whee got a new phone today! it's the nokia 5610 XpressMusic, which is good enough for me. =) at last, i don't have to put up with an lcd screen which regularly goes bonkers and displays a blank/upside down/"broken transmission" kind of screen.

nice. and!

it didn't burn a hole in my parent's pockets like i originally thought it would. gotta save money, especially if you're not earning it yourself.

...

work's catching up with us, but really soon it'll be mostly over (in about 1 month or so?) so hang in there dudes and dudettes, we will come out tops.

somehow though i feel all detached from the process. like i'm just going through the motions, finishing the work as i've always done (which is rather relaxing) but it doesn't feel quite right.

the work seems to have really slackened off this semester (although admittedly we are only 4 days in). just the two biggies called documentary and biography, a lit performance, testimonial writing and the showcase portfolio to complete. seems like a lot, yes, but the difference is that there aren't any more of those little niggly assignments which don't seem like much, but when put together can take away a productive rafflesian working night/morning.

then again i could, and probably am, wrong.

...

the great quotable group of people that is mostly simply a bunch of famous people who act all confuscius-y (of course, some really are qualified enough to be all confuscius-y) said once, "love is irrational."

wonder what that means. (calling all mathematicians...)

but seriously, how is that related to me? i mean, i don't have a love life. (CONTRARY to what many people out there think mmhmm. you know what i mean.)

why, of course, i find myself being too rational at times.

rational to the point where analysing what and why people do and feel what they do and feel comes too easily and quickly for me to even try to block it out.

i'm not sure if that's a habit i'd like to try and kick, or at least tone down.

sometimes i should learn how to relax and just take things as they are.

easily.

Two roads diverged,and I-
took the one less taken...

peace and quiet reigns supreme yay. :D

...

when you dumb things down they look so easy to accomplish.

...

i fear i'm losing my old self (especially the parts which are good).

and i'm falling into the trap of trying to identify with everybody else that i risk losing touch with myself and who i actually am.

i'm a walking mirror with a fragile facade. that's the best way to put it. if you've been around me long enough you might see that.

i'm reminded of a seemingly stupid quote from one of my friends:

"if everybody's trying so hard to be special, why not be normal for once?"

yes it's stupid. but it's starting to make sense for me. somehow.

Two roads diverged,and I-
took the one less taken...

now that school has started i may not be blogging as much.

3 weeks of utter slogging. then a week of apcg (yay! =D) and then we slowly wind up our lives here in ri (with showcase portfolio).

it's time to let all the emo stuff get cleansed away anyway.

(is this blog really emo? doesn't feel that way to me. ><)

maybe it's just my writing style.

but i guess i'll be taking a break, with the occasional post every 3-4 days.

or if i'm feeling particularly emo then i'll do more.

...

and i didn't realise my blog was that popular. if my friends are to be believed of course.

gosh this reminds me of the time when my english teacher (mrs nathan, if you're reading this, here's a shout out to you!) read my blog.

well maybe that's where the stories in the staff rooms originate from.

Two roads diverged,and I-
took the one less taken...

i know it's 3 days before the start of the holidays, which means we're about to go into "rush homework like madmen as we always have even though we're supposed to have 4 whole weeks to do it but yet we never learn our lesson every year and teachers think we're freer than happy meal toys so the sunday before school reopens becomes 'go-mad-over-homework' night/morning, i.e. extending into the hours of monday and allowing us to refamiliarise ourselves with the 'sleep late, wake up early' motto students such as us swear by and make us feel oh-so-cheery-and-enthusiastic about school" mode.

but in spite of all of that, i'm really itching to do some things:

1) watch a movie. any movie.
2) play pool/tennis. been wanting to play them, but...
3) go out with friends. to do fun things.

so if any of you out there are similarly inclined (and similarly prepared for a right old ticking-off by your furious teachers who thought that in the course of 4 weeks of supposedly carefree and stress-free and whatever-else-free holidays we would have time enough to do their work, which we did but just didn't want to do it or conveniently had it slip our minds), please, regard it as saving a friend from ugly withdrawal symptoms, and let's arrange a suitable time.

...

i said that half in seriousness, half in desperation.

problem is, my saturday is almost fully gone (thanks to a 9 to 5 workshop at sungei buloh, exactly diagonally opposite on the singapore map from where i live, and as far as possible from my house) and my mother's sister is currently visiting from down under, so i'm obliged to spend time with them.

somehow teenagers seemingly have one extra obligation than their parents: to maintain friendships by regularly meeting their friends.

or is it just me?...

