A year!

Wow, has it been long since I last set foot here. But just in time to chronicle some of life's wondrous changes that have happened thus far.

Rewind back to April 2010: first commissioned, but me and my fresh face walked smack into one of the East's oldest camps. Got told that my posting would change, and became quite abrasive over that (and rightly so might I add!). But to condense a full nine months' of adapting, tolerating, learning, and even some fun into a few sentences is almost unimaginable, yet our human endeavours to always go beyond the limits to achieve the ultimate pinnacle of laziness and at the same time, practicality, amaze me to no end. And so it shall amaze you too.

Taking on my new role was not an easy pill to swallow, I'll be the first to admit that. I was probably very aware of the fact that how I looked, how I behaved and how I thought and acted, were very much dissonant with the people I was about to meet, and who will ever be really ready for that? But being thrown into the deep end had its own merits, and I, somehow or rather, found myself climbing that steep learning curve faster than I imagined possible. Somehow, they endeared themselves to me, and even though the work was pretty much gruelling and sometimes impossible, I told myself I should just try my best, and if anything went wrong, God was always there anyway. Many things did go wrong, but at least from where I stood, they didn't seem to go spectacularly wrong, so that was good. Going to Taiwan for the second time in two years; taking over the upperstudy too quickly for my comfort (to his credit, he was a fantastic upperstudy); having to manage the idiosyncrasies and different personalities of my subordinates and at the same time balancing their interests with my superiors' targets, deadlines and taskings; helming one of the many backend projects in a huge behind-the-scenes effort to support the nation's most prominent sporting events; finally taking the evaluation test we were all preparing for and worrying over - all of it seemed awfully like work, and it was. But more than that, it gave birth to a new sense of self-awareness, again grappling and finding out where I could improve on, and how best to react to a certain set of challenges. I'm so entirely grateful for all the opportunities and chances I had to interact with people, work with deadlines and keep the faith, and I could not have fathomed just how much I have learnt in my stint with this group of people - the good, the bad, the ugly, and the impossibly amazing. All of them probably wouldn't even chance upon on this, but it is to them I owe my eye-opening experiences for the most part of 2010 and a little of 2011.

In all of this, I've realised that my social circles have been changing dramatically. Now, the only people I usually and often meet who I've known before 2009 are a meagre few, and I do feel quite bad about it. Many of them have attributed this to my MIA-ing during the training phase, and it's quite true indeed; back then, I had barely enough time even for myself. As much as I would like to close the previous chapter in life and move on to the next, it is definitely unwise to archive the former and not bother further, but perhaps to leave it peeking open would be the best option. I've also begun to be more adventurous in terms of exploring certain conversational topics with friends, but I prefer to think that this was pretty much the case even from the start, just that this trait has yet again been enhanced and sent to the forefront of my psyche - where there should be no OB markers, but just free-flowing expression that delves into the previous no-no's of religion and politics, while at the same time inhibiting any vulgar or offensive barbs, especially those that stem from others. Maybe I'm just taking this all a bit too seriously, but a sincere conversation can do so much for those taking part in it. The sense of adventure has also extended to my taste for travel, and having gone overseas in a short span to Vietnam, Thailand, New Zealand, and soon, Indonesia and Thailand again, my hunt for bargains and good, affordable food have always been met with some measure of success.

This probably sums up my year till now, and oh, the constant 'agony' of settling on the right course of study as well, but that remains to be another experience to relate once I can make enough sense of it.