It's not easy being me. And there were many times when I silently told you (my parents) off for telling me:
"Stop scratching....it's bad for you...it's all in your head...etc"
Don't you think I know that? Do you really think I want to mutilate myself? It's almost the same as asking me to ignore the incessant taunts of my brother. You wouldn't know unless you are in my shoes. I'm almost willing to bet that those of you who do not have chronic eczema will not know how it feels.
How it feels to have an itch so bad that you just have to scratch it or you'd just die. To have itching on multiple parts of your body at the same time recurring throughout the day. To unconsciously scratch yourself in your sleep and wake up the next morning to find lesions that bleed and ooze on various parts of your body. To have to suffer the pain and discomfort from those lesions.
Would you know how it feels like to have permanently dry skin? That is so bad that sometimes when you move, a really dry part of your skin just tears? To feel that your limb feels very uncomfortable because a large part of it is dry? And because of that you can't bathe very often in this hot, humid country as that will just dry out your skin even more?
Do you know that the topical corticosteroids and moisturisers have only temporary effects? And that prolonged use of the steroids causes tolerance?
Do you realise that with all these lesions, even a simple thing like washing dishes and taking a bath hurts and itches like crazy? And yet you force me to do things like bathe the dogs. And when I protest, you don't seem to care and make me do it anyway.
You don't know that I worry what other people think of me when they discover I have this. You don't know I take pains to prevent certain parts from being seen at certain times because even I can barely stand to see it. You don't know how frustrating it is when I layer myself in ointments and creams daily but it never heals enough before another lesion appears there....
...you don't know I worry that I'm wasting your money on all these skincare products.
I've told you some of these things before but you just didn't seem to bother. In fact, the only time you do bother is when you see me plastering some part of myself in a semi-vain effort to prevent excessive damage to a part.
I've given up trying to talk to you about these things. Since you always think you know better than me...
...it's just like how well you 'know' my allergies and forget that I can't eat prawns when ordering...
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Friday, May 19, 2006
Disgusted
Honestly, I'm disgusted and disillusioned with the students of IMU as of now. The recent SRC elections was the subject of much heated debate in the IMU online forum.
Holier/Smarter/More-experienced than thou individuals criticized and insulted, basically bombed the way the SRC handled the elections. Using a not-so-selected choice of words too at that. Really makes one wonder if they actually think before the talk...wait...rephrase that to whether they actually think or not.
Ultimately Eve, Cheok Soon and Kah Heng resigned from their posts. Not because of the criticisms, not because they failed at their jobs but because after all the bashing, they felt like the very thing they cared for turned around and stabbed them in the back.
Not a day passed when a certain lecturer told his PBL group about another idiotic incident. Lecturer X told a few students one day that Lecturer Y's lecture was a little advanced for our current level of required knowledge and hence would not be asked in the exams. Word passed around (our lovable batch rep did so as well) as friends would try to help one another and that was, in fact, a really heavy lecture.
Soon lecturer X heard from lecturer Y that a student came up to ask if the lecture was really not required for the exams.
Can you imagine what lecturer Y must have felt when that idiotic student asked that question? Can you imagine the implications on the batch rep (who probably felt partly responsible for it)?
To the idiot who asked the question to the lecturer:
How many enemies have you made in uni that made you disbelieve the word of your fellow students? Even so, surely you should know that our batch rep has done nothing but work for us M104 students? Surely his word is believable.
Normally if a lecturer does not hand out notes, Johan and Renee would ensure that the batch receives a copy eventually. However after lectures today Johan (finally) announced that from now on, lecture notes that aren't handed out by the lecturer will have to be printed by the students themselves as he had not the time to do that stuff anymore.
This was met with a resounding wail of despair and negative statements from a large part of the class.
To all the assholes who did that:
Go boil your head, fry your face and then smear salt over it!
Johan and Renee have worked their butts off for you and all you can do is feel upset that they consider their studies more important than you spending some 40 sen to print out your own notes.
Talk about kiasuism!
Curse you to suffer as they have in the very near future!
Eve, Johan, Cheok Soon, Kah Heng and Renee - you have all done wonderful jobs. Yes, you make occasional mistakes but you are human too. And it's perfectly understandable why you did the things you did. Sadly such things go unappreciated.
Holier/Smarter/More-experienced than thou individuals criticized and insulted, basically bombed the way the SRC handled the elections. Using a not-so-selected choice of words too at that. Really makes one wonder if they actually think before the talk...wait...rephrase that to whether they actually think or not.
