The quarter-life crisis

"To deride the hopes of progress is the ultimate fatuity, the last word in poverty of spirit and meanness of mind" - Sir Peter Medawar, 1960 Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

One's graduation is a time to reflect upon life, and upon one's education. And I hear this term being bundled around a lot these days, of how people are settling into quarter-life crises. Of how people have no idea of what they want to do.

An article I read by a talented young writer set me thinking. In it, she talked about a friend who was the archetypal model student - straight As student, talented athlete, officer in the army and scholarship holder in the civil service. But when he was discussing his personal statement for admission into an American university, he came up with this statement.

“I have a feeling that education has taught me all about this world, but nothing about myself.”

And this statement is the crux of why we feel quarter-life crisises. An education is supposed to teach us everything that we need to function as grown-ups. At least, that is its premise, and it is something we buy into unconsciously.

Never mind the countless warning bells along the way that tell us that maybe, just maybe, education does not really prepare you for everything in life, or how little it actually does for you as a person.

For me, the warning bells came early. When I was in primary school, I was often bullied by three bigger boys for being a small kid. But because much of the abuse took place during recesses or in between breaks, none of the teachers were aware of it. One day during recess, one of them took my file and I snapped. I gave it to them as best as I could, and of course that landed me in suspension because one of them needed medical treatment. At the age of 8. And I was to get two suspensions before the year was out.

My parents came to school and scolded me for being a bad kid, but I wondered why nobody ever noticed that maybe I was a victim of bullying. It was then I realised that maybe, my teachers and my parents, people who were supposedly better educated, they did not know everything.

In secondary school, I got a lesson into the inequalities of life, and the systems that perpetuated it. A scion of a powerful family in Singapore was admitted into my class, despite being less than qualified for the school. And the teachers virtually bent over backwards to let him promote to the next year although he failed every single subject and showed no interest in doing anything other than disrupting our classes. It made me wonder why I even worked hard at all. Was it because I did not come from a distinguished background?

Now, decades on, I see that like any institution, education is not without its flaws. The purpose of education often trumpeted as an ideal has its foundations in democratic forms of government, where the emphasis is on developing rational and enlightened individuals able to collectively decide the best course for their country in the future. The focus is on developing well-rounded individuals, healthy in body and spirit, while filled with a burgeoning curiosity about life.

However, the purpose of education that is the reality here is often more harsh and unforgiving. It is focused solely on grades and other benchmarks of success, so as to funnel people into different stratums of ability. It purports to do as the fairest way to ensure that everyone gets what they deserve, that the most capable get the best jobs and hence the best lives, without recognising that many times, it is not just the most capable but the most well-connected and privileged that have the tools to fast-track themselves into those lives.

Education here is a tool to feed the economic machinery, to keep it running, and to sift out the populace into the different roles within that machinery. It takes little into account who you are as a person, it is more interested in making you into a cog within a large whirring and clicking system of gears and crankshafts. It is why upon graduation many of us are quickly funneled into large soulless bureaucracies, where we find little emotional satisfaction.

But we are humans, we are many things apart from a cog. We have hopes, aspirations and dreams, many of which cannot be fulfilled simply by being a part of someone else's blueprint for the future. But, many times, our circumstances dictate whether we ever get to break free and seek out these dreams.

I've spent much of my educational life seeing less qualified peers leapfrog over me because their parents had more money to buy better degrees for them. I've survived a less than intellectually stimulating education, mostly by pursuing my own education outside of the curriculum picking up skills and reading.

When people ask me why I didn't choose a scholarship, I simply tell them that selling oneself into an organisation should not be the only way one can get a good education. You have no idea what you are selling away, those four or more years of your life. The time and freedom you give away is often a greater price than you imagine.

Many of us are aware of what we are signing ourselves into when we decide to embark on scholarships. But we are not sure if we are ready to give up our dreams and hopes, because once we go into these organisations and become part of the machinery, it becomes that much harder to escape. We think that these organisations will help us fulfill our dreams. But years later, many find that apart from money, they grew little as people.

But if we do not choose the security and privileges that the iron rice bowl provides, we face disapproval from society in general, for being unemployed, for being jobless, for studying in less famous schools, for trying to find ourselves before others take even that away from us.

This is why I challenge that your socioeconomic status actually determines more than any one factor whether you get to live a fulfilling life, have a fulfilling education. The rush for upward social mobility is really to escape this machinery, to finally find a life that is your own. It is the reason why education is often the means to an end, rather than the end in itself.

The phrase I often hear from my friends is "I wish to be my own boss." The reason that is so is, people who do that are able to live out their dreams. Work in something they are passionate about, take time off to do things they are interested in. The rest of us, we are just tools to fulfill others' dreams.

Even in our schools, we are made acutely aware that some of us are destined for greater things, and some of us are just cogs. Look at our clubs and societies. How many are the presidents, and how many are just members. We are socialised into our future roles in society. I'm not arguing that it is impossible to make something of yourself despite your circumstances. I'm just saying that it is a lot harder to. Access to the right education determines if you will develop the right skills or meet the right people so you can do that.

As individuals, there is often little we can do about circumstances. As Mills once said, we live life feeling as though we are trapped, and by what, we are often seldom aware of. But I challenge that no matter what, it is most important to find yourself first, what you want out of life, what you really want to do. It will not be easy, it is a path fraught with failure, difficulty and probably even social disapproval.

But once you do, and you know what you want out of life, no one can take that away from you. You will seek out a life that gives you satisfaction, and the rest of that life will be filled with the meaning that all before it lacked.

Décembre.

As the end of the year comes around, one looks back at how much has passed, and how quickly. It is as though one has turned another corner in life, like many before it. Before one can flip the page to the next chapter, it is inevitable that one has to close the page on a previous one. And perhaps, that is what December is.

At this time last year, I was about to embark on an internship. And now, that same internship is a faded memory, a yellowed news photograph sitting atop a pile of books, a few news clippings carefully pressed into an old file. I go through that file sometimes, and I laugh at all the silly things I had to do to get some of those stories. What was I thinking, I say to myself. And then I laugh again.

Once in a while, I take a journey down memory lane, the product of a lively mind that enjoys a leisurely stroll through verdant green lawns filled with life's moments, recollecting sights, smells and sounds according to how I remember them. I slow down as I relive the little joys of those days, the displays of mirth that coloured my days with laughter, the tacky jokes cracked over lunch that made the girls cringe, their annoyed protestations that I now sorely miss.

However, as with many things in life, I recognise that these are all but phases, points in time, and I am happy that they happened, but I also accept that they are past, and in those fleeting moments, I feel a palpable sense of loss.

In some of those moments I truly lived, in some of those moments I wished time to stop. But although time stops for no one, I am not perturbed. I know that I will have more of these moments, and every day is a gift, a blessing, a new lease to discover new things. Things to hold dear, things to hold near, things to reminisce about over cups of tea.

And I am reminded that the next time I look back on this month, I would have graduated from university. I would be in a different place yet again, and this year would become yet another trail in the garden of the mind, one that I can wander off into on a lazy afternoon, another rabbit hole to run into, to explore till its end, where the recollection stops.

And I know that I'm getting older. The legs don't run as fast as they used to, I sleep a bit more than I used to, and I have more trouble keeping the weight off. I'm also starting to get used to the fact that I don't look like a student anymore, because no one mistakes me for one these days. The first question people pose to me now is inevitably "where do you work, and how long have you been there", when it used to be "are you still studying? what course?" I've become so used to it that when a Caucasian girl told me recently that she thought I was 15, I got so happy a grin broke out from ear to ear and I could not wipe that stupid grin off my face for the better part of ten minutes after that. The joy of being deluded, if only for awhile.

