It’s Been a Long Time

Bah. I barely look at my blog nowadays. I think it suits my moody and inconsistent personality or something like that. Actually I’m spending more time in the real world now (not that I was stuck on the internet all this while) and jotting down stuff with the more traditional paper and pencil or the occasional ballpoint pen et cetera. It’s a better and faster way to write or scribble down inspirations. But I still find blogging (like this) is a good way to just bitch. So here are some things that annoy me:

1. Overuse of multi-color LEDs on building facades. You see this everywhere. The building walls changes color seamlessly thanks to the new technology. It looks kinda nice if it’s done correctly and only on a few buildings. But the thing is it seems that it’s the IN thing right now and so all around Singapore we see buildings changing color like a discotheque in the 80s. Hell why not add lasers as well. UGLY. OVERDONE. BAD TASTE.

2. Our landlord is selling the house we’re staying in and it seems he’s quite desperate at it. Comon we all know this is exactly not the time to sell a house. Anyway the flat is small, expensive, and the crowd downstairs tend to get a little too rowdy for family living. But it’s located very strategically. A good 2 dozen or so buyers have come and go and it’s still not sold.

What pisses me off the most is that the agents hold the key to the house and on more than 1 occasion, they just let themselves in the house without giving us a call beforehand. So we’re caught sleeping / showering / on bad hair day. The owner is not much better in keeping forgetting to tell us that buyers are coming. I should put up a “trespassers will be shot” sign on the door.

Uhm.. yeah that’s about it for now. Anyway I’m kept quite happy with my weekends. I love my art class and the museum keeps me from wandering aimlessly on weekends.

25 Blah Blah about myself

This thing has been going around Facebook for some time and I got tagged by a friend the other day. So here it is, 25 things about me that you may or may not already know…

1. I’m an only child. So an only child has to entertain herself. I ‘published’ books and tabloids and read it myself for enjoyment. That was before those desktop publishing softwares were in, so everything was printed out MS Word, cut out, laid out, and photocopied. I pretended my articles were world class and intelligent, and my corny jokes funny as hell. Apparently I was full of confidence. One of the earliest books I wrote was about the rabbit who’s afraid of carrots. I think I should’ve went on with it and maybe I’d be rich by now.

2. I love making things with my hands! Anything, really. Be it drawing, origami, writing, photoshopping, assembling IKEA furnitures, you name it.

3. Thing is, I hate cleaning/organising. Everytime I want to start making something, I can only imagine how big a mess I’m going to make and how I will hate cleaning it up. I know where my things are, but I leave them in random piles. Organised mess yes yes. Although I must admit sometimes it’s just a mess, a mess.

4. I’ve loved listening to music even since I can’t remember it. As proof, I have photo evidence of myself on a green potty with headphones on. My earliest memories of popular music was the 80’s stuff my aunt listened to.

5. To be honest, I’m not a big fan of travelling. I don’t REALLY REALLY REALLY want to go on a long trip to somewhere exotic or anything. It’s in my list, but not one of the top items. If I get the chance, I don’t mind. If the world were to end in a year, I can do without travelling far and wide before I die.

6. I think I have relatively good taste. Although this is yet to be confirmed. I hate ugly and tasteless things and wish more people have better taste. Maybe I should stop complaining and start providing solutions.

7. I don’t like money. Yes, that’s right. I like to have enough money to live comfortably, but not luxuriously. Nothing should be done for the money other than to feed myself. Come to think of it, I may be a little allergic to money. But not that bad that I’m gonna start giving out what little cash I have to other people. Haha!

8. I’m basically an introvert. Yes, I like talking and may even be loud and obnoxious around people, but that’s me on overdrive. More of a survival skill. And even then usually I need other people to initiate the talking. I get tired after some time and need time to brood. I get excited when other people are excited. But when I can’t really connect with them, I just stay in the background and let the hype happen.

9. I’m bad at parties. I wish I were better in starting conversations. And sustaining them. Saying hello and talking about the weather is easy enough. It’s hard to keep on after the first few minutes. And I hate awkward silence.

10. On that note, I guess I find many things boring. Maybe that’s why I don’t have many things to talk about usually. Sometimes I’m amazed at how people can be interested in (my opinion) the most mundane things in the world. But maybe that’s what keeps them happy and me uptight.

11. My ideal job would be getting paid for churning out ideas. Be they good, stupid, beautiful, random, impressive, world-saving, or destructive. I will charge by the hour. I will listen to what the client have in mind for the first 15 minutes, and let my brain on the loose for the next few. My second one may be an ugly-detector. Much like expert sommelliers or tobacco sniffers or perfume testers. People bring me things and I tell them if they’re ugly. The things, I mean.

12. I never knew I’d have a degree in Engineering one day. I thought I wanted to be a doctor. Before that I thought I wanted to be a microbiologist. Before that I thought I wanted to be a vet. Somewhere in between I thought I wanted to be an astronaut, a palaeontologist, a designer, and a magician. I still don’t know what’s next.

