22:41.

I reckon it must had been in Sec Three when a classmate or teacher mentioned a post-millenium year (2010? 2020? I can't recall) and I automatically went, "Oh my gosh, I probably be dead by then". The irrelevance of that comment in the light of the fact that 2000 was only four years away then was pointed out to me and I covered up my boo-boo with a "30 is like being dead" or something to that effect. You know, the usual pride of youth and teenage disdain towards age.

I used to think I was always grown up for whatever age I was at. Today, I just told someone that I don't think I will ever grow up. How cliched a line it may be, but I employed it. I'm 23, living in the year 2004 and moving as linear time dicates. And next year, I will be 24. And this story won't end until this earthly tent ends.

Do I feel like an adult? I don't think I have ever really felt like a child, not totally.

There are moments in my life when every thing seems to become real-er, clear-er and freezes for a spilt-second frame. They have happened throughout my life, from childhood to now, and perhaps what happen during those moments - or at least one thing that happens among every thing else - is that I really feel my skin. The outsider looking in becomes the onlooker from inside, from behind these brown eyes, as if I am not the first person.

So it is that I am still the same person. And if it's all right with you, we won't go into great discourses of identity as definition and memories and soul vis-a-vis Identity.

My finite-ness presses against my soul.

This afternoon for my first meal of the day, I chomped down a Big Breakfast (the joys of all-day breakfast menus... sigh) of one sausage, two eggs, two pieces of toast with butter, two strips of bacon, one hashbrown, some sauteed mushrooms, half a tomato and a black coffee.

Considering my breakfast normally consists of one toast and a coffee or tea with no sugar, this was properly unpreceded. The theory of good conversation, coffee and (oh all right, 12) bucks being a sure win was tested in that nice cafe ran by Italians with stereo speakers playing guitar music from the three guitar virtuosos at Bourke.

I somehow cannot see today duplicated in Singapore - Spending five-and-a-half hours with a new friend whopping great brekkie, then chilling later at her place and watching Eat Drink Man Woman before I strolled home down Elizabeth road to cook dinner. It was one of those days with sun but a pleasure chill in the air still and it was that cool embrace of Spring that embraced me and strolled home with me alongside people who just knocked off work.

Solid good way to spend the day.

Maybe I am supposed to be slowly saying my goodbyes to this land and its people now but I keep falling.

I just keep falling.