Fish

If you’ve been learning English for quite some time, you’d probably have heard of this saying that when a friend ask you for a fish, if you really want to help him, you will teach him how to fish instead of giving him a fish. Well, there something along this line is all languages I think, at least it does in mine. I used to really agree with the saying but now I no longer do.

The answer is very obvious in university. You can observe it everywhere. When asked for a fish, and you’re trying to help him by teaching him how to fish. He’d tell you he doesn’t have time to learn how to fish. By the time he knows how to fish, he probably won’t need the fish anymore, which is quite true if you think about it. This does happen to me quite a number of times. Another problem that I observe is that most people think that “I probably won’t need this fish in the future, why the hell should I learn how to fish? I would just forget it anyway if I don’t practice it.” Again this does make sense. Meanwhile, some would thing that “fishing” is too complicated and troublesome too learn, they’d rather not going through the trouble for something that’s not really that useful to them. The bottom line is I want fish! you give  me or I ask somebody else.

So well gruadually, I learned to adapt and drop that saying out of my head. They don’t want your selflessness, they want your fish. So yes, be selfish and sell the fish. You’d be surprised that people will pay for it, instead of learning it for free. Everybody is always too busy for something they don’t give a sh*t about.

Team & Leader, The great crumble.

hahah sth really good happened made me wanna take study break and come back here to rant about sth again. This time it’s about the worst project I’ve had since entering university.

In this particular project of mine, we have it all. Failed leadership, poor communication, miscommunication, free rider, weak personnel, wishful thinking, conflicts among members, and needless to say, zero teamwork. You name and the project has it. However, it didn’t really bother me because I knew this was gonna happen at the earlier stage of the project, though I have to admit that I didn’t expect it to be this bad.

In a project, usually people prefer to work on their own and not to have to much collaboration with people (well, at least that’s how it is in my course and all the electives classes I’ve taken). Then at the end of the day, they’ll come together once and for all to integrate what they’ve done individually into the final piece for submission. Well, that only works if your project doesn’t require regular integration and correlation across all sections. When you’re working on a project that equates to a 4AUs subject, that completely doesn’t apply. My current project is a perfect example of that. Well don’t get me wrong here. “Doesn’t apply” here doesn’t mean you won’t get good grade. If you say your sole goal of doing a project is to get good grades then you can stop reading this post.

Scoring should be only be the team’s short term goal and one of the project’s objectives. Learning is however the true aim of it. Again before I could go on, a bunch of people would rebut that we do learn sth. Learn what? Like how to write report? how to design cover page? how to program a software? to make a website? how to apply our lecture into our project? Well honestly, if that’s what each of us would learn every time we do a project, then the idea of project has failed completely. Again, I began to sound like a real smart ass here. I mean who the hell don’t know the potically correct answer that the whole idea of project work is to let us learn about teamwork, leadership, blah blah blah. But what exactly did you learn?

You see, usually when u try asking a person what he learned after completing a project. He’d go, “I learned how to work in team.”, “I learn how to handle leadership.”, “I learn that teamwork is important in life.”  or sth along those lines. This is why I like to listen to real leader talk. If you pay attention to them, real good leader/ team worker they don’t boast about how great a leader they are neither they would say anything about knowing leadership and teamwork. Come on, this is like a small school project that barely simulate anything in a working society. If you say u alrd can learn how to handle teamwork and leadership just by doing a few projects in school. I think that’s pure rubbish.

With that said, there is where I have say that I’m glad to have such a screwed up project. It makes the learning points of the project more obvious and easier to pick up. Imagine if all your projects were to go smoothly and peacefully, you would never really know what could’ve gone wrong, would you? In fact, I spend more time reflecting on the project than doing the project itself. One of the things I asked myself most frequently during the course of this project is “out of all the many causes to the failure of this project, which one would I say is the key cause to everything?” Some people would think that it’s a dumb question because it’s so rethorical. “Isn’t it obvious that it’s failed leadership?” Well that’s the thing. I feel that we are so blinded by the institution teaching and society’s over emphasis on leadership that people automically assume leadership is the key to everything. I mean some people don’t even know why leadership is crucial, and just know that it is. So many people told us so that we agreed to it without condition. Then when you’re put in the a leader position, you’ll start questioning yourself what exactly is important about leadership in a team or an organization? And only when you manage to make it work through your leadership then you have the right to agree that leadership is really the key and is crucial.

Omg! I think I watch too much nigahiga that I start to have ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) also. I just realize I just rambled all over the place and haven’t really made any point. Well my point is…. my project sucks big time!! Teehee!!

