Ghost in my shell
I have been missing her, so much so that she appears like a ghost in my mind. So many times in the day, as my mind wanders and I think about her, I can hear her voice and the rustle of her clothes as she walks by me.
I smell the whift of her scent mixed with the smell of the threatening rain, in the hot Indian afternoon in the middle of a blackout, in her flat, while the storm clouds gathered above the line of flats opposite her living room window.
I can see her smile in every reflection and in every empty seat that magically fills with her presence.
I can trace, in my mind's eye, the curves of her face as they flow gently into her neck, like a beautiful river of bronzed skin. I can see her resting her nose on my cheeks, as she tears up and tells me in her childlike voice, "Nooo....." when we talk about being apart, and she shakes her head in childish denial of the situation as we are now.
I think, when we eat a meal full of meat and pork, how she will shudder at the thought of eating possibly more meat than she has in her slim (in my eyes, but always overweight and "bloated" in her eyes) body.
I taste local millet wine made by the Taiwanese aborigines, and wonder what she would think of the sweet-sourish cereal wine that enters the gullet like a blazing dragon from the sky.
I look at the street stalls, filled with stinky beancurd, pig's blood, and other gastro(anato)mical oddities, and wonder what she will say. ("You heartless weird Chinese! How can you eat baby pigs??")
I miss her so much.
And yet, she really isn't far.
All I have to do is think, imagine, remember.
And she is always there for me.
In Taizhong, and my Accounting results
Sorry to the nonexistent reader who is following this blog, but I have been travelling.
First, travelled back home to meet my parents back in Singapura. Blardee hell, the place has completely changed!! Even NEWTON HAWKER CENTRE has freaking been demolished, and now even BREWERKZ sucks (but maybe that's because I am comparing it with the Gingerman in Houston...).
Kenina. Can't things stay stationary even for just a freaking bit while I come back??
Well, came back, and almost immediately after meeting up with a few friends, I went on to Taiwan with my parents on holiday.
Always a good thing.
Even though I appear to be some sort of
chao ah beng online, in reality I am very much of a Mama's boy. I've been having a lot of fun with my parents, and rediscovering that they are really cool, in their own way, with their own quirks...
So I have been resting, going around visiting Taiwan (have been to Taipei, Kaoshiung, and now in Taizhong. Also got to Kenting Peninsula, which is the southern most tip of Taiwan, as well as Beitou, which is probably the northern-most point. And went to Sun-Moon Lake today, which was nice), eating, sleeping, and reading a freaking lot. And buying a lot of useless stuff as well... not really useless. I bought a book on accounting in Taiwan, learning how to read financial reports of Taiwanese (and mainland Chinese) companies, which will prove to be useful, I think.
In addition, I finished reading (within these 10 days) the
Warren Buffett Way by Robert Hagstrom,
The Constant Gardener by John Le Carre and am now working on
The Idiot by Dostoyevsky, and am about halfway through. I think I will buy more Dostoyevsky: his take and musings on religion and spirituality strike a strong chord.
I have something else that I was reading, but I cannot remember what I finished reading....
The Warren Buffett Way was a book which I bought a long time ago, maybe 13 years ago. Things have changed since, for sure, but some fundamentals are still the same. FOr one thing, the book makes a HECK of a lot more SENSE now, after having gone through an accounting course: accounting really is the language of business. And I am going to try and see if I can use the Buffett Way to apply for any Singaporean stocks... the idea of personal investment and making money in that way suddenly really appeals to me, much more so than getting a highpaying job that gives no equity.
Speaking of which, I apparently got a B- on the final and a A-/B+ on the term paper, which makes me VERY happy, basically because
a) I studied all of 5+ hours (actually, more than that, but I was so distracted half the time...) for the final
b) the term paper cost me my very first ALL-NIGHTER, with COMPLETELY no sleep for about 48 hours straight. I didn't even take a nap until I was on the plane to NYC, at which point I just collapsed and slept like a log (I don't remember anything on that flight!)
That said, it was a worthwhile experience, since I learnt a lot more in preparing for that paper (I maintain, it was the longest 6 pages I have ever written...) than I ever had in the course. I do think, though, it would have been much more interesting if it was written from an investment point of view, rather than from a "consultant" point of view.
Listening to Beethoven while grading physics homeworks
I've forgotten how nice it is to listen to classical music from a long time back.
There's something stirring in the music, which are like pop songs without words, if you think about it.
I remember when I was in the Kennedy Center in DC, listening to the National Symphony, there was a talk about Beethoven: a talk cum performance of Beethoven's 5th, which I find extremely cliched. But it was interesting, because I had never really listened to anyone talk about the music before, in a structured fashion like a seminar.
The conductor put the music in context, highlighting bits that are normally buried beneath the key melodies, like the recurrence of a theme in a supporting instrument like, say, the trombone or the double bass, by asking these instruments to play their parts alone.
People forget that this was once the pop music of its day. And in those days, apparently NEWSPAPERS would publish music scores in the same way newspapers now publish crossword puzzles: it actually helped to sell the newspapers. Of course, this implies that the typical man in the street then was much more well versed in music than the man today.
Not surprising, really: these were the days before the telly, before the internet. Their only forms of entertainment were each other, and I wouldn't be surprised if many a child was forced to play music in front of the parent as entertainment...
Makes me wonder: 150 years down the road, will Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera only be listened to by upper-class connoisieurs of "good taste"?
First bad grades this semester...
I got my first D and C- grades in my university career.
Ok, I lie. I got them before, but they didn't count because of the pass/fail option.
But now, these count...
and my GPA ( based on my calculations) will go from 3.5 to 3.33. I will need to buck up next semester to pull it back up to 3.5 again!
