HAPPY HALLOWEEN! SCARE THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS OUT OF THE PERSON YOU HATE MOST!

I find this inherently amusing, particularly after reading 'Singapore, you are not my country (for Noora)' by Sa'at.

OB markers. They tell us to open our minds and mouths yet gag us with OB markers. O Singapore of inumerable paradoxes.

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7153/2102/1600/obmarker.jpg

(Stupid blogger can't upload pictures! ROAR! WHY IS EVERYONE OUT TO PISS ME OFF TODAY?!)

Apparently because I replied more than 2 weeks late, the position has been filled up by another person.

Yeah, I am disappointed and pissed off. CURSE YOU, STUPID END OF YEAR EXAMINATIONS! ROOOOAAARRR!

*aims dart at exam timetable*

Hi Chanel, Unfortunately you replied almost 2 weeks late, and the position
has been filled with another reader. The book itself will be launched on the day
itself and you will be entitled to a copy, so do come and get yours. Take
care,Kai Chai.

I am a civilised person. I am reasonable. I will not threaten or kill the poor messenger.

*fumes silently, before stomping off to corner of woe to wallow in self-pity*

ALAS...IT IS NOT MEANT TO BE.

I swear to God if Chang Bo puls a miracle and beats me in English composition I might just lose it and come after him with a parang. So please wear armour and stay away from me.

*wails and melts down in a blubbering mess*

But it's okay. My poem was shit anyway, and I am glad not to have to read it and look stupid in front of all those people. Who would care about a teen reading her poem anyway? Since I'm not gonna read it, I think it's time to release it here for you all to poke fun at.

(Anyway, as testament to how crappy I thought said poem was, I named the file 'terrible writing'.) Here goes...

100-word drabble: Merlion

Tonight is clear and starry out, and
street lamps slather light with soft tongues.

One day I will fall
apart and disintegrate, but do not weep by my grave. I plead of you nothing but
two favors: remember me, somewhere, nestled in the crook of your plastecine
mind, somewhere. Someday I will not be able to watch over your every second,
your every breath, count the stars and moons with you, but promise me you will
carry on.
I know one day I’ll be forgotten, but the indelible relics of
your passing will pass through my metal veins. I’ll remember.

Terrible, wasn't it? *nods in agreement to other poets on cyberworld. I know, no meter, no meaning, cliched content, melodramatic, blah. This is blah. It's really obvious which poem inspired this.

Obviously, it is 'Do not stand by my grave and weep' by Mary Frye.

Do Not Stand At My Grave and Weep--Mary Frye

Do not stand at my grave and weep;
I am not there.
I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn's rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there.
I did not die.

Seeing how obviously superior it is to my pathetic effort makes me weep.

*goes once more into blubbering mess*

I wish I could get drunk, like how they do in movies when the female protagonist breaks up. I feel like I'm going through a divorce with my poem!

I will go wallow and cry m tears into the *rolls eyes* hot shower. Like a typical cliche. Meh. I will go back to being a cynical bitch.

Singapore, you are not my country -- Aflian Sa'at (i.e. the guy who wrote 'Cardboard', the poem in Unseen component of E. lit.)

Singapore You Are Not My Country (For Noora)
Alfian Sa'at

Singapore you are not my country.
/Singapore you are not a country at all.
/You are surprising Singapore, statistics-starved Singapore, soulful Singapore of tourist brochures in Japanese and hourglass kebayas.
/You protest, but without picketing, without rioting, without Catherine Lim,
/but through your loudspeaker media,
/through the hypnotic eyeballs of your newscasters,
/and that weather woman who I swear is working voodoo on my teevee screen.

