One and Two

“Maybe…maybe this is it, then,” she said. “Maybe it’s just over.”

“Over? what’s over?”

“Us. you and me. Friendship. There are things I needed to talk you to about, Dex. About Ian and me. If you’re my friend I should be able to talk to you but I can’t, and if I can’t talk to you, well, what is the point of you? Of us?”

“‘What is the point?’”

“You said yourself, people change, no use getting sentimental about it. Move on, find someone else.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t mean us…”

“Why not?”

“Because we’re us. We’re Dex and Em. Aren’t we?”

Emma shrugged. “Maybe we’ve grown out of each other.”

He said nothing for a moment, then spoke. “So, do you think I’ve grown out of you, or you’ve grown out of me?”

One Day, David Nicholls

Because it’s something I used to believe in

Amor é fogo que arde sem se ver (English translation)

Love is a fire that burns without being seen;
It’s a wound that hurts without being felt;
It’s an unhappy happiness;
It’s a pain that drives you crazy without hurting;

It’s a wishing no more for what you like;
It’s walking lonely within a crowd;
It’s never being contented with contentedness;
It’s seeking to find oneself in losing oneself;

It’s wishing to be a prisoner of wishes;
It’s serving who you have overcome, you the victor;
It’s being faithful to someone who kills us.

But how can its favour cause
friendliness in human hearts,
if love itself is so contrary to itself?

Luís Vaz de Camões

New Shores

Quite literally. I have to go soon, so this would be more succinct then I would have preferred it to be.

So, NS is over. What now? It had been the perfect two years of procrastination, actually. Two years where you don’t give a shit about what you are supposed to be doing in your life, what to study, what career to approach, or how you see yourself ten years down the road. Just two years of living on a day to day basis. It was hectic, it was annoying, but it was fun when you did not feel that you had some expectation looming over the horizon. And now I have to actually start seriously thinking again. And that is not fun at all.

But, another month or so of procrastination awaits. Other shores literally await me right now. Maybe this one and a half month hiatus from Singapore would be a good purging of all the minor problems and inconveniences bugging me right now.

And then, come April the 27th, start to panic again. Till then, adios. And maybe I would actually start using this place for REAL UPDATES of my life.

The Things That Die With You

It is the same time again. It is when we berate ourselves for all the stupidity committed. It is when we kick ourselves for all the actions we regretted. It is when we look forward to burying the past, and perhaps to a new start.

It is time for a little pause.

I do believe I have matured this year; not surprisingly, it has been a pretty shitty one from my point of view. For the first time in my life, I actually looked back on NYE, and felt that time has actually went by goddamn slow. Aside from the current(and pretty obvious) problems I face, it did not really help that I was dragging alone baggage from the year(or maybe two) before. At least now I can say I have thrown some of it away. I hope.

There is always the topic of relationships when you look at how things fared at the end. Sometimes, things work out, and sometimes they just do not. Sometimes it’s from the most unexpected avenue where you find the ones you can trust the most. And then once in a while you realise you are simply dragging someone down by clinging on to much, and it’s time to release that death grip of yours. I need to keep an open mind. It has applied to be in several forms this year, be it army, of from friends from schooling days. You squeeze when should, and release when you have to. And burn bridges when you absolutely need to.

I felt like the last two years, oddly enough, were useful. For one, they have really made me think about my family more. When I was overseas, it’s odd that I really felt a need to talk to them, and they were not the ones that was worried, rather I was.  Thinking about involving them more in my life. I guess this is the end of the teenage years that we know off? Then again maybe I am thinking far too ahead, as usual. I know my male chinese ego(don’t laugh) would not let me show this upfront, but I would want to start making the small things that really count.

And then, there is the year ahead. My life as I know of right now would culminate and end within these two months.  Then the cycle repeats itself, a new environment, new people, but hopefully a wiser protagonist. I honestly do not look forward to going back to studies. It’s as if you finally mastered a ball game, and then you get promoted, and throw into a completely different arena; with all new rules of their own. I am a creature of habit, admittedly, and I hate change, but from all the phases I have left behind in the past, this would probably hurt the most, seeing how much I have grown into the people, and to the job. Ironic, no? But a fresh start is at least better than nothing, another chance to make the correct decisions for once. I always make the shitty first impressions, and take time to get to know things better, maybe that’s why I resent the changes so much.

Incoherent ramblings inside, I actually can summarise the year into two pretty succinct points;

1. I feel lighter.
2. Indecision is usefully the worst decision of them all.

These were the things I learnt which I felt help me grow the most. Learning that as you grow older, you need to really throw some shit away. I think I have let go alot this year, be it mentally or emotionally. It is impossible for me to progress dragging any and every fuck shit I have committed or wish to avenge along with me. It is more of accepting that I am not the reason why things are the way they resulted, and it’s time to give it up. Take things down a notch, life is not meant to be that serious, no?

