who am i? who am i if circumstances keep making me change? i've already come all the way here; how come the roads branch and fork and dance at the horizon? can't i be who the world wants me to be, and still be who i know myself to be?
who are we other than the person we know ourselves to be?
who stares back at you from within the mirror?
who is that person called by your name in the past?
will you be yourself in the future?
will you remember who you are now?
~
just re-watched the video i made for my dad's birthday... didn't like the first part on hindsight, but there were some flashes of brilliance that made me go "wow... i'm good at this".
isn't it nice? to think that you are good at something? too often we try so hard to be humble that we forget that we can do some things well, and that people appreciate that.
other stuff...
just had went for an archery mini-competition for beginners :) was really really close to getting 2nd place, but my hand somehow slipped at the last arrow and it went way too low. ah well.
oh and the journals are about to be sent for printing :) *high fives candice*
just re-read my previous post... "my little life"... i think that's a nice way to call my life. :)
today was interesting. went to tecman today to discuss candice and my designs for the journals (gonna get them printed soon, in huge huge batches!), and happened to arrive exactly when the staff had caught a thief and were waiting for the police.
i think all hope of escape must have died in his mind when he saw my dad and i (both pretty big guys) arrive to stand at the doorway of the shop where he was being detained by one of our rather fierce-looking male staff member. i mean, if he tries to run, all i have to do i push him hard to the floor and when my dad and i sit on him that's the end.
that, and had my second latin ballroom lesson for the term! which wasn't very interesting given that they're teaching moves i've learnt before...
other than that, a lot of stuff happening and coming up.
1. i've joined the school salsa team (VERY taxing training)
2. will likely try out, at least, for the latin ballroom team
3. am considering joining the archery club (cos i've been going for a beginners' course and the archers seem impressed with me heh)
4. will likely join a sub-committee for the upcoming latin fest, a latin dance festival, smu is organizing.
yeah, events are swirling around and people, both nice and not-so-nice, are coming into my little life.
i instinctively don't like uncertainty, which may be the reason why i've been feeling disoriented and even worried about the future, these days. but i guess... i'll hold on to the belief that things always do work out well.
*slightly-tired smile*
you know how just talking to an old friend can bring back memories of a whole era of your life? just had that experience :) not just an era, but an era full of wonders and surprises, that is all the more precious because it passed by so quickly...
and secondly, i have this theory that smu students' grades are divergent. in that the good will do better and better, and the bad will do worse and worse. that's because a big chunk of our grade is in projects. and the good students tend to group together (obviously), leaving the not-so-good ones to group within themselves...
:)
ok i planned to put up a lot of photos, but it's late so i'll put just one up for now :D
:)
Mazzlewaz the king on his lofty throne
As a beam of the sun from his window shone
On the gold of the ground of the highest hall
Where the people cry as the heroes fall,
Said, "Hand me the sceptre of jewelled silver
We plucked from the dark, unending shiver
Where our enemies died while in vain they called,
And our people cried, "Their heroes fall!"
So the Guards of the Sceptre march up the stairs
Past watching lords and their ladies fair,
Whose eyes, like stars, affixed, enthralled,
That saw people cry and heroes fall.
Now king with sceptre and sceptre with king
And a song of war, this song they sing:
Minstrel and soldier and blacksmith and thrall,
All our people cry, "Their heroes shall fall!"
The king, on his feet - his steely gaze
Catches each eye, each radiant face -
And raising his voice in resounding call,
"Make their people cry as their heroes fall!"
there's something glorious about tango. it's such a subtle, beautiful dance that has so many combinations of moves and so many styles. i'd say it's the opposite of salsa. salsa is about flashiness and sexiness in a pretty fixed structure while tango is about subtlety and elegance in a smooth, flowing structure.
anything is possible in tango. the crux is the leader knowing how to shift the follower's weight and knowing where her feet are at any time. once that is mastered, virtually anything is possible :)
oh yeah and tonight's milonga realy was particularly nice :)
i was very touched this morning when candice asked me how my life is right now, aside from time with her. i don't usually get people asking me how i am :)
well, how *is* my life at the moment?
it's looking up! lots of things i'm looking forward to. i'm planning to take up archery, squash, social latin and salsa classes in school, working on tecman's new publishing arm, spending time dancing tango, and my classes this term look interesting at least :)
yup life's been nice :)
pink penguins and pink flowers:
the cute pink thing's name's Cordellia!
this was at the pet shop at suntec! LOVE hamsters. really really want a guinea pig *sigh*
i've been walking around town in singlet and short alot these days hehe
okie that's all for now :D
this choir gathering i've been trying to organize is a good real-life example of inertia
1. people say hey let's have a gathering - ok so at least some people want a gathering
2. people say hey get sam to organize - and i don't mind cos it's true that most of them are working and all
3. sends out chain emails - ok doesn't work cos it's just a mess of random ideas
4. ask people to tell me when they're free - something like 3 or 4 people replied... out of nearly... 20?
