I am going to hand in my Honours dissertation tomorrow, effectively completing my university education. It’s surreal, bittersweet… You name it, I feel it. In my writing, at several moments, I remembered you. Taken from my thesis acknowledgements:

My supervisor, Dr. Rebecca Suter, who has been simply indispensable in the past year – my sincerest thanks and deepest appreciation for your unceasing patience, graciousness and optimism, as well as your valued tutelage and guidance in and outside of this Honours programme. Having you as a supervisor has been a joy, indeed. Domo arigato, sensei.

Davina and Tina, my partners in crime during this pivotal stage of our lives – as we near the end of the different phases of our university education, having still kept our sanity, I am reminded of how much your companionship has meant to me. Thank you for the study sessions, text messages and cups of coffee throughout the year (not forgetting the previous three); all of which have given me the encouragement and energy to press on.

Jessie, Rosa, Preethi, William, David and Elizabeth – all blessed with analytical minds and wonderful personalities, whose corresponding journeys have been a great source of support. I hope our paths will cross in the future.

Ernest, Eliss and my cell members – I have never witnessed more generosity and willingness of heart, nor have I experienced a dull moment with you. Thank you for the laughs on the weekend and your prayers during the week. Keep in touch!

Kay-Lene, my dearest and ever-present ‘old same’ – thank you for sympathising; for listening to my gripes; and for not holding it against me when I do not have the time to hear yours. I am more grateful for you than I am able to express.

Gerard and Amy, my encyclopaedias and voices of reason – thank you for the sage advice you have dispensed, even before I undertook this thesis project.

Roger F., excellence personified – to me, he is the archetype of hard work and strength of mind.

My parents and siblings, for your unconditional love – words are not enough to convey my indebtedness to the affirmation you have shown in my choices.

Last but not least, my Almighty God – the comfort during my most uninspired days and my beacon in the darkest of circumstances. You have never left my side.

It took me a day to figure out my bearings between Zen and devastation, but I am miraculously still alive after the US Open men’s final. You just learn not to sweat the small stuff – marriage (boo hoo!), Roland Garros, Wimbledon, Grand Slams record, Career Slam, World Number 1, fatherhood; everything else is icing on an already sweet cake. It helps that I have gained impenetrable armour over the past year and if I can survive those setbacks…

What can I say? Composing this will either serve as much-needed therapy, or plunge me into severe melancholia (skyrocket or nosedive, remember?). I read match analyses and reactions; I do not write them. I am neither a commentator, nor a journalist (yet) – I am a die-hard fan. Just as how the wind kept shifting during the match, both literally and figuratively, so did my emotions. By the end of it, when Juan Martin Del Potro (his name appears first in this post, because his win was deserved) collapsed on the court, I reached a new spiritual plane… That, or I must have taken a chill pill some time between the fourth and fifth sets.

Roger Federer remains superhuman, so there’s no reason for my fandom to take a turn for the half-ass. Even so, waking up at 5 am to make a trip to the casino counts as one of the crazier things I have done in the name of ‘Fedophilia’. Do I regret putting in such effort only to see him lose? Not in the slightest! Will Federer make it 16 Grand Slams? You’d better believe it, baby! Allez!

“[...] and if you are not a tennis person, I suspect this may be somewhat hard to fathom – the idea that watching two men spend that many hours hitting a ball could actually make your heart pound so hard that you have to keep jumping up and yelling and grabbing your own head.”

I live and die with Roger Federer’s matches. When you factor in the year-long tennis season, multiplied by the number of years I’ve supported this player, I have long surpassed that clichéd expression about a cat’s nine lives. Little good comes out of being so emotionally invested in tennis. My once-upon-a-time harmless support for Federer has morphed into full-blown love for the sport. If I thought my level of fandom at the Australian Open was dangerous, then what I feel now is bordering on lunacy. Federer’s performance at Flushing Meadows will either send me skyrocketing to new stratospheres, or nosediving into a reality where Federer loses in Grand Slams.

I suppose I cannot bring up a major loss without following it up with the next natural thought; Federer’s ‘unanswered question’: Rafael Nadal. My pendulum-like relationship with Nadal swings from fire-breathing hate to jaw-dropping admiration – I hold him responsible for all of my tennis-related mental breakdowns, but his tenacity is why he is another exception to my ‘exclusively Federer’ posts.

However, loyalties do not fade quickly, so that is all I will say about the Spaniard.

And this post for that matter. Every time I start something that is beyond match narration, I meander and end up stopping – why else do you think I can spew play-by-play Tweets, but hardly anything about the aftermath? It’s hard to shut me up when it comes to the analysis, but to encapsulate the awesomeness (whoa, that’s a legit word) of Federer… Words fail me.

Put simply, there is no satisfactory way to describe the Roddick-Federer Wimbledon final.

