Tuesday, January 3, 2012
So, at last, it's finally a new year. Time seems to fly. In just 4 months it'll have been one year since I graduated and amazingly succeeded with the Spire85 campaign with my batch. But so much has happened as well in this one year. Lots of things tested friendships this year, and I'm glad everything has gone well. It was a big transition to go from college life to working life as well. Not as dramatic as a lot of people made it seem, but it was definitely a huge time for adjustments.
What do I remember from 2011 at the top of my head?
Graduated from The One Academy, the torturous college, with Spire85 as a very proud achievement.
Got a job at Creative Thumbprint. I learned a lot, although I was dissatisfied after a few months. Resigned after half a year.
Got a job at Canvas Art, thanks to Fei Yan. Still here and enjoying it more.
Meeting up with Sze Ying, and still having our status unresolved.
Developing dermatographic urticaria aka dermatographia. I don't know how the hell I got it but apparently from what I've read 4% of the world population has it. It's become a great conversation starter and topic, but it's an annoying thing when you're absent-mindedly scratching yourself and it gets itchier later on.
Paternal grandfather passed away. I now have no grandfathers left, and only my paternal grandmother remains as the sole living grandparent.
Jerrine moved to England. The one girl this year that I found attractive, smart and very easy to talk to, moved. To. Freaking. England. She was the only real person I was considering making a move on, out of all the people I met this year.
Along with Justin, confronting Miki about her extreme lying habits, her lies and our friendship. This was solved, thankfully, at the risk of losing the friendship altogether if things went wrong. This was perhaps one of the most testing moments for friendship this year.
Along with Justin once again, confronting and telling Redzuan about Masayo cheating on him. It was a bloody painful thing to do, but it was the right thing. My heart hurt like hell when telling him.
Met Masayo. Funny how one symposium with Symposium ended up with us meeting her, and her eventual relationship with Redzuan. She caused much drama to the entire Symposium, pissing off nearly everyone at some point in the year, with Nikke as a specific target. The cheating on Redzuan was the last straw, and we finally severed all ties with her. She caused a near-breakdown in certain ways, and occasionally bitches about us on Facebook, while spreading her heavily modified lie of the whole situation to her friends. Despite this, it bonded Symposium in a very, strong way. And she's in a worse position than ever before.
Switched to Sunday services for church. After close to a decade of attending Saturday services, suddenly I'm attending Sunday services. I'm still not used to it and I'm late almost every weekend. Still, its the only time to meet my cellgroup.
Both my churches moved to their new buildings. City Harvest Church KL moved into the new building in mid-2011. After so many years of sowing into the building fund, at last, we moved to our new building. And I'm bloody proud of it. Part of that building was paid for by me in addition to some chairs that I helped manually make. In addition, City Harvest Church Singapore moved into Suntec City as well, finally leaving Expo after half a decade there. Part of the move was also paid by me, and I am extremely proud to have contributed to it. Serves as a great success story, especially after the whole CHC SG scandal last year. God has been faithful.
Got freaking stranded by my cellgroup, because no one could bother dropping me off 5 minutes away, but could drive me 20 minutes away in the opposite direction because they were headed in that direction. Since that day I haven't bothered with the cellgroup providing transport, since they can't be bothered. I borrow the car. If not, I don't bother attending. No point attending and then getting stranded.
Fixed a busted car tyre twice. Once for the Hyundai Accent, and second with the Mercedes C-class. A new skill I learnt which is very practical.
Ryan and Faidhi and Mahdi left Forsake Me Not. Harish and Christian joined in their stead. We also played in Festival of the Tritone 2, which was a great success, albeit smaller in scale, but much more personal and fun.
Went for Eyes Set to Kill gig in Kuala Lumpur. I have supported them since I first heard them, way before they were famous and it's great to see them in such great success. And to finally attend their gig live. Impressed in every way!
Went for MTV World Stage thanks to Wai Kwan having a spare, free ticket. Enjoyed the performances greatly!
Arranged monthly meet ups with Essenism. After finishing college, my times spent sleeping in the library and waiting for a phone call or someone to invite me for lunch and stuff ended. Meeting up with Essenism regularly was superbly easily in college. Most of us would have no classes at a certain hour and we'd meet up almost everyday to eat or hang out. Now that Wai Kwan and I have begun working, arranging a meet up is much harder. Wai Kwan's tired after work on weekdays, and I can't borrow the car as easily on weekdays, making weekends the only time to meet up. So I proposed that we meet up once a month, so that the friendships wouldn't fade. Although keeping the once a month thing is still lagging, we still meet up regularly at least, which maintains the effort. And that's keeping things good.
Met my dad in KL for the first time in my life. And a few times during the year. Half of Symposium met him, thus, meeting all my parents that I currently have, with the exception of my dad's girlfriend, who I just consider a parent by "default" only because she's with him,. I haven't met her yet.
Visited Singapore/Johor Bahru for the first and only time in 2011. It was really nice to meet up with all the friends and hang out. Due to the working life, I'll not be able to go down every holiday as I did in college times. Now I need to carefully combine leave with public holidays to maximize the time I have to go to Singapore.
Had a Symposium trip to Genting, and stayed in Amber Court, just to prove it wasn't haunted. We did a documentary and took many photos. It was a great trip, despite Masayo's constant nagging and slip-up of her affair
These are the things that I remember off the top of my head. I realized I was a horrible blogger in 2011, lol. Not for my posts, but due to the lack of them. I just got lazy. Blogging as a hype as died down, and I'm one of the few bloggers among my group of friends who still maintains their blogs. Compare that to the group of friends I had in secondary school who all started their blogs a few days before I did. It was a big thing that time, and we'd all read one another's blogs. Then over the years they all died, except for mine. And mine's really slow on updates. Partially it's because I'm lazy. Coming back from work, I'm tired, and I read articles and books and go on some funny websites. After this time of unwinding, I'm lazy to blog already, or it's already very late. I don't count blogging as unwinding. It's work; an effort. I need to make the effort to get my thoughts into words, type them all out and do a very casual overview of it and post it. I'd rather enjoy and relax than "work" again after work, so blogging on weekdays is rare, unless I make the effort for some reason. Then on weekends it's the only time to unwind and go out and hang out, especially at night, so I don't get to blog 'cause the time I reach home I'll sleep, or read a bit before sleeping. Hence, the rarity of my posts.
2011 wasn't the most fun year. It tested me on many grounds. Granted, there was much fun, laughter and joy. I met tons of new friends, and had a lot of fun days. But there were many issues and friendships put to the test, and they were not fun at all, despite coming out of it stronger. But 2011 was without a doubt one hell of an interesting year that I enjoyed tremendously. There's a saying in my church(es) at the beginning of every year: "May this year be the best one yet". So far it's followed this pretty well. Best years don't necessarily have to be all fun and games with no hardships. On the contrary, I think they add on to what makes it better.
Fallen
12:10 AM
in the grip of darkness
