I will never complain that caifan is boring ever again.

I apologise for the melodrama but I just really miss the food back home so badly it's driving me nuts.

It's so bad that everytime I think about some random food item from home I feel as though my heart just kind of disintegrates into this pile of tiny starving beggars who immediately try to squirm their way out of my body and the minute they are expelled through my pores, they pray that the wind takes them on a journey back to Singapore and hopefully lands them in a bowl of wanton mee.

However reality is harsh and I think not every one of them tiny beggars are gonna make it all the way back to Singapore because there are millions of them, and probably only the strongest one will make it while the rest are just gonna die halfway and now I sound like I am describing sperm.

By the way have I mentioned before that when I was small I read this book called ‘Willy the Sperm’ and it tried to explain the fertilization process, except it had a horrible loophole because it said that when Willy was in sperm school, he was depressed because all his friends were really good at things like math and art, but he was only good at swimming.

(Of course, he was finally appreciative of his only talent on the day he won ‘The Big Race’.)

But anyways, they later showed that the baby that was eventually born grew up to be really good at swimming but that doesn’t really make sense does it, because then every single one of us would be great swimmers because we’re all technically made of the Willys of every sperm school.

Imposter duck.

There is a lake in my school and it's filled with ducks. Almost everyday we walk past it and it looks pretty much the same: ducks chillin' on the water, ducks chillin' by the pavement, ducks chillin' on the grass. Sometimes, we'll bring bread and feed them.
But one day, we noticed that amid the tall marshes next to the lake, was a duck.. that didn't look very much like a duck.

 

IT WAS AN IMPOSTER DUCK.

We observed him for a while and realised that he was trying to hang with the ducks and have a share of the food being thrown into the pond, but the duck majority kept chasing him away.

But the imposter duck never stopped trying anyway.

We don't know where he came from, maybe he got lost on its way to Austria or some nearby country, but he sure wasn't very welcome in this seemingly bounteous pond he thought he could call home.

We proceeded to laugh for a second or two at his tragic fate, before I had this sudden epiphany that the imposter duck was pretty much the story of everybody's life.

We are all imposter ducks, except we are often too afraid to try, especially when rejection has come our way. We would rather starve to death than face rejection over and over.

In that moment, bravery was all I saw in the imposter duck's attempts at survival.

And after a few weeks, he magically became a beautiful swan dictator and took over the whole lake and that, was the story of the ugly duckling.

THE END.

Ok no not really. After a few weeks he just managed to live with the rest of the ducks and share in their food, without them chasing him away anymore. They probably just gave up, because he wouldn't give in.

The imposter duck taught me a lesson on the power of persistence. He is a true inspiration to us all and from now on I will always take a moment to remember him every time I eat some duck rice.