Rant

Urgh. Okay, so let me wallow in my teenage miseries.

Would have blogged about my trip to Japan but am suffering from How-Was-Your-Trip fatigue, in which everyone asks you about your trip to the point of your own frustration. Besides, I've drafted one but I'm currently having those weeks where I can't seem to blog anything because of a shortened attention span.

Yes, I'm having one of those weeks where I don't want to do anything but fade into my surroundings and blend into the blurriness of the Japanese countryside while on the shinkansen. I crave salted caramel ice-cream and sticks of pocky. I get moody all the time but trying not to show it because the last thing I want now is an escalation of anger leading to an undesired manifestation of internal fury. I look at my report book as if it was a bad smell. I type and get more frustrated because language is such a limiting way of expressing oneself, despite the supposed vastness of vocabulary and diction available. As if we pick up stock words and phrases from a supermarket shelf and arrange them nicely in the cart. I am infuriated when caught in the whole pretence of cultural constructs and expectations, and the roles, and the expectations, and the responsibilities, and the expectations. I am not suicidal but rather homicidal, yet it is not only anger but helplessness that I feel. I'm sick of the euphemisms, bureaucracy, motivational posters and the annoying as heck Spring Singapore public service messages. In other words, I am confused, angsty, frustrated, and will also be labelled as a shallow teenager who apathetically blogs about his own selfish sorrows. They call it periodic male tension. And not many people will get to this last part of the paragraph because of my adolescent babble.

And also the fact that singapore is like, the land of ennui-sodden mediocrity. We're born, we go for montessori kindergartens, we attend swimming lessons, we go for ballet/violin/piano classes, we join our parents in the queue for elitist primary schools (where our placement also serves to assure them of a hassle-free registration for younger siblings down the road), we study for psle, we go to a secondary school (preferably SAP, IP programme, Special Stream) and then we graduate. And then what? NS is already too cliché a subject for the modern singaporean male to be ranting about. Our lives revolve around the freaking concept of meritocracy. We chase that holy grail of holistic, all-rounded success. We crave that perfect oh so perfect single-digit after 4 years of mindless repetition and memorization. Even this ideology has seeped and contaminated the preferred perception of Family; parents now judge their children by their grades. Are parents even supposed to judge their own children?

Gawd I'm starting to sound like a clamant opposition party member during a GST hike.

I hate the thesis statement-elaboration-conclusion structure.
I hate writing narratives.
I hate soggy cashews and pecans in a tub of Ben and Jerry's.
I hate commonwealth essay topics.
I hate singaporean immigration officers who never greet you despite being greeted, eye you suspiciously as they turn to the photograph on your passport, remain silent throughout the whole time, and never say welcome or thank you. And they give you a look of bemusement when you loudly say 'thanks' before you leave, as if saying 'thank you' and 'goodbye' were as obsolete and uncool as saying 'carpe diem' or 'by jove/golly'.

urgghh. I'm going to sleep and I'll wake up tomorrow and realize that it's a better day. Or something.
(Oh! I bought a pair of havaianas and they are really so very soft and pleasant :D)