AAAA

In this moment and every single one past a world of potentialities has been brought into realization and into obliteration. As time passes the balance shifts because time necessitates some action, might even be an action in itself. Of some agent or force. So any kind of action no matter how intangible or invisible   is a realization of something that is no longer a potential. We move from 0% realization and 100% potential towards 0% potential and 100% realization. When everything is realized and there is no more potential I suppose we can only be dead.

Swallowfield

With the morbidly late sunsets these days it feels like the days are bleeding into the nights which bleed again into the day. The lines between one day and the next are so blurry, the bank holidays this weekend and all the late nights aren't helping either.

Have had extremely happy days for the past week or so. Went to Antwerp on a whim, visited Sam in Durham and came back to hang out with my best friends in London. For the last three years I have relied so heavily on these people for their comfort and company. I love that my best friendships are easy and kind and honest. Distance is easy because closeness inevitably leads to friction. I think it might be a matter of whether people are willing to endure that temporary awkwardness for the long term gains. After waking up to a frigid morning we brought lunch to the boys' flat in Regent's Park and spent the afternoon playing mahjong and talking about things like, dreams, fears, ambitions, hopes. What we think and what we don't think. We're all very different people, it's quite obvious, but whatever made us still led us together. It is a bit miraculous maybe.

I am so grateful that this sort of happiness is present in my life,I must not waste it or forget it. There are so many things to love in this world, how could anybody bear to, or dare to turn their backs on them? Or even worse, to not see them at all? 

That is the only thing which is truly and really sad.

In Pitch Dark I Go Walking In Your Landscape

It's weird walking around campus knowing that it has all ended. I don't know if I'm happier or sadder about it. Went for Slade's grad show yesterday evening great way to spend a Friday evening.

It feels like a lot of small worries are piling up in my head and preventing me from feeling intensely about anything. Or it could be just the dreams. But talking it out always helps especially the caffeine light-headedness induced type of talking. We were talking about how commitments make a person, and so it makes good sense for us to make certain commitments in our lives but in the end, the only commitments that count for anything and make you anything are only those that you didn't choose. Consciousness is all fog and mirrors.

I'm really going to miss my friends so much

Some Crap

It was a good weekend I enjoyed the David Shrigley show at the Hayward Gallery which I visited with my favourite art-loving man friends. 


The Jeremy Dellar bit downstairs depressed all of us a little bit, especially the political stuff which I couldn't even bring myself to glance at. The 3D bat video also made me feel a bit nauseous. The Acid House part reminded me of Mike Nelson's The Coral Reef except a lot less interesting maybe it just felt less immediate because it wasn't as big and elaborate as the other one. When we were walking through all the Dellar stuff the word "hipster" kept ringing through my head, but that doesn't really mean anything because I can't tell what would have preceded the other... necklaces with neon yellow beads are a bit inexcusable though. I thought it was interesting that he explored using 3D media in different ways like with the dangling ViewMasters and the 3D bat video and even embossing machines with titles of his works(?) e.g. "A Range Rover crushed, and made into a bench". I liked that he used so many mediums and that each of his works were so completely different from the other. Sometimes it was hard to recognize any connection in between. 


It felt a bit off to me maybe no fault of the artist but I mean like that I ♥ Melancholy painted on the wall right after exiting the "acid house". It was hand painted and it was kind of obvious where the assistant had to go over the edges of the black paint to make the words look neater and more consistently. Freehand? I don't know, that was probably the most depressing thing. Can't you use a stencil for that or at least try to make sure the correction isn't so obvious? It was totally visible even from the other side of the gallery like a good twenty metres or something. It's a small thing and in the gallery shop I briefly considered buying the sticker for a friend but it still bothers me.


David Shrigley's illustrations/paintings cheered me up a bit because it is just... hilarious stuff. He uses the same type of aesthetic for most of his work which makes it a bit repetitive perhaps but it makes the individual elements come across a lot more strongly. The large cup of tea was really cute Bong and I stood around it and theorized that every day the assistants from the "cafe" in Dellar's exhibition would collect the leftover tea and pour them into Shrigley's giant teacup. Of course that is impossible and a stupid theory.

After eating sub-par ramen noodles along the South Bank we went back to the station, stopping by M&S for something sweet to eat. Out of all the bad habits I have collected since moving away from my parents I think the most expensive and debilitating one is this stupid compulsion to enter every supermarket I pass, either to buy groceries(always eggs and bread and chocolate biscuits) or just random sweets and coke. Based on the pile of receipts which have transitioned from my wallet and various handbags onto my bed right now, I roughly spend half of my allowance in the Tesco along Goodge Street every week. I bought at least 3 packets of fusilli pasta and maybe enough apple juice to fill a swimming pool. The dates on the receipts also show that I have been doing this about 4 times a week which is unhealthy by any standards. I've probably seen Mr. Tesco Team Leader more often than I see my best friends, and I also noticed that he got promoted this year because he used to wear the normal shirt now he wears a checked button up in Tesco colours with a big TEAM LEADER badge on it.

