Jokers with cheap smiles.

Our face is the mask to our soul. And the joker's face masks his soul.

Some wear a scowl. Some wear a poker face. Some look beweildered. And then there are those who wear smiles.Smiles are like human beings. The Mask like its owner. They can be genuine, fake, happy, sad, vengeful, benign and even pitiful. Yet these are the masks we wear everyday.

Then there are the jokers. Filling the lives of others with magic and wonderment, entertaining all those all around them, yet feeling empty within. Like the prophecy within the fortune cookie. Once released, the cookie becomes useless and usually abandoned.

And there is the Joker with his cheap smiles, strutting and fretting in the crowd he is in. Smiling and Joking, as he makes the day for others. But there is deep resentment within him, a loathing for crowd and noise. But nobody is aware, the mask overdoes its job, lulling the mob oblivious to the reality that lies within.

He makes his way through crowd, thinning them as he thread towards home, his abode of solitude, his bastion of fortitude. The smiles die, the weariness return. The weight drops off his shoulders as he slumps onto his couch. He closes his eyes and his head lightens.

Nobody knows what lies behind the mask of smiles, within his burdensome heart. That despite his glowing, cheerful demeanour lies the desperate desire to be left alone. And yet the night ends and the day begins.

And the joker leaves home, with cheap smiles to sell to the crowd that await his presence.

The Watchful Friend

Friend. Friendship.

Reading a friend's blog and a conversation with my brother, who came home for the weekend, got me thinking about this concept called Friendship. Despite the urge to quote the Oxford English Dictionary about the definition of friendship, I would rather define friendship in my own terms in my post today. And more importantly, decipher along the way, what kind of friend I am.

The concept of friendship took roots as soon as I stepped into primary school but grew into a sapling only in secondary school. It was the golden days of discovery, disappointment and disillusionment. As I sported the white-&-white school uniform, friends to me and, more importantly, friendship itself were something sacred. Growing up in a nuclear family, where ties and bonds are worshipped more than respected, the idea of friendship took on a similar theme. I failed to differentiate between family and friends. The lines were blurred then by my ignorance, naivety and foolishness.

Experience and Life taught me a hard lesson. Friends are not family. Friends are people you can choose and people who choose you. Friends sometimes choose you to be their friend, sometimes they choose you to be a stranger whom they could not be bothered with any less. Like waves in the sea as they ebb and flow over the sands of time.

Yet after secondary school, I did not learn my lesson. I was too emotionally needy and desperate to hang on to the people I chose to call as my friends. Life did not give up on me. It brought me back to the classroom to teach me the same lesson.

And I grew wiser.

Friendship to me is that of convenience. When one needs company, one seeks friends. When one needs help, one seeks friend. When one needs a shoulder to cry on, one needs friends. When one needs direction in life when lost in the maze of circumstances uncontrollable, one needs friends. When the crisis is over, they need something fresh and that is not me. And so I define myself as a friend to others through these needs.

A friend once complained to my loved ones that I abandoned her and she even suspected that my friendship with her was to serve some political purpose in the drama that raged around us. I was hurt but I was not angry with she said. She is not to be blamed for thinking as such. My actions were not accompanied by an explanation.

Here is my explanation...

I never expect (well almost) anything from friends. Ironically, the only thing I expect from them is to hurt my feelings by saying something stupid or betraying my trust. Yet I recognize that they have needs. Needs that I can fulfill. Like understanding them and telling them things they do not wish to hear from anyone else, in a tasteful yet forceful manner. I listen to them when they need someone to pour their troubles to. To counsel and provide them solace when they are in need. To be their sounding board as they sort out the mess in their lives.

But I admit. I have needs too. I have a need to feel a sense of purpose in any endeavor. Even if that endeavor is to help a friend. Once my friends are stable from the ills that have plagued them, I withdraw. And therein lies the problem.

My withdrawal is interpreted as many things but its true form.

I withdraw because of expectations. I had admitted earlier that I had let go of expectations. But expectations has not let go of me. It hounds me at every step, rearing its ugly head out of the water everytime I linger on the shores of friendship. I expect companionship that can never be fulfilled. Life taught me in the harsh classroom of experience that everyone has their own lives to lead and I have mine as well.

And so I became aloof and self-occupied. Channeling my energies into my quiet moments and family. And waiting for the moment when a friend needs me.

Graduation

It was a cloudy and lazy afternoon that greeted the doors out of Harmony Hall. It was the 27^th of February 2009 at the Home Team Academy. It was my Graduation Day of my training phase at PSTS.

The Feelings…

Somehow at that point, it was nothing. It was an interesting journey through which I have come of age. An interesting journey indeed.

9 months ago, on the 2^nd of June 2008, I stepped into HTA for the first time. It was not the first time I saw my fellow Senior Officer Trainees, as I had already met them during the Attachment Officers Dialogue held by Recruitment Branch, yet it was the first time that I actually met them proper. It was also the day I was supposed to go for my ICT, but being in here absolved me of my NS commitments.

9 months ago…

As I sat with my parents and girlfriend, I had no flashbacks although the COHORT video showed snippets of the COHORT’s training days. I had no withdrawal effects, as this seemed to be another graduation in my life’s many graduations.