Ultimately Eve, Cheok Soon and Kah Heng resigned from their posts. Not because of the criticisms, not because they failed at their jobs but because after all the bashing, they felt like the very thing they cared for turned around and stabbed them in the back.
Not a day passed when a certain lecturer told his PBL group about another idiotic incident. Lecturer X told a few students one day that Lecturer Y's lecture was a little advanced for our current level of required knowledge and hence would not be asked in the exams. Word passed around (our lovable batch rep did so as well) as friends would try to help one another and that was, in fact, a really heavy lecture.
Soon lecturer X heard from lecturer Y that a student came up to ask if the lecture was really not required for the exams.
Can you imagine what lecturer Y must have felt when that idiotic student asked that question? Can you imagine the implications on the batch rep (who probably felt partly responsible for it)?
To the idiot who asked the question to the lecturer:
How many enemies have you made in uni that made you disbelieve the word of your fellow students? Even so, surely you should know that our batch rep has done nothing but work for us M104 students? Surely his word is believable.
Normally if a lecturer does not hand out notes, Johan and Renee would ensure that the batch receives a copy eventually. However after lectures today Johan (finally) announced that from now on, lecture notes that aren't handed out by the lecturer will have to be printed by the students themselves as he had not the time to do that stuff anymore.
This was met with a resounding wail of despair and negative statements from a large part of the class.
To all the assholes who did that:
Go boil your head, fry your face and then smear salt over it!
Johan and Renee have worked their butts off for you and all you can do is feel upset that they consider their studies more important than you spending some 40 sen to print out your own notes.
Talk about kiasuism!
Curse you to suffer as they have in the very near future!
Eve, Johan, Cheok Soon, Kah Heng and Renee - you have all done wonderful jobs. Yes, you make occasional mistakes but you are human too. And it's perfectly understandable why you did the things you did. Sadly such things go unappreciated.
Sunday, May 14, 2006
Unorthodox
2 days ago, due to some miscommunication, I had a fun-filled badminton game with Zhun Jeat, Chu Kin, Steve, Rafiqu and Kok Chuan. The catch was that I had only brought with me a spare t-shirt. So I played in a t-shirt and formal pants and shoes. (I usually bring along a spare shirt just in case I decide to be hardworking one day and go exercise)
I must say it was an interesting experience but of course it affected performance.
Later Eve invited me to go for a so-called 'Night-Walk' in Bukit Gasing. Apparently it was some Adventure Club thingy. I agreed, mostly since it would be so near my house. Besides what's a little frolic through a secondary forest which I've been to a few times already?
Some time back in secondary school, I used to join the annual camps to Taman Negara, where we were clearly told in black and white, what to bring along. It included 2 pairs of jeans for trekking (presumably one to wear while the other dries back at camp) as well as trekking boots. The problem was that I didn't have jeans nor boots. I hated jeans - the material made me itch, and the boots...what was I made of? Money?
Anyway I went for the camp regardless, equipped with my trusty khakis and my badminton shoes and stoicly trekked along with the others. I got some comments from my friends, including why I didn't wear jeans, why jeans are superior, whether I was sure the shoes would last etc.
In the end, I had the last laugh. My khakis were as tough as their jeans for the trek, my shoes survived without problems and almost everyone else complained that their jeans were SO heavy after wading through a river. In fact, until very recently my badminton shoes have faithfully served me, albeit having lost their grip (leading to me doing sliding stunts on the court).
I learned from that experiece that nothing is really hard and fast. There are always alternatives - sometimes even better than the norm...unfortunately we weak-minded humans give up way to easily, but that's a topic for another time.
Back to the present. I realised that since my t-shirt was as of now unwearable and I faced the quest of trekking in my entire formal wear. I also realised that I could simply go home and grab a spare shirt and my somewhat holey badminton shoes...but where's the fun in that? After all it was kinda wet that night.
And so clad entirely in formal, to the surprise of the guide (who was a friend of the Adventure Club guy who got us involved), I went through the forest.
Emerged unscathed, not that we would be anyway since it's devoid of dangerous animals, but somewhat muddy and sweaty. It was a mediocre adventure - nothing to shout about. It might have been more fun had the guides not stopped every 5 minutes or so for 5 minutes or so, to break open dead tree barks to admire little white insects or stare at a spider the size of half a thumbnail.
No offense but if you had mentioned earlier, like before we entered the forest, that you were on some biology hunt I might have had second thoughts about it.
