I’m faced with a dilemma these days. You see, I am a committee member in a religious society. At the same time, I am currently studying full time under a scholarship. My workload can be very punishing, because of the math subject I am taking which I suck at, yet desperately want to do reasonably well in.

Most of the time, I’m trying to catch up with schoolwork and assignments. I must admit that I am not a super-efficient person. I procrastinate and I ever so often have times when I just laze around. I’m trying to change that though.

I have to say that the people at the religious society aren’t giving me much pressure to be present often at their activities. My primary role is to build and maintain the society’s website, which I have been doing so faithfully, since this role allows me to do things at my own time rather than follow fixed timings. I’m pretty comfortable with it.

However, since I am probably the only computer-savvy person around, I am called up once in a while to help out when the computers at the centre needs some tending to. I do oblige, and set aside some time to settle these affairs. I do grumble a bit, but that’s just me. I only wish I have more spare time (or less homework) to handle these stuff so that they won’t cross paths too much with my studies.

Now the thing is that, my mom is very pious and faithfully goes for the centre’s activities several times a week. Her thinking is that I should go down too whenever I am free. The impression she gives me is that she feels that whenever I am free from schoolwork, I should be free to go to the centre. However, I have my private life too. I have a girlfriend to go out with, I have my needs to relax and chillout once in a while too.

I don’t oppose her going there. It’s really good for her. I mean, since my dad passed away this is the activity that takes her time and mind away from thinking too much about the past and negative thoughts. It’s also good for her to have a strong faith to help her along in life.

What I am irritated about is that she keeps asking me to go, even when I told her explicitly that I don’t have time and that I will make time to go when I can.

Now, we are in a middle of a spat when she accused me of being ill-tempered about it and I countered by saying that she puts the centre more significantly than family. It’s really a pointless argument because it’s only creating more problems.

I have to reiterate that I do not oppose her going there too often. I think it’s good. I just feel that she should give me the liberty to decide when I want to go and not to put extra pressure on me. As I said, I am most happy to do volunteer work but I hope to do so within my comfort zone. Meaning to reduce such activity during school term, especially when exams are looming.

Someone please tell me what to do. Am I just giving lots of excuses for not going there? Is it very bad to set aside religion for studies? I know some people can balance these stuff very well, but I am not one of them. I am still learning to lead a more balanced life, starting with the very basic of trying to incorporate some physical exercise into my life.

It’s coming to the end of term soon, while about 1 month to go till exams start. I just got the results of CA1 for my Singapore Studies module today. Hmm, I thought I did pretty well, and I even congratulated myself after the paper… well, I got only a B-. That sucks. Goes to show the standard in NUS is really !@#$ high.

Anyway, I got the results for my Network module too, and was ranked at 99.3 percentile. Really lucky. And I did quite well for the Network assignments so far.

Now, I’m just worried about the math and communications modules. For the former, well, I suck at math. For the latter, I’ve not been doing really well for it… just perhaps averaging about B so far. So for this, I suppose I have to work really hard for the exams.

I’ve been pretty busy these 2 weeks, catching up (as usual) with studies… having little time for anything else. Hmm, or is it just that I’ve been procrastinating too much without realising it?

It’s a festive long weekend, but it doesn’t feel any different from any other weekend. Lots of work still outstanding, projects waiting to be done, and math still sucks.

I’m thinking about going on a backpacking trip coming December. Probably a short one, about 2 weeks or slightly longer. Planning to go to Northern Thailand, Laos and Myanmar. BUT… I can’t seem to find me a travel companion. Everyone’s like, "no time" or "no money" Going alone isn’t a really good idea since that part of the world isn’t exactly very safe…

I think I might just go alone to just Thailand if there’s nobody else with me. Thailand’s a tad safer than Laos and Myanmar.