Culture, Colour and Chaos

Today's Sunday Times carries an article about Geylang, regarded by Spore police as potentially more dangerous than Little India, a hotspot for hooligans, hookers, gangsters and crooks. On the other end of the spectrum an expat couple living in a lorong 24A shop house, a lane next to the epicentre of prostitution, describes the area as one of culture, colour and chaos. I know where they are coming from because I have been attending Buddhist classes in this area for the last 2 years. Ironically Geylang is also a place with many temples, Buddhist institutions, clan associations, a mosque and lots of good eateries as well, and yes the Buddhist Library is at lorong 24A where the expat couple stays.

So if I take a bus from my home that deposits me at Lorong 18, I walk upwards towards lorong 24A where the library is located. At early evening around 7 pm the place is beginning to get crowded with Chinese and Indian workers going home to their crowded rooms or flats in old dilapidated shophouses and apartments. I have to avoid body contact jostling amongst the workers in the narrow corridors of the shop houses selling food, groceries, clothing, footwear, necessities and provisions that cater to their needs, I would imagine it a bit risky for a younger female to walk this stretch not to be "accidentally" taken advantage off. Some brave pedlars have started laying out smuggled cigarettes; and probably drugs will come into the scene later. I can also imagine some workers who are gobbling down a quick dinner hastening to some illegal gambling joints when night falls.

As I approach Lorong 24, even when the sky has not sufficiently darkened, females mostly in high heels and revealing or suggestive outfits have lined the road intermittently. However what startles me is when I notice some older women who are brightly though not indecently dressed and who look every inch like an ordinary Singapore aunty offering their services to male passers by as well. I was really shocked when I heard one neat and homely looking middle aged woman doing that. Often times I walk pass them quickly trying not to look into their eyes, lest their eyes dare me to disdain or sympathise with them or lest their eyes smirk at my 'better' life.

Admist the loud China-slanged hubbub and clueless Indian din, I descend on the Library, a beautifully restored shop house. Once inside the quietness becomes more pronounced. I take off my shoes and keep them amongst others neatly arranged in the hidden cabinet. Through the glass door to the partially lighted prayer room one can see the metre tall Buddha seated in the centre and a nearby oil lamp giving out an orange glow, a place of refuge. Another glass door leads to the actual library which shelved rows and rows of books. One can sit quietly in the rather deserted library to quiet down, reflect and contemplate. Occasionally, conversations of passers by outside can still be heard even in the air cond room; but they seem distant though not unloud whilst I find myself drifting into a silent prayer, " May their sufferings be lessened".

To the culture, colour and chaos I think Geylang also awakens our Compassion.

The Importance of Being Busy

Once when finding it hard to find a time slot for my next facial appointment due to my so called busy schedule, my therapist commented 你是大忙人 .  I beamed a tinge of satisfaction, a modern evidence of achievement perhaps.

Yesterday's ST carried an article about how leading a frenetic life has become a status symbol. As the writer puts it "busyness has become not just a way of life but a badge of honour" and increasingly "an exhausting everydayathon". Being busy implies importance and together with hectic multi-tasking connote a full life.

Now I reflect upon the real motives behind my own engagements. Since I do a bit of everything and  if people do ask me what I am busy with (after my retirement); and if I am all out to impress I can reply tongue in cheek in one of the following ways depending on who I am responding to:

• To impress someone who focuses on making money, I can say I spend much of my time trying to invest wisely
• To someone who is altruistic or believes himself to be, I can say I spend much time doing charity/volunteer work
• To someone who believes that life is an adventure, I can say I often travel
• and if one day I can be fortunate enough, I would want to say I spend a lot of time looking after my grandchildren to someone who believes life is all about family

The litmus test is what I would be busy with if there is no need to appear important to anyone.

After a bit of pondering I think I would still be doing a bit of all the above including the last if I have that fortune. Meanwhile I would include one more activity which is to keep dreaming or thinking of writing a book which will never be published, a book which will perish with me. Furthermore if I can silence the 4 types of people mentioned above, who incidentally live within me and are my biggest critique, I will likely spend a lot of my time just doing that. The biggest fan of such a project will be dreamers or what the world would describe as idlers.

