"Sing with me on the quayside
sing by the light of the moon
Dance through a carpet of coal dust
torn from mother earth's womb.
Watch as the tall ships are passing
proud with white sails unfurled
Loaded with wealth from the valleys
bound for the rest of the world."
-Inscription at Cardiff Bay
A view of the Brecon Beacons, Pen-y-Fan in the background and Talybont lake.
The little town of Talybont-on-Usk, population must be less than 500.
The bike.
" Do not all charms fly
At the touch of mere philosophy?
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine-
Unweave a rainbow..."
Keats, Lamia
I happen to be reading "Unweaving the rainbow" by Dawkins... more on that later.
"I'll take the rain." Sun moves quickly to rain and mist in these parts.
sparks and mensa.
if you don't get it you don't get it. i didn't. she did.
london takes a different hue when exams are over. it slows down a bit somehow.
i was just surfing around blogs for a few moments and i realised how fast everyone else's lives seem to be moving because they've distilled all that fast-paced action into a few lines of text. it makes one feel rather laggard but here goes.
post-exam brought with it the usual sigh of relief. economic history wasn't that difficult because faced with blank paper facts rush in to fill the void. kev, shar and zl came over, although i don't really have any photos because it was exam time for me. brought them out to crush just in time for post-exam revelry.
but apart from that just relishing the chance to walk around and to read. yes get that, immediately after the exams i go get myself a book. i used to not like richard dawkins so much because he used to put himself out in a rather arrogant sort of way as if one could never understand why there should be religion in this world. but reading "unweaving the rainbow" has convinced me that there is a nice side or at least a pretend-to-be-nice side in this guy (after all don't you argue that communication is manipulation?) read through freakanomics because it looked completable and michelle has tempted me with a book on "the paradox of choice", which has tempting pictures of the kanehmann-tversky value function. i am convinced simple curves have names tagged onto them to make them sound cooler than they are i am convinced.
then again i wonder if i should spend my time reading more economics considering this is what i'm doing during term time and although they look at it at a rather more unconventional way i am wary of simply trying to read economics. sometimes the words lie, and i am an easily convinced person.
Apart from that I have been stressing over packing. You wonder how your sprawled out life could ever fit into those boxes, especially if you're the kind of person who is a fire hazard (i don't mean almost burning down the kitchen because you microwaved a croissant for five minutes on a non-microwaveable ceramic plate, haha how the fuck did you do that you know who you are). it did once before when i left singapore and it did once again. i love switching habitats but i wonder whether my fragile constitution will be able to take that much moving, especially if i have to move again at the end of next year. At the same time I always get a real kick out of going to Ikea at Edmonton and seeing what I would buy for my place if I had proper money. And the bus back, although it took forever to come and forever to get back, cut through a whole swathe of London and a little glimpse of how cosmopolitan it was as the ethnicity of the bus passengers changed as it cut through Haringey and then Islington and so on. And the neighbourhood near Ikea had so many Ikea workers I wondered what would happen if Ikea moved out of the 'hood.
I've always wondered where I got that sudden impulse to jump on a train to Wales. I could have gone to Romantic Rome or Voluptuous Venice, but I think something at me balked at the hassle of flying and just going to far. Or it balked at holding a city map wondering which junction to cross again. As it is Snowdonia was out because Virgin trains refused to cooperate and they were doing engineering works at Euston. So i took a pencil and I dropped it onto a map and it said "Brecon Beacons". Beautiful Brecon Beacons.
"The Brecon Beacons provoke a sweeping, spotlit, pearl-grey light. The curving muscular hills, in places almost an edible green, in others, blue burgundy and ochre, are stibbed with thick dark trees and creased by gorges. Underneath lies red sandstone, which has weakened to form this range of rounded ridges, rising and falling like a great, green sea."
Well first of course one has to get there and it was Cardiff first on "First Great Western Trains." Cardiff central was a bit like what I expected Western frontier railways stations to be like, made out of a lot of wood and very functional. Next to it was the spanking new Millenium stadium where Cheltenham were playing Grimsby in the playoff final for promotion to League One. very noisy. We tried some welsh stuff (cawl, faggots, rarebit etc) and were talking to some elderly Cheltenham fans. He thought cawl was chinese soup but he was english after all. Cheltenham were the underdogs, everyone was hoping for penalties. they had the nicer fans too and it must be the whole town coming for the biggest match of their lives on 47 buses.
As I journeyed through BBNP (Brecon Beacons National Park) the combination of beautiful scenery, fresh air and loads of time threatened to induce a personal crisis in me. When you see camper vans, forest information centres and winding hill roads you're reminded of all the nature holidays you had... from some forest in ipoh on geography field trip to all those trips your dad took you to New Zealand or Yosemite. I can understand why my dad doesn't like cities. You slog so hard in cities for so long and on a holiday you want to get insanely lost again? But then again, you climb so many mountains in army then now still want to climb again? but well, some things you like. cycling down the A40 was simply brilliant as it weaved its way through the hills and the valleys and sudden vistas and it was far less torturous than the country roads up and down. well-tarred roads are better to tour on.
