The white man clearly has the upper hand in a lot of respects, but the media is something that is so white-washed these days that in films, television, the news, music, and other forms of media, we don’t react to seeing or hearing anything commonly associated with Caucasians but once anybody from another racial platform steps forward to put their two cents in anything – to change the world – there is always going to be negative reaction. We’re desensitised to white people in the media, and to the way they treat coloureds, but so much the opposite towards coloureds themselves.

Now, it’s impossible to please everyone. Virtually everything we say has the potential to hurt someone; to offend. The problem really is how something that essentially hurts becomes commonplace in society. Just like racism and racial stereotyping. It doesn’t always hit us immediately how offensive it is for ‘the powerful white man’ to say something like the N word or ‘chink’/'orient(al)’, but after awhile perhaps we start to feel anger bubble. Maybe not even bubble – more like simmer. We don’t feel that angry. Should we be?

Sometimes I’m watching television or film, and it’s a dialogue heavy scene, and it’s difficult to follow it word-for-word. However, the second they refer to something derogatory towards a race, my head snaps up. I wonder if the white actors feel remorse for saying something so offensive onscreen – perhaps for several takes at a time. Just as I wonder if authors feel bad for writing those words in their novels or what have you. I wonder how it has become acceptable in the mainstream, why it has become acceptable. ‘It’s real life.’ Really? And doesn’t life imitate art too? So it’s a vicious cycle. It’s been going on for so long it becomes second nature. It becomes ‘okay’. It isn’t okay. Being acceptable doesn’t make it right at all.

I’m Asian, more specifically East Asian. I grew up in a predominantly Chinese environment, so I can’t say that I have been subjected to racism from the white man, but I know the term ‘ching chong Chinaman’. It basically refers to a particular surname, and how some words are pronounced i.e. ‘ching’/'qing’. And guess what,in the modern world: “Chinky is a modern British term for a Chinese restaurant or take-away, and the actual food.” A derivative of the original, completely offensive slur is used so commonly. So such a thing that happens in real life, in British films, will they use the word ‘chinky’ to describe their particular take-away? Like, “gonna grab some chinky on the way back” – that kind of thing. You know what, it’s just plain wrong if it happens.

That was only one example, and I believe I chose it because I myself feel indignant that because of my race, somehow in media terms, there is that notion of superiority. And this is only a niche area in a subject so large. The cycle is not easy to break, and this issue in the media – as well as the issue of LGBTQ (which will be discussed in a different post) – will not go away in fifteen minutes, or even in probably a hundred years. Racism is much more subtle than certain outright portrayals of LGBTQ, and because we’re all so used to it sometimes we cannot see it happening. The fact that one race still happens to dominate the industry whether we like it or not is frustrating, and it doesn’t have to be this way. There are some huge names that are LGBTQ activists and I find that amazing and loving, and a wonderful decision they’re making. Why not some people step up against racism in the media, then? It’s really not much of a different cause. We’re just indifferent towards it.

And I just remembered today is Valentine’s Day. Now what a great way to spread love, really :)

I won’t be alone for a week – my mum and aunt will be there with me helping me get settled but after that, the only people who’ll be over will be the once-a-week cleaning lady/man (we haven’t an idea who’s going to come, but I’m sure my aunt will arrange for a lady to do it lol) and my other aunt (I just have a lot of aunts okay? Haha) twice a week.

University enrolment is Thursday, but orientation won’t start till the 22nd so I have time to really get my shit together and work out this living-alone thing so I won’t die. FINGERS CROSSED.

It’s like you go to the movies with your friends and you just assume they don’t like horror movies or comedy because they happen to call one of them out as really bad, so you guys end up seeing the wrong film. Or you start calling people fake for ‘pretending to dislike a band when they love them’ just because one happens to say ‘that track by so-and-so kind of sucks’ but never managed to get out that the rest of so-and-so’s material is actually good, because you and your pretension has cut into the conversation to denounce that person.

Very trivial, I know, and I am also aware I tend to overthink things. But I saw this today and it just got me so angry:

RT @DamnItsTrue Stages of a relationship = :) :D :P ;) <3 ;P xD :| :/ :S :( :’( </3 #DamnItsTrue

I don’t follow that sorry excuse of a twitter account just because I’ve seen those generalised tweets of theirs. Trying to make people feel they’re not alone? Well, why the hell not just generalise the damn world along with it? Of course it has to.

