I Have OOACD (Obsessive Ogling At Caucasians Disorder)

I like to look at angmo’s (which means Caucasians in Singlish). It doesn’t matter what shape, size or colour they come in—I like to look at them all. You can say that I have OOACD (Obsessive Ogling At Caucasians Disorder). I ogle at females as equally as I ogle at males. In the bus, in the train, at the supermarket or the mall: I have a special radar that alerts me to their presence, and immediately I turn and stare at them until I get slapped by them (which hasn’t happened so far).

First of all, I marvel at their superb height. Caucasian girls at 13 look 17 because of their cool stature. And while I’m 17, I look more like a 13 year old thanks to my diminutive frame.

Then comes their hair colour. It’s so naturally fabulous—brilliant ginger, flaming red, platinum blonde, rich mahogany brown… lustrous colors that hair dye can never achieve on Asian hair.

Their eyes are mesmerising. Their coloured irises give their eyes so much depth. The range of colours they come in are also mind-boggling. I clearly remember my father’s light green eyes. The intensity of the green varied according to his mood. When he was worked up, it turned really bright and almost fluorescent. His eyes pale to an almost ashy shade of green when he’s calm and serene. I used to clamour for his attention as a child because I could never quite figure out why his eyes looked so different from mine.

It suddenly seems to me, that in this corner of the globe, Asians are spending their whole lives (and quite some money as well) trying to look like Caucasians, or at least resemble them in some way. Take a walk down Orchard Road on a Saturday night, and you can see many locals trying to hard—bleached hair, coloured contact lenses, mile-high heels… It really makes me sick because everything appears all too artificial.

By now you’re probably thinking, “Hey, this Jennyspeaks person is just another Caucasian worshipper.” While I do admit that I have a unashamed admiration for them, my reasons are actually more deep than that. The truth is, I am half Caucasian. I’m half Indian as well, which makes me Eurasian I suppose.

Raised mostly by my Indian mother in tropical Singapore, and hardly seeing my British father, I never really bothered about my so-called British heritage. I was fed with curry, learnt my lah’s and leh’s, went to a local school and swore in Hokkien before I learnt my fuck you’s. To make matters more complicated, everyone in school was Chinese (with a few Malay and Indian exceptions) and I was treated as Chinese thanks to my pale skin. I even learnt Mandarin as my mother tongue. So for a good part of my childhood, I tried to be Chinese, convinced that it was my destiny. My horrible Chinese gave me away.

I was pretty culturally confused and never knew what Eurasian life was meant to be like. While I’m quite familiar with my Indian half already (with Bollywood/Kollywood films, briyani, pesky relatives, and what not), there’s a part of me that yearns for more Caucasian interaction.

Sometimes the feeling of isolation hits me. I realise that I’m the ultimate minority, wherever I go.

Most of my peers think it’s cool to be Eurasian. I do accept that being different has its perks because you tend to get noticed. But sometimes I feel like I’m one big cultural mess. I have a cultural identity crisis. It doesn’t help that contact with my father has come to a standstill. I’ve never had the chance to build firm bonds with any Caucasian people my age too.

So that is why I like to stare at Caucasians. There’s this glass wall separating me from my other half. I see likely companions in these people walking by, but I can only stare. I want to talk to them, to be friends with them, to be with reconnect with my “own kind”. But they continue walking. Then they’re gone. And then I return to my muddled existence where everyone else is Chinese, and I don’t know what I am.

Stuck In A Moment

Credits: esotericwhale.com

It seems as if the gears of my life have jammed. I’m not moving forward. I’m not making a real difference to anyone. I’m just living my selfish life like a typical fathead. Nothing is happening.

Everyday is like yesterday.

I try to convince myself that it’s just a phase.

Last Night

It was 1.07a.m last night (or was it this morning?) when I came to a conclusion. I did this with R.E.M on replay, watching wispy shapes on the ceiling made by the passing headlights of cars.

The conclusion is (drumroll please)…

…no one really knows the real me.

Nothing particularly revelatory there. It’s the kind of thing people sing about. We all think we know the truth to that statement. And so did I. But it was only last night that I acutely felt the reality of it.

