Why I Love This Picture...

...Is probably due to the fact that it reminds me of how I place a lot of my hopes and dreams on massive amounts of faith even in the strangest of places and most difficult of situations. I hope to keep doing more of that in the future.

(Thanks for the pic anyway Abi!)

                                                                         ~ ~ ~
"Nothing is to be gained by a head-in-the-sand avoidance of the facts of life and death. The healthiest solution is to accept that one's span on earth is limited and then to live every day, in the present, to the full. Nostalgia and procrastination have always been, and will always be, the two greatest enemies of a fruitful enjoyable existence on this planet."


-Peoplewatching: the Desmond Morris Guide to Body Language


Yeah this came from a body language book. And yeah, this (in observance of the book's contents) comes from a man who believes we came from apes and live to have sex to pass on our genes. These kind of things amuse me much.

                                                                         ~ ~ ~

So its exactly 12 hours and 59 minutes to army since typing this, and there's this strange thing about army that makes all of us guys feel that its either

a) A jail term of 2 years

b) 2 years of hell

c) A damn waste of time

For me, it kinda like someone snipped off the reel of an awesome movie and replaced it with some weirdass/boring documentary. Well 2 years is pretty long. Come to think of it, its like spending your 19th and 20th running around grass and trees instead of spending it on more productive things like studying in uni/traveling the world/picking up new skills/finding a gf? HAHA. But you probably get what I mean. Like what I always seem to say, its a void of 2 years.

Well hopefully those 2 years would be worth it somehow. I'll be placing a lot of my faith on that as well, most importantly, the decisions I make then, trust me. I bet it'd be pretty memorable somehow.

I hope I don't procrastinate too much though. For certain matters of the heart.

                                                                        ~ ~ ~
"But it is important that, in gaining success, the individuals should not overstress themselves or place themselves in prolonged state of tension. And success must always be measured in personal terms. A hill-shepherd may feel just as successful, in his own way, as a world-famous Nobel Laureate. Success must not be confused with fame."

-Peoplewatching: the Desmond Morris Guide to Body Language

Wisdom in a body language book? Strange.
                                                                        ~ ~ ~

So I've had my worst result in a race in 6 years. HAHA. Somehow I'm strangely satisfied (not in the achievement point of view quite obviously though), and perfectly sound despite losing to a teammate 3 years my junior. One thing I learnt though; losing is a humbling yet important experience. NJCC 2008 K1 500m Junior Men, Silver, one of the best lessons I've had in canoeing. And life. By far. It teaches you to appreciate what you've got and at the same time drives you on further, because it is true, too much of something is no longer magical. Besides where is the kick? Heh.

It doesn't teach you not to lose, and swear by winning all the time, but rather how to find your will to go on while shit falls from the sky and while at it, love the chase, because once you get how this works, well, things will just work.

You can't win all the time, but you can try.

Anyway, k2 300m (300m is a damn weird distance I swear) with Qiang was awesome, albeit the lack of training and familiar boat, because for that first 200m of that 300m race, it felt just like my first race in Sec 1, training in heavy rain, and sprinting in the morning just as the sun is breaking through the sky just to be the first to send huge ass ripples through that perfect glass-like water. 3rd was great, but flying out of the starting block felt amazing.

That, is worth spending the last 2 days before army running about on rocky ground and getting burnt in the sun, all while wondering if the water in Bedok is drinkable with its nice blueish greenish colour just before lining up for a race.

                                                                         ~ ~ ~

"It is important to make a distinction between being calmly relaxed and being passively lazy. Relaxation does not imply lack of enthusiasm, nor does it contradict the idea of passionate interest in a person's favorite preoccupations. Indeed, zest for living and an eagerness to pursue one's chosen subjects are vital elements in ensuring a long life. It goes without saying that retirement from such activities is to be avoided at all costs. If a job or occupation has to be given up, then it must be replaced immediately with some new and equally absorbing hobby or task that each day offers an exciting new challenge. Pessimism and cynicism are negative elements; optimism stretches lives."

-Peoplewatching: the Desmond Morris Guide to Body Language

                                                                        ~ ~ ~ 

I can honestly say that I'm glad that I did not get an internship with some architectural firm as I had planned to do after IB, after Hungary. I can also honestly say I am glad I didn't try to enjoy more of my time before army but instead got a job in the kitchens of Fish & Co to try to earn some money.

