Before I forget, let me first pay a tribute to this very cool poem I heard a few days ago, created by Justin of 03s62

The Exam Poem

One more week
That is all I need
Oh, Shit

So apt.

Anyway, I spotted a cockroach enroaching into the insect-free confines (well, except for mosquitoes) of my room yesterday night, which galvanised me into Immediate Action. It disappeared under the big pile of stuff under my sister's table, so I had to remove several files, the huge luggage bag containing (?), some stacks of papers and a few mysterious packages to target it properly. Unfortunately my first try didn't work, and it crawled speedily under the new pile that I had just created. But with my great persistence, I killed it in the end.

Ha. I hope this serves as a Warning to all other cockroaches. Perhaps in their next annual gathering from wherever they came from (I strongly suspect under the bed in my grandmother's room, which contains a number of things that we haven't dared to touch for fear of incurring her wrath and a lot of mould), they'll talk about finding new territory and expanding their horizons, then cower back and say, "hey, but you know so-and-so? He went off to explore and he Never Came Back."

RIght.

Haha, I think I really am crappy. But I simply cannot abide cockroaches. And ants, unlike Judith who shares her home with a large garden community of them. WEll, a few individual ants are ok, but I destroy any nest on sight (In my house, anyway). I remember once when our room was in a huge mess with both my sister and I refusing to pack, but we cleared out the entire room when we suspected a new ant nest inside. After discovering it behind the air-con cable, we placed ant poison near it, the kind that prevents queen ants from laying eggs, patiently waited for the ants to take some to their nest for half a day before swamping it with insecticide and water. The reasoning behind this is even if the queen ant somehow manages to escape, it won't be able to lay any more eggs and start a NEW NEST.

I saw a man with the largest ass I've ever seen in the MRT today. Worse still, his huge pair of black pants were pulled up high all the way on his waist, which only enhanced the size of his posterior. Due to the amount of shirt he had to tuck in, I could observe the many undulating layers of cloth covering the huge expanse of flesh. To top it all off, he was wearing an ill-fitting starched white shirt, which made him look rather like an overweight waiter with a fatter older brother who used to be in the same occupation. It occured to me later that had our genders been reversed, I would have been the very picture of teenage lust, because I was staring at his buttocks with a stupid grin on my face.

All right, I shall stop.

But just as a final word, this is the exact thing any self respecting guy should never wear.

Econs was god-awful terrible. I sneakily hope that many other people found it bad as well, so that I would at least stand a chance. Well, even if they screwed up they wouldn't screw up as badly as I did. I find myself praying that I would get at least four marks for my last one page essay, which is, I admit, a pathetic mark to pray for. And that my first essay was really as excellent as I thought it was. Sigh. I find it incredible that I wrote both my personal best and worst economics essay I ever have in my life in the very last paper of this nature I would ever take. What a time for dramatics. Unfortunately, my middle essay was not mediocore but somewhat (significantly) below average, because even in my brain-sieved (a new term I have invented, because I felt like my brain had been passed through a sieve after my first essay) state I could tell I was completely rambling by the second part.

These days I have realised a sudden urgency to claim back all my debts and rebalance my accounts, because of the large unbalance created by my rebonding and my cousin's birthday present. My brain has been churning out figures like this:

1) Rebonding: - $221 (which my mother has already repeatedly assured me that I overpaid for, and I keep telling her that she could nag all she wanted if she just paid half of it).
2) Cousin's birthday present plus earrings for myself: - $101
3) Father's and sister's birthdays, which are nearing: - $ ???
4) Currently in possession, planning to save: + $100
5) Liquid spending income available for the month (underestimate): + $ 22
6) Felda owes me: (+) $ 55
7) Kathryn owes me: (+) $ 90, for tuition
8) Lin Zi owes me: MY BIRTHDAY PRESENT
Overall balance of accounts: - $ 77 - $ ??? + BIRTHDAY PRESENT FROM LIN ZI (with the assumption that I can collect back my debts and Lin Zi would eventually, after the A levels and after inspiration has struck her, get me a birthday present, because I've just reminded her and laid on the guilt that she still owes me one. Hahaha.)

There. I tried to tell my mother that I had financial planning despite my stupid impulsive decision to rebond my hair in an expensive salon, but she wouldn't believe me. And that sometimes teenagers do make impulsive decisions and still stubbornly don't believe they were stupid, however much nagging they recieve (oh, cos apparently rebonding goes for less than a hundred in neighbourhood salons and I should have done a survey first despite the fact that I hadn't been intending to do it in the first place. Blah blah.).

But overall, I'm still in debt to myself. In the true Singaporean way, I will assure myself that this DEFICIT will be covered by past budget SURPLUSES, but also in the true Singaporean way, I'm rather unhappy about having a deficit in the first place.

I had a major quarrel with my father yesterday, which ended with him slamming the door to his room in a huff, me crying in front of the computer while chatting with my sis and us carefully not talking to each other today. It's been coming for some time, I guess. Not that I'm sorry for it. Because he's not talking to me he's not grumping at me either. I feel rather liberated, actually.

I'm sick of his lack of conviction. It's bad enough that he never believes me to be as good as my friends because my standard is just my standard. Smart means smart, dumb means dumb, yeah, my quality is just there. Just because he doesn't see me studying doesn't mean that I don't, and the fact that my lifestyle habits are different from his doesn't mean that they're wrong. There's nothing more adding to your stress level than having a family member that will say "I told you so" if you score badly. I've been hearing his complaints for the last few weeks when he thinks I'm sleeping in my room and I'm fucking sick of it. I'm lazy and stupid, not deaf.

