Clairine

What is intelligence, really? I find it to be a paradox somewhat for me. I’m so intelligent that I’m actually stupid. I find that my exam marks don’t mean very much. I torture myself for these grades, and I don’t get very much satisfaction out of them. I don’t eat, I hardly sleep, and I study like crazy in the few days leading up to the final exams; these would equate me to somewhat of a fool, right? Some people are very deceived by me. They think I’m a consistent student. What is my secret? I torture myself half to death cramming at the last minute, always, everytime, without fail, every semester, every year. With the exception of English and particularly simple math courses, I do this for every single subject. So I don’t actually know if I’m intelligent - maybe I just have very excellent cramming skills.

And what exactly IS intelligence? Getting straight A’s all the time? It’s not a very appropriate measure of intelligence, is it? And yet this is the only way society measures intelligence. What about someone who loves to learn? Who loves knowledge, who loves studying things NOT for the sake of exams? And yet maybe since that person doesn’t study for the sake of exams, that person doesn’t do as well as another person, who on the contrary does study for the sake of exams and for no other reason? Who is more intelligent? There are many things I’d love to read in my textbooks for the sake of knowing it, and some people might think I’m crazy. Like, who does that kind of stuff for FUN? For entertainment? Surely someone mad. I find that the more I immerse myself in studying for the sake of getting that overrated "A", the less time I have to occupy my mind with things that I’d want to know just for the sake of that - knowing.

I always had this sort of illusion in my mind that straight A’s would prove something to people. And it does - oh it does - but after all this time I have just realized that the only person it hasn’t been able to prove anything to is myself. After all this while I still have this sort of… inferiority complex. Like I always think I’m not good enough. Never good enough. As long as I am not the best, I’m not good. I always had this kind of mentality that girls should either be very pretty or very smart. Since I never thought of myself as something "very pretty" I just concentrated on developing my "intelligence" with the hopes that I would always have something to fall back upon - as if being "intelligent" would make me more likeable. This has worked in the contrary for me. I thought that even if the world fell out around me, even if my life shattered into pieces, even if everything just went wrong, at least I would be intelligent, and that would matter above all else. It turns out I could never be more wrong about anything in my life. 

Perfectionism - how do I break out of it?
Discipline - where can I find it?
Confidence - why don’t I have it?
Intelligence - what exactly is it?

Dear people, I shall be going to Penang in an hour. I’ll be staying with my aunt cos my dear cousin is busy with her final year project (weirdly, it was assigned to her 6 months ago… but I don’t know when she started, however she seems quite frantic to get it done… hmmm… since it’s due by the end of this month) and I have no where else to go. So i guess I’ll be trailing my young aunt around looking at how she conducts her businesses. She has three bakeries and one cafe, I think? And she’s so young… 35 only I think. With two adorable little girls. I’d take pictures, but the problem is I don’t have a digical camera… So I don’t know how I’ll be doing that.

I’m kind of excited to go there alone, although my parents are like SO worried. But it’s really no big deal… I’m 18, I’m not that innocent and naive, I know how to take care of myself… Yeah well I guess the only thing I’ll miss is my room in Kajang (as usual) and perhaps the air conditioning… although I don’t know if I’ll have it at my aunt’s house. I’m wondering what I’ll do for 6 hours on the bus, I hope it doesn’t get caught up at Pudu cos you know how "effective" the Malaysian public transport system is. So I’m prepared for the worst… Even though they claim that they will leave at 11.30am, I’ll prepare myself for 12.30 and when they claim they’ll reach Bukit Mertajam (it’s my birthplace, you know?) by 6pm, I’ll prepare myself for 8. There you go… the beauty of Malaysia. Wish me a great trip, I hope I’ll have fun!

Blogging would be so much easier for me if only I had an Internet connection at my house in Subang. I could blog every day, maybe twice, or even thrice a day, every day of the week, every week of the year. It would be fantastic, I could have accumulated thousands of entries by now. It would be a blog phenomena in my life. I could even get my blog published. (Alright enough of crap)

This is just SO like me. To blame things on things that I can control, but choose not to control. I have a lot of things on my mind right now, things that I put on hold temporarily due to my lovely finals. Thank you, INTI, for all that you have done to me, for all that you have put me through, for all the torture you have caused me, thank you for making me suffer so damnfreakingmuch for my finals this time around. Thank you for putting me in quarantine because I had an exam clash, even though I reported it twice, it still wasn’t changed. And because of you, INTI, within the 48 hours prior to my quarantine day, I slept for only 6 hours, and on the quarantine day itself, had exams for 7 hours straight without having any lunch. I nearly vomitted, I would have collapsed, dear INTI, if it weren’t for the fact that……

Someone took me out for dinner on that night, to Asian Heritage Restaurant, CoChine. So I couldn’t collapse. So that I could have a nice lovely dinner. And thank you, for taking me out. It was the thought of having a nice lovely dinner that kept me going through the three weeks of unbearable stress. Thank you for footing the bill, even though I offered to pay half. Thank you for taking away all of my stress. And thank you for deboning that delicious fish for me. I’m no good with fish.

Am I just this serial heart-breaker? What do I get for breaking people’s hearts, and then breaking my own in the process? My mother says that I do this because I am afraid of commitment. But am I really? I want commitment. I get it, and I throw it away. I’m jealous of the kind of strong loving lasting relationship that one of my friends has, for four years, how does something like that last? And why can’t I do it? And I can’t wonder why people don’t understand me, when I don’t even understand myself. Why is it that I like to throw good things away, and perpetually chase after something that I don’t even know? You people out there who JUDGE me, why do you judge what I do? So what if I am like this? Do you think I like being this way? Do you think I enjoy it? I feel like I’m in this ferris wheel that just keeps turning and turning, one moment I’m on top, the next moment I’m at the bottom, but the problem is it never stops because I have no control over it. What I want, I can’t get; what I have, I don’t appreciate; and what appreciates me, I throw away. Right now my heart is… in the words of yet another friend… "Hancur until no more debu"

What devastation is this? How sure am I that I want to study actuarial science? It’s the boring-est major in the world. It’s the boring-est career that you could ever find. I want to study something exciting, something interesting. I want to study liberal arts. Why do people in Malaysia look down on the liberal arts field? They have this general perception that liberal arts is the "last-choice" major. Students who aren’t smart enough to do anything else (such as the unfailingly respected engineering, pure science, and mathematical majors) or the "sensible" majors (accounting, finance, commerce). But I know what I want to do. I want to study liberal arts. I want to analyse poetry for a living. I want to learn journalism. I want to travel and write about things that I see. I don’t want to spend the next ten years of my life studying for actuarial papers and the next thirty working nine-to-five in a stuffy office. I get so much stress out of this major, I wonder what it is for? Is it really worth it? I can’t get rich - I won’t be poor either - but I’d rather poor and happy with what I do, than not rich and unhappy with what I do. I study obsessively, madly, ridiculously hard for calculus, I wonder what for? Why do I do this? I’d much rather be reading novels and writing stories…

On the outside it looks like nothing is wrong - but you can’t see the storm that rages inside me.