Anxiety Issue

Guys, I am in great jeopardy here. Friday will be my first day at school and i have to transform from this (my head is in the red elipse):

...to this:

Actually, exclude the tie, coat and spectacles(since my eyesight is still fair and is insufficiently crippled by long hours of staring at the computer screen to merit such "accessory") to get be an idea of my dressing on Friday. The all-too-common anxiety prior to a new experience is taking its toll on me as I constantly worry over the many possibilities, most of which are negative, that would follow relief teaching in SA. Heck, I look like a kid and to dress up so formally will undoubtedly make a funny-looking person out of me.


Moreover, there is this uncertainty gnawing at the base of my heart whether I can handle such big group of students in a class (not excluding the posssibilities of several encounters with spoilt, lazy, unattentive and rude students). True, there will be someone to guide me on the first day, but I will eventually have to teach alone, projecting my voice to the back of the class, putting on a mask of mature wisdom and being wary of making mistakes that reveals the child-like side of me.

Anyway, there is not much to do in allaying my anxiety but to confidently step into school on Friday 7.15am sharp and report to Madam Lee, the Senior Head of the Chemistry Department.
Meanwhile, I will parade with all the formal clothes on to get use to the attires' feel. So narcissistic, ain't I?

Why Inagiku Rocks!

My patience with the tardy, interrupted internet coverage in this house is nearing its limit, very much like a wood splinter lodged in the flesh. However, the connection is good today allowing me to indulge in blogging again.

Anyway, this fine Wednesday will be my last day at Inagiku restaurant, at least until the school holiday jingles its way into the calendar. It will be a heartfelt and memorable day as I'll be leaving a world unique in itself. Unique because in no other place can you find uncensored straightforwardness in full-fledged display as you get screwed, trashed and yelled at the commission of even a single mistake. There is no room for cynicism, sarcasm (except for one arrogant manager who struts around with a self-imagined pomp), and scheming. It's whether "I like you" or "I hate you" verbally expressed in sweetness and vulgarity respectively, as simple as that.

Waitering at Inagiku is also unique because everyone there is family. Perhaps, the bond among us develops from the need to put trust on one another in coordinating the myriad of tasks from taking order to cooking to serving. Otherwise the elaborate chain of action that is necessary for the smooth running of the restaurant would simply break down. As such, we develop a formidable sense of comradeship amongst ourselves with the commitment to help each other out for the common good of the restaurant. Ironically, it is the harshness and volatility of the circumstances there which force people to express goodwill towards one another to create mutual respect and harmony amidst the excruciating and stressful working environment. To cite an example of us being family, a Japanese manager personally encouraged everyone to call her "Mama" (I guess there is no need to elaborate on what it means). And yesterday she bought us cakes from Prego as a treat after a grueling day of work. How sweet!

In a way, some sort of loyalty towards Inagiku has found itself stubbornly lodged in my heart. I love Inagiku not because of the food or the classiness of the venue, I love it for its people. Thanks a lot, people of Inagiku! Muah!

A Change In The Path I Tread

A new day commences with me waking up from an uneasy slumber, which for some inexplicable reason is not caused by a dreadful nightmare. The sky is gloomy as dark cumulunimbus clouds race to block off every shard of the golden sunlight and to call the sky their dominion, for the moment at least. My back is aching as it was yesterday and the day before yesterday due to the heavy and exhasuting waitering chores at Inagiku.

Nonetheless, the same pain will not be visiting me for some time in the future since I have secured a relief teaching position back in SAJC. Credits to Mr Mannan for helping me out otherwise I would still be running around picking up dirty plates and delivering sashimi to the front counter. For the time being, I will be aiding a pregnant tutor in her Chemistry tutorial (and not in her labour, mind you!) and doing some administrative work.

Oh dear (such a cliche), time is running late and i myself should be bolting off to work! Will talk more about the post tonight.

8 minutes of crapping

Well, I have only 8 minutes to type out something in this post since I have to rush to work later. Actually, I have no idea the sort of cognitive substance that I should mould into letters and words. It is just this "blogging" addiction that has taken a toll on me, taunting my poor soul to tell something about myself, today, people, events, actually anything that is perceived through the senses or arises in the mental activity of the organ that lies within the cranial cavity.

