The Weather Girl

This sounds very bizarre but have you heard of the weather girls?

Not perky little ambitious twenty-somethings (I am starting to sound very old...) who shake their tushie as they tell you which region is experiencing heavy downpour but the Sunshine Girl, the Thunder and Lightning Girl, the Stormy Girl and the Human Glacier, etc. (I cannot think of anymore at this moment). Before I wax lyrical, I think I should define what they are:

Sunshine
Happy-go-lucky, cheerful and effervescent girl. She doesn't think very hard about what other people think about her, but she gives her all all the time.

Stormy
The promise of tears almost everyday, but not quite. She's very emo and sensitive. She sucks the patience out of you, with her neediness and attention-seeking.

Thunder and Lightning
Always angry and aggressive. Like lightning, she smites you hard and fast, like thunder she roars in unexpected moments. Just like thunder and lightning, she forgets her anger very quickly after she explodes, and all is calm, until the next time. Which comes very quickly.

Human Glacier
Beautiful and unapproachable, she keeps everyone at arms length. She is either vilified for being a ice queen or sought after as a ice queen. You desire her attention, and get excited when she deigns to cast you a icy stare. You are afraid of making her angry. She doesn't get mad, she only gets colder.

This is a very fascinating topic that I had come across in the office when one of the male colleagues confessed that he was looking for a Sunshine girl in his life. I am not quite sure how many of these Sunshine girls there are around, and I think that there is no such thing as a PURE Sunshine Girl. In order to pass through emotionally crippling Singapore educational system, one's innocence is and tends to be torn to shreds very easily, from all the subtle (or not) bullying, competition and cruelty. IMHO, a pure Sunshine Girl has to be slightly mentally off-balance in order to be that cheerful even when facing obstacles. Most of the time, one encounters the fake Sunshine Girl. A girl may appear Sunshine Girl to you because she wants to and you haven't done anything to piss her off. I mean who will smite a friend for no apparent reason and it's not exactly very conducive to one's popularity to do that.

As I am typing this, I recall now. There was an apparent Sunshine Girl in my Junior College. She was hugely popular with the boys and hugely unpopular with the girls, poor thing. She might have been a real Sunshine Girl but the nasty comments on online forums and voting boards (this is why I hate social networking sites) definitely tarnished her glow. One asshole started this voting board where they wrote about fantastic relationships among schoolmates, which is very tiring, especially when it is not true. She ranked No 1, together with her very own stalker. *yup she had a stalker in her same class, who stole her socks from her schoolbag in the lab. Now that I know what it means, EWWWW!!!* She still tried very hard to appear cheerful and happy, but you could see that she was trying too hard to rise above the situation.

I think a Singaporean Sunshine girl is at least 30%-40% Stormy, 20% thunder and lightning, and at best 50% Sunshine. A Singaporean girl cannot tolerate lack of attention, which they deem as neglect, which is a problem, because most Singaporean males work and play very hard, and may not have that much attention to spare. As I listened onto my colleague's description of his Sunshine Girl (who turned out to be his Mother, thirty years younger. That is another topic, which I will post later this week), I wondered and opined that such a person is more likely to come from Malaysia, our neighboring country.

Despite being a Singaporean female, I can appreciate why local men especially love Malaysian Chinese women (a male colleague recently proclaimed his preference because they are hardworking. What are we? Boiled Liver? *raised eyebrow*). They are quite resilient and emotionally self-sufficient. They are the epitome of what Eleanor Roosevelt's description of "a woman is like a teabag. You never know how strong she is until she gets in hot water". I have noticed that women in slightly less affluent countries (this may not be in reference of Malaysia) are stronger and tougher than the men. They work hard and look after the family. But as the nation becomes more developed, the woman's role diminishes with the heady distractions of vanity and superficial ambition as the higher educated she acquires too much self-worth to a point of self-centredness, becomes dissatisfied with her lot and just expects much more from her partner. Kind of the reverse of "ask not what your country can do for you, but you can do for your country", if country is your home, for this context. Which is kind of sad.