as i watch all these old and seemingly insignificant places being torn down and rebuilt in the name of progress, i can't help but feel that yet another piece of our country's history is lost.
perhaps more painfully, we're slowly being detached from our own personal histories. where are the places you used to go when you were young? what happened to the old playgrounds? where's the bench you sat at and had your first kiss? i think there's a certain sense of comfort in knowing that the past, present and future will be intact and you've contributed to a part of its history.
strolling down a walkway and imagining the generations of people before you who have done the same, and knowing that things are just as they've always been, unchanged and maintaining that little link to a time long gone.
life is all about changes but we all try our mighty best to make things remain as they are. aren't we fighting against life itself then? no wonder we're always so miserable because we can never win and still keep on fighting, struggling.
this is the story of the stubborn man trying to move a mountain. it can never be done, everyone tells him, but the stubborn man will not be told what he can or cannot do. he shifts the mountain everyday till one fine day he could do no more and he died. it CAN be done, he had told himself everyday. yes it can, but it's gonna kill you before that. the stubborn (and now dead) man also did not realise that by moving the mountain, he was merely placing it somewhere else and one day, he or another stubborn person would have to move it again.
fighting, struggling, we do that all our lives but are we gonna win? can we win? perhaps the wisest thing anyone has done was to give up, to rise above it all and realise that we are just here for a ride. enjoy the view but don't bother trying to fight the currents. enjoy it, so when the end comes at least you'll go in peace, knowing that things were actually quite beautiful, a beauty that was never seen by those busy struggling.
it's a beautiful world, but most of the time even i who know of the beauty forget to appreciate it.
on thursday school's finally starting again, and just as well since i'm almost starting to feel stagnant here. the past 4 months of holidays don't even feel half as long as the 4 months i spent studying though.
i haven't done anything noteworthy this holiday, just chilling and enjoying the feeling of doing nothing. back when i was still studying for my exams, there were a ton of holiday plans being thrown around.
australia, bali, phuket, hongkong, taiwan... but in the end nothing came of it and i too didn't really feel the pressing need to go anywhere or else i would have done something about it.
from now till february, it's gonna be my last ever school term so i better enjoy it while it lasts. things are gonna be crazy after that.
it was a dark night as i climbed up onto the parapet outside a stretch of hotel rooms. walking down the line, my partner and i peered into each room through the windows until i came across a woman sitting upright in a sort of crevice in the facade of the building.
was she dead? it was too dark to tell. i signaled my partner to check out the room ahead as i attended to the woman. the window was shattered, that's all i could tell from where i was. i tapped the girl on her cheek and shoulder, but she remained motionless and limp. i thought she was dead.
suddenly my partner ran out of the room and pulled the woman out from the crevice, propping her up in his arms. in the dim light, i could tell that she was his wife and immediately knew some serious shit was going down. he said that his son had been murdered in the room and i guess his injured wife had managed to escape and hid herself there.
he shook her a few times and she slowly came to. she started crying but otherwise seemed unnaturally calm, and i was worried that she would turn hysterical once she realised what had happened. as i was watching her cry, i came under the impression that i was somehow in love with this woman.
i took out my handcuffs and said i wanted to cuff them both together, in case she turned hysterical and tried to do something stupid like jump off the building. they protested at my inhumane actions but i persisted, saying it was for her own good.
i cuffed one of her wrists to one of his and then we helped her up. there was no other exit so we had to walk through the room. i saw the bed was a bloody mess and the wall by the bed was covered in blood too. i had to fight the urge to hug her as we helped her through the room.
out in the corridor, other policemen were arriving at the scene. we walked past a smirking man in plain clothes and the woman suddenly lunged towards him, screaming, but we held her back. i recognised that man as a crooked cop. calm down, we told her. she was probably already a suspect now and attacking the guy wouldn't help things.
we didn't ask, but it seemed obvious that this man was the murderer. how could she walk by and pretend that nothing happened, she asked. "the most important thing now is to secure your position," i said through gritted teeth as we left the area. "and then what?!" she shouted.
i don't believe there's such a thing as 'still being friends' with an ex-lover. once you get past a certain point in your relationship, you really cannot be considered 'friends' any longer.
how can you go back to being friends if you weren't friends to begin with?
i think people want to be friends in order to assuage their guilt, alleviate the pain of separation, a sort of half-life between lovers and nothing.
in the end all it does is to drag this rotting shit on and on, and you can smell the stench every single time you meet this 'friend' of yours.
so one day last week i got so sick of the kids that i just decided to fuck it and sleep. i was awoken from my nap by a group of kids standing in front of me, saying "why is he sleeping here? why are you so tired?"
