Almost five years ago, a distant cousin of mine got married. Out of the blue.
The entire extended family was suddenly rife with all sorts of theories revolving around the marriage. In those few frantic weeks, I would hear certain camps claim authoritatively that their version of the events leading up to the nuptials was the authentic one, only to soon hear from other factions similarly credible spins on the 'truth'.
Right up to the night of the wedding dinner, the tide of theories still surged on unabated, and could not be quelled. Some whispered 'shotgun marriage', others 'true love', while the ones who sat on the fence and couldn't really keep up with justifying their positions merely muttered 'fate'.
I remember them walking down the little aisle in the ballroom, and it struck me that they were impervious to all that was being said about them. Surely they were aware, but they didn't much care.
For how does one ascertain truth? As human beings we necessarily perceive the world through coloured lenses, yet surely that in itself defeats any claim to any objectivity we might stake.
To a geographer a rock is an embodiment of Nature's whimsical creative energies, to a doctor a rock is a dangerous object posing as a repository of microbial miscreants, to a lawyer a rock is an article the possession of which spells the degree of pre-meditation a party to a fracas nurtured.
I fancy that the then-newlyweds were acutely aware of the disparaging talk going on around them, but they weren't too bothered. There was only one perspective to the truth that was crucial to the longevity of their union, and it was shared by both of them.
And that was probably all that mattered.
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Sunday, May 07, 2006
A Sincere Reply
I made a short call to my dad today, which ended in both of us laughing. It's nice to have parents with the same sense of humour as you. =)
Me: Pa, Aunty Lily asks if we would like to take in her dog.
Dad: Well, have you seen it?
Me: Yea I have, I went over the other day to play with it.
Dad: So what type of dog is it? What breed? What's the upkeep like?
Me: I dunno. Brown colour one.
Me: Pa, Aunty Lily asks if we would like to take in her dog.
Dad: Well, have you seen it?
Me: Yea I have, I went over the other day to play with it.
Dad: So what type of dog is it? What breed? What's the upkeep like?
Me: I dunno. Brown colour one.
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
Random (Nocturnal) Thoughts
I awaken in the middle of the night.
There is a light drizzle outside, street lamps illuminating the raindrops' shocked expressions as they end their indulgent free fall and gently plink onto the tiles of my roof.
The wind continues her petulant course through my neighbourhood, teasing the leaves on the trees, threatening the hastily affixed election posters with premature retirement. Swish-swish, swish-swish go the things that flap in the night, a chorus that drowns out the crude yappings of the resident dogs.
I am suffused with calmness. I contemplate the happenings of the past day, then the past week, then month, then year, and it all seems surreal. It's almost as if I could turn my head and see Desmond sleeping next to me, in the army a year ago. Or my brother, eight years ago. Or my mother, fourteen years ago.
It's like walking down a street while you're engrossed with talking with your companion, or trying to guess the song on your Shuffle. Then you look up and you're startled by how far you've gone, without realizing how much you've passed by, or where you're going. Life blindsides you that way.
Slowly, a few things come to mind. Regrets converge and attempt to ouster the important thoughts from my focus... But I know I am not perfect, and there are some things that I just could not have done better. There is too much to live for to stop now.
If I could speak to you now, and you would listen, you would agree, right? Let the worries and frustrations fall from you, and tackle problems day by day. You know you can.
The street lamps die, another night is over... another day is dawning.
There is a light drizzle outside, street lamps illuminating the raindrops' shocked expressions as they end their indulgent free fall and gently plink onto the tiles of my roof.
The wind continues her petulant course through my neighbourhood, teasing the leaves on the trees, threatening the hastily affixed election posters with premature retirement. Swish-swish, swish-swish go the things that flap in the night, a chorus that drowns out the crude yappings of the resident dogs.
I am suffused with calmness. I contemplate the happenings of the past day, then the past week, then month, then year, and it all seems surreal. It's almost as if I could turn my head and see Desmond sleeping next to me, in the army a year ago. Or my brother, eight years ago. Or my mother, fourteen years ago.
It's like walking down a street while you're engrossed with talking with your companion, or trying to guess the song on your Shuffle. Then you look up and you're startled by how far you've gone, without realizing how much you've passed by, or where you're going. Life blindsides you that way.
