Friday 30 November 2007

sometimes
i wish i didn't know the things i know now. things about life, people, the world. sometimes i wish i didn't know that hearts (including mine) could be broken so easily, by what would seem to others to be the slightest, most cursory of things.

sometimes i wish i lived in a world where paddington was real and we believed in winnie-the-pooh and were willing to take time off from our busy lives to traipse in the hundred acre wood. they're two of my all time favourite characters in books - they're not just bears, mind you. sometimes i think they have more sense than the people i encounter in real life - or humans in books, my post about grown-ups who refuse to believe in magic being a case in point.

"Paddington wasn't quite sure about the spelling of itinerary, but though he had looked through all the 'E's in Mr Brown's dictionary the night before he hadn't been able to find it anywhere. On the whole, Paddington wasn't surprised. He didn't think much of dictionaries and he often found that when he wanted to look up a particularly difficult word it was nowhere to be found."

he just went ahead and spelt it "eyetinnery." and why not? it sounds enough like 'itinerary' when you say it. it was good enough for him, it was the best he could manage, and more importantly it seems that it was enough for everybody else.

sometimes i wonder if i'm running away from Growing Up (sometimes is also a song from britney spears' first album, and look where she is now) because i re-read the adventures of paddington and winnie-the-pooh every so often, along with all the other children's books in my bookcase, most of which have cracked spines. i don't think i am, but sometimes (especially in recentimes) it has gotten pretty overwhelming, and i've felt nauseous, like i was drowning, because there were just too many things to do. and i think, at these times, i should turn to my bible and to God, but sometimes it's just easier to read about pooh and piglet catching heffalumps. i'd like to think God divinely inspired a.a. milne too.

sometimes i wish i wasn't equally guilty of making assumptions and jumping to conclusions about other people, of judging them, really, but don't we all? and sometimes, just sometimes, i wish that was a valid excuse. excuses aren't ever quite valid though, you think?

***
i lay on my bed last night looking at the ceiling, beginning paddington abroad for the umpteenth time. scrawled on the inside front page in a childish hand are the words "This is hereby the property of cockroach eye. Bought at Foyles, 26th Nov 1997 London Heathrow. If lost, please call 469-3012."

that was when - i can't even remember why - i was cockroach eye to my friends, kak chuar yan. when i didn't know that you flew to london heathrow because heathrow was the name of the airport, not that the full name of the city of london was london heathrow. a time when singaporean telephone numbers didn't begin with '6'.

i turned off the light after the first bit of the first chapter, surprised that i felt so chillax about the impending exam, a little sad that this semester was going to be over at 1100 on thursday - with a chinese paper, nonetheless - and it had been a rather weird-ass semester. 'weird-ass' is the only way to describe it because it went by so fast, almost like it didn't quite happen at all. and yet i know it did because i remember rui's everlasting packets of japanese and/or korean seaweed, our endless chastising "GET OFF FACEBOOK/MSN/WHATEVER YOU'RE DOING NOW AND STUDY!" - usually over said medium. and i remember all of our daily groans (whines) whenever lunch or dinner time came round because we usually ended up eating cai fan; the seemingly never-ending evidence lectures, and how when p*nsler announced that it was the last one it was like i was waking up from a long sleep and i didn't quite know where the hours before had went; how we said at the beginning of the sem that we didn't know why evidence was eight credits or why it was a year 3 subject because "it's just case law what." boy, were we wrong when we finally got down to studying it properly.

i think i remember the most about evidence simply because it was our common module, the last we'll have in law school. the next time we have common modules in the sense of 'compulsory, everyone must take,' is when we're doing our plc.

***
today was a nice day. there was perfect after-exam weather, not hot, and i spent the most part of it with sean, long-lost heart friend. funny how we've all turned out after jc, how you realise that life isn't quite about always and forever. and how can it be, when everyday you're reminded how fragile you are and how only He can be always and forever.

the only thing that was missing from today was -

jerome called me the night before last and we talked a little about jon's family's trip to japan, and he asked me what i wanted for christmas. i told him (he's only 13) to save his money for a rainy day, and that all i really wanted for christmas was for da ge to come home safely. and seeing as neither of us had enough money to make that happen, i told him he didn't have to buy me anything and all he had to do was to remember to pray, and be a good boy.

i've taken to referring to jon as "you-know-who," with the hope that that makes the fact that i talk about him pretty often less gay. of course, after harry potter, "you-know-who" is more or less taken to refer to voldemort.

now if only he could apparate home, just like the latter.

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