remembering

(actually incredibly proud of myself for capturing snippets of my most formative four years in such a consistent and tangible manner, such that that i can revisit at whim from hereon, in the years to come) 

nostalgia is a funny phenomenon: there is only the good left, and even the bad times are coloured in a rosy, almost psychedelic hue. i remember how badly i wanted to graduate and be done with formal education, but now that all is done and dusted i cannot remember why i chafed at college life so desperately the way i did. there was a moment when i sat in the elm courtyard past 10pm with qiken catching up on life and he told me something along the lines of my self-inflicted pressure with my overloading modules and what not, and that i should slow down and invest in getting to know the community better etc or i would regret dearly afterwards. for sanity, i had deliberately picked my battles and shut out the white noise with mind over matter as my guiding principle, but somehow some friends got shut out in the process as well. but you know what? i still have no regrets, bc now that everything is passé i only have good memories left. even the bad are obscure memories cast in golden hues, dull flickering lights of a past that has made the present me stronger and of better faith.

what do i miss? i miss the littlest things of life on campus and the campus itself:

taking away lunch treats (double taps for an iced cafe latte, a slice of pipping hot but mediocre-tasting cheese pizza and two mini-sized haagen dazs ice cream tubs) to floor nine room D of saga tower B and tucking myself into bed as i feasted and watched jennim for a short lunch respite before the reality of my 28mc workload hit me like a truck once again

feeling incredibly happy from gaining a small paradigm shift in the way i viewed the world from class, and excitedly texting bae something like "do you know why china's so adamant about claiming the islands in the south china sea? bc according to unclos, claiming the islands means they'll be able to extend their territorial waters 12 nautical miles from there and project their geopolitical influence across asia..." - so eager to share my new knowledge with the person i love

cafe agora with the senior crew - the camaraderie of being able to count on bumping into my favourite people and lament about capstone together: some days i would turn up and see vincent, mars, jon, jieying, annie, and/or milly already there (and the occasional guest appearance from qiken)

chilly night walks across the elm courtyard and around utown post-workout with my airpods playing "pretend" and "love drunk" on repeat - that feeling of a deep-seated quietness in the midst of a whirlwind of things demanding my attention

the rare but treasured supper nights walking out to the al-amaans stretch with vincent - those supper nights that made us wise ("our friendship will really be over if we can't even make one supper night before move-out")

night walks at star vista and rochester park with koi in one hand and bae's hand in the other, just like the way we first met in my sophomore year

and of course, spending our third valentine's day feasting on cheap but good clementi sushi in the comfort of my home away from home - magnum night and the mistake of getting wang wang's hotkid milk beverage (it screamed childhood), or holding bae's hands as he clumsily twirled me around and i tried to jump on his back for a piggyback ride in the utown green field.