| The New Room. |
[Jul. 17th, 2006|08:54 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  blah | ] |
| [ | music |
| | All That You Have Is Your Soul - Tracy Chapman | ] |
A new trimester.
A new room.
So why do I still feel like everything’s still the same? Maybe it’s the room itself. It feels incomplete, bare. There are so many things that still need to be done here. The room is naturally dark, because of the position of the room itself: on the shaded part of the condominium block that I’m staying in. No matter how bright it is outside, the room still feels gloomy. But it’s something else as well. Something I can’t quite put my finger on.
Maybe it’s the way I arrange my things. Too normal, too mundane. Clothes strewn everywhere, both clean and dirty ones. An unkempt bed. Messy wiring for my PC that I feebly try to hide with careful positioning of the computer table. The move to the new room is very much incomplete, in more ways than one. Try as I might, it seems that I have a natural inability to make my room a cozy place to be. Maybe a carpet would work. Or maybe one of those lamps that cast a soft, sensual orange glow to the room at night.
But I still feel like I’m nowhere near the crux of the matter. I wonder why. Of course, when the place is finally done, you will be among the first ones to know by the pictures I’ll be putting up. Maybe it’ll take a month or two. It takes a while for me to do these kinds of things, so bear with me.
Stay tuned.
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| Like Father, Like Son? |
[Jun. 12th, 2006|10:29 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  contemplative | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Maria of My Soul - Los Lobos | ] |
My father presents a dilemma in my life. To talk with him means to take all my principles and my beliefs and put them in the corner and listen to his explanation about whatever he feels like talking. To say what I feel about something means to incur his wrath. This has been the way I communicate with my father for the past few years, ever since I took the initiative to say what I mean. Obviously, this has not been very beneficial in our relationship. Calls home would be spent mostly talking to my mom, and conversations with my father would revolve around money and studies. This is normal among many families, apparently.
Just because it’s normal doesn’t mean it has to go on that way. People tell me that it’s normal; that men generally have a hard time showing their emotions. My dad tells me that’s how he’s been all his life, and there are better things to be done than wasting time talking to him. I called him stubborn right to his face once; he threatened to throw me out of the house. See, this is the thing: I want to talk to him. He’s my father. As much as I hate him and his decision-making skills at times, the fact that he is my father is an irrefutable fact. I want to know why he thinks what he thinks and why he says what he says. Maybe, that would be the stepping stone for me to understand the man that he is, the man that he has become.
Seeing how my father reacts to things and situations makes me wonder how I would be when I have a family of my own; what kind of father I would become when the time comes. I’ve established, in my head, certain criteria for the father that I wish to become: kind yet firm, open-minded, funny, willing to make a fool of myself in front of my children when the situation calls for it. But then I catch myself thinking like my father; jumping to conclusions, hot-tempered, making assumptions before asking questions. These things are in my thoughts, wondering if I’ll be able to come out of my father’s shadow, to be a different man than he is, forging my own identity.
My dad is a good man, make no mistake about that. Only love for his family would make a man conduct tuition classes after work day after day, coming back close to midnight every night, so that he could gain extra income for the family. Only love for his family would make a man take his sick son to the hospital every night for months on end, without a second thought. That’s my father. But he is also, at times, arrogant. Assertive. Hypocritical. Not open to suggestions or criticism.
That’s called being human, isn’t it?
There is no doubt in my mind that I’ve inherited some (hopefully not all) of his traits, both good and bad. But I don’t want to go through this life always thinking about the inevitable day when my father’s beliefs and my principles clash head-to-head. Boy, there will be complete chaos on that day. And relationships will be changed, probably on a permanent basis. As much as I would like to avoid it, it is inevitable. I pray that I don’t lose him when that day comes.
In the meantime, I guess the only thing I can do is to take it as it comes, criticisms, arguments; the whole package. I wish I could change his mindset, even if just a little, but it takes a person who knows his strengths and his weaknesses to help another person, and unfortunately, I am not that person. Not yet anyway.
He’s my father. In the end, I guess that fact makes it worthwhile.
I hope. |
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| Much Ado About Nothing. |
[Jun. 7th, 2006|11:18 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | blah | ] |
| [ | music |
| | 24 - Jem | ] |
Well, this is an awkward position I’m in. Staring clueless at the monitor, then the keyboard, then the monitor again, wondering how to start putting together the words that will become the catalyst to the torrent of ideas that’s been buzzing in my head for the past few days. Now that I’ve dug out the old laptop (actually I took it out of my father’s car), and have a room to myself, these ideas will bloom into sentences that will miraculously move my fingers to type those keys that will transfer said sentences to the computer. Now, if only real life was as predictable as fiction.
The exams are still going on. Actually, they were over quite a while ago, but my performance on one of the papers was so heart-wrenchingly painful that my to-do list I’ve set up during the break includes studying for the supplementary paper that will take place sometime during the first week of the new trimester. Honestly, I felt the intense urge to throw up after coming out of the exam hall that I went and locked myself up in one of the cubicle and just stared at the wall, then the door, then the toilet bowl. Unfortunately, it was clean, so the feeling of nausea never came out. Thankfully, the other papers were a joy to sit for, and they calmed my otherwise frayed nerves. Imagine, four papers in three days.
Already a week has passed since the semester break started. Nothing much has happened (and I doubt that nothing much will in the days to come), but that is precisely why I came back home: to do absolutely nothing at all. To contend myself with just doing the housework, plopping down in front of the TV and trying to finish Kingdom Hearts II. After the maelstrom that was Trimester 3 (with four subjects, CCIP, and a general feeling of inadequacy), it feels absolutely refreshing to wake up to an empty house, go jogging (and buy my breakfast on the way home), come back, take an ice-cold shower, have said breakfast, and turn on the PS2. After slaving off for 14 weeks, being an absolute slob is an absolute blast.
Being away has a disadvantage though. Well, it depends on how you look at it. It effectively cuts you off from the rest of the world. Of course, it’s not a problem if you watch the news once in a while, or read the papers regularly. But let’s face it. Most students have other things to worry about besides the current affairs. Like Akademi Fantasia, for example. But coming back home to all this drama about misyar marriages and Tamil movie-like theatrics within the MIC; I was flabbergasted. Wow, what a word. It’s been a long time since I used that one. Seems out of place, just like how I felt. Macam katak di bawah tempurung. So many things were going on, yet I was worrying about remembering the Japanese word for office (it’s jimusho).
But I digress. What’s done is done. Besides, it’s not something that has a capacity to overwhelm me, so there’s no point waxing lyrical about it. Plus, I’m not really interested in politics, preferring common sense and rationality instead. I have a blog to resurrect and a game to finish, not to mention a subject to pass and e-mails to write. Common sense and politics never mix (and I seriously doubt that they ever will).
So, gaban means bag, and mainichi means everyday. Got it.
Now, can someone tell me how to get Fenrir for Sora? Seriously, anybody? |
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