Updates and Bukit Brown

The summer break is finally here! I apologise for not updating my blog throughout the second semester as I was drowning in my readings and other prosaic matters. I am sure I would be able to update this blog more often before the whole drudgery of school starts again.

It is a surreal experience to realise that I have just completed my first year of college. And while I may have given you readers the impression that I dread school completely, I do exaggerate. The workload may be overwhelming at times but I cherish the intellectual challenge. I do hope that my results for the semester that has just passed would not be too bad as I felt that there were a couple of papers that was rather difficult.

So what do I have to look forward to during this break? For starters, I have started flamenco classes; something which I have wanted to learn since I was a kid. The rhythms are slightly more complex that I am used to but it is indeed a welcomed change from my relatively sedentry lifestyle (hopefully I could lose a few pounds from all that dancing too). As to how the interest in this dance form started, I shall reserve it for another post. I am also resuming my Latin lessons; the language that everyone feels that it is dead or that it sounds nice regardless of how sordid the subject matter. Besides acquiring new hobbies and resuming others, I am glad that I getting some income from teaching drama at a secondary school and I hope that the children would be excited to learn new stuff as I am in teaching them. It does look like my summer holiday is filled with a myriad of activities. Here's to wishing that it would be a good and fruitful one!

Before I end this post, I would like to mention that I recently attended a talk on The Material Culture of Bukit Brown and have written about it here. I do hope this article would give you a clearer picture of what we stand to lose if Bukit Brown were to be destroyed. I am grateful for the opportunity in which The Kent Ridge Common (KRC has given me to write for them. As such, I shall shift the focus of this blog to cover more of my personal issues and musings while the serious writings will be posted onto KRC. Of course, I would put a link to all the articles I have written there on this blog so that you can read those too.

As such, I would like to say a very big thank you to the few of you who actually reads my blog.

Commonplace: Atonality

This is the second post for commonplace. The features in this section are different from that of my usual features. Click here to read what the various posts filed under this section are about.

On 19th September of this year, I was fortunate enough to attend a concert entitled "La Noche" (the night in Spanish) which is a collaboration between Roberto Alvarex (Flute) and Katryna Tan (Harp). The duo premiered eight pieces by various composers comissioned to compose a duet for Flute and Harp based on their perceptions of the night. As all the pieces are written by composers that are still alive, most of them were atonal (ie. the piece of music is not written in any key).

Before playing one of the songs, Katryna Tan mentioned that most people would view atonal music as a piece of music that is composed of random notes. But to the composer of that particular piece, atonality means that every single note that is written is just as important as the other. That got me thinking...

If one were to extrapolate this idea to society as a whole, isn't this a statement about embracing diversity? It is definitely a good thing to embrace a difference in culture and opinion and accord the same importance to every single member of society. The more important question is, how do we harness this diversity to produce something productive and beautiful such as the duet I heard in the recital hall? In writing music, there is a science to it but is there one in a societal construct?

If we were to water down the construct to a mundane one such as a project group, another question pops up: where do we draw a line in embracing a difference of opinion and decide on the way forward? It is easy to say that the leader should take charge and decide. But in doing so, it negates the diversity that we are embracing in the first place.

While I do not have an answer, I love how the concept of atonality triggers off such thoughts. A beautiful metaphor too!

Communication: It gets worse as it becomes easier

Being the semi-Luddite that I am, the number of social media networks that I am on often amazes me. In fact, the medium I am engaging in now can also be considered a form of social media. Such a technological trend is often paradoxical. While it makes communication and socialising with others easier, we become increasingly anti-social and often take the ease of communication for granted; a backlash. To prove a point, this post is composed through the Blogger app on my iPhone. While I will eventually communicate to you my thoughts and ideas on the go, I have switched off from my surroundings and people around me in the process; becoming anti-social.

Due to the ease of communication, we become slack in our attitudes towards punctuality, etiquette and sincerity. Running late? No problem! A text to your friend and you know that your friend won't worry and would bother himself with something else while waiting for you to arrive. Thus, one finds oneself never being able to be punctual for anything. This differs from the pre-cellular network era in which the embarrassment of having someone wait for you meant that one would leave the house extra early to give a buffer time for any delays or problems with transportation.

Aside from punctuality, the ease of writing this post or an email through my iPhone meant that I can easily type out my thoughts in a stream of consciousness. If you are still reading this post, the words I have typed so far are still within a span of a train ride home and I have not reviewed what I have written thus far. As such, we slowly become less concerned with the nuances that are implied in our choice of words. Instead, we're more interested in stating what we think even though if those thoughts have not been processed properly; a need to insist on the world listening to oneself.

