Jokes, jerks, toxic friendships

It’s Monday.

It annoys the hell out of me that every single time I have something on my mind, I’ll lose my train of thought when I sit down and write. There’s so much stuff trying to get out of me and yet I have not been able to articulate them.

It is unsettling, but bear with me as I try to say them, because I need to get them out of my head.

These last two days were not good. Someone took a joke too far and cited the overused excuse of how I can’t take a joke. Like seriously? If someone tells you that the joke’s not funny anymore and you continue it, there’s something wrong with you. It’s as offensive and annoying about the ‘you must be fun at parties‘ jibe – hell, take a freaking mirror and look at your utterly crap attitude in it. And when they give you a non-apology apology it’s just utterly ridiculous that they think life and whatever fancypants stuff means the offended one has to take it.

No – I’m not obliged to take it, so take your apology and shove it up your arse.

I can’t freaking believe I have to do this for the third time this year. Do people actually respect boundaries these days?

I actually went to ask ID thereafter if I get triggered too often and that I’m hurting people because of it (he got the brunt of it once), but then I realised it was stupid to ask so. My emotions are valid. I shouldn’t be acting like the one that always has to apologise for the mistakes of others. I shouldn’t have to act in this knee-jerk way that ‘it’s my fault‘ when it is not.

Yet I wonder if I am inherently evil despite people always saying otherwise. I do admit I have a thing for ‘an eye for an eye’ – I do vary my response to people depending on how they treat me. I probably am cold-blooded since I don’t really take into account ties and kinship when it comes to issues regarding principles.

I happened to wake up intermittently today to the long conversations that SW and MH were having over WhatsApp in our group and read parts of it and went back to sleep. It didn’t help that I went through another blog I read and saw the exact same situation (let’s call this dude K). SW and MH were talking about toxic friendships and about how there are jerks in your life (that you think you’ll spend the rest in your life with) that disposes of you. K said things in the same vein. Now, I’m still deathly afraid of getting into a relationship because I don’t think I can ever have someone to share my life with, and I don’t trust anyone enough to do so. Someone told me I should be spending more time with girls and not guys even as a bi dude but the thing is he doesn’t even know I don’t spend time with either.

With the experience SW/MH/ID/K got, I probably be happier alone than having two parties forced to compromise for each other. Love probably is dead.

Two other things happened in the intervening half an hour I was typing –

1. I received the withdrawal letter from the local university – it was nice to see that those buggers finally sent a legitimate letter (through the postal service) for once. I don’t regret my decision. Despite having quite a good time with some of the people there during my stint, I’ve found that the school keeps them in blissful unawareness of the world – in that they don’t know that competition exists outside of the school and that it doesn’t matter with regards to dominating and scheming within the school to gain favour from the bell-curve gods. It seems something quite prevalent in the business schools here – with their immense population they think they can break into IB or consulting just by going there. I don’t know how they will take it when reality hits.
2. I got a satisfactory response from one of a complaint I made the other day. I really don’t get the service industry at times when service delivery is everything but they’ve managed to do everything except that. As much as I dislike Akbar Al-Baker’s (Qatar Airways’ boss) show-boating tactics, you’ve gotta give him credit that he has managed to build his airline around service delivery. It’s something that others should really learn from, and I just wonder how people can think they can break into the service industry and yet forget the service delivery bit – the bit that amounts to everything.

I know my titles are sub-par, but hey, bear with it? (I do need better titles, though.) And if you’ve managed to get yourself down to this line – thanks for hearing me out. It means loads to me.

Till next time.

Deja vu

AM (a friend of mine) asked me earlier over Insta whether I was going to get people to send me off. I told him no – there was no point, I ain’t any popular dude and I’m going to be back in December for my break anyway. I’m neither emigrating nor disappearing from Singapore for the next three years in its entirety, and it’ll be awkward.

Ironically after that I headed off to the airport with my mother, since we waiting for my father to land and to pick him up. He was supposed to arrive on Wednesday, but somehow moved his flight later to today.

We had time there, so we decided to go up to the departure hall at Terminal 3 and walk around aimlessly. My mother made the observation that the kids going about this time should be heading overseas, so we went around the Singapore Airlines economy check in counters to prove her hypothesis. She was right. There was a dude having an entire motley crew sending him off, and a couple others who seemed to be going with their big bags.

An entire crew sending him off to university.

