One Night Out In The Unstructured Holiday

We're at the open air market, the one near Elektra House, sipping white ladies and tired from Judo. It's as good a day as I can make it - I wake up at 6 for work, spend a whole day at the UiTM labs, and then I head home for a short rest before going to the dojo. Two full days like that and I'm already happier.

Right now, however, I'm at the tail-end of a long 24 hours, sitting at one of those hard-topped plastic tables you can only find in old Kuching. These are speared to the ground on rusted metal rods and surrounded by similarly circular chairs, like a mummy mushroom with her children. Malcolm and Tim are with me. We're sweaty and high on endorphins.

"Where you want to go after this?" I ask Tim. It's a question we toss around a lot these days, before warmups or after stretching, all casual-like.

"Biomedical science." Tim speaks in Mandarin. He dips his spoon back into his cup, extracts a chunk of milky ice, and takes the time to swallow before continuing: "I'm taking IELTS now. If I do well I'm planning to go UK."

I know nobody who's gone to the UK. Of the top five students in my form 5 class, I know of only one - Aidan - who's currently in France. And even that's a whole channel away from England. And biomedicine? Wow. I look at my hands and consider the difficulty involved in any bio-related subject. I never did do well in Bio. Couldn't for the life of me figure out why I needed to study mitochondria and platelete structure, especially when I wouldn't - couldn't (I cannot stand the sight of blood) - end up a doctor.

When I return from my thoughts Tim and Malcolm are talking about our drinks. "You know," Malcolm says, "You remind me of Sensei."

I turn towards him. Huh?

"He had never drank a White Lady before. Not until Clifford brought him out for a drink. He was like ... -" here Malcolm makes a mime of putting down a glass after a first sip "- 'what drink is this?' and then he asked for a lemon and then he put the lemon on his cup edge and he turned it all around and he drink finish. Wow mans he loved white lady."

We smile at the memory of Sensei. I wonder what he's doing over in Penang, and whether he thinks of us the way we think of him. But that's maudlin territory, not to be touched, so I blink the thought away and ask: "Where's Clifford now ah?"

"Plymouth." Malcolm replies. "Coastal engineering."

"On scholarship?"

"Yeah. Kinda -"

"What kind?"

"INTI."

I raise an eyebrow at that. I now know somebody who's in the UK.

"You le?" Tim asks, looking at me.

I hold a breath. "If my results aren't good, probably local U. Don't want to overburden my parents."

"How're you so sure you're not going to get good results?"

I stir the ice in my white lady. "Left about 40% blank in my math paper." I say, quietly. "And I don't want to think about the rest. What does that tell you?"

What I don't tell them is that the nightmares are back.

"So what? As long as you pass -"

"If it isn't an A, it isn't a pass."

"You can't be serious ..."

"True la." Malcolm cuts in, "For them, a B is a fail." I do not question what 'they' meant.

But then Malcolm turns to me, and the thought spills out: "Sometimes, when I see Joash, or Clifford, or you, I get jealous. Things come easy for you people. Look at Joash, man. He's now at NUS, doing business. Or Horng Eng. You know, she's like me - she's taking Civil Engineering. And you know what she got in her first sem? 4.0, mans! And Clif-"

"What about me?" I ask, and I narrow my eyes. "I mean, you got all that from just seeing me in Judo?" And this is strange - Malcolm has never seen me negotiate, has never seen me lead, has never seen me teach. The thought that he can see the other side of me - the side my friends call intimidating - is a scary one.

"From what Lee Hwa says -" (Lee Hwa is the current president of St Thomas's Judo club) "- you're the kind of person who ... does things. Who says, 'okay let's do it'. You know? You want something, and you go towards it. It's like you work hard, but not that kind of hard. You're ... committed."

