Alright, I’ve converted!

to Firefox that is.

After all the pushing and shoving and nudging and “IE is evil!”, I’ve finally procrastinated to the limit and downloaded Firefox. The threshold was this passive entertainment I was actively seeking to get which, for some mysterious reason, IE couldn’t run – BBC Sex ID a pretty interesting quiz to determine the gender of your brain.

So far Firefox doesn’t look much different from IE (except that it managed to run that quiz).

In fact, I’m still not used to clicking that fox icon and my reflexes clicked the big E so… I’m using IE to type this post. =)

What’s the big deal with this battle between the browsers?

On living life to the fullest

“What are your plans for the summer?”

I almost always find that question immensely difficult to answer.

“An internship.”

Not the most interesting or enviable thing to spend 4 precious months of the summer holidays on. Not exactly a good way to get the conversation going too, when acquaintances ask the first question in an attempt to break an awkward silence.

But of course, I’m not ashamed to say that I’ll be slaving my summer holidays away in suffocating office wear doing (possibly) mundane work. Neither am I ashamed to say that I do this to make the internship requirement and beef up my CV.

In fact, I may very well enjoy doing work (real work, that is) where I can pick up skills useful for my future career. But that’s beside the point.

The point is, as much as I would like to go traveling and pick up hobbies to enrich myself, it’s a trade off between putting the time to and spending money on making myself more knowledgeable of the world and putting the time to fulfilling my ambition and earning a (measly) sum in the process. “Du-uh!”, you’d say. Indeed, this is no new discovery.

If you’re one of the lucky ones who gets all expenses paid vacations to exotic locations for the summer, good for you. I don’t have anything against you, neither do I envy you (Ok maybe I do, at least that teeny weeny bit.). For the rest of us, it’s about earning our keep and if I want a vacation, I will earn and save for it.

A friend once told me, “No one said education was cheap.” In fact, it applies to everything that you could possibly want to learn – broadening your horizons through travel, picking up a musical instrument, getting a driver’s license.

Naturally, being able to enrich myself, to get degrees after degrees, diplomas after diplomas, certificates after certificates in every discipline that interest me would be a dream come true. There’s no stop to learning, and to people with diverse interests and a lot of spare cash, nothing is impossible.

In an extreme example, if I have a big enough inheritance with no one to provide for, I could spend my youth on learning music, arts, get a degree in economics, finance, political science, architecture, archaelogy and natural sciences. When I feel that I’ve learned enough from books (and still don’t need to earn a single dollar) I could go traveling, to understand the world I live in and make friends everywhere. At my deathbed, I would feel that I’ve lived my life to the fullest and that I’m enriched with knowledge of the world.

Alas, most of us do not have rich uncles who die while we’re young and found no use of the money other than to credit it all into our accounts. Some of us have rich enough daddies and mummies so that we can spend the money without feeling that we have deprived a sibling of the privilege. But for the rest of us, it’s about carefully measuring the opportunity costs and balancing this trade-off between our interests and the sad practicalities of life.

Life’s never fair. I can live with this.

The only thing I do not like, is when people say with an air of all-knowingness “There’s more to life” at hardworking people who put down their interests in pursuit of their careers so that their families can live a better life. I do not like it, when the lucky ones snap a few pictures with pretty foreign backdrops, give an airheaded “I absolutely love the place, it’s so unlike boring Singapore.”, or “The weather was so dreadful, but oh the shopping was wonderful there!”, or “You really should go there, stop mugging so much.” Yes, I’m sure you’ve enjoyed yourself there and I’m sure I would too, thank you very much, but some things have to be done and someone’s got to do it.

Sad to say, many of us are boring because we are too well trained by circumstances to become hard, pragmatic, and sometimes ambition-less people. I admire romantic people who could throw all pragmatism away to pursue their dreams. I have utmost respect for them if they succeed and could make a living out of it. But it is harsh to expect people to spend a lifetime learning the violin to busk in the streets to unappreciating passerbys; and it is shameful and selfish if the person chooses to do this over putting food on the table for his family.

Nonetheless, the practicalities of life cannot be an excuse for being a boring, unintelligent and ambition-less person. There are infinite ways we can enrich ourselves. Sometimes we just need a little encouragement but definitely not encouragement like this – “It’s the holidays, you should be out having fun! Go try [insert random celebrity activity].” Some activities are labeled more popular and desirable than the rest. If such labels and stereotypes are continually used on people, it’ll only encourage people who are not genuinely interested in the activity to dabble in it simply because it’s “cool”. Then, we’ll just have a whole group of equally boring, equally unintelligent and equally mediocre people.

