Missing Persons Report

Name: Jesmond Chia
Description: Not available
Last seen: 6 Oct 2011 at UCC Theatre
Usual locations: PGP, COM1
Current status: Missing Found

If you have seen this individual recently or know of his whereabouts, please contact your local authorities immediately.

Current status of Jesmond Chia:
Individual was found outside of MPSH2-B exam hall. Individual displayed signs of severe sleep deprivation and residual signs of high levels of stress. Interestingly, the individual seemed to also slight signs of relief but that might be due to a misinterpretation of his current state. Individual has now been returned to his room and is currently recuperating. Individual is expected to return to normal status as soon as tomorrow.

Another Semester, Another Concert

I'm finally back from the little dark hole that I buried myself in. For those who are wondering, for the last 3 months I was stuck in this little time black hole called EMCC (just take it as another Dance BLAST! concert). This concert is a little different from the previous one (SUAD earlier this year) in a couple of ways.

Firstly, it's my first concert as a non-freshie (meaning I get to do items other than the freshie item O=). Secondly, got the chance to perform in two items under 2+1 different choreographers (interestingly, all of which never choreographed stage performances before). So yeah, during the slow periods I was already putting 4x2 hours/week into practices. By the time we hit the crunch period, I was dedicating twice that amount of time. Throw all that on top of 2 other normal CCAs and the additional responsibility of being an inexperienced club president ON TOP OF my regular studies as a (by right lifeless) computing student and you'll understand my disappearance from the face from the Internet.

Looking back now, the feelings I had after this concert are interestingly quite different from those I had post-SUAD. After SUAD, I was simply left in awe after stepping into the world of dancing at a university level. However, now I've actually naturalised into what it's like to be a BLAST!ard so the shock value is much milder. Don't get me wrong, I still find it amazing how good the items look and I certainly enjoyed watching the bits and pieces of the concert which I managed to see.

However, did I have any life-changing moments of inspiration from this concert? Honestly, no. To be fair, EMCC is a much smaller scale production compared to SUAD (esp since the last SUAD was the 10th anniversary of BLAST!) so I felt that this concert was more like a platform budding choreographers and dancers rather than a performance to exhibit pure awesomeness.

Did I learn more from this concert? Definitely yes. I suppose this also has something to do with the fact that I just choreographed SoC Rag just before participating in EMCC. Rather than focusing solely on levelling up my skills as a dancer, I was more interested with how the choreographers conceived the big picture of the item. Story, music editing, blocking, levels, layering, musicality. I found myself inadvertently deconstructing the choreos to see what makes an item awesome beyond just steps.

It also helped me a lot being under three different choreographers. It was interesting how different people interpret music differently, be it beats, counts, lyrics, backing instruments or just random sound bites. So as a dancer trying to be a choreographer, I think it's definitely a plus to learn new ways to interpret music. Aside from that, I also learnt how each choreographer managed their dancers and their training sessions which again will be very helpful when I try to choreograph next year's SoC Rag.

At the end of it all, I think that this concert was quite a humbling experience. Every so often I get my ego let the best of me and I end up thinking that I'm the best dancer around, that I should be given more solos, given chances to choreograph items. Then I sit through the concert and see how awesome the choreos are, how awesome the real soloists are and I suddenly think to myself, "Shit, I could never do that." So yeah, I've learnt to shut my ego up and let my dancing do the talking for me.

Do I think I'm good enough to perform solos? Do I think I'm good enough to choreograph items for a BLAST! concert? I can honestly tell myself, "No way in hell. Not now." There are dancers and choreographers in BLAST! who are FAR better than I am and any concert-goer deserves at very least a level of quality that only they can offer. Nevertheless, this also gives me a goal to reach. To be able to one day reach the level of awesomeness that the only BLAST zhai-squad can offer. To improve till one day I actually become that awesome.

These past few months really helped me grow as a dancer and from this experience, I've gained some headway on my goals as a dancer. So from here on, the only way to go is forward. To one day become so awesome that I finally impress myself.

Life after Rag

(Yes, this post is way overdue given that Rag ended more than a week ago but getting my life back in order took some time. Better late than never =D)

So yes, Rag is finally over. Brief history for those who do not know what Rag is. Rag, which stands for 'Receive and Give', is Chingay-like parade which is held by NUS every year in conjunction with Flag Day. So basically every faculty and hall will build a float and put up a dance performance. For the School of Computing, I was given the task of being the dance choreographer, tasked with choreographing the performance and overseeing the teaching and execution of the item. I should have you know that prior to this, I have never choreographed a full performance (my only choreographing experience being a 2 minute item which eventually got scrapped) and now I was tasked with putting together a 6 minute performance, which is considered uber long by dance performance standards.

