Behold the endless abyss.

Shared grief is half the sorrow, but happiness when shared, is doubled.

Came across this mail sent to me about the story of 2 ill men in the hospital. One was blind but he would paint a super nice picture about the things he “saw” through the window near his bed to the other one who wasn’t by that window and didn’t know he was blind. When the blind one passed away and the other one moved next to the window, he found out the window faced a blank wall and the blind man who had tried to enliven his world by telling him about all the activities and colours of the world outside couldn’t actually “see” all the things he had described, but did so anyway to encourage the other man. And finally, the story just want to bring across the point that there is tremendous happiness in making others happy, despite our own situations. If you want to feel rich, just count all of the things you have that money can’t buy.

Alright, so I’m more or less done with A Levels. Taking this chance here to drop by and say Hi… One more paper to go… Funny how I don’t look as forward to the end of it as many others do… It’s going to be a new stage of life isn’t it? No longer “sheltered” under the education system. More challenges, more uncertainty ahead. It’ll take time to adjust and adapt… I hope I’ll be able to cope well with it all… And finally there’s the big question of deciding where to really go from there… It’s hard to envisage how it might all happen. There’s this tinge of insecurity, okay maybe much more than… but I don’t like to express it out so blatantly… so let’s just use cover it up with “tinge”… Pretending that it’s only a teeny weeny bit cuz I don’t want this to become an excuse for anything not done well enough.

Exams wise, I don’t wish to comment much about it cuz it has always been this way all along… An one-off attempt, maybe not really since we have more than one paper per subject, to assess most, if not all, of the things you know in a mere few hours spread across several weeks. Fortunate or not for you to decide, results judge us wholly as a person, in the workplace, in society. But well… it’s the worst assesment of an individual’s worth, except for all others… My Physics tutor has been doing some serious fanning to get us moving. He did it in good sense, but I don’t always take it very positively… Things like how you’ve got to work hard to step on others to get what you want, in this context, a place in University. Analogies like how if the person seated beside you in class can get in, you can’t. That’s how harsh reality is and I don’t like that feeling… But you can’t deny he makes sense. It’s all about relativity in this sense isn’t it. The A grade that you get, if you happen to, is because there’re others who’re below par that led you to obtain that grade. I’m sure no one wants to be at the rock bottom but inevitably, there has to be one when exams try to set us apart.

I think the best thing that has happened to me these 2 years was befriending genuine people that has made my life in college so much more bearable. Reassurances from a cute one who intends to become a baker or garbologist who is super talented in pronouncing “GP” as “JeePee”, “GC” as “G-Sheeh”, “xie2dai4″ as “xue2dai4″, “orange” as “orleng”, and finds nothing perfectly wrong with it, who uses her hand to cover her forehead in a very “paiseh” manner whenever she’s shy, who’ll hold on to my shirt and hide behind me whenever there’s a teacher in front, and we’ll tremble together… It’s because of her that I felt I became somewhat braver for her sake. And another cute one who plays bball like rugby, hugging the ball with all her life running towards the other end of the court when everyone else is totally amused by her actions and the teacher is frantically blowing her whistle, who becomes the loudspeaker when I ran out of bravery, who surprisingly has exceptionally high centre of gravity and keeps falling during PE lessons, NEAR me, giving the teacher the illusion that I’m a hazard… I’ve grown because of them. All the authentic moments they’ve brought me made me feel so fortunate. I know it’s going to be worse out there, with even more cut-throat compeition. But I feel so lucky as I looked back.

These 2 years perhaps wan’t as negative as I started out thinking it would be. Even though I can’t bring myself to share as close a relationship as the rest do with teachers because I feel somewhat distanced with them, as in, they’ll always be people I respect and it’s hard to cross that line and become “buddies” if you get what I mean, I think I’ll not forget all the things they’ve done in our best interests. It’ll be hard to forget my GP, also civics tutor’s “so how” which left the 2 cute ones I mentioned above and me puzzled, looking blankly at one another, scratching our heads trying to think of better answers, and the way and number of times she calls my name; my chem tutor’s “clap-clap”, push up glasses, “open-fringe” action before he starts the tutorial, who’s always hungry, but who sacrificed his lunch time to drop me a call to answer a question he looked up on; temperamental maths tutor who claimed to use our tutorials as beddings for his two hamsters called “Nitrogen” and “Oxygen”; who is very particular about table arrangements and punctuality and shares a lot of his KKK philosophies; Econs tutor, although she has retired, whose name suggests that she has a lamb (cuz “Mary has a little lamb…”), who has eyebrows that looked / \ which makes me feel a little sad everytime I look at her; and the phys tutor who dances and who sows discord among my classmates…

All that aside, I hope this emptiness I’m feeling right now will go away soon. There’re going to be lots to do in the upcoming days, experimenting and trying out different things, doing things I really like and hopefully I can be more sure of what I really want to make out of myself and where I really want to go after everything!