And when I see my younger friends laugh and joke about their freshman year, I'm reminded of what it was like when I was one myself. Don't get me wrong, I certainly don't wish to be a freshman again because I'm in a better place now, but their innocence and naivete does get to me at times.

How they laugh at simple things, how they make the silliest mistakes that would be funny as hell if they weren't so bothered about it, like forgetting not to print lecture slides as handouts, and landing up with 80 pages of single slide printouts, jamming the whole printing queue in school and earning the ire of just about everyone in the lab.

The peers my age, everyone's changing so fast. The topics we converse about have changed. They have started talking about jobs, about investments, about where they want to be in 10 years, married, with kids, a car and a nice flat. I miss the days when we would talk about games, soccer, girls, but I accept that my friends have grown up and so have I. Now they talk about girlfriend trouble, office politics, about old classmates that have gone different ways. Sometimes, the gloominess and angst of their lives gets to me. I don't know, is it age that brings forth their cynicism? Perhaps it's the uncertainty of youth, where the world is at your feet, but you have not found your place in it. Perhaps, your destiny is already fixed, and you don't like where you see yourself going.

Perhaps, it is all of these, or none, but it really is little of my concern. Maybe it is all just a show of hubris, a facade to mask the fact that we are all really scared little children that have been forced to grow up against our will, and that some of us have done it better than others, as some always will.

It's really so scary, being grown up. You know that you're about to enter a phase in your life where it will be more of the same, every day, a lifetime of work and commitments. And you wonder if you've lived enough, you wonder if you can still live.

You wonder if you've done enough, you wonder if that's it. You look at your dreams, and you wonder why they are still dreams. You wonder if they'll ever be anything, but dreams. You wonder if it's too late for them. Actually, you know it's already too late for some of them. You've always known. You wonder why you were once told that you could do anything you set your mind to, when you know that its not true. It doesn't look like it will happen.

Right now, some people tell me that I'm so many things, but I don't know what I am. And because of that, I don't know what to be. I don't know where I'm supposed to be, and because of that when I look in front of me, its nothing but a thick fog of uncertainty, into which I stumble, feel my way around, but I am no more sure of where I'm going in its midst than I was before. I ask the walls around me, is that it? And then I feel silly for talking. I ask my friends, but they have no answers for me, because they are looking for some themselves.

And you look at where you're expected to be in a few years, a husband, a spouse, welcoming a new little life into this world, and you get scared, because that's so far away from where you are now. You don't see yourself in it.

I'm not ready, I'm not done living for me. I'm not ready to settle, because I haven't found me.

All throughout history, people have asked about what life is. They want certainty. They want to know many things. They want to know if whatever will be, will be. Life, it's really funny. It's more than you could ever imagine, but it's also simpler than you think. As you live, you find that you change. Your dreams change. Everything that you thought important, they change. Some things become less important, others more so. But some things don't change. There is one thing that I ask myself often.

If I were 80, and about to die, what would I hope that I would be able to do.

The simplicity of that answer often surprises me. I would play my favourite songs on the piano. I would write letters and address them to all the people who matter. I would meet up with long-lost friends, to close those chapters of my life. I would eat my favourite foods. I would revisit the places that mean something to me.

If I'm lucky enough to have a wife and kids, I would tell them that I love them, and I would ask that they love themselves, and those around them. I would ask that they forgive their father for being imperfect, because there is a certain beauty and dignity in being fallible, in being just simply, human. I would ask that they never forget to laugh and smile, because life isn't ever really that hard when you do.

I would ask that someone takes a last photograph of me, with my family, smiling, happy that I was given a gift, the gift of living, of having witnessed life's ups and downs, and I would give thanks that I'd made it thus far. And I would ask that when people think of me, they remember me that way.

I would then make peace with myself, have a good laugh at the life I've had, and go.

And suddenly, I realise that everything I'm doing, it's just the journey on the way to getting there. When I'm 80, I will not remember all of the little things that I used to lose sleep over, all the silly little distractions that were really potholes on the road to self-discovery. I might then realise, that at the end of that road, maybe I've always known who I was all along, it was just about making sure.

Some cool audio stuff

I really like this mashup because its so creative, but so many copies of his face rather freaks me out. But he sings well, he doesn't autotune, which already makes him better than a lot of people out there.

And, if you want to hear a time waster that is really cool, visit this link and click on the listen button

You know you stirred some shit once when...

You know you stirred some major shit once when mrbrown tweets about you. Even if the news is 6 months old, an eternity for a medium like twitter.

Dirty Laundry

Dirty Laundry from lamebook.com

There is a wall, and there is private messaging. The perils when your parents don't know the difference.

Too many jumping in front of trains these days

The MRT train. A mode of transport, a part of the local landscape, and a modified anti-personnel weapon

Has anyone realised the number of train disruptions recently due to people jumping in front of trains. Recently there was just another one at Queenstown MRT, which had the headline "Man dies after being hit."

http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_608842.html

Definitely one of the stupidest and most "duh" headlines ever. One of the comments made a point - Of course the man died after being hit la, why is this news. If he got hit and didn't die, then THAT is news.

This incident really makes me wonder why people would want to go in such an antisocial way. Don't get me wrong, I'm not for people taking their own lives, but if you have decided to opt out of living, please pick a less antisocial way to do it instead of disrupting the lives of thousands, and causing trauma to those who have to witness it.

I've personally witnessed one before, and although it has no effect on me now, I would say its not a pleasant experience for those who have to see such things. I still remember the exact day it happened, and that was 8 years ago.

As for the headline, it would rival the ones that are usually put up like "Man falls onto tracks", which actually try to suggest it was an accident, when everybody knows people don't just go falling in front of oncoming trains.

One of the best studies of the phenomenon of suicides, unsurprisingly called "Suicide" by Emile Durkheim, actually suggests that its impossible to prevent them, and that the number of such cases is an indicator of structural strain in a social system. In other words, the less people feel connected to each other and the more difficult it is for people to achieve the kind of success they want in their lives, the more the rates will increase, and vice versa. As personal as the decision seems, it's really a social phenomenon.

But you know, we have a very ruthlessly efficient system here, calculated to maximise economic gain at the expense of social health. Not a bad thing, if it means we all get rich, but we'll just be inconvenienced once in awhile.

So, the only real function of putting up those barriers is not to prevent suicides, it's just to prevent disruptions to the train service, which cost a lot of money. They just want to route the suicides elsewhere. So, now it's a case of such cases coming to a neighbourhood near you.

Next time when you are walking under HDB flats, watch out for killer litter falling from the skies above.

This is damn funny

Oprah Invites Hundreds Of Lucky Fans To Be Buried With Her In Massive Tomb

You gotta love the Onion. Especially their version of Oprah at 0:20 and the segment of her minions building the tomb.

A ridiculous facebook campaign

Recently, there has been this campaign going around on facebook that I find really ridiculous

"Change your Facebook profile picture to a cartoon from your childhood and invite your friends to do the same,until Monday, Dec. 6. There should be no human faces on Facebook, but an invasion of memories for the FIGHT AGAINST VIOLENCE TO CHILDREN!"

I might be called a cynic for saying this, but let me highlight the reasons why this campaign is ridiculous.

1) There is more than sufficient awareness that children are being abused. It's like saying people don't know that women are being raped, old people are being robbed, wheelchair bound people are being thrown from HDB flats, actually there was just one case like that recently. The question is not whether people know about it, its whether people care enough to do something about it that actually changes things.

2) What does changing a facebook picture and invoking memories do for all these children? Raise awareness? Look at point one. Do we really need more awareness? We need action. You might argue that people will be moved by childhood memories to treat children better, but you have to realise that children can be abused in a lot of ways.