I’ve always been an intensely private person. I knew that right from the start, I was different in so many ways. I was aware that my skin colour differed from my peers, that my hair was curly and not straight. I was overweight. My family was different too—my father never signed my report card. I felt the need to conceal all these from people. I became ashamed about my unique situation and resolved never to reveal too much about myself to others.

While I’ve had firm friendships, I’ve never a friend whom I’ve bared my soul to. It hurts me to say this, but that’s the truth. Everyone gets a piece of me, but then again, it’s just a piece. While in recent years I’ve become more comfortable about talking about my dysfunctional family, there’s still so much I’m hoarding inside. I’m afraid that no one will really understand.

My mother thinks she knows me, but at last she doesn’t. This is particularly sad as she’s my closest friend, and yet my closest friend barely treads the tip of the iceberg that is me.

This became apparent after a short argument I had with her. I wanted so much to shake her and say, “But I’m not like that!” And then I realised that by doing so, I would be destroying her image of me. The person that she wanted me to be, all her life. So my temper deflated and I let it pass. In those few minutes, the space between the both of us widened into a gulf. She seemed a few light-years away.

At 1.07a.m last night, with R.E.M on replay, my relationships with people felt as insignificant as the shapes on the ceiling.

For the first time, I felt very much alone.

Sometimes I Do Stuff.

In my 17685^th essay here, I am going to talk about my deteriorating self-esteem. Brace yourselves.

Well I don’t exactly know how to beat around the bush for this one, so I’m going to spit out the sorry truth. And the sorry truth is that I feel so worthless sometimes. Not that I’m blaming God or anyone for that. Nor do I expect any heavenly assistance for this because this is my own stupid problem. But that’s the sorry truth right there.

And the sorry truth gets sorrier: I especially have a problem with good-looking or “cool” people.

You see, whenever I speak to good-looking people or “cool” people, I automatically feel that I don’t deserve to speak to them. I feel unworthy to occupy their time. Why should they waste their time talking to losers like me? What ensues physically is that I start to clam up and babble lame things like “The weather’s so shitty”. And that probably seals the deal for them because they clam up too and give me weird looks. They’re probably thinking, “No, you’re shitty. And boring. This is the end of our conversation.”

Which really doesn’t help my self-esteem at all.

And it hurts when people stereotype you and assume that there’s nothing more to you. That you’re just a nerdy-pants who looks nerdy and lives nerdily ever after. Which may be true to a certain extent. But every nerdy-pants, though he/she may be as flat and boring as a coin, does have two sides, no?

Take for example the schoolmate who only bothers to talk to you to:

1. Find out about your grades
2. Ask if you study every day (which, for clarification, is a NO)
3. Find out about the day’s homework
4. Copy your homework

and thereafter assume that you do not exist.

I’m starting to think that all this has a link with my slouch, which has more or less reduced my backbone shape to that of a prawn’s. I’m not a Hunchback of Notre Dame yet though. Might reach that level in a few year’s time.

To conclude this depressing essay, I’d just like to say that it’s only human nature to judge and stereotype. For example I’m judging those “cool” people myself and assuming that they’re dismissing me. And similarly others judge me and assume that my main goal in life is to finish my homework. So this is how karma works then. I’ll just swallow my pride, lower my head and walk along. And maybe secretly swallow some potato chips as well.

Home Improvement Madness.

Sometimes I feel that I’m slowly morphing into a middle-aged housewife.

I had a relatively carefree childhood, one that honed my free-spirited character. I didn’t understand the rationale of cleanliness (why clean something when it’s going to get dirty again?) and I could never understand my mother’s preoccupation with plastic flowers and vases.

However as I grew older, I began to feel the weight of the burdens that are associated with running and maintaining a home. Now don’t get me wrong, I do not have any particularly strong desires to behave like a housewife/homeowner. I’m just a kid. But still, being the only other person around at home to help my single mother slowly elevated my status from being “mummy’s little helper” to “mummy’s only helper”. I still did not give much thought to the weight of my role, until last month when my mother’s arthritic stabs took a turn for the worse.

And then I began to grasp the enormity of my responsibilities when my mother could no longer perform to her “full capacity”. I took charge of grocery shopping and minor chores like sweeping and dusting. In a bid to lessen the laundry load, I picked clothes carefully, opting for jeans so I could wear them a few times. I tried ways and means to earn extra cash so that my mother didn’t have to fund my transport.

