Coffee thoughts of the day:

"Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man."
~ Hume

Excessive ruminations is a psychological problem that some of us are afflicted with. Skepticism is the symptom. It takes a lot of courage to believe that you have the answer. It could well be arrogance. The Search then, will never cease.

It takes courage too, to believe that things can be better. The idea of a better future can be as painful as it is beautiful. It is not easy to just raise your hopes believing that things will change the way you want it to, or that things will improve when your hopes have been dashed so often. Without expectations, there will be no disappointments. While I think that it is possible to be detached and be without expectations, I am not sure if many are capable of that option.

But I guess it is easier to be courageous against hope then against pain.

 
Bus thought of the day:

"God is dead."
~ Nietzsche

If the christians can interpret the bible in all its metaphorical, paradoxical glory, why do most of them fail to interpret the above quote contextually? Perhaps if they do, they may grow to be far more respectable.

 
An indian sat down opposite me during lunch time, with his bread and his dips. A few quiet minutes into the meal, I asked if he tried the indian food at Amara foodcourt, level 4. Comparatively, he like the one at Lau Pa Sat better. I asked him about traditional indian food and was told that North indians generally take more bread, south indians generally take more greens, rice and yogurt and he, from the brahmin caste, is a strict vegetarian.

The stall at Amara foodcourt was selling south indian cuisines. My first and only experience with it was rather memorable. I ordered some bread with mutton and was given 4 dips. A metal tray of colours greeted me; green, red, yellow, white... The assorted dips tasted differently from each other too. The green one was slightly bitter, one of the white being homemade yogurt was sour, the other with rice bits in it was sweet, and final the yellow dip was slightly spicy.

I was deeply amused, the meal being reminiscent of life's ups and downs. In chinese, life is described as suan1, tian2, ku3, la4, literally translated as sour, sweet, bitter and spicy. My lecturer once told me that in Japan, there are certain foods for certain seasons. And eating in a way, signifies the passing of time, just as this meal, which reminds me of how life can be colourful and everchanging.

I may not subscribe to the cultural significances given, but they can make life fun and meaningful, or they can make the already confusing life more confusing and a painful one more painful. For the same act, which the cultural exalts and praise, they can ostracize and penalize, while they reward and empower, they can punish and incapacitate for the same thing.

An example or two perhaps?

Work is defined as the actions you do to fulfil certain tasks in an occupation.

The act of copulation has dozens of linguistic equivalents, such as having sex, fucking, baby making, fornicating, making love, the union of souls/bodies, screwing....

Quoting a friend: Human beings do not copulate, they make love.

I guess my trip down Desker road the other night got me thinking. The sight that greeted us when we walked into the small shophouses were the sight of small rooms separated by thin wooden walls, with tiny sinks facing the door above small dustbins, overused and dirty mattress on wooden beds, with middle aged ladies scantily clad waiting inside the rooms. It was so cramped that little of the cement floor can be seen. The corridors were narrow with customers having little personal space nor privacy should they choose to walk in. While no rude noises could be heard and the environment remains relatively quiet, there was a strange smell in the air. Pink fluorescent tubes were used for lighting and for once, walking along the corridors of a shophouse feels like a surreal trip down its back alley.

I guess for first timers, the sights and sounds can be overwhelming. We were overdressed with 3 of us were dressed in long sleeves and 1 in tee shirt and and jeans, looking like part of an anti vice unit. Perhaps that is the reason, periodically I could catch someone watching us.

With 2 of my friends being having patronised the place before, my other friend was complaining that his future political career would be ruined if he be caught here, worried about his reputation if he runs into relatives here, whinning about the lack of morality and the decadence. One too many "if"s for me.

I was told that the majority of the patrons here are malaysians, with a few bangladeshis, and one or two caucasians. We went upstairs and was answered with an old man watching TV, signifying that we could find little relief for our curiosity should we go further. We went on to the next shophouse, having to leave my friend outside with his cigarettes in the shadows.

I could remember the song by Nobody called The Prostitute and the Singer/Songwriter, which greatly disturbed my sis during her creative and productive days. It compared the singer/songwriter to the prostitute, having to sell and exploit his emotions to make a living.

The chorus, pardon my poor translation:

You said that we are all exploiting our emotions,
under a different light, but the same act, the same burden.
You said that the emotions that they bought,
are your unnecessary pains and joys in your life.

