Lost

What kills the desire to write? Contentment, inertia, and a lifestyle numbed by the clockwork of work, deadlines and living up to expectations. What inspires writing? Accumulated feelings of being torn and a general sense of being very, very lost. Tonight, as I sit typing at Chills Cafe at Stamford House sometime after midnight, this post will be dedicated to a day less ordinary.

Book-out day. Endured hunger so that I may have dinner with someone who I have not met for quite awhile. She was supposed to knock off at 10 pm, so I hung around and amused myself until then, when I found out from her boss that she left at 9 and was uncontactable by phone. In summary, hunger and abandonment does not make me a happy man.

So I sat, stunned and absolutely lost by the Clarke Quay riverside steps, and imagined myself to be by the Thames, the Danube, or the Seine (yes, I am a hopeless dreamer) while gazing thoughtlessly at the night scene. I had wanted to share some good news with her tonight. Be that as it may, I told myself, half an hour to wallow before I snap out of this ridiculous emotional state, and I tried my best to make myself happy by laughing at the morons taking the GMAX reverse bungy. I must have looked pretty pathetic sitting there by myself on a Saturday night because this bubbly girl (by which I mean below the legal age to smoke) came up to me and said hi.

Hold your (wayward) thoughts.

"Hi, I am.. erm.. conducting a survey, can I have a few minutes of your time", she ventured, in heavily accented English.

"Yes, how can I help?", said needy, emotional me, who would, at that time be glad to speak to a multi-level marketer or a zealous seventh day aventist, so long as it was a human voice.

"I am conducting a survey on the current market conditions and job opportunities", she continued.

I laughed silently (yes it is possible). So now I look like a jobless loafer stoning by the riverside. I replied, "wo hui jiang hua yu" (translation: I can speak Chinese), to which she gladly switched to Malaysian accented Chinese. Aha! Bingo. I pinpointed the source.

So the conversation continued, and she came to the "Expected Salary in these uncertain times" question. I told her honestly that I was extremely greedy and wanted as much renumeration as possible and asked her to tick the box at the bottom. Out of curiousity, I asked her what the box read. ">$5,000". Hmmmmmmmmm. Somehow that piqued my interest and I asked her what would her answer be. She replied "$1,700, for poly students like me after graduation", and she confessed that it may not be enough as she liked to buy tons of stuff, and after which we ended up talking for what may be more than an hour.

Incidentally, I read a book today titled "Nowhere to Run", a true story about a woman abused and left homeless by her loveless parents only to be abused and raped by her abusive husband. This, coupled with my conversation with survey girl and my general feeling of being lost and abandoned somehow amalgamated and crystallised into a thought. I will not be noting this thought down, but may this post jog the memory of tonight and the abovementioned thought to myself as I read this again in the future. Be content, be content, Jared.

A Chinese New Year medley that I heard today contained the lyrics "Don't waste youth". Tonight, I have not wasted mine, despite waiting 6 hours for someone who I will try to love a little less from today onwards.