i question

i wonder

i'm not pressured.

you considered

you are going

it was finally cancelled.

i asked

you answered

maybe... i shouldn't even think about it.

there is just this unspeakable joy in me now.

seeing everybody at home was just too much for me to take it all in in one shot, so much so that i was pretty much overwhelmed in church. the kids were scrambling, rachel was screaming hysterically (fine, i'm exagerrating), and everybody was just wishing one another merry christmas. speaking of which, i was asking myself what Christmas meant to me this year, considering all that i've gone through for this one year in the army. frankly, i never really gave it much thought even right now as i type, it's just on the spot thoughts. reason why i wanted to come back this Christmas was because i wanted to share the Christmas spirit with the people i love most at home. it would be a crying shame if i spent it overseas, in a mandarin speaking church with me not knowing a quarter of the people in there. but Christmas is after all, all about Christ the Risen Lord. things are not the same when you view this holiday season as something else, i guess it's become innate already. so i shall use this Christmas season as a form of Thanksgiving for those who have desperately missed me (LOL) and those i have sadly left behind. for that, i thank you all.

have you ever seen the naive smiles on the faces of innocent, pure angelic children. it is a smile that carries with it no worries, nor hardships nor pain. what happens there and then is exactly shown and displayed on their faces; nothing is fake, only the genuine appears. a smile as heartfelt as this would simple make hearts melt, and guess what, there are a lot of kids here who have successfully done so. i love kids. they make me think of my past, and my future. and their smiles are miraculously able to spread the joy around. it seems to be more of some centripetal foce or radial energy that spreads it's wings outwards, into the lives of others. and in that way, smiles begin to appear on the faces of even the older ones. after all, there is a child in every one of us, isn't there?

it's amazing what cynical people can actually do to your fragile sanity. trust me, in no time just a slight twitch of the facial muscles is enough for complete insanity. and i mean a total transformation of a normal world into a world filled with hair-tearing and shrill-screaming people. i'm just at a loss of words really, how people can actually be and remain cynical even in the presence of the most optimistic people around. it's like chucky meeting a happy teletubby, minus the cute factor. i must say it's getting increasingly difficult to be that happy little, not forgetting chubby, teletubby and wandering in the misty midst of dense chucky. i'd rather be frolicking with my bunnies over the green hills and Far away. i mean, you definitely don't want to see a hairless screaming chubbs scooting around the hills now do you? so for crying out loud, spare me the audio agony.

我不知道我一直重播那首歌的原因，
但心里却是蹦蹦，蹦蹦的跳着。
虽然我们之间的关系已来到了终点，
我还是无力抗拒黑夜所带的沉默，的孤独；
默默知道再也无法回转时间到我们年轻的时候。
。

想你到无法呼吸的我
实在是被思念给吞没到寂寞中。

i need to put this down in words no matter how lame this sounds but damn it's good news. i passed my driving test yesterday. (everybody says yay!) the entire experience was rather exhilirating right from the beginning. seriously, if you had to wake up at six in the morning just to be at the driving centre by seven in the morning, i bet your head would still be rather groggy from the beautiful Disrupted dream you left from. aaron and i were and it was not a very good thing. upon reaching the centre, i stepped on a cat (not to mention it screamed and Thank God it didn't attack me) and the two of us were whisked off to the main centre only at around seven.thirty. we went in to do the theory not knowing we were the only two of four students, the other two being burmese, taking the theory test on the computer. the computerised test was supposed to be meant more for listening but heck it, we just read off the screen and did the test. so we four students started first and barely into the paper test that the taiwanese were taking, aaron and i stood up and left. we finished the test in ten minutes and guess what? we passed. i scored eighty.seven.point5 when the passing mark was eighty-five. Thank God i passed it on first attempt. aaron passed too so when we walked out, we had heads turning towards our direction and upon hearing of our results our instructor, who so by the way was uber uber worried for us because we hardly done the mock tests ever, was visibly shocked, most naturally. i mean we were too. we studied like crap the day before only, and for such a result- i mean we passed. typical singaporean, pass can already la. i remember that. so we went back to the centre and then we waited. did a few practice rounds and then we went out for a beek steak lunch. arriving back at the centre at around one, we waited for the think-they're-so-mighty examiners to arrive and soon enough we found ourselves in the driver's seat. so we went through the all so familiar circuit- reverse parking, S course both forward and backward, parallel parking, railroad crossing, stopping on a slope, accelerating and then it was all over. i made no mistakes, at least not that i know of and THANK GOD I PASSED! aaron made a booboo on the first station and was somewhat in a state of shock when he found out he passed. well he did too anyway. uhhuh, so that concludes our exciting driving test day. right now, i'm a proud holder of a taiwanese driving license and very soon a proud holder of the singapore equivalent.

