In Retrospect
I’ve come to realise that most of my life has been and is still revolving around expectations.
I’ve always been expected to act a certain way, achieve a certain level, conduct something in a certain manner….so much so that this is how I’ve come to view people.
I expect people to follow a certain set of moulded expectations. Adults are always mature. Doctors are always intelligent. Friends should always be openly caring. Etc. And when they deviate, I feel disappointed, and I judge ever so harshly.
I guess this applies to relationships as well. Like how sometimes i feel like I don’t tell Alex enough and then I get quite upset about it. But is there the necessity to regale him with every single little thing in the first place? I just expect that I should tell him every tiniest detail. By tiniest detail I mean, “Oh my hard disk is full!” Which is wrong. Because that’s really not the point of the relationship and getting upset over that just because you EXPECT that it should be is just not right, is it?
Of course some measure of expectation is fair enough but…it’s give and take, right? Never lean too much on one thing, too many eggs in one basket?
Maybe someone was right in telling me that I do need to open my mind after all. And love people for who they are, and not because they act like how I hoped they would.
And maybe that way I’ll find myself disappointed less often. And then feel generally happier. Maybe?
When in Prague
We saw a boating competition.
We attended 5 minutes of the United Islands 2009 music festival.
We walked down Charles Bridge almost everyday, with St. Vitus twinkling in the distance.
Everyday we looked out for the railway bridge, because it meant home.
We ran after Tram 17 once, much to the excitement of cheering young men onboard, but intentionally missed the tram after that because we were so embarrassed.
We watched our friend walk right up to a group of Asians and stare openmouthed because she thought it was someone familiar.
We traversed the streets and stopped at random pubs and restaurants to eat, because the food was so good and so cheap.
We drank beer everyday, because it was cheap, and because it was all brewed in the restaurant itself.
We saw the 80000 names of Czech Jews who perished during the Holocaust, and the graves of 40000.
We saw the paintings Jewish children drew in times of adversity. We saw their manifestations of hope, dreams, fears, love and innocence.
We saw their dates of death. It wasn’t very much later.
We learned something new about Prague everyday.
We shopped…at Mango.
We happily gushed about our very nice B&B owner everyday, guessing his age, a different guess each time.
We frivolously gossipped about the Swede girl who kept hitting on the tour guide.
We watched me fall with a splat onto the paved ground while sitting on my luggage bag.
We bought an icecream to eat everyday – be it a gelato or a Twister.
We walked, and walked, and walked, for hours, one instinctive, one paranoid, one happy to just accomplish her mission of snapping photos and looking for watermelon gelato.
We cut through Wenceslas Square and the Old Town Square everyday, snapping a different picture of Tyn Church each time, set against different weather, different sky, different people.
We climbed uphill, downhill. Through alleys. Through parks. Across bridges. Across roads and tram tracks. Along the river.
We watched the sun rise outside our window, we watched it set over River Vltava.
We said hello Prague by the river.
And it was also there where we said goodbye.
Lie With Me
Here I am, back from Prague.
These past few weeks, I have been waiting. I waited, I waited, I waited so hard for Prague to come. For, finally (maybe?), a chance to burst the bubble I have been festering in and look at my reflection in the glimmering, ethereal surface of the River Vltava of Prague, and maybe, finally, learn something about myself.
But ‘finally’ never came.
Words like ‘finally’ make you anticipate the end, the achievement of your goal. But it’s a deception, a lie. There is never an end to this. There is only an interminable journey, from uncertainty to uncertainty; shaky every step of the way, like a Ryanair flight.
Here I am, back from Prague- in my empty, lonely Tocil room, with walls as bare and unyielding as the truth, dotted by tiny remnants of blue tack and adhesive. Drawers empty, like my heart. Floor messy and strewn with junk, like my head.
I have packed away my belongings into sturdy cardboard boxes. I am tired, my eyes are about to shut, and my nose is runny from the dust. I seem like I’m ready to move on.
Move on? From what?
And where to?
In the Middle of the Night
Today I had a little laundry adventure.
My hall laundry room has a very annoying door with a magnetic lock that is supposed to be released when you slot your student card into the reader.
Trouble is, the reader never works.
It’s always a cruel deception when you run out in slippers and no coat in the middle of a cold cold night, expecting to immediately enter the laundry room so close by, dump your laundry and run out again back to your room without having to suffer too much of the cold.
Because half the time you end up outside the door swearing like a drunk, violently jamming your card into the slot again and again hoping to see green light, but only to be greeted by a devillish red light. Which, mind you, takes longer than the green light to flash. So imagine how it is – it only takes that one extra second of waiting for the light to flash to feel your heart sink- and the profanities rise to your mouth.
So today it happened to me.
But, thankfully, I have a very kindhearted and manly and tall (ok no racist jokes this time Earl hehe) flatmate who came to my rescue by climbing through an open window and opened the door for me from the inside.
Then I put a sock at the foot of the door so it wouldn’t close and lock itself. There was no one else using the laundry room at that point and I figured no one would bother removing the sock.
That’s not the end.
Because.
When I returned to move my laundry into the dryer, I found that someone had come and done laundry while I was gone, and very considerately removed the sock! The door was locked! My student card didn’t work! And so I was stuck outside again!!
In the cold!
In flip-flops!
In a light jacket!
At 2.45 in the morning!
So the string of profanities gushed out again like water from a high-pressure running tap, while the churning of that anonymous person’s washing machine taunted me from inside the laundry room. “Ha-ha, look what I can do that you can’t.”
So what did Pris and I do?
There was a nice wooden bench nearby, sitting in a nice homey patch of grass, probably there for people who take relaxing strolls around the pretty landscape of Tocil (my hall) in the early mornings to take a breather and admire the view and listen to the birds chirp. Oh and the ducks quack.
Well, sorry. Because it is now under the laundry room window, and facing the wall too. Unfortunately, I am way too short and way too physically unfit to climb through the window Earl effortlessly slinked through.
So unless an early morning walker thinks sitting on a bench while facing a brick wall with his knees tucked into his chest is a good way of adding a bit of extra excitement to his morning walk, I’m afraid that bench is not going to be of much use now. Until people move it back.
I sure hope it’s not going to be a doddery old man who’ll have to do it. I’d feel extremely guilty.
So to whoever who thought the bench was a nice touch to the park-ish feel of Tocil, Thank you. Because without you I would still have a three-week-old bag of laundry sitting in a corner of my room.
Clarity of Thought
Connect the Dots
Despite all that-
I have the most amazing boyfriend.
Ever.
(:
