2010 Now-Here & Nowhere 0102: October 2010

Sunday, October 31, 2010

31 October 2010

With 2 more months before we bade 2010 goodbye, it is a good time to slow down and start getting ready for 2011. After-all, if the Mayans were right, we all have 2 years more to party. In Singapore, we do not experience the 4 distinct seasons.

As my old joke goes, Singapore have 4 seasons, hot, hotter, hottest. And you will ask, "I thought you said 4 seasons?"

And my reply would be, "Yup. The last one is 'Hot until cannot say anything already'."

=_=|||

Anyway, my point is, if Singapore do have the seasons, November and December will herald in the feeling of going slow. Cold, snow and the biting winds usually brings the image of lazing before the fire-place. And basically there is nothing much to do except to think about what to do when spring comes again.

Yea.

Thankfully, Singapore do have the seasonal monsoon winds and rain. And it do bring that image to mind. And I am do that now. Reflecting. What is going to happen next? This brings me to something that had happened a couple of hours ago. It is rather haunting, more so, it was something that threw some reality into my life.

At around 7pm, there was a shout. I dismissed it as children running around and doing their children things. The shouting became more persistent and I vaguely made out what was the content. It cantonese. And there was a few words that shook me and made me realised something serious had happened. The words were "jumped off". I could not make out the full content of the shouting as it came from somewhere opposite my building.

I looked out and there were nothing and I guessed whatever had happened, happened on the other side of the building. I prayed that it was just a false alarm. Till now, I don't know what had happened, other then my parents telling me that they saw police man and the fire brigade. They too do not know what had happened.

But still, the shouting haunted me and it was real.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I saw "The Social Network" over the weekend, and the show is good. It too brought some reality into my life. Harvard University.

The reality is the disparity between my education that I have received from NTU versus Harvard. Both are places of higher learning. But at the same time, both are vastly different. We cannot even begin to start the comparison.

I am impressed by the culture of Harvard. Naturally, with 3-400 years of history, the place itself is teeming with culture, pride and the ancient spirits. I was overcome by a wave of hunger. I realised that I wanted to be in Harvard. It is the sense of pride and culture that inspires me. I cannot say I am a proud member of NTU. What is NTU in the first place. Nantah was all but a fragment of Singapore's history. What could have become a place full of pride and history and culture disintegrated through the necessity and brutality of the process of nation-building. NTU will never become a Nantah. It is just a place that is hollowed out and probably will take many years to build its culture.

I just feel dejected and disappointed.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Where do I even begin to get life straight?

Perhaps CA is my last shot at restoring the Kenneth I used to be.