It's just emotion taking me over...

... words of a phrase that repeats itself in my head.
There are probably several reasons and several different levels to why that is so.

But - I have been accused of being melodramatic - twice in the same week. V mailed me to accuse me of that and said my blog posts haven't been the happiest lately... but it's not true, is it? Well, vic, you should remember the words of your favourite author fanny fern... who said:

No happy woman ever writes.

And then, today my last story for the summer was published. And J, who was featured in the story, just told me he was laughing out loud while reading it because it was too 'mama drama' - he said the headlines were too sensationalised.
But comon, if everyone read the way they spoke in plain English, newspapers would be out of business right now. The only reason why newspapers are such an integral part of modern humanity's everyday life is because they make boring information interesting.

So having said that, I'm not being melodramatic by saying it's just emotion taking me over... it happens to be a phrase in this song by Destiny's Child... and the strange part is it's not like I heard it on the radio today. in fact, the last time I heard this song was probably.... last weekend at Sentosa when this bohemian-like singer was busking at this cafe in the sunset. Why it suddenly surfaced, is probably a sub-conscious reaction from the inner recesses of my brain, reminding me of X.

Speaking of strange, something odd happened to me today. I was in town walking in an underground pass after walking out from a bakery to buy some stuff for my family's breakfast tomorrow... and then in my pre-occupied state of juggling all my bags of shopping, putting my change back into my bag, and making my way to the next shop I had in mind, I heard this person calling me from behind in Mandarin:

Miss, Miss...

I turned around and saw before this bizarre-looking middle-aged woman who was short, unkempt, with strange bespectacled eyes. When I say bizarre-looking, it meant she had a look that was somewhere halfway between normal-looking and deranged-looking. So I looked back at her quizzically and she said:

Can you give me one dollar ninety cents for me to take a bus back to Tampines?

She said this with a pleading/deranged look on her face, yet no please, no elaboration, no why-on-earth-are-you-randomly-asking-me-for-money kind of explanation...

I had no idea why I did what I did, but I gave her this wildly surprised look and then walked quickly away to my next shop, which was just in front of me. When I stepped in it, I was immediately plagued with guilt. Obviously I can afford two dollars, hell, I would give her more if she told me why she was randomly asking strangers for money!
I don't know if I should feel complimented that she obviously thought I looked enough of a kind soul for her to approach me for money, or embarrassed that she thought I looked easy enough to fleece and surrender money without reason...
I guess it was just the shock of being approached by a psycho-looking person that made me flee... it's one thing to look at scruffy beggars on the streets of London, and another to be approached in the full-face with a dodgy person demanding for money.
But I felt terminally bad about it.
So after making my purchase, I went out with money in my hand, determined to give it to her, if she was still lurking in corners of the underground pass, waiting to pounce on innocent kind-looking girls... but I couldn't see her any longer.
Just as I was pushed by the crowd to the opening of the underpass, I gave one last look and glanced behind my shoulder... and then I saw her in the far distance, wandering with a blank look on her face. I thought to myself: did she lose her friends, her family, or her money... couldn't she have called home, approached security..or do something...anything? It's just not a situation that's likely to happen to someone in fisrt-world country Singapore in the year 2004 - everyone has a home, everyone has money. supposedly.

By that time, I had advanced too far forward... I hesitated for a moment and wondered if I should walk back... incessant questions and speculations on her plight surfaced in my head...but I didn't.