Like I said on one of my previous posts, whereas 2008 was the year of the end of long roads, 2009 for me was going to a year I would get off my ass and seek a new life. To what extent have I been successful?
Computer science: the plan was to plough through all my CS textbooks so as to have the same amount of knowledge that a CS undergraduate would have. So far it looks like I won’t get it all done any time soon. I’m half way through compilers, and I’m trying to cram in the most salient concepts of operating systems. Operating systems is easier because there are fewer basics, fewer ideas, and the rest is application. Got through some systems analysis.
Financial planning: I had a few meetings with the fiancé of a long lost friend, who somehow convinced me that I was a potential customer. 3 sessions later, I told her no thanks, and I dunno if she was pissed off at me.
Later on, a friend of mine approached me with a business proposition that was as lucrative as it was shady. I thought about it for a while, thought I would play a small, bit part. It didn’t work out. His old business partner sabotaged his business plan. In the end, he left and joined an insurance policy. He became the second person to (unsuccessfully) sell me a policy this year.
A new job: I took on a new function at my workplace midway through the year, one that’s closer to the front. I’m sick and tired of doing the same old shit which may not have meaning to the larger scheme of things. So far it’s not been a disaster although a lot could have been better. I’m learning and mastering stuff I should have mastered a long time ago. Things are a little more stressful.
Romance: Some of you may recall that the fiancé of my long lost friend had set me up with a friend of hers. It was a disaster that didn’t work at all. Much later in the year, I had a few dates with teapot. Unfortunately it didn’t work out. But I did think that I should go out hunting. Now’s a good time, there won’t be a better time than now.
I have to figure out what's wrong. One complaint I'm getting is that I'm boring. This is true, especially for people who are not on the same wavelength as me.
Music: It was all right. I wrote a few songs that I was quite satisfied with. Some of my compositions are on midi now, but MIDI is a shitty medium. I have the arrangements in my head, some idea of what it’s supposed to sound like, but my demos sound like crap. But at least I have fleshed out all the ideas, written down all the notes. In theory I just have to find the right sounds to match all my stuff.
I've had a few tryouts. I did think that I was quite psyched after that, but a lot of it's not my work. I think there's still some more work to be done before I start advertising myself as a "keyboardist". Still, I'm glad that I actually went to find some people to jam with.
Johor: I’m helping my computer illiterate father with some of his paperwork, but most of the time he does his own thing. He’s an incredibly hard worker. I don’t know why I have such a hardworking father, and such a hardworking sister, but myself, I’m such a passive person.
I’ve also gone on some trips to Malaysia to explore the place, and occasionally help with some shopping. My father and I planted 2 trees, and 1 of them died although the other is still alive. He’s always wanted to teach me how to manage a property and I still have to learn.
Housework: Other than some half-hearted attempts to follow my parents to the wet market on Saturday mornings, I haven’t been able to make much progress on this.
Is this why I’m always feeling tired these days? But I’ve hardly begun to live my life. I’m only doing stuff that I should have started doing 5 years ago. Well 5 years is not a very long time anyway.
Health-wise, things have not been very good. My family members used to marvel at my ability to skip meals and not get gastric problems. Later on, I've realised why this is so: I don't stress myself. I've been living such a horizontal life for so long that I never had any stress. This year, the first time in a long time I've seriously considered my future, is also a year I've had more problems with my stomach than any of the preceding years.
And let's not talk about a really crappy December where I've been laid low by flu and it's taken forever for me to get better. At a time when I was clearing leave and supposed to have some fun times, I'm sick.
I noticed that I have changed my life a lot in the last 2 years that ended with zero. 1990 was the end of the childhood and the beginning of the troubled teenage years (although it should never have been as troubled as it was). 2000 was the first year after I glimpsed at a lot of possibilities that opened up for me in 1999 - although being a big bookworm was the main possibility that was opened up. I'm also due for a big change now. Some of these changes have been for the better, but many have not.
For the last few years, I had been content to bury myself in a lot of books as well as the occasional long distance run. Gone are the days when I can say that a weekend has been meaningful just because I managed a 20 km run (and I doubt I'm going to run such distances anytime soon.) Gone are the days when I would treat 1-2 hour bus rides as an OK thing because I can always read some more, when I would shake legs at a cafe for hours and a book. There was a time, when I thought, give me the warm glow of lights above, a book, and a cup of coffee / tea before me, and I will always be content. I would be reading investor reports, and figure out how to be much richer than I am today. I would be reading computer science and magically become an uber geek. How was I to know that I'd be bored of that within 6 months? It used to be, if I had nothing better to do (and when have I had anything better to do?), I would just pick up a book, and read and read. But now I'll practice not picking up a book for once, and see whether things will take place.
In fact the last few days have felt like what it was like in college, when I just spent hours alternating between useful activity, and fretting about time passing by and getting older. (I was not a bookworm in college - I budgeted my brain power strictly for the stuff I had to read, because it consumed so much mental energy.) Being alone in a dank, dark house, going to bed at 4 in the morning and rising at 9 (afternoon naps have become necessary.)
I will probably not have a mid-life crisis. Mid-life crises are for people who have accomplished what they want in their 20s and 30s, then have nothing else left for them in their 40s. It looks like I’ll be busy for some time.
Saturday, 30 January 2010
Thursday, 28 January 2010
Rebel Rebel
In 1968, there were a lot of student rebellions all over the world. In Czechoslovakia, in the US, in Mexico, in France. To a lot of people, it was a curious sight. These were the baby boomers in their teens, and especially in the US, they were the most pampered and indulged generation in history (although I think that succeeding generations were even more indulged.) Suddenly they thought that life wasn’t good enough for them?
The late 60s were a time for the counter culture. The postwar boom had created a standard of living that was higher than anything else you ever saw in human history (in the West anyway). But it also brought with it a stifling conformity. So counterculture was born. It was about young, idealistic teenagers rebelling against strict social codes (long hair, smoking pot, love and peace). Some of it was a rebellion against capitalism, against the Vietnam War, against the “straights” – the nerdy, conservative, square types.
Hippie culture has some enduring legacies. Body shop, with its emphasis on sustainable development and care for the earth, embodies some hippie culture values. A lot of the computer industry was founded on hippie values. The internet was designed to be democratic, so that no large organisation, or no government was able to control it. It’s not a surprise that much of Silicon Valley is located on the outskirts of San Francisco, which was the capital of the hippies. Steve Jobs was a hippie. Ben and Jerry’s was founded by 2 hippies. Although, considering that a lot of hippie culture was virulently anti-corporation in nature, you could say that at least some of the hippie values were betrayed in the process.
The green movement was also greatly connected to the hippies. They rightly saw that man was destroying his environment, and even though they met with varying degrees of resistance, people are finally realising that humans on this planet are living a basically unsustainable lifestyle. But people are selfish, and you cannot preach to them by saying, “look, you are destroying all these plants and animals.” They’ll tell you, “we have a right to our way of life”. So instead we call it Climate Change now, because the message now is, “you can destroy the plants and animals and pump poisonous gases into the sky. But after that you will suffer because the sea level will rise and life on this planet will be less livable.” This is also a reason why, when I hear the words “climate change”, it is with a sense of shame.
The hippie culture has also spawned a free love culture, where people were much less restrained when it came to sex. Pre-marital sex became much more common. It lasted around 15-20 years, and that lifestyle ended (or at least became much less widespread) when people started hearing about AIDS.
I’m thinking about the nature of rebellion, now from the vantage point of somebody well into adulthood.
Yes, I don’t like conformity. I’ve said it. I know I work in a place which values it above just about anything else. I know that to a large extent, you need to have common standards in order to make the organisation gel together. And I know that there are many workplaces which have an even stifling culture than mine. I still have to grapple with that problem.
My instinct has always tended towards rebellion. I was tardy about work at school, (although, when I did do my work, I always gave it my best shot). I made goofy comments in class. I often detested people for the simple reason that they followed the crowd, and took on the values of “society”.
During my film buff phase, I always had a weakness for films about teenage rebellion. OK, “Rebel Without a Cause” is too obvious. But I liked “400 Blows”, “And Your Mother Too”, “Dreamlife of Angels”, “Brighter Summer Day”. There were others about people making their way in this world, in the face of adversity, like “The Crowd”.
Ultimately, though, what does rebellion mean? On some levels, it is absolutely necessary. Revolutions were borne of rebellion. You just felt that you had to have a better life, and then you destroyed the old way of life, simply because anything else would be better. Sometimes this was true, but often it was not. The Russian Revolution was largely a tragedy for all concerned (except maybe a few top-ranking Communist Party cadres). Mao Zedong had a dictum, “we must destroy before we build”. A lot of his actions have turned out to be totally disastrous.
Rebellions were often an expression of democracy. The French Revolution was something that ushered in the modern democracy, even though people hardly commemorate the Terror that followed: you didn’t know who else would be guillotined in the morning. (Well maybe a few nutty people like Pol Pot thought it was a good thing.) It is a very useful check and balance against tyranny, and something that I feel could have been used a bit more.
