i have been putting away the tedious chore of writing a long but needed post for a long time. i don't know why i did that, but i guess i'm kind of afraid of what will happen when i put down all my thoughts into writing and the reality of it stares and slaps me in the face.

just finished training in the morning, and man was it screwed up. its definitely not the most screwed up one, like those sec1 trainings where i did 50mins for 8km. haha its quite fun to look back at all these trainings and realising you have indeed improved and come a long way. come to think of it, 50mins for 8km is a kind of joke timing, i could have done such a time by walking today.

back to today. my knee was not feeling so good. it was sort of creaking in some places at some times and it felt very fragile. this is not very new news and i've been plagued by this for some time. but this is not very worrying as it comes and goes and normally by the end of warmup it disappears. however, i found out on monday i've got another injury, one which is not my fault, one more to my already extensive list of current injuries like shin splints and creaky knees. apparently, the ligament just under knee, next to the soft tissue, is inflamed because my bones grew and my ligament cannot match the growth, causing it to be overstretched and thus inflamed. this only occurs in active growing teenagers, aka me myself and i. now when i run, or even walk, when i land on my right leg, there is an irritating and sometimes painful and restrictive throbbing just below the knee. and the bad thing is that there's nothing much i can do about it, until my ligament decides to start growing. ruiyong had this injury last year. at the currrent rate of incuring injuries, i would need a walking stick by the time i'm 50 years old.

but that's in the long-term. in the short and immediate future, it could get worse and might possibly prevent me from training, doing sports like football. in football not only do you need to run you need to jump, turn and kick. if i can barely cope with walking, what else need to be said of running, jumping, turning and kicking?

next year's o's year. admittedly i shouldn't be as stressed and worried about this as the other half of singapore, since i only take one subject, higher chinese. come to think of it, i shouldn't be too worried, as there is no 填写汉字 to prepare for, so no mugging required. hcl is actually one of my better subjects, in comparison to the sciences like physics and chemistry. and if any more motivation is needed, they don't come any more than one of a PS3, current price $798. yes, my mother has promised me a PS3, provided i get an A1 for higher chinese. it sounds tough, but i know its achievable. i just need zhang hongshi to be my chinese teacher again next year, hope she don't get pregnant next year and a bit of luck. i think i'm speaking for the whole class when i say we want and need zhang hongshi as our chinese teacher next year. right guys?

speaking of chinese, i've unknowingly reflected on my PSLE 3 years ago. for your information, my PSLE score is 262 and i have 3 A*s and 1 A in chinese. after taking the chinese essay exam, i know i had already 离题. so the A was expected. i know i made a mistake in the problem sums in my maths paper, but other than that it was excellent, seeing how many practice papers we did in P6. maybe got 50, i'm not sure. its was like everyday got 1 to do, and must finish in about an hour, when the paper is actually 2hr 15mins. so the maths paper is always sleeping time. anyway, i think what may have happened is that my chinese got damn low, low as in low A, the 75-79 range, seeing how i 离题. in fact i think i 离题 still can get A is damn pro already. so if my chinese damn low, it means my 3 A*s should have been damn high A*s but was dragged down damn badly by my chinese. for the past 2 years i kept thinking my A*s were low ones and they were only so because i didn't work hard enough (like 2 weeks before the exam i was still coming home to play the PS2). now, after my moment of epiphany, i know that even if i worked harder i wouldn't have improved my marks by much, since they were quite high already. but it also makes me all the more sadder because i would've gotten like 270+ if my chinese essay didn't 离题, and would have 4A*s, and a $100 richer. nan hua primary school gives out scholarship prizes (money) to pupils who get A*s in english and chinese ($100) and A*s in maths and science ($20). i only got the $20 one, how sad right? sigh, 3 years on and i finally realised how wasted it is, not only for the money but for the record. but hey, 262 is a much better score than my prelims, which is the inverted score of 229.

yesterday i was eating breakfast at ya kun (despite being an hour late already, but screw it) and i couldn't help but listen in (not eavesdropping, the term is listening in, tuning in) on the conversation of 2 men, late 20s. after a while, i realised they were ex-classmates and had decided to meet up to reminise about the past. they were talking about many things, from how they now got an msn account to how they met other classmates on facebook. it was usual old friends chatter, about how so and so just came back from italy from work and how so and so went to hong kong and found a job there, how so and so just got married, who of their classmates have kids already. how he met his girlfriend, which is he met while being the brudder to his friend, and his current girlfriend was one of the 姐妹 who was disturbing the bridegoom and his brudders at the door, you know, the one where they don't let them in unless the bridgegoom give hongbao, do pushups, eat ice-cream, drink beer, eat chilli padi, etc, etc, you get the drift.

normally i wouldn't give two hoots about the content of this type of conversations, but with the last year of my RI life staring at me in the face, I can't help but wonder about myself, when I would one day be in their shoes, meeting my ex-classmates, say theodore or shanzhi or jianxiong at ya kun, and reminising about the past over breakfast. i start to realise the immaterialness of time, how it just flies by without you realising it. as in when suddenly you are the oldest person in your cca, when you are planning for an orientation camp, while the memories of your own orientation camp, malaysian montage and obs is still fresh in your memory, its quite scary.

having done this, i look foward to the future with lots of hope and anticipation. seeing the immaterial of time, i'm more resolved than ever to do anything that i want to now, in the hope that i would not regret at my own inaction and folly 10 years down the road, when eating kaya toast with a hamster.