A walk at holland V

You've probably heard the trite phrase change is the only thing constant many times, it means little except probably a hint at a sense of resignation or grumpiness. Still, it is true that change is that condition which our surroundings always impress upon us. What good, old grandfather stories have i got this time?

Nothing interesting as usual. I was at Holland Village this evening, and walking around the area, i realised - no surprise - that there have been changes, new developments. The construction work at the area has been going on for quite some time, and as anyone who drives would tell you, parking is a bane over there. But no, i wasn't driving.

Walking from the carpark into Holland V, i saw new roads in the making. They were constructed above the existing carpark - something like a flyover - and apparently leading from the main road to a multistory carpark that's also in the making. The reality might be a little different, but pardon me, i can't describe this very well. Anyhow, I had my dinner at Subway. First time eating there, i didn't quite know what to get, so i chose the one that is on offer for the day - turkey breast. After the quick dinner, i walked with my friend from this end of Holland V to the other end where we were to take a bus home. Now, the part of Holland V where the subway's located at is one place i seldom go to. If im at holland v, it's usually at the other side where the cafes and restaurants are found. I may be wrong, but it seems some of the shops here are a new addition. Katong Laksa is still there - this one i know for sure.

It's trivial, but i relished the short walk to the bus stop. Just being able to walk slowly, taking in the myriad sightings and enjoying the vibes of a familiar yet always refreshing place - these are simple pleasures that i can't ask for more. Having been cooped up in school and at home for the better part of two weeks, there was an inexpressible sense of elation in me that makes me feel alive and full of hope. I don't think of unfinished work, but just let my gaze fall on whatever that comes into my vision - be it the couple reading books over a cuppa at coffee bean, a waitress taking orders at crystal jade, or the ostentatious classic BMW car that just drove past. My mind's always full of what i see and what i hear, but i generally find it meaningful to observe people and things i come across. I can't take an expensive holiday in Europe or buy the things i fancy at a shopping mall to make myself happier, but there are always innumerous simple and costless trivia that can lift my spirits. Taking a stroll in the evening or at night is one example. If there's company and conversation, good; if not, a walk alone can provide for some quiet contemplation - good for the mind and soul.

Reading a good book is another, but i shan't go into that. For now, it's signing out of blogspot, shutting the computer down and delving into either boring traditional chinese medicine or the political economy.
Or maybe - take a walk outside, eh?

Futility of Thought

First it was the tsunami, then came devastating hurricanes, and now the latest manifestation of Nature's wrath took the form of an earthquake in Pakistan and other parts of South Asia. Apparently, a village was wiped out and a building had collapsed in Islamabad. At least a 1000 people are reportedly dead.

More headlines run across the screen on Channelnews asia: i learned that Central America and Mexico are not spared either - flooding and mudslides have left hundreds dead. Then there are the familiar warnings about the spreading bird flu.

How does one react to all this? These are the sort of news, if you took notice, which make you shrug; they unsettle you a little, but it won't be for long before you clean forget about them. The news and especially its medium, the TV, do convey a sombre, proximate sense of realism and evoke feelings of poignant tragedy. But life is such that unless you are personally brought to bear the consequences of tragedies such as natural calamities, you won't be terribly affected by their occurrence or the immense damage that they wreaked on human lives - lives which are probably totally unrelated to your existence and never would cross path with yours. And so while mass rapes and unspoken atrocities were taking place in Sudan, while entire families are possibly destroyed by the earthquake in South Asia, while many Iraqis struggle daily to survive and not get killed by bombings and insane killings, and while many other atrocities are occurring in many parts of the world even as i am writing now, you and i - our lives just go on as normal. We have many burdens too, like coping with school and work stress, but surely they cannot compare in any degree to those implacable problems that are prevalent and ongoing in this world.

Yet the truth is, such is the the condition of life, that while we are aware of injustice, unfairness across human societies and both inevitable as well as blatantly wanton deaths in the world, many of us will not and cannot be made to confront our problems while keeping in mind that real life tragedies exist elsewhere which surely make our problems somewhat infinitely inconsequential. It just doesn't work that way. No one ever said that keeping a healthy perspective of our personal life and personal problems must entail comparing with people who are worse off than us. On the contrary, it is to those seemingly blissful/successful/beautiful/powerful people whom we look upon and contemplate our fate.

