I went through a painful, life-changing ordeal last night. My laptop died, and was reborn.
Yesterday, I came home and switched on my Compaq Presario 1200: a black screen: "Operating system not found."
I panicked. Went ballistic. Berserked out. I cannot conceive of a life: 1) without internet connection; 2) without my trusty, if temperamental, laptop.
I ran through the house, knocking on my housemates' doors: "My laptop died. Error message: 'Operating system not found'. How how how? Any idea? What to do? What's wrong? How can I make it better? How come this happened?"
They filed down to my room, peered at my laptop, scratched their heads, and concluded that my laptop had "gone to IT heaven".
I was a computer-idiot, and as luck would have it, so were my housemates. I had no one to turn to, and was hyperventilating (that would be.. for the... *fifth* time in about three weeks), so I went bawling to [X], a friend who is, unfortunately, one-third of the globe away.
I brought my laptop over to my absent housemate's room, where I sat in front of her laptop, and hammered out frantic IMs to [X]. Whimpering and whining, and being generally very panicky and sniffly, I proceeded to attempt to resuscitate my comatose laptop, with much patient remote guidance ("What does the screen say?", "Okay.. choose click Enter")and determined prodding ("No this is not a SIGN. It's a sign that you should use anti-virus software").
By the end of five hours, I was half crying from exhaustion and frustration. Exhaustion, because I had slept less than 5 hours the night before, which is another story for another day. Suffice to say that that was the fourth time I had hyperventilated in this three week period, and ended with me shooting off a barrage of OFFLINE icq-messages to the ex-boyfriend for one hour, in the dead of the night. Frustration, because I had seen the blue "Welcome to Setup" screen more than ten times in the span of five hours. Windows would not install properly, and every attempt to reboot the HD would result in the dead black screen with the sinister grey words "Operating system not found", which began to take on the tone of prophetic finality for me.
Discouraged, and physically, mentally, and emotionally drained, I wanted to give up, sit down, and cry. But I was made to go on a forced march. After many reboots, rejigging, and repeats of "Welcome to Setup"; much whining, wailing, and drama; tears, blood, and sweat; and aye.. human rights abuse even!... Finally, a breakthrough was made! It felt like a miracle... the Compaq Presario 1200 equivalent of an NDE (Near-Death Experience), where my baby... at the gleaming white end of the dark tunnel, at the pearly gateways of Tech heaven, was suddenly called back to earth, to the realm of the living, and to the side of the near-deranged (and nearly-bereaved) loved one, by one very persistent Techie geek.
Anti-climactically, after Windows XP successfully installed, the laptop started acting up again as the keyboard keys spazzed out on me. I found myself impotent - unable to even reach google or yahoo, because I could not type out letters. Communication became an impossibility. So instead, with it being nearly 3am, and with me almost catatonic with exhaustion. I went to bed, and woke up this morning to re-install Windows, and rebuild my laptop from scratch.
This reformatting was be the second or third time this particular laptop of mine had undergone a reformat. On previous occasions, another friend [Y], who was in London, had managed to back-up my files and salvaged some of my memories. This time, unfortunately, all was wiped out. Years and years of ICQ message history, my songs, my saved Heroes games - holdovers from another era, scanned pictures, years and years of never-binned documents collecting electronic dust on my virtual shelves, who knows.. maybe diary entries or saved letters: footprints of my life. Washed away from the sands of time by viral waves.
I am sad. Was sad.
After all, I am a sentimentalist. Anyone who knows me, or has seen my room, can attest to that. I never throw anything away. I hoard, like some crazy paranoid squirrel, in preparation for an everlasting winter. Which is sometimes good, like when you need to pull up ancient artifacts to confront someone with; or maybe when, alone on the dim distant shores of the future, you need to wander through the empty halls of your youth, pick up the the pieces of memories, coated with bitterness and cynicism, dust off life's experience, and hold the memories in your hand, feel it on your skin, and remember that once, you laughed, cried, raged, stormed, loved, and were loved.
And yet.
Hoarding can be bad. When the acccumulated memories become sclerotic, and constrict the vessels to the heart.
To go back to the micro-reality of my laptop, the programs, songs, saved documents, and installed applications, had made a labyrinthine mess of my hard-disk. Not only was it difficult to navigate within my congested system. It also made daily life difficult, and steering into the future (installing new apps or downloading new movies or songs) a Herculean task.
