Okay, after writing a much too steamy retailation and typing out what I wrote on Friday - after it stormed thanks to global warming - I'm finally sane.

And I'm pleased to announce that I passed my 2.4 km run after all. Hallelujah! But I have muscle cramps now.

Okay. It stormed last night so my PE things didn't dry, and I was going to borrow YJ's, but then she didn't have extra shorts and mine were soaking wet. So I had to sit the lesson out. After the mid-year papers I'm going to make Dad play basketball with me every week. I hate going out, so thankfully the court is indoors. No AC, though.

I don't really have much to say today since my creative juices have all been pressed out already (makes for a very bitter juice, I know - one thing about my CAP portfolio was that the whole thing was egocentric angst, but apparently it was well-written egocentric angst so it was accepted).

Oh. I just realised something. "rage" mentioned that I'm a "bleep bleep bleep....whom everyone pretends to like". Correction, dearie, nobody pretends to like me. I wouldn't like it if they did. But then what I like doesn't really matter.

Hm. And I haven't called people mentally challenged before they said the same thing about me. I heard it a lot before I ever said it - where do you think I learnt it from? I got it from my mom and schoolmates all the time. By the way...who is Stephanie Crawford? Haven't been watching English movies/TV shows for the past...I don't know. Seems I never have. I assume she has something to do with showbiz. Sorry, I'll go look it up myself. Thanks. Now at least I'll have someone to talk about whenever people ask me about the film industry etc. etc., which they rarely do. People just don't talk to me that much, and I have no objections whatsoever. :) Ahh... I think "rage" is just getting on my nerves a little. No more objections to the rest of what was said. And by the way, "rage", if you think having a bunch of spam on your tagboard is evidence of having friends, think again. There's a difference between being popular and being cared about. I may not be popular, true - never have been and never will be - but I know people care about me. My parents care about me (in case you're wondering, yes, my mom may have hit me a lot but insane streaks seem to run in this side of the family - granddad had it too), my friends care about me, I care about myself most of the time... Whereas for some popular people (not stereotyping, don't accuse me of such), their "friends" remind me of flies crowding around an open sewer. Do they care about the sewer? I think not. They only want to know what they can get out of it. Again, I'm not stereotyping, since you have something against that while doing it very well yourself, I have seen this from personal experience.

Ugh. I may have to just post some spam myself and get "rage"'s post out of my sight. True, beyond the swearing and acid it does have a point, but swearing gets me fired up no matter who does it. On second thoughts, I won't.

Okay, all egocentric angst aside. Yesterday was Sheryl's birthday (do you know she turned up for the run because her birthday was the next day?) and I forgot to get a present...now I wonder what I'm going to do about it.

Ah yes. For the skit, I have yet to come up with a way of making shoes that look anything like paws, so if anyone has any ideas... And I need to ask my lab partner if she knows of any place to buy felt. Will's uniform is settled, so for now I just need to worry about the boots and fur coat. I'm also a bit apprehensive about the whole get-up... What if Baby Kanga gets heatstroke? I wonder if we could settle for cotton.

Not much other than that, only we have tutoring again on Wednesday. The kids are cute. I hope they won't keep asking me for answers though. I'm not supposed to tell.

Summary to do today, also Geography essay and three worksheets to do with indices. And I have to begin memorising History and Geography. I can't very well memorise Math, and memorising Chinese a week before the test won't do me any good, so I'll have to settle for those two, as well as come up with a viable sci-fi plot that can be manipulated however I like. I can't write mystery on short notice, or I would.

Hope YJ does really well for her 2.4 km on Wednesday, although I don't think I have to worry that much - she is in Track and Field.

[Edit: Thanks for refreshing my memory, whitelight - Stephanie Crawford is a character from TKMB. Regardless of that, whatever I said with reference to "rage"'s post is still relevant - I haven't stereotyped people before they did me. I am starting to suspect that you are someone I know after all, so I may have to look out for people I know who don't have fantastic manners. And who stereotype. And who like spam on their tagboards. And this refers only to you so please don't accuse me of stereotyping.]

(This is what I wrote on that day, on the bus. Edited for your reading pleasure, if it can be deemed as such.)