Singer: Anna! It's 3am, what are you doing?
Anna: I am peddling my emotions...what about you? Why aren't you asleep?
Singer: I am like you, selling my feelings....it will be daybreak soon, tomorrow...what will tomorrow be like?
Anna: The same, I guess, everyday's the same....everyone's the same...
Singer: When will it be, when we will live on this world, finally devoid and exhausted of emotions?
Anna: Heh! When will it be, when we will live on this world, finally devoid and exhausted of emotions? When will it be?

I heard that the place has shrunk down a lot, and I noticed a condominium springing up nearby, and I presume that it will not be around for much longer. I have mixed feelings about it. The place has settled into an equilibrium, a microsystem isolated from the rest of the world, hardly interacting overtly with it. For the sake of someone else's condominium, these already suffering people has to move. They have to relocated to another hole because someone else wealthier are moving into the vicinity and they do not want their family and guests noticing the prostitutes as they drive past in their mercedes, nor the sight of the whorehouses spoiling the poolside view. I guess it is harder to sleep at night know that there is someone else just outside your house selling their flesh for money, while all the time, they are looking up in your direction, hoping for a better future...

While these people may hate and despise themselves for what they have to do for bread and butter, yet in developed countries, there are people doing the same for branded goods and promotions, only in offices, in designer suits and lingerie and spring mattress.

We are all performing the same transactions, under different lighting.

Kishore in his book "Can Asians Think?" wrote on the effects of the internet, technology and telecommunications on the global migration. In the past, the West had to deal with the problems of inequality during the Industrial Revolution. And now that telecommunications and the media are able to communicate the images and ideas of western affluence to the rest of the world, the inequality on a global scale is going to be greatly apparent.

And the ideas and the images of a better life has always been the driving force behind mass human migration. We are looking at a slowed population growth rate in developed countries compared to the growing population in the developing countries. Both Singapore and America were founded on refugees and foreign workers who travelled across oceans in hope of a better life. With modern modes of transport, the oceans are no longer as large as they seemed. In recent years we have seen the problems of increased global migration gaining international attention. If oceans were unable to quench the hopes of these people, will condominium walls be able extinguish them? It will soon be time to address these issues soon. I just hope that it will not be too late by then.

 
I was reading Simmel about females being excluded from the process of production of culture. And he said that while males can segregate their life into different spheres because they can specialize and draw clear lines between the different jobs and duties which they have, females are holistic in their psychological make up and their approach to life because their duties and work are more diversified without much specialization. It is a rather strange theory.

But the distinctive point which I picked up is that the word used to describe the totality that characterizes women is "fidelity". For it shows that a female is complete and her whole sense of purpose with her whole being is directed towards a particular person or goal.

And the reason why men are less faithful is their ability to differentiate and separate the different aspects of their lives. Their ability to "specialize" proves to be the undoing of their ability to be faithful.

Perhaps some of my female friends whose mottos in life are "All men are b**tards, besides my father, my brother and my boyfriend" should see this, because they are wrong.

All men are b**tards, without exception.

 
In the City of Angels, the angels, all dressed in long black coats will standing at the beach at dawn, watching the sunrise, admiring God's handiwork, listening to songs which no mortal ears can hear, receiving instructions from the Almighty. It was depicted as a rather majestic sight

I went to work specially early today. Hoping to be a witness to all the wonders of Creation, hoping to start a new day with the warm morning sun washing over me, hoping to be there when God speaks, hoping from my office on my 26th floor to catch the morning sun....

The sky was overcast.

Guess God didn't feel like talking to an atheist.

 
HEY!!! I FINALLY KNOW HOW TO PUT PICTURES ON MY BLOG!!!!

The next thing I want to find out, are ways to archive my posts and to create a comment page for all you people.
On my path to world conquest, as usual, first the net, next the world.



P.S: If you happen to find the flower familiar, that's because it was on my original webpage. And I have done a hyperlink to it so that you can mail me just by clicking on it.

 
Shower thought of the day:

Thinking about the Truman show and was wondering who were made to watch Dark City with me, was it the same gang who was made to watch Joe's Apartment with me too?

