I count my blessings and put them in a jar

I wish I could tell everybody the concerns that I have in deciding to continue my studies or not. But then again, I don’t want to let my reasons affect those that are considering the same school as me.

Furthermore, I have not really arrive to a decision to study or not. Maybe the reasons will be explained IF I decide to carry on :)

On a side note, was having Tao kae noi the other day and being the very studious fan of this seaweed brand, I went to google and finally (I hope) read the story and case study behind this company. Young promising entrepreneur whose story is worth the read.

Another read that I’ve gone further to explore after doing a project on it last sem is ‘body shop’. Another good read that show the unethical side of business. How I wish I’ve read and gathered more information on body shop last sem and not only now. But oh well, at least now I know ^^

Heh, maybe reading up on case studies and company background gna be my new hobby! :D I’m also particularly interested in religion and so far, only grasp the Islamic background well! (that’s cause I did a project on it!) Time to visit the library to borrow books on Christianity! (find this religion really interesting with lotsa stories)

I’m gna sound really nerdish if I continue to type all the boring reads that I’m interested in. Hahahahahahahahah! But before you judge, here’s another stuff that I found really interesting and hard to grasp: calculus. Decide to pick up this subject myself since mid march and boy, it’s tough but nonetheless, interesting and challenging! :D pick it up if you guys are bored of this holiday or don’t want your brain to turn rusty (like me)

Till then,
Goodnight! ^^

Well written blog post that made me think about life and brings tears to my eyes:

Hello!

I guess you could say my blog’s pretty much dead now. I’m not sure if it’s due to the lack of interest I find in my own life or even just because I’m lazy, but up till recently, I haven’t had an event or encounter that I was compelled to have immortalized on paper (or rather, in pixels). Not that my life is boring.. just ordinary. Ordinarily pleasant. I’m content! :)

But I make a special (yes, special) trip here today because there’s just something I’d like to remember forever. This could be the beginning of an entire collection of memories I’d like to enshrine, or even just the only one. But today I’d just like to sit down, and talk about something while it’s still fresh in my mind. So next time, when I look back (if I do), I’ll be able to remember the context, the conversation, the perspectives shared, and just about every other element of this encounter, just as perfectly as my writing skills will permit.

Tonight I had the fortune of meeting someone different. I’d just left from a hearty supper with a couple of close friends after the Death Cab for Cutie concert, and we were sharing a cab to go home. There were three of us, then two, and finally after I’d dropped my friend off, it was just the cabbie and I alone.

“Could you direct me to your road?” he asked. “I lived in Thailand for two years, so my sense of direction’s not too good.”

I told him the way. The conversation light-heartedly strayed onto the topic of his stay in Thailand. He was 35 years old, he told me. His highest level of education were the ‘O’ Levels and he’d started taxi-driving as a job when he was 30, stopped for the two years he moved to Chiang Rai, and then started again when he got back.

“You must meet a lot of interesting people,” I remarked. He paused a while. “Interesting? Not really.” And then he paused again before adding, “But there was this one guy,

“he entered my cab and he said ‘I want to see the whole of Singapore.’ I thought he was high at first, but he definitely wasn’t. So I told him, ‘Pay me $100, and I’ll take you everywhere.’

“I ended up driving him across every expressway in Singapore. All he saw were trees.” He chuckled. I frowned.

“You cheated him?” I asked. Was that something to be proud of?

“No. As it turns out, he wanted to commit suicide.” His answer was calm. “I spent the entire trip trying to talk him out of it.”

“What for?!”

“His girlfriend had left him.”

“How old was he?”

“In his late 20’s at the most.”

“That’s young.”

“We talked the entire trip. He seemed better when he got out, but whether he’s still alive now, I don’t know. But I’m sure if he died it’d be on the news,”

Before I could reply, he added, “But you know, I wanted to commit suicide too.”

It was my turn to pause. He wasn’t bragging, or fishing for sympathy. It was said in a disconcertingly matter-of-fact tone. The same tone you would use to comment on the weather, or on the bitter taste of burnt toast. My eyes flickered upward from the text message I was composing, to the back of his head. I wasn’t really sure what to make of the sudden act of vulnerability from a complete stranger.