I felt rather old among my friends, because while they yakked I would be making mental grocery lists or deliberating on whether the table fan needed cleaning or not. It was altogether pretty odd behaviour for an adolescent. Perhaps the one good thing that came out of my mental preoccupation with domestic matters was that I pondered less about what I could eat next.

What ensued was a period of mental torture because by nature I am a social creature. I pretty much hate pottering about the house when I know that concurrently my friends are at the beach having a barbeque. Or accompanying my mother to ogle at different sewing machines when I have no inclination towards such objects whatsoever. But I knew that as a daughter I had some filial duties and my mother depended on me. And so I suppressed my urge to slash those damn plastic flowers and did what I had to do.

In my mother’s calendar, Christmas is coming soon. And that doesn’t signal Christmas shopping but rather cleaning and pimping the house for bloodthirsty relatives. To be fair, the house isn’t in fantastic shape either. And that fact kind of hit home when things began to malfunction back-to-back, lizards began strutting around like they owned the house and cobwebs hung like chandeliers.

Here’s a glimpse of the To-Do list:

1. Clean and throw out kitchen storage cabinet
2. Clear out the storeroom and throw all the junk
3. Clear the ancient pots in the oven (with ancient food in them)
4. Cleaning of display cabinet and water pipes
5. Dispose sofa and clean the area
6. Clean behind the TV set
7. Install the DVD player
8. Install ceiling lights and clean up the aftermath
9. Dispose bedroom bookshelf and clean up
10. Empty and shift plastic cabinets to the kitchen
11. Sort out clothes, arrange in new wardrobe
12. Send the sewing machine for repair
13. Buy material for new curtains
14. Clean Kitchen cabinets and chest of drawers
15. Sell VCR, DVD Player and Desktop Computer to Karang Guni
16. Buy  full-length mirror and install it
17. Paint ceiling

And it goes without saying that I have a part to play in all of the above. Oh well, I guess that Mummy’s Only Helper has to come to the rescue!

Full Circle

“Who is Jennyspeaks?”

I first posed myself that question some two years ago, on a greasy Wednesday night. As I sat in front of the computer, fingers hovering the keyboard, there was a tinge of nervous excitement gnawing me inside. After all, it was my maiden foray into this strange activity called “blogging”. Besides, I had inherited my mother’s anti-technology genes, which only made me wary of anything electronic.

But with that question, I was free to pave the way for who I was going to be. I could single-handedly sculpt this character through my posts. I was going to have this faceless, anonymous, virtual mouthpiece. And with it I could let loose the many ideas, emotions and thoughts that were writhing around in my head.

When I finished the “answer key“ in my first post, I was smugly satisfied. I was pleased that I had managed to condense my very self into 320 words. I was also pretty sure that this was the real me, the unchanging Jennyspeaks, the young and restless lass who would be like that forever and ever, amen.

Of course that was rubbish. That answer key quickly became obsolete.

Some two years and 99 posts later, a very different Jennyspeaks is here before you.

In the weeks leading up to my 2^nd year Blogging Anniversary (a personal achievement, something to be celebrated, for someone who has never quite gotten over her fear over HTML), I was rootling around my Archives.

After looking through my old posts, I had only one conclusion: Jennyspeaks was f**king awesome. (This may not be a very reliable assessment considering that I am Jennyspeaks.)

But the point is. This blog has seen me evolve from a bipolar crow on amphetamines to a cynical depressive to a ??? now. In its posts I have confided terrible secrets and morbid emotions that I never had the courage to tell anyone about (including God). In typical no-holds barred fashion I have rattled off about everything from constipation to Amy Winehouse. I always prided myself as being a private person, but it is really ironic how this public space made me open up. These archives have now become precious and dear to me, because every single word I’ve uttered reminds me of what I was, and how far I’ve come.

And the thing that kept me going even on my lowest of days was the comments I received. Some of them made sense, some of them didn’t. But they all mattered anyway. It was affirming to get a comment from someone I didn’t know, because it reminded me that somewhere out there in our disconnected world, someone was listening to what I had to say.

Two years ago, I promised that I would continue the “answer key” as to who Jennyspeaks really was. I think it’s high time that I confront that question again.

Question: Who is Jennyspeaks?

