"Toccata" and "Fugue" by J.S. Bach

I went searching for J.S. Bach online after piano lesson today. Here's an interesting YouTube video post I found. Apparently the guy who made the video made different midi files and fused them together to form the video. Very cool!

There is no truth. There is only perception.

So said Gustave Flaubert, the great French novelist, considered by most to be The Great French Realist.

Following recent Singaporean incidents such as the suicide of David Widjaja in NTU and the infamous AWARE saga, I am beginning to see why such philosophy exist.

How can one hope to know the true circumstance of things when everything is smeared with a cloud of opinion? One can think that the Josie Lau team were a group of radical Christians out to hijack a secular women's association to spread their personal beliefs, while another can think that the opposition old guard are promoters of homosexuality. There would be no end to it. It seems like we always tend to see the world in distinct ways: Christians hate homosexuals and plan to take over the world; Homosexuals plan to take over the world by turning everyone gay.

The thing is, most of the time, we just act according to what we think is right. And there are 6,706,993,152 different ways of doing what is right. What we see as methodological and organised takeovers of our society are nothing but the push and pulls of the aggregate values of Singapore. That is something we would have to face and find in ourselves to accept in all things

I do not believe that there is no truth, just that it is impossible to know it. Much like how it's impossible to see the two sides of the same coin in one glance, we can never know the entirety of Truth. Perhaps that's why we are embroiled in wars and conflicts, forever insisting on the authenticity of what our faction holds to be true.

One would think though, that the human race would one day cease to argue once they all realise that there would be no end to it.

Take for example Cheney's defence of the usage of torture in the interrogation of terrorists. There can be no end to such an argument. A security hawk would think that such criminals deserve the harshest punishment to exact the information they require while the opponents would see it as a breach of human rights. (Though if you really think about it, it would be quite funny to see the wardens pleading the terrorists to let on the location of bombs they have planted: "Hey man, can you please tell me where your buddies are going to crash the next plane?")

I guess at the end of the day its to each his own. We all have to seek our own truth.

Bowling Champion.

There was an SMa Bowling event going on at Mt Faber SAFRA yesterday and I got $133 richer from it.

This must be God's little reward for me for my work here. Hahas.. Anyway, it's official. I am having my last day on June 2. I really enjoyed myself here. But I guess there's never a neverending banquet. All good things come to an end as they say.

I'd miss you guys, EDC! and CCL!

A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon

A story about one George Hall slowly undergoing a bout of depression and panic attacks after finding a lesion at his hip which he suspects to be cancer. The novel pans out in the backdrop of his daughter, Katie getting remarried with Ray, an ultra safe and regular guy who is the exact opposite of her ex-husband.

As the story moves along, we find out the dark secrets of the Hall family: Jean, the Mother, is sleeping with George's ex-colleague. Jamie, the Son, is a homosexual who cares too much about how others might see his sexuality and hence is unwilling to commit to his relationship, and Katie, the Daughter, who marries a guy whom she is not sure that she loves but who would be able to provide her with all that she seeks.

The mode the novel was written in was confusing at the start, and it took a few chapters to get used to the jumping from a character view to another. Once you got used to it though, it felt to be an apt way of portraying the individual break-downs in relationships in each of the character's lives.

I especially liked the part where Katie discovered her love for Ray only after splitting up and questioning why she really wanted to marry him, and how Jamie realised his own iniquities after Tony left him in a hurry because he was not invited to Katie's wedding.

I guess it's very true that you will only find out what you treasure the most the moment you lose it.

The ending was happy and wholesome, with everyone finding their happiness and George regaining a certain sense of sanity by rejecting his panic.

A good read on the whole that allows the reader to really feel the panic and strange logic that bogged George throughout the novel and a good expository piece on our modern family and relational values.

Alma mater.

Well, it turned out better than we all expected it to.

The bottomline is, we get to continue as a CCA, and that is all that matters for now. What we really need to do is to prove that we have what it takes to achieve more. Come on J1s! You can do it!