They can be abused by neglect, a lack of love and care, a lack of respect and recognition for their achievements, a misguided belief that violence is the way to discipline, none of which are causes that are likely to be helped anyway by this meaningless campaign. And the people who are likely to be moved by such a plea are not the ones abusing children. It's like preaching to the converted.

Changing a display picture is not action. Signing up and volunteering at an advocacy group is. Donating money is. So is caring for and loving your own children. If you really cared for the cause, you would do one of the above instead of trying to appear socially conscious in a misguided attempt to shore up your social image. Everyone wants to look like they care about social issues, but seriously I'm not impressed. The day it becomes more about the cause and less about your image, talk to me again.

3) If you really cared about the cause, why should this last till just Dec 6? Because children stopped getting abused after that? Because after that people don't need awareness any more? Why not keep the picture there for good? Because you can never spread enough awareness if that's your point isn't it?

4) You know what, maybe I'm going to start liking the pages of all these advocacy groups so people can see that I'm like really socially conscious. Like I love the environment, I love children so much I can't bear to see them being abused, I love cats, dogs, pandas, cheetahs, random critters from the games I play that I sometimes blow up with bombs and missiles but I love them anyway.

Yup, it's a hollow gesture. Maybe that's why I'm not in advertising.

I knew somebody was going to spoof this.

Thanks Mr Brown, for giving this rubbish commercial the treatment it deserves.

This is one clueless dad.

Source: http://www.buzzfeed.com/melismashable/wtf-dad

xinmsn epic fail

I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. If not for the lead, I wouldn't even know the actual date was April 6. If it really was April 29, the joke he cracked in the article wouldn't make any sense would it.

I actually went to google "Michael Buble wedding date", and I think everyone got it right but xinmsn. Anyway I've screenshotted the glaring error and even taken the liberty to add a few beautiful red circles.

xinmsn, the peddler of misinformation.

to the sonofabitch who took my portable hard drive.

To whoever this may concern

You knew that drive sitting there in the CATI lab wasn't yours. And you went ahead to take it. You knew very well it belonged to someone else, and that it might contain important information.

For example, assignments that needed to be submitted that cannot be done so now that you've very happily absconded with my drive instead of turning it over to the lost and found corner.

I'm not asking that you be an ethical person, because I know for you going to hell was long a given, and hell has too many like you. They probably struggle to keep the lid on their cages below there cos dipshits like you keep turning up.

Of all the reasons for going to hell, this is probably one of the worst.

"Oh, I took somebody's portable hard drive once.

"I know right, totally lame reason to be stuck here with the murderers, rapists and animal abusers. I can't even take a bath to cool off in this heat now because I can't bend over to pick up the soap. Damn."

It's behaviour like yours that makes life in school much more unnecessarily difficult than it should be. Everyone loses or misplaces stuff every once in awhile, and it's really nice to know that someone will return it out of goodwill, because we're all students and know what it's like to lose something important.

Don't let me see you around in school because I swear I will fix you. I will find out who you are, and I will find you. And when I do, you will hand over that drive if you know what is good for you.

Because we love our waterpolo team

From http://yfrog.com/08aofzj

I was just joking that the Merlion design should have made it onto our polo team's swim trunks, and someone online designed this. I love it when people have the same sense of humour.

I can't believe this shit. No, seriously.

This fails so bad as an army propaganda video that it's sad. And it's even funnier how the girlfriend says "Oh he works in this huge organisation, its adventurous, and he gets to travel."

Nobody says that, unless they are trying to be deliberately evasive, like if their boyfriend works in a drug cartel or something. In real life, people will just say "Oh he's an army regular" and it stops there. Or maybe they've actually realised that being an army regular is actually quite an unattractive profession.

But this quote takes the cake. "And the best part is, he always has time for me." Finally, an admission that all our regulars do nothing but chao keng. On national TV. Congratulations.

This video is so BOOMZ, I think the girls will never live down acting in it. Forty years down, they will be telling their grandchildren "When I was younger I made a really big mistake. I acted in this video..."

Ready, relevant, decisive? I see none of those qualities here. What I see is an army regular who booked out in uniform to meet his girlfriend, apparently unaware that it's a chargeable offence.

In an unrelated development, I can see why MICA had to act on this. Is it me or is the position of the crescent a little disturbing. LOL.

D'oh.

From http://www.flickr.com/photos/teohyc/5201471706/

Two videos that left me speechless today for two entirely different reasons

A very moving video that I watched today. Nothing fancy, but it left me speechless.
The song is "Kiss the Rain" by Yiruma.



And this is just madness, genius, whatever you call it. Somebody in Youtube commented that God came down to Earth and played piano for 6 minutes. He was close.

the earworm phase

you know how you get earworms sometimes? like an old song you rediscover on the radio, and suddenly you realise that you miss it so much you listen to nothing else but it for the next few days.

yup. I'm in one of those now. and I sing along to the lyrics on the streets and people look at me funny but I don't care. hahaha.

Sorry seems to be the hardest word

References and interviews are key to scholarship selection

I'm referencing the Elton John classic, but I think that this is the exact problem Singapore has. The recent case over the MOE scholar who got a teaching scholarship and was later found to be an avid fan of child pornography caused widespread horror and revulsion, not least because it was a teaching scholarship he was offered.

Parents were left asking, what if he had become a teacher? And I do believe that MOE has to come out and say sorry about the whole affair, that they had selected someone like him to become a future teacher.

Not because they should have seen that he was that perverted or depraved. I will give you that, such behaviour is often hard to detect, even if he had a bad record in secondary school. I actually remember this guy, because he was a junior in my school when I was studying, and the severity of his peeping offence then had sent shockwaves throughout the whole school. But he managed to live a pretty normal life for almost 10 years after that, which kind of hints to you just how difficult it is to really judge the contents of a book if all you can see is its cover.

The whole secondary school affair was hushed up, and he was given a chance to repent, to move on from the whole incident. The fact that he did not take it means that he will live out his life in shame and ridicule, and that is his price to pay.

The current selection criteria does not give any weight to one's disciplinary record for scholarship selection, and I think perhaps that should change. For one, someone who has a record of voyeurism should definitely not be considered ever for a teaching scholarship, no matter what his merits. Perhaps another scholarship, but not teaching, because I think we do expect teachers to have a certain level of moral standing.

MOE should apologise, because like any process, the selection of scholarship candidates is ultimately fallible. MOE needs to come out and say sorry, we screwed up, but we will make our selection criteria stricter in the future.

An apology conveys a genuine recognition that one has made a mistake and is willing to do something about it. Not doing so only gives people the impression that they are unwilling to acknowledge that they had screwed up, that they want to remain immune to criticism, that they hope this whole thing will blow over.

They just want to make it seem like its not us, its just him, when we all know its more than that. I'm not baying for blood here, I just don't want another pervert in our schools. Who knows how many more there are out there, or whether they are already teaching in our schools.

By golly, I'm actually sick of slashing stories in the papers

Paging for The Bride. Got a few gangsters to chop up.

A few months back, they had the Yishun stabbings, then the Kallang stabbings. Now, there are the Downtown East and Bukit Panjang slashings. If you didn't know better, you would think that some vocational school in Singapore was training butchers and they graduated students every three months or so.

And the papers have all gone nuts with gang stories. They assume that we care, but I care to the point where they are locked up in jails, better if they have the death penalty hanging over their heads so they can be removed as menaces to society. I don't see how understanding them more will result in them becoming safer, or make me any more well informed or prepared for a random knife attack.

Maybe the government can start distributing flyers or start public awareness campaigns on "what to do when you are approached by knife-wielding gangsters."

