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You know how some songs just come on the radio,
songs you haven't heard in so long you forgot you remembered the lyrics until you started singing along.
And you felt young again.
You remembered how life was simpler back then when you first heard that song.
You think about how the song used to be just another catchy tune,
but now you hear the lyrics and feel a certain way the younger you never could have felt.
And you wonder what else in your life you could have forgotten,
forgotten until the day someone or something jolts you out of your slumber.
And it's like nothing has ever changed,
and you wonder how you could have forgotten.
Caught Toy Story 3 and Inception.
Wasn't planning to watch Toy and didn't expect anything but I was pleasantly surprised. Gotta love those short clips at the start of the movie.
As for Inception, I heard so much hype about it, going on about how it was a really smart movie and such. I don't know if I am too stupid to get the deepness of it or what, but it was just ok to me. Actually almost fell asleep towards the end of the show. Not that it wasn't exciting, but after a while... It was kinda repetitive. Explosives, kicks, Molly...
Oh well.
More hype, more expectations, more disappointments.
Should stop putting things on pedestals.
On a sidenote, Dan was hiding behind the potato chips and squealing and giving free commentary every now and then. hahah. Hilarious.
Sometimes, I make an opinion about someone based on whether they hold the doors and let me exit the lift first.
Sometimes, I wonder if I judge too quickly.
"I think in our rush to argue and dissent these days, we have lost the art of listening. By that, I mean listening to truly understand the other person, not listening to agree or disagree, but simply listening to understand. "
Excellent article on what it means to listen:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/russell-bishop/self-help-personality-are_b_650627.html
"It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
"A good listener tries to understand what the other person is saying. In the end he may disagree sharply, but because he disagrees, he wants to know exactly what it is he is disagreeing with."
- Kenneth A. Wells
"Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen."
- Winston Churchill
Ok.
Submitted my FYP and design project choices.
Now it's up to fate.
Something I learnt today -
While it is nice to have someone around,
it doesn't mean we should just settle for anyone.
I wish she could see that.
Our rare few squad outings! Funny how we only seem to meet up many years (3-4?) after our graduation.But I am glad we did. Nothing seems to have changed much ((:After going through tonnes of crap with a bunch of people for 4 years, there's nothing much we have not seen of each other. Anyhow,we met at city hall to grab some snacks at carrefour, before heading to marina barrage for kite flying!But so much for that.We had 2 kites, one of which FLEW AWAY after 15-20 minutes while the other one broke before even leaving the ground.HAHA. Epic.So we ended up sitting on ponchos (reminiscent of good old nco camp days) and eating away.And cam whoring.And somehow we had the luck of catching some ndp rehearsal action!Airplanes, night sky and fireworks!After which, we WALKED all the way to marina bay mrt (managed to get there faster than the bus. accomplishment of the day) and ate dinner at 85.Cool night for a walk and wonderful food and company all around.Hilarious how the settling of dinner money became a game of pass the coins. Combined with some screaming at each other on whether to use notes, coins or ibank over amounts like 50cents and $1.Pictures on FB!On the way home, sihui and I talked about worklife (been doing a lot of that to many different people) and I made her promise to pull me in if she ever want to start an events company.I am increasingly suffocated by office life. People tend to either work for money or meaning. And now, there's neither meaning or money to my job.But then again, we agreed that we probably shouldn't plan so far lest the world ends in 2012.On a random sidenote, I am addicted to this song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uelHwf8o7_U
Dishwalla's songs are just so melancholic and nostalgic.
Angels and Devils
"The angels they burn inside for us
The devils they burn inside of us
I'm always gonna worry about the things that could make us cold"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQLbYvjG_j8
Candleburn
"Take me over when I'm gone
Take me over make me strong
Take me over when I'm gone
Will they burn for me"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjfpyiyVQ00&feature=related
1 July
Met up with someone. I don't know why but I am controllably irritated whenever that happens.
Maybe it was the things that someone said, maybe it was the way someone said it.
Maybe it's me.
