Remorse

“If I could sell a guarantee for love, I would be a millionaire,” a friend of mine said to me during a discussion on love. I agreed with him, knowing that there is no other force, as fickle and unpredictable but as powerful and miracle working, as love. I may not be an authority on love, but I have spent much of my time trying to fathom the deep workings of this mysterious power. The power that will make a man lift a 2 ton car to free his wife underneath, the power that can drive a man insane shooting up a shopping mall just to bring back his wife who has passed away.

This power may have worked its wonders through many of us; however we fail to see its magic. We fail to understand that this power is not to be taken for granted. Divorce rates are rising, premarital sex is considered acceptable, relationships are just a staple part of a teenager’s life without the passion and the feelings involved. Has love really left us? Have we really lost the power to truly love another? I myself am guilty of the heinous crime of the debauchery of love. I have committed many sins myself that I am not proud of. However, recently, I have been reminded that love holds no grudge against the people that has forsaken it. I am glad my eyes have been open and I intend to keep it that way.

We walk along the streets seeing couples holding hands, sharing passionate kisses on buses, making out in cars. How many of them know what true love is? My guess is few. How many of them will one day realize what true love is? “Two six year old kids can share as much love for 5 minutes as two forty year olds can experience in a life time,” My guess? Not many. Career, money, friends, hectic lifestyles, materialism, consumerism has taken over as driving forces in our lives. Love has been pushed into the background and left alone. The ending “Happily ever after,” now has several suffixes such as: “They lived happily ever after, until he ran out of money,”, “They lived happily ever after, until he found a mistress,” Where people once lived for love, they now do so for material objects, the newest iPod, the biggest car, the biggest house, the biggest prostrate. Love from a lady is now dependent on your spending power. People now get married for the added bonuses that the government gives you. Ability to buy a house, ability to take maternity leave, cash bonuses on your child are offered if you get married. What happened to being married because you love someone?

Teenagers are not spared either. On internet chat channels, guys ask for sex and girls ask for money. What happens in the end - Sex for money? Promiscuity has invaded the lifestyles of teenagers. Where sex used to be a sacred act between 2 people in love, it is now defaced by testosterone pumped guys who can’t keep their hands to themselves and girls looking for a way to fulfill their curiosity. Chastity has gone straight out the window. It doesn’t stop there. Where dates used to be just you, me and a picnic mat, it is now the standard to go for a movie, or shop, or do some activity that would hinder the communication between 2 people anyway. Where lovers used to create their own paradise anywhere, now there are “romantic hotspots” like esplanade and Clark Quay. How can a place be romantic when there are thousands of other couples smooching just 5 meters away?

However, I may be wrong. Love might have evolved over the ages to something that we see between couples nowadays. Love may mean something else. Perhaps it is me that needs a perspective adjustment. After all it is me that has been disillusioned by the many failures I have had in love. I still believe that true love can be found through much effort, namely trying to make it work with different people. I still believe that love at first sight exists and people do not have to know the person for 912379123 days to actually have a relationship with them. I still believe that sitting down at a poolside and just enjoying each other’s company is a good date, perhaps the best date. I still believe that there should be no reason why someone loves another, for when a truth that cannot be spoken appears between two people, saying anything about it will spoil the magic. I still believe that absence does not make the heart grow fonder, that people truly in love will look at their loved one the same way for fifty years or more even if they see each other everyday. I still believe.

Call me a traditionalist, call me a lecher, call me a romantic, call me a flirt, I stand by my principles and my beliefs. I believe that I see love from a different perspective as the world. My intentions are pure, but my body is not. I am a flawed person. My principles, however solid they are in me, will not uphold this broken body, this body corrupt with greed, hedonistic desires and arrogance. My heart may be pure, but my mind is diseased. I may be good at giving advice to people in need of it, but I can never hold a proper relationship myself. Sometimes I do feel that I would not love again, to spare the people around me. But sometimes I also do feel that perhaps this mind is not as corrupted as I thought it would be.

