acuransx the foolish

FYP discussion between me and a friend leading to re-examination of values:

A: still no topic lah
R: !!
A: keep getting rejected by *****
R: i thought that u pitched some topics to *****?
R: even the media and religion thingy?
A: there were 2 rounds of that already
R: aiyohh
A: if only it were clear - wat were the guidelines for choosing a topic and scope
A: right now it just feels like its up to the fyp sup's interests or understanding of how wide or angled it would be
A: i'm quite disappointed lah
R: the media and religion kena rejected too?
A: keep refining... he keep insisting certain things arent worth it.... doesn't like our scope and approach... why r these ppl so 1-track? just like *****
A: well then have u tried the other journ profs?
A: who is he better to say that something is going to be more appealing to audiences than something else?
A: but anyway i sometimes feel i am in the wrong area of study
A: it is true audiences haf a short attention-span and want only the gist of everything
A: i only regret that i fooled myself into thinking it was something else.
A: cos i hate the restrictions that 'capturing audiences attention' or 'news relevance' imposes on me
A: if it were me, i'd rather write to make everybody read what i want to say. and convincingly too

In short, I want to define what ought to be newsworthy. HaahHAa...

People who say objectivity? there isn't any... The best they could strive for is balance or 'plurality of viewpoints' People who insist they can be objective are claiming to be espousing the viewpoint from nowhere - which doesn't exist. Shyam concedes with me on that :)

(sidetrack: Only God has the viewpoint from everywhere - the ultimate and only objective journalist in that sense)

But anyway the media industry just seems so... trivial... just like news, celebrities... it focuses on things that are here today and gone tomorrow and promote self-seeking, sensastionalism, gossip, controversy and all other kinds of rather unworthy distractions for people to spend their time and money on.

Maybe I'm too pessimistic. Maybe I'm just focusing on the negatives. But somehow I don't find my supposedly stated goal as a media worker any meaningful... apart from the fact that it pays the mortgage. But so many other jobs pay the mortgage too...

I still maintain that I like writing. I always will. Just that journalism isn't the same as writing. On that I was so mistaken. Does it give opportunities to write? Yes. But its stated intent of writing and impact on content is too great for me. I'm not just a writing machine no sir. I will write what I mean to write.

*sigh*

Why don't I just shut-up already and just get a job that pays the bills...

Ha. That's why I can never believe whole-heartedly in any job. Just Our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Come live your life with me
Peter Cincotti

No one can buy tomorrow
No one can sell their sorrow
But when you look into my eyes
Darling, you'll always see

Love, I will give you love
Come live your life with me

We'll have our good times and even in sad times
With love we will find the way

Nothing else matters but loving each other
The way that we do today

Here in our world together
Love will go on forever
Warm in the shelter of my arms
Darling, you'll always be

Love, I will give you love
Come live your life with me

Here in our world together
Love will go on forever
Warm in the shelter of my arms
Darling, you'll always be

Love, I will give you love
Come live your life with me
--------------------------------------

slow n jazzy - to the opening theme of the Godfather...

nice music for a quiet night.....

Straits Times, why do ye speakth in parables? If income disparity has worsened, tell us plainly!

Another reason not to read / work in the local newspaper industry?

Perhaps so, my hapless SCI friends. And the MICA had the cheek to go around accusing mrbrown of 'distorting the truth'...

Truth twisted around and contorted is still arguably truth sometimes, but the June 29th headline treated all Singaporeans like complete idiots.

In the past it was a matter of reading the headline, and then the main text body of the article would tell you something else. But this time their window dressing was plain for all to see. Need I press any further?

After NKF we thought maybe the press after all did operate as something else other than a business (as some people would claim). But thinking about that, it does make perfect business sense that the ST would defend its reputation? So no ideals being upheld here. As Don Corleone would say - its not personal, its strictly business.

But I would suspect that, the effect of that whole NKF episode was that somehow public expectations of the press were changed or increased somewhat, at least maybe to certain sectors of the population. This was probably in tandem with an increasingly sophisticated readership.

Anyway, GE2006 and Gomezgate with its political implications came along and ST descended back into its former self. With increasing access to alternative media as well as large attendance at disappointingly covered opposition rallies I believe a growing number began to be disillusioned and skeptical about the mainstream press.

Now, the dust has settled. And yet ST pulls off yet another excellent stunt. Why such a headline? It would be very VERY hard for ST to argue that it was being responsible to the public and not being partisan in politics (the same accusation MICA threw at mrbrown) when they come up with such headlines that are twisted and contorted for some reason close to the point of self-contradiction.

