Laughing at Virgins

There has been outrage in my country today. Bitter, disbelieving outrage.
Because the MOE has decided that all sex education teachers must believe in abstinence as the best form of birth control, and the family as the basic unit of society.

Some of the comments made:
That Singapore is going back in time with this move.
That it is impossible to practice abstinence when more people get married later in life.
That virgin teachers will be clueless about sex.
That they wouldn't want to learn about sex from virgins.

Some of the comments that weren't made:
That abstinence is, indeed, the only sureproof way to avoid STDs and unwanted pregnancies.
That encouraging our teenagers to stay pure for longer is not a bad thing.
That despite the number of people who do not practice abstinence, there are yet a good number who do. And a lot of them are eligible, normal, socially ept people, unlike society's rather grim stereotype of giggly adult virgins wearing their pants up to their chests.

How did the world come to this? How did society come to a mainstream consensus that virgins are to be laughed at on 9gag? That virginity is of no value? That it has become more socially acceptable to accidentally get pregnant with your boyfriend's child and abort the baby, than to be a virgin? No jokes are made about such mothers. And certainly nobody is worried that they might become sex education teachers. Yet the virginity disgust abounds.

Or else virgins are sexualised. Virgin Airlines' branding and advertising drips with overtones that its women are in fact not virgins. Elvis had infamous virgin fetish. So do a lot of men, pricing virgin prostitutes so much higher than regulars that hymen reconstruction is a standard surgical procedure for women in the trade. Yup, it seems that the only people who value virginity in this world are the perverts.

The rest of us are just labelled prudes or chronically uneligible. Females get away with it because they run the other risk of being labelled as sluts. Male virgins get it the worst. Their purity is never seen by other males as a choice, but as something weird and emasculating, possibly contagious.

I tweeted this: "I think virginity is highly underrated. #virginMOEteachers"
and got this reply: "the corollary is that sex is highly overrated?"

I wanted to say yes. But not in the way that you might think.
You are only thinking of the enjoyment of sex.
Which is narrow, too narrow for us.

Some of you know it inside. Wrong men. Condoms that broke. Aborted foetuses. You know what you would have erased. There is no protection for the heart. Was it worth the hype, or was it overrated? Would you put another young person through it? Or would you stop her at fifteen and advise her to simply walk away?

On the other hand, you have virginity, precious because it can be lost forever. Making singles save themselves for the one they will marry, as an exclusive gift. Making couples learn to use other love languages to get intimate before marriage. Saving unwanted babies. Even if you're not compelled by God to abstain, the benefits of abstinence are there for all. It is not self-serving; it looks out for others. Even the ones not conceived yet.

Virginity--an internet joke. With great value never ever talked about.

Today my country was in outrage over my government's decision. A very "backward" decision.
Most of the time I scoff at my government's decisions. But today I want to thank my government for being backward, for giving back value to what is priceless anyway.

Sincerely,
A Virgin.

Joy is giving us a deadline to download her facebook photos of us before she deletes them (paranoia). So I was made to look through all her albums, and I found these. Including this from Year One, when Joys still looked sporty and I still had a tan.

Presenting the Finest moments of our Group of Eight. (with occasional honorary members).

There were Muffin Awards at the end of year 2 or 3, and we went crazy nominating each other for all the prizes. I think we were the only ones who bothered with the ballot box. So we swept the awards. I won Best Dressed because Joys put in a dozen votes from fake voters. When they announced that I won, I was hiding somewhere in the school hoping they would forget it. But when I emerged they still carried me up and forced me to say "thanks" into the microphone. Nonetheless, I'm proud of us for bagging ALL the awards.

One of Lena's surprise birthdays at mcdonald's. A children's party with games led by a Mcdonald's auntie!

Another of Lena's birthdays held in school. Joy and I did up the student lounge, and then went to the computer lab to drag Lena out blindfolded. She didn't want to come at first because it was submissions period and she was completely in the zone. We had to get zihan to carry her over, kicking and whining. Only when she saw this did she realise we weren't trying to sabotage her project, we were only celebrating her birthday.

It ended with a cake fight.

Lena will kill me for posting this post-cakefight photo of her up, but it's alright. She doesn't read my blog.

Christmas party one year. One of several failed attempts to look like a rock band.

They celebrated wenchuan's and my birthday by making us solve a mystery/treasurehunt around nicholas's house. They call us the 'reluctant twins' because we're always forced to celebrate our birthdays together. But we were quite excited about this mystery. 

The caption for this photo was "the reluctant twins blowing out birthday candles."

Preparation for jieni's pink-themed surprise birthday in the Viscomm lab. We like to go all out with the decorations.

We also like to dress in coordination.

Happens to be Lena's and joanne's birthday again. After our grad show in school, we went to settlers and amused ourselves.

