I was inspired to write because of this.
http://thoughtcatalog.com/2011/dont-date-a-girl-who-reads/
There isn't going to be much of a point for this. I have no real "agenda" or "point I want to make". I just felt inspired to write, something.
Writing is the one thing I have where the gut takes precedence over the mind. In everything I've done, everything I've ever given a damn about, I've never been able to put down certain missed connections. Some things seem misaligned, unstraightened, or somehow off. And I'll always make it "perfect" but it never seems "right". That's why I've failed so many times at minimalism. Because I can't seem to put things down. I can't stop adding things and making changes until it overwhelms everything.
I've never been a great storyteller. I've observed myself over and over and as great and amazing as "that thing that happened" happened, I cannot never seem to bring it up to a level that "that thing" deserves. Except bad stories. I seem to have a knack for bad stories. Like the time I almost shot a guy by accident. Or the time I caused my platoon to get punished because of I wore slippers to the ground floor. Or the time I confessed to my crush and she said that she wanted to focus on her studies, only to find her with a boyfriend that lasted barely a month, one year later during her actually important exam year. Oh, and she met him for only 4 days prior.
I don't have many good, good stories.
Travelling is one of the greatest luxury that this generation has, second only to instant and global reach of the internet. As much as I hate transportation, I'll always love train rides. And train stations.
I don't have very many great stories from my travels. They are all captured by many small moments from great friends I've made. All we did was take a walk in the park and buy cakes or beer and just talk about life and each others' culture. And they make terrible stories,
but I loved each and every one of those moments.
http://wherearemyheels.com/2012/05/12/date-a-boy-whos-travelled/
Another article that sums up how and why I enjoy travel. Especially the coming home part.
Saturday, April 20, 2013
Sunday, April 07, 2013
last one before dawn
one last stream-of-consciousness post before I sleep. That means, no editing, just thoughts in barely readable sentences.
So right now, every time i go onto facebook or talk to my friends, I feel a tinge of regret because I really missed out on a lot of things. This feeling is strongest when it comes to hall events because it's people you see on a daily basis and even better, you see them AFTER you finish school, when you start to chill.
Next year, I'm probably going to join at least one sport and RHOC, assuming it doesn't create a horrifying experience for me. I want to do more, I want to participate more, and I want to make more meaningful connections. At this point in time, I allocate roughly 95% of my time to my school work and 5% to Hall. To break it down, I spend approximately 2-4 hours per week for hall stuff, including meetings and making stuff like posters and decorations, while I spend about, 12x7 =84 hours a week doing school work. Because school of architecture is ridiculous.
And right now, I am incredibly disillusioned with school work. I don't see the point of an education under these tutors and TAs. I honestly don't see myself doing much more poorly if I hadn't spent that much time on it. It feels like one of those things when you put in hard time and get pretty much the same result as if you spent like an hour on it. It's just ridiculous. And because of my school work, I have missed out on so many times when I could be hanging out with friends and enjoying life.
and the weird thing is, I wouldn't feel this way if the time I put into school work bore any fruit. It's easy to regress into the high school mentality of studying during last minute because it's not like it's going to make much of a difference.
when i see pictures of Dinner and Dance on facebook, i get pretty upset that i had to miss it because of school work. and like what i said above, since it doesn't bear fruit, it doesn't seem like a fair exchange. Why be miserable and learn so little and worse have little to prove for it, when I could be out enjoying the company of friends and have just as little to prove for it.
Every time a social gathering or just talk cock session arises, I find myself consciously sacrificing that moment. those moments start to accumulate and they become a blotch on these memories. What could have been instead of what it is now.
It is quite disappointing.
I'm not sure how much more I'm willing to commit to Hall stuff next sem. I'm really leaning on the side of spending more time in hall, simply because it's a more meaningful experience, both in terms of people and in terms of spirit. It seems stupid to sacrifice relationships for something that's not producing results. It barely even produces any meaningful lessons or educational worth.
I think I've gotten over the naive expectation of semi-greatness (which never really even happened in JC or high school, I just expected to be mediocre throughout.) 2 semesters worth of pointless soul sucking work has taken its toll i guess. I was lucky enough to have a good tutor in sem 1 so I didn't struggle as hard, or to put it in another way, my struggles felt like they were in a good direction, so even when i fell, i knew my face was pointing towards where I wanted to go.