/Singapore, what are these lawsuits in my mailbox?
/There are so many sheaves,
/I should have tipped the postman.
/Singapore, I assert, you are not a country at all.
/Do not raise your voice against me,
/I am not afraid of your anthem although the lyrics are still bleeding from the bark of my sapless heart.
/Not because I sang them pigtailed pinnafored breakfasted chalkshoed in school
/But because I used to watch telly till they ran out of shows.
/Do not invite me to the podium and tell me to address you properly.
/I am allergic to microphones and men in egosuits and pubicwigs.
/And I am not a political martyr,
/I am a patriot who has lost his country and virginity.
/Do not wave a cane at me for vandalising your propaganda with technicolour harangues,
/Red Nadim semen white Mahsuri menses the colourful language of my eloquent generation.
/Your words are like walls on which truth is graffiti.
/This has become an island of walls.
/Asylum walls, factory walls, school walls, the walls of the midnight Istana.
/If I am paranoid I have learnt it from you,
/O my delicate orchid stalk Singapore,
/Always thirsty for water,
/spooked by armed archipelagoes,
/always gasping for airspace,
/always running to keep ahead,
/running away from yourself.
/Singapore why do you wail that way, demanding my IC?
/Singapore stop yelling and calling me names.
/How dare you call me a chauvinist,
/an opposition party,
/a liar,
/a traitor,
/a mendicant professor,
/a Marxist homosexual communist
/pornography banned literature chewing gum liberty smuggler?
/How can you say I do not believe in The Free Press
/autopsies flogging mudslinging bankruptcy
/which are the five pillars of Justice?
/And how can you call yourself a country,
/you terrible hallucination of highways and cranes and condominiums ten minutes drive from the MRT?

/Tell that to the battered housewife who thinks happiness lies at the end of a Toto Queue.
/Tell that to the tourist guide whose fillings are pewter whose feelings are iron
/whose courtesy is gold whose speech is silver
/whose handshake is a lethal yank at the jackpot machine.
/Tell that to my imam who thinks we are all going to hell.
/Tell that to the chao ah beng who has seven stitches a broken collarbone and three dead comrades
/but who will not hesitate from thrusting his tiger ribcage into another fight because the lanterns of his lungs have caught
/their own fire and there is no turning back.
/Tell that to the yuppie who sits in meat-markets disguised as pubs, listening to Kenny G /disguised as jazz on handphone disguised as conversation and loneliness disguised as a jukebox.

/Tell that to all those exiles whose names are forgotten but who leave behind a bad taste in the thoughtful mouth, reminding us that the flapping sunned linen shelters a whiff of chloroform.
/Tell that to Town Council men who feed pigeons with crumbs of arsenic.
/Tell that to Natra Hertogh a.k.a Maria who proved to us that blood spilled was thicker than water shed as she was caught
/pining under a stone angel in the nunnery for her husband.
/Tell that to Ah Meng, who bore six hairy bastards for our nation.
/Tell that to Lee Kuan Yew's squint.
/Tell that to Josef Ng, who shaves my infant head amidst a shower of one-cent coins, and both of us are pure again.
/Tell that to my Warrant Officer who knew I was faking.
/Tell that to the unemployed man who drinks cigarettes smokes tattoos watches peanuts unself-conscious of his gut belch
/debts and wife having an affair with the Salesman of Nervous Breakdowns.
/Tell that to our Maya Angelou's who are screeching like witches United Nations-style poems populated by Cheena Babi
Bayee Tonchet Melayu Malas Keling Geragok Mat Salleh.
/Tell that to the fakirs of civil obedience, whose headphones are pounding the hooving basslines /of Damyata Damyata Damyata.
/Tell that to the statue of Li Po at Marina Park.
/Tell that to the performance artists who need licences like drivers and doctors and dogs when all they really need is just three percent of your love.
/Tell that to the innocent faggot looking for kicks on a Sunday evening to end up sucking the bit-/hard pistol-muzzle of the
/CID, ensnared no less by his weakness for pretty boys naked out of uniform.
/Tell that to the caretaker of the grave of Radin Mas.
/Tell that to Chee Soon Juan's smirk.
/Tell that to the pawns of The Upgrading Empire who penetrate their phalluses into heartlands to plant Lego cineplexes
/Tupperware playgrounds suicidal balconies carnal parks of cardboard and condoms and before we know it we are a colony once again.
/Tell that to Malaysia whose Desaru is our spittoon whose TV2 is our amusement whose Bumiputras are our threat whose outrage is our greater outrage whose turtles are weeping blind in the roaring daylight of our cameras.
/Tell that to the old poets who have seen this piece of land slip their metaphors each passing year from bumboats to debris to sanitation projects to drowning attempts to barbed neon water weeds on a river with no reflections a long way off from the sea.

