112 - The day my father dies

One thing that has never come up in my everyday ponderings is the prospect of my dad dying. I know it sounds terrible to think about my father's death, but let me just explain how my emotional system works.

I don't like watching people or hearing about people being stricken by tragedy. I don't like knowing people can feel devastated, or torn apart. Most of the time this happens, is when people get too used to taking life for granted. They take the people around them, they take the things they've got for granted, and it's only a matter of time before some unknown force takes it away, because the reality in this universe is nothing lasts forever.

Something as tragic as my father's death is undoubtedly going to affect me. I shouldn't even be allowed to blog if I thought his death wouldn't affect me, due to how disturbingly stoic and inhumane that kind of reaction would be. However, the one thing that I can reduce is the shock factor. The one thing I can control is whether I feel something has been taken away from me, or has merely been lost. I don't want to feel that God will have taken away my dad. Especially with the information I have, I shouldn't feel that way.

My dad takes drugs. My dad drinks. My dad smokes. One would normally take these facts, and say they worry about their father's health, and that would be the end of that train of thought. It would be a dark piece of information lodged in the back of their mind, and they wouldn't think of it any further because they would be afraid to think of that dreadful day. Everyone wants their parents to grow old, to watch our growth, and to live a long and prosperous life.

But being afraid to think of death is what causes that sense of surprise. Having faith in life lasting forever is what makes us overwhelmed by grief. Which brings me back to why I imagine how his death is going to go beforehand. 

I picture myself in my bedroom, at my computer, in the five-person house I will rent with the English friends I've met at university. Or perhaps I will be walking out of a lecture, and as I do so, checking my phone for any missed calls. Any way it happens, it'll probably be my mother who tells me how, where and when my father happened to die in Hong Kong. I would be surprised by the news then, but I will not feel dismayed, shaken up, or awe-stricken.

I would tell my mother when I would fly back to Hong Kong as soon as possible. I would notify my housemates of what happened, and what will happen in the next few months, and will probably shed a bucketful of tears as I do so. I would fly back on the plane, quiet the whole time. On my arrival back in Hong Kong, many days will be spent organizing and discussing with my family what will be done with my father's body, and how we will commiserate him. Nobody will really care to ask me if I want to talk about what just happened. They will just assume I do, when really I don't. It'll be annoying, but I can't and won't blame them.

A couple weeks later, his funeral will happen, and I will be there in the front row, directly in front of a portrait picture of him, with his ashes or coffin situated behind it. The suit I will wear will be the most expensive outfit I will have ever purchased. Outside, it will not be sunny that day. It won't be cloudy either. It will just be normal weather conditions, semi-sunny, semi-overcast. I won't wear a tie. My face will be blank. Maybe I'll wear sunglasses, like how my father wore sunglasses at his dad's funeral. The church would be silent, just the way I like it, besides the words of the reverend that will perform the ceremony.

Standing behind and beside me will my three half-sisters of which my father also beared, my paternal grandmother, my aunts, my uncles, and my cousins on my father's side, as well as my father's co-workers, my father's friends, and three of my best friends and my mother who I invited for my own moral support.

I might speak about my father to the people who attend that day. After all, I am his son and I am a writer. I don't know what I will say, but I don't need to start writing that any time soon.

But that's already past the important part.

The important part will have been when I stand in front of his picture and say goodbye in my heart.

And as the days go by from now until that day, whatever may change externally will be countered by some change in this image that I have constructed, promptly and appropriately. Like if it turns out that I get an apartment by myself next school year, then I suppose I don't have to tell those housemates I originally planned to live with. That's how the grief reduction program works.

This system works every time. The system prevented anxiety attacks when it came to my final high school examinations, because I prepared myself mentally for glorious success and dismal failure. The system helped me face my summer job, knowing how to balancing inner confidence and the idea that I might get fired at any point I was working. The system saved me months of depression in the last few weeks I was in Hong Kong, on the plane ride to England, and for the past four months in university when I had perfectly good reason to feel weak and lonely.

