Learning To Relax

After listening to Skrillex, I felt a stroke go off somewhere in the branches.

It's hard to register that after almost three months of school, I'm still nowhere well-adjusted.

I kid.

I'm so put together by my assignments, projects,  quizzes, midterms, and incoming finals, that the thought of a semester closing in also puts me into a total blackout.

"What am I going to do? Who am I going to call? Without sounding invasive or alcoholic, when and with whom am I going for drinks? No, really." 

I've got a condition that's to be the stress responsible for my lack of care toward any holiday commitments; that is to say, I'm definitely doing a lot less "Let's catch up" during the holidays, because I'm just not that good with time.

I remember the first definition of time given by a high school tutor who, you guessed it, had no tolerance for tardiness. Mr. Tan, for the lack of originality to which his last name still escapes me today, had the discipline of a rod. He was a handsome man with strictures so unbendable it made an Encik squirm. That included (and never limits to) "no eating", "no side chatters", and "no excuses for feebly walking into class late". Not even if you had a broken toe. His no-nonsense disposition toward the uninitiated was so astoundingly astute, you just had to try him.

I remember coming in late once just to test the waters. And they were scalding. Drawing the lesson to a halt, I was shamed, berated, and alienated by grating words that never quite reconciled thereafter. What the class missed that day, uncompensated by my lateness, then made up for with an hour's worth of even more "hazing", was something I guess I'll never find out. In my orientation experience, that was pretty hardcore.

The point is, after years of chafing with Mr. Tan, I'm still not that smooth with time. The irony somewhere in its physics still baffles me. From coming in late, to showing up on time, to actually learning how to maximize it, depending on how you see it, will always be as malleable as substance that just slips right through your finger tips. (There's also a reason why I do not enjoy yoghurt, but that's another story for another day.)

I guess when it comes to having nothing to do, it's best to be away at a holiday, lolling under the trees, than fretting over how and when to make full use of your time.

"Always find something to do, don't just sit there and stare at your shadow!" was something my mom would used to remind me of. But even "You're going to get Alzheimer's!" doesn't taunt me to plan ahead for my term breaks. And if it were really all that simple, I would have also been exercising more, sleeping earlier, and learning to relax better. But that's just all theory now, isn't it?

Think About Littering If You Love Murder

Also, put a smile to those behind 

Back in 2013 when Singa drew its own resignation letter, jokes exploded on the Internet like a fine ticket- the horror, dismay and a gradual realization that we were a bucket case for graciousness.

Today, with a spike of up to 19, 000 notices for littering, a double from that same year Singa called quits, it seemed that we have alas reassured ourselves a quality for debauchery. And if that’s not a trait to brag about, why do we still persist?

I knew from the get-go that littering is wrong. Even before the cases of UFOs (Unidentified Falling Objects), sighted from the windows of our neighbours, left the rest of us puzzling over what can, or cannot, be considered “killer litter”.  That the act itself too, cannot be singularly defined either- cases of an entire household burned to the ground by obstructing “litter”- where a collection of your neighbour’s possessions strewn in the corridors stood in the way between you crawling out unscathed, and folding in completely into flames. 

Litter kills, I know that, but it’s a careless killer who leaves behind evidence… Its idiocy has roused flat, tall jokes about a certain occupant who gets 4-weeks of jail time for flinging a bottle of perfume through his window grilles, not a fear of a killer the public would usually worry themselves over. And it’s no surprise for such an inconspicuous act to arouse absolutely no degree of suspicion. After all, litter has no common sense. Litter, as charmless as it’s indifferent, has become collateral damage.

Today, I am part of that generation of indifference reflected most recently in a Facebook post by our prime minister. This time litter has saved on the killing, but disfigured an entire pasture of our Gardens by the Bay. The evidence of Laneway (a Facebook photo of our yearly music festival held outdoors) became his concern, and they sounded like warning shots fired at environmental agencies to tighten the viceroy grip on this continual case. Those shots were heard: every 19, 000 of them.

You see, litter has little mystique (if not none) over what’s feared as a crime; it strikes between apathy and a nagging conscience of how conservative the country has been about the way it’s to be sown forever evergreen. So if I could suggest an emphatic approach toward murder by litter, it should be one that revises from graciousness to actually saying our proper graces. Something like the next time the ticketing man comes to “fine” you, the rest of us could go, “Bless you!”