oh, its what you do to me

It really surprises me how I always manage to lose myself in the steady momentum of footsteps, in the incessant slapping sound of my slippers against my heels, in the constant progressing that I have control over...

It's so boring. So predictable. I love it. I love walking.

Today I think I walked a total of at least five kilometres, most of which was done in a tiny drizzle with my entirety being kept warm by the lingering touch of something I find I am unable to put into words because it is indescribable and because whatever I would or words could say would not do it enough justice.

As I took my last walk for the evening alone, at 11pm and suddenly I realised I was automatically processing what I saw on the street and juxtaposing it in my head. The lights turning from amber to red as I approach the junction. The short-cuts, the speed limits, the warnings of 'Humps Ahead'.

The people. The people over-taking you the people who don't give a fucking damn if they run their shiny Mercedes Benz into a puddle next to you the people shutting their doors the people lowering their blinds the lights going off on you one by one by one the people you give smiles to but you don't know them they don't know you and then you're wondering-

I realise I am craving for people. Then again I didn't realise when I stopped opening up.

More speed limit signs telling you to slow down. More signs telling you of obstacles ahead but we're still going, maybe faster, not caring for the resultant ramifications that we cannot just stick a million-dollar bandaid over.

And it's all there. The rules: stick to your lanes, go in this direction, wait for the lights to change, be polite to fellow drivers and pedastrians, keep within speed limits. Then there's still the unfairness of how some people get away with speeding some end up with fines some end up with death... its this big road. It's life. This is life. Life as observed from the viewpoint of a lone seventeen-year-old college student. Life as observed from the corner of a sidewalk under the interrogation of glaring streetlamps. Life as observed from someone shivering in the chilly evening air waiting hoping wishing longing for that something that doesn't come.

I think I've officially become jaded.

stood beneath an Orange Sky

I know it's been nearly a month since my last post and that pretty much sucks.

---

Returning home late every night of this week is a starting to mess around with my head again. It's just that warm dim glow of streetlamps throwing everything into distinct divisions of either orange or black, either light or shadow, but I wish everything could just be that simple.

Although, I have (very maturedly ha ha ha) concluded that if life were any less complicated it would be boring.

So!

Life = twisted inscrutable mess that is interesting.

Therefore I go so far as to make a resolution that I will Enjoy My Life (TM). Or rather, try as hard as I can to. To achieve this, however, I would have to stop thinking. To stop thinking would be to embrace the superficial, surface aspects of the world (such as mindless partying, wealth and airheaded giggling) so as to ignore its brimming flaws.

So there: I have a problem. I am supposed to be Enjoy[ing] My Life (TM) but I'm not sure I can stop thinking. I have a feeling my kind of thinking is like a subconscious activity that goes on in the fuzzy backstage of my brain.

When the fuzz clears out I get an epiphany.

Hmm I think I'm out of point now, I was talking about streetlamps.

What a random post.

fever you just can't sweat out:

(I'm sick.)

Well today I went home alone and while I was casting my eyes around the bus I came across a large blue plastic bag bundle on the floor.

Though highly unlikely, I wondered if it could be a bomb.

On my bus.

Then I wondered what I would do if it was a bomb.

Which is a very strange train of thought, but if you know me you'd be used to it.

A bunch of secondary school boys (who were, and I was pleasantly surprised, quite goodlooking) stepped gingerly over the bag and tried to look at the suspicious contents.

But it was wrapped up in many plastic bags.

So they just left it there and continued their chat.

Then I wondered what would happen if it were a bomb. Of course, we'd all be blown to bits and Singapore would have lost goodlooking teenage boys-

Excuse me. I know I sound paedophilic, but that's just how I am. News. Speaking of goodlooking boys Ann and I were going nuts at the American Club (we had dinner there on sunday) because of all the mixedblood-ers wandering around the buffet table and they are just SO VERY goodlooking despite being what, eight?

...

As I was saying.

