Last Conversations

It's gonna be two-and-a-half weeks without any Internet connection for me (since unlike those enlisting in the army, we can't bring smartphones) so here's a slightly heavy one people who bother reading long-winded, meandering passages might again be put through. These words are from the past 15 days since I've been back from an overseas trip, scribbled on paper and on my phone between hellos that were all too soon followed by goodbyes. These 15 days were odd - some were spent waiting for people to return from their own trips, and some were spent waiting for my own enlistment days after most friends have already gone in. If I have learnt anything at all, it is that there is never enough time, and never enough words.

I have a feeling that the waiting will continue, even when I eventually enlist tomorrow and am subjected to the regimental life of uniformed forces. At this stage of our lives - like it or not - we play the waiting game.

--


It is not my first time at the basketball court of Buona Vista CC, although it is my first time playing here. The court is an ashen red, the net droops with a loose end and the rim is so lopsided I think I'll have to shoot from a particular side if I'm to score at all.

Trexel projects the ball into the air, and I'm projecting tales from Sec Three and Four - from memory to mouth.

Swish.

"Wah, not bad."

He is surprisingly humble. "Nah, no form already."

We talk about the NBA, about the Premier League, about how he used to play the 2014 NBA video game on his Mac and I'd watch during our lunch breaks.

"The file no longer works, I can't play it anymore."

"Oh man."

Swish. 

The disparate puddles from the previous night's rain dot the court, but soon they have shrunk to irrelevance. The sun comes out and the day has found a new reverence. Trexel jumps for the ball after a shot of mine circles the rim and tips itself over. He reaches for it as the ball in mid-air happens to cover the Sun from where I'm standing, such that it's like a scaled down solar eclipse in play. As he grabs the ball firmly there's the illusion that he's touched the sides of the Sun, and the rays sprout out from around the edges in that brief fraction of a second to glorious effect.

He then flings the ball in my direction, the fiery orb spinning its way towards me. I seize it mid-spin, and I imagine this mass of heat and light suddenly at my disposal. There is the feeling of being in control as I handle the ball, my fingers wrapping its contours and navigating its grooves.

This sensation of ascendancy is only momentary - a water droplet, presumably from the tree still damp with rainwater, taps me on my shoulder, and I am reminded it is never all up to me.

____________________________________________________



A snow globe a friend got for me as a Christmas gift sits on my desk. The miniature reindeer in the globe - adorned with a tessellated red scarf - clutches a hand bell and rests on an even tinier stone. With a light shake, the "snow" - or, as I like to call it, "overpriced dust" - rises and engulfs the small sphere.

I look on and wonder what it must be like to be the reindeer, knowing the snow - this unchanging snow - will rise and fall the same way every time, the minuscule specks lost in a flurry but then ultimately floating down to rest. The reindeer sleeps knowing that things are as they were.

I am later overcome by bemusement - who stares at a little knick-knack and gets jealous?

_________________________________________________

In a quiet corner of Bishan MRT Station is a QB House I go to. Six months ago my hair was cut by a lad who I think just got transferred there and since then I've been going back to him for my hair cut each time. If he wasn't in, I'd ask his colleagues when his next shift would be and might return another day on my way home, or if I was running errands in the area.

His name is Elven, and I'm not actually sure how old he is but he seems to be in his mid-20s. He has a thick Malaysian accent, which is especially noticeable because our conversations are in Chinese. That is not to say we speak a lot during my haircut, though - I'm often glad to let the razors and scissors do the talking.

I find it awfully awkward when he asks a question and we start to have a private conversation of our own, even as there are two other hairstylists and five other customers in that tight space. I still oblige in replying but it doesn't mean I mind the small talk all that much, because after all he's a pleasant fella.

A few haircuts ago he'd asked what my post-exams plans were, and I'd raised enlisting for National Service as something that was on the horizon. I've learnt that NS is actually a pretty decent conversation filler (or starter), because there are so many ways of branching out into different sub-topics that you don't have to worry about racking your brain too much for something to say.

This time, I am back again and he remembers that I will be enlisting very, very soon, so he hypothesises that this might be the last time I go to him for a haircut.

“ 几个星期后你剑 botak, 以后就不用来了，对吗？”

“ 啊，对。”

He chuckles, and then goes on to give me some hairstylist's advice for shaving techniques in case I ever wanted to “ 剑 botak ” on my own. I share how some friends are at a loss as to whether they should shave their heads at a barber shop before enlistment, or at camp on enlistment day itself. Somehow or another I also get to asking him about whether he'll get a Chinese New Year break, and whether he returns to Malaysia to see his family then. His response is to ask me if I will get a break during that festive period.

