Safe in a Crazy World …

I read in the papers yesterday night that Taiwanese actress Xu Weilun had met with a serious accident and was in critical condition. At the same time, I heard that she had actually passed away, just that the news wasn’t available at press time. This morning, wormie smsed me that the actress had passed away at 7 last night, and she felt that it was really a waste of talent.

I guess both of us felt something else besides the loss of a great person - her age. She was just 28, merely one year older than I am. To think that her life had to end so soon. When wormie and I were at the crematorium to visit zing, we noticed that there were quite a few young people, some younger than us, who had passed on. The sight of these really wrenched our hearts, because they were all so young, and gone too soon. It is a kind of feeling, which up till now, I cannot put into words. Even though these people were not related to us, we kind of feel for their loss, and feel helpless. Same with the case of Xu Weilun’s death, it saddens us as well. One moment this person was alive, and few minutes later she was gone. I guess it is too short a time frame to make one accept such a sudden and shocking event. Even if we were to think of them years later, we would still sometimes be dumbfounded, or even have to remind ourselves that they are not around anymore, which seems very weird. There are 2 songs which convey this feeling of mine very well - "Invisible Wings" by Angela Chang, and Sissel’s "Summer Snow". I don’t know if you would be able to feel what I feel after listening to them. It is very subjective after all.

Anyway, I can only say that these are events of fate, and that we should treasure our loved ones while they are still around, and be more forgiving towards their imperfections. Easier said than done huh. Well, I myself cannot do it all the time, but I always tell myself that at the end of the day, these people, no matter what imperfections they may have (esp our parents), are the only ones in the world who would give us unconditional love.

This is another sh** period of time for me. I am doing a project which determines whether I can graduate after 4 years of brain damage. And it seems that I cannot communicate well with my boss, and to make it worse, we have different thinking on certain steps of the project.

I got scolded today because I did not get enough cells in time to grow for a certain step of the experiment. And bcos I feel that there is another method to get around this problem, I felt that I should let the cells grow before proceeding, rather than proceed to the next step and not get any useful information on the results due to low cell count. When I asked boss, he was so angry probably bcos he is stressed over not getting substantial results for my thesis. But you can’t change reality - that research projects usually take years to complete, what’s more I have only 3 months!!

We are not required to produce outstanding results, but most importantly to analyze any results or even mistakes, and gain insight into how we should approach the experiment or troubleshoot any problems faced. Mistakes actually give us more information on a step or even our target cell or protein! It is very common for a project thesis to contain no results, but only troubleshooting of problems faced, due to the time frame given. These are useful information which could guide future experiments, and the school accepts them in the thesis because that is the reality of research! You might well get stuck on a particular step for months, and it could be just a step which helps you isolate the cells or protein etc you need to even START your project. Apparently my boss thinks that we must get some results significant enough for the school to see, and bcos he was the one who gave me the project, I don’t think that I have the right to argue with him.

I don’t mind going back to lab 7 days a week, never mind that I don’t have time for myself. But I just hope that he could understand the intensity of brain exertion and labour that I have to put in on all the procedures. I wish he could try it out himself and not forget that I am only human. Everything is so multi-factorial that just thinking of them makes my brain experience a mental block. Sometimes I would hang like a computer and I would ’stone’ to regain what I had been thinking earlier on. Different groups of cells have different factors, different time to process, different things to add etc. I feel like a robot having to remember complex things and the smallest details, besides not having enough rest and NO LIFE.

Everyday is a war. Once an experiment starts, I have to make sure everything is ready, if not, even a few days of work can go to waste. This makes me think of experimental steps even while having dinner. And when I realized that I had forgotten to coat some 96-well plates for tomorrow, I almost fainted. Which means I had better go to lab 1-2 hours earlier to coat them tomorrow morning. If tomorrow’s operation goes wrong, I wouldn’t want to think what might happen to me. Just bcos of the limited time frame given, I am working much more intensely than even the lab staff, sigh … think my brain is going bonkus anytime soon …

Ok, I shall have to get going after all the complaining … sorry that you had to read this haha … 

Finally, exams are over. I can say that it is the worst exam I’ve ever had in my years of study, due to the lousy schedule (papers on consecutive days). The last exam before graduation usually matters most to a lot of students because it is usually of greatest weightage, but for many of us, all the hopes and aspirations to do well for the final battle seemed to have diminished to zero on the eve of each paper. Ironically, all we had on our minds were ways on how to get pass the border so as not to do too badly or fail. It is no wonder because sleepless nights and mental fatigue had driven us to a corner. Only those whose aspirations and determination were stronger than anything else had the discipline to perform constantly well for exams.