Two roads diverged,and I-
took the one less taken...

so tiger woods wins yet again, for his 14th major and 65th tour win.

what's new, really?

well only one thing was different this time: i actually watched the entire round (yes, i am that crazy).

so that meant on monday morning i stayed up from 3 to 9 to watch the final round, only to see them having to play a playoff, which i watched from 12 to 5.

i'm so thankful it was the holidays.

on another note, things are looking rather much better for the homework so yay. =D

Two roads diverged,and I-
took the one less taken...

i've been thinking about myself, and why i do things that i do (such as my most famous/hard-to-explain involvement so far with the pb).

and i think i realise it now.

i need to do something. i need to be involved in something at any point in time.

i find it incredibly difficult just to sit down for hours on end doing something - even fun things such as playing games. i get tired of those too after a while.

i guess i need a challenge, or at least something to keep me suitably occupied.

maybe that's where all my senses of "i'm not doing this right" come in. i realise that i need to do something else, which makes more sense.

maybe that's why i'm feeling so hollow this holidays.

there's been nothing much to do (quite surprisingly for a raffles holiday), and i've really tapered off into a minimal-work state. and once you do that it's hard to get back on track.

so i'm in need of that one spark which can put me back heading in the right direction, or at least, heading somewhere at all.

ok all this thinking about myself is getting to me.

but i guess it's one of the only things which is really worth the time thinking about. time well spent, sort of.

Two roads diverged,and I-
took the one less taken...

oh here comes another really weird dream.

i used to have a blog named "the dream machine", the chief aim of which was to keep track of my dreams.

well that blog would certainly have fulfilled its aim over the last week.

but on to the dream proper. (and the reason i'm revealing this one is because it involves nobody from around me. hint, hint.)

...

i was showing this friend around singapore's nature parks/places of interest to someone who likes nature (tree-huggers? nature-lovers?).

first we went to sungei buloh (the place of all my re escapades, including a certain "scam club"). nothing hugely interesting there. then we went on to a certain mysterious park.

the park was pretty normal (lots of brick paths and brick walls everywhere), except for the last, innermost part. which was where the weirdness all started.

there was a huge pool, filled with black water such that you couldn't see anything below the surface (or so we thought, until there was a clear counterexample later). but for the most part it was dark and opaque.

there was a relatively low wall guarding this pool, about up to hip level.

me (being the tour guide, although i have no idea how i know all this) told my friend (who was sort of spanish-australian), "this pool is the most dangerous part of the park. this pool contains sharks, and the water has been coloured black so as not to scare people when they see the sharks."

(i think now the more real reason was to prevent sharks from jumping out of the water and injuring the people around the pool by making them "blind" in the water.)

now there was no signboard that said "no swimming", but clearly no sane person would try to swim in that pool.

apparently a few girls, and my spanish-aussie friend went insane.

he jumped in, and began swimming around the edge. so i left him alone, and went off to do other things.

then i suddenly changed into a rafael nadal-like person. the (really really damn) pro tennis player, with the green sleeveless shirt and muscles to boot.

don't ask me why i chose to change into him. but i'm a supporter.

oh the setting changed to an airplane as well. i was sitting down in this rather spacious airplane, before getting up (to presumably play a match).

then the setting changed to a tennis court (playing tennis is a no-go on airlines. what if you break a window?), and i remember hitting a few balls.

(i'm not that good in real life, and i don't exactly remember the way it felt hitting those balls, but i hope it felt good. for all you know it could be a confidence-booster for my real-life game.)

ok so the match ended rather quickly (as a fair few of rafael nadal matches tend to, usually in his favour - about 99.9% of the time), and i returned back to the airplane (which was flying all the time, mind you), to get a rest. i had a bag of refreshments at my table when i returned, so that was a nice touch.

then suddenly, the plane started to slow down. looking out of my window, i could see some yellow vehicle (probably a van) beside me. apparently, we were in a traffic jam.

i told you the dream was weird.

so with nothing to do while the plane was in the jam, i decided to revisit my friend at the black pool.

when i went back, he wasn't dead, surprisingly. in fact, he had completed one round of the pool, and was doing his second round.

unfortunately, coming up to him was the king of the pool - the sharks.

(and this also disproves the apparent fact that nothing could be seen from outside the pool.)

so he was swimming, and we (me and a few other "supporters") were shouting furiously at him to get out or hurry up.

as he rounded the side close to us (the pool was an irregular shape) the shark came in to slam him against the wall. fortunately, it missed.

but more trouble was brewing. 2 other sharks were heading for him.

so he was nearing the end of his 2nd lap. the sharks were closing in, but he was slightly ahead. as he reached his end point, he heaved himself out of the pool...

only for the sharks to get a grip on his leg, with their teeth. he was desperately kicking out, hoping to free his leg, while the shark was holding on. it was tense.

eventually though, my friend won, and he did wriggle himself out of the pool and to safety.

i remember i was seeing a few instant replays (in the dream itself) of the struggle. and in the end we were just happy to see each other alive (not that people get killed very easily on a tennis court). so i should say i was happier to see him alive, and he was just happy to see/be alive.

my friend must have been a real adrenaline junkie.

that's where the dream ended, so you can evaluate for yourself whether that was plain weird, or *(%^*(^%#()^*&$ weird.

i remember reading once before, though, that using dangerous animals to motivate swimmers to swim faster was a technique used somewhere (hopefully in some fictional world), so there may be some truth to the dream.

on a sidenote, i read somewhere in the chinese book we're supposed to read over the holidays (like all holidays are supposed to be spent in ri, as instructed by our dearest and most motherly mother tongue department)(i hope you sensed sarcasm in that line, or you need to see the school counsellor) that:

"how fast one swims doesn't depend on the swimsuit, but the swimmer."

try telling that to the Speedo LZR Racer designers, and the 37 world record holders who used it.

back to the dream though - maybe my friend would have done better if he had worn the LZR Racer (he was wearing a pair of very normal swimming trunks).

so there we go. a weird dream pulled right out of fantasyland.

if you didn't already have official confirmation, now you do.

i'm a really strange kid sometimes.

Two roads diverged,and I-
took the one less taken...

my dreams used to be rather "standard" and "average", if ever you could have a standard and average dream.

happy things occurred in those dreams. love. friendship. and other things which made you feel somewhat happy, or at least if they didn't, they didn't make you feel sad.

of course there was the occasional nightmare. i remember i was killed twice in my dreams before (as i related, rather hilariously, to my oip group last year, while waiting for the plane home) - the first time when i was killed was by zombies (must have watched one too many horror movies), and the second time was when the mrt train crashed off the tracks and head-on into a canal after paya lebar heading towards boon lay (that's detailed for you).

on a side note, getting killed in a dream is rather... ordinary. no light at the end of the tunnel kind of thing. it's like an instant sleeping pill. you just see what's coming up ahead of you (you might know you're going to die), and then everything in front of you turns black. like you closed your eyes at that point, and went to a sleep-like mode.

of course, when i got killed in the dreams i woke up immediately, so that feeling of death was very short. and even then it may not be a true feeling, but seeing as i haven't experienced death before i've had nothing to base it on (supposing dreams are built on our real-life experiences), so it just might be true after all.

that's surely something for you to consider (maybe 65 years later).

on a seperate side note, i remember there was this scary x-files trailer i watched when i was in primary 3.

there was this weird thing which could suddenly just appear out of the dark and do horrible things to his victims (x-files fans, correct me if this never existed).

i think that's where my fear of the dark came from. i'm very much less scared of it now, but when you live in a 3-storey house, and you try to go down to the first floor to get a drink at 2am, trust me, you'd be a little twitchy too.

and then the funniest thing happened to me - i became scared of sleeping on my own bed.

this was all in the new house, by the way. i trust i'd remember none of this when i was 7 or 8.

why was i scared? my bed (like all logical bed-placers would have it) was right next to the wall, but of course it wasn't touching the wall, but instead had this small gap next to it (which made it easy for things to fall through. when my room was getting renovated it was interesting to see what kinds of things had fallen in). at night, i just found the gap rather eerie and scary (in fact, i was half expecting that hideous creation to jump out of the gap to do something evil), and consequently, i tried as much as possible not to sleep there (instead sleeping on a mattress next to the bed, or in my parents' room).

then after my room was renovated i decided it would be highly stupid not to sleep there since i had a say in choosing my room's design (plus, i had seen first-hand during the renovation that there was no x-filey thing underneath my bed).

and of course, now, i have my lovely carebear quintet to take care of me! =D haha no thanks to the 5 people who burned a hole in their pockets to buy a carebear each, i'm sure. and in different colours too, and personalised!

ok that marks the end of the side note chronicles. if you'd like more, chances are i'll have plenty sprinkled in every post.

so where were we?... ah yes. last time, happy things used to happen in happy dreams, with the very occasional sad dream.

but these last 3 days have produced something which leaves a rather bad feeling in your mouth, and all over.

3 dreams in 3 days, all with sad elements. the last one was just a total nightmare. not in that it was scary, but it was a horrid experience.

i'm not going to reveal the dreams here, because that would be hanging my laundry in public (clean or dirty, that's for you to decide), but i must go back to something i heard from someone before:

"dreams are a reflection of your real life. whatever you experience in real life which is the most impactful and leaves the deepest impression, you'll find in your dreams."

i cannot help but agree, after going through those 3 dreams.

all of them were so graphic that i can still remember them.

2 of them were about friends. really close friends. and both of them ended rather unhappily, or at least, had sad/scary elements in them.

the other was about my family. no prizes for guessing which one was the total nightmare.

