Hate the army

Of the nine-man section I am in a total of three were left today after lunch break. MCs, medical appointments, offs, you name it. Good. Very good. I like this. Their escape skills are admirable.

Please allow for a moment’s silence while take my beret off to 1) the person who skipped bmt (and you can trust he will skip any future sessions as well) 2) the person who got a 2-day MC from the camp doctor the second time.

Please allow for another moment’s silence as I crush my beret in my hands and utter negative things about the army.

The amazing thing is how we still manage to get our work done. We avoided over-time last weekend, for example, after we managed to clear the required vehicles in time for an exercise, when the other section with 6 months of experience more had to come back on Saturday. How did we do it? We rest more.

But anyway, being one of those few back in the workshop today I found myself an unexpected deal. A staff sergeant came around looking for people to do guard duty on Chinese new year and since there was no one about I struck a bargain with him: I will volunteer to do it, only if he promises to recommend 2 days off for me and guard-duty immunity for the month of march. I hope he sticks to his end and I hope my workshop IC approves the 2 days off. If he doesn’t I’ll just have to use my tongue again.

Yea NS does teaches you how to speak up.

The Prestige, Snow Cake, Turning Pages, Pan's Labyrinth

The Strait Times used to provide reasonably balanced reviews in the past but after giving Stranger than Fiction 3.5 stars, Curse of the Golden Flowers 4.5 and The Illusionist 4 they can't be trusted anymore, at least with respect to my own tastes. Once or twice is ok but Im not going to forgive them after compelling me to seat through those 3 terrible shows.

The Illusionist, in particular, is one of the greatest piece of rubbish I've consumed in a while.

Snails

When I was a kid I liked looking at snails and stepping on them. Today I saw a snail in a garden. I looked at it and walked away.

Have I grown up? Nah. Probably just lazier.

Hehe

2 years ago I met a bunch of people and spent 2 of the best months in my life with them. 2 years later on this day we met up and I observed a subtle but definite change in our interaction. As we ate billy bombers and had some dessert from one of those small shops outside bugis, as we periodically punctuated laconic moments with vain attempts at conversation, as we tried to re-kindle fires that long had no trace of timber left, I thought about several things regarding friendship.

Friendship, just like an economy, can be split into 3 stages: the calibration stage, the manufacturing stage, and the reflection stage.

The calibration stage is the initial stage where any number of individuals meet and interact. It is where the first point of contact takes place and where the first impressions are given and received. It is where the individuals get to know each other better, not just in terms of their background, but in terms of their mannerisms, their attitudes, their general character: gentlemanly or vulgar, hip or apathetic, geek or sportsperson. More important, this is the stage where individuals, after processing information about the others, fine-tune themselves to the rest: Does he accept my kind of humour? Can I push it a bit more? He does seem to take well to some of my comments but not to others. Maybe I should go down this path and that but not those. They seem to be a rather grave sort of people. Maybe I should just keep more to myself, and so on.

The interesting thing here is that you're not the only one subconsciously processing data and sending out cryptified signals across the ocean-- the other party is too. Assuming he and you are not social morons he's trying to suit himself to you just as you are to him. He's trying to decryptify your code so that he can reply to you, and vice versa, and sooner or later, if the parties involved are meant to be friends, a new language would be born, a new language that belongs, perhaps exclusively, to you and your newfound friends.

I contend that the more exclusive it is, the stronger the chemistry between the friends are, and hence the stronger the friendship would be. I also contend that the less calibration needed the better but these notions are advanced concepts that I shall touch on another time. I also believe that some of these so-called friends we see around have never gotten beyond this calibration stage. In fact every time they go out they're still calibrating themselves to each other.

The manufacturing stage sees the industrialisation and urbanization of the country. Secondary industries become the primary focus of the economy, and growth is prevalent as much as social disorder is rampant. This is where most of the fun comes in as the individuals start seeing themselves as a group. They start moving about in school together, they start laughing and eating together, they start hanging out after school or work, they go to the movies, they go to each other's places, they go shopping, LANning, swimming, pooling, they start daring each other to do things (most commonly get the stranger's number), they generally make a lot of noise as compared to groups in the calibration or reflection stages.

