Macbeth was right.

When you're happy, you think you know what life is: it's about enjoying every day as it goes by. But when you're hit left, right and centre with things you don't want to think about, you wonder. Life is but a series of actions and decisions made on one's part to reduce the amount of pain one feels to the minimum. Never mind whether it's physical pain or mental pain--life is just a continuous effort to get away from it. No one asks for pain. No one enjoys pain. You keep running away from it, keep wanting to escape from it. That's what it is. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow...until one day you can't take it anymore and your heart goes PHUT and that's the end of it for you, ta-ta. And then, just as you are about to leave, you ask: why? What was all that for? If I die, what will be left of me?

What will be left except for a heart of darkness?

And I hate Joseph Conrad for putting the idea into my head. I hate him even more for the fact that it is true.

I lost my wallet today. And I'm not feeling sorry for myself; there is a difference between self-pity and anger. I'm angry because I shouldn't have lost it. Should have used a purse, something I can put into my pocket because you don't lose pockets (well, you do, but I assume one doesn't take off her skirt at random times of the day). I know where it is and I pray I'm right, but if I'm not, it's the end of it for me. It's the first gift he gave to me. I can't lose THAT.

And then if I really do lose it my father will get on my case. What pisses me off is how he can seem so ready to get angry at me when he isn't equally ready to get angry at my sister. I didn't lose a credit card or an EZ Link card or even anything remotely relevant to the basic needs of my life--I just lost money, that's all. I shouldn't have, but it's just money. My sister lost her PHONE. No one flipped. No one yelled. Just, "well, we'll have to look for it tomorrow. Hope we find it". And then, when she doesn't, no one flips. No one yells. She gets a decent phone almost exactly like the one she lost. She paid for some of it, but the point is that she got a decent phone. I was warned that if I lost MY phone I'd get one of those ancient ones with the antenna from 7-11 shops.

Remember the time you joked about how you would love her more if I didn't give you a kiss? And I muttured, you already do?

Well, stupid, obviously it's true.

Can you blame someone for getting hurt in a relationship? You ask your boyfriend if he wants to go out for lunch with you, because it's your anniversary, so to speak, and he's been getting on your case asking you out. And he replies, as if he thinks I'm mad, that he lives on the other side of Singapore and that it's just not worth it traveling back and forth for lunch. After thinking that you're making him happy, that you're doing this because he wants to see you and you him, he turns you down like that. A slap in the face. And don't tell me that doesn't hurt. So I say, alright, fine. I'm sorry I didn't consider the traveling time. I just thought you wanted to see me...so on and so forth.

And the matter goes on and on until eventually he apologizes (and note that I already apologized up there) and, as usual, I go, damn it, he makes it so hard for me to stay mad at him. Which is understandable, because I love him.

But someone else begins to doubt Jennifer because she blamed him for the argument. No, because she got HURT. I apologized for not taking into consideration the time needed for him to travel. But initially I'd said I couldn't make it, homework, dance, whatever...and I made time to have lunch with him. And just like that, with a tone that could freeze an oven, he goes, so you want me to travel all the way across Singapore just to have LUNCH. RIGHT.

If I can't blame him a little for being so cold, you can't be serious.

Life is unfair, so on and so forth. People are unfair.

But as much as I've already come to accept that fact (however grudgingly), it's exactly what makes me wonder. Macbeth was an idiot, but he knew what he was talking about. What's there to our lives except our desperate and notably futile attempt to get away from pain? What's left of us after we die but a vague, floating memory of hurt and ugliness that eventually fades away completely with time, the way a faint, lingering smell disappears on the wind?

"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time...
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

Cheers, Macbeth.

