Turtle Tale

What happend to the turtle at home when there is no one but moi to feed it?

Yes. That turtle. The one that lives in the toilet.

I've never fed it before and it can't go without food for the 3 days my sis and mom are in Malacca. This turtle is a creature which I live with extreme ambivalence and I could draw up a list of all the whys of both feeding and not feeding it.

No, Not feed:
1. It is smelly.
2. It is gross.
3. It has claws.
4. The dried prawns which I've to feed it with stinks
5. The tank is gross.
6. The tank is also smelly.
7. I've to touch it if I am to feed it because I've to put it back in its tank
8. It doesn't look light

Yes, Feed:
1. Only because my conscience asked me to

So, after umm. possibly more than a decade sharing the bathroom with that creature whose sex we've yet to determine but which we all decided couldn't matter anyway, I doned two plastic bags over my hands and picked it up. It was surprisingly light, but I wouldn't be able to describe how it smelt like because I was holding my breath. I then placed it back in its tank.

We both stared at each other.

I stripped off the plastic bag and refilled the tank and fed it, holding my breath again when I opened the lid of the prawn can. My mom and sis claims it has the same aroma of prawn crackers. I would like to point out that if prawn crackers really smelled like that, no one would buy them, least of all, me.

The turtle didn't look happy to see the food. Or maybe it was just not happy to see me. It flailed about and tried to escape. I ignored the flailing and scrabbling and sprinkled the water with the food (all the while holding my breath) and quickly fled when I was done.

When I checked back several hours later, all the prawns were gone and I was feeling a little satisfied, that is, until I remembered that I would have to repeat the whole fracas one more time the next day.

Dog Tales

Everytime I visit Pet Safari I end up having to reaffirm why I am a cat person. Seeing all those doggies, those puppies and those little woofies and I can see why people are enamoured with them. Come on - those eyelashes on the golden retriever puppy are so pretty~ I am still a cat person and I will one day own a sulky black tabby (you know, the striped kind) called Milton. But, before this turns into a loving paean to all things feline, I should get back to why I think dogs and animals in general (with the exception of caterpillars, illamas, sea cucumbers and most manner of insects and some reptiles, amphibians and fishes) are so well-loved and cherished by humankind. This is a story as to why dogs anyway, are so well-loved.

Cindy was my uncle's dog. But because he worked and lived in IMH (he's a nurse in case you're wondering) where animals weren't allowed, he gave it to my aunt to take care of. Now, Cindy is not one of your fancy pedigree types and is by far more intelligent than most of her purebreed cousins - or - at least that is what I like to believe, having next to zero experience with real dogs. Now, once Cindy made a - as they say in a certain parlance used commonly with tai-tais on their chihuahuas or inane parents on their babies - boo-boo of a monumental kind. My grandma was livid. And to point out how just how angry she was, she took up a cane and whacked Cindy. Before you get the impression that my grandma is some deranged old woman, I should point out that it is my grandma who cooks Cindy her food, it is my grandma who shops for her sustenance and who, in all the decade they had owned Cindy, never once laid a hand on her.

Cindy was of course pissed but being a dog and an affectionate one at that, she simply ran away. So, later during the day when they realised that she wasn't in fact skulking in some corner of the house, my grandma panicked because Cindy is the beloved of my aunt. She then went out to search for her. After hollering the street up and down to no avail, my grandma went back home to cook dinner. She was clearly still worried because she went out a second time after that, and was successful in spotting Cindy trotting homeward, but - truculently covered in muck and about as apologetic as the indignantly righteous.

This is a dog I would have liked to have known better. Heh. Naughty dog.

Face Up

Having said that, grades are not everything but they are the most superficially in-your-face thing that I can deal with. There was a long period last semester when I asked myself what I was doing, whether I was suited for an academic life. Last semester was horrible – the constant string of B-minuses was crushingly depressing because I had worked at my essays. Each one, as far as I was concerned was a dialogue between me and the module and the measure of not only how much I understood from the module but a measure of me as a person. When you are a student and your life revolves around academia, grades while not everything, is at least a way of measuring oneself. That you, after 3 years still fail to be:
a) clear
b) organized
c) pertinent
d) reflective/insightful

is a crushing thing to hear.
I chuck those essays aside. And that, I quietly tell myself, is yet another sign of inherent failure of me – not as a student but as a human being. How will I improve?? Can I improve? I am on an inherent and unstoppable train further into failure because I dare not face up to that B-minus. I cannot read it without feeling disappointment, without feeling inferior and insufficient – in discipline and hard work and intelligence. And I dig a further hole because I can’t face up to how I will never be disciplined, or organized or insightful enough.

I am scared of failure – both how it is manifest outwardly as a grade and how it might be a sign of inward failure of me as a person, and that fear is so crippling that I can’t even look at it. This time round, I have yet to look at it closely either. Can I chuck it aside? I might and I will tell myself: you can do better than that. But, as a person I cannot do that when I haven’t even seen what is wrong about it. So, tonight I will look at it. And though the grade isn’t everything; it is a lot of things to me and it is something I want to give due to by facing up to it.
And maybe it’s there where I can start to be those things. It’s not too late. I am not a B minus person. It is a grade which I am given and I can take what it is and maybe that is where I can begin to be not a B minus. Denial

To tell myself that grades are not everything is to not accept that I do find them important. But should they be? I don't know. After looking back at little more about what we've said today, I think they are. They can be so much pleasure and why should I belittle disappointment because it's unpleasant? Denial gets me nowhere.

Monsoon

I put up there 'Monsoon', but when I think monsoon I think of wet plantations, coconut trees lashing in a murky grey landscape with rain at a 45 deg angle - things which are not happening here. You'll be hard put to find enough land for major crop growing anyway, here in sunny Singapore-land. So, really, maybe this post has nothing to do with the geographical imaginings though because it is the tropics, the rain we're having is probably part of a common geographical phenomenon in these parts.

It has been raining. And I have been feeling lazy, partly because the weather is so lovely but also because for 12 academic years, whenever it rained, it meant holiday. I'm feeling the instinct of 12 years telling me in that insiduous whisper, "Kick back. Don't you hear us? It's the end of the year. Time to chill. Time to do the things you like again. No more obligation to textbooks." So yeah, when the North wind doth blow, I feel unaccountably willing to throw that book/essay/proposal aside. Holiday is in the air and I do so love it even though it won't, technically, be here for another month.

The Week in Three.

1. Ice

Welcome November,

Good friend to wind, rain and ice.

A time to reflect.

2. Loathing

Come, essay time,

Like some rank, o'ergrown carpet

Requiring a trim.

3. After rain

There is much to love

In watery days, milky light,

And murmuring of chimes.