Me: Why hello again, blog o' rants!
Blog: Back so soon? You were just here yesterday!
Me: Yeah I know. I'm in the moment
Blog: Sweet!
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Ok that's me being a little bit high. Thankfully today's post is not a rant. I let off so much steam yesterday, I feel so much better today. Not counting the times today that I was super stressed halfway through the work day and somewhat emo after lunch coz' one of the puppies my mum is fostering died of Parvovirus during my lunch break in front of me and my mum, which resulted in my mum crying, but thankfully not getting overly emotional and guilty (at least not in front of me). Although it did result is a bit of paranoia among some of my relatives' Whatsapp chat who were all going on about possibility of getting Parvovirus from dogs, and worrying about mum and worrying about my nieces getting infected when they go to visit, and even though I told them repeatedly that the dog strain of Parvovirus can't infect humans so mum and kids are all perfectly safe, they all still continued being paranoid about it. And then I sent them webpage links from reputable sites (not crap like Yahoo Answers which any Tom, Dick and Harry can answer) that reinforced exactly what I was saying, plus a link showing all the possible fatal diseases human can get from swimming in a pool (which my nieces love to do), trying to make a point that humans are more likely to die from a disease contracted while swimming in a pool than getting parvovirus from a dog, and therefore they don't need to worry about getting the virus from the dogs. After which my aunt left the Whatsapp group and my uncle refused to talk to me and said I was being exactly like my mum (which they also complain about), which I assume to mean that I'm being very defensive, among other things my mum does.
All that for trying to tell them they don't need to worry. Which is the exact opposite of what my mum does. Hmm, ok. I guess next time it's better to just encourage unreasonable fear of anything they know absolutely nothing about instead of telling them actual facts with evidence. Coz' being afraid of everything you know nothing about is the best way to live. And this is why I scuba dive and hike in jungles by myself and tried jumping out an airplane for fun once while they're happy to live in a imaginery little plastic bubble of safety. Although tomorrow, the risk of any of us dying in a car crash is way more likely than me dying from a scuba dive, hike, or sky dive. And certainly way more than even the one year old niece getting Parvovirus from a dog. But oh well, scientific facts and statistics are just waaaaay to much for some people to handle.
Anyway, even that sideshow didn't ruin my mood, though it did result in me posting some cryptic posts on my FB account, which may earn me more backlash tomorrow from them (to which I will privately/publicly say in advance on this post, f****** it allll :D :D :D).
On a somewhat related and somewhat not related note, I know from personality questions of some sites I visit that most people get really annoyed with super logical people like myself. Which to me, really explains why a lot of people cannot handle being told they are potentially wrong even when presented with evidence. And such people then tend to react with personal attacks, which sometimes can be mild but annoying, like my uncle saying I'm behaving like my mum, which he knows will bug me. And sometimes, it can outright rude, like on some online forums where I've gotten into active debates with people I don't know, usually religious beliefs. Like now, I'm on this FB group called 'Malaysian Athests, Freethinkers, Agnostics and their friends', which I initially thought would be a great place for debates among reasonably open minded people, but actually it's more like an avenue for people who hate religions to post any piece of news about stupid things religious people do then make fun of them. And sometimes even the posts from hardcore atheists against religion are so stupidly illogical, I can't resist to throw in a differing opinion, and then I get flamed for it. Which has only proven to me that even though atheists claim to be smarter than religious people coz' they rely on science, facts, etc, most of them are just like some religious people who ramble off what they were told by other atheists without thinking if what they're saying makes any sense and then shoot down anyone who challenges their beliefs (in no God). Fortunately most of the ladies on that group and very amicable to talk and debate with, which I enjoy. It's some of the men I've met there who just enjoy throwing insults at me when they can't seem to think of anything worthwhile to say about any point I made. I've been much more thick skinned during such online discussions, thanks to my online encounter with Dennis Chow Chow brain. So far, no I've met online has beaten him in terms of sheer annoyance, though I'm in a way happy that he helped make me so thick skinned.
Ok, I should stop rambling now and overworking my brain at 2.30am with lots of things to do at work. Stop thinking so much, woman, for Pete's sake, you're annoying yourself. @_@
Thursday, March 06, 2014
Wednesday, March 05, 2014
Doggone it!
Hi there, my ranting blog. I've been missing in action for quite a while as usual, and I'm back again with another lovely rant to help me blow off steam. The last time I wrote, I was toying with the idea of shutting down this blog and taking my grouses elsewhere. The idea is still tempting. I now have an idea to start an anonymous blog which I can rant about anything I want without the need to censor any expletives, since no one would know who I am and therefore it would not matter at all if I sounded like an an eternally ungrateful person with severe anger management issues and a cold black heart. I could therefore end every post with an "F***** it all!" and then chuckle to myself with amusement at the joy of getting away with such crass behaviour through the power of internet anonymity. Nevertheless, as fun as it sounds, it's probably also not very healthy for me and also not helping to make the internet a beneficial place to spend time. So I continue to rant here, to the people who care to know what grates me and able to forgive the fact that I now use this blog for nothing else but to vent. :P
Here's the rant of the year: Dogs dogs dogs. Why, do I hate dogs? No, actually I love them very much and I have two of my own whom I treat like my kids and one even helps himself to taking up half my bed on some nights. Unfortunately in the past slightly less than a year, I've become a bit sick of them too. All thanks to the one person in my life who I thought could no longer drive me crazy once I moved out of her house, but was proven very wrong: my mum.
In the past half a year to one year, she has gone absolutely bonkers in her desire to help stray dogs, particularly puppies. My family has been dog lovers all our lives, but that just meant we had dogs as pets. She, however, has in the past few months, picked up dozens of stray puppies from the shoplot area near her place which also happens to be where I work, an area where there have been many stray dogs since the time my family moved there about 3 or 4 years ago. But in those 3 or 4 years, she has never bothered too much about those dogs. Now she makes it a habit to go there every day and regularly feed the stray dogs, drives around to look for puppies to pick up, and even buy medication for injured strays who are too afraid to let her touch them, so she can only put the medicine on their food and let them eat.
This is of course not a bad thing in itself. Most people see her as being quite angelic for putting in the effort she is to help the poor defenseless strays. They don't really know what goes on behind the scenes and how her 'angelic' behaviour is putting a strain on people around me. Especially me. But also my dad, who has to live in a mini dog pound at his condo on a daily basis now.
Initially, when my mum started doing her doggy rescue work, I was ok to help out as I thought it was going to be a temporary affair. She found a litter of black puppies and wanted to help put them up for adoption, and I knew how to do it online coz' I'd done it before with some stray pups near my place. Then after those all got adopted, she found another litter of black pups. Then those got adopted, and she found ANOTHER litter of black pups. It got to the point where I thought she had a black puppy detector attached to her head. But she found other coloured puppies too, so it would have been a mostly black puppy detector.
If she was taking care of them joyfully and without complaint, it probably would not be so hard on my dad. But my mum being my mum who loves to complain about everything, just couldn't...not complain. Even before that she always went on about how tired she was everyday from school work and house chores, etc etc. And after she was taking care of puppies, she started complaing about how tired she was taking care of them and even bugging my dad to help her, scolding him when he didn't. Which of course isn't fair to him considering she's the one who wanted to take care of them.
And then she started wanting to keep some puppies, one of which was a very friendly mongrel female who loved licking people to death. I could already tell when she was small that she would grow to be too big and active to stay in a condo, and wondered why on earth my mum would want to give herself more work taking care of her. And I was right, coz' today after 6 months, she's a too-tall-for-a-condo, lanky and mischieous mutt who loves to try stealing food off the table, launches herself at people's faces to lick them, climbs all over the living room table and couch and pisses everywhere everytime anyone comes home coz' she's so excited and for some reason has yet to learn to control her bladder.
But that wasn't enough.
