Tuesday, June 27, 2006
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The freakiest thing happened to me yesterday.
Yesterday morning, when I was at home, I stuck a finger in to dig my ear. I stuck my pinkie in and touched something synthetic.
I didn't know what it was, so I said, "Mum, there's something in my ear!"
"It's probably some earwax."
"No, Mum, it feels like metal."
And then my dad came. "Lemme take a look..."
Perhaps the lighting really sucks, 'cause my Dad thought it was a really huge piece of earwax.
"I'll help you get it out in no time."
He went upstairs and came back down with a pair of tweezers.
"Will this hurt?"
"No, this won't hurt one bit... OH MY NA MO AH MI TOR FOR..."
In his tweezers was...
A plastic stud.
How the hell did it get there, I have no idea, but I know it's been there for months... I remember waking up one morning a few months ago without my earring on... searched my bed and couldn't find it.
It must have been a really long time ago... there was even a thin coat of earwax over it.
And the luckiest thing is, we got it out early. The stick side was facing my eardrum... had I not realised it earlier and pushed it deeper I wouldn't be able to enjoy Cabaret and the Phantom of the Opera with my left ear!
And to think I brought it along with me to Europe... OH MY GOD.
Speaking of Europe, let's continue with my journey.
Day 6:
We are in Krakow, Poland! What did we do? Visited the Jewish Quarter! Where Schindler's List is filmed! But I don't really give a damn 'cause I've never seen the film before, and I'm not sure if I'm going to be interested. And the coach drove past Schindler's factory. And then we visited yet another cathedral, and went to the toilet, and more shopping. Bought chocolates. Lots of it. Of course we bought the local brands, what the hell do you fly a thousand miles to eat international brands for, when you can get them in your mama shop across the street. Wayne ate one whole bar by himself... AND THE SADDEST THING IS I DIDN'T EVEN GET TO EAT ANY. I fell sick in Hungary (I think) and had a sore throat. Got out of the shop, and saw Shuqian and his dad sitting outside, drinking beer and enjoying life. Went to say hi, and immediately Wayne and Shuqian went off to take pictures of pigeons. Sat down and chatted with his dad for a while and soon it was time to go for dinner and so we left. Tried to do that "Make the bloody birds fly by running through them" thing but the pigeons here have no fear of humans whatsoever. Dinner, don't talk about it, it's Chinese stuff again.
Day 7
Went to the least likely tourist destination... Auschwitz Concentration Camp.
Hmm. I be honest.
It's not the most frightening of war museums that I've ever seen.
Or maybe I'm so sadistic that stepping into the gas chamber doesn't evoke any feeling in me.
Or my imagination has run dry.
Aiyah... can't be bothered to type everything out lah, maybe my English journal on Auschwitz camp might give you a better idea?
Warning - Damn Cliched and Very Emotional.
Some Information May Not Be Accurate.
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Many a time I have seen the compassionate side of humans; there are people in this world who truly care for the poor and the disabled, the old and the young, relieve them of their misfortunes and troubles in times of need.
Yet today, I learnt about the other side of humans, the evil, dark side, people who kill or torture other people out of misconceptions and distorted theories deduced from their prejudices and biases, or blame all social and financial dysfunctions of a nation to just one or a few races.
For today, I stepped into Auschwitz Camp in Poland, to find out what exactly happened on this end of the world during the Holocaust, a piece of history that Europeans of every creed and race will never forget.
During the Holocaust, this part of the earth was no longer known as earth. It was more like a living hell.
First, we visited the exhibitions in the museum. They were mainly facts and figures, but these were not enough to shock me until we reached the exhibitions that featured the sheer amount of shoes, pots and pans, shoe shines and suitcases, clothes and Jewish prayer shawls that Hitler’s men had stripped from the prisoners of the camp. And those were only a small percentage of the total number of belongings confiscated – many, many more were burnt in the last months of the Second World War, an attempt to destroy war evidence.
There was yet another exhibition, harrowing and touching, tragic and horrific.
As we walked down a corridor in one of the brick houses, I saw close to a hundred identification photographs of the prisoners, coming in sets of three (front, left and right side of a person’s face), each wearing a set of blue-and-white striped uniforms and with an identification number and name at the bottom. There were so many different faces – Jewish, Gypsies, Poles and Roma – and thus so many different identification numbers and names, yet they all wore the same expression, the same vacant expression, eyes wide open expectantly, lips numb with speechlessness. I could not help but think, what were they thinking? They probably had an inkling of the things that were about to happen, just that they did not know the proportion of the situation. Perhaps they did not see what was coming, they were merely shocked that they had to go through so many processes; they had forgotten why they ended up in this remote Polish town in the first place. Maybe some had found out, somehow, that their elderly parents or young children had been murdered in the gas chambers, and they were too traumatized to hope for anything else.
