2008.

Alas, so it has come to pass that another year has gone by without so much as a "hello" or "farewell".

This blissful, yet somewhat sad 365 days have been a sight to behold from where i am now, sitting infront of the screen, my siblings playing with the dog in my room, thinking of ways to make the next chapter of my life a more meaningful and memorable one. Yet i am stuck, stuck with this tight knot in my chest, stuck with the year 2008 and simply refusing to let it pass me by..

But as we all grow up, we remember the good and bad times, the best and the worst, the Mr.Ong lectures and the Mr.Ng controlling the entire school attempts. And these times will be what we depend on, what we look back at when we travel through time and space, through the infinite cosmos into.. 2009. From the very first entrance into class 5/2 to the final day the guys and i spent in that stuffy classroom, walking around in our boxers, painting the walls in orange, which by the way will always remind me of "Orange-loving Joyna Chua".

The uncountable times i slept at the back of the class, amid either Grace Low's chattering or Ms.Zaidah's robotic voice. The rebellious episodes when we reprimanded the teachers for reprimanding us, the hilarious chapters of 2008 when we took pictures of Yan Xiang drooling in his sleep, all over the table. And who can forget the Michael's oh-so funny actions that make him semi-retarded from an "Alex Yap" point of view. Then of course there is the "Alan Law aka. SK" escapades in the guys' toilet, and the radioactive waste he left behind in that tiny room that almost made extinct the Crestian population and started a new Ice Age.

Soccer was always the main event of each week, provided that i was present that day, which i almost always was. Knocking the little carbon ball around with my mates, namely Firdauz, Faisal, Amirul, Michael, Dzakir, Zulhelmi and of course the ballet-dancing/clown-fooling/classroom-drooling/soccer-wannabe, Ng Yan Xiang and that signature pair of glasses that never failed to fall off his big head once every two steps. Sometimes we won, and sometimes we lost. Sometimes we got hurt, sometimes we inflicted massive head-wounds that caused concussions of epic proportions that eventually led to death by "soccer ball to the head/groin". Yet the 5/2 boys always stuck together, there was never ONCE we had one of our own on another team, we always played as a team, scored as a team and triumphed victoriously as a team. Boots or no boots.

If i wasn't playing soccer or trying to come up with a revolutionary way of embarrassing Yan Xiang and destroying the school's reputation(if any) at the same time, i would have been in the Art Room. I'll always remember strutting past the little side room of the Art Class and turning left, through the main entrance, into the room where i've spent so many days of my miserable life in. The scene that'd greet me would be either many or close to zero students inside, either busily painting or sketching away listening to the new Coldplay song or just Mr.Ling doing what he always seemed to be doing when i stepped through the gateway into the artistic realm, using the laptop. To all the times i got my hands, shoes, pants dirty and the occasional face painting session, courtesy of Valerie, i really wished from the bottom of this beating muscle in my chest that i could have continued disobeying Mr.Ling and drawing mangrove trees and bald eagles and on Zulhelmi's sketches and whatnot.

And then there's the "Chronicles of the 5/2 Boys", taking place ONLY during recess time in the canteen, and occasionally the toilet. It became a third home to us, behind our real homes and PRCS as a whole. When we were finally allowed a breather and escaped the clutches of the teachers and the impending doom that signalled the end of our adventures in class, we would make our way down to the canteen. Sometimes quietly down the stairs, when all of us had just woken up from our slumber, sometimes creating noises that broke the sound barrier, when we had been awake all the while, busy cursing each other in class or getting Yan Xiang to toss crushed newspaper articles at Jeremy upfront and seeing the look on his face when the teacher confronted him. From the worth-your-money chinese food to the expensive-with-crappy-rice malay food, we always cut queues, only on very generous occasions would either Alex or me decide to queue up, much to the dismay of Mr.Singh when he arrived to usher us to assembly and realize we were only half done with our food.

To all the people and fools that made this past year a sight to behold, to all the people and weirdos that make me who i am, and finally to all the people and friends, and brothers, and sisters, and teachers, and mentors, and past-loves, i say Kudos! to each and every one of you for making this past year without doubt the best time of my life. To friendships that will never cease to be anything less, to relationsips that will always remain throughout the calm AND the storm.

I love each and every one of you for making my life what it is, for making me who i am, for giving me life in times of death. For stretching out your hand when i had sprained my ankle. For messaging me at the precise time my bus reached my stop just to wake me up. For holding my arm while we watched the fireworks under the drizzling rain. For believing in me when i had already lost sight of the light at the end of the tunnel. For passing me the soccer ball that eventually led to my one and solitary goal for the entire 2008 season of "PE Soccer". For making me laugh so hard on so many occasions that my eyes watered and i doubled over in histeric laughter that took a full 5 minutes to recover from.

If i had a hat, i would take it off to all of you.

I love you all, and to you 2008 : don't forget me.