One day she found one single stray, very young male puppy with a bad case of mange near my office. She gave him a foster name, Pooch, nursed him back to health, all the time pushing me to help look to adopters. We spent several weekends taking him to this pet shop named Ohana at Kota Damansara where they hold pet adoption drives for indepedant rescuers, and we'd just sit there for hours hoping someone would want him. Eventually the shop owner found an interested adopter, who was a nice family of three, staying in a house with a nice big garden. It was the perfect environment for a growing active mongrel dog.
Except that once they took him and kept him a few days, my mum started missing him terribly and going on about how special he was to her. So much that she even cried and forced my dad to go take the dog back from the adopters who also liked the dog very much.
I was absolutely livid that she did that. She removed the dog from a big house with a nice garden and good family to a condo with limited space. She wanted to keep a third dog, in addition to one crazy old Shih Tzu and another relatively young mongrel female. Both she and Pooch would grow too big and active for a condo. Plus they would live for another estimated 10-15 years, while my mum is already in her 60's and losig energy everyday. In a few more years, she will probably not be able to handle them due to age, or touch wood, passes on before the dogs. And then I'd be left with the headache of having to get adopted two old mongrels who are not used to living outdoors, which very few people would be interested in. And because of that, I would most likely have to send them to PAWS or SPCA where they have maybe 2 weeks to get adopted, if not, they would likely be euthanized. That's the 'good life' she was condemning the two mongrels she loves sooo much to. But even when I told her the facts, which she knows herself, she still wanted to keep them. In a few years, guaranteed, they will become my problem. And I can't keep them myself as I already have my own dogs. In addition to that, it made the adopters as well as the shop owner of Ohana very upset. So upset that the next time I went back to the shop by myself to put up for adoption another stray pup which my mum had found, the shop owner didn't nothing to help me push for the dog to be adopted, like post on her shop's FB page like she did before. My wonderful mum effectively shut off a good avenue for gettting a precious pups adopted, because of her own inability to detach from one dog.
The only good thing about her taking back Pooch was that I used it as leverage to make her stop complaining to my dad about being tired or forcing him to clean up, because I told her if the dogs were making her stressful and tired, then I would gladly take them away and get them adopted by other people without ever telling them who took them. From then on, she stopped complaining about the dogs.
The bad thing is that she continues to display a lack of ability to emotionally detach herself from the dogs she rescues or helps. Like when some puppies died under her care because they had a deadly virus, she became very guilty and thought it was her fault, even though there was no way she would have known or prevented it. But she still gets emotional, which means I have to deal with her emotions, which of course affects me as well. Another example, she recently gave for adoption a black female dog she named Sheba which she was keeping for abut 2 months. She was a well behaved quiet dog, and of course, my mum got attached to her and just one day after she was adopted, my mum started showing signs of wanting her back. When I said she can't have another dog, I thought she'd understand given she apparently 'felt terrible' for taking back Pooch and upsetting a lot of people. Instead her response was "Why? Because I'm too old?". At which point I couldn't do anything but shut up before a blood vessel broke in my head, so I called my brother in the US, yes, that brother halfway around the world, to talk to my mum who absolutely refuses to listen to reason from me, the daughter who is right here with her.
Previously there was also a friendly female dog who I and my animal loving German boss like to feed outside my office. Eventually my mum found her and got attached to her too, then one day before Chinese New Year, the dog went missing and she became anxious and thought some Vietnamese workers had caught and eaten the dog. When I told her to relax and said maybe someone adopted her, she wouldn't believe it. Coz' that's what she tends to do, assume the worst instead of the best. And while assuming the worse, she lays blame on herself, or others. And so the 'best' part of that was when she asked me why I didn't choose to adopt that friendly dog instead of my current 2nd dog, Angel, since there were people who were interested in adopting Angel. In a way saying it's my fault that something potentially bad happened to this friendly stray because I chose to keep another dog instead of her. How the heck is that in any way fair to me? The friendly stray was eventually found perfectly alive, well and happily being kept by the shop owner of the shop just behind my office, just as I said.
In addition to the emotional stress, there's of course also the time burden added onto me by all her dog saving activities. I'm currently already super busy with work, so much that there is months old work due which I have not been able to catch up with. And because of super puppy rescuing mum, I have to spend time posting up new puppies for adoption, dealing with potential adopters, answering all the stupid questions they have which I usually have already explained on my posts, such as what what breed they are when, you know, calling them 'Mixed breed' strays is clearly not descriptive enough, and dogs only deserve to be loved if they are of a certain breed. I like to call that a special form of stupid prejudice called 'breedism'. Take note of that, Oxford Dictionary.
If that's not time consuming enough, I also had to take care of some dogs she found, not because she can't take care of them herself, but because I'm so damn afraid that she'll get attached to another dog and decide to keep it or get too emotional about letting it go to an adopter. Taking care of dogs of course adds more stress to me, ot just in terms of the massive time taken for clean-up, but also because they destroy things, and make noise which disturbs the neighbours when I'm not around. It's extremely tiring, especially with my current workload and having to take care of my own dogs. It got so much to handle that I eventually complained to my mum that I simply cannot take care of any more dogs, and she said ok, she'll just take care of them herself. Those kind of arguments also aren't good for our relationship, hence more stress.
Even that promise is something she couldn't live up to, coz' right now as I type this, she has a total of 12 dogs under her care, and had sent one white female puppy at the vet for a few days to recover from a fractured leg. And to reduce costs of boarding, she asked me to take care of the white puppy until it recovers. And I can't make her keep it because 3 pups at her place came down with Parvovirus, which is potentially fatal to young, non-vaccinated pups. I spent one and freakin' half hours at the vet waiting just to pick up the puppy, because the doctor is always super busy. And every time I go to the vet because of one of puppy rescuing mum's charges, that's the normal amount of time it takes. That white pup is now sleeping on my dog's mattress as I type this because earlier she was whining all night wanting to be let out of my back room. Which she will probably start doing again once I go to bed and the whole day tomorrow while I'm at work and the rest of the days I keep her, disturbing all my neighbours and causing me more stress.
My mum's insanity has made her the running joke among some of my family members, including her own brothers and sister. And while I initially thought they understood how stressed it was making me, it got round that some of them even said that I started her crazy dog saving behaviour because I was the one who started 'rescuing dogs'. Which, sorry to say about my own relatives, only showed another level of stupid which I don't have a word for yet, for making me their convenient scapegoat. The dogs I supposedly 'rescued' were not ones I found through active searching like my mum does, but pups that were at the area where I frequently walked my dog (when I used to have only one dog) and pups which were born right outside my house coz' the silly mama dog liked my dog so much, she gave birth right there. Under those circumstances, I thought it was only the right thing to foster the mama dog and pups and get them adopted, and I considered it a temporary inconvenience which I can live with. I had no idea it would give my mother crazy dog rescuing ambitions, and not once did I encourage her to try it herself, and certainly I did not want to become permanently inconvenienced by her activities. And yet because of that, I somehow became the one responsible for my mother going off the deep end by becoming the puppy saviour of the world. Well, I told those relatives exactly how I felt about that, and thankfully they got the point.
Another annoying side effect is now whenever I post anything on my Facebook page related to animals, I have a fear that some smarty pants will make a wise crack about me being the next animal rescuing Steve irwin or something along those lines. Which already happened once when I posted a photo of a Papua New Guinean cat begging for food and my uncle joked about me wanting to rescue cats. Needless to say, I did not find it funny, and he thought I was being too serious. Well, when you're not the one whose life is being turned upside down by your crazy dog rescuing mother, you would probably find a bit more humour in it, but I was unfortunately having a bit more trouble in that department.
