SG Fairy

i went back to uni today to pick up my graduation gown, mortarboard, sash etc.

because i was in full office wear (ie, pants and long-sleeved shirt), i felt and probably also looked damm old. all the rest were in like, tees and jeans, or shorts.

the entire process was rather fast and smooth... but i left with a little sick feeling in my stomach.

i suppose i should be excited about graduation, and i guess somewhere inside of my being, i am excited. but yet...

firstly i believe the entire commencement ceremony is a circus, with us graduates being the performing monkeys. our audience? our parents. we slave over our essays, tutorials, and exams (well, i did study, mostly), and what happens in the end? we're paraded around like trophies. geez... we should be properly rewarded with things like, a concert, a fair, shopping discounts, or something. i know it's a matter of repaying our parents for bringing us up and all that asian crap, but urgh...

and my mum's already set aside a place in the living room for our family photo... you know, the one where i'm in my graduation gown, surrounded by proud parents. i was looking at the promotional flyers from the various photo studios and as i examined the sample photographs showcasing the studio's wonderful work, i thought, "this is not what i remembered my uni life to be". the pics were of grads holding their degree scrolls, standing in front of bookshelves, holding some thick, cheem-looking book, the background a dull fusion of weird colours.
that's so not my uni life lor.
i remember long nights outside the faculty club, smoking, watching the guys play cards, studying, stoning, chatting, eating... meeting for a huge supper at fong seng, taking walks at unearthly hours of the night with friends attempting to jog... looking for corners and stairwells to smoke in uni... and i also do remember some lecturers fondly - i never fell asleep during their lectures... oh, and the rush for hot mocha from TCC during lecture breaks.
i dun want some pic which totally insults my memories of uni life.. a pic which basically advertises a lie.

:p

second... i suppose a part of me doesn't really wanna graduate. though technically i've graduated, i've not gone through the whole symbolic ceremony which seals it. and as i left the hall with my gown just now, i felt as though i was walking away from my youth.

how upsetting.

I'm now working part-time at a bar somewhere on the island... just a once a week thing, couple of hours a shift. The salary is sorta 'yi si yi si' coz I'm only working once a week, but even then, the hourly rate is quite good. And hey, any amount of money helps...

I'm not sure if it's a childish thing... but I feel like a little girl in a candy store whenever I'm behind the bar. It's not like I can get free drinks and down shots every hour or so. But it's just the entire experience, you know, of working behind a bar. I've always found bartenders of both genders really cool. They look cool standing behind the bar, they look cool getting you your beer, they look cool, period. I know it can be really hard work, extremely stressful whn you've lots of customers waiting for their drinks, and your feet ache coz you're standing during the entire shift. But still, so exciting! Lol...

I'm not like, mixing really complicated drinks and cocktails... just the usual beer and housepours... take it one step at a time... maybe someday I'll get to mix cocktails or something... then go even further, throwing bottles and doing all those sort of stunts you see bartenders do.

Ya, I know... cheap thrill...

and people wonder why i was a screwed up teen who cut myself and all that jazz...

i get these ugly bouts of rage sometimes... like, i just wanna grab my brother by his head and repeatedly bang it against the wall, letting blood fly all over the walls. and yet still, i also have these moments where i'm so concerned over his well-being, and i do things like, set aside 10 bloody per cent of my monthly salary to get him tuition, despite there being a possibility that he wun appreciate it, and make full use of his tuition to pull his grades up.

i've been trying so hard all my life to please my parents, in the hope that they'll love me as much as they love my brother... but i guess no matter what i do, it'll never be enough. his grades are like shit, and he doesn't know how to function in society. my grades in sch were always good (til i started playing more when in uni) and i'm more street-wise than him... and yet...

i really shouldn't bother...

so why does it hurt so much?

Knowing that I can never compete with my brother for my parents' affections, I should not care and even bother to try and win more favour and affection. It's a losing battle so why start anyway, right?

So why do I still keep letting myself get angry and upset?

sigh...

doggy (that's what i was calling it) is such a good little dog... it spent the night with me yesterday... slept right beside me... kinda reminds me of a dog i once had, a silk terrier named toby.

doggy kept following me around when i got back from work yesterday... my mum said that coz i had been the first one it got into contact with, it probably felt safer with me.... and it really kept to me.

i had to be careful to make sure my other dogs didn't feel neglected. i made sure i patted them first, before i patted doggy... and doggy would wait patiently for me to finish with my dogs, almost like it understood.

late this morning, my mum smsed me while i was at work, informing me that doggy's name is Chester and that it has returned home with its owner. and i felt a pain in my heart.

i know this will sond crazy, since i only had Chester for a very short while, but i had really grown to like him. as i thought over my mum's sms, i started regretting not spending some time with him in the morning before i went to work. i was in a hurry, and so i had just patted him on the head, and then put him in my brother's room. he had been trying to jump up to me... he'll rest his front paws on my legs and nudge me... yet, i hadn't taken the time to properly pat him, hug him...

my eyes started tearing as i thought, "but i didn't even get to say a proper good bye! how can?!?!?!?!?!"

machiam i was saying good bye to a boyfriend like that :P

i know... i'm pathetic... i can't help it... i like animals, especially dogs. that's why, since the time i watched 'Benji' the movie, i vowed never to watch those sort of animal movies again... coz i'll definitely be in tears by the time the movie ends.

