Blank Doll screams with joy

All right, the toughest paper is over.

No it's not gp, silly.

It's econs s which most of you don't take so cannot possibly know how nerve wrecking it is. I felt like such an iceberg just drifted over me when I finished the paper.

Ok, lousy imagery aside.

Tomorrow will be PC which I hope to get 30s for both essays which will then make my effort at getting an A for Literature slightly easier. I have a bad feeling about Measure for Measure (Die Shakespeare die! Oh wait, already dead.) and oddly, The Country Wife which I love. Those two will set me back to a B! Ahhh! I don't want a lousy B, not at the prelims.

Sorry, let me rant about results for a while. You know of course that Sean wants perfect As this time round though getting an A for History now looks highly unlikely although I'm damn well going to try. S papers, I want a D for Hist S which is possible I think, M for Econs S or I'll be devastated.

Ok, so I've set the bar. Now let's see if I can jump over it. Wait, you DO jump over the bar right? That's how that figure of speech works right?

On to other stuff.

Credit card companies are so scheming. I am utterly tempted by the new platinum by Amex and Singtel and am tempted to get my mother to accept the invitation so I can get a supp. The thing is, these platinum cards actually induce you to move your spending bracket up a notch too and I don't think I really want my mother to do that. I think having a platinum and a few golds are enough. I'm supremely proud of my mother for having a spotless credit card record. I aim to be like her in the future although we all know of course that Sean really wants the Amex Centurion.

Xiao Jun thinks poets are a waste of time. I think this is because she has been permanently traumatized by her brief encounter with Frost, a poet of adequate ability with a fixation on the most inane things from which we are forced to assume greater insight, and also because she belongs firmly in the Legalist school of Chinese thought.

Legalists and the Confucians. I think I straddle the middle ground because I believe in pragmatism, reasoning and the iron hand of the law. I also believe in civilisation, the arts and comportment. Civilisation may be a veneer but it certainly covers up the ugliness of human brutishness. You cannot imagine how uncouth some people can look, peasant stock being what it is.

Ok, I'll stop.

My point being, I think poets are actually quite respectable. This is because poetry was considered one of the skills besides rhetoric that the Greek masters held essential to holistic learning. The Greek masters also believed in tumbling naked in a sand pit every other day to train up and that slavery was ok. I rather like the slavery part but I'll pass on the wrestling.

I do digress. Another reason why I admire poetry so much is because it is so bloody difficult. Good poetry, not the sort that induces vomit and embarrassment, ends with a note of awe. It brings tears to the eyes, it captures the mood brilliantly in a few words. Prose is wonderful for building grandiose works but for pure beauty, there can only be poetry.

Enough for a day. I shall now rest up for PC. LMAO.

C'est tout.

Blank Doll

Hermes has done a superb blouson for men that looks like fuddy-duddy chequer from far but on closer inspection, is the result of weaving strips of kidskin together.

Parfait.

What I wouldn't give to be able to head Hermes.

C'est tout.

Blank Doll talks.

Ha ha, thanks to Jessie for reminding me what I wanted to note down in my blog. Anyway, it's just something simple. So here goes:

I hate the phrase oedipus complex. It seems so robbed of its meaning when people just take it to mean a perversion of love. I think people miss the point about the story then or Freud was just deliberately being obtuse. Oedipus is tragic because his is a tale about the helplessness of Man before fate. It is about the ignorance and baseness of humankind, that we cannot escape from the grasp of the gods. That it happens to the son of royalty and not some peasant's get only highlights the delusion of mankind to its ability to control its destiny. It is the tale of punishment for hubris not pronounced. This is why it is tragic, that fate may play with mankind to make tragedy so farcical, to make man such a fool for daring to stiffen his back before the presence of divinity.

Yet it is not the fault of fate. It is Man's fault for it is Oedipus who returns to his father, who weds his mother. It is by the hand of Man that Man is punished for his misguided sense of power.

That works better I think.

C'est tout.

Blank Doll yells I Am.

There is something delicate about our existence or rather, how we perceive the existence of the things around us. It seems to me that so much of our assumptions on the physical environment- the very assumption that there exists a physical environment- is based on light, electricity and little more. What is vision but what we can see, and what is that but something built on light? What is your sense of touch but a variation of electric signals? It really is hard to justify one's existence when one comes to see how little we base our presumptions on, and how comfortable we are with them. I do not take kindly to the easy way out, that we think and therefore, we are. That certainly explains why we exist, but what of our physical world?

