Depress'd-O-Vision

YE GADS. It's AUGUST GAAAAAAAA

AAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAhwow.

So, how has my life been since the 18th of July (which is apparently my last post)? Very meh, is how it's been... but I'll do the show-not-tell thing that's apparently big in creative writing, and tell you all about it in customary mind-numbing detail.

So I was in Patience, and then returned to So Hour with the parents for a day, and returned to Spore the next day--the, let's see, 20th? Yes, the 20th. So I returned to the house, having been away from it and the landlady for nearly half a month--if you remember, I had received the summons to So Hour to see my grandfather on the 7th--and so it was a little bit of familiarity as I settled back in to the place--got laundry going, went online, checked emails, that sort of thing.

And then the next day it was up and running off again, as the reason the parents (and both younger brothers) were in Spore was that there was a leadership conference going on, and they had an extra ticket that originally had been meant for the Empress, but she couldn't get leave from work and so I was going to take that ticket in her place. The conference (it was organised by a group called the Eagles, they're really good) lasted three days, most of which I spent out with the parents and their friends (my father had brought over a contingent of people from China and the contingent was forever splitting into mini-contingents and wandering off) and suffering from both information overload and people overload, and I'm afraid I wasn't in a great mood for most of the time. I think I frightened some of the contingent, since apparently my conserving-energy face looks like a murder face--at least, that's what I was told later.

So those three days passed, and then the parents left to return to Patience over the weekend while I returned to a semblance of normal unemployed life--the usual waking late and eating one meal a day and so on, interspersed by obtaining convocation gown and hat and meeting up somebody who claimed to have met me through other Crusade people...

...that meeting actually, I think, deserves to be told in further detail. I met him for lunch--he turned up late because he'd been at some kind of entrepreneurship forum, and then we proceeded to have about four hours' conversation about dreams and goals in life and all that kind of thing. Now, as anybody who's asked me about that sort of thing knows, I haven't got any. It's the main drawback of my being so easily satisfied with life--food and board and Internet and books and regular meetups with friends and I'm good to go, really--but he went on and on about the high cost of living and how difficult working life is and how wonderful it would be to have passive income, and absolutely refused to discuss anything other than monetary matters, and only those pertaining to himself (or myself) at that, and dismissed the idea of considering other people or the definitions of happiness and dreams and goals as "complicated, wisdomful [sic]" things. Which, of course, irritated me, because I think life is horrendously complicated and nothing is ever as simple as it seems. At any rate we eventually parted, since he said he had something to rush to (it was 5.30pm by then) and he said it would be nice to not waste time in future on complicated thoughts.

I had another lunch with him some time later (which I shall recount here so as to not have to bring him up again), and it started with him saying he'd got an amazing opportunity that would supply him with enough passive income to have all his dreams come true within only five years, and then inviting me to meet the friend of his who was the source of such opportunity because he wanted partners and he was offering the chance to all his friends. I unwisely agreed to it, though I couldn't very well say no--he was apparently bending over backwards (he said) to accommodate it, and the only time available for it was lunch the day before the convocation ceremony; so I went, and he was late again, and the whole thing was a failure because apparently his friend was a very busy person and had rushed off somewhere and so it was just him and me at the lunch. It was very, very irritating, especially because I'd had to do quite extensive travelling, and for all that he refused to give me any more details about this wonderful opportunity other than that it involved VOIP and IT services and healthcare (which sounded quite ridiculously diversified to me). To this day I don't even know the name of his company.

Two days ago he messaged me asking to set up another lunch, but again wouldn't tell me the name of the company or give me the address of its website, and said that I was asking a lot and asked me to detail how I'd be contributing to the expansion of the business (no longer an "opportunity"!), upon which I said that without data my opinion was that I was uninterested, and then he said thanks and promised to catch up later--which, I suspect, means that I'll never hear from him again.

So much for that.

