This is the grand prize winner of the Philips Parallel Lines 'Tell It Your Way' international competition.
It’s not easy to make a coherent, compelling three minute video with only six lines of dialogue, but those were the exact requirements for a recent Philips Parallel Lines “Tell it Your Way” competition on youtube last year. This was the winning film.
... changed sleeping position, and went back to sleep immediately.
Then I started dreaming from the third-person perspective:
I was looking down at my body, which was in the exact position that I had left it when I had changed sleeping position- sprawled on my front on my bed.
I was either dreaming about reality, or having a real out-of-body experience.
Then, to my horror, I saw a cockroach or something of that size crawl from my pillow onto my neck.
I was suddenly sucked back into my body, startled out of my dream, and clawing at my neck to find the cockroach in real life.
But there wasn't one.
Who needs horror movies when I have dreams like these, with such an overwhelming amount of the uncanny, terror and horror?
I could not understand why sometimes I fight with all I've got, and am satisfied even off I lose, and other times I fight like a snail without a shell holding a hammer.
I also could not understand why I've never beaten Florence, even though I could defeat guys that have beaten her.
Even today, after an entire year of training, I was still trashed by her.
"You fence so much faster when you fight guys," Florence commented.
She had told me this many times before, but today was probably the first time her words had a chance to sink in.
I can't believe that I didn't realise the reason for that until now.
You see...
I just can't hit a girl.
It explains why I lose to girls who fence so slowly, but can hold off the faster male fencers.
It explains why I've never, ever beaten Florence.
I can't hit a girl.
I can't hurt a girl.
Especially not a dear friend.
Even in a fencing bout.
And I will stop feeling like a loser just because I can't beat them.
At about 2.40am, the wind picked up so strongly my shorts that I had left in the kitchen was blown to the living room.
When I did eventually fall asleep, I dreamt I found the body of the missing fish in the tank's filter.
Now I had a group presentation today (in real life), and last night I dreamt I was already in class. As one girl spoke, I wrote the notes on the whiteboard.
Then I realised she was not not group mate.
I was writing my group's points as a girl from another group presented on a different topic, which confused everyone. I quickly took the duster to rub what I had written off.
But then I realised I had used permanent ink.
My lecturer stared at me having written on half the board. I took another whiteboard marker and tried to colour over the permanent ink and dissolve it so it could be erased. I covered practically half the board with ink as the girl continued to present.
Then I found that I still could not rub ink off the board.
And I had just turned half the whiteboard black.
Meanwhile, my MJ choir friend (she wasn't in my class in real life) began her warm up at the back of the class. She was stretching, as their group would act out their presentation. My group then tried to use the other whiteboard on the opposite wall to prepare our points (as the other groups presented). By the time I got to the board, my 2 group mates had already filled all our space and I had none.
But life's like that.
Anyhow, I woke, upset with my stupidity in the dream, and frustrated that the presentation was still not over and done with.
So I arrived in school just on time for my presentation in real life.
As class was about to begin, I looked around and realised that I did not see a whiteboard marker for the board.
I asked my group mates, and none of them had a marker.
I asked the rest of my classmates, and neither did they.
My tutor didn't either.
My group mate started to freak out.
We really needed a marker for our presentation.
I was still calm at this point in time.
Hey, I thought to myself, I've been through worst (last night).
The guy sitting opposite us noticed our plight and reached into his pencil case, then pulling out something that looked like a marker, he said, "Will a permanent marker do?"
There's one for every situation, questioning the basic foundations of society we tend to take for granted, making us think beyond what we already know and wonder... what if?
Gender inequality?
This was my question. But then I realised Ron could not marry his sister.
I went to get my notes from Yat Kah. I saw her sitting next to 4 fellow students I had just met during last week's tutorial and they found me familiar.
Dude: Do you remember us?
I pointed to him and replied with his name: Nicholas.
"What's my name?" The girl on his right asked.
Now pointing to her, I answered: Hui Ling.
"Mine?" The girl on the left asked.
I turned to look at her and said: Joanna.
As my finger trailed to the last girl, I hesitated before answering.
"I'm sure you've forgotten my name," she said.
It took me a while, but I finally recalled: Si Jia.
The group was clearly impressed by my memory.
The girl who was the first to test me commended me, saying:
Then there are those days when you get to sit next to a pretty girl in the train for the entire trip, and midway through the ride when you realise she's noticing you, your nose decides to suddenly mimic a waterfall.
Yeah there are those days...
I sneezed no less than a hundred times on Saturday.
My head still hurts.
I wonder if it is just because of the sneezes, or if there has always been something wrong with my brain, but it only hurts when i sneeze for a whole day.
It's the start of recess week, and I fear for my sanity.
When you meet so few people and spend so much time with your books in the library, you begin to go a little nuts. I spent the whole of today studying the portrayal of rape and revenge in Indian movies, and widow burning in real life. It's not stuff you should be filling your head with too much.
My greatest fear at this point though, is how given so much time to sit and think, the demons of my past and will come back to haunt me. As I learn more about this fallen world I'll be reminded of all the stupid things I've done and all the people I've hurt.
It always happens. I spent a good half and hour today watching the sunset on the roof of the library and praying for deliverance.
I dreamt one of my sunday school boys was a sorcerer.
