Illness, the sedative we need from the humdrum 9:45 pm

Fell ill after doing an all-nighter for my politics essay, which was due in on Friday. As mentioned, it was on a topic of my personal interest, that of ASEAN. As mentioned, one realises how interesting your own neighbourhood is after leaving it.

Went on down to Bath on Saturday, still nursing that awful flu, and attending SoulAsia Food Festival on both weekend nights. Singsoc sold excellent curry chicken, mee chaim kuay, Milo Dinosaur, pineapple tarts and kaya toast on Sunday. :)

Overall, the company I had over the weekend was excellent. It really was. I would even go as far to say that the trip to Stonehenge (yes, I was up close with 5000 years of history!) and Bath was made memorable more of the company than of the places themselves.

But having fallen ill, other than irritatingly slowing me down, has had its up sides. Ever since falling ill, and also possibly due to the romantic notion of the advent of spring, along with it being Lent, I've gotten more contemplative. This physical slowing down, as given me more time to think and reflect on what the hell am I running on the mill for. This comes timely, after hearing what Ben had to say about this insatiable appetite we all have to outdo each other. The focus becomes on others, then on ourselves. WOuld we go as far as saying this is a rather Asian perspective to life? A competition? I won't dare hazard an answer, really.

But, for me, this illness has definitely helped me put things into perspectives, calmed my nerves and slowly help me regain the focus on my centre.

And its off to floorball now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Uncle T

Chinese New Year in Birmingham 9:57 pm

Mic croonin'...Dang, didn't catch Sumit AFTER.

Shuki courteously ensuring that Bryan's wishes of "kuai kuai zhang gao" came true. (ps. Shuks is way taller than I. Most things are)

Mars singing, I playing. Melayu some more!

Delene: Summer dress in winter. Ha.

And the peeps who made it all possible. Singsoc exec :)

Uncle T

I like the daffodils... 9:01 pm

Just look at my artistic photography. I should turn pro :)




The English sky, daffodils and a Chinois

Lovely crocus at Lakeside on campus. Love them.

Dr Gabby and I when his team came from London to play floorball.

Warwick teamtalk as we battled Imperial at floorball

As that one world leader picks up the environmental flag and waves it frantically to attempt to leave a legacy as he leaves office, headlines scream about environmental politics. We are getting warmer, so is this winter, so said BBC this morning, from the black box, which was on the crumbed table, in my flat kitchen.

But I'm enjoying the nicer side of the warmer winter; squishing about in winter's remains, amongst the daffodils, crocus and finches that are returning to their element.

Remeber that tree outside my room window? Its still there, standing. Once a low-branched, sturdy tree that was emerald-crowned, was battered during harsh winter nights, was tugged at by drunkards at silly hours, stood majestically bald during beautiful snow-fall, it is now slowly coming back to life. Still standing. What resilience.

I'll really be getting back to my World Politics essay. Its an interesting topic, at least for an unbecoming nerd that I am. ASEAN, the neighbourhood that we all lived in and never knew. Join me? Get to know ASEAN better. We only see its beauty after we've seen it from the outside.

Sumit made me feel real guilty. I'm such a poor Liverpool fan. I feel bad, cause its true. I'll have to be a better Scouser (see? I don't even know how to spell it la!).

85!!!!!! Whee! SHould have gotten 90. -_-

Uncle T

Orders kebabs. Yup, kebabs...

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,

where there is hatred, let me sow love...

...Grant that I may not

so much seek to be consoled as to console;

to be understood as to understand;

to be loved as to love.

Listening. One of the most difficult to do. Something we all take for granted in the noise fuzz of materialism and bass&drums of consumerism.

Listening. One of the most difficult to do. Especially in the deafening roar of our ego.

What am I doing about being a PPE student? I'm just merely a student taking 3 seperate majors. What does PPE hold for me, for the 60-odd of us? Let's hope more than what is.

Uncle T

Orders roti prata with coconut milk gravy, mua chi and heh bi hiam noodles...

I cannot say that life has been unkind; things have been coming along well, to be honest. True, essays and logic homework just keep streaming in ceaselessly no doubt, but it is all well-fulfilling. The more essays due, the more occasion to celebrate.

One of life's hardest lessons is learning patience for success.

Since my Paris trip last weekend (yeah, have to talk about that in another entry, with photos), we have had Chinese New Year go by, along with the Singsoc's belated Reunion dinner just couple of nights back in Birmingham. I was pleasantly surprised at the excellent turn-out and enthusiastic response, which made it a good evening.

