MinnaCon: The Convention Two Years In The Making

22 June 2013 marked the end of a long two year journey to bring the NUS Comics and Animation Society's (NUSCAS) very first major event to fruition.

It started with a dream I had to put NUSCAS on the anime map. To have a hallmark event that people will mark down on their calendars as an event to look out for. For a year, MinnaCon stayed as an idea, slowly being fleshed out in the back of my head, occasionally bouncing ideas of other like minded people in NUSCAS to see how we could make this plan a reality. Finally, at the beginning of 2012, concrete plans were laid out for MinnaCon 2013. NUSCAS brought NTU Visual Arts Society (NTUVAS) into the picture, making MinnaCon not only the first university-organised ACG but also the first regional cross-university anime convention. This partnership also allowed the scale of MinnaCon to grow even larger than anything NUSCAS could have undertaken by itself. 

We originally slated MinnaCon for January of 2013 to fill in the gap in the anime calendar that was once occupied by the now defunct Start Of Year (SOY) organised by the Japanese Tsubasa Club from Ngee Ann Polytechnic. In hindsight, it was a blessing that we delayed the event to its final date in June because even with the extra six months of preparation, there were still a number of hiccups that happened at MinnaCon due to a lack of preparation. This would've been obviously compounded by the fact that I would be absent due to my student exchange to USA.

So just before I flew to USA, the decision was made to postpone MinnaCon to 22 June 2013 after some fierce discussion amongst NUSCAS and NTUVAS. One major concern with the new date was that it was perilously close to Cosfest, quite possibly among the three biggest ACG events in Singapore so rather than directly compete against Cosfest, we decided to leverage on these circumstances and struck a deal to include the organisers of Cosfest, Singapore Cosplay Club (SCC), in the planning of MinnaCon.

During my half year absence, MinnaCon was left in the capable hands of Yanxu and Shawn from NUSCAS, Stifler from NTUVAS and finally Stephanie from SCC as they fleshed out the skeleton of MinnaCon that had been built over the previous two years. In the beginning I tried beating the time zone difference and attempted to join in the discussion over Skype but the 13-hour difference very quickly beat me back. So I resigned myself to being the man behind the Internet facade of MinnaCon, answering emails, designing and updating the website and maintaining MinnaCon's presence in Facebook.

Fastforward to 24 May 2013, one month before D-Day. The day I touched down back in Singapore. A lot the pieces have been put into place so all there was left to do was some aggressive publicising. Balancing Rag and looking for an internship along with MinnaCon was tough but fortunately still doable. There were some setback such as internal conflicts within the executive committee but fortunately for us, we managed to dodge any mission critical mishaps so MinnaCon moved forward like the steadfast ship that she was.

One week before MinnaCon, disaster struck. One that was beyond the control of the entire committee combined. Singapore was struck with the worst haze situation ever recorded in Singaporean history. The day before MinnaCon, the Pollutant Standards Index (PSI) reached a record 401, obliterating the previous recorded high of 272 set in the 1970s. The government was constantly advising the public to stay indoors and rumours spread that MinnaCon may be cancelled due to Singapore's ever worsening haze condition. Once again, the God of Fortune must have been smiling on us as we had all along planned MinnaCon to be an indoor event and the air-conditioning shielded us from the brunt of the haze's force so MinnaCon could proceed mostly unfazed. Nevertheless, the publicity department had to go into overdrive as we had to not only settle last minute entries to MinnaCon's various events but also constantly assure the public that MinnaCon was going to proceed as planned.

And finally the time had come. 22 June 2013. The morning was hectic and tensions ran high as the day opened with hazardous levels of haze (PSI = 320), the crew was scrambling about setting up the event and a miscommunication between one of our external event organisers and their participants had some participants showing up a 2.5 hours earlier than expected. Luckily, the entire crew held its own and order was quickly established just before the doors opened.

Things were looking up for MinnaCon as the day progressed. The haze dropped below unhealthy levels (PSI < 100) in the afternoon and participants continually flooded throughout the afternoon. The stage events had to be delayed due to a delay at another event which some of our participants were participating in but our stage crew very efficiently handled the situation and the rest of MinnaCon ran smoother than an arrow sailing to the bullseye.

At the end of the day, I honestly couldn't be more proud of how MinnaCon turned out. Though I was practically grounded at the stage the whole day due to my emcee duties, my few trips around the venue along with our ticket sales and the reports I hear from other friends and staff blew my expectation out of the water. There were definitely a number of problems which arose throughout the journey to this point and the haze situation put a major dent MinnaCon's success but despite all that, MinnaCon's success, being a first time event, surpassed all the benchmarks set for it. It has been a long an tiring journey to this point but there is certainly an undeniable sense of accomplishment to see a dream two years in the making come to life and become something greater than even my wildest imaginations.

