A THOUSAND CROSSINGS X

Dear Diary...
A Retrospective.
samedi 6 août 2011

How time flies, it has been 8 months since my last post on Blogger. Been busy with the paper chase, but today I had some time to myself to take a breather, so I decided to look back at what I had experienced in the past 1 year and 8 months.

Life hasn't been particularly smooth-sailing, there seemed to be more downs than ups, I had fallen in and out of... Kinda, my mind's fault actually. I had blamed life for putting me in my position and I had everything to complain about.

But every time I am halfway through whining and complaining, I decide to count my blessings and all the good things that happened to me that I could have missed if I hadn't been in this position.

I'm always complaining about coming to this school I'm in. I had a choice. I made a choice. And I always thought I made the wrong choice. I still don't fit in. I still feel like a square peg in a round hole, a fish out of water. But I'm not going to complain anymore, because now that I finally sat down and thought about it, it hasn't entirely been a bad experience and I have so many things to be thankful for.

I found friends, I gained new experiences, I won and lost, I learnt to cherish some friends that I never really knew I had, I learnt to push myself to my limits, I found 2 new passions, I found Chistina Perri and I learnt how to get over broken things.

While I complain about the state I'm in, I can't deny that I've found new friends from my experiences this 1 year and 8 months.

There's Wen Cong, Wan Xin, Leonard and my dearest Cross-Country team - Nathaniel, Jeevaneesh, Si Heng and Jian Hong. They are like colour pencils, filling in the white spaces and making life beautiful. Wen Cong and Wan Xin are always there to make bad days survivable. Real comic relief those two.

Thank you Wen Cong especially for being such a good friend. :D He has everything a friend should have - a 1000-megawatt smile, warmth emanating straight from his heart, wise advise to give, a ear to listen, and a hand to lend. If there ever was a Hall of Fame for friends he would be in it.

And there is Leonard who spends lunch breaks with me playing racing karts and leaving banana peels for each other to slip on.

If I had made any other choice, I wouldn't have joined the cross-country team and strengthened my friendship with Nathaniel, and forged new relationships with Jeevaneesh, Si Heng and Jian Hong. It's amazing how 5 of us with very different personalities managed to stick together to the end and achieve miracles. What miracle?

The cross-country team was pretty much in shambles when I joined them. 'Them' consisted of only three people - Jeeva, Si Heng and Jian Hong - not even enough to make a team of 4 to compete in the Nationals the next year. I was slow for much of 2010, things weren't looking good for us when we didn't get any new athletes for 2011, so there were only the 5 of us to count on and besides Jeeva, the rest of us were sub par.

Here was where I learnt to push myself to my limits, found a new passion, running and won and lost.

We did all sorts of mad things like running up hills, running in circles for as much as 12km, covering 32km in 2 training sessions every day of the week for 2 months but we survived. Through those experiences we learnt that 32km probably wasn't our limit. (:

I fell in love with running. I still run now, and I miss the times when I ran with the team. We were the epitome of camaraderie. Camaraderie - Noun: Mutual trust and friendship among people who spend a lot of time together. And indeed, we spent A LOT of time together. And I loved every moment of it.

Then the Lunar New Year came and gone, and as if an air of auspiciousness swept over us, things began to look better. I was slowly getting faster, Jeeva was like a rocket and there was healthy competition between Si Heng and Jian Hong - both were fast. And Nathaniel was always there, being supportive. :)

Things got even better when new athletes joined the team. Eventually we defied the odds and came in first, we were the champs! I didn't contribute to the points, but I did get 12th place and hence 2 medals.

But the 2 medals don't mean anything compared to our friendship, the Gokul dinners, the Banana Walnut bread every morning, our photo-taking sessions and movie outings. Thank you HCX 2011.

Of course we didn't win all the time. I lost miserably at the Track and Field nationals three weeks later. It was my first time running the steeplechase and I tripped over the 5th hurdle and landed flat on my face. But I'm proud of myself for jumping on my feet and finishing the race and not choosing to throw in the towel. It was disappointing to be overtaken at the home stretch by an opponent but still, this memory is one for keeps.

HCX was probably the best thing to have happened to me. Esprit de Corps. Thank God for the experience.

Besides running, I fell deep in love with mountain biking. And it was through mountain biking I met amazing people from different walks of life. I met Arif, a financial analyst who shared a lot about life and what to expect from it with me; Gio Fabio, an Italian IT dude who helped me to ride better and painted a picture of how the world is like beyond school through our little conversations; Willhelm Prasser, VP of the APAC region at Azeti networks, a German dude who looks younger than he is and the only one among us with a carbon bike; Edward, a litigator at Bird & Bird who shared with me how it would feel like to be a father through conversations about his son. Haha! Besides these four great men, I rode with Swedes, Frenchmen and other Singaporeans. Every ride I learnt something new, whether about a country, about life, or about riding. Life is exciting on 2 wheels, there's always something new to keep me entertained.

Arif shared with me some morsels of his life and experiences that I could relate to during the drives to and fro the biking trails. He talked to me about how he saved every single cent of his NSman pay to fund his tertiary education in Canada. Because he saved every cent, he stayed out of trouble, some friends didn't understand but it did not deter him. Look at him now, he's got a career, happy family and a beautiful mountain bike. Sacrifices well worth it. I learnt from him what it meant to be down to earth and to prioritise. When I grow up I want to put my family first, just like Uncle Arif.

I'm no longer as obsessed with Taylor Swift as I used to be. Not that I had much time to obsess over a beautiful, blond, blue-eyed girl when I had 20 miles to run everyday and sleep to catch up on.

Maybe it's because I found Christina Perri.

A beautiful girl with a raw, powerful, unpolished yet beautiful (man, I used the same word twice in the same sentence) voice. I always thought tattoos uglify the body but this girl is beautiful with or without the ink. (check her out here!) Well, then again she's so much like Taylor Swift. Another girl who shot to fame because she believed and loved what she did. I remember when I was the only person I knew who listened to Taylor Swift in late '06. Can't believe it has already been 5 years. Now, I'm the only person I know who listens to Perri. Maybe she'd be world-famous in 5 years.

A few months back, I learnt to get over broken things. Because time mends old wounds. Scabs disappear but scars remain but what's important is that I'm stronger now. 经一事，长一智 that's another lesson learnt.

Looking back, it hasn't been all that bad. So many friends and so many experiences - good and bad - that I won't exchange for anything else. The A levels are creeping closer, of course I'm afraid but I know I will come out of this stronger. 船到桥头自然直。I'll just have to do what I can.

Au Revoir
yongliang

he closed his diary at {19:39}