Back.

I haven't posted here since January.

There was supposed to have been a post in February, but it was based on this book I'd read and I couldn't find the time to skim through it again for the purpose of said post, hence why it still remains unfinished and unposted. And after holding back on one post, naturally, I've not written any others since then. Until now, anyway.

Months have passed and, during that time, I've submitted my thesis, finished the Level 3 exams of my sign language course, and played in a chess tournament, as well as other things. Today is the last day of Ramadan, and in just over a month from now I'll be on a plane to Sabah, where I'll be spending two weeks at a primary school located in an area so isolated that I won't be getting any phone service or internet access. I guess you could say I've been a bit busy.

I've also been looking ahead to doing my PhD, which is likely to begin after the turn of the new year. My supervisor tells me that this time, unlike during my Master's, I'll have such responsibilities as showing up on campus from time to time and taking over tutorials for other lecturers. I suppose it's sort of an induction to slowly prepare me for potentially getting hired as a full-time staff member at the university. 

It's not quite the plan I've always had for myself, but it looks to be the best option at the moment. It's also not what anyone else I know is doing, but I see that as a good thing. I know that the unbeaten path that I've been on for all this time will eventually rejoin the path other people are walking, but it's nice to see that that won't be for some time yet.

Well, whatever happens, I hope I'll still be able to find the time to write in this blog - not because I believe that anyone eagerly anticipates my periodic updates, but to ensure that I spend time writing at least once a month to keep the authorial juices flowing. See you in the next post, whenever that is.

January.

My mom's cousin dropped by today to take her out for dinner. We chatted for a little bit, and she remarked on how quickly the past several years of my university education had gone by. I replied by saying it was, in fact, the contrary - it felt like it had gone by pretty slowly to me.

Of course, that wasn't entirely true. I've written about this before: time doesn't really seem to me to be going by quickly or slowly. It just goes at the exactly the pace that it does. Seconds are seconds, hours are hours, and yes, years are years. I obviously kept this to myself as it didn't really seem like the kind of conversation to be dropping this sort of observation in.

Anyway, it has been several years - six, to be precise - since I started my undergraduate studies at Manipal in January 2013. It's January 2019 now, and I'm rushing to submit my thesis. I say I'm rushing, but I use that word rather loosely here. In any case, I'm confident of being able to finalize it by next week, insyaAllah.

I've already been thinking about what I'm going to do next. That PhD scholarship option seems the way to go at the moment, assuming the terms and conditions are satisfactory. The monthly allowance could be supplemented with a part-time job at (preferably) a bookstore somewhere, leading to a fairly healthy income.

The other option, of course, is to not further my studies and get started with my career. What that career will be, I honestly don't know yet - the thought of having to deal with office politics makes me never want to work with other people, ever.

But enough about that. There's still so much uncertainty with regards to my future that I find it tedious to talk about. At this point I've more or less given up on coming up with concrete, detailed plans for my future because they've never worked out. I've come to accept that the path Allah wants for me is better than anything I could ever come up with myself. It's sufficient to just know where I want to go and make my way there; how I get there is up to Him.