the silence of unwritten letters

i am so lazy that i'm just pasting my friend's email. it's the extent of our plans so far anyway:

Maybe we leave right after trinity service on Sunday? Or else right after the game? Not sure, but we can round out the remaining time in NYC or keep driving.

oh, and apart from that, i'm also going to princeton for the football game this weekend.

but first i need to get my homework done. after all these years, still doing homework. thinking back i always wonder how i managed to finish all my homework. don't you? at least 12 years worth of homework, if you're done with the singapore education system. if you stack all your homework together, it'd probably be as high as ... i don't know, the height of your primary school? like four storeys? mind-boggling huh.

in the past two weeks i did many things for the first time:

wrote a paper on the frankfurt school/critical theory
went crazy at a scavenger hunt
played flip cup
attended a sorority mixer
went sakae bombing
played wiffle ball with kids
told my life story
went to an 80s dance (see picture above. and yes, i know we don't look that 80s.)
felt grateful to the police
played madden 95 (sad but true)
got invited to a christian event by an agnostic

and that's just two weeks. for now i'd really have to say yale is a great place to be. if only there wasn't so much awkwardness and adjustment in the early years.

my entrance here, like for so many others, was clouded in a burst of youthful enthusiasm. had we known what each scene was about, we'd probably have chosen differently. but i guess that's life - an endless improvisation of imperfect information.

addendum:
(and what are the scenes? there's the a capella scene, the varsity sports scene, the frat boy scene, the social justice scene, the theater scene, the residential college scene, the christian scene, the asian scene, the af-am scene, the latino scene, the political parties scene, the gay scene, the hardcore science scene, and a couple more i don't know about. it's fascinating social psychology.)

junior year has been really hectic, but fun, fulfilling and all that too. i haven't willingly ie. happily gone from thing to thing to thing since my raffles days. that's a long time ago.

one more thought: the more comfortable i get here, the harder it will be to leave. the gothic architecture that i take for granted. the cashless (aka just show your yale id) life. the same few late night places always. the luxury of meeting friends for meals all the time. how walking is enough to get anywhere. awww.

there are some things i packed to ensure my sanity over the course of the summer. namely, my mac, my ipod, my bible, my diary and my clotrimazole cream.

there are some things i've bought here because they were entirely necessary. a good novel, taxi rides at 2 in the morning, and more clotrimazole cream (which has proved frustratingly ineffectual so far).

and there are some things that i just can't get a hold of. my guitar - any guitar for that matter -, and the two fellas who share parents with me.

i need to shoot the crap with you guys. we don't just share parents. think foosball, music, philosophy, education, class, clothes, shoes and secrets.

my mum just got back from hongkong, and i'm flying there tomorrow morning. meanwhile, my dad is on his way to london. the other members of my family are at a concert and studying respectively (although who's doing what is sort of a surprise).

it's like how sitcoms last for ten seasons at most. time can be suspended, but not indefinitely.

a friend, who will move to new york to start a career with mckinsey in the fall, asked me today,

"if i don't do well as a consultant, if i'm not able to be what they want me to be, do you think i will lose my friends?"

to me, new york is the place that has taught someone i used to respect the meaning of arrogance - last time i visited, he told me, with palpable disdain, what the projects were. "that's where they put all the plebeians," he said, without a hint of irony.

new york is the place that causes break-ups (think "the devil wears prada") because it teaches you that even though your boss is a modern day slave-trader, it's all good. "it will be worth it," you say.

new york is the place that breeds insecurity through advertising, and cures it with consumerism.

in high school it was whether you were on the track team. at yale, it's whether you will make it to a society. and when you get to new york, it's whether you wear a power suit. it's all the same game, just a different name.

life will be miserable if we don't rise above this petty elitism. and we, are of all the most pitiable, because we have been winning all this while.

a couple of weeks ago, i went camping with a bunch of guys. and i am now inspired to create more lists.

why the outdoors in temperate new england is more appealing than in tropical singapore
1. less mosquitoes
2. not as sticky
3. easier to start a fire
4. air guns are not illegal
5. we also threw an axe at a tree for fun - i swear it's more interesting than it sounds

why camping without girls is more fun
1. grilled hotdogs and chips - no salad
2. stories of conquest around the campfire
3. going all out at capture the flag/frisbee/soccer
4. no one complains if you wear the same clothes again
5. no one even notices.

and the one thing you can do, temperate or tropical, girls allowed or boys only: get away, step off the wheel and spend time with God, with friends. priceless.

assorted generalizations about europe:
1. the food tastes better. it's not just ketchup and mustard.
2. so people take their time to eat.
3. as a result, people also take their time with everything - from getting to know friends to getting their work done.
4. this is both delightful and frustrating.
5. when life gets so good, it's easy to be smugly satisfied.
6. hence the post-christianism we talk about all the time.
7. it is such a paradox.

