Work
I thought about the mosquitoes that are appearing in my room now due to the construction works that are just happening around my block. I thought about the perspective that the mosquito might have about me. This huge blob of food, dangerous food, that sits around typing into his laptop all the time and reading books. How useless. And when he actually gets up and does something, it is either to eat, or to hit a ball around a court and chase it at high speed.
Whereas a mosquito thinks, I am doing a dangerous activity in order to propagate my bloodline. My tasks are infinitely more laborous, and my dangers much more acute than his. Hence, it is justifiable for me to take blood from him, because my activity is infinitely more noble.
That led me to the thought. What is it that my existence contributes to? I am studying. Reading about something from books in the hope that my understanding of what is written there contributes to my practice of medicine in the future. In my mind, I am doing honest work. But what is work? I am not flying around the world, looking for prey. I am not propagating my bloodline. I am not doing anything actively except consuming resources.
Why then do I say that I work. Do I think I work because I am doing something faintly laborious and disagreeable? Do I think I work because what I do tires me? Do I think I work because I think I am contributing something.
What is work? And why do we consider some things work. How do we shift our frame of mind from work to play? In the case of a mosquito. Is sucking blood work? Is having sex and prolonging the bloodline work? What if men couldn't orgasm. Would sex be work?
I wanted to post about how we're so lucky that we don't have to work in the traditional sense of moving heavy objects, and restoring structures that nature takes down. But then I thought about all those other occupations. Do they really work? Does a farmer feel that he works hard by furrowing the soil and sowing the seeds when it is actually the plants that convert sunlight into sugar? Does a construction worker feel that he works by moving piles of earth, or assembling concrete, that someone else designed, with raw materials that someone else quarried, and with stones some natural process created, for him to work with pleasurably.
For if you think about it, our world is a really pleasant place to live in. Our world is like heaven. All possible things that may go wrong have been thought about. Building things, moving heavy objects, we all have a pleasant way of achieving these tasks. And our bodies take these punishments, and recover with just a little bit of rest each night, so that we're ready to work the next morning.
If you think about it, even if we give our all each day, we get all that energy back with just 8 hours of not doing anything. If we are in homeostasis, the energy consumed in our 8-12 hours of work is equal to our 6-8 hours of sleep. When we sleep, we recover energy faster than if we'd been working hard consciously.
Somehow, working hard doesn't seem hard enough anymore.
Lucky
I can't ever believe how lucky I am. I don't think I deserve to be so lucky. But when the wind blew through the entire NUS today, and even now, the fingers of the wind caress my face, I can't help but feel that all's right with the world, and that I am so lucky to be who I am, where I am, with the friends that I have.
Everything else is just so material, compared to the soothingness of the wind today.
Competition
Well today I had a few really hmmm moments, so I think the word of the day is competition.
I don't know if I'm an overachiever or whatever, but apparently I've been accused of that, and it made me pause a little to consider his accusation. Overachievement and competition is something that dominates our lives. We all have drives to be better, to explore, to learn, and to do that faster or better than everyone else.
Some people commented recently that they never knew that I had a particular skill. I was quite surprised myself, when I allowed myself 5 mins on the rental drumset and actually managed to keep a beat. Or that now I can play tennis semi-decently, thanks to Sheryl, Wei Tse and the girls on the tennis team. It's not men's team beating standard, but I'm happy with what I've achieved. I feel that learning something, doesn't have to be because you want to be the best at something. You could learn for learning's sake, or to gain an additional perspective.
Some people go a lot further and seek to master a skill. They may be great tennis players, great exam-takers, great chess players. I admire their dedication to their craft, and I respect that by learning somethign from them, or being inspired by them to take up their passion at a limited level. I don't think that's something I have to tell anyone, or profess to the world.
If someone takes a lifetime to master something, there must be some inherent value in it. It could be cultural, it could be sensoral, it could be kinetic. By following them, we can get a glimpse of the world that lies just beyond. I respect the masters in their own way. Not by seeking total mastery, but by sharing a tiny taste of that passion that keeps them going.
I may not compete, but that's because I have nothing to prove.
Time
I was just thinking today that... somehow, time has become more precious for me. Time is my only enemy. Time is what prevents us from reaching our full potential. I haven't reached my potential. Time ultimately limits that, and upon realizing that, I've got to go all the way now.
I'm sorry if I've been neglecting all my friends. But everyone's time is so precious to me. Everyone with me is teaching me something, and all I can do is try my utmost to learn.
IHG!
Woo hoo! IHG stands for Inter Hall Games, and they've been fantastic this year! Not because we've been winning, far from it. But in spite of losing, we've had such a great time cheering each other on, and enjoying the shared nervousness and happiness that is a part of a competition situation.
It's just great watching at the sidelines at your friends playing their best, and watching how they suddenly become so good compared to at practice. Haha.. i just love the unpredictability of it. How points swing back and forth, and how people lose their cool, or get their nerves back, all in the span of 45 minutes. A sport competition is like getting out of your comfort zone, and facing all these uncertainties, and overcoming them when you know it's all going to be over 45 mins later.
I just love it.
