Yesterday was my mother's birthday, so part of the larger family went down to Sizzler (i dunno what's our affinity with this place - it's my second time there in two weeks). As usual i stuffed myself silly (a recurring theme in my eating habits ever since Thailand) with salad, soup, lamb chops and ice cream. What was interesting was how my two aunts and my cousin Ann were excitedly talking about soccer, especially the upcoming Germany-Argentina clash; while the interest of yours truly, the sole male in between them, was not even piqued to the slightest extent...
Today i went down with the folks to one of my old churches - we were there from 1992 to 1995 - or in other words, what seems to me to be eons ago. Went there to attend the wedding reception of one church member, someone whom i distinctly remember visiting the house of a long long time ago, where i joined her in dismembering her barbie dolls and then proceeding to throw the body parts all over the room - and now she's married - go figure...
Well, i was only in this particular church for a few years, so my memories of it are not as profound as say the next church, where i was for all of nine years. But still, there were loads of familiar-looking people. I realised that since i was already of a reasonable age when i was there, i have somewhat no excuse not to recognise all the church members, unlike my current church for example, since when our family first left it i was all of two and a half years old, sowhen we returned to this current church two years ago, i had an excuse not to recognise the scores of people who were greeting me and saying stuff like "wah, so big now!"...
So what i mean to say is that today in this church during the reception i encountered many familiarish people who similarly made random comments to the effect of conveying to me the fact that i've grown so much since the last time they saw me (which of course is a given since i was like primary 6 when many of them last saw me...), but this time, i felt compelled to greet them and say their names (which thankfully i remembered more often than not) when i did so, since i was already able to recognise and carry out reasonable amounts of conversation with them even all those years ago...
All in all, the whole experience today made me realise how old i actually am now - my fellow barbie dismemberer is only a year older than me - and now she's married. Additionally, her younger brother and other people whom i remember as little tots when i was there are now in JC and army and all that stuff - in fact i could not for the life of me recognise any of them until i heard their names. And you know that when you reach the stage where you marvel at how much others have grown to the point of them being unrecognisable since you last saw them that you yourself are getting on in years. And in fact almost half of my current life has passed since i left this church. Ah well - to look at it from a more positive point of view, the older you get, the closer you are to leaving this temporal existence and being assured of eternal life in a better place...
On a semi-related note, i happened to chance upon happy floor-cleaning powder at the reception. It turns out that she's distantly related to the aforementioned barbie dismemberer - quite cool to see how all these connections can occur in this small world of ours...
After we got back, i decided to go for a run at ecp again (my first since a pretty bad attempt at a run while i was still in Thailand) so as to prepare for the impending ippt as well as to burn off the excess of the aforementioned visit to Sizzler - it turned out pretty well methinks - 38min 45 sec from parkway to round the lagoon and back again. What alarmed me however was after that when i stopped by a pull up bar just to see my standard, since pull ups are probably the most dangerous ippt station since my clearing it probably would be dependent upon whether i do at least 6 of them. Well, needless to say, i struggled and kicked my way to only four. And ippt is in just under than three weeks - aaaaahhhhh...
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