It seemed that my nightmare was over, after days of intensive journal and notes reading, and sleeping for 1.5 hrs on average on the eve of each paper, but sad to say, following the exams are our final year projects = more journal reading! Arrgh, just when I thought I could finally take a break.

Frankly speaking, I am not in the mood for doing research now, and fortunately, my present task is just a project that would last for 5 months, and not a permanent job. I think I really need a break from all these intensive "brain-digging" activities. I finally understand why my chosen subject of study has proven to be so tough - because it requires a lot of imagination and visualizing on our part, besides trying to understand the kind of english used in some journal papers!! All in all, we are like translators of language into visualization = linguistic + imagination skills (furthermore, at different specific levels). This is no joke, for it is unusually taxing on the brain. Do this for 4 long years + exams - I sometimes wonder how any human can take this kind of life? When I think back, it seems like quite a feat for me to have gone through all this (given my nua3 character), although there are also many fields out there which are more challenging than mine.

My heart tells me that I am tired and worn out, so I guess I would take at least a month’s break after my project - to just relax and maybe take up a temp job (not research), while thinking about what I want to do next. If I plunge into a research job right away, I may not do it well because I cannot concentrate.

Right now, I keep "psycho-ing" myself to do my best for my project. It is an interesting project, just that I feel really drained and wish to rest and do anything except research for the time being - to recharge. The good news is, that is impossible (wahaha), so I am trying my very best to strike a balance between project and relaxation now. It is not easy, but I will grit my teeth and hang on! Ok lah, must say some encouraging words at the end - there is still some reward - the kind of satisfaction of having brought your knowledge to another level after years of brain damage haha. Just treat it as a viking adventure ride (i.e., it would definitely end at some point of time - how encouraging). Sigh, c’est la vie … 

Something I thought about today: If you know some people who have yet to go through life as much as yourself, and obviously still quite simple-minded, would you expect them to think or handle things in life like you, or would you see things in their perspective and understand that they do not mean to do certain things which would deem to be unacceptable in your view?

For me, I would choose the latter, because I feel that it is not fair to judge in your light the things they do at their level of thinking. I guess I wouldn’t immediately judge them for things which I feel is wrong, because they may not see things as broadly or in-depth as I do, due to our different levels of maturity. Otherwise, these people would be condemned without even knowing that they are condemned. That is a little unfair to them.

Some things have to be learnt through life experience, and if I blamed them, it would be like expecting them to know things which they have not realized. What we can do at most is to tell them our views and get them to think about how they would handle the situation if they were given another chance. But then again, does something bad have to happen in order to make them realize their ‘mistakes’? Afterall, lessons learnt through experience are better understood. Would telling them be sufficient to make them understand?

Sigh, my thoughts are becoming a cycle. Think about it another day, haha (please don’t ‘box’ me). Going to copy notes again … sigh …   

Just read about a "no-wheelchair" policy being enforced in a well-known shop. I really cannot believe that people can think of such silly policies, which to me, don’t in the least make sense. The shop claimed that they have this policy because wheelchairs may hurt customers and damage property, and the shop may get sued. Isn’t it ridiculous??!

I mean, I have had encounters with many people who bumped into me, stepped on my feet and sometimes hit me really hard with their shopping bags in shopping malls, and yet didn’t sense it, or rather, pretended not to realize it. These people can also inflict injury on other customers within the shop, without having to be wheelchair-bound! I believe kids running around in shops are also a common sight, and they sometimes knock into things in the shops too. If the shelves within this particular shop cannot withstand a small ‘touch’ from a wheelchair, what makes them think that they can withstand the wear and tear inflicted upon by clumsy customers and playful kids, considering the ratio of wheelchair-bound customers to physically healthy customers?

Moreover, I believe that physically challenged individuals are in fact more mindful and have better visuo-spatial orientation compared to the other customers because they have to constantly gauge their positions wherever they go. Most people would also make way for wheelchairs, as what I have always seen on MRTs. Whoever cannot see a wheelchair coming should have their eyes checked. Wheelchair-bound individuals would also be posing danger to themselves if they bump into people and shelves (things do drop, you see), so I wouldn’t feel that anyone in the right mind would be crashing into people and things unless their aim for going into the shop is to hurt people and destroy things (isn’t it getting more exaggerated)?