Snips and swipes later, he reaches for the "blower" which essentially rids most of the loose pieces of hair on your head before the customer takes off the gown cape and the haircut is done. He dusts some hair off my back, passes me the standard QB House comb and wet wipe, then helps me with the cape.

He then remarks, “ 最后一次，好像有点感慨哦。”

“ 噢，的确是有点感慨。”

His eyes are small but contemplative. “ 到了 army, 祝你好运！”

I do not bother with pointing out that it is the police I'll be joining, and not the army.

“ 啊，谢谢你。希望我们后会有期。"

"哈哈，不知道两年后我会不会还在这里剪头发呢。没关系，人生就是这样。”

I open the door gently, but the bells attached to the handle make no mistake of marking my departure. I'm feeling abashed by the fact that everyone in the shop can listen on and watch our little farewell, but I muster up a  “ 新年快乐 ”, and then I'm out the door.

____________________________________________________



It is a Tuesday morning I've looked forward to for quite a while. It's the first time I'm back at school ever since returning from a trip with my family about a week before. At the turnstiles, I hold my breath in expectation of rejection, but eventually I find a strange comfort in the ensuing 'beep' upon tapping my card against the electronic reader.

Great, it still works. 

It sounds like 6.50am weekday mornings, 8am Saturdays and post-lunch drowsiness. Most of all, it sounds like a half-arsed 'hello' from a place you came to know in a myriad ways, but still never knew completely.

On entry, I am further greeted by the whistle of a netball coach frantically trying to organise her team. Her players are doing some kind of transition drill, encircling and exchanging, stopping and turning. Like a banquet table in artful conversation, their training session is a series of calculated steps.

I calculate the number of steps taking me to the mouth of the canteen, lightly tapping my feet against the tiled stairway, and, with some fleetness of foot, I soon approach the College section's street football court. I listen intently to the quiet. As is often the case, it seems the rest are not on time. Then I realise I've considered their "not being on time" instead of their "being late." Mornings like these mean the "half full" side of me can't help but rear its far-from-ugly head.

As I reach for my pocket to enter a "WHERE IS EVERYONE", or "WHO OVERSLEPT" (maybe not in caps), group message into my phone, a light shadow flashes past the ground ahead of me. I spot Yinn Ray, diminutive but as usual armed with a confident gait, about 20 metres away. He must have seen me first, because before I know it he has hollered out my nickname and charges down the slope with his arms wide open, even while trying to balance his shoe bag on one side. I wonder how he can be so full of life despite having just taken a 13-hour flight the night before. With his flip flops nearly getting caught between each other, and the beaming face I've come to know ever so infectious, he makes the 20 metres, and I make light of the sight. Upon embracing we both note how long it's been since we last met, and I despair about how it felt like I was away the whole of December, and he makes no effort to absolve me of any guilt. None of that seems to matter, though, and I am all smiles; this is a guy who knows me better than most, and the one who would take raisins - or as I also know them, "Raysins" - out of my cubicle in class.

With some faith, the rest arrive and so does the familiar banter. We split teams, the game of four versus five kicks off, and there is much #hype. I am on the side with one less player but we cope better than I could have expected, and somehow in the instances when Qi and I are up front we both know where the other will be at the exact moment one of us makes a pass. I think this must come with the two years, with me sometimes missing outings or meals with this group because of prior arrangements with other groups from earlier in high school, but then always returning in the knowledge that these are the people I've spent the most time with in the last two, arduous years.

A modest drizzle grows in hubris and looks set to unleash a downpour, but the clouds hold tight, as if desperately preserving this morning for our sake. There is no dampener, no despair - only the boyish howling and the friendly jibes and jabs fill the air.

Halfway through "the proceedings", Thung makes a trip to the toilet, adding to the piquancy of the moment. Like a jumped up pinball machine, the court and its occupants make the whole thing seem more intense than it actually is.

At lunch, we catch our breath. After defending myself with a clarification to everyone on a certain (grossly mistaken and highly unfortunate) "auntie killer" accusation against me, I am largely quiet, as I often am at a table of ten. I think about how it's fitting that we're sharing dishes for our meal today, instead of getting individual portions. The Lady Susan on the table is a negotiator of appetites. Chopsticks reach for the centre and food is shared. We play "the thumb game" to decide who gets the last piece of tofu. I look up at the faces around me in various fixtures of amusement and mischief. A new order of chicken is served. Much food for thought.

