Circle

If you have lived in a country so completely unlike your own and you were unable to communicate, perhaps you too would spend a lot more time thinking and learning about the world around you than savouring the tastes of wine. You see patterns, you set up theories, you understand from others what you can get away with and what you can’t. You evaluate what you do and you learn from your mistakes. You learn what not to say to others, and when not to say anything at all, which was most of the time be

Hey! Yeah, I quite enjoyed writing the Mormon encounter, as I had been approached a few times myself... hehe. Some of those guys can be very cute, but they generally cower when asked about gay people lol. I also had thought that it is untenable to continue Dan having problems with David's relationship and trying to destroy it as part of the conundrum - an ugly direction for sure, and not what I'm trying to say with this story. I think that at some point, we all have to accept that someone we like is in a relationship with another. Learning to accept and move on is a far better lesson than have Dan plotting and scheming. As always, thanks for your kind review and I'm glad the Mormon guys entertained you. .

Ohai! . Glad it is working as intended now . More of Chris next chapter .

Hi! Thank you for the review . I think part of what 'growing up' is about is the continued search and confirmation of identity. In this case, that Dan is from HK and his own sexuality both have a part to play and I'm glad what I'd done here pulled off on you . Hehe, perhaps because I have so much to get across I can't be bogged down in teenage angst . I think I want to do something new with a well-established genre. The thought bubbles too I like very much also . Thank you so much for reading!

Imagine that nobody ever calls or texts you because you don’t give out your number and you don’t understand why people would want your number anyway. That it costs to use the phone and you remember being told not to use up the credit in case of emergencies. That you have enjoyed a few years of calm and peace in your own room. On Saturday morning my phone began to vibrate, and make strange noises as though about to explode into a thousand pieces. I almost had a heart attack, right there and then

An interesting concept! I think for me, the act of reading a story and the act of playing video games are so wildly different that I can't draw any correlations between the two. When someone reads a story, and essentially an author's personal expression, they derive from it their own meanings and their takes on the story - in essence the story acts as a mirror and reflects what the reader already has inside him. Video games however, usually is an entertainment without the ultimate goal of trying to stimulate their targets in an intellectual way. Therefore, because the two are so different (at least for me), even the 'escapism' and 'realism' in both are different and not usually interchangeable. Personally I like realism in stories - in essence, stories that feel real. Stories of course are artificial and not real in general, but if it convinces me as something that could have happened and the characters feel real, then I'm going to be drawn to it. Vampires, Zombies and Black Jewels Trilogy didn't do much for me as a result. However I also like Dragon Age Origins... I like the story. I liked Kotor 1 + 2. Those are fantasy-based. Another fantasy-based game but slightly more realistic is probably Sims 3, which I also play. In it, I can repeatedly click a button to flirt with guys and then click 'WooHoo!' and then get Lifetime happiness points. To make it worse, I also play World of Tanks - which is not fantasy-based at all - and enjoy immensely the act of destroying other people's tanks, and my crew shouting 'Penetration'! So in conclusion, if I feel like being nice, I'd go on The Sims 3, grab a guy and make-out with him. If I feel like being mean, I'd go on Tanks and blow up other people's tanks with my big gun (Or penetrate, whichever you prefer) and have other guys curse 'F*** you!' at me :P :D.

You have a masochistic side? O_o. Never mind, I don't wanna know :D. I'm glad Chris is growing on you .

Hey! I love such intelligent readings! Lol, you're right. Dan is a little cynical .

Hey Lisa, thanks for the review! I'm glad you're looking forward to the next one... I like the next one too .

For the first time in years I wasn’t spending my break time in the library – not that I had a choice. I must find David, and before Chris could say a word about me. I would be there to foil his plans. God, I hate this guy. My knuckles turned white at his name. But in my heart of hearts, it was more fear than anger that I was feeling. The fear of what he could do. The fear of the unknown. I went outside. The school yard was of harsh concrete covered in chewing gum patches of various sizes and sh