The worst thing about all of this is that for all the time and money I've spent I doubt it has helped me lose any weight like cigarettes or cocaine would.

Haven't even mentioned the mild embarrassment of facing the same friendly checkout guy before and after going to the Hayward Gallery.. bet he thinks I live on pink-coloured carbonated drinks, fizzy Percy Pig tails and Extremely Chocolatey Dark Chocolate Rounds.

I could go on forever about my un-verbalized thoughts but I probably shouldn't.

Bad

I don't like it when there is a disjunct between what I think and what I express, like in situations where what I would do is not what I should do. The reason why I feel this way is because I still think that there is a possibility of perfect unity within a person, between our emotions and thoughts and actions. There is nothing virtuous or noble about doing what seems to be the right thing to do, regardless of whether we want to or not. There is only virtue in the act that is carried out with pleasure and full willingness. Morality is meaningless if it is detached from human desire. "What do you want?". "I want to do the right thing" type of reasoning is flawed for this reason. To actively pursue this type of self-alienation is the most brutal thing a person can do to himself. It is brutal not because it is painful or irrational, but because it is inhumane. 

It is also being dishonest, and therefore being stupid because the truth always prevails, in quiet and mysterious ways and the more you try to suppress it the more obvious it becomes.

Why Wait?

Why should a human being with all its capacities abandon active agency, to let other powers determine what happens? If we are able to do so much for ourselves why do we put ourselves in passive positions in the making of our own destiny? Why do we endure the pains of waiting and why do we even hope that it can be ended?

Waiting is difficult to some extent but it is even harder to accept the impossibility of perfect happiness, if we are aware of our imperfect souls and its limitations. All we can do is sit around, sleep it off, distract ourselves and kill time - until something or someone presents us with our object that we cannot create for ourselves, which is perfect because it is mysterious, and beautiful because it is given.

Back in the +65

pikachu in party lights mode, bed side wall

We all take comfort in the familiar, and with everything else we appropriate it into some semblance of familiarity, until it eventually becomes so.

En Route

madrid with marcus, pic via sam

If I don't push it too far it turns out that sleep deprivation is like the best drug for me, it makes me deliriously happy and mindlessly efficient. After staying up the whole night and attending 4 hours of lectures in the morning, it only took me barely half an hour to fill a 30-kg suitcase + hand carry, and most of that was my work stuff so a lot of rolling, folding and cling-wrapping heels et cetera. Slowly I am getting more excited about going back to Singapore but I really hate leaving London and all my friends :( 

I know that nobody really gives a crap about my new job, so I know that they're happy for me because they want me to be happy, to have what I want. It is sort of the same for me. I'm happy that after all this time I am properly wanted, with terms and conditions and a take-home salary. A real, legally-binding promise, signed and sealed.

Over the years people have always told me that there's no reason for me to worry, that everything will turn out ok in the end. It isn't a complicated process, and I am more than good enough. The older and wiser boys deal with this so well, they never seem to miss their shots, and if they do they never lose focus, they are always moving on, looking forward. They don't worry, and they tell me that's because there's nothing to worry about. I tried to be like them but I couldn't, I can't, my ambitions and emotions are all tied up with each other, and my head is always a mess.

There have been so many episodes of this anticipation - excitement - stress - nausea, dry-gagging, shaking, waiting - more dry-gagging. Then, hopelessly facing a person who would then destroy my soul most apologetically. Going into hell for a week and dragging myself out of it for the next ordeal. Again and again and again.

And this was the worst of the worst. I remember exactly how it felt, walking out of the interview room, shaking, the fuzzy feeling in my head. I couldn't even look at Harriet, because I knew she didn't know what to say to me either. The stinging feeling in my eyes came when I entered the lift, went away when I thanked the doorman, and came back again once I stepped out of the building. When the cold wind hit my face I realized I was going to lose it. I managed to get across the street, I went into a telephone booth to make a call, no answer, so I went underground, got into the central line train and covered my face with my hands. I tried to meditate but I ended up crying instead. I felt so stupid, all alone, this tiny Chinese girl in a navy suit and pumps, sobbing into her hands on the tube because all she does is waste time, waste money, waste everything given to her by her parents and life itself. The whole time I was aware of how ridiculous I looked, how embarrassing it is to be so vulnerable on public transportation, and... it just made me cry even harder. I felt so stupid for feeling so much, I felt like I was wrong about everything, always letting my emotions lead the way, in life, in love, in everything I do. I knew if I didn't care about things I wouldn't have to feel, they wouldn't be able to hurt me, I could live without crumpling up.

And now, in spite of everything, I have something to look forward to, and in that I've already had an easier time than most. How happy I am now just reminds me how fucking good it feels to want something so bad and have it in the end, to have hope fulfilled and ambition rewarded. My method is insane, but I will continue to want, I will continue to do so intensely, and I will endure pain and push on like a fool because I know without my emotions I will never want anything enough, and if there is nothing I really want how can my life be anything but meaningless?

