i have some time to spare before lessons/lectures start, so its time to go on a lengthy monologue on life so far.
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in all honesty, i feel i got overconfident, and too oblivious which caused my own failings for this semester.
sure, by most people's definition it isn't exactly a failure but i still feel that it could had been much better, given that there were so many chances along the way and i still managed to fumble.
somehow, i feel like i kinda blew it. i got a tad too complacent after semester 1.
guess this is a good wake up call for me to realign my priorities and focus again, lest i commit the same faults again.
i don't want to commit the same error as i did back in jc, and i sure am tired of regretting.
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on a lighter note to the previous section, if luck is a commodity, then i believe i may have already exhausted all my luck back then in sem 1.
well, good luck gary!
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next semester will be a critical juncture, and it is essential that i do whatever in my power to make sure that i do the best i can.
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so this semester opened me to a new circle of friends.
its largely thanks to the english mod which was 1) an all-guys only class (which means everyone can basically crack potentially sexist jokes without repercussions and laugh) and 2) a very small class size (only 8 people out of a maximum of 16). under such conditions i think it was much easier to forge ties with people previously thought to be impossible.
oh and the ang moh lecturer was one of the coolest/slackest of all that i have encountered to date.
all of which i am pretty grateful for, as someone who doesn't actively seek for friends.
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i think in last year's post i mentioned about how great the medical library was.
it still is great, but there's a new #1 spot in my heart - music.
non-existent crowds (even their own goddamn students dont use their home library, go figure), comfy chairs, small, quiet.
to add on, whoever actually suggested placing a piano in the library for use should be awarded a medal for his/her ingenuity because it is one of the best ideas ever. it's one of the most underrated, and effective tool for messing around. i think i've sunked tens of hours into playing the piano for this semester while waiting for lectures to convene.
i like to compare music library as a sanctuary, as a place where i can seek refuge amidst all the chaos. its so peaceful to the point that it feels like time had almost stood still.
i think i have truly found my second home in nus now.
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those commencement banners being put up around campus reminds me of my brother's commencement ceremony 2-3 years ago.
and it also reminded me of a promise made to my mom back then.
(late afternoon at the university cultural centre, seated at the rear end of the hall with my mom)
me: so what tier is he (my brother)?
mom: second upper, as you can see from the booklet.
me: (insert random smacktalk), i can do better than that no sweat
mom: oh really, you sure about that?
me: yeah i'm going to one-up his by getting a better score than he does, you'll see it in 5 years time
(later i realize his cap was actually ~0.03 away from a first class).
that is why you should NEVER ever make any promises, gary!
(chances are she probably had forgetton about it, but promises being promises, once you made one you just have to see through it to the bitter end)
(at least that's what promises mean to me)
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i'll probably talk more about special semester in the next post (possibly december 31 again?) , after both part I and II are completed.
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did some spring cleaning on my room.
started right after lunch at 1pm, and it took me 5 hours to complete.
among some of the things i thought was interesting-
1) i still have my mjc badge intact (which i thought was pretty impressive, thought i threw that away), still shiny as ever. also, i still had that open house card as well which was also in pristine condition. (no, i am not tossing those away)
2)i finally decided to toss most (~85%) of my jc notes, once and for all. room's getting too cramped anyway, given my habit of buying books from kino after each exam. not sure why this is a key point, but perhaps its proof that i'm not a hoarder like my dad is (which brings me to another topic to be discussed later)
3)upon cursory inspection, the percentage breakdown of the genre of books i have are as follow:
- fiction - 5% (figures, not exactly into fantasy in prose form)
- random books (i.e. books that tells you 1001 silly ways to kill yourself) - 20%
- commentaries (ramblings by certain famous people like jeremy clarkson) - 15%
- probabilities (yes i actually have these kind of books which probably makes me a sad, miserable, and insufferable fellow) - 20%
- philo stuff - 25% (reading out of leisure now, which is MUCH better than being tested for it)
- history books - 15% (i actually thought i had a lot of books on history but that doesn't seem to be the case)
4) the amount of thrash thrown was... a lot as a consequence of throwing stacks after stacks of paper. while throwing i saw some of my past exam paper, some of the answers gave me a nice laugh (especially the 8 mark question on probability - i remember the teacher actually giving a tick to me and my friend ONLY (two of us out of the entire cohort) for the answer when it was actually wrong upon further scrutiny, and both of us made a pact not to report it to the teacher. good times.)
cleaning is time consuming, but there is some degree of satisfaction to be derived from it if done well.
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i had a chat with a friend.
the topic of conversation varied considerably, from school to both of our lives.
then the topic somehow switched to the topic of marriage/finding a girlfriend (which i guess is a common topic to be talked among guys although i share faint interest in it (there are more pressing things to consider!))
he did mentioned that 'if you don't find one during uni times you're pretty much going alone' and that 'marriage is the goal in life' .
i can understand why he said that; i will not discount that it would be significantly harder once one is out of school, but i have an issue with his second claim - who says marriage is the goal?
i mean that's just the same as saying those who remained single failed in life which makes no sense whatsoever. moreover, surely marriage can't be the end-point; its only the beginning of a very, very long road to ... i don't even know where it leads but you can bet it's gonna be god damn long alright.
and having experienced a fair share of PTSD mothers (thanks to occasionally helping my mom as a head nurse, and no my mom does NOT have ptsd), i am of the opinion that if one only considers marriage as the end point, then he/she clearly hasn't thought through things well enough.
fuck me, i'm not even sure why i'm a tad miffed over this even though this has no concern with me!