Fairness? Equality? Reason? Complain.

It’s really been a long while again. I’ve had so much to write about but time doesn’t gimme the leisure to do so. But sth happened yesterday that I couldn’t resist not ranting away about it.

After a whole day of slaving over my project, I rushed out for dinner and went for IUC meeting. There were 2 agendas for the meeting. 1 is regarding the ragging issue and the other was on the HAS Distance point feedback and suggestion. Due to the late arrival of the president, the 2nd agenda was started first. So yeah the issue is the distance point for international student (which is currently 9 pnt regardless of year of study) maybe changed to 9, 8 and 7 pnt from as we progress in our year of study? What are your thoughts on that?

After the question was raised, a few particular people started throwing their feedback/reason/argument/complain/comment/nonsense/bull crap/waste of time (Yes, literally “/” because everything was mixing up together). You can’t really tell them apart, whether it’s complain, reason, argument or feedback. This is what happens when people use emotion and feeling to speak. I was sitting there close to 3 hrs thinking in my head “what a blardy waste of time, I could be better off slaving over my project right now.” I mean these people were raising an arguments that has already been repeatedly talked about since this issue started 4 or 5 years back. You are just being annoyingly redundant. But haven’t they thought of that? No, because apparently they sounded as if other people are stupid enough not to see the argument until they pointed it out. A few examples of the arguments raised were regarding the Singaporean has home and foreigners has no home, so Singaporean has an alternative and we don’t. Also, this is a distance point so by right, we should have it higher than the Singaporean since we live much further than them. These are the 2 classic ones and there were a bunch of others like renting house/room outside are expensive, exchange rate issue, blah blah… blah blah… Seriously, you’re getting nowhere with these. Then I was like never mind since already wasted my time, I might as well start praying for someone to at least come up with a creative and plausible feedback. Guess what!? Someone did went creative. Creatively bullshit.

He/She said the school should look at it from a financial point of view as in who earns more and who earns less. I was like what!? what the hell? where is that coming from? Well, I could see how she derived that out because well, according to the exchange rate Singapore has more or less the strongest currency in South East Asia, and apparently, he/she believes that it’s a common sense that foreigners’ families are poorer (as in earning less) than the locals’ families. The first factor was reasonable since it’s a fact. But the 2nd, prove that. I mean I’m on her side on the 2nd one since I’m from a middle-class family in a poor country. But the thing is will being poor and having been hanging around with poor international students and “rich” locals prove your common sense? How do you know one are poorer than the other? Because they said so? If I were to take myself as an example again, so far most people who just know me or barely know me assume that I’m one rich ass kid from my country. But how true is that? Well, after the SU side explain that this couldn’t be a valid point since we can’t prove it. He/She accepted it AND went more CREATIVE with the suggestion. He/She said the school should study the financial status of all the students and do a review on it. Seriously!? Did he/she just throw that for the sake of creating argument or he/she have seriously thought about it? I mean if he/she seriously thought this could be done, then I’m speechless. He/she was saying that students gave school their family income and financial status at their disposal so why can’t they just use the information to work this out?………..I was like SERIOUSLY? This is ultimate bullcrap. Maybe he/she did gave hers at the school disposal but not everybody does. It’s easy to say it when we’re poor since we have nothing to lose when it’s reveal that we’re poor. We’d just stay the same or probably gain sth. But how would rich people feel? I mean you can ask yourself a simple question? Why do rich people spend so much money and waste effort to put their money in a bank that promise them highest level of privacy? At the end of the day, even if 99% of the student agreed that their families’ financial information are at the school disposal, there school still can’t conduct the study because of the 1% that doesn’t agree. Man, when they went on lik 1 hour long regarding this financial issue, I was really close to stand up and walk out of the meeting.

Well, that was 1 of it. Then somebody else took on the creativity to a greater height. He/she said now the issue it’s not about who earns more and who earns less. It’s about who’s pays more and who pays less. wow! He started of pointing out the difference between our tuition fee (as in the locals and foreigners). And I couldn’t remember his/her exact wordings but he/she was basically trying to say that if the school wanna treat us equally they should put us in an equal financial ground. That means to say either we should be paying the same amount or the rental outside campus should be as cheap as the ones provide by the campus. That’s like asking Apple to sell ipod at $500 to the rich and only $100 to the poor. Anyway, that isn’t the main problem. The main thing is he/she now trying to involve MOE and Singapore Government into the equation and not just the university. Either he/she is that dumb or he/she has really has no clue that tuition fee/tuition grant and real estate price not under the university’s control. So if you’re aware of that, it really sounds as if he/she is trying ask Singapore to change their policy just for this issue. wow! that’s simply creativity at its best. And I could see that the SU President and Vice President were both -___-” though they are foreigners as well. However, they were polite enough to answer everything politely and not asking he/she to zipped up and f off. I mean foreigners or not, we should be able to see this clearly that money is not part of the equation and that the result they’re looking for in this equation is a “≥” sign and not an “=” sign. You just make a fool of yourself and make all foreigners look stupid by suggesting this.

