love, life, school and coffee.

Sunday, November 20, 2005

You are you.

Jimmy, good to know you grasped back your roots. They say the fruit doesnt fall far from its tree. Not saying you're a fruit or vege or something. Hanz's a vege btw. If he's not reading this its ok to call him that i guess hehehe ;-)

Aaaaanyways...... Here's a good way to mess up your com big time. Go to "run", type msconfig. Press Enter. Go to win.ini, then uncheck anything you fancy. Restart com and Despair! I'd like to thank Chin T for making me try to fix that virus he downloaded. BUt all's well that ends well i guess. Virus deleted, and a VERY valuable lesson learnt. Makes me kinda wish for Win 98 back.

By the way if you're wondering, the msconfig thing makes the com unable to run many windows background progs. You'll see your wallpaper (only) if you're lucky.

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Who Am I? You Sure You Wanna Know?

Half empty or half full? Some things just get blown out of proportion.

When music groups do something like this, it is known as "double a-side". When magazines do it, it's known as "special bumber issue". When TV stations do it, they call it "special 2 episode screening". In the normal English language, it can be called a "double whammy" or "Double dose". There I go again, saying irrelevant things before even talking about the issue at hand.

So just what is the issue at hand? Well, I can't put a finger to it either. I guess it's just one of those times when you really feel confused but really eager to find out more. Last week, while I stayed back in school discussing a particularly draining project, this thought crossed my mind: "Why am I spending so much time over this group project?"

It had been a long day for me. Earlier in the day, I was questioning the wisdom of doing accountancy. Why the hell did I not take aeronautical engineering, considering I love planes, and I love Physics? (It's a long story, but I guess I'll add this to the list of topics I can blog about, but never get down to doing.)

Anyway, it was late, I hadn't had my dinner, and I was discussing the project with another member. I wondered why I did things the way I did. I thrive on having a clear set of goals, then working alone to achieve it. When my parents wanted my sister and I to change our bedsheets, I would rather do it alone rather than co-operate with my sister. I've never wondered why I preferred it that way.

If I had lots of tasks at hand, I'd need pencil and paper to scribble them down. I'd then scribble down what has to be done for each of them and plan out the tasks into manageable bits. I need pencil and paper to think. I hated doing mental sums back in school; I could never visualise problems. Everything has to be put down in pencil and paper. Even when writing compositions, I'd do a pencil/paper backbone before fleshing everything out.

I'd count being focused as one of the traits of an effective leader. However, I have never bothered to rise to the challenge of being a leader. I was never a prefect and I only held the (lowly) title of Section Commander in NCC. I was a clerk in Army. I didn't find it worthwhile to drive a group and be accountable for any mistakes within the group.

I also felt that I was better than some of my friends in terms of grasping new concepts being taught. (I am really thankful for this, though.) I believe most of you would be bored by now. I'll get down to the issues.

I asked my parents why I work this way. Apparently, much of how I work comes from my father. Yes, he prefers working alone. (He admits to having a perfectionist streak.) Yes, he feels weird if he does not plan meticulously.Yes, he feels more endowed in grasping concepts taught. (Yes, he thinks he might do well in accountancy, and I feel I might do well in engineering too.)

I wondered how much of this similarity stems from nature, and how much from nurture. Was I like this because of my parents' blood? Or is it due to the fact that I've observed them since young, and that I am merely emulating them?

Like any debate that has raged on for ages, the nature/nurture debate had no conclusive answers. I was pretty confused when I signed on in MSN that night. While I was chatting with a friend, however, it dawned on me.

It doesn't matter whether it was nature or nurture that made me who I am today. What was most important was my parents. I am who I am today because of them. For all my strengths and imperfections, I have my parents to thank. And I am thankful for them. I've had friends who claim that I have a unique family. I smile back. I love my unique family. I love the fact that I'm a Tjeng. -Jimmy

PS: In case you didn't understand what I meant when I talked about "double trouble", it just meant that I posted 2 different posts in a day! Whee! We're now at our 10th post! 10 measly posts! Oi! Ah Han! Izz! Don't tell me the blog idea went down the drain!

Of Playing Pool and Sitting on Laps

Progress at work. Blog being updated.

Well, here it is. The long-awaited post that people who have stumbled upon this blog have been asking for. The thing is that I set out to make this a thinking person's blog and I only post an entry when I ponder over certain issues. I guess you guys, our loyal supporters (however many there are), are in luck. I have some issues which you guys might wanna ponder over.

This event occured about 3 weeks ago. I was playing pool with the usual gang: Secondary and JC ODAC friends. As usual, most of us were making a fool out of ourselves: tripping over our cues, hitting the cue ball off the table and missing the cue ball entirely. (I just realised that I have digressed even before starting.)

The issue here is not our very poor pool skills. It was the behaviour of the teens playing on the table next to ours. If you consider them teens. They looked more like 12 year old kids. Actually, I was never good at telling people's ages just by looking at them. However, for the purposes of this post, and for dramatic effect, let us just assume that they're not much older than 12 year olds.

There were 3 guys and 3 girls taking turns to play. They were taking turns to play and they sat at the benches next to the table while awaiting their turn. One particular girl, however, was sitting on the lap of a particular guy and had her arms around his neck. I don't really have any objections to public displays of affection (another blog post, perhaps?), but I was disturbed by what I saw.

The first thought that came to my mind was "Do they even know what they're doing?" They looked like 12 year old kids! I don't think anyone just at the cusp of puberty knows what a relationship entails. (Forgive any exaggerations on my part.) Could they perhaps go into a relationship just because they think it's cool? Do they know the repercussions of any action they make in the relationship? Will they be able to balance both the relationship and their studies? Do they know how to handle any problems in the relationship? Will they be emotionally ready for a break-up?

Then it dawned on me. Perhaps I was disapproving of their behaviour just because I have never been in one myself. Perhaps I was just jealous. If I had been in a relationship back in secondary school, would I also have done the same? I quickly dismissed the thought: I was such an introvert back in secondary school, I didn't even dare talk to a girl! What relationship? Rubbish! Still, it didn't hurt thinking about it. Will I want a girl to do the same if I was in a relationship today? I know I'm much more of a "internal" person, as opposed to an "external/physical" one. I'd rather spend time chatting about hypothesis testing than have her breathe down my neck. Just a personal opinion. Couples out there, no offence, ya?

So, the natural progression of thoughts came to this: What right do I have to care how the kids spend their lives? I'm just another human being, not some god. Not even a higher-level human being. If they want to have a relationship, I have no say in it. (I don't think blogging about it is wrong. Or is it?)

I asked a friend over this issue. The friend laughed it off. Friend thinks I'm too conservative. Well, perhaps I am. But I guess I like being conservative. Ultimately, I'm happy that I've never been in a relationship thus far. I don't feel any less human just because of that one fact. Neither do I feel any less human just because I trip over my own cue. -Jimmy