Sunday, 2 September 2007

Whoosh and a week goes by. I had quite an eventful week - been working all week at my aunt's place, helping her out with graphic on Photoshop for her proposals for Christmas decorations, while fitting in errands and meeting friends. Monday I collected my passport so finished early but after that it was quite intensive but I was glad I had the discipline to leave on time-ish. Tuesday, I left at 5.45pm but only managed to get home at about 7.20pm so it takes quite a while ... sometimes I get worried about my work ethic, but then it's work life balance that I should really keep focused on, not working till there's nothing left in life than work. Especially when I have priorities to spend more time with my mother. I think my priorities are right. Even if I wasn't leaving for studies overseas, one mustn't let work become one's life. As Eunice says, even if the bosses reprimand you, even if you miss a deadline, you wouldn't die. After all, there are limits to how much one can and should work. Easier said than done sometimes, especially if everyone around you is working like a maniac.

Anyhow Wednesday I left early as well as I wanted to get home to get changed and showered before meeting Eunice for dinner at City Hall - that was quite pleasant though I got back late and had to fork out dosh for a cab to get to City Hall in time. Still, it was good as we ate at the food court and that saved some money. She's still the same and she's got a good head. She puts things in perspective for me sometimes as she's more worldly I guess. It's funny - she's like a big sister in a way though I'm actually older than her. But then she's more of a rebel and I'm pretty much the goody-two-shoes. At college I was designated the driver for everyone when people went out clubbing ... that was in jest but then I'm the responsible one who wouldn't drink, etc. The only problem is that I don't drive. I should learn someday but then if I haven't got a car there's no real point. One step at a time I think. Get trained up, get a job then get other things ...

Thursday ... ah yes I worked till 7.30pm and finally got home at 9pm - that was really stressful as I don't like to be outside my room when my father is around so I had to shower, have dinner, do laundry and dry my hair in double quick time. Gosh. Then came Friday. I worked till 6.30pm which was reasonable I thought, then went to meet Zhiying and Zhixiu in Orchard. I had finished the graphics for the second project so that was cool. I was meant to meet ZX and ZY at 7.30pm but got there early at 7.05pm so I popped to Osmose, tried on the couple of blouses I'd seen a week and a half ago but decided to think about it then ... and bought them. All in 20 minutes which was good. I like efficient shopping. I also like to think about things I'm not too sure about for a while and return. There aren't always return policies and mainly only exchanges within 7 days or 3 days even so it's good to prevent impulse buying. Obviously sometimes this backfires as when you finally decide that you want to purchase the item, many other people have decided that too and beat you to it such that it's completely sold out. Then you can blame it on divine intervention or be miserable forever. I usually take to the former school of thought and save being miserable for larger things like a dysfunctional family problems, struggling with existentialism and trying to get Jesus to carry me through.

I digress.

ZX, ZY and I had dinner at Thai Express and it was lovely to see them again. Friends like these you know will be friends of life, we can be the singlehood haha ... things don't seem to change fundamentally with friends like these and you feel so comfortable with them, though obviously you have to work on keeping in touch.

I met up with Zhiying again today. We went to Sentosa to walk by the beach. It was raining when we headed out at about 2pm but it cleared up towards 3.30pm so it was all right. There was even a nice blue sky overhead for a while and some decent sunshine. We chatted quite openly which we hadn't done for over a year now. She'd been distraught at having to return to Singapore from NYC at the end of 2005 and it had been difficult to speak being so far away and both of us being wrapped up in our own problems. But I'm glad she updated me on what horrors had happened to her after she'd returned to Singapore, about her various jobs and disappointments that she was being treated like crap at various production houses, and insulted financially, overworked and underpaid ... verbally insulted as well. I must confess I can't really know how she is feeling as I haven't experienced it myself but I was glad she was telling me stuff again as we'd told each other everything since we were 15 but since she returned to Singapore we'd had a break in communication.

