Existentialist Depression Alert

I was getting lost in the drones of the engine of bus number 246 today and felt the day's lethargy creeping up on me.

Unexpectedly, I thought, what was I brought into this world for?

To lead a happy life! An enthusiastic little voice in me said. (Achieve Eudaimonia, Aristotle said so!)

And how do I lead a happy life?

A voice replied in deadpan: Just shut up and go finish your tutorials.

Next to me, my mum said, Remember to wash the toilet later.

This is not a very intelligent thing to think. But it really happened because I'm feeling really flat now.

And I haven't helped to do housework in about 10 weeks.

I just read P's blogpost and now I feel like I'm one of many fortunate Singaporeans who have the means to achieve anything in any field they choose to, but who lack the goals to do so. We are spoilt for choice when it comes to academic opportunities, but we don't know which one to focus our efforts on. So we go for everything. Cram our portfolio. Line our days and nights with activities. Compare this to teenagers living in poorer countries. I'm sure they're all brimming with dreams about their future but they don't have the financial means to go to school to break out of poverty. And here I am, living in comfort, but with no dream to call my own.

What do I live for?

Blogger's note: I'm not suicidal. See you people on Monday.

On hindsight, I do have a dream. It is to find one of my own.

I bought a book today, it's called Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro. It has a pretty cover. :) And a pretty name too. I haven't started reading it yet.

Before that I watched Gnomeo and Juliet. O: I'm sure Cheryl agrees that it wasn't one of the better movies we watched LOL it was made for children. Still, pretty entertaining.

Red Riding Hood would probably have been a more rewarding movie experience haha. :D

Feeling pretty frustrated now, but I'm know I'm just being lazy for feeling like that. It's term 2 all over again... It is tiring knowing that I'm going to experience again what I've been experiencing for the past 10 years of my education... I sound like a delinquent...I shall not elaborate further.

Sigh yes there are always ways to make my daily routines better, and I know I will not hesitate to do them (like slacking off during work and sneaking peeks at Ai, the Channel-8-drama-for-aunties, and also peeking at the Channel-8-drama-at-9-pm-called-Happy-Birthday). It's actually quite a nice show, this drama at 9 pm.

Don't you doubt my taste.

Singaporean dramas aren't always bad. Chen Hanwei is a good actor. And there's eye candy.

Taiwanese dramas might have odd scripts (maybe we can't identify with their humour as much) but they are still interesting to watch.

It feels quite luxurious to have the night stretching away before me, setting aside all my work, and blogging about nonsense which you've just been reading.

Happiness is frail, relationships are fragile (not always).

Here's a cute song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T728aTfa5TU&feature=related

Now where has my working spirit gone to; I suppose I'll just let myself have a break this weekend.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb2si7fClqA [to prepare myself for next week]

Just for Laughs asia was really funny. :D

Some people plan out their life. By 25, I'll finish my studies. By 30, I'll make my first million (well that's what TV dramas say). By 35, I'll get married. ETC ETC

But I have no plans at all. On the contrary, I have unplans. For example, I know I'm not going to be a doctor, lawyer, construction worker, or a public relations officer, or an athlete.

It's unsettling, because sometimes I think to myself, ohmy am I going to degenerate after I leave school and become a nameless faceless self-absorbed employee working in a huge huge company with no interests and no ambition etc. Am I going to spend everyday sitting at a table from 9 am to 5 pm and developing living-person-rigor-mortis?

Of course not.

Then what?

But wondering generally adds to the excitement.

Although you can tell I'm quite bored now.

Apparently Harris bookshop is having a $5 book sale. Talking to cheryl, I realize that our school's people are huge nerds. Everybody seems to go to bookshops after tests. On Thurs AND Friday we saw people from our school at bookshops. Kino and PageOne. Whut...

You know, some people are sunshine people and they literally burst with energy and make friends with everyone. They genuinely love people. Some people sit and gawk at these sunshine people. I think I belong to the latter group.

Must. Remember. That. Time. Is. Precious. And. I. Am. Majorly. Wasting. Time. Now.

Shall. Not. Be. Lazy. From. Tomorrow. Onwards. (hard to do though I won't be home.)

LOL I'm playing this game I saw Jess playing weeks ago, it's super funny. Go play.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/game_nolan.shtml (it's a game about the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy.) I read the book and never got past the first 10 pages of it, I think. Hahah.

Okay it's an irritating game don't try it unless you have truckloads of time to spare.

It feels like life has come to a standstill, after the holidays and after a week of blocks spent revising.

Brain overload, brain hang!

Sometimes random scenes, random events occur to my head suddenly. Some memories make me smile or laugh, some make my insides squirm. Why did I do/say that? How very childish/insensitive that was! But it's no use wondering why. I should just remind myself not to make those mistakes? social blunders? again.