I used to feel ashamed that people of my generation did not stage rebellions, and often deferred to the government. Then again, it is not always true that people in my generation are less rebellious. I wondered why the Vietnam War protests were so much more famous than the Iraq war protests. In a way a great amount of discredit has to go to the US public for allowing the Iraq war to happen. I don’t really know how much they are ashamed of themselves, or the torture of Iraqis that took place by the US Army. But later on I found out that there was a big protest in the UK, and a record turn-out, to demonstrate against the Iraq war. I can’t remember the figure – half a million? That was a great thing. But it scarcely went reported, because, unlike 1 generation ago, news broadcasters have become very wary of giving credence to that sort of thing. The Iraq war destroyed the reputation of Tony Blair, who had up til then been a hugely popular prime minister.
So what are rebels? Do people rebel just so that they felt good about themselves? Rebels do their work under very dangerous circumstances, and a lot of the great rebels of the past have attained great stature, simply for standing up against a system that was morally wrong. Gandhi. Martin Luther King. Mandela. And to a lesser extent, Aung San Suu Kyii and the Dalai Lama.
But my tendency towards rebellion is probably now tempered with some hard-nosed conservative thinking, and after all, you have to understand the system before you try to change it.
Does rebellion build anything? No. Rebellion is destructive. Destructive does not mean no good, because in many cultures, we understand that creation and destruction are both part of the great plan. Hinduism has a god for creation and another for destruction, even though I can’t remember their names offhand. Taoism has yin and yang, the cycle of life, where one begets the other. Even in the West, harvest is often equated to death, a tacit acknowledgement that some yield is gained from the destruction.
But rebellion alone does not build anything. Some of the regimes that came about as a result of a rebellion would be worse than what they replaced. There was ZANU-PF, which replaced the white rule in Zimbabwe. Living standards have plummeted since then. There is South Africa, which may or may not be faring better than under Apartheid. The feminist movement promised a better world for all, but at this point, the gains are quite modest compared to the promises, and for that matter, the ladies are beginning to realise that men live quite a shitty life (even if they don’t bitch about it as much as women.) And then there was communism in Russia – enough said.
It was the luck of the draw when it comes to changing regimes. Sometimes you will get LKY – a pain in the ass, but he makes life better for all. Sometimes you get Ferdinand Marcos.
The other thing about rebels – there are rebels who rebel because they want to shake things up and change. Then there are others who are merely dissatisfied with the current system, but offer no solutions. You’ve seen them before, those people who throw spanners for the sake of throwing them. And they talk vaguely about making things better. They offer no solutions. In fact, they are the people who just prefer to stew in their own juices all the time, and enjoy the benefits of being part of the system, and yet reserve for themselves the right to complain about things they don’t like. Most of us are like that some of the time, and that is not unusual. However it becomes really grating when that person starts to assume the heroic mantle of the rebel leader, and that’s when he starts being laughable.
Of course, it could be that half-baked ideas eventually evolve into works of genius, but more often, they end up as nothing.
And there are other rebels, who have ideas which work well on paper but when it comes to the implementation, they are let down either by faulty execution, or the idea wasn’t very good at all. In the end, though, if ideas don’t work, there’s usually a part of the theory that the originator of the idea didn’t want to consider. And that person would usually be quite stubborn about brushing away that part of the theory, because that would mean he had to throw away his ideas.
Because ultimately you have to look at the big picture. Rebels are celebrated in our culture for various reasons. One of them is that the act of destruction is more spectacular and dramatic than constructive acts. You get more publicity, more airspace. Another one is that when people around you are pissed off with a certain regime for certain reasons, you can be a focal point for their collective voice by speaking out against the injustices of the incumbent system. That is easy. You are the popular voice, and you cannot be wrong. But talk is cheap, and what would happen when you are actually the one elected into office, you’re the one who’s in charge? Can you reform the system? Can you make the changes you promised, without making the system substantially worse as a result?
I’ve seen my being rebellious for at least as many wrong reasons as well as right ones. I think that you cannot be a rebel your whole life. You cannot be a rebel without a cause, it doesn’t make sense in the long run. Even Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols was circumspect enough to admit, “I don’t know what I want but I know how to get it.” It shows that he acknowledges the limits of rebellion. In the end, it’s just a means to an end, and you have to figure out what you’re really getting into, what you’re really doing all that for.
The late 60s were a time for the counter culture. The postwar boom had created a standard of living that was higher than anything else you ever saw in human history (in the West anyway). But it also brought with it a stifling conformity. So counterculture was born. It was about young, idealistic teenagers rebelling against strict social codes (long hair, smoking pot, love and peace). Some of it was a rebellion against capitalism, against the Vietnam War, against the “straights” – the nerdy, conservative, square types.
Hippie culture has some enduring legacies. Body shop, with its emphasis on sustainable development and care for the earth, embodies some hippie culture values. A lot of the computer industry was founded on hippie values. The internet was designed to be democratic, so that no large organisation, or no government was able to control it. It’s not a surprise that much of Silicon Valley is located on the outskirts of San Francisco, which was the capital of the hippies. Steve Jobs was a hippie. Ben and Jerry’s was founded by 2 hippies. Although, considering that a lot of hippie culture was virulently anti-corporation in nature, you could say that at least some of the hippie values were betrayed in the process.
The green movement was also greatly connected to the hippies. They rightly saw that man was destroying his environment, and even though they met with varying degrees of resistance, people are finally realising that humans on this planet are living a basically unsustainable lifestyle. But people are selfish, and you cannot preach to them by saying, “look, you are destroying all these plants and animals.” They’ll tell you, “we have a right to our way of life”. So instead we call it Climate Change now, because the message now is, “you can destroy the plants and animals and pump poisonous gases into the sky. But after that you will suffer because the sea level will rise and life on this planet will be less livable.” This is also a reason why, when I hear the words “climate change”, it is with a sense of shame.
The hippie culture has also spawned a free love culture, where people were much less restrained when it came to sex. Pre-marital sex became much more common. It lasted around 15-20 years, and that lifestyle ended (or at least became much less widespread) when people started hearing about AIDS.
I’m thinking about the nature of rebellion, now from the vantage point of somebody well into adulthood.
Yes, I don’t like conformity. I’ve said it. I know I work in a place which values it above just about anything else. I know that to a large extent, you need to have common standards in order to make the organisation gel together. And I know that there are many workplaces which have an even stifling culture than mine. I still have to grapple with that problem.
My instinct has always tended towards rebellion. I was tardy about work at school, (although, when I did do my work, I always gave it my best shot). I made goofy comments in class. I often detested people for the simple reason that they followed the crowd, and took on the values of “society”.
During my film buff phase, I always had a weakness for films about teenage rebellion. OK, “Rebel Without a Cause” is too obvious. But I liked “400 Blows”, “And Your Mother Too”, “Dreamlife of Angels”, “Brighter Summer Day”. There were others about people making their way in this world, in the face of adversity, like “The Crowd”.
Ultimately, though, what does rebellion mean? On some levels, it is absolutely necessary. Revolutions were borne of rebellion. You just felt that you had to have a better life, and then you destroyed the old way of life, simply because anything else would be better. Sometimes this was true, but often it was not. The Russian Revolution was largely a tragedy for all concerned (except maybe a few top-ranking Communist Party cadres). Mao Zedong had a dictum, “we must destroy before we build”. A lot of his actions have turned out to be totally disastrous.
Rebellions were often an expression of democracy. The French Revolution was something that ushered in the modern democracy, even though people hardly commemorate the Terror that followed: you didn’t know who else would be guillotined in the morning. (Well maybe a few nutty people like Pol Pot thought it was a good thing.) It is a very useful check and balance against tyranny, and something that I feel could have been used a bit more.
I used to feel ashamed that people of my generation did not stage rebellions, and often deferred to the government. Then again, it is not always true that people in my generation are less rebellious. I wondered why the Vietnam War protests were so much more famous than the Iraq war protests. In a way a great amount of discredit has to go to the US public for allowing the Iraq war to happen. I don’t really know how much they are ashamed of themselves, or the torture of Iraqis that took place by the US Army. But later on I found out that there was a big protest in the UK, and a record turn-out, to demonstrate against the Iraq war. I can’t remember the figure – half a million? That was a great thing. But it scarcely went reported, because, unlike 1 generation ago, news broadcasters have become very wary of giving credence to that sort of thing. The Iraq war destroyed the reputation of Tony Blair, who had up til then been a hugely popular prime minister.
So what are rebels? Do people rebel just so that they felt good about themselves? Rebels do their work under very dangerous circumstances, and a lot of the great rebels of the past have attained great stature, simply for standing up against a system that was morally wrong. Gandhi. Martin Luther King. Mandela. And to a lesser extent, Aung San Suu Kyii and the Dalai Lama.