many things happened on my jaunt to europe. and i'll probably be too busy to upload pictures for some time to come. but here's a perfect moment: a nap in the sun, on the french riviera. it doesn't get much better than this.

blessed be your name, when the sun's shining down on me, when the world's all as it should be... blessed be your name.

and it goes on to say: blessed be your name, when i'm found in the desert place, though i walk throught the wilderness ... blessed be your name. that's just what i need now.

recently, i have been inundated with facebook friend requests from the cyber chic city i call home. i think facebook in singapore is about to reach the tipping point soon. it'll explode in about may of this year. so when it does, don't pretend you heard it somewhere else.

basically, facebook is like the fax machine. it is only useful if other people have it. that's why people on facebook keep inviting their non-facebook friends to join. cos you don't want to look like a loser who has no friends.

so, if you like to look at your friends' photos, see who their friends are, look at your friends' friends' photos, see who their friends are and so on, sign up right here. it sounds silly, but show me someone who is not a voyeur, and i'll show you a liar.

because what's really important is friendship, love, integrity, humility and respect. the things Jesus talked about, you know.

you know, that feeling you get when you're listening to a song on your headphones, and you say, now this is art. ok i guess not many people think about rock (in whatever manifestation) as art. but i do. this one's got an upbeat chorus and wonderful lyrics. very apt, very wry.

so testosterone boys and harlequin girls
will you dance to this beat
and hold another close?
...let's get these two hearts beating faster, faster...

and i like the final scene in the video: for in the throes of passion, we are but dead.

the days and the fun:

1. serangoon garden market/ hanging out at home
2. street soccer
3. shopping at taka/ royal copenhagen/ all-nighter for the paper
4. mrs heng's house/ xmas concert!
5. heartland mall/ marmalade pantry
6. morning service at bethany i-p church!/ vivocity
7. xmas service and lunch - shangri-la/ the chins'/ icecube
8. copthorne waterfront/ shopping with the mother/ tapas at clarke quay!
9. ang mo kio comfort food/ shopping for a friend of a friend/ club21/ el sheikh/ white grape
10. meeting with the i-p of the i-p =)/ thai express
11. step up/ serangoon garden country club/ wedding dinner at swissotel
12. handsome haircut/ young people's group in church!!/ cousins and such/ chomp chomp
13. church/ down memory lane service/ fireworks on the double

and i stop here for now. because 13 is a lucky number. and because it's half-time. i'm so thankful for everything because nothing should ever be taken for granted. not the plane ticket, not the love, and most certainly not the God who from whom all good (and bad) things come.

so apparently some online saga erupted a couple of months in the good old singaporean blogosphere. i say the storm has been brewing all this while, and it's good that all this venting is taking place. anyway, it's about a certain wee shu min's elitism and you can read all about it here.

it is indeed sad, but i tend to think (surprise, surprise) that whining has become a national pasttime. blaming the government is all too convenient. thinking that singapore is a dump has never been more fashionable.

1. the best universities are private institutions, ie. not gahmen-funded, ie. only those who can afford education get it. and i mean afford with a capital A. to the tune of US$40,000 a year.

2. admission to these institutions is a totally opaque affair. there is no accountability, and rejection is just a fact of life, no questions asked. there is no such thing as an appeal, hor.

3. you do not even have to pretend to be competent to rise to the top. you can average a C+ in college, and still be president for 8 years. just because your daddy blazed the trail for you. or more accurately, because your family owns lots of oil in the land of the cowboys.

1. we are people too, leh. before throwing darts at a faceless target, consider the fact that there is no such thing as a free lunch. we have to earn our keep as well.

2. the sad truth that money makes money is not unique to singapore. but the fact that everyone has equal access to education might be.

3. it's easy to be leftist. it's easy to complain. it's easy to see faults in "the system". but what would you do if you were in charge?

for argument's sake, i have adopted a slightly high-handed tone. irony, my dear readers, irony. don't get me wrong. i am not saying i don't care. in fact, i care a lot. i wish more could be done for the "masses", and i intend to do something about it if i can. but i mean to point out that the situation is more complicated than it seems, and that shooting from the hip will get us nowhere. spinning a conspiracy theory about "the elite" is great fodder for forum discussions, but surely the solution to inequality is more about constructive policies than angsty finger-pointing?

...
Sunday, December 3, 2006 06:18 p.m.

click for pictures of fun times in maine.

boy grows up in ex-british colony. he watches soccer.
boy goes to faux preppy british school. he watches rugby.
boy moves to country which won independence from britain in a revolutionary war.
he watches football.

unfortunately, yale lost to princeton on saturday despite an amazing performance by that fast kid.

nevertheless, elitist schools do battle once again next week. yale-harvard @ harvard bowl, cambridge, ma. nov 18, 2006. the people change, but the game goes on.