After lunch there comes the inevitability of parting ways. Someone says something about meeting on the third Saturday of every month but I have no clue if that will turn into a thing. Along the afternoon activity on Upper Bukit Timah Road, there are red lights where revving engines give away the impatience of drivers ready to go. I am anything but ready to go. The group walks towards the nearby train station, and I am at the back. Yinn Ray is beside me.

Breaking the silence, I admit to him, "I don't like this feeling."

"Yang, it'll all work out." He tries.

He rests his palm on my shoulder for a moment. I tell him he seems slightly taller now, and he rolls his eyes nefariously.

"I guess so."

I force a grin, but I also want to tell him that saying it is different from knowing it.

That simply guessing is not enough for me.

____________________________________________________



On New Year's Day a fellow Liverpool fan and I map out the games that we'll miss because of BMT. After working it all out, we discovered that after we both enlist, the next game we'd be able to catch is the one on 24 February, which is nearly two months from now. That's six games missed; to put things in perspective, even during the A Levels period, the most number of games we missed in succession was three.

It is now in the wee hours of 6 January and time for the last game I'll catch before that fateful 24 Feb. It just so happens to be a cup match versus the local rivals, Everton. Moments before kick-off I text my friend. We watch virtually all the games together, that is, if you accept our extended definition of the word "together" to include being in two separate homes but awake for the same game while the rest of the neighbourhood is asleep. My first text is to check if he's up because we have a pact to call the other person if one of us has slept through our alarm.

"Heyo, you there??"

I add on a bit more, because we have just signed an exciting new player and he's been selected to make his debut.

"Van Djik's in the line-up... THIS IS IT"

It is only when the referee has blown the whistle to start the game, and Anfield erupts into its raucous best while my text goes unanswered that it hits me.

Shit, he enlisted a day ago. I knew that. 

We'd go on to win the game in the most rousing fashion, with the debutant scoring the crucial goal. Yet, even in the elation and euphoria, it all just felt slightly different this time around.

____________________________________________________

It's said that when we look at the stars we are actually seeing them as they were many years ago. Say a star is 50 light years away - we'd therefore be seeing it as it was 50 years ago. In that sense, watching the stars is like seeing into the past, each celestial body of light representing a certain period in some galaxy.

It's all very romantic but there's no such thing as "wishing on a star" - shooting stars are meteoroids that look like stars just because they move through Earth's atmosphere at such a speed that the resultant heat creates a visible path. Those wishes fall flat.

Instead, to look up at the sky is to be a privileged observer of history - things you know must have happened because you can actually see them happening.

I don't require proof of any personal recollections, but I wouldn't mind living for many more light years to come, just to watch it all unfold again when I look up at the night sky.

Silent, but sure.

____________________________________________________

My last goodbye to a friend is on a Sunday night in Bishan. Holding vanilla cones from McDonald's, we sit at a bench outside a row of shops. We talk, about people and music and life, and pressing those small buttons on the lids of plastic cups. Then, later on, with the crowd dissipating as it borders 9.30pm, I realise that it is Elven in the QB House ahead of us. He folds the barber gown capes, then sweeps hair off the floor. I watch as he goes about preparing to close shop, and after the lights in that QB House go out, I turn back to my friend, and in my mind I'm thinking about how all this is going to be so far away from me in time to come.

I am a hostage to growing up, held at gunpoint by the memories of things that were and the weight of things that will be. Curse me for being melodramatic about all of it, but heck - who's to tell?

Things keep changing, and I know that.

All too well.


--

Thanks for making it this far. A brief hiatus, for now - be back in a bit?

Where The Streets Have No Name

That night, we find ourselves at a hostel nestled between two mountains. Without an address, we'd gotten here only by plugging geographic coordinates into the navigation system on our rental car. The thought of travelling to a single point reducible to numbers without knowing where you're really going to end up has never lost its magic. There are no street lamps, no road signs and no markings. When we find the place, it is by spotting a yellow flag. Entering the hostel, we lay out our bed sheets, and, needy for dinner, we walk back out into the cold, then the car. There is a faint glow over the lower sides of the mountain to the right. We drive in its direction, and arrive at a point when the glow morphs into a ray, and then looking down from the edge are rows upon rows of city lights. A labyrinth of life stirs and its ordinariness stirs further. It looks like an hour's drive away, and yet it's the closest we've been to civilisation thus far. In the dark, our trusty Toyota Fielder works its way down, and with the heaters blasting, the alpines hide shadows - of monsters, of men, Of Monsters and Men on CD playing in the background. As the wind whispers warnings through the valley, there we are, like wide-eyed neanderthals coming out of a cave, with only the light to follow.


