Friday, November 21, 2014 | 6:46 AM
Counting down went by faster than counting back. It has been a long year. I was flipping through my organiser, looking at the things I had done for this year and it felt like I've did them last year. The tutorials that I've done, seems so unfamiliar as compared to the test papers and essays I've been writing daily. Art fest was this year? It felt like last year haha. RVMUN was this year? It felt like a year back too actually. I feel like I've stepped down for more than a year already actually, but it has only been more six months.
Six months back, if you'd tell me that I'd be doing more than two test paper daily, I'd have scoffed and laughed, declaring it impossible for someone like me. But somehow, in between these months, I've unknowingly joining the muggers club, revising at least three subjects a day, pushing through a at least three essays every morning, and a paper every afternoon. I didnt feel any breakthrough though. I guess my grades wont miraculously improve by two or three folds. :(
Anyways its now the third week of november, next monday I will have one last chemistry paper and then... /deep breaths/ anyways, last week I made a list of people whom I want to see, things I want to do, and things I want to get when I was taking a break from studying (it turned into a half day off btw LOL so much for trying to make myself more motivated to study) and I realize I'm not very ambitious. :X (i have yet to make any long time work commitment)
When Ms Lee (my economics teacher) asked me and wai and kaiwen what are we gonna do after A's, I said go work lor and then she said, "HUH?! Aiya go play first la! Give yourself a long break, you deserve it man! You can work after you play!" My immediate thoughts were, do I really deserve the playing? Ive studied more than I usually do, but that's cause Ive never really been studying and theres so much catching up that I gotta be doing.
Even then, I dont think Ive been doing enough to catch up. LOL. And while Ive been working, Ive been giving myself more breaks than I think I deserve. Like while my friends study late into the night, Im in bed by 9pm. :x so honestly speaking, Im not sure if I deserve to play. Moreover despite having one more paper to go, I still went to watch Interstellar with Isabelle and Chenxi yesterday. I would love to elaborate more on this but my agenda today is to talk about "whats next?". But I really enjoyed the show and their company. Best combi ever! Even better than a hot cup of chocolate in front of the fireplace in one's fireplace on a snowy night. (Okays I exaggerated. Again.) Hahaha but it's THAT good, to me.
So I told Ms Lee that Id be working but I realize that I havent really go find a job or even a voluntary work to commit to. For next week, Im going to 4J gathering on tuesday, Adventure Cove on wednesday (provided that my mense will spare me somehow), town with Alicia on Friday, and Zoo in the morning and Hunger Games at night with my family on Saturday. And the week after next, PROM. And then, MALAYSIA TRIP. Whatever happened to making extra income? LOL.
Its funny how, after wanting something for so long, when it finally comes, it doesnt thrill you as much anymore.
What I want to do IMMEDIATELY after A's though, is to go home. Honestly Im sick of my conversation at home to revolve around A's and studies. I miss fooling around with my brother (who, at the blink of an eye, is no longer little. And has grown up a little but more without my noticing) and lepaking at home without having to hide away what Im doing whenever someone walk into my room (yes Im gonna paint my nails in the open!). I also wanna help my dad with his work, lessen his stress and his workload. Like how he has made sure that I dont have to worry about anything else during my exam period, sending me to school everyday, and bringing me home whenever its late into the night.
While studying for A's, I felt like Ive been through not just a lot of papers, but also a lot of life lessons. I figured that the most sociable people are seldom muggers not because high IQ equates to low EQ but because your only topic of conversation becomes your work and your studies and how interesting can that be? And I realize that Mr Roland Chua (my year master) was right when he advise us not to study with our friends. You'll either end up talking to your friends or feeling distanced because you feel "so near yet so far" when you arent talking. And if a friend say something mean, while you can usually take it under normal circumstances, when it's this stressful period, you will become more sensitive and feel that it's mean^3. Ending up with an subconsciously offended friend with a unintentionally offending friend. But it's okay.
The hardest thing about A Levels is not what one's doing. ... It's what one CAN'T do.
