Story!

This is my first attempt at typing out one of my old stories, written when I was in Sec 2. Yes, I was quite a prolific writer then, often writing about my friends, who brought me so much joy. Some of the characters are based on real friends, some are from my imagination, combined with characters plucked from books I've read. I must apologise for the Western names and setting. Back then, very few Singaporean fiction authors were around (maybe Catherine Lim and Adrian Tan? But I hadn't read any of their books yet), and my staple consisted of mostly American and British authors. So anyway, I shall be uploading parts of the story as I go along. I am hoping to transfer all of my pages into soft copy, and hopefully continue the story I left off in JC 1 and give it a proper ending :)

CHAPTER ONE

Sharon Loh gulped as she stepped into the classroom. They were receiving their Year 1 examination results that day and she already felt like she wanted to go to the toilet.

In the classroom, everyone was as rowdy as could be. Boys shouted and laughed, girls giggled and chattered excitedly. She couldn’t believe it.

“Hi!”Julie Ong, her best friend, suddenly appeared out of nowhere. “You look ghastly!”

“Of course, I almost couldn’t sleep last night worrying about my results,” Sharon said. “Why isn’t everybody nervous?”

Julie laughed at the expression on her face. “Not everyone’s like you, Ms Brainy. Now you’ve got to hear about the party. It sounds like a fireball of fun.”

After the long, hard examinations, her class was organizing a party to enjoy themselves and they were planning to make it a school celebration. Almost the whole Junior College was invited and they had even asked the school principal for permission to occupy the school compound on the day of the party. As far as Sharon knew, the principal had granted it. But she knew she wouldn’t be able to think about the party until the results were out.

Just then, Mrs Ho strode into the classroom with a huge stack of papers. Sharon gulped again.

“Good morning, Mrs Ho,” droned the class, standing up.

“Good morning, please be seated,” Mrs Ho took out a hanky to wipe her face. She was a plump lady with a bulbous nose and a warm smile, well-liked by her students. The students sat down with much scraping of chairs.

“As you know, you will be receiving your papers back today, and I will be pleased to tell you that though none in this class has got outstanding results, all of you passed and did well on the average.”

That was not what Sharon wanted to hear. A chatter rose among the students, but soon subsided when Mrs Ho started giving out the papers.

Sharon clasped her hands together and hoped. She was so nervous she could scarcely breathe.

When Julie received her paper, she shut her eyes for a second, then looked. She stared at her paper for a long time. Before Sharon could ask Julie her grades, she received hers and her heart nearly flipped. She took a long time calming herself before looking at the results.

She had an A for everything except History and Art. She heaved a sigh of relief. The weeks of studying had at least paid off. But Sharon knew she was not going to get away from a nagging session. Sharon’s parents had high expectations of her when it came to her studies.

Meanwhile, Julie was still staring at her paper. Sharon had the sudden thought that Julie had somehow scored all A’s and felt a poisonous pang of jealousy. Julie suddenly swirled around. You couldn’t imagine a wider grin.

“I can’t believe it! I scored a B for my English essay! I’m in heaven!” She flung her arms around Sharon in an impulsive hug. In fact, she looked so gleeful that Sharon could've kicked herself for being so small-minded.

Picking up Sharon’s paper, Julie gasped. “Eight As! Wow! That’s super! Congrats!” She pumped her hand enthusiastically. “Come on! Let’s celebrate!”

Gary Teo, who sat behind Sharon, giggled. He was a boy who was definitely on the round side. Giggling was one of his favourite pastimes , usually at nothing. He got along quite well with Sharon and Julie.

“Stop jumping around, you look ridiculous,” he said between giggles.

“Oh yeah, that’s because you’re jealous you can’t do that without causing a mini-earthquake,” Julie teased, still grinning her head off.

“Stupid Charlie,” Gary said quite pompously, wagging her finger at her. He called anybody whom he didn’t like Charlie. That was another of his little habits, which as usual, made no sense.

Sharon smiled at their teasings. They never got tired of it and could never spend a day without snapping a saucy remark at each other. Sharon usually joined them and ended up laughing her head off, but today… She sighed again, glancing at the offending grade sheet. All because she had been best student last year. If she wasn’t, she wouldn’t have cared how may A’s she got. One of life’s ironies.

The bell rang and Mrs Ho dismissed the class. There was an air of gaiety everywhere. Students packed their books, talking with one another. Chairs were pushed in and someone cleaned the blackboard, bringing out clouds of dust.

