A Lunar New Year away from home.

This year, I am spending it, for the first time, in a Western country where the whole festive atmosphere and social texture are vastly different from back home. This is not a bemoaning of my current station in life but rather, a notable change and experience for me. I see it almost as a rite of passage. But it does make me think how profound the impact the environment can have on one's lifestyles, habits, customs and even aspirations. To make up for the otherwise forgettable way this traditionally significant period will be spent away from home, we will be having a steamboat celebratory dinner later this evening. Funny how this must have been how enduring racial enclaves first came about; faced with and surrounded by larger alien cultures, primordial sentiments reflexively clump together for mutual affirmation.

The new semester has been treating me well and while I am still fighting off traces of denial (that Winter break has come and gone!), I must begin oiling the academic machine in me to get back on top of things. As proof of the struggle I have against distractions of all kinds, below are some videos which I think all Singaporeans, in particular those born in the early 1990s, should watch; I was 3 when they were produced! It is certainly a pleasurable experience being thrown back into the era of unconsciously over-sized glasses, poky dotted dresses, center parting of the hair, bland HDB exteriors, Stop-At-Two campaign posters and more.

It was also very interesting to see how Catherine Lim (name was misspelled in the film), Prof Chan Heng Chee and Prof Lee Tsao Yuan have, on different counts, changed or/and not changed. It is also of interest how history seems, even on a micro level in our tiny red dot, to repeat itself. Calls for loftier nation-building aims, rampant today, are, alas, not new: "It is not bread and butter now, it is what kind of jam you're going to have."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNcHOXDUUP0&feature=BFa&list=PL9C1C644CC4212D45&lf=results_main

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iaj8Jl5XhiE&feature=autoplay&list=PL9C1C644CC4212D45&lf=results_main&playnext=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ss5BKt7Voek&feature=autoplay&list=PL9C1C644CC4212D45&lf=results_main&playnext=2

Such videos provide opportunities not to indulge in self-congratulatory back-slapping but a visual and thus more moving flavor of where Singapore came from and how best must we move forward. This has to do with my recent flirtation with majoring in History instead of/in conjunction with Political Science. I shall see where that leads.

Anyway, to end off, Happy Lunar New Year to all! May the Year of the Dragon bring renewed energy, greater prosperity and better health for all of us :) Xing Nian Kuai Le, Wan Shi Ru Yi! Cannot wait to Skype with the extended family later tonight when they will be all gathered, as per custom, at Kembangan.

brain burps after a semester

Like your typical college kid, I am reveling in the happy aftermath of the semestral finals. Not that they went particularly well; among other subjects, I did Biology this semester and if you know me, you ought to know that, perhaps regrettably, a galactic distance exists between my core intellectual interests and the sciences. Nevertheless, in the somewhat trite (but true, I hope) spirit of a broad liberal arts education, I must say the experience had been a good one. The many connections between how our body functions and how human society and organizations operate were my key takeaways.

The American classroom - and I am necessarily generalizing and oversimplifying here - is quite distinct from the Singaporean one in which I have spent my most formative years. There is a greater sense of "intellectual flatness" in the former while "intellectual hierarchy" tends to be more pronounced in the latter with regards to how students and teachers engage with each other intellectually. 

In the Singaporean classroom, or rather, in my own experiences of it, it is patently clear who's the boss: the teacher holds in his/her hands the sacrosanct knowledge which the students should seek to gobble up as quickly as possible. The Answer Scheme - prefixed and largely shielded from revisions, even valid ones - is the holy grail of most modes of examinations. This is not to say I have not experienced thoughtful instructors who engaged ideas more than they do iterations of facts; yet, they are notable precisely because they are the exceptions and not the rule.

Placing efficiency and focus on the pedestal is to be admired. It helps keep the discussion "on topic" and "wastes nobody's time". But the downside of such an environment must be acknowledged: without a suitably encouraging ethos of "feel free to speak up" (audibly as well as more literally, towards or against superiors - our Professors in this instance) the many mental gems buried in the students' restive minds might remain forever undiscovered and unnurtured. 

