Monsieur Order and Madame Chaos.

I am a big fan of order.

Some might consider it unnatural (blasphemous, even) that I would say such a thing, when I consider myself a man who enjoys creative work, which many people associate with an absence of routine, organisation and a host of other unexciting things.

If there was a school of thought that rejects such an association, then I’m definitely part of it. Take time management, for example. I’m not  great at it, but on my good days (like today), it’s a wonderful feeling when I’ve finished things on schedule and more importantly, in so doing, allows me to have time to sit here, munch on some cookies and think about how to rule the world [insert appropriate creative pursuit].

…or maybe it’s just the dictatorial side of me, vicariously expressing my preference for stable, controlled environments.

In any case, the real reason why I brought up order in the first place was because Timeless 2012 – which had consumed my life in its entirety for the past 3-4 weeks – is finally over! And now I have some room in my life to catch up on skipped lectures/classes and to get back into some of my more productive routines e.g. the simple rules I had set earlier last month …most of which, needless to say, were broken with anarchic ease when Timeless occupied my life.

But all the personal rule-breaking was worth it! The audience responded well to the acting, the script and the performances. Also, the trailers that I worked on were pretty successful, considering I completed both of them in less than a week, and both got close to 2,000 views. Of course, I’ll never know if they actually translated into ticket sales, but to help me sleep at night, I shall stubbornly delude myself into believing that they did!

And while we’re on the subject, let me finish by introducing two new characters in the classroom of Zhi!

Meet Monsieur Order and Madame Chaos. Monsieur Order is a man of principles and predictability – he believes that rules are always good; they provide clarity and it is only in a condition of clarity that one can act to best of his/her capacity to reason. A mind is a terrible thing to waste, and his view is that by keeping the mind’s efforts in a well-defined space, our personal resources are expended most wisely.

But of course, Madame Chaos would beg to differ – her view of life, whilst capricious, boils down to one simple idea: unlike Monsieur Order, she believes that we can never truly explain and understand with geometric precision the events and experiences that occur during the course of our existence. She will not surrender her joie de vivre, for it is from such a feeling that she attains freedom, and only a free mind can imagine the possibilities that truly matter.

Timeless! 2012 video work

Been extremely busy doing media/promotion work for Timeless! Came up with these two promotional videos in 4 days – one’s a music video, the other’s a cinematic trailer. These attempts are actually my  very first at making videos, so check them out! And if you’re in London, you’d better be coming to watch the show!

Trailer #1

Trailer #2

Timeless on my mind!

It’s that time of the year again.

Timeless! 2012 is coming up – the only major production that I’ll be participating in this year. It’s less than 2 weeks away, and I can’t focus on anything else other than the event and things pertaining to the event. It happens to me every time, whenever I’ve got a show coming up.

And when the alternative is to read papers on accounting standards – nothing short of engaging, I assure you – expending my energy and enthusiasm on the show instead of classwork becomes an even more tempting (reasonable, even!) prospect!

Fingers crossed that everything will go smoothly over the next one and a half weeks – although that does seem like wishful thinking. Anybody who’s ever been involved in a production knows that the final week is always when people start freaking out, panicking and get all stressed out with one another.

But at the end of the show, we’ll always laugh about it and know that it was all worth it.

a brief reflection on Chinese New Year.

A few days ago, I made my first profit from a financial investment. Incidentally, that same morning, I found out that my neighbour – a kind and jovial old fellow – had just suffered a loss: his wife had passed away.

The irony – that while one was attempting to construct a life, another had lost hers – struck me deeply. Now, when it comes to fate, I’m a non-believer. But it was almost as if life was sending me a gentle reminder: a pat on the back to congratulate me, but at the same time, cautioning me to stay true to one of my fundamental beliefs about life and success that I’ve developed over the last few years. And that is the belief that while financial health is an excellent means to a large variety of goals, it holds little inherent value, and must never, never be treated as an ends in itself that is worth pursuing.

And of course, this is often repeated by many others, almost like a mantra of many who seek balance in a materially-driven world. But to utter one is very different from truly living by it, and I must admit that sometimes, it is extremely tempting to go only as far as preaching it. We are creatures of convenience, and financial goals are exceedingly straightforward to understand – more is better, period. And by virtue of its simplicity, success by such a yardstick is much easier to achieve than when it is measured differently.

Family

That such conflicting events occurred in my week leading up to Chinese New Year accentuated the irony, and the message even more. For me, this 2006 advertisement is timeless, and sums up a lot of what I feel:

Sometimes, you really have to take a big step back and reflect: why do I live my life the way I do? It would be sanctimony for me to judge what is a good life and what isn’t. But I do think it’s a fair question: to ask ourselves if we are indeed living a meaningful life and whether in our deathbeds we would be content (or happy, even, if we are that fortunate) to look back on everything and think: “It was all worth it.”

I know it’s the festive season, but I do not think that it is depressing to be contemplative of matters concerning life and death at such a time; I think it is liberating. Because I believe the day that we wake up feeling that our deeds are driven by something other than what exists within ourselves is the day we wake up as truly unhappy men and women.

