Adventures in 20 Days

Twenty days have passed since the last entry here, and while I don't know who is really following this blog, I think I might owe my hidden audience an update or two ever so often.

Much can occur in twenty days, and it is of no difference now. Over the last twenty days, I have done the following (in no particular order):

• Met up with the ``new generation'' geocachers at an event
• Bought a new 箫 and 笛子
• Found a long lost geocache that was stumping the usual finders
• Got a first to find on a puzzle cache for my geocache centurial find
• Got assaulted by red ants on bare skin
• Walked through a mini tunnel near a drain that runs through a building
• Walked along a mossy rock-infested shoreline towards cliffs at low tide
• Learnt more about dog breeds than I had cared to find out
• Bashed through two jungles in Singapore and breaking lock combinations of the logs of the geocache
• Got stung by something unknown
• Performed light ``field surgery'' to remove a thorn splinter in my thumb
• Made some break through in work
• Got spanners thrown at me for my studies

No wonder it felt much longer than that.

I think I believe more in myself now than ever. I think I no longer harbour a strong need to have someone who is there for me; I think that I am starting to understand what it means to be a strong individual. It's funny to think that I need such a long time to finally realise what many folks have understood for a long time. In any case, it is a nice reprieve from all the unhappiness that I have been having over the last few years over this; while it is a little contrary to my overall being (a normal thing, considering that I'm a man of walking contradictions), it is still a sound proposition to myself. There is really no need to be reliant on a special other when one is strong enough. And thanks to the amazing powers of gender roles in society, it becomes much easier to convince myself that I am on the right course.

Of course, the true acid test of whether my mettle is stronger is when the time comes and I fly off for my next round of studies. Isolation has a strange way of amplifying all sorts of latent negative emotions that are absent when one has a support network of friends.