In Continuum.

My mother does frequent full-body check-ups annually. She does it in Taiwan because it is cheaper there, and she visits her regular doctor over there most of the time. She dragged my father along because, well, my mother has always been the most health-conscious person in the family. She is almost a vegetarian, eating very little meat and focuses the bulk of her diet on vegetables and fruits. It's not that she is secretly a fruit bad or that she loves animals too much to kill them really. She just feels that avoiding meat, any kind of meat, is better for the health in the long term. I suppose the cholesterol in meat has got something to do with it, but I suppose I personally cannot imagine a life without bacon. Anyway, my mother is probably the most healthy person in the family, and these full-body check-ups aren't anything to worry about, or at least for me. After all, my mother has been like a straight A student at such health screenings for the past years, always scoring relatively well other than a few minor hiccups here and there. However, it doesn't matter if you are scoring full marks or just over the threshold of an A - you are an A student, no matter what. That is my mother, a grade A student at health screenings.

A week or two ago, my mother flew back to Taiwan to run some errands, with the health screening being one of them. She does that every year, so I wasn't exactly too concerned. Amongst many other things were the new house that we bought, checking up on my uncle, and a couple of other minor businesses. Besides, I think my parents have been married for a long enough time to warrant some time alone with each other. Nobody wants to be tied down to their children for the rest of their lives, right? So last Friday, or was it Thursday, my mother went for a health screening early in the morning, and the results were available for pick-up almost straight after she was done. The results, however, weren't exactly that comforting. The doctors found some kind of growth, like a tumor, at the base of her neck. No one was sure what they were, but the doctor immediately scheduled a blood test on the following Monday. My mother called me after the health screening, starting the Skype conversation with some trivial matters about cooking earlier just so that my sister could cook her own food when she returns from work, and asked if I have been keeping the house intact - like I said, trivial things. Then she told me about the news, and I couldn't stop thinking about it ever since.

It seems like everybody is getting tumors now, as if it is some kind of a trend that everybody wants to catch on to. Now my mother has some kinda tumor, my uncle's cancer is due to tumors, and it just seems like everybody else wants one too. It is certainly not something I wish upon my loved ones, but what can we do about it anyway. I remained calm for the most part, and I haven't talked to my sister about it just yet. I don't suspect that she is still kept in the dark about this anyway, but then it's not like we've addressed the issue with each other. Or rather, my sister never really address any issues with each other - ever. I am glad that my sister and I are not a married couple, because it'd be the worst couple around, truth be told. Anyway, I called my mother up over the weekend to check up on her condition, despite the fact that I knew nothing about what was going on. She didn't tell me a whole lot about the situation, nothing more than the fact that she could only get a blood test by Monday, at the very earliest. I wanted to know more, but even the doctors couldn't do anything more other than that. It sucks to sit at home and not know what is going on with your loved ones. Then again, it is probably worse for my mother, knowing that there are things in her body that aren't supposed to be there.

I asked her about the options that she have, and she said that the doctor told her to get the blood samples first to determine if the tumors are benign or malignant. Here is the thing that I do not understand: why would doctors advice the patients to "observe" the tumor if it is benign? My mother was told by the doctor that if the tumor is malignant, then she should have it removed. That is a fair enough diagnosis, because it makes a lot of sense, right? Then the doctor went on to tell my mother that if the tumor is benign, then we should just wait and observe and, well, see what happens. OK, that is just something that doesn't make any sense to me, and that is what got me furious for the most part. It is a tumor we are talking about, and there is a reason why it is called a "growth" - it grows. I'm not saying that I am a doctor, or a tumor expert or anything like that. Hell, I haven't even taken biology before, and the only medical information I know are from House. I know next to nothing about tumors, but I know this: if it isn't supposed to be there, it isn't supposed to be there. If there is a growth in the body that isn't supposed to be there, it is meant to be cut out and removed. I don't care if it is benign or not, just cut the damn thing out! If there is a chance to remove a dormant volcano from a village, the villagers would be elated to hear that I am sure. They won't care if the volcano hasn't erupted in the past sixty years. What if it does tomorrow? Yeah, exactly.

