Sunday, October 19, 2008
Friday, October 17, 2008
How do I enjoy myself?
Admist all the work I should do, an article overdue, a poem to hand in, a paper to research on, readings untouched, and everything else I could continue rambling about, I decided all those could wait while I pause to teach myself how to enjoy the moment. I realized, while talking to a child tonight, I have somehow gotten into a habit of rushing the present, developed an impatience for the right-now moment. This sounds like it could be the Abstract for a “The Problems of Modernity” book, but I’m not sure if this is a modernity problem. The irony of it all is that I am actually enjoying the moment, yet unconsciously rushing it. There is always a nagging background voice asking, “what’s the time now?”, or thinking “this conversation is getting too long”. In a slightly exaggerated and harsh manner of expression, I have quite simply forgotten how to enjoy myself. Gasp! The Horror, the horror!
I wonder if it’s my lack of concentration or inability to focus for extended periods of time (ten minutes?) that has gotten me into this mode of thinking about what is going to happen next when the present is still unfolding (for me, too slowly). Or I wonder if it’s because I am so used to the rush culture--teleporting from one place to another, transforming from one social role to the next, that I have quite gradually and definitely subconsciously forgotten what it means to savour an experience. I’m not even talking about taking time off to watch a droplet fall off a leaf, or smelling the after-rain air. I’m referring to things like appreciating a conversation without having to rush to end it off, or enjoying a person’s companionship without forming imaginary to-do lists on my mind, and the like.
To this, Giddens says,
“[In pre-modern world], no one could tell the time of day without reference to other socio-spatial markers: “when” was almost universally connected with “where” or identified by regular natural occurrences.”
“Time was still connected with space (and place) until the uniformity of time measurement by the mechanical clock was matched by uniformity in the social organization of time.”
“The ‘emptying of time’ is in large part the precondition for the ‘emptying of space’…the development of ‘empty space’ may be understood in terms of the separation of space from place.”
“The advent of modernity increasingly tears space away from place by fostering relations between “absent” others.”
“[The separation of time and space] is the prime condition of the processes of disembedding…by disembedding I mean the ‘lifting out’ of social relations from local contexts of interaction and their restructuring across indefinite spans of time-space.”
----
I think of this line “What’s so amazing about really deep thoughts” from the song "Silent All These Years" and I feel that these thoughts carry me nowhere. Probably how a Science/Computing (okay, huge generalizations, scientists of the world, be forgiving) would cast a critical eye on the Arts and Social Sciences, scoffing behind their calculators, thinking these people are perpetually engaging in their endless meaningless discussions that does nothing but go on in the space of a classroom, write papers that only one other person in the world has read, and the like…I don’t think I wish to continue. I feel so bored typing this out, you see, I am rushing this Now moment even if I’m enjoying the self-reflexivity, the writing, ah whatever. Merry Christmas (even if it's two months early).
I wonder if it’s my lack of concentration or inability to focus for extended periods of time (ten minutes?) that has gotten me into this mode of thinking about what is going to happen next when the present is still unfolding (for me, too slowly). Or I wonder if it’s because I am so used to the rush culture--teleporting from one place to another, transforming from one social role to the next, that I have quite gradually and definitely subconsciously forgotten what it means to savour an experience. I’m not even talking about taking time off to watch a droplet fall off a leaf, or smelling the after-rain air. I’m referring to things like appreciating a conversation without having to rush to end it off, or enjoying a person’s companionship without forming imaginary to-do lists on my mind, and the like.
To this, Giddens says,
“[In pre-modern world], no one could tell the time of day without reference to other socio-spatial markers: “when” was almost universally connected with “where” or identified by regular natural occurrences.”
“Time was still connected with space (and place) until the uniformity of time measurement by the mechanical clock was matched by uniformity in the social organization of time.”
“The ‘emptying of time’ is in large part the precondition for the ‘emptying of space’…the development of ‘empty space’ may be understood in terms of the separation of space from place.”
“The advent of modernity increasingly tears space away from place by fostering relations between “absent” others.”
“[The separation of time and space] is the prime condition of the processes of disembedding…by disembedding I mean the ‘lifting out’ of social relations from local contexts of interaction and their restructuring across indefinite spans of time-space.”