13. I don’t really like playing favorites. When I determine that something is my favorite anything, I feel the need to be consistent and sometimes to the extent of betraying myself. My favorite things are things that I think are nice.

14. I shower quick, make-up quick (I rarely put anything on my face anyway), but spend most of my time getting ready picking the clothes I’ll wear. I’ll try on different combinations and pick the one that looks best for the day. I don’t have that many clothes, nor am I stylish, but I like to make sure I don’t spend the rest of the day being uncomfortable.

15. After graduating from Uni, I felt lost. I still do.

16. Watching people slurping soft-boiled eggs mixed with pepper and sauce makes my stomach churn. I hate soft boiled eggs. And anything that has a soft, slimy texture. Like okra, or salmon skin. I think they’re gross. If I really have to eat them I’ll just swallow them as fast as I can.

17. I don’t open up too easily. I may make good conversations, but usually they don’t revolve around me. But I find it easier to share with total strangers, compared to people more familiar to me. I like to keep a distance, although close, but still some distance. Some people say this has got to do with being an only child, but I’m not sure.

18. My favorite subject in primary school was science and maths and crafts, in high school it was biology and drawing, in university it was engineering graphics and life science. I kinda liked language/literature, too – when we get to write stories and such. I like things that I can see or imagine, and disliked anything electronics. I couldn’t fathom programming either.

19. I have short attention span and get very tempted by the prospect of new things and projects. In the end I’ll have dozens of things I do at the same time. Luckily I’m not too bad at multitasking. At least not until it reaches some critical point where everything just become one big mess.

20. I abhor organised, repetitive things, even more those that goes on and on and on and on. Examples would be cross-stitching, or repeating the same experiment dozens of times everyday.

21. I hate moving crowds. Like those in shopping malls on weekends. They give me a headache and I’ll feel a little claustrophobic. But I’m alright with them just sitting around, like in a crowded bar or restaurant.

22. I like performing in front of people. That’s one of the reasons why I was in the choir, and now a guide at the museum. Maybe I just like being the centre of attention. And I like spontaneous feedback. Hmm.. maybe I should try streaking next time.

23. If I won a million dollars, I would buy a house. In Singapore, I would be left with nothing much after that.

24. I don’t know if it’s just a nightmare or if it was real. When I was about three I saw a woman’s head coming out of the floor under my grandma’s bed and started following me with her eyes. Or maybe I had too much imagination, or I was hallucinating, but it freaked me out real good. I’m still freaked out.

25. It takes forever to make up my mind.

Stepping Stones

Found an interesting article in an interesting blog, thegrowinglife.com. It’s basically a life-hack / productivity blog, how to stay true to yourself, do what you love, going against the mainstream, and at the same time make a living out of it. A number of the articles written there ring very true to me and brings out new questions that hopefully will help me understand myself more.

So many of us live “stepping stone lives.”? We spend the majority of our waking hours working for goals that are merely stepping stones to other goals. For example:

• We do well in high school so we can get into a good college.
• We do well in college so we can get hired by a good company (or get into a good graduate school).
• We do well at our jobs so we can get even better jobs and make more money.
• We join committees to pad our resumes or impress our bosses.

(Question: what would your life be like if you cut out all the stepping stones?)

Blah

I’ve been in a pretty pessimistic mood lately. I keep questioning everything and most of the time I don’t know the answer to these things and it just makes me more and more pessimistic. Again, I think I’m in an identity/existential crisis. The questions make me feel like whatever I am right now is not what I should be. I’m in the wrong place/ career / faith / etc. I’m not depressed and I hope I won’t sink into depression anytime soon. I’m still functioning quite well, I’m still perky around people most of the time but it’s just these questions keep popping in my head and follow me everywhere, much like a really annoying swarm of mosquitoes. My question is not WHY, but rather WHAT. It’s not exactly the best feeling to have. In the past few years my dreams mostly revolves around never-ending searches for things I don’t even understand, and now it’s like those dreams are coming to reality.

One of my lab’s PhD student writes in his nickname on Gtalk: “Work like you don’t need money”. My first reaction was, yeah rite – if I don’t need money than I don’t even wanna work! That’s the lazy answer, obviously. But of course if I’m doing what I really like / feel I’m born to do / think serves a bigger purpose in life other than a paycheck – well, who wouldn’t work like they don’t need the cash! For now, I can’t even proudly tell people what I actually do. And this is definitely not what I am, nor what defines my identity. If I ever lose my job, I can’t identify with it. An Engineer can say he’s an engineer even if he’s not employed by any firm, or even after he retires. An artist can say he’s an artist all his life. A clergy can say he followed his calling and that is what defines him. A salesman can say he’s a true salesman and he can sell sand to an Arab. And me? I feel like I don’t have an identity at all.