The whole choreographing journey started at the beginning of the year when the first design of the float came out. The main reason why I had to wait till the initial float design to come out was because we wanted to ensure that the float and the dance to complement each other (which was not quite the case for last year's rag when the float was an armoured whale and the dance was about war and peace...). So with float design in mind, I went about roughly sketching out the rough storyline and specific effects and moments I wanted in the dance. After that was done, the dance was left to sit at the back of my head till May >.<

May arrives. I start fleshing out all the filler bits and I finally have an idea of how many dancers I have to work with after our recruitment drive during the Freshman Orientation Camp (our main source of manpower). After that, the rest was history. The next three months was essentially just teaching, training and cleaning up till show day alongside National Day.

Of course, to leave those three months at just that would not do justice to the hell of a journey those three months were. I had one dancer tell me he got chicken pox a month before show. My lead dancer gave me the scare of my life when she was suspected to have appendicitis just 2 days before showtime (luckily of course, it turned out to be a false alarm and she performed). Tempers flared as my freshies were torn between Rag commitments and orientation, made only worse by the fact that I had some dancers go missing for weeks on end and come back like nothing happened. If my stress levels were plotted against time till performance, it'll be an exponential curve hitting infinity as time left tends to 0.

Despite all the sleep-deprived nights and all the loss of what little hair I have left, I do not regret being a part of this epic journey. In spite of the numerous failed stunts and dropped steps during showtime, I still believe that we managed to put up a show that we can be proud of and at the end of it all, I believe that's what matters most. For me at very least, I have learnt A LOT from being this year's Rag choreographer, things that I would never have been exposed to otherwise, like cheerleading =P

Videos of SoC Rag 2011:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osvRSVY873I ('official' video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjHLwzW2y-M&feature=share (audience video 1)
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150254339070814&comments (audience video 2)

In the Solemn Defence of All Things Weird

Just imagine this for a moment. You're standing at a bus stop as the bus you're waiting for approaches. You board the bus, pay your bus fare and walk in to find your seat. Then suddenly you notice a guy casually doing a handstand against the side of the bus with the most deadpan look on his face. What are your most immediate thoughts of the person?

Some of the more open people would probably just think 'Cool' and move on with their lives without anything more than an impressed eyebrow raise. The slightly less open people may probably think 'Okay...', look confused for a moment but still continue on their path to find their seat without any negative impression of said person.

Now we look at people who are even less open and that is where things start getting ugly. Thoughts like 'freak', 'retard', 'crazy person' and maybe even 'mental hospital escapee' start popping up. Muttering "siao" not-so-under their breath or even blatantly just shouting it the person. Making terrible jokes about the person, thinking they're out of hearing range when really they are. And then suddenly, just because he's doing a handstand in a public bus, he becomes a bad person. It may not be entirely obvious but he has just labelled and socially outcasted just because he stood out.

I'd pose a question to everyone. What exactly is wrong with being weird, being different? I'll qualify my question a little bit. People who are weird in the sense that they hit on random people, invade people's personal space and stuff like that, those examples I concede are cases where it's wrong to be that weird but by no means can we pigeonhole ALL weird people with the above cases of weird people. Just because weird people are a little more difficult to understand doesn't automatically make all weird people closet perverts and axe murderers.

Now why exactly am I defending weird people? Well for starters I'd be lying terrible if I said that I wasn't the least bit weird but the biggest reason why I defend weird people is because they are often times the most interesting group of people I know. Weird people tend to have more character depth than conforming individuals who just end up being carbon copies of the next guy. I mean, the last adjective you would use to describe a weird person is boring. Take the time to talk to a 'weird' person and leave your mind wide open and you'd know this too.

I'll take an example of a conversation I had about doomsday. My friend said that if humanity was about to go extinct (for argument's sake we said that this was a confirmed issue), she'd want to quickly kill herself before everyone else died so that when she went to Hell (and face it, most of us probably will too) she'd be able to better picks on things like land and accommodation. Furthermore, she'd be able to hoard goods at cheap prices since supply would great outnumber demand and possibly make a killing by selling her hoarded goods back to the rest of mankind once doomsday hits. Now do I agree with anything she said? To be honest not really. Did I find it the least bit logical? If I accepted the wild premise that Heaven and Hell are just extensions of the real world, then her logic is technically sound. Then again, I never did accept her premise so by extension, I didn't accept her logic either. Did I find that doomsday discussion interesting? Heck yeah.

And that is why I like mingling with 'weird' people. I suppose all I wanted to say is that we should just have a more open mind to different people and take life a little less critically when we don't need to be critical. We're all human and we all have limits to our comfort zones but open up your comfort zones a little bit and you might just let in a brilliant new way to see the world you thought you knew.

