~JcZw

This is a long post, so I encourage you to endure if you intend to read it through...

I don't know why, but recently I've been having really bad nights.... Insomnia can keep me awake till 2 or 3 whilst tossing and turning in bed, or rather, on the mattress. I don't have a bed since I roll in my sleep and propelled myself off the bed with alarming frequency. There was once I dreamt that I was in a firefight and got shot through the elbow. Reality was that I had knocked myself off the bed and landed smack on my funny bone. The part of my brain that supresses the instinct to ACT out your dreams doesn't work on this organism. The Force is too strong in this one.

Last night was the worst though... Due to a church activity in which I drank a large packet of strong black Nescafe (We were playing shi zi lu kou), hence an excess of caffeine, a blocked nose, a nocturnal near-nosebleed, and due to worry about certain things, I think I slept for a grand total of 3 hours, from 3-6 am. Such was the strength of the caffeine that I'm still quite alert now, thank you, albeit tired from kicking around the Heritage Trails with my juniors earlier today.

Don't ask me why I thought about such things as I will write out now, but lying very much awake in a darkened room illuminated by the indicator lights of the air-conditioner and battery charger makes you think funny things. Add to that an over-active imagination (hence the dreams) thats probably stimulated by thinking too much all the time anyway.

I was mulling over the problems that we were facing now, our promos, preperations for open house, then chinese paper, which, but for some crazy red-tape kicker at the MOE, I wouldn't have to take, and hard on its heels, our PW Oral Presentation. What was all this struggling for position for anyway? After this would just be competition for S-papers, then A-levels... NS, university, who knows? Life wasn't very fair was it. There were too many variables, more than we could cope with at a single given moment. Then as one thing led to another, maybe in retropect, though our problems were hard, they were still not so bad.

Then I thought about about Typhoon Katrina's assault on New Orleans, as I stared at the unblinking green light of my air-con. It occured to me that there were children over there the same ages as us, probably down to the same birthdays. They would be like us, living relatively peaceful lives, never seen danger or been exposed to dire calamity. Like us, they would be studying (maybe not as hard and kiasu as us, but studying nonetheless), playing games etc. What was it like for them to be cast out of their comfort zone then? To be evicted from their homes by so merciless a natural force? What cruel trick of fate was it that the lives of people who live so similar lives as us could be so savagely ravaged whilst we remained unscathed?

It really isn't my place to be thinking such funny things at 2 am in the morining, but the thing about New Orleans that struck me, was that I bet a year ago these children. like us, wouldn't have dreamt that their daily routine would be disrupted just a short while later. For example, I assume one year from now I'll have handed over all my CCA responsibilities and be prepared for Prelims, but whether I WILL be doing that 365 days from now remains to be seen.

Coupled with a few other incidents these few days, it occures to me that life is so fragile and impossibly fraught with hazards toward ourselves and our friends. But a passage from the Bible that I read with my little devotional book did some good in allaying my worry. Its amazing how God could predict that the night that I would read this passage would be the night that I had such thoughts.... Regarding a tree in Lebanon (Ezekiel 31), it was talking about how it stretched its roots to the point that it could reach water. This implied (as written in the devotional book)that if the soil was dry, for example, in a drought, then the roots would go far into the ground, and thus when it found water, not only would it be able to thrive, but also it would be firmly anchored and unlikely to be swayed by the elements further along its life.

In other words, although many people condemn God for the trials and difficulties that we go through in life, they do in fact make us stronger, and if we turn to Him for our providence, putting in our roots further, then we would be able to be more "firm" and not so easily toppled by difficulties further down the line.... not only because we had experience, but also because we had God himself. I'm not masochistic, and I won't go bumbling through life looking for trouble to have a deeper relationship with God (Thats not faith. Thats stupidity. God doesn't want us to hurt ourselves needlessly), but this teaches me to go through life with God as a guide and trust that he would provide when I meet with obstacles (See the diff? Clearing obstacles you encounter as you meet them versus LOOKING for obstacles to clear whether they're in your path or not). Yup... so it was encouraging to read that.

So with all that thinking sorted out, the thing that kept me awake was then the caffeine...
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Everyone who visits this blog will notice that on 8th September at 2351 hrs (look at the tagboard), Jonathan Chua-H of 05S15 requested that I write I segment on him. I told him I shall oblige, with the liberty to write off my own free will.

Unfortunately he threatened to, in effect, bring his metacarpals into high velocity contact with my mandible, or even between my mandible, or to puncture certain areas of my bloodstream such as the aorta, superior vena cava, carotid artery or femoral artery if I was a step out of line. So rather than take the risk, I'll keep my thoughts to myself for now (although it may interest him to know I've got it written out already =)
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One last thought. The school song should not change. Look at how much mayhem changing the school song has caused in AHS, not to mention VJ.

Also, a diplomatically neutral "Victoria thy genetic offspring are we" lacks considerable poetic flair.