Even between haphazard packing and shuttling between meetings like getai singers, life managed to squeeze in one big lesson anyway. It was a spectacular lesson - one spanning across the entire syllabus, covering Fragility, Carpe Diem and Friendship all at once, and in the signature style of life, one big rude surprise.

In what was supposed to be a farewell dinner of sorts among Jervis, Hong Zheng, Colin, Adele and me, Grace ended up in the Accident & Emergency unit with a fractured skull and a bruised frontal lobe. My mind is still twisting around the details, but to the best of my ability: the dinner somehow turned into a cycling expedition at Pulau Ubin, Adele couldn't make it, Jervis fell sick and Grace was invited in stead. And Grace - sports junkie, cycling pro Grace was thrown into the air like a rag doll 10 metres in front of me and landed head-first, face-down into the shrubbery and didn't move.

It took nearly ten minutes for the boys to realise we didn't catch up, and when they did, Grace had lost some 10 minutes of her memory and the sky turned into a sea. Between rousing Grace, washing her wounds, and trekking around to pick up her strewn belongings and getting help, I didn't have time to freak out, but now, I think I am thankful that the boys arrived at that point. We took her to a shelter and because we had the good sense to pick an offshore, rural island with no phone reception, the boys pedalled through the storm to get a ride.

At the A&E, we laughed the day off as we huddled outside the observation unit, shaking off the beads of rain. Then the next day, she was back in - with a crack that ran through the base of her skull to her forehead and sensory malfunction.

I am afraid now. I am afraid of how danger lurks behind sunny island-mornings and youthful laughter. And how even as her insides are broken, the eye cannot detect a difference in Grace. I've learnt now not to trust the lithe nymph of normalcy, but I know we cannot live in fear and trembling.. perhaps I will have mastered this lesson when I know how to draw up this fine balance.