The 411.

You force yourself up at 5.35am after the shrill ringing of your alarm snatches you rudely from the warm cradles of your slumber. You know you can't hit the snooze button, tempted you might be, but no, you can't. Because five minutes will turn to ten and eventually you will be standing along side the other late comers outside the gate, hearing the anthem and looking like a fool, while earning yet another detention for yourself.

Blearily you stumbled to the bathroom, flinching as the harsh bright light assaulted your sleep tender eyes. You went through the morning routines without as much as a coherent thought, and stepped inside the shower, allowing the icy water to slap your mind awake.

The bus rumbled on, as you propped your arm against the window still, earphones plugged deep into your ears, ignoring other sleepy students and chatty primary school kids , staring at the world with heavy eyelids as your shower this morning begin to wear off.

You're not a morning person.

Morning assembly.You mechanically mouth the words to the song you have been singing for the past ten years, all the while cursing the humidity that causes your uniform to stick uncomfortably to your back.

Sweat trickled down into your cleavage. Goddammit.

And so the day unfolds. Lectures after tutorials, as you snooze in the theatres and daze int the classrooms. Words ran pass you without comprehension, numbers flew by in a blur. Equations, concepts and formulas swirled in front your eyes, like dizzy spots, but never into your mind. You feel oddly detached, and the only thing you felt was a spurt of panic when a test on chapters you dont understand was announced to be taking place not many days from now. You promise yourself to ask and enquire, but deep down, you know you will never work up the discipline to.

Hours and seconds ticked by, oozing down to 340pm ever so slowly. You feel frustrated, you scream inwardly.

Why is it taking so @#$%ing long?

The bell sings it final melodious tune, you feel a loosening around your heart, you are released. Relief burst like a bubble, enveloping you. You just want to savour the moment, to breathe in that carefree elixir of freedom. You know it wouldnt last, that made it all the more precious.

That moment passed. You open your eyes and face the bitch of reality. Homework piled upon heaps, project deadlines looming ahead, NAPFA test next week, summer test just around the corner.

You sighed, but a smile soon took over. You and your friends are going out now, you are going to just enjoy the moment, and not think of anything else. Procrastinate, you are the master. Next morning is going to be a bigger pain in the ass, with nothing completed and one more day wasted. But you dont care. Live it up now and think about consequences later, its always been like for you. You briefly wondered how are you going to get promoted next year, but dismiss that thought quickly because you didnt want to ruin your mood now.

"I will think about it tonight."

And as the day draws to an end, you snuggled into your bed, exhaustion pressing on your bones. The feeling almost palphable.

"Think about what?"

You thought as you slip into a blissful nothingness, knowing that that bitch alarm is not going to let you rest for long.

And the day starts over again as you regain consiousness six hours later. It going to go on like this for two more years.

Sighs.

You're tired, really tired.

Honey, does my penis look small in this jeans?

Headline in today's The Strait Times :
"JC Student Kills Himself, Convinced His Private Parts Were Too Small."

Now I could think of a millions reasons why I might jump off the roof of a building.

1. My parents decided to film a sex video and post it up on the internet.
2. I walked around in pink and called myself kimiko or xiaojenny.
3. My brother flashed himself at a guy I might have taken a fancy in.
4. I have AIDs. ( I mean really, I dont see the point in living to the fullest when you have to be deathly afraid of catching a common cold. )
5. Singapore decided that its time we go into war with some random country.
6. Some random country decided its time to go into war with us.
7. The day I start to listen to techno.
8. Cannibalism becomes a trend.
9. The school decided we should all wear plaid pinafores with knee lenght socks.
10. When I get to go to heaven if i jump off the roof a building.

But no, this guy, who was studying at a top junior college, a member of the school volleyball team, who was doing well enough to take special papers, has a loving family and girlfriend decided to take his own life because he thinks his damned penis is too damned small for his ego. AFTER the doctor had verified that his sexual organ is indeed normal sized, alive and kicking.

Some people really deserve a good shaking, even after their deaths.



Afterthought.
Maybe his volleyball shorts were too tight around the balls... those volleyball tights are really ridiculously tight anyway... hmmmm...

Is that a silent T or not?

When I had pigtails and ribbons in my hair, I was envious of girls who have long fancy names. I used to think they sound really pretty. Girls with names like Jennifer, Stephanie, Angeline, Elizabeth, Samantha etc. I used to give myself a new name everyday. On mondays I will be Veronica. Tuesdays Madeline. Wednesdays I fancy Belinda and it goes on and on. My parents look on with amusement whenever I sign my art pieces with every other name but my own.

I was adamant about the names, and choosy to a fault. Any names without at least three syllabus was looked down upon. They HAVE to be fancy shmancy, frilly schilly.

When I entered primary school, the nightmare with my real name begin.

"Err...Z-Zhi Ming is that it?"
"How do you pronounce this?"
"Ze Min?"
"Err, I cant read this. Something Min?"

I used to cringe and cower in my seat whenever my name was called. It seems nobody could get it right. I made a vow on that very day in the first week of primary one, my kids will never have to suffer through the same ordeal. I will give them beautiful names, princessy names. Maybe I will even give them two names. Something like, Elizabeth Karen Lee. And if its a male, I will let my husband do the honours, my childish mind firmly decided.

However, when I was in the midst of secondary school, my preference for names swung back and forth. Like most trends, my fancy couldnt hold for long. One moment I wanted edgy names, names no one could pronounced, names no one would have. ( It was that period where EVERONE wanted to have something nobody had.) Names like Schyler, Xaveira, Desiree. And at another I wanted names with double Ls. Names like Danielle, Joelle, Gazelle. There was time where I wanted boys names too. Names like Alex, Randy, Sam.