“But why?” was all I could manage.

“I.. My wife died. It was three months after our marriage - it was an accident - and it’s been 16 years. But even now I’m always seeing psychiatrist after psychiatrist. I can’t sleep. I take pills to sleep.”

“Is that why you take the night shift?” I asked feebly.

“No. I only became a driver at the age of 30. This is my first ever job. Before this, I was-” he gestured towards the elaborate tattoos that adorned his arms -

“In a gang?” I quipped. He nodded, and asked me to guess which. “Was it Sa La Kau?” We had drawn to a halt at a traffic light, and he swiveled around to look at me. “Why does everyone always say Sa La Kau as the first answer??”

“Because it’s the most known!” I laughed. “Then which one was it?”

He grumbled inaudibly. “Sa La Kau la.” I laughed.

“But it’s different than how it used to be then. Before, you used to really be able to make a lot of money. Especially in Geylang.

“You know the Lorongs? We used to guard each of them, a bunch of us. And we’d get like what - $3000, $4000 a month? And we used to sit around and do nothing. But other times, we’d have rival gangs try to claim our Lorongs and that was a lot of trouble.”

“Did you get into a lot of danger?”

“Of course.” He gestured towards a scar on the back of his neck which I could make out faintly, in the dim light of streetlights flashing past. “I got stabbed with a durian knife here.” He moved his hand slightly to the right. “Here, I was slashed by a samurai sword. I needed 248 stitches for that.” I cringed at the thought. “The doctor said to me, ‘My hands went numb doing your stitches.’”

“Oh god. Did the people who attacked you go to jail?” I asked. I guess it sounded like a very naive question, because he chuckled.

“You don’t get killed if you’re slashed. You get killed if you’re stabbed.”

“What about the guy from the Downtown East slashings?”

“He was stabbed wasn’t he? With broken bottles. The shards are so sharp you know! Or he bled too much.

“But I’m no longer part of that anymore. No more.”

He continued on a bit further, but the words blurred as I got momentarily distracted. We were drawing close to my neighbourhood, and I was afraid he’d miss the turn. When we got back on track, he continued,

“I quit. I just left after my wife died. No more of that stuff. There was no money in it anymore, anyway.”

“How did you leave?” I asked. Another naive question? I guess I was expecting some sort of epic chase where they would hunt him down and threaten to do unspeakable things lest he spill their triad secrets, ala every other action movie in the world out there.

“I just left lor.”

I guess not.

We passed through the stream of houses leading into my estate.

“I blame myself for my wife’s death.”

A silence ensued.

“I was supposed to pick her up. But I wanted to play soccer. She wouldn’t have died if I went to pick her up.”

“You can’t think like that.” I started, but he cut in before I realized I had nothing more to add to that. How many words would it take to break a man’s 16-year-old resolution? Something you could come up with from the top off your head after a 15-minute taxi ride?

“After all these years, I’ve never shed a single tear. My psychiatrists, my doctors, they’ve all been trying to get me to cry because they think it’ll make me feel better. I don’t know why I can’t cry myself.”

“Maybe you just haven’t accepted it yet.”

“Yeah, I think so.”

We finally reached my estate, and he asked, “Which way do I go?”

“Straight, down.”

He collected the fare, and he said, “Thanks, goodnight.”

I was slightly at a loss of words. “My wife is dead, ok bye?” Was that really it? I stopped.

“Would you like to talk about it?” I asked. It was all I could manage. You guys probably think I’m weird for asking a taxi driver if he’d like to talk. Some people find it annoying when they step into a taxi expecting a quiet ride, only to realize that their drivers yak their heads off. I normally hate small talk with taxi drivers - or small talk with anybody, as a matter of fact - but I couldn’t just step out of the taxi and go about my way after he’d just told me all that. It could’ve been a sham, it could’ve been a tall tale, but I simply couldn’t just leave.

He turned around and shot me a long, incredulous stare. “No. It’s okay?”

