hmm.
(imma write in caps so it seems slightly more professional.)

Haha I know I've talked about this countless times before, near spent an entire school year composing poems about it last year when I wasn't trying to counter the problem itself, but the fact remains that the problem still exists and it's p*ss*ng my *ss *ff. (Woohoo if only it could! Then I wouldn't be desperately doing laps in the swimming pool every week in a futile effort to level down my two glutinous maximus-es. T_T) And if I already ain't being obvious enough, 'tis the workload of the Suffering Singapore School Student I'm talking about here. I'm writing now with the intent of some professional taking a professional break from his profession and unprofessionally browsing through blogs and coming across this (hopefully! :D) professional-looking complaint against the extremely professional professionals up there who profess to be professionals at education but in reality are naught but professional killers. ^^

How goes this? Well, it's all a really elaborate flim-flam. I mean, their means of torturing us is really so delicate and subtle that one really doesn't realise one is being tortured till one is quite, quite dead. It's something in the way of making one so busy in trying to keep one's head above the water that one doesn't realise one is already drowning anyway. T_T How devious. How very, very cunning.

I wonder how the Singapore government feels about everything? About how Singapore ranks 131st out of around 180 or so countries in terms of happiness? About how there's a constant leak of what little talent Singapore has and needs through mass immigration? -by the way, doesn't that already seem like a kind of exodus to you? Kinda like the Israelites right. Fleeing from a place where slavedrivers (the monarchy, you know what I'm talking about) whip at the Israelites (we the poor oppressed citizens of Singapore) across a sea (that could mean anywhere) to a place flowing with milk and honey (doesn't really narrow down the list of countries who fit the criteria either; just that Singapore's definitely not on the list, cuz we're renowned for not having anything in the way of natural resources).

I read about how teenagers these days are all supposed to be weak and frail and unable to do housework and unable to hold up to wind or rain and basically unable to do anything other than spend money, eat money, wipe their asses with money etc. And I get really, really really really peeved. I mean, yeah I got over this bout of peevishness a long time ago for the sake of not foolishly disagreeing with everything that the Chinese exam papers throw at us (newspapers have often reported that teenagers now are rather like strawberries [?!] - pretty, but weak - what are your views?), but that doesn't mean I do agree with what the papers say. Heck the papers man. Take a peek into the living hell we teenagers, whom, I deign to remind you at this point, hold the purse strings of your future CPF savings and are going to decide whether you get your upgraded lifts or not - and see what we really go through.

1) Pressure to do well, do VERY well indeed, for our O and A levels and even just PSLE. Probably because Singapore doesn't have enough land space to build more universities, it isn't enough to snag a couple of As for our As, to get into any university at all. So we tread the water like mad, our arms and legs whirring like clockwork through the turbulent water, just to take one gasp at the end of Os, after which we plunge back into the murky depths in JC and and resurface to fill our lungs with life-giving air again, and this cycle just continues until - we think! the end of our education. Oooooh, but haven't you heard? LIFELONG LEARNING is all the rage now! So that means our education continues past our prime, past our menopausal stage and carries us all the way past our golden ages and back down... into the grave. What ho! And there's one Singaporean life, just one more sacrifice for the good of our Great and Glorious Empire.

And do we hold up to the pressure? Oh boy, do we. Day after day we ask ourselves, what's the point of carrying on? Well, at this point, another wave sweeps us back down and we're reduced to struggling for survival again, or we pacify ourselves with the smaller joys of life - chocolate, ben and jerrys, or - for the more sophisticated ones ^^ - looking at pictures of Lee Joon Ki and, for others, a certain Jae Joong. And they tell us that we don't know how to be happy? I'm telling you, Singaporeans are the best at understanding what it is to be happy. Scrap a high-ranking job with a high salary and yearly bonus. Scrap the swanky new Mercedes you're going to drive to your disgustingly opulent office everyday. Scrap the 10-course dinner you plan to eat every night of your future prosperous life. I'll tell you what happiness is. Happpiness is getting a smile from a stranger. It's sharing a joke with your friends. It's rejoicing over the fact that the canteen stall has restocked its sausage buns (nothing dirty here). We don't (okay sometimes we do, but mostly we don't) get upset that we didn't get A1 for a subject. Rather we pop the champagne when we don't fail. Happiness is having one day, just one, in which we don't have homework to do. Happiness is looking forward to eating nasi padang during recess. Happiness can even be found in knowing that you've got about ten other people battling the z-monster the night before a major exam, fighting the same fight as you are, laughing over everyone's morbid plight together. Happiness is everywhere, and most of all it's on top of the education system.

And we've perfected this to an art-form. Because we know we're never going to get out of this vicious cycle of Lifelong Learning till we die. So we pull up our socks, tighten our belts, and sacrifice our sleep, our meals, our body to Contribute Towards Society.

