Moving On

MP3: Keane-Everybody's Changing
This song very popular on the radio these days, but unlike all your typical radio junk its fine with me. Its chancing upon songs like this that makes me feel obliged to tune into the radio every now and then.

Things happen.


For this blog, you’re given free rein to link me up. I don’t mind now.

Anarchy is dead. 4 of its leaves turned a very gruesome black, I had to cut them off. So its now left with one leaf. I must say Ive grown accustomed to its presence, its removal would definitely leave me disorientated.

The schools had some personality profiling 3 day course. According to them it’s a very popular uh, assessment of people, largely used and recognized in the corporate world and such.

I wont say much about my results, I leave it for you to judge. It goes as follows. For every “most dominant” point I got, I got a “least dominant” point—7 to 7. For Influential it was 3 to 2. Steadiness, 6 to 6. Compliance, 4 to 3. Blank, 4 to 6. It just means every trait gets cancelled out. I got a steadiness for my adapted behaviour, a influential/compliant one for my uh real one. Personally I find it rather amusing I have no clear trait which defines me, wonder if that’s good or bad. Compliance and Influential are, btw, two directly opposite traits in the quadrant thingyi.


17th May, Monday saw me catching up with the not so distant past. Ran late for Troy, converted that evening into a shop-and-dinner evening with—hoho, Mr Joel and Mr JJ, two individuals I got to know in the first two months.

Have never understood how females can spend hours on end shopping for intricacies. Rather spend those hours shopping for books and albums, which was what we did. Amazing how time passes when you shop, could’ve sworn I would have gone on for a couple hours more if it weren’t a Monday night, and if friends wasn’t aired at 10pm.

Had dinner in a Chinese restaurant. It wasn’t arranged; beware of that fellow standing outside the restaurant beside seoul garden on the 5th floor of ngee ann city. He clings onto you. Being very kind souls with kind wallets, we went for it. The day marked the first time in my life I ate in a restaurant [a proper one, not seoul garden, not pastamania etc etc] and paid for it myself—and in a sch uniform at that. Felt out of place, not entirely becaue of the uniform. We were three young teenagers dining it some posh Chinese restaurant, and the other patrons were maturely dressed adults. Food was great, but only because it was cheap. For just over $10 you could get roast chicken, thai prawns, some deer meat and some chicken dish, will make a point to suggest tt place in future—its definitely better than your classical teenage dining places for gatherings, marina bay and marce for example. Heres the receipt.


http://roticv.rantx.com/kc/Receipt.gif



24th May, Monday was Troy. Good show I say, worth a second watch. All this honour, glory, sword fighting stuff never fails to inspire much feelings within me. The scene of King Priam and Achilles was particularly moving, the fight between Paris and whosethatking particularly controversial. One feels contempt for Paris for being such a weakling, to the extent that you wish he would just get slaughtered. But on the other hand, you feel reprieve, relief when Hector steps up and says, “hes my brother”, and violates the rules of the tournament. Should Hector have done what he did? To save his brother from an honourable death—only to cast him in a life of shame. Either way it works out well emotions. If he had not saved Paris everyone would feel sad for the both of them [and of course priam as well]. If he had saved Paris, which he did, one feels moved by his decision to go against conventional honour to save his kin. One also feels proud of Paris when he decides to face the brute for his love—only to feel so urgh when he crawls away, a bloodied, whimpering loser. Truly one of the most emotionally controversial scene ive encountered, which isn’t saying much because of the rarity of such stuff; Its pretty hard to actually design a controversy of emotion. Its always either all-hate [the character] or all-good.

Achilles is another controversy for me. His individualism is beautiful, defying his king as and when he likes for example. But his honour—conventional honour is non-existent. Fancy killing unarmed priests and women, or at least allowing his whatsthat myrmidons to do it. Honour has its set of rules, and so to have honour one is bounded by rules, which makes individualism impossible. As much as Achilles’ individualism is admirable it isn’t so pleasant to see him sleeping around with people, especially when compared to the ever-faithful Hector. Can one have both attributes? Can they co-exist? If your king is evil, killing innocent people and such, do you fight for him or kill him? Do you conspire with others to overthrow him, or do you defend him to the hilt? Both ways contain their own unique beauty.


Its been a long time since I last went to chomp chomp. The place’s been renovated, which is good, and the food’s still good as ever, which is bad. You could practically see the gunk on every single plate, all the char kway teow, all the mussels, la-la, bbq stingray, ou-jian, all the oozing chilli sauce, all the oil, enough to make a whale jealous. [Just for info, an adult whale can contain up to 50 barrels of oil (or was it 50 gallons?)].

Who cares. I didn’t. Good food takes precedence over health. Made do with a plate of char kway teow, shared a plate of ou jian with Mr Hanxiang. Even I don’t dare to take on a 5 dollar plate of ou jian btw. Not with the char kway teow around.

