musings of mine

Christmas is over. Thank God. I hate to sound like a Grinch but that was one of the worst christmas’ i’ve ever had!! What with the damn chikunguniya, my relatives getting divorced, extra marital affairs and the likes raining all around me…i’m glad it’s over.

The next headache; New Years Eve and what to wear. I just purchased a dress. Inspite of convincing myself that i need not spend money on something i will almost never wear again and inspite of refusing to fall prey to the materialistic instinct within me which calls out to every pretty item of clothing i pass by. Note to self: ignore those damn instinctive calls!! You think they’re instictive, dammit woman they’re not!! Now let me give into that part of me which is thrilled about that dress…ITS PINK! For those of you who know me, then you undoubtly will know of my fascination with the colour pink and butterflies. i know..how totally girly of me! What to do ane…some things you can’t help..This is the only thing that i’m currently thrilled about.

Inspite of the divine dress, i’m not looking forward to the New Year. My favoritest person in the world’s leaving again. Back to the States, gosh i hate the damn brain drain. Why can’t local universities accomodate International school kids?!!

 My questions i fear fall on deaf ears. And i once more will return to the awesome book i was reading….maybe i’ll go out…hmmm…

I’ve never really had a fun christmas. I always remember being really fussy and grumpy when i never got what i wanted. That was a couple of years ago.. Now…i’m exhausted. Just got home after literally draining shopping expedition. One thing i noticed was how commercialized this damn holiday has become. I mean this is a predominantly Buddhist country, and look at the impact the damn holiday’s having on people! Odel was packed with more people i see in church at midnight mass!!! Unfortunately even though there’s so much red, green and twinkly lights from crescat to the little game kade down my road there’s no real christmas spirit. Heck even i haven’t got it.

Tuk tuks honk, and wheedle their way into every nook and cranny. Prices soar and eyebrows rise. Purses are opened. Bank accounts are emptied. That’s what Christmas has become my friend, and i for one wish i had a little christmas cheer to share.  

At the back of my wardrobe there’s a huge stack of notebooks. These books are filled with scribbling. The handwriting changes…becoming more childish as the end of the pile grows near. The notebooks are mine, so is the handwriting. I’ve been writing to myself since I was 8 years old. It was a pastime I reveled in…the one moment during my day where I could say what was on my mind, without any inhibitions, to no one in particular. Blogging is the same, I think. The only risk I am taking is publishing my thoughts on the internet where everyone can see them. Its not that I mind. I welcome all forms of criticism; especially the constructive kind.

 My style of writing has always been like this. And throughout the years I have encountered many a person who has enjoyed my writings and has helped me tweak my style, in attempt to help me become better at doing what to me is, an outlet to release those thoughts that keep buzzing in my head. For example my sentences are too long. Like the previous sentence. But as long as I punctuate them with smatterings of commas and semi colons, and not stick these long sentences everywhere I think I’m fairly safe. After all this is a blog, not my A/L literature paper!

 What pisses me off the most is when I am criticized destructively. Where the ‘criticizer’ does not want to make a positive change in your life, but a negative one. I just heard one such criticism recently. It was made to a person who means a lot to me. A person who’s opinion I value dearly. It was made, I think, in an attempt to get that special person to think that I was merely a babe in arms and that my writing style showed my true age and the fact that I will never grow up. I am, unfortunately, immune to being called immature. I was told this by my Principal a couple of years ago, when she told me that if I matured I could go to great heights. Of course I remained immature, and went to greater heights!

A day after this comment was made, I look back on it’s impact on me. True enough it did make me worry. Yet that worry was a waste. It was a waste of my time. Now I can look back and actually feel sorry for that person. I can rise above that nasty comment and think to myself, it doesn’t really matter to me. And that to me is an achievement, a sign that that I, the kid that would never grow up, has grown up…has matured. You know the weird part of this realization? I don’t even want her to know that her opinion of me doesn’t matter.

March 2006 

My thirteenth birthday dawned, bright and early, and I woke up thinking ‘Yes, today I’m a teenager! I will be posh, slim, svelte, beautiful and intelligent. And when I’m 19, I’ll look back on six wonderful and incredibly happening years of my life’.

Now I’m 19, still slightly overweight, myopic, hoping I haven’t failed my mocks and under house arrest. So much for my ‘happening-ness’.

At 13 I always thought older girls were beautiful and smart and had everything they ever wanted. Now, quite rudely, those rose tinted glasses have been ripped from my eyes and I’m not staring at beautiful and smart older girls. They’re quite different actually. I look at myself and at the people I know and ask, ‘oh dear, what’s happened?’

I hear stories of my uncles and aunts talking of the days when they were 18 and 19 and went out, got drunk, came home and were yelled at. They’ve turned out fine, they even have kids. My mum talks of the days of the mini skirt, the bell bottom and kitty heels…now she wears saree to work. My mum had also been pretty naughty in school too…the nuns hadn’t given her that much trouble…’she’ll grow out of it’ they’d said. And well, now she’s a model of decorum.

