Resolutions

Of the many, many things that I am skeptical about, commitment to the self is probably one that hits the top five list. One simply cannot be the sentinel of those promises one's made to oneself, or at least I cannot be one for mine. That is why there is merit in writing them down somewhere, to serve as a reminder. I was thinking of some resolutions for the next year yesterday, and here were the things on top of my head:

1. read everyday
2. take more naps
3. invest more in others
4. use fewer words
5. upon overthinking, sleep
6. smile more
7. laugh more
8. take self less seriously
9. take life less seriously
10. eat more vegetables
11. swear less
12. take ballet classes
13. always warm up
14. always cool down
15. perform fewer lifts

"Dear Basil! I have not laid eyes on him for a week. It is rather horrid of me, as he has sent me my portrait in the most wonderful frame, specially designed by himself, and though I am a little jealous of the picture for being a whole month younger than I am, I must admit that I delight in it. Perhaps you had better write to him. I don't want to see him alone. He says things that annoy me. He gives me good advice."

On Weeping

When the battle was over, they were all a mess, coated from head to shoes with gunk. They held hands and ran in a big line into the river to wash off. Thy came out, changed, and had their final campfire. Harold had brought no booze on the trip, and retired late that night to his tent sober and happy. Hey lay in his sleeping bag, feeling exhausted and lucky. It's interesting how fast a mood can change. In an instant something turned on him. Suddenly, he felt like weeping.  

He had never cried in his entire adult life, except occasionally in the dark at the end of a sad movie. And he didn't actually cry this time. He felt tremors in his gut. He felt a pressure at the back of his eyes. But nothing actually came out. Instead, he had this weird sensation of imagining himself crying. He was floating above and got glimpse of himself in a crouch heaving with sobs in his sleeping bag. 

And then it passed. He thought about the life he had constructed and the life he would have constructed, if he had been a little more open and possessed a little more emotional courage. Eventually, he fell asleep. 

Respect

I was in awe every time I walked onto the field. That's respect. I was taught you never, ever disrespect your opponent or your teammates or your organization or your manager and never, ever your uniform. Make a great play, act like you've done it before; get a big hit, look for the third base coach and get ready to run the bases.

These guys sitting up here did not pave the way for the rest of us so that players could swing for the fences every time up and forget how to move a runner over to third. It's disrespectful to them, to you and to the game of baseball that we all played growing up.

Respect. A lot of people say this honor validates my career, but I didn't work hard for validation. I didn't play the game right because I saw reward at the end of the tunnel. I played it right because that's what you're supposed to do, play it right and with respect. If this validates anything, it's that guys who taught me the game did what they were supposed to do, and I did what I was supposed to do.

What I Wanna Do For Christmas

Elevation

When the historian William McNeill was in the U.S. Army in 1941, he was taught in boot camp, how to march. Soon, this act of marching with his fellows began to alter his own consciousness:

Words are in adequate to describe the emotion aroused by the prolonged movement in unison that drilling involved. A sense of pervasive well-being is what I recall; a strange sense of personal enlargement; a sort of swelling out, becoming bigger than life, thanks to participation in collective ritual.

Millions of soldiers have risked and surrendered their lives in was because of the primordial connection they felt toward their fellows. Families are often held together through thick and thin by that feeling.

Limerence

Most people are deeply moved when they return to their childhood home, to the place where their mental models were first forged. When we return to the town where we grew up, it is the details that matter most--the way the drugstore is in the same place as it was when we were young, the same fence around the park, the angle of the sun in the winter, the crosswalk we used to traverse. We don't love these things for their merits, because the crosswalk is the best of all possible crosswalks. The mind coats home with special layer of affection because these are the patterns we know. "The child will love a crusty old gardener who has hardly ever taken any notice of it and shrink from the visitor who is making every attempt to win its regard," C. S. Lewis once observed. "But it must be an old gardener, one who has 'always' been there--the short but seemingly immemorial 'always' of childhood."

Peace Out

Truth

FFT

Ms. Taylor's theory about Harold was that he was a popular athletic high school boy who also showed flashes of idealism. She'd notice it in their classroom discussions--a desire for loftiness, a desire to be part of something higher than normal life. Ms. Taylor had originally given Harold that Hamilton book because the ancient Greeks offer boys a vision of greatness that seemed to inspire them. When they met, she suggested that Harold write his senior paper linking classical Greek life to some aspect of high-school life. Ms. Taylor was a big believer in the idea that creativity comes when two disparate fields clash in one mind, like two galaxies merging in space. She was a big believer in the notion that everybody should have two careers, two perspectives for looking at the world, each of which provided insights into the other. In her case, she was a teacher by day and, less successfully but not less important, a singer-songwriter by night.

---

She was struck by its nearly schizophrenic quality. Sometimes Harold wrote in a portentous Gibbonesque voice. Sometimes he wrote like a child. Sometimes he was cynical, sometimes literary, and sometimes scientific. "The mind wheels," Robert Ornstein has written. "It wheels from condition to condition, from emergency to quiescence, from happiness to concern. As it wheels among different states it selects the various components of the mind which operate in that state."

---

But she could make one decision--to change her environment. And if she could change her environment, she would be subject to a whole different set of cues and unconscious cultural influences. It's easier to change your environment than to change your insides. Change your environment and then let the new cues do the work.

---

Tennis was serving some larger cosmic purpose in her mind. Walter Lippman once wrote that "above all the other necessities of human nature, above the satisfaction of any other need, above hunger, love, pleasure, fame--even life itself--what a man most needs is the conviction that he is contained within the discipline of an ordered existence." For a few years tennis organized Erica's identity.

That Moment Where The Shoulder Clicked

Headbanger

Conflicting

As a law student, the two feelings that I’m constantly swinging between.

