Ten years ago, my festival celebration usually routed around with my volleyball team. We met up and celebrated via karaoke sessions or dinner. Sometimes, we even stayed overnight at public places like Merlion Park.
It seemed that we could no longer return to the fun times when everyone started to have more commitments.
I had strayed further away from them since the location of volleyball game shifted. I stayed furthest among them who were all in the west side. Moreover, they knew my interest quite well that I was not into most of the common entertainments – movie, pool, KTV and mahjong etc. The worst thing was that I was not even into appreciation of food.
For the past few Christmas, I had been home alone, either spending my time working or being a little kind to myself by playing some games. My younger brother had many good friends while my elder brother stick closely with his girlfriend. My mum had some activities sometimes, otherwise, she would sleep at home.
Christmas 2011’s night was a peaceful night for me like usual. I began rewarding myself by uploading some outdated photos into Facebook. I had a surprise when a net friend messaged me in Facebook regarding embedding copyright text on my photos. We began chatting and she suggested calling me through Skype.
I was entirely melted by her sweet voice. The thing I enjoyed most was her appreciation for me. In fact, she sounded too nice to be true and I had perhaps met many weird people online to believe that I was lucky.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed the one hour of Skype chat.
“I wondered if that voice was real; no doubt it was the greatest present ever. The clock ticked as the countdown ended without me knowing for the best Christmas. There was no celebration, except for a wishing - a simple wishing that weighed more than anything and could melt anyone.”
At the first hour of Christmas, I was with my buddies at Vivocity, catching the movie “Guards and Assassins”. I had not been to the cinema with them for very long. It was an unusual outing since the guys had their girlfriends along, except for Weitat and me. We split into two groups of four each, on the same row, but separated by around three to four persons.
It was a story about people trying to protect the father of Republic of China, Sun Zhong Shan aka Sunwen. Some people thought that we had to really understand the story so that we could understand the movie, I thought differently. The story was simple, but the plot was definitely good enough to link up all the characters. Fighting scenes were nice. It was one of the nicest Chinese movies ever.
At the start of the movie, someone nearby started snoozing. In the midst of it, Weitat joined in the fun, then I realised the sleepy person could have watched the movie before like Weitat.
After the movie, we proceeded to Ruo Chun at Geylang for dim sum. I reached home at around 5am and the rest of them were definitely later.
In the afternoon, Mingfa came over to fetch me to East Coast Park. We rented bikes and cycled to the beach volleyball court. The sand was lousy but the poles were firm. None of them wanted to dive and I was the only fearless yet stupid one. I played better on sand than indoor court most of the time.
After the short volleyball game, we went further after the Outward bound campus before going back to the bicycle kiosk. We decided to end the day then. Jingkun sent me home and in the midst of the journey, just as I was admiring the dark clouds seemed like dropping, it started pouring very heavily.
Thursday was a full day holiday for me, and thus there was no pay.
After getting home late from Carl’s Junior, I did not sleep immediately as usual. I managed to wake up at 8am to visit the Chinese physician and she knew it easily that I had little sleep just by looking at my throat.
I left for Sarah Home before 10am and felt lost because the old batch of students were all absent. Weiming was still at IMM to do the shopping. The event was delayed since the person who planned it was not around and the few of them, being freshies, seemed lost.
After Weiming arrived with Mdm Seet in Mr Baey’s car, we started unloading the food and packing them. I could feel the pressure from the old people staying nearby; they approached to ask for the food which we had prepared for the forty elderly that the Interact Club was taking care of.
It was raining heavily and I made my way home before 1pm. Soon, I dozed off as expected from the extreme lack of sleep.
My family had gifts exchange before 10pm and I left my house at around 11.30pm to meet my buddies at Vivocity.
I was expecting a big cool mass meet-up on Thursday, Christmas day itself. Jason and Lynn organised the NP ex classmates gathering to meet up at Cityhall and I thought everyone would be late since it was a big group outing but it turned out to be a bigger surprise.
I made myself late for fifteen minutes and Cher Fong was already there with Jason. Then, I was informed that Lynn had decided to fly us aeroplane due to her last minute issue. Huiwen changed her mind and Ziying followed suit. Some of the rest were not informed properly and when I called Shilin, she told me she was not coming anymore.
We made our way to Shokudo at the basement of Raffles City. It was my virgin visit and I was quite surprised by the system. Everyone was issued a card each to be scanned for each food we were to purchase. It was like a food court style except that we had to queue up at the entrance and wait for our tables so that there was more order this way.
The three of us walked around to search for food while waiting for Wen Chang’s arrival. I ordered a Teriyaki chicken burger set and it tasted quite good, except for the bread covering the meat was huge. The serving of the French fries was great with the portion and yummy taste. The meal cost me ten bucks exactly.
