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The most painful feelings, the most piercing emotions are also the most absurd ones - the longing for impossible things precisely because they are impossible, the nostalgia for what never was, the desire for what might have been, one's bitterness that one is not someone else, or one's dissatisfaction with the very existence of the world. All these half-tones of the world's consciousness create a raw landscape within us, a sun eternally setting on what we are. Our sense of ourselves then becomes a deserted field at nightfall, with sad reeds flanking a boatless river, bright in the darkness growing between the distant shores.
The Book of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa

A little tennis game with Jie Ming is squeezed into the middle of the day, but the rain thwarts our plans. Half way through the game, the court gets too slippery so we sit down in the rain listening to Mayday, and dreading the the university replies (update: both rejected!). On my mind is the meeting with R later, and I sort-of dread it more than.

But it is a dream. The ohm from Concave Scream is left over, so I am calm when I face him. When we hit Changi Coast Road, we're chatting like old friends and I dont miss him anymore. Planes roaring overhead drown out our voices and the Manic Street Preachers, but we're part of the road, so we just listen harder. At the beach, it's disgusting and packed, so we stand a little, staring off into the Straits.

There is something about two boys - running barefoot, chasing each other, tossing a frisbee, swimming across the river, skipping rocks, smashing fish, climbing railings, scaring ghosts - that is so incredibly exhilarating and athletic, the serotonin high still lingers inside. At the end of the night, chatting in the car at R's carpark, just like years ago on the taxis, I know we're friends again. Not hundred dollar friends, and we both know it, but something more. And a night like this, not hundred dollars, but something more.