Life.....has been really really busy! well since when am i not busy. but with this busy schedule of mine, i am still trying to meet up with people and have fun too! life isn't all about studying, but its about chilling too. Now with my gyming from monday to thursdays, in the evenings after school, i do feel very very drained out at times and like unable to "recover". Fridays are used for me to catch up on sleep especially or anything nerf related :) This weekend, i am really busy with schoolwork! (kinda ironic that i am blogging now, but i guess i need to get stuff out of my mind and relax. Not that the stuff are gonna be verbally vomitted here lmao) School sucks, with all the workload piling up, but what to do?!


Moreover, i took time off to visit Lee Kuan Yew as he lay at the Parliament House. I went on thursday with alicia as we did not have school on friday. They estimated the queuing time to be 10 hours then, but we took approximately 5 hours. Queue times became the talk of the town for this week, with a #prayforlky hashtag floating around. Many of us also collected decals and pasted it on our cars. On my end, i do have some decals at home, while i pasted a "SG50" sticker on my laptop while having the LKY black ribbon velcro to my bag. I found it kind of amazing as to how Singaporeans came together as one to mourn over the death of our founding father and also supporting one another by giving out free snacks like twiggies and water, to torn up cardboards so the people could sit on the floor. I also saw the ugly side of Singaporeans cutting the S-shaped queues at the holding area and pushing and budging to get in front. This on top of a grossly littered Padang. I don't understand how people can cut queue when paying respects to MM Lee. There were also a ton of heartwarming sights and gestures like those serving us to greet us 'good morning' at 5am in a light hearted tone to lighten the atmosphere, with some in the queue reciprocating. man i haven't been on instagram for a long time! (2 days to be exact)


What particularly touched my heart were scenes like handicapped people still wanted to come and queue up, and school students donning their uniforms. I saw school students entering the parliament house at 5am. I started queuing around 12am so they probably started around the same time. What touched me was that they were actually prepared to queue so long that they donned their uniform, ready to go to school right after paying their respects. Alicia and I were expecting to queue till 8am after which we planned to go for breakfast, but we were out after 5.30am so we decided to head home! At least we managed to bid one last farewell to a really remarkable leader of Singapore. Extremely grateful for all that LKY has done for us, that now students my age are able to enjoy the fruits of his labour. Us uni kids were only exposed to a very minimal extent of his policies as compared to our grandparents who experienced his leadership of moulding Singapore into a first world country, from a third world country.

"Ten years from now, this will be a metropolis. Never fear!” — 1965, Sembawang Grassroots Event

I am 23 years old this year. My generation and the ones before will never be able to fully comprehend the change that has occurred in Singapore. From the healthcare reforms to the housing and birthrate policies 1975, Minister Lee Kuan Yew delivered. I feel that it really takes a person of certain stature to be able to pass such promises to the people especially during a difficult time period and yet most importantly, being able to deliver. I found it really breathtaking for someone to have that much confidence that he will be able to deliver, more so when Singapore was a volatile mixture of different races. Even though we now are still a huge mix of races in this little island state, there is far greater stability now. Surely he did not accomplish all of these single-handedly. LKY had a team to work with and bring about the success that Singapore is experiencing today but it goes to show his leadership skills as well as the people who worked for him, how supportive they are towards his vision for a clean, green Singapore. He was the direction-setter and man did he put us on a good direction. leaving us with a stable foundation built upon well-founded policies. There is good reason why he is called the founding father of Singapore. Without his far sighted vision, i have no idea where this little nation of ours will be at and what kind of standard of living we will be having. Especially given that we have close to nothing to offer to the world in the past.

I hope that the previous generations will understand that whatever we are enjoying now, a high standard of living, being one of the Asian Tigers, having good infrastructure, a peaceful and stable nation. These things that we are blessed with, it didn't come by chance, neither was it given to us. Our previous generations worked hard for it with the guidance of good leadership. Now we are the ones who will take ownership of our country. To those guys serving national service, you don't have a choice to serve, but there's a reason why and make it worthwhile. As I told my brother, don't let other people defend your family for you, train hard and be able to defend your own loved ones.

Minister Sir, you will be dearly missed. Thank you for all that you have done.
I am truly proud to be Singaporean.