Blah blah, everything has a generalisation but fuck. that. explanation. Especially with something as complicated as a human relationship. Such things aren’t as black and white as that tweet. Not everybody is Taylor fucking Swift okay.

And this is what the account describes itself as:

Facts that are relevant to your daily life, since April 21, 2010.

Um, yeah. Hardly.

Every girl wishes a boy would dedicate the song “Just The Way You Are” by Bruno Mars to them. #DamnItsTrue

Okay this is probably because I really don’t like Bruno Mars but lulz if that’s even true.

Heart Break is more popular disease than Heart Attack.#DamnItsTrue

Going to be a smartass and say that heartbreak is NOT a disease. Stop attempting poetry because it does not work in your case, love.

Whats LOVE? In math: A problem. In history: A war. In chemistry: A reaction. In art: A heart. In me: You. #DamnItsTrue

…WHO WRITES THIS SHIT. SERIOUSLY.

Friends = Crayons. Color my life! #DamnItsTrue

Are you five?

I’m not going to find anymore. Not everything on that twitter account is utter bullshit, but really, all the tweets pertaining to ‘knowing about love and heartbreak’ are rubbish. Why do we treat love the way we do? It’s because of the way we see it. People copy things from TV and film, people take all that too seriously. In the end, what a genuine relationship is it’s hard to find out. That raw energy and passion that actually makes someone so free in their skin next to this other person they love dearly… you can’t fake it. And you sure as hell can’t give people advice on it, because it is a deeply personal experience on its own. Some bits may be the same, but the overall experience would and should be different.

Disclaimer: Assumptions made in the above article may or may not stand up to ‘fact’. Don’t get your panties in a knot ;)

Is there anyone who is like your other half?
I would say one of my closest mates, Jackie, was my other half. She and I can be scarily alike but we’re not afraid to tell each other when we’re wrong. We aren’t cookie cutter friends, we wield switchblades. In a manner of speaking.

Have you ever felt like you completely wasted your time on someone?
That fucking Canadian.

Do promises mean anything to you?
Sure, they can mean quite a lot, and it’s because I tend to make a lot of them.

How good are your math skills?
Fucking lousy. I’m surprised I can still do mental sums. I haven’t taken maths in over a year.

Do you ever wish you could be the opposite sex for a day?
All the time. For various reasons. Like being able to be free of having periods. And being able to wear awesome hipster boy clothes. And penis envy. (loljk)

What inanimate object could easily be your best friend?
Either my laptop or my bed.

Have you ever seen a black rose?
Nope.

What is the most played song on your playlist?
According to iTunes it’s so far been “Bed of Roses” by Bon Jovi.

If you could dye your hair any color, what would it be?
It’s already red so I guess I’d say I’d like a brighter red colour. And I really fucking love blue hair.

What you recently did ?
I just watched Mean Girls.

Does anyone call you baby?
Everyone in my family does, and sometimes it’s a term of affection my girl friends use too.

Choose: The ability to speak any language or play any instrument?
The ability to speak any language. Preferably very very fluent Mandarin. (ever heard me speak it? I can’t.)

If you met yourself, would you befriend them?
I’d probably find myself annoying as fuck.

In your opinion, what’s the best cure for the hiccups?
I hold my breath and count to ten. How is this a relevant question?

Do you watch sport on TV even though you aren’t a sporty person yourself?
No. I fucking hate sport.

When you hear your voice back on a recording, do you think it sounds awful?
I do on the first couple of listens but as I get used to it I just get over myself and stop being so critical.

Which is why I’m starting over. Not in a blogging sense but in a novel-writing sense. I have never been so terribly honest in fiction as I plan to be. If I’m ever going to be a serious writer I need to figure out if staring these imperfections in my writing is something I can deal with. Only then can I tell the real stories. There’s no point if I’ve never lived it.

I’ll even be the first to say that I haven’t really lived at all. I’ve been terribly fortunate and very sheltered. I grew up away from gangs and “hoods” and bad influence. I grew up in a religious home. I grew up watching my siblings go through experiences but never actually went there myself because I was always too scared to. So I wipe the very messy slate of my writer’s knowledge clean. Away with the fanfictions and fake characters I’ve picked up from movies and television shows. Away with all that. Not to say I’m not immensely proud of how much I’ve achieved in honing my grasp of the English language through those media, but I just want to try this out. Let’s call it an experiment. If I finish a novel by the end of 2011 and can read it over without feeling I would cheat any other reader, I can say this experiment is a success. If not it will be an ongoing process until I throw the towel in and give up writing altogether. That last bit will probably never happen as I love it too much. I have a voice and ought to use it.

