Flow; Stretch

It troubles me that sometimes, I feel completely at a loss for words. There's just so much tension and stress bunched up inside my head that lying down and imagining something just for fun is difficult. It doesn't help that I'm not playing for the whole of this month, either. There's no time to take my mind off things, to simply drift.

I've been trying to understand the flow of short stories, of how authors stretch out a plot over 5000 words. Jennifer Crawford's advice and methods seem to really come in handy here. But the more I think about what kind of length makes sense, the harder it becomes to imagine anything just for fun. Everything has to fit into the flow. Everything has to make sense.

The fact that Golden Point is so prestigious is another problem. I want so badly to win it that I can't relax and really get a feel of what I'm writing. It's just like FYP- when you're scared or desperate enough, you become willing to turn a blind eye to things so you can believe that it'll work out. The more you obsess over it, the harder it gets.

I want it so badly, this chance to make a mark and to receive a sign that tells me that maybe, this is something I can do somewhere down the road, sometime. I'm not sure whether it's that I've never desired it more, or if I've never feared not having it more than now. Can't feel the difference. Always feeling the itch to write things in short, gasping sentences without an 'I'.

I wanna win so badly. I want to write something that could burn 'Trondheim' alive, roast it over a fire. A part of me wants that emotion because it's easy to think that that emotion will drive me to completely crush the competition, regardless of the quality of their works. But that's not how I feel now, and in some ways that's better, in other ways worse.

After the events of the past few months, I feel like I want to write a warmer kind of story, about love received rather than love chased. Funny that that's what's most on my mind, given everything that took place. But there it is. I do miss my friends in school, the ones I no longer talk to, the ones I don't talk to as frequently... Yet as much as I hope that I'll get to talk them again someday, I no longer yearn for it with that desperation of a person fearing death or total collapse. Something's changed. Indelibly. Irrevocably. Incredibly. Something's changed, and now I find I can stand, even when everything precious to me was scattered to ruins. I want to share it, but I don't know how. Making the leap to writing controlled, 5000 word (or less) stories was/is hard. Trying to write something that is not infused with emo/cynical/indifferent/jaded/ambivalent/hesitant/bewildered feelings, even more so. And to top it off, the temptation to douse one's work with ample amounts of nationalism and conflicted Singaporean identity is always weighing on me, clamoring to be heard.

Ambition without accomplishment. Dreams without desire. Half-existence of a soul without substance. The nightmare that can't be felt. Nor seen, nor heard, nor tasted or smelled.

Boiling blood and a fire burning within the bones. A hunger in the core of a soul I'd never bothered to know. I want to be filled with that blazing vitality I felt during HZ101, so that I wouldn't have to feel that I'm struggling through this, never knowing how it will end. And I know that that fire comes from being filled, filled by the works of others and the sight of their ambition and their swelling pride and their perverse, ravenous hunger for the prize.

Some people write for beauty, others for their idea of what a cultivated beauty means. Me? I gravitate easiest towards writing for glory, for the transfixing of hearts and minds. Yet something's telling me that that's not enough. I have to hunger without hungering, desire without coveting... Or something like that. I think I understand now that there is an optimum point/situation that every person has, where they can function as flawlessly and fervently as is possible for them. It's about knowing where our strengths and weaknesses lie, or something like that. Something like that. Sometimes it's all I can think of, to fill my writing and my FYP full of 'Somethings like that'. Cliches squeezed out like the shallow breaths of a dying, gasping man.

Breathe. Sleep.

Universe juice. Want.

Plots and Plans, Pots and Pans

Run Run Run

After the intense battle with the Dark Ones, I had a chat with a very civic-minded taxi driver on the way home and it made me think about things.

In the past, physical survival could definitely be said to have been fundamentally based on consumption. Back then, land was in no short supply, and in that land there was food, some of it hard to get and some of it effortless to collect. People may have starved at times, but simply living off the land was certainly a feasible option.

Today, it's hard to imagine eating without working for food first. For many of the many people now crowding together in this world, the free lunch has become a thing of the past. Survival is now primarily defined by production, be it the production of food, appliances, entertainment, or knowledge. The trouble is, the kind of production the average person engages in is constantly being devalued by forces larger than any single individual, forces such as global competition or wage setting in private businesses.

The monetary valuation of your work drops simply by virtue of the fact that someone else is willing to work for a lower salary. Just like that. Maintaining a state of prosperity or even mere survival entails having to global-scale sprinting race, even though our stamina and our very lives are finite. Right now, human beings are collectively like a single hamster running to reach the 'end' of its hamster wheel.

