The Night of the Heart Attack

The guitar’s strums filled Ethan’s room on a Sunday night after 11, and it sings with Ivan’s rendition of Disagree’s Crumbs and Suicide Note. My mind transited to what seemed like that world on the other side, and I’m subtly reminded of Suet Li’s once groupie-like obsession with the band. And I’m here at a corner of the world, in a room ready to begin our game of cards, listening to songs from the past that seemed so.. familiar. Like waking up the memories residing within me to get ready for a day of awakening.

We played Heart Attack throughout that night, trying badly to muffle our shrieks of laughter with the occupants of the house staying so close next to Ethan’s room. It was almost like playing Heart Attack with my primary schoolmates, and now I’m a legal adult playing the very same game with other legal adults, and there’s almost no discerning differences between these two eras: hysterical laughters, buoyant bangs of mock frustration when one made a mistake, behaving almost like those bunch of kids from all those years ago that I can barely recall.

#1 Using Ethan’s mattress to double as a table.

#2 On a game of Heart Attack.

#3

#4 Ali the Iranian popping by; we were afraid we may have been to loud as his room was right next to ours.

#5 Babi yang gatal hahahaha (inside joke).

#6 Your eyes may deceive you. (Spencer also stayed over for the night at Ethan’s.)

#7 A game of Speed between me and Desmond while the rest went on a ciggie break.

#8

#9 Playing cards on an adult periodical.

#10

#11

#12 Adult periodical and me. It was touted as an incorrectly matched picture.

#13

#14

When we were done with our game at 1.30am+ (I lost at the final round of Heart Attack; we also upped the difficulty once by tweaking the rules—concentration’s definitely a must!), we stood outside at our “balcony” while the rest smoked, and I took in the moments I had. It was the night I’ve ever laughed so much since I arrived in Melbourne, my cheeks hurt and I was out of breath, while the rest descended into this similar predicament; I’ve never felt this tired while laughing before.

I want to remember these moments with the same exact clarity as I remember them now, but I know that as these memories were filed away in a photo album, they’ll fade with time, sharp only at the edges. And I’ll forget a mannerism or two, that we’d ever used an adult periodical that doubled up as a platform to smack our palms with, the mistake both Ivan and I made at the same time, thinking we were right, when we placed our cards down at the same time only to laugh uncontrollably when we realised it after the rest pointed it out, that Desmond’s hand bled a little as a result of his participation in our game. And maybe with time, faces may fade, and these recollections are soon buried and only wistfully picked up decades later in a sudden flash of nostalgia.

I always have trouble remembering the smallest of things—most things, rather—but if there were only a few handful memories I’d like to keep, it would be this.

Sometimes I feel, that with all the financial mistakes I seem to get myself into in Melbourne, the only right choice I made was staying at Walsh Residence where I had one of the best times of my life with the people residing in it.

Spencer is leaving to Singapore this Wednesday for work (though a Singaporean he is not).

A little more than two weeks till I stop seeing these faces, some of them.. perhaps for good.