Tips and Service

There's one more thing I picked up from USA which I feel that should be implemented elsewhere in the world and that is the culture of tipping. I've lived all my life in either Malaysia or Singapore, both countries that favour charging a service charge over tipping so I've never seen how the service industry of a country that employs tipping works but having seen it in action, I'm almost convinced that tipping is a superior system that should be adopted in more places around the world.

The rationale behind tipping is simple, people in the service industry such as waiters, tour guides and private bus drivers earn additional revenue based on how their customers feel they deserve to earn. The average tip is about 12-15% but if you're feeling generous, 18% is about right. The crux is that tipping is entirely optional. If the waiter did a terrible job at their job, the customer is entirely entitled to not leave a tip. If you factor in the measly wage some of these professions have (we noted somewhere that a waiter can earn as little a $2/hour), the money they earn from tips becomes all that important so service industry employees continually strive to impress their customers in attempts to get a better tip.

I'll pull up an example of how terrible the service industry can get in the absence of tipping. Australia is a country that not only lacks the practice of tipping, employees are all protected by Australia's insanely high minimum wage (if my memory serves me well, a stall attendant earns about $12-$16 per hour). As a result of these compounding factors, employees take for granted the belief that they are entitled to their abnormally high wages regardless of the work they put in. This is especially evident among young employees. Too many times I encountered absolutely terrible service during my stays in Australia. More often than not I meet waiters who couldn't care less about their customers, carrying themselves with a demeanor which could rival a poor desk jockey stuck with a permanent data entry job. If their earnings were determined by tips, most of these waiters won't even a tip, let a alone the minimal 10% the underperforming waiters get. 

While I'm here advocating tipping to be implemented in other nations, the critical part of me understands that the practice of tipping can only exist in a society with the culture of tipping, a culture that is sadly absent among Asian societies, particularly Singaporean society. I don't really wish to attack the culture that I live in but by and large, it's all completely true. By our very nature, we're particularly stingy over things we don't want to spend money on. A Singaporean friend of mine living in USA for a year quite shamelessly advised us that if we don't intend to visit a restaurant ever again, we could just not leave a tip, regardless the level of service we get.

Another possible problem with tipping is that the customer's perception of how much to tip may be greatly swayed by forces beyond the service employees control. If the chef is having a bad day and dishes out mediocre food, the waiter's tip could be in jeopardy because the overall dining experience is still spoilt. If a customer is feeling disgruntled for their own personal reason, again the waiter's tip could be adversely affected. I feel that Asians, on top of not embracing tipping culture, prefer predictability and having a handle on things so the unpredictability of tipping is the least bit desired.

At the end of the day, tipping is still a valid form of extrinsic motivation which would greatly benefit the service industry but it would take a culture that knows how to embrace it before it could properly function. Maybe one day, Asian cultures will learn to adopt tipping, for the betterment of service.

An Exchange Student's Academic Experience

So in the post below I talked about the greatest thing the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill (UNC) gave me, friendships that changed my life. However, at the end of the day I'm still a student, exchange or otherwise, so it'll be irresponsible of me if I didn't talk about the academic side of these last semester.

Now future exchange students from Singapore or other major Asian universities, there is a grand rumour of how easy studying is going to be if you go on exchange in USA. I learnt the hard way that there are exceptions to this rule, even outside the set of legendary universities known as the Ivy League and other similarly prestigious colleges. I spent my semester in UNC, a university that no one outside of the US has even heard of, and I got my ass handed to me by the workload. Back in NUS, most lecturers gave students a week or two to settled down before ramping up the pace. Here in UNC though, you hit the ground sprinting. Within the first week, the first of our numerous assignments comes in and the pace doesn't drop at all till the end of the semester.

Sure if you intend to coast right through, you could forget about doing all the coursework and attempt to barely escape a failing grade to get your credits transferred back but you could very well do that in your home university. If you wish to get a respectable grade however, you're going to have to work hard for it. And work hard I did. I was stuck in the drawing studio till at least 3am no fewer than twice trying to finish off an assignment and countless more times in the comfort of my own room.

Those of you who were closely reading that last sentence would've noticed I said drawing studio which brings me to my favourite part of UNC's academics. UNC boasts its own studio art department, together with its own art museum. Now I'm a computer science major but graphic design has always been a point of interest for me, so much so that there was a point in my life where I actually considered the possibility of pursuing a BFA instead of a BComp. NUS does not offer anything remotely close to digital art or studio art so when I found out that UNC had a studio art department, I immediately jumped on the chance and took two studio art courses. Doing studio art was certainly a refreshing change of pace from my coding-intense 2.5 years. Considering that this is the first time I've ever done art properly since forever, I'm actually quite proud of what I managed to produce.

