Of the days past and the days ahead!

There are a gazillion thoughts running through my mind now but I don't feel exactly lyrical, so I don't know how this blog post is going to turn out. Stuff like how your secondary school seems to mould you for life, about traveling, studying abroad, medicine, love-lust-infatuation...

First up: sec schools. At the risk of sounding elitist, I'd say that many people from those well known schools (and coincidentally higher ranked ones) do fit certain stereotypes. I can't really think of stereotypes for neighbourhood schools, but I can easily picture a typical ri/rgs/ny/tchs/acs/mgs etc. student. And this labels stick for jcs. You can easily pigeonhole people from hc/rj/nj/ac. Is it because of the longer school history and hence predominant culture? Many of these schools (especially secondary schools) have been around for a really long long time - so maybe they have had time to build up individual school cultures, free from the influences of prevailing education policies. And then these well known cultures attract the same kind of people over the years, which only serves to propagate them... Oh and the love (or lack of) between brother-sister schools.

(I really sound constipated. Typing this.)

When I was in primary 6, the hot topic was "Which secondary school do you want to go to?" and my answer was ny, which would always be followed by "erm, you don't look like the typical 华校 kind.. are you sure you want to go to ny?" Which was a pretty good assessment I'd say, because my chinese was utterly beyond redemption then - the examiner for one chinese oral exam asked if I was in EM1 after I stuttered through the passage, plus my command of English (at that time!) was pretty good. And then, I spent 4 years in ny struggling with chinese (pledge in chinese on Tuesdays and Thursdays, school song in chinese... chinese orchestra...) and another 2 years in hcjc (where I didn't have to struggle with chinese that much, but I'm still terrible at it.) and now, when I say I'm from ny/hc, people aren't surprised, because I have that kind of "look". 6 years, and I now have the "look". Right.

My command of chinese is still terrible, but at least I don't wince as much when I have to use it. Or maybe my skin just got thicker.

Ger really wants to go on SEP but the number of applicants for the limited number of spaces suggests otherwise. Sigh. Sometimes I wonder why I want to go away so much. Because it gives me a clean slate, even if it is for a while?

In my lifetime, I'd really like to visit the following countries: US/Canada for studies or work (and beautiful nature galore); backpack Cambodia/Vietnam/Thailand for the adventure of it; Mongolia/Ghana for medical volunteer/internship work; China (Yunnan especially) and Japan (Kyoto, Hokkaido) for the sightseeing; Germany and France for the language.

Gladys said I'm desperate. I'm erm, a bit stunned, because I'm not! Being attached is nice, but so is singlehood =P Really! Its pretty liberating, in a sense: no worries about what the parents think - great stressor, that was, no counting of hour differences, no more bringing my laptop to campus just for conversation's sake plus packing of webcam, no missing and pining and wondering how I'm ever going to move over in future etc. My life is starting to feel like it truly belongs to me again =) Oh, plus I'm free to flirt (If I ever figure out how to) and discretely check out guys, minus the guilt. (Doesn't sound like a very geraldine comment, does it? Hehe.)

I am really looking forward to the next few days! Besides the food and getting fat, there's going to be a good number of events coming up, like meeting up with the hcco seniors (I know the 2-3 of us from my batch are going to look sooooo extra but its okay) and with my beloved 6R people again and supper date with nat and karin and likely s71 gathering again! The only downside is that I probably might end up missing a portion of cg on wednesday because of a meeting. Then again, its for the advancement of the arts...

What is co to me? When I was younger (read: 13-18) I could say it was my lifeblood, and mean it. It was my safety valve - it pushed me, it gave me much stress, but it also kept me sane, taught me so much. If I was unhappy, my mood always lifted after practice, be it personal or official practice time. Now, music still lifts my mood, but not by very much - perhaps its the repertoire haha - I've already memorised 90% of my scores. Perhaps its what I'm doing: when I took office I wanted to make a difference, but I ran into so many issues, I think I'm going to go down in history as one of the lousiest office holders. WE are going to go down as one of the lousiest excos. I feel very haunted whenever Saturday rolls around, it feels like carrying the collective disapproval of seniors and alumni, knowing that we are already condemned. Its like a vicious cycle, see.
What I will treasure from this one year of service would be knowing some seniors better (source of stress, notwithstanding), working with my exco over stuff like music camp and the joke of a bazaar (profit: $1) and the within-cfa interactions, especially with guitar. Its quite weird, see: prior to taking office I never really noticed the different cfa groups around, and so the retreat was a huge eye opener - I really felt like a frog in the well trying so hard to disguise my non-existent knowledge of the other groups. And how cfa was run. And I never realised that co and guitar had so similar practice times - in fact I never noticed them around until after the retreat and then suddenly -poof- they're around every Tuesday and Saturday. And we even shared the same genesis camp week.

My inspiration to blog just ran dry, so I'd stop here.