Yes, I know I should have blogged earlier, but you have no idea how busy everything suddenly became. One moment, I'm peacefully levelling my character on WoW, and suddenly along my mum comes... Bang, I get hit with shock after shock of everything I should have/have to do before I fly off tomorrow evening. Ok, fine, so I'm not the most organised person (even though you think I am (not)), and I haven't finished packing... Fine! I haven't started! Sigh, I really should get to that >.> But really, you have no idea how much there actually is to do, especially when you're going for holiday. And not coming back (for 2 years :P).

On Wednesday night, I probably saw my all my school friends for the last time. It was actually sort of sad in a way, they were pretty much the first (close) group of people in my life who I had to actually say goodbye to. It was odd, in some senses, and just downright sad in others. I must say, holding in my emotions was not an easy job. The good thing is, they all left in small groups of ones and twos, that sort of made it easier. If they all left at once I don't know what I would have done =/. After the hotpot, 5 of us went over to chris's, while David, Anyq and Jack went home. Ji-yoon, who had an interview the next day, couldn't even make it to the dinner, but I was really touched by the fact that she made the effort to come down just to meet up for the last time and see me off. Kylie and Greg left shortly after they came.

On a side note: Kylie made me do this! <-- disclaimer. Well apparently, Kylie made some pretty indignant claims about what I said about her habits of letting people know about outing plans. My bad: it wasn't just me she left out. She left all of us out. Only she knows what we're doing. Yeah, Kylie expressly asked me to blog this, hope you're happy now Kylie xD.

Anyway, so it was just me, Chris and Kat who were left. And we pretty much spent the whole night with whisky, webcomics, and just general chatting. Somehow, after chatting for what didn't seem like such a long time, we opened the blinds and the sky was getting bright. I hate it when the sky starts to get bright. It actually feels like a hangover. Eventually Kat left in the morning, and I stayed with Chris until noon teaching him WoW, before I left too.

As you can see, the goodbyes were sort of spread, minimising the emotional impact they could have potentially had on me. Aren't you glad :P.

So I spent the next day (Thursday) getting a haircut, and shopping... I've always been better at buying gifts for people when I come back :P. I did promise Lynette I'd get her (a) <--surprise-->, ^^. Many gifts for all my old friends too, assuming we even meet up before I have to report in T.T.

Tonight was sort of our church's farewell thing for me, so my parents had a sort of farewell party at our place. Even though I'm not really too close to my church community, I found that there will be a few people I'll miss too. And there was the whole goodbye thing all over again. My mind found a way to disconnect the hugs, prayers and cries of "good luck" and "see you in 2 years", from the actual emotions that normally go with them. I think, after having so many goodbyes already, this one was just sort of numb, emotions few and short, sort of when my mind realised what was happening, then got disconnected again. Self-protection mechanism? Perhaps.

Something I sort of didn't appreciate as much was this cake a lady from church brought. It's sort of hard to explain why I was sort of disdainful of that act... What it was was simply a cake, with a liberal amount of intricately coloured icing depicting what was supposed to be me, in army uniform, sitting in a field with a gun. And I was muddy. Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly appreciate the effort and everything that went into the cake, and I don't doubt the intention one bit. But somehow, if I was to choose a cake on my farewell, it would probably be a relatively plain one, perhaps with snowy-white icing, saying farewell/good luck/come back soon or something. Not one with me in the army, that would be the very last thing. Sort of something that reminded me of the bright side of things to come, instead of the actual source of sorrow (even though that was probably the thematic choice)? I don't know... Sorry for my clumsy explanations. I'll stop now. If you get it, thank you. If not, go away, don't ask me.

Oh yes... Apparently my treatment with the plate (braces thing) thing should have finished by now... But somehow the dentist said I still need to wear it. For another 2 years. Go go dentist. Gah. They hurt quite badly actually T.T.

Well, this whole goodbye thing is getting old anyway. Sort of fed up with all the seemingly endless motions of goodbyes, rituals of parting so to speak. Sounds really insensitive of me, but it's sort of true. I've been more than prepared/pumped to move on now, and now I just want to get it done with, embrace the future gracefully. A very interesting observation I made was that, assuming something happened, and I would somehow not have to go back anymore, just apply to uni like a normal student and go on to continue my studies, with no more NS, I would probably be more crushed than I am about going to NS in the first place. It's really weird, but it's something I've come to realise. Maybe it means I'm ready to move on. Maybe it means I'm an idiot. Meh.

Still, I'll miss you guys over here in Australia who I've come to know in my relatively short 3 years over here, which somehow seemed like half my life, even more. Truly, it's been a pleasure. This is probably my last post before my flight tomorrow, as I anticipate a mad rush to come... So to everyone here, this is goodbye =), the true end of the chapter lies here. My next post will probably come from Singapore, a new beginning.

So if you'll excuse me, I should get packing =).

Cy4 l84z~. Flourish. <3