Life, Laughter and Everything Else

There is this Indian movie that I love, in which the protagonist is a Robin Hood style character, someone who helps the poor but is forever at loggerheads with the corrupt government and the police. He befriends a local ganglord, who like our hero is a dog-gooder but an arch enemy of the authorities, and ends up being his right hand man. The story reaches a climax when a new mayor is appointed to the province. They mayor, being a good man, is determined to get rid the city of all the evils, like our hero and his leader. In the midst of the ensuing battle, our hero finds out that the mayor is in fact his half brother and promises the mother that he would not kill him. However, in the midst of the battle, the hero's leader is captured and beaten up. On his release, he tell's the hero to kill the mayor, which he refuses. Visibly stunned at this defiance, the leader demands an explanation and the truth comes out. So the leader asks the hero "Why? Why after knowing that h...

I once went for a course in conversational Chinese. For those of you who do not know, every character in Chinese has 4 tones, none which my Indian tongue managed to master even after finishing the Intermediate Level. As such, the day I found out that Vietnamese has 6 tones, I realised that trying to learn it was a lost cause. Let me get this straight. Speaking Vietnamese is tough, as in REALLY VERY TOUGH. I can remember the day I met some of my Vietnamese friends, I could not catch their names during the introduction that I had to go back home and check out their facebook before I had some idea of what the name somewhat sounded like. Though do not get me wrong. There is nothing really uncomfortable about listening to it. It is simply very hard to catch and even more hard to say, with the right tone. Though if you are travelling to Vietnam, do not let that daunt you. Over my years spent travelling, I have learnt that while people might not always really understand what you say, th...

If there is anything about Dak Nong that moves you, it is the children. I remember the time I stood watching a school assembly in front of me, with children chatted away on the school courtyard, half listening to the instructions of the teacher blaring over the microphone. Some wore shoes, some wore slippers, while some had no footwear. Some wore jackets, some wore sweaters, while most wore just their thin layered school uniform. As I stood there with my hands tucked tightly into my pocket and a fur thicket jacket covering my body to protect me from the chilling cold, I wondered, ‘Don’t they feel cold?’ In fact they did. As the doctor’s delegation, whom my team was helping, later revealed, many had severe throat pain due to the cold. Given the high attitudes they lived at, they had little or no access to proper medication or food. The vitamins and other medicine we gave out would last for just a few months. After that what? It was interesting to note that there were countless childr...

Imagine your friend passes you a fully boiled egg, garnished in onion and sauce. You use your chopsticks, lift it up to your mouth and bite of half the egg. It does not tear away as easily as you thought it would. And it tastes queer. Then while chewing away at that half, you look down at the other half on your plate and you see tiny grey feathers and a tiny leg bone staring back at you. My exact feeling at that moment was like I was making love to a woman and she suddenly reveals in the middle that she used to be a man. In short, I wanted to puke. I am not a big fan of Vietnamese cuisine. During my 18 days stay there, my Viet friends were kind enough to bring me around and let me taste about every kind of street food and drink, from snails to sticky rice to Viet baguettes to local alcohol. Other than certain items here and there, I generally thought the food lacked any kind of strong flavour to it. Plus, for some reason, I could not understand why the Viets went to the extent of ea...

During my stay in Vietnam, a friend once asked me ‘Describe Vietnam in 1 word?’ ‘Chaotic’, I replied. Though chaotic would be a bit harsh to describe a country that houses one of the friendliest group of people I have seen so far (But given the word limit and that she asked me to describe the country and not the people, I came to the above word). And when I say friendly, I do not mean the standard smile followed by a ‘hi’ and a wave of the hand. The Vietnamese, there is something about the way they treat guests that is truly admirable. There was an occasion when I was invited to a dinner with the vice-principal of a school with which my group was going to work with. For a vice principal, he lived in a house (the size of my bedroom) where his bedroom, living room, study room, dining room was all in one room. His roof was quite rundown and there was no kitchen to speak of. Even then, he went to the extent of preparing a mini steam boat and even killed one of his chickens, just to keep...

I know I do not have it in to be a businessman. I am not very good at asking people for money. When I was in secondary school, my parents once bought me a bicycle after much nagging on my part. Like any other boy, the novelty of the bicycle wore off after time and it became a symbol of my wastefulness. The once shiny steel rims looked like it had a new coat of brown paint thanks to the rust and the tires deflated to the point that it needed to be replaced by new ones. At this time, I was surprised one day to see a foreman with his bangla knocking at my door. They enquired about the bike and asked if they could take it if nobody was using it. I sensed a moneymaking opportunity and I told them, "You can take it for $5". That they readily accepted. Later that day, when my parents came back home, I expected much praise from them for displaying some business acumen. Though in life, what you expect is not always what you get. As my father would never cease to remind me "...

The main frustration that I have had with my life in NUS was that I felt I was never really learning anything meaningful or anything that I felt would come useful in my life in the long run. My father has always insisted that NS was a waste of time, but to a certain extent, 2 years spent navigating around a difficult routine and even more difficult people has taught me to stand up for myself, something that can never be emphasised enough. Whereas in NUS, I knew I was never going to be an academic in the future, but here I was, studying 90% of the time. To have some life, I involved myself in CCA's, but still academics have pretty much dominated my life here. Though, every hour spend in front of my books, I have rued the missed opportunity to have spent it on something that I would have learned more from, something that would have added value to me. It is during these moments of pessimism when you need someone to come along and give some meaning to the things you do. For me, I h...