Caught up with two of my closest friends from JC today and we sat and chatted for 5 hours straight over copious amounts of sashimi and amazing bubble tea.

Today, I also discovered what it means to really love someone - I was reading a passage on love and relationships on the train journey to lunch, and I was struggling to grasp what it meant. We're all taught to think that love is some kind of all-consuming passion made up of a series of cutesy gestures of attraction, and for Type A people (ahem, like me), there's a special tendency to want to run headlong into relationships to prove that we, too, are likable and not social outcasts.

But that's not the kind of love I understood today. The kind of love I felt today was the kind of love I had for a friend who'd seen me through my formative years in JC, and a kind of pride in how they'd turned out to be. It's a love you can feel despite not having a starring role in their future (though I'd be content with Best Supporting Actor, hehe) and perhaps that's a more selfless kind of love.

Either way, said friend told me about their journey of self-discovery after studying abroad, and told me something about their identity that couldn't have been easy to admit at all. I'm so, so proud of them for discovering it, and so honored that they were willing to share it with me, and after they told me, my face literally split into the biggest shit-eating grin ever, and it felt like I was lit up from inside with happiness that kept bubbling over. It wasn't even my discovery, or even my business, but I guess that is what it's like to love someone (in a very platonic way) - their happiness is better shared.

:)

What an absolutely terrifying and enlightening day - I was at a Buddhist conference for youths and students and was happily bantering with Mum and Pa on Whatsapp about the ongoing National Day Rally speech where apparently PM Lee still spoke appreciatively of Stanford (me: "wow, despite all the people who have gone there but broken their scholarship bonds?") and Block 71 in SF. And then suddenly, my mum texts me: "Omg, PM Lee collapsed during NDR"

My first thought was that it couldn't be real. I mean, I knew it had to be true on an intellectual level, because why would anyone joke about anything like that? But being halfway across the world and so removed from events back home, it felt like it just couldn't be happening. Like any stereotypical millennial, I opened FB to check for news back home, and amidst the barrage of cat photos and Joseph Schooling fever, there were the first few posts. People - both locally in Singapore and the Singaporean diaspora abroad - were sharing news and updates about the situation, and I was busy lapping up all the snippets I could find from various sources. Friends who had gone abroad were also texting me - trying to figure out if it was real and what exactly was going on. In some kind of twisted relay system, we conveyed the same bits of information - tweets; pictures; videos of the event; whatever we could find, really - around and around to soothe each other.

I had to slip out to pray, because 1. I was at a Buddhist camp and that's like literally the solution to everything at any kind of religious camp; and 2. personally, make myself feel a little less impotent for sitting so far away from home in a time of a very publicly televised national scare. I thought about my relationship with Singapore and what being away from my country means to me, and not for the first time, I was hit with a lot of frustration and confusion about how I could best contribute to the country that has given me so much, and how I could deal with the anti-nationalistic vitriol that tends to come up amongst Singaporeans every now and then.

It's definitely still a work in progress - I don't claim to have all the answers, and I don't know if I ever will. Call me a sap, perhaps, but when I was watching footage of the NDR just before PM Lee collapsed, it just struck me that he's gotten so old now. Obviously, not as much as some other world leaders have aged while in office, but here, in front of me, was a man who had given the better part of his life to serve a country and electorate that sometimes doesn't seem to appreciate his work or effort, and takes every opportunity they can to grumble. Yet, despite all of that, he continued to serve, even taking the time to ask guests at the NDR to enjoy the reception and APOLOGIZE for scaring everyone, and struggling to come back to finish up the speech even after he had to be escorted out for a checkup. And then you have me a couple of years back - fervently thanking the senior civil servants who interviewed me and saw that I clearly wouldn't be a good fit for the civil service due to my temperament, and happily trying to take my talents elsewhere (i.e. the private sector) rather than do what I saw as a thankless job.

Of course, that is the reason why PM Lee is our PM, and why I'm not - I still can't see myself as a political figurehead in the nation, but this incident - seeing how old PM Lee has gotten and realizing that it's going to be up to us soon to carry on the legacy of Singapore - has kind of given me a little kick in the ass and reminded me that my duty to the country is first and foremost. That doesn't mean I'm hustling back right after college - I am well aware of my value and I'm practically useless to the country right now with my limited experience and network. But while I had always felt like I could take it easy and kind of bumble along through life slowly developing my network and skills, and then coming back home "when I feel, y'know, ready", that's no longer an option for me. I'm going to throw myself into each day, working as hard as I can to become one of the most renowned female investors of all time - and using that experience to bring Singapore's financial market to the next level. (Mostly because I'm still a believer, unpopular as it may be, in the doctrine of trickle-down economics if benevolently applied.) I don't know how I'm going to get there, but today - the first day of the rest of my life - and each first day thereafter, there is no more time to waste.