I've realised I almost neglected this blog for a month now. Not that I'm entirely busy or anything, but I just didn't have any inspiration to blog.
Busyness is everyone's prerogative anyway. New things on my plate are now weekly driving lessons. I had my first driving lesson this week, and I did manual. Very tricky business, but I thoroughly enjoyed the feeling of gripping the wheel and feel the car move under my control. 2 ambulances and a jay-walker kind of got into my way. I think I may be switching to learning how to drive auto instead. If all goes well, I'll be taking my TP in June! Seriously driving is a very very useful skill. Today we had a friendly at bowen sec, somewhere in Yio Chu Kang, and thankfully I had 2 friends to drive me there and back. Stef drove me home after camp com meeting on Thursday night too. Thank you my part time chauffeurs!

A couple of weeks back I was walking out from SOA/L back door again, and this time, I was the one who tapped my card. He held open the door, said 'Hi' and 'Thank you' and let me pass first. haha. DEJA VU. Perhaps lawyers and accountants are all gentlemen, business bad boys like to smoke and drink, IS guys like to play com games, while social science guys are few and far between. Hmm, I shall dedicate a separate post on guys and such but it shall be a private entry. HAHA.

WELCOME, MID TERM BREAK!!!

(Seow Cui Shan, this is for you, since you enjoyed the part of his speech so much. The entire speech is even better. Enjoy.)

Adrian Tan is a litigation lawyer at one of Singapore’s top law firms. This is his speech at NTU’s convocation ceremony last year.

Life and How to Survive It

I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give your convocation address. It’s a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation. I say this as a Singaporean and more so as a husband.

My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one. She is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practising at home during conversations between her and me.

On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day telling people how wrong they are. I make my living being disagreeable.

Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one who triumphs is always the wife.

And so I want to start by giving one piece of advice to the men: when you’ve already won her heart, you don’t need to win every argument.

Marriage is considered one milestone of life. Some of you may already be married. Some of you may never be married. Some of you will be married. Some of you will enjoy the experience so much, you will be married many, many times. Good for you.

The next big milestone in your life is today: your graduation. The end of education. You’re done learning.

You’ve probably been told the big lie that ‘Learning is a lifelong process’ and that therefore you will continue studying and taking masters’ degrees and doctorates and professorships and so on. You know the sort of people who tell you that? Teachers. Don’t you think there is some measure of conflict of interest? They are in the business of learning, after all. Where would they be without you? They need you to be repeat customers.

The good news is that they’re wrong.

The bad news is that you don’t need further education because your entire life is over. It is gone. That may come as a shock to some of you. You’re in your teens or early twenties. People may tell you that you will live to be 70, 80, 90 years old. That is your life expectancy.

I love that term: life expectancy. We all understand the term to mean the average life span of a group of people. But I’m here to talk about a bigger idea, which is what you expect from your life.

You may be very happy to know that Singapore is currently ranked as the country with the third highest life expectancy. We are behind Andorra and Japan, and tied with San Marino. It seems quite clear why people in those countries, and ours, live so long. We share one thing in common: our football teams are all hopeless. There’s very little danger of any of our citizens having their pulses raised by watching us play in the World Cup. Spectators are more likely to be lulled into a gentle and restful nap.

Singaporeans have a life expectancy of 81.8 years. Singapore men live to an average of 79.21 years, while Singapore women live more than five years longer, probably to take into account the additional time they need to spend in the bathroom.

So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you’ll have another 40 years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.

Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they’re 50, 40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their convocation. They would be very disappointed that they didn’t meet their life expectancy.

I’m here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy.

After all, it’s calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want to expect being average.
Revisit those expectations. You might be looking forward to working, falling in love, marrying, raising a family. You are told that, as graduates, you should expect to find a job paying so much, where your hours are so much, where your responsibilities are so much.

That is what is expected of you. And if you live up to it, it will be an awful waste.

If you expect that, you will be limiting yourself. You will be living your life according to boundaries set by average people. I have nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be them. And you don’t need years of education by the best minds in Singapore to prepare you to be average.

What you should prepare for is mess. Life’s a mess. You are not entitled to expect anything from it. Life is not fair. Everything does not balance out in the end. Life happens, and you have no control over it. Good and bad things happen to you day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. Your degree is a poor armour against fate.

Don’t expect anything. Erase all life expectancies. Just live. Your life is over as of today. At this point in time, you have grown as tall as you will ever be, you are physically the fittest you will ever be in your entire life and you are probably looking the best that you will ever look. This is as good as it gets. It is all downhill from here. Or up. No one knows.

