Veronika D. Dentstaporn

I really dislike it when you ask a question and the reply is: “You probably won’t be assessed on this”

But that isn’t the main reason why I am asking the question,  can’t it be due to the fact that I am purely interested in the subject/topic at hand and that is why I am asking the question as opposed to being purely interested in the grades. Of course I want to do well in a subject, but that doesn’t mean that the grades is the centre of my universe. 

And when you move on to do research or more advanced studies, or even out to work, you mean to tell me you’re only going to be using the stuff that is assessed on the exam? Sure the lecturer chose certain topics to be in the finals maybe because it’s the key points or that he likes it or whatever, but surely that 2h exam can’t possibly encompass everything that is taught in 13weeks of lecture, that’s like 26h of materials all together, excluding the stuff in the textbook. So “you won’t be assessed on this”, is NOT a good reply. >:( 

Sometimes, you feel this blind fury building up within you, and you feel the need to suppress the crazy flash of desire to reach up and snap that person’s neck, just so your life will have one less annoying person. Now, of course if you weren’t in public, in the middle of a crowd, where the cost of such an action would obliterate any momentary satisfaction of seeing the source of your perpetual annoyance, lying on the floor with its neck twisted at a strangely grotesque angle, you might actually consider acting upon your thoughts.

However, it is probably considered more socially acceptable to smile and pretend to agree or sympathise with the person. It’s easier to walk around behind a facade, it doesn’t matter that you’re really quite hollow inside, and all you feel these days are anger and frustration. While the monotonous flow of inconsequential chatter grates on your senses, you have to press your lips tightly together, struggling to harness the nuclear force coalescing within your words, and you didn’t dare let your thoughts escape lest they blew you wide open. You try to corral the rage that building up within, not even daring to look at your reflection as you walk past a window, for fear of finding the face of evil glaring back at you.

It’s all a pretence, the act of “caring” about someone else’s well being. Why should you care if someone is feeling upset? What benefit does it give you in consoling or comforting them other than the fact that it is what society expects you to do. Or that it is the appropriate response to a person in distress. You could hear the words tumbling from your mouth like rocks, you feel your facial features contorting into the obligatory sympathetic expressions, pretending to listen, pretending to show interest… It’s like a perpetual masquerade, portraying a believable rendition of a normal human being. When all these while, behind that mask, you don’t give a damn what actually happens to the other person. In fact, you find yourself planning and altering scenarios of the best ways, should I add most painful ways, to get it to stop its inconsequential blathering and leave you in peace. You find it a tad amusing that its focus is so short term, and you also find its tendency to magnify small worries and trying to ensnare you in its web of paranoia slightly ridiculous. 

You’ve learnt early on in life to split your concentration perfectly, that way, you could give all the appropriate responses, all the while concocting schemes in your head about what you’d really like to do. It’s getting more and more difficult trying to act within the rational constraints of societal expectations. Spending time in the company of people that you don’t even really like, talking about matters that you don’t give a damn about, all these pretence…

You usually know what you want and how to get it, how to talk to people to get them to act in accordance with your wishes, all the while thinking they made that choice based on their own reasonings. You observe that there is this strange need for emotional connection, and you watch curiously as a ballet of guilt and remorse dances across their features in perfect synchronisation to your cues, and secret smile tugs at the corners of your lips, watching their reactions. They suffer because they have a moral anchor, that you never had in the first place, stemming from a deep sense of social obligations to others, something they deem as part and parcel of having a relationship. 

There is a sense of entitlement that comes with your underlying sense of rage, fuelling the sense that you have the right to get what you want. Imagine a person with two distinct self at work, duplicity incarnate, with a polished self shown to the world, and darker, covert, hidden self with a rigid and calculating agenda: to win. Regardless of the cost to others. You view the world in a sterile game like manner, with no real attachment to anyone. 

But in this current situation, your payoff matrix has revealed that it is better to continue to act like you care, like you feel sorry for it, like as if you don’t dream of just stabbing it to death, so it will take its useless concerns and needless whining down the bowels of hell with it, and leave you to play out the next game to soothe your craving for manipulations and connivance of the next gullible pawn. 