I guess the doctors haven't lived right next to a damn volcano before, and they probably don't understand that very well. Here's the thing, what if we observe for the next year and it grows to become malignant? Now what, cut it out? Well, why didn't we cut it out in the first place when we found it? It's not like a third arm when it just hangs there and not grow anymore, you know. It is there because there is a problem, and it demands to be removed. It's like seeing an injured soldier on the battlefield, and the medics tell the other soldiers to not pull him out of there because he's only been shot in the stomach and not the head and, thus, not going to die anytime soon. "Let's see what he does next! Maybe he will make it out of there himself". It doesn't work that way! He needs to be pulled out of there or he will die out of blood loss! Maybe this isn't the best analogy around, and the tumor isn't going to miraculously bleed itself out and die - which would be great. This is something that could very potentially develop into something worse than it is. It is easy for them to say, because they are not going to be responsible half a year down the road when the tumor develops into something malignant. I mean, even a malignant tumor must have developed out of something perfectly normal, right? I might be wrong, but I can't be wrong about this: it's not supposed to be there, cut it out.

The blood samples came back today, and two person called me about the results back to back. My aunt called me first to tell me about the situation, but I wanted to hear from my mother herself. She called almost right after my aunt hung up, and she told me that at this point in time, the doctor is deeming it to be something normal, and that we have nothing to worry about. Supposedly, people around her age do get such growths often, and she quoted a medical term in chinese which meant nothing to me. She just kept repeating that, and I was frustrated that she couldn't understand all the medical terminologies that she was churning out. On the phone, she asked me to look up a bunch of ways to decrease cholesterol via food intake, which is strange because my mother is already taking very little meat. She's not even 50KG! Anyway, that's not the point. The next scheduled check-up is in the March to April period, and she'd have to make a trip back again at that time to have it examined further. Yes, that is a full two to three months away from now. I don't care if it is nothing serious at this point, what if it develops into something else within that period of time? It unnerves me, but my mother seems nonchalant about it, oddly.

All this teasing with death makes me somewhat uncomfortable, somehow. People grow old, people get sick, and people die eventually. I understand that, and I suppose I have been equipped with everything that I need to deal with everything that life is going to throw at me at this point. Yet, when it does happen around you, even if it is just a tease, you cannot help but feel uncomfortable about it. And as for my uncle, who has been going through the experimental treatment, he is doing rather well. Surprisingly well, at that. He is supposed to go through six to eight treatments, with the last two being done only if necessary. He is about to go through his sixth treatment, and everything seems somewhat optimistic at this point. Measurements are done once every two treatments, and the last result (after the fourth treatment was done) indicated that 50% of the cancer cells were terminated in his body. That seems like a really good news, and my uncle is really hanging in there by a thick thread of his stubbornness. He is a fighter, and he's never ever been the person to give up so easily. These are just some of the good news out of all the bad news, I suppose. People are getting sick around me, but at the same time they are doing better than expected, you know? I worry, and I worry a lot. But at the same time, I trust in numbers and statistics. These are the things that will get me through.

In times like these, a lot of people would probably turn to prayers for comfort, you know. I don't want to turn this into some theological argument, but let's just say that I did not turn to that for any forms of comfort. I didn't see a point of doing that, because it isn't going to make anybody around me get better just because I mumble a few words to a being of higher order. If there is a plan for something to happen, then it will happen. Shit happens, you know, and we cannot prevent that just because we pray for somebody to feel better. However, I sought comfort in knowing that the numbers are not against me, that people have been through the same situation and came out on the other side just fine. I want to hear statistics, and I want to know case studies. I want to know what the doctors are doing, and I want to know that they are qualified to do their jobs. I don't see a point in praying, because that does not make me feel better at all. Praying makes me feel worse, because it makes me feel like I am out of control, that it is up to somebody else to make me feel better. Well, instead of praying, I figured, I thought learning more about what is going on seems to make more sense, you know? So I looked around for answers, and I will continue to do so. In the mean time, everybody, just hang in there. Let's pull through, let's get the hell out of here.