Before I came to England, I imagined myself crying every night, missing home. And I now imagine crying every night after my father dies. In doing so, I live the experience once already in my head. There will be no heartbreak anymore because I've already had it broken. It's not to say I don't care about my father anymore. I'm not saying he's dead to me. I still care about him, my mother, and all of my family and friends. But I feel that I need to be strong, and I need to take care of myself. As people sometimes say, you can't look after others until you learn to look after yourself.

That's what I'm doing. That's what I just did, today. I went through the day my father dies. I will be fine on that day. They will say, "Wow, Michael. You're handling this incredibly well. I can't even begin to figure out how you do it."

And what you have just read is my explanation in full.

104 - On my guts

Well, it's been a very long day, but I have nobody to blame but myself, because I chose to wake up at around two in the morning. I could've gone back to sleep, but instead, I decided I would finish off my new blog, get a Twitter account for Do you hate it too?, one for myself, and also create a fan page on Facebook. I also did some reading on conducting ethnographic research in past civilizations - it proved to be difficult to stay awake, but it's now more than eighteen hours later, and I'm still here.

For most of the day, I was feeling scared inside.

I am scared about how I will feel after I announce the launch of all those things, I don't know what I expect - if I want a lot of the attention, or if I might get freaked out by it. I was certainly freaked out when I found out that people were writing reviews about me without telling me. (I hate it when people read my blog but don't tell me.)

I often ask myself if I want to be recognized. I ponder it all the time, because it takes a lot of guts to be a person with a widely known name and personality. It takes guts to devote so much time to something like blogging, instead of doing something else that might be practical and productive. It takes guts to self-publish a book. And it takes guts to pour your thoughts, your memories and your feelings out on a public forum where just about anybody can (and actually is everybody that) reads it.

I'm not always sure I have the guts. Most of the time, I like to give off the impression that I do, but those who truly know me, know that I have a lot of fat question marks, sitting on broomsticks, flying around inside my head. I know I doubt my own ability. Worse yet, I doubt my own potential. All I can feel comfortable with admitting are my mistakes, my downsides, the reasons why not.

I wonder why that is. Maybe it's just the way I was brought up. My mother and father, if my memory serves me right, never really gave me impressionable advice on how to live my life. It was always something about what I did wrong, or what they did wrong, or how not to live my life. Don't point at strangers, don't use that bowl to microwave food, and don't ever get married. And maybe that's why that is the way I see things, I am always accustomed to seeing things in contradiction, my moral compass consisting of a giant list of double negatives.

lol. I chuckle at my own words. I admire my own phrasing. One positive thing about myself that I'm quite happy to admit is that I'm funny. Another positive thing is the fact that I'm good at writing - at least for my own entertainment. Sad, I know, but how often have you gone back to read your own written words and found it entertaining, huh?

Oh, Michael. Too often you look at yourself like you're another person, whenever you get depressed or high or tired or drunk. 

Is it a coping strategy? I think so. 

Is it weird? I think so.

Should I stop? I think so.

99 - On a 'Do you hate it too?' book.

If you have read my last entry on Do you hate it too?, you will know that my blog has been well-praised. This got my mother very excited, and she pushed an idea forward for me to consider: publishing a Do you hate it too? book.

When I first began doing this about a year ago, I had already begun to think about compiling them all up one day and putting them in a publication. 'Why I didn't do it earlier' is a question I often answered with weak claims that I'm too lazy, can't be bothered, or haven't got the time for, but to be entirely truthful, it's because I don't think it's good enough. I still feel like it really is just me giving a childish rant everyday, and honestly, what contribution to the world do I give, by exerting negativity within the blogosphere?

I know I make people laugh, but in the end, I cannot collaborate with, let's say, an anger management-orientated business, seeing as I don't offer tips on how to deal with the hates I write about. I don't give advice on how to use the English language, or how to deal with stress, or how to focus on thinking positively - even though that's what you would associate with my blog, if it were just a little bit different.

But it is the way that it is, and being an active consumer of the book-selling market myself, I know that this would merely sell as one of those silly books uncles buy for their nieces, and mothers would refuse to spend money on for their children. 'How about this novel on vampires, sweetie', 'Check out this book about dinosaurs' and 'Trevor, come see if you'd like this one full of brain teasers' they would chime. The blatent truth is, I believe Do you hate it too? is silly.