It's virtually impossible to empathise and I found myself doing the apparently very male thing of trying to think of how to solve her problems. Oh dear, I'm sure I'm going to grow a beard soon at this rate but I guess when I don't have the emotional sides to her troubles and harrowing experiences, I tend to focus on what can be done about helping her move on now as she's still scarred from her jobs thus far. Sigh. Well, I'm glad at least she's started on a decent film-related job now again though. Hopefully the stigma of the vicious shark-infested media industry won't scar her too much. She is paranoid about getting into all that mess again, being abused, with no unions or representation, with threats of being blacklisted if she quits, not being paid on time, or enough even to live on, being told that her NYC experience counts for nothing because it's a different scene here, etc ... People can be so cruel sometimes it's unfathomable. Anyhow so far it's going ok in this job and she has a good chance of staying on till December or maybe June next year which will bode well for her bank account and loan repayments to her parents and her medical costs and hopefully heal the disappointment and disillusionment from her first experiences. I shall pray hard for her and I'm glad I know what I can pray for now.

Sometimes I feel quite lucky. At least according to the medical check-up I'm pretty much ok health-wise. As they say, health is wealth. That's very true. That is something that money cannot buy once it is lost.

Yesterday though, I thought I was going to injure the health of my father right in public. It sounds silly but I wanted to stab him with the pointed end of a large golfing umbrella. He'd called up in the middle of the day while mum, grandma and I were having lunch and then said he wanted to have dinner out either in the evening or the next day i.e. this evening. Mum and I had a nice afternoon browsing the shops and we also watched Ratatouille which was funny and enjoyable only to be capped off with my blood boiling and hot angry tears rising up in tandem with my blood pressure. I was so angry I even shouted out in the street. First he demands to eat out, obviously having no money to foot the bill and so my mother has to pay for the dinner as well as the cab fare to take my grandmother there and back ... what kind of lout does that? Family to him is only family when it is useful, when we can be cash cows to be milked for all we're worth. Then after finishing dinner, he asks to borrow $10 from my mother for his transport and I cannot believe my ears. I have heard of his borrowing antics countless times for much larger amounts as well as his 'borrowing' which really means he spends a vast sum he does not have, then waits for my mother to pay the debts or threatens that the house will go to the creditors if the debts are not settled. Just hearing about all these things incenses me but actually witnessing it happening, well that's completely different. When he opened his mouth to ask for money I was both shocked in a way (oh my goodness this is ACTUALLY happening) and gosh my anger levels accelerated faster than a DB9 driven by the Stig. According to my mum I was actually glaring at him and well on hindsight if I hadn't quite been so shocked I would have not given a flying f... that we were in a public place. So was he using the cover of public spaces to ask for money after getting a free meal? I was so angry so so so angry. It was probably a good thing that I was semi shocked that this was actually happening and didn't burst out otherwise my mother would have been terribly embarrassed. She is of the old-school stiff upper lip kind where even if a vampire was sucking the lifeblood out of you, as long as it was a public place one would not make a scene.

It makes me terribly terribly guilty for taking money from my mum though I am so glad that I paid for my visa myself even though my mother wanted to pay for that. She was quite annoyed that I'd gone and exchanged pounds for dollars and lost out on the exchange rate but I think that's the least I can do. For all the guilt and strain I bear here he was sticking his hand out for money after making her take him out to dinner. I was so incensed that when he gave me the umbrella to take home as he was going out gallivanting God-knows-where I was really really tempted to stab him with it or hit him with it to knock some sense into him. Doesn't he know what he's doing? Doesn't he have any shame? I just shouted it out after he left, asking my mother why she gave him her travel card with $25 in it when he'd only asked for $10. I just shouted that out and shouted that he had no shame and gosh I was so angry I wanted to hurl the umbrella or hit something with it. Or someone. Him. If it knocks any sense into him I would do it. Adrenaline fuelled by anger is a powerful thing. However, until I have a proper job and am not earning yet I cannot make my feelings clear to him as I am just like him in a way, a leech sucking money from my poor mother.

Dr Hadley would probably have disagreed to that statement. Ah well, I guess I might not be completely free from my destructive thinking patterns but at least I can identify them now and try to be more balanced. At least I have a part-time job and I don't spend more than I can afford to. At least I have guilt and shame so I won't be a complete waster. God willing, I will be financially independent. Thank God for my auntie who hires me part-time and for David Mellor for the weekend job.

And for all my friends who take me out and make me laugh and help me remember that I have them too. For now at least. Until they're all married, every single one. Well then there's the singlehood haha. Maybe I should make a pact like in My Best Friend's Wedding. What was it ... if we're both not married by 30 then we'll get married. Nah.. I couldn't do that. Not if I'm still thinking of Finch, to whom it probably would not matter if I'd died. That would be unfair to the other person. That's not the way to go. It must be for love. Am I being idealistic?