And there all my economics seemed to melt away. Of course you can ask questions. Why does Royal Mail still serve towns of less than 200 people? How do they manage it? But faced with the leaves and trees and flowers of which you know so little they threatened to expose your ignorance. and after all, if it's all about paring things down to the essentials, i think they're the bare minimum you need to live after all. some fruits and leaves.
with a map in your hand and illusions of independence, you realise you could be jumping from hill to hill all your life and still not have walked everything "but you don't have to!" there was an old couple in front of us on the trail and there i was 50 years later still walking on old trails. i had perspective again, perspective i had as a kid but it's not very pretty perspective. hurling yourself into life and not wondering too much about it is not entirely honest but it's easier to take. and i know now why reading doesn't have the same pleasure. when i was younger i could do nothing but i could read everything. i am older now and i can do more, but at the same time i have so much less potential. different fields are becoming closed to me, i can no longer convince myself that i will be a 17 year old teenage prodigy playing for liverpool and with that goes some of my amazement and wonder. i guess that's why we have cities. but the sheep were soooo cute. but i dread having to fence my land.
On the way back I passed by Merthyr Tydfill for a change of bus. It's a coal-mining town and there's post-industrial blight. So many of the shops are closed... employment bureaus, and this is deindustrialisation brought to life. As is most of Wales really. Cardiff seems fine but it can be a rough place too. But the people in these parts seem to have a certain soul about them.
i realised how you can try to imagine what someone else is doing at that particular moment when you have not much to do. and i realised for the few months prior that has been it exactly i've been snatching at it a little. i haven't really had time to think about what i have, what i did, or even to enjoy the happy moments by replaying them all over again in my head as i used to do. and i think i should.
but then again i am rushing things again i am rushing off to ireland. it's funny how i rush to try to find the "still point of the turning world." so that, then, cannot be my excuse, its something else.
5/31/2006
5/24/2006
photographically/philatelically yours
i intended to do this post yesterday but i kept having problems uploading the photos. as luck would have it i actually did sit down for a good half hour (must be) yesterday looking at photos of a pretty young thing =) so that kinda inspired the rest of this photo post (other than looking at pictures of myself you little narcissist you).
in any case, i'm hardly photogenic, good photos of myself are few and far between, compounded by the fact that i don't like taking photos of myself. (or maybe too much of people). photographs of people are so interesting, and i don't mean those you wank to or in victoria's secret's catalogues. but to be photogenic is so difficult. there must be a million possible freeze frames in a person's expression which makes them so beautiful. how do you capture that laugh that you saw, or that fierce man-chewing expression? of course we're better off with photography, which is why i cannot understand those non-photography day, 17th july stickers they've been pasting around the neighbourhood.
black and white is so cool... light falling on bromide crystals. from top: arthur miller dancing with monroe, a poor substitute for the photo which i can't find of both of them staring out of the house into the nevada sky on the set of the misfits, after which gable died and monroe killed herself, bombed at the box office etc... but it appeared to be a nice show. beauty and the brain. the american dream. "He was very sad at the breakup. It was the end of a dream for him too." All these nice photos. Did you know Miller married Inge Morath, the photographer for the misfits who took all those photos of monroe and miller together? how she must have felt!
next, monroe at the crap tables. blondes do have more fun. she was most elegant on the misfits it must have been the most intelligent and absorbing character she had to play.
next top rolling stone (or was it magazine cover) of all time. john lennon & yoko ono.
next photo reminds me of my grandma because she would tell me about when the queen was crowned being one of the few people i talk to who actually went through that. her 80th birthday a few days back and these are the 2nd class stamps they gave to me so her face will be on manila envelopes everywhere. the queen was remarkably elegant then (and now) and she has a nice cute cover on time and the picture of her holding her orb and wearing the crown was so... queenlike. sometimes i suspect no one could ever love a king that much (ok maybe the thai king) everyone needs their motherly figure which is the entire point of the virgin mary.
hepburn in breakfast at tiffany's
april showers are here. it can be sunny one hour and the rain just falls. minor inconvenience.
sometimes i think i am a dangerously simple person. i'm easily swayed, especially when i walk past homeless people with my white ipod when the lines "no need for greed or hunger" come out and it breaks my heart everytime it goes "you-u-ooooh" even though i've listened to imagine a thousand times. until you deconstruct the song and it says "a brotherhood of man" and "no posessions" and it seems contrary to everything you've ever learnt in liberal economics.
maybe i shouldn't consider ethics and philosophy i don't see how i can survive these nice rigorous standards which all melt away when i listen to a song.
history! i love reading about countries i've yet to step foot on.