Step One "Run"
Step Two "Look out for glass doors"

My empathy for gangsters as the misunderstood misfits of society ends when they carry knives to the streets and actually kill, or attack innocent people. Like damn, what if that was my family that you chopped up on the streets over there. It's as bad as having tigers and lions from the zoo let loose in the streets. They have sharps, and they kill. Furthermore, tigers and lions are furry and cute, and at least they eat their victims so it doesn't go to waste in the circle of life.

These gangsters, well, I'd be better predisposed to them if they wore tailored suits like those stylish mafiosos above. But I have a feeling the reason they became gangsters was because they couldn't afford tailored suits. For those people who preach reformative training for these crazy gangsters, wait till someone they know actually gets chopped. Then you can go to a Primary One kid and go "Let me teach you new word today. It's spelled h-y-p-o-c-r-i-t-e, and make sure you dot the 'i'."

I actually have a few unique solutions in dealing with these gangsters.

One, we could start issuing age-sensitive licenses to knives. Knives cannot be sold to kids under 21, and each knife must be licensed. Yes, even the ones used to shred your apple peels in the kitchen. The resulting furore from housewives nationwide will ensure that these gangsters get nagged to death. "See what you've done! Now I cannot even chop carrots to cook soup because my knife had no serial number and got confiscated! Why are you so stupid!"

Alternatively, another solution concerns our very flexible immigration policy. We should have a flexible export policy as well. We can export all these people. It's not very hard, just pack them in crates like those DHL commercials and send them to like Siberia. Of course we cannot let our neighbours know, or we will have bad bilateral relations.

Otherwise, we could start staging gladiatorial games in our soon to be built National Stadium, where we pit one group of slashers against another group. The last remaining survivor gets a prison term, the rest just die. We can also open up the games to betting in Singapore Pools. Ultimate win-win. We monetise our criminals, kill them off for entertainment, and use the money to fund their imprisonment. Maybe there might even be a movie deal in there somewhere. Damn, I'm brilliant.

The College as a Philanthropy. Yes, a Philanthropy.

Weili: This is the kind of letter I wish the president of NTU was able to write. Not some tripe about why the school's ranking has fallen but it is not his fault. Because if anything, it IS his fault. But no, I guess he makes no attempt to hide that our university is a business, and the students suffer because of it.

October 31, 2010

Gwenda Kaczor for The Chronicle

By Dick Merriman

After spending most of my adult life in private higher education, I've concluded that most of our students are unprepared for college. They may be academically ready and emotionally mature, but they don't understand what a college is or what its motives and mission are. Because they don't understand those things, they are often unprepared to meet our expectations. Worse, they are unprepared to receive the gifts we are waiting, and hoping, to give them.

The way students don't understand college was crystallized for me several years ago in a meeting with a student. She had come to see me to voice a complaint, which went roughly like this: "I've learned that a teammate on my sports team is receiving more institutional financial aid than I am, even though she isn't as good a player as I am, and she's not making as important a contribution to the team as I am. In the interest of fairness, I would like you to increase my aid."

This student's evident emotional turmoil made it clear that something bigger than wanting "more" was happening. It eventually came out, through tears, that her family was struggling financially, and she felt she needed to lighten her parents' financial burden. That was easy to address once the true problem was made clear.

The question the meeting raised, and the question I couldn't stop puzzling over afterward, was why it hadn't occurred to this student to come to me and say, "I have a problem, and I need the college to help me." Clearly it never crossed her mind that her relationship with the college would permit such a request for help.

Many subsequent events and conversations have confirmed that our students, and their families, and many others, don't understand what a college is. In an era of increasing competition from for-profit colleges, and facing heightened regulatory scrutiny, institutions with selfless motives and service missions would be wise to find their voices and make their intentions clear.

I've tried to find, and raise, my college's voice, and to address, in various settings, this issue of what a college is. The best opportunity I've found—because freshmen will still listen to the president at this point—is when I welcome our new class to the campus. Here is what I say, with variations, each fall:

We have a strong tendency in our society today to look at things from the perspective of the consumer. We want to be smart shoppers. We want to make a good buy. We love a bargain. We don't want to get a bad deal.

People often speak of "shopping for a college." Maybe you and your parents used that phrase in the past year as you visited colleges. It would follow from that perspective, wouldn't it, that you, the customer, are here to purchase your higher education?

Another way the consumer perspective shapes thinking about college relates to scholarships and financial aid. Many of you have received academic scholarships, which reflect your academic promise as revealed by your high-school grades or your ACT or SAT scores. And many of you have received scholarships related to your planned participation in the performing arts, service learning, and athletics. The consumer perspective would prompt you to think that the college is "paying" you to come here. That would make you a kind of commodity, a bundle of talents and experiences that the college has decided to purchase.

I want to be clear with you: You are not a customer here. You are something much better than that. You are not a commodity here. You are something way better than that. The reason you are not merely a customer or a commodity is that this college is not a business.

This college is a philanthropy. If you pay attention to the origins of words and you look at the pieces of that word, "phil" and "anthropy," you know that "phil" means love or esteem or high regard. And "anthropy" means humanity or humankind. The college is a philanthropy, an expression of love and esteem for humankind.

This college exists as a philanthropy because thousands of people, many of whom you and I will never know, have built it over the past 125 years. They built it for your benefit, knowing they would never meet you. The college's facilities, our endowment for scholarships, our mission—all of these have been built, and protected and sustained, for your benefit. They were built so you can gain a college education, find and pursue your passion, and commit yourselves to living a valuable life. In short, this college exists so you can become a better person and, in turn, help make the world a better place.

None of you, not even that very rare student who receives no financial aid from the college, will come close to paying what it is going to cost the college to educate you. You know what? That's OK. That's not a problem. In fact, that is the whole idea. Because you are not a customer, and the college is not a business. This college is a philanthropy, and we have a marvelous gift to give you—a far better education than you can afford, and the opportunity to work with people who truly care about you—and we are able to give this gift to you because of the financial support of thousands of alumni and friends and because the college's people have committed themselves to you.

If you have the money to purchase it, you can go into any McDonald's in the country and they will sell you a Big Mac. But you can't buy a Southwestern College education that way. How much money you have is not the point. If we were to run this college like a business, if profit were our motive, we would probably just focus on educating students who have a lot of money. And a lot of you wouldn't be here today.

But making a profit isn't our mission. Helping you is our mission.

What I'm trying to say is that you may believe you are here because you chose this college. And it is true, of course, that you have something to say about which college you attend. But it is more relevant, and truer, to say that you are here because we chose you. You certainly wouldn't be here otherwise.

So much for being a customer.

Now let me say a few words on the subject of students as commodities. I know that there are lots of messages in our consumer culture that encouraged you, as you advanced through high school, to think of yourself as a bundle of talents and experiences that could be "marketed" to colleges. Right? You were encouraged to participate in a wide range of activities to show that you were well rounded. And you were encouraged to excel at something specific—singing, basketball, writing for the school paper, debate—to show that you were talented. All of this would make you marketable. Right? And you would attract scholarships and financial aid. In short, you were supposed to see yourself as a commodity that colleges would compete over.

But the college is a philanthropy, not a business. And we are here to help you, not to buy you, and certainly not to pay you. The reason to sing in the choir is because you have a passion to sing. The reason to play football is that you love football.

I know—because I ask this question of freshmen every year—that you believe you will lose your tennis scholarship if you quit the tennis team. You think your choir scholarship will vanish if you decide not to sing in the choir anymore. But I've got news for you: You won't lose that scholarship. Your financial-aid package won't be reduced just because your interests or priorities change. Why not? Well, first, because you are supposed to change. That's why you came here. It doesn't make a lot of sense to punish you for it. Second, because we aren't using financial aid to pay you to come here. We are using financial aid to help you afford a college education. The college is a philanthropy.