But my lips twitch upwards into a smile, because for a bubble of a second I see Kenny's face, and it's Form 4 again and I'm telling him that I'm washing my hands of the Maxis CyberlinQ project and he's telling me that I'm not committed enough to the team and I should buck up and see reason or get out, and out for good. And he's right. But I hadn't seen it yet, hadn't completely given in to the Thomian culture of giving yourself wholely to a cause greater than the sum of its parts ...

"I wasn't always like that." I mutter.

And I see now. I do. I call it drive. The need to prove yourself, the need to reach for higher and greater things, to do things other people wouldn't think of doing, just for the heck of it. Reaching so hard that your fingers brush the fruit of perfection, the blades of sunlight in your face. And never settling when you win, never too depressed when you lose. And a corollary: never really happy; never really sad. The cost of drive is ambivalence, a half-life that never swings too far up or down. And I'm just 19. I was driven, but maybe in the wrong areas. I don't know. When I'm old and I look back, would it be good? Would it all have been worth it, being driven like that, at the expense of unfiltered joy, and bleak dispair?

[Update]: I've gotten rid of the bloody arrogant ending, and that teaches me a lesson for writing at 3 am. The truth is: I'm not sure whether drive is a good thing. We've all seen overachievers in action, and I'm sure we all know one or two in person. Over the past 2 years, in Form 6, I've had a taste of how it feels like, being one ... and I'm not sure if that's how I want to live my life. Dickens had drive in abundance (wrote a series of classics, edited a magazine, had 10 children, set up a house for wayward women, lectured, fought for wider adoption of copyright law - you have to wonder if he ever really slept ...) So did Trump, and Jobs, and Chanel. But look at the flip side of the coin: Einstein lived a bummer life (and a great one!) and he got far; Hubble practically had everything handed to him on a silver platter, and he got far too. (History remembers him for his contribution to astronomy; what they don't mention is that every academic and career decision he made turned out to be the best possible thing he could ever do.)

Would I want to live the rest of my life in ambivalence? The self-help books call drive 'positive energy', which I think is mostly a load of badly written money-guzzling metaphysical rubbish. Drive is best learnt from the sweat and dirt of sport, or under the iron tenacity of a mentor, a coach (or in my case, a sensei). Is drive the best way to live a life? I know that this sounds weird, asking these questions here. But my writing is an extension of my mind, and drive is something I've been thinking about a lot these couple of months. I'm adrift for the moment - driveless, if you will. What will my plans for 2009 be?

The answer is that I'm not sure. But I'll tell you when I find out.

A Few Notes On University Hunting

You tire from it. You tire from writing long, mint-perfect letters of recommendation - letters of self-love so repulsive in nature as to be unimaginable, being turned into an institutional requirement by the gatekeepers to universities and scholarships like that. Have you given thought to the act of recommending yourself? - an idea uncomfortable to me, for would an author, or a playwright, or a musician ever review himself? Nice young chap, balls still intact, fairly handsome - please consider for employment thank you so much for your time. The proper word is sell. You're forced to sell now, and sell yourself, and ignore the multitude of sellers around you who're all selling at the same frequency so as to prompt you to think up some new selling technique like putting on that pink shirt you have at the back of your closet - yes that one you never wear - the one with the HE'S STUPID with little arrows pointing to the people unfortunate enough to stand around you in the crowd; and you're hoping that that's enough to get you noticed, to be picked out of the noise and the sweat and the pushing bodies and plunked into a chair and grilled sufficiently so as to wipe the perma-smile off your face.

And the most horrible thing about the process is how normal it is. How the world is arranged around such detestable acts of selling, where actions don't always speak louder than words and where boasting is fine as long as you put on a tie and a perma-smile. And you receive this as a slap to your face because this is how things are, after all - and you better get used to it, or you'll be left behind while the adults get to play ball.

Grow up, you. Put on a tie. Welcome to the real world. 

My Sister Is A Lousy Photographer

It was her first time with the 1000d. It was my first time giving new meaning to the emoticon XD.

