boys to air stewardess

Hey almost a month without entry in my blog. It is probably good news as it means that the past 4 weeks have been busy and eventful, so much so that writing an entry in this blog has plunged in priorities.
Back in Singapore again, and as usual, observing changes since my last trip has its way of fascinating me or pissing me off. I was on the train yesterday, when I saw a couple of army boys booking out and they were on their way home. It brought back memories – the good old days of longing for the weekend to near just so that I could have a proper bed and private toilet facilities. But a lot has changed since then. I remember lugging my Ali-BaBa duffer bag with a sling around the shoulders and the weight of it would threaten to suffocate anyone without a very fat neck. These boys, however, were wheeling a certain black luggage bag gracefully like air stewardess waltzing onto their next flight. What is the world coming to? My friend said welcome to the army of the 21st century. When once upon a time, they turn boys into men, we are turning the boys into girl scouts.

The boys will be coming

The boys are coming. There is a sudden surge of fear mixed with anxiety in possibly not the most welcoming nature. The boys are coming. My routine will be affected, and my status quo ripped to shreds. The boys are coming. I will lose my bed, and nights will be furnished with howls of snoring. The boys will be coming…… bring it on!

Slumber

The sun rises too early. It is summer and despite the adjustments of daylight saving, the sun still rises too early. My bedroom is furnished with double-layered curtains of deep royal blue, yet sunlight still seeps in from the edges to provide some unwelcome illumination each morning.

Sleep is a necessity too precious to be cut short. I can’t think of many things in life that has the right over disrupting sleep; save breathing and possibly sex, which really is a preparatory rite to sleep if you think about it. That is probably why I seldom have breakfast, and mornings to me are a theoretical construct that begins at 2pm. Maybe being awake is a periphery state, almost like a side-effect to sleep with the latter being the main purpose to live. Controversial, but I’m happy with any notion that will buy me a few more hours of slumber without the exchange of guilt.

Quote worthy from our minister mentor, old-man Lee, “one of the best inventions by man is the air-conditioner.” Old Lee attributes the contraception to productivity; I accredit it to good forty winks. Next closest to air-conditioner for a noble-worthy invention is probably the sleep mask. It cheats the sunlight from day and shelters you with the same sense of sanctuary not felt since the security blanket from the nursing years. With my sleep mask and valerian in hand, slumberland party would have been a nightly affair if not for disturbance each dawn of the most bothersome nature; a bird. There is this particular bird that sings like a nightingale each morning with vocals crisp, melodious and delightful. At least, it would have been delightful if that demonic creature didn’t twitter at 5am in the bloody morning!

As such, I realise that the next to follow the air-conditioner and the sleep mask as the best inventions by mankind, is in fact, the sling shot.

Penguin Parade

It was a happy day yesterday. Strange actually, it was a strange blend of joy mixed with envy and a dash of inspiration to top it off. It was graduation day for my Faculty, with two ceremonies one at 4pm and the other at 8pm to cope with the number of students dressed like penguins to collect their testamur.

I never thought much about graduation when I did it. The emotional aspect of completing my course was exhausted by the time I finished my last exam, and the donning of the graduation robe felt more like a masquerade for parents rather than a self-closure of a journey past.

Yet it was so different yesterday. Just seeing the pride on the parents’ faces gave me a certain feeling of warmth and a trickle of anxiety (although I couldn’t help but imagine some of them were thinking to themselves “it is about bloody time after all the money I’ve spent.”) At one end, it was reminiscence of how my parents felt when they took pictures with me wearing the cardboard hat. On the other hand, there was anxiety of wanting them to feel the same again when, hopefully, I’ll one day be able to replace the cardboard with a cushion.

I met a handful of my students who graduated yesterday. I felt like a celebrity over their eagerness to take pictures with me. They thanked me and made me feel like I made a difference - it was a priceless sensation. It is moments like these that make me appreciate why my mom never gave up teaching after thirty over years.

But of course, the main reason I was there was to offer my congratulations to my friends. Swallow was collecting her testamur for a Masters in accounting (although it still sends a shiver down my spine just on the thought that someone would actually pursue that course). Two of my colleagues finished their seemingly perpetual pursuit to obtain a doctorate. Watching them dressed up like an elaborate table-lamp with a mushroom-head made me green with envy.

Vietboy and I looked at them two and without any exchange of words raised the same question simultaneously, “when the hell is it our turn?”

Kempetai!!!

Friday Night at Forum

I had the entire weekend full! It was rather uncharacteristic considering the fact that my weekend routine typically consists of staying in the office to procrastinate from procrastinating to do work. Murphy’s Law proved true once again; when I have no plans for the weekend, I will have absolutely nothing to do in the office except to swat flies. On the other hand, when I had this wonderful Jazz gig to go to on Friday night, my desk magically stacked up with paperwork. Almost at a frantic pace, I managed to clear the work and headed down to Forum to catch the Royal Crown Rue.

I actually had no idea who the Royal Crown Rue was, except being told that they were the band that appeared in The Mask. Gangster jazz was what they called it, and that certainly sounded like my kind of music. It was costly, $50 per person and it was quite a challenge to find anyone to go watch with me. Chris who first came up with the idea couldn’t make it as she thought it was beyond her budget. So there was I, left with the option of asking some underage princess who had no clue about jazz to keep me company, but instead I was privileged to ask out a self-confessed over-aged princess who made the price of the ticket worthwhile.

The Forum was a grand venue, redone with a Roman theme with five-pillared pavilions and white marble statues ornamenting the sides of the theatre. What really impressed me was the layout – it was not a typical concert layout, but instead a seating area at the top end of the area closer to the entrance with a standing/ dancing floor space just before the stage. The setup was non-formal and pub-like instead of theoretical. The first band that played was really interesting but I couldn’t put my finger on what genre their music belonged to. It was a hybrid of rap and brass and with me being above 25 yrs of age, I had no clue as to what they were singing. When the second band played, I knew for a fact that millions of my brand-cells died. It was a racket which I couldn’t really appreciate, save the memories it brought when I was rocking my head to GreenDay back in high school. Punk really isn’t my cup of tea.

So we were there from 8:30pm and it was not till 10:30pm that RCR appeared. We were brought back to the fifties where mobsters were raving the streets of LA with tommy guns. Gangster jazz lived again and the crowd rose to the occasion dressed in their hats, black suspenders and checked ties jiving till the clock hit twelve. RCR was brilliant, ‘Hey Pachuco’ was a twenty minute item featuring trumpet, bass and drum solos that had you cheering your lungs out.

Not a bad end for a Friday evening, if that really was the end of the evening. There was an emotional episode to follow but that is probably best left for another entry. In any case, the Friday evening marked a pretty eventful weekend. I’ll leave the rest of the story for another time…. …

"everything is fine thank you"

My daily work routine is one that doesn’t help make a lot of friends when I share it over conversations. The best way to sum it up is that if I were my own boss, I’ll sack myself. Sometimes I wonder if this habitual behaviour to procrastinate and slack will render me a vegetable by the time I finish my doctoral studies. Actually, that is a rhetorical question; I just need to look at the academics in my department to realise that the truth is as naked as salad without dressing.

I am never convinced that I work hard, because I can remember vividly the number of hours I fall asleep at my desk rather than the minutes I diligently invest to get work done. Yet, the comments and perceptions of my colleagues and peers suggest different. There is this strange impression that I am an industrious worker-bee that will finish my course before you could say PhD. In situations like these, I will always beg to differ. Being the Chinese that I am, I will attempt to brush aside compliments to confess that I really spend as much time doing nothing as much as I spend time being tucked in bed. That is cue for weird looks of resentment which look upon me as being a hypocritical pig rather than a humble pie. Therefore, I would suppose swinging conversations to the other end of the spectrum would help make more friends; “ah yes, the study is going well, in fact I think I will finish in two and a half years” – in which case, I will be looked upon to be arrogant and conceited like a prancing peacock with its feathery bottom suck to its head. It has been an interesting learning experience in terms of developing social skills with fellow academics. At the end of the day, I have learned to basically keep my mouth shut when someone asks about my research and work…………..

