don't laugh. i mean it. according to yesterday's post, i should be in dubai by now, probably. so can someone tell me why i'm sitting on my bed at home in our not-very-sunny-nowadays island of singapore???

ok i'll tell you.

yesterday morning, i woke up and glanced at my handphone to read an sms from mervin asking what the transport plans to the airport at night were gonna be like. so i called up my mom..

me: mom, how are we going tonight?
mama: where are we going tonight?
me: what do you mean "where are we going tonight"?? aren't we flying off later??
mama: no lar, tomorrow night lar!
me: what! no 21st 1am right??
mama: ok now you're making me worried. go check the tickets...

little miss not-so-smarty pants shireen got the wrong date. but let me give you a prelude. yesterday morning, when i woke up, the first thing i did as i always do was to look at the clock on the wall. and it showed 1240!! i was extremely puzzled because i couldn't figure how i could've slept that long and was trying to figure out whether i had woken up in between to go back to sleep. worse, i was panicking because i really really believed i was leaving that night and there was tons to do now. that's when i checked my phone to read my smses and saw something else that puzzled me even further. my phone clock showed 930am! it took me a while to try to figure out which timezone i was currently in and was relieved that it really was 930am. it's like time had turned back 3 hours for me.

and so, when i found out that we were really leaving the next day (which is tonight as i type this), i was even more relieved. it's like a doctor telling you today is your last day to live and then you are given another day more to live! haha. i was immediately reminded of veronika in veronika decides to die. the doctor told her she was going to die (when she was perfectly ok) and even gave her a timeframe. such that each day after she passed that timeframe, she couldn't believe she was still alive and lived and rejoiced as though she was going to die the next day. and funny that i just blogged what i did last night as well. and here i was now, with all the time in the world (ok just one more day) to do all my "last things" without the panicky "last things" feeling.

i got to visit uncle ishu, get my pedicure and hair treatment, go for mass, have a nice dinner and evening with mervin (especially after my foul mood last night)...

i even had time to go see jeremy and joyce off at the airport.


i didn't have a chance to see them before that. and they're gonna be away for soooooo long!!! so, seriously, thank god for the extra day!

you'd think that at 1130pm, time would no longer play mid-december-fool jokes on me. but noooooooooo, you are sooooooooo wrong. so there i was with mervin, just talking and enjoying the seabreeze, and i remember glancing at my watch and realising it was only 1130pm. ok, i thought. quite a while passed and decided it was time to look at the watch again. mervin said something about it coming close to 1210am. i was kinda puzzled again because my watch read 1130. i didn't know what to make of it. i mean, how many times in a day??? what were You trying to tell me??

i guess Time was your gift to me yesterday. i mean, it's your gift to me everyday, but even more so yesterday. and i remember, yesterday, as i was hailing a cab by the side of the road, the thought crossed my mind that it was really so easy for me to throw my days away procrastinating. and i was thinking, if god had given me one more day to live, it would really be so easy for me to give up when something takes too much effort and then make up a really solid excuse for it. and seriously, what a sad waste that would be.

and it's funny i say "if god had given me one more day to live". because, what am i thinking?? everyday i wake up, god IS giving me one more day to live. so what am i doing with my life??

head knowledge. head knowledge. i need all this to singe my heart.

(wednesday 1am, actually)

i wonder, if everyone were to blog about goodbyes, would it all read the same? would we all write about how everything seems brighter, bigger, happier, sadder...? would we talk about all the "last times", last breakfast, last walk to the grocery store, last kiss, last bus ride, last swim, last....whatever? would we all talk about the things our hearts left behind and the things they now carry forward? i figure it would all sound the same, especially at that "final goodbye".

please excuse me. reading about z's last days on exchange, recollecting my own in wildwood, jeremy and joyce leaving tomorrow, fanglong leaving next month, me leaving tomorrow night (only for 2 weeks lar), people dying...it all just, you know, makes me wonder...

on another note, it has been raining incessantly! and now, there's this hole in my ceiling and the rain has sneakily found its way there. and THROUGH there. i realised putting a pail underneath would be pretty futile because the water splashes in all directions once it gets through that hole. so, little miss smarty pants shireen decided to put a plastic bag right under the hole, with the help of jeevan MUTTON-NI!


here's a close-up of the ingenius contraption.


a blue plastic bag and a whole army of wristbands from moreys piers. god only knows how useful those things were.


and we can only hope that as i sleep tonight, the bag will not come loose and release a torrent of cold rainwater onto my face. tonight, the wristbands of morey's will be put to the test. yes, tonight, we will see.

alright, time to sleep. think i should be able to blog from the states. pravin, be good. i'll miss you. seriously.

you wait for this day for the longest time, enduring 15 weeks of hell just to get there. and when it finally comes, you're left clueless about what to do with it. maybe it's because there's so much you want to do, and you don't know where to start. maybe it's because there's so much you suddenly have to do, and you don't want to start. or maybe it's because you finally get to spend time with who you love, but it seems like the world has got other plans up its sleeve.

are you telling me something, god? so, what's the plan?