Again, as I’ve mentioned, the ratio of wheelchair-bound to physically healthy customers is probably 1:50, or even less. To me, it is plain discriminating and selfish not to let them into shops. If healthy individuals can shop anywhere, wheelchair-bound people have the rights too. It is every individual’s attitude and behaviour, and not the physical wheelchair that would make the difference. A person mindful of people around him or her would hardly cause any injury or damage. I would think that in the case of this shop, coming up with this policy is very mindless - convenience at the expense of wheelchair-bound customers’ rights.

P.S. I wonder if they have this perspective because they are one of those who inflicted injuries on me in the malls? Oops.

Something happened today which really touched me. It may seem like nothing to others, but to a student who has some interest in research, but not to the extent of being passionate, and hence not really favoured by lecturers with high expectations, it was a really heart-warming moment.

We were supposed to choose and submit 10 choices for our final year project, after which one project would be allocated through balloting (or so they said) and announced after a week or so. We were also advised to meet up with supervisors of projects we are interested in, as some of them would not accept students whom they have not met up with. The ambiguous part was that the coordinator hinted on supervisors having a say in the final allocation as they may be allowed to choose their students, regardless of the ballot. However, after clarifying with the coordinator, limited information could be given to students on this, leaving a cloud of uncertainty hovering above our heads. In this case, we presume that academically and research-inclined students are usually the ones whom most researchers prefer. Those like me who are average but have interest in the projects then seem to be at a disadvantage.

So the story for today goes like this … I had emailed Dr B to meet up for discussion of his projects which I am interested in, but just before I met up with him, there were news that some projects were really popular and have already been "pre-allocated" (i.e., some supervisors might have given their projects to students whom they think are suitable, without going through the balloting), and Dr B’s project was rumoured to be one of them. Even though it was hearsay, I suddenly felt disheartened because such things were really possible in my school. When it comes to choosing projects or signing up for assignment topics, 50% of the choices would often be snapped up by early birds (who are so impossibly early that you would think they camped overnight in school and rushed into general office to sign up the moment the door was opened, hahaha …) such that you might well be left with the not-so-nice topics if you do not hurry. Moreover in the case of my project selection, about 50% of my choices were rumoured to have been pre-allocated, meaning that I no longer stand a chance even if I submitted them under my top 10. Nevertheless, I went to see Dr B, as agreed in my email. The whole process of discussion ended up to be a really nice one, for he made the effort to explain the project details from scratch, something which not all supervisors do. Some professors whom I had met spoke very little during their discussion sessions, merely waiting for my questions, hence I had felt that those were rather "one-way" sessions. In the case of Dr B, he even rummaged through his cabinets for a whole 5 minutes just to get a few pieces of notes to explain background information to me. I wanted to ask him not to bother as I did not wish to take up too much of his time. Friendly as he always was, he joked about his cabinets being ever so messy, and assured me that it was alright as he would find the notes soon. After he got the notes, we discussed a little on the project techniques and when I told him that his projects were interesting, he gave me a reply which surprised me. He said that he was very happy to hear what I said, and it was as though many people failed to see the interesting part of his work.

He went further to tell me about some other projects going on in his lab and that he had a hard time getting grants over here for studies on this particular disease which is not common among Asians, but with high occurrence in Caucasians. I commented that this is a realistic place, and many people would prefer to invest in projects which either concern "trendy" topics, or would benefit the local situation and economy, and he agreed. But he mentioned something very subtle, yet extremely inspiring to me. He said that research should not be categorised/limited by national boundaries. For a moment I felt like I was hearing wise words from Gandolf in "Lord of the Rings", right in front of me, just that he was the Chinese version (I know this is exaggerating, but he really touched me with his words!). I have never heard anything like that in my years of studying Science, and it felt really good to hear something so meaningful and sincere from a lecturer. In the research community rat race, there are researchers who become obssessed with results and publications (sometimes fame), and truly neglected the initial purpose and attitude towards research. Dr B also told me that the purpose of final year projects is to give students a chance to have a feel of research, and results are not more important than the experience, most of all we should have learnt new techniques and the way of research at the end of it. His words gave me consolation that there are still people who research for the sake of goodwill.