Till I figure it out, I don't think I can meet with someone again.
5 July
Dinner at the Wongs' house with Junil.
Love that girl. Everytime we hang out, it's like 3 years ago, when life was simpler.
She's the type of person I know I probably will never met again as the world turns ugly, and is the type of person I wish I am lucky enough to know more of.
She is the eptiome of the real friendship we make when we are young and lament about for the rest of our lives why adult relationships can't be the same.
Anw, I digress.
We happily ordered pizza to the wongs' place, only to realise we ordered enough for 6-8 people when there were only going to be 4 of us o_O
But food was good and company was great.
I was amused at how everything in the house had to be fold-and-hide, so that after dinner, the table and chairs were immediately cleared and folded and tucked behind the sofa and hidden at every corner of the house. Ah well.. Condos.
Drank some awful sounding Mini Tuo tea (which kept me up for a while), had an evening walk and it was home sweet home.
It may well be another year before another gathering like this will take place again.
Till then (:
25 June
Dinner with MY. Had quite a nice time eating pizza at Pasir Ris Park sometime ago so decided to do it again.
Mistake.
Got attacked by some flying stuff and I think I am getting too old for stuff like these (last time it was night cycling, now this.. sigh).
It was kinda difficult to eat pizza while sitting on a metal pole trying not to fall, keeping an eye for aiai, prevent flying stuff from eating my pizza and talking.
Shall stick to a restaurant next time.
Just when we finally got throught the multi-tasked dinner, MY had to clean up aiai's crap (literally).
And almost gave me a heart attack when she was dumping all the rubbish away.
She encountered a cockroach and shrieked so loudly at the exact moment I was trying to pick aiai to save her from stepping into (probably bugs infected) soil that I thought I accidentally murdered her in the process
Drama drama.
Needless to say, we left.
But had a nice long chat in the car at her MY's void deck.
She's now happily spreading horror stories about my internship dept people to her friends while I am tasked to slap her if she ever turns out like that.
Or maybe I am just supposed to remind her, not slap her. Hmm.. Nvm, not that important =D
30 June
Dinner with MY at Kenny Rogers. I think I am going to swear off the food there for a while.
Their clam chowder in the bread thingy? I don't think it's designed to be finished.
I should swear off overeating. Period.
Stupid.
The freaking problem behind all the internet fiasco?
A loose cable at Singtel.
What can I say?
C.U.I.
I am slowly going blind ):
And while the spec shops salesgirl was fixing up my 3rd pair of contacts since 2007,
she told me some interesting stuff.
I don't really know if she remembers me (or just referred to my records and looked at the years or something) but we started talking about how fast time was passing by.
How I was almost graduating and how she used to be the youngest and freshest girl in the shop.
But now, it's no longer the case for her, having been there for 7 years.
I can't judge since I don't know her all that well, nor anything about her dreams or vision of her life,
but I felt for her.
I can't imagine myself working in a spec shop (nor in my office now for that matter) for 7 years and not having something to show for it.
Schooling have trained me to achieve grades and certificates, and I think I am addicted to those little tokens.
But work is never to going to be all that clear cut, is it?
Everytime I whined about work to my mom and how tragic working life appears for everyone (the office people, those hawker aunties and uncles frying things night and day, weeks after weeks after months...) and all she tells me is how work is work, and money needs to be made. As if it is an absolute truth. An unchangable fact of life.
I don't believe that.
I once had a colleague back at MOE who talked about how he, like all young people, wanted to change the world at some point in their life, only to realise, as they aged, that it was never really going to happen. That the job they end up doing is probably not going to be all that great nor inspirational.
I heard that when I was 19.
And I didn't believe that.
I thought to myself "what a sad man", and believed that I WAS one day, going to change the world.
3 years on, I still believe that.
But I am not getting any closer to it, nor do I have any plans to get closer to it.
Closing on 22, the one-day-I-will-do-it is now.
Suddenly the job I had secured 3 years ago seems a burden, a weight, an anchor tying me down.