Wonderful story, Fishie. You have written a tale of sublime beauty, witty in conception, and there was not a single moment where it failed to move. I find it written in an utterly heartfelt and convincing way that I felt some exceptional storytelling has taken place, and yet it would probably take me far longer to examine the piece in full for it to yield its true essence. While I did not cry, you have deliberately constructed this story to engineer this effect, which I must say you have extremely successful. To me, I felt the piece portrayed rather well the fragility of relationships and understanding through the fabrics of time. How time can be stretched to infinity when spent with the special someone or, how to spend the last hours of our lives are deep rooted themes and I had been meaning to explore those, just haven’t had the time yet! Here you masterfully demonstrated the concepts, tied-in, mirrored many small parts of this short story into a well-crafted and compelling tale, with of course no small thinking on the author’s behalf before evening imagining to tackle such a theme, is highly commendable. I loved the pace of the story. It was unfolding with grace, poise and direction. The characterisations of the protagonists were fantastic. I also love your verbosity – there were lovely descriptions, which when combined with the subject matter, really made for a powerful read. However, I feel there are rooms for improvement, which apart from some typos, there weren’t all that many. But I believe, at least in my opinion, if you read this and understand where I am coming from, it may be of benefit. Callen's gleaming, dark blue, carnauba-waxed Ford Flex tipped sideways over the rocky edge in a puff of snowflakes, suspended in the frozen air, overlooking the stormy Pacific Ocean with a billion cobalt waves that reached up at him. Chapter one is perhaps the one chapter I feel the least convinced. Perhaps when I first read a story I am not automatically sympathetic with the characters and you have not yet ‘bought me in’ and thus I may be more critical than usual. But I find this line here (and sparingly in other places of the story) not so effective for a few reasons. While from the storytelling perspective (and I’m also sensing your intentions here) are correct and noble, the overstatement of ‘a billion cobalt waves’ did not act to increase the impact, excitement, or horror of the accident. Choosing when to overstate and when to understate is essential to deliver maximum impact. For example, we should be horrified, or at least be thrilled and unsettled by the horror of this accident, yet the verbosity natures of ‘gleaming’, ‘dark blue’, ‘carnauba-waxed’ do not add to your primary objectives in a storytelling point of view, nor do they add to character development. A distraction from the action perhaps, but not effective in a scene like this. I am not sure the sentence structure here also suited your intention, if it is that at all. However, if you compare this with the Sage crash scene, I believe you will notice a difference, and I much prefer the latter. His eyes, brown as he remembered, were almost a black in the high contrast lighting. Typo: As He ran a gloved hand through his short, ink-black hair and yawned There is a slightly more…organic and natural to introduce hair colours, I think. It is the second time you made a character run his hand through his hair to show us his hair colour! For example, in flashbacks and various points of view changes, you already showed us Callen is blond. We don’t HAVE to know what hair colour our protagonists have right at the start. Readers fall in love with how the character feels usually, and not their physical descriptions. Sage's eyes widened in shock. Very effective. I love sentences like these. Sage had chosen a flat rock to hurl into the water when he saw a boy riding a small black bike with tremendous speed along the North trail I love the irony in this. In fact, with the dead cat amongst other things, this story hold itself up in unity, which is, in the storytelling and plotting point of view, masterfully crafted. He was golden all over – golden shirt, golden skin, golden hair that absorbed the sunlight. This is what I was referring to here about description. I think we were described Callen had blond hair for at least three times. And the thing is, this is much more natural than have Callen run his hand through his hair. However, here I think you mean ‘reflect’ the sunlight, not absorb. By the end of the fifth run, Sage hadn't liked the sled rides any more – but he looked forwards to the few seconds of respite that he had, nestled between Callen's legs and warmth that wrapped around him. Typo: Looked forward. And then suddenly, realization dawned on him. The saline smell of his hands, his forehead. A rustling, like cards thrown into the air, rushed into his ears, and at once, things clicked into place. Love this. You held the suspense inside two sentences, gripped and compelled readers to the next paragraph. This approach really would have worked marvelously in chapter one. Oh. I think I stopped making notes half way through. Never mind. But you certainly have a honed writing style and a developed voice as a writer. Stylistically it was perfect for a story like this. It’s not every day that I get to read words with such emotion attached to them – one of your special skills, no doubt. Be proud, my friend! You have brought me great pleasure today. Thank you for writing this wonderful story for us all to enjoy.

Hi! Thank you for an intelligent and perceptive review and read of the chapter! Yes, Dan is not on friendly terms with Chris and certainly doesn't know how to handle social interactions particularly when it comes to David. I guess what I was trying to say was that action, although only part of a picture, is still the only thing others will judge you by. Hey, maybe Chris DID check David out, just that Dan was too preoccupied to notice . I admit the the three sets of baby items did not really add anything to the story as it merely justified why he had no siblings. Again, perhaps because I never had to make plans to conceive children, here I seemed to have sacrificed a degree of realism to suit a storytelling objective, which is not good, of course . I think the main thing with Dan's thought patterns is that, to sum up in one word, it is negative. He assumes a negative result at the end of a social interaction. That the ambiguous statement his dad said and that his parents' eyes 'opened in complete sync' after grace could be enough for him to draw a link to a negative outcome for himself. Weird but that's how some minds work! We perceive everything negatively and then we believe them. Having said all that though, I think Dan is still in an insecure position, preferring to treat this whole gay thing as a bit of a hypothesis. It will take something extraordinary to prove this hypothesis right or wrong, once and for all. Again, many thanks for the perceptive reading of the chapter!

Hey! Thanks so much for the review! You summed up the Teen minds perfectly! .

'If you’re having Chinese everyday, how the heck are you possibly so thin?’ A girl asked me this years ago. Who was she? I couldn’t remember her name. Probably someone from my first school. Anyway, I remembered telling her (although I was trying to be annoying) that because I was Chinese I was therefore immune to the effects of Chinese food. We invented it, you know. Lipids from Chinese food were broken down more quickly by those who had the inheritable Chinese gene – which I had and she didn’t

Ugh, they really ought to get rid of the Report button because as long as it's there I have a chance to press it accidentally. Anyway, hi! Thank you so much for reading! My writing skills are nowhere as good as they used to be, but thanks lol. I'm just glad I entertained you . Hope the unpleasant memories didn't stick around for long .

I'm surprised there are no WIlSon fans here!

Hi! I'm glad you like this chapter! Haha, my high school years are no different. And I think there's only ever ONE American Differences .

Hey! Thanks for the insightful review . Telling me which parts you liked certainly is helpful to me! Once again, thank you so much .

That's why I don't ask for people to Beta/edit my stuff

Omg? The author of French Kiss? What an honour! I'm flattered that you stopped by and read my story. Means a lot .

When David went into the room, he glanced around before picking a seat in the middle row in the centre of the room, with two spare seats on either side. He didn’t even hesitate before sitting down, like it was natural for him to sit there, like he knew even before he went into the room, that this was where he belonged. But that was not where I wanted to sit. I never liked sitting in the middle. I wanted to sit on the side like we did in form period. I had always sat there – it was where I belon

Thank you so much for reading

Hey, thanks so much for reading! Ng, technically, is pronounced either Mmm or Hmm with a stress on the first 'syllable'? I felt it was similar enough to 'unngh' to warrant using it as a substitution .

Thanks for reading . Was the British humour the 'Unngh' or something else?

Hey! Thank you for giving up some time in your busy schedule to read this . Dan LOVES to contemplate. If you love that about my stories you will see plenty more