August 2012 – michelle teoh

IT’S THE WEEKEND OH MY GOD

I have never been so happy and glad that the weekend is finally here. This entire week has slugged by so, so slowly that my entire body literally feels heavy from the weight of this entire week.

For the clueless, I had and am still having my SPM trials since the starting of this week until the 11th of September. The first week of trials was especially tiring, because they managed to cram six subjects (thirteen papers) in the span of five days. So it was an entire week of not writing at all during Raya holidays and going back to school writing ten pages a day. Not to mention that all subjects were heavy subjects (BM, English, History, Moral, Chemistry, Biology), so there was literally no time to sit down and rest because before you’ve even finished revising for tomorrow’s paper, you start worrying about the day after tomorrow’s paper and it’s been so hectic and exhausting and I haven’t even told you the best thing out of all of this yet.

I fell sick the night before the first day of trials. The traditional combination of fever, inflamed tonsils and flu. So I went to school feeling like passing out in the middle of all my papers and spent several restless nights having nightmares about falling asleep in the middle of a test and not being able to finish a paper in time while waking up in the middle of the night with snot clogging up my respiratory tubes.

But that’s over and done now and at least I can take a breather today so after I finish up this post, I’m going to finish The Da Vinci Code while listening to Ben Howard on loop.

Trials aside, some of my friends and I got to thinking randomly the other day that we only have three months left in school. Technically, we only have two months because the last month will be spent sitting for SPM and I don’t think that counts at all. Two months. Two months. Where have the times gone? (WOW no I definitely didn’t mean to sound like I quoted that Maroon 5 song but I guess that’s what you’re already thinking anyway.) No like honestly, I’ve been in this school for five years? And I’m leaving soon? And I’m leaving my home and my parents and everything in Alor Setar soon? What?

Two months suddenly doesn’t seem like enough time to…well, I don’t know, to spend time properly here I guess because two months will definitely fly by so quickly, not to mention that in those two months I’ll definitely be extremely busy and occupied with SPM so time will zoom past in the blink of an eye and I don’t want that to happen. I want a proper, dramatic and impactful goodbye like how Holden Caulfield would want it to be. I don’t want to treat leaving Alor Setar as a mere rite of passage, so I’ve decided to start this sort-of project called Collecting Memories (I’m sorry for the cheesiness I thought of it in the middle of Biology paper 1 okay) which involves creating a journal to have people in school write in their honest goodbyes to me before these two months are up. I might possibly also write letters to some people so at least, you know, they’ll have impactful goodbyes too. And yes, I know what you’re thinking, that this will probably end up like one of my abandoned projects again (remember Project More and my 50 books in 2012 challenge? Well at least I’m almost halfway through the latter, I’ve read 25 books so far) but I promise you I will try my best to make this project work.

Speaking of letters, I’ve been having a letter fetish lately, evident in my sending letters to Sakina, Mei, Ellie, Effie, Elya and Paik Suan a few weeks ago. I got a reply letter from Paik Suan last week and as she had requested in aforementioned letter, I’m posting a photo of it here:

Paik Suan’s very colourful and lovely letter with honorary mentions of Tom Daley and Benedict Cumberbatch.

Paik Suan, if you’re reading this, I know I promised to write you back last week but trials have been maddening so I will write your reply today. As in now.

That’s all folks!

Some Opinions About Opinions

So here’s the thing. I like a band which people either extremely love or extremely hate.

Perfectly symmetrical, perfectly normal. Hatred and dislike must exist to complement love and adoration.

I also understand that different people have different opinions, and that we are a species who like to express their opinions publicly. And that’s all very fine, until people start to direct those hateful comments towards you. Multiple times.

Would you believe me if I said I’ve gotten a fair amount of disdain comments ever since I started liking One Direction? It’s gotten to the point that admitting one likes One Direction is an invitation to sneers and teases. Disliking someone for their horrible attitudes is one thing, disliking someone for their music tastes? I don’t get it? Someone enlighten the dusty corners of my mind which fail to allocate the logic to this?

