Part II - Birthday Alarm ya a Godsent! But what happened to me?

Then just the day before, while I was waiting for my consultation slot with my family doctor at his clinic, I overheard a conversation between two grannies. They were perfect strangers five minutes before they started chatting. They might have had nothing in common apart from age / generation but they sure had lots of stuff to talk about while waiting for our family doctor to return back from his lunch. Topics ranged from their children to grandchildren and of all they discussed, the most interesting one was the one about the young generation.They were discussing how lonely the young people these days have become, how anti-social the younger generation are these days, how the doors of these young neighbours were tightly shut day in day out, 24/7 and how little they have said to one another despite having stayed next to one another for about 10 years. 10 years, a relatively long period of time isn't it? I thought to myself, how sad it must have been to stay along that corridor.

What happened? What happened to the friendly environment whereby everyone living in the same block knows basically everyone and sometimes their affairs? Why do we talk to people? What is it that makes us talk? Why have we all become so lonely? Why are we all so self-absorbed these days? Are we only talking because we need something from someone? Hence if there is nothing anybody can do for us, there is most certainly no need to talk to them? And why then are we conveying whatever message we can via emails and even sms-es (well my friend is complaining about her boyfriend sms-ing her more often than he calls her) when we could have just added a more human touch to the message which we are conveying to another person?

What is it about interacting that frightens us? Is it because talking makes us pregnant? Else what? The difference between us and animals is that, we think and we talk while animals don't talk and as for the think part, I am not so sure if animals don't think, their brains are not there for decoration, just because we don't understand how their brains work doesn't render them brainless. I don't think talking makes the world a more humane one when so many people out there are doing so much evil but hey talking makes this world a more friendly one, sure who cares about the world when I gain nothing from making the world a more friendly one. Hey excuse me, you are part of the world, geddit? geddit? yes, you are part of the world, so if you contributed to the friendly environment around your neighbourhood, hey that's one good thing considered done for yourself. If everyone is to do things only when they get something in return, I think that person never truly lived. I love talking! I do! I love exchanging greetings with people, I love to meet new people, I love to interact with people, because that makes me happy!

I don't know if it is the Singapore culture but I realised this, people sometimes from other parts of the world are much more friendlier than Singaporeans, they smile at complete strangers, made people's day by saying kind things to them or just by a simple hello or thank you but in Singapore, it seems as though one would be regarded as some sort of demented person when he/she smiles at people and say hi to people on the streets. I tried that out, so don't you dare say I won't know for sure because I am away half the time and mind you I was born and raised in Singapore like a true blue Singaporean. If it is our culture, I HATE IT. I felt so freaking happy when strangers taking a morning jog smile and greet me with a hearty morning! as they run past me, in some strange way, they made me smile, I felt so much like a human being (you must be wondering what rubbish am I uttering, it is indeed a little difficult to express this sort of feeling, you must experience it first hand to understand it, but try to imagine the situation and feel it?) See little acts of kindness and friendliness does help to make this world a better place so we should all start doing that, who knows we might get an award for being the friendliest nation?

Really, if you don't want your kids to grow up without anyone to play with them because all the neighbours' kids are all just not bothered to interact with anyone else apart from their parents and siblings and if you don't want you, yourself to start losing that humane side of you, please, for goodness sake, start smiling or just exchanging some greetings, for a start, I say start with smiling and smile like you mean it. :) *smiles*

**** Ok for some part of this part II, the thoughts are not that organised, if you think they are of no relevancy, you are probably right, I must state this, I am not, I repeat, not trying to link what I've typed a few days ago up, I think they are inter-related in a certain way and I stand firmly by my views that although they don't exactly match each other like a T but in some way you can relate them. But since I am not entirely satisfied with this entry, I might amend it so till then! :) ****

Birthday alarm, ya a godsend, but what happened to me?

Knowing you are remembered and treasured is indeed a happy feeling, no in fact an exuberating one that warms the cockles of one's heart. When people from afar send me their sincere birthday wishes or little handmade cards / cards, I feel cherished and it is a very special feeling knowing your friends care for you, somehow you are allocated a space in their hearts. Especially those people who you'll never imagine remembering your birthdays or even people who found out about your birthday through someone else but you.

