Lets Start

Music: LOTR 1 track number 17

Watch out for the tunes in the 2nd and 4th minute of this one. Its the kind of music which suits those "we've come to an end, but theres still a new journey awaiting" feelings. LOTR, whatd you think.

Over the past months, I have observed the presence of several laws of male-female interaction. In addition to that, I have observed that these laws are always observed.

1) When a guy looks at a girl and a girl looks at a guy, and they are friends (the extent of which is of secondary importance and relevance), the guy would always have to be the one who walks over to the girl. No doubt about it, never the other way, 98% of the time, with 2% deducted just to qualify the statement.

2) Girl never calls guy. This law applies if and only if law 1 holds true.

3) Length of skirt is inversely proportional to length of chatter per unit time. Not that I want to be a pervert or anything of that sort, but for me, length of skirt is the only true, constant discriminator of the extent of which a person is a neo-liberalist or quasi-conservative. (Note that neo-conservative is not used; most girls are liberalistic and not conservative these days, and so we are primarily concerned with modern liberalists and *conservative* liberals) As such, a lot of implications, most of them valid I must add, comes along with the length of a female’s skirt.

4) I never get along well with neo-liberalists nor quasi-conservatives.

5) When something *peculiar* happens, particularly if the happenstance is of a slapstick nature, girls will always giggle. When this happens the guys would tend to look at each other; A small number would smile.

6) Girls are more dirty-minded than guys in a female-dominated environment. They get more vocal about things which, ok while not in essence dirty, reveals certain sexual tendencies which should really be kept to one’s self.

7) The probability of people thinking a male and a female are an item the moment they talk more than their usual ‘quota’ of times, or in fact if any mere thing like carrying some books for her occurs, is 75.36543682340128%.

8) I hate all of the above 7 laws.

It is certain that there would be more parts to this, but these would do for now. Law 3 is a weak one which I admit suffers from over-generalisation. Relationships with females for me are bounded by laws 1 and 2, as well as to some extent 8. Laws 5, 6 and 7 are irritating, but you get used to it. Law 4 is a fact.

Take all these with a pinch of salt. I am pretty sure you disagree with some of these *laws* as much as you’ve got your own set of observations; indeed, it’ll be interesting to hear some of them.

Just realized serangoon gardens is a beautiful place to dine in. So beautiful in fact, that Im going to make it my HQ for dinners. My view was restricted by chomp-chomp in the past, but Joel recently brought me to café cartel in a nearby backstreet. Under-the-sky seating, big tv, very good environment, free-flow of bread, some fantastic potato wedges (no, actually it’s the sauce)…

Had class cip earlier on (Sunday). Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

We were doing flag day, with some daffodil badge for sale too. You know, its actually quite amusing how some people alter their trajectory by two steps for every step you make towards them, or the way some would hold up their badge to me like a cross to ward off the vampire.

Rejection is a terrible feeling, but I reminded myself that I tend to be one of those who reject those flag day students too. Heh.

The day saw, if I recall accurately, the first time a girl treated me to a drink, or indeed, to anything at all. Think its some chrysanthemum tea with some bitter herb, for accompanying her to make a police report because she lost her donation bag. Could’ve been prevented but wahlau eh, think she took out her money faster than I took out mine. And when I insisted it was allright, I can pay for myself, her charisma which earned her a VP position in the SC left me overwhelmed. Ouch indeed.

It is noted that with me, girls talk more as time progresses, and I talk less, and sometimes when I disappear to the behind they would fold their arms across their front and continue talking, as if to an invisible being.

A movie came later. Open Water. We were disgusted with the show, and it is the worst show I’ve ever watched. In fact the audience was disgusted with it too; I had the feeling that if they had eggs they would throw it at the screen. $8.50 to watch two people in the open sea for one and a half hours! And they didn’t even show the sharks eating them up! It was only later on that we thought we had just caught a preview. Will check the papers tomorrow. But anw its still bad as a preview. Some nudity btw, wasn’t aware NC16 would show a female’s whole body.

Took neoprints later on. No wait, forced to take. !@#$%^W@#$!Q$^@. Females don’t seem to realize that if they laugh less whilst drawing all those things on the photos they accomplish more. Indeed, they don’t seem to realize that guys would actually do a better job drawing the stuffs.

