this past week has felt rather insane for some strange reason. it's been too long, and too short, and not long enough; it's been a mad rush, and a slow siesta, and everything in between. in short it's been a bundle of contradictions mainly triggered by the disjunct between my diurnal and nocturnal activities.
i feel so bifurcated at times-- in law school i am a completely different person from the person i am outside of it. and frankly at this point i almost wouldn't have it any other way, because i think law-- school, not the subject itself-- ceased to be utterly accommodating (?) and fun and even purely acceptable a while ago. even as recently as last sem i thought nothing of spending 16 hours a day in school-- now i just want out, or at least to be alone without having to deal with the insane squash of humanity. i can take people in small doses, but push the whole faculty together and i just want to scream. or maybe it's not really the "Faculty" as the unseen unknown undefinable "they"/"them"-- you know, "they" judge, "they" always say. and it's true, like i told steph as we waited for her ride last thurs-- they judge, alright. they do.
antisocial much?
so i've actually been quite grateful for this past week-- which has been a sort of transition (haha transition provisions) for me to catch my breath and juggle myself back to reality. i realise i've got no small number of cryptic posts recently; basically the reason is that i've been playing agony aunt to my girls all week. the past two (three? four?) days especially-- it seemed like i was online 24/7 or trying to meet up somehow somewhere; creature j in the daytime (or hours away from my laptop) and the other creature j in the hours i WAS at my laptop.
and this is not to say that it's good or pleasant or positive if your girlfriends' lives are in turmoil, but dredge up that adage-- huan nan jian zhen qing-- and maybe you can see what i mean when i say that, for some reason, during this time i really felt like i grew closer to both the creatures. of course we enjoy "peacetime"-- shopping, eating, the usual slew of activities-- but we tend to take those for granted. it's usually only when we need them-- when want leaves us naked, emotions leave us scarred, the heart and its passions rip us open and turn us vulnerable-- that we truly realise and are grateful for how wonderful our closest friends are. i felt like i wasn't even remotely-- giving back-- enough, because it was a big deal for me that they came down to emcc and were willing to queue and watch and listen to me obsess and everything.
it's always nice to be needed, even if the circumstances leading you there aren't pleasant. and yes, i felt like i got closer because-- let's face it-- best friends are best friends, but even they take second place all too often to boyfriends. i've accepted that (after a good long talking-to by my mum haha), but it doesn't mean it doesn't hurt at all; socrates' hemlock draught was gladly imbibed, but it still killed him. and as friends we ought to know when to back off, and most relationships-- best friends or no-- are out-of-bounds; there will always be secrets between you and a lover that your best of best friends will never ever know.
so this was sort of an intromission in a time of need, if you get what i mean. but guess what-- it's been resolved on both ends, and i'm glad. emotion is exhausting, and honestly i ached to see/read how affected they were, and to know there was nothing i could do that would make it better. so it';s all good that it's good now (i was quite exhausted by the end of the week, physically AND emotionally. hohoho).
anyway friday! we had grand plans to study, ning and i, and to go shopping and then 'wala' in self-pity (or not) for our sad states on a friday night. unfortunately that didn't quite work out because my plan to study in the central library was thwarted by my ignorance. after we got kicked out of the library for my tapping ning in (i SERIOUSLY did not know we couldn't tap outside people in. i mean, what's the deal? is air-con air that precious we were just looking for a place to sit wth hahah), we adjourned to munchie monkeys where, in between abortive attempts to sort out my hellish constitutional law readings and pasta-ing (don't order al funghi! :( seriously all the creamy mushroom pastas in sg are just degenerating. even wine co's! *shudder*), we finally had a chance to just talk. ning played with her mussels and hid them in a napkin haha.
we stayed till near closing, and then headed for holland v where we had thought of siesta-ing at wala wala. parking was crap we ended up on deck 3b of some MSCP because holland v's was chock full. wala was equally crowded, so we finally ended at cold stone creamery. the ice-cream's overrated it's not that good, but the music and the swings-- and of course, the company-- were impeccable. :)
thereafter we lurked out again, avoiding the cockroach ning had kicked earlier (hahaha) and laughing at over-modded suzuki swifts that had the muffler-removed vroooooom but not the know-how to negotiate a u-turn (i will get karma one day, i know. actually i think karma's already slapped me in the face, and repeatedly so). since my petrol gauge was blinking frantically at me i started hunting for a shell station, found the black hole where i could have sworn one once existed, and took two wrong turns before heading down sixth avenue to dunearn and missing one station cos i was happily nattering away before finally stopping at the one opposite law school. sheesh. oh yes along the way we passed gunnysack high and gunnysack junior college which have both been collectively renamed as gunnysack institution. hahaha. and ning's brother is a true blue (brown) gunnysack because he went to both chinese high and hc. hahahaha :D
eurgh reminds me randomly of how the hci uniform is apparently 7-secs fire resistant. ha.