“Lunch?” Sharon asked listlessly, dawdling over her books.

“Of course, I feel like a Botak Jone’s Supreme Pepperoni Deluxe, chicken wings, cheesy nachos, not to mention a root beer float!” Julie always developed an usual appetite when she was happy. “How about you?”

“I’m not hungry, why don’t you go first?”

“No problem, call me later ok?” Julie bounced out. Sharon smiled at her friend. She always seems so easily happy. While me, I’ve got so much and yet I’m not satisfied. I’m sick.

Feeling all the more miserable, Sharon stepped into the corridor and just started walking. I feel like I could use a Mickey Mouse right now, she thought.

“Sharon!” Someone called her from behind. She turned.It wasn’t Mickey Mouse. It was someone better. It was Winston Chia.

Snubbed!

I went to an old friend's birthday party last night. I mean a really OLD friend. We got to know each other during a French immersion programme in Sec 3, maybe the most memorable trip of my life. It was my first month-long overseas trip with a group of 15-year-olds, away from parents. It comprised a two-week stay at a French correspondant's house and another two weeks travelling around France with the other students. What heaven.

During the trip, six of us became close friends - all of us being from the "non-elite" schools. I guess you could call it selection by elimination :P Four of us formed the core group - two guys and two girls and we used to have heated, long squabbles on the train going to and from French lessons. One guy and myself were "conservatives". We believed in marriage, fidelity, filial piety, loyalty to country, etc etc . Could be our unbringing in a very Chinese school :P The other guy and girl were the complete opposite - believed in free love, cohabitation, etc etc. I shall very innovatively call these two, Liberal Guy and Liberal Girl. Myself and the other guy shall be called “Me” and Conservative Guy :) Besides the four of us, there were another two guys. One could be considered an extremely prim and proper teenager in those days. He would stuff his fingers in his ears when the guys were telling crude jokes, just to illustrate. Even myself, prudish as I was at 15 years old, was not above indulging in a few crude jokes and laughing myself silly. I shall call him Mr Prim-and-Proper. The last guy of our gang was a rich kid who was very laid back and easy-going, but didn't seem to hold very strong views, or at least if he did, didn’t put them across too strongly. He also didn’t have a chance to join us in our ideological debates as he lived on the other side of town (actually he lived in town) and didn't take the train like the rest of us (ah, the benefits of being middle-class). All 5 of us lived in the east. It was to Rich Boy's birthday dinner that I went to.

As I had caught up with Conservative Guy, Mr Prim-and-Proper and Rich Boy 1-2 months ago, one of the highlights of going to this dinner for me was that I would finally get to catch up with Liberal Girl after so many years. I had heard that she was based in another country, China? Russia? Anyway, it was some exotic country, after having left her former job to study, and that she was now leading some exciting life cycling around the world and being super fit. There is also this other little thing between me and Liberal Girl. Back during the French trip and the days taking French together, I had the nagging feeling that she didn't like me much. She was always closer to the other two guys. But I always treated her like a good friend, cos she was one of our gang which was very close. However, I realised halfway that she seemed to have a crush on Liberal Guy, with whom I made the mistake of hooking up with after the French trip. Ok ok, I was young, I was impressionable and being overseas in France with 30 other hormone-charged teenagers didn’t help. Anyway, it seemed very simple. He liked me, I didn’t mind him, so voila! The fact that our world views were as different as black and white didn't cross our minds as being a problem at all. Aah, the recklessness and optimism of youth :) But after the trip, the romantic feelings slowly turned into a strong friendship as we spent more and more time together and really got to know each other beyond the jokes and repartees. He was an intelligent, witty and good-looking guy, but it turned out he was rather needy and we didn’t quite agree what level of intimacy was appropriate at that time. I think we sort of just became good friends, and eventually split up in JC 1. I must say I didn't really mourn the passing of the relationship and after that, I had the distinct feeling that Liberal Girl felt rather sorry for Liberal Guy and thought I was being so very nasty to him and that I didn’t deserve him in the least. I believe I actually heard that from someone!

Anyway, it has been years since then, and I was quite excited to see if she had changed, what she had been up to, and whether she still held the liberal and radical views she did. She was the missing link in the puzzle of our group I wanted to piece together.

Being extremely excited, though more than an hour late (gosh, these Bukit Timah houses), I sat down quite far diagonally from her and at the first pause in conversation around the table, immediately asked her what she has been up to. But I soon realised that the feeling was mutual. The conversation went something like:

"Hi!!! So where are you now???"

