I rushed home for my weekly session of Commanding Heights.

And what I got was just a dialogue session with Young Ming on the September 11th incident. Somehow with the impending war, with America ready to go to war in the name of justice, with more blood to be shed, the September 11th attack seemed so insignificant. They are trying to convince us that it is a retributive strike, that they are acting in the name of peace and justice. And blood is about to be repaid in blood, violence returned by violence. Somehow the exchange does not seemed right. Superficially it seems like a fair exchange, but more lives will be lost. To replace loss with loss, somehow just create more deficit than before.

When they said that they are fighting for the good of the world, I think I have a different definition of good. I felt cheated, so should the rest of the silent world.

 
Telling Stories
~ Tracy Chapman

There is fiction in the space between
The lines on your page of memories
Write it down but it doesn't mean
You're not just telling stories
There is fiction in the space between
You and me


There is fiction in the space between
You and reality
You will do and say anything
To make your everyday life
Seem less mundane
There is fiction in the space between
You and me


There's a science fiction in the space between
You and me
A fabrication of a grand scheme
Where I am the scary monster
I eat the city and as I leave the scene
In my spaceship I am laughing
In your remembrance of your bad dream
There's no one but you standing


Leave the pity and the blame
For the ones who do not speak
You write the words to get respect and compassion
And for posterity
You write the words and make believe
There is truth in the space between


There is fiction in the space between
You and everybody
Give us all what we need
Give us one more sad sordid story
But in the fiction of the space between
Sometimes a lie is the best thing
Sometimes a lie is the best thing

 
I sent out a few SMSes to some of friends, asking them about who is the person who has influenced them most in their lives and in what ways. I do not know how that thought came to be. But I recall wondering how different my life would be if I had not picked up philosophy through an introductory text on Nietzsche which I found just before my junior college days ended.

The love for knowledge was actually flamed to life by this rather strange GP teacher that I had during the first three months in junior college. He was Irish, had this huge beard which we wonder how much food bits actually nestled in and he had once, in a dramatic fit of passion, threw a chair out of the classroom.

There was a strange episode relating to this tutor of mine that happened years after I left college. I was waiting for bus 105 at this bus stop located between Toa Payoh and Bishan, slightly before Braddell. It was late and I was wondering if I had missed my last bus. There was but one other guy at the bus stop. As the wait continued, doubts set into both us about whether our buses would even arrive. And I cannot exactly remember how we started a conversation. It turned out that this Malay youth, about my age was on his way to sleep at the bus stop in the east, so as to be able to receive and distribute the papers when they arrive first thing in the morning.

And he knew my tutor. I suppose it is just another one of those strange encounters I get at night....

I found out that my tutor used to teach at Bartley Technical and all the students thought he used to be rugby player of sorts. I suppose that explains why he throws things around. Reflecting on the short three months that I spent under his tutelage, the most significant exercise he made us do was to ask the class to list the attributes of an educated person. The list was terribly long, it made an educated person seemed god-like.

And I was in despair, thinking that there is no chance of me ever been an educated person, not in this present life, anyway.

That brief session actually changed the course of my life, inspiring me to chase after an impossible dream.

My bus came.

And I guess that got me wondering, who or what actually changed my friends' lives, for better or for worse....

Newsflash

Letters From A Killer will be shown on Channel I on Tuesday at 10pm.

It is the worst show EVER made and I sat through it. The show is highly recommended for all those who want to feel my pain.

 
I was sending out my resume via email yesterday.

And I was about to hit the SEND till I remembered that my name on my yahoo account still is Blossom, Bubbles, Buttercup, Bung, not to mention my signature message goes:

How to make your very own Powerpuff Girls:

Sugar.
Spice.
And Everything Nice.
With Chemical X.

Needless to say, I was not applying for the position of a sales executive in a toy manufacturing company. I refused to change it, it seemed like a betrayal of sorts just to make apologies for differences with social conventions. Nothing about me really changes without a reason. And most things remain unchanged. The nick Alvarny has not changed for the past 6 years or so, not since I started my online life.

What is in a name?

If a name is just a linguistic basket to hold all the other adjectives relevant to the referrent, then this basket here is rather spill-proof.

 
Human blood is always different. Never the same. I've seen it many times and it's always different. Just like people.

"This the room?"
"Must be. Just a minute."

This story has a lot of beginnings...

Victim is a caucasian female... 18-24 years... extreme struggle apparent... multiple stab wounds... wearing a wedding dress.

...from her perfect mouth... the mother-of-pearl handle of a straight razor.

....suppose the world makes no sense. No sense whatsoever. Say that all human life is idiotic, all human feeling, an Absurdity. Effect without a cause.

Say that to weep at the death of a child after the death of a million children -- centuries of mothers wailing, gone berserk, each father turning, his heart startled, mistaking a sound for his dead child's voice -- say that it is all a shameful humiliation, not to be put up with.

"So who's the acrobat?"
"Looks like her fiancee."

It's hard to be a policeman and keep God out of the picture.

We detectives have a dream. When we die we get to haul God up before a judge.

A detective imagines this God in our court pleading, "Guilty with an explanation, your honor."

Thus began The Crow: Vengeance.

P.S: Recently updated:
3/9/2002 entry.
4/9/2002 entry.

 
I was lying on my bed last night when I tipped my water bottle over. It resulted in me relocating most of my papers to other parts of my floor before I can wipe up the mess. Of course, that is until, while wiping, I tipped over my water bottle again. This time, the rescue operation included moving some of my papers to higher grounds and on top of each other.

At the end of the exercise, I went to sleep. All would have ended well, if I did not tip over the bottle a third time the next morning while I was leaving my desk to look for food, this time at a new corner of the room.

There are of course, several lessons to be learnt from this.

1. Do cap your water bottle after every drink.
2. A 1.5L bottle may be able to quench your thirst better, but it also spills better.
3. Given the height of the 1.5L bottle, it can technically throw water a lot further due to the moments generated.

It is almost back to the younger, clumsier days when I spill coke all over the place and tip water bottles over on my bed. As an Aquarian, I am not really good at containing water, as all can testify to. As such, I am considering drip or connecting a hose from my bathroom as a viable source of convenient water.

 
If there is anything that I know, it is that the past catches up on you, no matter how fast you run or how far, for you carry it with you, in the back of your mind, or at the bottom of your heart. It is impossible to change the past, and not easy to forget them. Things change, and we all have the ability to meld the present into the future which we desire. But our limitations remain glaringly obvious and eternal questions remain, for whatever we get, whatever we do, until they are solved, we remain unfulfilled.

I sulk for simple reasons. I sulk for the very same reasons that my friend sulked. Once in a while, it gets to me that I cannot find a reason for living this life, that we cannot find a justification for our actions, that the things that matters most to us, should not matter at all. Existentialism tries to solve these questions, by stating that we create our own meanings and we decide on our own life projects. Meanings should be personal and private, subscribing to the socially defined will only result in a semblance of life, devoid of authenticity.

Yet that is little in the way of consolation. It will only sound like a poor excuse from seeking the true teleological status behind our very own existence. And we sulk.

She asked me if a beautiful sunset over a the battlecries of a thousand soldiers in war would still be beautiful. I told that it would be beautiful even despite the carnage and the violence beneath. For beauty is still beauty, irregardless of how the world is, above the conflicts that rage beneath the blues skies, insensitive to the pain and suffering of mortals.

Perhaps only beauty, being so detached from the ways of the world itself, can allow us to forget Life.

"The sky is the same everywhere, always the same, always above the pain and the love, above joy and murder and loss and sacrifice."

~The Crow - Resurrection

 
Machiavelli in his Art of War changed the way Europe fought wars. He taught politics, psychology and deception. And injecting his pessimistic view of human nature into his ideal of a perfect commander, he blurred the line that separates friends from enemies.

"But he recognizes that at best a civil society and an army are complex mixtures of friends and foes, individuals and groups contending for different interests; they are certainly never totality of friends completely united in pursuing a common good. Within the group immediately supporting the political leader, the friendship of some is usually more apparent than real. The allegiance of the "friend" may be only temporary, ready to be transferred to someone else when advantage is to be gained. Even the most intimate of friends may, without warning, prove unfaithful in an hour of need, because the strongest self-discipline implanted by convention under certain circumstances is not enough to prevent the outburst of the self-seeking ego. Friendship, Machiavelli seems to imply, is not so much the precious union of hearts so dear to the classical theorists, as it is a tenuous, external bond of self-interest. By the very fact of their egoistic natures men are forever isolated and alone, whether they are friends or foes. With Machiavelli the classical distinction between friend and foe is blurred. Since every friend is a potential foe, there is considerably less reluctance to employ deception and violence in dealing with a fellow-citizen."

