back in pgp...

Suddenly coming to the realisation that I will be lost in the holidays. Unless I find something to tether to, the holiday might be a wasteful one. Oh dear.

lesson learning after 1st semester

I am learning, among other things, the skill of NOT learning to judge, not to impose my own values upon others. Everytime I come near to that, i have tried to... go somewhere else, do something else, instead of making that judgment. i am learning how to live in anticipation instead of expectation, which makes a huge difference when it comes to treating people. the difference is between learning to give, and giving expecting returns, when the former is obviously preferred over the latter. so i'm learning to give, and to live, and to be with as in for the sake of companionship and companionship alone, and really, expecting nothing back. for myself, i'm learning NOT to expect anything, but just go ahead and do the things i have to do as part of learning chemistry, and learning to understand chemistry for its own sake... BUT this is NOT (cannot be overemphasized) nihilism. to show God's love to others as He showed it to us.

amen

random thoughts about graduating in USP

Maybe its because its nearing the end of the semester, but a random thought dropped by. I'm thinking, when my years in NUS-USP (assuming i make it all the way) are over, I would like to, with other graduating people, throw a graduates' appreciation party or something, inviting the profs and maybe some alumni... But I'm only in year 1, and graduation seems so far away... but one day it'll come, and i'll want to thank USP for giving me so much... 

Am now also suddenly questioning the utility of USP modules, especially with respect to myself. Without USP, I would have no issue doing the STS minor that I wanted, but without USP, I wouldn't have found out about writing and thinking... but only USP gives me the opportunity to stretch myself in thought. And the ISMs... I thought I could do something at the interface of science and arts, do something truly third-culture-ish, like whats being done at SEED and Edge... arh wells. the reality of academia...

Wonderful conversation...

In the midst of preparing for the examinations, i had a talk with a friend, who kinda refined what I would want to do. He's Shaun, and he's at michigan studying computer engineering. In our conversation, he talked about taking over the information sector, while i'll work at the environment-industrial sector.

but basically, the point was that, there is a qualitative difference between being a science writer from the journalistic point of view, and there's a science writer from the scientist perspective. there are slight difference between the two, but to gain credibility fast, and to do something beneficial, then the science route would be fine. He put it this way, if I wanted to report future trends, or write about the future, then the best way is to create it. and the only way to create it, is to do it yourself. So I'm thinking about it, but I think the science writing masters can still fit in somehow. Or maybe I could be like some scitech oracle or something. WTH.

oh wells.

'being' at USP

Inisghts come when you least expect it.

This one came when I was having diarrhoea in the afternoon. And the thought just came up, about why USP people *might* be different from other students. I just came up with a few traits at the top of my head.

USP people might tend to be more academically confident about their majors, as in, they take the fact that they are good at certain subjects (or their major) as a given, and they work darn hard to keep it that way.

Maybe this confidence develops into something else, that having at least have a safety net, they are more... curious about other stuff, say, about the basis of their subjects. For a chemist like me, I might be interested behind the basis of quantum mechanics or the ethical consequences of chemical weapons and research (I'm interested in both. But now i realise that the mathematics of QM might be beyond me. Chemical weapons... well... I would have nothing to do with them, but chemical weapons in WW2 were based on pesticides. sigh... The guy who invented the AK 47 wished he could have invented some agricultural invention instead. oh wells).

See... I digressed. Maybe I'm just *different* in that sense. For me, moving out of context is as natural as water flowing.

So I was processing my diarrhoea (to put it rather euphemistically) when I began to wonder what I would do if I didn't do USP... I suspect that I would still be contented being a chemist-in-training, just a little more angsty, maybe a bit more experimental with my GEM and GEKs. I guess I would have done like, PH1101, SC1101, GE1101 just for *fun*. *Maybe*, I would have done the critical thinking module, but heck, maybe I wouldn't. All the "maybe"s.

If I wasn't at USP, i wouldn't have had the boldness to recognise that I might have a genuine knack for writing, and I might've gone through writing in a roundabout way. I remember some America general in ww2 telling his troops that the fastest way home was to hit Berlin asap. The fastest way home was the longest way through. Or something like that. Maybe my current situation in writing is something like that. I have to go further now, in order to go lesser later. If I was fully in science, it would have been the other way round, I would have accomplished my task of getting a BSc, but I would have one heck of a trip to get to writing. Who knows?