and just now, as my mum told me about her meeting with the owner and i talked abt how well-behaved and affectionate he was last night... i started crying...

urgh.... i miss Chester!

it's like... being the owner of 2 dogs myself... i know i'll be worried sick if ever one of them goes missing... so i can understand how Chester's owner must have felt and how it was a good thing Chester got home with his owner... after all, he was definitely more familiar with his owner than with me. but still...

nevermind... i am blessed... i have two totally wonderful dogs of my own...

take care, Chester...

i was on my way back home with my mum in a cab... just as the cab got outside our place, we noticed this dog sniffing around in the gras. it wasn't your basic everyday mongrel stray... it looked like the sort which was either lost, or abandoned. we immediately stopped the cab and i ran out to it. it jumped into my arms the moment i called to it.

we finally decided that it was probably a miniature schnauzer... it was an adorable little thing.. male, brown and grey... very affectionate and obedient... and well groomed. since it was in such good condition, we figured it was probably lost.

i'm gonna do up some posters tomorrow... we'll put them up around the neighbourhood and see how it goes from there...

packing up again...

i told my parents i had to go on a business trip... i'm just gonna spend a couple of days with Him...

i feel better... i know it's bad coz they just got back.. but i'm gonna be happy away from them again...

i've been having dreams about moving out.

sigh... my parents are back...

dun think bad of me... but i had actually been drearding their return. i could feel my body tense up when i entered my home. i became all stiff and closed up again.

i mean, i love my parents... i just... it's just hard sometimes you know... i really wish i could move out.. i really want to move out..

why do relationships with parents have to be so complex?

desparate housewives:

gab. faces yet another obstacle to getting a baby. carlos comments that it's the first time he's really sensed that she wants a child when she comes up with another stratgey.

she said, "it's the first time someone's told me i couldn't have a baby."

so was it because she had taken it for granted all along that she could always have a baby when she wanted to, that she never really bothered with it? and now that she realised she couldn't have it, she was going all out to fight for it.


are we like that.... we take things for granted sometimes... only seeing the bad in things until we've lost it, then we start treasuring it?

remind me to be nicer to my brother...

when we finally got out of bed this morning, it was already noon.

and one of the first things we did was to, yes u guessed right, eat!

lol.. we're such pigs!

sausages, scramble egges with tomato, toast, and coffee... it was a long brunch which we had... but the time we got up from the table, it was nearly 6 in the evening. but it was good you know, the company... we sat around and talked about the old days in uni... nevermind that the events we talked about were really rather unpleasant things which happened to us back then. but i suppose it is a sign of maturity when you're able to look back on those terrible dark days calmly with little, or completely no, bitterness at all.

i had a quite evening by myself... just resting a bit before the start of a new week... i like it that my parents are away... but i'm also dreading it a little coz i'm not sure how idiotic my brother will be. you would have thought that after all these years, now that he's much older, he'll be a little wiser. but he can be the most *&^%$^( individual ever.

sigh.

let's see... what did i do today...

i woke up... rushed around to make the house, especially my room, look presentable. then i got myself settled down on the sofa, newspaper before me, and started reading as i waited for the already-late girls to arrive.

we played around with my dogs for a little while... lol, it was hilarious the way V kept talking and pleading with them not to lick her. when we finally got our lazy butts off the floor, we started to make our way down to parkway. E had this great idea to drive down (imagine walking/taking bus in the heat), and so we did just that. E has driven me a number of times before, so i felt i could trust her with the parents' car.

lunch, and a stroll through the supermarkets later, we collected our ice-cream. yum yum!

then we headed back home, where V stayed in the shady part of the pool while E and i paid homege to the sun god. man the sun felt so good... i read all those articles about how when you feel your skin burning, that means the sun's cooking your skin cells, the cells will die, and you'll get black (coz that's what burnt things look like), and how it's all just so utterly terrible terrible terrible and every decent girl would know better than to do that to herself and her beauty.

i didn't fucking care. i loved the way the sun rays attacked my skin.... you actually do feel like you're cooking under the sun... and it's a most marvellous feeling...

dun worry... the sun didn't burn away my brain cells too.

i just like being dark-skinned.

and yes... there is a certain nice snobbish element to it... it feels to say things like, "I'm going for a tan", with a toss of the head.

lol.

when we finally went back upstairs, it was off to the showers and then cooking time. when we sat down to dinner, we had roasted chicken swimming in a sauce full of mushrooms, tangy orange grilled salmon, aglio olio, and boiled veggies. it wasn't my best cook session, but i was pretty pleased - the girls didn't end up spending the night making trips to the toilet.

we didn't drink much that night.. probably coz we were tired. together with gin and tequila, we also had our ice-cream, and chips with this lovely dip recommended by E. it feels good to just sit around, watching trashy vcds and eating and drinking and talking.

a good day...

my mum is out of town... both parents are away... i know this is going to sound really bad... but i actually feel very relieved, like, i can breathe much more easily now.

tsk tsk.

got a full day planned for tomorrow... i've been looking forward to it all week... man oh man... andersen's ice cream...

erm, and of course, the good company... yes, i'm been looking forward to the company, lol.