But my tendency towards rebellion is probably now tempered with some hard-nosed conservative thinking, and after all, you have to understand the system before you try to change it.
Does rebellion build anything? No. Rebellion is destructive. Destructive does not mean no good, because in many cultures, we understand that creation and destruction are both part of the great plan. Hinduism has a god for creation and another for destruction, even though I can’t remember their names offhand. Taoism has yin and yang, the cycle of life, where one begets the other. Even in the West, harvest is often equated to death, a tacit acknowledgement that some yield is gained from the destruction.
But rebellion alone does not build anything. Some of the regimes that came about as a result of a rebellion would be worse than what they replaced. There was ZANU-PF, which replaced the white rule in Zimbabwe. Living standards have plummeted since then. There is South Africa, which may or may not be faring better than under Apartheid. The feminist movement promised a better world for all, but at this point, the gains are quite modest compared to the promises, and for that matter, the ladies are beginning to realise that men live quite a shitty life (even if they don’t bitch about it as much as women.) And then there was communism in Russia – enough said.
It was the luck of the draw when it comes to changing regimes. Sometimes you will get LKY – a pain in the ass, but he makes life better for all. Sometimes you get Ferdinand Marcos.
The other thing about rebels – there are rebels who rebel because they want to shake things up and change. Then there are others who are merely dissatisfied with the current system, but offer no solutions. You’ve seen them before, those people who throw spanners for the sake of throwing them. And they talk vaguely about making things better. They offer no solutions. In fact, they are the people who just prefer to stew in their own juices all the time, and enjoy the benefits of being part of the system, and yet reserve for themselves the right to complain about things they don’t like. Most of us are like that some of the time, and that is not unusual. However it becomes really grating when that person starts to assume the heroic mantle of the rebel leader, and that’s when he starts being laughable.
Of course, it could be that half-baked ideas eventually evolve into works of genius, but more often, they end up as nothing.
And there are other rebels, who have ideas which work well on paper but when it comes to the implementation, they are let down either by faulty execution, or the idea wasn’t very good at all. In the end, though, if ideas don’t work, there’s usually a part of the theory that the originator of the idea didn’t want to consider. And that person would usually be quite stubborn about brushing away that part of the theory, because that would mean he had to throw away his ideas.
Because ultimately you have to look at the big picture. Rebels are celebrated in our culture for various reasons. One of them is that the act of destruction is more spectacular and dramatic than constructive acts. You get more publicity, more airspace. Another one is that when people around you are pissed off with a certain regime for certain reasons, you can be a focal point for their collective voice by speaking out against the injustices of the incumbent system. That is easy. You are the popular voice, and you cannot be wrong. But talk is cheap, and what would happen when you are actually the one elected into office, you’re the one who’s in charge? Can you reform the system? Can you make the changes you promised, without making the system substantially worse as a result?
I’ve seen my being rebellious for at least as many wrong reasons as well as right ones. I think that you cannot be a rebel your whole life. You cannot be a rebel without a cause, it doesn’t make sense in the long run. Even Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols was circumspect enough to admit, “I don’t know what I want but I know how to get it.” It shows that he acknowledges the limits of rebellion. In the end, it’s just a means to an end, and you have to figure out what you’re really getting into, what you’re really doing all that for.
Sunday, 24 January 2010
Gary Neville vs Carlos Tevez
Wayne Rooney misses a goal. Wayne Rooney says fuck. Nobody says anything.
David James concedes a goal. David James says fuck. Nobody says anything.
Fernando Torres powers past Nemanja Vidic and scores. Vidic says fuck. Nobody says anything.
Gary Neville shows his middle finger. The horror! The horror!
David James concedes a goal. David James says fuck. Nobody says anything.
Fernando Torres powers past Nemanja Vidic and scores. Vidic says fuck. Nobody says anything.
Gary Neville shows his middle finger. The horror! The horror!
Saturday, 16 January 2010
Joo Chiat
If you asked me what years were very good years for me, I would unhesitatingly tell you, 1992 and 1999. I don’t really want to elaborate, or maybe I may have blogged about this before. That’s why, when 2006 came around I was wondering if the time was ripe for a change. (ie every 7 years I get a year which is amazing)
When you look back upon it, it was a gradual change. It was nowhere as important to me as what happened during 92 or 99. But there was something there. I felt that it was easier for me to talk to people. I no longer had the knots in my stomach when approaching others, as I did in my earlier days. Whether or not that made me a better person, though, is something that’s highly open to debate.
In January of that year, my maternal grandmother died. It was actually a good thing, because she had been in a coma for 3.5 years. At the risk of sounding heartless I’m glad that her suffering was over. I met the cousins from the maternal side of the family, many of whom I had not seen regularly over the last 10 years. It turned out that we did get along. It was OK.
Around May of that year, Basketball Jones (I’m calling him that, but you guys should be able to guess who he is) asked me to join Harry Redknapp (ditto) and him at dinner. I thought, that’s a bit funny, but I did join in.
Basketball Jones was about to leave the department. He had just broken up. After a while I realized that he was in a state and he just needed people to go help him cheer up. I didn’t go, “hey that’s not fair people never do that kind of stuff for me”. I just thought, OK, let’s go.
After dinner, we ended up in a sleazy club in Joo Chiat. Harry Redknapp brought us there. Most of the bar girls were Vietnamese. Most were smart enough to have picked up Chinese, but a few of them didn’t know the language. I cynically thought, “well, I’m not going to waste time in here, am I?” So I grabbed somebody. It was OK, but it felt really strange to be groping a complete stranger, no matter how well-proportioned she was. I was looking a little enviously at Basketball Jones, because he got somebody I kinda fancied. But on subsequent visits I never saw her, and anyway we made it a point not to get girls that any other of us had been close to before.
It was kinda tiring, I got home after midnight, and the next morning had to get back to work. I remember meeting Basketball Jones in the hallway the next morning, we looked at each other and started laughing, and then we walked off without saying a word.
On the second visit, another girl came up to me and started fondling me. I told her to go away, but I took a second look at her, and said, “you’re OK”. Well there was this hanky panky. Let’s call her Winnie. At the same time, Basketball Jones had this girl, called her Apple, and he said that Apple reminded him of Fiona Xie. I don’t really know if that was healthy. He wasn’t having his way with Apple, wasn’t treating her like a sex object, the way that I was treating those who came up to me. I think that he had rebound-itis. (Rebound is a basketball term, is it not?) By then, Harry Redknapp had already found his regular, Peach, and was making her his mistress.
There was another trip, to Sentosa. Harry Redknapp got 4 girls (including to meet us there. It was very weird, what if people saw me? There was Winnie. There was Peach. Then there was this ah-nine (not to be confused with numbernine). I thought that ah-nine was really hot, but I couldn’t possibly be having two at one go, could I? We had dinner in one of the hotel restaurants. It was a nice balmy night. And after a long walk, they had to go to work. It was embarrassing for Basketball Jones and me, but Harry Redknapp seemed to enjoy making us flustered. (In fact I was so flustered that after this was over, I spent 1-2 hours sitting in Coffee Bean, reading a book, doing things that I felt were normal, in order to exorcise away that feeling of being unclean.)
I don’t really know if people at work suspected anything, other than us going for lunch together and discussing the night before. My mother was getting upset, asking me why I stayed out so late at night, and so often. I asked her if she ever worried about that when I was not at home for 4 years.
A lot of them, you had your way with them, and at the end of the night, you gave them “tips”. It would maybe amount to $20, $30? The girls would go fondle a few male customers per night. I don’t know what the mathematics would be like. Did they have to give a cut to the owner, did they have to pay rents on their crowded apartments? I don’t know how often they had to go back home before they overstayed their visitor’s visa. One of the pubs that we went to brazenly called itself the “U-turn” pub. The beer was often expensive - $40 a jug. But you got different kinds of jugs there as well.
I felt that I hardly connected with the people around there. I didn’t really identify with them. Winnie seemed to like me. And she got upset when I played with more than 1 girl. She seemed like a nice girl, and I might have considered hooking up with her, but for the fact that we met under such circumstances. It’s true that when you know somebody likes you, that person immediately becomes more attractive. Well, at least she made me start to think about what I wanted my girlfriend to be like. I want to believe that she’s a nice person, but like that old saying, what’s a nice person like you doing in a place like this?
Harry Redknapp carried on his affair with Peach during this period. She wasn’t that pretty, and her face reminded me of Patricia Mok. But she had a good body. And sometimes Harry Redknapp would disappear just to carry on his tryst with her. I never really understood what happened to her after this whole episode was over, but I suppose we all understood that these things didn’t last forever.
I suppose it was nice to be able to shed your inhibitions in an environment like this. I kinda enjoyed the feeling that Harry Redknapp, Basketball Jones and I were buddies, we were quite literally partners in crime. Now I know where that term comes from. It was around the time of the World Cup, so we just had extra excuses to stay out late, we could say it was the World Cup. It wasn’t a good World Cup, though – the matches were quite boring.
