Kids and Exaggerations

I was walking past a playground one day when I overheard a kid telling his father a story he had heard in school earlier. The story revolves around 2 animals that refused to help one another despite their unfortunate circumstances, thus resulting in their demise. The dad patiently heard his kid out, egging him on with, "Yes", "Uh hmm" and "And then?".

I say "patiently" because the kid was being very animated and kid-like in his discriptions. He had this shoutish voice that you'd expect of a 5 year old boy and kept pausing every 2 or 3 sentences to think about what to say next.

But the most interesting thing about the kid's story telling was how he seemed to be exaggerating everything. The two animals weren't just angry to be caught in their predicaments. They had to be "very very very very angry". They weren't willing to help each other. They were "very very very very unwilling". In fact, in every 2 or 3 sentences he had to take a pause, you're bound to hear some form of exaggeration. It's an exaggeration of the "very very very very" kind.

It got me thinking about how kids pick up languages. Obviously, the more commonly used words are picked up and put into sentences much faster by kids. (However, the exception is the Singapore Pledge. I only began to understand the meaning of "democracy" some time in secondary school, despite having to say the word "democratic" every single day since primary school.) Despite kids' amazing abilities to grasp and learn languages though, you cannot expect a 5 year old to possess a very comprehensive vocabulary.

My opinion here is that the exaggerations that make kids kids, with their truly enthralling brand of storytelling, is the result of a lack of vocabulary. Whereas adults will get straight to the point of saying the house is "huge" or "extremely big" or "immense", a kid will wildly flail his arms to encompass the "huge-ness" while pouting his lips to emphasize how "very very very very big" it is.

However, adults have lost the capacity to handle another adult telling stories in the same way. They think it's childish, immature and just plain freaky. Adults hardly get enchanted with one another. I guess it's a good thing, because that leaves all our attention for such enchanting antics for the kids. -Jimmy

The Teenage Exercise Book

(Parody warning!)

YKK nervously eyed the girl from the corner of the book. Class reading time was supposed to provide the students brilliant, creative story writing ideas for their essay writing. However, the teachers who had begged the principal to reinstate the program after reading about the 2009 Budget in their students essays for the nth time were now regretting their call. They now had to contend with renditions of "Sweet Valley Secondary" for the nth time.

YKK put down his book "Guns: Relative Stopping Power and Projectile Ranges" (he did not believe that reading Neil Gaiman or Stephan King to add value to his knowledge) and turned to his good friend, Ar Lot.

"Ar Lot, I can't help it. Ever since school started, I can't help but feel all light-headed seeing Aimee."
His good friend put down his Enid Blyton compendium, carefully closing the pages to make sure the Playboy magazine he had hidden inside did not peek out. "Do you seek advice from the great Master, then?" He asked coyly.
YKK pensively licked his lips then nodded slightly. Ar Lot seemed to have a way about girls; they didn't mind going out with him after school. There were days when YKK would jealously watch as Ar Lot refused to level up their WoW characters after school and instead went out with a whole gaggle of girls. If YKK wanted any chance to strike up conversation with Aimee, Ar Lot was his first step.
"Waikaykay, in order to initiate you on the intricacies of intimacy, you will have to acknowledge me as master."
YKK sighed. If there's one thing he wasn't comfortable with having Ar Lot as a friend, it was his huge ego that needed to be pandered once in a while. He mumbled, "I recognise thee as master, Ar Lot."
Ar Lot smiled smugly, "The full name, dumbo."
YKK said less commitantly, "I recognise thee as master, Bates Ar Lot." He sighed at the end, thinking how his life story would make for MAD magazine type stories with bad puns. It would be written by testosterone-charged teenaged boys for hormonally-overflowing teenaged boys.

"Waikaykay, the first thing you need to understand is that there are four kinds of attraction. When you see someone you like, the kind of attraction you have dictates how you should respond." Ar Lot started his lecture sounding all self-important.