Ohh anyway I've got a new chair in my room, and everything's been going swimmingly. I'm going to study if I have the time to, and it's going to be so comfortable. Oooh and the weather has beeen coooling.
I'm just having a great time, and I think all's right with the world this semester. All's right with the world.
School!
Haha I'm really excited now school's out. At a Kaur lecture, where she goes on and on about renal anatomy. I think renal is really interesting except that it's all been mostly thought out throughly.
I've been through a lot of things this hols, and thankfully I have some time now to write about them. Since I'm supposed to be in a lecture, but I can do both reflections and listening at the same time. The only thing I really need to know anyway I already know.
I spent some time of my holiday in hall, working on the sets for hall play. I haven't posted a picture of the set, but I shouldn't also because I want it to be a surprise if you're going to come watch the play. I also did the photography of the poster, which was reproduced faithfully by Chee Hao and made into this wonderful poster at the UCC.
I just love the people in hall. It's such a microcosm of society, where everyone has such unique abilities and are such fun to work with. It's too bad people have to graduate and leave or go on exchange.
Besides hall I've been giving my room a much needed overhaul. It's not completely done yet. I've got quite a bit of budget more to go, but it's my first designed space, and i just love starting with a completely clean room and getting things to fit into this living space.
Part of the whole design thing that I've got going on this holiday was a really welcome break from Medicine. I think coming back, it gives me a much broader perspective on the beauty of the human body and medicine. I've been reading books on design, and actually went to the SPACE showroom and the Knoll showroom to view the original pieces. I think they are pretty expensive, and some designs are really out there. But you see the originals and the imitations, and it's just amusing to see the hand of creativity, practicality, cost, and interpretations riff against each other.
For example, I was reading Karim Hashid's book on Designing your Life and he actually is an active industrial designer. He made a wastepaper basket that was designed for Umbra, and I actually saw an original of that in Takashimaya. 14 bux for a wastepaper basket with a swoopy shape. But next to that was a similar wastepaper basket with a similar shape, but refinements in the design (more squat, lower CG), and rubber padded handles, and it cost only 9 bux.
Part of design is in it's inventiveness, but nothing says that we can't use those ideas and develop them further and at lower cost. A copy might not only aspire to be a copy, but may aspire to refinement. Who says we need the best leather, the best steel and the best materials for a simple couch? Materials should fit the use, and design should serve function at the right price.
But I'm glad that in this world, some of us are taking a brush to the ugly grey, dull modernity, and exploring the forms, colours and fuctions that are available to us now.
What Singapore lacks is the basic design language. We haven't yet developed a form that is our own (except the HDB block, and our roads). Somehow what we have are riffs of other people's designs from other cultures. The nicest buildings we have are one particular mosque and one particular temple.
I was thinking about this topic as I was in town running errands (a phone to repair, a few shirts to exchange), and looking at modern designs in the World of Sport and Sony. I then happened to chance upon this book in the Orchard Popular book store, about Chinese Furniture. In it, a chinese professor of furniture history chanced upon a leg in a scrapyard (where they were destroying valuable antiques during the Cultural Revolution), which was made of the most exquisite chinese wood. He carefully picked up the various pieces, where they were being taken apart and sold for scrap, and bought the entire table. The table happened to be a Ming Dynasty royal table, but to own such a fine table was to risk execution if it were found.
I just felt so lost upon reading that passage, because that event in our history was what caused the loss of a large portion of our design language. How we of today have no way to express what we feel because our techniques, our sense of beauty has been disassembled into tiny pieces and sold as scrap. Our masters have not passed on their knowledge. Our forms have now become so simplified and uninspiring. We have lost a language. And hence we have lost our cultural place in the world.
I was looking at the designs of the Buddha figures when I was in Thailand. There are lots of places in Thailand where you can buy wooden figures, furniture and other things in this huge market. Thailand after all, happens to be a major exporter of timber. But looking at all the Buddha figures large and small, they all had different, unsatisfactory poses. Either the curves were not pleasing, or the posing looked stilted, or the faces looked bored, or sleepy.
What would a Buddha figure look like? I just had perfection in mind when I was looking for a Buddha figure. Don't they make perfect Buddha figures anymore (I'm not Buddhist BTW, I was just getting one for my dad.) It's weird tho, you'd think there'd be some template where everyone copies, but that's not the case. So much of it is the artistry of the woodcarver himself. So much of it in the eye of the woodcarver, and his understanding of Buddhism (factoid, almost everyone in Thailand is buddhist and has spent some time in a monastery as a monk). So it's not unreasonable for me to expect a beautiful Buddha statue from a Thai woodcarver.
But as I was lookign, I was thinking that maybe everyone's idea of Buddha is different. Maybe perfection has different meaning to different people, our sensitivities to light, colour, shape might be different. Maybe if we insisted on the perfect buddha, we might not find one to sell in the first place. Maybe all disagreements come from different Buddha figures. Maybe we should just find a Buddha that would suit us. Or maybe that's wrong, and we should have no Buddha.
I'm getting worried. I can hear my Wifi router chirping. I can hear the bits coming in and out of the router. They occur in time to the pulses of the LEDs.. :(
My new drawer and table!
Designed by yours truly :D
