I was trained up to be a teacher and in the times we are in now, we are taught not to spoon feed children all sorts of information we already know, but to create opportunities for them to experience it themselves and arrive at the conclusion by active exploration.

Which is why our lecturer taught us the beauty of critical thinking. I became beholden to this concept probably because it fuels my love for questioning. Critical thinking urge us to question assumptions. Asks us to dig deep and challenges us to dare to ask questions that may seem to border on the edge of idiocy.

Maybe it was at this point of time when our exuberant, upbeat, unpredictable and zesty lecturer opened to us a world where nobody is chastised or thought a fool to raise a question when I revived a personal question of my own. This was also quite possibly the reason why I chose to leave behind a lifestyle I was so used to living for the past years. A lifestyle and belief which indeed brought me hope at a point of time when I thought I could never fail more impressively, and yes, it raised me up to be successful later in life.

Our own sets of morals tell us to look at things in different perspective, for there are always two sides to an argument and we are a fool to only listen to one and fully support it thereafter. Almost everyone agrees with me about this, I'm sure. But have you ever heard of selective agreement? While people would generally agree that to pass a fair judgment on any situation, one must look at two sides of the coin, there are instances when the same person would probably disagree when people offer to examine an opposition's argument against a cherished belief.

It's a hush hush topic and it's been taught that no sensible person should dare ask such a question for fear of being labeled as 'lack of faith' or they are discouraged even, to examine those baloney material or to entertain questions which probe deep into the heart for fear it would render you into confusion. And I dare venture to say, if one's faith was strong, it wouldn't harm them to try to understand another's perspective on things. Even in this simple reasoning, they would refute that its a misconduct to allow yourself to fall knowingly into a situation where you are vulnerable. You would not trust a judge who has only heard the defender's case and neglect to hear the prosecutor's side to pass a fair judgment. Why is it a vulnerability or a misconduct when a man only wishes to be civil and hear what others have to say?
10:54 PM


Something I have been fervently wishing for in the rain, under the hot sun, blown by extremely cold winds, in the past 2 years finally happened. Fever started out last sunday as an innocent headache. Then it happily fell and rose to 39.1 for the past two days like eating panadols were of no consequence. It'll break me into sweat and then rise again in a few hours. Finally trudged myself to the doctor's just now to explain the shizzaz.
Anyway, I'm back home with the pills. Just in case you paranoid people out there, it wasn't H1N1, just a case of throat inflammation.

Doctor proclaimed that this funny fever will keep rising and falling for the next two days.

Now tell me why do I have to fall sick only after graduation???
11:18 PM


I chanced upon a huge shoal of fishes seeking refuge under a pier one day. I stood entranced for awhile, observing the fishes like the typical local born and bred in the concrete jungle I was. Think the 'Gods must be Crazy' where the main character encounters a coke bottle for the first time and decides it's absolutely the most amazing thing to be found subsequently confirming it must have belonged to the Gods. Reverse that and you get me, looking positively mystified by the fishes' survival skills, something they have been doing for a thousand years; when coke wasn't even in the books.

The beautiful thing i noticed was how the fishes swam seamlessly alongside each other against the current as if they had telepathic notions; they could tell exactly which angle and what speed to go in order to stay in their position; unlike humans and ballerinas who need countless practices and someone to be their third eye to notice if they were not in sync, finally they qualify to step up the big stage and wow their audiences away. At first I noticed these little frantic splashes from the fishes and decidedly tried picking out the errant fish falling out of rank in this beautiful ballet thinking that maybe the fishes weren't so perfect themselves after all. Then i looked on a little closer and saw how the fishes in the outer most ranks swam most furiously than the others, like it's life depended on it, whilst the rest in the inner circle seem to casually 'float' in the water. These outer ranked fishes, i would deem leaders would sometimes, with a energized flick of their entire bodies, change their angle and direction, causing those weird little splashes and in doing, change the entire course of the rest of the shoal. You look at a ballet and you fall in love with the grace and perfect harmony of the dancers on the stage. Asked about the ballet later on if you had spotted your friend, you realise you do not recognise the individuals, they were just nameless face in the crowds.

