Birthday Wish

Yesterday, Thursday 27th of August, was my birthday and the night before it I made a wish right before I went to sleep. A little childish or possibly a sign of insanity but stating it out loud on my bed seemed to have some effect on my birthday.

You see at approximately 11.00 pm on the 26th, I was about to go to sleep when I remembered that the next day was my birthday (I’ve really been busy lately). My birthdays usually end up the same every year with my mom wishing me a happy birthday in the morning and us all eating either at a RBC restaurant or at home with my grandma’s stew and cakes. Because I felt like it would be nice to have a change of pace this year. So by saying “I want something interesting to happen tomorrow. Something interesting, not problematic. Interesting”, I tempted fate and got my wish.

It started right from the moment I woke up for Sahur. For some reason I woke up a few minutes later than the rest of my family and I’m usually the first one down to Sahur – so far I have been since Puasa started this year. Then I dozed off till 5.40 am which is when I go and take my shower. While I was waking myself up with hot steaming water, I suddenly felt a small sting on my collarbone. I scratched at it for a bit and found a black crusty thing squashed under my finger. I wondered what it could have been and felt another sting on my neck. I patted my hand and found that there was a still moving ant on my hand. Not knowing where they were coming from I tried washing myself from head to toes to get any other ants on me off. It took another couple ants to realize where the source was exactly. The ants were coming from INSIDE the showerhead. Apparently a small nest of ants had made the inside of the showerhead I use everyday their home overnight. Took ten minutes after I came back home from school till I was certain that I managed to wash out all the ants. At that moment I just knew it was going to be an interesting day.

After making sure that there weren’t any ants on me, I got out of the shower and noticed that the sky was more reddish than usual when it should have been blue. It didn’t have anything to do with the time I got out since I finished at the same time as usual. While I was walking around, I happened to see that there were cars parked outside my house for some reason. It was only later when I left for school at 7.00 am that I found out that my next door neighbor just died of cancer a few hours ago, quite possibly around Sahur. OK… That was DEFINITELY a sign. Adlan and Afiq were really surprised when I told them that – Adlan more so because I told him that I made a wish and that it seemed to be coming true and that I told him about the death after it occurred to me that it completely slipped my mind when I was proving it to him. Not sure if he was more surprised at the death or that I actually forgot about it. I remember Chris was really surprised that Shaminan’s seizure during our AS levels last year didn’t bother me at all while we were doing our Stats paper.

My departure at 7.00 am would usually end up in me being late but traffic was unusually light for the normally jammed Jerudong area so I made it on time to school. Once I got there I was taken by surprise that we were following the normal Thursday timetable instead of the H1N1 approved Saturday schedule(Our school cancelled clubs on Thursday to minimize risks and alternated with other days’ schedules). I was also told later by Colin that there was an unusually high number of people coming in late when he went down to send in the class register. I had a really surprising morning yesterday.

Then right before the Tadarus session that was replacing CCA time, I messaged my dad that I had to stay back till 1.00pm. The reason for that was because Khai wanted me to transfer some of Adlan’s stuff into his pen drive but Adlan went home right after the Tadarus session anyway. Right before I could go off to find a room to write up the manga reviews I set up, I learned that we actually were going to be having extra class till 1.00 pm. Sigh… another coincidence to add to many others today. While I was in class I think I managed to consciously manipulate either the shape of the lens in my eyes or dilate my pupils more so I could see the projector’s image better. I also have to say that the weather was actually quite nice too. The sun was bright but didn’t burn as hot as it usually did, the wind refreshingly cool and the sky looked absolutely magnificent with just the right balance of light blue and white. There were even rain clouds in the distance that looked just right in the distance. Unusually perfect weather on my birthday, never happened before.

Nothing much happened later that afternoon other than us leaving for my younger brother and sister’s school earlier than usual. My mom only seemed to remember that it was my birthday while she was at work too. We even walked to the stalls even though my dad prefers to drive to the stalls instead. I didn’t get to eat the food I bought till Sahur though. There was a Tahlil event at my neighbour’s house so I had Sungkai over there. Again something odd happened. While we were reading Yasin, the vases and bowls on this cabinet I was sitting next to suddenly started shaking hard enough for it to make a rattling sound. What’s weird about that was that I was sitting in a corner in a carpeted room and I was the closest one to it and I didn’t even touch it while it happened. I tried shaking it a bit with my arms and legs but none of those things shook enough to make a sound. If it was near the air conditioner or near the parking space it’d be easy to explain but they had a central air-conditioning unit, the kind they use in office buildings, right in the middle of the relatively wide room and the nearest car was at least ten meters away.