I laughed when I read the paragraph. He is brilliant, just absolutely brilliant. I have always equated the word Machiavellian with consequentialism. But I have never explored the idea in its extremes. The impications can be truly disturbing. Most governments I believed, practise deception, in both internal affairs and diplomacy. Our government has deceived the people more than once; if you look, you will see.

At least now we know why some people called him the son of the devil.

I have always found it strange when my friend told me that we should not trust anyone completely, even if they are your parents, so she trusts her teddy bears and her diary. And one will notice in the preceding posts, my emphasis on appearance, illusion and manipulation. I have chanted to friends that we are in the age of advertisements and marketing, where we sell ourselves off as a brand, as a product, as a label, and quality does not matter, for no one really bothers to check, till they bought the products.

But I wonder how does all these apply to some of us, some of us whom what we need cannot be found in others, whom what we want to know, few can provide , and we know little as to what else to do, but to trust our heart and the ones we love. Or maybe those of us who love the truth much and respect honesty equally so that much deception is unacceptable, or those of us who place comfort above all else, having little fear in our lives, always on our faces, wearing our irrepressible joys and pains with pride.

Fear is a futile attempt to prevent the million undesirable possibilities that can happen, but may not happen. It is also the same futile attempt to prevent the other ten million undesirable possibilities that you are unaware of. Fear is never rational and pain will only be delayed never prevented. Paranoia and suspicion may only postpone the hurt, only to let it return in redoubled fury.

Fear paralyzes, only courage can allow room for wisdom.

 
I am sulking.

I do not why I am sulking, but I am. I have friends who can sulks for days, and probably longer, feeling angry at the world, yet unable to define the world, feeling angry at the state of things, yet unable to change it.

Useless anger, useless passion, useless heart, useless mind, useless fists; all slamming themselves against everything and nothing.

 
Something happened on my way back from my friend's place. I was trying to reduce an half hour walk to twenty minutes at 2+ am, rushing home to unload my exploding bladder. As I turned from the Serangoon stadium towards my place, I heard rustling sounds coming from a block of flats about 50m away. There was an old man at the void deck and upon getting my attention, he waved. I was left looking around for the person he was waving at and there was no one else in the vicinity. At least, none visible to me then.

If not for Nature's Screams, I would have walked over and talked to him.

It is always interesting what an encounter between two strangers can produce..... and I mean, interesting exchanges, not offsprings.

 
Taking my seat beside my colleague at the end of the bus, I expected the bus ride to be just like the others: a trip down the comatose lane, into dream plains. That was until a familiar face popped into sight when I looked up from my newspaper at the very next stop.

It was a face I have not seen for 6 years. It was a face which have not changed much. She was my junior in junior college and one of the few female members in our AVA Club. Although our relationship was purely professional and we were never close, she was outgoing, cheerful and kind, and her presence was absolutely delightful. Memories of her were always heartwarming.

She took her place a seat away. And I was hesitant about actually initiating dialogue. It was that awkward feeling when you see someone you have not met in years. You simply do not know what to do or what to say.

A stranger took the seat between the two of us. Doing what the usual working class do when they are sitting on the homebound bus, she nodded off into sleep. And once in a while, I cannot help throwing a sideway glance her way.

Neither the six years nor her training in Business Studies in NTU did much to her; she is still more dressed more for ultility and comfort rather than presentation. She wore neither much make up nor expensive accessories, which is rare for a university graduate in Shenton. It was a place where presentation matters as much as ability, a place where brands scream for attention, where Mont Blanc pens are more common that Pilot pens. In a place where women are seen as mere decorations for their Prada bags and designer shirts and ties are seen spotting men, she was a rare sight. I looked at her hands: no rings. I surprised myself thinking that most girls my age are getting married.

I wanted so much to talk to her, to find out what she has been up to, to just talk to her again, but I could not bring myself to open my mouth. There was just something holding me back...

And just what was holding me back? I did not know and I do not know.

Am I afraid that she is no longer the girl I knew her to be, sweet, kind and frank? Or am I afraid that I have changed so much that she can no longer recognize me? Or to show that I was never the person she thought that I am? Am I afraid of the seemingly eternal silence that occurs when we can no longer proceed beyond the formalities? Am I unable to face the prospects of having an embarrassing distance of years of separation? Or maybe it is because there are already too many people in my life? And that I do not want to have someone else in it, especially when I cannot afford them my time and attention?

Maybe it is just that I do not want to destroy her impression of me, as a guy who is always cheerful, helpful and yet a little enigmatic. Over the years, my dark, brooding nature has taken over me, my training in philosophy is nothing short of a headlong plunge into skepticism, nihilism and solipsism. Knowledge in science has only reinforced my idea that nothing is planned and we are but the result of an accident that we called Big Bang. I carry too many of my own demons and my presence in most people's lives have created nothing short of upheavals. Maybe it is best that I leave her alone.

Maybe it is best that I do not talk to her.

Maybe it is best that I do not talk to anyone.

She might be a stranger now, strange to me, and stranger than she ever was.

She was just a seat away, just a seat that seemed to span light years. The span of six years seemed like an eternity. Such distance is almost too painful to bear.

Yet, the fond memories binds me to her image across time and space, and the more precious they are, the less I want to risk them. I want to embrace them, yet fear that they might crumble before my very eyes at my very touch.

I am very equipped to deal with changes and I am already resigned to impermanence, but I hate them all the same. I have learnt to walk away from a lot of things, learnt to accept that a lot of things are beyond our abilities to change, learnt that a lot of things are not worth breaking our hearts for, learnt that some things are just "like that", learnt to live my life one day at a time, learnt that memories can be too painful to bear, learnt that love can be a burden too heavy to shoulder, learnt that ten years of oblivion is preferable to one minute of consciousness, learnt that hope refuses to die, even if it does not know what it is hoping for....

I had learnt too much too soon: I took twenty five years to learn when I was given seventy five. Now I have so much more to watch them all coming true, over and over again....

If there is one thing I wish for more than anything else in the world, it is to have someone prove me wrong, that I am so fucking wrong.

And if there is no one in the world, hell, I guess I have to do it myself.

So let my mind be my blade, and my madness run myself through.

I suppose as with my usual practice towards chanced meeting; if lightning does strike the same place twice, if I am to meet her again, I will go up to her and say "Hi".

The above is dedicated to all my friends even those who may never read these pages.

To a friendship that we try so hard to maintain, try so hard to keep at being nothing but friends, try so hard not to let this beautiful touch fade away. We live in beauty but also in fear of losing it.

A toast to the efforts.

 
There is something in some of Wu Bai's older songs that always get me thinking. I cannot really describe his songs, but they are written like a soliloquy, from a third person's perspective. The effect is that of a guy trying to rationalize his emotions, and he seemed almost often in denial and in futility. The thoughts are intimate, but their owner is miles away, entire songs narrated in a cold, resigned tone.

I am not sure if I what I am writing about makes sense. I know little about songs. Maybe I should stop analyzing them.

Afterall, all I am sure of is that I love rough husky voices from Wu Bai, Billie Myers, Zhao Chuan, Byran Adams to Tracy Chapman. Rough voices can bring out angst so much better.

 
This Is Where I Belong
(Bryan Adams, R.J. Lange, Hans Zimmer)


I hear the wind across the plain
A sound so strong - that calls my name
It's wild like the river - it's warm like the sun
Ya it's here - this is where I belong

Under the starry skies - where eagles have flown
This place is paradise - it's the place I call home
The moon on the mountains
The whisper through the trees
The waves on the water
Let nothing come between this and me

Cuz everything I want - is everything that's here
And when we're all together - there's nothing to fear

And whenever I wander - the one thing I've learned
It's to here - I will always...always return


It is ironic that even in knowing that this is the perfect place for me, I cannot help but wander, only to return later.

 
As I laid on my bed, suddenly awake at 3+am this morning, a thousand thoughts crossed my mind. When sleep eluded me, hundreds of haunting images took turns on the stage of my consciousness.

Suddenly, the silence seemed non-existent, the table lamp too bright, the fan too strong, the air too cold; nothing seemed right. Looking at my now puny windows, both covered by rough, tinted glass, I realized how long it has been since I last saw the world outside from my room. And curtains were missing too; they were unnecessary for the glass separated the visual world as an iron wall would.

I remember a time, a long time ago, back when I have not moved. It was a time of huge glass windows, of light, of clouds, sky, streets, people, stray cats, and of course of curtains. It was a time where separation between the streets, the passer-bys and the happenings below was but a breath away. It was a time, where lying on my bed beneath the window, I can see the clouds above in the day and the moon and the stars in the night. It was a time where many idyllic, breezy afternoons are spent in solitude and non-thought, silent songs playing on in my mind, hands beneath my head and one of my legs raised, trying to catch the flapping curtains with my toes as it throws light and shadows across me.

