Some Taipei Photos

Shihlin Night Market. That place suffers from the perpetual crowd. If you've been to Bangkok and thought the night markets there were congested enough, wait till you enter the world's largest mosh pit. Every night is a Guinness Record attempt to compact as many people into a confined space and test the carrying capacity of the ground on which it sloshes itself on with a disconcerting array of neon lights.





Of course, how could I not visit Taipei 101? We didn't go up though, since it was a tad too overpriced in my opinion, and going up a tall building, even the world's tallest, is not exactly a life-altering experience.



The main Eslite Bookstore has got me set for another return trip. Think of Borders, Kinokuniya, HMV, Far East Plaza and Haji Lane stacked on each other and lovingly adorned with Christmas lights and with a large emphasis on nordic/scandinavian design. Most of the books were in traditional chinese, but the simplified chinese and english sections were quite modest as well, with titles that I couldn't find stocked at the literature section of borders/kino in Singapore. My sister and I bought a Holga camera and 2 chinese books. Hers was a book by François Sagan that was translated into simplified chinese. Following that, we looked around the comme des garcons boutique on the ground level, where all the clothes were sorted by their colours into racks of reds and blacks. It was so cool. Although that would have been an understatement.

More resolutions to renege

I've been busy preparing for YF camp. I have prepared encouragement gifts, perfected mystery Encourager techniques, brought cards and mahjong paper for encouragement corner and I can safely say that I won't face the same encouragement-corner disaster of 2005 when I forgot to bring my candy.

Now all I have left to do tomorrow morning before 11.30 am is to prepare worship for wednesday and do up my picture and cartoon for the encouragement corner.

And only previously, my family had a "discussion" on the music choices of my sister and I where I had to bring up the seemingly foreign concept of teenagers' discretion. That was an hour taken away from me as I wilted in my chair.

Anyway, I haven't blogged about Taipei yet. (shame) But it can be summarized into walking, eating, taking the Taipei MRT, walking, then eating, then walking some more. I'm glad I managed to get some exercise by walking. Really, really glad. I gained a few kgs in Hong Kong and was determined not to let that happen again.

So at this point in time, I'm like "my 16th birthday is in a month's time but no one cares and I kinda don't care about it too" and "I'm so freaking depressed because Apple is screwing up my computer and replacing the entire hard drive without checking software issues first and not to mention retrieving my photos and music and everything I think I'm going to cry" and "wth I still have so much work left but everyone's buzzing around me telling me to do stock taking/to help burn a cd/to design christmas cards/to bake freaking brownies/to organize the bicultural exchange exhibition booth/to plan extra practices/to lead this and lead that, so stop overloading me already".

Have I met another person facing the same problems that I have in school? Heck, no. I have not seen anyone else leading a CCA with totally apathetic members and ambitious teachers, being in a love/hate relationship with a board since sec 1, losing 4 years' worth of photographs, 11 gigs of music, hundreds of bookmarked pages, folders and folders of designs, being plagued by a fear of mediocrity in a class full of brains, living in the shadows of the generations before you, being constantly taunted unjustly, having to bounce back up because there's no choice but to put on a stupid brave manly facade, listening to the problems of other people who carry the weight of the world on their shoulders, trying to say no but sadly bound by societal obligations and trying to lead a godly life at the same time.

Yes, I am wallowing in self-pity once again, but that's all I do on this blog now, right? Let's have nature take its course, let this blog decompose into a state of unintelligent drivel, let tendrils and creepers (and lianas and rattans) engulf and suffocate my misery away, etc.

Ok this is what I have been doing this week, summarized into ridiculously nonindicative minute chunks.

1) Concert at PLMGS
2) VJC invitationals
3) Shiyun's birthday
4) Khai Soon's birthday
5) Grandpa's birthday
6) Stock-taking at bbc
7) Bag-packing

And please sms me your preferred gift from Taiwan or else I'll randomly assign gifts to you on a first-come-first serve basis.