Or maybe I was just a little dehydrated from doing napfa for the freaking third time since I keep failing the same stations. There is something to be said about my physical condition, that no amount of exercise may improve it beyond the limits set by genetics. I was born, it seems, with the body of a Chinese scholar. The pallor of my skin that no amount of sun may stain for long, the single-lidded eyes set a little slant, the flexible limbs, the narrow shoulders, the palms that cannot be roughened. I take after my grandfather I suppose, who was a scholar in the early 1900s. He knew English and wrote Chinese poems to my grandmother, a Hokkien Straits Chinese from a family of rice merchants, who lived across the sea in Singapore while he was in China. He was also a businessman who married his cousin to join their family's fortunes though I like to think that he loved my grandmother. He was also 19 years older than her. If I want to know more about my grandfather, I could ask my mother, my father or my grandmother but all they will do is add on to the sprawling mosaic that is my memory of a man who died before I was born.

My grandmother tells me that my grandfather will return every seventh month of the year as a giant black moth and sure enough, he returns dutifully to my grandmother for the ancestral feast each year. I have never hurt a moth in my life, thinking them all to be a fragment of my grandfather.

Ah, but I digress. My grandfather gives me strength you see, just as my paternal grandmother and my own mother. My family has known powerful women and talented but weak men. I cannot bear to see weak men, snivelling men, petty men, men who rely on women, men who cannot defend their family, men who cannot honour their wives.

But increasingly, I hear the stories of the men. They show me another side. In them, the women are still powerful, my grandmother still chased my grandfather out of the house and he would walk the distance from their home to the factory seventeen miles away, my mother still supports the entire family with her own hands and instructs her husband on the simplest things. But there is some sort of inner endurance that the men possess, it makes up for their weakness I suppose, and I am inclined to be more forgiving.

I love my family so much though they have given me so much pain, taught me anguish. Strength is something that can be cultivated just as pride may be tempered and talent polished. These people, these flawed persons- they have all had a hand in the making of me.

C'est tout.

Blank Doll

My head throbs now. I had a really strange dream yesterday. I dreamt that I was at some piazza with two women. One of them had hair so blond it was nearly white with really fair skin, I can't remember her eyes but she was the retiring sort. The other had dirty blonde hair with really tanned skin. So there I was praising the woman with the fair skin and the other woman got really angry and then suddenly, she took of her shoes and started hurling them at me.

Weird.

I really am a city person. It becomes very apparent because whenever I think of a country, say France, I think of it as a faceless landscape marked with beacons of life. It is as if I cannot figure the countryside in my head and can only imagine the cities. I cannot see how the cities may sprawl across the landscape until eventually it gives way to the countryside. Surely the countryside and the city are two distinct entities.

Suburbs are detestable. Tear down the banlieues I say, just another euphesism for the bidonvilles.

But I do love the city, even as I want to love the countryside too.

It's equally telling that when I think of countryside, I think of the French campagne and the Tuscan fields. Both are wild, fecund and thriving with the life that one cannot see in the weak images of the Wordsworthian English countryside which besides, has already been claimed by industrialization. Of course I would be silly to say that the Provencal and Florentine spaces that poets eulogize are still there, worse if I think them perfect. One forgets the plague that ravaged the countryside, the cold winds from the north, the swarm of vermin and the numbing boredom of la vie des paysants.

All right, as you can see, I just woke up so my head's still a little woozy. Krugman, by the way, is SUCH a poseur. I cannot believe self-respecting students in my beloved school are actually doing the song and dance for Cambridge. For shame! Don't you value your knowledge? The countless hours you spend in breathless anticipation as the forbidden doors of learning creak open to you? Of course not, you are all content to reduce it to nothing but a matter of tactica and strategy, nothing but pallid letters inked on a piece of paper.

Bah, I have no right to complain any longer. I'm not even going to university after this.

Which means I can grouse about fashion designers not treasuring their craft in seven years time.

C'est tout.

Blank Doll

Finished reading Irving Stone's The Agony and the Ecstasy. It's about the life of Michelangelo and suddenly, I want to go back to Florence once more to see his all sculptures again. I want to go back to Rome to lie on the floor of the Basilica staring at his frescoes. I want to see his tomb for the Medici, his tomb for Pope Julius II, his carvings about Florence, his Captives, his Pietas.

How wonderful to be illuminated by this unquenchable desire to create, this supreme talent to liberate from the infinite transcience of thought an entity of such permanence. What glory is art!

What a pitiful world we live in. To have all the comforts that technology may bring but to lose the craft that gave the world such art. Who amongst the artists of today may carve marble as he did? Who may ascend heaven to fetch back once more the illumination of paradise? Who may capture in perpetuity the nobility of the human spirit in the flesh of the earth?

