Playing with sand!

A few days back I was at the beach with my best secondary school friends. Just 4 guys who were really bored and ended up on sentosa's beach. After having tried my hand at sandsculpting (of sorts) during an earlier trip with the beach with Miranda and friends, I brought my tools (garden spades) again to see if I have the chance to have some fun.

And guess what? My friends were game for it and even sculpted some of their own stuff. We tried (and failed) to make a watch tower. And I thought we could make it a part of the Great Wall of China thing. That was when I learnt that my ability to stack sand to a decent height is not decent at all.

Looking closely, we actually did pretty well - if we were trying to make a volcano.

But later we (at least I did) still got our tan, and in our last hour on the beach, I sculpted a squarish watch tower by going subterrain - digging into the existing sandbed, rather than building upwards.

And here's how it looked like.


But I think the prize for the best sculpture surely goes to Zhidong, who carved a nice turtle out! (there should have been eggs)


And as the story goes, the turtle swam from the water to the shore towards to mountains!

Anyway, after a very fun day, we ended up with this!


And I figured out that I wanted to learn more about sand sculpting. Guess I'll go back to the beach more often to have fun while tanning!

Fitness plans

Just a very short update. And I hope this doesn't bore you. Part of my intention of more intensive blogging is to provide material for reference and reflection when I need them in future. So some posts might really seem pretty useless, boring, or even annoying. ("WHY DID HE HAVE TO BLOG ABOUT THAT SILLY THING??")

Anyway, in line with the requirements of the Ministry of Defence, I am to pass my IPPT (physical fitness test) in 2 months. Judging by my performance during my last test, I need to buck up on mainly my pull-ups (did 5 out of the 6 required) and running (didn't finish even half of the required 2.4km distance).

Also, I want to strengthen my sit-ups, so thus I launch a three-pronged approach to passing. I'm already in the midst of applying the first and third aspect. I do pull-ups whenever I go to Miranda's place (since there's a fitness station nearby) and when I don't get to do any in a day, I do 30 push-ups.

As for sit-ups, I started off with doing 40 sit-ups every night when I get home or before I sleep. But I realised I didn't have any reaction from my body (in terms of aches during the following day). So I tried doing 2 sets of 40 sit-ups, still no response. I realised the problem is that doing sit-ups do not target my abdomen muscles directly. So after some thought and consulting a friend, I switched to crunches today. I wonder what the effect will be, but it sure seemed more difficult to do 50 crunches. I'm considering if I should hold and count to eight/ten rather than just contracting my abs momentarily on every count.

As for runs, I really haven't decided how to go about it. I was thinking I should run twice a week. Maybe even thrice, even though I don't quite enjoy running. The short term goal is certainly to complete 2.4km in 12 minutes. But the long term goal is to join my friend at Standard Chartered Bank's Marathon. I was told it's 10km. That probably qualifies as a fun run as compared to the full-fledged 42km marathon. So that would mean I need to do endurance training too.

Goal setting

Inspired by my birthday that has just passed by me, coupled with the fact that I really have too much time on my hands now (since I hold no jobs, unlike a couple of my uni friends who are still working very hard just before school starts), I decided I needed a plan to go forward.

Oh, another source of inspiration is reading Adventures of a Currency Trader once again. My fourth or fifth read of the book I think. So much of what my goals entail concerns my financial health and expenditure/income management. I'll go into detail some other time, since I think they aren't quite finalised as yet.

I was also inspired by dance, having taken a basic waltz course at Whypong and Michelle Danceworld. The course was organised by the NUS Social and Ballroom dancing club. I realised that I really needed some form of artistic expression in my life. Probably partially fueled by the fact that Miranda and her siblings have their lives intersperse with various forms of music. One thing to look into is definitely to take up a course to learn Lindy Hop.

Fitness is high on the list too, since I'm supposed to pass IPPT (fitness test) within two months.

I'm tempted to start a new blog for every aspect of my life, but I think that might be a little too much for me to update and keep track of, even for myself. But I guess the least I can do now is to update this blog as often as possible.

Thailand trip

Thanks to Qingren and Kah Chun for a wonderful trip up north to Thailand. I don't know if it's a land of a thousand smiles, but I'm quite sure for now it's a land where salesmanship (on the part of taxi drivers) can mean we end up lost, paying too much, at the wrong location or simply lost for words.

