twenty-six: city of blinding lights

twenty-five: city of blinding lights

unable to sleep now. woke up at 4 am and tossed around for a while before i gave up trying to sleep. i'm due to go running in about an hour's time with Siva and co., and then there's still school and all the pageantry of life. all in a day's work.

i feel like i should restructure my life and change the way i see things once again. change the set of values and the world views which i've held. choose not to become prey to the common afflictions and problems which most people have. disengage from the thoughts of the crowd and begin to exert my own individuality in the world. heck care attitude. hopefully this is just temporary.

it's so much easier to live in the comfortable world where we don't bare our souls to the world, where we don't destabilise our own air of invulnerability and not concede that we can be hurt, painfully, madly and deeply. it's so much easier to cruise through the days, flying like a bee from one place to another without never ever stopping to leave something behind, to maintain that cool composure. to choose to sit and see and look on at the world without emmersing ourselves into the myriad of vibrant emotions which must be the characteristic feature of life. life can be so much easier if we choose to be facetious and flippant, if nothing ever matters and if setbacks were there just to break the consistencies of life. but then, what would be the point. there must be something greater and deeper and more meaningful which we all live for, and at some point we're going to have to concede that much and realise that to feel the summer breeze, one needs to get through the winter freeze.

i'm telling myself that i'm being irrational and that i'm not making sense. but then again, some things just happen and often one conclusion leads to another and before you know it, the US has dropped an atomic bomb and then hundreds of thousands have been killed. things just happen.

twenty-four: arghz

felt so angry and frustrated when i woke up this morning. can't explain why, but probably a mix of all the things which i feel irritated about, without one thing being anything significant and hence, no major reason to channel rage towards. still mildly irritated now although i took a little bit of alcohol which calms and nullifies the senses.

woke up at 1140am this morning after DnD. felt so much like prom with all the photo taking and stuff. i find myself unable to maintain the level of hype and excitement. the constant finding of poses to take picture with, the touring around the hall taking photos. i don't know why i can't do it and lose the sense of occasion very quickly. and hence, felt sedate for a large portion of the middle section. or at least, less in tuned than the rest. which is another reason why it felt so much like prom. i was so out of touch with the occasion too. but that's a whole different thing.

twenty-three: amazed

today, i'll be amazed once again by the way things unfold and how life is able to take you through ups and downs, and it's often so unexpected and so shocking when it happens. nothing is going to be as it seems. i'm thinking of so many things which happened today which have either made me happy or gutted, and them not having been anticipated before.

i think i need to spend some time alone. i don't know why i'm suddenly having this feeling, especially when all day this week i've been trying to find people to occupy my life. but maybe i need to go someplace quiet and think about thinks and reflect about life. i don't think i've done this recently and i used to do it so often in the pass. really helps put life in perspective. it's quite hard nowadays, everyone looking like they're doing something. and the place has got to be conducive too. not my room in raffles hall definitely, too spartan. somewhere beautiful, cool, quiet, where nature has exerted its influence. and away from school.

i don't know why i'm putting this all out here but writing is fun.

twenty-two: ode to studying in rj

i have no idea why but an msn conversation made me start thinking about the times before the A Levels when i stayed in school till around 930 pm to study. rj's a really nice place to study late at nights. there's not many people, the usual crowd of coucillors over at the corner and some other people. kind of like a small community of stay in studyers, some in the library, others in the canteen, but all knowing each other's turf and most comfortable studying place.

it gets even better when it rains and the wind blows through the canteen like a wind tunnel. the canteen, a little shelter for friends to hide in. there's the sound of raindrops battering against the walls of the buildings. the shard of lightning and the clasp of thunder.

and then there's the comforting thought that there's always ghim moh for a late night snack. beef horfun? fish noodles? NO!, not this one but the other one which gives extra noodles for free!

and the long walk out of rj's front gates to get to anywhere, whether it's the dark and desolate red house route, or the long march to the 156 bustop. but it doesn't matter!, dark or long, there's always the company of friends.

rj was a great place to study at. just hope studying at nus will be as good or better. but i know it'll never be the same. those times in rj were a special moment.

twenty-one: goodbye

sent a close friend of mine away to the States yesterday. lots of my classmates from JC were there. it got me thinking about JC all over again and for a while, it felt like i was going to ghim moh again the next day, to do chem bonding or to study op-amps again. and sitting in my friend's car as he drove some of us back to our homes, made me realise that things have changed and that life has invariably moved on, and that some of us are doing medicine in singapore whilst others are doing it overseas, or that some of us are not doing medicine at all. that the threads of our life have deviated from each other.

and it made me think about a time 8 months ago when i said goodbye to another very special friend. the temporality of people, the evanescence of experience and the transcience of the security which friendship brings. it reminded me of how i felt.

still, i will have to say goodbye to yet another best friend in about a months time. and also other friends who have undoubtedly made a difference in my life.

never said goodbye to friends before. maybe now is when we're growing up. you only know you've grown up when your friends start leaving you for other places. you only know you've grown up when you start attending their weddings and you realise that you've stopped growing when, and now, also if, you say goodbye to them forever.

at the end of the day, all we're doing is skipping stones.

