i'm done with my law and society paper!

have you ever felt that you're a fine individual and you would want to raise your future children the way your parents raised you? i have. i want to dicsipline them the way my parents disciplined me.

joanne junior wtf hahaha

yes, yes, it's way too early to think about how you want to educate your non-existence offsprings but the question occured to me naturally. the other day, i asked my friend the same question and his answer triggered a train of thoughts.

were my parent's parenting the best?

now, i dont mean to be dubious towards my parent's parenting. they were both great parents. but when i heard how my friend did not get any positive outcome from capital punishment and a time-out in the corner, i started to contemplate.

were my parent's parenting the best?

i think that all of us are influenced by things which are inflicted upon us and by the people who imply these things. i came from a chinese primary school lick hung where all the teachers held rotans in their hands.

in many ways, they have taught me to be a better student; in other ways, they inspired me to have the ambition of becoming a teacher so that one day in the future i can cane little children when they are disobedient the way the teachers did me.

have you ever wondered, whether we did our homework because we wanted to gain knowledge or was it out of fear of the cane? now, not digressing any further, let me get back to topic.

were my parent's parenting the best?

my parents were okay, i couldnt find the right words to describe them but they were sort of violent in nature, i would say. they used the cane, which until today i salute as an item of wonder.

i wore cane marks on my lap to school, it was pretty embarrassing at times. thankfully, i succeeded to persuade my mum to buy me a set of baju kurung in form 2 which dutifully covered 85% of my body and did wonders in concealing my family affairs.


ironically, the caning stopped that year.


my siblings and i would hide my mum's cane all the time so that we could fight without getting spanked. and one of us would take it out when the other was in trouble so that we would have some drama to watch. yeah, it was pretty fun after all. and my parents cursed in chinese dialects. in fact, i did not understand what they were yelling until my friend enlightened me in form2.

note: vulgarities ahead.

now, one of the phrases my parents loved to curse was diu nia ma. which is actually in cantonese, meaning fuck your mother. it intrigued me in the first place that my mum would scold herself when she gets angry at us. and also that my dad would scold my mum simultaneously while disciplining us.

impressive.

and living in an asian country, it's pretty much in the culture that you dont stand up against your parents and fight to avoid being called a derhaka child. but rebellion isn't really the only implication of an attempt of justification, agreeable?

i always stood up for myself which didn't improve the situation at all. on the contrary, i was deemed the opposition in the family, the lim kit siang. coming back to the issue, in the reason years, i've found a way to stand up for myself without putting up a fight.

mum: diu nia ma!
joanne: what's nia ma?
mum: ...

it has been working so far to weather the storm so alhamdulillah (الحمد لله) may this wonderful solution have infinite perpetuity. i guess parents would prefer not to talk about things like that to their children. this is asia afterall. i remember once my friend went home:

friend: mum, what is fuck?
mum: it's like, a sexual act.

and that makes me wonder.

is the word fuck merely an expression of a sexual action? what does small fuck mean then? whatever it is, wouldnt it be more convenient to say fuckling instead? duck, duckling, fuck, fuckling. i had my own experience too. once. in asking for interpretation of the damned.

joanne: what is sohai?
mum: where did you learn that from?
joanne: er, tv.
mum: cannot be.
joanne: really lah.
mum: it's a bad word, don't say it.
joanne: oh.
mum: what tv show?
joanne: chinese wan.
mum: cannot be. sure you learn from school.
joanne: no lah. from tv.

thinking back it sounded ridiculous wtf hahaha.

coming back to the question, are my parents parenting the best? i guess it depends on the child, diffrerent individual, different parenting. but it was almost the best, at least to me it worked. so i end this post with thanks to my parents. and here's to a great parenthood for the many more years to come.

i'm too busy saving the world.

question.

ever felt so down that your mere existence annoys you? and every second that passes by irritates you and you get so cranky to a point where you start to feel impatient with yourself, you cant stand yourself, you feel restless, you feel unworthy or ashamed out of a tinge of guilt or a smoulder of anger.

and you start to annoy the people who care, you attempt to make them angry, intentionally or otherwise, to push them away, because deep inside you feel like you dont deserve what they have to offer, even when you dont realize you feel that way.

and when they get angry and they storm off you feel a dark sense of pleasure and satisfaction and the the victorious feeling subsides and the loneliness kicks in and you start to feel helpless and you dont know whether to buck up and get tougher or to soften and apologize.

i did today.

happy valentine's day my lovelies!

three years ago, this very day, it was still sort of the starting of form4. being the one put in a class of 34 strangers who mingled amongst themselves like siblings, i was almost singled out and left to sulk alone. and then valentine's day came.





