The Least of Bliss

Obligatory HDB patriotism.

1) Jingliang, Linette and I had dinner at debatable Subway competitor Quiznos a few days ago.

Pictures from Linette "Shanghai Temple" Cheong

And you never would have guessed the past few months have been nothing but a black void of each other. Maybe we choose not to remember, subconsciously bridging all our sparse times together. Any way, why should I complain. When all that we get out of this are seamless conversations, unknowingly effortless, that gracefully weave themselves around our fingers and ears. We are willing to suffocate, just because the blanket we're under is so intricately quilted with nostalgia that when we choke, we heaves blasts of hot nostalgia and news. This is exactly what a good time is.

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2) The night before, Linette and I were on the phone with each other. Some sort of a sneak preview to the next day, gripping cliff-hangers and all. Post-jittery hype clearance, we kind of lazily grazed general Catch-Up pastures, like How's School and How's Life. And then What Are You Listening To Now. I kind of fumbled with a few names ("Oh you know.") and I felt an odd lack of satisfaction after we hung up. So I made her a mix-tape.

If anybody else is keen:
♥♥♥

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3) Quite a bit of the kids around me are hopping onto the university bandwagon. And for a luck-infested handful, their bandwagon is an immaculately crafted airplane bounded for better-than-you destinations. Like France, for example.

Adel got shipped off to Bonjour-land a few days ago, where I believe she will live quite decadently nestled in an apartment made of macaroons and other astonishingly beautiful Laduree pastries, waking up each morning to a different French boy (all pretty enough to push you from a state of self-loathing to suicide-contemplation), and do annoyingly well in school just cause she's Adel.

The best of YMC (we're a compilation CD like that) met up to wave goodbye quite forlornly on the Singapore side of customs and at the same time break our fasts together.

And like a fucking group outing conspiracy, we predictably moped around, took a frustratingly endless amount of time deciding where to eat.

[Note: It is an AGE. I tell you. Like the Ice Age, the Stone Age, etcetera. Deciding on where to eat when you're with more than two people qualifies for an Age. Because it is that epic, and for a loooooong period of time, the same thing is happening (Snow, People use stones for EVERYTHING, racking your brain for restaurant names) Though I can hardly think of anything catchy. Deciding Where To Eat Age is an awful mouthful.]

In the end we had Popeye's take-away, since the place was brimming with homeboys and girls (read: Pakciks and Makciks) with both hands quite poised hovering above their platter of fried goodness and eyes not-so-discreetly darting at each other like it was some kind of space awareness exercise (if you eat, I eat, then he eats ,then we all eat). The lot of us decided to escape this, despite it being blatantly in our best interest to keep close to the makcik with the handphone earphones tucked underneath her tudung and into her ear.

So we trekked up to the viewing gallery, which won Anti Climax of the Night because it was all boarded up/closed down. We ended up being sprawled in the corner (hello, Mat Minah pride) and gnawed our way through chicken while having the usual, almost patented, fantastic YMC time.

Ami is quite the skilled photobomber.

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4) Nigel's been a little bit more part of my life recently. And not just in that sketchy, metaphorical sense that is dangerously caressing the start of sap, but in a very literal, physical way that is Nigel. I now have his adorable boat-soap necklace, which I'd like to believe is part of a one-for-one exchange since he has my unicorn necklace. And he passed me his diary that his 11-year-old self kept.

We all know that one. Your teacher makes you buy an exercise book from the book store and every week we're supposed to write about How Much I Love My Father or Why Singapore Is Such A Great Place. Pre-opinionated topics that actually bother me quite a lot now that I'm not pristinely pre-pubescent anymore.

Anyway, he passed me that. And I've loved reading it! It's hilarious. Just because Nigel v. 2010 would shoot himself up the nose before saying any of the default sugar that Nigel v. 2003 wrote down.

OH GOD I MISS HAVING A LIMITED AMOUNT OF VOCABULARY TO TALK ABOUT HOW FUCKED UP YOUR BROTHER IS. In those days, you had to be CREATIVE.

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5) I tried digging up my own. I *knew* I had a 12 year old Iffah journal stagnant somewhere, bursting with whiny fluff in the form of erratic handwriting (I had OCD in random pulses). GODDAMNIT I COULDN'T FIND IT. I did, however, manage to uncover a collection of notebooks that were outstanding companions throughout my gap year.

What's inside? Ask me nicely and approach me with a pug that has a big fat peony tied around it's neck, I might consider replies.

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6) I baked today. Just because Hari Raya is in two weeks and Mom's crazed baking fever is quite infectious.

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7) Of course I had to fall asleep while a batch was in the oven. They turned out nastily burnt and teeth-breakingly hard, so Rabani and I rounded them up on a single tray to shoot them out the windows.

We felt ~adventurous~ so we went into the kitchen and tried to shoot past the laundry hanging outside while sitting down on chairs two metres from the window with legs propped up on the table. LIKE A FUCKING BOSS.

It's not killer litter if you can eat it right. RIGHT?

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8) And here's leaving you with the drapey goodness of the bottom of my Hari Raya outfit my Mom picked out. It's like a nightgown with glitter.

Turrah.