Sunday, May 13, 2007
Uncluttered
I had a “moral” breakthrough three nights ago.
The chance came up and being ever as opportunistic as ever, I decided to do the “right” thing.
I use the big word “morals”, always with some apprehension because I think somewhere along the way, I have converted to amorality because I have lost that supposed discernment that conventionally enables one to “get” what is deemed “right” or “wrong” in action and behaviour. Also, I think the word “moral” sounds like the type of vocabulary typically used by pastors in Sunday schools to brainwash gullible worshippers into thinking how to behave as good Christians in the bid to save their poor lost souls and be assured heavenly peace with their Maker. I don’t know- the word “morals” leaves me in an uncomfortable position and I often use it with slight cynicism. But today, I cannot find a better word so in my attempt to convey the idea across to you readers; I’ll stick to this word until I can find an apter solution.
****
So Nano and I were chatting online and then on the chat phone.
That night he seemed to loosen up from his usually ambivalent aloofness and was really heaping on the compliments on how gorgeous and hot I look.
You see, he had requested for my photo a thousand times and since I don’t generally keep pictures of myself and am really quite technologically impaired to know how to really send it across the chat line, I have declined just as many times. But that night while playing around with the features, I suddenly figured out how to attach a picture on my profile. Naturally, it was a photo of not I but my dog.
Nano jumped at the opportunity to ask me for my picture and I finally gave in and sent one with my younger sibling and myself. It was a picture that if one looks closely, one would notice that I had the flu and my nose was peeling a little. I had no make up on and was definitely not dressed up to the nines- just a short-sleeved nude coloured turtle-neck top and brown pin-striped velvety pants.
“Oh my god, P you say you are fat? You look so gorgeous!”
He kept going on and on. It was unlike him when we met. He has always been aloof and for a moment, I really think it must be the alcohol (as he had gone out for drinks prior) that was loosening him up.
“I’ve made your picture into a wallpaper on my computer!”
“Stop doing that. It’s embarrassing!”
I felt really uncomfortable with the flattery and the attention. Throughout the night, he had been asking when I was getting my ass back to his part of the world again.
“I could so marry you P.”
I kept even quieter. Nano wanting to marry me would be huge newsflash across society papers and magazines in his part of the world.
I recalled that when I first met Nano at the party and I exchanged contact details with his friends and him, I meant to store their phone numbers into my phone. I asked for his surname as I like my information to be complete. He was hesitant for a moment before he said it as if he figured that since I was a foreigner, it would not mean very much to me and try to use that information possibly to my own advantage. He was definitely a guarded person.
I observed that night that he felt some form of attraction towards me but he was ever so subtle. It was during the time where I excused myself from the table as I received a call from V and then B. I stood at one side of the courtyard talking and then from my periphery view, I noticed that Nano was looking at me admiringly. It was that light in his eyes that I have noticed in many a male in my life but disguised behind that aloofness as he smoked his cigarette, his aura shrouded by that cloud of elusiveness behind the smoke. When our eyes finally met as I still continued chatting on the phone, he was quick to avert them and looked away.
Then there was my subtle persuasion for him to join us clubbing the next night (Saturday) at the Embassy as I too, was attracted to his aura when he first arrived with his friends at my table where my host and I sat. He insisted he had long planned to head to the beaches out of town with his mates and was not about to change his mind. He suggested casually that we could have dinner together with my hosts when he returned on Sunday but made no firm commitment. When we finally did have our dinner on Sunday, I spent no more than 1.5hours before Ted and his entourage came to whisk me away since it was post our rendezvous night one. If he had been disappointed, he sure hid it well.
The next Saturday night while I was out with my hosts to the Embassy, we were travelling along an avenue just outside the village where they live (Nano lived a few houses away in a high walled property that is at least five times larger than my hosts’ already big house) and mentioned that it shared the same name as Nano’s family name. My hosts replied that it was named after them and they have built up that entire area from swampland and the massive shopping malls and stalls that I have been were built and owned by his family.
Recently, I started doing some research myself. Think it’s my professional instincts to map people of interest. Then I realised that Nano’s family has built an entire business district where skyscrapers of global banks reside in that part of their world. I knew he is wealthy, more than Ted but not this opulent. The sort of wealth I have always dreamt in my life since my teens. It wasn’t the money that I am interested in but the power to change that lies inherent in opulence and also the skyscrapers- the ability for one to make one’s mark on the face of the earth even when one has long depart. It has been the egotiscal “I” that I have tried to contain for a long time. In short, I (feudal, capitalistic me) have a love for land, properties and skyscrapers and I recognise my limitations as a non pedigreed, middle-class female to make my social ambitions a reality. Plus they even have a foundation that extends their largesse to the less privileged part of society. Here was a possibility that I missed with Mr. London and it was even better since Nano and I share quite a number of similar interests…
“I have a crazy idea!” He was extremely chatty that night.
“What?” I thought he wanted to say that he would fly down to see me in Singapore when I return again in September.
“Why don’t you come work for the XYZ. Bank?”
They built that building and housed that global organization as with many others. He went on about how this organization pays well and I could get a comfortable lifestyle in that country. I laughed to try to move on from that point and said light-heartedly that if I am paid what I get now and lived there, I’m sure I would still be very comfortable so thanks anyway.
Then we were on the topic about him visiting Australia as he said he would have to make that trip down with family at the end of the year.
“My parents will be staying with my relatives. But ‘we’ll’ get our own room in the city and I’ll get my cousin to drive us around.”
My heart grew heavier with the thought of “we”. It was getting too close for comfort. Somehow, I knew I would have to let him know that I have a boyfriend before we burn our bridges there.
You see, I truly regard Nano as my friend.
Then there are also my hosts whom I presume would let him on by now that I am attached since Nano seems to be very chummy with them and often goes round to their house to have a dip in their pool or have dinner. I was sure if he did ask them, they would have told him.
In addition, I reckon it was too presumptuous of me to blurt that I have a boyfriend previously as it meant that I think that someone is interested in me even before he confesses outright. It must be the Chinese in me, always slightly embarrassed of assuming that I am “popular” with the opposite sex and that everyone is so into me.
I waited for him to ask the right question for the past two months and some days, I felt it was like a time bomb ticking and we are so getting closer to the truth.
“Oh P, can I go off now for my cigarette? It’s late on your end anyway.”
His tone was endearing and was one asking for permission in a slight whiney way. It was not the aloofness that I knew from the two occasions we met while I was in his part of the world. He was definitely warming up to me.
Also, he has this strange habit of writing to me (always) and addressing me (occasionally) by my Chinese name. Only my best friends these days would call me that and he knew that.
“Ok, you better get going then.”
“We should plan our chats next time…”
“Erhm… yeah, as and when you are free I guess.”
“Oh my god P… How can you be so gorgeous and hot and have no boyfriend?”
He must have flattered me for the tenth time that night.
(Pause) “Nano, I do have a boyfriend.”
“You do? Of course. P has a boyfriend. P has a boyfriend.” He tried to cover up his surprise and disappointment and attempted to mickey around a little.
At this point, I felt really bad because I felt his disappointment and perhaps slight embarrassment (for making such a big presumption) which he immediately tried to disguise in light-heartedness.
“You never mentioned you have a boyfriend.”
“Well, because you never asked.”
(More conversation but don’t want to go into much detail).
“I better let you go then. I’m sure he must be waiting for you upstairs asleep.”
“No, we don’t live together. He lives inter-state.”
“Oh, long distance?”
That night, I felt strange and uneasy. I could truly feel his disappointment after having opened up to me like that and I crashed his hopes. I truly felt horrible for him, especially when we did come quite a long way, beginning from his aloofness and guardedness towards people all the way to our progression in our friendship. He also did mentioned once that he would like me to give him the chance to know me better when I visit in September. I felt a pang of pain for him.
I then decided to email him next when we hung up as I knew I wasn’t going to sleep in peace:
Dear Nano,
I am glad that you asked the right question. If you truly want to know me as a person, you should read something that I wrote at the start of the year. It is something written very close to my heart and sums up my philosophy in relationships and grey arrangements.
Cheers,
P
I sent off the email with the attachment, “Can you Handle it?”
Next day, I bumped into Nano online again.
He could not help but kept bringing up my boyfriend like I should definitely get him to come along when I next visit his world in September. Perhaps it was Nano’s way of maintaining graciousness. And he reiterated that he had my picture as his wallpaper.
Before I rushed into my next meeting, I typed:
Hey Nano, I hope you manage to find time to read “Can you handle it?”.
I recognise that I am not the best of people but I hope you won’t think of me any less as a person.
His reply:
Of course not, you are still hot and smart.
I know he is back to his cool shell again.
I could have built on what I really wanted and planned for my life as according to my grand plans like the way I always wanted (on my terms) before DL accidentally came along and I side-tracked. I almost got my break there, so to speak. My years of being well versed in Tatler and Forbes and my overseas education and travels that has thus re-fashioned my persona to equip me for possibly seeing that red letter day- the Pip in me who used to constantly seek for an Estella like in Great Expectations. But no, I decided to do the “right” thing this time.
