I was walking home at about 1 last night, after a freaking long meeting for my damn marketing module, and well on my way home there was this man, had to be at least 70, hunched over carrying two large plastic bags full of stuff.
And then you know altruristic feelings started to emerge within me, like hey maybe i should help this man out. I mean i felt that at 70, i wldn;t want to be out at 1 am lugging plastic bags full of stuff, hell i shld be home with ppl looking after me. Well it would have been really great i guess if i really did go help that man out, but then of course there is always this invisible force that seems to stop one from doing something of this sort- what if he thinks i trying to rob him? can he understand me if i spoke to him? maybe he doesn;t need help? and all sort of this kind shit
and then i started to wonder ( like real only), if ppl were able help people regardless of any situation, help someone with the firm belief that even if our help were to be rejected it would be alrite, wld the world then be an easier place to live in. Its amazing how people are willing to sacrifice everything for an ideal, yet choose not to do anything about the most apparent conditions of others next to them.
201 tutorial is cool man, nothing jolts the old noodle like some old school philosophy
people tend to seek happiness, but happiness is only a feeling... am i then living my life for a feeling which undoubtably has to do with some chemical reaction in my body
so then when u deconstuct it, aren;t you then living your life for a release of some hormone or chemical or whatever on to your nerve receptors
deconstucting makes everything seem so insignificant
This life is bullshit man..
who you are is just a lie, its so pathetic to put on a show of yourself and mask what you feel inside
friends are only friends as long as you can get out of them
do i have friends really, am i really a friend to anyone?
everything is either some chemical reaction going on in your head or some action done with an agenda in mind
nothing is true man
its bullshit i tell you
feeling terribly sick of everyone and everything, things and people are getting on my nerves for no apparent reason.
If there is a male version of PMS(is there?) i think i am experiencing it now..
i see so much shit going arnd me and i want it to change yet have no motivation to go change it....stupid shit
MAn A7x is crazy for coming up with this song....in a gd way
man i love JAp songs and their lame dancing which becomes kinda cool in a lame sort of way which is kinda lame coz what can be lame and cool unless its like lame cool but is it like really cool then or like a lower level ccool or ......
Man school starts in like 1 day, its not like i hate school or anything but the thought of doing readings and writing term papers (not to mention the travelling time) just urghhhh!!!
man i can;t believe 3 mths have passed and sad to say i did not accomplish anything i had set out to do at the beginning of the holidays. Most of the time wasted trying to make money while the rest of it spent aimlessly surfing youtube and wikipedia for useless facts and videos--terrible....
only really cool thing about the holidays been perhaps meeting up with all my old pals from AJC, SJI and my squad mates, as we reminisce about ye olden times.
But i guess i shld not live in regret of wat i could have done but rather try to make the most of this new sch semester.........rite
i love this song man
(too lazy to write anything)
I finally got myself down to read the book i borrowed from the library the other week, Paul Ginsborg's The politics of Everyday life, rather good book that kinda reminded me of this conversation i had with my friend Joe Han a few weeks ago.
Joe Han had just returned from England for the summer break and he was recounting about this incident he had with his friend back there.
Well the story goes like this, he was with his friend trying to get back to newcastle or something from london, and Joe Han was like lets catch a flight, faster more convenient and stuff, but his friend was like no, we should take the train which is a less polluting way of transportation. OF course like most people educated in singapore his typical reply was wth, the plane is going to fly anyway whats the difference, but his friend replied that its not really the calculability or the need for your actions to make a significant impact but rather the attitude in which you carry out your actions.
I guess it really struck me, sometimes its really about the attitude to go about and actually try and do something and to not let yourself fall into an apathetic indifferent state that seems to hold us back from even attempting to try to make a difference.
What Gramsci calls 'molecular processes', every little action can make a difference, all we need to do now really is just to get of our ass.