(oh and of course i did not rebutt his claim during the conversation; sure i did disagree but i did not go so far as to enforce my opinion on him, which would be silly on my part)
(jeez, i think i acquired most of my medical knowledge from my mom)
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the process of cleaning my room has brought up a topic that came up to my mind - nostalgia.
the only reason why i kept those jc notes was mostly because i thought they were probably useful during uni (which they weren't for the most part) and that i had a bit of nostalgia.
don't get me wrong, nostalgia is okay in my books, its fine to have some of it. the thing with nostalgia is that when it actually impedes oneself in terms of potential, in terms of growth or self-betterment that is where i draw the line in the sand and say that nostalgia can be harmful, especially so if it prevents one from making beneficial changes.
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this then leads me into another idea that floated my mind - change.
i decided to take a run around tampines, from my house to tpjc/dunman. (which amounted to approximately 5km after crude estimations), just to keep myself amused (because running in the same park gets awfully boring after some time), and to see what has changed.
here's a laundry list.
- mrt station (i think?) being build opposite tpjc, tons of construction going on
- the bubble tea store is now a dominos!
- dunman apparently look much bigger than before which is odd but okay
- the food court is now a departmental store
- the western store seem to have switched locations from the right to the left side of the walkway
well actually alright it isnt that much of a list but yeah there are some visible changes now compared to a few years ago.
all these prove two things -
1) changes take place whether you like it or not
2) changes are unavoidable
on second thoughts both points seem to be the same but yeah, it serves to remind me that i can't just keep things as status quo forever and not progress; i also have to change too if i am to actually improve myself.
as uncomfortable this may be, i am painfully aware that its a necessary evil.
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i always feel that i'm living on borrowed time.
sometimes i do wonder what would happen had i actually died back then. (no it wasn't suicide, it was an actual accident i must insist) (man, this makes for a interesting thought experiment)
someone else would probably take my place in secondary school, and subsequently junior college, someone else would be able to affect the dynamics of the classroom quite differently from what i did.. and so on and so forth, the list never ends (since its all hypothetical).
frankly speaking, i would be happy to die sooner than later. perhaps by the age of 30?
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on the topic of death, i still stick with the opinion that the hospital is the best place to actually understand and learn humility.
i had to visit my grandmother who was warded for minor chest pains due to the haze(which was fortunately a false alarm) (she's already discharged and well at home, where she always want to be).
because her ward wasn't an a ward like my mom back then in end 2011 at ttsh, she had to rest with four other elderly people in the same room. of all the 5 elderly people in the room, i can safely say that my grandmother was the best of shapes compared to the rest.
i find it interesting that the physical body itself (note that this is a distinction from a person's mental will) is designed to live/survive, by struggling to breathe non-stop even if it gets difficult until it finally gives up. incidentally, thats one of the symptoms of lung failure where you could tell by their very heavy breathing like as if they're gasping for air.
i can only hope that it goes well for the rest, or that their deaths be as peaceful as possible.
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a year has passed now, and i'm still struggling to understand myself better. there's still so many things i don't know about myself in all honesty.
3 more years. lets see if its even possible to get definitive answers while studying in nus.
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i stumbled upon a short animation flim called 言の葉の庭 / the garden of words.
the animation was sublime, and the story line pretty decent for a 'slice-of-life'/romance flim.
but what actually left me impressed was the piano soundtrack itself which was made by this fine gentleman called daisuke kashiwa. (yes i like piano and/or jazz)
its a single soundtrack 14 minutes long, piano solo. he manages to convey a swirling mix of urgency, sadness and wistfulness into one single piano piece and does it very, very well.
so i decided to look into more of his works, and that is where i think i might have found the chaos theory equivalent of music.
enter stella and write once, run melos. two pieces of... alternative music (not exactly sure how to classify this kind of music) 36 and 26 minutes long respectively, which is very long (most music tend to vary from 3-10 minutes tops, give or take +/- 5mins).
what actually surprises me is that he actually throws in actual static sound (which actually threw me off the first time i heard it, thinking that the music file is corrupted), and random sounds as part of the mix into the music but funnily enough, it actually bloody works! it sounded really good.
well, guess there's always something new to discover on the internet everyday.
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piano exams in a months time.
gotta get ready gary, and above all, just like school life, have fun.
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some people did asked me why in the world i am taking piano while in university.
their concerns have basis i must admit, since time is a valuable commodity in university.
to which i can only say that i had a deprived childhood, and that i'm just trying to pick up something that i had always wanted to for quite a while, but lacked the courage to do so.
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i end off with a quote from a professor that i had a chat with before.
the topic of conversation was "why are laws designed to be mindbogglingly longwinded and boring".
his reply was as follow -
"law-makers create laws to have hundred of pages, they make it so long and draggy such that the average layperson wouldn't be interested in it. because of that, lawmakers are able to pass through laws and constitutions much more easier since there is little opposition from the ground (since people just couldn't be bothered with having to read tons and tons of verbose)."
so this entire post/blog is an exercise in verbose, designed to bore everyone except myself. score!
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