Confessions of a Sai Kang Warrior

(Pre-blog note: For those who don't speak Hokkien well/at all, 'sai kang' roughly translates to 'shit work' and is usually used to represent menial tasks or simply work that no one wants to do)

In my last post, I talked about one aspect of myself (being hyper) so I thought I'd use this opportunity to talk about another aspect of myself, being 'on'. A brief history lesson now, prior to coming to Singapore a few years ago I was pretty comfortable with drifting through life but the moment I came to Singapore I decided that I would turn over a new leaf to mark this new beginning. Thus, I hopped from the drifting end of the involvement spectrum all the way to the to the hyper involved end.

From my first year in Singapore all the back in Secondary 3 till now, I have volunteered/ran for/self-nominated myself for every committee position/key role/responsibility that I could get my hands on.

Trivia-break. Back in secondary school, my classmates nicknamed me 'Nitro' which was the result of some twisted train of logic which somehow went like 'enthusiatic --> enthu --> N² --> Nitro' (surprisingly the name still managed to somehow capture the essence of who I was/am).

Anyhow, fastforward to present time. I'm currently in 4 clubs (one of which I currently president of >.<) and the dance choreographer for SoC's Rag Dance (Rag is sorta like a Chingay type parade, it'll take too long to explain in full). I'll be totally honest with you guys, never once have I wanted to run for the sake of filling my CV (though it does feel good when I look at my CV and say "Damn, it did a lot of shit"). I mean, it's kinda like working for the sake of the money, after a while you're just going to end up jaded and start hating your job. And that is why I've told myself that I'm doing all these jobs because I want to. That way I always have the resolve to see my work through.

I've come to the realisation that I'm sort of like a shark. A shark has to constantly swim in order to survive, much like myself. I constantly need to be doing something or else I start rotting. It's either I'm full out doing something or I'm full out nua-ing (like a tofu). I can't quite tell if it's a good thing or a bad thing that I have yet to find a middle gear between the two.

After all these years of being a sai kang warrior, I've discovered yet another rather important perk about being a sai kang warrior. I found out that the pre-working environment is the perfect place for all trial-and-error experiments regarding any responsibility-related. It's the perfect sandbox where we are allowed to screw up with (relatively) minimal repercussions. It's nearly impossible to not screw up the first time we do anything so why not try while the cost of trying is still small?

I'll end this blogpost with a thought that I was once told:-

Never call your work sai kang because if you call it sai kang, you're only degrading the work that you are doing. There is no such thing as sai kang because any work you do, no matter how insignificant it may seem, is still important - Patrick Loo

A Keen Sense of Insanity

Greetings poor Mr. Blog. I'm sorry I haven't been visiting you very often. I have been, still is and will be very busy with Rag Dance but I'll try to come around as and when I can okay?

Never mind that. I digress...

Back to the subject title. Recently I just came back from a 4D4N stayover camp better known as the School of Computing Freshman Orientation Camp (SoC FOC). I think the name of the camp best speaks for itself what the camp was about. My role in the camp was supposed to be that of a fake freshie but my cover was very quickly (albeit unintentionally) blown by one of my orientation group's (OG) group leaders (GL) so I ended up being my OG's fake GL/mascot for the rest of the camp.

Now anyone who knows me well enough will know that I'm a hyperactive bunny when I'm in camp mode. I figured myself to be a rather animated person under normal circumstances so being in camp mode just exaggerates the crazy person that I already am. This behaviour stems from one of my many life philosophies. I believe in creating moments regardless of the personal social costs. To rephrase that, I'm the type of person who doesn't really care if people are laughing with me or laughing at me, just so long as they are genuinely laughing, like being a jester of sorts. It's a whole lot easier to keep people hyped and keep their morale up when you have a hyperactive crazy dude prodding them from behind. That and generally people are more inclined to have fun at the same time.

Which now brings me to the final point of this blogpost. I think being slightly hyper is an important trait to have yet I don't think I'm wrong to say that most people shun it. Granted, there are a great many situations which call for utmost seriousness but that doesn't mean that ludicrousness has no place in our society. Maybe it's in our Asian blood to be conservative and all but I swear, sometimes we are just too quick to reject anything that either stands out or is simply out of the ordinary.

Nevertheless, I suppose I would be asking for too much if I wished that everyone be a little more hyper and I will also concede that not all people are cut out to be hyper. So that being said, I think I'll just have to contend with being one of the few crazy people around to light up people's days for now, for better or for worse =D

Greatness

Don’t we all want to be great? Don’t we all want to have that feeling of being able to honestly say to ourselves, “I am awesome”? Don’t we all? Yet, why is it that so few of us actually strive to achieve it? A good majority of us end up settling for less, settling for average or worse still, settling for mediocre.