I realised there were a lot of young people on the bus. Students clutching biology textbooks and student diaries and stacks of worksheets. An adorable Malay boy asleep on his mother's shoulder. Girls with pictures of their favourite Taiwanese/Japanese idols plastered all over their math files (I suppose this is incentive).

Of course I couldn't help but think of all the things I would do if there really were a bomb on the bus.

There were obviously the typical things:

1. Call family - my mother would actually flip many times. And not hang up the phone, so I can't call anyone else.

2. Call friends - Not that my mother would actually hang up in time before the bomb goes off. But I would call Yici and tell her that she needn't worry about being annoyed by me anymore then she perhaps would be finally regretting the daily insults she throws at me (save for birthdays).

3. Call dog - If that's possible.

4. Call brother - he's currently residing in Sydney. So that'll have to be done.

Then again there are the non-typical things:

5. Snog the cute guys on the bus because I refuse to get blown up into bits without ever making out. Especially in public.

6. Tell everyone that I'm going to be the next Singapore Idol- and prove it, by singing 'Stairway to Heaven'.

7. Climb on the bus handrails because that's always been something I've wanted to do, yet never done (for obvious reasons).

8. Make faces through the back window of the bus.

There you go.

I'm sorry if this post is a little rambly, but the fever has obviously fried my brain.

Life is like a...

No, not a rollercoaster.

Not a bed of roses either.

Down with the cheese. Up for the strange: Life is like a busride.

Seriously, it's bumpy, but you're still on it, there are pitstops where you could get out but then you'd have to take the risk to alight, not knowing where the hell you are or what the hell you're doing or if the next bus will bring you to the right place.

You'd never know the kind of people you're going to meet on the same bus.

The problem is you never know which direction you're heading in. You're just going... occasionally hitting potholes, going up curbs.. yet if you never alight, you'd never get any experience of life outside. Just meaningless scenery, rolling by, seemingly stationery with the motion of the bus but you know its never really.

Bus interchanges serve as transition zones. Like between secondary school and college. Between the end of higher education and career. Between teenage years and adulthood. There are so many other options to pick and you just have to pick one bloody bus at the interchange and GET ON.

And there are the speed changes. Time and spatial variation. Unconscious, but happening.

Fascinating isn't it.

After a while you might realise this bus is taking you in nothing but loops and the same scenes are going by again and again then you have no choice but to get your ass off to change your route in life.

Eventually you'd start recognising places and learning things and meeting new people along your way in life's path of discovery and blah and eventually one day you might be able to plot your own route to an actual destination.

Instead of wandering around aimlessly, trying to get there by mere happenstance, though we'd have to spend more time at bus-stops plotting our way and ageing at the same time, perhaps the slower, less impulsive way will get us there.

And this is yet another parallel: youth is a time of hot blood and discovery, when you hop on and off buses whenever something outside the window fascinates you. Mid-life comes a time of reflection over stupid mistakes (perhaps even involvement in motor accidents) and missing buses that take forever to come and taking the wrong bus in the wrong direction. At the end of the day you accept life as it is and choose carefully that final bus that you think will lead you there.

I seem to have this strange notion that if you in fact think very absolutely that the bus you had taken is the right bus, then it will bring you there.

Unfortunately I can't say the same for reality, no thanks to past experiences with public buses that have ever led me into entirely foreign and desolate territory in which I felt, without a doubt, hopelessly, appallingly and desperately lost.

of Crossings and Direction:

The green blinking man said to me, "COME TO ME... COME TO ME... COME TO ME..." with each flash.

The red man was beckoning as well.

Now tell me, why can't the red man mean 'go' and the green man mean 'stop'?

Took forty minutes to walk home today instead of the usual thirty. As you can tell I was trying to defy all traffic rules on the way home. It was fun. There was just something about the post-rain air that made me want to walk forever.

Took forty minutes despite knowing the route better. I wonder why.

I suppose it would be because I sat at void decks to stare at children in playgrounds, encircled fire hydrants twice for good luck (shh), sang about 'Yellow Submarines', checked pathways cautiously for overhead killer litter and stopped to have a chat with the neighbours' dogs.

