Breakwaters

Breakwaters are structures constructed on coasts to reduce the intensity of wave action on the coastlines.

A breakwater is not a beautiful sculpture or structure; it is merely a functional one, ignoble stone structures with no aesthetics to command anybody's approval, merely fulfilling its function of guarding the coast against being eaten away by the sea. The breakwater - stalwart, isolated -the solitary line of defence against the wind and the waves and all the destructive power of the unleashed elements, sea pitting its strength against the land.

What solitary things breakwaters are. Alone, and doing the thankless unglamorous task of standing guard over land, protecting it from the sea. People speak admiringly of the great and the beautiful structures - the unparalleled Great Wall of China, the dazzling tombs of Egypt, the quixotic Tower of Pisa. But nobody speaks of the functional, plain, clumsy breakwater. Because it is neither great or seductive or exciting; it just does what it's built to do.

Not too long ago, I had a dream, and the image of a breakwater arose in my mind, uninvoked. I have run out of words to describe it, but to express it baldly, the breakwater, though small, was holding at bay the terribly destructive power of waves that threaten to engulf the land hiding behind the stone structure; the winds were strong and aroused the waves to great fury, but the breakwater stood its ground, undaunted and indomitable. A puny man-made structure made out stone, against the great wild elements. It seemed like an unfair fight, but when the wind and the waves had done its worst and subsided in its fury, the diminutive structure still stood, unyielded.

I was astonished at the hardiness of this crumbling structure, but I realised that although on the verge of collapse, after having received such a battering, the stones almost disintegrating, but I knew that the strength of the structure lay not only in its tip which lay above the sand, but in its deep-rooted foundations in the sand. And no matter how punishing the assaults and buffeting, the little structure can withstand them all.

I woke up with a question ringing in my ears, "Is that breakwater, you?". I was afraid, perhaps "afraid" is not a good word, but I felt a sense of wonderment in my dread. Being like a breakwater, requires a strength, a toughness, a fastness; the thought almost terrifies me as I think about the super human kind of capacity it would take for a person to be able to stand resolute, faithful and unwavering in the destructiveness of the life and the world that we know. The breakwater is the sole protection of the weak and the unable and the fragile. Maybe I am what I am, and I am strong-willed and physically strong, and there is a reason why I need to be strong, because the weak needs a breakwater to fend off the worse of the elements.

Maybe. I am so afraid of this "maybe".

Cringe

No thanks to Dumb Ass, I was reading through some of my old posts, way back from 2005 (such a looong time ago!), and it all seemed like such a different day and age, and even coming from an entirely different person!


Some of them were really cringe-worthy in terms of what I wrote about, and how I wrote, and how naive and ridiculous I was, just 5 years ago. But the surprising thing is, so much had change since then. Life has changed dramatically since then - the change is only obvious when one compares life in 2005 and the same in 2009, and I almost didn't recognise myself. It was such a different type of life, the lifestyle I was living, the types of friends I had, the things that I was concerned with. Not that it's good now and bad before, or vice versa, it's just, well, different. And the person I am now, and the person I was before, well, I'm just different. Not better, not worse, just different.


I'm not necessarily better now than before, neither am I worse off. It's just phases of life one has to go through I think, and in each slice of life, the focus, the values, the lifestyles all reflect different parts of that life cycle. I can't look back at myself in my 20s and bemoan my guilelessness, my naivety, my happy-go-luckiness then, because it's not a bad thing, it's just what I was at that point in my life.


I used to have this habit I think, when looking back on the year during Christmas time, to talk about the should-have-beens and the could-have-beens and do the oh-how-i-wished-i-had-done-it-differently-stupid-me. It was that desire to have every minute of my life perfect I think, to have the perfect job, perfect friends, perfect boyfriend and that refusal to have anything inperfect or ugly or embarrassing mar my life. But I suppose now, I am starting to accept that life is made up of the good, the bad, and ugly, and I have to learn to take it as it comes, and not take inperfect things as a personal affront. Life is just, well, life. It comes as it comes. There's a randomness about the universe in the sense that it doesn't care whether you're rich or intelligent or powerful or famous; when things happen, it just happens, regardless or who the heck you are.