It was beautiful.

My friend, I really wish to show you how it feels, I really do....

 
If having a conversation is like having sex, then contracting chicken pox is like getting AIDS.

Once you find out that you are down with chicken pox, you will have to call up your recent partners to inform them about their exposure to the virus, feel guilty for exposing them to unnecessary risks and avoid exercises and activities that you normally engage in.

Two weeks of MC, however is extremely enjoyable despite the isolation and the diet restriction.

 
I am back.

I am sorry for the long period of absence. There were things I needed to think about, and things that I needed to do. I have thought about things, but I have not solved much.

But anyway, I am back.

 
I have been called insensitive.

And sometimes it is not such a bad idea. I guess that kind of absolves me from a lot of blame and responsibility. An insensitive person hurts or offends another without intending to, without knowing. You cannot, afterall, blame someone who hurts you without knowing, or blame a kid for hitting you with a stick without knowing how much it will hurt.

It is better than having to hurt the ones you love because of your beliefs, principles or your duties.

Insensitivity allows me to turn my eyes from a lot of things I should have seen, have learnt or should have known. It takes me out of the social circulation of knowledge temporarily, so that instead of assuming that things are what I should know, people assume that I do not know.

Sometimes, being treated like an idiot can be enjoyable.

 
My friend told me that there has been medical findings stating that too much chocolate can cause irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).

It explains why I always get upset stomach after every double chocolate brownie or chocolate bundt from Starbucks, although I could have sworn that any one of the abovementioned can wipe out ant colonies with diabetes. In the past year, I have developed allergy to crabs, clams and now chocolate.

I think I might as well kill myself.

 
"Hands Clean"

If it weren't for your maturity none of this would have happened
If you weren't so wise beyond your years I would've been able to control myself
If it weren't for my attention you wouldn't have been successful and
If it weren't for me you would never have amounted to very much

Ooh this could be messy
But you don't seem to mind
Ooh don't go telling everybody
And overlook this supposed crime

We'll fast forward to a few years later
And no one knows except the both of us
And I have honored your request for silence
And you've washed your hands clean of this

You're essentially an employee and I like you having to depend on me
You're kind of my protege and one day you'll say you learned all you know from me
I know you depend on me like a young thing would to a guardian
I know you sexualize me like a young thing would and I think I like it

Ooh this could get messy
But you don't seem to mind
Ooh don't go telling everybody
And overlook this supposed crime

We'll fast forward to a few years later
And no one knows except the both of us
And I have honored your request for silence
And you've washed your hands clean of this

what part of our history's reinvented and under rug swept?
what part of your memory is selective and tends to forget?
what with this distance it seems so obvious?

Just make sure you don't tell on me especially to members of your family
We best keep this to ourselves and not tell any members of our inner posse
I wish I could tell the world cuz you're such a pretty thing when you're done up properly
I might want to marry you one day if you watch that weight and keep your firm body

Ooh this could be messy and
Ooh I don't seem to mind
Ooh don't go telling everybody
And overlook this supposed crime

ALANIS MORISSETTE

If society has set down its unspoken rules and unwritten regulations to protect the younger generation, it is because of the manipulative nature of human beings. For till they grow into their full potential of independent thought and critical thinking, they are still too susceptible to the influence of those with experience, coupled with intelligence and knowledge.

But I think I know too many who does not want to grow up, to grow into their full potential, taking refuge in dreams, metaphors and denial, expecting someone to always come to their rescue, refusing to take personal responsibility for their own wellbeing.

For only S$39.89, anyone can get the book called The Art of Seduction by Robert Greene at MPH. On the back cover, it chants the mantra: "seduce ... or be seduced".

The world just got a lot more interesting.

 
I have a few friends who are going to be teachers, and looking at them, I fear for the future of the generations to come. One of them told me how stupid trainee teachers can be.

And I kind of agree.

My friend's colleague who just finished his school observation/attachment for his NIE course was shocked when he found that his amiable, reserved HOD had through the vice principal wrote a complaint letter to NIE against him. He was said to be too close to the students without drawing a professional distance and boundary with the students.

He did not know how to react to the accusations when he communicates to the students solely through emails and in school. He did not go out with the students and had no involvement with them outside campus.

I just learnt that the principal and I think the vice principal have the power to submit a negative comment about any teacher without their knowledge. This comment will be kept in the teacher's profile, accessible to any institution or principal interested in viewing the file. This remark will be kept in the file for 5 years till it is purged. The said teacher will not be informed of the negative remark. The only visible signs would be a lower pay raise or a delayed promotion.

This raises disturbing issues. In an institution where honest, open, frank dialogue and compromise are encouraged as substitutes to violent, physical means of settling conflict, the authorities are empowered to penalize a staff without proper dialogue, assessment or forewarning. It seems to contradict its very own principles. The physical violence is transformed into a covet, silent form of equally violent punishment.

It grants the administrators unchecked power over the staff, for the staff cannot defend themselves. They are not notified of their mistakes or punishment. It can be said that the instrument itself is a tool for tyranny and terror, where the staff are kept in line, in fear, in the dark.

Once again the example of the panopticon comes to my mind.

It gets worse. Work cultures vary from institutions to instutitions. A teacher can never get used to the school culture for a general school culture does not exist. Every school has their very own way of doing things, their very own beliefs, priorities and traditions, all of which change with changing principals or administrators.

It was some time ago that a MP told the press that Out-Of-Bound markers cannot be clearly defined or spelled out, even if it will allow the public to know what is allowable and what is punishable. His reason was that social norms change from time to time, and so does the definition of what is acceptable, so it is impossible to pen down the OB markers.

Social norms was also cited as the reason for why male civil servants can extend their medical benefits to their family members and not female civil servants. It is, according to the spokesman, that it has always been the traditional male role to provide for the family and that the government does not want to change or upset the usual, socially acceptable way of doing things.

Whereas in other countries, the people, the deep rooted history and practices decide the social norms, in Singapore, our government has both hands in shaping our history, beliefs and values. And having them throw qualitatively unverified statements attributing rationale to prevailing intangible social norms which no one can define, somehow absolves them of their responsibility to correct unjust treatment, of their fault in propagating sexist gender roles and their duty to change the socio-political climate to allow for fair and equal treatment on the basis of our being.

 
Let us talk about death.

Francois said that in the past, funerals used to be grand affairs where the family and close friends gathered to witness and ease the pain of departure. But nowadays, death is a taboo subject which no one wishes to broach.

My friend's grandfather just passed away. And another one of my friend's grandfather is in the Class B2 Ward. They are feeding him vanilla flavoured milk through tubes inserted through the nose down the throat. My friend told me that it does not matter whether it is flavoured or not, normal human beings will never be able to distinguish the flavour of the milk when it is fed down your throat. The tastebuds are located only on one's tongue. The medical professionals do not and will not know whether her grandfather prefers chocolate or vanilla milk anyway. I told her that the nurses are feeding him vanilla milk for the sake of the family members and the witnesses present.

Death is definitely a social affair. Funerals are social mass dances. Let the reaper do the tango.

Let us talk about suicide.

If I am right about what Schopenhauer said, our most authentic choice as human beings, is to choose suicide.

If our lives are ours to lead, our demons to be our shadows, our fears our eternal companions, our pains are forever ours own to bear, our troubles forever personal, our thoughts never to be shared, then our ends will always be ours to face. And should be ours to choose. But in our society, suicide is a crime and death a public affair. And I wonder why.

My friend said that he will beat up anyone who wants to commit suicide. Society has spent so much in bringing one up, the parents have expended so much effort on bringing up the child, and he finds it ungrateful should one just chooses to throw one's life away. He thinks that these people should just be forced to labour to make the society better. I do not think that he has heard Russell's statement that parental love can be the most selfish love of all. And as for our debts to the society, well, I did not choose to be born. The society owes me an explanation.

I told him to consider people who finds no meaning in living, in giving and in breathing. I guess the concept of such a being still eludes him, even when a living, laughing example was there asking him the questions.

If living is just about breathing, then we will all be so alive. But if it is about self created meanings and self directed actions and ends, then we should have a choice as to how, when and where we want to end our existence. Medical science has allowed us to survive the worst of physiological nightmares, it has the ability to give us another shot at living or an extended timespan for life. But it has failed so miserably if its aim is to provide meaning or happiness. All it can provide is relief from pain, not joy.

Durkheim's study on suicide failed to shed light on this account. Social solidarity and shared meanings and lives will prevent suicide, but legalising against suicide is not something I would call social solidarity. And modern societies while providing an education, have failed to provide a substitute for faith and religion. Love of knowledge and passion for life will not stand up to the scrutiny of Reason. If Rosseau is right, we will be forever in chains, always trapped in the discourse with no visible of escape. We are all part of the Whole, our personal decisions will affect others. And perhaps that is why suicides are illegal.