At the end of the discussion, I was really curious to know his take on the project allocation. According to him, some students had specifically expressed their wish to take on his project, but he did not give promises as the final allocation should be decided by the project coordinator and not himself. He also said that he welcomes anybody to his lab even after graduation to learn anything that interests them. At least it assured me that he is not the kind who would give under-the-table pre-allocations to students. Given my fair share of encounters with professors who do not like to waste their time on average students (as one can feel from their behaviour), I was really at a loss for words on having met somebody like Dr B. When I thought about it all, it made me feel like crying.

At the end of the day, I no longer dwelled on the impending project allocation disaster. Rather, I felt that I had gained something even more important - I had chatted with a non-judgemental and magnanimous researcher, somebody who genuinely puts his heart into researching for goodwill, and a person who made my day. Most importantly, it gave me encouragement that I shouldn’t feel unworthy of research just because I am an average student.

To think that the first blog I post right after my internet connection regained, would be due to anger (again). I promised myself to write less of negative stuff cos it is not good to be always angry and brooding over things which I cannot control. But this time, I lost my cool again.

Very trivial incident it may seem, but when history repeats itself over and over again, I really feel like a pressure cooker exploding. Just imagine you took some nice videos of a cute baby, and had waited for weeks to specially show it to people. They viewed the video 50% of the time, and during the remaining 50%, they were half looking at a website and half observing the parts of the camera, and even looking into the viewfinder!! Wouldn’t you be angry if you were me? I felt as though I was not being treated with any respect at all, because similar situations have happened many times before. And that was not the end. I put on an angry front and some insensitive person still cared to joke and jostle around, and even deliberately stepped on my foot!!! To make the "joke" even more funny, my chair was taken away from me while I was switching on my laptop to test the internet connection. If you knew that you had made somebody angry, would you still sit on her chair in this case and not even leave some space for her, leaving her to stand and fume like a chimney? And still basking in the glory of your so-called joke?

Then came the most ridiculous part - I finally decided that I couldn’t, and shouldn’t tolerate that anymore, and scolded this joker, who still had the cheek to say that I vented my frustration on him after being angered by somebody else. I fathomed that he had said this because he seriously did not sense anything wrong with his actions, which is seriously, very serious. I thought I was on cloud nine before the joker came. None of my family or friends had EVER done this kinda thing to me. I felt really really disrespected and on some other past occassions, insulted.

I have never seen a case like this, where I felt that even a stone could have sensed the tension and anger building up in me, not to mention a living human. I have concluded that this is a case of extreme insensitivity and childishness, coupled with ZERO situation awareness. Period.   

*If you happen to have survived such ordeals, pls donate some advice in counteracting this "syndrome". I think your help would go a long way. Thanks. I certainly wish that this could be the LAST straw, but it certainly isn’t going to be!!

I specially created this blog entry to post excerpts from a book I am currently reading. It’s titled "Japanese Women Don’t Get Old or Fat", by Naomi Moriyama. The title may sound a little shallow, but it is definitely not a diet book. It merely celebrates the spirit of Japanese home cooking through many anecdotes by the Japanese author and her American husband. Below are some excerpts I especially like. Here goes …

My mother, a short, black-haired, ultra-high-energy Japanese woman, is making our family dinner with the speed of a panther, the confidence of Martha Stewart and the precision of a NASA scientist.

Green tea is brewing in an earthenware pot.

Fresh green and yellow vegetables are simmering in dashi, a clear broth made from bonito flakes, kelp and mushrooms. Fluffy rice is plumping up in the rice cooker, steaming out a rich nutty flavour.

My mother grills small slices of fish with a light touch of lemon and rapeseed oil, then polishes little squares of tofu with a brown sauce before lining up bowls of simmering miso soup made from scratch. They look like jewel boxes.

What comes out of my mother’s kitchen is not complicated sushi or elaborate, formal kaiseki dishes. This is good old-fashioned, hard-core everyday Japanese mum’s cooking.

It’s what tens of millions of Japanese mothers and wives serve their families every day. It is the food my mother fed me as a little girl, as a high school student and even as a young executive trainee in my first office job in Tokyo, when she would sometimes chase down the street after me with a piece of toast if I rushed out of the apartment without eating.