"When the sun sets, the world's two most exciting countries to be in are not the United States or Britain, or even Japan.

They are Italy and - surprise, surprise - Singapore, the city that only until recently was known as Dullsville.

In any case, Singapore is 'hot', say more than 1,500 frequent travellers and travel experts who ranked it No. 2 for nightlife and dining in a global brand study.

The Global Country Brand Index was compiled by brand consultancy FutureBrand and public relations firm Weber Shandwick.

...Besides easing restrictions to draw tourists and foreign talent, the Government has welcomed new industry entrants such as Ministry of Sound and topless cabaret Crazy Horse. It has also designated areas such as Boat Quay and Clark Quay as 24-hour entertainment zones and has eased up on rules against bar-top dancing.

...Homegrown entertainment brands, such as Zouk and IndoChine have put Singapore on the world map, while international brand names, such as Ministry of Sound and Q Bar, have chosen Singapore to establish their regional presence."

-The Straits "we tell it straight" Times

i'm definitely not a conoisseur of the nightlife, so i can't say much, but i have to say i do feel overwhelmed by the options available in singapore whenever it is time to go out and have fun. everything's changing, there's always something new to check out, and i keep forgetting how to get to places i've been to before. whatever it is, it is definitely good enough. for me.

second in the world is, however, so dubious a claim i won't even bother analysing it. singapore more exciting than london, paris and milan? tokyo and hong kong? what about spain? (random trivia: some obviously overpaid and underproductive academics have studied sleep patterns and found out that spaniards as a whole sleep less than the rest of the world because the sun sets later there. and also because over the years they have gotten rid of their siesta.)

i guess all i'll say is i'm ambivalent to the article. we've seen enough of these over the years, haven't we? but then again, smoke without fire is a phenomenon unheard of since moses' burning bush.

as my cool brother (yale alum '05) says,
it's not:
1. God/ church
2. Family
3. Friends
4. School work
5. Other activities

it should be:
1. How can I honour God in my church life?
2. How can I honour God in my family life?
3. How can I honour God in my relationship with my friends?
4. How can I honour God in my school work?
5. How can I honour God in other stuff?

I know i sound like (a) a maniac or (b) someone who has been brain-washed, but the question is: what makes otherwise normal, just-like-you people make such declarations? do we find a perverse joy in identifying with other zealots? is it herd instinct? or just an emotional crutch?

i leave with words from Jesus himself: "Ask, and it shall be given to you." So many questions, so many contradictions, so many are-you-sures? Keep asking, asking, asking. The answer isn't that far away!

i have succumbed to the next big thing on the net. i am now a video-blogger! saw these dancers the other day in the new york subway, and i just HAD to watch them. you should too! click on the button in the lower left corner to watch the video while staying on this page - cos you can't bear to leave it.

are these guys talented or what? there was more break dancing talent in those six guys than all four million smilers combined. our little island is time-certified funky, but it sho' ain't dancin'.

so you know you're still a fob when you have to learn these things all the time.

me:so .. you're a yankees fan, and you're a mets fan. what's the difference?
friend 1:well my father was a yankees fan, so i just followed him. (note: friend 1 is a girl, hence her ignorance in sporting matters is forgiven)
friend 2:(clearly more knowledgeable - he's a guy) well, people from the bronx tend to support the yankees cos that's where the stadium is. if you're from queen's, you're probably a mets fan.
me:ok, but you're from long island. so why are you a mets fan?
friend 2:outside of the city, yankees fans are usually slightly more affluent, while mets fans are more working class.
and so on...

i learnt two things from this conversation: (a) girls know nuts about sports, and (b) friend 2 thinks he is working class. (come on, you go to yale. how working class can you be?)

anyway, the point is: $1.99 for wonton noodles is CRAZY! that's like 60% discount. and you thought all asians were cheap.

note: fob is not a word i made up. it's slang for "asian loser". it literally means "fresh off the boat".

off we go to washington, dc. the pictures are nice, but you can find them anywhere. so, why bother?

...because, today, you will learn that i am of the habit of storing useless facts in my head.

The Senate, where every state gets 2 representatives. Doesn't matter if you're a trigger-happy cowboy from texas or a bodybuilder from ~~austria~~ california. Doesn't matter if you grow potatoes in idaho or pluck coconuts in hawaii. Your state gets the same number of senators. And you thought irrational equality was a communist idea? No sir, it's right here in the land of the rich and the free!

It is also here in the Senate, that Connecticut is more than just a word game. The Constitution/Nutmeg State is home to a crucial mid-term election battle this year. Incumbent Joey (not to be confused with the actor who beat Jennifer Aniston and Courtney Cox to his own sitcom) Lieberman, who was running to be vice-president with Al Gore in 2000, ie he is supposed to be hot stuff, lost the support of his own Democrat party earlier this year. So many if not all eyes will be focused here, to see if the Republicans can capitalize on the schism that Joey has created in the Democrat populus to reclaim a seat in the Senate.

