A life of learning

My mom thought me to say 'no' to a friend when I was around 8 or 9. It was to a friend who kept on wanting to borrow money to buy ice-creams because she said her mother told her to eat one ice-cream everyday. That, even to my then innocent and naive self, sounded like a lie.

I learned that some people lie just for the sake of lying not that long after. When another girl deliberately told me lies about her family and gave me fake phone numbers after making me promise to call her at home.

I became aware of jealousy when one friend complained that another was trying to steal me away as a 'friend'. And I felt jealousy for myself when I found myself saying mean things to someone after she won a race. Both situation perplexed me. The first because I thought that we were all friends with each other and it shouldn't have mattered. The second because it scared me that I would try to hurt a friend over something that I didn't really want anyway.

In secondary school I learned that it was possible to behave normally during the day, and still shut yourself up in your room to cry at night. Every night. For a year.

Somewhere along the way, I learned the invaluable lesson that people will talk about you behind your back. And that they might not necessarily think well of you. This happened when one friend asked me point blank about my thoughts one what another friend had told her in confidence; that she didn't like me and thought that I was proud and arrogant. I don't remembered how I answered, but I remembered the shock and the feeling of being wronged. Looking back, perhaps I did give her reason to think so (I lived mostly in my own thoughts back then, still do in fact) but I'd never purposely looked down or felt superior to anyone else. And while I don't blame her and in fact am appreciative of the lesson that I learnt, I could never bring myself to like her again after that.

I learned (but didn't yet understand) that girls will have crushes on boys (and vice versa) and the things that they do. And that people will gossip.

Off to college and I learned that confining hundereds of teenagers in a site far from civilisation in order to educate and prepare them for the "real" world is just stupid. And that there is a difference between an advice and an order. Between teaching and preaching. And that if you nit-pick on little things I will continue to do them just to spite you.

People will group you with other people because of your similarities, without bothering to ask for your opinion. And even teachers, educators; shapers of the young; will judge you based on your appearance. A teacher (who I will probably remember forever) once told me in a triumphant voice, "Your time will soon be over". I hated her for it. Firstly because the way she said it made it sound as if I was the leader of some gang that was corrupting the whole college. Secondly because it made me realise that she cared more about "winning" and promoting her own values than she did about "teaching".

I learned to distrust and question people and their motives, especially those of the opposite sex.

Once in uni I learned that the grass is always greener on the other side. No matter how many times you cross over the fence. But seriously, there is no such thing as the perfect city to live in. It's all a matter of preference and opinion.

I learned that there's so much that we know. But even more that we don't. And while asking questions are good. Learn to ask them in the right place. Holding up a tutorial with questions that are out of the scope of study are not going to earn you brownie points with anybody especially when there's 50 more tutorial questions that need to be finished.

I learned that some lecturers don't care. Some do. But they're (mostly) not scary people at all. And that they have better things to do then try to end your (alleged) reign of terror.

I've realised that Malaysians will be Malaysians. The good. The bad. The lah.

Money and time have become convenient excuses. Don't want to go? No money, no time. And the crowd shuts up. (Oh, I sound cynical now.)

I come to the realisation that reasons are sometimes mere excuses in disguise. But it takes a hell of a lot of courage to admit it.  And even more courage to do something about it.


I learned that life sucks. I learned that life's fantastic. I learned that life is a contradiction.

I learned. I'm learning. I will never have learnt enough.