Pre-Halloween Scare

Photo by Bekir Dönmez on Unsplash

Sometimes we scare ourselves by seeing things that aren't there. Or sometimes, we are scared by the lack of a crowd. This applies to me, particularly in a new parking spot.

In the middle of this week, instead of driving to my usual MRT parking spot, I decided to park at the one in Bandar Utama. I had planned to meet up with former college mates there the next day and thought I could save time on traffic by taking the train straight from my office to 1Utama. The rush hour jam is particularly bad these days because its usually exacerbated by evening thunderstorms.

Remembering Sulli

Photo credit: SBS

I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw #RIPSulli trending on Twitter on Tuesday. I thought it must be some kind of a sick joke or prank. Sadly, it wasn't. Former f(x) member Sulli passed away on Monday, 14 October 2019, from apparent suicide.

From reading the tweets by her fans, it seemed like she was a victim of cyber bullying. I really could not fathom how people would want to direct mean comments to someone as sweet as Sulli. Of course I don't know her personally but I did watch her on variety shows and listened to some of f(x)'s music (being the nerd that I am, I like the band's name, f(x)). From what I had seen of Sulli, she seemed like a genuine, cheerful, playful girl with a hint of tomboyishness. She was not quite the typical feminine K-pop princess, which is what I liked about her.

Cleanliness and Kindness

Photo by Rodion Kutsaev on Unsplash

I work in a what you might call a fancy around 30-storey building in the city centre. You would expect smart, educated, courteous people to work here. By and large they are but there is one aspect I find totally lacking amongst the people who work here (or at least, those that work on the same floor as me): washroom etiquette. I'm sure it doesn't apply to everyone on my floor but there are enough of them that cause real distress and inconvenience.

How The Dark Crystal Resonated with Me

Warning: Spoilers ahead for The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance.

Netflix's The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance has been described as dark high-fantasy, which would of course appeal to me as a long-time fantasy fan. How I stumbled upon it was because I had just completed the final season of HBO's Game of Thrones. Even though season 8 of GOT went on-air way back in April, I didn't watch it then because I felt my life was already dark at that point. I finally summed up my courage to watch GOT in August. After finishing it, I felt like I wanted to remain in the fantasy realm and was looking for something like GOT or some other fantasy-related media to delve into. The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance appeared at the right time in my Netflix timeline.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Since I was a kid, I used to read a lot of fairy tales and as I got older, naturally made the transition to fantasy novels. I used to read The Lord of the Rings every year during my university days. I thoroughly enjoyed the Valdemar series, Wheel of Time series (unfinished, only reached #10), Song of Ice and Fire series, Harry Potter series and so on. I generally avoided fiction as well as self-help books. I started to read outside my comfort zone around a decade ago. The fiction novels that impressed me were Cloud Atlas, 1Q84 and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.

In recent years, I started to read the literary classics including To Kill a Mockingbird, The Outsider, Fahrenheit 451 and The Jungle Book (finally!). I still like fantasy novels but I couldn't find any along the lines of Harry Potter or the Lord of the Rings recently. I like my fantasy novels to have adventure, magic, comedy, magical creatures, heroism, epicness and without any overtly sexual content. I don't like it if the story is too dark either. So yeah, my criteria for a fantasy novel is pretty high.

When darkness runs out of fuel...

This post is in relation to my post titled "Release" (October 15, 2018).

In the end, I did not shatter the friendship. I did go on silent mode for a few weeks but I ultimately started to respond again. It may seem like I'm backtracking from what I had intended to do but that's not quite what it is. It wasn't because I couldn't do it, it was because there was no longer a reason to do it. Months after the series of incidences that had troubled me thus far, I no longer felt the anger and bitterness I used to feel. It seems that the darkness that used to swirl within me has run out of fuel. Of course, there is still a small marble-sized ball of sadness caused by the end of a close friendship but I could still continue being not-so-close friends without any sense of it being forced.

This is partly due to a quote I heard from my mom, whom in turn, heard it from her best friend (translated): "Let others be mean to us, just don't let it be us who are mean to others."

Release

It was long overdue but it was time to let go.

I could no longer keep up the charade of friendship when the people in the group possessed empathy only for themselves and others like themselves. I could no longer extend empathy to people who did not extend any empathy to me, whether it was through lack of awareness or whatever other reasons they had. Initially, I did not want to shatter the camaraderie that we supposedly had. If I did, it would feel like I broke something special.
It was getting too burdensome to pretend everything was okay for the sake of protecting the group but I was forgetting one crucial fact: it was never real. In a true friendship, people understood each other and supported each other through the good and bad times. Once you got to know each other better, you would not pull back after discovering the issues the other person had. You would try to help that person and not be afraid of difficult conversations. You would help your friend in need, especially if that friend had helped you countless of times before. To sum it up, I could not break something that wasn't real and therefore, should not feel bad about "breaking" it.

Whatever "it" was, I should have no qualms about leaving it behind and just move on.