Life is very strange thing. I heard/read somewhere that says "The more I know about life, the less I understand it." I do feel that from time to time. Belief is definitely one of the most puzzling things that life shape in us. It's what makes life in adulthood complicated and sophisticated.

At this stage of life, most of us have our own belief and perspectives on things that we derived from the our experience in live. Some of us fool themselves into having one. Delusional as it is, it's how it is with grown-ups. You and I alike, We have preconceived ideas about many. We quickly stereotype things/people at our own convenience base on our so-call "life experience". However, I have to agree that we are not to blame entirely especially when you are growing up in a society that perpetually echo into your ear that you have to think fast, be critical, and you need to learn to make quick and accurate judgment because the world is moving quickly and changing promptly. Eventually, we're all distorted. We lose sight of what matters in life and only focus at what matter to us. Some want to conform while others prefer to be different. Ironically, now that the world is encouraging us to be original and different, being different would mean you're just conforming to the concept. In the end, it all boils down just one simple powerful word - Belief. As long as you believe you are, then you are, no matter what people say.

The problem with this message is that people takes it too literally that they create a tendency to reject others' belief prematurely. Sometime it become so extensive that we're unable able to compromise with the difference and engage ourselves in aggressively futile debates to convince one another. "Well, that's just life." Well, that's what most people would say. Simplest, quickest and easiest way to reason it. Sometime it's hard to believe, but it's true, the reason is because it's the way it is. Do you believe that? Well, I don't. Even if most of the time it's apparently so.

With everything said, most of the time I still took the more cowardice way out like most of us do. Avoidance. Especially so when I sense the situation is getting hostile. I'm still looking for courage to not only collaboratively compromise my difference in belief with people but also to discuss and debate it. At the moment, it still seems to be a pretty far-fetch attempt. But I believe it'll happen. Somehow...

Which do you hear louder? the your own voice or others'?

For me most of the time it's others'. I don't like it but somehow I have a very tendency to think about what would people think of me and the things I do. Will they like it? will they hate it? will they find it annoying? And that consideration influence my action and behavior tremendously.Why does that matter to me all of a sudden? First of all, it's not all of a sudden, but it's just that lately I came to realize that the influence is stronger than I thought.

I've always thought that I'm the type of person who always know what I want in life but I come to doubt that recently. After some sharing with some peers at work, I became quite puzzled. Some people tell  me good income is the key to being happy. Some people say career satisfaction is the key not pay. Some people it's neither, it's whether the job can benefit and value-add to your career goal, which in turn, it'll result in the achievement of both job satisfaction and monetary desire. The third also implies that you'll achieve neither if you approaches things wrongly. However, what bugs me is not these difference in opinions it's how they constantly judging people who're doing thing differently. For instance, for those , who didn't do that well in academic and end up with a good start-off job, would look to their highly-academically qualified friends with a very egoistic sense of victory. On the other hand, they also being judged as materialistic and myopic. Either way, neither of the side know what each other is really thinking. All they are doing is making assumption about each other to make them feel better about themselves.

They say human nature is selfish. This truly reflects very clearly through our opinions. If you observe carefully, you would be able to see the fact that people always tend to think that other people is in a way similar to themselves if not the same. When we're smart, we automatically treat people around us as if nobody is really that stupid. When you live in an environment where everyone is well-off, the next person you know, you would assume that they at least well off as well. When you spend a lot, people think you're rich. When you save a lot, people think you're stingy. When you plan, people say you think too much. When you don't plan, people say you live on impulse. We are basically stereotyping everything about each other. Why? Because it's a very quick and convenient way to form an image of a person in our head. The problem with that is that image is very influential towards our behavior toward that person. The best part is we know this is happening and why. The real mystery is the fact that we still succumb to it.

The fact really sadden me. It's a big reminder to why we have lesser and lesser friends as we grow older. When older, we're are less susceptible to influence and change. And we know that about each other, so we choose stay away from people with conflicting interest/opinion/goal/etc.... This is probably one of the damn wonderful things about childhood, we just don't care and don't give a damn about all these and laugh everything off.

Seeing Me & Orson Welles makes me feel that opinions can be really objective. And that is scary. Can you imagine person is giving you his opinion which is not really his opinion? Precisely, it's like lying to you. But the only difference is that it's the truth. His opinion towards you changes depending on how much you benefit/profit him. Again that can be your very powerful weapon if you can master it. You're no longer prejudice towards people since your opinions no longer matter to you. The only thing that matters is what can you make out it.