/O Singapore your fair shores your garlands your GNP.
/You are not a country you are a construction from spare parts.
/You are not a campaign you are last year's posters.
/You are not culture you are poems on the MRT.
/You are not a song you are part swear word part lullaby.
/You are not Paradise you are an island with pythons.
/Singapore I am on trial.
/These are the whites of my eyes and the reds of my wrists.
/These are the deranged stars of my schizophrenia.
/This is the milk latex gummy moon of my sedated smile.
/I have lost a country to images, it is as simple as that.
/Singapore you have a name on a map but no maps to your name.
/This will not do; we must stand aside and let the Lion crash through a madness of cymbals back to that dark jungle heart when eyes were still embers waiting for a crownless Prince of Palembang.

FUCKING AWESOME!

YES YES YES YES YES

(I know I sound like I'm experiencing an orgasm here, but I really am. Writer's euphoria! Yes yes yes yes yes OMIGOD! KYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!)

LIKE, YAY! I amk so frigging happy I sound incoherent from bliss.

Lookie at the surpirse I found in my email!

Hi Chanel, This is Kai Chai, the co-editor of the Merlion anthology. We are launching the anthology, Reflecting On The Merlion, at the Singapore Writers Festival. The Merlion debate, which includes speakers such as Alfian Sa'at, Ovidia Yu, Ng Yi-Sheng and Alvin Pang, will follow the book launch. As 'Merlion' is included in the anthology, we would like you to read your poem at the launch. Would you be able to make it? The event will be held at November 1 (Sunday), 5-7pm, at the Chamber in the Arts House. Kai Chai.

Is this not frigging awesome?

I myself was surpirsed at it, and proceeded to get a big, shit-eating grin on my face, ecven though I am screaming my head off like a deranged fangirl in my heart, squealing and letting crazed laughter swing through the bars of my ribcage like monkeys on crack.

(Holy crap I am poetic even when deliriously happy!)

You know why I was surprised?

THAT'S BECAUSE I DIDN'T SPEND ANY EFFORT INTO WRITING THAT POEM.

(Actually, it's not a poem, but a 100-word drabble).

The night before the dateline, I was in a tizzy. I had to submit two pieces as part of CAP homework, and I have only finished one prose piece, of which I was relatively satisfied with. The subjects of the two pieces must be 'home' and 'merlion'.

It is pretty much obvious which one I finished writing first right? Obviously it was 'home'. What else can you write about an ugly, white mammoth who got struck by lightning? Okay fine it isn't a mammoth (dunno whether it gives birth, but I suppose it has hair because the top part if furry and all).

I was panicking, running around in circles like a headless chicken, and typing crazed messages to my MSN contacts, or those unfortunate enough to want to talk to me then.

Why wasn't I writing, you ask?

Ah. Well...I am the king of one nation known as PROCRASTInation, and even as the deadline draws near, I was still being my lazy, indolent self and doing completely useless things like panicking, messaging and reading. Anything but writing.

But I decided, okay, no use panicking.I might as well bite the lion in the head and start writing, because I was horrendously late, rushing to back up everything on a CD-rom and filling in my particulars for mentorship, juggling between tests and managing the internal affairs of PROCRASTInation. What the fuck, I thought. Just anyhow write lor, mei you shi jian liao!

I wrote some quasi-romantic crap, and being inspiration-less, decided to limit it to 100 words drabble. Gave it a title, and called it 'a piece of homework'. There. I had doen my duty.

Exhauted due to m overly brilliant machinations, I fell asleep contentedly and assumed I would never get into Mentorship, unless pigs flew.

Well, you know what happened to Mentorship. I got in.

Somehow the pigs weren't flying.

Just as I thought my luck is running out, I got this message.

YES. OH MY GOD YES FUCKING YES.

HAPPY~!

But I still think my writing is crap. Exams kill creativity, and excrete it out of some mighty bladder like creatinine and urea and uric acid and excess mineral salts and water.