Sometimes, the best thoughts are not best developed in silence or isolation. By throwing a seemingly unrefined or incomplete thought out there and then revising or elaborating it in response to others, one ideally plunges into a mental flow from which an otherwise latent or nonexistent insight can be fished. In familiar parlance, a person's comment can be say, 85% of "smoke" or "fluff" (and I know it can sometimes be very vexing getting through this portion of someone's speech) but if that is accompanied by 15% of "substance", I think all in audience will be the richer for it.

Now, I do not think the American classroom (or culture, for that matter) is perfect; it is far from it. Among other salient flaws, it can regularly be victims of fantastical and/or pretentious opinions which, in true "free speech" tradition, the teachers do not robustly strike down or correct. The belief seems to be that in a mass (and mess) of opinions, the law of average will work its magic and dilute extremism; sometimes such a scenario comes to pass, sometimes the said opinions are left to fester.

The above is, of course, purely anecdotal and personal. For one, I have never experienced a typical (if it exists) American high school culture and therefore, cannot draw perfect comparisons here! Just one of the few observations of my academic career thus far.

On another note, and it is perhaps a timely reflection considering MP Seng Han Thong's recent verbal gaffe when commenting on the SMRT fiasco, being an international student in the USA has heightened my sense of being a minority. It is also a happy coincidence that one of the overarching themes of my residential program this past semester has been on "Identity". When I was in DC a couple of days ago, I was lucky that the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History was running an exhibition on Race. It helped to consolidate some of my thoughts about the issue which still occupies an emotionally explosive place in Singaporean society. Walking through the exhibition, I was constantly reminded of something I read from Wikileaks a few weeks ago and Alfian Sa'at's abandoned blog. 

Minorities of all stripes and sorts will be the first to tell you that professed understanding and empathy without personal experience is strained rhetoric. The realm of public posturing and statements by public personalities is, almost by definition, fraught with hypocritical imperatives and impulses. Yet, can we really expect otherwise? That public personalities will say things as they truly are, blotches and all? 

The pragmatist in me tells me that we would be lucky to have an approximation of the truth when it comes to issues as sensitive as race. All public personalities seek to rephrase, paraphrase, polish, conceal etc. so it comes as no surprise that MP Seng's comments rubbed so many, minority and majority races alike, the wrong way even if the underlying prompting is but moral illusion on the public's part; there is value in being delicate and nuanced in one's public expressions. The same logic applies to a politician from the ruling party, if only with greater intensity and implications.

Being a minority gives you a unique vantage point with which to view and examine the world around you. As long as it does not represent a glass ceiling, I actually think it is to one's advantage. A life led without such an experience is not a textured one. That is why traveling is, besides all its more indulgent aspects, to be pursued and loved. Since I titled this entry as a mere "burp", I am going to end it off lazily by way of a quote which is nevertheless profoundly wise:

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. - Mark Twain.

an identity still under construction

By Alfian Sa'at  

Singapore you are not my country.
Singapore you are not a country at all.
You are surprising Singapore, statistics-starved Singapore, soulful Singapore of tourist brochures in Japanese and hourglass kebayas.
You protest, but without picketing, without rioting, without Catherine Lim,
but through your loudspeaker media,
through the hypnotic eyeballs of your newscasters,
and that weather woman who I swear is working voodoo on my teevee screen.

Singapore, what are these lawsuits in my mailbox?
There are so many sheaves,
I should have tipped the postman.
Singapore, I assert, you are not a country at all.
Do not raise your voice against me,
I am not afraid of your anthem although the lyrics are still bleeding from the bark of my sapless heart.
Not because I sang them pigtailed pinnafored breakfasted chalkshoed in school
But because I used to watch telly till they ran out of shows.
Do not invite me to the podium and tell me to address you properly.
I am allergic to microphones and men in egosuits and pubicwigs.
And I am not a political martyr,
I am a patriot who has lost his country and virginity.
Do not wave a cane at me for vandalising your propaganda with technicolour harangues,
Red Nadim semen white Mahsuri menses the colourful language of my eloquent generation.
Your words are like walls on which truth is graffiti.
This has become an island of walls.
Asylum walls, factory walls, school walls, the walls of the midnight Istana.
If I am paranoid I have learnt it from you,
O my delicate orchid stalk Singapore,
Always thirsty for water,
spooked by armed archipelagoes,
always gasping for airspace,
always running to keep ahead,
running away from yourself.
Singapore why do you wail that way, demanding my IC?
Singapore stop yelling and calling me names.
How dare you call me a chauvinist,
an opposition party,
a liar,
a traitor,
a mendicant professor,
a Marxist homosexual communist
pornography banned literature chewing gum liberty smuggler? How can you say I do not believe in The Free Press autopsies flogging mudslinging bankruptcy
which are the five pillars of Justice?
And how can you call yourself a country,
you terrible hallucination of highways and cranes and condominiums ten minutes drive from the MRT?

