First. Fast. Not Flawed.

It’s funny how life lessons come in the strangest ways or manners you least expect. I accompanied my precious grandmother watching the mega 3hr taiwanese soap opera on chn8. She stayed over for the weekend and my parents aren’t around to keep her company.

The opera, in its 452452 episode, has progressed to a stage where the big powerful hotel tycoon is struggling with heart problems. As he struggled to even stand, his kids are all at a lost at how to cope without their strongest family pillar  supporting them. It suddenly dawned on me that I am at the age where my parents are not as immortal as I always thought since young. Always believing that they will always be around, I believe i have been taking their presence for granted, never thinking about the “what if”.

I had a brief taste of that “what if” when an old family friend died suddenly of heart problems. We as a family were close, the parents having their honeymoon together, the kids attending the same schools together. Looking at the grief that they had, it was truly frightening.

I am not trying to avoid the inevitable or escape from reality. But yet, if I could hold on to our treasures, I would certainly do so in all my power for the longest time possible.

God bless them and dear my grandmother. I love them in words that I cannot express freely due to social rules here.

But that is another entry.

[I just learnt from my grandmother that she used to do trishaws from the newton market back home! =) ]

I am really glad I stuck to my decision. Though there may still be longing, I think the notion of being free from all the fuss and drama really out weighs all the unclear 50-50 factors. This is the right decision.

I hope.

After a gratifying meal of Bak Kut Teh, * which is pepper-flavoured pork served with other dishes like Pig Kidneys, intestine and trotters * I headed to my lift through my carpark. As i crossed the motorcycle section, I stopped dead in my tracks. My feelings vocabulary immediately kick started to disgust which was  followed by revulsion. Located between a Honda Phantom bike and the kerb was a small greyish immobile body.

Yup, you guessed it. A dead rat.

The small little bugger was as limp as a stone fish. He was probably stone cold too due to the fact that death had claimed him(I am assuming it is a he, i didnt check) and ants were starting to converge around his body. As I stared at its small snout and short tail, I suddenly realised that he seemed about the same size and had a level of cuteness to Remy the mouse in Pixar’s Rataouille!

Now don’t get me wrong, I still think they are the most disgusting creatures ever followed by roaches and wet toilet seats. So why do I regard them  top of the horror list? I have very little contact with them as the denizens of the modern world rarely come into contact with our rodent friends due to our practice of shunning the subterranean levels. Neither have I experienced the joy of having a mouse as a pet *oh the horror!*

What then.

Stereotyping thats what. Rats have such a horrible reputation which even Ogilvy & Mather cannot save. Through the ages, rats have been beaten, drowned, baited, poisoned, scalded, gassed, shot at and almost everything else humans can think of. They probably deserved it due to the pestilance and diseases they bring about. With the many horror stories and anti-rat public campaigns, the average human can be sure that rats are NOT our friends.  But yet, how many deaths were directly related to them? After all, once diseases like the bubonic plague was caught by us, short-sighted humans then spread it amongst ourselves.

But the campaigns worked and the stereotype stuck. As a result, I am afraid of a creature 20 times smaller then me due to misinformation and fear. I stop in fear whenever I notice a small black figure scurrying across the pavement. There was even an episode where a full-grown rat nearly fell from the roof onto our table at the hawker centre in Bishan.  Socrates once said that the wise should not be afraid of the unknown, for there is no logical reasons to fear something you do not know. So by right i should be fearless and walk into the temple of rats in India so as to do participant-observation and understand them.

Yeah right. *Takes out my shotgun*

How can one not have absolutely anybody to talk to. That is one question I habitually ask myself.

Is it because one is boring?

Or one is plain outright ugly.

*Scoffs*

But maybe its because there just isn’t any need to talk at all. When two acquaintances strike up a online conversation, it usually runs its course past mundane questions before fizzling out to boredom and slience.
Stopping a conversation online is definately easier. A person just needs to stop responding to the repeated text appearance of “hello? you there?” and the irritating shakes of nudges. And to round it up, the act of going or appearing offline pretty much settles it!

Easy.

So what keeps that person from deleting 95% of his IM buddy list? After all, we only speak to a select few “friends” on a regular basis on IM. The rest are just mere acquaintances and third degree friends. However, having a long buddy list is important to the individual. It helps delude the mind and boost esteem that one is popular and has a large social circle. As such, one will actively try to engage and strike up conversations to be pathetically sociable to strangers that barely even consider interacting with the individual.

Truth as it seems, is always less rosy.

How to we improve the situation then? Firing off conversation windows and aggressively messaging everyone that comes online immediately will just make people avoid or worst, block the person. There must be common interest for the stranger to be on the IM buddy list, be it bonding at a orientation camp or post-drunk/clubbing activities they shared together. The key foothold is to build on that interest and branch out to other topics like ” Is boxers or briefs better? ” or ” Name your poison. I like my Chivas neat. Topics such as “friends’ partners” or “bdsm desires” are best left for a later timing when a stronger relationship exist. Being too pushy or mindlessly responding/throwing out dumb one-answer questions will not help either.

Maybe I do need to defragment my IM buddy list into two list.
” Who talks to me ” and ” Everybody else “.

What a Today.

First i had a philosophy test at 9am.
then hung around in sch with ppl to town.
Stayed in town to wait for Miss Wong from 1pm to 5pm with yans and cher on that same Starbucks chair sweating buckets.
Miss Wong came at 530pm to 745pm. (Still on the same chair)
Alpha meeting(church) at One Tree Hill from 745pm to 10pm.
Talk to Melissa for the walk to bus stop > change bus >  ride home.

Mum and Sister had to say the word “stupid” to me twice.

A total of twenty something people in one day.
Two exams on friday and Tuesday respectively with Dennis stuff to be done by Wednesday.

I am shunning human contact tomorrow.

From my soul i say to thee, with love poured forth overwhelming. For unrequited a thorn that pricks, stumble may I hastility fall. Make not with half-truths, but dreamers lie. Let not say I die, for I still breathe and fly.