In a world where everyone is searching for a way out, it is dangerous knowledge that death might be the only permanent solution. Thus, people who possesses this knowledge and who are eager to demonstrate it are dangerous. They might just be the virus who might kill the dinosaurs.

My friend told me that suicide will probably be the first and the last crime she will ever commit.

This post is inspired by Battle Angel Alita, when I re-read it a few months ago..

---------------------

"Before dawn, I have been looking at the sky... from complete darkness, to a deep blue that I've never seen... in the sky, countless hue overlap each other and form an incredible picture, I was fascinated. ... Then gradually, the blue in the sky falls down... I mean, I feel my body was blown into little pieces, and only my heart was left and it ascends to somewhere in the sky! I felt I was no longer me, but became one with the "blue in the sky", and scatter over every corner of this world... did that happen in several seconds, or several hours...? I don't know... but that was a very wondorous and intense sensation.

"I now understand. Until now I have seen a lot of people... a lot of incomprehensible and tragic things happened to me, but...

"In this world, nothing is meaningless. And in my heart, nobody had died."

~ Alita


P.S: When I said that medical science cannot provide us with joy, I did not consider "flying" as joy. As for the quote for Alita, it is just there for fun. And as for my promise to ^dante to die only after him, with the way he is accelerating his death by smoking and keeping late nights, I do not see that there is any contradiction between suicide ( if I should even consider it one day ) and my promise to him.

 
Reading the article below must be one of the most painful experience I ever had.

The Straits Times
June 19, 2002, Wednesday

On the headlines, I believe the title was:

PM Goh: The Lees are exceptional

PM explains Ho Ching's appointment
There is some conflict of interest in DPM Lee's wife becoming Temasek chief, but Mr Goh says it is 'for the larger good'

PRIME Minister Goh Chok Tong has acknowledged that there is some 'conflict of interest' in Ms Ho Ching being made executive director of Temasek Holdings.

In an interview with Business Week magazine, he was asked about the appointment of Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong's wife to the top job at the Government's investment holding arm, which controls about 40 companies.

Stressing that Singapore's talent pool was small, Mr Goh said: 'It is awkward, we know that... But you know, we work for the larger good.'

The interview, which appears in the magazine's June 24 edition, centred on the fact that many of Singapore's largest companies have boards filled with members of the Lee family, former Cabinet ministers and civil servants.

Since the Asian crisis, the Government has moved to restructure the government-linked companies (GLCs) under Temasek.

Mr Goh conceded there was a perception that the only way to shake up GLCs was to bring in a Lee family member and that was why Ms Ho got the job.

'That's a big problem politically for us. We've got to make sure she can justify her decisions. Otherwise, we are all in trouble,' he said.

Ms Ho became boss at Temasek on May 1. The reason Temasek chairman S. Dhanabalan wanted her, said Mr Goh, was that its board was not 'fully satisfied' with the progress made so far in the restructuring of the GLCs.

Her task was 'to give strategic direction to the GLCs'.

But having former ministers and relatives of Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew on the boards did not make it harder to restructure the GLCs, Mr Goh stressed, pointing to the opening up of the telecom sector.

DPM Lee headed the committee overseeing the liberalisation when his brother, Mr Lee Hsien Yang, was SingTel's chief executive officer.

'They argued together that you need to open up the sector. The brother has to make sure SingTel can compete.'

Mr Goh also defended SM Lee as chairman of the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation, whose rate of return in the past few years had not been 'exactly stellar'.

'When I took over as PM, I appointed him as chairman. Do we have a better man than he in giving good returns on GIC? The answer is no.

'Is the management the best in the world? I think the answer is probably not. Is it the best fund manager in the world? I don't think so. Is it the worst? I don't think so.'

On the accountability of GLCs' top management, the magazine recalled that in 1999, listed SembCorp Industries' division heads received a directive warning that it would be curtains if they did not meet new targets by year-end.

The targets were not met, but no one was punished.

Asked why, Mr Goh replied: 'I have no idea. But at the end of the day, when they go, who else comes and takes their jobs? You don't have such an abundance of talent that you can say: 'No good, out you go, put in somebody else'.'

------------------------------------------
"I have no idea."

I like that answer.

Would I defend my country? Who has the biggest stake in the country? What would I be defending?

"I have no idea."

 
Laughing

I'm neither unhappy enough
to forget unhappiness
nor happy enough
to forget happiness.

The sun keeps speaking of day,
and the stars of night;
or, say rather, that a most beautiful silence
speaks of my heart and mine alone.

What is does not flow.
What comes and goes knows
nothing but this present moment.

To question the present moment is forbidden;
and one day, before this moment ends,
people may break out laughing.

~ Tanikawa Shuntaro

 
There was a slight drizzle as I looked up at the streetlight before me. Throwing light on the unseen, pointing the way for the sight, the rain drops were falling like golden drops in the rainy night. There it was, like a resilient ray of sunlight fighting the rain and the dark, a strand of spider silk streaking between a nearby branch and the post. Silent and still, it stayed apart and afloat, detached from the dark, from the gravity and from the drops.

I thought it beautiful.

I think I want to be that spider web.

 
My personal promise to myself:

To finish The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene before 15th July 2002.

 
I am thinking of becoming a monk lately.

Again thinking of becoming a monk...

"For who has ever met a pure and natural human being? We are always social beings, clothed in our skin, our class, income, our history and as such, our obligations to each other are always based on difference. Ask me who I am responsible for, and I will tell you about my wife and child, my parents, my friends and relations, and my fellow citizens. My obligations are defined by what it means to be a citizen, a father, a husband, a son, in this culture, in this time and place. The role of pure human duty seems obscure. It is difference which seems to rule my duties, not identity."

~ Michael Ignatieff

Freedom is confusing, freedom from define oneself is tiring, freedom from belief is taxing. I guess I would become a monk and a lot of other things for the sake of getting a belief, for the sake of getting an identity, for the sake of having some guidelines to follow even if I do not believe in them.

Michael Ignatieff believes that our duties, obligations and identity are derived from socially differentiating ourselves from others. The claims of others on us are based on the differences between them and the rest. We respected the ways we differ, and ignored the fundamental universals that underly all of us, in the form of our basic humanity and vulnerabilities. And as such, we miss the point in the way we care about people, by neglecting strangers' claims on us, which are often based on our common denominators.

To be a human being is to be lost. To be a human being is to be without a direction.

To be a monk, I guess is to have someone define you and to have someone finally telling you where to go.

Order arises from chaos, and I wonder if it is time I give up my madness.

 
This post is dedicated to both Maria and Weeling, although they might never get to read it.

I just returned from the retreat for my mentoring organization. And in small ways, I learnt a lot.

During one of the sessions, one of the mentors from RI proposed conducting courses for mentors to teach or inculcate anger management. And I questioned the feasibility of mentors trying to teach the kids anger management. Given only 2 hours weekly, of which the time is split equally between study and play, I questioned the practicality of us trying to impart such values to the kids. Positive changes in the character, in normal situations, can only take place over a long period of constant exposure to relevant influences together with reinforcements from immediate surroundings. So I reminded the mentors present to be realistic and not expect ourselves to be able to teach the kids everything, given the limitations.

As it is, we are expected by parents to be free tutors and not mentors. Schools expect us to help them out by revising with the kids what they were taught in class, expecting us to play experienced and trained teachers. The last thing we should have are more unreasonable expectations about ourselves.

At that time, it seemed only the reasonable thing to say. Now, I supposed those words showed how tired I am.

I guess after 3 years of being a mentor to a bunch of 5, watching them grow from secondary 2 till their "N" Levels now, watching them drop out of the scheme because of financial difficulties, watching them fall away because of their getting involved in unsavoury activities and groups, watching them skipping sessions because of their jamming sessions; the disappointment I was fighting for so long is getting to me.

I admit. I am tired.

I spoke with Maria during lunch about this issue and in a short span of an hour, she taught me lots. She has years of mentoring experience behind her and her words were extremely helpful. She agreed with me that we cannot learn anger management over a short time, and for most of us, learning anger management will take our whole lifetime. Some of us will never learn. But for all of us, learning as with growing is a lifelong experience.

She has had mentees who found her advice and her games unpalatable when she was mentoring of them, only to catch them one day, years down the road, playing the same games, sharing the same advice and saying the same things. With a grin, she told me that we are all here to plant seeds, not to harvest. We might never be able to see the results of our works, or our words. But we should never stop planting these seeds just because we cannot harvest the fruits; it is just that the time is not right.

