overheard by a friend

"Yelah, you sorang je betul, orang lain semua salah, you sorang je pandai."

 I dont get it. I had said nothing offensive, at least I don't think so. I didn't cuss or abuse, I didn't even raise my voice, but apparently I had said something wrong.

"and you thought this because?"

 ...she started speaking in Malay, she never speaks Malay unless she's upset. Its always a bad sign when she goes full Malay.

It's like the time she played with scarves, and started wearing them like tudungs on her head, and then asked, "do I look nice? Do I look pretty?" Next thing I knew, I was at lunch with her parents, no warning gave.

I really have no idea what ticked her off this time.

"Why do you bother with these kinds of characters? I thought you used to hate these plastic folk?"

I dont think I ever liked them, but I dont know, maybe its because they're shiny, and attractive?

Or maybe Im shallow, I dont know.

"As a friend, let me remind you what you seem to have forgotten: you're not them, and they're not you. You're forcing yourself to feel miserable day in and day out, just to fit in.."

You know what it feels like? Like a knife scraping off every single bit of myself from my bones, every morning I feel less and less like myself.

"So stop" I cant stop. "of course you can" I cant.

"May god guide you"

In the end, it turned out that he could stop, but not before he lost all respect for himself.

He realised that he was clawing the bottom of an empty well, and looked up, and saw the blue sky through the narrow hole overhead.

His calls for help was heard by a thirsty passerby, who helped him out.

Don't think like I did, he told the traveller, and fall into a hole chasing after a glint you see at the bottom.

They then made their way back to their normal lives.

emo-ammo

You could say that a lot of the things we do, they're not grounded on thought but run almost exclusively on emotions.

Trends and fashions, for example. Sometimes the trend appears rational, sometimes not, but when a trend blows up and gets adopted by the masses, you can be sure that its success owes a lot to emotions: to fit in with peers, to be seen as a trend-setter, etc; these feelings act as influential motivators.

For people with agendas to push, to be vulcan, that is to act exclusively on intellect and rationality, is to behave in a manner alien to the people of earth.

As the cliche goes, you cannot force someone to love you, so you attempt persuasion. To love something, is to have a feeling inside of you, burning from your core across your entire being, is very different from knowing the benefits and advantages of an action.

In other words, it is not something you can debate with your mind and superior intellect, but instead is something that needs to be inspired, either by an act, or speech, or presence.

And when the audience has strong inertia away from your intended outcome, you would need a clear ringing stimulus if you were to have the slightest chance of getting your preferred responses.

provincial Melbourne

a Westpac document calls Melbourne a ‘provincial global community.’

I would say I’m inclined to say the same, being here for some time now.

Melburnians are proud, with a very strong sense of identity, which is good.

They take the city’s issues to heart and there’s a strong sense of responsibility expressed.

This pride can feel a little inward-looking though.

Melbourne invites people from all over the globe to work, play, and study here.

As long as they don’t disrupt the city’s look and feel too much. A tall order when you consider the number of people who come here every year.

Melbourne gladly opens its doors to the world; perhaps it’s time to open its heart too

simply decide

faced with difficulty, we sometimes offer people excuses.

But we also offer those same excuses, and maybe more, to ourselves.

We blame the world, god, the universe instead of rolling our sleeves and doing the hard work of finding our way out of those difficulties.

One day, you'll run out of excuses to give out, even to yourself.

It'll be very sad if that's the only person left on that day to hear them

love

why don't we teach young people how to love?

Love is an overwhelming sensation. It's a wave of emotions that collapses over you.

The danger can be felt from the very beginning. You sense it, but the pull is so strong that you can't swim away.

Without advice, young people have to figure out for themselves how to deal with this situation. They grasp at straws, guessing out solutions based on juvenile beliefs and expectations.

Sadly, bad guesses lead to pain, trauma, and distrust that lasts years after the storm had passed.

A few good words could have avoided all that damage