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A new beginning, the same old story

2010-02-16T15:47:00Z

So much has happened over the last two months, I wonder how I'm going to squeeze it all in. Three main things I guess: MTI internship, Caderas and Bailamos, and then academics and other school stuff that have happened so far this term.

As I mentioned the last time, my internship at MTI was really tough. Not because the project was too difficult for me to handle, but because the timeframe was so tight and the constraints on the completeness and timeliness of arrival of the data I needed that I didn’t have time to synthesize all the little interesting findings I made. The end result was that the final product was something that I wasn’t really proud to put my name on. Well, maybe I did have difficulty handling it – very early on there was a problem with comparability of data from different countries because I ran up against the nominal-real issue and exchange rates – if I had had a little more experience about how to adjust my data to account for these discrepancies the end result might not have been so convoluted.

But strangely enough, when I finally went back to give a presentation on my project findings it seemed to go surprisingly well. About halfway through my presentation people got really interested in my animated bubble charts that I figured out how to do in Excel, as well as my inter-country comparison, which I had gone through several calculations in order to obtain. I felt it was all very fluffy and disjointed, but in the 45 minutes that I was speaking it seemed relatively well-received. So thankfully, I'm all done with that now – I learnt that I quite like the idea of working with data and doing research, just perhaps not in the public sector… seriously considering an academic career path right now. But we’ll see.

Dance has been another headache over the last few months, albeit a marginally more enjoyable one. The main sticking point has been the fact that the Salsa choreography that we did for Bailamos was the toughest I have ever attempted. About two months before performance day, I strained my wrist while practicing the final trick (which basically involves carrying the girl straight up, placing her on my shoulders, holding one of her legs while allowing the other to whirl around in a turn, catching her and then putting her down into a side dip), and I was struggling with it ever since. Saw a TCM doctor, saw a GP, got wrist guards, plasters, and took Panadol regularly every day the week before the performance. It took so much out of me that now that the performance is over, I honestly am thinking about stopping Salsa and enjoy the rest of my life as a regular Joe. Instead of a Latin-dancing sexy wannabe Joe.

But the performance came off really well, and the sense of achievement was insane. Here are some shots – not very good ones of course. Oh! - I must add - Charlotte, my partner for this piece, was just amazing throughout the whole training process. Took all my nonsense and even gave me back some of her own; not too slack and not too on, and it all turned out a lot better than I expected. Thanks Charlotte.

Some other cool stuff has happened in Caderas. First of all, we’re gearing up for a split between Latin and Salsa. Which some people found regrettable, including myself. If Salsa and Latin hadn’t been part of the same club in SMU I think there would have been precious little chance that I’d have joined both. But when I look at the way the club has evolved over the last three years I can't help but feel that this is inevitable. People are just not interested in what’s happening on the other side of the wall anymore. Honestly, I don’t blame them. It’s really hard to maintain continuity and consistency in this club; I feel we are lurching from one event to another and it’s a miracle that we manage to achieve anything beautiful at all – praise God! Secondly, we are finally going to execute our first ever JC outreach dance workshop thingy. This will see some 60 JC students coming down to the ACC for a Caderas101-style event, and hopefully we will get them interested in our school and the dance scene therein. I'm in charge of that, and honestly I'm so slack I think we’ll need another miracle to get it off the ground. But we’ll see.

Finally, academics. Decided to take up 6 modules again this semester because I honestly feel slack doing 5. Say whatever you like. I originally intended by 6th module to be ECON305 Advanced Mathematical Methods, but after 1.5 lessons I felt really lost, so I decided to just walk out without even bidding for it. Even sold off my brand-new textbook as a commitment mechanism. Instead I signed up for an Operations Management Independent Study on Sales and Operations Planning, which honestly sounds really cool. But what’s really cool about it is that it’s a 2-for-1 deal – it’s an Ops Mgmt Elective module which sees me and a partner and my Prof doing research on Sales and Operations Planning, and then writing a paper about it. It’ll then snowball into an internship in the summer, so I hit quite a lot of bases for effort that isn’t quite proportional to the outcome – in a positive sense. A little hairy because at times I really feel out of my depth but I'm sure it’ll all turn out dandily in the end.

Chinese New Year just passed. Sharon was able to join the gathering of the relatives on my dad’s side – I was really happy! I think she and my cousins really “click”! But then I mixed up the ang pows that I was holding for both of us, and she ended up “earning” more than me. Sigh.

Apart from that, I realize that this is already the middle of Term 2! That means I'm roughly 70% through my university education. That’s actually really sad because I enjoy school so much. Only now do I feel that I have the credibility to undertake a lot of cool stuff like thesis, independent study, exchange, internship etc., but there’s just enough time to do all that. Nor is there enough money to extend my stay here in SMU – well, maybe there is, somewhere, but my scholarship runs out after 4 years, and I need to start earning some cash so I can get married anyway. Sigh. Hopefully I can come back to school after a few years of actual work and commence on my very alluring academic career path.

The fun never stops

2009-12-15T09:25:00Z

Blink blink, and a whole term is over. Here’s my first blog post in three months. Ought to start feeling less guilty about not posting. Not like anybody reads this anyway.

Just like that, the hellacious 6-module term is over. At many points during the term I told myself that I would never do 6 modules again because it’s so tiring and stressful. Somehow I managed it, and my GPA didn’t even fall! Really praise God for that. Once again I did worse for my Economics modules than my Business or Core modules, or even the extra Persuasion module that I decided to take for fun this semester. But not that much worse. Now I’m considering doing 6 modules again next semester; oh how joyful that’ll be.

But for now I’m stuck doing a 4-week internship at MTI because I got a cash prize from them sometime back and I felt that it would be rather unbecoming to turn it down so blatantly, given that my belief that part of the reason why I was given the award was because my school’s faculty wanted a good representative to intern at MTI. The sense of obligation was rather overwhelming. Would have been a pretty embarrassing picture at the award ceremony if I had had to tell people that I wasn’t going to intern at MTI after receiving the attendant accolades.

Got a pretty meaty project to handle, one that I'm not entirely sure I can complete to spec on time. I'm trying not to think about or work on the project at home, but something tells me that I’ll eventually have to anyway because the timeframe is so tight. At least for the next two weeks I think we’ll have 3.5 day weeks because of the Christmas and New Year holidays. And I have my laptop working, with Eviews and email and everything I'm supposed to have working on laptop because my lovely girlfriend Sharon was nice enough to let me have use of her wireless broadband modem for this period! When I'm working at the 11^th floor of the building and apparently Wireless@SG ends at somewhere around the 4^th floor. Sigh.

Anyway, we recently marked our 1^st year anniversary. No pictures yet because I think Sharon has them all, but we had a lovely time picnicking at Sentosa’s Tanjung Beach. Sharon brought all the food and I drove, and things were just as they should be. Love.

Dance trainings are really tiring me out nowadays. Haven’t done intensive training since Week 14, so the ramping-up of trainings as we enter crunch period for Bailamos is really taking its toll on me physically. And now, horror of horrors, Angeline, my dear Latin Ballroom partner, has decided to retire. It’s the right decision for her personally, but now Latin trainings are no longer the same for me. I feel like a Ronin.

Oh well. I’ll be making it a point to blog as often as I can, seeing that I'm sitting in front of two laptops all day and can't seem to focus on my research and report continuously anyway. Hopefully with some effort this blog will be brought back to some modicum of life at the end of the next three weeks.