But seriously, I really don't see the point in becoming like that. Can't imagine having to constantly looking at things from a third-person point of view.

First of all, my stand on the whole truth issue would be "Everybody is a liar when they say they only tell the truth and everybody is hypocrite when they say they only want to know the truth."

So which one are you? the one who only tell the truth or the one who only wants to hear to truth? I hope the answer is neither. Anyway, I'd like to categorize people into different categories of truth listeners. (1) Some of us only want to hear the truth that they want to hear (I hope that does make sense). (2) Some of us only want to hear the truth that we can handle. (3) A few of us simply want the truth. Bear in mind that all of these are said from an observant point of view because I believe that if asked, almost everybody would, without hesitation, answer that they simply want to know truth no matter what. So to me it's not what they say or think they are that matters. It's how they react and respond to the truth that being told to them. For example, if you react angrily and respond violently to certain news or thing, I don't think anybody would want to tell you about it.

In my life thus far, I think most of the people that I've met and known belong to the first 2 categories. Those who belong to the first categories unconsciously are mainly those of lower education level and minimal life experience. A for those who're conscious about it, I believe they chose to be that way. Why? I think they just find it happier that way. Most of my closer peers are in the 2nd categories. Hence, needless to say that's where I am. But to what extent can we handle different type of truth? Honestly, I think that's very much depends on what each of us as individual went through and learned in our lives. For instance, my friend who's very knowledgeable would most likely be able to accept a greater truth of knowledge whereas I, who came from a society where death and violent is a daily routine, would most likely be able to handle more emotional truth. I remembered when a friend of mine told me he could play chess blindfolded. I was like there no way in hell anybody could do that, at least not anyone of my age. I was skeptical and cynical. So I denied the truth. Of course, the reasons to that is a no-brainer. It's because I don't believe/think it's possible. I haven't seen anybody does that before. I think he's just bluffing to show off. etc. etc.

What then? Prove it. And when he did, that's when the real test comes. Whether I can handle the truth or not? Some people , like me, would simply go "Wow!, that's awesome!" That was simply because I'm not chess player and has no interest in chess whatsoever. So to me, this is pretty much a cool magic. But imagine, if I were a chess player who spend my life playing chess and never for once the possibility of this has ever occurred to me and suddenly I meet this guy. There could be 2 outcomes. Either I'll be enlightened or devastated. If you actually amplify, this simple brainless scenario many times and bring the scenario to things like political truth, conspiracy theory, environment, super power, outer space, science... you name it. There is simply no room for us to be able to handle or accept them all. Most of the time we're just so confused that we don't even know it. Hence, we simply choose to believe what we think is true or who we think is telling the truth. This is where the whole world is thrown to chaos just because there simply cannot be a universal truth for everything. They are very much accepted under perspectives. Therefore, knowing, believing, and accepting knowledge and truth has become a test of faith, self-judgment, and resilience. And knowing has a snowball effect, the more you know, the more you will know. Finally, it will come to point where you find yourself knowing too much to tell. This is where I have a hypothesis that the more truth we know the higher tendency we have to lie. Most of the time, it's not because we don't want to tell. It's either just because we simply can't tell or we don't think the person is ready for it or we don't feel like telling or etc...

I think the best book that exemplifies the whole truth issue is Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol. But again I don't read that many books, so I guess this the best among the few that I read. According to the book, the things that blind us from the seeing the truth is not just our ignorance and arrogance but also our knowledge and experience as well. Ignorance can be enlightened but knowledge is very difficult to be unlearned especially when one has already have complete faith and belief in his/her knowledge. Most of the time, the truth that a knowledgeable person find it hardest to accept would be the ones that he/she can prove and argue otherwise. The problem with that is we often try to prove/argue sth's wrong base on what we know and what we've experienced. Needless to say, there's obviously a limitation to that. Nevertheless, we tend to be blinded by our confidence and faith in our knowledge that it prevents us from being to able to fathom greater knowledge. If there is anything we learn from history that would be the advancement of mankind is very much credited a small group of individuals who faithfully believe in the impossible truth.

Ironically, for me, 1 of the most truthful things a person ever said is "I lied."

If you've been learning English for quite some time, you'd probably have heard of this saying that when a friend ask you for a fish, if you really want to help him, you will teach him how to fish instead of giving him a fish. Well, there something along this line is all languages I think, at least it does in mine. I used to really agree with the saying but now I no longer do.