"ARGH last night i drive taxi, now very tired. GO AWAY DON'T DISTURB ME!" and i closed my eyes again. i could hear them discussing among themselves: "why he drive taxi at night then now still must work here?" "AH I KNOW! I KNOW! must be he very POOR! he need a lot of money!"
afterwards i tried to further drag these little fuckers into my world of lies and deception, offering to drive them home in my taxi after they were done there. they believed me but declined my kind offer. they asked me how old i was and when i told them to guess, there came replies of 21, 29 and 39. WTF?
i told my other colleagues about this stupid story and had a good laugh, and soon i was known as the Taxi Driver to my colleagues and that group of kids. my colleagues continued spreading my taxi driver story, in part because i was late almost every single morning. "last night he drive taxi that's why he's always late."
then earlier this week, a new group of colleagues joined us. half-jokingly, my colleagues told them about my other job as a taxi driver. before long, they were coming up to me asking if i was really a taxi driver... HOW COULD I SAY NO?
i guess partly because they'd feel bad not to believe me in case i was really a poor guy who had to work day and night, and also partly because i'm so good at this shit, or perhaps because there wasn't really any reason not to believe me, but they all did.
some smarter ones asked why did i ride to work everyday if i had a taxi, and i told them i had to pass the taxi to my day-shift partner and ride to work, and then ride over to collect the taxi from him at night. they also asked all sorts of other questions, like if it was scary to drive at night, how long have i been driving, and of course how old i was.
again, i told them to guess and this time it was 23-29. ***i don't really look that old. their estimations were skewed by the knowledge of my taxi-driving. other times people have asked me which poly i was in or if i was waiting for NS.***
on the final day of work, we were leaving the place and some of my new colleagues were hitching a ride on one of their cars. i went to the carpark to get my bike and LO AND BEHOLD, there was a taxi parked right beside his car... HOW COULD I RESIST?
together with my cousin and another colleague, we went up to 'my' taxi. "hey where you guys going?" i asked. "wanna take my taxi? but i charge you by meter!" i took out some keys from my pocket and pretended to open the door. "i'm dropping them off too," i said, referring to my cousin and the colleague with us.
some of them were still alert and asked why was i holding my helmet if my taxi was there. "my night-shift partner has something on later so he left the taxi here. i will get my bike tomorrow." and that convinced them once and for all.
"so who wanna take my taxi?" i asked again. "hurry up if not i'm going off already." finally one of them took the bait. "ok lah you drop me off at jurong?" she asked, as she grabbed her belongings and headed towards my taxi...
"HAHHAHAHAA FUCK YOU ALL, YOU REALLY THINK I'M A TAXI DRIVER?" and we all burst out in hysterical laughter for a good minute, even her friends, everyone except her. later as i was riding off, she stuck her head out of the car window and shouted "RYAN I HATE YOUUUUU!"
it always starts off with a spark. it could be from anywhere, the tiniest of things creating the tiniest of sparks. if it catches, there's still a chance to put out the smouldering embers. stomp it, piss on it, anything, because if you don't act fast enough, it's gonna grow and then all that's left for you is to sit back and watch it burn, burn until it engulfs you.
there was a group of kids in the waiting area making a hell lot of noise and my friend was trying to shut them up. i went over to have a look and found them talking shit to my friend, so i told him to pretend to note down their group number so that the judges can deduct their score.
he pretended to write something on his clipboard and the kids were like "HEYYYYY why you minus our score?" so i told them to shut up or we'll minus their score further. they then continued talking shit to me so i got my friend to 'minus their score' a few more times (don't think they really cared).
after a while we got tired of talking to them little fuckers so i started to leave. my friend told them, "ok i am not going to do anything to you. just sit down here and don't misbehave." one of the little fuckers replied, "but if you are not going to do anything, does that mean that we can misbehave and nothing will happen to us?"