My One and a Half Semester of Empty Dreams

Newest Post..
The longest post/composition I've written in my life.
Word Count excluding these side comments: 7866
Just another boring story of mine

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Chapter 1. First Encounter

It all started with my new term as a Resident Assistant (RA) in my hostel (namely Prince George's Park Residences, PGP), and it was near the starting of new semester (Academic Year 2007-2008) where freshmen from various countries come to the hostel because of their admission to the University. I was assigned as one of the two RAs acting seniors of my faculty, School of Design and Environment (SDE) to have some chit-chat with SDE freshmen who stayed at PGP to clarify their enquiries, but of course, it was up to them to choose whether to attend the thing or not to. This is a part of a major freshmen orientation in the PGP event called Welcome Fest.

So yeah, me and my partner (the other RA, my classmate also) started the thing, and we asked everyone who were there to sit and form a circle. We started with introduction: names and the course they are in. So I started with: "William, Project and Facilities Management (PFM)" and then the person on my right carried on until the end of the circle. Well, there were one or two Chinese-s (nationality, not ethnicity), 3 of my "fresh" Indonesian friends, some Malaysians, and a huge bunch of Vietnamese-s whose names I mostly can't remember all. I can remember some now though (lol). Well and most of them are from either PFM or Real Estate. Well, if I'm not mistaken, some people came around 5-10 minutes late, and I was distracted by one of those latecomers coming from my 8-9 o'clock direction! A girl! Her hair is of medium length with glasses which looked quite thick but a pair of beautiful eyes behind them. The description would be like: when you can’t see her eyes clearly due to some light reflection by her glasses, she looks like normal University nerds, but when you can see through those glasses, the feeling is like you just stared at an angel’s pair of charming eyes.

*Zap!*,

But of course it was no time to be distracted! William needed to do work and start responding to any question that arose from the others, right? But as far as I remember those latecomers came before the last person finished his introduction so they got to introduce themselves and the girl I described was in Industrial design. And so, my partner asked the crowd to separate into two groups based on their courses: Real Estate and PFM; Industrial Design and Architecture; and then, I were told to handle the former group because he says he was from Industrial Design before he transferred to PFM. “AAAA!!”

I suggested to him to do just in one group, partially I want active interactions among me, him and everyone else (of course because the girl was not from PFM either :s) and partially because I was nervous and I’m sure I was younger than everyone there except for my one Indonesian friend who was from accelerated class like me too (hohohoh :P) . And so I was in a group of like around 20 more people and he was in a group of like 6-7 people and she was inside the group he’s handling. How I wished I were in his position… But towards almost the end of the thing, I tried to explain general things that both groups could understand like the scoring system in NUS, bidding system which they had already known beforehand, etc. And it was great to have her pay attention to me (>.<,V,, yay!..) and when most of the guys were already left the venue, there were only a few of us left and I managed to ask her the name (>o我(read ‘wo’, means I or me)” on a paper that I used for some explanation I did during the chit-chat session, saying that that’s her name and she says it means “me” but she wrote “my” on the same paper. So Me, with a little knowledge of Chinese, told her that “my” is written as “我的(read ‘wo de’, means my)”, and as a justification in case I was wrong, I took the paper and verified it with a Chinese girl which was still there. And yes, of course I was right but I was wrong also because she might had meant that her name is pronounced as “me” (read ‘mi:’) and as written with the former instead of the latter. Yeah, and that event ended after everyone there left.

“Damn! I forgot to ask which residence she’s from!” I said to myself, and I was hoping that she was from residence 6 (part of the hostel). The reason is that because I’m an RA from residence 6 and if she’s from R6 there are a lot of things that can happen like: I can ‘coincidentally’ see her because she’s from the same residence with me; Every semester RAs do room verification (basically visiting residents’ rooms asking for their matriculation number and student pass FIN number) and so during the room verification I can get a chance to see her and know which floor and room she’s staying at (I sound like stalker L wew..); And because we arrange residence based events, there are some chances that she’ll come down and take a look and maybe a little chat can light up the atmosphere; Whatever!! I just want to get close to her to know her more.