5. sends out excel file for poeple to input names - no one replies
like what the toot?
anyway. trying. too many people i haven't met!
:)
a mental image of an exhausted and muscular but wasted-away man in a cage of rusty iron, pulling at the bars with all his might, his eyes in a frenzy and most of his hair in clumps on the ground. now he's pacing back and forth, back and forth, like a stalker staring at his prey, his eyes feral yellow with a hungry focus. steely gaze. back and forth. back and forth. and suddenly in a frenzy his hands whip to the nearest bars and he screams, head facing the sky, as he pulls with all his might. he will eventually give up, and he will die, alone, like a beast in a cage.
recently i've been having this heavy suspicion that i won't amount to anything.
i see people around me all gearing up for or actually entering high-profile jobs. people who got into huge firms after graduation, people who are very "into" market analysis and other financial thingies, people who take on leadership roles and service roles like it's second nature to them...
and i see myself. this simple guy who was all along content to be a theoretical physicist, sitting at his desk musing over his equations and once in a while giving an interesting lecture to his students. even when this dream changed to something more leadership/finance related, the new dream involved working with and building up what was dear to me (Tecman). somehow i always go for familiarity and constancy... i look into my heart and can no longer find any of that drive to make millions or to be famous or to be some big leader.
maybe it isn't such a bad thing. maybe i just feel this way because of the pressure i get from parents, peers, the world. maybe... maybe it's just because i'm in SMU, a place full of people who have that drive, after all it IS a business school. it's just difficult sometimes. especially when i look at myself and wonder if the problem is ME - like maybe i'm lacking any drive at all, maybe i'm just a lazy bum, maybe... i dunno.
it's scary because i used to be 100% happy to be myself, to a point that i would refuse to change no matter what. and now that i have become mutable inside i'm starting to look around and see that i am different, that i just don't want or am not interested in many of the things my friends and family are after.
so right now... here i am. this blur big soft guy that at least one person finds sweet, who finds doing nice things for people a million times more meaningful than making a million dollars, who is content to hold on to and develop what he is familiar with, and whose heart is perhaps bigger than his deeds.
and perhaps, for good or for worse, that is all i have.
So I was a faci for this year's SMU Freshman Team-Building camp. I'd gone through hours upon hours of training, and probably twice as many hours of my own planning and dreaming up of how I would craft the experience for my freshies and what I would say to them.
The facis from mock camp group FABS just before we were to receive our freshmen!
Well, it didn't go according to plan :) I did expect that the freshies would be unreceptive to the idea of teambuilding (as opposed to stupid fun like in any other orientation camp), but I didn't expect them to be THAT unreceptive, nor did I expect the team to be so unmotivated on the first day. I tried my best to inject some energy into the team by minimizing debrief sessions to just a few words and playing silly games, but nothing worked... It was even difficult getting the team hyped up during the fun night games.
Fruit-eating: one of the silly night games hehe
But all that changed at the first activity (horizontal spiderweb) on day 2. I managed to psyche the team to wanting to complete the very difficult activity, and was much stricter with constraints than before. I kept giving them benchmarks ("Half the teams can complete the whole challenge", then, "best teams can do it under 3 minutes"), and told them that one touch of the web meant failure. And with that they simply kept trying, even to the point of restarting the whole attempt when the very last person touched the rope on the way out of the web.
It was a certain team pride, a pride that said, "I've come so far, no way I'm not gonna try one more time to succeed. If other teams can complete this, so can my team.", and this carried the team through to success. It was amazing.
The team at the horizontal spider web.
At that point I threw everything I learnt away. I realised that given the team dynamics, there was not going to be time to bring the team through all the stages of team-builing and what not, so I simply scrapped any negative learning points from my debrief, and focussed on their success, to give them a high experience they would remember forever.
The team at sea.
