You’re so good at being lousy

It’s always easy to pick out the problems and rotten parts, and sprout snide remarks or witty criticisms to the eyesores. It’s gratifying too, the feeling of having came out with a clever insult.

You kind of figure out how badly you’ve fallen into that trap when even people you’ve only known briefly realize how caustic you are. And recently I’m also feeling how each sarcastic remark I came out with (which often I am only half serious about) can sometimes be the equivalent of dealing a blow straight to the face.

It’s really, not very nice of me. Oops.

But it’s so difficult to dish out sincere compliments. I know some people who consciously offer compliments to people, mostly as a friendly gesture or for encouragement. Most of the time it just sounds pretentious (or is my cynicism acting up again?). Very few compliments give that good feeling of being appreciated.

Showing how impressed you really are is very difficult. It’s not even easy pretending to be impressed without looking like you’re fawning. Such compliments are really reserved for people who don’t matter.

Get used to the inconvenient truth.

Another World

I unexpectedly found myself sitting in a talk by novelist Anita Desai this evening, packed amongst English professors, library staff, literature buffs and the rest of my equally surprised literature class.

I’ve never been in any of such talks with writers before, literature is out of my league and I didn’t have the sense to google for her name which I’ve only heard one and a half hours earlier. So I just sat reading New York Times online while waiting for the event to start, responding to this constant need to keep myself occupied.

Anita Desai turned out to be a gentle and soft spoken old lady, she talked about herself and how she came to become a writer. She said it was a calling - writing was a way for her to make sense of her experiences during the day and it so happened that what she penned down turned out to be novels. She spoke about “writing in a cave”, with no one to respond to what she wrote, and how she had lived in sleepy old Delhi in a male-dominated society and time period where women’s experiences were much limited compared to the men’s.

There’s a mellowness in her speech that’s impossible to tell if it was from age or the conditions she lived in. It came as no surprise when she mentioned how in the world she came from, everything was done in a slow and relaxed manner, much unlike today’s expectations of efficiency.

Halfway through her speech and reading of excerpts from one of her short stories, I felt completely out of place. I was in a roomful of people who sat in awe of her experiences (which I suspect 80% of the room do not know much about), hanging on to every word that she crooned in her tranquilizing, almost hypnotic voice. That was such a moment of peace and so beautiful was her prose and story, that I almost fell asleep. (Well I was captured by her story and I heard every word, but I was in a dream-like condition and I believe my eyelids fell over my eyes for several moments.)

I felt like an intruder in this world and space I don’t understand. Literature is one of these spaces. Another is the physical roomful of people giving cult-like attention to this gentle lady they don’t know, in a manner that seems to suggest a silly mentality of “she’s-an-old-lady-writer-so-she-must-be-really-experienced-and-insightful”. But the most alien of them all would have to be the novelist herself and the world she lives in. 

She belongs, somewhat, to the old world where women are confined to marriage, the home and at best, educated ones like her, to a hobby like writing, planned according to her own schedules. (I imagined her to be somewhat like the Brontë sisters and to my surprise she acknowledged the sisters as some of the writers she enjoys reading in her younger years.) It is this strange world from far away and long ago, where writing is a career choice and work entails sitting down to spin tales around observations and create histories for people you met during the day.

Her world is one I can’t connect with.

In my world, work and career is synonymous with deadlines, responsibilities, office politics, key performance measurements and the constant worry of career progression. In my world, children are brawling mouths waiting to be fed and potty trained and house work is a mundane drudgery, both of which will exhaust and dull a woman so much she can’t seem to do anything else. In my world, life is the freedom to pursue any interest, to go out with friends, to not be tied down by any institution and to absorb all forms of entertainment in its full speed and intensity, all at once.

I don’t know which is better, but I’m glad I’m not her.

Pockets pulled out

I just made a huge splurge on some reference books – enough to give me a free Kinokuniya 1-year membership. I also made a huge splurge on CDs some days ago. So I’ve knowledge at my fingertips (not in my head, unfortunately), and the wallet’s weak.

As I sat at the bus stop waiting for my bus home, I wondered to myself – why is it that I’m a pure bargain-corner price shopper when it comes to clothes (and pretty much everything else), but when I was getting my books just now, I picked the copy with the best printing and font, even though it was significantly more expensive than another print of the same book? When I saw a bag I really liked but was too expensive by my “bag price standard”, I checked it out on at least 3 separate occasions and eventually decided against the purchase, but I bought the reference book after a minute of browsing even though it was more than twice the price of that bag.

This whole process of book selection just now left me feeling quite disappointed in myself. I’m a letdown to the bargain-hunters alliance! I must be some inconsistent, irrational person with multiple standards! And I’m spending outside of my means.

