oh and one more thing.

here’s to embracing my inner demons and doing the tango with the skeletons in my closet! to the epicurean lifestyle!!

whatever happens, happens!!!

its saturday; late saturday night and somehow i feel an urge to write something here. dont know what, though. im so tired ive had three hours of sleep since i got back late last night and decided to try out a couple new playstation games - which left me *literally* furiously mashing on my X button until four or so in futility as my dragonball z heroes incessantly got their butts kicked…

pretty busy weeks loom ahead… particularly the fringe-weekdays… the next two fridays’ll be kinda shitty, i think. this one i’m on attachment to the school of military intelligence as an enemy. and the next one i’ve got freakin’… orderly duty. chrissssssssst.

have decided to indefinitely keep my hair cut really, really short. to ditch my scruffy image and rise from the ashes looking immaculately… preppy.

okay am falling asleep and suffering from literal merlion syndrome… btw sophie’s world is a tremendous, tremendous book and tomorrow comes sooner than i think so im gonna get some mucho-needed shut eye.

i just did a mildy good deed. or did i?

okay heres what happened, explained once more to you, my adoring public. (yes, you too, joel…)

after dinner and chilling out along reading my magazine in serangoon gardens, i walked off to the bus stop at the ‘circus, chatting with a friend of mine on the phone, and there smack in the middle of this empty space bordered by benches is a motionless indian man on the floor.

his hands lie somewhat to his sides, and his feet are closed together; he wears a cotton tank and long black trousers, with one of his shoes lying not far from his feet, and a little half-opened backpack sits near his right arm. he has dark, dark skin and his hair is slightly greying, and his chest moves up and down faintly…

now, dude lies there nigh-motionless, and no one knows if he’s drunk or dead or whatev’, but there’s a big-ass crowd of elderly ladies standin around and talking about what to do, and saying that someone should call the police. right.

i end my now-pointless phone conversation with my buddy, and walk up to the little-but-growing crowd, and whip out my pseudomacho phone to call… but there’s this girl who’s about 5 years or so younger than me and she’s already on the phone with, well, authority.

so here comes the dilemma: should i go help? like, human friggin nature tells me, right away:

joel, you had a bad day today. you freakin puked out all your lunch - again - when you were doing circuit training just now. you were stuck at this lame-ass new year celebration in camp. with Prevomit (aka tiger beer) to drink as the only, well, consolation. and you gotta wake up real early…

anyway, i decide against hopping onto my bus which promptly shows up and go to say hi to the girl on the phone. she said she called the police. my interest in the Prone Guy, well, piques the interest of the further-growing crowd of serangoon gardens folk, who somehow expect me to go do something.

so i walk over the Prone Guy and look closely; i didn’t need to be semi-medic-trained to see that he was alive, since his chest was rising and falling and… before i could do anything else, this lady shouts to me: ” don’t touch him! you’ll leave FINGERPRINTS.”

(what the hell? dude’s here lying unconscious and like, the last goddamned thing i care about right now is fingerprints, honey… i can verbally prove my goddamned innocence without your help. not that it would even come to that! ugh…)

next i bend over to his face and… well, realise that he’s… just… drunk. pretty badly drunk.

“he’s drunk,” i announce to the auntie collection.

by now, though, it’s been minutes since the girl with the phone - rachel - called the police and they haven’t shown up. though there’s a police post across the street. i decide to call the police again. it seems a consensus by the crowd to tell the police now, so rachel and i decide to the police post n tell them there’s a drunk(?) guy lying in the middle of a bus stop.

ahem.

anyway, when we return to the scene, a police car shortly shows up and the duo of cops promptly wake the dude up. he’s okay. another police car shows up. and the four ‘pigs try and get him on his feet, met only with the drunk dude’s arm flailing and drunk incoherence. one of the cops asks rachel for some information. seeing that Prone Guy is in uh, good hands, i walk to the side of the bus stop, not wanting to unnecessarily crowd the already crowded situation, but not before exchanging numbers with rachel. and giving the helpful aunties a collectively confused, yet steely glare.

cough cough.

allright. so did i do a good deed?

well, if we DIDN’T get the cops on the scene, he might’ve been left there the entire night, and some (other?) drunk guy might just go over and swipe his wallet and everything. or he might’ve been more than drunk and whatever. the aunties could’a just stood there talking about how someone shoulda done somethin’ till they all boarded the last bus and well, nothing would’a happened, holmes.

maybe… before i enlisted i woulda walked away. and felt bad about it for days after, went all wishy washy about being a “bad christian” or whatever. to hell with that. wuss-ass bitch.

maybe i coulda woken him up myself and went ” hey buddy you’re drunk. get home, aight?” and gotten him a cab or somethin. thing is - when the police woke him he was so horribly incoherent he might’ve just thrown a sucker punch at my forehead in gratitude. it would’a saved him some police trouble though…

still, being in temporary police custody beats… getting robbed, or possibly worse, right? don’t kids drown in their vomit, when they’re drunk? and uh, die?

what pisses me off, though… WHAT pisses me off, man, is that everyone was just standing around waiting for shit to happen. standing there for the first coupla moments, the first thing that went through my mind was: if i don’t do something and this guy really is hurt, then how the fuck am i ‘gone live with myself?

fuck losing face. i’ll kneel in front’a him and see if he’s okay.

there were little girls standing around laughing at him. kids asking me and rachel whether “he was a friend of ours”. har har har. that’s so funny, you know? a guy lying on the floor is funny to a pre-teen girl with ponytails.

