Secret War Journal[11 November 2012]
Published on Nov 11, 2012
-- ST ILLUSTRATION: ADAM LEE
In my phone, there is a long-running Whatsapp group chat titled "Sunday woohoo". I created it on April 30 to organise a meeting with a group of friends the following week. The actual meeting transpired a month later, and it wasn't on a Sunday.
More than half a year later, this group chat still exists. It is a way for six people who used to work in the same office to keep in touch. Two of them have since quit the company - one left to pursue a law degree and another to work in the civil service. One friend who is still working as a journalist is now on no-pay leave to spend time with her baby.
"Sunday woohoo" is our own social network. As a place to share news and bad puns, it is on fire. Sometimes, when I am busy conducting an interview or having a meeting, my phone can buzz needily and non-stop against my thigh. When I finally check the overheated phone, there would be a ridiculous number of messages from my friends discussing crucial, earth- shattering issues, such as whether someone looks like a tranny and how to get better skin.
But truth be told, the vast majority of the messages are actually attempts by us to find a day in which we are all free to meet up.
There are thousands of reasons tripping up our group date. Babysitting difficulties. Holidays. The flu. Unpredictable schedules in the office that end anytime from 7pm to midnight.
Because we have an ill-advised "leave no man behind" policy, our rendezvous keeps getting pushed back, receding further and further into the distant future till I'm certain we'll probably meet in the afterlife. Even then, that's not for sure. Some of us may be in heaven and some in hell.
Just as I was starting to forget how my friends' faces look like, we made a ruthless decision: We named a day to meet. Those who can't make it will just have to miss it.
It sounds cruel but it was necessary. The co-ordination attempts were getting preposterous. More than 50 messages will go by, waiting for non-respondents to reply and accumulating more reasons why so-and-so can't do this date. And we still would not have come to a decision.
Gone were the days when we were younger, single, slogging away at the office and leaving together at the end of the day, cursing at the night sky. Yes, our lives were an unhealthy cycle of co-dependence. We probably should have met other people. We were losers. But meeting up was easy, and we met regularly and at short notice.
Now, because life has taken us to different places, scheduling has become like pulling teeth. Harder, actually. Because for our group of friends, fate will have it that when the dentist can make it, the nurse isn't around.
Eventually, four of us made it to dinner on Monday. Like shipwreck survivors, we washed up at our usual haunt, dazed, blinking, surprised to see one another.
We ordered the same food and our old, familiar drink: a bottle of merlot from a company called Fishbone. I always found it a terrible name for a wine, foreboding terrible things happening to your throat. Just one step below Razor Blade or Glass.
The catching up began. The new mother refused to drink the Fishbone. We were almost hurt, like someone has rejected old clothes we didn't want anyway.
"I rarely get to drink because I'm breastfeeding," she explained apologetically. "I'm dying for a glass of white."
I nodded in an understanding manner, until she went on about how she can eat five or six meals a day without putting on weight.
We toasted our meeting, a glass of sauvignon blanc clinking against two glasses of Fishbone clinking against... a mug of latte.
The law student grimaced. "I need to study, I can't drink," he said, adding that he is engaged in competitive mugging with his younger schoolmates. In which case, I thought, your drink is too weakly caffeinated.
About one hour in, one of us stood up to leave. A church event. "I'll be done in an hour, Whatsapp if you guys are still hanging out," he said.
The survivors clung on a little longer, sharing more stories from our vast expanse of time apart. This must be what long-lost siblings feel like when they are reconciled.
I regaled them with my recent trip to London and Edinburgh. "On the way back, a woman next to me puked and passed out on the plane. For a while, I had to sit on the folding chairs meant for the crew. Facing everyone else. When I went back to my seat, the air stewardess gave me a gigantic mask. For the last five hours of the ride, I didn't sleep..."
"I've got to go study," the law student said.
"...I simply breathed into the mask and created condensation against my face."
I yawned into my elbow. "Okay. You're right. Let's go. I'm jetlagged."
We left at 9.30pm. I showered and went straight to bed. The next day, my phone was alive with hope, crammed with messages of how nice it was to finally catch up.
"Maybe we should fix a date every month to meet up," said one of the absentees. "Like the 15th."
"Like Taoist rites?" I typed.
"How about this Friday?" she said.
"Oh, I've got a family dinner.
"I need to study."
"I've got to review a play."
chiahta@sph.com.sg
facebook.com/chiahta
How true is that?
