i used to be my own protection, but not now

previous week: What I've Done, Linkin Park

might as well stay on Minutes to Midnight.

three things today:

1. group identity

it's difficult to maintain a web of relationships in a satellite format with you as the centre holding scattered people together. group identity is valuable, and forming a good group is tough. a good group lasts through the separation of time and space. there are is something about basing your identity in something bigger.

2. fallen away

i think i can stop denying the truth and confirm that the brothers have finally broken up, despite legit efforts to try to keep everything together. everyone is leading their own lives now. it is sad, when something a group of people you have based your foundation on, who have gone through shit together, and where (previously) you would have been willing to take a bullet for. all this is gone, and there is a large empty vacuum. floundering a little bit. it's kind of strange because everyone here has been in the same place for awhile, and knows everyone, and has that fallback thing, while your own fallback thing is light where here is dark, and your fallback thing here, your home base, your lender (of emotional capital) of last resort, is gone. broken, and there a most valuable part of your life has drifted away. valuable parts of your life are shared. when and with who can i share this?

already, in planning the holiday, there are some who have fallen away. are there no pleasant surprises? is the cynicism and moroseness thoroughly justified?

3. hollowing out of the self

complaints choir was good. pity about the police permit and the flamboyantly and in-your-face gay people. it was all i could do to not become politically incorrect.

on the old website, i wrote somewhere that i was afraid that being in Penn IV and being "Christian" (as opposed to being a "follower of Jesus") was taking away the old edge, the ability to play games and to be a good politician and presser of flesh. the good news is that it's not gone. but the bad news is a eerie rhyme to Jim Carrey's film, where the mask is in danger of becoming the man. in a way it's born of necessity, as at work (office politics) and having to schmooze at various levels in a busy and work-oriented world means that you have to become immediately interesting and unfortunately shallow. on the other hand, there is something about singing and performing that brings out that side. but it is false, and merely the mask.

slowly seeing the serious one, the wise one, the loving one, the discerning one disappear. please don't. need some provision and reliance and 1-on-1 (or small group at least) serious conversations.

i also serendipitiously met someone i've been hoping to meet for awhile. very few serendipitious things happen in my life, so this may mean something. but it doesn't appear that this is the counterpoint that i have been looking for, although it is good to encounter another point, which would make the second so far this new year. still mulling over the counterpoint though.

i am currently craving for a pulled pork sandwich with sweet barbeque sauce.

lunar curtain

NEWSFLASH: i passed the stupid exam! my capital is saved!

your face like the luminous full moon, framed by your hair like the curtain of a clear night, two stars embedded, and your collar like a reflection projected onto the eerily inky waters of a quiet lake. vision of peace.

lunar => lunatic => insanity.

i've drawn regret from the truth of a thousand lies

last week: Building a Mystery, Sarah McLachlan

this lady has a voice to die for, and is one of two artistes that i sorely regret never having watched live in the states, the other being Jewel Kilcher.

did i mention before that the surest way to bewitch me is to sing? there's something about a clear pure note, and a clear pure soul behind that seals the deal.

work is picking up - i've been OT-ing a fair amount, and working flat out during regular working hours. i'm actually pretty proud of my efficiency and ability to churn out good ideas under pressure. but for the next few days it's back to pretty mundane stuff.

been busy with rehearsals and trying to stop that self-destructive streak, so no really deep thoughts to share.

for the very best, there is a lot of effort put into nonchalance.

what exactly does the increasing convergence of financial markets mean? although contagion might mean crashes would be steeper, they are likely to be shorter since there are plenty more opportunities for bargain hunting. on the other hand, if there was to be a reversal, as in the pre-1914 period...

i was reading The Bible Code real quick in the church library today and realised that they had gotten 1996 partly right and 2006 completely wrong. i wonder if there will be a second edition?

i can't stand writing in the perfect tense and using all those definite articles. i also hate writing minutes.

next offhand research project => "Then you will know I am the LORD" (Ezekiel) - occurrences and background

where are the fellow thinkers? is the gift of prophecy stirring again?

ahhh... battling obsession and impatience is so difficult. in 3½ weeks will be a possible decision point. put me out of this misery quickly... or forge me in the refiner's fire.

shameless plug

some of you may have heard about the Fringe Festival http://www.singaporefringe.com/ that is currently going on in Singapore. i'll be performing as part of this outfit called "The Complaints Choir", which is basically a bunch of amateurs getting together and engaging in a musical version of Singapore's #4 favourite hobby.

being a lazy bum, i quote from Wikipedia's entry:

Complaints Choir is a community art project that invites people to sing about their complaints in a choir together with fellow complainers. The first Complaints Choir was organized in Birmingham (UK) in 2005 followed by the Complaints Choirs of Helsinki, Hamburg and St. Petersburg in 2006. ... When the video clips of the choirs were distributed through online magazines and video sharing websites, the idea spread quickly to many other countries. To date additional Complaints Choirs have been organized in Bodø (Norway), Poikkilaakso primary school (Helsinki, Finland), Budapest (Hungary), Juneau (Alaska), Gabriola Island (Canada), Melbourne (Australia) and Jerusalem (Israel).

you can also read about it at http://www.complaintschoir.org/

if any of y'all have a minute or two to spare next weekend, please do come support us! our performance schedule is as follows:

Sat 26 Jan
4.00pm Merlion Park

4.45pm Speakers Corner (yes, the under-used one)

5.45pm Singapore Art Museum

Sun 27 Jan

3.00pm The Chamber, Arts House (Old Parliament House)

4.45pm Esplanade (Waterfront Canopy)

5.45pm Vivocity Amphitheatre

this being Singapore, the performances are contingent on getting a permit for them =p

let me know if you'll be there and hope to see y'all next weekend!

you strut your rasta wear and your suicide poem

previous - The Frog Prince, Keane

things seemed to have calmed down a little bit. work is picking up and it was a busy, but fulfilling and fun week and weekend hanging out with friends and trying a couple of new things. slowly and creakily, the edifice seems to be constructed under God's grace.

no emotional storms, so some mildly intellectual-type thoughts. i have taken to writing down some of these. it is quite useful.