It’s true that not everybody can be in the top 1%. It is true that in most cases, every winner will produce losers to similar effect. I will certainly concede that a sense of realism is important. Yet, in this morbid realisation of reality we tend to forget one thing. Greatness isn’t something that is given, it something that is achieved.

I suppose one reason people would settle for average is how daunting the path to greatness seems. It’s a given that not all individuals are born equal and it’s easy to blame the lack of opportunities or natural talent when we decide to give up on pursuing greatness. However, I believe there is one very big misconception of greatness. Greatness is not absolute, it is relative. To be great does not necessarily mean that we would have to be globally recognised or be the winner of some highly sought after prize simply because not everyone has the calibre to pull of such feats.

The point that I’m trying to get to is that of potential. Not everyone is cut out to be Einstein or Zuckerberg and that in itself is what makes them the geniuses that they are. Yet, I believe that everyone has the potential to be great. Like a hearing-impaired person learning how to dance or a local choreographer’s dance item that sends goosebumps down one’s spine, the ability to fully utilise one’s potential is what defines greatness. All people can achieve greatness. That is what I believe. It may not be ground-breaking or world-shaking greatness but still greatness that can touch the lives of others.

Then again, you might ask yourself, why on earth am I making such a fuss over others? If others choose to settle for less than greatness, what does that matter to anyone else? The only person who is left miserable is the person who didn’t attempt to pursue greatness. To those who share those thoughts, I will say that greatness is not a means to an end or an end in itself. 

Greatness catalyses greatness. Inspiration inspires inspiration. Have you ever witnessed a moment of greatness, be it real or fictional? A moment where your world seems to stop spinning as you bear witness to a sight so epicly mesmerising? A moment that simply drives you to tears with its majesty? Of course, these moments are not limited to human creation and I grossly exaggerate my descriptions but it is moments like this that drive other people to pursue greatness. These moments serves as testaments, showing us that greatness is achievable. They propel us to strive to recreate those moments of greatness for ourselves and in the process achieving greatness. 

I’ll end this blogpost with a quote from my favourite geek webcomic, xkcd.

You don’t become great by trying to be great. You become great by wanting to do something, and then doing it so hard that you become great in the process – Randall Munroe as zombie Marie Curie

EXAMS!!! THEY'RE OVER!!!

Yeah. They are. So now I begin doing all of the shizz that I haven't had the time to do. Anyhow, for now maybe I'll just put down the bucket list of ALL the stuff I want to try to get done. Let's see how much I'll be able to achieve within a three month break.

Cosplay:-
Human-scale Wing Zero Custom
Black Rock Shooter (Kaito version)

Dance:-
Generally: Get Rag dance done (ok, this isn't really a project since I HAVE to get this done anyway)
B-boying: Get some floats (e.g. crikets, turtles, etc) and some air freezes (e.g. Nikes)
Locking: Clean up my EVERYTHING
Tricking: Get a clean butterfly twist

Art:-
MOAR wallpapers!

Games:-
Finish Portal 2 (my inner gamer appeals to anyone who plays video games, YOU HAVE TO GET THIS GAME!!!)
Finish Ace Attorney series
Finish Machinarium
Play MapleStory again

*Update*
All in all, it seems that I did not manage to strike a lot of the things off my holiday list but at least I managed to get half of it done-ish >.< (I blame Rag for eating up all my time).

A Personal Tradition

Today was the last day of the semester, which means today I put on my last day of semester clothes. Now what the heck does that mean? To put it into perspective, last semester I wore a beret, my Lion Heart necklace, a short sleeve shirt, a skinny tie, black jeans and sneakers. This semester I decided to kick it up a notch.

So this time around, I walked into my first lecture wearing a white fedora hat, a white long sleeve shirt, a black velvet vest, a black skinny tie, black working pants and black leather shoes. To say the least, it was a surprise for all my friends in the lecture hall (and the lecturer himself). And such was the rest of my day. Every time I passed by someone I knew, they would give me the 'woah' look and ask me what the occasion was, to which I always replied, "They're my last day of semester clothes =D".

So what is the point of this celebration of the last day of the semester? Well, for one, it's to mark the last official day of the semester in which have to go to uni (save exam days). Other than that, it's my personal excuse to crack out my good clothes because I always found it a waste to have nice clothes in my wardrobe but never actually having the chance to wear them. Perhaps I also take a little inspiration from a friend of mine who used to dress up practically EVERY SINGLE DAY last semester. And maybe, just a little, I want to make my daily life a little more special than usual.

