So I haven’t updated since New York – but it’s all been for good reason: going out with friends, projects, the occasional meeting when I want to. It’s been a great holiday, in other words. Also, planning for a New Year’s Eve party for a neighborhood grassroots project. The work was really intense – imagine eating ice cream at 4.30 am at a sleepover/worknight where no one slept, while being at the Community Centre for full days on end. But it ended well and I’m really happy to have met so many awesome seniors and really great batchmates. It’s wonderful welcoming a new year with people you trust and care for.
Also, not sleeping for 24 hours on the first day of 2012. A few weeks before the countdown I said I wanted to see the first sunrise of the new year, and with a motley crew of fellow slightly off-kilter people we did it. Hailing taxis in the middle of almost-nowhere, playing cards at macdonalds for hours on a diet of twisty fries and cola, buying the morning’s zaobao newspaper for want of a place to sit on a beach – we did it. We were looking for stars among the lights of passing planes (and Borneo -Borneo is not to the East by the way- among ship lights), laid back and talked, and then the sky began to brighten. We did it.
East Coast 6.47 am
Singapore's sky is perennially cloudy and sqr was complaining very loudly (yes qr) that it wouldn't happen, but we were blessed that day.
The next few hours were a blur of breakfast with one of the grassroots guys and wandering around lost around East Coast before giving up and hailing a cab home. I was out in Sentosa by evening again with company.
Guess why?
Spot the star!
It may seem a little silly setting such great store by random dates and times – it could’ve been any other day’s sunrise and sunset without looking any different – but I guess my obsession with it was not so much getting something out of it, but just doing it. If you ever expect to get a great revelation or a particularly wonderful year out of simply watching the sun go up and down on the first day of a year on the calendar, don’t hold your breath. But it had been a stressful few weeks heading up to countdown and maybe I needed to get it all out. Maybe I wanted to see if I could do it. Maybe I needed to see something beyond all the work and details of daily life – to spend 24 hours looking at the sky. None of these are probably the reasons but I guess I don’t need a reason to do these sorts of things. In the end, you just have to stop worrying about why when how and just count the stars and watch a sunrise.
No matter whether it has been a terrible 24 hours, a wonderful 24 hours, or 24 hours of nothing, in the end everyday the sun goes up; the sun goes down. The moon goes up and down. The stars come out and then fade away. Life goes on and all that is needed is to appreciate the moment.
***
Stressful as it was, the days leading up to 2011 have been wonderful – I’m seen enough years (16? Or less?) to know no one year can be confirmed to be great, but I’ve done what I’ve wanted and I know I’ll be fine.
Here’s to 2012 and survive a new year, buddy 
Don’t worry about the Mayans. I would know. My countdown party was Mayan themed.
