Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Closing with an advertisement

Ladies and gentlemen,

This blog is now closed.

Be back on brrip.blogspot when I have the time to open it up again. Hopefully by next week.

I realised this place was made for a need which should never have arisen in the first place. More about that, eventually, elsewhere. Maybe.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Perfection

Perfection is the one of the few things in the world that lingers around once you see it, you experience it. And by this I don't just mean achieving perfection in something, in fact I mean quite the opposite: to be in the presence/audience of someone who, by your own standards, has achieved it.

I went for Jason Mraz live last night, and it was oh, awesome. I'd always heard about Mraz being pretty damn good live, but it didn't quite prepare me for the concert last night. So I wasn't familiar with all the songs, but with Mraz I guess you don't really need to know ALL of them. It was actually perfect, as far as I could tell.

So yes, perfection lingers in different forms for different people. For me it's one of the few things I could describe as "humbing" in a there's a lot you can do in the world kinda way. And it also makes me avoid anything I deem possibly interesting for a while, because the bar has been set so high. I felt that the first time after finishing the Fountainhead, I couldn't get myself to read anything for 6 months, and then after Lisa Smedman's series.

And last night, after Jason Mraz Live, that about sums up how I'm feeling.


Well I suppose well all make our judgement call
Well walk it alone, stand up tall, then march to the fall

Saturday, September 20, 2008

My Stoddard Temple

Today I feel like writing for an audience. And it's ironic that this is the only place I can say that without intending it for any other reason than to just express just that simple fact, where nobody else can read it.

Let me explain, for the benefit of my failing memory, why it is tonight that I feel this way. Sometimes you feel compelled by not a certain event but a series of them, and I'm personally not really a fan of blogging about events, but here goes.

Last night a particular conversation made me wonder if it's time that I let someone step forward and renew my clear lack of respect for humanity, where humanity is what I see of it and not what I believe in my own head, namely my own ideals.

I was reading about the credit crunch today, and it made me wonder if any respect I will now acquire for humanity will be temporary and falsely created. In view of the mumbling idiots who thought of it a few years ago and those who sat by without realising where it's going to take them. Maybe the Statue of Liberty is incomplete, because holding up the torch doesn't remove the filth where the light doesn't shine.

And another conversation last night made me realise that there's nothing I know in the world that could be classified as "informed malice", and it made me wonder why I believe in such a concept in the first place. Maybe Ellsworth M. Toohey is nothing but an impossibility. But I still don't see how the world is getting where it is without such a helping hand.

Lastly, I'm in the middle of the Fountainhead. That explains my choice of title, the line just blew me away. But my reference to Toohey has nothing to do with my reading the Fountainhead right now. I've always felt that way, even before I read the Fountainhead, except now I have a name for it. Maybe it's because I fell asleep reading it, but it makes me slightly depressed. Strangely it has nothing to do with being homesick, because I'm not homesick. It's because of something between the fact that I didn't regret missing dinner today and the fact that my idealism isn't failing, and yet I'm afraid to express that in writing.


In true fashion of how I feel about all this:

shrugs.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

london part 1

Well I'm not in London yet, but Part 1 is the bit when I realise that I'm actually heading there, and the countdown stands at only 12 days. Somehow every waking moment seems to be a little more tangible.

I guess the UCL Singsoc camp and getting to see my airticket made me realise how soon I'm actually going. Amazingly, and scarily at some level, I managed to switch back entirely to the extrovert whom I thought I no longer am. All in all, I'm quite glad with how the camp as it happened, and I'm left to wonder if I actually did sculpt myself a persona for university without realizing it. So with 80% of myself and 20% of someone I don't really understand yet, London is just around the corner.

Saturday, June 7, 2008

And i quote "even though you seemed to understand the world and how screwed up it is, you still came across as rather positive and optimistic. But now, you're not that positive." Well mostly quoted anyway.


Firstly it's quite nice to hear it from someone else that you get the whole worldly shit and you were still bright and happy about it. It's one of those things you know for yourself, but it's still nice to hear it said out loud. So anyway, this is something quite related to what my previous first post was about.



I like to believe that my old positive attitude stemmed from my belief in people. When I say this, I don't mean people in general. I mean my belief in a specific person or persons. I mean people who don't live their lives with a direction and a mind which is the collective of the different pressures exerted on them, those who live their lives with a philosophy. The kind of people who don't just feel disappointment when something goes wrong, they feel sad.

Because fundamentally disappointment lies in comparison, sadness lies inward.

Either there are no such people left around me anymore, or I've stopped looking.

Sunday, June 1, 2008

number one

And so I find myself back, writing. I've virtually stopped blogging since army days, and though I've loads of different reasons, it comes down mainly to the fact that it dawned upon me that there's nothing I have to say that hasn't been said by someone elsewhere, albeit in a different context. I think the hugeness of the blogging community (although it's mostly filled with mundane daily rants and cam-whores) makes it so insignificant to be writing, pausing to think after every little phrase to grasp the exact meaning of what you're trying to convey. After all, the moment i click publish so do a thousand other people.

I've also been subconsciously extending my egoistic philosophy towards those around me, neglecting the fact that they actually believe in something other than self-purpose. (or think they do) I'm therefore harsher in my interactions with others, even though I don't often show it. It's one thing to hold someone accountable for something they did, but I think most of these dimwits don't even realise their blatant unconcern for others, and yes that is a part of egoism. They just go on imposing on you with the bizarre expectation that you'll ask them to get lost once you don't want to put up with it anymore.

It made me realise my increasingly shrug-to-everything attitude. Whether I'm pissed, happy or bored, I have to do justice to my own persona and act like I like to give a damn about things that neither have a bearing on my life nor does it matter to me which way they end up. Shrug. So I go on tolerating, often wondering if it's time to just throw it all back. But then again, dimwits and logic don't mix anyway so why bother right? Shrug. A simple shrug is really the best answer to most of the questions that pop into my head nowadays.

And thus the blog. I hate the fact that I had to borrow Rand's title for this, but nothing that came to my mind in the five minutes in which the idea of this blog was conceived was more fitting. So it stuck. If eventually someone's reading this, this entry was written for my benefit and mine alone. I figure eventually I might open this blog to others to read. For now it just feels nice to know that I can write without the hesitation or the motivation of anyone else reading it.