Then again, what's wrong with dressing up and looking good for no reason every once in a while =D

Post-SUAD Thoughts

Well, it's finally over. Shut Up And Dance 2011 comes to a close. Okay, fine. It actually came to a close last Sunday but I've been spending the last week picking up the pieces of my life. Just a little bit of context for everyone. Shut Up And Dance is a concert put up by the NUS Dance BLAST! club. This year in particular is really special since it marks the club's 10th anniversary so the scale of this concert was A LOT bigger than anything I've been a part of before.

It's really on hell of a crazy ride for me. I'm only a junior this year so I was only a part of the finale item in which they shoved all 40~ of us juniors plus another 20~ seniors into. That plus the fact that I'm practically a bottom feeder within the club, so I had a nice cozy time in the back corner of the stage. So to make use of this situation, they committee decided to make use of the extra muscle and drafted all the junior guys into the backstage props team while we were not dancing.

But that didn't make the experience any less awesome. I've been in concerts in secondary school before and recently I was also a part of the CAC concert as a b-boy but the scale of those concert do not even come close to SUAD. It's an inspiring experience watching the seniors and alumni dancing on stage. Almost breathtaking when you watch the sheer level of quality in the choreography and execution.

It's one thing to be blown away by professional dancers from the comfort of a nice cushioned chair but witnessing a performance of that level from the wings just takes it to a whole new experience. Sure I don't get to see the big picture of all the blocking and there will be a lot of instances where I can't see what's happening on stage because I'm blocked by the wings but there are nuances of a performance that can only be witnessed up close.

I'll just try to retell one example that sent chills down my spine. One of the dances used the song "Love The Way You Lie" by Eminem and Rihanna and featured one of the most amazing solo dancers I've had the honour of meeting, Chun. Her solos by themselves are already insane enough with the amount of energy she puts into her performances. Still, the thing that totally knocked me off my feet was how into the character she was. In the silence after the song, just before the stage completely blacked out for the next segment of the dance, I heard the faintest of whimpers coming from Chun and I was like taken aback by how immersed she was into the role to the point it almost became real.

Still, as inspiring as watching another dancer is, nothing can replace the feeling of being the one on stage. 60 people on stage forming the biggest 'dance armies' to grace the concert. Standing in front of a sellout crowd, there's a feeling that drives you to throw out everything you have and leave it on the stage floor. After an emotionally charged choreo to an equally emotionally charged song (Eminem's solo in B.O.B.'s Airplaines Part II), I ran into the wings and for a few seconds I almost thought I would puke after just throwing out so much energy during the performance. A really super crazy 4 minutes.

But I think my greatest takeaway from this concert is not the inspiration or the time on stage but the new friends I made. When I first auditioned for BLAST!, I went in alone and got in not knowing anyone at all. For the longest time, I went to weekly practices without actually getting to know 90% of the other people in the studio but thanks to this concert, I finally managed to sit down and attach names to the faces I've seen for so long. Like Pat (our resident choreographer) said, the concert is sort of a 'baptism of fire' and that we are now inducted into what is the BLAST! family, soon to become the seniors I so greatly admired.

To wrap up my thoughts, this concert for me is really a rite of passage as a dancer stepping onto the next level of my dancing life. So onwards I go, to become the senior who inspires juniors like I have been inspired.

1600 people in the audience, 10 years of BLAST! history, 1 unforgettable experience.

Art: Crash - Durarara!! Wallpaper

As I continue on with the expose of my life, I'll begin with my first anime wallpaper post. Given that this is my first post about anime wallpapers, I should type out a bit of background to my Photoshop-ing past.

I've been Photoshop anime-related images for about 5-6 years now. It first started with just making simple web banners and signatures for a forum I used to frequent back in the day, back when I simply extracted stock images using the magic wand tool and pasted them onto filter spam backgrounds. Humble beginnings much. Eventually I ventured into the realm of making composite anime wallpapers, stumbling upon the amazing website, animepaper.net

Recently, I've been dwelling with the wonderful world of vector graphics, vector tracing and Adobe Illustrator. It's really amazing what one can do with vector graphics. Since most anime art is drawn in a style easily mimicked by vector graphics, vector tracing really opens up a lot of restrictions since vectors can be resized to any arbitrary size I want without any loss of detail. And for those who are wondering, the huge anime picture staring you in the face at the top of the blog is one of my older works.

Now onto this specific wallpaper. The underlying concept of this wallpaper is essentially an attempt to mimic a movie poster. Specifically, I was trying to sort of spoof the movie "Crash". Those of you who are familiar with the anime Durarara!! will be able to immediately draw the link between the anime and the movie. For those who are not in tune with the anime universe, quite a bit of context will be redoubtably loss.