One day the Idler in me will gain stature and I will want to appear important before her more than anyone else.

Fun with Urban Dictionary

Next time someone responds with the word "Whatever" to something you have said and you aren't sure where he or she is coming from, check the Urban Dictionary online. This dictionary is created to provide definitions for common slangs, cultural phrases and vulgarism often not found in ordinary dictionaries. Its unique features lies in the fact that anyone can contribute definitions though there is some regulating done by volunteers. As at Mar 2013 there are 7 million definitions in the dictionary.
So the beauty is in having many definitions for a single word or phrase. Definitions are ranked based on the number of "likes" garnered from readers

For example the slang "Whatever" has 62 definitions with the most favoured definition capturing more than 13,500 'likes' and which reads as follow :

Whatever  - used in an argument to admit that you are wrong without admitting it so the argument is over.
Other well like definitions for 'Whatever' include:

• "Indifference to what a person is saying! Who cares!;Get a Life!"
• "A polite and less vulgar alternative to FUCK YOU"
• " Either an idiot's response to an intellectual's question, or an intellectual's response to an idiot's question"- (I like this most) 

The definitions are usually not just confined to meaning of the words or phrases but often come with opinion on their usage. So for example someone has this to say about the word "Amazing":
-Over used word. Usually by teenage airhead girls. Amazing was once a word to describe something outstanding and wonderful. Now, teenage girls have overused the word. And have ruined it all.

How I discovered this wonderful dictionary was when my daughter was describing someone as a douchebag. No matter how she tried I wasn't able to get the right meaning or really the right flavour.
 "Ah" I exclaimed, "Maybe douchebags are like those smirk and arrogant young bankers who used to push sell new products to our company".

That was when she asked me to look up Urban Dictionary which amongst many had these to offer for 'Douchebag';

• ' An individual who has an over-inflated sense of self worth, compounded by a low level of intelligence, behaving ridiculously in front of colleagues with no sense of how moronic he appears'.
• ' Someone who has surpassed the levels of jerk and asshole, however not yet reached fucker or motherfucker'

"Maybe 'SmartyPant' is a better word for those guys" she offered.

I then checked SmartyPant which read "someone who displays intelligence in an annoying way"
Hmm...not quite really, the intelligence part. The annoying part maybe.

Remembering the grande dames

In celebration of International Women's Day, BT correspondent Jamie Lee paid tribute to her grandmother who passed away recently after being a shadow of herself with dementia. Jamie recalled the old lady's resilience bringing up 6 children working as a samsui woman; and in later years as the matriarch who constantly pulled the family together with the same "inspite of all" smile. Of the old lady's driving force in life, Jamie remarked " If only I'd have the same courage to put all my hopes in family, knowing that disappointments might come in ways that would not be within my control."

Reading Jamie's comment reminds me of a similar feeling I have after visiting my 90 year old aunt during Chinese New Year. A fall has made her wheel chair bound and she now depends on the maid to help her around. Unlike other old folks who may vent their loss of freedom on their maids my aunt was truly appreciative of her maid's support and dismisses the maid's tasteless cooking as trivial shortcoming. Such rationale and clarity of mind at 90 is a marvel. Reflecting on hers and other aunts' life journeys, I am reminded that the women of my mother's generation have only their family's well being as the principal life project. A quick scan on the life journey of my brood of over 30 cousins has dawned on me how much anxiety or disappointment our different scales of roller coaster rides would have brought upon our mothers. Yet these women who (unlike us) do not have careers to fall back as an alternative project, can only accept whatever the family chose to bring; be it joy, fulfillment, anguish, disappointment or pain- all have to be packed in and carried with stoic acceptance

It puts to shame the frustrations that we currently encounter over the first world problems that our children bear upon us. On this International Women's Day I become aware again how much we can learn from the spirit of these grande dames, though many of them are no longer with us.