the good, the bad, and the vulgar

The Good

The much-awaited cheque has finally arrived! I'm talking about the GBP 500 cash-prize I won for getting second place in the 2010 UK International Student Short Story Competition. Read here and here for more stories about the competition and here if you feel like reading excerpts from the story I wrote. The result was announced back in September and I have been waiting for the cheque to arrive since then so I'm soooo excited now! Hmm, what should I do with it???

The Bad

I was skype-ing with my family on Saturday after not doing so for a month and I was told that my uncle was admitted to the hospital due to the constant pain he had been feeling around his chest that radiated to his armpit as well. It was first thought to be shingles (kayap in Malay - I had to confirm this because my Malay vocabulary on diseases is not that good and that is the downside of studying Medicine in the UK!) but now they're waiting for biopsy result following endoscopy for suspected lung cancer. Apart from that, I was also told about two new cousins, both of which came from two aunts whom I didn't even know were pregnant! The rest of the conversation was me asking my parents about the medications they're taking apart from my sisters wriggling our cats (they all looked so fat and cute =P!!!) in front of the camera.

Now, there was nothing bad about catching up with the family but I felt really bad of how out of touch I was with everything that's been happening in the family. Yeah, I always say I'm busy (which is true, kinda) but if I can still find time to blog and check out other people's blog, I couldn't be that busy, could I? And if I can check Facebook and Twitter and talk to people I've never met and would possible never ever meet, shouldn't I be trying to find time to at least send emails to my siblings? Now, I'm not gonna blame social media or my study for the sense of detachment because blaming it on external factors seems like a coward move of running away from the actual issue of me chasing and wanting freedom.

I'm a very independent person and I love being independent but to be out of touch of your own family couldn't be good. At all. I miss them all the time and I think about them often but since I've studied in a boarding school before, I've trained myself not to dwell so much in those feelings. Now maybe that's not a very wise move.

I guess an apology to my family is in order. To both my parents, my brother and my two sisters, I'm sorry I'm less of a son and brother to all of you. I love you all and I promise to keep in touch more often.

The Vulgar

I like romance. Heck, I'm a sucker for romantic moments. I'll always smile whenever I see PDA (public display of affection, that is) but if it's done excessively, heck, I feel like murdering those couples!

Like, seriously? Get a room!

Since I need to take the bus to and from the hospital where I'm doing my FoCP, it was not uncommon for me to see couples holding hands, hugging and kissing as they were saying their long good-byes. Parting is, after all, such sweet sorrow. So said the Bard (Shakespeare, that is) but when the couples start snogging for a good ten minutes as they twirled on the same spot as if they're on some cheesy rom-com, that's just going beyond the beyond!

It's kinda like Paris. I hated that city with a burning passion for its vulgarity. Yes, I found it disgustingly vulgar and that place is beyond over-rated! Yes, Eiffel Tower is certainly a sight to behold but that place has more nude statues than the actual population of real life human being! I can understand the pleasure of nudity. Heck, I found pleasure in it =) but when there was just too much of it, the whole thing just started to lose its aesthetic value. I remember walking all the way from Musee Du Louvre to L'Arc de Triomphe along Axe historique or Voie Triomphale. I lost count of the number of naked statues halfway through.

Yes, I get the fact that you two love each other so much and that it kills you to have to be separated but like seriously, I don't need to see you people eat each others' faces!