I am the map you use to find her

Recently I moved away from paper maps.  Instead I use the map in my phone.  It's funny how in this age of interconnectedness, it's more natural to see someone with a phone in their hand.  If someone has a phone in their hand, they could be reading facebook, checking messages from their friends, trying to figure out their next appointment.  If you have a map in your hand, you're a tourist.

My friend from the MBA program (SW, if I ever remember what this initial stood for.  He's the Daytona driver who got us safely through the gorge in South France) also introduced me to the wonders of GPS.  Now instead of peering at street signs, I just move the winking blue dot that is me along the black line that is the direction of where I should go.  No need to know what is right and what is left either - you can orientate the map to turn as you turn.

I kind of miss navigating by paper maps though.  There's something physical about reading a road sign and comparing it to your map to see where you are.  There's something about making the wrong turn, realising it fast enough and making a backtrack.

It's like how I get a little upset with my friends who play with their phones while they are on the train.  The landscape rushing around you is gorgeous.  You will never see it again because you are a tourist.  Yet you keep looking at this little device in your hand.

In the same way, I suppose I should take my own advice.  I should stop looking at the computer screen and the phone screen and go out and experience real life.  But the phone is useful for getting a direction to start walking in...

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Some other thoughts that I had was that I should start something like what I had in secondary school.  Like how Literature lessons with its hidden computers were a sign to start typing in this blog, I need a similar trigger for blogging now.  There are so many thoughts that I have in my head, and some of them need to be recorded before they disappear.

Writing diaries

I visited the Anne Frank museum today and if anything it cemented my resolve to document more of the things I experience. A diary can be a record of who you really are at that point in time. Even Anne Frank's father didn't know the real Anne Frank, although she trusted him enough to let him keep her diary in between moments when she was writing it.

It was also nice to realise she was a scribbler like me, writing short stories about people she knew and herself. I don't know if I want to read her short stories though.

What I do want to do is improve my handwriting, because hers was miles better. People don't handwrite things anymore.

The Night of the Night Before Xmas

I was just starting to do my practice questions for Accounting when I realised that yes, this is a post I want to put on my blog.

I'm staying for a while in Cambridge, as I'm currently studying here.  Since I didn't grow up here, there are a few changes in lifestyle to make.  The last few days have been a bit traumatic, as everyone trickles out of Cambridge and you realise that when things shut down for Xmas over here, they really shut down.  It makes things a bit frightening, like how food can suddenly become a problem if you don't plan well (both running out of and having too much), or yesterday when all of the lights in my room decided to up and die.  It's alright when you have people around, and you know that you can fix things in the morning or get people with expertise to fix them.  It's another thing when you know that people are trying to celebrate and you have to call them specially out to do things for you.

I tried not to do that - the nice guy came over to fix my lights (on a Sunday) and I asked him for the key to the circuit breaker, so that I could fix things myself if the same problem happened again.  I also made a run to the grocery store, so I don't have to worry about starving even with my two meals a day thing that I've got going on.  (And too many bananas.)

But it's this sense of powerlessness that I don't like, and makes me faff around instead of studying.  I tell myself I'm equipped to handle living alone.  It doesn't make me feel good to think that I might not be as good as I think I am.

It doesn't help that studying itself makes me annoyed.  I don't like to think of myself as an accountant, and yet the subject that comes to me the most easily here is Accountancy.  I don't know whether it's because it's so easy that anyone could do it, but it seems strange to be a source of comfort.  In comparison, Corporate Finance is killing me, and I know all the topics.  I just don't know how to apply them.  So when people ask me for help, I feel pretty useless because I still don't know all these things!

That makes it hard to see what I want to do in life.  A lot of my assumptions are being questioned, and I don't really like the answers that I get from them.  It's hard not to be afraid, in this case.  But I shall try.

The Impact of Apple

Let me make 3 things clear before I start:

1) This is a tribute to Steve Jobs

2) Apple has had a profound impact on my life.

3) I've never owned a single Apple product.

Before you get angry and start yelling at me for point 3, let me tell you my story.


My first interaction with Apple was in my teens. Computers were new at that point - I didn't even own a computer and the only thing I was previously allowed to do on my old school's PCs was to play word games. Somehow or other, I ended up in the computer multimedia design club.

By some serendipity, the multimedia design club teacher was an Apple fan with sufficient clout. So the first thing that greeted me when I joined the multimedia design club was an entire computer lab of Apple computers.

Since then, Apple has been synonymous with creativity in my head. When I think Apple, I recall large clunky monitors with superior graphics. I think about the funny mouse with no right click that I did magic with. I think about the drop down menus at the top of the window that let me flip through my creations.

In the same year I joined the multimedia design club, the iMac was introduced. The teacher-in-charge wasted no time in adding some iMacs in the shades of the rainbow to her flock of Apple computers. Even though the iMac was a creative leap from its predecessors, it did the same things in a pretty package. But packaging apparently did the trick - everyone was raving about the computers, and even people who didn't need to use the lab would sneak in to use the computer. I'm not sure whether they sneaked back out after discovering that it didn't run on Windows, but it was still amusing to see.

Out of all the iMacs, I had a personal favourite - the purple iMac. I would always come early to make sure that I was able to sit at that iMac. I remember the position of that iMac clearly, because it was just in front of the door - as I sat there, I would be able to watch people going in and out of the lab. This has shaped me too; I still love people watching.

With a personal iMac at school, you could say I got lazy as an Apple fan. When my parents expressed doubts about getting a Mac, I gave in. Besides, they already found Windows difficult - what more a Mac?  After resisting that initial push, it's been easier to resist the others.