Encouragement could be as simple as not putting down any activity that anyone might do. Personally, I find it interesting if someone tells me he did something over the holidays which I could sense that he is really passionate about, even if I have zero interest in the subject. Sometimes, encouragement could be, “Tell me more about it!”

For me, I dare not say that I’m all out to enrich myself in my own little ways. I dare not say that I have a mind-blowing passion in a subject or a powerful ambition that will be the pursuit of my life. But I constantly keep this in mind and find ways that can consistently interest me in learning and enriching myself.

For everyone else, I hope you live your life to the fullest, in your own way.

Re: On Female Mediocrity 2

My comment on a good issue brought out by NeiL in the comment thread for the same article. Maybe this ability to be independent thinking individuals is something that we have sacrificed for all that wonderful economic prosperity. It may not necessarily be bad, or rather it might well have been necessary, but how sustainable is economic prosperity if we go on doing what we do? Is training a bunch of elites to run the country and leaving the messy majority out of it the best way to do so? I don’t know, but it sure is worth thinking about.

“Actually, NeiL made a great point that wasn’t mentioned.

“I think that, politics aside (since we’ve heard so much about how as youth, we’re so apathetic), Singaporeans (again, ex pre-65er) are so used to “someone” planning the path for us, “someone” being there to cushion our falls and “someone” who will help us in our problems, that we’ve forgotten that this “someone” sometimes needs to be ourselves.”

Indeed indeed, I commented on the transition we’re facing, but this whole idea of a well-managed and well-regulated Singapore could also be a contributing factor to the mediocre people around, men or women.

At one end, the women (this issue about using ‘girls’ or ‘women’ is plain silly to me, women are grown up girls, it has nothing to do with the generation they belong to) need not do anything themselves and just depend on the men in their lives who willingly, gallantly and chauvinistically come to their rescue.

What makes women like that mediocre is their lack of ambition, lack of drive, lack of want to learn and pick up skills for themselves.

Similarly, what I personally experience with Singaporean men is their lack of ambition and drive to do something about their lives. It’s always about cramming the books in their heads for good grades at the exams and to get the most stable, well-paying job to waste their lives away. Often, this is related to societal norms about what is most profitable, or maybe what the government wishes to encourage, e.g. biotechnology, entrepreneurship.

We hear underdog stories of successful entrepreneurs and also the government provides support for entrepreneurs. So poof! We suddenly have everyone interested in setting up their own businesses. The arts is not lucrative, so few build a career in it (but many dabble in it, for a “facebook” while). It is saddening that I seldom meet people who are truly passionate about what they do and have the drive to achieve in their area of interest. We are just too economic savvy. (This may well not be Singapore specific.)

Like NeiL mentioned, perhaps all this has to do with the fantastic planning that the Singapore government has done for the country. Maybe this has made people forgot how to think for themselves.

Maybe we’re just too used to having decisions made for us and routes planned for us. But really, everyone should have the drive to make decisions for themselves. Everyone should bear responsibility for their decisions, boys and girls. Guess this is not absolutely relevant to the gender specific mediocrity. But also maybe, men are too busy feeding their egos by meeting the mediocre women’s trivial requests to spend time working on their ambition. This just makes everyone worse off, men or women.”

For Steven

Why this post is here…

oiying:: says (9:24 PM):
lemme help u
oiying:: says (9:24 PM):
i go blog ur story
oiying:: says (9:24 PM):
then 5000 years later, internet archaelogy might find it

—

While looking at the 7 wonders of the world on Google Earth,

Firewood says (9:13 PM):
y ppl are so facinated by stones
Firewood says (9:13 PM):
and sands

oiying:: says (9:14 PM):
because of the story behind it
oiying:: says (9:14 PM):
if the esplanade had a wonderful story it’ll prob be fascinating too

Firewood says (9:14 PM):
what story?

oiying:: says (9:15 PM):
the whole story lor.. the pyramids and the kings and all the treasures and how many many men died building it
oiying:: says (9:15 PM):
and the mysteries… of not knowing how the men in ancient times built the pyramid and stone henge lor