Now, the fact that the college is a philanthropy doesn't mean that we're all soft and squishy and have no expectations of you. Quite the opposite. We expect a lot of you. We expect you to spend your time here exploring and developing your talents and abilities. There is something you are uniquely well suited to do with your life, something for which you have a passion, something valuable for others. Spend your time here looking for that. We expect you to take yourself seriously, and to take this opportunity seriously.

Our admissions process doesn't make many mistakes in evaluating the academic abilities of students. The students we choose to be here are able to do the academic work that is required to stay here. You can do it. We chose you on that basis.

Because the college is a philanthropy, because we are committed to your growth and development, because we love you, you are permitted to make mistakes here, you are permitted to be confused here, and you are permitted to change your mind and change your plans here. What you are not permitted to do here is waste our time. Because we have made an investment in you. Because we chose you to receive a fabulous gift. All we ask of you is that you honestly make your best effort to capitalize on this opportunity.

Of course, the college also has responsibilities and obligations. They stem from our philanthropic mission. We owe you our very best efforts, in instruction, in our campus-life programs, in the residence halls, in everything we do.

Please make the most of your time here. Let's grow together.

Dick Merriman is president of Southwestern College, in Kansas.

University students complain that they can’t find partners for project work without branded goods

Publication: Lianhe Wanbao
Date: 9 November 2010
Source: LianHe WanBao © Singapore Press Holdings Limited. Permission required for reproduction.

Translation:
Some netizens have posted comments that at SMU if one does not have a car, own branded goods, an iPhone or an iPad, one would be ostracised. Still others say it is a school for the elites. But not all agree. Some others have pointed out that it is not a question of what you have but how you interact with others that determine if one will be accepted. On these incidents, SMU has noted that they are more of an anomaly than a norm.

SMU Dean of Students Assoc Prof Low Aik Meng says, “SMU emphasises an education not just of the mind, but also one which stresses values and character building. All freshmen undergo the Freshman Teambuilding Camp where the SMU Circle Values – Commitment, Integrity, Responsibility, Collegiality, Leadership and Excellence – are instilled in them.

Among numerous ways through which we develop our students is the emphasis on giving back to the community. All students complete at least 80 hours of community service. By the time they graduate, more than half would have exceeded the 80 hours requirement, serving between 120 and 500 hours or more per individual.”

(Article appropriated for criticism/review. Copyright not infringed on defense of fair use, under the Copyright Act - Chapter 63, Section 36, "fair dealing for purposes of criticism and review", which states that "a fair dealing with a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work, or with an adaptation of a literary, dramatic or musical work, shall not constitute an infringement of the copyright in the work if it is for the purpose of criticism or review, whether of that work or of another work, and a sufficient acknowledgment of the work is made.")
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First of all, does anyone realise that what the SMU Dean just said was totally irrelevant to the topic? I find this a problem with older people who have been bureaucratised for too long. They become incapable of thinking, just throwing out the company line to try and make it sound like a statement for every single situation that comes their way. He sounds more like he is trying to sell the values of his school than answering the question.

A problem is not an avenue for you to make a sales pitch. Answer the question that is being asked. For a dean, you make me wonder if you learnt anything at all in primary school. I believe the question is, "How can SMU assist students in finding project partners for projects," not "how does SMU build character in its students." It is akin to being asked the question "Name me the first three letters of the alphabet" and going "1, 2, 3."

As for the students who are complaining, it really depends on who you want to hang out with in SMU. If you want to hang out with the people who have business connections or the "in" crowd (i.e. the rich), obviously you'll be ostracised if you are not rich. That is the reality everywhere, and it is hardly something new or unexpected. In fact, if anything, it is a lot less blatant here. Try studying in the States where they don't even bother to hide that you need certain "credentials" to get accepted into exclusive clubs and fraternities. And to be fair, not all rich people are pricks.

If you want to hang out with other people who are more like you, you will find them everywhere, if you bother to look. No matter where you go, people who own cars before the age of 25 are always the minority. I guess it kind of sucks that you can't join in their supper parties and secret alcohol-fueled orgies that are closed to you because you don't have a car, but well, that's life. Go find a convenience store, drink cheap alcohol and then go grind yourself silly on the dancefloor of Zouk with other smashed 19 year olds.

If you're really hung up about owning branded goods, my friendly neighbourhood shopping mall Eastpoint is having a sale of branded sneakers. Some of them cost just 30 bucks. I wouldn't buy them because they look awful but hell, they're branded. Buy them and you will now gain entry into the club for SMU elites, even if you are wearing ratty 10-dollar pasar malam berms. Doesn't sound like such a bad tradeoff now does it? I think it becomes apparent here that maybe branded goods are not exactly the problem here, the person is.

It is not unusual that our society loves money though. There is really nothing else for Singaporeans to do but to earn money. We don't have choices, like we can't exactly retire on a farm if we feel that we don't need any more money. Even our government loves nothing more than creating more money for itself. Look at how they always trumpet stellar GDP growth, although I really wonder why we need such great GDP growth numbers if it means nothing for the average guy here.

The biggest surprise for all our graduates is just beginning though. I think in a few years time, most are going to get a nasty shock when they realise that having a degree does not earn you enough to get a flat, a car, and start a family here. Not at the rate the cost of living is skyrocketing into the stratosphere here.

Damn, that's one little charmer right there.

This kid tries to do a rendition of Jason Mraz's I'm Yours. He isn't really good, but damn he's already a lot cuter than hundreds of other Mraz wannabes. However, it seems that playing this song gives him an itchy nose.

And here's a shoutout to all those wannabes - Stop wearing hats. Mraz killed that look already. Anyone else doing it is going to be a negative example.



However, become too cute like Bieber and you get hit on stage by a packet of Sour Patch Kids and a T-shirt in Christmas packaging. By a crazed fan no less. "Ow. that didn't feel good." Yeah, must be pretty shit to be stoned by your own fans Bieber. Damn.



The best compromise is to be a guitar virtuoso. Introducing Miyavi, a Japanese visual kei guitar god. Just watching 0:00 to 1:00 is enough.

How Smartphone Users View Other Smartphone Users

Notice they didn't even have a category for WinMo users, which kind of validates my opinion that WinMo phones are so shitty, they don't even qualify as smartphones. If you have a WinMo phone, junk it before the iphone, android and blackberry users find out and shit themselves laughing.

One note samba.

Teacher: What is jazz?
Student: I don't know, a style of playing?
Teacher: No, never call jazz a style of playing. Jazz is a concept. A composition of one minute, composed in a minute.
Student: Uh okay. (Not sure he gets that) Then what are the blues?
Teacher: The blues are a style of playing. And they will form the foundation of your training. Now play me something.
Student: Shit, where do I start. Feel so embarrassed just being here.
Teacher: Alright, then we will begin with the 12-bar blues. Now, I'll give you a walking bass line, and you will improvise a melody for me.
Student: Guess that after all these years, I am finally learning music.

Squibble, squabble

The Lamborghini Murcielago. My dream car, but virtually the price of a house on wheels here. The scissor doors are too freaking awesome though. Damn you Italians, why are you all so damn stylish.

One of the greatest problems with being an adult sometimes is, your parents haven't figured out yet how to let go, but you know that you need that independence if you are to grow into your own person.

I mean, its nice and all that Mom and Dad are always there to provide support and stuff in familiar ways like cooking dinner and giving me lifts and such, and when I tell my friends that I have dinner at home for me after classes sometimes people tell me how lucky I am.

Then I also tell them that my mom made muffins for my breakfast tomorrow, totally untrue, but I do that just to see the expression on their faces. One of the best things about life is partaking in glee at the expense of others. It feels so damn good you could almost break out in song.