…………..“everything is going fine thank you.”

I left with a backpack

I left with a backpack, an electronic air-ticket and a booking at a backpackers. I wasn’t sure at first why I would want to do something like that, but deep inside I think I had a pretty good idea; I was looking for something… …

So I managed to catch my flight to Sydney last Thursday morning with VirginBlue. Essentially, anything that has to do mornings will get me as enthusiastic as watching paint dry. I guess that is pretty much the theme of the trip, no planning, no expectations and see what happens. Perhaps I was setting myself up to do something which I had always struggled to; be spontaneous. I guess I did alright, because after checking into the backpackers, I decided to roam Sydney. By the time I got to the Sydney Harbour Bridge, I decided to climb it. I must admit there was a certain voice in me that suggested, “perhaps it is a little too windy today; perhaps tomorrow would be a better choice….etc etc.” That is the planning voice speaking, it is that voice that got me thus far in my studies, but listening too much to that voice will render me a dull boring academic. I succumbed to the alternate inner-self instead, that is the voice that typically gets me in trouble, or really drunk. $165 for the bridge climb; not really what I would call value for money especially when the stated 3hr climb comprised more of theoretical embellishment rather than the climb itself. I guess the experience was a bit like visiting the Eiffel tower; been there, done that and never do it again.

Probably one of the biggest rewards of the trip was to meet new people. I shared room with two Scotsmen and an English. Waking in the morning was like opening your eyes, or ears to comedy fest galore. I was as fascinated with the Scots’ accent as they were fascinated that I could actually understand them. They were a laugh; it was not what they said, but the way they said it. Nevertheless, it was the English whom I found a mate in. Maj is an English-born Indian that speaks with a London accent, a combination that feels almost mismatched. My initial impression with these boys was that, well, they were boys; backpacking globetrotters that were only concerned with booze and getting laid. It was not till later that I had breakfast (yes I actually had breakfast) with Maj that I realised that he was a pretty nice bloke to talk with. Maj seemed enthralled with all my radical opinion about culture, politics and religion. I never thought of myself as being a man with broad horizons, but the compliments Maj paid me about my open-mindedness gave me a sensation of self-approval; a sensation that I have not felt for a very long time.

The second evening in Sydney was reserved for doc. He is definitely my closest Aussie friend. This is not going to come out right, but the nights we shared in Paris were just unbelievable. Well he was my roommate during the study trip and we are probably the only roommates that still keep in touch with each other. Doc is married now, and he is doing ever so well. His dry wit sense of humour was still intact and it was certainly an evening promised with laughter, especially when we shared two bottles of wine. His apartment was amazing. Only 5 mins away from Darling Harbour I thought I was at Wayne’s mansion when I walked in. He had his own concierge for crying out loud, a two story high library with a fireplace and a hidden doorway where he kept his Batmobile. I was introduced to the missus and all I can say is that I am very happy for doc. He is a lucky man; and deservingly so.

The third evening in Sydney was…… well, breathtaking. There is a certain someone whom I have not met for a year and a half. And it was through this person that I found myself again at times when my assurance was lost. This part of the trip is probably best left for another entry, because emotional escapees are best left to the flow of words in a moment of sentimental introspection.

In a nutshell, a backpack, an air ticket and a booking at a backpackers marked more than short trip for a holiday. I was really there because I thought I lost something… …. me. It will continue to bewilder the mind should I attempt to reason if I have found what I was looking for, because the journey of finding that astute self is a perpetual quest. Least I could say is that I was left with an experience, despite being a pretty short one, that reminded me that a certain self-assurance still resides somewhere within, needing only good faith for me to draw strength from.

Sydney Harbour Bridge

heartbreaks

I’m in the mood for clichés tonight; how would you mend a broken heart. Damn it sounds cheesy just typing it out. But being heart broken can be more than having a member of the opposite gender walking out of you for some droopy-eyed junkie who wears camouflage pants to buy his daily milk. It really is anything that brings about a wave of disappointment, sometimes even brining a person to the point of disillusion. Maybe the last couple of days could have been filled with sunshine and lollipops, but being the typical me, I was only aware of the air of pessimism which basically rendered me vulnerable to be heart broken.

I constantly need to have something before me to look forward to. This carrot of hope keeps me going, and makes sense to my world. However, this carrot also opens the flood gates to disappointment which has a habit of hitting me with in backlash. For the last weekend, it was the heartbreak of watching Rovers being creamed by Newcastle. 14 shots on goal versus their 3, and they scored three goals and we continued our goal drought this season. The pain of disappointment feels like having your heart slowly squeezed by a bench clamp while being showered with pins all at the same time. We are playing Manure this weekend, and we don’t seem to have a hope in the world, yet I have ten bucks on rovers to kick some ass. Bring on the heartache, I can see the calling.

Maybe I need something else in my life to look forward to. Sometime that promises more than heartbreaks. I don’t exactly know what that will be and I seriously doubt relationships will fit the bill. I’ll be packing my backpack and head for Sydney next Thursday. I have no idea what I’ll find there, and maybe the only way to defend against heartbreaks is not have the carrot dangling in the first place. I hope it’ll work.

Sandcastles in the air

Sometimes without any conscious effort, I would just slip into a daydream. Building sandcastles in the air is a really cool pastime; it kills time; allows you to escape, if just for a moment from reality; and it gives you the pleasure of a short-lived thrill otherwise found in bursting the air pockets of bubble wrap.

It takes creativity to fabricate a daydream that is involving enough for you to dwell upon; well, at least that is what I like to think as a weak excuse for my subliminal endeavors. On certain Thursdays for instance, a certain jingle will ring in my head. It is the jingle for PowerBall, with the lyrics, ‘life can be a dream, shaboo’. It is not surprising that I will typically be holding a PowerBall QuickPick ticket as the jingle plays between my ears. One would call spending twelve dollars a futile attempt to purchase hope, while I call it money well spent to buy myself a daydream. The difference being, I don't spend the money in hope to win ten million big ones, but I spend the money to buy myself a moment where I could indulge myself within the imaginary walls of an alternate reality.

Questions of ‘what ifs’ and ‘what would you do ifs’ race across my mind, and I have to confess that I take a lot of pleasure solving these seemingly fruitless riddles. If I had ten million dollars, I would invest one third of it in property, perhaps in New Zealand, or maybe one of those new apartments in Docklands. I’ll place two million with my parents perhaps for their retirement fund and the rest will be nicely distributed in stocks, shares and unit trusts yielding a decent return equivalent of a clerk’s monthly pay. I would perhaps strut into merrill lynch with a cigar and ask for the best personal financial consultant and expect service standards meant for royalty. See, daydreaming is a pleasurable pastime. The pressure to solve self-created problems presents its own challenge and can create a rather unique hedonic experience; much like how dogs chase their own tail.

It is amazing how spending too much time sitting in the office can do to one’s head. Maybe I should get out of here, walk across the street, to the newsagent, and buy a powerball ticket.

thoughts

Mental disengagement. This is one of the constructs I’m studying in my research. It seems almost like some noble talent for one to take a closer step towards Nevada, yet there is a connotation of giving up as defined by the literature. When I am in the mood to dissect every philosophical notion known to men, my head swells with too much thought and it makes me go crazy.

