A large chunk of the previous year just did not exist for me. I don’t remember it, I don’t have pictures, and the feel pictures I do have, it just doesn’t seem real at all.
Like time stopped; like I was unplugged for months and now finally plugged back in. I still have difficulty coming to terms with this feeling.
Came across this post was in my RSS feeds last night — it made me pause and think. I was still thinking about it this morning on my commute to work. It’s by Jake Adelstein, author of Tokyo Vice.
Even when we realize that we’ve made shortsighted, foolish, or difficult promises–it’s doesn’t nullify the promise. If we could retroactively change every promise we didn’t like or wish we hadn’t made—a vow wouldn’t mean anything at all. Of course, it’s hard to learn to not make those promises in the first place. Maybe that’s even harder than keeping a promise, learning the gravitas of our words. But when you break them, no matter how foolish they might have been–if you don’t at least regret it and ponder it, you haven’t yet learned anything. And ultimately that lack of regret makes a person untrustworthy and prone to do it again. People remember every missed appointment, every casually promised thing not delivered, or book not returned. Just as they remember every little favor you have done, or kindness you have bestowed upon them, or little promise to them that you kept. These all add up when we judge a person and ourselves and how others judge us as well. And if they don’t, they should.
“The unknowness of my needs frightens me. I do not know how huge they are, or how high they are, I only know that they are not being met. If you want to find the circumference of an oil drop, you can use lycopodium powder. That’s what I will find. A tub of lycopodium powder, and I will sprinkle it on to my needs and find out how large they are. Then when I meet someone I can write up the experiment and show them what they have to take on. Except they might have a growth rate I can’t measure, or they might mutate, or even disappear. One thing I am certain of, I do not want to be betrayed, but that’s quite hard to say, casually, at the beginning of a relationship. It’s not a word people use very often, which confuses me, because. By betrayal, I mean promising to be on your side, and then being on somebody else’s.”
-Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit
In December 2007, I had the good fortune of meeting Jasmine You in person a couple of times. I did not manage to talk to him much as we didn’t share a common language; what we did manage was conveyed with the help of friends acting as translators. He seemed very happy with Versailles and quietly charming in his own way.
I remember being impressed with how he wore his signature flamboyant look with so much ease and elegance. Anyone else in that costume and makeup would have looked silly, but he carried it all off with the air of a natural performer.
It’s hard to come to terms with the fact that he’s gone.
When you think about it, what are the odds? Had one out of infinite factors been different, everything which comprises your life could have been drastically different.
Ichi-go ichi-e; we live each moment only once, each experience will never return, only the memories remain. I look back with fondness on the past, and I treasure each new encounter that is to come.
“Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. And yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four, or five times more? Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless…”
—Paul Bowles
The earliest comments I can remember about my physical appearance were all about how skinny and long-legged I was as a kid.
I was called “bamboo pole”; adults often exclaimed at how skinny I was to my mother, and it would inevitably be followed by some sort of advice on feeding me the “right food” to fatten me up.
I was a quiet kid but never stupid; I would pretend not to know what was going on while silently observing the adults. I hated these conversations and I hated how many people saw it fit to comment on my weight in a manner that insinuated that my mother must have been incompetent or a neglectful parent.
In primary school, I always wished I was average-built. I didn’t enjoy being singled out for being one of the few underweight students and having to sit through school-sanctioned dietary talks with my mother. These talks were supposed to be for all students whose weights were out of the healthy weight range, but always geared towards those who were overweight. I always had to sit at the back of the class due to my height, and this arrangement often made me feel as if I was punished for being tall.
I hated how the school uniforms looked on myself — I never fit into them properly, and looked gangly and awkward. When I first met a girl who was of similar build as myself in primary five, we hit it off almost immediately and became best of friends. There was something we shared and understood about each other — how we got teased, how people made comments about our height and weight — that others did not. Finally, I had someone whom I could talk about these issues and feelings freely, someone who understood.
As I grew older, the nature of the comments I received changed. It used to be “Wah! You so skinny! And tall!” in the same tone one would point out an alien UFO, and it started to change to one of envy when I was in secondary school. People would start suggesting that I should work as a model because I was skinny and had long legs. I hardly believed them, because to myself I still saw this gangly, awkward girl.
I never considered myself superior in terms of physical looks to the other girls, who looked prettier with their figures that filled out the school uniform nicely, with curves in the right places. I looked like a bamboo pole with a sack wrapped around it. I still disliked my height for making me stand out, although I was beginning to enjoy being seated at the back of the class (more leg room and room for mischief.)
