We dream in narrative, daydream in narrative, remember, anticipate, hope, despair, believe, doubt, plan, revise, criticize, construct, gossip, learn, hate and love by narrative.

Stories are not lived but told. Life has no beginnings, middles or ends: there are meetings, but the start of an affair belongs to the story we tell ourselves later, and there are partings, but final partings only in the story. There are hopes, plans, battles, and ideas, but only in retrospective stories are hopes unfulfilled, plans miscarried, battles decisive, and ideas seminal. Only in the story is it America which Columbus discovers, and only in the story is the kingdom lost for want of a nail… So it seems truer to say that narrative qualities are transferred from art to life. We could learn to tell stories of our lives from nursery rhymes, or from culture-myths if we had any, but it is from history and fiction that we learn how to tell and to understand complex stories, and how it is stories answer questions.

- Louis Mink, History and Fiction as Modes of Comprehension

When I made the decision to become a unicorn, pay was not a key factor. looking shiny, being around rainbows and gold, and having a long and hard phallus on my head to screw with others’ lives and sanity were. The disruption to my actual physical existence was also an important consideration. I had some ground to believe that my family would not suffer a drastic change in the standard of living even though I would experience complete vanishment and detachment from the reality of actual real people. If the balance is tilted further and hallucinogens continue to be outlawed in most places of the world, it will make it harder for anyone considering becoming unicorns.

on January 31, 2011, Fernando Torres signed for Chelsea in a British record deal worth £50 million. in providing his reasons why he had wanted to leave, he intimated that he needed to be at a “bigger” club than Liverpool FC, with greater ambition to match his own and a greater chance of success. or something along those lines.

at the end of December 31, 2011, Liverpool had amassed 34 points from 19 games. Chelsea’s points tally – 34 points from 19 games.

Torres, and Chelsea, had moved forward in time but stayed pretty much the same in all other ways. and that has been the story of my year too – of circularity, of quiet progress, of consolidation. many times it was not pretty. i fell in, out of, and back in love – with the same person. in the financial markets my year was bookended by a spectacular upshot, and then spectacularly back down. what the market gives, the market takes back – as is the case with life and the Universe. lessons were learnt but (thankfully) at pretty little costs. school-wise my CAP score went down, then back up to finish the year on the slightest of gains year-on-year.

elsewhere in the world, some wars have ended, while some wars continue to rage on. some corrupt regimes were brought down by people’s will, but the teething problems of experiments with liberty bring with them pain and only new forms of imprisonment and servitude. tyrants and bad men died, but so did a few good men (and a family member). some nations were born, others brought to their knees. elections (at “home”, at least) came and went, but nothing changed.

it could have been better, but it could have been much worse. i finish the year not on a high, not on a low too, but nevertheless with the realization that somehow everything feels like it can be okay.

“Yes, on a bad day, I wake up, people are on strike, I can’t get to work on time… Someone tries to snatch my bag… But on a good day, I say yes! Strike. Fight for better pay, better working conditions. It’s ok. I don’t mind the inconvenience. On a good day, I hit the thief with my bag and yell at him. ‘You stay the hell away from me motherfucker’. He runs away and strangers high five me. It may not be safe. It may not be perfect and efficient. But it’s… the feeling of being free… being innately free… is what makes me human.

You have never experienced that freedom. And as long as you’re living here, I doubt you ever will. Peace be with you.”

- from Balek Kampong by Alvin Tan and Haresh Sharma for The Necessary Stage

he sits uncomfortably in his faux leather desk chair, his right ankle propped under his left thigh, his hangs ringing in trepidation, his brow peppered with a few beads of perspiration – which were as stale as his glass of cheap Scotch positioned beside him was strong.

ahead of him, the financial charts on his 24-inch computer monitor took on a life of their own. tickers flashed, and the price lines bounced up and down, painting colorful green and red candlestick patterns with broad and daring brushstrokes to tell a story which he still does not understand. he never does.

so there are countless times when he enters a trade, with all the economic fundamentals, news and expensive charting software telling him whatever he was doing was right. he just, nevertheless, could never get enough assurances. he would see the prices fluctuate up and down as it responds to market reaction here or that occasional downward spike, he would become fixated with the open positions and whatever may be going wrong with them, and then he would, finally, in trying to preserve a semblance of his sanity, close out and close the window, cutting his “losses” or happily – at that time – settle for a small profit. of course when this happens, he misses out on the huge rallies and spikes which would have delivered upon the big victories everything else told him was eventually going to happen.

