Now on the contrary, there ARE things to do in Penang

I've been shopping! Waha stuff in Malaysia is quite cheap thanks to the exchange rate I can get good shirts for 30 odd ringit from Levi's which is really a steal. At the moment the current loot stands at two T-Shirts and one Levi's Jeans, am planning to hopefully add a Shirt, a Cap and Nice-Nice-Shoes to the bounty. If I can find them. Oh and socks as well! They have so many sock-shops here it's quite scary.

Yixun I have bought you Lost-in-Translation if you don't like it too bad. Either way let me watch it fast.

Is now 1:30AM on a Monday morning. I'm on the ground floor of my uncle's house using the computer in the dead of the night, and weixian has just ended his chat with me. The solitude is mildly oppressing, I could actually just go up and sleep or chitchat with my mother who is strangely still awake, but I think I shall stay here a little longer. Inertia has always been one of my failings after all. And no matter how I try to persuade, convince or delude myself to move, it still all comes back to the same thing. I cannot deny who I am.

Penang has been quite an eye-opener. I've seen relatives I haven't seen for 8 years. Some of them are well off, some not, and I've realized that all in all I'm really quite pampered back in Singapore. But such feelings will pass soon and I know they will. This kind of superficial sympathy doesn't last. Not when I'm back in Singapore and the commercial whirlpool beckons. I have big dreams. I think I shall revamp my direction in life. Strangely, I have never realized how much I need money.

Family politics are strained business. I hope my family doesn't turn out the way my Mother's family has. But one never knows such things. Back in Singapore it was just the four of us, and it was already quite terrible. It's no wonder when you throw in a few uncles and cousins and one grandmother into the equation that the whole domestic setup just explodes.

My cousins are all married. And have kids. It is odd to have little kids calling me "ah chek" (Which means uncle in hokkien I think. One of the uncles, anyway) at the tender age of 17-and-a-half. Their kids are adorable, really really adorable, I swear the boy loves me to bits. But that was only for a while, as the baby gurgled in the seat behind I looked out the window as my mind turned to other matters.

I would like to have kids. But then again looking at my illustrious record I doubt I'll even get married.

To be forgotten is worse than death. After the As it's time to take control of life, and it is also time to step out of people's lives. But to be forgotten is worse than death - you're right yixun I still suffer the same popularity virus, it's just a different strain. Milder, perhaps - but still there. I still need people to acknowledge me as a form of self-validation, and it's sad. This stupid instinct needs to be killed.

The most important line in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is, in my opinion:

"Okay."