Beauty and Time

Always, when beauty blooms into existence, there comes two choices

To bow to the inexorable persistence of Time, turn a blind eye to the fleeting spectacle, and forge deeper into the depthless mire of important, necessary, pressing work.

Or

To stop and look to see, to nourish the soul with the prettiness that sometimes materialize from the random polymorphic world, and for one brief moment be happy. And later, to be punished harshly for having fallen behind the unforgiving, relentless steps of Time.

At this moment, as I bask in the coolness of the drizzle outside my window, and in the music emanating from the twin speakers of my laptop, how I wish that, just for this brief moment, the falling grains of sand will cease to trickle through my futile fingers. Just for this brief moment let the steady flow freeze, and let me sit.

and feel.

Just for awhile.

But even as I am penning this down now, I know that I am wasting time.

Scarce and much needed Time...

Happy CNY :)

The traditional mad rush to Senai airport had never quite been uneventful before, and this time round proved no exception, as I discovered when I once again set off down the happy trail towards Johore Bahru, heading home for Chinese New Year.

At 4pm I walked out into blistering sunshine with a sleeveless shirt and a murmured wish that I don't get a headache from the heat. By the time I arrived at an overcrowded Jurong East MRT station, though, the skies had darkened, and the first traces of what soon escalated into an all out storm began trickling from the gray heavens.

And as usual, I was raincoatless and umbrellaless. Just my luck.

Fortunately due to my setting off early, the causeway wasn't quite a bottleneck of jammed metallic tranportational devices yet, so all I needed to get across was to fight alongside a monstrous swarm of people for the buses, which each left their stops more stuffed than sardine cans. At the other end, the pouring weather and the already considerable queue at the run-down Malaysian customs checkpoint gave me the sweet opportunity to make a little wade-dash in the rain, with my back arched over my laptop bag and my feet and my dear sandals splashing in inch-deep water. Talk about adventure.

So finally against the odds and the beating raindrops I arrived at the airport's city lounge at Kota Raya, where I to my extreme horror met Foo, also heading for Senai airport (to catch a flight an hour earlier than mine). After forking out a painful RM 8 for the previously free shuttle service to Senai, I was also blessed with the chance to pace, fiddle and generally sit in idle wait for the damned shuttle bus, which happily arrived about 30 minutes past schedule.

10 minutes later, when we were all snugly settled in our seats, the bus lumbered off in the direction of the airport - to be promptly caught in a terrific jam that basically lasted the entire way to the airport, tripling the time of the journey. And here I was worrying about arriving at the airport too early (I set out a full 5 hours before my flight)! As it turned out the attendant on the shuttle bus hooked up with the guys in the airport to delay poor Foo's flight, and so he fortunately made it onto the plane and flew off to Catland.

As for me, being ravenously hungry and rather short on time, I bought and wolfed down a quick meal at the new Marrybrowns outlet in the airport, nearly choking and killing myself, and thereafter hurried to the boarding gate to be greeted by the news that my flight just got delayed by half and hour.

Sigh.

Well, shit happens when it wants to. I guess what's important is that everything turned out well in the end. Sure, it may not have been the most smooth-sailing of trips, but many more things could have gone wrong. As it turned out God decided to answer all of my prayers despite the angry weather and ill circumstances, and I am grateful for that.

(Besides, it definitely wasn't the worse of trips, remembering things like the Chieh Ping's bag incident.)

And so I began this festive season rather wretched and abused, but with an acute inner sense of thanksgiving. Thanksgiving that I hope will remain in my soul as I stride firm steps into the new lunar year.

May it be that, though things may not turn out exactly as we want, there will always be room for reflection, that we may count our blessings and find joy.

Happy CNY :)

Dragontines day!

Peculiarly, jiwang songs have been wrapping strands of dreamy lyrics around my befuddled consciousness this entire day. A product of my characteristic perpetual sleepiness? Or the expression of a subconscious wistful sorrow, one that survived in spite of my various happily-married-to-sandals bravado?

Anyhow lately I have been - without any reason whatsoever - snapping awake on my bed way earlier than I need to, and today - again entirely without reason - my eyes happened to decide to flicker open at about 630 am.

And class only starts at 9!

Combine this with the fact that I slept at about 1am last night and you'd arrive at the conclusion that Jason will inevitably roam the woeful halls of NUS as a veritable walking avatar of sleepiness this day.

And so I did.