If I’m less fussy with some things, especially stupid things like “nice fonts”, I probably would have saved enough for a nice long graduation trip.

I guess it’s just a matter of priorities, like the friend who doesn’t bat an eyelid about spending hundreds on cosmetics, but begs around for advance birthday and christmas money for a cheap replacement of her lost phone.

Then again, maybe I’m still the bargain shopper. Hey, who writes a novel for a few ten-dollar notes or a reference book for a few hundred bucks? But with that kind of money, I can get the books! It’s the same thing with music.

Good. I got the money’s worth.

Because he’s not a hero

That’s why he wavered, he grieved, he has scars on his back, and he didn’t take it all in stride. He has no superpowers and he told himself “I can take it”, instead of that big fat self-important maxim, “with great power comes great responsibility“. Even his name was a recognition of his shortcoming and attempt to overcome it, unlike the insecure fools desperate to prove themselves. That’s why Batman’s the only superhero ever created.

Joker’s right. “I am not a monster, I’m the top of the curve.” He sunk below everyone and has risen above, high enough to mock. It’s precisely because of the masses’ strong sense of morality and mistaken self-righteousness that the incorruptible dark knight is condemned, while the fallen white knight remains in high regard. The fragile humanity of people can’t take the harsh truth.

The most classic scene in the movie was when the meanest and burliest crook persuaded the self-important and authoritative man-in-suit to hand over the detonator for the bombs on the other ferry by volunteering to “do the dirty job”, then threw it out of the ferry’s window as swiftly as the detonator landed in his hand. Who is to judge who’s the crook and who deserves to die?

Mad or not, Joker is the most clear minded character in the movie and “Why so serious?” is a sick stab at our highest moral discussions and beliefs in our humanity. The ones who “never lived long enough to see himself turn into a villian” are either dead, fake, or a superhero.

Batman deserves a Nobel prize for literature.

(even though he crashed my Lamborghini)

List of bests: Best Joker, Best make-up for Joker, Best Batmobile, Drop dead gorgeous Bruce Wayne.

Number Slumber

I’ve been playing with a lot of numbers these days, rows and columns of data that jammed up my excel. I’ve been doing a lot of charting and statistics too, which probably explains my hypersensitivity to the charts our dear PM Lee presented in yesterday’s National Day Rally. A fellow SMU student commented very aptly, “All SMU students know that charts don’t tell the whole truth.” Well, figure that out.

I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with numbers. Innocent sexy simple sophisticated numbers. I hate to love them. They make my life so simple and painful at the same time. I must be some sort of a masochist – I love things I’d never completely understand.

Today’s Investment and Financial Data Analysis (what a mouthful!) class has been interestingly boring. There’re some people who can make extremely complex concepts seem incredibly simple and intuitive. Then there’s my professor who has a knack for making things I thought I knew and thought were simple sound excruciatingly profound.

But the second half of the class kept me at the edge of my seat. Hell, all that I was trying to painfully figure out on my own for the past month was explained!

I’ll never forget the definition of a random variable. I tried explaining it to an accountant for 10 minutes in the stupidest manner possible “Er, a random number is random. It’s like, 0.524. RANDOM.” That obviously failed terribly at getting the point across.

The next time she (or anyone else asks), it’ll be “A random variable is a variable with an associated probability distribution.” Never mind if she still doesn’t understand, at least I’d put it across sleekly.

Smoke them like salmons.

Heaven is

A beautiful 2-minute 19th century piano piece performed by one of the greatest 20th century guitarists, in all his messed up cigarette-in-mouth, sloppy and laid-back glory, on an electronic instrument the composer never lived to see.

Jimmy Page

Alternatively, there’s the 20th century Korean pianist performing the same 19th century piano piece in all its constipated western classical glory at the other end of the world, in a culture the composer may never have been exposed to.

Kun-Woo Paik

Where is the music?

To beat lethargy and shut out the world, I’ve been plugging in to old rock songs.

Raw and rude music, I like.

From the first time I heard good rock (i think it was Dream Theater’s album Scenes from a Memory), I knew there was no turning back to pop music. I was amazed, I didn’t know music could be played like this. I got addicted to music, bought into the “without music, life would be a mistake” cliche, and started feeling a need to carry a CD/MP3 player around.

Compared to rock, popular music is inadequate and commercialized. I can’t feel the passion for music in the young singers who managed to cut an album or two simply because they looked cute and were not entirely tone deaf. I can’t feel the amount of thought put into making a song with catchy, repetitive tunes set in a formula proven popular, and abstract lyrics that don’t mean anything. I can’t enjoy rhythm-less and tune-less music heavily masked by loud African drum beats.