And I'm going for a flu jab tomorrow. Not that I'm morbidly afraid of needles or anything.

And now, to tacitly justify the little time I can spend online now that the nice people at Apple will only return my computer to me on Friday;

When life gives you lemons, well, make some lemonade. Not quite for Nokia and Universal which plan to launch a digital-download service that promises to offer buyers of selected Nokia phones free and unlimited downloads of Universal recordings. However, in the face of blatant contraventions of copyright laws, Nokia and Universal, in all their ambition and expediency, have decided to make a Nigella Lawson-esque Lemon-infused meringue with all that they've got.

Although relatively young, the digital music industry has been blooming, albeit being a rather monopolistic one dominated by Apple's iTunes Music Store. Furthermore, the closure of Napster, a free digital music download service, has catalyzed a reactionary response that has sparked greater awareness of online piracy and the effect this has on the stakeholders involved; in this case, the musicians, the recording companies, and the consumer base.

Due to the pressing need to fulfill the physiological level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, ergo sleep, I have chosen to focus on the cultural shifts in the Digital Age. While not entirely bad in itself since it is reflective of a non-stagnating society which theorists say is crucial for the evolution of civilization, such shifts in mindsets offer me an oft-daunting opportunity to look at the status quo from a Christian perspective, which leaves me with the haunting question of whether it's right to steal music if (a) I face little or no criminal charges (b) Media conglomerates are bending to my level and offering me free downloads already, in any case.

According to the Bible, it is very obviously a sin to steal. Likewise, with other secular cultural constructs, it's a crime to steal. As if to complicate matters, we start to wonder about the intangible fine line that separates intellectual property from concrete and physical goods, and at this point, my viewpoint is divergent from that of a secular angle because in spite of popular consensus, I do not desensitize my moral compass.

Let's augment this basicity with a secular angle, that it's only ethical that you own the exclusive right to your own music lest you give it up in a recording contract to the company. This is where the responsibility of the media company comes in as the conscience of a society too caught up in a whirlwind of consumerism to care for the ethical dimension to their actions: are the messages that the media companies send healthy for the creative climate in the industry? Does it reflect the value system that the artists uphold? Does it exacerbate the problem of piracy, or does it implicitly decrimininalize it altogether?

Yawn. Let me stop here, please. The lack of structure clearly reflects my state of mind, yet I'm aiming to offer as much insight as I can.

Yawn. Just came back from the YFC JC camp. We went orienteering around sentosa in the dark, ending up at strange obscure places along the dragon trail (where I discovered a spot where I posed for a photo when I was like 4) and a battery at mount imbiah. We were freaked out by termites pooling around our feet and the strange twisted shapes along the merlion walk without its light-up. We reached the end first anyway, and drank 100 plus and ate snickers and meiji chocolate.

So now I'm trying to rest at home to prepare for the concert at PLMGS later and I can't think quite clearly. Furthermore, the VJC invites are tomorrow and I'm desperate to catch as much sleep as possible. The busiest week of my holidays is ending soon, and I really thank God for that.

I will never see this sunset again, sigh.

Anyway; what I did this weekend-
1) Debate
2) Jiansheng and Stephanie's wedding
3) Baptism Sunday
4) Went to redbar to catch Gareth's band playing

Shall talk about the lattermost event since it's still stuck in my mind (like the unusual smell the fog-machine produced). Okay, minus the strobe lighting, maybe I would have enjoyed it better. They played 5 songs but I liked the fourth song best. Decided that I would not enjoy clubbing when I turn 18.

And the MRT ride between city hall and bugis is insanely packed. I met a backpacking couple that were smiling and beaming in the "I'm so loving this small quaint crowded south-east asian city kinda feeling" way.

Open House Blues; whee! picture of tokyo!

Autumn in Tokyo is nice, except that the leaves ain't flaming red or brilliantly orange yet. There was a post-apocalyptic gloom hanging in the air that extinguished most of my expectations of jumping into mounds of leaves washed in gold and amber. But hey, it's okay, I like grey skies anyway.

