My heart races, pumping oxygen to my muscles,
My hearing sharpens, and my eyes focus ahead,
I am alert, artfully balancing the precarious edge between safety and injury,
I know my element well, and am one with the surface beneath me.
My movements are silent and controlled,
Feet lighting upon the rooftop, I flit between shingle and concrete,
I have befriended my body, and it is eager to provide what I require of it,
Even still, my rational mind is appalled at the prospect of what I must do.
It approaches; The leap that I must make,
I have done it a hundred times before yet still I fear.
But with every step that brings me ever closer to the precipice,
I move through the fear, for I must; There can be no hesitation.
I master my thoughts and push forward,
Adjusting my footing instinctively, the ball of my right foot meets the edge,
I see where I will land a good 12 feet away,
And with an explosion of speed, I leap.
My eyes lose focus as my peripheral vision momentarily takes over,
My hearing is obscured by the rush of wind,
My heart beats but a single time,
And for that perfect moment in time...
I fly.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Monday, December 14, 2009
Anniversary Restoration
I restored of my parents' old wedding pictures for my their Silver Anniversary... Enjoy. =)
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Monday, November 16, 2009
I cannot have you
I hate you,
Oh for what you are.
That for you, I crave,
And are that which I desire.
That for your warm embrace,
I lust.
And even though so very wrong,
Like smoke, control eludes my grasp.
Innocence is fragile,
And before you, I shatter.
Oh for what you are.
That for you, I crave,
And are that which I desire.
That for your warm embrace,
I lust.
And even though so very wrong,
Like smoke, control eludes my grasp.
Innocence is fragile,
And before you, I shatter.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
The New House
This was ages ago before we moved in while the house was still a bare bone and absolutely empty. =)
Continuation
So, my life after NS...
It was all too easy to adjust back and slip into old habits. It made me question how far the governments good intentions are going to carry when there's no follow up program and no personal incentive to live with the "values" that they forcibly imparted.
When the government picked me for national service I bet they didn't pause to think twice about the social ramifications it would have on my life. Well okay, they didn't. A computer randomly selected us trainees. Sure it may cause a hiccup in my life, but what off teens from financially tight families who are working two jobs to support their siblings? That's going to cause more than a hiccup. Machines are cold and impersonal and know nothing about how it'll affect someone's life by changing the binary code assigned to their name from a zero to a one.
Three months is not much in the overall scope of one's life, but it's sure enough to fall out from most of one's social circles. I feel even more isolated from people than before, as if my brief absence aided my deviant personality in further alienating people from me. Any depth I had fought to obtain, gone with the erosion of time. Though people say I'm sociable, I find it hard to relate to others. I'm perceptive and that makes it easy for others to relate to me, but the same is not always true the other way around.
I feel like a blood O- donor; able to give to everyone but only able to receive from the exact same type.
I feel as if I'm closed off inside a bubble outside of which is vacuum, screaming as tension pulls me apart but unheard in the endless void of space.
I feel like eating dinner now.
It was all too easy to adjust back and slip into old habits. It made me question how far the governments good intentions are going to carry when there's no follow up program and no personal incentive to live with the "values" that they forcibly imparted.
When the government picked me for national service I bet they didn't pause to think twice about the social ramifications it would have on my life. Well okay, they didn't. A computer randomly selected us trainees. Sure it may cause a hiccup in my life, but what off teens from financially tight families who are working two jobs to support their siblings? That's going to cause more than a hiccup. Machines are cold and impersonal and know nothing about how it'll affect someone's life by changing the binary code assigned to their name from a zero to a one.
Three months is not much in the overall scope of one's life, but it's sure enough to fall out from most of one's social circles. I feel even more isolated from people than before, as if my brief absence aided my deviant personality in further alienating people from me. Any depth I had fought to obtain, gone with the erosion of time. Though people say I'm sociable, I find it hard to relate to others. I'm perceptive and that makes it easy for others to relate to me, but the same is not always true the other way around.
I feel like a blood O- donor; able to give to everyone but only able to receive from the exact same type.
I feel as if I'm closed off inside a bubble outside of which is vacuum, screaming as tension pulls me apart but unheard in the endless void of space.
I feel like eating dinner now.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Overdue Update
It's been forever since I've touched this blog. My hesitance to return here is namely because I fell out of the habit and knew that once I started, it would again consume large chunks of my time. And yet here I am. Sigh.
The first thing I should write about is, of course, National Service. 3 disgustingly long months of my life spent as far east of east Malaysia as you can get while still being in Malaysia; Tawau. I would best describe it as a combination between incredibly packed schedules, not enough sleeping hours, and mixed rice for every lunch and dinner. Add nonsensical rules, crap quality uniforms and bad living conditions, and you'll have a pretty good overview of what my camp was like.