i reckon it was primarily because of the lollipops my ex-classmates sent me together with the i miss you, akkw (my form3 crush) sucks and xoxo's what not which made me think you know what? screw valentine's day! friends matter more than petty crushes.





and i love lollipops. i stared at them and smiled and for the first time in many days i felt happy. and i had the hots for this guy in class so i thought i should give him one. but i didnt know how to. so i ended up distributing the whole bunch of lollipops.





two years ago, this very day, my ex-classmates for some reason seemed to have amalgamated with the rest of their new classmates into one big inseparable tribe with an overwhelming spirit of assabiah. so the lollipops were less.





and i thought yea, valentine's day is just a way to make people feel worse about not having someone to share it with. what is love? well, love is something beautiful, like, i dont know, according to toothpastefordinner, a butterfly. flies around for about a week then dies wtf.





so there i was, in my class, with my new friends, on a drizzling morning, with half the amount of lollipops i received the previous year. and i walked up to him and i gave him another lollipop just like a year ago. except this time it was green apple flavored instead of lemon.





one year ago, this valentine's day, i had work in a kindy in the morning. and no one would take me out to celebrate it with the guy i had hots for, which by then was my boyfriend (so now you know the secret to getting the guy you like - lollipops). then jess came home with this:

the 101 roses which saved the day.

this year, this very day, i'm looking forward to watch jay chou. you see, jay chou is another reason for lonely girls like me to spend money on and be obsessed over, and to mention when someone asks who's your boyfriend or whether you have any plans this weekend or on valentine's day. just so we wouldnt sound like losers. you really thought i worship him because he's handsome meh wtf.

i wish you love.

wish i had what i needed
to be on my own.
'cause i feel so defeated
and i'm feeling alone.

i'm a plane in the sunset
with no where to land.

and all my sandcastles
spend their time collapsing.

let that be enough by switchfoot and jars of clay.

for the life of me,
i cannot remember,
what made us think that we were wise
and we'd never compromise.

for the life of me,
i cannot believe
we'd ever die for these sins,
we were merely freshmen.

the freshman by the verve pipe.

dear joel,
i miss you macam hell,
i wonder when,
i see you again.

chinese new year was okay.

it has been a routine for the past 17 years of my life to endure trips back to my dad’s (sekinchan, kuala selangor: think paddy field) and my mum’s (chemor, perak: think dry, hot kampong) consecutively every chinese new year. and unlike some of my friends, i do not enjoy the privilege of staying in a hotel during these trips. i stay at my grandparent’s. this year was no exception.

i’m the second youngest and the second eldest in both the offsprings of my immediate family and in the whole of my generation. i amaze myself.

my siblings and i are the youngest of our generation in my father’s family tree and otherwise in my mum’s. thus, all my cousins at my dad’s are elder whereas all my cousins at my mum’s are younger. we are the followers at my dad’s and leader’s at my mum’s. there are about 23 cousins at my dad’s and 13 at my mum’s. my siblings and i prefer to go back to my mum’s because we get an air-conditioned room unlike at my dad’s.

the other day when i looked back at all these years, i realized so much changed.

back at my dad’s, 10 years ago, my cousins, my siblings and i would be reading dragon ball comics, playing with gasing’s and guli’s, playing with that toolbox of little toys, climbing over the rusty red swing, matchmaking my younger brother and the neighbor’s youngest daughter (we made a hole in the middle of the fence), playing hide and seek with my younger brother when we don’t want him around, plucking mangos and papayas, watering plantations and provoking my uncle’s dog, subsequently getting barked at and running away like the cowards we were.

now that my cousins are in university or are married, they seldom come back. games are a thing of the past. the toys are kept in cold and dusty places, the swing has been repainted brown, i no longer recognize the neighbor’s daughter, the hole in the fence has been mended and the dog died.

back at my mum’s, there were only 10 of us 10 years ago. we had our own exclusive kid’s table at dinner where the two philipino maids hired by my brunei cousins and the indonesian maid hired by my mum joined us. we played mini games at the table and rated the food. we mixed liquid into saucers and drank fizzy drinks excessively.

we went to the opposite multipurpose hall (where chinese opera takes place every august) with incense sticks to light firecrackers after dinners. we pray at the guan yin temple beside the hall where a cigarette god (who always had a lighted cigarette in his mouth) resided. we frequent the candy shop two doors away where chinese men drink and smoke and sing like the drunkards they were at night. we frequent the waterfall nearby. we had breakfasts at the noodle shop 3 doors away. we had cheap haircuts at the salon next door where i temporarily straightened my hair once for rm40, which made me look like this:

but of course, the salon is always closed on chinese new year.


