Sunset: 1st March 2011

I guess a lot of people aren't aware that sunsets are beautiful, and
that one can catch beautiful sunsets at NUS.

And so, I thought I caught a beautiful sunset in NUS today.

I guess that's a reminder, that today has been beautiful, in spite of
classes and all.

I long for the day I don't have to do too much management with
projects, but I guess that day is a bit far off.

one month already!?!

I can scarcely believe that one month has already passed. Yet the forth week is soon to end, and...

I still need to read more of some modules, to get a better, more comprehensive understand of the things that I'm studying. I thank God that I can keep my fridays free specifically for that purpose. Also, I have alternate Wednesdays free, which I think is also another manifestation of the grace of God.

CIR is coming along fine, and I'll be facilitating/managing sessions on fridays. Which means that something has to give...

My very own seminar series - the TED/related sharings, is soon to birth, and as with every birth, there are birth pangs; there are difficulties, there are management issues to settle. But even all that will come to pass, and by the grace of God, I'll be able to impart my knowledge and experience to the USP community.

And Leadership Programme...

Hmm...

And then the rest of the semester will come to pass....

All Glory to God.

a new habit...

For 2 a few nights now, I walk out of my PGP room, and walk. Usually towards Chatterbox, then pop in and see who remains there, then pop out back to PGP.

I usually think thrugh things and reflect upon recent events, and do a little bit of worship, and a bit of prayer, like solitude.

And it's a nice thing to do, especially when I realise that I cannot force myself to stay in the room...

Tonight I realised nothing new. It was a reminder that as things change, they stayed the same too.

My approach to topics have changed, but I'm still passionate or at least, interested in the same few things. I still think about environment, and I still think about how people make sense of information. It's just that I have new things to think about - sociology of science, of knowledge, and semiotics to bring these things to bear on various analyses. I still have an active mind, still thinking about many ideas - but the main threads still remain.

This time last year, I was still interested in information technologies and still concerned about climate change. At that level, nothing has changed!

The friends have stayed the same, but changed as well. We are not taking the same modules, and new relationships have developed that let old bonds weaken a bit. But no matter. There is still time, time enough to catch up, but these are moments to treasure, to cherish.

Love remains.

Day 4 august 2009

I remember that I wanted to blog, but I promptly fell asleep. Yeah. Yesterday was only Friday, only Day 4, yet a tremendous sense of fatigue and weariness has already descended upon us.

At this stage, one realises the importance of friends who feel as weary, if not more weary than you, and the need for mutual support to survive another semester, another year, fraught with many more assignments, projects, deadlines...

In quietness, one realises the life enriched by these people, despite the hurts and pains one gets through the course of study, and one wonders whether giving anything was worth everything.

Ultimately, life is still alone, the choices and decisions of one - alone, deciding the paths... it is a powerful, burden-full thing to think of, and that is where even friends cannot come in. Yep. Life is still, and will always be, it seems, a lonely life.

But friends make it infinitely more bearable.

Pardon my morning grammar.

the times i run at NUS

I enjoy running at NUS. I know its not exactly the sanest thing to do, considering that sometimes I run the slopes deliberately. Its this strange sense of catharsis, of clearing up certain thoughts. And here they are, as I went to run, and the thoughts that came up.

The first time I ran at NUS, it was the first year, and it was all so emotionally exciting, with many ups and downs - and that was felt in the run that I did - the strenuous uphills and the relaxing downhills.

But as I ran again, the feelings are different. It is still the same run, but the runner has changed. The slopes now mean something different - no longer the rawness nor the intensity of the slopes, but something else, that just slipped my mind. There was something that I grasped... the hills, the slopes, of the going up and the going down. It might not have been about the journey that we take, but about an experience through life.

The challenges of life will always be with us - in school, out of school, and after school. The destination matters, but the process of the journey is as important as the destination. I remember noting that I would want to come back to USP and mentor the students to think about their lives and how to get there. I think about the sobering fact that I would not have thought about doing sociology. In fact, if I were to come to FASS in my first year, I would instead have been hot-headed about political science.

As Dr Ryan says, Steve Jobs' connecting the dot backwards is too simplistic, but it is a beautiful narrative nonetheless. Its amazing that I stumbled into Dr Don's class - a semiotician, and how I got infected with certain ideas, and how all of that has led me in my current direction... deep insightful stuff...

