Here am I
and there is my body
dancing on glass

In accident time where there are no accidents

You have no choice
the choice comes after

They will love me for that which destroys me
the sword in my dreams
the dust of my thoughts
the sickness that breeds in the folds of my mind

Every compliment takes a piece of my soul

...

It is myself I have never met, whose face is pasted on the underside of my mind


Please open the curtains


- 4.48 Psychosis, a play by Sarah Kane

Caught this play about a woman's depression back in London. The only reason why this play stuck in my mind was that the playwright killed herself shortly after writing this play. Suddenly words become more than they are. A potential cliche made horrific and real by the events framing the words. It is a pity that her works had not fully exocised the demons within her. I am one step closer in trying to find out what it is that pained her about living, within her words, but yet nowhere near enough to fully comprehen it.

Sometimes life gets kinda scary. Especially when i feel that i am not totally in tune with what is happening around me. Sort of like a broken down radio dial stuck on some obscure frequency where you can hear snippets of songs and tons of static. I need to find something to keep me grounded. I found that if i just focus on one thing at one moment in time. One person. One issue. One concern. One problem. Things sort of stablize into some coherent whole for me to nail down. Other times, things are not so much as overwhelming that it would disorientate me. But i do feel momentarily incapacitated before recovering almost instantaneously and moving through with the flow of things.

That is sort of scary personally.
I hate running. One reason is that when i run, i cannot think. I am too busy trying to breathe. My mind is a blank as i concentrate on the most essential rhythm that would sustain my consciousness. In In Out. In In Out. I do not like this state of "mindlessness". I happen to feel that what makes me feel alive is the fact that i am conscious of the fact that i am thinking. Aware of my state of consiousness.

I don't particularly enjoy analyzing.
I just like running my fingers through the thoughts that filter through my head without having to act on them.

My cat runs and leaps into the air,
very much like a giant rabbit.

Realization no. 27:

Loneliness won't kill you. But it can darn well cripple you.

A hypothetical situation:

If you have just won a million dollars from a game show/lottery/toto,
what would you do.........


with all the new friends you have suddenly acquired?

:)

Watched Battle Royale on a monday night.

Firstly, i almost never watched a 9pm movie on a monday night.
Secondly, it wasn't as violent as i had anticipated.

The movie was interesting, not so much the violence and gore, in fact some parts were actually quite funny. On the surface, it is really your run-of-the-mill stereotypical melodrama jap flick, with tons of fake blood, frozen shots of dead corpses and rather standard jap diabolical expressions just before someone kills. And kitano is kitano. What can i say? He was a calm among the riot except he is really the crazy guy amidst all. A little unnerving but nothing more than what you would expect from kitano. Seems like he did this movie as a personal favour for the director. Wonder how much of that is true.

Actually, what is really interesting to me about this almost standard just-shock-em' slasher flick wasn't the fact that it was depicting violence in all manner possible (in fact i thought audition was much more gory and needless in the depiction of violence with all the long drawn out tortures), or that it pitted high school students against each other in the manner of "Lord of the fly". For me, it was much more interesting to think about what kind of mentality would possess the japanese to make such movies in the first place? A social commentary on the society in japan these days? Well, i don't believe incidents of juvenile violence is unique to the japanese culture. I wonder if it is really how the older generation of japanese perceive the direction which their society is heading.

Consider the japanese movies such as the postman, kitano's yakuza flicks, even some of the romance stories like the love letter, afterlife which has a underlying morbid, pessimistic feel to it. The normal guy on the street, the anti hero, the good guy almost inevitably die at the end of the show, sometimes almost incidentally. Life goes on. The movies, at times, were hardly meant to make one feel sorry for the characters or to glorify these characters. Leaving one a little disturb at the end without knowing really why. And consider the nation's adult male population preoccupation for pornography which depicts nubile teenagers in school uniform. I wonder if this trend of movies where the innocence being corrupted is in part a social reflection of the mentality of the society post-WWII. Someone suggested that perhaps they just wanted to juxtapose innocence and evil but yet i felt in such movies, it is usually a process of innocence morphing into something diabolical, something not subjected to choice usually, rather than putting innocence and evil side by side. It is not so much as a reflection or retrospection of things past in the japanese history (i.e. "evil" being unleased in the wake of the H-bombs during wwII). I think the older generation have moved on and it is really INtrospection of the current mentality of society which the movies are depicting. A sense of innocence still in the process of being corrupted even after 50 years. A sense of watchfulness of where things will lead to next.