I want to write about the future. The future of technology, of society, of the environment, all combined. Science as it is now, science as it will be in the future, and the application of that sciecne in the future, in context to everything else. Political, social and economic systems change only as a result of the change in techie.

This would be an A'level-style quesiton: does tech influence PES, or is it the other way round. A more deeper level of inquiry would be... Is scientific dominated by the demands of society, or should science be pursued for its own sake? Delving into this, then, we might ask, should science be pursued for its own sake? All these are all, cliche questions that erm... really don't answer anything... Maybe we need to start small, about the context of a science-based education in Singapore and how it affects the education curriculum. Maybe science in Singapore is really non-science actually. How students perceive these things as dogma, in oppposition to the constant criticality of the scientific approach. Who knows, perhaps Molecular-Orbital theory is waiting to be dethroned by another theory, and then by another theory, and so on. Nothing is ever the the truth, but it is different from no truth ! To put it cliches, science is the search for truth, and its very basis lies in there. If there was no truth, then there would be no point in doing science. oh wells

But... normal people don't ask these questions, or maybe they do, but don't have the time to stop and think. I guess thats where people like me come in... and thats why I'm in USP, i think, for people who go off on slightly different tangents, whose mind cannot be constrained by society or by education...

Maybe maybe... where would i be in USP again? I'll probably be furiously mugging in the hope of qualifying for second upper class honours somewhere. wth. but here i am blogging. argh.

crazy run

Now i run, i give myself the challenge of singing while i'm out of breath. which is... quite some challenge. but wth.

~ = inhale
! = exhale.

~~! ~~! ~~! ~~! when ~ the ~ oceans ~ rise ~ when thunders ~!~!~! roar ~!~!~ I will soar ~!~!~ with You above the storm ~!~!~!~ Father You are king over the flood ~!~!~!~ I will be still ~!~!~ and know You are God ~!~!~!~!~!~!...

When I hit the uphill at central library it goes like this...

~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~ when ~!~!~!~ the ~!~!~!~ music ~!~!~!~ fades ~!~!~!~ all ~!~!~!~ is ~!~!~!~ stripped~!~!~!~ away...

well you get the picture.

I realised that i can do something i couldn't really do before. I can now stride the uphill back to PGP. wee!

running has always had a special place in my heart. maybe it was army that strengthened certain mindsets about running. i've always thought running was a test of spirit, a time to think about certain things, or simply the way to think about things. i don't really have a thought agenda when it comes to running, but sometimes, after a while, thoughts come. i thought about my place in USP and what it meant. i thought about craziness and normality, how people in USP are crazy in a certain way, and i guess people join USP because of craziness anyway. I think about writing, and thinking about critical thinking, and why i will always be an america-phile, at least for now. and i think about the reasons about why i love america, and thinking about how to translate their ideals into reality here in Singapore. about working with school of thought, to spread the habit of critical thinking, thinking about the cashier at 7-11 in a high tech world of search that is now dominated by google.

i imagined this scenario. sometime in the next few decades, people are going to be surrounded all over by smart dust, and some uber-intelligent programme will surround you the day you live. what it means is that all the things that you've ever done, your preferences and habits would be known to that program, and everytime you step into the store, the cashier plugs out your preferences, and tries to give you what you want, even before you make that intention. woo...

i think about why america is the hub of innovation, and i think i can come up with an answer, albeit tentatively. i think about the way americans always look to the future, daring to dream, and sweating it out to make that dream work. in singapore, we can't seem to be able to look at that future on the far horizon, and all that we seem to be able to do is to dwell on the present, to see and react to things as they are, not as what they could be. I think the attitude pervades a huge section of whatever we do - social policies, education policies. We prepare our kids for the future, but that future immediately becomes the present, and so what we have only been able to do is to give them the skills for a possible future, whether it might happen or not. What we should be doing, is to give kids the skills to pursue their future however they want it to be, because the future is NOT what the government think it might be.

So I'm thinking and thinking, and now I see that our perception of the future shapes our present, about what we do now, without ever thinking about the fact that our perceptions could be dead wrong. The future is an expectancy that we create, and it shouldn't be an expectation borne out. If everything were planned out, which things don't, then... it ain't called the future, ain't it?