What constitutes the self-image? Which self of Johari’s window best depicts me? What self is the self perceived by my peers? Which self would they prefer? Which is the ideal? Which is the self that I should select to mask my agony?

Sometimes I just want to sit alone and find peace; stripped from the paradoxical attributes of ecstasy knowing that it is only a holy grill that one must suffer to find. In the sporadic moments of joy is when I find myself stripped from the concerns of these notions. It is a moment where one doesn’t second guess another and over analyse and accept gratitude in its purest form. Yet, I will find myself slipping into a paranoia state where conspiracy theories surface like slow shadowy vapour on hot bitumen. Why has trust from my peers escaped me? How do I earn it back? What does this trust really constitute? Why must I suffer in a portrait which was painted by my own palette?

The thoughts that envelope my mental state can sometimes be dangerous things.

another day past

How can a day not start off well when you get a surprise phone call all the way from UK from someone you were least expecting. I met this lady from London on my last backpacking trip to Thailand and she dropped me a line when it was 3am over there. It was really sweet of her to give me a surprise, but I do accredit her sudden desire to call me on my mobile, from her mobile, to the fact that she was somewhat drunk. Nonetheless, it is always a pleasure to be greeted by a London accent.

Amazingly, I was productive today. I only slept for 20mins in the office compared to the usual 45. Think I have just proven to the Spaniards that you don’t need an hour to call it siesta. I sorted out the marking, arranged my proposal for funding and prepared my supervisory meeting for tomorrow. It is funny how the joy of satisfaction can be so short-lived given the fact that I have only a few more hours before the new day starts again with a brand new set of work awaiting to be cleared. It seems almost unfair that in order to get work done, one has to go through the entire agony of procrastination leading to drudgery before sensing the short-lived pleasure. It feels almost like sex from the male perspective.

creme brulee

I made crème brulee this week. As I am sitting here at almost two in the morning, I am running out of things to talk about in this entry that I figure that probably the most exciting thing I may share to my imaginary audience is that I made crème brulee this week.

I asked my chief friend that I am not keen to learn how to make deserts to make the ladies wow, but I want something that will make them swoon. Crème brulee it was. I actually tried it with someone over dinner, and the effects was somewhat disappointing; I did get the praises which was sufficient to appease the male ego, but there weren’t fireworks and magic in the air you find in old black and white romantic movies. Maybe I was expecting too much, it was after all cream and eggs, not really aphrodisiac.

Having high expectations appear to the theme of my life. Finding contentment for me is like chasing a dangling carrot; it appears futile yet it drives me towards achieving an unachievable perfection. The tension in my neck is a good indication that I’m not being very smart about setting the goals in my life, yet I do not know any other way to lead my life. They call me a type A stress freak and I am pretty happy with the label as long as the tension headaches didn’t come with it. I constantly tell myself to set lower levels of expectation and be surprised by life’s little surprises, but the deliberate effort to set lower expectation levels in itself, defeats the entire purpose. It is like telling myself to think about not thinking in order to give my mind a rest. This paradoxical notion is as merciful as tying a ribbon on a dog’s tail.

It is late now, think I should hit the pillow. Maybe next week I’ll stress about making a chocolate soufflé. If life is like desert, I am a vanilla panacotta; really I have no idea what that metaphor means, but it makes me sound philosophically smart with a touch of Italian flair. Think I can be happy with that.

Work is back

Work is back. It didn’t really leave me, just that I forgotten how work looks like, just like how I completed forgotten who that Russian bird who waved at me at the café was; I made a complete donkey out of myself that afternoon.

So work is back just sitting on my desk. I somehow managed to overlook it for the last couple of days. I have been a bit more than clouded lately that my worldview has been somewhat skewed. Work became the least of my worries, but now that much of the other aspects of my life have been sorted, work is now waving at me like a blinking lunatic.

My application for ethics approval did not go so well. As part of the ethics committee’s mission to create hoops for research students to jump through, I have to resubmit my draft questionnaire. Well it is not like there is anything fundamentally flawed with my initial draft. It was highlighted that the draft questionnaire was littered with typographical and grammatical errors. I have got no problem asking my mom to read through my questionnaire again, but I’m still perplexed as to how grammatical errors have become an issue for consideration by the ethics committee. I mean, since when has subject-verb agreement become an ethical concern? And I thought the bureaucracy of the armed forces was bad.

The better work-related news is perhaps that I have a paper accepted in a conference in Perth. Fine this conference is probably as prestigious as TCS Star awards, but the point really is that I have never been to Perth. A five-page paper for a ticket and accommodation to Perth ain’t that bad. The reviewers’ comments were quite interesting. The first reviewer actually rejected the paper claiming that it was too conceptual and boring. If I know who this reviewer was, I’ll just like to let him/her know, it is only a local conference, not a nomination for the Nobel prize. The second reviewer recognized that it was an obvious cheap attempt to get a free flight to Perth gave me two thumbs up. Whoever you are, bless you.

Back to the office for the weekend. I ain’t complaining.

Change

What is it about change that we hate so much? It is so easy to say that we need a change, to move out of the status quo and yet when we find comfort with the latter, we cling onto it like a baby chimpanzee on mommy’s back.

It has been a traumatic week, with displeasure and resentment surfacing and manifesting in ways so quickly that I struggled to grasp and cope with them. A lot of time was spent introspecting and appreciating where I fit in this tapestry of uncertainty which I like to call my life. It has not been easy and sometimes when the thoughts overwhelm you, you feel like mash potato in a blender when you are consumed by those thoughts.

Things change, people move on and sometimes fighting against change becomes futile. These are lessons I have learnt before, but they can so easily be forgotten, especially when you have been exposed to moments of delight where rainbows and lollipops make sense once again, and you will become so disheartened to watch them vanish in the harshness of reality.

Things change, people move on. What really can you do, except to continue to learn how to cope with it, and find strength and comfort in yourself to journey on.

what is there left to take,
from an empty house,
once filled with balloons
and confetti
and laughter of hope.

A broken place remains
when abandoned
despite years of keeping.

What is there left to take from this vacant place?

The walls cracked,
and picture frames broken,
what is there left to take?

smokey pallet and sweet melancholy

I sit here,
and the words flow with such ease,
like an undisturbed stream
with waters cold like the winter air.
Melancholy finds me again,
the scars of old aches again.
I embrace melancholy like an old friend,
whom I have forgotten its name,
only for a brief moment,
a moment of naiveté

I have failed yet again,
to find comfort through my own strength.
Perhaps it was wrong
to have started such a challenge to begin with.
Could someone live life like an island?
To find contentment because there are no desires?
The intoxication of a smoky pallet wearies me… …
I must rest.
I think none of logic or rational,
my judgment is clouded only by resentment of so many events past.

Why wait to be excluded
when I could exclude myself first?
The desire for affiliation,
the desire to be revered is like poison
that entices the empty soul.
I yield so very often,
only for regrets to caress me like parental arms
in a forgotten dream.
Perhaps, an island is where I could find sanctuary
from the heartache that is imposed by so many others
……. perhaps,
perhaps………

sweet intoxications finds me….. I must rest……..

i was in church yesterday

I went to church yesterday. Now that is almost as close to me saying that I signed up a GIRO donation scheme to NKF. The last time I was in church was probably two years ago, when I was young, naïve and attached. I was probably only there to keep my then significant other company. Or perhaps, it was just to bring back memories of the days in St. Andrews, where Wednesday chapel lessons meant more about not having to stay in classrooms rather than to get in touch with divinity.

I am not Christian, I do not have a religion, actually, I don’t really know what I am. If I have to be labelled and categorised for the benefit of national statistics, all I can say is that I am not atheist, because I do pray in my most desperate hour, but my prayers are addressed to ‘whom it may concern.’

