QFT

"You do not have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body."

- C.S. Lewis

about the people around you

Longish post! I'm on a mission here, after all.

I want to talk (or rather, type) about the people I miss. Mostly because the holidays have been filled with too little of them, but partly also because I feel that I don't communicate enough with them outside of face-to-face chats and messages about businesslike things. It's not for lack of motivation, it's because I'm just that socially awkward. Yes, even to people who mean the world to me. So... yeah.

First up, I miss Grace. A lot. I haven't seen or spoken to her in ages, and I don't think she even drops by here anymore (heck, no one drops by here anymore, zzz). I wonder if she remembers the time in Form Two when she wanted to call me a totem pole but somehow called me a toomba relic instead. You owe us an outing! And I owe you a story, haha.

It hasn't been as long since I last saw Serene, but it's still been too long. And the last time I saw her wasn't the best of days for either of us, what with our sure-fail Trauma Management test... :( I want a BMT! And you know what, ten years from now I'm gonna go to your hospital and point at the nasal prongs and say that. Heh.

Guatchoo won't ever see this, but I wanna give you a virtual hug anyway. Deep down, Mr Low liked us, I'm sure of it. xD Lol.

My nakama, Zhiyung, will also never see this, but oh well. Ex-aibou, but not ex-nakama eh?

Okay, Pei-hime waltzes in here last because a) she is fashionably late, and b) I was toying with the idea of not including her in this sappy mulch altogether. Don't get me wrong, I do miss you, but somehow I get the feeling that stating it publicly isn't worth the scorn I'll get from you. That, or I might be accused of homosexuality again. Geez.

I guess these're the immediate ones that come to mind. There are others, but I don't think I can quite write about them yet.

As an aside...

I saw a rough draft of a story on an old (think seventeen years of acquaintance) friend's computer recently and it got me thinking about writing shorts again. Seriously, why did I stop? Because it's no longer possible to completely blot out the teacher from my consciousness and write while I'm in class? Or because I am, like I was bound to, finally outgrowing my alternate universe and imaginary friends? Well, I say friends, but I have a feeling my OCs would not like me. Eheh. So I might start again. Might.

You just gotta love Havelock Vetinari.

I am an atheist.

Long post! I'm on a mission to recover my lost ability to write like a human being. Go, me!

Recently, a deviant by the name of yuumei (Wenqing Yan in most other senses of the word), an amazing artist whose dA profile states "Proud to be an atheist", was sent a message that stated

"I love your work and I was hoping we could become friends, but then I saw that you're an atheist and I'm scared of atheists..."

This is, frankly, the stupidest piece of trash I've ever heard on the topic. Scared of atheists? Why? We're not the ones who started witch-hunts. We're not the ones who insist that you'll burn for eternity after you die. We're not going to put you in a bare cell, take away your sacred texts and shove science at you. We're not going to label you as uncivilised and jahil. We're not going to round all the theists up and gas them.

You're afraid of the wrong people, hon. In fact, we atheists are the ones who should be scared - of fanatics like you, who'll do who knows what to us because we aren't proper people like you are.

It's not just a western thing to be so anti-atheist. Two years ago, a certain classmate declared, with absolute certainty, that atheists (like myself, though I'm guessing he didn't know) were disgusting and would burn in hell when they died. Lovely. Look, I know it's never too late to repent and I can be brought to see the light, and I appreciate your concern for my soul, but I just don't see how it is that I can be brought to fear a fire that, to me, does not exist.

This country requires me to state my religion whenever I apply for anything, regardless of how useless this little procedure may be in any other process than that of discrimination. My parents expect me to show my Buddhism whenever the need arises because they don't know about my non-belief, and would not condone it if they knew. It really isn't nice, the feeling of kneeling at the altar and pretending to pray to deities I don't know, all the while thinking "Shit, this incense smoke is killing me and the environment."

I have nothing at all against religion. I just don't want to be forced into it, because I've realised that religion and I simply do not fit. Neither do I like how so many have used it as an excuse for so many things, although that is of course entirely the fault of the individuals concerned. I'm totally fine with religion, as long as it isn't forced on me. Have I made that clear enough? I'd hate to receive all sorts of senseless responses on how I don't respect religion, because I do. The world would be messed up without religion, that's for sure. I know that.

But STOP TELLING ME I'M WRONG, DAMN IT. There is no right and wrong about this, alright? Thank you.

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P.s.: Yes, I know I use a lot of Oh-my-God, What-the-Hell and suchlike in my speech, but that, as we very well know, is slang.

baby steps, infant wings

If only Raggs' Requiem, the requiem for a kingdom destroyed by war, had been sung by a less childish-sounding singer, I'd like it a lot more. But it makes me sad enough as it is, anyway. Never fails to put me in some kind of melancholy for a good while.

