Let's be more precise about what I'm saying:
When you have an established reputation, people will mark you with their estimate of your character based on the actions that caused said reputation. Hence, if you know your personalities and pasttimes don't match, you won't be able to integrate into their circle of friends. You stay as the acquaintance and nothing more because they know they stand to gain nothing from you beyond the little pleasantries.
I've got to get my head out of the sand and stop believing that I can make new friends now when I wasted 2 whole years of such opportunities.
I'm happy that Ab Ovo pulled through in the end, but it completely missed the mark on what I wanted it to help
me accomplish. Or it technically succeeded because it helped me to realise that my hopes cannot be realised.
So many people and hardly anybody around for me to talk to? Even Xinping had more friends there. Ridiculous. I think I was happiest when Dennis and Sally complimented my slight changes (tanned and more buff? HAHAHA)
Well, with such great disappointment it's no wonder I found myself down by the Singapore River dousing myself in tequila from the bottle. Damned Benjamin is going to kill my liver, I tell you, quarter bottle of tequila + Flaming Lambo + Boddingtons = die. I don't even remember how I left Zouk, the last thing I registered was the Boddingtons glass (I bet I dropped it somewhere... damn...)
One last thing.
Girls. Hate. Me.
I swear. They give me this sickeningly intimidating feeling that they don't want to talk to me.
Play me, did you really think that you could save me?
Hurt me, did you really think that I could trust you?
Stop me, I couldn't get away from you.
I wanna know why I lose control
You're my desire, you're the sunshine of my soul.
Damn Lush 99.5, where the hell can I find this song on CD? Getting the mp3 is impossible.
Flashback, one week ago -
Friday the 17thBen, Lei-Shi-Li and I are at Han's before our much-delayed Star Wars screening. Ben is shooting his mouth off loud as usual, but he forgets that we aren't in Taiwan anymore. People understand English, mate. So methinks the lanky lady in the little black number and her compatriot 5m away from us must not have been too pleased with our table's comments. (Ben: "Shit, why do ugly guys always get the hot chicks? This place is a living testament to that!")
Saturday the 18th11:00am. I don't feel like going for the meeting. I'm having a stomachache. I shall not go, I decide. One phone call from the President kicks my butt and I'm going 130km/h. And there are still people later than me. Right.
Candice, bored with army talk on the left and OGL-buddy talk on the right, enlightens me on the reality of London law I gave up for the American Dream. KCL ain't that bad after all, despite being in a dumpster of a shitty little building, huh? And UCL, too. If I had better grades, just maybe things would have been different? Who knows. Unfortunately, later it's her chic Beemer versus my miserly Saab - the cool characters opted for the lady's car (which is actually hot as hell after being parked in the sun), while ZL and Dennis opted to let me take 'em to The Ship for the yummy 鱼 片 noodles.
Fast forward to 3pm, Jervois Lodge. Charles Tan declares: "Ummm, we've got a situation. Shengwu's not coming for dinner because of duty, Crystal's got work, Suching's not coming if neither Arts personnel are coming for want of familiarity, and Denise and Nattie are bailing too!" Gee, that seems to be about half the guest list, isn't it? I thought we were working on the premise of getting strangers in touch. So much for good guest planning, we were left with Charles, Kokwei, Chris & Teresa with Shineik, Ruijie and Yixian incoming. (I note that I didn't put any effort into this planning. I thought Charles and co. would be able to deal with it)
It strikes me that I should try to salvage the situation by balancing the gender ratio at least. Suching seems to be the most likely candidate for success since she's not actually busy; I contact Cuixian, Dalglish and the abovementioned working Arts people - to no avail. (Stupid Law BBQ.) Oh, well, scratch that plan. How?
Flashback to a few hours ago - Dennis reads a message in a car from Huang Jian: "Dear friends, Yanling is bored and wants to go out, blah blah blah." Discussion on where to club follows, but they seem to concur on just nua-ing before clubbing. Now, I think: Why not come to my home for dinner and nua? Eureka!
Well, my idea for restoring the balance fails; Yanling is the only girl to arrive. Oh well - as if that's not good enough. I'm just worried that Teresa's feeling massively out of place. The food was well taken care of, though, so I forgave the bad HR. See the monstrously devilish chocolate cake below.
The dinner wraps up much earlier than expected - I invited exactly 2 people interested in social drinking, and to top that off I gave them stale beer. If that's not enough to put anyone off I don't know what will, I can't believe I made such a terrible mistake! Sigh.
Fortunately, I was smart enough to think of following Dennis and Yanling to Rouge (with a super extra trip to send Jian to his freaking karaoke). I was misled into thinking the whole bunch of people in Yanling's other group were all from Purdue (therefore if Purdue = wow! for the eyes, then BU = ZOMG!!!1111)
ZL, Jon and I were sad fucks though. I couldn't drink much thanks to the stupid car, and ZL and Jon were somewhere else instead of Zouk/dbl O. I wonder if Dennis enjoyed himself.
Sunday the 19th
The first salsa lesson. MAD SHIT! I've got bad rhythm and so does everyone else! And that Rachel, she seems so pro already, why bother signing up for beginners course har?
And the dream ended, I woke up in ATC and life goes on. Bleah.
