Thursday, December 23, 2004
The Never-Ending Story
Hoo I'm here blogging again. Bear with me here, this is going to be a really long post since I have quite some bit of inane stuff to muse about. Not that I didn't have anything to blog, but recently it has become more a matter of, If I'm not studying nor doing any work for Medsoc (oops, but yeah it's the truth.. currently I'm getting a bit worried that I might have done absolutely nothing for Medsoc by the end of my term as A&E Sec o_O;;), then I'm not going to sit down and spend one bloody hour of my time blogging. An incredibly stupid thing to be thinking, really, considering that if I sit down and really think about how I've been spending my time I will realise just how many hours I've sat in front of the computer trying to make the bittorrent light turn green on my Gundam Seed download so I can stop stagnating at a wee 10kb/sec, or brainlessly sailing on Sid Meier's Pirates! (the game title comes with the exclamation mark; I'm not shouting). Somehow, the lure of a running computer is infinitely great; as long as it sits there running I feel tempted to turn on the monitor and do absolutely nothing in front of it. Great.
But anyway I have started on my quest of the acquisition of knowledge (mugging is the bad word of the month), so here I am blogging for the first time on my new computer (I really can't get used to this blasted keyboard because it slopes away from me! How absolutely poorly designed). Yeah anyway as blog posts get this is a really mundane, boring, shallow one.
::::
Mom got me a Freedom Gundam for my Christmas present today, and I am very happy because I never expected any present this year but I also feel awful because I did not get my mom anything. The circumstances leading up to the purchase was pretty amusing. My mom asked me if I wanted a Christmas present, and goodness I couldn't say no, so I looked wistfully at my cupboard-ful of Gundam models and mom, being mom, guessed what I meant. So we went to Bugis today to see if they had any Christmas discounts on Gundam models. They didn't, so I told moum I would go up to Taka since I believed they had a 20% discount. When I reached Taka I found that there was only one Freedom left there. Well my original plan was that I wanted either a Freedom or a Justice, and I asked mom to buy one of those and give me a "surprise" (okay, it's a dumb idea, and not at all "surprising") but I ended up buying Freedom on the spot since my mom wasn't there. Quite a weird feeling, buying your own Christmas present. Almost like sending yourself a birthday card. I was wondering if I should go and wrap it up, but I didn't think anyone else would appreciate the irony.
So yeah, I am the proud owner of one Freedom Gundam (like Joseph). Hopefully I will be able to find companions for him/her? But choosing one model out of all the 1/100 models was really difficult; I liked Blitz, Freedom, Justice, Aegis, Gundam Astray Red Frame and Blue Frame, Providence (actually I only like that one for its name, and Raww) and Sword Strike. Sigh I need to start saving money.
::::
Speaking of saving money, J.K. Rowling has finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince! Apparently it will be out July 16 next year, so that's another reason to start saving. I never knew there was such a long period of time between finishing a book and releasing it. Boo.
::::
Just the other day I had this really bizarre dream where I was being chased by some gun-wielding lunatic killer or something (who looked like Sirius did in the Prisoner of Azkaban movie) and I had to protect this little boy and girl as he chased us through this dilapidated old building filled with dusty metal beds and cabinets. Then there was this part where the lunatic fired at us and somehow out of nowhere this fat Indian man appeared and took the shot in his back, and somehow he shielded us from the lunatic while we ran away (my goodness, I was saved by a fat Indian man. Imagine that) Of course all exciting dreams end at the most exciting part, where we were hiding in some old cupboard in the kitchen hoping that the killer wouldn't find us. Hmm, as Jon Chia says, welcome to the world of the bizarre.
::::
Carolling is over, and I miss not meeting up with a group of maroon-dressed people every other day and singing to patients and normal people alike regardless of whether they can really be bothered about our singing (that's my summary of what carolling was like, but it was really enjoyable). I really hope our carolling brought some cheer to the lives of those we carolled to, because I certainly felt lots of it. It was a very enriching experience; I got to know more people, I learnt how to sing in parts (and how difficult that is, too) and now I'm also one step closer to learning how to communicate with patients. So a gazillion thanks, Liying. for all your efforts and hard work in coordinating the carolling and for bringing back such a wonderfully meaningful and fun activity. We couldn't have done it without you.
