Fade To Green
Well, it’s nice, of course, that I’ve been able to meet up with some of my old friends in Patience. This has, unfortunately, been limited so far to my church friends since most of my old classmates are in Shining Institute and facing exams. Maybe I’ll try and meet them up after their holidays start. (For some unknown aberration of reason, their holidays are determined by the school itself, while my holidays are very sensibly timed to coincide exactly with government schools’.)
And I’m not going to complain about the weather. It’s absolutely heavenly, sunshine and rain coming down in good quantity and in pretty good proportions, too. No haze, what’s more: no need to worry about the air I’m breathing! Those who’ve lived all their lives in good climates don’t know what they’re not missing—and now I’m afraid that when I go back to school, I’m going to complain about the weather much more than before.
But I do have a list of grievances. I always do—it’s one of my skills to find the fly or flies in every drop of ointment. Ask anybody—being Perfect Melancholy means you find something to be melancholy about in anything that other people find perfect.
The Pig tops the list at the moment. I’m going to sound neurotic and depressed and overly sensitive here, but I really do think he’s trying to avoid me. Or maybe I’m just reading too much into his never replying my SMSes, his not picking up the phone when I call, and the plain simple fact that every time I ask him out, something else (inevitably unavoidable and life-threateningly urgent) just cropped up five minutes before and he can’t do anything about it. I would just love to murder him right here and now, you know. Give me an axe or a handgun or even a Swiss knife, then put me within striking distance of the Pig and that’ll be the end of him. I shall, of course, make sure that he has plenty of time to scream. I’m not about to let myself feel pain without inflicting it right back on its source.
Yes, that’s right. I said “feel”, and I said “pain”. You see what annoying things emotions are? Maybe I’m just sensitive, which is quite irrational since I’ve developed a high tolerance threshold for insults and suchlike. (Thanks to my family for that.) Or maybe I’m just reading things into actions which aren’t there at all. Or whatever (insert your own explanation here). But…I don’t know, I can’t explain myself, which in itself is a rare occurrence and deserving of study in its own right. Anyway, I think one of the reasons I was so enthusiastic about coming back was meeting up old friends. But what happens when you find those old friends doing their level best to get away from you? At least, that’s what I find keeps happening with the Pig. I don’t know about Kelvin, Herr Robson, Meow or the rest—they seem perfectly fine, but that’s the problem—I don’t know. Life is annoying.
I’ve begun driving lessons. It’s another step on my perceived road to adulthood (shaving has already been discussed!), and that probably explains why I only just began, one year after everybody else tried it. I don’t know why they were so eager to drive—all I get out of it is stress and a powerful phobia of cars, as well as lots of scolding from my instructor. I think the fault lies with him there—the old guy seems to assume that driving is in the genes, and that therefore if you put a teenager in a car and aim him at a bunch of sticks, he will instinctively know that he must perform the triangular maneuver, and what’s more that he will do it perfectly on the first try.
Guess what? I disproved that hypothesis by driving straight through those sticks. He said “turn right and stop”, so I did just that. Except that he meant for me to stop where the sticks did, and I didn’t stop until the car had made a few 360-degree turns. And then when he tried to teach me side-parking… notice that I said “tried”. I haven’t got it at all down pat yet, and since my next lesson is tomorrow (and he’ll certainly expect me to have improved, although how I’m supposed to is beyond me) I’m giving myself plenty of stress. My sister is having her Stinking Purple Muck, and even she has less stress than I do! (My mother is going through more than enough stress for the three of us.)
And the bus system in Patience absolutely absorbs. At least in KL, there’s a clearly defined stop where all the buses stop and changes are easy and convenient. Here? Yeah, right. I was told to take any bus, because every bus goes to the same park. So I did that, and I wound up in a completely unfamiliar spot, and there was no other bus (except mine) in sight. I ended up taking a two-and-a-half-hour walk back home. (At my rate of walking, that amounts to about ten kilometers). Of course, since I did it on the Pig’s advice, I’ve stopped trusting his sense of direction too.
And my blue hair has turned green. Herr Robson is going to have a field day with this, or at least he would if he weren’t taking his A-Levels at the moment. It’s just like that stupid genius. I think it’s the low quality of the dye, but in any case, the blue is fading, especially on the fringe. Since my hair was bleached gold before being dyed blue, the bits of semitransparent blue that remain are turning the gold green. And at this rate, I’m positively going to have hair conservatively dyed gold-green or gold in a month’s time. That’s sixty bucks of mine, gone down the drain.
So that’s my account of my holidays so far. I keep telling myself that it’s the holidays, I’m supposed to be relaxing and having a good time, I’m supposed to be filling up my time by learning driving and having hour-long chitchat sessions with my friends, I’m supposed to be happy, I’m supposed to be a lot of other things, but the fact is I’m not any of those, especially when the only friends I see are online, and the only of them whom I can be sure is on holiday is busily getting as far away from me as possible.
I can only hope things get better in the Big S, but that’s next month, and I’ll rant about it then.
Comments