This sem is shit. I honestly loved my 2 lecturers for Akicon and Climate responsive Arch, both of whom are senior lecturers and very good at what they do. But i think its something more. It feels like they both care about their area of expertise and more importantly, they care about the students. Maybe it's something that comes with age.
I realized I've been pretty selfish this semester. All my thoughts have been about myself. It feels somewhat like it violates my spirituality. As if some higher mental capacity is calling me to resist this natural urge and I have failed somewhat spectacularly throughout university. It never became this bad. I haven't been THIS pre-occupied with my own thoughts about myself for a while, especially when I'm doing work. I usually do it only when I'm reflecting. It used to be something I could put aside when I needed to focus on getting something done. Now, it's just ridiculous i guess.
So right now, every time i go onto facebook or talk to my friends, I feel a tinge of regret because I really missed out on a lot of things. This feeling is strongest when it comes to hall events because it's people you see on a daily basis and even better, you see them AFTER you finish school, when you start to chill.
Next year, I'm probably going to join at least one sport and RHOC, assuming it doesn't create a horrifying experience for me. I want to do more, I want to participate more, and I want to make more meaningful connections. At this point in time, I allocate roughly 95% of my time to my school work and 5% to Hall. To break it down, I spend approximately 2-4 hours per week for hall stuff, including meetings and making stuff like posters and decorations, while I spend about, 12x7 =84 hours a week doing school work. Because school of architecture is ridiculous.
And right now, I am incredibly disillusioned with school work. I don't see the point of an education under these tutors and TAs. I honestly don't see myself doing much more poorly if I hadn't spent that much time on it. It feels like one of those things when you put in hard time and get pretty much the same result as if you spent like an hour on it. It's just ridiculous. And because of my school work, I have missed out on so many times when I could be hanging out with friends and enjoying life.
and the weird thing is, I wouldn't feel this way if the time I put into school work bore any fruit. It's easy to regress into the high school mentality of studying during last minute because it's not like it's going to make much of a difference.
when i see pictures of Dinner and Dance on facebook, i get pretty upset that i had to miss it because of school work. and like what i said above, since it doesn't bear fruit, it doesn't seem like a fair exchange. Why be miserable and learn so little and worse have little to prove for it, when I could be out enjoying the company of friends and have just as little to prove for it.
Every time a social gathering or just talk cock session arises, I find myself consciously sacrificing that moment. those moments start to accumulate and they become a blotch on these memories. What could have been instead of what it is now.
It is quite disappointing.
I'm not sure how much more I'm willing to commit to Hall stuff next sem. I'm really leaning on the side of spending more time in hall, simply because it's a more meaningful experience, both in terms of people and in terms of spirit. It seems stupid to sacrifice relationships for something that's not producing results. It barely even produces any meaningful lessons or educational worth.
I think I've gotten over the naive expectation of semi-greatness (which never really even happened in JC or high school, I just expected to be mediocre throughout.) 2 semesters worth of pointless soul sucking work has taken its toll i guess. I was lucky enough to have a good tutor in sem 1 so I didn't struggle as hard, or to put it in another way, my struggles felt like they were in a good direction, so even when i fell, i knew my face was pointing towards where I wanted to go.
This sem is shit. I honestly loved my 2 lecturers for Akicon and Climate responsive Arch, both of whom are senior lecturers and very good at what they do. But i think its something more. It feels like they both care about their area of expertise and more importantly, they care about the students. Maybe it's something that comes with age.
I realized I've been pretty selfish this semester. All my thoughts have been about myself. It feels somewhat like it violates my spirituality. As if some higher mental capacity is calling me to resist this natural urge and I have failed somewhat spectacularly throughout university. It never became this bad. I haven't been THIS pre-occupied with my own thoughts about myself for a while, especially when I'm doing work. I usually do it only when I'm reflecting. It used to be something I could put aside when I needed to focus on getting something done. Now, it's just ridiculous i guess.
Saturday, April 06, 2013
How to justify suicide
Because I have a friend / friends who are just as morbid as I am. And we have been grappling around that idea so long that it no longer has the same taboo around it (at least to us) as perhaps say, sex or human bodily functions like pooping.
The inspiration for writing an article actually came from an NUS confession comment, where someone was bitching about being able to use an electron microscope whatever (worth 800k) after 1 hour of training but not being able to go rock climbing in Utown unless he had a week-long "national standard" instructor course, whatever that means. The important comment that someone said was and I quote
"maybe life > 800k"
That was a very interesting thought. Because we can instinctively understand that life is worth so much, that it is definitely worth more than this obviously low number of $800,000.