Whatever happened to the originality and invention of music from the baby-boomers era? The best bands that can qualify for the “legend” category all came from decades past, while we have the likes of Linkin’ Park and One Republic producing pseudo-rock music that are far too formulaic and polished, a far cry from the signature honesty and rawness of rock. And let’s not even go into the overplayed likes of umbrella-ella-ella.

Maybe it’s the iPod effect. With music made available to everyone, market forces cause music to gravitate towards catering for the masses that favor catchy tunes, which are quickly replaced by new ones once people lose interest in them.

Music no longer needs to be classics that can remain popular forever. I wonder how many of these radio tunes we have now will still be performed 300 years from now, like how baroque music is enjoyed by many now.

Back to Led Zeppelin’s Since I’ve been Loving you, on loop.

(By the way, I’m pretty disappointed after revisiting Bon Jovi’s old albums. In my opinion, Bon Jovi is very good only for 7 songs: Livin’ On A Prayer, You Give Love A Bad Name, This Ain’t A Love Song, Bed Of Roses, Always, I’ll Be There For You, and Never Say Goodbye. That means the only Bon Jovi album anyone needs is Crossroads, which has 6 out of 7 of their most representative songs.)

Woes of the spreadsheet literate man

Thou shalt do unto others what thou do not want others to do unto you.

Considering that they are called “cells” (on the excel worksheet, nevertheless), it seemed pretty redundant to lock them. In fact, I firmly believe that locking excel cells is one of the worst form of torture you can apply on a spreadsheet literate man.

So I didn’t.

I immediately discovered the next worse form of torture – having your spreadsheet’s formulas (which you painstakingly configured to have all the calculations done proper) all screwed up by someone who cared more about finishing work 10 minutes earlier than trying to understand how the spreadsheet works.

Ironically, in the next room I walked into after fixing up the spreadsheet, others were struggling with a locked spreadsheet template with countable cells that could be edited. “I don’t think you can change that,” *click* “Yeah, you can’t.”

All the frustrations I felt magically evaporated and my frowns were replaced by a devilish smile.

At the bottom of the food chain

Work these days somewhat reminds me of Shark’s Tale, that cartoon where a whale-cleaner fish befriended a vegetarian shark.

It’s tough enough being at the bottom of the food chain. It’s another thing when the top of the food chain expects you to liaise directly with those just one notch below the vegetarian shark, who is too busy with his own stuff.

But after a while, I’ve kind of accepted that “being hated by demanding things from people I should not be ordering around” is part of my job scope. And it’s quite an experience, really. So I’m not complaining.

What is most frustrating though, is the cultural differences when working with people from different places. All the Hofstede cultural dimension bullshit does actually seem pretty accurate. The Japanese never ask questions and don’t tell you the problems they face until you stare them in the face and dig it out of their throats. Plus they’ll always refer you to their boss. All of which I find pretty worrying sometimes because that strong sense of hierarchy should mean that I’m probably already stepping on toes by demanding outside of what I rightfully can, and they’re not going to tell me about it.

Well, I’m only an intern. So it’s not that bad, I’ll just experience this company’s culture as it is, and try my best to contribute (or at least, not cause too much damage). Working with people from different cultures is really something everyone ought to try out. The world is not as globalized as I thought.

Fortunate Unfortunes

Last week, I took another bus hoping to get home earlier and more comfortable. But after a long wait, the bus that came was a non-air conditioned one. I was understandably frustrated. I’m not only going home late, now I’m also going back sweaty. Why are there still non-air conditioned buses in Singapore? Take away TV mobile and the Just for Laughs reruns if you have to, and make all buses properly air conditioned in this disgusting heat and unpredictable rain of Singapore.

Yet today, I did my silly gamble again. Seeing that the wait for my bus is going to be 9 minutes, I tried to beat it by taking another bus to a nearby stop with more buses that will reach my destination. But I ended up taking the same 9-minute-wait bus, missed my destination stop and had to walk 10 minutes back to the destination because the next stop was a light year away.

But the hot ride last week and the long walk tonight turned out not bad at all.

The old non-air conditioned bus gives you the same messy, free, wind-in-hair fun that the gas guzzling 6-litre Murcielago Roadster can. And what can be more relaxing than a long stroll with a light splatter of rain on the face after a stressful day at work?

Or that overhead bridge near my house. The climb is always a chore and it’s a pain on rainy days and hot sunny days. So I was happy to see them start building the cover.

But tonight, I realize how much I miss walking on the bridge at night. When the bridge was unblocked, I could see far out and feel the night sky stretched across me, right above my head. Now, I can no longer tell what the color of the sky is, or if there’s a moon. My view is blocked, I no longer feel the light drizzle on my skin and the overhead bridge is nothing more than a chore to climb.

Sometimes, small discomforts can turn out to be quite enjoyable experiences, and conveniences can easily take away pleasant surprises.