Nevertheless, being a Comp Sci. major, it's impossible to completely avoid coding so I took a serious game design course because that was the closest thing they offered to game design course. Let's just say that it wasn't a particularly pleasant experience. The lecturer spent half the semester covering game design topics that I was already familiar with and spent the second half making all the students present 'research topics' which were essentially 10 minute guest lectures by the student in the class. The second half was mostly hit and miss to say the least. However, what took the cake was my final project group. Since the course was a special course which non-computing students could take, we had one person in our four man team who was an English literature major and fellow Singaporean exchange student so the remaining coding had to be managed by the remaining three of us. The kicker was that the two team members who were supposed to be the most likely to go AWOL ended up being the two who had to carry the entire workload of the team. I'm not asking to be given my regular coding team from back in Singapore but at least give me a team that could do work. When 95% of your code base was contributed by the one person who's grade doesn't transfer, you know you should either reconsider your field or some of the life choices you're making. Needless to say, our final product was lacklustre at best, salvaged only by the design document which was written almost entirely by our non-coding team member.

To sum it all up, this exchange experience taught me a couple of lessons which I feel should be shared . Firstly, for all you software engineering folk and other similarly team-oriented majors, never ever underestimate the importance of team dynamics. If you find a team that works well with you, never ever let that team our of your sights. Secondly and by far more importantly, don't just treat an exchange as a semester long holiday. I'm not saying that one should forsake experiencing the country for a regime of book bashing in the library nightly but do not forget that even if your grades don't transfer back, you're here as a student and nothing else. Choose to study things that aren't offered back home or at very least things that would interest you greatly. If you find an intersect between both sets, it's as good as finding gold.

Friends From a Foreign Land

Just after the turn of the new year, I stepped into USA for the very first to start off my very first experience as an exchange student. There were a number of mishaps and oversights following up to that moment but despite all the setbacks, I was insanely excited to be in North Carolina.

"Wait a minute. Did you just say North Carolina? Why of all places I USA did you choose to go to North Carolina?", you may be asking as you read that last sentence. The reason is quite simple actually. Because that was the best choice left when I applied. Now don't misunderstand me. In retrospect, I couldn't have made a better choice.

The University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill (UNC) and her students have treated me so well I cannot ever do enough to repay them. I'm fortunate to have gone to a university with such a large exchange batch from NUS because that just made road trips and all my other travels across the US that much easier to organise. They have been a wonderful bunch of people and I do hope that we continue being close once we return to our lives back in Singapore. 

Nevertheless, while it's certainly nice to see familiar strangers in a strange place who have similar tourist dispositions as myself, anyone who goes on exchange should know that the gem of an exchange experience is getting to know the locals. And indeed I did. I'm grateful that I managed to meet so many locals and make so many friends in my short stay here in UNC, perhaps too many friends even.

What makes North Carolina such a wonderful place for me is its budding dance community. From the outside looking in, nobody recognises North Carolina for its dance community so I was incredibly fortunate to have found this active hip hop dance community here. The community has a unique flavour that I might not have found in other states like LA or New York. All the dancers in the state are like a giant family.

They don't have the luxury of having established dance studios which teach hip hop dance so they have to rely on themselves to build themselves up. They have community workshops almost every other weekends and more often than not, these workshops were conducted not by professional dancers but college students like myself and people travel up to three hours from all around the state to participate in such workshops. In a single semester, college dance clubs participate in numerous small performances and each performance is choreographed and produced in house by its 20 odd members.

It was all an immense culture shock for me coming from NUS Dance Blast! where our yearly intake is more than twice the size of the entire club here and we can get professionals to produce all our performances. Yet, I wouldn't trade my experiences with college dance clubs here for anything. They're small so I honestly felt like I was a part of a family rather than a person in some random club and because they don't have the same support that I could get back I Singapore, everyone had to push all that harder, myself included. Granted the end product may not match the polish that Blast! dishes out for their performances, there is a certain appeal being a part of something homegrown.

The semester is now over and under normal circumstances I would have been elated to bid farewell to exams and welcome in the holidays. However, as I boarded my LA-bound plane leaving North Carolina, I was filled with only conflicting feelings. I've made so many amazing friends in here and it crushes my soul a little to know that I probably won't meet most of them in person ever again.

As I finish writing this on my way back from the Grand Canyon, it is no doubt that the sights and sounds I've experienced from my travels all over USA from Miami, the Key West and Washington, D.C. to LA, Las Vegas and San Francisco are all a spectacle to enjoy but the memories from this exchange that I will truly cherish are those of the people in North Carolina that impacted my life forever.

The Talent-less

You can go ahead and say that we're good at what we do. If anything, we love to hear compliments like that to give our egos a boost every now and then but do not ever, EVER, call us talented.

'Talent' is such a dangerous word to throw around. Most people harmlessly mean it as a compliment but calling it talent in subtle ways disregards the hundreds of hours we dedicate to our craft to get as good as we are. I'm a dancer and truthfully, performances are a thankless job. Quoting a friend, "For every minute on stage, we spend 10, maybe 20 hours preparing for it," and people who are not quite acquainted with performing arts don't appreciate that fact. Most, if not all the time, great performances aren't the product of talent, they're the product of hard work.

I'm not saying that there's no such thing as talented people. Any and every field has their fair share of people who are talented but being good and being talented couldn't be more different. Talented people may be able to catch choreography faster than you, they may require less practice to be as clean, they may be able to do tricks and stunts that you can't but even talented people aren't good automatically. It is also important to realise that the lack of talent is by no means a barrier to being good.

