Friday, August 13, 2004
Revelations, (II)
It came in the post yesterday.
The Royal College of Surgeons is pleased to confirm that my application for the MRCS has been approved, and I'll be sitting for it on 7 Aug.
What the hell? I sent my application in over 2 months ago! After months of waiting for a reply, I'd assumed I hadn't got it in on time or was too far back in the queue or something and I haven't been studying.
Bugger. So much for my carefree holiday.
*****
I grew up in Singapore. Oft-times we hear it lamented, even almost paradoxically by Big Brother, that Singaporeans are politically apathetic.
I think it goes a fair bit further than that - or perhaps only for some of us.
I had a strange upbringing, in a strange land. Strange, because I don't think they were innate to who I am - nurture vs nature.
I turned out pretty weird. I wasn't sure what I liked, or didn't - even trivial things, like food and music. I think anhedonia was a very close friend in those days, and conventionality was a familiar security blanket by which we all got by. I was very much apathetic about most things political and apolitical. It was a wonder that I, untutored, uneducated and unexpectedly fell (hard) for some girl who was entirely atypical for the country.
Part of me is a little ashamed to admit it, but one of the reasons I signed to the cause of the debators was because she was one, and maybe it'd bring us a little closer together. Of course, the bigger picture included being talent-scouted by the "seniors" the year before, after chairing a series of debates and proving good at it. Still, the way my folks "protected" me against anything that "wasted" my time, without the additional resistance from myself I'd never have wound up on the scene.
Debating was one of the first things I began to love. It gave me a right to self-expression - even though I didn't have that much to say. I always had someone else tell me what to say, or rather, something else. We had to, I suppose much like lawyers, be able to craft a debate from the side of the argument that fate handed to us. And much of the magic was in the crafting and delivery - after all, there are only two sides in a debate.
As I walked through London yesterday evening en route to a self-study session under London Bridge I realised that I have changed.
Anybody who tells you that living abroad hasn't changed them at all is either a liar, or a fool. There are many of both.
I've come to like things. And even perhaps to love some of them :
The way it's hot on the street but cool in the shade, in Summer. Not just varying degrees of sweltering humidity and heat.
The cacophony of church bells tumbling over each other in the evenings.
The way everything's within walking distance - for some reason walking distance here extends to up to an hour. Or three. But there's just so much to see between points. That and the air temperature doesn't sap you. It's different when you have a car. You're under pressure, to keep your eyes on the road, to find a parking space, to follow the main. On foot, you can turn on a whim down alleyways and discover new nooks and crannies. (Essex street, for instance, opens onto the thames via a dungeon-esque tunnel walkway. It's kinda cool.)
The sun! I never thought I'd turn into a sun lover. But there's something magical the way the sun gently envelopes you in her warmth, blanketing you in a cloak of comfort. It's accentuated by the coolness of the air around you, and makes you feel your skin. I suppose it's a vaguely sensous experience? shrug. I just like it.
The Thames by day.
The Thames by night.
The quiet solitude one feels, sitting on the bench under London Bridge that leans out over the water, slightly removed from the tourists and traffic a few footfalls away.
The sheer diversity of sounds - one moment, an underground busker with his african drums, then the next a pretty flotist / chubby saxophonist as you ascend the steps into broad air, then the bustle of the crowd, and a few minutes later a street busker on his guitar and his portable amp doing a very good impression of eric clapton. London is culturally very rich. You'd have to pay big bucks for performances like this back home, even the guy on his african drums - here, they just exist, plying their performances to passers by. Leave a coin, or don't. It's your choice. Either way it's clear (from the paltry "earnings" they receive) that they're doing it out of love. Don't make the mistake as one of my friends once did of assuming that they're begging. Notice those CDs they've produced in their guitar cases. And those little notes that tell you they play full time for the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Or simply ask them what they do, normally.
Vapour trails hanging motionless in the sky, while clouds pass them by underneath.
The many museums that one day I plan to visit on my own, really. But they're there, either side of me as I walk home every day, and there's always hundreds of tourists standing / sitting / lying in the courtyard of the British museum, amidst the ice-cream sellers and the greasy hotdog fryers. It always makes me want to go in, and be part of all that. And maybe even to ingest a potentially life-threatening saussage onna bun.