The mini-class outing confirmed what I had been thinking of for some time now. The males in my class are support males, theres no alpha-male: and that’s actually essential for group cohesiveness. 5 guys in my class, including me, and all support-males. Many supportive roles, but we primarily played the role of the honour guard: seen in the formation we walked, seen in the way communication was done (girls dictate and give orders), seen in many many little things.

We often got bullied. Lol. The girls bullied us into buying popcorn for them, the girls pressurized us into taking neoprints. In school too btw. It’s rather peculiar: in all areas they expect us to be the gentleman, and theyre very open about it. Its like: “Oi whatre you doing here, be a gentleman and queue behind..” “Guys go treat us popcorn..” All done in good fun of course, but we guys are always glad to acquiesce. One quote stuck with me: “How come your walk so ahead of us…We get kidnapped then how..?” Lol.

Wish I could show you the neoprints.

Well it was fine, it was fine. One girl punched her fist in the air and triumphantly declared, “Our first mini-class outing!” (Actually second). Well its fairly easy for us guys to go along with that gang, but a couple other cliques weren’t there. Cant be too optimistic; the inclusion of them could very well make things worse. Or a lot better. There was talk about some true class outing after the promos, Wild Wild Wet or the equivalent, we’ll see how things go.

And theres still more to look forward to! 1a03 outing coming up this friday, as well as a history field trip—to a musical (or opera?) at the last Friday of the term. And not to forget, the London-paris history field trip at the end of year holidays! I darn well am praying they get enough people to go.

It’s time for me to get a digital camera. I’ve saved up a lot of money over the past few months despite seeing my expenditure rise by at least 50%, no joke. (Sec sch say $3 per day, plus $5 for the occasional dinner; now average of $5 a day plus $15 for the occasional dinner which isn’t so occasional already; $20 to $40), and Ive got some cash left over after depositing a large portion of it in the bank.

After thinking about it for some time, I’ve decided to forego some items like a better hi-fi set for a digital camera. Will be launching a full-scale inquiry into this matter, would want the best deal for my money. Need to capture down certain memories in pictures.

Two-way Track

Music: The Beatles- Imagine

My next album should be a beatles one, been waiting a long time to get it.

Events which I thought were rather major in the past are now regular occurrences, so what will appear here from now on would be the big stuffs.

Saturday was national chess competition, teams. Got a rather satisfying 6th position. Could have gotten way much better—in fact 3rd place had 13.5 points and we 11, but considering that damn-power teams like the SJI sch team were there (they have a ASEAN silver medalist player down there, and the other players were all well-distinguished), and considering that both VJ teams and a NJ team was left behind us, as well as many others, I guess 6th looks fine enough.

We sandbagged unintentionally, but I guess that’s how the swiss system works.

Amusing would be the fact that dinner was between the AJ team and us. If you remember I’ve got a sec sch friend there, Lin Youjun, and though he wasn’t in the team (but was present) relations were somehow chummy enough to get a dinner going between the two teams. Actually I myself aint too sure of how it happened—I mentioned dinner to youjun some time before the end and all of a sudden the AJ team was behind us when we exited after the prize-giving ceremony. And all of a sudden I found myself to be the leader of the two groups—AJ left the decision with NY, and NY always leaves the decision to me, for some reason or the other.

As a side note, there would never be this kind of thing in the past. Power was always concentrated in either a core group of people, or power was non-existent at all; no one bothered making the decision and simply passed the baton to anyone else. Never liked leading, me.

As it was, the foodcourt at the toa payoh hdb hub looked good enough. We have much in common, us two teams. Both groups only have 5 members each, and we don’t have a professional coach to coach us. They were 4th place, and we were 6th, and we decided to collaborate to hopefully break the first tier’s oligopoly. We agreed to arrange exchange sessions on our common cca day, Wednesday. Yay! Wednesdays wont be so boring after all, would be able to travel down to AJ/vice versa. Mmm..

