wtf are they teaching kids these days?

my 9-year-old cousin came to me for help with her science homework, and i was flabbergasted when i got all the answers wrong.

she asked me what kept penguins warm. so i confidently said, “their fats! it keeps you warm, that’s why they are fat.”
and she said, “no, it’s their feathers”, and i said, “NO, it’s their fats!” wtf? and then she showed me her bloody workbook which says EXACTLY what she said.

ok to be fair they do have feathers on them, but it doesn’t contribute as much right! in fact, according to wiki (I USE ONLY THE CITED SOURCE), one intepretation of “penguin” is that it could be translated from the latin word ‘pinguis‘, which literally means FAT. although, there is the complication that most species of penguins don’t even live in the artic anyways (this is true, i swear), but then the question of warmth perhaps becomes irrelevant.

TELL ME THIS IS NOT A FUCKING FAT PENGUIN LIVING IN THE ARTIC.

point two: then she asked me, and do penguins have wings? and i very confidently said, “no, they have flippers”, and she said, “NO, they have wings!”, and she showed me her guanyin-forsaken workbook again, which said that penguins have WINGS. wtf. wtf?? although after some research i have found that penguins are in fact classified as birds, they don’t fucking fly. DOH. wtf do you need wings for if you hunt in the water??

O.M.G.!!

i think that these days, it’s not that kids are degenerating, it’s that these schoolbook writers are too busy collating their trivial knowledge to even educate themselves. my goodness.

mother sugar

“As for Anna she was thinking: If I join in now, in a what’s-wrong-with-men session, then I won’t go home, I’ll stay for lunch and all afternoon, and Molly and I will feel friendly, all barriers gone… We’ve chosen to live a certain way, knowing the penalties, or if we didn’t we know now, so why whine and complain… and besides, if I’m not careful, Molly and I will descend into a kind of twin old-maidhood, where we sit around saying to each other, Do you remember how that man, what-was-his-name said that insensitive thing, it must have been 1947…”

i have been back in singapore for more than a week now, have partaken in the weekend zouk rituals and endless mahjong sessions. not that i am complaining, it’s just local flavour as i have always known it.

grandma is doing alright, she’s lost so much weight and the skin bags on her arms that i used to play with so much now look more like rubber bags that have lost their elasticity. she showed me her scar, for which tears welled up in an instant, yet also bringing about another feeling- wanting to photograph it. it is perhaps the ultimate of rudeness, the media beast instinct of wanting to document pain. i remember the last time i took a picture of her she was upset by the result, disgusted that she had become so old and frail. this time, it seems, she is nearer to death than she knows… to have to go through the loss of others is a repetitive process, but to lose yourself? how must that feel like? to physically occupy space no longer?

these days i finally have the time (and desire) to read again. i finished yakuza moon, which was just tragic as a book itself, this chick lit called Band Geek Love, because i was a band geek , and now i’m on doris lessing’s The Golden Notebook, which is simply astonishing even on the prelude. completely marxist feminist i must say, but aren’t we all?

i repeat, this is not a drill.

in the past weeks i’ve had a couple of atomic bombs drop on my head, but right now, i feel like a train wreck waiting to happen.

i swear it’s the domino effect- except everything is not related. it’s like one wave after another and they were all churning and building up where my blind spots are. i was just never alert enough to see these things coming. and of course rash enough to do whatever i want and assume i can get away scot free. sadly, sometimes mistakes come back to haunt you in the most unexpected ways. i hope i don’t pichia lobang or i am in the shits.

some people deserve to die.

you fucking shitface. i’ll never forgive you. when i come home i’ll make sure you rot in your little personal hell of misery and regret and fucking die with a heart attack after a tranny blows you. i’ll make sure you’ll never be fucking happy again you son of a bitch. if i were there you will NEVER be even 10km from us ever again. cunt.

i’m really sorry God but sometimes i can’t understand why you let shit like this happen to innocent people. people who dont know any better and now will be scarred for life. and they call this a test? a test of what? i really can’t have faith in God if he lets people like that asshole even exist in this world. i can’t believe in God when he hurts the people i love. i really can’t.

procrastinator number one.

considering what has happened thus far at home, i really should be studying harder to ensure my studies aren’t in the way if i have to fly back to singapore immediately. i really don’t know what i’ll do if i lose my grandma, just like that.

i don’t really like this picture of myself but everyone else looks good here. this is a photo from last year’s chinese new year. i realised that we didnt take any photos at all this year.