Today it stormed so we didn't get to run after all. We're to report back tomorrow morning if the weather is reasonable. YJ isn't going; she claims she needs to sleep. So do I, but heck. I can live a few days without it if I have to. I have to sleep early tonight, though. I also have to finish the bulk of my homework because I need to spend Saturday doing Bach. The piano teacher'd murder me if I didn't.

I still don't get my Math but at least Dad won't be too late today, so I can ask. I need some more books to read, and another good brainteaser because I'm too familiar with the ones I already have.

I begin to think that inhuman selfishness is unique to humans. I don't profess to know human nature because I have no social life and have never really gone and looked at the world, such and such, but that's the impression I get. We take more than what we need from Mother Earth and don't think to give it back until it's too late, and then only for our own selfish reasons.

Deforestation, mining, exhaust fumes - who invented those? We. Us. Do we ever give a thought for anything beyond ourselves? I begin to doubt. Yes, I too an writing this, protesting again the fate of the Earth, for my own selfish reasons. The truth is that no action can be completely selfless. (Don't condemn me; that's what we learnt in Philosophy. I can take my little blue file out and show you.)

Just an example for the sake of illustration: baby seals. (Disregard whatever insulting comments I will undoubtedly make in reference to certain people while discussing this issue; it applies to that person only and that person will not be reading this because he is halfway around the world and probably does not remember that I exist.)

They were being hunted for sport a while back, as you may recall. Someone told me, "yeah, I know they have those big cute eyes and all, but they're just seals, lower organisms in the food chain". I commend him for his knowledge of the food web (note sarcasm here - on a second note, since you are so prone to being offended by my sometimes justified sense of pride, don't). Well, the fact is that we homo sapiens rely on those "lower organisms" for food, yes? So if they hunt baby seals, baby seals die, yes? If baby seals die, they don't grow up, yes? If they don't grow up they don't reproduce, yes? If they don't reproduce the population will diminish, correct? Got that so far? So what happens when there aren't enough "lower organisms" to feed the animals preying on them? Those animals die out, yes? Then what do we do for food? Do we starve? Ecology for dummies.

Anyway, what makes you think that you have a right to pick on them? (I know I have double standards here, something I just realised, but just to let myself see how I'm going to develop over the years I'm not going to correct any of what I've already written, so live with it for a while. I'll see if I can make an appointment at IMH the week after next. Who knows, they might deem me a sociopath and then you won't have to put up with this any more.) Because they're smaller? Weaker? Purportedly less intelligent? (Yes, last statement is evidence of double standards. Or not, considering I've clarified my numerous references to "idiot" as a very loose reference [for which my English teacher would condemn me for not calling a spade a spade] to "lazybum".) If you want to go by the theory that you can pick on beings less developed than yourself, go knock down the next toddler you see. (I am not asking that you actually do this. This is an analogy of what should not happen.) Alternatively, go stand under the elephant at your local zoo and let it trample on you. It's larger, heavier, more powerful. It has the right to harm you - not. So you don't be hurting baby seals for no good reason either.

There are thousands of other examples, like overfishing to feed the overgrown population of a generally overfed species. Note that I said "generally". I am taking into account starving children in developing and third-world countries, and I suggest, to all of you out there who are fortunate enough to be able to afford an internet connection, that you take one-third of what you normally eat and donate it to a mission. You don't need to eat that much. Really. I assure you. I eat one cup of yoghurt, half a bowl of rice, plus one omelette and something along the lines of two sticks of celery every day (it may not be celery but the quantity is generally comparable). I haven't starved yet. Just take pity on the poor kids, okay? It's not their fault that they were born into the situation they're in. If you have a shred of pity, unlike the man who thoughtlessly says that hunting seals is okay, please don't act like it is.

No matter how insignificant, every life is still a life - unless it's a human life, because some people have the opinion that human lives are worth much more than simply that. How much more, do you think? The world can't sustain itself for very long like that, and it's not fair for us to hand down to future generations a planet any less beautiful than what our ancestors gave us. "I'm not going to be around when that happens" isn't an excuse.

Okay. Just for clarification purposes. Yes, I believe I'm smart, and possibly with good reason. And I have good reason to hate the rest of society for what they already did to me when I was too young to stereotype, so. Anyway, 'rage' probably isn't the person I'm talking about. The people I talk about (at least those whom I know personally) generally don't swear, unless you count YJ, and if she wants to swear she won't bother to censor it.

