The stockmarket has begun to be kind to me,just as my tutoring business takes a big dip

Today was the 6th day in a row that stocks have given me profits(unspectacular in amount though they are).

I'm truly appreciative of them, as recently, I've experienced a cancellation, and just today, both pupils were unable to attend due to illness.


Which starts me worrying about the direction of my Life again.


"I contemplate the world, knowing I can never fully be a part of it"

Feeling a bit low on a Saturday...

Just when I was losing hope of ever recovering a $600 sum owed to me by a previously promptly paying pupil, a call comes from another (more reliable) pupil informing me that she has no option but to stop coming for lessons because her mother is 'getting busy'.Her friend, who comes with her, also isn't willing to continue on her own :(

This comes on top of another cancellation from yet another pupil, who also isn't coming for the whole of next week!


Needless to say, I'm a little deflated and flattened by all this bad news.

Yet I cannot allow myself to wallow for too long.

Because I risk becoming suicidal again...

Collected $88 from the Lottery, $300 from my pupils and made about $177 on the market

A trio of profits today lifts my spirits a little...

Bought two lottery numbers on a whim,and the 2nd number won...

...only a consolation prize.

>.<

Well, $60 is better than nothing. This is my 4th time buying numbers in 2010, and about my 20th or so time overall.

Needless to say, it has been an overall loss-making venture, with the only other time I had struck any prize money was by playing Powerball in Australia during a previous visit there in November 2007, where I just managed to sneak into the lowest rung of prizes with a measly A$12+ win.


Guess how I got the inspiration to buy the 2nd 4-digit number that won $60?

By throwing four darts at a dart board.

(I'm not kidding)

Actually I did it twice for the second number: the last dart hit close to a bullseye, and I was torn between buying 8570 or rethrowing the darts.

When I rethrew the four darts, the first three numbers were,incredibly, the same 8-5-7, but the last dart registered '5' so I bought 8575 just in case.

Turns out that it was 8575 that came out in the consolation list!

Ending it

Some say sleep is a temporary death.

Some days, I don't feel much like waking up.

When I do wake, the guilt envelopes me. The regret belts me up and almost refuses to loosen its grip.


I have done wrong things. To the person who was supposed to matter.


I sat on the wrong thing, knowing that it was like an unexploded bomb. Knowing that it could go off, but unable to get away from it. Fearing it might go off in another way the moment I let go.

Then just the other day it really went off.


