Today's Muse: You know, I don't know why I still do this "muse", thing. It seemed smart at the time.

Amusing story: I've been trying to get an internship with a media company. They asked me to call them back when I had my results (and thus, knew more or less where I was headed next), which I did. Over and over. For days (Bad impression.). Both numbers.

Finally, after a plaintive message had been sent, they called back today. Twice.

I was eating lunch upstairs, and just one floor down, in the basement, my phone tittered quietly. Unheard.

It's supposed to be funny, y'know, irony and all that? And I should be laughing, I really ought to be laughing. Why aren't I laughing?

Maybe it's because all those goddamned A's on my results slip has got people bombarding me with advice: Go to JC! Get a scholarship and go overseas! Your parents aren't young, you know! How're you going to pay? Lasalle isn't established. Waste, waste, waste.

We stood on opposing sides, belting out argument after argument, reason after reason, trying desperately to change our opponent's mind. I might as well have just said Fuck off, instead of all those long fancy speeches. We would have still arrived at the same standpoint.

No, I didn't fight with my parents. They've hammered it over and over into my skull that the choice is mine, and that they trust my decision. It's the rest of the world I've been giving the finger.

In hindsight, I have been unreasonable. After a certain number of people giving me the same long speech with the same reasons, it's a little difficult for me to continue to sit down and nod emphatically - Yes, yes, point taken, I understand, quite right. Y'know, they didn't come up and say anything when the preliminary results came out.

Yet, doubt. Damnit. Some of the incessant yammering must have gotten through.

Something good did come out of this whole fiasco. My Dad, quiet, gentle, neutral Da, actually convinced me to still go for Lasalle. He argued for it, shot my own feeble protests (recycled from the endless advice) down, pointed out where I could go from Lasalle. He was able to clearly articulate what I was unable to even identify. Good old Da.

I wish I was a self-assured as I was four days and one Matrix movie ago. The battle robots were, and are still cool. I love the battle for Zion. Bam! Bam! Woosh!



By the way, my family and I drove up to Malacca for the weekend for a wedding dinner for a cousin I didn't know I had. Kim and I spent the drive talking excitedly about cartoons we used to watch years ago.

Did anyone see that one Transformer movie with those stunted robots with the rotating faces and the huge bad-ass organic robot with the tentacles and everything? I remember being horribly scarred by that sequence; when one of the Transformer robots is captured and hoisted in the air by the zombie-tentacle thing, and he's just thrashing about and screaming bloody hell.

Damn, I can hear him now.