I've heard stories, seen people (in real and reel life) lament about a life gone by, things undone, a time passed by.
Suddenly, 4 years seems too long.
I will most certainly get by, learn things, pick up experiences.
But what if I forget how to live?
4 years in my twenties are not going to be the same as any 4 years in my fourties or sixties.
I have a list of things I want to do this holiday and I realised with a crashing revelation that I haven done half of them, and holidays are inevitably coming to an end.
What if this becomes the story of my life?
As the salesgirl went on to tell me about the pros and cons of hard lenses (which will prevent me from going blind),
she told me about a theory her christian friend had.
I once had a theory about why time goes by faster as we aged (I probably mentioned it some blog posts ago), but her friend thought differently.
Her friend believed that the seemingly faster pace at which time passes by is a sign of the end of the world.
My first thought was "hmmm, in that case, maybe I don't really need new contacts after all".
But I told the salesgirl not to think too much, lest it leads to madness, and we laughed it off.
And though it was a very short conversation, it was the first real conversation I had all day.
All day long I was in a real estate course, surrounded by people from my company, and every single one of them were passionate and excited about the real estate market, the cycle, the trends, the money.
I don't know all that much about these things, and I realised I couldn't really care (guess where all the abovementioned doubts about my future job came from).
All these things seem really, for the lack of a better word, shallow.
They are not really going to matter when the world (or our lives, whichever first) ends, is it?
All day long I was talking to people I (increasingly realised) didn't really care about, about things I didn't care about.
A working scholar told me at the end of the course that despite all her complaints, our company is not all that bad, it was only just as bad as any other.
The job I was once looking forward to, is now, just another job.
I don't really feel like I belong.
Then again, where do I belong.
Is my dear old mom right?
My belief is wavering.
But I certainly hope not.
People are so strange.
They blame a sea creature for the fall of a great football nation.
Actual news headlines - "Psychic squid betrays Berlin by sucking up to Spain in World Cup"
??
Maybe we can now push the blame for global warming, terrorism, economic crisis, oil spills, flooding, vandalism all onto the squid.
Then make sushi with it.
Then our problems will all disappear!
-----
What do you mean no?
*scratches head*
Chronicles of the screw-up:
29 June: Internet down. Decide to be optimistic and wait a day.
30 June: Call singtel. After waiting for 10 minutes to hear an actual human's voice, troubleshooting for 30 minutes (seriously, have these troubleshooting EVER work?), the helpline guy gave up and asked me to change the phone cable and call back if it doesn't work.
30 June (after changing cable): DOES NOT WORK (duh). Too pissed and tired to call back.
1 July: Call back. Demand for technical staff to come and fix the damn thing. Freaking person doesn't believe I've tried all their troubleshooting crap and asked me to hold so she "can clarify".
Satisfied with her check, freaking person informs me technical staff can only come on Monday.
I damn near had a fit.
2-4 July: No freaking internet.
5 July, morning: Technical staff comes and tells my brother what the problem is - our internet line is cut off.
WTH? WHY IS IT CUT OFF? And couldn't ALLLLLLL the staff at singtel told me this in the FIRST FREAKING PLACE?
5 July, noon: Call singtel. staff confirms (after I believe 45 minutes, with more than half of it just holding) that our line is NOT cut off.
5 July, afternoon: Internet still not working.
Wait till I get them at night. Enough shit is enough.
Despite the lack of internet,
I managed to spend the entire weekend doing nothing more than
playing l4d, reading harry potter, watching tv,
and snoozing.
I think this is how your life pass you by without you knowing it.
But I made a little revelation about my life.
I am not going to spend it in an office.
The internet in my house is down down down down...
Curse you Mio.
I would actually need to find a way to go through a weekend without internet.
At the risk of sounding like a typical young adult in spoilt, new-age generation, I really can't remember the last time that happened to me.
Maybe I'll clean my room.
Then again, maybe I'll busy myself with the outdated (gasp) PS2.
On a side note, I need to stop overeating and blowing tonnes of cash in the process.
And I really need my phone to stop ringing.
