Life, Laughter and Everything Else

 She gave me a look of deep displeasure, not very atypical of the look most members of the opposite gender gave me. “You know you can’t do that in Germany?”, she asserted with the same authority my mother used to tell me about not messing around in her kitchen.  “Yes I am aware”, I meekly responded, knowing well that any kind of argument about this would not end well, so it was better to close off the topic quietly and unlike the kitchen, I could not afford to get kicked out of Germany. She was not the first to respond with such hostility to what seemed like the most natural of things in my experience. The last one who told me the same was a teacher I had met at a party. When she sounded shocked that I was ok with it and said it was not right, I (with some alcoholic courage) had retorted, “How would you discipline them then if they do something wrong?” “I would tell them I am very disappointed with them”. I almost laughed. However, that was very much the theory of my new frien...

Why do I long for the past?  For the family  with their familiar tongues, their familiar faces,  their familiar laughs, their familiar comforts Why do I long for the past? For the youth,  with its youthful friendships,  its youthful energy, its youthful ignorance,  its youthful promise. Why do I long for the past? If they were once all, past, present and future.

It had been just four days since the self enforced no-music rule. As intended, the lyrics blaring out from the loudspeakers made me stop in my tracks and soak in the melody that I had been deprived off, that I had taken for granted. It sounded like the most beautiful thing I had heard in a while. Played with the magnificent Singapore landscape in the backdrop and the winds from the Indian Ocean blowing briskly but gently, I was comforted.  Nobody said it was easy It's such a shame for us to part Nobody said it was easy No one ever said it would be so hard Oh take me back to the start. So apt, so poignant, almost as if they could read my mind and put into words what I was struggling to piece together.

We were all given a rectangular piece of paper, about the size of my palm, and a pencil. The task was seemingly straightforward.  On that piece of paper, write down the biggest regret we held. It did not end up as easy as I thought. Of late, after a passage I had come across in a book, which dismissed regrets as pointless, as what had happened was divine fate and therefore beyond one's control, I had personally seen a dramatic decrease in the number of regrets over my past actions. Not that I did not make mistakes. Like every other human, I had made many, and will continue to make many, but mistakes were no cause for regret. Rather, it was providence to prevent repeating it. Subsequently, all my past personal failures, from the lack of effort I put in for my PSLE, the travel experiences I had skipped as superficial, the romantic relationships I had unambitiously not pursued or dismissed when they did come my way and the potential I had failed to maximise, did not hurt that muc...

Radioactive by Imagine Dragons. For most people, this was yet another pop song that lingered in the Top 40's about two and a half years back. When I first heard it, it had a catchy anthem like melody and like every novel tune, it too would have faded into obscurity after days of continuous listening had it not been for one place. Sweden. It happened, by chance, that I caught onto the tune at a time when I flew over to Sweden for my exchange and it was the first song I plugged into listen when I had settled myself comfortably in the warm Swedish hostel. From that point onwards, the song to me became Sweden. The freezing winter, the quiet breakfasts, the dark afternoons, the anxiety as I tugged my luggage into my accommodation, the awe as I explored a city so strikingly different and beautiful, the excitement of just finally reaching there and wondering what the country held for me. All those feelings just comes flooding back when I hear that one song. Makes me want to ret...