Bathing is for the Bourgeois/Last Day of July

The week ends just as the month does. What a July 09 it's been. This would have been a picture perfect week that I'd want to replicate for the rest of the weeks spent here, particularly because as the month ends, so do the hopes of the first 7 months. We can officially say we're into the 2nd half of 2009, into it's heart with just 5 more months of it left. Fully appreciating the fact that changes are taking place, but with certain constants that only get better with time. Tomorrow should be something like that, with the IP kids. Reading speeches by Arundhati Roy (The Ordinary Person's Guide To Empire) is another nostalgic throwback to the God of Small Things days. Tamiflu must now rank up there with those products that represent an era.

SAC

That there have been 2 days' worth of articles in the news and bulletins on the telly and messages on tickers, and because there have been justifications and explanations about quotas, merit and even gender (possibly with reference to guys outnumbering girls; apparently it's not usually the case with other scholar batches), I am led to believe ever more strongly in the truth I have long understood: there's something unique about being a guy, 19 and a 2009 PSC Scholar. Yay us 1990-2008 graduates (from which schools I'll leave you to articulate based on who was in attendance).

Harry Potter and the Half Baked Pie

It wasn't a good film, if you were wondering.

Mid-week rejuv over thai food and essential tea makes the last 2 working days of this week better.

Correspondence has been centred around the psc people; I feel the need to get to know my year's scholars much more since I'm not in pdc. After all, I still belong to the '90 batch.

So TGIF once more. Wonder how this weekend will be spent. It should begin at Borders after work tomorrow.

And I think I'll let the daily food tweet slide.

Some Basic Facts

- 8 offers were made; now there are 6 of us from ACI outta al 86

- We're the biggest crop ever and will thus not be at the Istana

- There are 5 countries of study amongst us: China Japan SG UK US

In other news,

- Thai Express dinner tomorrow

- Harry Potter on Thursday

- I've not told them that I can't make it for the leaders' retreat. Help!

So What's Left To Eat Exactly?

Like a day without news of a suicide bomb in Baghdad or human rights in North Korea, the leave entitlement of an NSF is immensely limited. I've not taken any unless there was a something on or it coincided with the leave of my friends, until Wednesday. It was the first time I took half a day's leave simply because I could and simply because I wanted to. It was refreshing, and I had some uninterrupted time of refreshing rest and rejuvenation before the YAM Camp Committee meeting in the evening. (Do come, it's from the 10th to 13th of December!)

Small gatherings are sometimes the most intimate and meaningful, 'cos you really get opportunities for uninterrupted interaction, usually over a meal. Yesterday's dinner + dessert with Elliot, Joash and Patrick at PS Cafe and this afternoon's lunch at Simpang with Lionel, Guo Nian, JP and Zhao Ming were good examples of that.

Finally, the topic of my post. My (almost) daily tweet is now about what I eat at work, because I'm meant to be on this one-year abstinence diet from things I'm sensitive/allergic to. The list is extensive, encompassing anything from eggs to wheat, asparagus to vanilla, banana to dairy.

Purchase of the Year?

Now, it's just a matter of how many people are before me in line. Harry Potter who? I'm queueing for an iPhone!

As promised, I shall be completing a Meme for this purpose this evening. One of my superior colleagues has informed me of his readership of this domain, which is both a new and thrilling thought. I do believe my opacity has been sufficient.

For days when there is not enough to fill this portal with a new post,

I tweet.

But today isn't one of those days. I was reminded of the route I ran for the Nike Human Race last year, which brought all 11,000 of us through some of the typically busiest streets of the business district; having a chance to trace the route made me think about whether I would want to live/work in that area and experience the corporate lifestyle that it represents. Similarly, I was reminded of my early days in the Youth Ministry back in 2003; that was when I joined the first of many camp committees, and where I met some friends such as louis and jeremy whom I never got to interact with after that camp up until I began joining the weekly Sunday YAM 4-6 Opera Estate Frisbee thingums. Perhaps the memory was jolted because of the upcoming YAM camp comm meeting this Wednesday, before which I shall have to prayerfully consider if I should take on the role of commandant.

