I rarely blog anymore and there's a reason behind it and that reason would be my ex boyfriend (who is not to be confused with the Boy and will be referred to as X in future) and I was just thinking about that whole debacle last night.
To put it baldly, I closed my old blog in the months after the break up with X because I realised he was still reading it, still commenting on it and still used it to feel involved in my life. In short, I realised he wasn't letting go and the blog facilitated that. I also closed it because I realised I had no right to stop him from doing any of it. This is the world of the internet and I was fully aware that a blog is part of the public domain. I could have locked the blog with a password the way some of my friends did but it would take away some of the things that made blogging fun.
But the nature of my break up necessitated the closure of the blog and I did it because I owed it to myself to break free of the guy who was and is the worst thing that ever happened to me. I wasted 6.5 years of my life with him and enough was enough. I was glad I was a thousand miles away in Australia and I wanted to be a thousand miles away from him in any and every possible way. I also owed it to Boy (with whom I was starting a new relationship) to cut my ties with X once and for all.
I still miss my old blog. I had a few regular readers who'd leave me comments and emails every so often and I miss that. I feel like I never really made this blog my own the way I made the other. But I have no regrets closing it because getting away from that guy was worth it.
Last night, as I was falling asleep after a long phone conversation with my best friend, it suddenly struck me that I never really blogged the way I did previously, because somewhere, in some corner of my mind, I was still afraid of X. I was still afraid he'd read it and follow it and use it to get to me somehow. I was still afraid.
X met me when I was a stupid, emotional and vulnerable kid and I stayed with him because I literally knew no other life, no other guy. In the years I was with him, I grew anti social, was isolated from my friends and grew to hate myself for that emotional dependence on him. All those parties and outings I missed or skipped out early on? All due to X.
How to describe him? X was screwed up, selfish, liked to argue and needed to be right over every issue no matter how small. When he was late for our dates and I got mad, he'd tell me that I was too anal about time and that time was merely a human construct. And seriously, when I look back I can't believe I was gullible enough to swallow that crock of bullsh**. He believed himself to be an iconoclast, someone who was different and who didn't need to follow the usual rules of society.
I'm not there anymore. I'm not afraid anymore and I don't want or need or love him anymore.
I can write freely again.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Friday, May 9, 2008
Stranger tragedies
I got woken up by a call at 4 am this morning and it led to a strange and surreal day. A day in which I wound up at the hospital, staring down at the unconscious figure of a girl I knew only from the briefest of email correspondences.
When you move overseas and live far away from friends and family, particularly when you're new to the country, there exists a network of acquaintances and friends whose telephone numbers and email addresses just get passed along to you. Because, sometimes, when you're alone in foreign country, it may be that your contact person in case of an emergency might be a mother's friend's brother or friend's cousin or some similiarly distant person.
Today I wound up being that person, because today, the offer of "call me if you need any help" was finally taken up in a way I never imagined.
When you move overseas and live far away from friends and family, particularly when you're new to the country, there exists a network of acquaintances and friends whose telephone numbers and email addresses just get passed along to you. Because, sometimes, when you're alone in foreign country, it may be that your contact person in case of an emergency might be a mother's friend's brother or friend's cousin or some similiarly distant person.
Today I wound up being that person, because today, the offer of "call me if you need any help" was finally taken up in a way I never imagined.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Moving around
I'm back in Singapore and am pleased to say, have been offered a job at XYZ law firm. At this stage, I think I'm just happy to have found a job.
I start work at the end of June and and I'll be coming back from Melbourne on June 14th. It's so odd, but when I realised I would be coming back to Singapore for good, I actually felt my heart sink.
What's wrong with me? When I left Singapore in February, I almost cried because I felt like I didn't want to leave. Now I feel like crying at the thought of leaving Melbourne.
I start work at the end of June and and I'll be coming back from Melbourne on June 14th. It's so odd, but when I realised I would be coming back to Singapore for good, I actually felt my heart sink.
What's wrong with me? When I left Singapore in February, I almost cried because I felt like I didn't want to leave. Now I feel like crying at the thought of leaving Melbourne.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Gone Fishing
I went to Lakes Entrance,Victoria over the Easter break to fish and have fun with a cool bunch of friends from church.
Its a gorgeous district of lovely lakes and rivers that spill out into the Bass Strait. We drove into the town at about half past three on Good Friday and it looked like it could've been used as the set of Dawson's Creek, all pretty riverside views with charming boats tethered to the jetty and the sun sparkling off the waters.
It was a fantastic trip, what with everyone managing to catch some fish, having a chef travel with us and whipping up a yummy BBQ with our catch and much much late night mahjong and card sessions.
I love road trips out of the city. One city is really so much like any other and I sometimes only feel like I'm in Australia when I've gone beyond the suburbs and into the countryside. It's so silly but I feel so happy just looking at the open spaces and water.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Some Like Poetry
Some -
thus not all. Not even the majority of all but the minority.
Not counting schools, where one has to,
and the poets themselves,
there might be two people per thousand.
Like -
but one also likes chicken soup with noodles,
one likes compliments and the color blue,
one likes an old scarf,
one likes having the upper hand,
one likes stroking a dog.
Poetry -
but what is poetry.
Many shaky answers
have been given to this question.
But I don't know and don't know and hold on to it
like to a sustaining railing.
thus not all. Not even the majority of all but the minority.
Not counting schools, where one has to,
and the poets themselves,
there might be two people per thousand.
Like -
but one also likes chicken soup with noodles,
one likes compliments and the color blue,
one likes an old scarf,
one likes having the upper hand,
one likes stroking a dog.
Poetry -
but what is poetry.
