Writing is easy

 "Writing is easy. All you got to do is cross out the wrong words." - Mark Twain

I started writing a short book a few months ago, and it has been really fun. Like, more addictive than playing video games, if you can believe it. It's probably not good, but it almost, doesn't matter? At least this time. I just wanted to have written. Perhaps the one good idea I will ever have, if it is even good. It's funny. It actually is a lot like the feeling of blogging. Like I'm saying something to the universe in the chance that someone will read it and find something. In this case, I hope they would be entertained. I wonder if there is some deep desire within me to be seen and heard, unconditionally. It feels very narcissistic, if I'm honest. But somehow, because I know it's probably going to be bad and nobody will read it, it becomes not narcissistic. I'm thankful that my older brother tried this too, I sometimes think he has a sense of freedom and agency that I lack at times. Or not even lack, just, self-conditioned, self-censored, like somehow my restraints protect me. All personalities, maladjustments, traumas, if you really want, learned behaviors, positive or negative, serve a purpose, as Dr. K says. I almost have to take how fun it is seriously, as I have begun to write even in transit or during mealtimes.

“The whole ‘What is me?’ thing, you know, how much of it is just training and repetition and am I just doing it to please my parents? But then, you know, I decided that actually, that’s all just a big f*cking cop out. Because if I can ask myself the question, then I can answer it for myself.” - John Stewart in Lanterns. I liked it!

STEM

 I had a conversation with Craig, Josh and Glenn, Xun Yi and Yan Zhou on separate occasions. Different ways of getting to a similar discussion about how SF puts on free, cool stuff for young adults and Singapore does not seem to. There are good reasons that explain why, but veering off, I also wondered about Singaporean expression of passion. Using STEM fields as an example, the most commonly cited reason why Singaporeans don't seem to express the same level of passion in it is purportedly that the "rat race" killed this passion at a young age. I can certainly agree with that, but wanted to go deeper than that too.

My brother used an example during one of his tech meetups - he said the most enthusiastic, question asking audience members tended to be foreign, while Singaporeans largely kept silent. They are, there though, right? The Singaporeans still turn up. I honestly believe, and most people would agree, Singaporeans are actually passionate for many things, but some of these are expressed (more often) and some are not (less often). On the surface, cynicism is king. We suck thumb, then complain, and anybody who doesn't is lucky, rich, old, or wayang.

Dr. K

Been watching (binging) his streams/VODs a bunch, the interviews with streamers mostly and decided to write down thoughts if I remembered them.

I like this stuff:
1. how to disarm and humanize your teammates in online games

2. the neuroscience behind technology, esp. dopamine and adenesine(?)

3. what is burnout?

4. understanding ADHD, the vata mind, and procrastination

5. that I need/want to hear this more

6. "western medicine focuses on conclusions on averages"

7. Awareness and experiencing the thoughts and emotions

8. for the first time in history, more people in some places might be dying from obesity than starvation

9. Relationship stream with Mrs. K

10. some try-able stuff like 

11. more soon!

Writing

I found this in draft mode still from May 2021, I'm just publishing it yolo style now without reading to check if it's fine. 

"Writing is easy. All you have to do is to cross out the wrong words." - Mark Twain

The quote I actually learned through Civ 6.

---

I've been meaning to write. In my so-far fairly stable period of thoughts and life, the contentment that pseudo-Buddhist philosophy has brought has been laid bare at times when I've felt provoked and quick to anger. I wrote down the topics which have done this. And I finally feel compelled to write.

I suggested Joseph try it to, though I don't know if he'll take it up. Maybe it is only for some people. He has had his own thoughts, and I think they are worth writing down for himself.

There are certain things that I'm afraid of, and they are unconventional. I feel the fear that maybe someone else from a less wealthy family may fear, and maybe it is a fear that is tied to the same philosophy. I think sometimes that maybe my father feared this too, and for the most part chose to ignore it. These are all I think, interrelated fears, but since I've listed them down on my phone separately I'll also write about them separately.

-- 

Fear 1: Thriftiness and Credit scores

All children eventually grow up to understand that their parents are flawed human beings as well.

I grew up taught by my mother to be cheapskate about many many things. In fact, I think I felt (note that in truth I don't even know if it mattered to her) like she was proud of me for spending the least amongst my brothers and living frugally. Till this day, variants of my spending habits translate comfortably to also being generally less wasteful and more eco-friendly. But the truth is I expend a lot of energy into things that probably do not translate, in real dollars, to as much savings as if I cared about "bigger" picture things like how I handle my personal finances or take advantage of deals. I am aware of my own stubbornness. And in fact in writing this I've come to realize what I've learned from my mother basically are all the things that also coincide with two virtues I value which are to live simply and to be at less wasteful, while passing up all the "auntie" street smart things like getting onto as many credit cards as she does, and opening up accounts in many places to get as many discounts and what not. She clearly does both, and for some reason I value one and disdain the other. Maybe these traits are a marriage of my mother's saving habits, and fathers' simple living. It's time I get on a credit card.

Fear 2: Immigration

I've also worded this to Christelle once. I think that I fear a lot of opportunities presented to me because I assume they are not for me, or because I'm unsure if I will lose something in translation. It may not be easy for someone to understand, especially because I speak great English, but there is a primeval fear associated with disassociating from your culture. It is maybe the same fear you might expect a first generation college student would experience, because the young person has to lean their way into the dark, without parental experience. That feeling can be generalized to immigrants that may not be able to rely upon an established community presence like mine. I feel neither here nor there, a common occurrence I'm aware, and fear I'm equipped neither here nor there with the intuition to navigate new situations. It is almost a curse that I manage such a natural American accent, because it arms others around me with expectations of me, outside their control. Yet it might also be my fear of being patronized that I know absolutely nothing, or weird stereotypes of foreigners I'm trying to avoid, that keeps me from seeking help with simple "I'm not from here" statements. It's time I wilt the pride.