I have just discovered, hidden among some random chain e-mail glurge, that we are having Open House consecutively for 4 days in a row, right after the release of the PSLE results and after the joy/bitter disappointment has sunk into the hearts of children and their obsessing parents. I am terrified.

So there goes my after-A-maths-remedial-plan to go to the esplanade library and look for the dang Erik Sate scores. My afternoons will now be spent trying to sell something I've grown weary and tired of to unsuspecting families. I am trying to think of smart-ass comebacks to counter comments steeped in ignorance.

Furthermore, how am I guaranteed a better turn-out after experiencing the dull mediocrity of the previous one that was supposed to be more hyped-up than the ones falling on these days? I am tired as it is of listening to the authorities go on and on about the importance of image (and that grating voice—no!), watching parents fuss over squirming children, trying to console parents who turn up with a child whose T-score falls short of the cut-off for the year, and sitting around waiting like taxi drivers at Changi Airport terminal 1.

And then there are the parents who arrive with a predatory glint in their eye as if trying to strategically place their child in a school where their academic pursuits would be further enhanced by T-scores significantly higher than the average student. Not that I have anything against high aggregates, but I can't stand people who enter with a smirk that says 'I could go to but I'm giving you a chance'. Nor do I have the heart to entertain parents who come in and start criticizing our severe lack of CCAs and land mass.

However, I am speaking from a pessimist's point of view (and one that is still pissed about not being able to use his own computer yet). Perhaps tomorrow will be a fair weather day and there will be happy smiley parents and children who are eager to come in and express avid excitement about the programmes offered in school. And maybe they'll send in a hokkaido ice-cream vendor and the rest of my day will be spent laughing and eating salted caramel gelato and vanilla soft serve ice-creams. (yeah, I wish)

status quo:

1) the somewhat much-awaited A.P.C. catalogue that I had ordered last month is here! I am a little disappointed though, because everything in the catalogue were the same as the things at their website. But my mum's pleased because apparently the pictures were placed spread-out enough for her to let her kindergarteners use it for their arts and crafts lessons. Ah well. But I really like the brown jacket you see on their front page! I tried hinting to my parents, but then again, it's kinda warm. And 'kinda' is perhaps an understatement.

2) I want to go back to Mie and cycle around the rice fields during sunset! And ride on the cool bicycle with my blue plaid lunchbox in the basket in front! And laugh with my host because it's so chilly. And see the trains pass by. But these moments are things that one tends to get lost in during daydreams. On a less romantic note, I love the 4 PM sunsets and the sunrise at 5 AM because the daylight's there in the mornings when I need it the most.

3) On the same day that I received the A.P.C. catalogue, my dad came home with Mac OS X 10.5 which comes in really cool holographic packaging. My happiness was short-lived, however, when (i) someone accidently pulled the plug on the external DVD drive that I was using to install it in, and (ii) when I re-installed it and woke up the next morning to face the horrifying Blue Screen Of Death. After fsck-ing it several times (the equivalent of CPR on a computer), and rebooting it with the original installation disk, and trying to hack into the root user of the operating system (and encountering a confusing myriad of coding that was reminiscent of A Maths Paper 2), and incurring the 'You Are Such A Geek' grimace of my sister whilst typing a line of code, I have learnt to accept the Inevitable. And thus the continuous struggle between man and machine lives on through our little technological tragedies.

I am now typing on my mum's macbook pro, and its metal casing is giving my wrists tiny annoying electric shocks.

4) My parents are marvelling at the perceived increase of productivity away from the computer, mainly because in my frustration, I decided pay homage to the Tokyo shinkansen station to alleviate my aggrieved state through drawing on my sister's canvas that has been stowed away along with the rest of her intentions to run off and join SOTA.

