Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Work! Little Faith toddles and trots off to work in a big big place called the Zoooooooo! Haha. Work! Work. Work. What have I learnt? Excruciatingly obvious lack of social skills I have. Habitual watching of people. Habitual watching of self. Cute and fake voice. The usual, usual, made suddenly conspicuous and glaring. When you undertake a job that demands constant performance (literal circus act) and scrutinization of every single gesture and word enunciated, you find the jagged flaws that you have magnified a gazillion times. Painful. And challenging of course. Competitive, without a doubt. FUN!!! Mostly painful.

I realized that the fastest way to learn, is to throw yourself into the deep end of the ocean and instantly force yourself to learn how to swim, or sink. The lack of confidence? The lack of courage? The lack of social skills? The inability to put on a fancy show? It will vanish away. Check, check, check, check. Anything and everything can and must be fixed. You want your money? You want your experience? You will get over it- whatever 'it' is. But first, be prepared to feel out of place, incompetent and constantly behind time. Be prepared to be bitched about, but never bitch, unless necessary, and even then, bitch only in front of those you know with all your heart that you can trust. Always always be willing to learn, and it would definitely be a bonus if you're fast to learn as well. No one is indispensable so make yourself so special that they don't want anyone to replace you for the time being.

It was so much easier to just read books and memorize lecture notes in JC. But in retrospect, it seems pretty useless now. What have I learnt, after two years in JC? A lot I suppose, but nothing that could possibly be helpful in the real working world. What can the French Revolution or Jane Austen do for me when I'm just trying to earn a few quick bucks at the moment? Nothing. Well it certainly does make you appear more knowledgeable and educated, but its all very tentative theory, all a little empty suddenly. They no longer hold any weight of the future. Perhaps they never did. There's no point being book-smart if you're not street-smart. Why didn't anyone tell me that? Lol.

Although at this hour, something does comfort me. I loved the swirl and scatter of words derived from the subjects I studied. I loved the way they fed me and kept me going. I loved the hours where I poured through them, wanting to know more and more, not for the sake of exams, but out of a purely genuine curiosity and hunger that greatly delighted me. There are things I did without passion, sadly, and I left them without passion. Nothing came in and nothing went out of my brain. But the things I loved then, I will love forever, and my oh my did I learn. Hehe. It doesn't really matter what alphabets they throw at me when I collect my results. My passion is stronger than my very being, than the very world itself. It is beyond gravity, beyond sanity. I am at its mercy and I will go wherever it takes me, god willing.

Went out with Alex for dinner the other night. Alex is exactly the same as before! Quiet, lame, childish, and mumbling strings of sentences every now and then so you have to strain your ears to understand... Strange how some things never change, and strange how some things do.

Friendship is a funny thing. I find myself a very difficult and eccentric person to get along with and I always find it a pleasant surprise when I realize that I actually do have friends who care about me. Tell me please, what did I do right?? Haha. What worries me is that while I might treat someone dearly and cherish the friendship we share, that person might think that it is in fact nothing much at all and dismiss it completely, and vice versa. Mind games and more mind games... When will they ever end?

What makes things even worse is that I am utterly incapable of receiving love (as those close to me will know). I don't know how much love I should demand or how much love is afforded to a person like me. Every act of kindness, every bit of sweetness given to me feels like a guilty burden to carry, a debt that I have to repay somehow or another. Because why should you care about me? Surely if you care about me, there must be something you want back in return? Yessss I am so very very paranoid. I cannot share my problems with anyone near me without feeling selfish and overbearing. I only know how to give, how to love, how to sacrifice. But what kind of love do I give if I do not know how to accept love? I deny those around me the chance to be there for me, and then I blame them bitterly for not being there to catch me when I fall. What a fool. A fool who has marked out her own death. What do I do? How do I begin to learn the things that they don't teach, that everyone is somehow simply expected to know?

My mother says that I have tricked myself into thinking that I am some goddamn superhero, trying to save the whole wide world when I can't even save myself. Maybe she's right. I think I am "Supergirl". Haha. Someone actually used to call me that in very affectionate terms. But the truth is that Supergirl does not know what to do with herself. I really don't know where I am going. I only know that everyone is moving on, moving up, moving forward. And while I try to catch up, while I try not to spoil anything anymore, I hope and I pray that one day the pieces will all align themselves together and make some sense out of themselves. Everything will get better. It has to. It must.

Maybe friendship is really as simple as what Alex makes it out to be: "I like you so I call you my friend. Don't like you then don't call you my friend."

And its 4.42 am! Yes I still sleep as little as ever and as late as ever... I still write a whole load of random rubbish that you, my dear, are reading right now.

Maybe you are just a voice in my head, as I am in your's. Maybe you don't exist at all.

4 comments:

Damon said...

Actually I did say something about books being useless, but maybe it's not you... though I'm damn sure it was. Anyway, welcome to the club of disillusioned intellectuals.

Anonymous said...

lol, i don't think tt knowledge is smthing u can measure in terms of whether it will be useful for ur future or nt. like for me, i actually have e chance to share with my class e various stories i've learnt frm history but tt's another story. muahaha.
what we're learnt in sch does nt always have to come in useful in e REAL world with realist needs. it is enough to make us aware and built on what e past to form e future. e sad thing is tt more realistic things like being street smart is nt being taught in sch. haha, i am talking crap. byebye! LOVE U!!!! WHEEEEE!

Anonymous said...

Eh.. well.. Those 'knowledge' we learnt in classes are just for 'fun'. Where you show others that you are knowledgeable in the 'classics'. Saying words like 'Glasnost' and 'Perestrokia' impresses people who know nuts about it, and let ppl who understands feel that you are at least on par with them. Other than that, not much use.. Like in ancient times, where scholars recites poems and the classics, it does nothing more than impress and getting themselves into civil service position. Ya lor.. so.. Hahaha. And you were asking what you have done right? Ans: you chose the correct friend. =) ya, i am thick skin.. Wahhaha

Jingo said...

"I like you so I call you my friend. Don't like you then don't call you my friend."

Sounds a bit like something Forrest Gump would say.