School of Thought

CAUTION:

 LONG-ASS POST AHEAD. DON'T JUST SIMPLY SKIM THROUGH IT. EITHER READ, OR DON'T.

I love my tuition.

Yas, I said it.

I LOVE MY TUITION.

Many people have tuition so as to bring up their grades. Okay, that is basically the main reason why students in Singapore have tuition in the first place.

But I have started to view tuition as enriching. Seriously. I have learnt so many things in my time at my GP  tuition. Not examination skills /heh, which I should have learnt simultaneously/, but thinking skills. I have been mind blown so many times at my current GP tuition. Things that I have thought about, but I have not given serious thought to, has been discussed so many times in SOT. 

Take for example, a GP question that we discussed today was "Discuss the importance of religion in today's society". Which was translated into "Is religion important in today's society?" And we talked about whether we can be religious, even when we do not have a religion. Are science & tech and religion really conflicting? I am not going into detail what I have learnt, I'm just going to put this out here for whoever may read this to ponder about.

So basically, it was mindfucking. Really. Mr Chng would always ask us some questions and we wouldn't know how to answer them. These questions, I'd say, are actually really important in shaping our views and opening our eyes to the things that we often overlook. These things have so much impact on our lives, but we just do not know it.

We need to start thinking. I know there are people out there, including me, still, who can't seem to stop ourselves from thinking so much once we have started to think. But don't let that stop you from thinking as it has stopped me.

I realised that I stopped thinking a few years ago. I started to avoid thinking. It probably stopped when I was in Sec 2. When I was trying to fit in with my friends because I was kind of ostracised in Sec 1 for being emo and hot-tempered and probably viewed as unreasonable. Overthinking, it had killed me. I hated how I was so stubborn and how I was unwavered by people's opinions. Now I actually miss those parts of me. It gave me character.

Now I'm actually literally afraid of people hating me. When I learn that someone dislikes me, I'd want to find out why and no matter what the reason that person has, I'd change that part of me that people do not like. I wouldn't think it through well enough to realise that I need to understand why that particular part of me is being disliked. And I realised this probably, last year? That's pretty late. Now I try to put serious thought to it to decide when and what I need to change.

And what frustrates me is that not everyone is as sensitive as me /though I can be really really insensitive at times/. Ever since I stopped thinking, I tried to be less sensitive. Because my sensitivity just amplified my character. The littlest of things affected me and I hated that. No one can understand why I feel a certain way and the worst part is that I do not know how to translate it into words, afraid that I would express myself wrongly and people would interpret my thoughts incorrectly.

This leads me to what happened today. So Ethel, Huimin, Halizah, Keith, Colin, and I are in this group named "Keith is the lousiest /insert poop emojis/". We had actually decided to watch a movie together. This movie is called Insurgent. I was so excited to watch it. Extremely excited. After tuition, I wrote in the group that I was hungry and asked whether they had eaten. What I did not expect was them saying that they had bought the movie tickets. For Fast and Furious 7.

That's right, I was fast to be furious in less than 7 seconds.

I was so fucking angry, and I still pretty am. Like all I wanted to say actually was, 'fuck,'what the fuck', 'the fuck?'. But I held myself back, and told myself that I needed to not lash out at them. So I spammed Pebbles. I sat in the toilet for maybe 5 to 10 minutes to text and rage. I just had to get it out of my system before I met them, so that I do not say things to them in a moment of heat.

Okay. I do not recall ever talking about watching that movie. Even if we did, I would have turned it down immediately because never have I ever had interest in watching any of the Fast and Furious movies. I interpreted this as being angry that I do not get to watch Insurgent because I had cancelled on my friends a week earlier so that I could watch it with them.

Then this anger coursed into the wtf, they changed the movie without saying anything...? Not getting my opinion and simply getting the tickets. For a movie I did not give a fuck about. Like my money and time was about to be wasted /in the end, the movie wasn't that bad/. The anger just heightened.

Afterwards, it was the "maybe I have no right to be angry in the first place!" phase. I thought through it and came to the conclusion that I do. This phase is the phase in which I often get stuck in. Because I don't want to show my anger and scare away my friends. Really. Like, legit. So I don't do anything and just remained angry and stay that way. I don't want to get stuck here because I feel like I need to really analyse just why I got angry.

So I analysed. I had plenty of time to think before reaching Jurong East. I realised the main reason why I got so upset and angry that I didn't get what I believe that I deserved was that I was disappointed.

I was disappointed in my friends for not taking me into consideration, for not being sensitive towards my feelings enough. I was disappointed that what I looked forward to was simply cancelled and changed. I was disappointed that the time and thing /in this case, watching Insurgent/ that I had set aside solely for them was just simply taken lightly. And disappointment to me is taboo. I hate it to the core. My anger is just amplified a thousand times.

But the thing is, what right do I have to be disappointed in them? They don't owe me anything at all. And neither do I.

I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to say. So I kind of showed my discontent. I didn't want to hide all of it.

I know that they felt bad. I kind of did too.

