Reminiscing

When I look back into my past, most of the time I tend to remember only the sweetest and nicest things. One of the sweetest times I had in my past was my later secondary school years and till this day, I only have the warmest regards of the time I had back then.

It was my first experience being in a boarding school and to this day at times I wish I am 17 again, young and carefree, not a care in the world except finishing homework.

I remember joyful friendship - there was one weekend when most of the students had gone home and the school was exceptionally quiet. We decided we would take this opportunity to 'learn' tennis. What I finally learnt was tennis is hard, okay! Instead of lobbing the ball gracefully across the net, we spent the hour falling all over ourselves and laughing at our dismal game. We were still laughing as we made our way to the Dewan Makan for the weekly nasi lemak.

I remember whispering in the dark past lights out, talking about how cute Boy A and Boy B was in the full splendour of baju melayu and sampin. My room was conveniently located by the covered way the boys would walk by on their way to the mosque.

I remember of infatuations and of puppy love - glancing longingly at the boy I had a crush on as he passes by the window of my class and I remember wishing that he would glance at me as I walked by. I remember the butterflies I felt in my stomach as he would smile at me, no matter how harmless and of no intention that smile would be.

I remember wishing the holidays away, counting the days when we would return to school because then would I be 'reunited' with the apple of my eye - and of crushes I had many! There was that shy kampung boy with his green school bag, the playful class clown, the wise-beyond-his-years city boy and even the school's tai-ko. Sigh, the times when we were young! But the heart can be as fanciful and as fickle as it wants to when you are youthful.

I recall my teachers: Cikgu Norlela taught us Chemistry. She has this high pitched voice and would get the boys who failed her subject to wash the toilet yet we all loved her. She acts all 'garang' but I am sure she shed more than one tear when we left. The soft spoken Biology teacher who was so proud when I scored an A1 in Biology. The many wardens who acted parents to us all - I am sure we were the cause of many headaches.

Some people would look back and remember the ragging from seniors - I remember being called to the compound and being given the dressing down and seeing my friends cry but I couldn't care less. To this day I still have a little bit of a problem dealing with authority. I was also never the ass kissing junior who would go out of their way to buy 'dedications' for seniors (my senior roomates doesn't count), a habit which have followed me to my professional career.

How times have changed. Occasionally I still think I am 17 - don't we all? - and wish life could be as uncomplicated as back then. Looking back, I remember even something as trivial as having a huge pimple on your nose can be earth shattering but as an adult now, I'm thinking how silly we were - life is so much more complicated than that. If I could go and see the younger me, I would tell her that there is more to life than not having someone special to dedicate that apple to.

I guess as I am approaching another crossroads, I tend to get a little emotional. Having all this free time isn't helping either. I am beginning to get an an inkling of how boring life would be without my my job. Of course I wouldn't think so if I could get off my bottom and start doing work!

Here's to a productive day, people.

What if....

When we started our 5-month elective period, June seemed so far away. Furthermore, I was doing my elective posting in a department which didn't pique my interest so much and I spent much of my days just standing around, seemingly observing but in reality planning my holiday abroad in my head.

Now that the holiday has passed and we have gone on to the second posting, entering second year seemed more of a reality and it is starting to hit me slowly. I realise that I will now have to keep my head down and start reading journals and practice long cases and spend afternoons on short cases with my lecturers. Acck.

The fact that I am back in Kelantan and cleaning the house and buying plants and moving furniture - did not help at all. In fact, the last few weeks I had been moaning, whining and lamenting the fact that my Masters programme might have been a mistake afterall and I HAVE ALWAYS wanted to be just a housewife and that becoming a doctor was a fluke. Heck, I was even talking to my Cempaka Telur plant while I was replanting it!

Why is it that we always want what we don't have? Whoever coined the saying 'The grass is always greener on the other side' was a genius because there is no truer saying than that.

But, wouldn't it be nice to spend your mornings leisurely sipping coffee while reading the newspaper (online of course) and then going to the garden for a spot of weeding before it gets too hot. By noon I would have had my dinner menu planned out, complete with a freshly baked cake - and now that I am a lady of leisure, I would even squeeze in an hour of embroidering. When Abg drives in into the driveway, I would be at the door greeting him with a smile and handing him a glass of juice (freshly squeezed) before I peel off his socks. Haha.

In reality though what would have happened is that I would wake up late, get online, insist that hubby iron his own shirt and trousers before sending him off to work - NOT before he buys me nasi berlauk first of course! I would then continue surfing the net and bloghopping and leaving unnecessary comments in forums, not even bothering to shower and then bug hubby with questions of 'When are you coming home?' when it isn't even two pm.

Maybe I am exaggerating but the point is, we would always think that we would be a better person if we were to be in another situation. 'I would be more hardworking' or 'I would be doing more aerobics and eat healthier meals' - but once we are in that different situation, of course, we would look longingly at another person's life or worse, the life we just recently left and think the same.

A few years back, Gwyneth Paltrow was in this movie where they showed what would have happened should she have taken one route instead of the other - you know when you are faced with a crossroad and you wished you knew what would happen if you had taken route A rather than B? I don't remember what happened in the end - I do remember it's theme song though, a rather catchy tune by Aqua which is playing in my head right this instant and would likely be stuck there for the rest of the day no doubt.

Wouldn't it be great if we could choose the course of our lives like an algorithm, see what the end result is and being able to pick out the one that we liked best?