Change

What strikes me as interesting in life is the fact that when we are overseas the idea of 'contributing' seems to have so much of a pull factor. Is it just because there is already a system in place to which we can contribute to that makes us so gung-ho about signing up? Or maybe the idea that CV padding has to occur in US universities otherwise the big banks and companies would never ever consider your resume? Regardless not every volunteering really has to be self sacrificing to the extent of gandhi-ism I guess.

But what really is the point? Volunteering is definitely soul sucking because you wonder what on earth you are doing and whether all your grand delusions of 'helping' are really helping anyone at all. I remember trying to teach the group of 10 year olds and attempting to engage them enough for them to read a paragraph in a book. It was scary when I realized that at age 10 I was reading novels and these kids could barely get a sentence together properly let alone with intonation and pronunciation intact, and this was in America, supposedly the most developed country in the world.

Right there is where you suddenly realize how much education exists as the one tool to really make a difference. Everything I know right now I have every single teacher in my life to thank. Who knows at what point I suddenly saw words and realized their meanings, where 26 alphabets combined plays host to a world of meaning.

In the past 2 hrs of sitting in the office kinda feeling guilty that I'm getting paid for not really contributing anything productive to society (which I might regret soon when I'm plonked with work), I've somehow decided that I've had enough with being complacent. Of course illusions of grandeur seem to always come with daydreaming but I guess I'm all up for volunteering time for things. Now to erase the guilt of self-congratulatory notions.

Dear Freshmen Self...

...Ann Arbor really will be as cold as they say it is. No one will warn you about how hard it is to get into classes you want, even in the last semester of senior year. You will meet the craziest bunch of people whom you will love and get to know by 6 degrees of separation and hours spent in the library puzzling over problems like the true nerds you are.

Find Tango sooner, it's a dance for life and you need to start asap. Markley isn't a nice dorm to be in when you're

1)Foreign
2)Asian
3)Can't stand obnoxious sorority girls singing opera in the neighbouring room

College will not tell you where you will end up in 3 years. It will not give you the answers to life, and it will not hand you a job. That's up to you. Interviews really do suck as much as you think they do right now and company presentations are definitely there to lure you into the secure mode of 'they really want to hire me' before stomping over any career plans you might possibly have and taking any self esteem you had to boot.

Go out there and explore the town beyond the foursquare of South Quad, Sadako, Markley and Bdubbs. I honestly wish you were 21 already so you could go chill at the nicer microbreweries and drink recommended beer which tastes the same anyway.

Eat out more instead of worrying bout wasting meal credits, there's so much to see and explore. Build a snowman and make snow angels. Go to Ice Hockey and Bball at Crisler. Make sure you walk through the fountains outside the MLB.

Visit Detroit wholly and discover its hidden gems. Explore all corner of the States when possible and don't run home every Summer too early.

You will kiss some wrong guys, make some wrong decisions, get some bad grades, fall in Love and get your heart broken. That's life.
Make sure you do the typical Spring Break, no matter how idiotic it seems to you at that point in time. Try and make all your lectures, for god sakes you're paying 40,000USD a year for this experience, at least try to learn something.

Take chances, embarass yourself, do things that you've never done before, meet different people and never give up.

Lose

Do we lose a part of ourselves over time? Just as we pick up new skills in the workplace, new real life job skills do we lose the idealistic part of us. Or maybe we just hit a brick wall called reality where all we end up being are jaded individuals.

If I could relive this life what would I do with the knowledge I ended up gaining over the relatively short period of existence? I would probably end up focusing on something developmental. No joke. Nothing is more impressive/interesting than fieldwork especially in the areas of improving people's lives. I would probably stay in academia, then again like anything else in this world there is no acknowledgment of the blood, sweat and tears that comes with struggling for recognition in an already saturated academic world.

I started thinking about jobs and being in Malaysia and how everyone that you encounter often wonders 'why did you come back?' I often want to scream out loud that people should obviously have more respect for their own country and be proud enough to say they WANT to come back. Why have we lost that much faith in our country? Negativity is great to spur people to want to do something different but sometimes I feel this country is really at its teetering point. If they build that stupid warisan merdeka I will scream. Then again it's been done through the ages so many times before and we're still functioning (barely).

Sometimes I think people just stay in places where they did their tertiary education because it holds so many memories and represents such a time where we attempted to transition to adulthood (albeit in a safe mode with tons of friends still around). I'm regressing at home.

Comme Il Faut

So much for waiting for Argentina, I HAVE MY SHOES!

Checked out Tango at Abrazos, must say the Singaporean standards are something else. They are pretty good too, but not far above KL. I'm pretty impressed at our own tangueros =).

28, Black, 10 bucks. Beginners luck and a chunk of cash, woohoo. Good weekend!

Of golf courses and financial models

I spent today traipsing around a golf course. In heels. Michelle Wie was somewhere in the vicinity. I now know that water retention is very important in a golf course and that people often don't really know what they are doing. Good god now THAT is scary.

Still adjusting, can't believe it's only second week. Uncovering more insights, nice bunch of people. See where this takes me.

Beginnings

First day on the job tomorrow. Eeps. See how it goes then shall we?

MSU vs Umich absolute failure! argh. Kinda miss the hype of standing in the student section with the absolute crazy pandemonium of sheer chaotic last minute wins. do NOT miss drunk idiots and near fights. It really is about the people that made AA what it was, wasn't it?

Ashes and Memories

Sometimes it's easier being honest with people you barely know than it is with people whom you've known for years. The human mind likes to attach certain unyielding and unchanging traits to the people we meet in our lives. The longer we know someone the more there is to forget about them and the more we know them, the more we tend to believe that we truly "know" them. As in, we know all about them and that's all there is. But maybe that's where we're proven wrong, just a little. Maybe it is at that point where we assume we know all there is to know about someone that they change, mutate, grow. We are after all the sum of our experiences and no one and nothing is ever unchanging.

Truth is though, whatever we present to others as the "I" is what we really want to be. It just takes time for the other less savory aspects of our character to present itself, and you know you're true friends when that ship survives it all. But time really tries its best to knock dents in it. Sometimes bad memories are all you have, where against your better judgment you clung on because once upon a time you needed it, but not anymore. It's sad but maybe somewhere in the past there was once happy times that once included that person you called friend.

The most beautiful reality is your own. After all, we are all actors in this play called life only once, so make it a performance to remember.