6 mods is not fun - but it helps me appreciate how fun everything else can be I guess

2009-09-20T10:18:00Z

Lots of cool things have happened over the last four weeks or so. Now, in no particular order…

6 modules in 1 semester is INSANE. For the first time in my life in SMU I feel like I have no chance to breathe. I exaggerate of course – last semester was pretty tight too, but that was mostly because of dance exco work and Bailamos, which was pretty manageable because at least I had the luxury of switching from one thing to another and keeping myself from feeling jaded. But now the mind-numbness is coming all from the academic avenue, and I want to absorb everything that I'm learning but I find I just can't. Once again I find myself winging it, faking one thing after another and just trying to stay ahead of the curve in every module. I tell myself that this is the only way to take all the modules that I want to take before I leave SMU, but even if I push myself to the brink this year (i.e. end up taking 14 modules or something) I will still probably end up having to deal with 6 modules per semester in my final year as well. I'm a big greedy academic pig! At least we get to watch cool videos every now and then in class.

Sharon’s birthday was a blast! I brilliantly executed my plan to take her out to the grass-covered roof of Marina Barrage for an open-air picnic. The wind was great, the view was lovely and best of all, nobody came to chase us away! The picnic comprised of the following:

- Picnic mat (partially permeable)
- Discman with portable speakers, playing Sharon-selected love songs for ambience
- Improvised tea-light-in-jute-bag lantern (pictured below)
- Take-out dinner from Saizeriya
- 2 slices of cheesecake from Cheesecake Café
- 2 bottles of Seasons flavoured tea
- 1 random cushion from my brother’s car
- Inspired gift of a custom T-shirt in a nice pastel pink box with silver ribbon

Sounds like a recipe for romance? I’ll let the pictures below tell the story.

Improvised Lantern

Birthday Cake from Cheesecake Cafe!

My birthday gift to her!!

And here’s a close-up of the T-shirt. Witty, isn’t it?

I'm really happy at the way it turned out…

Vivace this year was pretty cool. I had my doubts about how things would happen, but I guess God is watching and taking care of all of us. We got pretty good sign-ups for Caderas101, auditions and classes – nobody complained too much. I was surprised at how tired I was by the time it was all over. The only part I was annoyed about was our performance – not only did I have to run across wet asphalt in my ballroom shoes in order to get to the performance stage on time (thereby completely ruining their soles, which was unfortunate but not wholly so since they were almost gone anyway), but our music got cut off at the end, which was positively infuriating. Apart from that I had lots of fun talking to juniors (or rather yelling at them because the music and noise at every booth in the Concourse was deafening) and getting them interested in Caderas. Basically my job for the last year, which I relived for one day.

A couple of weekends ago Angeline and I hit KL for a ballroom competition. Crappy result, but an awesome experience. It was the first time that I had travelled completely on my own itinerary, i.e. planning my own flight, accommodation and preoccupations. So although performed terribly at the competition, didn’t get enough sleep and generally felt like mucus for most of the time, we had a good time just relaxing and shopping, doing whatever we wanted to do and going wherever we wanted to go. Ate Wendy's for the first time in my (very nice) and got some Krispy Kremes too (definitely very nice). We saw the Petronas Towers too, though we didn’t go up (to do that, one has to queue for tickets at like 8am in the morning). I enjoyed the break from school, though when I got back there was a world of suffering because I had to catch up on sleep as well as homework and readings. I feel relatively on top of things now, but that’s a very transient feeling.

Which brings me back to schoolwork. Every weekend is a mad rush for me as I try to complete the tasks that I've accumulated over the course of the entire week. I’ve MPW readings and notes to go through, a surprise Economic Forecasting assignment to complete, Ethics notes submission and readings, as well as a Persuasion thesis statement to come up with. And this won't be the last term of doing random stuff that doesn’t fall under my areas of specialization – there’s still Management Accounting and Strategy to go. Hey, actually that’s not too bad. Oh and of course ICC if I still want to do it next year. Sigh.

First week of school has come and gone.

2009-08-25T15:12:00Z

Well. Year 3 in SMU. Who’d have thought we’d ever get here. Was just agreeing with Felicia the other day that we never thought that we’d ever be in Year 3. It’s strange feeling too old to make silly mistakes in academics, yet not old enough that I feel confident behaving any way I like, as some wizened seniors are wont to.

Anyhow, the first week of school has been predominated by a sense of worry over my 6th module. I’ve been aiming to take a 6th module this semester, just to try the workload on for size, but silly regulations dictate that I can only apply for the 6th module during the 2nd week of school. Which means that up till this point I'm in the unusual position of not being 100% sure about what modules I’m going to take. Not to mention that I severely overpaid for a module that I really wanted to get and now am considering dropping it and rebidding so I can save some e$60 or so. Really risky but I think it’s essential – otherwise I may not have enough ammunition to last me into next term. I’d hate having to do summer term again… besides, I don’t think I really can because I need to dedicate my time to internship.

I’ve removed my Cbox because people keep leaving random insults on it. Whoever it is who is vandalizing that thing, if you know who I am please stop being a wuss and take your problems out with me directly. How old are you already. Sheesh.

Anyway no point talking about my academics until it’s all settled. Somehow I think that I would have gotten pawned if I stayed sitting on my Logistics module. Some part of me is glad that I'm out of it, and that now my progression is more balanced between my Statistics and Operations majors. I just wish the bidding hadn’t been so costly.

Two big things coming up to look forward to – KL dance competition and then Sharon’s birthday. Going all the way to KL for competition is a huge step for Angie and I, and we’re probably not going to win anything because there’s no Rising Star Novice category, only a Novice one. Which means we are spending about $500 in total to go up there and get thrashed. And I learned a painful lesson in booking budget flights online. I guess it’s all about gaining experience.

For Sharon’s birthday… I guess I’m a little stressed about it, but can't say much because it’s meant to be a surprise!

Back to Ethics readings I guess. Who sets 8 readings for the first lesson? Gosh.

Summer musings (dance matters)

2009-08-11T10:20:00Z

Lots of things have happened this summer, dance-wise. First of all, there's been the Malaysian Salsa Festival, an event that I told myself I would go for so that I would be able to say, at the end of four years in Caderas, that I at least went out of my comfort zone enough to attend a Salsa Festival overseas and pay good money for it. Ultimately not a very enjoyable experience, but at least the performances and a couple of the performances went well. Social dancing doesn't excite me anymore, as I realize that my passion for Latin Dance is largely confined to competing in ballroom competitions and teaching when the opportunity presents itself. Some pics of me, just to document my time there.

Didn't even bring my own camera; all these photos are from facebook. Brought two textbooks instead, and I do believe that brought me much more enjoyment. Finished reading them by now, but still have at least three more to read. Sigh. Failed again in my objective to finish reading textbooks before term starts. In any case the performance was ok, and thenice part about it is that most of the costumes we used are generic (i.e. not tailored) and can be used again by almost anyone else! Actually the guys shirts were tailored but they are very baggy and don't fit very well. What to do.

Second thing that happened dance-wise was Stardust competition. Really disappointing because Angeline and I didn't win anything, which is a first, but understandable because we just moved up to Novice category. And add to that the fact that we missed the next two competitions, Merlion (because of clash with MSF) and the Hong Kong competition (I wonder how that went for those two couples who went...) We need to work hard at it if we're gonna make any progress at the Novice level. The other senior couples are having a really difficult time getting anywhere too. Angeline and I really need to get our game together. There are 5 more competitions locally and in Malaysia till the end of the year, so there is ample opportunity to make some headway and history. At least during Stardust we won the Showdance category, which was unexpected and a little weird. Oh well. At least now I can say that I was part of a Showdance-winning team. My mailer, hopefully the last I will ever do.