Lately, a pretty good friend of mine just celebrated his 22nd birthday, in fact it was last sunday August, 14 and as his so called pretty good friend, I didn't even know about it. I felt so guilty and so disappointed in myself. I wondered why is it that I never bothered finding out his birthday if he meant that much to me, when he remembers my birthday and bothered sending me a card and I cannot even be bothered to find out his date of birth. I am so sorry ya. Not trying to look for an excuse but I realised the problem with me is my dependency on Birthday alarm.

For the benefit of the hermit clan, Birthday alarm is a service provider who reminds you your friends' birthdays a few days in advance of their date of birth for free, all you need to do is to invite your friends to fill in their birthdays for you and once that is done, you'll never forget about your friends' birthdays unless you are trapped on some isolated island where there is no internet connection.

Yes that's right, I've stopped asking my friends the question of "when is your birthday?" and too at the same time stopped making a mental note to remember these friends' birthdays. I just stopped doing all these and let technology get the better of me. Technology, gosh sometimes I love it to bits but sometimes I simply dread it. It simply devoured me. Why on earth do I rely on this damn service so much now? Why can't I just open my big fat mouth and ask sincerely my friend's birthday? Is technology aiding us or ate-ing (I KNOW ITS EATING :P) us?

This reminds me of the situation I encountered once while I was then temping during the holidays. My job and everything was great but the people there are in general cold, and I mean cold. There is little eye contact and interaction between co-workers, one by one, they each passed by one another without even smiling or greeting each other a "Hi" or what have you, the culture was suffocating, suffocating! Then my mentor had to make things harder for me by emailing me a "Livia, can you please go get this file ____" when she was just seating right beside me. I was like "HUH?", I mean you've got to be kidding me, is speech that redundant now? There is zero verbal interaction between my mentor and myself throughout the entire temping period, zero, the only communication we had was via emails, loads of them.

(Part II will be up in a couple of days)

Whenever someone complains to me how much they dislike a particular blog, I often advice them not to continue reading it if it irritates them and like all good advices, they are often ignored. I often think people brings about trouble upon themselves and if you were to look around and observe, you will understand what I mean. I don't think of myself any different from them, I am afterall too someone who often creates problems for myself and I admit that, what I try to do is to not cause too much trouble for myself.

You may think of me as someone who is overly judgmental and yes, maybe you are right, I don't often give second chance after forming an impression. When I pick up a book by a certain author and I find that book poorly written or boring, I simply condemn the author and will not read other books written by him/her unless it is one that has earned itself a reputation or even a spot on the best selling shelves, only then will I reconsider. That is the exception to the don't give second chance principle of mine. I often find myself a very lucky person becaues I know clearly what is it that I like and what is it that entertains me and I don't make my life miserable by doing things I dislike or reading things which will put me off.

Which is why, I cannot simply understand why is it some people I know of, make things harder for themselves and then in their twisted minds, they make it seemed as though they were coerced into making their life difficult. There is always a choice in life so don't make others shoulder any part of your responsibilty. It is like how I continue reading a particular person's blog even when I dislike the style and contents but I still choose to read it out of curiosity, you don't see me complaining about how this person should write or perhaps suggests how he/she should just disappear from this literary world do you? Why complain when you choose to be curious?

Let me explain the steps of visiting a person's blog to you, in case you don't already know. First, you type the address of the blog, second, you hit enter on your keyboard and voila ici, in two steps, you reach the site. Bear in mind, you actually need to type and hit enter before you can start reading a person's blog. So how is it that people can actually say they've been coerced into reading another's blog and how can you compare a person's blog to spam mails? Help me understand will you? I am simply too dense to understand. When you choose to read a person's blog, you need to remind yourself, regardless of how senseless a person's blog may seem to be to you, you made the choice to read the blog and if you don't like it, leave promptly and never return to the same blog. If you don't like it, leave it is what I am driving at, I hope you are not too thick to understand, put your cash where your mouth is at, match your opinions with your actions, don't torment yourself by making yourself go through things you dislike, you do realise you are not very far from being a sadist if you continue this cycle do you? It is not too hard or even too late to learn how to be a man of your word, really.

This world is materialistic, no matter how you look at it, it simply is a shallow little world we are all living in. People are judgmental and they tend to impose their views on what should have been on others rather than experimenting what could have been. Wherever you are from, whichever culture it is that you have, you are judgmental and but a pathetic fool.