People may call me hypocritical for the ideas I preach, I do admit that I am a hypocrite, that I should practice what I preach. But how harmful is it to read something that makes you realize your actions and enables you to change? After all, my credibility is not in the equation as people are looking inwards at themselves. Facts and figures will remain facts and figures no matter how hard you twist them. The truth will appear sooner or later even if people try to veil their eyes from it. I have merely stated what has been going on in our society, it is up to people to believe it or not.

Or, I may be just talking out of my ass and have no idea what I'm saying.

Black Velvet

Ever looked upon the night sky and wondered whether there was anything looking back at you? Okay, maybe not wonder whether anything was looking back, but you might have enjoyed the sound of waves crashing whilst sitting by the beach, gazing into the night sky. With the darkness all around you, it’s as though you were sitting amongst the stars themselves. The sand between your fingers and toes; is that what the universe feels like? Sitting in between the 2 boundless expanses, the universe and the sea, one cannot help but feel insignificant, trivial in the presence of these 2 giants.

“Water, 35 liters, Carbon, 20 kg, Ammonia, 4 liters, Lime 1.5kg, Phosphorous, 800g, Salt 250g, Niter, 100g, Sulfur, 80g, Fluorine, 7.5g, Iron, 5g, Silicon 3g, and 15 other elements, these are the chemicals needed to make 1 average adult human body.” The total cost of all this is USD 2.83. With current inflation and deflation rates, I’m not sure what the figure is. But it does fluctuate around this figure. That’s what we’re worth; two dollars and eighty-three cents. That’s about as much as my Yong Tau Foo in the school canteen. The amount of money used for one meal, can pay for our entire chemical make up. Human beings are made so cheaply and yet this $2.83 will grasp on to life so desperately. When one obsesses about one’s existence, the big picture becomes totally unknown to them.

In strict scientific terms, human beings are just means to pass energy from one source to another. On a long enough timeline, the survival rate of everyone drops to zero. Millions of years are just a 2 cm arrow on a piece of paper. We are inevitably a part of many different cycles. Whether one of us exists or not, it doesn’t really matter. The cycle will still continue its way with or without one of us, or even a few of us. The carbon cycle, the energy transfer cycle, the food cycle, we are all a part of a project that was not started by one of us. The project has existed since dinosaurs roamed this planet. Plants absorb sunlight, herbivores eat plants, carnivores eat herbivores, carnivores and herbivores defecate, providing nutrients for plants, carnivores and herbivores die, providing even more nutrients for plants and the cycle starts from the beginning again. It doesn’t matter if I died today or tomorrow, I’ll still be part of the cycle.

Well people might ask, “If our lives are that meaningless, what is our purpose?” I’ve got an answer to that. Again in strict scientific terms, we exist just to ensure the survival of the species. The common goal of each and every man is to spread his genes to as many females as possible ensuring that his genetic line survives. Our purpose you ask? The answer: To reproduce. It’s every animal’s basic instinct. They copulate with as many members of the female species as possible, to ensure that they will have a lot of offspring so that their species will live on. I must say, with so many human beings falling prey to war, disease, accidents, killing and various whatnots that happen during the course of someone’s life, it’s surprising that we’ve managed to keep a healthy number of about several billion people roaming around on this planet. And that is after tabulations like the Iraq War, World War 2 that claimed about 70 million lives. I must say, human beings are quite a frisky lot. Come to think of it, if those wars have never happened, and if all of us were to die of old age, to quote a classmate of mine when asked about overpopulation, “We’ll be falling off the edge of the continents and into the sea”