I don't really want to talk too much about the wallpaper. I'll just let it do the talking for itself. In the future, I hope to be able to post all my future projects on this blog. For those who may be interested to see some of my older works, I have a deviantArt account at http://infernova.deviantart.com as well as an animepaper.net account at http://nova-kun.animepaper.net. Do pay me a visit if you have the time =D

Once A Dreamer

Have you ever had dreams?

Like those from your childhood, when you dreamt you could be a superhero saving the world. Like those from your adolescence, when you dreamt of being to coolest kid in school. Like those from your adulthood, when you dreamt that you could just be a better person.

I was once a dreamer, embracing dreams in hopes that one day they will come true. Living life as it was because I knew that whatever else happened, I still had my dreams. That nothing in the world mattered because I lived in the world of my dreams.

I was once a dreamer, till one day I realised that dreams are not enough to defeat reality. Realised that the world I live in is the real world, not the world of my dreams. For dreams alone are not good enough in real life.

I was once a dreamer, till I gave up simply dreaming because dreaming alone is not enough for anybody.

I was once just a dreamer, now I turn my dreams into reality.

Trials and Errors

Fear is a necessary evil. It keeps us safe. It keeps us sane. Like most other developed instincts, fear stems from our need for preservation as a species. Without fear, we would lose our inhibition for self-destruction altogether. However, fear itself isn't perfect. It cannot completely distinguish what is truly detrimental to us from what isn't. So as a safeguard, fear takes effect against everything in the grey zone. To protect us from what will harm us. To protect us from what might harm us. To protect us from what won't harm us.

It is necessary for us to take control of fear, not let fear take control of us. As a boy, I was deathly afraid of failure, deathly afraid of embarrassment, deathly afraid of being an inconvenience to others. Thus, that little boy never tried, bound by the invisible grip of fear. But one day, that boy realised that not all fears are to be feared, that death was little more than an exaggerated figment of his imagination. Thus, on that day the boy made a resolution to live a life of living, even if it kills him. For even if he died, at least he died living, not died dying.

It is necessary to live not inhibited by fear, nor ignorant of fear but alongside it. Fear is a necessary evil because it is by definition, necessary. To live a life without fear is stupid but to live a life governed by it is sad. Thus, I walk, hand in hand with fear, into the abyss of the unknown, so that one day I may meet the face of what I so feared.

Because it is necessary to understand that in life, if we never try, we will never fail but neither will we ever succeed.

Conversations With A Stranger

Today was supposed to be a day most like any other Sunday. I was on a bus on my way to have dinner with friends, sitting alone in a seat designed for one adult and one child. As the bus stopped to picked up more passengers, the usual stream of people walked past me as they made their way to the back of the bus in of more space but on Indian man decided to attempt to squeeze onto the one and a half chairs that I was occupying. Attempting to be considerate, I tried to squeeze in as far as possible, given that the chair was not made to seat two grown men. As I was squeezing in, the Indian man said something that I interpreted to be some form of gesture to say that it's okay but I took off my earphones to make sure anyway.

Then after a moment of silence, out of the blue the Indian man spoke to me in slightly broken English, "What's your name?". Caught off guard, I only managed to voice out a "huh?" in response to his question. "Your name?" the Indian man repeated, apparently conscious that his lack of grasp of English might be hindering the conversation. "Desmond," I responded, as I normally introduce myself to people whom I don't want to take the trouble with to explain my oddly spelled name.

And just like that, my conversation with a complete stranger began. The Indian man I speak of is a construction worker from India named Abu (I suspect that this is not his real name, rather a name given to him by his foreman in order to simplify his presumably complex Indian name). He's been working in Singapore for the last three years and is currently working on a construction project opposite NUS (the university I study at).

If anything, this conversation was enlightening. I've had my experiences talking to polytechnic students and secondary school dropouts while I was working as a waiter but this conversation was on a whole different level. It was most interesting to have an insight into how a foreign worker's life is. He didn't exactly recite his life story to me but it was obvious there were large discrepancies between his ideas and my ideas of normality. Like how immediately after asking if I was still studying, he proceeded to ask me if I was married, as if it was the expected norm to be married while still in school.

Some of his other questions gave me a more sobering insight to what his world is like. He asked me if I was working, if my job paid me at least $1000 per month, if I still send money back to my parents every month. He asked which "construction site" I'll be working at in the future, if I'll be working as a "technician". Without actually telling me anything explicitly, the phrasing of his questions alone gave me a brief insight what constitutes 'normal standards' for a foreign worker.

