dysfunctional.

I have been feeling a little down on the weather this week. I think my period is coming soon.

Received news that my uncle (from my dad's side) had a cardiac arrest and is in critical condition now. Asked dad to head to the hospital but he said it is not urgent, until we received news at night that the doctor(s) declared that he will not wake up anymore, and told his family to inform all other family members to head down to see him.

Fortunately, as one of my managers was on MC today, it means there will be no one to call me at any random moment, and I could find time to rush down to the hospital with my parents during lunch. 

As most of my friends will know, I am a very sensitive and emotional person. I cry easily. I can cry for strangers I don't even know as well. I am not close to my father's side at all, but I still teared like mad at the cremation of my other late uncle. When I entered the ICU, I was ok initially, until my dad started telling me that this brother of his looks the most identical to him, like twins, and I started crying for some reason. 

Also, there was a brief moment where I was left alone in the ICU with my uncle, because my cousin exited the ICU to change shifts with my father. It was a truly odd feeling, to be left in an ICU alone, with someone who is not too far from being labeled as a stranger to me. 

Actually, I do not know what the doctors mean when they say he will not wake up. Does this mean he is in a coma? Does this mean he is brain dead? What exactly are we waiting for? Does this mean there is a chance that he may wake up if the plug is not pulled? I truly have no idea. I asked around (to the adults) but nobody could give me an answer. 

This is a truly strange family. Ever since covid and the passing of one of my uncles, this family has stopped gathering, and each time the full family is gathered, it is always the death of a family member. Even during weddings of a family member, it was never always full strength. Are my late grandparents quaking 6 feet under? I truly wonder. It is only through times like this where we get updates of each another's lives. 

Today I found out:

- My cousin, Shanice, is currently doing her masters in dance in Germany.

- Her 2 brothers got married and 1 of them has 3 kids and the other has 1. 

- My father's sister and her husband is back from Canada months ago. 

- One of my uncles quit smoking and drinking after a stroke a few years ago. 

- One of my aunt is still kept in the dark about my uncle's situation because she herself is battling cancer. Two kinds of cancer in fact. 

- My younger cousin, Sheryl, is waiting for a job offer from NTU. 

- No updates about another uncle and his wife because they have not visited their older brother at all. In fact, I don't even know if anyone told his family. 

And of course, in every such gathering, there is always bound to have some sort of family drama. Today, my dad decided to pick the fight. He asked the uncle of my wife, unprovoked by the way, if he regretted marrying his sister and if he had ever thought of divorce. I was like wtf, this is not the right place nor the right time. Truly truly, this family is dysfunctional. 

anxious people.

"Because there's such an unbelievable amount that we're all supposed to be able to cope with these days. You're supposed to have a job, and somewhere to live, and a family, and you're supposed to pay taxes and have clean underwear and remember the password to your damn Wi-Fi. Some of us never manage to get the chaos under control, so our lives simply carry on, the world spinning through space at two million miles an hour while we bounce about on its surface like so many lost socks. Our hearts are bars of soap that we keep losing hold of; the moment we relax, they drift off and fall in love and get broken, all in the wink of an eye. We're not in control. So we learn to pretend, all the time, about our jobs and our marriages and our children and everything else. We pretend we're normal, that we're reasonably well educated, that we understand 'amortisation levels' and 'inflation rates'."

- Fredrik Backman, Anxious people

A 4/5 read for me. Teared at the last few chapters. 

#dreamlog 6 - adventures at the themepark.

This has got to be one of the most random dreams ever. 

I have already told 2 of my friends, Do and ZX, about this dream haha. 

I dreamt that me, do, zx, Jon Ong and Chloe, were in a themepark. Actually, a huge group of us were at a theme park. It could be some school outing. We were broken into groups of 5 to complete some tasks. 

One of the theme park ride setting was a ride that was in a jungle. There were fake tall trees everywhere. It was a water ride. We were made to all sit on the floor, and a robotic gorilla would climb up the tree and shake the tree, and then water will come splashing down from the tree. It kind of felt like one of those 4D games haha. We all got splashed with water. 

The second game was a rollercoaster ride. We were listening to instructions for the ride and then I woke up. 

This dream was really random because it is the weirdest grouping ever. Also, I think it was because I was watching too many videos of Punch the monkey, that I dreamt of such a thing.  

#dreamlog 5 - pass it to me from below the cubicle.

Most of my dreams are random, but this dream stems from something that had happened in reality a few days prior to the dream.

Context: We were in office for our training sessions and during our break time, we went to the ladies and Yvette suddenly exclaimed, "Oh shit." When a girl is in the washroom and screams "oh shit", most of the time, it can only mean one thing — her period is here. 

I immediately ran back to our meeting room, and grabbed spare pads from Petra. Back in the toilet, Yvette just said, "PASS IT TO ME FROM BELOW." So I did. I remember it was so funny because we were laughing at how here fingers were looking from below the cubicle.

Back to my dream:

Somehow, this dream took place in a school setting. In the dream, Yvette and I were having stomachache and we went to shit in the toilet, in side by side cubicles. All of a sudden, my boss dashed into the toilet. He started screaming that we were going to be late for a performance. Then he kept asking us to come out to practise. However, our shit was so smelly that we refused to acknowledge that it was the two of us in the cubicles, and we refused to go out. He couldn't take it any longer and just started passing us the music scores from below the cubicles. Before I had the chance to see what piece we were actually performing, I woke up.

What a random dream.

discontent.

"What neither that doctor nor the therapist understood was that the stress was caused not by what I did at my job but, as I'd tried to explain to him, by having to go to work. Spending eight hours form Monday to Friday on alienating and unsatisfying tasks, surrounded by people with whom I was forced to have futile and boring conversations full of absurd platitudes about mortgages or parking spaces or the words their children said wrong or the last series they'd watched on Netflix. All that time I was giving to others instead of staying at home reading or drawing or simply looking at the ceiling, half naked, observing the cracks. I couldn't stand the idea of being forced to live that office pantomime in perpetuity just to pay for things like rent or food or a book or a weekend at the beach. I broke down every morning when the alarm beeped because life, lived this way, seemed like a badly written tragedy, boring and sterile, devoid of fun and, even worse, devoid of content, and so, on my way to work, I felt like grabbing strangers by the shoulders and asking them why they weren't feeling like me. What was their secret, how did they manage to maintain their composure, why didn't they cry every time their alarms beeped?"

- Beatriz Serrano, Discontent

you are a lotus flower.

"Lotus flowers take time to reach full bloom.
    About 100 days --   
    Fifty to get 90% of the way there,
    and another fifty for the remaining 10%.

    When the end doesn't seem in sight.
    When you've worked hard for so long, but see no change.

    Remember the lotus flower.

    Though, on the outside, you might not appear to be moving,
    you are a lotus flower, struggling on until that last 10% blooms.
    You are a lotus flower, still blooming, even if it's happening beneath the surface."

- Dancing Snail, I'm not lazy, I'm on energy saving mode

in a world of 2fas.

locked myself out of my wordpress --> tried to reset password --> had to verify password on hotmail --> locked myself out of my hotmail. 

I'm devastated.