beyond the traffic lights. [entries|friends|calendar] AVE.16 &fly away from the road where the cars never stop going through the night #theCAVEAT+theCREDITS [warning sticker] I must highlight that this is a side journal of sorts that contains "serious" compositions -- essays, poetry and the like, primarily for the good practice of my English writing. It is NOT my day-to-day online diary -- this is. Thus, I gladly welcome any comments and constructive criticisms based on my writing craft. However, comments unrelated to the writing of the entry should not be posted on this blog. Also, flames without constructive value or any relevance to the subject content of entries will be deleted. The opinions expressed on this journal should not be used against the author under any circumstances. Please acknowledge that these views are mine as the author's, and that I in turn do not seek to impose them upon you as a reader. That said, if you agree to the above, feel free to peruse this journal as you please. Credits for this layout's brushes go to CIRRATUS.org; those for the lyrics in the header to Dido's Sand in My Shoes. Yours, kaishi, @AVEnue16
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#0003: on lecture theatre politics [03 Feb 2006|06:09am] Noticing something amiss, a petite-framed teacher marches up the walkway between the two main divisions of seats in the Lecture Theatre -- one comfortably above it between the third and fourth floor, and one much more crowded slice between the second and third floor. She casts a heavy stare upon the forty or so students who have made themselves comfortable towards the higher end of the chamber; the top row looks back innocently down at her, or attempts to. It's only too obvious their chances of evading notice are now very highly reduced. "Why are there suddenly so many people in 3P?!" She barks. The block of students giggles, some more sheepishly than others. She's not wrong -- the diagramatic representations flashed indiscriminately and shamelessly on the overhead projector for everybody's edification dictates only one class occupying a column in this section of levitated land; alone, desolate in the otherwise empty half-of-LT. Now, she is looking directly at the top row, those who have attempted to sample a different environment from their respective home grounds'. One offers a rebuke: "Ma'am, we can't find seats downstairs." Her mouth now extends into a smile, which is indeed not really a smile but in disguise, behind a straight line segment of a slit, like a blade ready to slice and leak the juices of sarcasm. "It's okay. I WILL find seats for you all! Come!!" Conceding defeat, the top row of refugees sling their bags upon their shoulders, taking their time, and amble down the steps onto the walkway which marginates the third floor, just below the box indicated on the transparency shown overhead, as the tutor matches them most excruciatingly to dispersed, tiny and perhaps otherwise unnoticeable gaps of unoccupied seats below it. Many others of the superiors in the room are walking up and down, and across this vast expanse of a room another raises an eyebrow, and struts right up to the third floor aisle once more. Two lone rangers who had previously victoriously defied the previous exile -- to which the residents of the third-floor block had been most honestly nonchalant to, as they had been of the previous foreign fourth row -- gasp in horror as they recognise her familiar face. She has less of a sense of humour: "Those who are not in 3P, come down NOW!" She closes their options for meandering capture, and so they scurry down to the two empty seats at the lower block, syncopatedly, which this second long-haired woman points them towards, with the authority of a Queen of England. The top half of the Theatre is now, indeed, cleared except for the one class. The commotion that is so often witnessed before a lecturer begins continues to ensue, albeit the two large clocks on either side of the lowest entrances inscribed with times more five minutes past the bell ring. Tutors nonetheless continue to patrol the aisles to check for deviants, while the more soft-footed lecturer on the stage in front continues to gaze almost lovingly at the harsh seating plans that have already been reiterated in several lectures past. Who can forget the Chemistry lecturer from the previous day's lecture regime, who said that several non-Physics classes would be pushed down towards lower altitudes "because they needed to look at the screen more"? There are hidden messages behind every location where officious tutors have situated any one Civics Group, and they are now perfectly and happily blatant about them. Not to mention, equally happy to reinforce, strictly with no discrepancy, these divisions. Which is just what they're doing -- no inter-class parties, please, especially not in the sacred highlands above the walkway! The clock now reads a sheer ten minutes past, leaving a frantic forty-minute residual time for the lesson. One of the residents -- and perhaps some more -- on this now-isolated section above the septical holy walkway, above the rest of the batch in the same combination, frowns without reservation of disgust and slams his face on one of the tablets where Maths notes and stationery long at ready lie open. "What is their problem?!" 3   ¢

#0002: war-scene residue [19 Dec 2005|03:16am] An assortment of abandoned pieces-- Dog-eared foolscap paper, Scribbled many times over. A waxy candy wrapper, folded wires. A flattened, deformed origami crane. Who'd want this trash? Chuck it out! There isn't room for them -- some things you have to Learn to give up. Gentle fingers tug at the creased wings of the paper bird In opposite directions And, as an afterthought, Cast it through the open window. ¢

