2009

I don't know about you, but I have this personal superstition of mine where I believe that whatever you were doing at the very moment before the clock struck twelve on a significant date would symbolise the outcome of the rest of the year that follows the said date.

In this case, I ushered in 2009 with more than ten glasses of whiskey and beer coursing through my veins, screaming 'HAPPY NEW YEAAAAAAR' in unison with the rest of the club, deafening myself in the process. For that brief moment amidst the flurry of clanking glasses and bottles amongst friends and strangers alike, everybody became friends. Compared to how I celebrated the eve of 2008 by poring over obscenely huge tomes of Fluid Mechanics, I'd say that this 2009 would be a helluva better than 2008, and judging from the number of people who declared how glad they are to see the end of last year, I guess that I am far from alone.

2008 was a year of changes and discovery, for better or worse. I am looking forward to this year, where there will be even more changes to come (graduation and UK baybeh!), as well as one more chance to hit the reset button to undo all of 2008's disasters. After all, is that not the very reason we sing the traditional Auld Lang Syne at the twelfth strike?

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll take a cup of kindness yet,
For auld lang syne!

To you, I hope that the confrontations and the distance that popped up yesteryear would be forgotten and forgiven in time, and that perhaps one day the awkward silence between us would cease.

To you, I hope that you would forgive me for being a jerk to you despite your sincerity. I hope the scholarship would open up new horizons for you and your brilliance would find its rightful place.

To you, I could hardly guess what is going through your mind right now but I do hope you know that I have never once looked down on you and that I do indeed consider you a great friend. I really hope it stays that way. Let us smoke up when I'm back for Chinese New Year, shall we? :)

To you and you, I am sorry if I have ever led you on.

To you, I strongly believe that something existed between us for awhile, but perhaps we were both foolish to rush things. For what it is worth you were never a rebound, but someone who happened to be in the right place at the wrong time.

And there was indeed a storm of trials and tribulations. Right now at the end of it all I looked back at the turbulent year that was and saw how much I had grown from the fires that tempered me. Perhaps this is a little too much to say for a 21 year old (I am NOT 22 till I am 22), but we grow through the lessons learnt in suffering, do we not? I resolved to make 2008 the best year ever, a resolution that, in a disturbingly mocking manner, spiralled downwards in the first half of 2008 but then materialised in the late months of the year just in time to save me from the noose in my drawer.

But you know what? It may have its low points that plummeted to the depths of hell itself, but I cherished the 2008 rollercoaster ride, every fucking second of it. I sat through the dreaded EC exams which even the brains of my course shied away from. I took up a job as a student assistant at the college gym and loved every moment of it. I met and made more friends in this year alone that the rest of my college years combined together. I won the Best Prototype award for the ProDEx competition. I finally mapped out the next ten years of my life. Most importantly, I discovered myself during that year; the good, the bad and the ugly.

In the infant hours of 2009 I shall make the same resolution again, just because there is absolutely no reason not to, come what may. I do hope that you too make a similar resolution, for auld lang syne, people. For auld lang syne.

another story for another time

Like a grain amidst
the sands of time, I live just
for a moment's past

I never realised how much I have severed myself from until one fine day when I tried to seek my volatile emotions once again in another effort to express myself and came up empty handed. It was an unpleasant feeling, kind of like waking up one day to find that one of your limbs, now a stump flecked with dried blood, had been hacked of messily with a blunt axe and then remembering that ta-daaa!! It was you who did that hacking.

There are stories, there are endings and then there are unfinished endings. We live, we are being for a while, we spun the thread that is both the story and our life and then we die, at least for this year. Too much has been said and unsaid, done and undone to the point where I wreaked havoc on everything that I knew and loved and in the process I killed myself along with my demons in an attempt to give everything and everyone the finger. Dramatic, you say. How else would you describe it when you woke up one day and discovered that while you no longer bondage yourself with the troubles of your past, you also no longer recognise the person within you, who now looks back at you in the mirror with a donned iron mask?

