full disclosure

I thought I'd start this off by curating some posts from my previous blogs. I don't know about anywhere else in the world - though I imagine internet trends are pretty universal - but back in Singapore, in primary school, lots of kids had blogs. They were littered with words that, if they should end with the letter s, had a suffix that would be a permutation of the letters z, x, and c. So, for example, you might read, "after that we just took some candid picszxcx". (Note - the word "candid" had to be misused. I don't know what people thought it meant but their candid pictures were never candid.) To this day, I don't know if the whole zxcxsscxxs phenomenon was a part of the whole emo phase or if it was just a Singaporeanism. 

Anyway, my first blog's title, when I was 11, was "Sighzzz". I remember my mum helping me set the blog up (a patience I no longer recognise in her) and I can't believe she had no reaction to me making the title "Sighzzz". Note, my mother is a professor of writing. She has a masters in English and a PhD in film, which involved writing a book manuscript and then a script based on that. And she let her first-born, the fruit of her loin, name her debut into public writing: "Sighzzz". O I cringe. But I'm sure I'll cringe at this in like two days. Nah, that's overestimating myself. Cringing at past work is indicative of self-improvement; my rate of intellectual development has plummeted drastically since high school, along with my attention span (which I'm working on, by the way - I can now concentrate for 10 whole minutes at a time!).

But I digress. (Oh my god, I write as my father does in letters to journalists in the Financial Times about their articles, or as my uncle, a sheep farmer, did to a vegan in the West Australian. Remind me to tell that story.) But I digress. Its url was something like "idontknowwhattocallthis.blogspot.com", which i found highly embarrassing, and would spell out letter by letter to my friends instead of just saying it. I don't know if I thought my friends couldn't read, or what. But I really didn't know what to call it. My next blog was, I think, purple-stars.blogspot.com, and then silver-sparks.blogspot.com, then paranoid-freakazoid.blogspot.com, then sarcastically-cynical.blogspot.com. And right there is a summary of my aesthetic evolution (or lack thereof, because evolution implies improvement) from ages 11 to 14. I have not had a blog since.

The first three are long gone, deleted out of misplaced embarrassment, but paranoid freakazoid and sarcastically cynical remain for me to remember every few months and read back on. To my surprise, these older ones are actually quite witty and/or well-written (and here, without the shield of deprecation, I feel vulnerable) - thankfully without any iterations of "zxc", and it is these that I shall display, as an homage.

Hello again, fellow sadists.

I never thought I'd say this, but they've done it.

The teachers in school have found another way to torture us.

That's right people, you heard right. These evil creatures have decided that us simply surviving the madness of school, having to write reflections after each piece of math homework and singing hymns in the morning about honey in the rock (?) just doesn't do them justice, and that we deserve much more retribution for hassling their lives with our expecting to actually learn something.

We are now being punished in a whole new way: being dumped in the middle of a forest, and prancing around for twelve kilometres looking for peices of nature that match photographs we were given. Now don't get me wrong, I like excercise, and I wouldn't be complaining if it were 5 ks, or 7 ks or even ten. But TWELVE?! Doesn't that seem a little excessive?

I think I know what's going on here. The teachers are oh-so-subtly hinting to us that we are fat, and the only way we're going to lose any weight is if we walk ourselves to death. And you know what? I think the teachers actually ENJOYED watching us suffer.

Anyway. Enough sarcasm. It actually turned out quite OK, and it was fun in the end. My team came in first!!! YAY!!! :D

(From paranoid-freakazoid.com, "Deranged." I tagged that one "whining/complaining".)
This one, I'm putting in for archival reasons. I never want to forget my some closest friends:

I've always had imaginary friends. They seem so much better than real ones though I have real friends of course. Imaginary friends are perfect - they can pop up conveniently whenever you're feeling lonely, comfort you when you're sad, and they can be whoever you want them to be.

The earliest memory I have of my imaginary friends isn't exactly what you would call IMAGINARY. When I was seven I was in my first year of primary school and though I had friends they always sort of had closer friends, so I was often alone at recess. I had a good friend, Zelda, who went to the American School so at recess, with my lunchbox containing a lone piece of French-stick bread I would pretend she was there with me - we'd talk and play those little kid hand games. I don't know what happened to "Zelda", but she slowly faded away. I'm still sort of friends with the real Zelda, but she's gone all teenage fashion rebel, and we are quite distant. I see her maybe once or twice a year.

The second bout of imagination came around Primary 2. My friends Alexis and Lauren and Roshnie and I found a piece of glass in our school garden and we claimed it had magical abilities, such as being able to tell truth from falsehood - if the truth was told, it would become warm, and would go cold if someone lied while holding it. Anyway, back in class Roshnie claimed she could see a fairy through the glass. Alexis had a go, and made the same claim. Then it was my turn. I couldn't see a fairy of any kind, but inspired by the "Rainbow Magic" series by Daisy Meadows, I let my brain form an image of a fairy in a red dress before my eyes. I enthusiastically joined this fairy thing. I named my fairy Crystabel, and from there our whole "fairy" clique was formed : Me, Lauren, Alexis, Roshnie and Natalie.

