Theory of the Genes

Over breakfast, my dad and I were discussing my little cousin Naomi. I've been seeing her almost every day because I can't keep myself away from her. She has the most amazing little legs she toddles about on and huge grey eyes and soft brown hair, and she likes to look at the birds and the butterflies. She also has an incredible baby smell. When I carry her close to my chest (ahahaha, ok, breast) and she leans her head against my shoulder in contentment I feel this surge of maternity reminding me that my time is short (I leave you to deduce what I mean).

My dad says that women should get married young and men should get married later. He was expounding his "theory of the genes" to me. It's totally unscientific but he won't believe me about it and he says "You don't learn this in Biology?" and he won't believe me when I say that what I learn is very different.

According to my dad, the way to have smart and healthy children is for the dad to be much older than the mum. The dad thus produces mature sperm, which makes for a smarter child, and the nubile mum produces healthy eggs, which make for stronger children. "This is all part of the theory of the genes," says my dad. He then starts recommending much older men to me (names shall not be named). Ughhhhh...

Excerpt from Plane Diary (warning: mushy)

I'm still on the plane, having just watched Peter Pan... it's a wonderful film... really good.

I used to imagine myself to be the different girls I read about in stories. When I was just 7 or 8 years of age I used to be Cinderella, the Sleeping Beauty or Snow White. As I grew older I was Sheila Tubman or Mary-Anne from the Babysitter's Club. And after I watched Peter Pan I found myself involuntarily imagining myself as Wendy.

Having such an active imagination isn't good for me though, because I'll be sitting in my seat, blue-eyed and red-lipped and all of 12 years old, and then I happen to look in the mirror and see a plain oval face with black hair and haunted black eyes staring back at me (Ahaha, am exaggerating abit for the sake of literary expression).

That film gave me the queerest feeling as I watched it. Maybe it was the strange surreal beauty of Wendy's face, or Peter's crooked smile, like something not quite real. Maybe because I've seen the whole film in my dreams or in my imagination. I think the feeling that film gave me was a feeling like being in love...which would probably mean I've never been in love yet... haha.

I wonder if I will ever meet a Peter Pan? Someone who can understand every bit of me, someone whom I can be quiet with, dream with, say the strangest things or tell my fancies to, someone who breathes and lives and thinks parallel to me, someone who is almost an extension of myself. Maybe I'm being too sentimental... maybe it's a little too idealistic to think this way, and instead of dreaming about Peter Pan, maybe I should start preparing myself mentally for a Wang Da Ming instead.

Ok, have rambled on long enough...

The Flight

I was sitting next to a Scottish man on the plane, whom I kept talking to on purpose just to hear his lovely accent. He must've thought I was very annoying....

There couldn't have been a stranger flight though, because I met a few funny characters on the plane. I was about to sleep and I pushed my chair back when it suddenly met with a vast resistant. The woman next to me made a few sympathetic faces as the heavily built woman behind me (i.e. fat) pushed my chair against me and said, "I'm sorry, I have long legs, could you please not recline your chair?" Stunned, I said ok and made faces at the sympathetic woman beside me in sympathy with her sympathetic expressions, and left in search of another seat in front of a more horizontally-challenged person.

So I moved to the back, where I ended up against a woman from Norway who could speak a little English. Her birthplace was in Sri Lanka, and she was going to Singapore for a holiday and to buy gold (?!) before she would go with her husband to Sri Lanka. I ended up trying to adjust the entertainment system for her so that it was playing Tamil movies, and after a while while I was engrossed in Shallow Hal (bad movie ) she tapped me and said, "Up." So I frantically tried everything I could think of, tapping the upward arrow button, going back, and trying to figure out what she wanted, but she kept on saying "Up", and in the end I said, "Off?" and she said, "AHhhhh! Off, off, off" and I think I should start learning some basic Tamil, not just "Your voice is very nice" and "You are very handsome".

After that she went to the toilet, and her husband moved next to me and started talking to me. Suddenly leaning very close, he said, "You are very beautiful".... and I was a little worried and kept casting anxious glances at his wife, who looked worried too. "I have to go to the toilet", I said hastily, and took my pillow and blanket and headphones and scurried back to my old seat, where I spent a sleepless and upright night watching 50 First Dates (good), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (not bad), Shallow Hal (urgh), The Girl Next Door (blearugh), and Peter Pan (very very good).

