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biography 
STEFFIStill thinking of a better Chinese character I should use for the title of this blog. And still thinking of an apt song to fill this space. |
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To Forget or Not?
Thursday, August 18, 2011 I heard That you're settled down That you Found a girl And you're Married now I heard That your dreams came true. Guess she gave you things I didn't give to you Old friend Why are you so shy? Ain't like you to hold back Or hide from the light I hate to turn up out of the blue uninvited But I couldn't stay away, I couldn't fight it. I had hoped you'd see my face and that you'd be reminded That for me it isn't over Never mind I'll find someone like you I wish nothing but the best for you too "Don't forget me", I beg "I'll remember", you said "Sometimes it lasts in love But sometimes it hurts instead." Sometimes it lasts in love But sometimes it hurts instead, Yeah. I don't know why, but for me it hurts not just sometimes, but everytime. ---------- I pray for courage to face the things that are beyond my control. I will be strong. I rejoice that God has a unique plan for everyone. One plan is not necessarily better or worse than another. I do not belong to the generation of INSTANT GRATIFICATION. I am not a child anymore, I should know what is good for me. Most importantly, God please teach me how to go with the flow. I hope I am going according to your plan. Amen. P.S. I must survive this sem!!!! No Holds Barred
Wednesday, December 29, 2010 Hello dear you :) I haven't exactly had a break ever since the end of exams. I only had a change of lifestyle. Now, as I'm sitting here typing this, I feel like I'm going to have a fever anytime from this flu I've been having. Let's see..., I 1) Undertook a massive springcleaning effort at home (it was one of the things I was itching to do when I was intensely studying) 2) Went to Egypt & Jordan - that easily shaved off a huge chunk of the holiday :P (I like how you don't have to do anything bcoz it's an obligation when you're on a holiday. The days just get by.) 3) Have been going out EVERYDAY since I came back from overseas. And trust me, it's exhausting! (at least for a homebody) I feel like I need to write bcoz I need to detox my mind before I embark on a new year. And these are some of the more poignant thoughts that I want to remember, in no particular order. NUMBER #1 Oprah Winfrey is going to lauch the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) come 1 Jan 2011. This is something vastly different from the tried-and-tested formula which made her famous for who she is today, bcoz this means goodbye to the Oprah show. I love this part of Fortune's interview with Oprah: "My fear about 'Will the people follow me?' - I'm past that," says Oprah. This past summer, she says, she was reading a magazine article about Michael Jackson and was riveted by a quote from a former colleague of the late superstar. The friend said that after Jackson released Thriller in 1982 and it became the all-time-best-selling album, he was paralyzed by the notion that he could never top that. "All the bells went off," says Oprah. "This is why I lived in fear about this network. I kept thinking I have to repeat the 25-year phenomenon of the Oprah show." She adds: "I don't want to be Michael Jackson." This whole paragraph really struck a chord in me. The truth is after I passed out from SJAB, I haven't really found a new direction. I'm still stuck in this phase of paralysis. My squadmates should understand that feeling of loss of direction after our passing-out parade, but the problem with me is I probably haven't moved on from then. I haven't found a new worthwhile anchor since then. And by the way, mugging does not count. Mugging does not satisfy me deeply enough. It is just a very useful & productive way of filling up all the white spaces. Mugging feels like a selfish activity, bcoz it's just for ME. In fact, sometimes I feel that it takes me away from loved ones & the things that I love to do. I miss the feeling of working hard for something bigger than myself. I miss the feeling of how something can magically marshall so much energy & strength within myself that I didn't even know I possessed. The harsh reality is that THE MAGIC IS GONE. I'm just stuck in limbo, waiting for a new emotionally fulfilling anchor to come along, so that I can recreate that same feeling of inspired productivity & satisfaction. But today, I realized that I can't keep waiting for something to happen, especially when I don't even know exactly what I'm looking for. And most importantly, as this article taught me, I should get over the obsession that