And yes, me and my big mouth… some of my RA friends were like “Among those freshmen, did you have anyone you like in particular”. As I was under mesmerism of her chant, I felt like shouting “YES!! I have someone I like and it’s her!!” and so I didn’t literally shout, but it was like I was delivering indirectly this message to my RAs friend. “There was one from Industrial Design, a Vietnamese”, that’s what I roughly said.

“Oh William, Great!! You grow up now!” a quote from one of my funny RA friend – let’s just address him with JB (James Bond not Johor Bahru ok?) -who likes to tease his friends of course as a joke and this was due to the fact that I’m the youngest (= =) among those RA fellows and of course they treat me like a small kid. And I’m never offended, William had a cool head (literally and idiomatically because I had a bald hair can you can still see it on the sidebar of the blog.) and so that’s the part when I first met her.

Chapter 2. Days after that

Second time meeting her: I was actually involved in the University Student Union’s Matriculation Fair (basically an event to on the same day with Admission day where we received our student cards and it’s an exposure to the Student Union’s Co-Curricular Activities). I was part of the committee organizing this event last year, and freshmen were supposed to come to this event. The event was held at the Varsity’s Multi Purpose Sports Halls which were divided into two floors, First floor is normally the University administration stuffs and second floor, the event, and it is supposed to be optional. But the committee blocked the exit door and asked everyone to proceed upstairs, and I was actually the Publicity Head (whose task main is designing) inside the committee and during the event, I was located on that position to ask people to proceed upstairs. Well the event itself was carried on four days and freshmen were categorized based on their faculties to attend the event on different days. And So, I was looking forward very eagerly to so-called “guard the post” on the day where freshmen from School of Design and Environment (SDE) where Industrial Design is in. I kind of waited for her to attend the day and finish the admin stuff fast so that she will proceed to the second floor and so she can at least walk past me and I can see her. And so around 4-5 hours of checking freshmen’s student cards to ensure that they are freshmen so that I could let them proceed, the other guy informed me that we didn’t need to check any student cards anymore and afterwards, I could just let anybody to go upstairs and awhile later from faraway, I saw her face for the second time. Her hair was tied again this time and after she reached the edge of the hall, which is my position, I greeted her, “Hi” and she gave one melting smell and trying to restrain myself from exploding out of tremendous heartbeats, I quickly said “The fair’s upstairs” with my hand showing direction to the staircase.

I waited so enthusiastically for so many hours with such burning spirit just to have a close look on her for around 30 seconds.

What’s worse? I wanted to know her full name, and I could have known about it if I had pretentiously checked her student card to get her name!! And I could have even asked her how is her name pronounced, and we could have started a small conversation!!>.<

Yeah, my RA friends knew about this stupidity or timidity or whatever you call it. And that JB (mentioned above) gave me another quote: “William you must do something! You should go and approach her!! It’s not like you don’t have balls (balls means courage, don’t get this one wrong)”. I should admit that that word is rather harsh but it did give a bit of motivation. I am aware that I like her so much that I’d always wish that I can get to talk to her someday and become a friend of her, or rather, a close one. You may phrase it that: I’d wish I’d get a chance to start an approach.

And so, Welcome Fest went on and we were holding numerous events in PGP and I, of course, would be super happy to see her at those events. Probably the chit-chat session with the seniors, where I first met her, is the only time I met her in Welcome Fest. And there I went, quite disappointed because my time were mostly spent if not in my room, doing posters, it would be for the preparation or attendance to the Welcome Fest events, or it would be NUSSU Matric Fair or NUSSU Flag Day preparation because I’m inside both of the NUSSU freshmen orientation committees, I was even the Main committee for my other 2 CCAs. Even time management for those things was already too much for me and how the hell could I spare my time to go busy-body about a girl?

Yeah, days, even though it was holiday were tough. I really felt that I was so crazily busy and I have not been this crazy in my life and as Welcome Fest, Matric Fair and Flag Day, where all are orientation events ended one by one, I was constantly overfilled with joy. Satisfaction out of past sweat-full days was sweet. And now, the boring part of the life again, the new semester started.