I didn't know whether Peter Pan was targetted more at adults, because it seemed to have this undercurrent of darkness and sensuality running through its innocent portrayal of a few children in Never Never land. (ahahhahaa.... am talking crap la).... Will write more on Peter Pan in the next entry...am now going to sleep.

Millenium Square

This is my last day in Leeds, before I go back for the summer, and I'm in uni printing out my e-ticket so I guess I might as well blog a bit.

I watched the England-France match in Millenium Square yesterday. It was packed with people and the air around had the very English smell of beer, cigarettes and weed. It's a smell that will always remind me of England. Was pretty disappointed that England lost, but will try to catch the England-Switzerland one on next if I'm suffering from jet lag in Singapore. I'm not very into watching football but I have a slight sense of patiotism for England so I'll try to catch the matches! We yelled alot during the match, but the guy behind us was slightly tipsy and was dancing with another guy, shouting "Come on England!" "Neh.......ville!" and "You ****ing bastards!" at appropriate moments, which made Jean and I laugh.

I saw Wotshisnameasianfetish in Millenium Square that day, clutching his girfriend, and tried to get into Millenium Square by another route, but there was only one way in. Was with Jean and another guy at that time, who very kindly asked, "Do you want me to pretend to be your boyfriend?" I wonder what he would've done if I'd said yes! Ahahahhaha. It was very kind of him though!

Went down to the library today to return some overdue books. Contemplated puting on a funny accent and saying, "I ah ama a poore studenta ah. I no speaka Inglisah." to avoid my fines, but didn't have the guts to do that in the end. So I ended up £5.40 poorer. Aiyah....

Katie baked a cake for my birthday and gave me a little book entitled "How to be British". My housemates took me out for a very nice dinner and my cell group gave me a surprise picnic at Roundhay park. Everyone has been very nice, and I have to try hard to stop myself from getting mushy.

Am blogging rubbish so shall stop now. Next blog will be from Singapore. Stay tuned, folks.

Cheesecake, and the Art of Seduction

I made my second cheesecake today. I tried for a strawberry-flavoured one, cheating with strawberry-flavoured jelly instead of proper strawberries ground into a pulp and mashed into cheese. Hopefully, strangely enough, it'll all turn out well.

How will it? I don't know.

Have obviously been watching Shakespeare in Love as well, which I bought expressly to study Gwyneth Paltrow's British accent (I sound very weird, don't I?), but which I fell in love with 10 minutes into the film, where a parson shouts, "Theatres are of the devil! And the Rose smells thusly rank by any name! A plague on both your houses!" Shakespeare goes, "hmm", and uses both phrases in the play he writes later.

I'm trying to write a children's book now, on the experiences Liting had when she had her first job selling tissues for a blind man, but it's not coming along very well. I really should be packing as well, but all I've done is give away Robert Greene's "The Art of Seduction" to Housemate Above (Rule Number One: Isolate Your Victim), and put my Japanese fashion magazines in the common toilet. Very ... efficient.

I should start packing now. Pack Ruth Pack Pack Pack. Away I go.

Bryson's Thoughts on Happiness

I saw a little curly-headed boy at Borders today, with a round Charlie Brown face and hair the lightest shade of brown, pink cheeked and with dear little dents of dimples which popped out every time he smiled.

He was toddling around Starbucks with clumsy little legs and from time to time he would gurgle with pleasure. He'd wander round and get lost under different seats and from time to time I would see a little head peering out from under my chair. He kept on laughing for no reason at all, and seemed to be getting high just on stumbling around from place to place.

If only walking around made me that happy.

I sat in Starbucks for quite a long time reading "Notes from a Small Island" today. Not the "Notes from a Smaller Island" by Neil Humphries which I'm always raving about, but "Notes from a Small Island" by Bill Bryson. He talks about how he does a trip around the UK, and the book is chock full of funny anecdotes. He makes me want to go to some places especially, like Lincoln (which he says seems to be in a world of its own), Durham (which he says has the best cathedral in the world), and Glasgow (which seems to be full of people saying "I hae nae poo").

