At times I simply fail to understand how my body works.
I am five foot two, and for as long as I have been this height (which, ashamedly, since Form 2) I have weighed less than 45 kilograms, usually hovering around 43.5-44.5kg. I always put this down to the fact that I don’t eat much and I am a runner. I ran a lot of long-distance events back in high school. Somehow I’ve always finished 7th –.- but that’s another story.
I’ve also secretly harboured this desire to one day donate blood and therefore do the nation a service and maybe one day save someone’s life. I am also an organ donor. Yes saya rakyat Malaysia yang bersedia berkhidmat kepada negara. But in order to accomplish this I have to qualify lah obviously. Now that I’ve hit the legal age, the only thing that stands in my way is the issue of weight.
I’m heading the club in charge of holding the blood donation drive for HELP College, which will take place on October 13 this year. And I thought that okay if not now then when?
I thought that with the lack of exercise (I haven’t gone jogging since Jog For Hope ended) and all that Turkish delight, baklava and fudge from Istanbul/London and regular midnight snacks back home, I would have gone up in weight over the last two months.
Well GUESS WHAT.
I just stepped on the scales.
They now read 42.5kg.
WHATTHEFREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK
D8 D8 D8
I haven’t weighed this little since I was in Form 1. This is beyond upsetting! *flings out one dramatic arm* Will I never be able to donate blood in my lifetime! But even worse than that is the fact that Trishna keeps saying she’s going to balloon out and head the world’s first women’s sumo wrestling team when she hits forty because her metabolism will slow down then.
It looks like she’ll have to reserve a spot for me on the team (i.i)
PS: In hindsight it was never such a good idea to donate blood during my own donation drive since, presumably, I’ll have to help run the event and I can’t do that if I’m lying down fainting from lack of blood. But I’m beginning to suspect that future prospects for my dreams of blood donation aren’t so rosy anyhow. VAAAAAA T.T
I just received a notice regarding the MAD Charity Show – its venue has been changed from changed from Dragonfly KL to the Ministry of Sound @ Sunway. Do take note and make the appropriate changes. (:
***
A belated note on the World Cup. Does not anyone else feel that relying on an octopus to tell you who’s going to win the match is insulting, not just to us but to the animal kingdom as a whole? Obviously we are the most intelligent creatures on this earth, so it goes without saying that believing an octopus’s random predictions is a beyond stupid. I mean come on, how hard could it have been to get it right? It has a one in two chance of picking the right team! (Further Math students could probably prove me wrong on this but even at face value, one in two aren’t such bad odds)
And I don’t believe that the octopus is psychic. Yes, many animals have been shown to be intelligent and perhaps possess abilities we would deem “psychic”. Dogs rush to the door minutes before their masters arrive home, salmon find their way back to their breeding grounds, abandoned cats find their way home after being lost 100 miles away. The animal kingdom has secrets humans can probably never hope to uncover; or at least, not for a long time.
But the line is drawn at that creeping charlatan of a cephalopod. Because I believe that, no matter how “psychic”, intelligent or as Jonathan says, “pre-cognitive” he is, Paul simply will never be able understand a pointless activity that was invented purely by humans, for humans. Neither does he understand what flags and nationalities are, or what winning means to anybody at all. Paul is simply one freaking lucky – and hungry – octopus whose sole quest in life is to feed and breed.
What’s worse is that his predictions have made headlines around the world. Which goes to show you that clever has humans are, most of us are - most of the time - still the gullible monkeys we once were.
My point is, truthfully I didn’t really like the Netherlands that much. Spain beat Germany after all! But I REALLY REALLY hated Paul so much that I supported Netherlands just so that I could have the privilege of laughing at the world just in case he was proved wrong. So I went and changed my desktop wallpaper orange, tweeted my support to the Dutch incessantly and stayed up all Sunday night… To watch the Oranje go down in the most shameful manner ever. –.- I feel infuriated. This hasn’t convinced me at all of Paul’s capabilities and therefore I shall be revenging myself personally by eating tako every day for a month… Or as long as it takes for the disciples of Paul to shut up.
(Yeah I know my form of revenge isn’t quite coherent with my rant about the wondrous animal kingdom and it’s not even Paul’s fault, but what to do. Spain really deserved to win lah!)
(Besides, Paul is really quite a stupid name for an octopus.)
This country continually lets us down, in more ways than we could ever imagine.
I was blog-hopping and I came across this incredibly disturbing personal account of a student who witnessed a horrific traffic accident involving two smaller cars and a lorry. The passengers of one of the smaller cars were able to get out of the car easily, but there was a girl trapped inside the other car, screaming for help. The car was crushed and she was badly injured. The student tried to get her out, but noticed that the car had caught fire and was just beginning to burn. He quickly drove to the a petrol station which was a mere 500 meters away. He ran to the station attendant and asked to use one of the 4 fire extinguishers available, explaining the emergency and hence the need for it. It wouldn’t have harmed the station just to borrow one of them for a while. There was someone’s life at stake after all.
