020901, 1830hr, illinois time.

i went to st louis the past 2 days. it's the labor day weekend, so 6 of us decided to pop ourselves into a car and drove 4 hours down to st louis, the 6 flags there. we drove there on friday night, spent the whole of saturday there, before driving back to campus saturday night. of course, we also popped by the gateway arch and union station to do some obligatory sight seeing, and shopping. hmm. actually, not much shopping. we couldn't find parking for the gateway arch, cos we were too stingy to pay. haha...so we went into the parking area for this church. the guy/guard asked if we were there for mass, so we lied and said, no, we're just here to take a look, when we had no such intentions.

of course, we still went into the church for a brief look, just to justify ourselves. the rest quickly got out of there, cos in shaun's words, they felt that they "didn't belong there". oh well, anyhow, i stayed a little while longer, to speak to god. to basically thank him for the peace i have right now. of course, my ways and concept are more buddhist sounding than christian, but i figured it's all the same.

"so wassup dude? y'know, whoever you are, god, thanks for what you've done for me. i apprecaite it."

anyhow, 6 flags was pretty fun, i don't quite remember all the rides we took. i remember the boss cos it was the wooden roller coaster. both shaun and engguan refused to take it, which struck me as pretty amusing initially, cos they were the 2 civil engineers in the group. hahaha...the wooden bridge thing we walked up to the ride was kinda creaky, and the concept of a wooden roller coaster was kinda erm..... but really, the ride was safe, and very satisfying. the queue was so blardy damn long, half of my pants dried [more explanation on that later] up while we waited in the sun. by the time our turn came, we were kinda tired, and were grumbling, "this has better be worth it." and indeed it was.

yeah, reason why my pants were wet, was that we took this ride called thunder river which is basically a whole bunch of us in this circular raft going down the man-made rapids. somehow, for some weird reason, i got completely drenched, while everyone else had like a small fraction of their pants/t-shirts wet of something minor like that. after we got off the ride, i was walking funnily for like 15 minutes, cos my pants felt funny dripping wet. hahaha...

i had a good time. it was a good break from school, i guess. i brought some plato reading to do, but i didn't even touch it. partly due to no choice, cos by the time i was going to read, i realised that i left my glasses behind, and my eyes were hurting from prolonged wear of my contacts. heh, it's destiny, i say. heh.

at one point, we were lying/sitting in the sun, waiting for tk to come back with dry clothes [it's a long story again, nothing to do with thunder river.] we were outside union station, where there was this beautiful fountain. when the wind got a little strong, we had little sprinklets of water falling on us. it felt so good. the harmony of the warm sunrays on my body, the tiny speckles of water that disappeared quickly, the silence, my heart beat. the moment lasted only like 1 minute, but i was contented.

i feel almost like i didn't go away, since the trip was so short. ah, but it's the small differences that constantly remind me. the slightly itchy sun burnt skin on my shoulders. the temporary tattoo on my right arm. the rejuvenated spirits.

i feel good. :)