An aside

You might say that Lee Kuan Yew, Lee Hsien Loong and Goh Chok Tong are Singapore's Holy Trinity; they are:-
...
...
...
...
...
The Father, the Son and the Holy Goh.

A word on planning

The splendour, the arrangements, the setup at the Ministerial Forum at UCC is worth a mention too, and may even be of some interest to people who might be thinking of holding an event of a similar scale in the near future.

The event was scheduled to start at 7pm, but security had us queuing from 4.30pm. There were metal detectors and police checks on all the bags that were brought in. There were rows and rows of snaky queues. There were even policemen at the toilets. I mean, LKY retired or not is a national icon at least and it was the whole works, where security was concerned.

The ushers were all nicely dressed. The media were all in place. The mikes were manned by an attendant each. When the invited guests and LKY himself finally came in at 7pm the whole auditorium rose to greet him with thunderous applause. Everything moved just so. There was the podium for LKY to give his short speech, there was the president of the organising society to moderate the Q&A session. In short, the whole event came off like clockwork, and I can only guess at how much planning must have gone into this.

A Glimpse of the Great Man

I went for the LKY Ministerial Forum for a glimpse of the great man himself and to hear him talk. LKY showed his mettle in the question and answer session when he deftly took the questions and was at times incisive, humourous or downright cutting but always in control of the situation despite some hardballs that were pelted his way.

The most adversarial questioner was a history major who asked whether the government was now neglecting humanity in favour of unity and whether in this day and age when the social situation was more stable more attention should be paid to the voices of the minority. He accused the government of controlling too tightly the channels by which such alternative opinions could be addressed and he raised the examples of the Printing Act and the ISA (on the point of the ISA, our professors like to raise the issue on whether this Act has infringed the constitution or not). He said: "However enlightened a despot is, without checks and balances he will soon become a tyrant."

All valid points, granted, but barbed, and pitched in such a way that LKY either had to let them through or kill them thoroughly (and kill the questioner as well). After stating that the freedom and stability that society enjoyed today was fragile and easily destroyed etc, he went on to pointedly question the adversarial guy whether he had ever written to the Forum of the Straits Times before. I believe the LKY was expecting to quash the guy with this question since it was more likely than not that the guy never did so. I was surprised to hear the guy say that he had actually written 3 times, but was published only once. Well, LKY without missing a beat went on to say that adversarial guy could also publish his opinions in the university publications or put up his own publishing facility. That guy protested that they were controlled by the Printing Act. "Well then, put up a website", said LKY, "Do you know how to put up a website? If not, I have some friends who could help you." This drew a laugh.

The long and short of it was that LKY drove the guy into the ground and proceeded to stomp him further in throughout the rest of the evening by making sly, barbed jibes at his expense from time to time. He might be answering someone else's question and innocuously insert a sentence: "... and instead of whining about how your articles are not published in the Straits Times, you might ... (do such and such)". Or, he might be talking about the communist unrest at one point in Singapore's history and say that : "Some people might call me a despot, but [the communists had to be treated with a firm hand or else they would have overrun the country]." That term despot must have bit deeply (or at least touched a sore spot) because he looked then towards the adversarial guy and asked him: "You, the person who called me a despot just now, how old is your father?" Then: "He must have known how it was like during those times."

Although this was not any political forum and nothing but LKY's name hinged on his answers, I supposed that he thought that: 堂堂一个李光耀， 怎能被一个无名小卒三言两语就说倒？In his philosophy, you give no quarter and you ask for none, where adversaries are concerned.

He established his control over the audience and the questioners early. A person who raised the question of Singaporeans not having any sense of identity was asked in turn why didn't he have any sense of identity, and where, in fact did he stay? (LKY made him say his full address too, much to our amusement. One also wonders if he had his personnel do any checks with that information.) A swedish student who asked him whether in his opinion a change of political blood from time to time might be healthy was politely rebutted and then asked in turn, which political party he voted for at the last Swedish elections, the Socialist Democrats or the opposition? The Swede protested that he should not be required to disclose such information, but LKY said: "Why not? I make my party allegiances known, why shouldn't you?"

A girl who asked a question about identity crises in the post colonial era set LKY reminiscing about the old days and how he faced racism and discrimination, ending with an encouragement on how we could do the same. A rather baffling guy who asked about social entrepreneurship (of all things!) had LKY (figuratively) scratching his head and politely giving baffling guy a some very generalised waffle on how he should continue doing that (social entrepreneurship) if he thought that it was something he was good in.