Finally, I just wanna wrap this up by pointing out a some basic points that we can ask ourselves. First of all, nothing is equal and fair. Otherwise there won’t be people working much harder than the others. In fact the university is being very kind by trying minimize the casualty. If you look at university all over the world, people don’t even have hall to stay at. From there you tell, that the university has every right not to provide us hall, and every right to charge equal to outside rate (just look at how SMU and NUS charge compared to NTU). And when you complain about how expensive is outside rental, please do bear in mind who pay for your education here. The university and Singapore government. What if they tell us that ok, now we don’t pay for your tuition fee, tuition grant, and school fee and pay for your food and rental outside instead. Will you be happy? If you do the math, I don’t think you’d even consider coming to Singapore at all. Ask yourself why are you here? Never use money as an argument to an issue. Local or international alike, there are always people having problem with money. Asking why Singapore charge foreigners more education is like asking why a country charging tourists extra for visiting their attractions. You’re here means you’ve made your choice, informed or not. So live with your choice. Even it it turns out to be a mistake (financially in this case), it’s your fault. You can give 101 reason that the university didn’t explain clearly to you that it’s gonna be like this. But you have to remember that they are but salesman, their job is to sell, doesn’t matter how. It’s your problem after you choose to buy it. That’s why we should appreciate it when they have good customer service.

Man, I can’t believe that I’ve actually wasted 1hr+ ranting on these pointless arguments. But I really do hope that all my friends who end up reading this will not end up being in the same shoe as those people. We are educated people, and the university treat us as educated people. So when they give you opportunity to voice yourself out, you’d do so like an educated person and not simply making a fool of yourself and the community you’re representing. When we’re holding a representative position, it’s not just our individual image is at stake but our community’s. If you think you have nothing better to say, then take the most educated response by shutting up.

Getting Old, Morning Stroll

It’s really been along while since I blog about myself or my thoughts. Today sth occurred to me and made me feel like blogging about it.

Today I had an early morning appointment with a guy to buy sth from him. So I had to wake up very early, one of the very rare occasion that I get up early I’d say. Anyway, after washing up, I made my way to ATM to withdraw money. Outside, the sky is clear with no cloud and no sun and the cool morning breeze brushes me softly. I couldn’t help it but find myself enjoying the morning stroll with my favorite tunes on from my iPod. When I got back, I was like God, I’m really getting old. Please tell me that youngsters do enjoy morning strolls and not just senior citizens. Hahaha but honestly I don’t really care about that.

Maybe, I should go into rehab and start waking up early and have morning jog instead of midnight jog.

1000 Places to See Before You Die

While I was browsing for things to watch the other day, I came across this Discovery Channel program called 1000 Places To See Before You Die. The show is about a newly wedded couple, who got inspired by the book 1000 Places to See Before You Die, put their lives on hold and go on an all paid 5-month odyssey trip around the world to places recommended in the book. I love this show. If you love traveling or a traveler at heart, you’ll definitely love the show. So far I’ve watched only 2 episodes which is to Hawaii and India and going to watch Alaska and Brazil. And YES!! They also went to Cambodia. I’m trying to get that episode. If you have time, check them out.

Anyway, while watching the show, sth that was said in there got me thinking for awhile. During the episode, it mentioned that visiting the place is like realizing your childhood dream. Then I think why most of the time people relate their incredible experience to childhood. For example, I often hear people say “This really fun it’s like we’re a child once again.” or “this brings back our childhood memory” or stuffs along those lines. That implies that childhood is one of the best time in their lives, if not the best. However, we also often see people negatively regard people who are inconsiderate, hot tempered, insensitive, immature etc.. as “childish”. I found it ironic and the same time, humorous. It’s like they’re saying that “I love childhood but I hate being childish or people who’re childish.” How can you enjoy your childhood if you’re not childish?

So the next time somebody says that you’re childish, you say “Thank you.”

