Nothing is old, nothing is new.

I have moved.

-EDIT-

Anger dissipated, etc. If you are a friend and you are reading this, and if you had anything to do with the nasty comments on a certain person’s blog, please remove them and apologise. I appreciate your anger on my behalf, but this is really quite bad form. Thanks.

I’m not sure why some people take such offence or react so strongly and personally to what I classify as essentially my attempts to deal with my own insecurities. But what can I do? I write what I write, and I guess people will take it as they want to, I can’t really control that.

But at least he got one thing right - I will invest in a bottle of mouthwash.

(Jo, pls, need to change domain name, pronto!)

I’m trying to watch The Producers on Youtube now (the film version with Uma Thurman in it). This production always brings to mind the J1 history trip, when we cluelessly decided, or rather, the teachers cluelessly decided that we would go watch this on Broadway rather than Hairspray or Chitty. I guess they really weren’t expecting it to be so……gay! I’m still trying to figure out how this musical comedy thing is supposed to work. Campy and OTT is really just not my thing la, unless you’re talking about 881.

I have to go to the NEWater plant at Kranji in a bit to pick up 300 bottles of NEWater (note the lexicon - if you transcribe it as “New Water”, that’s wrong!) for Saturday. So in a couple of hours time, A and I will be in his car with 300 bottles of NEWater sloshing around in his boot. If a cargo truck crashes into us and trashes his boot, there will be 300 burst bottles worth of NEWater splattered on the roads. 300 burst bottles worth of liquid distilled from the washing and defecatory activities of any number of Singaporean households, slowly seeping into the asphalt. So cool.

OMG IT’S THURSDAY ALREADY WHY RECESS WEEK SO SHORT! AND I SPENT HALF OF IT EMO-ING COS OF SOME IRRITATING PEOPLE (omg just count the number of blog entries), FML!

I have slept so little in the past 2 days that everything right now is taking on a sort of dreamlike quality. It almost feels like yesterday and the day before didn’t really happen, but then I turn and look at the tidy stack of red packets on my desk, and am convinced otherwise.

Yesterday I went to J’s with Some Of The Boys, and it was nice in a simple, uncalculated way. R came and joined us for awhile, looking visibly distraught, but I hope he is feeling better about things now (if you are reading this!). We played mahjong until I was quite giddy so we went and nua. After R left, J, YH and I took a veh nice and veh long walk around the S.Gardens area, venturing into uncharted territory featuring such classic landmarks as rubber swings and sand pits and horny cats.

We talked and we talked and we talked and we talked, and I came to the realisation that nothing really can be affected by anyone, and that people will really just be the people that they are, when all is said and done. In a rare moment of lucidity while munching on a Magnum, I decided that what matter(ed/s) most is me knowing with clarity what it is that I want and believe will make me happy, and standing by it even if the going gets tough. This is a story about people who care about each other and who hurt each other, but it is also a story about believing in each other and in oneself and really trusting that things are somehow going to be okay at the end of the day. For now I need to learn to count my blessings and to stop taking anything for granted; this is the least that I deserve, and what the people I love deserve.

In the morning, I cabbed down frantically to Esplanade after dropping YH home, only to receive an equally frantic call from YL to say that she had just woken up. So we were supposed to meet and select scripts and talk about the production, but obviously we just ended up shopping. This semester there will be colour in my wardrobe, that is, apart from black and grey and white. Or off white. Please look forward to it.

It is 初三 and usually the festivities would have ended for my family by now but I just realised that my parents have asked some of the extended family over to dinner. For what I also don’t know; angbao all take finish already, why still need to entertain. Tsk.

I will keep up my healthful streak and go for a run later. Tomorrow will be devoted to schoolschoolschool. Thursday I will sing my lungs out and on Friday, I will attempt to socialise with people with big intellectual egos. My life is so packed that I will have absolutely no time for anything remotely morose, and I hope you won’t, either!

Today I am going to be a confessional poet.

I have come to the realisation that I wield a choice within my hands, and I have decided to exercise it.

Just like how you have exercised yours.

C was telling me about how she decided to cut the fat from her life, and I think this is something I need to do also. Sift through the debris, draw the lines that need to be drawn. Once bitten twice shy. I really should protect myself better.

On a slightly brighter note, I have been incredibly constructive and healthful this holiday. My shoulders and back are now buzzing with a light ache. I have procured a really old, musky copy of Sartre’s Intimacy to read over the week. Am pleased to announced that sex life has returned to Healthy Levels.

League of Legends is a very good game and it is also free. I highly recommend it to everybody.

I’m having a love-hate relationship with this semester. On one hand, I really, really enjoy most of my classes (though, come on la, have only attended 1 of the 5 lit lectures so far this sem =x), on the other, I AM NOW UP AT 4AM TO DO MY LINGUISTICS ASSIGNMENT AND MY LIFE IS GETTING SUCKED SURELY BUT SLOWLY OUT OF ME!