We played a game today and it turned out to be pretty interesting. I might as well share the fun with everyone else. Read the questions below and think about what you would do--and sorry, no running away, and no "it depends on my outlook on life at the time". 8D (Sorry if these scenarios sound really extreme or dramatic. They're all the little stories I made up in my head over the years. Accept the non-logical parts and have fun with the quiz, okay!) (:

1. Suppose you're 10-year-old kid living a normal, rural life. You only have one friend and you spend every waking moment with her. Then, one day, your parents throw you out of bed and accuse you of a murder. You remember that, the night before, your friend asked to borrow a knife, saying that her mother needed it for the kitchen. But before you can say anything in your own defence, you are knocked out, and by the time you wake up, you are alone in a foreign, uninhabited forest. Your parents--and the entire community--have thrown you out. You live out life on your own. Seven years later, you are reunited with your mother. She is elated to see that you're still alive, and she says she is willing to forgive you. Do you forgive HER?

2. Same scenario, only that your friend isn't a cold, psychotic killer. In fact, she's so nice you're in love with her. The two of you promise each other that you will get married when you grow up, and that you will love each other forever. She gives you your first kiss. The next day, an accident separates the both of you, and you each think the other dead. Nine years later, you find out where she lives, and in all your elation you go to see her. She is equally overjoyed to see you, but upon being invited into her house, you realize, from the photographs on the mantelpiece, that she is engaged with someone else. And happy. Do you fight for her--or do you let her go?

3. (Sharon, you haven't answered this one properly. What do you mean, "according to the way a drama series would typically go..."!) Suppose you are a combat agent conditioned to suppress all emotions, and to use only logic and intelligence to carry out your missions. You are dispatched one day to act as a bodyguard for a girl, but (and this is where your rigorous brainwashing completely fails you) you fall in love with her. Upon realizing that you will kill upon orders without hesitation, your client makes a pact with you: if you are asked to kill, you must go to her and tell her about it. She will then do everything in her power to stop you, and you will go ahead with the assassination only if she fails. You receive an order to kill a target. Do you or do you not tell your client? (I got this idea from Dune. How come everyone is so fascinated with the idea of conditioning the human mind to suppress all emotion? It's so sick!)

4. Suppose you are an innocent man with a wife and two children. You make the wrong connections, and you find yourself caught up in a dreadful conspiracy (don't ask what it is. It's a random scenario). You are asked to kill a certain target. Or rather, you are blackmailed: kill the target, or watch your wife and children die in cold blood in their own home. You ask for details, and you find out that the target is your best friend. Who do you kill--your family, or your friend? (By the way, suicide is not an option. The person blackmailing you would kill your family anyway, to make the entire thing look neater. Too bad, Sharon.) (:

5. Suppose you are a young boy born into a royal family (choose a country that doesn't exist). You are, first off, deaf, and therefore imperfect; secondly, you are the second child, and by custom, only one child can live to ascend the throne. The royal advisors and your parents choose your older brother, rendering you redundant and useless. You spend a large part of your life in prison, kept a secret from the rest of the country (you are not killed because your parents cannot stand the thought of killing you in cold blood--upon which they decide to ruin your life instead. Silly people.). Chance, cunning and desperation somehow help you to escape. You live your life as a renegade, living freely on the outskirts of the country, until one day, you are found and taken back to the palace. Your parents and your brother are dead; the country needs a ruler, and by custom, only one born of royal blood can ascend the throne. Do you save your country by taking its reigns--or do you turn your back on it and walk away to continue living the free life you have settled into?

6. You are a happy child living in a proud, powerful House (that's the Western version of a clan. Can't they just call it a clan? I get confused and think, brick house? Wooden house? Oh, and choose another country that doesn't exist.) until you are wrongly accused of treason against your family. You are exiled without a fair trial. Five years later, you catch sight of the House's doctor (a.k.a your former best friend) on the other side of the street. Do you let him spot you--or do you run away?

7. Same scenario, but put yourself in the doctor's shoes. After talking to the child, you realize that he was never guilty of treason. The child has made friends with a lawyer, who, upon understanding the situation, suggests a trial to clear up the accusations made five years ago (you never had a real trial, so this is it--meaning that if you lose, you go to jail. Again.). Your House takes up this trial as the plaintiff and sets up the prosecution case. You, as one of the more influential figures of the House, are naturally expected to testify FOR the House, AGAINST the child. Do you testify against the child--or do you betray the house and advocate the child's innocence in court?