My surprise party at Toast. They'd hoped to give me a surprise picnic, but it was raining that day. I loved everything--the hat, basket, ginger plant, balloons. I guess being viscommers, and knowing each other so well, we delight in customizing each person's birthday as if fulfilling a client's brief. Party must match client's personality, and come with relevant execution and props.

Then we graduated.

The birthdays go on, and we find ourselves in new strange games and photographs. But they can't beat the four fine years we had together.

<3

i love my family!

Convocation came and went and the outfit wasn't as awkward as expected, and the after-ceremony buzz wasn't as exciting as expected. Maybe cos not everyone in our batch was there, and everybody was scattered with their own clusters of loved ones.

But I am truly happy to have graduated, for I didn't do it alone--I was sent to school by different supporters every year who wanted to see me through university. Sometimes in school I wondered if I was doing the right thing, if i could just walk through without putting in too much effort. But nobody can think of just walking through, when every cent of that education is paid for in answer to parents' earnest prayers.

I didn't really care for the mortar board, or the certificate, or the transcript. But seeing my parents so happy, I was happy that I could get these things. We went to the supermarket the day before and my parents made me choose flowers that they could give me after the ceremony. My dad was hyper-wound the entire day and stressed my mum up.

So now I think I know what education is for: it's the last thing parents can give you before you try and make it on your own, and it's a rite of passage you have to go through together. I don't have any family besides them, and I wouldn't want to spend my convocation day with anyone else.

Two more days to see the Party of Tomorrow, including today. Old school at mount sophia, take the long long staircase up from between cathay and ps.

It was some major party planning, starting from theme conceptualization a year ago, worrying about venues and sponsorship, persuading deans, and finally getting this done. Even while planning it I hadn't imagined the amount of work that would go into it, and though it didn't look like a lot of work , it was. It all felt very handmade and house party, because we'd been on our knees making duct tape squares for the courtyard, and making the food ourselves.

My happiest purchase for my exhibit was the white vinyl sticker of paper planes. Although everybody thought I'd drawn with liquid paper on the glass. I suppose I could have.

Reunion! Ironically, at the old MGS building.

Somebody stole one of the hearts from my exhibition booth. One of the hearts is mine, and the other belongs to a child. Somebody took one of the hearts and closed the box, so it would take me a bit longer to discover that my heart has been stolen.

Not the first time that I've lost something in a school exhibition. Last year I made an illustration book called "Mine", about possessiveness, and ironically somebody has made it his or hers. It is still mine.

Who would steal student work? A student? But a student would know how precious a project is and how it hurts to lose it. One copy in the entire world. I'm considering taking everything back from the exhibition.

Now that school is really over, I sleep at midnight and love my tv, and this kind of nothing life is a luxury. Soon though, I will be itching to put myself back into a schedule with demands. The last time I was this free, I tore open the classifieds with a colored pencil and circled jobs like a madman, and ended up going for an interview in a very dubious place just for the fun of it.

I will control myself this time, I will try. Photos of my exciting nothing life coming up soon.

And we graduated.

My booth: next to lena's booth!

Didn't feel like the last day because there is much to do still. We have done so much, but it looks awfully little on one pedestal. One year of good intentions and massive reworkings, distilled until it is nothing more than one thesis statement, one well-edited concept. So it looks like we did nothing but think one thought.

Films are screened and you are their captive audience looking at lighting, speech, time. Photographs are all-encapsulating, a story in a frame. Products take up breathing space so you look at them as entire beings that you can touch and get a sense of .

But books? Nobody has time for books anymore. You have to read till the last page and there's no time for that. But still I made five books. We can sit and be spare together, a quiet gift.

Sigh I forgot that i'd done F for Furious already, and did Finally today. The polyvore itch is taken care of.

I played the helpless bimbo with carrie in the recording studio today, and found that people are always nice enough to help acquaintances with the most brainless of things, like switching on the system. Good mikes and equipment are wonderful for making lit matches sound like the room is catching fire.

This is supposedly the busiest time of my university life. And instead I'm polyvoring and spending time lying on roads having my photo taken, and letting this month be remembered for other, better things. And I wonder if this habit is good for my future, and I think, the more happiness i get, the more i need.

Sometimes you do something midway and give up on it, and upon returning you discover that it was actually quite fascinating.

Such as this Glasses Girl and other random doodles I scanned in for my process book. My FYP itself was changed because I revisited a random subconscious doodle. We will never know what Glasses Girl would look like complete, but she needs to be incomplete.

And other midway things: ET's tongue when she starts to clean herself but gets distracted by me and leaves it hanging out. And a storybook that I started writing in sec two that was loosely inspired by Anne of Green Gables, casting me and carissa as fairies: I wish I had written more chapters because I want to find out who Robyn-Jacque ended up with and how. And this piece of knitting that I didn't finish because I couldn't remember how to, and three pearls later I have my favourite shelf decoration:


And the half-cascading wall of clippings that I left hanging for a very long time, because while taking it down I realised it looked better half-removed:

Midway is also the camera click when nobody's ready, when things are in the process of being posed, and the only time when our true faces are seen.