Anyway, I am here to express just how tired I have become these days, due to work. Everyday is a struggle to defeat the ever-growing laziness, to drag my feet to the restaurant, and to kickstart some actions that are needed for work. However, it is strange though, that when the working shift is over, I feel happy, yup happy. Happy because I have achieved something in my life. Happy because I have lived another day as a person of some use. Happy because I am able to sustain myself in the costly setting of Singapore.

Oh dear, 1 minute left. Anyway, I better slap myself out of this post-sleep hiatus and be the enthusiastic Ryan again.

Anne

There I am at it again: blogging in the middle of the night when everyone else is already in deep slumber (well, almost everyone since one must acknowledge the existence of nocturnal subspecies among mankind).

Today, I would like to talk about a part-time colleague at Inagiku restaurant. Lets call her Anne although it is obviously an awkward name to give to a girl of Burmese ethnicity. Since I have no knowledge whatsoever of the Burmese language, lets be content with the mock name "Anne".

When I first met Anne, the first impression that lighted up in my mind was that she was a typical international student whose parents were rich enough to pay for her bills to study in the local polytechnic. I assumed that she resorted to working simply because she spent all her allowance and her parents refused to send her more. In fact, I had little opinion of her at all since I myself was busy with the demanding chores that a runner was entasked to carry out. We chatted mostly about trivial stuffs and did our own things, though we occasionally helped one another out when need arose.

Then, on one fateful day, I made a call to my employment agency to book for my working slot in the restaurant. The exact wordings of the dialogue with the agent are lost in the shrouded messiness of my mind but here is the gist of the talk:

Me: Hi, is there any (working) slot for coming Sunday(at Inagiku Restaurant)?

Agent: I am sorry there is none. The slot has been taken by Anne.

Me: Who? Can I change slot with her? Can you move her slot to some other time?

Agent: She is studying and that is the only time that she can work.

Me: What about moving her slot to some other day?

Agent: Look, she is motherless and must partially support her family back home while studying here. She really needs this job and the money that comes with it. I don't want to fiddle with her working slots.

Me: Oh, ok then.

The conversation, though short, is more than enough to deal a shocking blow on the nexus of my mind. All the sudden, I feel a sense of awe and guilt. Awe, because she is not some wealthy international student, rather a cash-strapped one who is determined to believe that the education here would provide her and her family a better state of living. Guilt, because I was trying to wrestle away her opportunity to earn the much need income that would go into supporting her family. Whenever I now look into her dark brown eyes, I know better than to judge a book by its cover.

In reality, we are surrounded by individuals, each of whom has his or her own poignant story to tell, unyielding resolve to inspire and amazing contradiction to astound. From the bubbly student on her way to school to the smiling cashier behind the convenience store's counter to a sleepy executive sipping coffee, each is a person unique not only in oneself, but also in one's predicaments and more importantly, one's will to challenge all odds. Anne inspires me.

Why Study History?

History is arrogantly selective and deliberately parochial in its study. First, because it only chronicles the accounts of selected few individuals, whose "decorated" stories are deemed worthy, appealing and meaningful compared to others. Two, because it grossly leaves out many details, even in the accounts for the selected few, and chooses to tell a limited perspective and supposedly "main" ideas. As a consequence, most of our stories, despite their potential life-changing impacts on ourselves and on others, go unpublished as they are alleged of being too personal, too emotional, too dramatic and more.

After all, it is this personal touch, this emotional encounter, and this dramatic enactment that drive the passage of our lives as we largely depend on how we feel and what our personal takes are on a particular issue, rather than pure cold logic, to make our decisions. If life were pure cold logic, this would be a dull and selfish world indeed. Dull, because the chain of occuring events is highly predictable given that it follows the flow of logic. Selfish, because altruism and love will perish, replaced by the overt display of self-preservation and cold-heartedness that are increasing evident in the modern society.