Working in the kitchen of a rather busy restaurant is an interesting experience. One moment you could be talking with your co-workers while making lemonade and in the next moment, dumping fish after fish into the fryer while downing platter after platter on the grill for that horribly mistimed team/OG/class dinner. Much like real life Diner Dash. The complains are real too.

Well to be honest, when I started work, the first thing I told myself was: 'After going through IB and all that education, what am I doing in the kitchen of Fish & Co. cooking for people when all my classmates are probably interning at law firms or some businesses, working in school and giving tuition, all while earning (probably or highly likely) more pay than me? Must have done something wrong somewhere, I didn't even get an internship like everyone else. Fail at life Brian.' But hey, when you want to get off your butt to do something, your whole body has to follow. (Good to know there are some others in school who work part time with this sort of jobs too! So now I don't feel so left out I guess!)

Quite elitist? Yeah. But don't lie, truth is, we all feel this way. How do you think the acronym NSK came about? In the reality of top schools, we're all secret assholes. Truly.

What I'll probably remember from working part time as a cook is the (strange) satisfaction of earning that (as the law interviewer had put it,'pathetic') pay which you had some awesome shopping plans for, only to realise that you couldn't bear to spend it. Because at that point, you suddenly realise.

Hey, earning money is no easy shit.

A majority of us, before getting a part time job will probably take for granted the allowance our parents give us, forgetting the fact that it does take effort to earn that amount. Its much easier to take than earn, in short. Once starting working in a part time job like this, where work is tough and pay is crap (a friend in Australia LOLed when I told her my pay) you thank your lucky stars your parents forced you to do finish those stacks of maths assessments in Primary school, call up your teachers to make sure you're on task in Secondary school, and in JC, call you repeatedly while you're in Starbucks studying, asking you how you study there, and double checking if you're lying and going out with some girl instead (strange but true). It does help too that by the end of the day, I leave work at 1030 to 1130 PM, head to toe in a film of oil, and smelling of fish, but very much wiser about the real world.

One useful skill I did pick up during this part time job was, well cooking. Before that, my home survival menu consisted of instant pasta and scrambled eggs (I got the recipe from this HTML for beginners book I borrowed. It was some HTML practice; make a page describing the recipe. Well, recipe turned out to be pretty genuine and I guess if it works for geeks, it will work for me.) which wasn't a very reliable source of food to be honest. Instant pasta had to be bought in the first place and depended on whether there was fresh milk in the fridge, and the eggs. Well they get kinda bland after a while. After working part time as a cook in the kitchen for 2 months, I have definitely learnt, as one of my friends had put it, "the most basic skill for surviving overseas." True enough I guess. Well, not confident enough to make staff meals for the more experienced kitchen crew, but good enough to make a nice dinner for my old class the last time we met. It was simple, but I guess its more tasty than scrambled eggs. Tomato based pasta with prawns and sauteed mushrooms. More satisfying than mushroom and herbs flavoured instant pasta. Definitely more useful in the near future/ for certain important events.

Next time, I'm really gonna try that chilli cream pasta. I wanna get it right the second round.

Another thing about working part time in the kitchen is realising that those Chinese foreign workers are actually a pretty fun bunch to hang out with somehow. We talk about random stuff that crops up, get annoyed with customers who are way too particular about food, and laugh at those strange orders that happens once in a while (big - seafood platter for two - without the calamari, without the scallops, no fries, all rice). Before that, they were always this rather foreign (no pun intended) concept of labour, probably comparable to robots. We are all quite unaware sometimes. In real life, they are just like alot of us, with their own dreams, and maybe, even a little more hardworking sometimes (Like how they try to learn English, very unlike the way we attempt to learn Chinese. Though the kind of English vocab they try to get me to teach them sometimes can get a bit amusing; somewhere along the lines of body parts and certain actions/movements).