So maybe it was good. The death of my operating system. It has at least forced me to make a fresh start. For, given a choice, given any kind of warning that my HD had to be reformatted, I would have tried to salvage everything, and be back in Square One. As it was, everything was swept away: old, and newer. Maybe, I have something to thank virus-creators for. - Who would have thought that?
So my reincarnated laptop is being moulded in the image of its savior, so to speak - let me specify that I'm being entirely literal here. I'm happy to go along because I am a computer-imbecile. Or computer-infant. All my life, in the matters of computers at least, I have allowed myself to be guided by Men: my dad, the ex, [Y], and now [X].
I think subconsciously, I want to be reliant on men. Or I want to find them useful. Because, men can so easily be useless. And given my general disposition... if I found Men entirely useless, I would never seek them out, not having any excuse to do so. On the other hand... maybe it's a self-destructive pattern.. that I'm secretly wired to be dependent on Men.
The solution then, is to be less lazy - to learn to do all Tech (and other) things myself. Then I am guaranteed independence. And maybe, somewhere along the line, without an ostensible reason to seek out Men, if I actually still do, it will be clearly my choice. An active choice I make, not because I have to, but because I want to. Because I will have discovered that Men, or at least one Man, can actually bring me happiness.
Today, my laptop begins afresh then. New programs are being installed. A new browser. Opera was the browser of the ex. This one is the browser of the [X]. A cross-platform Office Suite, more in line with the future and my own goals. Hell, I don't even seem to have Microsoft Office in my new laptop. I am monitoring the changes, still cautious. Trying it out to see if I can get used to it, or if I have to revert to Microsoft everything.
One great perk of the changes is my new toy - an optical mouse! I bought it ages ago, but it would never work with the previous incarnations of my laptop. The mouse would cause my laptop to go all spastic on me. - Personally, I think it has less to do with the OS, then with the how and where of me plugging in the mouse. But, I take it as a good sign anyway... or at least a celebration of change. Now, not only do I have left- and right-click buttons and a scrolling wheel, I also have two kewl buttons at either side of the mouse to click 'page-back' and 'page-forward' for my browsers. Yay me! :)
Maybe, just maybe, my life, like my laptop will start afresh. But, a cautionary word: there have been times I have thought I am ready for change, or I have moved on, and yet, I have remained surprisingly static. Maybe, each 'new change' that I feel coming up.. is a little death. Like a snake that moults periodically, maybe I am progressively casting off my old skin, flaky cells, dead memories. After all, life is continuous cycle of living and dying. Creation and death walk hand in hand: only when something dies, can another spring up in its stead.
"For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth."*
I was reading Petrice's blog and archives. And I found that she's been in London for the past couple years, studying and temping to make ends meet, and to stay on in the country for her bf. Then, a sudden move back to NZ and now Sydney.
And I was thinking...
wondering... whether it is something about being brought up under a 'western'-system of values, that makes you more willing to take risks, unusual paths.
I've always admired strange, Western-ways... the way people would just meet one day, hit it off, and then move in to stay the week after. If I'm not mistaken... that was the case of A, this guy senior to me at work. Now they're married. Or one party would go all the way to some foreign land for a holiday, meet someone, enjoy just their conversation, or amazing mind-blowing sex, then pull all sorts of strings to overcome the countless hurdles: geography, nationality, visas, culture. I'm thinking of this article I once read in one of those women's magazine, about this British woman who went travelling to Indonesia, met this native guy who she'd fallen in love with, nevermind that he doesn't speak much English... and then after 2 years, managed to get him over to UK. And then another story I remember... of two people learning I think it was English, both not knowing much English, but falling in love and getting together anyway.
I admire it. Am in awe. That they can make that kind of leap of faith. And yet I'd never do it myself. Because while part of me is awestruck by their courage, another utterly Asian, pragmatic part of me goes: "Dude. That's just plain stupid! How can you risk it all? For a virtual stranger! That's practically gambling your life away!"
And although I'd rather not do the whole West versus East thing, because I think the concept is rather passe in this increasingly globalised internet age. And because I've always sought to be more progressive, if only to debunk the myth that Asians brought up in the East (let's specify that) are arch-conservative.
Well... among other things, I find that I'm not progressive enough. Perhaps will never be.