I'm begging you, Shio Yee, do a cover of it! You'd do so much better than the original. ;_;

Mmm... Have I mentioned that I've gone all Wabisabi? My new Chrome and blog themes, anyway. And, now that I think about it, my desktop background fits into this quite nicely! Heh.

wrong side of the island

I didn't get enough sleep on Friday night, but somehow I found myself waking up on Saturday at dawn. What else was there for me to do but take this highly unusual occurrence as a signal to go for a walk along the beach? Ah, I want our old camera back, mum. This one's so blurry!

bah.

Weeeeell. The template designer thing is pretty cool, but I can't be bothered to do anything other than pick a ready-made template off the shelf and apply it. :/ I'm too tired to customise.

Penang was... okay. Being away from the Internet for three days... wasn't.

:D :D :D

I is happy. I's sentence have been reducted.

Also, Blogger has only just informed me of its new Template Designer function, which I am itching to try out. No wonder everyone's blog looks so good while mine is still stuck on Minima. ;__; I'll get on it as soon as I'm DONE WORKING.

Tee-hee. I is happy.

when tomorrow is just around the corner

This song wants you to know that:

You can’t quit until you try
You can’t live until you die
You can’t learn to tell the truth
Until you learn to lie

You can’t breathe until you choke
You gotta laugh when you’re the joke
There’s nothing like a funeral to make you feel alive

Just open your eyes
Just open your eyes
And see that life is beautiful
Will you swear on your life
That no one will cry at my funeral?

I really like this song. :) Yup, life is beautiful, even if:

i. my job sucks.
ii. I have been robbed of my precious holidays by said job.
iii. I have to rethink my plans for the future (also due to said job).
iv. the AFA exam is tomorrow and I HAVE NOT STUDIED ONE BIT.
v. I somehow cannot find mushrooms for my Zen garden.
vi. the releases of Kaze Hikaru on MF have stopped.
vii. MF seems to be turning into a shoujo manga viewer.
viii. the weird bites on my arm are irritating me to distraction.

Hmm. I meant for this to be a pro-life post but it's more like a complaint now. Ehehe. As an aside, I have taken to scouring YouTube to look for nice songs. S'tough on the ears, but the results are worth it!

you can't live until you die

If I died today, how would you feel tomorrow? Just curious.

Candy keeps a starving Katoo running!
Wasn't in the mood for lunch, so... ^^

to be crowned clown

Being modern isn't something to be so proud of after all, eh?

Not Quite Insomnia

(an imported post from my birdhouse)

I love Winter a little too much. So much, in fact, that I have frequently been spending late nights with her. This would have been fine, had my circadian clock not adjusted to this change of pace so efficiently...

I now get sleepy as the sun rises, and today I woke up just a few hours before sunset.

Oh, Winter. If only I could control myself better. Plants Vs Zombies just isn't worth the havoc this change is wreaking in my daily life.

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As an aside... I find it strange that I have so many little things I want to say, to the point where I post different entries into three different journals at about the same time. Somehow, having everything typed out like this brings a kind of relief - like I've made a little note to myself, so that I will be able to remember these thoughts. I want to read all this again when I'm much older, just to recall the kinds of things I was thinking. I've realised that this is why I keep writing these random posts even if no one reads them - I write them to myself, for myself. I suppose that's why my writing is so self-absorbed.

So, to the future me, hello. You wrote this when you were eighteen because you didn't want to forget me.

Now, I may have said this before, but I hope you're doing well and you're happy - because I want to be. It feels like there's a lot going on within me right now, but I don't really know what. I wonder if you do. I'm sorry that I write so often to you - but I can't help it. I think you understand. I think you'll appreciate the emotional relief you experienced when you were me. It's too bad you can't write to me, though.

It's funny, ne? People usually talk to someone they're close to (or, in some pathetic cases, write to an agony aunt) when they aren't feeling happy, but I write to you. Well, the justification is that you know me the best, and you understand the best - though sometimes I wonder if you think of me as a mere child. Please don't. I don't want to change so much in the future to the point where I will see my past self as a completely separate being, or even a stranger. You came to be because I was. Remember that, for my sake - because I don't want to disappear.

I think it's strange that I can write to you so much when I don't know anything about you. I can only hope that I'm writing to someone who feels as I feel about the important things in life and who loves the people I do. After all, I want to be the kind of person who smiles upon receiving a message from the past.

Promise me, won't you?

That you will smile when you see all the messages I'm leaving you, and remember how it felt to be me - and that you will name your retirement-home cat Ringo. Mind you, don't ever forget what Ringo means. Forgetting what Ringo means is forgetting your entire youth. Don't you dare forget.

-me.

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Haha. My aside turned out so long it became the main body of the post.