Fear 3: Finance

The excuse I've given myself for a time being is... yet I also know there are some unresolved tensions between what I know to be "good for me" and what I value personally as powerful motivators.

Fear 4: Future

In Coach Carter, one of the basketball players recites a poem that it is not our inadequacy that we fear but the opposite, of our own capability. Though I don't recall exactly the lines and could be misinterpreting entirely (especially as it later goes on to talk about how we should let our own lights shine to inspire others to do so as well), that line could read something about fearing we will not achieve our full potential. It certainly scares me. At this point I'm infatuated with being perfectly mediocre (knowing fully that on average in society I am doing well), but knowing it is possible for me, given life circumstances, to achieve more. Of course, there are all the sort of speculation that one never truly knows, which is why I always aim to do "slightly above average". I know that if I buckle down and stress about it now, I can set my own path. I also know I can be happy in many circumstances and don't need to stress about trying too hard. But it has often left me at an impasse between trying hard and not trying too hard.

Fear 5: My family, culture, and Christelle

Recently I reacted negatively to Chris's enthusiastic offer of help to my elder brother. This would not be the first time I react strongly and badly to Chris's enthusiasm for some subject. It's about time I sat down to really think about what that's all about. On the surface, I can honestly say it is cynical distrust. There's no way around it and no point in being euphemistic. What are the root causes and are they rational? Can I change or compromise? I can't help but remember the "curse" my history teacher Mr. Khoo told the class he was bestowing, and the irony that I probably have not strongly questioned his wisdom which is to question things. It's a simple precept which is the opposite of the presumption of innocence, which is not to commit to believing until evidence is provided. But I know aside from that I  know most people base their suspicions on their culture and personal experience. It's simply intuition whether right or wrong, personally justified. So when Chris shares her personal family stories with me, I believe them in my head, but I have not accepted them in my heart. This is obviously extremely hurtful to anybody who is sharing a personal story only to be disbelieved. But in my heart, it's simply principle and again, culture and personal experience. I do not come from a family with such a fantastical background. My family were simply immigrants - sure, my grandparents were fleeing the cultural revolution in part, but so have many others - worked largely within the system, and are for the most part, ethnically Chinese. Chris, and here maybe comes some partly American interest in genealogy, or maybe it was just my parents who simply don't find it imperative to share, has English nobility in his ancestry. And not just - she also has indigenous ancestry. I have never met anyone with this kind of background - or else they have never shared - so the matter-of-fact way she talks about it makes it even more incredulous - does she even know how rare and uncommon this is? Or maybe it is not uncommon in the US (for example, some of the slave-owning founding fathers, who likely sexually assaulted their slaves, have large family trees over the generations), or maybe I am unaware of how uncommon it is? Another piece of personal background, perhaps even more contentious was about a mural and painting that her family owned, stolen out of war and with incredible injustice, claimed by someone else as theirs. Perhaps I should not be surprised - injustice like this is apparently well documented in the US, however incredible it may seem today, and still occurs, though maybe more blatantly in the past. But then my history lessons (with Mr. Khoo) kicked in, and it tells me that I should not trust sources that could be biased.

An aside - there is another area in which I am to relax what I try to apply as standard skepticism across the board that I think I have yet to truly grasp intuitively, which is that we should always trust sexual assault victims. At first this was hard (because why should we believe someone without knowing the full story or evidence?) but in actuality the bias is against them, and so on the flipside this made it easier to accept this tenet (because the fact that they are claiming this, when there is bias against them not to do so societally, makes it more likely it is true).

So is it the same case here? I am not sure. Maybe from experience, Chris has never found it difficult to get people to believe her, or maybe it's the opposite and it's because she trusts me - making my skepticism more disgraceful. The fundamental problem is that it conflicts with one of my values - which is to treat everyone equally, even my SO. This means if a stranger or acquaintance were to tell me the same thing - I would not immediately believe them either. Yet I think she expects me to - because I'm her boyfriend? Or because she thinks it's normal for people to trust immediately? What is an average level of skepticism in America? Is it different from Singaporeans?

Here comes the more irrational parts. Part of my distrust comes from behavior I tend to associate with people who should be distrusted - but are they really correlated? For example, Chris likes to talk about her dreams. That's fine - but sometimes I get a sense that she believes they have some greater meaning (the latest science gives a pretty clear no) - or is it that she just finds them fascinating? Maybe it is me that just finds them not fascinating because they are so random and ultimately meaningless? To be fair, Chris finds many things meaningful where I do not (and vice versa sometimes), and I feel like I am disappointing or a mood-killer when I do not share the same enthusiasm. In fact it is a skill I think I should learn - which is to find joy and fascination in many many more things - which seems to come naturally to her. My mind on the other hand has been acclimatized to optimize and remove distractions - and things that she finds interesting, I sometimes find distracting from bigger picture things. So comes my own cognitive dissonance - I respect and admire valuing simply things, and am beginning to disdain "big picture" type people - yet I don't do it myself! Fuck me. Another thing I'm uncertain on is Chris's generally disorganization in some areas, and complete organization in others. I think some article said this was a sign of very smart people - hmm. Chris "gives me the impression" of someone who believes everything on the internet - but this is certainly and patently untrue. In fact she has probably whipped my own intellectual laziness quite a bit in terms of fact checking. One area in which I find difficulty is that she likes talking about news that are essentially still rumors - and she knows this, so why talk about it? - is what I find hard to understand. Maybe it's because I have given up myself - I don't like "following" news until they are certain, I think it's clickbait.

