Phantom Punch
If anyone still cares about this site at all, the lowdown is I graduated from university three months ago. And how things have changed. If I knew before university what I know now, I would say: screw this education, the one I received in particular. I haven’t collected my transcripts, I’m not sure I’m going to, and I’m quite possibly skipping my own graduation. I’ll just go take photos of myself in a robe and a hat in a studio somewhere. That’s how much it did for me: nothing. I’m glad for the good friends I met along the way, but beyond that I probably wasted my time in institutionalized learning. The ivory towers of Nothing. My proudest moment in there was when I traded my letter grades for the things I really love and care about, things I will continue to love and care about. If I knew what I know now I would say to you—if you have a passion you can’t shake off, take it and run as fast as you can. And if you have a bad feeling about your education, don’t ever think “if I stop now I’ll have to start over”, or “I’ll be behind my peers when I finish this”. Nobody cares. When you get there, nobody will care that you are only starting work at 24, or 27, or whatever it is. You don’t need to move up the ‘ladder’ with everyone else. It used to matter when it was moving up to J2 from J1, and not moving meant you got retained. Nobody cares unless you’re intending to be a civil servant (and why would you?). Start over. If it sucks in your first year, it’s going to continue to suck. Or get worse. I often wish I had the courage to leave SMU and start anew somewhere else, like some of my peers did. But all that is over.
In that time between my last exam and now, there’s been admittedly very little blogging, but it feels like a lifetime. It used to be that after you hopped over one obstacle, the next big thing around the corner was the next big exam you were going to sit for (PSLE, O Levels, A Levels). Life was this 3000m steeplechase. Now where I’m at is the part of the steeplechase that doesn’t make any sense, the part where you have to leap into the sloping pit with water, the one that might change the entire game. It’s wonderful that it’s all so open-ended right now, but when it comes down to it—it’s all quite scary, because everything changes, sometimes without you in it. In the time between my last exam and now, I was in Taipei, Surabaya, Yogyakarta, Jakarta, Langkawi, Koh Lipe, and shuttling back and forth from Kuala Lumpur; I parted ways far too eventfully with the person I’d been seeing for the past three years, who has since moved to a new country, the one that’s partly in Europe and partly in Asia.
Then spent the rest of it trying to figure out The Plan for the year to come.
The Plan. It was simple once. The Plan, for a while, was to spend several months with the tribes in Nagaland, hit the Middle East, then Spain (El Bulli), come home to wrap things up, and prepare for a new life in New York City at Columbia.
Nagaland didn’t happen, the Middle East isn’t going to happen either, and I’m now of the opinion that since New York City will always be there it can wait, while my seats at El Bulli won’t. There are now things I need to work on, and everything I’m currently doing is being done towards the ultimate goal of living and breathing my work in the field. In China. Pakistan. Laos. Wherever, really. It isn’t time yet, but it soon will. I think that’s what my mentor spent weeks trying to tell me when we were in Bombay last, but I was too distracted by the life-changing Chicken Shimla at Bagdadi to pay any attention to someone else’s plan for my career. Recent days have brought about tremendous amounts of self-belief, one which, if you’re not looking, tends to slip away when you most need it.
Things have kinda changed in ways I didn’t really expect them to, but surprises like that are always the most pleasant. Opportunities, career and otherwise, have come up when I least expected them to. Amazing opportunities, if I may say so myself, amazing opportunities I want to see through. I was told quite recently I do a great job in starting things but not in keeping them running or in finishing them. I feel like all that’s about to change, or already has.
I’m so goddamn excited all over again.
The real Phantom Punch: Sondre Lerche & The Faces Down play in Singapore on 14 March! Broken Social Scene on the 9th! Raul Midon on the 11th! Múm on the 13th! the bird and the bee on the 12th! Fujiya and Miyagi on the 14th, and The Roots too! Hooray for MOSAIC for bringing bands we actually want to watch every year, and for making me voluntarily broke for the entire month.
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I like the old saying that goes, DON’T LET EDUCATION INTERFERE WITH YOUR LEARNING.
I guess we can’t learn everything in the classroom.
Congrats! Life is way more fun than school life, for sure.
Part of schooling is learning critical thinking. I think you’ve passed this “exam” with high grades!
I’m happy for you :)
Pity you feel that way about your school and your schooling. Recall you had talked about trying to study elsewhere, like in the US or something.
School shouldn’t be about exams or grades but about learning, and you are far too intelligent and talented to not want to learn more. Yes, there is much to learn from the school of life, but with only 24 hours in a day and 365 days in a year and rarely more than 100 years in a lifetime, the right school enables the right person to accumulate knowledge, hone the talents they have and discover new ones in a manner that is difficult to do without some structure and some form of “educational” environment.
Ah well…maybe down the road you will find a school you can actually like. Its not “over” – age doesn’t matter lah…
@dizzydee I recall having that ‘conversation’ a few years ago, too :P To be sure I don’t feel that way about all education. I wouldn’t have spent so much time, effort and money applying to American graduate schools otherwise (still waiting to hear from some schools in a few months). Some part of me would still like to be educated that way, and grad sch is definitely somewhere in the picture, just maybe not as quickly as I originally anticipated… For now, I’m turning to the prospect of several years on the road on in SEAsia and China as my second education. That’ll probably benefit me when I go back to grad sch a few years later, I think.
Truth be told, an Ivy League education really starts to shine in the final years of undergrad, and possibly post-graduate studies.
Columbia and New York are nice, but there’s far more adventure to be had in Asia.
hi,
im just wondering, how do you manage to pay for all those travels, and indulging in what you seem to have a voracious passion for.
i would love to live my dreams, but money seems to be tight.
mark
Most of the time ‘travel’ is tied in so tightly with my ‘work that I can’t even tell the difference anymore. I live my work. I have to travel in order to work. It pays me. Better than we usually imagine freelance writing/photography to be. :)
Cut down the frills: the hotels and the full-service airlines, use the hundreds of dollars in savings to fund an extra week or two in these places. Cut down on things like gourmet coffee at home (I’m a huge coffee lover but I haven’t found a good cup of coffee in any of the high end chains, and Starbucks is just lame), saving $5-10 a day (what i used to spend on coffee) will go a long way. I live (rather) frugally at home. I don’t shop. I buy my things online, used or at a discount. I don’t buy clothes. I don’t switch phones or electronics often. The only things I indulge in at home are expensive food and taxis. Singapore’s getting to be a really expensive place to live. I find that by cutting down my expenses on unnecessary things at home, I can easily use that money to spend somewhere else and enjoy a better quality of the same amount of money. I spent S$130 in an entire week in Indonesia, for example, including midrange accommodation, plenty of food, and travel between three cities in first class. I easily spend that same money over two or three days just doing normal things (mostly taxis!). Or on dinner in one evening.
school life sucks,really got nothing to say about it .i take that as a torture.Luckly i graduate already .Now i can do what i want.