2/ The biggest obstacle that I have overcome: breaking out of the illusion that all my plans will end as I want. I guess because I have always been well taken care of by my parents and well prepared by many plans that they have for me, I have always thought that things will go well for me. I have got a lot of successes at a very early age. I appeared in a full-length program on national TV and had girls writing to me. Before coming to Singapore, I thought that I would succeed just like how "many" Vietnamese students did as I read their storied on the newspaper. Since being in Singapore, many plans that I drew for myself would probably die prematurely. I used to antagonize over those failed plans, but over time, I have realized that many successes that I have today have never been expected. Actually, I enjoy being a "nobody" here, without all the speculations that I thought I need to fulfill and many self-imagining pressures that I thought other people place on me.
3/ The biggest obstacle that I'm facing: how to enjoy life and be serious at the same time. I have got to know friends who can enjoy their life much better than me while they can still surpass me in many aspects. I categorize them as either genuine geniuses, who can find it relatively easy in many things that they embark on, and those who truly love their work. I'm still looking for, and I think with the freedom of working on what I like in a university, I can find a "serious work" that I enjoy.
4/ My childhood dreams:
To have a Lego set: I got it when I was in Grade 3. I remember that it was a rainy day and I actually didn't know where to buy, so my father and I walked into a bookshop near my primary school after class. My father bought me a Lego set there. It cost 10$. I knew that it was fake (my father didn't), but I knew a real one would just be too expensive for my father. Anyway, I was happy with the gift.
5/ My dream: when I was in primary school, I once read that if Bill Gates can actually pay (by all the fortune he has) to turn the whole Sahara dessert into a green land. So I used to dream of becoming as rich as Bill Gates to do so. Now I know that Qaddafi actually attempted and had, in contrast, severely depleted the underground reservoir of Sahara. I now want to be an architect to one day create a master plan to de-desertification Sahara. But first, I want to design my city. I want to build houses that don't have steps because I used to run around when I was a kid and I think steps are the most hazardous things to kid. I like riding a bike, or a motorbike in the afternoon in my city and enjoy the sea breeze blowing against me. So I would make everyone enjoy the wind as I do. I used to walk down to bottom of the rive when the tide was low and tried to catch the little crabs living there. So I would make the river the heart of my city and everyone would enjoy it as much as I did.
6/ What I'm good at: a bit of a few things. I used to draw a lot, and I think I was pretty good at it (back then). I was fed up when I was made to participate in so many city level, district level and sub district level drawing competitions. I like drawing the countrysides while such competitions only want me to draw advocating topics. Some time in grade 6, I stopped drawing to dedicate more time for studying.
I think I was above average in Physics and Maths. Given me enough time to ponder upon, I would understand most of the stuffs in Physics that I have read about. But I'm not at the level of Olympiad winners and I'm really bad at time-constraint contests.
In the last few years, I have been enjoying reading on environmental and social topics. I like Physics, robotics, engineering and thinking about environmental and social issues, and drawing at the same time, so I think that I would much enjoy if I can do all those things together. A piece of everything.
7/ What's so weird about me: I appreciate the fact that I'm quite normal (in a positives sense). I have no defects (as far as I know) with my body. Except my voice. My voice was strangely (and annoyingly high) and is heavily entrenched by my local dialect's accent. And it used to be extremely unpleasant for me to be in soccer because we are all expected to shout a lot during a match. My teammates always joke about my shouting "Come on, Raaaafflesssss", which, if I'm not careful, may end up in a very high tone at the end (in one such occasion, I think the whole spectators' stand of another school laughed). But I think I'm fine with that. I read this quote "Don't quack like a duck, soar like an Eagle". I guess for me, since the duck in my really wants to "sing" out loud, I would rather be a really really quacking duck than a quiet one.
8/ My favorite quote: "Live on rocks, don't belittle rocks' roughness. Live in a slum, don't belittle the slum's poverty ... Wherever you go, never feel inferior about who you are and where you come from". That was 3 lines from a Vietnamese poem about what a father told his son. I really do not like the Vietnamese people that I know of who try to be "cool" by trying to use English words when talking to me. They would keep the subjects in Vietnamese (I guess because the Subjects in Vietnamese language indicates the person's age, relation or superiority) and make up the rest of the sentence in English. To me, learning a language is not substituting one by another (especially something that I have learnt for most of my 18 years). I'm proud that I'm comfortable in communicating in both Vietnamese (at a sophisticated level if necessary) and English (at a relatively sophisticated level, I think)
9/ What's annoying about me: I like to give "comments" and criticisms. I pay the most attention to what people that I care about talk, and tend to blank out when people that I have developed some slight dislike for. Once at the end of last year, I asked my civic tutor to let me have a chance to talk to the class. I talked to them about no matter how boring the teachers are, we should keep quiet because there are those who are slower need to listen, about how we should be more honest to each other about how we think about them, and about how some of us should go out of the usual circle of friends and join some CCA or do something with people that, at a cursory glance, not-your-type. I did not do that for the sake of impressing my CT (although I know she will eventually write my teacher's recommendation). It was actually the foremost reason that makes me hesitant to speak up. But I know that there are some in our class who agree with me with such things and I think I usually have the urge to voice out my opinions to those that I'm concerned about. At the end, my CT said "I could see the future PM of Vietnam". I never expected such a comment.
10/ What 's not interesting about me: I'm full of worries (for now). My grades have not been good although I think I can perform better for Prelims. I have not taken SATs. I have stopped drawing for so long that my skill level has been stagnating for years.
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