Went to photocopy the result slip after dinner. Haha yea, the result slip which, me being me, I had conveniently taken off the board. Imagine the teams trying to find it heheheh. It’s a very good souvenir, not just for the chess results but for linking up with a very very friendly team. Its not often one finds cohesive company, and though both groups did not integrate into one, I guess the cohesiveness, fun-fun feelings were there, enhanced by the very speed (and chance) both teams took to interact progressively.

Some good stuff, some really good stuff. Didn’t know bluff can be made into such a fun game.

Development has been sustained for around 3 weeks now, factors of which I cannot pinpoint. If one were to chart my life in NY one would first draw a very steep, downward sloping curve (happiness on y axis, time on x) which encompasses and belies the occasional short bursts of *happy* things, and then from 3 weeks back draw a almost-vertical line upwards. Its intriguing, I seriously cannot explain why this sudden burst of growth, its not like anything has changed. Lets move on.

PS. I just checked the profile views thingyi and it numbered 92! I find it pretty weird—first it was 36, then after a few days it shot to 72 (and the outbound links remained the same) for some unknown reason, and now its gone to 92. Wonder if it discriminates by ip, or if its just a couple fellows spending a lot of free time clicking and clicking.

PPS. Who are you Prince?

PPPS. Olympics! Will be looking out for table tennis and gymnastics.

The Milky Way

Music: Train- Drops of Jupiter

Old song, but good song. Wouldnt say its a happy song, but it does leave one feeling nice. The lyrics about the female dont apply but this song always manages to conjure up images of the magnificent bodies in outer space, like the milky way. And for me, since I've always been captured by the vastness and serenity of the universe, listening to this song always makes me feel at peace.

Hello.

You know, when I said life has reached a equilibrium state last time, my guardian angel decided to contradict me—for the better. This post is going to be unusually long.

Ran marginally late on Thursday, decided to bypass the school’s bus stop as a result. Theres a glaring flaw in the system. Latecomers are required to hand over their bus passes and are only able to collect it after 4 (for what reason I cant fathom). That’s so what you know, esp for those who get dismissed at 2 or 3. Anw, I couldn’t be bothered to make the effort to collect the card from the teacher (I waited half an hour the last time I was late, in addition to the time spent between the time of my last lesson to 4; 50 minutes), and so I got myself down to the nearby kopitiam while they made all the announcements, got myself some roti prata and hot milo.

Seriously speaking, I would rather have a zero marked for attendance than to have my name down on the latecomers’ list. That’s another flaw: if the consequences of having a zero for attendance is lesser (especially when you’ve got a tutor who doesn’t care) than the consequences of being noted down on the latecomers’ list (all those cwo), then obviously one would feel more compelled to simply not appear for the first lesson of the day or so—and there would be no tangible penalty at all! It makes the latecomers’ deterrence/punishment system rather ineffective.

Anyway, I found out they locked both back gates after I was done with my unintended breakfast. Reasoned out that if they lock both back gates they would be able to spot latecomers through the front gate (even if this wasn’t the intention they had in mind), so I took the path from the carpark. Simple level zero stuff, wish I could have smth more challenging.

Amusing would be the fact that on that very same day the other 3 guys in my class (no wait, ‘class’…?) and I used that path to break out from economics tutorial. That was, btw, the first time we had a ‘mass’ skip-lesson outing, think the econs teacher not very happy. The back gates were still locked when we were done with lunch, so we hanged about the void deck. Void decks have a peculiar way of seeming very breezy whenever you go into deep thought while walking about around it. Void decks have a peculiar way of seeming like a place of serenity when its in the afternoon and theres no one else around the whole area.

A classmate gave me a minute tutorial on what was termed as the shoelace method sometime during the week. Or was it the shoelace method. And pardon me, but it has nothing to do with the mundane form of a parallelogram. It is a rather..intriuging uh concept, so intricate in appearance that I actually believed the shoelace was put through the skirt! Maybe my tutor should issue more tutorials eh.

Anyway, I have come to realize that a classmate of mine possesses a certain scent about her. I asked some other classmates about it, both male and female, and it appears that this scent is apparent only to me. Now I am aware about this ‘human scent’ thing, but perhaps someone with the relevant biological knowledge would like to shed some scent on it? Anyway think I always like to stand in front of her and tower over her and block her way. Think very fun.

