Growing up is awfuller than all the awful things that ever were

Everyone around seems to be doing grown-up things, they've got lands, status and people under their portfolio. Everyday's conversation cannot be divorced from the buzz of stocks, shares, properties, renovations and/or babies. You've gotta be on the tracks to the league of the 125,000 millionaire households (and counting) in SG or of making smart-ass babies. If not both.

At this age, everyone around are grown-up. They are... ermm... THERE, there doing the adult-y things. Everyone's building their great empires, and they are doing it as if most naturally. It is instinctive for the adults, I guess. Soon, they will be sipping wine and waltzing on their high thrones, looking at the next horizon.


So here I stand, on my bald little turf, pretending to be, but feeling oddly ill-adjusted to that instinct. I have my secret cravings for Ribena to replace the tannic wine in the wine glass I've been shoved. I have no gazing tower so I tip-toe to see what might lie beyond. I guess I must have not explored, discovered or played enough. I have acquired none of the grown-ups' instinct. I must have skipped some steps in life unwittingly.

Beneath my feets are fine sand whilst my peers stand atop their skyscrapers. In my head, there's just wondering if I will ever even see a lawn blossom. I am (still!) standing on my little brown patch hoping for some pretty daffodils to sprout under my feet one day.


Part of me actually find some occassional sense of zen in my laurel, bare though it may be. The dreadful thing: I am also of full consciousness that time's running out on me.

But geez, what do I do? Growing up is awful.

Out of sort

I have been feeling out of sort recently. Actually, I think it has been too long, I can't say it was that recent....


If we need our soul to be aligned to the head to function, I guess my soul must have been half dangling from my physical body, hanging dearly for its breath as I plod along... and for too long. I think the soul is getting asphyxiated.


The condition became evident when I caught eye of someone familiar from afar while shopping the other day. I walked towards her, as she did towards me. My mind a blank, I was frantically trying to make out who she was, while I brave on with a smile. (Yes, for some funnny reasons, I am able to cast exasperations and soldier on life in the most natural looking freshness while stale within. hah!)

She smiled back. It was the same anxiety as in the examination room when I stared at the questions with the brain's HDD and processor jammed at just the right time, in uncanny sync.


Then I got too close.


I banged myself into the mirror just as I opened my mouth to say hi.


Yea.. I guess I must have looked like a narcissist who cannot stop smiling at her own image. But the difference is the narcissist knows herself, bending over to admire herself clearer. But me? I just cannot recognise myself until I recognised the mirror. No kidding.... geez... Am I a mental case?

So blame me not if I have missed out anything recently. If I can miss out on myself, I guess I can be forgiven for missing out on any other thing... Need to tack the soul back to the body before (horrors of horrors!) I smile at the monkey and next try to say hi...

Little things to be thankful for

Life sux big time. Can't label myself an achiever even up to this age, seemingly good things elude me to my utter perplexity (still!), and there seemed a zillion things to be done at the back of my head but I can't seem to pin point what they are. Worse: it bothers nobody.

I have been good, haven't I? (alright, not the best, i confess)



Then there came nice little gestures - a warm colleague who would go to her neighbour's to pluck out a custard apple for me just because the suah-ku me know not what it is...
*

Well, I guess there are nice little things in life too, the niceties amplified because there just aren't enough of them... I ought to be thankful because I get to appreciate a little thought which might otherwise have been glossed over.
*
*

Table for One

Craving for some indulgence yesterday, I texted a few friends to asked if anyone's available for dinner today. From colleagues whom I thought will never say no to food, to long time primary school friends (yes, can see how desperate I was looking for dinner company!), I found no one to oblige me. Everyone had some appointments or tasks of some sort scheduled on their advanced lives, I am so left behind...

Geez... I think it will get worse with age. There will be less people left who can spare the time...

Is this a little biz idea for a quaint little cafe called "Table for One"?

