The Easy Way Out

I guess whether it’s your laziness at work or not I’ve done my part and I would say I’m pretty worn out already so it’s time for me to just let good times relive themselves in memories. Afterall good things always come to past and what’s important is to acknowledge that and move on. It’s easier on the both of us – you can continue to be what you are and I can know exactly what to expect in the future.

Who am I? Who are you?

How does it matter what we are in our own eyes and in those of people around us, when we are hardly able to catch a glimpse of our true selves, not even if we stand still in front of the mirror and keep our gaze fixed on our own reflection. We think we know enough about the space we live in, about what we are made of, about why things turn out the way they did, and why we are in this place we have put ourselves in,  but do we? We think we know why we do certain things, we give explanations, and yet explanations sometimes fall short of convincing our own ego. How do we know when our behaviour and the things we say are not just based upon confabulation, an ability that must have been so crucial to the preservation of our existence, so much so that nature has to assign a portion of our brain to the function.

I do not know why I am here or why I am supposed to be this way and not that. I do not know why I can claim to have been attached to a person so dearly and yet let time and the trivialities of life sweep my mind and heart away. I do not understand why I acted the way I did only to realise that I was not the least bit proud of who I seemingly was. Everything is changing. Everything about me down to the cellular level is changing. I am not who I was yesterday.

So who am I? And who are you?

Might we just be everyone, and everything?

You’re right, who’s not?

You’re always right and I’m always wrong.
How wrong I am indeed to make myself your social object,
only to have you take it for granted time and again.
You’re right to have insisted you were right when you were wrong;
that’s what made me realise the real problem has all along been that,
you have been right too many times,
while I have too often been denied the benefit of doubt,
that you’re wrong to not notice I may require every now and then.

Rooms

Life is a series of rooms and who we get stuck in those rooms with adds up to what our lives are.

CATCH 21

Just as I thought I wouldn’t have to face the huge question of life ever again someone came from out of nowhere and made me doubt if majoring in life sciences in university is wise at all. The dust was supposed to have settled a few weeks back when I decided to go along with the area of study that is more relevant to a career in medicine than engineering – the other option I had in mind during the application window – is. I know this is supposed to be the last thing on earth for anyone to be losing sleep over but indulge me a little, and help me with the decision making if you may.

I am very clear of my goals and what I want to be working as in the future, and hence the dilemma here isn’t as much about the kind of job my tertiary level paper chase is gonna land me with as the what-ifs in my attempt to make it into a postgraduate medical program. What if I have to be forced to face the cruel reality that a postgraduate programme may be far beyond my reach? What if I have to give up my dreams and start facing employability woes that come with not having acquired a tertiary qualification that is sought after enough by employers? It’s probably known to everyone that a graduate with a major in Life Sciences can only go as far as lending assistance  in a laboratory, euphemistically speaking. This is especially true in Singapore and the Ministry of Education, together with the Dean of Science in the National University of Singapore,  is not afraid to let the fact be known. I can wax lyrical about the statistics recently released by the Ministry of Education on employment and wages of fresh graduates from local universities but I won’t, you have to find out the horrors yourself. And if that still doesn’t explain why I’m so conflicted, I’m sure the words of the Dean will do the job. Fancy reading about how the department of life sciences “will be more comfortable with a hundred less (students reading life sciences)”.

An engineering degree, on the other hand, promises more than a science degree. According to multiple sources, a graduate with an engineering degree is well suited for a career both in the realm of engineering research and in the financial sector. The same set of statistics reveals that a fresh engineering graduate is more likely to be on a higher payroll than a fresh science graduate. The relatively more versatile degree gives one an edge over a science graduate in the workforce. Yet, do I really have to be concerned with employment upon graduation? Afterall I do wish to proceed with my postgraduate medicine studies after graduation. This is where all the what-ifs I’ve mentioned earlier come into the picture. I could try as hell to do exceptionally well in my undergraduate studies in life sciences and yet if I don’t make it through the rigorous interviewing process to be enrolled in a medical program, all that I’ve worked hard for will be for nothing! The worst is then I will have to start worrying where a degree in life sciences can get me in the workforce. Alternatively, I could attempt to work for a scholarship in scientific research in life sciences to lay off my fears of not being employed upon graduation, but this comes with it a possibility of me falling short of what it takes to make the cut. And even if I do manage to be selected for the research scholarship, I’ll be required to spend 6 to 8 more years on my doctoral research in life sciences and that will make an entirely different career from what I have originally set out to achieve.

Having to consider the future in this way is not what I have imagined myself to be doing, but sometimes the need to make the correct decisions becomes so real it is hard to shrug off. Then again this entire post just seems like I’m intentionally placing myself in a catch-22 scenario, except of course I do have a choice to do well and break out of the cycle I just described.

A Universal Reminder

In the face of ambiguity, one is subjected to the cruelty of having to make out for themselves what is the right and what is not, to choose what to or not to let go. The brutality lies in what one stands to lose when making the necessary decision.

