absolutum dominium

people who know me know tt i would take a one-on-one conversation with a friend any day over a group outing.

it's not tt i have a thing against groups, esp since dragonboat is a group-culture type lifestyle (even though i do admit tt i hate crowds and i am adverse to people in general), but rather, i believe quality time is better spent steeped in meaningful conversation. yes, i love laughing, joking, talking cock and all the ridiculous things tt we do.

but now as the time for me to leave draws nearer, i need the meaningful conversations with the long-lost friends whom i have neglected ever since my training for race more than anything else. i know tt they take up more time than group outings etc, but sometimes it's the things we talk about tt impact my thinking, my attitude, or even etch themselves into my memories the most.

like in april, a 'running'/counselling session with a friend over an issue tt had really been troubling me proved more than just a solution to tt problem - it's also a kind of philosophy tt i've adopted in my approach to things, and it's made me a happier person for tt. similarly, one-on-one conversations with close friends like james, my bro and all the people i've met up just to chill out over drinks, coffee, or lunch/dinner/walk-about sessions have given me a lot of insights into lives and mindsets tt i would have lost touch with otherwise.

sometimes, it's not about what you do. the activities don't matter so much to me anymore. first and foremost, it's the company. even with my baby, my primary objective is to spend time with him. it doesn't matter what we do or where we go. even if we spend our entire time walking from marina promenade to clarke quay (which we do), i don't care.

time feels like such a precious commodity now. even if my life becomes languid and boring, i don't care much anymore.

am at home right now on a sat night. mom made steamed tapioca with coconut milk - tt thai-style dessert. simply delicious. am trying to keep my parents company by striking a balance between going out and staying home for dinner. dad wants to take me shopping on thurs. so cute. i'm thinking of buying my parents a fancy dinner somewhere before i leave. i wonder if they won't mind morton's of chicago. premium steakhouse. even i've never tried it. but at $80 per steak, i think it'd better be fucking good. coz i'm going broke again.

wanted to buy my baby dinner since he generally didn't and doesn't have the kind of opportunities tt i do to appreciate really good food. but he'd rather trade off a fancy dinner for hokkien mee and a couple (more like ten) bottles of heineken. so ok lor.

anyway he's had a tough night last night. for some reason it was 'rejected girlfriends' night. so you had a few crazy bitches threatening to jump coz the love of their lives had left them, and one *really* crazy one who chased her boyfriend around the house with a parang and left a hole in the teakwood door. nice. and the best thing is: when they took her away she told her boy to look after her dog till she came back, otherwise she'd tell his father.

0_o

...right.

for the record, i told him tt i would never kill myself over any guy, including him. i'd probably kill him first. and i don't think i'll need the parang either.

ironically, yanli once told me a few months ago tt she would be worried if i ever got together with someone in the same line of work, coz if we were to quarrel we might just end up shooting each other.

well. on the bright side it would be a nice and movie-esque ending ala 'the war of the roses'.

in any case, i'm still determined to *not* die of old age (or cancer). "live life. die young." yeah. like i said, i'm naive and idealistic, in a morbid kinda way.

argh. anyway i hate this feeling of missing someone so much tt you feel like a chunk of yourself is missing. one motherfucking day, and this.

comes to the point where you'd irrationally and illogically travel 40 minutes to meet for less than an hour, only to travel another 40 minutes back after tt. nah bei.

but once again, i digress. was gonna talk about today. met francis after over 2 months (and some attempts to meet for dinner). he'd sent his car for polishing so we met at toa payoh central. i haven't been there ever since i stopped going for my taekwondo gradings at the sports stadium. now tt it's a 'hdb hub' (my god. enough with the goddamn 'hub' this and 'hub' tt!), it's so nice and spiffy and new. lee hwa jewellery at the air-conditioned bus interchange. fucking amazing. hdb is damn rich lah. wahaha.

we had lunch at fiesta japanese restaurant. i'm still not tt big a fan of jap food but he did want to try tt place, and anyway this is one jap food chain i haven't tried before, so i was like, what the hell. the salmon sashimi is not too bad actually. and these guys are creative. they make really interesting-looking combinations tt i'd try just for the heck of it. and later his friend jerald came to join us.

