The trouble with high-school reunions is that there are too many people at one event and too little time to stop for a serious tête-à-tête with everyone. The trouble with staying longer at one of those reunions is that the amount of food they provide. The longer you stay, the more you eat. I happen to have friends who have an unexplainable fondness for BBQ-ing chicken and meatballs. It is no use rejecting grilled food in front of you because you know a 'You know kids in Africa has no food to eat ...' line is coming right after that. And, if you're bother retorting that, a nice host would come and tell you to help finish the leftovers because she really, really doesn't want them.

While it's good to see those whom you've not seen since you could remember seeing them, the conversation isn't always so welcoming. There are a whole load of gossip to catch up on about who's with who and who's doing what and what's doing who. But, in the mass of information you recieve, there would be moments of shock, surprise and awkwardness. It is only with those whom you remember the last time you saw each other that provide a conversation more worth while. You see everyone all grown up, doing the sort of things you remember them telling you they'll do and talking about things they tell you they'll do one day and it makes one realise what a looong way we have all come since we left school.

When it comes to a deeper level of personal reflection, it is not difficult to realise how little one has achieved. At most times, I have to tell you, it doesn't take a deep personal reflection to tell you that. A high-school reunion tells you that (and more). It is a wonder to me why there is a fascination towards the question, 'So, what have you been doing?' or a 'What are you doing now?' or worst 'Are you still bumming around like you used to?' (The last coming from a source less welcomed.) Yes. It takes your high-school friends to remind you that you're still 'bumming around'. I happen to have the privillege of remaining idle for the next two months.

So, maybe I should pick up a new language or start knitting or reading Scott's Ivanhoe that I have bought since I went to a book fair months ago. But that would be quite unlikely. I happen to have no problems facing the blissful reality that I am living it, as one friend would call it. Achievements and accomplishments are after all are matters of value judgment and state of mind. In my own defence, though, I would read Ivanhoe soon - really.

On a completely different note, it's good to see everyone again. I have lost count of the amount of times I said, 'I haven't seen you since I left school/ Chinese New Year/ Christmas/ since who and who's party.' On top of that, I did not have any of those 'Who's that face?' or 'What's her name?' moments. I have a failing memory.

It's good fun.

But maybe we'll have something a little more ... dramatic next time - music and alcohol.



Cheerio.

[[ book ]] Edith Wharton - Age of Innocence
[[ mood ]] tired

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"And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood"

- John Keats, This Living Hand



You watch things happen to people. Sometimes, things happens to you. Someone else would be watching you.

Maybe not all things happen for a reason. Sometimes, they just happen and they catch you when you least expects them, revealing your most vulnerable and helpless state to chill and quiver. Fear, I am afraid, is the most crippling feeling. It makes you do things you don't want to do, things you thought you would never do, things you never thought you could do.

In the past week or so, there is greater realisation that one cannot always control what one is doing than at any other point in my life. The common phrase , 'That's life.' seems so clichéd, so worn out that it is hardly applicable in this circumstance. Perhaps, one should pause to ponder and wonder if one should simply resign to that expression. After all, it is not often that we get the precise and exact characterisation of the mentioned 'that' in the phrase. Why is it that the phrase is so often used when it appears so daunting a task to even fathom any faintly accurate description of the phrase?

To hell with life.

Life, perhaps, in many circumstances, is too much glorified and overrated that one could hardly suppose one should ever give it up without having a serious reason or a second thought about it. Maybe we don't know what it even means to live. Or rather, we don't know what it means to die. In of the Grey's Anatomy episodes, Preston says blatantly, 'I believe there's a mind/body/spirit connection.' To take a closer look at the three elements, the human mind, human body and human spirit are more helpless than we want it to be. Anyone could crumble and it seems a long, painful and helpless process. I'm seeing someone going through all that and it shall be with great distress and regret that I should witness a friend in such a position - struggling between adaptation with her new self while fighting to regain her former self.

Maybe, then, we should just live, simply because death is more painful, more lonely and more silent. Maybe it's easier to live. And maybe, that is life.

And as Christina puts it, 'I think you should decide to live ... Just decide to live. Because in your case, dying really isn't the best revenge.'


Cheers.

[[ music ]] J. Barrowman & K. Kline - Night and Day
[[ book ]] Bronte's Jane Eyre
[[ mood ]] contemplative

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