All this is especially maddening considering before I moved out, I actually brought home my current dog, Friendster, and wanted to keep him in the condo. I said I'd take care of him, but at the time, she was like, keep a mongrel in the condo? How proposterous! Plus I can't even remember to feed the Shih Tzu or take care of my own laundry, no freakin' way in hell I could take care of my own dog (paraphrased quote). Yeah, fast forward couple of years later and I'm doing a pretty good job taking care of TWO dogs (who far as I can tell, have not starved to death yet) and doing my laundry, and taking care of my own house. And she has two mongrels in the house in addition to the Shih Tzu. Dogs which give her much more work in addition to all the work she used to complain about me not helping out much with even though I did do, just at my own time and pace which never good enough or fast enough for her. Sweet.
Seriously, all I wanted was a nice normal, peaceful life, you know, the typical female dream of getting a nice guy, getting married, having some cute kids and having a happy family, with a proud mum and dad. You know, the kind of mum that people gush about on Mother's Day, the one that patiently teaches you, listens to your troubles without judging, takes interest in the things you love doing, most importantly, encourages you to do the best in whatever you do. Not the one that's regularly impatient, take offense if you refuse to apply her advice, has no interest or even ridicules anything you enjoy doing and critisizes freely. And now doing crazy dog saving activities in what is possible some misguided attempt to redeem herself in her mind that she can still be a good parent after 'failing' with me, which is doing nothing to help our relationship and just making me more exasperated with her. And in her mind, I've become so much my own person that I'm nothing like her, which unfortunately isn't true coz' if I were nothing like her, I'd be more optismistic and hopeful and much less paranoid about getting into a marriage that would crash and burn, which has resulted in me being super picky with guys and being still single and increasingly jaded every day.
At the risk of sounding like an ungrateful kid, while I know without doubt that she does love and has loved me all my life, I do feel that most of my life has been badly screwed up by my mother and I don't really have any clue how to change that other than haul myself out of the country. Which I actually still don't really want to do. Coz' I'll miss Malaysian food and weather too darn much, and rebuilding a new social life elsewhere is a more daunting task than I'd like to try. And even if I did migrate, I'm pretty sure she'll find another way to drive me insane. Lol.
For today I shall implement the idea of my imaginary anonymous blog and say "F******* it all".
Here's the rant of the year: Dogs dogs dogs. Why, do I hate dogs? No, actually I love them very much and I have two of my own whom I treat like my kids and one even helps himself to taking up half my bed on some nights. Unfortunately in the past slightly less than a year, I've become a bit sick of them too. All thanks to the one person in my life who I thought could no longer drive me crazy once I moved out of her house, but was proven very wrong: my mum.
In the past half a year to one year, she has gone absolutely bonkers in her desire to help stray dogs, particularly puppies. My family has been dog lovers all our lives, but that just meant we had dogs as pets. She, however, has in the past few months, picked up dozens of stray puppies from the shoplot area near her place which also happens to be where I work, an area where there have been many stray dogs since the time my family moved there about 3 or 4 years ago. But in those 3 or 4 years, she has never bothered too much about those dogs. Now she makes it a habit to go there every day and regularly feed the stray dogs, drives around to look for puppies to pick up, and even buy medication for injured strays who are too afraid to let her touch them, so she can only put the medicine on their food and let them eat.
This is of course not a bad thing in itself. Most people see her as being quite angelic for putting in the effort she is to help the poor defenseless strays. They don't really know what goes on behind the scenes and how her 'angelic' behaviour is putting a strain on people around me. Especially me. But also my dad, who has to live in a mini dog pound at his condo on a daily basis now.
Initially, when my mum started doing her doggy rescue work, I was ok to help out as I thought it was going to be a temporary affair. She found a litter of black puppies and wanted to help put them up for adoption, and I knew how to do it online coz' I'd done it before with some stray pups near my place. Then after those all got adopted, she found another litter of black pups. Then those got adopted, and she found ANOTHER litter of black pups. It got to the point where I thought she had a black puppy detector attached to her head. But she found other coloured puppies too, so it would have been a mostly black puppy detector.
If she was taking care of them joyfully and without complaint, it probably would not be so hard on my dad. But my mum being my mum who loves to complain about everything, just couldn't...not complain. Even before that she always went on about how tired she was everyday from school work and house chores, etc etc. And after she was taking care of puppies, she started complaing about how tired she was taking care of them and even bugging my dad to help her, scolding him when he didn't. Which of course isn't fair to him considering she's the one who wanted to take care of them.
And then she started wanting to keep some puppies, one of which was a very friendly mongrel female who loved licking people to death. I could already tell when she was small that she would grow to be too big and active to stay in a condo, and wondered why on earth my mum would want to give herself more work taking care of her. And I was right, coz' today after 6 months, she's a too-tall-for-a-condo, lanky and mischieous mutt who loves to try stealing food off the table, launches herself at people's faces to lick them, climbs all over the living room table and couch and pisses everywhere everytime anyone comes home coz' she's so excited and for some reason has yet to learn to control her bladder.
But that wasn't enough.
One day she found one single stray, very young male puppy with a bad case of mange near my office. She gave him a foster name, Pooch, nursed him back to health, all the time pushing me to help look to adopters. We spent several weekends taking him to this pet shop named Ohana at Kota Damansara where they hold pet adoption drives for indepedant rescuers, and we'd just sit there for hours hoping someone would want him. Eventually the shop owner found an interested adopter, who was a nice family of three, staying in a house with a nice big garden. It was the perfect environment for a growing active mongrel dog.
Except that once they took him and kept him a few days, my mum started missing him terribly and going on about how special he was to her. So much that she even cried and forced my dad to go take the dog back from the adopters who also liked the dog very much.
I was absolutely livid that she did that. She removed the dog from a big house with a nice garden and good family to a condo with limited space. She wanted to keep a third dog, in addition to one crazy old Shih Tzu and another relatively young mongrel female. Both she and Pooch would grow too big and active for a condo. Plus they would live for another estimated 10-15 years, while my mum is already in her 60's and losig energy everyday. In a few more years, she will probably not be able to handle them due to age, or touch wood, passes on before the dogs. And then I'd be left with the headache of having to get adopted two old mongrels who are not used to living outdoors, which very few people would be interested in. And because of that, I would most likely have to send them to PAWS or SPCA where they have maybe 2 weeks to get adopted, if not, they would likely be euthanized. That's the 'good life' she was condemning the two mongrels she loves sooo much to. But even when I told her the facts, which she knows herself, she still wanted to keep them. In a few years, guaranteed, they will become my problem. And I can't keep them myself as I already have my own dogs. In addition to that, it made the adopters as well as the shop owner of Ohana very upset. So upset that the next time I went back to the shop by myself to put up for adoption another stray pup which my mum had found, the shop owner didn't nothing to help me push for the dog to be adopted, like post on her shop's FB page like she did before. My wonderful mum effectively shut off a good avenue for gettting a precious pups adopted, because of her own inability to detach from one dog.
The only good thing about her taking back Pooch was that I used it as leverage to make her stop complaining to my dad about being tired or forcing him to clean up, because I told her if the dogs were making her stressful and tired, then I would gladly take them away and get them adopted by other people without ever telling them who took them. From then on, she stopped complaining about the dogs.
The bad thing is that she continues to display a lack of ability to emotionally detach herself from the dogs she rescues or helps. Like when some puppies died under her care because they had a deadly virus, she became very guilty and thought it was her fault, even though there was no way she would have known or prevented it. But she still gets emotional, which means I have to deal with her emotions, which of course affects me as well. Another example, she recently gave for adoption a black female dog she named Sheba which she was keeping for abut 2 months. She was a well behaved quiet dog, and of course, my mum got attached to her and just one day after she was adopted, my mum started showing signs of wanting her back. When I said she can't have another dog, I thought she'd understand given she apparently 'felt terrible' for taking back Pooch and upsetting a lot of people. Instead her response was "Why? Because I'm too old?". At which point I couldn't do anything but shut up before a blood vessel broke in my head, so I called my brother in the US, yes, that brother halfway around the world, to talk to my mum who absolutely refuses to listen to reason from me, the daughter who is right here with her.
