Sunday, August 26, 2007

SHOOT ME

I AM CONVULSING WITH DISGUST RIGHT NOW. WHAT'S WORSE THAN SELF PITY IS HAVING TO LISTEN TO PEOPLE WHO PITY THEMSELVES.

TO BE HONEST, I CAN'T STAND THIS EVANGELICAL WET BLANKET ATTITUDE. SAINTLY ATTRIBUTE DO ES NOT SIT WELL WITH ME SO IF THIS IS MORALLY WRONG, THEN SOMEBODY SHOOT ME.

Grinning Goat at 8/26/2007 07:35:00 PM pontificated

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{buzzz out}

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

What's wrong with this country

I had this discussion earlier on today in the lab; if you can call that a discussion because we were in the middle of isolating B cells and I was told to speed it up and cut the crap.

It's about what's wrong with this country. And this is precisely why the Speak Good English Campaign is doomed to fail even before it starts.

If you speak good english and spare the language unnecessary abuse, you'll be seen as someone who's trying to act all high and mighty.
If you speak bad english, nobody'll make snide remarks about you trying to act superior but you'll be laughable, not to mention being against the spirit of THE campaign.

It's just this reverse mentality where being too good is bad.
That's just perverse.

I'm not saying that you should flaunt your vocabulary in front of the uncle selling groceries; use simple english by all means, just don't ignore the grammar!

And what's wrong with speaking good english anyway? Is it so wrong to have a little respect for the language?
I don't speak proper english so that I can imitate the Caucasians (only an imbecile would think that). Good english is not about the accent (although I admit that my ears are not very attuned to a strong foreign accent).

I don't speak proper english to ACT SUPERIOR. I am highly irritated when people told me that. I always thought that a case of sour grape; just because they can't speak it, they think it's bad.

(and seriously, if I were to speak freely without restraint: I don't need to ACT superior; by speaking proper english, I AM superior to those bozos who are too half-assed to care about grammar. The evidence speaks for itself, there is no need for me to ACT)

Having said that, I stand corrected of course. I am not a literary expert and neither do I claim to be one. I welcome corrections to my own grammatical errors. That's the difference between me and those people who think I'm trying to ACT superior; I BOTHER about my grammars the same way I bother about having manners.

Grinning Goat at 8/22/2007 01:28:00 AM pontificated

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{buzzz out}

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Lack of suppression

I just remembered.

I came early the other day.

Chikuen: whoaaaa someone comes early ahhhh
Regina: No wonder you look disheveled
Chikuen: No what, she looks normal
R: do you mean to say I normally look disheveled?

Sometimes I wonder why Dr.Lim is so lax with us in the laughing department. She doesn't seem to have any intention of curbing our creative blood. Huahahaha.

Grinning Goat at 8/21/2007 12:09:00 AM pontificated

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{buzzz out}

Monday, August 20, 2007

There's no zeal like the zeal of a convert

Predestination.

If you believe that what happened in the past, your course of action and how they turned out, make you who you are today and that you are pre-destined to be how you are today (either cheery from excessive laughter of the past or bitter from spite; however you are)then the same can be said about the present.

Shouldn't it change the way you view the present?
That your course of action today and how they turn out will make you who you are in the future. That this pre-destination for the future lies today. I suppose it's not PRE-destination anymore if you know exactly what it is today, is it? But the question is, do you??

When people did things to you that were damaging, did you think oh yea, I can see the point of me having had to go through all that? It's only after it's all said and done that we see the point.
So when people do things to you that are damaging now, shouldn't you think there's got to be a point in all that. A purpose. Except that your eyes are not forward enough to see it.

The present is the past's future as much as it is the future's past.

That's what flitted across my mind when I thought about the story of Owen Meany.

Anyway today I took leave from my lab to sit for this test.

The test was held at the Informatics Centre, and for something that calls itself INFORMATICS CENTRE, it is terribly backward in technology.

Okay so it has a lot of CCTV camera, a lot of PC and something that resembled a webcam to "ascertain the identity of the candidates". It even has fancy gadgets to scan our passport's barcode to boot. Fully automated.

But is there MUCH point in being fully automated when it causes disruption and delay?

The PC lagged.

The webcam failed every once in a while; my neighbour failed to have her picture taken and so they resorted to take her thumbprint SIX TIMES. See if my neighbour gets a sore finger after that.

The ancient version of Windows (to this I wrote on the feedback form "It may be worthwhile to upgrade to a windows version later than Windows 2000")
I'm tempted to say "hell even MACS is better than that" but I've had my fair share of trouble with Macs so I refrain myself.

But mostly, the whole registration business was inefficient. I didn't mind all the waiting so much after all boredom served to calm a jumpy nerve but it just wasn't professional, you know. And besides, I can't get over the fact that this happened at the INFORMATICS CENTRE.

I mean, this is the kind of thing that happens in MY HOUSE, not at an INFORMATICS CENTRE.

so no I'm not impressed, not even with the plentitude of CCTV camera which served only to remind me of a mall. You don't want to be sitting for a test in a mall, do you? Unless you're being tested on the latest fashion trend or which shops offer you the highest discount; I'd fail those anyway.

As for the test, I have little to say about it. Suffice it to say that as with a lot of other things, I look at it differently now than how I used to look at it, although I'm still seeing with the same pair of eyes as I did back then.

Grinning Goat at 8/20/2007 08:35:00 PM pontificated

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{buzzz out}

Sunday, August 19, 2007

I am dead

R: I'm so dead
Kaka: Then die gracefully

I'm wondering if perhaps I am now old enough to give up my dream.

Grinning Goat at 8/19/2007 08:33:00 PM pontificated

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{buzzz out}

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

The meeting

I'm not one who reads poetry but I stumbled on one when I was reading John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany (which is more than what I bargained for when I started reading it, it's SUCH a treat to the mind -one of the best books I've read. Irving's the Fourth Hand seems such a PALE comparison)

The poem is by Robert Frost.

The Gift Outright

The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia.
But we were England's, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak.
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.

Anyway the Metastasis meeting was today. This was the second time I'm attending and even then I didn't even know it was compulsory. In fact, it's rather hard to believe that Dr.Lim actually made that 'compulsory' because we always go in such FESTIVE mood
that for it to be affiliated with the word 'compulsory'; to be associated with such rigorous dictatorial enforcement is not only inaccurate, it's an injustice.

I think the RAs were pretty happy because going means a sort of an excursion away from the lab. It's not that they're indolent or anything, it's just that when you're in a confined space that is a lab for the most part of the day everyday, you'd appreciate the fresh air that is conferred by an excursion such as this, even though it's only in the next building (albeit a newer and nicer one).

Not that our lab is shabby. In fact it feels homey to me, in a way I can't quite explain. It's the yellowing walls maybe. One RA remarked to me once that our lab may be poor -and hence the 'let's save moneh culture'- but it's most certainly WELL FURNISHED. I translated that to: poor liquidity but high asset.

In short, we're a self-sufficient happy lab.

And I actually enjoyed going too. One third of the reason being the same reason as the RAs'. The other one third would be the intellectual stimulation (at least for the whichever part I could catch given the time and my brain speed-which is not very fast and requires immediate upgrading; something of the order of Pentium 1). The final one third will be the excitement of being a busybody (and you need to remember that with THAT, comes the knowledge that it's compulsory to go which means that we're obliged to go and if we are supposed to watch we can hardly be blamed for being a kaypoh while we're at it)

In my business as a busybody, this is what I concerned myself with in my head (because the trick of being a good and civic-minded busybody is that we must be silent and discreet; the later part is not to hard because how indiscreet can we be when we're downright invited to be there that is to say we're there through no fault of our own?):

1. The identity of the presenter and my overall impression of his performance in explaining his project. (I said his performance but it might as well be a her performance for all I know- I simply hate the way people say 'his or her performance'. It gets on my nerves and I shall not damage my own heart in that way by saying that myself.)