i was very much upset when i first found out my grandma has cancer, and she has to remove most of her stomach. i genuinely felt pessimistic about how that may turn out, but the specialist thinks she’s strong enough to handle it. i’ll like to believe that. i pray she’ll never have to feel like she has no one, but me being all the way in australia doesn’t help things. i break her heart so that i can go ‘pursue my dreams’.

anyhow a lot of other things have happened this past fortnight. there was carl’s housewarming, kenny’s surprise birthday, jack’s 21st, and just last night, soong’s 21st. somehow i believe that there is always a balance. for every drop of happiness there must always be, at least, a drop of misery.

i better get to work now. think higher.

our own little piece of time.

to be fair, i have the chance photograph our romance too. (: i don’t really think it’s about having the best studio set or the canon 1D or something, sometimes everything is just right and you have to catch it, and it’s most perfect the way it is. i want to preserve the moments when we are the most raw and uninhibited, when we’re just together together.

love in a time warp.

i know i’m supposed to be obsessing about my preventative war essay now, but i was catching up on some new york times reads and it led me to something quite fantastic.

i was reading about danny lyon’s photographic work when it led me to Alfred Stieglitz (whose surname i cant pronounce haha) and Georgia O’Keefe. And yes O’Keefe is the famous American artist with a museum. but that’s not the point. here’s some of her paintings that i’m sure you’ll find familar:

It’s interesting because I wiki-ed about them and they have the most amazing story. Stieglitz was pretty much the pioneer of American photography and he published more than 300 photos of O’Keefe- those that i’ve seen are so very astonishing. apparently they were two very passionately lovemaking people; she was a quarter of a decade younger than he was and they were both excellent, brilliant artists. it was somewhat the kind of romance that you see in the movies… so warped, so daring, so undefinable. and it seems like only individuals like them can throw the societal robe away and you just have to love them for their freedom and ambition. you just have to envy them.

and here are some of the amazing photos Stieglitz shot of O’Keefe:

it is quite clear through these photos that Stieglitz had such an obsession with her hands. for most of the portrait shots above you can see that her hands are always somewhat contorted or almost unnaturally placed. i guess she really just looks like a very sleepy and drug-induced person for the most part, but at the same time it looks like she had so much soul in her that she was in pain, dying to express some very abstract part of her yet hardly the usual sense of “bursting forth”. it’s astounding.

and here is my favourite one, out of those i’ve seen so far. how can you ever see so much in a person- to not just look but see- and produce such a beautiful image that reveals all that passionate madness?

yup.

i’m so lazy it’s not funny. despite alicia’s arduous efforts to wake me up for camberwell i didn’t! imagine all the buys i would have missed out on! plus i brought up the idea in the first place :S

aside from that i realised something. i haven’t really had fun in a loong, loooong time. like the ‘let loose and puke’ kind of fun. i’m not sure if i’ve grown out of it, or maybe i don’t need these thrills anymore. it’s been a while also since i last felt contented, and i think when that happens you want to be safe and preserve everything in cling wrap. but even that cant stop the chicken from rotting eventually.

to be continued.

i can’t imagine the pain of losing a loved one, especially when you’re so far away from home. although i have gone through it in different circumstances, i can’t and don’t want to see it happening again, knowing that i may not even be able to be there and tell them how much i love them. and yet we simply cannot stop time from aging and taking it all away.

my black and whites are finally out, do see it on my facebook! here’s my favourite Duke, grumpy and grouchy and all and such a prince:

the way things are.

i remember this line was from the movie Babe. i can’t remember how many times i’ve used it or how staunchly i’ve believed in what it means. sometimes situations are simply unchanging and no amount of effort will turn things your way.

it’s been almost 2 months in melbourne now, and my housemates just booked tickets back to singapore in june. i am going to stay here and clean the house for 10 days.

it seems quite exhilarating that this life here will be over in months, in a way that before we know it, it’s all over. everything now is counted in months. carl and i have been together for almost 5 now (i’m reminiscing my puppy love period when i count my relationships in days), i have got 8 more months left in melbourne, and about 2 months before this semester ends.

time is most exemplary of the way things are. you can’t push it and you can’t create more. perhaps we can cheat for a few hours if we manually adjust the hand but that’s about it. and that is just fucked up. it makes us more afraid of what we can lose, simply because we can’t fight the regiments of regularity- if it’s gone, it’s gone. which is why i hope our time together will mean something more than just time.

pics of us at carl’s in echuca:

his house

with the fattest and grumpiest cat i’ve ever met. more of him when my black and whites get developed.