Yesterday, I made another decision. I had agonised over it for weeks and weeks, and if I could, I would have put it off until the decision was taken off my hands. Because, I really do not want to make that choice. Because then at least I can disclaim responsibility for the consequences of the aftermath. Unfortunately, that was not possible.
There were two choices before me. Whichever option I chose, I know what the consequences will be and that I will not like either of those consequences. I know that, whatever I decide, there will be this hollow aching feeling in my heart and the sinking feeling that I had destroyed or foresaken something dear to me.
I made the choice that I think will hurt the people I care for less. I made the choice that I think is the rational one in the long run. I made the choice that I think, my conscience can live with. In other words, as per my usual practice, I allowed my head to rule over my heart once again.
I see the smiles, I sense the excitement, I hear the laughter, I can almost taste the relief in the air. I think that I can live with the consequences of my decision.
And yet, tonight, I can't sleep.
- Mood:
indescribable
To everything there is a season, |
| ecclesiastes 3:1-8 |
- Mood:
contemplative
“When deep injury is done to us, we will never recover until we forgive. Forgiveness does not change the past but it does enlarge the future”
– Mary Karen Read
It brings to mind a conversation I had with a friend, S, when we were discussing the concept of forgiveness. S said that she doesn't hold grudges, and I told her that, by and large I don't, but there are some things which I can't forgive. She said, there is no point to hold such grudges, because it will only end in me being bitter. I kept silent, but my thoughts at that time were that sometimes it is this sense of injustice and bitterness that keeps me going. However, when I read the quote above, I thought, S has a point - why allow something or someone that hurt you so deeply to dictate the course of your life, even if it is just a little bit. Someone who I had already kicked out of or had already voluntarily left my life, and against whom I had already built walls to prevent him or her from coming back in ever again. To forgive but not to forget - surely I have it within me to achieve this.
( Some quotes I came across along the way ... )
- Mood:
pensive
She said that she joined a couple of friends who are spending a year travelling and sent me the link to their blog.
I clicked my way through and scrolled through their many pages - they went North America before going down to South America. And you know what? I am so envious. Not because they have the chance to do something like this, but that they had each other to do it with. I consider myself quite self-sufficient and independent most of the time, and I know that I lead a rich and purposeful life, but I must admit, there are days when I wish I have a companion to share all my experiences with. It is strange, there are days when I think one other person within sight is one person too many, but there are days when I really wish there is someone there with me.
Do you think, do you think I can bring a dog with me to South America (or get one in South America) and have it accompany me on my entire trip? The only problem here is what happens when we return - my mum detest dogs, cats, rabbits (i.e. any pets other than fish), and had more than once told me and my brother (whenever we requested for a cat or a dog) to choose between her or the prospective pet. Thus far, we have chosen her ...
My secondary school years were not my happiest - simply put, there was a serious mismatch between my personality and the school culture. When I left at the end of four years, I was determined to leave it all behind me, sever all my ties so as to speak. I chose a junior college far off the beaten track where I knew none of my classmates, and very few of my schoolmates will go. I chose a course that I knew none of my science-and-maths-mad and Mandarin speaking schoolmates will ever dream of signing up for. I had good friends in my secondary school - these three girls among them - but I wanted to leave everything behind and start afresh. It was for the best, I thought.
My friends did not think so. They left me alone for a while - for the full two years that I was in junior college in fact. I hardly heard of them, let alone see them, so different were the social circles that we were then moving in. I wouldn't say that I miss them terribly during those two years because while I do think of them occasionally, I was enjoying myself immensely in junior college. However, my friends got back in touch with me when we entered university, and it was as if we had never been apart.
They gave me my space when I needed space to recuperate, and once they figured that I have sulked enough, they came after me, grabbed me and held on.
We are four very different girls, but somehow we became very good friends. I never knew what I did to deserve such strong and steady friendships, but I give thanks every day that I have them. Thank you my dears, and here's to the next 17 years of friendship (and more!)
P.S. I am leaving this unlocked since I know you girls read this sometimes.