QOTD

Yes, you are doubly punished, but that is actually intentional. It's intentional in the sense that if you answer wrong the first time, then I give you a chance to explain yourself. But if your explanation is foolish, then you are showing that you are ignorant of what was wrong, and you're ignorant again. Right, so that's intentional that you'll be punished twice because first you misunderstood something, and then you're showing that you can't even recover from that with some sort of educated reason for it. Right? 

Mornings

QOTD

Today my self-esteem hit an all time low when my logic professor proved that I didn’t exist. I’m quite distressed. Perhaps this explains why my jeans are so loose-fitting. What’s equally upsetting is that I learned that non-existence does not exempt one from local or federal taxes.

Mantra

We just lost a battle, but we haven't lost the war.

I was feeling deflated not too long ago, and somehow when I came across this quote, I felt incredibly recharged. It's gonna be my mantra from now on.

wheninlawschool.tumblr.com

When my non-law friend is complaining to me about something.

I’m like:

When I trap myself in my room during a 36 hour take home final exam.

I’m like:

As a law student, when it feels like I don’t go anywhere without bringing my laptop.

After finishing my last law school final.

What I think I’m going to want to do:

What I actually want to do:

While studying for exams, what I do when I’m going insane from lack of human interaction.

Poetry Sung

Please Sing At My Funeral

That's Called Strength Mothaf*ckaaaas!

Perfect

Follow a Career Passion? Let It Follow You

by Cal Newport

Published: September 29th 2012, New York Times

IN the spring of 2004, during my senior year of college, I faced a hard decision about my future career. I had a job offer from Microsoft and an acceptance letter from the computer science doctoral program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I had also just handed in the manuscript for my first nonfiction book, which opened the option of becoming a full-time writer. These are three strikingly different career paths, and I had to choose which one was right for me.

For many of my peers, this decision would have been fraught with anxiety. Growing up, we were told by guidance counselors, career advice books, the news media and others to “follow our passion.” This advice assumes that we all have a pre-existing passion waiting to be discovered. If we have the courage to discover this calling and to match it to our livelihood, the thinking goes, we’ll end up happy. If we lack this courage, we’ll end up bored and unfulfilled — or, worse, in law school.

To a small group of people, this advice makes sense, because they have a clear passion. Maybe they’ve always wanted to be doctors, writers, musicians and so on, and can’t imagine being anything else.

But this philosophy puts a lot of pressure on the rest of us — and demands long deliberation. If we’re not careful, it tells us, we may end up missing our true calling. And even after we make a choice, we’re still not free from its effects. Every time our work becomes hard, we are pushed toward an existential crisis, centered on what for many is an obnoxiously unanswerable question: “Is this what I’m really meant to be doing?” This constant doubt generates anxiety and chronic job-hopping.

As I considered my options during my senior year of college, I knew all about this Cult of Passion and its demands. But I chose to ignore it. The alternative career philosophy that drove me is based on this simple premise: The traits that lead people to love their work are general and have little to do with a job’s specifics. These traits include a sense of autonomy and the feeling that you’re good at what you do and are having an impact on the world. Decades of research on workplace motivation back this up. (Daniel Pink’s book “Drive” offers a nice summary of this literature.)

These traits can be found in many jobs, but they have to be earned. Building valuable skills is hard and takes time. For someone in a new position, the right question is not, “What is this job offering me?” but, instead, “What am I offering this job?”

RETURNING to my story, I decided after only minimal deliberation to go to M.I.T. True to my alternative career philosophy, I was confident that all three of my career options could be transformed into a source of passion, and this confidence freed me from worry about making a wrong choice. I ended up choosing M.I.T., mainly because of a slight preference for the East Coast, but I would have been equally content heading out to Microsoft’s headquarters near Seattle. Or, with the advance from my first book, I could have hunkered down in a quiet town to write.

During my initial years as a graduate student, I certainly didn’t enjoy an unshakable sense that I had found my true calling. The beginning of doctoral training can be rough. You’re not yet skilled enough to make contributions to the research literature, which can be frustrating. And at a place like M.I.T., you’re surrounded by brilliance, which can make you question whether you belong.

Had I subscribed to the “follow our passion” orthodoxy, I probably would have left during those first years, worried that I didn’t feel love for my work every day. But I knew that my sense of fulfillment would grow over time, as I became better at my job. So I worked hard, and, as my competence grew, so did my engagement.

Today, I’m a computer science professor at Georgetown University, and I love my job. The most important lesson I can draw from my experience is that this love has nothing to do with figuring out at an early age that I was meant to be a professor. There’s nothing special about my choosing this particular path. What mattered is what I did once I made my choice.

To other young people who constantly wonder if the grass might be greener on the other side of the occupational fence, I offer this advice: Passion is not something you follow. It’s something that will follow you as you put in the hard work to become valuable to the world.

Hangover

If I were a poet, I would rummage in the tiny pockets of my memory for the best words to tell my story. I would seek north and south, east and west for the right words because this thing that I wanted to tell deserve not just any words, but the right words. And once I did, I would take these handful and weave them--one by one--to form a zipper, that would stretched from one end of deep memories to another of silent combustion of wordless sentiments; so that when a stranger read my story, that zipper could tear open and he or she could taste it--that animal that stretched from deep memories to wordless emotions--pristine and untainted. Alas, these words in my hands, they are not the best, nor are they right. But these few words are the only ones I have; and for now, I pray that these are enough to tell this thing I want to tell and to tell it in a manner that I can tell--a story only I can tell.

Story lets us carve our initials in the wet cement of this moment. And it does it so well because not only does it celebrate vulnerability, but it embodies vulnerability. The act of telling a story is a vulnerable act on and by itself. 

 -- Phil Kaye

Just to be able to stop and instead of catastrophizing what might happen, just say: I'm just so grateful. Because to feel this vulnerable means I'm alive. 

-- Brene Brown

But I see the impossible everyday. Impossible is trying to connect in this world, trying to hold on to others while things are blowing up around you, knowing that while you're speaking, they aren't just waiting for their turn to talk: they hear you, they feel exactly what you feel at the same time that you feel it. It's what I strive for every time I open my mouth: that impossible connection. ...

