The Time of Our Lives

It's a lazy weekend afternoon, switch on the TV with a glass of lemonade & tune to Star World or Channel 5. It's an exciting episode of "General Hospital" or "Time Of Our Lives" ! Couldn't they show something better? *Switches to AXN's re-runs of brainless blockbuster hero flicks* Who would have time to watch that? The suppressing over-emphasised ambient lighting, excessive diffuse glow, too warm & fuzzy picture... gaa. So I switched the TV off (AXN was showing some gay flick blatantly named "xXx" & there's this Diesel muscle guy crying in it) & went online. Surfed some blogs. Cool. Technorati... trackback... it's like everyone's connected to one another. I could search for "Converse" & see 1 million other user opinions on whether their shoes kick Nike's ass or how they rant about how the shoes wear out so fast. But how would 1 million random heavily-biased opinions affect your decision? I base my camera decisions on dpreview.com, tech purchases on HWZ forums, & Lips base hers on Flowerpod & Les Dames. Isn't that a million different views too?

Read on, & you will find out why. We could debate on & on in the comments section, but the blogging media is mostly a monologue. A conclusive agreement may be reached after a debate of 1000 comments, but no one would read it. The final verdict's in the blog post itself. When you surf a forum, you first read the thread title, then first post, &, either reading every post or skipping through them, you will definitely want to read the last post. This is because the forum is the literal version of a verbal discussion. You'll definitely want to hear what the last person has to say, right? So you can either rebuke him or suan him or "I so totally agree!". This is the involvement of a discussion. & so a conclusion reached in the forum is different from that in a blog.

U can read every post in a forum thread about Converse shoes, because they flow, & there is a logical sequence of events (setting the topic, rebuke, compromise/alternatives, agreement/conclusion...). I can't imagine how someone can read 1 thousand blog posts from different people & reach a conclusive decision. Or even read through all of them. & make sense.

Now moving on, isn't Technorati then the coffee shop auntie's kay-pohing, e-version? In essence, excessive useless chatter. It's entertaining but worthless talk. Just wait till someone searches for "Converse" & ends up at my blog.

But I just figured that Technorati might just work, for very specific subjects of interest. Search for "geocaching" and you will probably find blogs for other teams also in the game. "Quantum teleportation" will work too, & you'll probably get to leave a comment on Einstein's blog here.

Anyways, I'm just annoyed by all the hype & complications cropping up the blogosphere. Don't you just want a simple uncluttered space to express your thoughts? Let's keep things less connected, more private & personal, & closer to those that are supposed to read your blog (friends, lovers, society members), & keep kay-poh aunties at bay ok?

Idle Thinking

How long do you daydream in a day? Probably not as much as me. Ever daydreamt so much that your life felt like a dream & your dream felt like the reality? Somehow I recall going through that before. However, most of the other times, I just get distracted by my daydreaming. While my body is going clockwork, my mind is wandering far & away. I am completely aware of my thoughts but I can never remember what my body did during that time. I just roughly recall going into the bathroom, went through a Physics lecture at Caltech on atomic teleportation, then stepped out of the bathroom. Then after that I'll be frantically trying to recall if I did wash behind my ears. That's just a day in my schedule; most of the other days I have karaoke sessions. I just get carried away so easily. You would think that my ability to maximise my brain usage when doing mundane activities is a blessing. I'm not special or anything like that, it's just that my brain likes to work in funny shifts.

My Mum has always nagged me for having erratic & "disruptive" timetable for my daily activities. Sleep at 4AM, eat breakfast at 12noon, & supper as sumptuous as a dinner at 11PM. I can't help it, my brain works that way too. When people talk to me, my brain switches to "Hibernation" mode, & only hours after the conversation does it spring to life with ideas & responses. I feel helpless & sometimes hopeless that I have, not the lack of analytical & communication skills, but the delay in their execution, and thus the resulting effort expired in time. & try as I might, I can never overcome the problem. I am unable to converse spontaneously, & the inconvenience I'm facing is driving me to combust spontaneously. Heh. Bam. I wonder if anyone else faces the same problem. Probably when you are nervous, or trying too hard. I have to try too hard all the time.

Actually, I once found the solution to my problem. There is this one person who had made me felt totally at ease talking to her, unpretentious & easy-coming. Had, used to. I can remember it had something to do with my self-confidence & an acceptance of my personality. She just made me felt sure of my own words, when I don't have to be so conscious of what others are thinking about me. But as fast as I got it, I lost it too. But that would be another big unsettled mafia business for another episode of ranting.