Poverty and suffering, as do illness and dying, are after all nothing new and have been ever present. When someone talks about such stuff, sometimes it can seem as though yet another person is romanticising about Life, life's tragedy and what not. Compassion is like a residual feeling which one musters only when one is not afflicted by personal problems or tragedies. All is fair game; men may be created equal but they don't live equal - you just have to live with that, without needing to feel guilty or responsible for the status quo, no matter its inherent flaws.

I know i won't be thinking about the earthquake in Pakistan, the suffering i see on TV and the insane devastating human conflicts i read in the papers when i start to panic about work deadlines or grapple with money woes. I think only of how terribly miserable i am; i think of how i can extricate myself out of my misery.

But as i am these days constantly deluged with fresh news of brewing conflicts the world over, i get really unsettled and think a little deeper about what all this means for me, a student troubled over what path his future should take even as there are others whose future confines only to suriving the next day.

And as i ponder how ironic it is that Nature alone creates so many problems for human beings - including seizing one too many life prematurely - while human beings create more problems for themselves through terrorism, nukes and power struggles instead of solving problems together, i realise also the futility, even the irrelevance of my thoughts.

Us

I was talking to a guy whom i knew from one of my tutorial class this evening. I knew him through a class presentation which we did together with two other classmates. As i speak to him more often whenever we meet in school, i am increasingly inclined to think that he's an interesting friend to talk with. For one thing, in our conversations, he does 80% of the talking while i do the remaining 20% (don't ask how i derived that figure). This leaves me listening to him talk most of the time, which is not a bad thing since he's not at all boring or talking about himself endlessly. After all we take the same major and therefore it isn't at all very difficult to find something common to talk about.

The other thing about him, which i found out today, is that he jumps from one topic to another faster than you can figure out what he just said. So half the time while i listen to what he is talking about, my mind has to adjust pretty quickly to the imminent change in subject. He told me that every now and then 'we' see someone we know and there's something that we want very much to say to the person, something that is in our mind and that we just need someone to talk with. (He's thinking of himself, i am sure.) Then, almost as if to inform me how i should respond to him, he adds that while he says different and many things to people he knows, he says them incompletely (or selectively) such that they won't be able to grasp just what kind of person he is. In other words, his loquacity does not betray his real identity. And hence, therefore, his predisposition to talk about many things but only partially. I was amused enough to tell him that he's a very interesting person. Being not a very good conversationist myself, i was happy to let him do most of the talking.

Before i left, though, i bade him farewell and told him that i shall find out the real him by weaving together all the disparate information/ideas/stories that he had talked about. He smiled at me, somewhat a little surprised at my suggestion. He probably knew there isn't much of a real him behind his public persona.

Which brings me to this point: our self-identity derives from how others perceive us as much as from our own consciousness. No matter how much a veneer we hide behind, there's an inevitability to others' perception of us which we have no control over - because we don't always conciously portray an image that we want others to imbibe; we simply can't. There's always a part of us that is decided by others which we have no control over. On the other hand, we do knowingly deliberate to affect others' opinions of us. For aside from decorum and propriety (which restricts our behaviour), we do exercise control over what selective information we tell people. We may know a lot about our good friends but there're also things that we do not know. Even so, it is when we are with our close friends and loved ones - people whom we are totally at ease speaking to or hanging around with - that there are fewer inhibitions restraining our thoughts and actions. And we are at such moments a lot closer to being ourselves, safe, assured and contented.

something about rainy nights

it poured real heavily last night. i was walking on the sheltered path but it was not much of a shelter really. the harsh wind just kept bringing on the torrential rain in my direction and before i knew it, my vision was kind of filtered through many, many tiny droplets that had collected on my spectacles. i like rain, but if only at that time i was in the comfort of my home and not braving the storm outside. for once, though, the dormant umbrella in my bag came into use.

a few hours after i had got home, the rain subsided and it was starting to get a little stuffy once again. Little did i expect that it would pour again later in the night, when i and most other people were already sound asleep.

there's something about being at home on a night while a heavy rain pours relentlessly outside that makes you feel very safe and reassured, as though you are protected from some ongoing harm that is wreaking havoc. i guess this feeling of assurance is not consciously felt but it implicitly derives from the fact that you are taking comfort, literally, in being sheltered from a storm whose ferocity is very tangibly felt. the constant flashes of lightning and accompanying thunderous roar makes one shiver but the very cool weather is a welcome change from the scorching afternoon heat. to enjoy the moment, it is best to play some soft music that helps create a soothing atmosphere.

