How much is your vote worth?

Taken from:

"According to the report, a survey of 3,000 students conducted by an NYU undergraduate journalism class found that an overwhelming majority of those polled said their right to vote could be for sale; in addition to the 66 percent who said they'd trade their vote for a free year of college, 20 percent said they'd exchange their vote for an Ipod Touch. Half of the students polled said they'd forfeit their right to vote forever for $1 million.

Dalton Conley, chairman of NYU's sociology department, told Politico.com that the results are actually encouraging. The high price tag most students put on their vote showed that they actually think the right to vote is very valuable and important."


Despite the iffy news source (you can see I don't think much of fox news), the question posed inspired me to ask myself the same question. What would it take for me to sit out the next election? The answer (not surprisingly) is not very much. The reason I come to that conclusion is that the chances of me voting at all in the election is terribly low - in the last 25 years of my life, my mother has gotten the chance to vote exactly ONCE, considering I live in the walkover Bukit Timah district. Even if I did get the chance to vote in the next election, the chances I would have a choice of candidates to vote for are incredibly slim and the outcome incredibly sad i.e. there is a 99% chance there won't be any good opposition and a 99.9% chance the guys in white would win anyway and my vote would be a token protest vote.

The sad thing is I think that transaction has already been enforced on me wil say or nil say not mattering much in this equation. "The Western media wants Singapore to 'listen to them' -- to introduce more democracy and public protests." Sounds familiar? That's what our very own LKY said last week. The rheotheric has always been that individual freedom is a "western" concept, not an "asian" one. The implication being that as asians if we give up individual freedoms, collective wealth and economic growth will come. Not that I am denying that Singapore has gained great leaps and bounds over the last decades but sometimes I wonder if we had to have given up one to have gotten the other. In other words, this is like the enbloc sale of a flat - because 80% of you want the cash return, the other 20% of you must be happy to give up your home of 40 years sentimental value or not and not complain.

That being said, while I say that my vote price for not voting in the next election (a near surety anyway) is relatively low, my price for voting one way or another is much higher and in the faint hope that things somehow change (or that I move to Hougang or Potong Pasir), I don't think I'll be giving up my right to vote for life anytime soon.

Disjointed

Sitting in the taxi going down memorial drive, i was struck with the sudden burst of feeling that "ah, I'm home" even as a wave of homesickness for the places I had just come from hit me.

Home is everywhere and nowhere. Boston is expansive and welcoming. Here I can breathe and grow. But all the freedom in the world can't buy me my family and friends, the culture and world that is the home of my childhood even as that very same culture and family suffocates and confines me.

"Choose!" everything screams at me. Choose. There are so many push factors and so little pull. This is not choosing. This is running away. Left or Right? It feels like I'm picking against the other path.

Going Home.

I'm leaving the US for the first time in two years in about seven hours. I haven't blogged in a while because things have been so hectic. To start with I finally took the GMATS last weekend. Taking it the last weekend before I leave was definitely cutting it a little close but although I was ready to take it the weekend before that, those plans were cut short by analyst training.

I don't have to think about work for at least a whole two weeks! (I did promise I'd check in and check email daily when I could though...) Yesterday, I went out with a whole bunch of people from work to a bar to celebrate everybody leaving on vacation and the successful outcome of standardized tests.

Incidentally... I scored a 780. The GMATs are scored cumulatively out of 800. My math score was 50 and the grammer portion was 48. Not that that means anything to anyone who hasn't taken the GMATs. I'm just so relieved that I don't have to take them again. I guess the sad thing is that singapore has probably prepared me for standardized testing. Simple skills like sitting through a 4 hour long exam has been ingrained in me through force - rendering it slightly easier for me now to do standardized tests than for most people I guess.

Now I have to decide what I want to do with my life. If I apply to business school, where do I apply? What do I study? And what the hell do I write in my essays?

Sometimes it seems like every decision I make is a decision to put off the real decision of what to do in life. Before I know it I'll be old and gray and I still won't have done anything I wanted to do with my life.

居場所

honey & clover の竹本君はｸﾘｽﾏｰｽがきらいな理由はいつもｸﾘｽﾏｰｽの時：’お前は幸せか？居場所あるか？’って感じる。今ｸﾘｽﾏｰｽの季節ではないが私そういう感じがわかる気になる。

ねえ、幸せってなに？なぜ人生の中でいろんな幸せの中から選ぶことにしかならない？

私の場合はいい仕事といい人間関係といい生活の所は全部世界の違う所だ。こうなたらどう選ぶでいいの？自分の居場所がどこか迷いってもどんなに時間かかって考えってもも答えがわからない。どんな道選んでもあと後悔するだろう。

forever missing

This week's Lexington column in the economist is about immigration policy in the US, a topic I read with particular interest because I'm one of many who came here to study and then decided to stay to work. While the column itself was interesting, one particular quote stuck in my mind - the immigrant's lament: "she has spent the past 25 years missing India and will spend the next 25 missing America".

While the countries mentioned and number of years mentioned are different, that one sentence seemed to sum up my future pretty well. It's one of the reasons why I find it so hard to figure out what I'm doing next, much less what I want to do with my life. Here in America, I pine for the food culture of Singapore and the zen lifestyle of Japan amongst many other little unique things about each society. Living in Japan, I missed the open hearted acceptance of the urbanite American cities. You can't have your cake and eat it too, if only because there's no way to physically live in 3 places at one time.

The road is wide open before me but ironically the crossroads are too many to choose between. And having chosen one path, would I forever wonder what was on the others? I always thought that at some point, I was going to move back to Asia, maybe even Singapore, which for 2/3 of my life I had called home and knew no other. But when I think back to how I felt when I was in Singapore, before I knew that there were other ways of living to miss, all I remember was feeling trapped, unable to breathe.