Of course she was not forgotten, in fact, it was impossible to forget about her. Out of those two times where I met her for the first and second time, I did meet her sometimes during my dinner inside the canteen in the hostel, and the more I saw her, the less likely I’d be able to forget about her. But due to my lack of boldness, if I see her I’d only give her a “hi!” and a smile to give some friendly impression. I’m just so freaking happy already to receive the same thing from her, only that she always never wear her glasses and she took some time to bend her head a bit, looking confused, trying to recall someone she knows and said hi. And only that already gave me so loaded amount of please. But there was only that “hi!” and we walked away at opposite directions afterwards. But it was enough to make me that happy.

And so, when semester started I expected to see her more often because she’s in the same faculty with me. I was like an over enthusiastic guy that I even counted how many times I’ve already met her like during the holidays, or after the semester started, and the number of times seeing her went bigger and bigger, and I liked her more and more. Once I met her inside the faculty building, around the foyer area, and so I greeted her. She seemed that she was in a rush or something and again taking some time, trying to recognize me, who was someone she might have not seen very clearly on that time because she was without glasses again. And of course I felt it was very awkward for me to say hi and wait for at least two seconds before she replied. After she replied I asked why she didn’t wear her glasses and simply, she answered because she didn’t like to wear them. So, “okay” I replied. And I was rushing on something as well, and after that I bye-d her and so did she.

I’d always wish that she always wear her glasses or she could wear contact lenses if she doesn’t like to wear those so she could be the one who greets me first or at least she doesn’t take some time to recognize me. For me, wearing those or not, she just looks as beautiful as ever.

Chapter 3. Only an empty seat apart

There’s once I met her in PGP bus stop to go to around school area and I greeted her and as usual. This coward and boring William just didn’t know what to say and he couldn’t even start a conversation and soon the shuttle bus came and she went from the backdoor to go in and I went from the front door. I tried to spot her, but she was at the backseat, and I hoped to sit beside her so that we could be engaged in small talk or whatever. And I tried to walk to the backside of the bus, but slowly so that I didn’t look clumsy that I wanted to sit beside her so bad. Suddenly when I saw my friend on one of his side what her, and another side was an empty seat I felt super lucky on that day. So I greeted my friend from faraway and he saw me. I knew he was going to the other faculty, and the according to the bus route, the bus would stop at his faculty building first and another stop and my destination, her destination (class). Meaning: he would alight first and between me and her would be an empty seat! And of course after that quick analysis, I went and sit with him, and chat in Bahasa Indonesia with him to indirectly assure her that he’s indeed my friend and I took a seat there because I wanted to talk with this guy where in fact it was the otherwise. I even indirectly confirmed that his destination was the faculty building and because it was all Bahasa, I was sure she couldn’t understand a thing, therefore it’s good and my hidden intention couldn’t be detected.

When it reached my friend’s destination, he alighted, and I was felt even luckier when I saw not so many people weren’t going inside the bus and indeed, the me and her were only separated by one empty seat and I was so nervous but partially so delighted!! First to make sure, I pretentiously asked whether she remembered my name and I covered up my short sleeve because there was my name printed on it. And yes she did remember. And I tried to ask which block in PGP she stayed at so I could guess roughly where she would always hang around. Well, from this small chat I realized her spoken English is quite good compared to common Vietnamese-s, especially my year’s batch of Vietnamese-s, where they seem to have a little problem in communicating in English.

Sadly our conversation ended soon as I came out from the bus because my destination was there already. It was really a boring conversation I would say. But it was a good thing that she remembered my name, where during that time, most of the students foreign to Singapore couldn’t remember much names in their heads because there were so many new friends; And that I finally knew that she was from Residence number 3 of PGP, and I’m in number 6 and it’s separated quite far away *damn!*; another thing was that I tried to ask her how to pronounce her name properly in her language but I couldn’t catch that quite well even though she told me already, and so there it went. I went off at my destination. 