"Oh, I'm in Hong Kong." Silence. She stares at me. Isn't she supposed to say more?

"Oh ya ok! I meant where are you working now?"

"A law firm." She looks at me apologetically, like waiting for me to end the conversation.

"Uh-huh" I try not to roll my eyes, "What's the name?"

"It's a British law firm, you won't know it." This was getting weird. This wasn’t supposed to turn into an interrogation, so I stay silent, knowing she would have to say the name at some point.

"It's XXYY." She finally blurts out very quickly. It's true. I couldn't remember it the next second :P

Finally she asks me, are you still at XXYY?

"Yes!" I give her quite a comprehensive run-through of where I've been since we graduated. Then I ask again "So you are a lawyer now?"

"Yeah."

"But you went somewhere to study right?"

"Ya I went to US for a while to study" This other girl chipped in "Hey, where were you were USA?? When were you there? Blah blah blah..." And the two of them started talking very animatedly together. I was completely left out cold. I waited patiently for a while, then realised they were not about to stop anytime soon. Feeling like I was in twilight zone, I turned to talked to the person on my right. The situation repeated itself another 2 more times. Every time the conversation around the table took a breather, I would ask her another question. But the moment she finished her first sentence, the girl would ask another question and the two of them would go into their two-person world. It was so unreal I wanted to make a face at Liberal Girl to say "Isn’t she rude?”. But she didn’t even glance my way.

Sometime through the dinner, I decided that it wasn't worth it. If she didn't want to fill me in the details of her life, so be it. I wasn't going to wrangle it out of her any longer. This was more painful than pulling teeth. So I relaxed and started taking an interest in this other girl sitting opposite me and the girl on my right and we started having our own conversation.

Time flew, and soon it was 1130pm. As we got up to leave, some muttering about church the next day, with phrases like "830 service", Mr Prim-and-Proper offered to send me and Liberal Girl back since we all lived in the same area. In the car, we started talking about the value of marriage (ah, some old topics die hard) and why people get married (never thought I'd ever have to answer that in my life, I mean, isn't it one of those basic things?), and what was happening with her love life, and what was happening with Prim-and-Proper. Then as we were nearing her house, she heard this French song in his car and went beserk with excitement and asked him to send her the song. Then she realized she didn’t have his email address and started saying we should exchange hp nos and emails. All three of us whipped out our hps. Then she keyed in the guy's hp no and email, sent him an sms on the spot and got out of the car. I was quite shocked. What about me? Thankfully I already had her hp no and email, but she never really gave it to me. I got them from mutual friends.

Anyway, these few incidences left me feeling rather wounded. I realised anew that she really didn't like me, having been snubbed three or four times in a night, a first in a very long time!! But as I thought it over in my head, I realized this wasn’t going to change the way I feel about her. To me, she’s still a good friend. I guess that’s what friendship is all about isn’t it? There will always be friends you treasure more than they treasure you, and instead of moping about it and blaming them, I guess I should count it fortunate that I value them so much.

The Value of Rest

Ahh... I am amazed at what half a day off from work can do for me. Yesterday morning I woke up with a mysterious large lump of phlegm in my throat that I managed to get out with a loud hack. It really surprised me, as I had been feeling perfectly fine until then. Then as the rest of the day progressed, and as the pace of work picked up, I started blowing my nose more and more, and sniffling miserably as I worked.

Today I seriously contemplated taking a day off from work, but there was too much to be done, so I went to office anyway. Miraculously, I managed to finish most of the urgent things on my to-do list, and left at about 1pm to go to see a clinic near my house. But the strange thing was, the further and further I got away from office, I found myself calming down and looking forward to half a day off from work! Then i decided to pop into Tampines Library to look for a book... which resulted in my trotting around Tampines 1 bookstore and buying that Sophie Kinsella book that has been eluding me for so long :) Then I settled with a happy sigh into a restaurant called "Say Cheeze" and started reading the book, and before long, I was chuckling aloud to myself as I flipped the pages. She manages to be so funny :) If I were to ever write any fiction, I want to write funny fiction!

Anyway, as I finished with the minestrone soup and baked rice and moved on to the nice cup of coffee, I felt myself feeling better and better, and I noticed I had not blown my nose nor felt groggy and stuffy in my head in a long time. I feel perfectly fine! In fact, I feel so well, I think I'm not going to see a doctor.

