gravity

This has been the year of People Who Exert A Gravitational Pull. And i'm talking about people who are barely at the periphery of my life as a whole: people i don't really know very well at all who nonetheless have had an oversize influence on my life. i'm trying to figure out exactly what that influence was -- it's not like i changed my values or the way i see things because of them. i guess it's that they made me realise with new force things that i've always known intellectually; or they've helped me to see things about myself that i never knew before.
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In a few cases, there's deep regret: or rather, that feeling you get when you look back and think, Maybe i should have done things differently -- but given what i knew at the time, given how things were, i did the best i could. My conscience is clear. But my best was not enough.
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i guess that's life -- we do what we can, but we're human: our knowledge is limited, our strength is limited, and sometimes, what we do is just not enough.
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in memoriam

Dear C.,
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You were always one of the brilliant, scary ones. Too kool for skool, invariably stylish, with a whipsmart mind and merciless wit. i never imagined we’d ever become friends. After all, i was the quiet cabbage sitting sullenly in the corner of our NIE classes, refusing to participate because (and i only realised this years later) i just couldn’t stand the low expectations and lack of preparation that constituted ‘teaching’ in those grey container-classrooms. i told you years later that i’d somehow managed to forget most of what happened in NIE -- PTSD, i half-joked. You half-joked back that you wished you could forget. We both hated the place -- the difference was that i sank into depression, while you fought back with anger and rebellion. Those were not happy times.
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But then JT and his ‘Politics of Education’ module happened, and groupwork happened; and we ended up in the same group for the only course i actually took seriously at NIE -- because Prof T. actually took his work seriously, and took us seriously as well. Among other things, i remember how you taught me to pronounce ‘hegemony’: so gently, so hilariously, taking such care not to humiliate me for my lack of knowledge. That’s when i learnt that you could be both witty and compassionate, that there was a kindness beneath that sarky facade. i think that was when i decided that you were someone i could trust.
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Fast foward almost 12 years. We didn’t really keep in contact: asides from the obligatory Facebook ‘add’, i don’t think we interacted much in those years. There was a lot going on in my life; the same must have been true for you. But at the end of 2012, i found myself at loose ends, looking for a long-term part-time teaching position that would allow me to write on the side. We somehow got in touch: i can’t remember who reached out to whom, but the next thing i knew, you were showing me around the swanky tuition centre where you worked as head of curriculum development and teacher training. i was suitably impressed, decided that you were the kind of person i wouldn’t mind working with, and took the job.
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You were an inspirational boss, and a fantastic teacher. i learned more about teaching from you than from our entire year at NIE and almost all of my subsequent formal teacher training courses in almost 10 years of teaching. And i’m sure i speak for many people when i say that your care and hard work -- and all those amazing cakes you baked for our department meetings -- did not go unnoticed. The one time when i sat in your classroom to watch you teach, i found myself in awe at the way you commanded your students’ attention, interest, and respect, the way you made the classroom a place where students could laugh and learn and feel comfortable and be challenged to grow, all at the same time. i had never seen anyone teach like that before.
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When you left the organisation, i was the last to know. i’m always the last to know. That was just how our friendship worked. We never had a community of friends surrounding us -- it was always just you and me, catching up for lunch, asking for help, receiving help, talking about music, books, whatever. We never even interacted much apart from our almost-yearly meetings and those infuriating Facebook conversations in which you inevitably tried to insult and out-argue me, every single time. In the end i learned to just let you win. It was just easier that way.
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But we remained friends -- that was never in doubt. And i like to think that i saw you go through some major milestones in your life. You gave me a ride in your posh new car when you bought it; told me about setting up your own company -- and i watched as you found an office unit, did up the place, set up your website. I still remember you gleefully showing me that spoilt MacBook at the ‘reception desk’ -- you wanted the place to look posh and professional, you said, but couldn’t afford to hire a receptionist. The no-longer-working computer was your sneaky little compromise. It was hilarious.
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The last time we met was at the end of May this year. i was going to the US for further studies at the end of July, and you were one of the friends i wanted to see before i left. We had a lovely, laughter-filled lunch over pizza and iced tea. i confided in you about Physics-Olympiad-Machiavelli Kid, or Archaic Knowledge Boy, as you called him. A few days later, you sent me an email in which you’d written an entire essay in response to the questions i told you he’d asked me. i don’t know what you thought i would do with the essay -- i never got to show it to my student because i’d left the school by then, and i’m not sure i’d have wanted to show it to him, even if i could. But i was touched that you’d bothered.
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i’m always the last to know. The news came in an email from a mutual friend late last night, or early this morning, depending on how you look at it. It left me --- i can’t even say ‘in shock’. i just don’t know what to think. It does not compute. The idea of a world without you in it just does not compute. You were always so vital, so technicolourfully alive.
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i haven’t been following your Facebook posts for years. In my mind, i just assumed that you’d always be there, quietly going about your own business in your Orchard Road office, and that there would always be time to catch up. i’d assumed that we’d meet up for lunch again when i go back to Singapore this coming summer. Now i wish that i had followed your Facebook posts in the last few months. i missed so much of your recent life: your new place, your new dog. Trust me when i say, i would have congratulated you if i had known.
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God bless you, C, and may your soul rest in His peace. i hope that there’s good music where you are, and lots of wonderful cake. You will always be fondly remembered.
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Your friend, always.
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ishiguro

