Sunday, March 30, 2008

OMG I just realised how ridiculously stupid I am.

I didn't realise my clock broke down and thought it was only 12-plus when there are so many signs that IT'S SO NOT TWELVE PM NOW BITCH. SO NOT.

1. Firstly, Xero's clock reads 4:09 AM. It's the nearest working clock and I didn't see it. (That being said, I have about three broken alarm clocks, one slow clock and countless watches with failed batteries.)

2. How can I forget it's well past midnight when I watched LA Ink starting halfway at 11:30 PM, then Miami Ink at 12AM, followed by Project Runway at 1AM???? (Perhaps because it's the first time in weeks I actually got to watch all three? Mythbusters reruns old seasons at 12PM everyday so catching that was no problem, but those three shows often show post-primetime starting at 10PM. And they only air once a week. It's easy to forget!)

3. Isn't it remarkably quiet 'round the 'hood? Only thing is, my 'hood is forever quiet. I sometimes tell people I live in "swa teng" which translates as "mountain top" in hokkien or teochew. Crickets can't even be bothered to cry over here. It's so permanently quiet, it'd have made a really good retirement home for quiet-loving seniors if they don't mind the sweltering heat and the humidity. But I have friends in ulu-er residential areas still.

I'm guessing I'm still a night creature through and through, cultivated since toddlerhood by my maternal grandma who frequently falls asleep in front of the TV during the 10PM news and conveniently forget to send me to bed until she wakes up again at around midnight. While burning midnight oil was relatively unheard of among 8-year-olds of my time (but the same can't be said for kids nowadays. I feel old.), I was already using calculators for my abacus exercises in the dead of the night. My mom even helps me sometimes. Life didn't get better when I transferred to Ai Tong and they issued one worksheet of ten math sums to do, every single day. Fuck, those were hell. Ten seemingly-simple questions had me running for a calculator even though primary school never involved any electronic devices as far as math is concerned. And these questions frequently caused me to stay up till as late as 1AM just to finish, cross my fingers and hope I got at least 5 questions correct, hit or miss.

Of course, without question secondary school life is lousy with opportunities for midnight oil-burning. We all know so well — staying up till 3 or 4AM just for that last bit of Buddha-leg-hugging for various dumb reasons which include mugging for exams, recovering from writer's block for English, Higher Chinese or Literature essays, and editing scripts that have been written with an eclectic mix of lousy, unconvincing storylines, overused clichés and lots of bad spelling and grammar. It's a miracle how I survived secondary school without developing myopia, astigmatism, schizophrenia, depression, multiple organ failure (especially the brain) and, I don't know, there were so many opportunities for me to want to just jump off a building for the sake of my peers' linguistic abilities and low levels of intelligence.

Now, I stay up simply because night-time is me-time.