Ah, yes. The point about being unpopular. Well, seriously, I don't mind. I have no desire to be popular, after looking at what popular people did to me - again, when I was just a child. For your information I was in Primary One when it all started.

Maybe I am a total failure. Even I acknowledge the fact (do not mistake 'even I' for pride - I mean that even a person with no desire to be a part of society can see that...so on and so forth) that when it comes to social life, I have none. However, I've had more or less straight As since I entered school so at least you can't say I'm an academic failure. And while I'm not in the GEP (thank goodness, I don't think the poor souls need some more people to discriminate against them on my account) I never took the test (mother forbade it; said I wouldn't get in if I tried for a lifetime) so I wouldn't know.

Yes, I admit I stereotype. However, unlike some people, I stereotype based on what I know. Very little, admittedly, considering I have no social life, but you can't call it unfounded speculation either.

And yes, I am Singaporean, but I don't understand half of what people say when they don't use good English. Not my fault if I spent my childhood in China, never learnt a word of English before I was seven, and currently speak it better than most people my age (in Singapore) do. Reason enough to despise those who don't get there because they don't put in enough effort?

I'm not really that smart. I nearly killed myself working for my As back then. No, to put it more accurately, my mother nearly killed me. Did your mother cane you till you bled all over if you didn't get full marks on the Math exam, I wonder? Did she also throw you out for half a week because you got a Band 2 on Chinese?

And I don't have a lot of tags because virtually nobody knows that I have a blog in the first place. I don't need to let them know. I don't need company to feel that I'm needed. If I am, so be it. If I am not, again, so be it. I'm perfectly at home with my own company. By the way, don't swear on the tagboard. Not only is it impolite, it is an eyesore.

Okay, I correct myself. I should not have branded those people as idiots. I used the term extremely loosely. I think what I meant was something along the lines of 'lazy bummers'. Spellcheck comes free with MS word so when it comes to handing up assignments or anything that's typewritten, anyone not using the spellchecker is by my standards deemed lazy. I apologise for any bad grammar found in the last few paragraphs; my brain is on shutdown at the moment. Has to be, or this would be a rant.

No, I don't have a PhD. That is my goal in the future, though. Anyway, to those complaining because I'm commenting on (and therefore negatively criticising) their work, I'm going to throw back at them what they often say to me: Don't like, don't read. I admit I have no right to comment, however - in fact, I have as much right to comment and stereotype as some people have to stereotype me. Which is none, but it happens. You must admit that hardly anyone has not infringed on somebody else's rights during their lifetime. An apology nontheless, and if it really offends you I shall carve it on the wall in my house where nobody will see. The building will be taken down in half a year, anyway, so no matter.

Break: Yes, I use my brain. What I'm doing? Shall I tell you? I'm giving back to society the hell it gave me when I couldn't defend myself against it.

I don't have an excuse for how I'm acting, I admit. Even I don't know why (again, it's not pride - it's just that I'm the person who should know me the best). I could cry and offend no-one, but that's against my nature. Fine, so maybe my whole nature is corrupted with pride. Have you considered, though, that without that pride I'd be crying all the time? All that has ever driven me in this life is pride. I stuck it out to become the top student because of pride, because I wanted to say something along the lines of, "See, you discriminate against me without good reason and here I am, standing tall and so far above you". I put up with the scoldings and the beatings because of pride. Because I was too proud to let someone know I had a problem, and because I was too proud to let society see that there was anything beyond what they saw. I didn't want anyone to see what was beyond the mask of the cold, haughty, anti-social honor student. Should I have risked it? Do you think so? Would you have risked it? I didn't trust society then, haven't trusted society since then, and maybe never will. It's true that distrust doesn't hate and that hate doesn't equal lashing out at everything that comes my way. But what the hell (excuse the language) do you want me to do about it?

They want to discriminate against me. It still happens now, albeit to a lesser extent (thank God for YJ or I don't know what I'd do sometimes; whenever I feel like doing something incredibly dumb like cutting there's her voice popping up in my head telling me I'm being an ass).

