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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Free message from SPCA: A pet is for a lifetime, not just for Christmas.

 
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.