I didn’t feel a thing. I didn’t think that much about Winnie. I sometimes wondered why she was so nice. Maybe she felt that deep down I wasn’t the sleazy type? Maybe I was a little unpredictable when playing with her, and she liked it? Most probably she saw that Harry Redknapp was so nice to Peach, and thought that I was possibly cut from the same cloth. Well she was wrong. And I have to say that Harry Redknapp has his way with the ladies. Basketball Jones kept on calling him his “idol”. But I wondered if it wasn’t at the same time a form of emotional manipulation, so that Harry Redknapp would still want to bring us out.
There’s nothing wrong with having an episode like this in your life. You watched those coming of age movies (one example is HHH’s “A Time to Live, a Time To Die”) and you had those teenage boys visiting prostitutes to be schooled in these sort of things. Well these were not prostitutes (and I did not shag anybody throughout these 2 months that these things were going on). But I was grateful to Harry Redknapp for showing me a different side of life in Singapore.
But much as I was grateful to him, I wasn’t completely eager for these things. I drew the line – after Basketball Jones returned to his homeland, all this was over. Joo Chiat, the Geylang tours, the late nights watching football. There was the small matter that Harry Redknapp was married with kids. One time, we even had lunch with his wife so that he could show her that what was going on was completely innocuous. The conversation was forced and stilted, I don’t think she was completely convinced.
And there was this thought at the back of my mind that I was never the sort of person who did this sort of things regularly. I enjoyed the fact that I was breaking convention like this. I always wanted to do naughty things. But was this a lifestyle? No way. I remember, there was once we went out, had a lot of hanky panky. The next evening, I was at the wedding dinner of one of my school friends, all straight-laced, civil servant types. The juxtaposition was just too glaring.
So I promised myself, this was the end. And it was. There were 1 or 2 trips after Basketball Jones was gone, and that was it. It’s not sinful to have a short period of time where you did all this stuff, but once you made a habit of it, you’ve crossed the line. And as much as this had to teach me about girls, sometimes it teaches you all the wrong lessons. Girls are never this submissive in real life. Things don’t work this way in real life. A lot of it wasn’t pleasant. It was a little distasteful towards the end. I only went with it because I felt that I had to.
Anyway, back to 2006. Shortly after Basketball Jones left, I got my act together and organized a department gathering. We had everybody go to East Coast Park. It was a nice, sunny day. I think I was also going through a period at work, where I was getting along fine. (Well I never got along that fantastically, but around that time was as good as it ever got.) A lot of barriers that had existed when I first started work were starting to crumble. I got to the point where I was comfortable going to work. This was not the same as saying that I was the model employee – I still fell short of that. But a lot of things that had seemed impossible now seemed possible. There were possibilities in the future.
The bunch of colleagues I had then, they were my favourite bunch. You could pick other colleagues who were there at different times, and say, some were smarter, some were more hard-working. But that batch was my favourite bunch. Maybe there was just a very high concentration of friendly people. By 2007, many of them were gone. By now, of course, most of them are gone, except 1 or 2 bosses.
However, just as in 92 or 99, I felt that I did not entirely fulfill the possibilities that were opened up during that year. After moving 2 steps forward, I often felt like there was the inevitable step back. 2006 marked the time when I started feeling comfortable with my job. Before that I was emphatically not comfortable in it. I was pissing off a lot of people and they returned the favour. It was a gradual process but 2006 was a watershed. In case you’re wondering, it was more the being part of a gang with Harry Redknapp and Basketball Jones than the hanky panky with the ladies, although it was the latter that made us a gang for a short period of time. I became comfortable with my job, but that was the danger: I became too comfortable in it, and that explains why, of this writing, I’m still in that job.
I’m only starting to come to terms with what I should have done after that, after losing a great deal of my emotional inhibitions in dealing with people. I’m wondering how I could have capitalized. I still don’t know the way forward. It’s all a blur.
A lot of times in America, I told myself, wouldn’t it be nice if I had the maturity of an older person, I could just go up to people and then work things out, make things happen. A lot of the times, I wanted to do that but something just stopped me. I ended up being a passive observer a lot. Well even as a passive observer I learnt an incredible amount of stuff. But I knew that the next step would be getting rid of my teenage awkwardness. Well it’s finally happened. Very late, but it’s happened.
When you look back upon it, it was a gradual change. It was nowhere as important to me as what happened during 92 or 99. But there was something there. I felt that it was easier for me to talk to people. I no longer had the knots in my stomach when approaching others, as I did in my earlier days. Whether or not that made me a better person, though, is something that’s highly open to debate.
In January of that year, my maternal grandmother died. It was actually a good thing, because she had been in a coma for 3.5 years. At the risk of sounding heartless I’m glad that her suffering was over. I met the cousins from the maternal side of the family, many of whom I had not seen regularly over the last 10 years. It turned out that we did get along. It was OK.
Around May of that year, Basketball Jones (I’m calling him that, but you guys should be able to guess who he is) asked me to join Harry Redknapp (ditto) and him at dinner. I thought, that’s a bit funny, but I did join in.
Basketball Jones was about to leave the department. He had just broken up. After a while I realized that he was in a state and he just needed people to go help him cheer up. I didn’t go, “hey that’s not fair people never do that kind of stuff for me”. I just thought, OK, let’s go.
After dinner, we ended up in a sleazy club in Joo Chiat. Harry Redknapp brought us there. Most of the bar girls were Vietnamese. Most were smart enough to have picked up Chinese, but a few of them didn’t know the language. I cynically thought, “well, I’m not going to waste time in here, am I?” So I grabbed somebody. It was OK, but it felt really strange to be groping a complete stranger, no matter how well-proportioned she was. I was looking a little enviously at Basketball Jones, because he got somebody I kinda fancied. But on subsequent visits I never saw her, and anyway we made it a point not to get girls that any other of us had been close to before.
It was kinda tiring, I got home after midnight, and the next morning had to get back to work. I remember meeting Basketball Jones in the hallway the next morning, we looked at each other and started laughing, and then we walked off without saying a word.
On the second visit, another girl came up to me and started fondling me. I told her to go away, but I took a second look at her, and said, “you’re OK”. Well there was this hanky panky. Let’s call her Winnie. At the same time, Basketball Jones had this girl, called her Apple, and he said that Apple reminded him of Fiona Xie. I don’t really know if that was healthy. He wasn’t having his way with Apple, wasn’t treating her like a sex object, the way that I was treating those who came up to me. I think that he had rebound-itis. (Rebound is a basketball term, is it not?) By then, Harry Redknapp had already found his regular, Peach, and was making her his mistress.
There was another trip, to Sentosa. Harry Redknapp got 4 girls (including to meet us there. It was very weird, what if people saw me? There was Winnie. There was Peach. Then there was this ah-nine (not to be confused with numbernine). I thought that ah-nine was really hot, but I couldn’t possibly be having two at one go, could I? We had dinner in one of the hotel restaurants. It was a nice balmy night. And after a long walk, they had to go to work. It was embarrassing for Basketball Jones and me, but Harry Redknapp seemed to enjoy making us flustered. (In fact I was so flustered that after this was over, I spent 1-2 hours sitting in Coffee Bean, reading a book, doing things that I felt were normal, in order to exorcise away that feeling of being unclean.)
I don’t really know if people at work suspected anything, other than us going for lunch together and discussing the night before. My mother was getting upset, asking me why I stayed out so late at night, and so often. I asked her if she ever worried about that when I was not at home for 4 years.
A lot of them, you had your way with them, and at the end of the night, you gave them “tips”. It would maybe amount to $20, $30? The girls would go fondle a few male customers per night. I don’t know what the mathematics would be like. Did they have to give a cut to the owner, did they have to pay rents on their crowded apartments? I don’t know how often they had to go back home before they overstayed their visitor’s visa. One of the pubs that we went to brazenly called itself the “U-turn” pub. The beer was often expensive - $40 a jug. But you got different kinds of jugs there as well.
I felt that I hardly connected with the people around there. I didn’t really identify with them. Winnie seemed to like me. And she got upset when I played with more than 1 girl. She seemed like a nice girl, and I might have considered hooking up with her, but for the fact that we met under such circumstances. It’s true that when you know somebody likes you, that person immediately becomes more attractive. Well, at least she made me start to think about what I wanted my girlfriend to be like. I want to believe that she’s a nice person, but like that old saying, what’s a nice person like you doing in a place like this?
Harry Redknapp carried on his affair with Peach during this period. She wasn’t that pretty, and her face reminded me of Patricia Mok. But she had a good body. And sometimes Harry Redknapp would disappear just to carry on his tryst with her. I never really understood what happened to her after this whole episode was over, but I suppose we all understood that these things didn’t last forever.