The way seagulls and pigeons always choose to sit on high, spindly things like napoleans column, or cleopatra's needle.
I've even come to love the grimy, run-down facades of the buildings in London. I used to wonder how England could spend billions of pounds restoring old buildings to look just like... old buildings. The scaffolding came, and went, and nothing seemed to change in between.
Over the years, I've noticed that the scaffolding appears mostly to shore up the front facades while the rest of the building is ripped apart, and reassembled to be better than new, or completely different on the inside. The exteriors remain lovingly preserved, in all their mixed ugliness and beauty.
I still think that a good hosedown might be a good thing.
Oh, and blondes. Laughs. Mostly, for some reason, American. They've got tans, and their eyes sparkle. And the way the sunlight catches their hair... cough. moving swiftly on.
There's things I hate about London too.
The way everyone's eyes are carefully blank, at work. On the underground. Even standing in groups smiling and laughing with each other at pubs. Kill, or be killed.
The fickleness of the weather. Enticingly warm one moment, pissing gleefully down the next, then overcast for the next fortnight to emphasize the point that the Weather is NOT nice.
The mean streets of East End, dark, ugly and dangerous both in the day and at night. Police warnings - people are mugged here! Murder! Rape! that adorn most of mile end and The East. And the idiots that prowl the streets, perpetrating some of these crimes, swaggering, strutting louts with less humanity in their souls than animals. And I hate the way they become glamourised in shows like Eastenders. People just lke you and me, only with problems, man. Screw that - people can be more than their problems... people can be more than their environments.
Gangs of scrawny asian kids - mere children! practicing for the real thing, strutting around and destroying cars in broad daylight. One they they'll be grown up, and big enough to strut on their own, brave enough to put a knife to someone or rape some woman half their size.
The cherubic politicians who forked tongued, lead their nation into war against its will / incessantly promise healthcare reforms and then turn out the stupidest of proposals. Which experts did they consult, again?
I've come to learn to like, dislike, and love and hate things through living in London. I see the world around me a little more clearly, and a little more cynically - this is the Big City. Far bigger than the one back home. Darker, more dangerous, and yet immensely richer and more diverse. Some images of myself have been dashed to the ground, others reinforced.
I know now what I want.
The Royal College of Surgeons is pleased to confirm that my application for the MRCS has been approved, and I'll be sitting for it on 7 Aug.
What the hell? I sent my application in over 2 months ago! After months of waiting for a reply, I'd assumed I hadn't got it in on time or was too far back in the queue or something and I haven't been studying.
Bugger. So much for my carefree holiday.
*****
I grew up in Singapore. Oft-times we hear it lamented, even almost paradoxically by Big Brother, that Singaporeans are politically apathetic.
I think it goes a fair bit further than that - or perhaps only for some of us.
I had a strange upbringing, in a strange land. Strange, because I don't think they were innate to who I am - nurture vs nature.
I turned out pretty weird. I wasn't sure what I liked, or didn't - even trivial things, like food and music. I think anhedonia was a very close friend in those days, and conventionality was a familiar security blanket by which we all got by. I was very much apathetic about most things political and apolitical. It was a wonder that I, untutored, uneducated and unexpectedly fell (hard) for some girl who was entirely atypical for the country.
Part of me is a little ashamed to admit it, but one of the reasons I signed to the cause of the debators was because she was one, and maybe it'd bring us a little closer together. Of course, the bigger picture included being talent-scouted by the "seniors" the year before, after chairing a series of debates and proving good at it. Still, the way my folks "protected" me against anything that "wasted" my time, without the additional resistance from myself I'd never have wound up on the scene.
Debating was one of the first things I began to love. It gave me a right to self-expression - even though I didn't have that much to say. I always had someone else tell me what to say, or rather, something else. We had to, I suppose much like lawyers, be able to craft a debate from the side of the argument that fate handed to us. And much of the magic was in the crafting and delivery - after all, there are only two sides in a debate.
As I walked through London yesterday evening en route to a self-study session under London Bridge I realised that I have changed.
Anybody who tells you that living abroad hasn't changed them at all is either a liar, or a fool. There are many of both.
I've come to like things. And even perhaps to love some of them :
The way it's hot on the street but cool in the shade, in Summer. Not just varying degrees of sweltering humidity and heat.
The cacophony of church bells tumbling over each other in the evenings.
