Over the Pandan Leaf Chicken and the likes of it

Two days ago, on a surprisingly chilly Monday nite, I had dinner at Sakura restaurant in City Hall area with Dendry, Merlien, Wenny and Agee.

OK, from this first sentence you may also sense that nothing extraordinary will go beyond this point.
I'm fine with that. In fact, I agree that there's nothing unusual from this sort of gathering, knowing the fact that we often meet one another, way back since our college life.

Aha! There you go!

I was suddenly reminded that these beloved people are also the ones I spent my lunch time in Seaview Canteen when I still struggled with my studying in NUS. Those good ol' days where you could wander around in shorts, sandals, T-shirts that God-knows-whether-you-iron-'em-or-not, skipped class or just finished your tutorials, talked over nothing for hours while a breeze of fresh air from the seaport far away enhanced the atmosphere of warmth and innocent tenderness.

Fast forward to that Monday nite, here we are in our working suit suited to accomodate our offices' 'climate', and everyone seemed to be ready to blurted out their bad day/good day at work! From how you need to work your ass off to maintain your seat in a good place of the company you're working in, from how unforgivingly rich our bossess are and the deals they keep on making and securing, from how we've got to compromise and consider whenever we are about to take our leaves, from how to climb on corporate ladder, from being the ones who work head over feet and your colleagues and bosses take over the credits,
I tell ya, it's not about "how it's gonna be" like the way we imagined our life to be when we had that lunches 4 years ago, it's a matter of "how it need to be done ASAP" now, unless you want to stay in the reminiscence of nostalgia and step away from the spotlights of real life, you've no idea what you miss.

So, over the fried baby squids, sambal kangkung, claypot seafood soup, pandan leaf chicken and ended with beancurd longan, we indulged ourselves in, simply, our lives and whatever that comes along with it. Some crave in a career path as they wish themselves end up being with, some are still trying to figure out, some are getting 'em as a means of survival, some are simply doing what needs to be done, some are just nice! :)

It's still us, the same old person that you know since our good ol' days, be it from childhood, high schools, one-time flings, pubs, religious institutions, gatherings, etc. Nothing changes, except the change itself, or as I prefer to put it in as, we have evolved.


-- Thelonious Monk and his works accompanies this writing --