I have to recreate that same level and same kind of inspired productivity & satisfaction. I have to accept that each undertaking in life is just going to be.. different and fulfilling in its own way. We can't force magic. We can only allow each undertaking to work its OWN magic. NUMBER #2 Over a family Christmas dinner, my uncle (my father's eldest brother) was sharing his life stories. He praised himself for being gifted - how he managed to be in the top 10 of the cohort every year. He noted a time when he said that this guy from the 2nd best class actually managed to overtake him (from the best class) and this suddenly spurred him to work hard. He beat that guy in the end. And then he went on about other memorable milestones in his life. And here's the interesting part. I posed him a question along these lines, "What if it turned out that you never could beat this guy from the 2nd best class, do you think you would actually have the confidence to achieve all the things that make who you are today?" He replied, "Yes." He said the most important thing in life is to have a vision & work towards that vision (at least 10 000 hours of work from Malcolm Gladwell's The Outliers). My uncle also said something that really excited me. I wasn't as excited about the content of what he said. I was more excited that someone actually shared the exact same sentiment as me & expressed it in the exact way I did. He said that life is a journey. After reaching a destination, you'll realize that there is yet another destination which you have to struggle & fight to reach. This was the exact concept (though not the exact words) which I was sharing with Jolynn! When I was in JC, I thought what was most important was to get straight As, get into a good university/ course & life is more or less settled for good. I was wrong. Straight As is only a ticket to a destination. After 'A' levels, there will be yet another battle that we have to go through in order to reach the next destination in life. We just KEEP FIGHTING. On a sidenote, I'm also secretly pleased that I could actually think of such a concept at a mere age of 19 vis-a-vis someone who has gone through the vicissitudes of life (you know, my uncle in his mid/late 50s). And to digress even more, we usually say that someone has a lost childhood right? I think I don't have a lost childhood. For one, I cried watching Rapunzel A Tangled Tale (a Disney fairytale!) and I love all the silly whimsical rides the most at Disneyland. I HAVE A LOST TEENAGEHOOD. I had a pretty good childhood (my parents brought me out every weekend). And for most times, I think like an adult. To reiterate, I HAVE A LOST TEENAGEHOOD. I don't know...It just felt like I skipped that angsty teenage phase totally! (Okay, maybe I had a reaaaaally short one - a few months when I was ten years old - when I outrightly thought that everything my father did was "irritating".) Maybe this can plausibly explain why I have less of a phobia interacting with children & adults than people my age. NUMBER #3 To recapitulate point NUMBER #2, life is a never-ending journey where we keep fighting. This is where the 4Cs from Education Minister, Dr Ng Eng Hen, become a timely reminder in case we are lost in the never-ending fight. The 4Cs are namely confidence, compassion, compartment & company. I think the third C, compartment, has the most to teach me. I mentioned JOKINGLY (which means that I do have other priorities like health, family and social life, though the time allocated to these priorities are dismally & disproportionately less than studying) that my life is just a mono-compartment. Haha, made up of studying, if you haven't already guessed. My uncle responded gravely that this is not good. He gave me an apt analogy. We are like ships cruising along the sea. Like a ship, our life should be made up of different compartments bcoz a mono-compartment ship would not be able to sail anymore if it's one & only compartment were to catch fire & get destroyed. Conversely, a ship with a few compartments would still be able to rely on its other compartments should one of its few compartments catch fire, and still be able to sail in the sea of life. Sometimes it really feels like the happiness in my life depended on how well I fare in law school. Which means to say that if I don't fare well, I'm doomed to unhappiness? Actually, I don't like dicussing about law sch at all. Law sch is hard. But I don't like telling people that either bcoz I'm working hard to be optimistic about law sch, and at times I do succeed. And the almost default response I get when I tell people that law sch is hard is, "But this is what you want to do right?" Yea, definitely (no sacarsm intended, by