Giving myself a few minutes break after reading through some (just 2 actually) econs essays. So much information! H1 is no different from H2. Maybe just 20% less information. My skull feels sore.

Econs is interesting most times but I'm still glad I decided to take KI.

Things to do after blocks:

1) Work on IS

2) Read a storybook (hopefully)

3) Don't know.

I used to think I was musically talented, because I took the Grade 8 piano test and passed it.

Now I know what musically talented really means and how far I am from it. Not deprecating myself, it's just a fact. The world of music is diverse...

Poey just shared this with me. Some OMG relief: http://www.omg-facts.com/view/Facts/27616

KAY AHHH GO MUG AH

Hi!!! This is Cheryl making a cameo appearance on Marshy's blog. =)

She's doing SnS and losing hair, or so she says. I shall write a transcript of what she says.

"Oh crap what is this."

"K + 5 +4k!"

"YES I'M PROGRESSING!"

I might have missed out a bit here and there.

Marshy says she's lost her brain. HI MARSHY'S BRAIN I'LL FIND YOU. =)

I should stop posting on her blog. BYE BYE. We're listening to Totoro now. Marshy says I'm horrible. -.- I don't like her now.

She just said "Oh my gosh I'm so stupid AHHHHHH CHERYYYLLLL~"

I think I fed her too much Slurpee.

Bye bye! I'll go back to viruses now. =)

A reason to smile everyday, a reason to wake up happy everyday-- believe in yourself and your life.

Set a goal for each day.

During term, there wasn't much time, or even the need to think about how I would organize my day. Because every school day would be to start by waking at 5.30am , go to school, come home and do homework, sleep. I just went with the flow. Yeah, that's bad.
Now that I have so much work to do and just 1 week to myself to do it, I find myself slightly at a loss.
Zzz. I think I've been retreating into passive, go-with-the-flow mode over the past few weeks.
Omg what I just missed NUS open house?! Because I thought it was over a week. -.- Plus hmm there wasn't much talk about it within my erm world so I kind of forgot about it.

I think I would like to go to NUS after JC? Faculty of Science? A minor in philosophy? (Or something social science-y)

People who achieve more start planning early. They don't go with the flow. Like I do. D---.
Step out into the sunlight. Unjoin the dark side. i.e. stop dwelling on the bad side of things.

Meanwhile, I'm drooling over my brother's Indian food pictures.

On a more motivational side, I ran 1.5km today!(only because my mum wanted me to go to the park with her). Might be chicken feet to some of you, but to me, it's an astonishing start.

Sometimes what demoralizes me is why people are so unsmiling. They seem tired. They don't talk. It's like you don't exist. Maybe they are concentrating. But to me talking helps me concentrate.
Maybe that's why my mum scolds me for not responding to her sometimes. (and that's because I was concentrating too hard on my -coughcough- work)

Rant alert.
There are some days when situations seem to grind to a halt and stagnate...like water with thick oil slicks on them... and you feel like giving up...
Like today.
I'm left with a week to start with my IS as well as revision for blocks.
And it doesn't help when my brain starts becoming depressive, and keeps focusing on the bad side of everything. The bad side of school, the bad side of people, the bad side of myself.
The lazy, irresponsible, unfocused side of myself. That shows up everywhere, at unexpected times.
Just now I was trying to read some KI research that I photocopied and 50% of it sounded like Greek...I was reading it and I think only 1% got assimilated by my brain. On a bright side that might mean it's not relevant to my research. On another positive side I think most other articles I've read/will be reading will not be as convoluted as that. Totally exhaustive...and every sound that I heard just now seemed to be amplified 100 times because I just couldn't concentrate.
Bluh.

Face it. Just start. It won't be that hard once you've gotten past the initial barrier. It's not that horrible actually, thinking about starting my IS itself... it's just work. It's not like I'm forcing myself to get married. Or something.
Should set some...goals for myself. So I won't spend my free days during the March holidays lying face down in a cushion and moaning about life's frustrations and complexities.

Hmm.I recognize that I must work very hard. But today the slacking has caught up with me? Omg despite all my pretending for years that I'm a guaikia who mugs a lot, I'm actually a slacker at heart. Or am I just getting lazier?

Okay I shall just blog for the sake of blogging.

Today was instrument-washing day! Wow what a good outlet for my hidden OCD tendencies. I was feeling quite satisfied seeing all the green/yellow water flow out of my euphonium's valves, and scrubbing them till the water was colourless! Haha we probably just doubled the school's water bills.

Some things have happened and remained status quo even though I hoped they would change! But it has ceased to bother me because I can still find fun in them. Not everything has to be flowery and nice anyway.

