iMusings

I don’t particularly like it
I don’t particularly care for it
I don’t particularly agree with it
But I don’t have much of a choice

So again, it’s been some time since I was last here. Joined Twitter in between. Not that I’m using the thing properly. Semester is over here. Wrapping up work on my paper as well. Hopefully the journal accepts it. I kind of need a publication.

So I’m going back home in a couple of days. And I can’t wait! My family and friends (and SP!), Mum’s cooking, my home home, Singapore, the weather, places I’m familiar with etc. So many wonderful things there!

It’ll also be a chance for me to go into detox mode and take care of myself. I’ll admit it, I love partying with my friends. I always over-indulge myself when it comes to partying. Work hard, play hard right. And in recent years, the partying has gotten a tad bit more frequent. Not that that’s a bad thing. Getting together to have a good time is even more special since we’ve all had to move to different parts around the Midwest. Well, ok, I never moved, but my friends did. So when we get together, we always have a good laugh, lots of fun and memories. But fact is, we’re getting older, and the partying is beginning to take its toll. It is for me at least. I need more time to recover and a particularly fun weekend. Generally lots of sleep. And that question ‘Why on earth did I drink so much’, followed by ‘I’m never going to drink again’. Inevitably though, you do.

Of late, I find myself getting more tired than I used to after such a weekend. I’m not the most able-bodied person, so I do need to take care of my health. And going home fits perfectly with this. Good food, good environment etc. Complete abstinence is what I need right now, at least for a couple months. And that’s just what I’m going to do. Many people have told me over the years that I should slow down and take it easy. Well, guess what, you people are right. While I do idolize the rockstar lifestyle, I don’t think I’ll be able to handle it (dare I say any more?). There’s that old cliche: You only live once. I normally go by that to a fair extent. But another thought comes to my mind now: Although you only live once, shouldn’t you try to live it comfortably? I’m going to stick by that, for now at least. Eat right, sleep well, exercise and what not. And then perhaps try to strike a balance with this whole partying thing.

For now, I’m going to go with the sleep well part. My bed, hot chocolate and a book beckon! Goodnight everyone!

My last post was quite a while back. I’m sure quite a few people must have figured I’m never going to post again. Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but no such luck! Ok, comedy aside, my innate laziness has kicked into full gear for the past few weeks or so. I haven’t done as much work as I should. I’ve partied a lot (but that wouldn’t count as being lazy right?). On the plus side, I’m re-discovering a part of myself which I thought was lost.

Anyway, yesterday was Tamil New Year. So, I thought I’d try to put my laziness back into its place. Not that it’s going too well. I have to hold office hours soon for the 2 grad classes that I’m a TA for, and I haven’t touched the homeworks at all. So everyone is going to bombard me with questions, expecting me to give them mind-blowing answers, and all I’m going to do is stare right back at them, looking dumbfounded. And instead of looking at the questions, here I am writing a post. Though, to my defense, the site with the homework questions is down.

What a digression! The title of the post is ‘Twitter-ing’, and here I am writing about my laziness. Ok, so I don’t know how many of you know what Twitter is. It’s a kind of blog. Micro-blog, to be exact. You join up, and you can SMS, IM or use the site to post feeds. Basically, there are a ton of ways for you to tell the world at large what you’re doing or thinking or planning or etc. You get the idea. A friend introduced me to the site, and she seems to use it a lot. And from what I’ve seen, there are lots of people using it. Now, when I first came across the site, I was quite sure I would never use it. I’m still not, but I’m beginning to wonder if I should. It looks like a perfect way to waste time, which is what I’m all about. Looks like a great way to meet new people, albeit on the web. And most of all, it does look like a lot of fun. But here’s the thing. From what I’ve seen, the majority of feeds seem to be people saying ‘I’m doing this now’, or ‘Why am I doing this now?’, or ‘I just bought something’, and things along those veins. If I was to use it, I’m probably going to be not so different. Of course, I’d have a few rants thrown in there ;). Would it really be all that interesting for people to read about what I’m doing or thinking every few hours of my life? And given my innate laziness, would I even bother to post feeds on a regular basis? So I’m kind of in 2 minds about this whole Twitter thing. Oh, and my friend is trying her utmost best to get me to sign up, so there’s that as well.