But it really sucks when I've had my driving license for four whole years and my mom still won't let me drive the car unsupervised. The one thing worse than having a license and not driving it is having a license and having your mom or dad next to you in the passenger seat telling you how to drive. I swear it causes road accidents, because you are so distracted and bothered from the incessant nagging that you feel like crashing the car into the sidewalk just so that it ends.

I don't mean to sound like an upstart but I do know how to drive. I know that for sure, because I have driven unsupervised, many times. The first time I did it I actually had to "abduct" the car key and drive the car out myself without permission, and make it back half an hour later unscathed just to show my parents that "HEY, your son CAN drive. He can also park, change lanes, and do that drifting thing." Okay, the last is an exaggeration, but I can drift in Need for Speed on my Playstation. The point is, it is an auto car. Driving it as about as easy as operating a bumper car, only that you don't want to bump anybody.

I find it incredible that my parents let me board on campus for a year in secondary school, go through two years of NS, through another six months of exchange, and now they won't let me drive a freaking car although in the eyes of the law, I am perfectly qualified to do it.

I have the magic bluish green plastic card that states that I can operate heavy machinery, and I'm not on cough syrup. You don't get to say "I told you so, until I give you a reason to. There is no such thing as pre-empting I told you so and hence not letting me do something just so that you don't have to say I told you so."

Damn, that is one hell of a rant. I'm on fire.

I happen to belong to the school of people who believe that you learn best from your mistakes. I mean, I am fully aware that if I crash my car I might die, but I am very unlikely to be driving the car at 150km/h around a sharp turn, and most times I don't drive faster than 70km/h anyway. And if I don't get the chance to drive, I can't get better.

And if you don't drive for too long, you start to get scared of the roads, and that makes your license worthless. I also happen to believe that if you're destined to die, nothing you do, including driving your car safely, will stop that from happening. Yeah, I'm a fan of the Final Destination movies. Damn, what gave that away?

My parents then "show hand" by saying - "next time when you are a parent you will understand."

My retort: If you don't let me learn how to drive a car properly, I'm never going to be one. Not knowing how to drive is car is like how loser.

The last thing I want is to be like Wolowitz from Big Bang Theory, who is almost 30, lives with his mom and has an ersatz homosexual relationship with his best friend Raj. If that ever happens to me, please put me in a car and drive me round a bend at 150km/h.

The Straits Times, the government mouthpiece

The older I get, the less I find that I'm able to read the Straits Times without being turned off at its flagrantly nationalistic agenda. I really wonder sometimes if we should be told what to think so much, when it is quite obvious that we have our own minds.

Let me cite an example. A few days ago, we had a ministerial forum in NTU. A 23-year-old final year aerospace student, Lim Zi Rui, came up and asked SM Goh a question.

He said “When I was younger, I was very proud of being a Singaporean, but that was about five, ten years ago. Five years later, with all the changes in policies and the influx of foreign talent, I really don’t know what I’m defending any more.” “I feel that there is a dilution of the Singapore spirit in youth… We don’t really feel comfortable in our country any more,” he said. This exchange between him and SM Goh then made it to the Straits Times.

Unsurprisingly, a few days later, the results of a poll were released on the front page of ST.
Young S’poreans proud of their country: poll

I mean, who are they trying to kid. The poll wasn't even objectively conducted, or made to appear like it was. This came from the article - The Straits Times reports that the polls, conducted once in 2008 and again this year, revealed that most students from primary school to junior college believe Singapore would be able to overcome any difficulties to survive as a country.

The ability to overcome adversity does not represent one's pride in a country. It simply means that most people think that the government is so ruthlessly efficient it will get the job done somehow, which is more or less true.

It is amazing the kind of rubbish and fallacious logic ST can admit into their articles to try and promote what they hope we will buy because they assume we don't care. It's true, most of us don't, but the ones that do, I think we kind of die a little inside to know that such crap is being splashed across the front pages of our national broadsheet.

It was even funnier in a sad way that they admitted results from NSFs to try and justify their findings. I think it is pretty well known but unspoken that in NS, you have to give the "right" answers, because if you don't, it is all too easy to trace who did not, and they have their own unique methods to make you fall in line.

Check out this choice quote from Minister Ng Eng Hen.

"Our students openly declare their love for Singapore and are proud of Singapore’s achievements. They believe in a society that is self-reliant, intolerant of corruption and meritocratic," he said.

Really? Who are these students who openly declare their love for Singapore? The only ones I know are constantly complaining about everything and anything.

Singaporeans need to realise one thing. Just because a politician from the PAP says something does not mean it is true. There is an inherent conflict of interest there, because politicians will always want to look like they are doing the correct thing, so think about what they say more closely so you can tell if they are selling you horsecrap.

We are not stupid, neither are we THAT ignorant, so please stop feeding us this drivel, because you are misleading those who are too lazy or ignorant to care about what's important to them.

Yesterday, when I was talking to some of my course mates from tennis, who are from a range of faculties including literature, sports science and engineering, I was shocked to realise that they had no grasp of news at all.

One of them even quipped, "I think the younger generation just doesn't care, we're all
apathetic."

I mean, I can understand that not everyone reads the newspaper, but if all you know about what is happening in the world around you is gleaned from Facebook, then that is really being a little too ignorant, because on Facebook, you will only click on things that interest you, and most of the time, the things that really concern you are not the same things that are interesting, until they come back to bite you in the backside. Then everyone goes why didn't we see that coming, but actually, it had been there all along, just that no one cared.

It just kind of makes the government look more and more like they are trumpeting their own achievements in an alternate universe borne out of being isolated too long from the disaffection on the ground, on a medium that less people take seriously, and even less read.

I don't think I can ever work for the Straits Times. But where does that leave me.

This is not journalism, this is bullshit

I find it incredible that RazorTV tried to pass this off as journalism or some bastardised form of it. I am not surprised that the fatal stabbing of a teen at Downtown East is news, however, the only newsworthy part of it is the stabbing. His subsequent funeral is NOT news.

I find it really disgusting and warped that the editor of RazorTV, apparently a useless scumbag with a half-assed sense of news values and lacking in human decency, decided to send his video crew to take videos of a funeral procession, demonstrating an utter lack of sensitivity to a family that has just endured a really tragic loss. On top of that, he even tried to paint it off as "the friends of the murdered teen getting aggressive".

He should be thankful that his crew was not seriously assaulted, because in other countries, I can so totally imagine that happening. At least in Singapore, people are still civilised. These people have just endured a loss of a close friend, a loss that can be described as nothing less than traumatic, and nobody in that frame of mind will be rational.

This is NOT journalism. This is nothing but disgusting. And it does nothing for the already abysmal credibility of RazorTV. You may be the media, but it does not give you the right to demonstrate the social skills of a prehistoric ape. You are a journalist because you want to help humanity, not degrade its moral fibre.

I don't mean to get all preachy and idealistic here, but this is just an affront to everything that journalism stands for. If there is a reason why people hate reporters, this is it.

J.P Morgan's reply to a Pretty Girl

Don't ask me why I put a gossipgirl picture here, I just thought it suited the post somehow.

This is for all the young and pretty girls out there who want to hook a rich guy just because they are young and pretty. I don't buy it for a moment that the actual CEO of JP Morgan replied, but the impostor puts up a very good argument nonetheless.

Note: I edited the original post for grammar because I couldn't stand the grammar proficiency of bimbos.

Subject: CEO of J.P Morgan's reply to a Pretty Girl

A young and pretty lady posted this on a popular forum:

Title: What should I do to marry a rich guy?

