Checked Out

There you are, standing in a line at a supermarket. You feel the gaze of people as their lewd looks wash over your body, and you feel like a victim of an overactive imagination. Yet the worse part comes, when you finally reach the end of the line, and the guy at the check out counter starts reaching into your basket and handling your goods.

"Hey nice buns."
"What round melons you have."
"Got milk?"

Even though the guy at the supermarket counter is called the check-out guy, I don't think he has any right to do any sort of "checking out". I find it somewhat disturbing to be judged and discriminated by what I buy, when I buy and how much I buy.

"Hmm... Mac & Cheese right? How's college?"
"Coffee? Doing a lot of late night studying, huh?"
"PRICE CHECK ON TWELVE PACK CONDOMS ON AISLE 12!"

They seem to pass down judgement with every guilty pleasure in your shopping basket. They discriminate so easily. Junk food? College student. Fruits? Married guy or just gay. Fresh, organic vegetables? Lesbian, vegan couple. Yes, you can always spot them, from their organic fresh pickles to their hippie-colored, Alpaca, au naturale, clothing, and you just can't miss that other similarly dressed woman who seems conjoined to her by the hands, or lips.

It's sort of like a fat lady comes to the counter, and starts putting low-fat icecream, low-fat sausages, low-fat cooking oil, low-fat pig lard, low-fat fat and low-fat cholestrol... then the guy must have been trying to stiffle back a laughter and yell out loud, "Forget low fat, lady, just don't eat for a month and save an Ethiopian village."

But after all, you are what you eat, and implicitly, by association, you are what you shop. But hey, I just want a huge bag of chips once in a while. Call it guilty pleasure, call it necessary sin, call it whatever, it doesn't need to be judged. I'm just glad to get out of there, with my package, and my dignity, still intact.

discrimi-Nation

I've learnt in the course of my years, that everyone says the same thing. Everyone has the same kind of corporate culture, everyone emphasises on the same key highlights, everyone speaks highly of the people, everyone gives better perks, everyone has the same competitive strength.

I'm sorry, but if everyone has the same thing, no one has anything. Every company I met with gave me the same pitch, a great environment to work at, a non-discriminatory policy, a dynamic corporate culture and its strengths are its people. Yes, its strengths are its people. Take a look a every annual report. Good employees are the basis of a good company, and each company has the best people.

Makes you sort of wonder, where are the not-so-best people? Makes you wonder, which are the companies that treats its people like shit? Makes you sort of wonder, which is the company that doesn't have these competitive strengths, or discriminates against people, or doesn't place any emphasis on professional development?

That's why I'm beginning to feel jaded with the word meritocracy. Everyone claims to be a meritocracy, but what is a meritocracy? The word meritocracy is just about as tangible as the phrase "paradigm shift" or "multiverse". It's a word that just doesn't describe anything. Nothing is a meritocracy, period. A meritocracy is a system which rewards the talented, capable and intelligent. If meritocracies exsits, why does the word itself, not proliferate as much as the phrase, "It doesn't matter what you what you know, but who you know."

Awesome, cronyism-in-guise-of-networking trumps meritocracy anyday.

Any meritocratic system has its points of abuse. It has some sort of clause that allows it to discriminate, in some sort of weird seemingly logical excuse. Take for example the US Army. They are an institution that discriminate against homosexuals; "if you ain't gay, you're okay." So, hint to all the guys, if the Iraq war goes back, and US institutes a draft, hey, you know which way to swing. Though, it'll be interesting, if Hollywood makes a movie (yes, Hollywood likes to make movies about gays.) about the impossible situation where the US Army accepts homosexuality, and allows gays into the army and creates an all-gay platoon. Yes, it's Brokeback Mountain in army fatigues. Urgh.

But you get the point, that every system has some sort of fail-safe discriminatory policy. I can't help but feel it. Every company tells me the same thing, "Everyone we interview is qualified for the job." Wait a minute, have you seen some of the people you've been interviewing with? Okay that aside, companies aren't exactly looking for people to work. Companies are looking for people to work with. There's a whole difference. If I look like Britney Spears, blonde with a loose personality and looser legs, I'd be VP tomorrow.