I hate modern art. I hate installation pieces. They neither provoke thought nor appeal to the aesthetics.

Damn those Cubists. Damn those Dadaists. Art is ruined. All that is left to do is to collect and to preserve.

C'est tout.

Blank Doll yells.

Yesterday was horrible. I felt sick because my nose was trying to drive me insane. I felt like such a failure. I was mighty glad there was Akesh and his trusty Jan Smuts to make me laugh my head off. So much so that I actually got one for myself too.

It's funny how changing your perspective changes everything too. Today I woke up determined to be happy and on retrospection, yesterday was actually quite a fine day. All right, minus the runny nose since no amount of exuberance may dispel the melancholy that being sick evokes. Nevertheless, yesterday was highly enjoyable though I must have been too tired to appreciate the full taste of the day. Pity that.

Today however has been great. The idea that we can go to J8, have lunch, talk and still be in time for the next tutorial is very satisfying. I still love having the whole class take break together of course but the canteen food proves to be such a great disincentive sometimes. The first firm to think about delivering good food to school wins. Let's hope it's Lazy Gourmet because it will totally rock to be able to eat things like roast veal in school with a cup of iced sugar tea from stall two.

Having friends whom I know care also helps. Knowing that I have regained that thing that makes me succeed while being happy at the same time also helps. It's funny how a little cheer and free spirit can put back so much into me.

Which makes it a total stroke of luck that I read the comment on my tagboard this morning instead of yesterday when I was near suicidal. The brown-nosed, always assume that uncouth cowards who don't name themselves are ill-educated working class of no breeding, mongrel who had the audacity to mock my signature had better know French and do far better than me in school.

All right, I'm still a happy person now. Cheers to the world and chocolates! Yes, just discovered two boxes of chocolates my ma bought from some chocolatier so it's not some generic Cadbury shit. Double yayness.

Watch me enjoy myself.

C'est tout.

Blank Doll asks.

I was just walking about a while ago and the weather was very fine. It was windy, the ixoras were red not because I perceived them to be but because they were, the grass was green and the infinite breadth of the sky took my mortal breath away.

Then I wondered why people even need religion to get to God. Truly, you demean God when you think of God only as a people God. You belittle the concept of God's omniscience when you think all God is concerned with are the sins of people, their souls and their salvation. The God of humans is the God of the everything else as well. God created the world, or rather, God is the world not for the sake of mankind. To see God from this angle is to think too highly of one's nature as a human being.

By that same extension, why are you reading your scriptures? Why are you singing in worship and gathering inside cold buildings of concrete and stone? Why are you playing with handcrafted beads or following some obscure ritual?

Why are you not looking about you appreciating the fellow kin that God has made? Why are you to smiling at the trees and the rivers? Why are you not exultant and in love with God with every breath of air you take because every breath of air, every molecule is a part of God? Why are you not celebrating your role as one in the greater scheme of God where humans are but a single child of God amongst many?

I think to believe that the world is immaterial, that the realm of the material is base and not desirable is not the way to God. The rigidity of rational thought isn't either. Nor is the blind fervor of faith. The first leads to debauchery, the second to atheism and the third to religion.

None to God, or at least, not that greater entity, that supreme being.

Look into yourself and unlock the door of your self so that you are linked once more to the world. We don't do it most of the time but when you do try, the results can be quite startling. Why don't we do it more if it's so good? Because it reveals the prejudices upon which we base our lives to be meaningless and hurtfult, because it destabilizes our lives. We don't want to think about it. We don't want to stop judging because being critical of others make us feel better about ourselves. We don't want to stop thinking of ourselves because we are afraid of losing our sense of self.

But once in a while, one should seek to hold silent counsel with God. Prayer is a good way but it is a limited way. Meditation is good but it must be channeled properly.

God can find you though, because you are part of God, because you are God.

God is a brilliant concept, a magnificent entity. All our experiences are like votive candles before the metaphysical altar of God.

C'est tout.

Blank Doll says ouch.

Your father dies two days after you're born. Your mother has to work day and night just to put food on your table. You are skinny, not enough food after all.

And you are only 12 years old.

My mother's work take her to some strange places. She had clients from all walks of life and sometimes, I follow her to see the other side of society from which she has lifted us long ago.

I felt so much like crying then because a twelve year old shouldn't have to wear that sort of grim responsibility on his face. He shouldn't have to laugh with so little innocence. He shouldn't, just shouldn't have to live like this.

I look at my sister and I wonder if she knows how fortunate she is. She has everything that she could want for. She's been to so many places in the world. Does the boy her age, living on the meagre earnings of his mother, know the difference between hot chocolate and hot cocoa? Or where Hyde Park is? Or how toro sashimi could taste like when eaten in Japan?

