YEAH! My surgeon has cleared me for sports. I love her! She rocks compared to the frizzy haired lung doctor, who told me to stay away from sports another THREE WHOLE MONTHS, partly because my mum coerced her into forcing a longer jail term on me.

Well, at least surgeon's more practical.

ON a more serious note, I am highly screwed.

Today I went straight into a match and was breathless after one minute. Missed a few hits, found out my pushing is screwed up, just as it was the first time i tried a banana stick. My sweeps are so weak, my flicks are worse (not like they were g ood in the first place).

And Shi Min put things in a very clear light. "We only have 5 weeks to A div". I gonna have to work hard on my fitness before school starts so that I can play hockey.

And life looks bleak too. We finish training at 8, reach home at 9, by the time im refreshed and ready for work, its already 10! And i have promised myself to sleep at 11:30 everyday. That leaves one hour to mug and do work. Life gonna be stressful :(

Moving on, electives have been boring. After all, I didn't get any of the electives I was waiting for in eager anticipation. So sad. No marine ecology, no mangrove bird watching, no mentorship module.

Screw my luck!

Gah!

Cheers.

Alright, after talking to friends and family, ive cleared my thoughts, time to make good use of JC time!

OH fuck you, Mr "last four weeks". Stop torturing me

Years ago, my father often narrated to me the story of The Hero of Haarlem.

This is the story: He looked up and saw a small hole in the dike through which a tiny stream was flowing. Any child in Holland will shudder at the thought of a leak in the dike! . . . That little hole, if the water were allowed to trickle through, would soon be a large one, and a terrible inundation would be the result. Quick as a flash he saw his duty . . . His chubby little finger was thrust in almost before he knew it. The flowing was stopped! "Ah!" he thought, with a chuckle of boyish delight, "the angry waters must stay back now! Haarlem shall not be drowned while I am here!"
Haarlem was not drowned. The little boy stayed at the dike all night, too cold even to whistle and attract the attention of passersby, until he was found in the morning and the hole was plugged. Thus, in Hans Brinker or, The Silver Skates (1865), Mary Mapes Dodge told the legend of the sluicer's son who became "The Hero of Haarlem.

Can we be such heroes in our lives? Life, its fundamentally, just a wall and an ocean. Brick upon brick we lay, striving towards our panoramic vision of unblemished, monumental beauty, and yet for all the dedication and industry we invest, the vision we seek always remains an unfulfilled wish. The broiling torrent of water trashing at our dams will one day rip one..two..three…no ten chinks in the dam, and even as we frantically jam our fingers into the holes and hold on for all our life, irrevocably, inexorably, inevitably two more holes appear. One more burden for either of our hands, such a small number yet as deadly as a black hole singularity. The tiny peephole through which an irregular drip drop of water squeezes through eventually enlarges into a model approximating an incontinent small boy’s prick through which a steady parabolic stream sprays, right straight into our mouths, mixing its putrefying brine-y taste with the bitter bile of defeat accumulating in our throats. And then the entire wall rips apart, just like the neurons in an Alzheimer’s patient, each individual element crashing to the earth as its connections to its neighbours are cut off. The water slamming into our faces mixes with the salty tears gushing from our eyes, till the pain of personal grief and the physical pain of the ordeal are indistinguishable from each other.

Something that you had trusted to be as immutable as mum's love for us, something that you had stubbornly built up and worked on in the hope that it would one day be unveiled in its glorious beauty, something that you had faith in and depended on. When such a priceless thing fails, the chill that claws at your soul, the shock that freezes your spine, the crushing hammer that flattens your hope, the moment of emptiness and clarity of defeat that fills your brain and the unbendable law of gravity that drags your heart down into a bottomless abyss, could make you lose your faith in beautiful endings.

What are the things that one can lose faith in and still remain a happy person?

If it were himself, he would just lead a miserable, insecure life. No drive = lost potential = no success in life

If it were his friends, he could just find another friend.

If it were his best friend, he would be lost for a while, and take quite some time to find another friend just like the previous.

If it were his other half, he would be heartbroken, and depending on how dependent he was, and the strength of his love, he might or might not get over it soon.

If it were his family, he would be a lonely, fragile person for whom other relationships will have to replace the void in his life and therefore would be a difficult person.

If it were his religion, he would be thrown off course.

Ok I was just talking crap.

Unless the door is fully closed, and the vision of “fill in the blanks” is cut off from a person, he will never be able to turn his eyes away from “fill in the blanks”.

That’s why they invented jails isn’t it? So that prisoners can claw at the bars and snarl at the world passing by, moving on without them, right in front of their eyes. Wishing for something impossible will just hurt you, might as well not know about that impossible something. Stagnating stalemates are just so frustrating.

Bleah. Yet they are rare in chess, just as in life. Win or lose is usually the outcome.

What the hell am i saying?

Thanks readers, for wasting your time :)

Aha, I have changed my blogskin again, cos it’s a grand new year! It’s been too long since I last wrote, and no doubt no one ever reads my blog again, but “Hi again!” to any random reader!

Perhaps it is time for a recap, before 2010 heads into full swing, and washes away the memories of 2009 with its frenzy of new, exciting experiences. NO doubt I’ve learnt a lot of things about life, the life I want to lead, myself and my friends in this past year. In the past four years of my secondary school life, 2006 is undoubtedly my most focused and single-minded year, 2007 a tumultuous, angsty, and depressing year filled with self-doubts, 2008 a rather blank, antisocial and distrustful year (I cant remember much of what happened???, other than OBS and OIP), and 2009 a year in which I have experienced much stuff that I never thought I would experience (Making great overseas friends, getting a spontaneous pneumothorax, giving a speech in front of a big audience, and many many other more personal stuff). And of course, I ended off 2009 with a very very GAY awesome night!

The future’s an uncharted territory, as Carrie Underwood says “"God put us here on this carnival ride, We close our eyes never knowing where it will take us next" in her beautiful song “Wheel of the World”. Yet we can help ourselves by making some new year resolutions, and here are some of mine (which I want to share)!

1) Train my handwriting and pre-empt an A level disastrous failure –I realised I have been writing the wrong way for 16? years, according to http://www.paperpenalia.com/handwriting.html
2) Spend more time with friends and family if possible
3) Do things one step at a time and stop skipping stuff the way I like to do
4) Speak better
5) Stop procrastinating and live in the present
6) Be a better listener
7) Maintain a sleep routine—seems dam impossible
8) Be punctual for school—seems even more impossible, oh yeah but now jc starts late, great!
9) Learn more Cantonese
10) Build up my fitness and all the muscles I lost wasting away at home while im recovering from the stupid surgery
11) Be more gracious to people who helped me in my life
12) Have better EQ
13) Do more CIP that I really believe in
14) Accept myself
15) Maintain my reading habit
16) Drink more water
17) Be more positive and refrain from cognitive distortions (go read about them, very impt!)
18) Let go of past baggage and forgive people
19) Be more familiar with Orchard Road since I always get lost there
20) Be LESS SELF-DESTRUCTIVE, stop getting injured!
21) Update my blog more regularly, with less negative stuff?? IDK seems like a lot of interesting stuff in my life just get washed away by the passage of time. I don’t even like taking photos in the first place.

Of course I have many more, but I just wanted to share these..

Happy New Year!