You know the mass dance..the part where the song goes mo-ould..the female motion there is rather nice. Never seen such a sleek, self-contained motion before.

Friday was national day celebrations. And ‘inter-ct’ community *adventure*, which saw me and another guy walking about with a bunch of girls. No wait it should be..which saw a guy walking with a couple other girls walking with a bunch of girls walking with another bunch of girls walking with someone walking alone. Games were intensely boring. My pw mate and I got chosen for some blindfold game, and they seem to like making mountains out of a molehill when all she did was feed me some cream. I shant attempt to go figure whats so !@#$ about that.

Think the class has some little cheer. Think very girlish heheheh.

A mini mini mini mini mini class outing was arranged after the celebrations, think around 6 of them were there. Didn’t turn up because their timing was a bit too awkward—2 30..? (And do what from 11 to 2 30?) Joined some outside friends instead. It’s a start I guess, at least theres something to show after what, 4 months of being together. Pretty certain things would improve; if the male-female divide could be bridged through that outing Im sure the English-chinese divide could be bridged too. Preferably before A levels. Hmmm…

If you go about asking the people around you what they intend to be in the future, you’ll be quite surprised at the multitude of answers. What radiologist, what physiotherapist, dj, psychologist, got some don’t know what Egyptologist too. Its very interesting to see what the people around you would be in the future. Its very interesting trying to discern what you are going to be in the future.

You have got to catch Singapore Idol, its hilarious. Thought the show would be really silly initially, with the judges all trying to imitate their American counterparts and all. But it turned out pretty natural, some of their jokes were genuinely funny, and they were done in genuine Singaporean style. Not so bad after all, quite an entertaining show, nothing more and nothing less.


The 5-day break (inclusive of Friday) was a rather fulfilling one for me. No wait that would be inaccurate. It gave me a sense of being fulfilled—but somehow I am not too sure what was fulfilled.

Friday saw me meeting up with some outside friends. (You might want to note the usage of ‘outside friends’: to be conscious enough to call your closer friends as outside friends would mean that there is the existence of some *nationalistic* identity with your current school. It remains to be seen whether this identity would eventually demarcate your definitions of ‘closer friends’, or indeed, redefine your entire social circle. I feel kind of stupid picking up my own words, but I really do hope you are sensitive to such nuances [be it in overall language or in specific words, or concepts etc..] I occasionally, and sometimes sub-consciously, put in)

Friday saw me meeting up with some outside friends. Very nice to see so many teenagers on the streets, with uniforms of every sort. Always try to start off a holiday or break with some pleasure; that way you are almost certain to be well-orientated for the upcoming days. Go figure. When it comes to matters of such varying nature I cant explain much. But essentially, who ever starts off a relatively long break by not taking a break?

Caught I, Robot. Been long since I last saw such a plain movie. Attempts at provoking thoughts of robot ethics (or is it robotic ethics, somewhere there) and the future were there, be it intentionally or by chance. But those amount to little more than nothing when everything else was rather weak and somewhat dullish.

Sat around at china square, joel joined us for dinner, as well as some dontknowwho (a friend of a friend of my friends). Wait that means to her, Joel must have been a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend, and Im not trying to be funny.

Well, nothing much. The rest went off early but Joel and I stayed. And we did have a second meal.

I realized that when one has a good day out, and feels so pleasantly tired that he goes to bed upon reaching home, and has a good night’s rest, the following morning would have one feeling strangely euphoric. One feels a sense of accomplishment and well-being. You could probably say it is one of the most powerful emotions you could possibly experience, this spiritual happiness.

Saturday and Sunday was some chess competition. We didn’t win anything but it was nice, it was nice. One always feel nice when you’ve got 8 other guys walking about with you in foreign territory. It is often the presence of ‘enemies’ that distills group unity. I notice that when one is in a group of guys one feels secure and comfortable. When one is in a group of girls one feels highly vulnerable.

A good buddy, lim youjun was there too, representing AJ. Rather pleasant surprise—especially when he was a board two player and I was too, so if our schools fought it would be a very interesting friendly match.

