About time now.

The family had a gathering of sorts today. The main objective was to come together to celebrate an early Christmas. I'm not going to talk about dinner because it was just dinner.
I had to tell everyone that I was to go to VJC for the first three weeks of 2008. I wanted to withhold this information to myself really but the cat was out of the bag when my cousin's soon-to-be wife said that her relative had been posted to Nanyang. The reason was simple. I wasn't that confident of my O level results. Really I'm not. But that aside. I had a rather interesting and thought-provoking chat with my cousin.
He knew that I was about to enter shark-infested waters in 2008. The school is after all Victoria and it is highly regarded for a very good reason. It is good. He probed, asking me which combination I intended to take. He smiled and patted my back when I told him that Physics was still going to be my 'best buddy' for the coming two years. I suppose there is great emphasis on Physics because it is fundamentally the father of all sciences. Nature moves in accordance to Physics. The reason you can read this post is partly due to chemistry, but still majors on electronics, CRO and electricity. Physics. He said that if I were to run into some obstacle, at least with Physics as a back-up, I can still perhaps find a job in the field of engineering. The course of engineering by the way is already the subject of the other 7 cousins of mine.
We talked more and more with his wife peppering a few comments here and there. He said one thing. The field of engineering in Singapore is like, to put it crudely, shit. We live in a relatively safe world here in sunny Singapore. There is either rain or shine. No hurricanes. No typhoons. No snow. So fundamentally, engineers here, he said, lead a relatively easy life in terms of doing their jobs. Their work doesn't involve putting in the four seasons in the Americas and Europe to the test. No expansion or contraction quotient to that great of a degree. None.
Then he continued, telling me that essentially, engineering here is sapped. I already know that. There are signs.
The Singapore government along with some private organisations have already constructed a multi-million dollar facility called Biopolis in Bueno Vista. You don't see them building such an institute catering specifically to the field of engineering now do you?
The government is in the midst of cultivating plausible Nobel prize winners not in the field of engineering, but in the field of Biology.
This set me thinking. Should biology be one of my core sciences in JC?
It is true that the topic of Life Science is getting plenty of limelight of the late. Simply flip through the newspapers and you would get to read about another medical marvel. The latest, I think, happened in Japan. I cannot remember the details specifically.
So we talked.
He told me that I had the potential. The potential to do better.
I don't know really.
But I do know one thing.
It's time to get serious. It really is. I think I might be paying trips to the NLB in these coming days to just read about some topics which might prove handy in JC. Those interested are welcomed to join. I'm still torn between Physics and Biology- the O level results shall determine that then.
I think I should put a halt, if not immediate then gradual, to my partying days already. Of course I'm still going out but on the days that I'm not, I will be reading more and more. I can start by uninstalling some of the games in my PC.
It's time.