And on my way home, I popped into that posh-looking Urban Write stationary store I have been so curious about and never had the time to get there before closing time, and buy a blue scrungee to replace the one I lost... And as I let myself into my home at 4 plus, I still had time to pack up the mess of clothes on the sofa, and send off a few quick emails to cell that have been outstanding (never managed to find the strength to log on after work)... Ahh.... The luxury of some time off from work :) It's magical.

A Virtuous Cycle of Work

There is something I have been reflecting a lot about these past two weeks - and it is is excellence. I feel truly inspired when I encounter people who are excellent in their areas of work – be it a singer, an actor, a speaker, a writer, a civil servant, a cook, a waiter etc etc. It makes me realise the best that area was meant to be (music, policymaking, managing, influencing). These are usually people who do not treat their work as a drudgery, but treat each piece of work as if it were the last piece of work they will do and give it their all. I felt this keenly when I had the privilege and pleasure of meeting several such people a few weeks ago, one after another. I met a team of worship leaders who composed such beautiful songs I truly thought they were Hillsongs songs (snippets found at http://www.lighthouse.org.sg/light_the_way.asp), I met someone who manages his time so well and yet pushes the envelope constantly in terms in his work. I met an energy efficiency expert from USA who was extremely jet lagged (he worked on slides from 230 – 430am the night before) and yet appeared fresh and enthusiastic as a puppy when he delivered his talk. He must be pretty old, he has a head of white hair! I was truly amazed. I must have stared at him with my mouth agape for a good part of his talk because I could not believe my eyes – here was an elderly man, who not only must be dead tired and delivering this talk for the umpteenth time (he is also adviser to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s team and sits on many other committees), but he is as crisp and clear and engaging and fervent as ever. I told myself, when I am old, I want to be like that. Not something I get to tell myself often, mind you J When we meet such “work” mentors in our lives, treasure them.

This epiphany of sorts also came at a time when work was becoming a bit of a drudgery for me. I found myself lamenting to people around me the seeming lack of correlation between hard work and rewards at my workplace, and how many of colleagues were already taking the easy way out and deciding to ‘slack’ as much as they could get away with. After all, we all get the same pay anyway and the boss is too busy to notice us. And as I went along this trajectory, I started to see my work as just something to get done during the office hours, like a robot of sorts, and my life really starts after work. However I realised how this sort of thinking ironically made me value my work even less, and as I put in minimal effort, and cared less if I submitted things which were lackadaisical, I took less pride in work and work seemed even more of a drudgery!

As I was attending a worship service, images of such people excelling in every field kept flitting through my mind. I don’t know why. But I realized what makes me happy is excellent work. And I believe that deep down, everyone does. There is that sense of satisfaction when we have done a good job of something, whether it is something as simple as cleaning the house, to creating a piece of prose, to creating a set of powerpoint slides (yes we all know the “just throw the text up on bullet points” sort of slides, which is really the last resort and is really not that inspiring to look at). I realized there is a vicious cycle, and a virtuous cycle at work in work :P. When I put in my 100% to anything I am doing, and I tell myself to do a good job of it, cos it is something worthwhile, it brings a sort of positive energy and time flies, and my mind is engaged (instead of ‘switched off’), and work becomes what it was always meant to be. Of course, we should beware the other extreme (which I have also experienced) of caring so much about work that it consumes our every thought and it squeezed out other important things in life. That is not healthy as well. But I am talking about putting in that effort, to do a good job, and that immense satisfaction when we produce that good piece of work we are proud of. I call it “the virtuous cycle of excellence”. Just put in 100% to something you don’t really like, and strangely, I believe we will start liking it!

Rock and Opera

Somehow, I like to listen to rock music when I am feeling slightly blue or down about life. I think rock music has its roots in jadedness with life, reality, frustration and bittersweet feelings. Yet the songs do not end up completely wallowing in self-pity or dejection (some love songs do that), choosing instead to vent the frustrations by singing about reality in all its brokenness, with no apologies, and a bit of rebelliousness and heck-care attitude thrown in.

Sometimes it is just so good to let our hair down, put aside all the politically-correct language aside and tell reality like it is. I think that is why I like rock. After all the fizzy frothy pop songs that sing about love in a mono-dimensional way, usually focusing on just ONE facet of emotion (e.g. "I should be so lucky", i.e. why can't I get lucky and my dream guy just falls in love with me, or "I love your smile", i.e. as it's namesake, or "longer than", i.e. I have been in love with you super long, or "Would I lie to you", i.e. I wouldn't lie to you! But sung in that cheeky smooth way that makes you doubt it), and the snappy rap songs, that sing mostly about nothing but have their funky beat and irrepressible catchy rhythm that makes you want to get up and dance and more than makes up for their lack of content and depth... gosh I lost my train of thought. Also, I realised I really love some of these songs!