Eventually, my height and weight became less of an issue to me in my late teens, especially in junior college, where I met many girls who were much taller, and similarly built, that I didn’t stand out so much any more.
I started to see my height as a positive thing. The turning point was when I started attending rock gigs and getting into the mosh pits. It was so much easier to see the show and to actually breathe, because I was about the same height or not significantly shorter than most of the guys in the pits.
And while others started dieting to attract boys, I found myself being thankful that despite all the teasing I got as a kid, the tables are now turned. I didn’t, and still don’t find that being thin is “better”; but I am glad that I am no longer being picked on for it.
I have received so many comments of “Oh my god you’re so skinny and tall! Are you anorexic?” all my life that I have developed a finely tuned set of automated responses. I often rattle off the stock “No, I’ve always been skinny. I have fine bones and a high metabolic rate. I do not have an eating disorder.” without a second thought.
It is often considered acceptable to comment on someone’s weight if they are thin because being thin is seen as desirable. What people don’t realise is making comments like that is as insensitive and rude as going up to an overweight person and saying “Oh god you’re fat! Do you eat fast food burgers all the time?”
Because really, anyone who is thin must have an eating disorder. Why do I have to defend my physical build to random people?
I don’t fault most people for making comments on my weight because most of them don’t realise what they’re doing. But some people can be unusually obnoxious and rude, and for them I have a set of sarcastic responses, crafted and refined through my teens. All-girls’ schools can be vicious, nasty places for an awkward teenager:
“I am not anorexic. I eat three grains of rice a day.”
“Well, I survive by eating air.”
“Me, tall and thin? Nah, it only looks that way because you’re short and fat.”
I discovered this link while reading Boing Boing the other day. Every Saturday Morning is the blog of a volunteer escort at an abortion clinic in Kentucky, USA. These volunteers escort women entering the clinic past a gamut of vitriolic protesters, shield them and provide support from the abuse hurled at them.
It breaks my heart that the clinics needed to do this in the first place. I feel for each woman who has had to deal with abuse directed at them. Getting an abortion is a difficult decision and stressful enough, they do not need the added trouble from these anti-choicers. Many of those women were not even going to the clinic for abortions, but for other medical services.
Thinking about some of the stuff that goes at the clinic, it seems impossible to see where the protesters are coming from. Today, as a family walked away from the clinic after walking in with a client, a protester told a 5 year old that her mom was a murderer. Is this supportive, empowering, helpful, necessary, appropriate, and does it contain a shred of decency? No. Is that rude, insensitive, and incredibly small-minded? I think so. I also see it as inexcusable and unforgivable. For an adult to act that way is simply ridiculous. It seems like such an immature, below the belt low-blow sort of choice to make, something that any sane person would feel totally ashamed for having said. But to the protesters, that’s just another Saturday. This is just one example of how the protesters fail to provide support, or even be decent human beings.
I blanched and physically flinched at the photograph near the top of the blog with the huge photographic standee of an aborted foetus. I was furious that they had the bloody gall to print that and use it in their protest… furious, because it is a dirty tactic, horribly insensitive and damaging, not to even mention, without a single shred of compassion.
I had no idea that image triggered something in me that I did not know still existed; until I had an extremely vivid nightmare that very night about mutilated fetuses.
When I was a teenager in an all-girls’ public secondary school, a “family-counselling group” came to my school to educate us on sexuality issues. I remember that all of us were ushered into the school hall as usual for the weekly assembly; we were introduced to the counsellors who talked to us about abstinence, then launched into the main highlight of their talk.
It was a 10 minute video consisting of nothing but continuous images of aborted fetuses set to dramatic music. It was shown on the large screen and we were given no prior warning except “this may make you uncomfortable; if you are scared, close your eyes.”
Just a follow-up to the last entry, some relevant links and posts.
Why kill a cat over scratches on car? – AsiaONE Motoring
Paint on a car is manufactured to withstand the tremendous force of the gravel missiles as it speeds along the road, otherwise every car will be pitted all over as it speeds along the highway!
A paint technologist on this website (www.flippyscatpage.com/carpaint.html) wrote: “The worst a cat can do to in normal circumstances is leave cute little muddy cat prints – annoying but not inherently damaging.”
High ground
Cats, by nature, like to rest on “safe” high ground or seek the warmth radiating through the car bonnet.
Being animals, cats don’t know that it is “wrong” to do so.