- Mood:
happy
An intriguing article appeared in my Inbox this morning, about the teaching of history in schools. In the article, which was published in The Straits Times, the author lamented how our education system has failed in the teaching of history. As evidence, the author cited a case where 15 year olds at a school band leadership camp named their team 'Hitler' because they admired the dictator's leadership qualities, and another where young Singaporeans have no idea who S. Rajaratnam (a founding father of our country), is.
I wonder if the author realises (maybe she does but she is writing in a state-owned paper after all) that history is dangerous. While history can be a tool for "nation-building" (more correctly known as propaganda), the study of history is actually a training of the mind - to read between the lines of contemporaneous documents, the self-serving statements of persons with legacies to protect, and the words of the man-in-the-street, whose views and recollections are necessarily influenced by her circumstances, both at the time a "historical" event has occurred and how she has fared since then. A historian is not a person with a memory for dry facts and figures, but a person who is trained to look underneath the underneath. She does not only have to aware of the biases and the worldviews of the persons she is interviewing or who had written the records she is studying, she has also, to the extent possible, be self-aware of her own biases and her own worldview. It requires a person to be analytical, to be clear-minded and ruthlessly self-questioning and to ask hard questions. It is my two years studying history at A Levels that taught me the merits of doing intense research, of tracking down that one reference in a thousand page book to an obscure research paper that leads you to another aspect of the issue which you had never considered, of reading widely and finding odd correlations and relationships that you never realise exist, and then to put together the various nuggets of seemingly unrelated or distantly related information to form a coherent picture that may be different from what you had believed to be correct.
Teach students history well (goodness that is a load of unwritten and unspoken assumptions here) - and you are teaching them to ask many probing and possibly uncomfortable questions about our accepted view of the past, the carefully crafted story known to every single Singaporean child who ever studied in our education system about how Singapore came to be - the story of hardworking immigrants who through sheer hard work and with no intention of ever settling down permanently here created this modern city state that we call home. The story of how we are an accidential nation, thrown out of Malaysia as we did not believe in special rights of any one race, who nobody ever thought will survive for long as an independent nation state. The story of how, under the leadership of our wise and capable and incorruptible leaders, we have became what we are today. Still a little red dot, but a little red dot that all of us are proud of.
Do we want to put the tools for tearing down this cherished and almost-sacred worldview in the hands of our young? To allow them to become truly independent, tireless, curious questioners? To allow them the means to pull our almost-mytical leaders off their dais?
During my training to become a museum guide at the Asian Civilisations Museum, I learnt that Shiva is the god of death and destruction and is hence feared. However, he is also admired, because the Hindus understand that without death, there can be no new life, without destruction, there can be no new creation.
- Mood:
tired
""Dictatorial systems make one contribution to their people which leads them to tend to support such systems — freedom from the necessity of informing themselves and making up their own minds concerning these tremendous complex and difficult questions.” The authoritarian follower, Eisenhower suggested, desired nothing more than insulation from the pressures of a free society."
From this article.
There is indeed comfort in just following orders - it is so much easier to just obey as opposed to think as to whether obedience and adherence to the norm is correct in this particular case. The older I get, the more tempting it is, to just go with the flow. Why fight? Why not just do what everyone does? If so many people do it, it must be right, mustn't it?
- Mood: groggy
I was interested. A few of my friends had gone down that path - it seems to be a good springboard out of Singapore and I always wanted to go NY. The big obstacle was the fees. I could just about afford the fees, but not the costs of living in NY. My friend pointed out that I had financed my undergraduate education via bank loans, and I can do the same with my postgraduate education. It is different, I retorted - the bank loan for my undergraduate education was interest-free until six months after graduation, by which time I was settled into a nice-paying job, the bank loan for this bears interest from the date of draw-down, and even a person as bad at numbers as I am know that you don't fool around with compound interest. I would have exhausted my financial reserves and gone into debt just to pursue a post-graduate degree. Pssh, my friend said, the starting pay of a new lawyer in NY is so high that you'll pay off the debt in no time. And he was right - even now, after six years of working experience, my pay is less than the starting pay of a NY lawyer in a big firm (even after their pay cuts and pay freezes). And in those days, it seems that law firms in NY were hiring anyone who breathes.
