Hiatus

my best laid plans tend to go to waste as my life rarely turns out according to plan.

whether it is through my own incompetence, character flaws, mismanagement or because of various conspiracies of fate, i often find myself down a path which i did not mean to take. and very often, the momentum carries me forwards down that path, inexorably pushing me in a direction that i sometimes find helpless to change, leaving me at a place i did not want to be.

and every time that happens, i tell myself that everything happens for a reason and that eventually, things will, miraculously, turn out for the best. and after the last time this happened, i realise that miracles are products of hard work, determination and sheer grit.

i find myself at such a stage once again. it would take much out of me to readjust. i'm not sure wheher i'll document this journey in this blog or whether i'll just leave this blog to die for a while. as it stands now, it'll most probably be the latter.

well... in any case, thanks for reading my blog.

:)

Hero

just watched Zhang Yimou's Hero on TV. not the first time i've watched it. but as always, one gets a different perspective when one watches a good show another time (same goes for books... one tends to get a different perspective when reading a good book another time...).

the problem with watching the show on TV, with all the commercial breaks, is that the commercial breaks interrupt the flow of the show, disrupting the emotional buildup. it isn't as important for most shows, but for an artsy, emotionally heavy film such as Hero, it really decreased the quality of the show.

but the show was great nonetheless. the scenery was breathtaking, particularly the one with the super still, mirror-like lake.

the fight scenes were nothing short of spectacular.

i also liked the way the story was told, where the basic backbone of the story was built first by the lie that Nameless told, then rectified and refined by Qin Shihuang and finally with the gaps filled in by Nameless.

the show brought up a couple of good points which got me thinking.

what is suffering? what is one person's suffering compared to that of the world's? if we have compassion for everyone, then we would realise that we, as individuals, do not suffer. because we suffer only because we exist. so how can we suffer if we put others before ourselves, and in so doing, lose ourselves?

and only in losing ourselves are we able to willingly sacrifice everything that we have so that the greater good is served. however, there are times when the greater good is served by us living on. and if that requires us to sacrifice others so that we can live and thus fulfil the greater good, then we would have to be ruthless and sacrifice others.

of course, one could ask, what is the greater good? in the case of the show, it was simple. the greater good was to have someone strong enough to end the war between the 7 states as quickly as possible so that in the long run, less people would die. the greater good was to standardise the language, the units of measure, come up with one set of laws that can be strictly enforced so that there can be order in the nation.

the last 'thinking point' that i got from the show came at the end of the show. because Nameless tried to assasinate Qin Shihuang, he must be executed. this is despite Qin Shihuang admiring Nameless and wishing that Nameless need not die. so in the end, Qin Shihuang ordered Nameless be executed according to the law. and Nameless died willingly. because that is the only way to show that the law was enforced. it is only through this strict enforcement of the law that order can be brought out of the chaos.

are there parallels to be drawn to reality, to Singaporean society? of course. but there are definitely areas which do not apply. one might say that in today's context, one need not have laws that are as harsh. because we live in more enlightened times. and arguing otherwise would be going down a slippery slope. while i agree that there is some truth in that, i also believe that the evolution of human society is one of multiple iterations, we meander gradually to the ideal set of laws, to the perfect implementation of these laws, with the right balance of rigidity and flexibility. perhaps we may never reach that ideal. but we can always try to move closer, if only asymptotically, to it.

on a lighter note, i think Maggie Cheung and Zhang Ziyi are both gorgeous! mom pointed out, quite rightly, that one of my aunts resemble Maggie Cheung. but of course Maggie Cheung is a lot prettier.

Right and Wrong

It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened.

But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.

Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.

What are we holding on to, Sam?

That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.

_________________________

all the more wonderful when the above are said as voice-over scenes of triumph after intense battle.

friends... where would we be without them? who would believe in us when we have stopped believing in ourselves? to remind us of why we go on?

A reminder

i left school at 11pm last night. it was one of the most wonderful experiences that i've had. i answered some Physics questions, explained some Maths concept (as i explained the Maths concept, i could still hear my teacher's voice booming in my head...).

and i chatted with them. about many different things. and it reminded me of why i became a teacher.

the students.

Spiralling out of control

some times, try as we might, life spirals out of control.

all it requires are little nudges, tiny twists and small turns. and it starts heading off in the wrong direction, gaining inexorable momentum and bulldozes its way down a certain path which we don't want it to.

who's to blame?

perhaps no one. perhaps sometimes, life just sucks.

so what do you do?

grit your teeth, dig deep and cut a new path, a path which you want.