As such, history in its grand attempt to tell the story of mankind ("history" is "his" story, right?) falls short in achieving its purpose due to its philosophy of high selectivity and parochial reporting. No wonder, history has failed to impress on the younger generation the same fascination that the latter has for story books and movies.

Waitering: Not Easy

Yesterday, to be technically correct since I am reporting this account past 12 midnight, has been dishevelment, or more aptly a waitering disaster, at an unprecedented scale.

The new caller, due to her being inexperienced regarding the setting of the dishes as well as the order in which they are delivered to the customers, was obviously disoriented when she was hit with a barrage of orders. This, coupled with a record high number of walk-in customers, provided the ideal setting for a catastrophe of volcanic intensity. A small error, on the part of the caller, was sufficient to initiate a chain of errors and disorganisation from preparation to serving. Cooks began to screw up their recipes, and had to prepare the order all over again while servers outside were screaming for orders that took far too long for the diner’s patience to bear.

As a result, we had managers barking madly at us in a vain hope that this would somehow restore the smooth flow and impeccable perfection of work that was expected of the main kitchen. Runners, like me, were bound to suffer as we had to coordinate between sending ready dishes out to the servers, preparing special orders and desserts, topping up plates, cups and cutleries that were fast dwindling in the full-house restaurant, and not to mention, clearing mountains of used plates and cutleries

I don’t really blame the new caller entirely though; the girl is new to the task appointment and provision must be given for errors and setbacks. After all, the duos are among the best ways for one to learn the art of self-improvement as well as to gain invaluable experience and wisdom in carrying out the said task. The managers are forgiven for their ire, although unjustly unleashed upon us, since they are ultimately responsible for bearing the brunt of dissatisfied customers who are either irritated by a slight change in food taste or the unexpected delay of their meals. As for the waiters, one must understand that putting on a fake smile, supplicating to pernickety whims, saying nice things to nasty customers takes up a lot of patience, leaving little to spare when to interacting with the other staffs.

The experience of part-time watering has revealed to me a world that I had never ever seen. Behind the perfection of food, quality of service and extravagant setting in an expensive restaurant are the sweats of cooks, short and puffy breaths of waiters and the thumping hearts of managers. In other words, so much physical duress, mental effort and emotional resilience are involved in providing the near-ideal dining experience. I occasionally gave some time to self-thought, questioning whether such big sacrifice on the part of the restaurant sevice providers has to be made simply because the customers paid for it. Indeed, money can buy many things but should we use money to put others under such great ordeal to the extent that it almost bordered on a voluntary torture? Are we entitled to put the entire kitchen into havoc because we are unhappy with how the food is presented, despite that it is palattable?

It is true that as customers, we reserve the right to demand for the best quality of goods or services as our money can buy. However, as human beings, we should also understand that sometimes, money can bring unnecessary harm to the state of happiness of others and in this scenario, breeds suffering among the restaurant service providers. So, calling out to all consumers:

“Avoid being too demanding, be patient and close one eye to minor mistakes as they are not purposely meant.”

The waiters, especially, will appreciate this a lot.

Note: A caller is a person who receives orders from waiters, then informs or “call” the chefs to prepare the corresponding dishes. A runner serves as a “middle man” who delivers dishes from the kitchen to waitering counters outside, delivers special orders and clears out used plates and cutleries that are sent in by the serving waiters. A server, as the name implies, “serves” the guest by attending to their needs, taking down orders, serving ready dishes to them, and in some cases, doing cashiering work.

Work and Time

The past few days have come and gone like fleeting seconds. It feels rather unnatural to experience that time somehow speeds up when you work (well, the quantum physics theory of the relativity of time is valid after all). The preoccupation with clearing plates, wiping table, pouring coffee, and preparing Japanese rice set has, in a way, detached me from the sense of time. All the sudden in the midst of a hectic moment, you turn around, steal a glance at the clock and realise two hours have passed unknowingly while it feels like a few minutes.