(the family dream was by far the most graphic and vulgar, and needless to say, had the most unsuitable content for children.)

and i never believed i had the courage to do what i did to my family in that dream.

i can only hope and restrain myself, and ensure it doesn't happen.

man. when you think times could get a wee bit better (i was feeling really good after yesterday's board game cafe outing) those dreams really just bring you back down.

and the thing is that they felt so real. like they could happen anytime in real life. i even felt i was experiencing it for real.

luckily it wasn't. and excluding the happy parts, i hope it doesn't happen.

another relatively long (or short, in the context of my 4526-word-long post) post, about emo stuff once again.

i think the best thing i do is being emo, even though i smile 50% of the time.

and people even tell me my smile is lecherous. what a lovely reason to keep on smiling and forgetting my emo-ness.

honestly, that's probably the only thing stopping me from just letting everything go in public. just putting up a smiling, brave front, knowing i have friends who'll make me feel better, somehow.

man i really should get to being happier soon.

heck, even my writings and poems are all sad. not a single one touches on a remotely happy-sounding subject.

Two roads diverged,and I-
took the one less taken...

hey juan i have an exclamation mark behind your name too! (like that, see!) (there's another one!) (and another!)...

ok that could go on forever so it stops now.

...

on a more sombre note,

should we think of ourselves as little cublings, needing the warmth and support of our parents to grow into a truly magnificent, intimidating creature?

or should we think of ourselves as the same little cublings who are capable of surviving on their own, because they were just meant to be that way?


...


i once attended this course which was really expensive (conducted by adam khoo, mind you). it was meant to teach me all kinds of things, in my academic as well as overall life.

that was at the end of sec 1. i guess my life changed from there.

but i haven't really applied what he and the other course instructors taught me about how to do well academically.

so my mother asks me, "what in the world did you learn from that?"

i haven't answered her yet, because i know what i learnt. it was one of life's most important lessons, which i still remember clearly to this day.

it was to treasure whatever we have now. not to wait till it was too late.

the lesson was so impactful and touching that everyone in the room was in tears. everyone.

and i'm glad i learnt that lesson well, at the cost of only a few thousand bucks and a few hours of tears.

because you don't want to lose your parents (which is becoming more and more possible for us young ones as time goes by. it's true. we cannot stop time.) and then evaluate the loss of that.

not as much in terms of money as that of emotions.

the loss gets much bigger if you have any regrets.

you could say that's the entire basis of my conflict now.

i know i should be giving my parents a better time with me than what they're getting. but two things keep getting in the way.

personal interests always play a part. not at first, but eventually. and i don't know whether my parents know that i know all this.

it's very hard for them, i know. working to support a family is not easy.

but that doesn't make it any easier for us as youths.

i somehow feel restrained by my parents. i believe i have a mind for it but somehow, my parents don't recognise it all the time.

in fact they don't really encourage as much as they do criticise, albeit subtly.

for instance, when i get back test papers.

the first two questions are, "did you fail (again) this time?" and, especially if the answer to the first was "no", "are you the lowest in class?"

i see that as a entrenched belief that they don't think i can do it. it gets really demoralising to see your parents aren't even helping you through it.

and i'm trying to prove them wrong. trying so hard.

i studied 5 weeks in advance for the most recent biology test. flipping chapters well before the actual test.

i ended up scraping a pass, and getting lowest in class.

i haven't shown it to them yet. to be honest, i'm so afraid to show them that paper because i know what i'm going to get. and i don't want it. i'm honestly sick of it.

what i would give to have my parents reading this right now.

my mother in particular keeps telling me to read or study something. yes, i know i have to - and i do. but once she sees me doing something else, even if only for a while, she'll say i need to do work.

when i actually am doing work, she says i should do something to boost my grades.

i know this is not being particularly nice to my mother.

some other people don't seem to get along rather nicely with their mums too.

is it some kind of sexism at work? i could offer an explanation along that line, but not now.

it's becoming rather tiring to be at home, to be honest.

when i see other happier families out there i somehow wish i could just live with them for a change.

i see the need to be a "nice boy" for a change as well. they can't think i'm all bad at this point, and they don't need to.

the problem is that i don't really know how to do it though.

so now i'm stuck somewhat.

i don't know what to do to return my family to a much happier, warmer one.

is it even my responsibility? i don't know, but i do want that kind of a family.

ok i'm feeling rather confused about all of this right now. and i do not want another long emo post.

so i'll keep the rest to myself. i think i've said too much anyway.

Two roads diverged,and I-
took the one less taken...

haven't been posting for the last few days because i've been hooked on a eccentric show, to say the least.

and i have no idea how i suddenly got the urge to watch the shows.

it's strangely incredibly addictive and exciting.

reminds me of the time when i loved to watch these shows on channel 5 before i went to ri (and subsequently couldn't watch them because i was returning home so late).

haha at least "wheel of fortune" and "the price is right" are back on.

"iron chef" (the japanese version) isn't though. which is why i'm hooked on watching youtube videos of it.

haha how's that for an eccentric taste.

