walking in the rain

It’s been a long-awaited update.

Life has gotten so busy, it’s almost unbelievable.

I’m writing this at 5am in the morning, by the way, because I can’t seem to get a good sleep. Not especially when at the back of my mind, I just know there’s so much work to do. The scariest part is, I don’t even have a full-time job.

My phone has recently been ringing off the hook again. Clients from everywhere have been calling, and there’s just so much to prepare for each show. It reminds me of MDC, really, although the difference is that I’m having my own quartet now and we’re producing our own shows.

Lessons with my current students are in full swing, and there are calls from other students I’ve taught previously asking if I am able to teach them again. Then there’s my sister asking if I am able to take up 3 new students, one at Clementi and another 2 at Pasir Panjang. How am I supposed to do so when my schedule is almost full? My sister also wants me to meet one of the student’s parents after working hours next week, but my weeknights next week are fully booked, so I wonder if I’ll ever get to meet them.

At the busiest of times, there are people calling asking me to run errands, fix computers, teach music at a primary school for two months (I had no choice but to give this up and pass this assignment from this other company that I’ve recently joined to my sister), and several other things which I can’t recall offhand.

People whom I haven’t seen in a while have been calling me all over again. It’s interesting.

VE has been asking me to head down to their office time and again, and as much as I would love to spend as much time as possible, it’s just not the time to commit at this moment.

So you can imagine the stream of calls that come through every day, and the hundreds of messages I have to sieve through daily. Thank goodness for free incoming calls and SMSes.

Module exams are over, by the way. I did spend a good amount of time revising for them and I’m glad I did pretty well.

I was also surprised that the assignment that I did turned out much better than I had expected, and it was pretty well-received. It was about 2 chipmunks (it was fun playing with the pitch feature in ProTools), which was an idea taken from Ping and Pong from 987FM.

The MediaTech team at church has also come together to form a really cool group, and we had our first little gathering on Wednesday. I wasn’t looking forward to staying too long as I had a meeting to rush to after, but I was surprised to learn that so many of us had so much to share, myself included, that I almost wanted to cancel the appointment, which I didn’t do so in the end. It’s amazing to know that so many of us have similar aspirations and dreams.

Also, the CC concert saga is finally over, as I finally picked up my cheque last night. After about a month of hard work in the month of April (yes, it’s been over 3 months), we’ve only got a miserable amount of over a hundred dollars, no thanks to the people whom we worked with for the concert. I won’t go into details because I don’t wish to offend anyone, and as much as I would love to say that it was a great learning experience (and a great time making new friends), I have also learnt a good lesson myself of knowing not to work with certain individuals in the future. Sadly, you only get to know such stuff after working with them.

I did quite a number of shows lately. I was back at Shangri-La Hotel for the second time in a week to do another show for the Barry Plant Principals Conference Dinner together with my fusion group. I went all the way down to R’s place at Braddell in the afternoon to pick up the keyboard and grabbed a cab back to my place where I transferred it to my car. After the show, we got a chance to enjoy the delectable food at the buffet line that Shangri-La provided, and I have to say this – it’s simply awesome. I would love pointing out a couple of good dishes, but everything was so good, from the hainanese chicken rice to the mee siam to the chilli crab to the chendol to the goreng pisang to everything else, seriously. My brother played for this event together with me and I almost exploded while driving home after the show.

By the way, my quartet is finally back in action. On Thursday, it was the official opening of the Etihad Airways Singapore office, and Quartet Finesse was present to provide light music for the event. It’s completely amazing to note that I had just taken the airline 2 weeks back during my trip to Australia, and I actually quite like it. Well, I guess, like Arif said, it must have been fated for me to do this event. Haha. It turned out to be an excellent show, by the way, especially since we’ve been all too busy to perform together.

It’s going to be busy busy busy next week as we’ll be doing a show at SPRING Singapore for a SAF Day event on Tuesday, followed by a couple of rehearsals as we prepare for Flybar’s album launch at the Esplanade on Friday. All these thrown in with my usual weekly stuff, including my night classes from my current part-time course, classes I have to give, gatherings, AND, surprise surprise, an audition on Thursday morning, which I’ll have to spend some time preparing for. Also, a client has booked us for all 4 weekends (that’s 8 days, mind you) for the month of July but I’m still waiting for her to revert to me with the exact details.