And of course the last thing that has happened that I am really looking forward to is the Missions Month dance item that I have led a bunch of Kaleo youth in preparing for. Choreographed quite a bit and got a few of the youth to come up with individual verses, and several disorganized practices later we have something approaching a dance item ready for consumption this Sunday. Will have one more dance video in my collection by this Sunday. Tricky because we have yet to find a chance to do a full-dress run; things will come down to the wire this Saturday afternoon where it's make or break on the sanctuary stage. Personally I'm quite worried about how it will be received, i.e. whether anyone will take offence, or whether we will screw up our steps or showmanship, but then Sharon reminds me of the "audience of one" concept, which is refreshing and humbling. Must try to keep that in mind this weekend.

Summer musings (academic matters)

2009-08-03T09:15:00Z

Wow this whole summer has really been a big rush for me. Never anticipated that taking 2 summer mods in a row would be so challenging. I guess taking summer mods is difficult in another way because the compressed timeframe doesn't give one a chance to develop a sense of what's important and what's not in the course... before you know it it's exams. Game Theory was fine of course, but Environmental Science was really hairy. Chiefly that had to do with the fact that there was a group project to do just before the final, but also because I couldn't figure out what was going on in the Prof's head most of the time. Didn't help that I missed the first lesson.

Let's maintain the academic tenor of this post - I guess that's probably because I'm sitting in school writing this. I've decided to do 6 modules this term, just to try it on for size and see if it hurts because I did 5.5 last semester and it was still quite manageable. However there's a stupid rule that says that I can't bid for my extra module until BOSS 2A, which is basically the second week of school. Hence, all the spaces in most of the courses that I would have liked to take as my 6th module have been snapped up, and I'm left with the unpalatable option of waiting until someone randomly decides to drop the course sometime in 2A in order to sneak in. I have two things working in my favour though - firstly, I have almost e$140 on hand, thanks to liberal dispensations from my summer courses, and secondly I have a few options of courses that I can take as my 6th module, after accounting for clashes and the like. No point going into the boring details, but here's the point - if you are an incoming SMU freshman, please do not underestimate BOSS bidding. If even I can screw it up, you can too.

Well the reason why I'm in school today is that I've also signed up to be a TA for OPIM101 under Prof Pascale Crama. Pretty cool deal - I only have to be in class for 2 lessons, mark the quantitative portions of weekly assignments and answer student queries without any need for regular consultation hours. And of course there's the stipend, which is rather attractive - but I shan't elaborate on that because it's really not about the money. I just feel that I should do at least a couple of TA jobs before I graduate - would feel awkward otherwise given that TA-ing is such a common activity among my friends. The key really is finding the right profs to TA under so that you don't get a bad deal.

Sharon's away again in Kuching to sell property. Sigh... She'll be back today, but with my recent trip to Pahang for the recently concluded Malaysian Salsa Festival, I do agree with her that we have spent a lot of time apart from each other during this summer break of mine. Perhaps next summer will be better because I'll be on internship, which means that my schedule will be better coordinated with hers. Of course there's always the very real possibility that I will simply become so stressed and irritable and not want to spend time with her or doing anything else fun. Just stating the possible outcomes; no implications intended.

Which brings me back to academic matters - apparently I'm the top Econs student again this year. Yay... And also the other day I attended an interview for this Econs prize awarded by MTI. Was really confused during the interview (which turned out to be an interview with the dean and vice-dean) but I think that I eventually acquitted myself decently. Or maybe that's just the natural human tendency to stylize memories increasingly positively as time elapses after the end of the event being recollected. Either way, if I receive the award, apparently it comes with some cash and an internship opportunity with MTI. Which in theory is quite cool but somehow I'm not head over heels about it. I guess it would be nice to work for an institution like MTI, but I wouldn't fight tooth and nail over it... especially not when there are so many prima facie interesting internship opportunities in the supply chain industry.

OK I think this will do for a blog post for now...

Fish Soup SMU Ad

2009-06-03T14:34:00Z

This apparently appeared in the Straits Times on the 21st of May this year. Part of a series of advertisements to market SMU, I believe. This left me feeling rather weird about my candidature here in SMU – I understand the basic idea behind playing up the entrepreneurial paths that some of our graduates have taken, but really, fish soup? In an admissions advertisement? Here’s what the text in the little blue box at the bottom of the ad reads:

“SMU students don’t follow the crowd, they lead the way. Our revolutionary, broad-based and participative pedagogy transforms them into confident individuals prepared to go against convention. It helps them develop an entrepreneurial spirit and a sense of social and ethical responsibility. Claire Au, for example, runs a thriving fish soup business and considers giving meal coupons to the poor an integral aspect of her business philosophy. Above all, SMU teaches students to follow their passions, through good times and bad. Many found challenging careers in a variety of industries, others became budding entrepreneurs. Either way, each one has what it takes to choose their own path in life. THE WORLD IS YOUR CAMPUS.”

Once again, I think I can appreciate the spirit of the advertisement – entrepreneurship generally tends not to be the usual path of advancement for many young workforce entrants in Singapore, and now that the government is encouraging it, SMU is trying to be out in front and encourage it to. And a large part of that is attracting the kind of students that have the inspiration and drive to one day set up their own businesses and not just start climbing the ladder at a big-name MNC. So yep, to this Claire Au person and all the other entrepreneurs who have graduated from SMU, well done, and all the best. Honestly.

But I think the really questionable thing the marketing department of SMU has done here is putting the name of our school next to a picture of a lady offering the cameraman a bowl of what is allegedly fish soup (albeit a very well-dressed and attractive lady). We know that the economy is bad, and everyone who’s applying to university is weighing how marketable each university can make him or her. All this while SMU has been running the line that SMU graduates are on average more marketable than most Singaporean graduates, i.e. 100% find a job within 6 months of graduation, SMU Economics students are on average the highest paid among whoever, etc. My question to the school marketing department is – why suddenly change tack and emphasize entrepreneurship? And even if entrepreneurship is to be emphasized, why fish soup? Different, for sure, but what kind of impression is it going to give someone who has just left JC/Poly and is looking for somewhere to invest his/her next four years and $30,000+ in?

So in a spirit of candor, I present my take on this ad.

(I'm sorry if I've offended anyone, don't take it personally, I just have it in me to criticize marketing materials)

Yay finished Renegade

2009-05-21T03:34:00Z

Most people who talk about my time management with me usually don’t expect that I spend a lot of time studying – they think that I make most of it up on the spot, and put it down to intelligence. But the fact of the matter is that I do spend lots of time studying, just that I study at times that others don’t, so that when the rubber meets the road in the weeks just before an exam or test I appear relatively relaxed and carefree. For example, it’s been a long-time strategy of mine to acquire textbooks for the courses I'm taking in the upcoming term long before the term proper actually starts, and then try to read as much of the assigned chapters as possible. That way, when the term starts, I’ve already got most of the material covered, and if I haven’t, I’m at least in good stead to ensure that I keep up with my readings for the entire term, i.e. go into lessons having actually read the relevant textbook chapters. So that aids class participation, and contributes to my general enjoyment of the class. Nothing mystical, really. And I haven’t been doing this just in SMU – I do remember reading an Economics textbook after my ‘O’ Levels, in preparation for the inevitable plunge into Hwa Chong Humanities, and I ended up really loving Economics.