And to be happy, we must first be free to decide on our own happiness.

My father once told me that in life, the opportunities to make money are abundant; the question is whether you feel it is the right choice to seize those opportunities. To me, this was not an implication that all wealthy men are corrupt; rather, it was the idea that such a choice was no different from any other in life – it comes at a cost. And sometimes, that cost is just too heavy to bear on our shoulders and in our hearts.

To end this entry, I want to share a Mandarin saying* that I find exceedingly profound, moving and beautiful:

慈 母 手 中 线
游 子 身 上 衣
临 行 密 密 缝
意 恐 迟 迟 归
谁 言 寸 草 心
报 得 三 春 晖。

This Chinese New Year, let us all remember where we come from, and where we will all eventually be.

—

*Here is a translation for those who cannot read it, but it does not do poetic justice to the Mandarin version: “Loving him, the mother takes thread in hand/Leaving her, he’ll have this coat on his shoulders/Now that he’s about to go, she mends with fine, fine stitches/She knows the fear that he’ll be gone a long, long time./Who would say the heart of a tiny blade of grass/Could repay the sun for all the warmth of spring?”

judging a book by its cover.

I recently read an article in The Economist about a study that tested how violin players rated different violins, given that the instruments’ identities were concealed from the violinists. The six violins tested comprised two Stradivarii and a Guarnerius (classic and premium violins from the 18th century) and three modern violins. Just to put things in perspective, the three 18th century violins had an estimated combined value of $10m, while the latter around $100,000.

To cut a long story short, based on the participants’ ratings of playing quality, two of the new violins outperformed the old ones, while the third more or less matched the old ones. Granted, we need to consider the limitations of the study – for instance, I’m not sure if a different sample set would have made a difference (say, if we had world-class violinists as participants in the study).

But what intrigued me more is that the results aren’t exactly new – at least not in the market for aesthetics anyway. I did a quick search and found a research paper on wine-tasting which suggested that under a ‘blind-tasting’ setting, exogenous factors like the price of the wine and even the colour (!) can influence the taster’s perception of the wine! If you can’t be arsed to read a research paper, here’s a pretty decent summary of it.

Smelling the wine, or something else?

I think studies like these speak volumes about our behaviour as consumers, and in particular, how vulnerable we are to branding. If my memory serves me, I remember reading a publication by PwC UK last year that showed how the quality of some mid-tier textile products were actually superior to those on the high-end (unfortunately, I cannot find the source file now).

Despite having lived in London for the past three years, it still puzzles me why the average consumer, given his/her disposable income, is so willing to pay for luxury goods. Indeed, when I ask people who participate in such purchasing behaviour why they do what they do, I occasionally get some valid reasons. But most of the time, it seems to border on the habits of the nouveau-riche –  impressionability to advertising and quite plainly, pretentiousness.

Granted, my political views lean to the left-of-centre, and I may be a victim of confirmation bias. After all, I’ve never been a big fan of excessive consumerism, so forgive my digression. But it’s still food for thought; and I’d certainly be interested in knowing if experiments of this sort have been carried out in different areas (e.g. food packaging, handbags, whiskey, etc.).

And finally, I guess the point to take away here is that the next time you’re tasting wine, choosing a new instrument or trying on a new dress, have a think about whether you’re really picking something you want, or whether someone else has already made that decision for you.

new entry at Teh Tarik Economists!

Just thought I’d do a quick plug of the latest entry posted by Dhruva on Teh Tarik Economists* – it’s a pretty thought-provoking (and SHORT!) piece about whether Malaysia should consider classifying its non-renewable resources (read: petroleum) as wealth as opposed to income, which is what we practice now.

And this was the cartoon visuals I did for the article – it took me longer than usual because of the level of detail, but I’m quite happy with it:

I must admit, my college involvement in Little Shop of Horrors played a part in inspiring this one!

Political Economy guy is becoming a recurrent character in my doodles for the blog, and I think I’ll keep it that way because he reflects a lot of our policymaking quite well – big-headed (i.e. stubborn) and in a constant state of relative denial (hence the permanent grin). I tried my level best to visually express Dhruva’s underlying points here – to keep future generations in mind when we decide how to use our natural resources, and how short-term fixes can grow monstrously addictive, making people excessively dependent on them.

*Teh Tarik Economists is an economics blog with a Malaysian focus, designed to be as accessible as possible to the general public, irrespective of your academic background. I don’t actually write anything there (that adds a lot to the credibility of the content… haha), but I help provide cartoon visuals to their articles to make things more fun!

introducing: the Honesty Bean & Mr Ego

There will be more characters in the classroom of Zhi, but for now, let me introduce these two that you’ve seen before in entry #1:

The Honesty Bean is a straight shooter. This little fellow acknowledges that big words, ambiguous statements and beating around the bush can sometimes really get in the way of us trying to make our point, to others as well as ourselves. The Honesty Bean doesn’t believe in sugar-coating a situation or opportunity gone sour; he believes in reality checks, and that the best words aren’t necessarily the kindest. Above all, he refers only to The Whiteboard of Truth. Why a bean, of all things? Because a bean represents possibilities. It is the seed that can grow into something much bigger and greater than itself, which then initiates the entire process in a fruitful, never-ending cycle.

