In Continuum.

Anyway, I made my way to The Central afterwards via the bus, missing the thunderstorm that came down hard on the streets by literally a minute. I took shelter in an unexpected place, a place that you'd not usually find me - Starbucks. I had three hours to burn, and there weren't any other cafes in the vicinity that made sense for me to sit down with my Macbook and my schoolwork for that amount of time. So I bought myself a white chocolate ice-blend at the counter, found myself a nice comfortable sofa in the corner and basically spent the rest of the time making notes on the Macbook, highlighting line after line of text in the psychology textbook, with the music of Thomas Newman playing in my ears the whole time. If there is one thing that I love about Starbucks, it is probably the fact that you can add whatever you want to your drinks, and it certainly has a nicer logo than Coffee Bean - if you know what I mean. Time passed rather quickly, and Samuel was nice enough to drop by an hour earlier just to keep time with me. We caught up, since it has been sometime, and the conversation inevitably drifted to Hannah, which he expectedly avoided. For some reason, he doesn't like to talk about her very much, something which the rest of the night trying to figure out.

We met the main character of this gathering downstairs at the MRT station. Krishna appeared around the corner looking seemingly taller than usual. It was probably the hair, being a lot thicker than before certainly helped with the height. It was nice to see him all over again, it has been a little more than a year since we last met. So much has happened, and there was just a moment then when the words crowded around the edge of my mouth and refused to come out. It does seem like his stay in the States has changed him a lot, but then he was still the same old Krishna in the heart, it was not difficult to see that. There we were, the three of us, sitting in the middle of the Japanese restaurant after so many years of knowing each other. It was nice to see how much we have changed while we remained the same somehow, and these are the feelings that only old friends like them can bring along. Seriously, I couldn't have asked for a better group of people to have a reunion on a Thursday night. 

We started catching up on the old days when we thought we already had a hang of the mechanisms of the world. I remember those days spent suntanning during recess when we used to expose ourselves out in the sun until our visions turned purple literally. A particular conversation back then while we squinted our eyes at each other while being half naked in the sun was the topic of girlfriends, and I'm sure none of us back then thought that Samuel would be the man staying together with a woman for as long as he has. Hannah and Samuel has been together for a little more than three years now, a feat for someone our age in this age and time I suppose. They've always been a sort of golden couple in school back then, and I guess Krishna and I have been the ones on the peripheral of things. There is no doubt that people have come our way in between now and those days of innocence, but I guess nothing ever lasted long enough. We started a game at the dinner table last night, and we tried to remember who was sitting where in our classroom back then. We managed to nail about 90% of the people and their seats. I'd say we did a pretty good job considering how little we have thought about the sitting arrangements in the past four or five years.

Krishna still felt like the same guy back in those days when we used to stay back in an empty classroom to do Chinese composition because his efficiency in that language was equivalent to my knowledge on astrology. He went as far as his name back then, and the rest of the composition was basically the transcript of what told him to write on those long and dreadful afternoons after school. Still, I miss those days in Secondary School when everything was just so simply, wasn't it? I know Samuel and Krishna do not share the same sentiments as myself, but I guess high school really was the best time of my life, academically speaking. There was just such a simple and even blend of studies and fun back then, and the relationships in between people were much simpler back then. People hung out with each other without agendas, but because they genuinely enjoyed each other's companies. The innocence that we had back then has been lost through the sands of time somehow, and we have changed into three people that have been roughened up by life in every way possible. 

Underneath it all, however, we were still those high school kids in short school uniforms and carrying those ridiculously heavy school bags. Samuel is still the same person who'd allow that hidden rage to peep through every once in a while, the way he exploded in class back then when Darren used to tease him on a minute to minute basis. Samuel's maturity after the army as well as relationship with Hannah has not prevented his child-like aspects to come through at times, and it is delightful that we get a glimpse of that old Samuel when he told us about his family issues as well as his girlfriend. Krishna is still the same person who laughed to the same jokes and would enjoy talking about old times with a bunch of good friends. His accent has changed, and so has his facial hair. He's the guy who'd get excited with the sight of a reversed bungee jump by the river, but he's still the same person at heart - and I could tell from how we talked. He is still idealistic, still focused, and very much the person that lived for the moment - never the past or the future. 

We met Alvin afterwards, and there we were hanging out at a random bar along the Singapore River when we talked the rest of the night away over glasses of cocktail. It's funny how, in contrary to Samuel and Krishna, Alvin has changed so very little over the years. In fact, he changed so little that it became a little disturbing somehow, and I started to wonder to myself just how it is possible for a person to spin around in circles for so very long. I guess it may be because of the fact that he has deferred his army for his studies in medicine, or maybe just how his life has been revolving around his church and school work. Anyway, he still spoke the same way and acted the same way around us, the way he remained so stubbornly Christian even while Krishna and I were on the topic of sex. I thought it was natural for a group of guys to talk about it at the bar, but he was a little held back like he was back then in school when he joined our suntanning club during recess. It was a little awkward, and I wonder if he felt the same way as we did. I wondered to myself, if he realized that we have all moved on in our lives somehow, except for him. He's still back there in high school, still in that white shorts, still the same guy carrying the same red Deuter backpack to school. 

We have all lost our innocence to something, life has taught us well in leaving those aspects of us behind. It feels as if life has baptized us with what we need to know about it to survive, although some people have remained in situ. The loss of innocence, to me, isn't something to grieve over of course, but something that I truly appreciate. The trade-off is that we have also lost the simplicity of life in the process, but then I guess it just feels so good to be able to handle things the way we do now, to be able to have an opinion on subjects and to have different perspectives than before. Some people are still stubbornly holding on to their innocence, as if there isn't anything more important in life than that. There is a time for everything, like how there is a time to let go of that innocence and set it free. Sooner or later, you are going to find that everybody has moved on except yourself, and your mouth would be full of the dust that has been thrown into the air by our shoes. I appreciate the innocence I had, but I don't miss it at all. Maturity is merely a path in life that we all must take. What I miss, however, is the innocence of life that we used to have, a right that we all possessed. It just seems to me, that we lost more than just our innocence, but that seemingly innocent life that used to be so linear and straightforward in the most direct and beautiful way. 

Still, we have our friends. I have my friends. They are always going to be the ones to remind you of the good times, the simpler times, the better times. Even if it is just for one night over a few glasses of cocktails at a random bar, it is worth all the trouble. Things will be OK, things will be A-OK. They will be there for you, no matter what.