Story No.1

A powerful wizard, who wanted to destroy an entire kingdom, placed a magic potion in the well from which all the inhabitants draank. whoever drank that water would go mad.

the following morning, the whole population drank from the well and they all went mad, apart from the king and his family, who had a well set aside for them alone, which the magician had not managed to poison. the king was worried and tried to control the population... The policemen and the inspectors, however, had also drunk the poisoned water, and they thought the king's decision were absurb....

.. When the inhabitants of the kingdom...become convinced that the king had gone mad...they...called for his abdication.

in despair....the queen stopped him, saying,' let us go and drink from the communal well. then we will be the same as them'

...the king and queen drank the water of madness and immediately began talking nonsense. their subjects repented at once...the country continued to live in peace, although its inhabitants behaved very differently from those of its neighbours.

-extracted from VERONICA DECIDES TO DIE by PAULO COELHO-

Story No.2

....you see this thing I've got around my neck?'

'you mean your tie?'

'exactly. your answer is the logical, coherent answer an absolutely normal person would give: It's a tie! a lunatic, however, would say that what i have round my neck is a ridiculous, useless bit of coloured cloth tied in a very complicated way, which makes it harder to get air into your lungs and difficult to turn your neck...

...absolutely nothing. it is not evern purely decorative, since nowadays it's become a symbol of slavery, power, aloofness. the only function a tie serves is the sense of relief when you get hoome and take it off,you feelas if you've freed yourself from something, thought quite what you dont know.

...if i were to ask a madman and a normal person what this is, the sane person would say,'a tie'. it doesnt matter who's correct, what matters is who's right.'

-extracted from VERONICA DECIDES TO DIE by PAULO COELHO


After reading these 2 portions, are u as intrigued as me? basically, this book is about this girl who committed suicide but failed and was sent to a hospital for the insane. the author then further explored the reason as to why she wanted to die.

she was lonely, had sex with men, studied law, was a librarian. her life was mundane and she felt the world had lost her. but her prob started when she was young. cos she had a talent in piano and wanted to carve a career from there. but her parents forced her to take up law instead. she had lived a life for herself which led to her finding life meaningless. is this setting so similar to us? even tho this book's setting is in Brazil but it relects our society as well.

in this rat race, we do not care who's correct, what matters is who's right. it does not matter anymore what we perceive of the society but what the society percieve us to be. if we dare to challenge the society, then we are madmen or stupid.

due to globalisation, the whole world has drunk the water of madness. we are behaving so differently as compared to our ancestors. dun give me the crap that times have changed. haha. so what even if times change, so what if technology improves? do all these warrant us to have a survival-of-the-fittest competition?

the problem is we have to live with it. or else we will be like the king if he did not drink and being kicked out of the society.

remember in sec 2, my art teacher suddenly pointed a fan and asked the class what that is. we told him that it was a fan but he started to say,' who says that this is fan? cant i call it something else?' my teacher was weird hor? hahaha. but seriously, i guess he had proven a point. it is called a fan because the whole world calls it a fan. u r correct only if u say that it is a fan and nothing else.

the world rules us and not we rule the world.

heavenknows

8:36 AM