Life, Laughter and Everything Else

Sometimes, the prospect of living in this world scares me. Today I rallied against my father in a heated discussion of practicality versus idealism. While I staunchly held onto my belief that one needs a balance of both to lead a contented life, a part of me resonated with his opinion what Friedrich Nietzsche once summed up in a single sentence,  "If life is a struggle for existence in which the fittest survive, then strength is the ultimate virtue and weakness is the ultimate fault". I knew this for I had the misfortune of learning it the hard way during my National Service. There I saw how virtues of fairness and altruism were overpowered by the selfish need to make one's own life better and easier, even if it was at the expense of others. If these acts were limited to the minority, one could keep some faith in humanity, but when you see almost everyone, even those you consider friends, tireless in the pursuit of self preservation, you know the ideal world of m

'Batman in jail' The news screamed. The world howled. Half out of irony. Half to fill their empty lives. Be he couldn't care. At least behind these bars,  he found solace. Solace from the cringing mockery the raised eyebrows and the shameful recognition. At least behind these bars all he had to reconcile with, was the memoris of  past, a struggle to be normal. To be known for whom he was and not for a name so carelessly given. At least behind these bars he could hope to hear a number that he could stand up and accept as his own.

When quizzed by her friends, my sister once admitted to her friends in an all casual manner that she might one day enter into an arranged marriage. Her friends, predominantly Chinese, was revolted by this idea to the extent that information about any passing Indian guy who came on their radar was immediately relayed to her. Of course, when friends arrange it, it is all right. My dear non-Indian friends, before I proceed, let me clear one misconception. Arranged marriage is not forced marriage. In arranged marriage, you have a choice (and sadly so does the opposite number). What makes it particularly distinct are parents play matchmaker and decisions have to be made faster. Which means you don't play base. You just go straight to the home run.  Personally, I was not in favour of it, though that was 4 years ago, when I came into university expecting life to be like American Pie. But God had other plans for me. Not satisfied of putting me through an all male secondary school

What is hard work? Is it the burning of the midnight candle? Is it the sacrifice of life's pleasures  for a goal deemed worthy? Or as Ali said, suffering now to live like a champion later? I thought I knew what it was. I thought I had tasted its bitterness. Until they reached down and grabbed the bar And set it so high it disappeared behind the clouds. Now I preach from the ground, of the pleasures of being rooted to the Earth. Though I suspect it is but a fear to keep me from striving for the limits of the sky. Will I ever dare to take on the suffering and the pain and live to enjoy the fruits of toil? Will I ever know What is hard work? 

Perhaps any writer's greatest motivation to write is a strong emotion about a certain issue. I woke up with one today, thanks to a conversation I had the earlier night with a friend whose perpetually sombre face, cracking, deep voice and the slow, measured pace of talk exuded a sense of immense gravity to everything he said. The conversation starter was when I told him that I wanted a work life balance in my future career, to which he replied, " Work life balance? Throw that out of the window. This is Singapore and anything you do, you need to work really hard. The reality of modern day is that you cannot afford to sit on your chair at home while there is someone from some other country willing to do your job for more time and less pay " That statement did not really surprise me. I had known it all along, but I still chose to desperately cling onto the remnants of a hope that I could one day have work-free weekends. Coming straight from someone whose face see

A few weeks ago, my father left for India for his college reunion. The few weeks preceding the trip, I had never seen him so excited. E-mails, international calls, t-shirt designs, sponsorships, hotel bookings, alcohol, a myriad of issues were debated over ceaselessly while my mother scorned over this child like behavior of her fifty plus year old husband. It had been thirty two years since his batch graduated, though this period was peppered with reunions now and then between old friends and their families. The coming one would be the biggest of them all. It would take place at the very location where it all began, their old school, in the presence of the very professors who once taught them. People would arrive from all corners of the globe to relive the old times. And in the midst of all the planning, he rather boastfully dropped the question, "Why are kids today not as close to their friends?" "Competition perhaps?", I made a rational guess. But

He pressed seventeen. Two floors below, I noted. I took my place, straightfaced and cold, on the left at the back and leaned myself against the wooden railing. He stood prependicular to me, an arms length away to my right. As the door closed, I wondered where his two friends were. The three of them, big, round and brown lived in contrast in this middle class family oriented environment. Their foreign tongue and weather beaten appearance, grace of their blue collared jobs, did them no favour in our silently discriminating society. Their presence was unwelcome and a failure of the capitalist system of rewarding whoever had the money to pay the rent. Then I saw those words, stretched out on those unshapely chests. They stood out in big white lettering against a grass-green background, like an advertisement for Nike Golf, Smile!  Its a Charity :) It made me smile within. Then it spread to my body, like an itch. I had to say it, but I did not know him. And for what purpose? He

