Shift.

People seem to like countdowns an awful lot. Every time something deemed even the slightest bit significant seems to happen there will always be someone grabbing a stopwatch, another one with a loudhailer placed somewher between his larynx and his nostrils, one with ten fingers wagging about while a bunch of others try to get everyone else hyped up. You’ve seen this the first time a space shuttle left the earth and every time after that. You see this when a new year approaches. Now, you’ll see me counting down to my homecoming.

 

And by homecoming, I mean it literally.

 

Of course, when you start counting down, the hands of time have a way of slowing down, almost agonizingly while you wait. Seconds feel like minutes, minutes feel like hours, the list goes on. So I do feel somewhat mired right now. I could stop counting down, but that would make the time even harder to pass.

 

—

 

Everywhere, the world is shifting one way or the other. But then there was the saying “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” You know, I think it’s true. People claim that Singapore is getting richer all the time, that the stacks of papers containing numbers don’t lie. And to some extent, they’re right- numbers can’t lie. But the people behind the numbers can. Are we really getting richer?

 

The cost of taking a taxi has risen incredibly after the introduction of many different surcharges.

The cost of food is steadily rising. Remember when chicken rice was $2 a plate? Now $2-a-plate chicken rice is something to shout about.

The cost of rice has gone up 26% last I checked.

Did everyone really et a 10% rise in their income? It’s probably more like an average, since people who sell stuff start earning so much more.

 

No, I don’t think we’re getting richer. Then again, as someone who just had a 300% pay rise from last year, I’m hardly in a positon to complain.

 

And yet, I still do. Because I’m Singaporean and I’m human. Yeah, that’s national day for you.

Sickness.

The average human takes about 10,000 steps a day.

 

Today, I took about 10.

 

Yeah, being sick kind of sucks. Which makes me wonder, all this talk about humans being the most powerful species on the planet? I think it’s bullshit. Most dominant? Yeah. Most anything else? Probably not. We’re not as big as elephants, haven’t been around as long as cockroaches, can’t run as fast as most cats, can fly, can’t climb trees, can’t survive on only either meat or vegetables. If you came up with a list of things that humans can’t do that animals can, you could probably roll it up and have it mistaken for toilet paper.

 

But you know, I’m tired of hating already. Only those who think too much find that they have hte capacity to hate. It’s really much easier being a mediocre goon every now and then. Make that most of the time.

 

—

Have you ever looked at the stars? I’m guessing you have, unless a) you live in a country with smog about(aside: It’s been so long since I used the word smog I’ve almost forgot what it meant. Ever had that happen to you?) or b) You can’t come out at night, in which case you probably live in the 1700s and are afraid of werewolves, vampires and other less elegant,fearsome,vicious varieties of beasts that came out at night(let’s face it, werebunnies and appendix-sucking wolverines don’t exactly strike fear into the hearts of many.), in which case you probably wouldn’t have internet, in which case you probably wouldn’t be reading this unless you had a 512kb/s ouija board.

 

Have you ever wondered if the stars looked back? If they were watching every one of us? If they were rooting for us, or hoping we fail, or simply drawing entertainment the way we watch tv?

 

As nice as that might sound, science has proven that every star is its own sun, and no sun would watch a solar system other than its own, so that’s really moot.

 

See? Science, and by definition, logic, spoils everything.

Knight.

In traditional times, the Knight was a man in impossibly heavy armour that did battle with a variety of opponents, including but not limited to :

1)Barbarians that drove cars with their feet,

2)Lions in a colosseum, while a large-nosed roman man in a toga would watch while being fanned by manservants,

3)Heroes who would cut off all their arms and legs, only for the Knight to continue trash-talking them. They are mostly dressed in black for this role.

4)Other combatants in impossibly heavy armour ; Watching them do battle would be like watching Matrix-style fights, until you realised that they were actually fighting at full speed.

5)Other combatants carrying impossibly heavy lances on horseback; Horses are also impossibly strong to carry all that weight, and

6)The invention of electricity - Full suit of metal armour + electricity = ouch.

Over time, the Knight would go from a full-grown man to a wooden or plastic piece to be placed on a board on which the game known as chess would be played. Like golf, chess is about as exciting as watching two snails run a 120-mile marathon to the naked eye, and extremely exciting to people who know about it. Aforementioned people would then be outcasted as “geeks”, since majority of people do things other than look at people move things around a table. In this game, the Knight has a variety of roles ; Some people like to overuse him to create a unique threat on the table, while other players eschew the Knight completely in their strategies. This may or may not be due to the Knight’s not being “straight” - That is, not being able to move in a straight line, and thus not able to create any offense at all in a straight line. Indeed, the Knight is for people who like to go from around or behind.

