since its been awhile, I can't be bothered to look for my old beat up calendar to look at the dates, so lets assume this pathetic little entry will make up for the fact that I've been gone for so long...
Wow, its been awhile since I've written any of these "journal entries" I can virtually blow virtual cobwebs of my virtual desk where I write these virtual entries.
I have been uncharacteristically busy these past few weeks, preparing for my much awaited, Confirmation. It was a sunny Sunday morning when I reached the church of Jesus Caritas in Kepong to finalize my rite of Confirmation. As part of the dress code, I was (forced, threatened, pushed into) wearing a withe blouse and white skirt.Nothing much to say about the act of Confirming but the pizza party we had later was really fun.
My classmates (from Sunday school) and I congregated at the house of my Sunday school teacher as she had invited us over to commemorate our last day as the Form 5 class of 2012, and what a fantastic party it was. I will not bore my readers with details to the party (well, more of, after typing three essays, I am a little sick of looking at this blasted keyboard) so I will sign off early today (don't I always)
Have an amazing week people, ciao
Tuesday, 31 July 2012
Childhood Fears
I was a simple child, lived in Klang for two years before I got my first asthma attack, forcing my family to move to my dad's hometown in Kota Bahru, Kelantan where i would be safe from contaminated air. There I spent my days lying on the floor or watching my grandmother expertly push a needle through pieces of fabric to create a beautiful garment or watch her talk to her friends in the unique Kelantanese slang that until today I can barely grasp. It was not like I feared many things besides the prospect of a cane coming into contact with my skin but seeing as I am unable to fill up a whole essay just typing about my hatred for those canes I have no choice but to reach deep down to access my fears, so I will tell a few tales of fear from my childhood.
One of my fears used to be of dolls, and no, not those overly superficial barbie dolls that are a girl's dream toy at Christmas, but those dolls that had babyish features, the ones with pale white skin, straight midnight black hair and giant eyes that close when you place them lying down. This fear began when I received one of these dolls from an aunt, it was a beautiful doll with ghostly white skin, shoulder length straight hair and big brown eyes, dressed in a plain blue kimono. Being the good girl I was, I accepted the doll gratefully and played with it till I had to sleep. I put the doll on a shelf opposite my bed and shut my eyes. I realized I couldn't sleep with the doll staring at me so I put it into a cupboard and shut my eyes again. Not long after that, I woke up with the creepy feeling of being watched and looked around in the dark room, only to see the moonlight casting a soft glow on the doll through the window. Perhaps it was just my over-imaginative mind playing tricks on me, because I saw the eyes of the doll staring straight at me, with its smile forever etched on its face, it looked really evil and the fact that it was out of the cupboard creeped me out a lot more. I threw a pillow at it so that it fell to the floor and went back to sleep. In the morning, I saw its overly happy face staring straight into my eyes. Needless to say, I screamed and jumped off my bed and ran straight into my parents' room crying about an evil doll that wanted to make me its slave.
Next, for awhile, I was very afraid of small holes, like the kind you find on sponges or rotting wood. I could not understand why, but one day, as I was helping my mother wash the dishes, I looked at the sponge, as I stared at the innocent looking holes, I felt goosebumps and felt a shiver run up my spine. It wasn't like I imagines little things in there that were waiting to take over the world, no it was more like, I was scared because I couldn't imagine anything. The little holes were like gateways to the unknown, things I'd never seen before or even thought about, all the endless possibilities that could emerge from the little holes, all because I could not thing of them.
Lastly, I was always afraid of the dark. It wasn't like I saw anything in the dark, but more like my mind would just come up with the worst scenario suddenly and I'd end up scaring myself. The fact that one could never be sure of what you would find in the dark made this situation even worse for me. It was normal to see me scurrying to my parent's room after scaring the soul out of myself and taking comfort in the warmth they provided me. I would put up a brave front for my siblings when they asked me to accompany them to the bathroom, but the wait that would last about 3 minutes or so, I would have imagined how a robber or murderer would break int the house at that very moment just to kill me, or how the creeping darkness would extend its claws to grab me and drag me past the point of no return.