After all, I honestly regard Nano as a friend and I was really attracted to him and his aura when I first saw him and before I learnt of his great wealth.
Before I do permanent damage in September when I next visit him, perhaps this occasion arose at an opportune time to minimise it.
Perhaps, if I am single or if we have met way earlier (is what I am inclined to tell him)…
Strangely, I have since been left with a misplaced sense of peculiarity. I am neither happy nor sad, or even regretful by my action. Perhaps a slight relief, that I have kept any damage within our friendship to a minimum but somehow, it has done little to uplift my spirits either.
I didn’t know how I found that courage at 2.30.am on a Friday morning.
Guess the chance presented itself and so I did because at that moment, I felt that it was just the right thing to do.
****
Came Friday morning as I logged onto my PC at work, I received an email from M.
Recently, he wrote me one and made bold to ask how things were coming along in my life “Boyfriend/work/family wise?”
I figured he must have moved on with me to take the valour to ask me openly for the first time since we parted at Changi Airport in January 2006 about my relationship status.
I wasn’t about to show hand when I replied and again deflected attention to mention about work and family. However, despite whatever feelings that I have felt or still feel for M, I have learnt to understand that we both have to move on. So I too made bold for my own sake to serve him back the same question- “What about you? How are things coming along- Girlfriend/work/ family wise?” If he wrote back and mentioned a girlfriend, then at least it was “in my face” and I know as a resolution that I would definitely have to move on from here.
His email reply never came for days and was far from his usual promptness until Friday morning.
This time, there was no reply to my ending question of his relationship status but merely mention of work and him assisting his Dad on a book that he is writing. Instead I got this:
“Seems like u will be doing quite a lot of travelling for weddings, well that should be fun... how about yourself? any dates yet ;) ?”
I wondered to myself if this was a) his attempt to suss me out on my relationship status or b) he has assumed that I should by now have broken off with DL and hence, most likely single.
My reply to the above:
“ On my end, things are still the same since you left, albeit that I am in a better position financially and career-wise.”
I figured since I have started to purge my “immorality” the night before, I might as well keep going at it. Perhaps, I might get to the stage where my emotional state becomes uncluttered.
I didn’t have the courage to write in plain English to M that I am still with DL. But I reckon that would suffice for him to realise and make light of my current situation. At least, I gave him the reality of my life to the point that I can handle it.
I had a “moral” breakthrough three nights ago.
The chance came up and being ever as opportunistic as ever, I decided to do the “right” thing.
I use the big word “morals”, always with some apprehension because I think somewhere along the way, I have converted to amorality because I have lost that supposed discernment that conventionally enables one to “get” what is deemed “right” or “wrong” in action and behaviour. Also, I think the word “moral” sounds like the type of vocabulary typically used by pastors in Sunday schools to brainwash gullible worshippers into thinking how to behave as good Christians in the bid to save their poor lost souls and be assured heavenly peace with their Maker. I don’t know- the word “morals” leaves me in an uncomfortable position and I often use it with slight cynicism. But today, I cannot find a better word so in my attempt to convey the idea across to you readers; I’ll stick to this word until I can find an apter solution.
****
So Nano and I were chatting online and then on the chat phone.
That night he seemed to loosen up from his usually ambivalent aloofness and was really heaping on the compliments on how gorgeous and hot I look.
You see, he had requested for my photo a thousand times and since I don’t generally keep pictures of myself and am really quite technologically impaired to know how to really send it across the chat line, I have declined just as many times. But that night while playing around with the features, I suddenly figured out how to attach a picture on my profile. Naturally, it was a photo of not I but my dog.
Nano jumped at the opportunity to ask me for my picture and I finally gave in and sent one with my younger sibling and myself. It was a picture that if one looks closely, one would notice that I had the flu and my nose was peeling a little. I had no make up on and was definitely not dressed up to the nines- just a short-sleeved nude coloured turtle-neck top and brown pin-striped velvety pants.
“Oh my god, P you say you are fat? You look so gorgeous!”
He kept going on and on. It was unlike him when we met. He has always been aloof and for a moment, I really think it must be the alcohol (as he had gone out for drinks prior) that was loosening him up.
“I’ve made your picture into a wallpaper on my computer!”
“Stop doing that. It’s embarrassing!”
I felt really uncomfortable with the flattery and the attention. Throughout the night, he had been asking when I was getting my ass back to his part of the world again.
“I could so marry you P.”
I kept even quieter. Nano wanting to marry me would be huge newsflash across society papers and magazines in his part of the world.