I think that sometimes, it's important to disregard talent. When you acknowledge talent, you're basically drawing a line between those with talent and those without and if you're on the wrong side of the line, you're essentially screwed. Even if you're on the right side, it's human nature to look upwards, to further subdivide each section into those who are less talented and those who are more talented. We watch Youtube dancers, people like Keone Madrid, Vinh Nguyen, Kyle Hanagami, Brian Puspos and some of us dismiss them as the ultra-talented but at the same time we forget how much of their lives they've devoted to the art they love the most. The hours upon decades that made them into the dancers who they are today. Even choreography is not something that comes out of talent. It has to be grown, nurtured through countless hours of labouring in the pursuit of becoming better

When you stop acknowledging talent, it's easier to motivate ourselves to strive for seemingly unreachable goals. I would grant, realistically there are goals that require talent to be reached but no one can determine the divide between what is reachable by hard work and what can only reached by talent. If we limit ourselves to the bounds of our talent, one day we'll all hit that boundary and just stagnate but if we ignore talent, we stop being chained down by that self-imposed limit. In this world, there will realistically always be unreachable goals but if we keep working towards those unreachable goals, at very least we'll find ourselves better than we were yesterday.

The Extroverted Introvert

So here's another one of those private confession posts that I'll be writing. It's about a small misconception that people may have about me. If you take a public opinion on whether I'm an introvert or an extrovert, I'm sure that it'll generally be swayed towards me being an extrovert and I can't fault that impression. On the outside I look like a textbook extrovert. I like public speaking, emcee-ing, etc. I like meeting new people in social camps and such. I like being a mascot or public figurehead for things.

But then again, all of that is just on the surface. There's more to introversion than just an aversion socialising and at its core I personally identify more strongly with the qualities of an introvert than those of an extrovert. A great series of videos called 'The Power of Introverts' inspired by Susan Cain's similarly titled book helps elucidate the world of an introvert. 

Introversion is not shyness which is driven by a fear of social rejection. Introversion is a response to external stimuli, including social stimuli. While an extrovert would crave and re-energise themselves from exposure to social stimuli, an introvert would actually re-energise themselves from being alone. Introverts are not afraid of excess social stimuli, they get overwhelmed by it. 

Personally I build up a persona to handle excess stimuli. That overly-friendly, outspoken and slightly hyper version of me, that extroverted version of me, is the persona I build to handle the excess social stimuli. In situations where I can't hide behind that persona to protect me from all the excess stimuli, my brain just shuts down and I stop reacting altogether. Those who know me better may have seen that side of me. I can only handle the socialising once it's broken down into smaller, more intimate exchanges.

I'm a seasoned performer so I'm kinda used to crowds. It's easy for me to do things like emcee-ing, public speaking and dance performances. However, there is one very important feature about these activities that I need to highlight. They're all performances of sorts. Speaking at people (for the lack of better wording) is not the same as speaking to people. When I'm performing, I just activate my 'performer mode' and run on auto-pilot from a pre-rehearsed script or on my improvisation instincts.

I'm perfect comfortable with performing because at the end it all, I still have the performance aspect to hide behind. I'm totally uncomfortable with being thrown into a crowd of strangers and being expected to socialise. It scares the shit out of me. I like to think that my dealings are very calculated. I need to know the type of people I'm dealing with, the social environment I'm in and how far I can stretch before I start accidentally insulting people. I need to know this because I need to adapt to the situations I'm in. I don't have the luxury of such knowledge when dealing with strangers in alien environments. A true extrovert would probably just pick a simple set of social choices and just run with it. I can't do that no matter how hard I try simply because that is not how I function. 

Since I was young, I've always been a little bit of an oddball introvert. I didn't have too many friends and I didn't particularly like mass socialising too much. Since then I grown up a little into a more outgoing and (slightly) less socially awkward person but no one can truly outgrow who they are. For better or worse, deep down I'm still that little introvert I was born as and there's little I can do about that other than embrace who I really am.

Music: The Script - #3

It's been a long time since my last post but I finally had some time on my hands to do some writing so here's an album review of the recently released album, #3 by The Script.

Okay, first things first. Let me confess that I'm a dedicated fan of The Script ever since I came across their debut album. The band could not be more aptly named. What caught my attention the most was the beauty of the songwriting and the lyrics of their songs. Their lyrics read off like poetry with no shortage of clever metaphors and witty wordplay. Their second album didn't just live up to my expectations of the band, in many ways I felt it surpassed their first. So you could imagine my excitement when I heard the announcement for their latest album, #3

Now let me get on with it. Truth be told, I'm honesty let down by this album. This album is perhaps their most personal album yet, with songs like If You Could See Me Now, and also their most message-driven, with songs like Hall Of Fame and Give The Love Around, but overall this album seems to lack the lyrical genius and wit that are The Script's claims to fame. A lot of the songs are filled with needless filler of repeated humming and 'ooh'-ing, as if O'Donoghue and Sheehan couldn't figure out what else to put in. The other two bonus tracks found in the Deluxe Edition of the album, Moon Boots and Hurricanes, are equally uninspiring and are perhaps the worst songs off the entire album.