But despite all that, it was a wonderful trip. We had sufficient (QR would probably say too much) time for shopping in Bangkok (but interestingly, I either fail to bring the stuff back or bought the wrong sizes) and made 2 day trips to cities 2 hour's bus journeys from the capital. And those two were Ayutthaya (capital of earlier dynasty, around 15-16th century I think) and Kanchanaburi (death railway). Well, to me the highlight was the latter. First of all, they have a wonderful museum right within the immediate town area. Takes no more than 3 minutes on mini-bus (which only costs 10Baht a ride. Don't be fooled by those who extort more.) There you'll find many models which depict living conditions during the building of the railway. A very visual collection.

We later went to the Bridge over River Kwai, apparently famous, but I couldn't get much out of the place. That was the same with Ayutthaya, probably worse, because the museum gave virtually no information in anything other than Thai, despite being a world heritage site. We later spent another hour or so on a bicycle, visiting a war cemetary in the outskirts, padi and maize fields, cows, and a cave temple.

My biggest takeaway this trip is somewhat about history. I was at the war cemetary, quietly whispering a prayer for all dead, especially for those in war. And I was walking down the rows. Rows that look so dignified and beautiful (complete with plants and flowers, well maintained indeed). Home to those who died (mainly British in this cemetary) during the building of the railway. I think of a artsy film that I earlier watched - which informed me, in a subtle manner, of how the POWs' spirits and philosophy of life was superior to that of the devilish Japs. But the breaking point was reading the words left by the loved ones left behind by the late soldiers. I saw words from fathers, mothers, siblings, children, wives... Some of them reflected on what their beloved sons died for - peace. Some spoke of meeting again - in eternal bliss, hopefully. Yet others spoke of longing, remembrance, love. I couldn't not tear when I passed by those that spoke of the remains were those of "our (or my) son". I cannot imagine the anguish of losing a love one to something as stupid as a war. I've run out of words to describe such conflict and brutality. The message lives though. That war should and must be avoided. That peace and understanding is the only way for the human race to progress.

But not all tombstones had lines left behind. And not even all had names.


A soldier of the war. A soldier of the war. A soldier of the war.

That was all that was left of him. No one claimed some relationship to his bones even in death. Maybe no one could, for he was unidentifiable. But history is THIS. Unnamed people, positions, ranks, numbers, groups, formations, societies. After another 2 centuries (I dare say 50 years), who would remember this names? For the named soldiers, who would know of them and their personalities after their immediate families pass away? Probably no one, but right in our history lessons we learn that there was such a war and so many people died and they did this-and-that. And the reasons and trends was such-and-such.

WHAT IS THE POINT??

We should all stop to ponder on this. Somewhere, somehow, I recall that someone ever spoke of these lines to me: "We can avoid making mistakes we made earlier in our history in future if we truly understand our past." Note that there are two time phases there. Past and future. But read deeper. The past to us is nameless, and the future cannot be named for it hasn't come to pass. The only way that line is going to work is for the present to be involved, for numbers and statistics and academic studies cannot bring us the message and lessons from our past.

To fully comprehend and adopt these lessons, we need to be grounded in the present. Our current emotions and worldview and ideological (and moral) systems and codes. Our understanding of what happened previously. So we need bridges. In Singapore, the new generation has lived through at least 30 years of peace. No major conflicts which ends up in many deaths all at once. So we have to try to imagine the undesirability of wars and conflicts. We have to make up, in our mind, the hardships that those before us went through. But all this is not all that difficult. We just have to think of the times we came under threat, the fear, and maybe the bravery and camaderie such trying times resulted it. We could just reach deeper within us to recall times when we were hurt by others in various ways, and I'm sure we can all feel a small part of the soldiers' suffering.

We may be different, but we are really quite the same.

Birthday at Harry's

Hee.. so happy.. I came back, slightly tipsy, from Harry's @ Boat Quay. Went on a martini spree since I have a card which gets my martinis for 4 bucks! Just 4 bucks each man, and those at this outlet is darn gd!

And Miranda did the sweetest thing possible, to get the live band to dedicate the last song, before we left, to me. It's a samba number I think, titled Black Sugar. When I asked the band pointed to the lead singer, an African lady I suppose, and said she's the one that the title is referring to. Well, it really seemed quite funny at that point in time. Must have been the alcohol.

And we did more odd and outrageous things. Like we tried to dance some waltz on the way to Raffles Place MRT (train) station. Complete with laptop, tons of piano books, plastic bags (from Miranda's shopping). I'm sure you can see why we failed terribly.