.... Especially when you CANT seem to answer the next maths question. /barfing sound/
Im glad that I didnt walk into any exam hall with any panic attacks, and Im glad to say that I didnt walk out of it disappointed or full of regrets. I think the many timed papers under exam conditions the school has made us sit through has honestly helped a lot and rather than "OMG ITS THE A LEVEL!", it was more of "oh well, here goes another one", as though it's just another meal. (This freaking ten course meal (i had ten written papers) cost me about S$496 I think. Plus all the appetisers (all the photocopied and paid prelim papers, notes and tys) easily sums up to an equivalent amount)
Its one thing for the papers to be over, its another thing for the whole journey to be "over over". (Remember how in primary school, we used to say, "he is my friend, I like him only, is not LIKE LIKE", where the repeated words are used to emphasise REALLY liking i.e. Love (not sure why this word is such a sin back when we're ten when now swear words easily slips out of our mouths)) For the paper to be over, it is relief. For the journey to be OVER OVER i.e. Really over now, it's excitement mixed with fear. And with this excitement and fear, I reopen my blog and invite more approval with the occasional criticism and judgement.
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Sunday, November 9, 2014 | 7:16 PM
I was given a blog address of an acquaintance of mine and with every post, I slowly find the opinions that I have of her change. She used to be my classmate back in the old days (or should I say young days LOL). We were never close and I never have had any good impression of her. (Not sure if she thought well of me either) I guess I was never nice nor mean to her and between us, it always felt awkward when our eyes met and the atmosphere around us feels hostile. So why am I even bothering to write about this? About someone who is seemingly unimportant in my life, who shouldn't (and honestly doesn't) affect me in any way what-so-ever?
Because as I read her blog posts, I realize how inhumane/heartless I can be (okay maybe this is too strong a word but I really hate what I've been doing). Don't get me wrong, she never wrote anything about me but it's just that I realize I had been looking down on her. And then I realized that it wasn't just her that I've been looking down on (secretly), I had been judging people whom I feel has no EQ, whom I feel does not how to behave around people, have no self-awareness, does not understand human relations and so forth.
Part of me hate to admit that sometimes I put people down to elevate myself, making me feel like my amiableness had been a facade at times. I'm not as nice as I present myself to be, not as pleasant as people thought me to be. It stems from my insecurities which I still have a hard time to overcome when I am at my worst. Sigh. I needed to compare myself with others, to comfort myself, to boost my own ego and tell myself that, "hey, it's okay, he/she may have this but you have this, this, this and he/she will never be able to reach your level" etc. Yeah pathetic... Why do I even need to do this...
I hate that I condemn people to make myself feel better. I have no right to judge others, I have not gone through what they have been through and vice versa. Anyways, as I continued reading her blog, I read that she too, blogged about the past once in a while and about how much she had grown and changed since then. I uncovered her hurt and scarred experience, which I had underestimated due to my youth and folly. In between her words, there were regret, confusion and pain and somehow, I felt that she has become more mature and has grown, despite the occasional childish rants she still posts.
She had moved on, so why haven't I? I am ashamed that through these years, I had stubbornly viewed her as the offensive, bossy and clingy she had been since I first met her. When I heard about the rumors of her and a guy, I disgustingly put down their relationship and held thoughts like "what does he even see in her?". It's wrong of me to think like that, to judge people like this, to put down their feelings, when I don't even know anything to be able to come up with the appropriate conclusion. Even if she had been a jerk to me (though I don't recall any serious conflicts between us), she is still definitely capable of love and of giving to someone that she truly care about. I should start putting aside the horrible things I hear and feel about people which is preventing me from truly knowing them.
Well... admitting to all these isn't easy for me. I have never taken criticism well. Anyways, something that I can't stomach well, is violence. Not that I had any traumatizing, abusive upbringing that I can coolly share about, I just can't take violence and gore well. I remember there was this one, I watched
Escape Plan last year with Kaiwen and some of the 5F'13 people and I guessed even at some parts it was too violent for me with all the fighting and stuff and I felt like throwing up. /cues for uncontrollable barfs/ It really amused Kaiwen though... LOL.