There are some nice songs in this album though. Six Degrees of Separation in my opinion is probably the album's best song by far in terms of both musical polish and lyrical wittiness but still fails to match up with the stronger songs of their previous album (e.g. Nothing, Science & Faith, For The First Time). I would have liked If You Could See Me Now more with it being the most emotionally potent song of the album but the musical delivery of the song caused it to fall flat. Two other songs worth mentioning would be No Words for being one of the nicer sounding songs overall and Millionaires which barely makes it as this album's answer to Science & Faith's For This First Time, sadly lacking the lyrical punch its predecessor had.

I would like to take some time to talk about the live songs that were also included in the Deluxe Edition. The recordings were taken  during a concert performed by them in their hometown of Dublin and just by listening to the crowd's reaction and energy in each of the recordings makes me wish I was there. The sheer volume and synchronicity of the crowd was to say the least awe-inspiring and as a concert-goer myself, I would have given anything to attend a concert with a crowd like that.

Overall, the release of this album is a tarnish on their track more than anything. The message driven songs just feel preachy and unnecessary, and the album the album lacks the lyrical punch that I've come to expect following their sophomore album. I can only hope that their next effort rebuilds my confidence in them.

After the Burnout

For the third time now, my latest Blast! concert endeavor has come to an end and like every other major event in my life, here lies the blogpost recounting my journey.

This SUAD journey is slightly different from my previous concert experiences thus far. This is the first concert which really burnt me out completely. My first SUAD concert I did one item and the only extra academic work I had was CS2020. My first EMCC concert a semester later I did two items and had a rather normal workload for an SoC student. This time around I was doing four items while having to juggle Rag commitments for the first half of practices and CS3216 commitments for the second half. It didn't help at all that I was a lot more committed to Rag this year than I was when I was doing EMCC last year.

I've detailed quite a bit of this in an earlier blogpost so I won't repeat myself too much. After the second vetting, I somehow managed to catch up with most of the choreo and I felt a little better with myself. All was good until our first full dress rehearsal the day before the concert. Like all the practices and runs before that, I tried my best and gave what I thought was my best on stage but during the debrief after our stage run, a couple of my choreographers told us that that was perhaps one of our worst runs to date. Those words weighed a lot on me. I had a midterm test on the morning of the concert and I hadn't even begun to study for it yet I still couldn't bear to screw up the concert. Right then, I felt the lowest I have ever felt in a very long time. Thankfully, the dance captain, Glenn, and some of the alumni posted some words of encouragement on the club's facebook group and I managed to get back on my feet quickly enough for my midterms in the morning (which I believe I managed to do well enough for =D).

And then here we are, concert night. To be brutally honest to myself, I wasn't happy with how I performed during the concert at all. My first item went pretty well but it only went downhill from there. Throughout my second item, both my legs felt like they were going to give way at any time and I couldn't give it my everything on stage (the minor wardrobe malfunction of my scarf coming undone didn't help at all). My third item felt like a complete disaster because halfway through the song I completely bombed almost an entire eight because my muscle memory didn't kick in. The last item offered a little bit of redemption as it went off without any major hitches despite being the item that I was most concerned with. It just hurts me quite a bit to know that I tried my best for this concert given my other priorities yet I still fell short and there was nothing I could do about it.

At the end of it all, I'm just glad that SUAD is over. Don't get me wrong. I honestly believe the biggest purpose of joining Blast! is to participate in concerts and concerts are the platforms where all Blast!ards learn the most and bond the most but between this and my all other commitments, I'm more glad that I finally have time to do all the work that I've been needing to get done. I've loved every moment I've had in SUAD and now it's over and it's time to move on.

Though the following people will probably never read this blogpost, I still would like to express my thanks to my choreographers:-

Thank you Jasper for choreographing such a dope item. I'm glad that you decided to push us to our limits and allowed us to grow as dancers. I feel a bit sad that SUAD made you feel a little jaded nearing the end and if it is worth anything, I would like to say that I'll always be proud of being part of Team Testosterone =D

Thank you Chii Tarng and Weina for choreographing such a suave item. Chii Tarng, your stage presence is really an inspiration to us all and it gives us something to look up to not just as dancers but as performers as well. Weina, thanks for your frankness and attention to picking out our mistakes. It really helps a lot when I'm trying to identify the areas which I need to work on as far as the choreography is concerned.

Thank you Ahmad for choreographing such a cool item. Ever since you've taught me in JC, I have always looked up to your insane musicality. It's a little sad that I couldn't do more of your item but to be fair to you, I wasn't fully committed to your item so I understand your choice to block me out. Thank you for believing in me for the stunt (even though it turned out half-fuck in the end) and I apologise for all the shit that I gave you through over these few months.

