Wow.

I was talking to this sister that's waiting to get into NUS today, and man, is she well read. Me, I have no pretensions that I'm someone who read a lot of books, but I do like to think of myself as someone who has read more than his fair share. So when I heard she liked reading, I asked her what books she read.

She responded, "What kind?"

"Uh, modern day novels?"

She then rattled a list of authors that I've never heard of before, and for the life of me remember.

"Wow. How about something a little older?"

"Oh, you mean like.. " she proceeded to rattle off a second list of authors that I had heard of before, but never ever gotten to reading. Then we started comparing what we read and what we didn't.. and the only thing that I read that she actually didn't, was Les Misérables. Yay -_-

Then we started talking about philosophy, and my interest in it. Even took 3 modules on philo so far. She went "Oh ok.. I read a few philo books myself." And then she proceeded to list them..

You guessed it, practically every single philosopher I've heard of. As in, Plato Nietzche Kirkegaard Betrand Russell Descartes Wittgenstein Mill Hume etc etc etc.. The only notable exception was that she hadn't read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, but uh, who was I to comment.

Overawed, I started a tentative discussion on Wittgenstein's Tractatus.. and went internally "Yep, she read it and she remembers all right". Not name dropping either. Sheesh.

And mind you, this is not a philo major, she's not even an undergrad. I officially hang my head in shame. I shall not call myself "interested in philo" until I've actually waded through half of the philo books that she read in passing. How does someone read so much without her brain exploding?

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Seriously, one notion in my mind that was very quickly disabused, was that Christians are all the same. After today's incident I took a stock count of the brothers and sisters I knew from NUS, we have...

Sporty people, quiet people, noisy people, a self trained computer expert, non self trained computer experts, a history major interested in comparatative religon, Deans list students, marathon and half marathon runners, pool shooters, a few dancers (ballet and modern), a few awesome guitar players, many good guitar players, a footballer who plays for his faculty, a varsity basketballer, one or two ex-school team basketballers, a combined schools team basketballer, a very lousy basketballer (me), a guy who has 11 patents in US (he did a student exchange program in Biovalley), a guy who runs his family business as well as being involved in start ups, , future teachers, a MAS scholar, people that are really good in art and craft, KTV goers, bookworms, a Young PAP party member, several good cooks, chinese speaking, english speaking, bilingual speaking, people who watch anime, people who play the piano, ex (insert high post of some secondary school CCA) etc etc..

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And there I was thinking that Army was the ultimate mixing pot. Church is even more astounding.. many different walks of life, one common faith, all rubbing shoulders together. And now I can add "one well read girl" to the list.

I am in some awesome company..