14 Days in Europe? Feasible? Have i missed out anything?

View Larger Map

Between existing and living

This was a speech made by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Anna Quindlen at the graduation ceremony of an American university where she was awarded an Honorary PhD.

"I'm a novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is all I know. Don't Ever confuse the two, your life and your work. You will walk out of here this afternoon with only one thing that no one else has. There will be hundreds of people out there with your same degree: there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk, or your life on a bus, or in a car, or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank accounts but also your soul.

People don't talk about the soul very much anymore. It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume is cold comfort on a winter's night, or when you're sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you've received your test results and they're not so good.

Here is my resume: I am a good mother to three children. I have tried never to let my work stand in the way of being a good parent. I no longer consider myself the centre of the universe. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh. I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make marriage vows mean what they say. I am a good friend to my friends and they to me. Without them, there would be nothing to say to you today, because I would be a cardboard cut out. But I call them on the phone, and I meet them for lunch. I would be rotten, at best mediocre at my job if those other things were not true.

You cannot be really first rate at your work if your work is all you are. So here's what I wanted to tell you today: Get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger pay cheque, the larger house. Do you think you'd care so very much about those things if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon, or found a lump in your breast?

Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze at the seaside, a life in which you stop and watch how a red-tailed hawk circles over the water, or the way a baby scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a sweet with her thumb and first finger.

Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work. Pick up the phone. Send an email. Write a letter. Get a life in which you are generous. And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted. Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around. Take money you would have spent on beer and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother or sister. All of you want to do well. But if you do not do good too, then doing well will never be enough.

It is so easy to waste our lives, our days, our hours, and our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the color of our kids' eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again. It is so easy to exist instead of to live.

I learned to live many years ago. I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get. I learned to look at all the good in the world and try to give some of it back because I believed in it, completely and utterly. And I tried to do that, in part, by telling others what I had learned. By telling them this: Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear. Read in the back yard with the sun on your face. Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness, because if you do, you will live it with joy and passion as it ought to be lived".

The new MP for my area - Tony Pua Kiam Wee

薛语录

I dislike hypocrites. Yet by judging them, I cannot help being one.

我曾相信，看透自我，能使我摆脱愚昧，随而超越自我。可往往我有限能力谨能让我看清自己的不足与无能，却无法促使行动上的提升。这真是一种可悲的无奈！

Filodoksia - A Musical Production

To inform those of you who did not get to watch the Filodoksia one month ago, I have included some interesting pictures below to give you an idea of what has happened. Do take note that there are a lot of aspects of production which do not appear on the stage such as fund-raising, music-composing, marketing, sets-building, costumes-making, etc. Around 140 people are involved in this huge project! It's really great to see so many people willing to make some personal sacrifices (such as spending at least 4 hours per day for 5 day per week for 8 weeks to make preparation) to make a collective vision possible. I'm glad that it turned out to be a success.

The Publicity poster

Production Photos (2)

The Princess in her gown made by costume team

Sets team with the Greek City Hall Fascade

Costume team doing makeup

King and his maiden

Production Photos

The Prologue

The Celebration Scene

The Room with Talking Paintings

Ballroom scene

My life is a fire that burns

Remember that you are mortal,"

"eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die."

Manipulation(2)

Maybe I was wrong. People have their own rights to learn the truth in their own ways, even if they are the hard ones.

Maybe these internal struggles are meaningless. Who knows the truth anyway?

Manipulation

One who can only see the truth when manipulated deserves to be manipulated.

Intimate Expression

Ryuichi Sakamoto - Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (Trio Tour)




















It's ironic that the most intimate of expressions are conveyed through indirection and subtleties.

Let me contemplate

Thinking is resultless. It doesn't give you a pillar to lean on.

Would it be better to be a brainless (or headless) statue than a thinking being?

May be a little bit of hard work helps

And absorbing the knowledge too

May be I need some food

Chill... dude. I know the food is nice. Relax...

