Week 25: Sine curves.

hello there! for those who weren't in-the-know, i'm in kajang now and have been for the last 2 weeks! everything's fine and peachy except for the haze, which probably accounts for more health problems than the dreaded hini.

anyway, i give you the top 10 things i've learnt since coming back:

1. time may pass and 16 years may have gone by but, people never change.
2. "We cannot put you and baby together because when you guys gang up, the force becomes ultra evil" - Lola (2009).
3. 'hini', as a word, is more taboo than 'incest' when uttered around some one.
4. you can never have too much of pan mee with extra anchovies.
5. vomit can find its way around ANY obstacle if it wants out.
6. girls can definitely qualify as F1 drivers too.
7. if you climb up next to the statue of St Francis Xavier, people around you will stare.
8. pork satay is actually pretty good.
9. the botanical gardens in Putrajaya is, surprisingly, worth a visit come rain or shine.
10. starbucks is still the place to be for high-speed broadband internet.

and with that, i shall now leave you with more sombre jottings. life can't always be happy, you know.

. . .

Perhaps it is really because I’ve been away for far too long. This most recent trip back to the Motherland has finally struck it deep within me: I am the ‘Outsider’, the one who glances about quizzically during moments of inside jokes and back-of-the-hand muffled laughter. [However, it would be unfair if I white-washed my entire company of friends with this not-so palatable brush: the above-mentioned scenarios occur only when I’m with a select few. So, if you think I’m pointing my finger at you, chances are, I am not – don’t worry].

It feels odd. I feel displaced yet I know I shouldn’t be. But more often than not, I’m left wondering if I made the right decision to pick up my phone and dial your numbers. When I am with you, you and you, I find myself struggling to keep up with the conversation because everyone is moving through topics at the speed of light that I cease to comprehend what the subject is about after awhile. I sit there with this look that says, ‘Hey, I’m confused and can someone clue me in?’ but no one ever does. Then, cue inside joke and everyone laughs…but me.

Times like these, I feel like I don’t know you, you and you anymore. The ‘You’s I know were the ‘You’s that you once were. You are a new you, and I am a different me. Times like these, I feel sorry because what we once had is now entrenched in the past and I can’t possibly begin to decipher the ‘You’ that you have now become. It is probably something inevitable, something wrought by passing time and geographical space and it’s something that neither I nor you can do anything about. It probably just happened. Like how shit happens.

Right now, I guess I’ll just pretend like nothing’s happened and let time take its course. All of us know that, in time, we’ll just be someone we used to know to each other.