In Continuum.

In A Place Like That

Going home from school after a morning of brief orientation programs was a relief, especially after a full night of sleeplessness. While I highly doubt that I actually laid there for the whole five hours, I don't think I slept much in bed anyway. I remember the details of every single hour, and a writer's mind is definitely not a sleeper's mind. Instead of waking up at 7.20am, I woke up at 6.30am with a bad mood and was ready to break some glasses. This insomnia thing surely isn't something I'd want to have during my school days, and I certainly hated the fact that my mother proved me wrong when she said "I told you that you can't just switch things around over one night!" But what the hell, we will see how things go tonight, and if the situation persists I might seek professional help, or secretly buy sleeping pills for the nights. Yes, I am that desperate.

Despite the slight rain and the fact that I got off at the wrong bus stop in the morning, the trip to the new school was great. At least I was still early, and even had the time to go to the toilet to take a dump. It felt chilly inside the main school building, and the white and gray interiors sure wasn't helping all that much. Alone, I probably will be alone once again in this brand new school, like all the other ones that I went to throughout my life. It's not an issue for me, but the chill of a new territory gets to you, despite the thick top I was wearing and the new bag hugged over my back. I found the venue swiftly, and already the crowd of new students were outside the LT, queuing up for registrations and payment of the orientation. I watched, and observed as the people interacted - or tried to anyway. And I thought to myself," Looks like a good start."

The one thing that I realized was the lack of bad English speaking people around, which was great. The girl just in front of me was talking to her friend, and both of them had a kind of slang, with the precise pronunciations. There were three cohorts of student there - the business, the psychology and the communication students. And I dearly wished that the obnoxious, menacing looking ones would go to business while the Eurasian, the Caucasian, the handsome and the beautiful would come to the communication course. But it was impossible to tell, and it was merely just me standing there in line, dreaming away and having some foolish hopes. But it was an interesting experience, being in a place like that, the first time in a very long time.

Going back to school, suddenly this lifestyle is daunting. The amount of information poured into our faces today was staggering. To be honest, I am not yet accustomed to this new type of education system, or style of teaching. It is not a good thing I know, but I think I am still used to the passive learning process, the way the lecturer treats you like a five year old toddler and expects nothing from you but only your utmost attention. The way they think that they are big and you are small, they are right and you are wrong, and there is nothing you can do about it. That was the way they brought us up, that was also the ways we were brought up to believe. I've always known that there are better ways to teach students, but I didn't know how. But being in that kind of environment for too long, anybody would get used to things and be institutionalize.

Sitting in the lecture theater, I minded my own business mostly. Some of the new students came with friends, and those friends came with other friends. They already had people they knew, and it was perhaps my aura of unfriendliness that kept people away from sitting next to me. But it was OK, because I wasn't expecting too much from the first day anyway. Besides, it's not like anybody would sit beside a person who looked like he just went to Hell and back the previous night. I was exhausted beyond comprehension, and even before the lecturer began his briefing, I was already rubbing my knuckles into my eye-sockets, trying to wake myself up without slapping myself. I swear, that if I auditioned for a part in the sequel to Shaun of the Dead, I might just be able to get a part - and without the need for makeups too.

So the information dissemination came along. Portals, resignation policies, library books, library portals, University's website, orientation programs, GPAs, honors, minimum requirements, numbers, alphabets, more numbers, more alphabets...I was left in my seat confused and dazed - as expected. At the beginning of the lecture, the lecturer told us that by the end of the briefing, we'd most definitely feel mind-boggled and confused about this whole thing. I pictured myself back in the JC days, and yes I felt pretty much the same way about everything. I just hope that this new lifestyle - a lifestyle which I have stayed away for the past two years due to the military - will soon grow into me like a habit of sorts. But then the moral of the whole briefing today really is just one thing: Do as well as you can, and don't cheat in the process. Simple. Easy. Done.

As much as I thought it was a pleasant start to this new life of mine, I still very much dreaded the journeys to and fro. Thinking about the morning traffic that jam-packed the streets this morning gave me the worst headache and the sense of nausea. The way the bus moved and inch and stopped, and repeated the same process to infinity. It was not a comfortable feeling, but I endured it anyway and actually got off at the wrong stop - great. Anyway, I was glad to leave the school at the end of the day around noon, and was greeted outside by the coming of a storm. I grabbed hold of the strap on my left shoulder, braced myself from the coming cold, and rushed out into the rain.

I took at the side at the very front of a double-decker, where the view was great and I didn't have to observe the dandruff of the old lady in front of me. It was just me, and then the car right in front of the bus just below my feet. It was raining heavily then, and the water glided down the smooth surface of the window before me in undulating waves. I could hear the thunders in the sky and the sound of the rain hitting against the roof of the red bus, and sitting high above the rest of the traffic I was lost amidst the beautiful sound of piano and violin. It was the first time I listened to Philip Glass' The Hours soundtrack outdoors, and like any other emotional music, it got me thinking on my way home.

To my right was the McDonald's Ahmad told me about the other, and it was also the same McDonald's Stanley worked for before his accident. I remember my friends telling me that he crashed his bike into a drain nearby, and as I stared out into the rain, the deep monsoon train with slanted edges ran parallel to the side of the bus, like a deep trench dug by a thousand soldiers against the forthcoming enemies. The water inside was shallow despite the rain, and the sides were covered in green algae and slime. It must have been a drain which looked something like that, as I thought to myself. The barriers to the side were low, and it was easy for a rider to crash off the road and into the drain. And I pictured myself lying there in the thick weed and slime, dying with every passing second and minute, with my life flashing before my eyes, in a place like that.

He must have been there, or a drain that looked somewhat like the one I saw anyway. I have no idea how Stanley is doing now, and the previously conceived idea of visiting him on Friday was canceled due to my orientation commitments(For now). He was stitched up this week, the innards cleared up and the excess blood sucked out I heard. But still, none of us really know about the aftermaths of the accident, if he still remembers half of the people who visited him over the past week. But I guess, when you picked your up from the hands of the Grim Reaper, when somebody came down from the side of the drain and picked you up from there in a stretcher, a lot of things in life doesn't matter anymore. It doesn't matter - for example - if you are going to spend your twenty-first birthday in the ICU - which he did. Because a life returned really is the best kind of gift you can get for your twenty-first birthday. I'm not saying that I'd like to have the same kind of life changing experience on my birthday, but I guess it is just comforting to know that someone in my life is going to take life a lot more seriously, and treasure his remaining times better.

So, I trot on in my own life and hopefully without mishaps. The bus turned off the busy road and onto a familiar highway. I got off for a switch of the bus, and the rain only got heavier and heavier as I waited. I recalled Janice's words about missing the kind of rain in Singapore, and how the ones in Australia almost always feel like somebody watering her plants upstairs in the balcony. The rain today made me think about her, and I wished dearly that she was there to witness the kind of rain so uniquely Singapore. So heavy and so beautiful at the same time, with the scent of nature in the air, everything was renewed and everything was possible.

In a place like that, I guess, nothing matters anymore. Because after all, we should live like tomorrow is the last day of our lives, and dream as if our lives are going to last forever, right?