Less may sometimes be more.

Sun, 8 Feb 2009
2 min read
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I stay on campus during the weekdays, and when I go back to Hougang on weekends, I try not to use the Internet (or minimise my Internet usage, at least). Call me silly, but I believe it gives me some recharge time and forces me to do some offline reading – I’m finally starting on David Brin’s Glory Season (one year too late, some might say). Until it comes to be seen that this ‘no Internet on weekends’ policy is more bane than boon, I’ll stick to it. Nevertheless, one good thing that has resulted from the policy is in me realising the powers of micro-blogging.

I’ve just started using Twitter, and even more recently, tweet.sg. The latter allows me to send Tweets by texting to a local number, so in essence, I’m micro-blogging while offline. I’ve been wanting to do this for the longest time ever, because of all the thoughts that come to my head while I’m disconnected from the Internet. I’ve never been able to do it, though, due to either the lack of technology available to do so, or my lack of knowledge about the technology available to do so.

More importantly, I’m micro-blogging. Because of the 140 character limit that Twitter imposes, my thoughts are pared down to the bare minimum, so I’m forced to keep everything as succinct as possible. No lengthy discourses, sadly, but in this situation, it’s really the ideas that matter. One of the most important thoughts that came into my head over the weekend was this gem:

While waiting for The Girlfriend, am thinking of how a Writing Fellowship might work to improve standards of literary production in SG.

It was supposed to have been followed up by this:

Alternatively, a Writing Scholarship? Full tuition, yearly stipend, bond free. But recipient must produce literary piece biennially.

but somehow tweet.sg didn’t relay it, for some reason.

Nevertheless, it’s been a good weekend, and a good discovery. Looking forward to more of these weekends – and discoveries – along the way.

An economic thought experiment.

Fri, 30 Jan 2009
1 min read
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Scenario: You have six children. You plan to have at least one more child. You have eight more children instead.

Question: Given the above scenario, what is the marginal utility of having:

  1. One more child?
  2. Eight more children?

I’m really curious as to why the family isn’t already satisfied with the six children they already have. At the very least, I hope the family is rich and can provide a college education for all children, and the parents are loving people who know how to rear raise their kids according to sound principles founded on common sense.

Kiwi!: Rewriting The Myth of Sisyphus.

Thu, 29 Jan 2009
2 min read
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Wah, you know, when Kar Wee showed me this video, my heart broke into a million pieces. This, of course, was after I watched Changeling last week, when my heart broke into a hundred thousand pieces because THE FILM WAS SO GOOD BUT SO SAD.

Anyway.

THE VIDEO IS SO DAMN SAD TOO! Or so I thought. I watched it again when I returned to hall, and I wondered: is it meant to be sad, or is there another way for us to see the video and look beyond the initial grief we might feel? (WEI… Carrie Bradshaw-ly lah, as Yishu might say.)

The re-orientation of the Kiwi’s flight path reminded me of Ender’s Game, when Ender tells his Army that “the enemy’s gate is down” – one must reconfigure one’s paradigm of the enemy’s Achilles’ heel before one can defeat the enemy. The Kiwi thus demonstrates a paradigm shift in its drastically altered – and morbidly bizzare, of course – way of seeing the world and flying – if one cannot achieve flight through traditional means and within traditional constraints, then one must achieve flight by working with the constraints of gravity.

Though the Kiwi dies for its art, Camus argues that “[t]he struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart”. It is the struggle which holds meaning for Sisyphus’s life, and similarly for the Kiwi, it is the bird’s struggle toward the depths that fills its tiny heart with bittersweet joy. At the end of the day, it is the Kiwi who has achieved its own success – albeit in a final blaze of glory – on its own terms. One must imagine the Kiwi happy.

P.S. Please bear in mind that I’m not advocating suicide here. Life, like coffee, is beautiful.