I got back from a great vacation in Bali last Saturday, which was more relaxing rather than active. It was unfortunate also that I fell sick for half of the time I was there, but nonetheless, it was a good place to recover my health. The day breaks early and the night falls quickly. Anyhow, combination of sleep deprivation during the travel period and the need for my body to recuperate saw me fast asleep for 14 hours on Saturday by 7 pm until the following day. Sunday was when I had to catch up on some old job and today is when I have to commence by current 'day' job.
Anyway, now that I am back, I have loads of work to catch up on. I will blog more about my trip later in the evening.
Happy New Year!
Monday, December 31, 2007
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
It is just a week and a half to Christmas
And so little time, and so much to do. Keeping busy is good. Keeps one in perspective. Keeps on the positive vibe coming in, however downtrodden and battle-weary one might be at times.
And the great part is, I am beginning to read poetry again. I find myself in kindred spirit with poets at the moment. Great poets illustrate life's potholes and murkiness without that maudlin sensitivities.
I am beginning with Philip Larkin. Since I am going for a vacation in Christmas, I will be bringing with me some good, life-changing reading materials. An Indonesian and French poet or two might not be a bad idea, though I don't feel like lugging dictionaries around (and am too poor to afford the electronic version at the moment).
Too bad I couldn't go to the Ubud Literary festival but I still get to go to Ubud.
And the great part is, I am beginning to read poetry again. I find myself in kindred spirit with poets at the moment. Great poets illustrate life's potholes and murkiness without that maudlin sensitivities.
I am beginning with Philip Larkin. Since I am going for a vacation in Christmas, I will be bringing with me some good, life-changing reading materials. An Indonesian and French poet or two might not be a bad idea, though I don't feel like lugging dictionaries around (and am too poor to afford the electronic version at the moment).
Too bad I couldn't go to the Ubud Literary festival but I still get to go to Ubud.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Sometimes, it is good to give up something for awhile...
You are over obsessed with something and you want to find a quick resolution. How do I do that?
Sometimes, it is good to take a measured step back, and don't do anything about it (while learning not to over-procrastinate on that all too important decision) and see how things work out. Many a times, it is good to go back to the drawing board and see how it can be improved. If it cannot be improved further, and if it still doesn't work, then cut your losses and move on. Try something else. After all, genius is 99% perspiration (tears and blood). If you want an easy life, don't do anything remotely challenging, one that opens you to risks of failure and heartache.
Personally, there are times whereby I am tired of change. I am scared of it, particularly when I have no idea if I am going to fall into that big black hole and never come out again. I worry about my inability to take chances, or my ability to take the wrong risks, succumbing to further successions of failures. I worry that I will never find something to keep me happy and contented.
When I made a decision to change the direction of my life, five years ago, I took a chance at something risky. Really risky, with a strong chance of failure. Even my parents asked me if I wanted to do it. I said I did, impetuous lil naive me. At the same time, I was trying to look for other ways out, but not quite succeeding. While I might not be great in what I did before, I could still somehow survive it, intact. However difficult the task I was set to do back then, it was never as difficult as having to deal with a lot of the issues I had to deal with in the last five years. What if I want to go back to it now. Would I want to go back to it, to the way I used to like it? Or can I return to it, but in a modified form, using some of the skills I had obtained through much sweat and tears in the last five years. I do know, deep down in my heart, it was my first love, and I have a certain aptitude for it, a certain creativity even if technically, I was not strong.
Moreover, in the five years, I have given up the solace of religion, making an almost complete break but with still a tiny thread of unsevered umbilical cord that attaches me to it. While I still believe in its principles, my questioning of things that led to no answers had left me on a perpetual cliffhanger. In fact, much of what characterizes my life this year is the epitome of a cliffhanger. I am finding some time again to start re-examining my ideas and ideals and where I might have gone astray, reading and learning as much as I could.
So now, it remains to be seen how I can marry my strengths to this. I've learned more about my limitations in recent years, but at the same time, I have greater clarity over where my strength lies, and which areas I know for certain I can and will shine in.
I still have some unfinished business, which I hope to soon see the end of by the end of this year, even if I have to work overtime at it. I want to start the new year on a nice, good clean slate. With new ideas and directions, and work cut out for me to move towards it. This time, with greater certainty and understanding. Lessons I've learned this year had opened doors to me to experiences that I would never had, if I had never taken this step, however fraught with thorns it had been. Now it's a matter of sitting back and shaping them, and looking for ways to channel them, constructively. And to excel at it.
Am I a rough diamond? Yes, I am just mined from Earth's underbelly.
Sometimes, it is good to take a measured step back, and don't do anything about it (while learning not to over-procrastinate on that all too important decision) and see how things work out. Many a times, it is good to go back to the drawing board and see how it can be improved. If it cannot be improved further, and if it still doesn't work, then cut your losses and move on. Try something else. After all, genius is 99% perspiration (tears and blood). If you want an easy life, don't do anything remotely challenging, one that opens you to risks of failure and heartache.
Personally, there are times whereby I am tired of change. I am scared of it, particularly when I have no idea if I am going to fall into that big black hole and never come out again. I worry about my inability to take chances, or my ability to take the wrong risks, succumbing to further successions of failures. I worry that I will never find something to keep me happy and contented.
