The ghost of christmas past / that last crush of yesteryears

Christ·mas (krsms) n. :
1. an excuse to break free from the reeling monotony of mundane placidity
2. the level of excitment and degree of happenings are inversely proportional to age
3. is just another day

Playing DotA on AI is perhaps not the best way to spend christmas, but what the hell. The Warcraft Battlechest set was the only Christmas present i received....from myself. Well it's after all the season of magic, and if there's any consolation, i've managed to purchase my first Divine Rapier ever while playing DotA on AI. (cheap thrill, yes i know, come take your shot)

The christmas spirit just seems to diminish with age and i can't help but to feel that everyone i know who're around my age has become so jaded by all the jostling and no one seems to have anything planned for Xmas eve at all. Let's see, sow chen played majong all night, xander was with gill i think, trev was entertaining his relatives at home, tom slept early cos' he had to go to church in the morning, mutu and bodyguard slept cos' they worked all day, David Gan was with his ex cos' his gf had a curfew - a love story worthy of a taiwanese soap drama by itself. it wasn't until 2am when Chris picked me up, bought a bottle of cheap wine from 7-11 and hopped over to Alvin's place for a half-hearted salvation of what was otherwise a shitlessly boring christmas eve.

Happenings on xmas eve, has been on a downward slope as far as i can recall. the last time i went clubbing on xmas eve was probably 3 years back when i went liquid room with robin for some random christmas party. and i probably remembered this only for the wrong reasons. we chanced upon some random jc acquaintence called kim leng who was alittle tipsy. liquid room was rather small, so we ended up standing on the pool table with a couple of other strangers. then kim leng started taking off his sweaty shirt and hugged us, pointing at us and started shouting out to everyone '这是我的朋友!!' it was muthafuckingly embarrassing. he continued with his weird antics until some other guy came up to me and complained about kim leng's behaviour in these exact words, 'erm, ur friend is kinda sweaty and naked, can u ask him to put on some clothes'. to which i most gladly acceded and relayed the message to kim leng. and somehow, kim leng grew agitated and started shouting 'who?! who the fuck wants me to wear my shirt?!', and to pacify that mad fuck i went like 'no one lah, it's me'. to which kim leng went 'orh' and put on his shirt. i eventually learnt from chris that kim leng was a mad fuck even during his secondary sch days back in marist where he would carry a knife in his school bag and which he would proudly show everyone and brag to people telling them that 'eh, 有 dai ji 的话找我'

fast forward to xmas night two years ago. me, sow chen and ks were riding in xander's car aimlessly until we decided to settle for some adventure by climbing into a supposedly haunted house in sixth avenue which despite its shady facade, was anti-climatically laden with construction materials and not abandoned as what we initially thought. and xmas eve a year ago, was equally uneventful, which i suspect was just spent with the marlboro gang lehpak-ing in robin's house. at the rate things go, i would dread to imagine how xmas eve's gonna be like by the time i'm 32.

i remember better times, when xmas still had a quasi-magical feeling to me. when i would wake up on christmas day to find a present beside my pillow, unwrap it and be totally elated to find a Police Academy action figure of Sgt Tackleberry complete with his motorcycle.

Or perhaps back in the christmas of '94, which i spent on a tour in china where i met my last serious crush. we were on the same tour group touring several cities in southern china. i was 11 and she was 13. she had a dark complexion, had long straight hair and really beautiful round eyes. if my memory doesn't fail me, i think she's called liling. i guess even back then, i had a thing for older girls. she had 2 other sisters, one of them who was affectionately nicknamed Xiaobaitu (little rabbit) by some other guys in the tour group was the same age as me. the journey between the various cities was long and sometimes we travelled by coach and other times by train. during the journey, the group of teenagers who were on the tour group would gather together to play 'heart attack' or blackjack just to kill them. i did try to start a conversation with liling but it all came to naught when some of the older guys started to pair me up with Xiaobaitu and started teasing us. it appears that some of them caught me stealing glances at the sisters on the bus and just assumed that i was looking at Xiaobaitu when i was in fact trying to look at her sister who was sitting beside her. well anyway, eventually even liling was so convinced that i was trying to hit on her sister that she also tried to direct my conversation towards her sister. that was probably as close as it every got for me when it comes to feeling lovelorn. and the fact that they kept on showing the music video for Wham's 'Last Christmas' on Channel V in the hotel TVs probably made things worse. that was also the first time i've ever heard the song which was why i wasn't entirely convinced when that the moustachioed george michael was the same bloke who sang the song in the music video.

back in those days, the internet was unheard of, and there was certainly no MSN, ICQ, friendster or even email. there's no avenue to contact a girl u've met other than to ask for her phone number. and in those days, it was a rather touchy thing to ask for phone numbers then i guess...especially so when her mother's always around her. even throughout the flight home from Hangzhou, i never mustered the courage to tell her how i felt, nor to ask for her phone number. i knew that was the probably the only chance i have of hoping to ever meet her again and it was an internal turmoil trying to decided whether or not to tell her how i felt. well, eventually rationality ruled the day, and i just took it for granted that her dad exchanged business cards with my dad and somehow that could possibly give me another chance of meeting her after the trip.

it was a huge mistake.

as it turns out, my dad's correspondence to her dad did not extend beyond that of a few new year cards and i've never met her again ever since we left the airport that night after christmas. throughout that flight, those final moments which we spent returning to the teeming masses of anonynmity, i tried as hard as i could to hold on to whatever memories i had of her. her voice, her looks, or even her disposition. it's funny how perception ages with time as well, and even now, a decade after meeting her, the mental image i have of her appears to be that of a girl around my age now. i do remember her singing along to a 裘海正 song while listening to the Silkair inflight entertainment radio on the earpiece while we were playing 'Heart Attack', and the very last thing we talked about was about the weather. in a pathetic last ditch attempt to strike up a conversation, i causally remarked why was it so cold when the stewardess made an announcement saying it's about 29 degrees in Singapore, to which she curtly replied 'Cos' it's at night what!' it wasn't even a proper farewell, my family left the airport much faster cos' there were only the 3 of us and consequently less baggage and her family was probably still at the customs even after we collected our check-in luggage and left the airport.

years later, i met an army fren who's her age and attended the same secondary school as her. apparantly she was the school belle of the school, and that was probably as close as it gets to ever meeting her again. the crush is long over, it's really silly in hindsight, but well haha, i can't believe i genuinely felt kinda heartbroken back then. Even if i had the chance, i would probably not wanna meet her again. it's kinda beautiful keeping a memory of someone in our own special way where we are bestowed with the ability to manipulate our thoughts in whatever way we desire. reality is always overrated i reckon. my memories of her mannerisms, and those few photos we took, it's more than enough to dream the dream.

that night after christmas, after i returned home from the airport, i just couldn't take my mind off her. listening to my discman, i wallowed and indulged in a little of the usual pseudo lovesick symptoms, kicking myself for just letting 'the one' slip by. and that was the first, and the last time, i've ever lost sleep over a girl.