Ever been awake yet not feel fully awake, like your body is moving around but somehow your soul is still snoozing at home??
well i had one of those days today, the whole journey to work and at work was just this fuzzy period in time, it was as if i was on autopilot and my body was merely following this predetermined course trying to complete a series of tasks that would lead me to ultimately attaining a day's wage.
the lack of mental stimulus and motivation is really killing me.....denigrating what is human in me to something akin to a machine...
can we truly say we are alive then when we just go about our tasks with little mental effort, how are we then different from a supposed non-living thing, for wouldn;t one say that a machine is alive too for it too performs specific tasks each day.
and so now i become critical of the capitalist machinery..... and i rant and rant and i critique and i think i know what is the correct way to do something... but then again seeing what is wrong with something does not equate to knowing how to correct it....
feeling lost and empty....
Was watching across the universe few days back, really good movie mostly due to the excellent soundtrack which comprises entirely of Beatles songs. You can;t neva beat the beatles man, excellent love songs to crazy shit songs that make no freaking sense (I am the Walrus).
watching the show makes me wanna build a time machine and return to the swinging 60s and 70s, crazy music festivals, protests, weed, what could be betta...
i failed to build the time machine though so i did the next best thing, ask my parents!!
really cool chat, telling me abt all the crappy things they used to do back then. Like did you noe that they had SMS back then too, almost the same just took a little longer and that they had to use pen and paper and the telco was usually their younger siblings who would run to the different houses to deliver the messages. (I would hate to be the sibling of someone whose sweetheart lives in bedok while i live in yishun back then)
and also how their parents used to scold them for 'mopping' the fllor at city hall (Bell bottoms)
Well the chat ended with me trying desperately to search for these vintage clotes onli to learn that they threw them away few yrs back
DAMN!
Brings back memories of kindergarten
I was kinda like stoning on my bed just now, like after work which is getting terribly boring tat i have to constantly find ppl to disturb on my HP such that i can anticipate their reply and thus keep my mind of the work (long sentence which i'm making even longer by adding this).
Feeling some times that maybe a certain something is missing i mean i have a gd Family, friends, God (gotta put this in) and all but yeh sometimes i prob wish i could have someone like special to be with.
Now this is rather unlike me, i mean i have always felt like i dun need this kind of shit, but i guess sometimes there is a certain feeling of lack in a part of my life.
Maybe its just the romantic shit korean drams i have been watching to get my mind of work, or maybe the weather or the planets alignment but yeh i guess having being single for 22 yrs is kinda taking is toll.
Now i guess some of you will be like, u are shitting me, wats so cool abt relationships, the breakups and shit. But then again even though it may be crappy i guess it would be a worthwhile exp for that fleeting moment that u truly care for someone?(my opinion, dun fault me for it)
Man.....
Under the oppresively humid weather, the hero trudges along the main road of the fantasy land of Eropagnis. The road is packed with the daily commuters making their way from the suburban Ghettos of Nuhsiy to the city tat is D.B.C (damn bloody crappy place). The crowds move in silence, noone smiles or speaks, stoney faced, eyes blank. The Hero chuckles to himself, 'pathetic drones..' but doesn;t realise that he is but also but another chog in the evil machinery run by the lord Tsilatipac. The hero doesnlt know this yet, for his mind has been blinded by the evil spell of the high priest of Tsilatipac, Aidem.
In the distance a figure lurks under the shadows of the concrete watchtowers that line the main road.
The figure watches the hero making his journey, he wishes to make contact but is hesistant, in his current weakened state, he can not risk exposing himself. He turns around and disappears into the shadows, "another day perhaps... we shall meet...."
It past mid day and the hero now makes his journey back from the D.B.C, he is exhausted having to maintain the numbers of drones of the machinery. Feeding fuel to the drones was not an easy task, they had this propensity to explode without warning for no apparent reason. The Hero sighs, he hates the work but he yet again he wants to work.
The hero feels that there has to be something more to life but can;t quite put his finger on it. So he chooses to submerge this feeling and yearns daily to emerse himself in the distractions of the VT and the CP (electronic devices that entertain).
The hero is dreading the journey, however from the corner of his eye, someone catches his attention. the hero knows her, she is a sight for sore eyes, the hero feels lifted and happy. He approaches her to converse and it goes rather well, maybe there was something more to this existence.....