There is a secret language of the heart, long forgotten and rarely used. Instead, we try to express our thoughts and feelings with words that are never adequate, like a feeble attempt to capture the sunset on canvas. The result of which is rarely comparable to what the original really is. Our attempt at recreating reality with a tapestry of words often diminished the luminescence, muted the realism and dulled the dance of red fire of the dying sun on the waves. In the end, we can only abandon out attempt of an accurate portrayal in favour of wooing the viewer’s imagination with one aspect of the sunset. 

Why then, do we write in the first place? Writing could still be a mean of clarifying their own thoughts, and organising the jumble of thoughts in their head. However the spoken and the written word often fails in trying to communicate emotions, because it is so limited in the sense that it is trying to map a three dimensional experience into a linear structure. We trim away what we deem non essential to the text, and rely on the reader’s imagination to fill in the rest. Maybe it’s from this very aspect that the  ambiguity of words arises, What we mean to say and what the reader derives from what we have written down can sometimes be divided gulf of misinterpretation. For lack of a better word, it could be labelled as a bastardisation of the original text, what the writer meant to say has no longer ceased to matter, because the reader often twisted and try to understand the text solely on their own experience and understanding. 

The written word is like a sarcophagus that contains only the mummified remnants of the feelings or emotions that it was meant to convey. Sure, the sarcophagus could still tell the basic story: In ancient Egypt, a sarcophagus was often painted or carved representations of the deceased. As ornate or as elaborately constructed the sarcophagus was, it was essentially nothing more than a coffin. The real emotion or idea is entombed within the layer of words, and it’s up to the reader to assign whatever meaning they wish to it.

It’s rather unfortunate that even with our family and friends, we have forgotten how to connect on a deeper level. We’re all so busy with our own lives that we don’t try to understand people closely anymore. We say we’re close, but on what basis? Based on what I told you or based on what you read? It is inevitable of course that we’ve been reduced to this, because the long distance apart, but everything that is said has a thousand other counterparts that is left unsaid. “I miss you” How much simpler can a message be? But what was the 3 dimensional idea that has been compressed in that linear structure? I miss the things we did together? Are you thinking about me? Do you remember all the things that we did before? I miss our conversations? This song reminds me of you?

It’s a whole slew of feelings and emotions that is connected to a single name, but when you try to tell the other person exactly how you feel, words are never enough. Words are like nets, we hope they’ll cover what we mean, but we know that words can never hold that much joy, or grief or wonder… It’s up to the other person to fill in the rest of the space that words have failed to cover…

Once, there was a language of the heart, that you can hear even miles apart, a language that could encompass all of that which words cannot. A bridge that joins the two sides of the chasm, allowing the intended message to pass across intact. But this language, like any other, can die to neglect, it withers in the absence of care and the bridge falls apart due to lack of maintenance. And then we’re reduced to communicating like strangers again, with mere words that are never enough… With speech that often sounds hollow to the ears, and with promises that sounds empty, without that reassurance of a more binding contract, written in a language transcends time ~

it has been privately revealed to professor X that …

professor X has been brought up to have total and unquestioning faith that …

Professor X has promulgated an official dogma, binding all loyal X-sians to believe that…

The President of the Royal Society has been vouchsafed by a strong inner conviction that…

Professor X is personally offended by all strident and shrill and polemical denials that…

Professor X derives deep personal comfort from his belief that…

The president of the national academy of sciences has issued a fatwa that…

Alright, enough with the examples, but the point is, imagine the type of justification that would fill the pages of academic journals if academia was  like religion? If you take a look at the kind of excuses given by religion as proof about the existence of God, that is exactly what would find. “It was privately revealed to Pope whatever about the assumption of the virgin Mary. 

