random wise quote, part two. Wednesday, Jun 25 2008

this is one for all my single ladies out there.

“Men are like parking spaces, the good ones are taken and the free ones are handicapped. “

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random wise quote, part one. Wednesday, Jun 25 2008

someone said these:

“Friendship is like peeing on yourself: everyone can see it, but only you get the warm feeling that it brings. “

oh yes, i’m getting peed on all the time

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Picking Up (and dusting off) My Bible. Wednesday, Jun 18 2008

and so i’ve been telling myself to read the bible more often, because i’m a christian and being christian doesn’t mean going to church for an hour on sunday, and then throwing God in the safe-deposit box, retrieving him when neccesary.

thus last night i picked up my dusty ol’ bible and spent a few minutes removing the dust and lichen that have taken root. that made me a tad bit guilty, because i’ve been a Part-time Christian and Full-time Lazyarse. i saw Jesus in cheesecake and pasta, my church was my bedroom, and tabloids were my daily scripture.

then a couple of days prior to father’s day, i was digging through a pile of old papers in my room when i stumbled across an envelope. it was written in childish scrawl.

“dear daddy, what are you doing in… london, and why all the months you never come but i still love you very mach! i am big girl now! happy father day, my sweet heat! i miss you so mach! come back please? next time come erly. i am very sad you never come.”

the cold salt tears came. immediately i hated myself for crying, for being such a sentimental dumbass. through my tears i laughed as i noted my poor spelling (sweet heat, indeed). the concept of having a father was becoming very hazy, now. but wait: i always had a father. that was God. but i chose to lock him up and stash him away, forgotten like the old Father’s Day card i wrote to my dad when i was seven.

Back to last night. i flipped to Sirach, a deuterocanonical in the bible. the following verses were pretty memorable.

• don’t try to understand things that are too hard for you, or investigate matters that are beyond your power to know.
• (on friendship) Others will sit at your table as long as things are going well; they will stick to you like your shadow and give orders to your servants, but they will not stand by you in trouble.
• a loyal friend is like a good medicine that keeps you in good health.
• don’t keep company with female musicians; they will trick you.
• friendship is like wine, it gets better as it grows older.
• when a person dies, all he possesses is worms, flies and maggots.
• what are human beings? of what use are we? the good that we do-the evil that we do- what does it all mean? if we lived a hundred years, we have lived an unusually long time, but compared with all eternity, those years are like a drop of water in the ocean, like a single grain of sand. that is why the Lord is so patient with us, why he is so free with his mercy. He looks at us and knows we are doomed to die; that is why he is so willing to forgive us.
• don’t let a bad wife have her way, any more than you would allow water to leak from your cistern.
• nothing in creation is greedier than the eye; that’s why it sheds tears so often.
• when you sit down at a fancy banquet, don’t let your mouth hang open, and don’t say: “look at all the food!”
• people who eat too much get stomach aches and cannot sleep. if you don’t overeat, you can get a good night’s sleep and wake up the next morning feeling fine. but if you do, go off and vomit and you will feel much better.
• as long as you have breath in your body, don’t let anyone lead your life for you.

well said, really. Sirach makes more sense than Oprah.

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16 years on: what? Wednesday, Jun 11 2008

sheesh.

when i was a little girl, i always dreamt of the day i’d turn 16. it was as if it was the magical date, the Open Sesame to all i ever wanted. the glamour of 16 lay elusive, far out in the dim horizon, something laced with black and gold and surrounded by shimmering diamonds. 16 was the bomb, or so i thought.

and thus, my progression from girlhood to adolescence was all about my 16th birthday, and how i was going to be this tall, pretty girl with lots of friends and i’d throw this giant birthday bash and get all sorts of presents. and how afterwards i’d roll around in bed with my boyfriend and he’d propose with a diamond ring and blah blah blah. (you see, i was 6 then. thanks to Mary-Kate and Ashley trash, as well as years of vegetating in front of Xena the Warrior Princess, i was quite the mini-slut.)

and now, that “bomb” is right here at my doorstep, fizzling out. i don’t think it’s even gonna explode.

