Just a reflection

I haven't been blogging for ages and have almost forgotten that I had a blog in the first place. Working life is busy but fortunately I like what I am doing and where I am now (mainly attributable to my friends here). How many times had your seniors told you after you graduated that the working world out there would be treacherous, ruthless or schadenfreude-like? I had heard plenty and wondered if that world I was about to enter was going to be a greedy but shrewd hollow mask sucking and chewing the victims' senses stealthily so that they would not realise that their souls were bit by bit depleted. That was scary. That was society...

I read 'Following the wrong God home' by Catherine Lim, the celebrated Singaporean author whose 2 other books were studied as GCSE O' Level Cambridge University text. Like it and hate it. Like the way Singapore politics, culture and ordinary lives were exposed, bare but hidden. Hate the way it left me dwell in Ben's sorrow, pain and hopeless anger. Hate the way I'm bothered by it for so long, unable to convince myself that He's only a character in a story, He isn't even a real person for goodness sake. What if He's real, somewhere, shouting to the sea her poems, burnt twice and returned twice? Will his heart be 'comforted and strengthened'? It's a lie.

I love books but somehow I live in them and so it's bad. John said he shouldn't have brought Catherine Lim's book back or if he had been back earlier, he would have 'confiscated' the book. If he had a chance, he would ask me not to read the Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, but I'm already half way through with no intention to stop. Books are different from movies. I remember movies, but I don't live in them. I get out of the cinema knowing I've just watched a show most of the times. But characters in books etch in my mind, tossing my feelings, refuse to escape and no matter how rational I try to be, I can't stay indifferent.

Work, it comes in handy when one wants to escape the imaginary. Work is real, affecting the real, having the real, calling for the real money and cents. I'm happy with my work, happy with the people I work with and happy with the mini table tennis sessions that I have during lunch or after work with my friends (though I lost 21-3 to David who played with his left hand!). Work brought Jane back from London and Chi Ha back from New York. Unexpected or planned joy, excitement and sweetness, life is full of them. It only depends on whether you want to make it happen.