Worse, he thinks I'm wrong and I think he's wrong. Well, yeah, I probably shouldn't have said some things I did yesterday but he started it. I tried to shut up at the beginning because I didn't want to lose my temper, but he's rather like my grandma--keeps harping until he gets a reaction, which was me losing my temper. Ha, yes, I have a temper. I bloody inherited it from him.

And my mum probably thinks I'm deluded from stress and has nagged at my sister who is no doubt one of the reasons for my distraction. Can't she understand that if she likes chatting to my sis I would too? But it's ok, I had a long talk with my sis this morning and it buoyed my mood considerably. At least when two of us were at home the nagging was split evenly. Now it's just me. I feel stifled and lonely; it doesn't help that the As has guaranteed a lack of companionship.

Crap crap crap. Lucky it's math tomorrow or I'll be feeling terribly stressed.

News for yesterday: I REBONDED MY HAIR.
News for today: I PIERCED MY EARS.

Amazingly enough, I accomplished both without any intention of doing so. After fighting a losing battle with tangles, I decided that I am just not suited for long hair and yesterday was the day where I would finally do something about it. So I walked into the salon some time after math, fully intending to convert back to my secondary school hairstyle.

And I told the hairdresser: cut short. He asked: how short. I said: something like yours, slope cut.

He took a double take and stared at me with a totally appalled expression on his face, like I had violated some sacred rule of hairdressers: hair of My Length should not be reduced to That all at one shot. Very distressed, he reminded me of the long tedious journey from short hair to long hair--the mushrooming in between, the heat, the etc etc etc. SInce my experience of this was particularly agonising, I wavered.

But I decided, must stand firm. So I told him that it was getting impossible to manage. Rebonding would make my hair limp blah blah, and I simply do not have the time for it. The hairdresser then assured me that he would have two people working on my hair simultaneously to cut the time short, and all could be settled before the closing time.

What could I do in the face of such enthusiasm? I made one of my rare impulsive decisions (and had no time to rethink because the chemicals were produced with unbelievable speed). The whole process was quite amusing, really--I was very interested in all the chemical processes (Ms Tan in sec school: they destroy the hydrogen bonds in your hair...) but wisely decided not to ask. The hairdresser keep muttering over my hair; he didn't quite say that it was very thick and very tangled (for those who don't know, rebonding involves this ironing process) but repeatedly assured me that I had "a lot" of hair and that my hair quality was "very rare".

In the end it still took three hours, even with two hairdressers, because my hair was (surprisingly) resistant to chemical attack, and took a lot of time to iron out. Now I'm a total convert man. I hope it lasts. I don't particularly care if it looks better or worse. It's a certain thrill to be able to comb right to the ends of my hair and not wake up with hair all over the pillow because they strangled each other to death in my sleep. I must admit I'm quite relieved not to cut it too--I need to soften my image. I already have a domineering and bossy chracter; sHort hair would complete the image of a dragon lady. A girl has to consider her future prospects. BWahahahahaha.

I shall talk about my ear piercing now. I went to a jewellry shop to buy my cousin's birthday present today, and I was short of nine dollars to reach a hundred, after which I would get a membership that gives me twenty percent discount on all future purchases. The salesgirl was trying to convince me to get a pair of earrings, then took one look at my ears and exclaimed loudly: YOU HAVEN'T PIERCED YOUR EARS? (Fingering my ears somewhat protectively) I said: er, no. BUT YOU'RE EIGHTEEN! THen I was told that it was very fast, I could just do it there, free if I bought a pair of earrings (which would conveniently mark up the price to a hundred).

It went downhill from there. So, after years of not bowing to peer pressure, I succumbed to the relentless persuasion of a very charming and very persistent salesgirl. It really didn't help that she was such a friendly soul, in an unagressive way. I was utterly convinced that she had my best interests at heart.

Some people have optimistically described ear piercing to be like "getting an ant bite". After firsthand experience today, I can only conclude that it must have been a really huge ant. It feels like really what it was: having two holes bored into your flesh.

I had this amazingly vivid dream last night. In the dream, I woke up to a brightening sky and discovered that it was already seven plus in the morning. My mother didn't wake me up because she misunderstood me when I said that my exam was at eight--she thought I meant I was going to leave at eight. I even remember wearing my uniform and telling myself not to panic because there was still time, and was hailing a cab when I woke up (again) to the dark, at four in the morning, feeling slightly disorientated. I didn't get to sleep again, unfortunately.

I recall that in secondary school (for some reason it didn't persist in JC) I used to have very detailed dreams about getting up, wearing my uniform (down to every small action like buttoning up), going to toilet etc etc, only to wake up and discover, to my disappointment, that I had to do it all over again. This is what extreme tiredness and examination stress does to you.

I realise that I feel quite chunky next to extremely skinny and fragile looking people like Yiling, or small people like Amanda. SOmehow my voice seems louder than usual, and my every action amplified by the sheer presence of another dimunitive individual. I don't feel fat, just...big.

Oh well. Anyway, it's not like it matters much, since I'm naturally obtuse by nature.

After watching a documentary on Parkinson's and Alzhiemer's disease, it occurred to me that my greatest fear lies in losing my mind. The people who live on and make the best of their lives truly have courage.