When I first put my hands and feet to rigorous, blue-collar work in Singapore, I held a naive assumption that the faster you work, the slower time will pass since you are able to carry out and completed more tasks in a given space of time compared to when you are working at a slower pace. It didn't take me long to realise that I was wrong. Somehow, by a certain unseen mechanism that manipulates the human perception of time, time itself becomes the direct function of the rate of work. In other words, the faster you are at your job, the quicker every minute will pass (no wonder hardcore workers develop white hair; accelerated aging has taken a toll on them!).

Harking back at the old school textbooks in JC, the second last sentence in the previous paragraph is a clear defiance of Newtonian mechanics, in which we have learnt that the rate of work, or power, is inversely proportional to time. In light of that, I think it's quite funny that something we have acquired in education, which is supposed to equip us with vital knowledge for our career, cannot agree with a phenomenon that occurs in the working environment. No wonder I often hear that 80-90% of academic jargons garnered in university is reserved for mental disposal when one starts working.

Anyway, so much for now. Work calls and I'll leave this post at this juncture. Chao!

Singapura I'm Here!

Hurray, I have finally planted my feet on the terra firma that is Singapura! Well, I did it yesterday but since I can only assess my blog dashboard now, there is no way that i could have reported it earlier.

Enough with all the over-explanation for such trivial matter and lets acknowledge the reality that thrust into the my life. Well, this is another chapter that is bound to carve a deep imprint on the fabric of my life. My desire to work is finally realised when I was offered a part-time job at X-Celiz, a part-time employment agency specialising in the field of food& beverages. The schedule is somewhat jumbled up but I guess it's okay to list it out here:

• Tuesday 12 -3 pm then 6.30 - 10.30 pm
• Thursday 12 - 3 pm
• Friday 12 - 3pm then 6 - 11 pm
• Saturday 6.30 - 10.30 pm
• Sunday 6 - 11 pm

*Apologies for leaving out the venues, but I assure that the my job places are as scattered as the job hours.

Looks like I'll call Monday and Wednesday my "weekend" for the week though I am not uncertain as to whether an fresh employee should start having a holiday plan even before he commences work.

Nonetheless, an uncertain future awaits me. Will my physical strength endure the duress of the reputably tiring job? Will I grow to have compassion for serving plates, pouring coffee and smiling unquestioningly to passing customers?

Night has its calling and her dreamweaver has already knocked upon my door. I guess there is calling in me to answer her. Goodnight.

The Study of Bullshit: Part Two

Yum, yum, lunch was good. Mum cooked some pig trotter and the rich, gelatino-meaty texture complements so well with the soft, watery porridge. Anyway, lets get back to part two of the study of bullshit.

Another criticism against economics rests on its dependence on so many other fields for its core and auxiliary knowledge. That economics draws its contents from physical sciences, social sciences, philosophy and arts irks me sometimes as it seems to suggest that there is little, if any, knowledge that is purely economics or economics per se. Physics can be uniquely identified with the quantum theory, chemistry with le chatelier principle, mathematics with euler formula, philosophy with inductive and deductive reasoning, arts with colour and space, but what about economics? Demand and supply? Such concept ought to belong to the everyday, commonsensical knowledge. It is so easy to understand that the more you demand for something, the higher the price that the seller is expected to charge since it's an opportunity for the seller to exploit your desire. In simple term, there is nothing original in economics as a much of it is the product of cut-and-paste from other areas of knowledge, then altered a little to mask the evidence of plagiarism.

On a further note, these messy, tangled relationships between economics and so many other fields of knowledge makes it vulnerable to change as a change in theory of any other fields would render it necessary for the study of economics to be revamped somehow. For instance, the change in the nature of the international relations from the colonial era to the free-nation modern time will affect the economic concept of trade and international business. The idea of slave trade has become a thing of the past and is irrelevant to be discussed in a modern economics textbook. Here, I am not advocating that change is undesirable; change is necessary for man to improve on his current set of knowledge in the quest for truth. What I am trying to point out here is that economics, by the "virtue" of its dependence on a great multitude of other schools of knowledge makes it highly unstable and prone to rapid change. Textbooks have to be revised so regularly and ideas learnt by new economists may run counter to the concept of the older generation of economists. More aptly, economics is an "established knowledge on shaky grounds".

