On doing nothing part 1

Reflections.
Thats what i really am doing while doing nothing.

Doing nothing isn't really a bad thing after all. Hell, such is the tyranny of moral myth in today's world, where everyone rushes about to do this and do that, that doing nothing seems, at least to me, to put you out of place, so to speak, with the rest of the self-proclaimed human world.

It's good to be idle. Really. Its one of the reasons S78 is such a fun class to be in. Especially those of GP and PW during Colin Cheong's lessons. Being idle is about fun, pleasure and joy.

From the joy you get going to the loo together, as a class, is irreplaceable. Where else in the world can you find a substitute? The toilets are great idling spots. Especially the new clean ones. In the loo, we're physically, mentally and spiritually free. Apart from, of course, the sometimes all-too-unpleasant ordour arising from all those answering the calls of nature. Enjoying the trips to the toilet shows that it's possible to inject idleness into our everyday lives at no extra costs! Although in the economic sense, there have to be some opportunity cost involved. But alas! The toilets were built for only one purpose! How can there be any opportunity costs involved? You either use it to relief yourself and laugh with friends or do your changing of pe attires into the uniform while talking, or you dont visit it at all.

The toilet of my room used to be my sanctuary of my home. It was fortified and i felt safe in there. Inside, i was free from all hustle and bustle of the home life. I was free from the naggings and backings of my parents. Its so simple. "KUAN HUA!!!" and i would simply shout back. "IM IN THE TOILET". And it stops. so simple! Such, bliss! Over some time, i amassed such a huge collection of reading materials in my toilet, it should be dubbed the library instead. Naturally, the more i had to read, the more time i spent in the toilet. And so, the cycle continued until one day, my mum forced open the toilet door while i was still inside and confiscated all my reading materials. Sadly, im still not able to find them anywhere):

That aside, another place to idle and simply do nothing, is of course on the way to school, and from school, back to home, on the bus. Usually these commutes are filled with just necessary sleep. Other times, i just stare out of the window of the bus. Not in anything in particular anyway. And the thoughts flow naturally. And i reflect.

Throughout the whole of today, i've been doing exactly nothing. Rather, nothing in particular. I woke up and lay in bed for more than an hour, doing nothing. Soon i was joined by my mother who also lay in bed with me for quite some time, just doing nothing too. She went to get big breakfast for me because i cheered her up so much just by talking bout nothing in particular. In the end, my younger brother woke up so i gave him my big breakfast and ate beehoon and mee instead. After that, i resigned to my toilet for a nice shower and started restocking my now-barren "library". Having spent some good time alone in the toilet, i came out and to my horror realized my mother had decided to shift to the library because the weather was simply too hot. Great, so i was alone with my brother in the house.

I was actually, at this point of time expecting a reply to my only message sent today, so i wasn't exactly doing nothing. Of course i din just stare at my phone the whole time. I lay on my bed and put my phone on the bed too. So any vibrations would be felt at once. I sorta dispensed with that ideal that the reply would be soon. After all, i could be ignored for reasons only too obvious. But it really is my fault after all. I was expecting a reply. If not for the fact that i was expecting a reply, i wouldnt have given 2nd thoughts about a reply anyway. So in this case, expectations bred dissatisfaction.

After that, i was invited by my brother to play a game of moo-moo. Which i happily obliged, only to find my happiness a form of instant gratification to pass time which of course went away immediately the moment he had to leave for school.

I went online instead and started talking to a new found friend. Or rather, a friend i considered a better friend. Am i making sense? Okay, lets just ascertain that i realized she was a better friend/nicer friend than i thought before. So we talked and laughed for a while. Although i got quite perplexed that she was on perma busy mode. I mean, i was quite restless just doing nothing you know. And i was just curious to how someone could be perma busy just after blocks. Oh btw, i do consider bts are over.

Bad playing of the violin could be heard while waiting for replies. I simply was too lazy to rosin my bow. So well, the sound kinda sucked.

After that, my brother woke up. I had almost forgotten he was at home. He downloaded Prison Break. At least, i thought he downloaded everything. He invited me to watch with him so since i had nothing better to do at the moment, i accepted. We went to our parent's bedroom, connected the laptop to the 42inch plasma tv and started watching. Oh btw its prison break season 1 :$ For users who do not communicate with emoticon shorthands in msn, :$ is the shy/embarrassed face.