But I was already an Apple fan and I watched the roll out of all their products eagerly, even if I could only dream about getting them. But I was sure that there were creative things still being done on all those Macs out there, even if I wasn't the one doing those creative things. I resigned myself to living vicariously through others.


Being in Singapore, I had the unique opportunity of seeing the initial Zen ads. Zen music players had been created by a Singaporean company, Creative, and released before Apple's attempts. Creative tried to play up the music experience. Their ad, however, was either too "creative" or not enough - it featured a panda flying through the clouds, and then, at the end of the ad it had a forgettable slogan, but the general gist was something like "Panda Symphony (the name of the music), brought to you by Creative Zen."

"I don't want to be a panda, thanks," I told my friends, and that was the end of that ad.

Then Apple came along, and they had a product with the same basic idea - music experience. But Apple, being the creative force they were, knew exactly how to push that experience.

I still remember the ad on my tv - watching the sillouhettes with white ear buds dancing against backdrops of bright colours. I said to my friends, "I don't know what that is, but I want it."

And then I saw that the company was Apple, and it all seemed so obvious to me. Of course it was Apple - they were the company that signified creativity after all. Of course they could come up with an innovative product like the iPod. It didn't matter that I loved my Sony Walkman, the Apple product was still amazing.

I nearly broke down and bought an iPod, but Sony let me have a huge discount on their version of an "mp3 player", so I relented and stayed with Sony. But it didn't stop me from eyeing the iPods with a whole bunch of envy. If I were someone who cared about what people thought of me, I would have bought an iPod already. After all, it was what everyone wanted.


And then came the iPhone. And the iPad

I'm still thinking on those. I haven't bought an iPhone or an iPad yet because in all my years of following Apple from the sidelines, I know what it is Apple does. Apple gives you things you want until you need them. It creates: products; desires; trends. I'm not quite ready to want something so badly.

Still, looking back on how Apple has impacted my life, I have to say this: Thank you, Steve Jobs and Apple, for bringing me products I never imagined. Thank you, Steve and Apple, for giving me the option to indulge my wants. Thank you for being a part of my growing up process.


RIP, Steve Jobs. You will be missed.

A Curious Thing I've Noted

For some reason, lately I've developed quite an aversion to forms.  Whenever I fill them, a couple of worries surface in my mind:

1) What if I fill it wrongly?

2) These boxes aren't enough to describe who I am

3) Why can't I select multiple options?

And so on and so forth.

With all these concerns you would think free form fields would make me happier, but no!  Instead, I worry "what if I write something that the person who gets the form won't understand?"

A little bit of restlessness

I have been dreaming, but I haven't had a dream particularly worth recording until last night.

It was a long dream, of which I'll only record a part.  In this part of the dream, I was at a kelong.  For some reason, this particular kelong was keeping dolphins not only in the kelong nets, but also in additional nets that were bound tightly to the kelong.  Even though the dolphins could come up for air and stay alive, they couldn't go anywhere.

I didn't think much of it until I woke up and realised how tragic that was.  A quick google suggested that "dolphins represent your willingness and ability to explore and navigate through your emotions".

I guess it's true that I haven't been willing to navigate through my emotions for a very long time.  But why would I want to when I know that I'm not terribly happy?

Flight or roots?

A combination of this post on talent and its responses, Bennie K's version of Satisfaction (link to be provided later) and thoughts of my friend who wants to get out of this country prompted this post.
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Once upon a time, my dream was to travel the world. Not just as a tourist - I wanted to work my way around the world. I wanted to stay in different countries and immerse myself in the culture - what it was like in terms of food, housing, atmosphere - everything. I wanted to live. I deemed that I needed at least 3 months to do this.
That's why I took up my bachelor's degree - I was told that every company needed one of these, and it would make it easy for me to travel.
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Then I grew up, and this happened - I grew roots.
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It's not that I don't want to travel, I still do. But I worry more now. I keep looking back over my shoulder to where I came from. I felt it the most keenly on my most recent trip - I was relieved to be back. Yes, I had a lot of fun on my trip, but it was only fun because it was temporary. I was just as glad to be back as I was happy to be flying to a new place.

It's gotten to the stage that when I think about the possibility of a long stint overseas, I squirm. I want to go, but the idea of uprooting pains me. I'd just grown these roots - they may not be the best roots, but they're mine.

I'm not so sure I want to repot myself, at this moment.

Well, if I can't be honest on my own blog...

Where else can I be?

To round up the sorry saga in the last post, I've gotten back all my money from the Japan trip. The part which is not so happy making is that there are still loose ends from the Sydney post, part of which is the reason that I can't post about it just yet.  It's contributed to a sense of dissatisfaction about my friends and who exactly they are.

Making matters worse is having some of my core assumptions challenged.  Part of it is due to the friends issue, but part of it is also learning that I am very alone in some of my assumptions.  Some of these are core values to me.  For instance: "Would you thank a policeman for keeping the peace?"
My peers: "No! That's his job!"

Me: "So you don't want to be thanked for doing your job? Then why are you asking your bosses to be more appreciative of you?"

What makes it worse is that airing my views would get me booed down before I even got past the "So". And it's making me unhappy.  If they're all about giving the other side a chance, then why can't they give me a chance? What's wrong with a diverse range of views?

At the same time, I don't want to lose their friendship, but I feel increasing that they care little for losing mine, if it's so easily lost just by airing something different. The very thought tires me, but it's true.

In fact, I've been very tired lately.  Emotional bombardment is never fun.

In happier news, I found Star.me! It's a cute website where you can throw stars at your friends. And feel a little better about yourself in the meantime too =)