Ethereal.

Van was saying that someone told her the market for girls is like monopolistic competition. In HC, its more like an oligopoly, in my opinion. The good is not homogenous, but oftentimes we just ignore most of the market and therefore there are a few “large firms” which influence each other. It gets even trickier here. Cos normally, only one consumer will be able to get the “good”. So what happens then? We can’t produce more. So maybe it’s like a monopsony. One buyer many producers. In this case the buyer is the girl and the goods are boys. But that’s wrong too. That would imply that girls can have more than 1 guy. Maybe its like a sort of inverse perfect competition. All of the boys are willing to pay any price for 1 quantity, whether it is a minute sum or a princely one. But how would that work? The market is so imperfect, because the goods are not homogeneous, there is no perfect knowledge, and whether there is a large number of “firms” around is in question. Or maybe we’ll have to stop thinking about girls as goods or boys as goods and markets. Economics can’t explain everything then, unlike some people would have us believe. If someone can come up with an economic model explaining the above then I salute him/her.

As you can see econs mugging is making me a bit weird.

Isn’t it so funny. You don’t deny the beauty of the mountains, the plains, the lakes and trees and woodlands. You don’t deny the beauty of the sky, the beauty of moon and star and earth. You don’t deny the beauty of tigers or leopards or the wild. But yet you deny the beauty of humans.

We all like to think that its subjective, but then why then is the world always beautiful in its natural state but how some people can think that someone is the epitome of beauty while others might just see an ugly face. How can two people look at the same piece of art and one may think it looks nice but another might think it looks like rubbish.

How about art? Are we just trying to mimic nature? Many artpieces are influenced by nature and natural shapes. Shades, textures, patterns. But why is art so subjective then, if it is based on nature? Is it because it is man’s perception of nature that makes the difference? We are just making poor replicas, so subjective, so fleeting?

Maybe we’re just wise. The beauty of man is fleeting and inconstant, yet the beauty of nature is eternal. The beauty of man is sometimes artificial, but that of nature…is natural. Or maybe it stems from a need for reproduction. When we look at someone of the opposite gender, we only think about propagation, we think about physical traits that would best ensure the survival of our offspring. Then why do we go for waifish slender women then? Then it further begs the question what about personality. Do we take personality into account when we see beauty?

No matter how much we guys would like to deny it, looks do play a part when we look for partners. I dare anyone to say otherwise. Somehow despite all our moral enlightenment and wisdom we all have to pay our respects to things such as mere perceived physical perfection or lack thereof. This applies to girls. Admit it… while personality and character are important there’s still room for looks right? Which explains all the multimillion dollar cosmetics, beauty, fashion and Slim 10. But why are these products mainly targeted at women? Is there a greater urge for them to look better? If so is it because guys put a significant weightage on looks, at least at first? Will there ever be a stage where such things cease to matter? I don’t think so… Men and women are in the end physical beings, living in physical realms. But it’d be nice if we could.

Maybe it'd all be different if we were all blind?

You’re the sweet scent of morning dew on summer grass…





Conundrum.

Hey guys and girls…

Is there one truth? One truth to everything in existence? But if that’s not true, then how can anything be true? If there are many truths, then there is both one truth and many truths and that’s impossible. If there is no truth, then isn’t it untrue that there is no truth too? So that means there is truth. But we just said there wasn’t. But if there is one truth, why does everyone have their own truth? Is it the same truth that we all have different interpretations of? But how can there be so many interpretations of something that’s so pure and simple. Just one answer. Or is there no answer?

If ethics is subjective, does it mean that it’s ethical for me to murder and slaughter as long as I can justify it in my own moral code? But if it isn’t then what is ethics? What is the universal law that governs us, that we must hold to? If a house was burning and you could only save one of 3 people: Your mother, a scientist close to discovering the cure for cancer and an intelligent ape that holds the missing link to human evolution, which would you save. Would it be unethical to save your mother and possibly cause more deaths that could be avoided by stopping the progress of the scientist? Or would it be ethical to leave your mom there to die? The mother that gave you life, that fed you, clothed you, loved you? Or would ethics not even play a part in that case and would you just save your mother. Or perhaps you’d just save yourself. Would that be unethical? To do nothing and practice impartiality and not favour anyone and just preserve yourself?

Isn’t it so amazing that the things we’re so passionate about and so enchanted with are the things that are the least explicable, the least reconcilable, the things that we can’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt. Like love. We can’t prove that love exists, yet we can’t prove that it doesn’t. It is simply something we believe in or think we believe in. We don’t stop believing till we’ve either hurt ourselves too badly to continue or believe in it even more fervently when that happens.

It’s like that for so many things intangible. People don’t stop believing in God, they don’t stop believing in love even if u tell them they don’t exist. Is it because we’re stubborn or simply because it’s something we need to believe in to fulfil some need deep inside? Or because we can’t prove that it doesn’t exist. So it goes back again. We can’t prove that they don’t exist, so they do? I mean we’ve proven that a lot of stuff exists, but somehow we can’t rely on that all the time and we have to look beyond proof and logic to complete the picture of our existence?

You’re the dream that awakens my slumber…





Repose

Hey Guys n girls…

Yesterday was MAF… was intending to update last night but it was a little late when I got back so this is a little late. Sigh… dumb Dad had to go force me to go to bed… I hate being forced to sleep.

