It's been a long while, I was actually halfway into a post last Sat but was kinda too disappointed with the result to carry on, so it now sits unfinished, along with the rest of its kin in the draft folder, never to see the light of day~

Anyways, 4-0, granted, against an abject Fulham but still, wow. And with the distinct impression that we could have scored loads more no less! Very impressed with Coutinho, still a little rusty after quite a while out after that tackle but the quality is evident; loads more through balls coming into the game, and ALOT more attacking impetus as well. Unlucky to not have scored hehe. Well Fulham pretty much capitulated after goal number 2 so sterner tests lie in wait after the break, Everton and Tottenham haha, hopefully the reversion to 4 at the back means we actually have some midfield presence for once. With the number of false dawns this team seems to have seen, I shall reserve my excitement and anticipation for later in the season, but for now, I shall remain quietly optimistic of our progress.

Last Monday's shooting trials didn't go that well, mostly, I suppose, because I hadn't managed to train at all the week before, was completely unable to find my hip (maybe I'll have a little more success once lower body anat comes along hehe) and just felt really unstable. I somehow managed to pull things up with a 97 in my penultimate series though, so I ended up with something 53X-ish. Not ideal at all, gotta work on that. Sometime. Despite that though, I'm apparently on the school team! Nothing to brag about, but at least I'll be able to carry on training FOC~

I haven't been the most rigorous or on about my studies, not to the point of neglecting them, but I'm pretty aware that there's a lot more that I could do about them. A large part of it is down to laziness and inertia, especially during the midweek slump and over the weekends. And as I've said before, the issue isn't that I hate studying; I'm perfectly fine once I've hit the books, maybe it's a habitual kinda thing urgh.

For our LTPP, we accompanied some homecare nurses to visit pediatric patients. Can't say too much here but it was an eye-opening and visceral experience, I can only begin to imagine what their caregivers have to go through, emotionally and even physically, love is so easy to speak of but to see if expressed in such a way, day in day out, was very touching. And I guess it can be very easy to discount such situations, saying stuff like "Oh, they seem to be coping fine, you know?" so its very commendable that there are people and organizations out there who attempt to relieve some of their burden, to simply offer to look after their kids for a day while the parents have a day to themselves, it really does seem to have a profound impact on them.

I have awesome classmates, I really do. They're probably among the "nicest" most generous and caring people out there, which probably shouldn't be too much of a surprise, hopefully it means that our interviewers selected well. And if there's something I've learned from being around them, it's that being "nice" is simply not enough. It's precisely because they have so many things to them in addition to their niceness that makes them wonderful. And somehow, maybe because I've been over-saturated by the nice-ness around me, I find myself holding back; there's always someone else to care, to do something about it, and why do what'd amount to an almost pointless gesture? I guess what I'm trying to say is that in some sense, I've kinda lost my grasp on my barometers of who I am, what I wanna be, and it can feel unsettling at times. Or maybe I'm just screwed up inside :s

Went out with Mos, Merv and his sis to watch Thor last Sat, had dinner at the Soup Spoon before taking a walk to the floating platform with Mos. We've come so far since the last time we were there for our POP, the rest of my batchmates are gonna ORD in less than a month, and our futures await. Some much less definite than others, since mine seems to be almost-if-not-quite laid out, but the scary and impressive thing is how anything we do now will likely have a considerable impact on where we end up even a few years done the road. 举足轻重 comes readily to mind. And yet something to remember - and is so easy to forget - is that we're still young, there's room for mistakes, error and exploration. We've been so indoctrinated by the education system and high pressure environment that we come from that we feel that margins for error are tiny, almost no room for a single misstep, only one path to follow, and I'm sure I don't have to tell you that it's a very limited way of thinking. So yes, we may have our best laid plans, and that's a good thing, it's always prudent to have a well-considered Plan A, or even B, but we should never close ourselves off so completely that we find a single hiccup along the way all so jarring, or that we fail to consider other avenues when they open themselves up to us.

Idk. So I'll cast this out into the ether for now. Not the best worded of things I could have written but it'll have to do.