finally, the phd

routine and what i thought were life's little permanancies died the day i finished NS, and when not long after, i emerged from the hospital with a part of me - physically and emotionally - lobbed off, i've rarely been able to see my life past one year's horizon. tasmania, melbourne, NTU - first as a student then a salaried yuppie, and then now at the school where i'm teaching, it had and has been difficult to flip through an annual calendar, and plan for a foreign year. it's ironic because my introverted and indolent temperament naturally craves for the prosaic, the settled, the humdrum. but i repeatedly find myself hurled out there frantically rifling for yet another still ground in the shade. fate or subconscious masochism many times i wonder. simply, why? but i imagine otherwise, like holding down a 9-5 office job in a swanky skyscraper down-swanky-town like every one else and i develop convulsive reservations and worries about my sanity and happiness. so the choice (or, the no-choice) is clear. and so when this morning, when the news that my imminent phd candidature, that has hitherto been wavering tenuously between obstinate destitution and/or effortless perdition, has been awarded a scholarship, i was so relieved i couldn't feel it. and it is only just, a day past, that i realise an eternity of three years has been sweetly sequestered off my checkered life.