One time we met,

Monday, November 09, 2009
Landscape

I was born, I was born
To be with you in this space and time
After that and ever after
I haven't had a clue only to break rhyme
This foolishness can leave a heart black and blue, oh, oh
Only love, only love can leave such a mark
But only love, only love can heal such a scar
- Magnificent, U2

--

People can say whatever they like about Bono, tax exemptions and self-glorification, but I still believe U2 is a band with a genuinely big heart, sincerely trying to make the world a better place (through music, and otherwise) and fully deserving of their success.

At any rate, their music (especially Beautiful Day and Magnificent) has helped me through a desperate afternoon of trying to pick up the pieces of four years of neglecting Chinese. I know this is not the way to learn, but it's too late now to do much otherwise.

I have never felt so alienated from who I am, ethnically. When I look at Chinese proverbs and beautifully-crafted phrases and read the Chinese newspapers' social commentary articles (which always, somehow, manages to be pro-government; so what kind of commentary is that, I wonder?), I feel like this is a culture that is totally out of my comfort zone and way apart from myself. Writing a Chinese essay makes me feel wrong-footed and uncomfortable, afraid of stepping on some unknown supreme being's toes, because it's not just that I lack the vocabulary and fluency, it's also that there's a wholly different way of writing a Chinese essay, in examinations at least. For one, the hyperbole and the multiple slippery slopes nearly always culminating in a rant about modern society's moral degradation (both items are ubiquitous in Chinese essays) really get to me. I remember my teacher telling us in class that we should always, always write about the government only in a positive light, and always end off the essay on a squee-happy note; I was nonplussed and still am. It's more than a linguistic difference, it's also a cultural one.

Blame it on the east-west divide? Part of me hates that I've been so Westernized, after reading all the post-colonial stuff and Orientalism and having naively fallen in love with so many "international" writers; isn't it blatant hypocrisy to speak derisively about "white man superiority" and yet at the same time, have little else other than "white man" Western culture to rely on? I don't feel that I'm Chinese, to be honest. And the scariest part is that I know I should put in effort to try and make myself interact more with the language and the culture, but somehow the large part of me doesn't even want to.

--

Magnificent sounds more like a love anthem to a place, not so much a person. If it were about people, it would have to be a pair of legends, whose love transcended space, time, boundaries that existed and exist and will be brought down.

You know, with all the talk about the Berlin Wall, it is hard to imagine the self being anything other than inconsequential, and yet... what else is there to cling onto if not the self?

It is always comforting to dream; I dreamt last night. I was walking up a hill with two tall, faceless strangers, but the moment I felt most was when one of them turned and hugged me. I didn't want to wake up then... I didn't know I had to. But as always, I did.

Labels: chinese, frustration, music, self, thoughts

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Friday, November 06, 2009
Pull

I'll elaborate more when Tuesday is over, but for now:

1. Graduation was - unexpected, in a lot of ways
2. But there is a week of school left, so reality has probably not fully hit yet
3. Ambivalence made me... ambivalent; he writes beautifully and I felt the struggle, the inner conflict, but it was still a bit too surreal to be entirely believable. And I was expecting a lot more academic discourse, but it was more of a personal memoir than anything, which is cool but - yknow, somewhat disappointing. My fault, though.
4. ISO exhibition was enlightening. Will elaborate more post-Tuesday. I did meet a lot of new people, and was impressed by a few, especially this RI boy whose future might possibly consist of teaching physics at uni level (!!!). I think his conviction, and his passion for the subject, is inspiring. Also, I came to a lot of other (possibly biased, but amusing nevertheless) generalizations about other people.
5. Thanks Mr S, for everything : )
6. I'm so, so exhausted. I've been sleeping a ridiculous amount the past few days but still wake up tired and go to bed tired. Wonderful post-exam life, huh?
7. I really need to talk to people, and get back on MSN : ( I'm neglecting my friends, which is not a good thing.
8. Well, this is me hoping with all my heart that passion can really see someone through.

