A Better Title

I know that traumatic experience can cause people to have phobias of the things that traumatized them. I’ve never thought it would happen to me, but what happened today was probably a proof of how a person reacts to a traumatic experience.

McSpicy has always been my favourite meal from McDonald’s. For two years in the university, practically the only thing I would buy from McDonald’s was the McSpicy meal.

But not too long ago, I suffered from food poisoning after eating the soft-shell crab meal that tasted weird from the Japanese stall. I threw it away, and bought the McSpicy meal from McDonald’s. It was a bad mistake. I had a bad stomachache later, and was in agony through the night. The McSpicy presumably further damaged my already-weakened stomach.

I have since recovered, but from then on I stopped eating the two meals for a while. I still bought other meals from both the Japanese stall and McDonald’s without any problems.

A couple of weeks later, I tried the McSpicy meal again. I couldn’t finish it, feeling nauseous as I ate. I thought at that time I was just stressed and couldn’t finish the meal as I had no appetite anyway.

But today, I was quite hungry. I ordered the McSpicy meal for the second time. And for the second time, I felt nauseous while eating. One more time, I couldn’t finish the meal.

It was quite weird to think that McSpicy used to be my favourite meal, and now I can’t even bring myself to finish the burger.

I haven’t bought the soft-shell crab meal from the Japanese stall since the ordeal, so I don’t know how my body will react if I eat that meal. Maybe I’ll get the same nauseous reaction, or maybe I can just finish the meal normally.

Imagine if I go to a psychologist, and he has to hypnotise me while chanting “McSpicy is good… McSpicy is good… Soft-shell crab is good…”

PS: It seems that the Twitter Tools plugin I raved about a couple of days ago is quite problematic. Sometimes I’ll get blank pages on my WP Dashboard when publishing entries. I’ve disabled it for the time being. If anyone knows how to make it work stably in WP 2.3, please let me know.

• Friend puts "A test suite is a test class that aggregates the tests from other classes into one big test." in our report. Headache… O.o #
• And "A test suite is a way of running one program that runs all test cases at one time instead of running individual test case separately." #

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Got quite hooked to this song today, presumably because I interpret the lyrics as the only thing I can do now.

In terms of the song itself, did you know that the chants in the background were actually done by two Amis (one of the Taiwanese aborigines), who were in France for a cultural exchange program in 1988? They didn’t know that the recording of the chants eventually made its way to the song, and they sued Enigma’s producer (and several record companies) because of the unauthorized use of their song. Source: Wikipedia

[Amis chant]

Love
Devotion
Feeling
Emotion

Don’t be afraid to be weak
Don’t be too proud to be strong
Just look into your heart, my friend
That will be the return to yourself
The return to innocence

[Amis chant]

The return to innocence

If you want, then start to laugh
If you must, then start to cry
Be yourself, don’t hide
Just believe in destiny

Don’t care what people say
Just follow your own way
Don’t give up and use the chance
To return to innocence

[Amis chant]

That’s not the beginning of the end
That’s the return to yourself
The return to innocence

[Amis chant]

That’s not the beginning of the end

• @nicole85 Jiayou. Don’t give up, you can do it. #
• Going changi [airport|village] today to relax. Which one should I go to? Or should I go to both? Hmmm… #
• @nicole85 I do hope that I’ve not just been forgotten there… #
• If you want then start to laugh, if you must then start to cry. Be yourself, don’t hide, just believe in destiny. #

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Whee… I’ve just installed Twitter Tools (with a manual patch for WP 2.3) so that my Twitter and blog will be synchronized.

The features include creating daily digests of my tweets, as well as automatically tweeting whenever I post a new blog entry.

• Wireless@SG + NTU VPN + Remote desktop = Faster connection than Wireless@SG alone. #
• @chernjie For some reason NTU VPN + Remote desktop is quite smooth. And website access is faster in NTU side than through W@SG. #
• Feeling tired from weeks of work and emotional roller-coaster ride. I declare tomorrow a rest day! Yay! #

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I know we haven’t been talking much for a while but… happy 22nd month.

Though I’m not a Singaporean myself, I can see how the typical Singaporean can identify with this hilarious movie. Oh, did I tell you that it was done by an NTU WKWSCI student, and that it won the inaugural YourFilm.SG awards?

[Link to original YourFilm.SG page]

Enough of sad posts… Here’s a funny music video of a song popular long, long time ago.

It’s difficult to think clearly when you have a lot of things in your mind. For many days she kept on telling me that she suffered because of my selfishness. For many days I kept on defending myself, saying that I wasn’t being selfish, because after all most final year students are suffering because of the pressure imposed by Singapore’s educational systems.

But just a moment ago as I was doing my HRM case study (while blog-hopping and reading shoutbox comments), a realization came upon me: Maybe I was being selfish after all. I wasn’t there when she wanted to go all out and achieve her dreams. Instead, I pressured her with my problems. And that’s where everything crumbled.

She didn’t break my heart. I broke her heart.

For many weeks I had this conception that after all I had been supporting her even when she had previously hurt me repeatedly. I could still forgive her afterwards, and act as if nothing had happened the next day. You can say that I’m the type who may be angry for one day, but the next day I can forget about it and move on. I could still send her words of encouragement, just to cheer her on.

My mistake was that I was expecting the same thing from her.

For those many weeks I expected her to do the same thing. I expected her to be very patient with me, to forgive me so easily. But the fact is that it will not happen, never in my life time. After all, she may not be able to put all feelings behind just as easily as I do.

I had expected that after hurting her, she would forgive me and support me through this exam period, in my way. I had wanted someone there to cheer me on in words, on MSN, SMS, or a call, like what we had been doing to each other previously. And I probably had pressured her to give me what I had expected.

But what I did not realise was that all along she has been supporting me in many other ways. Like suggesting ways to solve my FYP problems, or even the snacks that she gave me earlier this semester…

It didn’t help that for the past many months I fought with myself. My head told me she had hurt me repeatedly, why should I love her back? But my heart told me to go on and care for her as much as I had previously. And therefore although I still supported her in her actions and we did many activities together, many times I did not bother to say “I love you” anymore and even refused to hold her hand. Although my heart still cared, perhaps even loved, her, but many times my actions said otherwise.

It didn’t help that the words “I love you” has been too much commercialized. To quote from my friend’s blog:

Kata cinta itu sudah menjadi sangat komersial. Seringkali itu sudah menjadi hal yang biasa, bahkan sudah menjadi kewajiban bagi pasangan yang sedang mabuk asmara. Seringkali dalam kehidupan ini kita sudah menjadi terlalu mudah untuk berkata “i love you”.

Or in English:

The word love has been very commercialized. Many times it’s something common, even a must for couples who are in love. Many times in life it becomes to easy for us to say “i love you”.

But by doing so, I must have in turn hurt her deeply.

I had taken her for granted. She was there for me through this period, but I wasn’t there for her when she was working for her dreams.

All being said, the only thing I can offer now is my most sincere apology, wishing that she would accept this apology. After all, I was not, am not, and will never be perfect.

Like ruikun says in the shoutbox, what matters is what I can give, not what I should be expecting.

I wish everyone all the best for the exams.