But is there a point where we are able to say, hmm, ya his life was worth ending for xxx amount.
Hank does an interesting analysis for this.
500k comes up as the US army's monetary value of life, which is what they payout to families when soldiers die under their charge. There is also a 6-9 million figure being thrown around. please look for the source in that video if you want to learn more.
My personal take on this is that when you're discussing monetary value specifically, it always ALWAYS boils down to supply and demand. If you're a faceless sheep in China or Russia (or even worse, middle east) their government is willing to send waves and waves of you into machine gun fire to the point where they hope their people outnumber your bullets (See: Korean war and most of their wars in fact). That is a crazy thought, for there to be so many people that a powerful organization can throw enough of them at you that they eventually run out of bullets.
On the other hand, if there is only one of you who can do something unique, say you are the only person who knows how to disarm a bomb that threatens the world, your value jumps up exponentially, not just because there is now only a single unit of you as supply, but everyone now demands you, from people who want to live to people who want you to die. So if anyone sends a bounty to get you, expect a lot of bling.
Monetary discussions aside, I think we're missing out on some "less concrete" arguments for ending a person's life. The important thing to note is that we're discussing the idea of killing yourself, because I would kill that bastard in studio at the drop of a hat if I had a way out of it, but then it would turn into a conversation about why you want to kill bastards around the world, and I'm not interested in that. Anyway, I think that a good way to look at justifying suicide is to look at whether living out one's life is worse than not living it. In most cases, it isn't; life is definitely worth living more than not. End Note: I never realised that this is a cost-benefit analysis until I wrote it out in complete sentences.
I think that people who say that no matter how hard life gets, its always better to live are naive. Sure it seems like that in Singapore, but other countries do exist. If I were a Jew and I knew exactly how Nazis were treating my people during the Holocaust, I would have no qualms ending my own life. Heck, I'd even end my child's life to spare him the misery.
Of course, that is the extreme end of the spectrum. It's the middle ground that's always murky. Personally, I have found 2 ways of judging this. First is when the problem doesn't seem solvable, even in the unforeseeable future, save for a miracle. Second is when I am not conscious of my actions and thoughts.
Unsolvable problems, in general, are usually health problems, especially in a first world country like Singapore. Things like the final stages of HIV and cancer seems to fit the bill quite easily. But extraordinary circumstances are also possible, like war, famine, drought, etc.
"What a terrible thing to have lost one's mind" -Dan Quayle. I am quite afraid of dementia and Alzheimer's to be honest. I can't imagine living a life and not being able to catch a though coherently, even in my own brain. It would feel like being lost in an immense library, there are huge walls of books surrounding you, but you can neither understand them nor find people you know. Best case scenario, I have some idea of who my loved one is, but can't recognize who they are or why they are important. I think that scares me more than anything else. But it's not a thought I entertain very often because it's still (hopefully) a long way from now.
Things like comas sort of put things is a difficult area to classify because they always seem like there's a cure for it, but not really. "Holding out" becomes a mental and emotional drain, especially for loved ones. Previously, I would have let my loved ones decide when to take my own life off the resuscitator, because they have a stake in it, emotionally, but now I think it's honorable to not have to put the burden of making the decision to terminate my life on their shoulders. They would simply follow the instructions on my will and not feel like they CHOSE to end my suffering. It alleviates some of the pain of it, I guess.
The last 3 or 4 paragraphs seem a bit unsatisfactory to me, because I got derailed to join a softball game in the middle of writing this. So yeah, there's that.
P.S. I was reminded of this person I read about before, Philip Gale, who despite being a computer genius and making upwards of a million by the age of 17, or perhaps because of it, committed suicide at MIT.
I really resonate with the things he said because it didn't seem like an impulse decision or a short term event that triggered it. This was his suicide note
P.P.S I'm not going to leave my parents behind so long as they are still alive.
The inspiration for writing an article actually came from an NUS confession comment, where someone was bitching about being able to use an electron microscope whatever (worth 800k) after 1 hour of training but not being able to go rock climbing in Utown unless he had a week-long "national standard" instructor course, whatever that means. The important comment that someone said was and I quote
"maybe life > 800k"
That was a very interesting thought. Because we can instinctively understand that life is worth so much, that it is definitely worth more than this obviously low number of $800,000.
But is there a point where we are able to say, hmm, ya his life was worth ending for xxx amount.
Hank does an interesting analysis for this.
