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.