Hi everyone :) yes, I know this post has been long overdue.  I do check back here regularly and I notice the avalanche of comments asking, cajoling, demanding, threatening and commanding me to write.  There have been many reasons for my extended hiatus and I beg your understanding for them.

First of all though, a very Blessed holiday season to you and yours.  Thank you for your continued visits to this site despite its lack of action; hundreds still come everyday and for that I am very grateful and feel very unworthy of.  All you anonymous people who keep up to date with political discourse and citizen commentary are probably the key reason why I have any urge to keep on blogging at all.

Which leads me to the reasons for my absence; I think you all deserve an explanation.  The first reason is mundane; yes I have had various things to do.  My A'Levels have been over and done with since the end of November, a big load off my back.  Since then I have been taking a little time off to catch up on reading and yes, quite a bit of gaming as well; all the small things I had no chance to do during my hectic two years in JC.  I am now also working as a debates coach, and am looking to do some things on the side as well.  If you need tuition in English, literature, history or social studies, drop me an e-mail =p I also can give piano lessons, so yup! Gotta keep myself busy for the long stretch headed up to my entrance into university.  I have also been spending this time on university applications; for all those interested, I have received acceptance letters from Edinburgh, Warwick, Sussex, East Anglia and King's College London, but as far as the UK is concerned I am still waiting for news from my real dream university -- Cambridge.  I will know in January whether or not I have been accepted and until then I will continue to have difficulty breathing :) all the other universities are of good repute and sound exciting but due to heavy financial constraints, if I am unable to secure a place there, then I will stay right here in Singapore and enrol in NUS.  In fact, I don't even know how I am going to afford Cambridge if I do get in.  But we will see.  Life has odd ways of working out.

Enough of that babble though, now you know what I have been up to lately.  The other reasons why I have not been blogging are rather complicated.  I have been suffering from a kind of blog fatigue, I suppose you might call it.  I am usually a very private person and having my life and identity out there in the open is tough for me.  You just have to look at my tagboard to see how much pressure there is on me to write, write, write like I'm some article generator or a conveyor belt of political angst.  I am not.  I do not write on automation, I do not write for the sake of writing, I certainly do not write for the attention as many have suggested or I would not have deliberately lost so many readers with my absence.  I resist being told to write when it comes to the issue of my blog which is something that I have invested a lot of personal time, motivation and yes, emotion into.  When I write, I write because I believe in something and want to champion it.  I do not write -- as I suspect, without dropping names, many bloggers do -- because I want to keep my readers or have high figures on my visitor counter or make little advertisements and generate income on sidebars.  Perhaps I take myself way too seriously; I'm not trying to be any high horse here.  I'm just saying, these are conditions I find it difficult to write under.

Another factor which has turned me off blogging is the overwhelming media hype there is about blogging these days.  Ironic, I know, because I was part of the movement that helped propel blogging to such fame/notoriety, but really.. am quite tired of blogging being the 'in' thing.  And the recent Girls Out Loud episode where Xiaxue "faced off" against that other girl (I just checked out her name and it is Mia) who accused her of being racist by suggesting that foreign workers should be banned from Orchard Road -- it was funny, it was good entertainment, I enjoyed it, but it trivialized things and turned a debate over a social issue into a catfight over whether or not Mia's eyebrows are too high.  Uh oh, I am being stuffy aren't I? :( I guess it's just a matter of personal taste.

So anyway.  That is the long and short of why I have been absent, and I am hoping to get back into my writing groove.. rediscover what really excites, interests and challenges me, and take good long looks at those issues -- not churn out tokenistic drivel.  Quality not quantity :) Hope this post helps to clear things up at least.  Do be patient with me; love you all.  Have a wonderful New Year ahead.  You will be hearing more from me soon.