Life etc
SO my life's been thrust into a familiar situation of uncertainty, trial and tribulation (hopefully not the latter bit) yet again. The road that seemed to be isn't open any longer. At least that's what a tiny voice inside of me says..although the options are always available. But somehow I yearn to take up the unfamiliar, more risky option. Call it sheer madness but that's what I've chosen and I'm trying to become a sort of a smooth operator with it.
Details later...
In others, doing up my childhood album was a cathartic exercise. I never realised just how far I've come..in the negative..how far behind I was. I think, growing up, mostly in Delhi I never really got an opportunity to know me. I was an incomplete person..somehow..I can feel the chasm..just beneath the surface of the still photographs that have accumulated an air of abandonment in the over-two decades of my life. They portray a person whom I left so far behind that even if I want/need, I can't touch her. Good thing is that I don't want to..I no longer wish to travel with the baggage of the past that sags my shoulders, clouds my mind and slows my pace. "Only what counts, counts"
I literally and analogically only want to/wish to carry forward the essential learnings. No point growing up to be just the way I always was. There are some things good and some plain ugly about the process. It makes sense to accept the ugly, work to make it better and try and retain the good while striving to make oneself better.

Excuse my quirks when I point out your spelling errors etc..
There are all kinds of people and one type, familiar to many journalists, editors and most of all sub-editors are the infamous grammar nazis.
They claw newspaper copy, cover to cover and painstakingly jot down every single grammar/typo error and then dash these off to the newsroom. I admire them, sometimes, but most of time I wonder what kind of person spends a portion of their 24 hour day in going over every inch of newspaper space and taking note of subbing mistakes - small, grammar mistakes that happen when rushing to beat the clock. No one does it on purpose and no one savours the result.
Factual errors are another ball-game altogether and I wouldn't want to touch upon them. Some ghastly errors have happened over the years in the exciting yet unforgiving and all-encompassing world of media, journalism and reporters.
I wouldn't go to the extent of calling myself a grammar nazi, but yes, obvious errors in copy, including my own, make me cringe. I hate the risk of being labelled a schmuck, but sometimes I can't help myself. Please forgive me, I try, but it's like a bad habit that refuses to go off..I'm trying.
I can't forget a vital lesson a revered English teacher once taught me - "the best thoughts are laid to waste when served in a vessel of bad writing - spelling errors, poor construction and a general appearance of carelessness from the author".
She had given me a miserable 2 out of 7 points for my first ever 1000 word English composition.

Acceptance..
Sometimes it's so hard to accept some things...especially stuff that doesn't seem to reflect so well upon you.
Not getting the job you wanted, not getting into the university of your choice, not getting the love you always wanted, not getting the friendship you desired, not getting the posting you desired, not getting the results you wanted..it's a never-ending list.
A friend recently confessed that not getting a friend request accepted on facebook hurts her.
I know only too well what it means to not get what you feel you really want. It's hard when your feelings are not reciprocated, and it's not just in matters of the heart. It hurts real bad, you cry a bit, but eventually you move on..save face..if it was something you blabbered about to others.
But after 20 over years of facing rejection of many different kinds, from not getting the crayon set I wanted to not getting the latest Barbie to losing friendship and love, I've learnt that perhaps accepting and rejoicing in what you already have is definitely one of the many keys to unlock the route to true happiness.
Contentment is never easy, I can preach all that I want but I still want to kick off the excess pounds, get Ivy-league exposure, get a rocking job and get a man who completes me. But a will to try yet accept whatever comes my way saves the day for me, day after day.
I may still end up single, without the Ivy league exposure and with many more pounds to shed, but I think I'll survive it. Acceptance, said Dumbledore is the first step to understanding and ultimately to finding solutions for your life.
On the positive side, what we feel we need isn't always what we really wanted and what we get, that we feel isn't what we needed, is actually what we wanted all the way. Go figure!

GROWING UP
Thanks to FB (Facebook) I've gotten in touch with some classmates from a former era that seems long past. Some people had put up a class photograph from our final year in primary school - circa '97. It has really been AGES.

It's an exercise in growing up, when you are confronted with the grown-up realities of life - taller, perhaps a tad cooler with the party-animal addition, you have the whole girlfriends and boyfriends thing going on. Association with your pals always comes with an unwanted, additional paraphernalia. Sooner or later you get swallowed by the working world and colleagues. Relationships come to an end, others begin. It's non-stop from there. Some day you tie the knot, settle down, have kids, watch them grow up and leave the nest and then, you are back to the freedom of old-age. Wrinkled, a little less of a good-looker than before, with hopefully a stable companionship that lasts till the sun sets on your life.

Sometimes things end even before they begin and rude surprises await us in the kitty..much like the little emperors and empresses, born of China's one-child policy, who lost their lives in schools across Sichuan and all that's left of them are the school books, the bag, the tiny shoe peeping from the rubble.

Sometimes we end up lonely, having everything yet having nothing or actually having nothing - no love, no life, no nothing. When even the crowd seems to part and you're left with a weird whirring sound inside of your soul, you know it can't get worse...or perhaps it can't get better.
You believe in the existence of God but you want to have more than just blind faith.

If feels like we're racing through time. What are we living for..what's this unnecessary clutter, undying need for status, respect, success, life itself...Is youth merely a wild party? Is work merely a success route to moolah and recognition? Is old-age a wrinkled doom?

What do we actually want out of life..beyond love, relationships, success...I think there is a lot more, but I'm not able to put a finger on it. It can be as simple as reading a good book, enjoying a good movie, eating a delicious spread or getting a hug and "I love you" from that little kid after you've helped him do his art project. But I haven't got it deciphered as yet. True happiness like the alchemist's treasure is elusive. It's there yet not there.

DO WHAT MAKES YOU HAPPY
Warning: Random, philosophical stuff
There is only one universal truth about ambition - doing things that ultimately make you happy. It's always wise when setting goals for ourselves, we should leave some place to decide whether our actions will leave us happier.
Sometimes inhibitions can come in the way, sometimes our actions especially those on impulse seem ridiculous and oh-so-stupid, sometimes we are left thinking why we did what we did. But if in the depths of our soul we feel happy about the outcome, then be it. Let others think what they have to.
But if doing something left you with deep regret, although you started out with hope and some blind faith - then quit. The stuff/person/incident was never worth your while. Much as we would like it, the world is never quite a bed of roses and how much ever pretty the roses may appear, they still have thorns underneath. Look for the rainbows instead. They may appear far, may seem like an illusion but may end up being the real deal.
I always have this feeling of walking on a path pre-determined for me, so I walk on, taking everything in my stride and for the skeptics - it has always bettered me in some way or another. Amen.

How to approach newspaper reading
Newspaper reading doesn't feature very high on most people's daily priorities - especially youngsters. When compared to the kind of hours people within a newsroom spend on making the paper, the average of 20 to 30 minutes that most people spend on reading it are a real lesson in humility for most journalists.

But I find that a little less than an hour of "smartly" reading the paper can be a very efficient exercise in building your knowledge of current affairs and general knowledge. It is also a very good way of improving your vocabulary.

Since ST is the largest circulating daily in Singapore, let's start with it. For one, ST has so many sections and sub sections, cynics and environmentalists may cry foul that it single handedly destroys an entire jungle every day! I don't know about the recycling bit and I claim to be no expert.

But, we are talking about intelligent reading. Most readers, especially the youngsters read Life! and browse through the main paper. If truth be told, that's hardly what one can consider enlightening. Leave Life! for recreational reading.

The first thing is to read the main paper - the biggest news stories gripping the nation at press time. After a while, you will have all the main issues on your finger-tips - from food shortage to rising food prices to Tibet to employment and foreign workers.

These days ST has adopted a cover-page layout that greatly resembles a layout common to a major Indian daily - Times of India. There are the main stories in the centre , other important stories on the left and the news feature column, Upfront on the right. So if you really lack the time, you can simply read the cover page and finish up.

If you do have the time, flip to the second page for major headlines in all the different sections. There is also a "what it should have been" - embarrassing errors made in the stories - cynical readers love going over that to have reasons to claim that dailies in Singapore are going to the dogs....to each his own.

A common complaint that people have is the lack of time to read an entire article. The most important news point always comes in the first 3 paragraphs of the story. No further. So you don't need to read the whole article if you don't feel like it. I generally do that for some TNP feature stories and the the review pages of ST.

At this juncture, I would like to encourage every reader to go over the review pages. The writers and their commentaries often leave you with food for thought and a better understanding of world affairs. So take some time for it, even if you must force yourself into it.

Flip through Home - it often has a gem hidden alongside the increasingly mundane reports of murders, thefts, housebreaking, accidents etc etc (I hereby ask the crime journalists to excuse my honest confession, but snatch thefts I feel will only excite the victim and the thief). There are some tearjerker stories i.e. baby Jolene who left an entire nation mourning. But there are also some intriguing write-ups i.e. Prima Deli, the MOH clamp down on places and people offering slimming programs and more recently the health ads issue.

Excuse my ignorance, but much as I would like to, I can't bring myself to read money and the sports pages and I only refer to the classifieds when I need some repair work at home. Recruit is good, but I don't have the time or inclination to sieve through and pick out stuff for myself - not yet. After I'm done with ST and Home, I'll go over Life!, the supplements like Mind Your Body, Digital Life and Urban and call it a day.

Time spent - 40 minutes

Simple Living
"Life is not complicated...we make it so."
In his classic - The Story of My Experiments with Truth - Mahatma Gandhi writes about the delights of simple living which combines simple food, daily exercise, minimal expenses etc. His main point - resist temptation and avoid excesses.
'Bapu' as he is fondly called in India, had gone to England in his youth to get an education. Expensive living costs made him scrounge and he came up with various ways of cutting costs and avoiding unnecessary expenditure.
In the process he realised that blissful existence stems from simplicity - think simple, act simple, live simply. Simple as this may sound, I found the thought most profound.
I find that I'm always inundated with options, choices, temptations. It's so hard to resist material cravings for new foods, new bags, new shoes, new clothes, new jewellery - even if you already have a lot.
I spend my money and find that the item I spent it on isn't that useful after all. So, I've devised a few simple rules that I keep in mind every time I'm about to give in to my desires:

- How nutritious is the food? Am I just spending money to grow fat - I find that this thought has kept me off chocolates, pastries and cakes for the longest time.

- How useful is the item? Will I really use it till I feel that every penny was well worth it? Shoes, bags and clothes addiction is a female disease and we are never satisfied with what we already have. I do give in..sometimes. But I ensure that I wear the stuff as many times I can. Just wearing them once or twice is a sheer waste. period. So if something only suits one or at best two outfits, it's out of question.

- Focus. This last one seems strange. But I find that most people who absolutely fail to give into their temptations (aside from those who cannot afford it) have no dominant goal or purpose in life. It's mediocre at best - goals like buying the latest it-bag are NOT COUNTED. The best goals are intangible in essence - doing well in your career, getting a new job, getting yourself in shape, making a relationship work - those are more like it.