But after yet another pause he added, “… I don’t see a meaning in life anymore. I don’t understand why I’m driving this car, I don’t understand why I’m trying to earn this money. What for? I don’t have any friends. Just recently I went to the casino and I won $292,000. It came in a cheque. But I didn’t know what to do with the money. I spent it randomly, I gave it to people I knew, I let them borrow my money… I don’t need the money.

“Every day I go home. I look at the ceiling, and then I look at my dog, and then I go to sleep.

“I don’t know what I’m living for anymore. I don’t know why I’m waking up in the day. I don’t see the point in life.” His expression was impassive, just as it had been the rest of the conversation.

“But they say that life is not just a destination. It’s a journey.”

Again here, I lost my concentration because I was still processing what he’d said. I started, as though I had something to say, but I couldn’t. He looked at me, waiting.

But even though words did flow eventually, I was awash with a sense of uselessness, and I was letting it win over me. The conversation deviated to politics, and to other personal subjects before once again, he said “Okay, thanks.”

I guess he really wanted me out of that car.

“Hahaha I see how it is. After you talk to me, you just chase me out?” I said jokingly.

“Nooo la.” He replied, and gestured towards the digital clock in the car. “I just have to change shifts.”

“Okay then, bye. It was very nice meeting you.” I started to get out of the car.

“You know, you’re very funny.” He suddenly piped.

“Why? Like I’m funny looking? Or I say funny things?”

“No. It’s like you have a lot to say.”

I smiled.

“I do. I just don’t think you’d want to hear what I have to say.”

We laughed.

“What’s your name?” He asked.

“I’m Mag.”

He told me his name, and I wished him goodnight before walking back to my building.

It just sucks that I wasn’t able to say or do anything to make this guy feel better. I know it’s different from consoling a friend from a bad break up, or a lost wallet, or something similarly trivial. This man had lost his wife. I wanted to stick around and say something not because I felt pity, nor compassion for this stranger. It was relatibility.

I’ve lost an uncle. Or rather I lost my mother’s brother, because “uncle” sounds too distant. He passed away due to cancer, which started in his lungs, before spreading to his spine and later, his brain. He was a free spirit, a man who hated to be surrounded by anything but the things he had a passion for. He was a brilliant photographer and a great writer. I was supposed to visit him in Minnesota during the summer of ‘09, but he fell sick and our plans had to be cancelled. A couple of weeks before his death, I held his hand as he sat in his wheelchair and he said, “When I get better, I’ll show you how to use that camera [which he gave me].” He never got better.

I’ve lost a good friend. She was a year older than me, and she died from micro plasma which had spread to her brain. We weren’t best friends, but occasionally we’d have conversations and it was easy to talk to her. She was laid back, yet always passionate about the things that she enjoyed. And while never romantically, I was always drawn to her because she was such a genuine, and sincere character. In the days before her death, she couldn’t remember her girlfriend’s face.

I’ve lost a favourite teacher. The last day of school before summer, I was having detention in the vice principal’s office. There was a large window in the detention room that overlooked the entire admin office. My favourite teacher walked in, cradling her 4-month-old baby. The moment she entered my Vice Principal strode out, a small smile lighting up his usually stoic face as he stood by them proudly. I watched from my room as the other admin staff surrounded them, cooing over the baby and congratulating them on their engagement. The Vice Principal caught me looking and shot me a stern glare, and I quickly turned back to my book. On the first day back to school from the summer holiday, it was announced that the teacher had passed away. She had died within a couple of weeks of getting diagnosed with leukemia.

I’ve lost.

And yet I didn’t have any words of “experience”, or of solace to this man who had lost, too. This wasn’t another taxi driver who was trying to engage me in shallow chit-chat. This was a man who looked me dead in the eye and calmly said that he didn’t want to live anymore.

And despite having only graduated with an O level certification, he was eloquent. His thoughts were perfectly lucid, too. I don’t think he meant to lay something that heavy on me, but he did, and now I’m sitting here wishing I could’ve done better by him.