Chapter 4. My friends came to know

Other encounter was after me and some of my Indonesian friends had a basketball games at the basketball court. We finished our game and with a lot of sweat, me holding the ball and my other friends were walking alongside me, I headed towards to the Multi Purpose Hall because there was quite some noise or murmurs of a crowd cheering and some music and out of our curiosity, we decided to take a look. There was a table set up outside and If I’m not mistaken, It was a something like charity event with some rock band playing music inside the hall. I came to find out that the event was held by the Vietnamese community and so when I turn my head back behind, there were these two girls, all of us were outside and they were like trying to take a peek inside from the outer door and I quickly turned my head back to the original side: Imagine like you just saw a ghost at your back when you turned your head, and you turned back again because your fear will be too much to manage. For my case, it’s not fear, it is nervousness! Because that girl was there! I was not ready to say hi or whatever and she hadn’t noticed me back then, so I took a move towards some distance behind her. My other Indonesian friends were confused by my weird reaction and there I raised my hand and swing it as an indication for them to come to my location. So they came and they asked me what was wrong.

“There”, I said, “In front there” I was pointing at her, “is my dream-girl!!”

“Oh, that Vietnamese girl you’ve always been talking about?”.

Yeah I did ever mentioned roughly about her in front of my Indonesian friends also.
All of those conversations above were in Bahasa also and I lowered down my voice so that she couldn’t hear anything. But I think it was quite some fuss me and my friends made and she turn her back too check what that small fuss behind her was about. She saw me and I saw her seeing me and I saw her!

“Hi…” I said as super fast reflex to cover everything up.
“Hi!” she said, as a response to my greeting.

So she turned to the other side again and I moved my ass off that place. She looks just so as gorgeous as ever and I couldn’t stand it because my heart was like melted only by seeing her greeting me back, accompanied by that friendly smile.

I know I was pathetic.

You can say that it was actually another “Hi” and “Hi” and “Bye” every time I see her again.

My friends saw her and they do think that her appearance is indeed quite nice and they know I was crazy about her.

Chapter 5. First time she greeted me first

There was at least an improvement. I was damn happy in this encounter. It was around the celebration of Mid Autumn Festival in my hostel, and as a combined event, this event would be enormous. So, normally as the poster guy in the RA team, I’d design the poster and distribute it after printing to my other teammates so that they can stick it at their own blocks. But I thought it was not enough. So I took initiatives to print more so that I could stick at other residences within that hostel. I took a scotch tape and a pair of scissors to stick several posters at the residences that were not participating with the event. So I was going to paste some poster around residence number three, that’s where she stayed at and it is also the place nearest to the PGP bus stop. And when I was sticking the poster on to one corridor gate, I received a sudden “Hey” from behind me. It was her! And she rushed to the bus stop after I greeted her back. But this time, I feel really really happy because it was the first time she greeted me first, it was from my behind so it shouldn’t be that easy to recognize a people and she was not even wearing her glasses.

Chapter 6. Stupid Stalking

These encounters, made me like her more and more, I don’t really know, but it’s just so comfortable to imagine her friendly smile, though what we had most of the time was only hi and bye, hi and bye and another hi and bye. Sometimes, I don’t even greet her, because I could spot her from quite some distance and I’d observe her charming face from that far away position. Even so, I was glad. So glad… “Yes! I saw her again today, it’s definitely going to be a good day!”

Having 10 am class during that semester, when I always saw her at the bus stop around that time as she was always going for class also, I found out that most of her class for that particular day every week was around 10 am. And sometimes when I needed to do something early in the morning, around that time also, I still could spot her around the bus stop as well, I came with the conclusion that most of her class actually started at 10am for the semester, not only for that day. But sometimes, my workload for school or Co-curricular activities just got busier and busier, I began to skip classes, I slept in the morning and I knew I could have met her at the bus stop if I go to the class, but too bad. We are human and rest is integral part of our life and I really was always freaking tired as I always did my work during night time. I skipped 6 classes out of 12 for a module and had no idea what was going on in class after the mid semester as I didn’t even bother to catch up. Okay, but let’s not talk too much about academic performance here. So, the odds of meeting her got smaller and smaller as I became more like one nocturnal being.