Pure

something that my colleague told my students during a camp that the students' council organised recently: "the purest form of service when you get nothing in return."

how many people actually are capable of that? how many people can truly be altruistic, not consider about themeselves and do something simply because that is the right thing to do?

just like love. how many people can truly love another person without hoping that their love be returned? how many people can truly sacrifice for their loved ones without asking for anything else? how many people can truly give without wanting anything back? how many people can truly put his/her loved ones before himself/herself?

not many. perhaps mothers. but in this day and age, there are some mothers who treat their children as nothing but a retirement fund of sorts. thankfully, my mother is not one of those.

my mother is a great lady. sure... she is weird, thrifty to the point of miserly, can be super messy... but she puts up with me. that alone is a Herculean task. she sacrifices for my brother and me, always thinking about us before anything else, before herself.

i don't think i'll ever be able to tell my mom how much i appreciate all that she has done, how much i respect her and how much i love her.

Birth, Death and My Dearest Friends

quite a lot of things happened in the week that just passed.

it was my birthday some time last week(a big thank you to all those who called me/sang me b'day song/etc. particularly the one who called me from Sydney. very touched). my students did some extremely sweet things for me, which really touched me. all the more so because they were willing to do all that despite how hard i've been on some of them. it shows that they do understand where i am coming from. it means that they are truly remarkably teachable students. and that they appreciate what i have done, hard and harsh as it might be. for that, i am eternally grateful and touched.

but that's not the most significant thing that happened. most of you would not know that my grandma passed away about a week and a half ago (that meant that i spent my birthday with my family...)

Grandma's passing marked the end of an age. the last vestige that tied the extended family together is now gone. where in the past, we would gather during CNY and Grandma's birthday, now, there will be no more occassions for the family to come together as a whole. while those people that i do care about, i would still keep in touch with. people like my Fifth Aunt's family. however, there are those who, if i had the chance to know them better, i might have liked and counted as my friends.

it is sad that now, even blood ties aren't strong enough to hold people together. i really wonder whether friendships would indeed stand the test of time. the thought that last Thursday might be the last time that i see a lot of my cousins, aunts, etc made me think of the many people that i have came into contact but lost touch with. people who might have become my close friends if only i had allowed them to.

but i do have great friends, great all the more so because they put up with me and accept me despite my failings. for these people, i am grateful. thank you for all the times you have tolerated with my bullshit, with my whims, idiosyncracies, for believing in me when i have stopped believing in myself, for being there for me when i needed you, even when i did not want you. my dear friends, thank you for being you.

so, while i know that it is out of character, i feel that i have to say it... my dearest friends, i love you all.

Of Cockroaches and NDRS

just got home. well... not quite just. had a shower. and guess what? there was a freaking cockroach in the toilet! all the while as i showered! in fact, just now, as i saw many cockroaches at the void deck... they came out cos people left food on the side of the road (as offerings for the Seventh Moon thing). those cockroaches, i could ignore. but not in my toilet! not when i am showering! it was so gross... i guess all the more because, in the light, in the close proximity, i could see that monstrosity quite clearly. and the more i looked at it, the greater my revulsion. which got me thinking... why are we repulsed by cockroaches so much? would a baby be as repulsed? or perhaps it is the 'gut' feeling that we build up as we grow up, which may or may not be irrational. or it might seem irrational, but could have been developed subconsciously from some rational basis.

which is just like how people react to many things... i had tea with a friend of mine. we talked about the fare hikes. she was completely rational about it. and when she rationalises the fare hikes, it does make sense and sound reasonable. however, people, with their gut feel, don't see it that way. perhaps it is a principle issue rather than a policy debate, that public transport should be a public good and hence the service provider(s) should not return a profit. and that all profit made should be pumped back to improving the service and building future capacity. however, unfortunately, policies are not made by the gut, but through cold, clinical calculations, by a group of people who might not really understand the mindset of a significant proportion of Singaporeans, hence leading to a disconnect between the policy makers and 'man on the street'.

which is what i felt about the National Day Rally Speech. at the end of it, i wonder whether there was actually any meat in it, whether i twas successful in casting a clear bird's eye view of how policies in Singapore would shape up to tackle the big issues on our horizon while still connecting with the 'common man on the street', with, particularly, the heartlanders (who still form the majority of Singaporeans, who are also the most disaffected group). i didn't think the National Day Rally Speech achieved any of those. and i was disappointed.

it was an entertaining speech, but it dealt with rather, in my opinions, trite and obvious points. it didn't quite managed to paint the big picture to show the general direction of our nation's development. but more importantly, i felt that it failed to inspire.

well... i got to go pee... i hope that stupid cockroach ain't there waiting to ambush me...

Opportunity cost

if a person is not happy, though not necessarily unhappy, in a relationship, should he leave the relationship? what if he has been with that girl for quite some time? would the memories be a legitimate claim to staying in the relationship? what if she seems to be the sort that would give him a stable, if bland love life? would that be a legitmate reason to stay in the relationship?

i think not. not least because the person would be depriving himself the chance of finding a relationship that would indeed make him happy, but also because it would be unfair for the girl. since he is not happy in the relationship, i don't think he would be able to make the girl happy. if that is the case, the relationship would, at best, be functional. it would thus be denying the other person an opportunity to have a relationship which would make her happy.

of course, the problem is that ditching one relationship hoping to find a better one involves taking a certain amount of risk.

