The following extract is taken from Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Dr. Juvenal Urbino is about to catch his pet parrot which escaped.

"Santismo Sacramento!" she shrieked. "You'll kill yourself!"

Dr. Urbino caught the parrot with a triumphant sigh: ca y est. But he released him immediately because the ladder slipped from under his feet and for an instant he was suspended in air and then he realized that he had died without Communion, without time to repent or say goodbye to anyone, at seven minutes after four on Pentecost Sunday.

Fermina Daza was in the kitchen tasting the soup for supper when she heard Digna Pardo's horrified shriek and the shouting of the servants and then of the entire neighborhood. She dropped the tasting spoon and tried her best to run despite the invincible weight of her age, screaming like a madwoman without knowing yet what had happened under the mango leaves, and her heart jumped inside her ribs when she saw her man lying on his back in the mud, dead to this life but resisting death's final blow for one last minute so that she would have enough time to come to him. He recognized her despite the uproar, through his tears of unrepeatable sorrow at dying without her, and he looked at her for the last and final time with eyes more luminous, more grief-stricken, more grateful than she had ever seen them in half a century of a shared life, and he managed to say to her with his last breath:

"Only God knows how much I loved you."

+ posted by M @ 5:18 PM

...	Monday, July 21, 2003

disappointed. that's how i've been feeling lately and that's how i felt today.

angela kept making digs at the CO girls throughout the whole weekend, and basically she does it all the time. i thought they would prove her wrong. i thought they would prove that they were actually thinking, sensible individuals. i guess i was wrong.

the minute the presentation started they decided to give angela a hard time and i could see the word 'disinterested' written all over their faces. angela can be annoying, but must you make her more nervous than she already is? my disappointment was more than just them acting catty, it was because they just didn't seem to want to hear what we had to say.

maybe our paper wasn't as interesting as i thought it was, although when i was writing it i really felt it was worth listening to and reading. bea says that perhaps they didn't bother to listen because they felt it wasn't important or exam-related, but that's not how i feel literature should be. is literature about exams? this may sound silly, but i was so into the literature symposium because i thought it would really be grounds where all of us could exchange views and discuss ideas about literature - be it julius caesar, oedipus rex or 1984.

i guess i want people to love it as much as mr tang wants us to love physics, and i can understand his disappointment now when he checks his website frequently and finds that we really don't care.

i think i'm asking too much. i can't expect everyone to be passionate about literature, i can't expect them to want to listen and learn about non-examined material, and i think i just can't expect them to think. but i'm so disappointed because these CO girls are actually nice. i know some of them, they say hi to me sometimes, including anne marie. and i wonder when i present if they're going to treat me the same way they did angela.

we're all ruled by prejudice.

i'm disappointed in myself for various reasons. my grades haven't been stellar even though i said i'd try harder - but i'm not. i'm still slacking, still falling asleep, still not clearing my room. and all i can think of is wanting to get away from this 'air-conditioned' society. i'm disappointed in myself because i haven't been thinking more about others.

today my dad fainted. i wasn't even there because i was sleeping in my room when i was supposed to be studying physics. i heard faith crying her loudest ever, but i just dismissed it as one of her tantrums and went back to sleep. what if anne hadn't been there? then none of them would have been able to call my mom and relay the message to her properly. and it would all have been because i was so indifferent to my baby sister's cries. he's fine now, his doctor friends came over to see him. he was just feeling faint because he hadn't eaten the whole day and he went for his fitness test today. but if he'd gone without me even being there, i would never be able to forgive myself. i think i've been a very lousy daughter, only feeling angsty and not doing anything to help myself. only wallowing in my own depression and self-pity and not thinking about how hard my dad works. and just ignoring him whenever he tells me very kindly to study.

i'm also disappointed in some of my friends. the way they don't seem to treasure my friendship at all makes me feel so unimportant to them. i'm disappointed that none of my friendships have ever really worked out. i'm disappointed that they remain superficial. but what right do i have to be disappointed? in fact, do any of us have a right to be disappointed?

why do we get disappointed? maybe because we expected something that was never there in the first place.

+ posted by M @ 8:18 PM

...	Friday, July 18, 2003

so you are a sly crafty old rat, aren't you? that is using the literary language from my training as a literature student.

evil as it sounds, i found the RJC Teacher Terror clip quite funny because the teacher sounded so incredibly unprofessional and ridiculous.

download it from kazaa and watch it. she's not as bad as the newspapers have made her out to be, but i think i would have died if i were the student. the boy simply stood there, unable to say anything while she railed at him and tore his homework twice. i would have broken down and cried, and this was in front of the whole class.

the education fraternity are trying to cover up by reasoning that we do not know what has been happening previously, and they think she has simply been caught on a 'bad day'. but why would a student just choose to record it on that day? it is obvious he has planned it already because they were probably fed up with her tyrannical behaviour which has been on-going from 'day 1 to day 100', as ms beh says.

