“I’m in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we’re all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we’ll ever have, and I am in love with you.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
This is what happened during the first week of April:
The district level English parliamentary debate competition was held on Monday (quarter- and semi-finals) and Tuesday (finals) at SMK Hutan Kampong and I took part in the competition this year not as a speaker, unfortunately, but as a researcher. We won against SMK Sultanah Bahiyah during quarter-finals but lost to Keat Hwa during semi-finals. It was sad but I couldn’t be prouder of our debaters: Aifa, Alia and Moksha. The next day, we went to watch finals and…Keat Hwa won! Which was good because it was time someone other than Kolej won.
On the same Tuesday, I came home early to find a package for me by a certain “Christopher Lee” and I was confused at first and then I thought of Ellen Lee and immediately knew what was in the package and it was my much-awaited for copy of The Fault In Our Stars by John Green! Also accompanying the book was a lovely handwritten letter by Ellen herself, inserted in a wonderfully drawn envelope which you can see in the collage above.
I didn’t start reading it immediately because I was caught in a reading dilemma: I’d just finished rereading Catching Fire and was just moving on to Mockingjay when the book arrived and as much as I’d wanted to start it right away, I’d also wanted to finish my Hunger Games trilogy reread but then I really wanted to read TFiOS and to be honest I didn’t really want to reread Mockingjay anyway because it always made me very emotional to the extent that I couldn’t function for the next few hours after finishing it (although it retrospect, TFiOS made me feel the same) and my head was a jumbled-up mess so I didn’t read anything for the day.
However, the next day, I couldn’t resist the temptation and started reading The Fault In Our Stars. And couldn’t stop reading it for the rest of the day. Even (admittedly) during tuition. I’d finished two-thirds of the book by that night and proceeded to finish everything by yesterday evening (and that was only because I came home from school at 5).
I read the last lines of The Fault In Our Stars and was unable to function because I was overwhelmed. With. So. Many. Feels.
I don’t really want to discuss about the book here since the surprise element plays an important role in making TFiOS such a wonderful book, but you can read the synopsis here if you want.
And now that old feeling revisits. What a way to start the month of April.
michelle teoh 
:3