and of course there were all the other times when his faith became untouchable, when he had that unassailable belief in all his avenues of analysis. and he would weather the inevitable opening fluctuations with a calm assurance. it remains inexplicable, as if there were some larger force in the air which served to pacify his tremendous desire to get his feet wet. on these occasions he is almost invariably wrong.

so today, he stands on the cusp of something – exactly what he does not know. perhaps he was simply buoyed by his doctor’s suggestion that he quit immediately. he has one last shot to make it right, or he will die. not emotionally, but clinically rather. as he sat in the doctor’s lab, he clearly remembers being told how those doctors’ charts clearly indicate that he cannot possibly humanly survive one more setback. he will cease to be. or not.

so here he is dressed up today, sitting in his room in a crisp suit and well-ironed shirt, all the more determined in an untouchable part of himself to make this work. he approaches the trading platform. and begins to feel his sanity slipping away as the charts once more vomited countless amounts of information onto his limited screen. his cursor hovers towards the ‘BUY’ button, but he does not click. his hands go numb, his eyes get bewildered by the green candlesticks which signal positive and vigorous upward price motion. his mouse runs out of batteries. his fingers begin to break and lose function. he tries clicking the mouse with his tongue, but recoils at the taste of the two-year old instrument. he could have tried again, because by this stage his tongue had begun to fail as well, but he was not to know that.

and all this while she was already running away.

In the conclusion to her book Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics, Katherine Hayles introduces the term ‘posthuman’, putting it forth as the predominant state of Man vis-à-vis our current position in the trajectory of anthropological history. Donna Kiser provides what may be the most succinct definition for the concept of Hayles’ version of “posthumanism”, terming it “an attitude on how to deal with the limitations of the human form. It is the vision of how to move beyond those limits by the radical use of technological and other means”.

If we were to adopt “transhumanism” (as Wikipedia defined it) and/or Kiser’s definition, to seek to be post-human would be to, as humans, attempt to make use of and evolve with technology and our environment. “The body is the net result of thousands of years of sedimented evolutionary history”, Hayles argues, and in today’s day and age the computer is the machine which defines our current period in history.

One article which I have read posits that technology is becoming merely an extension of our human selves, and our interactions with it and with others have changed dramatically because of the way the Internet is becoming a depository for information which would have previously been necessarily stored in our brains’ memories. As such, our brain processes naturally extend themselves to make use of the Internet and the computer, transforming us from depositories to processors of information. just as we would, for instance, take upon a bionic limb and use it in a way as if it were natural (should we unfortunately need one).

Another way in which we are becoming posthuman is the way in which we enter into symbiotic relationships with intelligent machines. When communicating with our friends online, the ‘like’ button on Facebook, net-speak like “LOL” and “ROFL”, smiley faces and emoticons, and the short forms like “RT” on Twitter – all constitute utterances or symbols which while meaning nothing in and of themselves, their emotional resonance can be understood, becoming a kind of symbolic language which we adopt as extensions to ourselves – a form of symbolic language which we now all know and understand.

All of us who are interconnected by technology and embrace it can be considered to be “posthuman”. We are not at the end of humanity, as some may fear, but simply taking on a new form of humanity where computers do not wipe us out, but merely become incomprehensibly fused into our lives and beings.

And most predominantly responsible for this, like it or not, is the creator of the first Personal Computer with a graphical UI – Steven Paul Jobs. This is not even to mention the music player which irrevocably altered the music industry and the phone which changed all phones. Rest in Peace, and thanks for everything.

this is no deep and uber-technical macroeconomic analysis, just the rants of a concerned and increasingly disillusioned normal Singaporean. i refer to the 2011 UBS Report, which of course our Finance Minster has claimed is pure bollocks, pulled out of UBS’ asses out of nowhere to satisfy their unique Singapore-bashing agenda.

