2012: Life Cherished

The curtain falls. The end is here.

Though there were flaws. The joy was sheer.

Time will not pause. Here comes a new year.

I began the year with various goals. Some were made, and others failed. Yet I'm certain this year would not have been as wonderful had I constrained myself to those very goals. Flexibility, adaptability. Perhaps the most overlooked ingredients in the recipe for happiness.

No I did not find love (as many a friend suspected). I simply found happiness in the simple pleasures of life that surround me.

As I reminisce the highlights of this year - too many come to mind.

There was the 'Tiger Train Trip' with Ben, Sui Jon and a group of Mensans (befittingly immortalised in a photo travelogue and 'Triple M' article after the trip). There was the homecoming of Julian Tan and all the shenanigans that stretched across and between the island cities of Penang and Singapore. Come to think of it there were quite a few friends who came home this year, some for a break and some for good. Later in the year I even took a trip to Langkawi with Kwong Hann.

There were also a whole host of activities I joined my colleagues in. So many that I figured they deserved a post of their own.

Then there were those nights at Ben's or Kishan's place, where we'd simply sit around sipping cocktails, chatting all night long about anything and everything. The many dinner and lunch meetups we had for all kinds of occasions. Bliss! And who could forget my cameo-like return to the Scrabble scene at the Mensa Tournament this year in Tropicana City Mall. Things were simply quite splendid.

I'm sure there have been many more highlights throughout this fantastic year, and I could go on forever if I had to list each and every one of them. So here I'll end this string of reminiscence; and look forward to what I foresee to be another splendid year!

Experiments

After talking about it for a good half a year - Jon, Ben and I finally got down to combining two of our favourite pastimes in a rather unique way. A friendship that was forged over Scrabble back in high school was fortified over our more recent obsession with cocktails. So it was only going to be a matter of time before we put them together on a weekend meetup. We simply called it - Scraboozling.

The discussion prior to the event was focused on the experimental nature of it, as we concocted hypotheses, control strategy for the variables and even data-acquisition and recording methods. Despite all the planning on controlling the passage of events through the night much like you would in a proper scientific experiment, what we ended up doing was quite different indeed. Random conversations over a string of cocktails. A couple of Scrabble games in between reminiscent of those good ol' days. On my way back home the next morning, I was thinking how the night had turned out as opposed to how we'd planned it - and how I wouldn't have had it any other way. And then it hit me.

I've been meaning to venture into a few things for quite some time now. Very experimental stuff, yet I wanted to do it proper and kept making plans. Plan after plan; some recorded, some forgotten. I even had a number of them listed on my list of resolutions, but despite all the plans I made the fact is I still haven't taken the first step. What deterred me was my fear that my current preoccupations like work and family could get in the way..

So what if my pre-occupations get in the way from time to time? I finally figured I should just start, and let things unfold as time goes by. What comes out of it all may not be what I had expected it to be; but it could very well turn out to be more beautiful than anything I have imagined. Like our Scraboozling night.

So I've taken a step.. not a leap by any stretch of the imagination; a simple step.. and hopefully a few more to follow. It doesn't matter where these steps eventually lead me to.. only that I HAVE taken those steps. I'd have performed.. an experiment. An experience.