I wonder if i am just thinking too much. After all, i don't really watch movies on a monday night.

My cat looks at me with sleepy eyes.
It should be my bedtime soon too.

Hey anyone wants two tickets to George Lucus student films at substation on 17th or 18th of October?
If you are interested and actually knows my phone number, you can still make it for the 17th screening by calling me.
I could only check my emails tomorrow night (after the 17th screening) if you can only contact me via the net.
Anyway i heard it is pretty interesting. So let me know if you or anyone you know is interested.
For those few that read this blog anyway.
*chuckles*

Name Analysis: (One of those links that i couldn't help but clink on when surfing others blog)

You don't fair well under inharmonious conditions. You are very peace loving. You can get very upset when you are frustrated. You can be quite inventive and quite curious. You are relatively demonstrative in your affections. (quite so) You enjoy being stroked verbally and physically. (Yes yes i do love my cuddles)

You are a quick study, and can be self-taught. Your curiosity can get the best of you, but you must learn to concentrate. (eh, what did you say?)You work hard to achieve material success through your own efforts. You need to learn to give and receive love for love's sake. (what other sakes are there?) You have a need to be assured of affection. You can handle details well. You have a methodical mind.

You are fair-minded sometimes to the point of being opinionated. (is that good or bad?) You have a strong need to be loved and appreciated. (i am beginning to sound needy and insecure, which is not necessary incorrect) You need to learn to be expressive. You are a person who cannot tolerate being misunderstood. You need to learn to be expressive. (i think i am fairly okie in this aspect) You are a person who cannot tolerate being misunderstood. (who can?)

Wah. So true.
Now i wonder how many get the same permutation of canned phrases.

On case conferences:

It is the end-of-term case conference, aka Meet The Parents weeks again.

It is this time of the year when our attire have to be more presentable. So no more wrinkled pants and t-shirt, and give me some of those stiff collar shirt and a coat. I got to wear a name-tag and sit inside the meeting room for half an hour each time reporting on the progress and projected goals for the students i see for therapy. This is the other aspect of my work which is very important. This is because i don't have much chances to meet up with the parents for some of my students as they only turn up for these case conferences twice a year. It is easier to share with parents who have been accompanying their child to school as they would usually sit in for the therapy sessions and knows what is it i am doing with their child. These weekly interactions and informal sharing during therapy sessions would also make the formal case conference more a formality than a necessity.

It is quite different for parents who are working and have not had a chance to sit in during one of my therapy sessions. I have to explain everything in a simpler form and often i have to bring along my "equipments" (e.g. My board makers, my "First-then" strip, my choice menu) to illustrate what is it i am doing during therapy. And often part of my responsibility during the case conference would be to answer any queries or difficulties in the child's behaviour that the parents need help in. This really requires one to think quickly on their feet. It sounds daunting at first, but gradually i realized, because i see these children weekly, i usually have quite a good grasp of their behaviour repetoire and the range of difficult behaviour that they might exhibit (e.g. throwing, banging their head etc). Hence, part of my therapy would have been to help modulate and regulate such behaviours already. So, what i need to do is really to make the strategies that i have been using in the class room more feasible for the parents to do at home (bearing in mind that they are busy or that someone else might be the caregiver).

More often than not, the strategies are not difficult to translate from the school environment to the home environment. But i need to empharize the main thing which is CONSISTENCY. No matter what consequence we give to a child for his behaviour, it must be consistent in order for the child to learn and associate. Seem like a simple behaviour modification strategy but it is very difficult to achieve in real life. One possible reason is that parents could be busy and do not have time to give consistent consequence or that parents differ in views of consequence to give or perhaps the parents forgot to give the agreed consequence. Still, most parents do try whenever they can help it. And usually i do see significant improvements after sharing with parents who are motivated to do something at home. For those who are either too busy or could not do something at home for whatever reasons, i think the aim of the case conference would have been achieved, if they would at least have taken a greater interest in the child's progress.

I resolved that this week will be better than the last.
And what do you know?
It is self-fulfilling prophecy at work!
Hurrah!