Answer:

Jennyspeaks used to be a complex girl with complex wants and needs. Today she is still (if not more) complex, but has greatly simplified her wants and needs. Her bisexual tendencies have remained largely dormant since and she is happy about that.

She is still Eurasian and her parentage has not been altered. However while she used to not give a shit about her heritage, she now has a mild cultural/identity crisis.

Jennyspeaks’ faith in her maker has definitely become stronger since.

She has completely forgotten how to play the bass and the guitar, thanks to years of nerd-dom. She has not strummed a guitar ever since a steel string burst in her face while attempting to tune it. She is not in any musical group but has quietly penned several tunes since, on a voice recorder.

She believes that she isn’t racist. She hasn’t had a situation so far where she can test that belief.

She continues to hang out at the same old pigsty of an apartment block called her home. And it’s still cool.

Jennyspeaks has ceased having unhealthy obsessions over Green Day, much less any rock band. She just enjoys music and has a few favourites. Such as Green Day.

Jennyspeaks no longer aspires rock-stardom. In other words, she has become sensible and boring. Her sensible and boring career options journalism and broadcast media. She still hopes to brush up on her musical skills so that she can play music as a hobby. But secretly she hopes to be a writer.

(You are probably aware by now that this is a nerd speaking).

Jennyspeaks has reached the stage where she accepts that she cannot have a Gisele Bundchen figure and so she has stopped bothering about diets and calorie counting. She tries to exercise and maintain a figure that does not revolt people. She is content to be small, bite-sized and on the fleshy side.

She would still play catching, hide-and-seek and Old Maid… if only there was anyone who’d be willing to play with her.

Don’t bother totalling up your marks to see if you passed or failed the question. This answer key doesn’t prove anything because there’s no way you can compress an individual into a set amount of words. What’s written here today might be obsolete tomorrow… Who knows?

Dating 101, as told by my mother

My mother and I hardly talk about boys, even though we’re pretty close. And so recently, it was a rare privilege for me to be able to engage in a few minutes of civil discourse with her over the subject of dating.

It has always fascinated me that my mother has extremely low libido, even through her teenage years (or so she claims). She has always insisted that she never had any problems with boys whatsoever during her school years, and that she never had crushes nor dated. How efficient. And she expects me to do the same. According to her, such complications only arose when she hit the ripe old age of 25. It makes me secretly wonder if my mother was a butch when she was younger (after all, she was a competitive netballer). Okay I’m just kidding. Of course she wasn’t a butch.

Respectfully bearing in mind my mother’s stand on boys, (“You are a Christian girl. God will keep you safe from such things”) I quietly kept all my messy hormonal adventures (or rather, misadventures) to myself. We remained as close as ever, but I just had to improve on my secret-hoarding skills. And improve they did.

I am very proud to say that as of 12 July 2009, my mother still thinks that I am “safe” from “such things”. I am also very pleased with myself for that. Just about a month ago, when I was marking the 17^th year of my existence, the both of us were taking stock of my life and it slowly evolved to the subject of dating.

“See mum, I’ve been such a good daughter. I never gave you boy trouble,” I said teasingly.

Her expression changed. Somehow she clearly felt uncomfortable but had to say something anyway: “Of course, you’re baptized in Christ. He will keep you safe.”

“What if I get a boyfriend now?”

“It just shows that you have strayed. You have become distracted. Good girls don’t do such things.”

“So I can become a nun, then?”

“No I didn’t raise you to become a nun. I will not allow that.”

“So you want me to live like a nun without becoming a nun.”

“What I’m saying is, God will provide you with a companion when you are in university. He will be intelligent and holding a good job. Or else, you will find your future husband in Church. I hope you date that altar server, the one who won the “Altar Server of the Year” award. He looks so holy and righteous.”

“Mum, that altar server wants to become a priest.”

“Then find another altar server. Oh, and put your sons in servers too…”

And so there ended the longest conversation I ever had with her on dating. And her instructions were very clear.

The thing is, my dear mother does not understand that most (but not all, I hope) males in church are no better than males out-of-church when it comes to serial dating. As one friend put it: “Don’t ever date a server. They are players.”

I think it’s in times like these that my mother and I revolve in different solar systems. While my mother’s advice is very entertaining, I don’t buy it. I don’t believe in restricting a relationship to a specific time/place. Or in my case, to a specific altar server.