And it seems to have taken my will to live along with it.



~~~

When I was younger, I stumbled onto my dad's pornographic collection one afternoon.
It was in a metal cabinet that I had always been curious about but had never mustered enough courage to open.

Magazines, some old, some new, had pale naked flesh painted on the fronts.

Next to the pile of revealing pictures was a stack of black video cassettes.

My little organ stirred in a strangely pleasurable way as I stared at the pretty brunette vixen smiling slyly at me from the topmost magazine, even as I reached out to a cassette next to it.

I quietly closed the cabinet, fully aware that both my parents were at the office and sneaked into their bedroom where the video recorder and television set was.

Inserting the cassette while my heart pounded and my body grew warm from the sense of anticipation, I breathed a little too heavily as I pressed the 'On' switch below the television screen almost simultaneously with the 'Play' button on the recorder.


A naked black woman, a little too rotund for my liking, was prancing on a wide open field, her jiggling breasts putting me off slightly, but my eyes also probed her other private part greedily.

I involuntarily turned off the television when what I later concluded to be sheer guilt took over.

But that remorse was too hollow, and eventually temptation dictated that I would lay my eyes on almost half of all the contents of that metal cabinet.


It only stopped when one day, to my dismay, I found it locked.

How I disregarded 3 downers to remain happy!

Downer 1 ~ Uncertainty over the status of a recent investment in which the company has gone into default over a certain amount


Disregarded because I have confidence that the investment at a low level will be in the black shortly. If not, then in the medium term.

I've also taken into consideration all possible risks and eventualities before committing the money.

Taking risks is part and parcel of becoming financially independent. And of Life!


Downer 2 ~ The non-attendance of 4 pupils resulting in lost income over the past week.

Disregarded because I have already earned well from this business. Non-payment risk(bad debts) and non-fulfilment of terms(lack of attendance) are just ordinary risks of doing business!


Downer 3 ~ General uncertainty over the direction of my life.

Patience with Myself is Trust! The ideas will come...

My two 14-year-old pupils have done me proud!

By scoring 97% and 89% respectively in their recent Maths tests.


Another 16-year-old tutee of mine scored 60% in his Physics mock test, despite failing his final year paper in the same subject last November.

Hopefully more celebratory marks will be revealed!

It's Nice to be Appreciated, but I No Longer Get Annoyed When I'm Not...

...though sometimes I do promise myself quietly not to do the same good thing for the same person again :)

Don't blame me ~ it's human.

Happiness/Contentment sometimes has little to do with Reality.

A couple of days ago, one of my casual Canadian Facebook friends changed her status to 'single' after an apparent breakup with her boyfriend of over two years.

She reported that she couldn't stop crying as her heart had been broken.Another person, a common friend, whom I've known since a year ago to be a very chipper person and among the last to ever entertain a clouded thought, insinuated that her heart, too, had recently been broken.

Knowing the former to be a very nice and honest person, it didn't surprise me when many of her Facebook friends posted encouraging replies on her Wall.


I logged in this morning intending to do the same, only to change my mind when I saw that she hadn't replied to her friends' messages in the last 24 hours.

This got me thinking: What is happiness? Is it based so completely on one guy or girl who, as Life often goes, can let you down despite, and regardless of all the wonderful times you have shared together in the past?

Just a few nights ago, I prayed to God for a companion to show up. I had been(and still am) alone for almost two years now, and at the end of this month would be a second anniversary that I would rather not celebrate!

Bearing in mind that I can be a difficult person at times, and that how many friendships had been ruined or tarnished by my bridge-burning policy when I detected any disloyalty from friends, I got over that urge very quickly and stopped asking for a special other.

I've learnt over the years(and over the numerous short-term lovers) that it's unwise to be sentimental about any person.

Yes, I realise that it's hard to rationalise when one is head-over-heels in love. But I've been on the receiving end of love turning into hate too often to allow myself to be hurt so easily again.

How have I managed to remain relatively happy and contented over the tumultuous years of 2008 - 2009?

Firstly, blocking out the downers mentally helped me to pull me through those difficult months.

Just about this time last year, my investments were down in the lowest dumps imaginable, and I did not even dare to contemplate the almost nine grand that I had invested jointly with a stranger.(When I did occassionally contemplate it, I wrote the sum off quietly until April 2009, when a phone call to that stranger held out hope that I might recover a partial settlement)

Some part of my mind forced my body to engage in distraction to avoid sinking into a deep hole of depression that threatened every time I thought of my parlous financial situation.

I played almost every online game available in Facebook at that time, and got intractably addicted to at least three of them!

The games, and the freelancing that I did helped keep me sane and relatively stable.
Although admittedly, I gained a lot of weight as a craving for serotonin-inducing foods lasted several months.

Strangely enough, I had no craving whatsoever for companionship.

And through the rest of the months of last year, my sanity was helped by the rising tide of financial markets that allowed me to see some improvement in my solvency.

In fact, being distracted proved to be a boon as I became fully aware of the markets only when it was a good time to sell, and seize the opportunity to sell I did!


My parents, though close by throughout, were, sadly, as distant as ever emotionally and psychologically as I was left to fend for myself.

They carried on their contented routine lives, oblivious to my insecurities.Never once did any of them ask me how things were going.Or whether I was OK.

But the important thing was(and is) : I pulled through

I should never be ungrateful to them for providing me a place to stay and work from home, but I can also never forget how 2009 confirmed that our relationship is built on nothing more than perfunctory obligation, if even that.

The credit I will give for this upward turn of events goes solely to the invisible hand whom I had sporadically prayed to in 2008 and 2009, but almost daily give thanks to this year.