--
"Still building, then burning down love"

Chrimbo Fever, and Trent

As you may find out yourself if and when I post more of these, stuff I write about sport is rarely about the games. So much of sport is contained in the stands and in culture and context that you will never be able to do justice to the significance of a sporting moment with a play-by-play elucidation of the event.

And so much of why I've always looked forward to Christmas is because of sport.

From a young age, I've long associated this time of the year with sport. For football, fixtures in the Premier League come thick and fast in mid-late December, leading up to the New Year. The action mostly culminates in the Boxing Day fixtures (which I absolutely love) and the New Year's Day games. It means that - thanks to the difference in time zones - my Boxing Day often lasts 8 hours longer. Following basketball slightly later on, the Christmas Day tip-offs became an actual thing in my family, living miles away from home then but finding warmth in huddling together before a television screen; the 2008 classic between the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics was everything we needed (besides the turkey we eventually burnt).

The excitement is so feverish, the need to watch men kick and throw balls around so pressing it's as if all the sporting action could emancipate psyches and souls hardened by a year of tedious afternoons and numbing nights. On The Anfield Wrap, this award-winning podcast/blog managed by Liverpool supporters from the city itself, there's talk of Christmas in most pieces. This one - which I'd recommend to even those who don't watch football, since it's hardly about the match and all about the people - had me hooked. It ends movingly and rather poetically:

"Stand Reds. Stand tall. The bells are ringing out for us. Happy Christmas, Mike. Happy Christmas all."

There's this idea of sport as a mass of ruffians, men high on testosterone with their chests out and voices loud. That piece shows that, but it also shows men at their most sensitive, softest versions of themselves. It's from watching sport that I've seen men reduced to tears on hearing a song belted out, and it's from playing sport that I've seen teenage boys acting tough and all suddenly breaking down and banking on every little ounce of courage left in them. The piece handles it beautifully; one reader even compared it to Yeats.

"I like to think that in my darkest, most cowardly hour that night at Highbury that the boy/man to my left side, the first lad to link me, my Gabriel, was Michael. That we stumbled and rose together in that Red front. And that maybe in some way he kept me safe."

My friend Caleb and I have this inside joke that he's "Ben" (Benjamin Woodburn) and I'm "Trent" (Trent Alexander-Arnold). We are both Reds, and both the real life Ben and Trent have been at Liverpool since they were 6, and now, as 18 and 19 year-olds, they've enjoyed a great year with the first team thanks to opportunities that the manager has showered on youth. They also happen to be really good mates, and there's this instance in November 2016 after Woodburn scores his first ever senior goal for Liverpool when Alexander-Arnold comes up to him after the final whistle, puts his arm around him and altogether seems more excited than his friend about that immense personal breakthrough moment.

I'm writing this now also because Alexander-Arnold just scored his first Premier League goal for the club he's grown up playing for on Boxing Day a few days ago. It felt special when that ball was smashed in, not so much because I might have internalised being "Trent" a bit, but more so because there's always this indescribable feeling every time a local boy who's actually born and bred in Liverpool scores in front of The Kop (which is the section of the crowd at Anfield, Liverpool's home ground, where the most fanatical fans sit - or, for the most part, stand).

I'm relieved that we've known each other for four-five years but started this joke only six months ago or else I'd really have completely internalised being "Trent" by now...

After Woodburn's goal last year someone pieced together the graphic below, showing how the local boys always seem to celebrate the same, distinct way - regardless of what year they're playing in; maybe it's a tap on the crest over the heart, or maybe with a fist bump at the end, but always, always, running to the corner flag completely hysterical with arms outstretched and looking to the stands as if it means that something more to them, more than to any other player on the pitch. Because it does, I think, if you score for your city and your people.

From left to right: Ian Rush, Robbie Fowler, Steven Gerrard, and Benjamin Woodburn.

I did look out for Alexander-Arnold's celebration on Boxing Day. Uncanny, huh?

In an age when sport deals in ridiculous wads of cash and borders are blurred, few clubs in the Premier League have this - this thing that we're fortunate to see and hold, witnessing a young lad come through the ranks at the Academy and finally play on the big stage for us. I know Liverpool fans might sound a bit self-righteous when we talk about this but it's this club that's all about roots and history.