5/18/2006
my tally for the day is a java chip frappucino and two chocolate fudge brownies... yes, death by chocolate. i also went shopping and had a nice lunch and got my haircut. a perfect day.
econs was funnily difficult. i mean i guess everyone sort of expected it. it's sooo interesting but i don't know how i can survive 2 more years of this.
and there she is in my room at the end of the day. she has to go back in 10 minutes because there's an exam the next day. but 10 drifts to 20, time dilates a little. and there i am blissfully thinking that she'd like to destress and talk, but in the end i maybe needed those 10 minutes more than she ever did. or maybe we both did.
small moments, small moments. the world turns on small moments.
"At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement."
T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton
econs was funnily difficult. i mean i guess everyone sort of expected it. it's sooo interesting but i don't know how i can survive 2 more years of this.
and there she is in my room at the end of the day. she has to go back in 10 minutes because there's an exam the next day. but 10 drifts to 20, time dilates a little. and there i am blissfully thinking that she'd like to destress and talk, but in the end i maybe needed those 10 minutes more than she ever did. or maybe we both did.
small moments, small moments. the world turns on small moments.
"At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement."
T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton
5/15/2006
"Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death."
W.B Yeats, "An Irish Airman foresees his death"
not in ireland yet, and hopefully not quite prescient. no, i wasn't slaughtered by math paper, and that was one demon out of the way. but i like the bit which goes "i balanced all, brought all to mind." kind of the psyche you bring to a paper.
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death."
W.B Yeats, "An Irish Airman foresees his death"
not in ireland yet, and hopefully not quite prescient. no, i wasn't slaughtered by math paper, and that was one demon out of the way. but i like the bit which goes "i balanced all, brought all to mind." kind of the psyche you bring to a paper.
5/14/2006
squaring the circle (indications of a proof)
"Your daddy he's an outlaw
And a wanderer by trade
He'll teach you how to pick and choose
And how to throw the blade.
He oversees his kingdom
So no stranger does intrude"
"draw me a square with the same area as the given circle, using a finite compass and straightedge construction. maybe then, i will let you have my daughter."
what kind of twisted challenge is this! even in gongfu movies the most he has to do is to draw a circle and square simultaneously with different hands."
..."a hopeless, meaningless or vain undertaking"
i thought i would save this post for tonight, but bringing it forward a bit doesn't hurt. first up, hello all. been trying to preserve my aura of mystique and conscientiousness by pretending to be studying hard. but here it is. one of my first major exams is here, finally, tomorrow. how i have grown! from a boy who didn't know what exams were when he first entered primary school, wilfully swopping places with another kid just so he could read what he had written for his picture composition, to colouring those same chronological picture boxes from finishing early, through psle, through o levels, through a levels, through army exams, and here i am again.
i always remember a distinct quiet feeling of unease. maybe not stress, i'm too relaxed for that. before the first exam i failed, i remember walking through the ri astroturf clutching frantically at my notes, wishing it would somehow make up for all the work i had not put in through the year. i remember running through the consequences in my mind, vaguely sickened, but i knew that after the exam i left relieved anyway living dangerously as ever until the results came out, at which point i had to face the music.
i've learnt not to take exams so cavalierly since, but there's this bit in me that gets saturated and just takes the foot of the pedal. i am definitely better prepared this time, but there's this bti in me that's still quietly worried. the bit that looks around at other people and wishes he could concentrate as hard as they could (but oh the moments of distraction they have which ones doesn't see!) the fact that it seems somehow, that all the year's work boils down to this, 3 hours, gives this little written exam importance it doesn't deserve. i wish i could go around screaming to everyone, my parents, my friends, to say "look at how much i've enjoyed myself this year, how i've tried to enjoy the course, work hard." and maybe it will suffice. if you want to freak yourself excessively think about how much money is riding on this (the scholarship), how this would severely mess up your future if it doesn't work out, how you will be an unloved child if you don't do well...
maybe it isn't. i guess, at the very least, there will be someone to go for a cup of hot chocolate for. my maths and physics results have always been notoriously volatile. i remember times when i know how everything clicks together and it shows. it seems to be like that a bit now with me and linear algebra (and if i had more options maybe i would take more of that). math is a religion from the axioms. i realise why myself, and so many people around the world, just don't get mathematics sometimes. alright, maybe i am more prone to the occasional calculation error or mental block, but that was never my real problem with mathematics. if i could pin it down, it was because in math you had to be absolutely sure (or at least i felt that that needed to be the case). something follows from everything prior to it, so a wrong step, error carry forward aside, destroys the chain of implications. and those days, when i knew nothing, when everything was to be "just memorised", i had no idea what steps i was taking and i was groping in the dark really. but now maybe i am better at taking the leap of faith, learning that some things are taken as given, i shouldn't analyse them excessively, and then go along with whatever is required to solve the question.