the way), but I wasn't expecting all the difficulty & competition when I made the choice (Suprisingly the part about how the legal fraternity is bitchy, as outsiders often think, has been very downplayed, in Singapore, in NUS, at least. Everyone has generally been very nice to each other which belies the inner turmoil everyone is going through I bet). Actually, the scariest part about law sch is how it fills me with self-doubt (hating something or someone is not half as debilitating as hating yourself). All my previously revealed (in GP & Economics) shortcomings come back to haunt me. "You write more in an explanatory style", "You have not proved anything up to this point", "your essay reads more like a summary", how I'm just not hitting the right point, how I understand the content but it's just the way I express myself (this part sucks the most). I. JUST. KEEP. HITTING. THE. WALL. Maybe I'm just stuck in a chimney and I should learn to stop moving sideways but up & down. Problem is, I have YET (thankfully, means there's still hope) figured a way to move up & down to escape the chimney. And it hits me the most when people tell me stuff like, "I thought you would do something like Medicine." This brings me back to the age-old quandary of how I do better in Sciences, but I'm really more fascinated with the Humanities. But to clear some misconception, Law is not entirely about Humanities, and as people in the legal frat would know, it's not about bombastic prose (definite no-no) or how many relevant examples you can raise but the LOGIC behind an argument that is grounded in precedent. It's a combination of skill sets from both the Sciences & Humanities. Just that I'm not doing well with the Humanities parts - how you persuade, how you organize & present your knowledge in a way that is most beneficial to you. God, please help the people whose strengths and interests simply don't converge. Sometimes I feel like I need superhuman conviction that I can overcome this. 10 000 hours. I'll be there. Watch me. Steffi, please promise yourself that you will not hit the wall, or at least hit the wall less, okay? After spending hours & hours poring over tons of reading, you better make sure that you write about them in a way that will give you the most returns after all the tears & late-nights you put in. And maybe, your number 1 priority should not be studying, but thinking instead? Read actively not passively! (Though it's understandly a feat considering the mountains of reading you have to go through; but remember, time is limited & you gotta make every effort count.) NUMBER #4 On to the fourth C, company. Dr Ng said that company in this case includes friends, family & a life partner. Much as I like the idea of the 4Cs, I feel that the part on "life partner" is just another government propaganda effort. I mean, seriously?!?! I know having a partner anchors you, but I'm sure there are other ways of finding happiness. I like this concept about how THE ONE should complement you, and not complete you. Kyna, if I'm not wrong, I got this idea from one of your articles. No one can make you complete, except yourself. If you need someone else to complete you, to define your self-worth, chances are your relationship will be based on neediness rather than true selfless love (is there really such a thing anyway? But I know everyone tries their best). And here's a summary of the guys in law sch (if any guy from law sch is reading this, remember I don't mean any of this personally!) which I thought was quite apt. Val was quite amused by this. They are: 1) Openly Gay (there's quite a high incidence of them than in any other institution I have been to) 2) Attached 3) Single BUT short :/ 4) Single BUT studying (lol, I'm not even considered mugger anymore in law sch!) NUMBER #5 When you're on a camel, follow the camel's gait. Love this quote. This was the essence which I distilled from my trip to Egypt & Jordan. Camels, especially one-hump camels, are one of the most HORRIFYING animals you can ride on. I really thought I could fall off anytime when I was on the camel. It didn't help that we did cases in Law about people falling off camels. As a result, I got myself in a bolt stiff position which I felt was the most secure for me - leaning backwards, my feet pressed squarely against the hanging feet latches, hands grabbing tightly onto the 15cm short vertical pole in front of me. I still felt like I was slipping though with every step that the camel took. I refused to budge from this bolt stiff position that I have chosen for myself. It made me feel the most secure. I was afraid of the risk of falling off should I just slightly let go. However, as the camel progressed further, I