YKK nodded eagerly to egg Ar Lot on. Ar Lot needed to be shown that his grand theories were being accepted as fact.

"The first kind is gravitation. This kind appears when you are attracted to a person's gravitas, or status, or credentials. This explains why so many girls in all-girls schools end up liking head prefects."

Ar Lot paused as YKK nodded in agreement. So those rumours about all-girls schools were true!

"You must be careful with this kind. They probably have seen all kinds of requests from all kinds of people. My advice is to find out if you could progress to other froms of attraction.

"Which brings me to the 2nd type, electro-magnetic. This is what most boys our age experience. It explains why they call the attraction a 'spark'. It happens when you identify something in common with the girl and you are 'induced' into strengthening that commonality. Soon, a magnetic bond may form!"

YKK admired how Ar Lot ended the sentence with flourish. Somehow, though, the found the lecture someone reminiscent of a certain subject he was taking, but he buried that thought.

"The third type is the weaker attractive force. Now we're moving to mutual attraction. However, it is weak because some girls LOVE to play hard to get! Once you're here, you'll have to pull all the stops to get to the next stage!

"Speaking of stage, when you get to the stronger attractive force, they'd be like rabbid girls at a Tom Jones concert! They'd be dying to get up on stage and jive with you!"

YKK's mind was fervently processing the information, but finding it hard as he frequently got distracted by Aimee, who was flirting with his peripheral vision. He had so many questions, he had to find out more! Just as he started formulating his first train of questioning, the school bell went off, marking the end of reading period and the start of lesson proper.

YKK cursed the deus ex machina that always seemed to pepper his life. It seems like he will have to wait till the next issue of MAD magazine to have his questions answered. -Jimmy

The Interview Call-up

(You know the author is looking for a job when his blog post talks about waiting for the interview call.)

If you don't have callerID.
So you never know who's calling you and you can never return the missed call.
And you receive a call during class time.
It may or may not be that company who's interested in asking you in for an interview.
Do you leave the classroom to pick the call up?

If you decide to let them tell you about the interview over email, and you choose not to leave the classroom.
And they decide to give the interview to someone else and forget about you.
Is that God's way of telling you that He has bigger plans for you? -Jimmy

Job's Last Hour

The figure in the mud stared up at the oncoming rain. It lay in an awkward position, like a doll thrown carelessly by a girl throwing a tantrum. The right leg was twisted up, the right arm ended in a stump and its wings were torn. They shouldn't even be called wings; they had an ornamental look about them and you wouldn't believe they could provide lift for such a figure if you ever saw it.

There was blood all around the figure. A-ha. So now you know the figure is a carbon-based life-form. If you really want to know, she's a female human. And yes, it's her blood around her. Mostly her blood, anyway. She watched the rain wash down against her mask and just lay still.

An old lady walked past the figure silently, holding an umbrella to shield her from the rain, making painstaking progress with her walking stick. She'd pause to catch her breath once in a while, but she'd continue on her way, because she had to get somewhere. The old lady happened to catch her breath while she was over the figure and commented simply, "What are you doing lying there in the rain?"

The figure grunted, "I'm hurt. I can't move."
"I can't help you. I don't know first aid."
"I know, it just so happens that my right arm's gone. I won't be able to fix myself without my arm."
"Would you rather die instead?"
"Without my arm, I don't think I'd have much of a life anyway. Stop staring at me. Get lost. I want my own time."

A little girl skipped past the figure, holding up a little toy. "Would you like to know more about the latest technology?" She held the toy up gaily. The figure wanted to turn away, but she was finding it hard to do so.

"It's the newest thing called assisted mobility," the girl held up the toy.
"You wear this thing around you and you'll be able to move like a sprinter! The thing is powered by a small power source and responds to slight motions the body makes and moves the relevant portion of the frame that surrounds that body part!"
The little girl obviously doesn't realise how difficult it is for free movement: she's young and energetic and unhindered. The figure finally spoke,
"Such technology is still propriety. Only a select few people can benefit from it before the price finally drops. Only a few people can truly enjoy unhindered movement that this promises."
"By the time I grow old, it'll be mainstream! I won't limp about like my grandma with osteoporosis does!"
The figure smiled sarcastically. The girl was naive; she'd learn the ways of the world soon. The little girl skipped away with the toy.