What does this mean for you? It is good that your life is over.

Since your life is over, you are free. Let me tell you the many wonderful things that you can do when you are free.

The most important is this: do not work.

Work is anything that you are compelled to do. By its very nature, it is undesirable.

Work kills. The Japanese have a term ‘Karoshi’, which means death from overwork. That’s the most dramatic form of how work can kill. But it can also kill you in more subtle ways. If you work, then day by day, bit by bit, your soul is chipped away, disintegrating until there’s nothing left. A rock has been ground into sand and dust.

There’s a common misconception that work is necessary. You will meet people working at miserable jobs. They tell you they are ‘making a living’. No, they’re not. They’re dying, frittering away their fast-extinguishing lives doing things which are, at best, meaningless and, at worst, harmful.

People will tell you that work ennobles you, that work lends you a certain dignity. Work makes you free. The slogan ‘Arbeit macht frei’ was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps. Utter nonsense.

Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway.
Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself.

I like arguing, and I love language. So, I became a litigator. I enjoy it and I would do it for free. If I didn’t do that, I would’ve been in some other type of work that still involved writing fiction – probably a sports journalist.

So what should you do? You will find your own niche. I don’t imagine you will need to look very hard. By this time in your life, you will have a very good idea of what you will want to do. In fact, I’ll go further and say the ideal situation would be that you will not be able to stop yourself pursuing your passions. By this time you should know what your obsessions are. If you enjoy showing off your knowledge and feeling superior, you might become a teacher.

Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don’t, you are working.

Most of you will end up in activities which involve communication. To those of you I have a second message: be wary of the truth. I’m not asking you to speak it, or write it, for there are times when it is dangerous or impossible to do those things. The truth has a great capacity to offend and injure, and you will find that the closer you are to someone, the more care you must take to disguise or even conceal the truth. Often, there is great virtue in being evasive, or equivocating. There is also great skill. Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence.

In order to be wary of the truth, you must first know it. That requires great frankness to yourself. Never fool the person in the mirror.

I have told you that your life is over, that you should not work, and that you should avoid telling the truth. I now say this to you: be hated.

It’s not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you? Yet every great figure who has contributed to the human race has been hated, not just by one person, but often by a great many. That hatred is so strong it has caused those great figures to be shunned, abused, murdered and in one famous instance, nailed to a cross.

One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong.

The other side of the coin is this: fall in love.

I didn’t say ‘be loved’. That requires too much compromise. If one changes one’s looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.

Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.
Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the truth worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.

Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn’t happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.

You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.

You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.

Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.

Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.

Recently, 3 of my close friends have been having relationship problems. One is having a long distance relationship, the other two are not on communicating terms. It has been constantly bugging them and causing them to lose sleep. It is depressing to see my friends in such a state, and to learn of the reality of relationships. Breakups, misunderstandings, and quarrels are not easy to handle. These three couples are all in different stages of life, e.g. one is studying in university, while the other is working/serving in the army etc. On the other hand, I have friends who are happily attached but they are both studying in the same school. I guess the true test of the relationship is when people don't date in school anymore. 


This is part of Adrian Tan's speech at NTU’s convocation ceremony last year. He is a litigation lawyer at one of Singapore’s top law firms.

The other side of the coin is this: fall in love.

I didn’t say ‘be loved’. That requires too much compromise. If one changes one’s looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.

Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.
Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the truth worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.

Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn’t happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.

You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.

You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.

Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.



 

 

Because I don't have lessons on mondays! Spent my monday doing a bit of work and baking kueh lapis for CNY with my mum. Baking it is hard work and a great test of one's patience, as it takes about 3-5 mins to bake every layer.

Last night/ early this morning a crazy stray cat came into my house, climbed up all the way up to the third storey steps, and woke me up. Thankfully it didn't come into my room. It was meow-ing/ purr-ring in a very loud voice and disturbed my entire family at about 5am. My mum switched off the lights and it got scared and made more noise and bolted out of the house. My dog, who is useless and lazy, apparently did nothing about it. What a bother. There are weird things coming into my house now and then, because the side patio door is left open. Occassional visitors are flying fruit bats, dragonflies, and moths. Which reminds me of yesterday's sermon;

Proverbs 30:28 
28 a lizard can be caught with the hand,
       yet it is found in kings' palaces.

The context of it was that even something so insignificant and small can still enjoy the riches of the King's palace.
Be faithful in the little things, and you will still get your rewards.

