becktan

Apparently the MFA wasn’t that turned off by my audacity.

And I’m definitely staying now. :) Independent Study Modules here I come! HAHA.

Praise God! :)

People have asked me if I’ll have regrets when I start at NUS, whether I’ll regret giving up the chance to pursue my undergraduate studies overseas.

For once, after my MFA interview, I was sure. I’m not going to regret it.

You know? People asked me whether my decision to stay local was influenced by David and a fear of the high possibility of a relationship not working out because of the physical distance. I thought about it and spent much time questioning my motives for staying. I realised that if I went and we broke up, I would regret going overseas because there’d be the possibility that if I stayed, we’d have worked out. But if I stayed and we broke up, then I’d regret not going overseas. In short, if we broke up, I’d have regrets no matter where I went.

In the same way, if I do badly, I’ll have regrets. Regrets rise from not doing your best and fulfilling what you know God has called you to.

Dennis asked me if I could stand living for 4 years with the fact that I passed up an opportunity to study overseas. But then, could I stand living with myself knowing that I was a poor steward of a quarter of a million dollars?

Some see red when others seem to be spending their money without thought. I know a mentor of mine does (see red, I mean). Admittedly, I’ve tried my best to communicate my thoughts to my friends and through this blog. I don’t want to impose it on anyone as the be all and end all. I do recognise that we each have our own resources and different ideas of what good stewardship is. But I do hope that everyone I know who is going overseas is sure that this is the best option for them, and for the money to be used as best as it can, regardless of where or who it comes from.

What I fear is seeing fellow Christians going overseas without any thought, simply because it’s prestigious and a pressure placed on them by family, friends, school and society. And to me, I see quite a few of them.

As for me, no reserves, no retreats, no regrets.

During today’s MFA interview, I was asked a wide variety of questions.

“Was studying Chinese hard?”
“Why don’t you want to work for the British Foreign Service?”
“Won’t you be constricting yourself with a bond from the MFA if you want to go to NUS?”
“So does that mean that you disagree with parts of the UN Charter like the sovereignity of countries and the right to self-determination?”
“Are you a bleeding heart?”

And I gave a wide variety of answers too. Most of which I felt were unsatisfactory, i.e. unable to answer the question as I should, too convoluted, not answering the question etc.

———

I had two resounding “yes”es to their questions today:

“So can you answer the question that you refused to answer directly earlier? Do you think that Singapore should boycott the Olympics?”

Bang, bang. Shot myself.

“So if we offer you a scholarship to study overseas, will you turn it down?”

Bang, bang. I’m dead.

———

But I must say that I am amused with my audacity.
I remind myself of the French to wore red and gold uniforms to war.

But you know something?
I was sincere and truthful.

I hope that counts for something.

———

And as I told my Dad about my interview, he told me about William Borden. Truly, the stuff of inspiration.

This is the best version that I’ve ever heard, better than Sinatra and Buble.

I first heard this song on Love’s Labour Lost. But Astaire’s version is so much better. :)

Why do things have to get more complicated just as I thought they were getting clearer, with accepting NUS and rejecting SOAS?

I’ve just been told that I’m invited to go for the MFA first round interview and am still being considered for PSC. While I’d like to work for the MFA, they want their scholars to go overseas. To tell them that I want to stay in Singapore would seriously weaken my case for a scholarship, apparently.

Many would jump at the chance, and I must admit that it is extremely tempting.

And then, as I sat here, I heard an Audi A4 ad. It said, “These are my principles, so I will stick by them.”

I will tell the truth on Tuesday. I will tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so God help me. I’ll need lots of help.

When I told Daryl that I was thinking of writing a history essay earlier this year, he called me crazy.

I haven’t gotten round to it yet, but am going to start doing research on the person of General Arthur Percival. I distinctly remember a History textbook (In Sec 2, I think) comparing Yamashita, known as the “tiger” and Percival, known as the “rabbit”. I’ve always wondered if Percival was simply misrepresented by history.

I think I’ll go and find out. :)

Hello National Library, here I come! :)

I watched Feet Unbound yesterday. It was a sobering documentary. Unlike many movies, I don’t think that I’ll be forgetting what I watched for a long time.

And Van, I disagree with what you said. It’s alright (I suppose) to want some form of escape from the reality of the lack of happy endings in life, but the purpose of documentaries like the aforementioned, is not to depress, it is simply to create awareness.

Now one may say that you are already aware of history and the constant depression that mankind is in (even saying that you experience it yourself), but really, how much of life do we really know? Or rather, how much do we care?

It was a powerful movie because it made you cry and laugh too. You didn’t have to escape reality to realise the tenacity of the human spirit,

These soldiers (although focussing on the women) marched 120,000 km, through the mountains, grasslands, swamps and so on. They walked for days without any sleep and food. At first they had fried flour, but that ran out. Then they ate the crops in the fields, but that ran out too. They started eating grass, but eventually that ran out too. Then they found undigested seeds of crops in yak dung, so they picked the seeds out and ate them.

the seeming futility of what we strive for.

A female soldier who had gone through the Long March, to cross the Yellow River and be taken captive by the Muslim Horsemen, tortured and raped, recounted how she was beaten by youth during the Cultural Revolution. She was beaten because she was an old person who was still alive. She was beaten and made to memorise Mao-isms, as if she hadn’t done enough for her country. (That was the saddest part of the movie, just seeing the tears well up in her eyes.)

Yet, in it all, there were still moments to laugh and smile.

A recount by a little old lady about how she dodged bullets by a “capitalist dog”. Another one who now stays in a veterans’ village, dancing along her vegetable patch while singing.

In the end, an escape from reality is simply the escape from our ignorance and indifference about others and the hardship they go through.

As I watched the documentary yesterday, part of me kept saying, “Break my heart for what breaks Yours”.

I recently watched Ironman and Charlie Wilson’s War. And I thought to myself, “Becca, who are you kidding? You’re not an Ironman or a Charlie Wilson.”

Perhaps naive and daft are apt descriptions of me…