In all, LKY gave as good as he got. One could see that LKY was prepared to be very friendly to people who asked nice questions, but at the same time sat with his gun cocked, ready to shoot down any audacious puppy who broached prickly questions. He is getting along in years, but he hasn't lost his vital edge.

Egg suicide

I opened the fridge and suddenly heard a resounding crash. A carton of eggs that had not been there a moment before had miraculously appeared on the floor at my feet . I wondered if my eyes had deceived me, or if a carton of eggs had actually seized the moment when the fridge door was open to commit mass suicide.

My first thought was : How did this happen? A glance at the fridge door and the fridge shelves showed no empty slot where the egg carton might have been placed.

My second thought was : Who did these eggs belong to? I vividly remembered an incident from the previous cluster I stayed at when someone put a carton of broken eggs on a chair in the kitchen attached with a note that said: "The person who broke my eggs can either own up or watch these eggs rot." It was the cleaner who disposed of the eggs. As far as I knew, no one ever saw fit to own up.

My brother said: "There are 6 eggs broken here, how about I get some from my room to replace them?"

I considered, but thought better of it. "No, I'll leave a note at the fridge asking the person who lost the eggs to approach me for compensation." I wanted to know who was it that kept those eggs in a place they could leap out off when the door was opened. I suspected it was on top of another carton of eggs in the fridge-door shelf. Both the cartons were made of smooth plastic and the upper carton would have sat unrestrained, high above the top of the shallow plastic barrier of the shelf. That's an absolutely idiotic place to keep eggs, I fumed. I wanted to tell this to the face of the person who did this. I wanted to see for myself who the brainless idiot was.

I was cleaning the mess on the floor when this China clustermate walked in. She was new this semester but I had spoken with her several times and we would smile when we passed each other on the corridor. On an impulse, I asked her if she bought eggs, by any chance. Suddenly I realised the eggs must belong to her. I knew that she had just gone shopping at the mart downstairs and I had seen her frying some eggs earlier on. That realisation rather took the wind from my sails. I felt that I could not bring myself to tell off this placid, easygoing girl.

She said: "Yes." Then: "Are they broken?" I said that they were. I said that they fell out the moment I opened the fridge. I apologised, but at the same time I made sure she knew that the eggs had fallen out the moment I pulled open the fridge door. I offered to pay her the price of the eggs. She said that it didn't matter. I insisted. She insisted that it didn't matter. I let it lie. I did not really think I was greatly at fault, if at all. It was an accident just waiting to happen. I had cleaned up the mess, after all, and that was penance enough.

This is a still, hot afternoon without even a breath of wind to ventilate the corridor. My fan is turned on at almost maximum capacity and yet the room feels warm. A mynah hopped onto our corridor with some dessicated object dangling from its beak, but when I moved forward for a closer look, the bird gave a sharp cry of alarm and took off into the glaring afternoon sun.

The steel wool really seems to be a good investment, considering the fact that I seem to be on a soup burning streak. Works better than any lemon, I should say.

A glimpse of the Full Moon

Oh, I just saw the moon rising! It was temporarily reflected in full radiant glory in the pane of a window directly opposite my room before it slid upwards in the night sky and the reflection was lost.

At one point, I was startled to look out of the window and see a large shing globe on the building directly opposite me. It was the fourteenth day on the lunar calender after all, and the moon is the fullest on the fifteenth. The moon was squarely reflected in the dark pane of glass that was someobody's unlit window and was so clear an image that I could see the 'rabbit shadow' in it. It was also less dazzling, so that I could examine it more clearly than if I had gazed upwards at it in the night sky. I suppose this is the same effect as one you might get if you attempted to view the eclipse of the sun in a basin of inky water.

I looked away for less than a minute and when I saw it again the reflection seemed to have moved. It was moving, and rather rapidly too, and within about 10 minutes, had disappeared from the pane of glass.

It could be better, but then again it could have been worse

The flute player staying downstairs is practising a nicer tune this evening, one that is a little sad, a little thoughtful and maybe a little wistful, like it is trying to tell a story that ends in regret. Granted, there are a lot of bum notes and the delivery is none too smooth, but I still hear it well enough to be able to be able to say that this is a tune that I can like.

The feeling I get when I hear this tune is markedly different from that which I felt when I heard another tune being played this morning when I was still in a state between sleep and consciousness. That tune was one which went in all the wrong directions and spoke of nothing sensible. Even as I tried hard to settle into a state that was either sleep or consciousness, something in me protested against the utterly unbeautiful tune that was (more's the pity) being repeatedly played. I think that is a tune whose story I would not be able to sympathize with if I heard it told.