lying snugly in bed with the music and the clattering rainfall in the background completes the picture of bliss. as it is, savour the coolness of the night while the rain pours on with abandon - because it won't be long before the realisation of its subsidence strikes you and induces a sense of disapppointment. calmness, in this case, is not something one desires or hopes for.

what happens when you try to study for a test whose subject throws up a lot of obscure names of herbs, their disparate functions and uses, their latin names, their effects etc etc? well you basically try to remember them, of course! But the trying is really trying, as it requires not so much understanding as purely memorisation. It sucks. This is incredibly uninteresting and an exercise of little purpose. I have it upon myself for choosing this module, but heck - it's either this pharmacy module or that science module; all are equally unappealing to me; all equally entail memorising lots and lots of alien terms.


i ran in the morning. 12 rounds on the track. I have to congratulate myself for carrying off such a repetitive chore. it's not the running part - it's the repetition: going in circles, with no distinctive end-point or scenery to motivate you, such that in your mind you don't - you can't - think about much else and you just let your body do the work, lift your legs off the ground and maintain a bearable pace. The morning sun was really strong, because when i changed up later, i realised i've acquired an unpleasant tanline. Surprisingly, for someone who really doesn't fancy running as a likeable sport, these days it just doesn't feel right if i don't run. Unfortunately there's only so much time one has. The current training regime means that cycling, swimming and even badminton have to take a backseat. I miss cycling.


Sunday. yesterday the best part of the day was a simple affair: sipping teh and enjoying 4 slices of kaya butter toast. yes, kaya butter toast - my perennial favourite. I used to crave those from ya kun and killiney which has a generous slab of butter and thick kaya between two slices of toasted brown bread. But these days, i prefer the ones that most kopitiam sell, which has the more common butter spread and ordinary kaya. And the bread's also the plain white one instead of the brown one. Which suits me fine. They taste heavenly all the same, with that hot cup of teh to go along with it.

Clash of cultures

It was an international relations class, yes. But at times the lecturer found it necessary to express (mock) disbelief at our seeming lack of understanding of some seemingly fundamental concepts.

"Can someone explain what is international anarchy?"
"Do you guys know what is...?"
"Have you guys ever heard of...?"

The lecture theatre remained conspicuously silent.

"C'mon, i saw some heads nodding just now"

Still, the class remained adamantly uncooperative.

I guess at the end of the class everyone had almost something to say about the new lecturer, an Asian American guy who is new to the department and who is now taking over the second half of the module. At the start of the class he told us he has been in Singapore for a month, and there have been many occasions where people were frustrated either with not catching what he's saying or with him not understanding what they are saying. With regard to his speaking, he sure talks with an obvious American accent, and many a time he ends his sentences with that american-or-not-quite-american whatever. As for his difficulty with understanding some of the people he has had contact with, i wonder if it's Singlish that's the problem or some of our imperfect spoken English. For instance, he informed us that in american speech, the emphasis is on the first syllable, but it seems over here the emphasis is on the second syllable. Once, someone said the word urgently to him but after a few times he still could not comprehend him, because the person said urGENTly, as opposed to URgently. He even asked if anyone would like to say the word aloud so that he could hear how we say the word, but you know better what the response was like. Generally, i find his speaking alright except that sometimes it seems as though he is mumbling and i need to listen carefully to catch what he's saying.

Never mind that it's a political science class - true to typical Singaporean school culture, the front rows of the LT were customarily unoccupied while the back of the LT displayed a somewhat compression effect. And staying true to the Singaporean cultural setting also, lecture participation had to be painstakingly entreated. Even then, interaction and questions from students were virturally absent. At least this aspect of our culture was a visible source of frustration to the lecturer, who was undoubtedly used to a vibrant american class setting. (My friend who had studied in the U.S. assured me that over there, people speak and raise questions all the time; they compete to talk in class; and active participation is the norm, unlike here.) As evidence of his desperate frustration, he had to implore us to assume that we aren't in Singapore now, that we are in 'sunny Los Angeles' - that is, please for goodness sake speak up!

