2:04 p.m. - 2003-01-28
Screw Family...Make A Difference
ok since Spunky finally updated, i think its best that i do too. Sooo where do i begin, the good stuff or the not so good stuff. ah heck i'll just flip a coin.
alrighty, so yesterday i went to the airport with my folks (note: i always call my parents "folks") to pick up my maternal grandmother. so what huh? well while i was pushing the baggage trolley through the queue to get a taxi, i happened to glance up at the TV monitor which is broadcasting Channel NewsAsia. after 3 seconds i screamed. why? look at it like this:
00:01 - Aragorn's face
00:02 - on the side of an airplane
00:03 - OH MY GAWD!!!! ITS AIR ARAGORN!!!
to the amusement of my dad, the chagrin of my mom and g-ma, and the confusion of the other people in the queue, i started screaming "Air Aragorn! Air Aragorn!" and pointing at the TV!...and that ladies (and gentlemen if there are any to be found) was the highlight of my yesterday.
So well my g-ma is passing through after her very long holiday in Australia, Melbourne to be exact, with the rest of the family. now just so we're clear on this, when i say "family" i'm referring to everyone i'm related to except my folks. And boy does my family suck.
last December, for the first time in all my 20 years of existance, my cousins Snaga and Bro finally ask me what i would like for X'mas so that they could send it back to me by g-ma. naturally i ask for anything LOTR related and Bro even offers to get me the Treebeard figurine. i KNEW it was too good to be true. what did i end up getting? my fifth TTT Calendar and the same hard-cover, Legolas file that Jol got from Perth. now while i am happy with the stuff, i know they didnt even try. they just bought the easiest thing they could find, the excuses being: "we couldnt find anything" and "it was too expensive". MY ASS! they're both lame cos for one thing Australia has way more stuff than Singapore cos some of the actors are from there. as for the second one: Give Me A Break! they're all working, with steady, well-paying jobs and they cant afford it? BULLCRAP! i, who am not working, scrimped and saved with my allowance and managed to buy THREE figurines PLUS Narsil, and they couldnt afford one? hey, i maybe weird but i'm NOT stupid. they just didnt try.
i dont even know why i expected stuff from them in the first place cos frankly they put no effort into it when it comes to buying gifts for people. they just go out and buy the first thing they see. then again, in that case they should never have asked me what i wanted. but that aside, they seem to think that buying me clothes will make me happy. well i guess if they were clothes that i look good in i wouldnt be making this fuss, but c'mon! they bought me a purple shirt that i can barely move in, with the assumption that just because i like the color purple, i'll automatically love this! yea right. not only do they not try, they dont even know my taste in clothes. i never wear button-down shirts!!
c'mon, arent families supposed to know all this stuff about you? well i think mine apparently missed the memo on me. and me being me, i flat out said that i didnt like the stupid shirt. so once again i've become the bad person: just for saying that. i should appreciate what they gave me...hey, i didnt ask for that in the first place! i'm supposed to appreciate being laughed off the streets when i wear that thing? i DONT think so.
i think my maternal family should become more like my paternal one. my Dad's family does not acknowledge me as part of them for the simple reason that i have no traditions or culture and they stay as far away from me as possible. no contact whatsoever except maybe for this Chinese New Year. but if i'm lucky i wont be home when they turn up.. hey a few cinemas are still showing TTT!
my mom's family on the other hand expects me to take after Snaga the Golden Girl and they hate me for the fact that i dont worship and kiss the ground she walks on. see they have this cycle of life that everyone's supposed to follow which goes something like:
Get a well-paying job
Marry a wealthy guy
have decent kids
Drop out of existance.
and they're pretty much pissed with the fact that i dont follow it, since my outlook is:
Follow your heart
Make a difference
Accomplish your goals/dreams
Be remembered
to me marriage and money dont even come into the picture. as for kids, well there's adoption. there are plenty of kids who need someone to take care of them. i'll consider that when the time comes. GAWD! i dont WANT to be like them. i look at them and think 'what a waste of a life! what did you do for the world that you're so proud of?'.
Me? there are things i want to do. i want to make a difference, i want to do things that matter, i want to do things that will change the future of the world so that when the day does come for kids, i can be certain that they will have a world to live in, not just to exist in. until i can be sure of that, i'm not bringing anymore kids in here. there are enough suffering as it is. i want to support Billy and Dom's forest project, and clean up the environment and the oceans and throw all poachers into jail for life, because i want my kids to live in a world where there are trees they can climb and get lost in, and clean water to play in without having to worry about bags getting tangled round their feet or getting covered in oil, and animals that they can love and fear at the same time - animals that have a home of their own too, not a concrete floor and bars... or even a city they can live in without having to worry about being blow up. There's so much to do, so who has time for marriage and a desk-job?
who'd have thought that the only things standing in the way would be your own family? but y'know.. SCREW THEM! screw them all. if they want to stop me they'll have to kill me first cos i'll be damned if i have to lie on my death-bed at 80 and wonder what the hell i've done with my life and become just another statistic. i rather go down in the line of duty having made, or trying to make, a difference, even a VERY SMALL difference, be it saving one tree or cleaning up a small stretch of beach, or releasing an endangered butterfly back into the wild, or convincing someone that there is a difference between living and existing.
Even the smallest person can change the course of the future....Damn Right!