Last but not least, thank you Pat for choreographing such an awesome finale item. I truly sympathise with the problem of terrible attendance you faced over the holidays but in the end it truly impresses me how you managed to create such a great performance which so little preparation. It was truly a fun item to be a part of. Thank you for also believing in me even though I always forget your steps every now and then.

I do not know when the next time I get to perform for Blast! will be because I will be missing the next concert thanks to SEP. This SUAD may have left me a little jaded and tired but nevertheless I will always look forward to doing better in the next concert. My next concert will most probably be my last so I have one last shot to become a dope legend in Blast! >.<

The Universal Balance Theory

Humans are all naturally curious creatures. We all strive to understand the world around us from the biggest pictures to the smallest details. We always try to reason out why the world around us works the way it does in order to make sense of everything that is happening around us. Some lines of reasoning make more sense than others though like how the laws of gravity make more sense than lunar landing conspiracy theories. Nevertheless, these are all attempts to understand the things that happen around us. I too have come up with a theory of my own in my attempt to rationalise human potential. I call it the universal balance theory.

Now a slight disclaimer. I'm not saying that I fully believe my own theory since I have no real backing to defend this theory nor do I intend to actually defend the legitimacy of this theory. I'm merely proposing an interesting theory to ponder about. Now that we got that out of the way, allow me to get theory proper.

Basically the premise is all of humanity shares a common pool of 'attribute points' which is proportional to the size of the human population such the attribute points per capita is constantly constant. These attribute points are shared amongst the entire population to be used to increase their own individual attributes such as intelligence, strength, appearances, individual talents, etc.. When I say attributes, I refer to inherent attributes like how some people are inherently prettier or smarter than others. Unfortunately, how these attributes are actually applied is completely involuntary, like a random stat generator in an RPG.

Now I propose that an average person would get approximately the same number of attribute points as another average person so in a way, this distribution is fair. For example, if an average individual possesses above average intellect, said individual might possess below average looks to balance out their individual point distribution.

Of course, one might argue there are plenty of exceptions to this case. My favourite example of a person who best illustrate this imbalance of stat points would be Wang Lee Hom. He's smart, good-looking, multi-talented and best of all, not a douchebag. The perfect example of an individual who has maxed out his IQ as well as his EQ while still having twice as many special attributes as an average person.

So evidently the distribution of stat points is not equal for every individual and I never claimed such to be true. A more accurate representation of the distribution of stat points across the human race would be a normal distribution centered around the amount of stat points an average joe would have. So for every perfect individual out there, there is an equally flawed individual to compensate.

The universal balance theory extends a little further than just the general amount of stat points each individual gets. As I mentioned earlier, the allocation of said points is involuntary and I believe that even the distribution of points to each stat is fair. For example, the nett average intelligence of the human race remains constant throughout time. Again, the distribution of points across each attribute is normally distributed. It may not be necessarily true that for every smart person, there is an equally stupid person. In fact, I have been told many times that stupid people far outnumber smart people and I won't be too quick to disagree. But allow me to challenge this notion a little. Sure, there may be a lot of stupid people around but how much damage could one individual stupid person do? Perhaps a few dozen people, maybe even a few hundred people over a lifetime. Now lets look at the other end of the spectrum. How many people could one smart person benefit? One Mark Zuckerberg changed the lives of an entire generation and his legacy will probably live on for generations on. That's practically one or two BILLION people who benefit from one smart person. Granted it's one really smart person but hopefully you get my argument. So in the end the effect this stat distribution is pretty much balanced.

I suppose at the end of all this, there are a few points I'm trying to get at. The first would be that we as human beings haven't gotten any better over time. We haven't gotten any smarter, any better looking, any more talented. We are still pretty much the same species of human we were thousands of years ago. Of course now we have better facilities and technologies but naturally we are the still the same. 

The second would be that in a way, the world is fair. No matter how you skew it, the balance of humanity is well, balanced on the grand scale of things. Everyone is born with their own strengths and weaknesses. And for those who have more weaknesses than strengths, that's just the unfortunate circumstance of being on the wrong side of the bell curve of humanity. The only thing we can do is suck it up and move on (and perhaps hope that our descendents get better luck from life's random stat generator).

Killing Dreams

It's been quite a while since I've been here. Between projects last sem (CS3217) to a summer of FOC, Rag and Blast! pracs for SUAD to projects this sem (CS3216 and CS4213) and more Blast! pracs, I haven't had the time to sit down and write a blog post. However, there is something I need to get off my chest, despite breaking my ironclad rule of not posting emo blogposts on this blog.

Since the middle of summer, I had to juggle being in charge of Rag dance and my commitments to Blast!. Since I have a bigger stake in Rag, my commitments to Blast! were sadly neglected. I missed practices. I didn't catch steps. I forgot choreo. I've been a choreographer a couple of times and I know how frustrating it is when dancers don't remember their steps and now I have the dishonour of doing it to other choreographers which it kills me inside knowing that I can't do better. Once Rag was over I thought that I would be able to catch up with Blast! but from week 1 the projects have been flooding in and once again I find myself spread thinner than I can handle.