Was at the national stadium last night, responding to the call to be the Singapore team's 12th man, for the first 10 to 20 mins it actually seemed that we could stand up to the tough Uzbek challenge. But it was all downhill from then on, it was almost as though the Uzbeks had a Howitzer and we were using an air rifle or something, totally outclassed.
"2010 world cup? maybe 2110 la" -anonymnous singapore football fan sitting behind us
I am once again hooked onto love sopey korean dramas, watching Full House for like the what...4th time i think. Still a great series, doesn't fail to give me that warm fuzzy feeling everytime. The cool thing about korean and japanese dramas has to be their soundtracks, how they use different songs to really bring out the emotions in the scenes, not to mention their superb cinematography, script and acting techniques, too bad you don't see that in Singapore. Another cool thing is how they are seemingly able to make speaking broken english sound cool, while it sounds horrible when some ah lian or ah beng does speak it.
Well anyway back to the main idea of my post, wouldn;t it be cool if there was background music for the different happenings in our lives. For example when entering the exam hall for a particularly difficult exam (204...) the soundtrack will be something like Eye of the Tiger. And if you are like heartbroken or very emo over some love stuff, it will be the OST of Full House (its in Korean, i dunno wat the hell they are singing abt, but sounds nice nonetheless) And if some ass is nagging you, the background will be blasting that Linkin Park song when they incessently shout 'shut up!!!!'
Yeh that would be cool in any case here are some youtube links to the songs that i mentioned
eye of the tiger
full house ost (song hye gyo is the ultimate babe)
And that shut up song by Linkin park
Labrador Park, great place for fishing
Been reading Hegel's philosophy of Right this past 2 weeks, well not really reading his work but rather the abridged version, but nonetheless think its a really good piece especially when it comes to the part on his conception of the 'person'.
So basically Hegel is saying then that the person or the self in a way is what is rational in its decision making, but not so much so that the person is entirely rational in every sense, but a form of middle way between 100% rationality and 100% action based on desire.
Which kind of makes sense in a way, for if we were to see the true self as something that can only emerge as entirely free from 'culture' and in a sense free to do how and whatever one pleases, that is not true freedom as the person is but a slave then to the desires that motivate his or her actions. Rather its the ability then to comprehend desires, rationalise and then choose how to act in which then the person comes about and in a way the true self.
What if then the true self is not so much this idea of being free from constraint, the supposedly entirely uniqueness of oneself. But rather the true self is then how one chooses then to rationalise and then choose to act in accordance with the stimulus present through the various faculties available to one then to express it.
Whooo just completed my first week of work as a waiter cum barista cum dishwasher. REally tiring work and its just 5hrs, can;t believe taking orders and running around trying to appease hungry customers can be so tiring.
have a new found respect for ppl in the f&b line, seriously not an easy job.
Whooo exams over!!!!!
List of things to do
write the next mega hit song
fight environmental pollution
stop the fighting in iraq and elsewhere
watch singapore soccer and promise not to criticise their lousy play
do some leisure reading for once
get a job
Today is Earth day, and I bet majority of you guys don't even know it. Not your fault really gotta thank all the more 'important' things out there. I guess we will only really care about the environment when we are melting in the sun or when food crops die out and we are plunged into another war over the remaining whatever lifestock and arable land there is.
I am probably also then the biggest hypocrite as I am blogging about this while using up precious electricity at 922pm with my light on in my HDB flat.
I can;t believe how we are so distracted and focused on the unimportant things in life. I can;t believe how, a man, escaping from some stupid area can be more important then the earth that is dying.
The human race then has to be the stupidest species on earth then, for we endlessly develop ways to ever more efficiently kill ourselves and then try tirelessly to solve the problems steming from our creations. Those enlightenment philosophes gotta be the most optimistic idiots on earth when they thought that the human race was progressing. Progressing my ass man, what has science done but open this whole pandora's box of death and suffering under the whole idea that we are advancing and leading ever better lives.
The whole very notion of our existence I feel is fundamentally wrong then for we do nothing but live only to create hardship and destruction for someone or something else. If an animal eats another he does so out of necessity and it contributes to the ecosystem, but men eats and not only that dumps in a few tons of pesticide along with some rubbish to top it off.