What disgusts me most about the study of economics is its attempt to quantify human behaviour. I am staunch believer that every human is unique in his own right. It is impossible to find two people with the same thinking, action and decision for every circumstance. The difference between individuals gives a person his identity which distinguished from that of others. On the contrary, the economics book, which has brought me to sleep, has blatantly applied terms such as the "average economic man". I see it as a degradation to the ideal of the unique individual. It is like designating numbers out of everyone's preference and choice, then crunching the figure through some calculation to arrive at how we, as a whole, tend to behave. In doing so, there is no provision for our differences, something that economics does to treat us as goods, not as respectable human beings.

I wonder whether, after so much complaint, it is possible for me to read on economics objectively and without bias. Really don't know, unless i have split personalities, hehe! Oh dear, I'm supposed to scour the net for recipes of mushroom soup! Better start looking now....

The Study of Bullshit

No offence to David Hume, Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo, Adam Smith (wait, are they all British?) and a great multitude of scholars who belong to the "grand" and erudite school of economics, but reading the first few pages of an economics textbook invites a yawn.

One line in the textbook goes like this: "...economics studies how men act." To a large extent, the statement holds since economics, as a social science, seeks to comprehend the workings of the human economy (as if there is such thing as cow economy or pig economy) and to discern tell-tale trends that are purported to be able to predict the economic progress in the future. In doing so, the study of economics has brought about the construction of various elaborate theories and principles which then serves as a foundation for more economic hypothesis to be formulated. The so called "oracle-power" of economics is claimed to play a fundamental role in business enterprises and MNC since the former is able to chart the direction taken by the latter in the highly competitive economy of today.

My question is, why are there more engineers being employed to run economics-related tasks in these business corporations than economists? Aren't economists, with their "comprehensive" knowledge on the nature of the economy, supposed to be better at jobs like these?

An article in the NUS Engineering Bulletin (what-ever they call it la) states that engineers find themselves in high demand by these corporations due to the practical training and skills that are acquired via engineering courses. So, what do economists study back in their university years? Almost immeasurable truckloads of theories sparingly dusted with a miserly speck of practical work?

Such is the reason why economics works better than sleeping pills. Too many words and too few actions. I personally think that economics is a forced marriage between the science and the arts. The book which i am currently reading claims that the study of economics can be regarded as a science yet its theories cannot be experimented with. What strikes me as odd is the irony of the previous statement. The knowledge of science is a result of experimentation as a hypothesis is tested in an empirical setting to observe whether the result agrees with the hypothesis and thus to prove the validity of hypothesis (how many times have i repeated "hypothesis"?)That economics cannot be tested in the same manner while claiming to be a science is akin to saying that cows can fly since its theories cannot be verified empirically anyway(so they are bullshit, right?).

I guess economists have plenty of time to spare so they end up concocting a wonderful fiasco to "explain" a tiny economic phenomenon, then shove it away in favour of a new one when it no longer fits in the real world, very much like filming a blockbuster movie (people's taste changes so the movie has to change as well). As such, i suggest that economics should be called a "popular pseudo-science" that is always pretending to be able to shed light on the human activities and thus gains the "blind acceptance" of the mass.

Maybe, the excessive crapping advocated by economics is why business corporations prefer engineers to economists for doing the economist's job. Too much time is spent formulating some abstruse explanation or prediction while too little focus is given to the real matter at hand, which are the figures and numbers depicting the company's progress at hand.

A cousin of mine told me that engineers are favoured because they can count. Yup, they can count (not the kind of 1+2=3, duh!). These corporations require individuals who are realistic and practical in training such that they produce discernible results and cut short on the long drudgery of philosphising in the air. Obviously, calculating numbers and figures yields results that are quantitative, measurable and definitely realistic compared to the highly qualitative, subjective and sometimes abstract theories of economics.

I must respect the economist's method of telling both sides of the story when he is asked on an economics question like, "Should I invest money in company A?" He goes the full length of unveiling every good and bad in accordance to the principle of the double-edged sword. However, instead of answering the question directly, the excessive preoccupation in analysis and balancing can befuddle the questioner's mind as it introduces too much information at one time. At certain times, the explanation is overly complex and uses words of uncertainty like "may, could, should, maybe" that can get on the questioner's nerves. A simple realistic answer, supported by empirical data, would serve better to address the question.

