Well tomorrow I'll be enlisting, and this marks my 1000th post. Sometimes I really wished that I'd stopped blogging here but...oh well. It has been almost a year since I visited this blog again, and it's always a wonder that why when I'm moving on to another phase of life, I'd always come back to visit this blog. Maybe it's because, this blog reminds me of my past, a past that I really tried my best to forget but there's a strange attraction that always pulls me back and tries to remind me of who I was once before, and who I am now. It feels as if it's a ritual to enable me to move onto the next phase of my life. And somehow it proves that the past will always cling to you. Looking back the past years, I'd somehow wonder what have I actually achieved in my life. Well, I did quite well for my polytechnic studies and scored myself a spot in NTU, which is kinda good! I was stuck between choosing either NUS and NTU, and my gut feeling tells me chemical engineering is still the course for me. So gut, please don't disappoint me. I guess that I've really changed alot in a span of two years. I guess I could describe myself as a really, naive guy back then. A guy that who's generous with trust, feelings, and emotions. I never held back whatever I feel, I always say whatever I feel. But over the years, I changed. I became someone who is much more wary, risk adverse and careful. I became less generous with my trust, feelings and emotions. I because someone who closed himself inside, instead of really speaking everything that goes through my mind. I became someone who is a totally opposite of who I was. Maybe it's because growing older makes me realized that the world isn't really all gumdrops and rainbows. It's a world full of landmines and war. Quoting from the book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer: "When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much…Where the smoke from a chimney ended. How an overturned bottle rested at the edge of a table. I spent my life learning to feel less. Every day I felt less. Is that growing old? Or is it something worse?" I realized that it's not everyone is changing, it's I who have changed the most. I became such a cynical, paranoid and mistrusting people. I am kind of disgusted and amazed at the same time, on how a human could change that much. If it's possible I'd really like to find the thing that changed me and undo the change, but it isn't that easy. Quoting from su ann: "i blame this on recent traumatic events that have scarred me for what feels like will be eternity… but ultimately i know that the mistake lies in me allowing the trauma to ripple across my life instead of letting it go. there are many platitudes out there about how we shouldn’t allow small people and small things to control so much of our mind and heart. in theory that sounds very acceptable, but in practice it’s not so easy for me. yes, some things are just not worth it, but some spider in my soul is just so incredibly sticky to these painful things and crawls the universe seeking closure. it gives me much grief and anxiety in its wake. i was becoming disinterested, fatigued and hateful, and for some reason i felt that was okay, and that it was all part of growing up. but actually, it is not all part of growing up. when one grows up, one doesn’t necessarily become bored, fatigued or hateful. the problem lies in being weak, in choosing flight over fight, in being too proud to admit that i’m over-generalizing when i say my lousy investments in the past are signals of all humans i am to come across, in being too scared and doubtful to realize that within me there is an expansive capacity to engage in battles and win them well. it only took me until my last couple of weeks in new york to see these things for what they were and to truly come face to face with them and how these distortions have affected me for so long." Maybe, just maybe, I'd find the courage to come face to face with my feelings. And change to be a better person.