Sophie

Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart. - Winnie The Pooh

I decided to post this as soon as possible just in case I forget about it. But again, how can I ever forget about this? Just in case y'all have no idea what's this about, this is a post dedicated to See Ke Xin Sophie, daughter of my beloved ex-form teacher Sherman See and his wife Mrs See. If you dig deep enough into this blog, you'll find one about his wedding. Yes, that 'old man' already has a daughter, just born on August 21st (If I'm correct).

It seemed so fast, that I didn't realise that it's almost a year since Sherman's birthday which our entire class 4E celebrated together as a class, how we conspired to smash a plain birthday cake on him (Edwin Wong you got the honour of personally completing that mission) and how sweet his appreciation 'speech' was. I could never forget that. He was even wearing the tee the class made for him when we were still '3E' on his previous birthday. And way before that was the Taman Negera trip which after we found out Sherman's secret relationship, we actually sorta pressured him to propose marriage, which he did, in dramatic fail fashion. Back to last November which we attended his wedding, a marriage in which we played an integral part in, and witnessed our ex-teacher say "I Do". That magic of that wedding would last forever in our minds, as we waved our ex-teacher off when he drove his Audi away with his bride to perhaps a happily ever after. Now, it's nearing the end of August, soon marking his 31st birthday (or is it 32nd? I'm confused here...), and there he is, with a completed family.

It's like we got into some sort of time travel and arrived at a timeline a year later. Sophie was born into this world, and lucky enough beside her is Mr and Mrs See, and later on she'll meet her other 42 brothers and sisters. Although... I have absolutely no idea that Mr See already planned to name his daughter Sophie(Or that I forgot). Coz... I also wanted to name my future daughter Sophie, if I had one. Maybe that's the affinity I have with this newborn child. Sherman why you steal my future daughter's name??? XP

That tiny little seed within a mother's womb that slowly becomes a form of life, slowly and surely growing, then eventually comes the birth of a new identity. A new life. No matter what, children will forever fill the hole within people's life that they didn't realise they had, like a missing jigsaw puzzle piece that would make the puzzle look perfect. They are the hope of our future, and the parents of the future generations. They are angels when they are first born... and well, all of us slowly take the form of little devils anyway. I'm not a parent so I don't know how parents would feel when they first set their eyes on their baby when they were born, but I guess you'd feel besides pure elation, some kind of completion. They say when a baby is born, a parent is born as well. A kind of responsibility is born. 

Still I find it amusing to imagine Sherman as a dad. I mean, yes he has successfully 'parented' 42 noisy and rowdy 'kids' in a classroom, handed out Physics assignments, gave us a breathing space during Character First periods, and a great deal lot of fun. Oh he even managed to stuff 8 of us into his car at one point. What a great adventure. But, to imagine him having to communicate with a tiny creature that speaks in a very different language, feeding her with milk, trying to hush her to sleep, attempting to stop her cries, changing her diaper and all that, it's just amusing I suppose. Though I must say, enjoy it while it lasts :D

Congratulations Daddy Sherman!!

"You spend the first two years of their life trying to teach them to walk and talk. Then you spend the next 16 years telling them to sit down and shut-up."

All My "Dreams"

“A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.” - John Lennon

I don't know why, but I've always been a dreamer. I dream a lot. I dream when I sleep, I daydream in class, I imagine a hell lot of stuff when I'm travelling, be it on train, on bus, or in my dad's car. But there's always a stark difference between imagination and dreams. We can't control what we dream about at night, when we are fast asleep. And that's the magical part of dreams, it can be everything under the sun. Well, I think it can be 'above' the sun too.

I recall writing a similar post on the same topic: Dreams, since I also had a flood of dreams back then in the post O-levels period, when I'm prolly all relaxed. This time it's the same, I get ridiculous dreams when I sleep. Half of what I dreamt doesn't even make any sense. Either it's practically useless or I am unable to interpret it since the dreams are very unclear, and I tend to forget such 'insignificant' dreams quickly(it always happen, doesn't it?). As for the other half... They might also be ridiculous, but perhaps in a different way.

Okay, this dream is stuck in my mind because I made an effort to REMEMBER it till the day I post about it. I'm gonna write whatever I can recall from it, and I emphasise, it's only a dream and I already said that it's ridiculous. I can't remember exactly how the dream started out, but I remember the bulk of it. In the dream, it seemed that I was with my classmates, together with the entire J1 cohort of Innova Junior College. I recognise some of them so I sorta know. I dunno how we got there and why we were in that place, but it seemed to be that we were in some sort of a field trip outdoors. It's a city area, there appears to be buildings on the horizon, and we are just there, no idea why. If I recall correctly, it was supposed to be a bright day at first, prolly at noontime. 

Here's the main body of the dream. I saw a meteor crashing down. It's getting bigger and bigger. And you know what that means. It's on a crash-course with us. Me and a few of my friends started to run, to escape from the incoming meteor. By then, the sky has turned almost dark and crimson red. I can't recall how we actually did it, but I sorta 'hopped' away from the incoming meteor, barely avoided it, while it crashed onto a shop or something. It's like the meteors you saw in the first Transformer movie when the Autobots came crashing onto Earth. There's lightning everywhere, filled with menacing blue energy. I hear sounds of thunder and some kind of cannon fire sound. It's a complete catastrophe back in there. If you may, it's like the apocalypse. 

Then something (ridiculous) happened. I saw some of my schoolmates get struck by lightning, and some get hit by meteorites. But they didn't die. Okay, they were kinda shaking furiously while getting struck by the blue lightning energy(which they are supposed too I think), but they didn't die. Worse of all, I recognise all of them as student leaders of IJC. Student councillors, House-Exco members, House Captains etc. I clearly recall that because I saw the Student Council President getting struck by lightning, and somehow I just know that all student leaders are getting hit by these "natural" hazards. Now, I can't interpret what's gonna on in my dream. They get hit, they didn't die. Doesn't make any sense. 

