It's been quite some time since i last posted. Time flew by and since august so many new and interesting things have come up. it is now the 12th of october and i am looking at 7 more weeks to ORD. once ORD arrives, maybe i will finally be able to blog about another topic.

i haven't been able to update my blog regularly because maybe i haven't had time over the weekends and even on the weekdays i am on off. i've been busy primarily with stuff to do in church. i'm doing the run-up for our Christmas event and it's a very exciting program that we've got lined up and i'm due to produce the outline and the target card content by this Sunday. working with the adults on Christmas is really quite an exciting thing to do. it's a refreshing change compared to the youth-level events that i've been involved in for some time now. maybe it's because we have more leaders and a more de-centralised system of event-planning now that it's freed up other leaders to take on new roles in church-level events. Estee and I are in Christmas, Derek and Jeri in Leaders' Summit, Jovina and I in Valentine's Day...it's really a new challenge everytime we get to try something new and work with new people. 

i've also been busy working on my university applications. Thankfully i was given off these two days to touch up the final applications to UK. i have an interview with Cambridge up on 25 October and i'm just thankful that the sterling pound dropped quite drastically so instead of having to pay S$300 for the 100pound application fee if i had applied last year, i only need to pay $200 this year, a 100-dollar saving for nothing at all. forex changes can sometimes be very beneficial. so i've got about two more weeks to prepare for the interview and i've been reading up more about psychology, because it's an area that i'm really not familiar with at all, but part of the Politics, Psychology and Sociology course that i'm applying to, so i need to brush up on that part lest i get owned in the interview.

Mrs Lee Kuan Yew died around two weeks ago. it was quite an epic event. to see the Minister Mentor, the Prime Minister, the CEO of Temasek Holdings (30th-most powerful woman in the world), the Chairman of F&N and CAAS and the director of the National Neuroscience Insitute standing by the casket and receiving visitors at the wake, one gets a sense of just how influential and powerful the matriach of this outstanding family really is. to read of ambassadors from as far afield as China and Britain, Malaysian royalty and former ministers and children of former presidents and ministers attending together with ordinary men and women on the street tells of the reach and impact of her life and the lives of her family members.

i had honestly never cared much about Mrs Lee, she was never in the limelight, always walking, in her own words, 'two steps behind' her husband. not until she died did i realise what an outstanding woman she really was. apparently she was first in class at Raffles College, a more commendable achievement considering she was the only girl in that cohort, beating even Lee Kuan Yew that year. she was also a Cambridge law graduate, top of her class too. upon her return to Singapore, she was a founding member of the PAP, helping to draft the Constitution and the Separation Agreement, recruiting women to run for elections and helping to influence the passing of the Women's Charter. In her private life, she raised three children who eventually grew up to be a politician, a corporate bigwig and a doctor. most women would consider raising just one child to be a successful a  adult a considerable achievement. not only was she a mother and a political wife, she was also running a law firm, Lee and Lee, earning money to support the family, even prompting Lee Kuan Yew to say that he was a 'kept man'. 

i cannot but be intrigued at the scale of her accomplishments. more than just a woman behind the successful man, she was every bit a successful woman in her own right. how many women, even in today's world can claim to run law firms while raising three children? how many could claim to graduate top of their class from Raffles College and Cambridge, the top institutions in their respective countries? it occured to me that she really was quite an intellectual giant. i'm amazed that a man like Lee Kuan Yew was able to meet a woman like Kwa Geok Choo. the life she lived was one that i really admire. 

seeing Lee Kuan Yew kissing her forehead at her funeral, and Lee Hsien Loong's puffy eyes at the wake, i cannot help but see, for the first time, these public figures in a new light. it is as though they had finally shed their public personas in exchange for a more human face. gone were the fiery eyes of Lee Kuan Yew or the confident smile of Lee Hsien Loong, and in were the furrowed brows of a man who lost the woman he loved and the haggard look of a son who had lost his mother. funny how we often forget that the very people we see everyday in the papers and on the news are also ordinary people with ordinary families and possess ordinary emotions, except that these were ordinary people leading extraordinary lives. 

the death of someone so illustrious and prolific has further reinforced my perception of the vulnerability of our humanity. sure we may become leaders of nations and militaries and mighty corporations, we might amass sufficient power and influence to give us the illusion of having the ability to command winds and subdue oceans, yet there will come a day when we will near the finishing line and inevitably cross it. sure, if you were successful enough or famous enough perhaps your death would be honoured with an elaborate funeral, a massive wake, a national outpouring of grief and flags flying at half-mast. perhaps the movers and shakers of today would deliver glowing eulogies and the most popular pop starts will sing at your funeral, but we all end the same, in the coffin, in the furnace, doomed to return to the ash we were created from. 

thank God for the opportunity to live forever, for the chance to live eternal life that begins now. thank God that a life in Him is never wasted, never despondent and never pointless. thank God for a destiny and a purpose to fulfill, thank Him for plans for our lives. 

RIP Mrs Lee