Soon we left the corridor and entered an exhibition room, all about the children in Auschwitz. First I noticed yet another group of identification photographs, this time of minors under 16, chosen for scientific experiments. Some, as the captions under the pictures stated, had survived Auschwitz; most others, however, died in the camp, were transferred to other concentration or death camps, or were never heard of ever again. Besides these identification photographs there were other pictures of the prisoners, starved to the bone, crippled with illnesses, barely an inch from death.
The tour guide began to narrate the tale of a boy who was fortunate enough to be liberated from the camp after the war, his reaction when he saw an old photo of himself in the camp, many years on:
“And now we see this picture of a 13-year-old boy who had been liberated from the camp. Many years after the war, when the boy came to visit Auschwitz, as a man, when it became a museum, he was told that the boy in the photo was him.
This man could not believe it. He at first denied that the boy was his younger self, until he realized that the identification number, tattooed on the boy’s leg, matched the one on his own leg, did he realize that he looked so emaciated and hollow at that age.”
It is not surprising why the man had denied that the boy in the photo was him; for in Auschwitz, there were no mirrors, and people did not want to believe it was them when they had seen their reflection in other reflective surfaces, choosing to believe that it was the face of another prisoner standing behind or beside them. Had I seen the reflection of a thin face with bulging eyes, sunken cheeks and purplish lips looking back at me in the window pane, I would not have believed that was my face, too.
We moved on to another section of Auschwitz camp – the camp’s prison, or a “prison within a prison”, for prisoners who disobeyed the German soldiers or were repeated offenders.
It was a strange feeling to step inside the plain-looking brick house. It looked just like any other building within the camp, yet it sent chills down my spine when I found out how many people had perished within these walls.
There were starvation chambers – rooms where prisoners were locked in and not given any food or water until they died. These rooms were not exactly small, but were empty except for a simple toilet, a hole in the floor, and a small window, a hole in the wall. The wooden door was heavy, and could only be opened or locked from the outside. Those who died in here died a long and slow death, for it often took days and weeks for them to starve slowly and bitterly to death. Some did try to keep their faith alive, and scratched out images of Jesus Christ on the wall, but ultimately their faith outlived their lives; though the prisoners were long gone, their etchings remain.
Then there were “four-men-chambers”, rooms that were no more than one square feet in area, the only entrance being a short gap at the bottom for prisoners to climb into. Four men were squeezed into these windowless chambers, with no space to sit, stretch, squat, or for that matter, do anything else but stand. There wasn’t even enough air to breathe – the weak ones collapsed first, dying of suffocation. The prisoners were shut in there for the entire night, sent to work like the others the next day, and then sent back to the chamber by night, having to endure this inhumane treatment over and over again until one by one the men fell. It is not an overstatement to say that it was better to die faster.
After visiting the prison, we headed for the place that signifies doom and instant death: the gas chamber and crematorium.
The gas chamber was about 25 metres by 3 metres, dark and empty with only patched-up holes in the ceiling. In this room died tens of thousands of innocent people, usually children below 16 who were not chosen for experiments, the elderly, the disabled, the mentally unsound and people who simply looked ugly and deformed. The crystallized form of Cyclone-B were poured in from the holes in the ceiling, and when reacted with water, released a poisonous gas. This poisonous gas froze the lungs of a human being, making it hard for one to breathe and thus killing a person by suffocation.
That was how tens of thousands of men, women and children died.
After seeing the gas chamber, the tour group leader led the group for a minute of silence. As the minute went by, I began to see it all unfold. Old men feeling exhausted, leaning against the wall, their lungs seizing up. Young children were gasping for air, using whatever strength and breath they have left to cry for their mothers, old women trying their best to calm the youngsters down, but they were struggling to live as well.
Minutes later, the children quieted down, the elderly spoke no more, and the handicapped people could not feel anymore pain.
All was quiet.
When we were done with the gas chamber, the tour guide directed us to the Birkenau camp, a short bus ride away.