exams aside, but still on geometry. shel silverstein once wrote a famously endearing tale "the missing piece", simply illustrated with an incomplete circle looking for its wedge. i must show it you you sometime if you haven't read it. it is so hard to make a circle happy. and i just thought of this in the shower. do you know what a selfish creature the circle (or sphere, or higher dimension analogues of it) is? think about it. take a square, and try to fill the paper. you will probably do it fine. even a triangle, you could use it to cover the same space. now take a circle. try to use it to fill space, volume, and if you calculate all the area left behind in between circles, i am sure it is larger than most other well-behaved geometric objects. you could even try to prove it.
and it's funny because the circle is always the shape i have identified for people (well who likes to be called a square?) i remember the well worn phrase (the right for you to swing your arm stops at another person's face). that's just how we are then, circles with our own personal space, our circumscribed radius. keeping all this space in between.
just as said circle needed a wedge, there's someone from time to time who will meld or change the contours of our existence. (a use of the word contour that doesn't come in the same sentence as "lagrange multiplier". yay!) to give an edge to the circle, to make it more of a polygon, take up less space, nudge other polygons in the side with its jagged corners. yes, there's still something beautiful about the perfection of the circle, but ideals are hard to live to , trying to maintain our vain perfection everyday. we are rarely a polygon whose sides tend to infinity but more often than not a hodgepodge collection of lines.
where these lines meet. (is an intersection). skew lines on the other hand are the most tragic. heading for a collision course, but yet always destined to be on a different plane. at least parallel lines walk in tandem with you. god must have been a geometer. and the contours of a body, a hand here, a face there, all seem surprisingly natural and easy. occasional incongruity aside, but i love incongruity! i love the roses hanging upside down withered and dried off the clothespins, still retaining their green thorned stems and with the dye fading off the white rose. yes i was swindled, in more ways than one.
3.14159265457979...
transcedental.
i will teach you my mmemonic for the number pi=p
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/CirclePacking.html (i found something about it).
i just realised the smaller the circles get, the better they pack, until they are infinitely small.
err yah this is like me before my 2nd driving test (one of the most stressful tests in my life)
what if i fail again? haha. take the ipod and walk around listening to music. NEVER NEVER arrive early for an exam.
And a wanderer by trade
He'll teach you how to pick and choose
And how to throw the blade.
He oversees his kingdom
So no stranger does intrude"
"draw me a square with the same area as the given circle, using a finite compass and straightedge construction. maybe then, i will let you have my daughter."
what kind of twisted challenge is this! even in gongfu movies the most he has to do is to draw a circle and square simultaneously with different hands."
..."a hopeless, meaningless or vain undertaking"
i thought i would save this post for tonight, but bringing it forward a bit doesn't hurt. first up, hello all. been trying to preserve my aura of mystique and conscientiousness by pretending to be studying hard. but here it is. one of my first major exams is here, finally, tomorrow. how i have grown! from a boy who didn't know what exams were when he first entered primary school, wilfully swopping places with another kid just so he could read what he had written for his picture composition, to colouring those same chronological picture boxes from finishing early, through psle, through o levels, through a levels, through army exams, and here i am again.
i always remember a distinct quiet feeling of unease. maybe not stress, i'm too relaxed for that. before the first exam i failed, i remember walking through the ri astroturf clutching frantically at my notes, wishing it would somehow make up for all the work i had not put in through the year. i remember running through the consequences in my mind, vaguely sickened, but i knew that after the exam i left relieved anyway living dangerously as ever until the results came out, at which point i had to face the music.
i've learnt not to take exams so cavalierly since, but there's this bit in me that gets saturated and just takes the foot of the pedal. i am definitely better prepared this time, but there's this bti in me that's still quietly worried. the bit that looks around at other people and wishes he could concentrate as hard as they could (but oh the moments of distraction they have which ones doesn't see!) the fact that it seems somehow, that all the year's work boils down to this, 3 hours, gives this little written exam importance it doesn't deserve. i wish i could go around screaming to everyone, my parents, my friends, to say "look at how much i've enjoyed myself this year, how i've tried to enjoy the course, work hard." and maybe it will suffice. if you want to freak yourself excessively think about how much money is riding on this (the scholarship), how this would severely mess up your future if it doesn't work out, how you will be an unloved child if you don't do well...
maybe it isn't. i guess, at the very least, there will be someone to go for a cup of hot chocolate for. my maths and physics results have always been notoriously volatile. i remember times when i know how everything clicks together and it shows. it seems to be like that a bit now with me and linear algebra (and if i had more options maybe i would take more of that). math is a religion from the axioms. i realise why myself, and so many people around the world, just don't get mathematics sometimes. alright, maybe i am more prone to the occasional calculation error or mental block, but that was never my real problem with mathematics. if i could pin it down, it was because in math you had to be absolutely sure (or at least i felt that that needed to be the case). something follows from everything prior to it, so a wrong step, error carry forward aside, destroys the chain of implications. and those days, when i knew nothing, when everything was to be "just memorised", i had no idea what steps i was taking and i was groping in the dark really. but now maybe i am better at taking the leap of faith, learning that some things are taken as given, i shouldn't analyse them excessively, and then go along with whatever is required to solve the question.
