joshua.

Feb 09

And thus concludes 10oclockgentleman.

Hey. All this time I’ve been meaning to post something, anything. There were so many things to talk about! Can’t believe it’s been so long since I posted.

For one, I really wanted to write about about my family trip to Gold Coast, the numerous quarrels we had and the stuff I took away from it. It was really a Little Miss Sunshine moment there, with the rented car substituting for the yellow van. All that GPS, missing roads, lost signals and foggy windows caused so many arguments, yet bonded us so much closer. And I learnt how to read GPS haha.

And about my future! All those thoughts on uni and career stuff that I wanna unravel and organise in words, but never got around to.

Then there’s the cliche reflective note I wanted to do at the end of J2. It got pushed from last day of school to prom night to end of the year and… continues to be pushed. I don’t think I’ll ever end up doing it in the end, but that’s what this post is about.

After a meaningful, yet depressing msn convo I had last night, I’ve come to realise how closeness in relationships can bite, and continue to bite even after they end. The paranoia that comes with closeness is way unhealthy, and I now see that 10oclockgentleman was merely a product of that closeness.

Whenever I tried to post something recently, I kept delaying it and nothing ever came out of that. This blog wasn’t meant to document my life and my thoughts, no matter how much I want it to be. It was set up specifically because of influences from who used to be my very best friend and the density of posts over the course of two years is a pretty accurate indicator of my closeness to her. My posts waxed and waned with the relationship. I wanna keep this blog live in memory of that.

I’m not gonna portray myself as the victim here, I do acknowledge the (rather large) part I played in the death of a perfectly good friendship. But that’s not the point of this post. I just wanna conclude this chapter of my life, which so happens to coincide with my enlistment tomorrow D: Haha well that’s gonna be the next chapter I guess, one I would very much want to write with the lessons learnt from the previous one in mind.

These two years in JC have been a whirlwind and I would admit I was dragged by it. I grappled with issues tougher than anything I’ve ever experienced before and were plagued by emotions I never thought I would feel. Jealousy, rage, frustration, inadequacy, confusion, love, gratitude, joy, peace, the whole spectrum of the human experience. Well probably not the WHOLE spectrum. But it’s gotten me prepared for the future, for more of these issues and emotions on a deeper level and wider scale than what I’ve experienced so far.

I’ve certainly learnt alot from the friends I’ve made, and especially from you, V. Omg I don’t want to do the whole encryptic codenames (that’s lame man) but I can’t think of a better compromise. Anyway this is more of my own remembrance.

I’m enlisting tmr morning, 11.45am. It’s a brand new phase of life! I wouldn’t say I’m prepared for it, but typing this post definitely helped by clearing up excess thoughts from my head. So onwards I go. :)

TL;DR: And thus concludes 10oclockgentleman.

Aug 15

“Nature’s first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.” — Robert Frost

Aug 12

but an adventure.

I felt super tired today and slept once i reached home so didn’t get to get any work done. Good thing wednesdays are slack, like really slack. Ms seah started gp class with “I was thinking that today we will do… nothing!” So we did. She’s still an awesome teacher but it does make you worry for your future gp grades…

And i am unsure of the future. I’m more lost now than i’ve been in recent years. Everything in the future seems up in the air. I dunno what uni course i can qualify for, what job i can secure, what friends i will keep, what my whole life has in store for me. Make no mistake, i know what i want. But as the philosopher Jagger once said, you can’t always get what you want.

Reality bites down on you hard, and it is at this age when you emerge from the shell of the almighty Singapore education system and realise that you’re not prepared at all. Oh my mom actually noticed my uncertainty and recommended me a short sermon that she burned on a CD for me. That was nice haha. In fact i think God will be my only solution to this.

I used to have this impression that following God’s plan for your life takes all the fun out of it. You’ve only got one shot at life, why would you want to follow a walkthrough instead of playing the game and exploring every secret that life has to offer? But i’ve come to realise this: it’s exactly because you’ve only got one shot that you will want to follow the walkthrough. There’s no ‘last saved game’ to load.

And it’s not exactly restrictive either. I used to think that following a fixed plan, a certain ‘God’s will’, will suck the adventure out of life and kill it. Sure, there will probably be only one perfect course that God knows will fit you absolutely wonderfully perfectly, one perfect career path that was made for you, one perfect person you’re destined to fall in love with. But it’s navigating down that one perfect path, that’s an adventure in itself. God’s will is like a walkthrough you can only read one page at a time, which is pretty darn awesome cos i wouldn’t want to know how my life turns out before i live it.