And if I hadn't given up midway, there would be no 25 today either. I have an itch to do a project on perfect incompleteness.

I should be doing my work, I should be doing my work, I should be doing my work. At least this isn't as all-consuming as paperdolling, right?

Now I know what I can do during sven's three-hour sitting classes.

the longest day

fyp exhibition/friendly grading session

first book

last book

as the day turned into a new day

fluke!

This week my days have been twice as long, and this morning my body felt it. Yesterday the profs made a toast with us, to us, and to all the sleepless nights and hard work, and I thought about these four manic years and how I didn't want them to end but am now ready for them to end, and I think I will miss this terribly.

It's 11:30 pm and I'm eating an omelette for dinner, and it's storming outside with sudden bursts of day. I have 6 books to show tomorrow, and I'm thinking that I need more. Although I've been rushing around in production mode I haven't felt that anything has been a rush, or a product. Instead each moment comes as a surprise, and I look up with pleased eyebrows as I discover what I am to do next. This is why she said everything flows. Pre-show, and still this has been one of the happier days of my life.

Remember this? We were so young. Puffy faces, luscious hair.

Today I greeted my friends with "finally, my friends!" in a hoarse voice because I hadn't been talking all day. One last semester of university left, and I have already used up all my friendliness, it seems. I can't muster up the energy to make a new friend.

So I spend most of my week sitting in corners of classes, smiling perfunctorily at neighbors if we're asked to greet each other, and walking out to keep warm whenever I can. I've always felt independent, taking classes by myself. This semester is different; I've unlearnt independence and I find myself needing all the companionship I can get before april comes and we scatter.

There is much I will miss. Already some pre-loved routines have been edged out over time: supper, waffles, lectures together, as if school is peeling my fingers off it for a calmer separation when the time comes.

I am very calm and ready to go.

360 degrees exhibition! For environmental design class. The last classes of these event-planning modules are always the best. Because the project is the party. You have until wednesday night to experience this.

From the sunken plaza the whole message can be read across the three rooms. We are mighty lucky to have a sunken island in the middle of water to sit in.

Too too tired and lazy to upload my own photos, so here are the photos from Word Challenge/Scrabble Queen's facebook album. I can't believe i got through yesterday and today. Doing layouts for 19 people and storing all their zip and rar files in my overworked comp, which i can finally delete, then emailing them to the printer this morning, writing and submitting my management module report, then cabbing to peace centre to collect the folders, then cabbing back and going carsick in the cab from folding the folders, and coming to school to slot them into the wall and be welcomed by this exhibition all done up and streaming with visitors.

This is Word Challenge Queen. She has 100 000 over points, and my best is 19 000. Second in place to her only has 40 000 odd points. She also coaches her hall mates in Scrabble, because she was Youth Scrabble Champion. NERD.

I can almost holiday now. At least there are four days to the Big Presentation, which I haven't been caring about as much I should be. But I will.

The feeling is monumental, just happiness without a clause. :)

Mulling over the balloon child. It seems right that my final year project is tied to the project that ties up my year. The royal family kids' camp is weeks away, and while i think of exhausting days with dread, i remember sleepyheads and wild girls, and know that this has been the best use of my selfish life so far.

More on the Project and the balloon child. (click)

To be honest i haven't been pouring my time into my final year project. Or into anything school-related. Jiet and I spent an afternoon doing nothing but marveling at how God stretches our time when we give it to Him.

The best single afternoon was spent belly-down on the red couches in the library, with the cold rain streaming down outside, drawing and listening to camera obscura to prep me for their show, which put me to sleep shortly. I can't stop falling asleep these days.

The man who truly and disinterestedly enjoys any one thing in the world, for its own sake, and without caring two-pence what other people say about it, is by that very fact forearmed against some of our subtlest modes of attack. You should always try to make the patient abandon the people or food or books he really likes in favour of the "best" people, the "right" food, the "important" books.

as spoken by a demon mentor to another demon, The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis

So that's why I'm so free and happy now. I have been doing things of pure pleasure, such as sitting by the lake on my way home, and scrunching up sand in my hands. Wednesday's surprise excursion took us to sentosa, and of course there was no going back to school after that. Nobody can leave a surprise beach in midweek. And there was a happy brainless movie with butterscotch popcorn. And happy hour last night!with kiyoko, megumi and daniel playing a live set as we sat around candles on the floor.

Because I've bumped off all my classes this week, except the sentosa class, I'm going for my management lecture today for the first time. I feel very rested, and plumped up, and soothed, and comforted. :)