OK, I'm back from Penang, and the trip turned out to be quite a bit more enjoyable then I initially predicted it to be :) Most of the credit for that belongs to our tour guide, who managed to be approachable, informative and entertaining all at once. it's true, that Chinese saying "行行出状元": he's most definitely the best tour guide I've ever been under. Goes to show the wonders that 13 years of experience can do for you, doesn't it? Maybe this academic rat race of ours isn't the only way to go.
So anyway, more about the trip. Mostly it was about touring the cultural attractions of Penang such as religious and heritage sites. Because they were all half-day tours, in the spare time the tour group would go looking for hawker centers to sample local cuisine, so it was much like a culinary trail too. Oh, and for some inexplicable reason I was rather lethargic for most of the trip, so I was sleeping in between all of that. So basically, the trip can be summarised as temples, food and sleep. I know I sound kind of bitter right now, and I don't know how to explain this, but it genuinely was still pretty enjoyable :)
When I came back home from the airport, my sixth sense told me to check my mailbox before going into the house, and... DSTA finally replied!!! :D I had more or less lost hope already because they said that it would take a month at most to reply, and that was in October, but in any case I now have a provisional scholarship!
But even though I know that I'm really lucky to get this, I need to ask myself if I want to just accept this readily or see if I can get any other provisional offers, because DSTA has a $1000 penalty for refusing a scholarship after accepting the provisional offer. Of course my parents are willing to pay the fine if worse comes to worse, but still money doesn't grow on freakin' trees. And of course, there's also the matter of where I want to enroll. Japan and Germany are definitely out of the question because I'm definitely not a multi-linguist (just look at my Chinese grades), so that leaves a collection of universities in Singapore, the US and UK. Why am I even talking about all this now, when I still don't have a clue how I'm supposed to go about applying anyway? I kinda feel guilty now because I have friends who have made sure to take steps towards securing a better academic future while I, for the most part, have been doing little more than drifting about and waiting for stuff to happen. I guess if you look at it this way, I sort of deserve to not do as well academically? I don't really know what to think, but I do know that I want to change all this. i need to take steps towards a future. I need to.
