On Wednesday, I had my MDA interview. Walter Fernandez told me that physical print media is a dying breed of journalism which made me so sad. I think one of the most constant impressions on my mind is of my father taking the newspaper every morning, with his cup of coffee, to read at the breakfast table, and subsequently folding it into a neat rectangle to tuck under his arm as he goes for work.
After that, I met Wei Xin for dinner. We were initially going to Casuarina Curry because Indian food is a vice of mine, but decided to go to Cedele instead because it was nearer.
This salad happened, and it was incredible. We talked about things - mostly relationships (not our own, which are non existent) and the messiness of them, the gore-y bits (like crazy reference) that splinter people apart. I am pretty glad I'm not attached, and shan't be until I settle down in England for university. Then perhaps I'll open my heart to possibility.
I went for fellowship, and arrived too late to get a worksheet/lyrics sheet for the ongoing worship, but I enjoyed sitting and savouring the music, and I was surprised at how many of the words I had committed to heart already.
Chris drove me home - a rather perilous trip including one time of driving into a lane of on coming traffic and two other necessary reversals. Complete with conversation about the correct pronunciation of his Chinese name and how to crowd surf and correct behaviour in a night club (which I may go to in the coming week oh help) it was a really funny car ride, but every conversation with Chris can send me into stitches.
On Thursday, I met Weixin for lunch again, and dessert, and got painful blisters before my interview. In the NLB interview where I met very friendly board members and its CEO. The interview went quite smoothly, it was very informal, and when they asked me about what were the three most important things to me I said: Family, Self-improvement, and world consciousness - living with others (animals, humans, the environment) in mind.
Although I think I have many other core values, I think these three have been weighing on my mind most heavily. Family because I realise how much I will miss them when I study in England. I've never been apart form them for more than 2 weeks, and I shall miss them terribly. I remember a time when I was in Shanghai, and my Mum and Brother came back to Singapore early. I stayed up for a long time just crying and (strangely) singing to myself, and (this is slightly embarrassing but) making up songs with lyrics that talked about a mother's love.
3 years.
Also I've been thinking about family because of Grandma's deteriorating memory. So many of the books I read deal with memory as their key theme- the brief history of the dead for instance. So much so that I have begun to believe that memory constitutes so much of your person that losing it means you lose so much of your own self - you are stuck in a limbo of childhood again except you don't have the promise of many years to form memories. It is one of my biggest fears.
Self improvement because I feel so restless sometimes - these months out of school have been fun and I have grown in many ways, mostly on the social spectrum (I sound as if I was totally socially inept previously oh my), but the intellectual stimulus and challenges I faced and relished in school are sorely lacking. I can't wait for school to start again so I can feel that burning relief of real intellectual challenge again.
Consciousness because I think I have become a lot more aware and educated and passionate about social justice, environmental preservation and animal rights in the past year. Today I read an article about the devastating conditions and effect of the fast fashion industry and last week I read something similar about the mani-pedi industry in America, and I am constantly aware of the slaughter of animals everywhere and endlessly, and I think I have begun to feel so critically the meaning of the phrase 'my heart is heavy'.
Sometimes it's just a hard, dull weight that tells you 'The whole world is plagued by sin and vice and you are powerless to stop this'. I have such limited capacity, such a stark reversal from the feeling that the world was so entirely in my grasp and that I could change it that I had earlier this year. I will never stop trying (Since turning vegetarian in November, I have statistically saved the lives of 101 animals) but sometimes the reality of the magnitude of it all is so crushing. Especially when solutions are so easily individually accessible, but require such mass behind it that changing the hearts and minds of every one seems so futile.
But despite me going into mopey moods like this occasionally I am so glad of friends who meet me multiple times in a week and shine light into my life.
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