392: something in the air tonight

It’s always a hard choice deciding whether you feel worse that you needed to be lied to, or whether you just weren’t worth the truth.

Damn, I think I need a drink. Or five.

391: five hundred days is pretty long

The only people for me are the mad ones.

(As usual, cut for spoilers, 500 Days of Summer.)

389: i reach out for you (and our hearts collide)

Checked shirt days are rare. Checked shirt days are the days when the clouds are grey and the sky is overcast and it threatens to rain all day but it doesn’t. Not till you’re inside ensconced in the building where you are constantly on the verge of freezing. But you don’t because your checked shirt saves you. Checked shirts are for days when you feel lonely and cold and require some warmth. A hug that doesn’t need to come from people. Checked shirts are for warm coffee and nice books and hiding in your bed.

Anyway I just bought another one, so that’s one more hug for me!

386: to know it, and love it for what it is

There was never a greater moment of happiness when I looked at my shadow on the wall while the piano was playing and I was singing at the top of my voice watching everything go by. There was never a bigger smile on my face, and I knew it for sure. The lights were changing and the stage was empty, and all around the voices churned. As somebody fiddled with the camera we leaped across the stage like children, scrawling words into the empty air. Sleepy faces were turned up towards the ceiling. I heard all this music flowing out, into the stage, into our heads and minds. Yet somehow at the other end of the stage hung a deep and pervasive sorrow. There is something tragic in silence, in juxtaposition, in contrast.

There will be no other time like this time. It is one of the greatest things in life, I think — to feel joy, and recognise it, at the very same time.

385: 小さな世界

There’s a weight spreading heavily across my chest. The last jump, the last shout. That night I was the happiest I was in a long time, but my emotions are all mixed up and I’ve spent the past week not knowing what to think or do.

Tell me this is normal. Why do I always go searching for doomed endings. Be still.

383: put it down for tonight

Dear friends, I think we have a legend in the making.

379: 可惜时光不会逗留，转眼飘走

It always strikes me as somewhat strange, the way age changes and defies logic. Over time, the wrinkles appear and the cheeks sag. Voices become rustier, more hoarse, tired from years of screaming at children. Movements are slower, the legs stiffen, backs bending increasingly over the weight of dreams. Recently there have been so many movies dealing with age and loss, as if the two must come together, but increasingly one accepts that the two are necessarily inseparable. With time comes loss comes age, and a painful process of maturity; age becomes wisdom becomes regret.

378: and when the storm comes, hold me close

There are few people I can listen to as readily as you, knowing always that you will have something worth hearing. Even though you’ve come — and you’ve gone — quite a few times, you’re here and I’m here and nothing changes. As you waltz back into my life I’m beginning to realise that you’d never really left, and the distance that separates us is painful and wide and altogether too long. I was surprised there was anything left between us, and not just anything, but something, in a way that is strange and unfathomable.

376: if it’s too loud, you’re too old

Happenings of the past (last) week of holidays;

375: some other beginning’s end

Tomorrow will mark the first week in which I lost the last three years of my life. Funny that that’s the way I chose to say it, when it could have been said any other way, but I suppose in a sense it’s true, because it’s three years’ worth of memories that I can never get back. This includes all the pictures and all the music I transferred over from my old desktop when I first changed over, some of which I’ve had since 1999; files which are now irreplaceable and I will never get them back even if I try. It also includes years’ worth of memories and letters that I wrote and never sent; always assuming that whatever happened, things would last forever. But that doesn’t happen, not even in cold November rain. Everything’s gone, but my heart’s still hanging on. I don’t know if that’s a good thing, but I feel less aggrieved by all these losses than I should be, considering the amount of time and emotion I’ve invested in it.

Everything is the same, but the inside will change. Not that this counts for much because I’ve changed everything possible about it since the day I had it, except this final part (which, now put in, will render it totally and completely different from who it used to be) — brand new everything, now. Totally and wholly unrecognisable. Except not, because I could have just bought a new computer, but instead I’m sentimental as fuck.  Strange how I am trying to make it into a metaphor for my life, but it’s not so far off the truth anyway.

Ever since I got back everything’s been dying on me. It’s probably a sign. Funny also how I always end up spending my final year in school alone.

374: lifelong ambitions (让一切随风)

368: youth’s elixir fills our veins

366: and you exploded in my heart

 

The weather needs to get a grip on itself. It keeps alternating raining and not raining, the sun shining and not shining, the sky being cloudy and then not. It needs to stop sending me on rollercoasters because I don’t like being taken for rides.

365: when i look at you i watch the sun rise

I’m not counting. 

364: 痛苦的相思忘不了

 

 

363: 等下一个天亮

As I get older I realise I am less and less prone to subterfuge. It may be a good thing or it may not, but somehow I can’t find the energy to hide behind words anymore. There used to be a time when I took great pleasure in making everyone guess what I was talking about (strange how people put up with me, sometimes) but nowadays I’m tired of mind games and second guessing all the time.