Two roads diverged,and I-
took the one less taken...

well so many people posted on my tagboard i thought i'd reply to them here.

i guess i posted that post because of my overall attitude towards things i guess.

if the old way works, why not continue doing it?

but then again it doesn't make for any progress, as shown by my weekly xbox showdowns with my brother.

i keep playing more or less the same way every week.

that culminated last week in a 6-0 defeat.

lesson learnt. although i'm not optimistic about the rematch.

ok i've changed my mind. i'll reply on the tagboards.

rendering this post absolutely useless. unless you would like to take heart from the fact that i am a utterly inept soccer player who sometimes cannot even kick the ball, whether in video games or in real life, and you would like to take me on and own my ass flat, giving you a sense of satisfaction (achievement would be the wrong word, since it's not really one anyway).

and also, if you would like to listen to some lovely touching songs.

and they're all about friendship. how apt.

Two roads diverged,and I-
took the one less taken...

well after reading juan's blog (which i just discovered for myself) i guess i was more compelled to post this. but i guess i would have even if i hadn't read her blog.

i don't really know whether it's better to live in the past or remain in the present.

yes some of my fondest things come from the past. not the least of which is my love for music from as far back as the 50's.

but then the present is so full of exciting changes. i'm looking forward (somewhat) to going to rjc and starting anew, with knowledge about myself and my surroundings that i never ever came close to having at the start of secondary school.

and for that i am immensely grateful to the magnificent institution which has served as my second home (i believe sometimes it even qualifies as my first, on those special occasions where you feel a true sense of ownership) for the last 4 years.

the claims out there about raffles in general being so many wonderful things and giving students holistic education may be cliched and painful for some of us students to hear ourselves,

but oh boy, they're true, if you have the attitude for it.

do indulge me a while more.

one of my weaknesses coming into ri was my physical condition.

that's been rectified beyond doubt.

another one was needing to speak up more. it's partly personal too, because i don't like those uncomfortable silences between friends when you're together.

have i achieved it? somewhat. i'm getting there still. i must admit this is a big challenge to me.

something else i sorely wanted was to have a "life".

(and juanmin hit it on the nail when she said "so many miscellaneous things seem important to me, the keyword being 'seem'." i guess this is one of them, but then again i've been trying to convince myself that it has benefits ranging beyond seeming "cool".)

have i gotten what i wanted? not really. but i'd like to think i'm gradually getting there as well.

some of you have told me that i'm not as bad as i make myself out to be when i tell you about all these things i want to be but am not. well, i guess my expectations of myself are pretty high. i want to be good in everything, as impossible as it may seem - i guess that's my nature.

some people also question my desire to be involved in seemingly everything around school. not least of which are my parents.

they're not questioning why i have so little desire, but incredibly, why i have so much of it.

which is a sticking point for me. people usually question the lack of desire. i guess in my case it's sort of justified, because my grades are pretty bad (i'll wager they're the worst by a mile in our 50-strong apcg group - and i'm assuming we were selected based on our all-round performance?), and it's due to the time i'm putting into my studies, or the lack of it, due to my involvement with school activities.

people usually say, "why are you getting involved?", or in another variation, "why do you help the prefects? why are you their 80th man?"

i actually don't really like answering these questions. anyone who's heard me answer these questions more than once will realise that i give the same standard answer to everyone, "because i like doing it."

but i don't like answering these questions, not because i'm asked so many times. it's the tone in which they're asked.

no offence to anyone who's asked me about this before, but most people who ask me this ask it in a very incredulous way. i sort of guess from the tone they ask it that they don't believe in it at all, because of a myriad of reasons.

and i'm worried that the way they ask it will affect my own attitude towards doing what i do.

cynicism is like a hunter's trap, and we are the animals who tread across this danger-filled path. every now and again, animals who have some awareness of themselves and their surroundings recognise these traps, but because so many other people have walked right into the trap, they follow.

and just like that, it loses its future.

i guess you could say i see myself as seeing a bigger picture than other people. and that people around me are all cynical.

that's another trap which we would do well to steer clear of. pride.

and again, juanmin is correct when she says that the life we grow up in in the future is full of "politics, caution, and a life that is so trying".

before we criticise people above us in the hierachy, we must first realise that the path they have trodden is so fraught of dangerous, tempting things, but they have not given in. in that sense, they deserve their place more than any of us can claim to - because they have done what we have not.

sometimes i use that to burst my inflating ego, and keep it in check before it gets out of control in a bad sense. when i think i can do things better than other people, and should be the person for the job, i remember that there is a reason why they are there, and that's more than enough to make the idea of breaking the hierachy disappear.

there's no reason why we can't break the hierachy - we just need to find the right way to do it. and being full of yourself and thinking you have what it takes when you actually don't is clearly not it.

sorry, that was a long indulgence.

all that may not have too much relevance to my first line about living in the past or the present.

or does it?

today, i was taking the bus home from boon keng. there was a direct service to bedok interchange (where i wanted to go), so i decided to take it, rather than take the mrt (which would have involved a big loop all the way down to city hall).

it's strange how that one bus ride led me to my thoughts now.

before i moved into my current house in 2000, i stayed at bedok reservoir road, right opposite the reservoir itself.