That reminded me of S. S had an entire crew sending him off that time. I remember feeling awkward since I was the youngest amongst his friends and acquaintances there, but ‘perfect dude’ and S’s close friends were there and I knew them so it made things a bit better for me. It was kinda cute that S was wearing the same type of casual stuff as I did, of a very similar colour. Perfect dude was in a shirt, on the other hand.

Facebook then had to remind me that it was the third anniversary of my ‘friendship’ with one of S’s close friends/my acquaintance.

Oh freak.

It’s the third anniversary of S’s flying off to the UK – to Manchester.

And somehow I’m here, at the same airport, different terminal, but seeing another person go off to presumably the same place – maybe like how S did – to London, and then onward.

Was it meant to be a pure coincidence? Or as S would say, everything happens for a reason?

I don’t want to know.

Our friendship is supposed to be long gone.

Random thoughts

It’s my last week in Singapore before I head to Bristol. I should be excited by I seem to be afflicted with a variant (?) of the Munchausen syndrome. It’s not good, but it’ll pass. I’m probably afraid of the unknown. I always am.

There are a few things that happened these few days which I thought deserves a mention, and they aren’t good.

1. I was following the news and tweets on Barbuda post-Irma, and for once I finally see where Trump is coming from about leftist fake news. This lady, ex-president of some provincial chapter of Planned Parenthood, decided to go on reporting incorrectly that the fatalities on Barbuda was ‘1,000’, when in reality it was confirmed to be one, and refused to remove the post when corrected. Now, I’m not saying it’s a crime to be wrong. It is not. But admit your mistake, person. It was kind of ridiculous she maintained her stance despite being called out for it and corrected, and refused to remove the tweet. What’s worse is that she went on a tirade about how men were oppressing her freedom of speech and two reporters (one from the Globe and Mail, even!) were siding with her. They really should be mindful as reporters that facts are critical. It’s… simply ridiculous when reporters don’t uphold professional standards and get themselves into opinionated blame games. 137 retweets could cause major scares to overseas Barbudans with family back home. It’s utterly irresponsible to sensationalise a disaster and to not correct yourself when proven wrong, especially on the news.
2. In a similar vein, major props to the ABS Television and Radio reporters of Antigua and Barbuda – they had the decency to double-check and reconfirm their information without the rush to get the news out first.
3. In the same Twitter stuff I managed to correct a Trump-loving fake-news-slogan-toting dude and he accepted it. I’ve never expected as a center-left person to see more rationality in the right than the left in any situation.
4. A foreign friend of mine declined his place in Cambridge apparently, and stayed in his local country to study, which is surprising. I thought it was a wasted opportunity, but it’s not my business to care how people lead their lives.
5. I was reading an article about this Oxford dude waxing lyrical about his girlfriend (apparently the most popular post on that blog). The post was meh, but his reply to a dude who said he can’t relate is awfully pretentious and elitist and downright rude. Hell, people have their opinions and they should express it, and if there are no verifiable and quantitative facts in question, his opinion about love is as valid as yours Mr. Oxford dude. While I had a much better experience with Oxbridge-going people in pre-university, it reminded me of the jarring disconnect I sometimes feel with those people. It says a lot about them when I’m supposed to be (and sometimes indeed) lumped into the same educational ‘class’ as them and can’t identify with them.
6. I’m still off my diet, but I intend to restart it when I’m in Bristol, as I will have complete control of my food intake and my pantry.

I’m going to end abruptly here since I have nothing else on my mind that’s aching to get out, so that’s that.

Defragmenting my brain

So, first post on WordPress. It’s cleaner than Blogger – I kinda like it.

Anyway I’ve been binge-eating the past two days and it’s really bad. I admit I don’t have any self-control when things that are outside my diet are near me, and that people don’t give three flying flutes about your diet and actively go out to sabotage it.

It’s quite a horrible feeling that people would rather see you fail than to succeed, however given that that is the feeling I’ve gotten around this island-state, I’ve been used to it.

I can’t believe I’m eight days away from getting to Bristol, and that’s something I’m really stoked about. Personally I’m still worried about the competition, but L told me beforehand not to be.

For those who just found this and don’t know who I’m talking about – here’s the post before I’ve moved over here on L’s belief.

So, yeah. It really is liberating to have the sense that I will have control over my own life, and that there are no one in my way to jeopardise me (and my diet), at least at home. I can’t put enough importance on this. I’m going to focus my first three months on continuing and refining my diet, perhaps restart doing some exercise, and learn something new! Certainly all these are on top of my schoolwork – which I hope would not come to me as a shock. It shouldn’t be.