After a lesson of having massive words being cramped into my head (B Law), I walked out by the back door of SOA/L. Just as I was about to take out my matric card to tap, there was a guy approaching from the other side. He spotted me, quickened his pace, took out his card, tapped it, swung open the door, greeted me with a smile, and held the door open for me to pass. I thanked him and almost couldn't believe what happened. Gentlemanly-ness is rare in sem 2, now that I don't share classes with Mr Kaimin Chan anymore. Kai is really the epitome of a gentleman; where can you find a guy who, every day, every class, every break, every meeting, holds doors, lifts, and laptops for the damsels in distress of SMU. Well done boys, and keep it up.

I started sem 2 by walking into a corp reporting class by accident, discovering that half my FA group modelled for bondue bash, and dealing with anal security guards. Other than that, all's been well and good. I've got a great LTB group, a crazy prof, meaningful modules, and the perfect tues-thurs timetable, with only one morning class. 

I've only got one resolution for the new year: To pass driving :)

Lee JW this is your cookie which I told you i baked but since I met you so many days after I baked it I didn't think it tasted good enough!
Enjoy looking at it!



The most productive activity of my holiday, besides shopping, was spent baking the entire alphabet, forming people's names with it, and giving them away as Christmas presents.
Haha. Just felt like posting something up.
Back to school tomorrow.

Paper and pen work best for me. Typing on the laptop always makes my writing feel a bit distant, impersonal, as though I'm doing an assignment of some sort, as the red and green lines attack my phrasings occasionally. Typing out a post for my blog always takes me ages, especially when there are so many distractions online, thus, from today onward, I shall pen down my thoughts and type it out here. I used to keep a journal since I was 10, and write very frequently, a couple of times per week. I stopped the habit in J1 after I got a blog, but then I realised that blogging can never take the place of old-school journaling.

I have a whole collection of those nice lined books lying in a pile, so instead of leaving them in one corner, I figured I should just use them. Some were gifts from friends and others I bought myself cause the cover design was nice! So much for not judging a book by its cover. I read somewhere that professional writers use moleskins to jot down their ideas on the go, but I don't write at that level yet.
I would think that 'Words' is my strongest love language, as I would rather receive a heartfelt, sincerely written card than the most expensive present in the world. I am not a linguist, but the way language is used to convey something truly amazes me. Like saying ' I Love You' to someone may make that person weak in the knees, and stir up tons of emotions. Or sometimes how a simple 'Thank You' may just make someone's day. Especially on Sundays and public holidays, I try to say thank you to bus drivers, especially when I take public transpor home at unearthly hours. I think of their families back home without them, and how tough it must be to work the graveyard shift.

I didn't dread writing English compositions in school, Chinese essays are a different story. I always feel a sense of accomplishment after writing an essay. If not well written, I would be harbouring the mistakes committed, and it would bug me for days. My handwriting has changed over the years, according to the seasons, my mood, and the instrument I'm holding.

Last week I walked into MPH and bought a book entitled 'Lost For Words' by Lorelei Mathias, (we all need of a good chick-flick once in a while), and I found this wonderful quote ' To speak personally, the very reason I write is so that I might not sleepwalk through my entire life.' -Zadie Smith

The entire holiday season is almost gone, and I've spent it attending and organising church events, attending camps, sleepovers, going on a holiday trip with the family to HK/ShenZhen, meeting up with people, Christmas shopping, giving tuition and doing CIP.
During my holiday trip with my family it just dawned upon me that my siblings are growing up so fast. I used to remember past trips when they were still kids, now they've matured and grown and changed. My brother enjoys shopping now, siblings are getting more vain, we squabble less, and conversation is peppered with intellectual humour and maturity. I really treasure times like these, I seldom hear of my peers taking holiday trips with their families anymore at this age.

I sound as though I'm celebrating Thanksgiving instead of Christmas, but I truly am very thankful for so many things. Hosting MHS and having Siska stay over at my place made me realise that I am indeed very lucky to have such a nice home to go back to everyday. Seeing the beggars in Shenzhen eat out of the dustbin is really heart-wrenching. It made me re-think how I spend my next dollar, and to be a good steward of my resources. This morning Pastor W said ' I wish you a commercialised-free Christmas' and so I decided that this year my Christmas gifts would not be elaborate.
 
Today's the big match day, SG vs Viet and Pool vs Arsenal, so I better get going!

Deck the halls and ring those bells and have a very merry Christmas :)