This is also the stage where inside humour develop, as a clear sign that mutual understanding is coming of age. They may appear awkward or weird to others, but that is only because they are outsiders to the language that has been spoken. At this stage it would be possible to read each other's mind.

The reflection stage is where the dinners come in. You start to play around with the forks and spoons provided in a bid to catch the reflection of your friends on the utensils.

The reflection stage is where the dinners come in. Having gone through the thick and thin of good and bad weather all you and your friends want is to just settle beside a fireplace and talk. This stage sees alot of reminiscent talk, but also sees deep-sharing sessions where you reach for your heart, take it out, and place it in the hands of another. It includes talking about the future--your life plans, goals, ambitions-- as well as weighty topics such as "what do you think awaits us when we die" and "what do you think we could see if we could see through everything". This is the stage where you swim in lakes and look at the stars.

Thus far we have seen the 3 main stages of friendship. There is one last thing I need to mention. The manufacturing stage applies itself in chronological order after the calibration stage, and the setting of it is very often the same setting as when first contact was made-- in school, for example. If one makes friends with another at the age of 13, but goes to a different school at the age of 17, then the manufacturing stage ceases to exist, even if the both of you still go sailing or whatever after. This is because I believe in the importance of the context in which one's friendship grew in. Consequently any changes in the context would alter the friendship in one way or the other.

But if the manufacturing stage ceases to exist, and if the reflection stage is yet to be set, where would that set one then? I'd say, the advanced manufacturing stage, the interim stage between those. This is the stage where friends transcend locational or temporal disparities to continue meeting each other. This is also the stage in which friends plan major activities together, such as an overseas trip.

Most geniune friendships, I believe, are 10% primary industries, 60% manufacturing/advanced manufacturing and 30% tertiary industries (reflection stage). The stronger ones would have a higher percentage of tertiary industries as opposed to secondary industries.

1A03, the bunch of people I mentioned earlier on, is very unique in that it seems to contain 100% tertiary industries. 2 years down the road, our economy is driven solely by savouring past memories, updating each other on the details of our present lives, and discussing what our plans are for the future. The sinews of our friendship are held together by nothing more than words.

I wouldnt say thats good. 100% tertiary industries mean everyone's either working in a law firm, in the movie industry, or in a hair salon, so to speak. If that's the case I wouldnt know where our food, clothes, and electricity's going to come from. Yes, you can always import them--but to what extent, and what are you going to use to pay them in the long run anyway? It's hard to believe that a 100% tertiary industry economy would be able to sustain itself for any long period of time.

But maybe it's different when it comes to friendship.

To rest for the next longer journey

2 days mc. Long weekend. New year resolution of less than 5 day work week fulfilled. I hate the army.

My superiors are getting stricter by the week. I've been eloquent, I've been forceful, I've been thick-skinned, I've been crafty. I've pushed my luck to a cliff and the next step I take may very well be my last. I don't have many trump cards left, I've used 7 of my 9 lives. The noose around my neck is contracting, and the more I try to struggle the more it cuts into my skin and constricts my breathing passageway. The next time they tighten the wire I may have to clutch it with my fists and go on my knees.

Rubbish. I'd rather die on my feet than on my knees.

It was beautiful eating breakfast at yakun's while watching the town wake up. I love mornings like this, care-free, bright, few people. There are always places to escape to, just like there are always places to escape from.

Enya

The first quarter of Pan's Labyrinth is sluggish and there were moments where I had to shift my weight in my seat to remind myself that there is a show to follow on the cinema screen in front of me. From the appearance of the monster who holds his eyeballs in his hands though, the film breaks into a gripping run of events and conflicts that eventually leads to a sublime conclusion at the end.

It was brilliant, just brilliant, a fairy-tale ending with just so much ambivalence in it.

Elsewhere, The God Delusion is first in Kino's weekly Bestseller List. Heartening to see so many people willing to get enlightened. As Dawkins suggests, if God exists, he may very well value honest skepticism more than anything else, blind faith included, in which case atheists and agnostics find themselves better followers than their religious counterparts. Ironically, it would mean that all religious followers should first suspend their belief in God first in order to qualify themselves as true believers in their religion.

