Plaything of the Body

I returned to Spore about... twelve hours ago? No, it's closer to fourteen hours now. Technically I and the family crossed the national boundary at around 9am or so... but I am getting ahead of myself. These few days have been full of things going on, but rather weirdly... I live very much in a world of my own, which makes me both easily entertained (because I pretty much never bore myself) and slightly off-kilter (because I'm also almost never quite paying full attention to the world around me). And of course, like the past few days, it makes for a sort of fugue state.

The past few days, of course, have been the Chinese New Year--my second completed cycle, since it's now the Metal Rabbit and I'm a Fire Rabbit. And since this year it so happens that the two days of public holidays given for the Chinese New Year fell on a Thursday and Friday, travel plans naturally began accounting for the previous day or two--in the case of myself and the Gobbler, we decided to head out on Wednesday morning to the grandfolks', and he decided that it'd be a good time to bring along his girlfriend, so she came along too.

The parents had arrived at the grandfolks' some days beforehand, too, and so when we arrived (a scant three hours after leaving the station, or about four hours after leaving my hostel), thye came along, picked us up, and off we went for fishball noodles--according to my father and the shopkeeper, harvested fresh from the fishing boats anchored a few kilometers away from the fishball noodle shop. After that we went back to the house, where we met the grandfolks.

At this point, I suppose I should interject. I and a few of the people from Crusade have been planning to go for a short trip--ten days or so?--to Japan, some time after graduation/convocation and some time before beginning work, because none of us think it'll be likely that we'll all be able to take that much leave to travel off anywhere together once we begin working; but it's a little costly--at least SGD3k, apparently--and while I'd already broached the subject with the family, the parents were already saying things like "it'd be more meaningful to climb a mountain" or "why not somewhere cheaper, like Malaysia?" so I wasn't terribly hopeful. And that probably led to a slightly chilly reception for my parents from me; it's not the first time that plans I've made have been kiboshed by them for reasons ranging from budget to not knowing my companions to approaching deadlines. At any rate I didn't greet the parents quite as warmly as I greeted the grandfolks.

But we arrived at the grandfolks' house, and greeted everybody, and then the usual rituals of comparing heights and exclaiming over how tall or fat or skinny people had gotten since the last sighting, and in my case there was also a great deal of exclaiming about my hair (it hasn't been trimmed since last, hmmm, October? September?) which apparently was much too thick to look real. And of course there were the usual choruses about whether we'd studied well, when I was going to graduate, had I been eating properly--this question only asked in jest, because my reputation is such that nobody worries about me letting myself starve--and so on. And of course, this time the Gobbler had brought his girlfriend along, and so I was asked when I'd bring one back too--to which my standard answer was "I shall grow old and die bitter and alone".

We had the reunion dinner that night--meat and seafood and things--most satisfying. But then I'm generally a happy person when well-fed, and I'm generally well-fed whenever in the grandfolks'; the only oddity about the menu was the inclusion of cheese sausages, thus showing that the goodness of cheese permeates even to the remote villages of Malaysia.

That night there were fireworks, and we enjoyed the show as usual; the neighbours are relatively well-off, or they are relatively free with their money, and they often put on a quite decent show of fireworks--the calculated cost is maybe RM10k or so for the entire display, and there are always, at any given time during the night, at least four families letting off fireworks. My family... lets off no fireworks, though we did buy a noisemaker this year and half-deafened all the family's dogs and certainly frightened the chickens. This year we noticed a few 孔明灯 as well--literally translated, probably bright-eye lights--they're massively illegal, but so are fireworks--both are likely to cause injury and fire if mishandled. But they were certainly pretty.

The next day was Thursday, and we set off for church; that particular church was full of old people, but the sermon was quite well-delivered, I thought; it did go on a bit long, but it was humourous and the points were well-put--full of stuff about being always thankful and so on. The church also happens to be located in the compound of a school--presumably a church school?--and so we went wandering around it after the service and laughing at the facilities and things they had up, like the educational corners where they had put up manila cards of idioms and "common phrases" that really aren't at all commonly used, or the art corner where they showcased the work of students who are convinced that the natural colour of a rabbit's fur is bright, shiny, sunny yellow.

After church we dropped by the house of my Fifth Aunt, and then returned to the grandfolks' house for a short time; and then we returned to the house of Fifth Aunt for a steamboat dinner, during which I found that it is quite difficult to tell fish from squid when both are in a thick opaque broth; that cabbages are nice when boiled to textureless softness; and that crabsticks are always a delight to the palate. After the dinner we watched the second part of Red Cliff--the first part had been aired the night before--and I Googled, Wikipedia'd, and TVTropes'd it with the handy laptop in Fifth Aunt's living room during commercial breaks. (As a side note, it was quite jarring to have the tense moments in the film, especially during the final battle scene, interspersed with little fluffy bunnies telling us to drink such-and-such brand of milk tea or whatnot. Very jarring indeed.)