Not sure if my dad was aware of it but he made me watch this video that he found online of some African tribe stoning and burning alive three people, an old lady, a middle-age man and a middle-age woman. After hitting them with wooden sticks, they threw rocks at them and proceeded to bury them under dry leaves and them jumped onto them and later set fire on them. I started feeling uncomfortable before the stoning even started but somehow my dad forced me to watch it till the end. His reason being that after seeing the hard lives others live, you should be more appreciative of what you have now and study harder and don't anyhow fool already.
Nope. Not very motivating at all. If anything, it was more like a torture to me. (Im okay with my dad in general but there are times like these that I can't quite figure out what he's thinking) So after that I felt really queasy and I went to sleep. Given what I was put through, no surprise for the nightmare I had that night. (I described it to my brother and he said that my nightmares are just freaking gore and painful, the other tormenting nightmare that I had was this mass murder at a unrecognisable old-design HDB with strangers and different people that I know from different point in my life and basically there were killings and sacrifices everywhere and I see people die at each floor. ... It was a total wipe out from the first to the last floor. Not sure if I've blogged about it before...)
For the nightmare I had that night, it had started out pretty normal. I was in a random school building going through the normal notions of a school life similar to what I had in primary school. During break time, I went off to explore an old part of the building with a layout similar to that of Hogwarts. We went through this curtained door and crossed a bridge with bricks flooring that's enclosed by glass. After we crossed the bridge, that's when my nightmare started. The sight that greeted us in the main hall of the building, was a large white flag with the devil sign (from what I remember, it was this star enclosed inside a circle and there were three 6s in the middle) written in red ink that has yet to dry on it. I guess the three 6s freaked me out and I immediately tried to run back to the previous campus.
Alas! When I tried to open the door, it was no longer the school campus that greeted me but a mass of white space filled with weird chants that gives severe headaches. (At this point the people I was originally with had disappeared and I'm with about 30 other strangers) Behind us on the bridge, a sinister version of Dobby(Harry Potter)/Gollum (The Hobbit) appeared and told us that to escape, we have to pass at least one stage of this place, either that, or (at this point, he made a hole in the glass walls of the bridge) we can jump down from the bridge right there and then. I can't remember what was at the bottom of the bridge but I remembered that none of us wanted to jump. And so, we played.
We re-entered the castle and there were many demons in human form which we have to avoid but the challenge was that we were all strangers and we can never be sure that amongst us, who is friend and who is foe. To get to the end of a stage, we have to pass by many doors along the way and at each door, one person must be sacrificed. Because what happened was, that once human presence is near a door, the door will slowly open and the weird chants will come out again and the sound fills the corridor. One person will have to sacrifice himself/herself by pushing back the door and absorbing the sound, in the end, they don't survive to catch up with the rest and end up bleeding from their ears and eyes and becoming all twisted.
In the end I survived not caused we successfully passed a stage but I became one of the servant girl of an old demon lady of the castle. The last scene I remembered was watching the remaining people who were with me attempt another stage and suffering and dying one by one. There were like three people left when my alarm rang (4:30am) and I was saved from the remaining trauma. Sigh. The worst thing is throughout, I know I'm just dreaming and it's unreal but somehow I just couldn't wake up. There was this point where I FELT myself lying down on my bed but at the same time watching the bloody scene in front of me which is pretty bloodcurdling. I guess it would have been more creepy if I woke up at 3am which is also known as the Devil's Hour. /inhales/
Not sure when it was that I started having really vivid dreams and its especially bad when I have these kind of nightmares. But on the bright side, these kind of dreams make me more reluctant to sleep and I will waste less time sleeping and napping. Who am I kidding. I will still sleep at 9am tonight man. LOL. ... Maybe I should take a course on 'The Meaning of Dreams' to figure out gory nightmares that I have. ... Im kind of apologetic for churning this out...
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