Unreasonable Singaporeans

in another comment on the same post about social welfare (see my previous post), someone said that he/she found it disturbing to see elderly selling tissue paper and 'begging' at coffeeshops. that person has obviously not been to UK. UK, with its oh-so-wonderful social welfare system has many beggars. usually one outside a major supermarket. those are true beggars. and they aren't always elderly. in fact, many of them don't make it to become elderly.

further, i find it odd that no one thinks it is a problem that our elderly have to beg for money from the family. isn't it the family's OBLIGATION to take care of its elderly? why then should the elderly have to beg? isn't that the bigger problem? that the family cannot/is not willing to support the elderly that the government has to become the surrogate family?

of course, there are those families who cannot afford to support the elderly. there are many causes of that, some more 'legitmate' than others. some reasons include: spending too much (i.e. consuming more than they need to... i've seen families which can easily cut down their utilities bills by half, thus saving enough to support one elderly member of the family... but choose not to do so...), having more kids than they can support (no... i'm not promoting eugenics... but if you have a family income of $2000 a month... any sensible person would tell you that you probably shouldn't have 4 children...), and some, really just cannot afford to support their parents because of truly unfortunate circumstances. and there are those who cannot support their elderly parents because of the near insatiable demands of their spoilt brat kids, who demand for new handphones, branded clothes, PSPs, computer games, etc... why? not because that would really help the child become a better person, but because the other kid in school has it.

do we help every one of the above cases? what kind of signal does that send out? "oh... it's alright for you to live irresponsibly... the government would take care of you..." isn't that ironic? on one hand, we are complaining about a paternalistic government, on the other, we want the government to support us from cradle to grave. how unreasonable can we get?

Social Welfare?

was reading SBP and came across this post, which triggered some thoughts.

i agree that we have to do something to help those who cannot afford even a minimum standard of living. by which we mean that this person ought to have a roof over his head, enough food with sufficient nutrition. should it include having a housephone? internet access? perhaps. but perhaps no handphone. tv also optional. i do agree that this person ought to also be given the opportunity to improve himself and given upward mobility.

i do agree that the state ought to help. and i think it is already doing so, to a certain extent. various schemes under ComCare are in place.

of course, many who have commented, including the author of the post, would like more. let's ask ourselves then, where are we going to get the money to finance your social welfare programmes? taxes? while IRAS has indeed gotten a record haul of $10 billion, do we really want to spend that money on a social welfare system?

of course, one might say that that's a better way of spending our money than letting Temasek not so well manage it. however, then we get to the other 2 questions.

firstly, would having a social welfare programme really solve the problem? or would it only perpetuate it? the chronic poor in Singapore is, i feel, symptomatic of 2 deeper social problems. firstly, there is a group of people who are not equipped for the knowledge based economy. compounding this problem is the second problem of a generation which consumes more and does not save as much as the previous generation. the latter problem results in people spending more than they should, landing themselves into debt and thus becoming poor.
can we solve these 2 problems by a social welfare programme? depends. it's hard to speculate, and i shan't attempt to do so here.

the final question that i would like to ask... why should we wait for/depend on the government to do something to help these chronically poor? why can't we do it ourselves? i give private tuition to this kid from a single parent family in financial difficulty (my 'market value' is easily $300 a month for private tuition). that's my way of aiding to the social welfare programme. and i take care of my own parents. i find gigs for a group of breakdancers, most of whom are from poor families, so that they can earn a bit of cash doing what they like to do. i'm sure that if all you people who commented here really care about the poor, you should think of what you can do to help them. watch one less movie a week, buy one less item of clothing a month, talk less on your mobile phone, drive around less, all that would let you save up enough to help one chronically poor person. then start a movement. get more people involved. and that's where you get your social welfare.

it's the gotong royong spirit. we help our neighbours ourselves. not divest this responsibility to the government, and only complain when the government is not doing it.

finally, the author of the post also talks about increasing divorce rates. social welfare isn't the way to solve the problem. the problem we should solve is not of either divorcee not having enough money, but rather that people are getting divorced, that family networks are failing. those are the real problems that we have to solve. implementing a social welfare system not only does not help, it worsens the problem by lulling us into thinking that we are solving the problem, when in actual fact, we are solving the wrong problems.

on a side, but related, note. friend's MSN nick says "one's riches is not measured by how much he possesses, but how few he wants". so perhaps Singapore's 'poor' are only 'poor' because they want too much.

Collide

The dawn is breaking
A light shining through
You're barely waking
And I'm tangled up in you
Yeah

I'm open, you're closed
Where I follow, you'll go
I worry I won't see your face
Light up again

Even the best fall down sometimes
Even the wrong words seem to rhyme
Out of the doubt that fills my mind
I somehow find
You and I collide

I'm quiet you know
You make a first impression
I've found I'm scared to know I'm always on your mind

Even the best fall down sometimes
Even the stars refuse to shine
Out of the back you fall in time
I somehow find
You and I collide

Don't stop here
I lost my place
I'm close behind

Even the best fall down sometimes
Even the wrong words seem to rhyme
Out of the doubt that fills your mind
You finally findYou and I collide
You finally findYou and I collide
You finally findYou and I collide
________________

some of the lyrics of this song actually doesn't quite make sense. but i guess... one can call it poetic license.

and it does describe how i've felt sometimes.

Return of the King

I just got myself the extended version of LOTR: Return of the King

2 particular speeches strike me as inspiring:

first one by Theoden:
Forth! And fear no darkness! Arise! Arise! Riders of Theoden! Spears shall be shaken, shields shall be splintered.... A sword day... a red day... and the sun rises!


second one by Aragon:
Sons of Gondor, of Rohan. My brothers. I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me! A day may come, when courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of Fellowship, but it is not this day! An hour of wolves and shattered shields when the age of men comes crashing down! But it is not this day! This day, we fight! By all you hold dear on this good earth, i bid you, stand, men of the West!

there are 2 other scenes in the Return of the King that struck me as interesting. the first was when the Rohirrim charged at the orcs. instead of standing their ground, the orcs broek formation. this caused a whole lot more damage. in another scene, the men of the West, after the second speech that i quoted above stood their ground even in the face of certain death. the difference that led to the difference in behaviour? other than inspirational leadership, i think it would be discipline.

that made me think of this conversation that i had with a friend. she was telling me about the pointlessness of making students in the military band do footdrills. she feels that this drives away students who might potentially be interested in music but are totally against footdrills...

however, i don't think that footdrills are pointless.

i look at it as a test of how much they are willing to sacrifice for the music. if they are truly passionate, then they would put up with whatever crap that comes your way in your pursuit for music.

further, and i think this is more important, footdrills hide what i think is an important lesson. it teaches the students the ability to force oneself to do something that one does not like to do. perhaps teach is not quite the right word. more instil. it instils a sense of discipline. and you never know when you would have to put in that sense of discipline to do something that you don't really want to do but have to do it because that is the right thing to do. and that is when the discipline that comes from doing seemingly stupid things like footdrills come in.

it is a subtle lesson, which only bear fruits much later in life. that is the bane of education. Chinese say, "Bai nian shu ren" (literal translation: hundred years mould person). not that it really takes a hundred years of work to sculpt the person, but more that it takes a really long time for the education to manifest itself. it's not 'Li gan jian ying" (literal translation: put pole see shadow), i.e. the effects are not immediate. and hence the problem. in our society, where our KPIs tend to be very short term, digitize-able attributes, education starts to focus on all the wrong things.

Rose by any other name...

is just as sweet.

War, even if it is as yet nameless, as what the Straits Times reported the current war going on between Israel and Lebanon, is just as cruel, dehumanizing, brutal. even if the war does not have a name, children still die, people still suffer, homes still get shattered, families torn asunder.

yet... despite the intense tragedy, i feel neither grief nor pain when i see the pictures of the carnage and death of the war in the papers or on TV. have i been desensitized so much that i have lost my empathy for people? or perhaps i never had it in the first place?

yet... i felt really anxious and worried for my students when they were taking this assessment of theirs. so... why empathy for one group facing a much less dire fate and nothing for another which is undergoing what must be the greatest of human suffering?

the connection perhaps. the distance, physical and emotional.

there was something else that i wanted to write. but i forgot. whatever then.

Elasticity

for those of you who have, for whatever reasons, read my ENTIRE blog, you might notice that the post immediately before this one is somewhat similar to another one that i had sometime last year. both were 'inspired' by memories i had of me looking out my window of my room in Canary Wharf. but because i am in slightly different moods when i wrote the latest one than when i wrote the one last year, i remember the experience differently and hence portray it differently.

just goes to show how elastic our memories can be.

Night in Canary Wharf

sodium yellow lamps behind a gossamer veil of winter mist, rythmic rumblings of a late night train. people dozing off, people chattering, people whizzing past. where's he going? what was she doing out so late? why does he smile so? each with a past obscured from me and a future lost down the track.

thoughts drift to memories yellowed by the unrelenting time, to friends who are reduced to uni-dimensional, incorporeal spectres. i reach out, arms flailing, plunging into the deep, dark chasm of poignant nostalgia.

i open the window. cold air assails me, jolting me back into reality. the last train passes by. my thoughts are drowned out by the deafening silence. i turn, and dive into the realm of sleep.