And we jumped down a few steps. When we got into the train, we relived our childhood (in fact, doing the following doesn't even exist in my childhood) by turning round poles. Like run, hold on to the pole, do a 360 degree with your legs off the ground kinda thing. And we played a game of charades - always starting with "I pray...(whatever)"

It's my 22nd. And as was my 21st, it was you, Seet, who was there. No doubt I have a few friends who smsed me to wish me a happy birthday, but life couldn't possibly be complete without you and your thoughtfulness. (and antics too)

Hope you enjoyed yourself as much as I did, Miranda.

Today I'm satisfied

Well...no long post today. A long post after a long time having not posted will put people (me included) off.

I met Seraphina today on a train back home from town. Now, who's Seraphina? Let's see...she's my ex-jc schoolmate, a classmate's netball teammate (I think)...not much more I can say I think...but I'm just glad that I met someone from jc and had a small chat.

And guess what? A stranger talked to me today on the very same train. Because I was holding a book by Paulo Coelho. Haha, and I guess we share quite a bit in common - educators, seekers of financial freedom, philosophers (at least I hope I am)

It's a good day. Not because of what happened, but because of what I interpreted and reacted to what happened.

And I started reading Adventures of a Currency Trader again. That's the kickstart the 2nd leg of my forex journey!

A long entry & some food for further research/thought

It’s been such a long time since I wrote anything, despite having the pretty frequent inspiration to write.

But in any case, what is lost cannot be recovered, especially when the “thing” is time. But this is no time to focus on lost time. Rather, I want to talk a little on what has been going on these 2 days, or rather, weeks.

Of course, there was Miranda’s birthday chalet. Although the 2^nd day wasn’t quite as expected (we were planning to play war games – or at least dirty/gruesome ones), but the party on the first day really was quite impressive with the number of people and food and cake and…erh…kids! Yeap! Kids from her piano classes and a few from her sister’s, Denise’s, ones too. And I don’t think any of us could have forgotten this cute little by boy called…oops…I don’t know how to spell his name…but it’s pronounced “Joe-Vers”…

One more thing I want to mention…for those who are turned off by my occasional philosophical thoughts you can stop here…but I believe this is a pretty interesting issue to think about for most people.

The problem is probably age-old. Or more properly speaking, as old as the ages. The epic conflict between truth and wit, between honesty and craftiness. Which would enable us to succeed in life? Instinctively it seems the answer is the latter. Only by cheating and misleading one’s competitors/enemies can one succeed. Let him know your weakness and you’re done for. And much of our worldly wisdom points to using strategies and battle tactics to achieve success in whichever field we are in. Just for instance, since this series is what I am currently in hearing about, we have the Chinese classic “Sunzi’s Art of War” and “The 36 strategies”.

In modern military organisations we also have units which specialize in collecting intelligence – information about the enemy. This highlights the need for information and how much of that is concealed in perceived situations of rivalry and warfare. Even in economics we talk of asymmetric information – that any two parties engaged in an economic transaction will necessarily, or at least probably, have unequal access to information about the other person.

It seems to me that many of today’s economic problems arise because information is asymmetric. I still think that if we all had perfect information (despite the impossibility of such a situation), we would not have issues such as overpriced goods and exploited labour. Maybe I’m wrong, and I indeed should take time to think through the validity of my position.

But let’s get back to the real issue. Is truth really that valuable? In If Aristotle Ran General Motors, Tom Morris, business-philosopher, argued that anything less than absolute truth would cripple an organization’s ability to perform in a competitive market place. His reasoning is simple. Assuming there is some inconsistency in a firm’s management and they lie to their customers about the performance of their products, the workers within the firm would then feel that the management could also be inconsistent in the truth of what is told to the workers about, for example, their future in the company. The insecurity generated by the inconsistent/untruthful information released by any department of the company would cause other departments within the firm to second-guess the management motives in anything they do.

But is absolute truth really the answer to all our problems? Or is the opposite the reality? In a recent tuition session, I came to the conclusion that some theories might seem to point us to an ideal state of affairs, for example the communist ideal of equality for all, they might simply be useless to a human race incapable of communally achieving such situations. Insofar as the ideals are unattainable, the theories or hopes are, to that extent, not useful.

Maybe some theories, such as being brutally honest about everything aren’t quite that useful for us as social and political beings. Maybe we shouldn’t believe in free trade and its benefits.

P.S. Kelvin, if you happen to read this, please contact Firman or me. We’re pretty worried that we’ve not heard from you for so long.