The next day was the Second Day of the Chinese New Year, when it is customary for everybody to gather at the grandfolks' for a massive lunch that continues on 'til reasonably late; so we obtained food--it's catered by nearby Malay families, because if you get five women to cook for 40 stomachs then arguments break out--and people fell to eating and drinking and talking and gambling. It's surprising how growing up separates people; I found I had hardly anything in common with my cousins apart from blood ties, and so spent most of the time drifting around eavesdropping on conversations or abusing the younger cousins; one of my female cousins is also a Rabbit, but twelve years younger than I, and she spent a good deal of time sneaking up on me from behind to attack; while I, of course, had a good deal of fun catching her in the act and then taking retribution. I now have a pretty scarred right hand, while I suspect she has bruises on the insides of both her wrists and the knuckles--my retribution was always simply to grasp the wrist or knuckles and squeeze, while her tactics revolved around her surprisingly sharp fingernails.

Later that evening, we went swimming; we found a dilapidated little pool, about an hour's drive from the grandfolks' house, and swam; we soon found that the place was cheap to swim in, and closed very early, for the same reason--to save money, the health club (or such it styles itself) doesn't turn any of its lights on; and as a result we only swam for about 45 minutes before the murkiness of the water and the darkness of the surroundings forced us out of the pool. I doubt that pool will still be there in a year's time--or if it is it'll be full of dead leaves and drowned moths. We came back from the swimming in time for a trip out to get lamb soup with grandpa and a couple of his friends--which was, I'll say, very nice. But then swimming had made me hungry; but the last time we ate it it was nice too.

The next day--Saturday--we spent partly out of the house; the morning was spent travelling to visit one of my father's old classmates and his children, and then we travelled back; I spent most of the rest of that day napping, because we'd been sleeping very little (midnight 'til about 8.30am or so!) and spending that much time around other people is always draining on me--a primary reason I usually bring the laptop along, apart from obsessively detailed and frequent Facebook updates, is for a bit of "me" time, or I get very tired very quickly (and then I start eating like mad, or madder). It was during the drive to my father's classmate's that the subject of the graduation trip came up again, and eventually my parents decided that a budget of SGD3k was way too much and SGD1k was going to be the upper limit.

At which I went into... a weird sort of mindset, I think. As aforementioned, I'm used to my parents butting in on my plans and kiboshing them. Then again, I did rather want to go on the trip; but there were (and are) cogent reasons to not go, i.e. budget, time, and so on; so essentially? It's a decision between enjoyment and rationality, really. Rationality says that the money would be better spent keeping myself alive while looking for a job, that surely (as long as life is) there will arise other opportunities, that I'll want that money to eat and pay rent and so on; enjoyment says that one only graduates once, and once one joins the rat race it's awfully hard to opt out, even for only ten days, and it's incredibly unlikely that all the people should get leave at the same time and have that much money left over from whatever other responsibilities we will surely accumulate, and that I've spent most of my life being the mostly-responsible, dutiful son, the one who pinches pennies and scrounges for ways to make ends meet while the other brothers spend money like water on strange things--my wallets, for example, are about to fall apart while the Gobbler paid SGD25 on a paper wallet (!) and it's about time I went on a splurge and was a little bit irresponsible for once.

Of course, the two pigeonholes full of books above me bear testament to my weaknesses in spending, too, but still.

But I've been mulling it over--together with the whole looming issue of job prospects and things--and the thought came to me earlier that it was odd how, when one asks for things and one gets them, one doesn't want them any more. In my case it was that I've been wanting a clear direction on what to do after graduation; and the parental kibosh on the graduation trip would seem to be that. But I don't like it, mostly because I don't quite trust the parents on their ideas of work and leisure and what constitutes fun. And that then ties in to how I see God... the thing is, there are a lot of verses in the Bible about Him supplying all we need. And there are a lot of people out there who are Christians who are leading incredibly uncomfortable lives. My way of harmonising these two facts is that... well, quite frankly, "all we need" isn't very much at all. All we need for survival? Food and drink and shelter and companionship. Perhaps then the promise extends to the resources we need to do what He calls on us to do--which, also, isn't very much. In fact my view of the "all we need" set of promises is something like the Perry Bible Fellowship strip where a man asks God for a billiards table in heaven, then admits he doesn't really need a billiards table, and so doesn't get it. And so I've come to have the idea that what God supplies is the absolute bare basics necessary to sustain physical life for as long as required, and anything more, well, better be grateful for that, eh?

Which is, admittedly, a rather cynical view of things, especially in light of other verses about having abundant life and so on.

So it's... back to prayer, frankly. I don't know what I want, and even if I knew I wouldn't know how to get it. Or at least, I know what I don't want. That's a start, right?

Incidentally, I found out today that I become extremely irritable when hungry, and I don't even know when I'm hungry because I so seldom am. The lesson? Eat within four hours or so of waking up, or I get very prickly and irritable (and irritating).