Curiosity Killed the Cat

I've done plenty of bafflingly stupid things out of curiosity before this. For instance, I've tasted dirt, grass, bougainvilleas, cat food, and a whole host of things which normal, sane people would choose not to put in their mouths. There was this one time where, instead of asking, I stuck my hand under a stream of boiling hot water to find out whether it was hot or not. All this happened when I was a little kid, but I've done some pretty idiotic stuff quite recently as well which, for obvious reasons, I shall choose not to divulge on the internet. Yes, I have never quite outgrown those lapses where I seem to be devoid of common sense, caught up in the wonder of my curious thoughts.

We learn from our mistakes. But there are plenty of mistakes that you do not have to make in order to know some things. For instance, a medical thermometer does not work on freshly baked muffins. You all knew that, right? And cats do not get along with birds. So if you thought that showing your pet bird to your cat would make your cat happy, well, you're probably right. Just not in the way that you imagined. It turns out that cats and birds don’t get along as friends. Cats eat birds, you see. I should have picked up that fact from watching Sylvester and Tweety.

As the wise Albus Dumbledore once said, "Curiosity is not a sin. But is should be exercised with caution….Yes, indeed…".

Now, if you're wondering whether you could use your 3G SIM card in a broadband modem to connect to the internet, you might exercise caution and check out the rates before trying anything, right? If not, you might end up with game soundtracks which cost you RM239.

Yes, curiosity killed the cat.

If I were a cat, I'd be very dead by now.

Bad Sun

So I got this idea in my head that I could get in touch with my exes and start over as friends. They're not bad people, I told myself. Let's take away the romantic agenda (which didn't work, obviously). We'd probably be better off as friends. We could be good friends -- best friends, even.

Some of you are probably laughing out loud by now. Some of you are probably rolling your eyes at my apparent lack of common sense. Yes, I can be naïve at times. This is one of those times. But I assure you that I never meant any harm. I was just sadly deluded.

So I got in touch with my ex from high school. I found him on Friendster. He was in a relationship. A pretty happy and stable one, judging from the PDA on his friendster profile. So I sent him a message. At first things went really well. He's an engineer now, so I could ask him academic related stuff and he'd get a kick out of acting all superior and knowing. I thought I owed that to his ego. Then things got out of hand. Suddenly, the girlfriend disappears. He starts calling me names like 'Manjaku', much to my distaste, and expecting me to report my every move to him 24/7. He obviously knows nothing about me if he's calling me stuff like that. But I swear I never treated him any differently from my other male friends. I'm rude and I swear quite often and I don't talk like a girl, especially in Tawau dialect. So my conclusion is that he's just a classic jerk who thinks I'm still 15 years old with a girly crush on him.

Right-o….So befriending High School X didn't work out….

I had also tried getting in touch with my ex from matriculation. I found him on Facebook. Things went pretty well with him. I could actually maintain a nice, friendly conversation with him. I thought that this is the way it should have been from the beginning, with us just being friends. So I apologized to him for breaking up with him. (Long story short, I knew we weren't suited for each other so I decided to end it then and there. Unfortunately, I did a bad job of explaining that to him). Yes, please laugh. Matriculation X never contacted me again after that. Be my guest, laugh some more. I'm guessing that he interpreted the apology as a desire to pick up the threads of our romantic relationship and carry on where we had left off. I don't blame him for running away from that.

By this time, I'm ready to roll around on the ground in embarrassment and annoyance at my stupidity and naivety. I was pretty close to doing so. Then Nena-nee kindly offered me this piece of advice : Exes are meant to be forgotten….

No, I am definitely not going to try and track down my ex from Penang -- I'll probably just traumatize him even more. I've learned my lesson.

Ankle-Deep Fast-Flowing Stream

This afternoon I had to go submit an assignment for Geotechniques. It was raining really hard, but the due date is today so I went anyway. Its a hilly area so when it rains the side of the roads have ankle-deep fast-flowing streams. I decided to wear flip flops because shoes would just get soaked.

On the way back, I had to cross one of those ankle-deep fast-flowing streams in order to cross the road. It was raining hard for a while now so the stream was quite wide. A truck was approaching and I quickly started off before my whole being got drenched in skid spray. One foot had to go in the stream because it was too wide to jump clean and the other stepped half submerged at the edges of the stream. I brought forward the foot that was in the stream -- but my slipper stayed behind, held down by the water pressure. Then it started drifting away. I took two steps after it, then my other slipper slipped off and drifted after the other one. I chased after it for about 5 paces then gave up and watched as both my slippers drifted away by the curb. The truck passed by, projecting the stream onto me, and honked its horn -- whether mockingly or sympathetically, I know not.

After my slippers drifted out of sight, I resigned myself to walking back barefoot and crossed the street. I got to the other side of the street and there stood 3 university guards by their post.

