Drivel

Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Dance Comparison

Not-so-Random Observations

Female Latin dancers= sexy
Male Latin dancers= gay
Male Standard dancers= classy

Female Latin costumes= sexy
Male Latin costumes= gay
Male Standard costumes= classy

Female Latin moves= sexy
Male Latin moves= gay
Male Standard moves= classy

And they wonder why guys don't dance Latin!! Maybe I ought to sign up for some Waltz lessons instead.

Monday, May 30, 2005

Law School

Dennis and I were on duty together and we were discussing the repercussions of the recent decision to allocate the Bukit Timah Campus to NUS, which would allow the university to move its Business and Law faculties there.

Now, seeing that both of us have been admitted to Law, one would expect an intellectual discussion befitting future members of the legal profession. Was it the legal consequences and precedents this landmark decision set that we chose to discuss? Or perhaps even the fairness of using spatial factors as a judging criterion? Nay, for lawyers are pragmatic people, too pragmatic sometimes, and thus practical issues were what we chose to debate.

Dennis: I can’t believe this. This will wreck much of the undergraduate experience I was looking forward to.
Me: I agree wholeheartedly.
Dennis: The whole point of an undergraduate education is to allow one to broaden one’s mindset, to allow one to achieve breath of mind by interacting with people pursuing different subjects and interests.
Me: Exactly, such a move would greatly limit our intellectual circles and opinions since we will be mixing with people who are rather similar. While diversity does exist within and between the two schools, it is greatly reduced since these two faculties are more professional in nature and students are thus self-selecting.
Dennis: Yes, it seems like we are deprived of a fundamental tenet of varsity life. If I had to put a number to it, I say we are losing out by at least 80%.
Wei Yang: 80%? Is it possible to quantify the quality of something as abstract and intangible as an undergraduate experience?
Dennis and Me: Well, we can calculate the percentage reduction of females. Why, just imagine all the hot girls from other faculties we are missing out on!

Disclaimer: This is meant to be a highly fictitious and exaggerated account. For all would-be-detractors, cease and desist, now!

Monday, May 16, 2005

New Way To Say No

“It’s not so much we are not open to you going to xxx university. We just don’t want you to make a big mistake. We simply want the best for you, and we definitely have your interests at heart.”

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

An Ideal Husband

I was reading An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde last night, and the theme of love being predicated upon worship struck a cord.

…the ideal…

LADY CHILTERN: Men can love what is beneath them - things unworthy, stained, dishonoured. We women worship when we love; and when we lose our worship, we lose everything. Oh! don't kill my love for you, don't kill that!

…which invariably leads to the revelation…

LADY CHILTERN: You sold a Cabinet secret for money! You began your life with fraud! You built up your career on dishonour! Oh, tell me it is not true! Lie to me! Lie to me! Tell me it is not true!

LADY CHILTERN: No, don't speak! Say nothing! Your voice wakes terrible memories - memories of things that made me love you - memories of words that made me love you - memories that now are horrible to me. And how I worshipped you! You were to me something apart from common life, a thing pure, noble, honest, without stain. The world seemed to me finer because you were in it, and goodness more real because you lived. And now - oh, when I think that I made of a man like you my ideal! the ideal of my life!

…the response, which in my opinion, is advice I need to heed…

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN: There was your mistake. There was your error. The error all women commit. Why can't you women love us, faults and all? Why do you place us on monstrous pedestals? We have all feet of clay, women as well as men; but when we men love women, we love them knowing their weaknesses, their follies, their imperfections, love them all the more, it may be, for that reason. It is not the perfect, but the imperfect, who have need of love. It is when we are wounded by our own hands, or by the hands of others, that love should come to cure us - else what use is love at all? All sins, except a sin against itself, Love should forgive. All lives, save loveless lives, true Love should pardon. A man's love is like that. It is wider, larger, more human than a woman's. Women think that they are making ideals of men. What they are making of us are false idols merely. You made your false idol of me, and I had not the courage to come down, show you my wounds, tell you my weaknesses. I was afraid that I might lose your love, as I have lost it now. And so, last night you ruined my life for me - yes, ruined it! What this woman asked of me was nothing compared to what she offered to me. She offered security, peace, stability. The sin of my youth, that I had thought was buried, rose up in front of me, hideous, horrible, with its hands at my throat. I could have killed it for ever, sent it back into its tomb, destroyed its record, burned the one witness against me. You prevented me. No one but you, you know it. And now what is there before me but public disgrace, ruin, terrible shame, the mockery of the world, a lonely dishonoured life, a lonely dishonoured death, it may be, some day? Let women make no more ideals of men! let them not put them on alters and bow before them, or they may ruin other lives as completely as you - you whom I have so wildly loved - have ruined mine!

Saturday, May 07, 2005

Moving On

I haven’t been myself lately. The last three weeks saw the resurgence of the gloomy, overly-critical and insecure Daniel that I thought was forever consigned to a distant memory. Yet it seems that the past doesn’t die easily; rather, it lurks within the deepest recesses of one’s mind, and resurfaces when one’s emotional defences are weakened.

But is there a point in brooding? What does it achieve? Wouldn’t moving on be better?

My dance shoes are covered with a thin layer of dust, the result of three weeks of disuse. Perhaps it’s time to wear them again?

Friday, May 06, 2005

Questions, Lessons

I remember Janice asking me in June last year: “Of all the people in the world, why do you have to fall for someone who’s both attached and overseas-bound?” I had no answer, for then, emotions transcended logic.

Fast-forward to the present: one year older, but not necessarily one year wiser. Indeed, one year of introspection has brought me no closer to the answer; rather, I’m plagued with more questions. Why has the Lord arranged for me to meet someone who completely changed my views on relationships and marriage? Why has the Lord then also made it such that we’ll never be together? Is there a lesson I’m supposed to learn?

Sunday, May 01, 2005

Emotional Dykes

I seek to escape reality by busying myself with myriad activities; work is the dyke holding back the tide of emotions. But why does it crumble when I hear Toshiro Masuda’s Sadness and Sorrow?