I had a pretty interesting night yesterday hehe. After much procrastination and indecision,  we (Gab, Charm, Jean, Dylan and I) decided to meed at Kallang Leisure Park, purportedly to go ice-skating. Imagine my surprise when upon reaching, they announced that we'd be going to Geylang for dinner instead. So off we went, thankfully Gabriel drove, parked at Lorong 2X and we walked around looking for somewhere to grab some dinner. Well anyway it was a pretty eye-opening experience, you know, you hear about it but I never knew prostitution in Geylang could be well...so...blatant. Scantily dressed women just standing along the streets not-quite soliciting while the intent was so explicitly obvious, massive groups of guys, some of them lining up in what seemed to be queues, some of them engaged in apparent discussions, the content of which I can only shudder to imagine, money changing hands and also random "couples" with an age gap that seemed too great to look any decent stepping out of some Hotel 81, steadfastedly not looking at each other after the event. So it was pretty interesting to walk through the throngs of people conducting their business, taking sideways glances at some of the products laid out by the more enterprising ones, various tablets of IDK what, performance enhancers I suppose, laid out neatly along the sidewalk, and I can only wonder what the conversations that take place between buyer and seller must sound like... "Sooo...what does this blue one do?" "It makes your @#$@# @#$@#  #$%$5" "Then what does that one do?" "...." I guess sometimes...it's better not to ask so many questions..

Dinner itself was good, followed by much wandering around Geylang looking for some place that sold dessert, which was unfortunately nowhere to be found. After much random wandering, wherein the above ^ observations were made, along with much random BS, we decided to give it up and go for a driveby instead, stopping at Jean's place for awhile before heading home. All in all an enjoyable time, though we didn't really plan that well in advance x.x

I was dealt a pretty cruel blow last week, for shooting, NOT anything else xP Team selection trials for the NUSIS, and before my detail, I happened to see on the coach's laptop that the next lowest shooter, the only guy I had a realistic chance of beating to get onto the final team of 3, shot 548. So, I set that as my aim for the trial. Things started off badly in my first series, I was unable to quite find my proper form nor the feeling to shoot a 9, let alone a 10, so it was always going to be an uphill task playing catchup with the subsequent 5 series. I somehow managed to recover somewhat, and was counting my score in my head, trying my utmost to hit +18 (because I use 9 as my baseline, a 8 is -1, 10 is +1).My form improved, and I managed to break even before making some headway, reducing my misfires to a minimum but eventually -by my count- missed on by about 5 points. My coach tends to be a little more lenient though so he eventually gave me a score of 548, target reached, right? But it was not to be, cause in some pretty sick twist of fate, either I remembered the score wrongly or he noted it down on his laptop wrongly; that guy got 549, 1 point higher than I did. Pretty ironic and sad, I guess, after counting so closely, and actually attaining my target, that target turned out to be off, by just that little bit. Maybe I shouldn't have been so focused on the score, but this time I didn't really get the impression that it was an incorrect focus that held me back, I don't think I could have done much better at my current standard tbh. Can't help it, I guess, I don't quite know how the team will turn out now, but it's all out of my hands.

Hmmm idk, maybe what holds us back just when we're thinking of taking that one step forward is the thought that it'd mean 2 more steps to just get back to where we used to be if things didn't turn out as expected, and even that is just an unlikely possibility. We can't just continue standing where we are, yet we're so afraid to step forward, trying to pick the moment, when things feel right. As with so many other things, it's all a matter of timing. It's all so very confusing >< And in part it's not fair to carry on with such uncertainty, is it? You get one hand clapping, with the other not quite sure where it wants to be. Or maybe that other hand is just thinking too much and should just give it time to see how things develop.

I stilled my heart before burying it deep, and still the question lingers: How to begin to make sense of what I have, what I am, to disentangle it from what I used to be, a fleeting coherence that vanishes the moment I open my eyes. Ask no questions, and I shall have to tell no lies.

This CNY, pretty much the least visiting I've done since I can remember, 初一 a flash of age-wrinkled hands, it shouldn't elicit as visceral a surge of emotion each time, but it does, always, another reminder of the passage of time. Memories seem to be a recurring theme for me, each CNY, this time was no different, many of my formative memories are of time spent at my grandparents' house, a 2-storied flat in Serangoon, heading there after classes at Rosyth to wait for my mum to finish work and pick me up, or time spent messing around with my cousins in our once weekly Saturday family visits, savoring my grandma's delicious home-cooked food, the doting affections of my grandpa who'd buy food from the coffeeshop downstairs whenever I came over, and, not that I remember much, but the first few months of my life spent there, while my parents were waiting to get a house of their own. It's changed, now, not only physically, after the pretty recent renovations, but also in the nature of the things we do, subtly yet very distinctly different, it's human nature, or perhaps more significantly, a huge part of my nature to hold that little bit of sentimentalism, and emotional attachment to the past, I know that part of me just isn't going to go away, and it hurts, more than a little, this realization that we simply can't hold on to the past forever.

In line with this theme, I spent 初二 alone at home sorting through a little of my old stuff while the rest of my family went visiting (yeah, I know I should probably have done this before CNY, but what's a procrastinator gonna do ><) in anticipation of having some friends over the next day, coz my room was in a veritable mess. Seriously. It was quite a chore, but as I looked through all those old RI notes, it really struck me that we were very fortunate to have been exposed to such a wide variety of readings, loads of paper wasted, trees killed, yeah, but no one can say that they didn't try. A lot of interesting stuff, ethics, politics and such, it shames me to admit that I didn't see the importance of these at that point of time, and didn't read much tbh, and it's a missed opportunity I may rue given the highly specialized nature my education is going to take from now on. And I realized that it is these miscellaneous readings, rather than the tutorials and lecture notes from the sciences that I'd treasure at this point of time,  the hard, recall based knowledge perhaps not as relevant to me now as the trivia on a basis of casual interest. I got into a bit of trouble with my mother, as a lot of her memorabilia along with old clothes was in my room, promises to clear them out "eventually" having never materialized till I pushed for it. It...wasn't too pleasant. Things sortta came to a head the next day, particularly tense and I couldn't take the overbearing passive aggressiveness (who flames their own sibling behind their back for asking them out for breakfast? It just doesn't make sense) so I just walked out when we were supposed to go shopping for ingredients together. I can't say I meant anything by doing that, didn't intend to make a statement, I just didn't feel up to sticking around with the negativity, I suppose that's something you can understand, right? To her credit she caught up to me pretty soon after and idk, things improved somewhat, without any mention of what'd happened earlier that morning. Things aren't ever resolved, but well..I was more than happy to take it..

Not the best start to the day, but things turned out well enough to pretend that everything was okay, and it got better from there, I actually enjoyed preparing the rosti, and having M&M over was a pretty nice experience, not much to do in my house, but I never knew my roof could be such a nice place to chill, talk cock and play a few rounds of poker, I was the first to go bust, risk-adverse though I was, and Mos won eventually, going all-in on pure dumb luck, so it was worth it, I guess?

I'm not too sure where life goes from here, I haven't quite formed the words in my head so do pardon any incoherence on my part. And I guess I should be the first to know that time spent one to one, rambling endless convos that go on and on don't necessarily mean a thing. Compound onto that my apparent self-perceived heartlessness, something I can't quite express, not right now at least, and I don't know if I even deserve anything.

Ah screw this, I tried, that's all for now..