Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Hello 2008, Goodbye 2007

My life is a marquee looking glass. As how Alice peered through the looking hole and fell into Wonderland, I welcome you to Butterflyland, the place of never ending parties and rivers of champagne. Grab a glass, you are in for a long ride.

2007 had been rather kind to me, with many calendar dates that have marked significant milestones in my life. For one, I’ve had decently spaced holidays, five for that matter, that have allowed me to keep sane in our race paced engagement of the working life.

I actually had a new year’s resolution last year to settle down. 12 months on and 7 women later, I realized that I had a greater scheme of things planned out for me, which required me to stay single. Namely, the big Taiwan escape plan or any of the holidays I’ve taken, would never have been possible if I had someone sharing my bed permanently.

So, in tangent to my year in review write up as I have done for the last 2 or so years, I give you Butterfly's,

10 Moments of 2007

1. Driving License

An eternity. That was how the 1 year and 4 months felt like without a driving license. In case you just jumped onto the bandwagon, I was unceremoniously stripped of my life when I blew a 50mg on the BAC at a Clemenceau road block in Dec 2005.

Since then, I have been an ambassador for drink driving. If Samuel L. Jackson grew a strand of hair every time I pointed to a traffic police poster for “Drink driving shatters life” and said, “That shit is real!”, he could qualify as Bob Marley.

I finally got down to retaking the lessons and I bitched about it every day it ended. I felt like a high school dropout being kicked right back into kindergarten. You can read it here.

I don’t think I've shared the Driving Test Story, but I actually almost had an immediate failure as soon as I drove off. That would have made driving history.

We buckled up. I did the mandatory checks. Greeted the invigilator with my best ‘will give good head if you let me pass’ smile and fired up the ignition.

He:We are going to test route 10, go out turn left.”

As he said this, he gestured with his right hand titled towards my direction and in a reflex action, I immediately steered the car in that direction. 2 seconds later, he tugged at my steering wheel.

He: “I said turn left. Why you turn right?”

I nearly choked. My pupils widened and if I ever needed to find my testicles, they were on the floor, probably somewhere between the clutch and brakes. I was screwed and scared shitless. I was now prepared to offer my first blowjob.

He: “Never mind. Go on. 19 turn left.”

I proceeded, turned left at 19, conscious not to scrap the kerb, and drove straight on. A split second later, he depresses his side of the brakes, which would almost certainly be an immediate failure under most circumstances. What did I do? Did I mount the kerb? Surely I didn’t run over a Bangladeshi. They maybe everywhere, but surely not in the driving center?

He: “Eh, I tell you turn at 19 of course is for parallel parking lah.. where you trying to go?”

I swear. I nearly pissed my pants if I had any liquids in me. I got so scared, so nervous, my legs were shaking so badly that I was barely even able to hold on to my clutch. My voice also escalated by two octaves and I immediately did the only logical thing to rescue my plight.

Beg.

He eventually allowed me to continue with a very stern warning about some rubbish on having to fail me the next time I pulled another stunt like this. For the record, I passed with 2 points. I always knew I was talented.

2. Phuket

The greatest challenge for us when it comes to travelling, is actually making to the airplane on time. This pickle with flight schedules started in January when LB and I took our first trip abroad with Huixx. We nearly missed the flight and we almost had to come up with some story of LB being our illegitimate spastic son.

I had one crazy hook up there with two other options in spare, a plenteous recap of being hit on at the clubs and we returned to Singapore swearing we found paradise. This eventually swayed our decision to return there to celebrate our birthdays in end August.

The second trip started off with a foursome and eventually climaxed with us missing our flight back. That won my vote for ‘Most Moronic Event of the Year’.

3. Taiwan and Perth.

I’ve elaborate this in a 10 part post, but in case you didn’t get the message,

“Best.Fucking.Holiday.Ever”

For Perth, I took this trip on a heavy sedation of mindless impetus. I was bored, wanted to get out of Singapore and had no one to travel with, so decided I would visit Eugg in Perth. I don’t even know what I was thinking. I had a better chance of scoring with a Kangaroo than to make out with anyone there.

Apparently, I was wrong. I hooked up with a girl, nearly had my balls chewed off by a Kelpie, smoked out and even nearly had a glass thrown at me. What is there not to love?