One of the perks of staying in this isolated Residence is that you get to hear 'free concerts' every other hour (and all the rehersals as well). The Conservatory of Music students are all shunted off to this end of the hostel grounds so that they will only disturb a small amount of students with their incessant practising, ie: us unfortunate residents who happen to be staying around them. Sometimes the disturbance isn't so bad, like this flute guy, whose melody is not that intrusive. Last semester we had this tuba player somewhere within the vicinity. Now that was an entirely different case. I think things might get very bad if the conservatory of music starts to implement singing lessons. But happily that day is yet to come. Still, some people in this vicinity apparently don't need to be taking singing lessons to display their vocal abilities (or lack thereof) to entertain (or distress) their neighbours. I think when you have two buildings so close to each other, any sound produced tends to infiltrate all the windows in the area.

The weather today has been most beautiful and the laundry that I hung on the corridor railings has dried marvelously in the clean breeze and smells oh-so-sweet.

Burnt Soup

Some nights ago I managed to burn soup. This means that the pot of water and stuff that I had placed on the hob to boil had completely dried up and turned into charcoal by the time I looked at it again. Someone had taken it off the hob for me, but that was probably because it had begun to smoke already. It wasn't that I had forgotten about it, just that I had underestimated the amount of water needed and overestimated the amount of time needed to reduce the water to moderately thick soup. I knew I was in for a protracted exercise of pot-cleaning this time. Here's how I did it:-

1) Remove all chunks of food that can be detached (and it was only the bigger pieces that were not charred to the bottom of the pot)

2) Buy two lemons. Use half a lemon to scrub the pot to remove chunks of charcoal.

3) Squeeze the other half and leave it to soak overnight.

4) Examine pan the next day and try scraping with a metal spoon. Decide that pot needs more lemon.

5) Squeeze another half lemon into the pot, add water and boil skin and juice. Leave to soak overnight.

6) Buy steel wool and give the pot another scrub. Voila!

Well, the bottom is still of a darker colour than the other parts, but it was a great improvement over the previous state of the pot. Three cheers for the lemons.

A Visit to a Sikh Temple

There are some things you should know when visiting a Sikh temple, assuming you do not have a native guide to whisper in your ear the dos and don'ts, which are many, that you should observe.

Dos:

1) Wear a piece of cloth to cover your head. For girls any shawl or scarf is fine, and for guys, even a handkershief tied around your forehead works. It is not necessary that the cloth hide all your hair, unlike for the Muslims. The rationale is supposed to be respect for their Holy Book, which they revere as their teacher so just a covering suffices.
2) Take off shoes and wash hands and feet before entering their upper sanctum.
3) Make sure you eat something at the temple if you visit it. One of their customs. Some people even receive some kind of oiled bean paste at the sanctum to eat in order to fulfil this custom.

Don'ts

1) Don't turn your back on their Holy Book which they place at the front of the sanctum during the service.
2) Don't wear a skirt (for ladies) but pants. Jeans are fine.
3) Don't wear shoes into the eating area.

In their upper sanctum, which was carpeted with a thick soft pink-and-rose carpet, there was a pavilion in which their Holy Book was placed. Two attendants sat behind the book fanning it "as we would fan a teacher whom we revere very much". To one side sat three 'wise men' who were singing the hymns and relevant explanations in Punjabi. They were the 'ministers' whom the temple invited from India to minister to the local congregation. (I'm not sure about terms for the Punjabi counterparts, so I am actually using Christian terms as a substitute)

People would be entering and leaving the service throughout, while the white-robed ministers kept up with their singing, almost a part of the furniture, seemingly impervious to the people walking around them. The devotees would enter from the doors at the side, walk up the to pavilion holding the Book, insert an offering into the donation box and bow themselves down to the ground before walking off to sit on the floor. The floor was really quite comfortable and looked clean (I suppose someone shampoos the carpet regularly) and the children (with tiny headscarfs tied on their heads) were romping around together on the soft surface (kiddies' haven, almost). One particularly adventurous toddler (my friends nephew) went up to the pavilion and examined the various flowers and paraphernalia on display there. He must have been intrigued at the sight of the tall, tall adults bowing themselves down to the ground, bringing themselves to his level, because he also bent down and put his head on the floor when they did, although it probably was to examine those people from another point of view than to emulate the admirable example of the esteemed adults. Jit and I chuckled at his antics, until he started climbing onto the pavilion where the Book was kept, whereupon my friend rushed up and bore him off.
After the food, which consisted of spiced rice with dal, sweet rice with yoghurt, chapatti with spicy potatoes, we went up again to watch the ceremony known as 'Daradas' during which they parade with great pomp and fanfare around the upper sanctum with the Book carried on someone's head. Everyone bowed to the ground when the book passed. As for us non-sikhs, the best we could do was to crouch while the rest were genuflecting.