Singapore is 10th most expensive city in world, but with only 42nd highest wages. all of the 18 most expensive cities in the world have wage levels amongst the top 24, with exception of Singapore of course. therefore, this leads us to only have the 47th best purchasing power in the world, below the likes of Moscow, Johannesburg, and comparable to KL & Buenos Aires.

the graph at the bottom of the page makes it clearer: our net wage index is about 30/100 (y-axis); our price index is about 90/100 (x-axis). thus, amongst countries in the “lower half purchasing power”, you can see Singapore clearly being the most expensive place to live in.

so if you’re an average person with average skills earning an average wage and buying average things, you can theoretically only afford half the amount things in Singapore (40.7) compared to obviously more awesome cities like London (84.9), Berlin (88.9). Chicago (96.3), New York (100) and Zurich (110.5). basically all the cities above 81.2 under “purchasing power”

combine the double whammy of high cost of living and low wages with unchecked inward immigration and what we have is a situation where housing, transport, cars & several other things dependent on our infrastructure keeping up with the increased population get more expensive because we can’t cater to the population explosion. yet at the same time, wages for the middle to lower-middle income groups (some may claim even more people are affected) are particularly depressed due to lack of minimum wage and crazy influx of low-wage workers from China and South Asia.

in conclusion, we are all fucked.*

*unless you are a minister

death – life’s greatest equaliser – claimed another amongst them, and there really was no good reason why anyone who happened to be awake that night was still around. so there were a few wet eyes and bowed heads. the 2-year old who had little idea what was going on breaks out in most inopportune laughter, and his parents’ faces crumple in unison, a picture of pained embarrassment.

meanwhile he sits on the precipice, legs dangling precariously upon the edge. he thought he had gone too, but had no idea he was going to be made to stick around just that little bit longer. it was just like that song which goes “you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave”, that stands in for everybody’s song, the soundtrack both for the times when we find ourselves transfixed in the unpleasant and inescapable, and the times when we revel in a few pleasant moments, hallucinogen-induced or otherwise, and be cruelly reminded of the temporality of that very moment and the inescapability of the humdrum of what has otherwise been masked with our Faustian festivities. wafting in the air as we sway to its arresting beat. so we can never leave, not until the very last moment at least. not until something compels you to.

so he resolves to enjoy every possible moment of it while it lasts, just like this or that platoon of drafted soldiers in any number of barbarous terrains, each and everyone of them who attempt to bring cheer to one another by commiserating about their girl(or boy)friends at home and share tired laughter together often tend to do. but just as they all silently and unwillingly let the despair of the desert storm creep slowly but surely into their souls and the wetness of the swamp creep slowly but surely into their underpants, it gets increasingly difficult – and baffling.

because while he does not really enjoy it, he cannot yet help but be swept away.

and only death will tell you with insurmountable certitude that the time will come for you eventually to flee the scene.

“…she moved through, carrying her fat book, attracted, unsure, a stranger, wanting to feel relevant but knowing how much of a search among alternative universes it would take.”

- Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

the riviera around him was slowly become something of a desert, pummeled into dry submission by the unrelenting and unadulterated sun which beats down mercilessly and with admirable perseverance. fittingly, and perhaps with convenient coincidence only the laziest writers would deign to craft, if you could even call this a craft, his mind was dry, like the many nights when he sat down and tried to write something – when every sentence he tries to lovingly mould into a coherent, slightly confusing collection of phrases appears invariably laboured and contrived, as many a struggling author in a French beret and assorted hallucinogens in his possession in an offbeat town of Italy, or somewhere in Europe, although just to be sure not the Germanic countries for they would not really convey the same kind of mood, would experience.

it could be that there was simply too much going on, or that he simply had no time to be judicious. although those were not the most accurate reasons. this author, however, knows better. more likely than not, and i am pretty sure this is true, it could be that his whatever he knew of life seemed to be crumbling around him. to clarify, it perhaps had been mostly of his own doing, although he himself suspects he may never ever know for sure if this was true, borne out of, i venture to speculate, his morbid attraction to distress and perhaps the vanity of poetic melancholy. his aversion to captivity and stasis ironically makes him a jailbird of his own mind, although that again is of course open to interpretation.

he cannot seem to feel, nor write, nor get in touch with himself or with the people around him who still matter, even if they may not necessarily know – given that he only makes his presence felt in absentia, and it has been like this since he could last remember, which was about

he wavers and stops. and drinks himself to sleep.

