Friday, January 13, 2006 // 9:17 PM

small mercies, i will take you

-seeing people in their secondary school uniforms, all over again. dudddee. that was the last time we're ever going to wear these things.
-the math lecturer being nice about our wearing secondary school uniforms. so maybe the establishment or its minions at least have a sense of fun after all.
-yong ming, jteh, lim en, for saying that i would be okay, for calming me down after i deleted my entire hssrp presentation powerpoint at the last minute(well done ella), for helping me out in a moment of sheer panic when i really couldn't think beyond the imsoshitted-ness. for much laughter in the taxi cab there.
-random rj girl telling me that my presentation woke her up, and helping me take a chocolate eclair, during reception.
-don't worry about what people think of you: they don't do it much
-ying xiang, for kinda-honesty, for next up, life and death. good conversation makes this was an unexpectedly good day.

and i am sad, by the way, about having left secondary school. it hits me now, of all times, thinking about the whole uniform thing. wearing the snt nicks uniform made me feel a whole lot younger, a whole lot more carefree, and happy, in the silliest way. i really wanted to wear the nanyang uniform today, and i'm sad, because potato sack uniform aside, you're my alma mater and you gave me some pretty good years out of my seventeen. and now things are really and fully behind me, because i still do believe that seventeen is the last year of utter childhood. there's something particularly old and newly serious, about turning eighteen, about jc2, it's only january but already the a levels loom, university looms, the real world beckons, smirks, and i, we, we are new blood, we are freshmen, all over again.

hello nanyang geps, where are all of you, anyway, and what have you become? would i recognize you, now, have you cast off this particular loyalty, for something else? people change, i know, i know i have, people become different people, after a while. hello shaoning, hello shuhan, hello sarah hoon, hello gail, hello yinkae, hello deb, hello peishan, hello shufen, hello christine. hello khin, hello liz, hello marian. hello smith, hello jade, hello melissa. hello ecila. hello wenqi, hello zhixuan, hello peiyi, hello chrissie. is there nothing to be said for nostalgia.

hello joyce, joyce lim. working my way back through my four nanyang years, my sec 3 year was made up of you. you writing me letters and giving me the fantasie impromptu score and copious amounts of chocolate. me trying to be there for you and trying to understand when really i hadn't the first clue, how to. you clearing my table every recess and my messing it up again. you buying me a basket cos you couldnt stand my mess. maybe that's how i ended up with all my boxes (1 for each subject) stacked around my table. i still recall mrs yong telling me once that my classmates were extremely tolerant of me, geez, were you guys? i'm not sure my mess was much of a blimp in your world, but then, i suppose i was even more blind to my surroundings then than i am now. so what was i, really, from the outside of my own skin? after all, friends, strangers. my identity belongs to you.