I used to whine to my mother, why couldnt you have given me an english name? why oh why? She always said, "Because I want you to choose one for yourself when you are older. I dont want you to be stuck with a name you dislike forever."
At that point of time, I didnt understand what she meant and always sulked and muttered, "I would have liked it if it was english."
She always smiled gently and said, "You will understand when you are older."

How I loathed that sentence! It seemed to me like, for every question they could not come up with a plausible enough reason, they will whip out this sentence as an arsenal. And I will lose, because how could I come up with a good enough retort for that?

But now that I'm reasonably older, I begun to see the light.

With each growing phase, our mindset changes. When I was young I wanted big fancy Tiffanies or Jennifers, but when I was an angsty age of fourteen, I couldnt bear the thought of having such a frilly, pink sounding name. And at sixteen, I shudder at the Xavies, Desirees which I thought was cool two years ago. New friends come and old ones go, and with each new environment and influence, my thinking evolved too. Now that Im seventeen, I couldnt really care less about names, and silently thanked my mother each time the teacher called on another student to answer the questions just because he couldnt pronounce mine. Who knows? Maybe when Im eighteen, I might just call myself Adrianna.

But Rhys does sound pretty cool though. (:

On my first day in a JC, my new teacher told the class to inform her if we preferred to be called something beside your proper name. A few in my class gave her english names, and we have been calling them that ever since. She asked me whether I had one and maybe I should get one because my name is a mouthful, I smiled and said,


"No thanks, Miss. Tze will be fine, just fine."

Pass the pills, dear.

W turns 18 this staurday.

When all is done and the dust has settled, you take a pull of breath and think, "18 is a rather large number, isnt it?" Not long after 18 you will hit the coveted 2. But if you come to think about it, when all is said and done, 10 years is not a very long time. So 30 and its laugh lines comes skipping merrily along and before you know it, the big dreaded four oh is pressing upon you with its wrinkles and sagging assets. Voila, you are married, your figure turns convex in the middle instead of concave, you struggle with grass-munching toddlers and sullen teenagers, your husband is balding and has a belly the size of the gym ball you bought for pilates classes which you never have the time or energy to attend.


Life whips you around pretty fast.


One moment you are young and seventeen, your figure is blooming regardless of the amount of junk food you consume, and the biggest problem in your life is whether you are going to fail your A levels or if that pimple on your face is ever going to go away.
And another you are getting old and everything is going south and age-spotted, you eat salad and oatmeal not in an attempt to save your increasing dress size, but to prevent yourself from getting heart attacks and kidney failures. And the biggest problem in your life is, hang on, what biggest problem? All the problems I have are kinda crucial. Like losing my job to a wide eye freshie with a the same degree but with the looks of a beauty paegant finalist, losing my husband to a twenty dollars hooker simply because she looks good in fishnet stockings, losing my daughter because she's experimenting with marijuana and motorcycles, losing my house beacuse the mortgage is one big fuck.


Whoop-dee-doo.


Pretty soon, I will be 70, all aching backs and creaking bones. Living my life away watching reruns on television and eating multi-coloured pills to keep me alive while ironically, waiting for my death.


After hitting 30, its like the famous quote, "Its all downhill from here."


Lovely.
Enjoy 18, W, while you still can.

So There.

It's 4.17 pm Sunday.
It's hot, airless, humid and stifling.

I'm feeling fat, frumpy, sick, lazy, ugly, boring, guilty, negative, broke, heavy, grouchy, unloved, lonely, friendless and unmotivated.

And to top it off, school starts tomorrow.

Boo.

Sometimes,

It gets too gruelling to reach in the swirling depths of my mind and simply pull out an emotion or thought and exhibit in words and poetries.

There are days when I step home in a haze of incensed fury, raised agitated fingers above the keyboard and just froze. The smorgasbord of unjustified indiagnations and petty frustrations pounded their fists on the locked door of my weary mind, wanting out. They crave to be liberated and eloquently expressed, they want the public to acknowledge their sufferings and demanded both their empathy and sympathy.

More often than not, all I wanted to do is to plunge into the recesses of my churning fury, and allow the rawest of emotions and thoughts to gush out without being filtered, restructured and moulded into a form which you readers have been reading for the past many months.

Just like this;
" I had a fucking bad day in school. Im so pissed right now. Everything that could go wrong did. Why is this world so fucking unfair? Fuck. Everything is so screwed, Im screwed and screw everybody else too. Every fucking thing is against me. And Im down with a fucking flu. My hair's all messy and my uniform looks like shit. The weather is fucking me up and so are the lectures. Fuck FuCK FUCK. Today suck big fat gooseballs. "


But with the principles to uphold and the standard to maintain, I couldnt allow myself to.
Heaves big sigh.

Sometimes I wish I have a twitsy blog and just write about my day like every "miik00" or "xiia0jenn". But these are just moments of my fleeting mental stability. A few weeks or maybe even days, I will look back at this sentance and probably laugh. But for now, I shall just indulge in the thought.


Till the next time, I'm incoherently yours.

Because I Couldnt Think OF Anything Else.

And the mother lode of them all,





Some people seem to have an extraodinarily large amount of free time on their restless hands and over-creative minds.

Mr.Blake sums it up for me.

I was angry with my friend,
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe,
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew it was mine .

And into my garden he stole,
When the night had veiled the pole.
In the morning, glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.