Christmas Day

Today was a bit of a mix of good and bad. Just for a change, my family with all attendant (or is that relevant) uncles and aunties etc went to have yumcha at a place called TopOne. Personally I keep thinking of TopDeck instead- mmm. Back to the story, I sat next to my mum, and also my cousin Keely, a little girl at that bittersweet age of 17. I say bittersweet because she's just like me, and just like my other cousin Hoki when we were younger. Her parents act just like ours did too. A stir-fried combination of fuckups on both sides have led to all three of us being ungrateful our parents' hardwork and we've all ended up as spoilt brats. This time however, it's a bit out there. She told me her highschool exit score (OP) and it was terrible. I was flabbergasted to hear what she got. There was a bit of recrimination on how her parents had never supported her in anything that she did in school, and I can see that she has fallen into the same trap that I did when I was in her position. Neither of us, had the ability to look at the big picture. Our behaviour was linked too much to our perceptions of our parents' behaviours and it created a nasty feedback loop that resulted in both of us vastly underachieving.
To give you an idea of how spoilt Keely is.. At one stage she had three different mobile phones because she'd convinced her parents that it was cheaper to buy three of them outright and then buy three simcards to use freechat time on it. Yikes.. Twisted.. It seems that all three of us are products of what I call the Gilded-Cage Syndrome. We've been fattened up so much inside it that once we're let out- we don't fly, but flop and fumble. :S
The funny thing is, that I talked to Hoki about it, and she also said that she sees a lot of herself in Keely. Hopefully, the three of us can reverse our fortunes and become the people that we want to be- rather than living a life of a kneejerk reaction.