When I made a decision to change the direction of my life, five years ago, I took a chance at something risky. Really risky, with a strong chance of failure. Even my parents asked me if I wanted to do it. I said I did, impetuous lil naive me. At the same time, I was trying to look for other ways out, but not quite succeeding. While I might not be great in what I did before, I could still somehow survive it, intact. However difficult the task I was set to do back then, it was never as difficult as having to deal with a lot of the issues I had to deal with in the last five years. What if I want to go back to it now. Would I want to go back to it, to the way I used to like it? Or can I return to it, but in a modified form, using some of the skills I had obtained through much sweat and tears in the last five years. I do know, deep down in my heart, it was my first love, and I have a certain aptitude for it, a certain creativity even if technically, I was not strong.
Moreover, in the five years, I have given up the solace of religion, making an almost complete break but with still a tiny thread of unsevered umbilical cord that attaches me to it. While I still believe in its principles, my questioning of things that led to no answers had left me on a perpetual cliffhanger. In fact, much of what characterizes my life this year is the epitome of a cliffhanger. I am finding some time again to start re-examining my ideas and ideals and where I might have gone astray, reading and learning as much as I could.
So now, it remains to be seen how I can marry my strengths to this. I've learned more about my limitations in recent years, but at the same time, I have greater clarity over where my strength lies, and which areas I know for certain I can and will shine in.
I still have some unfinished business, which I hope to soon see the end of by the end of this year, even if I have to work overtime at it. I want to start the new year on a nice, good clean slate. With new ideas and directions, and work cut out for me to move towards it. This time, with greater certainty and understanding. Lessons I've learned this year had opened doors to me to experiences that I would never had, if I had never taken this step, however fraught with thorns it had been. Now it's a matter of sitting back and shaping them, and looking for ways to channel them, constructively. And to excel at it.
Am I a rough diamond? Yes, I am just mined from Earth's underbelly.
Saturday, December 08, 2007
research and the story of my life
Most people fail to appreciate how difficult and how many hours are required merely to dig up a lot of information that one needs to write about something, particularly when that thing is either out of your reach (highly expensive subscription database that would be hard on an individual's pocket, particularly an individual unaffiliated to any institution and is from a country with a relatively 'small' currency) and who is unfamiliar with the subject. Maybe that's why I've to really decide. If I really want to work with ideas, what kind of ideas do I want to work with? Who do I want to work with? And what kind of work do I want to do? Why do I want to do it?
It's no fun being jill-of-all-trades researcher. Firstly, you are bound to have to do something you have little interest in yet have to spend hours unearthing (made possibly frustrating when you don't know where's the best place to start). I do enjoy doing research, but mainly in areas of interest to me. And I am interested in working with ideas. So where should I be? In the academia? Anywhere else? Perhaps start my own enterprise?
Trying out a test for a research-related job application really got me thinking: do I really want to do this kind of stuff for the rest of my working days, yet not quite getting anywhere, as in getting into something that makes my going to work something of a bang (despite the unavoidable down days that had less to do with job frustration but more to do with unavoidable or unpredictable circumstances) instead a bummer. Life is too short to do just things for money while being miserable throughout your youth. However, not having enough money can also do that for you. So where can I be where I can have enough without the financial struggle while doing something that holds a meaning bigger than a 'job.' How do I seek an opportunity to do that? Well, that's where research as a skill comes in. While skills in commercial research pays well and can have a good demand once one becomes a pro at it, it does not have the same meaning as when one is demand for being good at something that fulfills.
So, it is certainly time for me, by early next year, to begin preparing myself for the one that will define my career goals, and to persevere by it despite the immense difficulties I might fall into, because the goal and objective is now clear. Should I not succeed by that, at least I will still have the skills that could be used elsewhere. Rather than always trying to have my feet in two boats and being all tensed, anxious and stressed out because of that. This might mean taking a pay-cut and a job that has little recognition in society, but I think that would pay out in the end. After all, I've tried a different and more 'sensible' way forward, trying to give up on my dreams for awhile and that had come close to disaster a few times. So I do know now, that by a strange quirk of personality, I am not someone who can take on a job with heavy responsibilities and which requires a high level of performance if I am not personally engaged by it.
It's no fun being jill-of-all-trades researcher. Firstly, you are bound to have to do something you have little interest in yet have to spend hours unearthing (made possibly frustrating when you don't know where's the best place to start). I do enjoy doing research, but mainly in areas of interest to me. And I am interested in working with ideas. So where should I be? In the academia? Anywhere else? Perhaps start my own enterprise?
Trying out a test for a research-related job application really got me thinking: do I really want to do this kind of stuff for the rest of my working days, yet not quite getting anywhere, as in getting into something that makes my going to work something of a bang (despite the unavoidable down days that had less to do with job frustration but more to do with unavoidable or unpredictable circumstances) instead a bummer. Life is too short to do just things for money while being miserable throughout your youth. However, not having enough money can also do that for you. So where can I be where I can have enough without the financial struggle while doing something that holds a meaning bigger than a 'job.' How do I seek an opportunity to do that? Well, that's where research as a skill comes in. While skills in commercial research pays well and can have a good demand once one becomes a pro at it, it does not have the same meaning as when one is demand for being good at something that fulfills.
