i got a new camera, the sony t2. i thought it was ideal for me since i don’t want to carry my heavy and bulky s5 everywhere i go, and i always, always forget to bring my sd card (sigh so silly) but then i realise i really forgot how to use a simple point and click. see all my pics turned out blurry :’( eh in my defense ah, all the pet photos were taken illegally, and the kid was jumping around. hokay!!

i was feeling so down that i decided to go visit a pet shop the next day. pet shops are horrible. i went to pet lovers’ centre vivo and the dogs were all tired and looked sickly. there was a beautiful lion-like dog though, and he was gorgeous. a westie was an off-white colour and all were drained of energy. what do they do to them?? >:(

welsh corgi

schnauzer

see? all sleeping one! dunno la i was so sad after i came out of the store. told myself if i do buy a dog i won’t get it from a pet store. anyway ask questions they also won’t know how to answer hmpf. anyway i passed by this sign at their entrance entitled 10 commandments, which i thought was quite cute so i snapped a photo (but too blur so i won’t embarrass myself and type it out instead double hmpf!).

1) my life is likely to last 10 to 15 years. any separation from you will be painful for me. remember that before you get me.
2) give me time to understand what you want of me.
3) place your trust in me. it is crucial for my well-being.
4) don’t be angry with me for long and don’t lock me up as punishment. you have your work, entertainment and friends. i have only you.
5) talk to me sometimes. even if i don’t understand your words. i understand your voice.
6) be aware that however you treat me, i’ll never forget it.
7) please don’t hit me as i cannot hit back but i can bite and scratch and i really don’t want to do that to you.
8) before you scold me for being so uncooperative, obstinate or lazy, ask yourself if sometime might be bothering me. perhaps i’m not getting the right food or i’ve been out in the sun too long or my heart is old and weak.
9) take care of me when i get old, as you too will grow old one day.
10) go with me on difficult journeys. never say, “i can’t bear to watch,” or “let it happen in my absence.” everything is easier for me if you are there. remember i will always love you.

so i was disappointed yes, but i didn’t give up. off to holland v’s branch of pet lovers. soooo much better. at least they were normal, active, excited dogs! very cool la but the french bulldog was shuddering i felt so sad for her. she’s only two months old. haih i dunno how people can just cage these adorable creatures up like that :( but in all honesty hor, the french bulldog really looked like a french bulldog la, if you know what i mean.

illegal picture of a pretty, pretty pom that i just had to take! this pomeranian was sooo playful i wanted to just take her home there and then. there was a scottish terrier (ooo, small lil thing) that was yelping like crazy. what a contrast to another scottish terrier at vivo.

this was the hardest photo to take because it was right under the noses of the people in charge. hehe. i couldn’t resist - he’s just looking at me with puppy dog eyes (pun intended)! his coat was so much brighter than the westie at the vivo branch too.

yesterday i was having lunch at kim gary in gurney when suddenly this head popped up at me o_O really. omg i don’t have much experience with 4-year-olds and had been thinking that shin-chan couldn’t really exist because i didn’t think 5-year-olds were so gregarious or vivacious!

this is ryan, aged 4.

clearly i was wrong. wah i tell you ah, at this age i’ve hardly been told that i have to “finish all your food! you have to finish all you take!” wtf :’( i not even at some atas buffet ok.. :’( at first he was just popping up and down. he was at the other table with a partition right? (see picture) and he kept bouncing on his seat, making a different face when he came up. so incredibly cute can! btw he said i only eight years old. wtf. but still. why la why these charmers always start young?? sigh by the time he gets to my age he’d been snapped up long, long time ago :( ok i shall stop being so paedophilic.

ryan: why you don’t finish your fries?
me: no i’m done.. do you want some?
ryan: no cannot! i still have my bread. you have to finish your fries!!
me: huh but i’m full already o_O
ryan: you have to finish all you take!
me: but you never finish your bread also what!!
ryan: but i’m full already!!!!

-_- pengsan

man he was so cheery he really brightened up my mood lots :) he offered me his sandwich (”bread”) and was almost climbing over to my table lol. i’ve really forgotten what’s it like being with kids. it’s been a year since my teaching in thailand, and i do miss those lovelies.

thank you, 4-year-old ryan tan from penang :) god bless you lots.

i tried not to blog for the past few days because i didn’t want to verbalise what i felt, or really, how i am feeling right now. as if if i don’t put it in black and white it will cease to exist. doesn’t seem to have worked. it has gone from bad to worse, and whoever said it is darkest before dawn should be shot. seriously, my current moodswings are far, far worse than any sort of pms i’ve ever had, and i have to owe them to external circumstances. life, why are you making a fool out of me?

from my favourite comic strip.

i want to sue johnson’s baby shampoo for false advertising. how does one ‘cheer up’? is there any point cheering up when you know life the baseball player is gonna sock you one right in the eye soon?

getting to be a little too lonely; i need some company, but i don’t think i have any good confidants. haiyo why don’t i have someone who’s on the same wavelength who’s here with me? now would be a really, really good time for me to get a dog.

sigh. there’s really no point in living life like this.

I’m tired. I have things to do rather than sit around and wait for the call that never comes, only to listen to more lies. Lies that are meant to coax and humour. Lies that have the total opposite effect. But still. Like a drug, it hooks you. Infatuation is a dangerous word, and obsession a deadly one. It’s like keeping from reaching from another cigarette from the packet. The temptation is huge, you know you’re just killing yourself one cigarette at a time. But you still do it because you’re addicted. To the supposedly wondrous high feeling that just makes you feel cheap after. Like a used fifty-dollar whore. Like a hungover drunkard with shady images of the night before.