B. F. Skinner's Return

We're sitting down at one of the tables in the Swinburne auditorium, waiting for the start of the Kuching League. Justin and Sophia are cuddled together at a seat in front of us, Paul is looking at the other teams, Ashik walks around asking "So where's the free breakfast?"

I'm a little jittery. I've been brought in as a 'guest debater', as Mdm Christina puts it, and I'm debating as first speaker - something I've only done four or five times to epic failure. I remind myself that National Judo tournaments are far scarier than any debate league. Paul applies for a name change for our team, because I'm not a Swinburne student. We reject Team Jihad, laugh off Ashik's Team Al Qaeda, consider Team Gemilang and finally settle on Sungai Sarawak. All the other teams are busy opening metafiles and looking through motion notes and they huddle in small groups all over the floor; I pass by an IPBL team and hear one of their lecturers explaining the mechanics of hydroelectricity to them and feel a little strange, considering that both Swin teams are sitting around and talking about food, and I know from experience that such knowledge is almost useless in debate.

We wait. A couple of minutes later Choulyin goes up on stage and briefs us on the rules of the debate tournament, and it's remarkably similar to the other debate tournie I'm painfully preparing my teams for (ie: the Swinburne high school tournament) with the 3 motion system and the uber-air-conditioned rooms and the wall-to-wall vomit coloured carpet and the black shirted runners with little signs who lead you to your rooms and demand that you hand over your handphones to keep in large white and yellow Swinburne paper envelopes. And there's this little spike of deja vu as we copy our lineups and our first motions; and as my team sits on the steps between floors 2 and 3 to prepare I remember St Thomas and my first debate and a small lump forms in my throat.

But that doesn't last. The Kuching League gives all teams 15 minutes to prepare for a motion we've never seen before, and Paul and I quickly work out a prep system. 2 minutes of silence while we marshal our thoughts, 8 minutes of chaos as we outline the problem, pre-empt the other team, consider and then discard possible arguments, create a policy, let Ashik eat fries and hammer a case together. We do this very quickly - and looking back at it now I realize how much trust we have to place in each other: when Paul suggests something that I say won't work, he accepts it and moves to an alternative within the space of seconds.

The first motion is THW pay morbidly obese people to lose weight. We are against three very nice young gentlemen from IPBL A, who joke with us about the no-handphone envelope when we enter the room. We are opposition and our case is simple: we support the need for Government intervention in cases involving morbidly obese people, but we question the ethics of using a monetary incentive. Paul is extraordinarily witty and he opens one of his points with "the fat become fatter"; Ashik, however, closes his speech with profanity.

We win the first round with a huge point difference.

The second round pits us against INTI 2, on the bloody long motion THBT sporting bodies should penalize teams when their players commit criminal acts off the field. We are government, which worries me incessantly - I'm a third speaker by training and I do best when I open with rebuttal. Being gov means that I've to open up the whole debate on my own - something I attempted to do in Form 4, failed, and immediately got switched to 3rd because Cikgu Orlnda thought I handled my POIs quite-nicely-thank-you-very-much and wondered if I'd be good doing rebuttals as a full time thing (she was right). But anyway. I take the floor and frame the debate as value-judgement, and I keep 'sporting bodies' broad (no specific sports) and 'penalize' narrow (no suspension, just fines and point deductions) which turns out to be right thing to do. The opposition doesn't understand what we're getting at, shoots blanks for most of the debate, and scores us another decent win.

Come third round, we're feeling rather pleased with ourselves and we find Sungai Sarawak up against UNIMAS 1, the best team in the tournament. Paul and I are happy to get this challenge; Ashik on the other hand - with only 3 weeks experience in debate - is rather jittery. Things go badly soon after.