Chapter 7. Yahoo! Messenger

I got to meet her less and I felt I wanted to know more about her. I thought to myself: why not I do some finding about her course of study which is Industrial design, first so that I could have something to talk about the next time I got involved in a conversation with her. I opened the faculty’s website and went to the department of Architecture and tried to find something about Industrial design. Later on after browsing awhile, I discovered about the general timetable that Industrial student had, and there it was. Some modules with huge modular credits(8 to 12 MCs, normal modules are only 3-4 MCs), and a level 2 module (normally level shows the level of difficulty of the module and is according to the year you are in). And I found out that module code apparently started with the initial ME and I was surprised because that code should come from the department of Mechanical Engineering. According to the timetable, she should be taking that module in that semester. Oh my goodness!! I have quite a number of friends in Mechanical Engineering(ME) second year (the module’s level 2 right?) and so I approach one of my closest ME friends and I borrowed his computer and told him I wanted to see the online student portal system with his identity logged in. And so as predicted, I found the same module that that ME guy is taking. One good thing about that student portal is you can get to see all of the students taking that module in that particular semester. So I browsed that module’s student directory and Ctrl+F (shortcut to operate “Find” task) and typed “Mai” because what I roughly remembered was something like that, and when I couldn’t find a student with that name (or maybe I found one but I was not too sure). I typed “My” afterwards and it was there was a match! I was pretty sure that it was her identity. What’s even better for that system was that I could know the student’s NUS address just by a click on a student’s name on that page and so I found out her NUS email address. Her email was a super lucky number (0707777). I guess I could say that I felt very lucky indeed because I found her email address. This part I sound like a very desperate guy but I didn’t even have her phone number or her email address. I hesitated but at last I emailed her. Asking whether she could remember me or not. She replied like in three days, and I replied her again asking whether she’s got any instant messaging address like (msn or yahoo messenger) and so I waited again for someday before she gave me that.

Yeah, I got her instant messaging address, a yahoo id, and I had one yahoo id as well, but I purposely set the yahoo messenger software up only because I wanted to chat with her and so that I could see her displayed picture on the conversation picture.

I wanted so much to chat with her, but I’ve never seen her online on the yahoo messenger. But being so eager to do so, I tried to leave her an offline message so that by the time she came online, she will know that I wanted to chat with her. After two or three days leaving “Hi” on her conversation box, that day when I typed “hi” again, I received a reply which was “Hi” and a smiley “:D”. Her reply made me feel so contended again. And so, from that time onwards, our conversations mostly were through instant messaging. I do this partially because I can express more through writing, I can also understand if someone communicates with me in writing, and duh, it’s not like we have the leisure to meet and chat every day as she always looked so busy.

Chapter 8. She didn’t have

One day, I and some of my Indonesian friends were going for dinner to Mc. Donald located around my faculty building, and we were waiting for the shuttle bus at PGP bus stop. Then I think I spotted around the bus stop also but she was like at the other end with her bunch of Vietnamese friends. They looked like going to have some roller blade. The bus arrived and we sat around the front part of the bus and they were at the back part. There were quite a lot of people inside the bus as I couldn’t see her anymore inside the bus. Some of my friend saw her and told me “Woah, William, a guy looked so close with her, they are like lovers”. Of course due to the fact that I like her so much, this can be some shaking on me, but I stayed positive. It’s just a person I like, I didn’t even know her quite well yet, yeah, “So what?”.
And so they alighted around Faculty of Science and we went to have our dinner. But interestingly I couldn’t get couldn’t attain peace of mind even during the meal and so after we got back I tried to chat with her. She was online and we started a conversation, and after dragging for some time so I don’t sound too straightforward, I asked her whether she’s got any boyfriend already or not. This was out of my burning curiosity. Yeah I’m just curious. I wouldn’t be jealous even if she’s got one. I wouldn’t. Or I would? Nevertheless I got this vague answer, “No, not yet”. This gave the impression like she was going to have one pretty soon. But what did I care? She was just someone I know, does it even matter if she had one or not?

