GCB

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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.

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Thursday, February 07, 2008

HAPPY UNCHINESE NEW YEAR

Chinese new years don't mean anything to me anymore.

it used to mean a lot. but not any more. at least, not from the perspective of how it ought to.

don't get me wrong. i'm having a really good time being home with my family. i'm enjoying muar as much as i always do and being around my parents and siblings is so much fun this year, it's definitely already better than last year.

so i guess what i find meaningless about chinese new year is really the fact that it's a chinese thing. in the last five years, i've been gradually defining myself less and less as a chinese and i think i've passed a certain threshold. i've passed the threshold beyond which i find it hard to excite myself over anything that makes me special because of my racial heritage.

a few weeks back, i stumbled on an american website, and these women were bitching about oprah backing barrack obama for the democratic primaries. these women's anger was directed at oprah choosing to back the black candidate - and thereby playing her race card - rather than the woman candidate. of course, these women fail to realise that backing someone on account of their gender is really no more intelligent than backing someone because of their race. and in their anger, i guess they exposed their own shortcomings - that fundamentally, what they're really interested to back is just some superficial sense of familiarity. she's a girl. he's black. i'm chinese.

but my chineseness says very little about who i am now. i'm miles away from the guy who's miles away from being - if there's such a thing - a typical chinese person, bearing all the stereotypical chinese attributes. most of us think it's wrong to be racist but it's okay to be racial. today, i'm not so sure if i'm interested anymore to be a racial person. i'm not so sure anymore if it's okay to find racial discrimination repugnant but still find racial identification perfectly innocuous.

family? food? long nights talking? six days in the house i grew up in? all these i love. as for chinese new year itself? i guess i'm losing belief in it.

Labels: identity

Genusfrog [ 12:40 am ]

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