Well, it's water under the bridge now. Pretty sure I've gained something from it even if I dunno what it is yet. Besides we had fun in A&W afterwards :D
I must say it was an interesting experience but of course it affected performance.
Later Eve invited me to go for a so-called 'Night-Walk' in Bukit Gasing. Apparently it was some Adventure Club thingy. I agreed, mostly since it would be so near my house. Besides what's a little frolic through a secondary forest which I've been to a few times already?
Some time back in secondary school, I used to join the annual camps to Taman Negara, where we were clearly told in black and white, what to bring along. It included 2 pairs of jeans for trekking (presumably one to wear while the other dries back at camp) as well as trekking boots. The problem was that I didn't have jeans nor boots. I hated jeans - the material made me itch, and the boots...what was I made of? Money?
Anyway I went for the camp regardless, equipped with my trusty khakis and my badminton shoes and stoicly trekked along with the others. I got some comments from my friends, including why I didn't wear jeans, why jeans are superior, whether I was sure the shoes would last etc.
In the end, I had the last laugh. My khakis were as tough as their jeans for the trek, my shoes survived without problems and almost everyone else complained that their jeans were SO heavy after wading through a river. In fact, until very recently my badminton shoes have faithfully served me, albeit having lost their grip (leading to me doing sliding stunts on the court).
I learned from that experiece that nothing is really hard and fast. There are always alternatives - sometimes even better than the norm...unfortunately we weak-minded humans give up way to easily, but that's a topic for another time.
Back to the present. I realised that since my t-shirt was as of now unwearable and I faced the quest of trekking in my entire formal wear. I also realised that I could simply go home and grab a spare shirt and my somewhat holey badminton shoes...but where's the fun in that? After all it was kinda wet that night.
And so clad entirely in formal, to the surprise of the guide (who was a friend of the Adventure Club guy who got us involved), I went through the forest.
Emerged unscathed, not that we would be anyway since it's devoid of dangerous animals, but somewhat muddy and sweaty. It was a mediocre adventure - nothing to shout about. It might have been more fun had the guides not stopped every 5 minutes or so for 5 minutes or so, to break open dead tree barks to admire little white insects or stare at a spider the size of half a thumbnail.
No offense but if you had mentioned earlier, like before we entered the forest, that you were on some biology hunt I might have had second thoughts about it.
Well, it's water under the bridge now. Pretty sure I've gained something from it even if I dunno what it is yet. Besides we had fun in A&W afterwards :D
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Tribute to a Special Person
It seems fitting that for a first post (on this blog anyway) that I should say something nice. And so I shall - about someone I am indebted to. Not talking about my mom or dad though, I'll forever be indebted to them and they shall be mentioned somewhere in the future.
I'm talking about my piano teacher, a tribute to a certain Ms. Choo Ing Kitt.
I really can't remember the first time I met her, just that it was in some music academy by the name of 'Sunwave'. Anyway eventually she left the academy and went solo. Then she would come to my house every week to teach my bro and I. And we would serve her water and the occasional food (snacks).
Like most kids I was terrible back then. Always fooling around and refusing to practise. So my parents gave her full permission to whack (rotan anyone?) us when she deemed it necessary. Fortunately she never did deem it necessary :D
I remember the classes were divided into 2 halves. 1st one would have a practical session with her. Then both of us would do theory together in the kitchen. Then the other one would have his practical session. I loved the theory session for all the wrong reasons - it was more a time of chatting and gossip than learning. We would exchange stories and she would regale us with stories of her life :)
She taught us for a good number of years. Sometime during that period she got married to a certain Mr. Lee and had a kid. We still called her Ms. Choo though :)
I remember I was always the poorer student - I refused to practise and was absolutely lousy in my theory. Somehow I managed to scrape through Grade 5 Theory and didn't bother anymore after that. However my mom insisted that I get a Grade 8 in Practical (ie piano playing). So we kept having lessons.
I absolutely hated the ABRSM (Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music) syllabus. I hated and sucked at scales, pieces, and especially at sight-reading and aural tests (especially aural since I couldn't sing nor whistle). No matter how much she pushed me I just didn't have the motivation to improve myself. I scraped through most of my exams until I failed my Grade 8 exam by a point. (the passing mark was 100 and I got 99)
I was quite badly affected by it. I mean, it was my first real failure. I was annoyed, angry even, at the examiner for refusing to give me the one mark I needed to pass. I was about to give up then but was pushed on by my mom and her. Fortunately I could play the same pieces the following year, and so I did and I passed with 101 marks.
