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."

8 Days A Week:

On the way home today, I was sitting with two good friends. To my left, one I've known for four years, feverishly trying to complete math homework, scribbling away in satisfying silence. Ahead of me, one I've known for four months, plugged into an escape route, the mp3 player, while asleep against the foggy bus window.

And I look out of this very window, looking at the things we find familiar go by like a movie roll. Suddenly I'm hit by this feeling of nostalgia, because I cannot remember the last time I was going home with someone in enjoyable silence.

At this point on the busride, I'm smiling to myself like a moronic ninny but I don't really care. It's like what Audrey said; it's much easier to say that we've got to appreciate the smaller things in life like inevitable human nature and take slow walks to observe the little wonders of cocoons breaking out into butterflies or seeing a child ride his tricycle around the neighbourhood in absolute bliss.

It's much easier to say we've got to stop pointing out all the flaws in our existence and yelling at our parents when you know clearly you're all they've got.

So today was one of those rare moments. The busride could've gone on forever and I wouldn't have minded. For once the never-ending haste of this universe seemed to have slowed down (one day I'd be able to convince myself that yes, I am living a life on a VCR where people can control the speed at which I move. Or I could very well be a Sim and part of someone's computer game in another dimension) enough for me to look up and be thankful.

And someone on the bus pressed the bell to break my contemplation, then life in all its sentience came back like a rush of blood to the head.

Square One:

The first ever post. Symbolic, yes. Waste of my time? That remains to be seen.

As I was cursing the tardiness of my bus today, having taken almost two hours to get from college to my secondary school, I was hit by a sudden...

Lightbulb.

An idea.

To start this, you see. Because one takes the bus everyday, or the train, or walks, but nonetheless people do travel. And when people travel they do it alone or in pairs or in groups but yes, they do travel.

And when they commute, things happen.

I am going to record these things, whether or not they are merely musings while one stares out of the blurry bus window or interesting conversations overheard or a couple making out in the seat in front.

Embarking on a writing journey has never been very successful for me but- I shall make it one.

... Can you hear my determination?

Right, back for an update on my busride home today.