It's quite common to hear people lamenting that the world isn't fair. It's very uncommon, though, to hear people complaining that the world isn't beautiful.
I think God created the world with the concept of beauty in mind, rather than the concept of fairness. If everybody was born with equal amounts of the same amount of everything, and the world was evenly distributed with the same natural resources et cetera, it would be monotonous, and of course, ugly.
As an alleged beauty lover, I have to say that I think God's vision is better than having human perceptions of fairness reign. I'd rather have a world of diversity and beauty in that than a fair but prosaic world.
A chronicle of nose growth
'...changing the form of one's mission's almost as difficult as changing the shape of one's nose:
they are, each, in the middle of one's face and one's character - one has to begin too far back.'
― Henry James. The Portrait of a Lady.
Thursday, November 25, 2004
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
Mother tongue
I think I've finally figured it out. You know, the reason why I seem not to be terribly good at expressing myself in writing. Why I seem to have no inspiration for writing, and why even if I do, I usually don't bring the point that's in my head across.
It's becaue I'm not fluent the written and spoken word, as a whole. It's not that I lack the vocabulary, or that I lack any of that sort of thing. It's because written and spoken word isn't my mother tongue (when I mean written and spoken word, I include Chinese, so I don't mean that.)
I think I'm more fluent in the language of music and dance than writing. It's a consoling thought - actually, scrap that. I'm hardly fluent in either. But at least, when everything is in its place, I feel as if I'm getting my point across in those languages much more efficiently. It's my mother tongue - albeit a language I'm still a novice to.
This claim isn't unfounded - I've examined my preferences, and found little pieces of supporting evidence. For instance, I actually prefer instrumental music to songs. It's an unusal preference, I believe. Most people prefer songs to just plain old music. Of course there are exceptional pieces of music that these people prefer to song, but that is more the exception than the rule.
Of course, there's also the very obvious obsession with ballet. I can sometimes feel extremely ecstatic (as opposed to just aesthetic) when dancing, over and above the simple endorphin release. Asssuming what I've deduced is true, that's kind of a relief to realise all this.
It really helps after all those low low marks in essays and compositions (in English and Chinese). Not to mention oral.
It's becaue I'm not fluent the written and spoken word, as a whole. It's not that I lack the vocabulary, or that I lack any of that sort of thing. It's because written and spoken word isn't my mother tongue (when I mean written and spoken word, I include Chinese, so I don't mean that.)
I think I'm more fluent in the language of music and dance than writing. It's a consoling thought - actually, scrap that. I'm hardly fluent in either. But at least, when everything is in its place, I feel as if I'm getting my point across in those languages much more efficiently. It's my mother tongue - albeit a language I'm still a novice to.
This claim isn't unfounded - I've examined my preferences, and found little pieces of supporting evidence. For instance, I actually prefer instrumental music to songs. It's an unusal preference, I believe. Most people prefer songs to just plain old music. Of course there are exceptional pieces of music that these people prefer to song, but that is more the exception than the rule.
Of course, there's also the very obvious obsession with ballet. I can sometimes feel extremely ecstatic (as opposed to just aesthetic) when dancing, over and above the simple endorphin release. Asssuming what I've deduced is true, that's kind of a relief to realise all this.
It really helps after all those low low marks in essays and compositions (in English and Chinese). Not to mention oral.
Monday, November 15, 2004
Fidelity Fiduciary Bank
Yesterday was a rather interesting day. My mum, goodness knows why, decided to up and take us all to the bank.
I knew I was likely to be bored, so I brought a book along, which I read on the journey there, and found out about slime moulds. Slime moulds are really rather interesting creatures, although their name sounds decidedly boring and borderline disgusting (Their genus sounds even more repulsive - Dictyostelium). During the happiest part of their life cycle, slime moulds exist as unicellular amoebas (ring a bell?), feasting on bacteria and other microbes, in some dank corner of your nearest park. But when the weather starts to dry out and food is scarce, these little critters start converging on central locations, joining in streams that look like webs of slime. When all are present and accounted for, they assume their positions to form something of a garden slug. This slug-thing creeps about until it finds a place it likes, then settles down to change form again. It sends up a thin stalk into the air and more cells crawl up to form a ball. As the weather turns even drier, the ball cracks open and spores are released. Said in a Discovery Channel voice: And thus their life cycle is continued.
When we arrived, we were escorted to a small room decorated Oriental style and given tea and coffee (sounds so Mafia-ish, doesn't it?). While I struggled to identify whether the music playing was Japanese or Chinese or a fusion, and whether it was the guzheng or pipa or neither, my parents talked bank stuff. After a while, my dad got bored and started to draw on his serviette. This caught my attention so I decided to nosy in. My dad was drawing a Moebius strip, which, as I found out, can be easily made by taking a thin strip of paper and twisting it once, then attaching the two ends together to form a ring. The cool thing about this string is that if you cut it along the middle line, it doesn't become two same-size but thinner rings, but becomes one bigger and thinner ring. Soon we started to tear up the napkins to try this out. I was in the process of making my fifth or sixth when the bank person attending to us left the room and my mum started talking to my dad about investments.
I quote: "You mustn't be bought in by all this sales talk, dear. At the end of the day, an apple is still an apple. No matter what you say or do, it is still an apple. Just because she says [insert some banking jargon here - something about interest rates], doesn't mean anything. No matter what she says that apple will never become a pear."
And, in response to my laughter: "It's true! You can call it a Granny-Smith or a New Zealand, but at the end of the day, an apple is still an apple! And make sure you clean up that mess you made with the tissues!"
I knew I was likely to be bored, so I brought a book along, which I read on the journey there, and found out about slime moulds. Slime moulds are really rather interesting creatures, although their name sounds decidedly boring and borderline disgusting (Their genus sounds even more repulsive - Dictyostelium). During the happiest part of their life cycle, slime moulds exist as unicellular amoebas (ring a bell?), feasting on bacteria and other microbes, in some dank corner of your nearest park. But when the weather starts to dry out and food is scarce, these little critters start converging on central locations, joining in streams that look like webs of slime. When all are present and accounted for, they assume their positions to form something of a garden slug. This slug-thing creeps about until it finds a place it likes, then settles down to change form again. It sends up a thin stalk into the air and more cells crawl up to form a ball. As the weather turns even drier, the ball cracks open and spores are released. Said in a Discovery Channel voice: And thus their life cycle is continued.
When we arrived, we were escorted to a small room decorated Oriental style and given tea and coffee (sounds so Mafia-ish, doesn't it?). While I struggled to identify whether the music playing was Japanese or Chinese or a fusion, and whether it was the guzheng or pipa or neither, my parents talked bank stuff. After a while, my dad got bored and started to draw on his serviette. This caught my attention so I decided to nosy in. My dad was drawing a Moebius strip, which, as I found out, can be easily made by taking a thin strip of paper and twisting it once, then attaching the two ends together to form a ring. The cool thing about this string is that if you cut it along the middle line, it doesn't become two same-size but thinner rings, but becomes one bigger and thinner ring. Soon we started to tear up the napkins to try this out. I was in the process of making my fifth or sixth when the bank person attending to us left the room and my mum started talking to my dad about investments.
I quote: "You mustn't be bought in by all this sales talk, dear. At the end of the day, an apple is still an apple. No matter what you say or do, it is still an apple. Just because she says [insert some banking jargon here - something about interest rates], doesn't mean anything. No matter what she says that apple will never become a pear."
And, in response to my laughter: "It's true! You can call it a Granny-Smith or a New Zealand, but at the end of the day, an apple is still an apple! And make sure you clean up that mess you made with the tissues!"
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