The psychological pressure in the last round was remarkable. Been long since I last experienced such immense pressure. You see, by that point of time, NJ and AC occupied the top two places with 4, 5 points, nothing could dislodge them. The third place was wide open for the 2nd tier: AJ, TJ, NY, with 3, 3 and 2.5 points respectively (it was team competition btw).

And so when the pairings came out I couldn’t believe how unfair life could be. Yup, you guessed it, Aj got paired with Tj. A win is one point, a draw half a point. I don’t think you need to do much mathematics to realize that we had to win to go up to 3.5 points—and both Aj and Tj had to draw so that we’d all be in a tie. It’d be a totally different situation if they got paired with some other schools; true, theres the increased possibility that both would win, leaving us with totally no chance..But chances of both losing/drawing would be much higher as compared to them facing off each other—someone surely had to lose and someone surely had to win.

Fighting with the mindset that you have to win brings about a lot of pressure on your brain. We won that match, and I remember immediately moving over to the Aj/Tj tables. At that point, they had 1 win 1 loss and 1 draw out of 4 tables (4v4). Which meant I got even more jittery because the match point hinged on that last table (you need 2.5 points to win one match point, and the match point is all tt matters)..Their one win, loss and draw meant that the last table has to draw for both teams to have 3.5 points; a win on either side would place that team in 3rd place.

Watched that last table until my eyes popped out. Aj won in the end, but they didn’t win anything because the poly category was placed together with jc; a poly got the third place. Lol.

Don’t think I need much elaboration when I say team events like this always bonds the team closer. We had dinner at the end of it all. Been long since I last laughed this hard, continuously. As in really undisrupted, my stomach felt like rupturing. It was partly because I pulled a trick off on a macdonalds girl when I was purchasing my meal, a trick which I think I would use every now and then if I want to get the ice-cream cone. They have this 60-second thing right. The trick is simple. Just ask her a question or two to delay her, and there you have your ice cream or apple pie. And the thing was, she moved pretty fast. Haha.

Yup, been a long time. You could probably say you’re a fortunate soul if you ever manage to catch me laughing like that these days; I can only laugh like that in the most comfortable of company, and indeed, I do count myself fortunate if I ever do catch myself laughing like that these days.

Monday saw me out with my pw group for some pw. Went walking around a bit with one of them later on because we both had outings arranged for later (in fact all of us had, but the other two went off earlier) and there was nothing to do in between.

You know, sometimes I envy girls. She brought me to this dontknowwhat shop with all those bright bright, pretty things. And then she bought some uh pretty write-on-it things that looked pretty bright, and then she told me she was going to write some messages on it and pass them to her friends later.

She also told me they were going to watch Singapore idol later together over at a friends. The thing about girls is that its so easy for them to…just get together. They were going to a friends house just to catch a show and to just chill out together! Guys, or rather, my guy friends and I don’t do that? I bet if I were to what, ask some friends, no matter how close they would be, for a evening chill-out at someone’s house, they would probably acquiesce in the end, but they would give very weird looks and ask this and that and all. In fact besides the very, very occasional soccer match and risk match there wouldn’t be any other times we’d go to a friends’ house, which is really a pity.

One should never be too rigid when it comes to just chilling out and soaking in each other’s company, and I guess my guy friends lose out on that point as compared to, from my limited range of view, liberal girls. On a personal note, I tend to fancy simple, mobile get-togethers where you know, 3 or 4 people just meet up on the spur of the moment at a someone’s house or a central location.

Caught The Return with a friend later.

The Return is a rather fine film. For those who watched it, you get enthralled right from the very first scene as the boys jumped from the tower isn’t it. Directing, sequencing, acting, camera angles etc were all superbly done, and it was quite a pity the first *twist* somehow didn’t manage to hit me as much as it really should have; somehow you would have a taste of what it was going to be already, just before the thing happened. Don’t know about you but personally I think they should have developed the father-son relationship a bit more holistically so that the *tragedy* would have left a memorable dent on you.

Oh, but the second so-called twist did hit me at the weakest, when I wasn’t expecting anything of that sort to happen. That part really struck the chords in me, the loss was very astutely felt and it rippled my emotions much, very much.