My mum’s Tokyo kitchen is tiny, about 1.8 by 3.6 metres. It is jam-packed and piled high with cooking utensils, plates and seasoning stuff. She has virtually no worktop space.

When my good friend Susan came to Tokyo to visit for a couple of days from New York on the way to Hong Kong, she witnessed my mum whip up a few fantastic dishes out of thin air, in a scene right out of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Susan still talks about it ten years later.

When I was growing up, we rarely ate out or brought take-away foods home. My mum said she could do it better and cheaper. She did - and she still does.

She shops for ingredients from a variety of places - from local supermarkets, department store food halls, downtown Tokyo specialist stores and the Tsukiji fish market. Every day she goes to local stores for fresh fish, meat and vegetables, and back when there was a family-owned tofu store nearby that made fresh tofu on the premises, she even bought her tofu fresh. She often does not decide what dishes to make before she goes grocery shopping. Only after she’s looked over the market’s offerings and has seen what looks fresh and fabulous that day does she devise her menu plan. For perishables, ‘freshness’ is a Tokyo kitchen mantra. Whether it is fish, fruits, vegetables or herbs, if it is in season and available fresh, that’s what Japanese women buy. If it’s not fresh, they stay away.

From ages twelve to eighteen, my younger sister, Miki, and I went to an all-girls private school in Kawasaki.

On the first day of school all the mothers and daughters were seated in the auditorium and a teacher at the podium made an orientation speech:

                      We request that every mother make lunch for

                      your daughter everyday. Our main theme at this

                      school is to help our students learn to be giving

                      and loving. One of the ways your daughter learns

                      this is from your love-packed lunch box.

My mother took this speech very seriously.

For years, she woke up at 6 a.m. and cooked small portions of fish, veggies, eggs and meat for us, sliced them up and packed them neatly and elegantly along with a sheet of nori seaweed over a bed of rice in a small airtight Tupperware lunch box.

She wrapped up the lunch in a cloth napkin with my name and flowers embroidered in a corner. She made these napkins too.

Every day the lunch box contained different side dishes, sandwiches or rice balls. She made every lunch box with total dedication and passion.

One day, I untied the napkin, opened the clingfilm and started eating a sandwich. I was surprised to find a sheet of nori seaweed on top of the ham and cheese.

My schoolmates and I were accustomed to British-style sandwiches, with lettuce, thinly sliced cucumbers, tomatoes, ham and cheese. Nori seaweed was something we ate in Japanese dishes, never in a sandwich. As a self-conscious teenager, I was awfully embarrassed to be seen eating that seaweed in front of my schoolmates.

I went home and said to my mother, ‘Nobody puts seaweed in a sandwich!’

She said, ‘Well, seaweed is good for you, but I will try not to do it again.’

Today I realise that I was too young to appreciate her creatvity.

**************************************************************************************************

This is so heart-warming! I can’t help but want to share some of the good stuff over here. Sorry if some of you found it boring, but to those who enjoyed it, you may wish to consider reading the book. I really admire the Japanese people’s spirit and dedication towards food. Now, I shall continue my journey in further exploring this amazing culture! The mere description of the food ingredients made me hungry … haha! So, itadakimasu!! 

Life is certainly not a bed of roses, but it can be worse as it is sometimes covered with thorns. Lately I have no choice but to ask myself if there are certain principles or values which I should give up in compromise for some things. These values have been nurtured as I become older, hence I firmly believe in them and hope that they would be part of my life. However, sometimes life is really cruel and you are forced to make a choice between certain important things and these values you so treasure.

Fate has somehow decided that I should not have these values and that I have to learn to bear with the pain. I am not ready to give them up and succumb to living life in a compromising and absurd way (at least I think it is still unacceptable for now), but still, reality has shown me that things are not going to change for the better. I have only two options, one is to give up certain things in exchange for my values and the other is vice versa.

I am probably going to try to psycho myself in living life differently, although I am honestly not ready to do so. Because of this, many misunderstandings have arisen and I can’t seem to get my message across, no matter how hard I try. These events brought me a lot of anger and hurt, and drove me to my limits. The only reason I can think of for my persistence is that these values mean a lot to me, they are almost my life.

The only way out now is to not think of the problem as this thing has already taken up most of my time and energy, so further dwelling on it would bring disaster. Nowadays I constantly feel tired, have become really numb, and have no mood to focus on anything, which is quite bad. I think I shall just shelve this thing for the time being and give myself some peace. I shall numb myself till I wake up from this long break.