And for the second point, I need some more incision in my choices, I need to be firm. Taking some time to think about it is fine; getting stuck and not doing anything about it for two years, is not. In the end, I would just end up squandering the entire opportunity, and letting it slide.

Admittedly, I did leave something hanging for almost two long and stupid years, before letting it slide away at last. Because somethings are just not worth holding on to.

 

 

I hope

I hope to never have to live my life on a day to day basis
Yet, I hope to never have to face so much certainty and unknown

At times, I hope to be mature; responsible; depended upon for making the right decisions
Yet, I hope to never feel like I have let someone down when they needed me

Occasionally, I hope to always have someone to turn to when I need to
Yet, I hope to never have to burden others with my problems

Once in a while, I hope be able to fully understand the world, and the people that live in it
Yet, I hope to always be an enigma to my own wants.

I always hoped that somehow, somewhere at a certain point of time, the dice that is fate would roll in my favour.

But I could never hope to understand why I have always refused to even throw.

 

 

 

 

The Secret

don’t worry, nobody has the
beautiful lady, not really, and
nobody has the strange and
hidden power, nobody is
exceptional or wonderful or
magic, they only seem to be
it’s all a trick, an in, a con,
don’t buy it, don’t believe it.
the world is packed with
billions of people whose lives
and deaths are useless and
when one of these jumps up
and the light of history shines
upon them, forget it, it’s not
what it seems, it’s just
another act to fool the fools
again.

there are no strong men, there
are no beautiful women.
at least, you can die knowing
this
and you will have
the only possible
victory

- charles bukowski

Are you … ……..?

Only one part of my entire being wanted to say yes. And it was the part that had made all the painful decisions of my life to date.

I didn’t even need to think twice.

Perhaps he’s right, perhaps he’s not

 

And I have yet to watch that movie.

Maturing

There’s always some point in life, when you just achieved, or just overcome some hurdle and whatnot. Your ego inflates, you feel more confident, you think you are mature enough to handle whatever’s going to fly at you next. And then you get beat back into reality, adapt and learn, to overcome that initially impossible obstacle, and the entire cycle repeats itself.

For my own personal experiences, it is after somehow scrapping through every major fear, do I fall into this vicious cycle. It could be something as academic as your exams, or as basic as your relationships with the ones you love around you. One key thing I still, until now, am drilling into my head is that I am always still growing and maturing. It is a vision, to be a “mature, fully-grown adult”, it exists only as a goal to strive towards to, ever reaching it yet never there.

But I still fall into the egoistic self-centered trap that I am already at the pinnacle, that I am infallible. I keep falling into that irresistible temptation that I have done enough, finished the job, experienced what life is;  That I am perfect already.

I have had to swallow a reality pill from time to time, the most recent one several months ago, a much needed rap to my dense skull sometimes. Yet one thing I have always failed to understand until now, that I have yet to realise the long lasting effects of such mistakes. I merely write it off, “Oh shit, that was retarded of me, gah, I’ll do better next time” once, twice, then indefinitely on and on.

It will always be a regret, it has aftereffects that linger on that you might feel for the rest of your life. Right now, I am only just aware that I have been paying very badly for two wrong decisions that I have made in my life. One dates almost 6 years ago, and the other exactly 24 months from this very date. For the former, it is a work in progress to purge it from my character, but the latter is much, much more complicated and hits a little closer to the heart.

All I can say is, I fully accept what torment it have, and will continue to bring to this little overburdened soul of mine. It is no point airing my dirty linen, trying to get sympathy or advice when I am the one that dragged myself into this. Whatever annoyance, hurt or upsets it may bring to me, it is nothing but a long, outstanding debt I know I owe to myself for that moment of folly before.

And hopefully it will not weigh me further down any more.

 

 

 

We.

We the UNFORTUNATE
Led by the UNWORTHY
To do the UNNECESSARY
For the UNGRATEFUL

Blog surfing for a bit when I stumbled upon this quote, and a sense of deja vu passed over me. It was well founded, though, because I remember where I read it before, in MUTF, if I’m not wrong, or one of the other urban training facilities when I was training there in the last few months. It almost perfectly encapsulates what we feel about national service, sure, after the two years, there might be talk about pride, honour and how it turns boys into men, and how it should remain as an integral part of the Singapore society. But all this glory talk aside, if you had the choice, which buffoon would actually volunteer himself for service? Most, if not all, just want to serve and fuck off for good.

When I rediscovered this quote, I went everywhere to try to find for the source of it, but it does not seem to have originated from anywhere. So, I say kudos so the fellow who wrote this(in camo or in paint, I know not) on the grimy walls of whichever training facility it may have been. You just summarised the entire nation’s male population’s frustration so succinctly.