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...