The waters are rough

These 3 days had been a struggle. But to swim against the current of memories in the months or years to come, now that’s a battle.

And this trip to Japan, I had intended it to be an escapism but in the metaphorical sense, to take flight from everything ordinary here for a little while, not taking leave from the pain. Then again, I hadn’t been wishing it right. I just prayed for an escape, not thinking about what I wanted to run from.

Like this image that frozen in my mind now. The picture of me bent over her, with the words ‘I love you’ perched on my lips but never tumbled down them. All I could say was that asking her to rest well and I would be back again to visit the next day. I never got that chance.

The bitterness of the letters is still on my tongue and the icicles formed on the image are stabbing my mind.

I never thought I would ever experience this; regret over words left unsaid.

Could I dump my heart at home during my trip to Japan? One luggage is heavy enough; don’t need to carry another one in my chest.

The worst part is, I can't cry. I'm not that sort of person. Instead of painting everything on a canvas just to get it off me, I weave it tightly into me, even dark emotions, until time comes and undo the stitches. Like an incense, it burns excruciatingly slowly and eats from the insides while a skin-thin layer of ash forms, then falls with a little shake.

I don't know how much it would hurt when I eventually plow through the memories but I at least I know it would make me stronger. 

Wake me up when it's over

Sometimes, the reason you have to learn to let go, is because someone you cared a lot about had done so long ago. 

Today she has finally let go. Now it's time for me to do the same.

Take to the sky

God, I'm such a narcissist. 

"I shot for the sky."  –Down, Jason Walker

I did too. I reached for the stars and I swung for the heavens. And now my head’s rested on the cotton-candy of cloud, its milky-pink wisps a delicate tendril around my wrists. It is an ethereal bliss, this.

But I took a while to get here.

It's funny how you would never know the faith and confident you have in yourself till the breathless moment of truth when the results are smeared grossly all over your college inbox like a spilt bottle of black ink. Especially ones you strove hard for, songs you used your heart to polish so that fears of exam don’t taint enough to dull the brilliance.

I’m not saying the others were slacking, but I know I slaved for the 4 Jury pieces, just so I could put my mind at ease during the pending weeks of the doomsday. God knew the relaxed state I was in the last 7 days before The Day. It was as if my brains were a fenced off meadow where the sheep of Jury 2, Results and Days Left rather graze grass than try jumping over the barrier.

And that brief moment when I stepped out of the jam room, I was brimming with self-assurance that I did well, beyond a doubt. But today when Simon asked, “Why didn’t you want to check your results? What exactly are you expecting to get? B? C?”

In that 2-second silence, I was actually considering a D.

Guess it was written all over my face.

“You passed, I saw your results.”

Sad to say, I was immensely relief I simply passed and not bothering to consider if I got a higher grade.

“Hey, what are the marks you’d need to get for an A?”

“Erm…80 plus, I guess.”

“Ahhh. Juan said you got an A.”

“WHAT?!”

“I asked Juan about your results. He said you got an A.”

(I don’t understand why people can’t tell from my tone that my WHAT meant ‘YOU’RE SERIOUS?!’, not ‘come again?’. Not that I’m annoyed. I’m just baffled at my inadequacy to convey my surprise.)

But I didn’t want to believe it. My heart is a fragile thing. No need to carry up to the 15^th floor only to drop it back down. Not because I didn’t trust either of them, it was simply because I honestly thought it was law-of-nature-defying impossible. I had no belief in myself. If I were Tinkerbell, I would have died long ago.

Which was how, 7 murderous hours later, I found my eyes screening the page deliberately slowly, my inner eye preparing my heart for a B+, at most.    

Major Instrument Piano 4          A+          89

HOLY MOTHER OF HEAVENS. GOOD LORD OF DIVINITY. MY SWEET GOD.

I had wind knocked out of me forcefully. 

I mean, ME?! It was like some fairy godperson just handed me a sword and incited, “You are the Chosen One. Only you, who could defeat the evil and bring peace to this world.”

I swear, it felt like that. Surreal. Infinitely impossible. Mistaken.

Wen Dee has some wicked skills. Jia Wen chose mind-blowing band songs. Rou Yen possesses crazy chops. But me? This is insane.

Emotionally electrifying and all-consuming ecstatic, but nonetheless other-worldly absurd; truly it is.

The fact is still too fat for my mind to wrap around. Half of me swimming in this lake of happiness; the other half trying to formulate a logical equation leading to the marks.  

Please slap me if I start to get big-headed in college. 

Baby, you're a firework

The November babies are an adorable bunch. You have the rocker chick, Simmy, with all her silent guitar prowess. She’s like a jack-in-a-box, you know. A zinging ball of energy coiled within a shell of jeans and shirts declaring her devotion to rock, draped under chains, bangles and morbid trinkets. Caroling practices became witness to the other side and we would probably soon become mirrors of her insanity.

You have the girl with flying fingers, Wen Dee, someone who, for all her perfectionism, could be perplexingly lost 99% of the time.

“Cool. We finished revising! Did Justin give us any exercise to do?”

Wen Dee perked up. “What? Exercise now? It’s 10pm! All the gyms closed already!”

You could see from her face she honestly believed I meant physical workout. Yeah. Say hi to the genius whose piano marks never saw the daylight of B or anything less than that.