Phew, too tired to crap already. Actually, i shouldn't lambast the subject of economics too fiercely. Planning to take engineering+econs double degree (if NUS offers me, of course) so economics should be good, right? Mr Soh, please don't kill me.

Anyone Cares to Stroll to the Beach?

Yippie, I'll be going to the beach today after so many months. The question is, will I do the same "thing" that I used to do there when I was but a sapling and was definitely less corrupted by the lures of the material world? Wait, what is that "thing"? Read on:

"There I was, standing on the salt-crusted sand and watching the frothy white foam of water wash over my feet. I had returned to behold the cradle of life, where the first microscopic animals and plants mysteriously emerged billions of years ago from a concoction of warm organic soup. The streak of horizon cut through the panorama into two parts. The top featured the grey-blue sky with a slight tinge of coppery-yellow and flaming red as it reflected the dying ray of the sun. It was evening. The bottom half was the seemingly endless stretch of blue water I have learned to honour: the sea.

A great deal of my life was spent close to the sea. The house where I spent my childhood years was a mere few hundred metres away. From the top of the balcony, I could see white dots – waves – decorating the otherwise plain blue coloration of the seawater. Well, it was not actually plain blue. A closer scrutiny would reveal a gradual gradation from light cyan at the water edge to almost dark violet at the horizon. My uncle used to tell me that the colour of the sea held a curative power; gazing long and far out to the sea would relax and heal one’s eyesight, which was frequently abused under long hours of gluing onto the television screen. I had never doubted him though, never sceptical of what he said because something in me said that the sea hides boundless mysterious power yet unveiled before mankind.

I loved the sea so much that I gave her a personal name of my design. Clearly, by applying the pronoun “her’, I have always regarded the sea as a feminine entity, whose complex moods swing precariously from a benevolent mother of the fish and squids to a violent sorceress hell-bent on destroying everything in her stormy fury. Of her name I choose not to reveal but of my connection to sea I will unravel. When most people say, “I’m going to the sea/beach,” they mean that they are planning to fish, surf, swim, or just hang around stretching their back after long hours of excruciating weekday work. They understood the sea as little more than just a recreational spot, a place to let loose the raw energy inside so that at the end of it, they only want to crawl back home for a long night snore.

I, on the other hand, visit the sea to carve. Not to carve a statue of “David” rivalling that of renowned Michelangelo, but to carve my thoughts on the sea sand, which is often blended together with brittle shell bits and rounded stones by the violent sloshing and twirling of waves as they collide. The thoughts are conceived in the likeness of a city blueprint or a topographic map of a region. My mind was eager to instruct my hands – the carving tools – to materialise the abstract faintness of the conception into a reality visible to the human eye. So I carved, removing sand from one place to another, building plateaus, lowlands, canals, rivers, farmlands, towns and bridges. As I watched my work gradually resembling the intricate details of the conception, my heart would fill with an unexplained glee, as though the completion would satisfy an intangible demand of an abstruse whim.

The sea is never static; she changes not only with seasons, but also with years as she reveals different part of the beach at one moment and hides them under her saline water at another. Once, she retreated away from a rocky area, revealing a shallow, partially sand-covered rock pool of an elongated oval shape. It immediately caught my attention as I descended on the area to search for a suitable sand canvas for carving. What really intrigued me about the rock pool were the combination of fine, easy-to-handle sand texture and the presence of pond back water. It allowed for a greater dynamism in my work as I could utilise both elements to inch closer to an imagination humming in my head: an island city, well actually model of one.

At the end of being splattered with wet sand, landing a wrong footing on sharp rocky outcrops and earning a red bruise was a realisation: a large D-shaped platform flanked by a placid “lake” – which happened to be the original rock pool - on the straight side and a canal running in an arc with both ends adjoining the “lake”. The sandy platform was so flat that a scoop of water poured on the former was confused of where to flow, only to sink in through the sand in three minutes or so. The platform in turn was divided by smaller canals interlacing one another to form smaller, roughly rectangular sections. These reminded me of the chinampa – low-lying tract of man-made island used by the Mesoamericans for agriculture – and the totality of the islands, or islands system as I would like to call it, felt like a surreal reminiscent of Tenochtitlan.