*

Feb 1st Ramble

Life must be a comfort when there's company alongside while the clouds fly by. I seem to find myself blurred when I looked beside and found no-one there. Everyone else seems to be either ahead or otherwise, and I seemed to be treading on a different realm..

Alright, I guess it is okay to be swinging on a different orbit, but not when it is being beset by wild, thoughtless expectations from a different course. Geez... I feel the need to be unleashed from the field of conflicting forces. Well, I guess I am not looking for any wanton runaway. Just needed to be freed from the stifling air, and sit somewhere grounded, to chill and watch the clouds float by...
+

The New Year

Every year, TS would drop cheeky Christmas jingles she'd compose in reply to my greetings. This year, it was sorely missed and I dropped her a text to ask howdy. A day after, she replied to tell of how stressed she was without all the nurses and assistants. All of them were coincidentally either out on planned or emergency leave for the week. Imagine the dentist taking queue number, rummaging for info cards, digging teeth with drills, and replying my text... I cannot quite imagine the picture, but I guess I can imagine the stress. WH also texted a day after Christmas with news of coming down with chicken pox over the festive season. It must have been dreadful.

The good thing is that his text this afternoon was more cheery, and he is anticipating himself to be up and out by the weekends. It has been a week, and I guess TS must have had her nurses and aides back by now...

Retrospectively, it did not seem a bad idea that the lousy experiences were bore over and left in 2009. It seems to make the step into the new year sweeter and more hopeful. Almost like how the financial market is inching towards a new high at the year's end. It seemed like a struggle, but it's pushing the heights. A stark contrast to the dumps it was in earlier in the year...

Earlier in December, I met up with E* for dinner, and he commented that I have not been updating the blog. Aside from having been caught by a little depression bug, being caught up with work and getting stressed over not being disciplined enough with my self-study, I have in reality, been logging in to read the updates of other people's blog entries. I was stumped in awe by the dazzlingly blissful lives people are living. As I surfed past my supposedly-dazzling 29th with sad realisation that I have lived the last (one year short of) three decades of my life without much sheen, I was tempted once again to whine and gripe. However, I am kinda resistance to jot another moan and groan.

Well, 2009 has not been life's best dream for me, but it has been pretty experiential, i guess. Minutes into the new year, I am still wondering what kind of road I am treading on, and what is in store for me.

A month or so ago, I was listening to some online sermon and was reminded that the God that I had vowed to put my trust in is a God who makes no mistakes (I mean, that is but of course la, if not, it would have been a mistake, isn't it? But I am that lousy, faithless little human..). And while I leaf through some wedding sheets and cards to help sis's friend find some appropriate wedding songs, I came across Terch's wedding invite many years ago inscribed with the beautiful quote saying "Life's coincidences are God's planned miracles". Faithless was I, but He was and is still in control. I guess these are little knock-knock-hellos on my head to look up and remember...

Entering into the new year, I am glad that I can count the little blessings that I have been bestowed with in the midst of the little storms and gales that I underwent through the year. The new friend I've made who would pray for me, the old-time friendships reconnected (Sab and Tuan who would hear my stories with no slightest impatience or criticism but words of encouragement) and rekindled (thanks, jeff for being able to be so frank and tell me straight in the face how ghor-tuck i am... appreciate the honesty, really!), and the old bulwarks who had stood by, being a constant company to the theatres, dinners, teas and chats (muacks, Hong!), and bearing my nonsenses - like obliging me in my long old grandmother's stories that finds no conclusion every once in a while and exploring unchartered territories for cakes and scenes! (thanks, E*! The evening was fun! Can we do that again? Heh..)

Yea, I had my share of depressive and abnormally imbalanced times, but i can't seem to remember what had exactly gone wrong. Yea.. talk of about selective amnesia... All that would come to mind now is how I have been kept on the look-out. Didn't sound too bad that the wretched past in 2009 can be left behind and I can step into the new 2010 on a better footing. Sure, I can do without some episodes and mistakes, but some things are like chickenpox, I guess - one just gotta get through and be over with it.