When I meet you, in that moment, I am not longer a part of your future, I start quickly becoming part of your past, but in that instant, I get to share your present, and you, you get to share mine, and that is the greatest present of all. So if you tell me I can do the impossible, I probably laugh at you. I don't know whether I can change the world--yet--because I don't know much about it. And I don't know much about reincarnation either, but if you make me laugh hard enough sometimes, I forget what century I'm in. This isn't my first time here. This isn't my last time here. These aren't the last words I share--but just in case I'm trying my hardest to get it right this time around.

-- Hiroshima, Sarah Kay

Choose to Sprint

It's about what you want, and how you want to process that--how you go on your journey. So you can go on your journey halfway, which will manifest halfway. In life, people "Ow, they're really lucky! They're this, or they're that!" No, they're probably not really lucky. They probably just really went for it full-out.  

And, and we don't know that.  

They just keep knocking down doors, barriers and walls, and go full-out all the time to get there, to get where they wanted to be in their life. So that's all it is: if you choose to just kinda walk, or you choose to sprint.

-- Mia Michaels

Of Broken Memories

Manila was tremendous--for the most parts at least. Would I ever come back to Manila any time soon? No, I would not. And not necessarily because there were bits which I didn't particularly enjoy, but I think the snippets of Manila which I caught few glimpses of were enough, and they didn't need a follow-up really. It was a nice pull-stop, and I am ready to move on to the next one.

Preparing for the performance was brutal. And I could say this because never before had I ever sustained so many injuries preparing for a performance. My right wrist was messed up, my left shoulder went a little funky, and the shin splints made a second coming. I think they all formed the culmination of shock and stress which I had put my body under after having not danced for too long (due to Canada) and shoved my self into the thick of things abruptly (like TRDO). My body wasn't ready, and I pushed, it pushed harder--I lost and paid the price.

Nonetheless, doing the items I did for Manila really helped me understand the idea of living in the now. I consider myself generally as someone who lives in the future. I set goals on a regular basis, conquering (as I would like to consider myself doing) one thing after another either simply because I need to, or I want to and I can. As a consequence, I hardly spent enough time enjoying the fruit of my own labour. It was always an endless pursuit of the future, which I think I still do, and in which I see nothing wrong--although at times it does feel regretful that I couldn't help myself to remain in the present and relish it a bit more. Of course, there is nothing absolute about it either: there were times where I would chase my memories, vaguely trying to recreate the feeling that one piece of music or that one photo gave me when I heard or saw it for the first time. But generally, I keep my eyes on the finish line, and creating one after another once the former is crossed.

Not too long ago I watched this interview on YouTube of Wade Robson, titled Masterclass Legends: Wade Robson on DS2DIO channel (which if you guys haven't heard of, you should check it out!), and in that interview the host asked, "What do you love about dance?". Wade answered:

With dance, when you're deep in the moment of dance and just how time drifts away. You know, and like usually everything in life we're always thinking about something we want in the future or relating it to something that's happened in the past, you know, when you're in that moment just none of that stuff exists and time just slips away. All of us in life are looking to be a little bit more present and as dancers, we're so lucky that we kind of have that window of opportunity to see what that's really like to not be so caught up in the sort of psychological time. So and then it's just hoping we can take that glimpse and use that sort of more and more in our day-to-day life.

And as corny as it sounds, I really understood what he said when I did those items, during rehearsals, vettings and the show itself. Well, may be partially because the items were really long, but there was also something that when I put on the costumes, and the music began playing, and the lights went down, and there was this thing in the space in front of me that was liberating--it felt safe, empty, and here. May be I am over-romanticising it at this moment, may be just a tiny bit.

Anyway, Manila was special because of the people. The Filipinos that I met, they were a passionate lot. Despite the rain, the horrible traffic, the bugs, the flood and the sweat (or perhaps because of them), these people really knew how to live it. And it was so apparent from the way they dressed, the way they spoke--Tagalog, perhaps due to the Spanish influence, is a language which is spoken with gusto; it has rhythm, inflection and accompanying gestures; it has real character--the way they interacted with one another, and of course the way they drank.

I met this dancer who was not much older than I was, Zyda, and she gave a workshop which was easily the highlight of the whole trip. She was a dream to watch. Really, she wrote poetry with her movements. And when we all talked to her after the workshop, it was all over her: her life journey, her personality and her story, emanating from her pores. She had the words "Om Namah Shivaya" (which meant "I honour the divinity within me") tattooed on her left forearm and a trinity sign (which meant "the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit") on her right wrist, such that when she crossed her arms the two would meet. She mentioned that she used to be rebellious, and now she was trying to dial it down, and those tattoos helped her to relinquish her dark past. Everything about her: her body, her dancing, her movements, her technique, her voice; told her story--and I really admired her for that.

Whatever happened in Manila was not life-changing--nowadays, nothing is--but it made me want to live in the now just a little bit more. I probably will never let go of my clutch on the future, but perhaps I can afford to ease my clench just a tad bit and take chances to savour what is happening now, or what is in very, very near future. And each time that spinal reflex kicked in and I felt like tightening my fist of control over things again, let me be reminded that things would be alright. And even if they didn't, there was still something worthwhile in living in the now with my slightly relaxed fist--in living it so daring greatly.

He Does So Daring Greatly

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. 

-- The Man in the Arena, delivered at the Sorbonne, in Paris, France on 23 April, 1910 

Epiphany

If dance really is a lifestyle, it's selfish to ask others to live yours, isn't it?

Antidote to Morning Sickness

Bye House

It's been amazing eight seasons!

RIP Harry's Law

Another good series bit the dust. In one of her recent tweets, Kathy Bates (Harry Korn) announced that Harry's Law would not be coming back for a third season. What a dumb move.