Anyway, the little boy toddling around getting high on the aroma of Starbucks reminded me of a bit in the book that said it was well impossible to be unhappy.

Bill Bryson goes on about how you can't possibly be unhappy when you remember that you are yourself. Your father probably emitted zillions of sperm in his lifetime, and out of these emissions and out of 240 000 sperm in just one emission one of the little buggers survived and swam up that English Channel to make yourself. The odds say that you could just as easily have been a beetle. So it's pretty amazing that you are you.

Bill Bryson also says that it's impossible to be unhappy when you remember that you exist. You hadn't existed for eons, and you will cease to exist soon. So this brief moment of time, where you are picking your nose and wondering when this entry is going to end so that you can have your cheesecake dessert, is one of the rarest moments in history, simply because you exist in it.

I wonder if the little blond Charlie Brown personling knew all this in his subconscious. Perhaps that was why he was so happy even though he hadn't anything tangibly delightful to be happy about.

Life for a little child is so charmingly simple. I wish I could see things with such clarity and honesty and contentment, at times.

Lust

Housemate Diagonally Above asked me over dinner yesterday, "Would you prefer to see girl on girl action or guy on guy action?" This during some kind of strange lesbian kissing scene in Big Brother. After some pressing I replied "girl on girl". And then he asked me,"Do girls have sexual urges?" He was either asking because he really wanted to know, or because he was trying to embarrass the prude out of me! I was very embarrassed but said "Yes". I wish I could be more honest without feeling so (er, for want of a better word) embarrassed!

Lust exists, exists, exists. Even for girls. And its portayal of temporal pleasure and ephemeral reward makes it one of the representations of the "money" Paul speaks of when he says, "Do not serve both God and money."

Even Christians lust, perhaps even more so sometimes than non-Christians. So what difference does being a Christian make? I think it's just the trust that God will be faithful to complete the work begun in me, even though I may not be very perfect in this area in my life, and the knowledge that if ever I fall, I can pick myself up and start afresh. If I didn't have this trust, I would probably just give up on myself and spiral deeper and deeper down the slippery slope.

Christians still struggle with lust, pornography, any sort of thing that seems to represent the world at its worst; you name it, Christians struggle with it. Every temptation or desire that comes my way is something that is common to everyone. The deepest darkest things that would never cross my lips are probably in the secret hearts of everyone else. So everything comes back to this question: What, then, makes a Christian different from anyone else? A Christian may not behave better than another. A Christian may not even in his secret heart be any purer than another. So how can I say that being a Christian is the solution, if it doesn't make any sort of difference to the way I behave?

I think that the difference lies in my attitude towards lust. Knowing that it exists in me, I know that I am no better than any other. And I cannot do anything about it on my own. I can't cut it out of myself. Were I a guy and should I castrate myself then it would still be there. But I know I can trust my God day by day to make me more like Him, and that is the only difference.

I wish I wasn't almost twenty one, that I didn't have to struggle with all these weird adult things! Let me go back to when I was sixteen, when the only things I had to worry about were the O levels and crushes on pimply bespectacled guys.....

Cab Drivers and Islam

Had a big breakfast over at my place for the cell group people to send Liting off. Eggs poached and scrambled, bacon grilled and fried, sausages, mushrooms and bread rolls. Vincent drove over at 830 to fetch a sleepy-eyed me to Morrisons where we bought plenty of eggs and sausages and bacon. And we cooked and cooked, scrambling the eggs and heating the baked beans and frying the mushrooms 'til the whole kitchen smelt of Macdonald's. Everyone was sad to see her go...

After that I took a cab with Jeffery and Liting to the airport where we chatted for a bit. The taxi driver was a Muslim from a tribal area of Pakistan. Most of the cab journey was spent listening to him talk about Islam and how it was a peace-loving religion. He also talked about how we had to ask for forgiveness from God after we had sinned, and that if our good deeds outweighed our bad deeds, we would go to heaven. I tried a little by questioning him gently about whether an imperfect person could ever reach a perfect God, to show him that forgiveness couldn't be given lightly but had to be given after a price had been paid for sin; but we had already reached the airport.