Most of you are probably thinking ‘What the hell? Why is it so hard to decide whether you want to join this thing or not?’, and you’re actually right. It isn’t a big or hard decision to make. I was just feeling bored, and this seemed like a nice thing to write about, in order to kill some time

But to those of you who do use Twitter, I’d love to hear from you about using it, if it’s good, bad, fun, waste of time etc.

Finally, I got round to installing Parallels onto my Macbook. And now, I can run Windows XP and Mac OS X at the same time. I’m a self-confessed Mac fan, and I can’t stand Windows. It’s fraught with too many problems in my opinion, and not enough benefits to make the OS worth my time. But sadly, most of the world revolves around Windows. For example, data sets for my Management class are always given in Excel format. And for the Mac, I only have Office 2004, which isn’t native. Instead, it has to use Rosetta to run on my Mac, and that makes it incredibly slow. And there’s no word about when we’re going to be able to buy Office 2008 for the Mac at student prices. Another example. Most of the people I know use MSN messenger to chat. And Microsoft refuses to update the MSN Messenger for Mac to be more compatible with the version that is out for Windows. I can’t see most of the emoticons people send, and that’s a bit annoying.

Annoying no more, because now I have both Windows and Mac on my Macbook! Running Windows on Parallels on my Mac is almost like I’m running Windows natively. There isn’t much of a lag. Applications work seamlessly. And best of all, I can drag and drop from the Mac OS straight to Windows! Even this post is being written on Windows Live Writer on my Macbook. Strange how much joy all of this gives me. Needless to say though, I will be using the Mac OS much more frequently than I will be Windows.

I was planning on getting some take-out Chinese food the other day for lunch, and was having a hard time deciding what I wanted while browsing through the menu. I decided to look up some of the dishes listed on the net, to see if I found anything particularly interesting. Mee goreng was listed on the menu, and I know perfectly well what it is, but for the heck of it, I googled it and to my surprise, found it listed on Wikipedia. Now what surprised me more were the relevant links, one of which was mamak stalls. I was shocked to find that Wikipedia had an entire entry devoted to mamak stalls! A mamak stall is a sort of an eatery, with a lot of relevance to Malaysians and Singaporeans. Reading the entry took me back to my school days. Somehow, school kids in Singapore tend to spend lots of time at mamak stalls.

And of course, reading about mamak stalls made me homesick…again. Hopefully, I’ll be back home in about 2 months. But my plans have a nasty habit of screwing up. So I’m not going to count my chickens before they hatch (is that right, or is it count my eggs?). Can’t wait to go back home! But, for the first time ever in my life, this trip back home will be bittersweet. Still, it’s home, and East or West, home is always best!

It’s horrible when you’re sitting in bed at night, reading a book, and everything is quiet save for the sound of the boiler doing its job, just after you’ve had a deep and somewhat unpleasant conversation with someone you care about. Even though you’re supposed to be reading, random thoughts keep popping into your head. Things that you wanted to ask, but which never occurred to you during the conversation, start surfacing in your mind. You wish you could have said something different, made things happen differently, and a zillion other thoughts. And the book I’m reading, ‘The Master of Petersburg’ by J. M. Coetzee, which is turning out to be an excellent read, seemed to have all these lines which seemed so relevant to what had just happened. Of course, it doesn’t help that a paper I had submitted in late December was just rejected by the journal, a paper for which I had high hopes. I guess we’ll try to draft a response letter and see if anything different happens.

Anyway, in a situation like this, when you’re left with nothing but your thoughts, the truth hits home. And it hits home in a hard way, a really hard way. There’s a song by Common, called ‘the Corner’, featuring Kanye West and The Last Poets, and I’ve never remembered much of the lines, except this one, which seems very apt for a time like this

“Reality’s a b****, and I heard that she bite“.

And that’s so true. Anyway, enough of my sob story. A chapter in my life is truly closed. Time to reinvent myself! I need a new pair of shoes, because my daily use pair has sprung a leak in the bottom, makes for lots of fun when walking in the snow! Need a haircut as well, then go back to doing what I used to do! Looking forward to that, but a bit terrified at the same time.

I just found out that there’s actually a song called ‘King of Wishful Thinking’ by Go West. Must be where my friend got inspiration for his nick. I’ve never heard the song before, but the lyrics are pretty good, so I’m listing them out here. Enjoy!

