Thoughts about thoughts, writings about writings

It is not so much with much reluctance that I restart writing this blog, as it is with much inertia that I find it extremely difficult to restart this blog. I no longer have a way with words the way the mes of the past have had; I have probably traded a life of thought and mind for being more easy-going, glib with my mouth and more understanding of people.

I really wish I could easily write in the way I did last time, I do. But at some point life became about living as opposed to thinking and mindlessness became the way instead of questioning, Thinking became an issue of 'what is wrong' - thinking about how to correct a problem so that you can stop thinking. Maybe the problem is that you're thinking. Maybe that's the true sign that something's up.

It's not even that I am incapable of any coherent thought altogether - I've had decent, quality conversations with a number of friends talking about a large number of things under the sky. People, events, ideas, the like. The saying was that which category you talked about more determined your intelligence; maybe I just went from being intelligent to being dumb, average and smart at the same time. I could live with that. But my tongue flows when people are around. The good and bad, the smart and dumb, the deep and shallow.

But here it becomes a wall. Thousands of words are fine for university essays but five hundred a struggle when reflecting on my own life. Maybe it's the lack of people. If I have no one to interact with, the thoughts cease. Could that be the case? Could I just be a foil to everyone else's life, doomed to giving nuggets of wisdom and thought but never thinking hard enough about my own life? The thought is attractive - the conclusion depressing. But it is a thought. I've lost the ability to talk to myself. About myself. With myself.

The writing habits are still there. The rule of three. The nice, short and succinct sentences that give the little staccato in the writing. The longer run-on sentences that feel almost like rambling a series of afterthoughts after the initial point. but never truly follows coherently. The streams of consciousness that ebb and flow, the thoughts that slowly arise to the surface but recede back into the sea before I get a grasp on it. But the thoughts behind them are empty. All that is left are thoughts of thoughts. Writing about writing.

A thing about quiet people is that others always try to assign other traits to the quiet person - is his or her silence golden? Is there wisdom behind the facade or hollowness? Everyone knows that the man always talking is hollow - empty vassals make the most noise. No one ever mentioned that the quiet ones could go either way.

And for now, the silent vassal here is hollow. The attempt to knock at it to create some sound just echos and reverberates mindlessly. Just more sounds of knocking from attempting to knock, echoes of thoughts from trying to think, traces of writing from trying to write.

It's still too difficult for now, but I have to get back to this somehow. I have to try. I just hope I keep trying. The thoughts are there. They're still there for now. I have to catch them before they're gone and I stop thinking. Before the time where the only thinking I do is how to go back to being thoughtless.

Prayers in pain

Dear Lord all I wish for is for my mom to find a working combination of painkillers. That if surgery is an option that it goes safely and successfully. That we can eventually live past this and think "thank God that's over" instead of living in this for as long as she lives.

On expectations and friendships

The man from the west (Ironically currently in the East) mentioned that pain and suffering only result from expectations. My mom told me that it was meaningless to feel pain and sadness over things you have no control over. You subject yourself to unnecessary pain, unnecessary sadness. You cannot hurt the man who never had expectations in the first place.

If the pain, the suffering can be prevented then, is it wrong to subject yourself to avoidable pain and preventable suffering? No, he says, there is nothing wrong - it is human to expect and human to be hurt. No, she will probably concede, there is a difference between meaningless actions and wrong actions - futility and moral wrongness are separate entities to compare.


Expectations, he says, can be likened to a form of human attachment. Perhaps the follow-up to that is that having no expectations suggests detachment. If you have no expectations, you cannot personally associate with the pain and disappointment - after all, you never expected a good outcome, how could you feel bad over a bad outcome? But in a good outcome, do you actually feel good about it? How happy is the man who expected to get second but got first, compared to the man who expected (and hoped) to get first and got it?

You wrote that friendship is beautiful because you have less expectations of it, and its reciprocation is a pleasant surprise - an unexpected joy. I disagree - you have expectations and hopes for it, regardless of the fact that you're aware they might not be met. Friendship is beautiful because people meet expectations even though they are not obliged to. They sound the same, but the disappointment that results is different - after all, you can't feel sad if you never expected anything. You can feel sad if you expect something even if you're aware it might not happen. Friendship is beautiful because it goes in spite of possible  disappointment, not because it is a pleasant surprise over a situation where no expectations are harmed.

Are my expectations of friendship then wrong? If the annoyance, pain and hurt I feel is completely preventable, is it wrong to not prevent it? "In the first place", he asked, "is this something you have a choice over? The zen person doesn't think about not-thinking, he just not-thinks. There is no choice."