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*The remaining of this post below is written on my computer*

Perhaps that is why we can be considered as the "soundbite generation". As an illustration, we should look back on January of 2009 when Obama assumed office and gave his Presidential Inaugural Address. The whole world watched on and various political commentators were furiously giving their analysis on what is to be considered a watershed event in the history of USA. Amidst the cacophony of voices, one of them spoke to me. Clay Jenkinson, social commentator, historian and Chautauqua practitioner, was describing what a different world we are living in and wonders how could one even give a credible analysis on a speech mere minutes after it has been made. It would be impressionistic at best or utterly inaccurate at worst. Such comments certainly reflect the world we are living in; consuming a greater amount of information almost immediately but often missing out on the important points.

As a final anecdote, someone did point out the absurdity of the need to text someone to read an email that was sent and to reply to it promptly. This was done in spite of the fact that the reciever was expecting such a mail. It does seem to me that the efficiency of communication makes us less efficient in such a way that we are bombarded with all sorts of mail and messages to such an extent that we naturally just ignore all of it and, in the process, miss out on the important ones. Thus, we see the emergence of a seemingly irrational habit of actually texting people to remind them to respond.

While the bulk of my post is more of a lamentation on the falling standards of the way we communicate and conduct our relationships with others, it would be silly to reject the benefits of technology and do what the Luddites did. The synthesis should neither be a magic nor a mind-blowing solution because that just means that no one would be able to do it. At the end of the day, it truly boils down to how important the particular person is to you because if they were truly important, taking the effort to slow down, communicate clearly and promptly and being mindful of your conduct should not be a chore. In short: slow down, think through and be on time.

Thoughts of a College Student

Hello readers, I do apologise as it has been a rather long time since I have last written on the blog. It has been 6 weeks since I have started college (a month and a half!) and I'd thought I'll dash off some thoughts here just to give you a feel of what I am going through.

College is certainly a brand new experience. Everything seems much faster; time, expectations and comprehension of what is being taught. Amidst this manic rush and overloading, it is interesting that I feel a sense of liberation. Freedom and independence can be exciting and scary at the same time. While I am free to do whatever I want and take whatever subject that interests me, it does beg the scary question of what do you want to do with your life? That is certainly a loaded question because it not only forces you to make a choice, it also signifies all the responsibilities that growing into adulthood brings.

Aside from all the excitement and pressures of college, I can't help but compare myself to what others have accomplished when they were my age. The Inklings were discussing original compositions of what became some of the greatest books of literature, Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry and Emma Thompson were busy writing comedy sketches as members of Footlights ; the birthing stages of what became Fry and Laurie, and if I could not feel any smaller, Alexander the Great was already a force to be reckoned with when he was my age. 

By comparison, the various students groups in NUS really pale in comparison. Do not get me wrong, I totally admire all the leaders of the various groups because having to run a society in University is a no mean feat. But what are we lacking that the Inklings and Footlights did not? Are we not creative enough? The thing is, we are ten thousand times more exposed to influences all over the world than the Inklings and Footlights (during the time of Laurie, Fry and Thompson) combined. So what is it that is stopping us from creating something of that calibre?

It is interesting to note that while grades are important, what people remember of the Inklings and Footlights are certainly not what GPA/CAP (whichever way you call it) those luminaries got...

I guess it's time to start on that 1000 word essay.  

Commonplace

Dear Readers,

Welcome to the launch of a new feature on my blog! It's called, "Commonplace". Basically it is an online version of a commonplace book where I'll offer snatches of my thoughts, quotes or lines from books/magazines that caught my fancy.

In due recognition that I have started college and the workload is gradually piling up, commonplace will be great as I will still be able to provide you guys something to read and digest without taking too much time to compose them. And through these short entries, I hope that it will serve as a prelude to who I am in considering the material and content that interest me.  

So here's the first entry of Commonplace:

From the swirl of its initial letter to its sighing vowel and feather-soft final consonant, the very word - "swan" - suggests grace. Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky did not, after all, write Duck Pond

~ Untherthiner, Stefano (December, 2010). Swan Serenade. National Geographic, 57.

Whoever thought one can describe a swan by examining the linguistic construction of the noun attributed to it and extend the idea of gracefulness to music!