Firewood says (9:16 PM):
den lets make esplanade a story lor

oiying:: says (9:17 PM):
now everyone knows how the esplanade is built
oiying:: says (9:18 PM):
unless u can make up a really pretty romantic story
oiying:: says (9:18 PM):
make it into a hollywood movie
oiying:: says (9:18 PM):
then tourists will start coming hoping to see esplanade

Firewood says (9:18 PM):
ya lor, like the merlion is lonely
Firewood says (9:18 PM):
everyday looks at the river
Firewood says (9:18 PM):
hoping to eat durian
Firewood says (9:18 PM):
one day
Firewood says (9:18 PM):
a big durian drops from e sky
Firewood says (9:18 PM):
and splits into two

oiying:: says (9:18 PM):
hahaha!
oiying:: says (9:19 PM):
u’re talented lor
oiying:: says (9:19 PM):
try harder
oiying:: says (9:19 PM):
maybe u can write it down in stone… then destroy all records… and 5000 years later, pple might believe u

Firewood says (9:19 PM):
haha
Firewood says (9:19 PM):
i thot that is how kusu island is formed
Firewood says (9:20 PM):
what turtle overturned

Re: On Female Mediocrity

Was surfing Tomorrow.sg when I came across this blog post. Pretty good discussion that most would slap with a MCP label. But otherwise, the observation is spot on! Definitely not to say that all Singaporean women are like what he described (God forbid!), but I believe his observation is pretty much what many Singaporean women are like, at least on a most superficial level.

Read his article On Female Mediocrity. My comment on his blog as below.

“A very intelligent article! And some very good comments up there.

I think this notion that women are the privileged lot stems from the history of male dominance in the work place and the idea that women are the weaker gender. Even all that idea about expecting women to be demure and dependent is just a whole tradition thing that we haven’t quite shaken off. I guess it is just a matter of transition, that makes Singapore women seem so mediocre.

Comparing to our grandmothers, we are less competent homemakers and caregivers. How many young Singaporean women can sew and cook decent meals? (In answer to the argument that women and men excel in different areas.) As a matter of fact, few young Singaporean women are that capable in the home, or even actually feel the need to be able to bake her child’s birthday cake.

In comparison to more developed and advanced countries where women are given almost equal opportunities in work (and are expected to be equal, if not better, than men at work), our ladies look like day dreaming princesses stuck in their imaginary castle in the air waiting for the gallant, charming and may I add, RICH, prince to rescue them. (Oh all the rubbishy feel-good Korean dramas!)

It’s a transition. Let’s wait for the Singaporean women to snap out of their dreams that some prince charming will rescue them, and let’s wait for the Singapore men to stop hoping for a beautiful, eager-to-please Stepford Wife.

Perhaps then, when cold hard reality starts to hit us in the face, when women are expected to earn their keep and when men start looking up to intelligent women better than them at work, we’ll have less mediocre Singapore women, and men.

I suffer from this very difficult confused stage of transition too. As a female, I’d act absolutely horrified and yell “ungentlemanly!” at the guy who slams the door in my face and in etiquette, pretty much expect that guys stand when they introduce themselves while the girls may remain seated. I scream to the heavens how the feminists and their ridiculous feminism revolution has screwed up the lives of us modern women who have to balance both work and family.

But I am secretly thankful that I am now given the opportunity to education and self-improvement beyond skin deep, which has altogether made me feel like a better person. I approach my male friends for technological help, but google, hunt down parts in Sim Lim Square on my own, fix up the electronics at home. I scoff at male friends who ask me for technological help, but secretly feel happy at my accomplishment. (I’m only a layperson in technology.)

So I’ll say, there’s hope for Singaporean women. Really. And men too.”

Le Infantile of Middle Aged Men

*Update: Yes, it’s one of those classic “whachu looking at?” episodes. An unique local way of picking a fight. Absolutely inane. I had to try very hard not to laugh out loud, lest they start picking on me too…

Heard from 2 men sitting behind me on the bus home today…
“你摇什么？”

“你摇我就看你不可以啊？”

“你看我看你？”

“你嘴巴很臭！”

(Person who got scolded huff air at the other guy.)

“你滚回中国啦！”

“中国在那里我不知道！”

“你井底蛙！”

(turns out both were Malaysians…cantonese vulgarities)

“下车打啦！”

“你不下车，没种啊？”