I really wonder if I have the capacity to be a dedicated person, seeing as I've not had the same CCA everytime I change school. In primary school, I was in choir. (surprise surprise? I can/could actually sing!) In secondary I went to Guides. And here I am now in band.
I think I just go for variety now.

Feeling so extremely off tangent today! I'm in dire need of... urgh I don't know!!! Gege I need to blog to relieve my tensions!

Yes so as I was mentioning I felt extremely off tangent today. My brain was floating beside my head, it wasn't inside.
Horrible, horrible, horrible.

I don't think I'm as stressed as I'm tired... Not physically tired but mentally tired. I don't understand how, since I'm not very involved in academic and non-academic commitments... I've really just been doing the basics...

Today after CT I really felt the urge to run...to just run till I got tired... Blahhh.

I really can't pinpoint why I feel spent... I shall just keep on typing till the clock reads 21.30, since I've pledged to my inner angel that I will stop slacking at 21.30. It's like when people tell me, hi marsha I feel emo. And I ask them, why? And they exclaim, I don't knowww!!!

Grrr.
Maybe I just can't stand the feeling of always having things to do.
That sounds stupid.
Omg 1 more minute.
I think feeling like I do now is quite normal, because virtually every older person I know (and who went to JC) has told me that JC was the worst, most hellish period of their lives.

Let's learn to party in hell.

Introverted people keep to themselves because they cannot handle so many relationships no matter ow shallow the relationships are.
I just lost my train of thought because I'm having a bad stomachache >< plus diarrhoea.
Anyway, I always start my paragraph with the topic sentence, so I think that's the main point.

I've been in a snappy mood the whole day because I wasn't feeling well. Sighs...

But I really like my euphonium badge. Thanks pam and pling! :D It's so pretty :) and heavy. Is it made of silver?? I shall ask when I see you all.

When I step out/when I grow up (am I not grown up now?), I will always treasure the innocence that I have/had as well as the innocence that I observe around me. It is a wonderful thing, this naive uncertainty and optimism combined.

It is like stepping out of your house to discover that the Forest-Containing-the-Faraway-Tree is right at your backyard, and you go ecstatic with wonderment and excitement. (Remember Enid Blyton's Faraway Tree?)
But you're scared, until the next day, and you pluck up your courage and step into the Forest.
Then you realize that the Forest is beautiful and exotic, but mysterious and ugly at some places. It is a tangle of trees you have to fight your way through, for a long time.
But you emerge at the other side of the Forest. Unscathed, but scarred.
And you realize that you have lots of white hair.

Yeah. I think this forest analogy once occurred to me. I forgot how. A book? A dream??? o_o

I think (for now at least) the most wonderful thing in the world is to be able to maintain some of your innocence despite the struggles you've been through in life. I think it's impossible though, have you ever seen an innocent old man/woman? Maybe a touch of innocence in middle-aged people/young adults is possible. Because I think many people will not be able to stand innocence when they get older (i.e. when they are middle-aged).

But what struggles in life have I seen though? I don't think I've even seen 5% of the the Tough Life. I've been growing up happily in a sheltered environment for 18 years already. Even so, I sometimes feel like I'm going through turmoil (i.e. I emo badly).

Anyway. Today was A levels results day! I used to think that if you studied hard, getting a perfect score (i.e. All As) was a given. I realized today that studying hard=/= perfect score. But maybe Supreme Muggerhood = perfect score.
:X Maybe I'm exaggerating.
Because I hear things, like getting average grades, and I think to myself, is this all a person gets after a year of losing weight and hair and his/her social life?
So I was feeling quite apprehensive today as well.

Currently I'm contemplating if I should go for OCIP. Hmm...

Oh wow my diarrhoea has magically (almost) disappeared. Why did I just blog so much when my time could have been better spent sleeping or reading stuff?

Never mind. Sometimes, you've got to empty your thoughts first before you can do anything else.

I went for about 20 minutes of the UK universities talk today. It didn't really do anything to change my mindset, although I now feel more inclined to not spend my whole life in Singapore. I would want to at least stay overseas for a period of time, for studies or for work. As for my tertiary studies, I don't know... I am still more comfortable with the idea of studying in a local university. After that maybe I could further my studies overseas.

Okay I feel semi-conscious already time to sleep.

Motto of the moment: Relax One Corner.

I'm not going to say that everything will turn out fine in the long term or anything that's optimistic, because what matters more is adopting a practical opinion and taking action appropriately according to your judgment. It makes more sense to worry about the process rather than the outcome.

I'd rather see a not-so-pretty but smiling face than an ultra-hot but unsmiling face.
Would I rather be a satisfied pig or a dissatisfied Socrates?
Seeing as I'm neither, I should just be satisfied?
I'm not a pig by the way. (I know what you're thinking...)

Doubt eats away at my common sense and saps my energy. Don't doubt. But be vigilant.