I've watched a great many films in the past year or so, and it is quite a pity that the first film that I review after my "return", so to speak, is this one. By now, everybody has seen Avatar - and I mean everybody. Everyone has watched Avatar, and it is the new "in" thing, because if you haven't watched it, you are weird. It is like Titanic back in the 90s, and curious to note that they are by the same director, no less. Avatar has been touted to be the movie event of, well, this entire decade perhaps. Everybody has been anticipating for it ever since it was announced, and raving about it after they've watched the film. Ever since the first trailer was released onto the internet a few months ago, my reaction to Avatar has been this: Wow, James Cameron is back at last! Not because I thought the trailer was very special, but because James Cameron has had a great track record with his films. I am a huge fan of Aliens, and Terminator 2 is perhaps one of the best action movie ever. Titanic, while it was more like a badly written love story on a gigantic set, it was still a pretty decent watch. Well, it didn't justify people watching it ten times over, but it made sense, if you know what I mean. Now, here comes Avatar, and here's what I think about it.

If you pick out ten people on the streets and ask them if they liked Avatar, nine out of ten people would tell you that they loved it. Expand the sample size, and you ask one hundred people if they liked Avatar. This time, about ninety-five percent of the people will tell you that they loved it. Here's the thing: there is no denying that Avatar is a box office hit, and it is already the biggest film in terms of the amount of money it has earned of this entire decade anyway. Basically, it has nothing left to prove any longer - it is the king of this decade. As it carries on to be shown in the theaters around the world, people will keep flocking into the theaters for this "cinematic experience", something that it has been advertised as. You know, everything we've seen so far has been boasting about its visuals and special effects. Visuals, visuals, visuals, humans are slaves to those, aren't we? We love pretty things, and we are OK with ignoring everything else about it. Now, back to the sample size thing. If you ask me how I felt about Avatar, I am going to say that I am one of the five percent of people who didn't like it. In fact, to be honest, it is a truly over-rated piece of cinema.

Yes, you people can continue reading this blog entry after you have finished gasping. After all, finding a person who doesn't like Avatar is like finding someone with two properly working heads, each with its own personality and the ability to speak. People like us are hard to come by these days, especially when rave reviews are pouring in from every direction in the media. I get it, everybody loves Avatar, but that does not explain my general indifference towards the film. The same thing was said about The Dark Knight two years ago, and I loved it when I saw it in the theaters. I do pride myself as being a very objective audience, and I dislike something when it certainly deserves my disliking. Avatar did not work for me, and I feel like I have very valid reasons to dislike most of everything about. While trying to give a fair and balanced review of it on a forum, I couldn't come up with more than one good aspect of the film. You guessed it: I said good things about the visuals. Beyond the visuals, though, everything fell flat almost completely. I sat through the nearly three hour long film wanting it to end, and the first thing I did was to turn to my girlfriend to ask for her opinions on it. It's true, and we agreed. We shrugged, and discussed what to eat for dinner.

Let's begin with the good stuff: Avatar is the most visually stunning film I have seen in a very long time. Pretty much everything you see on the screen was generated by a computer somewhere, painstakingly painted frame by frame, pixel by pixel. That takes a lot of talented people and a lot of time (and money), and that is part of why Avatar is so awesome to look at. When you have just 40% of what goes on in the movie to be live-action, that's a lot of grounds to cover if you want to digitally insert elements into your film. I suppose that was necessary in the post-production process, considering how the film was made to be watched in 3D, instead of being altered to be watched in 3D like many other films. When you want that kind of control over your film, it is inevitable that you have to go through every single pixel in order to achieve it. You know, paint in elements digitally to give it a kind of 3D depth that cannot be achieved if you filmed something in an ordinary manner. This film is beautiful to look at, no matter how you want to argue about it. This is special effects done right, and you almost forget that you are watching a film that is saturated with computer generated graphics. All of that, though, represents a huge part of my problem with this film.

I remember watching an interview CNN did with James Cameron, and he was talking about how the technology today has enabled him to make this film with ease. He mentioned about how every blade of grass in the film was painted on, and the natural scenery could be altered over and over again until they got what he was looking for. In the past, he said, it was completely different. He brought up the famous kissing scene in Titanic, right after Rose tells Jack that she is supposedly "flying" at the bow of the ship. In the background, we see this beautiful sunset - that's a real sunset, by the way. Apparently, during filming, James and crew had to wait two weeks for the perfect sunset to come up before shooting that scene. Nowadays, all you have to do is to film something first and then digitally insert a fake sunset later. He seemed very proud of the fact that you can insert pretty much anything you want into a film now. If you want Elvis to come back to life, you can probably do that with a few buttons pressed - no problem. However, I feel that this takes away a part of what makes filmmaking, filmmaking. It becomes almost too convenient and too easy, and this isn't about digitally inserting a creature that does not exist, or a plant that is alien in nature. It's a sunset we are talking about, and it occurs 365 times a year. Even something like that, you have to digitally insert it? I guess I am old school, and I like "keepin' it real". That, to me, is just being lazy.