2) Say that we don't know how to do housework? Oh puh-leez, newspapers. Every one of us who can stand up, see lightning, hear thunder, and run away screaming and flailing our arms can do housework. It's all a matter of determination. How much skill does it take to pick up a broom and move it in a rhythmic motion to get the dust all over our neighbours' doormat? Now the thing that really gets me here is that, although we teenagers are part superhuman and we can not eat and not sleep and not bathe and still call ourselves a civilised human while we slog away at our homework in the dead of the night, we're still part human and I wish somebody'd remember that. For heaven's sake, ask yourselves this question! Do you want us to A) contribute towards society or b) do housework? What the bloody hell is your problem man? You can't have everything in life. That's why so many of you are unhappy. Learn to be happy with just A or B! Didn't your teachers ever teach you that when you shade your OAS, you can only shade ONE lozenge? Otherwise, if you shade two, you'll get the WHOLE QUESTION WRONG. Now that's exactly where you're going. Choose one, kids, and leave the gobstoppers alone!

And from the fact that we just don't happen to think housework is a very high priority in our lives, you go on to conclude that we a) can't be independent b) are self-centred c) take things for granted etc, etc, etc... There's a whole long list of four-worded Chinese idioms just to describe how bad and decadent teenagers these days are. Personally I disagree with every single one of them. Singaporean teenagers do NOT grow up to be teenagers with characters or personalities like that. It's a human-eat-human world out there, and boy do we know that. As a Singaporean teenager, you fight the war on many fronts. You deal with misunderstanding parents. You deal with teachers who think their subject is the most important among all the subjects you take. You deal with CCA teachers who think that CCA is the most important thing among all your other school commitments. You deal with teachers who think that the school projects they're heading are more important than everything else! You deal with bubble tea shop keepers who have a bad command of the English language and mistake your vanilla order for a banana order. You deal with police officers coming to your school to conduct talks about how you should please not get into crimes during the holidays and make things difficult for them when obviously we don't have ANYTHING, anything at all in the way of holidays. Holidays are an illusion. (But we'll get back to that later.) And of course, you have to deal with other teenagers who are sharing the same breathing space as you and one day you're going to have to clamber all over or end up as a stepping stone to that other person's success. And obviously the people-relationship thing is just ONE part of it. Did I mention that everyday, everynight, everytwilight, we slog away at our workloads, hacking away at an unassailable granite surface? Did I mention that we, as teenagers, especially those 15 years and older, have conquered all these to come thus far? Do you really think that we, especially this generation, who are the transition between the modern and the traditional, could possibly have clawed our way to this point in our lives without having some kind of skill? Some kind of survival instinct? Some kind of independence? Some kind of perseverance? Determination? Everything you say that we don't have.

Bite your tongue!

3) On top of all this, which heaven knows is already more than enough, we also have to deal with people saying that we can't deal with all these, which happens to be the main target I'm aiming this barrage at. Mmmhmm, we'll dissolve at the slightest hint of a light summer's breeze. Totally man. I worry for this country's future if you all really think that, since the society makes the man, doesn't it? Just one nice thing you could do for us, perhaps, is to FINALLY get down to making those stickers in the public buses which tell us to please give up these seats to those who need them. As in, those who really need them. Just add in a picture of a student with a heavy, bulging bag, arms nerdily overflowing with books and files, and you'll do fine.

man tha felt really good. well it's 4 am and imma go bed now.
SLEEP TIGHT ALL YE TEENAGERS OF THE WORLD!
and those teenagers at heart. :D

ILYALL;
the Darkening Dawn.

woohoo~ had a pretty awesome day at church yesterday! haha in the absence of the teacher, everyone totally opened up and we found out some pretty O_O facts about some of the really quiet peeps. like, the totally quietest girl in my class (nondescript, jeans and short - the works)... PLAYS IN THE GUY'S BASKETBALL TEAM IN HER SCHOOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHH -handpicked by her pe teacher k! the ONLY girl in the team! and on top of that she plays SOCCER and and NETBALL and BADMINTON. double wo-oh! haha and the two people in my class whom everyone knows are like the stereotypical loud sporty type, were like

can stop being so mysterious or not.
AHAHAHAHAHA hoozah go ruth! (:

O LEVEL CHINESE IN TWO. DAYS'. TIME.
then.
freedom!!!! -yea---ahh, no.
not really. ¬_¬ thanks again to stong's wonderfully dreamt up plan to destroy ALL the remaining vestiges of our holidays. T_T at this rate, the next time we're going to have our head above the waves is sometime after the O levels next year. T_T

calloo callay! oh frabjous day! -he chortled in his joy.