Over the weekend, we also had some friends from down south Imperial College, to play floorball with the young Warwick team started by Singaporeans. It was an extremely competitive match, but we all had our fun. Floorball is one helluva game. I still cannot believe it I'm here, 13 hours away from home, playing so much more sports than I did back home, more liberty to make choices of my own; in fact, that which I deem the hardest part about being away: making choices and living with their consequences. That's life.

We, the production team of the play Singsoc is co-sponsoring "Endorian Dreams", just had a fulfilling meeting cum dinner this evening. It is always a pleasure to lead a team of dedicated members who are each leaders in their own rights.

Sia la, miss makan back home, miss the ang bao collections, the walks with the beloved along Esplanade, the mat rocks... The Malaysians are a way cool bunch, I'm starting to realise. :) Will start playing more badminton with them from now on.

Sigh...if only I can have more time to reading "The Economist", the interesting article on the cognitive and emotive mood of music and the library book that I renewed 9 times and still have yet to complete.

The seasons go by so quickly. One moment the squirrels were hibernating, the next I know they are scampering across that faithful window of mine. Spring is fast approaching. So are exams. So is the time to return home. But do I really need to go back to Singapore to be home?

Its Lent you know? It's so important, Lent. That gradual build-up towards the climatic Easter, which has been blessed for me and my family the past two years.

As yet another essay beckons, this time on ASEAN, and more logic to peel down my cranium walls -∃x (Cube(x) → Between(x, a, b))-, I'm turning in to yet another new Lenten day, a new Warwick week, a new experience that I lay claim on.

quote of the day: "to build up a store of good habits"

Uncle T

Rugby a day... 11:45 pm

After spending the night at Jia Wei's, we headed down to the Tocil mudpool. Together with the other 3 Tocil boys, we headed into the mudbath to play touch rugby. Safe for JW, the rest of us were from the winning Singapore team in One World Week Touch. We were the champions, on the same field.

Despite just a 5-man game of touch and lots of slips and mud, I enjoyed it tremendously. Just good, dirty fun on a beautiful Sunday morning. It is indeed a wonderful day.

Nope, no intellect being pumped in today, just rugby. Currently watching France and Ireland in the 6-Nations. And guess what? I'm going to watch the Rugby World Cup 2007!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yup, catching the quarter finals in Cardiff. Hopefully the All Blacks will be in that, but this rare opportunity didn't come cheap, trust me.

Anyhow, its just rugby today, planning for Europe trips ahead, and a small start to an attempt to make intellectual headway in reading week.

It is a wonderful day today.

Uncle T

I caught it live. 10:40 am

Nope, didn't catch it on ESPN on my TV screen at a conflictual time on a weekend night. I caught it live. Christiano Ronaldo, Kaka, Adriano, Decco, were all before my eyes. At the Emirates stadium. It was an amazing experience.

Nope, didn't catch it on my TV screen. I caught it live. Brasil vs Portugal. I can't believe it still. I can't.

Uncle T

Blow after blow 4:56 pm

First, the financial team fines me for not having rent paid on time, an amount equal to weekly groceries.

Then I watch Copacabana in school with expectations that were not matched by the actuality.

Next, I dress up all smartly ready for Malaysian Night dinner and concert. Concert stub says it is at 7.30pm, and so I thought that the dinner is after that. Wrong. Dinner was at 5pm, at which time I was still helping at the Warwick Debating Competition. There was actually a tiny coupon attached to the concert stub in font size 4 citing dinner time. So I paid for dinner that fed the dustbins.

Finally, the final ingredient to this receipe for crapdom: Craving for a bottle of Coke after the concert, I bought one at 1.20 at the bar. I gave GBP 20 for it, but forgot to take change for it. So that's a $60 bottle of Coke for you. I come back the next day, and they tell me the change was taken to be tips. Nice.

There you have it! My receipe for crapdom! Well, hopefully watching Brasil play Portugal tomorrow at the Emirates, Sting's music, and the thought of the princess miles away will make it all better. We can only hope yes?

ps. "Endorian Dreams", the play I'm producing together with Director Prin is finally taking off. Last night was launch dinner. We have finally casted.

Uncle T

Pushing into the jar 6:05 pm

It is saddening to hear about more deaths in Iraq daily on the news, which makes one wonder how many more souls are lost not reported on BBC due to the lack of space for "Middle East" news; deaths simply excluded too easily.

Do you think the more troops the West sends into Iraq, the more it fuels the anti-occupational sentiment, causing more Iraqis and multi-national forces to lose their lives? Some believe more troops in Iraq can outnumber insurgents, yet others believe that more troops will only fuel the wrath of the local insurgents. Perhaps only after buckets of innocent blood, will history draw a conclusive answer. Perhaps never conclusive. Will we ever know?