What I do believe in is letting God take control of what happens or doesn’t. I’m pretty sure God isn’t going to cast me into the pits of hell for lusting over a guy, or for dating a player. I can get a guy’s number and seek him out; but what happens after that is beyond my control. I can date all I want and get my heart trampled; but I know that at the end of the day He will be there listening to my rants.

So dear mum, thank you for your advice. However I don’t think the birds and the bees are about university guys or church guys or what-have-you.

I think it’s about living and learning. The practical way.

:”(

Ever since my estrogen has been able to control my feelings, I’ve been playing with fire and getting burnt again and again. It brings me to the top of the world when the rush comes on, the heady feeling when a guy looks you in the eye. And you know that it’s more than just a look.

But I have fallen again and again for people who toy with my emotions, and then discard me. 

Like how I came to know about someone who has hooked up after hanging on to me for so long.

And how, upon reflection, I realise that it’s not the first time I’ve been so caught up in the moment that I forget there’s no ground beneath me at all.

Then the bubble bursts and I plummet and I pick myself up. Only to be swept away again by that smile, that touch, those words. Cycle repeats.

Heartbreak heartbreak heartbreak. There’s only so much I can take.

I guess this is where my cynicism comes in handy. Let me switch back to my asexual mode, take a step back, and laugh at the folly of hormone-induced “love”.

I’m just unlucky, I guess. Now where’s my tissue.

How to stop burping!

here’s how: read something funny. this Tina Fey quote got me going:

“While speaking in North Carolina this week, President Bush said, the economy is strong, and the best is yet to come. Adding: Also, the war’s going great, we don’t torture people, I’m 11 feet tall, and if you don’t believe me, you can ask my unicorn.”

The Post-Constipation Post

It’s really uncanny how much constipation has loomed large over my life. Both literally and metaphorically. I’ve had struggles with my rectum ever since I was born, and yet constipation has become more than just a health woe for me. Constipation (not of the literal kind) has now become a word in my dictionary of emotions. It means to have a pent-up of feelings, a sense of quiet despair and discomfort, when too much crap has been building up inside of you and you can’t seem to let it out. I “feel” constipated whenever I feel lousy, bloated with feelings but I can’t help but keep it all inside simply cos I’m too lazy busy to release them.

Thus I’ve called this the “Post-Constipation” post, cos it’s like this huge release for me, as I’ve not blogged in a while. So bear with me as I dislodge all the hardened contents of my mental bowels, in this long, crappy post.

Every once in a while, even the most brilliant of writers become lazy unbothered  so busy that they fail to come up with anything. I am no exception. For the past few weeks I was lazy unbothered quite caught up with my new money-making hobby: work. Since it had been some time since both my muscle and brain cells had been decently utilised, my first work week was, simply put, hell. For once in my life, I felt completely stupid as I fumbled about awkwardly, struggling to remember recipes (I worked in a cafe) and cooking up a disaster in the kitchen. I spent my nights after work studiously revising things like How many minutes I should deep-fry onion rings and How many scoops of vanilla powder went into making different smoothies. Hell, I even my usual dreams were replaced with work-related nightmares (such as when I burned the roast chicken).

Many interesting things happened at work, and I was itching to get it all down in my typical cynical fashion, but sheer lethargy bogged me down. when I was not working, all I wanted to do was to switch off my brain and rot with Ellen DeGeneres. I was utterly numbed. As a result I truly became lazy and unbothered to blog.

And then divine intervention came. In the form of a book.

I was floundering through the library one day after a particularly nasty day at work (TWO  elderly customers complained that they couldn’t chew my Roasted Chicken. Get some dentures, ya hags!) when I picked up a random autobiography in the Music section. It had a nice picture of U2 in the front together with a not-so-nice picture of some man, presumably the author Neil McCormick. It was called I Was Bono’s Doppelganger. The blurb promised lots of racy scandal (“Bad sex, weird drugs, bizarre haircuts” it read) and since it promised some relation to everybody’s favourite rock-superhero Bono, I borrowed it. Eagerly, I attacked the novel, hoping to unwind with page after page of brainless, rock-star misadventures.