I asked dad when I was little, what is our religion and he said “free-thinker”. I think he meant free to think whatever made sense, rather than ‘no religion’ as what most others brand us. Typically together with a look of pity that my family and I have bought the wrong ticket for a train that departs to some nasty destination where they don’t serve bacon and eggs for breakfast.

Sometimes it is difficult to be a ‘free-thinker’ when they don’t come with printed instructions as to what we were supposed to do. The Bible, Quran, and Sutras are like street directories in a rented car where members, and only members of Thrifty get to refer to when negotiating their way through the tapestry of life. The only guidelines I have are certain principles and values that I cling onto just to make sense of the world around me. I really don’t know how they got there, because my parents did not sit me down on Sunday mornings and drill Confucius teachings in me. At some level, I probably picked up some cheesy notions of societal dogma from Hong Kong movies. But the larger part of it is probably through watching my parents adhere so staunchly to these values that it only makes sense that I follow them. I am really happy about this system, because I don’t need to have ‘thou shall be filial to thy parents’ engraved on stone for me. I know that my children will not send me to a home, because I am not going to do so to my parents.

I like being a free-thinker; one who is free to think and believe in whatever that makes sense. It makes sense to me that I am not perfect and I do wrong, and my concept of sin is if you don’t learn and do it again. It makes sense to me that happiness is a paradoxical pursuit, because the drive to achieve your wants may bring pleasure but so does not having the wants in the first place. It makes sense to me that values, love and kindness are passed forward as how my parents are passing them on to me, and I will repay them on to my children. At the same time, if I ever get to meet God, I will like to thank him, because even though I don’t sing a lot of songs about him, I know that he saved many of my friends who are using his street directory.

I am not Christian per say, not exactly Buddhist, and I think that Confucius is a really cool teacher. I am a free-thinker, and probably a naïve one, because I like to believe that different religion and creed have no reason not to co-exist; we all journey through the same tapestry of life, just using a different street directory to find the way that makes the most sense, and maybe, just maybe with a bit of luck, find happiness along the way.

let me not.... ...

Let me not taste wine,
for I will yearn for intoxication.
Let me not taste poison
and I will be ignorant
and will never learn.
Let me not taste happiness,
so that I will not weep as I am doing so… …

6:25pm on a Wednesday

Wednesday evenings are strange. While routine determines what I do for the other evenings of the week; Mon: badminton, Tue: Movie or Kung Fu, Thur: Kung Fu, Fri: dinner with friends, Sat: swim, Sun: bible says relak…… Wednesdays I’m stuck somewhere between reluctance to do something and having an eventfully forgettable evening.

After spending four hours in tutorials and marking, I’m drained from the energy that is necessary to kick-start the motivational voice which will talk to me in a less than subtle fashion, “hey you need to get out tonight”.

The options I have require careful thought, in order to optimise the most viable plan to prevent an otherwise wasted evening. Will it be swim, or tango, or poker at the pub? Three options are two too many. More juice of energy is required to push myself toward selecting one. I sit here lamenting that I have too many choices to make, yet I have spare energy to type out this entry in a verbose manner, requiring no less energy than the amount required to make the choice in the first place. I pity whoever that is reading this. But thank you if you have come thus far. I can’t even begin to fathom what it is like to read pleonastic claptrap from a tired blogger suffering from verbal diarrhoea.

It is 6:30pm, Tango classes are at 7pm, poker at 8, the swim centre closes at 8:45. Which will it be? Indecisiveness requires persuasion from external sources. This phenomenon is best represented by the Singaporean self-convincing notion of “If you go then I go loh.”

I need to make phone calls to get a better picture of who will be at the Tango class, and who will be at the Poker tables tonight. It is amazing how a bit of organisation can provide clarity in decision making. But alas, his phone is turned off, and there has yet to be reply from her. My friends have abandoned me. How could anyone leave me marooned within my labyrinth of alternatives? Think I’m going paranoid here, but it is okey. I study psychology, I can fix myself……..

There, I’ve fixed myself over a nice dosage of logic and two glasses of Scotch whiskey I promise myself before the evening ends.

Now what? Wait, my phone rings……….

….. tango class it is.

Boom!..... there goes another one

I sit here in the living room, just about to watch City of God on DVD. Suddenly there was this news flash….. yet another bombing incident in London. The authorities scramble like cockroaches when the light comes on, partially to show BBC-watchers that they are earning their money, although one can’t help but be skeptical that they are clueless as to what was going on.

We have moved from the era of World War, Cold War, Civil War and now War against Terrorism. Unlike the previous three, war against terrorism is a declaration of confrontation against an ambiguous entity. The ‘enemy’ wears the face of common citizens, their beliefs skewed and their motivation incomprehensible. It feels like a futile cause, despite world leaders reciting rally speeches before decorated podiums. Terrorism feels hardly like a war, but instead the expression of oppressed voices based on fundamentalist notions.

I'm feeling numb towards all of these. As images of blown up bodies, falling skyscrapers and demolished train stations monopolise the evening news, it becomes increasingly easy to distant myself in denial of the world around me. Concern becomes too daunting.

Perhaps, just perhaps for this week, I’ll shut my senses from this reality. And dwell in a happier realm, where characters get murdered by dark wizards in children’s book.

Faith

It is the start of the semester and typically this is the time where I will be energetic, lively and can’t wait to walk into my first tutorial. Strangely, I’m feeling lethargic somewhat drained and nonchalant. I think it is due to recent events that I’m not as excited about this semester as I would like.

A few students from last semester informed me that they have failed the subject, some for the second time. I can’t help but take news like this personally, and I wonder if my teaching methods could have been better to raise the statistics. I’m proud of the ones who attained a top grade, although I don’t know who they are, as they have probably moved onto the new semester without the need to say hi when we meet in campus. Thoughts like this slowly extinguish the once idealistic flame I had about making a difference, and believing that I could make any student get a high distinction. Sometimes reality bites and coping with it needs a strong clinging to the faith I have in myself.

Faith is a paradoxical notion. It basically means believing in a conception that can not be proven true through any means that may convince. In other words, it is a constant struggle to believe. Faith in a religion, faith in myself, faith in my friends; these notions mark the journey of a lifetime struggle to grip onto the fabrics that make life meaningful. The constant chaos intrinsic to faith renders one to wake in the morning to feel wonderful when he looks himself in the mirror or feel that he is a man not worth loving the following day. The fibres of faith are so delicate that the smallest deviation of a well-planned endeavour can discourse and undermine the motivation for future pursuits.

I have friends with me that reinforce my self-belief. I have awards and trophies to remind me of my ability. I have a future that suggests to me that roses lie ahead. Yet without faith, I am but a hollow vessel aimless in the turbulent winds.

Retail Therapy

Retail therapy. Less than one week in Melbourne, three weeks before I start work and already I’m spending money. It is one of those Sundays where I would appreciate some company on this beautiful day, but I had to end up having a date with myself. Well, it really isn’t as sad as it sounds, because it can never be a bad thing to spend money on myself, instead on someone else who thinks of you as a forgotten memory right after the dinner bill.

I walked around St. Kilda and came across this hair saloon that is called ‘Split Ends’. I thought it was the dumbest name one can come up with. The way I figure it, it is like saying ‘don’t say we didn’t warn you.’ I’m keen to know how long this saloon has been around. Names like this may work after all.