But the day after the first lunch was my convocation ceremony. That day started horrendously, with me being woken up at 6.48am--yes, I remember being jarred awake--and the parents asking me to give them directions since they were driving in and I hadn't the foggiest where they were or how they could get there, being extremely geographically challenged and having only just woken up. Eventually I think I muttered the name of a nearby road or MRT station, went back to sleep, and woke up in time to change and rush down to school with the giant paper bag containing the gown and hat and sash, only to realise on the way that I was lacking in the safety pin department (those gowns are quite inconveniently designed, if you ask me) and dash off messages begging people to bring extra and lend me pins. I arrived, the parents arrived shortly before I did, and then there was a lot of yelling about car parks and directions to the Auditorium and eventually we found each other, and then the yelling continued about how my belt wasn't nice (I'd had to self-make holes in it because I've apparently lost a couple inches off the waist) and I was tie-less and my shirt wasn't white and my shoes weren't shined and I didn't have the safety pin, and suffice it to say that getting the gown and hat on and the sash in place was a very stressful process for everybody involved. We eventually made it in, the ceremony was very boring and several people fell asleep (or straight out didn't turn up, and everybody else wished they'd done that too), and the speeches were very much uninspiring. After the ceremony there was photographing and food (I was very hungry and the endless photographing, I admit, exasperated me beyond my limits of tolerance) and the more photographing; my parents met the other Crusade people who'd graduated on that day as well as the friends who'd come along to do congratulating, and some bickering ensued on what was to happen next and who was going where for what... and eventually I went with the parents to the bank where they did something about money that didn't involve me even though they had originally thought it would, so I eventually left them (with their permission) and joined up with the Crusade people for tea and walking around the mall, and I got a nosebleed while there--possibly from the heat of the weather, possibly from lack of fluid (I'd been thirsty the whole day), but for whatever reason there it was.

The day after the convocation was the 28th, and on that day... let me see, it was a Thursday, ah yes... I went to school again and witnessed a few friends' convocations, managed to get a good helping of food from the buffet table, and was impulse-invited to a Crusade guy's house for an afternoon of board games, at which I chiefly remember winning a game of Key Largo by the simple expedient of stealing, spamming cheap-but-safe searching, and doing a lot of selling while everybody else was still stockpiling resources. It's not a recommended strategy, obviously, but it worked out for me; I also remember playing marbles with one of the other guys there on the carpet, which is how we found out the house floor is tilted ever so slightly; and finally, the game of Betrayal at House on the Hill in which none of the heroes died. Which, if you've never played it and therefore don't know, is extremely rare and difficult to pull off, and was only accomplished by a few strokes of luck. I went to school again on the 29th, and on that day the convocation ceremony was in the evening, but food was still supplied.

On the 30th of July I had the aforementioned disappointing lunch, and on Sunday night one of the guys from the House of Bread treated me and a few other guys to dinner as encouragement for the upcoming beginning semester and (hopefully!) upcoming beginning of employment.

On the 1st of August I went to So Hour for a few days, leaving a bit of paper on the desk to inform the landlady of my departure and my expected return date (Thursday); then I went to So Hour, where the parents were, bringing along cousins who had been visiting Singapore over the weekend and the youngest brother who had been staying with the Gobbler and visiting local libraries to borrow graphic novels to read. It was a quite difficult time, mostly because the parents remain firmly fixed on the tack that if I'd been better at my studies or more pleasantly-disposed or had read a few more self-improvement books or had done any number of any other things I would already be gainfully employed, and were also firmly fixed on the idea that everything I was doing could be interrupted so I could go fetch them fruit or wash the dishes or discuss career options or something... and being already stressed out about being jobless and increasingly broke didn't help matters, so I was rather snappish myself, which didn't help matters any. It probably also doesn't help that my parents seem to think I'm misled in wanting to stay on in Spore, where the House of Bread is, and want me to go relocating off anywhere that opportunity beckons--as if I didn't already have quite enough instability in my life...

I returned to Spore on Thursday, as expected, and found the landlady in a tizzy because she hadn't found the paper I'd left; but Thursday came and went, and Friday, and now it's early Monday morning, I'm not hungry because I had a large dinner (which overtaxed my wallet really but still...!), and I'm still jobless, and can't apply for jobs until the Employment Eligibility Certificate gets mailed in--assuming the application is approved--technically I'm an illegal resident right now, I think.

Such is my life--it's ongoing, and that's the best I can say about it right now.

(Addendum: I know the Bible says a lot of stuff about me being more valuable than sparrows and how God provides and all that. I'm relying on God providing for my needs and all that, yeah. But I don't know how, or when, and at any rate I certainly am like the lily of the fields in that I toil not, neither do I spin, and am a very bedraggled lily at that.)