work job gym

a quick holler from my lil cubicle to indicate my continuing respiration (and exasperation). my thesis is still not going anywhere and i'm still reading aimlessly and irrelevantly. but i have finished the conference abstract so that's very industrious of me. i have been somewhat more productive eversince i made it a point to be at my workspace in the lab at least half a day everyday, and go back only for meals.

I've also signed up for the gym. I initially didnt intend to, i thought i could jog outdoors, and i tried for a few weeks, but clearlt it wasnt workable - i am subjected to the whims of the weather (too dry and hot or too cold and wet) and the park is as far as how far i jog, and the park's alternative is the pedestrian walkway beside a car-filled main road. so. but i do love the pool, except when it's too cold. i don't like running but it clears my mind and i feel energised for the next few days. and i clearly need to run given how delicious the food is in college and how much (and i mean MUCH) i partake of it.

I've also found a job, which was very unexpected. i responded to a uni email looking for a research assistant at the architecture faculty, and boy, the interview was grilling, and then later that day they called with good news. pay's good, and additional money is alwaaaays good. heh heh.

I came across two quotes during my aimless readings and I'll dedicate them to two people.

this is for jp: (long live our treasure troves of unread books!)

The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. he is the owner of a large personal library ( containing thirty thousand books), and separates vistors into two categories: those who react with ‘Wow! Signore professore dottore Eco, what a library you have! How many of these books have you read?’ and others - a very small minority- who get the point that a private library is not an ego boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real estate market allow you to put there. You wil accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growig number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call the collection of unread books an antilibrary.-- from Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (the reference is of course to karl Popper's theory of falsification)

the next is for those that Singapore's education system has let down:

Put a man in the wrong atmosphere and nothing will function as it should. He will seem unhealthy in every part. Put him back into his proper element and everything will blossom and look healthy. But if he is not in his right element, what then? Well, then he just has to make the best of appearing before the world as a cripple.
-- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value

nation of sheep, government of wolves

three sundays ago i had wanted to post an entry; i was amazed by how quickly the weeks flew past. one after another, the weekends seemed to be signposts for nothing in-between. but i never got to it, as you can tell, and, as you can also tell, two weekends have gone and tomorrow is yet another. what have i achieved? a paragraph proper of my thesis, and an abstract of a paper i'm thinking of writing, and a hell lot of useless and/or irrelevant reading.

i'm also quite amazed that i've actually managed to save up a substantial sum of money in my mere two months here. i've bought some books, i buy coffee, i pay for photocopying and stuff, and surprisingly, i got a prepaid mobile that'd last me for the entire year since i seldom use it anyway, and that's all i need to live on. contrast that to living in singapore, there's the compulsion to spend all the time - on food, entertainment, transport, phone subscription, the newest gadget, yet another book. is it the air that singapore breathes, that invigorates materialism and mass consumption? or is it merely the natural manifestation of a meaningless existence? - work, eat, sleep/work, eat, sleep - in such a life, what else is there to do with the little bit of time and money but to spend it away to forget one's own emptiness?

keeping up with singapore news via the Straits Times propaganda, i dunno why singaporeans allow themselves to be treated by the government and the mass media like idiots. a 'dangerous man' escaped from high-security cell - no questions! amazingly, singaporeans instead of putting the blame rightfully on the ones responsible for the cock-up, allowed the government to shift the blame on singaporeans instead - the leap of logic was impressive - mas selamat's escape is due to complacency, singaporeans are complacent, therefore singaporeans are responsible for mas selamat's escape. (wow!). but then being fed a lifetime of half-truths and myths (the myths of pragmatism, meritocracy, incorruptible government, racial and religious harmony, credible newspapers, first-world education, society, just to name a very few), and wired with the insatiable need to spend and show-off (and therefore, work), i really shouldnt be surprised anymore. no, but it's disheartening, and it's sad. to have a tyrannical, contemptuous government is one thing - so submit so unthinkingly and agreeably is another.

i should stop ranting, i've said nothing new essentially. but i'll just say, being here, it feels great. it's great being free.