Or do they have a duty to preserve at all costs public order, for fear that Singaporeans would riot and bang tables when they have learnt that the bottom 30% of people here got poorer?

I'm not advocating civil disobedience and quite honestly a bad report card as such would turn heads but won't start a riot.

The point here is - report the plain truth as it is. Don't go around twisting and turning on words like income and wages. What type of conclusion would people draw?

The public readership is becoming more sophisticated and politically-aware. ST needs to start coming clean and deliver what is being expected of it, lest business suffer.

Also, wouldn't it be a political nightmare for the government if people start getting fed up with the mainstream press and turn to alternative media for news and public debate - the latter being much more out of their control and influence than traditional media?

Wise-up ST. As far as I can see, you're not winning any hearts in the SCI fraternity or amongst the growing intelligentsia.

As an aside - now that we know - that the bottom 30% of household have actually been experiencing falling incomes - wouldn't it shake the foundations of a government that places almost all its legitimacy on being able to 'deliver the goods' and feed the people economically? The release of this information was nicely timed too - after GE.

Comeon, I'm sure things will look better with the casinos when they're finally done...

*blink blink*

Unemployed life

Good. I no longer feel bad about not working this holidays. Been busy reading the 2-volume A History of Christianity by Latourette as well as Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.

The latter book is a sort-of revisitation of my old JC arch enemy The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale which I did for A-level literature. It was a great act of foolhardiness that I went for the exam without having actually finished reading the text itself - and no doubt this wanton insult to Chaucer cost me my A.

But nevertheless I'm enjoying it tremendously now. If only I had appreciated it half as much as I do now back then...

Grammar and sentence construction getting a bit twisty and stretched out are we?

Like all lit texts there's a context of medieval Europe to be discovered in Chaucer. From their detailed astrology, fascination with the pagan Greek and Roman gods, the underlying theology and issues with the Christianity of their day... and so on. And all that soapy courtly love stories in between.

Btw, a great semi-final between Germany and Italy this morning. I watched from the 2nd half onwards. Nothing better than 2 evenly-matched sides, many close shaves and a SHOCKING 2 goal victory in the last 2 minutes of the post match 30min extra time period! Kudos!

God bless!

"if you don't like pushing paperwork, what do you like?"

That was the key phrase that stumped me as my supervisor enquired of me why I was quitting after a week on the job.

She got me on that one. There were so many answers I just didn't know where to begin.

Then it struck me. She was coming from an entirely different planet altogether. I was never meant for this job. So I politely came up with some self-depreciating comment about my incompetence with numbers and such (which isn't without basis by the way).

"Then how come you managed to last one month the last time you worked here?"

Well. The truth was it was a different supervisor who didn't just throw tonnes of greek at me and tell me hey - deadline in 2 days.

"Because the work last year was easy. I just keyed in things."

Also probably because last time I didn't get emails between 2am-4am in the morning about things to be done.

"I think I can't fit into the pace of work here, the work culture."

Indeed. I don't. Somehow I pity my friends who have careers or are about to have careers in lawyering, accounting, and all those kinds of specialist paperwork processors, always working around rules, legislations, legal frameworks, audit trails, tax complicance, going around and around in the bureaucracy.

But hey, maybe they find it a great challenge? Fair enough. Or hey - its just work. Yea so is driving the squeaky little van running around making deliveries.

Somehow maybe I'm very low-level material, but to me that's more fulfilling than figuring out how to justify putting 70% of this entity's support time into the German company's expense sheet. Nevermind whether or not 70% of the time was actually spent supporting the German company. Your job is to explain it away.

But of course, money ought to override all the most boring, redundant, ridiculous, unreasonable working conditions and supervisors and also dull away all the possibly unethical implications of your work right?

No wonder they paid me $9 an hour.

Too bad. I quit still. This work is not for me.

More things in life than corporate glamour, big money, expensive cars and suits and big lunches. I'm not going to numb myself half-dead just for all that.

Also, the last 2 full-time people who were here before me didn't last more than 3 months each either. So at least I know its not just me.

the rat race

finished the internship. What a teary send-off.

I immediately got a position at some MNC I had worked in before. It's at SGX Tower 1. The corporate rat race. Every morning walking with the throngs of executives and what-nots in the underpass to shenton way.

The pay's good, but the pace of work terrifying.

Taxation is something totally new to me, but I'm just being slammed in headlong in the work and muddling about figuring things out as I go.

I fell ill yesterday and it got worse, so I left work early. I told my sup: I might be on MC tomorrow as I'm going to see the doc. Been having a fever runny nose for past few days. She was like "why don't you get a jab so you'll recover faster then you can come back tomorrow afternoon".