So back to the impetus for this section of the post - my reaction to her wanting to help my brother. This subject might be one of the grayer ones too. It's about culture. Essentially Chris sometimes gives me the impression that she doesn't understand, doesn't get, or doesn't care that I'm foreign - and this is not a bad thing, generally speaking! For one, I am familiar enough with American culture and perform my own automatic-translations (literally, in the case of Fahrenheit to Celsius). 

One common stereotyping of Americans that Europeans and Asians share afaik is that Americans often fail to see how "American" they are, or that they presume certain commonalities across cultures that are simply false. This can be very irritating to foreigners, in foreign places, though obviously that's not unreasonable in the US aside from stressing immigrants out sometimes. To be fair, for Americans it might be both easy and difficult to understand or perceive these differences. Then comes a problem that is probably universal - people mistake what are individual characteristics as cultural phenomenon. Surely I am guilty of this. For one, I've come to the realization, too late at times, that when I talk to my elder brother, the discussion we have or jokes we make kind of exists in its own culture and understanding that does not translate, at least for my brother, to his other interactions. I guess I just assumed I was always talking to the same and true person - I was, but that wasn't the whole picture. Unlike me (or perhaps just like me), he keeps his mannerisms separate. Why is this relevant? Because we often make fun of Americans or other non-Singaporean places for various reasons. And so when Chris offered to talk to him directly, I was afraid some of her mannerisms would not be taken or understood well by my brother, who has not had the same experience as me in the US. But on introspection I realize this is not true, and that he may very well be keeping the jokes between us or perhaps he healthily chooses to keep an open mind anyway even if he has some underlying prejudices.

Wet

I had a good cry after so long. What broke me was re-watching a video of the final moments of Jurassic Bark and the true story of which it was based on, Hachiko. I cried not just for that but for all the pent up anxiousness and stress I've had for the past few weeks and the reminder that that story brought up. Which is that there is great sadness and suffering in the world that happen in isolation, and yet like Hachiko, people too go on. Maybe good news will come soon. Till then I want to cry in empathy with everyone else.

Dry

Eyes are pretty dried out. I felt the need to blog to get things off my chest (read: rant). I feel extremely lost over issues and feel guilty about it in a kind of cringey white guilt way. I think I have to, in an even more cringey way, resort to stepping away from whatsapp and the like. I'm very tired and just want to be with Christelle. I want my visa issues to be resolved, I want to make sure my apartment is OK, I want to get back to being motivated about learning and my job. I want my family to be happy and my younger brother to trust his instincts and learn to try and fail or disappoint and be his own success. I want people whom I've wronged to know I sincerely tried but apologize nonetheless. I'm not sure what spaces I can be my authentic self except here, sort of.

Here are some 'cultural issues' as Carlin might have put it:
-Our parents are proud their kids go to Harvard, OxBridge etc but then when they come back slightly ostracized because of an accent that for most people they probably have little control over, any ideas they might have are dismissed as Western liberal nonsense, unless of course it follows the dominant discourse that touts pragmatism and free markets
-We are scared of 'AOC-type politics' and warn of the dangers of liberal extremism, marxism, etc; again we call these 'sjw politics', or Westernized thinking, out of touch etc, but then we inherit colonial practices and ideas, neo-liberal economics, all products of the 'West' and are surprised if it brings along any of the consequences and fair criticisms of those ideas that also originate in the West
-We idolize and re-post LKY giving fiery speeches in cheem or poetic, usually Oxbridge British English 'this is not a game of cards!
-We are fine with comparing down 'at least we are not the US', but 'we are in a different situation' when trying to compare up ('scandinavian standard of living')
-We keep saying 'Singapore is small, we must be open to survive', but pick and choose what we are open to - rich tax avoiding foreigners and migrant workers that have low socio-economic and political power, but no 'Western ideas', sjw language, no refugees
-Singapore is actually beholden to shareholders - there are real threats that voting away from the centre-right PAP will cause investor confidence to fall, it's a reality that we seem powerless to or too cowardly to try and confront and change

I have more perhaps, but I've also calmed down for the most part... we just need to talk more.

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.

Thinking some more

I feel emotionally very stressed and lost whenever I think of job hunting, or trying to learn something 'professionally-related'. It's like I get a sick feeling in my heart and stomach and I'm not sure why; maybe in my head I've just been building up so much disdain and vitriol that now that I must confront it like an adult, I've only shot myself in the foot by literally triggering a bad reaction every time I try to deal with it. I feel like I am being pounded by contradictory advice, values, and I have so much fear that I cannot be myself or that I will get so good at imitation as I always do that one day everything will explode once more when shit hits the fan. I feel like I have so much regret but can only move forward, and only now witnessing the proverbial Jenga tower collapse in slow motion as I am left behind by everyone in the rat race and am only not sleeping on the streets because I can draw upon immense privilege, i.e. I am making my parents suffer for my arrogance, childishness, stupidity, laziness, etc. and have no confidence in anything that I do at the same time that I judge others less clever and yet employed - again the arrogance - but then this cannot be and it must be that I am just blind, unaware, unable to build up any form of the 'street-smartness' that was my passion and example to follow. I am constantly afraid to ask for advice as it makes me look dumber and dumber, and as I told Steele I hate feeling like I am dumb, patronized and spoon-fed like a damn amateur. I feel so fucking stupid, and a failure of a Singaporean compared to my peers because I should have, could have given up my ideals earlier and thought long-term. Now I might work in Singapore and essentially lose the only real connections and relationships that I really value at this point, for all my years of self-perceived social ineptness, because I was a fool. It's good to write this in words at least. But unfortunately for new algorithms they might be read, which I why I like being honest, so nothing can be held against me ever. I feel like I've been indoctrinated, turned against society by my education and made a fool for it, because I cannot seem to hold down reading any business news without cringing, when I know that the world is grey and made up of people who are just trying to do their best, as I saw in the museum today. I have squandered what was given to me instead in some lame rejection of position, as Chris pointed out, and am now the hapless and useless son that I despised in my mind. So it's self-hate really. I don't want to hear any comfort because I'm the recipient this time, and nobody's convinced me otherwise yet. I have to focus.