The answer is very obvious in university. You can observe it everywhere. When asked for a fish, and you're trying to help him by teaching him how to fish. He'd tell you he doesn't have time to learn how to fish. By the time he knows how to fish, he probably won't need the fish anymore, which is quite true if you think about it. This does happen to me quite a number of times. Another problem that I observe is that most people think that "I probably won't need this fish in the future, why the hell should I learn how to fish? I would just forget it anyway if I don't practice it." Again this does make sense. Meanwhile, some would thing that "fishing" is too complicated and troublesome too learn, they'd rather not going through the trouble for something that's not really that useful to them. The bottom line is I want fish! you give  me or I ask somebody else.

So well gruadually, I learned to adapt and drop that saying out of my head. They don't want your selflessness, they want your fish. So yes, be selfish and sell the fish. You'd be surprised that people will pay for it, instead of learning it for free. Everybody is always too busy for something they don't give a sh*t about.

hahah sth really good happened made me wanna take study break and come back here to rant about sth again. This time it's about the worst project I've had since entering university.

In this particular project of mine, we have it all. Failed leadership, poor communication, miscommunication, free rider, weak personnel, wishful thinking, conflicts among members, and needless to say, zero teamwork. You name and the project has it. However, it didn't really bother me because I knew this was gonna happen at the earlier stage of the project, though I have to admit that I didn't expect it to be this bad.

In a project, usually people prefer to work on their own and not to have to much collaboration with people (well, at least that's how it is in my course and all the electives classes I've taken). Then at the end of the day, they'll come together once and for all to integrate what they've done individually into the final piece for submission. Well, that only works if your project doesn't require regular integration and correlation across all sections. When you're working on a project that equates to a 4AUs subject, that completely doesn't apply. My current project is a perfect example of that. Well don't get me wrong here. "Doesn't apply" here doesn't mean you won't get good grade. If you say your sole goal of doing a project is to get good grades then you can stop reading this post.

Scoring should be only be the team's short term goal and one of the project's objectives. Learning is however the true aim of it. Again before I could go on, a bunch of people would rebut that we do learn sth. Learn what? Like how to write report? how to design cover page? how to program a software? to make a website? how to apply our lecture into our project? Well honestly, if that's what each of us would learn every time we do a project, then the idea of project has failed completely. Again, I began to sound like a real smart ass here. I mean who the hell don't know the potically correct answer that the whole idea of project work is to let us learn about teamwork, leadership, blah blah blah. But what exactly did you learn?

You see, usually when u try asking a person what he learned after completing a project. He'd go, "I learned how to work in team.", "I learn how to handle leadership.", "I learn that teamwork is important in life."  or sth along those lines. This is why I like to listen to real leader talk. If you pay attention to them, real good leader/ team worker they don't boast about how great a leader they are neither they would say anything about knowing leadership and teamwork. Come on, this is like a small school project that barely simulate anything in a working society. If you say u alrd can learn how to handle teamwork and leadership just by doing a few projects in school. I think that's pure rubbish.

With that said, there is where I have say that I'm glad to have such a screwed up project. It makes the learning points of the project more obvious and easier to pick up. Imagine if all your projects were to go smoothly and peacefully, you would never really know what could've gone wrong, would you? In fact, I spend more time reflecting on the project than doing the project itself. One of the things I asked myself most frequently during the course of this project is "out of all the many causes to the failure of this project, which one would I say is the key cause to everything?" Some people would think that it's a dumb question because it's so rethorical. "Isn't it obvious that it's failed leadership?" Well that's the thing. I feel that we are so blinded by the institution teaching and society's over emphasis on leadership that people automically assume leadership is the key to everything. I mean some people don't even know why leadership is crucial, and just know that it is. So many people told us so that we agreed to it without condition. Then when you're put in the a leader position, you'll start questioning yourself what exactly is important about leadership in a team or an organization? And only when you manage to make it work through your leadership then you have the right to agree that leadership is really the key and is crucial.

Omg! I think I watch too much nigahiga that I start to have ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) also. I just realize I just rambled all over the place and haven't really made any point. Well my point is.... my project sucks big time!! Teehee!!

It's really been a long while again. I've had so much to write about but time doesn't gimme the leisure to do so. But sth happened yesterday that I couldn't resist not ranting away about it.

