ぼくの日記

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Not The Festive Season I Had Expected

22nd December 2009, Tuesday

This the season to be jolly...well not exactly.

Just as I closed in on my final day of work with a long break in view, I got the unfortunate piece of shocking news from my Secondary School chum, HC about the passing of a fellow mate of ours, HT.
I had not been keeping up with almost all my Secondary School chums and had last seen HT years ago, I believed still in the university.
His passing really shook me, especially at our tender age when life barely started.

The following day I hitch a ride in HC's Mazda down to Rivervale Link where the wake was held.
I refrained from having a peek of HT's cold corpse after offering my farewell at the alter and the revelation of suicide really raised a lot of eyebrows though I thought it was not appropriate to probe further as his grieving mother might not be in the right state of mind to tear open that grievous scar again.

The wake did offer a rare opportunity for me to catch up with HC and Zan who was globetrotting as a SIA pilot these days.
The former claimed that I would only get to meet them for occasions like weddings and funerals which I could not refute.
Both were speaking about stocks and living the high lives these days but the same level of caramaderie existed between us; if only HT could thought things over and not resort to ending his fragile life.
The news report stated no cause of the trouble that led to his planned death as the police as they usually would, suspected foul play.

Despite seeing the last of a good friend from the yesteryears, I was still upbeat of a jolly festive season until Vincent called on Friday night that EK and Reedy s' old man who had been en route to recovery after his car accident months ago, suddenly suffered a cardiac arrest and passed on.

Unlike HT's situation, the signs were foretelling for a while, still it drew alot of sadness from the entire La Tendo clique.
There would be no yuletide partying as scheduled which was not totally a bad thing considering the element for laughter, Mr and Mrs Lim, could not make it in the first place.

The pair worked their magic when we gathered at at the wake, the second in 3 days for me, on a very soggy Sunday.
With the exception of Chan who was preoccupied with his booth at China Square on that day, the whole crew made up for the lost time we would have for the X'mas eve despite the fact that we ought to mourn for the senior Tay, perhaps he would like to see us doing our usual banter.
Vinny was constantly soliciting our mutual acquiantances from Iwate, Fure and Kumiko, to Karen and Reedy respectively and slowly drew the other swinging bachelors and bachelorettes into the equation as the topic then osmosized into homosexuals.

The weekend started pretty bright and early on Saturday as we headed to town as scheduled to beat the ERP gantry before 11.
It was going to be whirlwind time shopping the Orchard Road belt although at the end of it, I had the biggest haul and even contemplated on capping my burgeoning budget which spilled that of the intended amount with a pair of cool looking jeans which cost an even cooler price of $600 at "Bread & Butter".
Fortunately there had been some sensible restrain for us as the missus nearly succumbed to temptation at the Burberry's boutique as well.

The movie of 2009 or at least the latter half of the year surely was James Cameron's 13 years in the making extravaganza "Avatar"
It was my first foray into watching 3D film and was overall impressed with the technology despite GV being overly protective of their hefty 3D glasses which tend to slip of the bridge of the nose.
The film which banked on a whole new emotion capture technology and what not had a good storyline and smooth flow to it.
Its strong characterism tends to grip its audience who were captivated by their emotions near the end that one tends to forgo the high definition shit at that juncture.
The storyline had alot of rib on the American military policy and their constant invading of other people's lands and culture at the same time Cameron took a leaf out of Miyazaki's "Princess Monoke" with all the in-sync with the nature theme.

During the dinner after the movie, Bryan gave Chan the early X'mas present as he had chosen him with the Japanese edition of "Final Fantasy XIII" which came with his FF13 edition Playstation 3.
This was followed by my gift to Vincent and Karen's to Miyano the following day as it would be scattered for this time period due to the many little reasons about everyone's whereabouts this period.

While we are planning to meet up for X'mas eve since that day was vacated just for the party, my own family X'mas dinner was a blast as Mom and Sis cooked up a storm and we certainly had our fill for this time of the year...




Well still need to instill some jolliness despite a sullen end of 2009...
Japanese word of the day:かなり(Jolly)Sure hope 2010 will be a much more jolly year to be in

Labels: , , ,

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home