On a lazy Sunday afternoon, Neo I become.

It's interesting how you can connect with people from all over the world and yet you have nothing to say to the friend sitting beside you during lecture, for fear that you are going to repeat the same old, same old. Or worse, they think that you are disturbing them during lecture when all you want is to brighten up their mundane days.

You see something quirky on the way home and your first thought is to wonder how a certain friend from another corner of the world will think of it instead of what the friend walking beside you thinks, because she is too caught up with bitching about how another bitch in her tutorial kept asking stupid questions or that the oh-so-tiko lecturer refuses to put up his oh-so-important slides. You pretend to listen and keep a straight face, but your mind is filled with contempt with her for being so narrow-minded, or worse, with pity and sadness that she totally missed seeing the big picture. Occasionally you try to explain to her the bigger picture, but you know that you are fighting a losing battle because you start to be judged for trying to be too judgemental. Oh the irony and injustice of it all! And so you just keep silent and nod your head.

I realised that I have friends from all continents except Antartica and South America. Sometimes, I see bits and pieces of life here that reminds me of them, like Doraemon, popcorn, and that oh-so-irritating numa numa song. I can't help retreating into the comforting inner world of my thoughts when all life around me remains so superficial, so fleeting, and so....judgemental.

I have my occasional Matrix moments, when like Neo, I wake up to realise that the world I grew up in is just, well, a Matrix and nothing more. And you cannot turn to your friends because they are afterall, just part of the Matrix.

Yes I have been "unplugged". And the sad thing is, people around me are still "plugged" and have no inkling that there actually even exists an unplugged state of being. And like Neo, I guess I just end up going back into the matrix again.

5 more weeks of being in the matrix, and 7 more before I get out of it again.