Tell that to the battered housewife who thinks happiness lies at the end of a Toto Queue.
Tell that to the tourist guide whose fillings are pewter whose feelings are iron
whose courtesy is gold whose speech is silver
whose handshake is a lethal yank at the jackpot machine.
Tell that to my imam who thinks we are all going to hell.
Tell that to the chao ah beng who has seven stitches a broken collarbone and three dead comrades
but who will not hesitate from thrusting his tiger ribcage into another fight because the lanterns of his lungs have caught their own fire and there is no turning back.
Tell that to the yuppie who sits in meat-markets disguised as pubs, listening to Kenny G disguised as jazz on handphone disguised as conversation and loneliness disguised as a jukebox.
Tell that to all those exiles whose names are forgotten but who leave behind a bad taste in the thoughtful mouth,
reminding us that the flapping sunned linen shelters a whiff of chloroform.
Tell that to Town Council men who feed pigeons with crumbs of arsenic.
Tell that to Natra Hertogh a.k.a Maria who proved to us that blood spilled was thicker than water shed as she was caught pining under a stone angel in the nunnery for her husband.
Tell that to Ah Meng, who bore six hairy bastards for our nation.
Tell that to Lee Kuan Yew's squint.
Tell that to Josef Ng, who shaves my infant head amidst a shower of one-cent coins, and both of us are pure again.
Tell that to my Warrant Officer who knew I was faking.
Tell that to the unemployed man who drinks cigarettes smokes tattoos watches peanuts unself-conscious of his gut belch debts and wife having an affair with the Salesman of Nervous Breakdowns.
Tell that to our Maya Angelou's who are screeching like witches United Nations-style poems populated by Cheena Babi Bayee Tonchet Melayu Malas Keling Geragok Mat Salleh.
Tell that to the fakirs of civil obedience, whose headphones are pounding the hooving basslines of Damyata Damyata Damyata.
Tell that to the statue of Li Po at Marina Park.
Tell that to the performance artists who need licences like drivers and doctors and dogs when all they really need is just three percent of your love.
Tell that to the innocent faggot looking for kicks on a Sunday evening to end up sucking the bit-hard pistol-muzzle of the CID, ensnared no less by his weakness for pretty boys naked out of uniform.
Tell that to the caretaker of the grave of Radin Mas.
Tell that to Chee Soon Juan's smirk.
Tell that to the pawns of The Upgrading Empire who penetrate their phalluses into heartlands to plant Lego cineplexes Tupperware playgrounds suicidal balconies carnal parks of cardboard and condoms and before we know it we are a colony once again.
Tell that to Malaysia whose Desaru is our spittoon whose TV2 is our amusement whose Bumiputras are our threat whose outrage is our greater outrage whose turtles are weeping blind in the roaring daylight of our cameras.
Tell that to the old poets who have seen this piece of land slip their metaphors each passing year from bumboats to debris to sanitation projects to drowning attempts to barbed neon water weeds on a river with no reflections a long way off from the sea.

O Singapore your fair shores your garlands your GNP.
You are not a country you are a construction from spare parts.
You are not a campaign you are last year's posters.
You are not culture you are poems on the MRT.
You are not a song you are part swear word part lullaby.
You are not Paradise you are an island with pythons.

Singapore I am on trial.
These are the whites of my eyes and the reds of my wrists.
These are the deranged stars of my schizophrenia.
This is the milk latex gummy moon of my sedated smile.
I have lost a country to images, it is as simple as that.
Singapore you have a name on a map but no maps to your name.
This will not do; we must stand aside and let the Lion crash through a madness of cymbals back to that dark jungle heart when eyes were still embers waiting for a crownless Prince of Palembang.

Hello from Philadelphia.

1 day to New York City: family time, interview Occupy Wall Street mobs (oops) for the Penn Political Review, first Halloween weekend out of Singapore, meet-ups and, oh, did I mention family time!

7 days to Ugly Naing visiting Penn.

8 days to confirming Spring 2012 courses. Always brimming with possibilities and hence, exciting.

27 days to Thanksgiving break in Orlando. Universal Studios and Disney World! Possibly Miami/Palm beaches?

44 days to the last of finals in... surprise, surprise, Biology! (for me, it doesn't get more liberal arts than this.)

2 months to Winter break in South America, mainly Nicaragua and Costa Rica.

8 months (?) to Summer back in sunny little Singapore, which will always be home.

There, a sweepingly broad update/outlook of my life here on this other side of the world since I haven't exactly checked into this space for a while now. College has been treating me fine, I am still trying to find my place in this gigantic world of Penn, but I guess that is largely the case for most kids starting university - nay, for most people starting new chapters in life. Academic routine is emerging and my brain feels - alas - tingled again. 

Yesterday, I spent an hour jogging along the Schuylkill river just as the day was winding down with traces of crimson shyly dotting the clouds. It was one of the most invigorating runs I've had. Walking around the newly-opened Penn Park later that evening, watching kids play frisbee, soccer and football on the sprightly grass oozing a richness of life as only large expanse of nature can, I again felt that rush of invigoration which was, I think, simultaneously subtle and profound.

Maybe it really has to do with the unspectacular fact that my midterms are out of the way. Or maybe I was finally inching toward or settling into a comfortable rhythm of life here, fifteen thousand kilometers away from all that I had known and come to love. Or maybe, I was just being especially reflective because Mom and Aunt Seow Wah were visiting for the past few days. Anyhow, it was an enjoyably relaxed evening which felt good and inspired, if irrelevantly, me to make college to be all that I wish for it to be.

Hope that the folks back home are doing jolly well :)

P.S. 40 minutes to my political science recitation!

Hello, August one.

August 2011. This was a month I had spent the past 2 years in anticipation of. You could call it the single greatest delayed gratification I have had to endure. I have attached such romanticized conceptions to this prospective overseas education, and life, really, for way too long and that has constructed a really surreal reality for me now that I am less than a month away from starting a brand (and hopefully a bold, bright, brilliant and all things beautiful) new chapter of my life in... the Land of the Free, Home of the Brave (I love this line; I am a sucker for lyrical, historical American PR).

So yes, the activities that I have been busying myself with are equally telling of this unfolding season. The past weeks have been spent on the MFA Bali trip as well as the Pre-Departure Course with MFA kids. I can say no more about the former besides it being an eye-opening experience. But to have them open is one thing, to have them glisten with youthful hopefulness and earnestness is another. I am not so sure if my eyes are all that positively moist. That notwithstanding, if you ask me, I'ld much rather a life led with little illusions than one with grand pretensions which enrich no one besides a fantasy or sci-fi novelist (which I am not and never will be).

On the latter, I have to say it was a surprisingly enjoyable week. A huge reason, as is often the case, has to do with the people with whom I spent the week. By and large a wholly agreeable bunch, with a few individuals who shared a deeper, more natural connection. This was not preordained. The skeptic in me had, almost reflexively, all defenses up at the sheer thought of another attempt at "team bonding, team learning". I was glad the skepticism got chipped away as the days went by, especially during the 3-day OBS course which was incidentally my first experience at high-elements activities. I would not rehash the somewhat motherhood lessons these activities reminded me of but suffice to say I saw bits of my younger self efface over the week, and I kind of like what I saw. Nevertheless, I also noted, silently and somberly, some profound differences between the person that I am today and two years ago. Sometimes I wonder: where did the seemingly vast reservoir of enthusiasm, ideals and fire disappear to? Has it been scorched dry beneath the sun of realism and impending adulthood? I hope not. 

The weekend was largely a family affair, save for a poolside chat with Bryan in the wee hours of Saturday. At the family gathering on Sunday, I was told that on the shoulders of government administrators rests the "potential to do a lot of good for society". Overcoming pauses and tentative double-mindedness, I managed a "I have no illusions about the scope of impact I can make on society at this point in time", before adding something along the lines of "The civil service is quite deterministic." Again, I asked myself: where have all the idealism and beliefs - cornucopian in proportions a mere 2 years ago - gone to?