The Sikh community is a rather close knit group, with everyone knowing the background of most of the other members of their religious community. It is probably safe to say that it must be a totally different experience growing up in such a community. I wonder how it is like.

Wishy Washy Theory

Last minute as usual, I worked on my (ungraded) assignment until the wee hours of the morning, playing yahoo games intermittently to keep my brain awake. However this time the 'last minute-ness' was due mainly to the fact that I wasn't too concerned about the ungraded assignments which even came with its own stack of (not a very thick) readings. I thought I could polish it off like over the better part of the afternoon and night when I got down to it. Furthermore, I had a friend's birthday prayers - in a sikh temple - to attend.

In total, it took me close to 5 hours at night, and 2 more hours in the morning to complete the peculiarly abstract questions, alternately trying to modify stuff from my readings to fit or inventing answers when I couldn't locate anything amongst the readings that might be useful. Most of the questions were hypothetical, conceptual nonsense, the kind of thing you care about only when you know enough of the subject to appreciate the difference. I didn't and couldn't care less as to the difference between rights and interests. If you have an interest in something then you have a right, right? Like, what's the big deal. No judge is going to quibble about the differences between rights and interests and titles with you next time. And I strongly suspected I might give a circular answer. "A right over a property exists when you have an interest in it. An interest in a property means that you have some rights over it." On the whole, I am rather disgruntled with the assignment (which may have something to do with how I handled, or mishandled, it). I think my preferance is towards something meatier, not such abstract hogwash.

A time to listen, a time to work

There are two things you can do when a friend wants to talk to you. You can say that you are busy and ask that person to chat another time, or you can put down what you are doing and talk with your friend properly.

By not expressly stating that you are busy but merely continuing what you are doing and listening with half an ear to your friend, you may be putting your friend in a very awkward position of having to determine whether to stay or to leave. Your friend may feel compelled to ask: "What are you doing at the moment? Oh, when is the deadline?" in order to determine whether you are indeed busy, or whether you simply cannot be bothered to properly pay attention to the conversation.

If even at that point, you do not give any positive indicator of busy-ness to your friend, your friend may (however dubiously) start a conversation with you, if that was your friend's original intention to begin with. At that point it would be folly to assume that your friend was perfectly at ease with the circumstances. It would be folly to assume that you have done all that is required of you as a listener by allowing your friend to ramble on, while you continue with what ever you might happen to be doing then. It woud be folly to only look at your friend directly when your friend relates something that is to your interest, and semi-ignore your friend for the rest of the time.

By so doing, you may be placing your friend in a dilemma on whether it would be more advisable to show indignance and demand that you attend properly to the conversation at hand, or whether it would be more advisable to continue talking as if nothing was wrong, in the hope that you would finish what you were doing and take up the conversation proper.

It would be impolite not to give a friend talking to you the 100% attention he or she deserves. There is no basis to justify carrying on a conversation with a friend while looking at and doing something else. If your friend has taken the trouble to start a conversation with you, the least you can do is to give it your fullest attention. That is what your friend is doing, after all.

A moral a day

I can't believe I wrote all that in the post below. I freely forgive anyone who cannot reach the end ; ) Somehow I waas just drawn into writing all that stuff when I decided that I would blog about the movie I watched this afternoon. I mean, if I had thought beforehand that I would writ a 3-page blog (on Microsoft Word that is), I would have been so daunted by the perceived tedium of it that I would have left it off until the end of forever. The moral of the story? Think about the begining and the process of a project, and not about the end nor the duration taken, if you want to keep your morale high to complete something worthwhile.

Kinsey and related thoughts

The movie Kinsey: Lets Talk About Sex paints a decidedly favourable view of the person who set in motion a sexual revolution in America. Seen favourably, one might sympathize with Alfred Kinsey for being the champion of a cause he believed in -- the cause for proper sexual education and the demystiyfing of sex.

