The Average Pre-uni Life

So six months have flown by, and post-JC life has settled into a steady rhythm most of us are pretty content with. After all, who wouldn’t mind a few extra days of sleeping in past six? In fact, we’re grown so accustomed to this life that ‘post-JC’ hardly seems an appropriate title; with *ahem* school looming just around the corner again, ‘pre-uni’ seems a little more apt.

Many changes have taken place over the course of the last few months; I shall simply highlight a few common threads that hold most of us together. Like the alarming number of friends getting attached, for one. In every recent gathering I’ve been to with my old schoolmates, it seems that one more person has just found her Prince Charming, while the rest of us Swinging Singles contentedly bum around, discussing who’ll probably be the next to get attached, who actually already has a secret brewing romance (more than a few of you, this I know), or who’ll be the first to (cue: scream) get married. Marriage. While not a topic we discuss often (thankfully, please do not get me wrong, my friends and I are not desperate SATC wannabes or anything of that sort), the mere thought of it scares me. Even more so, perhaps, because it is a very real possibility in less than 10 years. While I’ll be happy to attend all my friends’ weddings and see them all be beautiful blushing brides it just seems all too… soon. But I digress.

Driving, of course, has also popped up frequently on our conversation radar. I, however, always managing to be the odd one out, have not even attempted to make it a part of my life as yet. Why not? It eludes me. Same reason why I always return library books a day overdue, I suppose. (Perhaps it’s for the greater good though; have you seen me play Crazy Taxi?) So in the midst of friends talking about how they’ve somehow failed their BTT at Ubi, or how their FTT’s next Wed, or how they nearly knocked two passengers down during a driving lesson because their brains ‘just didn’t respond!’ (true story), I sit in the backseat, happily taking offered rides back home in the wee hours of the night, knowing that I’ve saved yet another $19.60 worth of cabfare, midnight charge included. Yes, I’m one of those terrible, terrible leeching souls.

Another interesting topic would be one I always figured would hit us (young, privileged, sheltered Singaporeans) a little later in life – work. Look at your organisor, or back upon your memory (if you possess either), and you’ll realise that almost all appointments with friends have shifted to night plans. The whole working stint is probably dying down as I write this, since everyone’s off for university camps and all, but for a long time, that was the rule of the day. Plans? After 5pm, please. The old complaints about unreasonable teachers, copious amounts of homework and bitchy friends were replaced by complaints about – you guessed it – unreasonable bosses, copious amounts of menial tasks and of course, bitchy colleagues. The same really, just that this time you’re getting paid, and no, you don’t really want to keep taking leave, because unlike a pink slip, each hour not spent at work amounts to that much less in that bank account at the end of the month.

Oh, and finally, how could I forget  - NS. While it doesn’t directly affect most girls, except for the brave few who’ve chosen to enter it, it’s close enough a topic to cause us to bemoan the wretchedness of army life. For one, girlfriends are heard complaining all the time about how ‘army is not treating him right, I’ve got half a mind to write in a letter to COMPLAIN!’, and how they ‘never get to see him!!!’ As friends of NS boys, we find our once funny and interesting buddies turn into mass-produced robots who spew nothing but a slew of acronyms all day, as hard as they try not to. As a result, we’ve gotten quite used to it, amassing for ourselves an NS vocabulary wide enough to keep conversation going. New habits have been formed out of simply being friends with these boys – from getting nightly calls while they go through their BMT, to attending their POP, and then congratulating them on getting into OCS.

Boyfriends, Driving, Work, NS. We’re really growing up fast, aren’t we?

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