I suppose it was nice to be able to shed your inhibitions in an environment like this. I kinda enjoyed the feeling that Harry Redknapp, Basketball Jones and I were buddies, we were quite literally partners in crime. Now I know where that term comes from. It was around the time of the World Cup, so we just had extra excuses to stay out late, we could say it was the World Cup. It wasn’t a good World Cup, though – the matches were quite boring.
I didn’t feel a thing. I didn’t think that much about Winnie. I sometimes wondered why she was so nice. Maybe she felt that deep down I wasn’t the sleazy type? Maybe I was a little unpredictable when playing with her, and she liked it? Most probably she saw that Harry Redknapp was so nice to Peach, and thought that I was possibly cut from the same cloth. Well she was wrong. And I have to say that Harry Redknapp has his way with the ladies. Basketball Jones kept on calling him his “idol”. But I wondered if it wasn’t at the same time a form of emotional manipulation, so that Harry Redknapp would still want to bring us out.
There’s nothing wrong with having an episode like this in your life. You watched those coming of age movies (one example is HHH’s “A Time to Live, a Time To Die”) and you had those teenage boys visiting prostitutes to be schooled in these sort of things. Well these were not prostitutes (and I did not shag anybody throughout these 2 months that these things were going on). But I was grateful to Harry Redknapp for showing me a different side of life in Singapore.
But much as I was grateful to him, I wasn’t completely eager for these things. I drew the line – after Basketball Jones returned to his homeland, all this was over. Joo Chiat, the Geylang tours, the late nights watching football. There was the small matter that Harry Redknapp was married with kids. One time, we even had lunch with his wife so that he could show her that what was going on was completely innocuous. The conversation was forced and stilted, I don’t think she was completely convinced.
And there was this thought at the back of my mind that I was never the sort of person who did this sort of things regularly. I enjoyed the fact that I was breaking convention like this. I always wanted to do naughty things. But was this a lifestyle? No way. I remember, there was once we went out, had a lot of hanky panky. The next evening, I was at the wedding dinner of one of my school friends, all straight-laced, civil servant types. The juxtaposition was just too glaring.
So I promised myself, this was the end. And it was. There were 1 or 2 trips after Basketball Jones was gone, and that was it. It’s not sinful to have a short period of time where you did all this stuff, but once you made a habit of it, you’ve crossed the line. And as much as this had to teach me about girls, sometimes it teaches you all the wrong lessons. Girls are never this submissive in real life. Things don’t work this way in real life. A lot of it wasn’t pleasant. It was a little distasteful towards the end. I only went with it because I felt that I had to.
Anyway, back to 2006. Shortly after Basketball Jones left, I got my act together and organized a department gathering. We had everybody go to East Coast Park. It was a nice, sunny day. I think I was also going through a period at work, where I was getting along fine. (Well I never got along that fantastically, but around that time was as good as it ever got.) A lot of barriers that had existed when I first started work were starting to crumble. I got to the point where I was comfortable going to work. This was not the same as saying that I was the model employee – I still fell short of that. But a lot of things that had seemed impossible now seemed possible. There were possibilities in the future.
The bunch of colleagues I had then, they were my favourite bunch. You could pick other colleagues who were there at different times, and say, some were smarter, some were more hard-working. But that batch was my favourite bunch. Maybe there was just a very high concentration of friendly people. By 2007, many of them were gone. By now, of course, most of them are gone, except 1 or 2 bosses.
However, just as in 92 or 99, I felt that I did not entirely fulfill the possibilities that were opened up during that year. After moving 2 steps forward, I often felt like there was the inevitable step back. 2006 marked the time when I started feeling comfortable with my job. Before that I was emphatically not comfortable in it. I was pissing off a lot of people and they returned the favour. It was a gradual process but 2006 was a watershed. In case you’re wondering, it was more the being part of a gang with Harry Redknapp and Basketball Jones than the hanky panky with the ladies, although it was the latter that made us a gang for a short period of time. I became comfortable with my job, but that was the danger: I became too comfortable in it, and that explains why, of this writing, I’m still in that job.
I’m only starting to come to terms with what I should have done after that, after losing a great deal of my emotional inhibitions in dealing with people. I’m wondering how I could have capitalized. I still don’t know the way forward. It’s all a blur.
A lot of times in America, I told myself, wouldn’t it be nice if I had the maturity of an older person, I could just go up to people and then work things out, make things happen. A lot of the times, I wanted to do that but something just stopped me. I ended up being a passive observer a lot. Well even as a passive observer I learnt an incredible amount of stuff. But I knew that the next step would be getting rid of my teenage awkwardness. Well it’s finally happened. Very late, but it’s happened.
Cubicles
I’ve sat in 2 different cubicles. I don’t believe in Fengshui, but I believe that your cubicle influences your fate. Actually I sat in a 3rd cubicle for a few weeks before I was kicked out by some other guy who had to expand his office, and what do you know, he himself eventually got kicked out of his office too.
The fate of the first cubicle that I sat in is that they are not suited for work at my company. The first person who sat in that seat left before long. I languished in that cubicle for 3 years before earning the right to move out. Honest face took over my seat that the cubicle, and he did well in his job. But he left the company before he could get rotated. Then a 3rd guy went there, got rotated, but he got in over his head, so he came back.
What I believe is that the fate of my second cubicle is this: people who move on from this cubicle will move into better things. That cubicle was occupied by people whose intelligence and drive I respect. So I’m glad to be amongst their number. One of them is now a professor, and the other two are managers. This is wishful thinking, that I’ll do well if and when I leave my company, I suppose.
The cubicle that was occupied by ghost - . The first one there was Water tap, who you know is doing pretty well right now in another department. The second one was another guy who went to another department and also did well. Then there was ghost, and I can’t tell how well he did in that other department because he didn’t stay long. And now, it is occupied by somebody who’s actually in that other department – call him solar power.
(btw I was in solar power’s cubicle the other day, and on the white board, were written 2 large words. “Listen. Understand.” Those are very wise words. I have always felt that the other department people (yes I’m using “other department” as a code word and you should know the meaning of that code word by now) have a kind of wisdom, a keen grasp and understanding of how things are going to work in real life. Some abilities I wish my own bosses had.)
I was thinking about the people who sat in Shingot’s cubicle. The first one moved out soon, and shingot took his place. Then shingot had a long stay in that cubicle, and now he’s replaced by somebody else. Not sure what these 3 people have in common, but I think they do work that is well regarded in the company.
Nat’s old cubicle, the one where he stayed for the longest time – I can’t tell what that cubicle means, since the last one who occupied his cubicle was somebody who was a rising star until an unfortunate incident curtailed his rise. Then he had to leave the company and he prospered outside.
His new cubicle was unoccupied for a long time, but the only other person who used that one on a permanent basis was a chick who left the company for a lucrative job.
Anyway, that other day I was doing a tarot reading on various things. So I decided to do a tarot reading about my current work. It was sufficiently accurate that I’m including it here (although some parts are wrong.) I especially like the chariot part – success through hard work.
The card not shown but at the center of the cross, represents the atmosphere surrounding the central issue. Four of Swords, when reversed.
The card visible at the center of the cross represents the obstacle that stands in your way - it may even be something that sounds good but is not actually to your benefit. The Tower
The card at the top of the cross represents your goal, or the best you can achieve without a dramatic change of priorities. The Chariot.
The card at the bottom of the cross represents the foundation on which the situation is based. The Moon.
The card at the left of the cross represents a passing influence or something to be released. Two of Wands, when reversed.
The card at the right of the cross represents an approaching influence or something to be embraced. Seven of Swords .
The card at the base of the staff represents your role or attitude. Queen of Cups.
The card second from the bottom of the staff represents your environment and the people you are interacting with. Knight of Swords, when reversed.
The card second from the top of the staff represents your hopes, fears, or an unexpected element that will come into play. Five of Swords.
The card at the top of the staff represents the ultimate outcome should you continue on this course. Five of Cups .
The fate of the first cubicle that I sat in is that they are not suited for work at my company. The first person who sat in that seat left before long. I languished in that cubicle for 3 years before earning the right to move out. Honest face took over my seat that the cubicle, and he did well in his job. But he left the company before he could get rotated. Then a 3rd guy went there, got rotated, but he got in over his head, so he came back.
What I believe is that the fate of my second cubicle is this: people who move on from this cubicle will move into better things. That cubicle was occupied by people whose intelligence and drive I respect. So I’m glad to be amongst their number. One of them is now a professor, and the other two are managers. This is wishful thinking, that I’ll do well if and when I leave my company, I suppose.
The cubicle that was occupied by ghost - . The first one there was Water tap, who you know is doing pretty well right now in another department. The second one was another guy who went to another department and also did well. Then there was ghost, and I can’t tell how well he did in that other department because he didn’t stay long. And now, it is occupied by somebody who’s actually in that other department – call him solar power.
