4 places

In spite of my promising myself that I wouldn’t go back to a book warehouse sale, I still went anyway. And in a way I’m glad that I went for that sale. First, it was the Penguin book sale, which has the best books of all the warehouse sales. (Second is MPH, and third is a tie between Times and Borders). Second, a few things I saw on the way reminded me of a few things about the life I had been living over the last few years.

(digression start)

This is a digression, but I must tell the story of how I managed to get to that warehouse sale. I had originally intended that I would pop by at the office and get 1 or 2 emails sent out. But after a morning run I found myself sleeping again and only waking up at 5 in the afternoon. In the end, I decided to go get myself some dinner (1 bus trip) and then off to the Toa Payoh Library (1 more bus trip). Then I thought that it would be good to swing by the jamming studio I saw at Thompson Rd and check it out. (1 bus trip).

Here’s where it gets interesting. I was undecided whether or not to go to the office and in the end I decided against it. So I went to the warehouse sale, promising myself that I would only pick up 3 books. The easiest way, it seemed, was to take a bus to the east line, probably Eunos MRT, and take the MRT there. (Damn circle line still not open)

So I grabbed the first bus to McRitchie (1 bus trip). I crossed the road and grabbed a bus to Braddell (another bus trip). From Braddell I could take 59 or 93, even though 93 was preferred because it took me straight to Eunos. Eventually 59 came first, so I took it (another bus trip). I got off the 59 after it got off PIE, and then crossed the road to take a bus to Eunos (1 bus trip) but I overshot, and I had to take another bus back to Eunos (1 bus trip). I overshot again, and had to walk 1 bus stop’s length back to the MRT. But I also found myself near the junction of Joo Chiat Rd and Changi Rd. (One day I will blog about Joo Chiat but this is a historical landmark for me)

Then I took the MRT to the Expo. After the book sale, there was still time to go to the office (it was alright for me, I could dump my books there, no different from lugging them home direct), something that took 2 uses of my ezlink card, and after that back home (another 2 uses). All in all, I used the ez link card 13 times that day.

OK, end of the digression.

At the sale, I ended up buying 10 books, a few of which were books I would have willingly bought at full price, or I would have, of my own accord, borrowed from the library to read, including “Hot, Flat and Crowded” by Thomas Friedman (well there’s a 2nd edition out now but I dun mind the first. There was “The Age of Turbulence” by Alan Greenspan that I read halfway. There was “Gang Leader For a Day”, about a gang leader who infiltrated a gang.

There were some books that I would have snapped up 1 or 2 years ago. There was a history book about the fateful decisions that shaped WWII. There was a book about the screwed up culture of some big Wall Street companies during the heydays. Another one, written by a German, about how his country was both the angel and the devil (esp around WWII). There was that book on the Iraq war by Thomas Ricks which talked about the “surge” strategy which pulled the US from the brink of defeat against Iraq. They even had that famous book by Doris Kearns Goodwin about how Lincoln managed to pull together a cabinet full of the brightest talent, even as these people were

But I could see very clearly – I have tonnes of history books right now. I don’t need to read any more history. I used to have a great thirst to know about the great events of the past, but now a lot of it seems like the same old stories over and over again. I used to look forward to endless hours idling in front of a book, but now I only see the vast expenditure of time, which I don’t really have a lot of. I used to believe that all this contributed to my development as a person, and while it once did, it’s over. The easy part is over.

Because there are 3 ways of learning things, either through people teaching them to you, or experiencing them for yourself, or through books. Of the 3, books is the easiest, and the one that you have the most control over. But you also need the other two. It reminded me of “Waterland” by Graham Swift. Why do you need to learn history? Does explaining the past change anything? Does it even ease the pain? At the best, it can guide you towards your future. At its worst, it will mislead you about your future. Hindsight is 20/20, so the apparent clarity with which history is interpreted can lull you into a complacency that everything will be perfect from now on, and that is perhaps the greatest illusion of all.

A friend mentioned that I read a lot of story books. I thought that sounded derisive, until I realised that there’s not much difference between my reading of fiction books, and reading some obscure history tome. It’s mindless indulgence.

I had a dream the other night, when I pulled a sandwich out of my ear. I didn’t know that my earholes were so large that you could fit all that stuff in. But the meaning is clear – I had been wilfully deaf. (In case you’re wondering, I did not eat that sandwich. That’s disgusting.)

This was the time of the year when they were giving out race packs at the expo. This time last year I had, after months of arduous training, run a marathon, and it was the culmination of 2 years’ worth of long distance running. After that, though, it was time to move on to my other targets in life. So 1 year after the marathon, it’s worthwhile to look back on how my other targets had been faring.

I had been reading a book by Jennifer Michael Hecht – I picked it up in Borders in San Fran, and it intrigued me – about how the meaning of happiness changed over the centuries. There was this insight about what exercise was all about – only in a society where the majority of people lead a sedentary lifestyle, will you ever come across such crazy ideas – physical exertion for its own sake, for the sake of self-fulfilment. Throughout history, physical exertion is all about labour. People worked like slaves, or they hunted. Exercise is such a crazy concept.

Well I felt real good about completing my marathon, but I couldn’t just do it year after year. When I went back to office, they were putting up barricades along the route (yah my office is near the route.)

So actually on that day I really passed by 4 of the places which are all associated with my post uni life: Expo (because that’s where I got most of my books), the marathon route, the office and Joo Chiat. I’ve blogged about 2 of them, I can’t blog about the office while I’m still there, so I guess some day I’ll blog about Joo Chiat.