I usually am very stingy about including other players in a Roger Federer post, but I would be remissed if I did not mention Andy Roddick’s glorious display of an arsenal of skills throughout the tournament, which stunned even the most staunch of naysayers. As predicted, Roddick made Federer work for it. Their final match was a far cry from the one in 2004, when Roddick’s kitchen sink was unceremoniously rebounded by Federer’s bathtub – this time, Roddick brought along other household utilities. He swept aside Tomas Berdych, Lleyton Hewitt and Andy Murray – not easy feats by any means – and despite the popular pre-match opinion, it was a near-possible task for Roddick to scale and conquer the Swiss Alp, almost too close for comfort in the first and fourth sets. As devoted as I am to ‘Rog’, it is such a pity to see Roddick lose after an agonising 30-game fifth set, which he really didn’t deserve.

Perhaps the poem by Rudyard Kipling, emblazoned in the Wimbledon clubhouse, best surmises Roddick’s comeback, as well as Federer’s reascent to greatness (old married dudes have still got it!). I must admit that I am ‘ye of little faith’ – never in my time spent in wishful thought did I believe that 2009 would be the year Federer reclaimed his Wimbledon and World Number 1 titles, the latter being an unprecedented achievement. His victory at Roland Garros compensated for the Australian Open heartbreak and it buoyed my self-assurance of a Federer win, but that soon plummeted after the first set and brought back the nightmare of last year’s epic match. To see how visibly subdued I was, you wouldn’t know the havoc that was going through my mind until Roddick served the forehand that sent the ball into oblivion.

My head still throbs; my eyes are bloodshot from weeping; my backside aches from six hours of sitting; my heart is threatening an aneurism; and my body has yet to recover from two weeks of sleep-deprived nights. When it comes to Federer, it is ‘no holds barred’ – nothing is too long, too outlandish, too emotional, too stark raving mad… Many people cannot take me seriously, but there are reasons why he is worthy of the fanfare – 20 Grand Slam finals, 15 Grand Slams, Career Slam, World Number 1.

By no stretch of the imagination, Roger Federer’s win at Roland Garros was extraordinary, not to mention a long time coming. Having never won the Coupe des Mousquetaires, made worse by his fall slight decline from greatness in 2008, this makes his victory even sweeter. As a Federer fanatic, I am tired of seeking written therapy after his losses, so it is appropriate (and only mildly crazy) that I, too, am putting so much significance into this post.

Joachim and I, being hardcore tennis geeks who don’t actually play the sport, place an unhealthy amount of weight on superstition and fate. I can’t speak for Joachim and his karmic relationship with Rafael Nadal, but when it comes to Federer, I strongly believe in the butterfly effect… And wearing lucky underwear. Very few could have predicted that he would equal Pete Sampras’ record of 14 Grand Slams on this clay surface… I’m serious – Federer was meant to win!

The Fed Express (who else thought it was destiny that the FedEx logo was brazenly displayed on the sponsorship boards?) forced me to ignite my interest in this tournament, giving me the last-minute opportunity to watch the match with Davina (and 100 strangers) at Star City in my last year in Australia, an exhilarating experience I would have foregone any other time. Then, only do I realise that there is something better than catching a final with your siblings at home (no offence to Vanessa and Christopher).

Shot-in-the-dark theories aside, I’m going with the simple and say that I’m happy to be writing about this particular Federer achievement. I’m happy to have seen a semblance of his signature style of graceful poetry. I’m happy that he shrugged off the pressures of the Grand Slams record and Career Slam laurel, as well as the momentary scare suffered in the second set, to win his first French Open title. I’m happy he’s ecstatic.

I realised that nothing prepares you for death, not even when you know it’s coming in the midst of the drawn-out process of cancer.

My aunt passed away on Saturday morning – the grief is unexplainable; more painful than any heartbreak I have borne. I keep thinking that this is Auntie Susan – the one who always made me feel good about myself; the one who loved me like her own; the one with two wonderful children, whom I greatly admire; the one who I look forward to seeing during Chinese New Year; the one who gave the best Christmas presents; the one who performed many acts of generosity; the coool and fun one. Not a day goes by that I don’t miss or remember her; also present is this anger that He took her too soon.

But this is the same Auntie Susan with the unwavering faith, who, in spite of the circumstances, found reasons to praise God. She is still teaching me to believe in His almighty love and grace.

Susan Quay, you rocked my world.

It took me a while to get to this point, but here I am…

It just hit me that this is my last year in Sydney; many people, despite having featured so prominently, I might never see again.

Am I suppose to experience fear? It throws off the equilibrium I have carefully arranged, not to mention everything I have held close to my heart.

And to say it like it is… Although I almost always choose to curse silently.

It comes across as an excuse for bad behaviour, only because I am shamelessly turning it on its head. But I do feel that I need one – an excuse; a reason, justification; whatever – for the way I am disabling my life with ego and self-love.

Why I lose control I do not know.

My inner demons will unleash themselves, throwing me into the black hole which my own hands have dug.