excerpts

(shamelessly copied, lifted, plagiarised from enhui's blog)


life and how to survive it: adrian tan, convocation address at wkwsci


"Singaporeans have a life expectancy of 81.8 years. Singapore men live to an average of 79.21 years, while Singapore women live more than five years longer, probably to take into account the additional time they need to spend in the bathroom."

"One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong."

"...you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it."

dedicated to snowman the mingyang

saccade

"Seeing is a constructive activity involving fast computations, stored concepts and various purposes, expectations and hypotheses

"We assemble this world from successive visual glances which we check against our cognitive maps; physiological tremors are filtered out

"Most visual perception is peripheral"

And sitting in class now, my mind is thinking of all other things but this. sigh

when it's just little you and me; golden molten silence

under murphy's law, everything that can go wrong - will.

so in style of doing a step outline, here is today so far at 9.14am as follows

1. character wakes up and realises her menstruation has come and her underwear is coloured red from biege.

2. there are not enough pads

3. she drags herself up to go to school with the snowman

4. she chooses the carriage from which precisely there are no seats; there is one seat, they ask each other to sit, a man comes and sits.

5. at the next station, the person sitting the aforementioned seat leaves

6. the train is filled to the brim and the snowman melts from all the people leaning on him

7. the queue for 179a is f long

8. boarding the bus, no fewer than 4 guys (dickless, doubtless) look blankly at her before climbing up the stairs

9. being extremely civilised in the early hours of the day without fail, she says fuck

10. reaching the school, going to the toilet - there is a red sea churning in her pants

11. walks into the library (the only reason she left for school early is to view indiana jones, a pescribed film for the popular cinema module)

12. the library does not have a copy of the film yet

13. a blob of blood departs her womb
13.1 she sits at the benches
13.2 a group of people laugh and talk
13.3 the noise goes straight to her brain like a truckload of tequila shots

14. she spews blood (from her oesophagus), loses consciousness, wakes up to find it was all a nightmare and the weekend has just begun

15. unfortunately, 14 did not happen

16. now, 1 hr and 40 minutes in school early, with a grand total of 3 hours of sleep and a minimal quota of 14 hours more to spend in school, life is great.

butterflies escaped my heart, flitted particles of love everywhere

and settled lightly on them

a starfish coloured in the parachute for me

multiplicity is a fundamental truth and is often fundamentally ignored. prisms my eyes have become, kaleidoscopes my ears, and a rainbow my heart. there is just too much to bear and to hear and to tear, but is that really an excusable enough excuse to excuse?

there are so many people in this world who are blinded by their own selfish desires, choosing to remain blind because it is convenient and comfortable.

what makes you think you have the right to have what you have, when so many others are suffering so much? and to be willingly encroached in a race which is essentially meaningless to your person, your soul, is just pathetic. there is so much more to life than just this.

what have you done today? ate, shopped, showed off your made-up face and nice clothes to people and then think you're the greatest shit in the world?

each face of a child suffering on television is as real as you were ten years back. as real as your child will be in ten years time. so you switch off the tv. and then what? you live, study, work, die without helping another person. is that the life you want? is it?

the world of humans is an ugly one, it is Earth that is beautiful. we have what it takes to be able to enjoy life on a plane unreachable by other animals, and we thus have the privilege to be able to understand and encompass both this higher realm and the fundamental, naturalistic one. but too few people acknowledge this, and love nature.

and until we can embrace this base relationship with nature, embrace the inextricable bond we have with fellow human beings, we will never be able to experience life.
:mingyang


what have you done today?

pictures of you, pictures of me

hanging on your wall for all the world to see

i spent the past hour trying to choose pictures to post on this blog, and failed miserably at it. too many too many too many things.

there are things known and truths felt that stifle my throat with their thorny scents and the song sung from this heart will be one of jarring silence. for nothing encapsulates this experience save space

heart-wrenching, wretched heart

when the children sing the songs you teach, and smile the joy you feel, and chase after your departing vehicle,

when a family takes you in with open arms into their humble home, and offer you more than they can afford unconditionally,

when you dance in the mud and the rain around a campfire holding hands with students from another nation and sing their songs,

when you see children trooping to school in the rain uphill to attend your classes,

when they gather to look at you mixing cement and laying bricks for the first library ever in their village,

when you become part of a human chain with the locals to transport sand for flooring,

that is when your wretched heart is wrenched, wringed, and left to drip. and all prior mention of your heart's silence is silenced and left to roll despondently in the padi fields belonging to the family that cried when you left, that hugged you when you gave them a parting gift, that loved you so much more than you deserved.

with love, with love. with love -
i love