I was out on the Town Green this morning at 4:00am (after a video chat with a friend) and the singular serenity of the campus atmosphere at that time was striking. It is a rare phenomenon in modern society to feel a peace so pure and so untainted by the natural sense of mistrust that has come to accompany the dark. Because, while darkness is not inherently undeserving of our trust, it experiences this collateral damage due to its close association with our true fears. These fears take advantage of the dark and make it a scapegoat for their own acts of depravity and sickness.
But I digress. Indeed, a college campus that has been cleared of its telltale daily indicators of academia (i.e. backpacks, laborious sighs, stressed minds, and tired eyes) suddenly appears as weary as its frequenters—-and as equally deserving of its night-time break as its humans are of sleep. I felt safe in the Utown darkness. The Green promised peace and I gladly accepted it. Thank you.
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Garden Rhapsody light show
7:45pm and 8:45pm on Wednesday, July 12th, 2017. Never has something been so touristy and hyped and actually worth all the fanfare. What a magical show. I can’t even put my finger on why; but those dancing lights will be one of my top memories of Singapore. Apparently electricity, engineering, and a good sense of rhythm are the only three ingredients one needs to make magic. <3 I have been here three times now:
The first time, I happened upon it while wandering away from the ICA building. The second time, I took bus #33 and got off at Bugis Stn so that I could go to Epicenter and buy the ethernet adapter that I needed for my Macbook. And the third time, what was supposed to be a pit stop in Bugis (while I was coming from the National Gallery and going to Little India) turned into a six-hour shopping spree. (Mind you, my shopping “spree” was SG$60.05 for the whole day, which includes meals, other foods, souvenirs, and superfluous (yet unexciting) accessory items. But I think it’s sad how easily one can run into a mall here in Singapore. You can walk more than 2 miles in any direction without coming across a shopping center and the downfall in such a consumerist pastime is a result of both our own susceptibility to temptation and the selfish nature of the business world. Because if we were to single out the stores that were actually integral to our survival or to a moderate quality of life, we would be left with far more open, undeveloped land (to provide real food) and the space to discover all that is so much more important than all the stuff we could purchase and accumulate from a mall. I am a hypocrite; I get sucked into the tiled, shiny buildings to browse and select items that I believe will help cultivate happiness in my life. And even if a bag ends up being useful or a protective cover saves my knick knacks or my purchases otherwise seem to justify the amount that I deemed to be a fair exchange for them–there’s always something inexplicably deflating when, once again in the privacy of one’s own dwelling, we find that our shopping victories belong on top of the pile of previous victories that we now just call ‘stuff.’ ‘Stuff’ is such an ugly, vague term. But it brings us so much comfort; and what happened to human beings as the generations passed that has made us so easy to appease? Why do we desire so little for ourselves these days. I am strongly disgruntled when something looks yummy and then ends up tasting fishy.
Unless I am eating fish or looking for fish or settling for fish byproducts, the chances of me wanting to taste any hint of fishiness are negative one billion trillion to one. An entertaining mash-up of the millennial generation’s two most nefarious addictions: over-priced, sugar-diluted bean juice and pictures of one’s own face that are often unrecognizable and obtained through overly complex processes.
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Authormy mind is full of gibberish and this space will keep me sane. we have a love-hate relationship. Archives
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