500k comes up as the US army's monetary value of life, which is what they payout to families when soldiers die under their charge. There is also a 6-9 million figure being thrown around. please look for the source in that video if you want to learn more.
My personal take on this is that when you're discussing monetary value specifically, it always ALWAYS boils down to supply and demand. If you're a faceless sheep in China or Russia (or even worse, middle east) their government is willing to send waves and waves of you into machine gun fire to the point where they hope their people outnumber your bullets (See: Korean war and most of their wars in fact). That is a crazy thought, for there to be so many people that a powerful organization can throw enough of them at you that they eventually run out of bullets.
On the other hand, if there is only one of you who can do something unique, say you are the only person who knows how to disarm a bomb that threatens the world, your value jumps up exponentially, not just because there is now only a single unit of you as supply, but everyone now demands you, from people who want to live to people who want you to die. So if anyone sends a bounty to get you, expect a lot of bling.
Monetary discussions aside, I think we're missing out on some "less concrete" arguments for ending a person's life. The important thing to note is that we're discussing the idea of killing yourself, because I would kill that bastard in studio at the drop of a hat if I had a way out of it, but then it would turn into a conversation about why you want to kill bastards around the world, and I'm not interested in that. Anyway, I think that a good way to look at justifying suicide is to look at whether living out one's life is worse than not living it. In most cases, it isn't; life is definitely worth living more than not. End Note: I never realised that this is a cost-benefit analysis until I wrote it out in complete sentences.
I think that people who say that no matter how hard life gets, its always better to live are naive. Sure it seems like that in Singapore, but other countries do exist. If I were a Jew and I knew exactly how Nazis were treating my people during the Holocaust, I would have no qualms ending my own life. Heck, I'd even end my child's life to spare him the misery.
Of course, that is the extreme end of the spectrum. It's the middle ground that's always murky. Personally, I have found 2 ways of judging this. First is when the problem doesn't seem solvable, even in the unforeseeable future, save for a miracle. Second is when I am not conscious of my actions and thoughts.
Unsolvable problems, in general, are usually health problems, especially in a first world country like Singapore. Things like the final stages of HIV and cancer seems to fit the bill quite easily. But extraordinary circumstances are also possible, like war, famine, drought, etc.
"What a terrible thing to have lost one's mind" -Dan Quayle. I am quite afraid of dementia and Alzheimer's to be honest. I can't imagine living a life and not being able to catch a though coherently, even in my own brain. It would feel like being lost in an immense library, there are huge walls of books surrounding you, but you can neither understand them nor find people you know. Best case scenario, I have some idea of who my loved one is, but can't recognize who they are or why they are important. I think that scares me more than anything else. But it's not a thought I entertain very often because it's still (hopefully) a long way from now.
Things like comas sort of put things is a difficult area to classify because they always seem like there's a cure for it, but not really. "Holding out" becomes a mental and emotional drain, especially for loved ones. Previously, I would have let my loved ones decide when to take my own life off the resuscitator, because they have a stake in it, emotionally, but now I think it's honorable to not have to put the burden of making the decision to terminate my life on their shoulders. They would simply follow the instructions on my will and not feel like they CHOSE to end my suffering. It alleviates some of the pain of it, I guess.
The last 3 or 4 paragraphs seem a bit unsatisfactory to me, because I got derailed to join a softball game in the middle of writing this. So yeah, there's that.
P.S. I was reminded of this person I read about before, Philip Gale, who despite being a computer genius and making upwards of a million by the age of 17, or perhaps because of it, committed suicide at MIT.
I really resonate with the things he said because it didn't seem like an impulse decision or a short term event that triggered it. This was his suicide note
"Presumably I have jumped from a tall building. [...] I am not crazy, albeit driven to suicide. It is not about any single event, or person. It is about stubborn sadness, and a detached view of the world. I see my life—so much dreary, mundane, wasted time wishing upon unattainable goals—and I feel little attachment to the future. But it is not so bad, relatively. I exaggerate. In the end, it is that I am unwilling (sick of living) to live in mediocrity. And this is what I have chosen to do about it. The saddest part is the inevitable guilt and sorrow I will force on my family and friends. But there is not much I can say. I am sorry. Try to understand that this is about me and my 'fuked up ideas.' It is not because I was raised poorly or not cared for enough. It just is. [...] take care world, Philip." Gale closed his handwritten suicide note with a smiley face and the words "And stay happy!"
P.P.S I'm not going to leave my parents behind so long as they are still alive.
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