“Try to make ends meet, you’re a slave to money then you die.” From what I see, I guess this quote is very, very true. In our society all of us struggle to keep alive from the moment we take our first breath. We struggle to not sleep face down in the cot for fear of asphyxiation; we struggle through school to receive a piece of paper with a couple of “As” on them; we struggle to keep our job, try not to kill our boss and to raise a family; lastly, we struggle to battle whatever disease old age brings us and wonder where our life went. Are we too preoccupied with struggling to survive that we aren’t able to let what truly matters slide? We work hard so we can buy a sofa set for the living room. We work hard so we can buy a 40 inch plasma TV to look good with the sofa set in the living room. We work hard so we can buy a solid marble coffee table to complement the sofa set and the plasma TV. We work hard so we can buy a 13 piece Chinese porcelain tea set so we can sit in the living room, on the sofa set, staring at moving pictures on the 40 inch plasma TV, our feet placed neatly under the solid marble coffee table and talk about the newest BMW to hit the market, or the latest Louis Vuitton or the most fashionable Prada. Please note, everything here costs more than $2.83, in fact, they cost far more than $2.83. We scorn the out of fashion $10 a pair Bata shoes, we wouldn’t be caught dead wearing the 3 for 10 dollars undershirts the elderly wear at coffee shops. No, these $2.83 potpourris of chemicals have to drive $200,000 cars, carry around $200 handbags, and sit on $5000 furniture. Ironic isn’t it?

The privileges we have are not given. They are not our right as human beings. We do not take advantage of what our ancestors have given us and splurge it on ourselves. When was the last time you were thankful for the clothes you can wear, the food you can eat, the hand phone that you are carrying. When was the last time you thought about something else other than your miserable existence? Truth of the matter is, your death would not affect the universe in any way. Your struggle is insignificant to the billions of people that co inhabit this planet with you. The truth will set you free.

Weakness

Many people have it, but some of them don’t admit that they do. It’s like an inherent plague that spreads throughout the human race. It’s exactly like the plague. It spreads fast, it is spread by rats, it shortens your life considerably and it makes you an ugly person. This “plague” might not make you look like you had a nose job halfway through and the doctor died but it does make your heart the blackest black you have ever seen. Yes, I’m talking human weakness. Most people call it by another name - “The 7 deadly sins”. They are as follows: greed, pride, gluttony, lust, anger, sloth, envy. Curiously, they are the 7 homunculus of Full Metal Alchemist. Why they are named such, I have no idea. Perhaps as opposed to the natural order of things, they are the “anti-Christ” of alchemy. But I digress.

If I were to look at myself, I would say I’m guilty of all of the above sins, and then some. I’m greedy; I want more money. I’m proud; after all, my blog address is hubristic hedonist that should sum many things up. I’m a glutton; I eat so much you wouldn’t even imagine, best of all I don’t grow fat. I know girls would probably hate me for this. Lust; maybe I won’t talk about this. Anger; hmm I don’t really know. I guess I won’t know I actually get angry. Sloth; I sleep 12 hours a day, and if I can I’ll sleep even more. As for envy; one word – Gilbert. That should explain a lot. I’m a pleasure seeker. I hate working and I’ll skimp at every chance I get. However there’s one more sin that I would like to add to that list.

That sin is pettiness. Okay, maybe not a sin, but it’s still a weakness. Pettiness has ruined so many relationships, so many days, many a friendship have fallen prey to pettiness. For a piece of land, people will die just to claim ownership over it. For god’s sake, it’s just a piece of land. People die for religion, people will die for ideologies, people will die for race, people will die for almost everything that can be labeled. Question is, why don’t these people stop dying and actually live for something? Does the human race really love conflict or what? Throughout our entire existence we have been fighting, dying and then some. We kill for pieces of paper, certificates which say who owns who, for that black liquid that drives our world. The question is, what for? Even animals don’t kill their own kind excessively. All our wars, all our conflicts, people die. And they die a lot. Are those the benefits being able to reason have brought us? If that’s the case, I would prefer if we weren’t able to think. At least I won’t fear being killed by one of my own kind for my iPod or my handphone or the pieces of paper (or plastic) in my wallet.