Still, I hesitated. I had just got out of debt at that time, debt that I did not incur, but which I still had to pay. I had a brother in university, who I was partially responsible for financially. I have semi-retired parents. Given the circumstances, to take a year off and then come out of that year in debt seems foolhardy. It was a difficult decision - the heart says, go. the head says, you can't. And there is no right or wrong decision on this - either way, a price must be, and is indeed, paid.
Looking back, as the consequences of the decision are now increasingly apparent, I am wistful, but I know that even if I can, I would not have changed anything.
We live with the consequences of our decisions, and all we can do is to smile, grimly or otherwise, and move on with our lives.
The article that inspired the ramblings above.
- Mood:wistful
- Mood:wistful
X thinks work experience can soften us, as we lose the haughtiness from our schooling days and become more aware of our weaknesses (and hence more understanding with regard to those of others as well).
It generated a number of interesting comments, all in agreement. One, evidently a teacher, said:
" I used to tell my students to appreciate the years they have in school cos it will be the only time in life when their hard work will always produce proportionate results. when they start work so many other factors beyond their control come into play."
Perhaps it is part of growing up - but how true. The older I get, the more I felt that meritocracy in the real world is but sound and fury, signifying nothing.
- Mood:
moody
- Mood:
bored
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karenjem5 called me up one day when I was at work and said that she had a classmate mad enough to adopt two children from Cambodia, and upon realising after the children are in Singapore that they had been trafficked, went back to Cambodia and adopted their two remaining siblings and now wants to set up a charity to prevent child-trafficking in Cambodia. This friend wants to establish a charitable trust under Singapore law and since I am probably the only trust lawyer karenjem5 knows who is likely to be interested, can I please help her review and amend the draft trust deed. karenjem5 and I spent an evening at her home hammering out the trust deed, while wolfing down fried rice and washing that down with root beer. That must have been some three or four years ago. I guess I fell in love with Cambodia when I visited it on holiday in 2006, my last overseas trip before I started my post-graduate programme. As a history and culture buff, I enjoyed myself tremendously at Siem Reap - the Angkor Wat Archaeological Park is one place that I really wish to go back and spend weeks photographing. However, what touched my heart are the people - the gentle genuine people that I met, and the grinding poverty that so many of them live in. I was quietly horrified by the presence of sweet-faced children at the archeological park, experienced in posing for photos by trigger-happy tourists while asking for sweets or tips. I was uncomfortable when child hawkers called out to me - buy my scarves so that I have money to go to school! And I wondered how the tuk-tuk driver felt when he drops us off at restaurants where a dinner for three cost more than his entire earnings for the day. I remembered wandering around Phnom Penh and noting the preponderance of NGOs, realised that these NGOs are providing services that you would expect the government to provide - social welfare, education and training, healthcare, and I mused if this NGO network has become a crutch for this war-torn country, and if it will be able to wean itself off this crutch. I visited my sponsored child at World Vision, saw all the programmes that World Vision has carried out in the project, and while I am impressed, I quietly wondered just how much of my monthly contributions go towards donor management.
When I returned, I cast an more interested eye on Riverkids, and made monthly contributions. I did spread word of Riverkids to my friends and colleagues, and some of them also became contributors to the cause but I wasn't really active. Despite my increased interest, my life was a swirl of activities that took up all my time - work, guiding at the museum, volunteering at Food From The Heart, pursuing my part-time post-graduate degree, travelling, having brief flings with roller-blading, tennis, gym, salsa, photography and getting dragged into and escaping out of various churches and Buddhist organisations, sorting out the messes, both financial and emotional, that I found myself in. It was a mad mad period and I often found myself physically, emotionally and intellectually exhausted. Riverkids and child trafficking was on my mind, but always always towards the back. There is always another more urgent commitment, a more pressing obligation to attend to.
It is perhaps fitting that this advocacy trip is my first overseas trip since I completed my post-graduate studies and my life has settled somewhat.
- Mood: contemplative
This line by Jon Steward about what he assumes the press should be applies to Singapore too, don't you think?
I’m under the assumption, and maybe this is purely ridiculous, but I’m under the assumption that you don’t just take their word for it at face value. That you actually then go around and try and figure it out.
