Of price and pain, of change and friendships

It’s sad when people don’t care the way they should.

I’m CANOOOOEING in the rain…

Johno and I went canoeing today. And it rained. And it was super tiring… Luckily there was no sun at all, so could canoe without feeling that fatigued.

Something someone said to me bears repeating here though.

It’s like losing them again and again everyday; every goodbye reminds you of that final goodbye, every ‘see you’ is a mockery of the reality that you will never see them again. You hope and you wish and you pray that you’ll stay best friends forever, but look, that’s not what happened to you. When you leave, you’re giving something up, and this is just part of the price you have to pay.

There’re alot of private mushy things added after this, so I can’t repeat them here, but essentially that’s the gist of the message.

I’m already hating school because of this.

It is NOT funny… -.-

It has taken around 4 months, but this blog is finally dead enough for me to re-start blogging here. :D

Alot has happened in the 4 months I’ve been gone. The medical checkup is longggg gone, as I have been so brutally reminded when I checked up on this blog. Lenny has started this really funny blog too, at www.onlyhearthelennard.blogspot.com . I guess you have to know the context, but it IS kinda good…

We’ve also ran through the whole gamut of music major’s recitals. And they’re in Vienna right now actually. Coming back tomorrow, if everything goes as planned.

I’ve also lost alot of enthusiasm for school. Though that’s something that’s started since the beginning of this year… Probably because I’ve sort of lost interest in Astro, and lessons are spread out like those raindrops on the bus windows, so you don’t see as many of your friends as often as you’ll like to.

I’ve just received a comment that my music playlist is gay. Yes, some fat-ass disrupting my music to scroll through my current playlist just said so. I guess it’s a convincing argument, I just checked and every song on it’s sung by a guy. Seriously, I think it’s kinda weird, cause my playlist is TOTALLY random  -.- . I better add some Britney Spears and Pink inside though… You can’t listen to music very well if you have a 173cm imp trying to rap “it’s gay” into your ear.

On a more serious note, it’s the year where people actually turn 18! Which equates to the year where rich people start to learn driving! Which also means I get insanely jealous and wish I had more money… *kills learner drivers*

I wanted to go canoeing today. It started raining. Guess what happened next…

However, I instead had the bright idea of going to Orchard to walk aimlessly around. Seriously. What’s worse is that I actually went to do that. What’s even scarier is that I went to do that all alone. ALONE. With no one else! I was this desperate loner trawling the super wet streets alone, and I got splashed on by a bus! Like wet from waist to knee.

Theo is still wondering how the hell that happened.

I squished my way back home after a totally fruitless attempt to dry myself off in some random toilet at plaza sing, and I went to walk around my estate abit. When the rain stopped I was feeling lonely and unwanted and missing bits of my past, so I decided to find them (find the missing bits, you see? the missing bits of my past… yeah not very funny D:) by bussing to Temasek.

If there was anyone in the school compound, I must have freaked them out. I think the guard was ready to shoot me or something. There I was, standing there like some stalker at the school fence, trying to peer in and re-living the times I had there. I guess I stood there for at least 15 mins. Well, that’s not all. On some strange whim, which probably was some ghost subconsciously whispering to me I walked all the way home, re-living the past all the way. Basically I walked past Alain’s and Kela’s place, then cursed at the ChaiChee school building (in my mind, I’m not suicidal) for always tying up seats on the bus, then walked past Huiting’s place and bought chocolate from the minimart… Stuff like that. Well, I got caught up with “re-living” that I forgot I was actually living and almost got knocked down crossing the road near the Park Connector.

Guess what happened after that. Well the quick version is that I survived everything and went home, but that won’t do on a blog like this, right? Let’s number the events that happened after this, cause things happened really fast.

1. After jumping out of the way, I landed in a puddle. For the second time in a day, I got wet.

2. Stood there and cursed cause I had to wash my nice TEVA slippers again. Which was also MISTAKE 1.

Note: spending time in puddle = not smart. spending time in puddle at side of road crossing 10 metres from a bus stop = death sentence for clean clothes.

3. Bent down to wipe water droplets off my shins.

Note: Again, spending time in puddle = stupid.

4. Bus passed at high speed. I leave this to your imagination, but it suffices to say I got a literal faceful of water.

DO NOT LAUGH. ESPECIALLY AT THE NEXT LINE.

5. Stood there dripping wet. Wiped off water from glasses, cursed louder and stamped foot. Got even wetter.

I will never walk along a road after a rain again.

This wouldn’t have happened if it didn’t rain, cause I would have been happily canoeing. Therefore, I blame everything on the weather. Accursed weather…

ECP

Went to the library today. With raddy. Studied abit of Bio. And abit of Math. Hahahas, didn't get much done, but still...

