A new place, A new group, A new bunch of notes to be lugged;
Doth Thou Spake English?
Same old face, Same old soup, Same old desire to be hugged. Through the doors, it was once a boundary between hot and cold; Though it's so, Now the roles are reversed, Like those of a son and his old. Through the glass, it was once a flurry of leaves glistening in the sun; Though it's so, Now the colour's a-changing, And soon they will be gone. Through the days, it was once the joy and fear of a kid; Though it's so, Now I must grow up, Must the spirit be hid? A new path, A new post, A new variation of the flu; Same old laugh, Same old ghosts, Same old hope of something new.
This was going to be a rant about how inefficient certain governmental bodies are.
You know how they always take their time with the stuff you process through them, including - no, ESPECIALLY when you need the process cleared right away. And it probably would never get done, unless you chase them every single hour of every single day. It's like an a- a donkey who would only move when prodded with a really sharp stick, and then not always in the right direction.
But then I realised that people do that all the time, and this post will end up to be another run of the mill ones.
So I thought of this article I saw on 9gag awhile back: >>>>>>>
A tad morbid, I know. But you have no idea how I feel when I deal with these govt people. Makes me wanna do this to them.
Who invented bureaucracy, anyway?
On a more serious note, I'm pretty sure the chase is a metaphor for something else. It usually is. Usually when someone says chase, he won't mean harry or persuade someone to put some effort into it. A chase is commonly associated with a goal, a prize, or more commonly, a random stranger who just happened to pull your handbag off your shoulder.
Chases are good things. If you reach your goal, you can give yourself a pat on the back, and tell yourself and everyone around you that all that effort was worth it; if you don't, well, at the very least you tried to grab the guy with your bag instead of trying to tweet the incident on your now non-existent phone.
But that's not the most important part. What is more important is what you do after you reach your goal.
Hooray for you! The chase is now over!
Now what?
Do you end your journey?
Do you live the rest of your life in the comfort of your spoils?
Do you loiter about, telling yourself, your children and your grandchildren that you have once done something great?
Or do you set your sights on something greater, and start the chase anew?
There would always be something out there you don't know, don't have or didn't try. I made it my goal to catch'em all. It's a long journey, but as any runner nay tell you, it's much better than standing still.
Anyway, it's getting late. My dad's chasing me to bed. D: Cya.
You may think that what with A-Levels being over and stuff, I would have a lot of Laze time with the laptop and a book, with possibly a nice cup of smoothie. I seem to be into smooothies nowadays.
And I have been. Swhat I'm doing now, and The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender is sitting right next to the laptop, tempting me to make myself sad again. As for the smoothies, well there's milk, banana and avocado in the fridge. I take my time.
But then again, I've been out a lot recently. The JPA/BTN camp, the class trip to Redang, and the family trips to Sg Lembing and Chiang Mai (that's in Thailand). And I really enjoyed it. Experience and beauty. I love them all for that. To make me busy in my free time so that I don't go insane. But...
Thing is, I wanna do nothing. Like, really nothing. I wanna keep track of my thoughts and see where they lead me. I want to think of myself and what I actually do and how I really affect people and how people affect me. Most of all, I don't want my path to be set by other people for me. So that I could change for the better.
This is a very insightful journey, but a perilous
one too.
Sometimes I think I'm Charlie from Perks of Being A Wallflower.
And then I slap myself and say that that's a worst case scenario. I should be grateful, and I am.
But now, after A-Levels results are out, (got what I expected, thanks for asking), I'm getting kinda scared. I mean, in another month or so, I'll be flying off to live alone in the UK. Well, not really alone. I'm sure there're great people there. But I don't wanna grow up.
The reason why I'm so down while writing this post is because of visa applications. So many forms... So many documents.... I have lots to do, yet I can't do anything while I wait for responses to my queries.
Email sucks.
Hence the second meaning to the blog post title.
Short post today. Can't really focus with the visa forms sitting on the other side of the laptop, facing lemons.
So I was gone to Redang for 3 days. Twas a class trip. I decided unwind myself and just not care for a while.
Big mistake.
Boy, was it eventful.
Even before I left the mainland, memories happened.
I actually missed the goddamned flight to KTerengganu. I couldn't really blame anyone but myself for being such a blurhead and not noticing the difference between a Subang Airport and the LCCT.
I guess I deserved the following 7 hours only with myself as company. And I'm telling you, myself is a total bastard. The poison myself said cannot be reproduced here in this blog. All I can say is that I arrived to the Redang Reef Resort in a super foul mood, and did an unspeakable thing. After that, they say they were fine with it, but I wasn't fine with it, so fine me then.
And that's one.
SO the whole thing blew over quite well. And we went snorkeling, which is what you normally do at an isand like Redang. And I decided to go shirtless, since it was cloudy out. Only a Gaussian Blurred Sun can be seen in the sky, and I did have my sunblock, so I thought, I've cared enough, let's go under the sun!!!
And that's two.
I could swear that my shoulders were GLOWING RED the whole next day. It hurt when I put my hands up, put my put my hands up! (Standard party song line. Slightly related:
I love mashups.)