Many shaky answers
have been given to this question.
But I don't know and don't know and hold on to it
like to a sustaining railing.
Wislawa Szymborska
translated by
Regina Grol
Friday, March 7, 2008
Here and there
In politics:
Team Clinton to stop at nothing by Gerard Baker
By this stage, I've stopped believing the predictions of most pundits, the polls and various political commentators. This is the closest race for the Democratic presidential nomination I've ever seen and right now, I honestly think it could still go either way, Clinton's Ohio victory notwithstanding. As this article suggests, it could all come down to the candidate who wants it more. It's a pity that the showdown between the two is getting so ugly though. I personally would like to see either an African American president (despite his iffy protectionist economic policies) and a female president (even if most of her much vaunted foreign policy experience is little more than mere puffery) and I find it sad that it has to be either one or the other.
Science:
The Truth about Autism: Scientists reconsider what they think they know by David Wolman
Came across this via Mr Brown and it's an interesting paradigm shift from the way autism is usually viewed. Autism has always been regarded in the same light as other mental disabilities and this author makes a case for autism as a form of misunderstood neuro-diversity. It almost seems to suggest that autistics can be thought of as an alien race with different perspectives and abilities rather than as disabled. But the author is also carefull to outline the pitfalls of thinking of autistics as merely people with different abilities ("critics of the difference model reject the whole idea that autism is merely another example of neuro-diversity. After all, being able to plan your meals for the week or ask for directions bespeak important forms of intelligence")
Numbers Guy by Jim Holt
My favourite article of the week is about math and I'm as shocked as you are. This study confirms the area of the brain that deals with math and names the condition of mathematical disability ( 'dyscalculia'). It also confirms what most Chinese have been saying all along, that the nature of the Chinese language words for numbers aids the brain in holding and using them. So apparently, the Chinese are better at Math because they speak Chinese and quite possibly, if this guy is to be believed, the French really shouldn't be able to count at all because of its " vestigial base-twenty monstrosities, like quatre-vingt-dix-neuf (“four twenty ten nine”) for 99."
Fashion:
How to Shop by Jessa Crispin
Disclaimer: This isn't actually an article on how to buy clothes or dress. Rather it's an amusing indictment of the books that purport to aid women in personal shopping. While she admits the need for these books, ("These books exist, and are in some ways needed, because there is a huge disconnect between the fantasy world of Vogue — where women spend their days romping in fields wearing $1,500 sequined leggings — and reality.") she also dismisses their methodology of dressing with the aim of hiding one's flaws (" It’s hard to walk out the door feeling hot and feisty when your entire dressing process has been focused on your main source of anxiety").
Crispin does recommend one particular book (The Meaning of Sunglasses: A Guide to almost all things Fashionable by Hadley Freeman) which she says "will not make you feel worse about the state of your thighs, nor your brain" and if the rest of the book is anything like the sharp little quotes she's pulled out from it, I wouldn't mind buying it just for fun.
Team Clinton to stop at nothing by Gerard Baker
By this stage, I've stopped believing the predictions of most pundits, the polls and various political commentators. This is the closest race for the Democratic presidential nomination I've ever seen and right now, I honestly think it could still go either way, Clinton's Ohio victory notwithstanding. As this article suggests, it could all come down to the candidate who wants it more. It's a pity that the showdown between the two is getting so ugly though. I personally would like to see either an African American president (despite his iffy protectionist economic policies) and a female president (even if most of her much vaunted foreign policy experience is little more than mere puffery) and I find it sad that it has to be either one or the other.
Science:
The Truth about Autism: Scientists reconsider what they think they know by David Wolman
Came across this via Mr Brown and it's an interesting paradigm shift from the way autism is usually viewed. Autism has always been regarded in the same light as other mental disabilities and this author makes a case for autism as a form of misunderstood neuro-diversity. It almost seems to suggest that autistics can be thought of as an alien race with different perspectives and abilities rather than as disabled. But the author is also carefull to outline the pitfalls of thinking of autistics as merely people with different abilities ("critics of the difference model reject the whole idea that autism is merely another example of neuro-diversity. After all, being able to plan your meals for the week or ask for directions bespeak important forms of intelligence")
Numbers Guy by Jim Holt
My favourite article of the week is about math and I'm as shocked as you are. This study confirms the area of the brain that deals with math and names the condition of mathematical disability ( 'dyscalculia'). It also confirms what most Chinese have been saying all along, that the nature of the Chinese language words for numbers aids the brain in holding and using them. So apparently, the Chinese are better at Math because they speak Chinese and quite possibly, if this guy is to be believed, the French really shouldn't be able to count at all because of its " vestigial base-twenty monstrosities, like quatre-vingt-dix-neuf (“four twenty ten nine”) for 99."
Fashion:
How to Shop by Jessa Crispin
Disclaimer: This isn't actually an article on how to buy clothes or dress. Rather it's an amusing indictment of the books that purport to aid women in personal shopping. While she admits the need for these books, ("These books exist, and are in some ways needed, because there is a huge disconnect between the fantasy world of Vogue — where women spend their days romping in fields wearing $1,500 sequined leggings — and reality.") she also dismisses their methodology of dressing with the aim of hiding one's flaws (" It’s hard to walk out the door feeling hot and feisty when your entire dressing process has been focused on your main source of anxiety").
Crispin does recommend one particular book (The Meaning of Sunglasses: A Guide to almost all things Fashionable by Hadley Freeman) which she says "will not make you feel worse about the state of your thighs, nor your brain" and if the rest of the book is anything like the sharp little quotes she's pulled out from it, I wouldn't mind buying it just for fun.
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