It was a her performance today by the way. She was this person I've seen around in school because she looks familiar (and from my track record in recognising people in the street you know that this is quite an accomplishment, well either that or she is simply one who draws attention- not in a bad way of course).

Not exactly the best one I've seen (and considering how the first one was my own lab people's you may disregard my judgment on that note). I admit that I was more interested when my lab was presenting. Obviously. Otherwise, why else would I be in my lab? I might as well be in her lab.

But I also have to say that while my lab's data was preliminary, Dr.Lim has a way of defending it when the questions came flying from all directions, unlike this lady. She got confused towards the middle. Dr.Lim's view on this was charitable.

She said, "when you have a data you'll just stare at it for so long you convince yourself that it's one way and when there's someone who comes and takes look at it and tells you that it can also be another way, you find that your idea just crumbles but nonetheless an interesting fact is still an interesting fact. It's just not easy to figure out the pathways"

It's very hard indeed. This familiar lady had proven that to me today. The audience were actively taking part in trying to figure it all out (Chikuen came up with a proper rhetorical question to mark the occasion: Was that a presentation or a discussion?). She even had to admit her confusion. That's not to say that I do not think her intelligent (she was sitting for her QET- Qualifying Entrace Test for doctorate studies, who am I -one who has yet to obtain her bachelor degree- to say she's not?)

2. My supervisor's standing in the Physiology community.
I have to say she's one of the most intelligent. I have little doubt about this now.

3. The attendance level.
Very bad. Our lab made up almost fifty percent of the attendees.
Of course we were all waiting for a certain member of the audience to come, one who asks 'funny questions' and one we discuss most boisterously when the opportunity presents itself. Alas, the member was absent today.

4. The food.
This is another reason we all love to go to the meeting. We get to eat.
The snack was Bengawan Solo material, biscuits, chips and some cheesecake (as opposed to our Bengawan Solo material, chips and my apple pie). In the matter of consumption, we 'set the trend', we like to say.

5. When it ends.
The longer you are there the more problematic your project is because it means more people raise questions and objections and it takes time to explain.

6. The OTHER audience
I sat beside this girl who was frantically noting down the presentation materials. I peered over her notebook and discovered to my horror, how uncannily tidy her handwriting was. Almost TYPEWRITTEN MATERIALS. But besides that, it was good I guess because besides being very tidy and ALIGNED, it was also BIG which means I could conveniently peeked at it when I got confused over something the presenter was saying.

Oh yea before we went to the meeting we were taking LAB PHOTOGRAPHS (before BZ left for Switzerland next month). It was Dr.Lim's idea to immortalize us in picture for future remembrance. Which might as well be proven to be unnecessary because our noise should be of sufficiently high decibel levels to render it totally memorable (we got some complaints from a woman at the adjacent lab, that should be memorable enough).

I was initially at the back (second row) and then photographer Chikuen said that we should try another orientation for the next picture so we did. I moved to the front.

And then the budding photographer Chikuen commented that "Ross blocked Joe Thuan"
so I said "Oh I'm sorry I'M TALL" which obviously showed just how not sorry I was. In the end I had to bend my legs, which turned out to be a bad idea after all because it was obvious. As for being obvious to what, I'm not so sure, I hope it doesn't look like I'm constipating. That will be memorable for an entirely wrong reason.

7. The other professors.
How they assess the project is an insight into how they think about things. How politely they deliver their assessment is an insight into how high (or low) an EQ they have.

8. Who got bored.
This should be interesting to follow except that there were more thrilling things to observe just now.
I feed on cheap thrills.

Anyway I posted a long one today because I realise I have been absent for a couple of days. I've been having this dizzy spells which I thought was associated with lack of sleep so yes, I've been sleeping.

Guilty in slumber's embrace.