“belief, credulity, confidence. when one looks back, belief resembles nothing so much as a virus, and only as you recover do you realise how fever-addled you were.”

- Arthur Phillips, The Tragedy of Arthur

he stood in queue, ticket in one hand and a nondescript ballpoint pen with a cover well-chewed and masticated in other more nervous times in the other, the snaking lines presenting the only true obstacle to the new person he was going to start becoming. with steady hands and a clear mind he pens in his numbers, all the while believing that today was going to be the day his life would change. he did pick up a dollar when he was making his way to the mall, and it was not that often where having his head down and not daring to face the world paid off.

what is made of his time is fastened onto the ebb and flow of the fellow lottery aspirants. the same time every week, this little counter of the corner-shop – together with tens of thousands more like this everywhere around varying nooks and crannies of the vast earth – turns into one of the most optimistic places one can hope to find anywhere. of course it is well documented: lotteries are no good for the common man. the odds are something insane like one in 5 billion – 5864443200 to be exact. yet to a man (and woman) in this particular corner-shop they share our protagonist’s eternal optimism, that “if it has to be someone why couldn’t it be me?”, and for that few precious moments it was as if the odds were not 1/5000000000, but 1 in 2 – you either win or you don’t. today, just like every other time he has done this, he felt that sense of loss and despair at his odds in that exact same moment he handed over his money, which was for a fleeting moment real and still belonging to him.

it was only later that day when he learnt that the one US$1 million winning ticket was issued by this unsuspecting little corner-shop in which our hero was optimistically holed for 25 minutes. it could have been the middle-aged man in his 40s with an emerging paunch and a receding hairline who was right in front of him who got there first, or it could have been the silver-haired grandmother with the arduous gait from a protracted engagement with arthritis who tendered her own ticket right after his. it could have been just about anyone else in that room that day, at that time, or at any other moment before or after him.

it just could never, ever, have been him.

with haste and no small amount of precision, he was packing up and preparing to leave. his life – including all the junk he always refused to throw away even if he had no good reason to keep them – was disappearing into the DHL cardboard boxes, like space dust and screaming cartoon human beings with flailing arms being sucked into a dark vortex pregnant with possibilities and promise and inevitable letdowns. as it stands his destination is yet unknown, although he had, for most of his adult life, begun to perceive and endure the feeling of displacement and homesickness.

and in between mechanically dumping the post-it pads bearing names and logos of this and that company he does not remembering hearing of, pens which no longer work and the odd faded receipt from some restaurant or another, and having to take a second look at this trinket or that bric-a-brac, lay a notebook which did not belong to him. this was a notebook he had dared at first to scribble in – little notes of love and uncertainty; terrible rhyming poems which were incoherent at best; unsent letters; lame mix tapes; faded photographs which themselves nevertheless a cute rarity in the age of Facebook and Flickr. it was a time when he tried and failed. it was a time when he knew there was something else he could count on.

and he remembered all this without having to open the book. he only knows he wants to, but he found it difficult to picture – even if only in his head – reading out and reliving that life. he speaks but his throat is parched, and his screams do not make it above his breath. he keeps going, because that’s the only thing to do.

the now-almost-empty room stares back.

on the first page, our title character leads a life where he flies painfully close to and struggles to keep up with those who have. he commands a steady if not spectacular income from an uninspiring job, a colourless life. it is not one which ignites the fires of imaginations, and a picture of his life – if life can indeed be captured this way – will probably wilt in the recognition of his own humility when measured up to the picaresque photographs of unfamiliar cities his mates swathe their Facebook profiles with.

it is not to say that he is completely unhappy, though. there are the days when those friends – if you could call people with whom you share the awkward air of afternoon lunches, and who you clearly know have nothing in them which excites you the slightest bit but nevertheless have no choice but to eat with or risk the ignominy of being that weird office guy without a friend – were all that he had, and he would believe that he genuinely likes these people. too, there were weekends he would look forward to seeing his colleagues, even if he would get a little sick of their puerile chatter about that shitty boss or endless department meetings or complaints about undone work by Wednesday. or Thursday at the latest. he fancied himself as a midnight rider, riding on a cloud of smoke, but in the heart of hearts he knows he could never have enough courage to take even one taciturn peek at anything that could not give him the comfort of knowledge that his next paycheck will be in same time each month. that plasma TV, this new workstation, his new car.