How easy was it for me back when I still had mainstream hobbies and interests, and now everything seems so listless and hopeless. It's as if I've discovered myself and discovered nothing and no growth except realization of self-deception as I talk to the internet. I've thought about suicide some more but it's too selfish and too pathetic so I must ride it out. I have to try and hope for the best and meet mediocre standards and be prepared for jealousy and ridicule as I go below people's expectations. The thought of it only makes me want to work triply hard for any job I get. I must learn to discipline my mind and treat things as important and regain my confidence that things will work out, that the child in the basement will be uplifted if you participated, that this is MLK's struggle for integration and that revolution is a red herring. I must learn to remember that people opening the window, eating, walking dully along smiling while others suffer is a normalcy of reality, and that they truly mean no harm or perhaps are ignorant in self-protection. That you can help with a smile, though that still feels wrong to me, because only the people supposedly helping have that choice to carry on, smile and forget about everyday woes. I feel angry on behalf of people I do not know, that being a symptom of my own privilege still, which leads to further frustration that there can be so much unfairness but as long as it breaches no thresholds it is tolerated regardless.

:thinking:

I think I should start by admitting that I've had the beginnings of what people would consider suicidal thoughts. I know that suicide ideation requires planning of method, time, place, etc. so I should not kid myself in thinking I've gone that far, but I have been thinking about it much more than usual.

It's pretty pathetic though, which is why I chose to write it on my blog which I haven't posted in a while. The ironic thing is I think a lot of it is stress from job hunting but this absolutely does only harm in a job hunt by putting your mental health on the internet. I say stress from job hunting when in fact everything is my own fault and I have not really done much about it because of a mental block. I supposedly pride myself on being adaptable but can't seem to manage something that supposedly everyone does. I remember a lot of things in different orders that I wanted to include in this post. One of them was just thinking about a friend whom I visited many times in the hospital when he was checked in for mental health. That friend told me the doctors were not helping, but the sheer helplessness and hatred of the situation he was in (having his movement controlled, meds, etc.) made him absolutely want to never go back and motivated him to try and get better. That's just honestly, very tragic... I don't know, perhaps we are being selfish by being depressed, and that logic of the system only seems to confirm this. A shame that most things are a lie these days and for all days. I should read Kurt Vonnegut after Infinite Jest.

The other thing I wanted to include was this poem, and perhaps 2, both of which I was crying to when they were spoken by Professor Natasha Trethewey  during Weinberg's convocation. I took this from Emory's website:

Musee des Beaux Arts
W. H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

It takes up a good chunk of the text, so I'm not going to write the other way here. I told a few brothers this, but the true banality of the poem manifested itself in the setting of its delivery - while I listened intently in awe at how ... correct... the poem was, my two neighbouring graduates were looking at their phones, maybe listening, maybe not, maybe texting about how someone was crying next to them, or how depressing the speaker was, and how they didn't need to hear it, because ironically, her tragic life, was not an important failure to them either. But it certainly helped me to feel, and that's how I know I can carry on, or how I know I must learn to praise the mutilated world.

Soon I will have to leave my blog as is and write other things.

The poem goes even further; it reminds me of times when I felt that the suffering of others was not my own, and I had somewhere to get to and I sailed calmly on. Right now it frightens me how little I can do for others, how little attention the homeless man sleeping on a pile of soft garbage must get, and yet he carries on because he must. And yet I am upset over my own privileged life because I am upset that he does not get that same opportunity, and I believe the system will only benefit me if I play it. But this is not true, according to everyone around me, and yet this is not what my classes have taught me, but surely this is what all the fancy-clothed people around me must believe, as they stroll past Icarus in the dumpster. How curious that it follows the opposite pattern as another story I've been thinking of lately, the Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, which if you have not read... well you should and if you've forgetten its premise, you could catch up with this well-written article.

My mind strays then to the Little Match Girl, another story about poverty... But what is this abstract poverty I'm thinking of? Am I not just romanticizing the poor and exploited? That is when I think of Brave New World, about a happy socially-stratified country which somehow still makes absolutely no sense. Because maybe the book was about how happiness is meaningless without freedom, yet today the latter is easily traded, and you would be childish to go against the meta. OK, I think I've cried enough for now.

Why

I have not been able to concentrate for the past hour since Igor lambasted me for lambasting Nico. The truth is that I take him very seriously, and I took the two elections that I lost very seriously. The truth is, it hurts very much to have had such a bad quarter and not be able to overcome those challenges to prepare for my speeches. The truth is, it was very difficult juggling everything, bed bugs inclusive, and living so far off campus, and I am extremely exhausted and frustrated. And I feel even more frustrated because I believe I have done everything I am supposed to do for the fraternity while seeing other people seemingly not do the same things. I'm not sure what's going on in their lives, but I get the feeling I am handling a lot more than other people and still managing to contribute.

I think what upsets me is as Steele puts it, I worship my independence, and I guess I also worship some sense of self-awareness and moral authority that I detest having to hold on to and it's rearing its ugly head at last - I have always tried to convince myself that I am no better than anyone else but I have not actually been successful, and so in my arrogance I actually believe a lot of people 'don't get it' but don't see it, and I am 'done' playing my part in trying to convince them or to enact slow change. And my time is up, because it also hurts truly, seeing all my friends get elected (and they are all very qualified to do so), while I am left to freeload and my efforts (and I really feel like I staked a few eggs into this basket) but fell short of overcoming the fact that I was not here fall. And that is why I feel so fucking angry, that I was penalized for some understandable, structural region.