I don’t need to fall at your feet
Just ’cause you cut me to the bone
And I won’t miss the way that you kiss me
We were never carved in stone
If I don’t listen to the talk of the town
Then maybe I can fool myself…

I’ll get over you… I know I will
I’ll pretend my ship’s not sinking
And I’ll tell myself I’m over you
‘Cause I’m the king of wishful thinking
I am the king of wishful thinking

I refuse to give in to my blues
That’s not how it’s going to be
And I deny the tears in my eyes
I don’t want to let you see… no
That you have made a hole in my heart
And now I’ve got to fool myself…

I’ll get over you… I know I will
I’ll pretend my ship’s not sinking
And I’ll tell myself I’m over you
‘Cause I’m the king of wishful thinking…
I’ll get over you… I know I will
I’ll pretend my ship’s not sinking
And I’ll tell myself I’m over you
‘Cause I’m the king of wishful thinking

I will never, never shed a tear for you
I’ll get over you

If I don’t listen to the talk of the town
Then maybe I can fool myself…

I’ll get over you… I know I will
I’ll pretend my ship’s not sinking
And I’ll tell myself I’m over you
‘Cause I’m the king of wishful thinking
I’m the king of wishful thinking
I’ll get over you… I know I will
You made a hole in my heart
But I won’t shed a tear for you
I’ll be the king of wishful thinking
I’ll get over you…
I’ll pretend my heart’s still beating
‘Cause I’ve got no more tears for you
I’m the king of wishful thinking…
I’ll get over you… I know I will
You made a hole in my heart
And I’ll tell myself I’m over you
‘Cause I’m the king of wishful thinking

Don’t worry, there hasn’t been an earlier post with a similar title. I just recently started using this as my MSN nick, after a good friend started using it. He of course, didn’t have the II. I took on the II, because I’m the kind of guy who believes in giving credit where credit is due.

Surprisingly enough, Wikipedia has an entry on wishful thinking:

Wishful thinking is the formation of beliefs and making decisions according to what might be pleasing to imagine instead of by appealing to evidence or rationality.

I wouldn’t say wishful thinking is a bad thing. Life is pretty boring as it is. Not thinking about nice situations that probably couldn’t happen would make life even more boring. And we are all human after all, so we’re bound to end up in these phases from time to time. But, and somebody please correct me if I’m wrong, or let me know if I’m right, wishful thinking leads to trouble most of the time. Since you’re conjuring up situations based on your imagination rather than logic, I think most times wishful thinking leads to disappointment.

Here’s the thing though. It seems to me that most times, disappointments from wishful thinking arise due to people changing. I know it’s part of human nature to keep changing and evolving, change is the only constant thing, blah blah blah. But most times, people don’t change overnight. It’s when someone suddenly changes, and drastically at that, that disappointments occur. Of course, there’s the possibility that you yourself have changed, but that doesn’t really lead to disappointment does it? Someone who’s involved in whatever you’re going through changing though can cause problems. Perhaps a newfound freedom, or a sudden clairvoyance, or who knows what, lead to a person changing. They start to behave differently, reverse decisions they had previously felt so strong about. To them, they feel nothing about current situations. It’s the other one that suffers disappointment. I’m not getting my point across clearly I think. What I’m trying to say is, these things happen, and they’re out of our control, and the end result pretty much sucks, mainly for the person involved that is, not the other party. Thing is, nothing can be done about this. Like I said, we’re all humans, and we’re going to keep going through this, and keep suffering disappointment. Just part of life I guess.

Anyway, I don’t think I expressed myself clearly. Too bad I guess. It all makes such sense to me in my head. I was pretty much a cynic for a long time, and from time to time, I let my guard down and get enveloped in this wishful thinking phase. But through my own and others’ experiences, and recently someone else’s, I think it’s best to keep your guard up at all times. I had been less cynical of late, but things I’ve seen have made me decide that being less cynical isn’t a good thing in today’s world. Perhaps there’s something to be said for cautious optimism, but right now, even that doesn’t seem like a good thing to me. Keep your guard up at all times I say, and try and minimize whatever pain and disappointment you can. That’s certainly what I’m going to be doing.

Did any of this make any sense to anyone at all?? I suddenly feel like I’m conducting a class here.

I know this line comes from that classic film ‘Casablanca’, but that’s not where I actually got it from. I just finished reading ‘Eleven Minutes’ by Paulo Coelho, who I happen to be a big fan of. I think he’s a genius of a writer. His books always have some profound message in them, to me at least. There’s ‘The Alchemist’ , The Zahir’, ‘The Valkyries’ to name a few.