And so the slopes on NUS mean something different to me now, though I still can't quite get it.

ooh..

I was in the shower when...

Milo. A chocolate drink. Chocolate powder with a bit of water. When it settles, it's not nice to drink. Need to stir it a little.

God never allows things in our lives to become still, or stale. From time to time, He stirs, so that the chocolate powder becomes more distributed around the cup... It's a bad analogy. And then He drinks, and its good.

USP won best faculty float design. Emotions poured out. It was weird. I don't really know how to feel. It certainly feels good since I helped applied papier marche and paint in some areas, but I didn't got myself completely involved in it... It certainly makes me thing about a few things, looking at the graduated seniors who come down and helped in many crucial areas. There must be something magical, perhaps, in bringing people together to do a tremendously large project. I guess it is in such events, where the more you give, the more you received - to know that all you do is not in vain.

And so too, marks the end of the holidays.

I've gotten my new card as an FASS student. The rest of the next 3 years await. I pray that my move was Your move, not mine. Everything I have - all my milo powder, come only from You. Stir in my life what needs to be stirred. Help me Lord, to be effective and efficient for You. That the experiences in my life will shape me to what I need to be for You. So Lord, the rest of my life You already know. Help me walk through it.

Amen

blogspot kinda failed on me, so i'm using scribefire

Garg. I realise that if I don't write regularly the old-school way, the hand will feel funny when taking up the pen.

ok. so i've blogged a bit here:

http://eddiechoo.wordpress.com/2009/07/22/gargh-google-blogspot-has-failed-me/

but I wanted to write a bit more. I need to find back that link to information and society. See how bah.

Had many, many enlightening conversations. The next sem will be quite tough, I think. Oh well.

met up with someone frm acjc. coolios

I had the fortune of meeting a schoolmate from ACJC. It was those kind of, 'hey, you look familiar, you're from ACJC, right?' - sort of thing. And we were from the same batch, and she knew my friends, so it was an excellent excuse to start a conversation. And I happened to know what happened to some of the teachers at ACJC, and had *slightly* more interesting stories about what happened to ACJC since we left - like ACJC sucking at sports and stuff even though academically we might be doing well. About the teachers and where they are, whether they are still at AC. 

So yeah. It was nice catching up and all. And we were just talking about what we were studying and looking at our future potential jobs. She asked the question first, about what would I do with chemistry after I graduate (she's doing finances and accounting at SMU). I thought about it... and my thoughts about my future after I graduate are going to be on this blog.

I used to ask this question to all my friends that I met. But after going through some personal experiences, and hearing stories from other working people, I now DO NOT ask that question anymore, because asking that question is well... just a polite conversation starter, and there isn't much point in doing that, since there are a thousand other better ways to start a conversation. 

Anyway, I used to think that I studied chemistry because I wanted to do some research in chemistry, because chemistry is inherently interesting to me, just as physics might be interesting to someone, or mathematics, or economics... If not, there's always the pharmaceuticals, petrochemicals/plastics, semiconductors... *yawn*... you know, the usual boring stuff. If not, there's always going into teaching, which is also not surprising. So yeah. The future is still open for me, and me studying right now, I'm not going to be closing doors anytime soon, but going into industry isn't exactly what I have in mind. Maybe I might do some internships there or something, but thats not the point. 

But now that I'm in university, and having gone through the Writing and Critical Thinking module, I discovered that I really like writing, because I like thinking about things, and to write for other people to understand the connections between the different disparate things that might have nothing to do with each other. So, you ask me now what I'm thinking I want to do, I would say, something in writing. heck, I don't really know, neither do I really care. Just let things be, you know, trust God, that everything will turn out fine, that the decisions I make in that future will be the things that He wants me to do. Of course from time to time you think a bit about the things that I might do, but the possibilities are really endless as to make that kind of thinking just speculative and fun to fantasize about, but these fantasies cannot be the basis on which you make decisions about the future about. 

In the end, there's still reality out there to think about, and reality is ALWAYS stranger than what we expect. Before school started, if you had asked me the same question about what I might be doing, I would NEVER have anticipated that I would end up loving writing so much. So I've come to realise that these questions about the future are just that - just *questions* to think about, but to answer only definitely in THAT future, not in this present now. Because who we are at this present moment CANNOT be prepared to make those choices in the FUTURE. Questions about career choices, lifepaths, there are only general principles that we can take with us - do what we love, work really really hard at what we love, but beyond that, we still have to choose between the possible futures, and we can only do that through the wisdom that we acquired in the process of growth, and realising who we are as God made us, and to make full use of that, for His purpose! That is ALL we can do...