Harry's Law is--or, was-- NBC's latest legal drama-comedy (or, dramedy) created by David E. Kelly, who is the master mind behind the whole string of legal dramas we've seen so far on TV (The Practice, Boston Legal, Ally McBeal). It features an Oscar-winning actress Bates as the House, or the Sheldon, or the Barney, of the series, and a bunch of new faces, such as Brittany Snow (Jenna Backstorm), Nathan Corddry (Adam Branch) and Christopher McDonald (Tommy Jefferson). The first season comprises of thirteen episodes, which essentially tells a transition story of bored-to-death, former-patent-lawyer Korn opening up her own shoe-store-cum-law-practice in one ghetto neighbourhood in Cincinnati, Ohio. Granted Korn falls short of the magnetic charisma of House or Sheldon in their respective series, but nonetheless, Bates' portrayal of the curmudgeon lawyer who has a penchant for shooting quails is pretty delightful.

At the start of the second season, the show decided to toss up its cast by dropping Snow and Aml Ameen (Malcolm Davies) and introducing other new pretty (perhaps prettier?) faces, namely Karen Olivo (Cassie Reynolds), Mark Valley (Olli Richard), and from episode 16 onwards, Justine Lupe (Phoebe Blake). All of these aimed at bringing in more younger viewers, which the show desperately needed. Apparently in the US the deciding demographic that determines whether a show remains on the air is that of 18-49. It has something to do with the idea of it being the age group with has the most purchasing power, and since the network gets its money through its ads spaces, the higher the 18-49 ratings, the more willing the ads companies are to pay a higher price for the spaces, and therefore the more likely that a show would remain on the air. 

Sadly for Harry's Law, despite being the most viewed scripted show on NBC, pulling in an average of seven to eight millions viewers each week, and despite Bates' obtaining an Emmy nomination and Paul McCrane's (Puck Peyton) winning an Emmy for their respective performance in the first season, the 18-49 ratings have not improved enough to keep it on the air. Most of Harry's Law's loyal followers happen to be older. 

It is sad because I actually think that this is a good show, and not in anyway worse than the fas-and-critic-favourite The Good Wife (which Raj once mentions in TBBT as his new Grey's Anatomy)--although I have to say Harry's Law's attempts to appeal to the 18-49 demographic have been so in-your-face, that sometimes it is ridiculous, if not patronising. It is definitely much better than Shonda Rhimes' latest baby Scandal.

In the episode The Contest, Korn told Branch that: "And you know what else? I may be sixty, I may be short, but I'm damn hot! I sizzle in fact! And I want to win this competition. May be the equivalent to lawyers' wet T-shirt contest? I don't care. I want to get the news out there. The law offices of Harry Korn: we're sexy, we're hip, and we're hot!" after previously commenting that the 'people' think that they're 'fuddy-duddy'. 

In the last episode The Whole Truth, in a scene where Korn is forced to get out of bed at 6 a.m. (what's the purpose of this scene?), she grumbled: "It sucks getting old. I miss the time when I was in the age of eighteen and forty nine." Also, in a concluding scene of this episode, where Korn, Jefferson, Branch and Blake were sitting together drinking, Korn commented "Some days I don't know whether I'm gonna make it, but today... *one by one they held each others hands* *cue music with lyrics: /cause you're all I need/and I can't do this alone/stay with me/stay with me*". 

Nonetheless, it is really sad that the show is almost over. There were some really great highlights, such as: Jean Smart (Rosseana Remmick) being the draconian DA we all love to hate, the testimony in Sins of the Father which led the judge to declare prosecutorial misconduct, the cross-examination by Korn in Purple Hearts which stirred a confession from a nurse for a murder of a baby, and the Jefferson's auto-tuned version of a confession which he sneakily caught on tape. The show combines a healthy dose of lightheartedness with moments of moralising which give us the much-needed catharsis at the end of the episodes.

Of course, Kelley could have developed the character better, especially in the second season where more characters are introduced to the main cast, and there are times where I felt that the episodes abruptly ended where it did not feel like it was supposed to end there, but no show is perfect (with an exception of Grey's, TBBT and Modern Family), and I thought--and think--NBC should have given Harry's Law another shot, and instead of focusing so much on the 18-49 ratings. RIP Harry's Law. Can't wait for season finale next week!

Watching ABDC 2012 Week 5

ABDC is such a great show. I have not really been following the series for a couple of seasons, but this season I'm hooked. First and foremost, of course I am wrong about my opinions of the show or some of the crews featured. And of course, I am biased--that's the whole point of writing about your POV on something, isn't it? But disclaimer aside, this season's diversity of talent is insane. Granted, I did not see some of the previous seasons, which could have had some amazing stuff which my ignorant self is not aware of, but what makes this season exciting for me is that the talents are not as gimmicky as I thought they would be. Or at least some of them.

Before I forget, DJ Pauly D, whatever his name was: so unnecessary. They try to hype it up so much, given that this week was J.Lo's week, but I really don't think it's necessary. Lowest part of the show: Lil Mama's commentary. I cannot bring myself to listen to her--I've tried--and it's not only because of what she said. Funniest part of the show: when JC succumbed to following the crowd dancing the J.Lo signature dance thing. You could totally see his thought bubble: "Really? Urgh, F*ck it. *follows the crowd*". 

Anyway, obviously, MWC is the crowd's favorite, and I think that they are most solid dance crew on the series: they have some of the best choreography, some of the best dancers, and they win over their fans by their impeccable dancing, not so much by gimmicks. While RNG is strong on choreography as well, what makes MWC the one to watch is that they can execute their choreography flawlessly. Meanwhile it feels like RNG pack too much of a good thing in too short a period of time sometimes, which makes them look a teeny bit sloppy. But RNG are comprised of children, so perhaps anatomically speaking, they are already at a disadvantage. Nonetheless, I thought their piece this week was awesome, even better than last week's with the whole reverse concept thing. I am not particularly a fan of MWC's piece this week, and come to think of it, it seems that this crew is suffering from the problem of peaking way too soon in the season. Their debut piece was the best one, probably in the entire season, and they have not been able to top it off since--granted, now the show imposes ridiculous 'challenges' and assigns at-time-WTF tracks which more-often-than-not do not help this crew, or any crew for that matter, to achieve their best. 