But some people are hungrier than others, and these people are willing to drift from country to country to survive and to thrive. And there's no better destination for them than those countries with the most food, electric lighting, and tweeters.

Foreign workers: Yes or no? Yes, on the ideological grounds that what we are willing to spare them in terms of wages changes their whole lives, and on the practical grounds that there just aren't enough Singaporeans who are willing and able to do all the heavy lifting (Don't know how true this is in terms of flat out unemployment rate though). There is nothing simple or brainless about construction work- there are smart construction workers and brainless ones, eloquent journalists and ridiculous ones, passionate sociologists and those who talk shit and write papers just to make a living. Yet I know I would never consider construction work. I was born to be a lover, not a builder. And I only know two or three people who would consider this line of work.

Foreign talent? I don't know. Sure, it would probably lower the cost of operating in some respects. Yes, it's probably true that we need some foreign talent to bring in new perspective and specific competencies. And maybe having some of them come here would make wages and job-seeking more 'competitive'. But the problem is that foreign talent and foreign students are starting to squeeze people out at the tertiary level education and work level. We all probably know at least a few people who have had to go overseas to study, not because the foreign school is especially prestigious (e.g.Oxford), but because their 1 A and 2 B's couldn't get them where they wanted to be. I think the argument of 'competitiveness' is somewhat lame, because Singaporeans are generally damn frickin' competitive already.

Kids these days have long hours of school followed by tuition, and then followed by piano tuition. The taxi driver was right in a sense. How is it natural that children, who did nothing but run around in the field and milk cows 500 years ago, now have to spend the larger part of their week sitting still and writing? My youngest brother is still playing games way too much, just like I did when I was younger. I find it hard to chastise him at times, knowing that I myself was just as undisciplined in my youth. At the same time, I know he does need to play to some extent to get a break from all the tuition and schooling.

But the fact remains that foreign talent probably promotes itself more aggressively than we do; they do have talents specific to their backgrounds, and they are definitely just as hungry as we are for the good life, probably more so. It is not going to end completely, no matter how much government intervention we cry out for. Yet I hope the flow continues to be stemmed for now, not by CHARGING THEM MORE MONEY TO STAY, but by... I don't know, reducing the total number of successful applications per year or something. Singapore's success may have been built on the hard work of immigrants seeking new opportunities, but back then this island did not have the labor required to execute the plans of the British. Today, we have 3 million Singaporeans here, also looking for the good life, and to say that we still need immigrants to maintain the success of this island-shaped ball of money and prosperity is to ignore the fact that plenty of Singaporeans are already willing and able to do so.

Yes, practically we need some foreign talent, and we do need to open an ear to the needs of a wider global community. But we also need to attend to the needs of Singaporeans who are equally as important. We might be only 85% as capable as the foreign applicant applying for the same job, but this is our home. Is 15% more really that worth it? I do try to be friendly to foreigners whenever I can, but I don't want to wake up one day to a country filled with people I barely understand or can connect with, simply because foreign labor has been streaming in and Singaporeans have been streaming out.



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Good decision?

"The food here is tough and tasteless. The people- even more so."

... Breast hat...

Yes. Good decision. I want my own maxed-out-stats, photon-torpedo-breathing dragon.

How to Train Your Dragon might have used a slightly better script, but that is a minor flaw in what is otherwise a really great movie. At first it seemed it would become a cliche, but the people at Dreamworks have been really at the top of their game lately in terms of storytelling sense. The show never got melodramatic or cloyingly sentimental; the creators really made it into something quite unexpected and refreshing; they managed to make flying beautiful again. It's an example of a movie that leaves its impact deeply without resorting to overpowering you emotionally.

And the ending was poignant, poetic in its symmetry with the beginning.

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Removing all unnecessary movements, and all excess worries...

This might seem like cavalier advice to give, but if any of you soci kids are getting worn out and fatigued by consecutive readings, try taking a day off to relax. And when I say that, I don't mean the kind of surface relaxation we take part in just to escape problems that linger in the backs of our minds. Instead, slowly lie back and take stock of all the non-study things going on in your life. Pick a problem that is both manageable yet important to you, and take a step towards completing it. You don't have to fix it completely. Just work towards fixing something important, and feel good about that.

Then go watch an awesome, attention-capturing show like 'How to Train Your Dragon'.

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"He is a political person in appearance, but apolitical in spirit."

Cool eh? No?