I don't think this is my most coherent post, but I think I raised some valid questions, about the way we see our future, and how it shapes our policies, and the way we think. I think Americans have the highest number of future-fantasizers (serious ones) per capita. Or people who have the vision and the conviction to imagine a different future than what they've always had, and to work towards that... I think the day will come when people will go to university not thinking about what the future might be when they graduate, but rather, what the skills that the university will give them to CREATE THEIR OWN FUTURE.

Until we do that, that will be the day we stop making economic machines in the machinery of Singapore Inc, and that will be the day when the brain drain might actually reverse. Until then, I fantasize...

an exciting chemistry lecture

Today, Dr Bettens gave an exciting lecture about chemical bonds! He was describing how sodium cation and the chloride anion, due to their coulombic attraction, attain a certain potential energy due to their separation, but then, as they draw closer, the kinetic energy increases and becomes so fast that the ... crash!... into each other, forming sodium chloride...

Very blessed to have such a good chem lecturer as him, being able to actually make students feel inspired or at least, excited about the topic that they study. Add to his sense of humour and all.

Oh. and added to some unknown to-do-list. See if there's some way to extend my writing experience in USP itself... maybe through some ISM. and how to find a way to work with Dr Don or something. who knows?

Oh. been thinking back to my ideascape/idea-landscape. Looking at imagination as a garden, managing them, pruning them so that they grow in right ways... and how to design software to help people think, make new connections, notwithstanding the fact that people have different contexts, that how an individual thinks is vastly different from how another person thinks. interesting problems to think about.

equations as a lens to view physical reality. ooh..

Oh, and Obama won! woohoo! the world will be a better place! and people are gathering to pray for USP together, united! woohoo!

updates from NUS, USP

I frequently write emails to friends both church and outside, and here is one of them.

Hi all,

I attended a small group discussion that was meant to give feedback to the USP higher-ups about how to make admission more rigorous, ie., how to change, modify their admission system so they can get better people. Right now, the current application system asks for an essay and an interview, and they are thinking of adding an additional component, could be small seminar discussion, some project group, or something else.

And then, as the discussion was ongoing, i suddenly realised why USP chose me, or why i chose USP (can't really tell now). The facilitator kept on asking about how us - individuals about our SPECIFIC stand on a certain topic, and leading us to explain, justify it. And he kept on asking about how the idea can be extended or seen in a new light, or a different perspective. The topic being discussed was something about abstract art and the meaning of art, and I while other people seemed to be stuck on the metaphysical ie., super-abstract things about art, representing reality, and the context of the viewer, and viewer-constructed meaning, and all that stuff, i began to point out about some parallel with intellectual property, the mixing and mashing of art forms.

And my point was kinda singled out by the director of USP (he was sorta of chairing the session; USP very close-knit, hardly any protocol barrier between senior admin and students), by pointing out that i was able to move the discussion in a different direction, and how they are looking for qualities like the one i showed...

Lately, i guess i've been feeling kinda negative, because i don't think I am doing *well* at the moment. I need to catch up with work, both in chemistry and in USP, and especially for one USP module, where the instructor has super-high expectations (not the writing). Negative - is just a perception, and i will shake that off and just focus on what i really need to do!

What I experienced at the focus group was kinda like an affirmation, that I AM IN USP FOR HIS REASON, for something that i will not be able to fully understand, but eventually, things will work out! I see USP as something that i really have sorta divine connection with, more so with USP than with chemistry or even my interest in the arts.

On another note:

I've decided, that i won't let my life in NUS be determined by the pursuit of grades - i leave this at His feet, and i will enjoy the experiences - even the bad ones, that He has prepared for me! I will do what i can, but i will only do that by being dependent on HIm. i will not let anything affect my perception of what i can do, not even myself, but learn to see the things in my life especially my capabilities through His perception.

Live in His love!
eddie.shiqin

Room of Tears

My room in PGP, i think, is becoming a room of tears. Or rather, this labeling goes to show how inner emotions do change our reality. I mean, I struggle here until the wee hours of the morning, go to class, and still have nothing to show for it. 

I'm not sure how else to handle this internal mess I'm in, except to grow in the realisation that I should not have any expectations of myself, especially academically, because when I hold on to these expectations, i imagine myself as someone that i cannot be, and to hold on to these expectations would only be remaking myself into someone i am not - which is a hopeless task. So I cast off all these thoughts, but they will always gnaw at me inside - i mean, who hasn't fantasized about being someone else they can't be... 

I guess, only when I hold on to God, this room of tears can become a room of joy! woohoo!