Point

How can I put this?

I just came back from my sister's prize ceremony and she won 4 awards. The Brother Patrick Loh Award for Literature, the Lawrence Tay Award for Economics, Academic Excellence Award and the most prestigious award, Ee Peng Liang Award. Big names huh? You should see the trophies. Its even bigger. The trophies transcend the names they are supposed to hold honour to. Well, at least, only my sister got a standing ovation. Yup, big sister over here (*waves*) stood up to clap out of the sea of people. Haha.. fun! I like to do such things so people will take more notice of my sister.

Met James there. He said Alex's work is brillant with her analysis having insightful penetrations to the heart of the prose/poetry. Must say I have no idea what he is talking about. Sociology major, Neo Li Xian Victoria Anne, has never taken any Literature and isn't planning too. Not with my mum egging me about how I must do well or rather HOW SHE WANTS ME TO DO WELL, how she wants me to be marketable and take modules that will make my CV sparkle... Well, I guess however marketable I want to be, goes against my entire being. Maybe it is because I am afraid to fail. But when I look into the mirror, I guess it is like whatever.

I fail whenever I wake up and think about how wonderful life is. I fail when I think that it is a free market when I go and get a job. I fail when I think that meritocracy ensures equality. I fail when I think that power does not corrupt. I fail when I start to worry about my CAP. I fail each day, at every moment of my life. I fail when I think along gender lines. I fail when I follow the ideologies that construct my entire experience. Ah the joy of failing. You can't succeed without failing. =)

Sometimes Sociology is an ego-defensive mechanism for me, makes me feel better when I do badly. Haha.. is it that surprising I am in USP? I think so too but if I am not in, someone's CAP won't be pushed up. I see this as a good deed. Hey, I will make a good Boy Scout! 'I promise to do my best... to serve other people...' Making others be the best they can be at the expense of yourself is a good deed! After all, isn't the community supposed to be before yourself? Talk about your value-system... Ask Permanent Sec Mr Yip who gave the speech for the CJC Presentation Ceremony. One must be able to have integrity, love for each other blah blah. But the funny thing about it was him talking about competition before the values system. Competition to do well and be the best, competition to stay alive and survive. I think through the history of evolution, no animal survived by giving into others. If there is, please tell me. History would have to be re-invented. So Mr Yip, please tell me how can you be competitive by cutting others' throats and yet be ethical and share? Please tell me how it can be reconciled? Or are you just sprouting age-old ideologies? Hearing your speech was hearing a PAP speech that can be obtained by reading the newspapers or watching tv. Is it hard to commit critical thinking and not try to tell us youngsters everything we know but not believe in?

Youngsters/ teenagers are deluded because whatever they see and hear from their surroundings clashes with what they really experience in reality. Tell that to any neighbourhood kid who speaks Chinese as a first language. Do you think they will readily believe in meritocracy with the state of their school, their lessons? Do you think everyone wants to study? Do you think whatever you teach is really the best? Whatever we study isn't really for our own good. We just make someone else richer, we make our Singapore economy grow and we think it is really for our own good. But face it. Is this really what we want to pursue? If we can live in an alternate world, would we study the same things? Or are we studying it in someone else's interests? We feel alienated from what we study because it is an alien power exerting control over us. We can't control what we want to study, we can't control how we want to study it, we can't control how much we want to study. It doesn't belong to us. We can't feel or see ourselves in our work but I guess 'that is just the way the cookie crumbles'. So since whatever we do does not belong to us, we feel that life is meaningless and hence we do deviant acts to find ourselves.

Long rant is my middle name. But today is because I disagreed strongly with whatever Mr Yip said. If I ever get to go back to my alma mater (which I don't think I will because of the horrendous memories I leave behind), I will sing a different song for the Speech. I will ask them: What the fuck are you studying for? (yes, fuck included). =) Life is warped but Marx and Weber would be turning in their graves at the state the world is turning out. I would like to start on gender but it would take forever.

I wish I could change the world. You know how people prayed for the fall of Communism in the 1950s to 70s? I'm praying for the fall of Capitalism. Haha... but as you know Marx says that religion is the opiate of the masses.

God, is there no way out?