After a whole day of slaving over my project, I rushed out for dinner and went for IUC meeting. There were 2 agendas for the meeting. 1 is regarding the ragging issue and the other was on the HAS Distance point feedback and suggestion. Due to the late arrival of the president, the 2nd agenda was started first. So yeah the issue is the distance point for international student (which is currently 9 pnt regardless of year of study) maybe changed to 9, 8 and 7 pnt from as we progress in our year of study? What are your thoughts on that?

After the question was raised, a few particular people started throwing their feedback/reason/argument/complain/comment/nonsense/bull crap/waste of time (Yes, literally "/" because everything was mixing up together). You can't really tell them apart, whether it's complain, reason, argument or feedback. This is what happens when people use emotion and feeling to speak. I was sitting there close to 3 hrs thinking in my head "what a blardy waste of time, I could be better off slaving over my project right now." I mean these people were raising an arguments that has already been repeatedly talked about since this issue started 4 or 5 years back. You are just being annoyingly redundant. But haven't they thought of that? No, because apparently they sounded as if other people are stupid enough not to see the argument until they pointed it out. A few examples of the arguments raised were regarding the Singaporean has home and foreigners has no home, so Singaporean has an alternative and we don't. Also, this is a distance point so by right, we should have it higher than the Singaporean since we live much further than them. These are the 2 classic ones and there were a bunch of others like renting house/room outside are expensive, exchange rate issue, blah blah... blah blah... Seriously, you're getting nowhere with these. Then I was like never mind since already wasted my time, I might as well start praying for someone to at least come up with a creative and plausible feedback. Guess what!? Someone did went creative. Creatively bullshit.

He/She said the school should look at it from a financial point of view as in who earns more and who earns less. I was like what!? what the hell? where is that coming from? Well, I could see how she derived that out because well, according to the exchange rate Singapore has more or less the strongest currency in South East Asia, and apparently, he/she believes that it's a common sense that foreigners' families are poorer (as in earning less) than the locals' families. The first factor was reasonable since it's a fact. But the 2nd, prove that. I mean I'm on her side on the 2nd one since I'm from a middle-class family in a poor country. But the thing is will being poor and having been hanging around with poor international students and "rich" locals prove your common sense? How do you know one are poorer than the other? Because they said so? If I were to take myself as an example again, so far most people who just know me or barely know me assume that I'm one rich ass kid from my country. But how true is that? Well, after the SU side explain that this couldn't be a valid point since we can't prove it. He/She accepted it AND went more CREATIVE with the suggestion. He/She said the school should study the financial status of all the students and do a review on it. Seriously!? Did he/she just throw that for the sake of creating argument or he/she have seriously thought about it? I mean if he/she seriously thought this could be done, then I'm speechless. He/she was saying that students gave school their family income and financial status at their disposal so why can't they just use the information to work this out?...........I was like SERIOUSLY? This is ultimate bullcrap. Maybe he/she did gave hers at the school disposal but not everybody does. It's easy to say it when we're poor since we have nothing to lose when it's reveal that we're poor. We'd just stay the same or probably gain sth. But how would rich people feel? I mean you can ask yourself a simple question? Why do rich people spend so much money and waste effort to put their money in a bank that promise them highest level of privacy? At the end of the day, even if 99% of the student agreed that their families' financial information are at the school disposal, there school still can't conduct the study because of the 1% that doesn't agree. Man, when they went on lik 1 hour long regarding this financial issue, I was really close to stand up and walk out of the meeting.

Well, that was 1 of it. Then somebody else took on the creativity to a greater height. He/she said now the issue it's not about who earns more and who earns less. It's about who's pays more and who pays less. wow! He started of pointing out the difference between our tuition fee (as in the locals and foreigners). And I couldn't remember his/her exact wordings but he/she was basically trying to say that if the school wanna treat us equally they should put us in an equal financial ground. That means to say either we should be paying the same amount or the rental outside campus should be as cheap as the ones provide by the campus. That's like asking Apple to sell ipod at $500 to the rich and only $100 to the poor. Anyway, that isn't the main problem. The main thing is he/she now trying to involve MOE and Singapore Government into the equation and not just the university. Either he/she is that dumb or he/she has really has no clue that tuition fee/tuition grant and real estate price not under the university's control. So if you're aware of that, it really sounds as if he/she is trying ask Singapore to change their policy just for this issue. wow! that's simply creativity at its best. And I could see that the SU President and Vice President were both -___-" though they are foreigners as well. However, they were polite enough to answer everything politely and not asking he/she to zipped up and f off. I mean foreigners or not, we should be able to see this clearly that money is not part of the equation and that the result they're looking for in this equation is a "≥" sign and not an "=" sign. You just make a fool of yourself and make all foreigners look stupid by suggesting this.