So I'll give them a reason to discriminate against me. Go ahead, hate me however you like and however much you like. It doesn't matter. It hurts, yes, but I'm used to it. In fact, since I seem to keep making everyone hate me, it could be said that I enjoy it. So maybe I am a sado-masochist and maybe I should take my father's advice and go see a shrink because according to him I've had this problem since Primary Two. Not cutting, thankfully. He means anger problems, introvertion, snapping pens, rulers, chopsticks and such. Dissecting beetles to a certain point, which did not help in my Biology and which I stopped so long ago that I completely can't remember anything of the sort. (Do you think he's trying to get me worried so I'd panic and go call IMH right away or something?)

Yeah, minus the acid and swearing, you all have relevant points, including 'rage', whoever that person is. I get the message. Live and let live, don't judge people so harshly, practise what you preach, be more agreeable (and not so arrogant), etc. etc. I hope I got it right. Feel free to correct me if I didn't, but you may have to face another tirade. As I mentioned before, I have anger problems.

Oh, one thing I really dislike... People always assume that people who are anything like me have no friends. Remember the bad post I cited as an example last time? It was in reply to someone (who was really a bit like me) saying that you may assume he has no friends but his friends are more loyal than anything the person he was talking to could imagine. The analogy was that his friend would take a bullet for him. My friends wouldn't do that, hopefully, and if they did I'd call them extremely stupid, but Forte for one would devise a way to stop anyone from getting hit, Cesar could be the alarm, and YJ would avenge the death of anyone who did happen to get hit, although hopefully the genius's bullet-proof plans wouldn't fall to ruin. (I realise I'm guilty of redundancy, using two "hopefully"s in one sentence, but if the teachers are merciful for my essay paper that may be forgiven.)

In short, yes, I do have friends, and very good ones too. Just a note to thank them for putting up with this little bundle of angst that may or may not be amusing/endearing depending on mood.

Rock on, guys. (For YJ: Hamsters wuv you.)

YJ and I are onto our letter game. Admittedly, it was my idea, but she said she thought it would be fun so we're trying it out. I need it, anyway, to keep my act up. And it gives me an excuse to write and write and write because I know right now that I never want to stop. It gets the pain out of my soul. Walking around with my nose in a book, as I have done for the past few days since being engrossed in Anne Rice's masterpiece The Vampire Armand (I have Lestat too), helps me to ignore it but once I stop reading it comes back. I can only really stop it with writing, but then it still comes back. It just takes longer to. Music helps. So now I have to either read, write or listen to music all of the time. It takes all of my control not to stand up and scream at the class to shut up because they are killing my eardrums. I've had a permanent headache the last few days, partly due to lack of sleep but probably also due to noise. Oh crap, I forgot to put my card in the roster. Oh well, at least people saw me do my duty so they can't really say anything.

Today, I ache everywhere. It's a good thing, since it means the muscles are developing, and sado-masochist that I am I have to admit I'm nearly enjoying it - other than the fact that I really can't raise my arms above my head right now, and that it really hurts when I start coughing. YJ has a cold. I hope it's only a cold. I told her to go see the doctor. Think she'll listen?

Oh, for your information, YJ already thinks the class is noisy and she hasn't even heard their full volume yet. I swear, these people are driving me nuts. Is is that difficult to keep quiet? I mean, obviously I have friends whom I talk to, but I don't make as much noise as a herd of stampeding elephants while I'm at it.

Ugh. I can spot grammatical errors already. My English is going down the drain. Uh uh uh, Aerin. Not good. I should spend the next few days reading The Three Musketeers or something. Seven Pillars of Wisdom, maybe. It's a fantastically boring account of war, but...

RS is going...well...not so well. Apparently we have to narrow down our research question. We've decided to just do the modern era, but then that means dealing with a whole truckload of works that don't have much depth and in some cases having no referential material at all. I have to go dig in the library this weekend after training with YJ. I think I'll just forget about Chinese tuition. I absolutely detest being group leader (hate responsibility, remember?) but it can't be helped so I'm going to try my best.

Wish there were a bookshop here that opened 24/7. I need to get some stuff (mainly for organising my ever-mounting portfolio of works, since I've been writing so many sketches and developing so much on the Sorano/Eisenfeld issue that I've largely ignored the other characters). I wonder if I can persuade my dad to take me to Giant.

If I didn't know better I'd swear I had a crush. I do know better, however, and I know that I'd love anyone with this passion if they did anything to deserve it.

Ah, forget it. I am rambling and I make no sense. Is the clinic open? I need to see a doctor before I cough up blood.

