g|eichnisse

Ah Boy, Huat Ignorance You Talking?

at the annual gathering of the family over at gramp’s

aunt: what are you studying again?

me: english literature.

aunt: orh, so you want to be a teacher? or are you going to be a writer? (chuckles)

me: erm, no. not really. i’ll probably be going on for masters or something. film studies.

cousin: wah, you want to be a film director huh?! (slightly mockingly)

me: no? anyway, erm what are you studying?

cousin: business.

me: oh, so you wanna be a businessman?

an awkward silence bleeds over our shoulders.

as the annual fanfare of chinese new year draws nearer - disturbingly so - so does the awkward round of questions: mothers measure the futures of their sons and daughters against the products of other mothers, trying to ascertain if their investments were well on their way of paying off. a round of stock-taking. vicarious lives on display. possibilities traded away in the chatter.

and as the sessions of mahjong begins, so does the calculations: dreams dreamt long ago are slowly tossed into the pile, as mothers and fathers try their luck at finding the winning combination.

‘singapore’ is dreaming, and she is going gaga over the red packets. at the end of the visitations, it’s time to calculate if she has made a loss or a gain this year.

huat is it that you really want in those red packets of yours?

Nova Godina

“Time really is one big continuous cloth, no? We habitually cut out pieces of time to fit us, so we tend to fool ourselves into thinking that time is our size, but it really goes on and on.”

Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase

at the point of this reflection/refraction, earth completes its round around the sun once more as it has been doing so for millions. the end of ‘2011’ does not tell the full story, since the years that preceded the two thousand odd years simply ‘vanishes’ behind the numbers.

time is a funny thing. and here we are, signposting the years to mark our existence. we look back and down on ourselves at stages of time. our time.

anyhow, 2011 has been a great time. and i suppose i ought to, in retrospect, refract on it with the lens being the time elapsed between the there and now.

half the year spent away from home was no doubt an unforgettable experience. there’s a cliche about student exchange(s) - that it, the time abroad and out of one’s ‘comfort zone’, changes our life or you completely. well, it wasn’t totally the truth or the reality of it, i’d say. what often accompanies this statement is the assumption that the experience one has as a foreign student ‘grows’ you or simply makes you a better person. i don’t completely disagree with it, but i think the time outside of one’s comfort zone makes you more aware of what you can become. i mean that who i was in my time in zagreb does not necessarily makes the trip back home or rather, ‘he’ did not completely translate across. but what i gained was an insight or a knowing of who i can be or was. that, for me, is the crucial difference from the cliched statement.

a new year is perhaps similar. it doesn’t mean a complete kenosis of that which comes before it (although people who suffered a terrible year in 2011 might be wishing for that). but year 2012 represents a new time that can be molded into difference based on what it was that happened in 2011, or the years and circuits that earth made running around the sun for the longest time. i’m not good with new year resolutions. half the time, by march i end up already forgetting or abandoning what it was that was written down in solid conviction at the start of the year. all i really know is, i want it to be different. 2011 was an awesome year. but i am approaching 2012 with the belief that it will be different, it will reveal in deleuzean fashion the possibilities of life itself in all its sound and fury.  

so keep the balloon flying high, as you breathe in the new year.