#0001: flight. [07 Nov 2005|02:30am] [ mood | peaceful ] Cambridge "O" Level examination, English Language, November 2004. An attempt to reconstruct the essay, before I forget its existence. Flight is an embodiment of majesty and authority, a prized gift endowed upon only select creatures that roam the Earth. It is probably no wonder, then, that birds must have inspired a jealousy amongst even the earliest of Man. It is undeniable that for a million years, Man has from the lowly ground raised his head to watch Nature's aviators circle the heavens above them, a place that they were unable to reach even in spite of the clever hands able to craft tools and shape civilisation. After all, the added ability of flight allows its manipulator to ascend into a new physical realm. The freedom and liberty to propel oneself over the currents, the ability to cross physical boundaries on land which have thus restricted movement for so long is but a fraction of the advantages flight offer any organism. It is the ability to claim territory over the expanses of the world below, and eventually makes all geographical boundary only finite. Flight is an ambition, a monarchy, a rule over those below -- one which requires no language to dictate, and is understood universally by its simple physical representation. I believe that it is the hunger, possibly greed, to take his reign over the land one step further, that drove Man to chase the dreams of flight. Sure enough, after many generations of painstaking experimentation he had come to find himself a pair of mechanical wings, extensions beyond his four limbs that he believed would take him beyond the constraints of weight limiting his territorial invasions to the ground. Beyond the legacy of the Wright brothers, the Homo Sapiens have since progressed to more sophisticated metal monsters, their helicopters and courier aircrafts roaring with triumph as they glide across the skies. To bring one's body into the air is no longer an empty wish, an indulgent reverie; it has evolved into a breakthrough across the boundaries of the possible. Yet, now that Man has attached these extensions to his body frame -- has he found the free spirit of the birds? How far has he ventured to compete with the birds in their rule of airspace, of their claim of prestige hungered for from the times of the primitive man? Man, perhaps, is unable to fully understand yet his existence, his responsibility as a visitor of the sky. Though his new scepter of flight has found him many conveniences of distance travel, it has also taken his domestic struggles into a new space. Warfare has similarly extended into the air, from which weapons and explosives may be released to plunge into the deathbeds of millions. Flight has turned a priviledge to catch the enemy off-guard, a sneak attack operation upon the target; a double-ended sword, one which can injure as easily as it can clear obstructive brambles. While Man built his wings to earn himself new abilities, new capabilities, he has also borrowed them to shed blood, to destroy his own society to a scale once imaginable. Owing to this brash ignorance, this confused approach, it is evident that Man has far from elevated himself to the same hierarchal level of the birds. Despite those awe-inspiring technological advances Man boasts, we're still well separated from those avians, beyond the reflective glass which margins between the stratosphere and the passenger of the modern Boeing. We have indeed discovered for ourselves the means by which we may dive through the heavens, but we have yet to explore our niche in higher places, the meaning of our existence in a different universe that has been for many ages governed by feathered beasts. While man has been able to attain physical flight by fixing mechanical wings on himself, his soul is still trapped on the earth's surface, held down by mortal weight. He soars in the sky just like a bird does, but fails alas to emulate the diving swallows he has envied for millions of years completely. For he is unable to set himself free from his mortal concerns, the weight of sorrows he indulgently allows to chain him to the surface of the earth, trapping him within the prison of the human heart that stagnates every individual's search for identity, contentment and relief. It is only he who can free himself from this vicious maze, to grant him that ability to take himself higher that he has craved for so long. Perhaps he may learn to release these worries one day and find that his wings were his blood and flesh to begin with -- that he can break them free from the seams of his skin, from within his heart, and then lift himself into spiritual release. Just like a bird, his home in the heavens above. Flight. ¢

just a test entry [01 Nov 2005|12:52pm] [ mood | blank ] to check how things fall together. dummy link! 1   ¢