I believe I owe a few people an apology, one each for the most diverse reasons anyone could think of. God forbid that I would consider such vagueness as a proper apology for what I've done, but please do forgive my tremendous ego which had, if possible, been augmented to ten times its original size in the past few months, and I really do think that the sheer weight of it alone is giving me chronic neck pains. For what it's worth, I am learning a new lesson every day with the occasional lent hand or two, and then perhaps one day when I'm done being a bastard and my ego has shrunk to its original size of a baby elephant the iron mask would slip off by itself.

"A black comedy of unfortunate events and atrocious timing. Have you read A Midsummer Night's Dream? The chain of events and furious emotions triggered by a prank gone wrong is almost reminiscent of the whole situation, and up till now I still keep and eye out for an elusive Puck and his vial of pansy juice."

"Memories lie well. It is always this ridiculous obsession with capturing things that don’t endure. We often search for constants; was it because of nostalgia? Insecurity? I reject the pointless reminiscence of the nights spent under that street lamp. Isn’t change good? Think of the possibilities! I have always been blissfully comfortable in the same circle of friends to the point when I didn’t recognise the social opportunities that present itself. The other day I smiled at an attractive girl at the line of the warehouse sale who smiled back, and for the next 10 minutes our eyes shyly flitted across each other. The last time that happened the whole solar system was aligned in a straight line. Come to think of it I haven’t chatted up a stranger in years ohmygod I’m a disgrace to the human race."

The entries above were written in my old blog circa June and May 2008 respectively. There is something about rereading the thoughts that you plastered on cyberspace more than half a year ago before so much have changed, which brings to mind the iron mask once again. Those words were snippets of emotionally charged posts, written in the delirium of unbridled feelings that embodied itself all over my blog, and well, to look back upon them once more through the disenchanted eyes of the mask was...surreal. Ah, to look unto with the lenses of practicality where once upon I was blinded by the fires of my own emotions. It makes everything easier to destroy, which I did, but then again the cornerstone of whatever that existed then still stood, wavering but defiant. I chose to spare it, which may be the smartest decision I have made this year.

I am tired of writing about this. This story has lived and played out its life, a dying star with one last twinkle before it fades from the black sky to make way for the birth of new stories. And thus I shall end this as a story that was in past tense, a story that will remain to be just another story from a long time back, to be just another story hidden behind a shadow of a smile, a story never again to be told but perhaps whispered one more time beneath the orange glow of the lone streetlamp.

at the end of it all

I began the college year in the middle of 2005, twinkle eyed, foolishly hopeful and painfully oblivious to the ways of the world.

Three and a half years later, I am cynical, world weary and this close to being the biggest bastard ever. And I couldn't care less.

in one breath and then more

I am at the top of the world right now, and if anyone would ask me about the best years of my college life I would say that it is the very first and last year of college because they are fraught with memories both bitter and sweet that I hold very close to my heart and yes I really and truly believe so because guess what the noose in my drawer has spider webs all over it now and I am glad to say that I now look forward to starting every day with my trademark oats n' milk breakfast shakes but today in the midst of scarfing down my mutton Kajang satays I saw the only thing that has been missing in my life and I realised how none of the awesomeness really mattered without that missing piece of puzzle and that cold as I have become I am still very much a romantic at heart.

Today I stood before an audience comprised of my lecturers, school officials and fellow engineering students to engage the participants of an ongoing forum at ProDEx in a debate which saw all of them being murdered by me. Today I received a phone call from my parents about my skyrocketing monthly phone bill which told tales of my increasingly expensive sms habit. Today someone told me how some people thought that I am no longer the same person I was and I knew that there were slivers of truth in it. Today I realised how cocky and confident I have become but I refuse to apologise for it just so that you could accomodate your insecurity. Today I want to give you the finger and tell you to go fuck yourself because we both know that I am better than you.

hello! goodbye!

I have written 3 posts, 3 bloody monologues meant for you where I stripped myself of the walls I built and spoke to you unmasked for the first time in months.

They are still in my Drafts folder. I have a nagging feeling that's about as far as they will get.

On another note, I'm going back to Penaaaaaang!! Will be meeting the boys tonight for some boozing (I hope) so let's consider this my one last party before hurtling into the madness of pre-ProDex preparations and thesis writing.

Yeah, that bloody thing finally flew. It's about fucking time it did.