-endure!!-
Chai
What will I give for a cup of warm hot steaming chai, made from fragrant dark Indian tea leaves, freshly pounded ginger and fresh full-cream milk?
That's the best thing in the morning, along with a newspaper, sharing breakfast with her while we sit with the Indian city coming to life all around us.
Love III
I'm quite curious about the film
Brokeback Mountain, about two gay cowbows who fall in love with each other.
The NYT review writes that the movie is not about homosexuality, it's not about sex, but it is about love.
But isn't that already the case for a lot of homosexual people? That is really isn't about wanton, crazy sex, or about sex at all, but about love.
Sometimes it angers me that a lot of purported peace-lovers and purported "lovers of our fellow sinners" condemn homosexuality, with hypocritical words like "love the sinner, hate the sin", before launching into a whole spiel about "protecting marriage" and "protecting our children from homosexuality".
It angers me in a lot of ways, not least because one of my best friends happened to fall in love with a guy whose father wanted to do just that: protect his son from his sexuality.
So he brainwashed his son into breaking up with my friend, and to transfer schools, and to cut off all contact, to straighten out.
In the end, the father will pass away, and just leave behind two lost souls, with one haunted by repression and another haunted by this ghost from the past.
Pain
It sounds sick and melodramatic.
But I need pain in my life. Maybe not sharp physical pain, but discomfort of some sort.
It's a weird thing, but there is something about discomfort, which pushes me and urges me forward in a progressive way.
To give you an example, I've had some of my best insights immediately after running. It's as though the rush of blood to my brain catalyzes a whole spate of ideas.
In any case, I concentrate best when I have some sort of pain or discomfort. I get insights literally out of nowhere when I'm exercising, or making myself eat some really hot food, or forcing myself to sweat it out in the sauna (and my heartrate goes up to 108 or so...).
Maybe I'm an endorphin addict (and I'm not making this up: apparently there really are people like this. Check
this link out.).
I get the same rush of insights when I sit and meditate, and empty out my head, so I'm not exactly sure this is due entirely to endorphin addiction...
Dead man hung
So the
Australian drug smuggler Nguyen Trong Van has just been executed, according to
the Beeb.
A cursory examination of
the Straits Times reveals a heavily pro-government stance about this, with many letters submitted to the Forum supporting the execution of the smuggler.
The issue here isn't the crime: there is no doubt that Nguyen was guilty as charged. There was no contest that he had been caught with the drugs, that he had intended to deliver those drugs. The key issue, really, is about the mitigation pleas.
There have been letters written to the Singapore press along the lines of "he should have known better", "the laws are very clear on this", "the drugs he carried would harm thousands of others". Some were pedantic, along the lines of "the law cannot be bent for one person clearly in the wrong: otherwise nobody will respect the law". Harsher letters criticizing the calls for clemency were written along the lines of "the hypocrisy of those asking for clemency", because they were "completely silent on the death penalty for the
Bali bombers".
All well and fine, if you are not the person involved and if none of your family members are involved. But the moment your personal relatives are involved, I am willing to bet that these people will sing a very different tune. All these arguments with logic and reason suddenly get thrown out of the window, under the assault of emotions when they themselves (or their loved ones, who are emotional extensions of themselves) come under attack.
It is just the nature of the human mind. It is extremely easy to become judgemental and opinionated about others, with a strong vocal sense of self-righteousness, when you are viewing something objectively from an emotionally safe distance.
Thus, it is easy to tell your friend that he is an idiot for falling for a prostitute. Or to chastise him for breaking up with his wife to be with his mistress. Or to scorn him for cheating.
But then when you find yourself under the same situation, with your mind emotionally turmoiled and troubled, bubbling and boiling like steamboat soup, suddenly things do not become so clear anymore. When your mind becomes attached to something, and that attachment becomes attacked by others, things are no longer clear.
In this case, I think that all these critics, in their hurry to condemn others, are forgetting that they are really not different from him.
Nor, for that matter, are they different from the other convicts in prison.
The one major difference is that those behind bars and on the death row
acted on their emotions; the rest of us fantasize of the same things when we are angry, scared or emotionally turmoiled, the only difference being that we have not
yet done anything about it. But we could, and who knows, we just might. To illustrate a point, suppose someone were to attack your mother, and in your defense of her you killed the attacker. Strictly speaking, that is murder as well. The only difference is that the law is written such that you are not charged with that, but the end result is still that you have killed.
And I am pretty sure many of these hard-hearted people have, at some point in their lives, imagined such a scenario, of having to kill someone.
So why, then, do they speak of Nguyen as though they are themselves faultless, when they are mentally capable of being killers themselves?
The main point is, we are really not that different, and we are just as capable of heinous crimes as those who are convicted.
All this high-handedness and staking of the moral high ground is really inappropriate, in this light.
In the end, I pity his mother, who must be suffering to no end as of now.
I can only hope that her surviving twin son will reform and not let his now-deceased brother down.
Natural Disasters hitting Singapore
How prepared is Singapore for natural disasters?
That is a question that struck me as I watched the footage of New Orleans after Katrina, and a question that hit me when I was preparing for Hurricane Rita here in H-town.
Increasingly, we are at the mercy of an environment that is becoming bizarre, like a mad child gone completely bonkers. Anyone who has lived in H-town for longer than 12 months will agree: this is the warmest fall that we have ever experienced. I don't remember (and nobody does, for that matter) walking around in shorts in December, ever.
Yet, that was what I did today.
Then I came back and read an article
in the Oracle about how Europe will become colder in the coming years due to the slowing of Atlantic ocean currents. Apparently, that is happening, and it is coupled with the predicted effects of global warming.
Presumably, global warming will also entail rising sea-levels. And worse storms and volatile weather all around.
Does this mean that Singapore is going to be royall f-cked in the coming years?