readers who've read my previous blog post in my previous blog about the cross country run last year, you'll know this already, but since the blog doesn't exist anymore, i'll just recap briefly.

i have many memories of that place. not all of them were fond, but most anyway.

i remember every sunday, when our family (from our grandmother if she was in singapore, right down to me, the younger son) would make the short walk across the road (and yes, we jaywalked) to bedok reservoir. it was only 100m away, so it became a ritual of sorts.

our father would run the whole route around bedok reservoir (it was about 5.5 to 6km long that time, i believe) faithfully. the rest of us would stroll along the first half of the route, reaching the polytechnic behind the reservoir and then turning back to go home. sometimes all of us would run - i believe i only ever ran the whole reservoir route twice though. it took about 1 hour to complete, but of course, that was when i was young.

i remember things about the reservoir - the smell of the factory at the far end (maybe that is why i was never motivated to run the whole route), the terrain (for the most part it was gravel, but the area near the factory was a piece of road, and the bridge around the start was covered with sand), the "no swimming and fishing" signs around the reservoir, and the exercise equipment near the end (which i knew was there but at the time didn't really know what it was for)...

after we had finished our run and walks, we would go down, close to the edge of the reservoir. at the time, there was a bank of rocks leading down to the water, and so we would stand there, pick up small rocks and pebbles from the ground, and throw them as far as we could into the reservoir. it was always nice to hear the "thoop" sound as the rock entered the water, and sank to the mysterious depths of the reservoir.

it was nicer when the sun set - because the reservoir was so big and the terrain was flat, we had a good view of the evening sun, and sometimes it was setting just as we were ready to head home. i believe we could still see the sun set from our house.

sometimes, when we didn't want to go home and cook dinner, we could always take a short walk to the nearby coffeeshop to have a good meal. i remember we did that at least once.

that's why the 2007 cross country run brought back so many fond memories. i was almost reliving the times in my head as i ran along, with people complaining about the sweltering heat and lack of shelter, comparing the area last time to the area at present.

maybe that's why i did so well (or thought i did - according to estimates i ran about 21 minutes for 4.2km, which is pretty good for me, at least) - because of prior knowledge.

i ran around the reservoir in 1 hour (maybe even more) 10 years ago. now i can do it in 21 minutes.

what a difference a decade makes.

i remember when my father, my brother and i would go down to the bushes behind our block after it rained to catch snails. sometimes we would bring them home.

i remember when i woke up once in the middle of the night and saw black spots swirling around in my line of vision. i thought i was going blind, and so i asked my father to bring me to another room. when he finished comforting me, he was going to go out and turn off the light, when i told him not to - for fear that if the light went out, i would close my eyes and sleep, and when i woke up in the morning i might never see again.

so he kept the light on. i believe he stayed with me for a while, and eventually went out.

when i woke up it was morning again, and the light was still on. the black spots which i had seen, though, had disappeared.

to this day i have no idea what caused those black spots. all i know for sure is that i saw them, and i understand now just how much trouble parents will go to to care for their children.

i remember during national day, when we were watching the national day parade. my mother told me to look out of the window, and then i saw fireworks lighting up the very sky outside our house. i actually thought that the parade was going on right outside our house.

i remember the garden we had outside our house (it was a small one, since we lived in some kind of hdb block, yet it wasn't really a hdb block, because our house had 2 storeys. is that a special type of hdb block?). we grew cacti and many other kinds of flowers and vegetables, and it was nice to just look at it.

i remember there were times where i shone a torchlight up at the moon, and i became scared, because i thought that that was something taboo, and that someone up on the moon would come after me. another explanation i thought of was that my light would disturb something up in space, and cause a disaster of some kind.

i remember every weekend afternoon, after lunch, we would simply sit in the living room. my parents would watch tv (i remember that on sundays, "hercules" was on) while my brother and i played with the latest "hot wheels" toys which we had. those times were almost untouchable, and we usually spent about 1 hour sitting there, doing our things, before moving on. it was as if we had gone into a different, more serene environment in that hour.

i remember that every saturday, before the start of the 5-day work week, my mother would go to her lab (which was then located at buona vista's science park) to work for half a day, before joining the rest of us for another weekly ritual - saturday lunches at mcdonald's. we went there without fail almost every week, and sometimes on weekdays we even went for dinner.

i remember another ritual we had before we got our second car. since both my parents had to go to work, we would share one car. my father would drive to ang mo kio (or was it yishun?), around where he worked, before passing the wheel onto my mother, who would then send me to my nanny's place (which i still visit whenever i can) before going off to work herself.

i remember the time i scalded myself at home. i was reaching for a cup of hot water on the counter (yes, when i was that short) and tiptoeing to get it, when i spilled it onto my hand. i remember i was crying out in pain, and my mother immediately stepped in to handle the situation. she led me upstairs to her room, where as she scolded me, she applied some cream on the area to soothe the pain.