PAP Kindergarten. Xinmin Primary School. Gan Eng Seng Secondary School. Catholic Junior College. Basic Military Training. School of Military Intelligence. NUS.

And now Prison Staff Training School.

In some sense, I have reached the last leg of graduations. As I marched onto stage to receive my certificate of competency and award for tactical excellence, it was relief that greeted me. Relief that I have smoothly transited from academics to my working life. The Turbulence of transition has passed and I have stepped into a brave new world.

I have graduated into the Working World.

The Long Pause

Much has progressed and regressed over lost time. Much has descended and ascended over the hills of continuity. Habits have come and gone in the chasm between the now and the then... This is one such habit. 

***

The Receding days of Varsity... The Receding Memories of Age 

It has been days since I have stepped onto the hills of kentridge. As mentioned in a post long ago, my days of varsity have slipped into the annals of dusty tomes. My feet have become reluctant to step onto the paths once familiar, afraid to see the changes and unwilling to alter the memories that are tightly clung on to. 

The final year saw myself stubbornly cling onto a destructive habit. A habit, which I initially thought to be my saving grace and eventually ending up to be my greatest bane. I went seeking for glory and ended up floundering in the muds of pain and disillusionment. I was left wondering (and still am) whether the achievement that I sought out so desperately to achieve (and achieved) was worth the churling journey I endured. 

That habit was staying on for one more term in a society...

Yet I pushed on into it. Hoping to seek redemption. Like a religious pilgrim on the shores of the River Ganges. I stood on the shore, staring into the horizon for a time unbeknownst, feet entrenched in the wet sand, my heart beating heavily in my chest and my mind screaming its logic as if I were intoxicated. Yet I stepped into the river, to wash away my guilt and doubt ridden self, seeking the elusive the redemption despite the knowledge that I did not know what redemption exactly meant.

And then it was all swiftly over and I found myself in the exam hall for one last time, standing up to hand my exam paper for one last time and boarding the bus that I took for the last time as a matriculated student. My NUSTLS experience ended soon after in the brightly lit and crowded NUS UCC, as I marched out mechanically and awkwardly through the crowds that were jubilant at the success of the event that transpired within the halls of UCC. 

***

To Shape and Mould the Future of Tomorrow....

In the midst of the dying days of yesterday, I was making the bold steps of tomorrow. I found myself sitting on a sofa in a glass chamber, in my soft blue long sleeves, black trousers and shiny black shoes. Beside me were my papers, unimpressive yet sufficient and encompassing 15 years of education, wrapped in an unassuming black case. 

The interview was short. The panel were cordial. The deed was signed but the terms were never read. 6 short and wasteful months passed thereafter. 6 months through which I was shaped to hate myself, the mould was broken in a thousand different pieces and the present was filled with dread of what lay tomorrow. In March, my computer churned out a letter, before it died a week later. A letter that entailed the terms of my release in one simple paragraph. 

I lay on my sofa wondering what lay beyond that day....

***

A Broken Promise to a Friend....

In life it is difficult to find good friends. Good friends that stay on as Time ebbs and flows around us. But there was one such friend. A man who was just like me, who grew plants and reared fish. In my young and foolish days of NS, he wrote me letters (which I still keep) and met me for breakfast at the now-long-gone HANs at Hougang. 

As I lay on my sofa in the rainy days of May '07, staring at the off-white ceiling of my humble abode, I remembered that fateful phonecall he made in December '07. The phonecall was to remind me of a promise I once made... to join the service together, to adorn the uniform and answer the call to serve the nation. The sound of the bugle has faded and now replaced by the grumble of the empty stomach. Survival has superseded all. The promise was made alive. He had stayed the course, and I have become the late pretender.

Once again I found myself in a glass chamber, in the same soft blue long sleeves, black trousers and shiny black shoes. Yet I sat before a panel of what I would soon become. The image of uniformity and bearing. As, I pulled on my uniform, slipped into my boots and hid under my peak cap, my friend floundered... and I wasn't there to catch him as he fell. 

The promise was broken as we went our separate ways... 

6 months later, life was the image of a broken mirror. What was done can never be undone and my friend, who laboured in an effort to climb back to fight by my side, is forever separated from me by an impenetrable steel wall. 

The promise forever lay broken.   

***

Blood comes of Age

In the early days of this year, just as Barack Obama took his first few steps into the offices of the White House as the most important man in the world, I also witnessed my own flesh and blood, my youngest kin, step into the most important phase of his life. Ironically, his maiden entry was clothed in the new kit of a new generation. Fate, it seems, has decided to distinguish the otherwise common experiences of men in our fair nation. His journey has begun, and mine revisited. Nevertheless.... there is more to come...

***

Moving Forward. Like we always do, whether we grasp its meaning or not. We may plod, walk, run, crawl or get dragged but move forward we shall until we reach our mortal ends and step into the unknown world beyond. But for now, live we shall for that is a choice that we can exercise. 

Many thanks to my greatest fans. My loving brother and girlfriend who urged me, whenever they could, to blog and hence to live within the words I pen in these pages. My gratitude to the both of you for believing that I do have passable writing skills that thrill and entertain those who bother.....

Till the next post... Godbless.