Wednesday, June 22, 2005

a long long time ago, when i was in the 6th grade and still at the age where i really didnt give a darn about bad hair days, my school implemented this new disciplinary system called the Blacklist System.

the Blacklist, as the name implies, is a compiled list of damned students who have been delinquent in one way or another. this list is churned out monthly, but as i recall it didnt live past the 2nd month after its introduction.

i remember that the teachers used to threaten us with THE BLACKLIST everytime we so much as put a toenail out of line. and of course, i got more than my fair share of threats due to my penchant for reading storybooks in class, as well as for my headstrong inclination towards defending myself (verbally) when reprimanded in any way. (this still has not changed after 5 years, but nevermind that.)

some of my classmates used to practically break out in sweat at the mere mention of THE BLACKLIST, and most started bucking up academically to avoid being one of the damned. but i never really did grasp the fear factor of the whole thing. so what if we're blacklisted? and blacklisted from what? it's not like we're gonna get detention or 1000 lines on the chalkboard. to me, THE BLACKLIST was just another gust of wind that gets in my eyes for a split second and then blows right past me.

so naturally, i completely disregarded it and went on reading Fear Street and Roald Dahl during every class except English. still talked a lot, still stood up for myself when accused.

as you can guess, when the 1st BLACKLIST rolled around, i was the only person in my class who got blacklisted.

the day the first BLACKLIST was circulated, my class teacher came in my class and said, only one person from 6S got blacklisted. she said it in a very soft tone and a face so tainted with disappointment. most people assumed it was going to be this other guy who gets into quite a bit of trouble with the teachers, but somehow i just knew it was gonna be me who was blacklisted, and not him.

so she said, "only one person from this class got blacklisted ... and that's su ann."

and then she finally locked eyes with me, after avoiding them the whole time. her gaze was 60 parts disappointment and 40 parts 'why?'.

at that point, EVERYONE in the class turned to look at me, and their gazes were 100% sympathy.

i tried to keep my face as stoic as possible. i told myself, dont turn red, dont look at anybody, dont take their sympathy. and then i found myself wondering why i was struggling to keep the blood from rushing to my face, if in the first place i never really cared about this blacklist thing. i found myself trying to comprehend what was this emotion that i was feeling because it wasnt something i recognised or felt before. it wasnt anger, because if it was i would have leapt out of my seat in a flash and demanded the exact reason that led to my blacklisting. it wasnt sadness because there was no sharp sign of pooling tears. it wasnt indignation because i already saw it coming.

i didnt know what the heck to call it. after all, i was only 12, and hadnt seen or experienced enough to put a name and face to the boil that was in my soul at that time.

after the announcement of my blacklisting, and my 10-minute confusion over the way i was feeling, i promptly shrugged it all off and continued reading Matilda, work of Roald Dahl, for the 567th time. i never thought about that incident again, nor did i ever ask myself 'why me?'.

but then today at school i just .. stumbled across that old memory. like how i stumble across old diaries and stickerbooks. it was quite surprising, and caught me off guard. and me being the overanalytical nutcase that i am, attempted to find the solution to that old question... what was that feeling that i felt?

the answer came to me in a split second.

it was loneliness.

so it wasnt that i cared about the fact i was blacklisted, it was the fact that i was the ONLY one to be so. it was how all 29 other people turned around to stare at me with that look that said, 'ohmigosh, poor you'. that awkward moment just separated me from everyone else, and made me feel ..different. in a bad way. in a way i didnt like. in a way that made me feel i was lesser compared to the other 29 who didnt get blacklisted.

just that feeling that makes you want to curl up into a ball and have someone completely envelope you. while trying not to grit your teeth or feel too sorry for yourself.