4. House Parties

While I only wrote about one of the house parties we had, we actually had two more and boy were they crazy. We had 4 girls who were complete strangers come over and we did some really crazy stuff.

These were girls, very young and all of them worked as models. So what would make 4 girls in the company of total strangers lose all their inhibitions and participate in every of my suggestions? Alcohol. Don't you just love it?

They started out coy about the whole thing and by the time we did a round of our drinking game, these girls were open to the idea of stripping down to swap clothes with us. The only sheath to this madness was the youngest girl, whom we referred to as the 'cock blocker'.

If I could have my way without disrupting the proceedings of the night, I would have punched her face in and hung her over the balcony. This girl was like the enunch in an orgy. Perpetually grumpy, refused to strip or take a decent gulp full of vodka. Fuck her.

5. Goodbye Michael

I had a platoon mate who committed suicide two year ago and we only got wind of it when I was in Perth. It was tragic. Not only because we discovered it this late or the unknown circumstances which drove a devote Christian to take his own life, but because we weren’t there when we could have helped.

I was never particularly close to him to begin with, but we went through some insane training regiments together. He snapped one day during training and that marked the slide from the rest of us. It affected me more than I thought it would, standing by the niche, while everyone else shared a story.

You have always been loved. You just didn’t see it.

6. End of Anonymity

I actually came out of anonymity this year to very mixed reactions. Almost everyone thought it was a bad move, but I just got so tired of having to edit off my face. To begin with, I never liked the idea of posting pictures, because I believed it took away the focus on the writing.

The good part was that I immediately got recognized more frequently at clubs and people started buying me drinks. Although, it’s weird having people call you ‘Butterfly’ at a club.

7. Cleo

Yes, me. Cleo’s 50 Most Eligible Bachelors. What was I doing in that stellar line up of hunks you might ask? Beats me.

8. Break ups

Strangely, 2007 seemed to be a year of break ups, at least for the people around me. I found myself sitting in on more sob stories about how the relationship was killing them and I never understood how the concept of a ‘break up’ can sound so vulgar to anyone.

It’s not that I’m an advocate for breaking up, but I generally do not see why people constantly shroud themselves in misery for something they no longer have faith in. Most people I know cling on because they are afraid of being alone, which is a stupid reason to. The only thing dumber than this, is a box of air.

And because I do not patronize, I generally laugh at my friends for clinging on to stupidity. Thankfully, some of them have snapped out of it, while the others continue to tickle me with their plight.

It’s good to be single. Just look at my life.

9. Miss Months

I started this year with Miss February and when that ended, some of the guys thought I was a complete idiot because I allowed a hot piece of ass to slip from me. I can’t post any pictures of her because this girl is more famous than I am, and I’m pretty sure you’d have caught a glimpse of her on TV or in some men’s magazine.

Miss September eventually found her way back into my life and at one point. I was pretty sure no one could possibly love me more than she did. I mean, this was a girl who would shelter my face from the sun bare handedly while I was sleeping and waited a year for me even though I constantly gave her shit and made no promises.

I never entirely understood what would make her do such a thing. I never understood how she could possibly fall in love with me in under a week. I never understood why she wouldn’t move on and clung on so faithfully to memories we had a year ago.

That was until she gave me a photo with a caption that would impact me like nothing had in the last 3 years.

Love like war, easy to start, hard to stop.”

10. My Nephew

My sister finally gave birth on Christmas Day. I actually felt bad that I wasn’t around and was instead in Taiwan celebrating debauchery with a hefty tab. Call it honing my paternal instincts, but when I carry him, it’s like finding a whole new dictionary of life.

Now I’ll just have to wait till he gets to about a year old and I’ll have to start introducing important words of life to him. I’ll start with “Whiskey” and probably end off with “Margarita”. Somewhere down the line, I might have to whisper, "marijuana".


So 2008. I'm already taking a sabbatical from binge drinking, just so that my liver heals up. It's a new year and I might have to start growing up. I'm also probably going to give this 'monogamy dating' less of a derogatory stare and more thought.

I'm also planning my holiday fixtures already and the earliest one will be in February with the boys and hopefully I can pen Melbourne down for September. I'm also open to anyone who is willing to sponsor my trips.