Well, it went well until episode 3, where he reviewed to me that episode 4 was still downloading. I went back to msn to chat for a few minutes and den he invited me to play typing maniac. Yeah that facebook game. It was my first go at it. And it kinda sucked. I wasnt particularly good at the special moves. I used wind when there were no er sheets of paper? on the ground? and things like that. Anyway i helped my brother improve his ranks among his friends by 6 or 7. That was after say, 4 tries. Hmm, i wasnt really interested in helping him improve his ranks or being a typing maniac, but i figured that if the game was good enough for such an intellect like her, it was probably good enough for me. The fact that she said she lost gave me a challenge to win it. I decided winning was an improbable factor after a while, cause the levels just kept increasing, so did the number of words i had to type and the speed at which i had to type at. Well, after a while, prison break episode 4 finished dling so we continued watching it.

And then things started to go horribly wrong.
He lost internet connection (familiar?)
And well, streaming wasnt really good.

Anyway, i got back to violin playing cum msning.
I patched my warcraft to 1.23 and decided for a go at dota for the first time in months. i mean, public playing. or more affectionately known as pub. aka pubbing. i was totally ignorant to the new heroes and items and skills and recipes. so i just kept humming until i was forced to quit game after failed attempts at teamwork. At that moment, i realized it was imperative to go through the change log throughly and was quite astounded by the difference. tian1 fan1 di4 fu4 de bian4 hua4 sort of. I joined another game after that, and obviously won this time round. lol. i joke.

I talked to my buddy chuankhim whom i confided lots of bullshit secrets. secrets which if leaked out would definitely ruin my life a hell lot. You know what to do yea buddy(:

Anyway. My mother came back with lunch and the book "how to be idle". I ate my lunch past 7pm cos i was too busy doing nothing to get my own lunch at say, between 12 to 6pm.

I applaud you for your patience and determination to read till here. But this is where the true fun begin, for i'll begin my reflections(:

Its to do with the topic on waking up.
One of the toughest things to do isn't it?

Benjamin Franklin, the hardwokring American rationalist and agent of industry, popularized and promoted the trite and patently untrue aphorism back then in 1757. Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. If he studied prophecy, he would have realized how much misery it would have caused to millions in today's world, thanks to his puritanical zeal at that moment.

Is it not a sad fact that ALL OF US are taught to wake up early. That it is only right, proper and good to JUMP out of bed and leap to the toilet the moment we wake, to brush your teeth and wash your face? There is even a fabulous tune on it. Some "this is the way i brush my teeth, brush my teeth, brush my teeth, this is the way i brush my teeth, EARLY IN THE MORNING." Horrible. Totally. And after breakfast, to set about some useful work as quickly as possible?

Personally, its indeed clearly vivid in my mind how i used to/still awake to her screaming at me to get out of bed every morning. As i lie in my bed in bliss, in the comforts of my quits, hugging my bolster, eyes closed, trying to hang on to a fading dream, whether anot the protagonist of the dream is benja or some random stranger, doing my utmost to ignore her shouting (and beatings/pinching), I would start to calculate the shortest time it would take me to get out of bed, change, make my way to the mrt, wait, take it to little india, walk to the bus stop, wait for the bus, and then take it to school, den after alighting, running to central plaza to be in line and in time too for flagraising to save me a demerit point. PERMANENT demerit point. All this mental ingenuity and effort i expended in order to enjoy a few more moments of slumber. Im still trying to find a way to stop the pinching in the morning so i can really ENJOY my few more moments of slumber. Thus the idler (thats me btw!) beings to learn his craft(:

Take a step back and look at the big picture.
Parents are ultimately responsible for this brainwashing process. The school then takes over and works harder to indoctrinate its charges with the necessity of early rising. Imagine Ken Yeow's voice over the loudspeakers. "The discipline com is not out to kill you. Its not like, you're late for one time, thats it. You're dead. Thats why we give you 3 chances. In events like when the bus break down. You still have two chances!" Yea right. If you're not out to kill us, why is it that if we're late by 1 second, like, not in line bfore the command is given, we're marked as late? And then they further rob our sleep by the very famous "Do not cross over to the dark side". I suppose by closing your eyes, by shutting the lights out, we cross over to the dark side? Thats what you think. In dreamland, on the sunny beach with hot babes in bikinis, its so much brighter (both in terms of light and in terms of life) than say, sitting in the first row of lt3 during bio lecture when they're playing some very-interesting-but-not-as-interesting-video-as-say-the-likes-of-my-dream with the lights off.