Back to my point that although I'd rather not describe the world in terms of West on one hand, and East on the other... I can't help but wonder if the way we were brought up, the values... are not almost diametrically opposite. Or does it boil down to individual countries or families or even all the way down to the individual?
Some people take unconventional paths: unusual, risky, positively dodgy career paths; others are willing to put their careers on hold for their loved one; make sudden switches from a stable, secure, practical, if rather boring career, to something they enjoy.
I admire that. And yet, I cannot yet conceive of myself taking those steps. - In theory, I can I guess. I'm always dreaming of giving it all up for a life of drifting or as some random ranger or volunteer in some far-off, nebulous land. But it's all in theory. It's all speculation right now. And it is a lot easier to say: "Oh yeah I'd like to do it. I'll do it." than to actually DO it.
I don't know if my solid, plodding, uninspired self is due to social conditioning, upbringing, or an innate weakness.
"Everybody's searching for a hero
People need someone to look up to
I never found anyone who fulfilled my need"
I'm also searching for a hero. A model to work off of. Not to work off of exactly... more like a guide. I'm waiting for a blazing ball of light to burst out of the skies to show me the way. A booming voice from above intoning the right path would be nice too.
Not all Asians brought up in Southeast Asia are like that. Some are natural rebels. They thumb their nose at society, give society one big middle finger, and do it their way. I admire them, their courage. That they are so certain of what they want. That they stand up for what they want. Those are the true model crossovers... those who exemplify that there is no difference between East and West. Then there are those who are happy enough to follow the plan. Who are happy with their regular careers. Meet people normally, fall in love, have a good longish time for the relationship to get into the groove, undergo the usual trials and tribulations of relationships without the extra spices of race, religion, culture, nationality added in, and then they marry. Happily forever after in their own way (although there will still be ups and downs of course. Because every cynical modern child knows that two years after Cinderella marries the prince, cracks will appear in the relationship, he'll start philandering, there'll be money issues and maybe a divorce).
Okay... the cynic in me is showing. Oops.
To go back to my earlier point (I ramble too much. Mostly because I'm confused in my head too)... so there are the Asians (brought up in my part of the world) who are rebels; there are the Asians who are happy with the societal norms. Then there are those in the middle. With the fence poking their butt in a decidedly uncomfortable manner.
I'm torn between the one, and the other. Between a secure bank, and the turbulent seas. Between solid pragmatism, and the howling Black Winds, in which you can hear the distorted the cries of a million lost souls, that would drive you mad (I'm thinking of the Black Wind - is that what it was called? - in The Ways in RObert Jordan's Wheel of Time. Yes SW... I've actually read three or four of the books. pretty good stuff. - i can't stand Nynaeve though. wish Lan would like someone else.)
But I admire very much people like Jason. Drifters who follow their noses. Free as a bird, unburdened. And other people who dare. Who take the plunge. To make that leap of faith, whatever it may be.
I think most people on the secure bank in my part of the world would say I'm looking for the most inappropriate heroes in the most unlikely of places. And frankly, part of me agrees.
The above-mentioned inscrutable entries actually do mean something. They refer somewhat obliquely to two phenomena in my life.
- Care to hazard a guess? Email me your guess(es). There are no prizes for guessing correctly, no penalties for guessing wrongly, no guarantees that your submissions will be looked at. In other words: no incentive at all!
But it gives me the chance to finally use the "mailto" code, which I've never done before. Plus, the chance to potentially utilise my snazzy new longest alphabetical email from this site.
All submissions welcome: from the creative to the uninspiring. So, if you're as bored as I am... feel free to spam me. =)
A couple of days ago, it was my *Singaporean* housemate who announced to me: "Eh... Malaysian elections tomorrow."
Me: "*grunts uninterestedly* Really ah? Oh okay. Heh... oops... I'm Malaysian and I didn't even know."
Last night, my other Singaporean housemate skipped downstairs happily at dinner time, leaped into the kitchen dramatically, and pointed his finger at me: "What state are you from?"
Me: (thrown off balance)"Uh... Selangor. .... (warily) Whyyy?"
He: "PAS won Selangor!"
Me: "*sharp cry of alarm* NOOOO! What??? Really? NOoooo!"
He: "HAHAHAHAHAHA"
His gf: "Aiyah no lah. Ta1 zai4 pian4 ni3 (He's lying)"
Me: "Really? You sure? PAS didn't win?? What are the results?"
