Tag: World on a shoe string

It was late at night. My brother is now in Germany and Pasha is sitting in his room chatting happily with Masha over skype. I have offered to put him up at my place since he is having some problems with accomodation ever since coming back from his trip around Southeast Asia.

He seems happy now. I am glad he finally recovered from this really bad situation he was in last year. Some times the only paths represented in front of you are shitty ones, so regardless of which path you take you will still need to thread through shit. Yes, threading through shit is always inevitable at some point in your life, however much you attempt to avoid. This is Karma, predestined to happen and written in the stars.

I took my cup of water and looked out of my window at the mulberry plant growing from the pot. This was one of the very few things I brought back from my pilgrimage to the west in 2008. How I came to possess this plant was a really intriguing. It is the result of a whole series of coincidences that occurred that spanned across the entire length of the silk road.

Also I could have just happily sipped my tea, puffed on my cigarette while sitting in the garden behind of Sian’s house and simply ignored it when Sian was working at uprooting the entire root network of this mulberry plant. However, there was something about Sian’s complaint about this particular that told me, this was something I need to bring back to Singapore.

I still remember how she said it “oh, this is a mulberry plant. It grows all over the place like a weed, once it gets into your garden you will have a seriously tough time clearing it out. Try as you might to clear it out, if you didn’t do a proper job and happened to leave even just one inch of root lying somewhere it will all grow back suddenly. Plus the thorns are really sharp and hard.”

Since its migration from London to Singapore, this plant had died and resurrected multiple times over. Each time it would grow and take up the entire expanse of space made available to it. Each time towards the end of each phase some shit will happen in the environment and kill off its entire network of leaves. Each time we define the end of each phase by bringing out the scissors and trimming all the dead ends away. Each time without fail it will grow back still.Each time it grew back, its roots and hold on the soil became stronger and more deeply entrenched than the previous time, with more thorns to protect its main stem system.

Now looking out the window still, I thought to myself, this was indeed a very fitting item to have brought back from my pilgrimage westwards.

I was working the entire afternoon at the Great World City on this Father’s day. It was the launch of DBS’s EduSmart insurance scheme. I was dressed as the Judge while Dylan was dressed as the astronaut. The place was full of parents with children. It was expected. After all the edusmart insurance scheme was mainly targeted at young parents with children of pre-school age.

I was chatting with some of the kids and was asking about their dreams. What did they really wanted to become when they grew up. Apparently their dreams were mainly restricted to what professions they would like to enter into during their adult life. Lawyers, teachers, detectives, judges, car racers, astronauts! (at least 2 of these were high enough on the outrageous , and must be applauded on and strongly encouraged!)

Seeing these kids with their future with endless possibilities open before them, I had at the back of my mind some thoughts. How many of them will actually achieve their dreams and live the life they want? How many of them will eventually choose to give up their dreams as they go along in their lives and go for second best?

As one ventures further along one’s path in life seeking one’s dream, circumstances will happen. Some doors of opportunity will open and others will close. It almost feels like a game of deal or no deal. In this hypothetical game as each door closes, the  possibilities available becomes more and more limited. One is mentally breaks somewhere along the way and decides to come to a compromise and go for second best.

In the real world however, the rules of this hypothetical game does not necessarily apply. Till the time of one’s death, the possibilities available will be limitless! There are multiple doors leading to the same intended path. One need not feel despair if one such door closes. All that is necessary is to seek the next door that leads to the same path.

One thing I fear most for these kids that I had the chance to come in contact with today is that some day their parents or the social system in which we live in today might fail them and that they be mislead to believe that the hypothetical rules of deal or no deal actually applies to real life too. Johnson my cousin has one extremely nice phrase to describe this sickness that I have just described “THE SINS OF FATHERS”.

The sins of fathers is when the previous generation in an attempt to protect the younger generation from harm attempts to inculcate values that are already outdated and in some circumstances extremely harmful. These values are based on the norms perceived to work for the prior generation which might actually be very true back in the old days, however no longer applicable due to the rapid changes happening in this century of ours.

I had during today’s publicity event came across a few kids in their early stage of adolescent who gave me this very worrying response to my question “I don’t know!” Obviously something must have killed their dreams somewhere along the way between their times of early childhood and now. With no more dreams these young individuals are now cast away without any true sense of direction for their own lives.

I really wanted to grab and shake them hard then screaming right into their face these words “recall what your dreams are! Don’t let them die in some metaphysical graveyard! Fight for it! Bring it to reality! So what if society says it is not possible! So what if your parents tell you it is not practical. There is never any need to compromise! Put everything that is in your path out of the way and your dreams will definitely come true one day. Even if not, to die trying will really make this life of yours one that was really worth living!” But of course, I didn’t. Their choice of path is theirs to make.

In a sense one has to be extremely selfish and machiavellic a person to follow a path totally according to one’s desire which somewhat explains for the anger, frustration and utter helplessness sometimes felt by my parents and my love ones (or rather ex-love ones before they finally shed one tear too much). Somehow, I could not help myself , attempts to have me shackled with those invisible chains called relationships will always invoke in me either of the following three. Physical aggression, physiological aggression or simply out right rebellion. My will is my own. I was somewhat amazed that Win managed to decipher this from just reading my palm one night when we were out clubbing in Clark Quay. “My way or the high way” he concluded. Which is very true to my beliefs of life. After all, I have but an estimated 42 years of time left, I have no time to waste on making compromises.