::::
Two days ago I was rush-writing Christmas cards in order to send them out the next day, so that hopefully they might reach their intended recipients before Christmas (well they certainly can't reach the recipients on Christmas day since postal workers don't work on Christmas). It's just like me to leave things to the last minute, so to those people who I wrote to, I really really hope the cards reach you by tomorrow, otherwise a million apologies for my tardiness.
::::
Some ruffled feathers and harsh words abound lately, and I'm not sure what to make of it. From a neutral point of view of course I am wholly incapable of putting myself in the shoes of the persons involved because I don't know everything, and the natural thing to do is to try and advocate reason and calm, for lack of any good idea of what to do. But from someone who's said his fair share of harsh words himself, I know what it's like to feel that unreasoning anger that demands release, that urges you to do something vindictive, hurtful, to satisfy it's roaring hunger for recompense. It's not a nice feeling, to say the least, and yet it consumes your whole until you can see no sense until it is quelled, either through taming it or giving in to it. I know what it's like to to have people tell you that you're over-reacting over a little thing, but to the person involved it never is a little thing. It could be a little thing that precipitated it all, but that little thing, like a pebble, was supporting the weight of boulders, piled up steadily over time, and all it takes is for that pebble to slip and all comes crashing down. I know what it's like, and yet I can't say if it's better to let all the anger out or to force it into submission. Neither is easy. With one, you hurt others, and with the other, you kill yourself. It all depends on how much you like self-sacrifice for the greater good.
On hindsight, perhaps all can be resolved if everyday you do something to prevent the boulders from building up. When someone does something you don't agree with, work it out. Talk about it. Stop that something from becoming a point of resentment that builds up. But it's all too easy to say something like this. Shrinks can do it too. The problem is we never really know if being a good friend entails accepting the friend as he is and putting up with his eccentrities and flaws, or if we should try our darndest to change those flaws. Personally I favour the former, because I can't stand the thought of someone else trying to change me. So maybe I'm selfish, but I'd rather not tell someone else that I'm frustrated with some of the things I do, just simply because I would not like being given a list of to-dos and not-to-dos. Don't you think life would be such a bore if you had to remember all the things that all your friends hated about you, so that you won't do those things? I don't know, maybe someone better enlightened regarding these matters might wish to tell me?
The reason why this issue has particular significance to me is because everytime I get to really know a friend I start getting really irked by some things the friend does and it always ends up being blown up because I have a really bad temper. And it's starting again, though I won't say with whom. All I'm trying to do now is to ignore those things that irk me because thankfully for this friend those are really really small things that concern that person and someone else, and only remotely me, so it's at least easy to ignore. Yeah I know it's a bad idea to just pretend that a problem isn't there, but I don't know what else I can do. Sometimes I wonder if this is part and parcel of getting to know someone really well, that you end up disagreeing. I know of at least one time this happened and after I made up with my friend the friendship became stronger, so perhaps disagreements forge a stronger friendship? I have absolutely no idea.
::::
I'm almost at the end now. Phew this is like the never-ending story or something. I just keep writing. That reminds me of the never-ending song we heard at BK after carolling on Tuesday. For some insane reason (like to torture fast-food consumers or something) some idiots remixed a whole lot of carols with Sha-la-la and some song that goes That's the way-uh huh uh huh-I like it-uh huh uh huh. How absolutely ghastly. The worst thing was it started getting addictive by the end of the meal, so we made a hasty escape from BK. They should really have a law against bad music in public areas like fast food restaurants.
Ah yes, that is all. Thanks for your patience. I should give a prize to whoever reaches this sentence (and read everything above this too, don't cheat). Might I refer you to
mezza's blog, where there is a really good joke =P. Enjoy. And Merry Christmas, everybody! Throw away your notes for just one day, please.
Avaris / 12/23/2004 11:43:00 PM
0 consumed