From the excellent A Wrinkle in Time by the late Madeleine L'Engle. How did such deep stuff end up in the juniors' section?

Mrs Which:
"The only way to cope with something deadly serious is to try to treat it a little lightly."

French proverb: "Qui plus sait, plus se tait"
or, as more easily understood in Spanish, "Quien sabe mas, mas se calla"

Deep Thought A

A problem of incentives regarding civil services throughout the world is that (high-ranking) decision makers in the public sector seldom have to bear the full brunt of their decisions. We can motivate bureaucrats and politicians to run the country well by forcing them to choose to consume public services.

e.g. they have to send their kids to public schools, receive (a portion of) their medical care through the public health care system, utilise government pension plans, etc.

Deep Thought B

I suggest that the problem with mixing church and state does not generally lie with the church, but with the state. Allowing the church to influence the state, and vice versa, generally leads to giving over to human enforcement the responsibilities of coercion which should rightly reside with God, to exercise as he chooses, whether through human action or not.

In essence, it is abusing the good name of God to justify human coercion, since a purpose of the state is to manage the power of coercion so that it causes minimal (ideally) harm.

feed your people or lose your throne

had a good conversation with Geoffrey yesterday. here's a little something i didn't get to say cos it didn't occur at that time. it wraps up everything (in my worldview at least).

previous song: Freedom - Robbie Williams (carries over, natch)

reflections for 2007 are postponed till next time i have another free post then... maybe 2009.

we were talking about philosophical objections to "development" and he brought up the excellent book (and the concept therein) by Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom. and of course, what does constitute "freedom" per se?

some of the concepts he covers include the freedoms in the economic, political, etc etc sense, which was all hunky dory, but where we came to disagreement was on whether people should be allowed freedom to the degree of being able to choose their values. (of course it can be argued that we were talking about completely different things altogether).

for the record, he did believe in the absolute freedom of people to choose (afternote: may I also recommend Milton Friedman's classic Free to Choose?), while i believe that people are stupid (or whatever negative adjective) and require their freedoms to be curtailed (see Hobbes' Leviathan and various other works by - i believe - Machiavelli and Locke). i also argued that "absolute freedom" also meant the freedom to reject freedom (in a secondary sense).

in short i would argue that absolute freedom (which as mere mortals we will not be able to achieve) means that a person is able to completely appreciate the full effect of his actions, and only then be able to choose the best course of action and reject all others.

as i chewed on this it kind of dawned on me that this is the "freedom" promised by God - the ability and freedom to choose the perfect option which is not open without Him, as there is no omniscience or whatever you want to call the complete appreciation of the fallout of your choice. of course, it does help that he saves your ass and transforms things that were for evil into good.

well... i did feel kind of intelligent for the 2½ hour (or so) duration of the conversation. need more interactions like these.

all we have to do now is take these lies and make them true somehow

this is not a regularly scheduled post.

the title of the last post was from "Solar Coaster" by Solarstone. all the post titles are tangentially related to a song which is in turn tangentially related to my mood when writing =)

today's song is pretty relevant though.

yesterday was one of those days where it was kinda sucky except for a lightbulb moment. but it was a good lightbulb moment, though the answer is incomplete.

those of you who have been keeping updated with the sorry state of my life will know that there is one thing that has been testing me above all other current trials.

one of the takeaways is patience, but that is another story for another day. one of the others is purity of intent. passion, intensity, focus, loyalty... these are qualities that are already present.

but too often, they have been mixed with dross to produce selfish ambition, Machiavellianism and obsession. the focus ends up shifting from the other to the self, and in so doing, breaks the foundation of agape, which is itself the foundation for the other three.

to achieve this particular objective, one must be empty of all of these. this is in order to make the achievement of the objective sustainable and permanent. this is because we are dealing with people here. many things can be taken lightly, but people cannot be taken lightly.

therefore one of the intents of this test is purification! we will have to try very hard to succeed on this one. although the window of opportunity is not open (yet?), this particular project is currently anticipated not only to have high NPV / NFV, but also scores on the "bonus points" which clinch the deal, excuse the mixed metaphors.

yes, i welcome this test to prepare us for a duty that will endure to everlasting.

but then the questions remain. how? to do "nothing"? maybe, because a perpetual need for action is a symptom of obsession. and also, what is the reward? building character is pretty worthy in itself, but we are dealing with an Authority which gives out frequent and bounteous bonuses, though i'm not quite sure what the time frame is for that as well.

i'm amazed that my thoughts were so clear and true

random thought: "2008" read upside down looks a bit like "BOOZ"(E) doesn't it?

reflections this weekend.

happy new year all!