tick tock, for whom time tolls

wow. can you believe that one third of 2015 is almost gone? 2015 just bounced in unwelcomed and unbidden and now it's trying to creep slowly out the back door. yes, this is the annual customary 'omg! look where has the time gone?' post. actually, no, it isn't but i just wanted to also scream 'OMG LOOK WHERE HAS THE TIME GONE!!!' because the toilet roll of time seems to be running out faster towards the end!

OK, back to subject at hand. I've started to write 2015 instead of 2014 and am slowly getting used to the change. Until I saw that it is actually the year 2558 instead of 2015! WHA????!!! time warp. stephen hawking has finally managed to manipulate the space and time continuum, was my first thought. actually, it wasn't but it just sounds cuter if i put it that way. :p

apparently, in a galaxy far far away, eons of light years away from ours, some alien planet write this same time plane as 2558. actually, that distant planet is thailand. our 2015 means 2015 A.D (anno domini or in the year of the Lord), ie (isn't it strange that i.e. is read as I.E. and not that is, even though i.e. what it stands for. haha. see, you can't interchange that is with ie. how do you read an abbreviation anyway? so if you read an abbr. as it literally is, then you will read the first part of this sentence as 'so if you read an ae-brrrrrrrr'....which is weird, right?)

anyway back from the extended round the universe tour, thailand's 2558 is 2558 years after the death of Buddha. sigh. that complicates matters for the rest of the world. why are days religion-spurred anyway? shouldn't it be more scientific based? then again, when does time start if not at the mark of something significant? there has always been altercation about religion, even starting from the middle ages or maybe even before then. each wants to pull in more believers and followers to make their religion more powerful, the almighty one. for many who miss the point, religion is synonymous to politics. so, if the whole world, or almost a major portion of it, is writing their year as 2015, does it mean that christianity, or the acknowledgement of the existence of the Lord at the very least, has taken a firm hold on the daily lives of everybody? or perhaps it is just the easy way, for lack of an atheistic one, to mark the passing of time.

to complicate matters further, taiwan marks this year as the 104th year, sounding very much like some golden wedding anniversary. for them, it is the 104th year after the founding of the republic of china....which is taiwan. not china. even though it sounds very much like china' *rolls eyes*  i think that the head of some countries are just too free and are just messing with our minds. it could have been the republic of taiwan... but nah, that will be too distinct and clear-cut. why not mess with generations of school children's heads and make it sound like people's republic of china, which is of course, china. wouldn't that be the greatest legacy and dinner conversation starter?

guest: so, what do you do anyway?
host: me? i single-handedly confused every single school-going child in the world. how's that for my resume!

so, apparently the marking of the passing of time, which sounds like a very scientific thing, is very much politically and religious motivated. don't tell that to my gprs-enabled wall clock which loses 1 second every 10,000 years. i think it is an atheist.

to mark this wonderful occasion (of what? that i am alive, typing and entertaining you with my delightful amusing thoughts) i should start my very own year, just in case one day i become famous one day. henceforth, this year will be known as 1m. 1me. :D

24/3/1m

noiseless noise

it's 44 this year. with age you are suppose to be more comfortable in your skin. more confident and fearless. at least that is what it appears to me when i was growing up and looking at the faces of older people.

and am i?

i guess it is true that you care less about what people think. but i believe that only applies to people  you don't know. at least it does for me. i told my daughter that i am actually shy in nature, and she refused to believe that. her mother? shy? the loud-mouth woman who would randomly talk to strangers and voice out her requests to waiters? she doesn't see the timid and self-conscious side of me. i'm only shy with the people whose opinion i care about, people that i know and people whose judgement i value. she doesn't see when i look down on the floor or shuffle my feet. i'm shy when i actually give a damn, my two personalities a contrariety, like two opposite people living in one body.

but you don't grow more fearless as you grow older. if anything, i am more fearful. i'm afraid of swatting the fly, i am hesitant to destroy the ant, i think twice before i kill the mosquito if it doesn't appear to be interested in my blood. heck, i feel remorse at pulling out the weed!! i can almost hear them screaming for their lives, imploring me to think twice about annihilating their existence. with my own two hands i decide what lives and what doesn't? what gives me that right?! a plant, growing wild and carefree, undesirable only in my opinion, gets ripped out because it doesn't conform. yet what can I do? let the garden grow unkempt and untended? what is the point of having a garden then? it's a jungle out there (can't resist inserting this from the tv series 'monk')

i think too much, i know i do. who is so tortured by taking care of their garden? i am a paranoia begging to be released. i howl in turmoil inside when i have to squash the ants who are going about their day with such nonchalance. i question if i can live in peaceful co-existence with them. millipedes in the soil, cockroaches in the drain, ants in the kitchen, mosquitoes hidden away so i can never see nor hear them. i ignore those i can; like the lizards. i squirm when i have to kill those i can't. at 16 or maybe even 21, i was never thus. i never had a problem arming myself with the pest repellant spray. it was me against them in the survival of the wild. what has gone wrong? have i become more aware as i grow older? too aware?

it is burdensome and laborious living like this. yet i do not see a choice. i cannot determine what i will think or not feel. i can toughen up, like i already am trying, but i cannot not squirm in silence. i cannot be nonchalant about the whole thing. i cannot not be me.

what i need is to lie down on a comfortable daybed, in a dim room somewhere, and have a little chat with ms psychiatrist. i must be slowly going insane. you are witness to the slow degradation of someone's mind.