Always apply liberal amounts of sunblock at extremely short time intervals, especially during summer time, regardless of how cloudy the sky is. I JUST WANNA FEEL better shoulders.
And the rest of the trip went pretty dandy, with cards and drinks and food (repetitively and in no particular order). I really enjoyed myself there. Perhaps I'll mention this in another post. Because this post is a self-depreciating post about the downsides of not caring.
Thus, I will skip to the end of the trip to the airport before we leave. I went and paid Nicky RM 119 for the flight ticket ( reminds me, haven't gotten my 1119 cert yet. Hmm. ) And guess how much money I have in my wallet. Go on, take a wild guess.
RM 30. Frikking RM 30. From supposedly RM 400 I've withdrawn a week ago + RM 100 I got from my dad at the airport before I left.
I counted and I counted and I only calculated that I spent RM 350 at most.
Not exactly the correct meme to use here,
but with all this careless spending...
You get my point
Where did that money go?
How much did I actually spend there?
How much did I actually bring there?
And now I have a heart burn in addition to my skin burn, and awaiting a further word burn by my parents.
And that's three.
I just reckoned I'll be fine if I had enough in my wallet, ie I still had that purple 100 ringgit note.
That's more like it.
And I ended up not caring at all.
Not about the feelings about my friends, not about my health, not about my finances.
This keeps up, I can't survive studying alone overseas. Definitely. I have to learn to care, even about the small things.
Cause small things say a lot about yourself.
And I think I've said enough about myself today.
Cya.
PS Those guys could really drink!!
PPS I really had fun there, despite all that. Really I did. I'm gonna miss them.
lag : Fall behind in movement, progress, or development; not keep pace with another or others. jet lag : Extreme tiredness and other physical effects felt by a person after a long flight across several time zones. work lag :Fall behind in the progress of a project by various factors such that postponement becomes inevitable and deadlines cannot be followed. I hate work lag. That's my own term by the way. I mean, good grief. I'm working on this yearbook for three months now? I ask for pictures, and I get no reply, or a reply that goes along the line of "I dunno, maybe you can ask so-and-so for pictures..." I need results. This yearbook is for you. How do I do graphic design on the book if I don't get pictures? But that is just me ranting. Back to work lag. Work does't get finished because of work lag. Work lag occurs because: 1) Problem Upstream Which is the problem I'm having now. As an article graphic designer, I cannot do my work without the article (of course) and the pictures to furnish it with. I've been sending messages, calling, and patiently waiting, and yet most of my pictures come from the Head Ed herself, who of course is rushing all of us for the deadline. Meanwhile, other sources remain elusive, ie simply do not reply my messages. Shows the difference between efficiency of the team and individual efficiency, eh? 2) Malaysian Timing Malaysians are never on time is the sad truth. The first guy is late by a day, the second guy is late by another day, and so on and so forth, until there is a backlog of work lag. Enough said. 3) Procrastination Very common. Finding pictures is a kind of work. There are many more things funner than work/There is another work more important than this. Therefore, the insignificant task of finding your pictures can be done tomorrow, provided no other pressing matters pop-up by then. 4) General Blurness Example: What, I'm supposed to find you pictures? No one told me that? OR Huhuhu, deadline's yesterday? Totally forgot, sorry. OR Sorry, I don't know, maybe you can ask so-and-so for pictures... Sometimes I fear I may be guilty of the 4th one. But even so, I wouldn't know, due to general blurness. I just wanna get it over with. Time to work. Cya.
Did the SAC/BTN camp change me at all? If it did, I probably won't notice.
It's like the age old wisdom where the only way to tell that you have not been brainwashed is the knowledge that you are being brainwashed.
To tell you the truth, that sounded like hogwash to me.
Only slightly related:
But then again, any washing in the camp seemed to focus primarily on our cups, plates and cutlery. (Had to restrain myself from playing the cup song there and then. Always stuck in my brain, for some reason.)
With six meals a day, that's a looooooooooooot of stuff to wash.
I guess the whole point of the food thing is that they spend you out really fast with some camp activities like Spider Web or Marching orA Trip To The Nearby Dam or Fishing A Bottle With A Nail or Coming Up With A Group Slogan or Building A Raft oreven Watch A Movie. (Hati Melayu 1957. Not a bad movie, if you ignore the lack of flow and shaky dialogue. Informative? Definitely)
And THEN they give you a recharge (main ingredient: sugar) every four hours.
I thought that's how phone batteries die out fast. But I digress.
That's a dam nice view from the top and bottom of the damn.
Did not bring my camera. Had to steal from someone's
else's blog. Credit link in picture.
What makes this camp different from other camps, other that its insane length, is its insane amount patriotic songs and reference to governmental programs. Not in a bad way, of course. Most of the songs sound good and are REALLY sticky, esp Sudirman's. And it's good to know about what's actually happening in our country before going out so that you actually can talk about Malaysia with your overseas mates without sounding like you live under a rock/up a tree, as the common joke goes.
But how much of it is actually necessary?
I really hope I don't have to explain that Msia is between Singapore and Thailand.
Ah well. Something learnt, horizon broadened, blah blah blah. Maybe it might come in useful, who knows?