and beginning from the back page and advancing towards the front, our second hero leads an existence characterised largely by lack. he goes from job to job, each and every time staying only as long as his keenness for that particular job would hold up. he gave more than his fair share of shit, and resolved never to take any in return, and at times he could picture in his head a road-race between two incredulously drawn characters, one a caricature of himself and the other of his current employer, to see who could arrive at the big red button and get rid of the other first. his credit rating is near-perfect because he could never be approved for any, and whatever little he makes he blows it on some food and more than a little cheap scotch, burning it all up as a candle flame would to a cascading plash of gasoline. sometimes he would somehow save (or steal) enough for a bus ticket out of whichever political boundary he is within, whereby he would simply up sticks and leave. he has seen the world, belonging at once to everywhere and nowhere. he’s never had a penny to his name he could hang on to, but he’s never needed to dig deep for the richest adventures. it is a rootlessness wherefrom freedom sprouts, it is an abject abyss of plenty.

and they could never meet.

thus read his monthly health checkup report – “Mr. Bris: blood pressure OK, heart rate normal, blood sugar level normal, no known drug allergies. no smoking, no signs of drug abuse, alcoholism under control. overall clean bill of health.”

Hugo sauntered, not too tenaciously, out of the second hospital and onto the street, his mind at a moment’s rest that at last something in his life seems within the grasp of his coarse flailing hands. the streets are empty, it was 2.55am. he looks left, and right and left again and right again, before he dashes across with somewhat impressive – or at the very least eyebrow-raising – acceleration which characterised his earlier glory days as a Little League football team’s 2nd substitute star striker. satisfaction and adrenaline coursed through him as a solitary ’69 Honda momentarily disrupted the steady and fatigued ray of light emanating from the beleaguered street lamp. Hugo chokes, his mind feverishly visualising the visceral chemical reactions between Carbon Monoxide and the air he breathes in. his world collapses around him.

next thing he knew he was on his couch back home which had clearly felt the effects of the midnight chill, in a box of a flat as neat and uninspiring on the interior as the building was tired, with strips of paint peeling off and the rubbish uncollected. Odysseus does not even look at him, letting out a faint and non-plussed meow not unlike the “hmm” of a wife who does not raise her head from her pedicure when her husband walks through the door with a tired buttoned-down work-shirt. Hugo sits on the couch, his mind whirling with visions of his impending death by carbon monoxide and the decrepit life he has led till now. it was not always like this. he remembered having dreams which he now vaguely remembers, a time when he knew nothing else but for his desire to live, learn and get laid in this greatest of cities he can now barely call home. he lacked for nothing, almost, and wanted nothing to stop him or weigh him down. he is here – that’s all he needed.

Hugo takes a last sip from last night’s bottle of scotch. desperate sip it was, tipping the bottle bottoms-up to gather whatever he could muster in his awaiting gait, before he hooks himself up the water monitor, an intricate device which helps him decide if he should drink more water or pee before bed.

nothing’s going to kill him.

the elections in Singapore are nearly upon us. a million and one points of view whether regarding – policy, figures of speech, buzzwords, ethics, who to or not to vote for – are divided, bandied about, absorbed and regurgitated ad nauseum. i myself feel that change is in the air, but am unable to escape the feeling that many of us would wake up realising that it has all been much ado about nothing.

notwithstanding the poor folks in Tanjong Pagar who again have their leaders inflicted upon them without the natural process of democratic elections, the rest of us have a choice to make. when you mark an ‘X’ beside a lightning logo or otherwise.

you have EVERY right to vote for the incumbent party. indeed you have every right to vote anybody you choose, and that is or should be the cornerstone of democracy. but when you do so, just be aware of what you’re signing up for. remember that this is not simply about whether you want a new coat of paint or a new playground, but a statement about the beliefs and ideals which you stand for, and the kind of country and leadership you want.

1. if you vote for the incumbent party, it means that you think it is ethical, moral and right for our politicians to earn MILLIONS of dollars a year and award themselves lavish bonuses, while the same politicians ignore the plight of the poorest of poor unable to fend for themselves, giving them barely enough to have 3 warm meals a day. read: Lily Neo vs. Vivian Balakrishnan on Public Assistance scheme

2. you believe that it is beneficial for one single party to have over two-thirds of the seats in Parliament, allowing them to pass ANY law they want without having to explain it, debate over it or consult you about it.

