mess of a scribble.

oblivious.

i seem to be associated to that word quite a lot.

that's not very good.

i ordered the bowl of sweet potato soup, oblivious of whatever the price was. ma later told me that pa really wanted to order the soup but because of the increase in its price, he didn't order it. their partial honesty(refer to exhibit A) still kind of annoys me till today, and it's hard to change them, so i'll have to really get to understand them. sigh.

'partial honesty' exhibit A:

me : pa do you want the sweet potato soup?
pa : if you can't finish it you can give it to me.
me : no i meant if you want the soup, not whether if i can finish it or not.
pa : if you can't finish it i can eat it.
me : ...

behold. i don't understand too. from when we sat down eating all the way to exiting the mall, i saw a lot of people. i thought about the nation's plunging economy. but all of these people, who come from so many different backgrounds, were at the mall.

i saw a group of security guards, still in their full uniforms. they were probably foreign workers because i could not understand their language. they exited the supermarket all carrying one bag of things--not a lot of stuff bought for five full-grown men, but they all seemed genuinely excited and happy. i wanted to believe they were heading home together.

i spotted all of the people walking through the supermarket, with their small and big trolleys of stuff. from an aunty who bought five plastic red chairs, to others who are just choosing their share of food to buy. i thought to myself: are we not all spending frugally in this time of chaos, where national graphs that had to do with finances are no longer hoped to be surging upwards, but are undeniably diving down into a deep abyss, stretching far beyond the x-axis? yet, here they were, all of these people with their UNIQLO plastic bags, Aeon BIG cards, well-dressed selves.

where is the struggle? is it something we cannot see with our physical eyes, or simply something that is not there? i felt both the struggle and the extreme calm in people. i could almost hear their stories, about how life has been so hard, so tough and rough on them, and how they need to raise a family, feed their children, do odd jobs to make ends meet--and then there's the other end of the noise, where all i hear is chatter and laughter and some sort of a very false and made-up hope. where people spend out of an emotion, out of a want rather than a need. where money slips out of their fingers like water, in exchange for a new jacket, a new packet of cheese, a new pair of shoes, a new magazine, a new... thing.

life becomes painfully real when you need to pay the bills to survive the month.

i don't look forward to that life, but i hope i'll try hard enough to do the realistic things, and still be able to do what i love.

afraid, of the uncertain near future.

(this has been a very messy ramble.)