It was almost a death wish lugging all my stuff across London. With stupid escalator systems that dun take you all the way up, goodness…with a massive backpack, and a suitcase and my laptop…. thank god for a few nice blokes that offered to carry my luggage up.

Anyway, my fren picked me up from the train station and I was home by half eleven J home sweet home!

And the unpacking begins! ( I stayed up all the way til like 6 in the morn to recreate my room) Strange how your stuff just disappears in to the room, cos the 37kg that I lugged from Singapore looked more like 7 kg. But all in all, I really happy with my room now, manage to decorate it to the way I more or less wanted, except for the horrendous piece of flora carpet and window curtains and I cant do much about.. but other than that, I’ve got ikea mirrors lining my wall ( the small circle and square kind) and a comfy bed cos I’ve got like three duvets! Ha ( one under me, one to hug, one to cover me…haha) this is make up for the lack of male company…lol

There’s this sense of serenity and tranquility when you’re alone, having your own room… ( remember I was in a shared room) and I’m kinda liking it!

I texted mum and dad, to tell that I had arrived safe and sound.. and this was her reply : Glad u re safe. Sort of miss you ne. Feel like didn’t really meet you last 12 weeks. Hope we have a better yr next. L.V mum.

I cried.

Ha.. ok maybe teared….

Ha.. you know I think I ‘m like super vunerable when mum and dad show me signs of affection. ( shouldn it be the other way round? Ha.. this is probably one of those reverse psychology thing.. when you’re not cared for, you wanna show that you’re tough and dun really care if anyone loves you or not… ha.. yeah.. perhaps this is why I cant really talk really heart felt stuff to my parents.. cos I know that they care.. and then I’ll just be crying during the entire conversation… I always gag on the words I love you.. )

hmm ok shall show you what rencheng wrote me.. which i really like and will help you through your emotional roller coasters:

It is so easy for us to always look at the bad things in life. Would like to
share a story with you. Read this story in a book that my friend lent me.
This book is a collection of true stories related by a monk. This monk is a
Brit. He studied theoretical Physics in Cambridge, became a teacher, came
into contact with Buddhism and decided to become a monk. He went to Thailand
to be ordained. At that time, the temple that he was to be ordained was to
be relocated. After buying the land, the monks had little money left. So
they had to do all the building themselves. So this Brit monk had to chip
in. He started laying bricks for a wall. Now it isn’t as easy as it seems.
You put some cement, lay the brick, try to get it straight and even as the
rest, but when you knock it down in one corner, the other came up. Knock the
other down, then the brick is out of alignment with the rest. But our monk
persevered and finally, he finished the wall. As he took a step back, to his
horror, he saw that 2 of the bricks were out of alignment. He wanted to
knock the whole wall down, in fact, he wanted to blow it up. But the abbot
told him that that cannot be done. They just did not have enough time and
money to build another wall. So the wall stayed. And even years after the
monastery was completed, our monk would feel ashamed about that 2 bad
bricks. He would try to cover them up, would try to divert visitors’
attention away from them. Until one fine day when a visitor he was showing
around came to that wall and commented that that was a beautiful wall. Our
monk was aghast. What did the visitor mean? That wall was horrible. It had 2
bad bricks. Was the visitor blind? The monk told the visitor about the 2 bad
bricks and why therefore the wall could not possibly be beautiful. Then the
visitor said, “Yes, I see the 2 bad bricks. But I see the other 998 good
bricks. And that makes this wall a beautiful wall”. And all of a sudden, our
monk saw the other 998 good bricks. The 2 bad bricks did not look out of
place, they did not look bad either. Instead, they gave the wall a unique
flavour. And the wall was indeed a beautiful wall.