Life is not fair. Who do we think that we are that life has to be fair, just for us? Why do we deserve money, a nice life, wonderful friends more than the other person does? It's a sense of the world owing us a living and expecting the world to revolve around us that we expect people to be nicer to us than they are to the other person.


Having said all that, it doesn't mean I don't believe in God but believe that the universe is random and what happens to our life depends on pur chance; it also doesn't mean that we should be fatalists in our thinking. I was merely making the point that life, and the people around us, doesn't owe us a damn thing, so stop expecting the world to pander to your wants and needs and stop complaining that "life is not fair". (I am talking to myself really.)


So if I haven't accomplished anything worth mentioning this year, well, at least I am starting to understand where I stand in the bigger scheme of things, at least I hope so. The road is further than I thought it was, and I'm further from my goal than I originally thought I was, having previously assumed and presumed that I had journeyed further than I had these past few years. And although the thought of having to traverse such a great distance does scare me, I guess I'll just work at taking it a step at a time, and start relying on pure hard word rather than thinking that I deserve to be given a break and have it easier.


All this is extremely uninteresting to read and all very difficult to understand. But I guess this is what I am at the moment - uninteresting and slightly confused, trying to figure things out. And even if it is uninteresting and boring, I still don't mind posting; this post might just prove to be quite pivotal and important when I look back at what I was before in 2019.

Where do I go from here?

A song from Pocahontas

The earth is cold, the fields are bare
The branches fold against the wind that's everywhere
The birds move on so they survive
When snow so deep the bears all sleep to keep themselves alive
They do what they must for now and trust in their plan
If I trust in mine somehow I might find who I am

But where do I go from here
So many voices ringing in my ears
Which is the voice that I was meant to hear
How will I know
Where do I go.. from here?

So how do I know whether I'm a branch, a bird or a bear?
The branch recognises that it must submit to the harshness of the winter in order to survive and to bloom again the next spring, and it ceases in its strugglings and quietly dies.
The birds know to fly south, away from the cold and the snow and the winter, to a warmer place where they flourish and grow, until it's time to return.
The bears know their destiny is to stay on, no matter how deep the cold, because if it tries to go anywhere else it will die.
What if, the bird chooses to stay, and the bear to go, because they didn't know any better?

My world has changed and so have I
I've learnt to choose and even learn to say goodbye
The path ahead so hard to see
It winds and bends but where it ends depends on only me
In my heart I don't feel part of so much I've know
Now it seems it's time to start a new life on my own

But where do I go from here?
So many voices ringing in my ear
Which is the voice that I was meant to hear
How will I know
Where do I go... from here?

The Case of A Mistaken Identity

The post title sounds quite promising doesn't it? Sounding almost like a Agatha Christie who-dun-it classic. If only this post was as entertaining....

Incidentally, a mistaken identity, is the one thing that Bomba the Jungle Boy, a caterpillar, the Ugly Duckling, and Giselle of the Enchanted movie have in common.

Bomba, the Jungle Boy thought he was an animal and belonged in the jungle.
The Ugly Ducking thought it was a duck.
The caterpillar thought it was destined its whole life to crawl on its many legs.
Giselle thought she only had the chops to be a two-dimensional fairy-tale princess.

But we all know how all the stories of the different personalities end don't we?

Bomba was really human in his make-up and needed to go back to where he really belonged.
The Ugly Ducking was no duck; it was a beautiful swan.
The caterpillar had to submit to its personal metarmorphosis, to a butterfly.
And Giselle was more than a beautiful princess; she had brains and soul and heart and the creativity to be a fashion designer.

There's always the possibility of a beautiful ending to every story of a mistaken identity. In the midst of all that confusion and loss that comes with finding out one is not really who one thinks, and to all that trouble of having to re-define and re-discover oneself, and the pain and struggle of change and growth, I guess we can always take comfort that the end result of the transformation would always come as a wonderful and worthwhile surprise.