A teenager with a book walked past. She swooned over the words and spoke randomly to the figure, "I never figured Norsk myths to be so romantic!" The figure hardly batted an eyelid. She'd continue talking about the book whether or not you want to hear it or not.
"It's so interesting how the warrior race had mythology regarding these creatures that picked the bravest warriors and accompanied them to Valhalla.
"Isn't it an empowering feeling, knowing that you get to pick those you felt fought the hardest or were the bravest? There's a balance of the genders, unlike books where only one gender was perfect."

Just as the teenager walked beyond the figure's peripheral vision, a shape appeared in the sky above her. It looked pretty bulky, although she could vaguely make out a homonid shape. It had spindly extensions from its shoulder blades, pretty much like a bat's wings without the skin stretched across the fingers. From the clouds formed under the wings, the figure knew that huge amounts of hot air were being vented out from the spindly appendages, providing the lift. The figure noticed that the shape was occupying more of her vision; it was going to land near her.

As the homonid shape busied herself near the figure, the figure noted how under the face mask was the wrinkled face of an old lady. This surprised her, since the figure had danced in the air like a nubile dancer performing a ballet. The shape touched her thigh armour, revealing a wide array of interesting looking implements.

"You're looking worse for wear." The shape's voice sounded muffled under her mask.
"Yea, I think I lost quite a bit of blood."
"Don't worry, I'm here to help you. I'm a valkyrie." The shape selected an auto-injector from her thigh pouch and twisted the dial, presumably to select the dosage quantity. Maintaining her conversation, the shape said, "I'd like to give you painkillers, but I think your heart rate might drop too low. Adrenaline will help get you up and give you enough kick to get back to the field surgeon. The clotting drugs you took before this probably saved your life."
The shape jabbed the auto-injector on the figure's neck, giving her a jolt of awareness. Around her, the sounds of explosions became apparent. The shape smiled and said, "Can you make your way back to the field surgeon?"

"I don't see any reason I'd want to preserve myself. I can't imagine living without my right arm. Do you even know what I am when I don't don this face mask? Do you even know why I agreed to don this mask? With my osteoporosis, I'm hunched over in day-to-day life. I'm growing old, when I walk, I make painstaking progress. What is my life if there's no quality to it?"

The shape stayed still kneeling beside the figure. Her lips were pursed into a straight line.

"With assisted mobility, I felt young again. Life was worth living for, even if that meant I had to be fighting a war."
"Is life really all about quality of life? I think there are other things worth living for despite being disabled. I've read stories of how amputees can be happier than multi-millionaires."
"At the crux of this issue is how happy these people are. Life has less meaning for me just because of who I am. It seems like a cosmic joke that I only truly feel alive on the battlefield."
Tears were streaming down the figure's face. The conversation wasn't going anywhere; they both knew it. Perhaps it was good that the shape beside her stirred and turned to assist other fallen soldiers on the battlefield. She did not know how to continue the conversation with the shape anyway.

The shape leapt into the air to fly towards her next casualty. She would have to find them, decide if she had the tools to administer first aid, diagnose the injury and provide either the drugs or dressing necessary. She could pull casualties great distances with her assisted mobility suit, taking them to the relative Valhalla of the field surgery. She was a Valkyrie.

A sudden bright flash lit up the figure's view of the sky. Where she last saw the shape, there was now a cloud of black smoke. She couldn't see clearly, but she knew that a cannon shell had exploded against the shape's right arm. The armour could withstand small-arms fire, but not an anti-aircraft shell. She knew how it felt falling through the air now that the wing was destroyed. The shape was probably teetering on consciousness from the shock of the explosion and from the massive haemorrage. Even as the shape dropped below her field of vision, she knew that she would land awkwardly on her right leg, driving her left side into the soft, sticky mud. She knew that the figure would lie in that awkward position for a good two hours.