(btw I was in solar power’s cubicle the other day, and on the white board, were written 2 large words. “Listen. Understand.” Those are very wise words. I have always felt that the other department people (yes I’m using “other department” as a code word and you should know the meaning of that code word by now) have a kind of wisdom, a keen grasp and understanding of how things are going to work in real life. Some abilities I wish my own bosses had.)
I was thinking about the people who sat in Shingot’s cubicle. The first one moved out soon, and shingot took his place. Then shingot had a long stay in that cubicle, and now he’s replaced by somebody else. Not sure what these 3 people have in common, but I think they do work that is well regarded in the company.
Nat’s old cubicle, the one where he stayed for the longest time – I can’t tell what that cubicle means, since the last one who occupied his cubicle was somebody who was a rising star until an unfortunate incident curtailed his rise. Then he had to leave the company and he prospered outside.
His new cubicle was unoccupied for a long time, but the only other person who used that one on a permanent basis was a chick who left the company for a lucrative job.
Anyway, that other day I was doing a tarot reading on various things. So I decided to do a tarot reading about my current work. It was sufficiently accurate that I’m including it here (although some parts are wrong.) I especially like the chariot part – success through hard work.
The card not shown but at the center of the cross, represents the atmosphere surrounding the central issue. Four of Swords, when reversed.
The card visible at the center of the cross represents the obstacle that stands in your way - it may even be something that sounds good but is not actually to your benefit. The Tower
The card at the top of the cross represents your goal, or the best you can achieve without a dramatic change of priorities. The Chariot.
The card at the bottom of the cross represents the foundation on which the situation is based. The Moon.
The card at the left of the cross represents a passing influence or something to be released. Two of Wands, when reversed.
The card at the right of the cross represents an approaching influence or something to be embraced. Seven of Swords .
The card at the base of the staff represents your role or attitude. Queen of Cups.
The card second from the bottom of the staff represents your environment and the people you are interacting with. Knight of Swords, when reversed.
The card second from the top of the staff represents your hopes, fears, or an unexpected element that will come into play. Five of Swords.
The card at the top of the staff represents the ultimate outcome should you continue on this course. Five of Cups .
Sunday, 10 January 2010
Tryout: comeback band.
This was a case of somebody actually coming up to me and asking me if I was interested in helping her out for something. She actually was one of the indie bands in the 90s (when there were much fewer such bands than as now). Now she’s trying to make a comeback, and wanted a music arranger. She thought that I was qualified. I didn’t know. But I said yes anyway just to see what would happen.
She sent me a composition. I was quite “meh” about it. OK, I’m quite ego about my abilities but it’s really not that easy to write a song that’s interesting to listen to. That’s why when you claim to be a songwriter, people are immediately sceptical – it’s one of the most difficult skills to master. I know because I spent years (on and off) trying to figure it out.
She didn’t look like a star. I suppose you could say this about most indie rock people. We were in a studio (directly opposite the road from where I jammed with the post-rock guys). As usual, everybody’s either Chinese or Malay.
The song had an Arabic flavour to it, but I didn’t know much about Arabic music other than the call to prayer. I tried to play stuff. I’m a little sneaky so I usually try to bury my parts in the mix. Keyboards shouldn’t be louder than the guitars anyway. I played something that they said sounded like a horror soundtrack. Like the 2nd tryout, I’m never certain whether I passed the audition.
The last run-through got taped, and unfortunately that’s when I goofed up the most. The drummer left early. Later on, I learnt that he was a Berklee grad and knew the leader of the fusion band. And that he was drumming for some other band that I had never heard of but nevertheless had a really snazzy looking site.
We took the MRT. This was the first time I heard of the term “bouncing”, which means you take the MRT to Marina Bay so that you can get all the empty seats there. The 2 guitarists were taking the train all the way to Woodlands and Jurong East. The guy asked me if I was planning on getting a keyboard soon, I was non-commital. I think I have to do the job.
One thing that disturbed me that night came when they were about to pay up for the studio. The studio had gone through 5 or 6 owners over the last few years, and now, it was owned by a gang of 6 siblings. Apparently they were barely making enough to cover the costs of rental. It made me feel a bit bad because I know of a friend who owned a shophouse. He rented it out to a dance school, and when the dance school did not succeed financially, there were a lot of problems with the tenant, who didn’t (and couldn’t) pay up. You are supposed to pay the rent every month but I knew that the tenant was being bled dry.
It will be the same story everywhere. Creative types are always struggling to make ends meet. It's the cold, soulless work that's really lucrative in life.
I’m actually much less bullish now about my prospects of a musical career. What can I do that will still allow me to balance with my work? At least by trying out with a few bands, I actually have a feel of what the music scene is like. But I'm not doing this full time. I'm actually balancing this against having a job, at least 1 other ECA, and, if I were to go down this path, attempting to find a chick. I don't think I have time for more than 1 band. And it increasingly looks as though that band would be the first band I tried out for (ie the fusion band).
And furthermore, that band might not necessarily allow me to do my own music. (either because they might not ask me to write for them, or because my stuff is not going to fit in with their stuff.) In that case I might as well increase my capabilities of how to make music with my computer.
She sent me a composition. I was quite “meh” about it. OK, I’m quite ego about my abilities but it’s really not that easy to write a song that’s interesting to listen to. That’s why when you claim to be a songwriter, people are immediately sceptical – it’s one of the most difficult skills to master. I know because I spent years (on and off) trying to figure it out.
She didn’t look like a star. I suppose you could say this about most indie rock people. We were in a studio (directly opposite the road from where I jammed with the post-rock guys). As usual, everybody’s either Chinese or Malay.
The song had an Arabic flavour to it, but I didn’t know much about Arabic music other than the call to prayer. I tried to play stuff. I’m a little sneaky so I usually try to bury my parts in the mix. Keyboards shouldn’t be louder than the guitars anyway. I played something that they said sounded like a horror soundtrack. Like the 2nd tryout, I’m never certain whether I passed the audition.
The last run-through got taped, and unfortunately that’s when I goofed up the most. The drummer left early. Later on, I learnt that he was a Berklee grad and knew the leader of the fusion band. And that he was drumming for some other band that I had never heard of but nevertheless had a really snazzy looking site.
We took the MRT. This was the first time I heard of the term “bouncing”, which means you take the MRT to Marina Bay so that you can get all the empty seats there. The 2 guitarists were taking the train all the way to Woodlands and Jurong East. The guy asked me if I was planning on getting a keyboard soon, I was non-commital. I think I have to do the job.
One thing that disturbed me that night came when they were about to pay up for the studio. The studio had gone through 5 or 6 owners over the last few years, and now, it was owned by a gang of 6 siblings. Apparently they were barely making enough to cover the costs of rental. It made me feel a bit bad because I know of a friend who owned a shophouse. He rented it out to a dance school, and when the dance school did not succeed financially, there were a lot of problems with the tenant, who didn’t (and couldn’t) pay up. You are supposed to pay the rent every month but I knew that the tenant was being bled dry.
It will be the same story everywhere. Creative types are always struggling to make ends meet. It's the cold, soulless work that's really lucrative in life.
I’m actually much less bullish now about my prospects of a musical career. What can I do that will still allow me to balance with my work? At least by trying out with a few bands, I actually have a feel of what the music scene is like. But I'm not doing this full time. I'm actually balancing this against having a job, at least 1 other ECA, and, if I were to go down this path, attempting to find a chick. I don't think I have time for more than 1 band. And it increasingly looks as though that band would be the first band I tried out for (ie the fusion band).
And furthermore, that band might not necessarily allow me to do my own music. (either because they might not ask me to write for them, or because my stuff is not going to fit in with their stuff.) In that case I might as well increase my capabilities of how to make music with my computer.
Friday, 8 January 2010
The Fall
On impulse I picked up a book the other day. I actually considered buying a few other books, but they were thin enough that I could read them by borrowing them from the library. But this one caught my eye, “Savage Grace”, which was about how a really rich family met its downfall. It involved the incest between a mother and a son. Kinda perverse, which was why I wondered what the hell I was thinking. This will inspire me to write another blog entry about the meaning of being rich and famous, but for now, this entry is about peoples’ downfalls.
I never had a Christian name. When I was born, I was registered almost immediately, which explains why I have a really low NRIC number. My mother told my father the English name that she wanted to give me (It was “Jeremy”) but my father was half deaf, and went ahead to register me without the English name. (Now my father’s one good ear is beginning to fail him, and this is a source of friction in the family because everybody needs to raise their voice to make sure that he gets heard.)
There was another time when I thought I would get an English name. This time I chose Fred, as in Frederic Chopin, or Fred Flintstone, or George William Frederick Hegel (OK, I made that one up, because I was 8 at that time, I didn’t know Hegel).