3. you find it fair and in the spirit of democracy for that ruling party to draw and redraw electoral boundaries to their whims and fancies in electoral doping to unfairly boost their chances of winning, and that you want a system which forces YOUR representatives in government down your throat whether you chose them or not.

4. you don’t see the need for the government to take responsibility and answer for their mistakes, that it is acceptable for them to brush these booboos away and “just move on.” refer to: Temasek loses $58 BILLION, Vivian Balakrishnan refuses to debate about YOG, the “once in 50 years” flood, Mas Selamat.

5. you enjoy having those who are supposedly our leaders talk down to us like recalcitrant young children, not explaining to us policies but rather blanketing us with threats. read: vote for WP and YOU WILL REGRET IT.

6. you want to say to your leaders that you want yourself or your children to look forward to a future spending 30 years of your life paying way over the odds for a roof over your head which is not even yours, but only on lease to you for 99 years or less, to begin with; and you agree with the government blatantly allowing flats to get more expensive while disguising this scheme as “asset enhancement”, ignoring the fact that if you sell your flat for $10 million you still need to buy another for close to that price.

7. you agree that it is just and ethical for the ruling party to use public funds, YOUR MONEY, to further the party’s own ends, offering upgrading of public housing schemes to tempt voters while punishing voters of constituencies not under the ruling party with the withdrawal of such schemes. you find it fair and equitable that citizens of Potong Pasir and Hougang pay the same taxes as everyone but don’t enjoy the fruits of public schemes, as if they are not part of Singapore.

8. you agree that it does not matter to you that the unchecked influx of foreigners – many of whom do not pay taxes (if not citizens), do not serve NS, and are free to leave anytime – into Singapore are taking jobs, houses and university places away from Singaporeans, and driving down wages while costs of living continues to rage upwards. you do not care that they are REPLACING, not complementing, our fellow citizens.

9. you accept that the government is not at fault and can do nothing more, and that it is your own fault for not being cheaper, better, faster, that your pay is not increasing and, together with the rising costs of living, provide the average Singaporean with the purchasing power not of Switzerland or London, but of Russia, Poland and Colombia. read: UBS Prices and Earnings Report 2009

10. if you are not a creepy sex predator or pickpocket, but nonetheless relish the morning and evening rush hour experience of cramming into overcrowded trains and buses, not minding that the transport operators refuse to increase frequencies in their quest for larger profits that benefit the shareholders who can afford nice cars and thus do not take public transport. you are undisturbed and unaffected that SMRT can increase their profit by 50% in ONE QUARTER while you go body-to-body with fellow commuters each morning and evening.

11. you believe it is right and filial to send your parents to nursing homes in Johor Baru, as the Health Minister suggests that we do so, when you can no longer afford healthcare in Singapore. read: Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan’s comments

12. you find it acceptable for someone else to take the money you’ve earned, keep it away from you, tell you how you must spend it, when you can have it back, and then give this entire scheme a flashy name like CPF. really, if you do think this way, drop me a message, i’d like to talk to you, because i’m in need of some money too.

13. you are content with reading and watching news that distorts the truth, twists words and plays with language, or outrightly lies to you.

14. you agree with judging a person or an organisation based on what it did 30-40 years ago, not what it does now or what he/it will continue to do if left unchecked.

Singapore’s ministers are paying themselves 8-month bonuses for the “great performance” of GDP growth, but here’s a little story to show why GDP is useless!

two wealthy and powerful economists were walking outdoors when they saw a pile of shit. “I’ll give you $500,000 for the service of entertaining me by eating that shit,” Economist A said to B. so B did.

after a while, they saw another heap of shit, and Economist B said that he would give Economist A $500,000 if he returned the favour and ate the shit. and so Economist A did.

afterwards, one of the economists admitted that he was dissatisfied – they had eaten a lot of shit without earning a single cent.

the other economist replied that they had at least achieved something – their country’s GDP had increased by a million dollars.