After we finished praying and reading, we all went and ate at the tents prepared outside with catered food waiting for us. I’m impressed by how fast Bruneians can set up a gathering, I mean the man only died half a day ago. It started raining the moment I stepped out of the house but there wasn’t anything strange about that. At least not compared to other weird weather coincidences that have happened to me in the past. After I finished eating, I went back home. Apparently my family went back ahead of me to finish the stuff we bought so they only ate a little bit of the catering while stuffed myself full. On my walk back I heard some strange whispering like someone was saying something into my ear. It's been a while since something related to "that" happened to me. Nothing out of the ordinary happened later that night unless something happened while I was asleep.

So here is a summary of all of the things that were out of routine for my birthday:

• Woke up late for Sahur
• Ants laid a nest in my showerhead overnight
• My neighbor died a few hours before I left for school
• Unusually light traffic in a normally traffic heavy zone
• Made it on time to school when I left really late
• Lots of people were late coming to school
• The weather was unusually perfect
• I stayed back only to find out I really had class
  
• Parents only remembered it was my birthday after work
• I attended a Tahlil on my birthday
• Vases shook for no reason
• Heard odd whispering noises while walking in the rain
• No celebration on the actual day

After having all this happen to me on my birthday and breaking the usual routine I’d have to say I got my wish. I had an interesting day and it didn’t trouble me too much. Do you think so too?

Despair Before My Birthday

Yesterday was my eighteenth birthday. Everything proceeded just like the ones in the past few years. The only difference was that it was much quieter than usual. People just wishing me happy birthday and no one singing “Happy Birthday” until it was time to cut the cake. Well… not really, Rif and another friend of mine tried singing it but my guess is that they both stopped because they could tell that I wasn’t in the mood to hear that song. I’ve been acting much quieter than usual yesterday because I honestly wasn’t looking forward to my birthday for some reason.

I’m not exactly sure why though. Even I find it odd that I am unable to enjoy my birthday as much as I usually do. I’ve always looked forward to it every year before this one but I just didn’t feel the least bit excited for today. I even liked the fact that few people actually remembered and that I could just let the day pass by quietly. I suppose maybe it was because I’ve been wondering about the concept of “despair” for the past week or so.

I don’t know whether it should be called a blessing or a curse but having a high IQ can be just as much of a burden as it is of use. Of course personality plays a vital role in that view but I’ll try not to ramble about that in this post. Last time I really took an IQ test online, I got 141 – that’s in the range of “Highly Gifted” since that’s four points short of being a genius. Funny thing about IQ tests, especially timed ones, is that you only have to go through a few times to manipulate so that your score can get as high as 191. I had to make several accounts to that though.

By having this amount of intelligence, I don’t have many problems with mathematics or computers. I do screw up often just because of careless mistakes. The proof lies in my O’level A. Maths results. So basically my logical ability is my strongest field of intelligence while visualization is a second. At least I think it was visualization. I don’t remember the specified ones very well but I do remember that logic was 168 and the second highest was 153 and third was 151. Don’t remember which category was third though.

Since logic is my highest category, it also means my reasoning ability is top notch. Before anyone who knows can think of disagreeing, let me tell you that having high logical ability doesn’t necessarily mean that your common sense will be high as well. Common sense is comprised of three things: Logic, Experience and Etiquette. I would rather have said politics or strategy instead of etiquette but that’s just my point of view while etiquette is easier for others to understand. While it may seem that my statistics in those three are high, average and low in those fields respectively, my knowledge on etiquette is actually quite high. I just choose not to be polite to people because I find it impractical and dull to restrict my opinions around people I know. Unless of course I have to deal with them through some form of business. I find it very hard to socialize with people that have direct influence over my activities. I just can’t shake off this desire to act in a strictly professional manner around them.