I told him that I'd lived with a Muslim last year, and he asked me whether my housemate had asked me to marry him! I thought, "What a weird man!" but after recounting the incident to my housemates, they led me to realise that he probably thought I was cohabiting with my housemate! AHh!! So funny! I can be so absent-minded at times! I didn't realise that he might've been thinking that way. I just thought he was extremely weird, and was half afraid he might ask me to marry him himself. AHahah!

Memories

While checking through my old blog, which I do once in a while, I found a new entry on my tagboard.

Memories of the days not so long ago when I was young and foolish came flooding back with that little tag. Being called beautiful, cute and desirable for the first time in my life got to my head a little and in that period of time I changed from a sweet pastor's daughter to a confused and rebellious kid who didn't know what I was doing or what I wanted out of life. I thought that I was happy, but in fact was ignoring my closest friends and the people closest to me. Those memories remained bittersweet for a time, but as a few months went by they stopped being sweet and remained merely bitter.

Vincent once said, "Women usually have lower self esteem than men." I think it's very true, and it's especially true in my case.

Whenever someone tells me that I'm beautiful or that I'm cute, it's as though a hole opens up in myself or in my soul and I have this desperate longing for more affirmation, like a drug I can't get more of. And even though I know I shouldn't, the need for approval and liking leaves me vulnerable to all sorts of things.

I hope that I've learnt from my experiences, and that I won't do the same things again!

Dodgy Dodgy Guy!

I was running out of the house to meet Lizzie for lunch today, and I saw a Chinese girl who looked suspiciously like Arty from church. "Arty! Arty!" I yelled, but she didn't turn around. This guy in front of her did, though, staring until his eyes nearly came out of his head! I was very embarrassed.

I continued running along with my umbrella over my head, because it was drizzling and I was late, when said guy appeared beside me, striding fast. "You can put that umbrella down now," he said. "It's not raining!" "Oh!" and in the surprise of the moment my hyena-like laugh betrayed me. He smiled and told me that he often did the same thing, and continued chatting as though we were old friends, making me feel very uncomfortable, but I did my best to reply.

He had a strange pervy expression and his teeth were the colour of Philadelphia cheese.

When we parted ways near the Headrow he wanted to exchange numbers so we could "meet up for coffee" and he gave me his number and asked me to give him a missed call. "Is it alright if I don't call you?" said I. "Because ... you know... " and I shrugged. "Oh, definitely, I understand," he replied, looking distinctly uncomfortable. "Well, call me next weekend if you want to meet up for coffee then..." "I will," I replied, not having the least intention of doing so!

The worst thing was that he told me I looked like his Taiwanese friend, and trying to be flippant I replied that Singaporean girls were very different from other Chinese girls! And with bloodshot eyes he replied, "I know.... Singaporean girls are prettier! Very pretty!" I'm surprised my stomach managed to retain my breakfast (good stomach)!

:-)

A Jumbled Mess of An Entry

The past few days have been a haze of going out and relaxing, tidying up my room and hoovering with Shake and Vac from Morrisons which has almost become a Monica Gellerish obsession, eating Chinese and pizza takeaway, and drinking wine late into the night. Am sitting in Housemate Above's room blogging to the sounds of Pro Evo (again), which has become my nightly routine ever since my laptop crashed.

A few events stand out amidst the jumble of fun. The first one: going out with Audrey two nights ago to Le Cafetiere in Hyde Park and staying there until closing time. We were the last customers to leave and the manager seemed very interested in us. He kept asking us where we were from! I think looking pseudo Thai-ish attracts too much attention sometimes. We should just wear a huge sign on our shirts saying "I'm from Singapore (the Fine city!).

We were chatting and laughing late into the night and playing with the lone candle on our table. It flickered sporadically and when we left Audrey blew it out. After all the musing I did on life and living, I had the sudden thought on how good it would be to be a candle. Candles, I think, are the only things that seem to have a million lives. You can snuff them out and light them again, and there they are as good as new, just a little scarred by living.

