Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Hallucination

dEaR jUmJuM...

she was sitting silently with her eyes closed. concentrating.
she tried her hardest to block out the buzz of people around her. concentrating hard...
and then it came.
it felt like she was in the middle of the sea, the waves bobbing her up and down.
she sways from side to side, following the rhythm of the sea...but still concentrating.
and then it lifts her. she sees above her a wide, high, rounded, brown ceiling opening up.
she feels herself dancing..just twirling, twirling around the high open space.

then her eyes start to flutter, and she sees the most beautiful pictures appearing on that brown ceiling.
she floats around in circles, her fluttering eyes taking in the crystal clear images around her. with every round she goes, different patterns of colours seem to appear. and then she leaves the ceiling and drops down, floating through the hallways of the structure, one after another. she admires her colourful world, and feels a sense of belonging and want and need that she never experienced before. she feels light and calm and carefree. she just wants to dwell in it forever and never come back.

and then she feels an iron grip on her wrist and her eyes fly open.
and her hallucination stops.













*atm*

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Bond That Chains Us

dEaR jUmJuM...
Claire was brought up in a typical Chinese society. She was the youngest of five children- four girls and one boy. Her simple, carefree life came to a screeching halt when her mother passed away.
She was two years old. Too young to be stripped of a parent. Too young to understand the impact of the great change in her small little young life.
Her father was a burly man with hunching posture and thick, rough hands- a result from his job as a laborer. Mr Teh was a stiff and reclusive man who barely uttered a word, instead he mumbled and grunted in response to any friendly conversation.
Without a mother to run to, young Claire soon became the target of her siblings’ bully as she was the youngest and “dummest”.
“Look Claire! There’s a lizard on your bed!”
“Hahaha…Claire’s so ben. She doesn’t even know where the South China Sea is,”
“You better watch out, Claire, the boogey monsters are waiting for you in the toilet!”
Her siblings could not have known better as they didn’t have a strong disciplining hand nor did they have anyone to correct their ways. Mr Teh was always busy working to put food on the table. Even when he was home, he sat at the table reading the newspapers as if he did not have a care in the world. To Claire, a father is just a man who feeds you, clothes you, and puts a roof over your head. He frowns when you sing him a song. He merely grunts and bathes your wound when you are wailing your heart out after a fall. He doesn’t come to your rescue when you are bullied.
Three years later, Claire attended her first day of school. Her father dropped her off at the school gate, grunted, and cycled away. As she walked into the school compound, Claire noticed the kindergarteners all around her. Some were walking with their hands clasped firmly in their parents’ hands, some who were crying were being reassured by their parents, some were enthusiastically waving their parents goodbye. She felt even more awkward during recess when everyone’s parents came with packs and packs of food. She stared miserably down at her plain biscuits.
“Why didn’t you come into school with me today?”
Grunt.
“Why? Why didn’t you come during recess?”
Grunt. “I had to work.”
“Why don’t I have a mummy then?”
Grunt. Shuffle.
“Why don’t I have one?”
Shuffle.
“Why did she have to leave me? Tell me, tell me!”
“I don’t know!” Her father finally bellowed at her, slamming his fist on the table.
Claire was very shaken. Her father had never yelled at her before. She ran to her room, tears streaming endlessly down her red cheeks.
That was about twenty years ago. She had since studied her way to a scholarship, graduated, and now works at an established hospital in her hometown. She met a great guy who was willing to commit and they got married a few years later. All this while, Claire has faithfully been in contact with her father and siblings (who eventually grew up and made their peace with Claire), but she only stayed in contact with her father because he is, after all, her dad. But deep down inside, she still harbored a feeling of resentment towards him for being so cold.
“Frank, really. I don’t see the point in doing this. It’s just gonna end up all awkward,” Claire says to her husband.
“Darling, we’ve been through this. He’s your dad; come on,” replies Frank for the millionth time.
That day, Mr Teh was coming to visit his daughter, son-in-law and Hayley, their new-born baby girl. From the moment Hayley was born, Claire promised herself she would love her baby with all her heart, and she would show it and tell it to her, everyday. She reminded herself of her childhood and promised never to let Hayley go through anything like it.
Frank started chatting cheerfully away with Mr Teh (even though most of the response he got were grunts), while Claire went to bring her baby out. Claire watched her father’s thick, rough hands as they cradled the baby. At that moment, for the first time in her life, Claire saw her big, burly father cry.
“I’m…I’m s..sorry. She looks so much l..like you. A..and y..y..your m..mm..mum,”
Claire stood rooted to the ground, shocked, while her father took some time to wipe his tears. Finally, he lifted his head and looked her straight in the eye.
“Claire, I’ve been a bad father. I provided for you materially but I was never there for you emotionally…you, and your siblings too. The truth is I couldn’t cope with your mother’s death. You look so much like her…I just couldn’t bear to look at you without aching inside. Your mother was always so good with children, with everyone. I just am not. But I should have tried, I should have tried…Daddy loves you, Claire..”
Mr Teh felt his daughter’s arms around him for the first time in a long time, and felt her warm tears drenching his shirt. And that day, everything was forgiven.
Today, Mr Teh is going to see his daughter again.
He is, after all, her dad.
*atm*