I bought myself a dark brown suede jacket. I don’t really know why I did that, probably because I never had anything suede. But this jacket from CM is a strange one, it has a cotton hood attached to it. The hood can be removed, but the point is, why have a hood on a jacket? I raised this issue to the sale assistant and she assured me that it is the latest fashion. Who decides this fashion anyway? She showed me their catalogue with a male model with a suave look wearing the same jacket I bought and proudly displaying the cotton hood sticking out at the back like a printing error. I gave this look of distrust and needed much assurance that I wouldn’t look like a twit if I should choose to leave the hood on. The jacket is now hanging in my cupboard. I’ll wait for the occasion to wear it, and I’ll leave the hood on to see my friend’s reaction. Perhaps I should keep the brochure in my pocket just in case I need to defend myself that ‘it is the latest fashion’.

a matter of principle

Guy friends. Brothers. Companions. Buddies. In which ever way you want to call it, they mean the world to me, well, second only to family. Female friends come and go, but your true blue buddies will be there even if the world collapses on you. There is one notion that is clear to me since a very young age; that there are only two things that can break the bond with your brothers; money and women.

The first has, thankfully yet to become an issue, so I have always been cautious about the latter. Perhaps it is an Asian brought up, or maybe influence by Hong Kong movies, but there are certain principles that I adhere to, with my buddies’ love interest, basically I just don’t go there. Certain things have happened recently that I feel disappointed in. Can I bring myself to be gracious enough to overlook my petty instincts? Can I be as forgiving as I’m staunch in my principles? Conflicts that arise out of introspection sucks.

feelin blessed

My goodness, when was the last entry in this blog? It only goes to show that life has been good, that I’ve been nice and busy with better things in my life that I’m happy enough to leave this blog space to the dogs.

4 weeks being on holiday that I returned to my office forgetting what it was like to work. It took me a while to figure out how to turn the computer on, and probably another week before I relearn how to type. There really isn’t much to do at the moment, since I’ve gotta wait for my supervisors to read through my research design before I can move onto the next stage. That basically leaves me with a lot of time to swim, clean the house, do my groceries, and cook. I really can’t complain too much about life can I? Life is good. Sometimes I do get worried that how I’m going to take the next step once my tenure with my academic life is over. At the end of the day, shouldn’t worry too much about tomorrow but cherish what I have today.

And what I have today is a wonderful life, being blessed by so many people whom I can call friends. The boys back home gave me a delightful farewell present, although unwittingly, since I made a killing with poker at their expense, but I would like to think it as their gesture to say Godspeed. 7 hours later, I arrived in Melbourne to be surprised by a welcome party. What can I say? Actually I couldn’t utter a word, because I just felt really loved and undeserving. Perhaps maybe, just maybe, despite knowing that I’m not the perfect character that will be on everyone’s chirstmas list, maybe I have done something right to be blessed with so many wonderful people around me.

 

 

 

 

whilst in beijing, i visited this national park where the tombs of the Ming Emperors rest. The park was littered with these really funky signs.
 

Nokia Kicked the Bucket

..... I tried to teach my mobile phone to swim yesterday.....

...... it died.

should i be worried?

My cholesterol level is off the charts. Dr Ong instructed me that when I return from China, I should go for a blood test, but even without looking at the results. I know that my cholesterol level is off the charts. I recall vividly, the last time I had my blood test, Dr Ong said, “boy, you are going to die young.”

It didn’t really bother me that much, because my cholesterol levels returned to normal when I went back to Australia. Seafood is a luxury for poor students like myself in Australia.

For the two weeks I’ve spent in Singapore and Hong Kong, the meals I have been having is nothing short of extravagant, not in a healthy way of course. The very first night in Hong Kong, for instance, we drove an hour to this rural town for seafood. The dinner included :

* Clam soup
* Steamed bamboo clam in soy sauce
* Emperoress clam with garlic
* Baked sea praying-mantis in butter
* Steamed fish
* Baked lobster
* Sea snails in Chinese wine

A dinner of such basically set the pace for the rest of the trip.

Should I be worried? I think only when I face Dr Ong when I get my blood test results. Meanwhile, thou shall not waste when presented with good food. I’ll do my exercises when I return to Melbourne.

Before... ... 

Hong Kong Trip

Final day in Hong Kong. By the fact that I'm sitting in my dad's office, it goes to show that this isn't much of a holiday after all. I think I come to Hong Kong way too often; so much so that I'm running out of places to go.

The hotel is excellent; brand new and smacked in the middle of buzzing Mong Kok. But I can't help ignore the fact that right behind the hotel is the prime red-light district where a stroll down alleyways will reveal vices galore. I love the design of my hotel room; the basin is made of glass, the ‘wall’ that separates the bathroom and bedroom is made of glass, and there are mirrors planted everywhere in the room. Actually, it feels like a high class love hotel, but I'm not complaining too much.

The daily shopping was daunting (not not really), but my main highlight was definitely my day trip to Macau. It was raining donkeys and monkeys, but I had fun nonetheless. Getting soaked in the rain can be fun. Met up with Edith who was an absolute gem; took the day off just to show me around. She brought me to this smaller town to have my first taste of Portuguese food; which really is Chinese-Malay food cooked with olive oil. Oh portuguese tarts are fantastic!! I've tried them before, but not made to perfection like this. After which, did the tourist thing like Casino hopping but having my socks and garment wet didn't make it a terribly comfortable experience.

Gotta head back to 'work.. Meeting in 10mins – yes I need to attend meetings despite being on a 'holiday'. Can't complain though, all part of the package.

procurement pleasure

They say shopping for clothes is a women’s thing and men can’t appreciate the same pleasure at least in the same wavelength. It is probably true for most things, because I, for instance, like to scout for specific items; walk in-buy-get out, all in one swift moment quicker than you can say ‘how much?’ But that is for specific items on my mind such as electronic items and various types of boy’s toys. When it comes to clothes however, the same technique of procurement just doesn’t provide the same hedonic experience.

When it comes to shopping for fashion, I do envy members of the opposite gender. There are so many more options, so many mix-and-match combinations that the possibilities are endless. That is even before you throw in the accessories that come in more shape and sizes than Star Wars merchandise.

I do miss the days when I was attached, because I had such joy shopping for my ex. Buying clothes for myself could be a chore, especially during Chinese New Year, but it would always be a pleasure to shop for women’s clothing….. erm, it sounds wrong there. All I’m saying, is men’s apparel has little variant beyond the choice of shirt, polo-T, or T-shirt, although there can be the occasion dilemma of short-sleeves versus long.

Nonetheless, single-hood has sort of introduced to me the wonderful world of shopping for myself. Once you’ve acquired the art of letting loose the purse strings, there is no turning back. Four days in Singapore and I’ve chalked up enough on my credit card to buy a Park’s handmade lightsaber (that comes with a polycarbonate LE tube, batteries not included). Lets see what I’ve purchased so far, 4 pair of pants, 2 polo-T, 1 long-sleeves shirt, 2 short-sleeves shirt, 1 pair of Adidas runners and 1 pair of Teva sandals. 30 days, can’t wait to see the bill.

…… no, it does not end there, Hong Kong trip begins tomorrow….. if money is not spent there, there is still China………. life’s tough.

Achilles problem

There is no rhyme or reason. No signs, no indication of cause and no suggestion on why I deserve this. My foot will swell for no apparent reason!!! Okey, not my foot, but my Achilles tendon on my right foot. This happens about twice a year and lasts for three days. My foot decided to swell yesterday, on a precious weekend! How inconsiderate, especially when I was planning to visit some Salsa joints. It is swollen, the tendon is pulling and I am walking like a limping monkey which ate too many papayas.

At least when I get a stiff neck, I know that I deserve it; typically after being too stressed at work and forgetting to do my stretches. But this Achilles problem is more than a pain in the neck to say the least. It is like having a dreaded distant relative making a surprise visit when you lease expect it and you have to entertain unwilling for three days.