T_T

does God love humans better than angels, i wonder?

mm jiayou to everyone! for whatever endeavours they're doing now. (: enjoy yourselves ^^

Cheers,
the Darkening Dawn

I can't stand being human.

Everything we do is tainted by our emotions, limited by our weakness, contaminated by our needs and desires that are our driving force in the first place.

The world is going to the dumps because it's overrun by humans. And even I, a human, can't be bothered to do anything about it.

Instead of focussing all my efforts on something worthwhile like stopping global warming (which obviously isn't going to be stopped in case the world hasn't noticed yet - that's when the end times will come), my stupid human nature is just really freaking pissed off at another human. Damn the way human's troubles spring from humans themselves, and create trouble for other living things as well. Sometimes I wonder why God considers humans more gain than pain. If I were Him, I'd have demolished everything, everything - not just a once-off outpouring of water on the earth - but really destroyed everything and started again.

That's the best evidence that there has to be, that there is some good in everyone. Otherwise why would an almighty God who could amuse Himself with thunder and lightning at the slightest flick of His little finger go through so much trouble and so much pain to redeem broken goods?

But of course no one cares about this, right? We're enjoying our hedonistic way of life, we're happy just killing off ourselves softly, gradually, eventually. We even decry the sad state of the world and we think that's cool. Oh yeah, where is the love? Where is the love, yo mama? All fine and dandy, but what are YOU gonna do about it? No, we wouldn't ever give up our twisted, oxymoronic, ironic bittersweet way of living. We go all philosophic and sigh and shake our heads and utter cliches like "Life is hard" "Life is unfair" "Life is meaningless" "Life, life, life." Then of course the more advanced ones pull their black hoods over their heads, scrawl skulls and chains and bloody roses all over their bodies and go and sulk in the corner. Thus came emo, the modern philosophy!

Or maybe all this is bullcrap and it's just the fact that I'm really, really, really pissed at a few people that's causing this whole outflow of seemingly logical, sad truths. Maybe I'm just being emo myself.

Oh dear. I really hate being human.

Shall I bring it further? Hmm, did I mention that I've got multiple personalities and it's screwing up quite a lot of my carefully planned real-life episodes. I just can't decide whether to be a swashbuckling sam seng, a mysterious maniac, an aloof intellectual, a total swaku, an obscene-minded smouldering individual (keep dreaming, Jaime Liew) or a demure matyr.

The obvious answer, I suppose, would be to do all at one go and coin the Jaime Liew Multi-Personality Phenomena. But then again, like all things Jaime Liew, it's impossibly hard to maintain at all times and will be ignored and left alone after a while.

How?

And all that ranting really hasn't done anything to dispel that chestful of dirty water. And I can't complain, because then I'll feel like a total sulky weakling who can't take on anything at all. But it's been going on for some time - the entire year, in fact, on and off - and well - see I'm making excuses for my pathetic self again. Alright you know what. I'm just going to take the only sure course in this whole screwed up medley of life.

Imma try to be the best Christian possible, and when the day of judgement comes then please Lord, let person X know how much pain and internal struggle she caused me at a time when I really didn't need it. As for person Y, her normal kindness and loveliness cancels everything out I guess. For person Z, I hope I'm not asking too much to just let her know that sometimes her sarcasm really cuts and her unprofessionalism really didn't make my day at all. And for myself, I really need to know how to improve such that I don't affect others the way X, Y and Z's less finer points affect me. And dear Lord, please tell me before my Japan trip so I won't offend anyone on that side of the border. Thanks a gazillion. Without You holding up the earth on Your shoulders, we'd probably be sitting in a pile of platonic rubble now.

I'm dreaming more about my Carribean island even more everyday. It's like I've got a picture of home (to quote Bat) in my head and I just really wanna go home and leave it all behind. And go home with my family, the ones I count as my beloved. Dear Lord, I just really, really, really want to go home.

So for tomorrow, I'm not going to be angry at... her. One resolution at a time. I'm going to let her know that I really love her when she isn't being a total asshole and Imma try and encourage her when she starts again about that workload. And I'm going to try not to shut her out when she goes on about it. And perhaps it'll really work as Jesus said and she'll do unto me what I'm trying to do unto her and maybe we'll actually have a happy ending.

It's worth hoping for.

When that happens I'm going to try and pretend I don't have a body and I only have a soul and everyone can see how blackened it is by my weaknesses and also see whatever pretty parts of it I may have too. Then people will judge me solely by my soul and my body will just be a shell to hold it.

Won't that be nice, too? Not having to worry about what to dress up the body in.

Alright 'mma go bed now.