Labels: books, insecurities, school, self

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Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Justify

A Numbered List for the Time-strapped Me:
1) Today was a colossal waste of time, but I don't mind so much.
2) I want to rant but it doesn't solve anything, does it?
3) Sometimes I get so annoyed at myself for bitching about everything, haha.
4) Saw a book today titled S.U.M.O. (shut up, move on) and thought - hey, that's advice I should take, lol.
5) Happy birthday Oliver Leow and all the best for your IB exams : D (if you even see this)
6) Need to mug Chinese, oh god. today my teacher was talking about the beauty of the Chinese language and the thing is, yes, I absolutely agree with her, but my chinese = fail, nevertheless. ugh I'm ashamed of myself.
7) Ambivalence is beautifully written but I have serious doubts about how accurate everything Garfinkel describes is; his life and the events in it are all so unusual and, well, Other that I wonder if he sensationalized things - he probably did. (Or it could be that my own life is sadly boring - it probably is.) Anyway the constant doubt about the truth of what he's saying makes me kind of sad (Soul of Iran completely avoided that sensationalist angle!) but well, I haven't finished the whole thing so I will say more when I actually reach the last page.
8) Is this uncomfortable questioning a product of studying history, or literature, or both?
9) I want to watch The Blue Mansion so badly : ( It's Glen Goei, and it looks creepily wonderful! (It has Lim Kay Tong in it!) Also, I was supposed to watch (500) Days of Summer AGES ago, but never got around to doing it. This has happened with so many other movies (The Dark Knight, anyone?! My Batman project will officially be over after this Friday and I still haven't seen the film.) Where is my life????
10) I need to just sit at a random cafe and read. I like a lot of different places (Clarke Quay, Holland V, Fusionopolis, the Starbucks at Wheelock...) but I hate travelling to them. Which probably tells you something about my state of inertia, right.

-- Focus, Kar Min, focus.

Labels: books, frustration, life, movies, self, thoughts

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Monday, November 02, 2009
Filtrate

Today was an amusingly pointless day.

I finished Orientalism though! I won't be so bold as to say that I understood all of it, because I didn't, not entirely anyway - but I think I got the gist of what he was trying to say, the core ideas in the text, and it was very, very enlightening. I was particularly fascinated by two of his ideas - the first about how in order to have a sense of self, cultures construct an Other, and secondly the question of whether we are able to go beyond defining a society or culture in geographical terms. They're interesting concepts, and I'll keep them at the back of my mind, I think. Anyway, even though I didn't understand every minute detail of it, I'm really glad I finally read the book after coming across it so many times in my study of Iran : D

I think, perhaps, I should come back to it in a year or two and see what happens.

Now I can start on Ambivalence, which looks really really promising! It's written by a man who travels to a house shared by an Israeli and a Palestinian, and I think it's less of an academic work and more of one of those intimate, personal travelogue-style accounts, which is always interesting (think Nasrin Alavi's Soul of Iran!). I still find it somewhat difficult to stomach purely academic writing (yes this includes Orientalism); with fiction there is a real motivation to keep on reading but less so with critical material. It's improved over the past year or so, of course, but it's still easier to digest emotionally engaging, (subjective) personal accounts instead of dry histories.

History options has made me question my perspective on objectivity, actually. As Keith Jenkins said to me a long time ago, there is no truly objective historical source. And it's fairly impossible to find one. Therefore, why should any of us be afraid of subjectivity? It seems to me that the key is to read widely, and consider multiple sources, biased as they may be. I don't think sources can exist fully separate from each other, and so instead of being afraid of an overly emotional, ostensibly biased text, we should embrace it as part of a larger whole and that is when deeper understanding will surface?

(I'm not being very coherent, am I.)

In any case I've begun to see history as reliant on literature, and that helps me somewhat. And if you think about all (historical and literary) sources as, essentially, texts to interpret, then you'll know what I mean when I say that texts cannot exist in isolation. It's incredibly narrow-minded to look at "the text alone, without any pre-conceived notions", because you are bound to somehow have these notions and it is only with context and background that you can gain a wider understanding of what is in the text. In a similar vein, this is why the origins of texts and their geographical and chronological birthplaces are actually, I think, important. Also, if we say that the point of literature is to understand "the human condition" (in less cliche, less ostentatious terms - to understand who we are), then themes are important too, because themes tell you about who we are. Techniques of analysis, no matter how ruthlessly polished and effective they are, are a method, a means rather than an end. They're important, of course, but not the be-all and end-all, and certainly not what I'd like to focus on in my study of literature. And there you have it : )

--

Took the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking test today, which was an interesting experience. I've never had a test like that before, and I found the inference section particularly tricky, which I suppose may seem odd. But anyway I'll wait for the results and see what happens. I think it's a good move by the school, though. I personally don't think my critical thinking skills have been particularly honed by any official classroom happenings (save maybe for SS lessons). Even if they've been developed somewhat, it's likely to be an unconscious result of history and SS (perhaps lit, to a teeny tiny extent). I'm pretty sure math and the various sciences have not helped me in that area. I don't even feel engaged in those subjects.

