Basket.

It has been exactly two months since I underwent the life-changing, very Singaporean ritual of conscription. The coming year, I knew, would be like no other; a new experience. Yet even before I entered the military, change had visited with a vengeance; I went in uncertain about myself, about others, and about others in relation to myself. All the old rules had been broken, the old images shattered, the old limits exceeded. I had to pick up my own pieces and wonder how the others would pick up theirs.

It has been two eventful months indeed; filled not traditionally with cynicism but with a fresh new breath of optimism. Change was and has been in the air and everything, anything seemed possible. Paradoxically I felt more free - unlike when I was in school, the time spent outside my place of work was truly mine and no one else's. It was a La Belle Epoque*, and it still is, to me. Change and possibility still floating around in great quantities - nothing seems insurmountable anymore.

Is this all the result of finally managing to believe in oneself? Is the cloak of cynicism and nihilism merely a cage with gilded bars that so many have for so long imprisoned themselves within? Now I wonder what good it ever served except to provide some very memorable sound bites.

To me, it seems, liberation has paradoxically come with physical imprisonment. Or maybe I am mistaken and this is merely the calm before a very, very big storm.

No one can say for sure anymore. The old boundaries simply no longer exist. I overestimated their resilience.

Now we'll see what freedom can do.