The Little Sweatshop of Thoughts

this sounds stupid but google makes me feel smart.

i just had a conversation with someone and he asked me something and i didn’t wanna sound ignorant.

so i googled it.

i have done this with every blog i have and i love doing it specifically because i find it essential to have music to colour your world. it sharpens certain emotions and gives depth to others. so here is my musical soundtrack (thanks to terri for making me do this again)

Rocksy start to the show. Not bad.

Waking up because you loved me is also quite a nice sentiment.

overwhelmed by people and looking for a place in school.

ok la. its fast paced and happy-sounding.

The strategy paper on 16th April 2006 ended of 16 years of non-stop formal education. Amazing.

Congratulations, Roshni Prabhu. You have come a long way.

Now I am moving onto the next chapter, I must say, in haste. Haste by my standards. Taking a leap of faith.

this has got to be one of the best cartoon shows ever. produced by nickelodean, this show was one of the first few cartoons catering to both adults and children (unlike the simpsons which had a lot more adult material). its always heartening to watch the cartoon’s take on popular culture and potshots at the idiosyncrasies of modern life. like today’s revolved heavily around employer-employee relations in the dog-eat-dog world of the fast food business and the whole craze of seeking therapy. it was hilarious!

made my night. happy happy!

went out for lunch with b. tan who has turned out to be a great diva extraordinare. we are in the same class and have found kindred spirits in each other. people who talk loud, are sarcastic and caustic and like to talk in accents to prove the existence of third parties in stories we relate to each other. our other group members tend to disappear after a while since they can’t stand us BOTH at once.

anyway, we went to eat jap food at kuriya in raffles city. very expensive stuff but very nice. and the restaurant itself has many different settings to cater to different clients. like the open setting at the entrance is possibly for the ‘riff raff’ that comes in. and if you want a bit more privacy, they have nicer seating within and then for ultimate exclusivity, they have rooms within where you get your own personal maitre’d (i think). but the menu is extensive and they have vegetarian options too. very delightful. so anyway, i was telling ben about my nightmares of not being able to afford ‘all this high class stuff’ in future because i make a paltry sum of money. also, alluded to the numerous programmes and initiatives (shopping centres, IRs, real estate) that were becoming popular in singapore, in line with wooing the rich.

and ben comes back to me with a ‘darling, focusing on poverty is so passe. no one wants to know how poor you are. its each individual person’s pet peeve, no matter how much they have in the bank. now telling you how others spend their money and how you can have one up against the jones’, that makes good television, conversation and gossip’

(disclaimer: ben was not as eloquent. he actually said: poverty is boring. be atas. i like’)

and then he launched into his theory of how natural disasters hit these places of poverty and help us ‘naturally’ rid the world of these people. social darwinism, he said, and pointed to the tsunami, hurricane katrina and various other earthquakes to prove his point. survivors are the people who are more well off and able to avoid living in those areas, thus leaving the world ‘richer’.

my reaction to this was – eyes widening, jaw dropping and going ‘oh my god, ben!’ at the end of his spiel. like seriously! love your riches but don’t tell me that poor people need to be gotten rid off!! what is that for? to rid yourself of the guilt of not thinking about these unfortunate people while you spend your riches? and what about those who are born into this cycle of poverty without choice? are you going to say that it is better to be rid of them since they were not going to know any better anyway? and in a twisted way, if we did get rid of all these poor people, the next stage of poverty might just be the car owning middle class. now, logically, that target would be ripe for our poverty seeking, non-discriminating natural disaster, wouldn’t it? simply appalling theory.

needed to get that off my chest. the lunch ended well with us making fun of a horrible professor in school. now that is an area which i don’t mind bitching about.

the past week has been strange. i don’t think i have been this quiet in my life. i guess i could have done a lot – exercised (which i did a bit), clean my room (too lazy), study (did that on and off) – but i think i am stuck between wanting to talk to someone and being silly not doing anything about it. it’s not that i don’t want to talk to any one. i’m just not pushed towards it. and suddenly i have this flash.