Shows like this always makes one wonder how it would be like leading an alternate life to the one you’re leading now.

Been a fulfilling break indeed.

Actually I was waiting for a good time to write this in a “treatise” of pleasure, but since the outing on Friday, the first integrated one I have been to since college started, took place it reminded me of this so I thought I’d just mention it now.

Ive been thinking about it for some time now, and I think Im going to invite every single person I know down to a party on my 50th, or 60th birthday. Ive thought about holding it earlier but the main point of this would be to arrange the retirement thing, so too early at age 30 or 40 would be pointless. I’ll write more about it another time, but you know…self-centered as this might sound, its very interesting to see how different friends of mine would interact. For example, Im pretty certain the SR people and possibly some of my present classmates who think Im “weird in a good way” (this stuck in my head quite soundly but I forgot who said it…so maybe you could reveal yourself..) would want to meet the people who survived me for 4 years, and who have shaped me to the way I am now. Similarly, it would be rather interesting to see people like JJ, who is a primary influence on me (both in style and thought), meet up with people who had been equal influences on me in the past. Conversely, Im pretty sure some of you guys would like to meet the girls who have been with me in one way or the other. (For some reason or the other, the qns ‘Eh you still like that [meaning being myself] with the girls isit...then how the girls react..’ is always a staple amongst friends from the past)

Speaking of which, theres still the weddings…(This one inspired from Friends—showing on Mondays 10pm in case you aren’t aware; do watch it, its very funny…There was this episode where Phoebe got married and there was all this thing about the best man)…I was wondering…would I ever be invited to be someone’s Best Man in their wedding..? In fact, would I ever be invited to YOUR wedding, especially when YOU haven’t got my address (that’s why I asked for all your addresses at some point of time dudes! Im not counting on msn, anything could happen when it comes to technology…besides its so stupid to invite someone to a wedding through an email..). More importantly, if I ever do get married, who would I get to be my best man?? Later best man drop the ring in the toilet bowl. Grr later when must say ‘I do’ then down there laughing. Mmm..

But seriously, don’t forget to invite me to your wedding hor, whoever you are, however significant or non-significant our relationship is, because I’ll make it a point to invite all of you to mine, assuming I can pay the bill, assuming I do get married. Mmm…

Classic

Music: Bob Dylan- Knockin On Heavens Door

After listening to several covers of this song I realised the original version is still the best.

It's getting dark, too dark to see,
Feel I'm knocking on heaven's door.

That long black cloud is coming down,
I Feel like I'm knocking on heaven's door.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

This week would be a classical week, the kind which would form the bulk of my remaining college life.

Tuesday was dinner as usual though the company changed, but nevermind about that. Chomp-chomp’s food still as good as ever, though for some reason theres fewer people there already. Shared a stingray, shared a dish of kangkong—you really, really have to eat that when you go to that place, had some char kway teow, couldn’t finish a bowl of peanut soup with my companion. Its terrible, there was no such food wastage in the past. I had so much more hungrier companions in the past, and whatever shared food we had would always be finished, no compromise. Maybe its my companion’s fault. Haha, give me my elite knights and I’ll show you how much we can eat!

I thought we were done with All Star and the mass dance but no, physical education has to incorporate dancing too. A good thing I had a letter handy, part of a bag of tricks any disciple of the dark arts should have. Ditto for next week, if they still have it, though I doubt the pe teacher would notice if I use the exact same letter again.

Nah, its nothing personal. Don’t exactly despise dancing or anything. If executed properly it’d look very sleek, and I really do appreciate all those enthusiastically sleek moves, and its really nice watching all those youths enjoying themselves. Well, some of them at least. But nah, no mood, no appropriate context to dance in, and Im not referring entirely to the song. But oh, give me a oasis, radiohead, travis, and I’ll give you a dance anytime! That is, if there are dances which suit that range of songs. Eh wait, maybe Suede can.

High on diesel and gasoline, psycho for drum machine shaking their bits to the hits/

loved up, Doved up, hung around, stoned in a lonely town shaking their meat to the beat

Here we come, the beautiful ones, the beautiful ones LA-LA-LAAH-LA

--Beautiful Ones

Or maybe The Cranberries’ Zombie!