I've dangled the thought of deactivating but then my housing would be hopeless. So I am left as someone whom I believe tried my very best to contribute but will never have anything to show for it... just freeloading in the house. And it's sad that while I don't think that is very important in a sense, I built it up to really mean something to me that I could be an international student and juggle all these things and study abroad and still get a leadership role of some sort, and it means something to society who will see that I joined a fraternity but never took on anything significant. I'm toying now with the idea that I feel upset also because I 'wasted' so much time trying to run for things, and I guess told to many people that I did, and so I am ashamed I am this mediocre, ultimately.

And I consider myself, a loser for it. I am the jack of all trades, but truly master of none.

Musekeweya

Escapist stories. This is what I told Hannah and Cindi on the way to the airport, leaving Kigali, and Rwanda for probably a long while. I also told them this might be the most cheesy-sentimental I’ve felt, probably ever, and probably the most called for. Anyway, a movie marathon is what it is, the escapist stories I mean. La La Land is playing right now, providing a really bittersweet melancholic melody, in piano-heavy jazz. I’m also trying to beat jet lag as quickly as possible (and also, procrastinating on writing all the feelings I have about the program I’ve finished. Oh! Intense fighting started, good dialogue.

I felt like escapism resets the perspective, it helps you skip the sadness toward the gladness that you’ve participated, ‘done the thing’, it reminds you of the greater, yet unfamiliar (to you) world out there.

It’s been close to a week now. An overdue time to reflect after some initial reunion ecstasies. I’ve had flashbacks in fits and starts a few times now, and I’ve been taking every appropriate opportunity to share, as planned. So far, it was Conor that I shared the most with, but more abstract politics, whereas I don’t know where to begin with my host family and friends and just wholesome everyday life. And yes, people aren’t thatttt interested really, outside of some big picture summaries, as expected. I don't hold any grudges against that though, i'ts something understandable and something I probably would have done myself. Plus, people are often I think more interested in your experience rather than the information I want to share, because while the former is personally important and I guess more accessible to others, what I really wish is for people to know more about Rwanda, and to give it a shot. I find myself, I think, thinking about Rwanda sometimes a bit too much like Singapore when it is not.

It's been a few days since I uploaded my photos of Rwanda, in some ways kind of rushed and forced, because I really didn't know what to say. I didn't really think I had the patience to deal with people like Nico, who while jokingly didn't even know 'where in Africa' I went, in some ways also speaks to a larger problem, because I'm sure he would have remembered if I had mentioned going to South Korea.

As with all posts that take longer than a week to write, it's probably time to let it go to rest. I've had really not much respite and time to reflect over my time in Rwanda, sitting here so far away... on no coffee day no less. But I suspect that Rwanda will be in my memories for a blog post years to come, as did JLOC, or London before it. Musekeweya means New Dawn, something that Rwanda has embraced and I must learn.

Who's not here

I think about this a lot. About ‘who’s not here’. And maybe I am overthinking it. But I’ve always found it unequal that loud people don’t suffer from quiet people, only the reverse. And in abstract, this is an extrovert’s world, understandably so. I find it odd that quiet people try to sleep, but don’t really, because of loud people in the next room. I don’t know if this is only because I’ve tried to sleep, without success while loud people were in the next room, while my mom was shouting at my younger brother, or while people partied in the room over. I’ve thought about what is fair - that quiet people are naturally quiet, but also loud people are naturally loud, as I am. Probably, it is just a tragedy of contact, an impasse of genetics and environment. And yet Rhiannon walking out of her room, annoyed at Kathryn’s phone ringing all the time, is indicative of the fact that yes, people do ‘tank’, they ‘tahan’, they take it in their stride for other people’s convenience. And that is in a way a choice too. But it is, a tad unfair. Yet it is also true people aren’t born to cater to anyone’s needs, so maybe this consideration was taken into account when making that choice - I want to sleep early, but I understand if others don’t and this is also their house. And I think this is about the number and normality - who is being the odd one in need of accommodation? It is the introverts, mostly, who cater.

Rights and Charity

What is white saviour-ism? This was the discussion I had with two friends on the program at the bus stop and bus on the way home. None of us had a proper answer, although I thought about it a little more on the way home, which is why I wanted to type out my thoughts on the subject. Although I still have no formal conclusions on it (or any other social concept really), I thought things I had not thought of before. One is the disconnect between calling things like education and clean water ‘rights’ when the donor funding for it is called ‘charity’. This I feel, is one of the sources of white saviour-ism (of which I am also guilty of). For me, there is no ‘charity’ when it involves money flowing from white, western countries, to formerly colonized states. It’s returning money and resources and culture and dignity, all of which were siphoned away by force. A force that was in a sense, arbitrarily given and bestowed by great thinkers in the right places with flooded coal mines. In other words, in our contemporary sense, ‘illegitimate’. Of course, you can disagree on that front, and I think yes, society in general does somehow give all these concepts of ‘social justice’ weight and relevance. Without a collective agreement on what is right and wrong, who is to say what is right or wrong?

Back to it, if I were to join an NGO working to ‘rebuild’ or ‘uplift’ communities ravaged by poverty, disease, mismanagement and going further back, colonialism, I must believe myself to be the shameful one. The shameful one because I grew up easy and because we have to reverse/restore the power dynamic between the foreigner and local in such places. We must be convicted to our contemporary sense of social justice of restoring a wrong, and not ‘I do this because it is the right thing to do’ - somehow conveniently forgetting or ignoring ‘how we got here in the first place.’ Obviously, so many factors play into the ‘global’ problems of today, including by ‘locals themselves’. But many, or a significant amount that has not been corrected, can be traced to colonialism. What are we hoping for in the end? A restoration of positive liberty - the ability for an individual to, through his or her own agency, change his socio-economic position in life. It doesn’t matter if there are laws protecting free speech if psychologically or financially, communities are undermined in using those rights.