Next, when I say that the film is visually stunning, I do mean that the specially effects are awesome. However, this film was also advertised to be watched in 3D because it was meant to be watched in 3D. Avatar is my very first 3D movie ever, and I have no way of comparing it with anything else that I have ever seen in my life in terms of 3D. Based on what I have seen in Avatar though, I couldn't help but go, "That's it?". Because really, the only aspects of the 3D graphics that popped out to "wow" me were the plants and the computer monitors that the characters used in the film. Whenever those things were onscreen, you can very clearly see how it benefitted from being 3D, and how everything looked so much better in that medium - that, I get. Everything else in the film, however, didn't seem to benefit from the 3D at all. In fact, I took off my glasses every now and then to see if there is a difference between 2D and 3D. While the image was a little blurred out without the glasses, it pretty much looked exactly the same to me. In fact, the colors were brighter and much more vibrant without the glasses than with the glasses. With the glasses, the film looked dull and boring in terms of the colors, and the world of Pandora was completely drowned out in a scene of, well, dark hues and shades.

Everybody raved about the final battle between the humans and the Na'vi people, and you thought that all the spaceships, all the missiles, all the arrows and explosions involved would somehow take advantage of the 3D, right? No, it didn't. In fact, as you continue to watch the battle scenes, you quickly start to forget that the 3D is even there in the first place. It's not like I expected missiles and arrows to be flying into my face all the time, which would actually make things really cheesy. But one or two wouldn't hurt, right? I thought the action sequence did too little to take advantage of 3D, which meant that visually it was just like any other science fiction battle scenes out there. It kind of felt like the first fifteen minutes of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith when you have a million things happening at the very same time. Sure, great visuals here and there, but they weren't anything to make your heart race or your adrenaline rushing, you know. The final battle really wasn't as good as what people made it out to be. I mean, especially when you have gunships versus arrows, there aren't a lot of things that could potentially go on. I wanted to get involved in the action, but I couldn't. For the most part of the final battle, it was more like watching a bunch of people with high tech weapons exterminating pests in a jungle. The humans fired rockets, the natives exploded. The humans fired more rockets, more natives exploded. Then, of course, a miracle happened. 3/4 of the final battle scene involved the Na'vi pretty much losing, and then the reason why they won wasn't even because of the Na'vi themselves at all. Mother nature stepped in, and of course our hero threw a few grenades. He saved the day, yay.

That aside first, I want to talk a little bit about the story itself. Avatar is a rip-off of Pocahontas and The Last Samurai combined. We have a human infiltrating into the natives' lives to get to know them, and the natives reject his presence at first. Then, a beautiful native starts to teach this human the ways of the forest, taught him how to hunt with bows and arrows and how to live amongst the natives. Then, of course, the human falls in love with the native, and feels that the humans are doing bad things to the natives. So, the human tries to help the natives, and they eventually win. Avatar is Pocahontas because it follows the exact same plot from the beginning till the end. It is Pocahontas high on steroids, and it has gunships instead of men on horses. It is the same as The Last Samurai because, well, do we remember the final battle in The Last Samurai? Oh yes. The Japanese army, with their guns and cannons, fought against the samurai warriors who rode horses and killed people with bows and arrows. Everything is a rip-off of one another, I agree. But when your copying is this obvious, it almost becomes a little bit shameless, don't you think. James Cameron probably banked on people ignoring the simple story line because the visuals are supposedly so great. They are great, but they aren't enough to cover up the mediocre script that he supposedly wrote more than ten years ago.