So, it is certainly time for me, by early next year, to begin preparing myself for the one that will define my career goals, and to persevere by it despite the immense difficulties I might fall into, because the goal and objective is now clear. Should I not succeed by that, at least I will still have the skills that could be used elsewhere. Rather than always trying to have my feet in two boats and being all tensed, anxious and stressed out because of that. This might mean taking a pay-cut and a job that has little recognition in society, but I think that would pay out in the end. After all, I've tried a different and more 'sensible' way forward, trying to give up on my dreams for awhile and that had come close to disaster a few times. So I do know now, that by a strange quirk of personality, I am not someone who can take on a job with heavy responsibilities and which requires a high level of performance if I am not personally engaged by it.
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Thinking (un)linearly
I think I once wrote about thinking in a straight line. Writing in a linear way while being clear is an ordinary skill. Writing non-linearly yet sounding logical and clear is an art. Not many postmodern theorists can be said to have succeeded in doing that.
How does one succeed in the latter? Should we take our cue from John Donne, the sixteenth century poet and sermonist who is a pro in the art of rhetoric, and a master of making sense while arguing in circles and repeating sentences twice, first in Latin and then in English.
I've been writing a proposal and a personal statement in the last few days, while also reading a modern European thinker who is none too linear in his thinking. But its a translated work, I am not sure who's the one who had not quite mastered the art of clarity. Nonetheless, the ideas proposed are no walk in a park.
I am a mistress (this sounds demeaning) of non-sequiturs.
Ever seen a fish, swimming leisurely in a tank behind you, jumping out of the water in a shock just as you were bending backwards and stretching out your hands to loosen those knotted muscles? Well that just happened to me two days ago. That fish sits behind the sofa in my friends' living room. They've kept it for a year. It's gone much bigger
I've been thinking about how much I know or do not know, and realized how shallow my knowledge really is. So much that I've read I did not quite understand, nor did I quite know.
So what should I do to remedy that? Spend less time writing and more time reading? Spend more time thinking so that the ideas will sink in? This fast-pace world does not value the person with idle time.
Today, I went to a library and saw a Malaysian history comic book called "Where the Monsoon Meet: the Malaysian people's history." It's published by some small NGO. Anyone who'd like refresher course in Malaysian history would do well to get a copy of it.
I actually meant to write something that makes some sense. I have so much ideas earlier today, but no means and time to put them down. Now I am too tired. Goodnight
How does one succeed in the latter? Should we take our cue from John Donne, the sixteenth century poet and sermonist who is a pro in the art of rhetoric, and a master of making sense while arguing in circles and repeating sentences twice, first in Latin and then in English.
I've been writing a proposal and a personal statement in the last few days, while also reading a modern European thinker who is none too linear in his thinking. But its a translated work, I am not sure who's the one who had not quite mastered the art of clarity. Nonetheless, the ideas proposed are no walk in a park.
I am a mistress (this sounds demeaning) of non-sequiturs.
Ever seen a fish, swimming leisurely in a tank behind you, jumping out of the water in a shock just as you were bending backwards and stretching out your hands to loosen those knotted muscles? Well that just happened to me two days ago. That fish sits behind the sofa in my friends' living room. They've kept it for a year. It's gone much bigger
I've been thinking about how much I know or do not know, and realized how shallow my knowledge really is. So much that I've read I did not quite understand, nor did I quite know.
So what should I do to remedy that? Spend less time writing and more time reading? Spend more time thinking so that the ideas will sink in? This fast-pace world does not value the person with idle time.
Today, I went to a library and saw a Malaysian history comic book called "Where the Monsoon Meet: the Malaysian people's history." It's published by some small NGO. Anyone who'd like refresher course in Malaysian history would do well to get a copy of it.
I actually meant to write something that makes some sense. I have so much ideas earlier today, but no means and time to put them down. Now I am too tired. Goodnight
Sunday, December 02, 2007
Is change in the offing in Malaysia
I can't quite tell. The last few weeks had been a hectic but rather exciting time in Malaysia. First, the BERSIH rally that called for a clean and transparent electoral process in view of the soon-to-come General Elections which is expected early next year, and then the HINDRAF event where thousands of Indians had a rally to state their support for the lawsuit against the British Government. News were heard and seen from all sides of the media. With regard to the HINDRAF event, I already knew about it weeks in advance because a friend had shown me an sms he received calling for all Indians to show their support for this lawsuit and the rally.
I am rather busy working on something, but rest assure that I will be keeping my eyes peeled on all the goings on. And I have a gut feeling that the coming GE will be really exciting. However, I believe change is only possible if people are really angry enough to want that. What do the grassroots really think or feel?
I am rather busy working on something, but rest assure that I will be keeping my eyes peeled on all the goings on. And I have a gut feeling that the coming GE will be really exciting. However, I believe change is only possible if people are really angry enough to want that. What do the grassroots really think or feel?
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