March 2011
39 posts
Why do these things happen to good people?
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When I was young, my parents liked to bring me on cruises. Once, they left me at the cruise’s playroom while they went to the casino. (I think these playrooms were made for the very purpose of encouraging parents to go to the casino.) I arrived a little later than the other kids, and one of the girls took an immediate dislike to me. She decided that she didn’t want to play with me, and...
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Scheduled Grief
Monday, a little spark goes off in her head. She winces, and keeps walking.
Tuesday, when a word falls from her colleague’s mouth and it sets off the dominoes in her head. Her lip only quivers for a moment, but she takes the rest of the day off.
Wednesday, life goes on. She does the laundry, makes the bed, shops for groceries. In the car she plays in her head over and over again the movie...
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“Did you know that the metronome inside us quickens when telling a lie? I want to...”
– Megan Falley
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“Although it is true that some dogs are on bomb squads or drug-sniffing teams, it...”
– Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, by Amy Chua. This book cracks me up with its familiar typical Chinese refrains, the childhood I share with these children miles away, and touches me somewhere deep inside with the worries and truths of Chinese parenting. It is no coincidence that this is the first...
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“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you...”
– Mark Twain
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It’s been five days but I feel like I’ve aged five years. It would be nice right now to see someone who isn’t a doctor or a nurse or a relative, or go somewhere that is not the hospital or an empty house. It would be nice not to have to worry, but I guess nice things are not what life is about.
The sound of the first raindrops.
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Catharsis
Between the main road and Singapore General Hospital, there is a long road up a hill that passes through several other medical centres and a carpark. This is a road I have walked many times before. I walked it when my grandmother was ill and dying; I walked it when my aunt was in serious condition and warded for months. Last night I walked it again. Only this time, I walked it without my mother. I...
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Perhaps our lives begin to change when people we...
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“Knowing how to read and not reading books is like owning skiis and not skiing,...”
– Chuck Jones, till this day one of my biggest inspirations in art and creating.
“What he beat you for? she ast.
For being me and not you.”
– The Color Purple, Alice Walker
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My father and I hang the clothes out to dry, mutely. There is a thick air of estrangement as we move around each other, him with shirts on hangers and I, responsible for the trousers. We’ve never done this before, him and I. Not together, at least. He did, for a period of time last year while I was studying for the major exams. I am, on all counts, adverse to housework. Where possible, I...
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“I’m an idiot, a huge idiot. But I am an idiot who loves you, and maybe that should be enough.”
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“Tristran Thorn, at the age of seventeen, and only six months older than...”
– Stardust, Neil Gaiman
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#prayforjapan
Huge brown waves engulfing entire roads and villages. Coastal areas turned into giant swamps and wastelands. Fires raging in Tokyo, terrifying explosions at the oil refineries. Fissures in the ground threatening to drive the city into fragments. The seventh biggest earthquake in the world, followed by waves upon waves of a menacing tsunami. For the past few hours I have been glued to various...
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Two things right now
1. I am confused.
2. I am procrastinating.
This should hardly come as a surprise to anyone, because I am one or the other - or both - all the time. This time it worries me. It has been worrying me for the past couple of days, since the results were out and I began to survey the many opened doors. Will there be enough money? Will I be able to find a job when I graduate? Will I regret this?
The...
What is it that keeps us from saying: Today I...
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Conviction
Sitting in the clinic of a grouchy douchebag Chinese doctor, listening to him philosophise about the dangers of eating cake and being angry, the urge to leave gripped me again. Amidst his lecture on how humans are born herbivores and we were put on this world to repay our debts, my belief in living instead of just staying alive was reaffirmed. His rant on how everyone in the world is crazy and he...
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It rolls off your tongue easily, that dreaded word. Love. I love you, my love, my beloved, our love is forever. Forever - do you comprehend the capacity of forever? You cheapen forever. You cheapen love, dismissing caviar as simple fish roe. Love is a battle, a conversation, a dilemma. For you, it is but a word.
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so I aimed for the moon,
And while fearing the gutter somehow landed amongst the stars. Many more doors have opened themselves now, and for that I am thankful. Today has only made me more aware that the accolades you receive do not change the person you are or the people who love you - that the things and people which are the strongest and the most important cannot be altered by any singular event, and for them I am...
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Today a wish came true about a year too late for me - it no longer makes me as silently delirious or awed as before. This wish - this expired wish, the last present left in Santa’s little grab bag - is nevertheless now my security blanket, one last little act from whoever’s up there telling me: Everything is going to turn out just the way it should.
