Waves of nostalgia

This is hilarious... I have been trying to log in to blogspot for the past 10 minutes while trying to study at the same time... and I kept getting error messages for entering the wrong username.. First, I tried signing in as grainbowgazer, and then oops, ok, realised it and removed the g. and then, i attempted to sign in as rainbowgrazer. Am I turning into a farm animal or what??

Sigh.... I just read an entry by my friend regarding mooncake festival, which is just tomorrow. I'm feeling sad because I know that I won't be celebrating it, for the second year. And the arrival of this festival just brings back many past memories.. from as early as when I was a kid, to the year right before I came to Australia, when I was still in Pittsburgh CMU. It's always wonderful to be able to celebrate this sort of festivals with loved ones and friends. but it also means that when you don't get to celebrate it with people around u, there is a tendency to feel extra lonely and nostalgic about how you're away from it all, away from the people u would want to spend it with.

When I was a kid, my dad would buy sparklers for me and my sisters to play with, and we would all gather in our garden and sit round this table eating mooncakes and pomelos, while drinking chinese tea. It's a very traditional kind of setting I suppose, which i didn't appreciate as much as I do, now! Oh, and then there were foldable paper lanterns, or cellophane paper lanterns that either my sisters or I made during art classes in school ( hm, then again, I suspected that my mother made most of those for us haha). But I believe my favourite were still the battery-operated lanterns that became more popular (at least, to me) and could even carry a tune when u turned it on. Just thinking about that brings out a smile in me. Oh so corny.

But anyway, the point is, I really treasure those days. And I would love to be at home right now to be able to do that all over again. But those days will never come by again. After all, my eldest sister and I would never be at home in Singapore at this time of the year, at least not within the next few years. And I hate to admit that I would rather live in the past, than to look forward to the day that we can sit around again and celebrate mooncake festival as a whole family, because I know that things would be vastly different then. My sisters and I would not be as innocent as we were in those days anymore. We would have experienced life in different ways and there would be many words unspoken and unbridgable gaps between us that separate us further even as we sit there, within reach of one another physically. Much as I long for the days of the past, I fully realise we can never turn back the clock.

Foolishly sentimental, aren't I?

And I would also like to revisit the days I spent mooncake festival with different friends... such as that first MAF I experienced in Hwa Chong when the wushu pple put up a performance wearing white shirts and red hwa chong ties, even the girls. I remember the dance sequence and following sword movements that the girls put up, the amusing antics acted upon by the guys... the feeling of being part of a team is what's most memorable on that particular day. I recall white lilies and spending some quality time with a special someone on that day too... sweet memories, but a thing of the past.

It would be strange to say that I've got mooncake festival and a friend from London to thank for, to be able to get to where I am today. I would never have gotten the courage to think about changing my course of study if I hadn't happen to be talking to Libing the night the Singapore Students Association in CMU organised a mooncake festival celebration... I know that was the night that I started to think actively about what I really wanted to do. It's a good thing for him that I don't think I will ever regret the decision I made, or else he would be feeling pretty responsible for any sad plight that I may be in right now :P Hehe..but I don't deny that I never thought about what could have been if I hadn't left CMU. I'm not sure if I would be happier or feeling more sucky, but I choose to see it as an choice I made to embark on a different path, not necessarily right or wrong. And despite having to re-adapt to uni life in a totally different environment and losing 1.5 years of my youth (ooh time is soo precious), I now think that I would never regret having met all the people I got to know while I was there... even though I may not have continued to keep in touch with most of them now. Was it fated for me to take that short diverted path? And would my path ever cross again with those people I met? I wonder a lot, but luckily for my own good, I have stopped searching for an answer and making comparisons between my old and new life.

I knew I would get terribly nostalgic.. true enough!