Bohemia Bunny

On the linear nature of life

October 27th, 2005 by lynnylchan under My Life

I think one of the greatest drawbacks of life today is in its linear nature. Life is all one-way, no turning back the clock, no going back to rectify mistakes or take chances you didn’t dare to the first time around. No, life is linear, and we live with the consequences.

Got bored yesterday and got onto Friendster to reply a message, then went to kepoh around other people’s testimonials. I usually try to avoid testimonials because most of the time, they’re full of inane crap that in no way testify to the person’s nature or behaviour. But yes, I was feeling kepoh so went to read through someone’s testimonials. Wow, apparently he made a lot of friends at OBS (Outward Bound School, for those not in the know).

That made me start feeling wistful, about the times I missed out on going for OBS and camps like that. My dad had the idea of sending his daughters to OBS, as he believed it would be good for us (it always is ‘good for us’, isn’t it). But the cost was quite prohibitive, and so we didn’t go. It wasn’t just OBS, there was some other leadership camp that my dad was considering for me, when I was about 15. But yeah, no money, no go.

Some of my friends were more fortunate. One had a father who sent all his kids to OBS numerous times, which probably explains why my friend is so independent despite growing up a princess. Another went just once, but the adventure bug bit her and she went off on other funny adventures, like climbing Mount Kinabalu and going kangaroo-hunting in the wilds of Queensland. And when they get together and start talking about the people they met in OBS, and how the whatevers were so whatever, and yadda yadda yadda… Sometimes I wonder if I didn’t make a mistake by not going.

Heck, even my sister went for adventure camps. I think she went 3 times, once a year for every year she was in Interact. She came back with videos of her classmates doing the flying fox, pictures of some ulu cave somewhere, and some really *awful* gossip that she still likes to ‘ungkit ungkit’ today. Ok, so it’s nowhere near as challenging as OBS, but she still had fun. Makes me wish I’d signed up for the LEO leadership camp after all.

But I dunno, maybe it’s not really in my personality to do that kind of stuff. I think I’d have liked American-style camp better, where they have different camps for different niches (band camp, church camp, computer camp). I’d go to, er… is there a loners’ camp? I was quite a drifter in high school - unless there was a nerd camp, I don’t think I’d have fit in anywhere. Which is the crux of the matter, isn’t it. I just wasn’t meant to be part of a group.

The closest thing I ever had to camp was going on school trips with my friends. Going off on vacation without your parents, with 40 other similarly hormone-driven girls singing along to the Moffatts on the bus… kinda like a road trip, yeah? Those were good times.

Man, I wish I could go on those school trips again. And no, I don’t mean that I want to join NUS Rovers or whatever. The atmosphere of a school trip - of having your friends around you, and yet in different surroundings you see a different side of them - and also the freedom to, whaddya know, meet boys! Life was so much sweeter then, I think. Everything was a novel experience.

Getting too old and jaded for this world.