He: "BN swept all of Malaysia. Including Kelantan and Terengganu."
Me: "Really?? YAY!!!! Wheeeee. Phew. - You *sure* PAS didn't win Selangor?? Phew.. and anyway PAS can never win Selangor... it's the state with most Chinese and Indians. No way." (which was why I was so alarmed. - If *PAS* won *Selangor*, then my parents have to leave the country *now*, and I will be effectively stateless.)
I never thought I would actually see the day that I would cheer on BN.
Growing up, I never cared about Malaysian politics, but I was under the general impression that DAP > MCA. Even now, I could really care less. But BN winning back Terengganu, and maybe even Kelantan, is an important turning point that even I, the Malaysian-politics apathetic bystander, celebrate. That I celebrate the election results probably just goes to show how... tension-filled (?) the past few years have been.
To give a brief background:
+ BN (Barisan Nasional) is the coalition party of three parties divided along ethnic lines - UMNO (Malays), MCA (Chinese), MIC (Indian). This coalition party has been ruling since Independence in 1957.
+ PAS is an Islamic party, which is therefore by default, a party which can only ever possibly appeal to Malays, but not necessarily all Malays, probably just the more Islamic and religious types. My conjecture is that PAS would appeal to more rural voters. But of course, being almost entirely ignorant of Malaysian politics, I don't know much about it. But I know they impose the Islamic Sharia law... whether just on Muslims, or on everyone, I am not certain. All I know is that since 1990, PAS has gained control of Kelantan, one of the northern Malaysian states on the East coast.
Northern Malaysia is more rural and traditional, with a greater Malay presence than southern Malaysian states. Kelantan for example, if I'm not mistaken, has less than 1% Chinese (or was it non-Malay) population. My dad's family hails from Kelantan (at least my grandma and grandad settled in Kelantan when they migrated from Hainan Island, China. And that was where my dad grew up), so I spent many holidays there. My mom's family too, hails from a Northern Malay state - Kedah (again, her parents came down to Kedah from China).
The thing is, for as long as I can remember, PAS has controlled Kelantan. I never questioned it. But I was relieved that I did not stay in Kelantan. And I was thinking it would be best if the family moved out of Kelantan... and to a more appropriate state (like Selangor. haha.), which has eventually happened over the years, whether it is because the younger generation wants to flee from parental interference, or whether because there are more opportunities elsewhere, I am not sure. Be it as it may, only one uncle and his family, as well as my grandma is left in Kelantan now.
So, PAS-controlled Kelantan was one of those unusual states. More backward certainly than my home state. But I liked it, because it had a rustic charm. Compared to my home state, which threw up ever-increasing numbers of skyscrapers, highways, and mammoth malls, Kelantan seemed frozen: suspended in congealed time. And visiting once a year, its unchangingness soothed me, provided a constant in my life. In Kelantan, there'd be goats, turkeys, and chickens walking along in the narrow alleys behind the shophouse which was the family home. You could actually be woken up by roosters crowing.
I don't know if Kelantan's arrested development was due to cultural factors, or due to PAS dominance, but I accepted it as a way of life. Personally, I put it down to PAS, and was happy enough that PAS kept Kelantan of 2003 broadly similar to the Kelantan of my babyhood, a haven from unrelenting progress.
But in 1999, PAS won over Terengganu too. While Terengganu is also another Malay-dominated state, and while I didn't think PAS would make any headway beyond Kelantan, Terengganu, and possibly Kedah, it was nonetheless worrying, that voters would vote for PAS, which represented only the main ethnicity in Malaysia, rather than BN, which ostensibly represents the big three races in Malaysia. If nothing else, BN is the voice of moderation.
So I'm glad that the PAS frontiers have been rolled back. Apparently PAS cried foul for Kelantan, so there is a recount going on for the state. It will be nice if BN got back Kelantan Darul Naim.
There are times, when a whole day will pass by, and when I look back at the day, I sit and wonder: "what was the day for?"
Does it ever happen to you, that you sit up and suddenly wonder: "why do I wake up every day? what is this life about?"
Today, right smack in the middle of the day, it was as if a light bulb was switched on. Or perhaps switched off. I suddenly forget why it is I am alive. I forget what it is that I wake up every day for. I can't think of a single reason for me to continue breathing.