Someone else saying the same thing to our kids years down the road might just strike a chord in them; they might just be reminded of your words, and your ideas planted years ago, might just start to grow within them. It might take months or it might take years, or might never be. The point is that we plant our ideas, our hopes, our words, our values and our tears as possibilities in their futures; as possibilities that might one day take root and bear fruits. And what we hope for is that one day, the right person will come along, with the right words, at the right time, in the right place and achieve what we did not manage to.

Planting seeds is a tough job and once in a while, I guess we all do question ourselves about how much longer do we have to wait before the harvest? Maria said with a laugh that the harvest happens when we die. Her take is that the reaper will reap the fruits we become. Learning is a lifelong process and our death will our graduation. Now, that is one graduation of mine which I hope all who read this entry will be able to attend.

She agreed with me that we cannot learn anger management over a short time, and for most of us, learning anger management will take our whole lifetime. But she believed that we should never give up.

She said to Siva during dinner that the world is not a pleasant place, and that it will sound idealistic, but that changing one person at a time is what we can and should do.

She might just be right.

I guess we should at this moment ask ourselves how much more we are ready to give and how much farther we want to go. For me, I suppose a few more years will not hurt, afterall, I have lasted 3 years. While it may not hurt, it can be depressing and tiring.

So once in a while, I do need a friend to give me kick in the face to remind me to keep my chin up.

We cannot save everyone, but I guess, maybe we should not stop trying.

I hate it whenever I tell Weeling that we cannot have time for everyone, that we need time to reflect and be with ourselves before we lose ourselves in the troubles of others, before we lose ourselves in our empathy for others. She faces the same problems, having her own work commitments, personal commitments and church commitments and not having enough time for her youths. In a way, she hopes for more time for them, wanting to change them for the better, wanting to keep them out of jail, out of fights and away from whatever troubles their mischief will get them into.

Sometimes what I said sounds like a lame excuse.

But having to manage my life, their lives and still be responsible for everyone's feelings can be so tiring sometimes.

I want to get more involved in my kids' lives, find out what music they are into, listen to what they are singing and writing, what problems are plaguing them, what difficulties they are facing and she wants to devote more time to her youths, participate in her students' activities and get to know more about each and everyone of them, more than just their faces and names.

But that is all so impossible, teachers are not supposed to touch students, not supposed to be too close to them, mentors are supposed to draw a line between themselves and their mentees, social workers are supposed to keep a professional distance and detachment towards their counsellees. So for our own safety, we are supposed to keep a distance from those we care about, especially with the scandals in the Catholic community still fresh in everyone's minds.

So we cannot help but adopting a detached attitude towards things, cannot help but keeping a distance between ourselves and all others, cannot help but learn resignation, cannot help but walk away from a lot of things.

It just does not seem right sometimes.

Sometimes, nothing seems right.

Sometimes, real life can be the greatest obstacles to really living a life.

 
I left my room, heading for the bathroom for my usual morning shower before work. And I caught a black shape dashed between my furniture, hiding from my sight. It took me several seconds before I understood what happened. The cat I usually played with had sneaked into my house and it was lucky that my mother was not aware of its intrusion.

I coaxed it into leaving the flat before shutting the door on it.

It hurts when you cannot let what you love into your heart and your house, for the sake of their emotional and physical wellbeing...

 
Perhaps one of the few differences between human beings and animals is that human beings are conscious of the passing of time. They can direct their attention to the future; to construct their reality on an idea, of a reality-yet-to-be. They can have life projects and determine what they will be and what they want reality to be.

Perhaps that is why someone said that what differentiates a human being from an animal is an ability to promise and fulfill the uttered words.

So friend, so promise me something, anything.
Promise me something, anything, to show that I perhaps still figure in your future.
Promise me something ludicrous, and yet hope that it will happen.
Promise me something simple and close to my heart, to show that you understand me.
Promise me that we will have tea under a starlit sky in a cool evening breeze one day.
Promise me that we will meet one day, anyday, anytime, anywhere, before our final departure from this mortal realm.
Promise me that while faraway, you will raise your glass to propose a toast to the memories we shared, even if I will not be there to hear them.

Understand that the winds carry not only sounds, but also memories and blessings.

Promise me something, anything, to concretize our ethereal words, muttered under our equally intangible breaths, to set our footsteps in each other's lives.

So promise me...

 
I find your presence a little distracting.
And your breathing a little too deafening.
Your silence is a little too suffocating.
And your absence a little too disorienting

I love you and yet I dread you at the same time. The fault is mine.

Forgive me for being a little too human, for being a canvas of colours a little too clashing, jarring, for having contradictions too apparent by a little.

Now I just need to retreat inwards, by a little.

 
I was thinking about my IC (identification card) and I laughed.

I would want to take away the IC number, because I was never good at figures.
I would want to take away my photo, because it hardly looks like me anymore.
I would want to take away my birthdate, because I was never born and I will never die.
I would want to take away my address, because I do not belong there.

This earth is mine to travel as a wandering breeze, this sky is mine to fly as a lonely cloud.

What is left on the card then, is my thumbprint, which I hope to leave behind in the pages of your book you called Life.

 
My friend SMSed me to tell me that she got engaged when the guy whom she met earlier this year proposed to her in front of her parents yesterday. I hate friends breaking important news to me through SMSes. The news are more often than not, shocking. Late last year, she was just trying to get over a guy whom she was pretty close to. The guy got married without her knowledge and still wanted to be with her. Within a span of slightly more than a year since that incident, she is engaged. She has found someone special to her and she wants me to meet him.

Well, the good thing about SMS is that it allows me to edit my messages to sound calm and collected, without revealing much of my shock. But it does not allow me to satisfy my curiosity without invading upon her personal space.

A year back, she was certain that she will be staying single for quite a while more. Her high standards were not to be satisfied easily. And neither was my fear of commitment to be conquered without herculean effort. And now, she told me that the guy is "special".

I could not find words other than "yes" when I agreed to meet him, other than my default "it should be interesting". It is scary how fast things can develop and just pass you by.

The government's message to the citizens to set up their own family is certainly working.

My other friend has 2 secular weddings, 1 church wedding, 1 wedding dinner and one post ROM dinner this week to attend. It should be interesting to see how such a week will affect a single psychologically.

But in case anyone is wondering, I am very, very happy for my friend. He should be her very first boyfriend and it seems that he is going to be her only boyfriend ever. Life is wonderful.

 
The minimum wage in America is slightly over 5 bucks an hour, my students earn about 2.80 Singapore dollars an hour working at Burger King.

It pains me to see them having to struggle this way. But I suppose we are still a long way off from having a minimum wage law.

 
A lot of my friends are having problems lately, emotional problems. Is it the end of spring that heralds the hormonal changes or is it just me?

 
I must have slept for like 14-16 hours today....and it feels GOOD.

Oh, do not envy me, you can do it too. And do not call me a pig, because I missed my breakfast because of sleep.

Call me a hibernating bear.

 
My friend will be at the cemetery now, talking about issues of life and death. She is there with her friends from her group. I think it is a session for bonding and sharing, for open dialogues and discussions. In a strange, alien environment which smells and speaks of nothing but death, maybe people will be in a pensive and reflective mood.

I am always apprehensive about such sessions, it is very easily subjected to manipulation and subversion. Maybe during daytime, people are too conscious about their shortcoming and inhibitions, maybe in bright day light, they are too easily distracted, maybe while having tea, you feel immortal, and death is but a faraway idea, an affliction for everyone but yourself. Maybe they will get her to open up, to reveal more about herself and to allow them into her life. Maybe they call it sharing.

I call it mindfucking.

 
My friend's friend got married today. She got three friends as back-up witnesses in case her mother-in-law, who happens to the step-mother of the groom, refused to be a witness. The marriage took place anyway and she signed. But throughout, she was making things difficult, ugly and uncomfortable. She refused to be in any photograph, the seething anger was apparent on her face and the atmosphere was so tense that the girl's father got so angry that he left immediately after the ceremony without attending the reception afterwards. Since the newly-wed are both of legal age, I cannot understand why they need to have the parents involved in their vision of a perfect wedding ceremony. Of course it would be nice to have their approval, but my advice to them would be:

FUCK THE WORLD!

If I was the bride, I would have devised ways of making it a double whammy: my wedding and her funeral.

It makes me wonder why marriage should be a social affair. I can have a video tape and a government official (optional) as my witness, I do not see the of need any other living witnesses. The legal age of 21 is already a signfier of physical and emotional autonomy, an aribtrary date decided by the society to keep us enslaved to and dependent on our parents, denying us full recognition of our rights and abilities till an age when they decide they can no longer contain us. But in fact, it is not a dependency on our parents, but society as a whole.

The age of 21 is not a signifier of emotional or psychological maturity as exemplified by several of my infamous friends who are often pretty proud to exhibit their infantile behaviour.