After hearing comments from some that I was getting fat, I started on a daily exercise regimen in November 2009, and by January this year, had lopped off no less than six kilos off my body mass, culminating in a drop in my BMI to below 25 in late February for as long as I can remember.

Only on three days in the last four months have I slacked and neglected to do my cardiovascular strides.



The upshot of what I'm trying to convey is this:

- You should be the last resort bastion of support, if God should decide to hold back

- Focus continuously on the upside and Do, do, do! to keep your mind out of trouble

Tolerance...

I accept others for what they want to be,

So I'll not tolerate the intolerance of others towards me.

Changing my Facebook writeup...

Since Oct 2009, this has been it : 'A healthy scepticism of others' opinions, a controlled disbelief in convention and an unbridled love of oneself is probably the beginning of true wisdom and happiness.'

Day 3 of my 'father' not speaking to my Mum...

The humorous aspect is that my 'dad' is dishing out what he is complaining that he's on receiving end of, from me!

After heckling me three or four times over the course of last year in a most disrespectful manner,and over most trivial issues, it would be a fat hope on his part to expect my respect!

After giving me a life that I never asked for in the first place, and being the aloof father that his own father was to him(or so he claims),inflicting untold suffering by his neglect and unequal treatment that was augmented by reinforcing loop, he is very foolish to expect my continued respect(something I gave unquestioningly for over three-quarters of my life).

Game over. I see your lies and your willingness to gamble a large proportion of the bounty Life gave you rather than expend it for the sake of your children's happiness.

Yet I am still grateful for the times you have been generous to me.Which were occasions rarer than a coloured moon, but were there nonetheless.

But I remain the only of your three children to have given back meaningfully in appreciation. To have received the least and endured the roughest road through life emotionally and psychologically. To have been kicked when the chips were down and I was even downer.

I remember but I have let go. At least as far as the gradually fading memory of the callous and insouciant remarks doesn't still sting and make me cringe.

Though not enough to overcome thirty plus years of being lied to.

Italian Day for me also witnessed something really rare...

...,which was me attending church.

It was the first time in at least two years.

I came through the expected squeamishness of singing songs that didn't come from my heart rather admirably, because I was thankful to God for the steady stream of students in the first place.

My being in church was actually an accident of sorts: my mum had fallen out with her husband over a long-simmering extra-marital 'affair'(which has not been decisively proven by the way) with a heated exchange after lunchtime two days ago.

And now he is giving her the silent treatment(as he has been wont to do over the long years past)and my mum decided to drag me along as his replacement.

It so happens that this year has been a bumper harvest as far as my home-tutoring 'business' is concerned, and I genuinely believe that God has been answering my prayers, so I complied.

We ended up having home-made spaghetti bolognese for lunch, and after the service, decided to try the new pizzeria named 'Michaelangelo's', freshly baked and hot out of the get-go oven from last Christmas eve, and ordered the $29 Blue Cheese pizza to share, along with a Lemon Cream dessert.

It was a littly more burnt at the bottom than we were used to, but the unusual cheese flavour made it worth trying.


The proprietor(an American) came over to chat for awhile and it turned out that the wood oven pizzas they are turning out are authentic Chicago-style thin-crust pizzas.


Well, back to serious matters, and the subject matter of the sermon:

Impatience is a life-wrecking quality, which is a characteristic of single-issue folks bent on getting their way by manipulating others, God included, and mood swings have to be 'kicked'.

Also, patience with others is Love, patience with self is Hope, while patience with God is Faith.

I hope that nut-shells it adequately!

Chocolates 'n Tea before bedtime

A box of Belgian pralines had been staring at me from a basket(as much as I had been staring at it) over the past 3 weeks or more.

Finally, after seeing a discarded ice-cream wrapper in the wastebasket and guessing it was my diabetic dad indulging his sweet tooth come hell or high water, I decided to throw caution to the wind, the notion of my being in a much less perilous condition than he strong in my mind, and grabbed the white square box.

To dilute the sugary effects of the chocolates, I made a large cup of breakfast tea(no milk or sugar) and headed upstairs to my bedroom.

These couple of days have been pretty blue for me due to postponed payment by a tutee who, before the Lunar New Year, had been very prompt, but whose parents seem to be dragging their feet in the year of the Tiger.

I enjoyed four morsels of the Belgian chocolates while watching a couple of 'Golden Girls' episodes.

I slept relatively well.

Fairness.......... aka Revenge

'Life is not fair...' goes the oft-quoted saying.

I would venture to continue: '...so you should grab your fairness!'

Having never really understood why I'm so different from other average people,but having some inkling that it might just have to do with a psychologically-scarred childhood that constantly cried out for love but never received any genuine form of it.

Or at least, I didn't know how to go and get love at an early age.

Instead, I gradually turned insular over the years,instinctively avoiding confidence in my aloof parents.

In short, I self-pitied myself constantly!

As the mentally-sedated teens gave way to the psychologically- and emotionally- stormy twenties, I still hadn't dealt with my sexual orientation and hated myself for the majority of those years(apart from 1992 to 1996).

Then, in the midst of my thirties, I stumbled upon an elegant, and all too human solution: to get even when I was disadvantaged.

Thus, I got even with my persecuting principal by writing a nasty letter to his own superior, and taking two months of medical leave just prior to my resignation from the job.

And I'm getting even with the people who gave me my Life,something I wished to give back during almost half of my existence(maybe more) by staying put in their house,even though I know they would want nothing more than for me to leave.

They refuse to acknowledge their role in shaping my aberrations, and so I'm staying in my current place rental-free for as long as I can as a compensation of sorts.


If you find this mode of thinking sad, then you're the only one who feels that between us.


I couldn't be happier!