Previously there was also a friendly female dog who I and my animal loving German boss like to feed outside my office. Eventually my mum found her and got attached to her too, then one day before Chinese New Year, the dog went missing and she became anxious and thought some Vietnamese workers had caught and eaten the dog. When I told her to relax and said maybe someone adopted her, she wouldn't believe it. Coz' that's what she tends to do, assume the worst instead of the best. And while assuming the worse, she lays blame on herself, or others. And so the 'best' part of that was when she asked me why I didn't choose to adopt that friendly dog instead of my current 2nd dog, Angel, since there were people who were interested in adopting Angel. In a way saying it's my fault that something potentially bad happened to this friendly stray because I chose to keep another dog instead of her. How the heck is that in any way fair to me? The friendly stray was eventually found perfectly alive, well and happily being kept by the shop owner of the shop just behind my office, just as I said.
In addition to the emotional stress, there's of course also the time burden added onto me by all her dog saving activities. I'm currently already super busy with work, so much that there is months old work due which I have not been able to catch up with. And because of super puppy rescuing mum, I have to spend time posting up new puppies for adoption, dealing with potential adopters, answering all the stupid questions they have which I usually have already explained on my posts, such as what what breed they are when, you know, calling them 'Mixed breed' strays is clearly not descriptive enough, and dogs only deserve to be loved if they are of a certain breed. I like to call that a special form of stupid prejudice called 'breedism'. Take note of that, Oxford Dictionary.
If that's not time consuming enough, I also had to take care of some dogs she found, not because she can't take care of them herself, but because I'm so damn afraid that she'll get attached to another dog and decide to keep it or get too emotional about letting it go to an adopter. Taking care of dogs of course adds more stress to me, ot just in terms of the massive time taken for clean-up, but also because they destroy things, and make noise which disturbs the neighbours when I'm not around. It's extremely tiring, especially with my current workload and having to take care of my own dogs. It got so much to handle that I eventually complained to my mum that I simply cannot take care of any more dogs, and she said ok, she'll just take care of them herself. Those kind of arguments also aren't good for our relationship, hence more stress.
Even that promise is something she couldn't live up to, coz' right now as I type this, she has a total of 12 dogs under her care, and had sent one white female puppy at the vet for a few days to recover from a fractured leg. And to reduce costs of boarding, she asked me to take care of the white puppy until it recovers. And I can't make her keep it because 3 pups at her place came down with Parvovirus, which is potentially fatal to young, non-vaccinated pups. I spent one and freakin' half hours at the vet waiting just to pick up the puppy, because the doctor is always super busy. And every time I go to the vet because of one of puppy rescuing mum's charges, that's the normal amount of time it takes. That white pup is now sleeping on my dog's mattress as I type this because earlier she was whining all night wanting to be let out of my back room. Which she will probably start doing again once I go to bed and the whole day tomorrow while I'm at work and the rest of the days I keep her, disturbing all my neighbours and causing me more stress.
My mum's insanity has made her the running joke among some of my family members, including her own brothers and sister. And while I initially thought they understood how stressed it was making me, it got round that some of them even said that I started her crazy dog saving behaviour because I was the one who started 'rescuing dogs'. Which, sorry to say about my own relatives, only showed another level of stupid which I don't have a word for yet, for making me their convenient scapegoat. The dogs I supposedly 'rescued' were not ones I found through active searching like my mum does, but pups that were at the area where I frequently walked my dog (when I used to have only one dog) and pups which were born right outside my house coz' the silly mama dog liked my dog so much, she gave birth right there. Under those circumstances, I thought it was only the right thing to foster the mama dog and pups and get them adopted, and I considered it a temporary inconvenience which I can live with. I had no idea it would give my mother crazy dog rescuing ambitions, and not once did I encourage her to try it herself, and certainly I did not want to become permanently inconvenienced by her activities. And yet because of that, I somehow became the one responsible for my mother going off the deep end by becoming the puppy saviour of the world. Well, I told those relatives exactly how I felt about that, and thankfully they got the point.
Another annoying side effect is now whenever I post anything on my Facebook page related to animals, I have a fear that some smarty pants will make a wise crack about me being the next animal rescuing Steve irwin or something along those lines. Which already happened once when I posted a photo of a Papua New Guinean cat begging for food and my uncle joked about me wanting to rescue cats. Needless to say, I did not find it funny, and he thought I was being too serious. Well, when you're not the one whose life is being turned upside down by your crazy dog rescuing mother, you would probably find a bit more humour in it, but I was unfortunately having a bit more trouble in that department.
All this is especially maddening considering before I moved out, I actually brought home my current dog, Friendster, and wanted to keep him in the condo. I said I'd take care of him, but at the time, she was like, keep a mongrel in the condo? How proposterous! Plus I can't even remember to feed the Shih Tzu or take care of my own laundry, no freakin' way in hell I could take care of my own dog (paraphrased quote). Yeah, fast forward couple of years later and I'm doing a pretty good job taking care of TWO dogs (who far as I can tell, have not starved to death yet) and doing my laundry, and taking care of my own house. And she has two mongrels in the house in addition to the Shih Tzu. Dogs which give her much more work in addition to all the work she used to complain about me not helping out much with even though I did do, just at my own time and pace which never good enough or fast enough for her. Sweet.
Seriously, all I wanted was a nice normal, peaceful life, you know, the typical female dream of getting a nice guy, getting married, having some cute kids and having a happy family, with a proud mum and dad. You know, the kind of mum that people gush about on Mother's Day, the one that patiently teaches you, listens to your troubles without judging, takes interest in the things you love doing, most importantly, encourages you to do the best in whatever you do. Not the one that's regularly impatient, take offense if you refuse to apply her advice, has no interest or even ridicules anything you enjoy doing and critisizes freely. And now doing crazy dog saving activities in what is possible some misguided attempt to redeem herself in her mind that she can still be a good parent after 'failing' with me, which is doing nothing to help our relationship and just making me more exasperated with her. And in her mind, I've become so much my own person that I'm nothing like her, which unfortunately isn't true coz' if I were nothing like her, I'd be more optismistic and hopeful and much less paranoid about getting into a marriage that would crash and burn, which has resulted in me being super picky with guys and being still single and increasingly jaded every day.
At the risk of sounding like an ungrateful kid, while I know without doubt that she does love and has loved me all my life, I do feel that most of my life has been badly screwed up by my mother and I don't really have any clue how to change that other than haul myself out of the country. Which I actually still don't really want to do. Coz' I'll miss Malaysian food and weather too darn much, and rebuilding a new social life elsewhere is a more daunting task than I'd like to try. And even if I did migrate, I'm pretty sure she'll find another way to drive me insane. Lol.
For today I shall implement the idea of my imaginary anonymous blog and say "F******* it all".
Thursday, January 02, 2014
Another year survived!
It's new year's day (slightly after new year's day now in Malaysia, since I'm writing this after midnight) and that means time for reflection on the past year, wondering where all the time went, feeling sorry at how little was accomplished, making goals for the new year and failing to do them all over again. Hey, at least I'm honest about it. :)
I considered shutting down this blog several times in the past few months, as I am a bit sad that most of my posts here which are now focused on my more personal life have been more of rants than more positive updates. And now I am trying to reduce my ranting so I don't seem like an seem like a bratty incessant complainer, hence I wonder if this blog is still relevant for me since I post about travel, food, fun experiences and other less emotional revealing and personal things on my other blog). As much as I would like to post more positive stuff, most of the good things that happen to me are mostly work related, which of course is not something I would blabber too much about on the net.
So I haven't quite decided what to do with this blog yet, so I'm keeping it around for good measure and self embarassment whenever I read back the nonsense I've been writing here for the past 10 years. Yeah, this blog is a decade old. Damn, I feel old.
