day 2

hahaha i'm still awake at such a late hour. i must be crazy. too much to write, too much to talk. next time i should just close msn. xD hahaha

Mmm. Nothing very eventful. hahaha just a lot of photo-taking again xD

...there’s a certain distance now, a feeling that while we have a lot in common, good fences still make good neighbours.

I rarely read a book twice, and the same applies to movies and everything else. And to take up Rule of Four after a few years was something unexpected for me. I realise that reading it through the second time, I begin to notice little nuances I have never seen before, and see things in a better light. Sometimes, I think I must really learn to cultivate patience in repetition.

haha talking to some friends made me realise something – in everyone’s life, there is a code to be broken, a code to be deciphered, a code to be understood. Some choose to express them in riddles, whereas others mask them behind commonplace words. Languages, songs and everyday references – none is spared in this endless game we all play to amuse ourselves, and to protect ourselves.

We all have fragile hearts, and it is the means by which we choose to shield them that makes us all different in many ways. Some prefer to layer this glass sculpture with fortified barricades, thinking that detachment is the best course of defence. Others do it the radical way – they open up their beautiful treasure chest for all to see, and let their friends become their natural barriers, just like how the sea protects the defenceless coast. Actually, talking about this makes me feel slightly abashed – after all, who am I to talk about such matters when I often layer my actions with symbols, waiting for someday when someone will finally wind their way into my labyrinth, and understand the mysteries that define me.

This reminds me of an analogy I once thought of – that humans are like oysters. We choose to conceal the stunning gem of a person we are with a dull and ordinary shell that many are oft to overlook. I wonder why. But then again, we are all silly people leading silly lives. That’s why I find life so interesting – we don’t do what we are expected to do.

hahaha bomb there’s like no mention of my amazing vacation thus far. Ok ok the photos are still with my sister. We went to some interesting tourist landmark by the coast. Looking at the vast sea often gives me a sense of wonderment and unexplained happiness. The violent waves crushing one another in a stampede to determine who could smash against the rocks first; the occasional ship ambling in the quiescent waters; and the many undefined rocks that Mankind have imposed different interpretations on. haha, in fact, the only downside was that the pants I wore seemed to be at least 5cm larger than my waist so it’s kinda like drooping all the time. Extremely irritating, and there were quite a few times I had to make readjustments to prevent a potential embarrassing scene in front of everyone ><

The bus ride was quite productive – I’ve almost completed my War Games proposal! hahaha it promises to be extremely exciting and exhilarating for both the organizers and scout participants. Can’t wait to explain it in full to my fellow scouties.

Somehow, escaping from the workload, the pressure, the expectations and everyone to a world new world has helped boost my engine of creativity. I think I am able to come up with more ideas and initiatives during this time. hahaha I shall take up on some of these thoughts once I get back to Singapore. mmm

Sometimes, I really wonder how some people can make me wonder so much.

day 1

hahahaha there's internet access in this 5-star hotel! =)

SIA has really improved greatly in a decade. I could still recall the time when airplane food smelt so bad that it provoked a messy response from my mouth. During those days, games were the preferred choice of entertainment, for the movies provided were either too old or too boring. Today, it is no longer the same. Food was excellent and I would think that many might even ask for seconds were such an option provided. As for movies, I was totally enthralled and amazed by the wide array of movies available for viewing. When I saw that ‘Stardust’ was available for watching, I was pleasantly surprised and actually felt excited about it, for the bb27ths had planned to watch it on the coming Monday, which I would have to miss out on since I’m on holiday. And ‘Stardust’ was really da bomb! It was flawless – everything from the plot, to the actors, to design and animation, to graphics, to songs and music was perfectly woven into a heart-warming and, at times, amusing show that never fails to surprise the audience with unexpected twists and turns. Even if we all know that it will ultimately have a ‘happy-ever-after’ ending, it was done so artfully and tastefully that leaves viewers with a lasting aftertaste and a desire to want to watch it over and over again! Stardust is =)

You know when I said I knew little about love? That wasn’t true. I know a lot about love. I’ve seen it, centuries and centuries of it, and it was the only thing that made watching your world bearable. All those wars. Pain, lies, hate… It made me want to turn away and never look down again. But when I see the way that mankind loves… You could search to the furthest reaches of the universe and never find anything more beautiful. So yes, I know that love is unconditional. But I also know that it can be unpredictable, unexpected, uncontrollable, unbearable and strangely easy to mistake for loathing, and… What I’m trying to say, Tristan is… I think I love you. Is this love, Tristan? I never imagined I’d know it for myself. My heart… It feels like my chest can barely contain it. Like it’s trying to escape because it doesn’t belong to me any more. It belongs to you. And if you wanted it, I’d wish for nothing in exchange - no gifts. No goods. No demonstrations of devotion. Nothing but knowing you loved me too. Just your heart, in exchange for mine.

Once we have alighted from the plane, the first word that struck my mind when I saw the tour group my family has enrolled into was – ‘old’. Really, there were only 1 or 2 teenagers, apart from us, and the rest of the people are much older. Oh well, there goes the fairytale. haha, what fairytale, you might ask? Well, when I was young, I naively believed that when I go overseas, I would meet a girl whom I like and eventually fall in love with her. As such, even though experience had worn out the comfortable fantasy I used to believe in, the subconscious part of me must have recalled bits of the battered dream as my eyes roam to find out the composition of the tour group.

Dinner with my father’s old friend was interesting. Apart from the usual selection of Chinese food that was filling and nice, our sumptuous meal also comprises exotic food that I have never tried before. There was this mustard thingy (can’t remember what it’s called) that tasted quite awful – it was like the cousin of wasabi or something. I ate one and never touched it again. There was another wasabi-like food, and after trying it, I came to the reasonable conclusion that wasabi could be used to serve prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. After all, it inflicts such great torture on our taste buds. But again, there are people who acquired the taste for such weird food. Mmm, our world is really round.

I was reading The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell & Dustin Thomason on the airplane just now and a particular line in the book has left a deep impression on me.

Strange thing, time. It weighs most on those who have it least.

How true.

Right now, as I recall my experience of contained excitement and joy at playing Final Fantasy Anniversary on my brother’s PSP, I begin to realise why so many people of different background all around the world are so hooked onto these virtual games. The most ostensible reason will be that they allow us to escape into a different world and assume multiple characters, showering us with a multitude of options and choices. They grant us the feeling of control over our own destiny – or rather, the character’s destiny in the game – and allow us to relieve our innate desires of being the hero of a fairytale, the prince or princess of a story, or even the dreaded villain that everyone hates. But most importantly, it is the only medium that provides the opportunity for us to ‘turn back time’ and make changes in the game, that is. How many of us have consciously, or even subconsciously, wished to travel back through time and correct the past mistakes that have marred our lives? How many of us have wished that our lives could ‘restart’ and be played all over again? However, no matter how tempting games might be, they are still fantasy, whereas we are still living in reality. There are some things that nothing else in life can substitute or replace, warp or distort – our lives just happen to be one of them.

It is 12.41am now. Taiwan and Singapore has no time zone difference. I think I will start preparing the proposals for War Games and Human Chess. Camp is impending. =)