Why I love school and enjoy workload

There’s nothing too complicated about it. It’s like a game and like any other game, the objective is deceptively simple: to do well. Play fair. Perform your best. Most people find it puzzling as to how I can even enjoy it. There is some difficulty in giving a satisfactory answer, primarily because they refuse to even stop to reflect on how school is in fact more beneficial than not to us (no matter how shitty the system is, but it isn’t like they have solutions anyway). Beneficial, not perfect. I know of many who love school because of their schoolmates and certain teachers. But of course, that’s only natural for the average sociable student. However I derive much more of my joy from other aspects and the one people find to be most peculiar is the fundamental role of a student – not to simply mingle and learn – but the responsibilities and workload (yes work).

I have always enjoyed being given tasks to do, however often I procrastinate and painfully take hours to complete a couple of essays. Whenever the teacher gives my class homework, I exude more happiness than all the happiness in the classroom from my classmates combined. Of course I often try to hide it. Though there are some which I view as an obstacle to whatever I am trying to achieve for the day (which is, usually, perfecting the art of doing nothing). I just need to feel busy, to keep my mind occupied.

I am, however, not a nerd. Your average female nerd (or budak skema) is the goody-two-shoes, studious missy, probably with bespectacled squinty eyes. Always burying her nose in a book at every turn and obedient, what the Malays say to be lurus bendul. As far as I know, I don’t intend to wear glasses any time soon and I find it very difficult to read in the classroom. To boot, I am actually a little amoral. Really. No joke. It just so happens that I am really good at concealing all the lies and murders deception.

I don’t break the rules on purpose because I appreciate order. I also adhere to them most of the time out of respect for the teachers. Most teachers have well-earned my respect for them, judging from the effort they put into their professional performance and how they dress. The Indian teachers in my school dress well, sometimes even better than the headmistress. All the past headmistresses have never had a good sense of fashion and I have seen a good number of headmistresses in my time. I could never wrap my head around that. Back to school rules – I have a feeling that fellow schoolmates might pick up a nasty vibe from my tendency to follow the rules but I shrug that off easily. Rebellion has a time and place, and the last place I would like to display it is at school during a time of immaturity. I’ve seen enough of morons flouting the rules for the sake of it anyway.

This may be a little cliched, but I see high school as a platform for me to expand my horizons, no matter how much narrow-mindedness I am subject to at this point of time. Even a menial task like giving out Taekwondo registration forms to a dozen of classes is seen as an opportunity to practise my verbal skills. Trudging up the stairs to the highest floor where my class is is really a boost to my daily physical activity. Assignments in high school ready me for the shit I may face in a few years’ time. I realize that my ideas and way of thinking may come across as really annoyingly optimistic, but I find it a relief compared to the seldom seen cynic in me.

Dear Baby New Year,

If there is anything in the world I would like (and love, and adore) right now, it is for someone to write to me.

To physically write to me. I know it’s unheard of in this era of Apple and Blackberry, but the sentiment is still there, nevertheless, immortalized in space in time. I know paper degrades, but there’s always the option of paper lamination. Though I won’t do that, because I like to watch paper ‘age’ and yellow, instead of looking as shiny and new as I… age and yellow myself. Plus, sure, the Internet is virtually forever, but really, there’s not much apparent effort seen. SMSes can -and need to- be discarded for want of more memory space. Somehow, when I see a love letter, I feel its personal quality reach straight to my heart, the words strung together with heartfelt warmth. I can almost feel the near-equal (but unchallenged) passion and I try to appreciate the words for all its worth.

This is ‘Dear Zelda, Dearest Scott’ doing its magic, no doubt. I understand why people don’t write – for lack of a good reason. For Zelda and Scott it was distance and love. In this godforsaken high-speed decade, of course people don’t write anymore. The guy who entered a war-zone probably had the Internet at his base camp, though probably at a cost. Most people are not soldiers to begin with and probably have their spouses within a 10-mile radius. So I guess all that is left is the thought, driven by what people commonly know to be, love. Not infatuation. Who calls their 3-month relationship an infatuation? I did. Although I’ve stopped at some point, but that’s another story entirely. Back to my silly desire to be written to and why the hell people do it.