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- Mood: thoughtful
My plan for 2010 was essentially, get a job overseas (hopefully Hong Kong or China), and leave Singapore, and I was so looking forward to it. Then of course the credit crunch took place, and threw a big fat spanner into the works. So now, surveying the wreckage of my long-cherished plans, I decided it is time to plot my next move if things don't change quickly, and I'll like some ideas from you guys and gals out there. I have been brain-storming for a couple of months and here are some ideas - what do you think? I like my current job, mind you - if I stay on in Singapore and in law I'll stick to this firm unless they kick me out. Poll #1364793 The Way Forward
Open to: Friends, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 5
What do you think I should do in 2010?
View Answers
Travel in Latin America for four months and hope that the economy recovers by mid-2010
1 (20.0%)
Travel in China for four months and hope that the economy recovers by mid-2010 0 (0.0%)
Do a postgraduate degree (full-time) in Chinese law and hope that the economy recovers by 2011 1 (20.0%)
Do a postgraduate degree (full-time) in US law and hope that the economy recovers by 2011 1 (20.0%)
Do a postgraduate degree in history / international relations / museum studies (full-time) as a "gap year" break 0 (0.0%)
Do a degree in interior design or sewing as a "gap year" break 1 (20.0%)
buy private property (with scary mortgage), continue working and forget about the first 6 options 0 (0.0%)
Stay at current job, work at CPA and STEP qualifications and be frugal since times are so bad 1 (20.0%)
- Mood:
bouncy
This is one of my favourite songs!
I was a child who literally couldn't sit still, coupled that with a life-long tendency to sleep in on weekends, Sunday school was a real chore, particularly when we had to sit and sing. Good grief... one of the ways my cousin and I used to entertain ourselves was to fold paper airplanes out of anything we could get our hands on - including the dollar bills that our fathers gave us to put into the collection box - and then testing the paper airplanes. I remember that the planes used to land near our choir master's feet with some regularity!
Looking back, I really pity my Sunday school teachers and choir masters and wonder how they could have put up with us!
Nonetheless, I always have this idea that if you do not finish up your food, the uneaten food will accumulate and be waiting for you when you die and go to some kind of purgatory and you can't leave until you finish up all that rotting and decaying food. Sometimes I get the idea that the you can never finish all that food, it just keeps reappearing. Don't ask me where that idea came from, I am fairly certain that somewhere in my mind I had mashed together the stories from Shakeaspeare and Greek mythology:
- In Hamlet - "I am thy father's spirit, / Doomed for a certain term to walk the night / And for the day confined to fast in fires / Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature / Are burnt and purged away" ;
- Sisphus, who is condemned to roll a huge boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll down again, and to repeat this throughout eternity;
- Tantalus, who was condemned to stand in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low branches. Whenever he reached for the fruit, the branches raised his intended meal from his grasp, whenever he bent down to get a drink, the water recedded before he could get any.
- Mood: sleepy
I took a cab down to the museum today as I was scheduled for a guided tour, and the cab driver had the radio on, playing Mandarin pop. A song in particular triggered memories.
( The innocence of youth )( The only thing I can say is ... )
- Mood: nostalgic
I love this article by Allison Arieff in the New York Times, which is about the magical world of books. There are so many gems in her article that I feel myself almost swooning with ecstasy as I read it.
( Another homage to books ... )
Update: Talk about a coincidence - Books Actually has a new event right now:
Sometimes we find a part of ourselves in a book. Other times, we leave a part of ourselves in it. Recommend another is about sharing that part of you with others. Pick up a card from BooksActually, slip it between the pages of a book and leave a secret note for someone. Or if you’re feeling up for it, make your very own recommendation. Start a conversation with the person in the next aisle, in note-passing fashion. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know them or they don’t know you. Because if we all shared a little bit of us, then we wouldn’t be strangers anymore, would we? |
- Mood: tired
I was pondering this question though, and I think this is what I will do:
- Set up a trust of S$10 million for my parents, giving them a life interest with me having the remainder. They will be fine for the rest of their lives! Hooray!
- Quit my job and spend a year or more doing volunteer work
- Travel round the world, visit all the places I always wanted to go to.
