Wednesday, June 01, 2005
need to ... post: A message on this website that once again, i've just proven to myself how hopeless i am in the grind of corporate life.
I have managed to lose my GP attendance record book on the third day of my working life. AJC is highly competitive with the departments getting rated by the teaching staff on how brilliant their innovative and entrepreneuring efforts have been. I refuse to get sucked into this politiking and soulless drive for perfection. But then again, i hate being relegated to the loser's bench. i dreamt last night that i found my record book and i was so happy that my mind calmly shut down and i had a peaceful sleep without any dreams till hannon woke up for work.
I will post up the pictures of tokyo here. soon. i feel terribly lazy to download the picture uploading software onto hannon's computer. Loved tokyo for its food. im such a fan of jellies that when i stepped into the supermarket in shinjuku, my mind flipped to see the variety of jellies on display. oh my.. jellies in all sorts of colours, with all sorts of different fillings and compositions. Some small, fat, cute, monstrously sinful, confused... oh so amazing. jellies with fruits, with chocolates, with custards, with sugar toppings, with bean paste...
im such a jelly freak. it's hard to remain impartial and objective in a city like tokyo where everythings is so cute, so small and compact and absolutely mind-boggling. The toilet bowl in my hotel has an asshole washer that spurts out of the toilet bowl in steady jet of water which you can control the pressure. the salesgirls whimper when they can't understand you and when they finally can, seem to go alittle crazy with their delight and enthusiasm. One salesgirl literally stood outside a departmental store hawking the discount cards for the entire afternoon repeating the same inane phrases again and again without any hint of irritation or boredom. Fashionable men look immaculate and i suspect, are probably experts at applying foundation, plucking their eyebrows and drawing them. On tv, foreigners speak fluent japanese. i didn't see anyone doing a PDA - public display of affection. No hugging on escalators.
i think what shocked me the most was seeing the really extreme fashionistas - those who tan their skins to rotiboy brown and those who dress up like goths with one girl looking like she just stepped out from the set of hellraisers. They sent a chill down my spine. It was eerie, unreal and sensational. It most probably warranteed a remark like "hey.. regular growing up pains on display, nothing unusual". But somehow, i just could not come to terms with what i saw as just the ordinary teenage spirit. Sure, i did crop my hair short when i was young, did three ear piercings at one go just for the heck of it and held on to the mantra that no one understood me. I could be exaggerating here. You be the better judge of it. But everytime i'm near enough to these people as in an arm's length away, i feel pain and not uneasiness: Pain like an ache in the chest... "unspeakable horror"? hmm sorry can't find the right words.
I don't think these japanese kids simply feel that they are misunderstood. Even if they feel misunderstood, their reaction to it is incomprehensible. i don't know what they feel at all, as much as i don't know what the ordinary jap in suit is actually thinking about as he takes his smoke break at one of the smoking areas on the streets or at a backalley. Never a woman in suit. Always a man..
