Thursday, October 13, 2005
- Seems like everyone is writing a conclusion to JC life on their blogs, what with our swan song assembly coming soon. It's on Monday, but who's counting when we're going back to school anyway.
Where have the two years gone? It seems so long ago that I was that super-anxious SN girl who didn't know anyone in NJ. Almost like another life ago. I really really wished I'd gone somewhere else. It's horrible, the feeling of getting off at an alien bus stop, not knowing anyone, trying to fit in with people who don't care about you. Trying to make lemonade from lemons.
It's time to say goodbye soon. I know some of us might never have a chance to meet again or even want to meet again, but hey - we did spend two years of our life together. That should count for something.
I'm going to be back where I was two years ago - school-less. And hopefully this time next year (cross fingers, toes and heart) I'll be somewhere I want to be. Someone I want to be. This cyclical nature of my life is...horrible. And so it goes, the typical life of a Singaporean kid.
Nothing's ever going to be the same again. You can promise me that you'll never change, that we'll always keep in contact etc etc, that it doesn't matter we're going to be scattered across the globe. It'll never be the same again, but then maybe it was never meant to be. It's three days till the last last day of formal school we have. Till the last day we can call ourselves NJ students. Should I feel sad? I didn't have such a sudden realisation at SN, but then we didn't have a farewell assembly (that I remember) until grad night.
Some things never change, I suppose. I'm still lazy, I still don't like to study by myself. I have a great inertia to work. Etc, etc. But I think NJ has been good for me in a way that I couldn't have been sure of had I gone somewhere else. I've become crazier, more extroverted in a way, more impulsive (not that I ever was not) and for once in my life more proactive in assuming leadership positions. And my CCA record is still...
Time doesn't stand still. I read my senior's blog and well - her life is supremely removed from her pre-university days. As it should be, but why should the segments of our life be estranged from each other when they compositely form the essence of us? I think back on the girl that was an IJ girl and already the memories I swore would never fade are doing just that. The subtle ironies in life are bitter. It's a human survival instinct, isn't it? To blur out the little wrinkles in the past and preserve a largely pristine version of the memory we treasured in its entirety at the time of its creation. I can't remember many memories from preteens. Come to that, I can't remember many things before...Sec 3 or so. But yet I know that those were the halycon days, and I can't remember them.
So, is this interlude in NJ going to be consigned to the metaphorical Photoshop of the mind? To be touched up and reconfigured until it's perfect - until I don't remember the little things like suffering through consultations, tutorials, lectures; perfecting the art of sleeping with eyes open; lounging around the school when we should really have been mugging. You know, preserving the NJ rep of having hard-core muggers.
I feel like a character in my own version of 'Heart of Darkness'. Physical journey as well as an introspective journey into the self. Beware of looking too deep, lest your soul, like Kurtz, looks in on itself and goes mad. Choice of extremes posited again, I guess - Marlow, who doesn't look into himself and go crazy, or Kurtz, the prodigy who does - and consequently dies stark raving mad? Okay, I'm rambling as usual.
I'm really fortunate. Lucky to have come to NJ in the first place, when it was clearer than glass all through my secondary education that I was not of the calibre to even aspire to this eminent junior college, and I was told (more tactfully than I can ever phrase it) that I should consider my strengths in choosing a future course in life, my prospects/results being fairly dismal. Dismal isn't the word, they were actually abysmal. The irony in the end - this tortoise ended up first. Or near first as any tortoise could make it. Ths funny thing is, this tortoise slept as much as the hare.
It was also providential that I was placed in S23. It's so...coincidental I have no other word for it. Yes, I believe in Chance, because it gave me all of you. It's chance because there's definitely been good and bad, but hey - it's a fair tradeoff. (so George Eliot.) I'll miss the piano in LT1. I'll miss LT5 and the weirdo projector which blows hot and cold (no joke) and I'll miss TA25. Heck, I'll even miss that fan that sounds like it's spewing air. I'll miss that lab we had last year. I'll miss most of the teachers (can't lie here) and I'll kinda miss the canteen food. (My memories of SN food are painfully undiluted.) I'll sorely miss floorball, 'cause everyone was so nice and let me be goalie when I suck. I'll miss doing crazy things like spontaneously going to KAP, Venezia, Coffee Bean, town. I'll miss CCA. I really really miss my kulintang. I kinda miss performing. I miss exco meetings, arguments, outings, buying crazy presents for others (Kah Kah and Kok Hsien still have to shake and wait.)
I miss Pulau Ubin. That was really fun. The stress, the planning, the recces - all worth it. I love kids, if it isn't obvious enough. As long as they aren't MY kids, they're great kids. (Make an exception for my neighbours.) I loved the mixing with kids, although it was quite overwhelming, the be-in-charge thing. It's terrifying when everyone looks to you for what to do.
And I miss KK a lot a lot a lot. It was so idyllic. And perfect in everyway. In a sense, it was a reality check. And at the same time, it was a dream. The unreality. It's inexpressible, the unspoiled place. And the barriers that came down when we went there. Like everyone was friends and anything was possible. Lucky Terence and Na, who get to keep the magic alive. (winks) Once we came back to Singapore, the fairy dust disappeared.
I'll definitely remember NJ. And all the associations, I welcome. I only hope after one year, two years, ten years, I'll still remember it clearly, the way it was. The way I remember it now.
It's one last assembly. Yes, I know you don't want to be reminded it's the last one, as in final, no more, whatever, but yeah I shan't say it to your face. Haha. 'cause you don't read my blog anyway.
IRRELEVANT! I'm just venting. I'm confused and blur. Shall catch some shut eye. My, this is a long post :p
slash with the pen |||
8:54:00 pm