It certainly takes great courage to run against social taboos, especially one of such a nature and the fact that he actually initiated such a campaign, and staked his reputation on it, not to mention his life's effort, shows that he must have passionately believed in this cause to begin with. Emphasis was rightly made on his efforts to secure funding and his struggle against customs officials who had detained some of research material he shipped in from abroad. There is no question that his struggle was an admirable effort, whether it was made for an admirable cause, or made in an admirable manner, or had a desirable effect is far more dubious.

Detractors would like the public to believe Kinsey to be a depraved, immoral pervert who sanctioned unnatural sexual behaviour such as child molestation, bestiality and homosexuality. The movie has some things to say in defence of this accusation. Viewers gain the impression that Kinsey's cause is separate from such depraved sexual practices when upon the declaration of a child molester that he has had "sex with 22 species of animals ..... 600 pre-adolescent males and 222 pre-adolescent females" Kinsey's assistant got up in disgust and left. In that scene, Kinsey stresses to that pervert that at no time did he say that enjoying one's sexuality extended into hurting another, or forcing another to do something against his will. All well and good. Kinsey seems not to sanction child molestation.

We are not shown what came next, whether Kinsey actually showed that pervert the door at the end of the interview. But an internet search threw up disturbing details, including allegations from several sources that Kinsey actually corroborated with the pervert in gathering data for his book that included sickening claims that young boys although crying and fighting the adult sexual attacker, although "in excruciating pain and may scream if movement is continued", actually "derive definite pleasure from the situation". This is SICK. This is sick. But it is in his book, so it must be attributed to him.

The point that the movie wanted to make was that Kinsey was not such a *wicked* wicked man, just a passionate researcher who pursued his dreams. Viewers fresh from the movie may even chide Kinsey's detractors as prudes and snobs, but America's declining sexual morality is one very real situation flowing directly from Kinsey's revolutionary research. One may applaud Kinsey for having the courage to challenge social norms at that time, but with the benefit of hindsight, one concludes that those social norms may have better been left unchallenged, for all the good such a challenge has brought to the fabric of modern society. It is easy to sympathize with the 'sanitized' Kinsey of the movie, before you think about the prevailing sexual norms in America's society that must have been the result of his efforts to 'demystify sex'. Such freer attitudes towards promiscuity, homosexuality and adultery would have better been left in the Pandora's box that Kinsey opened with his research.

In the movie, Kinsey enjoyed a loving and intimate relationship with his wife, which is all well and good. But the movie made no bones about the fact that he had relations with a male student of his, although this is attributed to his free attitude towards sex when he told his wife about that homosexual encounter with a staff saying that he did not want to kep secrets from her. Some very valid points that are not addressed are raised in the tearful protests of Kinsey's wife:

"I'm very open to whatever you might require, why do you have to sleep with other men? Is it because I am not enough?" "Isn't it enough that it will hurt me?" "If I slept with other people would you mind? (Kinsey said that he wouldn't) Then, I would be hurt if you didn't mind!" Kinsey had no good answer to this. There simply is no explanation to be made with regards to his numerous and varied sexual practices. Critics denounce his practices of wife-swapping, voyeuristic filming of his wife having sex with his staff, promiscuous bisexuality. These were either glossed over in the movie or painted in more favourable hues. There is this scene shortly after his telling the wife of his homosexual encounter, where the same staff member expressed to Kinsey his attraction towards Kinsey's wife and upon the wife declaring that she was amenable, Kinsey assented to his student sleeping with his wife. In that movie, Kinsey was rather humourously depicted to be pacing the floor downstairs, and worrying about the impending visit of people from the Rockefeller Grant rather than the fact that he was being willingly cuckolded. There was no hint of voyeurism. In fact, one may even feel inclined to applaud Kinsey for not being hypocritical nor imposing double standards on himself and his wife.

The repercussions of Kinsey's loose sexual attitudes were shown in the movie, when one of his staff's marriage threatened to fail because the wife had been sleeping with another staff and wanted to leave her husband. The enraged husband tried to beat up the other man, but Kinsey stopped him. Kinsey said that he 'saw it coming' whereupon the student rounded on him with many bitter accusations. Viewers are brought home to the fact that promiscuity, despite the manner in which it is decorated, has devastating effects to marriage and the family unit. Kinsey may be shown to have a close and loving relationship with his wife, but at best one feels that his marriage is an exceptionally strong one to be able not only to tolerate such loose attitudes, but to even recast those attitudes in a favourable light. There is still the underlying impression that this approach towards sexuality is manifestly unsustainable in a society that wants to keep its family units and social fabric intact.