Never mind.

YJ, you rock.

I got into CAP. So did Tiffany and Tien. I wonder what they're going to make us do during the camp, though.

Went out with Cesar today and nearly got driven nuts. Thankfully her other friend (who came along) was relatively sane. I'm not quite sure if I should let YJ near her. Cesar would be in mortal peril.

Bronchitis is a jerk. It hasn't gotten better at all, and I can pratically feel the phelgm creeping up my windpipe when I breathe, which is all the time.

I had a half-hour long phone call with YJ yesterday. That's something of a record. Anyway I hope she didn't sing too out of tune today. Oh, and I found a favourite book in a bookstore today. You may wonder why I don't already have it, since it's a favourite. I found it in a library in primary school and naturally they refused to sell it to me.

My mom and I had another row today. You could say quite honestly that we hate each other's guts. Forget it. The best way not to get angry about things is to not think about them in the first place.

Signing off,
Aerin

Okay, after more than three months, Ae is finally back. I kind of forgot I had a blog. Rather, I thought I deleted this, but I didn't. So, since I need a place to rant anyway, I'm back.

I see I'm not the only one complaining about retards who seemingly don't know how to type (Sawa is, she has a blog now but I won't link her because I don't think she'll like it). Oh well. I'm not to go for choir tomorrow because they want to sort out the SYF group. I tried singing the Soprano One part just now. It's not exactly that I can't reach, but I have to strangle myself to do it so it's not advised.

History essay to write and PE to stress about. Okay, correction, NAPFA. I think I'm one of very few crazy people who stress about PE.

Forget it. YJ's OM will be over this Saturday (incidentally also Cesar's birthday, and thanks to not being in SYF I don't have prac which means she gets her day), so once SYF is over I'm dragging her to my place for an anime marathon. We need to relax. I've been sleeping at 1 am for the past couple of days and I daresay she has, too. And we haven't talked properly for months. Heh. My social life practically revolves around one person - not that I'm complaining; friends are very high maintenance if you treat all of them the way I treat YJ.

I discovered that YJ, who rarely obsesses (unlike Cesar who is presently driving me more or less nuts), actually is rather fond of Japanese seiyu Akira Ishida. So am I, actually, but not that much. The guy voiced Athrun Zala in GS/D and Eyes Rutherford in Spiral. Did I mention the guys who did Spiral's English dub messed up Eyes's voice? They casted him to sound like an old British man. I suppose it suits his attitude, but it does sound really weird.

Ooh... my class is so... noisy. I thought 104 was bad... I swear, I'll go deaf sooner or later at this rate. I can hear my pitching slowing going down the drain, and I don't hear that much better than YJ anymore - and I know she's a little deaf.

I don't know why some people just can't shut up. It's not a matter of re-testing, and I'm not saying all this just because I'm concerned about our reputation. If we have a reputation, it's not a good one. My problem is that they've compromised the integrity of an entire level. What happened this year happened last year - and some of the same people are involved. Do people never learn? If they didn't get the message during the hour-long talk, I won't repeat it here. I don't believe I need to. If you still haven't learnt anything after all this, then nothing short of banning communication altogether will get rid of the problem. It's not the system, it's not the teacher, it's definitely not the teacher's attitude, no matter how bad that might be. It all boils down to the fact that we were dishonest, that we are loudmouths, that we should just shut up, and that we haven't learnt anything from a whole term of TKMB. Again, I don't believe I have to repeat what Mrs Tan said. If you weren't listening then it's your problem. I don't know why people like that are permitted to exist. Okay, scratch that. I admit I don't have the right to decide about life and death, but I really want to know why. Why does society condone things like this? Why can't people just shut the hell up? Hey, seriously, if people didn't talk, a lot of the bad things in my life would never have happened. It seems that after what happened in primary school as a result of people talking too much, I'm never going to be able to trust anyone completely. Excepting YJ, of course, because she's been my anchor ever since I entered this school.

I'm sorry that the first post after so long is full of angst, but this is a troubled month. And I have troubles. In fact I'm almost sure I have psychological issues, because I nearly threw a mug at my mother the other day. In future everything will have to be chained to the wall. And bronchitis is a jerk. A resting heart rate of 100 per minute isn't helping.

I'll go write my History essay now. I have PE tomorrow so I can't afford to sleep that late.