I really don’t see why religion should be given any special consideration whatsoever about how they justify their field of study (if theology can be called a field of expertise at all that is). If a physicist has said something as stupid as: “well, it was revealed to me in one of my conversations with my imaginary friends, that nuclear fusion… And I draw deep inner comfort and joy from my belief that…” He’d be thrown out rather unceremoniously on his ass I’d imagine. But religion has always been allowed to reside in the “hallowed halls” of blind faith. Admittedly, if justification in academia can be done the way the priests have justified God, it would make my life a lot easier. No need for reference list! No need for research! Hell (no pun intended) the entire paper could be filled with crap like *refer to first part of this tumblr entry*

They say religion can answer some of the questions that science cannot. Oh really? Like what? The reason for our existence? Science can answer that, click here to read an excellent answer. The questions that science cannot answer (which I highly doubt) and can only be answered by religion are probably those feel good type of questions, that people love to hear just to make themselves feel better. I mean, When you ask someone why are we here? The answers that science gives is cold and unemotional, the bare facts, but the truth nonetheless. Whereas religion can tell you sappy stories like: “Because God loved you and created you in his image” ok… But need I remind you that not all questions deserves an answer, You can ask me: “What is the colour of jealously?” and that is a perfectly grammatically correct question, but it does not deserve an answer, other than: “don’t be silly” If you ask me why mountains exist, I can tell you how they arose due to the geological reasons, but if you ask me the meaning behind the mountain’s existence, that question doesn’t deserve an answer either. So religion is… 

Richard Dawkins destroys the 10 commandments:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoNqSrA7Mos

Choice quotes from his speech:

“I can imagine when Moses came down from the mountains, and the people said: Oh thou shalt not kill, how silly of me, I’ve imagined it’s a good idea to kill people”

“thou shalt not worship graven images… I’d have thought there are better things to worry about”

“this God, could not think of a better idea to forgive our sins than to come down to earth, as his alter ego, his son, and have himself hideously tortured so that he could forgive himself, including future people, whether or not they intended to sin when their time finally came”

Someone needs to write me a “how to be asian” manual stat! Because obviously I must have been sleeping when they taught these little asian kids how to be hardworking and all that… 
1. Why do I do this to myself? Start assignments only a couple of days (literally) before it’s due, and then go into a major panic attack about why the hell I didn’t start earlier.

2. Study for quizzes the night before, without doing anything in advance, and then panic again -_-

Do I secretly enjoy being stressed or what? (No, I refuse to accept that, that is just sick), ok, maybe, I have a loose wire somewhere.

3. And then, still find time to write nonsense like this on tumblr before going back to panicking, and then go to sleep worried, and just roll up to the exam still feeling worried. 

Le sigh, How to be Asian? Can someone tell me? :<

like attracts like. And I need to get more good/positive things to happen in life. 

That is all.

Clearly some people have EQ the size of a teaspoon (if it can be quantifiably measured that is). They wonder why people don’t like them and yet they’ve never taken a close introspection of their own character. There are limits to the things that you are allowed to say to a friend, even someone that you might consider a close friend. There still exists boundaries that CANNOT be overstepped, and that boundary is what you might call “RESPECT”. 

Sounds familiar? Or maybe you don’t even know what that simple word means? Because otherwise, you wouldn’t have made rude observations like that, and toss it out with such careless disregard for what others might feel. If someone puts up with the kind of shit that you say, that means they still value you as friend, or maybe the benefit of being your friend still outweigh the cost. But push it too far, and that person is going to snap. Trust me on this. Has anyone ever told you that words are like eggs dropped from a great height? You can’t take them back, and neither can you ignore the mess that is left behind. 

I’ve tried to put up with your behaviour, but I do have my limits, and given my unusually short fuse, it’s a wonder how I managed to put up with the nonsense that you say for this long. If you don’t know who you are, there is seriously something wrong with you. You might think its funny, and comment on such things with blatant ignorance of the consequences, and yea, you think its a joke, because the other person didn’t say anything? But if you have any brains at all, you’d stop doing such things. Stop wondering why people don’t like you, I’ll tell you why, because YOU GET ON THEIR FREAKING NERVES SO BAD EVERY TIME YOU SAY THINGS WITHOUT USING YOUR BRAINS FIRST. And your incessant whining about things that isn’t really a big deal? That is really really ANNOYING ME.

Now, you can either reflect on it and decide to watch what the hell you’re saying, or at least think about it first, I’m sure you know what the brain is for? Or just GTF away from me. 

p.s: That fake accent? Makes me want to bitch slap you into next tuesday.

Now please just stay away until I can compose myself and act with enough decorum not to scold you from head to toe with a slew of rather unacceptable choice vulgarities that I wouldn’t have used in ordinary circumstances, or just go jump in the freaking Brisbane River. 
Bye.