Contracheck

So there we all were - 20 or so of us - gathered in the library. It's an exquisite room with wooden bookshelves lining the walls from floor to ceiling and an old but perfectly tuned piano in one corner. Up above, the chandeliers cast a soft yellow glow all around - illuminating the redundant elaborate fireplace along one wall.

Boarding school was nothing like this at all for me. The boarding house was originally a private mansion with creaking floors of carpeted wooden boards and groaning staircases lined by sturdy banisters. Furnished with two wide-screen televisions, multiple computer terminals, a table football, a pool table and table tennis - just to name a few, I wished I could've boarded here.

Sinking ourselves into comfortable couches and settling onto reclining chairs, we sampled an array of desserts accompanied by its complimentary dessert wine. Tasting my lemon sorbet with the Riesling Eiswein icewine, I think to myself, 'God, how pretentious is this?' Feeling absolutely disgusted, I lay my head on the good friend's shoulder for comfort and security.

While the expert drones on and on about Pedro Ximenez as a sauce for vanilla ice cream, all I can think of is the contracheck figure in my Quickstep routine. Dance camp has been such an amazing, if not exhausting experience. Three days of non-stop dance workshops, practice sessions and mock competitions as well as two nights of complete drunkenness and debauchery, I wouldn't have it any other way. I can only wonder to myself, 'Why am I reading Medicine instead of Dance at an arts school?'

Two hours, eight desserts and seven dessert wines later, we're all playing Psychiatrist and finding out each other's dirty secrets. Who owns sex toys, who's had sex with the same gender, who's had a threesome and other filthy things we would never tell anyone off the cuff. Feeling comfortably at ease now, I relax and open up and start to enjoy myself as the dessert wines buzz in my head.

After all, it's all about the contracheck.

It's not true

They tell you he's not the one if he brings you this much hurt. It's not true.

There's no such thing as the perfect man. There will always be grievances, arguments and fights. You will get hurt. But that doesn't mean he isn't the one. Sons always hurt their fathers but that doesn't mean they aren't loved by their fathers.

And there will always be someone better. Someone who's more sensitive and caring, more tender and loving. Someone who won't hurt you. But why do we not choose the person who's less likely to hurt us? Simply because he's not the one.

I'm sure we deserve better most of the time. But love is blind, no?

Goals

It's funny how we set goals only to end up disappointing ourselves when we don't achieve them despite the effort we put in.

We tell ourselves: This time around, we'll succeed. So we stay up all night trying to finish that essay just so we can hand it in on time. We force ourselves to stay awake during lectures so we can understand what's being taught. And we revise all through the night just so we can do well during supervisions.

Oh yes, we do try. And yet, more often than not, we fail to achieve the goals we set ourselves. And then we think: We're probably better off without them in the first place. No goals to achieve means no stress. No goals to achieve means no disappointment.

But the real question is: Will we be content with such mediocrity?