8. You are taken as a young child and used as a human experiment in a laboratory (sorry--this idea came shortly after we did bio-ethics in LA). After years of torment, you somehow escape, and are taken in by a young couple. Many years later, the laboratory that used you gets found out by the authorities and is publicly sued for crimes against humanity; the scientists in charge of human experiment projects face the gallows if successfully sued. You are asked to testify against the laboratory in court. You are all set to step onto the witness stand...until you realize that the man that took you in after your escape, the man you came to see as your father, was one of the scientists. He had been working on another project at the time, and since he never used you, he never knew about your existence until you escaped and ended up at his doorstep, which is why he took you in, seeing you as a mere street orphan. Do you testify against him?

That's all I can remember from all my years of daydreaming. Tag your answers on the tagboard--it'll be interesting to see how you guys will react to this kind of thing. (: Here are mine:

1. Yes 2. I'll let her go. Sniff. 3. I tell her, and then very gently knock her out and carry on with my mission. Work is important. 4. I haven't decided... 8D 5. Sigh; I'll do it. 6. I'll let him spot me, and then I'll give him a good whack on the head for not being there when I needed him the most. 7. Advocate his innocence, duh. And then, when I get kicked out of the House, I'll set up my own clinic, thanks. 8. I'd testify against the laboratory. But I'd tell the court that one guy took care of me, so could he just spend his life in jail, please?

Have fun! :D

I.

It happened in the afternoon.
The July sun, the summer wind--
Excitement, even though I knew
You'd been waiting ever since
Sometime four years ago
Two children sat together in a room.
Time like a river steadily flowed
And then two children grew up; but you

Stood still in a moving crowd
Tried to speak up without making a sound
Wanted to reach out and take her hand
But with the crowd she was walking ahead

You whispered to her
But she never heard you
You wanted to hold her
But she never let you
And you wondered why you'd spent so long calling out
To a girl who would never turn around

But that July afternoon
It all happened
And the play of our lives
Unfolded

And now it's July again
A year ago, in July, we'd spent
Three hours in the noon wondering how far we'd go
Together, wondering how fast time would flow

A year ago, in July,
You were standing still in the crowd
Now I'm beside you
And we're moving on.


II.

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players
A thousand plays unfold on this stage, but not all are thus remembered
The forgotten ones are of love and trust and betrayal and lust
But they are unknown to all of us because
No one watches the stories we tell
No one cares for our stories until
We find the one made to listen to us
To us, to us, and no one else
That's the one who will watch your play
Your life, the one who'll stand up and say
I love you and I know just what your act
Needs; we'll make your play a duet.

He will be your audience
Your only listener
He will be your partner
The only other actor
In your play, on the stage where all are but shadows.

III.

"The course of true love never did run true...
Or, if there was a sympathy in choice,
War, death, and sickness did lay siege to it
Making it momentary as a sound,
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream."

"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
Nor hath Love's mind of any judgment taste;
Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste
And therefore it Love said to be a child
Because in choice he is so oft beguiled."

You know how our eyes have a limited spectrum of vision?

We tend to look forward; forward and only forward. We look sideways every now and then, when we feel like we've lost something, and look around to see if we can find it. But we never really look sideways much. It's tiring and if you can see things well ahead of you, why look left and right?

It's only when you take the time to glance sideways that you understand.

What your heart has been searching for has always been by your side.

You've noticed them, somewhere in your peripheral vision. They've always been there, but have never been too important. Their images are blurred, little specks of black and white. Specks that don't matter much. After all, what are a few grey dots of dust on the whitewashed wall beside the loud, colourful, vibrant painting in front of you?

But then, somehow, you turn, and you see them: the people you've never really noticed, never really understood. Fomr some reason, you talk to them. It starts as a humble, shy question. A reply. You smile. They smile. You are heartened. So you make a bolder move. You start to chat. They listen. You start to giggle. And then you're engaged in a conversation full of jokes and teasing and bright, loud laughter. It's worked--Operation Start to Get to Know People You've Never Really Known Before has been a success.