Oh ok, I guess after frothy pop and funky rap, which tend to be happy, sometimes I need a bit of gritty rock music to make me feel human again, cos life is not all rosy and peaches. On those days when things don't go well, I'm too tired to find out who's at fault, to think too much about it, rock music just helps me channel my malaise out somewhere, for the time being. Of course, one can't depend on rock music to solve problems. One would just end up being permanently angry and rebellious and jaded about the world. One uses another tool for that-- like faith, for me. When my heart has stopped beating erratically, my stomach settled down from its churning (my poor organs) and my rolling emotions have worked their way out of my system, I then turn to God to see what He says about the situation. But when I am in the throes of my emotion, when I am indignant and angry about the way things are in the world, then singing or listening to a rock song just gives vent to how I feel deep down inside.

I think there is a time for everything. There is a time to grieve, to be angry, to be sad, as long as we have a healthy way to work through these emotions, without harming anybody, and we ultimately come up with constructive ways of addressing these problems. I am quite an angst individual, I must say. Being calm and happy all the time just eludes me!

I tried listening to opera as I was doing work (at home) the other day, eager to try out my new opera CDs I bought in Berlin. However all I got was a headache. I think opera and concentration on arguments don't mix. One needs focus to enjoy opera - especially as it is in a different language and we need to focus on the intonation of the voice to appreciate the emotions. But I do think opera is one of the rich forms of music adept at conveying emotion.

Running with the Swift

I recently encountered two "alpha males" in my course of work, and it was an eye-opening experience. Both of them exuded zest and alacrity in their actions (as opposed to lethargy, apathy and various states of zombification), displayed a positive and 'can do' attitude towards things, that was so refreshing amidst a growing sense of negativity and complaints of people around me, a curious mind and a breezing disregard for superficial objections by people who say it cannot be done. Both were focused, driven, and absorbed in the task they were doing, and respectful of the different talents in their team (perhaps to varying degrees). They both described the end goal in such inspiring, lofty terms, that the people around them who were still mulling over the large amount of work that had to be done (and some never rise beyond that), were left feeling slightly- yes, inspired. Of course, being alpha males, there was a certain amount of one-up-manship, varying displays of (reckless) bravado and competition, of jockeying for space, but I could not help observing how the sheer power of their drive had a cascading effect of setting the people around them into motion as well, to be more "present", more engaged, in short, more alive.

I once read a book that said the way to keep one's passion was to be with passionate people, or like-minded, kindred souls. When I read it, I did not fully understand the point and even scoffed at it. How could that be a key factor in keeping one's passion? Surely a passionate person who has a clear vision could stay perfectly driven and passionate even when he or she was surrounded by people who were otherwise? But perhaps there is some truth in it after all.

The human psyche is such that we run with the herd. You know how people say it takes a long time to break one record, but once it is done, many others go on to break it? We tend to observe the people around us, and to model after them sub-consciously, in speech, in thought, in action. Knowing this, we should probably: (i) watch our speech and conduct carefully, as there is surely a knock-on effect on others, perhaps more than we realise, and (ii) we should be mindful of the people we are with, as we may be emulating them unknowingly.

Of course not everyone has the priviledge to be with people who inspire us, or who are excellent in what they do. But if we do, this certainly goes a long way in stretching our horizons, stoking our imagination, spurring us to reach further than we would have done ourselves. If we are with people who are going in the right direction, we tend to follow suite. And vice versa. Not by our sheer individual effort, but by the mere drifting along with the crowd. It is a scary thought.

Jokes repository

I have come across quite a few funny jokes these 2 days and I thought I should write them down to cheer myself up in future before they get lost in the hazy recesses of my memory:

From questionable analogies:
The sun rose over the horizon like a great big radioactive baby's head with a bad sunburn, but then again it might just have been that Lisa was always cranky this early in the morning

Losing is like fertilizer: it stinks for a while, then you get used to it.

Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.

John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

The thunder was ominous-sounding, much like the sound of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene in a play.

His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

Joke about ladies and diplomats
When a lady says "no", she means "maybe".
When she says "maybe", she means "yes".
When she says "yes", she's no lady!

When a diplomat says "yes", he means "maybe".
When he says "maybe", he means "no".
When he says "no", he's no diplomat!