The motion is THW protect the rights of smokers, and it becomes clear that UNIMAS is puzzled with our take on the debate. We define the topic as about whether or not smokers are entitled to the same rights as other citizens of a democracy, considering they harm other people with their habit, but UNIMAS defines the topic as whether or not smokers have a right to smoke. I'm worried. I lean over to Paul and tell him we're in a definitional debate, and then I try to brief Ashik on what to do.

A definition debate is a horrible thing to participate in. There is a complex, multi-pronged strategy to tackle these little beasts, but it's very difficult to communicate that strategy in the middle of a debate to two other equally stressed teammates. Paul gets the drift and pulls the thorny carcass of a definition onto the table, but Ashik doesn't and he kills us.

"What are you talking about DUDE! Smoking is the latest trend - what's wrong with being trendy?"

I tell Paul that I'll be doing the reply speech, and he agrees because we're in deep shit and I appear to know what I'm doing. I go up after the barrage of Opp 3rd speaker and reply; I look up: by then all the adjudicators look pissed and frustrated with the debate. Things cannot be worse. "Go on," the chief adjudicator says, waving her hand at me, "I've got nothing to say."

I begin. I have only a distant memory now of what my reply speech contains, but I remember that the words flow easily and the structure I put on paper leap and take shape in the air as I speak. I thread the fine line between lecturing and debating, telling the opposition what they should have done, and where they could've done better. The room grows silent; UNIMAS shift in their seats like schoolboys caught playing truant, the chief adjudicator slowly looks less and less pissed at the whole thing. I remember closing the debate with a quiet, conciliatory tone,

and my last line went, after a long pause: "So, in the end, there was no debate." and an even more quiet "Thank you very much." 

There is a split second of silence. And then the whole room explodes into applause: the adjudicators, the opposition, the UNIMAS supporters; Ashik is banging the table and Paul's face is glowing as I return to my seat; the moment is beautiful, powerful and I don't want to lose it because I feel like frigging Obama for God's sakes; and later I tell Paul that it's the speech of my career and if I stop debating now I'd be happy.

And I would. Sometimes in life you want nothing more than a second chance to prove yourself, to close up on the bitter scar of never doing what you believed you could. This was my second chance, a chance with Paul to create as far as was feasibly possible a Thomian team and I know now that I am good, that I am not a fraud, and that I can win in a debate. And I'm contented with that; contented to hold it in my hand, a perfect thing, for just a little while longer.

N.B. The title of this post is an inside joke. When we first started debate we used to collect a list of names of psychologists, economists and researchers. B.F. Skinner and his work on the behavioral psychology was one of our favourites, and we'd attach him to whatever child-related study we could make up in a debate. Paul used him again on Saturday, in a debate we won. And what a wonderful circle that was.

I Am A Riceball

Thank you, Ida. I owe you. =)

Unplugged

We are sitting at lunch, and I tell my parents that I'll have to go to school tomorrow to teach debate. Once a week, every Wednesday. Until I get my car back from my uncle. It's the third meeting, so they've sent me down twice already. 

"When," my mum says, "will you be cut off from St Thom?"

I freeze. 

"You're no longer a student of St Thom, why are you still doing this? Do you know how ma fan it is, to send you to school every week? Who is your debate teacher? Why can't she do it?"

I place my spoon back into my bowl, where it sends the bits and pieces of my soup - the carrots and the onions and the chicken strips - jumping around. "She has nothing to do with this. I'm doing this because I want to-"

"Oh. You want to. Smart." My sister cuts in.

"I volunteered - "

"Very smart." she says again, and then my dad takes on the mantle: "You don't have to do anything for that stupid school -" and my mum cuts back in: "You want to ... HAH if you can treat your house chores like that ... good lor ..."

I am seething now. There is a silence as we chew on our food.

"You know, if Val didn't come tomorrow we also wouldn't have any debate meeting." My youngest sister says.

"So it's okay for Val to do a debate meeting but it's not okay for me to do it?"

"Yeah."

"No it's not okay for Val as well," the other sister says.