Unexpectedly unexpected

First, I’ll touch on the 1st unexpectedly unexpected which is the top 20 for the current season of my most favorite reality show, So You Think You Can Dance Season 5. Well, I’m not gonna waste time list their name down here, you can check them out in detail HERE. The top 20 this year is a ridiculous surprise for me. The most unexpected top 20 for me out of the 5 seasons. Almost all the contestants that I’ve rooted and wanted them to go never got in. For guys, only one of those I wanted to make it to top 20 went in, and that is Phillip Chbeeb. He definitely deserves it. After all the praying I grave for him finally he made it. Now it’s time to pray that he’ll explode into awesomeness in competition not just in his style but in other style too. As for girls, only Asuka Kondoh made it from my favorite list. Well, I can’t complain much about this because my favorites are solely base on their solo during audition. They cut the Vegas week into 2 short episodes, so I don’t really get to see any of them dance properly. Most of time was the judges scolding them and sending people home.

This is in a way good too. Like that I won’t have much expectation of what to come. So there would be less disappointment. With that said, they’d better bring it because last year was HOT to the max. Season 4 performances will always be my benchmark for the show. Anything short of that, I’ll be disappointed. Let’s hope this unexpected turn out is a damn good one.

Next and last on the agenda will be Naruto’s latest chapter, 450.*** !!!![SPOILER ALERT]!!!!**

First, I’d like to give myself a pat on the back for accurately predicting the outcome of the battle between Naruto and Pain .  *pat *pat Now the unexpected thing is I never thought Danzo became the 6th Hokage just like that. No struggle no nothing… what the hell… I never thought he’d get to be one in the 1st place. I have a feeling that I may not be enjoying what is to come. But I shall have faith in Masashi-san. He has been impressive up to now. I shall wait and see.

The Farewell

Yesterday was the mass departure for some of us, including me, from our beloved facebook online game clan, called Suikoden. The chatroom of this small clan was filled with a mixture of emotions, relief, sadness, disappointment, shock, and even a slight anger. Well all in all the departure and farewell went pretty quick. Though it was kinda abrupt but I think it was for the best. The longer it takes the harder it is for those who were leaving as well as for those who’re staying. It’s funny how most of us get so emotional of this little community created solely for entertainment purpose. If you weren’t apart of it you’d never understand that feeling. A lot of ignorant people will dismiss the sentiment as virtual obsession. Yes everything was virtual but I can assure 1 thing that is real and that is the friendship we built through playing it and being a part of this little virtual community.

Suikoden is the 1st online game clan (well it’s not even exactly a true blue online game) that I actually got so attached and involved in. I’d say that now I finally have a taste of what some of those online game addicts feel. With this, I understand that gamers sometime are not addicted because of their obsession to be powerful (in the game), to escape reality but instead, it maybe the bond and attachment that they’ve built with various people over the net that prevent them from leaving. All in all, it has been a fun ride. It allows me to keep in touch with my real life friends who’re residing at different part of the world. It also allows me to get to know more friends who I may actually going meet in real life someday. If not because of this stupid facebook application, our path may never cross for the rest of our lives.

Anyway, sometime it seems that it’s better not to get too attached to anything because you’ll never when you’re going to lose it.

Lastly, I wish all my Suikoden peeps all the best in their furture endeavor.

Life’s a Drama

For the past week since my exam was over, I found myself got entangled up in a few dramatic situation. First of all was me sulking and getting all moody over my poor performance in exam. After that, it was my friend turn sulk to over his. Then we talked to find out who’s worse. -_-” A few days later, one of my friends suddenly became overly irritating but I couldn’t do anything about it for some reasons. I figured I should lay my opinions somewhere to prevent it from accumulating to frustration. And well I did. And just 1 or 2 days back, in my online gaming clan, there was a member who raised a complain regarding a certain situation. The complain caused a few members to get quite emotional and the situation became more dramatic than it should’ve been.

This suddenly reminds me of how our lives are, in one way or another, similar to those Korean, Japanese, Chinese or Singapore drama. The basic idea behind the plot is the same and that is one’s emotion(s)/feeling(s) affects another person’s emotion, which in turn affects another’s. This chain reaction create a story. You often hear people say they want to live a happy life or they only long for happiness in their life. But you never hear people wanting misery or sadness to be part of their lives. However, the ugly truth is we can’t live without it. If we can’t have it in our lives, we unconsciously wish it to happen in our friends’ so we can be apart of that misery. And if it doesn’t happen in our lives and neither our friends’ lives, we will crave for it by other means. This is precisely why people loves watching those Asian dramas or those reality shows. To feel emotion, get emotional and ultimately, share that emotions.  But if you ask, not many of them will admit it. The reason is probably lie in my previous entry, titled “unappreciated“. There also the other bunch of people where they have “very good” reasons for doing so like “Dramas are interesting”, “drama helps you understand life”, “they teach us life lesson”, or a more sophisticated reason will be “drama is an art that portrays philosophy of life”. Let’s dissect those few reasons.

