It hurts.

Well...I am upset again. This time, it is not really about studies. It is sort of like a few events that is making me upset and disappointed. I thought I could brush it off as a joke, but it is not so easy. I do not know if I should post this here, but I have to let it out. If you do not want to know about my sad life, please skip this post.

I know that I have quirky habits, calculating everything I spend, participating in contests and using cut-out coupons. It may seem like I am very ''auntie-like''. I know. Because I do not see anything wrong in it, do you? To me, it is more like being practical and realistic. After all, if I save this amount of money, I will get to use it somewhere else where it is more needed. I can use this money for rainy days, donate to charity or treat myself to ice-cream. There is always a reason to save. I am sure that not many people understand that and I do not blame you because if I was not me, I would not understand it either. I am definitely not an impulsive buyer and I am indecisive/fickle-minded. I know. But one thing I do not quite understand is, how come you see this negatively instead of positively? I thought this is being thrifty. That is supposed to be good...right? Well, the main point is, calling me ''auntie'' did not hurt for the first 5 times, but it started to hurt when everyone is calling me that. I know that it is a endearment(sort of) and I have tried to take it easy. But frankly, I feel uncomfortable when you relate every I do to being ''auntie''. I am just being me:( and I do share whatever benefits I have with everyone.

Another thing that has been troubling me is my standard of English. I know I do not pronounce my words well, it seems that my tongue is as flexible as the rest of myself. It is a wonder how no one really commented on my bad pronunciation till now. I can totally imagine my dear friend Rachel's thoughts when she talks to me. She is probably controlling herself from correcting every mispronunciation and grammatical error I made during our conversations. Thank you and I love you for that dearie:) Well...you see, most of my family members are Chinese educated. This means that they learn their school subjects in Chinese. That was in the 1970s in Singapore. They probably never used the English language until they went to work in a Danish company. However, they knew the importance of the English language and spoke to me in English since I was a baby. Only my Grandparents spoke to me in Chinese. But the thing is, their English is not perfect. I learnt how to use proper English in school. I was in a mission school for 10 years and almost everyone spoke English there. I sort of ''perfected'' my English there. Of course, it was not perfect but no one complained so I went on. The thing is, the English I use in school is simple English, without all those bombastic words. No one uses them at home. In my preteens, I enjoyed reading books, especially classical novels such as Anne of Green Gables and Little Women. These books improved my vocabulary and helped me to learn more difficult words. The thing is, these books do not tell me how to pronounce them. You may say that it comes naturally and I was supposed to learn phonics in primary school. But the facts remains, I would not know how to pronounce them until someone tells me how to. I do not have the ability(learnt or otherwise) to know how to pronounce these words. Ya. I am incapable of doing that. It seem to me that I always have to learn it the hard way---when someone laughs at my pronunciation. It hurts, although I try not to take it to heart. It really hurts, especially when it comes from my friends. I know it is difficult to understand where I am coming from, especially if you never had that problem. I will laugh it off together with you.

But I will be sad, that you do not understand what I really feel. I guess I have a poker face. After all, I always win Cheat with my friends. I think I have discovered the secret to having a poker face---a smile.

Yup. This is a very tedious, heart-breaking and long post about what I been so preoccupied about the past few days. Ciao.

Rebecca:'(

I hope that someday, someone will truly understand me, a kindred spirit (from Anne of Green Gables)