/I need more perspectives on this situation :(/

Putting so much thought into this has drained me out. I'm beginning to think again. And I will not be afraid to analyse things. I will not avoid things like this anymore cause all it does is just hold me back from growing. I'm extremely tired of being stuck and not moving forward. Everything is at a standstill and I'm ready to make changes and move forward.

CNY 2015 DAY1

Alllllll the fooooooooooood.

That's right.

My aunt was my saviour. I actually had no new clothes for cny and had pretty much planned to wear my usual clothes out. Luckily, Da Yi bought a skirt that I could wear and soooo I wore that with a spaghetti top. And I wore shoes that were bought last year but I had never worn them. Umm, so that is just for today & I'll reuse my previous cny clothes for the next few days.

The day started out good, then I kinda had a small quarrel with my mom. All was well afterwards tho. Yi Yi Pei Lee was supposed to come pick us up to go to my grandma's house, aaaaand she came an hour late. After reaching popo's house, we /Popo, Da Yi, Uncle Ambrose, Ade, Jie, Edward and I/ went to Adou's house.

It's tradition to visit the eldest in the family first. Hence, Adou.

We chilled there for roughly an hour or so...? I can't remember. I just remember hiding in the kitchen, eating bak kua and helping my grandma out with making the popiahhhhhs. I also remember feeling pretty sad about the fact that I can't communicate with Adou. She's about a hundred years old and she's pretty frail. All I said to her was "Gong yi wa sai" Which is Hainanese for gong xi fa cai. None of us will ever be able to understand what is going on inside of her head.

Then we went straight to second Ah bo po's house. Like, wow, the food is just hands down the best. My relatives on my mother's side are all good with food. Love love love eating there and chilling there. My uncles are all so friendly and funny, damn it feels good to be there. Buuuut, I'm still pretty reserved when I'm there. Tho I am starting to open up a little bit :)

Edward was cranky and kept expressing his discontent with him being outside, so after we left second Ah bo po's house, we sent Edward home and told him we'd pick him up later for dinner. Uncle Ambrose wanted to drink coffee, so we went to Dempsey Hill for tea at P.S. Cafe. Damn was the food great.

P.S. Cafe

We headed back to polo's 

-okay, so I stopped here, and I can't remember what I wanted to type.... SO THERE IT IS-

Whut.

Seriously, whut. ERHMAGERD I HAD TO RETYPE "WHUT" THREE TIMES CAUSE MY LAPTOP KEPT AUTO-CORRECTING IT TO "SHUT". It's a sign, even my laptop is telling me to stop typing and just shut it. But, nahhhhhhh.

Okay, it's been almost two months since I last posted something. I had a draft ready about CNY Day 1, then I didn't finish typing it. Since then, I've forgotten what had happened.

So many things have happened within these two months that makes me go like, whut.

The later part of February and the earlier part of March had nothing much going on actually. All that happened was that I was struggling to stay awake in school and I was really really really really really really prepared to fail my CTs. That's basically it.

Then that fateful day came when Mr Lee Kuan Yew passed away, 23 March 2015. It was the first day of CTs1. I have to admit, in no way am I emotionally attached to him. /Although, I do deeply respect him for everything he has done for our lives./ So I decided not to join the lengthy queues. Flags were flown at half mast in school for the entire school week. And a minute of silence was observed everyday of that week. I did use those minutes of silence to reflect on everything related to Mr Lee Kuan Yew. I made very sure to make full use of it. Then Sunday came when he was moved from the Parliament House to the University Cultural Centre in NUS. My sister and I had listened to the eulogies written for him and were really touched by some of them.

Okay, so I did not just reflect during those minutes of silence. I did a little more reflection on my own time. And I thought: It's good and all how so many people are grateful towards Mr Lee Kuan Yew for dedicating such a huge part of his life to building modern Singapore. But what portion of these people will translate their emotions into actions and start to make Singapore better than it currently is? Isn't building Singapore what Mr LKY spent his life doing? Even though he is gone, we have to be self-sustaining and continue down this path he had so tediously laid out for us. We all play a different part in forming Singapore's community and I believe every small thing we do will have a ripple effect and eventually be part of something bigger.  So I'm just putting my hope out here that people /who have yet to realise that/ will realise that and begin to play a useful role in out society. And thus, not only can we honour Mr LKY's memory, but also to grow together.

This has fuelled my thought process of, 'If we do not demonstrate gratitude, are we really grateful?' yeah, I need to figure that one out.

That aside, nothing much has happened.

Oh, wait. There's a little more.

Dajie came to Singapore! Yayyy! She arrived on 1st April and I'm not really sure what she did on that day and the next day. We went out on the following day with Jie in which we first bought the $1 /now $1.20/ ice cream in orchard. Then we went to A&F and bought a few shirts. After that we went around Orchard Rd looking for a cereal named "Cinnamon Toast Crunch" Thooooooo, we didn't manage to find it in the end. We ate llao llao and headed to Orchard Point...?  to find that cereal. We walk towards The Cathay to eat Maki San, but we got lazy and just stopped at Plaza Singapura. We ended up........... I can't remember what we did there actually. Ugh.

We had to go home cause mom cooked dinner for us and we had already kind of eaten our dinner.... YAY TO 2 DINNERS.

Woop woop, so that's how it's been.