Today we just had our second concert vetting which was the first time I got to see all the other performances (I missed the first vetting due to a mishap involving me slamming my head into the concrete floor and getting sent to the hospital). There I came to the realisation of a few things. The first is how hopelessly far behind I am in the choreography with me dropping steps everywhere (which is unforgivable since there is only three weeks to concert day). The second is how good all the other dancers are in all the other items. These dancers put their all into practices and take great pains to practice in their own time. It's not talent that got them where they are now, it's hard work and time, both of which I cannot afford to commit. And this is where I arrived at my third realisation that I'm not going to make it any higher in Blast! and that I'll always be stuck being worse than ordinary.

I've always had the end goal of choreographing for Blast! before I graduate. I thought handling Rag dance for two years would be enough experience to get me there until I saw the other items at the vetting. All the choreographers are dancers whom all the other dancers look up to. Superstars in all their own rights. The best of the very best that Blast! has to offer and here I am struggling to keep up with the ordinary bunch of Blast!. Perhaps if I took more classes or if I prioritised dance higher, I could be as good as they are but these options are simply beyond my means.

It crushes my soul a little bit to know despite how much I love dancing I will never be able to excel at it but it is a humbling realisation that I have to come to terms to. The audience only deserves the best show that we can give them and I'm never going to be able to give them what others in Blast! can. Even if I grew a thicker skin and asked for the opportunity, I know they will never give it to me because I'm simply not that good. The only thing I can do is let go of impossible dreams, leave a small piece of my soul behind and walk on, putting my best foot forward to do my best at what I can do.

Something To Prove

I have a small confession to make. I have come to believe that I might have a minor inferiority complex. Not the sad type of inferiority complex where I feel small and insignificant and that I will never amount to anything. In fact, it's quite the opposite. It's the type of inferiority complex where I constantly feel the need to prove something. Not necessarily to prove something to someone, just to prove something. It's that feeling where I just feel the need to accomplish something.

This complex is probably one of the driving forces behind the formation of my current personality. I will admit, for the longest time I've always been hounded by a constant nagging need. The need to be cool. I can't really remember where this need manifested from but I do know that I have had it for as long as I can remember.

I'll be perfectly honest with myself. I wouldn't consider myself a very normal person by societal standards. On more than one occasion, people's first impression of me is that I'm weird (occasionally the qualifier 'weird Malaysian' is added for nationalist emphasis) and I felt that this seriously hampered my chances of being the hip kind of cool person.

Since my chances of being that type of cool person were throw out of the window, I decided to approach being cool from a completely different perspective. I tried to approach coolness by being entertaining and as a result, my personality shifted to become the comedic, overly-dramatic person that I am now. The best way to describe my personality would be that of a cartoon character, over-the-top yet never ceasing to bring a smile to people's faces.

Of course, this need to be cool affected more than my personality. I believe that it also drove my passion for dance. At first, I picked up dancing out of jest but then I suddenly took it so seriously that it now has become an inseparable part of my life. I think the reason why this happened was because I found out how cool dance was but more importantly, I found out how cool it was to be a dancer.

You might have heard the dancer quote "dance to express, not to impress". Honestly, I never fully bought that quote. I believe that on a subconscious level, one of the reasons why I pursued dance so fervently is because I wanted people to find me cool and to stroke my ego. After a while, I succeeded in making people think I'm cool because I dance (as per feedback of most my friends). But then suddenly that was not good enough for me. Suddenly I wanted other dancers to find my dancing cool, dancers that I think are cool and godlike themselves. This eventually became a vicious cycle of pursuing greatness as when I finally earn the respect of good dancers, I have the urge to become cool in the eyes of dancers that are even more amazing. In the end, I became locked in a cycle of constantly trying to outdo myself as a dancer.

Now, my pursuit for coolness, despite being quite a large part of my inferiority complex, isn't the only thing I needed to achieve. To quote Steve Jobs, I have this need to put a dink in the universe. Ok, perhaps not on the same level and scale as Jobs but I certainly have a need to leave my mark on life. I have probably mentioned this somewhere before but this is the reason why I'm always taking up all kinds of responsibilities. Aside from simply challenging myself, I choose to take up all these responsibilities because that is my way of leaving my mark on as many lives as I can. Ever now and then, this need becomes my own undoing as I get crushed under the weight of the responsibilities but in the end I still regret nothing. In the end, I only do what I do because I want to do it and I choose to do it.

Steve Jobs once said at a Stanford commencement ceremony, "Stay hungry, stay foolish". I fully intend to do that just so that one day I can prove to myself that I have become cool enough to impress myself.