Well, for now, a week of soaking up the Singapore sun (and there is a lot of it to soak up, I kid you not) before Hong Kong and Krabi beckon. Adios!

college, to go

So commencement day arrives, your work begins. Work that will not be always joyful to you. Labour that may not always fulfill you. And days that will seem like one damn thing after the other. Its true - you will now work every day for the rest of your lives. That full time job, your career as human beings, and as Americans, and as graduates of Yale, is to stand on the fulcrum between fear and faith. Fear at your back. Faith in front of you. Which way will you lean? Which way will you move? Move forward, move ever forward.



You must never ever stop defending your ideals and dreams. Believe and fight for something you can bequeath to those who come behind you and do not hesitate in your efforts because in the end, man's power to create is bigger than his power to destroy. You have to give meaning to your life and to do so, you have to embrace, with passion, the things that you believe in and that you are fighting for. Be sure of your principles, and never, never give up on them.





My first job as your commencement speaker is to illustrate that life is not fair. For example, you have worked tirelessly for four years to earn the diploma you'll be receiving this weekend... and Dartmouth is giving me the same degree for interviewing the forth lead in Twilight. Deal with it. Another example that life is not faith, if it does rain, the powerful rich people on stage get the tent. Deal with it.


It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique. Its not easy, but if you accept your misfortune and handle it right, your perceived failure can be a catalyst for profound reinvention. 

No specific job or career goals define me. And it should not define you.

You've been inspired by the experiences you've had, the people you've held, the blood you've shed, all the growing ups surrounded by hopefulness of spirit. You've been moved.


This path does not belong to your parents, your teachers, your leaders or your lovers. Your path is your character defining itself more and more everyday, like a photo that is coming into focus, like a color that becomes more vivid in contrast with its surroundings.

Bali Brain Burp 1

So this is day 2 of my first ever "work" trip, staffing FM Shanmugam's trip to the 44th ASEAN Ministerial Meeting/Post-Ministerial Conferences/ASEAN Regional Forum at Bali, Indonesia. There, I just did you a tremendous favor by demystifying the alphabet soup of ASEAN-related acronyms... which incidentally also happens to be the story of my life in the past 2.5 months as an intern in the ASEAN Directorate at MFA.

Every bit thus far has been eye-opening by virtue of the fact that this is my virgin overseas MFA trip. An account of my experience at this point would be premature and I shall therefore not venture to narrate that. So, just a few food for thought, for now:

1.     Resist the temptation to talk big and stick close to the core of your (preferably substantive and insightful) message. Sometimes, hyperbole reflects flair and assertiveness. Other times, it is counter-productive and should thus be avoided. Note to self: do not speak about "wars" when you are really talking about "battles"; do not speak about "battles" when you are really talking about "fights".

2.     Singapore is incredibly small and this smallness has, for better or for worse, informed our self-conception, worldview and foreign policy. Do and can we genuinely appreciate the complexities and challenges that far larger countries face? We would be wise to always bear in mind that we are a city-state void of both the advantages and disadvantages of being a big place with chronically competing power centers and huge internal developmental gaps. To effectively safeguard and promote one's national interests is the overriding aim of any good diplomat. Yet this must not be conflated with adopting hermetic diplomacy because our interests do not exist in isolation from larger and oftentimes domestic factors in other countries. This, to me, seems to allude to developing greater strategic empathy.

3.     Our domestic (economic and social) successes remain key to ensuring other countries take us seriously. I am beginning to be thoroughly convinced that certain refrains ("small states have no inherent relevance to the world", "to survive, singapore must always be exceptional" etc.), popular among bureaucratic circles, are pregnant with hard truths which we ignore to our peril. "Power projection", in our case, is less about a physical show of strength (though that is still very important for our close bilateral dealings) but more about bolstering credibility and cementing reputation as a world-class oasis in a developing region. In short, a failed small state cannot punch..., much less above its own weight.

Time to head to bed now. Tomorrow marks the start of the flurry of meetings proper when all the ASEAN FMs arrive. Pardon my youthful idealism but I am honestly quite thrilled to be part of this delegation.