I find it highly offensive when someone suggests that I don’t love my country because I’m leaving to the U.S. to further my education.
I love my homeland.
There are so many things I love about it.
1. I love its history, for one. No kidding. I thoroughly enjoyed the History subject in high school (despite my moaning about it when exams were near; it can’t be helped, nobody likes exams of any kind). Other than the fact that the syllabus was not from an objective perspective, I was entirely fascinated by the history of our country. All about Parameswara and the Golden Age of Melaka (okay, I might be biased, because I’m from Melaka), to the Bugis and the trade flow with China and India and all that, to the intervention and eventual colonization of the British to the Japanese occupation to the Malayan Union to the actual formation of Malaysia.
(I also actually rather enjoyed learning about the roots of Islam and the spread of Islam in History, though because it’s unrelated to my specific love for my country’s history, I will refrain from talking about it too much.)
In fact, I remember very clearly that I loved it so much that it was one of my best subjects in high school because I didn’t mind taking my time to read and digest all the information. And it’s not because I was a good student, okay, I consistently failed Geography and did relatively poorly with other memorisation subjects.
Until now, I remember quite a number of bits and pieces of the History of my country that I learned in high school, all the way 6-7 years ago.
And speaking of the fact that I’m from Malacca…. yeah.
2. I love the fact that I’m from Malacca. It’s gotten to the point where it’s actually a bit embarrassing how much I love Malacca. Every time someone mentions Malacca in any context, I feel an overwhelming urge to yell, “MALACCA! I’M FROM MALACCA!”
…Not that anyone doesn’t know, because most people will find out I’m from Malacca within five minutes of meeting me. I didn’t even notice this until my friends pointed it out to me.
“When we first met, I think one of the first things you talked about was how you’re from Malacca,” a friend recalled.
“It was all you would talk about when we first started talking. I still have the MSN chat history to prove it,” another one said.
I can’t help it, my love for Malacca is part of me. It’s an integral part of me.
3. This one’s a bit obvious but I love the food. Don’t get me wrong, I also love Italian food and Japanese food and Mexican food, but dear God, I love me a good plate of nasi lemak with ayam masak merah. It’s just this unique blend of deliciousness and unhealthiness. I honestly don’t think I have to explain myself about this.
4. And yes, I even love the people. Some of the people. There are times when I think the ignorance and rigidity of the people of Malaysia reaches levels of incredulity. If you were to ask me why I think the people of Malaysia are detestable, I have a whole slew of reasons.
BUT, there’s just something about the people here. For every douchebag you meet, there’s someone who smiles at you at the toll or lets you go first at a road intersection. For every idiot you want to eviscerate, you meet someone who’s genuinely interesting, who knows the difference between sharing differing opinions and slinging mud in the form of words at each other.
5. I just love my country. I could go on and on and on and keep giving you examples of things I love about Malaysia, but what I really want to say is that I have no words for how much I love Malaysia.
It is the country I was born in, it is the country I was brought up in. All my best memories were formed in this country, as were my worst. Everything about me is Malaysian. It’s not a love for a certain aspect of the culture here or anything like that. I just feel an immense sense of bond with my country, my homeland.
But sigh.
It frustrates me that despite all the potential, all my love for my country… the politics of my country makes me completely disillusioned with Malaysia.
Someone said, “Loyalty to the nation must not be confused with loyalty to the government in power. One is patriotism, the other is stupidity.”
And that’s the reason why I’m leaving. Because I can’t stand reading the news and getting angry at what I’m reading. I can’t stand seeing the hate and bigotry that the government is perpetuating. I can’t stand watching the morality of our country crumble to dust around our ears as the politicians siphon off whatever they can for their own gains.
Because I love my country and I hate that it’s being destroyed.
Even writing this, thinking about the political situations in my country right now, is making me so upset.
How can I live in this country, when I’m constantly being told that I don’t deserve certain rights and privileges just because of my race?
How can I live in this country, when it is so hell-bent on telling who I’m allowed to love and what I’m allowed to think and how I’m allowed to say it?
How can I live in this country, when it is so determined to be the cause of its ruin?
You may say, if I love it so much, why am I not fighting for it? Why have I just accepted this destructive path it’s on?