#0000: on the meaning of blogging. [17 Jun 2005|12:05am] Posted here, once upon a time. Crossposted here yet again for easy reference and collaboration. As much as I know how nice it might be to bag another award, to be recognised amongst the other schools in this country -- I've never believed in "judging" the quality of blogs, particularly on a nationwide scale, at the inter-school level. People look out for so many different things when they're finding a blog to label "cool", to label "substantial", or simply to define it as a good read. Consider this, for instance -- while I agree with my fellow Rafflesian that dragging up an age-old controversy and trying to insert religious references into it is quite passé, there are definitely going to be some people lapping that faux-philosophical fare up; perhaps other visitors who view the blog will be able to share that blogger’s sentiments, or find reason in the expressed opinion while I am unable to do so. The judges who will be engaged in ranking the schools’ may judge such an entry positively or negatively, in spite of majority opinion or even, perhaps, the actual depth value of the entry. And in the end? We can't fault them for judging so. Judges have a set of judging criteria which limits how much extra consideration they're going to accept for each school. Of course it's necessary to have a judging criteria or attempting to rank things in a competition would be pure chaos. Yet there will never be a hundred percent agreement on what should be in the judging criteria. Some are bound to be flawed and yet insisted upon, and there are others which may be reasonable but frowned upon by the general public. I am quite peeved by how blogging has been viewed as a practice which can be converted for use in a competition, simply because it's the Internet zeitgeist. I have been a consistent blogger since the year 2001, and with my experiences doing so I feel extremely strongly that blogging, as much as you'd like to argue about it, is essentially a medium through which expression can be done -- just like music, visual arts, and the performing arts. It's very much writing on paper taken to a different level, a commentary journal of sorts for jotting down personal records and thoughts. How many people have you heard say, over and over again, that music is not meant to be scored against a marksheet and placed and ranked like athletes in a marathon? My opinion is that such objections apply to blogging, especially because blogging encompasses so many forms and purposes. A blogger who uses her blog as a form of emotional release, or simply to pen down daily happenings in her life, simply isn't going to be preoccupied with how philosophical and deep her blog entries sound as long as she's able to recall what she wants to using what she typed. At the same time, a blogger who's blogging for expressing his sincere view on a certain current issue probably isn't going to care how popular his views may be. Group bloggers may simply use their group blogs as a means of communication, a la a bulletin board, to all their fellow members without the use of a telephone or email. Thus the methods of judging a quality of a blog vastly differ where the purpose of the blogger in maintaining that blog is concerned. Which brings me to say that one of the worst things I feel about the competition is how "popularity" is a huge judging criterion, because I have seen too much about how the choices which are filtered out of such popularity-based competitions aren't always the best choices. Little Miss Popular can blog about the densest, daffiest things and get all the hits and visitor support she wants, because at the very least her friends are all there to read the blog and promote it for her. After all, popularity is never an accurate judge of quality where the artistic media are concerned. The point is? School blogs, if used for competition, are more than likely to morph into forced blogs. Not only are they inaccurate depictions of group blogs, they also limit the blogging scope of members -- down to the topics which they think would catch a reader's eye. (Watch, this is where popularity comes into play.) This probably explains where what I feel are faux-philosophical entries may surface; entries which are taking a shot at sounding deep and erudite, but actually going nowhere at all. Given the part of the judging criteria that has been revealed to us, blogs containing rants with little audience-capture element will be marked down. One has to blog about popular, heated debates, or topics that may generate controversy, or topics that most of the public can relate with, in order to secure a better place in the finals. It puts a lot of red tape and boundaries for your blogging area, if you think about it. School blogs force us to remember that Big Brother is watching us, that other people are going to read our entries and give them a statistical grade to be compared with others'. This also explains why I have not posted a single entry (until now) onto my own school’s blog. It's not that I haven't tried, or can't be bothered -- I wouldn't mind doing my bit for the school's interests. I have attempted, several times, at penning my own entries down. Yet nearly every time, I either felt like I was restricting my writing too much halfway into the entry in an attempt to come up with a reader-friendly yet "stirring" entry, or like I was forced to conform to a topic that would be relevant to students who were likely to be reading my school’s blog. There are about two or three half-baked of such entries that I've trashed, and the truth is I wouldn't have seen anything wrong with posting such entries on a normal blog. If anything, they would've been good for the insights provided. But, no, they simply wouldn't have gone on a school’s competition blog out of sheer lack of the personal flavour I could insert, the absence of an attempt to be completely politically correct (perhaps not in opinion, but at times the topics discussed) and the lack of already-established human interest elements. I sincerely wish careful thought will be put, in the future, into making just about anything into a competition for the sake of putting some hype into it, because I find such ideas very much knee-jerk reactions and I am appalled by the one-size-fits-all theory behind such a concept. Blogging as a competition? You might tell me that there are already online blogging competitions anyway. But don't forget that a formalized nationwide competition is vastly different from many of the blogging competitions set up online, which are largely informal and for which personal blogs may be submitted out of one's wishes; do not forget also that there is a much more varied criteria and more room for content development. To merge nationwide youth blogging with something "Singapore", something of a small group of judges will undoubtedly cause a decent amount of essence in blogging to be lost. And, as a final disclaimer: This holds no bearing on the quality of my own school blog, or of other schools' blogs. It's simply a criticism (yes, criticism -- you heard me right) about the concept, the system of turning blogging into a competition. While my views may not be shared by everybody who is engaged in the activity of blogging, I believe that they have the potential to contribute constructively to reshaping the local blogging and Internet communication scene. ¢

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