there're a lot of pretty exhibits at the science centre, like the one where electricity jumps between 2 rods, or the one which mimics the atmosphere of jupiter, but my favourite is the one that looks like a tornado.
it's just a tall column of spinning mist, going round and round and round, but ever so often i find myself just standing there staring at it, so pretty and enthralling.
sometimes i stick my hands into the ethereal, wispy column but all that happens is that the airflow gets disrupted and everything is destroyed.
for all its beauty, i can't touch it, can't bring it home, so what good is it to me?
i've spent the past week doing some work at an event involving a whole damn lot of school children, from primary all the way to tertiary level, their age probably from 9-18.
being around the primary school kids just caused me to affirm my dislike towards them. kids, they're cute from around 1-5 years old. after that they turn into little fuckers, and then grow up into big fuckers. there's really no other way out.
anyway it seems that kids these days are turning into FEARLESS little fuckers, ever since the government stopped teachers from properly disciplining them (aka smacking the shit outta them). besides that, parents can also get into trouble with the law for smacking too much shit outta their children.
instead, we've now moved into a new age of parenting and teaching, where the parents and teachers have to reason with the kids in order to stop them from doing whatever shit that these little fuckers are up to. i don't think they can even shout at the kids.
obviously it is impossible to reason with kids when their brains aren't even properly developed, so these little fuckers are now free to do as they please. what's the worse that could happen? teacher is going to scold me? does that hurt? no. do you think i care? no.
all week i've been resisting the urge to chokeslam them. it's so tempting, it's killing me inside. apart from my inner turmoil, i've been rather nice to them as compared to one of my co-workers... the kids were making a hell of a racket as usual, so he told them to keep quiet.
kid: you ask him to keep quiet first! (pointing to one of his friends)
guy: I TOLD YOU TO KEEP QUIET YOU BETTER LISTEN TO ME AND DON'T TALK BACK. JUST SIT DOWN AND SHUT YOUR MOUTH. (no exclamation marks because he said he wasn't shouting, just raising his voice)
the kid sits down with tears welling up in his eyes and i found myself a new hero. later that day we got a complaint from the kid's teacher. fuck the teacher, he's still my hero.
this was what he was good at, he thought. after all, he was a scientist, analysing and solving every problem put in front of him.
and one day he met the one unsolvable puzzle - love. he tried tackling it the only way he knew. he pulled it apart, attempting to find the secret which makes it work.
alas, love does not work this way. the unfortunate scientist lost his love, and it was only after love went away that he realised his mistake: he did not use his heart.
when i was young i liked to count the number of flags hung out by families during national day. i would stand by all the windows in my house and count as far as my eyes could see, and it is quite far, considering i'm on the 21st floor.
well, that was when i was young and had nothing better to do (the internet was not discovered yet). as i grew older i stopped counting, but have always took notice of the flags. they seemed to get fewer and fewer in number.
this year it seems to be at an all-time low, not just around here but everywhere i go it's the same. is this a passive-aggressive reaction of the nation towards our government? the unhappiness has certainly been brewing for years now.
aside from all the glitz and glamour of the government-made national day parade, do we really care enough to celebrate our nation's birthday? i don't think anyone bothers. it's just a public holiday, nothing more.
from what i see online (not sure if i can trust the internet), the americans really love their fourth of july independence day and all the celebrations related to it, something that has its roots deep within their tradition.
how many decades would it take before singaporeans finally see this country as something to be proud of and something worth celebrating?
this morning i woke up at 9am and had breakfast, watched some tv, went online, then i got bored at about 10-11am and decided to lie on my bed. when i woke up again, i went to check the time and found it strange that my phone displayed 6:00, when it should have been 2-3pm at most.
after clearing my head, i realised i had slept for the fucking longest time ever, and during that sleep i had yet another one of my fucking epic dreams.
i dreamt that i had been transported back in time to the year 2000. i was young again but with full knowledge of my life till now. i've always thought i would be happy being young again, but when it happened i was desperately trying to figure out how to get back to the present day. after a while it seemed destined that i would get to re-live the past 11 years of my life again.
it might seem like it's a great thing, but i was quite hesitant and filled with worries. after all, i think the present version of me turned out quite alright, and who knows how different my life would turn out with all the changes i would make, like in the butterfly effect, you know?
i wondered if i should try to re-live my life like it has been till the present day, basically following the same series of events and trying my best not to change things, or should i try to make my life better? right all the wrongs that have been made, undo my mistakes and regrets.
i also questioned if i had the energy and life left in me to live through all those years again, and worse being trapped as a 13 year old. secondary school, (not) studying and dealing with all the assorted shit ain't exactly my idea of fun, and i couldn't just fuck it and breeze through since this was now my life and i wasn't just there on holiday before returning to the present.
i went around the house and noticed that many things were not as i remembered them to be, which led me to believe that my presence alone was already causing changes in the world. how much more different would things be after 11 years?
after this i went through various events and for the most part i tried to do things better than i would have done, although at the same time worrying about the long-term effects of my changes.
one minor issue which i did not foresee when i tried imagining myself to be in love with random people is that i would actually find myself in love with one of them.
after 9 days (minus a day or 2 when she wasn't around) of looking at Tall-Girl, the image of her that i invented in my head has now stuck. i don't know who she is, but who i imagined her to be, she's perfect, and she's difficult to get out of my head.
see, when i imagined myself in love with these people, i had to give them a personality, a story and some characteristics that i would love. so here i created the perfect girl, an imaginary lover, except in this case she has a physical body to go with it.
and it is from here where things get complicated and borderline psychotic. so i'll leave you here with a song.
last night i went to watch warpaint for the second time this year. their set was short, only about an hour so that was rather disappointing. if a 48-year-old robert smith could play for 3 hours...
and the second disappointment was they didn't play this song, my favourite. every time i listen to it i'm reminded of june 2010, the great transition from ns back to student life. me sitting in my bridging night class, wondering what lies ahead, wondering how in the world do the warpaint songs manage to worm their way so deep into my consciousness.