A picture affixed in my mind A recollection of months gone by Of places travelled Of sights seen Of people met All starts with that image Of that silent room. The windows wide and tight shut Standing guard against the dreamy winter The lacy curtains drawn as they posture in reverence to the streaming sunlight who eases past the guard and rests on its throne, but a mere wooden table covered by a plastic fabric, scarlet and flowery. The silence is undisturbed a picture of an alluring harmony. Oh how I miss those silent breakfasts in that silent room.

One of the main reasons I looked forward to my exchange was that it gave me an opportunity to further expand my cooking repertoire beyond the omlette and scrambled eggs. In the process, after a series of successes and failures, more of the former than the latter, I remain exceptionally bad at it. Though failure is always the first step to success and now that I can also make edible pasta, I believe that qualifies me to do share my experiences and advice for all amateur cooks and cook wanna-bes around the world. So here goes, 1) Listen to thy mother As an amateur, never listen to your guts. This is all the more important if you are an engineer or a mathematician to whom logic is important, where input is equal to output and the amount of water you pour inside will determine the amount of curry you get. Cooking is not engineering, which should already be obvious from the differences in the gender ratio involved in either. So when your mother, whom with years of experience tells you

Silence is awkward. Or so it seems everytime a couple of people, or even a group, cannot conjure a single sentence to say next. The mind races to think of something, but it is a dead end. An unease germinates inside the mind and doubts of disconnect plagues the thoughts. What next? Maybe check for message on my smartphone? Everyone seem about to take out theirs. Then he says something. Phew! What a relief! Conversations seem to get harder with the day. After a point, one seem to run out of things to ask. I remember during my exchange, I was always armed with a set of questions or comments for every new person I met. What do you study?  Where do you stay (this question was rather pointless)?  The winter's been rather very cold. Is it the same in your country? What do you plan to do once you finish studying? If the reply was interesting, you built upon it. You get the idea. But sooner or later one would always run out of things to ask, especially if the other person was more

“I err, and therefore I am”. The number of days left in this city has whittled down to a number I can count on my fingers. A couple of days ago I asked my friend if he regretted choosing Stockholm for his exchange. “Now that you asked, actually I do”, he replied. During the long bleak winter, so did I. It was cold, people you knew travelled and those, whom you gave up the people you knew for, hibernated at home. The atmosphere at school was different. The American-Pie-like craziness I expected, I got, but then I realised that it was not really what I wanted. I left Singapore in search for people whom I thought might appreciate life more. Instead I saw scores that drank and partied, only to complain of headaches and hangover the next day. So I avoided the parties, the drinks and rejected invitation after invitation. I stayed in my comfort zone and ventured out along tracks that I knew was safe, that I knew had something in the end for me. I was convinced that actions ha

If there is something I really enjoy in life, it is meeting like-minded people. If there is anything I enjoy even more, it is meeting someone who has a set of beliefs completely opposed to mine, but whom I can’t prove wrong by reason. Now that is someone with a refreshingly new perspective. He was one such person. Tall, respectably well built and bearded with hair uncut in months, he resembled more of a hitchhiker than a playboy. I was not aware of his little hobby when I had decided to to host him at my place for a night. The truth came to light from his own mouth, and while there was all the possibility he could have been making up these stories, I saw firsthand the way he dealt with the girls, and I could see they loved him, his boyish charm, his jokes and his attention. Expectedly, my first question to him was, “ So can you give me any tips? ” What he revealed is probably what you already know. The art of picking up is essentially the art of marketing, except this tim

"So how has exchange changed you?" I might be one of the rare few who will respond to that question with an "I don't know". But honestly, I do not know and I am myself stupefied by this lack of an answer when the question was directed towards me, especially considering how much I preach about the pursuit of a meaningful life and the dare to take up life changing experiences.  And while it a month too early, I think this is a good time as any to look back and reflect on a period where I was far away from the warmth and comfort of family and friends, in a strange land that is both Antarctica and Spain in the same year. It has been a period which I had earmarked as a time to do some soul searching, but that has instead left me critcising the often over-maturity and sometime immaturity of my decisions.  I still feel that I am very much the same person I was before, though perhaps I have picked up some new pleasures in the form of grocery shopping and (v