Now ‘Eleven Minutes’ is somewhat different to these books. It’s somewhat more darker and deeper and deals with a subject that is generally considered taboo. The end result though, is heartwarming, like many of his books. A nice, happy ending of sorts.

The story is about a girl from Brazil who travels to Switzerland in search of adventure, riches and love. But life throws her many curve balls. Doesn’t it always. But she finds a way to accept these twists and use them to her advantage to grow as a person, both emotionally and intellectually. Along the way, she meets a painter, and ends up falling for him. The way Paulo Coelho describes this love is fantastic though. A love without need of possession. She decides to go back to Brazil with the money she’s saved, to buy a farm, and to embark on a new adventure. It’s at this point that the abovementioned line comes up. En route to Brazil, she stops over in Paris. Mr Painter here decides to be all cliche and flies to Paris, arriving hours before she does. He picks up a bunch of flowers, locates her, and whispers in her ear “We’ll always have Paris”. He does, of course, reference ‘Casablanca’, because it would be plagiarism otherwise. It’s cliche, but it works. And she decides not to go back, and they essentially lived happily ever after.

Ok, so I probably haven’t done much justice to the book with my review summary of it. This is basically what I got out of it though. But wouldn’t it be nice if we could all have endings like that, if we could all have “We’ll always have Paris” moments.

Have you ever had one of those days when you just feel annoyed with everything and everyone in general? There’s a reason why, but you just can’t put your foot down on it. Every situation and everyone you come across just seem to irritate you. I generally can’t stand feeling this way, just because I don’t know why I feel like that. If I have a valid reason for feeling that way, then I don’t feel so bad I guess.

Yesterday started out to be one of those days. From the moment I got up, I wasn’t in a good mood. For no particular reason whatsoever. It’s not like I got out of the wrong side of the bed, or didn’t get ready in time, or had some unforeseen change in my morning routine. I was just pissed off with the world at large. I guess you could blame the weather. As is the case with many people, the weather has some effect on my mood. After a glorious weekend of high temperatures, Midwest weather showed us why no one likes it. Just because it was warm for 2 days doesn’t mean the temperature is going to remain positive even for 1 extra day. We went into the negative region again, with very strong winds that seem to blow in a million different directions at the same time. So taking the bus to campus and walking back in the cold was not fun. Add to that the fact that my left arm has been aching since that fall about 2 weeks ago. I managed to keep out of the way of humanity in general, leaving myself to feel annoyed by myself.

As the day moved along, happily, my mood improved. I wasn’t chirpy or cheerful, but I wasn’t annoyed. Got back home in the evening, plopped myself down on the couch, and started channel surfing. And to my surprise, I come across Anthony Bourdain in Singapore. Now, Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations isn’t a show I watch regularly. But I don’t mind watching it. And it was great that this episode was about Singapore. And how we (even though I wasn’t born there, I think I can call myself a honorary Singaporean after all this time!) absolutely love food. It was fantastic to hear words and phrases like  ‘Kopitiam’ and ‘Sup Tulang’, to see hawker centres serving delicacies like chili crab and Mr Makansutra himself, KF Seetoh. Did wonders for my mood! And I can’t wait to go back home!

Now today started a whole lot better. I woke up on time, got ready and had a phone interview, of sorts. It wasn’t really an interview, it was more like the company feeling me out and earmarking me I guess. But it went reasonably well. For some reason, if something good like this happens, everything else has to be screwed up. It was cold again outside, worse than outside yesterday. I was absolutely packed with meetings and duties. I had a meeting with my advisor, and this went pretty well too. We had a really stimulating research discussion, and we haven’t had one this interesting in a long time. In the middle of all this, I get a call for an urgent favour for a friend. And this favour has a soft deadline. In the process of helping out, I managed to dent the trunk of my car. It’s not severe, and affects functionality in no way whatsoever, but being the perfectionist that I am, it irks me. It’s a cosmetic damage, and mars the beauty of the car. So I really want to get it fixed. So after about lunch today, my mood has progressively gotten worse. Sometimes, it’s annoying that when something good happens, something bad also has to happen. Perhaps it’s just the way the world works? In order to maintain some sort of balance? Days like these, best thing to do is curl up with a good book, then get some shuteye, and hope the next day works out better than this one, two in my case. But that’s just what I’m about to do now. I’m going to go settle in bed with ‘Himalayan Dhaba’ and a cup of hot chocolate, then sleep, in anticipation of a better and more fruitful day tomorrow.