As a student, i began developing complex alarm systems so i would not get demerit points that cannot be cleared unlike yesteryear. I had something like 3 alarm clocks (i'll get to this later) all showing different times. And of course ringing at different intervals to wake me up. It half worked. I would leap out of bed and totter for a moment. But what happened then, of course, as you might have gussed, was that i would turn all alarms off, ignore everything else around me except probably to check my phone for incoming messages if i was expecting one, and climb back to the snuggly warm embrace of my duvet alr comfy enough from the heat my body radiated throughout the night. Just last year, i had such habits i'd dao everything and slowly come to my senses around 10+, doze around until 11+ or noon den finally stagger to my fit around 1pm in a fir of self-loathing and for lunch. Den probably i'd consider going to school or doing nothing for around 2 hours bfore dragging my feet to the polyclinic at around 4 to get mc for the day based on complaints of headache, and the general languid state of my body.

It wasnt until many years later when i learned that i was not alone in my sluggishness and in experiencing the conflicting emotions of pleasure and guilt which surrounded it. There is a wealth of literature on the subject! And it is generally written by the best, funniest and most joy-giving writers. Imagine being associated with these people :P

Let me share a passage with you, in which JKrowlingJerome published, reflecting the pleasures of snoozing.

Ah! How delicious it is to turn over and go to sleep again: "Just for five minutes". (how familiar!) Is there any human being, i wonder, besides the hero of a sunday-school tale for boys, who every gets up willingly? There are some men to whom getting up at the proper time is an utter impossibility. (i pity you if you had a proper time) If 8am happens to be the time they should turn out, they lie till 8.30. If circumstances change and 8.30 becomes early enough for them, then let it be nine bfore they rise. They are like the statesman of whom it was said that he was always punctually half an hour late (HAHA). They try all manner of schemes. They buy alarm clocks (Artful contrivances that go off at the wrong time and alarm the wrong people for the wrong reasons). There are people who actually get out and have a cold bath; and even that was no use, for afterward they would jump into bed again to warm themselves. (sounds like.. somebody dont you think so? :D:D )

Sleep, indeed, it is a powerful seducer. So powerful that we had to develop terrifying machinery to fight it. Look at the alarm clock! siao ah. Must be some. Dr evil genius, who brought together those two enemies of being idle - clocks and alarms - into one unit! Every morning, millions of happily dreaming individuals are rudely thrust from sleep by an ear-splitting ringing noise that is all so familiar, or insistent electronic beeping.

Alarm clocks are the first stage in the ungodly transformation that WE FORCE OURSELVES to ENDURE in the morning. From the blissed-out carefree dreamer of all sorts of fantasies to anxiety-ridden toiler, weighted by responsibility and duty. Be it that of a student, or uh worker or parents etcetc.

But i think, what is truly amazing is that we buy alarm clocks voluntarily. Is it not absurd to spend our own hard-earned cash on a device to make every day of our lives start as pleasantly as possible, and which really just serves the school whom we sell our time to? After all, we should understand. Teachers get paid for teaching, so they would naturally want us to be in school for them to teach as early as possible.

After the alarm clock, it is the turn of breakfast cerals to shame us into action is it not. RISE AND SHINE, from the corn flakes packet. The physical act of crunching coco crunch/cornflakes and the like is portrayed in advertising as working an amazing alchemy on slothful beings. The incoherent, unshaven/ unkempt child/man/sluggard (bad) is magically transformed into a smart and jolly child/worker full of vigour and purpose (g00d) by the positive power of CEREAL! WOOTS!

Such are the architects of our daily lives. For all modern society's promises of leisure, liberty and doing what you want, most of us still are slaves to a schedule we did not choose. Just LOOK at the timetables. Rot in hell man. Although we shd appreciate the efforts of timetabling comm, but even so, we all know teachers hate to be part of them.

Hmm, i think if you're still reading, i shd just trudge on.
SLOTH - a murder of time, who keeps the lazy man's mind imprisoned. He must be fought against, there must be a manly battle of wills. THIS, of course, is bullshit and palpable nonsense.

SLEEP IS A FRIEND, not a foe, nor felon. Everyone knows, common, that our mind, far from being imprisoned, is actually at its freest when we're lying in bed dozing in the morning, and we will well come back to the creative benefits of that delicious in-between state later.

AND BECAUSE SLEEP IS A FRIEND,
i shall continue with this post later, and get some rest now.
Come back more on my rants soon =D


-----
There're no words, just love, i reasoned.
But snap back to reality and i realized you're ignoring me.

The irony of being irritating is that i end up irritated yourself.
The same for love.
The irony of love and loving is that you end up hurt.
The irony of being loved, is well. Forget it.

Love shall continue. Hatred can never be resolved by hatred, but only by love.
This, is Law eternal.