 

Now, however, when people talk about Knights, they talk about Batman. As good as the movie was at dealing with the eternal strafe Batman has to face, dealing with twisted criminals as well as the hatred that the very people he tries to protect, the most tragic part of the movie was that we wouldn’t have another Batman movie with as good a Joker as Heath Ledger, who will now have to deal with dual reputations as both a tormented clown and a gay cowboy.

 

R.I.P, Heath Ledger. R.I.P.

Loop.

It’s amazing how the most minute of actions can reflect what actually goes on in the real world.

 

When you take a small picutre and try to blow it up to fit onto a scale - perhaps a much larger scale, you’d realise that the picture becomes blurry, hard to make out and generally unsightly - Same goes for movies. Now, when you think up a plan it all sounds good in your head and everything will work out leaving you with a nobel prize, a brand new Chevrolet and hookers at your doorstep, but when you present it to people in black suits and thick glasses or even worse - try to put it into action, suddenly everything gets a lot harder, all sorts of monkey wrenches get thrown into your plans, and eventually you give up. S

 

See the parallel? It’s not obvious, because my writing sucks more than the secretary between the bosses’ legs, but it’s there - The bigger something is, the more easily it screws up - The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Not just a line for cheesy cartoons, it’s actually true in real life sometimes.

 

I have developed a liking for KT Tunstall. Hurhur.

Reason.

Why do I say so much, but do so little? It’s a question that has bugged me for a very long time, the same way a work assignment is thrown at you and you do everything else except work on it, but don’t forget it because it niggles at your brain like a barnacle on a rock.

 

Obviously, anything you want to do is very possible, depending on how you look at it.

 

It’s always possible, but there’s always a price, similar to how there’s never a free lunch in this world(a theory that seems to be consistently disproved when taken literally.) For some dreams, people can be so committed that they can pay any price for it. At some point, however, you have a take a step back and realise that going after what you want is a risk, a gamble ; And the stakes are what you have now. And I’ve found that the dilemma of opportunity cost means that I’m almost afraid to make decisions, because me being me, I’ll almost make the wrong one and not realise it until it’s too late.

 

On the other hand, I realise that sitting around and not making a decision is, in itself, a decision to sit around and not do anything. And if you sit around doing nothing, you really do end up with nothing. Which is obviously infinitely worse than making a wrong decision.

 

Hmmm. What do I do now?

Toss.

Every now and then, I read the news. I read blogs, I read about other people, I read about what these other people are doing about their lives. (Not lately though, since the interent was down my existance has been rather comparable to that of a caveman.)

 

I read a lot about how so many people in the world are doing these things, and how they seem to be making the most out of their lives. How so many people are doing this at the prime of their lives. And then I look at myself. At the prime of my life, I’m not doing anything particularly incredible. That can partly be blamed on being mired in a silly government policy akin to slavery disguised as country defense that prevents people from being free, but without it, I doubt that I would be doing anything useful anyway, I’m a dolt like that.

 

I kind of feel like I’m just tossing my life away, letting time pass, getting a job, eventually returning to the earth and being a contributing member to an Apple Tree near you. And hopefully that Apple Tree(caps intended) will contribute to the discovery of the next great scientist, but since lightning never strikes twice, it probably won’t. Am I really content to be just another face in the crowd, another Brick in the Wall, going gently into that goodnight while the world is killing me softly?

 

….Well that was a lot of pop culture references in one sentence.

Stuck.

So, a song has been getting stuck in my head lately. It’s not even one of those very popular songs or jingles that get stuck in your head. In fact, it’s one of those stupid Maroon 5 songs about a girl that slept with a guy, or the other way around(actually all their songs are like that).

Cause you keep me comin’ back for more
And I feel a little better than I did before
If I never see your face again I don’t mind
Cos’ we’ve gone much further than I thought we’d get tonight

As silly as the lyrics are(and many songs today have silly lyrics these days, obvious evidence that we’ve run ourselves out of words over the years), it’s still a decent song, which is why music is a beautiful thing, taking random noises and putting them together to create something harmonious. Kind of like making a hot dog. Well that was a really far-off analogy.

In other news, I got a new phone! The switch from Nokia to Motorola has been rather choppy though, icebergs cross oceans faster than I can type a message now, for some reason Motorola phone dictionaries are extremely anal retentive(or as retentive as phones can be). That, or I’m a phone idiot(more likely).

Oh, how I wish time could stand still. Then I wouldnt have to go back to Taiwan.

=(

Scheduling.

AUGGGHHHH WHY CAN’T EVERYTHING JUST FALL INTO PLACE?!?!?!

Is what I would scream out, given that I’ve already backed out on pre-agreed meetings for other people, rather unwillingly too.