Also, "could you wait till next Monday to get sick because I'll be on leave then"

Who knows. I might not last more than the first week there. I'm learning too slowly and the only reason I can think I'm still there is that they have no other alternative.

I get emails from her at 3am in the morning. Terrifying. They really bleed for their nice suits and extravagant spending.

Anyway, I have 2 days of MC and I intend to actually take at least one day...

But guess what. I'm actually feeling bad about taking MC and thinking about that pile of stuff sitting there to be cleared...

This is a different kind of work experience compared to what I've had in my previous jobs...

Of the Devil and the Holy Spirit

Its been over a week since the car's gone. Well. Still getting used to it.

Right now I'm blogging during office hours in my office. That is so "evil".

Talk about evil. Tomorrow is 06-06-06. 666 if you like. Mark of the devil. Launch of the newest incarnation of that old movie "The Omen". Although as far as I remember from the previous movie I don't think that "devil's child" was actually born on the 6th of June 1966 or something. Nah that would have four 6s (6666) and that would be one 6 too many of what we're supposed to look out for as the mark of the devil.

Anyway as far as I remember from Revelations "666" is the mark of the devil on people who belong to Satan close to the last days of earth. I wonder how it was actually translated over from the original. But it definately isn't a date we're looking out for so launching The Omen on 06-06-06 is just mere hype and marketing gimmick.

A long rambling rant my typical blog entry tends to be, and I make no apologies. As you may have noticed I did try in my previous entries to mark out the different sections or topics by drawing "-----------------------------" lines but I have decided I shall no longer bother. After all, this is definately not newswriting or PR writing where I write to please somebody or catch someone's attention. Imagine the lengths writers compromise themselves just to achieve all that. So keep up if you can or skim through if you think you can catch the essence of what I'm trying to say with just a once-over. But you'd probably never have as much fun as I have writing all this nonsense :P

Internship is ending (salvation is at hand!) but then I have to start planning constructively what I want to do with the remainder of my holidays.

But, what have I learnt so far? Well, personally and spiritually, many things. Things about church and church activities and people, workplace, other Christians, non-Christians, people of varying denominations, other religions, and the struggle to live out Christ's command to "love God" and "love thy neighbour as thyself" at all areas wherever we can

My dream FYP would be to do a content analysis of all the recent movies based on Christian themes (Da Vinci Code, The Omen, Passion of the Christ) and some older ones like The Last Temptation of Christ) and the effects of these movies on audiences, Christians, non-Christians, people of other religions, etc

Another thing - I think I understand why I've been very weary to things like "the prompting of the Holy Spirit" in certain things like making decisions and so on - there is no Biblical basis for that. After praying make the decision to the best of your ability with humility and concern for others and in clear conscience before God and in God's name. God won't give you a sign or some feeling of what decision you should make.

Look at Acts 1. When they needed a replacement apostle, they chose amongst many to the best of their ability by testimony 2 of them just as well suited to the task and couldn't decide among them, so they prayed and cast lots. Notice even the apostles didn't pray and then the Holy Spirit whispered to them or gave them some 'feeling' that they should choose Matthias.

But that is the way many Christians are justifying their decisions! By assuming some feeling they have to be the Holy Spirit leading or prompting them to do something. There is no biblical basis for this.

Even if you quote me the account of Philip's witness to the Ethopian eunuch you must notice in the KJV Bible there were many terms used "angel of the Lord", "Spirit", "Spirit of the Lord" and not only that, that Spirit whisked Philip away after it was all over. And earlier in that passage they talk clearly and in distinct terms about the "Holy Ghost". So, a translation true to the original Greek uses different terms.

I know, in NIV all these different terms were simply changed to "Spirit" or "Holy Spirit" so ppl will simply think they all refer to the same thing. That's the problem with translations that are not literal. They read easily but also have interpretations embedded into them.

Are we sure we can just simply call them all the same thing just so we can justify our "Holy Spirit feeling" prompting us what to do? How do you know this actually is the Holy Spirit? The never says the Holy Spirit is some feeling...beware... what could it be then?

To sum up:
The Holy Spirit is NOT some subjective feeling you get after praying or something like that. He is the Comforter. He will teach all things (no not by speaking some stuff into your head - but to convict you of the truth of the scriptures as you read and learn about them and as you go about your daily life in light of them)

We have feelings and emotions because we are of God. But we MUSN'T claim these feelings to be the Holy Spirit because even in the Bible there is no basis.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? - Jeremiah 17:9

I'm open to counters so please feel free to post here.