Friends and a rant about complainers

no picture today

went to compass to study with jelena. put in a solid 3 hours in maths and a bit in chem. its ok, but i could have done more, its quite irritating to lose momentum once you start, because you just don't wanna start again.

went home and ate dinner with family outside.

anyway, lets' talk about something that's arbitrarily important.

FRIENDS

i have never been the most approachable guy in the room, not even when i'm alone. so i tend to wait for people to talk to me before i open my mouth, which is admittedly a bad habit. most of my friends know that i ususally have something to say about something, but most of the time i just don't say it. i just keep feeling like there's never a good opportunity to say certain things. i'll admit im a very loud person, it has to do with my upbringing. but so many times, i feel like everytime i open my mouth, i'm not really contributing to anything positively, i'm just filling my ego.

so i end up with less friends than i could have. in my class, we have a mean score of 54 out of 90, which is great and everything. but like some people pointed out, these scores were done by people who just do their work alone and they stand out, which i feel is quite sad actually. i mean i'm not undermining their efforts, i just felt that if they had shared, and if we had been more open to this kind of input, we'd score even better. elizabeth pointed out that in 2s02, which is like the best science class presently, i think, they have a great class bond and they share help with each other, like the best in certain subjects just teach what they know and the others do the same. this is also true in 2a06, the best arts class. so yeah, teamwork does help. the teachers have said it, the principal has said it, now i have said it (yeah i just put myself in the same league as teachers and principals).

i think what really stops us from getting even better results is the lack of social interaction. i used to describe our class as having too many negatives (as in charges, if you take physics you'd understand), and too few positives. too many of us in our class are reliant on people talking to them before they contribute. there is like only what 2 positives in our class and they can't do all the heavy lifting. i mean it's probably already too late to really do anything about it, but i'm just saying

(oh boy html humor)

also, another thing i cannot understand. people like to equate volunteering and trying to be a leader to boot licking and kissing ass. i hear a lot of these stories from army. i have been on both sides of the fence, i was once a follower who thought they kissed ass, and a leader (in some aspect, what have you). being a leader made me realise how minor and meaningless most people's complaints are. everyone likes to complain that we don't do this, don't do that, never help the students, say this say that during election then in liao then never do anything. if we take a very consequentialist viewpoint (look it up), we can say that you stood to lose nothing through the votes and you didn't after it, so unless you lost a pound of flesh when you draw that circle on the oas, you can't really have anything to say.

i mean people stand up and we volunteer and we say, hey maybe i can do something to help. and people shoot us down and say, you selfish, you useless, you this you that. take a moment and think about how unfair and more importantly how unjustified that statement was. i mean, sometimes, people out of sheer goodwill and altruism, decide to help his fellow man and people take advantage. scott adams was right, people are selfish, greedy and horny, and that will never change.

if we took another point of view and said, but you really didn't help me with . think about that request for a minute, and then think about how ridiculously selfish it was. chances are 9 out of 10 times, the request directly benefitted you, and more importantly, at the expense of someone or something else, and also, did you think of the adverse impact on someone else when you complained. i mean, if we could do something to help you that will not directly or indirectly affect something else adversely, we'll do it, and we'll do it happily. here's an example, during the student forum last year, one of the biggest complaint was how the timetable was screwed up. some people wanted it to be longer, some wanted it to be shorter. how in the world is mrs tan supposed to make everyone happy like that, she has to accommodate everyone, encluding the teachers, who graciously have accepted what they were given, in other words they didn't even have a say in it (i think). now think back and ask yourself if you thought about the teachers or even better, the uncles and aunties who lock up after you leave. so ya, people are retarded.

so think about it, if you were to rate all the individual councillors on how they helped you, they would probably all fail. because you are THAT selfish.

(oh the geekyness)

for the longest time i have had friends who are anti-social. and more importantly, because i tried to be more like them, i became more anti-social as well. i kind of think that was a dumb mistake on my part. a lot of times i wanted to do something and because i had no friends who wanted to join me, i ended up backing out, which i sometimes regretted. in this kind of scenarios, i really don't know how to act. should i go for it and end up alienating my friends, or should i not go and waste a perfectly good opportunity.

as i grew up, i became more appreciative of opportunities, especially to do things i have hever tried before. but the reluctance and the hesitation never went away with age. with each new endeavour, i felt equally or even more afraid of trying. and sometimes without my friends, i ended up wasting it. i think that's what people in the industry like to call peer pressure. but i don't really know, it just feels like a lack of support.

also another thing as i grew up, i became more detached from "cliques" and just became this like wanderer from said "cliques". i mean it has it's benefits, at least i have a greater network now. but once in a while, i would think back and wonder what it would like to have a clique, just an exclusive group of maybe 4-6 friends who know anything and everything about each other. i think one thing is for sure, i certainly missed out on telling people my secrets, that's for sure. and whether that is a good thing or a bad thing is open to interpretation.

something jelena asked me as we boarded the mrt, you don't talk to your old friends one meh. then what if you'all like got something to say, you just don't say to anybody? i can't say this for all guys, but i now thts pretty much all that is from me. i don't really share with other people. that's why i keep a blog in the first place (actually that's the second reason, the first is to . that's not to say i'm not a good friend. i mean if i see someone that i am friends with, someone that i click with, i automatically have something to say and the other party also. just because we don't say things randomly, doesn't mean we have nothing to talk about when we in fact do meet. i thnk that if you can click with someone, even if you don't talk to them in a while, you won't ever really feel awkward around that person, not even in a million years.

it's never easy finding friends, but you will never feel that they be the ones who are stopping you from doing what you want.


unless you're taking drugs, then they'll stop you.