“Interesting” is most vague answer one can possibly give. What makes drama interesting. Is it the part where it makes cry? or the part where it makes you smile after you cry? or the part where it makes you curse the plot for making the characters so dumb and fall into every emotional trap that could never possibly happen in real life (well that is according to you of course)? “Dramas are interesting.” is a statement and not a reason.

Let’s move on to “helps us understand life” and “teach us life lesson”. Fun fact, this is what my mom told me when I made an ignorant comment about drama series being predictable, unrealistic, and boring. Well if you have seen enough of the outside world, you’d come to understand that life is far to complex and individualistic for drama to help us understand it, let alone teach us life lesson. What it does is exaggerate situation that some of us may face in life for us to relate our feelings and memory with. It’s funny how we human tend to find solace in other’s misery. On the surface we deny it but underneath we succumb to it.

I think I’m getting quite carried away with this so I’m just gonna end it here. This is 1 of the things we think and don’t say.

Unappreciated

Photo: unappreciated by lpdragonfly @ DeviantArt

I suddenly would like noting this down as I seem to have encountered the situation quite often. What I’m talking about is the situation where in conversation, you are faced with questions regarding your hobbies and what you like doing to occupy your leisure time and you choose not to reveal some of the things you do because you feel that your conversation partner will not be able to appreciate or may show disapproval towards it. For example, you decided to go to a mall to window shop. When you came back a friend asked where were you. Instead of saying you window-shopped, you’d probably just say “I went out”. Then he may go further, “what did you do?”. In this case, If I think that the guy would respond “whoa! you got so much free time ah?”, I probably wouldn’t bother telling him I purposely went out just to window shop and just say “to buy stuff.” or “check out sth.”

Basically, it’s about sth you do or enjoying doing that other people perceive it as useless stuff, unproductive stuff, or waste of time. What I don’t like about it is not the fact that the person doesn’t appreciate or approve of what you’re doing. It’s his inconsiderate expression of disapproval that puts me off. I mean what exactly is considered a waste of time. Do we always have to have a plausible reason for doing sth? Can’t “just for fun” or “i like doing it” be a good enough reason to justify it? Hahaha… I don’t know where am I trying get at with this but I guess what am I trying to say is that each individual has their own love and passion for things. They are unexplainable sometime. We don’t know why but we just like doing it. So we should think before showing our negative reaction towards it. Well, not like anyboy doesn’t know this but thing is it happens unconsciously sometime (especially for guys I think).

Here is one of the many scenarios, I encountered. When I first got a blog and I told my peers about it, here were some of the responses I got…

A: Cool! what’s your blog link?
B: Welcome to the world of blogging.
C: I see…
D: Are you gay? Only girls write blog dudes.
E: Wat de… blogs are for emos lah.
F: You have too much free time is it?

There it goes. Another random entry. ^_^

Ethic?

Yesterday, I had a small disagreement with my group mate regarding our report feedback. My take on the feedback form is to reflect my opinion on each member truthfully. His, however, is to falsely reflect that the project went smoothly and everyone put in equal contribution so that it shows that we have a good teamwork because if the tutor feels that there is no teamwork, he could deduct our score. So he’s saying that I should put a decent comment even on a member who refuse to participate, never listen, and produce rubbish work just to make others’ life more miserable. And he’s my group leader. This put me off completely. I felt like I should no longer need to put effort into the project anymore. Anyway, how high our grade goes is already limited by how much rubbish the person gave us. To him, it may be just a stupid feedback form for us to waste more time trying to show how good our group is but to me, it’s the only form of reflection that I have to show my view on this project and who is putting in effort and who’s not. Well, eventually, I stop caring so much about the whole project and just do my part and leave it be.

Through this small situation, I noticed something. This is actually one of the classic cases of ethical issue that happen in a project. Some people choose to hide the truth when they know the truth will hurt them. My question is: “is this ethical?” or “do you even care?” It also reminds me of something he mentioned back then on the death case of the NTU student. We were discussing about the many rumors that have been circulating around on whether he was attacker or a victim and whether the case is related to the suicide case of the NTU staff. He was blaming the school and the media for covering up the truth and exaggerating the facts. Then he said, “Why don’t they just tell us the truth? all I want to know is the truth.” And now he’s contradicting himself. If I were to re-quote his statement back to him, he’d probably just shrug and say that they are totally unrelated. Are they? Contextually, No, they are not related, but Ethically, Yes, they definitely are.