And it worked because the "high" from the integriy, success, and teamwork of the horizontal spiderweb carried on to the next activity, where they had to build a raft from scratch and race with it. And it was with this feeling of success as a team that they came in first in the group - when they had reached the end, ALL the other teams had at most just pushed their rafts to sea.
At the final challenge on day 3!
However at the end of day 2 was the lowest point for me, emotionally. It was the lowest I've felt in a very very long time. Even through the team's successes, I felt there was no bondedness and the team was very fractured into small cliques, and I felt very pressurized to follow the "traditional" style of team-building (sit in a circle and write down your feelings) because the other facis in my section were doing so. The second night was very difficult for me, even though the item the facis put up for the freshis was really hilarious (I was the most funny dancing sleeping bag! and we bit the skin off a watermelon! and the snail race! and the pantyhose fight!).
More of the final challenge!
However when I spoke with the team that night, asked them to share individually how they felt about the camp so far, and shared some of my own feelings, I was very encouraged. Because they themselves felt that the team was very bonded, and they thanked me for not going the "traditional" style of team-building...
Group photo after the final challenge!
Day 3's final challenge (a la amazing race) was simply an acknowledgement that I had a great team under my care. The during and after the challenge, I could see a the unity and the bond that had formed between them. It was the way they held hands and sang songs together as they had to brave freezing hands for a minute, they way they sat together filling up the survey forms at the canteen benches... At the final debrief of the camp, I asked individual freshmen to share what they felt was the one thing they learned from the camp, and most mentioned teamwork. :) I'm pretty proud of my speech to them too, telling them about the importance of setting personal goals, just as the team did at the horizontal spiderweb. :)
4 generations of VJC choir!
Oh and I did manage to do ONE thing I planned: to tell them, at the final debriefing of the camp, to rate the camp while they closed their eyes and I go through with them everything they experienced throughout the 3 days...
It was really a pretty magical 3 days :)
family reunion thing at my house a few days ago!
tua gou & i! my favourite aunt!
marie & i! my favourite cousin!
my mom & i! my darling mom!
the bear had been pining for his lily for so long...
and she finally came back to give him a hug!
candice's dad's birthday, post-chinesedinner!
:)
okie so i bought and built a new cabinet just for old memories and awards! (and the calculus book is just there to add weight so the cabinet won't topple heh) a lot of nice memories just from looking at the cabinet.
there's alot of stuff from birthdays! the little deer and houses is my collection of xmas trinkets from a few log cakes. the toilet paper has birthday wishes printed all over it (!) and the pink musical box was a 21st birthday gift from army friends lol.
a lot of nice non-birthday gifts from friends too. the big star is from my very nice junior while playing angel mortal game in J2 :) and the chicago bear is one of the most meaningful presents i've ever received.
also thos plaques are the awards i received in ACS(I). and i'm particularly proud of my 2 army half marathon medals and 2 xiamen choir olympics medals :)
much as i complain that i have a bad memory, there's tons of stuff to reminiscence on. it feels now as if i've stepped into a new phase of my life with new friends and new experiences along with the old ones, and i think i've been making very assured and comfortable strides :)
yup :)
(OK because a friend complained that i my blog is too chim, and said photos are easier to digest, here goes!)
stuff we love doing!
(1) Squash
ok i've only ever beaten candice once... and was a measly 18-16 scoreline. she just has this instinct for where the ball's gonna be. and i have this problem with getting beaten psychologically. ok enough rambling i know you want photos. oh did i mention that i think the squash ball's really cute?
^ us giving weird looks!
(2) Food - we LOVE to eat
this tummy is what you get after a hotcakes breakfast
for a while we were having hotcakes like everyday hehe
another favourite: vil'lage crepes!
and the ultimate is japanese food. man. we once finished 3 big plates FULL of unagi kabayaki in ONE sitting. felt sick after that. this was at sakae sushi. "candlelight dinner" haha
(3) Our stuffed toys
this is a shot of the sofa in my room :) yes mostly MY stuffed toys haha. baby's there perched on top!
we have happy stuffed toys.
(4) Doing all kinds of stuff!
surprise gift for me! i look like tiger!
at the esplanade just before watching dim sum dollies :) great play btw.
okie that's all for now! happy? hahahaha
saw dim sum dollies last night! it was amazing! hossan leong is an AMAZING stand-up comedian... "why do they keep making indians walk back and forth, back and forth?" :)
and a long-overdue quotable quote from candice:
"why would blood go to your hands? they don't need warmth what."
lol
okie back to cleaning my room. more pictures another time :)
