Thinking about thinking

I woke up today thinking. It's been a long while, I think. I thought about how I've been being lately, toward Chris especially. I'm not a very empathetic person, and even till now I don't quite get the fine line between platitude and genuineness. Since I was 9 I've asked myself the question in some form or another of whether I'm a literal sociopath. That day, I was watching the news about the Iraq War, and I felt very little about it. I wondered if I was supposed to feel sad or bad about war so far away, truly. And I wondered if people generally feel that way too. Since then I've felt "compelled" by duty and morals to do "good", but often I'm not sure if that's just a pride-based substitute for real emotions. Maybe this is why Amos is such a compelling character to me. I'm scared.

But mostly I woke up thinking because Chris has not replied to a long set of messages yesterday from me that ended in an apology for an issue I was not sure she actually cares about. This has happened several times now and it always makes me anxious. Sometimes she keeps her feelings and thoughts to herself and this scares me. Is it none of my business when it involves me? Is this the age old stereotype that boys are clueless and are simply dumbstruck when things come to fore? Or is it actually in my head blowing things out of proportion? Or even more ironic, is it that acknowledgement of the situation brings about the situation (i.e. drama creates itself)? It goes back to something much fundamental for me. I consider myself very direct and still prefer, very very much, that people be direct. It makes things simple for people like me who have difficulty understanding subtleties and emotions, which apparently loads of people "just get". I've thought rationally about it (maybe my original sin when responding to issues), and in the grand scheme of things we'll work it out and carry on. Though I can't shake the paranoia that it blows up into something terrible...

Maybe I'll continue this later, but I actually need to work... Mid-season final thoughts before I forget. I've grown more  now and I know you can't expect people to be direct if you yourself are selfish and lazy and not do your best to create the conditions that make people feel comfortable being direct. But I've now known a good solution till this day of how to go about doing that. I'm on the verge of tears and maybe I should ask.

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.

How to be a son

My father passed away today. I thought about how perhaps for anybody who is grieving the loss of something, there comes a point in time when they implicitly and deeply understand that life goes on. For me I've known this day was coming for quite some time. My mom is upset because she could not properly fulfill his last wish which was to die at home. I think that she is upset because of the many things that could have gone differently that would have allowed her to fulfill it. She is looking for someone to blame, herself, the housekeeper with Covid-19 that came to work with symptoms, the hospital staff that couldn't release him earlier, etc. but I hope she realizes that it is nobody's fault. One cannot help but feel guilty though, because last wishes hold some sort of finality to it. But she should know that we did our very best, and it shouldn't discount everything and every joy that we have brought him in life. In his last days I think he was most unhappy, slipping in and out of lucid consciousness, unable to fend for himself nor eat and drink the things he likes. It was pitiful and sad and hard to watch old age play out like that. That sort of decline was portrayed poetically in The Irishman, and in some ways I'm thankful that I saw it, and learned, though an aphorism, the line 'it is what it is'. It's very Buddhist if you think about it.

I changed my phone screen to one of those lovey-dovey couple pics, and am enjoying seeing Christelle. I can't wait to see her in person again. As you grow older I think it's true that you simply acquire more things that you don't want to lose or find it hard to let go of.

I'm thinking about my mom and younger brother especially now, and hope they are coping well. I hope that for the rest of her days my mom will find contentment, despite not being able to fulfill her wishes to retire in peace with my father, traveling the world on a long cruise ride, like any middle-class person of her generation dreams of. I want her to finally be happy and I know that most of all she needs safety and security to feel that.

Panic

I panicked during an interview and have so many regrets now... I feel worse when I feel like I didn't do my best and that was probably my worst. I also feel like I'm the only person supporting me.

Erhu

Lately I've been watching reaction vids to both Avatar: the Last Airbender and Legend of Korra, reminiscing both series and the banter I used to have with my friends about nerd shit in general. It was refreshing and sad at the same time. I was thinking about what I would do after I inadvertently finish both series (the reactions to them) as I still remain in a mental quagmire of my own disciplinary doing of refusing to start anything new as it would seem wrong to do anything new while in a state of transition that I wish everyday would end but ultimately rely on good fortune to take me out of. Just a random thought, I think at this point I'm too lazy to label or flair my posts. Although I still might.

So I decided one of the ways I used to calm down and go to bed was by blogging. It's tough right now even after a glass of milk because of the amount of coffee I drank and the lateness of it. I even knew kind of what I was getting in to but I could not say no to my mum offering some to me as I knew it would probably make her happy. Ultimately, it's because of the sharp contrast of going to bed so isolated from all my friends, which was not the case in collage of course. My friends here in Singapore have naturally settled into other friend groups they've had in university or work, and I am ultimately separated from all the close friends I've made overseas, and Chris - something I anticipated and accept. But perhaps I am being too inflexible and should try watching something new.

Meeting Yams was nice, however long we've not seen each other, she was very astute in asking whether I was lonely here - and I am. I miss Chris, my fraternity brothers, and my brother and sister-in-law for the brief time they were still here. I am not close to my parents or my younger brother by very much, and my VS and NAPS friends all have their own things to do as I said, although that might just be work. Ultimately, I don't want to spend money either, so I am going to try and stick youtube or games I've already bought for entertainment when I need to escape job hunting or need motivation. Right now, the truth is my biggest two leads are things I just have to wait for, and I am not even confident after the (in my opinion) fiasco that was my 21 hour Stata assessment. I ultimately fell into the same error that I've always had with GP papers and open-ended assignments - I lose track in my creativity and naturally divergent thinking methods.

So here ends I guess my first 'talking to the internet' in a while, as I don't really have anyone else to banter to. I really cherish the fact that such a medium exists - online communities provide a niche that is I think underappreciated by those who do not use it or stereotype it. This post was titled erhu because the legend of Korra's finale theme (just titled 'legend of Korra' by Jeremy Zuckerman, the composer) makes me cry.

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.