Well, I guess some people are just stronger than me, or they love it even more than I. Because I’m not just exaggerating when I say all this makes me upset.
For example, once, while reading a particularly horrendous article about how the Chief Minister of Malacca, my most beloved and cherished hometown, is planning to systematically execute the LGBT people, I literally just broke down in class. I started to cry, because the Malacca I love has changed and what I love right now is just a collection of hazy memories of my hometown.
No, I have to get out of here, before it drags me down with it too.
thedailywhat:
On Kony 2012: I honestly wanted to stay as far away as possible from KONY 2012, the latest fauxtivist fad sweeping the web (remember “change your Facebook profile pic to stop child abuse”?), but you clearly won’t stop sending me that damn video until I say something about it, so here goes:
Stop sending me that video.
The organization behind Kony 2012 — Invisible Children Inc. — is an extremely shady nonprofit that has been called ”misleading,” “naive,” and “dangerous” by a Yale political science professor, and has been accused by Foreign Affairs of “manipulat[ing] facts for strategic purposes.” They have also been criticized by the Better Business Bureau for refusing to provide information necessary to determine if IC meets the Bureau’s standards.
Additionally, IC has a low two-star rating in accountability from Charity Navigator because they won’t let their financials be independently audited. That’s not a good thing. In fact, it’s a very bad thing, and should make you immediately pause and reflect on where the money you’re sending them is going.
By IC’s own admission, only 31% of all the funds they receive go toward actually helping anyone [pdf]. The rest go to line the pockets of the three people in charge of the organization, to pay for their travel expenses (over $1 million in the last year alone) and to fund their filmmaking business (also over a million) — which is quite an effective way to make more money, as clearly illustrated by the fact that so many can’t seem to stop forwarding their well-engineered emotional blackmail to everyone they’ve ever known.
And as far as what they do with that money:
The group is in favour of direct military intervention, and their money supports the Ugandan government’s army and various other military forces. Here’s a photo of the founders of Invisible Children posing with weapons and personnel of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. Both the Ugandan army and Sudan People’s Liberation Army are riddled with accusations of rape and looting, but Invisible Children defends them, arguing that the Ugandan army is “better equipped than that of any of the other affected countries”, although Kony is no longer active in Uganda and hasn’t been since 2006 by their own admission. These books each refer to the rape and sexual assault that are perennial issues with the UPDF, the military group Invisible Children is defending.
Let’s not get our lines crossed: The Lord’s Resistance Army is bad news. And Joseph Kony is a very bad man, and needs to be stopped. But propping up Uganda’s decades-old dictatorship and its military arm, which has been accused by the UN of committing unspeakable atrocities and itself facilitated the recruitment of child soldiers, is not the way to go about it.
The United States is already plenty involved in helping rout Kony and his band of psycho sycophants. Kony is on the run, having been pushed out of Uganda, and it’s likely he will soon be caught, if he isn’t already dead. But killing Kony won’t fix anything, just as killing Osama bin Laden didn’t end terrorism. The LRA might collapse, but, as Foreign Affairs points out, it is “a relatively small player in all of this — as much a symptom as a cause of the endemic violence.”
Myopically placing the blame for all of central Africa’s woes on Kony — even as a starting point — will only imperil many more people than are already in danger.
Sending money to a nonprofit that wants to muck things up by dousing the flames with fuel is not helping. Want to help? Really want to help? Send your money to nonprofits that are putting more than 31% toward rebuilding the region’s medical and educational infrastructure, so that former child soldiers have something worth coming home to.
Here are just a few of those charities. They all have a sparkling four-star rating from Charity Navigator, and, more importantly, no interest in airdropping American troops armed to the teeth into the middle of a multi-nation tribal war to help one madman catch another.
The bottom line is, research your causes thoroughly. Don’t just forward a random video to a stranger because a mass murderer makes a five-year-old “sad.” Learn a little bit about the complexities of the region’s ongoing strife before advocating for direct military intervention.
There is no black and white in the world. And going about solving important problems like there is just serves to make all those equally troubling shades of gray invisible.
[kony2012.]
