Between job and university applications, I seem to hang around doing essays, read books, and finish my thesis. Days are passed by quietly, with a spectacle or two in between. News; my bicycle was stolen, I walked 3km from Central station, I just started reading Taqwacores, I only know one song from KRU, and I met a new group of friends (I think I’ll stick around with them for a while).
Yesterday I had two job interviews. In the train, I wrote my essay, slept, read a bit, and glanced at people’s book covers and socks. At the hotel lobby, I sneak 2 packets of Hot Chocolate into my bag. I wade through the array of people with sharp clothes, heel wearing girls and try to put myself against them. That morning I was deciding whether to wear baju kurung or formal attire. Heels. I don’t have any heels. I only own two pair shoes; one for sports, one for spiffy occasions, and another whose sole has already worn out you feel like wearing socks. Baju Kurung it is.
It’s always a funny feeling, going to graduate fairs and attending these careers talks, listening to wealthy and healthy looking people, using big words like return of investment and career progression. I do not want to turn into with them, they with all their perfectly ironed shirts and straight backs and having a certain certified look of success. I do not want to have my life sorted out for living.
Someone came over to the house and after dinner talked about all these things that you’re supposed to do when you’re graduate. Buy 10 or 15 of Corelle plate sets and sell it more than what they do in Langkawi, travel as much as you can before you come back to work, register in so and so companies and associations to progress in life, attach yourself a good and rich husband, and so on and so forth. As if the grass is always greener on the other side, and that to work is to bound yourself in servitude forever. It’s all just terribly depressing. What’s the use of buying plates and fancy equipment and a big house if there’s no time to use them?
Each time I feel like this, I’d just retreat into my room and try to write about it, in forms such as these and others, and then I’d talk to my mother or father. They’d always tell me to right thing to do. There’s 2 months left before graduation, so I must, must, must, soldier on.
perkaraperkara 