anyway filled up the car (i still don't know her name! i would like to call her monica but since i KNOW a monica that would be kind of weird) after a series of mishaps including my forgetting which side the oil thingy was and then applied for my shell card and and and SIGNED for my FIRST credit card purchase! whee. (i've spent a hundred bucks on fuel this month, even with my parents filling the car every now and then. BLEAK. oil guzzler). thereafter we headed east, originally intending to hang out by the kallang river or something, or even go to tanjong rhu. however, a couple of missed turnings later (i was distracted!! by savage garden! and anyway to be PERFECTLY candid we had NOT constitutionally hard-wiredly decided where to go, so TECHNICALLY i didn't make any mistakes. hee) we espied the kpe and decided to go down it. i'd never been in there! and like about 5 metres away from entering ning suddenly screamed "YVONNE!" giving me the shock of my life because i thought i'd run over someone or something. anyway she said we'd die if we didn't wind up the windows and close the sunroof pretty damn quick because her mum'd said the air in that tunnel is perilously bad. so there-- driving tip!
we eventually ended up at marina barrage after circling through raffles boulevard, eyeing the flyer, and our "old haunt" (aiyah what else is there you tell me. hint: it's where xf told me SOMEONE was her "new best friend", after which i frogmarched her to the toilet and made her wash her face till she stopped finding random "pillows" heeheehee) to which i still possess the (never-used) membership card. she spotted random ntu ppl there though. some party or another laaa. got on fullerton, now known as the "all-the-runs-bridge" courtesy of ning haha seriously we found our way to the barrage partly through remembering the routes our runs had taken. i found myself missing xf because we passed by her favourite view; the view is there, alright, but where is its admirer? :(:(:(
BUT...
marina barrage is beautiful. totally worth the crazy round-about-getting-mildly-lost drive to get there. xf you'd love the view-- it's so much lovelier than even our esplanade haunt. eh, in fact, JINGLIN-- haha i just realised you also like that esplanade stretch. and then i remembered you've heart-to-hearted on marina barrage before also. haha.that place is REALLY the heart-to-heart capital. City of Hearts. we sat there, freezing in the chilly wind, till i finally drove her home at close to the witch's hour (i was surprised my parents didn't send more than two messages demanding to know when i would go home, but then again they knew who i was with, and why). on arrival at the foot of her block, she was to pause, getting out of my car, and find an unexpected surprise that would take away the fears and the heartache and the regrets, and leave a genuine smile upon the visage that had been wearing such tired, semi-broken cheer all week.
a surprise that'd been waiting for some five hours. whoops. :)
and i happily drove off unknowingly. just as well. the night didn't need more dian deng paos to drown out the splendour of the stars :):):)
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nette finally told me the story behind the slew of emo-sounding posts on krys' blog ALL ON the day before vday. basically there's this shop in far east, allegedly on the 3rd level, where you can give this girl sitting behind a typewriter one word and receive a stanza or a thought in response. nette and krys gave "abortion" and "septic" haha hmms i really do wonder WHAT the heck she made of them. and i want to read what she wrote!
in any case krys decided that she could write better, and hence the posts.
but inspired by them, i thought it was such a cool idea-- to generate a whole world of emotion and responses based on one word. so, not liking to trust my own bias in choosing a word, i logged on to dictionary.com, and the word of the day is
hermetic \hur-MET-ik\, adjective:
1. closed tightly; airtight
2. obscure; magical
so this is a sort of facebook-note-tag, but on blogger: try writing something too! i'm going to see what i can make of it and if there are any results post them :):)
obviously the only word on my mind ought to be CONSTITUTIONAL, but OH WELL.
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and oh my gosh haha i want to remember random mondegreens (misheard lyrics-- they're called mondegreens because for 17 years some guy heard this lyric as something like 'they took the dead lord of the manor and lady mondegreen', and always wondered who was the mysterious lady mondegreen that was so fleetingly mentioned and never honoured in tribute on her death. he discovered close to 2 decades later that it was 'they took the dead lord of the manor/ and laid him on the green".) that ning came up with BUT I CAN'T REMEMBER. i only know i laughed my head off. OH OH HAHA lil wayne's lollipop!!! WHAT did she hear omg. ahhh. oh yes haha when there were words (the high-pitched part) she said "he's going laaaaaaaaa". and something like "li-li-li-lick the leather ball" instead of "she said i'm li-li-li-li-like a lollipop". ning! explicate! i cannot remember! hahaha. and rihanna's "sos" is "the spelling song" :D
unless you can muse in a crowd all day
on the absent face that fixed you
unless you can love, as the angels may,
with the breadth of heaven betwixt you;
unless you can dream that his faith is fast
through behoving and unbehoving;
unless you can -die- when the dream is past--
oh, never call it loving!