And so the habit starts: you sit with them, chat with them, share your stories with them, and they do the same. You realize that you have a lot in common. Where you don't, you listen to what they have to say in curiosity, while they press to find out more about what you think. You laugh at the same jokes; sing the same songs; recite the same poems. Your conversations get brighter and brighter, noisier and noisier, livelier and livelier. They even start to turn into some sort of bilingual speech competition--it doesn't matter how you say it, they understand you. And soon it gets familiar. The ringing of laughter, the old in-jokes, the nicknames that only they can appreciate. The time you spend together becomes a part of your life. The better part.

That's when they are no longer insignificant specks of black and white. They are part of the painting--brilliant, vibrant splashes of red, of blue, of green, of purple, of orange, of yellow. They cannot be erased. They make the painting more beautiful than before.

My painting.

I have people with whom I belong. People who accept me the way I am, who understand me, who share my dreams and my pains and my fears. People whom I know will not leave me behind.

I thank the both of you.

Alexander stood behind the cherry tree, watching Jamailah work in the garden. He leant against the tree trunk, his arms folded across his chest, where a familiar pain had started to grow. He had been here for almost an hour now, silent, unmoving, and she did not know it, but he smiled whenever she laughed at a passing butterfly, closed his eyes and listened whenever she started singing a new song. And all the while he looked at her, he fingered the new scar across his wrist, rubbed it gently against his other elbow. There was a tingling feeling behind that scar. He wasn't sure if it was entirely uncomfortable or not.

Demetrius had warned him against traveling to the village. He would attract unwanted attention with his foreign-looking attire (Alexander had stubbornly put off the idea of putting on a traditional tunic) and could possibly get caught up in a fight, considering what was happening in the empire. Secondly, the effects of the epic fight the week before had not worn off entirely. Despite all this, Alexander had decided to disobey Demetrius, just once. He had realized that seeing Jamailah was not a want, but a need. A way to heal the injuries inside, not out. And worth getting attacked by an entire village. Worth everything.

Alexander breathed in. The autumn air was crisp, fresh. And cold. Slipping his hands into the pockets of his jacket, he turned. Wondered, mid-turn, if he should look back.

He would never talk to her again; he would allow her to forget him, to move on, to find new love. That was the best solution he could think of. It hurt, certainly. But what mattered more was the fact that he would never forget her. He loved her, and it would have been nice if Jamailah could love him back, but maybe love wasn't meant to work out that way, not all the time. Love was probably about surrendering everything to a person without expecting anything in return--not even love itself. He didn't know how much of that was true. But the theory worked for him. It worked just fine.

Jamailah stopped short of a note of her song. Her smile faded. She couldn't act anymore. She straightened up to face the man standing behind the tree, watching her. Prepared to tell her childhood friend the thought that had been running through her confused mind since the day he had reappeared into her life.

She found herself staring at a lone cherry tree, its branches bare, its flowers gone, its fruits absent.

Alexander weaved his way slowly through the village, ignoring the stares and whispers around him. He didn't look up. Didn't have to. He knew the way--the way home.

I'm BAAAACKK! (Pwah!) Here's what happened on Saturday (sorry lah, must be teenage-girl sometimes lah huh. Bear with it!):

Kekkaishi 265 is out. It's late D: 266 is supposed to be here already! Ah, well. It'll come out sooner or later...I hope. Anyway, it's getting so twisted! Finally I understand what's happening (or at least, I think I know what's happening--I read it in Chinese, so...) and it's awful. D: I don't believe it--they screwed up big-time. As in, wemightaswellliedownanddiebecausewescrewedupsobadlywe'llneverwinthisstupidthing kind of screwed up. It's OVER D: Well, of course it isn't. Yoshimori will find a way with his weird musou thing. But that will only solve the fight. The battle will have to solved with brains...which is where Masamori is supposed to come in, but considering the way he's done things so far, he's maybe not the best candidate. Then again, no one else has as much political power, so he's the best they've got. :/ In the meantime, SOMEONE DO SOMETHING USEFUL.