Do I know how fortunate I am? I can pick and choose where I want to study without worrying about school fees. True, I may not be as wealthy as some of my friend's family but it is wealth enough for me to feel detached from the everyday life of the heartlands. Enough for me to believe that we are different in some way.

I have my mother to thank for this. She told me about her childhood, how she was just like this 12 year old boy with not a penny. How she worked so hard her whole life. Today, her son cannot imagine surviving on two thousand a month.

I can only say a prayer for the little boy. Grow up strong and tall. Don't go astray, don't be trapped by the hopelessness of mediocrity. Study hard, come to Raffles. Don't fall prey to jealousy and inferiority, don't grudge those who are better than you now. Don't think only of petty schemes and cunning ways. Be noble, get a scholarship. Study harder. Work very hard. Give your mother that Breguet lady's watch with forty five complications on her 70th birthday.

Be strong.

C'est tout.

Blank Doll wonders aloud.

The National Day Parade is a joy to watch, whether one belongs to the thousands aseat at the heart of the festivities or more likely, one watches it from the air-conditioned comforts of home.

My step-brother was asking me if I found it boring since they showed the same things every year? Same parade, same party, same Mr. Lee Kuan Yew.

It was not always the same.

It is the year 1966. Singapore's first year of independence. What airplanes did we fly across the newly sovereign skies of Singapore? We who had been excised from the one union upon which our hopes of future prosperity had been pined on? What tanks did we roll across the soil of Singapore? We who were now to defend this island we call our home? What fireworks did we launch in jubilation? We who did not know whether the next decade would bring peace or penury?

So yes, it is indeed a spectacle today. It is a joy to see Singapore display for a single day, the confidence of a wealthy country. We are the people of a country who has come so very far within the span of one and forty years. What is the Singaporean identity, you ask? You only have to feel it, on this most special of day. You only have to remember that your forefathers came to this island with no wish to stay and here you are, not a member of China, nor India, nor even the Malay islands, but a member of a country prosperous and free.

We have survived. We have thrived. Today once more, we celebrate this miracle of a nation. F-16s fly in the sky. Cannons worth only God knows how much are fired. The rifleshots of joy are Uniquely Singapore.

And we have something to celebrate now, haven't we? We are the wealthiest country in South-East Asia, the third in Asia. We are the only city-state in the world. Crime does not plague us, neither do economic troubles. Our government is a paragon of efficiency and service. Our people born knowing that the next day brings more than the last, that with each breath we draw, the future becomes brighter.

The colours white and red have special significance in Singapore. Red not because of communism, but red because, I like to think, so much blood was spilt in the delivery of this nation. White because we are still pure, still young unburdened by history. White also because it has been the party of white that has led our nation to its glorious present. Whether they do lead us to an even greater age, I do not wish to debate today. The fact is, Singapore bears the imprint of the white party and more than that, of one man.

Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, the first prime minister of an independent Singapore, the father of modern Singapore. He is old now, but watching him survey his work every year at the National Day Parade makes me burst with pride. He approves, he is proud of his work.

I am proud of our country. I can only hope that the rest of you- those among you who are still young, who will come to put your imprint on our nation- will be proud too.

Happy Birthday, Singapore.

C'est tout.

Blank Doll casts revive.

Nothing much today except for the fact that I thought of something.

Is there ever a day when I don't?

I remember something a dear girl told me once when I told I wrote an essay about asking the poor to fuck off and she reacted quite badly. Well, of course I didn't write about that. Nothing that simple.

What I wanted to point out was that the girl was operating on some code of morality which got to me. It made me think and lest this girl think I'm on the verge of conversion, no. It just got me thinking about how irrational religion makes some of us and how apparently intelligent people may adhere with any degree of sincerity to religion.

You believe in society, you believe in its functions and the social contract. Yet you also build an entire code of conduct, of actions and judgment based on some perceived set of rules established by your God. Isn't that rather strange?

It is wrong to kill your brother, but is killing your foe right? Well, I'd argue that both aren't wrong. When you think about it, on what basis have you set your morals upon? Who guarantees your morals? Faith? Is faith ever a good dispenser of justice?

Better still, people who propound that they love their common kin, that they want to do good and give back to society. How can you, from the base vantage of an individual rise above your singular self to see society from the lofty vantage of God? It does not make sense. Surely you have no incentive to look beyond your own needs or that of the people around you whom you at least have some basis for love since you have been bound together by time and blood.

Humans can be so irrational some times. They casually forget the atrocities and rank darkness at their hearts yet clutch onto the flimsiest of values.