Anti-Technology

When job hunting, I realised that more and more companies are looking for marketing people to specifically market to and on the latest things in technology, namely things like Facebook, viral marketing stuff on Youtube and what not, using Twitter and the gadzillion other online new-fangled things that I am not aware of.

To me, the Anti-Technology person, this will be a job from hell. I hate Facebook, and the only reason why I use it to to be a voyeur of other people's Facebook lives, and to un-tag photos of me that are uploaded on Facebook. (I really don't understand why people must tag me to their photos, but it would be rude to ask them to stop assuming that I want my photos seen by the entire world, so I must forever hold my peace regarding this.)

I refuse to tweet, even though some have almost gone down on their knees to persuade me to start tweeting. But I refused to have my thoughts confined to 14 letters because I know that is what will happen to my brain once I start tweeting; I will start thinking in terms of "tweets" instead of sentences, like I've started to expree myself and my life in terms of MSN display names!

Is it only me or is this level of technology really quite scary, the way they're so drastically changing how people live their lives, how people spell and think, and how people are losing the ability to think in long sentences?

Apparently I disapprove of gambling...

I do not approve of gambling. But I can't remember why exactly.

There was quite a furor when the Singapore government announced that they were going to build 2 casinos. There were petitions against it, forums bustling with indignant and vehement cries of protest, religious groups moaning "what is the world coming to?".

Personally I didn't like the idea of building the casinos either. But it was more from a dislike of encouraging greater tourism in a place which I already considered over-crowded than a disapproval of the apparently inmoral sport, which many have claimed gambling is.

But now, with the 2 casinos quite nearly finished, and having personally gotten to know people who enjoy playing poker, I think I need to re-think what exactly it is about gambling that I have against really; because I can't for the life of me remember.

Some say gambling, or the sport that is highly dependant on luck, is an immoral game. But from what I've heard, gambling actually depends more on skills than on luck. In fact, gambling is a sport based on probability and odds and evens, and what not, and is actually Maths in action. So it is a highly intellectual game. And if we're really against games of chance so to speak, perhaps we ought to get rid of things like horse-racing, lucky draws, and the lottery as well; or are these supposedly less 'evil' than gambling at casinos. And if they are, can somebody tell me why?

"Gambling is addictive and destroys families." Well I think many things destroy families - extra-marital affairs, the laws that allow for divorce, spousal violence etc. So why is gambling the 'poster boy' for family break-ups then? Gambling is addictive, undeniably, but so are computer games, over-eating and gluttony, smoking, and potato chips. Anything that is addictive has the potential to destroy a person's body and mind, as well as the potential to affect the people related and connected to the addicted person. Over-eating and smoking causes heart problems and may result in death. And I would think a dead person would affect a person as much as, if not more than a person who's alive but addicted to gambling wouldn't it?

So why on earth is gambling "wrong" or "bad'? If we are against gambling, surely we should be against anything that is addictive, that are games of chance, but why do we attack gambling but allow the rest to be named as lesser evils? It's a cop-out isn't it, this society that we live in. We condemn some things but encourage other things, merely by the basis of what suits our agenda best. That, I would think, is a fair greater evil than gambling can ever be, because it seeps into one's heart and soul and mind, and convinces that one is right, just because one says so.

Well since the society we live in is so hypocritical about such things, I don't see any point in standing up to a system that is amoral and value-neutral anyway. In fact, why doesn't everybody just do what they want, that seems to be the way things are nowadays. Wars are start for fun and without basis, innocent people are bombed and terrorized by some person's arbitrary morals and values that says "killing is divine". We live in a world that has no absolutes, where people can do anything they want to do, just as long as they can spin a PR-sounding spiel to fool the fools of the world. But this, is a whole new topic altogether that I shall address in a separate post.

Nostalgia

There are some people I really miss.

What is the reason...

...why you wake up in the morning every day?