It may be possible that I've met too many gorgeous girls in the span of 48 hours, in beautiful Singapore. Taiwan (Taipei in particular) sucks for the eyes, why are people so obsessed with Taiwanese girls?
Anyway, yesterday I dragged Stanley out for H2G2. It was missing so many things! I really wanted to see the spaceship that lands with the million-people-saying-"WHOP" sound. And nobody sucked any nutrients out of a towel, in fact, wrapping the towel around Trillian was like a Hollywood cop-out. Still a well executed movie with fantastic set backdrops, though.
Following which, the Mac/WoW evangelist brought me to the Apple Store downstairs to see the Michelle Reis-like salesgirl, and to acquire some iPod gizmos. Well, neither item particularly wowed me, I have to say.
We tested the 香 鸡 排 in the basement of Plaza Sing - completely doesn't live up to the Hukou cowboy town standards. The flavour of the powder is close enough, but the meat is far too dry, completely lacking in juices. We guessed it was the heat of the fryer, or the lack thereof. The Hukou 香 鸡 排 is much juicier. Also, I asked for spicy, but I got the equivalent of a 小 辣... I wonder how the public would react to a 大辣!
The Long John Silvers dinner tasted 10 times worse in comparison, though. I was more than glad to puke it out at the Zouk washroom.
Mambo night - Probably nothing new for you freaking JC clubbers who never jio me when I was in J1/2 and still resembling a chao nerd, right?! Okay lor, I still look like a skinny nerd, so sue me. Anyway, after the Volcano that Ben and his "we drink by the bottle, per person" friends put me through at O Bar, a Flaming Lamborghini is weak. If I can walk straight, it clearly isn't much good, is it? Looks like I have to go hunt for Bacardi 151.
So cute, saw Vincent in the 路軍 t-shirt which seriously cannot contain his hulking body. Silly guy - too bad Yiwei didn't want to come with us, we would have probably done some very hilarious reenactments of our live firing.
It seems part of this "growing up" business is learning how not to assume things.
In recent times I've had to come to terms with the obvious facts that nothing I've established has any credibility. For example, the people I assumed to be blockheads were, in fact, highly intelligent and sensitive gentlemen, but they knew as well as I do now that when you're young, there's no point in being so rigid and uptight about things anyway. To hold back is to invite misery - all too true on my part.
And backstabbing, now there's a complex business. Nobody means to do it, but everybody is somehow guilty - after all, he of malicious intent would be better off coming after the accused with a knife, right? We generally don't mean to hurt people, but because of our triggerhappy judgements based on singular incidents, it becomes like a reflex.
If only Perfect Information existed, if not for the economic utopia it'd bring, then for the tales of pettiness we'd save ourselves from.
I'm not prepared for the party on Saturday. Upon touchdown of the flight home from Taipei, Charles is sending a barrage of messages about the availability of "one of my houses". For God's sake, I don't own them! I can't even control availability of the house I live in, why are we talking about condominiums that the Empress Dowager (golly I haven't used that name in a long time) lords over?
But whatever. The deal's done, the place is set, only the logistics are left. Geez... before the SAF, I never knew logistics could be such a bloody big mess. Or is it part of Growing Up again?
I met a short-haired Joyce while waiting at Zara yesterday. This girl, I spotted not by face but by aura - there are people who have an unmistakable aura about them; it screams with the reckonable force of a banshee. But I digress.
Joyce asked, "Where in the world have you been? We've been worried about you, you know. We miss you."
People missing me? My heart went weak at such a statement. I had to question how true it was.
"Everybody has issues lah. What's been keeping you from church? Army? Or girlfriend?" Smile, smile. I wish.
My disappearing act began on the day I was born, 19 years later, though officially I walked away from the Church 4 months ago. Where were they when I needed them, cried my selfish heart back then. I knew very well where they were but I simply
couldn't be bothered to find them. I expected them to come service me, the way they had done when I had first been accepted into their arms.
But no, the new blood must be taken care of. It's an undeniable fact of life that the older brethren are expected to handle themselves in the wake of younger newborns who require more attention. I couldn't handle this. I knew too, that Seven was going to disband and be split up into the new Cells. It was as though my "family" was destined to abandon me.
I am, by nature, an ungrateful person, like most humans; I can't be bothered to count my blessings because nobody really points them out until I'm at the brink of losing them. So being the ingrate that I am, I slipped away from the Saturday meetings and the boresome Sunday sermons; I ditched my family before they could break away and ditch me.
But now, on the brink of losing my true family (and all the blessings that accompany it), the epiphany comes to me. Why strangers from different regions band together and are able to treat each other with such familial bonds.
They've already lost their families.
On leaving, did I manage to gain anything useful? No. I smoked maybe one pot of shisha, followed some idiots clubbing and got drunk maybe once - that was about it. No romantic developments or unbreakable friendships to fill the void. (Rather, I think I broke a couple of important friendships in my wake.)
But there's no turning back. I can't go back even if I wanted to. Seven doesn't exist anymore (even if the spirit of the old Cell lives on). I don't want to get to know the new Cell members. I think I would rather bear the burdens of loneliness and repression than bear with the guilt of intentional unfaithfulness to the word of Jesus Christ.
We move on, that's all there is. We dream of next time.
