A little bit... nationalistic?

It has been some time since I last posted something up here. Many things happened in between and I shall attempt to pull those thoughts in together into one piece.

Facebook and GP
Facebook is indeed some sort of social phenomenon that is worth thinking about. The textbook answer to the benefit that Facebook brings is the socio-communal network that one can form online and to keep in touch with people who lives overseas or just to have another portal for a group of close friends to chat and play around in. Obviously, there are two sides to the coin. The negative side about Facebook is the cheapen-ing the definition of a "Friend" or declining the quality of relationships. You can have an entourage that rolls like 500+ people long but i can make a relatively sure bet that you don't even talk to 10% of them. I just went to check out my home page a while ago and saw my friend Joyce tagging on her photos. Curious I was, so I just went to see her photo album and to my surprise, I just realised that this "Joyce" is the sweet-looking (yes.. im very neutral here) tennis girl I see in school. And more ridiculously, I didn't know her name until I accidentally browsed her photo album. I know I'm a bad senior who reserves little brain space for remembering my junior's name. But come to think of it... I didn't even know that I have this girl as my "friend" on Facebook when I hardly know ANYTHING about her in reality. Then again, I think the same applies in the opposite direction. She hardly knows about me. Haha.

National Day
So today is (well.. actually yesterday) national day and it's a time to ponder about national issues (even though we should be pondering about them everyday, not just national day). Letts Tan was reading the national day message from MOE and I just felt that NJCians hardly cares about this country?! People were blabbering and talking throughout. I know it's tough to answer the question "why should I be listening to this guy reading out the national day message?", but hey, this happens only once a year and even if the message is crap (crap because the message is about the same every year and for the fact that we have been brainwashed enough from social studies), it is some good crap that deserves some respect at least.

Moving onto the show segment. Not too bad, at least they got me up on my feet to sing along with their... out-of-tune singers. talking about national songs, i just missed those good old days where we had stefanie sun, kit chan and tanya chua. their national songs were bloody good and the lyrics (the chinese lyrics in particular) is really impressionistic and the melody is just unforgetable. Somehow, I just feel that chinese lyrics are more sentimental and more compassionate when it comes to bringing the message of the song across...

Ms Oon
So I was talking to ms oon on the way back from school on 156. and once again, she just impressed me with that extremely sharp critical thinking and observation of the singaporean society. We were talking about the scrapping of 1st 3 months and then talked about talent development in Singapore. So we somehow ended up talking about the development of artistic talents in Singapore. The sad fact is that we are results-oriented people and have relatively low capacity for failure and we perversely apply it into the area of the arts -though the true definition of failure in the artistic realm is pretty much difficult to be justified in rational sense-. Then ms oon asked, is the level of artistic development a true reflection of our development as a society. I just stonned down there for five seconds with my mouth opened. Reason being, we have this idea that when we have the capacity and the ability to valuate something such as art, we have moved beyond the need to address our material satisfaction. But is art really that valuable? So much so that we value it above material gains and use it as a benchmark for the development of a society. Or is it just a bourgeois thing that doesnt really reflects our position in the developmental ladder of society? Totally mind blogging and it was so lucky that we reached Bishan bus stop and I don't need to think too much about it...