Sorry for being a bit late with the updating! I touched down in Perth yesterday, and was on the com for most of the day but never got to blogger! -.-" Oh well, at least there wasn't a week-long gap between posts again! Improving! Yay! Okay.
Another song-ish post... yeah, yeah, I know you guys are bored stiff of 'em. I mean, who wouldn't be bored listening to some insane teenager relate random songs to her life? Yeah, whatever. I'm going to do it anyway =)
[This song is called Don't Give Up, and it's sung by Shannon Noll and Natalie Bassingwaithe]
*The italics are just how I relate to the song. Be prepared for some pretty long relate-tions*
In this proud land we grew up strong, we were wanted all along
I was taught to fight, taught to win
I never thought I could fail
All throughout my life, I've been encouraged, praised. Hours of tuition and a good mix of genes made me 'smart', or so people said. My mother pressed me hard, always wanting me to be the top of everything that I did. Teachers might not have liked me, but I did well in school, and there were those that appreciated that. I grew complacent... am complacent, because I've developed a disconcerting habit of judging some people as below me, just because they can't calculate algebraic equations at the drop of a hat. Hell, I can't do that either. But my mother has high standards, and if I told her that someone was really good at Maths, in fact, much better than me, and that she was getting higher marks than me... Yeah. My good ol' mum would be disappointed, give me her ' i'm-sending-you-overseas-for-a-better-education-and-this-is-how-you-show-you're-gratefui ' speech and I'd want to curl up in a corner and wilt. To preserve my dignity (since I have a major dislike for wilting and feeling guilty), I've learnt to pacify her with things like "Oh don't worry, she's not actually good at Maths, I just had some extra work that week so I couldn't revise". She laps the fibs up, and everything's fine. And now, I think that I'm actually starting to believe those white lies. And it feels terrible. It's like, there's two parts in me. The nice one that's like "Knuckle down and study, stop making excuses for your laziness!", and the evil one that's like "You know she sucks at Maths, just chill, you'll do better next time!". The evil one always wins out, nowadays. I never thought I could fail.
No fight left or so it seems; I am a man whose dreams have all deserted
I’ve changed my face, I’ve changed my name
But no-one wants you when you lose
Once I left for Perth, I gave up. The evil side reigned, I suppose. I did major assignments the night before they were due, got As for them, rejoiced, and didn't give two hoots about school. The good side lost the fight. My dream to be a lawyer, a philosopher, all deserted. Why? Because at the rate I'm going, I'll never get enough in my TEE to be anything other than a boring old accountant. I'm not dissing accountancy, but being a lawyer is just what I've always wanted. Ever since we were asked what we wanted to be when we were grown-ups, my answer was always lawyer. In SCGS, I guess that I was focused. I revised when I had to, did well enough to land me in the top class for my senior years there. I knew what I wanted, and I worked hard to get the marks. Okay, maybe I slacked off in P5, but whatever. The main point is, I was working hard. I was studying, I was dilligent, I was determined to be a success. Once I hit PLC, it changed. I changed my name, my face... literally. The identity that was 'Eugenia' was now something completely different. This new version of me was bitchy, self-concious, interested in boys, a tad emo, had an un-Singlish accent, and judged someone by what they looked like. I dissed short, geeky people, fluttered between various social groups, and tried to look like I didn't enjoy the company of those aforementioned short, geeky people. I played the game well, until one day I slipped up. The real Eugenia reared its unwelcome head and stuffed all my plans for the social calender. The short, geeky people enbraced this new/old me. The queens of the year detested me. It was a win-lose thing. But I'd been an airhead for too long: the popular people's opinion was more important. Thus, I dropped the short, geeky people and worked hard to be my old, fake self. It was too late. No-one wants you when you lose. And I had lost.
Though I saw it all around, never thought that I could be affected
Thought that we’d be last to go
It is so strange the way things turn
The 'American teenager' syndrome. Often known as being 'bimbotic' or ATS. Hell, I saw it all around me. At the malls, at Learning Lab, and I scoffed at them. I told myself "What complete airheads! So caught up with their appearance, I bet they're gonna fail PSLE! Ha, serves them right what! So... stupid leh..." I knew what they did; browsed through magazines like Teens, had idiosyncratic sleepovers where they fixed their hair, nails, talked about boys, and ate inane amounts of junk good, and complained about being too fat a week after their binge instead of griping about the 33rd test they've failed. I regarded it as a horrible waste of time, a blight in an otherwise perfect world, a blip on the record. Being a bimbo was stupid, trashy, and a totally insane way to pass perfectly good time. Or so I thought until I began living with them. Fashion, the latest on the pop charts, hot boyfriends, hating school... welcome to the world of a ATS sufferer. You had to be up to date, you had to be fashionable, you had to have the hots for a jock from the school down the road, you had to have obscene amounts of money. I satisfied every criteria except for the 'obscene amounts of money' and 'fashionable' parts. But I tried. Oh I tried. Because being a victim of ATS meant that you were at the top. Feared? Maybe. Respected? Maybe. Ruling the year? YES. Everyone coveted that top spot, damn, we could have formed a cult! Some made it to the top. Others, like me, hovered near there, never actually having any chance of being on the throne, and knowing it... but we just had to try. Call it peer pressure, if you will. But the lure of the challenge was just irresistible. I, like everyone else, wanted a little taste of the power. The closest I got to it was... well, not even that close at all. Even as I made the transformation, I loathed ATS. With passion. I hated it more than I hate peas (which is saying something!). I hated it because I was it. And then ever so slowly, everyone else around me was affected. The old bunch of studious little nerds was becoming a bunch of teenagers with opinions, views, and a healthy dose of ATS. ATS is everywhere. Suddenly we cared about what to wear to shopping centres, eyed guys, and started 'excluding' people. We knew who we wanted to hang out with, and we weren't shy to tell those that weren't welcome to piss off. We'd evolved. We questioned orders, learnt to defy authority. No longer the perfect little children.. well, we soon won't be. I thought we'd be the last to change, seeing as how alienated we are from the USA. But I was wrong. We were influenced. Whether for better or worse, I'm not sure yet. It is so strange the way things turn.
There's actually another 3 more verses, but I've exhausted my echelon of personal experiences, so I'll just put a cork in it. I bet you guys won't even read the body of this post.. just skim through it. But that doesn't matter. I wrote this post just to get a load off my chest, and indulge in a spot of self-loathing. Oh well... I'm gonna go to the petrol station and binge on some chocolate. Next post is on Thursday! Not that most of you are actually going to voluntarily read it. I guess my posts are too long. But what's the point of limiting myself?
Toodle-pip, mon chere
Oh, and I like chocolate. (: