How does one write a pre-NS post anyway? :/ My mind is literally buzzing with expectations, fears, and a whole gamut of nonsense at the moment. I’m pushing myself, no, forcing myself to think positive, and it’s all been pretty okay, but the idea that today is the last day before I go in is kind of daunting. Just an hour ago I was sitting on my couch feeling pretty terrible that I’m wasting my last civilian day away not doing anything. Then I decided to stop feeling sorry for myself and just go settle all my packing.

I hope that that mindset sticks. For all it’s worth, NS is, in the end, an unadulterated experience. It’s an unavoidable two years, and if I’m not positive, it’s going to be hell. I suppose this is where one really grows up. It takes more than a few reflections and musings to mature… I guess that’s where trial by fire really comes into play. It’s not going to be easy. It’s out of my comfort zone, I’ll miss family and friends… but it’s going to be doable. I suppose that’s all I can tell myself right now.

To whoever’s reading, see you in a few weeks. To those already there, I’ll see you in a day or two (:

Looking at my post again, it seems more like a pep talk to myself more than anything else. Ah well. It’s an update at least.

Back when the lovebirds start chirping~

No favours to Panama,
No favours to the Suez,
None but the naivete of a man
And a plan

Deaf of misfortune
And glee of burden
No shades before the Sun
Takes shots without a gun

Speculative firing
Foolish yet assured
As the clock chimes
I walk into a vivid darkness

I suppose it’s only when you experience these kind of things for yourself when you feel truly empathetic. I always expected one of these moments to happen sooner or later. I never did expect it to happen, however, sitting in the corner of the Debt Recovery department. Debt recovery isn’t a particularly interesting field of law. Person A with outstanding debt on a credit card hasn’t paid off the bank, and the bank sends a team of lawyers (no, most of the time they’re paralegals) after said debtor for awhile. Almost every initial writ from the court is identical, claiming the fee, some interest, some costs, and etcetera, sometimes it comes with a writ to seize the debtors’ belongings, and almost all of them don’t end very happily. As I sit leafing through literally thousands of files, I feel both a sense of monotony and boredom. After all, all the cases are the same..

Then I ran into one which made me sit up and take notice.

Banks are generous. Sure. But when it comes to taking back money owed, they can be ruthless. Credit card payment interest rates are already high at approx 5 percent per annum. Once legal action is taken, they suddenly have all the reason to jack that interest on the amount due up a further 5 percent. Late fees per month are about thirty five dollars and only accumulate further to accrue even more outstanding loans. Suddenly, $2000 is $3000, $3000 is $5000 after legal costs, and the situation just got a lot stickier.

It’s not exactly the fault of the banks. The debtors have done the wrongs to begin with. But is the law supposed to be this cutthroat on the average citizen? Maybe a few months of bad financial management left them in a state where they’re paying beyond their means. That’s ultimately a fault of their own. But I cannot help but feel nothing but empathy for these debtors in even more dire financial straits, no matter how much they did wrong to begin with.

These are men and women supporting families in sparsely furnished HDB flats earning incomes not more than $2000 a month including their spouse. Suddenly a letter comes demanding payment in 5 days for fees ten times that income. It is both deserved yet unbelievably sad.

 The case file I opened had a questionnaire filled by a lady in a similar situation. I don’t know what exactly it was about it… Was it the letters in all block letters that somehow showed something conclusive and unchanging about her meagre income? The handwriting never wavered. No line was ever crooked. Just like these men and women who face these kind of problems despite the stress and problems it brings. The fact that, reading these words that were written by hand by someone else… just made me realize that these are all real people. And these thousands of cases, while identical in procedure, are all vastly different and unique.

The law is strict, and the law is necessary. But sometimes the law is unyielding. And sometimes the law is not fair. The law can be just, but not necessarily fair. I think the distinction between these two adjectives needs to be quite clear. Should we be punishing these citizens with such a severity? I read the letters of contact sent by lawyers sitting in Suntec Tower to the poor living in three-room flats. I read the language that is formal and professional and exactly what is expected but unintelligible to the average heartlander. I read memos in files about ‘sparsely furnished’ housing with ‘no property worth seizing’. And all these gives me a sense of intimidation and fear. Where the debtors, albeit wrong, are being pushed even further down into this vicious cycle of poverty.

I mean no ill to the lawyers who are doing their job as is expected of them. And I expect, there are many more who must feel the way I do after reading so many of such files. It is moments like this that make me remember this quote.

‘A human first, a lawyer second.’

I feel more motivated to get into law school and do what I am driven to do.

These gaps seem almost regular
And the days seem almost normal
Till I turn in my sheets again
Never dreaming
Always dreaming

Adjunct to remnants of a passion
Covered by the shawls of time
Igniting the wool of a threadbare distance
Slowly burning
Always burning

Another night I spend morose
Etching shapes into the hollow of my shoulder
Waiting for the engines to sputter silent
And for me to fall into you again

Silence consents
in silent consent
to a level of palpable, almost
deafening…
quiet

When every flick
tap
knock
breath
or whisper

is suddenly the soundtrack of the court,
The silence is cut
by the throng of the over-eager
behind the baton of the Cisco guard

in forum non conveniens

in the back of the Supreme Court

Drowning in streams of water
Faint, fragments of a dream past
or reality too manifest to accept
Silence between lovers 

Yup, let’s go with that.