I have tried turning to the GP, I have tried acupuncture, I have even tried foot reflexology to no avail. At least I managed to amuse the foot reflexologist who found my predicament ‘fascinating.’ I would have shared the same sentiments if he could have found a solution rather than amusement at my expense.

Oh well, the swell has gone down and I trust that I should be up and about by tomorrow afternoon. Tony and Dennis were kind enough to keep me company on this Saturday evening which otherwise would have been unbearable; not the pain on my foot, but the feeling of wasting a precious weekend away.

You know that you with great company and great friends when the simplest things you do, like shuffling cards can get you laughing like hyenas. Wish the rest of the boys were in town because i certainly miss a good boys night out.

Will hit the pillow now, and will whisper a quick prayer before I turn in….. go away swollen foot.

The Island

What is it about coming back home to Singapore? There will always be a period, usually in the first 48hrs where I will go through some form of a culture shock. The culture-shock for this trip begun at the immigration counter where I smiled and said hello to the officer but got completely ignored. It was then that I realised that I was back in Singapore; a place where time is of the essence, and efficiency supersedes social graciousness.

It didn’t take me long to re-accustom myself to the social demands of the country. When I was driving on the road on the second morning, I made an unforgivable mistake; I gave way. Perhaps I could pardon myself that I spent the last 6 months in Melbourne, but I should have known better than to bring with me the mindset of a Melbournian driver. When I gave way on the road, not only did I annoy drivers behind me, my initiative was not returned by any gesture of appreciation from the driver whom I gave way to. I felt cheated, in a way similar to serenading with a guitar beneath someone’s balcony only to be told that she doesn’t like you and you can’t sing. Okey, maybe it didn’t feel that way, and no, I have never tried serenading with a guitar, but the point is I felt stupid giving way on the road. That sensation of stupidity could have manifested into road rage if not for my continuous reminder that it was not worth it, and I was on a holiday.

The difference between life in Singapore and life in Melbourne was apparent; there was a certain sense of pessimism and negativity that consumed me in the first two days I spent there. I met up with four of my old friends. Out of the four, two told me about how they just couldn’t wait to find a job overseas and get out of the fruitless life on the island. Although they were getting a decent pay, they complained that life felt like it was going nowhere. I have to agree, the constrains in Singapore is suffocating; eight years to pay off a car loan; twice that to pay off a three-room flat; weekends are spent shopping in the Great Singapore Sale which I found to be not that great after all.

I was listening to 95.0FM, on the morning show, Glen and the Flying Dutchman were bitching about the ridiculous increase of ERP prices, and the extension of toll to include Saturdays. It was the same time when I drove my mom to Suntec for a conference, and that trip cost me $4; $2 to pay the toll and $2 to pay for entry into the CBD. It was madness. I had to pay $4 just for a 15mins trip. I can fully understand when my friends were tellingl me that they feel suffocated. Cost of living is so high, but where is the outlet? Shopping? - stuff in Hong Kong is cheaper. Food? - expensive and quality is not what it used to be. Movies? - cost $10 a movie now. The prices are escalating and the value is diminishing. I cannot pretend to appreciate what my friends are going through, and I can just reflect and feel lucky that I get to taste the life of living overseas.

Despite all these, there were moments where I sensed some signs of optimism for life over here. There aren’t a whole lot of them, just bits and pieces of moments shared with family and friends. That’s it isn’t it? At the end of the day, you may be dwelling in a shit hole but it is your loved ones that make it bearable. Home is where love is, although I will miss the wine tasting, café hopping, and jazz clubbing life of Melbourne, it will be difficult to turn my back at Singapore – a suffocating island of nothingness save the people there that make it bearable.

Heard this on the radio

"What would you do, if you saw an endangered animal.... .... ....
... ... ... eating an endangered fruit?"

You know that you are back in Singapore when... ...

* The first sms you receive is not from family or friends, but from M1 that basically says, “We know where you are”
* You say ‘hello’ to the immigration office but he will continue to scrutinise your passport
* You walk into DFS and the aunties flank you and yell from a distance in a nasal voice “Sir looking for wine?”
* You find that children no longer walk; they wheel around on heels like hamsters on a scooter
* You walk out of the airport and you are choked by the humidity, and you perspire like a soaking sponge for the next 48hrs

* You wake in the morning and you get to say “good morning” to your mom and dad for the first time in 6 months… …

……. it is nice to be home…..

End of Semester Sentiments

Seven years in Uni, the end of each semester has never failed to fill me with this sense of closure. I can’t really articulate this feeling; be it being a student or a tutor, it is a time where you feel tired, sapped from energy, yet strangely refreshed and with a mild sigh of relief glad that you have past another hurdle.

Tomorrow will be the last lesson before my students head for their exams. I do feel a little sad that i won't see them as often. I feel empathetic at the same time because I know what it is like when the exam period starts. I reminded them two weeks ago, “when you are in the examination hall, you will be in my thoughts, as I lay sun-baking on some beach in the tropics.” They probably hated me for saying that, but I do wish them well. My regret is that I still can’t get all their names right. I have too many classes to teach this semester, I remember them by face, but there are just too many Andrews and Sarahs in my tutes.

I feel tired this evening, but glad at the same time. How often can I give myself a pat on the back and say you have done well. I am very glad that I’ve managed to get most of my work out of the way. I surprise myself that I was able to develop my research instrument and write a conference paper all in a week and a half. That I guess, is the power of working with a deadline. Maybe I should be looking forward to my trip back home in two days time, but strangely I’m not. While I planned to spend 3 weeks doing absolutely nothing in Singapore, the unexpected plans keep rolling in; traveling to Hong Kong then to Beijing….. ….. my plans to not plan is in turmoil. It stresses me.

I guess that is the problem with me isn’t it? I plan too much, and dream of impossible fairy tale endings that lies eons away and I will convince myself that I can plan for such endings to be realised. This observation was revealed to me by Belle earlier today. Bless her for being so insightful and being the voice that speaks to me in ways that make my otherwise forlorn moments encouraging and purposeful. She is an absolute gem.

It is the end of the semester, perhaps a time to reflect. I know that despite my pitiful whining at times, I am a very lucky person, to be able to pursue something that I love, to be placed in a position of comfort and to be blessed by some of the most wonderful people around me that don't mind a less than perfect soul, to say the least.

It is the end of the semester.... .... a bit of a break and I know that i will find a new source of energey when the next one comes around. Bring on semester 2!

I was checking out the wineries at yarra valley till we came across this celler door.. .... couldn't help but snap a picture. 

Women are from Venus, Men wished they came from Coruscant

It is a very well appreciated and well documented fact that men and women are different. Apart from the obvious, what actually constitutes this ‘difference’ remains a mystery and an enduring interest comparable to man’s romantic fascination with the cosmic alignment. For instance, it still remains unknown why putting down the toilet seat can be an issue that has, over the ages, led to warlike behaviour. It is not in the purpose of this prose to unlock the mysteries of the two dominant entities that walk this earth, but it is hopeful that some insight can be shed based on theories formulated during my moments of insanity (refer to previous blog).

I have got this cool theory; that the men and women differ in their conceptualisation of relationships with members of the opposite gender. Basically women adopt a ‘categorical approach’ to distinctly classify relationships, whereas men adopt a ‘continuum approach.’ Allow me to explain.

When women meet a man, they tend to categorically catalogue the person with labels such as; ‘cute’, ‘holiday romance’, ‘makes a good boyfriend’, ‘can never be my boyfriend’, ‘makes a good husband’, ‘soul mate’, and the most notorious and controversial label, ‘platonic friend.’ I don’t know why they do that; perhaps it is a cultivated habit to label things since the childhood years of pasting pink hello-kitty stickers on pencil-cases. These relationship labels are distinctive, mutually exclusive and enduring. The lady weaves the tapestry of fate and destiny when she places a person in any of these categories, because once you are labelled, it will take an act of god before you may have any chance of having the label changed. For example, if on the first date (speaking from experience), you are being labelled as ‘holiday romance’, you will have better luck cracking a brick wall with your forehead than ever having a sniff of being considered a potential candidate to be the lady’s boyfriend.