 
On SAT:

Our education is a relic left to us from our colonial times. It seemed that in recent years, it is not enough for our aspiring students to take the GCE "A" levels as the entrance examinations to our local university. They are now required to take the SAT as well. To make our students more marketable, to show that the local students admit to our own university are of a world class standard, products from our British inspired schools are now made to pass the American test.

Interestingly:


----
From the New York Times dated: March 23, 2002

College Board to Revise SAT
By TAMAR LEWIN

"The College Board has been re-thinking the SAT I for some years, as more colleges, including Bates, Bowdoin and Mount Holyoke, have dropped it from their requirements."

While the SAT claims to be "a curriculum-free aptitude test", University of California "and other critics, have expressed concern that the SAT I favors students from middle- and upper-income families — and that both grade-point average and SAT II subject test scores are better predictors of which students are likely to succeed in college."

----


Perhaps this is an example that even academic tests are not socially neutral.

 
On nostalgia:

Ver-nern commented that on the average, a local serial or production will be made on World War 2. While I would like to think that it is a year and a quarter, but that disagreement is inconsequential. War dramas and advertisements are probably the compulsory contributions by the media to our Total Defence, aside from our Power 98.0 and FM 88.3 which are radiostations largely funded and related to our military.

Oh, regarding the contributions of our media to Total Defence, did I forget to mention the selective coverage of our news?

I was switching channels between TCS 8 and Channel U, wondering whether Bukit Ho Swee or that imported soap opera from Hong Kong is the greater evil. In the end, I decided to turn to computer games for solace. It occurred to me that I have no idea where Bukit Ho Swee is, or what its historical significance is. Give me Chinatown and I can tell you what it is all about, maybe. The sets on the show looked over used, the screen was tinted yellowish to create the effect of age, embarrassed looking fowls brought onto the screen to show that in the past, people had land, enough for them to grown bannana trees, papaya trees and chilli plants.

Has anyone wondered why dogs were never figured on the set? Is it maybe because they were not around then, and only around now? Or maybe they are around then and now, and that is why they need not be featured on the screen?

Perhaps, I belong to a small group that is always trying to unravel my own roots, a group which thinks that there is no difference even if Merlion is something from an Ultraman movie, a group which thinks that the past contains lessons, not identity, a group that is looking forward to each new day with fear, anxiety, excitement and curiosity.

I think Hegel was the one who said that the person who does not know the past is bound to repeat it. Dare I disagree with Hegel?

But I do wonder though, aside from lessons, since I do not believe that history is the unfolding of the Geist, since I have no need of an identity, of what other uses is the past to me?

 
I was watching Point of View, a talkshow on Malaysian TV2 on Friday night when I was truly impressed by their insightful yet accessible exchange on the challenges of modernity to Islam, and how they should cope with it. They covered historical, sociological, psychological, political, philosophical and religious grounds. It was brought up that the current Islamic practices are influenced by the prevailing culture of the times when Islam was introduced to Malaysia.

At one point of discussion, the speakers brought up the importance of technical knowledge. The host was particularly impressive when he brought up the challenge to define knowledge, and the many senses of knowledge in Islam, following with a statement that says that the producers of knowledge may not be neutral, having hidden agendas for their genesis.

I do not believe that any talkshows in Singapore ever brought up the questioning of our norms, or the validity of the knowledege that is fed to us. We are passive consumers of information, as with a lot of other things. The people swallowed the recently constructed myths and legends surrounding the Merlion without chewing. Our national identity is constructed on our consumption and our forgetting, our forgetting of what is, of what was, of an accurate history, and filling the gaps with newly constructed images. Singaporeans, thinking themselves as cosmopolitans, located in one of the centres of trade in the world, having a degree of access to the external world, think themselves open-minded, international, citizens of the world.

Perhaps in a way, we are becoming Americans.

For Islam, knowledge is basically divided into two categories. One belonging to the technical and vocational sphere, the other belonging to the spiritual and religious sphere. The main fissure came during colonial times where the pursuit of "worldly" knowledge was given to the colonial masters and the locals were given the pursuit of spirituality.

Nostalgia, according to them is an impedance to progress. Always looking back to the golden ages of the Ottoman Empire or their prophets is somehow equivocal to our reminiscence of the illusion of our "kampong" days, days which we never lived through and probably never existed. The wonderful past propagated is often an abstraction from events, generalization of phenomenon, to form a hazy and perfect image.