Electrolytes this week is very entertaining. The theatrics worked. It is incredibly hard to incorporate a story line into a dance piece, and I thought they did that brilliantly. This has been the downfall of the FP this season, I believe, because while FP are known for their theatricality and such, they did so at the expense of shortening their choreography moment in their piece, so much so that it appears that there isn't much dancing in their pieces. Of course, dancing is so much more than displaying choreography or pulling off stunts, but in a competition, one's got to bring out the goods, and mere acting is often less than appreciated. Perhaps if the camera angle is good, the FP's story lines/concepts would come across better to the TV audience, i.e. voters, but so far it has not worked in their favour. That is why this week, FP pulled all stops to showcase their dance choreography, their concept and their fulfilling of the challenge, and they did much better than they did in previous weeks. Thing is, for this crew, when they got artists like Madonna and J.Lo, they should have ripped. it. apart. (pull stops for emphasis!), you could hear the crack on your TV screens, but I think they have yet to reach that potential. And I really want to like FP more than I actually do, but sad to say, I think they are riding more on their established reputation and their supposed potential in surviving on the show, than on their performances. 

The dark horse this season is 8F, and they are lethal machines. They say the best gifts come in small packages, and in this case they come also in eight flavours. This crew is the perfect blend of street dance (I won't say hip hop) and gymnastics (I won't say contemporary/jazz since they mostly, if only, use it for stunts). They really have good odds of winning the season because one, they are killing it each week someone should really have them arrested (save for may be last week, but that's a whole another story); two, they have a great back story (i.e. eight munchkins overcoming the distance to dance together and Angel's mum passing); and three, we have yet to see the best of them. I think 8F still have a couple of tricks up their sleeves that they are saving for the last lap of the season. One, two, three, and bam! A magic formula that will take them to the very end. 

Speaking of back stories, the reason why 8F are winning people over is that their story is not one that has been relentlessly flaunted on the show for seasons, so much so that the audience are practically numbed by it, i.e. one that's about dancers struggling to make ends meet, living off the streets with parents who are disapproving of their career of choice, or one about injured dancers fighting to not let their crews down. Not that I want to trivialise these issues--they are real and serious issues--but we have seen it one too many times on the show that we are used to it (or may be just me?). If you're a someone who has chosen street dance as a career, chances are you are not going to be wining and dining at some fancy restaurant or driving a Jaguar, at least not until some producer wants you to star in the next Step Up movie. But in exchange, you've got a good body, friends which you can call family and the joy of doing something you love. So, you win some, and you lose some.

Anyway, the results so far have been justified, I think, first they kicked out the foreigners (voters putting the A in ABDC), then the crew with gimmicks as their main selling point (as in the case of SB, which I could not stand, putting the B in ABDC), and now the real popularity contest begins: which crew is the most exciting one that even though they are not the best dancers, they are the best at putting on a show for the viewers (which is a plausible interpretation of ABDC, I guess)? I think MCW would come out in the end as the winner, although I hope they keep 8F and FP till the end because I'm just curious about what they would do with the challenges and how they would react to the development of the show thus far: for 8F, with Angel's coming back to join the force, and for FP, their retaliation after having been thrown to the bottom two weeks in a row now. Exciting much! 

Foodlocker

How many ways can you spell 'unagi'? 

Gayest xiao long pao ever! Garlic, Ginseng, Crab egg, Szechuan, Black truffle, Cheese, Foia gras and Original in the centre!

Spirit

About two days ago I went to visit my grandmother--my ailing grandmother who is now struggling to maintain her lucidity. I was told by my dad, but mostly by my mum, of episodes where she behaved less than a quarter her age. She is now eighty three years old, and I believe, personally, that she is suffering from mild Alzheimer's--although (no) thanks to the conservative thinking of everybody else in the family, she is judged to be merely senile. 

Nonetheless, she has recently been assigned a care-taker to look after and watch over her every need, even though the fact that the care-taker let my grandmother out of the house with pink eye shadow speckled all around my her eyes makes me shake my head little. This is an eighty-three year-old who in her prime has mothered four sons and two daughters, and used to run a Nazi-efficient operation in the kitchen each time the family came together to celebrate Chinese New Year, birthdays and the like. She used to be revered and feared as the matriarch of the family. And this omnipotent, despotic image was one that I know all my life. Since my grandfather passed away when I was too little to remember any encounter that I may (or may not) have with him, to me, my grandmother had always been atop the family tree. So, to see what her both her physical and mental capacities had been diminished to, when I saw her the other day, was truly incredible. 

Another sad news: one of my grandaunts just passed away, at the age of 52. Since I had a very vague recollection of who she was (apparently I used to see her a lot when I was young), truth be told, I was not particularly distressed. Nevertheless, two days ago my parents brought me and grandmother to pay a visit to my granduncle's to show our condolences. My granduncle lived in a humble area where the government built a strip of hostels for the army. When we arrived, we saw him sitting alone with a newspaper in one hand and a bowl of soup in the other, and after an exchange of pleasantries (which was awkward for me because I could not decide whether to call him 'granduncle', or just 'uncle', as I hardly knew the man), we sat down in the concrete-floored, spartanly furnished porch, just escaping the sting of the unforgiving midday sun--although the heat swallowed us up like a fat boy eats cake. Anyhoo, listening to these grown-ups talking about my late grandaunt and the miscellanea that ensued really made me realize how much I had been cut off from all these home/family stuff. 

