a story in progress

It has been a year. A year ago, together with my fellow fifth formers, we sat for our SPM. It was a real big fuss as far back as I can remember. Being preached, brain-washed and inundated with the sole idea that SPM will be the sole determinant to the road ahead, the thought of having to do well in SPM was naturally embedded into the brain circuit.

Come a year later, a new batch is up and ready to take their SPM this time. Nothing much has changed really from the way I see it. The silence will be broken with a flurry of chatter and "how did it went with you?" once the time is up. There will be parents waiting dutifully for their sons and daughters to finish their paper. Students will be greeted with food and refreshments as soon as they step out from the examination hall.

Albeit with the different people in it, such cycle of idiosyncrasies will definitely go on.

But where does that leave me?

I am still here. Struggling. Struggling to find my own niche. Slowly but surely, I am making pace, am I not? I am leaving behind that cycle to begin a new one. In due time, I will also leave that very new cycle to undertake another one. To put things in perspective, isn't the act of undertaking a cycle is but a part of a bigger cycle?

As I went back to my old school recently, the cycle that I left behind was evident. Though the atmosphere of familiarity is still potent in its essence, the whole thing itself is starting to unravelled. The foreign feeling is setting in. The greetings, the cordiality, the nostalgia. They will all diminish. Inevitably.