Instead what I read caught me by surprise. The book was essentially about McCormick’s quest for rock stardom, together with his schoolmate at Mount Temple Comprehensive, Paul Hewson (that’s Bono to you and me). Both Hewson and McCormick were in bands and harboured dreams of making it big, but only Hewson’s band succeeded eventually. While McCormick tried and tried relentlessly for more than twenty years to be heard, his former schoolmate soared higher and higher into the stratosphere of rock stardom. Thus unravels this sorry saga of a truly talented musician who lives in Bono’s shadow.

Sure, there are plenty of “sex, drugs and not-so-rocking rock&roll” bites for tabloid junkies like me to chew on, but underneath it all, I saw myself in McCormick. A strangely distorted reflection, at least. Previously, I too wanted a slice of such a lifestyle. I started out somewhat like McCormick, playing in amateur bands when I was 14, even when I could barely grasp the neck of the bass guitar. You may not believe this, but actually I was bitten by the Bug. The Bug to be famous. As a child of the TV generation (I had been watching MTV together with Sesame Street), it seemed to me the pinnacle of success, the achievement of my life if only I could appear inside that metal box. Being on TV seemed like the ultimate goal.

In the early days of my confused adolescence I was convinced that it was my destiny playing in stadium in front of a screaming audience. I worked hard at learning the guitar. I threw myself in the whole punk culture (listening to nothing else other that the screaming squalls of Sid Vicious and other punk gods) and was so sure that life was about rock&roll.

Unlike McCormick, who took twenty years of wrong turnings to finally get himself together, I was fortunate enough to be slapped on the face and shaken hard, pulling myself out of that silly dream. I realised that making music was about passion and expression, not making money and rolling around in Cadillacs. Today, I’m a very different person. I’m no longer a punk, or a whatever; I don’t subscribe to any particular music genre. I’m ready to embrace anything that moves me within.

I Was Bono’s Doppelganger is an airy, extremely funny and strangely poignant tale. As Bono remarked, McCormick has an ability to make “extremely heavy things feel weightless”. As if a reminder from above, a book I had picked to enjoy a temporary diversion into racy trash, instead had eye-opening passages on God. Bono has great faith in his maker, while McCormick is a committed, cynical atheist. The conversations between the two on God’s existence are extremely entertaining, but strike a chord with readers as well. The final, bittersweet twist emerges at the end when McCormick, ever the devout atheist, writes a very beautiful song about God. the song came to him in a dream, and proved to be elusive piece that finally clinches him a record deal, at the not-so-rock&roll age of 40.

So here we are, people. For those who have managed to stay with me till this far, you’ve officially ploughed through 1072 words!

Just to let you know, McCormick’s defining song, entitled I Found God, is neither preachy nor proselytsing. It’s extremely simple and yet carries alot of depth. some think of it as an atheist anthem. some view it as an affirmation. I tend to think it’s the latter. Here, read the lyrics and decide for yourself.

I found God
In the first place that I looked
I found God
In the crannies and the nooks
I found God
Underneath a stone
I found God
Didnt even have to leave my home
I found God
I found God

I found the Buddha
Sitting cross legged by the door
I found Jesus
Nailed and bleeding on the floor
I found the Prophet
Up to his neck in sand
I found God
Wherever I found man
I found God
In a hundred different places
With a thousand different voices
And a million different faces
I found God
I found God

I found God
Down the smoking barrel of a gun
I found God
In bones bleached white beneath the sun
I found God
Amongst the killers and the rapists
I found God
Between the proddies and the papists
I found God
In temples turned to rubble
I found God
On the pulpit stirring up more trouble
I found God
On both sides of the war
With the bigots and the fascists
Kicking down my door
I found God
I found God

And I said My God, my God
What have You done?
Why is this life so hard
For everyone?

And God said

I found you
Before it all began
I found you
When the universe went bang
I found you
In the cooling of the stars
I watched worlds collide
I wondered how we got this far?
I found you
Crawling from the sea
I found you
Hanging with the monkeys in the trees
I found you
Before you found me
I found you
And I set you free
Free to stand on your own feet
Free to watch the sunrise
Free to be what you can be
Free to be what you despise
Free to glory in the truth
Free to swallow your own lies
Cause I’m coursing through your bloodstream
I’m staring through your eyes
I found you
I found you.