Caught in the drifting of my thoughts, I was imagining various crops growing exuberantly on the fertile islands, boats of all shape and sizes sailing up and down the canals, caravans of traders streaming through the land bringing exotic goods and exchanging them for the agricultural wealth of the locals. Then I thought, a land that is so bountiful must have a king, or at least a ruling class, to maintain the administration of its people and resources. Almost instantaneously, I set off working and piling sands on a lone rocky step on the edge of the island system, to form a high plateau complete with a pyramid overlooking the expanse below. The work apparently never ended there as I went to the extent of digging a river leading to the lake to prevent the latter from drying out. Fed by a torrential influx of new ideas, my hands could not be stilled as I carved, carved and continue carving.
All in all, it was imagination let loose and running wild. It was a sense of a new-found freedom - the freedom of thoughts - and a gushing will – the will to make reality out of thoughts. Though, the sensation never rivalled the enlightenment Buddha attained under the bodhi tree, it was a triumph to me. Tucked within this tiny frame of a Homo sapiens sapiens was a new found power, the sort of enthusiasm to convert the abstract conception into physically discernible matter. I thought, perhaps this was the drive that man has long exploited to wrestle himself free of Nature and become an entity semi-independent of the environment itself. With the primal rule of “eat or be eaten” banished from the worries of a civilised man, he can then manipulate his mental faculty to experiment and invent various creations such as the wheel, wing and sadly war.

Yes, war. Man has long been at war with Nature, always scheming to take away more than what the latter can give. Man has stolen clean water, replacing it with filthy sludge oozing out from factories and septic tanks of home. He has cut down trees, exposing the nakedness of the land to be raped by torrential rains and scorching heat of the sun. Even the sea fails to flee from the vile atrocity of man, as her water ran afoul due to accidental oil spill and her fish was harvested almost to the brink of extinction. Sometimes, the devastation wrought by the 2004 tsunami seems more like an apt revenge exacted on the ignorance and selfishness of the human kind than some scientific esplanations. Somehow, I felt compelled to halt my work. Enough was enough. If I were to continue working, Iwould fill up the whole rock pool and deprive small fishes and crustaceans of a watery refuge during the low tides.

The definition of the sea as the salt water covering nearly three quarter of the Earth surface seems to fall short of meaning. She seems to mean much more to me, as the experience with this magnificent offspring of Mother Nature has carved a path of learning for me to stride. I guess it is not an overstatement to glorify her as a silent teacher, whose aura mingles thoroughly with the flow of thoughts to deliver a comprehension not only about her, but also about mankind. To even scrape the surface of the deep knowledge she holds takes a stubborn determination of the mind and body and the sincere commitment of the soul. But once you know her, you will never forget her."

Okay, enough with all the verbosity and surreal disillusionment. I'm thinking whether i should bring along a pail and a spade so not to sore my hands with the rough sand. Ah, forget about it. Just go.....

The Chick-en Story

Hi, this is my first blog since 2007. I'm not sure whether the "in-formality" in writing a blog has changed but anyway, I'd better start spewing words now.
I've scribbled some thought about chickens on a piece of paper, not knowing that the scribbling turns out to be a lengthy written piece of reflection on these bipedal vertebrates. It goes like this:

"To most city dwellers, the word “chicken” almost always translates to the wide variety of drumsticks and wings we enjoy at Kentucky Fried Chicken or Kenny Roger. We are so accustomed to the aromatically sweet honey chicken or the tongue-tingling black pepper chicken that the word itself seldom conjures the image of a bipedal bird that clucks gregariously as it scratches the ground for stray seeds or unlucky worm.