Maybe pettiness in our case is not as drastic as people dying and such. If that’s the case, we live in a very sad and apocalyptic world. Fortunately, we don’t. However, pettiness still does its damage in our small world. Take for example, my 2 friends. Let’s name them X and Y. X wanted to play a particular song during a gig. Y didn’t. Y said that 2 songs are enough. X got pissy and left the band. Y shrugged and left it like that. This event happened 2 years ago. Until now, they aren’t talking to each other. Apathy, pettiness and pride make a deadly combination. Personally, the word “sorry” is totally unknown to me. I never apologize; I never bow my head down to anybody. You know the Da lai lama thing that asks you to rank different kinds of livestock and a tiger? The tiger ranks first for me. I don’t know how accurate the Da lai lama thing is but so far, it’s been quite good at reading me. Well it’s not entirely wrong; I’ve been brought up the elitist way. I’m a perfectionist, an elitist and a racist. My finger tends to waver over the reset button every time something goes wrong. Diablo 2; OMGWTFBBQ DURIEL PWNED ME IN NORMAL. Reset. Maple Story; LOL GAY THORNS COSTS 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999. Reset. And that’s only games. Unfortunately I can’t do that with my life. I can’t say, wtf gay, depression made me lose 5 points for O levels. Rese…no wait I can’t. Well that’s the perfectionist in me. I don’t think I have to mention the elitist and the racist do I? You guys may say, “Hey a perfectionist is a good thing,” I’m the wrong kind. I give up when I don’t see a point in completing it. I believe that it’s better to restart something that would end up a shit job anyway. Too bad I can’t reset this shit job of a person.

Sometimes I think about where my life would end. I might end up lying in a ditch somewhere with nobody giving a rat’s ass about me. It’s quite a scary thought considering I’m sitting in a comfortable swivel chair, my cup of pure organic grapefruit, orange, apple, pineapple, tomato, dragon fruit, whatever fruit juice, my handphone in front of me, a pair of earphones on my head listening to American Hi-fi, typing on my Acer. To imagine how far I can fall is quite scary considering that it is possible. When you get used to this kind of comfort, you have so much to lose. The tragedy is that, I don’t realize that. I always think that I’ll remain whatever age I am. Ah well, the world needs more losers. Especially since Vladmir Putin made wealthiest man in Europe. The world can afford a couple more losers.

Below is a really nice picture I took at Bishan Park not too long ago. It was just after the rain and the picture was just itching to be taken. Not many people know how to stop and smell the roses nowadays. Much beauty goes overlooked these days. The picture quality isn’t very good, but your mind always sees things in HD anyway.

Reanimation

Well, it’s my first entry; don’t know what to talk about, don’t know what to do with this enormous text box that needs filling up. Why did I start this for then? I used to have an online diary at diary-x.com. The whole site just collapsed. Everything went poof. And for me it was about 45 essays. Essays that I used to enter essay competitions, essays that I handed up to my teacher and passed it off as original works, not that they weren’t though. Well, when I heard that diary-x went kaput, it was as though a large part of my heart got ripped out and thrown out the window, stampeded on by a herd of wild wildebeests and thrown into the incinerator. A year’s worth of essays is worth more than a mountain of gold man; and it’s all gone just like that. Whoop-dee-doo. Anyway, I just decided that maybe I should start writing again. A few years have gone by, I’ve grown a little older, not necessarily smarter. I’ve made mistakes, paid for a few, basically led the life of a normal guy; nothing magnificent, nothing impressive.

A New Year’s going to begin, New Year’s resolutions? I haven’t thought about them though but they’ll probably go something like this:
1. Cut down my time on the Internet.
2. Kick ass at the English Language.
3. Get the best results in the whole damn college.
4. Lead my life with confidence. That means no more petty arguments, no more holding grudges against people, etc. etc.
5. Basically be the best I ever can be.
These are pretty big goals, which mean pretty big work, which brings me to a very important point. I’ve said the exact same words a year ago and nothing turned out great. In fact, the whole thing went boom on me. I’m not proud of it, but it’s not like I can’t do anything about it. It’s either I get busy living, or get busy dying; take the bull by the horns or die trying. I’ve screwed up quite a bit; I’m not going to let it happen again.

