back.
currently listening to: Yu Tian [Stefanie Sun]

hoo~~ i thought i'd never make it back.

i guess it's only when you actually leave for a period of time that you get to appreciate the small island a little more. it kinda works both ways. i was only away for two weeks and it felt like eternity. then when i finally left i find myself missing seoul, albeit not as much as i did for singapore when i was there.

yet the only thing about seoul was that i actually got to walk around on my own for a little. my brother accompanied me for the first few days, but the last day where i actually got to go around seoul all by myself was probably the best out of the 9 days that i was there. taking in the sights, having some time entirely of your own, developing your own first experiences, feeling as if you are cut off from your usual environment etc were exactly the stuff that i could rarely do even in singapore.

and you have no idea how it makes you grow.

anyways, after seoul and beijing, i'm still trying to get back to the singapore mode, and i have no doubts that it will be easy since i haven't been gone for that long. the only difference is that there will be a little more appreciation, and perhaps gratitude, in the way i view the island and its heavily criticised government.

so the A level results are coming out soon, not long after the O level results on 9 feb. i can feel the people hyperventilating around me. *wahahaha* somehow i find myself hoping that the results will never come, never ever come, so we can all carry on with our current stuff. ie, i'm trying to escape. but i do try to imagine how it will be like. i know for sure that no matter how it turns out, i'll end up crying, but it is the reason behind the tears that i'm trying to predict.

relief, because i'm finally free for the arduous wait? or will it be because i am finally released from two years of stressful mugging? worse still, despair, because my hard work had not paid off? because two years of effort have been cruelly translated into a certificate that deemed me a failure?

relief or despair, it's 50-50.

or maybe it will be like the O levels... just pure blankness. i didn't know if i should be happy or sad. major part of it being that i had self-confirmed that i would be getting poor results due to the MOE letter incident that had gone around then, but my results turned out to be very average. i had aimed high. i recall falling into deep despair, a period where encouragement translated into a deeper sense of failure, where i spent days coming to terms with myself that i would be getting poor results such that i knew i wouldn't have any more tears to cry when it finally becomes reality. but this time, there is no cushion to fall back on, to lessen the possible despair during that moment in the near future, and this time whatever emotions would be doubly felt because the amount of effort put in is on an entirely different level from the O level period.

then you feel that no one understands. it's easy to say "oh man, i can't believe she didn't score..." or "what happened? she was faring well...", but all these will be quickly forgotten in the form of pity. yet the reality remains for that person, and no one can help, no words can help either because they all seem to prick at one's pride and heightened one's sense of failure. forgetting, for both sides, might then be the best from of console that is deemed to be cowardice and escapism that does nothing to salvage anything.

that's why it's always hard to console.

okay it seems like i'm getting more serious nowadays and this is bad. i should get some fun somewhere before i start growing white hair.

記憶は明日のために強さになるものだよ。きっと。