It is almost like choosing between an intensive course of treatment that might not guarantee complete recovery for a terminally ill patient and the resignation to the fact that death is imminent and inevitable and to adopt the palliative approach. The former will probably help buy more time for the patient but living on borrowed time always comes with it a high possibility of a decreased quality of life due to the myriad negative bodily responses to the treatment. And what is supposed to be right in accordance with the Hippocratic Oath – to preserve the purity of life – may actually turn out rather skewed. Going forth with the palliative approach may however allow for a better quality of life but this is at the expense of the duration one gets to live before death overcomes. Alas, it all boils down to choosing which is worth keeping and which is not.

Decision making is brutal, my friend, but it is necessary. Having to constantly be in the gray takes away a part of you that is bright and shiny and worth more than anything in the world to keep. And you know you deserve better than what you’re going through.

おかえり

能为一个人真心付出，一起走过种种艰辛挫折，

就算无奈到了离别的时候，累积的回忆也会让幸福延续。

真爱，不会因为离别而淡化或消失。

真爱，跨越时空的障碍，是一切奇迹的开始。

Life’s like cutting calories, and keeping away from chocolates.

We’re all just trying to find a better way to die.
Some of us do.
Most, sadly, don’t.

On Minimalism

About a week ago, I picked up a book off one of the shelves in the library at the Esplanade. It was a weird move and I really couldn’t explain why I did that because the book titled Minimalists was clearly a biographical account of the more prominent perpetrators of minimalism in the realm of modern music and I for one have always had something against biographies, not to mention those written on pioneers of a musical movement I never thought I would have taken an interest in. Now I’m halfway through the book and it got me pretty curious as to what minimalistic music actually sounds like. And just as I was looking through youtube today I came across this video of a choreography to a composition of one of the minimalists mentioned in the book, Steve Reich.

There is actually a second part to the video but I’m not going to show it here since I’m pretty sure some of you out there must have already found it hard to follow through with the entire length of the first video.

The music in the video is titled Piano Phase and as you may have picked up right from the start of the video, a single phrase of music was repetitively played until almost imperceptibly, the same phrase of music is played slightly out of phase with the ongoing one. Along with this changing overlapping time layers of fundamentally similar stanzas, even more seemingly insignificant changes in the way the repeated stanzas sounded were introduced. The result is a schizophrenic and time-suspending work. It gives the audience almost no sense of progress the entire time.

What left me in awe is however more the choreography than the music, although I must emphasize that the choreography will be meaningless without the music being the centre piece of the work. Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker & Michele Anne De Mey has masterfully made use of shadows to bring to focus the schizophrenic element of the music. I was especially intrigued by the superimposition of the shadows cast on the wall by the two dancers in the middle of the both of them and how as the music progressed, the superimposed shadows grew increasingly out of sync with each other. The entire setup feels as though three dancers were performing at any one time, the third dancer – the result of the superimposition – being the protagonist of the performance. While both of the dancers in white were mechanically moving about in similar fashion, being seemingly comfortable with what they were set out to perform, the protagonist seemed conflicted and confused.

The picture painted almost reminded me of the way life is like for me in the city I live in. Things are progressing so quickly there is hardly time to catch up with the changes that is happening all around. There is no room for letting anyone take a breather because if you do, you’re just going to be left behind too soon while the others continue unaffected with their lives.

Also with the video I am forced to look at how the typical harried and brusque urban dweller has to cope with the rapidly evolving systems of moral perception and religious beliefs. There is this perpetual state of duality one has to deal with – pretty much like the conflicted protagonist in the performance – when it comes to doing away with the old and embracing the new, defining what is socially and morally acceptable and what is not.

Minimalism in the visual arts serves to communicate ideas and emotions in the single most direct means of expression and in the same way, minimalism in music stirs the heart of its listeners. Simple really does it best.

Recruitment Drive

It amazes me how some bloggers seem to be able to find a whole gamut of stuff, noteworthy or not, to write about everyday. As my friends would have observed, the existence of my online journal has its place only in my subconscious and if i were to ever write about anything at all that is of substantial length – typically a paragraph of at least 10 sentences – the subject matter must then have concerned itself with the neocortex region of my brain enough to spark the otherwise mostly dormant intellectual process the neocortex facilitates.

Having said that, I don’t actually think I go about life not having any opinions on issues at all. To me, the need to write about stuff arises only when a particular occurrence possesses the potential to reveal a more important notion about this space that we live in. Otherwise writing is mentally exhausting and there is really no point in keeping up with the effort if all one has to offer to his readers is a narrative of what went on that particular day of his life.

Maybe I’m just plain lazy. Maybe I haven’t found the joy in writing.. because I’m lazy. Whatever the case is, I’m glad that WordPress is doing so well at providing such an interactive platform for my dilettante efforts in journalism. Something tells me this online journal is going to last longer than any of my previous botched blogging attempts.