My generation and I, we do the same things. So I don’t see what’s wrong with why most if not all the teenagers I meet are more concerned with where they’re going on Friday night, their Gucci bag, new ipod, classmate’s cheating boyfriend and where the weed’s coming from. Then why does Society say that the Youth are going bad? Poor things, they must be wearing those rose tinted glasses I discarded earlier.

Then again we can’t always point fingers, we’re nice children. Plus, we’ll turn out just like those narrow minded old people…I mean Society. Hmmm…we can be a bit selfish sometimes. (By ‘we’ I mean the people my age) We don’t really care about another person’s feelings…why bother? We don’t know what’s happening in Iraq or Darfur…we’re not going there. We sometimes have no propriety. We label what’s godey and what isn’t. We judge people. We gossip. Some of us don’t know the value of the English language. We don’t know what’s happening in the North (of our country). We don’t know how much our parents love us. (They say our education and maintenance is expensive…well manicures don’t come cheap). Oh dear, I think my generation and I, we don’t know much.

Why do you think this is? Did we do something wrong? Shall we blame it on the parents? But that’s not right is it?! I mean they did give birth to us and even if we don’t talk to them that much sometimes, we always get what we want…well most of us living in Colombo do anyway. So is the problem within us you think? Did we subconsciously absorb it from around us? It can’t be only our fault. We’re just teens!

In the past the world saw the Age of the Dinosaur, the Stone Age and then there were the Middle Ages, the Industrial Age etc etc. The Teen Age is much different. In the sixties the teenagers listened to the Beatles and Bob Dylan, fought for the whales, Peace, and to save the rainforests. That was NOT the Teen Age. This is. There’s a huge difference. See, sometimes we’re a bit sadistic, not selfless. (And even though the hippy/gypsy style is in, long hair is NOT for guys!) We like backstabbing. Gossiping is high on the list of ‘must do things to waste my time’. And don’t tell anyone, but I know lots of boys who like to torture lizards…and I read somewhere that that’s not a good sign.

So welcome to The Teen Age. I foresee a world where illegitimate babies, AIDS and Ecstasy will be as common as the common cold and Panadol. Morals and Values will be done away with. Clothes will be brought to a minimum; just cover the bare necessities…we’ll imagine the rest. World wars will be on an all round high, though none of us will know much about it; Ignorance is bliss after all. No one will nag and scream. Laundry will be piled up everywhere, it gives a pleasant odor. And when the world comes to an end, well…we’ll just look up from our Notebooks and PDA’s and shrug. Let life take its course. Chill.

I’m still 19. Myopic and slightly overweight. Its midnight and I have to study. (A/L’s you know) But you know what? I don’t think I want to wake up tomorrow…looks like its not going to be very sunny…but bleak…who do I call? The Weather Department?

Honestly I’ve tried blogging before…Unfortunately what happens to me is that I eventually get caught up in the rest of my life and lose interest…i won’t guarantee in a regular post because i’m not sure whether i will or won’t.. (did i spell ‘whether’ correctly?)

I’ve always been obsessed with my spellings. Ever since a fat teacher in Year 3 told me that for a Burgher girl my spellings were pretty awful! At that time i had weird pronunciation as well…i became conscious of that when i said the name ‘Julian’ in Famous Five out loud, the way i said it in my head. Turned out that wasn’t how it was supposed to sound. (Don’t ask me how i pronounced ‘Julian’ differently..i cannot remember!) And then at the tender age of 10 the same Burgher girl found out she could spell ‘Dictionary’ at the Primary Spelling Bee but somehow couldn’t fathom how on earth ‘Sportsmeet’ was spelt!!

 As time went by i did learn to spell…properly! Even my whacked up pronunciation definitely took a turn for the better…though to this day i do tend to mispronounce a few words here and there..if you hear me arguing that ‘it’s a proper noun it can be pronounced anyway!’ then you KNOW i’m not sure of my pronunciation!

 Now that i’ve finally left school i feel as if there’s this empty void. I must admit though, i never did have my required 80% attendence for my A/L’s. Somehow that never became an issue with most teachers. I always thought that i’d be the happiest convent girl to break free from the constantly praying clutches of ‘those nuns’..but now i miss it. I miss those dark corridors, those stairs (which i climbed with many a complaint), and most of all i miss the sheer predictabilty of life. The fact that i knew when the Interval was going to be, (though i ate during class) when i was going to have to come up with an excuse for not being in class during last week’s English Lit. lesson, being told constantly that i was going to fail my A Levels unless i got my act together and stopped doing everything else but my studies…

 Yes, i miss school. I miss the buildings, the people, and yes i even miss the politics and that’s saying something!!!

Now i work, and it’s not that i don’t enjoy it..i do! It’s just that now i’m home at 7.30 or 8 and not at 3..cos that was the time i got home after school. That’s my biggest problem! Looking on the bright side, Ammie doesn’t complain when i come home at 4am anymore…i got a tatoo, and i make quite a decent amount working which means monthly shopping expeditions i’ going to Uni soon and..i think i’m growing up..hmmm…im not sure whether that’s good or bad… (are you sure ‘whether’ is spelt like that?!!)