Ha, I've managed to squeeze a bit of my brain juices into action thus the existence of this post. The most horriblest thing long holidays does to you is to reduce the importance and meaning of your very existence into mere dust. I was pondering about the fact that a friend mentioned she'd be quitting her job at the start of june and kept harping (well not exactly, but enough to make me realise) that it'd all end soon. Then it kinda dawned on me, that almost half a year has passed already! A part of me highlights the 'almost' and is scrambling to find something to do that would make this first half of 2006 somewhat special and most importantly, something I wouldn't look back and find regrettable, or a waste of time. Despite, my almost busy nature everyday of the week, there's this big vortex inside of me that seems to be sucking away everything. Emotions, thoughts and, I fear, my sanity as well. Such that I see nothing except that big black empty hole within myself.

I think I have come to understand myself a little better. As extreme as I made myself out to be, swaying from one end of the spectrum to the other in mere minutes, emotions like anger, elation and hurt climax upon the triggering of minor events, there is a need for some sort of moderation in my life. This has been stressed during my years in JC and now, once again after. It is a kind of irony I feel. Hours of mugging non-stop where you see nothing but homework in everything that you do. You read the papers, surf the net, watch the telly all for the sake of doing that piece of assignment or prepping for that paper. All your daylight hours haunted by the nagging feeling of the piece of homework left undone. Day or night does not matter anymore, the only sole purpose of our lives was to finish that homework, scour through the lecture notes, do those tutorials, write those essays. Don't even talk about freetime, sleep was a luxury. And what was sleeping anyway? The only solace, where we could drift our minds off from this world, disturbed by such a torturous routine, reduced to mere respite. You could equate sleep as the turning off of a switch, only to be turned on say 5 hours or less later on when it was time to get ready for school. Oh the agony of being forcefully corrected into drones. Time and time again, it was not difficult to see the problem of such an insane education system. Moderation is key my dear friends. Surely anyone can see that it's not a healthy lifestyle to be forcefed with nothing else but what the higher ups deem as good and wholesome for the economy. A little leeway does wonders for the heart and mind. If you'd let the mind wander a little, you'd be surprised as to what it could come up with. Instead of restricting us poor souls into focusing every bit of energy into swallowing increasingly larger volumes of input, it would've been wise to let us stop, take a break and take in the sights and sounds. Breathe, smell, taste, touch, see, hear. Maybe we would even have felt an inkling of joy in the harsh studying environment. Education Nazis!

But now, when crazy exams and study routines and timetables have come to pass, it is time once more to reexamine this concept. Where time was previously non-existent, it is now behaving somewhat like a vacuum. As seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months quite quickly whiz pass at their usual speed, it feels like this could go on forever. As if stuck in a different dimension that keeps no log of time. Moderation again! Moderation! Maybe it is a secret ambition of mine, to attain harmony and balance with all that is around me and surrounds me (and sometimes, drounds me).

Prolonged periods of keeping that head down in the books won't do you any good. Neither will extravagant lengths of free unscheduled time.