Finally, I just wanna wrap this up by pointing out a some basic points that we can ask ourselves. First of all, nothing is equal and fair. Otherwise there won't be people working much harder than the others. In fact the university is being very kind by trying minimize the casualty. If you look at university all over the world, people don't even have hall to stay at. From there you tell, that the university has every right not to provide us hall, and every right to charge equal to outside rate (just look at how SMU and NUS charge compared to NTU). And when you complain about how expensive is outside rental, please do bear in mind who pay for your education here. The university and Singapore government. What if they tell us that ok, now we don't pay for your tuition fee, tuition grant, and school fee and pay for your food and rental outside instead. Will you be happy? If you do the math, I don't think you'd even consider coming to Singapore at all. Ask yourself why are you here? Never use money as an argument to an issue. Local or international alike, there are always people having problem with money. Asking why Singapore charge foreigners more education is like asking why a country charging tourists extra for visiting their attractions. You're here means you've made your choice, informed or not. So live with your choice. Even it it turns out to be a mistake (financially in this case), it's your fault. You can give 101 reason that the university didn't explain clearly to you that it's gonna be like this. But you have to remember that they are but salesman, their job is to sell, doesn't matter how. It's your problem after you choose to buy it. That's why we should appreciate it when they have good customer service.

Man, I can't believe that I've actually wasted 1hr+ ranting on these pointless arguments. But I really do hope that all my friends who end up reading this will not end up being in the same shoe as those people. We are educated people, and the university treat us as educated people. So when they give you opportunity to voice yourself out, you'd do so like an educated person and not simply making a fool of yourself and the community you're representing. When we're holding a representative position, it's not just our individual image is at stake but our community's. If you think you have nothing better to say, then take the most educated response by shutting up.

It's really been along while since I blog about myself or my thoughts. Today sth occurred to me and made me feel like blogging about it.

Today I had an early morning appointment with a guy to buy sth from him. So I had to wake up very early, one of the very rare occasion that I get up early I'd say. Anyway, after washing up, I made my way to ATM to withdraw money. Outside, the sky is clear with no cloud and no sun and the cool morning breeze brushes me softly. I couldn't help it but find myself enjoying the morning stroll with my favorite tunes on from my iPod. When I got back, I was like God, I'm really getting old. Please tell me that youngsters do enjoy morning strolls and not just senior citizens. Hahaha but honestly I don't really care about that.

Maybe, I should go into rehab and start waking up early and have morning jog instead of midnight jog. :P

While I was browsing for things to watch the other day, I came across this Discovery Channel program called 1000 Places To See Before You Die. The show is about a newly wedded couple, who got inspired by the book 1000 Places to See Before You Die, put their lives on hold and go on an all paid 5-month odyssey trip around the world to places recommended in the book. I love this show. If you love traveling or a traveler at heart, you'll definitely love the show. So far I've watched only 2 episodes which is to Hawaii and India and going to watch Alaska and Brazil. And YES!! They also went to Cambodia. I'm trying to get that episode. If you have time, check them out.

Anyway, while watching the show, sth that was said in there got me thinking for awhile. During the episode, it mentioned that visiting the place is like realizing your childhood dream. Then I think why most of the time people relate their incredible experience to childhood. For example, I often hear people say "This really fun it's like we're a child once again." or "this brings back our childhood memory" or stuffs along those lines. That implies that childhood is one of the best time in their lives, if not the best. However, we also often see people negatively regard people who are inconsiderate, hot tempered, insensitive, immature etc.. as "childish". I found it ironic and the same time, humorous. It's like they're saying that "I love childhood but I hate being childish or people who're childish." How can you enjoy your childhood if you're not childish?

So the next time somebody says that you're childish, you say "Thank you."