Before I started blogging, I had fears of rejection & all the rubbish. Of course the issue of teenage insecurity has been beaten to death (well, everyone was once a teenager), but I just hope that someone would say it to my face straight, "You are not the only one craving for acceptance, everyone else is the same!!!". It's just that everyone else (& most probably me... yes, definitely me too) appears so confident on the outside. No one would ever turn despo & claw onto his friend & say "Be my friend! Don't ever leave me I need this friendship too much & you're the only guy that thinks I look cool although I know you truly don't..." Maybe I AM thinking too much... but somehow I just get this feeling, that in some point of time, everyone would be that insecure. You want others to accept you, & when they do, you question their sincerity & truthfulness. But that hasn't helped me accept myself, because although I know the problem, I don't know how others deal with it. But then again, that doesn't really matter. Because what others know, I can't accept. I need someone to psycho me & drill it into my skull and brainwash me. It takes one hell of an effort to inject some pride & self-confidence into me. So once again, can someone say it to my face again? It's times like this, I wish I have my friend back again by my side, by the phone, every night sometime during this hour...

Anyways, by setting a blog online in the wide open field, I wish to conquer one of my biggest fears, of communicating with people and gaining understanding. Learn to acceptance rejection, face them & counter them, or take compromises. I have been trying so hard to be a "good boy". It sucks to the very core & I'm sure everyone must know that. I'm the quiet one during family gatherings, the one with good results since young & lots of praises from relatives. Engage with people with much reservation & respect. I just cannot take criticism, since I didn't have to deal with much when I'm young. I was brought up the "perfect" way & I behaved exactly that way. But for what? When you're young, school teachers praise you as "courteous & smart". But this dumbass straight-ruled respect will grow up to become pretentious, hypocritical behaviour. That I am trying so hard to grow out of. & leads to deliberate delinquent behaviour, trying so hard to break the chain and stuff. Many times I thought to myself smugly, "to heck with what people think", & sinking deeper & deeper into oblivion; that I am actually being more & more influenced by what others think of me. & this gross delusion over the years, along with the confused state of perceived acceptance, I have turned to the dark side... ok, I have turned pessimistic & morbid. I just wish the whole world dead. Blow up every figure on the street like they're just some inanimate dolls. Schools of similar thoughts. In my blindness, these thoughts of mine fed my ego & propelled my negative sense of pride high above. Once I craved for others' acceptance, now I feel these psychological needs with my own praises. I lost the aim to excel, to strive, or even have an aim. Questions like "What is Life?"... sigh. Yes, the big sigh... I was ranked 8th in Secondary 1. By Sec 3, I have dropped to 22nd. This isn't any big revelation; anyone can access my results through my academic reports. I have become playful in secondary school, but the key problem (or as I've figured) is that all my change in attitude & playfulness when there is a lack of supervision is all because of that. That, meaning my "overcontrolled" childhood & the subsequent lack of guidance & psychological aid in my adolescence.

I actually had an outbreak because of this issue before. I just cracked, because, then I realised, that all the schooling & being together actually didn't amount to anything, & I just felt no true friendship or that they're pretentious & not worth putting in effort for. But then they asked me to sacrifice so much, & to work together with them. That night I just broke down. But I was lucky again, for I have a strong girl who stood by me all along that night. I'm always lucky to have really good friends around. =] (There goes my first smile in this depressing confession).

The first step to improve my communications with others is to be truthful to them. & by setting up this blog, I wish to tell to my friends what I couldn't have, in person. To sit down & calmly read through, what you have never known of me, & things that I have yearned to clarify, but can't. I just need to let those who read this know, you are very important to me, & that our relationship has lasted through so much & so long. I had kept our feelings, no matter is it friendship or love, going on although I am holding on to so much unnecessary burden. I just hope that after you know more about me, you will want to continue the relationship as much as I have. Give me your assurance, ok? =]

Well, I guess now my 21st year is finally starting to make a difference.

A Walk down Memory Lane

I have to thank someone, firstly, for making this little shoutbox of mine a reality. Debating thoughts have put me in & out of blog business many times, as I struggled to come to terms with expressing myself & accepting others' views of me. Her blog had closed down then as her webhost contract had expired. When I thought that was going to be the end, she surprised me with her blog with a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious name. She has since moved to a new host, got a more familiar name, & still posts in regularly... long intervals. Despite being drawn into the world of blogging at first by reading the likes of mrbrown & xiaxue, I have come to realise that fame is but just another way of life, & that there are many other different reasons to blog. & she has demonstrated just the reason that I need to keep me going on. I still read her blog (for a short while there was RSS feeds on her previous blog, which also saved me from tik-kum-ing the URL name & completing sentences). Thanks, you would never have thought it meant that much. =]

Test

Lalala I'm testing my new layout. It's a wonderful & I just watched CNY festive celebrations on TV. It's the year of the dogs & I'm sure many ppl will be buying pet dogs.