Tuesday, June 17, 2008

There is no charge to awesomeness

Interesting tagline (or whatever you call it). Perhaps what the message sent through the movie is right; to be awesome, all you need to to do is be yourself.

That aside, there has been quite a lot of happenings during this June Holidays which I would say, it is pretty well spent. I didn't travel like some of my friends did, or did some crazy things like skydiving and bungee-jumping. All I did was training, playing, watching football and going out with friends. This incurred a huge budget deficit for the month of June, but I will say that it is pretty well spent. I guess the greatest difference that this holiday had as compared to the other holidays is that I didn't have to go for research attachment (and no Common Tests of course). This really freed up a lot of time for me to do whatever I want.

One thing that striked me was one of the issues that was brought up on Sunday Times a few days ago. The article about scrapping Miss Singapore Universe. Honestly speaking, we are a nation with women (and men) with exceptional and unique facial and body features that can well define beauty (or handsome-ness) beyond words. Do we lack pretty and handsome people in Singapore? Hell NO! Take a walk down Orchard Road, have a burger at Raffles City or shop at Vivo City for a day, you will realise that we have people that has both style and substance (and the "looks" and curves" as well). From the way we dress, to the handbag/backpack we choose to carry out with us, we demand ourselves to be perfect - whether it is out of respect for the person(s) we are going out with or just flaunting the tangible and the intangible assets. We have the "looks" and the "faces", but perhaps, what we lack is some sort of civilised "attitudes".

I guess that is why "simplicity is beauty". When we are simple (or at least look simple), we have nothing to flaunt. All we have to "flaunt" -in this case "show" will be a better word- is our own character and personality. That is what makes us shine much brighter than those with brain and brawns, with style and substance.

Moving on, like what I mentioned above, I had more time to interact with people whom I know and find out more about them. I want to write this down so that I won't forget about this person who is exceptionally unique in his/her own way.(I shall use 'T' as his/her name, just another letter apart from 'X' which I used the other time)

T is one of the most mysterious people I have ever met and I choose to derive his/her uniqueness from this personality. He/she strikes a VERY well balance between his/her private life and his/her school life. Already pretty active in school, he/she is even more active outside school! From hip-hop to golf, to piano, he/she does all this outside school! I truly admire this passive courage of his/hers; to be able to live without close interaction from friends whom you know from school (Perhaps she does have interactions with a group of close friends in school which I don't know). I guess most of us feel so compelled to stay within the community of our classmates or friends, that we hardly do something outside this community. We desire that sort of attention from this community which we convert it as a motivational or supportive force in our daily activities. I don't know how this person does it, but he/she can live without this. That aside, I must admit that he/she has a nice-looking face which pretty well shrouds his/her mysterious personality. He/she even has this mildly-angry-but-actually-not-angry look which makes me pretty apologetic to him/her when I try to speculate someting about him/her. I don't really know T very well I must say, because "I don't know my [his/her] life". Nevertheless, he/she is defintely an interesting person to hang out with.

Last thoughts: haha... not very comtemplative this time round. School's about to reopen :(

Sunday, June 1, 2008

Pre U Sem

6 Meals a day, 5-Day-long Seminar, Friends 4ever, 3 Fun SLOs, 2 Free dry-fit shirts, Seminar Group 1

The numbers said it all. Honestly speaking, the activities within pre-u sem isn't very much interesting. I'll give it a 2.5 out of ten. Reason being, all the presentations are pretty much the obvious things aka "duh-stuff". Obviously I know that there is brain-drain in Singapore (I can even chunk out the figures due to my little research on the topic for an essay competition). Obviously, ageing population is a problem in Singapore when more resources have to be devoted to this age group and even more problematic when there is a declining fertility rate which translates to a smaller working population for support (I can tell you that an average Singaporean lives up to the ripe old age of 85 -and it is still increasing-). Obviously, we are facing one of the worst economic vices, a widening income gap. In fact, our gini co-efficient (a measure of income inequality) is worse than philippines? (I would really like to contend about the accuracy of the figures though the source came from a UN research report)

Technically, the problem is there. Solutions anyone? There have been some good solutions proposed, though wasn't well evaluated though. (even the NJ's solution to ageing population isn't THAT good, but good enough la) So make that 3 out of ten.

Q&A was more of the subject of contention. Some asked really stupid question. Like some guy from XXXJC asked the minister about the lack of governmental efforts in tackling global inflation and income inequality. The minister immediately got up and listed out the entire set of policies in place to tackled the problems (and we are even projecting to have a budget deficit this year due to increasing government payments to address such problems). Then there will always be students from the school that symbolizes elitism to its furthest extent. "Mike-whoring" for the entire seminar. But you can't blame them, most probably that they have a quota to fulfill. Then again, there are some good comments (like the one from the IJC scholar and her rainbow colours) and some good questions which really sparked people thinking. Kudos to those students who gave in-depth replies and tolerating nonsense questions. So make that 4.5 out of ten.

Given that we got to see Vivian Balakrishnan (and even stood quite close to him as he walked down the isle), make that 5.5 out of ten. He deserved a lot of credit for being engaging and breaking away from the traditions of delivering a key-note speech. I think this is a win-win situation. He (or his secretary) doesn't need to prepare his speech while the students had more time to interact with him. You can't beat this offer right?

Last but not least, how can we forget the friends that I've made in pre-u sem? There are some rumours of me liking XXX. Say, we just clicked quite well given for our IP background aka people with the non-conformity mindsets. But apart from that, there are one whole bunch of interesting, handsome, pretty, bimbotic, smart, unique people. DaeYeon, Jason (lim), Jon Neo, Nicholas, XiuQing, Caitlin, Mathias, Shamini and etc. Crazy people to hang around with. These are the people who truly made Pre-U Sem something not just an intellectual holiday chalet. So make that 9 out of ten.

Where did the last point go to? We can never have perfections in life. Keep it that way. It's the only way for things to improve. Consider the fact that I knew a little bit more about Teena (and her private life), make that 9.1 out of ten. Haha.

Again... I have some many bottled thoughts which I really want to put it up here. But perhaps another time? Let those thoughts mature for a while more and perhaps when I'm particularly emo, I shall just let it all out.

Last thoughts: Aristal is not just a dance-affair. It was also a time to "flaunt" the beauty and show that suave body. But you were really pretty and beautiful with that dress and let-down hair. Then again, it's God's gift for girls to have long hair and can do whatever they want with it using infinite amount of accessories. As for you, simplicity is beauty. Perhaps, wearing heels will score you a perfect 10. My honest opinions. Nothing more.