However, that name did not suit me either. I felt uncomfortable with it. In fact, I feel uncomfortable with a lot of names because I don’t think they capture my personality very well. As you can see, in this blog, I actually named myself after a number. That’s OK, because we all know that numbers mean nothing. I don’t really like my real name either because I think it’s too egoistic. (Now the fact that I can be egoistic in real life does not mean that I like to have an egoistic name, and moreover all those of you who know me well understand that I am only egoistic half of the time, and the other half I am quite happy to remain anonymous.)
The last straw came when I had somebody in my class whose name was Frederick. I looked at myself, I looked at that guy, I didn’t dislike that guy, but he and I absolutely do not have anything in common with each other. That was the last I heard of that name. By secondary school, nobody knew that I ever used that name.
Well the other Frederick has hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons. I heard a few rumours a few years back concerning a messy divorce. But nothing very much, nothing substantial, and I cannot say anything for sure.
But based on what I have pieced together: the charge is believed to be about making advances to a female subordinate. It could be "sexual harrassment". Somebody had been mean enough to blag to the whole world about it, so people knew. I'm sure SAF officers commit indiscretions all the time, but as long as they can be kept silent, they will. Not for this guy, I suppose.
I knew the guy in primary school. We went to different secondary schools, so that’s the extent of my knowledge. He was a prefect back then, and he clearly had leadership potential. We always made fun of him because he always used to give a lot of speeches in class, and he was the one who always seemed to be a future politician. (Now you know why I say I have almost nothing in common with him.) In some ways, we were not wrong.
Yet there were quite a few people who detected something rather smarmy about him, some tendency to be too polished and insincere to people. I didn’t feel that, but what did I know in those days? So he was both widely liked and widely disliked. There was a lot of “Frederick, you know…” and then a rolling of eyes. And I knew that he was quite the lady's man, this was apparent right from the onset of puberty.
I wasn’t close friends with him. So I didn’t know him that well. But it’s not fun to see these sort of things happen to people you used to know from more than 20 years ago.
Edit:
An update on what I now know about the Frederick Teo incident. He was sentenced to a fine of $6000. Some ppl I was with felt that he got away with it lightly, but I think, given that people would be surprised to see him being charged for what is after all his own private business, that on balance, that is probably fair. I don't think that he's got a long term future in the SAF. I think they didn't punish him too much partly because this affair was a consensual affair.
I never had a Christian name. When I was born, I was registered almost immediately, which explains why I have a really low NRIC number. My mother told my father the English name that she wanted to give me (It was “Jeremy”) but my father was half deaf, and went ahead to register me without the English name. (Now my father’s one good ear is beginning to fail him, and this is a source of friction in the family because everybody needs to raise their voice to make sure that he gets heard.)
There was another time when I thought I would get an English name. This time I chose Fred, as in Frederic Chopin, or Fred Flintstone, or George William Frederick Hegel (OK, I made that one up, because I was 8 at that time, I didn’t know Hegel).
However, that name did not suit me either. I felt uncomfortable with it. In fact, I feel uncomfortable with a lot of names because I don’t think they capture my personality very well. As you can see, in this blog, I actually named myself after a number. That’s OK, because we all know that numbers mean nothing. I don’t really like my real name either because I think it’s too egoistic. (Now the fact that I can be egoistic in real life does not mean that I like to have an egoistic name, and moreover all those of you who know me well understand that I am only egoistic half of the time, and the other half I am quite happy to remain anonymous.)
The last straw came when I had somebody in my class whose name was Frederick. I looked at myself, I looked at that guy, I didn’t dislike that guy, but he and I absolutely do not have anything in common with each other. That was the last I heard of that name. By secondary school, nobody knew that I ever used that name.
Well the other Frederick has hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons. I heard a few rumours a few years back concerning a messy divorce. But nothing very much, nothing substantial, and I cannot say anything for sure.
But based on what I have pieced together: the charge is believed to be about making advances to a female subordinate. It could be "sexual harrassment". Somebody had been mean enough to blag to the whole world about it, so people knew. I'm sure SAF officers commit indiscretions all the time, but as long as they can be kept silent, they will. Not for this guy, I suppose.
I knew the guy in primary school. We went to different secondary schools, so that’s the extent of my knowledge. He was a prefect back then, and he clearly had leadership potential. We always made fun of him because he always used to give a lot of speeches in class, and he was the one who always seemed to be a future politician. (Now you know why I say I have almost nothing in common with him.) In some ways, we were not wrong.
Yet there were quite a few people who detected something rather smarmy about him, some tendency to be too polished and insincere to people. I didn’t feel that, but what did I know in those days? So he was both widely liked and widely disliked. There was a lot of “Frederick, you know…” and then a rolling of eyes. And I knew that he was quite the lady's man, this was apparent right from the onset of puberty.
I wasn’t close friends with him. So I didn’t know him that well. But it’s not fun to see these sort of things happen to people you used to know from more than 20 years ago.
Edit:
An update on what I now know about the Frederick Teo incident. He was sentenced to a fine of $6000. Some ppl I was with felt that he got away with it lightly, but I think, given that people would be surprised to see him being charged for what is after all his own private business, that on balance, that is probably fair. I don't think that he's got a long term future in the SAF. I think they didn't punish him too much partly because this affair was a consensual affair.
Saturday, 2 January 2010
Same Old Shit
My workplace was once featured in a documentary. For convenience, I will call it “the factory”. It was an exciting place, for a half hour documentary. It was a very complex place with plenty of complex systems in it. The amount of effort that went into the work at that factory was tremendous. You had hardworking and dedicated people, all striving to meet deadlines in a really intricate dance with each other.
But one sentence sums up the existential truth of our situation. It was this one line: “The shift ends, and next shift takes over. The process begins all over again.”
This story is not new. The Greeks had a character called Sisyphus, who was punished by the Gods by having to push a boulder up a slope every day, only to have it roll down to the bottom at the end. That is our existential situation. That's life. That's adult life.
Happy new year guys.
But one sentence sums up the existential truth of our situation. It was this one line: “The shift ends, and next shift takes over. The process begins all over again.”
This story is not new. The Greeks had a character called Sisyphus, who was punished by the Gods by having to push a boulder up a slope every day, only to have it roll down to the bottom at the end. That is our existential situation. That's life. That's adult life.
Happy new year guys.
Friday, 1 January 2010
Crude But Effective
The bookshelf I bought 3 years ago is looking to be quite filmsy. Within a year one of the shelves had already broken up. The material that they used to make this shelf is quite remarkable, it's very light and very strong, and this is probably the biggest bookshelf I've ever seen. But the bookshelf is only as good as its weakest point, and in this case some of the weakest points are the pins that are holding the bookshelf together.
It may have been due to my pushing that bookshelf 20 cm to the right in order to rearrange my room 1 month back, but some of the pins were no longer holding up the bookshelves, and they were now resting on the lower shelves. The pins are intact, but the holes where the pins were resting were sagging and were no longer holding the pins in their proper place.
I tried to match the broken pins to the broken shelf, and change the positions of the shelves, so that the pins were placed in fresh holes. In this way I got to salvage all but 1 shelf. This operation involved moving out 3 shelves of books. I was about to finish the operation, when one of the shelves got stuck when I tried to move it out. After yanking out the shelf forcefully, I found out that one of the pins was missing.
Afterwards I tore my hair out trying to locate the missing pin. Without the pin, it seemed that I would not be able to put the shelf back. After messing up half of my room in the process, I gave up and tried to look for other solutions. I found that we had other pins, and they belonged to the other type of bookshelf. But these pins were larger and fatter than those for this bookshelf. Eventually, I found a solution. The ruptured holes were bigger, and using a hammer, I forced the larger pin into the hole. (I know this sounds like kinky sex but bear with me. This is like an Asian woman having sex with a black man.) Turns out that the bookshelf is made of soft plywood, which allowed me to do crazy stuff like that. So I bashed the large pins all the way in. To my immense surprise, the whole thing worked.
This has confirmed in my mind that there is no problem in the world that cannot be solved by violence. Using a hammer and bashing your way through is truly the way to solve all problems. When they knighted Sir Alex Ferguson, they gave him a CBE, and I always thought that it refers to his methods of man-management: crude but effective.
So I have a properly functioning bookshelf again. Which is good. But now my room is in a mess.
Edit: found the !@#$ missing pin but I still think the CBE fix was necessary.
It may have been due to my pushing that bookshelf 20 cm to the right in order to rearrange my room 1 month back, but some of the pins were no longer holding up the bookshelves, and they were now resting on the lower shelves. The pins are intact, but the holes where the pins were resting were sagging and were no longer holding the pins in their proper place.
I tried to match the broken pins to the broken shelf, and change the positions of the shelves, so that the pins were placed in fresh holes. In this way I got to salvage all but 1 shelf. This operation involved moving out 3 shelves of books. I was about to finish the operation, when one of the shelves got stuck when I tried to move it out. After yanking out the shelf forcefully, I found out that one of the pins was missing.
