I'm not even going to lie---I'm starting to feel very burnt out with respect to the daily writing. It should be evident from the type of writing I have been putting up these days: really short single-paragraph monstrosities, and the deluge of six word stories that I just put up to cover up for this week.
There is, of course, a reason behind it.
Procrastination.
I have meant to write down the abbreviated history of the epynomous City for my NaNoWriMo 2014 piece, ``Tales of the City'', meant to be a part of an entire novel that is entitled the same way. But life got in the way and I never could bring myself to sit down quietly and write it down. Perhaps I will have better luck at it this upcoming week.
I have been examining quite a few life questions over the past week, which unfortunately resulted in my brain overheating and landing me in a semi-delirious state as I try to keep my poor brain in working order for the work-related matters while at the same time allowing myself the capacity to think about the life questions that I had unconsciously chosen to work on this week.
Maybe writing it down here would help push it off my brain and let it have more rest instead of getting all beat up.
The big life question is that of marriage. I was trying to determine my views on marriage and what it meant to me. The overall consensus I got from my thoughts was that I was amenable to the abstract principle governing marriage, that is, the idea of having a spouse who is one's co-pilot on the journey of life to share weal and woe with, a partner-in-crime, a confidante, a friend, a soulmate. However, the implementation of marriage was rather abhorrent to me---the whole ritualistic behaviour prior to marriage (the courtship, stupid excesses in the form of the wedding banquet, all the bullshit involved in the ``trials and tribulations'' that is common in my particular region), the completely imbalanced partnership contract (strong bias towards favouring the woman in any conflict whatsoever thanks to outdated Women's Charter laws that still pretends that there has been no progress in women's rights), and the ritualistic behaviour after marriage from others with respect to progeny (``hey when are you having your first child?''). I'm not even sure if putting up with all that kind of crap is worth the benefits that come from being with one's spouse.
And don't get me started on serial monogamy. It's depressing how people get involved in a marriage with the idea that they would divorce eventually. Call me old-fashioned, but I don't like that kind of marriage. I'd rather stay single if I have to put up with serial monogamy as the alternative.
The second big life question is that of my base of operations. I was trying to determine if I should stay on in the SIN city, or move elsewhere on a permanent basis, or even to live a more itinerant lifestyle, going to where the problems are. I am currently in the first of three options, and I know friends who are in the other two categories. One chose to move elsewhere on a permanent basis because it was clear that given his interests, staying in Singapore would be a complete waste of time. One chose to live itinerantly because he never felt that he had a place that he could sink his roots into and call home, more of a side effect of his upbringing than anything else. I have some roots here, and it is hard to determine if they are worth staying for on what is effectively a ship that is starting on its sinking run should no positive change occur. It's one thing to be a second-class citizen in one's adopted homeland, but it's another thing altogether to feel the same way for one's original homeland, a sentiment that I am finding hard to ignore these days. And I don't mean just the large numbers of foreigners-turned-permanent-residents/citizens---I am also referring to the second/third/fourth generation locals who have been on this same island all these times as well. I feel marginalised even among my own people.
The true trade-off is between familiarity/confidence against sustainability/the unknown. Still no answers here, of course.
And that's all the catharsis I'm looking for, perhaps. I'll try to write up the abbreviated history and push them out piece-wise for this week. Let's hope I can do it.
Sunday, July 20, 2014
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
On Censorship or the NLB Affair
(Cross-posted from Facebook.)
There has been recent rants about censorship in the media. Here is my take: to condone or even support censorship as the primary means of social control is a tacit acceptance that the people have not achieved a level of critical thinking where they can discern what is harmful and what isn't for themselves.
In other words, people who support censorship either think that everyone is too stupid to think for themselves, or are too insecure in their own infirmities to admit it, both of which undermines the fanciful thought that the education system is "doing its job".
"Protecting the values of X" as an argument is the uncritical assumption that the values in question are unassailable and perfect, which is extremism in disguise. If the values are truly unassailable and perfect, why would they need protection through the use of quashing the existence of information that is contrary?