Maybe I would see the light after taking a rest?

This is yet another blog that would bore people to death, haha. (Anyway it doesn’t bother me cos I only write for my own pleasure!) Hmm, I should have been doing my schoolwork, and instead I am here writing all these stuff. Well, because it’s another one of my very personal moments I would hope to capture somewhere.

Recently, a few of my friends are head over heels in love with the Korean drama "My Lovely Samsoon". It’s no wonder because I experienced the same thing only slightly earlier than them when I caught the drama on cable TV. One of the symptoms of ‘addiction’ was relentless searching for the soundtracks (at least that is the craziest thing I do for dramas that I love). Just today, I had borrowed auntie selva’s thumbdrive to copy over soundtracks that I didn’t manage to find earlier. As I listened to the tracks, some memories of the drama were recollected (I don’t know why, but this sentence sounds like a report to me), and coincidentally, I chanced upon the drama on TV and ended up watching the entire episode for an hour. After that, I was in this nostalgic mood as I listened to one of the soundtracks which was a piano rendition of "Inside My Heart". And to make things worse, I suddenly had the urge to play the piano.

I used to have one in the house, but it was later given to my sister who is not staying with me now. I had thought, since I play it only once in a blue moon (usually under scenarios like the one I’m facing now), I might as well help to clear some space in the house and fulfil my sister’s wish. Before the piano was moved away, it would just be a few steps away in my brother’s room whenever I had the urge to play. Now that I feel like playing, it is nowhere in sight. Thoughts of investing in a digital piano often came to my mind few years back because I tried playing on one and I loved the sound coming from this compact instrument. I guess it was also the design which i fell in love with, and the fact that it sounded much like a real piano. However, as years passed, I realized that what I actually want is still a classical piano - the authentic stuff. The crystal clear sounds which cannot hide technical flaws, haha. I would always admire the grand pianos in music showrooms, especially the ones at P.S. where you can enter a glass ‘room’ filled with pianos to play. I never dared to play in that paradise, except for once when my friend went in and played the piano with me. It feels so weird with people staring from outside.

At the same time, I often ask myself if I am worthy of such an instrument of value, because I had always been a very lazy piano student, and all I liked was just to play the music I preferred, at my own pleasure. Sometimes I really feel very ashamed of myself for letting my teachers down, especially my very first teacher, who always made sure we got good grades through her discipline. She was like a mother to me. After I progressed to higher grade learning from teachers whom she recommended, my grades dropped because I was only holding on for the sake of not wasting course fees. I had grown tired of it all and it became quite meaningless then. Few years after I stopped my lessons, I played pop music in school clubs for enjoyment. It was then that I realized how good it would be if I had made the effort to master classical techniques and be able to use them on contemporary music. I really wish to do justice to myself, and to my teachers, although it is slightly late. With increasing commitments in life, practising becomes even more difficult. It would cause a din to practise at night, and my family would probably think that I am out of my mind because it is unlike of me to be so enthusiastic in practising. I hate to practise to meet deadlines, but I like to do it at my own pace. I don’t think that I have much interest in classical music, although I do like a few composers. I don’t know if I would be able to regain my techniques and master those which I didn’t manage to master. But in order not to waste the piano for a house of my own in future, I guess I should start to be hardworking. Everything seems to be accomplishable whenever I think of having my own house. It’s probably because I can do whatever I want at my own pace, and I feel more free to do so. Even if I were to cause a din every night, nobody else would get affected.   

I feel very happy whenever I think of my future house, and the plans I have for it. It is the place where I shall accomplish my dreams. =) Why couldn’t I just make do with a more restricted environment then? I don’t know, but that is just me. Yes, I AM PICKY. Even the furniture in my room can affect my mood for studying. It’s definitely not a good thing. If I had understood myself better when I was younger, would things have turned out differently? I think so. I would probably have beared with my environment, if I had known that years down the road, I would wish that I had practised my piano more, done this and that etc.

I guess this is life (this is such a good excuse to use when you regret on something). Let me just look forward to graduation, when I can start a new phase in life - the financially independent phase!! I want to learn so many things, but all eventually boil down to money. Many people out there are like me. You don’t understand the need for something when you don’t have to pay for it. By the time you understand it, it would be time you have to pay for it yourself.