- Go back to school to study - interior design, museum studies, architecture, history
- Change careers and become a interior designer or a curator :-)
- Be a locum lawyer who works on a project basis
Correction (15 February 2009): As one of my friends who read this post pointed out to me earlier this week - we had and will continue to see this type of money during our lifetimes, just that the money is unlikely to be ours.
- Mood: cheerful
2008 was a year of many endings.
Many Deaths...
2008 stood out for the sheer number of deaths that impacted me - Arthur C Clarke, Samuel Huntington, J.B. Jeyaretnam, Loh Hwei Yen
Arthur C Clarke
(16 December 1917–19 March 2008)Arthur C Clarke was the favourite author of my childhood - I spent hours in the library reading his books, and when my secondary school cleared out its library in preparation for the move to the new campus, I picked my way through the garbage centre in the school compound, picking up ragged copies of his books, many missing their covers or with pages dangling. These books accompanied me through many years, many of them finally disintegrating with so much use. Arthur C Clarke introduced me to the mysteries and wonders of science and, in particular astronomy, and opened my mind to the sheer possibilities and potential (and limitations) of mankind. He was also probably single-handedly responsible for my dreams of being an astronomer, and even though I have since walked down a vastly different path, I still retain my childhood love and respect of science and most importantly, my appreciation of just how wonderful and amazing the real world can be in itself, without the need for the leavening of the super-natural, in no small part thanks to this man.
Samuel Huntington (18 April 1927–December 24, 2008)
Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
was a significant part of my A Levels education - History was my joy and passion during those years, and Samuel Huntington brought to mind the happy days spent sitting in class discussing the use and purpose of history, whether it can ever reach the kind of acceptance that economics and other social sciences seems to have achieved etc etc. He opened my eyes to the importance of culture, and lit in me a desire that still exists today to understand more about different countries, different cultures and how these influence how people think, how they make decisions, and ultimately how the world ticks.The ideas of these two men have a significant role in who I am today - a person who strives to be a rationalist, and with an appreciation of culture and the arts. A lawyer who volunteers at the Asian Civilisation Museum, an atheist who is interested in religion, a person who likes to ask "why", a person who strives to understand the world - politically, culturally, scientifically.
Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam (5 January 1926 - 30 September 2008)
Closer to home, the death of JBJ was unexpected. He was my introduction to Singapore opposition politics, which was sparked when my parents return from an opposition rally being conducted at the car park just below our block of flats - I remembered looking up wide-eyed when my dad entered our flat, while in the middle of a conversation with mum, saying - "he will be sued, for sure." "He" is of course JBJ, who was indeed sued by the then Prime Minister (now Minister Mentor) for making allegedly defamatory remarks. I remembered watching him hawk books in Raffles Place, and observing people discreetly pressing money into his hands that far exceed the cost of each book. At first I wondered, why would anyone help a man like that? As I grew older, I understand that it is precisely men like that who we should respect - men who lived for their principles, and not for a multi-million dollar salary. I remembered meeting his son, then President of the Law Society during a seminar by Michael Caplan QC on the Pinochet affair, and wondering, just what does the son think of his father's politics. I may not like his "angry" brand of politics but I respect him as a man of principles and a man who had sacrificed his material comfort in pursuit of these principles. I am not sure that I will ever have that ability to do so.
Loh Hwei Yen (1980 - 27 November 2008)
Hwei Yen - I still do not know how to respond to her death. I don't know her but her death hit way too close to home. One year my junior in law school, married to the brother of one of my hall mates, worked in the same two law firms I have worked in and am currently working in, gunned down in a terrorist attack on a hotel that almost every Singaporean lawyer will stay in if they are in Mumbai for a business trip. Our paths must have crossed numerous times - during school days, at office functions, at weddings and parties. I remembered the shock that went through my office when news of her death came out - almost all of us know her or someone who is connected to her - she is one of us - the illusion that most of us had been under - that we are relatively safe being but a insignificant little red dot with little political or economic clout in the world, and personally as non-combat professionals who are as far from the frontline as it can be - shattered with her death.
( Other Endings ... )
2008 was a year of many endings but every ending is a new beginning ...
- Mood: thoughtful
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