I do not see why a couple should not be allowed to be married without the blessing of their friends, parents or witnesses. Should not marital commitments be personal? If the move is to tie us to the community, asking for our actions to be answerable to the social whole, then Singapore has set up too many, way too many barriers against the blossoming of individuality. A ball and chain around everyone's ankles does not make a community.

 
It is tough being a customer service officer sometimes. Today a customer called in to cancel a policy which was supposed to be cancelled already. She refused to draft another letter because her policy should have been cancelled through the phone. She refused to send in any request through fax and insisted that she did not sign up for the policy. Only when I asked that she send us back her policy document, she agreed.

But she said that she would incur postage charges. And I asked her if she mind providing the stamp, she said she did.

I was shocked. She suggested that we send her a postage paid reply envelope. I did as asked.

But it is scary actually how nasty they can be. I mean, they can be in person, nice, amiable, generous and helpful. They are probably socially accepted, popular and functional in real life. But on the phone, with customer service officers, they can be demons from hell. The scary part is that they might be your best friend.

 
Sometimes the world can be an awful place, one that gets you pissed, disillusioned and jaded. It can be childish, cruel, irrational, merciless, rebellious, insane and downright stupid at times.

I can be hopping mad, feeling terribly jaded or being childish and just sulking like a kid, but once in a while a small feather light touch can turn me round. A falling leaf, a light breeze, a cloud or the sight of an old lady crossing the streets or a kid at play can elicit from me a smile ever so easily. Suddenly the world seems like a child, who abused your most beautiful and expensive colours to paint your world ugly, and yet nevertheless proudly show you his proud handiwork. Tugging at your pants, accompanied by an innocent, ignorant grin, he wants you to show approval...

And often the world has me on my knees, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

I guess the world renews itself with each new child, with each new generation.

And the world as with every newborn is learning.

I am learning.

"Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man."
Tagore, Rabindranath

 
^dante commented that I have weird friends; and made it sound as if I am a strange karmic magnet for the troubled and the bizarre.

His comments were well taken, at least till his insistence that he belongs to the small group of my friends who are normal.

Happy, thinking beings never made up the statistical majority in my circle.

 
I rolled a dice to decide which disposition to adopt for today and the dice said: Optimistic

So I tried.

1. I watched a grandfather playing with his grandchild on the bus and I wondered how my grandfather would be like should he still be alive. I am glad for the advance in science and our healthcare standards which will actually allow most of us to watch our grandchildren grow up should we decide to have kids.

Unfortunately, healthcare is going to be expensive and children quite hard to afford.

I tried.

2. As we continued with our nation building efforts, we have groups of people, who were gathered through unknown (probably government) channels, by unknown (probably political) beings, to set new records for strange feats. I thought I saw on the news that hundreds of people gathered to set a new record for the longest queue of people barbecuing together. I see people of all ethnic, gender and age groups coming together just to participate in this event and I guess for a while, they forgot their differences.

They also forgot that barbecued food are carcinogenic.

Again, I tried.

3. With our efficient police force, our streets are safe enough for most of us to walk about at night. Girls can walk alone at night, minimally dressed not to be arrested and still be safe from physical harrassment.

Most of the guys will just have to keep their hands in their pockets as they undress the girls in their minds.

And I tried, really.

I guess when I told ^dante the other day that the words: optimism and pessimism mean nothing to me, I was serious. But hell, a dialogue between a hedonist and a nihilist can be fun.

I think it is easier to get a cat to purr into my phone than to be optimistic.

 
I just went to the bookfair again today. And it struck me that in such book fairs we have quite a number of christian and buddhist bookstores peddling books, cassettes, CDs and religious goods of all varieties. It is interesting how each is selling their own brand of truth, partial truths and fiction; I could never tell the difference when it comes to religious writings. It is interesting how so many are buying into the hopes which are sold.

I read a poem of how some monks buried statues of the Buddha beneath the ground so that it will not be destroyed by invading armies when they sweep across the lands.

The armies have casted their enemity into the words and form of the Buddha.

And the monks have casted their hopes of salvation into the words and form of the Buddha.

Both are trapped.

 
Someone once said that Beethoven's music is not art at all, it is but a rant, a cry, a noise similar to one you make when in pain. It is not expression, not a presentation of feelings or emotions; it is as artistic as the gurgling you make when I tighten my wire around your neck.

You decide if you gurgle or you express.

There is a need for generosity and magnanimity between human beings: Generosity between us to allow the space for doubt; the space for freedom; the space for mistakes; and the space for understanding. Magnanimity to allow ourselves space to breathe; to allow others silence; our silence and their own; to allow stomach for the ambiguity between words; and for ourselves and others to follow their own hearts.

Now I am asking for space, just physical distance from some, and with that, silent, radio-dead space as well.

 
It has been a long week and I was struggling through the France/Senegal match. So it will be rest day today for the blog.

 
On Palmistry:

According to my pitiful knowledge on chinese palmistry, the lines on the left palm tell the past, present and the future for males. The lines on the right hand are for females.

My life line on my right hand seems pretty long, but the one on my left hand is awfully short, which signifies that I will have a rather short life.

As such, to prolong my life, I am thinking of undergoing a sex change....



P.S: Shuen, this entry will not serve as justification to give me a girdle of feminity.

 
I resist the urge to say that I am doing volunteer work. It gives the impression that I am someone nice who devotes my time to helping the underprivileged. It is wrong, at least on the part that I am a nice person.

Sometimes I wonder if the people we help really need help. Perhaps it is our own ego that persuades us that they are the poor and the suffering and they deserve saviour like us. It serves nothing more than to build our self-esteem. Or maybe the ability to help kind of gives us the illusion that we are enjoying a comfortable level of self-sufficiency. It allows us to tell ourselves that we are not the worst of the lot; maybe we are in the pits, but there are still many others below us. And the consolation is that we are not them.

Maybe that is why we feel good helping others, because it allows us to feel good about ourselves.

And you tell me that they should be grateful for our help?

I think not.

"Praise shames me, for I secretly beg for it."
Rabindranath Tagore.

That is perhaps the reason why I do not profess to be helping my kids. I do not know who needs help, them or I, I do not know who is the helper and who is receiving aid.

On a deeper level, the role of the helped and the helper can be so easily reversed.

I see them as my partners sharing the same goal, we are equals each having a part to play in our quest for their academic excellence. Their attendance, while desired, is never compulsory. I cannot see them as people needing help, I need help as much as they do.

If my memory serves me well, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the sun overflowing with superabundance has to thank the world for accepting what it has to offer. And I am thankful that people are willing to take what I can give.

If not, it may just be that the aid I offer is unpalatable to them.

Too bad.

 
My friend got me the VCDs for Dark City, which I had been searching high and low for, for the past few years. It preceded the Matrix and in my opinion, was so much better....

Finally, my life is complete.

 
If anyone receives in the manner of replies, 3 consecutive sarcastic SMSes, that will simply means that I am in a foul mood. I have been known to be sarcastic, butspending money on SMSes to be sarcastic probably means that a phone call from me to yell my head off is just a short distance away.

 
Thinking liberates me. It allows me to break free from the cages of my conceptualized reality. In a certain sense, critical thinking empowers the individual with the ability to appraise and assess a situation based on varying standards. And I asked myself what is the source of my freedom, that throws me into a state of anomie and vertigo? Is it a framework, method or mindset?

Critical thinking encompasses assessment, creation, negation, assimilation, modification, self-destruction, deconstruction, association, preservation, expolation and more. It is always in a mode of evolution, self renewal and self discovery. It feeds upon the experiences of the past and the present, growing alongside the thinker, seemingly having a life of its own. It thus, cannot be a framework, for it is everchanging, always evolving.

It cannot be a method either, for it is the result of the subject's pre-existing knowledge base together with his/hers experiences applied to varied circumstances, through various thought processes and criteria. I cannot agree that a single method will work for all circumstances, for an assessment from multiple points of views.

It is almost as if Hegel is right again. It is as if in critical thinking, our thoughts have a life, as in through the process of synthesis and antithesis, it is slowly reaching towards the Absolute. Or maybe the Hindus got it right, where Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva signify the basic elements in our thought processes, in the action of birth, preservation and destruction.

A night jog inspired me to compare life to a walk in the park. We are like moths flitting from a lamp post to another, in search for meaning and truths. For most part of our journeys through the park, we will be in the dark, stumbling our ways towards the light. We will cling onto the partial truths and temporary understandings that emerge. In our lives, especially in our early lives, we had and will have to abandon many of our beliefs and convictions towards what we understand to be a more reasonable explanation of our world.

I think life is about courage, the courage to let go of what we often hold to be the shore to seek new horizons. Perhaps, thinking is about courage too; the courage to let go of our lifebuoys and sink. It is about the courage to ask why, to destroy one's own walls that shut out the external world, to destroy what one built up to protect oneself and in process liberate oneself from oneself, even if that means losing one's own way.