realized it was really easier if I just let myself ease into the camel's gait, i.e. move your body together with the camel's movement. I thought this reflected my life a lot? My life is all about planners, timetables, schedules, and to-do lists to adhere to. Yes, I admit to be a 100% control freak. It's like I would fail if I would just let go of these for the slightest bit. When my life would be so much easier & much more PRODUCTIVE if I just handled what came along my way instead of stubbornly staying in my bolt-stiff position like that's my sure-win formula. NUMBER #6 There was this great article about the tyranny of choice in The Economist. We live in a modernized world with a wealth of choices. So much so that our expectations have been inflated to such an extent that people think that the perfect choice exists. At a certain age, people have a sudden realization that life hasn't gone quite the way they intended, and they feel stuck. They are paralyzed by having too much choice. The anxiety comes from worrying about making the wrong choice. Having options seems to make people think they can have control over outcomes too. Sometimes, choosing is about learning to live without control. We make choices everyday, don't we? Choosing to study Law is one of the more life-changing choices. Till now, I still wonder whether Law was the right choice. Would I have been a more "successful" person in another place in another course? I don't know for sure, I'm not God, I can't see into the future. I don't regret the journey so far (4 months long? 6 months long if you include orientation), it was very painful no doubt, but fruitful in the sense that I have picked up some skills & I can feel myself changing. Though, in a practical sense, the time would have been "wasted" if I do ever change course (there was once this NUS mailer that came in notifying students that XX/XX/2010 was the deadline for application for change of course, & we joked in law sch that we kept the mailer in our inbox just in case we decide to change). Besides the known fact that we do have to live with our choices & make the best of it, this article from The Economist helped me realize (and maybe forgive myself a little more) that there is no such thing as a perfect choice, but an appropriate choice to be made at any moment in time. Law Rag 2010
Saturday, August 07, 2010 Now that Law Rag is really over, I don't regret burning 2 months of holidays just going to school everyday doing the same dance over & over again. I initially joined Rag more for the dance (dancing gives me a natural high! I don't exactly understand why ppl need alcohol to get an artificial high when they dance in clubs & there's no space to dance full-out too. Give me a proper dance studio anytime!) than for the friends since my OG wasn't really into Rag anyway. I also wanted to familiarize myself with the Law Sch environment before sch starts proper, so that 10 Aug 2010 won't be so intimidating. But what I took away from Rag was much more than opportunities to dance but a bunch of lovely ragger friends & the realization that Summit (Law Canteen) food is actually palatable (Muslim stall for the win!), just that we're short on variety. I'm okay with my OG, but OG1 is really awesome - the ppl are unbelievably welcoming & inclusive :) There were other stranded ppl from minority OGs like me whom I made good friends with like Sara & Angeline. & there were all the other dancers along the way - my diamond buddies lol & my brother's drama senior, Wang Ting, who describes me as the girl with the glasses & the long legs (which makes me sound like a cartoon character). It's funny how I joined Rag for the dance but Rag ironically made me think twice (in fact, many times) about whether I can cope in a dance CCA in uni since I've never exactly been in one before (1 year of Chinese Dance in primary 3 doesn't count). Can't do the hip hop bounce properly bcoz I'm so long & thin. Too much uncontrolled energy makes me look like an overstretched human with flingy limbs (sometimes looking at videos of me dancing make me cringe, I would very much prefer a mirror so I can auto-correct). My balance is quite bad too (CG too high, I'm glad I'm not a flyer, it would probably be too much for me). & my energy level kept going downhill especially after Rag stayover. Don't know why... I would normally be in the zone once the music starts blasting, but I don't seem to be getting it anymore, it's like I suddenly lost the key to the door inside me. It helped though for a day when Angus (really admire the rag head for being so sincere, haha) said it was important to dance from the heart since dance is an art. Haha, but I lost it again the next day :/ It didn't help that I was having a flu, my period & a sprained ankle all at the same time. Which is why I thought God's grace was really important (yes, Angeline is getting to me, haha). I believe in God definitely, but I'm not very particular about the details. The night before rag I prayed that I'll be okay, that rag will be okay, that we can perform at our best. So, I was quite sad when I couldn't sleep the whole night coz of my runny nose & with my ankle propped up in an uncomfortable position. Ha, I was even thinking what I should do if mucus starts coming out from my nose during pre-judging. Hm, but somehow towards noon, my runny nose became drier for a while & my ankle just didn't hurt, no ache, nothing. And when I practised the fankick just before the performance it was miraculously the right feeling after not being right the whole week (which was seriously my fault, not my partner's problem). And I felt in-the-zone enough during the performance, fankick was 100% right haha (I'm actually fortunate that fankick is the only thing I really have to worry about; stunters, Sex Tonight ppl & acrobats have it so much harder). Kudos to the costume/ makeup team coz the costume and make-up did play a part in helping me get into character. GOD LISTENS! :) Oh yes, Calvin Magnus is a damn good dancer/ instructor/ choreographer! I love the dance conditioning, haha. If I'm feeling tired from conditioning, just look at Magnus do it effortlessly & I'll be inspired to just push on :) Arias is damn good too! I think I'll join a dance CCA in uni, although I've heard all the horror stories about how Law Sch is like having prelims everyday. But uni is like my last chance of sch life, I've already missed the chance to join dance in JC (didn't join due to lack of confidence = don't want to go through the trouble of auditioning, & 'A' levels is damn impt!), it'll be wasted to just miss it again. It would be good to have some exercise dancing & just do something that makes me happy just by doing it alone. I figured focusing too much on Law studies would be counter-productive as evinced by how I performed during prelims T.T The time when I thought I was really performing at my peak in studies was when I was juggling Bike Hike preparations, SATS & Mid Years all at the same time. I don't know whether I can get into Blast since it seems to be Magnus standard, but there are quite few dance groups in Centre for the Arts, so I'll just give some of those a try. Nikhita (haha, my bus buddy :]) says that it's impt to be determined & keep practising for ppl who have no background (like me, save for a few months of holiday dance classes). The dance groups will still give you credit if you do make improvement & meet a certain standard. It's touching seeing your peers & seniors working so hard for Rag. It's awesome that NUS has Rag, it's great for social bonding :) Although I do agree with Yvonne that the floats could be kept & exhibited elsewhere (after all the materials & man hours gone into making it) & that Rag should at least have greater media coverage. I realized NUS is actually brimming with a lot of life & activities coz there are just too many ppl in the university. It's just up to you to source for which activities you want to initiate or take part in. Yes, I like NUS now, haha. I find the run-down campus at Kent Ridge bearable now after we had a National-Day-like Rag-cum-SYOG-flame-arrival-ceremony there complete with fireworks! ^.^ Now that Rag is over, I MUST SWITCH BACK TO MY NON-RAG DIET. I can't believe how much I ate during the 2 months preparing for Rag. I just kept eating, oh my god! >< Told you Summit food was good. Somehow I just need to keep eating something (I have a particular fetish for carbos, the most weight-gaining category of food, sigh) to make myself satisfied enough to keep dancing everyday. & there's always the delusion that you can burn the calories off with Rag dance conditiong though I seriously think the calorie input is more than the energy output. I'm excited that sch is going to start, though I'm also a little intimidated about whether I can cope with the academic load and social environment, but yepp, God listens & everything will work out fine eventually with God's grace :) |
Affiliates Anna Calean Celia Debbie Eileen Ferly Gracia Jia Jun Jiin Shiuan Jolene Juat Ying Laura Li Fern Maverick Melissa My Fav Stone Pei Rong Sean Seow Yee Shi Hui Shi Min Shin Yi Valerie Xinyu Xiyu Yangg Yanqi Yu Tung Zhen Rui Zijia Picasa Shutterfly Photobucket Beijing NYSJAB 08S7A Shawnees 34th OAC - WHOA! Take a bow Designer: Eunice Inspiration: Plastic!Romance Color: Color picker tool Icon: Reviviscent |
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