In your head, in your head they are cryin'In your head, In your head, Zo-orm-Bie, Zo-orm-bie, Zor-orm-Bie, eh, eh
Whats in your heeeaad, In your heyaheyeed, Zor-orm-bie, Zo-orm-bie, Zor-orm-bie, eh eh

The opening chords of this song, by the way, are real nice. Always makes me want to sit up, always makes me feel restless, energetic. Love blasting this song.

I met up with Loh Yongcheng in the library. It was a long overdue uh, get-together with a primary school friend. That fellow still as clownish as ever, and it was quite nice watching my own style merge with his to produce a real fluid exchange. Or if it wasn’t that fluid, it was extremely funny. Yea, had been wondering what the result would be if you put my style with his own, and I guess my musing has been addressed to a very pleasurable extent. In fact he was so fluidly comical, and I was so comfortable, that I laughed and laughed, as usual, as usual. I love it when the synergy between two people gets maximized and stretched, enhancing both forms to proportions impossible to reach when alone, or with not-so-compatible company.

Thursday saw me skipping maths lecture. Met up with Yeo Kok How who had skipped PE. Somethings seriously wrong if a volleyball sports person skips PE, and many times at that, according to him.Yup, somethings seriously wrong, not only with us but with the environment. Somethings seriously wrong when you cant be bothered to see your tutor, or go along with your classmates. But anyway, that’s not important.

That fellows a primary school friend, and you might want to note the mirrored coincidence.

We talked much in that one hour. I asked him why he wasn’t a lao da in this school, and he told me he was practicing democracy. It belies a simple fact, of course. Still remember he was a lao da in the past (and from what I heard, a prominent figure in his secondary school days), and I still remember the times he would ‘protect’ me, and he was so much like a big brother to me (and he definitely looked like one, because he stands a full head above me) then that I still feel a sense of security and comfort when I spoke to him. Well, no more glory for him now eh.

He gave me one of the longest list of grievances I have come across (and I didn’t even probe him into it). He said the lecture notes here very lousy, pace very slack, everything here goes very slowly, canals very smelly, girls like to show their thighs, canteen food very lousy (YES!!!!#%@#$!@#$^), lecture theatres not cold enough, library not enough tables, people here no integrity (wont elaborate), construction damn noisy (still remember a few months back got the piling…the thing went PONG PONG PONG and you totally cant hear what the tutor was saying and you could feel the whole building vibrate), , new school 40 million dollars then toilet door spoil, visualizer spoil, lecture seats spoil, some people spoilt too, and on and on and on.

Skipped history lecture on Friday, met up with some A2 guys and had coffee with them. Was a nice morning, saw teachers having their breakfast. They have life good you know these teachers, early morning go canteen drink coffee eat breakfast, lounge around, and they seem to get along very well.

Got down to Singapore Poly on Saturday with two others. One of em met his secondary school classmate on the mrt, and its nothing important actually—only that that classmate has a friend, and she met up with that friend outside the poly, and that friend is called lum huiyun, and she’s my primary school classmate of 3 years. Its not only the sheer coincidence of meeting the past with the precise combination of time and place, but the fact that my friend met his past classmate and that classmate knows my past classmate and theyre friends and they met and we met—and all in the larger context of meeting loh yongcheng and yeo kok how (and just to add, tan caiwen too, the constant continuing to be the constant). Think my Guardian Angel has a sense of creativity and perhaps humour. Thank you!

Forgot who said it, and cant be bothered to verify it, but there was once some friends were saying that a whole one-age cohort does 228 years worth of cip every year. Wonder where this 228 years goes to.

My pw is on teenage depression. It was inexpressible feelings that I felt when I sent a friend an online survey form—and he told me he was actually a victim of it. He’s a closer friend of mine, and I was really really shocked. Its very hard to picture a close friend you know, suffering from depression. Whats more, the last I had heard from him, he was going to Malaysia with his class to attend his tutor’s wedding. In fact I didn’t believe him at first. I didn’t believe him the second round he said it was true.