At Warwick's One World Week forum yesterday, the Personal Adviser to the Iraqi Prime Minister was on the panel of "Questioning Democracy". "We write our Constitution in our blood" which sounded like a line from a Hollywood epic, held much meaning when he said it through his stories of the struggle of the Iraqi people to be self-deterministic. He was very fervent in bringing across the point that democracy in Iraq is not imported, but one that is determined, fought and preserved by the Iraqi people.

Does America think it is exporting its own brand of democracy into Iraq? On one hand, US is like a mother who always thinks she knows best. But she forgets her kid grows up, and has his own pride and set of experiences that makes him a unique individual. She must learn to let go isn't it?

Random comparison
Between freedom of speech and efficacy, which would you choose?

Uncle T

Notes from the Human Kite 10:16 pm

Human Kite
Winds here are so strong here in the country that the notion of a human kite is as far as you can spread your arms out in the wind. One can actually suffocate from winds walking to lecture. Imagine. Dying on your way to a morning lecture. Double shit. But I didn't and live to do more work piling.

Women...coming right up!
Just an observation from reading the news in the past couple of weeks: a recent number of women breaking the glass ceiling and assuming prominent leadership positions on the international scene.

Democrats have taken the majority in the House of Representatives in the US, they have a woman boss. WHO chief, Deputy Secretary-General of the UN, potential candidate for French top political office, my missus...

I'm glad to see that women rights' activitists are not seeing their good work going to waste in levelling the playing field in a generally patriarcal era we currently live in (and have been for far too long). Equal society, equal opportunities is good, isn't it? Discrimination is bad in general, no? But what troubles me is the notion of "positive discrimination". It is essentially a discriminatory process, with which as advocates of a free and equal society should principally disagree with, but yet it is this process that is touted one of the better means to achieve equality in an already unequal world.

The new UN chief said that he would appoint a woman deputy, and he did. So in this case, is the Tanzanian lady who is now his deputy there because of her merits, or because she is woman? It is fair enough to say she's the woman with the most merits relevant for the position, but essentially she is chosen because she is an Eve-descendant, hence discrimination.

No, don't get me wrong in thinking I'm not supportive of having an African woman as the number two in the UN, but I'm just puzzled by the proposing arguments and opposing ones for "positive discrimination". Possibly there are other substansive means to level the playing field other than appealing to the very principle that made the playing field uneven in the first place.


Uncle T

I don't know. Someone explain the intuition. 3:59 pm

I don't know. Someone explain the intuition.

I find it bewildering, intuitively. One moment they are asking for the empowerment of the fallen people of Iraq; hours of news on the Iraqi people usurp TV air time, there must be a restoration of autonomy in the government of Iraq. Lifes have been lost fighting to return that sovereign right back to the country. Then this autonomy provides a long but conclusive trial on Saddam and sentences him to death, along with his other 2 bigwigs in tow. But the very people who tried to restore the sovereignty of Iraq is condemning not only Saddam's death but trying to intervene and make the Iraqi government reverse its decision on Saddam's other henchmen.


Is the ability to exercise one's own decision not what liberalism fundamentally protects? Is there the West's own brand of liberalism?
Are you seeing why I'm bewildered intuitively? Possibly fathom why hypocracy surfaces in thinking about this? I'm trying to steer clear as much as possible from cynicism as much as possible. Worse, the West (they are generally the ones who wanted Saddam dead and now are the ones who are criticising it and death sentence etc.) are trying to use the UN to pressure for a reversal of the other two hangings of Saddam's accomplices. If the rationale is that this is a principled argument against the death sentence, can there also be a principled argument for the death sentence? Debators would agree with the latter. So why must one principal rule over the other with ubiquitous force when we are not a homogeneous people? Why must the liberals be so unliberal in their thinking, that they come across acting as ducks tripping over their feet? (one moment wanting Saddam dead, the next playing the benovelent saviour).

Liberalism seeks to protect the individual's liberty, and is not the capacity to make one's own decisions a part of that liberty? If yes, then the Western liberal world should at least start trying to even understand that there are possible rational circumstances when the death penalty may be applicable in certain countries. Principled disagreements are to be expected, but if one is a liberal, he/she must be liberal enough to respect the decision-making capacity of another individual no?

Honestly, think about this. I know I may not be totally appealing to the logic behind all this, it is just unnerving that I intuitively feel disconcerted over this, living in a Western society, brought up on Asian values and studying politics.