The case for LBGTQ tolerance or acceptance is no different from the case of racial tolerance and acceptance. In fact, apart from the highly stereotyped behaviours of the few, it is even harder to determine if someone is of the LBGTQ community than compared to racial inclusion since there are no "obvious" external signs, i.e. there are no phenotype differences of one who is from the LBGTQ community and one who isn't.
Protectionism as a general rule of operation never worked well unless there is a strong comparative advantage present. We see this occurring again and again in economics, so what makes us think that social problems will behave any differently? Enlightenment is obtained through the careful consideration of *all* evidence present; censorship is antithesis to enlightenment.
We can never go back -- we can only go forward; all the censorship in the world isn't going to make LBGTQ people "go away". Censorship is the head-in-the-sand way of wanting to go back, that somehow, to ignore the existence of something makes it disappear. The only way forward is to face the facts squarely and mediate. That is the mark of 400 years of improvement in human knowledge and understanding that is our heritage.
There has been recent rants about censorship in the media. Here is my take: to condone or even support censorship as the primary means of social control is a tacit acceptance that the people have not achieved a level of critical thinking where they can discern what is harmful and what isn't for themselves.
In other words, people who support censorship either think that everyone is too stupid to think for themselves, or are too insecure in their own infirmities to admit it, both of which undermines the fanciful thought that the education system is "doing its job".
"Protecting the values of X" as an argument is the uncritical assumption that the values in question are unassailable and perfect, which is extremism in disguise. If the values are truly unassailable and perfect, why would they need protection through the use of quashing the existence of information that is contrary?
The case for LBGTQ tolerance or acceptance is no different from the case of racial tolerance and acceptance. In fact, apart from the highly stereotyped behaviours of the few, it is even harder to determine if someone is of the LBGTQ community than compared to racial inclusion since there are no "obvious" external signs, i.e. there are no phenotype differences of one who is from the LBGTQ community and one who isn't.
Protectionism as a general rule of operation never worked well unless there is a strong comparative advantage present. We see this occurring again and again in economics, so what makes us think that social problems will behave any differently? Enlightenment is obtained through the careful consideration of *all* evidence present; censorship is antithesis to enlightenment.
We can never go back -- we can only go forward; all the censorship in the world isn't going to make LBGTQ people "go away". Censorship is the head-in-the-sand way of wanting to go back, that somehow, to ignore the existence of something makes it disappear. The only way forward is to face the facts squarely and mediate. That is the mark of 400 years of improvement in human knowledge and understanding that is our heritage.
Sunday, July 13, 2014
Because I Felt Like Ranting
(This began as a rant about being labelled a ``scholar'' and being the only non-PhD holder among a group and feeling all left out, but on second thought that is too damn inane a topic to talk about. I don't want to be thought of as being a massive whiner.)
Life ain't shabby. I'm alive, I have a job, I have some semblence of free time, I get to do things I like doing and things I love doing. Yet somehow there is an emptiness within me. It generally doesn't show itself though---I have enough interesting activities to keep things moving that I never feel bored or discomforted. Until of course when I stop to examine myself with respect to the world around me.
I realise that each year, I'm losing one more friend than I had. Sometimes I blame them, but most times I blame myself. There are many instances where I just... don't want to be involved with the people any more. It's not that they had done something untoward to me, it is more like their trajectory in life creates situations that I feel uncomfortable about. No, scratch that, I'm used to being uncomfortable. What I mean is that their trajectory in life makes me feel inferior in all manners of the word.
What I'm talking about is things like: being in the presence of peers who are all PhD holders who talk about nothing but their research using the latest buzzwords, married folks who yap non-stop about their children and all the related jazz, and people who have no fucking clue how to talk with me so they uncomfortably try to blend in and make it all awkward.
I basically leave the first two groups of people out of my life as much as I can, unless forced to deal with them, where I just quietly assume my nondescript position and only open my bloody mouth when I have to. The third group of people, I keep losing at the rate of one per year, and I'm not even sure what to make of that.
