第一个

This past week for two nights in a row I dreamt about my 1st gf. The details are fuzzy, but it is awful to wake up and to start the day in a lousy mood.

A quick check on this blog told me why. I am amazed by the ability of my subconscious mind to remember dates anniversaries.

Two years later, I still stand by the title of this entry.

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Olandario, who has since deleted his blog, wrote this in 2006.

A neverending story

Now and then, I may meet an interesting new girl, and being single and desperate, I take the opportunity to get to know her better. It’s tiring; trying to know someone new always is. And as we grow older, so do the people we meet (unless you are a cradle snatcher), and there’s more to find out. And then there is the usual background research to be done.

Primary school. Secondary school. Junior college. University. Major. Favourite colour. Favourite book. Favourite animal. Favourite number. Favourite song. Favourite movie. Favourite flower. Unfulfilled dream. Biggest regret.

You labour at it, so that you may reap the rewards later in case things work out. But one after another, they fall by the roadside, and even though you stay as friends, when her birthday comes around again, you can no longer recall what her favourite cartoon character is, or what she likes to eat at a restaurant.

I no longer ask, because I no longer care to find out. No more hedging of bets, just to clog up my brain with more useless tidbits of information I won’t be able to recall when the occasion arises. But for you; I can never forget.

Jin Shan Primary School. River Valley High School. Raffles Junior College. University of Melbourne. Medicine. Red. To Kill a Mockingbird (one of them). Dog. Five. Right Here Waiting. Serendipity. Lilies (or at least it used to be). To be a singer. Not getting together with me.

It’s almost ten years since we set eyes upon each other in that classroom, almost nine years since we traded rubber bands with straws between our lips, eight years since you looked through the fourth-storey window and watch me kick a ball, and I saw you stand and sing on stage in that most memorable of Talentimes, and we got ‘married’ in civics and moral education class, seven years since I heard you cry your heart out on the phone, and we stepped through the gates of the same college, five years since you laughed at my clean-shaven head, four years since I bade you farewell at Changi, and you first got attached, almost three years since I did, one year since I broke up, and four months since you did.

A decade of memories.

There have been many times in those years when I have wondered about us, and where we will be in another decade’s time. Whether the meandering journeys we have taken since those heady secondary school days were meant to test us, and whether fate will bring us together again some day. Or as you once put it, whether we will return to square one after everything that we have been through together. If, we will ever end up together.

I already know the answer.

Happy Birthday.

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And my greetings to another girl on the west coast.