I recalled that when I first met Nano at the party and I exchanged contact details with his friends and him, I meant to store their phone numbers into my phone. I asked for his surname as I like my information to be complete. He was hesitant for a moment before he said it as if he figured that since I was a foreigner, it would not mean very much to me and try to use that information possibly to my own advantage. He was definitely a guarded person.
I observed that night that he felt some form of attraction towards me but he was ever so subtle. It was during the time where I excused myself from the table as I received a call from V and then B. I stood at one side of the courtyard talking and then from my periphery view, I noticed that Nano was looking at me admiringly. It was that light in his eyes that I have noticed in many a male in my life but disguised behind that aloofness as he smoked his cigarette, his aura shrouded by that cloud of elusiveness behind the smoke. When our eyes finally met as I still continued chatting on the phone, he was quick to avert them and looked away.
Then there was my subtle persuasion for him to join us clubbing the next night (Saturday) at the Embassy as I too, was attracted to his aura when he first arrived with his friends at my table where my host and I sat. He insisted he had long planned to head to the beaches out of town with his mates and was not about to change his mind. He suggested casually that we could have dinner together with my hosts when he returned on Sunday but made no firm commitment. When we finally did have our dinner on Sunday, I spent no more than 1.5hours before Ted and his entourage came to whisk me away since it was post our rendezvous night one. If he had been disappointed, he sure hid it well.
The next Saturday night while I was out with my hosts to the Embassy, we were travelling along an avenue just outside the village where they live (Nano lived a few houses away in a high walled property that is at least five times larger than my hosts’ already big house) and mentioned that it shared the same name as Nano’s family name. My hosts replied that it was named after them and they have built up that entire area from swampland and the massive shopping malls and stalls that I have been were built and owned by his family.
Recently, I started doing some research myself. Think it’s my professional instincts to map people of interest. Then I realised that Nano’s family has built an entire business district where skyscrapers of global banks reside in that part of their world. I knew he is wealthy, more than Ted but not this opulent. The sort of wealth I have always dreamt in my life since my teens. It wasn’t the money that I am interested in but the power to change that lies inherent in opulence and also the skyscrapers- the ability for one to make one’s mark on the face of the earth even when one has long depart. It has been the egotiscal “I” that I have tried to contain for a long time. In short, I (feudal, capitalistic me) have a love for land, properties and skyscrapers and I recognise my limitations as a non pedigreed, middle-class female to make my social ambitions a reality. Plus they even have a foundation that extends their largesse to the less privileged part of society. Here was a possibility that I missed with Mr. London and it was even better since Nano and I share quite a number of similar interests…
“I have a crazy idea!” He was extremely chatty that night.
“What?” I thought he wanted to say that he would fly down to see me in Singapore when I return again in September.
“Why don’t you come work for the XYZ. Bank?”
They built that building and housed that global organization as with many others. He went on about how this organization pays well and I could get a comfortable lifestyle in that country. I laughed to try to move on from that point and said light-heartedly that if I am paid what I get now and lived there, I’m sure I would still be very comfortable so thanks anyway.
Then we were on the topic about him visiting Australia as he said he would have to make that trip down with family at the end of the year.
“My parents will be staying with my relatives. But ‘we’ll’ get our own room in the city and I’ll get my cousin to drive us around.”
My heart grew heavier with the thought of “we”. It was getting too close for comfort. Somehow, I knew I would have to let him know that I have a boyfriend before we burn our bridges there.
You see, I truly regard Nano as my friend.
Then there are also my hosts whom I presume would let him on by now that I am attached since Nano seems to be very chummy with them and often goes round to their house to have a dip in their pool or have dinner. I was sure if he did ask them, they would have told him.
In addition, I reckon it was too presumptuous of me to blurt that I have a boyfriend previously as it meant that I think that someone is interested in me even before he confesses outright. It must be the Chinese in me, always slightly embarrassed of assuming that I am “popular” with the opposite sex and that everyone is so into me.
I waited for him to ask the right question for the past two months and some days, I felt it was like a time bomb ticking and we are so getting closer to the truth.
“Oh P, can I go off now for my cigarette? It’s late on your end anyway.”
His tone was endearing and was one asking for permission in a slight whiney way. It was not the aloofness that I knew from the two occasions we met while I was in his part of the world. He was definitely warming up to me.
Also, he has this strange habit of writing to me (always) and addressing me (occasionally) by my Chinese name. Only my best friends these days would call me that and he knew that.
“Ok, you better get going then.”
“We should plan our chats next time…”
“Erhm… yeah, as and when you are free I guess.”
“Oh my god P… How can you be so gorgeous and hot and have no boyfriend?”
He must have flattered me for the tenth time that night.