To emphasise, everyone has their different opinions, different tastes in music, different tastes in men or women, different tastes in clothes, different tastes in pizzas et cetera and it’s okay to say you like this or you like that or you dislike this or you dislike that and then you know what you should do after that? You should shut up about it. Imagine sitting through dinner listening to someone telling everyone, “Hey, you know what? I hate doorstoppers.” “Don’t you think doorstoppers are so, like, irrelevant?” “Doorstoppers? More like doorstupid! Haha!” “You like doorstoppers? Ew! Are you okay!” “Lord help me, why do so many people like doorstoppers, I just don’t get it?” “Listen, I think y’all need a brainwash, doorstoppers are so not cool.”

UM OKAY?????? I think we all get it that you dislike something but don’t go around flaunting your dislike like it’s a shiny trophy everyone wants to kiss. Spare us all your wit and let us get on with our lives while you struggle through yours. Maybe if you put as much dedication into fixing that habit of yours as you do in your spiteful comments, everyone (yes, including you! Oh my God! Shocking!) might lead happier lives.

Oh, you want another example closer to reality? Say you know someone who likes K-pop (this is a non-biased example because I don’t like K-pop). You follow him/her on Twitter and are friends with him/her on Facebook. Heck, even if you live next door with him/her, and all you see on your timeline and newsfeed and listen to from the neighbouring house is K-pop, why would you mention them/post on their wall/scream at them through the gate that it is WRONG for them to like something which makes them happy and is practically none of your business huh huh why don’t you keep your opinions to yourself. Or a better and simpler idea would be to unfollow or unfriend or move if you really can’t stand it.

So what if I like a British boyband who sings teenage boppy songs that they don’t write themselves? So what if I like to read YA books? So what if I eat cereal for supper? So what because you don’t have a say in any of this!!!!!!!

I’ve been to many Last.fm and Youtube pages where people leave hateful comments at an artist’s page. If you really hate someone so much why would you even go to his/her page to criticise them? Are you trying to make a point because I don’t see one. Whenever someone does that, I imagine a poor little kid in his or her dark room with the lights off shedding tears over how completely offended he or she is by this band or musician or tv show or movie or actor or ice cream flavour that she clicks on their offensive fanpages and starts typing “VANILLA ICE CREAM IS THE WORST ICE CREAM EVER!!!!!!!! F A C T!!!!!! ALSO U R UGLY” with such intensity that it sends vibrations throughout the table as the kid blows into his or her tissue for the twelfth time.

Do you want to be the crying kid in the dark room? Do you?

People are people; you are you; they are them. You are not them, they are not you, neither do you control them nor they you. The world is made up of various and vastly different things, we can’t all expect everyone to like the same things we do. It’s the 21st century, people should be able to like whatever they want without receiving destructive and pointless criticism.

From the mouth of Thumper himself, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothin’ at all.”

You know who else agrees with me? My friends Mei Lee, Mark Foster (1) (2) and Ed Sheeran (1) (2).

I’m sorry if I offended anyone but I’m just sick and tired of people’s constant judgments about something that doesn’t concern them at all. You might think this post seems hypocritical but at least I’m not shoving my opinion down anyone’s throat.

Late Night/Early Morning Adventures

Many of you might know that just last night/this morning (I honestly still do not know which term is the more accurate one) I woke up at 3.30 AM just to watch the Olympics Closing Ceremony and let me tell you why I am and have been making such a huge fuss over this.

Number one, One Direction and Ed Sheeran was performing at the Olympics Closing Ceremony. That is a good enough bulletpoint for Reason #1 the end.

Number two, this is a totally and absolutely new thing for me. And I don’t mean that watching the Olympics Closing Ceremony is a new thing for me; getting up at three-thirty in the morning to do so alone is. I have never done anything like this before. I have never even stayed up past 3 AM before (except that one time I read The Hunger Games until 5 AM and then proceeded to cry when I found out what time it was which probably doesn’t count because after that I slept until noon). So this was all very new to me. Like a new adventure. Kind of like rebellion but not really because I wasn’t rebelling against my parents because they were okay with it but maybe rebellion against my dull, routine-centred life and it was all very exciting to me.

So the previous night, I went to sleep at 9 PM and that was a pretty restless night. I woke up twice, once at 1.40 AM and once at 2.20 AM, always checking my alarm to see what time it was. I even dreamed about watching the Olympics Closing Ceremony at Mei’s non-existent (yet) apartment. Is it obvious that I was excited no it totally isn’t is it

And then when my alarm rang I dashed out of the room so fast you would never catch me waking up so energetic on a school day (or any other normal day during which you wake me up at 3.30 AM, to be honest). I brushed my teeth, woke up Beneh and Laiyy and started livetweeting the Olympics Closing Ceremony.

