'In this digital age, people tend to talk at each other instead of with each other.'
I totally know what that means and I think it happens everyday in my life.
/vaguely depressed
Can I get into a time travelling machine and go live in the 1960s. And be my mum's friend or sth. Lol.

Sometimes I'm influenced to feel that everything I say and do has an irretrievable consequence and I make every move with gravity and caution because I'm afraid of making a mistake or hurting somebody's feelings. It sucks and I feel really heavy, but crap it does feel like that in law school. My revision technique, things I say in class, everything seems to impact my grades and hence my life (misconception arising from trying too hard and still spectacularly not succeeding). But acting with gravity and caution doesn't prevent me from making mistakes. Sometimes it works, other times it turns me into an expressionless scarecrow.
Point is, it does feel good to hang around with people who understand that life isn't like that. I like to hang around them and watch the lightness of their movements. And listen to our laughter billow into the air like dandelion fluff.

Retreating into myself feels good. Discovering the little hiding places in life. Some have crumbled, some have grown new organisms, some are lost and cannot be remembered.
And I'm just looking for a bit of moss to use as protection against whatever awaits me in the wild. But the place is woefully barren. I just have to make do with my bare skin, and realize that it does offer good protection after all.
It's all about moving on. It's all about not letting yourself get trapped into quicksand of your own making.
I sound a little odd but I like it.

I have a friend who is not a local and sometimes I don't understand her accent but I don't want to make her repeat because I just asked her a minute ago. And maybe 2 minutes ago as well. So i just say ya and sometimes she looks quizzical at my response. Oops. But I think we get along fine.

Just watched the fault in our stars. Cried :( I love idiots who write sad stories to make me cry cos there's usually so much meaning in their stories. And that meaning makes me fuller, and I feel like there's meaning in my life.

洒脱的人才能玩得起人生

Read an interview by one of my favourite cellists. Love it.
"Very often people are obsessed with what others think of them. It’s like if a flower wants to be a cactus or a palm but it’s not. A flower is a flower and that’s enough. That’s all you have to do is be a flower."
you can read it HERE if you want :D I just love it so much!

Title of post: Growing up-- in the context of school.
NB: lots of shitty musings but I enjoy it because I feel more real and it gives me something to remember in the years to come. It reminds me I'm not a mindless bimbo trying to attain a degree. It reminds me I'm not, and should not be, a sheep following the herd. 

Well, in my teens, I felt like I was standing on a good solid rock of ice. Everything made sense, everything came together to form good solid concepts through which the world was totally comprehensible to me. Like ice crystals coming together, to make the analogy complete. I loved it, I loved how whatever I learnt came together neatly in my head. I felt like learning was as good as eating, because the concepts I learnt were food for my soul. I was excited about school.
But now in university I've learnt and am still learning that the world is built on a very precarious complex grid of rules. Like how Singapore's housing is precarious and complex-- neat little compartment-boxes, built according to the unpredictable swings of supply and demand, etc. Partly it's the nature of my course-- all I'm learning about is rules, rules, more rules, and how I can advise people how not to break these rules in future. And the rules don't come together neatly to form good solid concepts-- at least, I can't seem to do it within one semester, possibly I'm not clever enough?? Or is it because there are just no links and all the concepts we learn are just supposed to be discrete blocks of ideas all by themselves? It's tough learning and trying to make the links in my learning all by myself. To use the analogy up there, I feel like ice is breaking up underneath me and I'm straining to keep them together so I can float and not drown in the icy depths beneath me, while all the time currents are pulling the blocks of ice apart.
Perhaps this is the nature of reality and we've just got to manhandle these concepts, face them head-on and get on with life.

It doesn't help that in school everyone seems to be trying to kill everyone else so that they can secure a good grade for that course. "Friendship" doesn't really mean friendship either. In the past it meant innocent and fun companionship and solidarity. Now, friendship means that you've got somebody who is going through the same struggle and identifies with your confusion-- which is not bad-- but who bristles with thorns every now and then, scowls at you and sulks in your presence, who is willing to put you down with angry words, burden you with their insecurities, distrust your opinions and tear them apart because they don't like them. Well, everyone is going through their own struggle and everyone is worried about their earning power in future, so I understand that it shows in our behaviours sometimes. And I don't mean to say that I'm the victim here; sometimes, I may offend others (and am not sorry for it, although now I'm vaguely sorry that I'm being so frank). Also because 'offending' is a such a personal concept, I have no idea sometimes whether something is offensive or not-- it depends on how well the person can stomach it. And I am willing to put up with these moments of bristling and insulting if it means that other times, we can have good fun together. I want to have a strong stomach for this kind of atmosphere, this kind of life, because it is the best way I can still have friends, and the best kind of life I can get for myself. I don't want to retreat and cut myself off from my friends because I've learnt that being alone feels equally unhealthy, if not worse. To use another analogy-- look at the Hunger Games trilogy, and you realize that friends were made in the Arena as well (even romance, but that's...slightly far-fetched IMO). And if friends can be made even when you're battling each other to death, friends can certainly be made here.
This sort of friendship (yes, it is still friendship) only serves to strengthen my belief that ultimately, the person you should listen to is yourself (and maybe your mother, lol). Sure, you ask your friends for advice and information, that's very necessary, but ultimately you need to separate the chaff from the wheat and hold your life in your own hands.

Okay I'm kind of tired after saying so much. But it has helped. Long live the holidays!

Feels good to submit the application for exchange. :) It's nice to know that I've made a decision which I would take full responsibility for after so much mind-churning deliberation-- it was a good kind of journey to take. I hope the school will approve it, if not I'll be so sad... in which case I would try again in the fall semester of 2015 lorrr haha.