the instructor took pity on me la. but I PASSED. omg. i hit the freaking pole while para-bloody-llel parking and i tried to move off in 2nd gear on the slope. ah ha ha ha. BUT I PASSED. gods. i still can't believe it.
skipped all my classes on monday to deal with driving and the backdrop for idil's item. sigh. sigh. SIGH. sunday's run at PA was-- painful. in so many ways. HAIZ. i don't even feel like talking about it-- not for a while. but suffice it to say that the night was an eye-opener-- watching all the other items in full costumed glory, as people started putting in their all, as everything took shape and started to come together--
in pat's words, "we got a show".
watching everyone just made me realise ALL OVER AGAIN how much more i have to improve to even be on remotely the same level as the least showy of them. and it's not just competitiveness-- if that, at all (i mean if it were mere competitiveness i would like seriously be doing my company tuts and attending all my lectures instead of blogging and thinking about dance 24/7 right-- even in the middle of my driving test haha i think i was running through idil's steps when i suddenly realised HELL green light and got 4 points for delay in moving off). i can't explain it, not really, but something has got to be the driving force for what keeps everyone dancing. maybe it's as simple and as complicated as something called love :).
i think... hmms. as much as i wanted a proper time and a proper separate post to deal with all of theis-- well. there's no time like the present, is there?
31st august-- or was it 30th? the confusion that mabel and i faced as we sat in lecture talking about jon's birthday seemed so-- unbelievable. could we have forgotten, so easily, after a mere-- what, two years? i didn't post on that day; nor did i have time to go down to bright hill. and-- if i am to be perfectly honest-- i didn't feel the need to, any more.
i think that last rain-logged teary trek through kneehigh grass and mud, clutching a single perfect white rose against that creamy paper-- that image i don't think i'll ever forget-- was enough for a leavetaking, for me. i guess i should face the truth-- i never was that close to him, although i won't deny he impacted my life and shaped some of the best memories of friendship and class-ship (? haha) i've ever had. maybe it's merely because
but i'm glad haojin's post appeared; i'm glad some of us remembered, that we still keep you in our hearts, no matter in how paltry a manner. you-- you-- the boy with the ever brilliant smile you'd flash at the oddest, most unexpected of moments; the boy hiding behind the door with a bouquet of bright sunrise-yellow chrysanthemums, velvety blooms clutched close to your chest (who knew that, mere years later, jin and i would lay poor facsimiles of the blooms you held that day at an altar too far removed to be of any use or any comfort?); the drummer-boy, smart and fast and slick and cool; the crazy-- spider? haha. was that what we christened you? who refused to pay xf class funds because she rendered you no "services"?; the boy so breakable, who fell into sliding tackles and lost the use of a hand for a month and subsequently broke the other and hence became ambidextrous, who stepped into the road and got knocked down and broke a leg (how lee jyun used to push you around with your cast-leg protruding like some battering ram, and with you screaming away); oh yes, you, the laughing hyena, the boy with the sparkling eyes, whose one april fool's day msg i kept for 5 years knowing it was the last one i'd ever receive; the boy who boasted of chokeslamming people; the boy who slammed a football into xf's head and a hundred-plus bottle into my face (ha, the blood and the bruises); the boy who apologised so profusely, so horrified; the boy forever 17 and summer-kissed and summer-loved.
i'd like to think you're happy now. happier than perhaps you were, or would have been, here.
your name and face and memory accompanied me for half the journey on the nike plus human race. 31st aug-- how apt, i thought, or perhaps ironic; that on the one race day that is supposed to signify life and passion my thoughts would be with you. apt-- because you were so full of vitality and vivacity, and the date was yours-- your birthday, or at least close enough? ironic-- because the operative word there is "were".
past tense, past, past, gone.
morose much? sigh. the nike race was the third one i completed this year and i have to say it was the WORST. sigh. so many many many people. the other half of the run-- when i wasn't thinking abt jon-- i was cursing the people running. or, to be more exact, strolling. seriously. a RACE, people, a race. there were so many people that i couldn't help but think of an edna st vincent millay poem or sonnet-- leastways, i think it was her, or else carol ann duffy-- about how if our sun were to go out we could keep the world warm by friction alone. didn't complete in my target of under an hour-- went 3 mins over. 10 mins better than my run nus result (which, of course, had the dubious honour of nearly making me break down in sheer unadulterated fury over the run up vigilante drive-- i got through that hell-stretch on pure anger, nothing else) but nowhere near my shape run's happy 1h 13 secs. RARR. well. i guess at least i made it through all three races-- something i thought would be such a hurdle to overcome. i am just never going to take part in the nike one again, although shape and run nus are always to be considered.
and-- yet another item i've wanted to talk about for a while-- for a really, really long while. weeks? perhaps it deserves a separate post, but if i do that i'll just delay forever and it will NEVER get posted.
but then again-- this is already a freaking long post.
and i have tutorial tmr at 9am. which is 4.5 hours from now.
sigh, alright. NEXT TIME.
so i guess the blog title-- 18 pts-- wasn't just a reference to my driving test results. maybe all that i've failed to blog about for so long can really be summed up into 18 succint, simple, sundry points.
(except who wants to blog in point form? i mean, where goest thy narcissism? [i forgot how to spell narcissist. or narcissism. omg. ok. malvolioism?])