"Wheres your slippers?" one of them exclaimed, sincerely concerned. I guessed that they hadn't seen my heartbreaking drama in the ankle-deep fast-flowing stream. Another guard ran out of the post to see what was going on.

I couldn't help it, I laughed.

Finally, I managed to gain enough breath to tell them what happened and we all laughed, holding our stomachs in the pouring rain.

So I walked barefoot the rest of the way back to my dorm, just like old days when I was a child refusing to wear slippers while playing football on the dirt roads. Lots of people stared at my bare feet. They would have stared at my face as well, but I took care to angle my umbrella so that nobody could see it.

Believe

I just noticed that my blog entries are mostly complaints about one thing or another. This may or may not have earned me a reputation of being a cynic. Well, maybe I am a cynic to a certain degree. But one thing I am not and, God forbid, never want to be, is a sour pessimist. So, yeah, I'm a cynic. But I'm an optimistic cynic. Sounds impossible? Hehe.

One of my most firm beliefs is that things almost always work out themselves. Of course, nothing happens unless you strive for it. But when you've tried your best and still nothing worked, just have a little faith and soon the mess would straighten itself out.

Here are some examples:

Story 1
I started out this semester pretty darned pissed off with my elective courses. I wanted to take management courses but because of my "World Class University Program", I was denied that choice and ended up with two of the courses I hated the most -- Geotechniques and Structural Steel Design. Some three weeks later, I realized that my courses aren't so bad after all. Well, geotech is still a bitch. But Structural Steel Design is the best ever. I haven't cut this class at all (for me, that's a really big thing). And get this -- I'm even doing my Final Year Project on Structural Steel. So, the moral of the story : When life gives you lemon, make lemonade.

Story 2
I had a helluva time getting placement for Industrial Practice. I went all over -- Shah Alam, KL, Putrajaya, etc. I got lost on Jalan Lontar Lembing while looking for Jalan Badminton (turns out it was near Jalan Ragbi). I thought I'd have to get "auctioned off" to some obscure waste water establishment or something like that. But in the end, I got an offer from a consultancy established in KK, and they assigned my to their site in Tawau! Not only do I get placement, I get to go home to do it! Moral of the story : Just keep swimming...just keep swimming...just kee--....

Story 3
Its the end of the semester, exams are around the corner, its raining assignments but we have to get through tests and quizzes first. All this tension just makes me want to eat all the time. But you know what? I'm dead broke. All I had was 20 cents, that's how broke I was. Thankfully, I still have a healthy supply of instant noodles, oats and biscuits. So, I've resigned myself to surviving on my God-blessed rations. I'll admit, I was a tad bit bitter at first, but then I thought of all the children starving in third world countries. What am I being bitter for? I have instant noodles! I should be counting my blessings! As if a reward for my resolve, a friend suddenly remembered that she owed my money and paid up. It was a debt from the beginning of the semester and I had long since forgotten about it. But here it was, paid in full, just at a time when I really needed it. Moral of the story : Have faith in God.


Miracles happen all the time. You just have to learn how to recognize them.

Above and Below

We live Life only once. Life is short and brief. We must make the most of it. Everyone knows this. Not everyone acknowledges it. But it’s true all the same. No amount of chemicals, cloning, technology, medical healthcare, organic foods, face lifting, tai chi exercises, or meditating can halt the coming of Death.

Knowing that we will inevitably Die and leave Earth, what do we choose to do with this short, brief, and one-shot occasion we call Life?

The most common path we are brainwashed into believing is the best route is to spend one-third of Life bent over books to score in Exams, then spend the rest of what’s left of our lives desperately accumulating as much Wealth as possible, only to be forced to leave it all behind when Death unmercifully tears us away from the fruits of our labor.

Yet others spend the first portion of Life halfheartedly flipping through those books we are supposed to pore over, fall devastated when we don’t miraculously score in those All-Important-Exams, then step onto the nearest, most smooth Path we come across, dreaming of What-Ifs and Could-Have-Beens.

Another group of individuals dream a Life of Fame and Overexposure. To be known by as many people as possible seems to be the pinnacle of Success. To have privacy constantly intruded upon seems to be the highest sense of Achievement.

All these people will be taken by Death.

Is that all there is to Life? Living for Yourself, maybe occasionally helping those who lie across Your Path, feeling good about Your Charity, but not bothered if such an occurrence never happened.

Is that all there is to Life? A Life in which we measure success by wealth and popularity, by exams and grades, by power and influence.

Is that all there is to Life? A Life where kindness, reliability, and compassion are simply qualities instilled in order to score a partner. A Life where wealth and status are only a measurement for finding a good mate.

Everyone wants to gain as much as possible from Life before they have to face Death. Does anyone think of what they can give to Life?

Life may not be as simple as Goodwill and Making-A-Difference. Yet all these requirements we place on Life – Wealth, Grades, Status, Acquaintances – makes one wonder the true reason why there exists this thing called Life.