But I knew I had to believe him. Its terrible, he hadn’t been to school for 3 weeks already and hes on medication. The only reason Im so open about it is because he was very open about it; he talked about it as if he was having some mere flu or something. I felt kind of bad actually—I mean, a close friend has been suffering from depression for 3 weeks already and I had totally no idea of it. It made me want to go about checking up on my other friends. Sheesh, who would’ve thought. This rift between friends these days…


Friday saw me swimming with Joel, JJ having to attend his school’s speech day. Realised that if you exhale and sink on your back and actually lie on your back on the pool’s floor and look up, you experience a certain sense of being in *heaven*. I don’t know you shld try it yourself. The water ensures that you don’t hear anything at all, and so silence is all around you. And then the water gives you a sense of weightlessness even though you’re lying on the floor, and it’s a somewhat surreal feeling. And then you see the sky through the water surface, and it’s a distorted sky, but somehow its just very nice. Its like you’ve just retreated to some haven where nothing can touch you, no worries no nothing. Remember to pinch your nose though.

Realised that even underwater one can still burst out laughing for no reason. No lah actually I was trying out some uh gymnastics underwater and realized that I looked very stupid, and so burst out laughing underwater, and because I was in the deep end then I rose to the surface laughing and fell back in laughing still. Think Joel and I had a good laugh over that.

We didn’t swim much, Joel and I, but we did lie about in the water and talk, occasionally breaking out into a short swim while we thought about things. When the floodlights came on the scene looked remarkably pretty, but the cold temperature and the security guard soon chased us out. Really nothing like a swim on Friday to sort out thoughts and purge yourself.

Saturday saw me swimming with chen yifei in the evening too. Actually lee yixin was supposed to turn up, completing one of the most fluid party I’ve ever seen. Indeed, I daresay few groups would ever come close to the absolute, fluid humour we represented—not to mention crappiness too. To the un-enlightened such humour always seem..what? stupid? Like..”Ermm..ok”. But like what I always like to say, it can get to very amusing, occasionally intellectual levels. Not everyone can process a statement of crap and churn out an equally crappy sentence with the fluidity of everyday conversation; in fact that’s our everyday conversation. You need a very sharp and responsive mind, you cant afford to be slow. In fact its so hard that really, you’ve to have it in your blood to be able to be a participant.

But anyway, yixin didn’t turn up and chen yifei and I were left, literally speaking, playing about in the pool. Pool warfare, I found out, could get very complex. Two aspects, above water and below. You have to gauge strength and angle for the best artillery strike, and because splashing water actually requires quite a lot strength, surface warfare often resulted in him pushing me back, then me counter attacking and pushing him back. But it wasn’t just surface warfare. There was the underwater close combat.

Don’t think of all this as child’s play btw, it got pretty rough at times. In fact I think we kicked other people a couple of times. Indeed, I couldn’t care less and held him underwater as long as I could even though I knew he had been underwater for quite some time; vice versa, and I experienced several times of that drowning feeling. But normally when you get the feeling of getting drowned you get sort of really violent, and you really just kick and push (cant punch in water!) with wild abandon, and that naturally repels the opponent.

Tactics got refined over time. One particular effective strategy to use would be to lure him underwater, and then when he gets to the surface to breathe throw him waves of water while keeping your head underneath. He has to turn away and retreat no matter what. Hes out of breath—and he cant breathe if you’re raining waves of water on him. Other strategies too, like swimming alongside strangers if you need to rest—he cant possibly do anything to you then.

Didn’t engage much in deep waters though, because the moment you feel tired (and trust me, after firing or receiving several shots you will) you cant rest lest you drown and your enemy can really kill you down there. Later play in baby pool.

Got down to have dinner at macs after that, nothing comment-able about that except that we couldn’t even manage to finish an extra value meal and 20 nuggets. It was agreed that Big N’ Tasty was neither big nor tasty. We were both defeated when there was 3 nuggets left, and it was only with much persuasion to our stomachs that we were able to get it down.

Gone are the ages of past glory! Actually I was wondering which age could I use to name this period of my life. Dark Ages? Classical? Renaissance? Victorian Era? I’ll go think about it.