Memories for me link past and present, which is why they hold more significance than merely being snapshots of times past. This year hasn't been one of much memory-making as it has been one of picking up where things were left all those years back. Mostly this has to do with people I came to know and have been given the chance to know better now.

Conversations with my 13 year-old self

I'm not one to talk about work; the fact that 10 hours of each day, and possibly more once in a while, is utterly wasted does not leave me with much to speak about pleasantly. And while it may be that I do not have anything particularly exciting to regale anyone with, simply conversing about everything else is enough for me. Just as it was this evening, over dinner at the Empire cafe and drinks and TeaDot, both at Illuma. So this, in addition to my visits to Tampines 1 and Orchard Central, I've at least set foot into all the newly opened malls of note. There is a very perceivable upgrade that these new malls bring, from the minimalism of restroom interiors to sheer size and open space, that makes me think the country is palpably changing its details to better fit its First World status.

I have finally managed to finish George Orwell's Why I Write, and it is both a poignant lament of the direction in which language is headed as well as a justified, opinionated cross-examination of war-time England which I find I'm able to appreciate being a history student studying that exact period in depth. When I finish the current Adiga text, I would have read a total of 4 actual texts this year, and including the war novel at the end of last year, it is an all-time high of 5 lit-worthy works. Appalling by most lit students' standards, but hey, way better than not having read anything of such standards apart from the 15 I read during my IB days.

Listening to Grasshoppers

Numerous possible post titles ran through my head as I made one of my regular sojourns to town after work; lofty, abstract ones that might have something to do with eternal hope, unexplainable yet conscious joy, surpassing peace, a word, in a word, music, or gasp, dare I mention love in all of this. I settled for this one instead because it's the title of the Field Reports of Democracy, essays by Arundhati Roy, the author of my favourite world lit, booker prize winning text. Nevertheless, what pointed me in the initial trajectory was a certain paragraph in a certain document that has so far been all at once a burning coal and luminous elixir. Ahh, July. I do hope it turns out to be a good month, the beginning of the rest of your life and all that jazz.

Wednesday, the First of July

Forgive the tone of the title, for as ordinary a day as it may be, it is wholly significant in my view. Somewhere between last night and this morning 2009 came to its halfway point. In other words, there is just half of 2009 left, and I cannot help but think to myself: wait, has it even fully started?!? Yes, it is a matter of perspective; many may feel the year could not have been going slower given their circumstances, and want it to come to a close quickly because that would herald a better situation in general. I confess I share a little of that too - every second that passes brings me, or rather us, nearer to better things than these. Yet it is the very essence of my being to live for the moment, and each moment that passes becomes another memory. In my experience, the good ones outnumber the shit-hits-the-fan ones by a comfortable margin. Today is no exception, not only for having spent an evening out at dinner and a film, but also because I'm glad to have had my sentiments about work in the armed echoed by my boss, despite me "earning" a tenth of what she does - I'd be content to be in my seat at my desk in front of the computer from 8 to 5, but kindly don't make me do anything otherwise.

Some of my closest friends exited the armed forces today. These include my medical brethren and the oms scholars. I've mentioned that I had wanted to further my studies this year, and it occurred to me recently that perhaps there were other avenues I could have pursued, including these but not limited to them. The appeal process that was successful for Durham (and unsuccessful for Oxford I might add) could have been applied to the 3 other schools in the UK which were in my UCAS list (I'm reminded of this because of the final Royal Mail letter I received today) but didn't. How easy would it be to think that oh, maybe I should have done that. But no, I won't, not because I think it would have been futile or because it makes me feel better for not having done so, but simply because, as life has shown me, there is a finality to things which, with time, makes things fall into place in ways unanticipated. The fact that the cycles have opened again emphatically lets me know that, not only has my cycle closed, but that it is time to start afresh without the baggage of the previous attempt, because it was, for all intents and purposes, the only way I would and could have done it, and I certainly would not have traded it at that time for any substitute. The same philosophy for all of life.