High School (Musical)

As I look around and realize just how wrong all this is, I'm glad I took the less wild path.

All the parties and stuff. Girls and guys got themselves horribly drunk and how did they end up in the hotel room?

Lets stop messing up our lives and concentrate on the A levels ahead ok?

Latin

I heard some programme on the BBC World Service Radio today about latin phrases.

The narrator identified how latin phrases were so commonly used as mottos around the world by institutions and organisations.

She pointed out a few and commented that making it latin makes it sound more profound, more impactful and make an otherwise cliche phrase sound majestic.

Take the motto of Tottenham Hotspur F.C. for example. Audere est Facere. Now that sounds really awesome. But what it really means is "To Dare is To Do". Something closer to Singapore, nothing without labour (Victoria School's motto) sounds kinda boring and cliche. But nil sine labore sounds like something you'd find on some nobleman's coat of arms. Well I've been experimenting with latin phrases for my email signatures and I finally settled on Semper Fidelis. Which means yours faithfully and it also happens to be the US Marines motto.

Not that I want to sound sophisticated or anything, but I do believe there is truth when the journalist who wrote that radio entry said that Latin phrases just brings out a lot more omph and meaning to an otherwise ordinary phrase. It shows a deeper truth and it some respect a warmer tone.

Hmm. Some real good food for thought.

Dreams - An old essay

Here's what I dug out over the weekend while cleaning out my desk, an essay I wrote back in Sec 4 (2008) that was nicely printed out. I read it and thought it to be one of my better ones, so I've decided to reproduce it here.

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Dreams

Dreams are an integral part of our daily life. When we sleep, our minds process our aspirations, our hopes, our experiences, and then them into dreams. Dreams are the fictional state of reality, where our unconsciousness takes over. The same can be said for reality, and the people in it. When attending boring seminars or meetings, we daydream, thinking of what we would do, what we would rather do, or where we would rather be. In the journey of life, we often dream to be better, dream to have better things, dream to be somewhere else, and dream to be someone else.

I have had many dreams. Once, I remember finding myself limbless, in another, had sprouted wings and was on my way to visit the Moon. Of course, we all know that such dreams are mere imaginations, and impossible. Yet, we all find ourselves dreaming unconsciously, and more often than not, uncontrollably.

Scientists, the very people we turn to shed light on the darkness and the unknown in this world we live in. Scientists, despite decades of existence, still have yet to turn out concrete results as to why we dream. Some say these dreams are the result of an active mind spewing out random ideas and memories while we sleep, and consequently, a dream is formed. Others allege that dreams are actually visions of the future, while to others dreams are their connections to the supernatural. Another common conception of dreams is that these dreams are the opposite of what is going to happen to our lives. Of course, we have no way of knowing who is right, and who is wrong.

While we have no idea as to what dreams are, dreams might not necessarily be detrimental to us. Dreams are goals, goals which we impose upon ourselves. A target, which we force ourselves to reach, and it is thought such determination of humans, that dreams are able to enter reality. It is thought such determination of humans, that dreams are able to enter reality. It is through the dreams of men such as Bill Gates, the Wright Brothers, and Nelson Mandela. It is because such men, who had a simple dream, and had the desire to carry it out, that made our world the world it is now.

Dreams have also affected our past, as well as our present. Soothsayers and oracles in ancient days would use drug-induced dreams to foretell the events which would dictate the course of history. This is apparent in Ancient Greece, where kings and generals frequently consulted their oracles in hopes that the gods would advice them well through the oracles' dreams.

Therefore, while we do not know the exact origins of dreams, we owe much of our lives to these strange and mysterious dreams of ours.

12 May 2008

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I also note that penciled at the top of the paper was "Draft", so what the final looked like I have no idea.

Yesterday

Someone asked me, what was the things I struggled most in life.

Without I gave him two things.

1. Being Excellent

2. Too reliant on the opinions of other people

Well life's been difficult lately. And it will continue to be. Can't wait for this to be over. Life has really been very very stressful, I cannot stress enough.

And btw, Goh Keng Swee passed away last Friday. He is one of the politicians in Singapore I have great admiration for. A multi-faceted man, he led the country on various fronts, serving as minister for finance, defence and education. and also helped boost the arts and cultural scene in Singapore by raising the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. His list of achievements go on. Respects to him. And hopefully the newer generation of Singaporeans will be able to rise up to be like this man.

Got into a little facebook tussle + rant

Pretty common for me to pick fights on the internet =(

Protip: don't fight on facebook. It can be nearly as bad as having sex with the other guy in public.

I don't really have anything against the YOG, honest. I don't have too much interest in the politics at the moment, because my own life is a sinking ship. But once in a while I can't resist playing devil's advocate. The perverseness of going against the flow... it gets me hard!