Critical thinking then, perhaps is just a mindset, a habit, a conscious will to ask the first why and a thousand more. Perhaps the final question would be: Why ask "Why"? Why the need for meaning?

And the moths fly.

 
From The Philippine
Daily Inquirer
Asia News Network

Reverend Sid Marinay on the celibacy of the Manila's 74 year-old Archbishop Jaime Cardinal Sin:

"As soon as you want to cling to one particular thing, everything else escapes you, whereas by detachment you can enjoy everything without actually possessing anything in particular."

What he said made sense, but I would have thought that detachment would be something just preached by the buddhists.

Cardinal Sin, what a name, what a name.....

Once in a while, I think of my friends who are feeling angry, frustrated, trapped and I cannot understand how they feel. For I believe that:

"Nothing can bring you peace but yourself."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

And I know that it is extremely difficult to understand and apply the above, and that it makes little sense to many whom I actually come into contact with. But it makes little sense to blame one's pain, suffering and plight on others as well....

 
I just caught Stars Wars last night, and I was trying hard not to fall asleep towards the end. Maybe I was being too critical, maybe I was feeling grouchier due to lack of sleep, but the experience was painful, very painful. It is no wonder someone said that the best actor in the movie was Yoda....

 
I want to post some thoughts I have on the nature of critical thinking and I realized how tired I am. I actually finished the post last night, but I lost it when blogger died on me; lost about a thousand words.

I just came back from a dinner with a friend who is very dear to me, so much so that I do not know how to deal with it. We had a decadent dinner, had coffee, took a walk to the playground, and she dropped me off on her way back.

It is hard to actually accept seeing her twice every three weeks when we used to have breakfast, tea, lunch, tea, and dinner close to 5 days a week 3 years back. She used to spend more time with me than with her boyfriend. We shared quite a lot during those days. When we were free, we just do nothing but have inane conversations that lasted for hours on end to arrive at convuluted social theories. It was mindless fun.

Now that we are both busy with our own careers, it is quite hard to meet up. Our commitments multiplied and there is so much to say with so little time to say them. We each have one too many demons to exorcise.

At Coffee Bean, I showed her my Fisherman's Friend and told her, "See? Just like the old days"
"But the colour (flavour) has changed." she remarked.
"Yes, this is only to make me more socially acceptable. It has not changed in essence, some things haven't changed that much."
She laughed.

We are now older, tired, burdened, fighting to stay afloat, full of hidden hurt and suddenly we found ourselves reduced to frightened little children. It is almost as if the fear we lost as children has finally caught up with us. Yet despite all that and so much, so much more, I still lose myself in her laughter. And she said that it was like getting drunk without the alcohol.

Deep down, she is still an alcoholic.

I guess things have not changed that much...

 
My friend told me something rather disturbing last night and I am still thinking about it.

And it was funny how I was standing in Geylang, thinking about the art of thinking....

 
Shower thought of the day:

Just some blabbering on the nature of language...

A truth can be questioned.

Can a question be said to be true?

What is necessary to establish the truth of any statement?

 
The Use and Abuse of Media

The power of propaganda cannot be more obvious than the difference in the way girls and guys view National Service.

The girls think of it as a phase, a growing up process, fun, memorable, adventure filled and a life stage which magically transform boys to men. Some developed a liking for men in uniform, where soldiers in their starched no.1 are the shinning examples of what real men should be like.

The guys who were mind-fucked before the army, will just be fucked during and after.

 
I woke up with my hair looking like Heihachi's. Bad hair day, bad hair day, bad hair day.....

 
I was alone at the beach today, cycling, thinking, stoning and writing.

The wind in my hair, soft grass beneath me, the sun fading quickly behind the clouds, the gales bring the waves and every grain of sand seemed so right and so proper. Nothing would make me change the way things are now.

And for a long time now, I wanted to thank everyone and everything that contributed to making things so right for me, for allowing me to be who I am, and who I want to be; childish, imprudent, impulsive, irreverent, rude, boisterous and obnoxious. Special thanks go to those who indulge in my excesses, and those who held me back from killing myself in some insane act. And for those who partake in my periodic crazy adventures, their presence made a irrational world less lonely.

To those who love me, I am honoured and I am grateful. I am truly blessed for I am well loved. And in turn, I hope to love well. Treading on the winds, I am a happy nihilist.

We are all connected in magical ways; without those whom I know to exist, or do not know to exist, I am impossible. Thank you for making everything wisp in the sky so right.

'Cause I wanted to fly,
so you gave me your wings
And time held its breath so I could see,
yeah
And you set me free

The sea embraced the beach and the breeze wrapped itself gently around me. I dropped a blade of grass to the winds, and I floated away, cushioned by your every breath.

 
you set me free

You are in my heart
The only light that shines
there in the dark

'Cause I wanted to fly,
so you gave me your wings
And time held its breath so I could see,
yeah
And you set me free

When I was alone
You came around
When I was down
You pulled me through
And there's nothing that
I wouldn't do for you

By Michelle Branch and John Shanks.

Do not ask me why I pasted the above. I just felt like it, treat it like a typing exercise if you must.

 
The Monk and the Traveller:

My friend is going to France. And she told me in jest that her friend and her are going to do meditation there.

Another of my friend wants to go Melbourne to find peace, to get away from so many things around her, from so many things that are troubling her.

So the buddhists are going to the somewhere out there to find the Here. They are leaving in two weeks to find the Now.

And my friend is going abroad to get away from the issues so that she can return to them later. She is throwing herself on a plane to find herself.

So the Here is out there, the Now is later and the non-existent self is running away.



Samsara is Nirvana.

 
I was thinking that my meetings with some friends are like casual sex without the sex. It is like a one night stand. Our eyes meet across the distance, we have a deep and penetrating conversation, relate to one another in the most intimate ways, touch on the most sensitive sides of the other, emerge with the most profound satisfaction and we part with a sigh and longing in our eyes.

I wonder if that is the reason why ^dante always smokes after every conversation....

 
I think Nietzsche said something about the economics of honesty. There is an oversupply of truths and a shortage of demand for them. Due to inflation, the rate is that ten thousand truths cannot afford a listening ear.

 
Celebrated my friend's birthday last night, and I found it a sobering experience. Everytime I meet her is a sobering experience. It is difficult to call the experience sobering because it kinds of wakes you up, but confuses you at the same time. It is almost as if I will be stunned and shocked everytime I see her. I knew her about 2 years ago, when my friend introduced me to her. She is 22 this year and she suffers from some kind of muscular atrophy. She cannot walk or get off her bed, never attended school or classes and now requires breathing aids. She can only move her arms and manage slight movements of her head, which allows her to SMS my friends, go online, and do some sewing. But beyond that, her body has pretty much wasted away. She is small, very small. Thus, despite her age, whenever she is warded, she will be in the paediatrics. It is no wonder that during her birthday celebrations or her christmas celebrations, a lot of doctors turn up.

One told me that she was a joy to work with. Her optimism was infectious and it gave them a lot of encouragement. Her will to live has sustained her this far and it has sustained them.

Her mother and her friends taught her everything, I do not know where her father went. My friend was from SRJC Interact Club which "adopted" her years back. And I guessed that they brought her a lot of joy and knowledge of the external world. My friends and I were introduced to her during one of her "parties". We were to cheer her up. We were told that we need not be awkward when we speak of her condition, she knows herself and she knows that she is going to die. But yesterday I was alone without my other guys, I felt lost as to what to talk to her about. She is smart, she learns a lot from her mum and television. But we were from two different worlds, I do not watch the programs she does, I do not know the names of Korean hunks, and the only F4 I know is the key on my keyboard.

And I was severely warned by my friends not to talk philosophy to her.

I managed a short conversation punctuated with periods of awkward silence, after which my female friends kindly took over. They can relate better to her, despite her condition, she is still very much a normal girl at heart. They talked to her about Korean and Taiwanese actors, about cute doctors and she would ask her mum to show us her photos, and I would sit by the side as they wrapped her presents for her, showing her the beautiful trinkets that are her presents. My job is to be a back-up voice actor whose task is to provide occasional "nice", "beautiful" or help in hanging up the wind chimes. I just cannot take part in what they are doing, it is not that I do not want to, I do not know how to.

She learnt so much from television. It is amazing that a person with so little life experiences can know so much, can feel so much, can know what is beautiful, ugly, good, bad, right or wrong. Her life has been a constant shuttling to and fro hospitals. While I am determined to unlearn all I have learnt, she is voraciously taking in all of it. While I am denying life its meaning, she is giving so many to hers. Perhaps here is a justification for the net and the television. Much as what she took in was all constructed and sensationalized by the media, it gave her a view of what the world is like, gave her an idea what to live for, and I believe that lifted her pain.