Enough is enough. Damn, times like this, even Kungfu Panda can speak to you. Just because you’re too shitted up caught in your own world that you fail to wake and let the fresh air bring you to your senses. To let the cold turkey wake you from your misery. You know you’re in a bottomless abyss, and yet you’d rather keep on falling. Only to hit the cold, hard ground, headfirst.

By then, you’ve already suffered a serious concussion, with cuts on your face and a broken neck. Still you would willingly do it all over again, in hopes that all this giving will finally lead somewhere. It’s not the first time, and every time you tell yourself it’s the last. It’s the last cigarette I’ll ever touch. It’s the last drink of alcohol for me. It’s the last lie I’ll believe. And it never is.

You’d give up your job, opportunities, advancement chances in a heartbeat just to be with your sweetheart. Not to mention money, time, effort spent on making him or her happy. Love makes one lose sight of their senses willingly. Others may call that stupid, but when you’re in the thick of it, nothing is. Nothing is when you’re blinded by this overwhelming sensation of love just swelling and bursting out from your chest. People addicted to say, coke, give up their entire family fortune for gram after gram of this heavenly substance. Resort to stealing and abandoning any shred of moral fibre they once possessed. Obsession is a fatal word indeed. Is is stupid, or is it love?  Yet would you be with someone just because they can help you climb the corporate ladder? Tonnes of people are willing to do anything to make their mark, even if it means sacrificing their true happiness. Call it a priority of importance.

History teaches us about great dead men, their triumphs, glories and their mistakes. Some people might think, what a hero; to have loved and lost and lived, to have caroused and celebrated and cried. But where does it go in the end? What happened to the words you uttered, what happened to the love you gave, what happened to the dreams you had? In the end you become emptier yet chock-full of secrets that you cannot tell, you become wiser yet wisen, more experienced yet more miserable than you have ever been. One would think that one would learn from his mistakes. Yet why does history keep repeating itself? Some irreparable genetic attribute and characteristic of humans, perhaps. Which is why we choose to love, knowing fully well we will get hurt, and yet choose it all over again after we barely heal.

What happens to those who do learn? They close themselves up and dare not love, dare not subject themselves to vulnerabilities, dare not take another plunge into the dark hole of blackness. In the end, they shrivel up and harden, trying to be as inconspicuous as they can. Wise, cowardly, or just plain sad? It’s not for any of us to judge. They simply have a need to protect their hearts from being mercilessly ripped to pieces.

wow… i just came home from my lesson and omg i took a super old-school sbs (now smrt) bus! i haven’t been on one of those in years. i remember taking them and having to regain my balance while i fed my ‘mrt card’ through the red machine and pressing the 45c button, then just running to my seat, aka whereever you land when you finally manage to stop running (because the bus is taking off!). of course, my mum or whoever’s taking me out would then come along and scold me for sitting too far away from them (very wtf right i chose the seat first leh!) irregardless, i tell ya, it’s better than the knight bus. the bus tonight resembled one of those old creepy, rundown hospitals in japanese horror movies, where the exit sign is the exact shade of garish red, flashing like the emergency sign at a byoin, only with incessant beeping noises.

i just typed all of the above in like 10 seconds. *catches breath before it runs away again*

hahah penang buses are run down and old and the exterior may resemble that of the old-school smrt bus but they are really different. penang buses have two categories. the old white & blue buses and the new, rapidpenang buses. i’ve had my share of weird encounters on penang buses, and that after hearing those you might not want to send your kid to school on a penang bus hahah. smrt bus drivers are reckless yes, but when they stop to let you alight they make sure they slow down (so sweet right!). who can forget those smooth brown chairs that are so much more comfortable (and hygenic, really!) than the current furry seats on buses now, where all the bacteria thrive! >:D *cue fat man & perverts jokes*

who can forget collecting those pink/yellow sbs/smrt bus tickets?? some people had a huge collection, with the wordings fading off slower than that of a movie ticket. i remember huge creative artworks made from these little scraps of paper, and of course, the horrible littering in buses. tickets could be found in every nook and cranny of seats, all folded up into tiny squares or rolled up like little ciggie butts.

when it was coming to my stop, i glanced at the bars anxiously looking for the bells, only to remember that the bells were on the sills. handles were still round - i remember sliding my hand through and taking them for bangles as a kid, and there were individual seats as well.

it just isn’t the same, having futuristic-looking ezlink devices installed near the doors of the old sbs bus, looking awkwardly out of place, as if it were a little girl dolled up in diamonds and adorned in the best silk wandering among the slums and squatters of india (or any other country, really).

anyone who knows me should know that my favourite form of transportation is the bus. it used to be airplanes, then i got sick of it just like any frequent flyer. up till a few years ago, whenever i was sad or just needed a place to think, i would take the 67 bus at night to the end, then alight, cross the road and take the same bus in the opposite direction. bus rides are ideal for thinking, for long conversations, for just watching people. perhaps my love for buses stem from my childhood, a reminder of simpler times before where everything was so much easier, a reminder of 1990s singapore where it wasn’t all that much of a stepford wife.

i wonder how i have willingly given up my simplistic life for one that’s materialistic, for one that finds the simple notion of faithful love sickening, for one that i would never would be proud to have ten years ago.

have we grown up, or have we deteriorated?