Grinning Goat at 8/14/2007 08:52:00 PM pontificated

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{buzzz out}

Sunday, August 12, 2007

I am freaking out

My sister is evil. She is evil in the way that she forces people to watch horror movie with her because she is of the opinion that being scared together is better than being scared alone. Which is a load of nonsense, do you not seek comfort at the fact that while you are scared, other people are not and so they are some kind of your pillar of strength courage?

I watched the stupid show and well it is best if I don't go to bed now.
I thought I'd write some stuff here because when I write I will think and it will not be ghostly things that I think about.

R: Dammit no more horror movie for me for the next 10 years or so
Tottot: HUAHAHAHAHA your fault for watching it at this time of day
R: Well, it is only aired at night. Channel 5 isn't stupid you know

So all this is because Channel 5 is of sufficient intelligence. And obviously also because of my sister's warped logic.

Anyway let's steer clear of unsafe grounds like that. I plan to un-excite myself, not to stimulate it further.

I was just thinking (ok this is a lie, I force myself to think about it now, I haven't been thinking about it at all) about the concept of "booking".

When we 'book' something, what does it mean really? When I book the culture hood, does it mean I have a 'moral claim' over the hood? I told Regina this and she looked at me like I've lost it.

Shit. This isn't working.

I better go sleep. While my sister is still awake. Because after all, being scared together is better than being scared alone, no?

Grinning Goat at 8/12/2007 01:09:00 AM pontificated

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{buzzz out}

Thursday, August 09, 2007

The great pleasure

Now I shall indulge myself in one of man's greatest pleasures of all time: bad-mouthing.

Before that though, I shall indulge myself in the mother of all prejudices and sink to the depth of shameless bigotry: dislike.

Dislike is a quite vehement sentiment, not so much because it is malicious (most of the time it isn't) but because it thrives on a baseless assumption or because it is not backed with reason (which is why I think it appropriate to call it the mother of all prejudices)

I don't like bitter gourd. Why? because it is bitter.
But how can I dislike bitter gourd for its bitterness when I like rum which is also bitter? In fact, bitter gourd is good for health is it not and why don't I like something that is good for my health (ditto for running)?

At the end of the day I simply dislike bitter gourd because I dislike like it and that's no reason at all. I do not know why except for the fact that it does not agree with me. I used to find it hard to swallow. I resent prejudice and yet I am indulging myself in it on an almost daily basis (what with my hatred for running being the tip of the iceberg).

If you cannot tolerate prejudice in others how can you tolerate prejudice in yourself? That's a filthy double standard. And yet if you cannot tolerate it in yourself how can you still like yourself and live with who you are?

Life becomes this perpetual great struggle in trying to shift the balance between how much prejudice in others you need to tolerate so as not to be a moral charlatan bordering on self-loathing and how much prejudice in others you need to disagree with so as not to sink into the depth of moral degradation.

Okay now that I have made clear my position on prejudice, the stage has been set and I will tell you my story.

This morning I went to this orientation camp where all the Indonesian students gather
together annually to welcome the freshmen.

One of the game masters was this guy (I do not particularly like to use the word guy to refer to a member of the male species but he was most certainly not a man, in my eyes. He was just this epitome of boyish idiocy). Today was not the first time I saw him. I saw and talked to him before when he was attending this stall in Science that gave out free cotton candies.

At first impression he struck me at this peculiar guy who was attention deficit,really loud, a little rude and more on the boorish side. (Okay that was most certainly prejudice from my side but at the time I did think that while I may think that he may not turn out to be quite like that -although it's hard to admit that I'm wrong sometimes. In short, while I was prejudiced, I still gave him the benefit of the doubt and you get to give me some credit for that)

I do not normally chit chat with strangers and ask for their names but this guy was well, an indonesian and with a fellow indonesian there usually is bound to be some kind of solidarity is it not? A sense of camaraderie between fellow countrymen on a foreign land. So although I found him disturbing I still bothered to ask him his name because it did not serve my moral fibre very well that I should be rude on the basis of mere prejudice.

