The Fortnight

Hello Amigos, I'm back from hell and am once again, raring to scorch and torch the chronology of theamigosparasiempre with inflamed online footprints that would hopefully put the highest order of Malike's charring bbq skills to shame, and leave more than a lasting impression on your minds. From my perspective, this most recent fortnight embodied a confluence of paradoxical emotions- glee and melancholy, involuntary apprehension and stillness, condescension and veneration, as well as raptures and the inexplicable but dreaded emptiness- which broke the constant hum of monotony in a tumultuous, yet pleasant manner. With many a nimble touch of my keyboard buttons, allow me to paint yall in nearly a thousand words, a depiction of events that added yet another dash of glowing orange to my predominantly grey backdrop.

To begin with, the abrupt torrential rain last Sunday marred our afternoon of soccer by forcing everyone into an undesirable, lengthy hiatus of intense restlessness as well as impatience. As expected, the minute the impending signs of subsiding manifested themselves, all hell broke loose in an unbridled fashion. Anyway, the flames within me towered into a conflagaration due to disrupted soccer that was compounded with a couple of extraneous factors. Consequently, this inferno exponentially increased my aggression factor and took my raging desire to score/tackle/injure to another level. Unfortunately, my team kena a highly adept and physically challenging opposition of Malays which never failed to pput the remainder of teams that were present, out of business. Basket man, I was constantly on the back pedal and on numerous occassions, I hadda resort to illegal bodychecks and other variations of foul play. Malicious tackles, spitting and even altercations were commonplace at that instant, and fortunately in spite of my punch-meriting fouls, I was elusive of the events that tainted the game. For the record, my intemperate rage melted into nothing but utter despair when our team kena kicked out at the death(just before nightfall) after defending so damn well for 1/2 an hr. basket man we were damn sway. Highly competitive individuals somehow accentuates the overall quality of the game i guess.

As a representation of the barren social aspect of my life, I met with various people over the past week such as my former track and field teammates, 2 girls from my jc class and malik most recently. In all these 3 encounters, strange and interesting things happened. First of all, Hilary(track n field) was outlandishly havoc; On that day, she displayed spurts of insanity when she started slamming everyone around her and that includes me(though I disagree she was successful haha). Nevertheless, even if i were the object of slamming, i'd always welcome frivolous, cheerful banter that comes with a hint of persiflage with open arms. Oh and Hilary got fined bec she didn't pay for parking during the day HAHA! The best part was she thought she didn't have to pay for parking(this is the bigger joke). Yup, as always, I thoroughly enjoyed the company of my trackmates..nic, nic's gf, hil and yusheng!

In a similar fashion to getting stunned by Elvin with his illogical and disjointed comments, I was baffled by 2 of my former jc classmates cheryl and jacqueline. As though I'd been hit by a rock from behind, I was totally unprepared for this calamitous(but they were laughing!) event of photo taking or 'photo-whoring' in the parlance of the 21st century uptown girl. Apparently, I had been living under a giant rock because it was only through this eye opening happening after 21yrs of existence, did I realise that photo taking actually qualifies as an 'activity' among girls! Hell, i got slammed once more. Yeah in the fashion of Eminem dissing himself, I shall follow suit and air to my readers at large my embarassing weakness that I have no defence for- As some of you already know, I can't smile for the camera! And when I try to contort my muscles to produce one, I appear unnatural and some might say, constipated. Though I may not have a concrete defence against this weakness, I have a very plausible explanation that might mitigate further slamming; It inherently lies in the fact that I am unable to display a specific facial expression unless it's source- the rudimentary and genuine emotion- generates it. This means that I'm unable to smile unless I'm truly happy. Therefore, if you wanna take a picture with me in future and don't want me to sully the photograph, crack me up and i'll do my best to prolong that emotion :).

While Justin defines the aesthetics of the female species as Da Best and unfaillingly saves the best for last, I've decided to reserve the final portion of my protracted entry for the events which lead to my forthcoming university life. I met with the seniors as well as prospective Singaporeans headed to Bristol over tea at 'Flutes at The Fort' last Saturday. In that transient gathering of surprisingly limited interaction and therefore little perusal of their characters, I managed to arrive at a conclusion that they're a pretty decent bunch. The parochial selection of girls is still a major turn off, and hence faint hope silently resides in my heart that the Brits who constitute the bulk of the multitude come in visually pleasant shapes and sizes that perfectly mirror a cola bottle. Incidentally, as international exposure comes with numerous intellectual and emotional rewards, I'm intent on actively preventing myself from being sucked into this blackhole of the insular culture among Singaporeans by intermingling with people beyond the few that share the same nationality as I.

Despite feeling largely indifferent towards departure for quite a long while, I cannot say the same as of current. On one hand, I anticipate and embrace the new lease of life Bristol has to offer. Yet on the other, I find myself in combat against my natural inertia which is most significantly responsible for my reluctance to leave- theamigos, family, other friends and even the minute things such as my peculiar running route I take for granted on a daily basis. As u can see, the struggle to balance, let alone reconcile these 2 issues has become turbulent and I guess right now in my heart, they exist in disharmony and in an uneasy equilibrium.

UPDATE @ 1700 GMT +8.00! For informative sake, this is not a superfluous but the final paragraph that is being penned a havoc 12hours after the 2nd last because i fell asleep on my half-done job at 5am. Also, i've no choice but to conclude this entry of slightly more than a thousand words in retrospect since i'd pre-decided to end 'The Fortnight' like this- impetuously and hurriedly- as i capture the moment on an all time high. Howya doin' Amigos?
-Kenneth Wong