twenty: wasted opportunity

can't help feeling like it was a missed opening today. shall seize the day in future! carpe diem! haha. and as mog say, going in!

nineteen: a photo i like

it's taken from soup spoon. i've always liked sitting there and feeling detached from the world, just looking up to it. kind of like a different perspective of this part of singapore. i like this part of singapore. i think it makes me feel like i'm a part of the iconic buildings in singapore, like the night skyline, the fullerton, the esplanade, the arts places. it's a history and heritage laden place, plus more beautiful than the rest of town.

eighteen: home again

i've begun to find that i'm living life with weekends as markers again, just like in ns. it's probably because of the hall staying thing and hence, there's always this repetition which comes on weekends starting with me packing up my stuff, leading on to boarding first one, then another bus, and finally ending with me plopping those belongings around my house.

i was thinking about the affairs of the week and wondered at how it's turned out. i've always been amazed at how impossible it is to have predicted at the start of a week the way which that week was to twist and turn. a week is really quite a long time if we choose to squeeze every ounce of experience out of it; it seems like such a long time since i left my room last week after staying up to talk to friends after float and rag day. it seems like so much could and should have been done differently even though it's just the time frame of a week.

it's both exciting and scary to stand at the start of a week. weekends are for resting and i've been doing that consistently, just sleeping my saturday afternoons away. feel kind of sedated now. hmph.

seventeen: blah

this blog shall be the death of me someday. i can just feel it.

sixteen: school starts

school started yesterday, and finally. was nice to get back to class, nice in an odd sense. even though we're doing a mainly JC covered topic such as cytology, i'd expect to feel like it's just a mere continuation of where i'd left off but certainly things have changed. things like how not everyone is wearing the same thing, how there's generally a less enforcing disciplinary force, how the familiar faces are gone and we're all carving our own niches again. there's more chaos to the say the least. had an online conversation with a friend yesterday night about JC, and it really made me miss the familiarity. guess i don't really like changes in environment. i don't think many people do actually, unless the old environment was really bad.

somewhere in all those thoughts, NS seems to have been nothing but an honest mistake. it's not along the normal timeline, not part of the natural progression of my life, as if there was JC, it left and then came university. and NS doesn't seem to have a part in that spectrum. maybe it should, i think guys my age hold too closely to things we've learned in NS, experiences we've gone through in there. i don't see my parents or their generation constantly reminiscing about that period. i also don't believe that anything you learn there, sword of honour or rifleman, has any impact in this greater outside world where the rules are different.

august seems to be moving on nicely.

fifteen: sixpence none the richer

Sixpence None the Richer

Your face i see blinds my eyes
Your voice i hear drowns out mine
Your thoughts i collect fools my head
Your touch i dream stings my skin

my senses dimmed,
yet how a sweetness blooms within.

fourteen: stupid mistake

ok, i made this stupid mistake standing in front of this girl i liked looking like some dumbass from Raffles. yeah, i bet she was going typical, just typical of a raffles boy to do this. heck, even i would have thought that had i witnessed myself. i feel so so stupid. and that's not the worst part.

she was at the fruit store and somehow she took the wrong drink. she took the drink of the guy before her and the guy was being prissy by not being a gentlemen and taking hers. a matter of starfruit and pineapple. rhapsody of starfruit and pineapple. what a bastard. i bet he's not allergic to pineapple anyway. and so there she was in quite a fix and there i was just standing there not saying anything, staring at the debacle before me, establishing myself as the stupid, ungracious, ungentlemenly, un-suave, uncouth, un-everything-that's-good person that i not am. so guess what, some other guy my age, in my faculty, who is in no greater capacity than me - as in, he's not older and hence maturity is not an excuse - offers to buy the drink.

HELLO DEDRICK! OBVIOUSLY YOU DO THAT! NOT STARE!

but it did go through my mind that such was the right thing to do. i just didn't do it. why? why? why? i can't understand.

and now do you agree about how stupid i am. all that time spent with her yesterday and over the past two weeks oh, hey, i hear it going down the drain. grrr...... i'm such a useless guy and so undependable and so hopeless and so so very feckless. i don't think i can depend on myself anymore. this is all so very bad for things between her and me.

you know when i could have volunteered to be ground by the blender and washed under in starfruit and pineapple juice? when the fruit juice aunty said "oh, you're so sweet" to the armour adorning knight, after saving his fair maiden. aaahhh! nnnnnooooo!

i am but a jester. and this is not even funny. sob.

thirteen: orientation over

it's rather soothing sitting at my desk, typing, surfing the net, with the radio by my side going 'have i told you lately that i love you'. there's the sense of freedom that comes with being alone in my own little space - my roomate is not back - that i like.

it's been an interesting past two days with orientation and all. orientation has been a nice platform to meet people and do things together and i hope that the end of it will not spell the end for my orientation group, or at least, the people with whom i have been consistently interacting with over the past few days. and as i was saying, the past two days have been great at times and insane at others. done some insane things, hmm, which i may actually regret one day. ok, it's not that serious. just something small and silly.

shall find things to occupy my time over the next few days. that's one downside to living alone. there's really nothing much i can do within the confines of my room.