Summer

http://www.fimfiction.net/story/204696/ego-aeternam

I'm beginning to fall in love with summer, even here in Singapore! Of course, we don't have vast green meadows and flower fields like in Japan (no surprise there, I'm obsessed with the country). Yet at times when I look out the window, I lose myself gazing at the deep blue skies, and a sort of happy feeling bubbles from within me. I guess it's good for my worrywart personality as well - kinda like drawing the curtains open and letting in some light and fresh summer air into my soul. One day, I wish to stand in that scenery and experience summer with all of my senses.

One thing I love about the Land of the Rising Sun is how emotionally sensitive the people there are to the seasons. The different seasons each set a distinctive mood or atmosphere there through various mediums like food, fashion, music etc.

During summer in Japan, the seaside or the mountains are common holiday destinations to enjoy 夏休み natsu-yasumi (summer break). Thinking of food conjures images of fresh red watermelons after a game of スイカ割り suika-wari (watermelon splitting) and かき氷 kakigori (shaved ice dessert). The colours of summer - the clear blue of skies and waters, the lush green of trees, the bright red of watermelon slices and other primary colours - are all very pleasant and uplifting to one's mood. Towards the end of summer, 夏祭りnatsu-matsuri (summer festivals) are held where people can don yukatas and visit stalls that sell food like candy apples, chocolate bananas, yakisoba, etc. and play games like yo-yo tsuri. There might be firework displays as well, and bon odori dances.

That's the summer experience in Japan of course, from what I gather from anime and television dramas. Yet here in sunny Singapore, I find that summer can be equally, if not more, fun as well.

I'm looking forward to the Japanese Studies Society (JSS) Freshman Camp that'll be held next Tuesday to Friday! I'll be participating as a helper and game master for some activities. I've always been rather inactive in JSS after my own freshman camp, so I was a little apprehensive about being able to mix around with the rest during the pre-camp last week.

Funny story - I thought precamp was LITERALLY a camp so I packed all my camp stuff and brought along a sleeping bag to school only to find out that I was the only one who read the precamp details that way. It was absolutely mortifying to have to carry around my bright blue sleeping bag on the first day. However that incident probably worked to my advantage because everyone was laughing and teasing me (and now I'm officially known as Sleeping Bag IC), coming up with jokes about my sleeping bag even on the second day of precamp! I had a lot more fun than I expected, and made many new friends besides those I had already known from freshman camp last year. This is really encouraging, since I have little confidence in being able to make (much less sustain) new relationships to begin with.

I'll end off the post with a picture of a cute cat I found sleeping under my HDB block - here's to a memorable summer break this year :)

When I'm alone, they come

http://www.zerochan.net/1733200

When I'm alone, they come.

Quiet as the falling of dusk, unsettling like the coming of night.

Why do I think, why do I feel? Why can't I live in the bliss of ignorance to the destruction this world is coming to? People crouching in their individual cages of thorns, hurting one another and bleeding themselves out in the process. Feeding on empty pride, living off on insecurities. Starving themselves of understanding and forgiveness, gripping tightly onto their pasts and upbringing. As if they're the reasons for existence and self-worth.

With recent news from the shaming of a local disabled cleaner (and the perpetrator who is now also a victim of online shaming) to the deaths of a talented singer and over 50 lives at the gay bar Pulse in the US, I can't help but feel sorry. And what else can I do but that? It doesn't change anything - it doesn't change this world and its people. We are descending even further to our own destruction. It hurts even more to read the comments on such news - with the netizens launching into petty wars among themselves. As if the actual problem isn't already devastating enough.

Do pointless, never-ending and exhausting struggles of selfishness and bigotry give people so much satisfaction that they thrive on it? When they get caught up in a flurry of passion and hurl insensitive insults or blows at others, do they pat themselves on the back for having done something useful and beneficial to Man, and enjoy a good night's sleep after that? Truly? It's not impossible isn't it, seeing how twisted this world has become.

These people would go on and boast to their children how they condemned those who are different - the weak, the sick, the poor, the minorities - and teach them how "this is power, this is strength, this is what being great means". They raise a new generation of what I describe as "thorn cage inhabitants" who don't have any qualms of murdering those whom they find an eyesore - be it literally or in spirit. Destroy, destroy and destroy even more - this is how you protect yourself and how you win, because everyone loves a winner regardless of the blood on their hands, don't they.

Can I even dare to imagine bringing a new life to this world ever in future? To have to struggle between teaching my child to love and understand this beautiful but broken world, and equipping my child sufficiently to protect him/her from those who are out to crush and destroy? And to not have an answer to quell all the fears and pain he/she might go through when he/she asks me why the world is such a cruel place?

When I'm alone, they come.

Quiet as the falling of dusk, unsettling like the coming of night.

These thoughts that haunt me.