And these student leaders who got hit, are like the "chosen" people according to my dream. I felt that, somehow. I was disappointed partly because I wasn't one of them, I suppose. That's probably how I felt in the dream. Well, I can't totally recall what took place next but it seemed to me that the calamity was over and the clear skies were back, and we all took the school buses back. By then I can no longer hold on to that dream and I woke up(I've almost woke up in the middle but I kept holding onto the dream to continue it). Weird dream, huh?

This is only just one, because there are many other dreams I had. Not to say that they are similar to this but if there's  something I can remember these dreams, it's two things. One: It's so epic and ridiculous that I feel embarrassed talking about it. Two: These scenarios in my dreams are trying to tell me something. Whoa whoa, you must think that I'm saying that I've sixth sense or something but I do really have this feeling which is incomprehensible. This sudden horde of dreams(or nightmares) are telling me something. Something important. Heck, I must be a living prophet.

Hotel Rwanda

Paul: "How can they not do anything? Don't they care?"

Jack: "I think that when people turn on their TVs and see this footage, they'll say, "Oh my God, that's horrible," and then they'll go back to eating their dinners." 

- From the movie Hotel Rwanda

The previous Thursday(the Thursday before the last one), the History cohort got to watch the movie Hotel Rwanda, which is relevant to our current History study of the United Nations and its effectiveness. If you want to know why it took me so long to post this since I had watched it more than a week ago, just check my usual excuses in my previous posts. Anyways, this is my second History movie screening(the first was Thirteen Days), and there might still been a third and more in the future. 

Just in case any of you doesn't have a clue about this movie's plot and background, it's based on a true story that happened in the actual events of the Rwanda genocide in 1994. The ethnic conflict between Hutus and Tutsis raged on, killing millions of innocent people in the wake of the brutal civil war. The United Nations tried to intervene but could not effectively stop the conflict and there were shortage of manpower within the peacekeeping forces sent there to 'keep' the 'peace'. No matter how I see it, there simply wasn't any peace to 'keep'. Chaos is an understatement if you watched the film, much less the actual events that had occurred. 

The main character of the movie, Paul Rusesabagina, is a Hutu, married to Tatiana who is a Tutsi, together with their children had to sought refuge in a hotel named Hôtel des Mille Collines who he then became in-charge-of, then had to shelter hundreds of Tutsi and moderate Hutu refugees within the hotel. He bribed the leader of the local militia many times, the Rwandan Army and it was utter chaos. Only 4 UN peacekeepers were spared by the undermanned UN peacekeeping forces to guard the hotel. And they are not allowed to shoot. It gets worse every single scene, as people get massacred 'outside' and no one knows when they might be the next. They were living on a thin thread, there's always the possibility of getting killed just the next moment.

There was numerous close-calls for Paul and his family, as well as, the refugees who stuck together in order to survive, waiting day after day for UN reinforcements, intervention forces and relief forces. That eventually came, but only to evacuate all the foreigners back to their country, leaving the Paul and the natives behind. The rest... Well, I'll leave it to you to watch the film and find out how it went and ended. It's a very touching film, and it was meant to be a message for peace, and a solemn reminder of how harsh and unfeeling humans can be, even towards their own kind. 

Yes, this kinda movie brings out the brutal truth in such massacres and genocides. The amount of blood shed in the history of mankind is just... You know what I mean. There were wars and killings found in our history probably since the dawn of civilisation. Some call it a war, others call it a holy crusade, a jihad, some form of 'cleansing', a vendetta, whatever. Under whatever names you call it, it is still considered as mass killings, probably for a cause, whether it's justifiable or not. And in this case, there are hundreds of thousands were killed during the genocide. That's gotta count. It's just so horrible when you think about it.

The film reminded me of my school trip to Nanjing in when I was in Secondary 2. We went to the Nanjing Massacre Memorial and got to understand the events that happened during the massacre. It was during World War 2 when the Japanese invaded China and they massacred people in Nanjing. According to the memorial, a total estimate of 300,000 people were slaughtered. It was a painful sight to bear when I was there. Even after we got out of the memorial, I remained silent, in deep thoughts and reflection. Similarly, I did the same when I watched the film. I felt so... helpless as I watched the parts where people were getting slaughtered like they don't mean anything. I wished I could've done something, anything to prevent this from happening. It was so brutal that I can't help but feel bad. It's a heartbreaking experience. It prompts you questions that you wouldn't have asked yourself before. How atrocious and savage can we humans actually be? Even animals don't even kill their own kind. How can some people claim to be more superior, more important, just because of the colour of their skin? How can lives be just taken away like they don't matter at all?

When the movie is nearing its end, I've made a promise to myself. If I got the power and influence to do so, I will not let the same thing happen again. I'm not gonna witness any meaningless murders again. If I'm able to, I'll stop it. No, I'm not gonna let the same tragedy happen twice. Not if I can help it. Not on my watch.

Colonel Oliver: You should spit in my face.
Paul: Excuse me, Colonel?
Colonel Oliver: You’re dirt. We think you’re dirt, Paul.
Paul: Who is we?
Colonel Oliver: The West. All the super powers. Everything you believe in, Paul. They think you’re dirt. They think you’re dumb. You’re worthless.
Paul: I am afraid I don't understand what you are saying, sir.
Colonel Oliver: Oh, come on, Paul, you're the smartest man here. You got 'em all eating out of your hands. You could own this frigging hotel, except for one thing. You're black. You're not even a nigger. You're an African. They’re not going to stay, Paul. They’re not going to stop this slaughter.

- From the movie Hotel Rwanda