But you know what? As much of an asshole I might seem like, doing that actually felt good. Not because I like going back on my word(and to be honest, verbal agreement rarely means much these days), but because making the choice to go against the flow(’flow’ meaning the obligations I set for myself) felt rather liberating.

That, and I actually had a fairly good time as opposed to the alternative as I envisioned it. See? Being pessimistic about everything is actually a good thing, because when you’re in an okay situation it almost feels like Santa is smiling down on you(or has a faulty calendar).

This is why I hate planning(and also why I lose and forget things a lot). See, because we plan so much, we can more or less predict what is going to happen. And being able to see into the future, as it turns out, isn’t much fun. Because unpredictability is what makes life worth living. It keeps you sharp since you need to adjust, and if you don’t plan, you don’t constrict yourself with the self -appointed onus of “sticking to the plan”. I mean, having a long-term plan is important, if, say, your plan spans years and years, since you do need to have an overall goal. But a plan that long is sure to screw up to some degree sooner or later, and when that happens you need to deviate from the straight line you drew, and then find a way to get back on course, or salvage the situation. This is why Zhuge Liang was a great strategist, why Boston won the NBA championship, why the Singapore Army is doomed to fail and why Mao Zedong’s cultural revolutions already failed.

It’s very important when you do something to recognise when your method isn’t working, and to adjust accordingly. To quote something a random guy who has no other significance outside of saying this sentence, “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.” This isn’t saying that sticking to a routine is bad, since you always try to do what works when you’re doing something you don’t like, but the problem lies in the routine not always working out. In fact, one thing doing things in an orderly manner has taught me is that routine is boring, and hence when people get bored the routine performance gets worse.

You might wonder why a post entitled “Scheduling” has so little to do with actual scheduling. The fact of the matter is that scheduling is the essence of a routine, and schedules always go wrong. That, and because I have a great number of scheduling conflicts I am very spiteful about the word schedule.

So there.

(on a side note, The Happening might be the best M. Night Shyamalan movie ever. Which isn’t saying much.)

Away.

“Statistics measure everything but prove nothing.”  This was question I did as a practice paper sometime 2 years ago, and not surpisingly, the only thing I learnt from it was not to do it, given that a)I suck at GP anyway and b)0%(0 of 1) people who attempted this question failed it.

 

Of course, if one thing 19 and a half years on this world taught me, it’s not to trust numbers, because numbers represent rigidity. Every form of statistics is garnered through a strict set of conditions and stipulations which you will incidentally, almost never find yourself in. In fact, I’ve spent most of my life caught on the wrong side of the numbers. Of course, I did turn out out to be a screwed up wastrel, but that really isn’t the point here.

 

One of the oddest statistics(not after you think about it for a while) is that more injuries in the SAF are caused by people hurting themselves than people hurting soldiers. There are two things you can infer from this statistic :

1) Singapore does not fight many, if any wars.

2) Singaporeans are not meant to be soldiers.

 

Both of these are true. In a capitalistic society that is Singapore, making people serve the nation through regimentation is like telling Adolf Hitler to spare the jews. And you know, I think that if Singapore would really be beset by war….

 

A lot of people would desert.

Wait.

I’m roughly a week away from returning to Singapore, and even though I haven’t prepared for the trip back yet, I can’t wait. And I’m not sure whether to feel happy that the wait is getting shorter and shorter, or not so happy because the wait feels so agonising. It’s kind of like standing in the queue to get on a rollercoaster. You wait so long it almost kills you. Then you get on the ride, and in a few scant minutes it’s all over, and even though there’s an incredibly inproportionate wait-action gulf, you can’t help but feel like it’s all over.

 

I hate waiting that way. Not do-something-while-I-wait waiting, but pure waiting, sitting there waiting for something to happen, or in some cases, something to start happening. Because when you’re waiting, anticipating, your mind takes you on a ride, and you form mental images of what aforementioned anticipated would be like. Ever been to the dentist as a kid, sitting in the waiting room and wondering what someone who plucks teeth would look like, and how he would do it, and imagining a tall, bearded man looking like he should be slaughtering pigs instead of little children’s teeth? And all sorts of contraptions and torture devices, only to discover that the procedure looked more like something out of Barney as opposed to the Texan Chainsaw Massacre you were expecting?

 

No wonder they say there is nothing to fear but fear itself. Like it or not, fear is a part of us, and will surface when it’s allowed to. A lot of the time, I get afraid before a big moment because things flash through my mind, like a slideshow of the future showing me how everything can go wrong no matter how you plan it. Or, I can imagine everything going smoothly, well even, and become afraid that I won’t be able to live what goes on in my mind. In fact, most of us have fear because we let our mind run in circles.

 

Oh dear, why did I write this?