but now I'll go sit on the floor wearing your clothes,
all that I know is I don't know how to be something you miss.

I haven't listened to that song since a break-up that happened not the summer just gone but the one before. Songs are potent as Dumbledore's pensieve at trapping memories, and people. I listened to it deliberately because it suited the mood and now I'm batting away tears as if I'd just watched the end-scene of Titanic. Last night, they said, go to your lectures, blah blah, besides, it's like a prison in your house when the roller shutters are down (which it is, it's pitch-black and doesn't even feel like home) and I said no, because I felt too sad to go and I didn't want the sadness to follow me to school. It's like having an obedient pet that's not yours. You tell him to go home and the monster clings to your ankles pathetically and trails behind you like a shadow. (Then you start feeding it. Pets are so demanding.) But maybe I should be selfish next time and spread the sadness like a blanket and let it consume everyone because it's easier than holding that vast emptiness inside to myself.

You know my favourite genre of songs to listen to? I'm sure I've said this before. It's Christmas ones. Despite their festive nature they can be relatable year-long. And perhaps because of their festive nature they are relentlessly happy. Melodies and lyrics ensnare emotions so Christmas songs bring Christmas to July. Or May. It's impossible to feel sad.
I use coloured pens for the same reason. It drives the 'impossible' out of it, and makes it do-able. Except in this case I'm not sure what 'it' is. Maybe exams. Maybe life. But it's raining today and the despite turning on every light in the room - the ceiling one, two lamps, one of which is attached to the desk and the other on my bedside table, and the night-light - it still feels dark and everything's stained in this disgusting grey that you can't wash out. (The skirt I dropped McDonalds' mayonnaise on is proof of that; it's virtually indestructable and makes you wonder what they put in that stuff.) The colours on my page all started to look the same so I stopped writing.

Nothing is going to come out of me today. Unless I go to work. It's always productive there. Despite what we call it sometimes it has this magical quality of actually being a break because my pet monster isn't allowed in. He's patient and sometimes he'll wait outside, but usually he'll just go. Back to wherever he came from, I suppose - which will free up some time for me to do something productive. Or to someone else, if he's hungry.

But he'll be back because I'm really generous with his meal portions.

It's finally happened! I've contracted a disease from work.

Not physically sick enough to be bedridden but contagious enough not to want to leave the house, if the way my own family is treating me is any indication. Overnight I've become a leper. Mum's stripped my bed and washed the sheets, my uniform and my towel. If there's any positivity to be made of this situation - this was it. That, and that she won't touch the phone because I used it to make a call earlier, leaving the remainder of the month's worth of free calls on our plan to my disposal. They've even left my cup of green tea alone from last night - though I went to bed too early to have even touched it.

The last couple of weeks haven't exactly been all rainbows and sunshine. But I've stopped waiting for it to turn around - not because I believe that it won't, but because I'm almost content with the way things are and it's just a matter of adjusting yourself to this new (albeit gloomier) perspective and living with it. Luckily I've somehow managed to land myself with the best people to tackle this new perspective with - even if some of those people won't touch me with a foot-long pole at the moment.

Sitting at a public library and just stretched backwards in my chair. A man in his forties was flipping through the magazines on the rack behind me, and I accidentally managed to punch him in the side. Not too gently either. FML

The other FML things about this week are:

Broken phone. In a fit of anger some time last week, I may or may not have thrown my E63 across the room, cracking the screen as it hit a powerboard and landed amongst a bunch of twisted cords in the corner of my bedroom. This only caused me to be even more angry wth myself. But puzzled as well. Nokia phones are - well, bricks, they're supposed to be indestructible.

Mid-semester tests. As much as I'd like to study I no longer have the luxury of sacrificing precious hours of sleep to do so, without repercussions the day after. So it means, study and no uni, or uni and no study, and work and bags beneath my eyes either way. It's a lose-lose-and-more-lose situation.

Lost wallet. I've already ranted about this one and how much it cost to replace the cards. Most of them have been mailed back to me. Except my myki. Because I don't drive this has had a significant impact on my freedom, nor is my station selling Metcards anymore. I've never felt more isolated and I don't even live in whoop-whoop.

No $$. Had some bills to pay (mostly phone) and debts to clear (friends through whom I buy things and who feed me when I am hungry and broke) - which is entirely my fault. But it's my brother's birthday this Friday and between Bianca and I, we've spent $90 on his present already, not to mention dinner and possibly a smaller amount on movie tickets on the night to see The Avengers. We also want to drag him clothes-shopping - he's a growing boy and now taller and lankier than the both of us. I don't want to whine because as much as I love spending on me, I love spending on him more, and besides, I never get to spoil him. But the gaping hole in my hip-pocket won't thank me much.

Things are looking up after this week though. Fingers crossed. See you all on the flip side!

Fridays used to be a luxury. They still kind of are - I still 'thank God' that it's a Friday.  But it's become something of a spare room in time. Can't fit it into your week? No problem, schedule it in for Friday.