She knew because the little girl, the teenager, the old lady and the Valkyrie are all the same person. From being naive and idealistic, she'd become disabled to the point of being crippled, tottering about her life finding no rhyme or reason. Assisted mobility offered a respite from this life that was proving painful to live. It was so amazing that even her seventy-year old frame moved like a young teenager's within the suit. But unlike the ideal vision her eight year old self foresaw, assisted mobility remained in the domain of the military. They gave her a new lease of life, and they're the reason she's dying in a wet, muddy, unidentified battlefield.

As the ultimate irony, the Valkyrie, the one who chooses warriors and gives them a new lease of life, loses hers in return.

I just want to die, the Valkyrie, numb from its pain, bleeding to death in the muddy field, screamed in her mind. -Jimmy

3rd Feb 2009

Just a ramble in a boring class that's going through a topic I've studied for before. Met up with the Bachelor guys yesterday, which is supposed to be phase 1 of our "Have fun in Aussieland, H!" get-togethers.

It was supposed to be just one night cycling event this Saturday, but H's parents aren't too keen on their son exerting himself so close to his fly-off date, so it got turned into Phase 1: Dinner and Phase 2: Drive-about.

The whole point of the post was to highlight how I realised that quite a bit of who I am also exists in these bunch of friends sitting around me. Whether it's H's nuggets of wisdom about relationships, or N's pointed questions/observations of jobs, student life and our future, or I's silly remarks and ahem (alcoholism), or C's dry humour and sarcasm, I saw how their behaviour is reflected in me.

H pointed out as we drank along the waterfront that beer isn't about the alcohol, but about the company. And it got me thinking: am I shaped by these people, or is it who we are that draws us together?

I guess either way, it should hold our friendship strong as we move on to the working world and H attempts to start his Uni life anew in a subject none of us thought we'd go into. -Jimmy

The SIA Job Interview

Well, it seems like I haven't been updating my blog for ages. I'm still alive and well, just that I guess even with the multitude of thoughts and issues that's been running through my head these past few months, they have been relatively happy ones for me. The period since I returned from exchange have been really great for me; given me much to appreciate for in Singapore.

So what brings me to this tired old blog? Well, as expected, I had to air out my thoughts and put them into words. It has to be something big enough for me to want to revisit this place after such a long haitus. It has to be disturbing enough in my mind that even friends and family do little to alleviate it.

Last week, in view that it will be my final semester in SMU, I started seriously considering all the possible companies I will cold-send my resumes to. Top of that list was a job that I knew doesn't fit with the Accountancy degree that I was taking. But I had to send the application in. I owed it to myself, my FT prof, and lots of random friends, some of whom prolly won't even remember that I made such a promise to them.

I put in an application for cadet pilot in SIA.

It's a job I've always dreamt of since I was a kid. I mean, it's one of those airy-fairy things you dream of when you're five. Jobs that demand a certain amount of "air" (no pun intended), a certain dignity to them. Jobs that place ideals of heroism, determination and calm. I'm sure you've had such dream jobs before: policeman, fireman, astronaut and the less glamourous cousin rocket scientist. And pilot. Every boy must have dreamt of being one at least once in their lives.

For me, the thought that man created a machine that can take to the skies will always fill me with wonder. It is a wonder that makes me want to be up in front of the plane, looking out and seeing clouds and blue skies around me. There is something about flying, something magical about sitting amongst clouds.

I only found out about the Singapore Youth Flying Club when I was in JC 2. A booth was set up early in the year to promote it as a CCA. However, when I asked about it, I was told that if I qualified for the Private Pilot's License course, I would not be able to complete the course before my A levels came around. Between chasing my dream and scoring good grades, I did what any other Singaporean student would do.