The upshot of this behavior is that my whole life, I’ve been studying during what most people regard as school holidays, and even more intensively during term, so consequently I’ve missed out on a lot of games/shows that I told myself I must play/watch. Thankfully, because I’ve got a lot of relatives and friends with these games/shows (and the Internet, if these relatives and friends prove insufficient) who are willing to loan them to me / copy them for me, I end up always having a little stockpile of games/shows to watch. So this holiday, given that I’m not interning but doing summer term instead, which is more than manageable, given that the workload is much less than during regular term, I’ve been catching up all of the above that I told myself I would. So in this holiday alone I’ve finally finished watching the last of the 15 seasons of Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis (which I started watching in Term 2 of last year), as well as Heroes Season 3. I’ve also finished playing Homeworld 2, the Black Knight Expansion of Mechwarrior 4 and C&C Renegade, the last of which I just finished last night. I never knew such old games could still be so much fun after so many years! While the world is going off and on about new games like Halo 3 and Fallout whatever here I am playing games I should have gotten over with in my primary school years. Yet here I am, living up the good old days and in awe of seeing C&C in 3D. And finding it quite tough. Here’s a screenshot of the final cutscene from C&C Renegade to prove that I did indeed finish it. Haha. I can imagine myself coming back here in a few years and laughing at myself.

Dance, dance, dance. Hm. Oh right, we just had dance camp not long ago. I took some pictures which I haven’t gone through till now. Well, up on Facebook and this blog they go. Hope you enjoy looking through them! Dance camp was crazy. Didn’t stay over of course, would probably have fallen sick the next day. The very thought of staying in school overnight just sickens me. Ugh. Anyway, it was wicked fun. Really tired out by it; ended up going back to school for the 2nd day of camp only at 11am. But that was mainly because those workshops which I attended were really fun. Thanks to juniors too for organizing the fun-fun stuff.

Angie and I have a short dance performance for HPB coming up this Saturday. I really hope we get time to practice and the stage is good and we look pro on that day. And that it ends quickly so I can rush back to town and watch movie with Sharon. At her recommendation, we’re gonna watch a – gasp – Chinese-language film called 18 Grams of Love. At least it’s local. Watched the trailer, should be good.

On with my life. I guess I should be reading something for my Game Theory now. Interesting but gosh I do wish it was more challenging. Knew it would be easy but didn’t know it would be this easy.

After spending a whole day relaxing and being sorry for myself

2009-03-29T13:54:00Z

Woke up this morning only to realize that actually I was supposed to be in church this morning to manage my boys to provide refreshments for Kaleo too. Prayed that God would help to sort it out and then went back to sleep. All I wanted was a big steaming bowl of some soup noodle, so I headed out to Bedok Central to get a bowl of my favourite Qiu Lian Ban Mee. Keeps you very warm, queue is very long. Well not really nowadays – it’s become so mainstream that there is usually no queue; at least at the Bedok outlets.

Spent the whole day working on my AE project writeup and watching stockpiled videos. Nice to be able to spend the whole day doing my own thing. But I just realized how much is to be covered for my AE quiz tomorrow, and I freaked out a little bit because I remember being quite lost last lesson. I guess I better stop blogging and go and study now.

Taking time off for myself at last

2009-03-28T15:26:00Z

Sometimes I really wonder why I push myself so hard to do the things that I do. It’s not easy staying ahead of the curve and bring myself to the brink each and every time I come to Week 12/13 of a term, or lead up to a Caderas event. Been so busy that I haven’t had time to update my blog since the last triumphant entry back in early February, after Bailamos was over.

If you’re a friend of mine, I suppose you’d like to know how things are between Sharon and I. I think it’s a great blessing that she works near my school – her workplace is literally less than 5 mins walk away from SOB! It’s awesome to be able to pop out of school in the middle of the day after my lessons and be with her for a quick lunch before heading back for whatever I head back for. This convenience probably won’t last forever, but as long as it does, I will appreciate it. It’s a real comfort to have her near me and communicating with her so often, very refreshing…

Because I know she reads this from time to time, I must say this – that Sharon is a very loving and understanding girlfriend (to me) and despite my crazy life she is willing to make sacrifices with regard to her schedule in order to be with me. Also when I can't be with her because of my busyness she understands. Another great thing is that she works while I study, so she’s more open to paying for herself when we go out – I know that the guy is supposed to pay more often than not, but nevertheless I appreciate the fact that she does make an effort to bear the financial cost of dates with me. Something to be said about dating someone older than you…

Well now she’s in Melbourne for holiday with her friends, giving me one precious week to catch up on my work. And I’ve promptly fallen sick with the flu – I write this amid severe cough and loss of voice and the irritating hiccups that seem to accompany my flu every time I catch it. Sickness is a good reminder that I’ve been pushing myself too hard to satisfy everyone else and not taking enough time for myself.

Argh there’s so many things I want to do. Apart from spending more time with Sharon, the unquenchable thirst for knowledge inside me yearns to spend more time with my books too, to get the most out of them before locking them in my bookcase to collect dust after Week 15 of each term. I’m taking so many interesting subjects, but this year I couldn’t find the time to plot through the out-of-syllabus topics to squeeze everything out of the brand-new textbooks that I buy every term. It’s anyone’s guess whether I will have time this summer break to do so – in between taking two summer terms and church activities, I doubt that I will have time to read through my old material and prepare for my third year too. Time moves so fast when one has meaningful things to do.

And to spend more time writing on my blog. The reflective property of my blog has been woefully underused in recent months. Did I really manage 21 blog entries in February 2007? I need to spend more time writing here, about specific issues in specific entries, so as to better focus my thoughts and plan for the future.

And while we’re at it, the foremost topic on my mind right now is academics. Doing a double degree and triple major is not easy (Economics, Operations Management and Business Statistics), but I’ve rushed quite well this first two years and when my third year starts, I would have finished 23 modules and would only have 14 more to go. A tantalizing prospect, by any measure. But once space opens up in my schedule I have the overwhelming desire to fill it up with stuff I think is meaningful. Out of the 20 more modules I can take comfortably, I want to do two Communications modules, an Environmental Economics module and a Poverty and Underdevelopment module – bringing the total up to 18. And then I’m tempted to spend a year on a senior thesis (which allegedly allows me to graduate “with honours”, which would bring the workload right up to the maximum of 20. The only consolation I have is that Caderas will never take up this much time again as it has this year – but that’ll probably be offset by the extra time that I will be devoting to Sharon and church stuff. Meanwhile my family life continues to be underwhelming and neglected.

Another thing I want to do this summer is PLAY GTA IV!!! It’s been sitting on my shelf for months now – I bought it on the day it came out and haven’t had a chance to install it and play it any yet. Utterly depressing. The fourth installment of my favourite game in the entire world and I don’t have the time to even touch it. So pressed.

Start on Econometrics report now, sleep soon. No church for me tomorrow, a rare occurrence indeed. Rest.

Bailamos is over!!! And I have a girlfriend!!!

2009-02-06T05:26:00Z

At long last, the scourge of my life for the last 20 weeks, Bailamos Para Siempre, is concluded! I couldn’t be happier, that at least this one source of misery in my life is quelled at last. In the event, quite a few of my church friends came round to watch me dance, and I’m thankful for them doing so! Your support means a lot to me, especially in that very dark and stressful time for me.

Before I go on with griping about that, let me get some good news out of the way first – I have a girlfriend! At last! Sharon is a nice girl from my church who I’ve known for about 4 years, so I didn’t go in cold. Because we got the opportunity to interact extensively during our preparation for Krazy Love, I found that she was many of the things that I was looking for in a life partner – conscientious, compassionate, and most importantly, willing and able to put up with the vast amounts of crap that my highly creative mind puts out every day. Bad as that may sound, I think that that’s really very important – I don’t need someone who can move mountains and change the world, I just need someone who will comfort me when I need her, and who responds to me affections and efforts, as she does. It’s been almost 2 months since we got together, and it’s been an awesome time so far.