Life is but an adventure, so i’m just gonna approach it headfirst and see what comes out of it. After all, uncertainty is just another word for adventure, right?

Okay no. Anyway this has been strangely therapeutic. I feel much better alr. Or maybe it’s the Glee. That was an awesome episode btw.

Aug 09

back.

Once again I feel like updating little fragments of my life on this thing. So i shall.

Jun 28

thedailywhat:

Optical Illusions of the Day: That last one is humdinger! It really looks like a goal!

(context.)

[reddit.]

Jun 23

insomnia.

I believe insomnia is the worst feeling in the world. Heartbreak and betrayal probably fall in a pretty close 2nd place.

I had a perfect plan: sleep at 9, wake up at 2, watch world cup at 2.30, mug from 4.30 to 6 then early breakfast. But then i just. couldn’t. SLEEP. I tossed and turned and for some reason could fall asleep. This is the most frustrating feeling ever. The last time i couldn’t sleep was before the SS O levels (haha i still rmb), so i got up and mugged till sch time.

So here i am, mugging quantum and i realised my foundation is really weak. And to think i felt really impressed with myself for finishing a third of the physics syllabus today. Common tests are just next week but for some reason i don’t feel a sense of panic. No… it feels more like… resignation? Like i can try to finish the entire syllabus, but i know i won’t, at least not within a week. So no worries, i’m just gonna try to mug as much as i can and leave the rest to God. It’s like seeing a horde of zombies coming at you in L4D when you have 10 health and 3 dead teammates. You just whack blindly and wait to respawn.

Or is the feeling that everyone else is just as screwed as you? In that case, no worries too, we’ll all go down together? I’m actually okay with that. I’m just unsure whether this relaxed mindset is unfounded and i’m the only one headed towards a disaster without knowing it.

Okay i feel mildly sleepy! Shall nap for an hour then wake up for a double world cup match.

Jun 21

Neil Patrick Harris speaks the truth but it’s not always easy.

thedailywhat:

Legen — wait for it…

[thrfeed.]

Jun 19

I want an underdog to win this world cup. Stop passing it around the same 7 nations.

Jun 14

radical conference. mugging.

I got a new com! I think it’s a really good deal. Actually i’ll find any com a good deal and super fast compared to my old one so i’m just grateful for it. I’m trying to catch up on the lost days of internet now. It sure evolves fast. Gonna catch up on my blog reading right now.

The past few days were all spent in church, for the Radical Conference! It was really inspiring. God’s been such a blessing and support this whole time and i’ve no idea what i would do without Him. It’s this tangible assurance He provides when my world crashed on me, when people disappointed me, when friends fail. Recently, i’ve also seen bouts of hypocrisy in the church, which really shook me. Someone once asked me about it, and i said that no church is perfect, but i guess that was really useless advice. If someone told me that right now, it wouldn’t help a bit. But God helped me through these doubts, and i do feel peace about following Him and influencing my world for Him.

Of course the flipside of spending 3 days at church is that my studies are screwed. I’m supposed to finish mugging math by this week, but only managed to accomplish half of that, partly due to my own fault cos i mugged the wrong topics -.- Next week’s chem week and i really gotta buck up. Organic chem will be my first topic. Dowwwn you go.

Oh i may be staying at a hotel for a couple days the next week cos one of my dad’s business clients canceled their trip so he’s left with a hotel reservation. But i gotta study during that hotel stay argh.

Jun 06

“Come mothers and fathers throughout the land
And don’t criticize what you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin’.
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’.” — The Times They Are a-Changin’ | Bob Dylan

Jun 04

First post in 2 weeks hah. I don’t want to sour your mood so click for endless rambling. The following was written on paper just after my mom yelled at me. I don’t think anyone will read the entire thing, i know i won’t want to read it again. It’s like… i dunno, just that i feel strongly about this subject of film that my mom understands nothing about. I was never sure what course to take in uni, but i think.. i wanna aim for communications studies now. I’ll try.

May 24

“Friends are those rare people who ask how we are and then wait to hear the answer.” — Ed Cunningham (via kari-shma) (via quote-book)