Nah, I'm just exaggerating, but I have this funny suspicion that applying for jobs is like getting picked for dodgeball in elementary school: first you pick your best friend, then you pick your next best friend, and leave out the guy who won't give you candy, and pick the next guy, and next guy, and when you got everyone you like on your team, all your good buddies, you look back and the rest of the people you don't know, don't like and don't bother and say, "We regret to inform you that we cannot extend you an offer to join our firm. This should not be considered an adverse comment on your abilities; rather it reflects our genuine desire to thoroughly evaluate a candidate in relation to his or her goals, our environment and current staffing needs."

Thinking out loud

We grasp on to these little tidbits of time, hungry for a bit more, asking for just some more, but what is it just that we're exactly asking for?

Not time, not exactly. I just want a moment, where I'm just happy, when everything is just nice the way it is, where I am comfortable.

Happy birthday to me,
Happy birthday to me,
Happy birthday to me,
Happy birthday to me.

How many moments does a person have in a lifetime? Moments, that aren't time. Everyone has the same amount of time, 24 hours, 60 minutes, 60 seconds, seven days a week and 365 days a year, but moments are so different. Moments, are the times you remember, memories. And all I want is just always, just, one more moment. And it's so fleeting, so gone before you know it, that you realise that you've just had it, when you are no longer experiencing the moment.

We could pretend like we're meeting tomorrow.

I find myself clawing at the sands of lost time. Wondering a lot of what ifs. Two nights ago, I wondered, "What am I doing in New York?" It is too late to be asking that question now, isn't it? Sometimes I am afraid of what things could have been, and what things could be. Just thinking of my transition between high school and college, did I ever appreciate how a miniscule change could have made it all different? I guess I never did appreciate it, neither did a lot of people, but how close I came to being a doctor, or an engineer, or something else. Or nothing.

I wonder why NYU even accepted me. I never realised how risky it was to put NYU as my "safety school" I figured it was just another regular school. I mean, well, think about it any way, if I were accepted into NUS med school, or dentistry, I would be in Singapore, and I always wondered, whether I would just be like you, doing nothing every day, waiting for time to pass, until the sky falls down. Or whether I'd become this completely different person, completely studious with my head so far down the books, I fail to see anything else. Or what else could I have become? It was all a flip of a coin, my life itself could have branched in a multitude of directions, think about it. I had applied to so little universities, that I could be doing nothing right now. Nothing.

One criticism about me is that I think too much. It reflects in my skeptical approach to everything. I suppose I might have been too hard on myself and the world. But I see myself in everyone... a little bit of me there, reminding me always of what I could be, or what I could have been. I could have been a doctor, or an engineer, or a slacker, or a biochemist. I could have been a shallow person, or a hermetic recluse. I could be a Wall Street Banker, I could have been a social worker. I could have been so many things which I see in so many people whom I want to be, and I want to be them all. I see possibilities, I see where I could be. And because of that, I am afraid that I am not where I want to be.

Y'know what I want for my birthday? I just want a regular day. A regular day. That's all I'm asking. A regular day, where no one acts any differently from any other day. Except the polite greeting of happy birthdays and a sincere handshake. That's all... today's not a day to show any sort of appreciation or celebration. Every day is just as special as today, and every day I am here, is a good enough reason to celebrate already. No artificially created moments, no awkward social situations where I'm obligated to feel happy and appreciated and touched, no empty gestures, just a little bit of decency, because that's just want we need in this world. Decent people.

Sometimes I wish I could be less vague in how I write stuff out. But sometimes, it is the words that don't matter, you just feel those words and they evoke a more powerful meaning in your mind that words just can't. Or maybe I'm just making excuses so I can write blogs which just don't make sense.

Do my writings just jump all over the place? Is it that hard to find continuity in everything I write? No it's not... it's all one fluid thought for me, just one single fluid thought that runs on about me. After all, am I writing about three things? Or am I just writing about one? What do these words mean? How are they related? Why do I ask questions? Who are these questions for? And at the end of it all, it doesn't matter what you know or what you think, but rather what you feel. And perhaps if you look deep enough, you'll find that everything is all the same, and all is one, and you'll see a little of yourself in everyone.

Not everything has to make sense does it?

How about this? I just want a little more time, to be in a comfortable place, among people I love, to tell them all the things I want to tell them, and let them say all the things they want to say, to guide me in a direction where I want to go by helping me figure out, who I am.