Tomorrow is Convocation. In many ways, I’m both relieved yet stressed… expectant yet nostalgic. I expect that many of my peers are feeling the same way. I don’t exactly know what to make of such conficting feelings… It is both the end and the beginning of something magical. I guess I’ll make the best of it. That said, to be honest, I haven’t thought about it all that much. Up until now, I’ve been going about everything kinda normally… and when I decided to write this post, it hit me…like WOAH. I’m not going to be part of this school already. In a few months I’m going to be in national service. And it’s just foreign from there on out.

To keep my post as salient as possible, I’m going to just talk about school for this post.

Choosing to come to this school was risky for me, I suppose. Throwing myself headfirst into a new system, an untested system, for that matter, didn’t seem like the smartest thing to do at the time, particularly when we all live in such a ‘kiasu’ society. I still did it. I had my hesitations, my doubts… to be embarassingly frank, my 12-year old self was drawn a lot more by the idea of a new campus more than anything. As to whether those doubts were unfounded… it’s probably better for me not to say here. But whether or not it was the right choice, I will never know. Regrets are not something that I like thinking about. But what I do now is that this six-year experience was in its own way, wholesome. I’ll spend a little bit talking about what left an impact on me. Briefly.

Year 1-2 in NUS High is termed the Foundation Years. Unfortunately, for me, i did most of my foundation work in the next two years. People call me slack, I’d just say I’m efficient. Okay not really. I suppose if I learned something from those years, it was the value of Time. I managed to salvage my time here mostly through a lot of efficient work in Years 3 and 4… but the time wasted in the first two years really came back to bite me. I’d write more about these two years… but really, it’s quite blurry to me. I remember my first A in a module I didn’t know there was an exam for, and my first failed CA without knowing there was a group project… but specific details are hard to recall. In a sea of new Year 1s, I was a very below-average slacker student. I hate that about myself, but it gave me somewhere to aim towards for the next years.

then, Year 3. Leaving a class I was acquainted with was probably the first step in my self-prescribed slacker detox. The first semester was frankly, terrible. Probably the most terrible six months I had in the school, and for mostly private, unimportant reasons. I was distanced from my class, I screwed up a little bit more, and wasn’t heading anywhere. But for the next three, 303/403 was what kept me going. Another underlying theme in my high school education was Change. Every two years, we were shuffled. And while we all resisted the change at first, it made us stronger, whether in harsh ways or otherwise. I was so familiar with 102/202 and the way it functioned… there were the hardworking bunch but I never really associated with them… there was the girl clique which was everpresent in most of the year 1/2 classes. And there was the bunch of easy-going, uninspired guys, inclusive of me. 303/403 changed everything. Suddenly, there isn’t anyone who’s going to slack with me. Everyone had their fun but for some reason I was the only one not getting his work done. Then I realized… while things changed, I hadn’t. And the detox continued.

Year 4 was an amazing year. I began to settle in, the strangers became friends, and this strange bunch of people with different interests, different faces, different races… found a collective love. 403 became my family away from home. Suddenly, I couldn’t wait to come to school everyday. I felt positive about everything and my grades picked up. The field trips, the outings at Ray’s and Rachel’s house… impromptu games of Whose Line… Change was everpresent. And even good change came with bad change. Seeing new teachers come, getting to know them, and seeing them leave… that was difficult. And of course that emotion can never be of as great a magnitude compared to the teachers who have seen us through the six years… That is a post for another day though. Year 4 was, really just fantastic. It may not have had moments like the Tioman outing, but it was unique to myself, and fresh as an experience which paved the way for a very enjoyable last half of high school. Thanks everyone in 403, thanks Miss Sie in particular.

I’ll leave the next two years for another post. These two years have been so poignant they deserve their own column.

Seeya soon.

1. Luck as a factor and being prepared
In a game like chess, the element of luck is hardly a factor in the game. A grandmaster will always beat a rookie, and even when it comes to a battle between two similarly skilled players, the player who wins is the player who can best read the game. In all of these cases, Lady Luck never influences the outcome. For a game like Scrabble, however, this isn’t always the case. While a skilled player will almost always beat a newbie, when it comes to a match between comparable opponents, the luck of the draw (literally, the drawing of good or bad tiles) can sometimes swing favour towards one side. And perhaps this is true of life as well. You may be good, and making all the right moves… but sometimes, something happens out of the blue which can be attributed to nothing but luck. Perhaps a university exam goes awry after a family emergency… or the stock market crashes when no one expects it… The world is governed by so many forces out of control, and sometimes, people find themselves helpless. But this only means one thing. Be prepared for everything. Expect that, when there’s a few tiles left in the bag on an extremely tight board, you might just draw an unplayable Z. And in life, there will be things you have no power over. But being prepared is the first step to avoiding defeat. And that’s not to say there’s nothing you can do against luck…