I always prioritize practicality over formalities. That means I also hate working on the frontlines of matters and prefer to work in the shadows where no one can see me. Of course people would often think of me as anti-social, manipulative and sometimes evil especially when I start smiling when things go wrong. Unlike most people, I still have the ability to be amused when things go wrong even when it puts me at risk. I guess that means that I prioritize entertainment over practicality. Well except when people are actually depending on me, I rarely get to have fun whenever they do that. As such the number of people who have seen the Death Note films and immediately thought of me when they saw L has exceeded twenty. Those are also the ones who would tell me that in person as well. I was actually amused when seven of them (all of them my cousins) simultaneously pointed at L and shouted my name when they came by while I was watching the L spin-off movie at home. Apparently two of my teachers have told me they did the same thing when they watched the first death note movie years ago.

Anyway back to “despair”. I think I’ve once written that normal people would be quite disturbed at my reasoning on matters like this. I’m actually quite surprised that I didn’t go into depression after picking at this concept. I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t done the same thing with “emotions” all those years ago. Although, I did have to write down the more depressing findings on a piece of paper for a couple of days to try to get myself motivated to do things again. And to make sure that I wouldn’t accidentally cause a suicide if someone else read it, I burnt it and flushed the ashes down my toilet. I took me about three days to regain my motivation, it’s actually quite depressing to think about what others would do if they fully understood the contents of that paper.

This isn’t the first time I’ve thought about depressing things. I think I started my habit of thinking about these things during my silent times when I was ten I think. That was the same time I bought a book called “Lord of the Dead” by Tom Holland. When I bought it, I honestly thought it was a book about vampires, werewolves and ghosts but it was quite different from I expected despite it actually having vampires in it. I am actually quite thankful that I read that book at an age where I did not understand the horribly disturbing aspects of that book. I went back to it about five years later during one of my idle hours equipped with much more worldly knowledge only to be shocked by the fact that I had finished such a book when I was ten. Two years later, one of my friends borrowed the book from our classroom’s reading corner only to call it one of the most disturbing books she had ever read. I don’t have that book anymore though since I have no idea who took it last or if it had been confiscated while I wasn’t around by our discipline teacher. It doesn’t matter though since the story of that book is now permanently burned into my memories in the form of a movie that can only be seen by me.

Anyway, my latest venture into this part of the way man perceives reality allowed me greater insights into despair. I believe that I even ventured into the deepest region of what despair meant to me and the inevitability of it. I would even go on to say that I’ve seen “Absolute Despair” in my thoughts. I’d rather not explain or lead people as to what that is but if you think it’s something related to death or loneliness, then you must be leading a happy life which could easily be destroyed if you understood what I’ve concluded “Absolute Despair” to be. I’ve had enough time to get used to it though. To illustrate what I mean, I shall use this one scene from d.gray-man to illustrate my point.

“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. I’d have to agree with that, though now, combined with my proficiency with psychoanalysis, I actually have something I can use break the “core” of most people. I feel that I may have just become a bigger threat towards humanity.

There are many good things about the fact that people can die. Not being able to die while having zero motivation would simply cause stagnation in the civilizations. That and stupidity. I remember watching this movie “Idiocracy” where there's this guy who’s been sleeping in a hibernation pod for 500 years only to find that world is now filled with morons who speak “text messaging” and water has been replaced by an energy drink. After watching it I made a decision. I came up with the top three worlds where I would commit suicide straight away should I find myself there. Here they are:

1. A world populated by morons only.
2. A world populated by men only.
3. A world filled with worm-like creatures.

Despite them being in that order, I seem to have reached the maximum desire to commit suicide in all those conditions so I based the order on the reasons why I would commit suicide or genocide depending on whichever is much more satisfying. Frustration > Displeasure > Disgust. I may be able to overcome my disgust for worms but I believe that I may never be able to overcome the urge to kill myself under the other two conditions.

You can easily imagine why I freely express my distaste towards Kyou Kara Maou to my friends. I honestly can’t see why is it a bunch of self-proclaimed straight guys would like such a series. Unless of course those really are just self-proclamations. Thankfully the fact that Animax will be showing CLAMP’s x x x H o L I c soon cheers me up. Those of you who don’t what that is, please get your mind out of the gutter as it’s a supernatural themed series whose only relation to what triple x’s normally stands for is the appearance of one of the main characters.

On a final note, anyone who knows me shouldn’t worry about me. I have no major symptoms of depression or the urge to start cutting various body parts. Pain only really registers to me when I concentrate on it so I honestly can’t understand why some of the people around find that making small cuts on their body would make them happy. I’d have to say even with my abnormal thought processes, I’m actually a lot more stable, mentally and emotionally, than most of the people I know.