It is also for the same reason that important issues arise between interpersonal relationships. For instance, women have this strange perception that there is an existence of this mystical impression called platonic friendships (mind you, never attempt to correct this perception because once the bubble bursts, hell breaks loose). Whereas men, at least following Freud’s theories, are motivated by physiological needs and therefore incapable of feeling sexually indifferent towards women. In other words, men don’t classify women as ‘platonic friends’ because this category doesn’t exist in theirmindset; along with other concepts such as ‘shoe-shopping’, ‘diet’ and ‘cuddle.’

Men adopt a ‘continuum approach’, which means that in any relationship with the opposite gender, there will always be sexual attraction. The degree of attraction differs in a spectrum from weak to strong; which can be measured in terms of ‘how attracted the guy is towards the girl before he’ll do something stupid.’ By doing something stupid, in the mildest degree will include sending the lady home, writing birthday cards, to sending flowers. At the other end of the spectrum, it will include buying gifts which he can’t afford, writing poetry and ultimately expressing himself by saying the three words which when placed in a sequence at the wrong time will make him feel like bungee jumping off a very tall bridge without a cord. It is only ‘stupid’ after he realises that his behaviour defies all sense of logic, upon which he’ll he gets a rude shock that he, as the Chinese will say, “has been playing the piano to the cows.”

So it is peculiar when a woman accuses her ‘platonic friend’ for breaking the trust of friendship when the guy confesses his attraction for her. I would say that this scenario has nothing to do with breaking of trust, or poor emotional management or miscommunication; it was just an honest cataloguing mistake.

type 2 knowledge

They say knowledge is power. I say knowledge is like the ‘occupied’ sign of a cubical door in a public toilet; it is sufficient to get a hint of what lies behind door number one, but you don’t really want to venture beyond that. There are two types of knowledge 1) usable knowledge – defined as the processed information that provides direction towards behaviour and to form the basis of aptitude, and 2) knowledge that you can do without – defined as knowledge that you can do without.

Usable knowledge is the good stuff, while the latter has the same impact on a person like salt on snails. It is like telling someone on the porky side that she is fat; or telling a weekend karaoke-goer that in comparison, slaughtering a chicken with a spoon would sound like a night with the tenors.

For some reason ‘knowledge that you can do without’ has become my central theme of the last couple of weeks. I have been told that I lost weight, although if the observation was phrased in such a manner, it will fall in category 1, but no, I was told that my head looks far too huge for my body. I have been told that my clothes look like what you would fish out of a time-capsule that has been untouched since the 70s.

Really, there are things that are nice to know, while there are other facets of information that only pop the balloons in my life and bring to my attention that lollipops and rainbows are only a figment of my imagination. I do wonder, how my world will be, if I never learned some of the things that I have.

Seventeenth day of the month

It is the seventeenth day of the month.
It is the time when a certain emptiness finds me,
and places doubts in my head
and i will ponder;
if the days ahead will ever be whole again.
The body feels weak,
like the withering stalk
of a neglected daffodil
and the mind licks the wound of exhaustion
from work that reaps so little... ...

it is the seventeenth day of the month ... ... ...

... ... ... ... ... ...I hate paying my rent.

What is Insanity?

Insanity is:

* when you have a strand of vegetable stuck between the last two teeth at the back of your jaw. You would love to wrench it out with your index finger if not for the people around you. You would reach for it after being excused to the wash room, if not for the false conviction that you could tongue the strand of fibre out. You couldn’t. You keep trying for the next hour.

* when you stare so hard at a monitor screen waiting for a moment of inspiration that the space around you begins to shrink and your instincts snaps you out of the hypnotic state only for you to start all over again… … it goes on for another four hours

* when you have the name of a song just at the tip of your tongue. It will roll so sweetly out, but just when you were about to pronounce the song title, all you could say is “blach”. You try to ignore this minor annoyance, but the chorus rings in your head like a jingle of a bad advertisement. You forget about the entire ordeal by the next day, only for you to try to remember what was that tune which you could not recall on the previous day. You remember the tune, but the title is still “blach.”

* when you are at Bugis MRT station waiting for the East-West train to take you to Orchard Road. The board reads 7 mins and you reason to yourself that 7 mins is not really that long as it is only 2 mins more than 5 mins and 5 mins passes by really fast if you occupy yourself with thoughts about how fast minutes pass as they are just a matter of seconds. You are convinced that the train will be here in the blink of an eye, and you check the board to be sure, it says 5 mins. You reason to yourself, 5 mins is fine, but perhaps you should not check the board so often, because time passes by if you don’t think about it. You check the board again, 1 min. You board the East-West train, alight at City Hall to catch the North-South train and at that point you check to see when the East-West train will arrive... ... ... ... 7 mins.

* when you are at the end of a Narruto episode after spending the last 3 hours telling yourself that I will watch only one more episode. Saske is about to kill Orange Boy and you tell yourself that I will stop once the fight is over, even though you know that it will not be over till another five more episodes because the monologues will take the better whole of 20 mins to make sense. But it is okey you tell yourself, it is only 20 mins, the clothes can be ironed later, the dishes can be washed later, and I can always catch my sleep another time.

* when you have another pile of assignments to mark and you are sitting before the computer thinking of moments that make a person insane... ... ... ... ... ...

... ... ... ... ... ... ... i hate marking assignments ... ... ...

Classroom Vibes

I was sitting in my office last night and just before I packed up for the day, I spent twenty minutes preparing for my morning lesson. Looking at my lesson plan, students were to prepare answers to a case study and I would facilitate some sort of a discussion and relate it to marketing. No sweat at all. The case study was a new one, and after a good read-through, my jaw dropped a little with the dumbfounded look commonly found in comics that goes with the thought bubble that says ‘what the….’

The case study was about a lady owner of a lingerie shop contemplating to extend her product offering and venture into uncharted waters selling sex toys. Yes, sex toys. Not toys as in plastic items for children’s leisure, but sex toys as in plastic items for adult pleasure; think mobile phone on silent mode.

I had to prepare a lesson plan and facilitate a discussion on how to market sex toys from a consumer behavioural perspective. I will call myself one who is open minded and receptive towards diversity in cultural views, and actually have a supportive stance in regards to social maturity towards sex education. Nevertheless, to manage a discussion with second year students on a topic like this isn’t like running a focus group about takeaway food.

So there I was standing before my class in the most professional stance I could muster in preparation to embark on a journey threatened to end up in utter embarrassment. I was actually more concerned, rather than worried if some students may find the topic somewhat uncomfortable. After all, it is not everyday their tutor strolls into the class and starts the lesson by announcing “G’day class, lets all talk about handcuffs and dildos.”

I asked the students to divorce themselves from personal or cultural opinion towards social desirability, notions of right from wrong, and judgements of sexual undertones, but instead focus on the case study theme from a purely commercial perspective. Yeah right, it is like telling a 3-year old looking at a dancing monkey wearing orange diapers and a zucchini tied to its head not to laugh. But the show must go on.

I actually thought I did well until I stumbled upon the discussion on behavioural sequence model – a framework that addresses issues of who, what, why, where, when of product consumption. I was quite eloquent when raising the questions, but I was just as quick to realise that I should not offer an answer to the questions I raised. As professional as you can be, but really, what do you think will happen if you ask a bunch of teenagers, “now, tell me, what are the various uses of a vibrator?”