It’s not charity, it’s returning what we (or our ancestors/nations/peoples) stole - what our birth-right lottery dispositions give us are all built in some way on that exploitation and have nothing to do with the people today, except by its effects. Although we cannot (and should not) correct inequality in general, I feel that we must restore the basic rights that people would have if not for war, genocide and unchecked, mercantilist exploitation. These are all fancy and lofty words and ideals of course, but I think we must hold them in mind when doing so-called ‘charity’, so that we never misplace our sense of righteousness. It’s not just about ‘being born lucky, with all these opportunities given to me’, it’s about recognizing that those opportunities came at a cost - to others, probably. And if we are not ready to deal with that as individuals - because after all, even people born with privilege didn’t technically choose to be born with it - then so be it, but we should acknowledge that they (the opportunities we were granted) are there for arbitrary historical reasons, and that not correcting them even though we know this, is kind of selfish. Perhaps even, ‘donors’ should be called ‘people who are returning resources that would not have been theirs if not for racism mixed with cannon fire and chattel slavery’. [I wrote this a while back and can’t remember if I had more to say or was just rambling, either way wanted to get this on before I forget]

Move along

[As in a day ago] Just had a mini-scare with my computer as I was going to type out this post - windows explorer (i.e. basic windows 32-bit stuff) crashed and upon restarting the computer couldn’t find the boot drive. I thought it could either be overheating, hardware-dislodge, a virus, or me just straight up killing the program. It turns out it was the latter, and there was a fail-safe feature where win32 restarts itself after a while (as does many important computer functions, thankfully) Still, did not stop me from letting Sunday know immediately and make an appointment with Kathryn to go to Mumujyi. I should try and find a laptop case.

A Rwandan was singing Let It Be (Beatles) on TV to an audience of what looked like students in some kind of (religious) forum? And so I’m listening to it now too. I told my host-dad my real dad really liked this song, and I remembered it was made after MLK was shot? But then I could totally be wrong and I had no internet to lawyer myself. Regardless, it’s a beautiful song. I just thought it sentimental hearing it on a Friday evening in a place I did not expect.

I just went through my system’s event log because Sunday texted me to say if I couldn’t fix it I should let him know so I was curious to see if the system could tell me when it revived it’s on boot drive. Couldn’t exactly find it, but whatever, it’s running, and I’ve backed my boot onto my hard-disk.

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Just went through my system event log again to see what happened to my trackpad not working. Discovered that the computer shut down around 4pm while I was gone and the kids were using it. I asked them about it and they were being furtive while mumbling about the computer crashing so I suspect they just let it overheat/did not check to see if the power was working - both resulting in a crash and damaging my computer more. I am actually so annoyed but this was a risk I took with the computer and plainly they had no idea what they were doing so what am I to do really.

In fact I was trying to write about my 4-hour bizarre adventure on no-coffee day. It starts off with my host father asking me out of the blue if I was free to accompany him to visit an uncle. I was technically free (but not for 4 hours I should think) and tried to ask him if we would be back in time to take a photo before the sun set and he gave me an affirmative reply after I asked him several times. Typically, he didn’t actually understand what I was saying and I was to return well after sunset. Again, kind of knew it would happen but also didn’t want to be a dick with my fast-paced lifestyle. We set-off and first thing he tells me to do is to take an SIT-forbidden mode of transport (moto), classic start to adventures of course. We then end up in a church session, sit down in the crowd for about 5 minutes, only for him to take a call and take me out of the church? What was the point you ask? No idea, something about the uncle wanting to meet there so let’s just casually sit in on church. We then get into his (admittedly expensive-looking, but I didn’t pay attention at the time) car and wade out of a packed to the brim carpark (as in, church-goers straight up parking in the lane) only to literally just cross the street to park at a pub and wait for my host dad’s uncle’s technician who apparently was going to fix his lights. Why didn’t we just let his car sit in the church carpark? Not really sure, but I guess it made going out later faster. We wait about 40 minutes just drinking beers (while his uncle was noticeably drinking wine). His light-fixing ‘technician’ arrives, and then we drive off to Bugesera, which was a familiar name to me and, in typical no-coffee day ashion, I realized it was outside Kigali, so a long drive we go! I of course, was still under the impression that we were just going to the uncle’s house and giving the guy a lift to fix his lights.'

I fall asleep from the beer and smooth ride out of time while trying to stay awake, so kind of hazily if you know what I mean. We near the place and drive through typical houses one finds in the country-side and then enter the gates into a really nice looking house (i.e. much more expensive than its surroundings). I step inside to realize by ‘light fixing’ my dad actually meant ‘setting-up the light fixtures’ because this house was brand new and under furbishing and looked like one of those ‘model showroom apartments’ with contractors about fixing up the lights and finishing touches. In fact, as we stepped out, it dawned on me that the gated plot of land had 3 (and a half, for the workers) houses and a sizeable garden/porch. My host father, seeing my expression goes ‘he is a rich man’. No kidding. ‘He is the owner of the petrol station.’ Wait, just the one? ‘The one outside our house…not Engen, SP’. Holy crap, this guy literally owns the Rwandan gas station company and this is probably his very expensive retirement home.