Can i just say, i'm so glad Kazuo Ishiguro won the Nobel this year. Not only because he's a fantastic writer, but also because he seems like the sort of person who would use whatever influence and power come with the prize responsibly and for the greater good. Not something one can say of all writers and artists ...
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Here's an excerpt from his Nobel Lecture:
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I woke up recently to the realisation I'd been living for some years in a bubble. That I'd failed to notice the frustration and anxieties of many people around me. I realised that my world – a civilised, stimulating place filled with ironic, liberal-minded people – was in fact much smaller than I'd ever imagined. 2016, a year of surprising – and for me depressing – political events in Europe and in America, and of sickening acts of terrorism all around the globe, forced me to acknowledge that the unstoppable advance of liberal-humanist values I'd taken for granted since childhood may have been an illusion.
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I'm part of a generation inclined to optimism, and why not? We watched our elders successfully transform Europe from a place of totalitarian regimes, genocide and historically unprecedented carnage to a much-envied region of liberal democracies living in near-borderless friendship. We watched the old colonial empires crumble around the world together with the reprehensible assumptions that underpinned them. We saw significant progress in feminism, gay rights and the battles on several fronts against racism. We grew up against a backdrop of the great clash – ideological and military – between capitalism and communism, and witnessed what many of us believed to be a happy conclusion.
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But now, looking back, the era since the fall of the Berlin Wall seems like one of complacency, of opportunities lost. Enormous inequalities – of wealth and opportunity – have been allowed to grow, between nations and within nations. In particular, the disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the long years of austerity policies imposed on ordinary people following the scandalous economic crash of 2008, have brought us to a present in which Far Right ideologies and tribal nationalisms proliferate. Racism, in its traditional forms and in its modernised, better-marketed versions, is once again on the rise, stirring beneath our civilised streets like a buried monster awakening. For the moment we seem to lack any progressive cause to unite us. Instead, even in the wealthy democracies of the West, we're fracturing into rival camps from which to compete bitterly for resources or power.
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And around the corner – or have we already turned this corner? – lie the challenges posed by stunning breakthroughs in science, technology and medicine. New genetic technologies – such as the gene-editing technique CRISPR – and advances in Artificial Intelligence and robotics will bring us amazing, life-saving benefits, but may also create savage meritocracies that resemble apartheid, and massive unemployment, including to those in the current professional elites.
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So here I am, a man in my sixties, rubbing my eyes and trying to discern the outlines, out there in the mist, to this world I didn't suspect even existed until yesterday. Can I, a tired author, from an intellectually tired generation, now find the energy to look at this unfamiliar place? Do I have something left that might help to provide perspective, to bring emotional layers to the arguments, fights and wars that will come as societies struggle to adjust to huge changes?
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hamilton

What a fantastic musical! Brilliant lyrics, addictive music, compelling storyline, charismatic protagonist. And now i want to read up on American history -- and i'm starting to think that it may actually have some bearing on my MFA project -- which would be an interesting turn of affairs ...
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Favourite line: "He took our country from bankruptcy to prosperity. I hate to admit it, but he doesn't get enough credit for all the credit he gave us."
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LOL.
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coercion

The thought just occurred to me today: i feel that the intellectual atmosphere on campus is just as coercive as the atmosphere in church can be if you're hanging out with the wrong people. i sit in class and feel as if people are like hawks waiting to swoop on anyone who dares think differently from the norm. Talk about a liberal bubble! Or, to use a stronger word, a liberal agenda. This is exactly what it can feel like in church sometimes -- on the other end of the ideological spectrum. The ideas may be different, or sometimes even opposite to each other, but the impulse is the same: to shut down different ways of thought, to establish through peer pressure and social outcasting just one way of thinking as the only acceptable way.
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My 9/10-score-for-independence-of-mind mind is rebelling -- furiously -- against this intellectual coercion. And yes, my dear bright shouting students from The Third School -- i'm going to use that word i told you guys not to use except in the most extreme circumstances: i hate this.
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lucky

Can i just say, yet again and i hope i will never stop saying this so help me God -- i love this. i love writing, doing research, doing the work of the mind, living the life of the mind. How did i get so lucky. How did this end up being my life.
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humility / arrogance

i've always thought humility is important. But, in the absence thereof, my next preference would be for justified arrogance. The worst is arrogance that's unearned. Good grief. If you want to be an arrogant little whatsit, then at least please possess the qualities that give you good reason for that arrogance.
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