I should be paid more for this job.

type C stress environment 

Stress, procrastination and coping strategies

Whenever you walk into my office, it is only normal for one of your colleagues to offer a nice smile and greet you with a quasi-rhetorical question like, “hi how are you?” The enculturated side of me (after spending eight years in Australia) tells me to retort with “not too bad thank you, how are you? (often without the faintest interest in the other party’s well-being)” or perhaps follow through to spark a small conversation talking about how cloudy the day is unlike twenty minutes ago. But no, the Singaporean blood in me will attempt to redefine what is deemed as socially appropriate and reply with some negative remarks like “I’m stressed” or “I’m just surviving”, or “I’m dying”, or “I’m tired, haven’t had enough sleep.”

My closest friends will take my retorts with a pinch of salt knowing that Singaporeans have a strange tendency to paint the sky grey being the only way we know how to be friendly. However, the locals here will often struggle with a reply because they are not used to communicating with a being of pure pessimism. I stand out like sore thumb in the social arena.

Talking about stress, there are actually three types of stress in my area of work. Type A stress is the kind of stress where you know what you are supposed to do, but you know that you are going to struggle to get it done. Type B stress is where you simply have no idea what to do. Type C stress is when you are stressed over the fact that you are not stressed enough.

I spent the first ten months in my work experiencing type C stress. Life was just too good and you know it when you have plenty of sleep before you start the day off (usually at 2pm, half an hour after you have woken up). I used to say that if I was my own boss, I’ll sack myself. Type C stress is a bitch, because your guilt will kick in to create unwarranted tension and hence accrued stress. The only coping strategy to approach type C stress is through cognitive reasoning; that the feeling of aimlessness is part and parcel of being productive. It is true. Through participative observation, it appears that in order to have half an hour of effective work done, there must be some ritual undertaking of surfing the web, reading news, reading blogs, reading freindster accounts, and reading news again before the ‘work’ can take place. This ceremonious behaviour is better known as procrastination. But once you are able to appreciate that procrastination is an honest prerequisite of work, the guilt subsides and type C stress is conquered.

However, the days of type C stress are over. I’ve moved beyond my first milestone and now left with a clear direction as to where I am heading. I know that I’m on the right track, except I suspect that I may be moving the wrong way. A hybrid of type A and B stress kicks in. My shoulders are sore from the tension and the stiffness in my neck is not allowing my head to turn left; not too dissimilar with Zoolander.

A professional massage beckons.

The 'V' Sign

The ‘V’ sign; a trademark of Winston Churchill as a sign of victory and defiance for the people of occupied Europe back in 1941. Today, the ‘V’ sign lives on, although not in the same majestic league of symbolism, but the ‘V’ sign lives on. Not in the blood of fallen war heroes but in pink candy-like photo booths of Neo-Prints, where teens and has-been teens display their defiance of mental maturity.

One can only take a cyber stroll on friendster (as one would during office hours) to realise that if only you could get a dollar for each picture that displays the ‘V’ sign, you will earn enough for a weekend trip to Tahiti.

This proliferating phenomenon is rather perplexing. I struggle to comprehend or decipher the symbolic representation of making ‘V’ signs in any photo shoot. My initial impression was that it could be in remembrance of the war, but through further scrutiny, it appears that these ‘V’ wielding characters will probably struggle to differentiate Normandy from North Korea.

Then a moment of epiphany struck me as I realised that the ‘V’ wielding teenagers do not appreciate the symbolic connotations, but really to use the ‘V’ as a form of visual communication. Somewhat like how Vulkons in Star Trek use hand gestures to offer salutations while at the same time communicate to Earthlings that “we are aliens from a different planet.”

This line of reasoning will however make sense, if not for the evolution of symbol from a vertical ‘V’ to a horizontal one ‘>’ or ‘<’. Perhaps the variant symbols are used for categorical purposes, such as if I hold up a ‘>’, it means my right brain is stronger than my left one, or ‘<’ means my left brain works better, or ‘V, V’ means I have about enough intelligence to uncap a plastic bottle.

I was caught in utter frustration as my initial deduction appeared to have led me towards a conceptual dead end. But alas, I overlooked the most important consideration in any from of ethnographic study, the consequences of context! Yes indeed, it dawned upon me that teens and wannabe-teens wield the ‘V’ sign only in front of the camera. It all makes sense now. As we learn from theories of self-image and alter personas, the ‘V’ sign is used as a temporal denial of one’s real self, to transport the user in that moment before the camera to a parallel reality where the personified self is positively reinforced with essence of marshmallows and pink cotton candy.

This curious behaviour appears to be mild symptoms of a psychological disorder in what is more commonly known as ‘acting cute’. It defies all logic that by hiding the face behind the index and middle finger, the subject actually believes that he/she can accentuate the photograph. It would perhaps be more logical to place the palm in front of the face to conceal the facial features if a more perfect photograph is the desired outcome.

Or just use a brown paper bag, it is probably cuter that way.

Blue skies

What a week

What a week it has been. Lesson for week 8 in MKF 2111, changes in the makeup of a typical household with an emphasis in the proliferation of single-person household. I asked the class, what is the most apparent need for single-person households and they sung all at once – social needs.

So here I am, on a Sunday afternoon sitting in my lounge over some promptly prepared pasta and stir-fried spinach – a perfect description of a weekend of a single-person household. Maslow will claim that I can’t climb up the hierarchy if I don’t satisfy this niggling tension of pure loneliness. What is a guy to do? My energy is rather spent and the echoing voice in me tells me that ‘wouldn’t it be nice to just spend some time with yourself?’ I wish that the voice can manifest in some physical form so that I can punch it in the gut.

The past week has been nothing less than daunting. No, not that I didn’t enjoy myself, but I feel sapped from the physical and emotional exhaustion. I had two ladies staying at my place for five days. Oh the pleasure I had just to play host; make breakfast; place little chocolate boxes on their pillows, the pleasure was all mine. It was delightful to be able to show them around my second home, with day trips from Ballarat to the Great Ocean Road. Just watching the childlike joy on their faces when the penguins came to shore made it all worthwhile.

I also had my bit of emotional roller coaster ride. Sometimes I feel that my naivety shows in the world of relationships. The learning process is painful, yet bitter-sweet. I guess there is so much more I can do to grow up.

Must there be a title everytime?

When was the last time I wrote something in this blog? Ages ago. Why so? Because it feels somewhat disturbing to think that I’m writing an essay to an anonymous audience in the best case scenario, or not at all at the other end of the spectrum. But at the same time, the thought that I have an account with cyber cobwebs filling the space contradicts my intrinsic characteristic of an obsessive compulsive; especially when faced with a need for organisation.

I got an email few days ago. Blog related. By this long-forgotten friend back in the army days, a character with a name not worthy of memory and a face only recollected by an enforced portrait in my friendster account. It was a mass email informing everyone of his blog. I’m still struggling with this blog concept. Is it a personal log or a diary meant for the public? Where the idea of privacy crosses the boundary of having an anonymous listening ear? Or is this a message board for your friends and relatives whom you have neglected due to the hours better spent at playing Football Manager 2005?

I love writing, but I hate not having an audience.

My day today. Tiring like all Thursdays. Two one-and-a-half hour classes to teach and the thought that I need to repeat the same material, same punch-lines and crack the same self-imposing jokes feels somewhat daunting. But I can never get sick of the feeling of satisfaction after where the students’ faces lighten indicating that it was money well-spent on amenities fees. Or so that is what I’ll like to think.

Perhaps I will write to this blog more often. It is always nice to place sentiments in words. The process of emotional purging after an introspective day may do wonders to my sanity, in a time where I feel most fortunate of my life, yet lonesome at times.

Watch this space I guess.