I can't blog as well or as fluently as I used to. I used to have so many things to say, every day, and they would just flow from the pen to the paper. But now I have to think very hard about what I want to say. Perhaps it's the font flickering in a different way on Housemate Above's computer, so dissmilar to how it was on my own; perhaps it's the constant noise of Pro-Evo and shouts of "Goal!" or "AHHHHhh!" to my right, or perhaps it's just the smell of Housemate Above's room, male and testosterony and so different from my own.

I checked Housemate Diagonally Above's Medical Engineering essay for grammatical errors and spelling mistakes yesterday, and it took me all of six hours to finish editing 11 pages. Very perfectionist. Housemate DA was very pleased with the finished product, though, which I handed to him at 2 a.m. the next morning. I felt very very proud.

Something very funny happened today: I was waiting outside Marcus' (a Singaporean's) house for Audrey, as she was bringing her luggage there to be shipped back to Singapore. Gave him a missed call to get him to open his door because I had no free peak minutes, and was pretty surprised when I received a text from him. It said, "Thanks for calling, but I think I accidently switched off my phone! Would you mind calling me back? I'd love to talk to you x"

I was really shocked! I didn't know Marcus was that polite or British-sounding, and I had never come across Singaporean guys putting "x"s at the back of their texts! "I'm outside your house! :-)" I texted.

Then I got the strangest text. It said, "Oh dear! I'm in London at the moment. Is Elaine expecting you? When are you going to be staying in England until? Would love to meet up with you. Marcus x"

And then I realised that I'd called the wrong Marcus. I'd called the British Marcus instead of the Singaporean one! Find me the most absent minded person in the world, and I'll find you a Singaporean girl named Ruth studying in Leeds.

And Audrey stubbed my little toe (this sentence sounds weird!) three times today; once against her 20 kg box of luggage where it started bleeding, once stepping heavily on it in New Look at the Headrow, and once when she was ironing my chiffon blouse for me and dropped the iron on that same toe. It's been much-abused and too mistreated. I hope it lives out the summer!

Killer of Snails

I killed a little snail yesterday. I was ambling around the area near my house when I heard a sudden loud crack. Lifted my foot in horror and saw a splotch of slime and fragments of shell on the ground. It was completely and utterly squished beyond recognition. What made me feel even worse was the other snail that I saw beside it rooted speechless on the ground. I felt as though I had killed his soulmate. Urgh!! I suppose it can't be helped, but it's pretty gross to think of how gruesome a death the snail died. It was a life after all, even though it was just a tiny snail one. And now it's been snuffed out forever.

I sometimes get all these strange chills down my back when I realise the significance of life; you have only one chance at it, and once it's gone it's gone, period. No more second chances, no more trying again, no going back to correct failed decisions. (Blogging shall now become very unclear because housemates are now playing very distracting Pro-Evo in Housemate Above's room after watching Derrin Brown, who is immensely creepy).

Since seven I've had these sudden epiphanies where I'm actually conscious of my hands moving, the breath entering my nostrils, my eyes looking out at myself in the mirror, and the fact that when I move, this image that is me seems to move in the mirror as well. I always know this in my subconscious, but there are moments where I'm actually conscious of the fact that I am me; that I am living and breathing and moving and that I exist. Do you know what I mean? I'm wearing myself out trying to explain it. Have you ever felt that way before? I've had these sudden flashes off and on, usually when I'm looking in the mirror. Do you think they're those kind of moments when you become conscious of your soul?

I also have these moments when I wonder how it was that I had come to exist. I don't really wonder about after I die, because I think I will still continue existing, but it's the "before my existence" part that bothers me. How could I have suddenly come into existence just because of the combination of a little wriggly tadpole and a small slimy egg? Something physical happened that day on the 16th of June (hint hint hint hint) but something spiritual also happened, I think. It wasn't just the creation of my physical body which took place that day, but it was the creation of me. My personality, my quirks, my flaws, my follibles, my insane hyena laughter... all came into being when that something physical happened, in a miraculous way I can't comprehend.

How come before I existed I was nothing, but in that moment I became something? How could I have been nothing before I was born, and then suddenly I was? What was I before I was born? Nothing. How could that have been possible?

Housemate Above: "Ruth, you are weird."

Esoteric and confusing entry shall end here...