Chapter 9. Little Brother

One time during our chat, I also asked her about her birthday. My prediction was that she was supposed of the same age with me, born in 1989 because she was a “direct” (admitted as soon as they finish their high school) freshman from Vietnam. Because average age for “direct” freshmen from Indonesia and Vietnam should be of the same age and that year of her admission, the freshmen should be born in around 1989. Although I’m one year more senior than her, I was born in 1989 as well. Given my weird habit to ask about a person astrological sign (zodiac) when I know a person as my close friends: (amazingly I remembered all my classmates’ zodiac during my high school and my closest friends here in the university, I also remember theirs), I asked about her zodiac first by giving her the reasons that I can know a person better by their zodiac. Of course afterwards, to confirm it I asked about her exact birthday. I kind of forgot but it was around 4^th or 7^th of October 1989. A Libran! I have thought so because she gave the same feeling as my first love, another Libran, and she was so heart melting, both were like angels. But it was so painful trying to forget about my first love, something happened, yeah and we are not talking about that..

And then of course I told her I was actually younger than her despite the fact that I was one year more senior than her. Upon reading this (everything was instant messaging after this), she decided to call me little bro. I couldn’t really say anything because I felt a bit unhappy due to the fact I’ve always been looked down due to my age, and I didn’t always like to be treated as younger brother. I come from a family where I’m the oldest child however my peers always treat me like their younger brother and it was not really nice to be treated so. But in the other hand, I felt a bit satisfied also because I could make her chat with me more if she assumed me as her younger bro. What a mixed feeling, but still….

But then, as expected, several days and weeks, as time went off, our conversations started to become so dull, I didn’t want it to be like that but I know that I’m such a boring person. I don’t even know what to talk about; I hadn’t found any common things that both of us had to bring out interesting topics; whatever. I always feel disappointed if our conversations were to end early or when she didn’t even reply anything even though she was online.

Nonetheless, in real life, whenever I saw her again even from quite a distance in the canteen, I feel better. I feel glad to see her smiling at her friends, and to know that she’s in a happy state.

And so days went on like that.

Chapter 10. Boring holidays

The end of semester came and all of us students would be busy preparing for their final examination and it was already quite a few days after the first day of examination. My preparation was not too quite tiring when I felt saturated and decided to take a break and I tried to find her online and chat with her. She was online and I asked about her preparation of course: at least this can be something to talk about. I know I would be disturbing her preparation, but she replied and so I just kept on chatting with her. And I also asked about her plans for holiday after the finals. For myself: I’d be going back to Indonesia for around 14days to see my family and relatives, but of course 14 days would be quite short and I’d be back in Singapore afterwards. So I wished so much that she would also only have short break so I could see her again during the holiday. Well, she was happy as she told me that she was going for a trip to Egypt. She told me that she had got some free sponsorship to go there. Yeah, what’s the point of staying in Singapore? She has her own life, and she was enjoying it with so much fun. To have a chance to visit such an exotic country for her holiday trip and I suppose she would be back in Vietnam probably spending her time with her family or maybe her old acquaintances.

I got to see my own family also during the 14 days of holiday and also I got to meet my old friends. But days in Singapore after that felt a bit lonely because she was not around and she was not even online during the entire holiday period and I was so eagerly waiting for school to start again so that I could see her again.

Weird eh? I normally would want my holidays to be longer so that I could enjoy the break from school life. But that’s not the case here.

And at last, the second semester of the academic year started. But the condition wasn’t as expected. This semester I met her really seldom. And I had missed her so much. I don’t know whether “miss” is an appropriate word but I really wanted to see her. Online chat was also not so often.

Chapter 11. The very best, (a) friend of her

School started and I was attending one of my modules tutorial classes where I got to know another first year Vietnamese girl who’s taking the same module with me. Well, by right she would be taking this particular module in her second year but she appealed to the Office expressing her wanting to take this module and she got it only with one point of bidding and most of the second years spent at least hundreds to 1300 points (I spent 1300 L ) to get this because the competition was tough. And so I was in the same assignment group with her and another two friends. Let refer her as “the very best (TVB)”, it’s her nickname on the messenger.

And some days after I knew her, My started a chat with me! It was so uncommon because I’d be always the one who had to start a conversation. But, later on, she said she was TVB instead of My. Not that she’s been using false identity, but TVB was inside My’s room. How good is it to actually know a friend of someone you like very much? You can start to “enquire” things about the girl you like from her friends right? Moreover, TVB was inside her room meaning that she was one of her good friends. Okay, TVB could make the conversation between me and TVB better because she was friendlier. My was less friendly or rather I would say, she wasn’t unfriendly but William was just so boring in front of her and so less interest was displayed to William. 