She showed us the ringtones which she downloaded, some really old photos, and played us a tape of songs which her friends sang for her. And it was rather nice of her actually to show us only the happy moments of her life, of the snapshots of the smiles in her life, sparing us the pain which we so often see when we visit her in hospital.

I do not know what to say. For the past week, I have been tempted to ask my friends what actually keeps them going, what actually gets them going, what would actually get them looking forward to a new day and just what are they living for.

I was tempted to ask her the same question. I was.

 
After a long night of hard fought battles, I returned home, in the knowledge that the world is safe once again from the clutches of Doctor Quilto and the tentacles of his evil towers. The AD&D campaign has been spectacular. And my friends drove me back at slightly over 5 in the morning. I walked up to my place, thinking of new ways of using my new pebbles to boulders spell. As I rummaged through my bag, looking for my two sets of keys, one for my new door and one for my old metal gate, I was feeling pretty proud of what I did today. Why the two sets of key? During the renovation, they only had time to change the wooden door. The old metal gate has not been replaced.

At this point in time, I discovered that I only brought the keys to my gate.

I searched through my spell book looking for an adequate spell. And I realized that I would need to rest in order to memorize my knock spell. Lacking fireball or the companionship of my tiger-orc, I am not going to bash the door down, even if my stoneskin is intact. My dad being a 20th level fighter and 25th level wizard, will be really pissed if I even scratch the door. For the same reason, my tiger-orc bought himself a scratching post instead of using furniture in my house. And be reminded, my dad is no illusionist, he has really potent fireballs and authentic meteor storms. And calling home to wake them up is not going to work. My mum is pretty high level too. Being a 25th level cleric, her withering touch hurts big time.

I could have cast a sleep spell on myself and faint outside the door, if I had memorised it. Or technically, if tiger-orc is here, I could convince him that it was sheep-god who wanted him to bash down the door. Do not be mistaken, I do not sacrifice my NPCs unnecessarily, in fact, I value my NPCs greatly. I do not dehumanize them, I attribute to them feelings and rights of normal human beings. As such, I would have gladly sacrificed Porkfloss in the place of my tiger-orc. Since both are missing, I guess I will just wait at the void deck till my parents wake up.

The price of being a heroic gnome illusionist....

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Where I used to stay, we had amazing rains and winds. My flat was located just beside a water catchment area so it has lots of greenery as well. The winds can be really strong during certain months of the year, so much so that you will feel its resistance when you walk into it. When it rains during the monsoon season, the skies are covered with thick clouds and day can turn into night. There will be terrific winds whipping around the building, and during the times when I chose to stay home during the rain, instead of taking a stroll at the void deck, I will close the windows till they are slits. The winds will be howling as they are blowing past. It can be rather eerie to some, with flat in semi darkness and the empty howls echoing through the empty rooms. Strangely I feel pretty at ease about it, I would usually be reading under my favorite table lamp, or sitting in the hall, with a cup of tea, stoning away, watching and listening to the rain. It was years back then, and I cannot seem to remember what was going through my mind, but I was definitely not a philosopher then (not attached yet); so I suppose I was thinking what teenagers think during their teenage years and dreaming what teenagers dream during their teenage years.

With the cold stone floor underneath my dancing feet, rejoicing at the arrival of the heavy rain, the blinding lightning and the accompanying thunder, the howling was not the sound of the winds, it was the sound of the empty halls, the sound of space, the sound of solitude.

And today, I asked myself what is the sound of the winds then? On the back of my mum's motorbike, speeding down the CTE at 80 or higher, I used my mobile to take down the sounds of the winds as we sped.

Upon replay, it sounds like the forceful flapping of wet cloth, like the hurried flapping of wings as birds take to the skies and leave the grounds behind.

Ah, the sound of freedom....

 
My hair is getting longer again. And it tends to curl at the ends. I wonder if I should go for rebonding...

 
I was thinking about relationships and I feel that guys, including myself who are predominantly problem solvers tend to apply their problem solving skills to try to fix things in the relationship, including the relationship itself. It springs from an instinctive reaction to reduce, remove or remedy discomfort or pain. To know that some things cannot be fixed is a hard pill to swallow and sometimes, there are living reminders of your failure and your impotence.

And sometimes, the best thing to do is to walk away.

 
The local newspapers should avoid giving rude shocks in the morning.

One of the letters to the press, by an assignment editor with Channel NewsAsia, titled What Do I Tell My Sons? (If they ask me why they should give their lives for Singapore) talked about patriotism in Singapore. And it said "Modern day patriotism is a form of cultivated patriotism, carefully nurtured though national education programmes, National Service (NS), National Day parades and national songs on TV."

He spoke of how Singapore society being an artificial construct and that there is no nationalism or patriotism to speak of that is not nurtured, manufactured or constructed. I have to agree with him on this point. But to be loyal and faithful to the state or the nation, we have to know what it means or stands for.

With the help of propaganda, the September 11 incident united the Americans, for a while. "American patriotism has always been seen as a defence of the values its people uphold, especially civil rights."

And I have always been wondering, what does our country stands for? What values does it hold to us? And to others? And I found myself unable to answer...

 
I am back to reading Foucault again after a brief respite of reading daily fiction of Straits Times, Streats and Today.

He talked about how progress in certain fields of knowledge tends to take place in discontinuous, sudden bursts, contradicting the usual idea that improvements should take place in a calm continuous manner. The rapidity and the extent of the development of the knowlegde are signs of changes in the rules governing what constitutes scientific knowledge, deciding what is scientifically acceptable. It is not an external imposition of authority on scientific knowlegde, but the entire system of what constitutes their internal validity has underwent a "global modification'.

Our state tends to operate in a similar way, where sudden changes take place and the supporting infrastructure of education, administration, taxation and legislation springs up overnight.

It is not a wonder then when the government announced possible of implementation of a 5% GST, and that studies are being done in look into the impact, the people have no doubts that the studies will be show supporting evidence for the proposition increase will be implemented, with or without their consent.

 
In the event calendar for the University Cultural Centre, there is a line that goes:

In BIRDBRAIN, Stewart conjures a dismantled and unhinged retelling of the classic SWAN LAKE.

Interestingly, dismantling, parodizing, trivializing of any classic artwork is not possible without the prior institutionalizing, formalizing and canonizing of the original work. Being given a place of authority, an artwork gives itself to be taken down and be recycled.

The process of deitification, interpretation, re-interpretation, expression, re-expression feels like a blind man trying to paint Mona Lisa in ways that he sees as representative of his times.

Sometimes, I would just call it Frankensteinian art.

 
On the move back:

Lost:

One drawer.

Found:

Incriminating evidence of me having a childhood.

Must destroy them, must destroy them, or I will have to live with my loincloth covering my face for the rest of my life.

 
I am back, moving back at least. My computer is up, my net is up, but my room is still a mess and it seems like I will have to sleep on the floor tonight or for the next few nights. With the lack of shelves and the amount of stuff I accumulated over the last quarter of the century, I am glad I still have floorspace.

 
One of the things you should never say to your friendly neighbour who is helping you move:

"Fwah auntie, your thigh more solid than mine sia, which gym you go to?"

 
My dad gave me a backhand to my thigh. And the following exchange took place in chinese.

I looked at him, said, "Pain?"
And I looked away.
He said, "If it's painful, stop shaking your legs."
I replied, "No, dad, I meant to ask if your hand is hurt from slapping my thigh."

I bolted.

 
Just like God, human nature has been blamed for one too many things. And I often wonder what is defined as human nature. I am more inclined towards belief in genetic disposition than just human nature.

Often, saying that certain behaviourial patterns are due to human nature, just does not convince me. It seems more like an excuse or a sigh of resignation, rather than a genuine, sincere explanation. Human civilization could not have come so far based on just human nature. Then and now, we have to conquer ourselves. To survive in modern society, we have to overcome our human nature.

Ascribing an action or mindset as human nature, naturalize and demystifies their very cause, explaining nothing. While it takes away the finger pointing, it disempowers the individual, setting him up against a named but undefined enemy, invisible and intangible.

It is our world and our life, if there is something we do not like, I suppose it is our responsibility to change it, not blame it on some obscure, nebulous abstraction.

 
Thought for the months to come:

It struck me to ask what is the meaning of meaning.

 
One will often face difficulties when speaking to a nihilist.

A lot of common definitions no longer work for the nihilist and they no longer hold any meaning. Good or bad, better or worse, right or wrong, no longer mean anything to the nihilist. It is a relative world that they live in, having no anchors, definitions or yardsticks for comparison or true objective appraisal of the world we live in.

Yea, once again, I am having problem talking to myself.