Hard to wake up from a deep slumber

(Ramblings from Day 4 of my trip in Canberra)

I took a walk today along a creek that flows through ANU. It is a bit hard to describe how the creek looks like. And neither do I have any photos to show, because I only discovered that my camera was spoilt when I was in Changi Airport. Anyway, it was a nice and peaceful walk along the creek, with the sunset diffusing warm rays through the leaves. The creek gradually opens up into a lake. I had quite a good feeling of emotional and mental uplifting; just me with my ipod nano; felt all the burdens, aches and stresses that have been accumulated in the past year slowly dissipating.

I think I like it this way, going to a foreign place without consciously wanting to snap pictures and capture Kodak moments. Memories become mish meshed into some sort of a blurry image at the back of my mind; like a prolonged blissful dream. It is in such a dreamlike state that I can also daydream all day long and put on a silly grin at myself, without being conscious of the people around me, because no one knows who is this guy who is grinning at himself. So I was just there grinning and daydreaming at the lake, and thinking back of joyful moments and events that visit my life once in a while in the past two and a half years – Angkor Wat, Matara, Seoul, Great Wall, Germany, Austria etc.

I must say that God has really blessed me with amazing stuff. I remembered that there were two distinct ‘stifled hopes’ that I did not dare to pray for when I went to FASS in 2004. First, I was hoping that I could write an honours thesis by year 4 although I knew that it was an insurmountable academic mountain to climb after total annihilation in year 1. Second, I was hoping that God could somehow provide me with opportunities to travel, because after I disqualified myself in my exchange to UBC, following the switch from SOC to FASS, I decide that it was best to stay in Singapore to pull up the grades. Somehow, God provided both – through some miracle grades, kind professors, and three unexpected summer schools, even when I wasn’t exactly praying for those things because I was kind of resigned and pessimistic to everything after year 1, not just because of school per se, but because I felt kind of stupid and pathetic in a lot of other things.

Yeah, so the past two and a half years have been, on hindsight, protected and blessed by God, and I just want to say a word of Thank You to Him (and my mortal dad, of whom I kind of over borrowed money at times), and sorry when I’m kind of blinded by my own pessimism and silly melancholy. And sometimes, it is better to stop revisiting those photos that I have taken in the past two and a half years, so that Kodak-moments can mix and match themselves to form a lovely stream of dreams.

Going back to Singapore can be a struggle in the sense that I know it is a matter of saying ‘goodbye’ to my dreamlike mode and the daydreams in my dreamlike mode, and saying ‘hello’ to realities and ‘silenced’ realities; ‘silenced’ in the sense that there are realities that I don’t want to face up to, or that I don’t see the need to. Ignorance is bliss perhaps.

Sitting alone by the lake in ANU, I happened to come across some ducks and black swans which are probably going home or something. The photo above was taken in Amsterdam, but it is more or less the same kind of sweet and lovely formation that I saw in ANU. Later on, I was quite amused by this old couple who were feeding the ducks and swans. For their old bones and age, they sure look pretty child-like in their own world. I hope I can have that kind of life when I am old.

Now that my ‘stifled hopes’ are almost complete – unless somehow I can’t write my thesis for whatsoever reasons – I’m thinking of exercising a bit more faith in future grace by deferring Masters for a year and do Tribute in church. Doing Tribute was something that struck me during an epiphany in Europe, but subsequently I rationalized it away that it can’t be true because I have a knack of getting things wrong in quiet times and prayers. And I figured out that my innate angst against all office politics, bureaucracy and social control will just explode if I do clash with Mount St. Helen in the church reception desk.

But for a few reasons, I got a feeling that I might miss the divine boat or something if I don’t respond to this epiphany. Yeah, will talk to pasta Ian and pastor Joshua soon, maybe Wee Shun too. There are certainly many struggles just thinking about it, so a prayer for me in this aspect would be great. Don’t be harsh on me though, if I decide to continue the Masters’ track.