Pandamian

We launch Tuesday. Joash says it well: we have much to be thankful for. See you on the other side.

The Variance

Every time I go back to Kuching I can't help but think of my friends, and how different we're all growing up to be.

I have a friend who is taking the bar exam in half a year's time. I was there when his plan was to be: "a lawyer! I never want to be a politician la!" and then in the last election, when his father was dropped in favour of another party representative, he got so hopping mad that he changed his mind. He's now working towards being a representative - and he probably would be, in due time.

I have another friend who won a Petronas scholarship to France. He spends most of the year in Lyon, lives in a studio apartment, and thinks the French are an unfriendly bunch. I think he has a bright future ahead of him.

Another friend has graduated with a technical diploma, and is working as an air-cond repairman. When we were in St Thomas's he was one of those who got consistently good results.

Another is the frontman of his own band.

Yet another took out a PTPL loan to cover his college tuition, and then dropped out of the aforementioned college, degree-less and in debt. He currently works at a paint shop, paying back his loans, biding time before he can go to school again. A mutual friend reports that he seems 'angry at the rest of the world'.

I hesitate to say that my friends are in a better or worse state that I am, because life is long, and all kinds of things may happen in between. The 'ones-with-a-future' may stumble and make mistakes; the 'ones-who-are-down' may come to be at the right place at the right time. Two of my friends in St Thomas's, whom we once knew as rich, are no longer so. Their families have experienced a reversal in fortune. And it's humbling when you hear of such things.

I mean: when we were young, we all thought we were equals, didn't we? We all looked the same. We were placed in this artificial environment, where our choices didn't affect us nearly as badly as they would outside. And in the Malaysian public education system, at least, we're put in an environment that consists of kids from all kinds of socio-economic backgrounds, and then we're led to believe that we are all equal.

When we leave school, our paths diverge. We fly apart like agitated atoms released from a magnetic field (ooh, nerdy analogy, that). But it's true, isn't it? Where before we were held together - just barely - by the institution, now there are large gaps between former friends. A doctor cannot so easily mix with a mechanic; or perhaps a hardworking mechanic cannot so easily mix with a drunk doctor (you never know!) and this is how we grow up. Nothing to it, I suppose.

I know that I'm probably talking about obvious, dumb things, but it's never really struck me till I got back late last year. The variances between me and my friends are starting to be large enough for me to notice, every single holiday I have, I go back and something has changed. And it's scary. Inevitable, but still frightening in its own way.

When I was in San Francisco I met up with and talked to Bob Stein, the founder of the Institute for the Future of The Book. We both gave talks on very similar things - the need for a usable, open system for publishing; the huge importance of having such a system before the current models of traditional publishing collapsed. He was arguing for it; I was among those building it. The difference was that he was 63 years old, and I but 20.

My grandfather is only a couple of years older than Bob Stein. I don't think he knows of the things I currently do. Truth be told, I never considered the idea that there were people of his generation who were living on the bleeding edge. And yet there we were - two people from two completely different generations, talking and thinking about the same things. I was struck by how different contemporaries can be - notwithstanding that they come from different places, and were involved in different things. And I thought: this is probably how it's going to be like for my friends and I, and even more so for the people I meet in uni, when we are 60 years old and retired and looking back on life.

The variance is here, and it is large, and it is growing wider still.