Halloween Horror Nights 2011

(subtitled "Exit From Hiatus")

Just a little foreword before I begin the blogpost proper. The events detailed in this blogpost date back as far as last September so yes, this blogpost is WAY overdue. However, I really didn't want to skip it because I think that Halloween Horror Nights was one of the events last year that defined 2011 for me. To be honest, maintaining my blog wasn't very high on my priority list last year but now I have an iPad on loan to me for a semester, I will hopefully be able to churn out more of my blogpost ideas that are currently sitting idle. Ok, now on to the blogpost proper...

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It all began way back on 31 August when I came back to work my part-time job as a waiter in Universal Studios Singapore during the Hari Raya break. While I was in the back-of -house, I noticed a poster advertising the auditions for internal staff for the upcoming Halloween Horror Nights (HHN).

A little backstory on what HHN is all about. HHN is a Halloween event that originated from the Universal Studios in USA. This meant that HHN in Singapore would be a MASSIVE scale production, similar to its American counterparts. In a nutshell, HHN was about taking the Hollywood experience, converting to a Halloween theme and setting it in a theme park for the public.

None of that really mattered to me though. The moment I saw the poster, I was hooked. For the longest time I wanted to have a glimpse of what it was like to be a part of the entertainment industry and this was my chance. The moment I got back to my room, I cleared my schedule to make way for the audition and crossed my fingers.

Fast forward a few days ahead to the audition day. When I walked into the audition room, I was greeted by the project director, the head of costumes and the stage manager for HHN. The audition actually went a lot quicker than I expected. The first part was essentially just them asking basic questions about my background like "Would you mind wearing coloured contacts?" and "Have you ever worn stilts before?". The second part was even easier. The project director simply said two words, "Scare me". The moment those two words left his mouth, I instinctively did the scariest thing I could think off. I bolted to their table and screamed as loud as I could into their faces. The tactic must have worked because a few days later, I received a call from Universal Studios Singapore saying that I got in.

Fast forward once again to the first day of practice. During the contract signing, I learnt that I was casted as an Evil Clown. Whatever that entailed, I didn't know but I digress. So as they gathered all the scare actors in the Pantages Theatre to brief all of us, we were grouped according to our areas and roles. As I sat down in my designated seat, the random stranger suddenly said to me, "I'm sorry but I seemed to have forgotten your name". A little surprised, I simply replied, "I don't recall ever telling you my name". As it turns out, by some random stroke of fate, the person sitting next to me was the ex-vice president of the NUS Comics and Animation Society of which I was currently the president of (in my defence, I only met her once before and moreover she was cosplaying that time so it was hard to recognize her out of costume). Either way, I was thankful enough to have met a familiar face in a sea of strangers.

The practice sessions before the event were odd enough for me. We were all dumped on an empty set with no idea whatsoever what our characters were supposed to look or act like other than the one-liner that told us what character was. So basically for the first few practices, we were left to our own devices and imagination as we explored how we interpret our roles and how we could interact with out surroundings. Nevertheless, over time as the props stopped shifting around and the costumes were finished, we had a more solid feel for what our characters were supposed to be. After that, the rest was history. After the practices, we went straight to the event itself which was spread over two weekends. Night in night out, we scared patrons as they walked in. Over the two weeks, I saw all kinds of people. Some were scared of out their wits for simply being there, some were stoned faced, some ridiculed us back as we tried to scare them, some even manhandled us while we were on duty. I was even fortunate enough to catch some of my friends while I was on set.

All in all, how did I find the experience? For starters, it was tiring like f**k. I was on set for as long as 45 minutes at a time and I was forced to wear a full-faced sponge mask so after just 15 minutes, my face started to melt under the sponge mask. On top of all that, we had to report in at 5pm and we were only released after 1am. Add transportation time on top of that and I got at least 10 hours of being outside to add to regular university curriculum and the fact that I only got to sleep after 2am for two weeks.

But boy was it fun. It would go without saying how fun it would be to be a part of an event centered on entertainment. On top of that, I got to mingle with a lot of interesting people behind the scenes. I met full-time performers, students studying drama and theatre, people who were there simply because they didn't have a job and even a person who has been in the freelance theatre business after quitting school after O-levels (there was an interestingly sizable number of openly gay people there as well). All of them were amazingly fun people. It was like a breath of fresh air to meet people I have never mixed with before and it was eye-opening to learn what it was like to be a part of the entertainment industry, both from talking to all these individuals who are a part of the industry and by simply being a part of this event myself.

Of course, this job had some extra perks. Before the event was opened to the public, some of us had the chance to experience the entire event for free. Some of you would have felt the $60+ entry ticket was too expensive but I would say that the ticket was worth every cent. The entire set-up was incredibly elaborate and the high production value was immediately obvious the moment you see the New York area which was converted to a post-apocalyptic setting complete with crashed cars and a dozen wandering zombies. It's certainly something that one is unlikely to experience within Singapore or even possibly South East Asia. As a customer and as a performer on and off set, I feel fortunate to have been a part of this incredible event and if all else works out, I would totally be a part of this in the future.

Some pictures of my costume for those who are curious:-

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).