Feeling a bit sian now, so it's time for reflecting on 2011! Actually reflecting is a bit useless since my reflections will change everyday. But still, here goes. Maybe I'll have 12 talking points since it's going to be 2012. It's going to be boring, please skip it, it's for personal entertainment. Unless you are bored now, then maybe you deserve more boring stuff to read, so you can read on if you want.

1) I realized that I have two rather extreme personalities: right now I guess my personality is the opposite of how I was feeling yesterday and two days ago, which was when I was feeling very sociable.

2) My brother is cute. Really. I've only recently started to take a good look at him and I realized that he's cute. But he just whacked me. I guess you have to take the bad with the good.

3) I feel that good education is a double-edged sword: I know it's a huge privilege to be able to study like that in Singapore. But this highly-polished education has developed some characteristics that I don't really admire in myself. 

But oh well, let's all love ourselves and stop disliking ourselves.

4) I dislike prolonged social activity (not more than 3 consecutive days). So if I don't treat you as well as I usually do, doesn't mean I don't like you. It means I'm tired.

5) I'd like to have stars on my ceiling, like in Hogwarts. Then I can stargaze in my HDB flat. This is called maximizing space, which is hot stuff in Singapore.

6) I'm afraid of obligations.

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12) I am young.

This hamster looks like it has an attitude.

If something absurd is going on, you are likely to be correct if you attribute it to crowd mentality.

I think I suffer from mild schizophrenia. I don't switch personalities by the minute, hour or day, but by the year/month. I think I have two different personalities.
Because today I got home, and started planning what I'd do to play the rest of the day away. Where did this playful me come from? Just months ago I was such a serious person.
I read something on tumblr. It went something like, "You can never be as young as you were a second ago." That really got me sitting up. So, to pay tribute to this sentence:

Weather update: My stomach is growling.

So today I went for NUH attachment Day One. I'm sure right now there's a question in your head: why? Since I've flatly refused to apply for medicine. I guess the only benefit of me helping out there at zero cost is that it messes with my mind. That's not necessarily a bad thing, because when your mind has been too ordered for a long time (i.e. while preparing for A levels), it can be good to mess it up a little. (Actually, Day One wasn't really "helping out". I really just slacked there. I hope this slacking doesn't last...)
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I realize that maybe throughout my 12 years of education I've grown to love my grades more than I do myself. It is a chilling thought. But it feels good to know that I can do more to treat myself better now.

I felt like I had a lot of things to blog about, but I think blogging will reduce my amount of talking, which is unhealthy. So, zip!

My brother showed me this article: http://www.todayonline.com/Voices/EDC111226-0000019/Disparity-in-tertiary-education-facilities#.TvfagqyflYU.facebook
Read it yourself.
And then... I will share my thoughts!

When I first read it I generally agreed with the writer, but I felt there was something wrong with his article although I couldn't pinpoint it immediately.
After a while I read it again (as well as the comments) and found out why I didn't sit so comfortably with the author's argument. I realized that I was guilty of elitism! Firstly, I didn't realize that it was wrong to say that "the best and brightest students" are not found in ITE. Of course, "best" and "brightest" are subjective terms and are unfair when used carelessly like in his article. It is not fair to compare who is the best when the type of education received is totally different. If you throw me in ITE I don't think I'd do very well; for one thing, I'm clumsy and blur and I rarely do technical work.
But you can't really blame me for not spotting the error immediately, right? All my life I've grown up in a tight, small social circle and I rarely mix with people not from my school (because frankly the only place I've gone to is school. Except for that one time I was at NUH and we met some students from polytechnic. That's all.)
And it is hard to spot the mistake when the author uses meritocracy to support his argument. Sure, Singapore swears by meritocracy. But it is dangerous when meritocracy is measured with a singular scale, with ITE at the bottom, followed by polytechnics, followed by JCs. Who should really be at the top of this scale? Should it really be measured by educational background? So, it's unfair and narrow-minded to label JC students as the "best and brightest". It is easy to make this mistake since we are JC students ourselves.
Yup, there's my response. On a rather related note, elitism is part of what fuelled the mindless massacre of Jews during World War II. This is how dangerous elitism can be. We shouldn't let it fester in our minds! I mention this because I visited the concentration camp at Auschwitz during my holiday. :)
In the next post maybe, I'll talk more about my trip...

Currently sitting on a chair in a hotel room in Prague, Czech! It's really thanks to my aunts and uncle that I can even holiday here. East europe is beautiful beyond words; all I can do is stare and revolve 360 degrees wherever I go and take lots and lots of photos. :) Even their houses are pretty! ( that was in Berlin) I think of Singaporean architecture and shake my head. The tour guide is a very interesting character. He reminds me of Aunty Lucy. (he just doesn't flick his head every second.) I finally found wifi today and hooked myself onto the Singaporean network on Facebook and suddenly felt closer home. :')

Bye Singapore! I'm flying to eastern Europe. Back on 23rd. Prom was great, I wouldnt mind going for a thousand more proms :)