Another sobering thought is how Abu saw education as a pipedream. "How much is your education?" Abu asked. "About ten thousand." I replied. Immediately Abu dismissed the thought of studying. "Too expensive," he said. Yet, there I thought to myself, there are hundreds, if not thousands of students in NUS who are content with cruising through university just so they get some random degree and get out of university as quickly as possible, without batting a thought about the cost of their university eduation.

All in all, it was a really eye-opening conversation, even if it did only last for about 5 minutes, passing 4 bus stops.

Music: The Script - Science & Faith

I'll take a detour from my regular musings to stop to talk a bit about one of the things I take a little too seriously, music >.<

To be more precise, I want to talk about an album which I honestly believe should be getting more recognition and airplay that it actually is getting. That album is the second album by The Script, Science & Faith.

The thing I probably like the most about The Script is their lyrics. The feel of this album is a lot more mainstream than their previous album (departing from the previous albums fast-paced raps in favour for more traditional verses) but nevertheless, it still hold true to the lyrical genius that is The Script. The song verses are more akin to poetry verses, packed full of literary goodness to help drive home the album's concept of the darker, more unfortunate depiction of love (and love lost). Every song in this album is well written, filled with smart puns, metaphors and rhymes. The pacing of the songs are also written with purpose, driving home each chorus like a slap to the face or a big fat full stop after long prose. The album as a whole almost feels like a concept album of a single couple more than a string of stories about love, with each track flowing from to another flawlessly through the album's expose of 'could-have-been' stories.

My picks from this album are For The First Time, Nothing, Science & Faith and Exit Wounds, each for their own particular reasons. For The First Time is a nice track mostly because it's one of the 'happier' tracks in the album, letting the listener immerse themselves feel of how love could overwrite all of the troubles in the world. This is immediately juxtaposed by it's succeeding track, Nothing. Nothing is another of my personal favourites more because of the pacing and the writing of the song. Nothing delivers killer verses with the breaks in between aiding to add to the impact of the lyrics. Science & Faith on the hand is probably my favourite song from the entire album because it is the best sounding song. The backing track for this song is the most sonically pleasing from the album and the verses also perfectly embody the conflict between man of science and the woman of faith and emotion with a killer chorus to score the homerun. Exit Wounds is my final album pick for it's impressive use of imagery, drawing analogies between a victim of a gunshot and a victim of love. The sheer cleverness of the lyrics helps the listener to see the music more than hear it, serving as a perfect conclusion to an equally awesome album.

The only downside to this album (and the band in general) is that aside from it's amazing songwriting, the execution of the album is a little more than average. The vocalist is by no means spectacular and the guitarist and drummer are as average as any other bands'. Nevertheless, the true selling point for the band has always been their lyrics. So if you long for an album which you can listen to while nitpicking the nuances of its writing, don't hesitate to give this album a spin or two.

A Life on Stage

Alternatively titled "Why I became a dancer/performer"

To all my friends who have never been on a stage/performed in front of an audience, I'll tell you one thing. The feeling one get when on stage is unlike anything on Earth. There are a number of reasons that drive performers to be performers. Nevertheless, I'll just mention the reasons why I do so.

Firstly, it's simply because on stage, I get to live a whole new life. I've had my fair share of stage performances and I'll tell you, for those few minutes I'm on stage I feel most alive. My dance instructor once said "We you're on stage, you get to be anyone and anything. So much better than living your old boring life," and I couldn't agree more. On stage, we can get away with doing close to anything that is allowed by law. It's probably the only place where people will CHEER a performer when he cross-dresses (thanks ACS(I) Drama for burning my eye on way too many occasions). In a nutshell, when we're on stage, we cease to be us. We instead become the characters we have been chosen to play, for those few minute we have on stage.

Secondly, it's because I want to say something. Much like why politicians do what they do, performer perform because they want to be heard, be it with their words or otherwise. Dance was, is and will always be a form of expression. It's the visual interpretation of music. Even if I'm just performing another person's choreography, in the end when I'm on stage it's just me and the audience (and the other dancers of course). The point is, even if the words are not mine, it's me who's having the conversation. It's me who's having that connection with the audience and nothing can replace the feeling of connecting with an audience. I'm not quite at a level where I'll be able to pull off my own choreography but I hope to be able to one day.

Lastly, it's because I want to entertain. I want to be able to create a moment for my audience, even if that moment lasts for well... a moment. The famous anonymous quote saying "dance to express, not to impress". No matter how noble the intentions of the quote are, the quote by itself fails to see that dancers are at then end of it all still performers. To dance without any regard for what the audience might think is quite frankly just masturbation. Besides, I shudder to think they may be dancers who would not feel the slightest bit of happiness when they see how much enjoyment their audience gets. Don't get me wrong. I do believe to dance simply for the glitz and glamour is like smearing mud on the good name of other dancers but that doesn't make the other extreme any better.