It's Sunday night already. Back to 5 more days in the workshop. Dreary, dreary. Fairies don't exist in this world.

?

Question: What is the opposite of conscience? Answer: Freedom.

42

In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
- Douglas Adams

Feel like reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy again. It's one of those must-read classics that you must read again. A pity I cant seem to find it anywhere--did I lend it to anyone?

Need to read more

I was browsing through an issue of scientific american mind when I came across an interesting article that proposed that our current sleeping rhythm is on the contrary to our natural one. It brought up a certain historian's research, which discovered that before electricity and industrialisation took place, humans actually slept for four hours after sunset (presumably after 6 or 7pm) and then stayed awake until 2am before going back to sleep again. Our current consolidated 6-8hour sleeptime is therefore a relatively modern construct, thanks (or no thanks) to the invention of artificial lighting which led to extended day-times.

Leading from this argument we realise that further technological inventions--such as the radio, television, computer, and, of course, the internet-- have furthered blurred the lines between our day and night-times; indeed, most people I know usually sleep after 12 midnight and a significant portion, say 30%, invariably sleep at times later than 2am whenever they can afford to.

If clubs, television programmes, net-surfing, and even the voice of a radio dj is what's keeping us awake in these times, what occupied our ancestors from 11pm to 2am in the past? According to the article it's nothing much: they took the time to have sex or meditate on their dreams in the silence of the night.

I read another article from the same magazine, this one on why we cry. From what I gathered we cry for 2 reasons: to achieve a kind of goldilocks equilibrium, that is to say to calm our intense emotions down; and to communicate to others that we are genuinely feeling intense emotions. Derived from Zahavi's handicap principle, which explored why animals have apparently useless features such as a cumbersome peacock tail or gazelles jumping high up in the air when it delays its runoff time, the article elaborated that crying, even though it is an apparently useless feature itself (the amount of hormones it discharges is insignificant, and tears very often blind our vision, which is, in evolutionary terms, counter-productive and often life-threatening), has the merit of conveying our geniune need for help and concern, such as when a baby cries for his mother. It was a good argument, but it overlooked one thing: if crying is a tool for communication, then why do some people cry behind closed doors and silent walls?

You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when god made man the devil was at his elbow

Harold Bloom didn’t hail Blood Meridian as one of the greatest works of the 20th century for nothing. Reviews are abound on the epic qualities of the novel—many have compared it to the likes of Moby-Dick and the Inferno--, on the relentless, brutal, yet singularly poetic prose McCarthy uses, on the apocalyptic darkness the story subsumes one into, and on the antithetically Biblical rhetoric that culminates in the devil dancing in the end, claiming that he will never die.

Of these I shall not mention, but I find some significance toward the end of novel, where the kid is running away from the Judge, running, and not killing him. The kid, ‘the child the father of the man’, himself both a killer and a child with a conscience (for he refused to kill his own comrade where others had left him to), could not bring himself to commit the one murder that would have mattered, when he had wantonly murdered so many others who did not matter:

The expriest was at the kid’s side. Do him, he hissed.
The kid took the pistol but the expriest clung to his arm whispering and when the kid pulled away he spoke aloud, such was his fear.
You’ll get no second chance lad. Do it. He is naked. He is unarmed. God’s blood, do you think you’ll best him any other way? Do it, lad. Do it for the love of God. Do it or I swear your life is forfeit.

To me this is McCarthy’s expression of the utter hold evil has over man. If we accept the Judge’s arguments that violence is inherent in man, and if we view the Judge as the devil and therefore the epitome of violence itself, then what the kid refused to kill was probably himself. And if we accept that the kid was killed by the Judge in the end, then what we have here is that man refuses to kill the evil in himself, an evil that eventually consumes him in the end.

Very good read, pristine prose covered with blood, human entrails, and the triumph of natural evil.

There were fireworks yesterday to celebrate the coming of 2007. From the 24th floor I heard the neighbourhood erupt as children screamed happy new year at the top of their lungs, the way I did last time when I was young. But now: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/fun/shermans.asp
(See the 31st Dec one)