The life and mind of Adeline Ong

My entry on 15 August 2002

In life there are always ups and downs, it does not matter if you are a King, the Pope or just a simple fisherman. There is nothing fair in this world. People said, “God made everyone equal.� Yet, how much truth can those mere four words contain?

We build our world the way we want it. “The world is my oyster�, someone once said. But has anyone ever actually given it a thought that the oyster might be a bit spoiled? Questions will always replace answers. The most common one would be, “Why?�

Why, indeed? I chose to live my life the way I want it and why does not society accept it? I penned down my deepest thoughts and why does not anyone acknowledge and praise me for it? Questions, questions, questions. Unanswered and thus we become bitter. Whose fault is this? Yours? Mine? The society’s? Just more questions waiting to be answered.

However, I believe that everything we do comes from within us. It is how we build our world from every nook and corner to our satisfaction, just to accommodate ourselves. There we will place our sanity, emotions, strengths and weaknesses. With this, no man is created equal. We challenge each other, day by day just to be individuals in the limelight of life. We want to be the superior, the prime, the numero uno, and the king of the world. We want it all.

Sometimes, when people say you are as good as anybody else, your ego will puff into the size that your body could not contain. You want what your next-door neighbour has, you want the same pay as your colleagues and you want the same grades as your classmates. You believe you deserved it and if you do not get it, you blame the world for your sorrows. The Heavens for torturing you and Hell for giving you misery.

In ourselves, we fight the never-ending battle because we could never understand how the Wheel of Life turn. I choose to liken life to the simple children’s game, “Snakes and Ladders.� In your hand you role the dice of life and the game board is your path. If you are lucky, there is a ladder and you climb to the top. When you are unlucky, you get swallowed by a snake and get sent straight to the bottom. Initially, you will reach the last box but tell me, can any two players ever reach the last box at the same time? Definitely not. Back to reality, life is like that game but with more players, less ladders and more snakes.

Honestly, there should be nothing to be bitter about. Life is like that. No matter how smart you are there will always be someone better. It is just how you play the game. Unlike the board game, we can build more ladders and eliminate most of the snakes. Some how, in some way, some one might get swallowed so much that they could never see the ladders. They are so immersed in bitterness that nothing seems hopeful.

Is there a cure for bitterness? I think there is. In fact it is in everybody, it is in their hearts but some how they do not know how to use it or take the proper dosage.

Since I am being a bit sore about Vday. Here is a really painful poem from my private collection. I wrote it circa 2001/2002

Broken Promises

You promised you’ll never,
Hurt me,
But you plunged,
The sword of sorrow,
Into my heart.

You promised you’ll never,
Make me cry,
Then why am I,
Drowning in the flood,
Of my own tears.

You promised you’ll never,
Leave me,
But I heard the door slam,
As I stared,
Into emptiness,
Feelings we once shared.

Copyright ©2006 Adeline Ong

When I was in Berea College for my student exchange trip in 2005, I have the chance to work with the most fun loving guy I ever met. Together we became the Dynamic Duo, his alter ego is the Conniving Caucasian and mine is the Malicious Malaysian. After I returned to Malaysia, we lost contact until recently; here is a snippet of our previous e-mail conversation. Personal jokes have been removed because many might not understand what we are yapping about anyways. Just to let all of you understand who is saying what, my code is MM and his is CC. This were the answers he gave me when I told him that I had a list of reasons to believe that he could no longer contact me.

MM: Created cancer causing chicken curry cookbook (it
can happen)

CC: The never proved it caused cancer…. its all LIES!

MM: You are an undercover spy for the FBI and your code
name is Matilda Mayhem. (cute huh?)

CC: HOW DID YOU KNOW?!!?!

MM: You got married and the wife has cut out your
connection with any other female friends you have.

CC: Jimbo and I are very happy together and he doesn’t
mind me having female friends…. its the men he gets
mad about

MM: You have decided that I am a terrorist and
cannot be linked with terrorists.

CC: While you are terrifying it certainly does not mean
I don’t like you.. now stay where you are the nice men
are coming to take you away

MM: Your e-mail address has been hacked because BIG
BROTHER is spying on the Dynamic Duo to see why we are
so dynamic.

CC: They will never understand why we are so dynamic, no
matter how many times they hack my account.

MM: You got so high on the drugs that you were suppose
to sell in the pharmacy and got sent to a rehabilitation
centre where they spray you with cold water in the
morning and give you electric shocks before bed. =P

CC: Maybe

MM: Your job has turned you into a computer illiterate
zombie, forcing you to work, work and work.

CC: While work takes up 50-60 hours a week of my life, I
still play on my computer… I just never look at my
email ><

MM: You got in trouble with the Mafia and are hiding
out in some shack by the swamp

CC: My shack is very homely in my opinion.

MM: You were just simply too busy….

CC: Well I’ll try not to be

It is great to have friends like these. People you know that you can count on for a laugh or two. It is excellent.

4 Seasons

Walking through mystical woods,
Sweet dewy fresh breeze,
Enjoying the likes of spring.

Summer sun kisses my face,
Tiny crystal sweat,
A sunny day at the beach.

Maples leaves falling again,
Nature’s red carpet,
Welcoming the winter queen.

God sends crystals from heaven,
They are called snowflakes,
So everyone is rich.

Copyright ©2006 Adeline Ong

I was in my first comedy two weeks ago. Here is the review. I was acting in Sure Thing.

New Sunday Times
Sunday 29 January 2006

THEATRE: Witty theatre
By HIMANSHU BHATT

THREE chimpanzees placed in a cage with typewriters – Milton, Swift and Kafka – keep jabbering away and come up with masterpieces of world literature. And the outcome is certainly no gibberish. Like the comic primates, three playlets recently staged in an evening of comedy in Penang managed to spew out spools of humour and wit, in a pleasurable theatrical knot between madness and (…dare we use the word?) intellect.

Entitled All in the Timing, the programme held as a dinner show at the Sheraton Hotel featured three one-act playlets written by American David Ives. The show was presented by Penang Players.

While it is always enticing to watch a comedy that is funny, it is even more gratifying to see one being taken upon that it is actually clever.

Directed by Alan Smith, All in the Timing as its title intimates, is a quaint breed of comedy hardly attempted by the group before.

The play depicted three absurd situations, including one with Trotsky the Russian revolutionary preposterously mulling over the discovery of an axe lodged in his head, on the day of his death.

It was not downright hilarious, utterly side-splitting fare; but it was the sort of stuff that can leave you holding a slight smile on the corner of the lips throughout.

There were some fine showings by the actors, particularly Choong Chi-Ren as the big chimp who inadvertently spouts out lines from Hamlet, in the finest comic telling of the evening.

The last act showed an almost impeccable exchange between two strangers at a café having to go through their conversation while a bell keeps interrupting their false starts, gaffes and faux pas.

Of course, one is tempted, due to the clearly abstract nature of the humour, to seek some sort of message or symbolic tenor in the whole thing.

Like monkeys fiddling with typewriters, so are we then no different than these primate cousins, spewing our own streams of intellectual drivel?

Like the mighty revolutionary, so are we then.

Ah! But no, Mr Ives… for that is exactly the trap — the cage — you would so gleefully want us to fall into now, wouldn’t you?

Khaz and me as Bill & Betty from Sure Thing.