So it is with life. We tend to be so focused on the 2 bad bricks that we
miss all the other 998 good ones. But if only we allow ourselves to see the
other 998 good bricks then, perhaps we’ll realise that the 2 ‘bad’ bricks
actually give our lives that unique flavour. I think this story applies to
quite a lot (if not all) aspects of life, our families, our relationships,
our friends, our life in general. We tend to see only the 2 bad bricks. And
then think that our lives are so full of problems. Full of shit. Indeed
problems, obstacles, unhappy times, etc. are like truck loads of dung that
are dumped in front of our house (assuming we live in landed property…). We
did not order it, we are stuck with it, it is so awful and such a destroyer
of our happiness and it is filthy, its stench fills up your whole house and
it is almost impossible to endure. There are 2 ways of responding to being
stuck with a truck-load of dung. The first way is to carry the dung around
with us. We put some in our pockets, some in our bags. We even put some dung
down our pants. We find that we rapidly lose a lot of friends by carrying
all that dung around with us. Now our problems are like this truck load of
dung. It destroys our happiness, it seems that we are stuck with it, and it
fills up our entire lives, and is so awful that it is almost impossible to
endure. And carrying the dung around with us is like us sinking into
depression, negativity and anger because of our problems. Now there is
another way of dealing with this truck-load of dung. We can take out a
spade, a fork and a wheelbarrow. Fork and shovel the dung into the
wheelbarrow, wheel it around the back of the house and dig it into the
garden. This is tiring and difficult work, but we know there is no other
option. Sometimes, all we can manage is half a barrow a day. we are doing
something about the problem, rather than complaining our way into
depression. Day after day, we dig in the dung. Day after day, the pile gets
smaller. Sometimes, it takes several years, but the morning does come when
we see that the dung in front of our house is all gone. further more, a
miracle has happened in another part of the house. The flowers in our garden
are bursting out in a richness of colour all over the place. Their fragrance
wafts down the street so that the neighbours and even passers-by smile in
delight. Then the fruit tree in the corner is nearly falling over cos it’s
so heavy with fruit. And the fruit is so sweet; you can’t buy anything like
it. there’s so much of it that we are able to share it with our neighbours.
Even passers-by get a delicious taste of the miracle fruit. Digging in the
dung is a metaphor for welcoming the tragedies as fertilisers for life. it
is work that we have to do alone: no one can help us. But by digging into
the garden of our heart, day by day, the pile of pain gets less. It may take
us several years, but the morning does come when we see no more pain in our
life and, in our heart, a miracle has happened. Flowers of kindness are
bursting out all over the place, and the fragrance of love wafts way down
our street, to our neighbours, to our relations and even to passers-by. Then
our wisdom-tree is bending down to us, loaded with sweet insights into the
nature of life. We share those delicious fruits freely, even with those
passers-by without ever planning to.

When we have known tragic pain, learnt its lesson and grown our garden, then
we can put our arms around another in deep tragedy and say, softly, ‘I
know’. they realise we do understand. Compassion begins. We show them the
wheel-barrow, the fork and the spade, and boundless encouragement. If we
haven’t grown our own garden yet, this can’t be done. Perhaps the moral of
this story is that if you want to be of service to the world, if you wish to
follow the path of compassion, then the next time a tragedy occurs in your
life, you may say, “Whoopee! More fertiliser for my garden!”.

You haven’t called back or text back. I’m still slightly worried. But after
writing (ok… copying mostly) the above, I feel more calm. Yet… there’s still
this conflict, this unrest. I guess things are indeed easier said than done.
The many conflicts in me have not subsided any bit. I still feel quite
vexed. Very vexed. I guess this is where it would help for there to be
someone else giving me those boundless encouragements and showing me the
fork, spade and wheel-barrow. The ironic thing is that I already know all
the theory… but having someone else remind me of them is still super useful
and reassuring.

But the conflicting emotions soon passed. (This comes after we have gone
‘drinking’.) Here comes another story. A new inmate at a prison was very
depressed while he first went into his cell. He felt hopeless. Then he saw
scratched on to the wall these words, “This too will pass”. These words
pulled him through. Regardless of how tough things were, he would think of
the phrase. And before long, he had completed his sentence, and he realised
the entirety of the phrase. His jail term too had passed. As he regained his
life, he never forgot the phrase. He wrote it on different pieces of paper
and left it around various places to remind him. So whenever times were
tough, he just remembered, “This too will pass.” and struggled through. The
bad times never seemed to last all that long. Then when the good times came,
he enjoyed them, but not too carelessly. Again, he remembered that, “This
too will pass”, and so carried on to work on his life and take nothing for
granted. Even when he got cancer he remembered that that too will pass. And
it did. When his time did come, he told his family that “This too will pass”
and settled easily into death. His words were his last gift of love for his
friends and family. They learned from him that ‘grief too will pass’. I
think that this story illustrates a very important concept in Buddhism. That
of the transience of worldly phenomena. Most people take it to be very
fatalistic, very nihilistic. But if one understands it correctly, it isn’t.
Unfortunately, I’ve only been able to understand it with the logic of my
mind. Not with the entirety of my life yet. Which is the same for a lot of
stuff in Buddhism. I’m sure if I can internalise the philosophy into my life
rather than just understand it, then I would be a much happier person. Go
read up on Buddhism if you have the time. It might do you some good.