WAHAHA THIS IS AWESOME MAN I GET TO READ MY POEM! YAY! SINGAPORE WRITER'S FESTIVAL! I can officially declare myself as a writer now!

Eat my dust, those who criticised me! Eat. My. Dust!

Okay now that the euphoria has worn off slightly and I have decreased my acceleration off Earth's surface, I know I cannot be proud just because of one insignificant achievement. This will spur me on to do better and scale more heights in my writing! I shall try my best to conquer all difficulties!

Oh. And another reason why I am so happy:

The fella who wrote the poem for the Unseen section of the EOY's lit paper is there! I can then ask him in person what the hell he means by his poem, 'Cardboard'. And of course, ask him questions like what is his inspiration for writing, and the infamous poem, 'Singapore, you are not my country'.

Awefriggingsome.

I shall bring along my E lit EOY paper and cleverly hide my results, before asking him to autograph my paper at the Parent's Signature space.

=D

Will post Alfian Sa'at's poem, Singapore, you are not my country on the next post.

Physics exam was a complete fiasco.

I started sneezing halfway through the exam, and I had no tissue on end, so I sounded like someone suffering from bird flu. If you would like more details on the consistency and colour of my mucus, you can send me an email, otherwise, I'll spare you the details.

I sneezed over the entire page of paper, and I daresay that it made it more interesting. The droplets of saliva or whatever clear fluid it was spiced up the otherwise boring landscape of stupid blocks that always fall in exam questions, and balls which have limitless ways of falling.

Who the fuck cares about a stupid block moving down the ramp? The block can slide its way down to hell for all I care. God forbid that it happens, because the impossible actually occured: Physcis is interesting! GASP!

The way the questions are phrased are so boring. I don't care about a metal hoop or whatever it was. Instead of using such boring terms, why can't they add more fantastical details to the question? e.g.

Physics questions Chanel's style:

A cherub weighing 500N slides down from heaven and, due to some mistake on God's part who forgot to close the holes to hell, the cherub falls to Hell at a velocity of 666m/s, and lands on an occupied Satan's head. Assuming that no energy is lost,

i) What is the force at which the cherub butts Satan's head?
ii) How will Satan be affected? Explain this in terms of Pressure.

At least this is more interesting than some stupid metal ball which falls in oil. WHo the heck is so free to ponder the speed at which the ball falls? I would rather be doign something mroe productive like sleeping or blogging.

You know, what makes a blog entry or even a diary/bad prose so different from prose as it is SUPPOSED to be written is that fact that the narrator must have a personality.

I contemplated this while reading criticisms of Twilight (see? Reading criticism DOES SO help you improve your writing because you learn more).

That's when it occured to me that holy crap! I have a lack of personality! because my ramblings in my head sound so similar to Twilight, minus the elegies/sonnets/exhaltations of one disco ball known as Edward Cullen. I'd like to think that I'm not as boring or vapid as Bella. I hope. Stuff in your head sounds better than what you write down. A good thing, considering how doleful and woebegone my sucky poetry is.

First it was the lack of emotion in my work. Then a lack of personality. I accept it! I am a terrible writer! This amazing hypothesis struck me as I was struggling with the Lit paper this afternoon, wondering at how insanely difficult it was to express myself. I felt like a 3-in-1 coffee mix: promising with good allocades, but terrible to the taste buds.

Maybe there are people who like 3-in-1 coffee though.

Re-reading what I wrote for this dratted entry, I figured that even if I added in a few vulgarities here and there and sprinkled it with sugar it would still suck because the previous few paragraphs were boring.

I am boring, Period.

The only interesting thing that happened to me was the infamous egg conditoner incident, which will be going into the 'classics' section of this blog if I bother to remember.

The exams are over! Yipee!

Listening to the girls discussing various facial treatments they wanted to do after the exams made my hands itchy for a lack of something to do, and I went to Watson's to try it out. Emerging with a dubious-looking pack of pore strips which looked like it was some pest killer (that's how unappealing the packaging was) and a deep hydration mask, I went home.