--

Chinese! Chinese! Chinese! Ugh. I read a stack of newspaper articles today, and I'm going to start on my chengyu list asap. I kind of really want that A, even if it won't end up on an A-level cert for me; it's about proving that I can more than anything else, I think. Also, I don't want to disappoint my teacher, even though she scares me sometimes.

I am so glad the three of us are back to annoying each other again : D It reminds me continually that we might think we're, like, 60, but we're only sixteen. As evidenced by the bipolarity of our conversations, which swing from things like the political (non-)situation in SG (Ikr :S) to our youthful idealism to how I should, apparently, get a boyfriend who can drive me around (to which I emphatically replied, "said boyfriend does not exist."). There was a lot of laughter today, which really helped mitigate the banality of the timetable.

Am gonna miss them next year.

--

I guess you'd bet
that I'd collapse before you do
Well maybe that's true, or maybe it's not at all
- Your Name Here (Sunrise Highway), Straylight Run

Labels: abstractions, books, chinese, history, literature, obscurities, school, self, thoughts

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Friday, October 30, 2009
Oceania

RS presentation is over, Options are over, Shell Dialogue is over - just need to tackle my history film review, ISO presentation (which is not much prep to be honest), higher chinese O levels and DELF (which is a Long Way Away).

Alright, life is looking pretty good right now. Except I haven't had much time to read Orientalism because (and hence) I am exhausted.

Today post-Shell was somewhat surreal; had a weirdly early 6.30pm dinner of reception food and then it began to... rain. Wait that is an understatement. It poured and stormed and the rain battered the building. And thunder, don't forget thunder. Anyway in the end I waited for the tantrum to subside, somewhat, and then walked out to the bus stop with my umbrella. As I was on my way home there was a small black shape on the pavement in front of me (I couldn't quite make out what exactly it was in the darkness). Evidently I see a lot of black shapes on my way to and from the bus stop. Anyway as I neared it it suddenly jumped high up into the air and then jumped away! I was very tired but it made me smile.

I am Sleepy.

--

I don't want to love you if love leaves me this cold
I don't want to love you if love is this alone
- City Traffic Puzzle, The Hush Sound

Labels: life, obscurities, self, thoughts

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Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Sediment

So, I turned 16 today. Like I said before, it doesn't feel much different. And I'm glad the kid in me is not making such a big fuss over a birthday this year. I'm surprised more than anything when people wish me happy birthday, whether it was a mass song-singing like Fior and 415, quick and cheery wishes from my ex-classmates and people in my options class, or those trasmitted via facebook or sms. All the same I'm incredibly grateful, and touched. Thank you, everyone : )

Watched The Game today. It was extremely disturbing, and kept playing with my own sense of reality, but I really really enjoyed it. I felt for Nicholas Van Orten, identified with his constant desire for order and control, really followed his character from start to finish. The funny thing was that the game was all about his birthday, and his birthday was on October 20 - a week before mine. My classmates were remarking about the strange coincidence.

I have tons of work to do (what's new?) but I think I'm becoming more and more of a last-minute person, which is not quite a good sign? But ah whatever I can't really be bothered right now. I'm taking all my deadlines as they come, which are - RS presentation and history film review on Thursday, Shell on Friday (I really can't be last-minute for this, unfortunately), ISO exhibition next Thursday and Friday, Higher Chinese O-levels on the Tuesday after that. And then... DELF in early December. Goodness.

Well, as I was remarking to my mom the other day, I actually should be (and am?) grateful for all this, because the only reason why I have so much nonsense (and I use that word in the most lighthearted and harmless way possible) to deal with is because I either signed up for it, or was fortunate enough to be given the opportunities that I have. Case in point: ISO/FPS. In a sense I knew this would happen if I did well for FPS, so committing to it is totally my own doing. And I'm only engaged in both the ISO exhibition and FPS national finals because I did well for both these projects; I'm also very much aware that to be able to do both is an incredibly rare opportunity. Therefore - I shouldn't complain, really! There's nothing to complain about, only everything to be thankful for.

--

On another note, this is a prime example of transference at its finest. Get a grip on yourself, Kar Min!

I just thought of Ryan Gosling in Half Nelson again and a little bit of me went up in flames.