30th December 2011, ~ 1730hrs, Madrid

Once in a while you see something and it just sort of knocks you out. Sensory perception is the best thing human beings have but we all get pretty desensitized to aesthetic experience after the 24/7 drivel day after day. Then you have all the deliberated, concentrated stuff in galleries, museums, cinemas, concerts... and that's all the aesthetic experience people talk about anyway. Other than that you don't expect much from life, and even when you experience something exceptional it takes a lot to share that feeling. Even then it really can't be shared transparently anyway, it has to go via some external medium, and in the end you have to create something entirely different from what you experienced. Almost everybody does this, which is great. Some people are better at it. Ok this is stupidly abstract.

Really long ago when I was a little kid in Singapore, there was one afternoon where I saw some broken glass on the street while walking home alone. It was all over the tarmac, like spilled crystals or something. I picked up a couple of pieces and brought it home and put it in a little box... the kind of thing little girls do (or maybe just me). 

I spend a lot of time doing stupid things these days. The little Marx faces on my browser tabs keep giving me disapproving looks.

2012

pigging out circa 2011, pic via sam

I went to Spain right after Boxing Day to spend some well-needed chilltime with two of my best bros in the world, and now the United Kingdom as well. Globalization is so good, I always have everything I need/want now. Madrid was great. Barcelona was Amazing and I know for sure I'm going back some day, hopefully sooner than later. 

New Year's, like most things, was an anticlimax. At the first moment of 2012 I was hollering down a hallway for Sam, feeling a bit sleepy and stupid. We went to a huge club and sang/danced to indie-rock tunes for the entire night, including Such Great Heights and Have Love Will Travel. So random but so good

I woke up the next morning with the full realization that it was 2012, and an entire year had passed since we watched the fireworks together off Tanjong Rhu in Singapore. 

2011 was a pretty strange year for me. I moved forward but I also went backwards, much further than I thought I could. Every year my emotional experiences seem to reach new extremes and last year gave me the best and worst times ever, sometime together at once. In so many ways it was the best year of my life, but very much the worst too.

Either way:

1. It is over (2011, but nothing is ever really over)

2. I am still wholly grateful for everything that has happened

3. And everyone who stayed by my side, some longer than others

xoxo

1. Free will is AN ILLUSION A METAPHYSICAL IMPOSSIBILITY!! If you really had free will you'd be able to go back and forth in time, live parallel lives, erase mistakes and basically do whatever the fuck you want. Unfortunately humans are subject to their natures and circumstances. Of course we are able to make some choices out of that but we are desperately limited in both our capacities and the possibilities the world is willing to offer to us. We don't really have a choice except to make do. There is of course, paradoxically, some empowerment to be found in a clearer understanding of our helplessness.

2. Beliefs are not equatable to knowledge!! Yes, we can only know what we believe. However, you're free to believe what you might not know i.e. what you cannot find justification for. The phenomenology of belief is separate from that which makes knowledge (some kind of epistemic justification like reasoning, inference or observation). Maybe that'll give you some basis for belief, but is it necessary or sufficient? NO. Where exactly do we find the basis for belief? Epistemic and psychological immediacy. No time to explain that now but I think what this means is this: the only way to change your mind isn't to talk yourself out of your beliefs, but to game your brain out of it!

God, I'm restless. After I hand in my essay on Monday I am going to drink myself to death.

Love is just a dream you wake up from eventually

“No one who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons that inhabit the human beast, and seeks to wrestle with them, can expect to come through the struggle unscathed.”

- Sigmund Freud 

What does it mean to dream, anyway? Sometimes I wish I had a brain scanner so that I could look my dreams over without the distortion of lucid remembering. Winter hibernation drives all my mental energy into my sleeping self and I've been dreaming about the strangest situations and people and things. The most alarming fact is that when I wake up I know that the experience has changed my beliefs in a way that feels almost involuntary, which I can't decipher for myself.

Bye Bye Summer 2011

OK I think this has been the longest summer of my life

London

Singapore

Taiwan

Hong Kong

New York City + Philadelphia

Summer Internship

In the end coming back to London just feels SO GOOD I have missed these streets so much. And now that all my buddies are up it's officially party time!!!

Also, this year I am taking these modules:

Ethics in Applied Economics

International Trade

Money and Banking

Advanced Class in Philosophy of Mind

Aristotle

Marxism

Global Health and Justice

19th and 20th Century Art in London Collections

Time to kick some ass

EYES CLOSED MOUTH SHUT

Ex-political prisoner speaks out in Singapore (Banned in Singapore) from sotong on Vimeo.

Tobin's Q

sometimes you're in the middle of a conversation and you just say something with the most casual intentions - but as it comes out of your throat into your mouth and into being it suddenly grabs you almost violently and before you even know it you're feeling something which you felt a really long time ago. Whatever it is, you thought it had left you completely but as things turned out it never went anywhere, and neither did you.

WHAT THEY DIDN'T TELL US THEN

apparently, right now, my friends and i are becoming the people that we are going to be for the rest of our lives.

if to be young is to be changeable and free, why do i feel like there's already so much i'll never be?

sigh