According to the story, the way that you find your banshee (those flying dragon things) was to see which one is trying to kill you. So, the Na'vi people brings out protagonist onto the edge of a cliff, and he is supposed to find a banshee that is out to kill him. That all made sense to me until the part when one of them actually tries to kill him. Jake, the protagonist, jumps at the banshee and wrestles it to the ground. According to the natives, the way to properly ride any animal on Pandora is to stick their braided hair, which has tentacles in them, into these tubes on the animals to communicate with them almost telepathically. Now, after Jake managed to properly wrestle the banshee to the ground, the Na'vi princess then asked Jake to quickly insert his tentacle things into the animal's tube. OK, if you guys are not getting what I am trying to say here, here it is: Jake just raped a poor animal. He wasn't using his genital to insert it into the animal's genital, sure, but it sure looked like it. Apparently, on Pandora, it is OK for the natives to rape an animal, just as long as no genitals are involved. Forcefully stuffing your antenna into the animal? That's perfectly OK with the people of Pandora. No wonder the humans thought them to be uncivilized. It felt like the banshee just didn't want to be disturbed, and here comes a native who tries to stuff things into its tubes. It's like a prisoner in a prison trying to mind his own business while picking up a bar of soap. Yeah, the poor banshee was raped and everybody got to watch it in 3D.

The characters in this film are bland and, well, nothing really develops in terms of the characterization. Jake does, though, because he went from a non-believer into a believer of "the force" that resides in the forest. Everybody else seems to be unnecessarily one-dimensional despite the three-dimensional film. The main bad guy seems to be bad for the sole reason of being bad. He shoots at innocent natives and kills them all just because he can, and you start to wonder if people give out military ranks randomly in the future. Then we have Giovanni Ribisi's character, the guy who is there for the mineral, and he suddenly decides that it is bad to kill the natives for no apparent reason. Out of nowhere, he decides to look guilty and sorry for the natives, but all he does is to stare helplessly at a computer monitor at the end of the movie. Michelle Rodriquez's character as the tough female pilot is even more puzzling. She doesn't do anything and, out of nowhere, decides to go against her authorities and act on her own. When she died, nobody cared - at least I know I didn't. She could have been out of the film and we wouldn't have cared for her existence at all. She was completely redundant, and I do not blame her for it at all. The script probably did not dictate a very heavy role for her, which caused her character to be almost utterly useless. Oh yeah, she can navigate the flying ships very well... and? Nothing else. She's really there to pilot planes and look tough.

Next, the usage of Deus Ex Machina at critical moments of the film. Deus Ex Machina is latin for "God Machine", and it is plot device where a previously intractable problem is suddenly solved because of some miraculously occurrence that is out of the story's internal logic. For example, there is a scene in the film when you see the princess being stuck behind a tree with all the humans and robots coming behind her. She wants to shoot at those human bastards because they blew up her home, but all she had were bows and arrows - not very smart. Jake is trying to stop her from doing it, but all she wanted to do was to kill some humans. However, by doing so, she'd expose her hiding place, and she'd probably be shot to death soon after. Then, out of nowhere, all the animals of the forest comes to her rescue and tramples all over the humans! How in the world did that happen? Oh yeah, mother nature told the animals to. Seriously, mother nature commanded the animals to come and kill the humans. Suddenly, all the previously ferocious animals become tamed little pets, and they even allowed the Na'vi princess to ride on its back at one point. Then the flying animals swoop down to destroy the flying ships, they start eating the humans, and everything is resolved. The natives win! Woo! Suck it Pocahontas, you didn't have mother nature on your side. The natives have mother nature and a bad plot device on their side.

The next thing I want to talk about is the entire first half of Avatar. From the very beginning of the film up until the sex scene (which really isn't a sex scene), it is basically a combination of a National Geographic episode and Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth. James Cameron seems to be in love with the world that he has created so much that he wants to spend the first half of the film showing you everything there is to show about it. This is what happens in the first half of the film: Oh look, these plants look funny and they act funky. Do as I say Jake you idiot, you are supposed to shoot arrows like that. That is the Na'vi way. Oh, more plants to look at. Don't touch that, try this, no Jake! You idiot. Plants! That animal is dangerous, it can eat you if it wants to. PLANTS! Waterfall. This is the Na'vi way of talking to our ancestors. CATCH A BANSHEE! Floating islands, a lot of minerals in those. PLANTS! Glowing plants. Strange monkeys, strange horses. Tree of Souls! Tree of something. PLANTS! Cute. Oh look at this, this is a sign that you are "the one". Stop doing that, idiot. Plants! Let's mate. It is almost like a documentary feature of Pandora on its own. I understand if you want to show off all your amazing creations, and I get that. However, noticed how Peter Jackson tried to show off Middle Earth, an entirely fictional world? He doesn't spend half of the trilogy talking about where everything came from. This time, it almost feels self-indulgent while he spent all the time he spent showing off everything. Look! I created this weird looking monster thing! Me! And this plant! It glows in the dark! Like those Twilight vampires the sun? Only, we are in the dark, and they glow! Look! Plants! More plants! No, that is not the Na'vi way. Let's come up with a new language so that the Na'vi can speak that way. Insert Na'vi speech here. HEAR THAT?! I created a language! I'm the king of the world! Woo!