He was about to teleport through a portal gate he had opened with a spell. I was trying desperately to see this miracle firsthand as proof to my disbelief. Pushing through the crowd that didn't notice what he was conjuring at the clothes hangar rack, I saw him open the wormhole, but as he stepped through the hangers, I was pulled out of my dimension and woken up by a phone call from marianne at 7am saying she forgot to upload her assignment.
Friday:
I woke up at 6am in tears.
I dreamt I was Harry Potter, appearance included. And I was living out the scene where his wand broke, and all hope was lost. I cried, being so overwhelmed with emotions, even though I knew from the story that he/I would eventually be the rightful owner of the elder wand and defeat Voldermort.
But Harry did not know that now, and so he cried.
And since I usually put myself in people's shoes in real life, doing that in my dream makes me become them.
Some people I know practically highlight their entire book, but I'm not sure if that is the idea...
But anyway, if you want to try, here's something that will help:
I saw this video, and I could say nothing. It reached so deep inside me I could not find words to describe what I felt. I just sat in from of the screen frozen for as long as it played, and was overwhelmed by emotions.
I'm not worthy to comment on this music video. I just repost it.
You know how freaky it is to be running towards something that's been staring at you without you even realising it was there till you're face to face with it?
I rushed up a flight of stairs in school tonight and came face to face with a spectral white cat that had been staring at me all the while.
I spoke to it but it ignored me.
I needed it's help but got it not.
At least I got it's picture though.
I wished it was an owl. And I wished it was my friend.
You see... I found a rat hole outside the canteen with at least 2 rats inside.
She said there was a missionary couple coming to her church to share their testimony about being kidnapped out in the mission field and held for 165 days in a dungeon and how they survived by the word of God and prayer.
She said it would inspire me, since I wanted to be a missionary.
Hahaha.
I laughed at her thinking that I would be inspired to follow in the footsteps of a couple who faced death, kidnap at gunpoint, and life in hell for duration unknown.
Today while playing doodle-find (something like ugly doll, where you snatch cards on a table) at St. Andrew's Cathedral, someone's fingernails cut my wrist.
There was blood.
Today while downloading Whatsapp on my phone in the train, I cleaned my nose with a tissue.
There was blood.
Today while hanging up the laundry at home, one of the poles fell on my toe.
I'm behind in my work, half coz of all the things I had to settle last week.
Thankfully most of it is sorted out by now.
Today I realised I was falling behind both in studies and fencing.
It was especially the case for the 3rd lecture in a row on Einstein's relativity that I could not follow.
I had the tutorial for this module later in the day, but I had to see the school doctor in between lessons. That made me very stressed because I feared I would be late for tutorial in a subject I was falling behind in.
I reported sick for foot-rot, and was sent to the lab for skin sampling.
The good news, it's not fungal.
The bad news, it's just me.
So I've got to live with it (and live with myself) for the rest of my life.
The doctor gave me a solution that would help turn my feet purple for the rest of my life, so people would not notice there was a skin condition. And she gave me a discount. Man... It's good to fall sick in NUS. We're on a welfare system.
But after all that I was late for my tutorial. Missed almost a quarter of it actually. I really struggled to follow the tutorial, but just could not understand the mathematics. It was so exasperating.
Had this been primary school, I might have cried.
Had this been JC, I would have given up and switched off.
But this was uni.
And so I trolled.
"Excuse me," I shouted from the back of the tutorial room, "how much of this will be tested in the test 2 weeks from now? Coz you're saying this is all simple mathematics, but I really can't do any of it... I'm from Arts."
Of course the whole class turned back to see which dumb idiot could not do simple binomial expansion, but I was glad I spoke up.
Yes I may not understand what you're talking about, but you can't silence me.
Yeah awesome then I went for fencing and spent most of the time training a new sabre fencer as though I was some skilled coach and then lost the only bout I fought tonight with the score 15-1.
If not for God pointing me towards studying Medicine in 2006, I would have never gone to India.
Which means I would have never met Dr.Raja, who inspired me to do Psychology (and a few years later invite me to return to India) and Bijoy, a local missionary.
If God didn't close the door to medicine clearly and opened that of Psychology in 2009, I would never have ended up in FASS and thus never return to India to teach Psychology. (I might have returned to film though.)
And if God didn't close the door to Psychology in 2010, I would have never considered taking Sociology, which in turn would mean I would have never understood the words of Moses Parmar when he spoke at my church in 2011 about the outcaste in India and the missionaries like Bijoy who were working among them...
Which means I would have never found my calling to go to India.
I had no idea why God kept changing his mind with regard to my direction in life, especially since each time I was so sure I was making the decision he wanted me to make.
Yeah I had my doubts, and plenty of them, especially after having to make 2 major u-turns... But I guess now it makes a bit more sense.
Oh my dear Lord... You were actually leading me every step of the way after all this time?
And it's not meant for the young or faint of heart.
(Melanie and Marilyn, give this a skip.)
But I'm posting it here because it is so experimental and groundbreaking in its filming technique, which in turn made this show all the more unsettling. This technique used to convey the story is in itself so foreign that it already alienates the viewer and gives a sense of the uncanny- we know we're supposed be watching a film but it doesn't look like any film we've ever seen and that sense of the unknown makes us feel all the more uncomfortable.
The film is disturbing, and because that's exactly what it was trying to achieve, I think it's a great film and worthy of mentioning here.