As you can tell, I am quite a cowardly person, my over imaginative mind tends to cause a lot of problems for me, although many of my most creative stories stem from it, many of my fears tend to be caused by it as well.
One of my fears used to be of dolls, and no, not those overly superficial barbie dolls that are a girl's dream toy at Christmas, but those dolls that had babyish features, the ones with pale white skin, straight midnight black hair and giant eyes that close when you place them lying down. This fear began when I received one of these dolls from an aunt, it was a beautiful doll with ghostly white skin, shoulder length straight hair and big brown eyes, dressed in a plain blue kimono. Being the good girl I was, I accepted the doll gratefully and played with it till I had to sleep. I put the doll on a shelf opposite my bed and shut my eyes. I realized I couldn't sleep with the doll staring at me so I put it into a cupboard and shut my eyes again. Not long after that, I woke up with the creepy feeling of being watched and looked around in the dark room, only to see the moonlight casting a soft glow on the doll through the window. Perhaps it was just my over-imaginative mind playing tricks on me, because I saw the eyes of the doll staring straight at me, with its smile forever etched on its face, it looked really evil and the fact that it was out of the cupboard creeped me out a lot more. I threw a pillow at it so that it fell to the floor and went back to sleep. In the morning, I saw its overly happy face staring straight into my eyes. Needless to say, I screamed and jumped off my bed and ran straight into my parents' room crying about an evil doll that wanted to make me its slave.
Next, for awhile, I was very afraid of small holes, like the kind you find on sponges or rotting wood. I could not understand why, but one day, as I was helping my mother wash the dishes, I looked at the sponge, as I stared at the innocent looking holes, I felt goosebumps and felt a shiver run up my spine. It wasn't like I imagines little things in there that were waiting to take over the world, no it was more like, I was scared because I couldn't imagine anything. The little holes were like gateways to the unknown, things I'd never seen before or even thought about, all the endless possibilities that could emerge from the little holes, all because I could not thing of them.
Lastly, I was always afraid of the dark. It wasn't like I saw anything in the dark, but more like my mind would just come up with the worst scenario suddenly and I'd end up scaring myself. The fact that one could never be sure of what you would find in the dark made this situation even worse for me. It was normal to see me scurrying to my parent's room after scaring the soul out of myself and taking comfort in the warmth they provided me. I would put up a brave front for my siblings when they asked me to accompany them to the bathroom, but the wait that would last about 3 minutes or so, I would have imagined how a robber or murderer would break int the house at that very moment just to kill me, or how the creeping darkness would extend its claws to grab me and drag me past the point of no return.
As you can tell, I am quite a cowardly person, my over imaginative mind tends to cause a lot of problems for me, although many of my most creative stories stem from it, many of my fears tend to be caused by it as well.
Monday, 16 July 2012
Discrimination Lives Within Us
One may argue that, today's world is perfect, any able-thinking human being would be able to see, plain as daylight that our so called 'perfect' world is not, in fact without flaw. One of the most obvious social issue that is present in every society is, discrimination. No matter how much we would like to deny it, acts of discrimination are being performed unknowingly despite the belief that we are superior, without flaws and able to think above our Neanderthal ancestors. In spite of this, we are still unable to overlook our differences, this results in petty problems that benefits neither party. Discrimination has many forms, for example, discrimination can be done based on racial differences, skin colour, appearance, religion, sexual orientation, social status, economic background the list goes on.
Case in point, one of the most obvious forms of discriminations is the act of discriminating against other races. This form of discrimination is described as being prejudiced against others solely based on their race this can also be a form of discrimination based on skin colour. People are more prone to discriminate based on skin colour because, it is a daily occurrence in our lives, namely, since we were young, perhaps our parents told us to stay away from other races due to their overprotective nature. Even as we grow with age and our mind matures, we will still have that inkling at the back of our minds to stay away or avoid people of certain race or skin tone.