C'est tout.

Blank Doll says hello.

It is near noon and I've just woken up. I had a dream that was as protracted as it was weird since it involved my little sister, my primary six form teacher, Mervyn of all people, Akesh, Daniel, Geri, Xuan and a strange auntie who sells lego blocks instead of food in the canteen. I can only remember bits of it though, pity.

I ate an interesting dish yesterday which was perhaps the only good thing that came out of that particular meal. There was like a layer of stewed radish followed by a layer of foie gras and then another layer of both. The entire thing was simmered in some sort of broth and topped with bonito flakes and smatterings of cheese.

Now, we all know Sean despises most types of fusion food but this was actually quite good. Or maybe it was just the foie gras.

Now I am eating two open-faced toast with peanut butter and wondering why I have come to love peanut butter again. This has probably something to do with the peanut butter hello pandas that XJ gave to me the other day to try. I never used to like peanut butter on account of it looking too easy.

All right, yes, Sean believes that good food shouldn't be easy to prepare. Apparently, Sean can be wrong. Oh wait, those of you who would use good sashimi as an example, don't. Good sashimi is the result after all, of the chef's craft. You try cutting sashimi, or choosing the fish.

Speaking of fish, Botan shrimp sashimi is quite nice. You ought to try it.

Back to peanut butter sandwiches. I suddenly have this idea of having two thick slices of apricot and walnut brioche toasted lightly in the grill and smothered in home made peanut butter stirred with a touch of honey. Add a glass of chilled rose tea or a flask of the freshest milk and you have breakfast to die for.

C'est les choses simples dans la vie qui la font bien, n'est-ce pas? Mais bien sur, vous le ne comprendriez pas même si je vous expliquais.

Oh yeah, and I do refer you to a certain blog rightly titled Really Sad under my links and if you have nothing to do, explain to the poor unenlightened chap there that we live in civil society with proper codes of civility and a wilful desire to contravene these codes makes one fit only for the wilderness.

Cheers. :D

C'est tout.

Blank Doll smiles.

Yay, today has been a great day. I think I've been surprisingly of good cheer and the day has worked out just fine.

Got my GP essay back. Ok, it was just a practice and I'd have gloated a little about getting 46/50 writing on a topic like Equality and Society but since everyone else have already harped on it, notably XJ -_- and Sarah double -_-s, I shan't talk anymore about it.

Eat this you lame shit. HAH.

Ok, enough. :)

Also went to XJ's house for a round of mahjong. Ok, I'm sorry, I suck at it ok? I was very slow and indecisive though not as bad as Sarah. I did manage to win at the end though through pure luck. I have NEVER been lucky in my life. This must be the first day. Or maybe second considering how Mr. Reeves didn't call me through the entire lecture yesterday to answer a single question though I was sitting in front of him with a blank worksheet.

My mother says I'm getting mischevious. What a quaint word to use on a 17 year old, mischevious.

Went to PE today to salve my conscience and also because I had a weird dream about the PE teachers yesterday so decided not to tempt fate.

Everybody's out to convince everyone else that Sean's really dumb. It's fine by me though, I can be quite silly sometimes can't I? Ok, maybe not quite. I do try not to be too stupid most of the time. Haha, some part of my brain must have shut down to accomodate other parts.

Yeah, that must be it.

Very excited about tomorrow though I shan't say why because the reason is just plain silly.

C'est tout.

Blank Doll.

Spent today very fruitfully. Finished everything I was supposed to study for the day in like, one and a half hours so the rest of the day was free.

Had fun during break getting to J8. Ate tonnes there. School's great when you have J8 and Akesh's place even though I hardly go to Akesh's place. It's just nice to know that refuge from school is only a walk/cab ride away.

Stayed in school till 4 30 with Val. Saw a really funny couple. More on eugenics some other day.

Met mummy thereafter. Walked a bit and ran a spot of errands with her. Went to Marmalade Pantry for dinner. I had the foie gras burger and the iced chocolate with the cherry crumble tart for dessert. The addition of foie gras to ground beef is genius, seriously. The burger remains moist afterwards and the juice that oozes out is just absolute. I'm not sure what the iced chocolate was made of but it's even better than the eight dollar shot you can get at Godiva's. It's half as sweet and twice as cold. Tastes like heaven. The cherry crumble tart was delicious as usual. What else did you expect from Marmalade Pantry but delicious cakes?

Bought the Gattaca's soundtrack finally. Was feeling very frustrated without it. Contrary to what Victor says, I actually like the hapless despair that the monotone strings capture. Nevermind.

Yeah, wonderful day. Wished every day were like this, that'd be really cool.

C'est tout.