March 30, 2005

Me? Morbid?!

I've been accused of being morbid (yes, all you people - you know who you are). I was actually gunning for deep and profound but obviously, that backfired. In retrospect, I suppose I have been a tad morbid, so in order to counter the impression that I have made, I will now wax lyrical about bright, happy and cheery things like ...

... pretty daisies, little puppies, chocolate chip cookies, teddy bears, sugar doughnuts, raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens ....

Ah, I have been liberated from the shackles of morbidity ... rainbows, sunny skies, chirpy birds ... Thanks guys, I really should've done this sooner. Now if you'll excuse me, I think the Brady Bunch is back on ...

March 28, 2005

Revelations of a Hot Potato: The final OLA


The love potato
Originally uploaded by Edwinek.
9.00am:
Someone flicks on the light switch. Loud groans are heard throughout the office. To keep office interior as dim and romantic as possible, we shut the blinds and keep lights to a minimum. We are accused of being vampires but we don't bat an eyelash. Dark and silent, office begins to vaguely resemble the inside of a hearse.

9.10am:
Willow (in whiny voice): Play something.
Jess Je (hereafter known as JJ): Can I play The Bongo-Bong Song?

Known for her strange penchant for songs like Last Christmas, The Bongo-Bong Song and other hypnotic tunes, we have learned and know better than to give JJ free reign when it comes to music selection.

Willow: Absolutely not. Let's play some jazz.
Self-proclaimed goddess (hereafter known as SPG): I know. We can play Maroon 5!
Willow (thrilled): Yes yes.
SPG: Okay, okay, we'll play it over and over and over again then. [Loud cheers all around]

9.30am:
Songs About Jane is playing repeatedly in the background. We become immersed in our work. We spend the better portion of the morning arguing over topics such as the ugliest celebrity of the week, most annoying talk show host, how in the world Mario could quit American Idol and which reality show contestant we'd like to see crushed under the wheels of a cement mixer.

10.30am:
Bear Bear (hereafter known as BB) makes her usual departure for a movie review. We plunge into our habitual rounds of "What movie you going to see?" and "Will you be back soon?" and "Do they have McDonald's where you're going?", after which BB warns us not to mess with her Legolas/Orlando Bloom poster. We nod, wide-eyed.

BB: Lay even a cuticle on it and you will not live to see your grandchildren. Got it?

11.00am:
We hatch a diabolical scheme to dethrone Legolas anyway by replacing him with a humongous poster of Smeagol. We snicker conspiratorially.

SPG: Why are we doing this again?
Willow: We're doing this to get BB all worked up.
SPG: Oh ya. That's right.
Willow: You should really stop the smoking.
SPG: Why?
Willow: Because your memory's beginning to resemble a pile of sludge.
SPG: Oh ya.

SPG: [silence] By the way, what's the date today again?

11.30am:
The Bongo-Bong Song is playing despite our protests. JJ smiles and nods her head to the beat. She is happy.

12.00pm:
Lunch time - always a time of great, yet fruitless, debate. Discussion revolves around where to eat and what to eat ... which is silly because we always end up in Batai where we spend half the time hovering over other people's tables and giving them the evil eye until they surrender their kway teow soup and scramble back to their cars. The rest of the time is spent grumbling over how bloody hot it is and how we should really look for other places for lunch.

1.00pm:
Back in the office, we engage in a lively debate over the big Question Of The Week, which usually includes harbouring fantasies of becoming Brad Pitt's masseuse, fighting the urge to make prank calls to people in other countries and becoming the sex kitten of a filthy rich man.

1.30pm:
We source for content and images from the Net, which lapses occasionally into bouts of playing computer games and checking out websites where people post pictures of themselves in their underwear and masquerade as their pets [note: Doc must never know this].

2.30pm:
BB returns and sees that Legolas has, since her absence, morphed into Smeagol. She is understandably upset. We get real scared and promise never to do it again. She responds by taking out her Tamagotchi and talking tenderly to it. We are puzzled but know better than to push our luck.

3.30pm:
Reading aloud and laughing at contest entries sent in by readers. We make a game of trying to figure out who are deranged and who are not. We decide they're all losers and suggest that we keep the prizes for ourselves and our grandmothers.

5.00pm:
Parting is such sweet sorrow...

Willow: What time you guys planning to leave today?
JJ: I don't know. What time you leaving?
SPG: It depends. What time you leaving?
Willow: I'll leave when you leave.
BB: I'll leave when she leaves.
SPG: [pregnant pause] What are we talking about again?

Pringle with an M is spotted walking towards the door. We indulge in our customary nudge-nudge-wink-wink, "Where are you going? You're wearing orange ... who's the lucky guy, woo-hoo!". We do this every evening in hopes of boosting our collective chances of a real date.

We eventually go home. But some of us sneak back into the office in the middle of the night with our sleeping bag and Ribena bottle. Since we're always connected, we wanna see who else is impersonating their hamster.

March 26, 2005

Giving The Ol' Bucket A Kick


Baby Bunny
Originally uploaded by jonathangrubb.