the leaves and fauna out where the protagonist was standing alone were swaying gently to the beat – of refreshing droplets of rain that comes as welcome as a cold iced and shaken beverage with a hint of tequila in the midst of a trek across the Gobi desert. or so it would have been, had there been some benign authorial intention to put this across in a lighter and gentler way. the truth was that torrents of unforgiving rain were lashing upon the meek and under-strength earth, pummeled into submission and mustering not even a whimper in reply. and it was in conditions like this where the protagonist stood while this soul at once discouraged and resolute waited at the creaking wooden doors that nevertheless inherited an air of majesty, being the doors of the temple that stood long enough to gain some historical weight and yet sufficiently badly maintained to be almost always on the verge of structural collapse.

the knocks which the protagonist administered on the door were getting sequentially weaker and less fervent as what was left of the protagonist’s bodily strength and spiritual resolve ebbed away with quickening pace. an old hermit, with disheveled hair, a conspicuous hunch and an awkward if endearing gait in his walk, eventually did answer those calls of distress which were very quickly turning desperate and nonchalant at the same time. looking at the protagonist lovingly yet not ever once signalling any hint of intent at a welcome into where it was warmer and safe, he managed to croak, loud enough for his voice to rise above the crescendo of the storm, that it was without question or doubt that the gods loved the protagonist, even if they operate in their own inexplicably unfathomable ways. “you will come to see how,” he trailed off, and he dispensed with what looked like a rough attempt at a curtsy. whatever it was, it was of course inconsequential to the protagonist’s hopes at that very moment. for the door shyly closed, slowly and conveying a sense of reluctance at first but rather discernibly becoming faster and more urgent as if betraying a sense of relief.

and it was during the closing of these very doors, which while in reality only took not more than four seconds, were the instigators of vastly differing instincts – vacillating fleetingly from anger to indifference to confusion and finally to despair. maybe love, it had to be there somewhere, although we realize now that these fancies have been all too quickly bleeding into one another. the protagonist sizes the situation up – drenched, alone and waiting.

and not seeing the open door right behind.

he shifts in his seat, perhaps imagining a wedgie and perhaps more than slightly bothered by the stifling heat that envelops his current existence. his work desk sits bereft and in isolation, save for the candle fast burning out and the antique typewriter sitting uncomfortably on the surface of the table, like two chastened schoolboys standing in front of the school – part in shame and part in delight at being there. it was not that he was averse to technology as some older folk tend to be, as his pristine 66-inch plasma TV entertaining nobody in particular with more another piece of bad news from another corner of the world attests to. as a writer he has just always imagined himself as a bit of a romantic, preferring not to seek inspiration from the mechanical hammering away at a computer keyboard for he could never find enough to go by. he would go as far as to write on yellowed paper with a fountain pen, as he used to in the earlier parts of what may pass off as a writing career, but he found soon that is too much trouble for what it was worth. a typewriter it was then – out of existential pretensions more than any practical premises.

and so it was that he continued settling into his seat. and just as he felt settled enough he felt the intense need to get up again, to dawdle and wander to the kitchen and get himself a drink. what he wanted to drink he thought he knew – a diet coke with a wedge of lime – but when he did finally get to the fridge he found himself not knowing anymore. it was there where he spent many a second, before returning to his room and his unhappy desk, empty-handed and without the drink he craved so intensely all of 120 seconds ago.

attempting to conjure another plausible reason to unsettle himself, he would fail, as his writing projects inevitably do. yellow papers with pen ink and short, beautifully-written but never completed passages lay on the ground. right now he found himself floundering again, and this time round on the typewriter his writing was constantly in interruptus. he had the most fabulous idea, having himself underwent an experience which changed his life down to his very bones. he saw the world in a million different ways, metamorphosed into a more interesting person, met the most wonderful people he would come to love forever, experienced so much, and returned with his goals in life all sorted. all he needed to do was to get his experiences down in writing – a guaranteed bestseller, a banker if there ever was one. it would be in the traditional Victorian form of the bildungsroman, a Dickensian epic.

except he cannot possibly remember everything anymore. all the photographs which never fade on Facebook, all the souvenirs, all the reminiscing with the friends from there and to friends from here were only brief and far too paltry. groping around in the dark corridors of his consciousness, all he feel was the smoothness of the doors against the roughness of the walls, and the coldness of the British beer down his parched and throat. it wasn’t everything, because no one possibly can understand ‘everything’, not even himself.

impoverished of meaning and with language failing him, all he could remember – suitably, although not without irony – were the nights he went out and got drunk.