I learnt that for quite a while I had been missing all these family rites, which I knew for sure I would have taken for granted had I been around all this while--'missing' in the sense that I was not there to experience them, not that I had sentimental yearning to be participate in them. I realized that I had been living away from my family for almost eight years now, and for those 'almost eight years' I had not been brought by my parents, by bribe, trickery, blackmail, or otherwise (I hate family functions!), to attend any of these vicissitudes of communal living. Just be clear, I did not resent coming over to meet my granduncle.

It also then made me realize how much my thought process had deviated from the people here back home. Disclaimer: I neither frown upon those people who cling closely to their superstitious/spiritual beliefs, nor do I think that my reason-based philosophy is superior to that of the former. It was intriguing to me how my granduncle relied on his belief/faith so much in processing his grief. He told this guests that he believed that my grandaunt's spirit was still with him. According to his religion (for the sake of avoiding controversy, it shall not be named), my grandaunt's spirit would still be around until the fortieth day after the date of her passing, and within this period there were certain protocols that my granduncle had to follow to ensure that my grandaunt's spirit could move on peacefully--one of which was to pay off all of her outstanding debts, no matter how small the amounts were, and irrespective of whether the creditor was willing to release the debts ex gratia. Moreover, my aunt, who joined us halfway through, believed that she had actually seen signs of the eventual preluding my grandaunt's passing, such as how my grandaunt became bashful when asked about her health, and how she snored nights before her passing.

I felt really sorry for their loss, not because I knew my grandaunt well--or my granduncle, or my aunt for that matter--but because from the passion and vividness with which they told these stories, I could tell how much my grandaunt was loved by her family, and how greatly she was going to be missed. 

My aunt also told us that the local community just finished building a place of worship (note the censorship) in the area, and that they agreed to name it after my grandaunt. Suddenly, a smile came to her face. She believed that through the good deeds performed in and around the sacred place, good karmic return would flow to benefit my grandaunt in heaven. It really hit me when I saw the totality in which my aunt held onto her belief and her god. Even though I thought that I had brought myself back into believing in my God, I was not sure that the confidence which I had now in mine was anywhere near my aunt's in hers. 

My torrid love-hate affair with God began when I was seventeen, and one of the many people that I turned to in order to find the answer was Julia Sweeney. I watched her TED talk some years back, and it got me started to re-think and re-evaluate my view of God and religion. And happy accident: last night that I managed to get my hands on the full version of her talk, titled Letting Go of God, all thirteen parts of them, which lasted for two good hours. Just for the record, she is an excellent speaker. 

Sweeney was born and raised Catholic, and growing up she had more an affinity toward Catholicism and nun-hood than do a typical teenager toward alcohol and porn. Later on she enrolled in a bible study group, which turned out to be nothing she had initially bargained for. She found the bible inconsistent, incongruous and incoherent: like how there were two versions of the creation of Adam and Eve; how in the Sodom-and-Gomorrah story Lot offered his daughter, in lieu of the two angles who had come to visit him, to be raped by a mob outside his house (the mob initially demanded for the angles which had taken the form of two male humans); or how Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son belies our instinctive and modern standard of ethics. Moreover, according to Sweeney, the New Testament did not show much improvement: Jesus appeared to be impatient and angry most of the times, and St. Paul's sexist view on women did not help to win Sweeney over either.

So, after all of that, Sweeney tried to find God elsewhere. She turned to Buddhism, but was terrified at the sight of a mother somewhere in Bhutan who callously said that she did not feel sorry for her son's deformity because she believed that it was justly caused by karmic retribution. To her, the god that encouraged that could not possibly be her God. She then turned to nature, but when she saw a Blue-footed Booby's brain being pecked clean by its stronger sibling in the course of natural order of things, she concluded God could not be nature either. She even turned to Deepak Chopra, consciousness and quantum mechanics, but based on her findings, they all panned out to be horseshit. Ultimately, she turned to science, through which she found out that man could stimulate the brain to artificially create a visceral encounter with the spiritual, which of course cheapened the notion of spiritual encounter with God. This was the last straw. 

At this point, Sweeney was ready to break up with God. This was an experience where she imagined that an aged, white-bearded man was sitting right outside her house refusing to go away. Sweeney reasoned with the old man, and after much cajoling and abandoning, he finally left. Subsequently, she told her devout-Catholic parents that she did not believe in God anymore. This, coupled by an expose splashed in local paper where her parents lived, labeling her an atheist, her father went ballistic. He was so angry that he even said that he wished she had told him that she was gay instead, because that would at least be socially accepted. Nevertheless, time healed all wounds, and Sweeney ultimately managed to make amends with her parents. 

One of the most beautiful things that I saw in her talk was the realization she had at her father's funeral: 

I look at the altar through my father's eyes, and it was rich and beautiful. I was baptized in this very church when I was one week old, and in so many real ways, I will never stop being Catholic. I mean, Christianity has helped shape my brain. It seems inevitable to me, that after all this searching, I have return to the Catholic church. I unexpectedly am right back where I started, surprised like Dorothy back from Oz. 

After all when I left the Catholic church, I did not realize that I would be giving up on God altogether. I just thought that I would find another church that would make more sense to me. May be this time, it would be more meaningful somehow, because I wouldn't be debating all the time, about what I believed and didn't believe. I would know that I just didn't believe in any of it.  

I mean, after all, may be objective reality is not the most pleasant prism through which we can view this world. And may be, by using fantasy, we can allow ourselves to glimpse at something greater than what we otherwise would be able to. Let's face it: truth is such a poor competitor in a marketplace full of ideas, and the love and the community and this church are real, and potent. Even if God isn't. 

To me, this seems to be such a painful reconciliation, worse than what I have ever had. Perhaps it is because I never took God and religion as seriously as did Sweeney with hers. And perhaps my relationship with God was, is, and can never be, as potent as I want it to be because of that. Unlike Sweeney--at least for now--I am okay with leaving the true existence of God to chance. I am okay even if deep down, as much as I do not want to, I still think that my belief is simply a protective psychological construct with which I process the not-so-great things that come my way. All I know is when the going gets tough, and I pray, I feel better. And so, given the pathetic state of my relationship with God, as much as I want it to be the opposite of that, this is good enough for me--at least for now. 