Now of course I would not say that we should run naked and return to our natural savage beings but the whole life outlook and meaning for living is so fundamentally flawed.
If we live to ever seek to lead more comfortable lives then of course some ass is going to pay for it, there is no such thing as a free lunch so to speak. The whole idea of the capitalist system so to speak then is a system of destruction that then ever seeks and develop ways to distract us such that it perpetuates till ultimately we cease to exist
If God is ,depending on you, really there and that he is really omnipotent, shouldn;t we be spending every minute of our lives trying to please him. Then shouldn;t it be the same for the earth, we are all on the same boat man, and if it sinks we go along with it, despite how much fucking money you have, shouldn;t then it play the biggest part of our lives then??
We are fucking screwed man, with the global temperatures rising and bees dying and pollution ,so that i can consume and be fleetingly happy for a tiny while with my purchase, and killing ourselves over some stupid belief of our own.
We are screwed.
This post is full of grammatical and speeling mistakes as i intended to write what i felt before it left me and i return to my distracted life again
A day in the Life
LSD!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Went to watch the Singapore-Lebanon world cup qualifier on Wednesday, pretty cool match I must say. Not watched a live match since the 2005 Singapore cup final and was starting forget the whole atmosphere and thrill from watching two teams battling out in front of me.
Singapore foorball has to be a very adequate expression of Singaporean culture I must say, what is Singaporean culture then (can it even be defined)probably not but i would like to say that what you see in Football matches probably reflects some elements of our culture.
Example, the fact that we can never be satisfied. we were up 2 goals and yet we were complaining, i was no exception of course. 2 goals where got enough? watching bloody Khairu Amri strolling in an offside position was super frustrating. This probably reflects our whole competitive, cut throat culture we have here, nothing is ever enough, always need to get the best and latest of everything. Of course I am generalising but I would like to suggest that one cannot deny this element of our culture.
The fact that we openly curse and swear at the players during the matches probably also reflects this whole opressive atmosphere we are in, we always seem constrained in our ability to speak our mind. Usually this happens in the whole concept of respect, and the whole frustration of it all seems to express itself during football matches where we are somewhat free from authoritative structures.
OF course one may say that I am probably reading too much into everything, but since whatever we do is guided by our cultural environment i would think its a pretty adequate argument
Was queueing up to pay for this loaf of bread at 7 eleven just now.
And do you know that whole stack of condoms at the cashier which noone ever seems to buy...
Have you ever wondered how people actually buy those stuff, let me enlighten you.
Well as you know i was queueing to pay for my bread, minding my own business, when all a sudden the guy in front just reached over to that whole stack of you know what, and quickly handed it over to the cashier. It was damn fast, over in a flash, like a snake striking at some unlucky ku ku.
I was like, did i just see what i just saw, haha and just as quickly it went into the hands of the cashier, upon return it went straight into his pocket in under a second.
Of course i was like wth man, but i exercised audience tact and tried to give the most stoned face i could muster.
But wth, whats wrong with buying condoms that you need to do it so quickly and discretely like its some thing you can;t be caught with.
Personally i don't agree with the use of such contraceptives but i'm like good for you man, at least you are responsible and safe don;t need to be so paiseh lah
Feeling really crappy these few days, totally lost all motivation to do anything remotely related to school. I blame it on all those damn post modernist thinkers and their damn relativist theories, influencing my mind with all that relatiist crap, waking me up from seemingly blissful ignorant life.
HA was reading the news again seems like the perenial ku ku chiao of singapore got himself arrested again. I dunno wat the hell is he trying to prove, that he is some hero, trying to model/pass himself as some freedom fighter.? Come on man, i know u can probably get some sympathisers from some hypocrytical western democratic koos koos but can u please wake up ur idea, this is singapore, who the fuck hell cares whether u march or protest or sell ur newspaper, all they care as long they got some food on the table and nobody go disturb them the government still ok la passable. Pls go do something constructive for once like take care of ur children and find some better way to change society rather than keep getting ur ass thrown in jail or made bankrupt which really serves no purpose at all......
like i said feeling crappy
Another 203 tutorial, getting a little worried about the whole tutorial thing. Yes i guess you could say there is no right answer in sociology, but the fact that we, a class of relative newbies to sociology were running the tutorial without a guide was rather worrying. I mean what if our theories though they may sound possible and logical are in fact just spurious assumptions made by us. Furthermore the whole thing about how the Maghibri and Genoese did their business was also i guess really besides the main point we were supposed to be discussing, which was basically how cultural beliefs could lead to different forms of social organisation.