It’s not so good when you keep looking back at what has happened and forget to look forward into the future though.

Being on holiday and living in my old house sadly cripples me in this respect. I have so many memories here, and it impedes my ability to think ahead. When I was still in Australia and had just gotten my marks for my final semester, I was all, “BRING ON UNIVERSITY AND LIVING ON MY OWN” and all that jazz, but at the moment what do I feel about it? Nothing. In fact, I actually feel a bit of dread. I’m always so stagnant being here at home, and I hardly have any drive for things. I surprisingly don’t really have a clue why.

I guess the most suitable answer would be that it boils down to what I’m routine to. If I’m working nonstop, work becomes my life so if I sit around watching films, eating, lazing, reading leisurely and using the computer all day, surely my drive drops to zero. Also being in this house reminds me of so many things but no one should expect any less since I spend my entire childhood and formative years here. It’s a special place.

I was watching Never Let Me Go (starring Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley and Andrew Garfield) last night for the second time. I’d seen it on the plane before, but not in full – I missed about the first half an hour to forty-five minutes of the film. Watching it in its entirety last night injected such profound sadness in me which lingered even after the credits rolled. For awhile, I just sat there not really moving, but contemplating the message of the film and feeling completely depressed about the human potential. Then instead of moving on from it, what did I do? I decided to put on some sad music in order to retain the feeling. See, I hold onto things. Sometimes I’m so masochistic it scares me. It’s not good to dwell on bad things, yet I do on purpose. To feel something real, I realise. I’ve had plenty of happy and positive experiences but there’s always been an undercurrent of discontent in what I did as a child. Being back here triggers a lot of those emotions whether I want them to or not, and I think it makes me a greater cynic than I already am. So much so all I identify with can sometimes be snippets of sadness.

/emo blog entry is emo/

So really, you can call someone I think is incredibly sexy beyond the depths of ugliness and you would be right in a sense I am not really in any position to try to change your mind. It’s like how anyone has the right to like Bieber, but at the same time, I’m also allowed to be extremely offensive about him without having to say “No offence” at the very end of every insult I throw at him.

(I am aware how superficial this post is, but bear with me. It has a point.)

I’m on tumblr a lot, and I always blog/reblog the same things and they’re mostly people I find insanely attractive for varying reasons. And every day I will stumble across a random comment from an anonymous user denouncing anyone’s love for any particular person I find lovely. It’s not even just on tumblr but on youtube and whatnot. Just today it was “Why do you find Matt Smith attractive when he’s fucking ugly” (but not in any way grammatically correct – spelling was atrocious) and other days I find people bashing the way other celebrities look, like Lea Michele for example with whom I’m incredibly enamoured. I find myself going, “Okay, calm down, remember your new motto and look at it from their POV,” but the thing is I don’t really have to. If you and I were friends that spoke every day about the most mundane topics and about our obsessions, you know how much I diss the things I love. It might be some strange masochistic way to express my love for something, but it’s honestly what I do. And the funny (or not) thing is that I usually just insult the most superficial of things and realise that with all these imperfections in these “perfect” (in my eyes) human beings, I adore them for something that’s skin deep.

Example #1. Matt Smith.

He really is a funny looking human being, isn’t he? Let’s just count the ways.
1) his head is too big for his face – he actually reminds me of Jay Leno in some pictures
2) his forehead is so big I could use it as a lawn chair
3) his chin is even bigger (even he admits this)
4) he lacks eyebrows
5) his overbite is ridiculous
6) he’s not got the best nose ever
7) his lips look rather odd
8) he is a clumsy motherfucker
9) he’s got these spindly girly legs and a disproportionate body

Whoa okay. 9 very valid points of discussion. Bear in mind this is what I see as objectively as possible and you might find overbites very appealing – I certainly actually think I do given the men I love all. have. overbites. But that was a digression obviously.

Oh I forgot to mention he has big Dobby ears and if it wasn’t for his heavenly hair, they would really stick out in the oddest fashion. And some people hate his accent (I love it, but I’ve heard them say it’s unbearable).