Next, we have religious discrimination. This seems to be one of the biggest controversies in our country where every individual has the right to practice his or her own faith and beliefs, as it says in our Constitution. However, with all this freedom there are certain consequences, namely differences in religious beliefs have caused a sort of divide between the people of this nation.
A rising problem of discrimination in today's modern world is the act of discriminating another individual based on their sexual orientation, namely the gays and lesbians. These individuals are constantly under the media's eyes and are usually persecuted by others. These people are judged to be unclean especially in the eyes of most religions. They are denied most human rights, such as the right to adopt a child, not because they are unfit to care for a child, others believe that just because a child grows up with two mother or two fathers instead of the usual white picket fence family with one father and a mother, they will grow up "wrong" in their society.
The next form of discrimination is the type that one may see in big corporations where an individual has to climb up the ladder to succeed. In most white collar jobs, the discrimination against women is somewhat prominent. This is because most employers believe that a woman is too troublesome to hire, because a woman has the ability to get pregnant, this causes productivity to suffer when said pregnant women take their maternity leave. People are also under the impression that a woman is unable to do most of the things that men can do, namely physical labour. This creates a glass barrier for women, as the most they can do is reach this barrier and stay under it because they are unfit to exceed it.
Therefore, our world is hardly perfect. We as human beings, thought to be the peak of evolution are unable to look past petty differences, instead we pick at those differences until it becomes an issue and cause difficulties for other, in short, we seem to enjoy making a mountain out of a molehill. We should instead be ready to embrace the fact that we are all unique, and not everybody can be like us, we must be prepared to love our fellow man for as William Gladstone once said, "We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know peace"
Case in point, one of the most obvious forms of discriminations is the act of discriminating against other races. This form of discrimination is described as being prejudiced against others solely based on their race this can also be a form of discrimination based on skin colour. People are more prone to discriminate based on skin colour because, it is a daily occurrence in our lives, namely, since we were young, perhaps our parents told us to stay away from other races due to their overprotective nature. Even as we grow with age and our mind matures, we will still have that inkling at the back of our minds to stay away or avoid people of certain race or skin tone.
Next, we have religious discrimination. This seems to be one of the biggest controversies in our country where every individual has the right to practice his or her own faith and beliefs, as it says in our Constitution. However, with all this freedom there are certain consequences, namely differences in religious beliefs have caused a sort of divide between the people of this nation.
A rising problem of discrimination in today's modern world is the act of discriminating another individual based on their sexual orientation, namely the gays and lesbians. These individuals are constantly under the media's eyes and are usually persecuted by others. These people are judged to be unclean especially in the eyes of most religions. They are denied most human rights, such as the right to adopt a child, not because they are unfit to care for a child, others believe that just because a child grows up with two mother or two fathers instead of the usual white picket fence family with one father and a mother, they will grow up "wrong" in their society.
The next form of discrimination is the type that one may see in big corporations where an individual has to climb up the ladder to succeed. In most white collar jobs, the discrimination against women is somewhat prominent. This is because most employers believe that a woman is too troublesome to hire, because a woman has the ability to get pregnant, this causes productivity to suffer when said pregnant women take their maternity leave. People are also under the impression that a woman is unable to do most of the things that men can do, namely physical labour. This creates a glass barrier for women, as the most they can do is reach this barrier and stay under it because they are unfit to exceed it.
Therefore, our world is hardly perfect. We as human beings, thought to be the peak of evolution are unable to look past petty differences, instead we pick at those differences until it becomes an issue and cause difficulties for other, in short, we seem to enjoy making a mountain out of a molehill. We should instead be ready to embrace the fact that we are all unique, and not everybody can be like us, we must be prepared to love our fellow man for as William Gladstone once said, "We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know peace"
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