But what I meant to say was not that I wish he’d buck the fuck up and move on, or any other empty words of encouragement.

I understand that you can’t help everybody. That not everything is something you can nurse from black to white, and that in between and all around the two there is a large grey area that you get caught up in once in a while.

Somewhere in the conversation and in response to him saying that he no longer wanted to live, I brought up how another friend of mine was diagnosed with leukemia and is - at this very moment - fighting for her life. In return he implied, “it’s easy for her to fight because she knows what she wants and she still has a lot ahead of her”.

So it’s true, isn’t it? Life is what you make of it. You determine what you’re looking for, and then you spend that part of your life working towards it. But what if you no longer hold the motivation to work towards it, or you can’t even figure out what you want? Why does a 19-year-old hold more potential than a 35-year-old? Because she’s younger? Because she’s more impressionable? Because she’s made less decisions which have set the course of her life in stone? .. Somewhat like a game of tetris?

I couldn’t tell him to simply not throw away his life because there was still a long way to go. Life isn’t just a light you can switch off whenever you please. My friend didn’t choose to fight cancer necessarily because she was happy and had a good life before that. My friend is fighting because she wants a chance to be happy and have a good life after that. I’m not sure if anyone reading this (if any at all) follows what I’m saying, but suddenly my head is clear.

Now I know what I wish I could’ve said.

-http://magxchan.blogspot.com/

I pray with all my heart that the man is still breathing and had found the will to continue living. May all the angels guide and embrace him.

Or rather, I found my best friend in you.

The one that listens to my rants and whines, the one that knock senses into me, the one that criticizes me, the one that bully me, the one that fights with me, the one that comes to my mind when I’m troubled (and vice versa)

The one where we spend hours laughing at each other flaws, calling each other names but at the end of the day, laugh it off and remain as…best friend.

I’m glad I found you, best friend ❤

or maybe even weeks after poly. The thoughts of having a straight 5 months break (or even more if I don’t get accepted into a Uni) away from school gives me a sick feeling. I know I’m weird, while the rest of my peers are happy to take a break from school, and here I am, sick of this holiday and worst still, worry sick about my future.

Finishing poly is so different from finishing my Os. After Os, you got the empty feeling in you because you spent the last few months doing nothing but study study and study even more for the perfect raw scores and then all of a sudden, you don’t have to study anymore. Then the oh-it’s-okay-sure-got-schools mindset kicks in and then you get to enjoy your well deserve holidays. But no, this doesn’t work when you are done with poly (that is, for me). Because after poly, it’s ‘hey babe, think and plan what you are going to do! Your future is now in your hands and whatever choices you make, it’s gna affect it.’ Which sets it apart from Os because nobody else, but you can decide which step to take next.

I’m afraid of making choices. Especially those that concern my future.

Yes, I want to further my studies, I want to learn new stuffs and I don’t want to give up without trying. But can I? Intense competition in Singaporean is turning me into a nervous wreck. And I know I couldn’t afford to further my studies in UK :( and Aussie was never one of my choice so that’s out too.

I’ve nobody to blame but myself for not working hard enough and at the end of three years, all I’ve achieve is ‘not bad’ results which are neither good nor bad. And here I am, with results hanging midair, praying hard that one of the uni allow me to continue studying business.

That aside, everyday I remind myself to thank god, to count my blessings that there’s still options for me, that I still have choices and doors open for me, that I am more fortunate than others who doesn’t have a choice.

And then, there are people out there who thinks that I’m overreacting with my anxiousness and thinks that I can secure a space in any uni. How I wish that their assumptions are right but no, they are very wrong. Me,smart? Never. Hardworking? Yes!

And this will lead to the same group of people questioning: Life isn’t about studying, where are your dreams? And to that, because I’m a mugger (hahah), it is my dream to get a degree, to major in banking and be a broker since I was 16. I know whatever you are studying now might not be what you will be doing as a career but then again, you will never know if you never try. How I wish I’m the female version of Bill Gates.

Oh wellz,
I hope the angels hear my prayers ♥♥

xoxo