I remember one of the days while clearing rubbish with one of them (the trash by the way, is freaking heavy. The size is deceiving.). We walked through the upper floors of the shopping center with the bins rolling in hand, past the high class restaurants grocery stores, as well as stores selling leather coated safes (???) and fancy stationary, before reaching the dumpsite where we, after throwing our rubbish, decided to go hide behind the small boarded off area to rest for a bit (Friday nights make awfully busy nights). Well, in the midst of all the random steel bars and scrap wood - the construction materials were kept there somehow - he lit a cigarette, plopped down on a ledge behind a grill facing some busy portion of Orchard Road, and over the sound of car horns and rumbling engines asked me (Not in English of course):

"So. You're done studying?"

"Yeah, waiting for army I guess."

He asks me to guess his age.

"23?"

"Nope, 25."

But then again, I heard from others that he was 23, and another saying he was 26 or so. The other Chinese worker told me he tells guys that he's 25, and girls that he's 23. "Girls love younger guys" he says. I just nod, wondering if he was really 25 or 23, or somewhere in between.

"How old are you?" he asks.

"18. Actually turning 19 this year."

"Mmhmm I see. Then what after army?"

"University."

"So what are you gonna study then? Is it necessary to go to a university?"

Awkwardly staring at the glowing cigarette, while suppressing the urge to wave away the smoke, I replied:

"Architecture I guess, Maybe industrial design? (Futile attempts to explain both subjects in Chinese) I dunno, but everyone here tries to go to a university anyway."

"Oh. I don't really know what to do next time. I know I want to go back to China someday. But I don't know what to do there."

Awkward silence. He looks through the grills and down on the traffic where the car horns continue to sound.

"Singapore is a strange place. Everyone is so busy, its totally different from where I'm from, the lifestyle is kinda slow there. Not as fast as here. You come to work in the morning and next thing you know its night already. Too fast for me."

More awkward silence.

"Hmm. Why not try open a restaurant in China? After all you probably understand how one runs since you work in one now."

He chuckles and looks at me and said:

"Its not easy. Possible but kinda hard I guess. There is corruption too, you know those officials there... Ah, hopefully I can figure out something."

He tosses the cigarette on the floor and rubs it out with his foot, blankly staring at the odd black mark it makes on the concrete.

"Alright lets get back now. I think they would be done washing the floor by then."

He gives this tired smile and gets up.

And at this point I told myself. We are some lucky fuckers. We just don't know how lucky sometimes.

On my last week of work, he was sitting on the pipes on one corner, next to the chillers with this blank look on his face again. I asked him if he was alright and he gave a sigh, looked at me and said:

"I have cooked everything here before, its always the same. It gets really boring you know."

The sound of printing, and a new order comes in.

                                                                           ~ ~ ~

"Longing for the future and nostalgia for the past are the two great enemies of a rewarding life. A careful study of the most successful members of society soon reveals that they have broken all traditional age rules. They have done things when they wanted to do them and have ignored any imagined limitations of time. They have succeeded early or triumphed late, lived short busy lives or long happy ones. The lesson they teach us is to eat life up greedily, never to procrastinate and never to think that it is too late."

-Peoplewatching: the Desmond Morris Guide to Body Language

Its kinda funny how scientific studies do bring out some pretty useful guides to life. I always thought science was just about technical details and facts, very much like a machine with well fitted and smooth running cogs. Except I didn't know that this machine is what makes planes fly.
                                                                         ~ ~ ~

So its past 3AM now and I should be packing my bag for army tomorrow, but I guess I shall finish up this post first. This is probably the post which I have put the most thought into by far, and in good time I guess. Well like someone just told me, its like we army guys are going to jail or something (Yeah there are people who don't need sleep like me too), but I do hope there's more to army than just comparisons to jail (Come to think of it, a few years back, I would be like 'What army?') Since I'm stuck in what seems to be the inevitable, I might as well just give my best into it. No point in between. Its either or. But of course, SEA games is still that new huge as target in my sight for the next few years, and hopefully, I can do more than just take part in it. There will be uni then, definitely too, and hopefully art opportunities for me, not to mention other things in life that needs to be settled. Wow.

If it looks impossible, I guess we can have some fun trying to make it possible. Done it once, I'm sure we can try again.

10 hours 12 minutes to army at this point. Time to get some sleep, and maybe get up just in time for Macdonald's hotcakes.

Oh yes and after reading that body language book; Women, when squeezing past someone, especially men, will always face her back to the person. Men on the other hand, do otherwise. It amused me when I figured out it really was true.