This is what I like about Singapore. The hawker centre, the 40 year old hawkers. The way they stand by their stall and say, “Xiao Jie lala hao chi yao bu yao”. There are the absurd ones of course, like one vendor who shouted to now one in particular how eating kangkong would make one richer, in a mixture of dialect and mandarin. And all the little little things, things you would never get elsewhere. Like how the hawkers carry their plates to their destinations, shouting, “Lai hou mian shao hor”. What I found really amusing was when one was carrying an empty plate, and yet she still said that in a ingenious attempt to push through the crowd. I like the crowded space, I like all the noise. It makes one feel loose, feel wild, with none of the restraints of behaving properly in a restaurant. And then theres all the friendliness too. The crude kind of friendliness, raw, but very pure. Like how a customer, for example, would request for the lao ban to add more ingredients. “Uncle jia duo yi dian tang hor”. And then the uncle agrees, and literally thank you for patronizing him in that coarse language. All these little little exchanges. The feel-good feeling you get, however minor and temporary, would definitely be worth more than the content added on your plate.

Im no hedonist, but Im starting to put effort into obtaining pleasure. Im going to spend 10 dollars on a stingray come next dinner there, Im not going to mind spending 20, 30 dollars on restaurant meals [Joel and Jj, hear that]. What is 20, 30 dollars when compared to a good time with your friends? Certain developments in life have led me to appreciating the pleasures of life more than appreciating good grades.

Mr Mhd Fawaz, ex vs friend who sat with me for the latter part of sec4, sat with me during pw lecture on Wednesday. Hes still the good old guy he was, and I guess I became the good old guy I had been. He commented that I still was chewing on my pens. Smile. In typical humour, he said I since I was index number then those two guys seated next to me would be number 2 and 3. And I laughed. And laughed. Oh sheesh its been so long since I went back to those good old days in vs. I burped at him, and he gave me a countless number of burps back. And I laughed. And laughed. He was used to it of course, and remained as humouredly indifferent as ever, which made me laugh all the harder. He recalled an incident Lim Weixiang had told him, smth which I myself had forgotten.

He recounted to me that I had called Lim Weixiang’s house back then. I called him, and then asked where he was. I assume you get the simple absurdity of that. And then I laughed, and laughed and laughed. Lim Weixiang then put down the phone and called me up a moment later [because he couldn’t get me talking]. I picked up the phone and he said I was still laughing when I picked the phone up. Damn where are these days now.






I have, at long last, come to grips with a mistake I have made in life. I have judged myself, and now rule joining NYJC is the mistake. It is the first life-sized mistake I have ever made. No, slacking around for O levels doesn’t qualify—I benefited from the short-term fun and space. Plus, who could say getting into a *better* college would make my life a more pleasant state than it is now? At best, we can only speculate, with the sageness not unlike that present in a mystic predicting tomorrow’s weather. If anything, I wouldn’t have minded staying in SR—more on this in the password blog, if I remember. As a side note, both schools boast a “friendly, caring culture”. SR pulls it off, NY doesn’t.

I extrapolate objectively, from my current state—or non-state, that NY is the mistake of my life. Patriots of the school, or people who hate me, would naturally point out with none too little contempt, “Its you who make the best of what you’ve got. You are the one who is responsible for your current state [non-state], don’t blame it on NY.” I have covered that with myself during my yoga sessions with my albums [coldplay’s ones in particular, theyre the most soul-stirring band in my collection] being played at near full blast volume, with the lights switched off, with me staring at the ceiling [or the moon, where applicable], from my bed. Yes, if I am to be at fault, it would be equivalent to accusing my genes of being what they are. I didn’t have any choice in the making of my character [that isn’t a bad thing] when I was born, I am who I am, and who I am cannot be held responsible for not conforming to the environment. Ok this could get a little tricky.

I cannot do anything outside my character’s reach. I was handed this character outfit from the day I was born, and I was given no choices. The Japanese are still bearing the burden of world war II—when they weren’t even born then. They are held to clear what their forefathers left for them—how fair isit to them?

I should not, ultimately, be held accountable for not being accountable to my genes, my spiritual build, whatever. Different environments suit different characters; the only mistake that could be undisputedly pinpointed on me would be my mistake in not doing prior research in checking up on the various JCs available to me before I signed up for any. Why didn’t I listen to you Matthias? Argh.

Logically speaking, we do not like a selfish or self centered [for instance] person. If he or she complains of leading a miserably lonely life we would prompty tell him, “Its because of your selfish ways, your damn attitude, that people shun you. Try becoming less selfish, etc etc.” Which would lead us into the 2nd line of thought. I do not conform. It just so happens I was given this attribute, “Inconformity”, in my character. I find it difficult to grasp and thoroughly understand this concept myself.