And we like it that way.

Stuff We're Made Of

In a planetarium near Mt. Aso, nightfall


What Are We

but a spectacular series of births and deaths,
a monument to psyche psyched-out,
the nightmare of the nothing from nowhere;
no one lived
to tell the story.


What We Are:

Fleeing fleas flying
Skies catching the light
Grimacing pangs
Cliff-hanging ends
Beginnings that promise
Journeys taken
Laps and leaps.


Magisterial might of light, you do not
go out. Celestial, incomprehensible,
with fate up in the air,

you

find your place in the sky.

December the 24th: Living Eve

My family is spending our last two nights in Japan in a city, having lost ourselves to the vastness of Kyushu's volcanoes, mountains and rural towns over the past week and a half. It takes some reminding, but there are actual street lamps now, actual inner city train systems and actual youngsters with glasses too big for their faces, iPhone 8s in one hand and overpriced coffee in the other.

There is something to be said about Christmas in cities across the world, something about it all being the same, even when there are thousands of ways to say "Merry Christmas". Malls try to outdo one another with their trees but none shall be grander than the big ass one in the city centre. Shops slash prices. Supermarkets play those more than likeable Yuletide tunes. People wish one another, back and forth. There's a familiar feeling in the air, a collective and albeit unspoken recognition that the year is fast drawing to a close and maybe this - like all endings supposedly ought to - calls for celebration.

In larger countries, humans get in touch with their inner animal and also begin The Great Migration. On the streets of this city we are in, people lug luggage across streets and into cross-country trains, buses, and ferries which will see them into the countryside. To have come to the city for  work is to leave a lifestyle and a community. To then go home to people who keep your name tucked under their tongues is to learn that there is probably nothing quite like it.

Tonight is our final night here, and we are at an izakaya - one of those cramped little restaurants serving skewered foods. This one appears to be a family business; the greying man working the grill is flanked by a lady, and two servers bear a striking resemblance to the both of them. For the first time since we've been in this city, there aren't any other tourists eating here. In fact, the street that this izakaya is on was not particularly quiet, but occupied by only locals. The table beside us seats a family of six - grandparents retired, parents rosy, kids rambunctious. It is a Japanese custom for families to have fried chicken on Christmas Eve, and, sure enough, they share a plate of crisp, blistering Hakata chicken. Above the squeals of mischief and sizzles on the grill, a radio station playing Japanese pop triumphs over the speakers and a guy at the table for two behind me pipes along; he seems to know the lyrics to every single song that station puts out. "Eve" has its origins in the Hebrew word for "life." This is very much a snapshot, but still, life is in flux.

Around here there isn't a Shibuya-type insanity. Around here there are few Singaporeans. Crows perch on branches above Shinto shrines and go helter skelter when visitors enter, but then there is a silence as they suddenly pause to take stock. There is an honesty here. This is not Tokyo. Neither is it Kyoto, nor is it Osaka. This is the capital of a lesser known cousin, along this proud strip of rising sun. This is Fukuoka. Between the giggling of a girl on her grandpa's lap, the charred pieces of meat, the gleeful 'clink' of glasses and my own father's bad jokes, I already know - this is Christmas Eve.

Peel Street

We walk ten thousand paces

of life; in the claustrophobia,

we all come face to face.

Faces, walls, façades:

face of a wall, another brick

in the wall, another shop

in a mall, and the

peace, and the

pieces

- they come together.

But all the paint, and all the

scaffolding that wore;

all the words that people left

for the photographs, home or away

- there must be, there must be 

a way, some

way.

Where once "we go again" rang true,

but now you can't put a finger

on where you're going to;

not again, never a gain,

all ways, always

loss.

Update: It's a drought

It's nearing a week since I changed up the site and laid out all these grand plans, but nothing's actually coming to fruition. That's even when I've tried working on five different ideas. 

I think the problem is:

a) The ideas for these pieces came to me when I wasn't sitting in front of my laptop so I had to jot down some basic notations on my phone/try to keep it in my head, but going back to them at night found that the inspiration was absent

b) My past week has been more packed and exhausting than I previously imagined

c) I've become lazy

d) Any idea I have at the moment is sort of being overshadowed by this overpowering feeling I'm having about where stuff (life) is headed. Which means nothing else gets dissected, concretised, or developed.

Terribly sorry...

It's a proper drought.