He mentioned that there are times where there are no skillful and diplomatic means to solve a problem, that the idea that you could overcome any problem if you tried hard enough is but American fiction and myth. Is it wrong to recognize the myth, yet subscribe to it regardless and to feel pain when you are forced to realize its mythical nature? To try to fix something that cannot be fixed, to rebuild a friendship that either spoiled or never existed?

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I seem to have, at this point, an obsession with associating moral rightness and wrongness to ideas of efficiency and utility. A rather unhealthy behaviour I must say.

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I considered why I was staying and didn't just quit, leave it all and be rid of these feelings. He mentioned feeling that way for ICT - mistakes better ignored but best confronted. "Deep down", he conceded, "it kind of unsettled me". Another good friend mentioned it as something to be proud of - to continue in spite of it. Is the struggle really as noble as they put it, though? Maybe I'm just a selfish and foolish guy thinking that this will pay off in the end. Who knows how I feel deep inside?

What I do know is that for a group to perform better, you need to have better teamwork. And while I've learnt that it isn't always true, I still prefer to subscribe to the idea that it's easier to make teamwork work if you're on good terms with everybody. Nothing wrong with the more professional approach but I wished it could've gone down this line instead.

For today, though, I just wish I could perish the thought that friendships can be bettered or fixed by trying to reach out to mend them...

...or perhaps stop seeing friendships where none existed, though that's even more pessimistic.

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The whole writing ended up much shorter than I would've thought it would, but I guess I should be thankful for the distractions that made it so. If there is any good in this it's that I now know better the people who do stick around with me in... more annoying times.

Alternatively it's just because the Amaretto's effect wore off and I'm more sober again.

なんで自分がこんなに情けないなんだろう

2013 Reflections

Reflections, reflections. The year will be over soon and reflections for the year must be done before the new one comes. はいそれじゃ今年のまとめ：

去年の話だけど代表としてＫＡＣＡに参加しました。　そのお陰で音ゲーがどれほど世の中の人を繋げるのがよく分かった。　台湾も韓国も日本も音ゲーでつな げるなんて凄いなぁ。　ＫＡＣＡの後は皆とつなぐためにツイッタはじめました＠ＲＢＲｉｅｚｚ。　大体音ゲーツイットしかしてないけどまぁそれでもいいん じゃない。

Lost my favourite music game and had to fly overseas just to play it but it's being replaced for now and SDVX is pretty fun. Can't beat RB for me and I don't really bother as much with scores but it's good enough I guess. Don't really know whether I can convince anyone to bring it back but I guess I can try at least.

Also I might be slow but it seems I'm a little more well known in the arcade community than I thought I was. >_> Oh well. I've been holed up at Cityvibe much more this year compared to last but I'm still thankful for all the friends and rivals I've made from SDVX, RB, and IIDX. It's nice to see that the music game community is still pretty awesome irl even if the JB FB group has kind of gone to hell and back, and it's really heartening to see that competitions, as rare as they are, are as lively and active as ever. Hopefully next year is a better year with regards to music games as this one - still hoping someone will change their mind and bring RB and Pop'n back into Singapore at least ~_~.

Got randomly dropped into a great project group and a great OG - probably the luckiest thing to happen to me this year as far as NUS is concerned. Wonderful people, and I honestly have no clue how my ISE life would be like without these guys. Kind of a scary prospect in hindsight. Damn. Really glad that you guys are there, and I'm looking forward to hanging out and working with you guys again next sem.

小さなバンドに入りました。　あまり練習時間がないけど大切にしています。 十年以上やった聖歌隊を止めた後歌うチャンス全然なかったからなぁ。　久しぶりの歌える場所があることは「運が良い」としか考えられない；これだけを心か ら感謝してる。　これからもっと皆と仲良くなりたいけどちょっと難しいだね。　まぁもうバンドのページいっぱい書いたからここまででいいかな。
　
Realized once again how great my friends are, over the various meetups to catch up, random crashing of people's houses (and vice versa), and all the conversations on FB/WA (across timezones or not), regardless of whether they lasted minutes or hours. Thanks for being with me through the good and bad times, the boring and stressful periods, and the joyful and painful days. バカな時でも支えてくれて本当にありがとうございます。 親友達はどれほど大切なんてもう一度分かってくれました。 シンガポールにいてもいなくても僕にとって皆は大事な宝なんです。

All in all the year's had its ups and downs but it's been mostly great everywhere. Life's been good to me even though I don't think I've done that much, and hopefully it stays that way next year - but I guess I'll be putting in more effort into keeping things good, be it friends, colleagues, work or life.
来年もよろしくお願いします。