Glad that I can leave certain things in 2009, and I am contented for the willing instruments of blessings. It's another new year (arghh!! how time is flying by!), but I guess there are things that need no change... heh...

Eh... I meant more blessings... Heh... Toast to the new year! =)
*
*

Loved not, Love lots

If ever I have kids of my own, I will make sure they are hugged and told that they are so lovely everyone will love them. The loved kid(s) will grow up loved, love and be loved. Why would anyone want to keep being told in one way or another that they are never loveable enough to have anyone really love them?
*
*

Outside the Hubbub Bubble

Everyone's caught up with something.

Busy, busy, is their common name. Everyone has activities galore. Seems like I am the only one outside the hubbub bubble, watching the bubbles float by.... . like this:

*

Hi, Saturday High

Met up Hong (she's looking prettier each time I see her! Wish I am too...), went to catch The Hossan Leong Show at the Drama Centre, had a good laugh, unexpectedly won a year's supply of frolick yoghurt during the show for sitting at the circles 2, GG14 seat (just as I was wondering if it is only the people who are in the stall seats get to win anything), took a photo with the standup comedian himself (up close & personal!), got shoved with two Maquillage lip gloss samples with an assortment of shades at Bugis, got tickets to Beauty and the Beast next month, grills, salads & devil's fudge cake at Cedele (yummilicious!), yakked and bitched about work (in the chill ambience), shopped (although without harvest), poked fun at obscenely dressed muscle-men, and got a much-needed esteem booster from spotting a cute guy (so there are actually still eligible looking guys out alone on Saturday evenings!) at Times bookshop whose gaze followed me after I sauntered past him at the shelves all the way to my exit from the store...

I suddenly hate full stops. I think I am on some high and I wonder if it was the good company, the day's program or the doubly whammy chocolate fudge in the cake...

How I wish every Saturday is as such.
*
*

The (Occasional) Sunday Brunch partner

It's nice to have someone to do Sunday brunch with after too many weeks of turning into a perpetual hermit. I may not click with everyone on the street, but I do love being in good company. Sure, there have been litters of texts now and then, but there weren't always replies... With some people, I am still excited by face-to-face exchanges.

*

I have lost count of the number of weeks we have not met and I wonder if it was because of this long absence, that it seemed the conversations needed more efforts to get going. The synergy was a tad retarded, and at some point, in intermittence. We were almost like awkward teenagers on first dates, not knowing what to expect and needing more time to respond (or was it just me?)... All the things I thought I would ask and tell through these weeks dissolved from my thought bubble just when I most needed them.

There even came an instance when silence ballooned for almost too long, and we were found literally staring at each other, eyeball to eyeball, under the dim brown lights across the oak brown table. For a while, it was awkwardly uncomfy. Then funnily, we smiled bigger at each other and broke the mute with a laugh. Consequently, one of us (can't remember who did, but probably not me though) mastered a question, releasing the paralyzing acupoints, and we went on again, idly chatting about work, old school-times and of things seen and heard.

Back in my solitude, that moment of silence replayed... I wonder why I was looked at like that and if I had missed any significance that was perhaps being transpired. Or perhaps, I am just imagining too much - as usual. Logic is awry here. I am befuddled. Can't quite figure a good conclusion of the event sequence. Ah well, don't try then, I guess. I will just be a faithful good Sunday brunch partner whenever hunger seizes and there are no other appointments in line....

Food was great at The Old Brown Shoe though, and chill ambience too, where we were seated. I walked out of the place and found myself smelling really nice from the refreshing flowery fragrances that they infused the air with. As was with our last two brunches (Simply Bread in Cluny Court and Kenny Rogers in Novena Square), I like the choice of food place by my (occasional) Sunday brunch partner.

*

*