So I don't have a habit of linking at all. But today I'm going to link 2 people, both old friends of mine. Because I want one of them especially, to write (the other girl writes at regular enough intervals). So, I'm using this evil, sneaky tactic to pressurize her to write. *rubs hands together evilly* I know she'll probably just ignore my childishness. And if I know her at all, she is more likely to not write then write, if she feels pushed to it. Stubborn as a mule she is, and very very perverse. Hmm... rather like me in that aspect actually. But dammit - I'm at my wit's end. Get off your ass and write already! Write and the words will flow.
He is the shouting, hand-waving maniac, beyond a thick glass wall at the Departure Terminal of an airport. She is insulated from his sound and fury. She hears nothing of his words, and only sees his frantic gesticulations, his face transfigured by violent contortions, his distorted mouth opening and closing like some bloated goldfish flopping out of water. Unmoved, she looks away, perhaps in response to someone telling her it is time to board, her gaze sweeping over him unseeingly. Languidly, she drops her right shoulder, her fingers closing over the handle of her mini trolley suitcase. She turns her back on him, and walks away.
This is it. This is officially Friday. The last day of Lent Term. All I have do to now, is to go sleep, and when I wake up in a few hours' time, the term will begin to melt away like a bad dream in daylight.
The start of Easter hols also mean of course, that work starts proper. No more goofing around, no more pushing my work around like unwanted vegetables on a dinner plate, no more lame excuses for not studying ("i have to go to school, i can't do any work").
It means I have to start getting the bulldozer, the picks, and the shovels in to unearth my notes from the anonymous masses of papers-magazines-plasticbags-clothes-photos-books that have spread like cancer from the ONE STACK (to keep them all) to the entire area in front of my bed (I have to take a mini jump out of and into bed every morning and night), the free wall adjacent to the door, and every other flat surface in the room.
I will sort all notes into four piles: one for each subject, proceed to order them chronologically, and shove all other superfluous items under my bed, to be ignored until the sun shines once again after the 27th of May.
While clearing out my room, I will naturally find my all-important P45 form. And so I will proceed to fill out my tax claim form, which I will promptly send off... erm... Tuesday maybe??
At some point in time, I should start looking at my Law essay assignment which was due... last Friday? (!!!) And I ought to start by studying Finance, which I have totally not looked at *once* in my entire academic year. (Go me!!)
I am not a cat. I only have one life. I really ought to remind myself of that fact constantly.
I am a star. I will be uber organised from now on. I am in fact, the single most organised and motivated person on the planet, when I choose to be. And yes, I choose to be this time, in the last exam of my compulsory academic life. Also, let's not forget how much I love all my courses. Yes, I will put my nose to the grindstone.
I raise my glass: I wish you well
An aside... I pottered over to J's blog again a couple of days ago. He types up something maybe two, three times a month now? Cusses a lot. Abrupt. This time a comment system is up.
I drop him a comment under an anonymous name, leaving no email, website:
"Hey there [his name].
me: not a stalker
but i drop by."
Why? - Because he's my favorite student scriptwriter-director. Because I remember those not too far off days. He fed us those little fish things from Cold Storage Gourmet. We played with huge water guns at his house. He had the cutest little siblings. The way his head swivels from side to side expressively when he talks, his chin raised, his grin wide. Because I believe he is truly brilliant. And then I heard that he got into atypical ways. From a friend that was. And I was sad.
The first time I ever saw him, was a couple of years before I knew him. He was the supposed secret weapon of his debate team for the debate "Hair is useless". I can still remember some of his arguments. His affected sneer for the opposition. Him reeling off some his more ridiculous points with the aplomb of a court-jester.
In the image I have of him in my mind, he has the half-annoying, unflappable bounce that reminds one of a crazy jack-in-the-box.
So although he will never see this. Or know this. And he will be baffled if he did. Because after all, he barely knew me. But I think he is brilliant. And he was an inspiration once.
- Here's to J. Because aye, everyone needs a life.
From today (Wednesday), I can see it, just across there. And yet, like a wheezing, unfit student in the last 100 metres of her 2.4 km NAPFA* run, to me, the finishing line seems an impossible target, dancing in wicked glee just out of range.
I'm exhausted.
My life is crazy out of control.
Let Saturday come. Let the term end.
I need some rest.
* NAPFA: a physical fitness test that all secondary school + JC students are subjected to in S'pore.