I wanted to write a post about the KONY 2012 campaign as well, but then decided that I should just reblog this fantastically informative and enlightening post instead because it basically says what I was planning to say.
I also have some more things to add on.
Not only is Invisible Children an extremely dubious organisation, I thought that the video was badly executed as well.
This is supposed to be a video on the plight of Ugandans, but practically half the video was focused on a five-year-old white kid. How seriously are we supposed to take them? The video starts with the birth of this five-year-old kid, and then ends with the five-year-old kid ‘wanting to be just like his dad’ (the guy who narrates the video). The only Ugandan we are actually introduced to is Jacob, and he’s in like maybe 5 to 10 minutes of the video.
Another thing I want to add on is that this whole KONY 2012 depends on hype. And hype, as we all know, dies. Especially with the fickle-minded nature of humans. This kind of issue doesn’t need hype; it needs commitment. Commitment most of the people who so valiantly proclaimed their support for the video will not have. A month or two down the line, instead of the passionate speech they have right now every time you bring up the KONY 2012 campaign, they’ll probably just say, “Oh yeah, that guy is bad news, man. Have they caught him yet?”
Lastly, this just proves that people are so gullible. You show them a video and immediately they’re drawn to your cause. Most of these people don’t even bother to do more in-depth research into this before declaring themselves advocates for the cause. How can you claim to be advocates when all you’ve done is watch a heavily edited video that may be exaggerated by a dubious organisation?
Anyway, here are more articles talking about why KONY 2012 is not the best solution to the problem:
http://visiblechildren.tumblr.com/
http://justiceinconflict.org/2012/03/07/taking-kony-2012-down-a-notch/
(via wilwheaton)
TL;DR
I usually don’t bother giving my opinions on individual people (unless it’s to fangirl about them; hello, all my fandoms), because I feel it’s just a waste of time and also it’s their prerogative to be/do/say whatever they want, as long as they’re not harming anyone. It’s kind of like when a six-year-old runs around the park saying, “Look Mommy, I’m a train!” I’ll probably just go, “Ooh, good for you. Now don’t crash.”
I mean, if you don’t enjoy something or someone, just avoid them. Simple as that. Cut them out of your life. Don’t pay them any attention. As Tim Minchin once said, “The existence of stuff you don’t enjoy is not a personal insult.”
To be honest, I don’t actually dislike Xiaxue (an infamous Singaporean blogger) or anything. I don’t read her blog or follow her twitter enough to have the kind of dislike that she seems to foster in many people who do read her blog and follow her twitter.
But I just went through a small part of her blog because quite a few people have talked about her post on Adele and how she was hating on Adele and fat people and I was curious so off I went. (Also, I was really bored in US History class…) And while trying to find that blog post on Adele (and then later, when someone directed me to it after I tweeted about the Adele post, reading her tweets on the KONY 2012 campaign - where she said she never even watched the video and is completely indifferent to the cause ), I realized why I stayed away from Xiaxue, and also why so many seemed to hate her.
A disclaimer before I tell you why: I still think she’s just someone on the Internet utilizing freedom of speech on her blog and Twitter a bit too belligerently, and this is not a ‘flame post’ in any way, form, or manner. I still don’t hate her personally or anything; I disagree with her opinions and her way of going about things, but I’m just going to continue avoiding her blog/Twitter unless necessary. I’m just trying to reason why Xiaxue is hated on so much, generally. Anyway, here we go:
1. Obviously, she has controversial opinions. Unpopular opinions, if you will. And she isn’t shy to broadcast them to the Internet. Sometimes she has some valid arguments for her opinions, sometimes she doesn’t. Nothing new there; all of us have opinions on things where we can’t pinpoint why we feel that way.
(Example: I have this inane dislike of discussing my education with my mother. Which I know is ridiculous because she’s paying for it, obviously she wants to know more about it. But I just don’t like it.)
Perhaps another reason is that she just doesn’t care when her readers disagree with her, which just enrages them more. Also, she is an attention-whore. This is not a conclusion on my part; she confirms this every time she gets hate. Another thing that is frowned upon by many people.