Slowly, a few things come to mind. Regrets converge and attempt to ouster the important thoughts from my focus... But I know I am not perfect, and there are some things that I just could not have done better. There is too much to live for to stop now.
If I could speak to you now, and you would listen, you would agree, right? Let the worries and frustrations fall from you, and tackle problems day by day. You know you can.
The street lamps die, another night is over... another day is dawning.
Monday, May 01, 2006
Conscience
Looking back, I suspect that I might not have been the most angelic of little boys.
The earliest memory of how demonic I was finds its roots in kindergarten. The adults who ran the place, probably young idealistic people without kids of their own, thought it decidedly brilliant to sit us "little angels" at tables of four, and rotate the groups every two weeks.
The theory was, by mixing in different groups regularly, the kids would develop their social skills faster. They would overcome their shyness at meeting new people, and learn to cooperate, give and take, grow into well-mannered sociable beings.
Evil finds no foothold in the hearts of innocent children, no?
Foolish humans! Under that system, there was no group that I didn't come to overwhelm by sheer force of character or violent brutality. My day of glory was when I was finally rotated into the group with the then reigning class bully, for after that showdown, my dominion was complete.
(He had taken my new eraser and pulled it out of its cardboard sheath, knowing how much I hated people to do that. I took his eraser, bit it in half, and spat it out onto his books. Ooo. Never seen someone cry so fast.)
But I couldn't afford to be complacent. They made me change classes, you see, twice. Everyday was a battle for new turf.
I heard much later that after my short stint there, they scrapped the rotating system, replacing it with one where the kids sat at cold metal tables, with at least 1m between each child, thumbtacks on the floor to discourage movement, and barbed wire circling the compound.
Even now, there are many colourful posters littering the walls of the staff room, with labels like "How to Spot A Possessed Child" and step-by-step guides to dealing with juvenile troublemakers. No kindergarten kid left such a legacy as I.
Yes. My early childhood was a completely amoral time for me. If someone hit me, I would hit them back. If someone didn't hit me, I would hit them all the much harder. I was practically the poster child for, if the government wanted, their "Stop At Zero, Sterilize Yourselves" campaign.
But every story has its turning point, and mine was in Primary Five, when we received our Mid-Year Exam results. I got a 53 for my Maths Paper, a dismal score which was probably Band 5.
(Just in case you've never gone to Primary school in Singapore, your grades are clustered into Bands, arguably to encourage you to work harder. Band 1 means "Good Job, You Did Well", Band 2 "Not Too Bad, But No More Scholarship Liao", Band 3's "Tsk Tsk, Police Going To Catch You", Band 4 "Hahaha see How You Tell Your Parents" and Band 5 "Brain Damaged La You".
Aye, the academic scene in Singapore's harsh at times.)
So anyway I found myself clutching my paper and running off to the loo. I shut myself into a cubicle, and just started crying. Before long, I heard the adjacent cubicle door close, and someone else started sobbing too. When the worst of my grief was over, I said:
H: You also did badly ah.
X: Yar la. S*** la. Feel very bad now.
H: Feel bad? Why leh?
X: I'm a full-time student... my only responsibility is to study. My parents work so hard just to send me to school, so the least I should do is get good grades and support them next time. I don't want them to worry about me...
H: Oh. Ok.
X: You leh? Why are you sad?
H: Go home my mother sure going to whack me. I scared pain.
On the way home that day, pricked by what my friend said, and after long hours of inner turmoil, I gave birth to a Conscience. It was small compared to its peers, underweight and decidedly malnourished. It certainly didn't look like it would survive past a couple of hours.
Yet, frail and delicate as it was, it wailed with the lungs of a dozen babies. And true enough, not only did it survive, it developed quite well.
In fact, since that day, I've changed quite drastically. Overnight I drew my own OB markers, and started treating people better, respecting their space and rights and privacy. People tell me that I'm very 'guai', and while they're right in that my parents were good parents, I must attribute a lot of it to the strange thing otherwise known as a conscience.
There are, as of now, a loooong list of things I must set right, and by my own hand too. Way way high on my priority list is to compensate my dear friend for breaking his arm in primary school, because I was too scared then to tell my parents.
