In the blink of an eye it’s almost the end of the recess week. I’m so happy and comfortable with getting to sleep in everyday that I just don’t feel like waking up at dawn just to go to school anymore. But that would be committing academic suicide, so…

The second part of each semester always goes by faster than the first. True, there are 7 weeks in the first half and only 6 in the second half, but the second half always seems to be packed with more work. Lab reports to hand in, tests and other assignments to complete, and the bugging thought that the exams are just around the corner.

And then the next thing you know, the holidays are here.

This is the life of a university student in Singapore.

NTU webmail ate up one of my somewhat important emails. Why? It’s never happened to me before.

日本語三が S/U をする？S/U をしない？分からないね。
来年日本語四を勉強するなら、elective が三個ある。でも、S/U が二個だけだ。
先学期 Language Puzzle が S/U だった、少し馬鹿だね。

日本語三は少し難しいけど、今から沢山勉強するなら、大丈夫だね。
そして、第十八と十九課 LJ81 の時もう勉強した。HMJ3 は復習だね。
でも、どうして私は少し心配だね？私の日本語はあまり上手ではないから？

月曜日まで S/U をしなければならない。どうしょう？

(*´ο`*)=3 はふぅん

I met a really rude guy on the train this morning. I was standing near the door of the train, and there was another girl standing near me. She seemed like a university student, and she had her earphones on the whole journey. When the train reached Jurong East, a large crowd of people boarded, and amongst them was a man in his 40s. He walked towards the door on the opposite side, and stood next to the girl.

Soon after the train moved off from the station, he turned towards the girl a few times and said something to her. I was listening to music at that time, and I couldn’t hear what he was saying. He seemed to get pretty fed up with something after that, and suddenly pushed the girls bag (which she held at her side) to her front. While I didn’t see the girl’s expression at that point of time, I’m sure she must have been shocked. She calmly asked the man if she did anything, and upon hearing that, the man said in a loud voice that her bag was touching him. That was followed by an equally loud “my bag didn’t even touch you!”, and the man took up his bag and hit the girl quite hard with it. The girl didn’t say anything after that, but shifted her bag away. I guess she was worried that if she said anything more, that guy would do something worse to her.

I really don’t get what’s wrong with the guy. The girl came on board first, and it was the guy who chose to stand beside her. And she didn’t purposely use her bag to poke him or anything. It was the peak hour then, and the train was very crowded. People standing near the entrances barely had space to even turn. You can’t possible expect everyone to stand away from you under that sort of situation, can you? If people are so afraid of something or someone brushing against them, then jolly well take a taxi or get your own private transport instead. And if so happens that you’re irritated with someone’s behaviour when you’re on public transport, if you go to the extent of hitting someone then you’re in the wrong.

These days, I have increasingly less patience for people who are provoked by the smallest things, or people who seem to think that the world owes them something and complain about it. No one owes you anything! People may make you upset or irritate you unknowingly. Things may not go the way you’d like them too, and you may feel very unhappy about it. We cannot control what happens around us, but we can control how we are going to react to these things. So why let these things control our emotions, and become such an unhappy person? Whatever circumstances or environments we’re in, there are things we have to learn to accept, and things we have to learn to let go of. Sometimes it’s not that life treats us really badly. It’s that we are blessed with other things, but we’d rather see what we don’t have instead of the things that we have. We choose to see how pathetic a situation we’re in, rather than how we can make the best of things, given our circumstances. In some ways, happiness is a choice. And if we choose not to grab hold of it, then what right do we have to complain about how bad life is? We only have ourselves to blame.

I’ve been watching quite a lot of shows lately, which explains the quietness around here. A bit too many in fact, but it’s good to listen more to people speaking in Japanese when I’m learning the language. (Excuses, excuses…) Jasmine says I always watch sad shows, but I usually don’t know what the shows are about before I start watching them; I just pick shows whose titles I’ve heard of before. And it so happens that a few of them are sad ones.

世界の中心で、愛をさけぶ (Crying out love in the centre of the world) was one of those that really left an impression.

“I thought I might be using a lifetime’s happiness in a moment. I was that happy and she was that beautiful.” A young boy stands on the red earth of Australia under its blue sky. It is 17-year-old Sakutaro Matsumoto. His time with the girl comes back to him. The coloured sand runs through his hands and a tear appears on his cheek. He wakes up. It’s 2004 and he is 34 years old and in Japan. He thinks “I have been in a world without her for 17 years.” Returning home to see his old high school for the last time before it is demolished, Saku confronts anew the loss of the love of his life, Aki, to leukemia 17 years ago. Now a medical researcher at graduate school, he has been living as if half of him died with her since then. Based on the bestselling novel that sold over 3 million copies, the past and present come together in this love story that is both pure and sad.

While the story is not something new, what makes it different from shows like A Walk to Remember is that we also get to see the main character 17 years later, finally coming to terms with his loss and realising that he has to move on with his life. I really like Yamada Takayuki’s (山田孝之) portrayal of Saku as well. Very good acting by him, and you just can’t help but feel for Saku when you watch the show.

No one likes to lose someone they love, because it’s such a painful experience. However, in the event that this happens, we can’t stop our lives and grieve forever. No matter how much we want to remember the other person, the fact is that as time passes, some of our memories of them will eventually be lost. It doesn’t mean we forget about them of course, but we just won’t be able to remember all the times shared together, or everything we once knew about the other party. While the other person is no longer around, we are still alive, and so we have to live on properly and not let life just pass us by like that. We grieve, but we have to move on after that.

Back to the show, the theme song is very good as well, and it really catches the essence of the show. I’m reminded to of story whenever I listen to it. English translation is below the cut.

There was an earthquake in Sumatra last night, and for the first time in my life, I felt the tremors here. Except that I didn’t know that it was an earthquake until this morning, when I heard the news on my way to school. When the tremors occurred I was watching a video online, and the computer screen looked as though it was swaying. At first I thought that I might be feeling slightly giddy from looking at the screen for too long, but I could stand up with no problem and I didn’t feel as though something was wrong with me. So I sat down again, and this time round I felt that the chair was shaking. Maybe I wasn’t sitting properly and the chair wasn’t balanced then? I tried shifting around, but still I felt that something was shaking. It went away after a while though, so I just ignored it and continued watching the show. No one in the house mentioned anything about the ground shaking anyway, so I thought it could just be me. The tremors at my place weren’t very strong as well…

There was an aftershock this morning, and this time round I didn’t feel anything even though some others did. I think there were 2 more after that as well. Hopefully there won’t be any tsunami as a result of the earthquake, and the death toll and number of injuries won’t be too high.