If I were to go back, would I be able to leave again? Is it easier to live in a gilded cage, if the door to that cage were always open? And if one were to live in that cage, and slowly realize one day that the once open door had shut, would the response be panic or contentment?

These are questions I would need to have my own answers to before I would ever think of moving home.

Need.

Whenever I get upset, or my heart is deeply unquiet, I have this abiding need to create. It used to be poetry but my words have long since abandoned my unfocused distracted mind. Right now, I just really want my paints.

However, I am in the office - the source of my need to paint, and therefore have contented myself with looking for an art program online, the better to flesh out my design for my next art project. I am going to paint a dresser.

That may have seemed like it came out of nowhere but where it really came out from was a combination of 3 things. Ikea is relatively cheap. Painted white dresser is already covered with an acrylic base i.e. no need to prime. White is a boring colour anyway.

The design that I have tentatively come up with is going to be called the forest of thorns (not that anybody is going to get that reference). I would come up with a more friendly happy design for something that's going to be placed in my house but I can't bring myself to paint anything that friendly or happy.

In any case, I get to put the cost of this project down to therapy which at $200 an hour, I certainly can't afford.

On Heroes.

For someone who was never a big fan of cartoons - disney or otherwise - growing up, I sure watch a lot of them now.

Not that I'm having some sort of early quarter-life crisis, on the contrary, these cartoons are hardly meant for kids. The cartoons I'm talking about come under the genre of Anime - mostly japanese-made serieses or movies that cover any and every subject matter - predestiny, duty, the meaning of freedom... everything from the nature of life to dealing with death.

Each title is like a story I watch unfold at the artist's pace and for each good story, at the end, I'm left wanting just a little bit more. I want them to tell me the answers to the questions that they are posing and yet I know, that only my own answers can give me any satisfaction. What does it mean to have a soul? Can a machine have real life?... Each time, they leave me to ponder my answers to the questions that they have left unanswered.

But more than that I think, I have finally found heroes in these cartoons that I can identify with, admire and respect.

I have a confession to make... I never liked any of the Disney Princesses. I watched the princess cartoons for the songs. The only one I had some semblance of liking was Belle and that was because of her love for books. Her dream library - that was my dream. I don't think I was ever meant to be a Princess in the way most people dream of being Princesses. Where most people dream of being gracious, kind, beautiful and loved by all... Where most people dream of having beautiful gowns, gorgeous palaces, and a prince to sweep them off their feet... It was all just a little empty to me.

In anime at last, I have found dreams big enough to satisfy me. In Utena I have a heroine that dreamed not of being a princess but of being a prince who can do the rescuing and be strong enough to stay loyal, true and protect those she loves. In Nana, I have someone strong enough to give up love to be able to follow her dream and stand on her own strength. And the best part? There is no Happy Ending. No Happily Ever After with adoration of subjects and a wedding. What there is, is pain, tears, suffering and yet the will to be strong, to do the right thing, and to make your own future.

That's something that I can live with.

The contents of my fridge.

This morning I looked in my fridge and took a mental catalogue of all that was in it.

For someone who lives alone, I have a terrible food habit - I buy lots of food to fill my fridge and cupboards and end up not eating half of it. Perhaps it's the legacy left from growing up in Singapore where food was the symbol of both prosperity and family, but food for me has always seem to symbolize so much more than just a means to survive. An empty fridge is an incredibly lonely thing.

Today I have - yoghurt (both the drinkable and the little cup kinds)
eggs
dried scallops (sent from home almost a year ago now, good thing they last forever)
chopped up cabbage (ingredient for okonomiyaki later this week)
bacon (I made the most delicious carbonara the other day)
cream (not sure what I'm going to do with this yet.. perhaps a stew?)
green onions
been sprouts (made pad thai yesterday)
gouda cheese (good snack)
shredded parmesan cheese (maybe another batch of carbonara?)
brie cheese (I used this to make pear, bacon and brie sandwiches)
leftover herbal chinese chicken soup
barley tea (I make big pitchers of these and stick them in the fridge)
coconut milk (I made curry last weekend, maybe I'll make nasi lemak)
chrysanthemum tea
black tea
white and mint tea (yes I have a lot of tea, love love love iced tea)
flour tortillas

As much as I miss the food back home, looking at my fridge I wonder if moving home would converesely make me miss other kinds of food. Like good bread, a plentiful variety of good cheese, and ironically Japanese homestyle food. As much as Singapore has amazing food in restaurants, I really think that the everyday grocery stores in Singapore leave much to desire. Grocery store food in Singapore is both not quite fresh enough and kind of boring. Or perhaps I only feel that way because I'm spoiled here by being able to buy what I desire without thinking of the cost. If I were to shop at gourmet supermarkets in Singapore, perhaps I'd feel differently.

I wonder what my life would be like if I were home. It'd be incredibly hard to move back to living wtih my family again after having had the glorious freedom of being my own person here. Worst, I'd have to give up my kitchen. One of my favourite books in the world is Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto. I understand the narrator perfectly in that story because giving up my kitchen would be one of the hardest things in the world for me to do.

If I ever had to move home, having my own kitchen would be the best consolation. I've never been able to cook in Singapore because my mum won't let anybody use "her" kitchen. If I had my own kitchen however, in return for the sacrifice of good cheese, amazing fresh vegetables, and exciting ingredients to play with I'd get to experiment with old and new ingredients and ways to use them in Singapore.

Akemashite Omedetou

new years are for new resolutions. new resolutions are however, for people who intend (if only for an hour or a day) to keep them.

Kotoshi mo yoroshiku onegaishimasu.