Long gone are the student days

On the way home today, I was standing by these 2 people – from the way they spoke, the Macbook Pro and textbook in her hands, I gathered that they’re uni undergrads, specifically SMU undergrads.

I got transported back to just a little over a year ago, when I was just like them – full of ideals and self-assuming theories about the world. A little over a year later, I realized how naive I had sounded.

Little had I known the challenges that laid ahead. Makes me wonder why graduation is a celebration when the working world is so much harder. The project mates that I hated? I hadn’t realized that I only saw them maybe 3 times a week. Try working with colleagues you hate for 10 hours a day, 5 days a week.

Project work that never seemed to end? Never-ending takes on a very real meaning when we step into the working world. At least project work has to end someway or another.

When I was a student, wishing that one day, I could earn my own money so I can spend it how ever I want? Nobody had told me that somehow, once we start working, that plate of wagyu steak, the classic Longchamp bag and the Zara dress all seemed more expensive than when I was a student.

Free time? That is the biggest luxury we don’t appreciate when we’re students.

Al these are said by a person who is immensely tired. Somehow, my emo words flow very well.

“If people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane”

I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together, in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.

- Looking for Alaska. John Green

Inconvenient truth

Been away from this place for awhile now.

I’ve posted this video of Gordon Ramsay on my Facebook, urging people to stop eating shark fins, very simply because it does not add any significant flavour to the soup/broth. You can eat an exact same broth without the shark fins in it, and you couldn’t taste the difference.

Thing is, I couldn’t bring myself to finish it, so I stopped within 3 minutes of the video. Somehow, today, I silently chided myself and played the whole thing from start to end. The heartbreaking part came when he came to a rooftop that is sunning an entire counter stacked with shark fins. Just how many sharks died unnecessary deaths because the Chinese need a certain type of food to make them feel like they are better than others?

The other heart breaking part came when Ramsay held up a perfectly big fin of a thresher shark. I cannot even begin to express my sadness; it feels like the ocean has now one less magnificent animal to patrol its waters. It’s heartbreaking because it is one less thresher I’ll ever (if I ever) get to see.

All these can end if lovers of sharks fin ask themselves, Why?
Why do I like to eat sharks fin? Do I like the soup, or the fin itself? Will I get an equal pleasure in eating just the fin without the broth? I do believe, more often than not, the answer boils down to – “I like the broth”. Which begs the statement of fin lovers professing their love for the fin.

I’ve been asking myself the thought-provoking, and often depressing question lately – what am I doing in this world? This video just fuelled my desire to make a bigger difference in the world.

Omm

Need some omm in my work life right now.

What they don’t tell you in school

Just when I was rethinking my career choices and wondering if I’ve made the best possible decisions I could have made in life, @JessLee sends this to me. Now I know I’m probably not alone. Some of the “rules” struck a chord in me.

And it’s again, back to the daily grind.

Bill Gates recently gave a speech at a High School about 11 things they did not and will notlearn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world.

Rule 1 : Life is not fair – get used to it!

Rule 2 : The world doesn’t care about your self-esteem.
The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3 : You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4 : If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss
(Agreed!! 120%!!!)

Rule 5 : Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity.
Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping:
They called it opportunity.

Rule 6 : If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7 : Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were;
So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’s generation, try delousing the closet in your own room..
(Never saw it from that perspective before…)

Rule 8 : Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT.
In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer.
*This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9 : Life is not divided into semesters.
You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF.
*Do that on your own time.
(This is quite sad)

Rule 10 : Television is NOT real life.
In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
(Now I really do feel better. So what they do in F.R.I.E.N.D.S is not true.)

Rule 11 : Be nice to nerds.
Chances are you’ll end up working for one..

Jaded

When you’ve been doing something for a long time, you get more experienced, right? Be it a job, a relationship or what have you. But experience can also translate to something else – you get so good at doing what you are doing that your perception gets warped.

A couple who has been together for a long time suddenly tumbles into the black hole because someone more interesting comes along. Because suddenly, your partner doesn’t mean that much to you anymore and the world out there smells fresher.

Junior/inexperienced employees join a company to learn through proper care and guidance. Chances for employees to learn and grow should be one of the key functions, isn’t it?

So many things I want to say but the Internet is a dangerous place to place words in.

Brain freeze

I was blog stalking and I read this birthday wish in a post:

So eloquently put and so thoughtful. Not something I couldn’t do, but as of late, I’ve realised that my birthday wishes, farewell wishes have sounded patronising more than anything else. It’s like an instant writer’s block when I pick up the pen to write something.

This will sound a lot like blaming, but I think work is a major reason why my brains seem to cease its function outside of work because they’re protesting against the intense stress I put them through on a normal work day.

Sometimes I wish that I have more time to think (of things other than work), to breathe, to ponder, and to just… stone.

:)

Needless to say, we’re all quite excited!