So as it turns out, my host family has low-key (very) rich relatives (well, I guess I only saw one). It was then, sitting on the steps to the house and watching the sun slowly set over my plans to take a photo of my host family, that I felt a very strange sense of ‘epilogue’, the same kind you see in books, movies, video games, any story really. It was, after all, the last Sunday I would be staying with my host family, and I was, admittedly, killing the 2 and a half hour on those steps contemplating melodramatically and thinking about this post. I saw traces of that alpine glow on the hills and farmlands just outside Kigali as the breeze gently blew and the soft chatter of arguing over lights went on in the background. It was cinematic, it was sombre, it was a really epilogue feeling. What you have to go through before it ends, so that your longing turns to gladness that it happened. I thought of the many times I had the same feeling, somewhat in this order: when Neo and Trinity fly over the clouds in The Matrix, when Samurai Jack returns to the past, loses Ashi, but finds the ladybug and hope, sitting with Chris in the large playground in downtown Chicago, the epilogue of Witcher 1, Odysseus nearing the end of his journey (well, odyssey) staying on that perfect life island for many years. All this time too, I was thinking about how I used to imagine myself being some random olive farmer on the hills of Greece, cut off from the world but serene and happy. But I couldn’t do it then and I couldn’t do it now, I’m too restless, and there are things to be done still. It’s exactly what it is with epilogues too - the credits roll, but the characters always move on, they always do something after glimpsing the sun (as in the Matrix), the things that need to be done to keep building a ‘better future’. Some kind of obligation keeps them tethered, but that image of ‘heaven’, of some ‘lovely retirement home in the countryside’ - as this rich guy’s house was - keeps them working till that goal, maybe for their children or people. In fact this bizarre adventure even felt a little religious, as if falling asleep hazily on that car ride was like entering into a dream, and this was a glimpse of a peaceful old life that I would never obtain, at least not now. It was a glimpse of what ‘heaven’(?) looks like but I feel too obligated on earth (i.e. thinking about all the work I should be doing instead of watching the sunset for 2 and a half hours in the country side). The fact that the house wasn’t finished too, in fact added to that perfect epilogue feeling, where people are still building their dream, but there is peace after a conflict - Rwanda’s story itself.

I don’t know if the rest of the journey needs to be said, nor whether this absurdly long narrative/melodrama was necessary. But it was said, and it seems my study abroad, despite being a month from finishing, is reaching its epilogue chapter after a jam-packed, heavy course on Genocide history. Pretty tired trying to speak French and dispelling myths about Asia/Singapore too.

Started this draft like 2 weeks ago

Sieving through pictures of Singapore to show my host family was perhaps the most powerful feeling I got to date since leaving my home … a deep and mysterious melancholy so indescribable (not in magnitude, just the fact that I can’t describe it) they must have invented the word ‘nostalgia’ and missing home just for it. To me, even though my family isn’t tight-knit and close, it is still special and maybe it’s the Chinese culture still in me, but I owe a great debt and will always try and be there for my parents when they are old. I say that, not knowing what kind of scenario that may be tested; after all, I am abroad while my dad is at home recovering from cancer.

Thinking about ‘why now’, and maybe it’s knowing that my friends and family back home are living their lives out and sharing and creating memories without me, and that the longer I’m away, the more I fade into their memories…except there’s Whatsapp and all is fine and dandy to a degree/till I get a degree haha geddit? I also miss Chris a lot (duh), I think mostly when I read her blog or feel cuddly. Rwandans are a warm bunch though and hugs are often and soon. My host mother is very sweet and has a hearty laugh whenever I imitate my host sister.

We did a 'processing session' last Friday; it's like a 'do whatever you want summer camp style' time allocated at the end of each week for students to lead some activity, be it etching out tensions (like last week) or building human pyramids. Last week we did a 'toilet paper pass' where we just picked a person in the group to say nice things about in a circle and passed them the roll to pass on to another person. Jack K passed me the roll and talked about how his support group back home was his fraternity, which happens to be Lambda Chi, how coincidental and wholesome is that? I'm so glad he's got great character and setting a good example for a historically problematic institution.

Peux ce que veux, allons-y

‘Rwanda is the Singapore of Africa, small and smart’ -Arsenal shirt wearing neighbour

‘Singapore is a small country, but a big idea’ - ex-Minister of Foreign Affairs George Yeo

I feel like I will not be able to really write out everything I’ve seen or heard that interests me, or that I won’t have the patience to outside of point form. And yet I feel so saturated with cool stories and observations it would be a terrible waste outside of my notebook ‘quickies’. I just hope my subconscious keeps up all this time. I am generally, I think, not ‘surprised’ by much, which makes me quite stoic/stone-faced to many. It was more a surprise to my host family for example, that I have washed my own clothes by hand before in my life, rather than me being nervous or surprised at having to do it here. It is not that I know everything already, but many things I know I don’t really know and so can’t really assume much and so come here and see, which excites and intrigues me, but doesn’t ‘surprise’ me or ‘break stereotypes’. It does help to confirm/unconfirm ‘commonly-held’ stereotypes that I know and gives me something to tell people who do hold them. I am not perfect of course, but it does mean I don’t know ‘where to begin’ outside of listing everything I’ve heard and seen and felt and smelled chronologically. I guess I’ve chosen, like always, to talk in general, in abstract, in weird jumbled blog-bytes.

^Wrote all of the above a day or two ago and have not just started my genocide classes here in Kigali, beginning with a movie called 'Ghosts of Rwanda', focusing a lot on the US perspective (it was made by PBS). I consider myself quite a stoic person who has loosened in outlook because I think it is more humane; the one part that did move me to tears was seeing Captain Mbaye's death in the movie. There can certainly be no heroes in a genocide, but he might have been the closest.

Practicing language is a good thing, because it is hard and it forces you at first. Alors je vais écrire un peu en français et peut-être en kinyarwanda. C'est la raison je n'ai pas publié ce poste plus tôt. J'ai décidé à essayer de faire la conversation avec le gens ici. C'est ce que je dirai: Muraho! Amakuru? Nanjye, ni meza. Nturuka he? Nturuka muri Singapour. Ndi umuyeshuri. Wowe se? Ukora iki?

C'est tout pour maintenant.

Her

Either I'm just more free to be extra sensitive when I'm watching films alone, or I'm watching 'these' kinds of movies precisely only when I'm alone, probably both. They're kind of like novels in a way, where the only one escaping is me. In the space.