Avatar is James Cameron's moment to show off what he has been wanting to do, and people lapped every inch of it up. Aside from the special effects, there really isn't anything to rave about. Notice how I couldn't even be bothered with going into details about the story. You, as the audience, are always going to be about forty minutes ahead of the film, because you know how it is going to turn out for sure. I almost wished for the Na'vi people to lose just so that there'd be some element of surprise in me - no, they won, because mother nature had a divine intervention. Avatar is nothing more than a bloating effort on James Cameron's part to show off what he can do with special effects and 3D. While those were great, he didn't have the story or the characters to match up to it. But humans, like I said, are visually drive creatures, and we create this halo effect when it comes to films as well. If a film looks good, then we can forgive a lot of other bad things that come along with it. It's good that my 3D glasses were uncomfortable and screwed up, because that allowed me to really study the film without being completely distracted by the visuals. I initially gave the film a 7/10, but I think I'd like to lower it to about 6/10, or lower. The more I think about Avatar, the more it feels to me like an overblown film about James Cameron's own little fantasy world badly executed.

6/10

I remember asking the receptionist if he was still in his office, and she pointed me to his office which was right around the corner. I knocked, and he was behind his desk arranging some papers and folders when he noticed me. It took a while, but his smile overcame his face and welcomed me into his office. We didn't talk there, though, and we ended up at the end of the corridor talking about my trip to New York City, his possible trip to Singapore, and my graduation. I remember he asked me about it, and I told him that I have finished my studies for good - or, at least for the time being. He looked at me with a frown in between his brows, somewhat accusingly I thought, and he told me that it was a pity because I should have stuck around for a longer period of time. I'd like to, I'd sure love to do that. But there is an end to everything, every phase in life, and that was my time - my time was up. I asked him for some advices about graduation, because I was a duck right there and then, standing before Dr. Carter, a turmoil of thoughts and emotions beneath my skin. I was petrified about the prospects of graduating, terrified of leaving my comfort zone. I had time, I really did have time. I'd not officially graduate until I receive my certificate, and I know that. Yet, to know that I was on the brink of my "real life", or "the rest of my life", I knew that the next phase is going to be a whole new challenge. New challenges entail new set of unknowns, and that to me is the scariest beast of all.

Dr. Carter's arms were folded before his chest at that time, listening to what I had to say about graduation. Graduation: the beginning of unemployment! I said, as I sarcastically pumped my fist into the air to show my enthusiasm - or, lack thereof. He laughed, and placed his big hands on my shoulder. It was comforting, the pressure, and reassuring, most of all. He lowered his voice a little bit at that time, and he told me that he understood my situation. "Just one thing though," he then went on to say. "Just relax". I have been brought up this way: We study, we study, and we study some more. We study for better grades, we study for better grades than everybody else. We do well at school, we base our lives around numbers and alphabets, and then we feel better about ourselves. We do that for a long time, for the better part of our youths, and then right after that you throw yourself into the next world - the adult world. The world with a lot of working, a lot of stress, and the world where you have to fend for yourself, where every man is for himself for the most part. It is a dog eat dog world there, a cannibalistic world where people would eat you alive if you are not careful. These are not zombies which we can destroy their brains without a care in the world. These are fellow human beings, people who are hungry not for your flesh for money. And you, and everybody else other than themselves, are standing in their way.