(Pause) “Nano, I do have a boyfriend.”
“You do? Of course. P has a boyfriend. P has a boyfriend.” He tried to cover up his surprise and disappointment and attempted to mickey around a little.
At this point, I felt really bad because I felt his disappointment and perhaps slight embarrassment (for making such a big presumption) which he immediately tried to disguise in light-heartedness.
“You never mentioned you have a boyfriend.”
“Well, because you never asked.”
(More conversation but don’t want to go into much detail).
“I better let you go then. I’m sure he must be waiting for you upstairs asleep.”
“No, we don’t live together. He lives inter-state.”
“Oh, long distance?”
That night, I felt strange and uneasy. I could truly feel his disappointment after having opened up to me like that and I crashed his hopes. I truly felt horrible for him, especially when we did come quite a long way, beginning from his aloofness and guardedness towards people all the way to our progression in our friendship. He also did mentioned once that he would like me to give him the chance to know me better when I visit in September. I felt a pang of pain for him.
I then decided to email him next when we hung up as I knew I wasn’t going to sleep in peace:
Dear Nano,
I am glad that you asked the right question. If you truly want to know me as a person, you should read something that I wrote at the start of the year. It is something written very close to my heart and sums up my philosophy in relationships and grey arrangements.
Cheers,
P
I sent off the email with the attachment, “Can you Handle it?”
Next day, I bumped into Nano online again.
He could not help but kept bringing up my boyfriend like I should definitely get him to come along when I next visit his world in September. Perhaps it was Nano’s way of maintaining graciousness. And he reiterated that he had my picture as his wallpaper.
Before I rushed into my next meeting, I typed:
Hey Nano, I hope you manage to find time to read “Can you handle it?”.
I recognise that I am not the best of people but I hope you won’t think of me any less as a person.
His reply:
Of course not, you are still hot and smart.
I know he is back to his cool shell again.
I could have built on what I really wanted and planned for my life as according to my grand plans like the way I always wanted (on my terms) before DL accidentally came along and I side-tracked. I almost got my break there, so to speak. My years of being well versed in Tatler and Forbes and my overseas education and travels that has thus re-fashioned my persona to equip me for possibly seeing that red letter day- the Pip in me who used to constantly seek for an Estella like in Great Expectations. But no, I decided to do the “right” thing this time.
After all, I honestly regard Nano as a friend and I was really attracted to him and his aura when I first saw him and before I learnt of his great wealth.
Before I do permanent damage in September when I next visit him, perhaps this occasion arose at an opportune time to minimise it.
Perhaps, if I am single or if we have met way earlier (is what I am inclined to tell him)…
Strangely, I have since been left with a misplaced sense of peculiarity. I am neither happy nor sad, or even regretful by my action. Perhaps a slight relief, that I have kept any damage within our friendship to a minimum but somehow, it has done little to uplift my spirits either.
I didn’t know how I found that courage at 2.30.am on a Friday morning.
Guess the chance presented itself and so I did because at that moment, I felt that it was just the right thing to do.
****
Came Friday morning as I logged onto my PC at work, I received an email from M.
Recently, he wrote me one and made bold to ask how things were coming along in my life “Boyfriend/work/family wise?”
I figured he must have moved on with me to take the valour to ask me openly for the first time since we parted at Changi Airport in January 2006 about my relationship status.
I wasn’t about to show hand when I replied and again deflected attention to mention about work and family. However, despite whatever feelings that I have felt or still feel for M, I have learnt to understand that we both have to move on. So I too made bold for my own sake to serve him back the same question- “What about you? How are things coming along- Girlfriend/work/ family wise?” If he wrote back and mentioned a girlfriend, then at least it was “in my face” and I know as a resolution that I would definitely have to move on from here.
His email reply never came for days and was far from his usual promptness until Friday morning.
This time, there was no reply to my ending question of his relationship status but merely mention of work and him assisting his Dad on a book that he is writing. Instead I got this:
“Seems like u will be doing quite a lot of travelling for weddings, well that should be fun... how about yourself? any dates yet ;) ?”
I wondered to myself if this was a) his attempt to suss me out on my relationship status or b) he has assumed that I should by now have broken off with DL and hence, most likely single.
My reply to the above:
“ On my end, things are still the same since you left, albeit that I am in a better position financially and career-wise.”
I figured since I have started to purge my “immorality” the night before, I might as well keep going at it. Perhaps, I might get to the stage where my emotional state becomes uncluttered.
I didn’t have the courage to write in plain English to M that I am still with DL. But I reckon that would suffice for him to realise and make light of my current situation. At least, I gave him the reality of my life to the point that I can handle it.