anyway he was pretty irritated coz the polishing was taking 4.5 hours - 2.5 hours more than he'd anticipated. apparently coz he hadn't polished the car in a year to 1.5 years and literally, the paint was already being eaten into. and since this was a black airtrek, it was supposed to be so-called 'amethyst black' - shiny black, but when he'd driven it in it'd looked matte black. so now they gotta machine it twice and god-knows-what else... apparently there's gonna be sand-blasting too, but sand-blasting's actually been made illegal because it's very detrimental to health (think abestos dust and lung diseases). you can sue your employers if you get sick and it's directly linked to your job. tort law 101. heh. ;)

so we just caught up on life so far. my life itself hasn't been too interesting. unless you count me living vicariously through my boy. well. if you can't be interesting, settle for an interesting significant other in the interim. told him about the boy. first thing he asked: "is this a 'for fun' thing or is it a long-term thing?"

haha. coz i'm going away, right? to be honest, i would like to keep it short, for fun, and no strings attached too. it makes the missing easier to bear. but unfortunately for me i know i'm not a 'for fun' kinda person. i would like to be, but i've come to realise tt i become emotionally attached, whether i like it or not, so even if things start out as 'for fun', after a while it pretty much becomes for real. so yeah. but he was pretty surprised. guess coz after all this time of being a swinging single clubaholic who loves to look but hates to be tied down, i've sold out big time.

anyway he was telling me about how life is on his hospital attachments. a lot of old people. having to do mundane stuff and tasks like draw blood and check up med reports... he was telling me about this guy who came in and they had to insert a urinary tube, but coz the guy's dick was too small, the female med student he was with had to masturbate it to hardness so tt it would be big enough to stick the tube down. and apparently she was horrified coz she'd never seen something like tt before, let alone had to um... touch it. and then there was this mental case from imh who was a psychogenic water drinker and a chronic schizophrenic. he'd had to restrain her to stop her from rushing to the tap to drink water till she bloated coz she was already suffering from hypothermia (i think), but she'd magically removed her restrains so he'd had to straight jacket her. and she had 3 personalities: the first screamed "i want bread biscuits and milo!" (in mandarin) for 2 minutes, the second sang chinese songs like shanghai tan for 2 minutes, and the 3rd slept for haf an hour. and apparently she was keeping her entire ward up all night coz she was screaming and singing everytime she was awake, so he had to pump her with 20mg of anti-psychotics, and apparently the entire ward applauded.

now tt would have been a sight to behold.

so jerald came along and we adjourned to bk. there we talked about stuff like cars, smoking (apparently all of their friends who have gone to canada have returned as druggies coz of the availability of weed and cheap cigarettes) and even the discontent with the traffic police and the speed radar guns. wahaha.

went home about 4-something. for some reason i was feeling very zonked. zzz-ed until parents woke me up for dinner. after dinner i accompanied my dad to draw cash, eat ice-cream and do grocery shopping. i don't know why. suddenly i felt this pang of nostalgia. it's like the simple things i'd do with my dad, like sit in his car and listen to him play frank sinatra or dean martin as he'd drive me somewhere or other. or have lunch with him at this burger place at millenia walk, and maybe coffee after. it strikes me tt i won't have these kind of chances or opportunities when i'm there.

i'm not coming back in december. it's going to be one full year in ubc. and now my parents may not be coming up for christmas. just waiting to travel with me in may. my only consolation is tt my baby's gonna come up for my birthday.

interestingly, this guy i know who's studying in ubc has been too nice to me. but as i was telling my bro yesterday, we both know how we feel about this guy, and we both feel the same way about him. i don't trust him, i don't particularly like him, and i don't understand why in spite of all my hints tt i'm not interested in sharing my time with him, he doesn't seem to get it.

like i was telling my bro, maybe i need to kick him in the groin a third time. maybe it's the only way he'll get the message.

oh well. church tomorrow. bbq tomorrow. ooh finally the npd video has downloaded. wish me luck. gotta watch it another 7 fucking times. kanina.