Naturally, she came to watch me dance at Bailamos, which was a day that never seemed to end for me – I woke up at 7:30am and slept at 1:30pm the following day! As I mentioned before, this whole process has been one filled with frustration – and event day was no different. For some reason, the task of constructing the stage backdrop fell to me – and I had to go the distance to procure the antique props from Mediacorp production resource (a pretty awesome place with lots of cool stuff), as well as go back to Hwa Chong to beg Mr Perry, my teacher in the Humanities programme, to loan me the huge wooden flats so that I could put them up as a temporary wall in Zouk. And then I had to transport furniture from my own home down to Zouk. And of course return everything after that. If not for the teamwork between myself, Edwin and Jeremy, as well as help from solid guys like Clement, Wellington and Pei Hua, I wouldn’t have been able to do it; would have collapsed a long time ago. In the event you read this, thanks guys,

At some point in the afternoon, in the midst of the final runs/rehearsals which I had to be part of as well, someone decided to saddle me with creating the video for laying on the LCD screens around Zouk. Of course, it was a tremendous task to create the video there and then in Zouk – I had to run off my rapidly fading battery and render it to spec before I ran out of juice. In the course of doing so, I renewed my burning hatred of Macs and cantankerously threw a chair to the ground. So frustrating, you would not believe. I wish everyone who thinks Macs are cool would just go hang themselves. You wanna buy a Mac and be different, fine. Just stay far, far away from me and don’t even think about doing any work with me whatsoever. I mean, for all their purported elegance, MOV files are larger than MPG files. What’s the point? And they’re not compatible with just about everything else. I am so pissed with Mac users who bother me. One day when I am rich I will buy a Mac and just smash it for kicks.

It’s Week 5 of school, and today is Patron’s Day, which is kind of like the anniversary of SMU. And apparently it’s also the day that awards get given out to individuals who contribute to student life, and Caderas is getting one because of our outstanding contributions. What contributions, I ask. I don’t see the point behind it all, and it just pisses me off – the main significance of this award to me is that I’ve been saddled to perform this afternoon – that’s another 4 hours of my life gone. I can't take much more of this – at some point I will just snap and quit all of Caderas, if this keeps up. I swear. So pissed right now with the unrelenting way it’s eating up my life. My academics, family life and spiritual life are all suffering, because the fact is that there are people slacking and doing half-past six work and the rest of us who believe in Caderas have to cover for them. So what if everyone looks good – I want the errant people to be embarrassed. Along with the Macs.

I realize I didn’t talk much about Sharon. She’s the one bright spark in my life over the last few months, the one area of my life where things have gotten dramatically better. (I suppose my academics are another bright spot – my GPA went up by 0.01 last semester!) She’s been understanding and supportive all this time, and above all she appreciates the time and effort I spend on her – unlike the ungrateful entity that is Caderas. It’s a great club, no doubt, but it’s just sucking more and more out of me without any concern of my limitations. It’s shown me the ugly side of working with people, and from now on I will be ultra-careful when deciding to work with people, whether for projects or in the actual working environment. Shoot I digressed again.

Bailamos Para Siempre – Singapore’s Largest Inter-Tertiary Latin Dance AAARRRGGGHHH

2009-01-13T03:27:00Z

For the last 18 weeks of my life I’ve been working on coming up with marketing plans and materials for Caderas Latinas’ main annual event – Bailamos Para Siempre, Spanish for “We Dance Forever”, an event that’s taken a lot of out me in terms of personal time, energy, ideas and resources. But on balance I think I’ve learnt a lot about dance and event management and marketing work and a host of other things, so it hasn’t been a total waste of time.

Briefly, this event is, like last year’s, a gathering of Latin dancers from the 4 universities and RP for a night of performances and social dancing at Zouk. Questionable that I’m touting such an event, given where I’m coming from, but I know the event enough to know what it is (a celebration of dance, a quasi-dance production, a Latin social dancing night) and what it isn’t (a night of drunken revelry, flesh fest).

So the details are as follows:

Thu 22nd Jan 09
7:30pm till late
Zouk
Tickets $18 available at bailamos.sg

Angeline has been wonderful in doing up the beautiful event website. One of the things I’ve learnt about this event is the wonderful talents that people bring to the fore and contribute to the event when they have the right motivation and attitude. Shu Hua has also been a solid rock all through this time – a quiet Year 1 girl who has been 100% reliable and conscientious with regards to every task I give her. Thank God for these people.

Everything in this experience, from theme determination to logo design, from poster artwork to photoshoot, has been a multi-faceted challenge both creatively and practically. I struggle to even remember the start of this process and I know I’ll have oodles of trouble when I attempt to write all of my collected experiences down on in a coherent format for my Marketing successor.

I’ve also experienced a fair bit of frustration and regret as I find myself meeting obstacles, especially with the huge number of people and organizations that I have to work with. Without going into too much detail or naming anyone in particular, I’ve witnessed first-hand how lazy and unreasonable and tardy people can be, and how selfish people can be when defending what they regard as their personal interests and seeking to maximize their own happiness. If anything, it’s given me an idea of what to look for when figuring out a place to settle down to work – the people one works with are of utmost importance.

Well in about another 10 days all of this will be over – and however the event goes down, I will walk away knowing that I put 100% of myself into this event. I’ve made more than my fair share of sacrifices and bled my inspiration dry for this event, and many times it still wasn’t enough for some people. There were plenty of junctures that I could have given up and walked away and feel justified, but God was merciful – he sustained me and prevented me from doing anything rash in my moments of anger.

In any case, this will be a great event – not the best out there, but certainly enough for you to sit up and take notice (and of course come for the event). So if you’re reading this and you’re above 18 and consider yourself still young and cool enough to come to a club and watch Joel and lots of other sexy people dance, do let me know!

Caderas ate up my life

2008-11-13T05:37:00Z

2nd blog post this term – it’s been so long since I’ve had the time and the presence of mind to sit down and collect my thoughts and write in long-winded prose. This entire term has been a blast from start to finish – ever since I’ve tied my life to Caderas – now I just feel like there's nothing I wanna do more but tear myself away from it. I guess it’s probably a little bit like how marriages work out – all rosy and peachy and start but then the full scale of reality creeps in day after miserable day and eventually you just find yourself wanting a break from each other but then being wholly unable to.

One of the things that was stopping me from ever getting down to writing this blog entry for the last 12 weeks was that so much has been happening for me, every time I sat down to write I found that I didn’t know where to start, and certainly didn’t have the energy to start from the beginning. You know me, just long-winded and comprehensive and never really want to leave any little detail out of anything I write. But I guess there’s no elegant way to do this, so I’ll just break it up into a few posts – eventually I’ll catch up with the present, much like the way my Economist reading is coming along these days (I’m stuck in the week of November 11th! Obama hasn’t won yet!)

After Vivace, it was a mad rush to organize Caderas101, the running of which left much to be desired, I'm sure. First of all, thanks to Stageit’s occupation of the ACC for their production, we were forced to hold our annual intro and info session in the CCA room, which is about half the size of the ACC. Very annoying, and we were forced to limit the number of signups. This led to a smaller than usual number of people actually coming because we did not anticipate such a large percentage of no-shows. Other than the fact that it was really cramped at times we all had quite a lot of fun – but the guys shortage really began to show itself here.

From then on it was a big snowball all the way down through Auditions and the planning for Bailamos Para Siempre – I’ve done so many wonderful things for Caderas over the past term, mainly in terms of artwork for mailers, and I think I’ve really learnt a lot about Photoshop and design work, though apparently not enough. Here’s a dump of the artwork that I've done for Caderas from Vivace till now.

