The Last Day

Yesterday I had my last lecture. Today I gave my last project presentation. Two weeks from now, I'll be having my final paper.

It's going to end soon. Somehow, it feels time went by really fast, even though three years does seem really long.

Next up, the last leg. The highest hurdle. The final sprint. Then comes the next educational advancement.

I had thought today was going to be perfect. All we needed to do when we met at 11, would be to compile whatever we had, print the report, bind it, and head to class happily for the last presentation. It was my worst nightmare. Out of the blue, I was made the leader, which made me wonder if it was because I did most of the non-theoretical work, which was more demanding than typing the report itself. My team mates did produce work, but as most of our work was done at the eleventh hour, I was utterly disappointed. Not in them, but in myself. So what if I had gone 3 days without sleep? I should have checked on them, not expect that they would do everything just in time for compilation and printing today. A herd of lost sheep without their lead dog, make easy prey for the wolves.

I had learnt my lesson the hard way 6 months ago. I wanted very much to have 0 last minute efforts this time round. The opposite happened. With 10 times the magnitude from before, it striked back really hard, and with a vengeance. I hate sub-standard work. I'm thankful I am not my tutor. I absolutely detest submitting work with language errors in them. Just 1 error, is enough to start the bomb ticking. While engineers are extremely meticulous and perfect perfectionists in their calculations, dimensions and drawings, I'm relatively relaxed in that zone. Just ensure the necessary stuff is there, and we're done. Guess I should tweak my mindset a little more.

Now that it's over, all I can do is move on. nothing is going to change the fact we did very little, the bare minimum. It's alright to be average, but it's not alright to be below average. Deep down, I was extremely upset, but there was nothing I could do. My team wasn't at fault. I was wrong not to check on them, to give them that push. Not knowing I was the leader, only made things worse. If I had asked them to return on Monday at the very least, we would have been walking home happily at 3.15pm. The last day of school, I don't want it to be the final day of my formal education.

I am going to make a vow right here, right now. After graduating, I am going to continue studying the English language. If I were offered a seat in a university, I will not repeat any mistake from the past three years. Academics, life skills, whatever's not right. There are thousands vying for those limited seats. I want to prove, my results may not be outstanding, but I possess e the potential to go further than the best.

Final Week of School.

Finally I'm down to the last week of the last semester. Doesn't feel like one though. Feels as though it's just like any other week. The only thing that's good, is the long weekend each week, lasting five days from Friday till the following Tuesday. This final weekend's going to be even longer, meaning the exams are just a week away.

Missed the delivery on Wednesday due to a knee injury from Monday, and went home, taking a nap at 6pm. In the end, instead of an hour's rest, I had two. I started a dream at the bus stop near Clementi MRT Station at 9am, with a friend calling, asking if I wanted to join him for a game of soccer at Commonwealth at 10am. I took service 147. Soon after a cousin called, telling me he was on a helicopter, coming to pick me up with a friend. I asked them to meet me at the field at the Commonwealth MRT Station. When I arrived 30 minutes later, my friend wasn't there. A helicopter was there waiting for me. I boarded, and we flew to Sengkang. Apparently I fell asleep during the flight, and my cousin was telling me I should get into the red convertible upon landing. He got in, while his friend flew the chopper to another location.

He told me that the car was mine to use, and that we should head over to a field in Aljuned first. We reached a field larger than two football pitches combined. By then, it was 12pm. There was something about the place. It felt as though we were in Africa! Cheetahs, lions, wolves, dogs, cats, birds, rodents, crocodiles, rabbits were roaming freely all over the place! What was more amusing, they were tame and spoke the Queen's English! We spent the whole afternoon talking to the animals there. I went under a tree, and had a short nap with a pride of lions. They were a cosy bunch! It was 6.45pm when the sun was setting, and I woke. I saw my father sitting on a bench, reading the papers, waiting for me to leave with him. In a daze, I saw the animals, and started feeling great fear. I paced back away from the lions silently. Out of a sudden, one of the younger lions let out a roar. I turned and bolted for the gate.