24

It has come down to my last 24 hours here in London, and I have no clue what to do. I remember when I was busy engaging in my national sport yesterday, i.e. ironing and tidying up my laundry, I looked back to the first day that I arrived here in London. After lugging in my luggage, thud, thud, thud, as it went down the stairs to the basement where later I spent countless ungodly hours in solitary confinement watching more reality TV than I had ever had my entire life (thank the heavens for speedy internet connection!), I told myself that this was going to be first day of my life. It is funny that I always look to what-is-to-come at the beginning of things, and cannot seem to not look back when it is all about to be over. 

This trip has turned out to be something different from what I initially bargained for. And not necessarily in the negative way. Its failure to meet my expectations was probably caused mainly by my too-idealistic notion of what it was, and my unreadiness to live up to those ideals. I suppose I was just not in the place where I was feeling like reckless abandon. Getting my US visa rejected was a huge blow, and at risk of sounding melodramatic, I would say it was as traumatic as the time where I accidentally dropped a stack of plates when I was about nine years-old, inadequately helping my mother in the kitchen. At that age, strict liability was the rule of the game. My mum thought that the magic mantra of telling me (repeatedly) "Are you sure you can?" and "Be careful, be careful, be careful!" was sufficient to completely eliminate the risk of having her china smashed into smithereens. So when I exited the Consulate in Toronto with nothing but a pink form of rejection, I swear I could hear those plates crushing all over again. 

Nonetheless, there were highlights too. Dog-sledding was particularly fantastic--although at first I was not quite sure why it always smelled like dog-poo whenever I sat in the sled. Only half an hour later I realised that I had eight dog asses staring back at me the entire journey. It was worth appreciating how these dogs could follow verbal cues better than could my little brother, and perhaps more importantly, how they can literally pee while running up and down the slopes with the weight of two adults on their backs. That is multitasking at its best! 

And of course, seeing snow first hand for the first time was exciting, well, at least for the first seventeen minutes. Having smoke-like exhalations, braving through a blizzard yet still keeping dry (or at least, until you enter a room where the snow cling-on melted and drenched you coats and boots), peeing in the wilderness to see whether it would freeze before it touched the ground (it did not!) were things that I can safely say that money cannot buy. 

And meeting new and interesting people was also part of the packaged prize. It is worth noting that somehow almost all the street dancers I met here in London, and Toronto too, were all men and women of colour: Asians, African, Hispanic. All the white people seem to flock in the contemporary scene. Only here that I was labelled the too-broad-a-term "Asian": not Indonesian, not Chinese, not even Filipino. Guess we do the same with "ang-moh" back home, which applies to Europe, North America and Australia. Everywhere we go, ignorance abounds. 

Anyway, meeting the people from WOOF was a blessing. They are a friendly bunch who really deserve the term "family". One of the most emotional thing I witnessed (though not necessarily experienced) was the prom, the moment when one by one the delegates from graduating batch went up to the podium to speak. One of them mentioned that when she wrote her speech, she peppered it with metaphors and humour to a point where the end-product did not turn out to be what she wanted to say. But stripped off of those distractions, she could write nothing. Why? Because to her, the reality was too painful. She said that reality is a state of things as they actually exist, instead of as how one hopes they exist, and the reality was that they were going to take their separate ways. I mean, I have had my fair share of graduations, proms and goodbyes, and by now I classify myself as a veteran, and not that I was moved to tears (these tear ducts have stopped functioning since 2007!), but it was nice to see a group of people that could feel that much for one another, even if I only see it from the outside. It was beautiful. 

So, perhaps it is too ambitious to call my trip exciting, because for the most parts it is not. It has been, for the most parts, relaxing. And on hindsight, relaxation was what I wanted when I signed on for this trip. The slow pace of London made me realise how much time I had in my hand, and while to relax is divine, there is such a thing as too-much-time. And there is also something called way-too-much-time. It is a delicate process to find that perfect balance, because once I went past the ideal, I just turned suicidal, bordering on homicidal. But I cherished it, now that I am at the end of the tunnel, because with those too-much-time and way-too-much-time, I did not what is especially exciting, not what is particularly relaxing, but those that I wanted to do--whatever they were. 

Now that the light is near, and I have a time-warp-like journey back home where I will have to squeeze myself into my claustrophobic airplane seat for too many hours that the human body can--should--endure, I just want to say I cannot wait to get home and meet my parents.

Sounds So Much Wordier On TV!

Our whole universe was in a hot dense state
Then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started. Wait...
The Earth began to cool,
The autotrophs began to drool,
Neanderthals developed tools,
We built a wall (we built the pyramids),
Math, science, history, unraveling the mysteries,
That all started with the big bang!

 by Barenaked Ladies

I Love Harry's Law!

And you know what else? I may be sixty, I may be short, but I'm damn hot! I sizzle in fact! And I want to win this competition. May be the equivalent to lawyers' wet T-shirt contest? I don't care. I want to get the news out there. The law offices of Harry Korn: we're sexy, we're hip, and we're hot!

Harry Korn, Harry's Law Season 2 Episode 17

Pro-passion

Passion is a loaded word: perhaps it is better felt then defined, in the sense that we might not really can put our finger on it, but when it is there, there is no denying it. We all have felt the warm wash of passion in one way or another. While passion is typically tied to creative work or creative life, and as we often sigh at the dreariness of the other residual elements of our lives, I think--or, would very much like to think--that there is still some room for passion to thrive in the latter.

Truth be told, it is very difficult to find passion outside the realm of the creative. And this does not necessarily mean that passion is restricted within the confines of the arts, because there are other professions and industries, such as journalism, branding and advertising, which entail a creative process at certain stage in their workings--albeit they do not prima facie strike us as relating closely to the arts. Nonetheless, the common threat amongst these various professions, and many others for that matter, is that this idea of creation. It appears that the creative process is the birthplace of passion. Or is it vice versa?