People should adapt to environment, it is allright to feel contempt for them if they do not make the effort to and then complain about things. But what if they were imbued with “Inconformity”, and to remove that attribute would be equivalent to removing say, “Generosity”, or some other positive innate attribute? It is that attribute that make me who I am, to remove that would make me like any other individual. It would be a totally different matter if my unique attribute(s) were “Generosity” or things as mundane, but fortunately/unfortunately it isn’t.

Sometimes I wonder if my life would’ve been better had I walked down different paths. To pick ACS(I), not VS, to pick another CCA instead of band, etc etc. There is an area of this that could be judged from logic and to an extent empirical considerations. For example, it is easy to see that, had I gotten into another college I would not have joined peer counseling because it doesn’t exist elsewhere, to the best of my knowledge. I would have more time, and less of the experiences drawn from the cca. And yet, there are problems with this. Who can judge the replacements for such experiences would be better?

Then there would be the non-empirical considerations. Who can tell whether being in another school would have given a better life—or a worse one?

For any one person who has a reasonable level of satisfaction with his/her life, he/she would naturally think him.herself as fortunate enough to land in such a fine school, to have the luck to make such wonderful friends. Few of such people would have considered the notion that their lives could’ve been yet better elsewhere. I am proud to be a Victorian, I love my friends there—and yet, there is still the possibility that I could’ve made better mutual friends, I could have had so much more fun if I had went to ACS(I) or any other school.

Note that such a notion always appears as ridiculous to one who is content with one’s life. That is arguably a sign of “thinking exclusively within borders”. People who despise such notions, people who are intolerant of such thought [the thought that grr, I shldve gone elsewhere (even if you’re having so much fun presently) in this case], tend to be people who are too conventional/rigid/conservative for my liking; friction occurs between me and such people more often that not. They would be people I think I understand, and people who would never understand me.

On another vein, I question my presence in college. I look at people like Joel, who’s been enjoying life, reading books, going shopping. I look at people like JJ, going to the gym, going for a swim everyday, or just lazing about at home. I ask myself, why am I pushing myself so hard. Why take 4As, when there are people I know who score single points but couldn’t care less and are taking 3. I jumped into college without really evaluating my options, simply because everyone else around me was heading to college—curse Singapore’s stressed emphasis on education. And now, after 6 months of college education, I cant help but feel some regret. If this sounds too radical to you that’s just me. Or maybe you shouldn’t be so rigid. Ok fine, a poly probably wouldn’t be the place for me. But how about SIM? I really shouldve looked into that path before making my choice. JJ, one of 40 who is taking the maiden flight of such a programme [O levels to business admin degree], sent me this email when I questioned him on the college path as compared to his quick degree path.

http://roticv.rantx.com/kc/Education.doc
(JJ)

Given yes, maybe ive got some tangible inclination towards reading, researching, analyzing, etc, but Ive also got a more tangible inclination towards having a simple life of fun. Theres all this extra baggage to carry, gp, Chinese, napfa, project work, cca, mathematics, and theyre weighty enough to claim much time meant for relaxation and enjoyment. And then theres the contentious point of fresh graduates earning just slightly more than poly grads. Whats the point then of going through a more arduous journey when the returns diminish. So what if, in the long run, U-grads get higher pay? As long as my life is kept simple and warm I wouldn’t bother getting a car, or anything of that sort.

When one reaches a juncture where he takes a step back and looks at the whole picture of his life, and finds it to be a picture he doesn’t like, one feels an overwhelming sense of self-pity, frustration, bitterness, and loss. A year and 10 months is a lot of time, and its all going to be little more than waste the way things are going. As I love saying, we only pass teenagehood once; it isn’t entirely the so-called unproductiveness of this time period that Im concerned about, it’s the chance lost that bites away at me. Only one shot at college life, only one shot to get to make new friends from college, all down to waste.

I find myself asking why life so unfair.

No, this isn’t the classical, delicate case of one crumbling under academic pressure, stress from the school environment, all your typical teenage problems. No, you know I have a stronger character than that. If not necessarily strong, different. If not necessarily different, then at least aware of such petty traps.

Im telling you, if everyone in that SR class I was in during the provisional period had agreed to stay on, I would have, even if it would mean dropping one A level subject. Remember, my main, perhaps only, objective in life is to enjoy it, culminating in a mature, glorious retirement to the countryside as mentioned before. If the academics had ever been a priority it was only temporary, and even then I did not press myself at the expense of comfort.

Two months brought me such people. I daresay I feel more attached to them as a whole than most other Victorians—which is not to say bonds with the latter are weak. I dare say too, that no where else in Singapore would there ever be a group similar to us. Oh the lunches, the lessons skipped, the class outings, the absolute unity of the class, the wondrous synergy between every single individual to everyone else, everything relationship was unique in its way, it was a group as diverse as it was united—and the moment such a paradox has its equilibrium achieved, you get the best of life.

What have I now, and what have I lost.

Life never is complete. Right now its more incomplete than ever.

PS. I post infrequently, so do take the time to re read the stuff and digest everything.

PPS. Comments are more than welcome.