A quiet weekend amidst a flurry of activity that has come to characterize these first couple of weeks of uni life. As I sit here shrouded by darkness, illuminated only by the dim glow of my laptop's LCD screen and the backlit keyboard in front of me, I still can't quie believe that this is really happening. So much material to study and cover before going to class each day, as I struggle to get the rusted cogs in my head moving, and on the not-quite periphery of school life; hall activities, friends and such, though I bring my laptop into camp hall every week I barely have the time to touch it, much less give its keyboard my customary loving caress.

Yesterday's lab practical was intriguing to say the least; another kind of electrophoresis, spectrophotometry as well as microscopic analysis of blood, our own blood, obtained via a tiny pinprick of the finger "Let me lance you" sounds quite wrong, doesn't it? Morning practical followed by an afternoon of mugging, eyes turned towards my iPad, frantically attempting to digest a series of lectures on metabolism (see what I did there? :P), Metabolic Pathways I & II, Oxidative Phosphorylation etc, material not exactly foreign to the A level curriculum but much more in-depth, and with the additional expectation that we should cover within a day - we're allocated 4 hours of prep time to be precise - what we'd take a couple of weeks to cover in RJ. Studying from 3pm-2am, till I got light-headed, and sleep, when I eventually allowed myself a respite, was fitful and disturbed with images of carbon compounds, biochemical intermediates, catalytic enzymes and the various pathways swimming before me, to be woken up and off for today's lessons, a mental wringing throughout the day bifurcated by an hour long lunch break. Mentally drained, sleep deprived, but I have to admit TBL (team based learning) is a very interesting way to learn, though there are some inherent flaws which I won't elaborate on here. And it's been amazing to finally and actually learn again, new input, new stimulus, more food for thought. The spirit craves, and dies when it finds wanting.

A good weekend, a meetup with dear and treasured friends, some distance, paths diverged and traveled, it's a sobering thought to recall that in the very near and immediate future we may all be scattered across the world, each pursuing our individual dreams. I want to remember the times we've had together, memories shared, walking down Orchard Road, huddled around in some bar, not talking much, but simply being, stupid things done together, and remain hopeful of the times we'll have together in the future as well. Foolish sentimentality? Perhaps, but maybe I want to be the one left in the room after the party's over and the lights go on, the one there to clean up the mess and tidy the place up, keep the lights on, for the next time. Why not?

A Sunday spent, I must admit, not in the most productive way possible, Monday's mugging frenzy was admittedly at least in part self-afflicted, discipline is something I'll have to enforce, if I want to have much of a semblance of a life in uni. The workload and timetabling is ridiculous compared to other courses, which is obviously to be expected, but I don't believe that I won't be able to make something out of it with the appropriate management, choices, choices, choices.

How could I forget, a Thursday, significant in it's symbolism,  a White Coat Ceremony in which we received the symbols of the profession. I know not how this tradition began, and tbh I'll admit that perhaps I was not entirely invested with the significance of the whole thing, but it is a significant milestone in our/my medical career; though I'm doing my best not to put the chariot before the horse and get too far ahead of myself. A start, after all too long a trip that began when I decided, on an impulse to submit an application to YLL 2 years back, the subsequent rejection, and the rollercoaster ride which was my application in the subsequent year. Now it begins.

Speaking of choices, a decision I found myself making that Thursday evening:  A decision between having my virgin clubbing experience (which is probably a damn pathetic way to put it) with my OG mates at Jash and completing the next day's lectures and ensuring I had sufficient rest before an early morning trip over to the Mandalay campus in Novena for a full day's worth of TBL. A decision possibly simplified as work vs play, and I went with work. Any regrets? Possibly, cause by all accounts those who went for it had a lot of fun, and that day's TBL didn't turn out to be particularly meaty, but still a more "responsible" decision (which has all kinds of connotations, different ones to different people) to make, influenced perhaps because I didn't think it too appropriate to go for it right after the WCC hehe.  Well anyway I don't doubt that I'll face many more such or even more significant conflicts of priorities and decisions I'll have to make, be it simply work vs play or something else, all I hope is that I'll be able to choose wisely, while still maintaining that all so crucial balance that's necessary to have an enjoyable and fulfilling time.

C'est tout.

I realize I may have been pretty lenient with frequent temporal skips and hopping back and forth along the timeline, but I've been, as always, typing as things come to me, and it does, to me at least, seem to form a narrative of sorts, so I'm leaving it as it is. It may be that when I eventually revisit this during my more idle/introspective moments, that it'll make absolutely no sense to the "me" then at all, but that's simply a risk I'll have to take~