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

11:04 AM

current music : Third Eye Blind - Semi Charmed Life

i havent been feeling very perky for the past few weeks or so. i'd go to school armed with as much as 5 hours of sleep, but still conk out on my desk for almost half the schoolday. i've been constantly feeling giddy and i get horrible headache as well. last Saturday i puked the day away (:P @ george) and diarrhea-ed the following day away.

i thought those were very usual things. so i didnt go to the doc or anything.

but then i started losing my appetite!!! i never lose my appetite. that's when i knew i had to do something :P

evil doctor wasnt very concerned over my loss of appetite. he was more concerned about my discharge and constant fatigue. i tried to convince him that losing my appetite was something that requires more attention than the stuff my cat spews, but he wasnt having any of it.

anyways he thinks i may be undergoing too much stress. how coincidential, after i posted yesterday's post too! and he wants me to go back for a blood test. nooooooooooo. :X needles!!!

but my mother kept pushing for me to get a blood test. she was all "take a blood test take a blood test TAKE A BLOOD TEST!!". i suspect she suspects i'm pregnant. cos everytime i tell her i'm nauseous, she asks me when my last menstruation was. BAH. it must be a parent thing.

i would like to thank my mom for sacrificing her sleep to bring me to the doctor. but i cant. cos it's weird.

so ... mom, if you're reading this, thanks for sacrificing your sleep to bring me to the doctor even though you nagged me about my health the whole trip there and nagged me about stress the whole trip back. you're really very nice. though i still dont forgive you for forgetting to bring home the durians.

Monday, June 20, 2005

10:40 PM

current music : Aqualung - Strange and Beautiful

i just finished cleaning my room and about 3/4 of the couch next to my desk.

the room was easy peasy. the couch, however, posed the bigger part of the problem since it's the one place that i dump all my books, papers, "lost" homework, gum wrappers, newspaper articles, instant noodle bowls, used tissues (um, yeah), CDs, broken stationery ....... man you wont believe the stuff that goes on that couch.

and the only reason i started cleaning it was because i ran out of space to dump my SPM past-year papers. oh, the slob that i am!

next step would be to sort out my wardrobe. if you can even call it that. i should post a pic of its insides just so you guys can point and laugh at the nonexistent entity that is my neatness.

but that's not the point :P lets move on, shall we?

when i was cleaning my room earlier, i found boxes and boxes of keepsakes that i've been storing ever since i was young. bouquet ribbons, hotel cardkeys, love letters, letters .. you name it, i've probably got it in some remote corner of my room. so i was checking the dates on the mementoes that i labeled, and i was quite sad to find that the dates didnt go past the end of 2004. the last souvenir i kept was the hotel roomkey from the Christmas trip to Singapore with sieutheng and the rest. in my mooncake-box of mementoes, it was as if 2005 just never came along.

ever since the year started, i've just not bothered to save any more of the stuff that i used to love so much to save. i look at flower bouquets and i think .. 'oh i'll just snip the ribbons off later', but i never do. the letters i've recieved lately have either been recycled or misplaced. i forget to keep the cardkeys from my hotel stays. programme books and greeting cards and little notes are just left lying all over the place and i end up just forgetting about them.

the thing is, for the past year i've been so horribly negligent about so many things. i dont know why but it seems as though time is passing by so quickly this year, and i subconsciously just want to cram as many things as i can into these 12 months before it vanishes on me just like 2004 did. cram, cram, cram is all i have been doing and as a result i find myself behaving more and more like a machine every day.

it's like i'm doing so many things at one time, and yet i still want to increase the efficiency at which i'm doing things. i dont want to waste even a minute of my time, and i want to make every second count. for example ... if i so much as spend 30 minutes doing nothing simply because someone didnt turn up for play rehearsals, i get extremely irritated and my mood just flatlines for the entire day. yeah. things like that.

being so rushy and constrained has turned me into a very .. brusque person. i find that i'm starting to become more and more curt. and when leading work or projects, i tend to just brush opinions aside if i feel they dont contribute to the objective, hurting feelings in the process. the thing is, i never used to be like that. or at least, not to this extent. gone are the days i used to be more relaxed. nowadays i feel like if i stop to ponder about something, i'm wasting time and that i just have to gogogogo.