Afterwards I tore my hair out trying to locate the missing pin. Without the pin, it seemed that I would not be able to put the shelf back. After messing up half of my room in the process, I gave up and tried to look for other solutions. I found that we had other pins, and they belonged to the other type of bookshelf. But these pins were larger and fatter than those for this bookshelf. Eventually, I found a solution. The ruptured holes were bigger, and using a hammer, I forced the larger pin into the hole. (I know this sounds like kinky sex but bear with me. This is like an Asian woman having sex with a black man.) Turns out that the bookshelf is made of soft plywood, which allowed me to do crazy stuff like that. So I bashed the large pins all the way in. To my immense surprise, the whole thing worked.
This has confirmed in my mind that there is no problem in the world that cannot be solved by violence. Using a hammer and bashing your way through is truly the way to solve all problems. When they knighted Sir Alex Ferguson, they gave him a CBE, and I always thought that it refers to his methods of man-management: crude but effective.
So I have a properly functioning bookshelf again. Which is good. But now my room is in a mess.
Edit: found the !@#$ missing pin but I still think the CBE fix was necessary.
Computer game walkthroughs
I played computer games as a kid. Not very many of them, only a few. I stopped playing them when I was 15. Actually I still play PC games like solitaire, minesweeper, freecell etc but I only restrict myself to them. I thought that there are a lot of other things you can do with your real life other than play games.
It was never a straightforward thing where I just enjoyed playing computer games. I always had at least some guilt about playing them. Maybe they detracted from my spending every possible hour studying, or maybe it was just my having a little more fun than my parents thought I had a right to. Whatever. To give a sense of perspective, I feel less guilt jerking off nowadays than I did in those days playing computer games.
It used to be that my mother would give me a hard time for playing computer games too much, yet at the same time she is one of the most compulsive players of computer games I have ever seen. She would play bridge with people online until 2 in the morning, and yet when I come back in the wee hours of the morning, after finishing off 100 pages of books (you may laugh but I’m a slow reader) she says that I’m not living a decent life. In another day and age I might have taken her comments to heart but I’m old enough to see those comments as what they are – absolute nonsense.
Anyway I have since concluded that computer games don’t really do very much for you. They shut you away from people. (But those were the pre-internet days, so I’m not sure now.) They take up your time. You don’t really accomplish much. A game does suck you in. The colourful graphics seduce you. It’s called “adventure” even though you are being holed up in your room as you play.
I play platform games, even though my hand co-ordination is not very good – people out there can finish 3 or 4 games in the time I take to finish one. But it’s the discovery of secrets that fascinate me. (This is one reason why I still believe today that I should be a scientist.) Hidden trapdoors. What happens when you pull this lever? Secret rooms. Secret weaknesses of powerful monsters.
Sometimes I suspect: is my preparation for the marathon nothing more than a glorified computer game? I finish level 1 (half marathon), I try level 2. If I finish level 2 I win a medal, and then I have this medal to brag about for the rest of my life. That’s pretty much it. I think about what I have achieved when finishing a computer game. The end of the game scenes for computer games are notoriously disappointing. You spend hours – 30? 40? – of your precious time and energy trying to get to the end, and all you get is Mario Plumber getting the princess. OK, you know that Mario is a plumber and will inevitably end up checking out her pipes but it is a letdown. The only reward for finishing a game, is the getting there. Is this the same for my attempt to run a marathon?
I seldom date people. But there was one time on the afternoon before I was to meet Teapot, I finished playing one computer game. My reasoning was this: even if nothing further took place because of our encounter, at least I could claim to have saved the world. I felt good about myself.
A blogger friend of mine (actually he’s my old classmate) wanted to fulfill an old dream of his and started a game software company. I wonder how he’s doing now.
When you play world of warcraft (and there were a bunch of guys who used to play WOW during lunchtime at my place even though I wasn’t one of them) you will see a lot of gold miners. If you study history, then you might find that when Columbus discovered the New World, and subsequent Spanish discoverers found that those lands had plenty of gold, all the Indians were enslaved and made to work full time mining gold. In a way, the quest for gold in computer games can be considered a celebration of genocide. But I digress…
I found a new hobby: when you go looking through youtube, for many computer games you will find “walkthrough” where most computer games are solved, and the action recorded down. It’s a crazy feeling, seeing all those puzzles you agonized over – 10, 20 years ago solved in front of you, just like that. It is a wonderful feeling. There is a lot of closure, as though something, somewhere clicked, and you feel like you can move on.
I think that once you have finished with something you must turn away and never go back. Old computer games. Old girlfriends. Old hobbies. (I will never write another play, or run another marathon.) You will have the memories, but they have to remain as memories.
Conan Volta
A shitty little game but I liked this one. Always wanted to know what lay beyond level 3. Who would have guessed that Conan is now the Governor of California?
Rick Dangerous
I have a colleague whose name is Ricky and when I first saw him I was like, "wow, he looks just like Rick Dangerous.
Rick Dangerous 2
Immortal
Maniac Mansion
This is a great game. I'm showing you the sickest part of the game, which involves a hamster.
Lost Vikings
A good thinking game.
Next: Jet Grind Radio, Gods, Leisure Suit Larry, Heretic, Rampage, Castle of Illusion.
It was never a straightforward thing where I just enjoyed playing computer games. I always had at least some guilt about playing them. Maybe they detracted from my spending every possible hour studying, or maybe it was just my having a little more fun than my parents thought I had a right to. Whatever. To give a sense of perspective, I feel less guilt jerking off nowadays than I did in those days playing computer games.
It used to be that my mother would give me a hard time for playing computer games too much, yet at the same time she is one of the most compulsive players of computer games I have ever seen. She would play bridge with people online until 2 in the morning, and yet when I come back in the wee hours of the morning, after finishing off 100 pages of books (you may laugh but I’m a slow reader) she says that I’m not living a decent life. In another day and age I might have taken her comments to heart but I’m old enough to see those comments as what they are – absolute nonsense.
Anyway I have since concluded that computer games don’t really do very much for you. They shut you away from people. (But those were the pre-internet days, so I’m not sure now.) They take up your time. You don’t really accomplish much. A game does suck you in. The colourful graphics seduce you. It’s called “adventure” even though you are being holed up in your room as you play.
I play platform games, even though my hand co-ordination is not very good – people out there can finish 3 or 4 games in the time I take to finish one. But it’s the discovery of secrets that fascinate me. (This is one reason why I still believe today that I should be a scientist.) Hidden trapdoors. What happens when you pull this lever? Secret rooms. Secret weaknesses of powerful monsters.
Sometimes I suspect: is my preparation for the marathon nothing more than a glorified computer game? I finish level 1 (half marathon), I try level 2. If I finish level 2 I win a medal, and then I have this medal to brag about for the rest of my life. That’s pretty much it. I think about what I have achieved when finishing a computer game. The end of the game scenes for computer games are notoriously disappointing. You spend hours – 30? 40? – of your precious time and energy trying to get to the end, and all you get is Mario Plumber getting the princess. OK, you know that Mario is a plumber and will inevitably end up checking out her pipes but it is a letdown. The only reward for finishing a game, is the getting there. Is this the same for my attempt to run a marathon?
I seldom date people. But there was one time on the afternoon before I was to meet Teapot, I finished playing one computer game. My reasoning was this: even if nothing further took place because of our encounter, at least I could claim to have saved the world. I felt good about myself.
A blogger friend of mine (actually he’s my old classmate) wanted to fulfill an old dream of his and started a game software company. I wonder how he’s doing now.
When you play world of warcraft (and there were a bunch of guys who used to play WOW during lunchtime at my place even though I wasn’t one of them) you will see a lot of gold miners. If you study history, then you might find that when Columbus discovered the New World, and subsequent Spanish discoverers found that those lands had plenty of gold, all the Indians were enslaved and made to work full time mining gold. In a way, the quest for gold in computer games can be considered a celebration of genocide. But I digress…
I found a new hobby: when you go looking through youtube, for many computer games you will find “walkthrough” where most computer games are solved, and the action recorded down. It’s a crazy feeling, seeing all those puzzles you agonized over – 10, 20 years ago solved in front of you, just like that. It is a wonderful feeling. There is a lot of closure, as though something, somewhere clicked, and you feel like you can move on.
I think that once you have finished with something you must turn away and never go back. Old computer games. Old girlfriends. Old hobbies. (I will never write another play, or run another marathon.) You will have the memories, but they have to remain as memories.
Conan Volta
A shitty little game but I liked this one. Always wanted to know what lay beyond level 3. Who would have guessed that Conan is now the Governor of California?
Rick Dangerous
I have a colleague whose name is Ricky and when I first saw him I was like, "wow, he looks just like Rick Dangerous.
Rick Dangerous 2
Immortal
Maniac Mansion
This is a great game. I'm showing you the sickest part of the game, which involves a hamster.
Lost Vikings
A good thinking game.
Next: Jet Grind Radio, Gods, Leisure Suit Larry, Heretic, Rampage, Castle of Illusion.
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