Confessions of a Cat-holic (99)

I was not totally unaware of their hallucinations that I was an evil being trying to make them feel bad about themselves with my looks that already stood out among a bunch of midgets, despite the fact that I was considered the ugly betty in my alma mater. The fact that they repeatedly picked Gigi Leung's classics definitely revealed something about their mental problems. But I didn't care enough to reciprocate or declare that I was not what they were thinking about, as much as I didn't care about their sentiments or low self esteem. I just didn't care about them enough to dedicate a song to hurt their feelings, but they didn't seem to see that in me. As I said, I was not particularly fond of my new friends but I didn't hate them either. I was more indifferent and rather than hatred or jealousy, I was more perplexed about their skewed perspective about life and reality in general.

Mindy was a patient of eczema and she was a serious case. In her bad times, she had fluids and swollen pus all over her body. She was also a bit fat for her height. She told me that her size and overweight health problems were due to her skin conditions. She had to continuously take steroids and smear steroids ointment all over her body so she would not have to scratch it too much. She said the itchniess and the urge to scratch could keep her distracted from studying. In order to focus on school work without the pain and irritation from her severe skin conditions, she had to take on an aggressive dose of medications because she said that her body had developed drug resistance so she could only rely on treatment in a dose that had to multiply through time like a spiral.

And she was not the only one. In a class of less than 35, around 3-4 of them had visible dermatosis. Sancho Lau was another one. And my other friend from Columbia, William Lai, also from SPCC, was another patient suffering from severe eczema. William left SPCC before I got in so again he was not my high school friend. He was a resident of Estoril Court, the quintessential stereotype of a SPCCer. He quitted SPCC by F3 to study at a prep school named Concord Academy as an American citizen. With a decent GPA and test score, it was no surprise that he was admitted to Columbia's engineering school, in the very same academic department as me so we were both graduates of Operations Research class of 2007. But I heard that he was going around mocking the fact that I only received an offer of 2500 RMB for a public relations winter internship at Weber Shandwick in Beijing so he was blocked in his junior year and senior year from the Columbia Center of Career Education and the entire Monster Trak network which normally allowed anyone to apply for jobs in the states. As a result, he could not seek employment in America as an American citizen and had to come back to Hong Kong on a salary package of 9000 HKD for a 100-hour work week job at the Big Four and the funny thing was that he was truly happy about it. SPCC students had a work slave mindset anyways, whatever made them happy.

And then Rebecca had a chronic flu. Sibyl and Keith were hillbillies. And Monica's father was a butcher. There would be a visibly senile cripple in each class, and then an albino or hairless cancer kid somewhere here and there. Would I still want to mock their misfortune? No, I thought they suffered enough already, god forbid, I would never intend to laugh at their own shortcomings.

To me, they were just a cluster of ants, hard-working, unsually tiny and somewhat disease-spreading but afterall they were just a nuisance in the ecosystem. Would you kill an ant with a flamethrower when you could crush them with a fingertip? Although I might if I felt like it. Or maybe I would just ignore them for now. They were nevertheless a symbol of strength, diligence, willpower, honesty, unity, patience, determination, stamina, sacrifice, and loyalty. Despite its petite size, the ants were a bunch of pathetic bugs that possessed an immense desire of accomplishment, reminding you that nothing would come easy in life without putting any effort. Why get angry over an ant?