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I woke up at an ungodly hour at 6am yesterday – which is a Saturday – when I only had 3 hours of sleep due to me trying to finish up an exciting final case of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials & Tribulations. I had to go visit the graveyards for Qing Ming yet again.. a smoky annual affair in which my family usually participated in weeks before the actual date to avoid the frenzying crowds.

We spent about 2 hours at two different graveyards: one containing my great-grandparents (dad’s side) whom I don’t think I’ve met before when they were still alive, and another with my paternal grandfather’s ashes. As children to my parents, we were posed the question if we would ever continue the tradition of this graveyard-visiting and my answer was an instant “Probably not”.

My mum found it ridiculous with this environment-unfriendly tradition of burning paper money and whatnot which I loathe whole-heartedly because I couldn’t stand the smoke. She declared that the following year onwards, we’ll stop this Taoist tradition of nonsensical burning and probably do a quicker and far more efficient graveyard-visiting instead.

And my parents told me that, when they do pass on next time, they prefer cremation to burial because they don’t need a plot of already diminishing land when they die – all they require is ample space in our heads for remembering them, to be buried beneath mountains of our other memories.

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I went for what is to me a permanent irreversible “life-changing” act – one of the two things in life considered as taboo to the older generation, and exactly these two things that most of us youths would like to do: piercing and tattoo.

I went for the piercing.

It’s a harmless one on my left earlobe, and it all began when I posed the question to my mum on her birthday night when we were on the way to Subang Parade. Long story short, dad said OK, mum said no, and all it takes is a little more convincing to get an affirmative nod from her.

So the next day after much deliberation from my part whether to actually go ahead with the act and after doing a little bit of research on the Internet and asking male friends who did it, I went to Summit’s Poh Kong and dragged along Kai Tzin to teman me (we actually went in two cars due to some miscommunication >.>). For some reason I was feeling a little nervous – getting cold feet, if you will – not to sure if I would actually regret it later on.

Bah what the hell, I plunged in. The entire thing from talking to Poh Kong’s employees to paying up RM18 merely took me about 5 minutes.

The lady counted “1.. 2.. 3!” and at “3!” she pulled the trigger on the gun, so to speak. At that instant I felt a sharp pinching pain and the deed was done – apparently Ding felt nothing when he did his so I’m pretty sure Summit’s Poh Kong staffs weren’t exactly professional. >_>

Said pain persisted for the next 5 hours or so.. but I didn’t regret it. :)

Pic’s a little dark but you can see a little white thing on my ear. And no it wasn’t Photoshopped on.