Transitions

We were young and innocent, oblivious to everything else. “Babies come from belly buttons. That's what my marmy told me.”

Making paper planes and imitating the Power Rangers. Cooking bougainvilleas and leaves on a Barbie kitchen set. Playing pretend while marmy was cooking on a real kitchen set. Boys?? Eeeew!

Years have passed since then; many years.

Now mum expects cooking on a real kitchen set and I dream of flying away in a real plane. Watching One Tree Hill and 90210 (the new version). Expecting flowers (instead of cooking them), wishing they would stop playing pretend. Not so innocent, wondering how the younger ones can be so ignorant and oblivious. Boys?? *giggles*

I've grown, everywhere!

Suddenly life is so much more complicated than which toy I want to play with today. Getting up means having to decide what I want to wear, how troublesome! Everyday is another decision, another question. Most of which still remain unanswered. Still a mystery.

People have changed. I have changed. My playground buddies are now sliding off different things, and I am now swinging in different directions. The Monkey Bar is a new club in town and that “spinning thingy” has now confused my thoughts. The grass, as usual, is greener on the other side. Now when we say, “Go fly kites”, we don't get that enthusiastic response we used to. Ironic, isn't it? Hide & seek now means hiding our emotions, whilst waiting for them to seek our hearts, our minds, our feelings.

When we were young, we used to talk about the future. Now, we try to hide our past and avoid the future. What are we afraid of?? Wrinkles? Judgement? Abandonment? Gossip? Loneliness? Hurt? Change? Others? Them? Ourselves.

We used to play pretend, our stepping stone into the real world. All the world's a stage, literally, and everyone is an actor. Sometimes I wish we'd stop playing that game, get out of character, get out of costume, remove the masks and write our own scripts.

Conversations used to take place at slumber parties, where we used to tell stories and giggle till the wee hours of the morning. Now we sit in the dark corners of our rooms and speak to little screens. Our thumbs tend to move faster than our thoughts and we've lost the ability to look people in the eyes whilst having a conversation. Everything is suddenly virtual. We are slowly going mute. Abbreviations increase our talking space, but ironically cut down our talk time.

Sex, now, does not mean gender. Giggling about sex does not mean we're embarrassed to talk about, it means we've thought about doing it. Boys are still “Ewwww!” because now it's the men we're after. *giggles*

Inspired by,

Chappa & Puchi

[Jean & Kathleen]

reason??

Do things really happen for a reason? Or is that just an excuse we give ourselves when something does not bend our way?
Are we really born with the fate of our lives stamped on the palm of our hands? As I stare at the lines on my palm, I wonder... Why me? What did i do to deserve all that has happened to me this far? Doesn't character count for anything?
Someone said, "Don't worry. It's trials like this that make us stronger." True. But then again, there is only so much strenght one can accumulate over time. Sooner or later all that strenght will be too much to bear.
In the meantime, I'll just have to wait. I'll keep trying. I'll keep getting 'stronger & stronger' and with each failed step just hope that my strenght won't go weak on me.

-never assume-

oneheckofadrama!

The other day my business teacher told us that another teacher would be coming in to invigilate our class. Immediately, we went from classroom to movie set with my teacher Pn.A suddenly assuming the role of director.

The whole class on the other hand were in a complete blur (as always). I was just starting to grasp the announcment when Pn.A said in a frantic tone, “Ok Jean, you do the first question. When I call you, go up front and write the answer on the board! ” Huh!? What? I didn't even know what the question was! What to do? What to do? Thankfully my wise friend beside me had words of advice “Just go there and write sum shit la”(yea, I'm sure)

When the invigilator walked in, the class became completely silent and Pn.A started to teach while standing for the first time. (no, seriously.most of the time she just sits her butt down, starts talking for like 10 mins then stops.) Anyway, there I was in complete awe that my teacher could actually stand when she threw a question at the class. “Anyone like to answer? Ah, Jean how bout you?” Great, I went to the board and ended up taking my friend’s advice… I wrote sum shit..

Halfway through all this drama the invigilator started to walk around the class and checking students notes at random. Alamak!. Well, thankfully she never reached my desk. She stopped and ask Pn.A where were our assignments?(so to speak). Pn.A said, “They all have a file with all their assignments in it but I guess they didn't bring it” Whoa, what file? Did my teacher just tell a lie? We have a file? Yea, she lied…

The funny thing is, while this drama was going on, class was actually more interesting. Everyone was actually paying attention and my teacher was doing an excellent (dramatic) job in filling our brains with info of the business world. She was actually pretending to teach like how she was suppose to teach. geddit?? It didn't last long though.

Once the invigilator left, she sat her butt back down and half the class went back to sleep…..

Back 2 Basics

sometimes, the basic things in life is all we really need….

The other day I was riding the bus when I looked out the window and saw a car stalled just before the traffic light. The hood of the engine was open and two young guys were standing outside the car looking totally bewildered. Then one of them runs across the road and comes back with a bottle of petrol! He fills up, closes the hood and starts the engine just as the lights turn green. They drive off looking slightly embarrassed and laughing to (or at) themselves.

I smiled to myself as I recalled being in the same scenario once. My mum was driving and suddenly we were stalled at the traffic lights. Quite embarrassing I would say. Thankfully, there was a petrol station nearby so my brother got down in the middle of the main road to go get petrol. I was wondering what the other drivers would be thinking. How can you forget something so basic as petrol for your car??

Sadly, that’s what happens most of the time. We forget. We are so caught up with our destinations that we forget that the journey needs to be fueled. We forget that not everybody can run on ‘nearly empty’ or maybe we just don’t care. Sometimes we look outside and see an awesome exterior. Spotless, shining with a tip top engine and we think ‘wow, that looks fine.’ But it ain’t gonna run if it ain’t gonna get fueled up. We take it for granted that just because something looks fine it will always be fine.

A fine car gets scratched, bumped, dusty, heck probably even a bunch of birds poo on it. It will probably still keep running but it will definitely stop when it runs out of fuel. Then we will realise that we like so totally forgot to fill up on fuel. So don’t forget to keep refilling your car with fuel. Don’t wait till it has to stop before your realise you’ve been ignoring the blinking red light by the ‘E’ sign because one day it might just be to late and your car might just not start again, ever…