psalm 139

(this actually is the niv translation, so i must apologise for the misinformation given at dinner on thursday.)

O Lord, you have searched me and you know me
You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from arar.
You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord.

You hem me in, behind and before;
you have laid your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.

Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make mt bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.

If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,"
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.

For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.

How precious for me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand.
When I am awake, I am still with you.

If only you would slay the wicked, O God!
Away from me, you bloodthirsty men!
They speak of you with evil intent;
your adversaries misuse your name.
Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord
and abhor those who rise up against you?
I have nothing byt hatred for them;
I count them my enemies.

Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.

happy easter!

-- and may your life be bunnies!

well, my reply to penn is winging its way across the ocean, and the die, as they say, has been cast. now for the thrilling adventures of Visa Application Part II: Electric Boogaloo.

Currently reading:
The Discovery of Heaven - Harry Mulisch (at long last - been meaning to get to this for forever)

stockholm syndrome

From Today, Friday, April 14th

Said undergraduate Lester Chiew, 24: "I don't think there will be any negative repercussion on me (sic.) if I vote against them [the PAP]. I live in Hougang. The only repercussion could be delayed funds for the upgrading of my estate, but I don't think I will get thrown in jail."

forgot to mention: received minz's aickman dispatch a couple of days ago. (thank you!) i'm done -- does anyone want to trade?

saturday

dinner with dukies - everyone from my batch except a- who excused herself because of a family thing. everyone's working for the government, everyone and their pet goat, and the conversation was all elections and the world bank meeting and oh i'm sorry i fell asleep.

i'm puzzled - am i supposed to care? does there come a point where you have no friends if you don't? you know, when it's just a couple of people at table, tactful direction of the conversation towards mutually acceptable topics is achievable, but five against one is not a very fair fight. and i've tried to care, i honestly have, but every time i open the newspapers to read the "election" "news" my eyes start pooling with blood and i can't see the words.

Currently reading:
Nobody Nowhere - Donna Williams

post-script:
on further reflection, i realise that it's not the subject of singaporean government in itself that bores me, it's the subject of singaporean government discussed by singaporeans from a singaporean perspective. also: the endless prattling on about people who are heads of this and whatnot department/minstry being posted in/posted out/promoted/publicly shamed etc. I DON'T CARE. I REALLY REALLY DON'T.

yesterday was the last day of the saturday neuropsych class, and all i could think about the entire three hours was how i'm going to sleep till noon next saturday.

i had intended to buy d-- y-- a copy of the horizontal instrument as a way of saying thank you - everyone else who audited the course had to pay for it - but was thwarted - it seems that the copy i bought from one of the expo book fairs was the last in the whole of singapore. i do think it is very appropriate for him - he specializes in treating dementia in its various forms - so i told him to hang in there while i ordered a copy from amazon. i hope he actually reads it when it arrives. i know that it's right up his street - but people are so resistant to reading even the skinniest of novels nowadays.

g.k. chesterton's dedication, in the man who was thursday, to edmund clerihew bentley:

A cloud was on the mind of men
And wailing went the weather,
Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul
When we were boys together.
Science announced nonentity
And art admired decay;
The world was old and ended:
But you and I were gay;
Round us in antic order
Crippled vices came -
Lust that had lost its laughter,
Fear that had lost its shame.
Like the white lock of Whistler,
That lit our aimless gloom,
Men showed their own white feather
As proudly as a plume.
Life was a fly that faded,
And death a drone that stung;
The world was very old indeed
When you and I were young.
They twisted even decent sin
To shapes not to be named:
Men were ashamed of honour;
But we were not ashamed.
Weak if we were and foolish,
Not thus we failed, not thus;
When that black Baal blocked the heavens
he had no hymns from us.
Children we were - our forts of sand
Were even as weak as we,
High as they went we piled them up
To break that bitter sea.
Fools as we were in motley
All jangling and absurd,
When all church bells were silent
Our cap and bells were heard.

Not all unhelped we held the fort,
Our tiny flags unfurled;
Some giants laboured in that cloud
To lift it from the world.
I find again the book we found,
I feel the hour that flings
Far out of fish-shaped Paumanok
Some cry of cleaner things;
And the Green Carnation withered,
As in forest fires that pass,
Roared in the wind of all the world
Ten million leaves of grass;
Or sane and sweet and sudden as
A bird sings in the rain -
Truth out of Tusitala spoke
And pleasure out of pain.
Yes, cool and clear and sudden as
A bird sings in the grey,
Dunedin to Samoa spoke,
And darkness unto day.
But we were young, we lived to see
God break their bitter charms,
God and the good Republic
Come riding back in arms:
We have seen the city of Mansoul,
Even as it rocked, relieved -
Blessed are they who did not see,
But, being blind, believed.

This is a tale of those old fears,
Even of those emptied hells,
And none but you shall understand
The true thing that it tells -
Of what colossal gods of shame
Could cow men and yet crash
Of what huge devils hid the stars
Yet fell at a pistol flash
The doubts that were so plain to chase,
So dreadful to withstand -
Oh, who shall understand but you;
Yes, who shall understand?
The doubts that drove us through the night
As we two talked amain
And day had broken on the streets
Ere it broke on the brain.
Between us, by the peace of God,
Such truth can now be told:
Yes, there is strength in striking root,
And good in growing old.
We have found common things at last,
And marriage and a creed,
And I may safely write it now,
And you may safely read.