If a sexual revolution had to happen, it would have happened in America. It is probable that if Kinsey had not researched what he did, some jackass 20 years down the road would have done it too. Because isn't America all about free choice? Isn't the Bible about the choice between life and death, between obedience and rebellion, between good and bad? In a way this revolution has opened up this choice to the people of the world: to choose promiscuity and its consequences or fidelity and its rewards. We are told that God placed the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden not to tempt man to fall, but to give Adam a choice whether to love and obey Him or to turn away in disobedience. Kinsey has legitimatized many sexual practices. People have the choice today at least between promiscuity and fidelity, between homosexuality and heterosexuality, and they are aware of the consequences of such choices. But as God has given us the freedom to come to Him and to accept Him, people today have the freedom to reject depraved sexual practices, knowing the full impact of this moral choice they have made on their lives and that of their loved ones.

If your first impulse is to say that Kinsey's work is that of the devil, remember that God turns everything to His purposes. Greater sexual immorality in the world does not mean we have to succumb to it, but rather that we are enabled to choose to adopt morality with the conviction that we have exercised our free will to do the right thing. It is a blessing, albeit in a very unappealing disguise.

My foot

I am quite baffled as to why the blisters from new shoes invariably form on the left foot before they start forming on the right, if at all, or why my left shoes always wear out faster than the right ones. If there is a strap of a sandal that will break, you can be sure it will break on the left sandal first. If my feet are going to get blisters, you can be sure they will first form on the left foot and be larger and deeper than any forming on the right foot. Is my left foot getting more pressure when I walk? As far as I can tell, I treat (tread) both feet equally.

Now, really

Apparently there was a 3-hour blackout in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia yesterday -- you would not fail to read about that if you looked at the Straits Times today! It is *really* not quite the most momentuous of happenings yesterday, but maybe for want of something more interesting to fill the tabloids, or maybe due a sense of smug superiority that some Singaporeans affect when some screw-up occurs in Malaysia, articles covering major and minor aspects of the blackout were splashed over three and a half pages of the newspaper. This is compared to some five pages dealing with the relief effort in the tsunami stricken areas which surely is a more relevant topic to the Singapore public, considering the money and effort invested in those areas.

Interested readers can find out about how Badawi dined in the dark on boneless fish, or how puzzled officials mulled over the reason the supporting system failed to kick in, or how the LRT stopped in the middle of its tracks forcing passengers to get off and walk (on that point, I saw a photograph of the a stationary LRT on one of those elevated tracks, hope none of the pasengers had any fear of heights, it's a long way down). There was also a little grumbling from the public about the fact that electricity was restored in the two poshest housing districts first, to reduce the discomfort of the families of the ministers.

I'm sure the amount of detail almost rivals that in local newspapers. I mean, so it is a 3-hour blackout in the capital city, worth a mention surely and maybe a page devoted to it, but three and a half?Is there a point in doing this? Do the editors believe the average Singaporean is interested in finding out the details of a blackout in Malaysia? Or does this cross the line into indecent gloating?

I am much tickled

Went surfing for the Chinese Zodiac and how people's characteristics may be influenced by the sign of the animal under which they are born and here is what I have found:

"You are a splendid companion, an intellectual with a very strong need to set difficult goals and carry them out. You are sincere, tolerant, and honest but by expecting the same from others, you are incredibly naive. Your quest for material goods could be your downfall. The Boar would be best in the arts as an entertainer, or possibly a lawyer." See it yourself.

This statement is of dubious reliability however. A sincere honest and naive person a lawyer?? But EK is born in the year of the Boar and so is Lee Kuan Yew by the way, though it would be interesting to see exactly how many lawyers are born in the year of the Boar, and determine whether this statement is supported by fact or not. Nevertheless, it has some entertainment value. More trivia: Lee Kuan Yew is also a water pig, exactly 60 years older than I.

Here's more:

"People born in the Year of the Pig are chivalrous and gallant. Whatever they do, they do with all their strength. For Boar Year people, there is no left or right and there is no retreat. They have tremendous fortitude and great honesty. They don’t make many friends but they make them for life, and anyone having a Boar Year friend is fortunate for they are extremely loyal. They don’t talk much but have a great thirst for knowledge. They study a great deal and are generally well informed. Boar people are quick tempered; yet they hate arguments and quarreling. They are kind to their loved ones. No matter how bad problems seem to be, Boar people try to work them out, honestly if sometimes impulsively. They are most compatible with Rabbits and Sheep. You are a good friend. You are sincere, tolerant and honest. You are sometimes disappointed. You will thrive in the arts as an entertainer or you will be a great lawyer. "

