Constructive Deconstruction

Perspective…

We are people who spend much time judging others. I too am guilty of this.

There are those of us who judge others by the colour of their skin.
Or by the ideologies that they live by.
Or by that one time that they failed to impress us.
Sometimes we judge those who cannot love,
and at other times, those who can.
Sometimes…in very rare cases
we judge them by how they smell.

It’s funny how much time and energy we put into it and choose instead to scrounge our faces and even structure a proper case as to why they are inferior or irritating or disgusting.

It’s even more fascinating that in the knowledge of this insensitive practice, we choose to carry on with it. To degrade, humiliate, isolate and sometimes even harbour the secret wish of eliminating them all from the face of the earth.

But for what?

I’ve come to learn that behind every face is story. That joy is not contained within a smile but rather it has a secret place in the back of a person’s eyes. And that every person, mean or not, is what they are because of a greater story. Often one that is untold except to its bearer in those precious solitary moments before he shuts his eyes at night.

Love has taught me many things. I wake up each morning thinking that one day I will wholeheartedly be able to write in my journal and say that losing the girl I so dearly loved must have been the best thing that happened to me. Because ever since then, i’ve always wanted to understand people - to seek out the meaning behind who they are especially if they were people who were irritating, disgusting or simply…different.

Because I am not who I portray myself to be these days. And it’s a conscious choice. It’s a fear that people will know me and would naturally harm me. Or worse…they would let me know them. And I would one day, harm them. It is not right, I know. Yet, my history makes this mindtrap so difficult to escape.

And in that same way, I know that there are others who are trapped too in the chains of their past. They may not speak of it. They may not admit to it. They may not even be aware of it. But they are - simply because we are all a product of our individual and collective histories.

We need to go beyond our borders. But we also need to take time to understand what’s within them. And sometimes, it means we have to step away from what we do and do things we’ve never done before. A couple of days ago I was thinking about the prospect of actually being able to get sponsors for the trip to Ghana that i’m spearheading. Then it struck it me.

If it went well..I would go. I would actually go to a place that is so foreign. And I don’t mean like going to America or to Europe where the difference the architecture and the language and the city planning and all that stuff. I mean, it’s like a different world. A different kind of world altogether. But I decided, I would go because the perspective would do me good. Only certain responsibilities I have here in Singapore during June would stop me…But I will try to find a way around it.

They say Ghanaians are one of the happiest people in the world.
And perhaps, the secret to happiness lies in the back of their eyes…

You are what you love

I wanted to make a note of what I heard on the telly just now…I was watching "Adaptation" starring Nicholas Cage. Good show.

"You are what you love. Not what loves you."

Random Thoughts on a Saturday night…..

I sit here with so many thoughts running through my head yet when i pick one to write about…the words fail me.

I love my father. I’d like to tell him to stop being so apologetic for not being able to give his children more…because he’s done more than we can ever ask for.

While sleeping a few days, I dreamt of Mikeller(One of last year’s NTU pageant contestant). I thought it was funny because I’ve only seen her twice. And the dream itself was this…I coincidentally was in the same building as some graduation party she was having and I was so sleepy that I went into the female washroom, plonked myself down on one the cubicle floor, closed the WC lid and slept. Mikeller later walks in and is shocked to find me. Haha. Effectively, I dreamt of sleeping. Must be a sign that I’m too tired.

My life is passing me by these days. I’m losing touch with my friends and i haven’t been able to find enough time to spend time with them. Even Zhiyong’s back in Australia..and I didn’t even say goodbye. In fact, I forgot he even left until malcolm told me the day after. Sheesh. Talk about me being  a good friend.

I just insulted a friend over MSN unintentionally. The feeling sucks. This is why I don’t make a good friend.

It’s funny how the world turns on you in a matter of seconds. One second you’re laugh and messing around with people and then all of a sudden everything crashes. This is why sometimes I think of life like one big morbid joke - it messes around with you - throwing you high up and letting you crash straight to the ground. Then..it throws you even higher.

I’m becoming a more private person these days. I stand in front of everyone with this mask of bravado. and it’s mask that’s so well plastered that even when i’m home i wear it still.

Sometimes I still miss her. Sometimes, I just miss myself. But mostly, I miss us.

Oh well…C’est la vie

Don’t expect anything from life. She’ll give you nothing.

Daytona Bus

I was on the way to school today and i hope it’s not just me…but the uncle who was driving the 179 bus today must have been in the mood to race or something. Every turn he took or even a bend caused me to grip the rails for my life. It didn’t help that the bus was full and there was this lady that standing in front of me using her phone so she was like swinging around and making me feel as if I was the that keeps crashing into her.

Why is it that buses don’t go fast when I have a seat?

Irritated

I’m here in the lobby of the Civil Service Club where i’m supposed to be attending a meetup for idealist.org.

There’s only one problem. I’ve been here for the past half hour trying to find out where the people are. Given I came 15minutes late and there are only 6 people coming for the thing, maybe I’m expecting too much to have signages and all…

I went to the office to check on whether the organiser had booked a room. But nope. I’ve also scoured the building looking for possible people. Nothing. I eventually decided to sit here and blog about it when I saw a sign saying that th eplace is being monitored(and I fear they might think i’m some civil servant assasin).

So there…I’m irritated that I made a trip all the down from Jurong to Little India only to sit in a lobby…knowing that they’re somewhere in a building i’ve never been to, and meeting people i’ve never even seen.

Sheesh.

Unsure, Unheard, Unseen

Frustration

This absolutely sucks. What was a great day yesterday night at the Ping.Sg meetup morphed into a terrible morning, worse day today. Maybe this is a sign that I shouldn’t be spending too many long and late nights…

I can’t think properly when i’m trying to balance my head on my shoulders. And what does that mean? That means I can’t get my work done on time. Then what? Then I’m so fucked.

I missed all my classes today because I was at home trying to sort out some coding my lab project today…Alas, I missed the lab itself too because I simply wasn’t feeling well enough. This does not bode well for my reputation. But heck. I’ll produce. I always do. (Although this semester I just feel like giving it all up.)

I still have assembly programming for the CPE206 module. Geez, I still have the wiring to do too. Gotta get all the keypad, CPU and LEDs to register values correctly
I still need to go back to the electronics lab to complete Lab 1 of CPE208 and write the report for that. Then I’ll need to finish up Lab 3.
I still need to write my report for Lab 1 of CPE205.
CPE207…I’ll need to check with my team what happened during lab today…
Then there will be DDP.

Then the stupid Joomla is giving me problems for the xsmatter site. They’ve got a dumb way of storing the timestamp, the value on the table is one thing, the value shown is another and the value on the feed is different. Why can’t they just store one value and then do a simple offset for the timezone? Shucks. Ok la…maybe its not dumb. They factored in the server time. And the complication arises because the syndication is done by a 3rd party script. Argh. All my posts on ping.sg starts off being 6hours old. After tweaking, they start off as being 13 hours old.

How wonderful.

48 hour lesson

The past 48 hours reminded me how fragile the line between friendship and business is. It reminded me how much I really treasure honesty and ethics. It reminded me that relationships are really more important.

And most of all, being a friend isn’t always easy…sometimes, you have to be really hard on a person simply because you care.