In doing that, I broke one of the cardinal rules. If I started running, from one of the animals, they would see me as a hostile, and would swarm toward me like hornets. I jumped over a family of rabbits who happened to be hopping home, stopped short of the gate when I spotted a group of dogs and a pack of wolves enjoying what seemed to be a reunion dinner. By then, I was beggining to suffer from a panic attack. They looked up in surprise, staring hard at me. I stared back, before making a sharp right turn to sprint, even faster, toward the other gate where the car was parked. My father was still reading the papers. My cousin walked to the bench, and called in the chopper to evacuate me in case something really did happen. I narrowly evaded a ceetah who pounced. I got up and skipped to the left to avoid crashing into a dalmatian which ran up to me happily, from near the gate. A golden retriever came up, running by my side, as though we were best friends. In the end, we got cornered at the fence. A boxer(the one whose face looks like a bull dog, but taller) walked up, and said," The penalty for running from a predator animal, is to get hunted and bitten." Without hesitation, he bit my left arm. It felt like a vaccination. Initially the pain was unbearable, then it became numb.

Away from the crowd, someone shouted,"Don't move!" I heard a loud bang. The boxer fell, and lay motionless before me. "Don't worry,he's asleep," A man with a shot gun came up. "Guess He didn't tell you about the running did he? Well, you got bitten alright. That makes you a member." I stared at him as he helped me up. I woke up right after, realising it was 8pm.

Last night, I dreamt was at some camp, being deployed to some forested temple on a mission. Turns out, the temple was really big, but run down. It had basements! However, when we reached the first basement, it felt as though we were in some headquarters. Moments later, it felt as though I was inside the game Halo. The Covenant, the alien race, had been waiting in ambush for us. We gradually realised they were forcing us into a trap by luring us down below, when the mission objective happened to be up top. Our battalion made it out to the first floor just in time, before a bomb planted by them exploded at the bottom. The Master Chief arrived in an enemy fighter, making things alot easier from there. We broke through their forces without much difficulty, making it to the control room. I woke up after we came into contact with a prophet.

Chinese New Year 2011

The transition from 2010 to 2011 was extremely fast. Just today, I looked back to the new year of 2010, and now today, we're at 2011, the rabbit's year.

The past few days were really relaxed, going from place to place, seeing my driving skills improve tremendously within just 2 days, when back in January, I still had to wait for the road to be clear without any obstruction before turning out from a minor road, I needed to make many tiny adjustments while parking, I did not even dare to park in a parallel lot, I had to drive in a car park extremely slowly, making sure I had perfect clearance on both sides before I went up or down the slope to the next deck in a multi-storey car park. In just 3 days, I got those skills to near perfection, with help from family, relatives and friends. Driving more than 220 kilometres over three days, spanning a total of 7 hours on the roads, to 13 destinations in 3 regions.

On Thursday, we went to visit our grandparents in the morning. I was very unsure of my skills back then, and my judgement was rather poor. In the afternoon after lunch, we started on our visiting. Grand mother's place first, followed by my aunt, then off to Plaza Singapura with another aunt, uncle and cousins to catch The Green Hornet. That movie sure gave me some motivation to drive at night I guess. Thanks to the driving at Plaza Singapura, I became more comfortable manoeuvring in tight spaces. We ended the night by visiting my second uncle's family.

I travelled to nearly every corner of the Eastern region of the island from 1.15pm on Saturday, getting lost in Bedok before eventually finding my way back home at 12.18am.

This week, it's back to studying. On the way home the night before many things went through my mind. What about now, later, today? What's going to happen over the next few months, years? What will I do? How would I do it? Where should I go? I felt as though I had found my calling, as though I could see my life right ahead of me. It felt as though, I was in some time machine, driving through time, into the future and back. However in the morning when I woke up, I felt as though everything that happened was just a dream, that it never happened, until I looked at my phone, realising I had forgotten to reply a few close friends the night before.

I had been feeling worried about absolutely nothing for four days now. I have no idea what's going to happen. I met someone who sounded like you, which made my heart skip a beat, but the feeling's still there. At least the twitching in my left eye ended, which I feel might be the fact I met my former form teacher's cousin at home today when she came to visit.