----
I think of this line “What’s so amazing about really deep thoughts” from the song "Silent All These Years" and I feel that these thoughts carry me nowhere. Probably how a Science/Computing (okay, huge generalizations, scientists of the world, be forgiving) would cast a critical eye on the Arts and Social Sciences, scoffing behind their calculators, thinking these people are perpetually engaging in their endless meaningless discussions that does nothing but go on in the space of a classroom, write papers that only one other person in the world has read, and the like…I don’t think I wish to continue. I feel so bored typing this out, you see, I am rushing this Now moment even if I’m enjoying the self-reflexivity, the writing, ah whatever. Merry Christmas (even if it's two months early).
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
On-air
Current earworm:
Current fav quote:
(on commodity racism and imperial advertising)
"Soap is Civilization."
Current fav quote:
(on commodity racism and imperial advertising)
"Soap is Civilization."
Sunday, October 5, 2008
They come, They go.
Do we really have to accept them?
Episode 4: Who lives around you?
"If we have workers coming in here, is it safe for old people?"
"It would be a disaster here. Thousand-over workers, can you imagine?"
"Even a 1% drop in asset value would mean a $14 million* loss." (*Devaluation of property because of the presence of foreign workers)
These are just some of the quotes by Serangoon Garden residents, an area now made famous by the foreign workers dorm saga.
This is a reflection of a bigger problem. It is not just foreign workers that Singaporeans don't feel comfortable staying next to. If you go down the list, half-way houses for drug offenders and ex-convicts are also frowned upon. But let's not stop there. How about hospitals or even funeral parlors?
Have we merely tolerated the presence of these foreign workers, rather than accept them into our society? And if this is a problem, who's going to solve it? Are the Serangoon Gardens people being elitist?
So do the Blogtv.sg
Blogtv team's thoughts...
So we knew that the discussion was going to be heated, if not outright explosive...but yes, that was kinda what we wanted in the first place. Sparks flew when we put a passionate Serangoon Gardens Resident together with an advocate for foreign workers' rights but hey, at least we tried to be balanced by throwing in a sociologist to provide an observer's point of view (or so we thought...)
Rose Tan, Serangoon Gardens Resident
She signed the petition together with 1,400 other residents to protest against the establishment of a foreign workers' dorm in Serangoon Gardens. Infrastructure is her pet peeve, or rather the lack of it in the estate is and without improvements in that area, she will go all out to prevent 1,500 workers from moving in...
Jolovan Wham, Social Worker
He's been working with foreign workers for 4 years now and yes they can speak English. Actually, make that Singlish since that is our 'national' language of sorts. He's also tried to set up a shelter for them in Little India but was rejected by the RC there because the residents were uncomfortable with the idea. To quote him "What's wrong with that since there are already so many of them in Little India?"
Dr Daniel Goh, Sociologist, NUS
He sends his students out to do projects on foreign workers and he claims that they feel 'enlightened' after that. So what does he think if a foreign workers' dorm was to be built in Serangoon Gardens? Why not? In fact, anywhere else on the island, including his backyard will do! But we're not so sure about that...especially if his neighbors in Punggol were to start complaining.
Check it out at Archives: http://www.blogtv.sg/home.php
"They are transient but the community is not transient."
What do you think?
Episode 4: Who lives around you?
"If we have workers coming in here, is it safe for old people?"
"It would be a disaster here. Thousand-over workers, can you imagine?"
"Even a 1% drop in asset value would mean a $14 million* loss." (*Devaluation of property because of the presence of foreign workers)
These are just some of the quotes by Serangoon Garden residents, an area now made famous by the foreign workers dorm saga.
This is a reflection of a bigger problem. It is not just foreign workers that Singaporeans don't feel comfortable staying next to. If you go down the list, half-way houses for drug offenders and ex-convicts are also frowned upon. But let's not stop there. How about hospitals or even funeral parlors?
Have we merely tolerated the presence of these foreign workers, rather than accept them into our society? And if this is a problem, who's going to solve it? Are the Serangoon Gardens people being elitist?
So do the Blogtv.sg
Blogtv team's thoughts...
So we knew that the discussion was going to be heated, if not outright explosive...but yes, that was kinda what we wanted in the first place. Sparks flew when we put a passionate Serangoon Gardens Resident together with an advocate for foreign workers' rights but hey, at least we tried to be balanced by throwing in a sociologist to provide an observer's point of view (or so we thought...)