So named because you gotta look in here and think long and hard before you decide to do stuff. Something the head of state seems to have neglected in recent times.

anyway, freebie random fact: this is the pool that jenny wades across to meet forrest gump after he comes back from the Nam. he then gives her his medal of honor, but alas, she rides the bus back to UC-Berkeley with her hippie boyfriend. guess that's what berkeley is famous for. you didn't count both presidential candidates among your alumni at the last election, but hey, you're mentioned in a movie. not bad at all.

trivia: every year, on the president's birthday, the public is invited onto the lawn for a party. because of heightened terrorism, muslims wearing headscarves have been banned from these parties since 2001.

when george washington was a little boy, he was playing in the yard when he accidentally cut down an apple tree. his mother asked, "who accidentally cut down the apple tree?" and lil' george, because he was a great man of integrity, even at that tender age, fessed up. from then on, his mother knew that he was destined to be the first president of the US of A, and that one day, his countrymen would erect a memorial for him outside the white house.

ok, so you've heard that story before. sorry. i don't have that many useless facts in my head.

(but coming up next .. more pictures of dc, and i will let the pics speak for themselves. i will stop boring you with to death with my useless factoids.)

yet another sollipsistic entry. what's with the additional advertisement line under "get a free chatterbox"? too much clutter. not nice.

and, i'm beginning to think i'm going colour-blind. because the colours on this page so don't match, but i can't find any other better combination. plus it's really tiring to do. i figured homework is more important. thanks for your loyal readership anyway.

see, i'm beginning to learn how to keep people coming back for more. ah the tricks of the trade.

does anyone know what happened to tag-board? if you know please leave a message.

(i mean, just because tag-board has died doesn't mean we can't talk anymore right? i guess we have to revert to more traditional modes of communcation like cellphones, email, and instant messengers.)

(you see, i'm much more of a verbal than visual person, so i can't help writing even when i've just posted pictures to keep this blog interesting.)

so, i just learned from my finance professor today that, "up to five years ago, when i started teaching this course, yale did not allow finance to be taught because it was considered too vocational."

(said finance professor is some kind of genius who is a founding partner of ellington, a multi-billion dollar company that is the market leader in collateralized mortgage obligations - don't worry, i didn't know what those were until last week either.)

apart from being glad that i wasn't at yale five years ago, i would like to register my protest against the notion that "vocational" subjects shouldn't be taught here. that learning should be for learning's sake. the pedagogical belief that a prestigious liberal arts institution must preserve higher education from being corrupted by base considerations such as, erm, a career (gasp! students need to find jobs after they pass through our hallowed ivy gates) is pompousness masquerading as sagacity.

finance? journalism? management? we can leave that to the riff-raff. our students are so bright that they must be instructed in modes of thinking as far removed from their future careers as possible. this will prove to the rest of the world how smart they really are, because they will succeed anyway, despite having filled their minds with obscure facts while they were here.

indeed, following this train of thought, one would see the abolition of all departments except those which maintain irrelevance to the real world as one of their fundamental tenets. philosophy, literature, mathematics, theoretical physics etc would be the odds-on favourites in this game of academic survivor.

we would run out of professors. seeing that it is taboo for one to study anything "vocational", all aspiring professors would not be allowed to pursue their academic interests. you want to do post-graduate philosophy? but you did that in college! you tried to prepare for a career in academia! you were vocational! next please.

facetious, i know. but that is the point. i have nothing against these learned men wanting to ensure the posterity of their chosen fields by passing on their knowledge to undergraduates. but they should by no means restrict their peers in other spheres from doing the same. no one's stopping them from teaching the impractical and abstract, so who made them god to stop others from teaching the relevant and profitable?

but that is the american way, i hear you say. the european education system is too specialized, too narrow, too vocational. it tells kids what to think. we, on the other hand, teach kids how to think. oh really. a nation of thinkers gave us britney spears, nipplegate and WWE. and, mr patriot, do you really mean to say that people who engage in finance, management et al are not thinking, but actually practising a mystical voodoo art form? i suppose you're right, since you're the one who knows how to think.

enough of this tradition and pageantry. this school has tried its best to model its architecture after 13th century oxbridge. there is no reason for its syllabi to be similarly ancient.

the silence of unwritten letters

archives pitas radiohead muse learn chinese! be amused! love your country! harvard what? you'll love it there too cool for skool you asked for it. sweet valley for real adrian foo

archives

pitas

radiohead

muse

learn chinese!

be amused!

love your country!

harvard what?

you'll love it there

too cool for skool

you asked for it.

sweet valley for real

adrian foo