And I clearly remember him saying, "oh I don't know, you ask other people" (not exactly that but an equally annoying Indonesian equivalent of it)
1. I ASKED HIM OUT OF POLITENESS, NOT BECAUSE I PARTICULARLY CARE WHAT HE'S CALLED -for what he's worth I probably forget his name even if he tells me anyway.
2. ASK OTHER PEOPLE? DOES HE NOT GIVE HIMSELF A LITTLE TOO MUCH CREDIT?
3. If he can't give his name to other people,there's probably something wrong with him, like maybe he's a criminal or you'd find his name written in NUS' would be expelled candidates list and I couldn't be bothered less with the likes of that.
4. If that was a joke it was a pathetic one and I couldn't be bothered with the likes of that too.

The second time I met him was at my band's gig in the Munchie Monkey. Again, I found him an aloof and rude oddball.

The third was at the recent Matric fair. Apparently he was a NUSSU member, which made me doubt their competency in selecting appropriate candidates for membership. Maybe his attention deficit disorder compelled him to join an organization where he can exercise his narcissistic charm and authority on poor souls so he can feel good about himself, because probably the other aspects of his life were most unsatisfactory. (because how else you can grow up to be as dense, narcissitic and rude as that?)

Today was the fourth. He was one of the game masters as I have mentioned.
The thing with the games we played was that the losing group can cajole/suck up to the game masters by doing their bidding to get extra points.

It was just a stupid game,I did not mind losing really but my group leader decided that she did want the extra points for our group. So the annoying guy said he would give it to us if we drew flowers on this other guy's face and it must be obvious (which means it must be big).

We did. And the poor guy was stuck with purple flowers on his face for the rest of the week probably, because the ink was not exactly water soluble. He could just let it fade away eventually or he could brush his face sore. Either way it won't look pretty.

To add on to the childishness of this orientation camp, there was a guy who got splashed on and the water screwed his handphone. If it had happened to me, I would at the least exercise my right to be cross and express my displeasure (Ok that was a mild way to put it, I would have freaked out and bashed the culprit's head until blood oozes out) but this guy, he seemed resigned. I suppose this is what they mean by the great divide that separates the two sexes. Females mind more. They tolerate less. Unlike males.

Mars and Venus.

Anyway my image of the rude oddball did not get better, in fact it got worse. To my ear he sounded even more boorish and annoyingly loud today. At this point, I gave up all notions of being reasonable about my prejudice and just accepted the fact that I dislike him, bias or not. I did not share this with anyone though because that is crossing to a totally different domain in the moral chart. I was guilty of prejudice and I could live with that if by admitting it I could hate him more freely. But if I talked about it to another person then I would be guilty of bad-mouthing and that was not something I was prepared to bear just yet.

And then a friend of mine made this casual remark, "if the game master wants us to sabo him (the rude oddball) I wouldn't want to do it. He is the kind who will bear grudges"

That's a new piece of information. Which my friend supplies without the influence of my dislike.

After my friend said that, another friend of mine nodded her head in agreement and then added that she did not really like him either.

So there you go. Three independent observations. All pointed to the same thing. Except maybe it was worse in my case because I went so far as to imagine that not only does he bear grudges, he looks like a potential abusive husband who batters his wife.

So after this honest disclosure, I felt obliged to share my sentiment with them (at this point I was prepared to be guilty of bad-mouthing. In fact, it would be a sin worth bearing. I suppose this makes me twice as guilty, because one is not supposed to feel proud or even pleased about one's sin)
Because if a lot of people find you disagreeable, then the odds are that there is something wrong with you.

And there clearly is something wrong with this guy.

I suppose it may not be his fault. You can't be guilty solely for being ugly, but can you be guilty solely for being annoying? I guess the key is whether you are being annoying intentionally.

Maybe he's built to be annoying. A product defect from the manufacturer. So that people like me can look at him and look at my friends and sigh with contentment that I am in the company of great people.