I re-looked the requirements for joining the YFC when I entered university. I wasn't well-integrated into SMUX yet, so I was considering all options available for possible CCAs. However, when I called YFC up to enquire further, I was told that my PES C status in army automatically disqualifies me from the YFC program.

So there you go. All the times I thought I could chase my dream, my hopes were dashed. This application to SIA is the last time I would think of pursuing this dream. My accounting degree and OM major should put me in good stead in the corporate world, enough for me to establish a career and climb the ladder. It's not the end of the world if my hopes get dashed again.

However, seeing the email from SIA's HR department arranging an interview for the cadet pilot position filled me with dread. It occurred to me that all this while I'd been simply following the motions of chasing my dream. But now that SIA's letting me have a shot at being a pilot, I also realise that if I fail now, I will have to banish all thoughts of ever becoming a pilot and focus on a career in accounting or operations management. I get butterflies in my stomach thinking how a part of my childhood that had fervently wished to become a pilot might die off after the interview.

Right now, I must sound so idealistic, so naive, so dreamy. Many others have kissed parts of their childhood goodbye, and a good handful of them at ages much younger than I am now. So what's the big deal? I don't know. But it's sad when you lose your innocence and you don't even realise it. It's sadder still when you knowingly lose your innocence. -Jimmy

Cross-section of Singapore

I've vaguely mentioned this phenomena in a long-ago post, but given that I didn't elaborate fully back then, and the recent dearth of posts, I'm revisiting this old musing. It's not really an old musing, cos I'm sure I notice it pretty often. However, the thought only crystallised with such clarity yesterday as I took the bus back from dinner and dessert.

It was a normal bus ride back home from City Hall MRT. I pretty much do it every school day. In the first deck of the SuperBus, sitting facing two Malay girls, was this old man. He had wiry silver hair, bulgy eyes, a really gaunt look on his face, a frame that was almost all bones and he kinda stank like a person who showers once in three days. Every ten seconds or so, he'd look towards the girls (they were about their twenties) and give two or three curt nods.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that action (and its associated glint-in-eyes look) will pass off as a -ummm- pass in any nightclub.

The girls probably knew that he was staring and nodding in their direction, but they ignored him. The scene got me thinking about all the other weird characters I've noticed on my bus rides. A particularly memorable instance was this other old man with thick glasses who wears an army jockey cap. Every five minutes, he'd get off his seat, turn around to face it, stare it up and down for a while, then get back on. Another chap I remembered was this thirty-something man who dressed like a China-man (navy blue pants, white short-sleeved button-down shirt -tucked out, worn leather shoes). He was lying across 4 seats along the back of the SuperBus catching some shut-eye. His shoes were arranged neatly on the floor in front of the seats and he was showing his unbranded socks for all of us to see.

I then thought about how the bus provided one with a wholesome cross-section of Singapore. Besides these strange characters, you also have the lanky youths in their drainpipe jeans and over-sized T-shirts, bony shoulders jutting out awkwardly under the black cotton, chatting blissfully on their iphones with their girlfriends. There are the Filipino domestic helpers chatting happily with one another after their day out at Lucky Plaza. There are the workers from Bangladesh and India. The old chinese couple, sitting together, holding hands and communicating without exchanging any words, trained from over thirty years of marriage; as blissful as they were when they first went out to pak tor. Then there are the people who wear their power suits, neatly pulled-back hair and manicured nails, wearing their favoured blue blouse to face the torrent of work on Mondays.

Even the driver can be an exhibit sometimes: faces plain as they go about doing their job, watching expressionlessly as people tap their cards. However, watch them as they try to filter across 4 lanes within the space of two junctions and that face is all alertness, concentration and a bit of cunning determination.

Sometimes I wonder about "the elites" in Singapore: people who had sheltered childhoods, cruised through the best schools, got scholarships and Swords-of-Honour, climbed fast and high in their careers and end up leading Singapore. Sometimes I wonder if they have the pleasure of watching the cross-section of Singapore unfold before their eyes. -Jimmy