It is hard to believe, at first sight, that this is where the Nazis had tortured thousands of prisoners. Even if you were not sent to the gas chambers, a few weeks in here would ensue your death by hunger, diseases, overwork and sheer torture. Young, fit and strong people came in here but were all reduced to skin and bone in a matter of weeks – one Jewish woman weighed seventy kilogrammes upon arrival, yet when she was rescued she was only twenty-five kilogrammes, withered, wasted and badly exhausted.
It was time for us to say goodbye to this place of tragedy and death. As I got on the bus, I couldn’t help but look at Birkenau and Auschwitz one more time – and tell myself, this world had once been a terrible place no one wanted to be.
-
Are tears running down your acne-plagued face? Do you find mucus dripping on your keyboard?
I think I read too much Joy Luck Club.
Oh yeah. So that was Auschwitz. And then it's off to Prague (pronounced as "PRAHG", it should sound like the noise a pair of splitting pants make), Czech Republic! (It's pronounced as "Check", as in "Czech out that hot babe".) Sigh... stupid Ricky had to tell us how Prague has the most number of ghosts per square kilometre... and to make things worse the hotel made me think it was one of those haunted hotels... Czech out my English journal on this... (yes, I'm running out of ideas, that's why I write lame stuff like that to pacify OW.)
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“… and Prague has more ghosts per square kilometre than any other city!” my tour guide said as we bumbled along an expressway in Prague, Czech Republic, tired and fatigued from some 10 hours on the road from Krakow.
“These Czech people… they love to scare tourists, yeah? They organise good ghost tours. You will definitely see a ghost!” he said triumphantly as he caught sight of my younger cousin’s amazed expression.
“Really?” my cousin wondered aloud.
“Yes. Even if you don’t see a real ghost, a fake one will come out and scare you out of your skin!”
The coach was instantly filled with laughter.
“Ghosts,” I said. “The very thing to make up my night… what if we’re staying in a haunted hotel?”
“One in a million chances,” my father replied. “Do you think the ghosts will just haunt anyone?”
“There is a reason why I’m scared. Some ghosts can hurt you or even kill you!” I shivered.
“Nah,” my cousin chuckled, “they’ll think twice about haunting an elephant like you!”
All through the journey to the hotel I kept hoping we would be staying in a ghost-free hotel. As a traveller I would of course want my stay in Prague to be pleasant – who wants to have to wrestle with a foul poltergeist every night before bed?
Thirty minutes later the coach pulled over at the driveway of a ten-storey building. A faulty, flashing neon sign read, “Top Hotel – Praha ”.
“Here we are, ladies and gentlemen! Top Hotel!” the tour guide said cheerfully. “Have a good night’s sleep – and if there’s anything out of the ordinary, just call the concierge!”
I remembered my cousin telling me how poorly lit buildings are at night in Czech Republic. Well, she was absolutely right. Only the lobby was bright; the corridors and the shops were all dark and gloomy.
After checking-in my grandmother and I headed for our room. Obviously I couldn’t wait for daytime to arrive, when we reached the walkway leading to our room, I hesitated for a moment.
The walkway was totally dark. The only source of light was from the street lamp outside the window. Would I ever dare to step in there… only to find something lurking in the pitch of blackness?
Apparently my grandmother could tell that I was being paranoid, and said, “You stupid girl, just turn on the light!”
And she promptly hit the switch, and, like a gas stove, the lamps jumped to life, one by one, down the walkway.
We located our room, 302, second last room at the end of the walkway. I couldn’t imagine walking down such a scary walkway for another night. I would gladly head straight for Berlin tomorrow morning so that I wouldn’t have to face one more night down this walkway!
I slot the key card in, and pushed the door open. It let out an extremely loud creak, just like the kind of door-creaking sound you would hear in any clichéd horror movie. I didn’t even dare to push the door wide open; I just left it ajar and stuck my hand in to feel for the light switch.
“You stupid girl! What are you doing,” asked my grandmother.
“Trying to turn on the light,” I replied.
“Ah, let me do it,” said my grandmother irritably. “So wishy-washy!”
So my 70-year-old grandmother opened the door and pushed the switch. Only two lights were on, one wall lamp each in the bedroom and the bathroom.
My fear of the dark gripped me. Is that all the light we’re going to get, I thought.
As I inspected the room, I found two table lamps in the midst of dimness. I turned both on. And I looked around for more sources of light, like a moth trying to look for the moon.