We had great chat and what we lacked of was Benson’s DSLR camera, and of course, the presence of some females to make the outing not so gayish.
Christmas Eve fell on Wednesday and this time was something different from the usual staying-at-home or hanging-out-with-volleyball-buddies. My family had a barbecue session at East Coast Park in the late afternoon but things did not go smoothly.
I was lazy and it was never my intention to join in the fun if not for my younger brother preferred the family togetherness and that it was a fresh experience. My brothers did the packing of equipments.
The weather was a total disaster. When the dark clouds first sent a warning, we defied proceeded with plan. We boarded bus 196 and alighted at Parkway Parade to shop in the NTUC supermarket to get the food and some other items. It cost me nearly fifty bucks.
Next, we strolled across the underpass and decided on an empty barbecue pit since all the sheds were taken up. I did not feel secure at first and I knew I was right when a group of youngsters came over to tell us they had booked the pit. We quickly evacuated to one of the empty tables.
It started pouring and we set up the tent before moving the lighted tray over to the entrance. My elder brother’s gears were enough to set up a tiny tentage to house the fire and food. I was glad that I did not bring the better ground map along because the current one was pierced at the four corners. We started mocking at the group of youngsters who “snatched” our pit away.
Soon, we realised that we had made a wrong move of setting up our big ground sheet below our tent. The cheap tent was not waterproof and even though it was good enough to block the rain, any contact with the cloth would cause heavy water diffusion. Our pants started to get wet and it was yet another underwear-wet-wet experience.
I was yearning to get home but it was good enough that I was simply enjoying the serving of food with my mum. The amount of food was just nice for the five of us. As the rain got smaller, my mum, elder brother and his girlfriend went to the MacDonald’s and they got back with another ground sheet to put inside the tent and a new pant for me. Then we started to finish the remaining delicious food.
We waited for the rain to stop before packing everything up and walked back to Parkway Parade to catch bus 196.
We started taking shower once we got home. They planned to catch a movie and eventually managed to persuade me to join in. My main hesitation was the problem of taking a cab home after the movie since we had five persons. They proceeded first to Tiong Bahru Plaza to get the tickets while I accompanied my mum over after taking my bathe.
The Yes Man was quite a good movie. It somehow reflected on my life on the number of opportunities I had given up. I said “No” more than “Yes” in my entire life and I had missed out a lot. I did not have a choice anyway.
After the movie, we tried to get cab but none of the drivers was daring enough to house in five of us and thus we decided to walk home.
For those who did not receive my SMS, just to let you know that Uncle Santa has instructed you to give me my present first. Later, he will put yours into your smelly socks. So, remember not to wash them first.
By the way, if you really never receive my SMS, probably I have sent to your old number. Please message me your latest number!
It was Christmas Day finally and I was preparing to deliver the present over to Vivi when she sounded very sleepy. I tried to keep her awake but instead, I lost a lot of time doing that, which was a mistake. I had not cycled for so long since after my operation and this time with the new tyres, I used less strength than before to do the same amount of job.
It was a challenge against myself. I reached her place near 1am and gave her more than thirty calls which she did not pick up. I got so disappointed because usually her friends could easily wake her up when they wanted to chat with her over the phone. Standing at the corridor, I had so much doubt that I could take good care of her.
I made the wasted trip there and I was not sure how my mum felt about it. At least I had proven that my left leg was capable of paddling though it might still not be able to withstand jumping. It was quite an unlucky morning for when I got to Yan Kit Road, the roti prata was sold out. I decided to go home empty-handed and the chain came off. For the first time I fixed it back but got my hands so dirty.
It was a boring day ahead. She had organised a party at her house since her parents did not allow her to go out to celebrate. I seriously did not understand what grudges her parents bear with me but from what she told me, I could not go even though I was not very interested as well.
It was till night time when I decided to deliver her present over, her friends were leaving. Since she told me her dad was sending them to the MRT station, I decided to stop by Outram Park MRT station. It was raining but I decided to proceed on. After waiting for quite some time, I called her to check for her location and realised her dad was sending her friends to Woodlands MRT instead. In the rain, I cycled straight to her house and luckily her brother came to the living room and I quietly caught his attention to pass him the present without letting her mum know.
After that, her brother and I started to bluff her that the present was given by her brother and she believed it. Since the day before she had received some chocolate with “I love you” label inside, she insisted that present was from me. No matter how I explained and swear that I was not so stupid to make her grow fat, she refused to believe me.
In the end, I realised her group of friends who went to her house was actually friends introduced by a smoker cum playboy who tried to break us months ago. The disappointment was so heartbreaking. Then, she was busy entertaining that playboy for she did not invite him over due to a conflict between him and another guy.