I was converting bits and pieces of my autobiography (only up to thirteen years old, unfortunately---some things had been too traumatic to revisit thus far) from the old MSWord document that I started when I was twenty into LaTeX recently when I unconsciously did some analysis on my life, looking for some of the fractal-like patterns in it. And funny enough, some patterns did occur, and even though their form evolved over time, the crucial aspects never did.
The ``me'' within is a different animal from the ``me'' without.
What I mean is, as a person interacting with the world, I have built many walls surrounding the psyche that is the real me. Everyone saw the walls I built, some more clued in than others, and most respected those walls. Only a few managed to breach them and access the me within, either through my own weak moments or through the more inane manner of a lasting friendship. There were periods where I tried to be friendlier and take down some of the walls and barriers thus erected, but they have usually ended up with me being hurt psychologically, which meant that the walls and barriers were up almost as quickly as I tried to keep them down.
Nowadays, as a rule of thumb, the walls are always up, never down. That can explain the misadventure with Janet---it was hard reaching out to her when both of us where having our own versions of the walls up. It was a shame really, I always thought we could have been successful. Maybe there's still a chance, but I'm not hopeful any more.
Sometimes though, I wonder just how deep my friends know me. Considering the amount of resistance I unconciously project through all the walls, it's something that is hard to tell. It's not even a case of keeping secrets---everyone has those---but rather, a segregation of personae. I know how the real me is like, he's complex, dark, wild, but fundamentally non-evil in nature. But the me without is more mundane, serious-looking, and probably very tiresome and boring.
Living this upcoming decade feels very similar to living during the first twelve years of my formal education---everyone around me is mainstream and ignores me in general, while I bury myself among creative endeavours and read a ton of books both fiction and non-fiction, not all of them related to a single specific theme of inquiry. Sadly, given my experience during that duodecennial period, I think I'm not hopeful at how things will turn out now.
To end off, I'll leave behind this: look for Dustin Hoffman's interview on his role in Tootsie.
Life ain't shabby. I'm alive, I have a job, I have some semblence of free time, I get to do things I like doing and things I love doing. Yet somehow there is an emptiness within me. It generally doesn't show itself though---I have enough interesting activities to keep things moving that I never feel bored or discomforted. Until of course when I stop to examine myself with respect to the world around me.
I realise that each year, I'm losing one more friend than I had. Sometimes I blame them, but most times I blame myself. There are many instances where I just... don't want to be involved with the people any more. It's not that they had done something untoward to me, it is more like their trajectory in life creates situations that I feel uncomfortable about. No, scratch that, I'm used to being uncomfortable. What I mean is that their trajectory in life makes me feel inferior in all manners of the word.
What I'm talking about is things like: being in the presence of peers who are all PhD holders who talk about nothing but their research using the latest buzzwords, married folks who yap non-stop about their children and all the related jazz, and people who have no fucking clue how to talk with me so they uncomfortably try to blend in and make it all awkward.
I basically leave the first two groups of people out of my life as much as I can, unless forced to deal with them, where I just quietly assume my nondescript position and only open my bloody mouth when I have to. The third group of people, I keep losing at the rate of one per year, and I'm not even sure what to make of that.
I was converting bits and pieces of my autobiography (only up to thirteen years old, unfortunately---some things had been too traumatic to revisit thus far) from the old MSWord document that I started when I was twenty into LaTeX recently when I unconsciously did some analysis on my life, looking for some of the fractal-like patterns in it. And funny enough, some patterns did occur, and even though their form evolved over time, the crucial aspects never did.
The ``me'' within is a different animal from the ``me'' without.
What I mean is, as a person interacting with the world, I have built many walls surrounding the psyche that is the real me. Everyone saw the walls I built, some more clued in than others, and most respected those walls. Only a few managed to breach them and access the me within, either through my own weak moments or through the more inane manner of a lasting friendship. There were periods where I tried to be friendlier and take down some of the walls and barriers thus erected, but they have usually ended up with me being hurt psychologically, which meant that the walls and barriers were up almost as quickly as I tried to keep them down.