A degree of theology from an university of Malaya would require an undergraduate to take modules in Greek, Medieval, Islamic and comparative philosophy. The last being recently and superficially offered as a third year module in the National University of Singapore. While not all embracing, I would say that their syllabus do offer a certain range and diversity of materials.

I was glued to my TV set, reluctant to move nor answer Nature's calls because the program does not seem to have commercial breaks, trying hard not to breathe, blink or drift away, for I, as Aerosmith puts it best, "don't want to miss a thing".

After this unique experience, perhaps I could say that their media enjoy a higher degree of political freedom, and this talkshow is certainly more insightful than many of our own. Perhaps an abstract below will show you what I mean.

----

From http://www.geocities.com/WestHollywood/3878/quotes.htm

4 June 1999
Mr Robert Loh, Chairman of the National Council of Social Services
in a Straits Times interview:

ST: Why did the National Council of Social Service decide to join in the debate on what a family ought to constitute?

Mr Loh: "Well, what constitutes a strong, healthy family? Actually, a happy family is a strong, healthy family.

----

I think you all got what I mean.

 
Perhaps an explanation for the title of my Blog....

The search for reason signifies that I no longer know what reason is, and that I no longer possess it. What is supposed to be rational, what is supposed to be reasonable basically has no objective reality nor justification to me anymore. The question as to what is reason or rational has been plaguing me for the past year or more. It has been central to my existence in whatever I do. Functional as I seem, it is just what it seems, nothing more.

The result of not knowing what reason is could result in disastrous and embarassing results, especially in tutorials.
A: " .....no society could develop in that way, it is not rational to do so. "
B: " Could you please kindly qualify your term 'rational'? "
Suddenly, the whole tutorial class is awake.
A: " .... "
C is gesticulating wildly.
C: " ALRIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! "

Of course, for me, this pursuit itself is for purely personal interests, nothing more.

 
The interview went fairly well, I made quite a few mistakes, perhaps because I underestimated the interviewers, at least two of them were really sharp. Burning with a fever, I blabbered on social issues, on social phenomenon, on my own philosophy, so much so that I think they were trying to get rid of me at the end of the interview. And in doing so I made a few mistakes which I will be kicking myself for. Yet on retrospect, given that this is my first interview ever, I was rather smooth. I went in asking questions first, answering questions later...

I shot myself in the foot a few time, but despite that, I got an encouraging sign towards the end of my interview. The interviewer whom I spoke to for most of the interview asked me how far I am willing to travel for work.

And I had to tell him that it depends on what time work starts....

 
Have to go for my first interview in a few minutes' time, with PA. I wonder how i got myself into this mess, given that I have done nothing but badmouth our government the whole of yesterday, following their announcement that they will finally allow our Ministers to debate relatively more freely in Parliament. They finally admitted to suppressing arguments from their own ministers against the prevailing or the proposed policies by the government. The so-called representative government was never practised here ever since 1965.

What disturbs most me is that someone asked me how knowing that should affect her. Disempowerment aside, there is a fundamental disengagement. I figured that while political apathy is discouraged on the media, it is secretly celebrated. Political participation, as with a frank dialogue in parliament, equivocal with that of free speech in the Speakers' corner, will only be tolerated only within limits.

 
I love playing with cats, but they have a rather strange way of showing you affection. They would try to grab your hand and bite it. Such acts were obviously not performed with the intent to hurt, or with their razor sharp claws and deadly teeth, or your hands would be torn to ribbons in seconds.

Many would know what razor sharp means, but to truly appreciate how sharp it is, you will really need to play with a cat. It would be a rude awakening to the insufficiency of language to represent reality.

Last night, I was squatting down, playing with a passing, seemingly pregnant stray. I used my IS magazine to ruffle it, instead of my hands. It suddenly climbed onto my lap, claws extended. I could feel the individual talons through my jeans on my skin, threatening to tear it. I caught its eyes following my magazine, reading into its motives, I dropped it. And it scampered to the magazine, and sat down comfortably on it. No amount of coaxing could removed it, and I left with a sore ego, badly defeated by a feline.

Cats, love them, hate them, do they give a damn?
*laughs*
Perhaps in terms of self sufficiency, self confidence and individuality, we have a lot more to learn from them....

 
I have been thinking of doing an online journal for such a long time that I almost forgotten about it....

 
Testing...