BLOGGER



Youngest kid of six with an inferiority and black sheep complex, but determined that God saves not just his soul to heaven but the remainder of his manic-depressive life, so others won't say he became a Christian and remained a jerk.


MAIN THEMES

On identity
i won't be transparent before i'm opaque. and you'll get to know me starting from the small things: who my favourite bands are. what kind of movies i like. who are my heroes.

On Christianity
I’m convinced that when confronted with sincere, real love, the Jesus factor will become obvious. But let’s not plant the cross before we carry it. I’m not trying to con you.

On dreams
Some dreams are meant to be achieved. I know that. But maybe other dreams are meant to drive us, privately. Never known to anyone but ourselves.


OTHER THEMES

On melancholy
It is a sadness that, when choosing between crying and sighing, will choose sighing. I'd almost say that melancholy is being sad about sadness itself.

On memory and nostalgia
It saddens me when life moves forward and people decide that certain things are worth forgetting.

On language
I've learnt that the word irregardless is filed as a non-standard word in the English language. That's a lexicographer's way of saying it's not a real word.

On politics
Crowds are fickle things. So when we stand in the thousands and cry against the present government, do we know who we're actually crying for?

On society
People always want the best for themselves. But I want to sometimes take second or third or fourth best, just so that the loser down the road doesn't always have to come in last. It must feel like shit to always come in last.

On growing old
Leasehold property make me feel sad. It doesn't matter how old the family photos are that you put on your wall. It's your family but it's not really your wall.

On philosophy
I ask you, if God loves everyone, and if God is also incapable of loving evil, how can there be such a thing as an evil man?

On a daily basis
One line quips, like this.


CHAT





Friday, February 23, 2007
HOME AND LEAVING

Today, i leave muar to head back again.

i don't know how you feel about your hometown, but i love mine. it's changed alot in the nine years since i left, first for the bright lights of melbourne and then for the madness that is KL. i feel sad whenever i leave muar. it reminds me that with each passing year, i'm leaving a part of my childhood behind, to move on without me. and in this, i too am moving on, without it.

this chinese new year, i didn't meet my old friends - not even one. i didn't bother because our reunions always gravitate around a gambling table, with drinking and small-talk the auxillary features. i could have, i guess. i had all the numbers in my phone. and if i met them, i could have kept in step with all their changes: of jobs, marital status, looks, scenes, gossip. but that didn't matter much to me. instead, i spent most of my time at home. and in the little time i spent outside, i preferred to inspect the changes in my town: its storefronts, the new shops and new houses, the redirection of its one-way streets, and the unstoppable dilapidation of some places that will never go away. the neighbourhood provision shop just got some new owners. but it still looks the same from outside. i need the comfort of knowing that some things just don't change.

this year, i didn't bother playing catch-up with my old friends. those guys are fine without me. and though muar seems to be doing no worse, i can't say the same for myself. and i'm definitely not fine without muar.

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Genusfrog [ 3:16 pm ] | 4 comments

Thursday, February 22, 2007
THE SPIRAL OF GROWING UP

When i was in kindergarten, i thought the time before getting schooled was much better. when i went to primary school, i thought my kindie days were more fun. when i went to secondary school, i wished i was in primary school. in uni, i was largely happy, but i did sometimes wish i was still in secondary school. now that i'm working, i wish i was still in uni. one day, i'll have to stop working, and i'll wish i still had a career.

the bible says that we are transformed from glory to glory. i dunno about you, but i sometimes think this whole ageing process sucks, and the whole thing looks like a miserable downward spiral, where we regressively dislike where we are, more and more and more. and so i ask you: is it just our attitudes, that we are always comparing whatever turf we've got with yesterday's green? is this whole enjoyment of life relative to what you've just left behind and how much of life you've lived? or is there an objective progression - or rather, regression - of how good life, as it was created, is supposed to be? am i observing something you also observe? or am i just depressed?

growing up is easy. but coming to terms with it is much harder.

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Genusfrog [ 2:42 am ] | 2 comments

Wednesday, February 21, 2007
ALONE WITH FAMILY

I'm not really interested in meeting people anymore. i'm quite happy if the world left me alone to mind my own business, because i'm in the mood to be alone. i don't want to visit my parents' friends, i don't want to entertain guests, and i don't want to make small talk with relatives. my family has always been a bit like that. whether what i'm going through is a wicked trick of genetics or a textbook example of familial modelling, i seem to have taken their lead and launched this anti-socialness to a ten ton truck offensive of solitary stubbornness.

i keep telling people that i have my movie to cut, and that's why i wanna be alone, and though that doesn't work in some social settings across this CNY, i do wonder if this excuse is merely just that - an excuse, a scapegoat for some deeper-rooted condition of alienation from family and a desire to deal with and work out the fact that i think nobody understands me. it's sad because in my bid to find quietness and some peace of mind, i end up pushing away the people who love me the most. these are people who care that i sit around the table to eat a meal, they care that i'm in the car going with them to a friend's house. but i don't care. why da heck don't i care?

i just wanna be left alone. but it's a selfish wanna be left alone. it's selfish because when i'm through with my solitude, when this season of loneliness passes, i'll go back to them and want them to remain as they were before i left. but that't not how it works. they're not the one constant in my life. on God is. and as i desperately seek time to be alone, i forget that every moment i spend without my family is time during which they too are changing, growing, becoming different people as i have. but they're doing it together. and i'm doing mine alone.

like now. everyone's downstairs eating lunch together. and i'm upstairs with my notebook. talking about it.

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Genusfrog [ 1:09 pm ] | 0 comments

Tuesday, February 20, 2007
THE COST OF ADULTHOOD

Chinese New Year is happening again. This year, it crept up from close to nowhere and suddenly, it's the third day and i'm staring a return to KL as imminently as my impending deadlines, both office and movie, loom towards me. and now i know something. Chinese new year used to be fun because as kids you could enjoy it for what it was.

sure, you had school looming on the horizon as well, but school rarely ever crept into the holidays. and even if it did, cos there's always that breed of sadistic teachers who give tons of homework whenever kids get a sniff of a holiday, that's all it was. work. but i find that as i grow up, it gets harder and more complicated to draw the line where the responsibilities of day-to-day life ends and where festivities begin. and i realise now that's why adults don't enjoy chinese new year as much as kids do. it's not really because they loose interest in fireworks, or that it just mythically "used to be more fun", it's squarely because the line between duty and fun is blurred.

i've been trying very hard to grow up these past two years. but all that growing up had a cost attached to it, and this was it. this was the cost and i think i've been paying so many part instalments, the whole ferari's almost mine now. and so this is it, huh. i've traded off simple joy for complicated adult bullshit.

what a deal.

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Genusfrog [ 5:09 am ] | 0 comments

Monday, February 12, 2007
I've temporarily given up on the face transplant. That temp skin was impossible to fix based on my lack of knowhow and i've decided that this blog shall go commentless but at least look good. in the meantime, you can comment in the chatterbox on the top right. if it loads up for you at all. Am gonna be very busy so i decided not to rock this boat. Thanks for dropping by. Updates will follow now.

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Genusfrog [ 10:45 am ] | 1 comments