Hua ren hua yu?

My father and I were listening to a Chinese infotainment radio station on the road 1 morning, when the presenters started discussing the political coup in Thailand.

"Why do these people jostle for power?" My father asked rhetorically, "Those people who assume positions of power suffer so such pressure that their hair grow white."

I said rhetorically because he didn't expect a response from me, who's usually comatose in the morning and can muster, at best, a weak "uh huh".

I was silent for awhile, thinking of how best to respond, and sprouted a Chinese saying I heard just the previous night, while watching a Chinese documentary about the Yangtze River: ren2 wang3 gao1 chu4 pa2, shui3 wang3 di1 chu4 liu2 (humans will always aspire to climb to higher ground, just as water would always flow towards lower terrain).

I think he was surprised; he said: "Isn't the Chinese language meaningful? It's so descriptive."

I was pleased--it's not often that he thinks well of my Chinese language proficiency. And it felt good too, because he was right, Chinese proverbs and sayings can often hit home better than English.

I guess my perspective about my langugage usage had undergone a slight change recently, after a job interview with the Sin8apore branch of a UK publishing company. Their job application form, which I was supposed to fill out just before the interview, asked for my colour. I felt more than a jolt of irritation. I find the term offensive, and besides, they had already asked for my race and nationality. All of a sudden, I begin to understand how members of ethnic minority groups feel, when their colour gets in the way of their daily life. It really wasn't a good way to get acquainted with the company. I put in a dash.

Before the job interview, I was quite confident that I would develop a long-term career in editing. Just as the accountants crunch numbers, I like to crunch words. I like to work with words and pore over pages and pages of words. But editors in Singapore, as the instructor of the editing course I attend recently put it, get the short shrift because editing skills are not appreciated here, unlike, say, in the UK. But so what even if I shift base to overseas, I thought, how am I supposed to compete with the natives of English language?

That point was reinforced during the interview, when the interviewers explained the job scope (which was not editing per se, but more of soliciting book ideas from academics and making recommendations to the UK headquarters, ie. commissioning) and say that actual editing is done in US and UK but not Asia, even for books that are written by Asians. Commissioning is actually considered a higher rung on the editorial ladder than editing of content, but the latter is what I want to continue doing and which I hope I can still get to do in future.

The cognitive dissonance (the only handy term I ever learned in undergrad social psychology) I experienced was quite discomforting. English is the language that I base my career on, that I (mostly) think in and write in, and yet it is not a language that I own. So I could venture out of Sin8apore and possibly be considered 2nd-rate, or stay in Sin8apore and be underpaid. What a thought.

And that's why I'm thinking about picking up Chinese reading and writing again, just to touch base with the language I was born into. My first step was buying a Chinese (kiddo) storybook about 2 weekends ago, thought I haven't gathered the courage to pick it up and start reading yet. I tried the Chinese newspaper My Paper today though, and I must say it takes some getting used to. Is it me, or do Chinese writings have this undertow of moral righteousness in between the lines? It's almost like listening to a sermon. I don't think I'll be able to become a Chinese editor, but gee, I don't mind switching to translation as a career and oh, work for the UN aka The Interpreter! Erm, but I'm talking nonsense now. So, back to work.

Why didn't I study harder for Geography when I was young?

The weather has been freakish for the past month. I've never seen Sin8apore so drenched in rain before. Today, I got to talking with a sweet-looking, dimpled French girl on exchange, who said that back home , people are milling around in summer attire when it's supposed to be deep in winter because it's been unusually warm, about 15 degree celsius as opposed to the usually 3-5 degree celsius.

And last night, I was bumming at home, watching the epic-disaster movie "The Day After Tomorrow" which was wildly exaggerating but still reasonably scary. The scene that caught my attention was the one with Jake Gyllenhaal trying to stop people from leaving the library and trekking to the south because they'll freeze to death once outside. How do you know, someone asked, and he replied that because his father is a paleoclimatologist working for the US government (and the 1 who briefed the Mr President of USA) .

Wow, that sounded so cool, so authoritative, the kind of thing that would stop people in their tracks (but, of course they didn't in the movie because someone has to go outside to freeze their butts and chalk up the death count for not listening to the cute lead). Which of course got me to thinking that if I had studied harder for Geography when I was in secondary school I could have become a paleoclimatologist too.

But how do you get worked up about Geography when you had roly poly teachers who treated the lesson as an extended lunch break by demonstrating how a gorge is formed via munching on a piece of sponge cake, or tell you gleefully that the geography department in university makes you chomp on soil as part of the education? Or another one who got more excited about our upcoming prom and what we're going to wear than us?

But I think all the paleoclimatologist-wannabes in Singapore can ever amount to would be hapless weathermen who kena questioned by ST for not issuing a heavy rain warning earlier last Thursday. So boring!

Run, 2007 is coming!

The end of the year has always been my favourite part but this year, it seemed to have whizzzzed past me (or me it, I'm not sure). Christmas was quite hectic, with work deadlines and gift-shopping and a looming job interview joining forces to knock me out.

I still remember how I scurried around the mazy mall a few times in a panicky mode, lugging my violin and trying to zig-zag my way through the crowd. I rushed into those crowded Gifts-n-Such shops and scanned their shelves up and down, frantically flipping their notebooks and cards or poking at their trinkets, trying to find something nice.

But if you want to talk about running in a frenzy, nothing beats new year's eve. Me and 2 other pals, W and YZ were basically driving around Sing*pore, first in search of a decent dinner, which was difficult because everywhere was full of people, and then a decent countdown party, which was much worse.

We first climbed down Fort Canning Hill and marched to the National Museum, but found it too arty-farty. We didn't want to usher in the new year watching a few contemporary dancers twirling around incomprehensibly. So we climbed up the hill again and drove to the Esplanade area at 11.30pm. But W's car was running out of fuel and we were caught in a jam while the minutes went by. "I don't want to count down to the new year in a car!" W wailed. Us spending the dawn of the new year pushing her conked out car in the jam was a real possibility. We had to turn off the air-conditioning to slow down fuel consumption, and I made helpful comments like "Hey, look, the sign says Esplanade Drive closed 8pm to 1.30am!" while W starts to hyperventilate.

Finally, we got ourselves out of the traffic mayhem and parked the car at a basement carpark with 5 minutes left. "Run, run!" we shrieked and bolted out of the car and ran up 3 flights of stairs to the exit which turned out to be locked. We were stuck, huffing and puffing in that stuffy, narrow stairwell but good thing there was an uncle and auntie who were as tardy as us. The mighty uncle wrestled the door open and we tumbled out into the open air. Freedom! And so we managed to join the countdown crowd with 3 minutes to go. What a thrill. Let's see whether we can top that this year.