exams aside, but still on geometry. shel silverstein once wrote a famously endearing tale "the missing piece", simply illustrated with an incomplete circle looking for its wedge. i must show it you you sometime if you haven't read it. it is so hard to make a circle happy. and i just thought of this in the shower. do you know what a selfish creature the circle (or sphere, or higher dimension analogues of it) is? think about it. take a square, and try to fill the paper. you will probably do it fine. even a triangle, you could use it to cover the same space. now take a circle. try to use it to fill space, volume, and if you calculate all the area left behind in between circles, i am sure it is larger than most other well-behaved geometric objects. you could even try to prove it.
and it's funny because the circle is always the shape i have identified for people (well who likes to be called a square?) i remember the well worn phrase (the right for you to swing your arm stops at another person's face). that's just how we are then, circles with our own personal space, our circumscribed radius. keeping all this space in between.
just as said circle needed a wedge, there's someone from time to time who will meld or change the contours of our existence. (a use of the word contour that doesn't come in the same sentence as "lagrange multiplier". yay!) to give an edge to the circle, to make it more of a polygon, take up less space, nudge other polygons in the side with its jagged corners. yes, there's still something beautiful about the perfection of the circle, but ideals are hard to live to , trying to maintain our vain perfection everyday. we are rarely a polygon whose sides tend to infinity but more often than not a hodgepodge collection of lines.
where these lines meet. (is an intersection). skew lines on the other hand are the most tragic. heading for a collision course, but yet always destined to be on a different plane. at least parallel lines walk in tandem with you. god must have been a geometer. and the contours of a body, a hand here, a face there, all seem surprisingly natural and easy. occasional incongruity aside, but i love incongruity! i love the roses hanging upside down withered and dried off the clothespins, still retaining their green thorned stems and with the dye fading off the white rose. yes i was swindled, in more ways than one.
3.14159265457979...
transcedental.
i will teach you my mmemonic for the number pi=p
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/CirclePacking.html (i found something about it).
i just realised the smaller the circles get, the better they pack, until they are infinitely small.
err yah this is like me before my 2nd driving test (one of the most stressful tests in my life)
what if i fail again? haha. take the ipod and walk around listening to music. NEVER NEVER arrive early for an exam.
5/06/2006
i borrowed birthday letters and i know i must have said this before but i think ted hughes takes the cake for me.
alright, so 2 of the women he went out with eventually killed themselves. was he that exasperating? or merely fatally attracted to crazy women. whatever it is, he doesn't deserve the feminist claptrap calling him a chauvunist, chipping his name off plath's gravestones and shouting "murder" at him. so he had an affair. if you're going to judge a man on that many men are going to fail and plath was probably exasperating to begin with.
and all this for a man who gave up writing for a while so that he could help plath publish ariel, to ensure her legacy, who sat her down and taught her how to write and would give her little writing exercises. is there nothing in this world to be grateful about? what pray, was all the fuss about? that plath was brutally honest and so we should give her a clap? brutally honest about what? that she was a spoilt little girl who didn't feel like living if not perpetually in extremis? and who, pray has to continue living and dealing with all the shit. perhaps i simply don't understand "what it feels like". oh well, being insensitive. crud.
2 suicides later, and all the little transactions of love, little chance encounters collected in this book. no one remembers all that shit if they don't love someone. haha. i'm biased i know. just that men get short shrift sometimes. they have fed your mom to the dogs indeed.
and in the end, plath must have been at her most adorable happy, hopeful, and waiting for her baby.
You're
alright, so 2 of the women he went out with eventually killed themselves. was he that exasperating? or merely fatally attracted to crazy women. whatever it is, he doesn't deserve the feminist claptrap calling him a chauvunist, chipping his name off plath's gravestones and shouting "murder" at him. so he had an affair. if you're going to judge a man on that many men are going to fail and plath was probably exasperating to begin with.
and all this for a man who gave up writing for a while so that he could help plath publish ariel, to ensure her legacy, who sat her down and taught her how to write and would give her little writing exercises. is there nothing in this world to be grateful about? what pray, was all the fuss about? that plath was brutally honest and so we should give her a clap? brutally honest about what? that she was a spoilt little girl who didn't feel like living if not perpetually in extremis? and who, pray has to continue living and dealing with all the shit. perhaps i simply don't understand "what it feels like". oh well, being insensitive. crud.