Am I looking too far? Christmas comes first right? Christmas - the season of giving. I find myself saying this year after year. Christmas is the season where people with materialistic desires satisfy people other people with materialistic desires. Is it just me, or do people around me just celebrate Christmas for the presents? Walk down Orchard Road, Christmas decorations to advertise Christmas Sales. Signs all around saying “Buy this, buy that”, “Spend more, spend more”, “Discounts here”; and everybody just laps it up buying things that they probably won’t need, satisfying what they say in economics, “endless wants”. I don’t go shopping, so I won’t know what “retail therapy” means. I’m not a fan of presents but I am guilty of the materialistic thingamagi that has been going around since consumerism was in fashion. I own an iPod which is currently on loan to a dear friend of mine. I have a Nokia 6300 which serves me quite well. I have a Bluetooth Sony DR-BT10CX headset which I use to listen to music on my Nokia 6300. I have an Automatic-Kinetic Hamilton watch that does nothing else but tell the time and a Pierre Cardin black leather wallet. I wear a Hugo Active Jacket, a pair of black Giodarno jeans, a navy-blue Lee Cooper T-Shirt and a pair of quite worn New Balance 813 running shoes. Do I need all these in the hunter-gatherer sense of the word? No. Are they necessities needed to survive? No. I’m a slave of consumerism. With all these endless products on the market, advertisements telling me what I need and dictating what I want, people buying the latest thing on the market, Nokia phones, Apple portable music players, Braun Buffel bags, Armani Exchange shirts. It seems we end up with a lot things that we “need”. Materialism is in fashion, consumerism is the catalyst. Merry Christmas shopping guys, next time you see a nice Versace dress in the window, think where your money is going to.

My take on Christmas might seem a little too extreme and I apologize for the “woah” factor, but in all honesty, that’s how I feel about Christmas in the 21st century. No offense to those doing Christmas shopping.

That wraps it up for Christmas. Lately, I’ve been thinking about where my life is going. I sit on my ass all day looking at a 17” computer screen, typing on a 101-key USB keyboard, Quietkey and I look back on my life and ask myself, where has it gone? Most of my waking hours are spent looking at the thing you’re looking at right now and it has been that way for most of my life. Which means, not only am I a slave to materialism, I’m also a slave to the computer. In my case, it’s an Acer T310-30P5MR, Windows XP Professional Edition, 3.00GHz with 1024GB DDR Ram, 128MB ATI Radeon 9700 Graphics card with integrated sound card, etc. etc. The computer itself costs about 2K SGD. I’ve given 2/3 of my waking hours to this machine. This means that this computer, is worth 800 SGD (I was quoted this from the nice man at the computer store. He told me the computer was old) and 1440 hours of my holiday; in short, priceless. And that’s only the holiday. I’ve had this computer for about 6 months. I don’t even want to know how many hours this computer has taken from me. The irony of it all is that, I gave it to the computer. The computer did not hold me at gunpoint and demand 2/3 of my life from me. Nor did it sneak up on me when I was asleep and suck out my life through any orifice in my body. I willingly gave my time to it. Warcraft 3, Diablo 2, Starcraft, Maple Story (Yeah a bit, when I was incredibly bored), Ragnarok Online, lots and lots of movies, these things are what I spent my life on. Is it worth it; at that point in time, yeah, probably? But when you receive your result slip and notice that the As, Bs and Cs have evaded you, and you wonder where they went, that’s when you really think about whether your time on the machine have been worth it. I used to boast about how “Pro” I was at “Dota” and it was all for shit. Dota doesn’t get me my grades, and they certainly don’t make me money, unless you count the 5 dollars I won from some sucker that I could get a godlike streak before level 9 which I did. The things I should be doing like researching my paper, downloading notes I don’t do. The things that I should only be doing after I do all these, I do. My priorities are a little topsy-turvy don’t you think? Ah well, probably won’t happen again, unless Blizzard comes up with some kick ass game that has the whole world playing, maybe.

Oh as for the title of the blog, I wasn’t really thinking. I just put the first two things that came to my mind. First was the song “Thoughts of a dying atheist” by Muse and “Hubristic Hedonist” which was my nickname for quite some time, thus the name “Thoughts of a Hedonist”. Don’t see the hedonist part? It’s all right, after all, what’s in a name?