All these thrown in with so many other stuff I have to do daily. And I can’t wait for next week to be over because there’s a long list of things waiting for me to do. Sometimes it gets quite tiring when almost everyone and everything needs your attention. Either I have too much on my plate, or I have to manage my time better.

Then again, I’m lovin’ what I’m doing, because I’d rather be busy than be bored lazing around doing nothing. :)

Oh, and did I mention that I’m back from Australia? Gold Coast was a blast, and it was one of the best holidays I’ve ever had. It’s been 2 weeks already and I haven’t really found the time to sieve through the 4000 over photos that I have, not to mention upload them. I’ll write more about the trip when I have the time.

Alright, it’s 6am. I’m off to see if I can get some sleep before I wake up again in a few hours for my lesson. I’ll write soon. :)

So I was running late for my first class yesterday.

Moving up the escalator at Clementi MRT, I saw that the train would arrive in 1 minute, followed by the next one in 9 minutes.

Seconds before I was about to tap my card at the gantry, the train arrived. Knowing clearly that I would miss it, I made a decision to change plans immediately because I didn’t want to spend 9 minutes waiting for the next damn train (SMRT, you suck to the core, I swear), so I walked back to the bus stop and boarded service 189, alighted a couple of stops before Bukit Batok, hoping to catch a cab to Choa Chu Kang North 5, where my student stays.

Unfortunately, 10 minutes passed, and no cab turned up. I was seriously running late, so out of desperation, I boarded the next bus, which brought me to Bukit Batok MRT. I couldn’t believe that I actually paid twice when I actually could have done so once and save 10 minutes in the process. Oh, what luck do I have with cabs.

I then rushed over to the taxi stand at West Mall, where, surprise surprise, the empty cabs picked up everyone from the stand and left me stranded for a while. A taxi finally arrived, and when I stated my destination, the driver suggested to take the highway (KJE) so that I could save some time. The journey turned out to be longer than I had expected, and because the taxi driver didn’t know the exact location, we made one or two extra rounds, and the fare came up to $11.60. Screw it, man. It probably would have cost the same if I had taken the cab from Clementi in the first place. I ran out of money, unfortunately, so I gave all that I had ($11.20) and thankfully the driver was nice enough and let me off.

All in all, I was close to being half an hour late. I was fuming mad because I paid good money for almost nothing – money I could have saved if I had caught the damn train in the first place.

I was going to declare the day as one of the worst days in a long time, because there were several other things that didn’t exactly make my day as well.

Well, here’s the thing. The problem with many people, including myself, is that we don’t look on the bright side of things.

The thing is, we should. Here’s a good reason why.

A friend of mine died on the spot when the car he was in smashed into a tree along the ECP yesterday afternoon. Yes, the very same screwed-up afternoon I was having.

I do not know the exact details as of this very moment, but he had just gone to the airport to pick up someone with his friends. They were on their way to wherever they were heading to next, and there were 3 of them altogether. Both the driver and the front passenger were girls. My friend, RX, was sitting at the rear, and according to sources, they were all belted up safely.

Unfortunately, the female driver was speeding, and when they came across a sharp bend on the highway, she lost control of the vehicle and the car they were in ploughed into a tree. I do not know what happened exactly but the 2 passengers at the front escaped death. Sadly enough, my friend sustained severe injuries and died an hour later.

This is not the time to argue that female drivers are terrible drivers (although I have my reservations), but if you can’t drive properly, then don’t. In this case, my friend's innocent life has been lost.

I received the news when I was driving, when I was on my way to Shangri-La Hotel for a show. It was just when I found a parking lot at the service apartments at the hotel when my phone beeped. I looked across my arm and saw that it was a message from Shaun, expecting it to be some information for some upcoming performance which I had just clinched with a client. I decided to park the car first, before reading the message. So I did.