I wanted to go to ECP to eat, but in the end we went to this Aston's place. There's nice food there, but it's a little ex. Like 8 dollars for a main dish (chicken/steak/whatever), and 2 side dishes, and a drink. So it's all right I guess, its even cheaper than Macs.

Then I went to East Coast to get a coconut. In the end I took the coconut to the sand and just sat there for awhile. Then decided to slowly walk home. The coconut is surprisingly light after you suck all the water out. So now I have this coconut at home, next to me on the desk. It still looks kind of dirty, but I guess that's fine. It's as clean as I can get it now. I feel kind of sad for it. It had its head cracked open and its brains sucked out. And it floated for so long hoping to germinate or something, then kena caught and eaten. Haizz...

Life is hard when you don't have people around you. When you don't have your best friend by your side, always. When all you have are your thoughts, sad songs, last episodes of cartoons, and nothing new seems to be forthcoming. When you don't have any food left in the house, and when you've run out of chocolate and ice cream and fruits. When you probably can never have anyone over. When you find yourself making things up to keep yourself from killing yourself. When all you're doing is waiting for days to pass so that good times can come again. When you know that what you're feeling is probably just a phase, just something you're gonna get through, and you know it cause it's happened before and all, but right now you just can't believe it. When you look at the world, and see nothing but it's potential to go horribly wrong. When you see your future, and see nothing at all. When you know you can do so much more, but not right now. When you cry for help, but no one answers.

Life is hard. Growing up is hard.

X-country

There was cross-country today. Like had to go to MacRitchie at 7.45 in the morning. We were supposed to run, but in the end it rained for like half an hour, and they cancelled everything except the first 2 runs. So it was like boy's competitive and girls competitive (I think), then they just dismissed us at 9.50am.

We went to eat lunch then. The same meepok place near wenn's house. Then went to his house to slack off. I played with Dalton awhile, then wenn took out his guitar hero set. Then played until crazy le. Like 4 hours or something spent there, from 11 something to past 3. Kinda crazy right...

Now I have a sore throat, because I used the microphone to sing like for 3 hours straight, ate a ton of absolutely great blueberry muffins that Aaron's mum made, and ate abit of the salsa chip thingies. And had 7-up to drink. Then I had a headache going home. I think I was too enthusiastic in singing. Then strained everything, like my voice, my head... Or maybe it's swine flu o.O.

Anyways, I think guitar hero is really cool now. And I haven't enjoyed myself so crazily since... Hmm a very long time I guess. Like just going crazy over some little thing, then partying until my head actually hurts, and I actually hurt myself (my sore throat). I think the last time I had this was at the hostel disco thing. Then, I danced until I was sweating in aircon, and my feet hurt, and I seriously couldn't move the next morning in hostel.

I'm happy that I can still have this kind of fun though. I think as NUSHS students, it's hard to find this kind of fun. Or the people actually willing to participate and help it along. Like either there's homework, an exam, a test, or something else to do which stops us from just going crazy. Either that, or somehow people just don't want to do it. Which I think is lame.

I don't understand how people can not want to play. And I don't get why people need structured play. Like an itinerary. Or like we have to come up with some sort of ideas how to have fun before they will actually bother to even think about it.

I mean yeah, sometimes if you don't plan properly things just turn out to be a flop, but I don't think that's a good reason to just not have fun and forget everything else. Haizz. Like it's already so difficult to find people to just go out with, and play around in the shopping centre or something.

I guess alot of people just stop being crazy. Like I don't see alot of people in JC's laughing at some weird random thing anymore. It's like some kind of curse.

Which reminds me; we saw a squirrel today. Outside wenn's house. I was walking with Johno, Jack and Charmaine, behind everyone else, then they said there was a squirrel on the tree. So I went to the tree to look at it, and it ran up the tree. Then Johno said to kick the tree, and the squirrel just ran higher and higher on a branch. Then it suddenly jumped off. We thought that it was going to like jump for the other tree next to it, but apparently it was a failure squirrel. It sort of flew abit, the just dropped like 2 storeys, or around 5m maybe? Then it was like thud, on the grass patch. Like super shocking la. All 4 of us were like omg. Then laugh like shit as it ran away up the other tree. It was only just outside wenn's house, like along the road, where got trees and grass patches. Lucky the squirrel didn't fall on the road la. If not sure die le. But damn scary la. It like just dropped, the got a thud somemore. But it wasn't like stunned or what, it just landed then ran away. So I guess it was fine XD.

Ah wells. I wonder what it would have done if Dalton was there. I shall go sleep now. Lol.

CRRP talk

It comes once a year, and yesterday was the last time they'll be talking to us. Ever. Kinda scary once you think of it like that. 3 years have passed so quickly, and the fourth is a third of the way through. Ah well...

We talked about alot of things though; what's wrong with the school, what you think could be improved, what's your best subject, what you enjoy the most... But the weirdest question was what would you most remember or basically take away from this school. At least that was what I thought the question was.

It's weird, the way I've ended up here. Took a test, went for a camp, got a letter. I guess I decided on impulse then; Forensic science was wayy too fun, maybe. Either ways, I found myself starting a new life somewhere far away...

If you're thinking it's an exaggeration, well, it's not. Since whenever I've been going to a school that's around 5 bus stops maximum away? And then I had to travel halfway across the island to get to school. Not only that, I suddenly wasn't able to go to malls after school, or slack off before going home, and still have still to do homework or stuff. I guess the first problem was the people; not many of us live in a single area, and if you're spread out like that, it's hard to find a common place to hang out where's it's comparatively near everyone else. Secondly, no one really goes and loiters at McDonalds in this school. It's a basically go home mug/computer/sleep kind of school.

Thirdly, I didn't have time to even think about hanging out somewhere before heading home. If I "hung out" anywhere, it means home at 8 or 9pm. Which is kind of retarded, really.

Anyways, with this sacred time now totally different, changed and mostly interrupted, I started life in NUS High.

I really don't know how I survived those first few days... It's hard to leave friends behind, and I found myself really irritated by the fact that they could still be together. Yet, it was still my choice, said something in the back of my head.

Over the years, I've thought of many things; I regretted coming here, I regretted leaving, I hated this school, I loved studying what I love, I thought of leaving the school in Year 4... yet right now, from where I stand, I guess I can clearly see what has always kept me here, despite everything that went wrong, or felt wrong.

First of all, was my friends. The people that I meet here will always be a part of me, whether at NS, at work, or if I end up teaching their kids or something like that. I realised in Year 4 that if I left then, I would be starting a weird trend of having 2-year friendships. In a sense that I would be spending full-time with the same group of people for only two years each time; from Sec 1-2, Year 3-4, JC 1-2. And I didn't want that, because I felt it would dilute so many friendships. And evidently, that was one of my greatest pulls keeping me here.

I guess I was also lucky in having really great teachers here. Not that I didn't have great teachers in Temasek, of course I did. But another of the great pull factors which kept me here were the teachers from NUS High.

We were very fortunate to have gotten such a great combination of teachers. When we first stepped into this school, I had a mentor; obviously his name was (is still?) Mr David Ng. I don't know what to say about him, but I know he is one of the most inspiring people I've ever met. Or at least adults. Well, he's also the only mentor in the cohort to have stayed with us the longest XD. Our mentor group was the most (I would obviously assume, some of you might say) united and basically the best, mainly because of him. (Unlike now). It was always easy talking with him, whether in person or on MSN (and who would forget how we found his MSN in the first place...). He made life a lot easier for me, and frankly I was devastated when he left. It's like the earth moving below you, get it...?

Moving on, I guess he had to too. At least we have the dubious honour of having the class with the longest single mentor reign. So there. XD

We had teachers like Ms Seah, Ms Teo, Mr Ang, Ms (Step) (Sharon)Tan (Ee Ling), Mr Lee, Mr Chia, Mr Tang, Mr Tham, Ms Lee, even Prof Lai; (after typing this I realised alot of them aren't Mr or Ms anymore. And it's not that they got married) all who we could talk to or at least felt we were equal to them. Whatever the reasons, they were willing to lower themselves to our level and just take the time to know us, or chat with us personally... even if the conversations were kind of meaningless or time-wasting in themselves. And all these people have been instrumental in my life, in one way or another, and have one way or another, helped me pull through and still be here right now.

Of course, you might be wondering where a certain person that's supposed to be on the list is. I thought him meaningful enough to me to have his own paragraph (again, not as if the others were not meaningful to me... -.- I hate having to do this; it's retarded and it makes life difficult for everyone. But I think it's sort of mandatory nowadays unless you wish to be sued for something. It's terrible the way people can manage to misconstrue something that you say. It's like being told you can't say you're normal because if you're normal, it implies that someone else is "abnormal" and that's politically incorrect. I mean, isn't it stupid. Because of your hypersensitivity to innocent phrases, you take it as your personal mission or something to get everyone to stop using "politically incorrect" words. Actually, I think it's more like whenever someone uses words like smart or normal or "good adjectives" to describe you you just feel guilty because you automatically associate you being "normal", with others (disabled/impaired whatever or otherwise) being "abnormal". So to solve your guilt problem and your shame at automatically and unconsciously making that connection, you take it upon yourself to force others to call the disabled/impaired/whatever person or thing by another ridiculously ungainly term, so that others may soon follow and develop your psychosis; hypersensitivity to a word which accurately describes a condition. Let me tell you, calling a piecemeal function "linearly impaired" isn't going to change a fact that it's not a straight line, or it's broken, or it's bent. It's probably going to insult him that you're seemingly trying to cover up his illness or condition with a smoke screen, or give it less importance, or even downplay it. Just tell it straight as it is; the only time you should be moderating your words is if it has the potential to hurt others. Don't smoke because you can. Anyways, on to the real story... -.-)

