The Halfway Point

It's been an eventful semester, much different from the first. Following the first semester's stress, I took more time out to relax, taking entire days off from study to spend with Yolande.

We got to see a lot of baby Andrew, first with Singapore's National Day, then with his Christening. National day was interesting to see. We swam, played tennis, and barbecued (as in food, I'm not referring to our skin in the hot weather, although that was probably true in my case). I was shocked by the level of patriotism (I couldn't tell how serious they were) displayed by some of Yolande's relatives, who unashamedly peeked through the window of a first floor apartment next to the barbecue pit in order to watch the celebrations on their TV and recite the Singapore National Pledge in unison with the rest of the nation...

We, the citizens of Singapore
pledge ourselves as one united people,
regardless of race, language or religion,
to build a democratic society,
based on justice and equality,
so as to achieve happiness, prosperity and
progress for our nation.

...If you get the chance, I recommend asking Yolande for her version of this pledge, with added clauses that give a slightly more realistic depiction of Singapore!

But perhaps the biggest highlight was being rushed by Yolande's nieces to quickly down my glass of wine and take them to the playground, where I was spun on a roundabout and made to lift them onto the monkey bars. I went home feeling extremely dizzy!

The Christening was also a lot of fun - Yolande's aunt managed to smuggle baby Andrew onto the minibus after the Christening without his parents realising. We also tried to help him get to sleep later on in the day, but ended up entertaining him by singing and reading to him, which he seemed to enjoy. Although, Yolande now has a reputation for making him cry, which she is convinced he does on purpose only when she holds him in front of others.

Yolande and I also completed our walk, at last, between Orchard Road and home, this time starting from home in the morning. It took us about 5 hours to walk the roughly 20 kilometres to Orchard, including a stop at Clementi, the halfway point, for lunch. We felt very triumphant upon reaching the station, but had only enough energy left for a quick lunch at KFC and the train ride home, after which we napped away the afternoon until about 8pm.

So as you can see, I've been making more effort recently to relax, spend time with Yolande, and reboot myself. I think Yolande has also been much happier this semester as a result. It's not that I've been working any less hard, but perhaps I've been working more efficiently and managing my time better. The first semester's results were good (A for OB, A- for SMBP), but I spent too much time on additional reading that ultimately proved unnecessary when it came to taking exams. In semester two, I streamlined my efforts, reading only what was needed, and putting grades before self-enrichment. As a result, I was far less stressed, enjoyed myself more, and should have hopefully topped semester one's results by a significant margin. However, I think I can do better. Because when it came down to it, I still needed to re-read chapters and make notes for exams later on, making the long hours during term-time spent in the library keeping on top of the readings all but pointless. And I still haven't made much progress with my research projects! Semester three will be 100% streamlined - I will not study unless it will directly impact on my grades, and the rest of my time will be spent on leisure, and of course planning for a certain wedding.

Yes, that's right. Yolande and I are now officially engaged and plan to have the registration of marriage later this year, before travelling to England for our Christmas holidays. In fact, a lot planning went into what turned out to be a complex proposal plan, and I'd like to thank Yolande's friend, Rene, for discussing ideas with me without giving the game away to Yolande! If I do score high grades this semester, it will have been whilst preparing and carrying out this proposal, and whilst preparing for my family's visit to Singapore on the day of my last exam. Not to mention Yolande's birthday week (the myriad celebrations really did last a week!) falling during exam time. In fact, I believe all three of those events (birthday, proposal, family holiday) merit their own blog entry, and two of them would be better told from Yolande's point of view, so I shall conclude this entry by saying that I look forward to, if it's possible, an even more eventful third semester than the last!