I'm happy.

Perhaps I am going insane or this is just very healthy and I've just been very unhealthy.

I have concluded that the pertinent problem in life is that we have absolutely zero knowledge of where we're going. Oh, don't you give me that shit like 'I'm going to college and I'm going to university and I'm going to be a TAX ACCOUNTANT and I'm going to retire with six kids and good-looking wife and a dog' because you and I, we both know that anything might occur to destroy your picture-perfect life.

So I will be realistic.

Because reality posesses that insufferable way of sneaking up behind you to bulldoze carefully-built expectations, deflating your lungs, halting progress and making you feel like an inane half-wit stuck forever in this boundless continuum (also more affectionately known as 'Life').

And so I will sit at more empty void decks, encircle more fire hydrants, sing about more than simply 'Yellow Submarines' and even, perhaps, stop to have crucial debates with the neighbours' dogs.

City Love:

Stupidly, yesterday, I took an extremely long walk home.

Thirty minutes from the train station. It never used to feel that long, but I suppose since I was going at snail's pace, I could've stretched the time.

It was drizzling, too. Then again, that's a merit. It's been ages since I've taken long walks (ever since I went on to college and stopped walking home from school, ha ha) in the rain, skipping over puddles, slipping on wet concrete, listening to the roaring of cars passing me by.

People should always walk. Everywhere.

I felt a strange sense of euphoria. Mixed with triumph and contentment and acceptance. I have no idea what the heck it was, but it was there. It's nice to stop everything for 30 minutes and lose myself in a foreign housing estate that I was trying to cut through to get home.

Not the brightest of persons directionally, but I can assure you that it was great fun. Everyone should get lost all the time.

I've actually nothing much to say about my thoughts during the journey home, because, thankfully, I wasn't thinking of much this time. Just silence and rain and concentrating on finding my way.

It's good.

Day Tripper:

(written at 1401hours)

"I'm on the bus, alone. Thinking about college and grades and my utter lack of motivation to ameliorate my current academic standing. I really do not have the drive.

Now, I'm not sure if I'm finally evolving into one of them apathetic Singaporean teenagers. I'm afraid I might be. And that word is just one letter away from what might become if I go on at this rate.

There is a boy across the aisle from Tao Nan primary. There is something distinctly striking about the way he swaggered down the aisle looking for a seat despite being roughly 1.3metres tall. He, like me, is alone and proud owner of a schoolbag twice his body size. He, unlike me, is having an animated chat with the empty seat beside him.

Unless its an encounter with the supernatural, I do believe he is lamenting about school life to himself.

He proves to be an entertaining distraction. I watch him as he rambles to himself about the new English teacher reprimanding him for undone homework. He even mimics her at one point! Bordering on insanity, this poor poor boy.

So I'm wondering, is this really what education does to you? On one hand you have me, the stoic college student incapable of feeling for anything that doesn't pertain directly to myself. On the other land, him, the young and overly-stressed, so much such that he'd probably land up in a mental asylum by thirteen having clearly already lost his marbles at ten.

"THIS IS SO MUCH WORK TO DO..." he declares, causing a ripple of head-turning in his direction. And he trails off sighing while flipping the page of a battered science textbook with contempt in his young, bespectacled, hopelessly Singaporean face.

I'm not being discrimatory. It's just that typical Singaporeans have a Face, especially in bad situations. The look basically screams 'I'M KIASU AND IM STRESSED AND I'M DYING FROM MY TROUBLES IN LIFE THAT INCLUDE THE GOVERNMENT AND EDUCATION AND HOW OUR COUNTRY IS SO BORING'. Yes, that is the face.

Passing Marine Parade road. I'm sad and amused. But at least he's a worthy interruption from my reflecting about grades. This is the problem with being in a class full of brilliant people. You can't help but feel insignificantly backward and an academic joke.

We just passed a banner that hung on a roadside fence, saying 'SELLERY'. I sincerely hope that it was meant to be a bad pun. Ha, ha."