From the battlefield

Hi everybody, it's been over three months. Does anybody miss the blogger me? I don't know who actually reads this blog now, but I still keep it because it holds a lot of memories for me. It's sort of like an autobiography, in a very weird sense. Blogger tells me that there are 19 people following the blog, but the thing is I don't know any of the 19. So, hi my 19 followers! Thank you for being interested in what I write, I really do hope to get to know you guys.

Anyway, why I am here? It's the middle of my exam period. Three papers down and two more to go. Not the best time to come blogging after a three months hiatus. But well, Blogger sent me an email saying that if I don't migrate over to some new system that they've got, they're gonna wipe out all my data. Hell, this blog's been around for almost 8 years now, I udon't want my data to get all wiped out. So yeah, I sort of did the migration thing and thought I might as well come and post something.

My life's been like a machine these days. Just running and running according to a sort of system. School, research, church, girlfriend, friends, family. I don't have much happening in my life. Just a lot of reading and writing, reading and writing. An occasional jog once in a while to get my mind off things, meeting my girlfriend for a nice meal or a simple movie in the house. That's about it.

Academia is slowly killing me. I'm so grade-oriented now that I am getting closer to graduation. And it doesn't help that I am a borderline first-class. Being that just puts so much pressure on me because I don't wanna spoil it right at the end of the race. It would really suck if over the next two semesters I drop back to being second-upper-class again. It would really really suck. And that's why I'm working my ass off to try and score as many As as possible, and that's not exactly a very easy thing to do. I'm not exactly very bright - I scored 18 points in my 'O' levels and in the 'A' levels, my grades were a horrible A, C, E. ACE, yeah I know the joke, but it wasn't a joke back in 2007. It was my future on the line. And it is only through God's grace that I somehow made it into university. And now I'm in university, it is through God's grace again that I'm on a run for first-class honours.

If there is anything that university has taught me, it is to bring me into focus. Focus on what I want for myself and the future, and then go for it. Never mind if I fall or fail, as long as I give it my best shot. The most important thing is to decide on what I want, and then go for it. It's like running a race. Back in the secondary school and JC days, I had no clue about what I want in the future. So I was just running aimlessly. And because of that, I didn't run very well. But now, I really can see the finishing line ahead of me. My dreams, my future. And I have to run for that. It's just two semesters now, and the run is becoming very tiring.

Research is confusing and difficult. Even after like nearly 7 months into the research, I only have a very small understanding of my research area. The topic is just so huge and deep, and the readings are really not easy to understand. But I try. It's all about trying now.

A few things that I'm looking forward to at this moment: the end of my exams, the arrival of some parcels that I ordered online, going for some epic movie screenings (Avengers, yes), and my summer internships.

Just can't wait.