I don't know. Someone explain the intuition

Uncle T

Time seems all too buoyant 8:56 am

Before I know it, I was once again travelling alone. I could definitely get used to this inital novelty of solitude. Soon, I touched down at Heathrow. Not long after, my body took on a mechanism that seemed unfamiliar to me, as it went about getting on a NatEx bus to Coventry, hailing a cab to campus, and opening the front door of my flat. I was startled by the ease with which I went about this journey. The familiarity with which my hand reached into my pocket for the key, slot it in and turned the door of my flat seemed all too simple, considering how Warwick has only been my home for 3 months.

But those 3 months was a time where I built the experience myself; my room here in Warwick seems more familiar and comforting than my room back in Singapore. Strange. Mega-wierd (I quote Yong out of context). And after all the flurry of activities and hordes of people back home, the solitude on campus before term started was welcoming. I can go about my daily tasks with a quietness that provided me space for reflection and contemplation. As life slowly creeps back into campus, I'm already looking forward to the next time I will enjoy such warming solitude.

Time is such a buoyant concept, floating on an entity that is seemingly unfathomable to me other than mathematically. Technically an hour is very long, a month even longer, more so a year. But it all seems to fly by so quickly, and clarity of memory sometimes undermines the technical length of time.

As I watched a finch sitting on the bush outside my window, I felt that pregnant wait for school to reopen, exciting if I can muster up courage to take on the challenges that lie ahead, dreadful if I'm to allow the schedules to wash me by. I decide.

And to the rest, here's to a life lived to the full.

Uncle T

Smile 7:59 am

Uncle T

Foreigner at Home 7:40 am

Orders fish head curry, sotong in black sauce, chap chye and lime juice...

Don't you sometimes feel as though you're red amidst a sea of blacks and whites? A lobster out of water, somewhat? As I squeezed through smiling bodies along a lighted Orchard Road, I don't exactly feel the intended Christmas blizz being at the heart of "Christmas in the Tropics". Fighting with prams that clip at your heels and flaring arms does not help the cause. But this is home. Or technically, an extention of "home".

Celebrating midnight Mass at Holy Spirit Church was home; the same joy as we celebrated the g0d-child's birthday; the carols that filled the air, greeting friends from days when I still did not have facial hair (some may argue I still don't), having family close at hand, this was home. Having the precious one sit next to me at a children's Mass earlier in the evening felt comforting, with the only discomfort being how this Christmas seems so awkwardly placed in my life; there hasn't seemed to be an preparation for its arrival, and for a moment actually felt foreign to me.

I am extremely glad to get to spend time with loved ones, with Yong and old old friends and family. That is home. Yet, it seems foreign when certain circumstances have changed; people who once were dating are now not, that seemingly commonplace in today's restless world, but disconcerting when you thought that relationship would see you at a wedding banquet in the end. There are no rules for love, for relationships specifically. One would be naive to think that any sort of empirical precedence would akin to rules in such complex matters; being attached to close to a decade doesn't mean you'll end up together.

It is just sometimes that you feel fundamentally disconnected from the very system that bred you. It is, possibly, at such times that you seek a life-changing experience. An experience that can change your perspective on the littlest things in life; the toilet as an unexpected haven, life as a gift, trees as perils to drivers...Changing perspectives, dynamic perspectives. When I saw the book "Jazz 101" on Desmond's organ, I thought that would be that book that would change my musical understanding, hence a how I may perceive life as a whole. From Borders to Kino, the book is out of stock for an indefinite period. Will continue to seek the book with that sureity of wanting that that epiphany-perspective change.

Uncle T

That sense... 1:00 am

The moment that iconic tower topped with the ball came into view in a backdrop of a green coastline, the sense quietly crept up against my skin. As the plane taxied through the terminal upon touchdown, seeing Singapore flags on the sides of other SQ planes had that sense take a better grip of my consciousness. And it was when the leading flight stewardess welcomed Singaporeans home over the announcement system when that sense engulfed me. Home.

I was home, a first homecoming, at least a proper month, for this was the furtherst and longest I have been away from home, from Singapore. I was not exactly nostalgic, wherein old memories float through my grey matter, where old smells and senses teased my almost air-plane-sterilised senses. I just smiled, sensing that sense.

Returning into the embrace of the sun and the arms of that precious one further bolstered that sense. No, not nostalgia again. These experiences had no room for former memories to enter the experience itself; I was just living in the wonderment of that moment. Nice. Family, my room...

But where IS home? Not a new question, really? Could I get the same kind of sense being with close friends and family in another obscure part of the world? Possibly. I am often quoted to saying "home is where the heart is"; since I've forgotten who I picked that clever line from, I'll just assume its mine to some extent.

But how true is that truism? While I figure that out, I'll enjoy this sense in the meantime. Cheers, with kopi peng and mee pok tah....


Uncle T