Post holiday depression

I am suffering from post holiday depression. Cure? Go for another holiday!

Youth

Like Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray, whose portrait ages, while Gray himself appears to remain perpetually youthful, some of us have an obsession with youth - either with the physical appearance of youth or with the loss of youthful vigour.

I believe that it is youth is the happiest time of life because it is when we are free - free from prejudice, free from worries.

Technology

In Aldous Huxley's novel "Brave New World', he describes a society where humanity is free, healthy and technologically advanced. Warfare and poverty have been eradicated, there is no racial discrimination and happiness reigns. Our lives now move with 21st century speed: mobile phones, computers, and aeroplanes conspire to allow us to communicate faster and more easily. Technology has indeed improved the way we live and certainly has allowed us to live longer. However, we need to ask: at what expense do we embrace technological advance?

Saint-Exupery alluded to this when he said that "The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them". A classic example of this was when the discovery of nuclear physics led to the invention of the atomic bomb, which resulted in utter devastation in World War II. Nuclear energy today is harnessed to provide electricity and power to industries and homes. However the problem of disposing nuclear waste and the destructive use of nuclear energy are issues that we face in today's relative peacetime. Iran is defying the international community by insisting on enriching uranium on its soil, and North Korea has shut out international nuclear inspectors in the past.

Frieberg was not entirely correct when saying that 'Only science can hope to keep technology in some sort of moral order". With advances in the fields of biology and genetics, one hopes that we will be able to increase yield in the crops that we harvest, or harvest stem cells so that we can grow parts of our body in the future to replace the defective parts. This has also a flip side where ethics and morals are compromised or challenged. For example, eugenics, the picking and choosing of favourable genetic traits in human offspring may lead to a world devoid of diversity. 'Scientific achievements' in stem cell research by South Korean scientist Dr. Woo-suk have been found to be fake and he and other members of his team have lost their jobs at Seoul National University.

In 'Brave New World', utopia is achieved by eliminating many things - family, cultural diversity, art, literature, religion and philosophy just to name a few. Written in the 1930s, this clearly hasn't happened today. Space research has given us Teflon which is now used as a non-stick material in frying pans. Spacecrafts have been sent to Mars and other planets so that we understand more about the universe we live in.

We experience life as it is with its suffering, misery, happiness and joy - the common denominator of the human race. Technology has not eliminated the experience of joy in seeing a new born child, or the sadness when an athlete loses a competition after years of training, as suggested by the anonymous writer. On the contrary, technology such as film and the internet has possibly brought us closer together by sharing our human experiences.

Toddycats

Woke up at an ungodly 5.30am on Sunday 12 Feb to join Kenneth and the toddycats on a nature and historical walk around Kent Ridge Park and beyond. The walk was to commemorate the fall of Singapore to the Japanese.

I got to the bus stop at 6.20am thinking that I would get a bus to NUS. Waited for a good 20mins before realising that buses probably aren't that frequent on Sunday mornings. 'Ordered' a taxi (had to wait some time too) and got to NUS at 7am.

The walk started at a quarter past 7am or something like that, and it started with a briefing telling us what we were going to see and the historical background of the ridge. I never knew that the ridge was formerly known as 'Pasir Panjang Ridge'. The fact that it was a ridge never crossed my mind too. I just thought that NUS was in a strange part of Singapore which was still hilly and haven't been leveled to reclaim more land.

I don't know why I feel so exhausted the entire day. Getting up in the morning is as difficult as struggling to resurrect a dead cat.

There's something that continues to bug me - the inability of MRT train passengers to move to a space vacated by a passenger who just got off. Theoretically speaking, if 5 people exit through the door, another 5 people can get into the train by the same door right? No...apparently conservation of mass doesn't apply to certain people. I tried getting into a crowded train this morning but most people refused to budge. The newspaper readers continued to read their newspapers, the 'I'm going to fall' people held on to the metal poles for their dear lives, and the poor souls who didn't get on remained on the platform to await the next crowded train.

Up and running

Sorry for not updating my blog...I've just been staying late at the office and I really don't want to spend another hour on my home computer blogging when I do get home.

After 3 days of crippling forgetfulness, I finally remembered to bring my living room curtain blinds to the office building's dry cleaners. I'm probably the sort of person that cannot take rejection and no very well, and was devastated when the man at the counter told me, "we don't take curtains anymore". I didn't know what to say and stared blankly at him. The thought of 'why didn't I remember to bring them earlier' swirled through my mind before the idea of threatening him with a complaint to CASE suddenly surfaced.