so i look at myself in the mirror and i go: 

 I’M 16!!!

and then i drag my feet to the kitchen and eat potato chips. then i examine the blackheads on my face, brush my teeth and shit (if i’m lucky) and this and that and life goes on.

in terms of height, i’m not 16. i’m 6.

emotionally and mentally though, i’ve grown up. too fast. i’ve become so numb and cynical and jaded like a piece of agar-agar that’s been boiling for 60 years.

i’ve had an amazing life so far. i’m surprised that i’m still alive despite the threat of cancer ever-present.

you see, when i was 7, i was a girl with crew-cut hair (that was curly. imagine that) who hitched up her skirt, sweared in english-accented Hokkien and arm-wrestled with the boys. in short, i was a tomboy. so there was this showdown between me and this dude Li Yang. after we drew at the spitting competition (we could reach no farther than the teacher’s table), there was a tie-breaker. this girl came forward with this assorted array of pencil leads and suggested that we have an eating face-off. so imagine: the whole class crowded around the both of us, sitting face-to-face, each armed with 3 boxes of leads.

“GO!”

my supporters constantly fed me water as i hurriedly crushed thick leads between my teeth. i might as be eating granite. as i was finishing the 3rd box, my opponent threw up and i won hands-down. for a few weeks, i became a god and everyone whispered my sacred name in awe.

when i got home that day, my mom asked my why my teeth and lips were grey. i told her i fell on the classroom floor.

so since then, i’ve always been waiting for the day i’d be diagnosed with cancer, and so i can tell the doctor: “i know why, it’s cos i ate pencil leads when i was 8.”

fast-forward. yesterday i hauled out some tapes from my cupboard. yes, from age 9 to 13, i taped stuff off from the radio and i played them on my walkman. i remember the horrified look on my friend’s face when i changed tapes on the excursion bus. “is that your mother’s?”

some of them were mouldy and i ditched them. i picked the rest up and played them on the cassette player.

the songs sang about the past. memories of my first crush, our little love notes. my dad slapping my mom, my mom slapping my dad, both of them slapping me, me poking holes in my mom’s photo. playing with make-up, dismantling a sanitary pad, drenching my nails in polish. me finding my mom’s divorce papers. hating my first crush for talking to another girl, hating him after our break-up. watching the total disintegration of relations between my sister and mother. failing my mid-year maths paper and trying to forge the signature, only to end up in the principal’s office.

enter: age 14. the most chaotic, contradictory and absolutely exhilarating years of my life. when bad tasted oh so good.

age 15: becoming christian again.

and now: another year, another kilogram added.

happy 16th birthday to me. i’m going to Fairprice to buy some instant noodles.

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where did the vulgarities go? Wednesday, Jun 4 2008

i’m tired.

yesterday i had the most interesting experience with Singapore’s public transport system. drunk with heady themes seeping from the pages of my O’level literature text, To Kill A Mockingbird, i boarded the bus 853 in the evening to my church. so the youth group meeting was to start at 7.30pm. i was early, so i decided to hop down at the AMK Library to read some tabloids. then at 7.15pm, i left the library to re-board the bus 853 to church.

it was 6 stops away. planting my arse firmly down beside woman with a supermarket on her lap, i closed my eyes. six stops, later, i’d open my eyes and i’ll see my church.

six stops later, i opened my eyes. I saw a stadium.

time: 7.40pm.

Calmly, i alighted. I was so calm as noted the number of the bus: 852. I was so calm as i messaged to leader and told her i’d be at least 45minutes late.

I made a mental note that i hadn’t started unleashing all my colourful vocabulary and all the indecent references to one’s Mother in Hokkien. Usually, ‘shit’ is the first word to be verbalised, and ‘fuck it’ is the first thought that surfaces in my head. For the first time in my life, i was actually not letting off steam.

I had no idea where i was. There was a stadium and a few blocks of flats separated by a highway, but at night, Singapore looks the same, whether you’re in Kallang or Woodlands. To my surprise, i began humming R.E.M’s Imitation of Life as I crossed the overhead bridge to take the bus back to square one.