"About half of adolescent boys surveyed said they had sex within one month of knowing their romantic partners, compared with about 23 percent for the girls. "

.

with compliments of channelnewsasia.com i managed to read this article with much interest. frankly, this report came as no surprise to me considering myself to be exposed to all these small facets of life as seen by my college friends. i've heard of stories, personal accounts, and know friends who have gone through this. sex is no longer a taboo subject. in fact i think it's precisely because of our asian attitude of making this sex topic seem as a taboo subject that is creating an interest and desire to dwelve deep into it. teenagers want more than just a 'when you grow up you will find out for yourself' or a 'just don't do it because it's wrong' answer. at this point it's apt for me to inject this fact that even in the western world where sex seems to be less of a taboo subject, pre-marital sex is still rampant as is with abortions before marriage. short gun marriages are not uncommon there and with a lack of knowledge and exposure of the following consequences, such statistics may soon find its way into our national records soon. what interests me more is that considering the above statement to be a true representation of the entire nation, does that mean only half of our males are copulating with a quarter of our females? so after doing a little math here and there that makes a ratio of two males for every female to effectively give one child. in economic terms, that means low productivity. it's no wonder our birth rate is so low. tsktsk.

it only just recently dawned upon me that today is a friday and it's december already. winter is literally here in taiwan but my heart is still warm from the smiles taken with me at the airport. it's been a seemingly long while here, 5 months and counting, but looking back now it doesn't seem that long really. a flutter of an eye, that was what it seemed to be. i've got another 9 more months to go, that is if i do extend which is highly likely, and estimate myself to be backfor good only in mid-september or beginning of october. in the process of planning ahead, i'm currently looking forward to my mid-term home leave in december; to see all you wonderful people back home. still, i'm still trying to believe that today's a friday on a wintery cool december night.

they know that santa's on his way.

he's loaded of toys and goodies on his sleigh

and every mother's child is gonna spy

to see if reindeers really know how to fly.

there's really a sense of nostalgia emerging from within whenever i hear carols being played on air and through youtube. the five consecutive days of carolling were once such a pain in the ass; tiring schedules, odd timings, sometimes horrid food, but nevertheless all the while fun. Majestic songs such as "O, Come All Ye Faithful" and "O Holy Night" never fail to bring back the tingles and satisfaction felt after singing those high notes and finally ending the song with a beautiful slow decresencdo. i then heard celine dion's version of "The Christmas Song" and nearly teared. it was a song that our batch sang in our post-christmas concert- the first concert we did on our own. with meaningful words matched aptly in flowing tandem with the fluid-like music, it will be yet another symphony of voices, of both young and old (yes chorale, don't deny it. we are All old) in the Grand Hall of Raffles Hotel on Christmas Day. so even as i type this here in taiwan, i look forward to the day of carolling with my best companions beside me, because after all, that's what makes Christmas each year special- spending time with you.

... although it's been said, many times many ways,
Merry Christmas to You.

i've been doing a lot of thinking these few days about things back home; reminiscing of old times, hopeful of the future and many times in deep thought. there are of course some things that cannot be publicly disclosed here due to the complications that may arise if intepreted/ passed on wrongly, knowing that for every sentence that people make on their blogs there will be some tabloids going around spreading false rumours. i'm someone who thinks a lot but the things that i think of hardly ever come true- a worrier? i reckon i am. still, there's a lot more of things ahead of myself to hope for and fight for. thank goodness, this particular issue only stays for the last few minutes before i fly to dreamland. and for every thing that i think of, there has to be something to jumpstart my thinking cap right? believe it or not cnn jumpstarted mine just a few hours ago. there was a report "Czar Putin" and an advertisement on Libya's female fighters. and because this blog is not some global political blog, i shall not go into the horrid details of the report. but it definitely got me thinking; thinking about the sort of things that i want to study in two years time. gender issues, politics, racial issues, the list goes on. still, That particular issue continues to hang around somewhere. maybe i'm not over it; but i'm rather certain i am, though others say i'm not.

like a communist assasin

at the back of the alley, i fled.

there was no screaming, no agony, no pain

it was a silent affair.

at governement house,

after being granted political asylum, i left.

still, i held on to my roots.

i knew, and continue to know.

the ball's still in your court

yet there's another sharing the same space.

maybe mine has been thrown out;

discarded into the box of friends.

nevertheless, i wish you love.