I miss philosophy... my brain is stagnant and decaying

Maybe the fountain of wisdom will keep me alive

Not thinking feels worst than being shot to death

P.S. On a serious note, my mind is dead now. I need strong stimulant to revive it. Can you help?

More pictures

Linsly-Chittenden Hall - the place where I have lessons.
I heard Stanley-Milgram experiment was carried out at its basement.

A tower that produces a chime many times a day
I think it was used to indicate time when watches were rare in the past.

Outdoor barbeque on a cold day after attending a talk by Spike Lee, a renowned director

Outdoor concert at the Green.
A symphony band played selected soundtracks from Spike Lee's movies
The atomosphere was great.

The entrance of Sterling Memorial Library

Moment of Happiness

"We're all faced throughout our lives with agonizing decisions, moral choices. Some are on a grand scale, most of these choices are on lesser points. But we define ourselves by the choices we have made. We are, in fact, the sum total of our choices. Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly, Human happiness does not seem to be included in the design of creation. it is only we, with our capacity to love that give meaning to the indifferent universe. And yet, most human beings seem to have the ability to keep trying and even try to find joy from simple things, like their family, their work, and from the hope that future generations might understand more."

Professor Louis Levy in Crimes and Misdemeanors, a great movie. I watched it for my course, Evil.

I am very happy with my life now. I seem to be able to derive happiness from doing simple things like reading, enjoying the breeze, basking in the sunlight and talking under the shade. Somehow, time halts to a standstill. I feel more connected to my soul. It feels like falling in love. I am in love not with a person or a place but rather a moment, a transient entity that consists of everything that I can capture through my senses. More importantly, I have realised that by leaving the suffocating tropics, I have escaped temporarily from the great currents of Progress. By isolating myself from the pursuit of Success, I have gained greater access to my trueself. Maybe that's happiness.

Yet, I am aware that this moment won't last long. The weather will become unbearable one day. The readings might become boring one day. Even love fades away with time. What I can do is to enjoy every moment, feel blessed that I am fortunate to be here and aware that this state can end anytime in this indifferent universe.

The Start of Happy Days - First Week at New Havens

My room at Morse College. The weather reminds me of Cameroon Highlands. It's like staying in a naturally air-conditioned room.
















Entrance B. Something like the block that you stay in the residential college
















Photosynthesising under the sun. The sun is as bright as it is back home. But it's unbelievably cool. The ground is soft and insect-less.

Inspired to read under the shade at Morse College. The photographer is Jan. We are discussing the anthropology theories. The summer courses, with tons of readings, are very intense. Yet, I love it!

Jose (second from the left), a Peruvian Yale student, is taking us to Sterling Memorial Library. The library is stunning. It has a Gothic architecture according to Jan (first from right), an architechture student from NUS. Prat (first from left) is a business student from NYU. We are all taking Anthropology of Religion. The class is fairly small. It has only six students.

















The lawn at the library. I am again inspired by the sight to do my readings. The campus seems to be designed to inspire people to learn.

HCAP Singapore Leg

In this photo: Aseem K Thakur, Vikram Parsani, Ankit Sachdev, Giselle Cheung, Israel Figueroa, Stephanie Kwong Set Ying Ting, Mike Nguyen , Rares Pamfil , Chen Li

Short essay written on this event:

HCAP Singapore was a refreshing experience for me because it gave me the chance to interact with students from Harvard University. To me, they are special not only because they come with a different perspective from the other side of the world but also because they represent the best the American universities can offer. In particular, having conversations with them about their background was a joy because every one of them is so different. Consisting of Puerto Rican, Romanians, Asian American and much more, the Harvard group can be seen as a melting pot of diverse cultures, a fitting tribute to the exchange conference’s theme, multiculturalism. I have found the friendships forged during the conference invaluable because of the shared interests that we had. We had spontaneous discussions on many issues sparked off by unrelated things that we saw along the trip. For instance, I had a serious discussion with Mike Nguyen on how Asians and Americans differ in perceiving China’s emergence when we saw foreign workers from China and an interesting and personal conversation on how modern consumerism is undermining masculinity when we were at VivoCity. During the bus trip to Sentosa, Rares and I tried and failed to do a “racial profiling” of everyone in bus and eventually concluded that dividing people by race is a futile effort. At Siloso beach, I defended the CMIO racial classification in Singapore in a debate with Michael Lin…… and more. As a slight introvert who rarely talks unless the conversation concerns something of importance, I really treasure those experiences of having meaningful conversations with people. It is certainly an experience that is hard to forget.