I came to this conclusion because even in the area of commerce, which is commonly regarded as the wasteland of anything passionate--with its rigid hours, mind-numbing tasks and pecuniary gain being the sole (and inadequate) source of motivation (or, perhaps more appropriately, compensation)--there still seems to be some available space for passion to grow, particularly in the area of entrepreneurship. In Onward, Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, tells the story of his returning to the CEO position after he learnt about (for the lack of a better word) certain points of unhappiness in the day-to-day operation of the multi-million-dollar company. In the initial chapters, he reveals his inspiration which lead to the creation of Starbucks. It was a short business trip to Italy where he was enthralled by the manner in which coffee was served in those small, rustic Italian coffee shops: everything from the barrista-patron rapport, to the aroma of espresso wafting throughout the cafes, to the cacophonous harmony of the sounds made by the coffee machines. It was an experience which Schultz yearn to recreate for his customers in the US, and subsequently the entire world. He speaks about how he wanted to make Starbucks something more to its people, namely its customers, its employees and its senior management. So when he felt that the company was going astray from its core values, in spite of its rapid growth (specifically in terms of the breakneck pace with which it opens new branches all over the US), he was compelled to recoup his position as the CEO. In page after page, he tells the stories of his blunders, anxieties and successes, and in those pages, one cannot help but to acknowledge his passion for the company and what it stands for.

Gretchen Rubin, in her book The Happiness Project, concludes that true happiness necessarily flows from a circumstance she calls "an atmosphere of growth". It is hard to divorce the idea of happiness from that of passion, and if passion is incidental to the pursuit of happiness--or if happiness is incidental to the pursuit of passion--looking into the ingredient of happiness may help us to find an ingredient for passion. Coming back to my initial premise, perhaps a plausible correlation between the very nature of creative work and passion could be found in the fact that there is simply boundless room for improvement in one's creative endeavour. Rebbeca Pi once wrote that "[a] poem is never finished, only abandoned." There just seems to persist this overwhelming sense of self-deprecating, self-abasing and even self-flagellating humility (which at times, to me, appears somewhat unjustifiable and bogus) that plagues individuals entrenched in creative pursuits. When one is truly passionate, many argue, one can never be good enough.

Similarly, the gap for improvement is vast when one is an entrepreneur, because there is really no ceiling to what one could achieve and how to achieve it. The sky is the limit. This is in stark contrast to other professional sectors, say if one is an accountant, a lawyer, or a manager, where there is this inevitable climb toward the top of the corporate ladder: a young accountant aims to be the CFO of a Fortune 500 company, a young lawyer seeks to make partner at a Magic Circle firm, a manager endures sleepless nights in the hope of becoming a CEO, etc. While the progression may be long, the delineation of the job titles creates a degree of certainty, and certainty reduces the vastness of the progression. Another problem with these professions is that due to its title-by-title progression--which upon stellar or even satisfactory performance, such progression becomes inevitable (albeit at variable pace)--one may be rendered an audience of one's own success.

This is what one of my lecturers told me a few days ago. To some of us, arguably lucky ones, things fall into place because they are the next easy, almost-inevitable step. William Deresiewichz noted that "[i]t just kind of happened. It's easy, the way the system works, to simply go with the flow. I don't mean that work is easy, but the choices are easy. Or rather, the choices sort of make themselves. ... From the time you started high school and may be even junior high, your whole goal was to get into the best college you could, so now you naturally think about you life in terms of 'getting into' whatever's next. ... You take it one step at a time, and the next step always seems to be inevitable." My lecturer observed that depression is the number-one cause of malpractice amongst lawyers, even seniors ones. "Many young lawyers often dismiss this problem fairly quickly," said he,"but the problem is young lawyers become old lawyers, and before they know it, they drink themselves to sleep every night." Notwithstanding the material success and the prestige attached to their profession, the common trend seems to point to a downward spiral toward mental breakdown and psychological mayhem.

I would postulate that the main cause for this unfortunate finding is that these people do not find themselves living in an "atmosphere of growth". Despite the progression that has taken place--or, is taking place--in their career or whatnot, there is essentially zero growth because they simply cannot care less about it. Obsence!, this may seem to some of us. What an ungrateful bunch! However, it is not to be forgotten the hapless fact that one cannot force oneself into liking something. In her year-long project, Rubin codified this principle as one of her Secret of Adulthood: "You can choose what you do; you can't choose what you like to do."

So why do I ask myself this question? I believe--or, fear, to be really honest--that I am on a path to entering into an environment that is so consuming, so unrewarding, and so potentially nefarious, that unless I find myself an "atmosphere of growth" somewhere in it, there will be no evading the slippery slope leading to that pith of despair. Ridiculous!, some may argue, I am not even close to dipping my toes in the pool. However, the ultimate problem, by its very nature, is subtle and creeping in the manner in which it penetrates into our lives. And to tackle it prematurely would not only help to curtail the extent of eventual damage, but is absolutely necessary, in particular, if I were to see longevity in my story, and to flourish at it at the same time--which is I do.

Unfortunately, a creative life may be inherently and structurally so distinct from a legal career, that there is room in the latter for an "atmosphere of growth" to take root, or at least in the sense as we understood it in the former. There really is no guarantee. However, what one can attempt to do is: to, firstly, create an atmosphere or something resembling it, and to subsequently stimulate growth. The dictionary defines "atmosphere" as "the pervading tone or mood of a place, situation, or work of art", and as a consequence, for anything to pervade an aspect of one's life, one needs to steep oneself into it. Immersion is key.

Perhaps there is no light at the end of this endeavour: a dark path leading to nowhere. Perhaps for those (un)lucky among us, we are destined for eventual professional counseling. Yet, one can always try to blur the distinction between profession and passion, even if they initially stand mutually exclusive. One can always try, one baby step at a time.

And pray for the best.