The Avocation (A 20 Facts Special)

Two: The Rubik's Cube

"Maybe I'm lost, but at least I'm looking."

- Kris Allen

Everyone at college was talking about it.

Our lecturers had just released new information about the annual Geography trip that Friday morning, in which case they had planned on returning to South Korea.

"I heard the Econs and History departments are also planning to go there," a classmate told her boyfriend about the sabbatical. "But we're going to Jeju island too, not just Seoul." He had no intentions of signing up, but I knew she wanted to go. I knew many wanted to go.

I wanted to go.

The last time I travelled overseas was on a 30 minute flight to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. And who knew when I'd have another chance to see East Asia? I couldn't let this go.

But there was a criterion that students had to fulfil before signing up - only the top 40 students in the upcoming block tests would be chosen for the trip. Priority was given to Higher 2 students, who took all the core themes of Geography. That made me entirely eligible. I had every chance in the world.

Still, I had doubts about signing up. There was no certainty I would be chosen. Then again, there never had been - all this was, was a risk. This would take off a whole week of June vacation and leave me two and a half weeks of studying for midyears and prelims, which were certainly way more important than blocks.

"What if you get chosen and I don't?" I recalled asking my sister one morning after our tutors left some signup sheets with us.

"No lah (1)," she promptly replied, "We should have a fairly good chance of going. Last year we were in the upper percentile." I caught a glimpse of unabashed hopefulness in her eyes that I never saw in anyone else. That must have ignited something in me.

In the next few sleepless nights, my head was saturated with case studies about lithosphere processes, globalisation, and the latest core theme on hydrology. It took me a few days before I could truly understand what this trip meant to me.

To see the world... To experience a whole new culture?

Perhaps. Yet, it was never about that.

For a while, I set my love for writing aside and fell in love with a new subject.

Geography encompassed everything I loved: nature, society, science, art. It was a perfect blend of everything. Writing liberated me; geography marvelled me.

I never believed in the secularism of education, especially in Singapore's society.

Geography put me into place with my religion - anything in nature started to speak to me. There was a constant appreciation for these amazing landforms that were created by God. I just had to leave the mountains and volcanoes and limestone caves for a billion years, and everything else would perfectly fall into place. And the fact that I was an academic in the area made it easier to connect with all of it intellectually as well.

There was a Rubik's cube on my table gifted to me on my birthday. Oddly, I never took notice of it until one night before the test of a lifetime. All the layers were solved except the last one at the top that shared a mix of the remaining five colours - blue, green, orange, red and white. I picked it up.

In a way the cube was a globe. The top layer's edges untouched, unexplored, like the rest of the world was to me. I was going to South Korea. And this was just the beginning.

Glossary:

(1) lah is an interjection in Singlish, a Singaporean pidgin of English, to express an exclamation.