2 suicides later, and all the little transactions of love, little chance encounters collected in this book. no one remembers all that shit if they don't love someone. haha. i'm biased i know. just that men get short shrift sometimes. they have fed your mom to the dogs indeed.
and in the end, plath must have been at her most adorable happy, hopeful, and waiting for her baby.
You're
Clownlike, happiest on your hands,
Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled,
Gilled like a fish. A common-sense
Thumbs-down on the dodo's mode.
Wrapped up in yourself like a spool,
Trawling your dark, as owls do.
Mute as a turnip from the Fourth
Of July to All Fools' Day,
O high-riser, my little loaf.
Vague as fog and looked for like mail.
Farther off than Australia.
Bent-backed Atlas, our traveled prawn.
Snug as a bud and at home
Like a sprat in a pickle jug.
A creel of eels, all ripples.
Jumpy as a Mexican bean.
Right, like a well-done sum.
A clean slate, with your own face on.
warning, a lot of detail, maybe more than is necessary.
When there are so many we shall have to mourn,
when grief has been made so public, and exposed
to the critique of a whole epoch
the frailty of our conscience and anguish,
of whom shall we speak? For every day they die
among us, those who were doing us some good,
who knew it was never enough but
hoped to improve a little by living.
W.H Auden, "IN memory of Sigmund Freud"
I am rather more inspired tonight having had my daily dose of stimulating
conversation. Sometimes I wonder. There is a moment for exam papers and a moment for loud music, drinks and dances. But least of all I guess this blog wasn't meant to capture those moments. It is badly put, I guess a place to wax lyrical.
I will start from the back and jump around. Firstly, it is Freud's 150th birthday today. No one really believes him nowadays but apparently modernism owes a great debt to him. so i was told that "i wouldn't be me if i didn't try to analyse myself all the time."but the flaw in that argument is that you already assume the existence of an inner, unchangeable "me" in rebutting that.=) we are changeable people, and i don't believe in psychoanalysis.but the debt we owe is indeed and insight and the possibility that intelligent people must sometimes look within themselves from time to time.
tonight was a bit nostalgia night or perhaps as people ended their exams they decided to renew and take up conversation once more. so i got sucked in. topics today range from a yearning for the past. with reference to j.k. galbraith, an irrational common whine that "people don't write like that anymore,"with "verve and nuance", "concise" and "with conviction". or that economists don't seem to be as interesting anymore. at the same time, i was invited to a ball in oxford but that didn't materialise, and for a brief moment i entertained the joy of putting on a suit and meeting strangers in a strange, antiquated setting doing antiquated things. as i said, there is a moment for the modern, but tonight wasn't one of them.
went through little debate about education, how things were like in cambridge, how they were in lse,a wish that a little bit of the professors nowadays would be more square pegs in round holes, yet the skeptic warning against the seductive allure of charm and words eschewing the practical. the skeptic and the romantic always exchanging roles.
there was even time for the big word called "love". and even the "quest for knowledge." but if you are inquisitive there is nothing that can take that away from you except years of jadedness and disillusionment but i am happy to report thati have not had the requisite number of years for that.
so, i have taken the liberty to provide a few alternative definitions, which correspond to different periods and timelines depending on what i believed then (or now, the trick is to guess.)
"i thought that love was precisely that, some fantastic nebulous concept which would apply whether or not you spent time with the person. in fact it derived its greatest meaning when you were apart and you believed that you had an invisible friend there supporting you through some shit, and somebody you could return to at the end of the day. but i realise people need intimacy and affection as much simply as some reassurance or validation and they may need it more than i do so i have to try harder nowadays."
on honesty:
"but i can always explain it away and still kinda accept it once i have developed an irrational loyalty, which is why i don't point it out when people are fucked up sometimes. but maybe i have an ulterior motive, it is something i demand of people too, that hopefully they will look past my mistakes (especially of omission and neglect), and that perhaps i am wilfully expecting an irrational loyalty to myself too."
in any case, there is only so much you can capture of the spirit of it. but ever grateful.
p/s auden has always been a favourite
When there are so many we shall have to mourn,
when grief has been made so public, and exposed
to the critique of a whole epoch
the frailty of our conscience and anguish,
of whom shall we speak? For every day they die
among us, those who were doing us some good,
who knew it was never enough but
hoped to improve a little by living.
W.H Auden, "IN memory of Sigmund Freud"
I am rather more inspired tonight having had my daily dose of stimulating
conversation. Sometimes I wonder. There is a moment for exam papers and a moment for loud music, drinks and dances. But least of all I guess this blog wasn't meant to capture those moments. It is badly put, I guess a place to wax lyrical.