Its kinda weird that the things that we do now are going to lead us to unexpected places in the future. Well, not quite. I might be studying chemistry now, but I might not be doing chemistry in the future. Does that mean I studied chemistry in vain? NO! Thats just pure nonsense! The point is not in the actual study of the subject content, the point was in all the times you had to apply your mind to some interesting question, to rest upon the concepts that you know, and learning how to apply them, in the training of the analytical skills, to spot common patterns, to organise the knowledge that you acquire - those are meta-skills that any good high quality job would need! Chemistry is just an excuse to acquire them. Ditto with mathematics and physics, or economics... Learning about the equations, and trying to make sense of the abstract and make it something you can relate to... thats a key skill too! To make sense out of the noise of everyday things, seeing that sometimes they might not be noise but bits and pieces out of a larger pattern... Even though we are pattern-seeking creatures, there is also the key point about learning how to distinguish between genuine noise and real patterns out there - those are also key skills that needs picking up! The subjects that we are study are EXCUSES to acquire those universal skills! In doing chemistry, I have the pictures of molecules in my head, I do mental rotations, I *see* the electron clouds, I guess at the possible reactions that might happen here, there, in the molecule. Or I *see* a material, and imagine how it is composed, how the individual moleucles are cross-linked together to form the entire material, and to imagine the possibilies and application of that material, or find new ways to apply the material... Others might *see* idea-spaces, some theory or construct embedded in some social space, or some philosophers might *see* the applications of certain thought-constructs in certain government policies or certain aspects of human behaviour... These are the tools with which we make sense of things, to think about them, and to communicate with others about, to try to see how we might see things differently, and learning how to implement these possibilties - all of these are things that we learn in university and maybe a lot more or less. 

Of course what we learn has bearing upon our future, its just that our future might be something that was totally unexpected by ourselves in the first place! (well, except for those scholarship holder stuck to their bonds) This expectation of the unexpected, this readiness to accept the randomness of life that takes us to somewhere strange, different, discomforting, new, this is something that we have to learn and acquire as we go on in our lives. 

And that is the reason why I'll never ask my friends about the future they see for themselves, because NO ONE, can really see for themselves what might happen in the future...

wednesday 3rd december

I wanted to go hang out with my army buddies, but then i realised i had something on at church, so the latter took precedence. it was a time where church leaders shared about the vision for next year's work, and there were many big words and simple overarching ideals.

FCBC's theme next year is about 'Loving Our Neighbour', and it will be I suspect, another year of growth in these areas, of coming to engage others emotionally, spiritually, and so it'll probably be another exciting year and semester.

Met up with cell leader and processed a lot of stuff. (don't like to use the word 'process' but anyhow...) It was a nice heart-to-heart talk and going through the many exciting things that had been happening for the past few months especially in NUS.

I enjoyed sharing about my first semester because i really enjoyed it! It has been a time of maturing, of learning, to begin to appreciate what God's love is about and trying to live that out, of learning about myself, and appreciating how God has made me, managing my own expectations, thinking about the immediate paths and the steps ahead, coming to terms with reality and how things really are... it was a really enjoyable time.

learning to *flow* with the Spirit...

a reflection about friends at the end of the semester

The semester has practically ended, with the final closure happening on the 23rd, when the *truth* will be known. Meantime, there is time for a break, for a little reflection of the semester that I've had. And one of the things that I've realised is that, I have been much blessed with friends - that despite my social awkwardness, I was never physically alone, that for most of the time, I've had friends - people whom I know physically close, that I really could be alone, but only by deliberate choice. I'm finally learning to be with people for the first time in my life, without being bothered too much by the timing of reaching home.

I love my friends. I really do. And to some of them, I appreciate them much more than they might realize. I realised the importance of 'touching base', that despite the busy-ness, it is ALWAYS important to say, 'hi, how are you, bye' sorta thing, even for just 5 minutes. These little acts are more important than people realise, I think, because it represents a person's intention in engaging others, that despite limited time, 'I still want to keep in touch with you, because I care about you enough'. I guess to some, it might seem to be a compromise, since nothing can replace dedicated time and attention...