Chapter 12. Chinese

It was Chinese New Year already and it seemed that My messaged all contacts on her messenger and wish them Chinese new year. I got that too and it was on Viet. Of course at first I didn’t know what that message meant and so I asked her. So, after she told me, I wrote happy Chinese New Year also in Chinese “新年快乐”. I was in the project room with my other Indonesian friends and they saw me chatting with her. As I told you, they knew that I kind of liked her, so they played a prank on me before she replied to that Chinese writing I just sent her. Two or Three person grabbed my hand, leg and shoulder to immobilize me and one guy typed “fuck” on the conversation window. I was struggling to release myself with all my might so that I could click backspace before my friend pressed ‘enter’. With a bit of strength, I managed to move my body a bit forward and my neck was free, so I was trying to press the backspace key with my head. Yeah and ‘enter’ was typed inside the conversation window. They released me when the message was sent, and they told me they just did it for fun and they couldn’t have pressed enter. So the sent “fuck” word actually, according to them, was my own fault. But I was actually glad because thanks to this, the atmosphere lit up and we could chat longer than usually we would. Well, only for that particular day though.

But “Chinese” became an interesting topic. I’m talking about ethnicity not nationality and She actually look like Chinese. It may sound a bit but I’m not trying to be racist here on this entire post. To confirm, I asked about her ethnicity and I told her that she looked like Chinese. Ooh.. She gave cute negative response saying that everyone’s been saying so to her and that she didn’t want to look Chinese. Only from this chat I came to know that there were actually local Vietnamese-s whom they said were the originals and that Vietnam was part of Chinese colonialization thousands of years ago. And she said that she was local Vietnamese. I didn’t believe her at first and I kept teasing her (lol) saying that she looks like Chinese, and I even mentioned that because Chinese-s are everywhere and her ancestors might be Chinese.

I was telling her this and then she told me that I look like Malay. I was surprised because a lot of people have been mistaken me as Malaysian, Singaporean or even Chinese. But, Malay is just too far from my resemblance I suppose. I tried to confirm whether she really meant it or not but she kept telling me, “really! You look like Malay!” And if I’m not mistaken, another day when we were chatting on the same topic again, I tried to confirm again by asking her whether she knew the difference between Malay and Malaysian. And she said that she didn’t care. TVB was on the same room with her and they were chatting with me alternately. So TVB explained to me that what she meant was that I just didn’t look Indonesian. And apparently I later found out that she couldn’t differentiate between Malay and Malaysian! Yeah. Ethnicity and Nationality. But we only chatted not too long about this, but this was quite funny also.

Chapter 13. She did have – Once in four years? – Shattered dream

Okay, after this long meaningless story-telling, this is the main thing. One good day, I was trying to post about politics (at least that’s the term my RA friends have been using). Some of my RA friends were treated unfairly and our Advisors who were supposed to advice us played favoritism and covering it in a professional way, is politics. I had this in my mind and I saw one of my friend’s new post: to commemorate the day that only came once in 4 years, 29^th February 2008, just a post reminding everyone about the date and it would be very special to blog today, and so I was just about to start my blog.

It’s that date mentioned.

I found her online on that date before I started the blog and so I chat with her. She replied and She sounded high and her personal message looked happy. So out of curiosity, pure curiosity –aren’t we supposed to be happy when someone we liked so much was so happy? – I asked her what had happened that made her sound so happy. At first she decided to told me and the whole messenger was a bit filled with lots of “:D” smiley. And she said that that was her little secret. Well apparently she was just kidding about the secret thing but she added later, that she was high, because her boyfriend said something funny to her. The reason seemed so trivia to her but one word, that one word I saw…. made my mind blank in a short period of time. I thought to calm myself because I didn’t feel anything for the first few minutes upon seeing that word, but ache started to grow. My chest, inside felt very painful. And tears came out. William is such a crybaby.

I kept my cool on the conversation window. I carried on chatting with her for some minutes pretending with a language tone as if nothing had happened like the way it was supposed to be. Nothing did really happened actually but that nothing was something to me. I tried to divert the conversation to other topic, so instead of asking who her boyfriend was or whatever concerning her boyfriend because I would look so weird in front of her, I asked her what’s on her display picture. I was trying to have some positive point of view because she might have meant a friend who’s a guy.

