A Happy Memory

I believe life's journey is too long and even though we've only gone through barely nineteen years of it, I am sure if you were to sit down and think of your happiest moment ever experienced, you would find yourself trapped in the convoluted sea of numerous happy memories for a long time before eventually conceding that its too much of a gauntlet to tackle. Here's the reason why- our life journey thus far was, and is still continuing to be inundated with an overwhelming number of fond memories, each of them punctuating a precious milestone in the many facets of our lives. And so, with each fond memory leaving a lasting impression in our minds, its no wonder why we would take such a long time mulling over such a humble question indeed.



Based on the whole concept of this project, with its meaningful intent of preserving a joyous moment like a floating, precious memory perpetually at the back of our heads, or in the hope of invoking a wave of elation whenever we look at that tangible form of that particular memory, especially during our tumultuous days in life, I would say that that one special happy moment must be able to serve its purposes. It must have the ability to make me smile just reminiscing it, something that should not run the danger of being hackneyed to the extent that I'll never get tired or numb to it, especially even if I were to view it constantly.



My favourite fond memory which would never fail to plaster a smile on my face shall be called the 'Carrot Cake incident', even though nothing remotely close to the humble orange vegetable was involved. But it holds dear to me because of many reasons- firstly, I've never remembered myself laughing so hard in my entire school life, and secondly, it was a happy memory shared with my dear friend Aa-nchal or manch, who added spice, zeal, laughter and meaning to my jc life. It makes a good illustration and representation of the two of us, being us, and the power of this memory drawing many other precious memories I had with her in the school. Follow me as I trace back the etymologies of that moment...



I'm sure all students out there would be all too familiar with the workloads of JC life, from mustering every once of energy from your body to travel from lecture hall to the tutorial classrooms, and back to the lecture halls, with a few toilet breaks and recesses interim, to the pains of having to write timed GP essays at the start of the day. And how can we forget some of the spiels made by lecturers as they droned on and on, broaching on topics such as Evolution, Hypothesis Testing, or even Physical chemistry while we tirelessly (and blindly) copied points from the screen, but the thought of what yong tau fu ingredient to add to our bowls mattered more to us. For me and my friends, we'd often crack each other up secretly laughing and mimicking the many bad pronunciations or funny accents of our teachers. I'm sure that Basta dish your mom cooked the other day, or Mr Yeo's erratic bursts of lameness and his answer to why couldn't the Vectors test be postponed being 'Otherwise, we would become a vector!' would bring back a smile to your face.



My counterpart, accomplice and good friend Manchal complement each others' jokes really well. We share the same sarcasm, dry wit and can get carried away laughing at our own stupid jokes understandable only to the both of us. It does get a little creepy sometimes how we tend to think about the exact same things regarding the exact same issues involving the exact same people. But if we shared none of those uncanny similarities together, then the 'carrot cake' joke would never have been born.



A bunch of us girls in the class were walking across the canteen, as we couldn't wait to get our hands on Felicia's secret recipe chocolate banana cake. She bought it the night before and only ate a quarter of it, and so expected us to finish the remainders during one of our breaks, which we gladly love to. After all, secret recipe had long been known for its exceedingly scrumptious fudgy and pure chocolate banana cakes, and seriously how often would you get your hands on such a costly cake?



When SY, Manch, Fel, Mic, Cheryl, Tracie, Moohuey, Yappy and myself stood around the table with the deep brown beauty in front of us, our stomachs gave way to temptation. But looking around us, we noticed that not all of our classmates who wanted to eat it were present. So, me and manch, being the good Samaritans that we naturally are, volunteered to rush all the way up to the library to inform Alicia and Carol. We made our way up the two flights of stairs laughing about something as usual, and into the library bags corner where to our great delight, we saw the two of them. 'That’s good', I thought. 'Certainly saves us the hassle of going up to the library tables to inform them since they're already here.'



'Hey babes!' Manch greeted them, a little too amiably, as usual. 'Sam has something to tell you.'

'Hey, why can't you just tell them?' I retorted at once, only to find myself opening my mouth once again a second later. 'Eh, anyway, you guys,' I said, and with my eyes looking at carol, 'we've got Carol cake...' Without finishing my sentence, I already saw Manch bursting into laughter, before I too joined in the laughing at my own ridiculous folly for quite a while, only to have Carol's and Alicia's puzzled faces staring at us. Making another attempt at conveying the message, I said 'Carol.., we..', but unfortunately I gave in to laughing once again, and didn't even manage to complete my sentence. Manch and I were both in our own hysterical world, and no one could understand us.



Sooner than we thought, in the next moment, we found ourselves back in the canteen stoking up our bellies with the superb cake, as if it was our last meal. 'Man! This cake is damn good la!' Manch exclaimed. 'Yah! The best tasting cake ever' I agreed.



'Hey Sam!' Moohuey called out from across the table. 'Why Alicia and Carol don't want to eat the cake? haha so weird.'



To the horror of horrors, me and Manch swerved our heads to each other at once, eyes enlarged and jaws dropped, in momentary shock and utter disbelief that admist all that laughing just now, we had absolutely forgotten to tell them anything about the cake! All we could do was continue to laugh at our own stupidity.



Norm Papernick once said 'Those who can laugh without cause have either found the true meaning of happiness or have gone stark raving mad.' Others might think we are the latter, but I believe we are both.



Cheers! As time passes by, we may encounter different obstacles in life which may pull us down, but the key is in dealing with them. Many people have different ways of how we can deal with the sorrow, or detached feelings in our lives, but I'm sure great comfort can be drawn from looking at a happy memory, preserved in a physical, tangible form, because as time passes by, even if we don’t want to, the faces of those we've lost fade a little. But the love we have and share with them never will , but to touch or revisit a picture of that memory reconnects you some how.



Even if happiness forgets you a little bit, never completely forget about it. :)



(P. S Anw, I still feel that it doesn't necessary need to be called your happiest memory in your life.. I mean, we have just SO many happy memories and if we were to pick one over another and label it as 'happiest', then its as if I'm denigrating the other memories as less happier moments, which is not true. Each memory evokes a different kind of happiness in us, so they shouldnt be weighed up against its other. )

P.SS Ok, firstly Inspired by dear manch who caused a rush of those memories in school into my mind when we were chatting on msn about it and yes, I promised to thank my cacoepistic friend LT the Lappoad, (lol should be LAPTOAD right? since its ur initials!) for pointing out on my mispelling of two words. Though, she ought to thank me for teaching her new vocab words. HUR HUR.