and when the heck did i stop noticing when i hurt other people's feelings by accident?

i buy so many magazines and books to read in my leisure time but they're just collecting dust underneath my bed. i never make birthday cards anymore. the last time i did, i sat down and attempted to for 5 minutes before i thought "shit, why am i wasting an hour making a card when i can just go out and buy one?". (actually, come to think of it, the last 3 gifts i gave didnt even have a card attached) and the last time i took the time to read a good book was .... man i dont know, i think it was The Time Traveller's Wife from the last December holidays.

seriously. what am i doing to myself? i'm losing more and more of my old self as each day passes.

i think i'm growing up.

this sucks.

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

11:18 PM

current music : Velvet Revolver - Set Me Free

i swear my heart almost stopped beating. and i very almost started crying.

that's how much i dont want to go for National Service.

i was having trouble accessing the damn site, so i dispatched half the world to try to access it along with me. gave them all my ID number so they could key it in for me if the site loaded faster for them.

kevin was the first one who came back with my results.

the first thing he told me was "wow my prediction came true!!" then he started laughing and telling me i was 0wned. after that he said ;

"xxxx-xx-xxxx TERPILIH untuk Program Khidmat Negara"

i swear i just wanted to die. because 10 minutes ago he was predicting that i would get selected for NS.

he went on with his damn charade for a few minutes before saying :

"oops! i forgot the tak!"

(translated : "oops, i forgot the 'not'!")

i wanted so badly to kill him. but since he was the harbinger of my good news, i spared him.

thank You, Lord. thank You for hearing my prayers. thank You.

i'm just really relieved right now.

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

3:05 AM

current music : Jets to Brazil - You're Having The Time Of My Life

i am back from Pow Wow with loads of new friends and mosquito bites, renewed perspectives on a lot of things, a bagful of clothes of which half are wet, and the other half el stinko, and the knowledge that i am listening to rm3000 worth of radio ads in the 15 minutes i take to go to school. i have also lost the pastiness (or creaminess, if you will :P) of my legs. jungle trekking has taken the whiteness of my thighs and calves! now there's this stark contrast between my shorts-line and my thighs. bah!

i remember when i was on the bus to Kuala Selangor, i was thinking .. 10 days is way too long, i want to go home already. and for the first few days i was counting down the days till the conference ends. i kept telling myself "just 6 more days, just 6 more days .."

but then on the last day as i was lying on the floor of the longhouse listening to John telling scary stories, i wondered where all the time went. was this really going to be the last day together for all 32 of us? some of these people i may never see again despite being so close to them for the 10 days we shared bathrooms and combs and stories and secrets.



i have met the coolest people and learnt loads of stuff. Guo Heng, Pancake, Jolene, Sathya, Sai Mun, Christal and Niki .. they are the best teammates ever. Day 6 and 7 were critical days for us -- a lot of arguments and discomfort and clash in opinions. and on my part, a lot of tears too. i was just so upset at the way the 8 of us were behaving that i couldnt help but cry.



the night of Day 7 and Day 8 proved to be so much better. the guys especially Pancake and Guo Heng were being the sweetest people on earth, and of course that made me cry even more. i couldnt believe that after all the arguments we had, they were willing to just drop it all and forgive and forget. and then on the day of the presentation, Niki told me out of the blue that i was going to present on my own instead of with her as originally planned. at first i was really doubtful, and asked her what if i screwed up. and so she said some things which meant the world to me. it is nice to know that there are people out there who believe in you.

as for the presentation, yes i actually did screw it up :P despite performing well during the impromptu rehearsal, i completely bungled the finale. i made the stupid mistake of preparing a script for the finale, and by the time the presentation rolled around, i hadnt memorised a darn thing. so not only did i have to rely on notes, i also forgot a good part of what i wanted to say. stupid, stupid me.