So last Friday, I returned two dress-slips I bought during the week that no longer fit because the canteen food has grossly amalgamted into an unflattering and very much permanent gut where there was previously only temporary food babies. Many clothing stores only do exchanges instead of refunds, now it's legally harder to get a 'change-of-mind' (read: change-of-size, because technically the item was met its specitfications) refund. Had to go from one branch of the store in Highpoint to another in Watergardens because they didn't have the size I wanted. But that's what you get for not trying before you buy. Moral of the story there.

Being already so close to home, I spontaneously dragged the kids out to see a movie. Went for dinner at Hog's Breath, where you pay more for the service and the decor than you do for the food. Don't get me wrong, the food was decent and the hog's tails fries are cute. But the portion sizes aren't quite proportionate to the price you pay for them. Not to mention they're only burgers anyway. How wrong can you go with a burger? The success of McDonalds is proof of that.

Made it to the movie 15 minutes late. I was grumbling because we missed the trailers. I love trailers. The anticipation of seeing the next movie is almost as good as the movie itself. (Mental note: must see The Avengers.) The Hunger Games received a lot of priase. Given, there's not much I can say about the plot. The book deserves credit for that, and despite minor deviations in detail that my little brother, an avid fan, kept picking up, it sounded like there were few differences on a huge scale. No one died who was supposed to survive, and vice versa. But the book's quite thick and the movie only runs for about 2 hours. The result of that was cutting out much of the background. The death of Katniss' father was shortened into a 30-second scene and her mother's mental condition was briefly acknowledged in a one-liner. The complexity of the ideas, of the power held by the Capitol over the people, of the Hunger Games and sacrificing children being used as a strategy to both mentally and physically repress the public (and thus, hope), was compromised. The development of Katniss' character might've even been stunted. It might've been okay for the readers who retained the back story and the significance of the messed-up political system, but other friends who saw it understood it on a basic level and just went with it. As a result the motives behind such dramatic events were a bit confusing. Then again, it's just a movie and just entertainment.
Oh, the other thing: Jennifer Lawrence being too 'fat' to play Katniss? Please. The book might describe her as being half-starved but how realistic would having a stick-thin skin-on-bones girl win The Hunger Games? Whatever she lacked physically, she made up for in skilful acting, ten-fold. I can't imagine a thinner, prissy girl playing the part. The character needs more maturity and more emotional hardness - something a lot of girls just don't have. (I would know, I'm one of the ones that don't.)
The only other criticism I feel as if I ought to address is that the movie wasn't everything it promised - that it wasn't 'action' enough. If we were going to categorise it into a genre I'd say it's more fantasy/sci-fi than action. On my part, I don't think I needed to see any more action, involving children between the age of 12 and 16 brutually killing each other - that was plenty. The way the actors 'died' in this movie, as much as it scared me, makes me appreciate it more. Just because they were children, their deaths weren't 'airbrushed', or skimmed over - they died as painful a death, if not more painful, than if they were, say, adults - especially the shots of the corpses after the initial bloodbath, and the brief video of the winner of the last Hunger Games. Their deaths were adequately slow, and almost always agonising. Now doesn't that make me sound like a psychopath.
All in all, I had high hopes for this - and it didn't let me down. It mightn't have impressed me, but it wasn't exactly a disappointment. Still a good movie in my books., and speaking of books - my brother's just borrowed the whole series from a friend. Just in time for the mid-semester break :)

Okay, going to take a food break. See you when another aspect of my life evokes a rant - to which many of you have been an unlucky recipient already this week. Happy Easter, everyone!

Not that this is the place to talk about private family issues, but I had a row with my parents last night again. Probably over something insignificant - if I could remember, I'd tell you for sure, but the minor details tend to get lost in amongst the emotionally-charged storm that are family disputes. No one ever walks away unscathed, and yet no one escapes the healing process of a good night's sleep. So this morning everything was fine and dandy. But every time shit goes down in the family, at least at the time, it's pretty painful. Sticks and stones may break bones, but words break hearts, and don't know about you but sometimes I'd gladly give an arm or leg bone to spare the internal scars some insensitive asses have left.

A particular scar that really gets me are death threats. Which is pretty hypocritical, when you think about how often I use them. (Long would know.) One of you, some time ago, mentioned something to me about the suicide of two - incidentally, Chinese - girls, about the age of 12. Story goes, the girl was terrified of being punished for losing a house key and her friend was distraught at continuing to survive without her. According the suicide note left by the two girls one of the girls had a dream about travelling back to the Qing Dynasty - and whether they were hoping that dying was the key to time travel or otherwise was unclear. The media linked it back to a hotly debated move by China to ban time travel shows as some popular Chinese dramas featured girls who were hit by cars or struck by lightning and found themselves having to readjust to life several hundred years in the past, especially because, and I quote, 'schoolchildren are rich in curiosity, but poor in judgement'. Again, neither the suicide note nor the media are particularly enlightning here but how severe must the 'punishment' the girl wanted to escape was, if they were willing to risk 'death'?

Granted, they were possibly deluded into thinking that they wouldn't actually 'die'. (And maybe they were right, we will never know.) But still.

I hate talking about ex-boyfriends. I really do. Usually any conversation revolving around them is generously peppered with profanity and reveal me to be, at best, a bad person - and at worst, a whiny, back-stabbing, bitchy, conniving, obsessive little stalker. Just kidding. (I think.)
My ex-boyfriend's mums, though, works with my mum. So sometimes it's unavoidable. They go out for work functions and dinners and mother dearest comes home with a present from his mum, and she thinks it's her duty to pass it on to me, when I all want to do it burn it or perform some African ritual on it and use it as a voodoo doll. Kidding. I swear. I shouldn't say this to her. She's a lovely person. Teaches good, incidentally Christian values. The type of woman who really does place cleanliness next to godliness. The one time I went to her house when were together, the first thing she does is apologise for the mess and explain that they had some relos over from overseas, all because I'd noticed the chandelier was missing some glass bits. She should see my room. Despite everything that went down, she still offers me sushi every time I walk past her shop.
It was through the ex that I incidentally heard about what his mum thinks of us. He was driving and I was trying not to fall asleep in the passenger seat - because if there's one thing you aren't allowed to do in his car, it's sleep. Like, seriously, I can touch the windows and leave fingerprints, I can eat chicken nuggets and Maccas and Hungry Jacks in there without a word of complaint from him about the crumbs, or the smell. But he likes conversation. So I'm yawning, when he suddenly pipes up with, 'Why do you guys talk about death so much?'

Taken by surprise, I said, 'No, we don't.'
'No, I'm serious. Mum says she hears it all the time.' As the only Indonesian worker in a Cantonese takeaway shop, she's often the victim of inevitable ostracism when the other women are gossiping in their language. As a result, she's learned to pick it up. Mum says the good thing about her is that she's not too proud to attempt to conduct broken conversations in Cantonese, which results in a lot of undeserved titters when she gets the intonation wrong or uses slang in a literal context. Still, you can't deny she's got a gift for it. 6 years of French and I still can't remember how to say, 'please pass the bacon'.

Point being, he said that we use the word 'death' a lot - pronounced, as accurately as I can, 'sei' (note that Cantonese is supposed to be a spoken language).
Casually in conversation.
Jokingly, as a threat: 'Yu guo lei mm zhou [insert activity], lei sei gung le' (If you don't do [whatever it is, washing your hands before preparing food, totalling the tills before you leave, bowing for the manager when he walks through the door], you're so dead, or - literal translation - dead for sure).
As a substitute for 'damn', 'shit', 'f*ck': 'sei le, gwo mm gei duk zhuo [insert activity]' (Crap (literal translation - I'm dead), I forgot to [insert activity e.g. polish the manager's shoes with my spit]).
You know, as you do.
For a culture in which the number 'four' is so taboo because of its vocal resemblance to the word for death, it's true that we're very liberal about the usage of the word otherwise. Naturally it was jarring to her as a devout Christian who sees death in many regards - as a punishment, as a form of liberation, as something in the hands of a higher power, as holy and mysterious and in no way casual.

So let's go full circle and talk a bit about that heated 'family discussion' last night. It's coming back to me now. The topic was 'not ironing the clothes'. Hardly deserving of the death threat, and yet I'm not surprised at hearing it because I've heard it so often before. My parents don't think it does anything - I'm sure they were threated with death to 'wipe that stupid look from their faces' (it's what I was threatened for, anyway) in their younger years. It's not only the generation gap but also being born immersed in a slightly different culture that makes those words sting just that little bit more. It's funny, because it's even a little bit hypocritical - given that, when I was younger, my threats to kill myself or someone else resulted in a fairly heavy reprimand. They used to tell me that if that person actually died the next day, I'd be held accountable. For hexing them, for having someone randomly overhear what I was saying and drag me by the ear to the police station despite never having laid a finger on the deceased one. Ridiculous as my examples are (because I'm not witty enough to think of real life ones), I can see the sense in viewing dying, and the idea of death, like this - with more weight. I'm sure everyone's at some point spoken about the way we fling the words 'love' and 'hate' and 'f@#$' around, and rightfully. If we're already using such strong language (ha, how I would get penalised for that phrase in an English analysis) now, what words would we be left with to use when we really need it? Maybe we ought to conserve them.

Last point to make: hate to be racist, but I just assume that it's less likely that a Caucasian family threaten their children with death. (If I'm wrong, correct me.) I agree with them wholeheartedly. If I were to have kids (darn, isn't this topic coming up a lot in my analogies recently), having what my mother calls different 'xi seung' (modernised values as a result from living here), I wouldn't ever threaten to 'kill them if they ever lose the house keys'. Oh wait - doesn't that sound familiar?

Of course, I don't know if that was the case. I probably won't ever know. But if children are as 'poor in judgement' as they're claimed to be, I shouldn't be taking that risk.