I've been taught that since young, especially from the teachers in school. If you screw up in one stage of your life, you are screwed for the rest of your life. I've grown to learn that grades isn't everything, although it helps. It helps with a lot of things, but it certainly isn't everything that a person should be aiming for. I have done well in my college life, in fact pretty damn well if I do say so myself. I don't think I have had a better streak of good grades throughout my academic life, and this time I am more qualified than ever - or so I thought. Even though I am armed with everything that I can possibly arm myself with to protect me from the rest of the world, I am still, in every which way possible, scared. That is the case for every college graduate, I presume, you feel the fear brewing in your stomach, and churning around like expired milk. Or at least I hope dearly that I am not alone in this, that people are supposed to feel the way that I am feeling right now. It hasn't even been a month since I returned from the United States - hell, a month ago, I was still in New York City. It hasn't been that long, and I know of people who have graduated for good, still touring the United States because 1) They have the time. 2) They have the money. It isn't too late, it isn't the end of the line. But. But. There's always a "but".

I don't think everything will miraculously work itself out, and that everything will be fine. But when he told me to relax, I feel he doesn't mean that I should just sit on my butt and wait for something to happen to me, you know? I feel what he meant was that things are not going to take a turn for the worse, that this is not the end of all things. We don't have to worry particularly for too many things, because we only need to do what needs to be done in order for things to work out, you know. I think that is reassuring, it really is. Like the hand he placed on my shoulder that afternoon, I keep reminding myself those words. My mother isn't worried, father isn't either. My friends from local universities took three months before they found a job, and I am not even back from Buffalo for a month at this point. These are the things that comfort me, and also the fact that I am not in this alone. A bunch of my friends just graduated along with me, and a bunch of other people will graduate in a few months as well. We are all in this together, you know, like brothers in arms on a battlefield of some sort. It'd be nice to sit down and talk about our hopes and fears one of these days, at least that'd be more comforting than to wallow in our own worries. I think I should relax, and in the mean time, do what I need to do to make that happen. It can be nerve-wrecking, it really can be. This period of time, although you are really not doing anything, it can be the most stressful period of time.

It's not like I have never transitioned from one phase in my life to another before. I have, many times, but they were always within the same ballpark, you know. The difference between primary school and secondary school was huge, and the same goes to the difference between secondary school and junior college. The workload got heavier and heavier, and the things you had to deal with became more and more challenging. Yet, we still have the examinations, we still had the projects, we still had the assignments. Everything was the same, but varied in more ways than one. School is school, after all, and all you have to do is to adapt to the new lifestyle, and you are good to go. It's like switching from swimming to doing water polo, you know. But this time, the working life, that is something that is completely different. It is different from everything that you've ever done before in your life, and that can be really daunting and overwhelming sometimes. It feels like the time right before my military service, and the thought process that went on in my head. I couldn't help but start to get nervous about what awaited me, you know, because it was a completely different life - or the lack of a life.

This is the part when it gets heavy, this is the part when we have to toughen up all over again. Life seems to be an intermittent series of sessions where we have to toughen ourselves up somehow. I don't think humans like change, or changes that are too dramatic. We like to be comfortable, to know what we are going to expect. There are times when we seek the unexpected, when the unknown excites us. But not when it also has to deal with reality, our real lives, not when there are consequences that are going to affect you directly. Every once in a while, we want to go to a foreign country because we know nothing about that country. There is that excitement in there somewhere, but not when you are gambling with life. Life is such, and we have to live it. We all wished to be somebody else when we were five, or ten, and then you grow up to somebody whom you are not. I suppose, in some ways, none of us want to tell the childhood versions of ourselves who you finally became. My childhood self would probably be disappointed that I didn't eventually become a movie director, that I am still in Singapore and still a part of this massive system. Well, such is life, and it is harsh. It presses down upon, but we do the best that we could to get by. But sometimes, when you think about it, just "getting by" isn't nearly enough any longer.

I think I have figured it out, though, I think I finally know why that is the case. You see, when you are somebody who strives to write a little something everyday, then there is bound to be the day that you begin to burn out, when you feel like you don't want to embark on that kind of expressional journey on a daily basis. I am not the kind of writer, or blogger, who wants to post just about anything everyday. There are funny pictures or interesting quotes that come along all the time, and the sites that I see them are updated pretty frequently throughout the day. Yet, I don't want my blog to turn into a picture blog of sorts, choked with pictures of little things I gather throughout the day. It has always been a part of my heart and my mind, it has always been like a bank where I deposit these things. To exorcize them, to leave them somewhere safer than my head, perhaps. It has always been an effort for me to sort my thoughts out so that it will not jeopardize the rest of who I really am, you know. Every once in a while, I suppose posting song lyrics and such should be fine, but that has never been the sole purpose of what this blog is all about, or what I deem it to be about. This is an attachment, or a long engagement that seems to have gone too far and too deep. It's just a blog, the rational side of me tells, it's really just a blog.