I shouldn't say this here, but

A brief mention is also due to this Public Law lecturer who has taken us for the first two lectures of this course. She is a simply cool person, with a brilliant wit and sparkling oratory skills. She is full of politically naughty anecdotes, and with a twinkle tells us that if we want to hear more, we may ask her after the lecture, or at least email her. She recommends that we read an article so expressing such unorthodox views that it was dubbed 'academic porn' when it first came out. She mimics the whining drawl of an American professor extolling the virtues of the pocket-sized American constitution until the entire LT is reduced to gales of mirth. She is great fun. I hope she takes my class for tutorials.

Oh, the joys of being human

I've just realised that I seem to have hit a no-blogging streak. Never mind, these streaks come and go.

I would have liked to have blogged earlier about the ending of an internship that even now leaves a good feeling whenever I think of it. This internship has enabled me to answer queries of: "Do you enjoy law?" with a level glance and a confident affirmative reply, instead of hedging and telling people that maybe I mightn't be a lawyer after all. In short, this internship made a world of difference to my outlook on the legal scene, and may even be said to have tinted my glasses with a rosy hue.

I really enjoyed it, if not every moment, at least the more memorable moments: writing and compiling a mitigation plea document on my own (with my tutor looking in from time to time and chuckling to himself at my somewhat frenetic efforts), listening to EK talk about the most interesting things (juicy bits from the legal scene and how to avoid loopholes in the documents you draft), discussing minutiae about the people in the firm with KM (and speculating about the relationships of the people in the office), shopping for gifts together while intently marshalling every ounce of intuition and psychoanalytic skills we possessed in order to select suitable gifts for both EK and my tutor (it was such a 'high' that I couldn't stop laughing at some points). And to round it all up, a night spent talking on the banks of Singapore River on the last day of our internship, still dressed in our office black-and-whites.

Yes I should have blogged about this earlier. But the term has started with a vengeance, bringing with it all its commitments and responsibilities, jolting me into the world that I didn't know I had happily shelved at the commencement of the holidays until it jumped off its shelf and bit me. Ouch. I realise I have let someone (or some people) down by forgetting something I should not have forgotten, and there simply is no excuse for it.

Now the initial round of offers for exchange places have been made to the students. Most people are esctatic or pleased, at least. I am -- thoroughly baffled, confused, nonplussed. Until I straighten out the issues that I am considering, until I uncover and resolve the doubts that I might have about going to Wuhan University for one semester, I cannot happily embrace this admittedly exciting prospect of going for exchange. Last night was filled with confused and tangled dreams, involving a spider, a motorcycle, and a lost teddy bear. Go figure. KM is over the moon at her own exchange prospects that even this wet blanket feels slightly undampened when reading her blog. I have until tomorrow morning to make up my mind, but I just know that if I pass up this chance, I will regret it every time I think about it. 'No regrets' is an admirable philosophy which however only works for someone without the 'regret reflex' that I have.

This is what 'being alive' is supposed to feel like, this assault of hormones and/or neural electricity. I should maybe take up meditation. Om.

Selling your soul

"...I don't believe there is any way for a good person to work at a [law firm] without destroying whatever makes him or her good. I see interesting, kind, creative people come in and quickly turn cold. At first, it was the speed that shocked me. This takes over their lives, and suddenly what made them human vanishes. Their souls get swallowed. Before they can do anything about it."

The quote was from Annonymous Lawyer, which although being a fictional blog by a law student, actually depicts life in a law firm rather accurately. This brings to mind EK's question: "How many years are you willing to sell your soul [working as a lawyer]?" Us interns were shocked that working in a law firm is comparable to this, but the question comes from someone with 8 years of lawyering experience, and in the adversarial litigation field, quite the worst of legal fields, so he of all persons must know what it is like. But he retains his humanity, or at least he seems outwardly human over a core of cutting edge steel. This makes me think that if you want to remain human in a non-human world, at the very least you have to protect your humanity from whatever will seek to destroy it, by changing it or at least covering it with a protective shell. I get the impression that EK has found the balance between protecting what humanity he retains, and surviving in his field.


"And they resign themselves to their fates. As corporate drones, completing repetitive, mind-numbing tasks for outrageous salaries and little else. "

Another of EK's questions: "Would you choose a job that offered a ludicrously high salary in which you would earn nothing, or would you choose a job that paid pittance but in which you could learn a lot?"

