The Passing of Time

In a couple of days' time, I shall be sitting for the second part of the 2nd MBBS professional exams. And after that, I shall be flying to Melbourne for a month to experience the medical system over there. I am astonished at how time flies, and how within a year, so many things have changed.

The exact physical environment around me has altered substantially. I no longer have a best friend who buys food for me when we go out and gets me things that I desire but have no guts or money to obtain. My favourite karaoke buddy JW has dumped her ex and found a new love whom she affectionately names Jing Ge Ge (Brother Jing). The other buddies M, LP and D are estranged from me too because of my estrangement from J. Right now, all I really have left is a group of "Beng-ish" friends KZ, PH and LL who will never volunteer to buy food or go to the aquarium shop to get me a goldfish.

Of course, I have got my dearest Darling, who never fails to bring a smile to my face whenever I see her. But even she cannot be around all the time when I want her to. The nature of her job has rendered her rather non-existent except perhaps for 7 days in a month. And the only certain and constant affection I get now is from my family members who are always there for me and who will still buy food for me when we go out. And maybe they will never get me the goldfish from the aquarium shop; but, definitely, the Seiko watch that Ekin Cheng is wearing on the life-sized ad is not something too expensive to be expected from them.

My mental self has matured to an extent I can't quite quantify. I thought this process of maturation has stopped as soon as I left the Army, but I was so badly wrong. My moral values were challenged time and again over the past 12 months, and each time, I'd been required to exercise such advanced decision-making skills that I reckoned my hair was turning white because of that! Perhaps I've been too over-protected in the past. I know what lies out there - this I am very sure - but whether I have enough practical experience is truly doubtful.

In fact, I now believe my future is not so certain. Not that I never predicted those changes; just that I never expected them to come true. This possession of prophecy is getting very spooky and it is filling me with ambivalent feelings. A few of my predictions are still waiting to happen. The anticipation is messing up my nerves, but at the same time it prevents me from getting a big shock when they do happen.

And being the pessimistic fellow that I am, my predictions never cover the better things in life. I prefer to let good things happen without prior knowledge.

Why?

Because I love pleasant surprises.