Grinning Goat at 8/09/2007 10:32:00 PM pontificated

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{buzzz out}

Frederick Buechner, on faith

"Not the least of my problems is that I can hardly even imagine what kind of an experience a genuine, self-authenticating religious experience would be. Without somehow destroying me in the process, how could God reveal himself in a way that would leave no room for doubt? If there were no room for doubt, there would be no room for me"

How apt

You know how sometimes you just lack the eloquence to properly articulate something you felt as though there were not enough words in this world to convey it until someone comes along and manage to voice out loud your exact sentiment and you feel this great burden being lifted off your chest because it has finally been expressed and you seek great comfort in the fact that someone else feels the same way too?

That's how it feels for me.

Grinning Goat at 8/09/2007 09:22:00 PM pontificated

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{buzzz out}

Monday, August 06, 2007

THANK GOD IT's FRIDAY

I think you would've known by now that Regina and I, we love our labs. The people in it, the things we do and even the let's save money culture. Just now on the bus we were talking about how Saturday is a good break and all but sunday is just too much and we are always bored stiffless.

Then later that night,

R: eh Regina, I heard something funny. "It's Friday tomorrow. I know that as a student on holiday, I'm not entitled to say TGIF, because I already have TGIM, TGIT, TGIW, TGITh, TGIS, TGISun"
Regina: who said that?
R: a friend of mine
Regina: eh.. i think for us lab geeks, it should be TGIM..

Grinning Goat at 8/06/2007 10:27:00 PM pontificated

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{buzzz out}

The great escape

The song goes like this

Paper bags and plastic hearts
All are belongings in shopping carts
It's goodbye
But we got one more night
Let's get drunk and ride around
And make peace with an empty town
We can make it right

Throw it away
Forget yesterday
We'll make the great escape
We won't hear a word they say
They don't know us anyway
Watch it burn
Let it die
'Cause we are finally free tonight

Tonight will change our lives
It's so good to be by your side
We'll cry
We won't give up the fight
We'll scream loud at the top of our lungs
And they'll think it's just 'cause we're young
And we'll feel so alive

Throw it away
Forget yesterday
We'll make the great escape
We won't hear a word they say
They don't know us anyway
Watch it burn

Let it die
'Cause we are finally free tonight

All of the wasted timing
Hours that were left behind me
Answers that we'll never find
They don't mean a thing tonight

Throw it away
Forget yesterday
We'll make the great escape
We won't hear a word they say
They don't know us anyway

Throw it away
Forget yesterday
We'll make the great escape
We won't hear a word they say
They don't know us anyway

Throw it away
forget yesterday
We'll make the great escape
we won't hear a word they say
they don't know us anyway
Watch it burn
Let it die
'Cause we are finally free tonight

:::

I got a funny story to tell but perhaps not tonight. Remind me, it's about something that happened on bus 53.

Funny stories are what make your days, are they not?
They are not your life goals, they're just these mundane, inane things that make life a little more interesting, a little more bearable and a little more enjoyable.

The lecturer last Saturday was one of those intellectuals who view the world through very skeptic eyes and I might be wrong but I thought of him as a scientist who is at odds with the world, being as sarcastic as possible if he can help it.

And to tell you the truth I couldn't tell when he was jesting.
At one point, I scribbled in pencil for Regina to read during the lecture: was that a joke?

Regina and I, we laughed at fresh prunes.
Not a very intellectual joke, I told her. We laughed at simple things. Too simple even, hauahaha.
But if the simple things do, why bother making them complicated?

Jokes. Life's greatest escape.

I wrote them so I can grow old to look back and laugh at them all over again.

Grinning Goat at 8/06/2007 12:07:00 AM pontificated

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{buzzz out}

Sunday, August 05, 2007

oooohhhhh

My student's nickname: LATE LUNCH MEANS LATE LUNCH, NOT DIETING YOU GOONDUUUUUUU!!!!!!