More often than not, i feel like I'm the one in the inner circle, going along with others who seem more adept at finding the right direction than I am. I fall into rank and feel so comfortable and at ease. Then in it's near perfectness, I think about other fishes playing the same game of survival. What it was like to be them? Was our strategy at survival the best bet? I can't help but be curious about the rest of the ocean, how it looked. How does it feel to be swimming alone in the deep blue, all that space to your own? How it is life like, other than under a pier? So i inch a little closer to the outer ranks, hoping for a better view, understand the world a little more, but effectively destroying the direction the others are going, and of course, I stick out like a sore thumb. Like a ballerina in the Nutcracker who decides to go left when everyone is going right, all eyes falls on you like you've ruined the show. Others tell you how you don't belong out, they shake their heads sadly and think of the imminent doom they perceive in your decision.

When you were young, your parents give you a list of dos and dont's. Which is perfectly understandable because you were too young to understand right from wrong. When you age to 23 and you approach your mother if it was okay to eat an ice-cream before dinner or if you were allowed to hold your girlfriend's hand, she'll think she was a bad job of a mother. At 23, you are supposed to know the answers to the simplest questions, you have been taught to know. But what if you have been too spoon fed to make your own decisions and now you only follow like sheep to slaughter?

There are times when you were young that you start to question your do's and dont's. Why can't I stay up like daddy? Or, why can't I watch TV and not go school? Of course your parents give you a most perfect logical explanation. Yet, when you grow up, things don't always rest comfortably in the black and white. When you ask questions and don't always get an honest answer but just a stern warning not to go there and it's because they know better, what do you do?

It's just like certain things you tend to miss out because it's been too much in your system you hardly notice how it could be inappropriate. How grossly inhumane it is for schools to insist you wear that uniform that kills your identity and makes you look like a factory product like the rest of your friends? Does wearing a uniform makes you behave? Changes who you are? But you go along with it because everyone else does it. Sooner or later, you start forgetting you were wearing it. Haha. I'm definitely exaggerating, but you get my drift for the bigger picture.

I'm thinking as I age and throw some of my own conventions out the window if I'm losing a little bit of myself as I go. But then the longer you conform, the more restless you get because the longer you stay circling the same spot you have been ten years before, you realise you are not any closer to the answers. In an establishment, you gain security and safety in numbers, you dance along to the same tune and meticulously craft your lives similar to the rest around you. But there is another thing about establishments, things may go wrong in an attempt for unity. They gain that gross parental authority to knock the wind out of you, and when you question the system or move away from the pack, shake the very core of their system, they don't give you answers but brand you the black sheep when the others may just be hiding their spots.

I stand out like the sore thumb, the ignorant delinquent, at this point of time not because I am any different. Maybe it's just that I question more than others do? Yet maybe others have come down the same way and found their answers, made their decision. Maybe I am wrong. What if I am right? Or there are some who just simply squelched their questioning long time ago and moved on along because life did not differ greatly if they did or not. But me? I just happen to choose something unconventional i deem as treasure all the time and i got in deep soup for having such a value system. At first everything seems loving and accepting because you flow the right way, but once you start upstream, things change and suddenly you realise how stereotypes work everywhere.

Is it true that I had found love in all the wrong places? Yet try defining love and you probably spend the whole night laying out all the cards, and you might as well be trying to study a foreign language in a night; you wind up disillusioned. No one's perfect, they don't come equipped with all the right elements.

I don't know if my inquisitiveness may get the better of me at the end of the day. But what i do know is if i did not try, i will end up becoming less of me.

'Conflict is the gadfly of thought. It stirs us to observation and memory. It instigates to invention. It shocks us out of sheeplike passitivity, and sets us at noting and contriving ... conflict is a sine qua non of reflection and ingenuity.'

