The New Trend

Back in JC we took a vote on who we thought the Class Prince was.

No surprise that I didn't get voted by my classmates.

But what was surprising was that my teachers unanimously voted for me.

Another classmate concluded, "You appeal to older women."

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I was at the surprise anniversary dinner for my parents last month, with several other parent couples from church.

Some of the mothers joking asked me if I would be interested in their daughters.

One of the fathers gave me a hand by saying,

"Impressing the mother is one thing, impressing the girl is another!"

-

I have come to believe I do impress older women. But in the past month a newer but no less depressing trend has emerged.

I appeal to younger sisters too.

-

I don't understand why mothers and younger sisters want me to get attached to their daughters/older sisters, while the daughter/older sisters, who are around my age, think otherwise.

Which made my friend ask, 

"Why don't you just date the younger sister instead?"

-

Heh, don't worry about me okay?

I'm not complaining, I'm amused.

I'll complain when I book the church for my wedding again and start looking for a bride.

For now, I laugh out loud.

Like my friend succinctly says, "LOL!"

What Women Want

So I'm at timbre having a pint with 2 of my gender studies classmates. I'm not doing too well on the alcohol tolerance department (they call me a lightweight) and I'm turning red and complaining about women in general.


Women complain a lot about men, and I have tried very hard to avoid all the things that irritate them and be the guy women are looking for. But after all this time, I realized that women in general, don't have a consensus on what they want from a guy.


My friends brought up this example of a TV show that had American women and Korean women come together and talk about cultural differences. On one episode they got a Korean hunk to come and talk about how he'll treat his girl.


He said he'll take care of her, since she is of the weaker sex, and that he'll protect her, provide for her, and allow her to live in comfort and not need to do anything. The Korean girls swooned. The American girls corrected him for calling women the weaker sex, saying that, back home, it was not acceptable (politically correct) for a guy to say that.


So I rambled on of how hard it was to please women.


Then one of my two friends then asked me:


"Okay, never mind what women want. What kind of girl do you want?"


And I did not know how to answer.


I've spent so much time trying to be what women want (I blame the feminist movement for subjugating me) that I had absolutely no answer to that question.


What do I want?


I probably need to finish writing my personal research paper on Attraction soon.

Random Pictures

But nothing is random.

Church building.

This seat is reserved for cats.

This is the cat that came up to me and rubbed its body on my leg.

I seriously thought this was a given.

Life parallels art.

Fish in the sky.

This gallery did not turn out the way I wanted.

Psychotherapy

"I've tried to be the man I wanted to be, I've tried to live like I'm dying, but at the end of the day I realized it was just not me..."


I said that to my psychologist as I recalled what I had just learnt about that very day- Extroverted people are happiest when they do extroverted things while introverted people are happiest when they do introverted things. It doesn't take a professor to tell me that before I believe it, but it takes a professor to tell me that before I take the advise seriously.


"... At the end of the day, I'm just the man in the train folding origami."



To that my psychologist replied:

"Why can't you be just Justin?"


(1 day later and I still can't think of an answer to that question.)

Okay.

I think it's time to cancel the reservation I made of the church building for the purpose of my wedding.

(I meant that figuratively.)

Puzzles

When I set my mind to do something, I never give up on it.


I love puzzles, especially those cast-iron interlocking ones which you have to try to undo. There have been those that I fiddled with for a few hours or days before successfully undoing, while there was one that took me a full 3 months to finish.


Whatever the case, I never gave up, and always solved the puzzle.


I view people as puzzles too. If I can understand them, I solve the puzzle.


But people are much more complex than cast-iron.


And my undying perseverance is sometimes my fatal flaw.


The solving of one such puzzle consumed me in 2008, while another made me falter and fall in 07. The fact that I cannot give up leads me to try all means and ways to solve the puzzle. Sometimes... this involves giving parts of myself away, or doing things I should not be doing.


The worst thing to tell me is that no one else has solved a certain puzzle before. The same goes with someone saying "no one has understood me before" or "no one can ever understand me".


I take it as a challenge, and I never, ever, give up.


And so... I probably lost almost everything in the past 6 months or more. I failed, I tried again using a different method, I failed again.


Never give up.


Yeah right.


To gain something, you'll always need to lose something. I'm tired of losing so much for the sake of saying I never gave up.


I give up.

As the LRT approached my station...

Someone jumped up and ran towards the window.

All eyes were on this suspicious character.

He held his face so close to the glass.


Everyone saw him, but no one saw what he was looking at.

-

I was talking to God in the train.

This year, I became the person I wanted to be.

But what I thought I wanted, was not what I really wanted.

-

It's been a while.

I have felt the silence from God.

The silence that makes me aware that something is not right.

It happens all the time.

But this time, it lasted for so long.

I tried everything to find out what was wrong.

I could not find it.

Eventually I lost hope that I ever would get out of this rut.

That sucked. I was a shadow of my former self.

-

Today I realized what it was.

No one has challenged the things I was doing this year.

None but one.

And that one voice...

Was actually the only voice I needed to hear.


So thank you Kimberly.

-

But I am an idiot.

And I am a sinful man.

And the silence will return.

What then? How will I overcome it?

How can I get out of the silence and live in his light?

-

I think it's like in Farmville.

You need something, you'll never be able to buy it yourself.

You need your friends to help you.

-

So help.

I suck at asking for help and prayer so I'll say it now before I really need it.

I can't do this alone.

If you're a friend, please keep me and my relationship with God in check.

I'm okay now, but 6 months was a little too long for silence.

I haven't blogged for a long time

Because I don't feel right.

Seen and Heard at NUS

2 of my friends were sitting along the corridor in school.

I dropped them some money as I walked past.

-

"What's up!" I said as I passed Hilda for only the 2nd time this year.

"Nothing," she replied. For such is life in school. And in King Lear.