People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination,  the kind of people they ignore at home.                                                                                                             -Dagobert D. Runes Much has been said about travelling, about how it exposes us to a new culture, reveals endlessly a series of bright and beautiful sights that one could never find at home, how it reawakens in us a sense of childish curiosity and awe and reignites the explorer in our soul. And so it goes on and on. The atmosphere these thoughts create is in itself extremely exciting. One can probably go delirious deciding where to go and what to do there, even before one has already been there. And when we finally arrive at our destination, the novelty of it all culminates in a visual orgasm, one after the other. “Waah, so nice!” is heard for the umpteenth time. Out comes the camera and the building is photographed from all 360 degrees and uploaded onto Facebook for

One of the greatest joys of this exchange are dinners in a cross cultural setting that brings forth current day issues and culturally diverse opinions on it. Recently I had the privilege of being part of one, which began when one of the girls, who was doing her phD in Sweden, expressed her concern of how difficult it would be for her to find a husband in China given her superior educational background. The issue she said, would not be raised by her potential husband, but by his parents stuck in an outdated attitude towards marriage. Her situation received a lot of support from the table and the discussion went onto include how the girl, if she was better educated and older would be at the receiving ending of much criticism from the elders. We talked about how education was changing attitudes towards these ways of thought, how today, what mattered was the person and not society’s measure of him or her and how we were all becoming more humane. In this mood of openness, I decided

Somebody up there do not want me to club. It has been one experience that has eluded me despite my multiple visits, that has brought as much excitement as me sitting in a meditative pose.  This is all the more interesting because my intention was simply to get a feel of it, and not kickstart a career as a party animal, that would either way not work for a person who dared not even to dance in the shower. Perhaps  though, it is not the circumstances, but the person to blame. I should have known I was not the party kind the very first time I set off. As I was tying my shoe laces, my father would politely enquire where I was going to. “Going to club”, I responded. “What? Like a community club?”, he carried on. I am not the most superstitious of persons, but when you are about to do something, it has to start off on the right tone. There and then, my father set the expectations of me, and all the stamps I received on my waist before entering the club became but somebody’s

One of the most remarkable thing about being an exchange student and going out to see the rest of the world is that you are hit by the sudden realisation that there is a lot, as in really a lot of people with whom we are sharing this planet with, about whom we never really bothered to know more about and compared to whom we share as many similarities as differences. As a Singaporean, these circumstances have put to the test, the strength of my identity and how proud I am of my life back home, especially when one my European friends ask me, “So tell me more about Singapore”. And to describe my life back there, I have no need to look further than the group of friends who followed me here, and it is with some pride, some amusement and some could-do-better feeling that I write this article. A Swedish guy I once met at a bar told me how his Singaporean friend described Singaporeans and Swedes as the most emotionally private people on this planet. The Swedes I have noticed thus far,

There is a mother and her child, a little girl about 6, sitting next to me on my way back to Stockholm. The girl is for some reason not very happy. She pulls the pink hood of her jacket over her blond her such that it covers most of her face and then she stares down at her legs defiantly. Her equally blonde mother bends over in front of her and talks to her in Swedish, in a  firm but patient tone, but the little girl does not respond. She pulls down the hood more tightly to express her annoyance with the one sided conversation. But if she was stubborn, she had inherited it from her mother, who does not give up. She attempts to lift up the hood but her daughter pulls it down firmly again. Instead of starting a tug of war, the mother continues her gentle persuasion, but the daughter is in no mood to listen. Then all of a sudden, she hugs her daughter and kisses her on her forehead. She does not let go but holds onto her daughter, tight. After a while, the child reciprocates and hugs

There are two places I remember hearing the sound of silence. The first was in the basement of the NUS Library, in the middle of the towering shelves sheltering the ageing books, who seem to quietly bide their time in the world of tablets and smartphones. The second, that’s right here in my small room in Lappis, Stockholm, Sweden. It is a week and one day since I shifted my habitation more than a thousand miles from the sunny little island. Landing here, I set no high expectations of my new home. A few years ago, just half an hour in Snow City had taught me that winter was a foe. The heat of the sun can be tolerated, the wetness of the rain ignored, but the coldness of the winter, it never fails to remind you it is there. Cover your body all you want, but the coldness gets to you where your skin is bare and sometimes, where it is not. Even the ever enjoyable breeze switched side on the command of the winter, heaping more misery when it blows against you. Water runs down your no