First, I'll touch on the 1st unexpectedly unexpected which is the top 20 for the current season of my most favorite reality show, So You Think You Can Dance Season 5. Well, I'm not gonna waste time list their name down here, you can check them out in detail HERE. The top 20 this year is a ridiculous surprise for me. The most unexpected top 20 for me out of the 5 seasons. Almost all the contestants that I've rooted and wanted them to go never got in. For guys, only one of those I wanted to make it to top 20 went in, and that is Phillip Chbeeb. He definitely deserves it. After all the praying I grave for him finally he made it. Now it's time to pray that he'll explode into awesomeness in competition not just in his style but in other style too. As for girls, only Asuka Kondoh made it from my favorite list. Well, I can't complain much about this because my favorites are solely base on their solo during audition. They cut the Vegas week into 2 short episodes, so I don't really get to see any of them dance properly. Most of time was the judges scolding them and sending people home.

This is in a way good too. Like that I won't have much expectation of what to come. So there would be less disappointment. With that said, they'd better bring it because last year was HOT to the max. Season 4 performances will always be my benchmark for the show. Anything short of that, I'll be disappointed. :) Let's hope this unexpected turn out is a damn good one.

Next and last on the agenda will be Naruto's latest chapter, 450.*** !!!![SPOILER ALERT]!!!!**

First, I'd like to give myself a pat on the back for accurately predicting the outcome of the battle between Naruto and Pain :).  *pat *pat Now the unexpected thing is I never thought Danzo became the 6th Hokage just like that. No struggle no nothing... what the hell... I never thought he'd get to be one in the 1st place. I have a feeling that I may not be enjoying what is to come. But I shall have faith in Masashi-san. He has been impressive up to now. I shall wait and see.

Yesterday was the mass departure for some of us, including me, from our beloved facebook online game clan, called Suikoden. The chatroom of this small clan was filled with a mixture of emotions, relief, sadness, disappointment, shock, and even a slight anger. Well all in all the departure and farewell went pretty quick. Though it was kinda abrupt but I think it was for the best. The longer it takes the harder it is for those who were leaving as well as for those who're staying. It's funny how most of us get so emotional of this little community created solely for entertainment purpose. If you weren't apart of it you'd never understand that feeling. A lot of ignorant people will dismiss the sentiment as virtual obsession. Yes everything was virtual but I can assure 1 thing that is real and that is the friendship we built through playing it and being a part of this little virtual community.

Suikoden is the 1st online game clan (well it's not even exactly a true blue online game) that I actually got so attached and involved in. I'd say that now I finally have a taste of what some of those online game addicts feel. With this, I understand that gamers sometime are not addicted because of their obsession to be powerful (in the game), to escape reality but instead, it maybe the bond and attachment that they've built with various people over the net that prevent them from leaving. All in all, it has been a fun ride. It allows me to keep in touch with my real life friends who're residing at different part of the world. It also allows me to get to know more friends who I may actually going meet in real life someday. If not because of this stupid facebook application, our path may never cross for the rest of our lives.

Anyway, sometime it seems that it's better not to get too attached to anything because you'll never when you're going to lose it.

Lastly, I wish all my Suikoden peeps all the best in their furture endeavor.

For the past week since my exam was over, I found myself got entangled up in a few dramatic situation. First of all was me sulking and getting all moody over my poor performance in exam. After that, it was my friend turn sulk to over his. Then we talked to find out who's worse. -_-" A few days later, one of my friends suddenly became overly irritating but I couldn't do anything about it for some reasons. I figured I should lay my opinions somewhere to prevent it from accumulating to frustration. And well I did. And just 1 or 2 days back, in my online gaming clan, there was a member who raised a complain regarding a certain situation. The complain caused a few members to get quite emotional and the situation became more dramatic than it should've been.

This suddenly reminds me of how our lives are, in one way or another, similar to those Korean, Japanese, Chinese or Singapore drama. The basic idea behind the plot is the same and that is one's emotion(s)/feeling(s) affects another person's emotion, which in turn affects another's. This chain reaction create a story. You often hear people say they want to live a happy life or they only long for happiness in their life. But you never hear people wanting misery or sadness to be part of their lives. However, the ugly truth is we can't live without it. If we can't have it in our lives, we unconsciously wish it to happen in our friends' so we can be apart of that misery. And if it doesn't happen in our lives and neither our friends' lives, we will crave for it by other means. This is precisely why people loves watching those Asian dramas or those reality shows. To feel emotion, get emotional and ultimately, share that emotions.  But if you ask, not many of them will admit it. The reason is probably lie in my previous entry, titled "unappreciated". There also the other bunch of people where they have "very good" reasons for doing so like "Dramas are interesting", "drama helps you understand life", "they teach us life lesson", or a more sophisticated reason will be "drama is an art that portrays philosophy of life". Let's dissect those few reasons.