In retrospect, I think my excitement was more 70% excitement due to rebellion and 30% excitement due to the Ceremony (aka I’m only watching for One Direction and Ed Sheeran).

Later on, I found out the Youtube live streaming was actually much slower than the live show so I went downstairs alone in the dark and watched the live broadcast on TV2 instead. I didn’t want to at first because I was scared but you should know the power One Direction has over my current life right now which is not a very healthy element of my existence.

And so I spent the next three hours watching the whole thing while livetweeting with Beneh, Laiyy, Wahed, Thira etc (albeit incomplete livetweeting because I HIT TWEET LIMIT HALFWAY THROUGH THE SHOW) and whatsapping with Mei and Sakina. Other highlights of the Ceremony included half of Oasis namely Liam Gallagher singing Wonderwall, a Spice Girls reunion and virtual appearances by John Lennon of The Beatles and Freddie Mercury of Queen.

By 6.30 AM, I decided to switch off the TV even though the Ceremony had yet to end because I had to prepare for school. And school today was just a whole day of gossiping with Beneh and Laiyy about the Closing Ceremony. How awesome.

So is this the turning point of my life where I actually get to lead a real teenage life now? I’ve been giddy with residues of excitement over both my staying up and the Ceremony for the whole day that I actually felt more energetic in school today than any other day during which I practice a normal sleep routine. It’s like a hangover but a nice hangover because I’m not actually throwing up or anything but memories of last night/this morning would always seem ethereal whenever I revisit them.

And yes, I’m just going to straight out admit that I only watched the Ceremony for the acts (two particular acts, to be frank) but I’ve never been interested in sports nor the Olympics so I’m not going to just jump on the hype bandwagon just because it’s Olympic season (except during the Lee Chong Wei vs Lin Dan match because it had something to do with Malaysia so it more or less also had something to do with me). Some people truly do watch the Ceremony to celebrate the ending of three weeks of sports unity, but sadly I’m not one of those people nor am I going to pretend to be one. I, however, am a fan of British performers and entertainers and I’ll do what I can to catch a glimpse of them, even if it requires me to wake up in the wee hours of the morning just to witness their two minutes of screentime.

I live by the motto that it doesn’t matter if it’s a good idea or not if it makes a good story. So one day I’ll be telling my kids about that time I woke up in the middle of the night just to watch the boyband I was hopelessly devoted to on my television.

Buka Puasa at Pengetua’s

This post is a week late but I’m still going to blog about it anyway because it was one of the best nights of my life.

Last Tuesday, Etiqah invited the whole of 5 Negeri and a few others from other classes (a total of 30 students) to her house (aka our school’s headmistress’ house) for a buka puasa event.

So by 6pm, everyone gathered at the school porch and we set off for Et’s house in a bus.

Et’s house was at Jitra, so it was a half hour’s journey ride until we reached her enormous house. And then things got wild.

(Well, not in a bad way.)

While waiting to buka puasa, we explored the house, played with Et’s kittens, took loads of photographs, goofed around, talked really loudly and basically treated the house as our own. It was great because everyone knew everyone and for once, all of us were in an environment in which we weren’t obligated to jot down notes, complete exercises and study. It was a moment of zero stress. It was a moment of fun.

And then it was 7.38pm and it was time to break fast!

There was rice, chicken curry, beef, prawns, chicken sticks and kuih, prepared by our very own headmistress, if I’m not mistaken.

6bf95460daff11e1974722000a1e8c8b_7 — Yours truly, Beneh, Laiyy and Huda the cat

a1ead442db0211e1818012313b012024_7 — Yours truly and Laiyy

And did I mention it was Laiyy’s birthday as well? Because it was and we even had cake!

Laiyy and the headmistress in which the headmistress gave her a birthday present

And then soon, at around 10pm it was time and everyone headed home in the same bus we came with.

Everyone was more or less already knocked out in the bus so it was a quiet journey home. Despite feeling the fullest and most tired I’ve ever been, I enjoyed myself thoroughly and here’s a note to Et: don’t hesitate to invite us over for another event like this again.