Very nearly died of boredom in Aaron Tan's Lecture (those who've listened to him for CS1104 will know what I mean) In order to save myself from the immensely Ben-like behaviour of falling asleep in class, I needed to entertain myself. But unlike Eric who simply solved his problem by immersing himself in one of his characteristic uber kuailan flash games involving Osama, Mao Zhedong and Pope Benedict, I sanctimoniously decided to work on something constructive.

Well obviously, that could only mean one thing :



Happy Dragontines Day :)

Procrastination

Every day when I return to my little room, bearing the remnants of the day's load, she awaits me therein.

And when I come to sit on my bed, wishing brief respite from the endless chores, she comes to sit alongside me.

Her touch was the caress of the shifting breeze, and her voice the faint whisper of noctornal song.
Her shimmering hair was the silver rain that bathes me, in ripples of pleasant chill refreshes me,
And her breath was the fragrance of the washed earth.
And her eyes, always the depthless velvet of night, draws mine into its swirling embrace of passion.

Her unfolding hands beckon like a dove, bearing the promise of flight, of limitlessness and infinity.

"Come with me" She says, as always "Release your burden, the weight that leaves you earthbound, and come with me.
"Come dance with me the steps of lightness, of simple, thoughtless uncertainty.
"Come and sing to the rhythm of your desires. Come and lose yourself in the enigmatic grace of the night
"Come with me and take flight, love, unto luna's radiant silver take flight."

So sweet her voice, so tempting her call. So wondrous the fluttering thought of her seduction.

And yet I fight her, though not knowing why. Steel upon steel, my will against her magic.

And this night, it is obvious who claimed the victor.

Break

Break (in C/C++ and many similar programming languages)
A statement that instructs execution to break out of a loop cycle when further looping becomes unnecessary or potentially harmful

Okay in response to Ben's and Christine's posts as well as the various opinions they generated I will now seek to explain and clarify the idea I was trying to bring forth in my previous post.

Here is the essence of my argument : We each have our varied set of problems - having too much to do, being unable to work towards a dream, failing at what we expect to achieve - but they share one thing in common: They all involve intense difficulty in, or failure of, our efforts in obtaining an ideal(s). We aim at a mark identified by society or by our own inherent wants and slave away to that end (or, if this is not possible, gaze anxiously at the horizon in wait), and when we find ourselves up smack against a blank wall or climbing a seemingly insurmountable potential barrier we, naturally, cave in to frustration, cynicism and deep depression.

We wonder why is it that we cannot get what we want. We wonder why is it that despite having held on for so long, no deliverance seems to be forthcoming to reward our painful perserverence. Why must we suffer and whether there is an end. Why God implanted these desires in our beings, and yet withholds their fruit from our reaching fingers.

The fact of the matter is that ideals don't become any more reachable through the pratice of constant thought and sheer, unquenchable want. And while working towards our goals may increase our chances at winning it, the actual probability increment is measured solely by the raw effectiveness of our methods and its synergy with the other random factors of involved in the situation, NOT by the actual amount of sweat and efforts we invest. Success comes at its own time and in its own flavour, and no matter how much we would like to we are not afforded the luxury of any form of choice.

So yes, I agree with Ben and Ian that it is nigh impossible to disconnect our sense of self worth from the social forces that shape our lives, BUT I do not agree that a particular ideal (or yardstick), once identified, should have a permanent rooted position near the top of our priorities. The reasons :

• We know that if we want to have any chance of getting what we aim for we have to work for it - but what if whatever we're aiming for turns out to be unreachable? The question then is no longer that of replanting the 'yardstick' onto a location we can consider 'more successful' but that of removing the yardstick from grounds we are unable to reach despite repeated efforts on our part. Security loses its meaning if we cannot have a realistic chance for hitting the level at which security is attained.
  


• Plus, if our minimum level of assurance proves to be at least currently unachievable, insisting on keeping this gauge of assurance will only lead us to be fearful, insecure, and generally even less effective in our efforts as a whole. This is certainly not going to help our chances of achieving what we want in the near future and will in fact adversely affect our performance in any other endeavour we may be undertaking at that moment. The idea is maintaining fast hold and pouring insistent attention and sweat on a presently unattainable goal is tantamount to beating ourselves against a solid bolder : it won't get us through, and it will hurt us
  

Hence, under such considerations it becomes both rational and necessary sometimes to just let go of some things in life, however much we may desire them at some point. If something is unattainable at a particular time we should strive to recognise and admit this, and be rational enough to understand that there is nothing we can do about it and that we should be focusing on something else - I am certain that at least for the people likely to read this blog, there will always be other things that require attention. Work on those lest you find yourself losing something else just because you wasted too much time on something that was a lost cause to begin with. I am in no way implying that letting go is easy (I've had my share of lost ideals) but my assertion is that there should be no reason to NOT work on something achievable, however lacking its appeal, on the account of something that is NOT achievable, however painfully alluring.