After that long paragraph, here we go back to the beginning again. Obviously, things started at year 3. Joining astro was probably the best thing that happened to me. Not only was it great fun in Years 3 and 4, but I had the privilege to have a great teacher guiding me throughout 3 years there. Of course, it's Mr Lim. I learned alot from him. Not just astro things like lens cleaning, though there was a lot of those. Not even just how to be a good leader,  even though there were many of those lessons as well, formal or otherwise. The only words I have to put it in is that he inspired me to do things. In things like IR, or CCA, competitions, planning for Astro sessions, just being a good person... I've learned alot. But because of him, I finally settled on some goal in life (which I'll probably talk some other day, because it's getting late now). And if I had known this would happen when I first came here, I think I would have done it with much less hesitation.

Well, you may notice that many of those teachers above have left, which kind of says something about the school.

However, I realised after all that talk about teachers and such, I haven't talked about the other great reason why I'm still here. I think I'll leave it for tomorrow. It is getting late, but luckily I don't have school tomorrow. Still, I want to sleep early. Get a chance to mull over what I'll do tomorrow.

Rock climbing

Was fun. Yet too bad the place isn't airconed. They closed down that spot le, then the instructor shifted to Toa Payoh Safra. Super far away, and I got lost trying to find the place.

I went to school at 730am yesterday morning. And the day before was ODAC, Astro/The Sound of Music until 10 something. So yes I had a terrible Friday/Saturday long day.
If you're wondering why I went to school at such an unholy hour on such a nice day to sleep in (-.-), I had astro to do. Had to brainwash poor P5 people to join the school. Or the Einstein club, something like that. Like give Observatory tour and talk and all that. Long time never do le, so it was kind of a refresher course.

I went there in the morning, and turns out they were doing rehearsal. And I had to be in FORMAL. So I daoed there and played Patapon 2 until like 10am, when they started. Then worked till almost 1, changed and begun my pilgrimage to the Safra place.

I reached there at around 230 or 3, and stayed there for about 2 hours? Or one and a half hours. Climbed twice, and didn't get to belay at all D: In the end it rained, so we were dismissed and everyone else got their Level 1 climbing certification. Great for them.

I slowly made my way home, and collapsed on my bed. Woke up this morning feeling sick. Like really sick. Went to watch TV, but then fell asleep in front of it and didn't go to church -.- And on Communion Sunday somemore.

Anyways, now I think I'm better. I've been feeling cold the whole day, and I bet it's a fever, but I'm trying to fake myself that it's because of the rain.

The S Rajarratnam Lecture thing is on Thursday, and they replied my RSVP to say I've gotta go there at 3 (half hour earlier), IN MY BLAZER. So a big OH NO to it. I'm gonna see if anyone else is borrowing a blazer. If not, then we'll see what to do. D:

Tomorrow's gonna be a hiong day again. English (zzz. I'm betting 2 dollars that she asks us to "go home and think this through", or give us homework, or simply irritate us with take home stuff.), then Stats presentation, which we HAVEN'T STARTED ON!! Then another round of Calculus. Then there's Lit, and luckily there's no ODAC.

I think Tuesday is going to be even worse la; it's retarded that Tuesday was actually my earliest day (finish at 10am), to finishing at 6pm (AP Bio training). Like now I have English, then Math extra Calc lessons to make us pass the APs with a 5, then now extra Bio lessons. Can't they just let the Bio honours people have their AP prep on Fridays in lieu of the Bio slot? And it's at 4-6pm, smart la. Or was it 2-4pm? Something like that la. After that, we still have Calculus extra extra lesson, to go through the horrible test and do another quiz (which is 50 minutes long. What kind of quiz is that??)

So from tomorrow onwards the week will be hell. On Wednesday, it takes Friday's timetable. So ODAC as usual, together with Lit and the whole host of stuff that comes on Friday. Then Thursday is (luckily!)just chemistry and Calc (again, yes I know....)

Friday is Good Friday. Good is good, but I think it could be better. The school has a talent for scheduling things to make sure you have no holidays, less breaks, more lessons, etc. After this week, the next is AP mock exams. So that means studying. And after that, it's another Bio AP mock, then the real things start. So it's more like from next week onwards, we'll be fully in exam mode. All the way until like halfway through May. And come to think of it, it ends half of our last year here. Time passes really fast when everything is crashing down on you.

Ah well. I shall go to sleep. 7th April is coming soon...