Then I realised that it was over - no more lessons as she wasn't qualified to teach diploma level. No more fooling around, gossiping over theory classes. She had also mentioned she wanted to stop teaching and focus on her child. And so she just stopped coming...
As the years passed, I realised just how much I missed having her in my life. She was more like a relative than a teacher. Mostly my fault for not keeping in touch with her, understandably so since she had a family to focus on. There were a number of occasions when I just wanted to pick up the phone and call, just for a chat, but never summoned enough courage to do so. I kept playing the piano though, turning to it for solace and just whenever I felt like making some music. Looking back I think what I really hated back then was having to play pieces I couldn't understand and didn't like.
When my 21st year on this earth came, I decided that I would invite her for lunch - but nobody answered the phone. Then I realised that I only had her father's house number - I didn't have hers.
I'm pretty sure that if she could see me now, listen to me play, I'd make her a little proud. I believe I have improved lots over the years (although my theory knowledge is now almost nonexistant :D) and play quite nicely. I also believe that my singing has improved loads. All because I was given the chance to enjoy music, but I only really started doing so post Grade 8 Practical.
Dear Ms. Choo, wherever you may be. Thank you for all your time, guidance and patience. Thank you for the wonderful times we shared. Thank you for this wonderful ability that you have passed down to me.
I'm talking about my piano teacher, a tribute to a certain Ms. Choo Ing Kitt.
I really can't remember the first time I met her, just that it was in some music academy by the name of 'Sunwave'. Anyway eventually she left the academy and went solo. Then she would come to my house every week to teach my bro and I. And we would serve her water and the occasional food (snacks).
Like most kids I was terrible back then. Always fooling around and refusing to practise. So my parents gave her full permission to whack (rotan anyone?) us when she deemed it necessary. Fortunately she never did deem it necessary :D
I remember the classes were divided into 2 halves. 1st one would have a practical session with her. Then both of us would do theory together in the kitchen. Then the other one would have his practical session. I loved the theory session for all the wrong reasons - it was more a time of chatting and gossip than learning. We would exchange stories and she would regale us with stories of her life :)
She taught us for a good number of years. Sometime during that period she got married to a certain Mr. Lee and had a kid. We still called her Ms. Choo though :)
I remember I was always the poorer student - I refused to practise and was absolutely lousy in my theory. Somehow I managed to scrape through Grade 5 Theory and didn't bother anymore after that. However my mom insisted that I get a Grade 8 in Practical (ie piano playing). So we kept having lessons.
I absolutely hated the ABRSM (Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music) syllabus. I hated and sucked at scales, pieces, and especially at sight-reading and aural tests (especially aural since I couldn't sing nor whistle). No matter how much she pushed me I just didn't have the motivation to improve myself. I scraped through most of my exams until I failed my Grade 8 exam by a point. (the passing mark was 100 and I got 99)
I was quite badly affected by it. I mean, it was my first real failure. I was annoyed, angry even, at the examiner for refusing to give me the one mark I needed to pass. I was about to give up then but was pushed on by my mom and her. Fortunately I could play the same pieces the following year, and so I did and I passed with 101 marks.
Then I realised that it was over - no more lessons as she wasn't qualified to teach diploma level. No more fooling around, gossiping over theory classes. She had also mentioned she wanted to stop teaching and focus on her child. And so she just stopped coming...
As the years passed, I realised just how much I missed having her in my life. She was more like a relative than a teacher. Mostly my fault for not keeping in touch with her, understandably so since she had a family to focus on. There were a number of occasions when I just wanted to pick up the phone and call, just for a chat, but never summoned enough courage to do so. I kept playing the piano though, turning to it for solace and just whenever I felt like making some music. Looking back I think what I really hated back then was having to play pieces I couldn't understand and didn't like.
When my 21st year on this earth came, I decided that I would invite her for lunch - but nobody answered the phone. Then I realised that I only had her father's house number - I didn't have hers.
I'm pretty sure that if she could see me now, listen to me play, I'd make her a little proud. I believe I have improved lots over the years (although my theory knowledge is now almost nonexistant :D) and play quite nicely. I also believe that my singing has improved loads. All because I was given the chance to enjoy music, but I only really started doing so post Grade 8 Practical.
Dear Ms. Choo, wherever you may be. Thank you for all your time, guidance and patience. Thank you for the wonderful times we shared. Thank you for this wonderful ability that you have passed down to me.
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