This blog was set up some time in June 2006 by Jacq as part of a series of blogs for members of the QuGee group. Its original purpose served to keep up to date members of QuGee with each others lives.
I suppose if you've come this far, you'd want to know more about me, beyond the occasional crazy antics or even the solemn front I present at work. This is where you'll find my passion, my emotions, and even my innermost thoughts that I wouldn't dare tell those beyond my private circle of friends. I can't start writing an autobiography just yet since I probably have 3 quarters of my life still to live. And no, my life is not exciting enough for me to do that, I have'nt been to the Amazon basin, haven't trekked in the Saharan desert, haven't searched for sulphur bacteria at the hot springs of Yellowstone National Park. But if anything, I want to say that I have led a very fulfiling life when I'm at the end, I want to be able to say that I have seen this, experienced that, and most importantly had thoughts and feelings that no ordinary person would have had. I pride myself in being part of QuGee, my closest group of friends who are each of them extraordinary individuals, global citizens, and who have given me much inspiration.
This blog was started in June 2006 as I've just said, and it so happened that that one year between then and now has been the most crucial turning point in my almost-24 years of life. To put it simply, I have found myself once again. Between June 2006 and November 2006, this blog was titled 'Memoirs of an Obaa' ('Memoirs of a grandmother'), it's entries were written to address a single reader, who was nicknamed 'Oji' (Grandfather) by members of the QuGee group. It reflected my obsession then with keeping together a relationship already falling apart. In a fortunate turn of events, and as fate would have it, I was offered a PhD position at the end of my lab placement in Lausanne last year (July - September 2006), a position I could only take up if I returned to London for a Masters degree. I like to believe that there is a reason why events turn out the way they do in life, and I see the reason now why I had to go back to London for that one year - it was more than just the Masters degree.
By November 2006, after seeing the end of three years of living to others' expectations, there was an urgent call for 'reforms'. That was when this blog took on the title 'To look life in the face, and to know it for what it is', taken (surprisingly) from the suicide note of Virginia Woolf:
To look life in the face, always, to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it, to love it for what it is, and then, to put it away.
- Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf in The Hours
The entries written around that month and the first few months of the subsequent year were sometimes anecdotal, written in the third person or were blatantly emotional. They've been categorised under 'To look life in the face' just last month in September, to which I still add entries every now and then when I need to look life in the face.
Having been born and bred as a typical Singaporean (I've gone to government schools all my life until Uni), you'll probably find very appalling my take on many issues. My life in London revolves very much around QuGee, so you can expect while surfing around their blogs that we're thinking about the same issues. When QuGee moved to Lancaster Gate in June 2007, so marked the next point in all our lives, and for me it was to look beyond London. I am now at home in Singapore writing this, but yet not quite at home. I will be returning home to London soon, and then move on to Switzerland where I will call home for the next four years. I pride myself in being international enough to do that, not just physically, but also mentally and culturally. You might find one blog entry under 'Deliberating' when Jacq, Kamil and I were pondering over being YATCKs. I guess it is time I acknowledged that and embraced the world as my home - 四 海 为 家
Xiao, 2nd Oct 2007