i remember the time where i was snacking on those instant noodles straight from the packet (they are actually deep-fried already, my mother told me once, but when cooked again they give the softer version we all have come to know) when one of my baby teeth fell out. those were a common occurence, really, when i was younger, but the numbness of the gum in that area and the blood which followed was always something i was not too eager to experience.

i remember when we had to wash the car, we would bring pails of water down to the central landing between the second and third floor (the third floor was where we lived, and that was also the highest floor in the block), and draw water from a common tap there, before going downstairs to throw water and soap over the car.

there are so many other memories which i would dearly like to put here, but this post is becoming very long. so i will stop here. but these are just some of the clearest memories i have of my old home.

in fact, i could even draw you a layout of it right now, complete with details.

then, in 2000, we had to move house. i didn't know why, and to this day still do not know, but i will try to explain later.

and with that, i severed almost all relations with the old house. one, however, remained. after moving house, i could not find one of my game CDs (yes, the popular games came in CD form in that era, not the PlayStations, Xboxes or Nintendos we have now. it is my personal opinion that nowadays, games which come as CDs are not as entertaining as on other consoles - which is true really, since a computer is not really meant for playing games as it is for typing documents, for instance), and to this day i do not know where the original is. i did, however, manage to get one copy through my mother's sister's son (pardon me for my lack of knowledge of the family tree), so that was eventually resolved.

and then again it wasn't, because the game was only compatible with Windows 98 or earlier, whereas in this day and age, Windows XP (from 5 years ago) is already considered old, compared to Vista.

with the change of address, my lifestyle gradually changed, from revolving around my previous environment to a new, rather foreign location. and i lost touch with the things i was used to in my earlier days.

these things included the nursery and primary school i was at (before i transferred schools due to the GEP), and of course, the environment in and around my house which i have described above.

as a result i didn't do the things i did up there anymore.

no more sharing of cars.
no more falling of teeth.
no more saturday lunches at mcdonald's.
no more snail-catching.
no more shining torchlights at the moon.
no more car washing using pails of water.

and now? i've become used to my environment here in my bigger house. i probably have good memories of this place, but then again i won't really know whether i have them until i move house again, and begin to miss this one.

but that bus ride reminded me of everything. because it took the route which i would have taken if i had still been living at bedok reservoir.

the first thing it passed by was the coffeeshop, and together with it, the small complex of shops which was the most frequent destination of our family trips. it still looked the same, with a nice homely feel to it, as ever.

it then passed by something rather new, but was already there by the time we moved out - another supermarket housed in a multi-storey carpark building. we had never gone to this supermarket before, and we had witnessed its entire construction first-hand from the many trips we made around that area.

and then it passed by the reservoir.

yes, it's changed a lot now. i saw that for myself last year, when we took the exact same route this bus was taking, strangely enough, to the reservoir for the run. it felt rather different, but in a nice way as well. somehow it felt more alive then when we were still living there.

and then, our old house.

what took me by surprise was that in the preceding 200m, there were signs of construction of a new waterfront condominium. you could see the cranes going in to demolish the buildings. i was hoping that my old house wouldn't be one of them, for some reason.

i guess i'm a sentimental person. that's somewhat proven by my love for old music. it just sounds nicer and more emotionally charged than today's music - which is too angsty, and perhaps even too superficial or vulgar for my liking. and by vulgar i don't mean just cursing vulgarities, but the very things they sing about - some of them aren't really worth having a song written about them, or are sung about in the wrong kind of music.

but as i passed by the block of flats i lived in, my heart sank when i realised that firstly, i could see the block from the road (which was previously not possible), and that secondly, a crane was perched close to the block, standing atop a pile of rubble. thankfully, the block was still standing, though, and it afforded me another look (and what could be my final look) at my old home.

maybe that's why we sold our flat - my parents knew that it was going to be converted into a new condominium, and thus there was no point in holding on to it, and watch it turn into worthless rubble.

and for some reason, i thought about that CD which i had left in the old house. wondering whether it was still in that house, and whether it would be found when it was demolished.

after my house, the bus turned into the road where my schools were.

i nearly didn't recognise that the two buildings along the road were my previous schools, if not for the fact that they were in the same place they were 10 years ago.

firstly, i saw red swastika school, my school from '99-'01. i remember the school was old and needed some upgrading to give it a fresh look when i last saw it.

now? it won't need upgrading for another 2 or 3 decades.

the layout has changed too, from what i could guess in the 10 seconds the bus took to pass the school. i remember every day, we would go down to the road before the main classroom block to line up for the flag-lowering ceremony. following the national anthem, we would all run down the road, towards the area where all the buses were parked, to board the bus home (or in my case, to my nanny's house).

now, that area has been converted to a drop-off point, and the road is no more. one of just the many changes i am sure has taken place since i left 7 years ago. before i left, there wasn't even a single indication that upgrading would be done too. but just look at the result now.

