Why Lambda Chi was meaningful and important to me

I'm recalling Jeremy Bell coming back from work one day frustrated that his workplace made him go through a lecture on 'building your personal brand'. If you find that not odd at all (the lecture, not his reaction), well idk I guess we won't connect very much. I find such a world where such topics are 'taught' to others as absurd to the extreme and dystopian even. Yet it is pervading across the so-called 'business world' as if business administration and marketing was objective science (and people will swear by it, which I cannot really understand), and now it is treated as such since places like 'investopedia' exist, placing finance on a strange commensurable pedestal as chemistry and history.

Anyway, I felt like despite having differences elsewhere, that kind of weird disgust and cynicism to the ironic consumerism society we live in is what made Lambda Chi's bond together (well mostly, except Armaan), and the variance was in acceptance of that reality and eventually landing a consulting job. I feel like my fault then is that I was self-deceived, I feel like everybody knew it was mostly a joke but I did not and tried to live by principle if I was already joking about it, and nobody is actually on my side and so here goes my mental health as my perspective of the world is torn down. Back to linked in and the sort of banal life we lead anyway.

Mental Health

Recalling a time when I had to support one of my men going through mental health problems while in the army. Back then, I think my understanding and empathy was extremely poor, all I could do was feel bad while being helpless.

Sleeping

I was thinking just now about how my blog is a place to express myself, and maybe it's because of the difficulty of sounding emotional out-loud, in-real life as a guy, or otherwise normal human being. I think it ruins the image of sounding stoic and in-control and not attention seeking and not needy.

I slept for 18 hours by accident and by design since I didn't set an alarm. I woke up normally yesterday and so I didn't think I would need to honestly, but I guess the jet-lag really didn't reset that quickly... so it's back to square one. I overheard my mother joking that I was useless, having heard I slept so much. My dad said it probably means I needed the sleep. I think it really shows their different approaches to life. The capitalist and the 'normal'. I guess now I'll start looking again. Another thought I had was that I slept 18 hours because it's a sign of depression? I don't think so though.

I feel like I've learnt to quickly the normative nature of words, without any experience. Like 'networking' - what is that supposed to mean? It sounds ridiculous, and a lot of people give me a lot of shit for it, but when I think about it, I can't grasp it conceptually, it sound estranged, foreign and scary. Is it fear then? Maybe. In my head I just see negative things, a room full of tired, fake, uninterested people. But that isn't true. Supposedly it 'happens all the time', but I think that is a lie. I don't know if it is possible to 'network' and do other things at the same time. It just sounds like a deception. This ricemedia article I'm reading doesn't help: https://www.ricemedia.co/culture-events-diary-forced-boss-visit-funan-mall/?fbclid=IwAR3dBkoEZqMyI7A5v2I1LxG_Vt7eCff-Z3jmvu7sas9j-Czj2yTl38J5Lcc. I think the worst emotional feeling in the world for me is embarrassment, which is extremely Chinese. I don't know how this came to be, but it is. I just read that LinkedIn is apparently one of the top 10 sites visited in Singapore. Jesus christ that's banal. Fyi Blogger is telling me to capitalize the word Christ lol. When people smile so cheesily in the camera, are they thinking of memes, or are they genuinely blissful? My brother saw my graduation photos and saw my half-smiles and said I looked like a monk. But to tell you the truth I didn't know if I was happy enough then, which was the real problem.

I wonder who are the 1 or 2 views that see my post, or are they just search algorithms parsing through my site? It's hard to know these days. I'll tell you something though, this ricemedia article really stings, because I was in the process of accepting I must become a 'liberal-leaning' type they describe, and it's displaying it in full glory. Mostly I feel caught in a contradiction. On the one hand I've decided to pursue an education in 'capitalism' but am not particularly seduced by that work space. I am told by my mom most people are lying all the time 'but what to do' as in this is the reality we live in. On the other hand I feel like I relate much more to the artist-type 'outsiders' of sort, although they lean-in to society in odd dysfunctional ways too, but I have no talent in that regard, even in photography which I've given up almost entirely. There are thousands of 'tips' on career-building on all these sites, and I feel uneasy, why are they helping, and I can already hear a retort from Christelle. I don't know, but I feel put off by smiling these days, for the same reason that Musée des beaux arts is a great poem.