| Sigh. Every time I come here the forum looks deader and deader. POST, FFS! =P.
Here's part of a story that I've been planning to write for ages; jotting down ideas all over little scraps of paper but never actually starting. So today I picked everything up and tried, and here's what I have so far - it's just a rough draft, and the story hasn't really been fleshed out that much yet, although I do have a vague idea of where I want to take it. Basically, it's about a jaded, repressed young man who has just gone with the flow all his life; fulfilling everything he was expected to do, doing whatever he had to do simply because he had to. Then, one day, he suddenly stops to ask himself the question "Why?", and it throws his entire world into turmoil.
(And yes, I know that I used the word 'pathway' many, many times, but it's a noun, and I'm too lazy to think of substitute for now =P. Feel free to post your ideas.)
[Glossary (again =P)]
Tai-Tai - a local colloquialism, originating from the Cantonese dialect, usually referring to an ostentatious woman of high society who spends her immense amount of free time living it up on her rich businessman husband's income. Tai-Tais are fond of draping themselves in large amounts of jewellery; they never go anywhere without decking themselves out like christmas trees. They can also be distinguished from their extra-long, french-manicured fingernails, well-honed mahjong skills, and extensive knowledge about the best spas and high teas in town.
Mahjong – a popular chinese game played with tiles. No, it's not that arcade pair-matching game. Mahjong is on par with the games played in casinos in terms of popularity, although it requires far more skill to play. One particular trend of thought is that Mahjong keeps the old from going senile because of the amount of concentration and strategising the cursed game requires. I say it'll probably end up killing them from the high blood pressure first.
SMS - short for something, too lazy to check what. It's just those text messages that you send with your cell phone. Singaporeans (teenagers in particular) are OBSSESSED with text messaging. They leave their phones on ALL the time, and respond almost instantaneously to each and every message that comes through - even at 4am at night. Vigilant, eh? This pathetic preoccupation with the cellphone has led to two things - ridiculous handphone bills (and when I say ridiculous, I mean like 2000-us-dollar-a-month ridiculous) and morons actually forgetting how to use proper english (they use this weird form of abbrieviated english that's favoured on internet chat clients) and ending up using SMS-language in english essays. What else can I say? Shallow is as shallow does.
National Service - compulsory 2 1/2 year army duty for all males over 18
*Singapore has only got two seasons - hot and humid, and very hot and humid.
**Singapore is bordered (surrounded, more like =P) by two countries - Malaysia and Indonesia. As a result, they tend to serve as a buffer against almost everything - monsoon rains, earthquakes, etc.
***In one particularly famous example, one episode of the famous american television series The O.C. was butchered, when the censorship board cut several scenes where one girl helped another girl wear a necklace, on the grounds that it was full of LESBYUNN TENNSHUNN.
Something Remotely Approaching Happiness
Christopher trudged silently along the narrow, crudely constructed pathway that led to his apartment block. The path was nothing more than a few leftover concrete slabs hastily thrown together over the muddy grass to allow the rich tai-tais to walk home without getting their dainty Ferragamo shoes soiled. The management had finally succumbed to the endless barrage of complaints and gotten the contractors to use the concrete tiles leftover from retiling the carpark to form a pathway of sorts over the grass. Now, they were complaining that the pathway was bleak, ugly and depressing, and demanding that something be done so that their posh, classy condominium would not look like a “construction site�. Christopher snorted softly to himself. There was just no pleasing some people.
The wind blew through his dark, curly hair, tousling it this way and that. The atmosphere had a cool, moist feel to it – a result of the recent downpour. He breathed in deeply, savouring the delightfully refreshing coolness of the air, allowing it to permeate every fibre of his being. He stopped short, his sudden halt causing one of the concrete slabs to shift and splatter mud all over his expensive new black nike trainers with a sickening squelch.
He loved the feel of the wind in his face just after it rained. It was the closest he could get to cold weather in harsh, sweltering Singapore. He stepped onto the grass, walking aimlessly about and drawing several annoyed twitters from the sparrows that were foraging in the grass. With each step, his shoes became increasingly flecked with muddied water and bits of grass. He would have to remember to clean them when he got home.
As a child, he'd always eagerly awaited the monsoon season. The people living in Indonesia – which had just been flooded again that morning – would probably beg to differ, but he loved the rainy season. The world always felt so fresh after a good, long drenching, as if the rain had somehow managed to cleanse it; washing away all the pain and sorrow and guilt and suffering that plagued the earth day after day after day.
The rest of his family hated the cold with a passion – he'd been the only one not wearing a thousand layers of clothing when they'd visited England in June. He let out an audible sigh as he recalled their vacation in Europe. His parents, much like everyone else these days, were infatuated with speed; they were always obsessed with making the most of their time, and it wasn't any different when they were on vacation. In an attempt to take in every single sight worth seeing within the quickest time possible, their parents had shuttled them from landmark to landmark, museum to museum with a brisk, dispassionate efficiency. Not that they'd truly seen much, anyway. His sister had spent the entire holiday sending SMSes to her friends in Singapore and brooding about all the fun she was missing. His mother had spent the entire vacation yelling into her cellphone. His father had done what he always did when they were on holiday; he went everywhere with his face buried in the camcorder's viewfinder, recording every single landmark and scenic location, ensuring that they'd have a permanent record of each and every place they visited. Christopher could never understand what his father was thinking – what was the point of capturing everything on tape; ensuring that he had an interminable memory of every single beautiful vacation spot he'd been to, if he'd never actually seen them with his own eyes?
update 31/8
The wind howled, startling him from his quiet rumination. It was almost dark. The cold night air gusted around him, swirling his clothes into disarray and sweeping dust particles into his eyes, making them sting and tear. Goose pimples broke out on his arms and legs, and shivers of delight ran up and down his spine as he reveled in the deliciously cool evening breeze.
Somehow, the cold always made him feel more alive; it invigorated him. Perhaps he had simply come to associate Singapore's generally warm climate with everything else that he hated about it – the salient superficiality, the constant rush, the endless pressure, the neverending pursuit of society's definition of success, the bleak, black emptiness that resulted. He could never understand how everyone else managed to live with it. Maybe they can't, he mused. There had been rumours going around about the skyrocketing suicide rates among the teenage demographic, but he couldn't know for sure. The local media was notorious for suppressing any and all controversial information that the government thought might put unwanted notions into the brains of the general populace. Suicide, deaths in the National Service, dissent, racial and religious differences. Everything was just conveniently glossed over as if pretending they didn't exist could actually cause them not to. |
