//and when you cry
a piece of my heart dies//

8)

Taylor Swift's tweet about her Blank Space/Style mash-up brought me here. This is such a delicate and feminine song even I have to go "awww" when listening to it.
Even though she's from Nashville, this just reminds me of how secretly I just have so much respect for people who have both the talent and resilience to break the classic mould of success in Singapore. I mean, cheers to 90% of the population who work really hard in more stable jobs to provide for their families as well. But the creative 10%-- they are magical unicorns who equally deserve our respect.
(I also really love music by Bon Iver, Ed Sheeran, Kygo, Pentatonix, Kodaline, etc. ^_^ )

I really really want to go to certain countries! Let me list them because I love their sceneries (on Google images) so much:

1. Croatia (in summer)

2. New Zealand (in summer)

3. France (the nature side of it; in summer)
4. Iceland

I'm sure there are more places with awesome sceneries that I haven't noticed. Or don't contemplate on going to (like Brazil because I feel it is too far). But those are my top 3!!!

I want to go to one of them for grad trip!! But the huge problem is I don't think anyone will go with me? My interest lies more in nature and sightseeing, and some light hiking will be great. I don't think I can ever properly relax on a holiday in a city. Singapore is already a bustling city. I don't really wanna go to another place like Bangkok or Tokyo that reminds me of crammed public transport. The awesome food and shopping might almost make up for it, but I already get awesome food and shopping in Singapore (albeit of a different type).

Honestly, all my friends are city people. -_- I don't think there's a single one who loves hiking. 

The last resort is to wait for a honeymoon?! As has been suggested to me. But I think that's just waiting for something that may not happen. I'm not one to sit around waiting for chances. I can't relegate my dream to some shady game of chance.

I can't go on nature/sightseeing tours alone because I am not a very fit person and it's dangerous to go hiking alone. And my family will probably object vehemently, with good reason I think. And there's no possibility of making random friends on a solo tour because my grad trip, if there is one, is supposed to be only 2 weeks (because), and 2 weeks is too short a time to make any friends. 

Of course I'll try asking around but I'm not banking on anyone agreeing. Because all my friends seem to be city people. 

A future alternative... which I'm not too sure will happen...would be to go on my own when /if I make a mid-career switch. At that time, I'd probably be just ripe for a quarter/mid-life crisis so it will be nice to go somewhere to eat pray love. I'm dreaming of doing some work-travel arrangement. That will be so cool!

An alternative for now will be to ask my family if they wanna go anywhere nature-sy and nearby, in Southeast Asia. Perhaps Vietnam, there's awesome scenery too. *_*

Another alternative is perhaps to just settle for less and perhaps see if anyone is interested in going to other bustling cities. It's not always easy to get the best of both worlds. Gotta compromise sometimes. If I want to go overseas that badly.

Another alternative is to just stay at home lor. Grad trips are not an entitlement. I shouldn't be burning my savings just to experience a so-called rite of passage.

Haven't made up my mind yet because of school and its usual avalanche of work. 

Wasting time, when done sparingly, is a virtue. I feel like after wasting a bit of time I attain a millimetre of enlightenment.

//mind-numbing sundays//

Don't ask what others can do for you, ask what you can do for others.

Forgot who said this before. Anyway, I wholeheartedly agree. But sometimes I wish I could do something more useful for this world than study. I mean, I know that what I'm studying (and this applies to any other field of study actually) can be put to good use in the future, if I've got the right mindset and all. Right now I'm just stuck in this moment numbing my brain with technical concepts that I'm not sure will ever be useful. Studying, on its own, never helped anyone achieve anything useful. Especially when the nature of your course is that studying just takes up a lot of time. I feel like I just wanna graduate right now. 

Some people may say that making contributions to society/doing something useful might be jumping the gun, after all students should just stay students and enjoy life before they go out into the working world. There's some truth in that, which is why I let loose sometimes and try to go out with friends/family to take my mind off things. But at the back of my mind there's a niggling awareness that I'm still actually not a very useful member of society and that I don't know how to be useful while juggling mind-numbing schoolwork. Ask someone on the street what their micro-goal is in life at this moment, they would probably say something cool like, taking care of my kids, designing this product, increasing sales of that product, doing some research, etc. Ask me what my micro-goal in life is now, I'll just tell you that I wanna get through this semester which has exactly 1 deadline and 3 exams left for me. And several mind-numbing lectures in the process.

Okay, perhaps I'm learning something in the process. And learning should not come with a price. But today I don't feel like recognizing the benefits of learning in itself. Perhaps tomorrow I will awake a new person, as I usually do. Perhaps all this grumbling and grousing can be sidelined with the common refrain that "youngsters nowadays don't know how to work hard".

I think since young I've just never really liked school. This would be roughly my 16th year schooling. Well if I've gone through the past 15 years, then the 16th year should go by like a breeze. If only I'd stop wondering about whether there's any point to the stuff I'm reading. 

sigh... life is unpredictable.
always do what you love, what you believe in, and don't delay doing it.

This generation: materialistic, practical, purposeful.
Perhaps we should have more idealism in the mix?
Practicality and purposiveness are very useful qualities but they can only provide you an incomplete life.