A number of replies present themselves in my mind at this point, each one ruder than the last. I chose none of them and return to my food.

There are a number of reasons why I never tell my parents about my dreams. Why I never ask them for help with my problems. Why I never tell them anything about my non-academic activities. This conversation is a case study for that root cause. I'm not sure if my parents are alone in this, but they have never supported anything I've done, unless the activity concerned had some tangible benefit attached. When I had problems with the debate club I sorted them out myself. When I had problems in Judo I sorted them out myself. Ditto for almost everything that has mattered to me in the past 5 years.

I don't understand this. A part of me says they want the best for me, that their opposition against everything non-academic I've done is a result of their worry that I will let my grades slip. And I'm sure that plays some small part in it. But when conversations like today's happen, and their opposition is based on how ma fan it is for them to send me down ... that's when I know I've been justified in keeping my work/academic/co-k problems to myself. 

And that's not the end of it. I also don't get how my sisters consistently support my parents in this. Firstly, it's none of their bloody business. Secondly, their argument consists of nothing more than "You always think you're right", which is a failsafe, and a intellectually slothful one at that. "You always think you're right" means that they're too lazy to think of a better counter-argument, in a fight that they shouldn't have been involved in in the first place, considering that it had nothing to do with them.

I think there're parents out there who would be proud of a kid who takes the initiative to start something on his or her own. Those parents aren't mine. My parents would only be supportive if I had something like a newspaper interview or a plague to show for my efforts - something they can see and touch and brag about. They never think about the things I learn when I'm doing something on my own - they don't think about the leadership I'm forced to show when I teach in debate; they don't think about the mental toughness I'm forced to have when I'm sparring at the dojo. There are other people out there, my age, who club and drink and have the time of their lives every other night, for no other reason than youth. And here I am doing something that I think is worthwhile, that I think would be worth my time in ways that don't benefit me directly ... and all they can think about is the amount of energy it'll take to send me down to school.

Don't get me wrong. This is not about gaining my parents' support, or respect, or even their recognition. I love my parents, even if they're not exactly good in this support thing. What this is about is why I don't talk to them about the things that matter to me. The things that make me who I am. My drive to do things, to accomplish things has never come from them, and it probably never will.

Drive

Well here I am, one month into the new year, and I have done absolutely nothing with my life. I am blocked. Jamned up like a photocopier on a bad hair day. If I were standing outside in the rain and looking in to the residual glow of my life, I would see one boy with his hands in his pockets, knee-deep and stuck in a large cesspool of misshapen insecurities. Just past this side of the waterfall dear, and you're good to go, but you just have to get past that first whirlpool ...

We celebrate two new years every year here in Kuching, simply because we're Chinese and when you're Chinese you never want to lose out on anything. Especially if anything includes food. So I'm not only sitting here and stuck with this Godawful block, but I'm also sitting here feeling fat after eating too much over the holidays. I think it was two years ago that I felt like a diabetic shrimp after visiting with my Church youth ... but - wait where was I? Oh yes. Diabetic shrimp. Quite a delectable phrase, considering shrimps don't come with kidneys ... what? You mean I wasn't talking about that before? Then what was I talking about?

Welcome to the cesspool, folks. 

This isn't the first time it's happened. I had a huge block after the SPM too, and I whittled away 4-5 months doing absolutely nothing more than typing and eating and sleeping and chores. Oh yes, chores. I think my parents think that I'm God's gift to smelly dogs, and they make me bathe mine twice a week. Because the dog stinks at about that frequency. I'd have never gotten a dog if I actually knew about the body odour. Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.

I think my main problem right now is a lack of a schedule. I write, code and design best when I'm busy with schoolwork, and that in itself is a remarkably daft thing to do, seeing as there just isn't enough time to do everything all at the same time when you're hurrying for assignments and such. I suck. I'll admit it. I suck. 

I've never wanted to be in school as much as I do now.

N.B. Comments are closed.