So in the spirit of the new year, here's the summary of the events and my reflections on year 2013. Usually people start with the positive, then the negative, but I'm going to do it the other way round, so at least my readers don't feel so meh at the end. :)
THE BAD
1) A doggone year
One of the major changes this year is the amount of activities I've been doing with my mum, which has been mainly been dog/puppy rescuing activities. By rescuing, we mean getting puppies adopted and getting older stray dog spayed before relocating them back to where we found them, which is usually near my workplace where there are many strays.
It's good of course that we are doing this to help the animals and reduce the stray population, and it's also good that at least I'm going some form of activity with my mum, who for reasons I've ranted about on previous posts, I'd usually just not do anything with. The bad thing is that my mum is going overboard with this dog rescuing thing and it's making me exhausted and annoyed. Exhausted because all this takes up time which is getting more difficult for me due to my work. Annoyed because if she's the one doing the fostering of the dogs, it leads to other problems, such as her getting more tired and then complaining to my father on why he doesn't help out (which he shouldn't be bugged to do since he wasn't the one who picked up the dogs in the first place, so naturally he doesn't like it). And another problem which is even worse is that she tends to get attached to the older puppies too darn easily. Young pups in a group are fine as long as they are still too young and blur to show her appreciation and love. But when they are older, loving, friendly, and playful, she gets easily attached. The worst case was Pooch the ugly pup which she found at my office area trapped in some metal cylinder thing with a bad case of mange. She took care of him for a couple of months til he was healthy and his mange disappeared and became very good looking. We also kept looking for an adopter for him, even going to Ohana Pet shop in Kota Damansara which organizes weekly pet adoption drives for independant rescuers like us who do not come from an animal NGO. This involved us sitting at the pet shop for hours waiting for visitors to see the dogs for adoption and hope ours get taken, and I did this for several weeks with Pooch. Through Ohana, we found a fantastic family with a nice house and garden who adopted Pooch. It was the perfect home for him. And yet my mum started become depressed and crying because she missed him, and eventually my dad went to take Pooch back from the adopter, who already liked the dog. It made them upset, it made the owner of Ohana upset, and it made me super mad. In addition to my time wasted, far as I was concerned, she was not thinking about what was best for the dog, considering she's old, had already adopted another mongrel which I already thought is not a good dog to keep in a condo, in addition to her Shih Tzu, plus she's over 60 years old and always complaining of being tired. And as terrible as I may sound, the reality is that she is quite likely to pass away before these two newly adopted young dogs, and they will be much more harder to get adopted into good homes when they are adults, especially considering they will not be used to staying in a garden. But she didn't care, she wanted the dog so much, it hardly mattered that she gave up Pooch's chance at staying at a nice home with a big garden for him to play with and a family that can take care of him for the rest of his life. Far as I see it, eventually Pooch and the other mongrel will eventually become my problem. I know my mum wants to be loved, so I offered a more feasible idea such adopting an older toy dog, instead of a younger active dog that will grow too big and tire her out even more, but she refused. And now Ohana's owner does not even bother to help me when I have a new dog for adoption, just because of what my mum did.
Due to that, I no longer allow my mum to foster dogs, but she still goes all crazy wanting to rescue and rehome them anyway. So whenever she gets into that mood, I now have to do the fostering. And it's tiring, since I have my full time job and my own two dogs to take care of.
Considering that my mum was never this crazy about dog rescuing until after I moved out AND after she knew I had helped foster a nursing mother and her pups and helped to get the pups adopted, I suspect this is her form of empty nest syndrome. And perhaps some severely misguided attempt at trying to spend more time with me, which far as I'm concerned is not really improving our relationship much, considering the frustration she is putting me through even though I'm out of the house (which is the main reason why I moved out in the first place). It's especially annoying because she tires herself out doing this, and yet before I moved out, she constantly complained about always being so busy and being tired. I thought my moving out would somewhat reduce some of the workload she got from me, like washing my clothes, cleaning my room (all of which I always say I will do but she always does it first then complain that I'm too slow, when the fact is I'm busy working and I have a higher tolerance for uncleanliness than her), so it irks me that after trying to help to reduce her workload but not being patient enough to allow me time to do the work at my own pace, she ends up giving herself more work to do with these dogs.
See, I'm ranting again already. Enough of that.
2) The trouble with guys
Ah yes, failed attempted relationships with members of the opposite gender were another favorite ranting topic of mine this year. And every year before that for as far as I can remember. April and May this year were tough as someone I'd known and cared about for a few years turned out to be completely not what I thought he was, and I never met him again since April due to that. And then I met another guy who I got along incredibly well with to the point where I was thinking it could potentially be a great relationship, until he abruptly ditched me for the stupid reason of not being able to get over his ex-relationships. Well, it was more complicated than that, but the fact that I tried to be understanding towards him but he simply completely shut me off, really disappointed me. A lot. Thankfully, I have gotten over that by now and removed all traces of contact with him from my phone with no remorse. But those couple of months, I was so annoyed with life, you could probably cook an egg with all the steam emanating from my head.
3) The Chow Chow brain
Undoubtedly one of the most memorable parts of 2013 was my online encounter with one of the most annoying human being on the planets, who after I wrote an article for FMT which went kinda viral, decided to take it upon himself to make a point about how pathetic my viral article was compared to his grand efforts to make Malaysia a better place (berating strangers online apparently being one of his modus operandi in improving the country. Still not sure how that works). That complete story was in my post here, so I won't go into it again. However, as terrible as he made me feel, in the end, that encounter, in addition my sad experiences with guys, kinda helped me towards becoming more of what I wanted to be. Although some people might think that how I've change isn't actually good at all, but to me I prefer to think of it as good. And hence I move on to the good parts of 2013.
THE GOOD
1) A good year at the office
As I said earlier, I prefer not to talk too much about work. So I can only say that I've been quite fortunate that even though I'm not the ambitious type in terms of climbing the corporate ladder, promotions and whatnot, for some reason, my bosses like what I'm doing and they reward me for it. I got several increments this year and a promotion. And I'm also lucky to have very open superiors and colleagues whom I get along with very well. Even though work has been super busy at some points, I know that I will be appreciated for it. For that I am thankful.
2) Emotional robotism
Yeah, that subheading doesn't sound that good, and as I mentioned, some people probably wouldn't think it's good, but I do. Last year I had wanted to become more in control of my emotions, almost emotionless in a sense, so I wouldn't become so easily emo or depressed in case of future sad experiences, whether it be with guys, family or whatever. Which in my understanding meant I also had to not feel so happy when good things happen, coz' logically when something makes me happy, and that something eventually is removed from my life, then I will be sad again. So if I don't allow myself to be too happy, then I won't get too sad when it's gone. And I also could not allow myself to hope for too much, as that would lead to disappointment if not met. And I really don't like being disappointed.
Needless to say, that was not an easy state of mind to develop, but well, my encounter with the Chow Chow brain in addition to my two relationships that turned sour pushed me so far over the limits of my tolerance that I quite suddenly found that I had pretty much achieved that emotionless state. Pretty much, but not completely, as I still feel easily annoyed and mad when stupid people tick me off, but not emo or sad about stuff that used to make me that way. I have never mentioned it here, even though I've been that way for several months, as I wasn't quite sure if it was going to be a temporary thing and that I would soon be bawling internally again after some time for some reason or another. But it's been almost half a year and I still feel that way. Well yeah, I still get sad about stuff sometimes, but the impact is a lot less. I'm actually not quite sure how to explain it. I'm not emotionless in the sense that I lost my ability to care about people's problems or feel a sense of injustice when something is not right. Just when it comes to my own personal problems, I don't feel as sucky as I used to. And to me, that's great!
And for my final bit of positive summary for the year....
3) WTH, another guy?