--

The study of history for me is the study of human nature, and in a lot of ways it is also about human interactions with the environment, both physical and non-material. In a sense it is about discovering what we are capable of - both the terrible things and the inspiring things, and sometimes both at once. And I feel that history connects me to other people and other lives and other stories, and that is part of what makes the subject so emotionally engaging. A lot of it is also awe, of course, because as I've said numerous times before, the beauty of history is in its sheer depth and breadth - compared to the vastness of the world and of time, of what significance is a single life or breath? And yet, a single life or breath does swing the course of history in the most obscure of ways. You know, that - somehow gives hope.

Labels: exasperation, history, movies, self, thoughts

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Saturday, October 24, 2009
Creased

I ran 10km or so today (I say "or so" because I took a wrong turn and ended up walking to backtrack, and I stopped to climb or gingerly descend a number of particularly tricky and slippery steep tree root/ gravel trails) at Macritchie Reservoir. I think I acquitted myself pretty well, considering that I haven't run anything longer than 2.5k since... well, off-season, which was the end of last year, haha. I appreciated the run; didn't quite like the parts which involved running on the jungle trails, since the trees hugging each other overhead made it incredibly stuffy and claustrophobic, but the parts next to the water with the sun and open sky above and the irony of the golf course right next to the jogging trail were enjoyable.

Also, I am actually glad I took the wrong turn, because as I was backtracking I saw a monkey on a tree right above me; it climbed a couple of paces and turned to stare at me. And shortly after that when I was on the right trail again, there was a monkey on the trail itself, walking along jauntily. There was a group of people walked slightly ahead of me and as I ran past them I said, "there's a monkey following you!" They turned around, amused, and one of the guys joked, "it's attracted to the food in my bag." They flashed brilliant smiles and I continued running ahead, but there it was, Ms K - the "human connection", corny as it sounds.

And as I was nearing the end of the run I saw Ms Tan BC taking photos as incriminating evidence of people from The North Face 100 organizing committee getting ready for the night race - they were blasting really loud (and bad, if I might add) music, and as Ms Tan told me indignantly, were going to do so until night-time, when they were also going to make the runners wear some kind of torch thing. Of course that disturbs the animals, both the light and noise pollution, and that was what Ms Tan was really annoyed with. I am annoyed too, to a lesser degree. I can't get why people have to resort to fancy schmancy gimmicky kind of races like these to prove their own worths, or to make themselves run.

I would actually probably appreciate track a lot more if there wasn't competition. I know my coach always says that life's about competition and yes, competition is integral to the sport as a whole, but personally, I'd probably be happy just training too. (Or perhaps that's me and sour grapes because I never do well in competitions.)

--

I am worried but somehow excited about the week ahead, especially Shell Dialogue.

Shameless plugging, kind of late I know - dialogue with Shell (yes, the Big Oil Company) about sustainable energy for the future (hahaha I caught that smirk), 30 October 2009, Raffles Girls' School (Secondary), 4.00-6.30pm. Speakers: Mr Warren Fernandez (Regional Director for Communications Strategy, Shell), Mr Howard Shaw (Executive Director, Singapore Environmental Council), Ms Jessica Cheam (Correspondent, The Straits Times). Please let me know if you want to attend (people from other schools also cordially invited).

I feel kind of old... I'm turning sixteen on Tuesday. It's a ridiculous feeling. I was asking my mom what I could do legally now that I'm sixteen, besides "the thing" and watching NC16 movies, and... nothing. I can't drive, can't drink, can't vote (not that we generally have much use for that power, but still). I'm not really complaining about all that, it's just - sixteen is fairly overrated. Nothing much will change from Monday to Tuesday except for my state of panic about the Batman project, Iwo Jima presentation and the Shell Dialogue. And sixteen means I have about two and a half years to university (assuming, of course, I actually get there - you never know what life throws at you). It's a scary thought because damn I am helpless to stop time! And before I know it my youth will dwindle away (it already it) and never come back (?) - well, debatable, I suppose, considering all the imagining we do during FPS.

I read somewhere (I think it might have been in Orientalism) the other day that "time and space are artificial concepts". It's such an interesting thought because I always thought of both as natural, immutable things, that Man works to accommodate rather than the other way round. But it is fascinating to think about them from the opposite angle, as being Man-made constructs. Perhaps they started out as constructs, but have eventually weathered the storm of civilization to become immutable parts of the world around us. Imagine how lost we'd all be if time suddenly disappeared, or our perception of "space" turned itself inside out!

--

I named my stuffed fish Charles De Gaulle. He has been called practically everything from "strange" to "ugly" to "kissy-lips" but he is my friend and nothing, nothing will ever change that.

Labels: abstractions, Charles De Gaulle, connections, growing up, obscurities, self, space, time, track

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