So anyway I don't know either of these people, or indeed many people at all on FB, so I decide what the hell I'll just go bomb something off the top of my head. I thought the miss Tan up was just making a throwaway comment like me, but nooooo, she starts naming names. Everybody in Singapore knows that one person is just a dangerous detractor, but two people is a mob and you should call the police so they can bring in the riot vans and tear gas.

Anyway yeah, small beans, wouldn't even call it mudslinging (though I probably sound harsh for a Singaporean). The surprise is when I realize that Estell IS ON MY FRIENDS LIST LOL WAT. I keep a fairly tight friends list and never add anyone I don't know, and I have never known anyone by this name. I check the profile, and it's my junior in Mass Communication. She changed her name to this weird thing.

*headslap* Of course. It's the goddamn internet.

I guess it looks like I've lost another of my precious few media contacts, not to mention one of links back to my old life in secondary school and the Drama Club. I shall strive to be less snide on Facebook. *sigh* Miss Tan there added me as a friend though, lol. She appears to be a 20+ politically-minded girl, judging from her profile. I was hoping she'd be younger, hehehe.

Rant time. Why are Singaporeans so adverse to passionate debate and argument? It gets on my tits how many people keep interjecting variations of "OMG I HAZ MY OWN OPINION OKEY" and "agree 2 disagree can???" Those phrases have nothing inherently wrong about them - when an argument persists as a stalemate, you can talk about common ground and difference of opinion to bring things back to earth. But it has been feeling to me for a very long time that too many Singaporeans spam these lines at the first sign of tension, throwing a blanket on the debate the moment things get interesting.

Singaporeans like us loooooove the status quo. It terrifies us that our opinions may be OMG WRONG, it terrifies us that because Person A has different values from Person B, a fight might break out OMG! Or they won't be friends anymore. No, we just want everyone to keep quiet except when they're agreeing with each other. After all, we wouldn't want a repeat of the racial riots from 1962 now would we?

We're so fucking pampered, not just in the material sense, but in the social sense. In May last year or the year before, a Singaporean teacher went to lecture at New York. There, she taught that homosexuality was bad, which made the liberals there flare up and start up a little campaign against her. Did she stand up for what she believed in? Fuck no. She turned tail and ran for home. I'm pro-gay marriage myself, but that's not the point. The point is that Singaporeans shit their pants at the first sign of conflict, they either run away spouting "BUT IT JUZ MAI OPINON", or they get really defensive (see LKY's lawsuits).

It's probably the reason Singaporeans venture little into the international stage beyond business. One of the few reasons I would not migrate west is because I'm pretty sure I'm mollycoddled too. Wouldn't fit in.

Security guard laments to me about life

The security guard was at the table just outside the lifts. I walked up and sat on the opposite end. She was Malay and obese.

"How do you buy that?" she asked suddenly, pointing a finger at the ice blended coffee I had set down. Apparently she wasn't so sure what the black pearls in it were called. The conversation turned into a rant about her job pretty quickly though, so I'm fairly sure she had wanted to talk about that all along.

She works pretty much fulltime. In a single day she has to stand around at different places, usually traffic control. She opened her notebook and indicated a bunch of organized scribbling. It all adds up a nine hours a day of standing. Not all at once, but I think it was mentioned that the breaks were short. It's hard on the legs. Right now she was taking an unsanctioned rest; the pain became a bit too much for her this time. She has to ration a medicine to keep on her feet.

I wasn't participating much in the conversation at this point. The woman obviously had a lot she wanted to get out. She was an immigrant, and she couldn't use her Johor work experience here (I think it had something to do with production lines). The paycheck is eaten up quickly - with products like clothes and shampoo priced for the middle-class, saving money is a challenge.

I honestly can't remember very much. I'm a pretty bad listener, but I didn't want to break her flow. It's a bit like a dream - I had long grown used to the convention that adults would only ever bother to talk to teenagers for work, or for dispensing advice. As a listening ear, even, but never the other way around. Most of what I know about my own parents' lifestyle at work is stuff I overhear.

As I said goodbye to the security guard, feeling some pity for her pretty shitty existence, I wondered why she had bothered to talk to me. I definitely don't have that kind, approachable face. Would she have said anything if it was in my twenties, thirties, or preteen years? Teenagerhood is a magic period of time where most people hover between childishness and adulthood. Perhaps it's a mix of the youth responsibility to listen to elders and the ability to understand things on an adult level. This could be a quality that teenagers could utilize for the betterment of society and all that, but sadly, due to widespread apathy and image of teenagers as immature suicidal nymphomaniacs, the generation gap stays, and woe betide anyone who tries to take that away form Singapore.