I'm going to be honest about what I'm going to say here. I'm 25 this year. I'm very pretty, have style and good taste. I wish to marry a guy with $500k annual salary or above. You might say that I'm greedy, but an annual salary of $1M is considered only middle class in New York. My requirements are not high. Is there anyone in this forum who has an income of $500k annual salary? Are you all married? I wanted to ask: what should I do to marry rich persons like you?

Among those I've dated, the richest is $250k annual income, and it seems that this is my upper limit. If someone is going to move into high cost residential area on the west of New York City Garden, $250k annual income is not enough.

I'm here humbly to ask a few questions:
1) Where do most rich bachelors hang out? (Please list down the names and addresses of bars, restaurant, gym)
2) Which age group should I target?
3) Why are most wives of the rich only average-looking? I've met a few girls who don't have looks and are not interesting, but they are able to marry rich guys
4) How do you decide who can be your wife, and who can only be your girlfriend? (my target now is to get married)

Ms. Pretty

Awesome reply:
Dear Ms. Pretty,

I have read your post with great interest. Guess there are lots of girls out there who have similar questions like yours. Please allow me to analyse your situation as a professional investor. My annual income is more than $500k, which meets your requirement, so I hope everyone believes that I'm not wasting time here.

From the standpoint of a business person, it is a bad decision to marry you. The answer is very simple, so let me explain. Put the details aside, what you're trying to do is an exchange of "beauty" and "money": Person A provides beauty, and Person B pays for it, fair and square. However, there's a deadly problem here, your beauty will fade, but my money will not be gone without any good reason. The fact is, my income might increase from year to year, but you can't be prettier year after year.

Hence from the viewpoint of economics, I am an appreciation asset, and you are a depreciation asset. It's not just normal depreciation, but exponential depreciation. If that is your only asset, your value will be much worried 10 years later. By the terms we use in Wall Street, every trading has a position, dating with you is also a "trading position".

If the trade value dropped we will sell it and it is not a good idea to keep it for long term - same goes with the marriage that you wanted. It might be cruel to say this, but in order to make a wiser decision any assets with great depreciation value will be sold or "leased".

Anyone with over $500k annual income is not a fool; we would only date you, but will not marry you. I would advice that you forget looking for any clues to marry a rich guy. And by the way, you could make yourself become a rich person with $500k annual income. This has better chance than finding a rich fool.

Hope this reply helps. If you are interested in "leasing" services, do contact me...

signed,
J.P. Morgan

Uke got talent

I went to a ukulele open mic session called Uke Got Talent where some of my friends were performing today, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was organised by these guys as seen above, and held at the 15 minute cafe at the Lasalle College of the Arts.

There were good performances, some not so good, but I was amazed at the ingenuity of the players, who managed to improvise their own covers of songs and rock them out. I was particularly impressed by one group that did a ukulele rock cover of "Papa Don't Preach", which was cool as hell not least because it had a ukulele bass. Like who even knew that there was a bass version of the ukulele. They got the whole cafe clapping together to their song, no easy feat considering that the patrons were spread over two levels. But the nature of good performers is, they draw you in, and before you know it you're part of the performance.

I totally regret not bringing my camera, and I want an ukulele for Christmas.

Now, who's paying for that potato salad?

A brilliant Obama spoof off CollegeHumor.

The TV Theme Medley

This guy is just absolutely talented, and this video is really a delight to watch. See if you can identify all the TV themes in the video.

0:01 Two and a Half Men
0:22 The Simpsons
0:36 O.C
1:00 Naruto
1:11 Family Guy
1:41 Married with Children
1:57 Cheers
2:16 That 70's Show
2:41 Big Love
2:58 Freaks and Geeks
3:18 Malcolm in the Middle
3:35 X-Files
3:55 Firefly
4:09 The Office
4:24 The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
4:44 Scrubs
4:54 True Blood
5:27 Charles in Charge
5:38 The Big Bang Theory
5:55 How I Met Your Mother
6:05 Mission Impossible
6:14 Friends

My laptop is starting to die on me

The title of this post kind of sums it up, like any good title should. I am starting to castigate my laptop a little too often, like every other hour when it crashes spectacularly on me.

"You useless piece of machinery! I'm going to buy an Apple I tell you, nevermind that I am a iGoondu."

The latter is of course, utterly false. I am not an iGoondu, I'm just not an iWhiz. And when I'm finally done with all the bad iJokes, I have to crack the really bad one about the iPad, which I swear is the most uninspired name for a computer device ever. If you didn't know better, you would think that Apple had entered the feminine hygiene market. Hey, you never know, they just might. After all, that is one area that will never lack demand.

I am no fan of Apple products, but I do think that the norm in CS is to be an iConsumer. If you don't own a Mac, an iPhone or an iPad, you're somehow antisocial, the archetypal outcast. Yours truly doesn't own any of those, with the only exception being an iPod that I bought secondhand off someone, and even then I jailbroke the damn thing. I guess I chose the blue pill, so I'm some kind of Neo in an Apple-crazed world. Steve Jobs is watching you, yes? He wants you to hurry up and buy the iPhone 4 so he can start releasing the iPhone 4GS.

Sorry, that was my Orwellian complex going into overdrive.

My laptop has somehow lasted three whole years without dying, but now, it is surely tottering on its last legs. And I would really hate to send it to the place where all laptops go when its their time, but the problem is, it is about its time. My warranty is up, which I totally squeezed every last drop out of, changing the casing and motherboard on the very last month. I bet ASUS hates me because I'm such a cheapo.

Now, I am starting to find that the laptop is too slow to handle all these newfangled applications that are popping up on the market. I'm not even talking about games, my laptop stopped being able to handle new games about two years ago.

But now even the simple task of opening gmail chat, facebook chat and youtube at the same time makes my browser hang. And I get random stupid bugs like my volume control refusing to open and my media player taking forever to get started, only to pop open an hour later when I'm about to shutoff the thing for the day.

It is really such a waste because I've gotten so used to all its eccentricities. When you use a piece of equipment like a laptop long enough you will know what I mean. Your laptop gets like random errors and bugs that nobody else gets, that you pray do not surface when someone else in school goes "Can I use your laptop?"

You even come up with all these weird ways of troubleshooting those problems, like my favourite one for the volume control, plugging the earphones in and out. Somehow it resets the volume control and it works fine again. The logic behind that? I have no idea, you have to ask some egghead at Microsoft.

It has reached the stage where supplication to a higher being for the darned thing to work no longer suffices, especially when the thing starts to crash so often it puts the very existence of the higher being into question. I'm not even religious, but I will do intercession because my parents taught me so. Case in point - "Pusah, today Weili has an exam, bless him with an easy paper and good grades okay? Come, take these 3 joss sticks and pray to the pusah here, okay now turn around and pray to the other one..."

"Pusah, my laptop has trouble trying to start up today. I absolutely need to finish this report, so please help it to stay stable long enough so I can finish the thing because my tutor will absolutely not believe that my laptop crashed running two instances of Microsoft Word. It was not thought possible until my laptop came along."

One more year, come on. Once I grad I will buy a new one with my first paycheck.

Ferguson confirms Rooney wants out

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ESPNsoccernet staff

Sir Alex Ferguson has confirmed the "terribly disappointing" news that Wayne Rooney has told Manchester United that he will not sign a new contract and wishes to leave the club.

Wayne Rooney and Ferguson haven't had a conversation for a month. (GettyImages)

Rooney, who will miss Wednesday's Champions League game against Bursaspor due to his much-discussed ankle injury, has personally informed Ferguson that he does not wish to continue his career at Old Trafford.

Rest of article is here at Soccernet.

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Honestly, if this news had broken a year ago was Rooney was in untouchable form, I might have cheered, because I'm a Gunners fan and I sure as hell don't like Man United. However, I have to admit that right now Rooney's departure doesn't mean diddly-squat because he basically hasn't played like the Rooney of old since March when he picked up that ankle injury.

