Dreams, Ambitions and Generally Serious Stuff

I will now make a huge announcement.

I'm back to blogging!

*cricket sounds*

Oh come on. I've been away busy for so long on my book, resulting in no time for me to do my 'normal' blog post. Yes, I'm aware that's mostly my fault, but I'm back now, right? And all you readers can now enjoy my wonderful-world-beating-hilarious-unstoppable-insane-crazy-but-lovable writing again, yes?

*more cricket sounds*

Someone needs to call the pest controller. 

Anyway, taking so much time to try and write a decent novel has allowed me to learn a few things. Most notably:

1) Novels are MUCH harder to write than you think.

How hard can it be? If anyone asks me that, no, if anyone dares to ask me that, my answer would be: Go try it. Just go, and don't cry when you realise how hard it is to complete just one prologue, all the while trying to find a right balance between the characters, putting in the correct amount of suspense, detail and action, while making sure everything fits, especially in later chapters. Also don't cry when you realise that your creativity has left you. Assuming, of course, you had much of it to begin with.

2) You can get really distracted when writing one.

No matter how much focus and attention you put in, you're bound to run off halfway in frustration(refer to above paragraph) and run to Facebook, Twitter or Youtube for salvation. Then you'll realise that you've done absolutely no work at all.

3) That's all for now.

Obviously, there is a lot more, just that I'll have to use so much time typing it all up, and there's not enough time, and web-hosting is getting more and more expensive, and you'll probably realise that there's actually nothing more but I'm just giving excuses. have no time to read it anyway.

Now, on what's happened lately in my life, although no one cares anyway. Well, with the exception myself of course, which I suppose counts as a person.


The ASEAN scolarship.


I'm not sure if I've mentioned it here before, but basically the lucky b*tches deserving recipients get to go to Singapore to study under their famed education system.


Do I want it? It's kind of a no-brainer.


I'll 'fess up: Ever since I took the tests to qualify a few months ago, I've had this nagging worry about it. Will I get it? What if I don't? Do I have to stay here, and stare forlornly at my close friends leaving, one by one, for greener pastures, better lives? Would I have to go through the horror of Form 4 in this country, where Chinese and B.M. are hard as hell, where my command of English would be practically useless?


If I'd told anyone that I wasn't worried, that I didn't care, sorry. I lied. I did worry. I did care. A lot.


And I still do, but this has helped a lot...

What you're looking at, in case it's not clear, is an e-mail notifying me that I have qualified for the ASEAN interview. Or, in other words, the very last stage of qualifying.


Needless to say, I was thrilled. I literally yelled, whooped and jumped all over the place.


Three months of hoping, praying and fretting had finally paid off.


Then I started worrying again.


As I've stated above, this is the FINAL stage. It's all or nothing now. Would I come so far, only to drop out, just like hundreds before me? Would I be deemed unworthy, not good enough? Would I mess up, despite my "trained-and-tested" experience in speaking?


Oh yes, I'm worrying all right.


But I've made a promise to myself: I'll try my best, and that's it. If I don't get it, all I can do is push myself to be better in the next two years, then try again. Besides, what can I do? Hide in a corner and cry?


No, think positive, Terence. You will get it. You will go to Singapore, and you will show the world that you are capable of this.


Thanks for the encouragement, M.E., but you're an editor. Not writer. Editors edit. Writers write. Geddit?


29 August, 2011. Traders Hotel.  Let the countdown begin.

If you are an official in charge of selecting the scholars who has so coincidentally dropped by, the writer would like to say he really^100 wants the scholarship. Okay? Okay.