5) I want to go to Disneyland in California, Colette in Paris (and see what all the hype about it is about), Shibuya in Tokyo and Manhattan in New York! I'm rather disappointed with the Tokyo part of my trip because I missed out on going to all the, well, cool places that put Tokyo on the map. I mean, we spent an entire day visting shrines and temples. Not that's anything bad per se, but I've already seen enough of ancient Japan to last at least half a century, thank you very much. Where are the freaky cosplay people in Harajuku, the neon lights, and the quirky avant-garde shops that make Tokyo so wonderful to go to? Having said that, the whole breathlessness of exiting the train station and entering Tokyo watching reporters run around in front of TV crew and cameras for the opening of Daimaru in Ginza made the stressful-bullet-train-rushing all worthwhile.

6) I have too many spiral-ring bound notebooks.

So tomorrow, I have debate in the morning, choir workshop in the afternoon, and SL chalet in the evening. I feel like going back to the past and giving my sec 1 self a huge slap.

Rant

Urgh. Okay, so let me wallow in my teenage miseries.

Would have blogged about my trip to Japan but am suffering from How-Was-Your-Trip fatigue, in which everyone asks you about your trip to the point of your own frustration. Besides, I've drafted one but I'm currently having those weeks where I can't seem to blog anything because of a shortened attention span.

Yes, I'm having one of those weeks where I don't want to do anything but fade into my surroundings and blend into the blurriness of the Japanese countryside while on the shinkansen. I crave salted caramel ice-cream and sticks of pocky. I get moody all the time but trying not to show it because the last thing I want now is an escalation of anger leading to an undesired manifestation of internal fury. I look at my report book as if it was a bad smell. I type and get more frustrated because language is such a limiting way of expressing oneself, despite the supposed vastness of vocabulary and diction available. As if we pick up stock words and phrases from a supermarket shelf and arrange them nicely in the cart. I am infuriated when caught in the whole pretence of cultural constructs and expectations, and the roles, and the expectations, and the responsibilities, and the expectations. I am not suicidal but rather homicidal, yet it is not only anger but helplessness that I feel. I'm sick of the euphemisms, bureaucracy, motivational posters and the annoying as heck Spring Singapore public service messages. In other words, I am confused, angsty, frustrated, and will also be labelled as a shallow teenager who apathetically blogs about his own selfish sorrows. They call it periodic male tension. And not many people will get to this last part of the paragraph because of my adolescent babble.

And also the fact that singapore is like, the land of ennui-sodden mediocrity. We're born, we go for montessori kindergartens, we attend swimming lessons, we go for ballet/violin/piano classes, we join our parents in the queue for elitist primary schools (where our placement also serves to assure them of a hassle-free registration for younger siblings down the road), we study for psle, we go to a secondary school (preferably SAP, IP programme, Special Stream) and then we graduate. And then what? NS is already too cliché a subject for the modern singaporean male to be ranting about. Our lives revolve around the freaking concept of meritocracy. We chase that holy grail of holistic, all-rounded success. We crave that perfect oh so perfect single-digit after 4 years of mindless repetition and memorization. Even this ideology has seeped and contaminated the preferred perception of Family; parents now judge their children by their grades. Are parents even supposed to judge their own children?

Gawd I'm starting to sound like a clamant opposition party member during a GST hike.

I hate the thesis statement-elaboration-conclusion structure.
I hate writing narratives.
I hate soggy cashews and pecans in a tub of Ben and Jerry's.
I hate commonwealth essay topics.
I hate singaporean immigration officers who never greet you despite being greeted, eye you suspiciously as they turn to the photograph on your passport, remain silent throughout the whole time, and never say welcome or thank you. And they give you a look of bemusement when you loudly say 'thanks' before you leave, as if saying 'thank you' and 'goodbye' were as obsolete and uncool as saying 'carpe diem' or 'by jove/golly'.

urgghh. I'm going to sleep and I'll wake up tomorrow and realize that it's a better day. Or something.
(Oh! I bought a pair of havaianas and they are really so very soft and pleasant :D)