I will start from the back and jump around. Firstly, it is Freud's 150th birthday today. No one really believes him nowadays but apparently modernism owes a great debt to him. so i was told that "i wouldn't be me if i didn't try to analyse myself all the time."but the flaw in that argument is that you already assume the existence of an inner, unchangeable "me" in rebutting that.=) we are changeable people, and i don't believe in psychoanalysis.but the debt we owe is indeed and insight and the possibility that intelligent people must sometimes look within themselves from time to time.
tonight was a bit nostalgia night or perhaps as people ended their exams they decided to renew and take up conversation once more. so i got sucked in. topics today range from a yearning for the past. with reference to j.k. galbraith, an irrational common whine that "people don't write like that anymore,"with "verve and nuance", "concise" and "with conviction". or that economists don't seem to be as interesting anymore. at the same time, i was invited to a ball in oxford but that didn't materialise, and for a brief moment i entertained the joy of putting on a suit and meeting strangers in a strange, antiquated setting doing antiquated things. as i said, there is a moment for the modern, but tonight wasn't one of them.
went through little debate about education, how things were like in cambridge, how they were in lse,a wish that a little bit of the professors nowadays would be more square pegs in round holes, yet the skeptic warning against the seductive allure of charm and words eschewing the practical. the skeptic and the romantic always exchanging roles.
there was even time for the big word called "love". and even the "quest for knowledge." but if you are inquisitive there is nothing that can take that away from you except years of jadedness and disillusionment but i am happy to report thati have not had the requisite number of years for that.
so, i have taken the liberty to provide a few alternative definitions, which correspond to different periods and timelines depending on what i believed then (or now, the trick is to guess.)
"i thought that love was precisely that, some fantastic nebulous concept which would apply whether or not you spent time with the person. in fact it derived its greatest meaning when you were apart and you believed that you had an invisible friend there supporting you through some shit, and somebody you could return to at the end of the day. but i realise people need intimacy and affection as much simply as some reassurance or validation and they may need it more than i do so i have to try harder nowadays."
on honesty:
"but i can always explain it away and still kinda accept it once i have developed an irrational loyalty, which is why i don't point it out when people are fucked up sometimes. but maybe i have an ulterior motive, it is something i demand of people too, that hopefully they will look past my mistakes (especially of omission and neglect), and that perhaps i am wilfully expecting an irrational loyalty to myself too."
in any case, there is only so much you can capture of the spirit of it. but ever grateful.
p/s auden has always been a favourite
5/04/2006
one last push
and out comes jesse! how many times must they have repeated that lie to my mom.
i have always been a linear learner and i totally do not understand mind maps. the only readon i would do them is if i have to make them for teaching purposes.
you know, one of the reasons i never ever could study in the library is because 1. i get tired of being in the same place for extended periods of time and 2. i need to do embarassing things once in a while. god knows how i would have passed bio if i didn't walk around my room repeating "interphase, prophase, metaphase, anaphase, teleophase" or the next verb from the ci yu shou ce. (proof i haven't forgotten all i learnt at a level=p)
decided to do something different today so i wouldn't be bored to death. firstly chose a quiet classroom to study in with jx away from the maddening crowd but where i could still enjoy the sound of my own voice. but putting me in a room with markers is dangerous. why use a ballpoint pen on foolscap when you have an erasable whiteboard?
so i decided to do the questions on the board at the same time running through a short exposition of macro. and if you make mistakes just rub away and change. it looks impressive (like mathematical scrawling on windows) and they always say explaining something to someone makes it clearer to yourself. couldn't agree more.
no but really this aside i'm trying to be serious in the sense that i need to entertain myself (shamefaced nerdiness included) so that extra stuff can go in. i am convinced that if i make everything one big joke i will just leave the exam hall laughing. so i beg of everyone please to excuse my behaviour during this trying and difficult time. one last push (oh the old lie).
and after that i hope i'll still be standing there. i just need that bit more patience.
Darling, I would have died for you
but I never had the luck.
(teng qian xi, waterlights)
not this time i'm not leaving it to luck.
5/01/2006
cast your net wide
"follow me, and i will make you fishers of men"
gives the term hooking up a new meaning. unfortunately that's not material from the latest advice column from a women's magazine, it's matthew 4:19.
'SUP guys i'm BACK. not at my best i have to admit, after all, i have experienced failure today, 2 weeks before my exams. nothing new, not trying to make it a habit though. "if at first you don't succeed..."
i am starting to sound like dr phil. for the uninitiated, (and i did not know who he was too), this is the guy who's some pop psychologist in america and has his own show. self improvement maxims are his staple and my attention was drawn to him because in scary movie 4 they spoofed saw and he sawed off the wrong leg (he was supposed to saw off the chained one) which later became the number "4" in the title.
hmm, anyway, i'm pretty afraid about mediocrity descending upon me. i don't mean watching scary movie 4 (hey! it was funny!), but as i was watching my punctured glutinous rice balls sink to the bottom of the pot bleeding tau sar i knew it was not my day. and i had this vague worry that i would turn out to be something like that too. deflated, unprepared and bleeding at the end of it all.