Anyways, yesterday was quite groovy… got out of bed at 10, left the house at 12 and got to Bishan to do a bit of card trading before I went for MAF. Managed to make some cash to spend, so I was pretty pleased. Think I got ripped off for one of the transactions though. Damn. Saw Jik, Kiat, Ben & Ryan there, as usual. Think I’m starting to kinda ease off magic though… my hands no longer itch when I fail to pack or draft once a week. Phew. BTW, to all of u who DO play magic, Mirrodin looks pretty nice! Really it looks fun! And lots of powerful stuff/ fast stuff/ fast & powerful stuff. Yeah. And finally black got its arse kicked. Score 1 for the good guys.

Left around 3.40 to get to Orchard for lunch with my 1st 3 months classmates…who have unfortunately left the FARMily. Ah well just being together again made me feel that time somehow reversed and we were back in the first three months again. Sigh.. ok there were only 4 of us but that was enough. Memories were provoked and came unbidden… and suddenly felt a strong surge of loss and anger. Thankfully, both were drowned in conversation and filled up with food instead. Had some funny Korean vegetable dish again… that cost me 6.50. Yeah for some vegetables and rice. Nothing much else attracted my attention at Scotts Food Court. Anyway, had to leave at 5.15 to get to school to do the setting up. So I ran to catch the 171(phew.) and got there at 5.40. Not too bad… considering the traffic on Saturday evening at Orchard. Yeah anyways the security guard was going “present or past student” and I was faintly bemused at the notion of ppl like Kiat answering that question. For those of you who don’t know, Kiat’s from NJ. Anyways dashed in, got to the stall and discovered few people were there. Yay. Put down my bag, went in to make sure I didn’t look too stupid, then starting helping out to set up all the stuff. Learnt how to do the computer stuff from Zhehan. Thing is the trial picture he took of my face looked like total ****! Then Jik and co actually turned it into a badge and used it as a sample!!! That’s counterproductive my friends. You’re never going to sell any badges if you use my face. Yeah anyways I had my revenge. I took one of him in return and starting doing funny things to the picture ;P. Anyways Kiat and Jik started playing around with the badges…And then suddenly Jik saw Kenny, and putting two and two together, started asking me who *she* was for the fifth time. Luckily Kiat had a good idea after my somewhat garbled directions.

Before we knew it it was 6.30, and MAF started. I’m a bit sad we missed it because we were doing the stall thingy and all… anyways business started picking up after a while and there was quite a large demand for a small amount of computers… and things started to go wrong, by murphy’s law. First it was the circle on the badge picture being too big, then the cutting went off, then some people got us to scan a neoprint so that we could put it on a badge. Sigh. Yeah after a while got sick of trying to put a crosshair over people’s heads on the com so I used the camera instead. Most of the shots turned out fine, thankfully. Though there was this rather fickle group of girls who took 10 shots and we ran out of space on the camera. An observation: girls normally take 3-4 tries before they’re satisfied, even if the shot is perfectly fine. Guys usually at most take 1 shot before they’re happy. Hmm….

Around 8.30, shift ended so I went to participate in the activities. It was quite a nice place to be. The atmosphere was perfect… all the people coming back and having fun. Even those who were not HC students came, thankfully. Saw Yihui, Andrew, Alvin, Emily, Zixu, Haogen, Kiat, Mike, Peiyi, Changjian, and quite a lot of others...can’t remember everyone right now…sorry. The place was crowded with people having fun, chit chatting, sitting around and generally making noise. Never have I seen the place so packed, so re4 nao4. Not even during Chinese New Year... anyway quoteworthy: “who needs friends when you have a girlfriend!”

I kinda pity those people who missed the grand lightup… it was so cool! Council did a really great job with the special effects! 3 cheers to councillors. After that it was all fun and games, singing and dancing. The songs were nice… not often u see that small little place packed with thousands of people all singing the same song.

Felt like we were back in the first 3 months again… during orientation’s final night. We were all singing and dancing and having loads of fun and the spirits ran high and soared into the sky. And, like during orientation, I ended up being paired with a guy for dances again. Stupid. Why guys always go with guys girls always go with girls anyway. I dunno all the girl moves and ended up staring at the sky sometimes. But it felt so exhilarating just dancing to the beat and “wild wild west” was the rocks, as usual! Small things like these sound so boring when I write them out but I guess that’s my limitation as a writer… It’s really hard for me to write about happy stuff.

I think I begin to see why not many people don’t really enjoy themselves in HC… cos after all the dances and songs and camaraderie, there is sheer menial drudgery. And unfortunately, most of the 2nd intakers didn’t even get to see the dances and songs and camaraderie. I wonder why HC didn’t bother to give the 2nd intakers the time to learn all the dances and songs? I remembered last night how much they’re missing out on… a lot of them were looking lost and bored cos they didn’t know any of them…

After the main events proper my senior class and us 1st intakes ran around doing stupid stuff… just like we used to…then we sat down in this little corner near the staffroom and started singing songs till we had to surrender to the birth of the new day…

The moon seemed sublimely resplendent that night…

You’re the soft splendour of moonlight in the wistful eye…