Rose Tan, Serangoon Gardens Resident
She signed the petition together with 1,400 other residents to protest against the establishment of a foreign workers' dorm in Serangoon Gardens. Infrastructure is her pet peeve, or rather the lack of it in the estate is and without improvements in that area, she will go all out to prevent 1,500 workers from moving in...
Jolovan Wham, Social Worker
He's been working with foreign workers for 4 years now and yes they can speak English. Actually, make that Singlish since that is our 'national' language of sorts. He's also tried to set up a shelter for them in Little India but was rejected by the RC there because the residents were uncomfortable with the idea. To quote him "What's wrong with that since there are already so many of them in Little India?"
Dr Daniel Goh, Sociologist, NUS
He sends his students out to do projects on foreign workers and he claims that they feel 'enlightened' after that. So what does he think if a foreign workers' dorm was to be built in Serangoon Gardens? Why not? In fact, anywhere else on the island, including his backyard will do! But we're not so sure about that...especially if his neighbors in Punggol were to start complaining.
Check it out at Archives: http://www.blogtv.sg/home.php
"They are transient but the community is not transient."
What do you think?
Greater things
I learnt that there must be heart in writing and that good writing has honesty. I also found out that writers do not write in a vacuum, they are and should be grounded by people. I used to have this romantic/disillusioned idea of poets running away into a hut in the wilderness and indulging in a self-consuming form of writing. I now think that is unhealthy because we ought to be surrounded by people, people keep us saint, people remind us that we are part of a social system, people exude love.
But what a strange thing love is, the cliché goes. We can never really pinpoint love, or contain it neatly within fixed boundaries. Love is such a paradox, a double-edged sword in every way. It brings joy but also pain, it may seem eternal yet it could be fleeting, it may deceive yet it could be as real as you would allow it to be. These emotions, responsibilities, and choices that we fit into a word called love is contested at this juncture of life more so than ever. This is a period of trial and error where lovers decide if this is enough to venture to marriage and beyond, a time when singles come up with hypothetical situations and sustains on the characteristics-of-my-ideal. A moment in life’s seventy-eighty years when people struggle in their hazy situation, wanting resolutions, fearing conclusions, desiring answers, denying rejections.
These preoccupations are such priorities right now, and uncertainty makes it so. Soon, the finality of marriage would remove it all and replace such questions with a different set of anxieties, such as bringing bread and butter on the table. But right now, this indefiniteness brings about a restlessness that magnifies the less poignant things in life, it makes the unreal what-ifs real, it feeds on a hope that people hold onto that may turn to disappointment. I'm just hanging onto this:
“I have loved you, my people, with an everlasting love.
With unfailing love I have drawn you to myself."
Jeremiah 31:3
And I guess the best thing that could happen admist such great preoccupations is an awareness of the greater things that could be done...
But what a strange thing love is, the cliché goes. We can never really pinpoint love, or contain it neatly within fixed boundaries. Love is such a paradox, a double-edged sword in every way. It brings joy but also pain, it may seem eternal yet it could be fleeting, it may deceive yet it could be as real as you would allow it to be. These emotions, responsibilities, and choices that we fit into a word called love is contested at this juncture of life more so than ever. This is a period of trial and error where lovers decide if this is enough to venture to marriage and beyond, a time when singles come up with hypothetical situations and sustains on the characteristics-of-my-ideal. A moment in life’s seventy-eighty years when people struggle in their hazy situation, wanting resolutions, fearing conclusions, desiring answers, denying rejections.
These preoccupations are such priorities right now, and uncertainty makes it so. Soon, the finality of marriage would remove it all and replace such questions with a different set of anxieties, such as bringing bread and butter on the table. But right now, this indefiniteness brings about a restlessness that magnifies the less poignant things in life, it makes the unreal what-ifs real, it feeds on a hope that people hold onto that may turn to disappointment. I'm just hanging onto this:
“I have loved you, my people, with an everlasting love.
With unfailing love I have drawn you to myself."
Jeremiah 31:3
And I guess the best thing that could happen admist such great preoccupations is an awareness of the greater things that could be done...
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Parallels & Ironies
Part of an e-mail correspondence:
I said, “…So it is kind of a self-conscious sort of writing. I write with a person/people in mind and this person/people direct my thoughts, or the choice of words I use. Whenever I think of a certain audience, I morph into that person or group of people. I don't write to appeal to them though; it's just that I feel that that my writing becomes pretentious. Again, not that I write things I disagree with, but it feels like almost another person entering me, taking over me and writing on my behalf.”
