dumped in some photos from my australia holiday last year, because the reader needs pictures to give the eye a visual treat every now and paragraph-then
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Life and How to Survive It**Below is a speech to the graduating class of 2008 at NTU convocationceremony last week by Adrian Tan, a litigation lawyer and the author of TheTeenage Textbook. Read it! It's hilarious but very meaningful.
I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School ofCommunication and Information for inviting me to give your convocationaddress. It's a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here forten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation. I saythis as a Singaporean and more so as a husband.
My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one. She isthe editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has honedher expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practising at homeduring conversations between her and me.
On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day tellingpeople how wrong they are. I make my living being disagreeable.Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That isbecause when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one whotriumphs is always the wife.And so I want to start by giving one piece of advice to the men: when you'vealready won her heart, you don't need to win every argument.
Marriage is considered one milestone of life. Some of you may already bemarried. Some of you may never be married. Some of you will be married. Someof you will enjoy the experience so much, you will be married many, manytimes. Good for you.
The next big milestone in your life is today: your graduation. The end ofeducation. You're done learning.You've probably been told the big lie that "Learning is a lifelong process"and that therefore you will continue studying and taking masters' degreesand doctorates and professorships and so on. You know the sort of people whotell you that? Teachers. Don't you think there is some measure of conflictof interest? They are in the business of learning, after all. Where wouldthey be without you? They need you to be repeat customers.
The good news is that they're wrong.
The bad news is that you don't need further education because your entirelife is over. It is gone. That may come as a shock to some of you. You're inyour teens or early twenties. People may tell you that you will live to be70, 80, 90 years old. That is your life expectancy.
I love that term: life expectancy. We all understand the term to mean theaverage life span of a group of people. But I'm here to talk about a biggeridea, which is what you expect from your life.
You may be very happy to know that Singapore is currently ranked as thecountry with the third highest life expectancy. We are behind Andorra andJapan, and tied with San Marino. It seems quite clear why people in thosecountries, and ours, live so long. We share one thing in common: ourfootball teams are all hopeless. There's very little danger of any of ourcitizens having their pulses raised by watching us play in the World Cup.Spectators are more likely to be lulled into a gentle and restful nap.
Singaporeans have a life expectancy of 81.8 years. Singapore men live to anaverage of 79.21 years, while Singapore women live more than five yearslonger, probably to take into account the additional time they need to spend in the bathroom.
So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you'll have another 40years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they're 50,40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their convocation.They would be very disappointed that they didn't meet their life expectancy.
I'm here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy.
After all, it's calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want toexpect being average.Revisit those expectations. You might be looking forward to working, fallingin love, marrying, raising a family. You are told that, as graduates, youshould expect to find a job paying so much, where your hours are so much,where your responsibilities are so much.
That is what is expected of you. And if you live up to it, it will be anawful waste.
If you expect that, you will be limiting yourself. You will be living yourlife according to boundaries set by average people. I have nothing againstaverage people. But no one should aspire to be them. And you don't needyears of education by the best minds in Singapore to prepare you to beaverage.
What you should prepare for is mess. Life's a mess. You are not entitled toexpect anything from it. Life is not fair. Everything does not balance outin the end. Life happens, and you have no control over it. Good and badthings happen to you day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. Your degreeis a poor armour against fate.
Don't expect anything. Erase all life expectancies. Just live. Your life isover as of today. At this point in time, you have grown as tall as you willever be, you are physically the fittest you will ever be in your entire lifeand you are probably looking the best that you will ever look. This is asgood as it gets. It is all downhill from here. Or up. No one knows.
What does this mean for you? It is good that your life is over.
Since your life is over, you are free.
Let me tell you the many wonderful things that you can do when you are free.The most important is this: do not work.
Work is anything that you are compelled to do. By its very nature, it isundesirable.Work kills.
The Japanese have a term "Karoshi", which means death fromoverwork. That's the most dramatic form of how work can kill. But it canalso kill you in more subtle ways. If you work, then day by day, bit by bit,your soul is chipped away, disintegrating until there's nothing left. A rockhas been ground into sand and dust.
There's a common misconception that work is necessary. You will meet peopleworking at miserable jobs. They tell you they are "making a living". No,they're not. They're dying, frittering away their fast-extinguishing livesdoing things which are, at best, meaningless and, at worst, harmful.
People will tell you that work ennobles you, that work lends you a certaindignity. Work makes you free. The slogan "Arbeit macht frei" was placed atthe entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps. Utter nonsense.
Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so thatyou can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. Youmay never reach that end anyway.
Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoydoing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for tworeasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value initself.
I like arguing, and I love language. So, I became a litigator. I enjoy itand I would do it for free. If I didn't do that, I would've been in someother type of work that still involved writing fiction – probably a sportsjournalist.
So what should you do? You will find your own niche. I don't imagine youwill need to look very hard. By this time in your life, you will have a verygood idea of what you will want to do. In fact, I'll go further and say theideal situation would be that you will not be able to stop yourself pursuingyour passions. By this time you should know what your obsessions are. If youenjoy showing off your knowledge and feeling superior, you might become ateacher.
Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an obsession.Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don't, you areworking.
Most of you will end up in activities which involve communication. To thoseof you I have a second message: be wary of the truth. I'm not asking you tospeak it, or write it, for there are times when it is dangerous orimpossible to do those things. The truth has a great capacity to offend a ndinjure, and you will find that the closer you are to someone, the more careyou must take to disguise or even conceal the truth. Often, there is greatvirtue in being evasive, or equivocating. There is also great skill. Anychild can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takesgreat maturity to appreciate the value of silence.
In order to be wary of the truth, you must first know it. That requiresgreat frankness to yourself. Never fool the person in the mirror.
I have told you that your life is over, that you should not work, and thatyou should avoid telling the truth. I now say this to you: be hated.
It's not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you? Yet everygreat figure who has contributed to the human race has been hated, not justby one person, but often by a great many. That hatred is so strong it hascaused those great figures to be shunned, abused, murdered and in one famousinstance, nailed to a cross.
One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it's often the case thatone is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one's ownconvictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to beaccommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitatetowards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role.There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offendingthem, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doingsomething wrong.
The other side of the coin is this: fall in love.I didn't say "be loved".
That requires too much compromise. If one changesone's looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.
Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me totell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation.That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We've taken a microscope toeveryone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find areason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only onereason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kindof work that I find palatable.
Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attractionand something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. Inloving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. Welearn the truth worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human.Loving is good for the soul.
Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn't happen bychance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly,sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed,but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.
You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is lessimportant than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.
You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is notreciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspireyou.
Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to lovingsomeone. You either don't, or you do with every cell in your body,completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, andyou are reborn, all the better for it.
Don't work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.
You're going to have a busy life. Thank goodness there's no life expectancy.
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oh and i remember sometime in church long ago, someone said that the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. just a side note though that i thought of while reading this
the subway sub bug was damn cool right.
clouds there are nice, you find more pepsi than coke, and it comes in glass bottles.
fish n chips are served in big, big, big portions. which is very good and in paper wrapping so it can be takeaway-ed
daylight there lasts into the early hours of the night
some shots were taken at king's park, perth, this super big park. very nice place, grass much like istana, you can lie there all day really
others were taken at some vineyards and random small parks where the piers were white with bird shit
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