This afternoon when I stepped out of the train after 3 long sessions meeting with different clients, I felt somewhat weird. While the train was on its way heading towards Clementi, my subconscious mind spoke to me. It emitted this sense of danger, call it spider sense if you will. I started looking inwards, after a short while I managed to identify the source of this wrongness.

During this recent spate of hectic schedule, I was unconsciously blind siding myself by developing tunnel vision and I knew it could get potentially very dangerous. My brain due to the recent overload of external stimuli had kicked itself  into overdrive mode  (the general direction of my tunnel vision) . This is causing my recent inability to sleep. This inability to sleep further compounded my excessive brain activity. It was a vicious cycle. I was literally walking around like an highly animated zombie during day time in an unnatural state of prolonged hung over.

Pasha a few days ago while we were doing some discussions in the west coast park noted this drastic decrease in my recent span of attention and also this tunnel vision of mine.  I have to admit that is the truth. Information is just slipping off my mind before I could even register it to my memory. In fact there have been more than a few occasions, when I experienced serious time lag when attempting to retrieve from my brains facts and information that should have been at my finger tips at any single time (talk about trying to recall what your own name is, haha!). There are increasingly more occasions when I develop this tunnel vision and enter a state of fixation.

Jim while driving my back to his place to discuss about his website pointed out to me, the time lag I had registering “contest” as “contest” instead of “content” during our IMH presentation. Damned! I should have consulted a doctor while I was there at IMH today. 😛

Hmmm, actually the part about me bringing up the fact that they once had their Hawaiian themed annual dinner and dance at the Expo really got them disoriented. I play my little pranks sometimes, I just can’t help myself.

Back to this issue about my insomnia, I think I got Satheesh really annoyed with it today. Opps. sorry my friend.

Hmmmm… I need to find a solution to it soon.

A possibility to this is taking a long break. I mentioned to Jim while I was in the car that I was intending of taking a two months break in some cheap 3rd world countries with no internet or communications facilities and live under 100usd per month after these current projects of mine finished.

While Jim brought up a valid point about the possibility of me losing lots of business in the process. In this case, it is two against one.

Pasha advised that if I go on anymore like this, something irreparable will break.

Dad has been admonishing me with this statement over and over again recently. “Son, make money for yourself and not for the doctors. ”

Now that Alena is out of the picture and is nicely fending for herself, there is really no reason for my continued presence around on this tiny red dot. Ricky was joking just the other day about this.

“It was weird what happened to you while you started hanging around her two years ago. Now that she is out of the picture, I think you will be getting back to your normal self soon enough. It was even amazing you stayed with her for so long, two long years. It was breaking the guineas world record man. The only other girl that I know of that even got close was just 2 months and you didn’t even see that girl more than once a week. Haha ”

I think for my health, I should really start making provisions for this long over due break of mine. I need to get my spiritual center back.

It was just past midnight and I was sitting outside club Attica drinking from my bottle of Heineken.

Suddenly, from where abouts I have no idea of, I  popped this question to those two sitting right beside me “have you ever made a green shooting star? ”

They looked at me totally puzzled.

“Green shooting star?”

“Oh Yes! green shooting star” I insisted. Laughing away maniacly at myself.

“What the hell is that?”

“Alrite I am gonna show you later” I replied in my drunken stupor.

Nash soon walked off with looking for chics. His was quite a profitable venture too, he soon brought back two of them. I was by then on the verge of finishing my bottle of heineken.

I finished the last sip from my bottle of heineken, I once again popped the question but this time to the two new comers.

“Have you ever saw a green shooting stars? ”

“What?” they responded puzzled once again.

“Alrite let me show you”

I stood up then and flung the green empty bottle of heinken across to the far side of the river.

“Now you see green shooting stars. Hahahaha!” I burst out laughing incapable of controlling my mirth.

While Nash and this other dude with a cool looking goatie laughed along. Those two new comers looked at me in the weirdest way possible then and walked off.

“Sigh. Some jokes are just too hard to get” I exclaimed and kept laughed away oblivious to everything around me.

Interestingly, this is not the first time. We have this inherent urge within us to classify everything. In a sense, such an act provides us with a false sense of comfort and security in this otherwise anarchical reality of ours. The same thing goes too with our dealings with other individuals whom we see for the first time.

It is generally true for us to harbour prejudices towards a stranger whom we met for the first time. And this prejudice is often based on something external and superficial such as looks, hair style, height, built, race, clothing accessories. It is just amazing how fast we form this prejudice. Our synapses just forms it within the wink of an eye and it suddenly becomes our overriding reality without any concious decision making on our part. This just goes on to show how suggestible we truly are as humans.

On the other side of the coin, take an instance whereby your prejudiced is immediatlely shattered by a strongly contradictory evidence that shortly presents this prejudice is formed. That really leaves you with two options. The first is to simply ignore the new evidences available and go about the current reality that you have already created for yourself. The second is throw what you think you knew of the world out of the window and relearn everything from scratch.

The defining difference between people who choose the second option over the first option, is their level of openness to change. In some literature, this is one defined as one of the main characteristics of a person live a happy and carefree life despite the fact that 2012 and the end of the world might be coming to theaters near you. Haha!