Thought about death this morning. No. I didn't dash out the front door for a truckload of Panadol or arsenic or a Backstreet Boys CD (apparently, listening to it for a straight 24 hours can and will kill you). I merely contemplated the idea of death. The concept of it. Death meaning to slip into nothingness. To be free from all constraints of life. To be free from worries, expectations, restrictions.

I was fumbling around for my car keys when I suddenly wondered what it would be like to just be ... nothing. Of course, mundane trivialities such as how I would die, how long it would take and how it would physically feel did not make as much as a dent in my ruffled brain. No. Only that it would be pure heaven to not have to deal with the banalities to which I am currently shackled.

Then another thought crossed my mind: If I were dead / nothing / free from life, I wouldn't be able to enjoy the freedom that I now have, would I? Especially since I have now become zilch. I would be free, yes, but I would be too dead to enjoy it. To be free and to be able to savour freedom, I would have to be alive. But to be alive is to not be free. Talk about a no-win situation.

People say death is the coward's way out. I beg to differ. While running away from your problems may seem like an unforgivable act of cowardice, I think this simply refers to defecting to another state or country. Because let's face it, wherever you go, there you are. You can never truly run away from life. As long as you're alive, that is.

But dying isn't running away to another country. You are moving from a state of being to, well ... not being. From existing to ... no longer existing. In this case, there's nothing cowardly about it because the journey to death (some people like to call this suicide) is hardly a cushiony one. And to make the conscious decision to take this journey, despite it being fraught with peril, pain, blood, gore and a slim chance that you might make it out (god forbid) alive and thus, wind up even more miserable than when you first started, I think that takes a handsome amount of guts.

Guts play an even bigger role when you consider folks who decide to off themselves even when they believe in the afterlife. When they believe that this earthly life isn't all that there is. That there's life after death. Which means suicide is wrong. Which means you'll most probably end up in hell being licked by flames and having your eyeballs gouged out with a pitchfork and being subjected to all sorts of things that are very, very ... painful. Which means that death is not exactly a way out of your problems. Rather, it is the beginning of a whole new set of problems that will, unlike your sordid life, last for eternity. Because you cannot kill yourself once you're in the bowels of hell. Hmm. You don't get any more from-the-boiling-pot-into-the-frying-pan than this now, do you?

The big cosmic prank


Why does it seem, at times, that life is out to get us? I’m aware that spouting such sentiments makes me sound like the poster girl for paranoia but bear with me: Is life really out to get us? Is this what life’s all about? A huge cosmic setup whose primary goal is to get us?

Why are we given this human nature and expected to fight against it tooth and nail in order to be deemed upright and acceptable? Why are characteristics such as greed, selfishness and lust built into us when giving into these very impulses is tantamount to committing a grievous sin? Why do we spend a big chunk of our lives at loggerheads with traits that appear to be as natural to us as breathing, eating and sleeping? Why are we condemned when we are unable to overcome the very traits with which we were born through not fault or choice of our own?

When put this way, does it not seem that we are hopeless saps attempting to fight a battle we can never realistically win? The more interesting question might be: why do we even bother trying?

We try because of expectations, I suppose. Expectations from the people around us. We’re expected to do the right thing (which is tough sometimes because what’s really ‘right’ anyway?), feel a certain way and not feel a certain way, say certain things and not say certain things, do certain things and never, ever do certain things. Should we have the audacity to flippantly dismiss these expectations, we will certainly suffer the consequences …

March 21, 2005

Till Death Do Us Part


3263822_1
Originally uploaded by Goodknight.

I'll be brutally honest and confess that I do not understand nor appreciate the concept, the pressure and the hoopla surrounding marriage. Spoke to a friend of mine who claimed that the only valid reason for sentencing yourself to a lifetime of "till death do us part" is kids. If you want kids, it helps for the government to know who made them - at least on paper. It's simply a way of keeping track of where these kids come from. What other conceivable reason can there be for the institution of marriage?

At the risk of sounding hopelessly unromantic and cynical, I must first defend myself by stating that this argument was not bred out of bitterness or cynicism or anything of that sort. To a large extent, I feel that marriage is a concept imposed upon us by society and religion. Because of social pressures and expectations, people are putting on their running shoes and making a mad dash for the altar. I suppose you can argue that no, they do it because they are fueled by love. Well, that statement is flawed because I would take that to mean that every single person who gets hitched does it because they have found The One, and we all know that is simply not true.

Truth be told, at this point in my life, marriage holds little allure for me. If I were to jump onto the bandwagon, it would - to a considerable extent - be because of what society expects of me (society being mother, grandmother and family relatives whose favourite question never rings too far from, "So, found anyone yet?").

I have wondered if I am talking like this simply because I have not found The One. Perhaps once I find The One, I'd be singing a different tune. Perhaps once The One appears in my life, I'd be happily traipsing through every bridal store in town, checking out the gaudy selections of sequined evening gowns and haggling over the price of fruitcake takeaway for the guests. Perhaps when I find The One, my brain will be polluted with nothing but thoughts of screaming pink-faced babies, soiled diapers and the Teletubbies theme song. Perhaps when He comes into my life, I will miraculously rediscover new meaning to my life and find no greater fulfillment than handpicking lint off his clothing and watching him down a gallon of beer in a single masculine gulp. Perhaps.

