Reflections on Brown Paper

Interesting weekend indeed... Whenever I read over the Dragonfly entries I'm tempted to write myself the Great Singapore Romance Novel. What should I call it? "Dragonflies on the Shoulder"? Or just "Dragonflies"?

I have my protagonist all planned out. She will have a dragonfly, of course, and for added salt, I'll make her a dragonfly too! She will like this guy, and have this guy like her as well, all in secret! Wah, can write HK drama liao ah like that!

I'll span the saga from JC to Uni to when they start working. Along the way I'll create massive love triangles, sex, drugs, rock n' roll, and TONS of scandal! Mwahahaha!

Ok, should stop now.

Well, at least I can sympathize with my protagonist anyway. Besides the sex, drugs and scandal part anyway. As for a script, might need some help there. But at least if I don't win any scriptwriting competitions, I could try for a book... If I ever get down to writing it... hahaha...

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At my kid's house today, she showed me her composition exercise book. When I opened it I found streaks of liquid paper all over the compositions she had written for me previously, like someone decided to draw something on her book. White snakes all over her pencil handwriting.

"What the...?"

"My brother lor!" exclaimed Rachel in frustration. [sweet, primary 4 Rachel] "Don't know why he suddenly decided to draw on my book!"

"In liquid paper?"

"No, in pen, then I go over it with liquid paper lor." That explains the streaks. At the last written page, there is even a note, written in a much more adult hand, excusing the mess in Rachel's book.

"That one my father write one."

"Oh, ok. Did they scold him?" If my bro had tried doing that to my exercise books, my father would have given him hell about defacing other's properties.

"No, just tell him not to do it again." Ok, so her parents are a whole lot nicer to their kids than mine. I turn to the last page, examining the rest of the empty pages for more liquid defacement, and on the last page is a flurry of pen marks.

"Aiyah! Got some more I never liquid!" And she immediately reaches for the liquid paper and starts to erase off the pen marks. Some of the pen marks are on the cover of the book, and as she covers them with liquid paper, I cringe at the mess she makes on the book.

Because the cover of the book is brown, the ballpoint pen marks weren't that visible. Once she went over them with liquid paper, however, the thin, blue lines became huge, fat white snakes, and it made the cover of the book even uglier, the scars standing out even more.

Sometimes, you do stuff in your life you wish you'd rather cover up. Dumb, stupid things that make you wonder why you ever considered it in the first place, and make you wish that you could go back and change it all. But then, do you feel that sometimes when you try to cover it up, or push it to the back of your mind, it just makes it stand out even more?

Just that liquid paper on brown paper. You make a lot of stupid marks on the brown paper, and then you try to liquid it off, because it's always worked with white paper. But then to your horror, the liquid just becomes even uglier when it's applied to brown paper and now there's no way of getting it off. Now you think, godammit, I should have just left the marks there. It would have looked better.

Hmmmm...... Never thought one could have a flash of inspiration from a tuition exercise book...