Alas, I concluded that she was so naïve to easily believe other people and yet she always had doubts in me. Another disappointment was that she would never ever keep her promise to stay away from people whom I disliked.
Chua was a freak. He SMSed me at two plus yesterday morning to ask if I had given 007 the photos taken at Rehan's house. I didn't expect he still remember after so long and I thought it was all settled.
I answered him "yes" with a "goodnight" immediately but suddenly I remembered I had passed him the CD the day he came to camp to collect his pink I/C (identification card) and told him to do it on my behalf since I didn't want to see 007.
For now it would depend on my mood to do 007 the favour. He is on long leave for his new born child and recently work has been a hectic in camp, which he will never realise the effort my team has been putting in (of course not everyone). Recently he has been smiling a lot and sound friendly but I realise our backs are always bleeding, so, I really have to consider wasting my time for him; unless if he asks me in person, I might be too soft to be mean.
Anyway, I haven't updated on the outing on 23rd December 2005, due to time constraint. I keep dragging it as more things pile up as there are just too many things to work on; and since I've been quite anti-social for the past few years, it also increases the unspoken thoughts in mind. Inspiration can be gone very soon, and therefore sometimes I just allow stories of events to be delayed.
This outing was one of the greatest I had in my one year plus of army life; it was so because we could officially skip a day of camp life. Although not the entire group of people are very welcoming, almost all are my good buddies in camp. I didn't know how much budget the camp had given, but it wasn't the money that counts.
Meeting at Commonwealth MRT, quite a number of them were late and expected. It took us a long walk before we reached there, a condominium with badminton and tennis courts, as well as two small swimming pools.
We had only around an hour of time to use the facilities before lunch and I tried playing tennis for the first time in my life. I realised I was more suited to play golf. While some of them were playing badminton, the shuttle cock got struck at the branches and they had fun trying to get it down.
Chua and I decided to go for a swim and too bad none of them wanted to join us except for Shep's son - Joshua. Since he was looking for swimming companion earlier on, I called Chen De who was at the house and he was brought down. This boy was very cute and started to abuse Chua who almost got angry with all the violent kicking and punching. To me, it was really a fun period of time.
We took many photos and then went up for lunch and Rehan's maid made it a splendid one and everyone was filled to gain extra weights. We had spaghetti, salad, mushroom soup, Sri Lanka fruit juice, pizza and some other food. The best attract was the massaging chair which gave an almost total body massage. Everyone didn't want to get up and I didn't mind going there again for the massage, especially after a tiring swim.
In the gift exchange, I got back a useless large pen which I didn't mind throwing away. It was so super duper useless and uninteresting for a mature adult like me. However, I was surprised by 007 who gave each of us a present, which was a t-shirt.
Since there wasn't any plan for the afternoon or evening, I stayed there even though we were officially "dismissed" after lunch. It started to rain as well but soon began to drizzle. In the end, Rehan drove some of us in his Jeep to Commonwealth MRT and that was the last err of our outing.
It's just a festival, an excuse for friends to gather, for fun and to release stress.
Every year it's still the same, going out with the same group of friends, except the faces are somehow different; people just walk in and out of our lives.
This year, I thought I was going to stay at home until Mingfa called me. I tried to get more people like Kachua and Jinyang who had already had their own appointments, whereas Guoxin claimed he didn't know the rest well and I stopped probing him.
It was a short notice and then Mingfa suddenly messaged me that I'd to get a present for gifts exchange. After lazing around, I started cracking and finally bought an umbrella, which exceeded the budget.
Moving about slowly and preparing to be late for more than half an hour since Weitat usually wouldn't arrive until two hours after the meeting time, this time I was wrong. Perhaps, they might have met up earlier before going there.
Dinner was Long John Silver's at IMM. We slacked around waiting for others and then took the shuttle bus to Jurong East MRT and proceeded to Somerset, where we had fun taking photos. When all the thirteen of us were there, we moved to Cuppage for karaoke.
Gifts exchange was at twelve sharp. I got jewellery for girls and Meijun exchanged her pillow with me. We continued with the singing and photo taking until half of us were falling asleep.
Partying during festival season could be costly like up to $28 each person. We left the place with pocket torn at around three in the morning. I gave a call to Ruoci and realised she had abandoned us again. After a visit to the Seven-eleven store, the breads cured me from my gastric pain.
We proceeded on towards Lau Pa Sat by foot and it took us around an hour to reach there. I'd a plate of chicken chop. It was quite nice except that the paper plate didn't have any divider to prevent the fries from being wetted and the paper fork wasn't sharp enough.
Everyone started to leave soon and we didn't go to Fullerton One as planned. Anyway, just when I was about to leave with Weitat and his two thirteen-years-old friends, it started to pour heavily.
We boarded the first bus and the pillow saved me from being drenched badly.