After giving my face a good scrubbing down and exfoliation or whatever that stupid beauty thing is called, I'm a facial idiot but a hair-beauty-expert, I followed the instructions to a T.

Much confusion ensued because I wasn't sure about what the instrucitons meant. What did they mean by 'smooth' side? Was it the sticky, shiny side or was it the furry side? Anyway both sides felt smooth to me. Why are insturcitons so goddamn ambiguous? It's like cooking instructios which tell you to add milk but never state what type it was (cow? goat? sheep? breast?). For goodness' sake, pick out a more defining quality!

I came ot the conclusion that instructions were useless, and fiddled with it for a while, and decided to stick it to my nose the sticky side down. Well, whatever. To be safe (because the instructions said to wet my nose), I think I dunked my entire face in water.

Whatever. My nose felt weird, and I looked like one of those Chinese criminals. Except that these anceitn chinese criminals stuck weird black patches to their temples (which I never quite figured out the purpose). Did the chinese invent facials or something?

I surfed the internet because I had nothing better to do than to wait for the ugly strip across my nose to harden up. Thank goodness it smells relatively pleasant, and not like some mysterious herb medicine of the coast of South Africa. Nevertheless, I was grateful no one came up, because I must have looked quite the sight. Anybody with a humongous back curtain plastered to their noses will look ridiculous. Especially facial masks. When I was young I recall thinking that women were stupid to put green stuff on their faces.

Anyway, I peeled it off 15 minutes later, liek the instructions said, and discovered that only one or two black heads were popped.

Stupid advertorials and the people gullible enough to believe them (i.e. me!)

I can do a much better job with my hands, damnit. (Doesn't this statement sound wonderfully sexually suggestive?)

Stupid commerical products. Arghhh. Why bother to manufacture them when they don't work.

Conclusion: Biore pore strips don't work. Period. For them to work you must have blackheads the size of a shitake mushroom, which is pretty damn big when it's on your face, rather like huang zu ren's mole. The type of blackheads that, if your nose was the world map, would obscure the entirety of China.


I AM STILL FRIGGING HIGH THAT THE EXMAS ARE OVER. I WANT TO BUY MY ANKLE BOOTS! BOOTS BOOTS BOOTS!

Welcome to the 21st century way of brainwashing regular students into docile, politically infantile adults: Social Studies.

Honestly, after a good solid hour of attempting to memorise the infamous chapter on globalisation (up to now I fail to see where on earth the rest of the world is...isn't globalisation supposed to involve the movements of the entire world? Funnily enough, there's a gargantuan wedge of it focusing on 'ol, self-centered Singapore.

No wonder foreigners hate our country and our people so much.

What is the point of Social studies, apart from teaching us critical thinking skills? I only find the whole 'critical thinking' bit useful in Social Studies..the self-praising, pompous, outlandish praisings of Singapore and its reigning government start to grate on one's nerves after a while. I can't give a flying fuck whether you hosted the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Haze in December 1997 or not, so apologetic to tell you. It's almost as if every single tiny, nanoscopic achievement Singapore has gleaned is polished like gold and embellished with pride before dropping it straight into textbooks.

And of course, A1-hungry memorisers like us docile sheep will jsut gobble it up and vomit it back on the exam paper. After continuous regurgitations, we learn to accept what we come to memorise as the absolute truth.

Yes, learning about government policies is important. But all I see are the pertinent point of these policies -- why aren't their drawbacks expounded upon? If they want to teach us 'critical thinking', why do they only do so in sources of Northern Ireland and Sri Lanka, and never of Singapore? All we get are politically 'correct', clean versions in newspapers. Kinda reminds you of George Owell;s 1984, where the government had free reign over the textbooks and knowledge, and tinkered with people' minds like machines, ain't it?

I am a Singaporean and proud of it. I love Singapore. But the social studies textbook just irks me sometimes. Why can't they be like America and teach us about the constitution, or give us more details abotu the policies? It's better than the boring trifles.

There. I just admitted Social Studies can be boring. Right now I am bored off my ass, still stuck on 'globalisation'.

ARGHHHH.

Someone please help me take my paper tomorrow.