Heh, these mornings I have the option for instant coffee, plunger coffee or espresso based drinks (the milk based ones are pretty limited to being flat whites as I still can’t make a proper frothed milk). Still stick very much to plunger coffee as the coffee maker is a little noisy (only cause I have housemates occupying the living room area) and the stages of noise are the grinder, the pump when it presses the coffee out and finally the steaming wand (which incidentally, shouldn’t be making so much noise).

* * *

It is the end of the year. Maybe feeling a holiday mood now, but working life is sad in that you don’t have an extended 3 month holiday for you to just unwind before looking forward to some new challenges in the following semester. I keep remembering how life’s gonna be like that for the next 40 years or so. Heh, not that I’m complaining. People have lived their lives just working day in and day out before.

I don’t know what dads and moms of today feel like with work. Do you just go on with it? Maybe at times it looks like that’s all you’ll ever be doing, apart from the weekend golf or some socialising occasionally. As you grow older, get a fatter paycheck, you tend to cling on to things more and more. There is that job security that will fund your lifestyle and you can’t just wake up one morning and decide to sell your house and give it all up to go on a world tour or something. Kids my age seem to question these things a little more these days. With all that exposure to other culture/media (it’s a recurring theme for me) and a microscope on our lives, we seem to be less content with just blending into society and being washed out. Maybe from an Asian perspective anyway.

* * *

Heh, still just contemplating about the larger things in life. The day to day stuff you just plan as you go along.

Normally I’d make a cup of coffee to go with writing a long and lengthy post. However, today I’m really tired and would just like to get through this. I can’t really wait until tomorrow to type this out because I guess I’d lose the essense of it by then. Heh, been sleeping little since the exam on Wednesday, and with the whole heap of activities today, I was tired by dinner time.

* * *

The day started off strangely with rain threatening before consuming the whole day. Rarely does Melbourne rain for a couple of minutes at a go, but today it rained continuously throughout the day, pausing in the evening before starting again. It’s currently drizzling outside but you can’t really hear the rain as it’s like light fairy dust on the ground.

Today Nguyen Tuong Van was hanged for smuggling nearly 400g of heroin through Singapore borders. At first I was indifferent about the case as you get the death penalty if you are caught with drugs in either Malaysia or Singapore. However, the press coverage has been far reaching. The press showed many pictures of the weeping mother and condemned Singapore for having such a ‘barbaric’ punishment for just drug trafficking. This coverage has brought a lot of sympathy from people as Van only did this to help pay off his brother’s financial debt. The Singapore government refused to budge from their ruling and decided to go with the punishment as it was implemented as a deterrent to prevent people from doing these activities.

A lot has been written in the media and everyone has either taken sides saying that the punishment should not be so harsh as to rob a person’s life for his mistakes. Especially heart wrenching is seeing the mother and family going through all that emotional turmoil but alas in vain, they could not save him. Then there are those who argue that he deserved to die, as the heroin itself, especially in those quantities, which roughly equalled 26,000 doses, could have just as easily wrecked so many other people’s lives. It seemed a little ironic, that Van was committing the crime that brought trouble to his brother to begin with. His twin brother had previously had a heroin addiction and in loving his brother, he would now break someone else’s heart with the heroin he was about to bring it. Somehow, this case has fallen upon a gray area and I don’t really know if there’s any right or wrong in the punishment. Even if Singapore’s government has no right to take a person’s life, what do you do instead? Lock a person up for life? What is the quality of life for the person then?

Maybe staying alive, there is hope that one day he might be released. Humans survive on hope. It gives us the strength and courage to carry on, even under dire circumstances. Sometimes I feel that how we deal with ourselves, and how history judges us, depends on how well we can cope with our circumstances. There is always the agony of losing someone, and that we try as hard as possible to cling on to them, to not have to say goodbye to them. A long time ago, I heard a saying,”Time does not heal your sorrows, it just numbs them.” I feel very much like that and I still have not forgotten the things of before that remind me so much to cherish the things I have and to not repeat the same mistakes. We learn to deal with the pain, and learn to convert that pain into strength, and not malice or hatred and blame someone else for your misery. Humans are social creatures and depend on others at times for their own well being. If one could come to terms with their own pain, maybe they can help others going through the same pain, while at the same time releasing themselves from torment.

Maybe the rain is a sign of mourning. Perhaps beyond the senseless physical loss (one can never replace a loved one), there is hope. What kind of hope, I don’t really know. One would always carry on the memory of a loved one, and hope that through this loss they can help others prevent such a loss, and bring awareness to people about the most important things in their lives. We should cherish what we have and no matter how tough the situation, seek comfort that there are those who will support and protect us. We should never throw it away for selfish personal needs like drug addiction and while we may stumble, we can still pick ourselves up and hope that we are given another chance in this lifetime to make things right.