Callous toil came all in a package..
Office, family family, office..
Xmas forced itself through..
New Year day followed suit.
Jaded.
Youth passed us in delirious frustrations.
Calendars become useless pieces of paper binded by that round metal rings.
You’d flipped them one by one mindlessly, but only to find with dismay that those are times that passed into history.
Twentyoeight was history..
What had we done?
What had I done?
Edges of me worn.
Repeated buckets of cold water gradually wash off the sculpted motivation that was once so fine and defined.
*****
CNY is the period when you hear well wishes over and over again..
祝你 新年快乐 万事如意 事事顺利 身体健康 恭喜发财..
They felt bland and got us numbed..
Somehow I thought the greetings gradually became more diplomatic instead of sincere heartfelt ones.
And there was one particular one that I used to think it was not creative enough if you are looking for rich Chinese idioms to greet and impress the old folks..
祝你 身体健康
So plain and colorless..
Yet through its simplicity, felt it more as I grew older..
How many of us has actually ignored the significance of this simple greeting time and time to come?
Especially when we are in the pink of health..
No one really feels the importance of it..
Till we are really sick and uncomfortable.
Imagine having a simple migraine that accompanied us to work..
Imagine when we did not sleep well the previous night before and our necks have a slight sour feeling everytime we tilt our heads to that angle..
Imagine having a sore throat in complimentary to a running nose..
Imagine running a fever with aching bones and a strengthless body..
Imagine those monstrous mentrual cramps that penetrate your spine and render you weak and helpless..
Pain is such an underestimated word that only the beholder can understand..
Often ignored till it manifests itself..
Often brushed aside till it threatens..
Define human beings..
*****
It was loads of spring cleaning, necessary shopping and more dreadful reunions.
CNY approached and left me a sick glutton..
Was it really worth it to go through so much hassle for CNY?
After all these gone,
What's really left?
And yes, they are gone.
I refused to make resolutions.
I refused to start anew to a seemingly brand new year..
Enough of living in self delusions.
I grew so tired of life..
Fatigue drudgery pessimism
Linked, interchangeable, complimentary.
The festive seasons ironically made me feel the melancholy more than before..
Double attack..
The mental turmoil and the physical drain.
Both days almost had me reduced to nothingness..
PAIN
Sitting on the couch at my aunt's place, trying to manage a smile and show interest.
But what really went on in me were splitting head thumps and horrendous stomach cramps..
On the verge of crying..
Insomnia
Turning and tossing
My mind boggled with the day’s events..
Suddenly I smiled, suddenly I cringed and I forced myself to relax..
When the drift finally came so close, a thought dashed into my temple and I was jolted, once again awake.
Sub-consciously I felt daddy switch off the lights..
I thought to myself in that dreamlike state..
Oh gosh what time was it?
As I squeezed my eyes shut to sleep, I was mindful of the strain in my eye sockets..
My eyeballs were still moving when the alarm rang..
Did I sleep?
Nope.
The fever’s gone somehow and I mistook the drowsiness to be a usual early morning dread of being forced awake..
Till the floating delirium I felt in office the moments I was on my two wobbly feet.
Was home in no time.
The fever’s well gone for a proper clinic check up.
I really knew naught what to tell the staring face back at me what exactly was wrong with me..
Till she commented that my face was void of colors.
Oh well..
There is this side of me that continuously reprimands myself for allowing myself to fall sick..
The other side of me?
Simply tired.
At that point in time..
I need all the 祝你身体健康 possible..
Cos it sucked not having the energy to go about the daily life..
Felt awful when there was an insane tug on the mental mind at the same time when the physical state crumbled to deterioration.
Relatives
Left me thinking who they really are unmasked..
Social gatherings made me feel uneasy.
Nope definitely not in a state to mingle around.
Adult questions.
As usual buzzed through and meaninglessly never end..
There was no reason to feel pissed but I am.
I gave an equally ambiguous answer that I knew it would torment them..
Did it torture them?
Oh yes, cos they went asking my mom about it.
And I sadistically derived joy from that.
People should always know what questions to ask and when to stop.
Human beings are born to be able to think intellectually.
That includes EQ.
I have very very low tolerance for such mindless people.
Dont ask for the sake of asking the same thing every year..
Dont comment for the sake of it.
Make useful statements, share valuable experiences..
Tell me something that I do not know, inspire me a little on lost life.
Let me grasp the subtlety myself.
Human communication
I thought this is what it should be worth.
*****
Twenty years back..
I was sitting in my favourite position..
In a circle facing the rest of my fellow classmates..
Playing a much anticipated game every time I went to kindergarten class..
A class of twenty plus six-year-olds.
Madam Teo was there alright..
We were all waiting for her to "announce" the game..
Did she ask anyone for their hankerchiefs?
Or did she place a pack of cards in the middle of the circle?
None.
She explained the game.
She would start phrasing a sentence to the first classmate at the beginning of the "circle"..
And then the sentence was supposed to be passed down each and everyone..
Mouth to ear till it reached the last person on the circle.
If we all got the message right at the end of all, we would be given goodies each.
We did that thrice..
But every time,
Foreheads crunched up somewhere and eyes went bulging...
I could not get what the person before me was trying to convey and I did not know what to tell the person next to me..
At the end of it all,
It really amused us how the teacher's words could be distorted into some ermm weird languages..
*****
Art thou Communicator?
Who says human beings are the masters of communication?
Though human species are blessed with the power to think, they do think too much..
From elective listening, to deciphering the meaning and then selectively passing on information..
The end result will of course turn out differently from its source of intended motive.
I was a little mortified what I heard from her and him came up in different versions.
Sighz..
*****
irony @
4:22 PM
