| | went back to rjc last saturday for odacia, which is this huge gathering of old odacian fogeys that happens once every year or two and i'm so glad that i managed to make it there this year. it was, in short, a much welcomed respite.
i've said this a million times but i've always considered my jc years the best times of my life. it was a time when everything was simple enough; a time when you could afford to take a step back to enjoy the trains that roared past the tracks next to the school, a time when you could lie back in the netball court to enjoy the stars painted across the night sky; a time of venturing through underground school tunnels and a time when you were safe in a little hobbit hole in the corner of the school.
odacia has changed quite a bit over the years. back in our time, we had banners and elaborate opening sequences (which gives me goosebumps when i think back about it) but that wasn't what odacia was about, it was the fact that we had people from batches long before us (batch 2!) come back to visit and for us to marvel at how far back these ties of tradition stretch back.
odacia is really, at the end of the day, an excuse for everyone to come back to mingle in one location all at the same time. it was a good time for batches to come back together to recollect, to bask in the nostalgia, to take time off their busy lives to relive a day as jc students again. admittedly, the new campus holds little memories for us as a batch as compared to if odacia were held back at the ghim moh site because really, memories are as bound to the place as they are to its people. we'll never be able to sit around the odac table again and neither will we be able to return to the old odac room in its musty state.
[i miss the odac room. it was a little stuffy, and everything was a
little dusty. the lighting wasn't great and the furniture was all a
little termite infested. but it was comfortable. it provided us with
shelter and a place to hide away (from teachers, from the world) when
we needed to.]
but as we come back together from all our various paths, it is apparent that we've all moved on in different ways in varying degrees. it is easy to see how working life has changed all of us, how it has robbed us of time to meet up more regularly than we do or should, how it has worn us down, how it has changed the way we see things, people and the world. we might have shared a common lot in life 8 years back but we've all drawn different fortunes from then on.
it is heartening to see the younger ones filled with so much enthusiasm and passion, as we were back in those days. i realise that if it were not for things like npcc, amazing races and even the navy, i would have little in connection with the batches after me but it never fails to remind me of just how tight this family really is. the fact that we can find resonance with each other, across the age gap, simply because we were all part of a common timeless experience. and i'm really thankful for that, because in this way, odacia has served to bring all the elements from the past (batches before mine) and the future (batches after mine) together in the present.
but it is also sad to see how the more senior batches thin out
gradually more and more over the years, especially when the whole point
of odacia is for them, and considering how we now belong to that
category, for us. and it's nobody's fault really, sometimes time and space are simply that unforgiving and inflexible. but i really hope the spirit of odacia never dies, and that it will remain as an important date in the calendars of all future batches to come, together with other dates like 'inauguration', 'btc' and 'farewell'. it is selfish, no doubt, because odacia really does nothing for the current batch, it is both time and energy consuming and robs everyone of a saturday. but i hope odacia remains, as a gift from each batch to the batches that came before them.
so that we can all come back for one day in our lives and remember what it is like to be young and happy again.
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| | Posted 8/17/2008 10:29 PM - 162 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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