At the end of the day, I dance because that's what I love to do. Dancing is by no means an easy thing to pursue. If I didn't have as much vested interest in dancing, I probably would have quit a long time ago. Thankfully, I love it as much as I do since I cannot imagine myself in a world without dance.

Drive and Aspirations

There will exist that one thing that a person is willing to spend the rest of their lives doing. That's what I truly believe in. I mean, I feel that I'm truly privileged to have found the things in life that make me feel alive, the things in life that I'll be doing for as long as I can. I've talked to friends, people who are deciding what course in university to pursue, people who have entered into the working world, and I have come to the understanding that maybe it's the norm for the common man to have little idea of what they want from life.

What are the most common fields of choice fresh undergraduates choose to pursue? For some of the brighter individuals, it's always the choice of law, medicine or business. Why? Simply because those are the choices that are likely to lead to the most profitable careers. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that all law and med students are in it for the money. But there's a point to be noted when an individual puts Law and Medicine as their top two choices for uni when in reality they are absolutely nothing alike.

I've been told before that 90% of people hate their jobs and it seems that some of my working friends support this statement. This has led me to question, "Why on earth do people continue to strive at something the despise?". I grant, not everybody may have the ability or the circumstances to allow them to pursue what they really want but 90% of the entire workforce? I'm hardly an adult myself but I refuse to believe that dreams and aspirations are really that much a fairytale, figments of a immature man's imagination.

I truly believe that every person has at least one thing that they want to do, that one thing makes the world and all its troubles seem insignificant. And if there really exists that one magnificent thing, we will want to keep doing it over and over. Eventually, we would become so good at the things we're passionate about that the larger society will find a use us, a use that both benefits society while allowing us to pursue the things we really have a vested interest in.

At this juncture, I should qualify the difference between passion and escapism. Playing computer games simply because we're too jaded to do anything else should not be confused with passion. No matter how much vested interest we may have in these activities, at the end of the day we're only pursuing them as a form of escape. On the other hand, if we are willing to put in as much effort into such 'escape' activities as say, a Korean professional StarCraft player, then that may be considered passion (of course, nobody should ever estimate the amount effort Korean StarCraft players put into their profession. E-sports is as much a legitimate sport as any when players are executing over 300 actions per minute).

Nevertheless, there will always be a trade-off. We cannot simply be good at something and expect employers to drop from the sky to offer us jobs to do specifically what we're good at. They is always some middle ground to be broken. For example, if one is passionate about cars to the point that one buys all kinds of car magazines and the like to keep up with the specs of the latest model, perhaps one could pursue a job where one actually designs car parts. Sure it's more work than sitting on one's ass while scrolling down an automotive website but one is still working with things that spark one's interest more than the average man.

So yeah. Don't settle for the average. Don't just dismiss dreams as simply dreams. Life is too precious to be spent hating it.

"Stay hungry, stay foolish." ~ Steve Jobs

The World Through Different Eyes

One of the things that has fascinated me till this very day is people or more specifically how different people perceive the world in different ways. I mean I'm only one person so I can only see the world in one way. So I always find it so intriguing how the world may look to another person. Some people may travel the world in search for 'exotic' people and cultures but to me, the person sitting next to me is as just as exotic as some other person on the other side of the globe.

Of course on the surface, people of the same culture will appear similar to one another but if we look deep enough, we'll find all the difference in the world. Every person grew up under different circumstances with different families, mingling different people, with different goals and aspirations. So I always find it most interesting listening to the daily life stories of different individuals, as if vicariously living their lives in fast forward for those few moments. To take the time to listen to the life of another is probably as interesting, if not more, as taking a holiday to a far off land to experience exotic cultures (at least that's what I believe in).

Same thing with artists, dancers and the like. Their works, their styles, are all embodiments of who they really are. Seeing a dancer freestyling in a cypher or capoeiristas in a roda is almost like having a conversation without words. Watching a person's honest choreography is like having a screen the looks right into the soul. Maybe that's one of the reasons why I choose to hang with these kinds of people.

But yeah, next time you have the time with someone, just sit down and listen to how the world looks like through a different pair of eyes.

Hello World!

Well...I have this New Media module that requires us to try out a new form of new media and so I chose to try out a blog. If time allows, I'll try to maintain this blog even after my module stops requiring it.

Anyhow, what will you find on this blog? Pretty much anything the comes to my mind. Anything from amateur reviews of stuff I like to random musings to possibly even the odd piece of literature. Like what a blog is defined to be, it is an open diary for any interested passerby to read.

Hopefully this will be the start of something good =D