Some people are happy enough doing what they do, working for a monthly paycheck and providing for themselves or their family. I’m not say that’s bad in any way, but I feel like I need to find my own calling, my identity, and can finally confidently and proudly tell people who I am, and can comfort myself, telling myself that I’m not useless, that I do have a place somewhere on earth which serves something good for other. Yes it is my opinion that we can all find happiness inside ourselves, but these questions inevitably came to me, like I woke up one day and then realise that life has a meaning, is this it, is this really good enough for me, that I need to find my own interpretation of the answer to the biggest question in life, and convince myself that I’m not just another filler for the earth’s crust. It’s an overwhelmingly sublime feeling, edging on loneliness. It’s also an overwhelmingly desperate feeling, since I realise that I don’t know where to start, not to mention where to go.

I don’t know if it’s a good sign, that I’m actually looking beyond myself into something bigger, a start to a journey of exploring my own feelings and knowing myself better and hopefully growing into someone wiser and more aware of myself and others. Or maybe that’s a bad sign, that I’m not satisfied with what’s been given to me and this particular journey is indeed pointless. Maybe not everything has to have a meaning. Maybe not every question must have an answer.

I feel like I’m getting old really fast. I need some margaritas for lunch.

(It’s funny, and counter-intuitive, how depressing feelings pushes you to do self-destructing stuff. Drinking. Smoking. Popping pills. Jumping into the subway track. When you’re feeling low, shouldn’t you be watching cartoons or standups or pulling pranks instead? I guess that’s another quirk of the human mind.)

An Emo Note on Not Blogging

Haven’t been in the mood to write anything online the past few weeks. Haven’t even read people’s blogs in a while. Anyway, I’m still alive. I need to do some soul searching (who’s got time to soul search nowadays? I wish there’s an extra 2 hours at the end of the 24 in a day where I can enter a dimension where only me and my thoughts exist). Sometimes I feel like a teenager, since brain experts say that’s the period where people search for their identity. For me, my teenage years was pretty forgettable and smooth-sailing. But now more than 5 years after I was last a teenager, now, I start to seriously think about who I really am. I just hope I won’t start breaking out like teenagers do. Anyways, just some updates:

What I Did:

• 4-day of Tioman Holiday with 5 other friends (fun, with some casualties – itchy bitchy plankton stings)
• Worked on another 2 paintings in art class (1 unfinished still life with jugs, 1 in progress of a green teddy bear)
• Submitted my paper for the museum (a week late)
• Went to Haw Par Villa (weird place with an extra charm after it got semi-abandoned, I actually like it this way)
• Friend’s seafood birthday dinner (polished off everything in 30 minutes flat. looking at the bill we should’ve eaten much. much. slower.)
• Went to Binealle @ South Beach (interesting, somewhat superficial, what local art, but I love love love the abandoned army camp – I’m partial to old, abandoned places, I guess)
• Drew a portrait of my Dad for his birthday (first time in my life I’ve drawn my dad seriously – Mom said he’s got too much hair on his head in the drawing)
• Dropped by SMU for the Indonesian Triple Bill (Oei Hong Djien collection, Nasirun, and Entang Wiharso, I’m partial to Indonesian art)

What I’m Gonna Do:

• Give my maiden museum tour (Jitters jitters)
• Last art class
• Attend tour on Masriadi’s exhibition
• See the City Hall & Marina side of the Bienalle
• Buy some self-help and career guides (20% off Bugis’ Kino for members this weekend)
• Attend the Art Museum’s autumn party
• Submit my entry to Crocs design competition (no inspiration man)
• Oil my rusty drawing hand. I really have to be more serious about this.
• Daydream about wide open spaces, prairies, and mountain tops while filling up Excel spreadsheets in the office

Buzz me if you wanna know more about any of the above.

41 Questions

I was in a taking-a-random-online-personality-quiz kinda mood, so I did so at 41 Questions. It’s a short quiz, basically you answer 41 questions (duh) based on the Myers-Briggs test or something. Here’s my result. I wonder why they only put positive-sounding traits under “personality type”. Haha. I guess it’s gotta with the human tendency to believe more and be less skeptical about positive readings about themselves. That said, I think it’s pretty accurate

Jade’s personality type:

Quiet, serious, sensitive and kind. Do not like conflict and not likely to do things which may generate conflict. Loyal and faithful. Extremely well-developed senses and aesthetic appreciation for beauty. Not interested in leading or controlling others. Flexible and open-minded. Likely to be original and creative. Enjoy the present moment.

Careers that could fit Jade includes:

Artists, musicians, composers, designers, child care workers, social workers, counselors, teachers, veterinarians, forest rangers, naturalists, bookkeepers, carpenters, personal service workers, clerical supervisors, secretaries, dental and medical staffers, waiters and waitresses, chefs, nurses, mechanics, physical therapists, x-ray technicians.