2. Reducing the effects of luck and maximizing points
A smart Scrabble player knows that drawing more than one I is bad, and more than one C or V is suicide. But rationally thinking, the draw is the one thing in the game that a player cannot influence. Every turn, you’re going to be drawing tiles you have no control of. But a smart player would definitely not see this as a crutch. Rather, as mentioned earlier, prepare yourself before hand. Playing a three letter word and leaving yourself common letters like E, I, T and R is good. Playing just one letter and leaving yourself with six consonants is terrible. Knowing which letters to play to prepare yourself for the next turn is just as important as the value of the present play. The value of preparing yourself for what is out of your hands is unquestionable. When heading into an unexplored caves, explorers bring ropes and torches. When preparing to draw tiles, Scrabble players make sure they have the best equipment possible for the next turn’s job. And even if Luck chooses to screw you over, every single turn… what do you do? Even with a nonstop draw of consonants and terrible vowels, the key is to remain focused on the task and maximize points! In life, similarly, we look for the brightest spark in a dark room… we look for the good when everything around us seems to be bad. As long as you keep maximizing the value of each opportunity… there is always a chance to turn a bad situation around.

3. Knowing your two-letter words
In life, natural talent will only take you that far. There comes a point where employers aren’t going to ask for an IQ test or care all that much about your academic grades. At that point, if you haven’t been putting in the hours to improve yourself beyond what was given you when you were born, don’t expect to get the job. In Scrabble, the same applies. You may have a range of obscure vocabulary, but if you don’t bother to memorize the two-letter words, you aren’t even amateur standard. And as you get higher up, what you need gets even larger comparatively. If you just sit back and think that you just need the two-letter words, you aren’t going to compete with someone who’s memorized the three-letter words or more… The thing is not just about putting in work to improve yourself… but also to know never to be complacent. You may be gifted, but if you don’t have the effort to back up the skill, there isn’t much point in being good at anything.

4. If you can’t use the triple word square, neither should your opponent.
The triple word scores are placed at the edges of the board for a reason (Words with Friends SUCKS). Tripling the value of a word can bridge a fifty-point gap faster than you can say ‘Bingo?’ The value of the tiles are so high that you should not be making it available to your opponent at almost any cost. (There are exceptions but few). So when the opportunity arises for you take that triple word, you jolly well use it to the best you can (again, there are exceptions). But when you can’t… be despicable. Make a word that ends just before the triple word square, a word that can’t be extended in any way. If you don’t have a five letter word, fine, make a four-letter one. Whatever it is, that triple word square is out of the game forever. In life, of course, this is not applicable. I am a big fan of altruism especially when directed my way, so please, keep the triple words open as often as you want. But in a competitive environment (read: most people’s adult lives), this tip may come in useful more often than you expect. I’m not telling you to be a cutthroat corporate guy who only cares about him/herself all the time… but sometimes, yeah, you have to.

5. Watch the clock.
As a game requiring deep thinking, Scrabble eats away at your perception of time. It is not uncommon to see someone look up after brooding over a word, only to find himself five minutes behind his opponent. In a game where you only have twenty-five, you don’t have such a luxury. Time management is everything. Think during your turn, think during your opponent’s turn. Think when you’re drawing new tiles, think all the time. The same applies to everything. If you aren’t making full use of your time, all the time, you simply aren’t getting the best out of whatever you’re doing, Scrabble, school, work, or otherwise. After all, we only have 24 hours in a day… are you using them well?

There’s way more that I could have said, about bingoes, blanks and what not. But to keep it simple, five tips is all I’ve got! I hope I don’t come off as arrogant. I just thought some things in games can be paralleled to life. That’s all!

Stop and smell the roses. There will be roses if you plant them.

- A friend of mine

Deep words, don’t you think? When he told me this, I was like, wow. That’s deep. And no offence to him but I didn’t expect it at the time. I don’t even know if he meant it to be philosophical, but philosophical it is.

What are the roses? Stop to smell the roses. When we think of the first sentence stand alone, we think of the wonders around us… or the under-appreciated things… or things we fail to notice. So we stop to appreciate them. That in itself is perfectly logical. But the second sentence adds a new dimension to the saying. Are we bystanders to these miracles, these wonders? Do we appreciate as mere onlookers? No. We plant the roses ourselves. The roses can be the product of our own decisions. So in a world where there is little to appreciate, we have to create the wonder for ourselves.

How we interpret this is personal. Maybe, take control of your life and make it beautiful. Maybe it means, set your goals and achieve them using your own merit. Either way, the positivity of the quote was quite memorable for me. And I will probably not forget it. Poignant, that it is a friend who said it. Just yesterday, I was editing my Facebook info and I couldn’t think of anything to write under Quotes. I am not really a quote person. I’d much rather let my own goals and motivations guide me rather than the life lessons of others. But when a quote comes from someone in your life, it’s just that much more memorable. So thanks, friend!

To another friend… I hope this quote will give you something to think about as well. Plant your own roses and make what may be a one-dimensional life into something worth living for.

To everyone else, good luck for exams!