the nerd in me arises

hello my darlings two weeks of school left for me i'm going to flood you with posts before i disappear into the dark depths of peru. also, a lot's been on my mind and you guys are the only ones i know who won't judge my immediate thoughts. they can change in an instant but most people think what i say should represent what i am, and so i'm "the great vacillator" (think mr perry) or just plain fickle, when i'm just thinking things through in my own way.

i've changed a lot since a levels ended, not just how i look (shup i can't believe you can't recognise me in pictures you poot), but mostly in how i express more of what i really think instead of being nice genial chim who didn't voice any opinions. i'm less reserved in saying what i think now, less afraid of repercussions, because "If I am not for myself who is for me? And when I am for myself what am I? and if not now, when?" (from the "Pirke Aboth", ["Sayings of the Fathers"])

my friend showed me an article by Colin Goh and his wife on the Singaporean Dream versus the Singaporean Plan, and i told him i had thought i was in bigger danger of falling into the Singaporean Plan had i taken up the Berkeley scholarship instead of teaching. Maybe not the SINGAPOREAN plan cos i'd probably remain in the us but it'd still be the kind of life that's darkly attractive - glamorous, high-paying, the kind i'd easily sell my soul for, but that i rejected because of a deep yearning for something extra, for that entheos that should not come from retirement alone. and all this while i thought that teaching was my calling. then i walked around the university library today, that crazy place filled with literally millions of tomes of knowledge, all calling to me(that's why the nerd has arisen), and i remembered what the psychologist and so many interviewers told me, that i'm more of an academic than anything else. the lure of a phd was what my mom used mainly to tempt me to take the Berkeley money, but somehow i managed to psycho myself that life should be of flesh and blood, not dust from untouched books; and sakhar who had just got a phd from princeton actually returned to singapore and despite his complaints about singapore's system enrolled himself in nie to become a secondary school teacher. that he gave up what i thought was the ultimate life of teaching and learning in a top us uni to return to teach in singapore made me treat his warning words to me on academia very seriously. but now, not so sure anymore. will i retain the drive for knowledge and wisdom when i start working? or will i lose it and be bitter in yrs to come? somehow i think i'd have been pressured to take econ/business/pre-law, so all this is a load of crap perhaps. bwahaha. but aiyoh ok the point of this is i'm tired of people telling me that i'm crazy. first people back home then people here. as you can see i've thought about all this a lot so there's no point in asking me am i stark raving mad anymore. and it's all in the past anyway. i hate looking back and thinking "what if".

since on singapore, i think you all would know about the australian guy who's been hanged. my funny lebanese teacher said that the price of our high standards of living is the loss of a lot of liberties, political, legal, whatever. you think? he also asked if i feel claustrophobic in singapore. strangely i don't. the world is as big as i want it to be, and sometimes i feel that americans have a very small sphere they navigate in, despite the size of their country. my roommate doesn't know most of the places in america and she's lived here all her life. and nothing can ever hold our minds' roving back.

ok at the root of all this crap is the sudden realisation at 4am last night that what i want is just an achingly elusive dream that i should forget now. and what i want is something that i cannot verbalise just yet. and that epiphany sucked big time.