i remember in my primary one days, i vomitted in school, and had to go to the girls' toilet to do it because the boys' toilet was halfway around the corridor. that is the only time so far i've been sick or injured in school (barring, of course, my unfortunate yet strangely comical drain accident on the very first day of school last year). that was in the first block from the road, which seems to have changed as well, despite being the newer wing of the classroom blocks.

and then i passed by my nursery and kindergarten.

i just realised that my going to church with my nanny and, on other occasions, isaac, actually should mean something more to me than simply going to a church.

because while i may be a free-thinker, i was actually schooled in nursery as a Christian.

yes, it took a while for me to realise it. but that is where i got my knowledge about the Bible and Christianity. while it may be basic, and i have forgotten some of the facts, it still is a part of me, deep within.

i remember the time when progress awards were given out to bright pupils. i was one of them, luckily enough, and i received a Bible as my present.

unfortunately, i have misplaced it, but i did read through the entire book, and now the urge to find it comes back again.

maybe i might have left it in the old house as well. i cannot remember.

another memory i have was the celebration of my birthday in front of the whole school. as you know, my birthday is rather special, and it calls for a special celebration every time it actually comes around. my first actual birthday celebration was at this very kindergarten, in front of the whole school. i remember a picture of it, where i looked fairly lost and actually rather grouchy. but that was when i was young, so i guess i can be forgiven.

of course, there was always the lunch breaks which we all looked forward to. before eating, we would close our eyes in prayer, and i still remember the teachers would pull out the students who spent more time talking than eating to sit alone and eat in silence. i remember i got pulled out more than a few times.

i believe the principal, mrs seah, is still there. it's online too - you can look at the website here.

again, it, like red swastika, has changed so much. it looks much more modern and has a brand new church right beside it.

and to think i pass within a street of it almost every day, on the way to and from my nanny's house, but yet do not realise the transformation of the area.

the ride onboard the bus for the 5-7 minutes it took to pass by all these places was nostalgic, to say the least.

it really led me to think: would it be better if we lived in the past, or continue living in the present?

yet again juanmin gets it right when she expresses her desire to remain a young child forever. that idea came to me for a while; our family was getting on pretty well and it was a very warm and inviting environment for the family to bond together.

in fact, our move to a bigger house with more defined boundaries may have been what set the wheels of conflict in motion.

i don't really want to grow old. i really don't. for one, i know i cannot stand to face death. the only time a relative died in my time on this world was when i was too young to understand what exactly was happening.

last year, a close friend of my parents died in a freak accident. i could hear the crying of her husband through the phone, and let me tell you, it wasn't nice. i was rather shaken by it.

i don't want to think about when my parents or my grandmother will have to leave this earth. i don't want to leave my nanny too - she's taken care of me and my brother for 19 years now, and she's just like a second mother to me, and her family are like close relatives. some of you may think i'm still baby-ish to be visiting my nanny at 16, but there's the real reason. when my first family isn't at home, i go to look for my second.

sometimes, i find it hard to split my time between my families. it's a nice conflict to have, really, but the fact that one day it must end makes it a very poignant and heavy decision i have to make. with each passing day, the decision becomes more and more difficult, until there is no decision left to make, because God and Fate have made it for me.

growing up can be pretty painful.

if you've actually read till here, thank you for listening me out. but there's just one more thing.

juanmin, you're so mature for someone your age, do you know that? it's incredible how something you write can be so relevant and impactful to other people your age, perhaps even older than you.

i'm a very easily influenced person. sometimes it's a good thing, sometimes not. it's a good thing in that i listen to everything, and look out for the learning points in them (another instance of how i like to think of myself), but it's not good when you realise that i'm easily cheated and lied to.

and i guess after reading other people's blog posts i should reassess my level of maturity compared to other people.

and this is something which seems really important, and is.

so ends this 3 and a 1/2 hour-long typing of this post.

it's getting late. perhaps i'll blog more about the maturity bit another time.

Two roads diverged,and I-
took the one less taken...

#1: look before going up/down escalators. make sure it's going the right way.

#2: do not go up casually to a waiter and ask "table for 14, please".

#3: do not pretend you own the free-flow bread counter in front of customers.

i'm proud to say i did all of that today! =)

(don't know if that was the right emoticon to use but what the heck)

in other news, singapore got their ass handed to them on a platter by the uzbeks.

what's new?

haha it was good to watch though.

and to cap a wonderful day off I DISCOVERED WHEN WHOSE LINE IS IT ANYWAY? IS SHOWN ON TV and i'm so happy because I THOUGHT IT WAS NEVER GOING TO BE SHOWN ON TV AGAIN. (the horror of it all, because IT'S SO INCREDIBLY FUNNY!)

so i'm happy! =)

oh the show time is friday night, 12.30am. (which means saturday morning if you're picky)

(i really wonder what people reading this blog think about me after reading my posts.)

Two roads diverged,and I-
took the one less taken...