Sunday, November 13, 2016
Day 270:
Apologies to no regular updates, seems like my aim of writing a post everyday slowly became a weekly thing. Now, it's monthly. Not good. It's not that I don't have much to write about - I guess my mind finds it too time consuming to type blocks of texts down every night, which is kinda bullshit because I spend a lot of my 'rest-time' just scrolling through shit anyways.
In fact, there was quite a few stuff going on since the last post - School officially ended last Friday, had my 23rd birthday/halloween party, Hatta's mum came over and we went to Great Ocean Rd, Mt. Dandenong, Phillip Island, started on my 2nd Russian Squat Routine this year, did a few more performances for the Australian Basketball League, watched a lot of movies recently, Melvin is going to stay with us for the next 2 weeks. What remained unchanged was that work still took up majority of my schedule - in fact, a few hours more a week (45hrs) now that school's out.
Yeap, school's out. Can't quite believe it that the 24 weeks of school has flown by. I had great groupmates and am really happy with how most of the things turned out. I guess I'll be happy with whatever grades I'm getting. Compared to all the other people who slug it out to study for their exams and actually spend so much time in classes, I had it relatively easy.
I'm onto my last phase of my Melbourne life, and I'm almost submitted to the fact that I will be working all the way till Feb/Mar next year - hopefully hitting my ultimate goal of $14,000 ($10,000 earnings/savings and my initial $4,000) to bring back to Singapore, so that I can not work for a good period of time and focus on training, and also travel full-on next year without worrying about money issues.
I went to Sam's party last night which was really cool, seeing how the Australian throw a 21st birthday party was sick, with a full house party set up and great finger food and birthday speeches. However, what struck me the most is the questions people ask me and sometimes I'm stumped. People always ask me 'How's Melbourne life?' 'What are you doing after school?' 'Are you going back to Singapore or staying here for longer?' 'Why don't you want to live here?'
To be honest, I can't say if I truly like this Melbourne life. Sure, it's different. Sure, I've grown pretty comfortable to it now. I'm not sure if I can say I love it here though, and I can't quite put it into words. I just know that there's something missing in this life. My perception of migration/finding life elsewhere have changed so much in this 270 days (9 whole months, that's actually a long fucking time to bear a child). It's funny, ain't it?
A letter came in last night regarding the $777 fine and sadly I didn't pass the appeal. I guess I'm lucky enough that I got away with the tram incident scot-free, so I'll have to bite the bullet and pay this shitty fine and get on with life.
I went to Foodora looking for a job this week ever since I knew a friend who have been doing both Foodora and Deliveroo at the same time, and he seems to be making so much money a week and I feel that maybe I can do with some more extra passive income. After making the initial trip to the office to ask for an application, then doing a test ride, and then an induction session... tomorrow I have to head down hopefully for the last time to grab the boxes and stuff. The pay has dropped though, unfortunately, but I guess take the risk to do it both at the same time, I might be able to scrim a few more hundred a week, which can be pretty handy. I'll know how this will go next week, hopefully things go well!
I'm also getting a bit of extra income helping out with some pre-game and half-time performances for the Australian Basketball League. I'm keen to get back into performing and bboying a little bit, I guess it's pretty damn important to be able to showcase a good repertoire of skills in front of an audience, even if it means you just have flat concrete. I've been really shit with landing my slightly harder tricks consistently and I really hate it. It's a bit lame especially knowing that I've been doing this for so long, and still struggling to keep up with proper landings. I definitely needa work on consistency and vocabulary, and showmanship too I guess.
Each day I wake up and watch Instagram clips of full-time athletes like Alfred Scott, Dom, Joe Scandrett, etc., all I think about is fuckkkk. I'm nowhere near the level of them at all - especially knowing that all they do is TRAIN everyday, without worrying about anything else in life. My plan is to be like them next year. That's the life I want to be living. That would mean I'm finally living the parkour life after 10 years of training. Kinda late knowing that I'll be 24 next year, while I'm seeing the progression of the newer generation like Jared Nahulu and @twin.parkour... I hope that I'll keep on progressing despite probably being past my prime (?) already.
Maybe when I head back to Singapore next year, my head and vision of my life is much clearer, and I have something to truly focus on, keep moving in a positive direction, being the best I can be. However, words don't mean anything if I don't actively work on it. Truthfully, as motivated as I am, I'm afraid that when it's time to actually do things, I'll become too skeptical, too lazy, lose interest, especially when I'm pretty much in this alone. Just like when I first got to Melbourne. And remember when I head back to Singapore during the break hoping to do tons of things... but didn't manage to do much. I need to be constantly reminded of what I planned to do and execute it without straying away. But as of now, I'm pretty excited for this and can't wait to be back on the parkour grind, full-time. I want to make it known to the world that the people who chase after their passions will end up living a successful, fruitful and most importantly a happy life if they work hard enough. Putting it
As for the remainder of #CPMelbLyfe, I have a couple of goals written down on my whiteboard that I have to tick before heading back. One of the biggest goal parkour wise would be completing that Dive Roll video. I guess I'll start working less during January and go out more before I lose this opportunity to. Have to make my final months in Melbourne count. Hope to get more memories other than riding a bike to restaurants delivering food to customers all day...
PS: Hi Takuya and Shay
PSS: Joe and Eric Parkour Show is one of my favourite videos in a long long time. I really wanna make videos like that.