The Dropdown List

How is it that sometimes things are said quite eloquently?

“Because of the rat race, a lot of us have been pushed into studying something that would give us security for life”.
– Scarlette of Core Design Gallery, Timeout KL April 2010 –

If you were a post-secondary / college student in Malaysia in the late 90s, instead of “I want to be ___”, your career decision may likely have been influenced by “I will select from the below list”, which looked something like this:

1. Accountant
2. Engineer
3. Doctor
4. Banker
5. Lawyer
6. IT (no designations because to be honest at the time, no one really knew what it was, other than IT was the next big thing)
7. Pharmacist
8. I am struggling to even come up with more

Call it realities of capitalism, the developing country, or the arguable conservatism/foresight of parents who want the best for their children, there is no wrong or right. I do hope though, that we are moving towards an environment where individuals from more professions can find their choices equally rewarding in practical and personal aspects, so long as they do their jobs well.

To fill that blank myself, I might have said….anthropologist. What about you?

Discussion with an atheist

Today a colleague of mine told me that spirits cannot exist in the same realm that we do, simply because the world would then be overpopulated. I told him that unlike real people, probably more than one spirit can sit in the same chair, so really they wouldn’t take up so much space.

This is the math grad who believes that there is no God (in the context of the bible, at least) because given the proven time that photosynthesis takes, the world could not have been created in 7 days. I don’t argue with that, but then, I haven’t read the bible.

Anyway, he counters by saying that even if this were true, at some point, we would still run out of room because think of the multitude of spirits we must have through time since the creation of man (being from Hong Kong, he is very concerned about space and population control. Being Malaysian, I am a little more easygoing about real estate in general).

Why then I say, that is exactly why we have reincarnation. Same soul, re-born into a different body that lives through a different time. At some point, perhaps that soul might move on to somewhere beyond, and there will be room for a new one here and there. Everyone/thing else in between, is what we accountants would just call timing differences.

Hey I don’t have all the answers, but mathematically it seems to make good sense, no?

Are we ever 100% ready?

"How often I have found out where I should be going only by setting out for somewhere else."
- R. Buckminster Fuller -

I guess maybe the idea is to first, set out.

God I hope I am a sophomore, but I am not really sure

A good friend of mine once introduced the idea of the “University of Real Life” [社会大学], a place where there is no course duration, no syllabus, unlikely and unbeknownst teachers, and no guarantee of passing with honest study.

Two years ago, I made an “enrolment” of sorts into such an institution. I applied all my pre-requisites, watched and learned, and here are some takeaways I have so far:

- We are all alone, yet no man is an island
- Talk is cheap, yet information is power
- There are no perpetual friends and enemies, but relationships go a long way
- No news may or may not mean good news
- You may not agree with the rules of the game, but to be honest - winning is fun
- Go with the flow, but all is lost if you are not true to yourself

I’d like to say that 2+2=4, and I still believe that it does, but My Goodness, sometimes so many invisible forces need to come together to make that unsuspecting equation happen, and depending on who you are, who you know, what deliberately / inadvertently happens, it just may not add up despite best efforts.

I suspect that in the end, only I can define flying colors for myself. Until then, I'm just doing up the homework and waiting for the next lesson to unfold.

Life As We Know It

Work took me to the slums of Malabon last week - this particular one was called "Vegetable", a community of makeshift huts built on a haphazard network of cement slabs and planks, elevated above trash and stagnant water below. Yet, life goes on every day as it does anywhere else.

Pouch pack everything: shampoo, cooking oil, washing powder, you name it. Small packs mean affordable prices for the low income groups.

How perfect Creation is: Flowers bloom, and children are beautiful no matter where.

Pedicab drivers: These guys were blaring a Tagalog version of "Nobody-nobody-but-you clap clap clap clap" (it is The song to play now for the upcoming elections).

Hardware store on wheels: Torches, batteries, mobile phone chargers and other bits and bobs.

These little convenience stores or "sari-sari" are everywhere - usually the store is at the front, and the family lives at the back. Salted eggs are painted red.

Resident dogs - these friendly guys looked like they'd been here a while, maybe seen a couple of things in their time.

Manila and me

A barangay (Filipino: baranggay, [baraŋˈɡaj]), also known by its former Spanish adopted name, the barrio, is the smallest administrative division in the Philippines and is the native Filipino term for a village, district or ward. Barangays are further subdivided into smaller areas called Puroks (English: Zone). A sitio is a territorial enclave inside a barangay, especially in rural areas. Municipalities and cities are composed of barangays.

You get the idea - there are small places inside smaller places, which are then sub-divided into more small places. Welcome to the Manila, the city of villages.

It is important to exhale here, more than in most other cities I've been to. My most pronounced memory of Manila after spending about 3 months here in 2009 and being here again now, is the traffic jams. There are just a lot of cars. The roads burst at the seams at almost at every hour of the day. More flyovers and tunnels would help. Jeepneys, which typically do not go faster than 50 km/h should probably not be allowed on the highway. I am no city planner, but one should probably be able to turn right when they need to, instead of cramming with a crowd of vehicles turning left just to make a u-turn, and then join the futile congestion on the other side.

Still, that is life sometimes. Messy, a little hopeless and you just got to laugh. And keep on trucking, measuring out on each other’s patience and mercy as we go. In time, I hope we will all get home.

Why I Do What I Do Sometimes

Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.

-Maya Angelou-

Thank you Alliz, for introducing a great lady!