The way everything's within walking distance - for some reason walking distance here extends to up to an hour. Or three. But there's just so much to see between points. That and the air temperature doesn't sap you. It's different when you have a car. You're under pressure, to keep your eyes on the road, to find a parking space, to follow the main. On foot, you can turn on a whim down alleyways and discover new nooks and crannies. (Essex street, for instance, opens onto the thames via a dungeon-esque tunnel walkway. It's kinda cool.)
The sun! I never thought I'd turn into a sun lover. But there's something magical the way the sun gently envelopes you in her warmth, blanketing you in a cloak of comfort. It's accentuated by the coolness of the air around you, and makes you feel your skin. I suppose it's a vaguely sensous experience? shrug. I just like it.
The Thames by day.
The Thames by night.
The quiet solitude one feels, sitting on the bench under London Bridge that leans out over the water, slightly removed from the tourists and traffic a few footfalls away.
The sheer diversity of sounds - one moment, an underground busker with his african drums, then the next a pretty flotist / chubby saxophonist as you ascend the steps into broad air, then the bustle of the crowd, and a few minutes later a street busker on his guitar and his portable amp doing a very good impression of eric clapton. London is culturally very rich. You'd have to pay big bucks for performances like this back home, even the guy on his african drums - here, they just exist, plying their performances to passers by. Leave a coin, or don't. It's your choice. Either way it's clear (from the paltry "earnings" they receive) that they're doing it out of love. Don't make the mistake as one of my friends once did of assuming that they're begging. Notice those CDs they've produced in their guitar cases. And those little notes that tell you they play full time for the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Or simply ask them what they do, normally.
Vapour trails hanging motionless in the sky, while clouds pass them by underneath.
The many museums that one day I plan to visit on my own, really. But they're there, either side of me as I walk home every day, and there's always hundreds of tourists standing / sitting / lying in the courtyard of the British museum, amidst the ice-cream sellers and the greasy hotdog fryers. It always makes me want to go in, and be part of all that. And maybe even to ingest a potentially life-threatening saussage onna bun.
The way seagulls and pigeons always choose to sit on high, spindly things like napoleans column, or cleopatra's needle.
I've even come to love the grimy, run-down facades of the buildings in London. I used to wonder how England could spend billions of pounds restoring old buildings to look just like... old buildings. The scaffolding came, and went, and nothing seemed to change in between.
Over the years, I've noticed that the scaffolding appears mostly to shore up the front facades while the rest of the building is ripped apart, and reassembled to be better than new, or completely different on the inside. The exteriors remain lovingly preserved, in all their mixed ugliness and beauty.
I still think that a good hosedown might be a good thing.
Oh, and blondes. Laughs. Mostly, for some reason, American. They've got tans, and their eyes sparkle. And the way the sunlight catches their hair... cough. moving swiftly on.
There's things I hate about London too.
The way everyone's eyes are carefully blank, at work. On the underground. Even standing in groups smiling and laughing with each other at pubs. Kill, or be killed.
The fickleness of the weather. Enticingly warm one moment, pissing gleefully down the next, then overcast for the next fortnight to emphasize the point that the Weather is NOT nice.
The mean streets of East End, dark, ugly and dangerous both in the day and at night. Police warnings - people are mugged here! Murder! Rape! that adorn most of mile end and The East. And the idiots that prowl the streets, perpetrating some of these crimes, swaggering, strutting louts with less humanity in their souls than animals. And I hate the way they become glamourised in shows like Eastenders. People just lke you and me, only with problems, man. Screw that - people can be more than their problems... people can be more than their environments.
Gangs of scrawny asian kids - mere children! practicing for the real thing, strutting around and destroying cars in broad daylight. One they they'll be grown up, and big enough to strut on their own, brave enough to put a knife to someone or rape some woman half their size.
The cherubic politicians who forked tongued, lead their nation into war against its will / incessantly promise healthcare reforms and then turn out the stupidest of proposals. Which experts did they consult, again?
I've come to learn to like, dislike, and love and hate things through living in London. I see the world around me a little more clearly, and a little more cynically - this is the Big City. Far bigger than the one back home. Darker, more dangerous, and yet immensely richer and more diverse. Some images of myself have been dashed to the ground, others reinforced.
I know now what I want.