Today (well, yesterday, really) we had our PW class (not project work la hor), and I was super happy that our group play went so well. Prior this, we were all suffering from major anxiety issues - “Oh no, ending not tight enough!”, “Oh no, this character is too one dimensional”, “Oh no, what if they don’t find it funny!” - But in the end, it all worked out beautifully, and the comments were largely positive and encouraging. We now have to write a fucking musical comedy for our next class - KILL ME NOW!

Fuck my skin is shit, I feel damn heaty (not on heat ah, sorry; hurhur), and there is just So. Little. Time. Why must we go visiting on CNY? Waste time leh; why not I just email everybody my new year greetings and in return they just bank transfer the angbao money to me? So much more efficient!

In the midst of all this rubbish, it is easy to forget that you are 22. That you are no longer in an institution that requires you to wear a uniform, with matching shoe laces.

It is easy to forget that at 22, unlike when you were 12, people can no longer be expected to be consistent the way you would like them to be. That relationships are not things you can secure with a good joke and a handful of candy. Or even a shoulder to cry on. That people will do what they want, that friendship is not an equitably reciprocal affair.

It is easy to forget that tears and heartache no longer hold the same value they used to. That the world now functions on a different currency, one that 12 year olds are incapable of comprehending. That’s what growing up is all about.

At 22, the only way to move is forward. It is easy to forget that the world has no patience or space for you to dwell in the hackneyed nothings of yesterday. That to be constant is now a folly rather than a virtue.

When there are no more words left to say and no more tears left to shed, one needs to keep walking. This might be hard, without a destination in sight. But still, keep walking, because it is what needs to be done and because it is the only thing left to do. Keep walking until one day, somewhere, you forget why you started walking in the first place.

And maybe, just maybe, you will find yourself at the beginning again.

<>Sometimes the most brutal cut is also the most necessary.

ADDENDUM @ 2.30pm (because I don’t have twitter and cos this is my blog)

Okay, time to grow up!

都是些露水情缘，世上哪儿来那么多一生一世？

There will be 2 parts to this entry, the first part pertaining to the bit about Bangkok, and how it all came about and the implications, and the second part about life apart from Bangkok thing. I can’t really be vocal about my elation wrt BKK on Facebook, not because I’m going to piss people off, but because it just doesn’t seem right to articulate your joy when it is at least partially premised on some other people’s unhappiness - some people ought to pick this up, but that’s a different story for a different time.

Above and beyond the ranking shocker, and the fact that I MADE IT (not just made it, but touched a few raw nerves along the way, baby!), is just the kind of self-validation that I’ve needed for the longest fucking time ever. Let’s not even go into the bigger picture self worth issues that I’ve had since last semester, cos that’s just a whole (very very big) different can of worms altogether.

But it was awesome to have W come up to me out of nowhere after one round to tell me, “That was a good speech, you have improved a lot, we are very proud of you.” In the smaller scheme of things, i.e. debate, it’s just so great when you get the recognition from someone you really look up to (and tbh, when we’re talking about debate, the last time I got recognition of any sort was probably in secondary school). And the best part is, you don’t even realise it until they tell you, and you’re like, “Really? Well, hey, I really must have been doing something right then, committing so many late nights to this thing.” I’m not saying that we should only do things when we perform well, but obviously people are going to have a certain threshold as to how much is enough, and when they are going to need to see some returns in the investment they have made, and YES, so now can go Bangkok.

Which brings me on to my second point. I think what’s really significant about this is that I now have the affirmation I need to really commit myself to all these things, knowing that it will, at some point of time, be worth it. I can now really tell myself that it feels right (not necessarily good, but right, at the very least) to commit myself to the gazillion things I have done to nix out any possibility that I might have any residual energy or time left to be concerned with or to get thoroughly upset with anything else. I don’t mean to say that things don’t affect me anymore, but there is something very empowering with being able, after the shitty initial 2 minutes of “Why is this happening again?”, to say, “You know what? Screw you, I’m going to try to be happier than any of you can ever aspire to be, and my happiness doesn’t have to be contingent on yours.”

Happiness shouldn’t have to be a competition, but in many cases, it is. Emotions do not operate in a vacuum. As human beings, we are not equipped with the apparatus to truly dichotomise reason from emotion, to consider happiness as an absolute concept as opposed to a relative one. I now know why the world is such a fucked up place, with such fucked up people. Because everybody is competing to be happier than everyone else. And while I thought I could be above this rat race, I realise that I can’t, really.

But at least I’m going to do my darnedest best to be happy in my own way rather than to undermine your happiness. I can think about six hundred and fifty-nine ways to cut you up in ways so deep you’d go into instant rapture, but I will not. And I think that makes me a better person. Than you, at the very least.

As above. Reflections pending.