I remember before finding out he was a fantastic actor, I didn’t find him very attractive at all in a physical sense. Seriously, people are right to call the man ugly. Or are they? Maybe he’s grown on me, or maybe my taste in men has changed (hur hur) but I look at him and go “he is so fucking sexy o.m.g. *bimbo hand gesture*”. Everything about this physically imperfect man is so perfect because his talent factor is through the roof. His hair is brilliant too, I might add (the best physical feature he has – he should never chop the teak off), but that doesn’t really count. He seems like the nicest man possible while still being unafraid of having an ego since he probably knows how good he is. He has this alpha male self confidence every interview I see him in, yet he is a complete dork. A doofus really, a very clumsy one that topples things and destroys the TARDIS at least once a day (according to his lovely ginger assistant Karen Gillan). He seems very sweet and caring – obviously towards Karen – and he has a fantastic sense of humour. And you can tell he’s intelligent – just listen to the way he speaks. He is very eloquent. Those good qualities in him cancel out his rather insignificant bad ones, yeah? I think so anyway. Matt is bursting with acting talent too, obviously, so it kind of makes me even sexier. That’s just the icing on the cake, though – his personality just makes you wish a Matt Smith existed for you to stuff into your closet because it’s impossible to live without one.

(oh and forgot to mention he has a fine bum.)

Example #2. Alexander Skarsgard.

I picked him because he kind of looks a bit more like an Adonis by conventional standards.
1) THAT. OVERBITE.
2) he kind of has disproportionate chicken legs compared to his bigger upper body.
3) he’s got a really funny nasally voice irl.
4) no eyebrows again.
5) he can look like he wants to kill you if he stares directly at a camera with a come hither gaze.
6) his nose looks odd when he’s facing one head on.
7) he once looked like this.

Good thing he’s a mile tall and looks good with scruff.

So yeah, less mistakes to point out of course, and really most girls find him very attractive just by looking at him. I did too, until over time the fact of #5 got too much to bear and I started noticing his flaws very obviously. But I never thought he was ugly anyway, since he is such a sweetheart in his interviews. He’s so funny, makes fun of Stephen Moyer (who’s also odd and sexy), gets so embarrassed when people call him sexy, etc. And even though I’m sure people will argue (for whatever reasons), but the man can act okay. Seen Generation Kill? And True Blood season 3? Yeah, perfect display of how emotive he is through his eyes, a technique that’s not exactly the easiest. Skarsy does it flawlessly.

Example #3. Matt Bellamy.

I know that’s an old picture but I specifically chose it because he looks like an anime character there.
1) OVERBITE OVERBITE OVERBITE.
2) his head is too small.
3) his chin cleft is too prominent.
4) his nostrils are hilarious to look at.
5) when he smiles he can look like he’s 70 years old.
6) he dances like Mr Bean.
7) his eyes are INCREDIBLY deep-set.
8) he’s only 5’7″ – he’s shorter than my best guy friend who’s also the shortest guy I know.

At least he has eyebrows, a nice bum and those adorable puppy eyes. But anyway.

I’m getting tired of writing in paragraphs.

WHY MATT BELLAMY IS ONE OF THE SEXIEST MEN ALIVE (har dee har har)
1) his level of intelligence is that of a Zeta. He’s an alien.
2) his guitar playing talent is out of this world.
3) he makes simple arse piano scales sound so epic and emotive.
4) he laughs so much it’s endearing. He’s an easy-going chap.
5) he mishears fans and never gets offended. (One girl was at the Melbourne airport asking him for his autograph, wanting him to “make [the autograph] out to be personalised” and he thought she asked him to make out with him and all he said was “that’s a bit forward”)
6) I can’t believe I’ve gone this far without talking about his voice. Um, yeah. He sounds like an angel. And he sings perfectly live. Abso-fucking-lutely perfectly.
7) he is incredibly dedicated to his work and doesn’t let anything else define him.

Where is this even leading, one might ask. I just think it’s incredibly interesting how I used to be so opposed to other people have different opinions to me but oddly recently I’m all “fuck your opinion, and fuck mine; we’re entitled to our own and although it’s nice if we kept ugly comments to ourselves, we can’t be classified wrong by making them known”. Yeah, and in order to make it interesting, I decided to turn it into a very very superficial topic to lighten up the mood of my blog since it’s usually so desolate. (I think it is anyway. And I never talk about boys. Ever. Consider yourselves lucky.)