I watched both Blade Runner and Her, and the former is really good, and smart, but I think a lot of people know that, plus obviously both from recency and because the it's sappy and about relationships, I'm talking about the latter. (Just like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Nick and Nora's infinite playlist). 

But what am I supposed to write about? That I identify with the main character even though he has done some inexcusable creepy things? Am I supposed to pity the patriarchy now? It's sad of course, and the show's (as in, his ex's comments) got a point with him, and I took it too. People obviously hate drama, but if you ain't going to take it, you're probably the selfish one. Because truth be told I'm also sensitive to trivial (to other people) things, but in my self-deceiving self-deception philosophy, I think that holding steadfast to some ideals will help you overcome it. And it probably does to some degree, but not completely. I'm writing so... coherently, and logically... as usual. And trust me I know, I'm sensitive to how... weird that can sound sometimes. Something something edgy teen who's read Nietzche. 

Also true, if I really weren't considering all the practical things like jobs, and future, I might just as well be dating or something (ha! like you could find someone like you), it really does suck.

Her knows that to some degree, what's too good to be true is probably not going to last...
I just took a side-step to read YY's blog. Always liked the simplicity and writing style... I try to do it that way too. It's nice to really read the thoughts of someone who... thinks, in a free-flow, unmasked way? In some respects over here, I've only ever heard it from people I'm genuinely close to or are drunk, which is a bit sad but understandable. In a sense that I think people are afraid of saying what they say because they are afraid they will leave the wrong impression/be judged... and they are and will be, actually. Obviously I feel it to some degree, but I also feel... free, because 'fuck it' basically. But it's been tough... outside of Karen maybe and Dominic, that I feel like people are really... considering their position. What I mean is that I often feel like people are one way or the other in terms of 'social groups', and political views and what not. There's so little... empathy and I guess, this curiosity and drive for inclusion that I've always felt... even though this has frequently just clashed with an instinct of cold toughness (overcompensating? something something toxic masculinity?).

Sigh. Maybe I'll go drop by Drenga.

Choosing

Told myself I'd be involved with mixers and stuff but quite frankly caught the Jake in a sense that I'm not that interested.

I've had a lot to think about, and I feel like I'm already in post exam phase halfway into the quarter. C'est la vie, ou peut être, c'est l'hiver.

Unfortunately, I think I am a little tired after all and won't write at length. Realism is how I cope but not what I ultimately want. It's hard to accept this pilgrimage status.

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I penned that a while ago, but today is a different story. A turn for the worse, unfortunately.

Surprise surprise, another 'frat' guy speaking about recent events. To be clear, I'm speaking as an individual here. I do not generally like to make too many public reactionary political comments (for reasons not relating to apathy), and especially for an issue like this, where I completely understand anybody who might feel my comments disingenuous or tokenist in nature. (And on the opposite end, making a big deal out of nothing) But honestly, I feel pretty strongly about it. And by strongly, I mean extremely disgusted, and extremely frustrated. I'm talking to fellow guys here. (and yes I acknowledge guys get raped too) Here goes the (calm-ish), admittedly preachy, rant.
First of all, while I acknowledge these are still 'allegations', it matters very little to my intention - whether they are found guilty or not, I'm going to use this unfortunately-realistic scenario as a good time to say something.
Actually, that's my second point. I believe the survivors, and I admire and respect their bravery. A lot of people question this assumption, alluding to 'due process of law, presumption of innocence'. It's unreal how frustrating this is, because while I respect it in principle, this is just not something tenable in practice. Many of these cases is one person's word against another. You know who wins then? The privileged guy with more money, contacts, and 'reputation at stake'. I hear people say 'this will open the gates of false rape accusations'. What person would go through all the legal and public trouble, on a lie? Why are we presuming the guy's innocence but imagining the girl to be some 'nasty woman'? What about her innocence? It is already not easy to relive trauma in court, let's not dissuade testimony on what are a minority of guys repeatedly violating HUMAN rights.
Another thing. Why the hell do we have a fraternity (and national HQ) on campus whose nickname at other schools is literally Sexual Assault Expected?! Actually, don't tell me, I know why, and I disagree. Yes, not all guys are bad. Heck, not all the brothers there are bad. But when this issue literally earns you a nickname, and there's been no institutional/cultural/leadership change (you can't just keep excusing yourself that 'oh this happened at another school we're fine', when you are supposed to be the national example/leadership), one has to seriously question their sincerity. Also, do not give these guys a space on campus when other less privileged groups don't.
That's my third point: it's a culture problem. If this was just a guy stealing property and UNLESS the frat was known to tell it's members 'taking people's property is fine, it's obvious the owner was careless', people will more likely believe it was an eccentric individual. But this isn't. We KNOW 'locker room talk' exists, because I've heard it, and all of us heard Mr. '10 minutes of action'. These are guys who treated women LIKE property, probably in part because they've heard brothers imply that they are, and that 'it's fine because she wants it, playing hard to get', or whatever nonsense.
And my last point. To my fellow brothers, to other guys, to myself, don't forget to always say something, and do something. Some people have given me dirty looks today, and I want to say, I welcome them. It's a fallacy in my opinion, that we call people 'woke'; awareness isn't past tense, it's present continuous. We should be 'staying woke'. It's a culture problem, and culture is an aggregation of habits. It's impossible to pretend your character developed in a vacuum, we have to check/remind ourselves always. I've caught myself saying or thinking or believing or feeling stupidly sexist things like 'dang this (female) professor is really annoying' and then imagining if a male professor had said the same thing, I wouldn't have batted an eye. Side note to my Singaporean friends, if you think this culture isn't in our society too, that it's an American hookup culture problem, I strongly ask you to reconsider.