You take care and have fun, everybody.
Don't think too much. (Nice example there, Jaime Liew T_T)

Ever,
the Darkening Dawn.

sometimes i just feel like giving up all my plans for world domination and living in a small windy hut on a white sandy beach and look at a crystal clear sapphire sea everyday. with about three people with me, and serenity all around. no more school, no more worrying about politics and money and everything the body needs. oh, and a plot of land to grow the stuff that unfortunately, the body can't live without.

and then one day the four of us would sail off in a self-made yatch and keep on sailing and sailing and the sea would go on forever and then we'd see the sunset touch the horizon, which we never get to see in Singapore, and we'd sail to the end of the world and live there, and wait for the coming of the King.

isn't that what we're all working towards? true contentment. is that why we work so hard for the money? to buy the island? to get away from everybody else?

if only everyone could just give up money and status and power and everything that puts others down at the expense of others, and everyone would disperse to whatever parts of the world they wanted to live in and we'd be back to pre-historic times, only with intelligence enough to preserve the environment and get what we need at the same time. no more wasting time inventing wheels or learning to create fires.

now that's called living.

It's. Over.
Thanks to everyone who 1) Put up with my constant "Imma fail, imma fail" 2) Helped me out with studiation sessions, and 3) Gave me constant encouragement and telling me it's okay to fail! (:

Hahaha this includes:
Buddy who always found time to help me out with my maths questions, and was even so nice as to pretend that it was all for relaxation.
Mommy who said it was okay to fail. I believe you.
Shuyi who gave us cereal and a note all the way from NJ! If you ever read this, I LOVE YOU ALWAYS.
Sandra who went through it all with me.
Boss who endured all my down moments, and made my day everyday you walked back with me.
Bat who was my Chem Counsellor and made time for me all the time. (: you'll grow up soon Bat. I have faith in you.
3T for being the mugger class! (: So that I didn't find it embarrassing to have copious notes of this and that all over the place. And for being there all the time, and for being so patient with an idiot ass. chairman.
Everyone else who secretly prayed for me and went "go Jaime" behind my back, for reasons unknown but THANKS ANYWAY.

What would I do without you man?
(Ans: Retain.) KIDDING XD

OKAY DOODS ENJOY YOURSELVES.
SEC2 SLS YOU GUYS HAD BETTER ENJOY YOUR CAMP.
Liana Chek I still hate myself for supporting you in insisting on a full games trial this coming Friday. *swears*
Gayle Sim I really miss you in MG. ):
DADDY COME HOME SOON. ):

- special post -

BUDDY. Your As are coming up! Haha yes I know you feel the pressure, but that's not what I meant! I meant your FOUR As ARE COMING YOUR WAY. YES ALL THE WAY BUDD! I BELIEVE IN YOU!

And I don't want you to become a teacher. ): But if you really want to, I'll be a phone call away if your students start chucking paper balls at you ):

So anyway!
Psalm 91:10-12 No evil shall befall you, no scourge come near your tent for He will give His angels charge of you to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up lest you dash your foot against a stone.

Well if you aren't even allowed to stub your toe on a pebble, As can hardly do anything to you man! Especially since you're such an angel, I'm sure your kindred will be all the more motivated to protect you man (:

Okay STRIVE ON!
:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D

TO EVERYONE ELSE:
A belated Selamat Hari Raya!

And really, I meant it when I said enjoy yourselves. It's an art. Needs practice. So go all out and practice this lifeskill now! NOW!

Otherwise Singapore will be the land of 4 million sad faces ):

HOORAY I'M GOING OUT TOMORROW. THANKS MOMMY ((((:

I LOVE YOU ALL!
I really do.

hahahahahaha ^^
Ever, the DARKENING DAWN.

a brief note from the battlefield -

hey all. i'm not supposed to be blogging now but HEY! HISTORY'S OVER! =O Therefore in lieu of the "history hiatus" and the "english escape", i'm blogging. (:

okay this extremely short postscript is not going to give anyone the faintest idea of the magnitude of the art nightmare. so i'm not going to try. yet. (such great deeds in history must, after all, be chronicled at some point or another in time)

mm anyway all i'm going to say at this point is:

To everyone out there fighting for their lives, strive on. We have four more days of battle to go! WHEEE~~~
end-of-end-of-years loom close by! (:

/and thank you Lord for the constant saving of my soul. That my brain hasn't fizzed out yet, and it's still going strong ^^ and that my last-minute cramming for history was exactly the question that came out! That was totally awesome, THANK YOU LORD. oh yeah, and that we managed to find out about the new SBQ scheme despite somebody not teaching it to us. Thanks./

"And I press on towards the goal..."

See ya everyone! Thanks to everyone who shared in my history horrors and endured my mad raving and prayed about it. Thanks ya'll. And thanks to those who said they hoped I wouldn't die during history too (yeah I know you didn't say it aloud but what with all the cautious hugs, over-cheery "you can do it!"s, well y'know actions speak louder than words... heh.).

Ever,
the Darkening Dawn

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