John Dewey

*Sine Qua Non: A neccessary action/element/ingredient
10:19 PM


Just like a child who've received a new canvas and set of shiny new paints, he's suddenly interested in drawing all over again. The new look for my blog just makes me feel like writing...

something

anything

'risk my life losing everything, lose everything to gain my life back again.'
12:56 PM


It could be that silly little key chain that doesn't catch your eye anymore. Or that funny useless toy that lay in your room collecting dust. The little ornament that sits quietly by the windowsill. You would have forgotten the effort to get those useless things. The thought and careful planning that went into making those things come into existence. Those things you fought tooth and nail to get, in your hands finally, it felt like cheap stones; useless marbles, eyesores.

Human-beings can be fickle. When everything is taken away from you; you throw a temper thinking it'll all come running back to you if you could just sit there howling, screaming yourself silly letting it be known to the world how it hurts. Finally you acknowledge those little objects and why they came into existence in the very first place, by someone who thought the world of you, as if that smile he/she wrung from you meant she won the championships. Every time you glance at those things that weren't there before, reality is like that horrible bully who blew up the big balloon and savored the moment of popping it in the head and if he could, would lengthen that moment of time into centuries just to see you bent over in misery pleading for him to make it stop.

Curiously, it didn't even matter anymore when the recognition I thought I deserved was offered up to me in a silver plate. I threw away everything. Yet, i felt no familiar pang of heartache. It's as if those years wasn't mine. I was just another audience in the back row, staring at the tube, looking at someone faintly familiar, I watched her fight a losing fight. It was just another tasteless movie re-run to fill in tube space. What used to be reality now has become like the dregs of a nightmare, unetheral and unreal.

They tell you to stand up alone. To brush the sand off your feet like nothing every happened and move on to another city. That which I did. I walked on for awhile on my own. Then I turned the corner and discovered I wasn't alone. I was joined by one who was always there before, then another whom I never saw.

I'll give you my best shot so far.
12:19 AM


Mood: Crappy because I can't get to sleep
I don't know why I can't sleep. There must be a perfectly logical reason why I can't. Darn. Have been trying to make it a habit to sleep early these few days but i guess it's not easy for the body to get used to it at just the snap of your fingers. And I thought I used to be the favourite of Mr. Sandman. The sun has become the moon and the moon the sun.

Favourite thought of the day: Bread Talk.
Their bread is the best! Two is always better than one. =D

Addiction: To tea.
My family loves tea. My daddy loves making tea. Everyone who gets invited over to our house whenever my daddy is around gets the question "Do you want to drink tea?" (I sense many people nodding their heads enthusiastically as they read this particular sentence) It's a horrible sin to reject my daddy. My daddy's an all-time 'Lipton' supporter as is mommy. Their kids love to try different kinds of tea and have come to mutual agreement that English Breakfast and Early Grey is a nice change from Daddy's signature drink especially for their aroma. It has become second nature to me. Like a dog's natural reaction to stick its head out, roll out its tongue during car rides; every time i think of tea my heart sings and I start to drool because I get reminded of their aroma. You hardly get a rejection when you ask around in the family if anyone wants tea. It's a conversation starter. 'The tea today's not very sweet.' OR 'The tea today's a little diluted.' Ah. At least we started somewhere. It's a life-saver from sticky quarrels. 'Do you want tea mommy?' Mom goes 'Uhhhh.' Hey at least it's a positive response. Hahahaha. I'm just exaggerating. But maybe the family motto should be "A family who drinks tea together stays together"

Habit I am trying hard to break: Nibbling at Night.
I get hunger pangs and start to scour the kitchen for snacks. DARN. As you get older and the metabolism rate decreases, the guilty feeling of sneaking snacks at night increases. There's always this thing called 'balance'. WHY DID I HAVE TO LEARN TO LOVE FOOD ONLY NOW?? Whoa. Then I am glad when my mind immediately conjurs up a name for me 'T-I-M'. What if i had become not only vertically challenged but horizontally as well?? Woah man. Maybe it's a blessing after all.

2:51 AM


I am ridiculously sentimental over my current blog skin. I've actually been eye-ing on one for quite some time now but have never made the decision to change it because I love this one much too much.

Sigh.
9:28 PM


When I walked away. I gained wisdom.
When I chose not to look back. I saw my future.
When I whispered my thanks to Him. He spelt 'happiness' for me.
8:44 AM