Oh yes, I've actually met another new guy I like, and I've actually been getting along well with him since around July til now. I decided not to mention him til now, since after my previous experiences left me sour and I didn't know how long this one would last. Nor do I know if it is going to last, as for the moment, we are doing not moving any further than occasionally enjoying each other's company and chats, but he's not really sure if he wants to make it any more serious than that. It's a possibility, but far as I'm concerned and in line my policy of not having hope to avoid disappointment, I have to consider it a bigger possibility that he will eventually leave. Right now, he's one of the sweetest guys I've met, and he does not annoy me at all (which is really almost impossible these days), and he's the type of guy who should already be married with two kids, but for some reason he isn't. Or at least, that's what he tells me, but for all I know he could have a secret family somewhere I don't know about coz' that the kinda of weird stuff that happens to me.
For the moment, I enjoy what we have now and glad that I have someone to talk to ever so often, although I keep in mind not to get too expectant of any further developments in the relationship as it could go bust at any time, and I don't want my heart to go bust with it. I keep my options open at all times, with the mindset that if I meet someone else who's interested, and this guy still doesn't want to commit, I will not be hesistant to end it without feeling sucky. Yes, I understand that sounds sad and kind of cold, but after all I've experienced, that's the way the cookie has to crumble.
So that's my year, with it's bad and somewhat good. This year, my goal is to make the most of my single life and do more crazy fun stuff, like join some flash mobs or go bungee jumping or travel to some weird places like the African Safari or Galapagos Island. Don't think all of that will happen, and I'll probably ends up being swamped with work and having too much annual leave leftover again, but it's good to dream and all.
Happy New Year people! I will spare you all a depressing Cyanide vs. Happiness comic strip this year. No guarantees for 2015 though.
I considered shutting down this blog several times in the past few months, as I am a bit sad that most of my posts here which are now focused on my more personal life have been more of rants than more positive updates. And now I am trying to reduce my ranting so I don't seem like an seem like a bratty incessant complainer, hence I wonder if this blog is still relevant for me since I post about travel, food, fun experiences and other less emotional revealing and personal things on my other blog). As much as I would like to post more positive stuff, most of the good things that happen to me are mostly work related, which of course is not something I would blabber too much about on the net.
So I haven't quite decided what to do with this blog yet, so I'm keeping it around for good measure and self embarassment whenever I read back the nonsense I've been writing here for the past 10 years. Yeah, this blog is a decade old. Damn, I feel old.
So in the spirit of the new year, here's the summary of the events and my reflections on year 2013. Usually people start with the positive, then the negative, but I'm going to do it the other way round, so at least my readers don't feel so meh at the end. :)
THE BAD
1) A doggone year
One of the major changes this year is the amount of activities I've been doing with my mum, which has been mainly been dog/puppy rescuing activities. By rescuing, we mean getting puppies adopted and getting older stray dog spayed before relocating them back to where we found them, which is usually near my workplace where there are many strays.
It's good of course that we are doing this to help the animals and reduce the stray population, and it's also good that at least I'm going some form of activity with my mum, who for reasons I've ranted about on previous posts, I'd usually just not do anything with. The bad thing is that my mum is going overboard with this dog rescuing thing and it's making me exhausted and annoyed. Exhausted because all this takes up time which is getting more difficult for me due to my work. Annoyed because if she's the one doing the fostering of the dogs, it leads to other problems, such as her getting more tired and then complaining to my father on why he doesn't help out (which he shouldn't be bugged to do since he wasn't the one who picked up the dogs in the first place, so naturally he doesn't like it). And another problem which is even worse is that she tends to get attached to the older puppies too darn easily. Young pups in a group are fine as long as they are still too young and blur to show her appreciation and love. But when they are older, loving, friendly, and playful, she gets easily attached. The worst case was Pooch the ugly pup which she found at my office area trapped in some metal cylinder thing with a bad case of mange. She took care of him for a couple of months til he was healthy and his mange disappeared and became very good looking. We also kept looking for an adopter for him, even going to Ohana Pet shop in Kota Damansara which organizes weekly pet adoption drives for independant rescuers like us who do not come from an animal NGO. This involved us sitting at the pet shop for hours waiting for visitors to see the dogs for adoption and hope ours get taken, and I did this for several weeks with Pooch. Through Ohana, we found a fantastic family with a nice house and garden who adopted Pooch. It was the perfect home for him. And yet my mum started become depressed and crying because she missed him, and eventually my dad went to take Pooch back from the adopter, who already liked the dog. It made them upset, it made the owner of Ohana upset, and it made me super mad. In addition to my time wasted, far as I was concerned, she was not thinking about what was best for the dog, considering she's old, had already adopted another mongrel which I already thought is not a good dog to keep in a condo, in addition to her Shih Tzu, plus she's over 60 years old and always complaining of being tired. And as terrible as I may sound, the reality is that she is quite likely to pass away before these two newly adopted young dogs, and they will be much more harder to get adopted into good homes when they are adults, especially considering they will not be used to staying in a garden. But she didn't care, she wanted the dog so much, it hardly mattered that she gave up Pooch's chance at staying at a nice home with a big garden for him to play with and a family that can take care of him for the rest of his life. Far as I see it, eventually Pooch and the other mongrel will eventually become my problem. I know my mum wants to be loved, so I offered a more feasible idea such adopting an older toy dog, instead of a younger active dog that will grow too big and tire her out even more, but she refused. And now Ohana's owner does not even bother to help me when I have a new dog for adoption, just because of what my mum did.
Due to that, I no longer allow my mum to foster dogs, but she still goes all crazy wanting to rescue and rehome them anyway. So whenever she gets into that mood, I now have to do the fostering. And it's tiring, since I have my full time job and my own two dogs to take care of.
Considering that my mum was never this crazy about dog rescuing until after I moved out AND after she knew I had helped foster a nursing mother and her pups and helped to get the pups adopted, I suspect this is her form of empty nest syndrome. And perhaps some severely misguided attempt at trying to spend more time with me, which far as I'm concerned is not really improving our relationship much, considering the frustration she is putting me through even though I'm out of the house (which is the main reason why I moved out in the first place). It's especially annoying because she tires herself out doing this, and yet before I moved out, she constantly complained about always being so busy and being tired. I thought my moving out would somewhat reduce some of the workload she got from me, like washing my clothes, cleaning my room (all of which I always say I will do but she always does it first then complain that I'm too slow, when the fact is I'm busy working and I have a higher tolerance for uncleanliness than her), so it irks me that after trying to help to reduce her workload but not being patient enough to allow me time to do the work at my own pace, she ends up giving herself more work to do with these dogs.
See, I'm ranting again already. Enough of that.
2) The trouble with guys
Ah yes, failed attempted relationships with members of the opposite gender were another favorite ranting topic of mine this year. And every year before that for as far as I can remember. April and May this year were tough as someone I'd known and cared about for a few years turned out to be completely not what I thought he was, and I never met him again since April due to that. And then I met another guy who I got along incredibly well with to the point where I was thinking it could potentially be a great relationship, until he abruptly ditched me for the stupid reason of not being able to get over his ex-relationships. Well, it was more complicated than that, but the fact that I tried to be understanding towards him but he simply completely shut me off, really disappointed me. A lot. Thankfully, I have gotten over that by now and removed all traces of contact with him from my phone with no remorse. But those couple of months, I was so annoyed with life, you could probably cook an egg with all the steam emanating from my head.
3) The Chow Chow brain
Undoubtedly one of the most memorable parts of 2013 was my online encounter with one of the most annoying human being on the planets, who after I wrote an article for FMT which went kinda viral, decided to take it upon himself to make a point about how pathetic my viral article was compared to his grand efforts to make Malaysia a better place (berating strangers online apparently being one of his modus operandi in improving the country. Still not sure how that works). That complete story was in my post here, so I won't go into it again. However, as terrible as he made me feel, in the end, that encounter, in addition my sad experiences with guys, kinda helped me towards becoming more of what I wanted to be. Although some people might think that how I've change isn't actually good at all, but to me I prefer to think of it as good. And hence I move on to the good parts of 2013.