R: WOW, SOMEONE'S WORKED UP EH?
G: YA LA STUPID MEN
R: WHY IS IT ALWAYS MEN?
G: BECAUSE
G: MEN
G: ARE
G: THE
G: PROBLEM
G: MEN ARE ALWAYS THE SOURCE OF OUR PROBLEMS
G: MEN-SURATION
G: MEN-OPAUSE
G: MEN-TAL DISEASES

You know if she's bent on picking faults on men, I can just let her and add on:

MEN-STRUATION
MEN-ORRHAGIA (and it seems that all the problems we have with our monthly bleeding can almost always be associated with men. I'll say she has a point, my student has)
MEN-ACE
MEN'S LAUGHTER - MENSLAUGHTER
MEN-INGITIS
MEN-DACITY

Grinning Goat at 8/05/2007 08:01:00 PM pontificated

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{buzzz out}

Thursday, August 02, 2007

This thing called moral obligation

What I wanted to write about isn't exactly this but this was what triggered the strings of thoughts that were to become the point of this entry.

Excerpts from Alexander McCall Smith's Friends, Lovers, Chocolate:

"...of form and friendship and how letters - and gifts- were the only vestiges of form which remained to us in the conduct of our friendships. Other cultures had much more elaborate forms for the recognition and cultivation of friendship"

"In South America, she had read, two men becoming friends might undergo a form of baptism ceremony over a tree trunk, symbolically becoming godchildren of the tree and therefore, in a sense, brothers to each other. That was strange, and we were just too busy to arrange ceremonies of that sort; meeting for coffee was easier"

"And in Germany, where form is preserved, there would be linguistic milestones in the development of friendship, with the change to the familiar du address. Of course, one should not be too quickly start to use the first names of friends in Germany; in some quarters a good few years might be required"

"Isabel smiled as she remembered being told by a professor from Freiburg of how, after several years of knowing a colleague, they were still on formal terms. Then, one evening, when the colleague had invited him to his house to watch an important football match on television, in a moment of great excitement he had shouted out,'Oh look, Reinhard, Germany has scored a goal!' and had immediately clasped a hand to his mouth, embarrassed by the solecism."

"He had called his colleague by his first name, and they had known one another only for a few years! Fortunately, the visitor had taken a generous view of this lapse, and they had agreed to move to first-name terms there and then, drinking a toast to friendship, as is appropriate in such circumstances."

"But what happens if two colleagues agree to address one another as du and then they fall out over something? Does one revert to the old formal usage and go back to sie?"

If the Germans have du and sie, what has been referred to as "linguistic milestones in the development of friendship", and the French tu and vouz, and the Spanish tu and usted, where does that leave us then?

The vestiges of form which remained to us in the conduct of our friendship: gifts and letters.

Gift: this teddy bear that could drop its fur and be balded for all eternity is a symbol of friendship? (In that case wouldn't it mean the older the teddy bear and hence the balder it is, the deeper the friendship? One that sails through time and prevails above all others? That's an amusing concept if not a ridiculous one)

Letter: not everybody is blessed with the gift of the gab and for those who are, they are not necessarily articulate in writing.

(What's the difference? the earlier has to do with spontaneity and the ability to say the correct things at the correct time -and when one does not feel very charitable, one might even add: to cajole others to get what one wants.
The later however has to do with a slower brain reaction, one that involves some mental digestion and then regurgitation of words.)

Besides, do people actually bother to write a letter nowadays? e-mails are better, eh? they get sent to the recipients faster so news are delivered fresh from the oven, not old and mouldy and past the expiry dates. They get deleted and forgotten a lot faster too, mind you.

For me there is something about writing a letter though.
Call me old fashioned if you will but there is definitely something sentimental in the act of writing and reading a letter. It is, how shall I put it, more personal?

You get to send an email that contains six words: I am going to be late.

But do you ever write a letter with only six words on it?
You would not, and why wouldn't you? Because the cost of a stamp is worth more than six words, you reckon? So if you're writing a letter to somebody across the Atlantic it better be a long one but if your intended recipient is just your neighbour next door then a couple of words should be sufficient? I am sure the reason is not as simple as that.