Nowadays, as a rule of thumb, the walls are always up, never down. That can explain the misadventure with Janet---it was hard reaching out to her when both of us where having our own versions of the walls up. It was a shame really, I always thought we could have been successful. Maybe there's still a chance, but I'm not hopeful any more.
Sometimes though, I wonder just how deep my friends know me. Considering the amount of resistance I unconciously project through all the walls, it's something that is hard to tell. It's not even a case of keeping secrets---everyone has those---but rather, a segregation of personae. I know how the real me is like, he's complex, dark, wild, but fundamentally non-evil in nature. But the me without is more mundane, serious-looking, and probably very tiresome and boring.
Living this upcoming decade feels very similar to living during the first twelve years of my formal education---everyone around me is mainstream and ignores me in general, while I bury myself among creative endeavours and read a ton of books both fiction and non-fiction, not all of them related to a single specific theme of inquiry. Sadly, given my experience during that duodecennial period, I think I'm not hopeful at how things will turn out now.
To end off, I'll leave behind this: look for Dustin Hoffman's interview on his role in Tootsie.
Wednesday, July 09, 2014
Welcome to July
July. The beginning of the second half of the year. How time flies.
I am nearly halfway through my insane story-fragment-a-day journey. To tell the truth, I am getting rather fatigued by it. There are quite a few days where I just had to take time off from it all, and just not write anything, hoping that I can fill in the gaps the next day, or sometimes, within the next few days. WriteThis is still doing a decent job, but it is me who is not catching up well.
I find that my writing is lacklustre.
Not to mention that sometimes I cheat. Six word stories are hardly worthy enough to be called ``prose'', the underlying principle behind the writing anyway, yet it had been done quite a few times where I had to do something but had no wherewithal to actually do it.
But as I said, we're halfway through. Once this year is up, I will have to decide how best to carry on filling up entries on my prose blog. This is, of course, not considering the amount of writing that I need to do for this year's NaNoWriMo, which I haven't actually planned in anyway other than that it should be part of a larger narrative that I am supposed to be writing.
Speaking of writing, I have rebuilt all the NaNoWriMo entries. The oversized text on ``A5'' paper was starting to get on my nerves, and I fixed the source files to generate things according to letter-sized instead. The files preserve their old name and are shorter in page count and look a little more readable instead of something designed for those under twelve.
I have also put up A Missed Connection as a PDF for download as well.
I suspect I'm in some kind of an emotional slump. Maybe I need to do something physical again to rebuild sufficient levels of happy-hormones so that I stop feeling this way. And with that, this entry ends.
I am nearly halfway through my insane story-fragment-a-day journey. To tell the truth, I am getting rather fatigued by it. There are quite a few days where I just had to take time off from it all, and just not write anything, hoping that I can fill in the gaps the next day, or sometimes, within the next few days. WriteThis is still doing a decent job, but it is me who is not catching up well.
I find that my writing is lacklustre.
Not to mention that sometimes I cheat. Six word stories are hardly worthy enough to be called ``prose'', the underlying principle behind the writing anyway, yet it had been done quite a few times where I had to do something but had no wherewithal to actually do it.
But as I said, we're halfway through. Once this year is up, I will have to decide how best to carry on filling up entries on my prose blog. This is, of course, not considering the amount of writing that I need to do for this year's NaNoWriMo, which I haven't actually planned in anyway other than that it should be part of a larger narrative that I am supposed to be writing.
Speaking of writing, I have rebuilt all the NaNoWriMo entries. The oversized text on ``A5'' paper was starting to get on my nerves, and I fixed the source files to generate things according to letter-sized instead. The files preserve their old name and are shorter in page count and look a little more readable instead of something designed for those under twelve.
I have also put up A Missed Connection as a PDF for download as well.
I suspect I'm in some kind of an emotional slump. Maybe I need to do something physical again to rebuild sufficient levels of happy-hormones so that I stop feeling this way. And with that, this entry ends.
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