The days where you wake up on the right side of bed, when the grass is especially green and the sky the happiest shade of azure, and you feel that your life has been enriched by the conversations you had with your friends on the same intellectual level as you are -- those are the good days.

And then you have days where your hair looks like a bird's nest, when the sky is horrifically dark grey and there's thunder, and everyone you know is being totally uninteresting -- those are the bad days.

Today can't be classified into either one of the categories. It's just one of those things that happen, y'know? Like how stealing money to pay for your sickly mother's prescription isn't exactly good, nor is it completely evil.

Lots of half interesting things have happened, but let's just get to the good stuff, shall we not?

We're at dinner/supper, and the topic of people looking bored or angry all of the time comes up. It saddens me to know that people think I'm bored or angry half the time. It's important to me, but the moment I bring it up people start sharing stories that have, in my opinion, no relation to the topic we're talking about.

And that was the thing that bothered me the most. Not that I have what most people would collaquially call a "dao-y" face, but that no one was willing to talk about the subject with me. To be honest, none of them were very interested in what I had to say throughout the whole conversation. Which was frustraing.

But anyways, talking to adults is frustrating in general. They never listen. They hear, but they don't listen. They hear what they want to hear, not what you're saying to them. And they never take your fears seriously. I honestly don't know why I even bother anymore. But when you're desperate, anyone or anything is good.


Anyways, I just finished The Little Prince/Le Petit Prince, and it's taught me a lot more than two full years of doing Literature has.

Here are some quotes from this wonderful book.

'Now here is my secret, very simply: you can only see things clearly with your heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye.'

'My life is very monotonus. I run after the chickens; the men run after me. All the chickens are the same; all the men are the same. Consequently, I get a little bored. But if you tame me, my days will be as if filled with sunlight. I shall know the sound of a footstep different from all the rest. Other steps make me run to earth. Yours will call me out of my foxhole, like music. And besides, look over there! You see those fields of corn? Well, I don't eat bread. Corn is of no use to me. Corn fields remind me of nothing. Which is sad. On the other hand, your hair is the colour of gold. So think how wonderful it will be when you have tamed me. The corn, which is golden, will remind me of you. And I shall come to love the sound of the wind in the field of corn...'

So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the time for him to leave was approaching:
'Oh!' said the fox. 'I am going to cry.'
'It's your own fault,' said the little prince, 'I never wished you any harm; but you wanted me to tame you...'
'I know,' said the fox.
'So you have gained nothing from it at all!'
'Yes, I have gained something,' said the fox, 'because of the colour of the corn.'

'You are nothing like my rose,' he told them. 'As yet you are nothing at all. Nobody has tamed you, and you have tamed nobody. You are as my fox used to be. He was just a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I made him my friend, and now he is unique in this world.'

'Good day,' said the little prince.
'Good day,' said the merchant.
The merchant was selling patent pills to quench thirst, you swallow one each week, and you no longer feel the need to drink.
'Why are you selling these things?' asked the little prince.
'They're a great time-saver,' said the merchant. 'The experts have worked it out. You can save fifty-three minutes in every week.'
'And what do I do with these fifty-three minutes?'
'You do whatever you like...'
'For my part,' said the little prince to himself, 'if I had fifty-three minutes to spare, I would take my time walking slowly towards the nearest fountain of water.'

I raised the bucket to his lips. He drank, his eyes closed. The water gladdened the heart. It was something other than a mere beverage. Its sweetness was born of our march beneath the stars, of the pulley's song and the extertion of my arms. It was good for the heart, like a present. When I was a little boy, the lights of the Christmas tree, the music at midnight mass, the tenderness of the simling faces, all these together made up the radiance of the present I received.

But I was not reassured. I remembered the fox: you run the risk of a few tears when you allow yourself to be tamed...

'It's the same as with the flower. If you love a flower that lives on a star, it it sweet to look up at the night sky. All the stars are in bloom.'
'Yes, I know.'
'It's the same as with the water. What you gave me to drink was a kind of music, because of the pulley and the rope... Do you remember... how good it was?'
'Yes, I know.'
'At night, you will look up at the stars. Mine is too small to point out to you. It is better that way. For you, my star will be just one of many stars. That way, you will love watching all of them... They will all be your friends. What is more, I am going to give you a present.'
He laughed once more.
'Ah! little prince! How I love to hear your laugh!'
'And that is my presnt - just that... As it was when we drank the water...'
'What are you trying to say?'
'The stars men follow have different meangings. For some people - travellers - the stars are guides. For others they are merely little lights in the sky. For other still - the scientists - they are problems to be solved. For my businessman they meant gold. But for all these people, the stars are silent. For you, the stars will be as they are for no one else.'
'What are you trying to say?'
'At night, when you look up at the sky, since I shall be living on a star, and since I shall be laughing on a star, for you it will be as if all the stars are laughing. You alone will have stars that can laugh!'
And he laughed again.
'And when you have got over your loss (for we always do), you'll be happy to have known me. You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And sometimes you will open your window - just like that, for the sake of opening it - and your friends will be amazed to see you laughing as you look up at the sky. Then you'll say to them: "Yes, it's the stars; they always make me laugh!" And they'll think you are crazy. I will have played a mean trick on you.'
And the laughed again.
'As if, instead of stars, I'd given you a string of little laughing bells...'


It's amazing. I wonder why I never picked it up before. Probably because I thought it was for little kiddies. But this made me change my mind:

No book is really worth reading at age of ten which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty...Those of us who are blamed when old for reading childish books were blamed when children for reading books too old for us. No reader worth his salt trots along in obedience to a timetable.

It makes perfect sense, really. Winnie The Pooh is so much more meaningful now than it was when I was a kid. And I've always read books too old for me.

Now I'm off to read A Letter to a Hostage, and I'm going to go to bed and tomorrow I'm going to do homework and study for ting xie and Bio. *sigh*