Let’s just say, it’s akin to standing outside a girl’s house and strumming that impressive new guitar for her to hear and her parents to be annoyed by. A guy would rather send a Youtube video of him dedicating a love song to his sweetheart (of recent times, of course). At ‘some point’, people just cease to make the effort altogether. Maybe there is the occasional, forced declaration of their love on Valentine’s Day (which is, in my opinion, bloody cheap in terms of love) or either’s birthday. Other than that, it’s unapparent.

I may seem rather nasty and cynical when I scrutinize other people’s relationships, but only when they are truly insincere and ungrateful for what they have. There are times, I admit, when neither party requires to express their love (not infatuation) for each other in terms of money or even letters. But there will always be a hidden desire at the back of one’s mind, wishing. Wishing for my friend to return the favour. Wishing to know what having a father is like. All these wishes insignificant in reality but at the same time important as it constitutes the suppressed, irrational being inside me.

Rationally speaking, the solution would be to write to myself. Yes, that’s about right. Thank you Baby New Year for blessing me with the opportunity to reflect and reason. Have a truly jolly new year and good luck with your arduous task of proving millions of people wrong this year.

Love,
Nathalie

The end of (another) beginning

If there’s anything 2011 did for my decision-making, it made it even more messed up. Thanks to my BRATs programme and acquaintanceship with new people, I am more confused than ever, and so it means that I can kiss my previous plans for pharmacy goodbye and embark on yet another mysterious and confounding journey. Enlightenment my ass, I want certainty. However all the baaaaawling will not get me anywhere, so I need to act – I need to start somewhere.

As a consolation, I know what I don’t want to be. Aside from my averseness to anything that requires me to lie through my teeth about the uselessness of a completely pointless product of greed in a pretty box, I don’t think I can stand to break my mother’s heart and venture into journalism. I have low self-esteem when it comes to my writing, and this is even more so for my ability to adhere to deadlines, binging on crackers and cheap coffee in the face of financial adversity. Yes – I am your average, passive little girl who wishes not to topple her home’s autocracy. I consider whether a job is profitable, because essentially, that is what a job is for. When I say profitable, I don’t mean money-raking, but sufficient. People who preach about how money is useless nauseate me. I don’t deny that money is a tool and money makes the world go round. People grovel in the dirt for it. People are killed for it. Granted, the world may be a better place if humans weren’t so obsessed with it. But it reeks of a downright ‘better-than-thou’ attitude, however sincere they may be. The prospect of eating maggi mee for a few weeks in a row because of fluctuating income isn’t very pleasant to me, but so is working in a cubicle.

Pharmacy WAS a choice, because I saw no other option. It just seemed like a logical next move, though it was an unfeeling decision. I am gradually finding it difficult to accept the image of me sitting behind Guardian’s pharmacy counter. No. I want to inject meaning into my life, but is my career the sole outlet to express myself in? Of course not. I don’t want to loathe my job and I trust in myself to do all that I can do avoid falling into that pit. But I also want to like it. At least like how I like my shit Nokia phone – serves its purpose and tolerable. The ultimate problem right now is that I have nothing to fight for. Sure, there were moments of compassion for the sick and poor. Once in a while I would find X subject interesting. But that was about it. Now I’m thinking – maybe I have to get over it and just pick a job that has a high probability of me being good at. This opens another can of worms but at least this time it’s a measurable problem.

One day I will look back at my young and silly self and think – what a naive little soul, the answer’s been right in front of her all along. Or will I still be searching for clarity. Cognizance.

Another year…

…Oh no.

It’s nearing the 31st, and I haven’t made my mind on what I should make of it. If I view it simply as a continuation of my boring life, then I may miss out on the glee and false hope of a better start every other teenager is pining for. Or else I could hop onto the bandwagon and begin my celebratory mood of the year, gaining weight drinking soft drinks and genuinely thinking that the year will be awesome.

O torn between two.