And here we have Mr Ego. I guess you could say he’s kind of an inflatable ball – pump him up, and watch him grow, grow and grow. It’s a lot of fun, but it’s not always healthy (or safe, for that matter), but Mr Ego doesn’t know it – he prides himself (pun not intended) in this illusory display of strength. But in truth, he is extremely vulnerable – fragile, even – and must be treated with utmost caution. A prick of a needle and, much like the proverbial Humpty Dumpty, he is a broken, irreparable mess. Except with him, there is no royal army to pick up the pieces, only his other friends in the classroom.

If you have any suggestions, feel free to comment and make them – it’s easy, just think of the kind of conflicting elements when we make our everyday decisions and maybe I’ll be able to put a picture to your ideas!

gotta love image macros.

I offer no expert commentary on the acquittal of Anwar Ibrahim and what it means for Malaysian politics, but I found this today on Facebook, and it cracked me up:

Taken from http://on.fb.me/zbq2ty

plugging the small leaks!

It just hit me today: tomorrow is the first day of my final term as an undergraduate student. I can’t say I’m ready to face that prospect just yet – heck, I’m not even ready to face the prospect of handing in my classwork, let alone graduation, the transition into working life and all that jazz.

So to help get myself back on track, I created a personal list of simple rules to fix annoyingly simple things (that I keep forgetting to do) in my day-to-day routine. The rules aren’t incredibly glorious – they include stuff like making sure my work desk is tidy at the end of the day (can you feel my excitement now?) – but that’s really the best thing about them: they often happen to be the things we can actually get done with great ease and speed.

We ignore tasks like these not because they take a long time to do, but precisely because they are mundane. And sometimes, I think we ignore it at our peril, because just bothering to put certain things in order can sometimes make a big difference to our day – think about when you’ve had a bad day, or not had enough sleep, and you returned/woke up to a room that was a bloody mess. Maybe it’s just me, but that’s not exactly inspiring stuff!

So that’s how I’m going to kick off my new and final term. Not with an overarching grand ambition – not yet anyway – but with a straightforward goal: to plug those small leaks that have been sneakily whisking away my everyday motivation. Time to get back every damn drop of it!

an introduction to the classroom.

I just checked: my last entry on my previous blog was on January 21, 2011. Wow. I cannot believe that it’s been pretty much a year since I posted anything. So you may ask: why am I blogging again, if I was already struggling to frequently update my old one? And it’s a good question – and I will seek to answer it in entry no. 1 here. My brief introduction to this new blog, I suppose.

No, it’s not a new year resolution of any sort – it really is pure coincidence that I am writing again at the start of 2012. The real reason is that I needed a blank slate to start all over again. It’s a clichéd response, but hear me out.

The thing about  holding on to something that’s been there for years is that you tend to become to comfortable and afraid, even, to write new things in  fresh ways that contradicts the style that your readers – but most importantly, you – have gotten used to.

Over the years, my blog had slowly morphed into a mere mouthpiece for my opinions – some of which I’m no longer entirely sure are even legitimate or reasonable. Age and experience has certainly taught me some philosophies and principles about how to lead my life, but opinions – opinions are something else altogether.

Opinions, once uttered, have a stubborn nature about them; they have an enormous reluctance in backing down, and they can be restrictive to our own thought process and indeed, to our ability to be honest with ourselves -which sometimes, is ironically the most crucial ingredient in creating ideas that are truly great.

Meet the Honesty Bean and Mr Ego - more on these classroom characters soon.

There were days when I felt like I wanted to write something, or just express a fleeting thought, but I felt as though I was being held back by things that I had already said. It’s strange. I’m not sure if you even understand what I’m getting at, but the point is this: this new blog serves to detach myself from that familiarity which has become restrictive.

Instead, what I wish to express in this blog will be very different. On some days, it may be a sudden stroke of inspiration; on others, it might be just an inconclusive and incomplete piece of artwork or a stand-alone musical riff. And I don’t think I’ve had that for awhile – an outlet to, quite simply, express what I’m feeling. So simple, yet so powerful.

And writing has always been so for me – a great force in my never-ending road to self-discovery. I believe you learn so much more about yourself when you are able to put your thoughts down, because that allows you to reflect upon your past experiences, and derive meaning from the ideas and emotions that they evoked.

And that’s what this blog is about: not another opinion-based blog, not another afatpenguin (where I write snippets of my personal values and philosophies), but a place for me to learn about myself, about life and my place in the world. It is a personal collection of my thoughts, lessons and revelations.

Welcome, dear reader, to the School of Zhi.

Credits to Wai Shan for coming up with the name for this blog!