15 seconds of life

Due to some hurtful *sniff sniff* accusations that I only blog about conversations *glares at seok mei* I have decided to make a supposedly proper blog entry

Do you realize, that already half the year has gone by since we started the oh-so-wonderful thing we call college? We (or at least some people I know) were just so excited to start our (their) college life. But for me, I didn’t think of college as being a different stage of life…my parents and cousins all thought it was some big shindy that I was off to college…but not to me…actually I was even more dull and not-caring about the first year of college that everyone was making such a fuss about, than I usually am about starting a new year of school.

Half a year. Whoa. That really is unexpected. I have finally planted myself firmly in college life and suddenly it’s the beginning of a month holidays, and major exams? It went by in a matter of seconds on the clock, so imagine…15 seconds from now it will be the end of college. We (I) will be moping and emoing out in the background as we (I) watch new friends and old friends disappear into the black unseen mists of the future. We’ll probably make promises to meet each other often, or at least once in a while, and to never forget each other, to keep in touch, to be friends forever. But how many of those promises will be kept, and how many will be just fake words to comfort the promised?

Where would our friends and we be in 15 seconds time? Will we ever see or think of each other again? How can we be so certain we will if we don’t even know where our paths are leading us? Will we turn out how we have been hoping to turn out since we were small? Or teenagers? Or young adults? Will wistful and wishful thinking be a reality in the future? Or will we be on a totally different path of life? Will some of us sink into the dark pits of drugs, murder and joblessness? Will some of us be the next Bill Gates? Will we have fights that we can never repair if one party doesn’t want to repair them? Will we draw closer to people we didn’t even notice before? Will we be happy and feel our lives have been fulfilled, or will we be left alone to dwell on mistakes and regrets?

But I suppose that that’s the future, and its meant to be the future. I suppose the feeling of knowing after 15 seconds is better than the feeling of knowing after 1. But what if right now, if we keep following the track of wondering that we are traveling on now, we’ll end up successful and happy, and if we stop wondering and let life take control of the steering wheel, we’ll end up unhappy and lost? How do we know the right thing to do? Wondering can drive you out of your mind but what if wondering is the only way to get you where you have to go? How do we even know, that even if we end up happy and successful, when we get to heaven we’ll find out that it wasn’t the path we were meant to follow? What if there were signs we missed and nudges we ignored?

I’m lost (and so are you – except your lost cause you cant understand my blog). In 15 seconds, results will be out. 1A? 2As? 3As? 4As? Then I’ll have to make the biggest decision of my life.

First, the most important thing, the one that would decide my future, was PMR…then suddenly the thing that would decide my future was SPM…and now it’s changed again? But finally I think I have finally found the most important thing.

But it’s the hardest. Do I be selfish? Do I look at the decision from different angles and points of views? Both options have their owns pros and cons.

If I’m selfish, I choose to go to Melbourne in 2008.

Which means I would need 3A’s and 1B. It would also cost a hell of a lot more. But it also means ill be away finally from my parents and prove to everyone that I can lead my own life perfectly. I would be independent and free. And I wont have the headache of transferring across the continent in the middle of my studies (which is the next option)

Twinning 2009, if I decide to feel sorry for my parents, since they have already spent over a 200k on my education. They have spared no money from me, and have always tried their best to provide me with everything I want or need. And now, with my dad tethering on retirement, if I stay back and do twinning it would make a world of difference. Which means ill be back at HELP for another year literally alone. Pack up one year into my studies. Enter a class with no one I know. The plus point, I only need 1A, 1B, and 1C.

Its funny. I always had enough money to spend on things I didn’t need. So I suppose, in that way college IS a total new plane of life, since now I have nothing to spend. It’s my first time in this predicament. This is all so new to me.

Either way, I’ve decided ill be doing

• a Double Degree in Accounting and Finance, followed by
• a course in CIMA

Which will end me up in a career in Accountancy. The job lifestyle itself is the thing that draws me. I have exposure to it as my sister works in PriceWaterHouse Coopers, one of the Big Four. (And after all, my mom has successfully brainwashed me out of law). Since I was 5, I made it crystal clear that no matter how much pleading and bribing my mom carried out I would never pursue medicine. But right now, I’m doing the unthinkable and thinking about it (pun not intended). But the repulsion is of course, the early hardships in the field of medicine.

Being the pampered sheltered brat I am I wouldn’t tolerate a minute of it.

But then, which will give me the more comfortable life I’ve always lived for. Obviously the third offers more opportunity to climb the money and social ladder, a dream of mine, but the second has been a fantasy of mine since a tween. The first provides a different kind of satisfaction; security. And if work hard, I should be able to earn into the tens of thousands.

Money or happiness? Gregory Tan says aptly that they can co-exist. Which I agree. But then, money>happiness to some...me as well...I don’t know. I still haven’t figured it out. How can I be sure? Especially coming from Cempaka.

But why do i dwell in the future?

Banish the future. Live only for the hour and its allotted work. Think not of the amount to be accomplished, the difficulties to be overcome, or the end to be attained, but set earnestly at the little task at your elbow, letting that be sufficient for the day. --William Osler

I always feel sorry for people who think more about a rainy day ahead than sunshine today. --Rae Foley (Suffer a Witch)

It is difficult to live in the present, ridiculous to live in the future, and impossible to live in the past. Nothing is as far away as one minute ago.--Jim Bishop

So my dear dear friends and blog readers. My Seinfeld is on. But remember

Look to this day,
For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course lie all the verities and realities of your existence;
the bliss of growth, the glory of action, the splendor of beauty.

For yesterday is but a dream
And tomorrow is only a vision,
But today well lived makes
every yesterday a dream of happiness
and every tomorrow a vision of hope.

Look well, therefore to this day,
such is the salutation of the dawn