From an email from Mom.

A giant ship engine failed. The ship's owners tried one expert after another, but none of them could figure but how to fix the engine.

Then they brought in an old man who had been fixing ships since he was a young. He carried a large bag of tools with him, and when he arrived, he immediately went to work. He inspected the engine very carefully, top to bottom.

Two of the ship's owners were there, watching this man, hoping he would know what to do. After looking things over, the old man reached into his bag and pulled out a small hammer. He gently tapped something. Instantly, the engine lurched into life. He carefully put his hammer away. The engine was fixed!

A week later, the owners received a bill from the old man for ten thousand dollars.

"What?!" the owners exclaimed. "He hardly did anything!"

So they wrote the old man a note saying, "Please send us an itemized bill."

The man sent a bill that read:

Tapping with a hammer...... ......... ........ $ 2.00
Knowing where to tap.......... ......... ...... $ 9, 998.00

Effort is important, but knowing where to make an effort makes all the difference!

Existence.

"If no one turned round when we entered, answered when we spoke, or minded what we did, but if every person 'cut us dead', and acted as if we were nonexisting things, a kind of rage and impotent despair would ere long well up in us, from which the cruellest bodily tortures would be a relief; for these [tortures] would make us feel that, however bad might be our plight, we had not sunk to such a depth as to be unworthy of attention at all." - William James, 1890 I am unworthy

Similarity: 99%.

It's okay not to be okay.

I remember reading something about 'true happiness' being when you have neither attachment to joy or aversion to sorrow. And accepting that neither joy nor sorrow is permanent. At the time, I found those words really meaningful and wanted to try and achieve that 'true happiness'.

Bullshit.

I didn't choose to end up like this. It was after constant reinforcing and conditioning that i'm now just numb to everything. Which is good considering now I don't feel disappointed so much and I cry a lot less than I used to.

At the same time, I've pretty much lost the ability to feel excited or happy about anything. Most of the things I 'enjoy' doing have just become mechanical.

It sucks to feel so dead. I want to feel that tingly warm feeling when I hear a familar song that means something to me. I want to laugh like a madwoman at jokes people tell. I want to cry out loud, feel that stabbing pain in my heart.

Better than not feeling anything at all.

-

So yes, I am disappointed right now. Sinking feeling in my heart, please come back.

-

It's a protective mechanism.

Get disappointed after having hopes. "I'm not going to have hopes anymore."
Get pissed off from waiting. "I'm not going to wait anymore."
Get upset from caring too much. "I'm not going to care anymore."

That's how people become numb.

Why women are always on the losing end.

Just some random thoughts from the other day. If you're looking for something objective, you probably shouldn't be reading this.

We learn from the book 'Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus' that men dislike it when women try to 'fix' them [and also, to score points with men, women should forgive their mistakes]. We also learn that women are always trying to improve people.

So the tendency, of course, is for men to get annoyed when women care too much and try to offer their well-meaning advice. They feel like the women are just trying to stop them from doing what they want. If they do listen, then good for the women.

But when men ignore whatever their women say, and go ahead with whatever it is they wanted to do, there are simply two ways it could go. If everything goes well, then of course everything is fine. The man simply finds the woman an irritating nag who gets upset/picks arguments because she was overly worried about something that didn't happen anyway. HER fault.

However, if things do go wrong, the women are supposed to forgive the men for their mistakes. Even though we had warned them beforehand and they insisted on not listening. "I told you so?" Men get pissed off. Still HER fault. And at the same time, whatever consequence the man's actions brought about, the woman has to bear as well.

Of course you're thinking right now, why not just let the man bear his own consequences, then?

Does a man's consequences really affect himself as an individual? If a man falls sick because he doesn't bother taking care of himself, is there really no expectation for his partner to take care of him? And in a really extreme case, if a man kills someone and goes to jail, is he really the only one who suffers?

Is it fair that we bear the consequences for something we were trying so hard to prevent in the first place?

So it looks like all a woman can do to keep her man happy is to keep her mouth shut, be supportive in everything and bear her share of consequences at the end.

I don't know why.

I just feel worn out.

Physically [probably because of the scratches from my dog, the blisters from my new shoes, splinter from my floor and random cuts here and there].

Mentally [schoolwork, what else?]

Emotionally... Not really. I've been through much worse.

So yeah, just tired from stuff I guess. Will have an early night. Had enough of reading without anything going in.

So today's kinda gonna look like this.

- Put eyedrops for J

- Sound the horn

Get a little of my stuff done until 15 minutes later.

- Put eyedrops for J

- Sound the horn

Get a little of my stuff done until 15 minutes later.

- Put eyedrops for J

- Sound the horn

Repeat until 2 hours up.

- Put eyedrops for J

- Put eyedrops for J

- Put eyedrops for J

- Sound the horn

Repeat until approximately 6 hours up.

- Put eyedrops for J

- Put eyedrops for J

- Put eyedrops for J

- Feed J

- Sound the horn

Seems like fun.

Most beautiful place in the world.

Search the above phrase in Google images.

It kept me happy for a while :)

Burlesque!

I CAN'T WAITTT TO START THE COURSEEE.

Been a long while since I felt the excitement of going to learn something new [that i'm actually interested in, unlike school]. So excitinggg.

Looking forward to it! One more week one more week one more week.

Pirates!

Been a long time since I was in love with a movie character ;) Been searching up Captain Jack Sparrow quotes for the past hour or so. The only reason i'm not looking for pictures is because i'm in the school library :/

I have to thank J for making me watch Pirates with him, even though by the time we were watching the third movie, he fell asleep. But anyway, yeah. I can't wait for the next one to be out.

Barbossa: The world used to be a bigger place.
Jack Sparrow: World's still the same. There's just less in it.

Just some updates.

I should be more careful about the stuff I leave lying around the internet.

-

Anyway, I signed up for some Burlesque Cabaret dance course thingy at Groove dance studio. It was some highly discounted thing that I saw through Groupon.sg's website, and I decided to give it a try. I'm still really confused as to how the whole thing works though, so i'm just signing up first and figuring out later.

Will be going to the studio tomorrow to find out more. I'm really quite interested in the course, so I hope there won't be any problems [considering how complicated the process was] and i'll be able to take it :D

Looking forward to it ^^

Random.

The other day in my German class, my Prof was trying to explain the masculine/feminine nature of nouns. He looked around for something as an example, then reached into his bag and pulled out a brain.

Umm. Whaaat?

Social, 50 points.

So this fella came to talk to me on Facebook chat. Just one of those people whom I added for Mousehunt horn sounding. I never thought i'd bother to talk to any of them, considering the past few times some of them tried to talk to me was to ask me to send them gold.

It was a very simple chat, involving the usual 'where are you from' and 'how old are you' stuff. Kinda nice actually, since it's been ages since I chatted with anyone I don't know over the internet. The last I remember making internet friends was when I was 14 and chatting on the Neopets Fan Club chat boards.

Oh and of course the 5566 guild, as well as AuditionSEA friends. Those are locals though. Heh.

Maybe I should go chat with more of these people :)

Oh, Mom. Vol. 2.

Over dinner again.

J: -puts a piece of extremely hot tofu in his mouth without realising-
Everyone else: o_o
Mom: Oh no you poor thing! -turns to me- Quick! Help him blow!
Jbro and I: -facepalm-
Me: You should probably just spit that out. As opposed to me blowing you like my mom said.

Congrats silly.

J: -is looking through my clothes- Which shirt should I wear?
Me: You can wear whatever you want.
J: Is it because I won?
Me: . . .

:)

Went to catch Green Hornet with J last night. By the time it ended, so had all the public transport, so we walked back to my place from Tampines.

Had a nice little chat at the playground on the way home, both of us sitting on one big swing and discussing hypothetical scenarios. Just like last time, when we were still trying to learn more about each other :)

Wonder what we'll do today. But first, gotta wait till that Booboo wakes up :)

Happy CNY I guess.

Today feels like a nice day to sit alone on the beach, in the rain, and just... be away from everyone and everything for a while.

Unfortunately it's not going to be.