"Interesting" is most vague answer one can possibly give. What makes drama interesting. Is it the part where it makes cry? or the part where it makes you smile after you cry? or the part where it makes you curse the plot for making the characters so dumb and fall into every emotional trap that could never possibly happen in real life (well that is according to you of course)? "Dramas are interesting." is a statement and not a reason.

Let's move on to "helps us understand life" and "teach us life lesson". Fun fact, this is what my mom told me when I made an ignorant comment about drama series being predictable, unrealistic, and boring. Well if you have seen enough of the outside world, you'd come to understand that life is far to complex and individualistic for drama to help us understand it, let alone teach us life lesson. What it does is exaggerate situation that some of us may face in life for us to relate our feelings and memory with. It's funny how we human tend to find solace in other's misery. On the surface we deny it but underneath we succumb to it.

I think I'm getting quite carried away with this so I'm just gonna end it here. This is 1 of the things we think and don't say.

Photo: unappreciated by lpdragonfly @ DeviantArt

I suddenly would like noting this down as I seem to have encountered the situation quite often. What I'm talking about is the situation where in conversation, you are faced with questions regarding your hobbies and what you like doing to occupy your leisure time and you choose not to reveal some of the things you do because you feel that your conversation partner will not be able to appreciate or may show disapproval towards it. For example, you decided to go to a mall to window shop. When you came back a friend asked where were you. Instead of saying you window-shopped, you'd probably just say "I went out". Then he may go further, "what did you do?". In this case, If I think that the guy would respond "whoa! you got so much free time ah?", I probably wouldn't bother telling him I purposely went out just to window shop and just say "to buy stuff." or "check out sth."

Basically, it's about sth you do or enjoying doing that other people perceive it as useless stuff, unproductive stuff, or waste of time. What I don't like about it is not the fact that the person doesn't appreciate or approve of what you're doing. It's his inconsiderate expression of disapproval that puts me off. I mean what exactly is considered a waste of time. Do we always have to have a plausible reason for doing sth? Can't "just for fun" or "i like doing it" be a good enough reason to justify it? Hahaha... I don't know where am I trying get at with this but I guess what am I trying to say is that each individual has their own love and passion for things. They are unexplainable sometime. We don't know why but we just like doing it. So we should think before showing our negative reaction towards it. Well, not like anyboy doesn't know this but thing is it happens unconsciously sometime (especially for guys I think).

Here is one of the many scenarios, I encountered. When I first got a blog and I told my peers about it, here were some of the responses I got...

A: Cool! what's your blog link?
B: Welcome to the world of blogging.
C: I see...
D: Are you gay? Only girls write blog dudes.
E: Wat de... blogs are for emos lah.
F: You have too much free time is it?

There it goes. Another random entry. ^_^

I've been away from here for quite some time due to Exam. I was so tempted to write about so many things during my mugging confinement period but I resisted the temptation everytime. Well I guess the first thing I should be writing now is reflection on the exam since it's still hot and heated in my brain.

Well, as the title stated, it went pretty awful. To the point that I believe that I couldn't have messed up anything in my life thus far more than this semester exam. After today's paper, I was practically covered with sense of total defeat and disappointment. It was a complete mess. After a few hours of sulking, I finally came to my senses again and began wondering what was I dreaded for? I mean since secondary school, there were subjects that I wasn't able to perform even though I put the most effort in it. Not like this is sth new in my academic endeavor. I think the obvious issue here is that I'm so concerned with the fact that in university, every result of every subject will effect the quality of my degree, which logically should affect my career life, at least initially. Though it may not exactly be the case, but such mindset was hard drilled into me since the very beginning that I couldn't ignore the possibility of it happening. Well, this is how powerful society's influence can be. You ignore it, it ignores you. Choices? Face it or fear it.

I'll leave it at that as I have no concrete solution to myself for that. I still do what I always have done. Go through it and try to make it out alive in one piece (emotionally speaking).

Next issue is now that I know I screwed it up, what do I do? break down and cry? Nah.. Never happen, and I'd like to keep it at that. So? try Invent time machine and go back in time and study harder for it? I might as well go and sell my time marchine and become a millionaire. Reflect, Learn and Prepare? duh.. this is a no-brainer for any educated person. So here it goes..