at the same time, i don't want to keep blogging about studying and etc. spring hit me like a train and left me flummoxed for a bit. didn't realise how happy i was. and in this "in between time" i know that on the 27th i can sing "i can see clearly now" but will it be too late? will the rush of spring have gone?
so yah i am quite sick of it all i wish everything would start next week so i'd be slightly more stressed out. and i was online yah trying to prove my theory cause apparently people hook up more during the exam period (or so the null hypothesis claims). anyway i had interesting responses. "exams make me horny" <-- (real response). anyway, i couldn't justify causality. defenses are down? boredom? too much free time? need someone to stare at so that your eyes can take a break from the book? just cause there's some correlation cause there seem to be so many more couples in the library. plus upon saying that there were 2 weeks left to my 1st paper i had an amusing reply : "and you've started already?" YEAH MORE POWER TO YOU SISTER. that just made me feel so much better, it changes nothing (not my extent of my preparation or anything) but yeah glass is half full now.
apart from that many things have not changed. i am getting used to seeing trees with leaves again. man with poetry still sits underneath blackfriars bridge. had wonderful club sandwich today. bank holiday today so workers gathered in trafalgar square. but to be honest inspiration was a bit gone. so this is what it feels like to be so placidly happy?
i didn't get to exercise my right at the vote because it's a walkover. but because this is a dinner table post and politics shouldn't be talked about at the dinner table i will chew my peas and not play with my food. but if you do wanna get started on it it's cool come find me.
oh yes i am going to re-encounter the guitar again cause at my break in school i found myself in a corner with jonathan and i told myself i have to conquer my fears=p
~fin~
brought to you by the letter l. (wah the coxford dictionary so good at reading my mind)
"lost form"
"low morale"
"lu lai lu lao lan" (l-cubed l-square)
"lum pah pah lan"
NO LAH. I ON FIRE OK. kaoz now can go zhuo gang liao.
gives the term hooking up a new meaning. unfortunately that's not material from the latest advice column from a women's magazine, it's matthew 4:19.
'SUP guys i'm BACK. not at my best i have to admit, after all, i have experienced failure today, 2 weeks before my exams. nothing new, not trying to make it a habit though. "if at first you don't succeed..."
i am starting to sound like dr phil. for the uninitiated, (and i did not know who he was too), this is the guy who's some pop psychologist in america and has his own show. self improvement maxims are his staple and my attention was drawn to him because in scary movie 4 they spoofed saw and he sawed off the wrong leg (he was supposed to saw off the chained one) which later became the number "4" in the title.
hmm, anyway, i'm pretty afraid about mediocrity descending upon me. i don't mean watching scary movie 4 (hey! it was funny!), but as i was watching my punctured glutinous rice balls sink to the bottom of the pot bleeding tau sar i knew it was not my day. and i had this vague worry that i would turn out to be something like that too. deflated, unprepared and bleeding at the end of it all.
at the same time, i don't want to keep blogging about studying and etc. spring hit me like a train and left me flummoxed for a bit. didn't realise how happy i was. and in this "in between time" i know that on the 27th i can sing "i can see clearly now" but will it be too late? will the rush of spring have gone?
so yah i am quite sick of it all i wish everything would start next week so i'd be slightly more stressed out. and i was online yah trying to prove my theory cause apparently people hook up more during the exam period (or so the null hypothesis claims). anyway i had interesting responses. "exams make me horny" <-- (real response). anyway, i couldn't justify causality. defenses are down? boredom? too much free time? need someone to stare at so that your eyes can take a break from the book? just cause there's some correlation cause there seem to be so many more couples in the library. plus upon saying that there were 2 weeks left to my 1st paper i had an amusing reply : "and you've started already?" YEAH MORE POWER TO YOU SISTER. that just made me feel so much better, it changes nothing (not my extent of my preparation or anything) but yeah glass is half full now.
apart from that many things have not changed. i am getting used to seeing trees with leaves again. man with poetry still sits underneath blackfriars bridge. had wonderful club sandwich today. bank holiday today so workers gathered in trafalgar square. but to be honest inspiration was a bit gone. so this is what it feels like to be so placidly happy?
i didn't get to exercise my right at the vote because it's a walkover. but because this is a dinner table post and politics shouldn't be talked about at the dinner table i will chew my peas and not play with my food. but if you do wanna get started on it it's cool come find me.
oh yes i am going to re-encounter the guitar again cause at my break in school i found myself in a corner with jonathan and i told myself i have to conquer my fears=p
~fin~
brought to you by the letter l. (wah the coxford dictionary so good at reading my mind)
"lost form"
"low morale"
"lu lai lu lao lan" (l-cubed l-square)
"lum pah pah lan"
NO LAH. I ON FIRE OK. kaoz now can go zhuo gang liao.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)