Thereafter, I opened the message. It read, “Eh did somebody send you a message that RX passed away?”

I couldn’t believe my eyes. I turned off the car engine, and stopped dead in my tracks. I remember sitting there for a good 3 – 4 minutes, telling myself, “No lah. This can’t be. No lah. No lah.” I sat blankly into space. All of a sudden, images of him and moments of us spending time together suddenly rushed through my mind. Although he wasn’t exactly a very close friend of mine, I felt slightly devastated at that very moment.

I made my way up to the ballroom where us, a 10-piece string ensemble, performed 2 sets of music for a wedding. It was nice to see my friends, including some which I haven’t seen in a long time, and we had plenty of fun performing together. However, SMSes from MDC friends started rolling in one by one, and at the back of my mind, I couldn’t help but think about my friend who had just died in the car crash. At that point of time, all I knew was that he lost his life in a car accident, but nobody knew the details as it had just happened then.

I cancelled my morning class today. RX’s family had decided not to hold a wake but to cremate him immediately, so I reserved my day today for him because I wanted to attend the cremation. It turned out that we could see him for the last time at the undertaker’s place at Toa Payoh after 5pm before the cremation at 7pm.

My friends and I rushed down to the undertaker’s shop at 1.30pm, only to realize that we could only see RX’s body after 5pm. We spent the next 3 hours or so having lunch, and hanging out at Toa Payoh HDB Hub, the place which we perform for the MINDEF Pride Day every year.

After receiving news that the body would be available for viewing at 4pm, we then headed back to the undertaker’s place. It was then where we could finally see RX for the last time.

RX’s face was pale, and he had the usual slightly shabby look. The few of us stood there looking at him for a few minutes, without uttering a word. There were huge stitches towards the back of his head, which showed that the accident was probably a very serious one. It seemed that his head had actually cracked, but none of us had any clue as to what could have caused that, especially when he was sitting at the back of the car at that time.

None of the MDC guys had anything to say, and we all came out from the room, hoping that it was just a really bad dream. Other people were bursting into tears and consoling one another.

About an hour later, when I went in to see him for one final time, his family members were there talking to him, bawling their eyes out. There was the usual Buddhist chant music playing in the background, which made everyone feel even sadder.

To keep the story short, prayers were made and the 100 over people who were present could pay their last respects to him, before the coffin was officially closed at about 6pm. We then walked behind the casket, after which Shaun and I decided to make a move. Most of the other people boarded the bus to Mandai Crematorium, where they cremated RX at about 7pm.

This has got to be one of the saddest, most unfortunate incidents in a while. RX was a great friend with good character. He was someone who never failed to lift my spirits whenever we hung out together. I remember the times we spent laughing over silly things, and although I didn’t exactly meet him too often because he was my senior, we were rather close friends in MDC.

He had a strong passion for nursing, and he never failed to make us smile whenever he was around us. His last blog entry at http://rxlim.blogspot.com/ was most touching and it is most unfortunate to lose a friend like him all of a sudden.

RX would have actually spent last evening celebrating his grandmother’s 86th birthday at a chalet, but it was never to be. I was told that his grandmother has been kept in the dark till this very moment, as the family did not want to ruin their celebrations. To make things worse, it’s Father’s Day today. Enough said.

This is the first time a friend of mine has actually passed away.

The day of the cremation (today) is also the tearful final farewell of 2 NSmen, who unfortunately died over the week. I do not know the exact details of their deaths as I was away, but I guess this has turned out to be a real bad week for a lot of people.

I wish to know what exactly happened to RX on that fateful day, and although I don’t wish to be mean, I hope justice is served.

I pray that his family will be strong, and that time will heal their wounds.

This incident has served as a great reminder to all, to treasure the people around us before it's too late.

To RX from all of us at MDC: Thanks for being a great friend. You will be dearly missed. Rest In Peace.

Sorry I haven't written in a bit as I've been rather busy.

I'm off to Australia, Gold Coast with my family and some of my relatives for a week. Hope it'll be fun! :)

Take care all. Will write soon. :)