It’s always good to have new experiences. I finally got myself exposed to the Info Comms lecture last Friday. I so love being bombarded by big words with the likes of androcentrism during the sociology of food lecture (even Office 2003 cannot decipher this combination of letters in the alphabet!) Being able to attend the Info Comms lecture gave me some insights into what I am headed for the rest of my university life. I liked what I saw. Concepts like how media sets the agenda for people’s thoughts for the next weeks or months and who actually calls the shots as to what they shall cover infused into my brain cells that day. Turns out established news agencies like the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal are the ones which decide on the headlines and then it spawns a trail of followers from other media bodies. There is actually an emerging Knowledge Gap resulting from advancements in Information Technology as well, which is pretty much like the disparity of income, only this is more intangible and subjective. Tomorrow, make that later today,
I will be tagging along for another field trip to NUS’s lecture theatres again! Yet another foray into the unknown, good for me to walk the ground first before officially stepping foot into the premises with my own matriculation ID and everything starts to follow a form of routine inevitably making life so much less carefree as it is right now.
As I type it is the third day of Chinese New Year, the year of the rooster. It’s been quite a fruitful new year, and I’m not talking in terms of monetary gains. We’ve visited quite a lot of friends this year, some of which I actually made the effort to contact and meet up with and most of all, people whom I want to see and not just my parents’ friends. This makes me less of a victim to my dad’s tyranny with time and how he always manages to find ways to “save time” by taking short cuts to people’s houses but somehow we end up being later than had we gone on with the original plan. I can choose to leave as and when I wanted now. No one’s perfect, at least there is still a glimmer of hope that he will not become a full-fledged grandfather replica of mine.
Another thrilling thing that happened around this time is that on the eve of Chinese New Year, Shaun (my senior from St Stephen’s School and campmate) and I went back to school and showed them young punks how the big boys play basketball. We had fun prancing around the diminutive court and truncated stanchions dribbling a size 4 soccer ball, sponsored by a junior who claimed that he found the ball. On one end of the court is a slightly bent rim with an estimated angle of depression = 30°. What we did was try to jam the ball ala NBA’s Allen Iverson on a fast break. It felt so close to the real thing. Being able to shove the ball into the rim was an ethereal feeling. I understand now why the crowd goes wild whenever someone dunks in a game. It crushes the opponents’ will and assimilates that stolen strength into their own team. I am almost certain there was a surge of raw power pulsating through those veins that not even the searing sun or the starving stomach could sap away, on a successful dunk. The last time I had so much fun was back in Nanyang Junior College, when Jin Yuan and I went to Catholic High to play, and the rim back there was in derelict condition such that dunking didn’t produce that much of endorphin. Success rate that day wasn’t that high (maybe 2/5 dunks would not result in the ball flying in the opposite direction after ramming the inside of the rim due to insufficient clearance off the ground), or probably because we just ran 4.2 km at Bishan Park, as part of the preparation for neutering the effects of Chinese New Year weight gaining back in Sungei Gedong Camp. Daniel drove us there in his brother’s BMW, about time I took an interest in cars. Made it so much easier to go missing in action after the run.
Since I didn’t list down my new year resolutions last time round, I shall adopt the better late than never consolation and hand up my late work in the next entry. May the new year bring new things to learn, new things to do and new challenges to conquer! It’s the Rat’s Year for 21st birthdays!
Birthday wishes to: Yosep, Kaiyi (Fillet Sis)
Currently listening to: Power 98 LIVE online, as 120GB hard disk is not connected