He spoke about his intention of showing a film some time later in the course and he told us the name of the documentary. Then failing to get a response from the class about whether anyone has watched or heard of the film, he hastened to add, 'wait a minute, do you guys even watch movies?' We do, thank you very much. Later the lecturer informed us that his sense of humour very much borders on sarcasm (yes i realised that long ago) and we would just get it all the time, unfortunately. I have no problem with that actually, for he's aware of his style of conducting class and he's being candid here. He's obviously being deliberately sarcastic but i don't think it's in a fundamental way very negative or disparaging. But i reserve my judgement, for these are early days yet.

I do sympathise with him even as i am guilty of indifference in class. But if silence and an unwillingness to speak up is indicative of an imbedded culture and all that attendant implications on our education system in Singapore, i guess the lecturer would have little choice but to adjust his expectations and not be too hopeful of replicating a vibrant Los Angeles or Californian class setting. Some of my peers are obviously very vocal during tutorial classes, but when under a larger public setting, many tend to just not want to voice their opinions even where opinions are overtly sought. The reasons, you and I know, are the same few, which i shan't talk about. I agree that it's a very unsatisfactory cultural attribute that boils down to some flaws inherent in our education system. It is an unhealthy state of affair, for it lacks the important qualities in a vibrant participatory culture, where the underlying mechanism encourages creativity and confidence in public speaking, and prospects for fruitful debate are likely to be more prevalent. I am not sure whether the situation and teaching emphasis in our primary and secondary schools have improved over the years.

For now, it awaits to be seen whether during the next lecture my peers will heed the lecturer's request and occupy the front rows in the LT. For me and my friends, i can safely say we will be typical followers instead of trend-setters. What's wrong with being at the back, you know. =)

The little girl on the bus

Still on the topic of kids.

Today i was on a crowded double decker and was standing right at the back. Even then, the bus was unable to admit more passengers when it reached many bus stops, much to the frustration of those wanting to get on the bus.

Throughout most part of the journey, my attention was focused on the little girl who sat in front of me. Looking around 3 or 4 years old, she sat in between two ladies, her short dangling legs a contrast with the the full length of the legs of her neighbours. She was separated from her mother and younger brother who were sitting across on the opposite side, and i was that human barrier in between them. But i shifted my position slightly so that the little girl was within sight of her mum.

Having nothing better to do than to hold on to the railings and stand rather immobile throughout the journey, naturally, the little girl became my subject of observation. She was after all just in front of me and unless i made a deliberate attempt to focus my gaze elsewhere, there's no avoiding looking at her.

As it turned out, it is always a joy to have kids around you. Their seeming unconsciousness and innocence, their childish but ceaselessly adorable actions - all these make for a source of joy and amusement to us adults. Unlike adults who are consciously aware of others' perceptions of themselves and of their presence in the midst of strangers, the little girl is constantly active in that little space of hers. One minute her knees were on the seat as she turned her body around so that she could look at the passing buidlings and people when the bus moved along; a few minutes later when her curiousity and enthusiasm had waned, she would once again settle on her seat, rather like a child who is tired running about. She would hug her little, pink bag closer to her and for a moment looked as though her mind was intently preoccupied with some serious thoughts.

All this while i noticed the young lady (who is probably in her late twenties) to her left would occasionally look at her just to make sure that the little girl's actions would not disturb her unnecessarily. The very first sign of the lady's slight displeasure with the girl was shown when the latter was climbing to get seated next to her. The lady saw her, quickly tucked the sides of her dress to the underneath, presumably so that it will not suffer the risk of getting dirtied by the restless kid. That move proved a sound one but it also quickly reflected the lady's uneasiness with her neighbour. While the girl would constantly make little actions while seated down, the lady would from time to time glance at her disapprovingly: if it is not a look of disapproval, at the very least her eyes conveyed an expression of cautious wariness, as though to look out for and preempt any undesirable movements her diminutive neighbour is capable of. I was in fact secretly hoping that the little girl would precisely step on her just so that her fears would prove founded, and just so that she will be annoyed. I wonder whether not a loud, disapproving grunt would come out from her while the rest of the passengers look at her and judge her petty reaction.

But alas the journey was peaceful and the lady got off before me. The little girl later joined her mother at the other side when there was an empty seat. When it came to that critical bus stop, almost half the bus was emptied as people rushed to alight. I moved down from the back and as i tapped the ez-link card reader and saw the time, i realised I was running late for class again. What's new.