Q

Where do I even begin?

For more than a decade i’ve had the privilege of your friendship – your wacky ways, your unconventional wisdom, your unwavering loyalty, and your ever tireless ability to be there as a friend whenever, whatever. 

We’ve been through pretty much the highest and lowest of each other’s lives, and i can say this without being metaphorical. You’re really, truly, one of the biggest blessings i have. Just as fate/God/predestination dictated our collision last month at Bugis (when we could have been there at any other time, or been any where else), i believe it was by the same cosmic grace that we were made to sit together in Primary 2.

All the days we spent buried deep in our otaku geeky nonsense, sharing our roots in literary ventures with co-novels, or else conjuring up the most ridiculous stories during table tennis (i need to confess that you were the only reason why i loved going for CCA hur).

I don’t think people tell you this enough, Cel, but you are an amazing human being. Not just the best friend i could ever have wished for, but pretty much close to the best person the world deserves. Talented (in so many fields), insanely introspective, sensitive (in both the good and bad way lawl), and much as you deny it – a genuinely huge-hearted person. And most of the time you have no idea how much of a star you are.

You just have it, you know. For all your insecurities, you’ve got that innate furnace of charisma that never exhausts itself. You often mention how much you admire this or that person, when really you are just about the brightest shade in so many of our lives. You’ve got this way with people that makes them love you and trust you, and deservedly so because you’re that great a person.

Even your most iconic faults – the perpetual lateness, being a generally unaware mu-tou-ren, your sometimes bumbling and fumbling and getting bones wedged into the floor – are endearing. They are part of you and because the overall part of your is so beautiful, they become that too. That’s the only theory i can accept for why everyone lets you get away with being an hour late for everything.

Now that we’ve both traversed through the pains and plains of youth into the platform of adulthood, i’m more than convinced – having seen you through all you’ve been through and knowing you to your very core – that you’d make it big in life. Big not necessarily in the Lady Gaga book-out concert sense, but big how accomplished you’d feel about your life. I know you’ll get there, and when you do, I’d still be here cheering you on!

So proud of you for all you’ve done already and all I imagine you’d go on to do, Cel. HAPPY 21st and I love you!

xoxoxo