On the other hand, I come from a rural background and the same “chicken” means a lot more than poultry meat or egg. I used to keep a chick, which refers to a juvenile chicken and not the allegedly “hot-looking” babe hungry for men, when I was a child. I suppose I need not explain about its yellow fluffy outlook sometimes marked by dark stripes or spots, but the experience of raising one is undoubtedly exhilarating. Apparently, I found the lone bird chirping ceaselessly in an abandoned nest for its mother, which apparently never answered the call again. So I took the poor creature back home and raised it as a household pet.

Though at first frightened by the high ceiling, towering wall, spinning fan, and the strange sound that a human made, from a chicken’s point of view, the pet of mine adapted and grew into a beautiful hen. Thinking that I was its mother, it would follow me faithfully out on the field, believing that I would protect her from cats, snakes and even cars. It would remain casual even as I caressed the beautiful golden brown plumage of feathers that it sported as a fully-grown adult. Other chicken would simply sprint way if I were to try to do just the same thing.

Although the experience occurred already ten years ago, the memory has persisted vividly in the nexus of my mind. Looking back, I am touched not only to see the amazing bond that has grown between two beings of different kinds, but also the experience it myself. Despite being aggressively protective of its own brood of chicks for most of the time, the hen would allow me to touch and play with them with little fear of me hurting them. The degree of love and trust that have emerged from such relationship was so strong that when my mother intended to slaughter the beautiful creature, I objected obstinately and almost went berserk.

Today, I sit on the grass carpeting the garden lawn before a reasonably large, crudely hammered-together enclosure. It holds six chickens walking around, flapping their wings and running in vain after flies that could easily dart away their relatively large and clumsy assailants. I am an observer, studying the minute movement that every bird makes to gain a little more understanding of what is soon to be served for dinner. Separated by a six feet tall fence that wraps around the enclosure, the birds are not alarmed by my presence. Perhaps, they know that because of the fence, I cannot go in after them easily as they can get out.

Suddenly, a strange behaviour becomes evident as the birds go about doing their own business. When one chicken pecks on a tuft of grass, the others do the same thing, pecking so violent at the same spot that the roots almost come off. Then, when one sits down and rests its body lazily on the ground, the rest follows. I suppose chickens are perhaps the most capricious trend-followers I have ever encountered. Imagine such fickle-mindedness being implanted into the mind of every human: the trend in fashion and music industries would have to change on a minutely basis. It is so fast that the hit songs or hips clothes we spot on magazines would be considered obsolete by the time we purchase them in the store.

Then, after long hours of being a distant observer, I decide to introduce myself to the birds, at closer proximity. I get up, unlock the door, and awkwardly crouch into the enclosure. Just when one bird is startled by the ostensible presence of the newcomer, the other joined in the atmosphere of shock and caution. As expected, they move away from me not individually but as a group. It seems that the fickle-mindedness is not an accident of nature; rather, it is the adaptation to survive in the harsh world where predatory danger lurks, and the slackening of vigilance is a matter of life or death. The instinctive reflex that is inherent in these birds allows them to flee together to safety when one of them spots danger, foiling death traps and allowing them to live for at least one more day.

Although all the chickens distance themselves away to me, it is not to say that they are equally frightened of me. The hens and younger chickens appear to be bolder and happily strut about a comfortable radius of one metre around me. A much larger cock, however, ran almost to the other end of the enclosure. A mental perversion entered my thoughts, compelling me to believe that it is a matter of egoism. Once the garrulous big brother in the flock, it may too ashamed to confront the other chicken after being shocked by the presence of an even more domineering figure: me.

A chicken may not measure up to an eagle or a lion in majesty, grandeur and awe that we have for the latter. However, through the subtlety of its movement and the complexity of its behaviour, a chicken appears to tell a gravitating story of its own, an autobiography worthy of attention. The question of whether its story is powerful enough to rock the human civilisation is debatable but one thing is for sure: a chicken is more than the chunk of gourmet meat gracing our dinner table."

In the event that you disagree with the contents in this writing, please consume a piece of "ayam percik" available at Ryan Hee's kampong. I bet the gastronomic experience would make you forget everything except the desire to get another piece for yourself. Do note that it is only available during Ramadan, hehe!