What I will say is that it is important to read opinions that differ from yours, but again, their opinions - especially a blogger’s who literally do not know you or your opinions - are not a personal insult to your opinions. Take their arguments at face value. If they are good arguments, ponder on why you are convinced by them and if they are good enough to change your opinions on things and perhaps, if you can come up with an eloquent, diplomatic and articulate counter-argument. If they’re not good arguments, laugh heartily to yourself and then move on.
2. She is very…uhm…vain. She herself openly admits this; constantly telling us on her blog/Twitter that most, if not all, of her pictures are heavily Photoshopped. I suppose, right now, it’s no longer acceptable to openly admit that you’re vain? I don’t know; there are a lot of people who apparently flames her for not being ‘real’, and for being shallow and superficial and for Photoshopping her pictures and getting plastic surgeries, etc. Not that she actually cares, but that seems to just make people dislike her more, for revelling in her vanity.
I don’t really care that she’s vain. Caring about one’s appearance is not a sin, even if she seems to take vanity to a whole new level. But while trying to find the Adele blog post just now, I realized that I found her pictures on her blog very jarring. In just about every blog post, there are like a billion pictures of her. And not just pictures of her hanging out with friends or you know, something worth showing us. They’re literally pictures of her face and her shockingly pink hair. I just don’t see the necessity for so many pictures of oneself. Like, if I read a blog, I want to read what they write, and maybe see a few pictures that better illustrate the point of what is written. I don’t want to have to go through 302574657 billion unnecessary pictures of the blogger’s face, just to read what they’ve written. Also, dude, bandwidth???
But you know, that’s why I don’t usually read her blog.
3. This point and the next one are just what I think personally from the very short time I’ve been on her blog and Twitter. Referring to the first point, Xiaxue writes a lot of unpopular opinions. But here’s what really turns me off from reading her blog/Twitter: she instigates all these arguments and discussions, but when people try to present their arguments against her, she falls back on logical fallacies to defend herself.
Okay, I will say that some of the people who attempted to argue with Xiaxue on the Adele post and her tweets on the KONY 2012 campaigns did go off tangent a bit with their arguments.
Regardless of that, the way Xiaxue retorted these people was a bit…off.
On the Adele post:
“If obesity is something that you cannot change, why do we not ever see fat poverty-stricken African kids?”
…was her argument to people who say obesity is genetics.
I…don’t think she actually understands how genetics work. Or at least regarding obesity. Some people are overweight because their metabolism are biologically slow. This means that even if they exercise like a bitch or eat healthily, their metabolism is still going to fuck them up. The healthy food they eat is still going to be digested slower than most people. Another reason why genetics could cause one to look big/overweight could be big bones. Bone structure could cause someone to look stocky or nuggety. So no matter how much they work out or how little they eat, they’re still going to look bigger than most people. Now poverty-stricken African kids go without food for days. Even if they have a slow metabolism, there is literally nothing for them to digest. Even if they are big-boned, the extreme lack of food causes them to be nothing but skin and bones. Not to mention, they are often riddled with diseases or illnesses that affect weight. Come to think of it, this isn’t a logical fallacy as much as it’s just her not knowing what she’s talking about. (Sorry, I realize I’m taking this particular argument a bit too seriously, but it’s a habit left over from having debate-y friends who enjoy picking apart arguments)
On her KONY 2012 tweets, she committed even more logical fallacies. Someone said something about her being selfish, living in luxury while not caring about people suffering. Quite a dumb argument, but instead of pointing it out for what it is (a dumb argument), she just went ahead and committed the same thing the guy did; AD HOMINEM. Basically, ad hominem is when you attack the person you’re debating with personally, instead of the points they’re presenting. I don’t mean physically (though…does that actually still count as ad hominem? Just wondering), but you know, just pointing out negative characteristics of the person instead of the point.
So yes, the guy tweeting her committed ad hominem by talking shit about her not caring about people, but then she also did the same thing by saying something along the lines of, “I bet you’re also living in luxury, in a nice house, etc.”
Uhm, sorry, I don’t see how those are even remotely related to her KONY 2012 tweets.
