My Player is a Playa’

Ah. Technology.

How will we survive without it? I simply can’t imagine living my life without my computer, my stereo, and my favorite one – my DVD player.

I always consider the DVD as my loyal faithful companion. A little bit like a dog, minus the pooping and the barking. It’s always there when I need something to cheer me up, it’s been with me during the hardest points of my life and no matter how busy I get, it never complains. Before I had a real boyfriend, I considered it my boyfriend.

Well, okay, it’s only a machine, but so what? It’s a lot more dependable than some living beings I know.

The other day I bought the complete season Six part Two of Sex and the City on DVD and I couldn’t wait to put it on my DVD player and be passively entertained for about eight hours or so. Just the thought of it was enough to give shivers – there is simply nothing more enjoyable than watching my favorite shows on DVD, because it’s all about picking my favorite episodes, the rewinding, the fast forwarding, the subtitled or the non subtitled.

As I inserted DVD 1, I waited with anticipation and delight and guess what.

It skipped over.
And over.
And over.

And then it stopped completely. It froze over, mid-animation process into the menu.

And it was only the intro to the episode selection.

I was totally non-plussed for a second, while having that “I can’t believe this is happening to me” look on my dumbfounded face. Though I knew this actually had happened before, it still threw me back completely, and all I could do was chanting out “Please don’t do this to me, not now” because it was just too devastatingly unbelievable.

I might sound like I’m exaggerating here but I’ve totally got a point. The previous DVDs that I bought were pirated and these ones were the original. Original. Nothing should have gone wrong with them. If there was anything that was wrong, it was definitely the player.

Yes sista, my player is a playa’. My fellow companion, whom I have always trusted to fix my whacked-out state of emotion. Is. A. Playa’.

If it were a man, it would be the time when I start to think about the perfect time for breaking up.

Whatever happen to technology making our lives easier? Now it’s just complicating things, making it harder for me to live and get on with my life.

I know that getting pissed off over a crappy DVD player is not really something to fuss over, but if only it wasn’t the only bad encounter I had with technology, I wouldn’t be writing this at all. On top of that, I had lost my ATM card about a week ago. The machine swallowed it in. Yes, the technology is skipping over and eating things in right now.

Technology fails on me, and I’m just about to have a nervous breakdown.

A Blazing under a Bushel

Someone told me that life is like a game; if you broke down and cried or you ever felt lonely, you’ve lost the game.

Well that was how I felt on Friday. I felt like a big fat failure who had not only lost the game but on top of that, had no idea whatsoever about what I should do for my life. Other people had everything figured out, but I felt like I was lost and clueless and it scared the freaking bejesus out of me to know that I was pretty much going with no direction – no job, no career, nowhere to go.

I applied for a job vacancy at a banking company and they asked me to come for a psycho-test last Friday. Not that I never had it before, because I did, and I didn’t pass. And the second time around I didn’t get lucky. I got fucked over actually, because not only did I not pass, I didn’t even pass the first stage of the test. There were about ten people who did the tests and there were three who didn’t pass, and I was one of them.

I felt like such a loser – “Hey look at me, I’m an overseas graduate who had spend six years of her life living abroad and I couldn’t even pass the first stage of a stupid psycho test.”

I didn’t exactly break down and cry and I sure hoped that I did because maybe that would make me feel a lot more relieved. The fact that I couldn’t even bring myself to cry was something to worry about. Unlike any other normal female being who was dying to talk about her problems to others just so she could feel better about it, I closed myself out from the rest of the world and hibernated at home, watching DVDs non-stop and trying not to think about anything except the movies I was watching at. I slept for eighteen hours and felt like shit when I woke up because the first thing that came onto my mind was, “I failed that stupid psycho-test”, period.

For others, this may seem like a no biggie, but it is to me, because I failed it – for the second time. I felt as if my whole life’s worth of academic background and effort was thrown out of the window and I got stamped ‘Not good enough’ on the forehead just because I didn’t pass the test.

The whole thing got me thinking over and reassessed myself on what was it that I was lacking of, and I still had no clue. Even if I bought ‘Psycho Test for Dummies’ (which I did) and did all the exercises with the stopwatch and all, I still don’t think I could pass the test. The questions were ridiculous I sucked and cringed on the math part of the test, or any tests in that matter.

I don’t know how they could possibly sum up a person’s character and attributes and I just don’t see how those things were enough to measure up someone’s capability. I felt like I was simply being dismissed because I was not given the chance to shine.

I was confident that I could do anything that I set my mind to. My friends told me that I was a girl with many talents. My ruthless English teacher in high school, whom everyone was scared shitless with, told me that I was a blazing under a bushel, and that I would shine wherever I was.

I was dying to believe those words so much, and deep inside I knew that they were somewhat true, yet what happened on Friday seemed to make me falter even more. I appeared to fail on both accounts – failed on the test and failed to see that I was special enough to be given the chance – on anything.

Aaliyah told me to dust myself off and try again. Des’ree urged me to be strong and tough. Mum advised me that maybe this was just not for me, and that many others would come and God was trying to test me to see whether I would crumble or clamber up.

So today I dug up old letters from my friends and families and found out some stuff from high school – papers that we wrote to each other anonymously, telling each others about the good things that they were. The words ‘talented’ and ‘gifted’ came out a lot, and I realized that if these people had that much faith in me, then why couldn’t I feel the same? Maybe I didn’t fail on the test but I failed to see myself the way others did. Maybe other people didn’t underestimate me but I underestimated myself. I didn’t believe I was good enough to be given the chance. I have been hiding under the bushel, still, after so many years.

I didn’t realise that chance don’t just fall on my lap, but it’s something I got to discover myself. I simply cannot give up knowing that I can do better than this and just because I failed on something it doesn’t make me a failure. I’m just a girl with her own limitations but I know that there are some things I do that others can’t do.

They can jostle me with all the bizarre questions and math problems in the world and I still won’t be able to answer correctly to any of them but those things will not make me feel less of myself. It doesn’t matter that some people don’t know how special I am, but there will be many other people who will see to that and they will let me shine, whenever and wherever I am.

This piece is dedicated to Judeline Wadhwani, wherever you are – I finally get it now. it took me years to find out what it means but I hope it’s not too late. Thank you.