Man! I am on a roll. Though nothing concrete that has happened warrant a celebration but my happy feelings are going rocket sky high!
And i love it!

I woke up bright and sunny today feeling good so i decided to mass-sms all my friends wishing them a happy day and week ahead. I wonder if i drove anyone up to wall sending them sms at 8am in the morning.

My cat is jumping all over the place.
What made it so excitable?

They changed the format of the sunday comics again.
Why on earth did they have strips like "preteena" which is not funny and makes absolutely no sense?
At least they kept sherman's lagoon and get fuzzy.
The new comics they added sucks.
Preteena: uninteresting layout and drawings, with boring jokes
Mr potatoe head: visually distracting (can hardly tell one thing from the other), with stale jokes.

What ever happened to good comics?

I don't feel like doing any work today.
Been feeling kinda lethagic lately.
Perhaps because the love of my life is not here?
Some people ought to find that funny.

:D

According to Emode:

I am a Collie who is Walking on Sunshine, in my Comfort Clogs.

Hmmm... i can live with that.

On learning:

I am glad the whole thing is sort of over.
Considering that i actually at the receiving end of a very muddy stick, i am quite okie.
Or perhaps i am in denial, and the horrors have not sunk in yet.

Whatever it is, this accident was not all bad.
Hey, i learnt all that i ever wanted to find out about...
1) making insurance claims (my own and third-party)
2) what the heck NCD entails
3) how much my dad's insurance policy premium is
4) how much NCD he is ALREADY paying
5) what difference it would make between going to the insurance appointed workshop and my own
6) how much settlement people usually get when it is your word against my word in the claims procedure
7) what is an non-injury accident report
8) how much a new bumper cost
9) how much extra cost i have to bear (surveyor and what nots)
10) the whole fiasco of trying to get a private settlement
11) how nasty and irresponsible people can be
12) how trusting i can be
13) how to make phone calls to insurance company, car workshops and ask "intelligent" questions

The idiot get to go away scot free since his dad stood up for him and it is all under his company insurance.
So not one cent from him. He could even come around and start a claim on me. Ah well.

I should be feeling upset. But i did learn plenty of stuff which i had not learnt before.
Unlike him, i had to call many people and places for advice and tried to make heads and tails of what had happened.
And now i know what i should have done before when an accident happened.

We live and we learn. I certainly learnt alot. No doubt, a whole big chunk will have to come out of my pocket. But i am happy that i managed to come out of this mess somehow. Money can always be earned back. Though i am sure their lack of responsibility and integrity of that father and son will not make them lose their sleep, but what goes around comes around eventually right?

Life still goes on.

You are missed.

Realization no. 26:

Small things add up to great things.

Spend the whole night thinking if the accident was in any way my fault as well. I think i need someone more objective to advice me. But still, i fell asleep with the thought that hey! things aint that bad.

At least my bumper didnt fall out.
:)

One more week to case conference.
More parents to see.
More reports to write.
I am going to be busy.
I am glad that it is during this time that you went away.
Time should pass by quite fast, i think.

Babes, thinking TOO far ahead is a habit i cant exactly control. :)

I am so tired these days.
Can't think of writing much.
The bloody accident isn't helping.
And SO has just gone to Germany.

Somedays i just wish i never got out of bed.

Damn it.
Why hasn't the �"*&$(* idiot that bang into my front bumper called yet??

I wonder if i am unlucky or what.
HOW CARELESS can you be that you can reverse park without checking your rear and blindspot before you turn??
Especially when the car is just next to you?!

As if i don't have enough to worry these days.
I am so tense that i can chew steel wires for lunch.

Happy birthday to a dear friend.
Happiness to you always, though we may not always know in what form they may come. :)

Realization no. 25:

After the next three weeks, I want to sit by a cafe and just sit and stare at the world around me.

I really shouldn't make fun of my cat. He seems pretty vulnerable right now. A contradiction of wanting to be near me (i.e. curling up on my lap) and hiding in some obscure corner (i.e. burrowing in my closet). He looks kinda sad and weak. I wonder if it is traumatized. He hasn't eaten since last night and can't eat till tomorrow morning. And he is so quiet now. I hope he will be more energetic tomorrow. I miss him when he is not zooming all over the place. Hell, i even miss him pouncing and biting me!

My cat just had the operation.
Now it is walking funny, poor chap.