I guess my point is that even though she’s eager to talk about her opinions to the world, she’s not prepared to defend her opinions properly. Which may just be a pet peeve on my part. To me, if you want to tell the world your opinions, you have to know that there are going to be people who disagree with you, and who also want to tell the world - but more specifically, you - their opinions. And then you’re going to have to defend your opinions.
I mean, obviously I know that’s not how a majority of the Internet works (hello, Youtube commenters), but you know, I don’t usually read the comments section of articles I read and most of the websites I read can actually articulately defend their points.
4. Okay, this last point is definitely a pet peeve of mine. Her blog and her Twitter are so…. PINK. And sparkly. I have no reasonable or logical argument for this. I just personally don’t like pink. I also cannot tell you why I don’t like pink. Or sparkly things. I just don’t. So, reading her blog/Twitter actually makes me uneasy because of the ridiculous amount of pink and sparkly things. So there you go.
I know this was a completely unnecessary post on someone who already gets way too much attention, and I know that if I claim to be indifferent to her, why did I write such a long blog post on her then? Well, for one, because as I said, I tend to think too much about trivial things. And then I feel like I have to write it down somewhere. I started talking a bit about this on my Twitter, but evidently I had much more to say than Twitter allowed me to. Secondly, I am genuinely curious as to why people hate Xiaxue so much, and yes, even why I do not enjoy her blog/Twitter. This is just my attempt at rationalizing it.
EDIT;
Someone reminded me of another thing I personally find off-putting about Xiaxue’s blog: Its unnecessarily complicated layout. Which takes forever to load, especially on slower connections. I just prefer simple layouts in simple colours. But that’s just me, I suppose. Personal tastes.
Hello!
As you can see, the above picture refers to something - more specifically, a little written something - I’m currently working on with Cas (@raffinit). I’m really - really - excited about it and have been focused on it since the inception of the idea (when I’m not regrettably forced away from it for more important things like tests and university transfer applications), so I guess we’ll just have to see where this goes. It looks very promising at this stage, so hopefully, this will go far and reach the epic-ness it deserves.
I’ll keep you guys updated on this pet project of ours! If you’re interested of course. :)
Stop it, crises is the plural form of crisis. So, now that we’ve got the potential OH-MY-GOD-SHE-MADE-A-SPELLING-MISTAKE hullabaloo out of the way, I want to talk about The Sims and existential crises.
So, I have been playing The Sims 3 for the past few days. I have a…complicated relationship with all my games, especially The Sims. When I’m playing them, I can be obsessed to the point where I forget to eat my meals and/or get much sleep. But after a while, when I tire of them, I will delete them mercilessly. A few months later, I will feel the itch to replay them and install them again. Rinse and repeat this process ad infinitum.
With The Sims though, the process is a little bit different. I don’t get tired of it as much as I start to question it. Because it is a life simulation game, I start to ask myself after playing with it a while, “Why am I playing this game? It’s so repetitive. I’m just making my characters do the same thing over and over again. Wake up, toilet break, breakfast, work/school, come home, eat, toilet break, do some leisure stuff, work on improving self for promotion/better grades, sleep. Over and over again. It’s so boring. Why’d I ever think it was fun???? Ooh, I should try playing [insert random other game here]”
At this point, I’ll uninstall The Sims, only to reinstall after seeing a lot of simsgonewrong.tumblr.com on my dash (because it is hilarious!) or something. “Why’d I ever uninstall it? I had such a perfect little family! I want to play it again!”
This time around, I actually stopped and asked myself, what is it about The Sims that makes me go through this process repeatedly? And I think I have come up with the answer.
Basically, I think I’m projecting my existential crises onto The Sims. Because I’ve noticed that ever since I started playing The Sims 3 sometime last year, the amount of times I’ve fallen into a rut of existential crises has significantly decreased. I’ve found myself being a lot more “meh, why question life? Just live it!” instead of my previous, “What is the point of all this? I’m not doing anything, not really.”
Do you not see the parallels between the latter sentence and what I just described as my problem with The Sims??
Instead of questioning my own life, I’m questioning The Sims - a life simulation game. Instead of doing something drastic like falling deeper into the hole of depression I’ve found myself digging countless times before, I just uninstall the game and I go on with life, probably while playing another game.