Bu zai hu tian chang di jiu, zhi zai hu ceng jin yong you.

Better to die having lived ideals than live having let ideals die ...

The Sandman:
She needs to work on that.

Poppy:
Hmm. Yes. She's thinking of "The Hours".

...

Leonard Woolf: If I didn't know you better I'd call this ingratitude.
Virginia Woolf: I am ungrateful? You call ME ungrateful? My life has been stolen from me. I'm living in a town I have no wish to live in... I'm living a life I have no wish to live... How did this happen?

Virginia Woolf: I'm dying in this town.
Leonard Woolf: If you were thinking clearly, Virginia, you would recall it was London that brought you low. Virginia Woolf: If I were thinking clearly? If I were thinking clearly?
Leonard Woolf: We brought you to Richmond to give you peace.
Virginia Woolf: If I were thinking clearly, Leonard, I would tell you that I wrestle alone in the dark, in the deep dark, and that only I can know. Only I can understand my condition. You live with the threat, you tell me you live with the threat of my extinction. Leonard, I live with it too.

Virginia Woolf: This is my right; it is the right of every human being. I choose not the suffocating anesthetic of the suburbs, but the violent jolt of the Capital, that is my choice. The meanest patient, yes, even the very lowest is allowed some say in the matter of her own prescription. Thereby she defines her humanity. I wish, for your sake, Leonard, I could be happy in this quietness ... But if it is a choice between Richmond and death, I choose death.

Virginia Woolf: You cannot find peace by avoiding life, Leonard.

Clarissa Vaughn: That is what we do. That is what people do. They stay alive for each other.

Virginia Woolf: Dear Leonard. To look life in the face, always, to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it, to love it for what it is, and then, to put it away. Leonard, always the years between us, always the years. Always the love. Always the hours.

Clarissa Vaughn: I don't know what's happening to me. I seemed to be unraveling.

Virginia Woolf: I've been attended by doctors, who inform me OF MY OWN INTERESTS.

Virginia Woolf: A woman's whole life in a single day. Just one day. And in that day her whole life.

Kitty: Oh, you're reading a book?
Laura Brown: Yeah.
Kitty: What's this one about?
Laura Brown: Oh, it's about this woman who's incredibly - well, she's a hostess and she's incredibly confident and she's going to give a party. And, maybe because she's confident, everyone thinks she's fine... but she isn't.

Laura Brown: It would be wonderful to say you regretted it. It would be easy. But what does it mean? What does it mean to regret when you have no choice? It's what you can bear. There it is. No one's going to forgive me. It was death. I chose life.

Sally: Why do I always have to sit next to the exes? Is this some kind of a hint, sweetheart? Anyway, shouldn't the exes have a table of their own, where they can all ex together in ex-quisite agony?

Richard Brown: Oh, Mrs. Dalloway... Always giving parties to cover the silence.

Clarissa Vaughn: Why is everything wrong?

Virginia Woolf: Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more. It's contrast.

Angelica Bell: What happens when we die?
Virginia Woolf: What happens? [pause]
Virginia Woolf: We return to the place that we came from.
Angelica Bell: I don't remember where I came from.
Virginia Woolf: Nor do I.

Clarissa Vaughn: I remember one morning getting up at dawn, there was such a sense of possibility. You know, that feeling? And I remember thinking to myself: So, this is the beginning of happiness. This is where it starts. And of course there will always be more. It never occurred to me it wasn't the beginning. It was happiness. It was the moment. Right then.

Virginia Woolf: Say something, Nessa! Didn't you think I seemed better?
Virginia Woolf: I am saying, Vanessa, that even crazy people like to be asked.

Angelica Bell: Goodbye.
Virginia Woolf: Goodbye, little girl.

Virginia Woolf: You return to what?
Vanessa Bell: Tonight. Oh, just some insufferable dinner not even you could envy, Virginia.
Virginia Woolf: But I do.

Virginia Woolf: Did it matter, then, she asked herself, walking toward Bond Street. Did it matter that she must inevitably cease, completely. All this must go on without her. Did she resent it? Or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely? It is possible to die. It is possible to die.

Virginia Woolf: It's on this day. This day of all days. Her fate becomes clear to her.

Kitty: All my life I could do anything. I could do anything, really. Except the one thing I wanted.