After that... after that I will seek out the loved ones I've wronged in some way or another, and for what it was worth, tell them I was sorry for the way things turned out. Some things can never be righted, but I know I will still try.
For all the laws we have, for all the fears of punishment, the hardest thing is to be able to answer to yourself before you sleep every night.
The earliest memory of how demonic I was finds its roots in kindergarten. The adults who ran the place, probably young idealistic people without kids of their own, thought it decidedly brilliant to sit us "little angels" at tables of four, and rotate the groups every two weeks.
The theory was, by mixing in different groups regularly, the kids would develop their social skills faster. They would overcome their shyness at meeting new people, and learn to cooperate, give and take, grow into well-mannered sociable beings.
Evil finds no foothold in the hearts of innocent children, no?
Foolish humans! Under that system, there was no group that I didn't come to overwhelm by sheer force of character or violent brutality. My day of glory was when I was finally rotated into the group with the then reigning class bully, for after that showdown, my dominion was complete.
(He had taken my new eraser and pulled it out of its cardboard sheath, knowing how much I hated people to do that. I took his eraser, bit it in half, and spat it out onto his books. Ooo. Never seen someone cry so fast.)
But I couldn't afford to be complacent. They made me change classes, you see, twice. Everyday was a battle for new turf.
I heard much later that after my short stint there, they scrapped the rotating system, replacing it with one where the kids sat at cold metal tables, with at least 1m between each child, thumbtacks on the floor to discourage movement, and barbed wire circling the compound.
Even now, there are many colourful posters littering the walls of the staff room, with labels like "How to Spot A Possessed Child" and step-by-step guides to dealing with juvenile troublemakers. No kindergarten kid left such a legacy as I.
Yes. My early childhood was a completely amoral time for me. If someone hit me, I would hit them back. If someone didn't hit me, I would hit them all the much harder. I was practically the poster child for, if the government wanted, their "Stop At Zero, Sterilize Yourselves" campaign.
But every story has its turning point, and mine was in Primary Five, when we received our Mid-Year Exam results. I got a 53 for my Maths Paper, a dismal score which was probably Band 5.
(Just in case you've never gone to Primary school in Singapore, your grades are clustered into Bands, arguably to encourage you to work harder. Band 1 means "Good Job, You Did Well", Band 2 "Not Too Bad, But No More Scholarship Liao", Band 3's "Tsk Tsk, Police Going To Catch You", Band 4 "Hahaha see How You Tell Your Parents" and Band 5 "Brain Damaged La You".
Aye, the academic scene in Singapore's harsh at times.)
So anyway I found myself clutching my paper and running off to the loo. I shut myself into a cubicle, and just started crying. Before long, I heard the adjacent cubicle door close, and someone else started sobbing too. When the worst of my grief was over, I said:
H: You also did badly ah.
X: Yar la. S*** la. Feel very bad now.
H: Feel bad? Why leh?
X: I'm a full-time student... my only responsibility is to study. My parents work so hard just to send me to school, so the least I should do is get good grades and support them next time. I don't want them to worry about me...
H: Oh. Ok.
X: You leh? Why are you sad?
H: Go home my mother sure going to whack me. I scared pain.
On the way home that day, pricked by what my friend said, and after long hours of inner turmoil, I gave birth to a Conscience. It was small compared to its peers, underweight and decidedly malnourished. It certainly didn't look like it would survive past a couple of hours.
Yet, frail and delicate as it was, it wailed with the lungs of a dozen babies. And true enough, not only did it survive, it developed quite well.
In fact, since that day, I've changed quite drastically. Overnight I drew my own OB markers, and started treating people better, respecting their space and rights and privacy. People tell me that I'm very 'guai', and while they're right in that my parents were good parents, I must attribute a lot of it to the strange thing otherwise known as a conscience.
There are, as of now, a loooong list of things I must set right, and by my own hand too. Way way high on my priority list is to compensate my dear friend for breaking his arm in primary school, because I was too scared then to tell my parents.
After that... after that I will seek out the loved ones I've wronged in some way or another, and for what it was worth, tell them I was sorry for the way things turned out. Some things can never be righted, but I know I will still try.
For all the laws we have, for all the fears of punishment, the hardest thing is to be able to answer to yourself before you sleep every night.
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