maybe it’s just because i don’t do things voluntarily, out of some inner desire. i do things as a by-product of something happening to me. some external force affects me, and i, provoked, elicit a response to either counter it or enhance it.

now this is frightening, to be dealt with an idea of these proportions. where am i then? this whole personality junk that i have been deluding myself with… is it just not there? so the emptiness that i feel; it’s not so much lonliness but rather an absence of self? could it be, that i am so boring or rather mundane, that i don’t interest myself? that my personality (or lack of) is heightened only around others? what does that make of me if i can’t be interested in myself?

maybe i should just sleep this off. grr.

so in the spirit of reminiscing, i went back to the 90s when musical choice revolved around the spice girls, take that, the backstreet boys, n*sync and well, more. so i remember this particular dance song and perhaps, VB’s one hit. the beats are heavily ‘computerised’ and considering they call victoria beckham a robot for her unsmiling ways and ‘engineered body’, the song might have been a sign of a time to come. plus it ends off saying: ‘this tunes’s going to punish you!’. hahahahaha.

the song does signal to a less complicated and more clueless time in my life. it was when you developed your own irritating lingo. the repetitive ‘your out of your mind’ in the song did become something i just kept saying until my mother told me she would kill me if i said it again. i recorded songs off my aiwa twin deck radio and i used to stay up late into the night so i can hear all the dedications on 987fm and record all my favorite songs. and then i used to listen to these mixtapes on the way to school on my sony walkman. still pretty behind the times in the early sec sch years when disc mans emerged. anyhoo, the very first cassette that i bought myself was No Doubt’s Tragic Kingdom and at $5 then, it was my most prized possession. i can still remember the lyrics to ‘don’t speak’. slowly, slowly i started buying more cassette tapes and doing more so whenever i went to india, since it was so much cheaper there. and then came the cds. i was into boy bands then and so i only have BSB, Boyzone and n*sync. listening to them over and over and over again. haha. all good times.

did i say i love dance music? *my inner gay man boogies furiously*

its a quiet saturday afternoon as i sit in my living room. corinne bailey ray softly singing, ‘put your records on’, cool weather and a nice warm tea – its perfect for a lazy afternoon. just missing some people to share it with. and for some reason, the mood transports me back to the holiday in sri lanka dec’07. at the end of our trip, too well rested and too energetic, i sat in our hotel in bentota and came up with this photo journey. i don’t think the parents really got it when i showed it to them. all they could say was, ‘you didn’t sleep the night before ‘cos of this?’ 

(photos are slightly enhanced for colour and mood)

i just watched this amazing ad by nike for its training gear. Just click on the link within the site that asks you to spend 60s getting motivated. the website is very interactive, providing people with different goals useful tips on how to execute them. very discretely placed, are links to the merchandise where they tell you how they are performance-enhancing and what they can do for your goals. no mention of prices but instead a list of outlets on where to buy them.

i find the the ad truly inspirational. it shows how Federer, Sharapova, Bryant, C. Ronaldo and Manny Pacquiao (kickboxer) train to reach their goals. the tagline for the series is ‘How hard will you work for your goal?’ which i think is a powerful statement to make. and by featuring popular, prominent young athletes shown working hard to get their success, it puts into perspective that hard work can pay. by ‘humanising’ the atheletes, the ad makes it seem that such success is actually possible for ‘mere mortals’ if push ourselves as hard. simply awesome.

plus, this is just off the cuff, but by just segmenting their existing market to target the ‘fitness freaks’ and people considering turning pro, it reaches out to more people, making it more than just another branded exercise wear. nike may not even have to spend a lot more on this new product line, just advertising maybe. very cleverly, it can now charge a premium for its gear by pressing the right buttons.

i’m hooked.

yes i’m grounded
got my wings clipped
i’m surrounded
by all this pavement
guess i’ll circle
while i’m waiting
for my fuse to dry