Wednesday 30 July 2008

Expectations

I’m so sick of living up to people’s expectations. Being born and living in Singapore, we’re expected to follow the path that has been set out for us ever since we’re born. Primary school, secondary school, followed by poly or JC. Then university, find a good job, find someone to marry, have kids and spend the rest of your life balancing bills and teaching your kids to follow the same stated path all over.

Just because I want to do something that I like to do and that something is different from the original path, I’m seen as a failure and useless. Not that I have tried. I have tried to work like everyone else, get up in the morning, go to work, come back very tired but still fulfil family’s obligations, weekends spend with church events, come Monday, follow the same pattern again. I used to have a boyfriend also to deviate a little from the regime, and to have someone to hold and talk to. Those did not work out and were not God’s plans. I accept that. Why can’t everyone else accept it too?


MOE rejected me yet again. Everyone asks me to keep trying. I may or I may not. It’s just that everytime I get rejected, I feel like such a failure and it’s a crush to the ego and my own confidence. I’ve tried twice and I should think that’s enough! I may be saying this now, but I guess eventually when life and reality strikes, I may go back to trying again.

Now I try to avoid seeing my mum and talking to her. I will try to be nice or talk nicely to her and she will be saying sarcastic things about me not working and wasting my time and youth, etc. She just wants me to work so I will give her money. I’m not working now, so I stop giving her money for family expenses. Her lack of understanding for my feelings, ambitions and thinking irks me a lot. It’s always about money, money, money! And she keeps using the fact that I’m not working, so I should do this or that around the house, like I’m a maid. When I was working, I was expected to do the same things also! So why keep saying the not working part!? I hate that!

I just wish to hole up somewhere and wait for the world to forget about me.

Wednesday 23 July 2008

幸福跟你无关

年轻时,
人总是在寻找让自己幸福的理由。
如果可以怎样怎样,
就会多多多幸福。
如果可以跟谁在一起,
世界就会多多多美丽。
其实,很多人最后还是不幸福。
我想,幸福是可以跟别人无关的。
当我们想不通这点,就会陷入苦恼。
也会强求,乞讨,甚至用威胁来换取所谓的幸福。
幸福,也许会来得很缓慢。
但,它绝对不是来敲门的售货员。
也不是唐三藏千山万水取西经。
我想,幸福可以跟别人无关。
很简单的,
从自己看世界的丑态时,
从自己看内心的空虚时,
从一个深呼吸和微笑
重新开始。

Thursday 17 July 2008

Cheers to MY and only MY Poverty

I don’t like to be poor
but I deeply appreciate my poverty.
for the past months,
I have been very poor.
I told myself, I would bring you
to your long overdue dentist visit
once i got my paycheck.
I worried about many things
and felt utterly hopeless
but still
I slept through the nights
like a drooling baby
I cursed and lamented
to the ceiling fan
about what a bitch the world has become
then I swore to kill this mean bitch
and would never surrender to its claws
I deeply appreciate poverty
because it forces me to
gain new perspectives
and cultivate a wicked sense of humour
to mock at myself
which is difficult when one has
everything
and everything comes too easily.
but honestly, what is my poverty
compared to those who are truly suffering?
but what depresses me is the fact that
the world is controlled by those in power
and so are our lives
even when we don’t regard money
as the path to happiness
the powerful and rich
have rightfully made the world so.
and so the manipulation goes.
and goes and goes.
finally my paycheck arrived.
I went to do my groceries today.
and realized i didn’t need many things.
I am truly happy and rich
in my own twisted way, I think.
this is a simple tribute to my constant poverty
which I appreciate while I am alive and kicking
and always hope to float above it
heads up
I will always kick life’s ass, you bitch.

Thursday 3 July 2008

Books to read

(The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicise those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books that you love.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ/blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 and force books upon them

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo