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Sunday, August 27, 2006
Two posts in one day. What a surprise! But let's get straight into things.
I was reading Jiamin's blog about 5-10 minutes ago, and she said (I quote) 'you know; i never really learned. it's time i do..'
I thought I had learnt. I thought that all that had happened in the beginning of this year was enough to let me know that there was more to life than marks and studying. That there were so many people out there who were dying, sick, alone, and not because they were failing their exams and their parents were disappointed and unreasonable. And that we could and should help them, love them and everyone around us all.
But then I realise that I never really did anything. Sure, I thought about it, I knew it was the right thing to do, but then something came up at school and I never got round to it. And in the six or seven months that has passed since I really understood (or though that I did), the pressure and stress of school and marks and studying has infiltrated and morphed me into someone that I hate -- the very people, really, that I know are heading down the wrong path.
And now with the exams 33 days away, our every fibre and energy is being pressed and ironed into studying and revising.
We always count the months, the weeks, the days, the hours, the minutes that we have left to study. But we never count the months, the weeks, the days, the hours, the minutes, the seconds that other people have left to live, or how many minutes or seconds they even feel loved and safe in this world.
So perhaps it's time I started to learn as well.
Perhaps it's time for all of us to learn.
[ T-ray* ] blogged @ 7:32 AM
I haven't blogged for so long that the auto link for blogger.com when I type b-l-o... has disappeared.
But seriously, was it that long? Because it seems long, yet when you look at the date it wasn't that long ago -- only a couple of weeks.
Which is a long time as any. Considering that we now have 4 weeks left to the EOYs. A daunting figure if any. Though why the first mention of exams haunt us and leave us quaking and shivering in our shoes, and crazily emotionally attached to the ground escapes me.
All I know is, exams are important. Fail them like I do my tests, and you're one screwed kid, buddy!
The concept of time, when it comes to exams, also eludes me. It seems that you want nothing more than the exams to be over and nothing more than a speckle of dust that we've flown by, but at the same time you want time to crawl by like a snail with a two sizes too large shell so you can study.
And for every second and minute spent worrying over and stressing over that one exam a year, you just do it all again the next year. And that next year the last exam where you were also sweating and streaming and crying over is nothing more than a dot in that crowded brain of yours that must be eliminated so you can cram that one more dot of Stalin's reign or redox or heart structure into it.
And now I need to stop writing because I need to study and sweat and stress over my exams.
[ T-ray* ] blogged @ 2:25 AM
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Put your wallet, keys and passport in a plastic bag, and you can board the plane.
If you have no idea what I'mtalking about now, go watch BBC.
Perhaps I really should have started with this.
'What the fuck is going on in this world???'
If you are currently still befuddled by what I am talking about, allow me to let you in.
Terrorism, this rising threat that the world faces now. The new and supposedly hopeful twenty-first century, brimming with the new concept of the world as a Global Village, loaded with the current advances of technology, and the knowledge dug out deep from centuries ago, has fallen flat with an embarressing 'plop', right back into the sinkholes that it belongs.
One often expects, that when a new century rises from the shrouds of the old one, in this case the twentieth century, that the next hundred years would see an improvement from the previous one. Even more so for the millenium, of which humans have only, to date, witnessed three. The next thousand years, would be the band aid, the medicine, to forget all that had happened in the last violent millenium, and especially the horrors of the past hundred years.
Such hopes were dashed nine months and eleven days from the day the new millenium was born. With the violent and shocking 911 attacks on America (I hardly need remind you), one could safely say that this new millenium has charted its course for being a dismal flop.
In the past five years, roughly the same timespan as the world wars that we were assaulted with in the last hundred years (less even), we have faced numerous terrorist attacks, and the rise of several prominent groups that threaten the very foundations of human morality.
And once you think it has stopped, that they have slowed down, especially with the death of Al Zarqawi, we have once more been proven wrong. This goes to show, that they will never stop going. In fact the deaths of Saddam's sons and the capture of this illustrious demon have fueled their desire and passion to, simply put, kill more people.
If you think they're done, think again.
A massive scale attack, larger so than the 911 attacks (how could one even think it possible!), terrorism has once more reared its ugly face. Today, it has been announced that there have been plans to bomb nine US planes leaving UK, through some sort of liquid bombs. All over the UK airports, there have been great delays, and passengers are only allowed to take on board as hand luggage, their keys, wallets and passports in plastic bags given to them. 21 arrests have been made so far, but how exactly does one know whether all have been caught.
They're like ants, these terrorists. Kill one, and another one comes in to take its place.
Really though, the blame falls on Hitler, our dear fuhrer.
Truly, it was he who brought out the worst of mankind. What truly disinguishes the World War II as the most horrific war, is not only the fact that total extermination of a single race was begun, but that mankind failed its test in humanity.
Yes, there was the significant but small number of people who retained that morality of human beings that seperates us from non-living things, those who resisted. But the fact of the matter remains that most of the people in this world were completely ignorant, no, indifferent of the annihilation of 6 million people.
Such powers like the US, Britain and the Pope (the Pope!) ignored the pleas of those dying and burning alive in the crematoriums of the cruely constructed concentration camps.
Why does everyone hate Hitler? Asides from the obvious obvious reasons, there is another obvious reason. It was he who was the lock to the drawer that kept shut the devil. It was he who showed that human beings are cruel. It was he, but really, through us, that killed humanity.
Adele said that World War 3 would be the last war on Earth. We would annihilate ourselves with nuclear bombs.
I do agree, and add on to that fact that it would probably, sadly, horribly, with a twisted fate, be between religions.
Another ironic fact, in the way that it will be technology, that was our blessing, that will probably be our undoing.
Or who knows, truly, perhaps with a vicious and merciless hand we would continue to erase little snippets of human life here and there, and when world war 3 finally comes, it would finally annihilate the tiny, pathetic, countable human beings that remain.
Goodbye, cruel cruel world.
[ T-ray* ] blogged @ 4:09 AM
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Sometimes you look back at the times you had before, when you were little kiddies running around on the playground, swinging high and low on the swings, so proud when you swung high.
And then you look at yourself now, and you think, 'What the heck happened to us?'
So suave now, so slim, so muscular, so cool, so grown up, just like the teenagers you wanted to be. But now that I'm here, I just want to go back.
Now we're speeding in our race cars, screaming and screeching as we round a corner.
I liked it better when we were puttering about in our little toy cars, pretending to be driving.
Sundays and holidays used to be the times when we hung out together, kayaked, played football, played computer games, watched movies, had fun. Those were the days that we looked forward to, and loved with all our hearts. Sitting in the backseat of the car, in the darkness, drowsy, tired and blissful.
Now sundays and holidays are the days when we study the hardest, finish all our homework, study some more, stress a little touch more, and at night, lie in bed in the darkness, melancholy and dreading the next week when the same cycle runs its course once more. Where in a week's time you would be doing the same thing, willing yourself to sleep so you could concentrate the next day at school.
Last time we yelled and ran about, chasing each other, screaming, fidgeting anxiously while our mothers wiped the muck off our clothes, wanting to go back to play.
Now we stand with our mothers, with the adults, with the small talk.
In those days there was no seperation between boys and girls, it was the same old laughing gang, watching the same show, playing the same game, acting the same play, talking the same talk, having the same fun.
Now when girls and boys are together, there is talk among the gossiping onlookers. There is a taunt tension that hangs between us all. The girls are at one side, talking. The boys are at the other end, acting cool.
Last time I looked forward to the next day.
Now I look back wistfully over my shoulder, for the days that have gone past.
Then our parents didn't shout so much, not at each other, not at us. Nagged some, but not so much. Then we were united in one way, against the parents, we talked to one another, let each other in.
Now all we hear everyday are the yells of our parents, at each other, at us. Now we are are a dishevled bunch, stragglers that face each new day feeling alone and lost.
We were ignorant.
Blissfully so.
Then we were dragged out on long, boring, shopping trips, whining 'Can we go home now?'
Now we are dragged out on long, boring, tiring, stressful, meaningless lives.
Can we go home now?
[ T-ray* ] blogged @ 8:38 AM
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
This
Blog
Is
Dying
.
.
.
Bleaugh. I'm drawing blanks here.
I'm tired. And really bad. And feel guilty. Though I have no idea why.
But I don't want this to become one of those angsty posts; one of those angsty blogs that the Straits Times thinks are the only kind of blogs that teenagers can write.
Plus, I've done enough whinging for today.
HuiQi, Aileen, Florence, Mellissa, Melissa, Yi Chan, Yu Qin and Chai Ping thanks for listening to me whinge and for lifting my spirits up yesterday.
And everyone else.
I suppose everyone is feeling pretty low at the moment. In 307 anyway. Probably in other classes as well. In dear ol' Nanyang.
That is a pretty difficult feeling to avoid at the moment -- 4 tests a week and a bunch of SIAs to hand up in the same week, truly if you can laugh and dance and sing and live without feeling the tiniest bit of stress you must be a) failing everything and really not caring (impossible in today's world) or b) you don't exist.
But still, you can be dragged down to the arena and torn apart by raging horses and beaten, whipped, then chased around by a dozen hungry, saliva dripping lions, but that's not the end. The emperor could decide that you are too valuable to human kind and let you live, or the lions could go dizzy with wild hunger and smash into the arena walls.
Do you believe in a eucatastrophe?
For every one thing that you have to do today (this could include homework, studying for tests, CCA, anything that stresses you out), there are two times more people who care about you and show it, if you allow yourself to see it.
For every two things that hook into your heart and never lets go, there are three times more people who have you in their heart and prayers.
For every three things that get you down, there are five times more people who love you, care for you, comfort you, support you and cheer you up.
And for everything that you do, you have God whose love is worth more than all your worries and problems multiplied together and then multiplied to the power of 107823462734627846287346378264723 billion.
And out of these 2 times, 3 times, 5 times etc more people who love you, one of them is the person next to you right now; one of them is your sister/brother/mother/father; one of them is the person you sit next to in class; one of them is the person in your thoughts all the time; one of them is me; one of them is your best friend; one of them is someone you don't even know; and everyone else is everyone else you know.
Do the math.
[ T-ray* ] blogged @ 7:48 AM