THE GOOD
1) A good year at the office
As I said earlier, I prefer not to talk too much about work. So I can only say that I've been quite fortunate that even though I'm not the ambitious type in terms of climbing the corporate ladder, promotions and whatnot, for some reason, my bosses like what I'm doing and they reward me for it. I got several increments this year and a promotion. And I'm also lucky to have very open superiors and colleagues whom I get along with very well. Even though work has been super busy at some points, I know that I will be appreciated for it. For that I am thankful.
2) Emotional robotism
Yeah, that subheading doesn't sound that good, and as I mentioned, some people probably wouldn't think it's good, but I do. Last year I had wanted to become more in control of my emotions, almost emotionless in a sense, so I wouldn't become so easily emo or depressed in case of future sad experiences, whether it be with guys, family or whatever. Which in my understanding meant I also had to not feel so happy when good things happen, coz' logically when something makes me happy, and that something eventually is removed from my life, then I will be sad again. So if I don't allow myself to be too happy, then I won't get too sad when it's gone. And I also could not allow myself to hope for too much, as that would lead to disappointment if not met. And I really don't like being disappointed.
Needless to say, that was not an easy state of mind to develop, but well, my encounter with the Chow Chow brain in addition to my two relationships that turned sour pushed me so far over the limits of my tolerance that I quite suddenly found that I had pretty much achieved that emotionless state. Pretty much, but not completely, as I still feel easily annoyed and mad when stupid people tick me off, but not emo or sad about stuff that used to make me that way. I have never mentioned it here, even though I've been that way for several months, as I wasn't quite sure if it was going to be a temporary thing and that I would soon be bawling internally again after some time for some reason or another. But it's been almost half a year and I still feel that way. Well yeah, I still get sad about stuff sometimes, but the impact is a lot less. I'm actually not quite sure how to explain it. I'm not emotionless in the sense that I lost my ability to care about people's problems or feel a sense of injustice when something is not right. Just when it comes to my own personal problems, I don't feel as sucky as I used to. And to me, that's great!
And for my final bit of positive summary for the year....
3) WTH, another guy?
Oh yes, I've actually met another new guy I like, and I've actually been getting along well with him since around July til now. I decided not to mention him til now, since after my previous experiences left me sour and I didn't know how long this one would last. Nor do I know if it is going to last, as for the moment, we are doing not moving any further than occasionally enjoying each other's company and chats, but he's not really sure if he wants to make it any more serious than that. It's a possibility, but far as I'm concerned and in line my policy of not having hope to avoid disappointment, I have to consider it a bigger possibility that he will eventually leave. Right now, he's one of the sweetest guys I've met, and he does not annoy me at all (which is really almost impossible these days), and he's the type of guy who should already be married with two kids, but for some reason he isn't. Or at least, that's what he tells me, but for all I know he could have a secret family somewhere I don't know about coz' that the kinda of weird stuff that happens to me.
For the moment, I enjoy what we have now and glad that I have someone to talk to ever so often, although I keep in mind not to get too expectant of any further developments in the relationship as it could go bust at any time, and I don't want my heart to go bust with it. I keep my options open at all times, with the mindset that if I meet someone else who's interested, and this guy still doesn't want to commit, I will not be hesistant to end it without feeling sucky. Yes, I understand that sounds sad and kind of cold, but after all I've experienced, that's the way the cookie has to crumble.
So that's my year, with it's bad and somewhat good. This year, my goal is to make the most of my single life and do more crazy fun stuff, like join some flash mobs or go bungee jumping or travel to some weird places like the African Safari or Galapagos Island. Don't think all of that will happen, and I'll probably ends up being swamped with work and having too much annual leave leftover again, but it's good to dream and all.
Happy New Year people! I will spare you all a depressing Cyanide vs. Happiness comic strip this year. No guarantees for 2015 though.
Sunday, August 18, 2013
Therapy session with a pighead
I know I shouldn't have, but I couldn't resist continuing my online conversation with that twerp who fouled up my FB inbox with his presumptious, arrogant behaviour making fun of my one little article. True it was made me very upset, as evident from my last post. Fortunately, I have a bit more maturity and self esteem than a regular teenager, else I might have ended up like one of those unfortunate cyber bullied suicide cases. However, I have to admit that I'm not really that mature. After getting it into my head that he was just an annoying nobody trying to prove himself better than me, I've spent all my life being mostly nice and trying to refrain from being insulting or berating even to obviously obnoxious people online, and here was the one person whom I could unleashed all the frustrations I have on and not worry about him feeling bad about it, since he wasn't capable about feeling bad about anything. Again, won't go into the details, but it was quite therapeutic in a way. But I've had my fun and not angry anymore, so decided to block his royal pompousness.
I know I kinda made it out like I feel like there are only pigheads in my life, which is of course not true, and it would be a very lame reason to want to leave the country. I have many good friends, those who actually read this ranting blog included, whom would certainly be missed if I really actually get round to moving over to another country. I don't actually know if such a move would really make me happy... maybe it would make it worse. But on the logical side of things, I have the future of 3 nieces to think about and looking at the way things are going here, I can't help but think that the only way to ensure a good future for them is to make sure they can get an easy ticket out of the country through me. Oh well, still depends on my own luck on getting a PR. Perhaps I should try looking for an Aussie guy online to help along the process.
Huuuhuhu, I'm kidding.
I know I kinda made it out like I feel like there are only pigheads in my life, which is of course not true, and it would be a very lame reason to want to leave the country. I have many good friends, those who actually read this ranting blog included, whom would certainly be missed if I really actually get round to moving over to another country. I don't actually know if such a move would really make me happy... maybe it would make it worse. But on the logical side of things, I have the future of 3 nieces to think about and looking at the way things are going here, I can't help but think that the only way to ensure a good future for them is to make sure they can get an easy ticket out of the country through me. Oh well, still depends on my own luck on getting a PR. Perhaps I should try looking for an Aussie guy online to help along the process.
Huuuhuhu, I'm kidding.
Friday, August 16, 2013
A ugly face of a 'true Malaysian'
So my other blog got quite a bit of attention recently due to a certain article I wrote that went pretty viral, and this blog might be feeling a tad bit lonely these days. I'd been doing much better in the past couple of months after a couple of years of brooding and making this piece of online space my little place to brood. I started caring about things a little bigger than myself, being more aware of the news and especially taking to the FMT website and enjoying little debates with commenters there. As things were getting rather kooky in this country over the past weeks and seeing a lot of angry tirades online about certain issues, I felt motivated to write that article, wanting to do a local language version as it was meant for a certain target audience, but decided to do an English version first so gauge if my opinion really reflected that of others. It got a lot more nods than I expected, even making it onto the blog of a local respected politician. Of course, that made me little proud of myself, like my first little achievement since coming out of my emotional slump, but the intention wasn't to inflate my ego, it was to try and bridge a gap. So I wrote the local version, not really knowing if it would really make any difference to make things better but helping at least it would to a few people. But feeling a bit frustrated too coz' I know it's not much, and I even considered a few times just quitting my job and becoming one of the things I'd never thought I'd want to be... a damn politician. I even had the funny idea of taking a few weeks off to travel to Sabah and Sarawak and educate the poor people there so they know a little better next election, but it was a crazy idea of one person and I know I can't make much difference without a team at least.
