In Continuum.

But the television is just a tiresome and continuous repetition of the very same things, over and over these days. Television channels feed us with information, turning us into passive zombies taking instructions on a subliminal level. Buy this brand new facial wash, buy that new car, sign up with our new credit card, the new digital camera is being released! Those are just the advertisements, and the television programs are choked with reality shows and some which are merely the regurgitation of television in its more splendorous days. They don't make the same kind of television nowadays, though there are some exceptions now. I still believe that America makes the best serials ever, but I miss the old cartoons on Cartoon Network when they were just harmless cat and mouse chases or robots transforming into vehicles and finding aliens from outer space. It is kind of sad that, while the children of my generation can be represented by cartoons like Teenager Mutant Ninja Turtles, Transformers and whatnot, the children of this generation are going to be represented by the likes of Spongebob Squarepants. Which is why, I am a couch potato without the love for television, and that is something that I have discovered of myself over the holidays. 

So the holidays are coming to an end, drawing to a close, coming to the end of the road, whatever. It has been a rather long holiday as far as holidays go in my life in UB, and it has been a rather uneventful one I suppose. By uneventful, I mean that the majority of the time has been spent bumming at home, spent lurking around the front of the computer and doing the kind of things that people who loves the great outdoors would be appalled about. Within these four walls of my bedroom, I have spent so much time doing close to nothing for the most part, and the rest of the time was spent justifying myself for doing nothing. The excuses include anything from the comfortable bed to the hot weather, from the aching knees to the fact that all of my friends were either out of town or cannot be contacted at all. The holidays then became a string of continuous nothingness, episode after episode of routines based on not doing anything more than nothing. I guess for the amount of effort I have put into the last semester, I do deserve some sort of a break, but then it still feels a little strange as I laid there on my bed, knowing that everybody else seems to have a plan for something. 

Sometimes I do wonder where people get their ideas from when it comes to planning their holidays. It's not like I do not make the effort to do so, but my plans don't seem to crystalize and formulate into the execution phase every time. They just seem to fall apart for one reason or another, and I am not pointing fingers at anybody in particular here whatsoever. People just seem to have things to do all the time, so busy with errands and just busying themselves with little things in life that I start to wonder why I do not have similar things to worry about at all. Perhaps it is because of the lack of expectations in life, how I can survive with the minimal of things in life and not ask for more. It is perhaps something that is evident in the genes of my family members, the way we have adapted to a simple life with the most basic of things. I need food everyday, I need water, and the air, and some minimal amount of entertainment and human interactions. I'm not the kind of person who'd die if I do not club for two weeks straight, or the kind of person who'd feel suffocated if he remains in his own home for more than three days. I love my home, I love everything about it. I don't see the need of stepping out of it, and I am perfectly fine being grounded at home by myself.

The problem arises, however, when others are doing things and you are not. My parents are not the kind of parents to force me into anything, they believe in the laissez faire way of doing things in the house and not interfering too much with what we want or do not want to do. They are not going to storm into my bedroom one day and tell me to find a job during my holidays, or learn a new language, or play a new instrument, or learn to dance samba for that matter. The problem does not come from them, but the knowledge that the people around you are engaging themselves in activities which are, well, more interesting than doing nothing. People going for overseas holidays, people finding jobs, people going on overseas mission trips, whatever. Although these countries are not some exotic countries that I haven't been to before, but it's just frustrating to know sometimes that they are there and you are here. This holiday hasn't been very kind in providing me with the kind of relaxation that I might have otherwise acquired, but at the same time the lack of activities really gave my brain the break that it deserved. Perhaps that is just another excuse for things, but I guess it makes more sense more than anything else.

The summer semester is about to begin, and most people are going to scratch their head over a term like that. The summer semester is probably the result of a certain group of people in the education system, coming together in a conference room one day and then discussing about how to make university under-graduates graduate faster from their courses. So they took out the timetable, and they realized that there is a three month break in the yearly calendar that is the summer break in most universities, and they decided that it'd be fun to have an actual semester during the summers to speed things up. That is also why I finish my university way faster than most university students in Singapore, and that is also why I am having way shorter holiday than everybody else. I don't mind a short holiday actually, bumming around too long may cause someone to grow molds on their skins, scientifically proven - well, not really. I like bumming around a lot, but at the same time a three month long holiday just doesn't appeal to me at all. It is too long for one to do nothing and too short for one to do anything, what a dilemma. 

The gathering at Naz's place on Thursday was a welcoming one. Nothing beats a group of good friends with board games in the afternoons. It was the couch potato stepping away from the couch and out of the house, something that should have been televised and broadcasted over the air waves. It was fun to hang out, but at the same time I was just glad that I was not melted by the afternoon sun that day, which seemed to have a personal vendetta against me wherever I went. Like Naz said over dinner that day, a part of me also cannot wait for the school to begin. I guess school gives me a lot more focus in life, a lot more challenges and a real goal to meet somehow. Holidays are nice, but they tend to sway you in directions that you are unsure of, and holidays do not have boundaries at all. They are like wide open spaces without walls or signs to tell you where to go, and you can basically go anywhere you want to just as long as you keep your feet on the pedal. It may seem liberating at first, but the freedom may take you to places that you may not necessarily want to come. I realized the holidays really injected me with thoughts that I haven't had for a long time, thoughts that should have remained buried underground. They resurfaced however, and I know that I am going to have a hard time burying it all over again.

Anyway, the holidays are coming to an end, and I am sure there are lot of people who are cursing at that statement right now. People know things, but they don't like to be reminded of it by someone else somehow, it just hurts a little more. I am sure for those that enjoyed their holidays, 20th of May is just going to seem like the beginning of yet another round of living Hell. For someone like me, someone like a couch potato, I suppose I am more than happy to know that there will be things for me to work on all over again. Thankfully, I do not have similar problems as Naz, the problem that involves a textbook that costs a grand total of $171. In the meantime, I suppose I shall try to enjoy the remainder of days as best as I can, try to figure out how to get the most out of doing nothing all over again. It's disgusting I know, but it's a genetic thing. Now, picture me shrugging at the end of the last sentence, and then picturing me crawling into my bed to call it a night.