Whenever we first acquaint ourselves with others, we tend to ask them either about the course they are currently reading or their job positions and it is from there we start playing the judges of others' life. If you are reading law, medicine, neuroscience, sociology bla bla, you should be smart. If you were previously from a good college or tertiary institution, you should too be intelligent, somehow one way or another. If you are working as a lawyer, a doctor, a banker, a financial analyst, certainly you are expected to be a high flyer and you should have enough brains to hold on to that position of yours.

But is it all true? Are you sure all lawyers, doctors, bankers, psychologists and so on are indeed intellectual? Why are we letting the qualifications of others speak for themselves when we could have taken the time to sit down and decide for ourselves if that particular lawyer or doctor bla bla sitting right in front of you is not just booksmart but too measured in terms of ability, capable? Sure, we are all busy, we are busy all the time aren't we? Too busy to look around and appreciate the trees planted around us, too busy to do this too busy to do that, now we are even much more busier that we let people's degree qualifications and job positions fool us.

Certainly, by no means, not every single first class student of whichever discipline they graduate from are dumb, there are indeed a few of them who are indeed booksmart and simply put, they are just smart on the whole, but then again you must too realise there is another group of first class students who are merely good at regurgitating whatever they have read somewhere either from books or from others' essays. When put to the test, which might all be a little too late, that is when they have secured a job, these jokers may prove to be much worser than sometimes even a third class degree holder.

Ok a little too extreme you say, but it is true, nothing in this blue globe like thing, also known as the world is not memorizable. I tell you this for sure, nothing. As much as I like to think academics do know how to mark papers properly, I tell you, hell no, at least not those I've came across. I regurgitated quite a whole lot of rubbish from some of the lectures I have attended as well as materials from the textbook once for my non-assessed essay, which took me less than an hour to complete that 1500 words essay and I gotten a high 2:1 for that piece of work that requires zero brain cells to produce. My other fellow coursemate, who by no means is dumb, gave his all to that essay, which I must say is pretty well written as well as evidently clear that he did quite a fair bit of research and critical thinking, and guess what did he get? A mere 2:2, a pretty high 2:2 though, but what is particularly ironic is the remarks given on his essay is that his essay is too descriptive and what is written on mine is something along the lines of there is trace of critical analysis. Ha! What a joke! Ok to be honest, quite a fair bit of his essay was pretty introductory, but it is not exactly introductory without merit. He was at least working on style, something which I tend to indulge in when I can afford the time. I am in the opinion that my seminar taker should have at the very least given him the credit for his style and the analysis he did independently.

Everyone else in the same seminar group thinks that this guy is perhaps dumb or something, and that he is perhaps better off reading some other courses. But because I had the privilege of reading his essay and too gotten to know him on a personal level, I judged him differently. I know he knows his stuff, he is perhaps just not good at knowing how to present his points effectively within the 1500 words limit, that in itself, you may say is evidently destructive but hey the old english way of writing essays is to illustrate your point, which may be summarized in 5 - 6 words, in like 20 words. Yuppy, three times more. So, he's not exactly wrong either.

Had I not had the privilege to read his essay and to know him for who he is, I would probably have been one of those judgmental fools who has no regards for his brains. But reminding myself from time to time, that people with good grades are not necessarily smart, I tend to keep my mouth and mind where they are and not let them wander off too far. Of course, you may say, without prior knowledge of what the person is like, degree qualification and classification is perhaps the easiest way to judge a person quickly (but not effectively), certainly with such a fast paced society, we cannot afford to sit everyone down and understand them one by one. I agree with you totally, but if you are starting to acquaint yourself with somebody and gradually better associate yourself with them, don't let the first impressions (which you may derive from the shallow questions like, "so which sch are you from?" "oh HARVARD!" *mental note* smartass smartass right in front of me) you have get to you and let it be an obstacle to know that person on a more intellectual and personal level. I mean really do yourself a favour, you can be shallow but you can too stop being shallow, know when to stop yourself is the point I am driving at.

And oh, by no means am I trying to say people without proper qualifications are the winners in life, qualification is one thing, education is another, education opens the door of opportunities for one and education helps someone who is smart to become smarter.

Last but not least, the real battle starts at work, so whether you are a dumbass or a smartass, your employers will know, unless you get super lucky, which is not impossible you know?