Back to the so termed minimum level of assurance, my point is that if this minimum level proves either unattainable or costly (to our emotional/spiritual well-being, that is) to maintain, then this level should be readjusted. Of course if we seek a readjustment that will not devalue our self worth then we will find ourselves with the question of how? - Since we acknowledge that society has laid down a rigid set of rules defining success in its terms, it would seem that redefining our inner-gauge such that it will both measure our own worth to our satisfaction AND comply by societal standards is impossible. What I am suggesting, however, is for us to simply accept a humbler view of ourselves - ie if we cant change the meter, we would lower the threshold. If we cannot change our level of success in society's rigid terms, then we quit trying to and live with a lower position in the success hierarchy - in exchange for a calmer, potentially happier life and a clearer mind. This is not easy given that everyone and anyone would like to have at least a relatively high regard for themselves and their intrinsic potentials. But a pathway that eats up all of our energy and/or spirit without giving any realistic results is no way, and we are much better off breaking out of this cycle of unhappiness and fruitlessness and walking down a path we can actually progress naturally. Put from a religious viewpoint, we should seek and walk the direction in which God intends for us to go, even if it humbles us, instead of wandering out on our own and demanding that he help us to whatever prize we find.

This is the Geodesic of Life that I talked about. Only some wounded pride, intrinsic longing and a certain degree of vanity should stand in our way of a smoother walk down the hilly roads of life.

Note:
I am not in anyway suggesting that we should not put great effort into fulfilling our ambitions, or that we should be giving up when we encounter discouraging signs during the course of our efforts. I should state here that I write this post keeping in mind that my 'target audience', sort of, do not usually have a problem with application of effort. Rather, most of us, I think, simply try way too hard sometimes.

Also if I'm not making as much sense as I'm hoping to make, then please bear with me. I have not written pieces like this in ages, plus I'm really sleepy right now~~~

Night Begins

At this moment, when the pen is finally laid down.

Night begins.

Not when darkness spreads its cloak, but when the midnight candle dies.

Not when the outside world turns quiet, but when the rustling papers hush.

Not when the air is still, but when the stillness seeps past the rushing blood to finally bring rest.

When the mind withdraws at long last from the torment of dull exertion, and the soul at long last sheds the chrysalis of the day's fruitless load. When the breeze lifts the consciousness from the clinging flakes of tedium, and my entire being soars with the intoxication of this one brief moment of utter freedom.

Night begins.

Live free and live merry, for tommorrow we die.

Doodle-oo!

This one's dedicated to Victor-sama! ^^

Life's Geodesic

Geodesic
The shortest distance between two points on a surface

Why do we go out of our way in pursuit of all these ideals that come our way? Why do we put so much effort into hacking, slashing and feeling our way down an entangled, blocked, hostile path, when another awaits, clear and bright and easy, just next door?

So many goals, so many things to aim for, so many aspirations. And following that, so many lost causes, so many disappointments, so much sorrow.

What justifies this sheer labour? This teeth-gritting, relentless hold on all these hopes, all these duties, all these work?

What is it that we are working for anyway? Are we labouring under the will of God, or our own insistence? Is He there ahead, saying "Keep going, I will deliver you" or is He standing back at the sunlit road that we left, saying "Come back after you have exhausted yourself, when you lie broken, in final comprehension that you belong not there but here. And I will walk with you once more"?

Perhaps there is a path through the thick forests of life. One that we can walk, slowly by suredly. A path along which we can look at the hanging carrots of life - money, love, fame; good results, social popularity and Cambridge - and despite not having achieved them, still find peace.

How do we find this path? Perhaps it is just there, the simplest, most natural one. The direction in which we can put one foot on the smooth grass ahead of the other, instead of beating our shoulders against a stone barrier and shedding tears of impotence.

Perhaps this is life in its truest splendour - to turn away from the many unreachable temptations and look instead for that wooden staff, upon the hand of the gentle Shepherd beckoning towards the Geodesic of Life.