What a day.



This is why I never feel rested over the weekend. My schedule on the weekend is always crazy packed, that by the time Monday rolls around again (in the blink of an eye, it feels), I'm possibly even more exhausted. This is not a sustainable lifestyle, S.

Just returned home from the Singapore-Malaysia Suzuki Cup match at our spanking-new-beautiful stadium (for me reminiscent of Camp Nou! ahah). We lost -- if you didn't already know, but what an experience. First off, the last time I was at Kallang Stadium... was... I don't know when, honestly. So just being in those spectator seats, amongst the pumped-up crowd, was exhilarating. It brought back some long-suppressed patriotic feelings, and I cheered like I was back in school. And the crowd! So many, and so red. And there were like two rounds of a perfect Kallang Wave.

But then we lost, which put a damper on things. And led to us witnessing some crazy fan behaviour. We totally wanted to keropok the referee, ahah. He gave a penalty to Malaysia at like the 93rd minute or something -- and you can imagine the rage in the stands, aiyoh. Bottles, toilet paper rolls, were flung at the said referee-kayu until police with shields had to come escort him. I thought it was seriously funny that people refused to go home until we booed him to satisfaction. Funny, but also, not very pretty.

Also, earlier in the day:

Cara's wedding! 

One of the most demure and classy brides I've ever seen.

STs unite! at weddings.

God, I miss my class. I really do.

Then we birds had a seriously overdue meet-up:

Arabic exam tmr some more! 

Ridiculous. I must learn to prioritise.

"The habit of apprehending a technology in its completeness: this is the essence of technological humanism, and this is what we should expect education in higher technology to achieve. I believe it could be achieved by making specialist studies the core around which are grouped liberal studies which are relevant to these specialist studies. But they must be relevant; the path to culture should be through a man's specialism, not by-passing it...

A student who can weave his technology into the fabric of society can claim to have a liberal education; a student who cannot weave his technology into the fabric of society cannot claim even to be a good technologist."

-- Lord Ashby, Technology and the Academics

This -- as E and I share books, and thoughts about the world. We lament almost consistently now how education should have been for us, and how it should be in our dream school. Instead of being given the tools for thinking, we've often grown up being taught what to think.

Currently in Kuala Lumpur, at the tail end of this 4-day trip for a workshop on pediatric dysphagia.

Feel like I just have to blog, since I have the chance to. Although, I'm dying to get back to watching American Horror Story, thanks to my colleague-and-current-roomie G -- and I can't say no to horror, ahah.

This workshop has been super-educational, insightful, and vindicating. Especially vindicating, because I feel like it makes even more sense now why I floundered so much at inpatient training. I haven't suddenly developed a love for pediatric swallowing management, but I now appreciate the field a bit more, and I still feel like I'm an okay therapist, despite not being great at this.

I have other thoughts but--

tonight I want to chill in this awesome hotel. (: 

It's been a good feasting, learning, and shopping escapade.

So yesterday, after what seems like eons in the realm of friendship, I finally met up with E (I have taken to not spelling names out because then they are not made google-able, and there can be some semblance of anonymity to the other people in my life -- but no, I will not backtrack and do that to all my previous blogposts, that would be a nightmare).

Blogging list-like so that my thoughts aren't so messy:

• I realise I have been worrying my friends about my previous drama with inpatient training. I am sorry for being drama! It may be the reason J bought me pastry for free, accompanied me for haircuts, and the very reason E finally called down for a meet-up after so long. There is an innate melodramatic instinct in me -- I don't know if I should blame the Indian part of my heritage, haha. But actually, yes, the problem is not as bad it sounds and I am not dying. And besides, inpatient training has been put-on-hold, so life is not so crazy for now.

• That I have a few best friends. I tend to say E is my best friend because our rapport is crazy (see comic below for explanation), and just yesterday alone, we sat in the same restaurant for 3.5 hours just chatting. But then I spend a whole lot of time with J nowadays and it's cause I realise we have the same... needs, for lack  of better word. Like we panic over the same things, and she totally gets why I panic about the things I panic about. And then there's S, with whom discussions of the theological sort are just super-amazing, and our thoughts on the way the world should be are super-congruent. 

• It leads me to that one time the Linear Algebra group had a discussion on this topic of best friends, and I was appalled at the idea of two best friends having a falling out with one another because one of them had been neglectful of the other, and not included the best friend in all of her outings/decisions/new friendship groups. I didn't know that to some people, a best friend was an actual label, like a boyfriend. And you had exclusivity rights! like your boyfriend/significant other would. That would make me a cheating best friend! D: Because I guiltily enjoy all my best friends. Can't we have a polygamous relationship with friends, please. I love you all. (And omg, I'm starting to wonder if this is what polygamous men say to their wives! OMG -- no, no, no, romantic relationships are different from friendships (and not just cause of the sexual intimacy bit) and the arguments are not all necessarily parallel.)

• My brother is getting married before me; not-so-soon, but soon-enough, and for a while, it became this other thing that underscored how not-normal I felt I was. So I had a bit of soul-searching for a while to regain mental and emotional stability -- and I realised after a while, that this has happened repeatedly in my life. Not the fact that my brother was getting married, but the fact that I would always fall short of some conventional expectation or other (and maybe everyone does, eh) -- and that the best times of my life have always been when I came to realise that I liked me for who I am, that I accepted me for who I am, that I am different and it's okay (or even wonderful!). It's not easy to explain how this happens... but I think it's got something to do about seeing the beauty of your own situation and not missing it for someone else's fairytale.

• Despite the nightmare that inpatient work was, I still actually enjoy this profession. Just because it puts me in a position to work on stuff that are supremely interesting to me (i.e. language and communication, its intricacies, its impact on life, the brain) and I actually am able to do stuff to help people. I've been thinking how annoying it is to have these boundaries of our profession -- like this is what a speech therapist does, that is what a teacher does, that's what a doctor does, that's a counselor's job, we're therapists -- not academics. All I want to do is help people and do what I'm passionate about. Stop labeling me! It's suffocating. 

And now that I've finally lost steam, here's the INFP-INTP comic (from oddlydevelopedtypes.com, which is hilarious and fun) that I think depicts my dynamic with E: