Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Grocery Store Wars

Whoever said that organic food was boring? :)

The person who came up with this video (Grocery store wars) is either a genius, had nothing better to do, or both, haha. Maybe they were one of the lucky people who just had a lot of free time on their hands. Cuke Skywalker and Obi Wan Cannoli, heh!

Thanks LC, for recommending the link! It made my day :) That grocery store wars video brought a smile, and I spent most of the rest of the day going around with a silly little grin on my face.

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Ok, I've had my short respite, time to get back to work :)

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Life and How to Survive It

Taking a short break, and wanting badly to look at something other than scientific papers, I browsed through my links, and came upon this speech by Adrian Tan (author of the Teenage Textbook) to the NTU graduating class of 2008, that a friend had posted on her blog.

After reading it, I have to say I was very much inspired again, his message is simple yet poignant. Wouldn't it be great if we could have such uplifting speeches at our convocations too? :)

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Life and How to Survive It

I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give your convocation address. It’s a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation. I say this as a Singaporean and more so as a husband.

My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one. She is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practising at home during conversations between her and me.

On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day telling people how wrong they are. I make my living being disagreeable.

Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one who triumphs is always the wife.

And so I want to start by giving one piece of advice to the men: when you’ve already won her heart, you don’t need to win every argument.

Marriage is considered one milestone of life. Some of you may already be married. Some of you may never be married. Some of you will be married. Some of you will enjoy the experience so much, you will be married many, many times. Good for you.

The next big milestone in your life is today: your graduation. The end of education. You’re done learning.

You’ve probably been told the big lie that “Learning is a lifelong process” and that therefore you will continue studying and taking masters’ degrees and doctorates and professorships and so on. You know the sort of people who tell you that? Teachers. Don’t you think there is some measure of conflict of interest? They are in the business of learning, after all. Where would they be without you? They need you to be repeat customers.

The good news is that they’re wrong.

The bad news is that you don’t need further education because your entire life is over. It is gone. That may come as a shock to some of you. You’re in your teens or early twenties. People may tell you that you will live to be 70, 80, 90 years old. That is your life expectancy.

I love that term: life expectancy. We all understand the term to mean the average life span of a group of people. But I’m here to talk about a bigger idea, which is what you expect from your life.

You may be very happy to know that Singapore is currently ranked as the country with the third highest life expectancy. We are behind Andorra and Japan, and tied with San Marino. It seems quite clear why people in those countries, and ours, live so long. We share one thing in common: our football teams are all hopeless. There’s very little danger of any of our citizens having their pulses raised by watching us play in the World Cup. Spectators are more likely to be lulled into a gentle and restful nap.

Singaporeans have a life expectancy of 81.8 years. Singapore men live to an average of 79.21 years, while Singapore women live more than five years longer, probably to take into account the additional time they need to spend in the bathroom.

So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you’ll have another 40 years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.

Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they’re 50, 40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their convocation. They would be very disappointed that they didn’t meet their life expectancy.

I’m here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy.

After all, it’s calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want to expect being average.

Revisit those expectations. You might be looking forward to working, falling in love, marrying, raising a family. You are told that, as graduates, you should expect to find a job paying so much, where your hours are so much, where your responsibilities are so much.

That is what is expected of you. And if you live up to it, it will be an awful waste.

If you expect that, you will be limiting yourself. You will be living your life according to boundaries set by average people. I have nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be them. And you don’t need years of education by the best minds in Singapore to prepare you to be average.

What you should prepare for is mess. Life’s a mess. You are not entitled to expect anything from it. Life is not fair. Everything does not balance out in the end. Life happens, and you have no control over it. Good and bad things happen to you day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. Your degree is a poor armour against fate.

Don’t expect anything. Erase all life expectancies. Just live. Your life is over as of today. At this point in time, you have grown as tall as you will ever be, you are physically the fittest you will ever be in your entire life and you are probably looking the best that you will ever look. This is as good as it gets. It is all downhill from here. Or up. No one knows.

What does this mean for you? It is good that your life is over.

Since your life is over, you are free. Let me tell you the many wonderful things that you can do when you are free.

The most important is this: do not work.

Work is anything that you are compelled to do. By its very nature, it is undesirable.

Work kills. The Japanese have a term “Karoshi”, which means death from overwork. That’s the most dramatic form of how work can kill. But it can also kill you in more subtle ways. If you work, then day by day, bit by bit, your soul is chipped away, disintegrating until there’s nothing left. A rock has been ground into sand and dust.

There’s a common misconception that work is necessary. You will meet people working at miserable jobs. They tell you they are “making a living”. No, they’re not. They’re dying, frittering away their fast-extinguishing lives doing things which are, at best, meaningless and, at worst, harmful.

People will tell you that work ennobles you, that work lends you a certain dignity. Work makes you free. The slogan "Arbeit macht frei" was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps. Utter nonsense.

Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway.

Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself.

I like arguing, and I love language. So, I became a litigator. I enjoy it and I would do it for free. If I didn’t do that, I would’ve been in some other type of work that still involved writing fiction – probably a sports journalist.

So what should you do? You will find your own niche. I don’t imagine you will need to look very hard. By this time in your life, you will have a very good idea of what you will want to do. In fact, I’ll go further and say the ideal situation would be that you will not be able to stop yourself pursuing your passions. By this time you should know what your obsessions are. If you enjoy showing off your knowledge and feeling superior, you might become a teacher.

Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don’t, you are working.

Most of you will end up in activities which involve communication. To those of you I have a second message: be wary of the truth. I’m not asking you to speak it, or write it, for there are times when it is dangerous or impossible to do those things. The truth has a great capacity to offend and injure, and you will find that the closer you are to someone, the more care you must take to disguise or even conceal the truth. Often, there is great virtue in being evasive, or equivocating. There is also great skill. Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence.

In order to be wary of the truth, you must first know it. That requires great frankness to yourself. Never fool the person in the mirror.

I have told you that your life is over, that you should not work, and that you should avoid telling the truth. I now say this to you: be hated.

It’s not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you? Yet every great figure who has contributed to the human race has been hated, not just by one person, but often by a great many. That hatred is so strong it has caused those great figures to be shunned, abused, murdered and in one famous instance, nailed to a cross.

One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong.

The other side of the coin is this: fall in love.

I didn’t say “be loved”. That requires too much compromise. If one changes one’s looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.

Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.

Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the truth worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.

Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn’t happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.

You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.

You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.

Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.

Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.

You’re going to have a busy life. Thank goodness there’s no life expectancy.

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What a timely reminder to Live Life to the fullest :)

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Sunday, October 12, 2008

Tag, you're it ! :)

Eli tagged me in one of these memes, and I thought I'd fill it in quickly (yes, I'm updating the blog! haha) ... They've asked for 15 things, but I've posted 10 of them here, since they seem to be rather long. The other 5 have been included in the 'comments' section if you still want to read them (that is, if you haven't fallen asleep while reading this :)


State 15 weird things/habits/little known facts about yourself.

The 10 people I tag are to then follow my footsteps and write their own 15 weird things/habits and little known facts.

1. Coffee has a bizarre effect on me, I once fell asleep during a physics test in secondary school, shortly after drinking my very first can of coffee.
My brain "switches off", and I get groggy after drinking it. Strange, I know :)

2. I enjoy dreaming, because of the vast variety of experiences that I can go through, which I may not be able to have in real life.
And the good thing is, you can survive anything that happens in those dreams, because you can always wake up ;)

3. I used to dislike barbie dolls, and all things pink, because I was rebelling against the stereotype that these were the things which all girls should like.
That was until just a few years ago. Now, I don't have an issue with anything pink... but I still don't like barbie dolls :)

4. When I was young, I sliced some long beans, found half a worm in one of them... and have been paranoid when eating long beans after that.

5. We used to create, program, and compete with robots made from Lego Technic in secondary school, which could get amusing because you could tell people that you 'played with Lego' when they asked you what you did for your ECA (extracurricular activities).

6. I joined the Biology society in junior college, even though I was the only one in it who wasn't studying anything to do with biology in my classes.

7. I love learning new things.
Given a choice in a dream world (without having to worry about money, funds, assignments, exams, or results... haha keep dreaming), I could happily spend the rest of my life as a student.

8. I can raise my right eyebrow and left eyebrow separately, one at a time.

9. After helping a friend to look after her pet carpet python, I've been wanting to keep my own pet python or iguana.
Unfortunately, the people I live with don't really seem to share the same enthusiasm ;) As Karen says, 'If the snake comes in, you're moving out'. Haha.

10. Beware if you have a soft-drink cup with a plastic cover anywhere near me. If there are knobs/tabs/buttons on the cover that can be pressed, I will reach over and press them :)
As you can guess, I also love bubble-wrap, heh.


Reminds me of a quote from Garfield :
'I'm normal. It's the rest of the world that is weird '

:)

Friday, October 03, 2008

Clearing the Dust

Yes, it has (amazingly) been 5 months since I last wrote here.

Now, with the end of this academic journey and life chapter finally in sight, the analogy of a race often comes to mind. Like a runner, I strive to approach the finish line, longing to complete this leg of the race well, and to finally be released to move on to other races or paths. However, one of the frightening things about running in a race is that sometimes, life and everything else may just speed past you far too quickly as well.

There are times when thoughts and ideas for writing in this blog spring to mind, but there's always so much to do and so little time to do them, that I often have little choice but to prioritize... and well, blogging has landed somewhere on the bottom of that list of priorities :)
In the midst of all the busy-ness, it's been tempting to just abandon this site or give up on blogging... and I sometimes also wonder if anyone even reads this anymore, heh.

However, some family and friends have continued to encourage me to write, and I know that they still do occasionally pop by to find out how things are over here.

I'm also reminded that the purpose of this blog was to keep friends and family updated on the things that happen in my life here. Something like peering through a window to my world, especially since some of us are lands or continents apart.

So, I'll continue to update, and continue to blog, although the intensive string of deadlines that loom over me may sometimes limit the frequency and length of my posts... Still, I'll try to put something up every once in a while :)

For now, here's something from a light-hearted moment during one of my short respites...

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What do you get when you mix 2 stressed and crazy housemates, 1 (poor) toy kitten, a jar of sweets, a camera, and an over
active imagination ?

You end up with
the exploits of Karen's toy kitten, and lots of fun and silly photos :)









Heh.

More posts to come... hopefully :)

"... and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us ... " - Hebrews 12 : 1
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