I objected strenuously to this question when it was posed to me: Which law firm would offer to a law student a job in which he/she could learn nothing? At the very least you would learn what was related to your field of work, wouldn't you? But EK said that some firms would offer a law graduate a job copywriting or photostating just so that they could bill clients for the work of an associate instead of a secretary (which would cost less). I didn't offer an answer because I knew that had I been given a choice at that time I would have chosen any job that offered the highest salary at that time and hoped for the best where learning was concerned. The repayment of study loans can never be far from anyone's mind. But thanks to EK's 点化 (reminder, warning, there's no exact English equivalent for this philosophical Chinese concept), I will be careful to choose a job that emphasizes learning, instead of salary. I have yet to discover whether high salaries and learning are necessarily mutually exclusive in a job, though.

Apperances deceive

The first week of internship turned out pretty well, and I rather enjoyed it. I am glad to be given work that involves drafting stuff instead of merely taking down dictation and typing it out. I am glad that I have two very good mentors who let me and the other 2 interns tag along to court, explaining to us the workings of that particular courtroom situation. A friend who is interning with me is positively head-over-heels with enthusiasm over the internship. I'll just settle for saying that it is a good experience, and that I would love the opportunity to intern at the same place again.

The firm held a kind of tea party on Thursday, for which occasion some people scouted Spore for delicacies including fragrant *purple* taufufa, otah, spicy fried beehoon, sushi and more which they brought back and arrayed on a long table. There were also a few bottles of wine for a good measure.

At the party, we were accosted by this rather portly, jovial, middle-aged man in a loud, shiny red tie decorated with a reindeer and holly. He asked us how we enjoyed the tea party and how our internship was going, telling us a little history of himself and his work experience. I thought no more of him after he wandered off. Later we noticed a Christmas Card tacked to the wall that bore a group picture of the lawyers in the firm. The card was probably taken during one of the firm's outings and bore the inscription "Oops, you caught us working! Merry Christmas!" When asked, Gopi pointed out a diminuitive, portly man in orange beach shirt and party hat as *the great* TPC whose name the law firm bore. Ah. TPC does seem to have a taste for loud clothing. No wonder also, the atmosphere in the firm is so good, as the 'guy at the top' is such an affable and sincere character, who gives himself no airs or graces whatsoever. Another lawyer even ventured a rather tasteless joke at TPC's expense (of course the venerable TPC was not within earshot): If you think he looks funny in a party hat, you should see him when he is swimming! Some people present immediately made noises of protest at the very suggestion while the rest fell over laughing.

TPC is not to be underestimated. He is not soft, or his firm wouldn't be the size it is today. Yet he has all that capability concealed beneath a rather humble exterior. Not bad.

Happy (rainy) New Year

I wake up this morning to pelting rain and a freezing room and find my bed so warm and comfy that I stay in it for two more hours. I don't particularly remember whether it has always been so rainy in Spore around the turn of the year, but this year we seem to have had an inconveniently large amount of rain, in protracted rainfalls throughout the day. No spectacular thunderstorms that exhaust themselves within 15 minutes these days, just a continuous pattering of raindrops, a continuous falling of dreary grey rain and a continuous wet, wet feel to the entire day. Hardly the ideal start to the new year.

But it is still a start that many people make do with. In the Sentosa Nation's Countdown yesterday, despite the fact that many spirits were dampened by sporadic rainfalls throughout the event, PCK the host did his best to liven things up, and coupled with the appearances of the Spore Idol finalists, a more festive atmosphere built up as the countdown approached. With a fanfare and a burst of bubbles, we welcomed the new year by turning and wishing other's a Happy New Year. This climax was pretty well-managed, and probably the only thing worth coming for.

Otherwise, the music was deafeningly loud and the flashing lights glaringly bright. This seemed to suit most of the partygoers just fine and some jived merrily to the pounding beat. Others engaged in various means of attention drawing activities, from climbing onto their friends shoulders to tossing people high into the air (and catching him when he came down again, of course). But there were still many people standing huddled under umbrellas, gazing blankly at the sultry moves of some voluptuous dancers prancing on the stage, a foreign troupe probably brought in to fill up time at the start if the event. PCK tried to cheer the audience up later by asking them alternately to cheer, to scream and to sing 'Ole, ole'. Some even obligingly went through these paces. But most left soon after PCK left the stage, even though the 'party' was supposed to go on till the next morning. It's just the weather, probably.

So I take down my old calendar and hang up a new one that I brought from home. A New Year faces us. Oh, and Happy New Year all!