MehBees are lazy asses compared to me.
The danger of working too hard materializes when you realize that... you don't know what you're working towards to. Good grades per se? Bleagh. They would be nice, but they ain't gonna keep me sane during this period. The future? That's too far away to even give me motivation.
WHAT, WHAT AM I WORKING TOWARDS TO THIS SEMESTER? The little things in life used to keep me going in previous semesters - the occasional dinner, the occasional drink, the occasional Ladies' Night club-hopping, the occasional shopping trip (to Haji Lane!! Oh, how I miss you). But they don't anymore because I HAVE NO FREAKING TIME.
To prove this point, I have to admit that I actually don't enjoy being out and mingling anymore. Even when I stop to talk to you for that short 5 minutes, my brain's like, "OK, GERI, TIME TO MOVE, GO GO GO!" so I don't really know what you're saying and I don't really know what I'm saying during that short conversation.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not becoming antisocial. In fact, I still adore meeting the people I want to meet and talking to the people whom I want to talk to. But with what precious time I have left, I give all to these darlings, and I'll have none left for the rest.
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Since I'm in ranting mode, there's something else I need to talk about.
My "eccentric" upbringing. An upbringing which I've now come to see as, with the enlightenment of what I see in other families, unusual and something I'm trying to correct in my family now. It all has to do with the eccentricity of my Grandma, who also had a huge influence on my Mum (who's actually gone through a whole process of self-rediscovery to find her own identity)
(omg, this is starting to sound like The Woman Warrior by Maxine Kingston.)
It was my Grandma who looked after my brother and I when we were younger and our parents were away at work.
When we were 5 or 6 years old, we loved to go out and play with the neighbours. My Grandma would dress us in our "playclothes" - a shirt and UNDERWEAR. Yes, white freaking cotton underwear. She said they were cooling. Of course, we thought nothing of it back then because whatever she said was the only thing we knew. Until all the kids started asking, "Why do you only wear your underwear?"
My Grandma was also a tyrant. When I was 4, she would put my bowl of lunch in front of me, and told me that I had to finish it by the time she finished bathing my brother, otherwise I would get "pinched to death". I was positively frightened. The moment she headed into the bathroom, I took a few bites, and dumped the rest of the food down the rubbish chute (I was pretty smart for a 4-year-old, eh!)
She curses and swears like ALL THE TIME. She would curse at the neighbours, curse at the random person on the street, curse this, curse that. Even when she is by herself, she would curse and REPEAT THINGS OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN. Back then as a child, I didn't think much of it. Now, at the slightest sound of her voice, all the ugliness and bitterness of her thoughts, drives me absolutely crazy. I hate it. I hate the hatred, I hate how thinks the whole world's against her, I hate how she's out only to benefit herself and no one else. AND I HATE that when I'm doing something nice for someone, she scolds.
I haven't even gotten around to what she does around the house. There are NEWSPAPERS EVERYWHERE. It covers every single object, it is placed on top of table mats to be used as table mats, and it drives me nuts.
She brings back serviettes from her workplace, like chunks of them. There are bags of unused serviettes in the drawers, yellowing and musty-smelling. She places some pieces on the kitchen floor, just so that "when something spills, there is something to wipe it up with." I'M GOING NUTS. The sight of those serviettes on the kitchen floor makes me wanna throw up.
There is a cloth over the armchair, because "the armchair would get dirtied".
There is a mat above the doormat. My once-pretty garden (my dad bought lots of nice plants and a palm tree) was destroyed, because she just plucked everything out and chopped the palm tree down.
My Mum's still in the process of getting out of these influences, but every now and then it crops up and I freak out. Take my conventional oven for example. I love baking, pastries, meats, you name it, I bake it. BUT I CAN'T USE THE OVEN because there are a million things piled up on the top! There's aluminium foil dressing the cupboards because if not "the cooking fumes will get to it". The living room layout is weird to the max and I have NOT even begun to talk about THEIR BEDROOM and the Master Bedroom. It's a storeroom.
When I was finally alone in my own apartment in Canada, my eyes were opened. That was the way I lived, which was how normal people lived. Maybe I have changed, but I like to think of it as THE REAL ME WAS UNLOCKED and I was starting to see things that actually made WAY MORE SENSE. The more houses I visited, the more houses I saw - the more it dawned on me that I was living in a home out of the ordinary.
There's no lack of love, mind you. So I'm grateful for that. But for the rest of the things, OH MY TIAN.
You know, maybe I'm just developing a serious case of OCD for neatness and appearance, in which case I can't wait get my own apartment once again!
Try to walk a mile in my kicks.