Here’s the horrible part, the part I find incomprehensible, shocking, and left me feeling dismayed with the station attendant’s reaction: he refused to let the student borrow the fire extinguisher.
You really cannot blame the student for shouting at the station attendant, who was all the time sitting benignly behind the glass of the counter. According to this frustrated student, he just kept saying “cannot borrow” and refused to open the door. At one point he changed his story and said that his boss did not allow him to lend the fire extinguishers to anybody. He even got another of his partners to come and back him up. The two of them stood their ground against the student.
By this time the student was kicking and punching the glass of the kiosk; which, considering the blatant lack of empathy from the kiosk attendants, was actually quite an acceptable reaction. He even said that he would leave his IC with the station attendants, saying that if he did not return the extinguisher they could report him to the police. And still, for some incomprehensible reason, they refused. They even had the gall to say that the CCTV had caught all his actions on camera and that they would be reporting him the next day.
Giving up, the student drove back to the scene, only to find the car completely on fire. The poor girl was burnt alive inside.
The student later then reported the actions of the petrol station attendants to the police, who were angered as well and promised to take action. But of course by then it was too late to do anything about the dead girl.
There are no words to describe how I felt when I read this. I feel so, so angry with the station attendants. Why could they have not lent ONE of the FOUR fire extinguishers to the student? For what reason did they decide to cling to the fire station property like it was the Hope Diamond and not a fire extinguisher that they were charged with guarding?
Why could it not have occurred to them to see the accident for themselves if the student was telling the truth? There were two attendants after all, one could have guarded the station while the other went with the student to make sure that, against all odds, they would get their precious fire extinguisher back. Why could they not have accepted the student’s offer of his IC? That alone should have proof of his sincerity. An IC isn’t quite a fair exchange for a fire extinguisher.
The problem is that now I am angry. I can just imagine the attendants languidly denying him any access, possibly even making fun of the student’s frustration. It’s something we’re all too familiar with – the tak apa lah attitude of Malaysians that I have come to detest. How many times have we witnessed a situation where we should have spoken up, should have acted, should have taken a little more initiative to right something that went wrong, and then decided that it wasn’t such a big deal and could live with the cons? How many times have we been the ones saying aiyah never mind lah? Think about the time you were at the public library and they didn’t let you borrow a book because there was a system error and the librarian couldn’t be bothered to figure out what the problem was. Think about the time you last saw litter lying on the ground. Think about the time you queued up for something and it gets to your turn only to be told curtly that what you want isn’t available/is not allowed, and worst of all had no alternative solution offered.
Believe me, this is related to my rant: this disgusting tak apa lah attitude can and has lead us to believe that the world revolves around us, and nothing potentially harmful will ever happen to us. We begin to dislike venturing out of our comfort zone, and therefore become increasingly complacent. We develop the mentality that nothing untoward can ever happen to us. We think it won’t happen to me.We invent excuses as to why we don’t have to do things, to act on anything because there is sure to be someone else who’ll pick up after us. We blame it on computers and bosses – the big unseen people whom we will never get to speak to and therefore do not need to deal with once the complaint is gone, shoved to the back of the mind to be forgotten. Out of sight, out of mind. This is the kind of attitude and mentality we’ve developed. Only in this situation, it was taken too far.
How about, no, it DOES matter, that if something seems wrong we have to act on it, and we can’t leave it lying around and expect another person to fix up? That if you see litter lying around, you have to pick it up? That what little you do DOES make a difference, no matter how small or insignificant the action? How about, no, someone’s life does depend on your passing me one of your four fire extinguishers; and whatever consequences your boss will deal you don’t mean jack in this situation?
As usual I don’t think I make sense. I am outraged and very, very bitter with the way this life could have so easily been saved, but wasn’t just because someone was too fucking lazy to look outside the window and try to feel a hint of compassion for the person stuck in the car, just because it’s not happening to him and (in his mind) probably never will. They chose to remain cruelly and blissfully ignorant. I am so angry and full of disbelief that something as cruel as this could have happened so close to home, in a city and country which boasts of first-class infrastructure and harmony and unity among its people and many other things. And yet it can happen – it did. I have never felt so unsafe, scared for my own life and for the lives of the ones I love. I have never felt so let down. And I have never in my life wished so hard for the concept of karma to be true.
Congratulations, Malaysia. Negara ini memang boleh.
Labels: Gloom And Doom, Musings, Rants, Very Long Posts