She's the one next to me

You have Rebecca the Drummer; the tiny one, the pale white one, the rabbit-like one. She’s kind of like a werewolf, but instead of morphing into some loathsome creature, she turns from sweetly silent to annoyingly boisterous under the shimmer and influence of our presence. It’s either she enjoys being a pain in the ass or we’re simply too awesome.

 Yo people, doesn't it look like Rebecca or what?

You have Penny Wong, the hoodie enthusiast. She’s the sort of person whom you would never shine in the light of an aging senior, much less someone who’s soon to graduate. But she is, and she used to be the index-fingers-poking lovable dwarf of my band during my very first semester in Modern Band. Ah, those days. And I still remember our thrill at having made it to the concert. Good memories, and I thank you for that, Penny (:

 The leftmost little gal

Happy Birthday, peeps! 

Now you know

This post goes out to my bewildered mom, horrified friends and appalled conservative society.

Why we celebrated Halloween when it isn’t even our culture:  

ONE. It is not our culture. Period. In my equation, culture comes hand in hand with family. The lunar new year, mid autumn festival, hungry ghost festival, winter solstice, it didn’t matter, my place would always be at a posh restaurant, buried under a sumptuous meal and layers of chattering while my reunited family members tried to talk over one another in excitement; or at home bowing my head before the altar, praying for good health and a smooth year ahead, as mom sets a table of offerings for the gods.

But Halloween is not my culture. I do not have customs to comply to, I am not haunted by superstitions guarding my actions, I heed no advice regarding my garments and looks; my every step becomes my own tradition and my every movement is the rule for this new occasion. And, just as cultural festivities are for family quality time; non-cultural celebrations mark the freedom of sharing them with anyone we chose to. Since my parents just rolled their eyes at the word, and the idea of dressing up with them actually nauseated me, so Halloween with my cohorts it is then!

TWO. Nobody remembers the evenings he spends nestled comfortably at home. I wouldn’t either, not when I’m 70 and crooked and my mind a dusty cavern. All that would light those blurry eyes of mine would be these colorful memories, the days of rainbows and bunnies; the times when we were young and could run, baby, run, to be who we wanted to be.

So let this Halloween be another penny in my piggybank of smiles, another note in this symphony I write for us, another gigabyte of photos in my external hard disk. At least I would be able to tell any keen listeners, “You know, there was once we did this cruh-ay-zee thing back during the Halloween of 2010…”

THREE. This is my way of feeling closer to you. Call me twisted, but celebrating the same occasion as you are overseas somewhat gives me a sense of connection. As if our personal Halloween experiences were like steamy mugs of chocolate with marshmallows; it didn’t matter that we each brewed them in our corners of the world, separately and using different brands, mine Nestle and yours Cadburry, coz in the end all that counts is the fuzzy moment where we meet on Skype and sip them together.

It’s absurd, I know, the way my thoughts work and the way I try to hang on to everything and everyone. But I can’t help it. I’m a person of heart over mind; and my heart tells me it misses Les Sluts insanely and Halloween is a brilliant opportunity to bridge the gap between us, even just for a day. And for that couple of hours, I really felt like I was celebrating, in my glorious witchiness and all, with you.  

Somewhere only we know

I've always known, with you, I am home :) 

Eu Chern

We let me be who I want to be and that makes me who I am

Joanna

We make jigsaw puzzles seem incomplete and rainbows monotonous <3

Ying Hui 

P.S. The rest of you can just email me and you'll appear here and be famous (:

You know it's fun to be me

I read somewhere that writers are control freaks.

Since it would be downright moronic if I denied I’m a writer, then it would also be an ass of me if I don’t accept my being a control freak. But I do, wholly. And I could understand and reason with you why.

Bear with my narcissism if you will. See, when I’m writing, I am the God of my ink and paper world, the Lord of my verbal creation, the Authority of my virtual universe. I control everything; I control the concept to which my own planet bows, I control the lives that exist on its surface, I control the fate of these insignificant souls, heck, I control my characters’ emotions and their every single thought and movement. I play the ultimate omnipresent master puppeteer of my art.

Sad that I should lose this power every time I step back out into reality. No wonder I would be considerably upset when things don’t go my way in real life; when I’m not the one holding the reins to this twisted world; when the fairy dust had settled and my words lay lifeless on the tar road, serving only to express my exasperation, rather than breathing life to my imagination.

I hate that I sometimes have to be someone I’m not, just so I would pass as norm in a society, instead of penning the words, “She isn’t beautiful; she isn’t smart; most of all, she isn’t perfect. But it doesn’t matter; they see her as a living proof of someone who isn’t afraid of being who she is and people accept and love her for that,” then POOF, I become popular. Huh. Reality does NOT run like that, much to my disappointment. Words are nothing against the works of life.

And I hate that I can’t make you want me. Hate that mere scribbled alphabets can’t make you see that I’m better than her.

  

How freaky is this? To you, of course.

But screw it. I found my niche in this harsh place. I found myself a band of control freaks who believe that the world WILL bow to us one day. So no matter how stoned the earth seems to get, there will always be a secret haven for us, within us.

Just a gentle note: Never piss a writer off. Words are our shadows and we can shape them just as a clown can knot a wiggly balloon into a sword, though a sharper and much harmful one.