The greatest thing you’ll ever learn

is by stargazing, head tilted up towards the heavens. Thoughts swimming for miles and miles in every direction, emotions moving with the tides, all occurring simultaneously in a humble head. Enchanted.

When I don’t feel like making the effort to lie down in the open space outside, I gaze into my own thoughts. Without much restriction and utterly alone. Don’t get me wrong, thinking of the mind-bogglingly tiny size of the planet Earth is definitely a lonely feeling, even after you try to grasp the number of probable habitable planets outside our galaxy. S’not like they’re a phone call away. However, exploring one’s own thoughts uncharted can be an invigorating experience, as well as a depressing one.

Unfortunately there have been countless plunges into the dark recesses of my mind that resulted in unhappiness. Most of my invigorating experiences are acquired from hands-on experiences, where there is an external influence, be it an article, books or a good friend. Could it be that I am not making frequent enough trips to those parts of my mind with a pleasant mood? Proper reflection I may be lacking. Courage is definitely needed. I think of these unhappy thoughts as ‘unsupervised thoughts’, because after a couple of years of observation of my reactions to situations, I have been able to predict, time and time again, my impending sorrow. And like any other wonderfully irrational human being, I sometimes go ahead and make myself unhappy anyway.

One’s greatest enemy is oneself and one’s greatest friend is too, oneself.

So I welcome my enemy and my friend with open arms. The arrogant bastard that coerces me into reevaluating my chances of hope and the patient friend that rescues me from the self-less exorcism of my own ego and the temptation of reliance on anything that has a Platonic shadow. I love them both, like how I love my legs. Strong but stout. Nothing is useful until you use it, with a desired outcome. This is the positive side of things – the idea that everything is good when you see it as so. Sickeningly positive because anything we perceive to be good makes it so to us and only us.

I often hear the standard advice-cum-solution to unhappiness spurred from solitary, unsupervised thought. Like postcards coming from distant relatives, meaning nothing to the receiver and ghastly repetitive. It’s understandable. How can we expect others to understand why we are bothered by the intangibility of love? Or why we feel the nagging desire to climb Mt. Everest next month? Such problems of the mind can hardly be solved by others. Granted, I am guilty of having sent those cards of hopeless recovery (not the postcards), but only because I do so out of a sense of obligation. I still do. ‘Don’t think too much’ has been said to so many, even during times when I go beyond my obligation to cheer the person up. Come on, what’s a girl to say? Although this goes without saying, the best remedy is still to listen.

Listening is much appreciated when it comes to conversing with others. What about the dilemma of that deals with the matters of ourselves, especially when we wallow in self pity? If my theory of listening holds true for anyone – ranging from childhood friends to complete strangers – then it should also do so for ourselves. Listening to ourselves doesn’t have to mean babbling in front of the mirror, because even that wouldn’t work. I think it’s the an underlying need for our feelings to be addressed and to be given attention. So maybe we need to think a little less (since we are overdoing it anyway) and listen to ourselves more. Less advice, less judgement and a little more lovin’.

Excess, excess

People cause mental distress.

Aquarius rulez

My planetary alignment is the least of my concerns, yet I found myself listening to how Aquarius people get along with each other in an orgy of Aquarius affinity. I don’t have bad listening skills (I think) nor do I have ADD, but there are times when I just want to pull the hell away from a conversation and sit in a cooling, quiet corner by myself. But noooo.

He jabbered on about his Scorpio boss and Taurus friends who ‘don’t seem to click’ with him and Libras that ‘are kinda alright I guess’. But anyway here I shall cease to risk any misquoting. So Jean-Luc entered the cafe and casually joined our table. I thought, okay this will be much better. But Jean-Luc caught onto the conversation and couldn’t help but say that he doesn’t really believe in that stuff at all, and my classmate insisted that horoscopes can help you learn about yourself more. I alternated about 50 head-tilting positions in both directions and only spoke to let out ‘uhuh’s.

Thankfully it was over soon. Jean-Luc suddenly whipped out his cellphone from his back pocket, bid us adieu for the moment and left the room (pretty) abruptly.

I wonder if that was a real call or not. I’ve seen it being done in movies but never in real life. I have to admit… S’handy.