Basket.

November is just about to roll around again, and the end of the year really beckons. While temperate countries have all these wonderfully poetic occurences like snow or leaves falling, Singapore just has rain. Lots and lots of lovely monsoon rain, accompanied by arcing lightning and clashing thunder that sometimes seems to come just a little too close for comfort.

Somehow, every end of year, I think of the phrase "The boys'll be home before the leaves fall". Does not seem like much when you first look at it - until you learn that it was a common phrase bandied about as millions of young men all over Europe marched unwittingly to their deaths in August 1914. A war that was expected to last a couple of months at the most turned into one of the world's worst armed conflicts, and ten million of "the boys" never went home at all. Look at it this way and the simple phrase is heartbreakingly poignant.

The end of every year, though, is already poignant. It is an ending, after all. Every year I've experienced since I gained the ability to remember events of significance has been unique and in its own way memorable. Some part of me, sometimes all of me, mourns the passing of each year, because it will never return and will live on only in a very human memory that will slowly deteriorate over time.

Not too quickly. Please.