a few days ago, rummaging through my rather messy drawers for something – can’t remember what it was now, not that it matters at all – i came across tickets to The Killers, printed on solid cardboard that still smells a little fresh, with a face value of $151, whispering with what had to be an attempt at silent enticement the date and venue: 24th January at the Indoor Stadium. i do still remember how much the supposed concert meant at that time, pregnant with associations not just to the potential excitement of a good rock concert but to the companion that i was to have had. both of these never fully worked out; the tickets remained just useless glossy cardboard pieces, the companion now just a friend.

and as it is frequently with life’s little symmetries and quirky ways of working out, 2010 was footnoted by another cancellation of a major (to me, at least) event – Chelsea vs. Manchester United. i was going to go by myself, except that at Stamford Bridge i have never felt alone. with the game cruelly postponed out of my reach due to the unrelenting snow in London (and the inadequacies of snow control measures in the UK), this time round i kept not even the cardboard ticket, offloading it for £50 and a cadbury bar. and along out the window with that ticket went the a dream i’ve harboured for much of the conscious life i remember. and taking my place on the East Stand instead would be a Canadian. A CANADIAN. (only kidding, if you’re reading this Robby.)

yet sandwiched in between these disappointments, and who would have guessed after the start it got off to, a year i could not possibly forget in a hurry even if i did try. i’ve found and lost love, and with each of these i would have grown a little, i hope. most importantly, i’ve found and kept (and long may i continue to keep) a truckload of truly amazing people in my life – back here in Singapore and on my travels in Europe. i would always look back upon my time in London with misty eyes and a ready tear: the (mis)adventures; the love that i’ve been most fortunate enough to be showered with; the freedom and life of the a real cosmopolitan city in an actual nation. i’ve dined with and breathed the same air as some of the most wonderful, generous people anyone would have ever met, i’ve laughed with and cried with (and there was lots of crying) with friends, and dare i say ‘brothers’, the memories of whom will always tug at a heartstring of mine from thousands of miles and too many timezones away.

it is also in 2010, my 14th year as a Chelsea fan, that i’ve managed to come as close to my idols as i have ever come. maybe not close enough, not touching distance, but Man Utd aside i still saw Chelsea live on five different occasions. on one of these occasions i had the pleasure of bringing along with me an American and a Canadian (!) to the Bridge, and they were (joking aside) great company. my first and only time not being at a game by myself, and the footballing heavens duly obliged with a match that delivered everything – 4 goals, all at the Matthew Harding stand where we were seated; a penalty; a sublime Anelka finish; Frank Lampard waving at us; and a crazy Russian streaker. i would also particularly relish the memory – more so given Chelsea’s wobbly form of late – of Chelsea’s double-winning season which, lest we forget, came in 2010 too. champagne football on the penultimate league game where Chelsea demolished Wigan 8-0, followed closely by an utterly nail-biting finish in the FA Cup Final where we could have easily lost it.

2010 also saw me manage my best NUS semester ever, leaving the semesters to come with a lot to live up to. results-wise my 4th semester would be hard to top, and i can only hope to repeat that. indeed i’ll be very happy to come close. and as had been a consistent theme throughout the year, i’ve also come to enjoy the company and love of a zany group of fellow English Literature majors, with whom life never is dull. there has to be some perverse pleasure in being able to make and share intellectual jokes/nonsense not many outside the group can understand, and they unfailingly deliver, time and again. your insanity anchors me, and i’m glad i’ve found you guys.

in the midst of all this love i have managed, in 2010, to find room for yet some more. more people who i can trust with my secrets, vulnerabilities, hopes and fears. and so it is – emergency phone calls of desperation, text messages from Thailand, long rambly email exchanges (not always replied, but I FORGIVE YOU AHEM), 3am beer at void decks.

‘this too shall pass’, alas, applies also to the good things in life, and i find myself firmly back in real life now. with every cloud comes a silver lining, but happily i’ve had more silver linings than clouds in the year gone by. as with the case of a most memorable ex-boyfriend/girlfriend, 2011 and the years to come will be invariably compared, and palely, to the year i’ve just had the good fortune of having. regardless, at risk of being greedy, i shall solemnly hope for another year just as good. or close.

i wait with bated breath.