I think even my theory on hindsight looks rather doubtful cause for one is too simplistic, and needs probably someone to like check it out. Cause premodern societies also had formal institutions, Jewish laws for one. Well there is a case that may support my point namely that any community can never be entirely Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, but i think its just too simple to say something like that.
Homo Economicus manifests oneself within the constraints of that one individual's culture. Yet consideration has to be made for the possibility of the individual being deviant and not following his cultural norm.
Was reading Prof Benjamin's paper on the nation state just no in the library, man one heck of a long paper, while draining it was rather interesting.
One point was how he elaborated on Gellner's point i believe, not sure ho to spell his name, regarding how education is a from of establishing people's acceptance to the nation state which was particularly interesting seeing ho we live in what prof calls a secondary nation state.
Education thus essentially is a device for the subversion of the population to the ideals of the nation state and also to enable the perpetuation of its existence. Which brings me to our education then, are we then merely being herded I would say into a particular field of study for the perpetuation of this regime and not for the true intrinsic value of education per say. I do not wish to discuss abt the whole 'value' of education, it is a debate in itself, but rather are we then learning for the right reasons. How often do we hear people studying for a course just for career prospects or even grades- prob guilty of this, for example taking slack elective courses because of its effect on GPA, are we thus then diminishing this whole value of education into something so pragmatic that we lose the true meaning of education.
I was practically asking myself that question while reading the paper, so what am i doing essentially, what is the true motive behind my studying? am i studying just so i can subjugate myself into this seemingly oppressive world order of ours, or am i doing so for the value and pure interest of which. Which then also brings to mind the question of knowing the reason for why we are doing something, are we then so influenced by the regimes in place that we are blinded and misguided in our motives in doing anything even though they may seem legitimately to contain value.
Have then this whole overt celebration of pragmatism and seeming rationality, diminished any value present left in our lives?
In the news- well looks like some guy just escaped from a detention centre, really laughing my ass off when i read the explanations for his escape. If he is so high profile how the hell can he escape by pretending to go to the toilet, that has to be the oldest trick in the book. mannnnn can envision some poor civil servant getting blamed for this
This is crazy, i wish to become one with my guitar too but i guess i have to settle for my easy slow picking songs at least for now.
Reading the newspapers, read about the whole space crunch in TTSH, wondering what the hell is going on. Did some guy in the ministry like underestimate the demand or something? so much for forward planning i guess. Why the whole delay in building a new hospital till like last yr when it was suggested years before? I guess healthcare issues are the bane of all societies whether in the first world or the developing nations. I wonder if its prudent to market ourselves as a regional medical hub when our own citizens have to suffer with the overcrowding, settle the domestic space crunch first perhaps?
Whooo recess is here and I can't believe i'm freaking wasting it away. In fact I can't even remember what I did over the weekend, thats just how 'exciting' my life is for you.
Well at least i have a gathering planned for tomorrow, hopefully no last minute cancellations that would once again relegate me to spendning the day jamming all by my lonesome. GOt to find some freaking jamming partners man, so yeah any of you readers out there who play the guitar or bass or drums or er hu or pi pa or recorder for that matter look me up man.
Too, shy shy
hush hush, eye to eye
too. shy shy
hush hush, eye to eye
NOthing much to write about these few days, just been reading, doing assignments and studying for the damn mid terms.
MAn this song is great, solo at 2:48 is cool man!!!!!
Whoa I found my old visual boy emulator on my com and my pokemon leaf green save game....fun!!!!
Me on my way to catching my Snorlax
MY Pokemon, all time favourite has to be Charizard, had it since I first became a trainer
Battling!!!!!!