I need people who can change my mind about this, so if you have any words of encouragement, please share them with me, because I'm in a place with no self-confidence right now. I would love to begin this whole adventure right now, to find a distributor, to format a book, to sell it online, and to watch it sell on shelves in Hong Kong, Canada, the US and the UK. I probably would anyway to my mother's insistence, even if I still don't believe in the book.

But I know that if I don't believe in my own work, it won't be a success.

Sigh. What do you think? Any words of advice?

10 - Why being an A- or B-grade student is alright to me.

Here's a collective record of all the grades I've gotten from Primary 1 to Primary 6, and from Secondary 1 to Secondary 7. I've received two or three grades a year, but I'll just include the end-of-year results, i.e. the ones that matter, except, of course, for Secondary 7 which I'm still studying. For that year, I'll post the half-year grades I received last month instead:

P1 - AB
P2 - AA
P3 - AAAAAAAAB
P4 - AAAAAABBBB
P5 - AAAAAAAABB
P6 - AAAAABBBBBB
S1 - **AAAAABBBBBBC
S2 - ***AAAAABBBBE
S3 - **AAAAAAAABB
S4 - AAAAABBBBBC
S5 - *AAAAAABBBC
S6 - AAABBBBC
S7 - AAAABBBB

Not to say I'm unfit, but the Cs I get are usually from Physical Education. I don't excel in most of the common sports such as basketball, tennis and hockey. I'm happy sticking with my pseudosports, bowling, snooker and golf. I say pseudosports because you don't run around in any of them, and you don't sweat as much (although, there are some exhilarating games where you will require some sort of energy drink.)

The E that I received in Secondary 2 was from Music class. At the time, I didn't know how to play any musical instruments. The music teacher was a pedantic one and disapproved of my rendition of Chopsticks, claiming it wasn't a 'valid' solo performance. I got 2 out of 25 possible marks for my performance and that equated to an E.

As you can clearly see, I've always been an A- and B-grade student. For those of you who are unsure of what the asterisk represents, it's a 'star', which is even better than an A. I don't really know how it is in any other school, but in our school, standing out academically is difficult. You would think a bunch of As and Bs is impressive, but not when compared to my classmates who receive grades not unsimilar to say, this one: **AAAAAA, or this one: *****AAA or even this one: *******A.

Seven stars and one A. That is insane. And extremely admirable. The fact that they have the capability to actually obtain close to the maximum standard of education in an official educational program is a fact that blows my mind.

Here's the thing. I know that I'm capable of that too. We all are if we study hard enough, pay attention in class, ask the teacher a million insightful questions, yadda, yadda, yadda... but even though I have a habit of procrastinating and cramming my head with revision material at the very last minute, I am fine with the As and Bs that I get, because I believe in the concept of no regrets. I don't and won't regret being just an A- and B-grade student, because in my heart, an A always stand for Amazing Achievement and B will stand for Brilliant. I don't need a star to make me feel good. I feel okay getting As and Bs because I know I tried my best the way I felt was best. I'm alright with it because I won't regret it.

A lot of my friends often feel like shit whenever they receive a bad mark for a poorly done piece of homework, or when they come out of an examination knowing that they haven't done as well as they could have. If we're being objective, most of the time, the reason they feel like shit is because they actually receive bad grades. There is also, of course, the pressure on one's shoulders that comes from parents that want to raise highly scholastic sons and daughters. And there is the feeling of inadequacy that people experience while living and learning amongst geniuses.

But, my advice is this: If you feel alright with yourself, that's all you need to do well in life. If you know you're lacking in some areas, then you really need to work, but if you truly feel comfortable with what you're rewarded with, that's okay. If you spend your time feeling worried, stupid or insecure, you will truly have more to regret in due time. I have been taught this lesson (and still get taught this lesson) many times, and this message doesn't only apply to school, but work, friendship, love and life as well. I don't regret missing the opportunity to get all those stars in the past few years. My strengths are for me to define for myself. You can define them too.

What are your strengths? What sort of As and Bs have you received that you see as stars?