21:13.

10.

Before our one day.

Just 10, though even 10 just feels way too long.

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I was on the MRT on my way home just now. So was a group of five young teenagers. Colloquially so, they were sharing about what I hope is just a part-time job - door-to-door ice cream sales, where they have to lug big cool boxes around estates for a measly what, $20? a day if you sell enough load.

It's not even legal, I think though it's a grey area but whoever their bosses are, those shrewd types are really making modern day slave labour out of these 13/ 14-year-olds.

I remember interviewing runaway twin sisters two years back. One of them too made a living selling ice cream this way while she was on the run. That day, the two 14-year-olds let me into their world for just a bit just by answering my basic questions.

It perplexes me, shames me as a person so much better off and humbled me - Their world is all they know, a world where your mom's with someone else, where you can't talk to your dad about girly growing up needs, where you spend nights at some void deck with others latchkey kids like you, kids who you hang around with the neighbourhood shopping centres near your house instead of town, where your results suck and no one helps and you learn to embrace it as a badge of honour. You learn to embrace everything that makes you different as a shield and defence against the rest of the world.

But they were only kids.

I'm perplexed at the many worlds that exist in just my country (can someone please just call C r a z y Horse a stripping show instead of whatever high class pretenses it has? How stupid are all you big corporations and gov related agencies to embrace and support it as some proof of how open, liberal and creative you and we as a country are? Like baaaaaaaaaaaaaaa), neighbourhood, in just my block, in just my mind sometimes.

Yesterday, also on the MRT while on my way home, two kids - teenagers again, two young boys perhaps 15, were trading stories about exercise and such. They talked in a tone of one-uppity, you-did-such-and-such-yeah-me-too-you-know.... It's a familiar undertone in teenage voices. I remember I did that too - had a voice where your super boring life had to be broadcast in voices slightly exaggerated. Hearing them, or my teenage self - You would had thought we thought life is supposed to be a dramedy or sitcom.

But then, even adults do it. We are no wiser just by merit of age. Though when adults do it, I get even more perplexed.

Boy A (tanned, slightly chubby, spectacles, sports togs) suddenly started telling Boy B (who looks the same but spoke in less exaggerated tones) about a fishing experience.

"This uncle caught a lot of very big fishes *gestures size of fish*. You know why? Because he was using fishes to fish (he meant "bait"), live fishes, you know! Catfish! There was one that he kept throwing in and taking out because somehow no fish wanted to eat that one. And it was going to die already, you could see it, so he gave it to us. He said 'Aiyah, this one going to die soon. Give your lah'. We very cang ren ("cruel" in Mandarin) lah. We throw it against the ground, wah, the sound was so loud. Bang! We throw again, harder, hit its head against the ground. It was going to die but not dead yet. Then we tried again. Wah, the sound was so loud!"

And on he went about the demise of the poor fish. (And I really doubt that it was a catfish, I think that was the only breed that popped into his head then).

I was greatly perplexed by how cruelty and senselessness was trumpeted.

The way we humans try to find significance sometimes seem alike to animals peeing at a spot to mark their territory. Maybe it works for them animals. It's sad and unbelieveably disgusting to see humans do the same. It's not wrong to want significance, I think, but the way you go around doing it is sad.

Certain methods are plain stupid - the roots of racism and prejudice, social classes and probably more than a good half of all of society's ailments.

You think education is a cure and yes, education is good and should be freely available to all but that brings up the huge can of worms about the insanely inanely high costs of education. It's stupid.

It's stupid seeing grown adults thinking they are being adult and righteous through racist acts in Sydney (that includes the reverse racism attacks).

It's stupid reading how a Msian guy was reportedly murdered because he spoke English to ask some guys to back off from making cat calls at the girl he was out with.

It's stupid because I see all these educated folks, big shots in big companies and every where else all trying to mark their tuft by being defensive, self-promoting, "enemies" bashing and talking way too much about oneself.

It makes me sick.

Life is way too short to join the ranks unless it's in the army of God. Life is way too precious to dwindle at amazingly senseless insignificant things.

I'm perplexed, puzzled and have a headache with the thoughts and emotions going on in the head.

Don't leave a message in my guestbook to tell me all these are results of our fallen world. When people ask "why?", it doesn't always mean they don't know the answer. You can know the answer and still cry and wail "why??" because every thing inside of you knows, I know that this is NOT WHAT IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE.

There is more than this.