This thing called procrastination

Has your study table been through this situation: piles of books/magazines and wads of rough paper strewn around, mugs with the stain of Milo 'freshly' brewed 3 days ago, gradually thickening layer of dust. Well, this happened to me all the time, and each nagging reminder to tidy my room and that very study table yielded an almost natural response: WAIT LA. Welcome to the world of an incorrigible procrastinator. Yes, there were times when i sprang to my feet to set things right, battling stains on the very same Milo stained mugs and lugging the avalanche of books back to the shelves where they belong, my room was restored to a modest level of decency after these efforts. But the battle with procrastination was not always won.

I was pretty sure this character flaw will come to haunt me some day, but I never realised that the hour of reckoning would strike during the preparations for this exchange to Canada. Despite knowing the urgency in booking the plane tickets and hotel, I kept telling myself, "It's not as if everyone in Singapore is flying over to Canada in September. Sure got vacancies one la."

Bad News number 1: yah, not everyone flies over to Canada during September, but there is only a limited number of discounted tickets available for students going overseas for exchange. An email sent by a travel agency regarding the availability of these tickets prompted me to make the trip down to the tour agency 2 days later (procrastination here, I should have went on the day i received the email). Can you imagine I almost shitted in my pants when the counter staff informed me that the tickets were all taken, and the best alternative was to pay an additional (rip off) $1000 for SIA's ticket and it isn't business class, 2.5K for a stinking economy class. But by some fortunate turn of event, some bugger cancelled his reservation or sort (I wasn't really aware of the actual story), and I managed to get the tickets at the discounted rate.

As if the first sign of warning wasn't powerful enough, this personal flaw is still not rectified. Hence, bad news number 2: All hotels near the campus in Canada were fully booked, this means that I can get to sleep on the streets of London Ontario at btwn 10~15 degree celsius. GREAT! SUPER! It's not all that bad what, imagine at that temperature, I get to have air condition throughout the night. Who am I kidding? I'm almost stick thin with probably 0 ounce of fats on my body, I'm likely to freeze to death on the streets before someone actually rob or murder me. As usual, a tremendous stroke of luck found its way to me when I was told that I can actually get to move into the hall of residence a day or two earlier at a 'reasonable' price (it's about 40 Canadian dollars).

Perhaps in retrospect, I should heed these warning signs and realise that procrastination during the preparation for this exchange to Canada will be disastrous. However, looking at the piles of clothes strewn around my luggage and not a single document sorted out to bring, I realised I'm far from learning from my lesson. For instance, I should be reading through my lab manual in preparation for tomorrow's lab session now, instead, I'm blogging away happily. Ironic? No, I suppose the army's lingo 'test water' is an apt explanation for my behaviour. Until my luck runs out, I remain your humble procrastinator and will most definitely retort a firm, "Wait la." when a mundane yet troublesome task is set for me.