And like an idiot, i waited for 15 minutes and took the bus back to the library (and i had to climb another overhead bridge), where i waited for 853 and reached church at 8.15pm.

And i left my house at 6.15pm.

Then i realised why i was so sedated. I was simply tired. Not the kind of tired that happens after a game of badminton, nor the kind of tired after a long day at school. It was a kind of a vacuum, an immense plastic bag full of nothing that was stuck somewhere between my windpipe and my brain. A choke. Blood wasn’t flowing. The buzz had gone the only thing that got me interested was food, sleep, and the occasional sighting of a hot guy.

I told my friend about it. “hey, you’re finally BECOMING LIKE A NORMAL PERSON!” she laughed.

If normal is being sedated, then i’d rather be a howling lunatic anytime. I want to cry, scream, laugh and screech when i’m not supposed to. I want feel every single emotion. I want to blast off like a rocket with colors spilling from all sides.

I don’t want to be tired. Please, let me cuss normally again.

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to kill a pig Wednesday, Jun 4 2008

before i begin, two words: Apology. Warning.

apology: I haven’t been updating, and this will be likely situation with the onslaught of the killing season. go ahead, sue me.

warning: jennyspeaks will be updated pretty erratically from now on, but hang in there, my strawberries.

pigs have become a central theme in my mind now. pigs, pork, and particularly, killing pigs. as i reflected last night on what my life has evolved to, this quote surfaced:

“‘Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Bash him in! Spill his blood!’”
- William Golding, Lord of the Flies,

this is what my life has become: an endless war-dance, a savage hunting trip, where armed with textbooks, ten-year series assessments, thick piles of exam papers and even thicker expectations from everyone, i tread cautiously into the jungle, ready to kill the pig. the pig, in this case, is the upcoming O-level exam, a national torture, the culmination of ten years of full-time studying.

so i am told kill it, to crack its skull open, to suck as much marks as i can from it. everyday in class, i sit back and muse at the bowed heads scribbling furiously at yet another mock exam paper. in my mind, the white uniforms disappear and the pens are replaced by spears. the sound of pen on paper, the friction, becomes the frenzied sharpening of spear against stone. in the distance, the teacher becomes the tribe chief, and he utters the battle cry. this is civilised savagery.

this is the killing season.

you could also compare it with Darwin’s evolution theory. the survival of the fittest. the weakest fall down and get trampled by other charging savages, never to rise again. (even if they do, either their bones or their spirit is broken. usually it’s both.) far ahead in the horizon, lies the pig. fatty, tender, moist, and just begging to be skewered.

but do i want the pig? no. i’m just running with the tribe, because if i stop, i’ll get trampled over. do like pork? technically and literally, no. in real life, pork only tastes good when it’s fried (but then again, even a remote control would taste good when fried). the pork of the hunting trip, the pork everyone is running after, the pork that everyone wants a slice of, is something i wish i didn’t have to eat.

i’m too tired to care about the harvest, the bounty. so what if the pig that i eventually spear will give me sweet roasted meat? when i finally hunt it down, all i’ll see in my hands are blood. when i finally cook it, i’ll be too tired to appreciate the sweet pork of success. i’ll just lie in a corner and chew it like any another piece of food.

hey you. yes, you. the one staring at your miserable computer monitor now. don’t you feel that sometimes, you’re actually a savage? you’re hunting down your own pig, whatever it may be, somewhere in the forest? you put on your war-paint, you grab your weapons, and you get out there into the wild. but don’t you ever feel that Hey, what the hell am i running for? what the hell do i want anyway? and why, when i finally get it, there’s still a piece of the puzzle missing?

but there’s one way to make it all better. a tribe is not a tribe without the members doing it all together. a barbarian behaves like one because everyone around him is a barbarian too. so c’mon people. let’s all put on our war paint and sharpen our spears. then we’ll charge together, chanting ‘Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Bash him in! Spill his blood!’ as we run.

whatever we’re running for, anyway.

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