But since I haven't experienced even the most infinitesimal urge to do these things, it is safe to conclude that I haven't met The One. For now, anyway.

So my point remains: why get married? Doesn't the concept go against every natural human instinct? Forgive me but aren't we humans neophiliacs by nature? Don't we crave the new and exciting? Don't we live by the credo that variety is the spice of life? I mean, we get restless when sitting through a half-hour TV drama, relentlessly channel surfing just to see what else is on. We have about five hundred million different ice-cream flavours. We get sick and tired of the cute little outfit we bought just a week ago. We hop from job to job in scarily rapid succession. Is it just me or is it a tad ludicrous to expect a race this fickle to commit to one single person for the rest of their lives? In essence, what we're doing is swearing to commit ourselves to a lifetime of sameness, of non-variety. A pretty big step especially since most of us can't even stick to the same cellular phone for more than a year.

In this sense, isn't marriage (to put it crudely) similar to buying an electronic gadget? Isn't it a natural human instinct to exchange the current - and therefore, older and crummier - model for something better when the latter comes along? Of course, you can argue that it's utterly ridiculous to compare a spouse to say, a really fancy digital camera with enough features to make grown men salivate. But are the two really all that different? The same impulses kick in, don't they?

So isn't that what marriage really is? Simply a way to make sure we don't give in to what is, at the end of the day, our most basic, natural impulse? Because they know (I confess I have no idea who "they" is) that, left to our own devises, we'd be changing models faster than you can say "in sickness and in health". So, in order to thwart what we would, under very natural circumstances, be very likely to do, they (I confess I still have no idea who "they" is) trap us in this unnatural state where we suffer great bouts of guilt the second we entertain the merest idea of being - dare I say it - bored.

And to think we spend our entire lives attempting to claw our way into such a situation? Scheming and plotting to gain entry into this seemingly hallowed institution? To think that the perceived success or failure of your entire existence can be extricated from your answer to the million dollar question, "You getting married yet?" Is this all that really matters? That you have a rock on your finger and you have somebody to microwave that frozen pizza for?

"Sure she's traveled around the world on a makeshift boat three times and was part of the team that fashioned a sphinx out of chopsticks but does she have a husband to cook and clean for? No!"

The strange thing is, despite how some of us might feel about marriage, we inevitably play right into the whole fiasco. Marriage is like men - you can't live with it, can't live without it (at least you have the knowledge that your family will do everything short of rushing headlong into an elephant stampede to make sure the curse of non-marriage never befalls you). We still want it. For all sorts of reasons. Of course, there are the elite few who would find more fulfillment being chained to a cement mixer than joining the ranks of the ol' ball and chain contingent, but they're a different story all together.

Social conditioning runs deeper than anyone thinks. We've been so psyched into thinking that life is meaningless and purposeless unless we have someone to wake up next to that to be happy is to be married. Even when we may disagree with practically everything we've been brought up to think, we still find ourselves being swept up in the current of popular opinion. To still be single after a certain age is like having the word "loser" stamped across your forehead. The only upside to this predicament is that it saves you the trouble of having to explain why you're still unmarried (which is a good thing since people usually act as if you've just announced that you're planning to dissect a puppy).

Which brings up an interesting point: why in the world do we have to somehow defend ourselves for not being caught up in the ecstatic throes of matrimony? Why is the following question to "are you married?" always "but why?" I think a more fitting scenario would go something like this:

"Are you married?"
"Why yes, I am." Smug smile.
"But why?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"But why are you married?"

Befuddled silence while trying to ascertain true intent of interrogator. Based on previous experience, an answer in the affirmative usually signified the end of the conversation and they would move on to other intellectually challenging topics such as why the tablecloths don't match the upholstery.

"Well, because I love him."
"Uh huh." A glaring lack of conviction can be heard.
"I really do. Besides, we've been dating for eight years and our families were bugging us and we weren't getting any younger and we had these coupons..."
"Uh huh."

When people are interrogated on why they are unmarried, it implies that being unmarried is an unnatural state and being married is whereas we have already pointed out that it very clearly isn't. So what gives? Perhaps it's a numbers game - two are more intimidating than one. It goes without saying that when a married couple (therefore, two people - unless it's one of those bizarre, unorthodox-type marriages) is pitted against a poor, defenseless singleton (one), the duo usually wins. Or perhaps the married couple is floundering in the paralytic state of ennui so badly that anything - even (or especially) the merciless ribbing of an unarmed unmarried individual - can be touted as amusement.

"Are you married?"
"No."
"Why in the world not?"
"Well, I haven't met anyone whom I'd want to touch with a ten-foot pole much less take an oath to spend eternity with."
"Really?" There's so much incredulity that you might as well have told her you were planning to surgically remove your uterus.
"Yes. Really."