Travel Bug

Yay I'm going to the land of dimsum after my papers in late apr!
Cant wait to eat n shop in HK n Macau, haha.

Now left with the EUR trip to plan. Hope to confirm booking very very soon!

Happy cny everyone! =)

Busy Flurry

These few days had been such a flurry of committee stuff. Recce, photoshoot, meetings. Juggling 2 committees with a lousy timetable with grad trip planning is no mean feat. Totally exhausted at the end of it.

Recce and photoshoot on Saturday saw the whole group of us clad in green and we went to many national parks in Singapore. A very greeeeen day where we all felt so close to nature.

Grad trip planning seems like project hauling. SIA tickets to London/Paris/Frankfurt currently stands at only a mere $1198 and the offer ends today! So even though the States had always been our choice, Europe seems to be emerging as an option as well. Okay i can hear mich, ming n even yc shouting out to me to join them over there!! But well, planning for a Europe trip is really loads of work! I nearly wanted to faint just by reading up on all the Eurail passes. And there're so many other factors to consider as well. So where would we be heading to???

Now, it's the time to do up my tutorials. Omg, 306 tut has 6 qns, sigh.

Yet Another Beginning

Finally, its the end of a full school week. Only the 2nd week has ended, but I feel as if I've spent many many days in school alr. No thanks to this sem's timetable, which is the WORST in my whole 3 yrs.

Like going to school for just 1.5 or 2 hrs of lesson, when my one-way journey is alr 2 hrs. Do your math and you'll know I spend 4 hrs travelling for just 1.5/2 hrs of lesson for two days in the week.

No, this shouldnt be the timetable of a student in her final semester you knowwwww.

But anyway, what's done cant be undone. I'm going to spend half my lifetime of this sem on the mrt, so it's time to start loving the mrt.

And, I still have to go back to ntu land tmr!!! On a saturday!!! ROAR.

I just wish that there could be more trust in this world.

A World Without

Everyone should read this book.

Words like "Afghanistan", "Taliban", "U.S. troops in Afghan", they werent exactly unfamiliar to me. But during those turmoil times, after reading a summary of what has happened, I usually do not keep abreast of these news anymore. Too depressing, and well, just admit it, we just get too caught up in our own lives to care about such world news for long.

It's the same with any other world disasters, such as the Szechuan earthquake, the Mumbai terrorist attacks, etc etc. We read about the pitiful stories of the victims, we know who are the Singaporeans that have been sacrificed, and once the newspapers headlines have moved on to other news, we move on with our own lives as well.

And then, I picked up "The Kite Runner" to read 2 days ago. Left me totally in awe. I think "powerful" describes the story best. It gave me a greater insight into how Afghanistan is really like, what it had gone through over the years, from being a monarchy to being overthrown by a coup, and then being invaded by Russian, then by the Taliban, and then the U.S. troops toppled the Taliban regime.

The Taliban regime was governed with many prohibitions, among them, fireworks, clapping at sports events, television, computers, photos, movies, etc. And the treatment of women during then is utterly anti-modern. But the worst of all, was the "ethnic cleansing" of an ethnic race called Hazara in Afghanistan.

"The Taliban drove their pickup trucks up and down the narrow streets of Mazar-i-Sharif shooting to the left and right and killing everything that moved."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban

A complete replica of Hitler's massacre of the Jewish.
Or perhaps, even worse.
And all that happened during 1996 to 2001, not too long ago.

The wars left Afghnistan being only a land of rubble and beggars. Today, the country is reconstructing from the aftermath.

But today, another war is happening in the Middle East. As we are buying our CNY clothes or getting ready for the new school semester ahead, the people of Gaza find themselves being surrounded by bombs and corpses. Nothing but fear grips them.

Take some time out, read the book, read the news, and count your blessings.