we locked ourselves in a room and climb on the beds and wrestle and fight and imitate characters from the monkey king. i have always been the evil white bone witch (bone memang white wan lah wtf) when i was a kid. it was quite therapeutic, releasing all your anger and grudges once in a year on helpless little children. during my preteen years i have transform into guan yin ma, healing my wounded cousins, to avoid all the violence. all throughout, my sister had been the evil bull devil king. i know, it all sounds idiotic but it was pretty fun. we bash each other up until someone (usually my younger brother or the youngest of our herd) starts crying. then, we bersurai and eat more junk food.

now, there are 13 of us. my cousins and i still sit in the same kid’s table but the asses grew and the space shrunk. the phillipino maids no longer tag along, and the indonesian maid is officially my ex-maid. we no longer play mini games or rate the food. we talk and laugh and tap on our respective brand new colored mobile phones. the firecrackers sessions are long gone, the trips to the candy shop decreased drastically, replaced by visits to the pasar malam where we bought 25 sweets at rm1. we still go to the noodle shop and the salon where the elders start commenting on how fast we grew etc. and no, we don’t play monkey king anymore. the younger ones play ps and games on their laptops and the elder ones sleep excessively and listen to mp3's.

chinese new year was okay.

yesterday while browsing through friendster accounts i came to realization of a fact. most of us will only upload photos which we look nice in. predictably, i fall in the majority and despite being aware of the fact that i stray far from photogenic, i couldnt help but scrutinize my photos before approving them for the public eye. so after meticulous inspections yesterday, i uploaded a few photos.

"insert captions". i paused. i clicked delete.

this one particular photo i uploaded which consists my three friends and i caught my attention. two of them were a blurry for whatever reason. the other looked pretty and i looked fine. all of a sudden, i felt bad. why do we always upload pictures of us looking nice regardless of the how the other people in the photo look?

if the other person were doing something else random in the background i can understand but when they intend to be part of the photo equally, i dont see why we should upload a photo in public (when they dont look their best) just because we want to show off our hair or face or body or toes. that is selfishly self-centered.

how would you like it if you took a photo with your friend and you looked horrible in it somehow but your friend posted it anyway because she looked nice (and if you look ugly she'll look twice as good)? think about it. do you feel selfish now? of course, you can go on and say, it's my friendster, people want to see my face so they wont really bother to see any other person's but when a picture is like this:

yes, i do feel a little selfish.

here's to lester and kiavin, victims of cameras without stabilizers.


kai and bhako love their son lesles.

there's always individual photos and photoshop. the outcome feels better anyway if not the same. remember how you feel everytime you take a picture?


*camera snaps*

you: i want see! i want see!
friend: ee, quite nice! :)
you: yer, so ugly! delete! delete!



imagine how would you feel if you see it in friendster the next day. but then again, life is fair somehow, sometimes. i bet almost everyone's doing it. you win some, you lose some. life (as muttered by ryan on an average of 16 times a day). i must have excessive conscience or something to intend to be somewhat empathetical in uploading photos in friendster. at least i'm blogging again.


everyone's hot and happy. yay.

sometime in february 2008
turning 18 this december, i am doing my last semester in foundation in law (somehow it sounds lousy. foundation wtf)
(i'm currently in a cranky mood)
anyway, i'm secretly married to jay chou (oops, i didnt mean to make it public but yeah, he's coming for me 23rd february why am i so delusional wtf wtf) and yes i'm a little vulgar but wtf's more like a slang rather than cursing whatsoever.
life has been a fullstop. because i have no idea how else to describe it. so life has been.
i'm sort of fickle.
okay, that was random. anyway, i derive from the china, technically. because the last time i traced, my ancestors are from henan. okay, more like my grandpa only but he's still my ancestor right. please respect my dead grandpa lah hello wtf.
damn i wish i were more exotic.
i am a proud production of SJK(C) Lick Hung. if you dont know where is that, you will never fathom the hardship i've been through. lick hung is a factory. i had classes 630-410 everyday for last two years of primary school. oh the horror. i then moved on to SMK Seafield, one of the best schools around where i "spread my wings and fly" (why do we always say this when we leave our respective alma maters? that makes me a 4-winged person doesnt it? my body structure is better than an angel this is so irrelevant wtf) and had two of the best years of my life thus far.
i'm currently in mmu. if you read till here you must be either really interested in me or have very high resistance of boredom. i spend my time studying, reading blogs (kennysia and suetli, xiaxue is too childish for her age. for real, all you avid reader of xiaxue. i'm not jealous or being spiteful but honestly, she's a little too immature and all her make up is also a fullstop.) daydreaming and decorating the window grills and walls of my room. so far i have patches of sketches, movie tickets, magnets, a glowing star, a plastic cup's cap and 7 post-its. not very much of an achievement at all.
so yes, i am married to jay chou so stop sniffing around my husband! for more info, visit joanneloke.blogspot.com okay tq babai
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