Couple of days ago, along comes this message on my FB from some Chinese guy I don't know who pretty much starts berating me for that article and making all sorts of assumptions about my intentions. That I just want attention to stoke my ego. That I'm just a 'keyboard warrior' with no idea what I'm writing coz' I'm a typical Chinese who have little friends of that race which makes me 'less Malaysian', and urbanites don't need that message anymore (which I personally feel is mostly but not completely true, based on my observation and even my own colleagues). The best part was him calling me a college kid, which I shall take as a compliment that I look younger than I am. But all in all, it was infuriating that some stranger pretty much came up and flung all sorts of assumptions about what kind of person I am and how little I actually know based on one article I wrote. His argument? That the real work needed to be done on the ground with the rural folks, not urban ones, which is what he and a group of multiracial friends are doing. Which is great work, of course, which I respect. What I didn't respect was him proclaiming that made him so much more of a true Malaysian than me, in addition to his continued beration of me and accusations that I didn't know what really needs to be done to make the country a better place. The fact that I had aging parents and the future educational costs of 3 nieces to think about is just an excuse. And my explanation that I don't have many friends of 'that' race is mainly because I'm generally untrusting and introverted in the first place, with people of any race, was just me trying to get 'sympathy'. Even when I did admit that I did feel little proud of that article because it was the first big thing I did since my depression and having lived a life where I felt like my opinons don't matter even to my own mum, this insensitive turd had only one word for me. Pathetic. All this coming from someone who is supporting the same side as me, and claims himself to be a 'true Malaysian', but only made himself out to be the most arrogant and judgemental person I've met in my life.
I don't intend to go into the details of my conversation of him. I do think I was an idiot trying to justify myself to another idiot who knew nothing about me but pretended like he knows everything. If he had talked with a little politeness and explained his work, I would have been so much more supportive of his work. But instead his behaviour was just like the infuriating leaders of this country. Not making any effort to understand the problems of people different from them and then misjudging their intentions, and provoking people to become angry and inflamed to the point of petty arguments about stupid things that don't matter in the big picture. The only difference is that anyone misjudged by the leaders gets charged and thrown in jail, while this turd was just being an annoying little prick. So much that he got the honour of being on the receiving end of my own little tirade of foul language that no one else in my life has ever heard me speak.
Actually, it wasn't so much me being mad at him. After all, he's just a stranger trying to stoke his own ego by belittling some miniscule efforts of an ordinary person while he runs back to his gang and makes fun of me like an immature high school jock (yeah, his royal pompousness told me that's exactly what he would do). What I am really mad at is why this had to happen, after so long of trying to work through my internal issues and trying to open up with people. And especially, after almost decided to go back to church again, which I did last week when I visited CBC. Why, just when I'm starting to turn my life around and have a bit more faith in the goodness of humanity does one stupid annoying little imbecile have to come along and unravel everything? If it's true that God works through people, I can only wonder what great and awesome plan he has for sending the biggest pighead in the country into my life to undermine my self-worth, in addition to all the other pigheads I've known although their pigheadedness was nothing compared to this. Really, God? I don't think I think I ask for much, just one person among 7 billion people whom I can really connect with so I don't have to deal with a messed up world by myself. Even in my latest attempt to join some social events to get to know more people, the curse of meeting weird guys strikes me again. Which is another story in itself which I decided was not worth ranting about anymore, and just consider another amusing addition to the collection of weird guys I meet. At least this time, I know I'm not the only one who sees him as weird, coz' it turned out he and I have mutual friends whom when I asked them about el weirdo, spent an entire night telling me the many ways in which he pissed them off.
I guess it's still for the best to assume there really is no God, so the most logical explanation is that I must have done something really terrible in a past life that karma is coming back to bite me in the ass. Whatever it is, whatever motivation I had to make something little better of myself and try and make some small difference is kinda down the tube right now. I had recently starting asking some friends in Australia about life there and prospects of getting a PR, just considering a move as an option. But after meeting the face of a true Malaysian and finding out a true Malaysian has the ugliest character among everyone I've ever met, I guess my decision is pretty much made up. No need to stay in a country where one is not appreciated, not by leaders and not even by people supposed to be on the same camp. I guess that makes me selfish and immature, but hey, if life's a bitch, after a while, you just need to be a bitch right back.
Couple of days ago, along comes this message on my FB from some Chinese guy I don't know who pretty much starts berating me for that article and making all sorts of assumptions about my intentions. That I just want attention to stoke my ego. That I'm just a 'keyboard warrior' with no idea what I'm writing coz' I'm a typical Chinese who have little friends of that race which makes me 'less Malaysian', and urbanites don't need that message anymore (which I personally feel is mostly but not completely true, based on my observation and even my own colleagues). The best part was him calling me a college kid, which I shall take as a compliment that I look younger than I am. But all in all, it was infuriating that some stranger pretty much came up and flung all sorts of assumptions about what kind of person I am and how little I actually know based on one article I wrote. His argument? That the real work needed to be done on the ground with the rural folks, not urban ones, which is what he and a group of multiracial friends are doing. Which is great work, of course, which I respect. What I didn't respect was him proclaiming that made him so much more of a true Malaysian than me, in addition to his continued beration of me and accusations that I didn't know what really needs to be done to make the country a better place. The fact that I had aging parents and the future educational costs of 3 nieces to think about is just an excuse. And my explanation that I don't have many friends of 'that' race is mainly because I'm generally untrusting and introverted in the first place, with people of any race, was just me trying to get 'sympathy'. Even when I did admit that I did feel little proud of that article because it was the first big thing I did since my depression and having lived a life where I felt like my opinons don't matter even to my own mum, this insensitive turd had only one word for me. Pathetic. All this coming from someone who is supporting the same side as me, and claims himself to be a 'true Malaysian', but only made himself out to be the most arrogant and judgemental person I've met in my life.
I don't intend to go into the details of my conversation of him. I do think I was an idiot trying to justify myself to another idiot who knew nothing about me but pretended like he knows everything. If he had talked with a little politeness and explained his work, I would have been so much more supportive of his work. But instead his behaviour was just like the infuriating leaders of this country. Not making any effort to understand the problems of people different from them and then misjudging their intentions, and provoking people to become angry and inflamed to the point of petty arguments about stupid things that don't matter in the big picture. The only difference is that anyone misjudged by the leaders gets charged and thrown in jail, while this turd was just being an annoying little prick. So much that he got the honour of being on the receiving end of my own little tirade of foul language that no one else in my life has ever heard me speak.
Actually, it wasn't so much me being mad at him. After all, he's just a stranger trying to stoke his own ego by belittling some miniscule efforts of an ordinary person while he runs back to his gang and makes fun of me like an immature high school jock (yeah, his royal pompousness told me that's exactly what he would do). What I am really mad at is why this had to happen, after so long of trying to work through my internal issues and trying to open up with people. And especially, after almost decided to go back to church again, which I did last week when I visited CBC. Why, just when I'm starting to turn my life around and have a bit more faith in the goodness of humanity does one stupid annoying little imbecile have to come along and unravel everything? If it's true that God works through people, I can only wonder what great and awesome plan he has for sending the biggest pighead in the country into my life to undermine my self-worth, in addition to all the other pigheads I've known although their pigheadedness was nothing compared to this. Really, God? I don't think I think I ask for much, just one person among 7 billion people whom I can really connect with so I don't have to deal with a messed up world by myself. Even in my latest attempt to join some social events to get to know more people, the curse of meeting weird guys strikes me again. Which is another story in itself which I decided was not worth ranting about anymore, and just consider another amusing addition to the collection of weird guys I meet. At least this time, I know I'm not the only one who sees him as weird, coz' it turned out he and I have mutual friends whom when I asked them about el weirdo, spent an entire night telling me the many ways in which he pissed them off.
I guess it's still for the best to assume there really is no God, so the most logical explanation is that I must have done something really terrible in a past life that karma is coming back to bite me in the ass. Whatever it is, whatever motivation I had to make something little better of myself and try and make some small difference is kinda down the tube right now. I had recently starting asking some friends in Australia about life there and prospects of getting a PR, just considering a move as an option. But after meeting the face of a true Malaysian and finding out a true Malaysian has the ugliest character among everyone I've ever met, I guess my decision is pretty much made up. No need to stay in a country where one is not appreciated, not by leaders and not even by people supposed to be on the same camp. I guess that makes me selfish and immature, but hey, if life's a bitch, after a while, you just need to be a bitch right back.
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