Because I Care and Share

So I’m supposed to be doing a paper about avoidance and approach mechanisms to emotional information right now. In fact, I am not JUST supposed to be doing a paper. I am supposed to be on top of this paper, giving it a huge wedgie while whooping its ass.

But I just had to take the time to share this because it makes me so happy that I could jump out of the fifth floor window and I would FLOAT onto the rooftops of the building next door.

Meet my new toy: The Yamaha PSR- E403. (Say it with me, people: “Ooooh! Aaaaah…”)

I ordered one a couple of months back (with the kind help of Mel and Jason… thanks guys!) so that I could play it in my room in school and at home without having to disturb the peace of the good citizens of this country. Unfortunately, it’s such a popular model that they apparently had orders backlogged till the twelfth of never. So they told me I had to wait and they would call me when mine arrived.

Spring came and went. Fall fell. Still no call.

I got so desperate, I actually posted a picture of it on my desktop to remind me not to lose hope like a wife whose Marine husband had gone off to free another blighted country on a “god-given” mission. And THEN. Yesterday, my phone rang! And I was so happy that I was positively vibrating the whole night and the whole of today until I was able to go pick it up.

M and I strolled nonchalantly over to the Yamaha branch in town only to find out that it came in a box big enough for me to climb into and weighed 11 kilograms. “No problem!” the salesman waved airily, sticking plastic strips onto it to use as handles.

Well, after nearly knocking down five people and almost giving one girl a concussion, we dragged, pushed, pulled, carried and staggered onto the train back to school only to find that people were throwing us suspicious glances. A four-foot tall giant cardboard box with all sorts of strange markings and plastic tape all over it causing suspicious glances?! Well, I never!

M suggested pretending it was a bomb, so I kept looking at it worriedly, checking her watch and saying things like, “Once we reach the platform, you have to run because we don’t have much time.” Which was a lot of fun until we noticed a girl in a Cisco t-shirt eyeballing us. (Half the time everybody else was sleeping or didn’t care. Singaporeans are the epitome of vigilance. I could walk onto the train with a semi-automatic and they would pretend to sleep so they didn’t have to give up their seats.)

Anyway, we FINALLY got it back into the hostel where it now sits, waiting for this paper to be finished so that I can start doing trills on the keys like a fey Andrew Lloyd Webber kind of character with an equally barmy Sarah Brightman counterpart who hits high notes by rolling her eyes into the back of her head.

In fact, I’m already thinking of composing a musical inspired by the whole saga which I will call “Bomb on the Train” (for which the drumbox in the Yamaha will come in very handy).

I hear Phantom of the Opera is coming next year.

Save your cash though folks, my musical is going to be a lot cheaper and a lot more… wait for it, wait for it… EXPLOSIVE.


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On a more serious note, my hamster Angstrom died on Friday night. He was over two years old, so I guess he’d had a long and fulfilling life, but somehow thinking about things that way doesn’t make you feel any less sad. He was my favourite hamster because he was a birthday present from M two years ago and he was funny, bright, curious and very active, if cantankerous.

We buried him in some soft earth under a nice tree and I am ashamed to say that I cried like a pansy while M dug him a little hole. We blew some bubbles over his grave because he was that kind of hamster, I think he would have liked the bubbles, found them interesting.

Bye Angstrom. I’m going to miss all the times when you’d do pull-ups on the top bar of your cage and when you’d come running to see what food I brought you when I made a squeaking sound. I'm going to miss rearranging your cage every week because I heard rats whose surroundings constantly changed grew bigger brains.

I’m glad I got to know you and I hope that wherever you are, you have much much more to run on than a titchy old wheel because you deserve it.

Ahh, things come and go. I suppose that’s what life is all about.

All that’s really real is now.

And now, for me, is feeling good enough.