Reflect: I think I know just exactly what went wrong. Most of it could be corrected except for a few fundamental issues that snowball the whole thing. That is the lack of drive and motivation to excel, the lost of ambition to compete and the absent of sense of achievement. Why would I want to excel in sth I'm not interest in excelling in? Why am I trying so hard to fit in where I don't exactly want to belong? Why should I battle so hard for sth I'm not proud of winning? Some of these questions do pop up every now and then, and they bother me a great deal sometime. Most of the time I shoo them away by telling myself that I should stay focused and work hard. To keep it short, the bottom line is do I hate my course? Well, I recently have a good answer to that. I like learning what is being taught but not studying them.

Learn: What do I learn from this experience? To never pull and all nighter before your paper, and drink 2 cans of redbull. It never work! I totally got pwned by Mugging for Dummies and How to be a Mugger 101 lol but I had no choice though. It was either do or do (lol the word "die" is pretty sensitive in my school now I shall not use it too lightly). On a more serious note, life's like that. No payne No gayne yerrhh!

Prepare: Well, first thing gotta get ready for worst in my results, of course. And depending on how bad they turn out to be, I will have make up for it in year 3 and 4. All I'm saying is IF it is bad, hahaha I'm still clinging on to that little hope that it isn't that bad although I'm usually pretty accurate at judging my own performance in study.

Yesterday, I had a small disagreement with my group mate regarding our report feedback. My take on the feedback form is to reflect my opinion on each member truthfully. His, however, is to falsely reflect that the project went smoothly and everyone put in equal contribution so that it shows that we have a good teamwork because if the tutor feels that there is no teamwork, he could deduct our score. So he’s saying that I should put a decent comment even on a member who refuse to participate, never listen, and produce rubbish work just to make others’ life more miserable. And he’s my group leader. This put me off completely. I felt like I should no longer need to put effort into the project anymore. Anyway, how high our grade goes is already limited by how much rubbish the person gave us. To him, it may be just a stupid feedback form for us to waste more time trying to show how good our group is but to me, it’s the only form of reflection that I have to show my view on this project and who is putting in effort and who’s not. Well, eventually, I stop caring so much about the whole project and just do my part and leave it be.

Through this small situation, I noticed something. This is actually one of the classic cases of ethical issue that happen in a project. Some people choose to hide the truth when they know the truth will hurt them. My question is: “is this ethical?” or “do you even care?” It also reminds me of something he mentioned back then on the death case of the NTU student. We were discussing about the many rumors that have been circulating around on whether he was attacker or a victim and whether the case is related to the suicide case of the NTU staff. He was blaming the school and the media for covering up the truth and exaggerating the facts. Then he said, “Why don’t they just tell us the truth? all I want to know is the truth.” And now he’s contradicting himself. If I were to re-quote his statement back to him, he’d probably just shrug and say that they are totally unrelated. Are they? Contextually, No, they are not related, but Ethically, Yes, they definitely are.

Refer to: Chiyo no Chichi's entry on Monday, December 01, 2008

I found it very intriguing to me personally and it makes my fingers itchy. But since he doesn't have a comment box and I don't think a tag box can accommodate my long winded-ness. So yeah I'll take one entry to respond to that.

Well, I couldn't agree more with you. It's easier to understand them from where you are since it's a developed country but when it comes to people in poor country like mine, I can't comprehend them at all. They spend too much money on what they want and too little on what they need. At one point, it seems as though what they need is what they want. But I have to say that having what you want effortlessly does breed a bad habit.

Hehehe, anyway working really opens your eye, doesn't it? I have to disagree with you one thing though. Even though, money is hard to make, that's why I can afford to spend what I earned myself on what I want with no guilt. I would also be willing to spend my 1 month salary to go to UK for 1 week (if 1 month salary is enough lol).  Why? Because, if I don't go now and I may regret it later since it's not sth you can do anytime like going playing sport or going shopping. If I wait till I'm older, I may lose the adventerous spirit due to work pressure and stuff, and you may not be so free to get me around anymore since you'll be working too. Furthermore, right now, I don't have family (well, I do have family but I'm refering the one that I'm solely respsonsible for. I don't mean to insult your intelligence but I just bracket as pre-emption, in case you shoot back. :P) so majority of my salary would go to indulging my personal needs and wants. When family comes under our responsibility, we'll definitely have to redefine the term "financial planning". Yeah well, that's only how I see though.