Why do you write love letters but not love emails? Because love letter reaches later so if you want to change your mind you can bust his mailbox to retrieve it or bribe the postman to return it to you? I am sure the reason is not as complicated as that either.

(Oh god I'm sorry I need to sidetrack because I just had this conversation with a friend:

Az: ehhh ross...when you eat something that is so sinful, you are at the brink of what?
R: At the brink of what? A weight gain I would assume
Az: weiiiiiiiiii, I want to say at the brink of ecstasy, will it be okay?
R: well I think it's not on the BRINK. I think when you're eating it you're already experiencing it, aren't you?
Az: so we were close to ecstasy?
R: I'd say you're IN ecstasy, that is if you're really eating it and not simply staring at the sinful thing anticipating to eat it

I think I know what it means when people say I take things too literally sometimes.
Now I'm hungry)

I have not written a letter in years and so when my friend was in a student exchange program in France, I told her I would write her one to make use of the opportunity to send news the old fashioned way, after all sending a letter from Serangoon to Bukit Panjang (or Bukit batok, I'm not sure which bukit it is actually) is hardly worth a laugh, is it not?

There's a certain degree of snobbery in the ways the contemporary views older generations: Getting yourself a sworn sister/a godfather/a godson. This is not very fashionable nowadays, is it? When you get yourself a sworn sister you can almost feel the frown of the society and their eyes boring into you as though putting a label on your forehead: CONSERVATIVE/OLD FOGGIES

Actually, does the ritual really matter? it's the symbol that matters, is it not? Who cares if you have to bow together before a tree to get the job done?
If friendship can be symbolized with a balding teddy bear and a chit chat over a cup of coffee, why can't it be symbolized by a bow in front of a tree? Is that a less dignified way of symbolizing?

As society progresses (I am not condemning progress but there is just something disturbing about progress for progress' sake), the tendency is to side with whichever side that is convenient.

I bet you a ten year old will say the use of a calculator is convenient. But is that a good way to teach a ten year old how to count? That's progress for progress' sake. You want him to get on with multiplication and subtraction so he can move on to bigger things like algebra, but what is the point in advancing him so far out that he skips all the basics but is rendered ignorant of the fundamentals?
Does the end justify the means? I think not.

Sure we are more likely to stick to convenient things than troublesome things but I am saying we should not do things just because they're convenient.

Cheating IS convenient, is it not? Poof the answer was there even without you having committed the concept to memory the day before. Surely you do not absolve cheating for the simple reason that it is convenient?

And all this talk about the cultivation and symbols of friendship makes one want to ask: Do we have the moral obligation to remember people?

Do we have a duty to remember?
Those who have a moral claim on us may expect us to remember at least who they are.

How long would you remember your friend?
Memory is a very strange thing. Occasionally you remember without you being conscious that you are making a memory. And yet there are times when you make a conscious effort to memorize only to forget it (and at the time you need the memory the most usually)

Well then at least this strangeness about memory serves as a kind of a loophole for us, does it not? We know that while we may try to remember, what happens eventually (whether the memory gets to be properly stored) is somewhat out of our hands.

This is good news, no?
"It was as if a weather warning had been lifted. There had been a mistake: winter was canceled and we would move straight to spring"

Well enough philosophical musings for one night. I have a lecture coming up this saturday and term has not even started yet. My professor, she likes us to learn things early.

Grinning Goat at 8/02/2007 08:41:00 PM pontificated

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{buzzz out}

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Frustrated gratitude

It was a little weird for such a mundane thing as a flammable cabinet. To lock our flammable cabinet, the handle must be tilted at an angle. And it wasn't 90 degrees either way (vertical or horizontal), it was like what 38 degrees something? At the door, someone had marked this exact position to lock the door.

Mr Joe said that Chikuen MEASURED that angle and wrote the marking there. I'm impressed. And then Mr Joe said that not everyone can be a thief.

Grinning Goat at 8/01/2007 11:19:00 PM pontificated

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{buzzz out}