At the same time, though, I didn't want it to sink into a blog that is like the ten million other blogs out there. I didn't want every entry to be a description or a report of what happened in a day of mine, you know. Nobody wants to read about my trip to the supermarket, the brand of rice that I bought, why I preferred to buy the bottle of cream sauce instead of a tomato-based one. Well, perhaps the reasoning would be somewhat interesting, but then there are so many blogs around that I can never be bothered to bring myself to read. I have too much respect for myself to do that, because some blogs are simply not worth your time. Even if they are just a paragraph or two about what they ate, where they went, who they met, what they did - you feel like pulling your brain out from your nostrils via a very long hook, and then proceed to beat your brain into a pulp with your fists. There are times when you start to wonder how anybody would be egoistical enough to expect anybody to read that. They may argue that they blog for themselves, that it is really a personal diary that happens to be online. Well, no such thing exists when you are on the internet, and a blog that isn't locked is for the public eye. A part of you craves for that attention when you leave it available for the rest of the world to see. A part of you wants to be read and be known no matter how mundane your life can become.

So, I didn't want my blog to be about that at all. An everyday account of what happened in my day - who cares? I know I don't care, but the thoughts that come along with the events that happened, now that may count for something indeed. I've heard of a saying before that speaks of how there is something in everything to write about, and I suppose that is true. Yet, if you are also writing with a certain audience in mind, no matter how insignificant or small, you have to realize that although there is something in everything to write about, not everything is worth writing about, however. So, in an effort to control the quality of things, I suppose that was the reason why I so suddenly stopped doing something altogether. It wasn't a conscious decision to do so, it just kinda stopped midway through my trip in Buffalo. Maybe it wasn't even midway, but it certainly felt very immediate. I have proclaimed a couple of times that I was back to writing for good, but I suppose there were too many things going on back then - or too little - to want to do this all over again. Sooner or later, guilt started to set in, and I started to avoid this blog like an ex-lover. You know, like an ex-girlfriend who is in the same class as you, you cannot help but avoid her as often as possible. Worse, if you guys were assign the same group in a project - the horrors.

I cannot guarantee to you, blog, how long I will be sticking around again this time. I still have a brain, things still go through my head, and I've always had the urge to write something. Guilt kept me away, and isn't that a curious emotion to feel towards a blog anyway? It is a time of self-reflection these days, when you are sitting at home alone and you are wondering what exactly you can contribute to, well, everything. Graduation is the beginning of your unemployment, and while that can be a truly terrifying period of time, it is also a time when you get to sit down somewhere quietly and do some reflection. That's what I have been doing, just reflecting upon myself and thinking about what I can do based upon what I do best. When you come right down to it, you have very little talents to boast about, and there are probably a dozen others who can do a better job than you do at practically anything. In a world this competitive, it is almost impossible to stand out, especially when you haven't been trying to do so all your life. I figured that I love writing, and I am somewhat decent at doing it. Writing isn't something that is foreign to me. In fact, I love writing just about anything. Even if it is a note for my sister, I enjoy crafting the message and choosing the words carefully. It expresses who I am, even the littlest things in life.

This is the crossroads, and I suppose any of life's junctions deserves a fresh new start in terms of expressing myself. It is petrifying down here, which is why I managed to ignore the nagging guilt in my chest. It bugs at you and tucks at your veins until you finally give in. You say to yourself "yes, yes!", and you go ahead and begin on the very first line, even if you have written something similar a couple of months ago. This is when everything bears down on you, this is when it seems like the right time to start over. I don't know how long I will last, but this feels right. This, everything, feels appropriate. By now, everything seems comfortable and familiar already, and it doesn't take a lot for me to slip back into my comfort zone. You know, amidst the billions of permutations that my keyboard can conjure, the different combination of letters and buttons, that is the place where I discover my solace and bliss.