Yes, I am on the 31st storey of an apartment building right now. For the record my own apartment occupies the ground and second floors.
Yep I’m at Xuewei’s high-rise apartment smack in the middle of Orchard! The view’s fantastic but I don’t have an SLR, so… 
It’s a class gathering again, but so far I have been somewhat antisocial (ok fine Uno Stacko doesn’t exactly appeal to me). I guess I am just not exactly in the mood. Or maybe the right people aren’t here (i.e. Desmond, Jon Yee, etc). Not that I don’t get along with the people here right now, just that I don’t terribly feel like talking. And everyone’s too busy having fun to talk about anything serious anyway. Since I only feel like talking about serious things at the moment it isn’t surprising no one’s terribly eager to talk to me. So I’m here blogging. Yep.
But it’s nice to be here all the same. Being with a group of people I genuinely like somehow makes me feel less alone. Still I keep a little distance, and I’m pretty sure they appreciate that too. Though such interactions may not be terribly heartfelt or close, they still do give me no small measure of comfort that scarcely anything else can.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the future again, recently. What started that I have no idea, but perhaps the likely catalyst were the long talks I had with my closest friend of now over 7 years about careers and education. To be honest, I am having doubts about my investment banker aspirations. Though a disgusting large paycheck entices me, making money by making money isn’t exactly what my spirit craves.
That brings the JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, at Pasedena, CA) video I watched at Astrigue Challenge to mind. I was actually very moved by the video, which was about the various contributions JPL had made to space exploration. (actually I had to suppress the tears welling up in my eyes because I was sitting next to Audrye) Somehow or other I felt that being part of such a team, and being part of great things like space exploration projects, was what I truly craved. I’m sure my sister will despair when she gets wind of this (and she will, eventually).
My sister means well, though. I know as much. She laments often about not studying harder and getting a foreign education. As a result, she slaves perhaps a hundred hours a week for about 6000 dollars a month. It isn’t terribly worth it, and she doesn’t exactly like the job she’s doing. But if I worked a hundred hours a week, what would I want? Twenty thousand US dollars a month for reading and writing financial reports and sucking up to wealthy men (and women), or messing around in a lab or workshop for most of the time, with short exciting periods in a control room and a measly five or six thousand US dollars a month? Somehow or other the latter seems more appealing.
Come to think of it, I’m not particularly a materialistic person. I would want a nice camera, music player and computer, but those are purely for usage. A more expensive camera would produce better pictures, a more expensive music player produces better sound quality, and a more expensive computer works faster and more efficiently. I am not into particularly expensive leisure activities (save perhaps archery which requires a significant initial investment), and my single largest expenditure is back to food (formerly periodicals and books combined at Kinokuniya). Indeed for non-essentials I am mostly crazy about buying books. All in all I don’t actually need all that high an income. As long as its enough to feed my book and technology cravings, kids’ educations and maintainence with an occasional vacation and a decent retirement, I don’t particularly care for millions.
Perhaps I am destined to be poor. My family has never been terribly rich anyway. All I could perhaps hope to do is to invest wisely whatever I have left over, and minimize the accumulation of liabilities. But I really won’t have a large disposable income to use for wealth generation. I might just end up buying the S&P 500, or some mutual funds just to keep ahead of inflation. Basically all bad ideas.
The more I write this the more confused I get. So far academic life isn’t working out too badly, but I did get snubbed really badly twice already. Once was the outright rejection for the MOE overseas attachment programme, and another time at SSEF. But I suspect they won’t be the last.
Almost all top colleges look for something called ‘character/personality traits’. What am I? Other than the all-too-familiar epithet of ‘weirdo’, what describes me? Nothing really complimentary comes to the mind of those who know me casually. Perhaps I should speak more to those who do know me and care enough to tell me what they think and feel, the not-so-nice parts included. After all, self-introspection is one of the rarest gifts, and since I do not have the tremendous luck to get it, I shall need a little help here and there. I can only hope I am humble enough to listen and retain what they say. Learning isn’t about asking questions and refusing to listen to the answers. Asking the question is but one-third of the process. Listening and comprehending the answer, and further thought/questioning constitute the other equally vital two-thirds. So far I am not terribly successful, but now that I have noted this failing this should soon change.
I need to get back to some translation work. Perhaps this feeling of restlessness has got something to do with me not ‘contributing’ to the world in my own small little way of translating much-loved but little-known Japanese songs. But I have no doubt another piece of work is on the way. Stay tuned! ^^