When someone like Berbatov the languid ballerina can become the first choice striker at Old Trafford, it really says something about the squad's strength in depth. Don't get me started on the third choice striker, the biggest football club scammer in England, also known as Michael Owen.

Now, he's just a deadweight, albeit one that has a taste for publicity loving whores. He even bonked one when his wife was pregnant, and that's probably a conservative estimate, which kind of takes away any possible respect I could have for him as a man.

Right now, the news just makes me feel a craving for one of United's famous prawn sandwiches. You know, if the Glazers ever bankrupt the club by defaulting on their GBP40 million a year interest payments, please franchise the prawn sandwich stall, so I can buy a sandwich and throw it at the fans.

What, did you think I was going to eat them? Nah, not when the players themselves seem more interested in using them for food fights.

It ain't my fault, its yours.

I've been working freelance while studying and I have to admit that while having the recompense for the necessary effort and trouble is great, it is often at the expense of my sanity, with certain incidents illustrating the foibles associated with human incompetence and a need to rid oneself of blame so as to keep one's job despite that ineptness.

Being a contract writer, the onus is often on me to schedule appointments for interviews and photoshoots, and of course, it brooks no delay as any holdup in the whole process means that the stress increases for the people in the back end, who have to clear the final article. And when the stress gets too great they become very unpleasant people to deal with. Since they have a tendency to call very late, it is really in everyone's best interests to keep relations cordial.

Unfortunately, most companies have this person in the payroll that is a testament to why you should be more discerning during job recruitment exercises. They are so bad at executing orders that if you were to ask them to make coffee for you, they would use coffeemix but forget to add water, and deliver the subsequent product to the wrong person.

They would then proceed to blame someone else for it, saying that it was not their fault that the office pantry had run out of hot water, and that it was really the cleaner who had moved the cup during her cleaning rounds.

Of course, the only reason such people are still in their jobs is, they have certain skills that make their extermination from the workforce very difficult. Like cockroaches, they have simple structures and limited ability, but hell, no matter how hard you swat them they never seem to die. Sometimes, it helps that they disgust you so much you don't even want to swat or go near them.

Having said so much, I shall now relate one incident. I was commissioned an article, and given two weeks to do it up. Normally, two weeks would be a luxury to someone like me, because I'm used to working on two hour deadlines.

Unfortunately, as this is an ad, I have to make sure that the stuff I'm writing is approved by the client. Even more unfortunately, since it is an ad, I have to let them choose an intervieweee for me, and the interview has to be at a time of their own choosing.

Do you see a problem? Probably not, so I'll highlight it for you. The problem is, the whole process is kickstarted by the PR department of the advertiser, and if the PR is a cockroach, the son of a cockroach, or just a cock, nothing can get done! And it looks really bad on me, because it appears that I'm holding up the process by not getting the PR to move his or her fat ass off the supply chain.

So, this PR that I was dealing with, she took the liberty of being uncontactable for days. And despite my best attempts to reach her by phone, sms or email, she remained so. As I watched my two week deadline tick away, I felt it necessary to inform my superiors that she was being a dipshit.

This dipshit then had the cheek to call me back a day later, asking why I had got the company to pressure her for not doing her job. Well played, but I'm not interested in your petulant Hobbesian displays. You are free to do anything you wish, except not answer my calls because you are paid to do that, dipshit, and society is an amalgamation of individuals cooperating to further their own self interests. You do your job so I can do mine, and we both get paid without getting screwed.

But of course, with me being the civil professional, I simply requested with some urgency that she get the ball rolling. She did do so, but she arranged a photoshoot for me only after the final deadline, and the interview slightly before that, leaving me just one day to write everything out. All I could tell her was, she was cutting everything a bit late, but she insisted that it was the best she could do. Obviously, my bosses wouldn't have any of that, so they went ahead and sent the unapproved drafts for print.

And on the next morning, the shit obviously hit the fan. The draft was full of mistakes, and they had used the wrong picture. The PR then had the cheek to call me asking why I hadn't waited for her amended and approved copy. Well, have you ever seen a newspaper wait for an advertiser?

In the first place, she was uncontactable and slow. And she started saying that this was not the way to do things, that I was irresponsible because now her job was in jeopardy and someone had to be accountable for the mistake (aka not her because she created this mess and she's useless but you cannot let her bosses know). She even had the audacity to claim that she was always contactable, when she had just missed my call on the night of the deadline itself to check errors in the copy since she was taking forever to get back.

In my opinion, if you work in the public relations department, and you cannot keep yourself contactable, what kind of relations with the public are you looking to build? The frosty kind?

The PR, also known as dipshit, then took her argument up with my bosses directly, which resulted in them and her calling me and ruining my whole Saturday morning from 7am to 12 noon to clarify the whole mess, and since it was the first day of my recess, it left me more than a little pissed.

I could not even sleep in on the first day of recess, and on top of that, I had to deal with the Machivellian power plays between both sides, and the spinning of intricate yarns of deceit as she sought to pin blame on anyone except herself. She even tried pinning the blame on me, except that I had everything in black and white that showed that it was her who had held up the whole process. FML.

The good thing about school is, if a person is lazy and stupid, they get a fail grade. The bad thing is, these people will still eventually come out into the workplace, where there is no fail grade. These people will also have evolved survival mechanisms, to make their otherwise routine extermination a very challenging process indeed.

I haven't heard from the PR since Saturday, so I'm going to assume that all is well. But definitely not taking up any more assignments for now thanks.

On the warpath about footpaths

Singapore seems to love the construction sector.

Look at your average HDB estate. Some part of it is perpetually in a state of construction, whether it is lift upgrading for the 4th time in 5 years, or building a new senior citizen's corner that is really used by teenage couples to make out, or building a new footpath, or a shelter for that footpath, or a new shelter replacing a shelter that was built just last year, or the landscaping of a park that no one really notices.

However, one ironic situation surfaces in almost every estate I've been to. Money is spent to build super nice footpaths, only to have people cut across the grass and create new paths because the footpaths simply take the longer way to get to a place. And then you know what? They build a shelter over that footpath.

I'm really fed up of all that construction. I don't see the need for it, and today when I was walking to my grandparents' place I had to walk on the road because a perfectly nice footpath that was just repaved a year ago had been torn up again to build an overhead shelter. Mind you, the shelter was really unnecessary because another shelter was already built, just that it was at the other side of the estate, about five blocks away. If this goes on, soon the footpaths will all become sheltered travellators, and we will have manicured lawns full of carpet grass and fountains bursting with Newater.

And, what's with all these estates being called "Tampines Green", or "East View Garden", or some other form of address that nobody uses or remembers? I live in East View Garden. Letters are routinely addressed to me with that tagged on, only that apart from it being in the east, I don't see a view and there definitely isn't a garden or I'd know about it. The nearest thing I have to a garden, a large open field just next to my house, just got torn up to build a new HDB estate, so I can have 1,000 new neighbours looking down upon my house. Yay.

If I were to tell the average taxi driver to take me to "Tampines Green", I bet you he won't know where the hell it is, because nobody uses those oblique references. In Singapore, it doesn't matter how you demarcate estates, because once the elections come round, the same part of Tampines that was in Bedok will become part of Pasir Ris. Just get the damn road name right.

It sometimes makes me feel like someone up there is playing SimCity. The only problem is, when stuff is actually built, it creates a lot of inconvenience for real people, not computer sprites who don't ever say anything even if you destroy their whole city by pulling out the plug on your computer.

My wish for Christmas this year is simple. I want a garden with a view that faces east. If that's not possible, please stop playing that "Train is coming" shit at MRT stations. It's driving me nuts.