i used to want to be a teacher, i dreamt of teaching literature and english. but looking at myself and some students around me who tend to be half-dead during classes has killed that dream. i suppose i'm not the kind of person who will try and emulate the scenarios that went on in Dead Poet's Society, Dangerous Minds or even Boston Public for that matter. don't get me started on moulmein high because i am sure that things like that never happen here.

i really like reading the newspapers, although i end up feeling depressed after that. i think of small kids, who just take things at face value, but now i see that people stage events, or claim to be guilty just to win the law case. i have learnt to question everything i read, to look deeper for hints of personal agenda and reason with myself.

mrs quek would be so proud.

today i sat down and started reading the article about Dr Kelly, who committed suicide. i'm beginning to wonder if he was murdered - the world of politicians reeks of blood and corruption.

my mom kept wanting me to read about the whizz kid who completed his bachelors,masters and PhD in five years. frankly i couldn't care less, i sat there in quiet defiance, silently reading the UK-Iraq article. i don't aspire to be him or anything like him - 'i don't waste my time doing stupid things like chatting on ICQ or surfing the net for no reason' well i like doing stupid things sometimes, thank you very much.[foolish as this makes me sound]

jenny always talks of francine or various model students parents would love to have of their kids, and i'm sure dr chua is one of them. but why do an article on him? is he that admirable? he knows how to study, he's 23 with a six-figure salary - but, why? what's he doing this for? so he can drive a merc and live in a big house? situations like these always bring to mind what ms ma has said. why do we do all these things? why do we want to score nine A1s and get a scholarship? why? will it make us better people? in fact, why do i want to get 6A1s? to get to a good jc and.. for what? so i can get away from here and study in UK... for what? i guess i just want to get away and going away to study is the only way my parents will let me go.

so i wonder why dr chua wants to do all these things. what is his dream? to make a lot of money? maybe i shouldn't judge, i shouldn't blame him for being made out to be a god.

i always believe that our media exists to give us what we want to see. after all they've got to make sure their ideas sell don't they? so why do they print such articles? because it interests us. and because we love people like him - they're so "zai". because singaporeans just love this fantasy of being rich and successful. and what do they mean by successful? by drowning in money and eating gold. by getting first class honors in everything.

its so easy to satisfy us, isn't it. just give us some money, and some good grades and we're happy.

+ posted by M @ 11:31 PM

...	Sunday, July 06, 2003

Sometimes it happens, feelings die,
Whole years are lost in the blink of an eye
We once had it all but events conspired
Sometimes
Saturn's decline in my star sign
Seasonal adjustments, stars realign
Sometimes it happens, feelings die
Sometimes, sometimes

- Sometimes, Ash

what makes something precious?

i remember last year, i really wanted a pair of limited adition adidas all white superstars. and naturally everyone i could tell knew because i was whinging on and on about how i couldn't find them anywhere. well, it happened to be around the same time as my birthday. and two parties actually tried getting me those shoes. the four of them [jas,yings,yilin,jen] and someone else. someone else got me a necklace instead, which i have misplaced. well, the four of them did hilarious things to try and measure my foot size. i have forgotten what they did. and although they got me a completely different pair of shoes [psychedelic reeboks], like andre said, "it wasn't what i wanted, but exactly what i wanted."

something is precious not because of what it is, how much it costs or the fact that it has a branded tag attached to it. we keep these things as a visible reminder. and i am afraid i'll forget, that i'll forget all the good times we had and all the tears i cried. i may have written a poem about not needing to preserve material things [memory] but the truth is, i'm just as insecure as anyone about my ability to remember. i've never experienced this before, but i suppose a gift becomes even more precious when the person who gave it is gone.

maybe sometimes its not just enough to live with the cliche "i'm not gone, i'm always with you in your heart". we always want something we can touch, feel or smell that reminds us of the person. just to make sure he/she actually existed before they vanished beyond human sight. the way she threaded the beads through to make a bracelet for you, or the way he'd feel when you hugged him in his suit or her scent when she went out for dinners.

these aren't just memories kept in mind, but in the heart as well. memories are the essence of a person - as long as one is not forgotten, one lives on. so is it better to forget or to remember? with forgetting, we will forget all the good as well, and with remembrance, we will remember all the bad. we can't have the best of both worlds, just like how people who convince themselves that shutting themselves out will save them emotionally.

material things don't recapture the essence of the person, we keep them because of the emotional price tag a person has attached to it. what makes a person? what is essence? does it have to do with what they look like? what they like? what they say? i still don't know.

the song up there is by ash, a good band i just discovered today while watching mtv. maybe i'm a bit slow, but i think they make pretty good music. that song reminded me a lot of julius caesar too [am currently doing powerpoint for the lit seminar].

+ posted by M @ 4:18 PM