I'm on wake duty again.

i.e. I'm going live from my uncle's wake (again). This time, I'm using a laptop. 'cause my mother brought it. She wanted to play PET SOCIETY. Sometimes, I have no idea what age she is, five?

I think sometimes, wherever I blog, I think it's an interesting experience for me. Different people think differently, but I can always engage people philosophically...even at a wake. Yep, that's me.

Last night, I didn't manage to blog. So here's my view.

Last night, there were Buddhist monks chanting sutras and others(which frankly I have no idea what they were saying) for my uncle. He was a Buddhist. I was busily doing my Math homework, which my pretty math teacher Mrs Ni had given me as part of her remedial class. So there I was, punching the calculator's buttons and trying to remember what (A+B) square was. Of course, I could remember within a few minutes.

Many people would think that I would be disturbed by the chanting going on all around me, as it was indeed rather loud.

Strangely enough, though I'm a Christian, I found it rather soothing, rhythmic and all in all, conducive enough for my distorted algebraic calculations. (P.S. Doing algebra is like trying to make sense of my classmate's Punjabi books;I don't really get a thing. Just joking, lah.)

I think I would have found a prayer or something else from another religion comforting/soothing, too. I think it was just the repetitive rhythm and the 'ambience'.

Then when it all ended, all the volunteers from the Buddhist organisation just took off the heavy black robes they wore, and they were immediately transformed back into normal human beings. You couldn't tell at all what they had just done. One old-ish guy leaned over for his bag near me, and said 'wan le, wo men qu he ka fei, jiang shi fei!' It means, it's finished, let's go drink coffee and talk about things which may be real or not!' Or something along those lines.

What I was amazed by was the way that the entire atmosphere created by the chanting had just dissolved, snap! Just like that. Snap.

I couldn't quite believe it, actually.

Now I don't quite know what I felt, nor how to quite explain nor describe it. I don't know...

I'm just doing something, just something, to keep myself occupied. Why? Just that when you're occupied with something, it stops you from thinking, or at least thinking so much. About everything.

Of course, it's just a temporary respite, a temporary getaway from everything. A little tiny 'painkiller' that acts for maybe half an hour. Doin something, anything, sometimes just takes your mind off the task on hand, or where you are now.

Over time, and over life, the mind gets desensitized or numbed to such things, such emotions and feelings.

If only we could be halfway there at birth.