Academics have been fairly light, given the fact that I elected to do only 4.5 mods this term. Nevertheless there were a couple of times I came close to destruction, such as during my CAT exam (haven’t felt that way since I’ve taken a Chinese exam) and the submission of my Marketing paper just last week. At times I wondered why I was burning myself out for Caderas when my studies, church responsibilities, family life and most importantly LOVE LIFE were suffering. Looking back, knowing what I know now, I would probably have decided not to run for Caderas Exco – it’s been rewarding, but I’ve honestly had to give up more than I thought I would in order to do the job. And even then the job isn’t even close to being over.

But at least the end of term is within sight – I’ve just finished the last of my presentations and project submissions, which partly explains why I have the time to sit down and pour out my feelings on this blog. And upload images – that can really be so therapeutic at times. It’s nice to see one’s content all published neatly on the web after you’ve worked hard on it.

What is Bailamos Para Siempre? I’ll dedicate a blog post about it soon – it’s a whole new ball game this year, so many moving parts I feel like shooting myself and everyone else at the same time.

That’ s in January next year – till then I have to drive the Krazy Love event, which is happening in church in less than a month’s time, and I’ve barely done anything to prepare for. I’m just pushing people and events in a haphazard way and hoping and praying that it all coalesces neatly at some point in the future, in time for the event to take place. It’s rather worrying right now, but I do get a very strong feeling that everything will be alright in the end. This is the life that I asked for myself when I signed up for so many things this term – all these things must have seemed part of a natural progression given where I was coming from and where I intend to go, but now that I'm in the thick of it I feel as if I had made a really bad decision back then.

That’s it for this post.

Artwork dump & 1st Depression in a long, long time

2008-08-23T15:26:00Z

Been a long time (again) since I blogged. I’ve just been through what I think will be the most busy and stressful week this entire term. And of course, the two weeks before that have been pretty hectic too. I see that the last time I blogged was about 3 weeks ago – that’s about right, I think… the work got really serious not long after my last post. Anyhow, I’m here on the other side of the fence, feeling rather strange. I’ll get to that later – time for a slew of all the artwork that I’ve produced for the recently concluded Vivace, otherwise known as the CCA Day of SMU!

These first three are simply posters that tell people that Caderas Latinas is very zhai3 and we will be performing at “The Dance Floor”, which is explained by the fourth poster…

And this poster announces “The Dance Floor”, the activity area that SA allocated us, which I played a big role in. I was chiefly responsible for liaising between the different groups and getting a programme organized so that events on the dance floor would run smoothly. I took the shot myself and put all the elements together. I’m pretty proud of this one.

In the event, everything went more or less… ROYALLY!!! People were dancing more often than not, at least perceptibly, and our classes got filled up to a decent extent (with the exception of Beginners’ Rumba class, but that class would be awkward if it were too big anyway). I feel that I did my job pretty well. Posters and displays were all ok, and my TV played the performance videos, like it was meant to, and didn’t break. We talked to many freshies and danced so much! Towards the end it was complete mayhem as Samba Masala came into the picture, completely impromptu-ly, and we danced the fastest Samba dance I’ve ever danced in my life. Ended up as a Shines workshop led by Douglas. Samba Masala kept at it for the E-mixers to come on and strut their stuff, and it couldn’t have made for a better finale.

I met up with her again for dinner and conversation. And I’ve been depressed the whole day after, and I can’t explain why. In the same way that I can’t explain why I like her so much. So depressed and tired that I just walked straight out of training today after 1.5h and sat/slept on a bench elsewhere in school until training was over. The thing is that after all this time (and so few dates), I still don't sense any hint of a spark between us, any one little thing that tells me that I’m getting somewhere. It really gets me down, and I don't know why. People are mystified as to why I feel this way – it’s not like she’s rejected me outright or anything dramatic like that. But I’m so scared of erring either way that I've been frozen into inaction, and that really kills me. And at the same time I have so much feeling and there’s so much chemistry between me and someone else, and I'm seriously considering why I made that stupid vow a year ago that I'm thoroughly regretting now, justifiably or no. They’re both great girls, and I'm wondering why I feel so miserable – and that just gets me down even more. The cycle of depression is a very deadly thing.

So now I’m waiting on the Lord, asking what I should do next. I feel really lonely and longing inside for someone to belong to and for someone to belong to me, and meanwhile the only girl whom I think is really worth my time now is completely (as far as my own eyes can see) failing to respond to me. Drive me nuts it does.

A million distractions

2008-08-04T04:28:00Z

Another day to be spent at home… mostly. It’s worth remarking these days because I spend so little time at home nowadays. In addition to regular Latin and Salsa trainings four times a week, our fantastic VPs have added on extra trainings to that number, bringing the total up to about six a week. Plus numerous and interminably inefficient rehearsals for our 1 minute of choreography during Convocation – which admittedly is coming up in 2 weeks time so it’s a little pressing, I guess. Oh and don't forget about the various Exco meetings we’re having – not just our own regular Caderas Exco meetings, but also Bailamos Orgcomm meetings and tomorrow’s meeting with the 4th Exco (we’re the 5th Exco; the 4th Exco is comprised of our seniors, and we have to meet them during an audit type meeting to present to them our plans for the year).

At least I’m getting something back. Last Saturday we took part in the Merlion International Dancesport Competition, and although only 5 couples from SMU Caderas Latinas went down and we didn’t win much (compared to last time at Stardust), Angeline and I still managed to get 2nd for Cha Cha. At least we came away with something – we honestly didn’t put in as much time and effort into this competition as we did for the last competition, so I guess there’s really nothing to feel sorry about. And the atmosphere was somehow lacking – we were a lot less hyped up, so I guess the circumstances were not conducive to us putting up our best performance.

< On Sunday I had a moment during Kaleo to do a little stock-take of my life as it is now, and I think I’m sorely lacking in many areas. Dance is sapping up so much of my time and resources, when there’s a million other worthwhile things that I know I should be paying attention to as well. Pushed myself so hard last week that I fell sick with a throat infection shortly after my wisdom tooth extraction, and I totally lost my voice, thus necessitating the cancellation of B-group with my boys on Friday. Kind of feel bad about that – it was sort of within my control and I let things get out of hand.

Neglected commitments in church don't stop there – I haven’t played for worship since before church camp in June, and the calluses on my fingers are almost completely gone. The acoustic bass guitar which I bought from LA, with which I was supposed to form my own little band and take SMU by storm, is sitting in one corner of my room collecting dust. Admittedly I will be playing for worship this coming Sunday, but I’m definitely not in the groove.

On that too – my goodness. Because this Saturday is National Day, people want to spend time with their families in the evening – so the rehearsal has to be either in the morning or afternoon. I have Salsa training at 11am and Spanish class in the afternoon, so that means that the worship rehearsal has been pushed to 9AM, on my account. Very awkward, but it really benefits me a lot, so I guess I can’t complain, and there's more trouble to be incurred if I ask to change the timing again. No harm coming clean about it though….

And of course, I’ve stopped going for Missions Committee meetings, after realizing that I was next to useless in that environment, and had no time to put in the effort to do some useful things. Didn’t even manage to find the time to attend the GoForth conference, which most of the MDeez attended. A little embarrassing to talk so much and then be able to do so little. But I honestly feel it was a little premature to just plunge into missions like that – there’s lots of other things, ministry-wise, that I have to do and learn before I can be useful in missions, I think. Oliver is nice about it – a missions trip for my personal exposure is still on the cards, should I choose to accept it.

Kaleo stuff is stepping up too – Pastor Andrew has just asked me to lead the youth rally that will take place in church at the end of the year, around 30 Nov, just after my Term 1 exams conclude. I have no idea what I’m getting myself into – the only thing that made me say yes is the fact that Woodlands youth will be running most of the music during the event, so I want to be in a good position to help tie things together. I pray that I’ll find the time and resources to run this together with my studies and dance stuff.

One thing going good for me is my grades – my GPA went up again after my EDA class this summer. Which means that I can get B- for every single course I take this year and still keep my scholarship and double degree. Which is comforting. Praise God. So I think I can afford to neglect my studies a bit – though in the event, I doubt I will.

But – and it gets me down every time I think about it – I’ve gone out with her three times already and now she doesn’t seem to have the time to see me anymore. I'm not even sure what I'm trying to achieve with her – don't even know what draws me to her in the first place. I don't know whether I'm thinking too much, trying to reach too far to find the perfect one when really there’s no right or wrong answer when it comes to matters of the heart. All relationships are based on mutual attraction anyway, and if that’s not happening why bother? (Haha interesting… just discovered that someone made an anonymous comment on one of my previous entries asking me to go for someone else… and calling me a fool. Maybe I should?) And besides, after all I’ve detailed above, do I really have the time for GF101 this sem? Sorrowful exhalation.

Lunch with my Economist magazine. It’s hard to stay ahead.

Joel the Latin Dance Marketer gears up for a new term

2008-07-19T15:38:00Z

It’s a really exciting time for me – I’ve just finished my EDA module in Term 3B, and I have a really good feeling about it. Now that that’s done I can start preparing for my next term, and of course turn my attention to dancing and doing Exco stuff for Caderas…

Well let’s catch up on things first. Here’s my latest mailer that’s gone out – announcing the team’s winnings at the recent Stardust Dance Sport competition. A real blast, it was. The mailer was fun to do also.

A couple of weeks later I sang as part of this good, clean, all-Christian band called Staircase 4, during a charity event organized by NUS Scholar’s Programme. Quite fun – we performed songs like Smooth by Santana, Boulevard of Broken Dreams by Green Day and Always Be My Baby – the David Cook version. Broke my high note during that last song, but it was OK because people still thought we were really good. None of my friends came, but my family and grandma came to check me out. So relieved that it’s over – I’ve spent the last few days pigging out on fried stuff and desserts. Had to discipline myself for two weeks beforehand to stay away from foods that would give me sore throat – but it’s all good now.

Let’s see – for now I’m preparing for a few things – we’ve got to work on competition choreos for the Merlion Dance Sport competition next Saturday, so this week will be mainly time spent with Angeline, hopefully. Latin team is also working towards a 60-second performance as part of the main show for Convocation, which is the day that we showcase all the CCAs to the incoming freshmen at a large-scale event at Suntec City Ballroom. About 2000 people expected – all things considered, this should be the largest audience I’ve ever performed in front of. A little desensitized to it all by now though. Salsa team is training for Vivace, which is our school’s CCA day, held on school premises. We’ll have one slot during the main programme on the main stage at the T-junction, and the choreo is actually quite fun!

But even more exciting is that I’ve managed to kick off the idea of working with the other 3 dance clubs in SMU to undertake a combined marketing effort for CCA day. The organizing committee for CCA day (i.e. Students’ Association) has very kindly given us a dance floor to share, and it’s right in front of the BE booth (just how I like it really) and if we can get our act together in the next couple of weeks I think that we’d have a great programme to run during the event. We get to think of a brand new para-club marketing theme and campaign and events to boot. Radical!

The original

My creation...

Dance Dance Dance

2008-07-02T13:54:00Z

My days since getting back from Cambodia have been filled with nothing but dance – trainings, competition, meetings, and work on mailers. For starters, here’re the two mailers that I did up for the Salsa team’s trip to LA. Particularly proud of them – it’s quite rare that I get the opportunity to do something from the ground up in Photoshop.

I’m especially proud of the 2nd one, because it’s a pretty good parody of the GTA game cover. Managed to find the right fonts and figure out the right proportions and everything. Tiring and tedious though.

On Sunday I competed in the 9th Stardust Dance Sport Grand Prix, and it really was a dream come true. I danced Rumba, Samba, Cha Cha and Jive in the Beginners’ category, and came out 1st for Samba, 3rd for Cha Cha and 7th for Jive. I think if we had worked a bit harder we would have been better for Jive, but that’s all in an alternate history. Here’s a shot of me and my lovely partner Angeline.

Apparently winning medals on one’s first time out is something remarkable. Allegedly when our seniors took part in this competition for the first time they didn’t win any medals. That kind of makes me feel better about what we’ve achieved. Admittedly Angeline isn’t a total greenhorn – according to her she’d taken part in a competition while she was dancing with NTU a year ago. Oh well. Next competition is coming up in 3 weeks’ time – we’re seeking to maintain or improve, which is not such an inconceivable prospect.

Cambodia is pretty fun too, actually

2008-06-04T16:21:00Z

Before we left we paid a visit to a local church – the abovementioned teacher is a Christian, so after we paid the obligatory visit to the local Buddhist pagodas, he brought us to his church, located in a far more obscure part of the village than the multiple Buddhist pagodas were. It was a simple church building, though it was concrete/brick instead of a wooden house like most of the other dwellings it was surrounded by. Essentially it was half an orphanage and half a church – the sanctuary being on the second floor and the orphan’s quarters on the first. I didn’t put up any of the pictures of the building or the orphans here – figured that that’d be a tad too depressing for the tone of this post and this blog in general.

But the highlight of that little side trip was the discovery of a neat little drum set in the sanctuary, which I promptly got down to playing. Here’s the clip of my playing my minute-long ditty – I have to say that all things considered, that was the high point of my trip – making a racket in the humid village stillness of that Monday afternoon. The kids watching had no idea what hit them.

After we left Battambong we hit Phnom Penh for some well deserved R&R – as if we’d just finished 6 days of jungle training. First place we hit was the nearest fast food outlet to our hotel – this neat little place called Lucky Burger where they sell all kinds of burgers and fried chicken that’s really good, even by Singaporean standards. Burgers can’t beat Mos and chicken can’t beat KFC, but the bare fact that we could enjoy both under one roof was kind of neat. Unfortunately they charged Singaporean prices too. For the rest of the trip food and groceries and other stuff would normally be at Singaporean prices too, with a few notable exceptions, such as alcohol.

We spent the next two days or so visiting a few nice places. For shopping, we went to the Central Market and the Russian Market, tourist shopping spots where you can bargain your socks off over souvenirs, clothes and bootleg DVDs. All alone without a mother to hide behind, I decided to kill time by actually trying to buy stuff, and of course I had to bargain for myself. Ended up picking up lots of clothes for dance trainings (dri-fit shirts and track pants, etc.) and paying peanuts for really genuine looking stuff. Fun, fun. I was most pleased with the yoga-style track pants that I bought for Angeline for US$2. Never thought that bargaining could bring me such a fantastic sense of achievement.

Another interesting place we went to was the Tuol Seng Genocide Museum in the heart of Phnom Penh. Apparently this was a high school of sorts before the Communist Khmer Rouge occupied it and turned it into a torture cum detention centre for people who they thought were a threat to the regime. Rather morbid 1.5 hours we spent there. Got a few pictures of stuff there – first up is the huge rectangular frame we normally associate with the low rope obstacle in SOC. Well the Khmer Rouge officers used it as a frame on which prisoners were hung upside down and dunked headfirst into a vat of water, as a form of drowning torture. To what end, I have no idea.

The cells were also quite interesting – about half of them didn’t have doors. If I remember correctly the prisoners were just chained to metal rings set in the floor – there was no need for doors to keep them in their cells. Rather innovative – though if I were a prisoner I think I’d much rather have a door keeping me in than to be chained to the floor. It was a such a depressing place that apparently prisoners incarcerated on the upper floors would attempt to jump to their deaths whenever they had the opportunity – hence the installation of barbed wire all around certain blocks of the school to prevent the prisoners from doing so before the prison officers were good and ready for them to die. Just about the only thing funny there was the English translation of the detention centre rules.

One of the last places we checked out was the royal palace – Cambodia still has a royal family and the all the attendant ostentatious trappings. Quite strange to see so much gold and silver and raw wealth concentrated in such a small and sparsely populated area when vast tracts of the country and multitudes are just scraping by. Makes for a great display to visitors, but I'm not surprised why democracy is a natural improvement on monarchy, economically speaking.

So I’ve been to Cambodia and back. Not too bad, methinks

2008-06-02T14:05:00Z

For those of you who still read this, I’ve recently returned from a 10-day overseas CIP trip to Cambodia. I signed up for it because Quanda and Tabitha were in the organizing committee, so I thought that the two of them being pretty competent folks it would be a pleasant way to clear my CIP hours and go on a short trip out of Singapore at the same time. Wasn’t 100% right about that. Conclusion to all other SMU students, present and future, who are thinking of clearing CIP hours by going on OCIP – don’t sign up for OCIP blindly. And if you do, get involved in planning. Not for resume or anything, but just so that your life is that much more bearable once you’re there.

But I’m making it sound a lot worse than it actually was. Let me leave that till later, and get on to the nice stuff first.

We spent 6 days of the 10-day trip in a village called Kok Khmum, which is a short distance out of the town of Battambong, which is also the name of the province it is in, which in turn is a 6-hour bus ride from the Cambodian capital city of Phnom Penh. Our official mission there was to bring books, clothes and stationery to the kids in the village secondary school there, as well as to give them English lessons and build 6 bookshelves for them.

Thankfully, I was chiefly involved in the building. Very early on I realized that no one in the group, myself included, had ever built a significant piece of furniture in their lives, which of naturally got me wondering about whether Singaporean university students had any business building bookshelves in the middle of rural Cambodia when they obviously had no comparative advantage in doing so whatsoever. But anyway, I decided to get involved with raw application of common sense and haggling of my parents, and we had a quasi-plan to go to the village, purchase wood from there and build there on the spot, with no electricity supply (thereby necessitating our dependence on battery-powered drills and hammers).

Going in, I was the unofficial design guy because I seemed to know what I was doing with regards to the basic design of the prototype back in Singapore (refer to blog entry before last). I honestly hoped that we would get nice planks like we got in Singapore so we could cut them all down to size and then just fit them together like Lego blocks. But when we got there and finally got the village carpenters to give us the quantity and pieces of wood we wanted and brought them back to the school where we were to do our building, I was shocked and petrified to discover that half the planks of wood were warped longitudinally, while the others were flat and normal. Quite annoyed about that – would have preferred if they had afforded us some consistency one way or the other. Add to that some basic measurements mistakes that I made in the process (such as not ascertaining that an edge was straight before I used it as a reference to make parallel cut a metre away), the end result was that the majority of the resultant bookshelves were terribly shaky. I tried to make adjustments along the way with my trusty set-square but there was only so much I could do.

Just like when building the prototype in Singapore, I enjoyed the time of working with my hands and doing all this nasty blue-collar construction work, even though the result was frankly atrocious and slant-y by my standards. At least the wood was easy to saw… and after painting the shelves all looked really nice in the photos. And the kids pretended to be happy about them. I think they were all marli tharn like the rabbits in Watership Down. Which I brought along as one of the donated books which I got from Salvation Army courtesy of Alicia Boo, and which I spent half of my time in the school reading. Love that book. Best book in the world apart from the Bible. Pap for the dispossessed.

But there are many other quirks about the life that we lived there. This was my sleeping area – on the edge of a second-storey balcony, on the side which had no railing. That actually made it cooler, which was important because the place was really hot. In my opinion, the coolest space in the entire house. I'm just glad I got it. Mosquitoes were a real bother though – had to put insect repellent on my face for the first time in my life.

Toilets were another shock. We only had running water for a few hours in the evening, so we have to leave the water running then to fill up a vat, from which we would all just bailer ourselves to bathe and flush the toilet and everything. Rather manageable, except that nobody there uses toilet paper. Big shock for me. Had to wash properly each time, and prospects of a quick shit before hitting the road were small.

Another thing worthy of note was transportation. As is to be expected, there are all kinds of vehicles plying the dusty streets of Kok Khmum – horse carts, bicycles, motorbikes, cars, trucks of all sizes, and vehicles I’ve never seen before in my life. This one’s called a “ler mok”, which is basically a big wagon attached to a single motorbike. 23 of us fit on this thing and it still moved. Amazing. Got the solution for global warming right here. Good for both cargo and passengers.

Another thing that really struck me was the extreme poverty in the rural areas of Cambodia where we were staying. Apparently the teacher who served as our guide and chaperone for our 6 days there earns nothing more than US$50 a month. Which is enough for him and his family to survive in a small wooden shack no larger than 75 square metres and to afford a small motorbike to get around. So before we left we got together a collection and gave him US$120. Not bad for a year-end bonus.

Of course, the other symptom of poverty could be seen in the children. Young children who walk around the village with nothing to do – and a few of them even had slightly bloated bellies. Can’t help feeling sorry for them and wanting to do something for them. Coincidentally, I’m doing Economic Development in Asia as an additional course this summer, and I brought one of my texts along to read in the bus. It was really poignant to be reading about the unique problems that the world’s poor face everyday and how impossible it is for them to pull themselves out of poverty unassisted. We in Singapore always think, “If only these people in Third World countries would get off their fat asses and work hard like we Singaporeans do then they wouldn’t be living such hard-up lives.” But the fact is that more often than not, they’re caught in a poverty trap from which there is little or no escape, at least not on a mass scale. More on this as I do more reading – but suffice to say that development economics is proving to be an increasingly interesting field for me to look into – might not be surprised if I ended up joining some kind of international development NGO upon graduation, or at some point in my future career.

On the bright side, food there is really quite good. For most of the dinners, it was wholesome home-cooked dishes with rice, but what really made our days was the breakfast at the quasi-coffee shop just a few shops down the road from where we were staying. Big winners were the beef mee sua, and this amazing beef stew with French baguette set that is apparently quite popular there. They had all the permutations of your standard coffee shop drinks too – my favourite was really milky ice Milo for under US$1.

Yay I don’t have to wake up at 4am tonight…

2008-05-13T16:14:00Z

For the last two nights I’ve been waking up at 4am to pray as part of GEFC’s involvement in the 24/7 prayer thing that this week came to our church. Since it’s the holidays for me, I thought that it would be a good idea to step up and take the graveyard shifts. And the way I saw it, these two days were the only 4-6am slots left, so they were a natural fit for me. Had a good time praying and seeking the Lord, and waiting on Him as He answered me. Wish I could find the time to do this kind of thing more during daylight hours.

Tomorrow is Caderas Exco internal elections, as explained in the former post. Lots of crazy things have been going on, and after tomorrow, they should all more or less be over. Really thankful for that, because it’s really taking a toll on me. Hopefully we can all get together for a big celebratory meal together in high spirits.

A couple of weeks ago some of us young adults from church gathered at Botanic Gardens for a picnic lunch. Because I was lazy to ask which part of Botanic Gardens they were meeting at, I ended up at the NIE side of Botanic Gardens while they were closer to the Orchard Road entrance. So I walked the entire length of the Botanic Gardens to reach them. Never knew the cursed thing was so long. And so beautiful. And so chock full of China tourists. Sigh.

An odd moment when Peng Hock tried to lead me into some basic salsa moves. Heartwarming with a tinge of gay.