You never know what you love till you miss it.
Though the word "love" is a bit far fetched in this case, I certainly realised the sentiment well enough this semester. All that with the thing I thought i hated the most.Yea, I am talking about the gruelling torturing tiring university life, chipping away your confidence, happiness, youth, energy slowly and by the time you graduate, you will be ready to kiss the muddy ground after your first step outside the walls of the academic prison or become a hollowed out shell that ceases to have any sort of feelings.Maybe I am exagerrating a little bit here, but I guess one has the right after suffering from exhaustion, sleeplessness, starvation for the past 2 weeks .Thanks to the light schedule of tests and assignments..
Anyways, inspite of my passionate feelings towards my uni life, I have been proved wrong, yet again . A little trick Fate played on me - give an opportunity to spend 3 days in a small piece of heaven on earth, away from books, away from my uni, away from the the city that makes a mockery of time and relaxation. A quick trip to Bintan , an Indonesian island, few miles away from SG would be a God Send to anyone in my position. The pristine beauty of the little town, fresh air, clear skies( I could actually see starts at night!), the beach- such beautiful beaches..the first view of the place was a straight kick in the gut. Isolated, quiet, lovely. my dream. or so did it start with..
The very first day on paradise was enough to drive me crazy, senselessly crazy. When I settled down in our stilt house- bunglow, well fed, relaxed, novel in hand, staring at the similar expressions of contentment in my friends' faces, the question stikes me out of nowhere. WHat to do now?! An hour passed, a couple more trailed after.. It was a slow world- completely different and muddled up one with nothing to do other than watch the day pass by you..THe nightmare began. Hours and hours of isolated idlessness , time was killing us inch by inch. The stunning beauty of the land became a prison detached form the world- no phones,no people, no communication, no COMPUTER!
It was just too horrible to go through.
After managing to occupy ourselves for the next 3 days with everything from snorkeling to Spa massages, we were tired.. tired of conjuring up things to do. Somehow in the beaches of the Malaccan Straits, I faced the truth- I am an incurable city mongrel. The rush , the activity, the killing schedule of the city has somehow become the lifelines of such creatures. The name " entertainment" in my dictionary is unanimously associated with a movie in bed, a movie at the theatre, bowling, great dinner or a walk along Clark Quay. Just as we reached the shores of Singaporean waters, for the first time in my life, I was thoroughly , extremely, devastatingly happy to be back into the millieu of mindless work -a-holics. Maybe living in a concrete jungle of people,pollution and power of communication makes us appreciate the world of Tarzans only in the cine boxes. Considering our dependence on the EM signals of this wired world, a future of X men and Resident Evil alikes arent all that hard to believe in.
For all thats worth, with 2 submissions on the morrow, a CA on the day after, drained of energy, filled with headaches,wanting to curse God for this hell I am in, it just takes a 5 minute browsing through those pleasant Bintan snaps to force me back into my life with a renewed vigour.