It may just be me, but I think that NS is based on a poorly planned system that wasn't thought through well enough before it was implicated. If I hadn't been selected as company commander I can safely say that I wouldn't have taken ANYTHING away from those three months at all. For pete's sake, they treat us like kids.
Allow me to illustrate my point. For starters, we are asked to decorate our dorm rooms. They give us paper and crayons and ask us to be creative. They even show us examples from the previous batches, and lookie here, they've copied their wall decor straight from my mother's child development center, where the kids range from 3 to 6 years old.
Maybe that's acceptable. After all, we spend all our free time in the dorms and they may as well look cheerful (albeit childish). But allow me to tell you about the character building and patriotic classes. In order to "make sure we're focused and enthusiastic" for a lesson, they make us to sing a silly song while doing a dance that accompanies it before the class starts.
There was one time they actually forced everyone to do the chicken dance, enthusiastically. They spread us out in a neat grid so they had a clear view of everyone and told us that if even one of us didn't do it with all our heart, we'd all have to do it again. I don't want to state how many times we had to restart. Their reason for it (and of course they have one) was that we needed to learn how to let our hair down at times and not care about what other people think about us. A good lesson for some to learn but they clearly forgot that a portion of society actually hold dignity in their souls.
And there they were at other times, complaining and scolding us for being childish, telling us that we needed to grow up and be responsible people.
In one of the early speeches a woman proudly told us that Malaysia was the only country that conducted their national service non-military style (obviously not counting the marching, the incomplete and largely disappointing M16A1 training in which they didn't even teach gun safety, the army style discipline they implemented). I would describe it as a pseudo-military summer boot camp but a friend of mine describes it far more eloquently.
"The only reason they don't conduct it military style, is because they conduct it kindergarten style" -Darlene
Now I would gladly rant on about the million other things I didn't like about it but I really should conclude. NS might do some good to an immature and unfit teenager who's exposure to the world can be quantified as abysmally little, but not much for someone like me. Their actual reason for the whole thing is to promote harmony between the different races. For some reason they've got it into their heads that spending in excess of 500 million (8k per person)each year on a bunch of 18 year olds with their own worldviews to promote racial harmony works better than starting some program in primary school which would be cheaper and probably more effective.
And my life after NS? Wait for the next update. =)
The first thing I should write about is, of course, National Service. 3 disgustingly long months of my life spent as far east of east Malaysia as you can get while still being in Malaysia; Tawau. I would best describe it as a combination between incredibly packed schedules, not enough sleeping hours, and mixed rice for every lunch and dinner. Add nonsensical rules, crap quality uniforms and bad living conditions, and you'll have a pretty good overview of what my camp was like.
It may just be me, but I think that NS is based on a poorly planned system that wasn't thought through well enough before it was implicated. If I hadn't been selected as company commander I can safely say that I wouldn't have taken ANYTHING away from those three months at all. For pete's sake, they treat us like kids.
Allow me to illustrate my point. For starters, we are asked to decorate our dorm rooms. They give us paper and crayons and ask us to be creative. They even show us examples from the previous batches, and lookie here, they've copied their wall decor straight from my mother's child development center, where the kids range from 3 to 6 years old.
Maybe that's acceptable. After all, we spend all our free time in the dorms and they may as well look cheerful (albeit childish). But allow me to tell you about the character building and patriotic classes. In order to "make sure we're focused and enthusiastic" for a lesson, they make us to sing a silly song while doing a dance that accompanies it before the class starts.
There was one time they actually forced everyone to do the chicken dance, enthusiastically. They spread us out in a neat grid so they had a clear view of everyone and told us that if even one of us didn't do it with all our heart, we'd all have to do it again. I don't want to state how many times we had to restart. Their reason for it (and of course they have one) was that we needed to learn how to let our hair down at times and not care about what other people think about us. A good lesson for some to learn but they clearly forgot that a portion of society actually hold dignity in their souls.
And there they were at other times, complaining and scolding us for being childish, telling us that we needed to grow up and be responsible people.
In one of the early speeches a woman proudly told us that Malaysia was the only country that conducted their national service non-military style (obviously not counting the marching, the incomplete and largely disappointing M16A1 training in which they didn't even teach gun safety, the army style discipline they implemented). I would describe it as a pseudo-military summer boot camp but a friend of mine describes it far more eloquently.
"The only reason they don't conduct it military style, is because they conduct it kindergarten style" -Darlene
Now I would gladly rant on about the million other things I didn't like about it but I really should conclude. NS might do some good to an immature and unfit teenager who's exposure to the world can be quantified as abysmally little, but not much for someone like me. Their actual reason for the whole thing is to promote harmony between the different races. For some reason they've got it into their heads that spending in excess of 500 million (8k per person)each year on a bunch of 18 year olds with their own worldviews to promote racial harmony works better than starting some program in primary school which would be cheaper and probably more effective.
And my life after NS? Wait for the next update. =)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