361: it’s just rough to stay tough

It’s funny how things never turn out the way you expect them to. And though I’ve said this many times over in the past few months, it probably never really hits you till it should. Where do you go when you’re lonely? Do you remember, that time when we were still in love, and as usual I was being cryptic because I’m retarded like that, and you said, no, I’m not here to gun down romance, but you did anyway, in the end, barely a week later (or two; who remembers?). Slowly the answers to every question matter less and less; there is no point asking why anymore. Why? has no answers, or at least none satisfactory. And finally, the answers die away, in a corner by themselves, like little birds in the winter. 

354: what you are is beautiful

I said, maybe Sally can wait this time. Every time I turn on iTunes and listen to the old songs I’m reminded of why I love music. The other day I had a conversation with someone (who was it, now?) about whether we would still be listening to new music when we were old. Of course, he replied, why not? Our generation is different from our parents’. I thought about it but we’re not so different after all. It’d be weird to find out my parents were listening to MGMT or whatever the equivalent is, and though this generation appears a lot more exposed to music than the previous one, some things, I think, change slowly, if at all.

 

352: vienna waits for you

349: the wheels fly and the colours spin

We were young, we were free, happily drunk and suited up. There’s no time to be in Holland like this time, and though the weather refused to cooperate, the joy is in gritting your teeth and continuing to be happy. Everyone was out in full force, from the babies to the grandparents — family fun. Whatever the reason to celebrate, there is always a reason to drink beer.

Cheers! ♥

348: they come, they come, to build a wall between us

(You know that they won’t win,)

Berlin is a wonderful place. For everyone who has been there, they will know what I mean. There’s nothing quite like Berlin, which continually surprises you and makes your heart stop at every turn. Berlin is a city where contradictions fly into each other and crash spectacularly. Next to a piece of history there is the unmistakable odour of youth. The crash and bang of paint and art hurls itself against unwanted buildings, forgotten roads, new life creeping into dead parts of cities. Slowly but surely the city is being preserved, sterilised against time, for a past they refuse to forget. And yet history is made relevant in the most startling of ways, through new life, new art, new ideas. Fresh ideas that refuse to be forgotten, old ideas that refuse to be erased. We cannot forget, and so we must remember. 

347: maybe that something’s gonna happen today

I feel like today has been a peaceful day. After the hubbub of last night, where I remember having dangerous conversations, great chili from Mitch, way too much wine and unnecessary beer, and once again, the frenzy of dancing in a crowd of bodies that have absolutely nothing to do with each other, smudged eyeliner. Strange because I didn’t recognise most people there and was too lazy to make new friends, for the most part. Increasingly I feel rather anti-social and reclusive and all I want to do is hide back in my (now) familiar, cosy room and not come out, especially since the weather this week has been completely uncooperative. Yesterday on my way to school I encountered at least four different weather phenomena in the space of twenty minutes, which sounds impressive but is terrible to get through. It is hard to explain how horrible it feels to have it rain ice when you are trying to cycle your fastest to get to school on time with the howling wind blowing ice right at your face the entire time. My cheeks are still itchy from the cuts. You never really know how much the weather affects your day, mostly because it never really changes in Singapore. In any case, everything is insulated against the weather, and nobody really cares. In view of my upcoming trip to Austria I finally downloaded The Sound of Music, which is possibly my favourite movie of all time and one that I really needed to have watched about three months ago. 

344: singing my life with his words

Strange how the time flies; suddenly I’m back in school again, lessons are starting up, and as usual, I’m all happy and raring to go. It’s good to be back in Holland, which is slowly but surely beginning to feel familiar. Still, home is where the heart is, and sometimes I think that it’s not so much the country but the fact that I can come home to my own room, my own life and space, and just do my own thing. Travelling is fun, and so is meeting up with people, but sometimes all you need is time to yourself. I have always treasured having my own life, and now more than ever, I feel like I’m getting myself back again.

339: remember 2008

The year has been eventful, to say the least. I ushered in the new year at the beginning of the year (last year, now) in a variety of circumstances; every year with the Hwa Chong people, screaming “Happy New Year” at the top of our voices around the swimming pool, and then drinking Raffles beer at the front of Block B, our cars parked in a perfect straight line along the parallel parking lots. I was wearing a red dress, I remember, and the rest were happy and drunken.

337: and where are the deep shelters?

I have been probably pushing myself too hard. There are things that I don’t need to do, but I have been doing them anyway. This includes stupid things like reading articles and cross-referencing them, putting in citations in my own paper that cite this article which cited that article on this page under this footnote, and drawing an insane number of mindmaps for that last International Company Law exam just so I would remember everything, which I didn’t, in the end. The last three weeks have been crazy and mad, and I’d like to say I’ve barely had time to think, but the truth is I’ve been thinking a lot (and maybe too much), and I don’t like what I come up with. Everything I write does not make sense, now that I read it again, and even though I passed my exam, I am still somewhat unhappy with the results. I want to do well, even if I don’t have to, and this bugs me. Am I asking for too much?