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Aideee 2

dEaR jUmJuM...

okay so i ended up removing half of all my posts.
my "edit posts" section is now full of little red "draft"s on every page.

*atm*

Aideee.

dEaR jUmJuM...

i was reading through my old posts from 2008 and i've decided to remove the first few months' of blog posts as they are just too childish and embarrassing. but it's only been two years. man i feel old!

*atm*

Friday, June 11, 2010

Funny Dream

dEaR jUmJuM...

okay last night i had the weirdest dream. my parents announced that they bought a "really nice place" in damansara and ordered us to pack our stuff up- we were leaving 1st thing in the morning. the weird part was that i didnt kick up a fuss or anything about having to move to another state again. instead i was like, oh cool lalala go pack me stuff. and i didnt even tell anybody.

next thing i know val, zac and i were walking from room to room discussing the pro's and con's of each. the next weird thing- val insisted on sleeping with my parents! oh dear. when i started to unpack only did i realise that i didnt pack any of my clothes. @@ then there was this piano left by the previous owners in the living room n i was all, hey! why dont i go play a song. when i opened it, i was damn shocked to see that all the black keys were made up of forks and spoons.

my gosh.

*atm*

Monday, June 7, 2010

Letting go.

dEaR jUmJuM...

okay.
so my mum's family used to be really poor and they lived in this government owned flat- KMC flats on ban hock road. (well actually most of the people living there aren't that poor anymore, they're just used to living there) even after my mum and her siblings became financially stable they still kept the flat because well, my grandma loved that place and you couldnt expect a woman her age to give up the house she raised her kids in maa. and well, it's been a few years since my grandma passed away now. so my mum and her siblings decided it was high time to give it up for some poor family who really needs it, however much they are still attached to it.

so today after finishing off my exams at school, my mum brought z and i there to pick up some stuff. z was like, "ma, dont you feel sad?" and my mum was all, "ah well. we dont really need it anyway." so yeah.

when we were still living in semenanjung and came back for CNYs, we would stay there. and honestly speaking i kinda loathed that place. it had cracked tiles, peeled off paint, mice running inside the ceiling at night, AND a crazy woman who lives downstairs, yelling and singing at random (seriously. apparently some guy broke her heart when she was young and she never recovered.) but you know, no matter how much i disliked that place i still feel sad. mm..oh well.






when i was young, i'd dangle stuff from this spot (pic below) to the ground three stories down (pic above) and amuse myself by watching my mum go down to pick it =)


i remember there was once i thought that there was only that piece of cloth in the doorway and barged in, only to hit my head on the hidden door =(

*atm*