It's a Mad Mad World

It’s more than three days now since I got back from The Mountain, and my legs are (I think) improving rapidly; I think that in just another week or so I might be able to get up and down stairs without having to wince at every other step.

It’s quite annoying being something of an invalid; I, who used to be somewhat quick at getting around the place, have been reduced to penguin-walking my way through the house. I call it penguin-walking because my feet have not regained the ability to keep my balance, forcing me to hold both arms out at odd angles when walking to avoid falling forward or backward. I do, unfortunately, usually fall behind when walking with anybody. Also, my gait has become decidedly ungainly, mainly because I cannot bend my knees much and therefore walk with both legs straight at all times.

To put it in simpler terms, I waddle everywhere I go.

If you’re reading this, you probably have noticed that I just posted the first poem ever to hit this blog. I suppose it’s typical of me that I titled it a dirge; I have this habit of seeing everything through gloomy-tinted lenses. At least I managed to steer clear of Poe-tic morbidity, although I assure you that while climbing, I often looked down and wondered what it’d be like to fall. In any case I did slip once or twice, but (thank God) I never did fall more than twenty centimeters to the ground.

I just saw a National Geographic program about death by water. I found the possibilities it implied quite frightening, especially in the light of the tsunami event. Yes, I know, this is the first time I’ve mentioned it at all on this blog, it’s more than three months ago, it’s too late, I’m an insensitive callous person who doesn’t know the meaning of empathy with the less fortunate member of the human race of which I am supposed to be a part of, but then I have this thing where I don’t give much attention to world events.

It’s a side effect of being a near-total recluse. In fact I’ve looked through my blog several times, and it strikes me as being terribly self-centered. I don’t seem to have had any concern at all for the great events that have been moving and shaking the world; for example, I haven’t even mentioned the Olympics, the tsunami, or any concert at all.

I wonder if it’s a bad thing that I give more attention to a prom night or to a book than to a killer wave.

By now I’m almost envying those of my contacts who are already taking their A-Levels. At least they don’t have their mom constantly telling them to apply for some scholarship all the time, or enumerating the SPM results of every other person within three miles who got better results than they did (in my case, that’s pretty much everybody: I did very poorly, after all).

In fact, I almost wish I were back at school somewhere studying. If so, I wouldn’t have to hear day and night about some student somewhere in the outback who walks three miles to and from school daily to save gas and money, cooks gourmet ten-course meals for the family, wakes at three a.m. and sleeps at midnight, learned to drive solely to save their mom from the family chauffeuring, worked at a high-paying part-time job at some prestigious company, and still managed to get two billion A1s, give or take ten thousand.

It makes one feel quite inferior, to say the least. After all, one can’t help it if one isn’t a high achiever, no matter how much one regrets it. (Of course, the good old Americans disagree: just look at any DIY seminar and you’ll read loads of bilge about ‘you can do anything you want’ etc. etc.)

I hope I’ll get at least one of the scholarships I’ve applied for; it’ll be just too bad if I don’t and end up listening to a recital of how everyone between my cousin and my maternal second aunt’s best friend’s worst enemy’s babysitter’s maid’s third cousin by marriage’s godchild’s sister got it while I obviously didn’t put enough effort into my studies to merit what everyone between my cousin and my maternal second aunt’s best friend’s worst enemy’s babysitter’s maid’s third cousin by marriage’s godchild’s sister did.

Trust me, it’s not pretty. I’ve been there. Perhaps one of this blog’s real purposes for existing is to show all the people out there what happens to bad people who don’t study hard?

But to brighter topics. I just got back from Wolf’s house, where I visit occasionally for movies and Scrabble. (I beat him—292 to 199.) Anyway, his knees are improving rapidly, he can walk around his house without moaning and groaning, and he’s stopped talking about the Paralympics, which I take to be a good sign. And I just watched yet another gore-and-guts movie.

My first was Sleepy Hollow; quite an introduction to the genre, and I watched it at 12 years old, and during a church camp, no less! Anyway, suffice it to say that I developed a strong distaste for the sight of people ripping out other people’s innards and tearing off other people’s limbs, with or without metallic, glittering implements. The second of its kind that I remember was a Bluetooth movie on a colleague’s cell phone; it was the broadcast of the Iraqi beheadings, and I watched it over lunch. I found it not at all to my taste, especially as the camera zoomed in on the victim’s face just before death. I have no wish to see it again. And then my third was Kill Bill, which I just saw and—if this was a movie review, I’d strongly advise people not to go to see it without a large sick bag.

You don’t want to know why, since I’m sure a nice, moral, upright person like you can’t stand to see blood and other vital fluids come gushing out of anybody like a fire hose spewing water, let alone it happening to about three hundred people simultaneously. I think I must have tuned out what’s left of my sense of compassion while watching, though, because I didn’t turn pale and go into shock. Perhaps it’s just my latent sadistic urges finding vicarious fulfillment.

Anyway, I’m pretty much fine now; this will probably be the last of the KInabalu Horror posts. I’ve got other things to post about now, at any rate; I just restarted my tuition class with my old Physics teacher and am studying STPM level Physics—three months early. It’s just so I can get a head start; God knows I’ll need it.

From all accounts, STPM is a killer. I wonder if I’ll end up on the casualty lists?