Went to bed after I got back from our ‘drinking’ session. I woke up feeling
a rather profound sense of emptiness (not the first time that I’ve felt like
that). There was a sense as if something that was there has gone, leaving a
gaping void. The sense of emptiness was slightly frightening, slightly
saddening, yet oddly liberating. Fortunately, I was not too caught up with
it. Had some food, did some work on the proposal for my project and went
back to sleep. There would have been a time in the past when I would gone
for a long walk to walk away the feeling. But I guess now that I have this
project to focus my mind on. Met someone from National Youth Council today.
He’s a friend of a friend. He’s agreed to talk to some people in NYC to see
how we can develop the project. With any luck, he’ll put me in touch with
some people and open the right channels for me to bring up this project and
get more people involved in my project.

I think that the next few years are going to be quite interesting. At least
for the next 2 years. The wheels have been set in motion. I think it’s too
late for me to stop working on this project. Also, I think (ok… this is
where I’m a bit arrogant for thinking that I’ll definitely mak the National
Youth Forum…) the NYF will throw up a few interesting things for me to get
myself involved in. It might even be an avenue for me to get into politics…
hahaha… can you imagine me as a cabinet minister?  I think that is
pretty much the path for me. I don’t know whether I’ll actually end up as a
cabinet minister, but for whatever reason, I think that being in the civil
service is one of the most entrepreneurial thing that I can be involved in.
I mean, everyone says that there is nothing that Singapore can do, that
Singapore is going to loose out to China, etc. and as a result, Singapore
will fail. But isn’t that what people said when we were first independent?
But a group of entrepreneurs made Singapore work. Now a new generation of
entrepreneurs will have to rise up to continue to make Singapore work. And I
believe that I want to be part of that team.

Just got back from dinner at your place. Enjoyed myself. Thanks for having
me. As I was walking out of your place, I had a nostalgia attack. In fact, I
had it when I went to Coronation Centre to get the apples. I thought to
myself, ‘Gosh… I haven’t been in there for so long.’ Then memories of me
being there as a student came flooding back. And as I walked out your place,
I almost felt as if I was back in the Hwachong uniform, walking back to
school to continue pia-ing for my exams (I had half the mind to actually
walk back to Hwachong… but a cab came along and I snapped out of it…). I
think that that is one major problem with me. I get nostalgic over so many
periods of my life. I am now listening to my trance music. And for some
reason they bring me back to the time when I was in Bristol (I think I told
you about one of the times that this happened right?). And I remembered all
my dreams and hopes for the future then. And how some of them have come to
past and how some of them have not been fulfilled and will never be
fulfilled. It made the past that seemed so real seem so distant away, so
intangible, so illusory. It inspired a sense of apprehension for the future.
It left a sense of emptiness. I guess that is why part of me has always
treated as if you were that naïve, innocent Sec. 2 girl. It gives me an
illusion of constancy. And I guess that is part of the reason of the
abovementioned conflict. This realisation that you are not that naïve,
innocent Sec. 2 girl anymore.

And I am no longer that JC kid. We have both changed. And it has indeed been
great to have been able to share in so much of your life, even though more
often than not, I am just a spectator. It was also really wonderful to have
been able to share so much of my life with you. There are not many people
that I am able to have such heart to heart talks (ok… that was quite a soppy
term…) that have a semblance of intellectual capacity with (that night we
went ‘drinking’ seems so surreal now…). You are officially in my inner
circle of friends. And I guess your advantage over them (there are about 5
or 6 of them), is that you are family, and so, in a way, you will always be
there. Again, I guess it is that desire to have something constant to hold
on to as I journey through life. What about a girlfriend you say? Wouldn’t
she be what I really need? Well… considering that I already have had 3.5
girlfriends (and I don’t think Christine’s going to be the last… sad to say…
sighz…), no… I am starting to lose faith in this whole relationship kind of
thing. But one wouldn’t know if one doesn’t try right? I believe that she’s
out there. And that when the time comes, we will meet and everything will be
right.

Anyways, you may be fat and ugly, but to me, you are always my kid cousin.
No one gets to bully you except me. And seriously, you aren’t fat nor ugly.
Besides, physical appearances are only skin deep. I think that you are quite
a beautiful person (okok… careful your swelling head…). A rare breed. I hope
that that at least doesn’t change. I know sometimes out of sight means out
of mind. But do drop me a line as and when you are free. Keep me updated.
And if there’s anything that I can help with, I’ll try to be there for you.
You can rest assured that if I need your help (with design stuff…), I’ll
definitely bug you…

Alrighty. Here’s to a good summer gone by and a great year ahead. Be good.
Be safe.
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ok shall how you pictures of my room... shall go snap some now.. talk to you soon!
:)