Badges..... on to the elite 4 soon!!!!
Where is God in this picture?
Funny thing how we always like check ourselves out in the mirror, and we try to look our best according to what we see in the mirror when the mirror isn't really showing what others see us as.
So if u like part ur hair to the left, what people see is a parting to the right shouldn't we then be using prisms to check ourselves out?????
Had a rather confusing 203 tutorial today, was thinking about the concepts after class and I feel there have may have been some errors of intepretation regarding Coase's theorem made in the tutorial.
The first error I believe was to center the discussion around the issue of transaction cost being 0, I feel that transaction costs being 0 is an ideal and not possible (I believe Coase also knew this). Transaction costs are not 0 because of social norms, which supposedly then according to Coase's theorem makes the law redundant and toothless.
To say that transaction costs are zero because there are for example social norms in place, is an error, for firstly even if hypothetically i am gd friends with my business partner or there are social norms governing transactions, there is still potential for him to cheat me, going back to Granovetter's argument. Therefore the transaction cost in enforcement cannot be 0. Therefore the discussion had been misleading. Transaction costs can be low but never zero.
What I believe would be a better understanding of the issue would be to look at Coase's theorem in the reverse. That because there is no 0 transaction costs, the most efficient way to handle 'deals' between parties would be to enforce or govern it through the use of laws. Therefore when transaction costs are not 0 any change in the rule of liability will affect the efficient allocation of resources, as the laws will be governing and enforcing what ever dealings betwen parties. Thus parties will be compelled to for example using Coase's parable, set up more fences.
What Ellickson now asserts in my opinion in his paper is that, it is not necessary neither is the assumption that laws are the most efficient way in which 'deals' are carried out but rather norms serve the purpose too. Therefore with norms in place the law becomes redundant as people ould rather settle out of court, bringing to the conclusion that with high transaction costs the change in the rule of law has no effect on the efficient allocation of resources, using Coase's parable- because of soicial norms people do not have to set up more fences as they have their own way of settling disputes which does not compel this action.
Thus to conclude what is the difference between Coase and Ellickson is that, Coase believes with transaction costs, the best way to deal with 'deals' is through the use of laws while Ellickson says that norms can replace laws and become the mode in which people 'deal' in the presence of transaction costs.
I have looked at this argument by placing Ellickson assertion and Coase's theory in the same context- assuming Transaction costs being high for both assertions, and I believe it ould be more fruitful to compare the two ways of thinking in this way.
Lastly I believe that Coase did not take transaction costs being 0 as being due to norms or whatever social relations may have been in place but rather it being an ideal hypothetical case, thus to debate about transaction costs being 0 as what happened in tutorial and to attribute it to norms was errornoes and futile.This is my take I just had to get these thoughts out of my mind, I am not maintaining that I am right just giving my opinion. Welcome to debate with me on this.
Just trying out picture posting on my blog
Pictures taken on my beloved Motorola Pebl's VGA camera which is sooooooooooo sharp and clear
This is not an emo blog, for me to like tell all my troubles and whatever shit thats been bothering me.
Thats like so not me, I named this blog after the Beatle's song While my Guitar gently weeps by George Harrison and the last time I checked the Beatles don't do no of that emo crap.
Anyway heres a clip of the late George and ERic Clapton on lead with that Huge Gibson....
Its weird how in the first post I stated that I write such that I would not forget, when its really not possible.
For what you are now is forever lost in time, nothing you can do will allow you to relive that past again.
What I think and feel when I write something ten minutes ago cannot be the same as what I think and fell now.
Even the words I use to convey a certain meaning now, may not adequately express the real meaning of this particular moment in a different time.
Everything is sacred in the now.....
I write such that I will never forget
who I was, what I felt
I write such that I will always remember
the times that have gone, lest they fade into oblivion
" Morning is when i am awake and there is a dawn in me. Moral reform is the effort to throw of sleep. Why is it that men give so poor an account of their day if they have not been slumbering? They are not such poor calculators. If they had not been overcome with drowsiness, they would have perfomed something. The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enouogh for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could i have looked him in the face? "
Walden, Henry David Thoreau