And I'm sitting down here, thinking about the 'networks' that I've found myself in... these networks are hardly interconnected, but there are some linkages and overlaps between them. Like science VCF people who are also FCBC people, USP peope who are FCBC... USP people who do NGO stuff. and so on. But its an amazing breadth of networks...

hmm... many of these links can only be maintained by 'touching base', since its nearly impossible to spend time and effort in the administration of these networks... just wondering...

exams have ended!

1st december. my last paper! yeah! the most important part of the semester has ended. and everything now awaits the closure on the 23rd december.

many things have happened since i last blogged. i clarified some stuff with academic advisor about my undergraduate studies in NUS, i went back home, to find out that my mum had rearranged my books, and telling me that i could open a bookstore, which i can, i guess. I guesstimate that my book count is about 1/3 of the USP library. which is. quite. a. lot. most of it from my NS days. I am after all, a late-bloomer, I guess.

So here i am, at the end of a semester, many more to go, thankful for God who has brought me thus far, for the friends that I have, walking on similar but different journeys.

Learning, socially and emotionally, about what to do, learning to be WITH people, loving and all, opening up, and persist in opening up, despite people not accepting, but learning to love all the same.

Its amazing how the Lord has brought me up in the family that I have, that I can flow between different contexts rather smoothly, that I have a wide range of experience with people. That despite me seemingly high up in the heads with USP (which isn't really the case), I am still down there on the ground. The analogy is a false one actually. USP and everything else just isn't in an up-down hierarchy, learning to see these things as different elements, different dimensions of my life. areas to revolve upon at different times. in uni, learning how to engage other people in different ways, and of course, engaging my mind, all the time, my inner being is changing hopefully to be more mature in handling life and circumstance.

its a growing process, and i'll see more of it as it comes. oh wells.

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

getting past myself

i realised that the most difficult thing in NUS is not the modules. It's not the lab reports, and for me, its not even USP. those things, i now realise, are secondary, compared to the more important thing... my own personal and character development. And the hardest obstacle for me thus far, is not really about getting the grades, but its about getting past myself, accepting myself as how God has accepted - i still find it hard to accept that, and i am still comparing myself with others, even though i know that is something i must not do, and that it will only drive me towards negativity and depression.

i should really accept who i am - someone who daydreams a lot, who cares more about the originality of ideas, someone who bothers to think deep, who is willing to get to the bottom of things, who considers his own learning primary to the grades he receives. Of course, grades do matter, but grades should not be primary, and should not be used as a basis for comparing intellectual capability. Besides, i MUST accept who i am - a thinker, first and foremost, and i am learning all the time... in some sense, i should be true to that, and not get depressed about who i can't be - simply because i am not, and because God has made me so. there are some areas i need to improve, but these improvements can come only because God deems it so as well. Without God, all my strivings would be for in vain. 

I must be clear about who i am, and get past myself. at least for now. other things are secondary. wth, i might even drop USP, and just take modules for fun - serious fun though, for my own learning...

i love my writing class. i am still loving this process of challenging ourselves, of getting to the core of ideas, of learning about the way we think, of critically assessing claims, and how to write a good essay... I find so much pleasure in learning and critically learning! love it! somehow i feel i wanna do something special for this writing class... documenting our traumas in writing, staying up till late just to come up with a draft, half-knowing that it'll be trash the next day, and stuff like that - its just so stimulating...! and it isn't about the class, its also about the classmates and the prof as well, who all end up to this experience. the writing class is truly the defining class for USP. questioning everything, even our most closely-held assumptions. self-realization, becoming a true scholar, who is able to come up with truly original thoughts instead merely rehashing what has been said and done before... i would love to have conversations with dr don about all of these, and just find out what he thinks... 

off to run!

thank God for the day!

getting used to myself.

I'm glad I was able to more than survive the math test. honestly it wasn't really that difficult, but i did make a lot of careless mistakes, as usual. Anyway, I reminded myself not to brood over it. Now that the test is over, treat it as another tutorial, and learn from it. 

I need to get over the fact that in some other areas in academic, I might still be somehow, above average. I know that there are people who can think faster, and more thorough than me, and I think my time in JC has kinda conditioned me that I am just not a certain kind of thinker. I am however, a slower, deeper thinker, and I know that I'll just suck at trying to strain myself thinking faster than others when I am plainly not able to do so. Flashes of insight do come, but only after going through a thorough process of thought...

and so this line of thought leads me to Psalms 139.