Saturday, February 25, 2012

When it happens, you won’t want to believe it. You’ll take their word for it when they say they’re busy, swamped at work, “just doing me.” You’ll make excuses for them, put your ringer on extra loud in case they call. But you’ll still feel the change, and because you can’t rationalize it, you’ll try to ignore it.

It’s a specific kind of loneliness that hits you like a wave of nausea. When the two of you are having a beer and you realize that you have both been staring out the same window for twenty minutes, nothing to say, the opposite of a comfortable silence. When they cancel plans consistently and stall when giving you reasons. When you scroll through your contacts and stop at their name and almost call but don’t, feeling suddenly, inexplicably, abandoned and confused.

Sometimes there’s no huge fight that marks the end of a friendship. No falling out, no major disagreement. Sometimes it just falls apart for no good reason. Distance. New relationships. Priorities. Somehow these things can become more important than your connection; they shouldn’t but they do. And as we get older we tend to downsize, prioritize. Trim the corners of our lives, keeping what’s important and discarding what isn’t. Sometimes we stop needing people in our lives and it isn’t even conscious. No one wakes up in the morning actively thinking “Hmm, I think I’ll stop being friends with so-and-so today.” It just goes out with an empty fizz, like a cigarette hitting the bottom of a Coke can.

In so many ways, losing a close friend is worse than losing a lover. Lovers are transient for the most part but friends are supposed to be there for you always, or so we like to believe. Friendship is a special kind of love that’s not supposed to fade. You never expect the one person you thought you could always depend on to disappear without saying goodbye. And when they do you feel sickeningly stupid and cheated, wondering what you meant to them all along, whether you were just convenient or in the right place at the right time. You never really know for sure.

You look through pictures from back when you were happy — holding each other up drunk and ecstatic, working on art projects on a rainy Sunday afternoon — and can’t understand what happened. Reach for the phone. Attach a photo to an email, start the subject line with some fusion of “Remember this?” and “I miss you…” Get suddenly overwhelmed by a horrible emptiness and discard the draft, leaving the phone untouched. History. So much history flushed down a dirty sink.

And the worst part is, you don’t even know how to explain yourself. You know if you bring this up with them they’ll give you a blank expression and a blank excuse. You don’t want to explain how you feel. You can’t. You just want them to get it, to read you like they used to be able to. You want to take them by the shoulders and shake them, screaming Where are you? What happened?! Until you’re blue in the face. But you can’t do that either, because you’re no longer on the same level and it’s going to make you feel crazy.

In life, it’s a given that you will lose people. People will flow in and out like curtains through an open window, sometimes for no reason at all. But losing someone important to you will feel like a suckerpunch every single time, and you’ll never see it coming. Which makes the friendships that do hold out, the ones that make it through countless breakdowns and breakthroughs and changes and years, so damn important.

reading every word off that page, and it rings so true in my head.

xinyi cartwheeled in the rain at 04:50

Friday, February 03, 2012

don't you wish you had that someone that comes to mind,

when you're listening to all these sappy love songs?

xinyi cartwheeled in the rain at 04:38

Thursday, September 15, 2011

it's pretty amazing seeing cheerleaders from all the squads all over singapore gather in SP today for our preview (: other than nationals, its rare you'd get to see so many cheerleaders gathered all in one place! there were so many people, all there to support their own teammates in Lions, or perhaps to support Singapore cheer in general. my dearest Steppers juniors were there too (: love love! but omg i cant believe they cheered the seXXY cheer in front of EVERYONE at the preview it was ultimately embarrassing ): haha now the Lions people know the cheer D: as if i don't have enough of the Goddess thing already.. and even people from other squads are making fun of me ohgod. but i was super surprised to see my favourite slut chenshiqi in the crowd (: haha she and jaja bought me a little cake as a belated birthday celebration for me! awww. sweetie pies.

today was really a good training day for the team i think! our warm ups leading up to the preview felt more stable than usual, stunts were going up better, hit rate was higher. haha weicheng says that we are all "fan jian", performing well when there's an audience. the toss-up chair with yan had like a 100% hit-rate which felt super awesome (: its one of my favourite stunts of the entire routine! while we were still training, people started streaming in and sitting around, watching. it felt like we were previewing our training rather than our routine haha because they kept watching us run and run and run!

finally when it was time for the official preview, i must say it was one of the better runs we've ever had! it was ASU... right until the final pyramid. which totally collapsed and imploded on itself :X which was a pretty bad ending, but it was really such a huge morale boost that we managed to do an ASU for the first segment + cheer! and i did my x-out twist and my cheer btoss too! :D :D thank you to my tiny cheer btoss bases who are all the shoulderstand bases haha, for tossing me so high and giving me the confidence to do my element! i could feel that all our spirits were high after the end of our preview, which is awesome because its our last training before we fly to Bangkok tomorrow! :O then we erupted in massive photo taking with everyone present and with our respective squads. haha everyone with their own little fan clubs (:

steppers and astros love!

and these are my teammates!

ruth!

michelle!

yan and jasmine!

hakim! mr poke(r)face

taufiq!

faiiii

jasmine! baby of the team

captain weng!

pohkang!

dosmond!

weihan!

andra!

weeps :D thanks for being here on this journey with me!

a present for our dear lotus!

oh oh and just before we had the official preview, we were given our uniforms, finally! extremely thankful that it looked much nicer than it did in the photos. and i was really worried about the fit and everything, cos it was so last minute! the girls made a huge ruckus in the toilet because all our tops were so ill-fitting! ): we could hardly breathe! and we were all whiny and unhappy and we had to call vince in to the toilet to solve our issues haha. hopefully the tailor can fix our uniforms overnight so we can bring it to thailand all nicely done! :S this is such a huge risk! and the entire evening, vince was helping the flyers make our bow (: a lot of effort went into the bow and he meticulously did it for us all night and presented it to us at the end of the training.. aww (:

the flyers with our pretty ribbons (: thanks vince!

so trainings all done, uniforms and bows all made, i guess we're ready to go! nothing holding us back now!

xinyi cartwheeled in the rain at 01:06

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

TWO days to Thailand!

today vince ruth and i ran all over looking the north bridge road area for materials to make our cheer bow! it was really funny because ruth and i were completely clueless while vince made all the decisions on his own. haha hopeless girls! and we were so intent in looking for the right materials that we were totally running late for training. felt like i toured the whole of singapore as i tailed vince all the way to Republic Poly, as he went the long-winded indirect route so as to avoid all the peak-hour jams, but to no avail. in the end we got to RP super late and everyone was there already! :S

and training today was.. eventful. don't quite know if that's the right word for it.. but many things happened today!

for starters, my dearest lotus was officially subbed by graham for the competition! ): he's been injured for quite a while and its so painful that he can't stunt properly without it almost killing him from pain. felt really bad for him when weicheng officially announced it, cos we're so close to the competition already and he's been training for months with us only to have it taken away at the end. all the girls went and gave him a group hug haha aww. plus he's my dearest lotus and I'm so used to our shoulderstand pairing by now that I'm also really sad that that has to change! but at the same time I'm thankful that we have graham to step in at the last minute and do everything in clement's place. i know it definitely isn't easy, subbing at the last minute and having to learn the whole routine form scratch just days before the competition. haha kinda reminds me of what weili did for Steppers when juncheng was injured that time. sigh i guess this kinda thing happens in cheer all the time. when we did our first few runs we had to keep shouting for graham on the mats to remind him where to go. must have felt like Mr. Popular that night haha.

and also, tonight was the first time i added the x-out twist into the routine! hm don't quite know how to feel about my x-out full though.. since the training at SP on sat when i lost my x-out twist, and vince said that maybe it's not such a good idea to try and force it out of all of us by atci, i gave up the idea of doing x-out twist for atci. i was slightly relieved, but also super disappointed and sad. because this really is my dream btoss and i really wanna be able to perform it in a competition.. and kahweng told me that if i can prove that i can do it, then i still can do it because our basket's in the center.. and i've done it before so i just need to get it back. and since last sat we haven't been training it so i haven't been stressing about it, but today weicheng suddenly asked me to do it at the start of training and i was just stunned. but he calls the shots so we just did, and i guess i just didn't think so much and i actually managed to do it! was really happy and surprised when i landed back in the cradle.. haha it was really unexpected, because i haven't had the right feeling for a very long time already. then we started running our routine with just x-out first, then weicheng asked me to add the twist in and i wanted to implode. but the first one was actually okay, yay first x-out twist in my routine! but the consecutive ones went from bad to worse :S didn't know what i was doing anymore and it was terrible landing in ways different from the normal cradle, and still had to carry on with the rest of the routine! but at some point i got so confused that i asked weicheng if i could just do x-out first which he agreed. sigh. but i guess I'm glad that i even managed to do it at all (: should focus on the good and not the bad!

and i thought the team spirit tonight was really awesome! like there was this one particular run when the music failed towards the end and the team just erupted into song singing 'Judas', our voices filling the room as we continued to do the stunts until the end (: haha it was so spontaneous i loved it! and you could just feel everyone's energy and everybody's spirit <3 twas a pretty good morale boost for the team i think!

omg tomorrow preview and thursday we're getting on a plane to Thailand! how surreal is this!

"I don't ask for any medals and gold. Just wanna perform a perfect routine of what we've been doing easily, happily." kudos to that.

xinyi cartwheeled in the rain at 01:21

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

tonight was another one of those memorable ones in Lions,

training outdoors on the track after moving the whole bulk of roll mats out, only to move it back in after about an hour when we all felt the raindrops.

it was a really funny sight, everyone scrambling for things- mats, velcro, bags, shoes etcetc, grabbing everything and anything we can and heading for shelter. and we were all huddling indoors, our arms full of things as we waited for an available venue to move to.. all slightly amused at the situation we were in.

and i guess now i can kinda see what the Steppers founding batch went through in their first year when they fought for Steppers. we're all fighting to prove ourselves, and we start off with nothing in the first place. we've been training all over Singapore, been to plenty of different training venues- NTU HSS, NTU SRC, NTU track, RP, *Scape, SP- simply because we don't have one of our own. and we encounter nights like these when the heavens aren't kind and we have chaos.

but i'm treasuring these moments, because it's moments like these that make the experience all the more special (: jiayou Lions. we're awesome!

xinyi cartwheeled in the rain at 02:47

Monday, September 12, 2011

un-cheer-able.

in every sense of that word.

today's one of the hardest days in cheer i think-

screwing up my x-out twist, tweaking my ankle slightly such that it hurts to tumble, being uncertain about all my pyramids because of my injured lotus, my horrid partner stunts sequence ): so many many things troubling me about this routine.

today i left training unfulfilled and unaccomplished, and that feeling sucks. i tried to go to people for comfort, but found none. tried to articulate my thoughts and worries, but i guess no one can offer me solutions, but myself.

but yod did say something that i'll remind myself of constantly-

that no matter what the outcome, no matter how hard it gets, we can already be proud of how far we've come and what we've accomplished. because this has never been done before, and for all of us to come together like this, 16men for one team, from cheer teams all over Singapore despite our widely clashing schedules.. it's something. and this something, it's enough (:

xinyi cartwheeled in the rain at 03:45

Sunday, September 11, 2011

PLEASE LET ME GET MY X-OUT TWIST BACK.

it felt so good :( now i just wanna find that right feeling back.

and, for the record-

starting today, i'll be seeing the Lions everyday for the next 10 days, and i'm looking forward to it (:

xinyi cartwheeled in the rain at 05:56

Friday, September 09, 2011

i've always loved birthday surprises, but as the years go by, you expect that less and less. because we're all old and graying and way past all these hahaha. but still, there are exceptions once in awhile.

so my birthday was gonna start out all rotten, but then came along step&deo who got me a cake and we just had a nice cosy little birthday celebration in deo's room as the clock ticked towards midnight, followed by some much-needed talking (: it really was exactly what i needed.. came at the right time and all (: thank you loves! and then dimsum lunch with c-family, tea with alexis and step, and off i was to training! thank you for making time for me guys (:

training was at Republic Polytechnic, we're really travelling around Singapore for all available training grounds huh. training started slow, but ended on a pretty happy high note (: and then there was the surprise birthday cake! and also the very embarrassing celebration D: the dear Lions surrounded me and went on their knees! and they even made clement, my dear lotus, come in the center to be my pedestal. hahaha! it was so cute and funny, but also highly embarrassing. totally don't deserve that high honour at all. haha then ruth gave me an awesome present, Clumsy Smurf! hahaha (: another addition to my smurf village in the backseat of my car. and karen gave me a Rexaz tee and towel too!

and throughout the entire day, notifications were flooding in from facebook, and there were smses and whatsapps (: and not forgetting debbie's cutest voice-recorded message hahaha.. really feeling the love from my friends <3 I'm thankful for all of you!

xinyi cartwheeled in the rain at 05:21

Wednesday, September 07, 2011

stuck in a rut.

xinyi cartwheeled in the rain at 01:14

Tuesday, September 06, 2011

went out with irenejiejie today to catch Smurfs in 3D! finally my first ever 3D movie.. these sisterly outings sure are hard to come by. anyway the Smurfs are absolutely adorable, didn't expect any less. and everyone should go watch it and bring on the Smurf fever!

then after the show i followed her home to borrow her camera, and when i was leaving she told me to hurry run along to my car where it's safe, and she watched from her fifth floor balcony to make sure i got back into my car safe and sound before she headed back into the house. things like these remind me that no matter how old i get, how independent I've become, i'd still be treated like the little baby in this family. and i guess that's kinda nice (:

xinyi cartwheeled in the rain at 03:09