News on the Duke lacrosse team rape allegations, and President Brodhead's response

for my own edification more than anyone else's, and only because the subject of taboo in cambodia was brought up

Batter my heart, three person'd God; for, you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow mee,'and bend
Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurpt towne, to'another due,
Labour to'admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weake or untrue.
Yet dearely'I love you,'and would be loved faine,
But am betroth'd unto your enemie:
Divorce mee,'untie, or breake that knot againe;
Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I
Except you'enthrall mee, never shall be free,
Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee.
  
                                                    John Donne

re; you are not what you do

von:
if you're not what you do, what else is there to be? i think about this all the time, as i'm sure you must have too. work takes up so much of life that there isn't much room for anything else; if you're not doing work that is self-identifying, then things tend to get pretty damn dismal i think. got nothing to do with the powers that be.

grar.

---

me:
you just are what you...are. i know that's not a very good answer, -- but if i thought it through i'd probably come up with something about abstractions and essences and transcendence, and it would sound very zen, and it wouldn't help you very much either.

and it does involve tptb. making meaningless employment seem meaningful is one of the main aims of government. they're just more subtle about it nowadays.

---

von:
that's a terrible answer. it is non-descriptive in the worst way. this is the kind of thing that gives false hope. you know, in the way myth does.


he's right, and i will make a better go of it as soon as i'm not drowning in work. (though i cannot guarantee that thinking about it for a couple of hours will allow me to write a better answer than the one i threw off in 30 seconds).

speaking of akvavit,, being foiled not once but twice has only hardened my resolve to actually eat at the place. (corollary: i now know that when we finally do get to sit down at the restaurant the food will be several shades beyond inedible). nevertheless, i am stubborn and perverse, and anyone who wishes to join me in self-destruction may let me know after their (purported) opening on the 24th.

Currently reading:
Black Swan Green - David Mitchell

first of all, i'm not taking sides.

this is how i feel about things:

(i) it's so obvious that it's almost trite, but you are not what you do. the powers-that-be will try and tell you otherwise, but please don't sell yourself that short, even if you don't have a religion.

(ii) "becoming everything you can be" is a bullshit, pie-in-the-sky notion that's been drilled into us through a combination of our education and mutual reinforcement. particularly when we apply this to The Choice (capitalised because of what it's become for us). i've said this. if you have found your oasis of happiness, and you can live wth yourself (as su-lin says she has), for goodness sake, sit down and drink. there is only one variable in the equation.

(iii) confession: i do feel in some ways apart from the teachers and the other civil servants, even though i've been here with them through the entirety of their careers so far. and i'm not blaming anyone for anything -- for instance, i understand why you would want to talk about work when we get together, because that's how it is: personalizing, consolidation, etc. i remember booking out from ns and meeting (guy) friends and having nothing to do around the dinner table except tell endless stories about field camps and platoon sergeants -- and i'm sure that bmt sucked 10,000 times worse than anything people are going through now (apologies if i'm wrong). but su-lin has cp, and jy and yen and addy can commiserate about -- well, whatever, i don't really know what they commiserate about because it's all acronyms and abbreviations -- but i don't have that. and in that way, i do understand where minz's sentiments are coming from, particularly when you add physical distance into the mix, and i can't say that i might not feel the same way a year from now.

(iv) and though i've never said this explicitly, i would like to be connected to the people who are most important to me in that way. (also, unlike what anybody may think i haven't "betrayed" myself, reason being in (i), above). just because i'm doing something different doesn't mean i have any less need to want to talk about it. but since deisderata and reality will never meet - i have no illusions about that - there's no point in either smacking my head against the brick wall or bitching about it in vain. being at peace with that notion has helped, and i guess i need that tranquility now more than ever.

today i learned that "nosology" is the "branch of medical science dealing with the classification of diseases". surprisingly, i did not learn this from an episode of house

cambodia photos (postscript)

* von tells me that using photobucket (as opposed to flickr) is demonstrably un-l33t. i had not a clue.

cambodia photos

it's been long enough

thanksgiving

because of the company i choose to keep, because of the circles i travel in, i forget that out there in the world - and closer, much closer to home than terrorists and dictators - are people who are truly, incorrigibly horrid (and i use the word very intentionally -- because we're not even talking about evil, a concept far more alien and difficult to diagnose.) the kind of people who fundamentally do not care. the takers. and because i don't often encounter them, my inner spectrum of good and bad is shortened, warped, and peccadilloes and foibles get blown up and become suddenly enormous and grotesque.

thus, thanksgiving is in order. first, for days like today, when things get put into perspective. second, that these days are few and far between. and third, that God gave us the capacity to forgive -- both idiosyncrasies and hurts far more grievous.

request

can someone else please write about siem reap? the mere thought of doing that exhausts me.

edited because i can't spell

because you asked

"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, trust also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going"

John 14:1-4

that's why.

dinner with nl, who's headed out to nyu in the fall for a phd in computational whatchacajigummy somethingoranother. we entertained, very briefly, the idea of sharing an apartment in princeton or some such place midway between us, but mapquest very quickly shot that down in flames.

Currently reading:
Leviathan - Paul Auster