and, hell, what the hell about “fingerprints” ??? i ain’t gonna be worried about getting myself convicted or whatever? go ahead and be safe in your home, with a man lying there. whatever, auntie.

if age brings about inhibitions that blind our basic courage and moral integrity, then i don’t want to grow up any more. but that isn’t true, isn’t it? it isn’t even about age; why then do we have little cutesy girls laughing at me and rachel and the Prone Guy?

goddamn it. fuck it all. i’ve typed myself into a horrible, horrible mood.

whatever happens, happens.

peace.

and fuck it all!!!

allright.

new year week’s over and its sunday night and im booking in soon… so what gives?

i think this’s been a well, well-spent new year’s week-long holiday.

in one week, ive…

ive patched things up with my best friend, spent time with my extended family, met up with some old buddies whom i havent seen for years, had a couple good basketball runs, fell in love with bossa nova music, introduced a few friends to a new and intruiging hobby (haha), discovered that unbelievably cute, intelligent female lifeforms aren’t TOTALLY extinct in serangoon gardens… and finally, have been struck by some sort of strange seemingly-causeless sickness…

the chinese new year sickness? oh please. that’s a damned myth - like the “tekong cough”.

but on friday night i puked my dinner out right after eating it, running into the cafe cartel toilet right after i was done with my platter. and today - sunday - i felt so horribly nauseous in the afternoon - you know the feeling: the taste of bile creeping up your throat - that i went to the toilet to voluntarily do myself the honours of gastronomically rebelling against my brunch, instead of waiting for my body to do so.

now, ive just had my first official meal of the day, which was a nice steaming plate of prawn noodles (except for the morsel of squid gratuitously given away to a goddamned mynah). all i can do now is pray those noodles stay put in there; the fiesty, diabolical snakey things…

why the hell do i suddenly feel the urge to worship the porcelain god? ive no idea. i havent had (much) alcohol lately; one kilkenny a few DAYS back and two heineken’s at my uncle’s house last night… that’s it. im perfectly happy emotionally. ive read a good chunk of my book… so i’m perfectly good, right?

maybe its because since all the good (chinese) food places’ve been closed over the new year, ive been living on prata and mcdonalds? instant pizza? and frickin ‘cartel?

happy valentine’s day, world.

i’ll be spending it in bed. in camp. suffering. post new year hangover. post nuclear, hungover. whatever. WHATEVER!!!

peace.

happy chinese new year, mah fellow yellow people.

is it just me, or is it just not the same this year? my cousin daniel has one feeling about chinese new year this year - he felt “sleepy”. which i smugly scoffed at until i fell asleep in one of my uncles’ rooms after new year’s lunch at my grandma’s. and found daniel standing at the door laughing at me… prick.

sigh. somehow, the mood isnt at all right this year. this year, i turn twenty. everything just becomes less special now, doesnt it? everything gets old and boring and tired; what’s tradition but glorified cliche?

everything gets old and stale, doesn’t it?

my elder cousin though, she’s something else. she’s 30 ( i think), and lived in hong kong till last year. she’s going to take her doctorate in NUS, and she looks and behaves like a bubbly 18 year old. which is hella amazing. she’s my role model for a 30 year old; youthful in appearance, spirit, demeanour.

if i DO take up a law degree i’d *better* be like that. youthful and everything. i dont want to graduate a fuddy-duddy and miss out on years of babe-action.

allright im gonna retire to my stan getz-ey play list. bossa is the way to go…

Ahem. The inaugural post. What can I say? A lotta things, obviously. First of all, I would like to say that this will be the last paragraph I write with consistent capital letters in the right places - now, hold your horses right there: I’m sure as hell not gonna type LiKe tHiS; its tiring, not to mention an optical torture, I’m just not gonna ‘capitalize’ the first word sentences anymore.

so there. much better.

well, ill begin proper, right now, by introducing myself.

i’m joel ong.

i’ve been serving in the singapore armed forces for two years, and right now i can just smell freedom a few months away. i am also a hopeless basketball fanatic; i’m not that great a player but i can hit the long ball pretty well, and i’m working on my handles right now to play guard properly and not just spot-up-and-shoot reggie-style. i watch soccer, like any other singaporean youth. yada yada yada.

i read - a lot. when i’m not talking or playing games i’m reading. i’m about a third into Jostien Gaardner’s Sophie’s World, which i cannot wait to finish. three thousand years of philosphy and history in five hundred pages? what a deal. its amazing stuff, though it gets boring now and then…

right now, i’m living alone in serangoon gardens. my parents are in canada, where we moved

when i was sixteen - i’m nearly twenty - and that’s where i’m gonna go study. i don’t know what i’m gonna do after i get outta school… or if i should continue my studies and take on a law degree.

well, enough about me, for now.

more importantly, id like to explain why i write this:

my entire life ive felt like in terms of thinking… ive always thought differently from everyone else. ive stood out of the pack whether or not ive wanted to, just because ive never felt a part of anything.

perhaps the closest ive felt to being part of a community was when i was in raffles institution; without a doubt the one place ive ever felt a strong belonging to. i still bleed green, black and white.

so with this blog, i think i will write down my thoughts and views on stuff.

so that i can look at them and with hindsight, try and figure out why i stand out so much from everyone else. why i feel loneliest in a crowd.

finally, i write this so that… anyone who amazingly takes time to read my musings and thoughts can figure out what i can’t: why i’m so goddamned different and, well, alone wherever i go.

amen.