Barack Obama's Audacity of Hope

I have never heard such an inspiring speaker. His speech made me cry. Go Obama!

Love

“Do you actually love someone, or do you love the feeling you get when you love someone? If that someone does not make you feel something which you like, would you still love the person? At the end of the day it seems like we love ourselves more than anything else, no?”
Chan Ern Theng

Reading this quote on YH's paper on the philosophy of love brought a lot of personal questions to my mind. How do you know that you are in love? When you are willing to go beyond rationality to do something for a girl? When you feel like touching a girl whenever you are next to her? Suddenly I have found myself incapable of loving. It seems that I love nothing more than myself. Everyday I wake up wondering where I am on the path of self-fulfillment. Now, I cannot imagine myself spending my time doing those 'silly' things. I'm simply too tired to love. Can someone remind me how it is like to fall in love?

Philosophy, Luck and I

It has always been my interest to entertain subject matters concerning meaning, purpose, potential and destiny of humankind. Thinking about the big picture of humanity through holistic ideas and abstract concepts is a great retreat where I can seek refuge from the triviality and boredom of my routine life. It is liberating and invigorating. There are few moments that bring greater pleasure than when a thought struck me. Such is not a conscious effort to logically “come up with” creative ideas. It is an intuitive process triggered by observing patterns and identifying irregularities. It produces the pieces of images which help me to make sense of reality and form part of my “big picture of humanity”. The satisfaction derived from these mental processes motivates me over and over again to contemplate issues which are often beyond my sphere of influence. As the field of politics, philosophy and economics basically covers a major part of my “big picture of humanity”, it is impossible for me not to stop my mind from venturing into this field.

This is what I have written in the first paragraph of my application essay for the NUS-in-Yale Summer Programme. Reading this always makes me wonder why am I studying Engineering Science. After attending USP classes, I have realised I seem to have an aptitude in philosophy. It doesn't matter whether I am studying a literature or a psychology module. I always find it easy to come out with something philosophical about irony, values or whatever. (That's what my classmates told me. Sometimes, I am inclined to believe philosophical = talking crap.) Of course, I hope this is an illusion. This is because if I have "wonder kid" potential (This is how a soccer management game Championship Manager 03/04 classify potentials) in philosophy, I would have made the worst choice in my life. Let's hope my potentials for maths and physics are not "limited" (another classification).

By the way, I am going to attend Yale summer programme during the holidays. I have just received the news that I have been accepted a few days ago after being wait listed for an agonizing week. In short, NUS was choosing 10 person for the programme and I'm 11th person. After spending one week blaming a God(dess) of Luck for putting me in the "so-close-yet so-far" position, I am lucky to count myself now as the tenth person. Apparently, the person who quit ditch this progamme for an internship. Maybe I should pray for forgiveness for all the expletives that I threw at my God(dess) of Luck during the frustrating week. (Maybe I shouldn't. The alternative hypothesis is that: I became lucky after verbally abusing my God(dess) of Luck). Enough of all this crap! More importantly, the lesson for everyone: Always put in your 120% in achieving what you want because you'll never know whether you'll be the 1oth or the 11th person. Well said?

Concert Photos (2)

No!!!!!!!! I don't have a mistress!!!!!!

A man trying to explain himself out of trouble

Happily ever after. Super bear hug
(I think I look like a bear.
Pow commented that the swiftness and
the intensity of my hug made
it look like a pornographic film.
Yeah, I'm a porn star. Haha... )