The picture was a chalk drawing probably on a floor, three rows, from above: a writing “Um” and a head of a Pig; second “Lan” and a fish; and third “My” and a head of a lion. So I asked her what did the picture mean. So she told me. “My” and a lion was herself. “Lan” and a fish was her sister. “Um”, was… umm…. her boyfriend.

Imagine you have spent so much time painting on a huge but thin and fragile glass layer. The drawing was so much more beautiful than your usual one. So much dazzling and unforgettable, And you were still drawing because it was not yet complete. Out of nothing, the glass layer developed a crack you didn’t know of and one moment in front of your eyes, it collapsed and shattered to pieces.

That’s my dream.

That blog about the politics I mentioned? I was never in any mood to write it anymore.

Chapter 14. that’s it, a semester and a half

Not to do anything stupid because during that incident I was inside my room alone. I decided to take some fresh air and try to forget about everything. I wanted to escape from seeing the broken pieces for a while. I washed my face and went to see my friends. I brought down my PS2 console hoping I could drive away this melancholic moment by spending time and having fun. So I met them at our usual spot.

“GG” I told my friends.

“The Vietnamese… I’m GG-ed”. They instantly understood what I meant.

But yeah, never mind.. We played our games till so late as usual, and I felt better, only when I was so much absorbed in the game. Just Kidding.. I might be shouting out with a lot of fun “GOAL!!” but inside still felt uncomfortable. After we were finished with the soccer game matches. I went back to sleep. On normal days before, I would every night before sleep, think about her and doze with a smile, hugging my bolster. Thinking of her after that chat, gave so much pain inside. I slept with a hope to wake up that I could forget everything afterwards.

I thought to myself that this wouldn’t affect me, at least not for too long. It shouldn’t. But to think that a semester and a half for not being able to get her out of my mind, and that I shouldn’t think too much about liking her, she’s already someone who’s got a boyfriend. I should not think of anything weird, such as getting close to her or even trying to win her heart. I’ve been just telling myself that I only liked her, only liked because she was so hard to forget. But tears were not something easy to shed. I’ve been thinking so much about her, more and more each days for that long period of time and how much I wanted her to be the one on her side. I realized it was not just common “liking”. Boys don’t shed tears: such nonsense. Crying is humans’ natural emotion especially when someone you think that is so special in your life leaves you. And I did that for 3-4 days afterwards, at least 30 seconds a day. It was still too difficult for me to erase her out of my imagination and to stop thinking about her.

To think that I’ve been liking her since my head was bald, until I have such a long hair even after a haircut during the holidays back in Indonesia….

(Don’t laugh at the pictures! I know you are laughing!!)

That time before this, I’ve only seen her in person only twice after the school started. Some days after I decided to write this post, I saw her again for three times in a week unexpectedly. I haven’t seen which one is her boyfriend but that’s because I don’t know who her boyfriend is, or where he is now or whatever. And the pain was so much even when I was just watching her from faraway. It was at the canteen. She was so tantalizing to me as usual.. I didn’t want to call her even though she was walking near my seat when she was buying her food. But again, she was not wearing her glasses. I didn’t want to be noticed either, it would just give more pain to talk to her or even just a “hi” won’t feel as nice anymore.

I thought to myself, what a lucky guy who have won her heart. 0707777, Chapter 7.

Now, Still in my seat writing the blog, unfulfilled craving to be on her side, had to be replace with heavy efforts to forget about her. It’s really really really hard.

我爱我

That’s what I have always been thinking indirectly I guess.. And I should stop thinking of that.. Trying really really really hard to..

-The End-

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Please enjoy the song.. This has been accompanying me to soothe everything up. The translation of the lyrics are profound
KonaYuki 粉雪（こなゆき）- powdered snow - Remioromen(レミオロメン）-OST one liter of Tears(1リットルの涙, Ichi Rittoru no Namida)


Thanks to teddykeren for providing the link to the song's music video on youtube.
Thanks to those of you who have read this blog