The doorway was still dark. I looked around for a lamp, and found a ceiling light above my head. I flicked a switch. Nothing happened. I tried again.
I sighed. The light bulb needed fixing!
“Why did you turn on all the lights?” my grandmother inquired, as though I was up to something fishy.
“Didn’t you hear what Ricky said? Prague has more ghosts per square kilometre than any other city! That means at any one time there could be a ghost in this room – AH!”
The lampshade of one of the table lamps suddenly popped out of place. I was almost certain there was poltergeist activity in the room!
Both my grandmother and I froze for a second. Then my grandmother calmly picked up the lampshade, examined it, and found the problem.
“See,” she pointed, “The light bulb burnt a hole in the lampshade. That’s why it fell out of place!”
Honestly I wasn’t quite convinced. This room just gave me a bad feeling, especially the weak lighting, the old creaky furniture, and the oddly silent atmosphere.
“Please, wash up and sleep, young lady, we need to get up at seven tomorrow!” my grandmother nagged.
I peered into the bathroom. It was only slightly larger than the four-men-chambers I had seen earlier that day when we toured Auschwitz Concentration Camp .
Thinking of what I had seen at Auschwitz made me frightened again. I decided to shower with the bathroom door open.
I sat on the toilet bowl and started my monologue to “ghosts” whom I assume to be lurking around.
“I’m just a little girl with her grandmother… I’m sure you won’t hurt me, right? We won’t bother you for long, we’ll only be here for two nights, I promise!”
And the monologue continued as I showered.
“Yes, I enjoyed my tour of Eastern Europe so far, I love the architectural styles an all… simply enchanting and twice as inspiring! Oh, and the food… well, a bit too much protein but nevertheless good…”
And even as I brushed my teeth.
“The weather’s been good, not much of a rain, plenty of sunshine, yet it isn’t all sweltering heat like Singapore… neither is it humid to the extent that you’ll feel sticky all over after sweating. Hopefully you guys will bless us with good weather tomorrow, eh?”
When I brushed my teeth or combed my hair, I didn’t even dare to look at the mirror, for fear of seeing an image or an orb of light running past me. I didn’t look at the television, worried that it will switch on by itself. I avoided looking at the window, the ceiling, the wall, the cupboard… so I generally avoided looking at anything at all, so I shut my eyes and tried to sleep.
“Rat-a-tat-a-tat!”
My eyes sprang open.
“Rat-a-tat-a-tat!”
Something was rattling at the door. A ghost!
“Rat-a-tat-a-tat!”
“My dear girl, someone’s at the door, why don’t you take a look?” said my grandmother.
“Erm…”
“Go, my dear.”
“Rat-a-tat-a-tat!”
I mustered up my courage, and walked towards the dark doorway.
I reached for the doorknob and turned.
I pushed the door open, and got the shock of my life.
“AAAARRGH!!” I screamed.
“AAAARRGH!!” he screamed, too.
Outside my room stood a thin, lanky man with the thickest spectacles I had ever seen in my life, and with crazy, wiry hair, musty-looking overalls, carrying a big blue toolbox and a ladder.
It was the repairman! Visiting me at half past two in the morning!
“Your dress is ‘ideous!” he groaned with disgust, in his funny Czech accent.
“What are you doing at my room at two thirty in the morning?” I questioned.
“To fix your light bulb? Someone requested for a new light bulb.”
“Well, I didn’t request for a new light bulb, but ours wasn’t working in the first place…”
“I’ll fix zat for you!” he replied cheerfully.
With that, he placed his ladder under the broken ceiling light, took out the faulty one and put a new on in its place. He flicked on the switch, and it worked!
“Thanks!” I said happily. “But please do something about your hair, people get a fright seeing you at night!”
“No problem!” he replied. “But pleeze do somefink about your dress, I almost electrocuted meself looking at zat ‘ideous thing you’re vearing!”
We both laughed, and he left, walking down the walkway and turning round the corner.
I shut the door and went back to bed.
“See,” my grandmother said to me. “No such thing as ghosts!”
“Yeah,” I thought. “No such thing as ghosts!”
-
Parts of it are not true, of course. I don't wear horrible nightdresses and actually to be exact the repairman came at 12 midnight, just as we were about to sleep, and he didn't voluntarily fix the light for us, we called for him.
Ah well, can't stay long... my dad's scoding me again. I don't want tonight to end in tragedy again.
Good night!
[fangying] [8:42 PM]