Crystabel got a friend and soon I had a whole posse of fairies: The original Crystabel, aged 14, with her red dress JUST LIKE Ruby's in "Ruby the red fairy", then there was Peach, who wore a Peach colored top and jeans, twins Annie and Anne, aged nine or ten, who wore floaty blue and pink dresses respectively. Given the fact that Annie was supposed to be a tomboy it never occurred to me why she would where a dress. Last there was sweet little seven year old Tricia, who wore a green mini halter top and a cute little grass skirt. She was the baby. There were over 25 fairies that me and my little group of friends created, including the almighty, rainbow-clothed Fairy Godmother, hip in all ways and the mother of all the fairies.

Many fights occurred in our group, and we were always trying to protect our fairies from the Evil Villian - Jack Frost. He was ripped off from the Rainbow Magic series in its entirety, right down to the evil Goblins. We were also convinced our "evil" teacher Mrs Tie was part of the evil Jack Frost gang.

At the end of P2 a fight tore our little group apart - me and Lauren on the still-believes-in fairies side, Alexis, Roshnie an Natalie on the other. Lauren and I went on to believe that our soft toys were in fact real, and they joined our imaginary gang.

It seems so ridiculous now but I believed in what my imagination had conjured up so completely and steadfastly. In facts, on those rare, terrible moments where my logical, scientific brain took over and remembered that fairies weren't real, I would have panic attacks and start crying- what with the on again, off again best friendship with Lauren, these fairies and soft toys were the only true friends I had. After every attack I would manage somehow to convince myself that they WERE real, and I could carry on with life again. This went on till about P4. By about mid P3 Lauren and I had stopped talking about the fairies, but I took it for granted that since I still had Crystabel, Peach, Annie, Anne and Tricia, along with an assortment of other temporary fairies, Lauren still had her group of fairies whose names I do not remember. One day in P4 at a sleepover at Lauren's I asked if she "still believed in (her) fairies" and she carelessly replied that she had, and I quote "gotten rid of them". Soon after I got rid of mine, though various fairies would still pop up over time when I felt like it.

P5 was when my next set of imaginary friends were formed. Again, these friends weren't EXACTLY imaginary. During the March, June and September holidays we had to come back to school to have "enrichment classes" for four days. Afterwards, at about 12, I would take the train, then the bus, then walk home by myself, a rarity. It got lonely, so I imagined that my cousins in Perth, Emily and Christopher, were staying over in Singapore and came to class with me. After enrichment we'd buy coke and head home together, often discussing how we would set up a "coke collection" together. This lasted all the way through P6 enrichment as well.

Then, after PSLE I went back to Sydney to see everyone as a reward for getting an awesome score of 260. When the holidays were over and Secondary One rolled around I got rather lonely at first and Allegra, my cousin, in my mind had also come down to Singapore for a while. I adored and looked up to the real Allegra despite her being eight years old because in my eyes she was perfect. What with the loneliness of being the oldest of four kids (the first gets all the attention for his ADD, the second is a whiny brat, and the youngest is cherished) her doting parents and awesome lifestyle was exactly what I wanted (and still want). So having Allegra there solved my loneliness. Conveniently, she participated in the primary section of my school, just next to the secondary section, while I was in school and would meet me for recess and after school. In times of stress I would ask myself WWAD? - What Would Allegra Do? Allegra often pops around, especially when I'm lonely or around the end of the holidays after leaving her and Australia. How pathetic I am.

Last there's Kelly. "Kelly", my half American, half Aussie neighbor slash bestie. Kelly went to the same school and activities as me. Kelly was fashionable. Kelly and I were joined at the hip. She was invented at the end of last year, in the December holidays where I didn't see my friends and was thus very lonely.

There were other minor imaginary friends, such as ones arisen from characters of books. One example of that would be Lola Rose, the book I read. I imagined I had a best friend JUST LIKE Lola Rose's.

The number of imaginary friends I have have waned over the years, but are still there. I don't suppose I'll ever stop having imaginary friends. They'll always be there for me. They'll always be what I want in a friend. They'll always be perfect.

I feel the squirm of vulnerability. But that one's from sarcastically cynical, "The Power of Imagination". I must have been angsty.
A very typical one:

SIGH. Today I woke up feeling very pissed. I don't know why. And then my MOTHER informed me that I have to play 4 hours of piano today. Which I am SO NOT going to do. 2 hours, tops. Meh, enough of that. I've complained about piano here a whole bloody lot already.

Anyway, I have decided that this holidays I am going to "teach" Felix. Because hell, I'm worried about the facts that he can read Chinese but can't read English yet. But I'm not going to teach him to read just yet. He's 3! So anyway, this week's theme is "Shapes" and so far Felix has been a willing participant. I've made him match the shapes, colour this shape that colour etc., and today he suggested himself that he wants to make shapes out of play-dough. I'm also going to give him Shapes biscuits as a snack!

from paranoid freakazoid: "I HATE PIANO."
A cute little one because he is now twice the size he was when this was posted:

I'll spare you the link to The Annoying Orange's parody of "Hide Yo Kids, Hide Yo Wife". I wish I was kidding.