And I thought, wow. This thing, this game here, could really be a good solution to all those people with existential crises or mid-life crises or similar conditions. I’ve actually asked several other Sims gamer, and they all agree with me, once I pointed it out.
So. Feeling like you’re stuck? Feeling a little hollow? Play The Sims 3!
I’ve been listening to nothing else but Tim Minchin lately. And when I say lately I mean for the past few months. Like… since December.
In case you don’t know who Tim Minchin, he’s actually a comedian, who conveys his comedy through music.
I don’t know, I sort of am obsessed with him. I find him incredibly funny, though to be very honest, not as funny as, say, Rhod Gilbert or Sarah Millican. But it’s just how amazing the lyrics to his songs are.
They’re funny AND they make you think, or at very least, look at something in a new perspective.
Check out Storm, for instance, his nine-minute beat poem. It’s basically him arguing with a hippie about the existence of psychics and auras and things. It’s not really all that funny, but it’s so true!
“Science adjusts its beliefs based on what’s observed. Faith is the denial of observation so that belief can be preserved.” - Storm, Tim Minchin
I feel like I should talk more about his works, how he usually writes about his atheism, his high-school sweetheart turned wife, his kids, things like that. (Some of his songs make me wonder why religious groups haven’t lynched him yet, actually. Like…. Ten Foot Cock and a Few Hundred Virgins, or The Pope Song).
But there’s really nothing I can say to make you listen to his songs. You should just listen to him. Shhh, go to Youtube. Right now. And search. Tim Minchin. Any of his songs. Literally. Any of his songs. Just listen.
Preferably with your earphones and subtitles on.
Can I just say that Martin Freeman is one hell of a good actor?
That’s one thing I’ve always liked about British actors. They tend to be more subtle in their acting. They don’t take the obvious route when it comes to giving their characters emotions, which for me, gives the character more depth and realism.
Because human beings are not predictable. We don’t always say or do the right things at the right time. We don’t express ourselves the same way, if we express ourselves at all. It’s all the little gestures, the side looks, the subconscious things that we say or do.
And to me, Martin Freeman nailed it all in his role as John Watson.
He wasn’t a polished, styled character who quipped witty phrases in between every line (which I realize is what a lot of writers do. If you pay attention, a lot of characters nowadays feels very…stylistic. People don’t actually talk or act like that in real life). He was clumsy with his words and with his life. You get the feeling that he’s not just some character who was written, but someone you could and have actually met in real life.
And basically his acting throughout the entire episode of The Reichenbach Falls. His barely concealed concern in the form of anger for Sherlock. His absolute belief in Sherlock, regardless of Moriarty’s game, revealed through tiny gestures, such as his lack of hesitation to deny Sherlock’s a fraud. And of course… his reaction to Sherlock’s death.
It was just downright the most convincing I’ve ever seen anyone act a reaction to the death of someone close to them. Granted, no one really reacts the same way, but there was just a certain genuineness to the way Martin Freeman chose to go about it. Even the little awkward speech near the end was flawlessly imperfect.
It makes you feel like this really is someone who is at a loss for words, he’s lost someone important and now he’s not quite sure what he’s supposed to feel or do or say. He’s not even sure if he believes the person is really dead. And I don’t know about you, but if you’ve ever had anyone close to you die, that’s exactly how it feels. Or at least, how it felt to me.
That scene. It just really got to me. I’m still tearing up just talking about it.
Someone hand Martin Freeman ALL the awards. (Or ALL the BAFTAs.)
The other day Cass bought a cigarette roller, along with all the other materials needed to roll your own cigarette.
Let me clarify that for the first 17 years of my life, I was rather strongly against smoking. Not because I was being righteously healthy or whatever, I just really didn’t like the smell. But then again, I downright hated all those fancy aromatherapy stuff, so there’s a hint on how my nose works (it doesn’t except when it does, it’s usually to make my life hell).
Then when I got to college, suddenly everyone seemed to be smoking. Well, not everyone, but certainly the few of my closest friends in college. I more or less learned to tolerate it, as long as they blew the smoke away from my face.