He said, “…As for audience – I often have an imagined ideal reader for whom I write. An imagined someone with whom I would want to have an intimate and intelligent conversation. I have been fortunate enough to have friends, themselves writers, with whom such a conversation is possible and enriching – both in real life and in writing. Sometimes it is a specific person, but more often than not the object of my communication is a sort of spirit than flesh. Poetry for me is both conversation and meditation; some might use the word prayer. ”
When I read this reply, I didn’t give it much thought, read it once and that was it. But just as I was checking my Inbox tonight and ritually clearing my mail, I chanced upon it and read it again. It made me think about two things: writing and living. Writing is strange because I am never writing for myself; I do not write a line or two, a poem, a story, chuck it in my drawer for personal reading. It is always a pouring of emotions for others to feel ah this is real stuff I can relate to.
Ironically though, writing for others, more often than not, becomes a personal discovery (what a disgustingly overused word but can’t find another one to replace this) process. And in living life, we’re never really living for ourselves. But when we live for others, we reciprocally gain ourselves. I imagine many cynical eyebrows raised but I shan’t challenge that…
On another note, I realized that when I am too eager to challenge something, I fail to capture the bigger picture. Durkheim has won me over a little. I do believe that religion is social, that rituals function to re-affirm the beliefs that the community of believers hold, that religious force is collective effervescence acting on people. And in acknowledging all that, the flaws in his theory are almost jumping out waving to me, how he has failed to see society as being made up of people of different class, race/ethnicity, gender, rather than a homogenous entity. He has forgotten that people make sense of the world they live in differently, attach individualised meanings to the same phenomena, he has completely discredited subjectivity…Sigh, all hail Weber.
I said, “…So it is kind of a self-conscious sort of writing. I write with a person/people in mind and this person/people direct my thoughts, or the choice of words I use. Whenever I think of a certain audience, I morph into that person or group of people. I don't write to appeal to them though; it's just that I feel that that my writing becomes pretentious. Again, not that I write things I disagree with, but it feels like almost another person entering me, taking over me and writing on my behalf.”
He said, “…As for audience – I often have an imagined ideal reader for whom I write. An imagined someone with whom I would want to have an intimate and intelligent conversation. I have been fortunate enough to have friends, themselves writers, with whom such a conversation is possible and enriching – both in real life and in writing. Sometimes it is a specific person, but more often than not the object of my communication is a sort of spirit than flesh. Poetry for me is both conversation and meditation; some might use the word prayer. ”
When I read this reply, I didn’t give it much thought, read it once and that was it. But just as I was checking my Inbox tonight and ritually clearing my mail, I chanced upon it and read it again. It made me think about two things: writing and living. Writing is strange because I am never writing for myself; I do not write a line or two, a poem, a story, chuck it in my drawer for personal reading. It is always a pouring of emotions for others to feel ah this is real stuff I can relate to.
Ironically though, writing for others, more often than not, becomes a personal discovery (what a disgustingly overused word but can’t find another one to replace this) process. And in living life, we’re never really living for ourselves. But when we live for others, we reciprocally gain ourselves. I imagine many cynical eyebrows raised but I shan’t challenge that…
On another note, I realized that when I am too eager to challenge something, I fail to capture the bigger picture. Durkheim has won me over a little. I do believe that religion is social, that rituals function to re-affirm the beliefs that the community of believers hold, that religious force is collective effervescence acting on people. And in acknowledging all that, the flaws in his theory are almost jumping out waving to me, how he has failed to see society as being made up of people of different class, race/ethnicity, gender, rather than a homogenous entity. He has forgotten that people make sense of the world they live in differently, attach individualised meanings to the same phenomena, he has completely discredited subjectivity…Sigh, all hail Weber.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
delirious
(with joy)
Life is such a treat every single day.
“This is pretty much how we find time – we beg, borrow and more often steal it from our budget of 24hours (usually losing sleep in the process).”
And I realize that when we’re doing what we like, we forget to sleep!
Because every single night, life is lived better than the day before.
Life is such a treat every single day.
“This is pretty much how we find time – we beg, borrow and more often steal it from our budget of 24hours (usually losing sleep in the process).”
And I realize that when we’re doing what we like, we forget to sleep!
Because every single night, life is lived better than the day before.
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