Ill

I have colds, I feel feverishly cold, good thing you have never been cold. 

If gods are always blamed for life’s misfortunes, I’m happy enough to note that I get to have motivations to keep me going amid all this stress. 

We’ll get by.

iDebate.

Everyone knows that, and it’s not even my original, so I neither understand the value added to that line nor why I made that this post’s title. Let’s just make ourselves believe that it’s pertinent. 

I have just realised how I spend my day. I spend my mornings til afternoons in CAL (be it for classes or hanging out with CAL friends), I spend the whole afternoon to early/late evenings with UPDS, I talk to you til past midnight while I’m doing my assignments, and I sleep afterwards.

And I’ve just realised how much time I’ve been spending on debates yet I have so little time talking to you.

I’m sorry. I really am.

***

I wrote in my LJ last week that I have been missing Singapore so much these past few days. There are so many reasons why I miss that cute, sunny island and sometimes I wonder why two countries need to be separated apart. I wish for the Philippines to switch places with the Mainland Malaysia, so I can get to go back even on a weekly basis (hello to the cheap coasters!).

NUS is still emailing me. I redirected my NUS Inbox to my Gmail so up to now, I still get to read all the updates from the school— Nominees for Student Awardees, Closure of Swimming Pools, and even a promotional ad for the NUS Debates (YAY!). I used to ignore these messages when I was still in Singapore, but now that I am no longer part of NUS, I feel awkwardly different. Look at how one semester can change a life of an idealistic student aspiring to become a full-fledged scholar and academician.

And of course, I miss the NUS Library, which has been my second favourite spot in NUS (the first being PGP, where majority of the friendships began and where almost all the fun stuff happened *grins*). I miss my favourite red couch at the left part of the P-Q shelves. I miss the people I don’t even know whose faces I used to recognise because of seeing them on an almost-everyday basis. I miss the self-service borrowing and returning system. I miss the free Internet access and the self-booking system that goes along with it (yay for just typing your student number). And of course, I miss all the books and the online subscriptions— everything I need I see on my web browser. 

Now I’m back to the third world, a library of a freezing air-con, irritating librarians, lost books, limited online subscriptions, and doesn’t even have an Internet connection (at least for my college’s library, almost all the other libraries have lol). But it’s something I have also equally missed when I was in Singapore.

Of course I miss all my friends I’ve met in Singapore. I miss my kiasu Singaporean classmates (at least, some of them are not), the exchange students I’ve met in PGP and even some from Raffles who I met in The Arena haha, my drinking buddies (*coughs* Jason and Bieu!), and of course, NUS Debates.

I just love UP and NUS so much. Although I obviously love UP more because it has transformed me so much, I guess it’s not wrong to miss NUS and Singapore once in a while, right?

***

I’m still waiting for the email from the Pi Sigma Fraternity regarding the semi-finals of the Oregon-Oxford format debate that Bo and I joined. Good thing we’ve reached the semis. We should win this round so we can be in the Grands, and more than the honour and the prestige, we want to be in the Grandsfor the money! Haha. Yes, we really need money for future tourneys! Haha. Bo teammed up with me during the pre-tournament screening when we defended the Human Security Act. Kriska was my partner during the first elimination round (quarters?) when we proposed the commercialisation of UP because Bo had a class that she can’t afford to miss. I’d be with Bo again for the semis, and yes, we need to win this. I think we’d be debating on EPIRA, some electric power law in the Philippines. Apparently, I know nuts about it. I need to research as early as now. 

***

It’s August. Time’s swift.

I love you so much.