my teammates did not kill me. they were actually really really sweet about the whole thing. kept insisting that i did a good job (even though i know i didnt) and that we should all be glad because it's all finally OVER. and so i smiled :)

the Datuk Seri telling me i should get myself involved in public speaking meant a lot too. sweet old man. i'm sorry i laughed when you commended us on our work at the beachfront even though we never did go to a beach :(



to those who havent read the newspapers for the past week, the whole objective of this event is to raise environmental awareness via 4 types of media, namely online, radio, print and TV. i got radio, with the subject of the Orang Asli (aborigines). and hell yes you can bet your boots i'm pretty environmentally aware right now.

to briefly recap a few of the things we did ...

the itinerary for Day 1 had an ambiguously-titled activity : "Crazy Class 1 - The World Is In A Lousy Shape And It's Not Our Fault." when i got the itinerary i was a bit curious. so i asked the volunteers if they knew what we were doing. all they gave me was a knowing smirk and a pat on the shoulder. then they expressed their sympathies o.O

so what happened was that we actually had to go to a .. landfill .. and actually raid bags of garbage for certain items. when i heard about this, i was like hahahaha no way will they actually make us do that. but then when our head facilitator said "when you bring back the stuff, make sure you wash them thoroughly. we dont want you bringing back any maggots" i started having my doubts. maaaaaybe we were really going to scavenge around the landfill.

and scavenge we did. talking about landfills and actually BEING at one are two very different things. when i got to the Ayer Hitam landfill, they brought us in a 4WD up this HUGE hill of soil and sand and plunked us at the top, which was flat land. we were told then that we were standing on 500 feet of garbage, piled over with earth for hygiene purposes. the manager of the landfill then said Kuala Lumpur alone deposits about 3000 tonnes of garbage A DAY.

we were all stunned to say the least. i was even more stunned when the manager told us how political parties are actually reluctant to hold environmental campaigns because they're worried of losing out during elections, and how the people at landfills hate recycling because it means less money for them. it was just ... i dont know. such an eye opener.



you should have seen how we all were. wandering among bags of garbage looking totally traumatised, or pulling out items from garbage bags yelling "wah, so new also want to throw away??" when we were all guilty of doing the same thing at one point or other. the bus ride back to the hotel was rather quiet. i think everyone was quite stricken. that or the stench of the landfill rendered everyone mute.

besides that, we did a lot of jungle trekking as well. went to a lil cave in Taman Negara that was full of bats and batshit. some parts of the cave were bloody DIFFICULT to navigate through ... once again, thank goodness for teamwork. some of us wouldnt have managed to get out of the cave if not for assistance by the rest. all of us came out of the cave covered in batpoo and stream water and mud.



went to an Orang Asli settlement as well. i was bloody disappointed to find that the whole setup was a fake and that those people there werent really aborigines. they were just tourist attractions planted by some corporate company (probably the hotel nearby) to rake in a bit of revenue. so they werent really keen on answering any questions for the interviews. all they wanted to do was sell their bottled honey, corn and other handicraft which may i add none of which were done by them.

everytime we asked them questions, they said "tak tahu" (i dont know) and some even went to the extra length of fabricating answers which i knew for a fact were not true. this got me quite irritated because that's how tourists who come over to Malaysia get the wrong perception of the orang asli, and then bring home that wrong perception, resulting in a whole misunderstanding of malaysian aboriginal culture. bah. if the corporate companies wanted to set up fake-settlements-masked-as-real-ones, you'd think they'd actually do a better job what with all the money they're making from these people.

t'was fun, all these activities as well as the rest. one of the best camps/conferences i've ever been too, if not the best. i miss everyone :( i miss my creamy legs too :P

oh and did i mention that i have been constipated for the past 10 days? now that i'm home, my bowels are shifting into hypertension mode. i cant stop going to the toilet!!!