So, in all likelihood, the cats did not even cause the scratches. Humans who insist on applying human notions of “right” and “wrong” to animals’ instinctual behavior, are, IMHO, a little wrong in the head.
News broke recently that stray cats, birds and a dog have been found in gravely sick condition at a local condominium estate. Most likely from eating poisoned cat food deliberately left around the estate. [ST link]
What the online ST article didn’t include were quotes from the residents interviewed, one of whom suggested that the culprit acted out of anger at having his car hood scratched by the strays. Cats like to lie on car hoods at night as the engines leave the surface warm; the people assume that they scratch the paintwork in the process.
It makes me sick to the stomach to think that people find damage to car paint adequate justification for deliberately killing small animals with poison. What is more repulsive is that this person has laced cat food and deliberately left it in areas where strays congregate so that they would eat it. I was also shocked at the interviewee, a Mr Tay, who expressed sympathy for the culprit; to condone such violence in reaction what is so disproportionately trivial issue of scratched car paint shows a disturbing lack of understanding and compassion towards living creatures.
I never understand why some people are so bloody hostile against stray cats and other animals to the point where they often express a desire to see the animals killed. They often claim that these animals “intrude” upon humans, which I think is a horrid expression of anthoropocentric arrogance. Humans have as much to contribute to these “animal problems” as well.
The neighbourhood I live in is a relatively new development. Before the housing units sprang up, it used to be a forested area with occasional fields and dotted with some small farms. There is a significant wild dog population that has thrived in the forests, and when we first moved in, it was not uncommon to see large wild dogs going about their own business or lying around in the sun. Then the eateries opened, and the trash wasn’t properly disposed of, and suddenly there was a “stray dog problem” because the wild dogs would go eat the leftover scraps and rummage through humans’ trash for food.
I must note that these wild dogs, although they are large, have never shown any signs of aggression towards humans at all. In fact, all the times I’ve seen them, they seemed either friendly, or inclined to avoid humans unless absolutely left without a choice.
One day I saw a dogcatcher’s van stopped outside the eatery. There was a huge cacophony of barking and howling, and what seemed like a staff member appeared to be cracking a whip and hitting the enclosure at the back of the van to intimidate or silence the dogs — I couldn’t see very clearly, as I was a good way across the street. This only resulted in louder barking. After some time the van left.
After that incident, and I supposed there were more incidents of culling of the wild dogs, the dog population was reduced and they stopped coming near human areas. I can understand people’s concerns for hygiene and safety, but a lot of it seemed to be borne out of unfounded fears as well.
It wasn’t that the wild dogs were “intruding” upon humans; in fact I would think quite the opposite. We have “invaded” their territory, which the dogs have been living here for many years, built up our structures, took away a good chunk of the forest, and refused to put up with the dogs that haven’t been even aggressive towards us. The dogs, for lack of other food sources, naturally gravitated towards human eateries and the trash.I missed seeing the dogs around, trotting across a grass field or lying down at the bus station in the evenings — sometimes with a young pup or two in tow — it always made my day a little brighter and more interesting.
It is a sad world we are in that fellow humans cannot accept co-existing with other animals; that in supposedly more enlightened times today there are still lots of people out there who think we are perfectly justified to kill animals any way we please over petty issues.
I’m fond of historical drama, and I’ve been watching Yoshitsune, a 2005 Taiga drama by Japan’s NHK. It tells the story of famous Heian-era general, Minamoto no Yoshitsune.
I enjoyed the good scripting with its subtle nuances in storytelling and the cast’s performance. I must say I was surprised by Hideaki Takizawa’s acting. I’ve only watched a couple of his early dramas before and his acting was unremarkable, but in Yoshitsune he seems to have matured a lot as an actor, and held his own well next to the veteran actors.
The only flaw was the battle choreography. I was laughing at inappropriate times in the story because the battle sequences were so fake. I was stunned to see a war scene where extras just ran in front of the camera, waved their swords randomly, then fell to the ground without even being touched, supposedly “slashed” by an approaching samurai on a horse, who was clearly at least a metre away and similarly waving his sword randomly (except with more gravitas than the extras).
It made me appreciate the quality fight choreography of Hong Kong and China’s drama serials that I’ve been used to and taken granted for. Heck, I think I’ve seen better fight scenes even in old SBC dramas!
Bad fight scenes aside, it is a good drama. I just fast-forward through the unimportant battles. 
ping:
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P:
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d:
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Huiwei:
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