So yes, Cass had the new roller, and we were trying it out, following the instructions and all. We failed miserably the first few times, but I managed to get it right the third time! I felt so accomplished, like I’ve hit my quota of achieving something for the day. Also, it feels a lot like origami, which I also enjoy, so there’s that.
That night, I was talking to Muqri, an old friend from high school, and I mentioned my cigarette-rolling conquest. He said, rather offhandedly, “Sooner or later, you’re going to start smoking.”
I’ll be honest with you, it kind of made me laugh.
I think he was referring to my fascination with the roller or perhaps he was referring to the fact that some of my closest friends in college smoke. It doesn’t matter either way. Statements like that make me more resolute in my aversion towards smoking.
I don’t know, it’s always been a thing with me. Whatever someone expects of me, usually if they expect me to just succumb to something - be it peer pressure or whatever - I want to do the exact opposite, just to prove them wrong.
…I guess I like being right more than I thought, though I seem to have forgotten that just because someone else is wrong doesn’t mean that I’m right. (Shhh, don’t tell the voice in my head.)
That is also why it’s always puzzled me why people actually take up smoking just because their friends are smoking. I mean, yes, the curiousity can sometimes be overpowering, but wouldn’t one feel as if one is obligated to not smoke simply because one is expected to smoke? Does that make sense?
Basically, it’s my pride and stubbornness that’s keeping me from taking up smoking, regardless of how surrounded I am of the smoking culture. That, and also, Cass said she won’t let me smoke, lulz, cause she doesn’t want me to ruin my health. *raises eyebrows*
I like to whistle. I do, and I’d like to think I’m pretty alright at it. I can’t whistle the intro of Patience like Axl Rose, but I can whistle a pretty mean version of Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head.
But ever since I was young - I don’t know when or how - I’ve always had this idea that whistling wasn’t for girls, that it was for guys only, to do while they were hard at work. I had to learn how to whistle in school with my friends, behind my family’s back, like I was hiding a drug habit. Whenever I forgot and the joy of whistling just compelled me to whistle out of nowhere in front of my family, I would get disapproving glares and that noise. You know the one, where someone places their tongue in between their teeth and inhale sharply. The one that can make you feel smaller than you were five seconds ago.
So for a very, very long time, I abandoned whistling. It was something I only did when I was not with family, and even with friends, I barely did it anymore because what if they made that noise too?
…Yeah, I was a pretty dumb kid, shut up.
And several years ago, I realized that whistling should be for everyone, and what the heck was so masculine about it anyway? So I started to whistle again, a lot more liberally this time.
Can you imagine? Isn’t it bad enough that we live in a world so insistent on labelling everything so rigidly, industries that are obsessed with making gender-specific things (why? Unless they really are things that cannot avoid being gender-specific like say, condoms or tampons, I DON’T SEE THE LOGIC BEHIND GENDER-SPECIFIC THINGS) and a society that - be it willingly or unwillingly - have been taken in by this…gender segegration? Not even whistling is exempted from this practice?
WHISTLING, YOU GUYS. It’s just someone blowing air in a certain way through their mouth. How can anyone even justify calling it a masculine act?! (My family, apparently, though in their defense, they are a rather superstitious bunch.)
…I just really like to whistle, okay? And I feel like I’ve been cheated of all those years I could have spent honing my whistling skills just because I was lied to when young about gender segregation of just about everything.
I’ve got several things I want to talk about (wow, I wasn’t kidding when I said I think a lot about a lot of things), and I just thought perhaps I should list it down first, lest I forget it later. Some of the things you can look forward to (or dread, depending on your perspective):
*Old wives’ tales about whistling and the gender construct it helps to fortify.
*Smoking, peer pressure and the antithesis of peer pressure.
* Martin Freeman’s performance as John Watson on BBC One’s Sherlock.
* The story of Assassin’s Creed that I am aware of, so far, and what I think about it.
* The music of Tim Minchin.
* Sherlock, in general, and the trolling ways of Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss.
* The wonders of swearing, and the power of words.
* Dragon Age: Asunder.
There will probably be more by tomorrow, but that’s all I’ve thought of so far. If you’ve got any suggestions you want me to consider writing about, drop me an ask. :)
P.S.: Needless to say, spoilers will abound. Sorry about that.