Naruto and Bleach don't need to say lah huh. You go and read yourself. Naruto is okay--moving forward...but Bleach is, as usual, long-winded beyond all imagination. At least it's getting somewhere in the fight, though. Long time no see, weird people whose names have temporarily escaped me (:

Went for KC CIP this week. Completely outnumbered by kids (ahem, Maddie--FREELOADER!). Pei Yu was particularly loll-lish this week (loll-lish as in, she likes to loll around people. Not LOL). I went to fetch her in the mini-van and she put her arms around my neck and she hauled herself up and from that moment onwards she refused to let go of me. She wouldn't go into the room when we got there so I had to carry her in, and even then she insisted on sitting on my lap when I finally got my butt on a chair. She wandered off after a while (ah...the relief. She doesn't weigh much but I have very low tolerance for weight on my thighs. Try me. No, wait, don't.) but came back only to loll around some more. After tuition the kids ran out to the playground for some fun and I brought her out, too. She wanted to get on the swing so I put her in, and another older kid started pushing her. But he pushed too high. By the middle of the fourth swing Pei Yu began to cry. I made the kid stop and I carried her out of the swing and she hung on for dear life for the next half hour. She wouldn't even let go of my neck so I had awful muscle aches afterward. She was alright after some pacification from Linus and Mousey, but then this OTHER kid went BOO! in her face and she got scared again, so she had another cry. By this time I was ready to slap anyone who made her cry so that kid got lucky, 'cause he ran away before I could stand up and...

I'm telling this story not because I want to complain about how stiff I was after three hours of carrying a baby monkey around (well, I was, but that's not the point). I'm telling it because for some reason, it left a really large impact on me. I've never had such a small kid hang on to me before (Marcus is an exception. He hangs on for fun. Pei Yu hung on like her life depended on it). It felt somewhat pressurizing, knowing that a small, vulnerable child is in your care and that you are responsible for her safety. On the other hand, it makes you feel as though you're worth something, as though you want to protect her, as though someone trusts you enough to seek your protection. Pei Yu basically hangs on to anybody half a head taller than her, but yesterday she was particularly attached to me and Linus. KC again, two weeks later--I'm looking forward to seeing her again, and everyone else. (: Glad I didn't stop going to KC after NYAA.

Had lunch with Clara at J8--she'd decided to go for dance, after all. (: (Now all we need to do is drag Stella along...) Dance this week was really fun. I like the warm-up dance--I suppose it fits me better. Girlish hip-hop isn't really my thing. I like the angry, pissed-off, really let-go kind of hip-hop (hello? This is Jennifer we're talking about). The main dance is to Ice Box, by Omerion (or is it Omarion? I never found out). It's more of lyrical hip-hop, I suppose (so good timing, Clara!). I LOVE IT. I'm a weird person. I like old-school hip-hop, but I like the emotion that comes from lyrical hip-hop, too. Looking forward to learning the rest of the dance. (: Glad I made the decision to take Saturday afternoons off to relax a bit.

THEN I went for a xiangsheng performance at the Singapore Chinese Conference Something (enlighten me. What's it called again?). I've just realized that it takes a LOT of brains to come up with a xiangshen script. It's not like English stand-up comedy. You get a lot of profanities in those, and then you realize that it's partly because the comedian f---s so much that what he says is funny. Xiangsheng is...I don't know. It's more cultured, more civilized. No profanities allowed whatsoever. It's a lighthearted intepretation of the typical humdrum of everyday life, written from the perspective of an observant, introspective individual who opens his eyes a little wider, listens a little harder. It's hilarious, but when you think about it, there's so much truth to what you're laughing at. Glad I watched the performance--good way to spend the evening, laughing at jokes and feeling slightly relieved at the fact that you CAN follow the script...which is in Chinese.

In other words, I'm glad Saturday happened.

You don't get many days like that.