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Friday, April 21, 2006

A Matter of People

21st April 2006, Singapore - People and places. People at places. People in places. People = Places.

We generally associate the places we love as being places we spend a lot of time at/in, the places we frequent, the places we're familiar with, places we know every nook and cranny of. But is it really the physical surrounding that makes us fall in love with places? Look beyond the furniture, the smell, the layout, amenities, architecture, landmarks, terrain, historical significance and climate and you'll come to realise that what gives places special meaning in our hearts are the people who were there.

People are the ones that make up the best memories we have in various spaces at different places. When you think of your office, your closest colleagues whom you lunch or work come to mind. When it's school, you look to the ones you've formed a clique with.

Recently, I spoke with an interviewee whom I learnt was a Monash graduate. He said he missed the place dearly when he completed his studies and returned home. (It sounded like my own experience.) So he returned to visit Melbourne a few years later - a place he'd grown fond of and missed. (Just like, me, I returned to Brisbane only two years after graduating.) But while both cities held good memories for both of us, we realised the places were no longer special or all that winsome.

When I revisited Brissie, I arrived with the same mental image and emotional imprint as I'd left with only a couple of years before. I made conscious effort to revisit the journalism department at university, Coffee Club in Toowong that served up magnificent delights of choice cakes and coffees, the mall in Indooroopilly I visited every weekend to do my grocery shopping. They were all places I'd spent many hours, days and months but the warm fuzzy feeling of reminisence was no where to be felt.

Why? Because the Journalism department meant Professor John Henningham and my course mates. The cafe was where we all congregated after Unicell meetings. The mall was where my flatmates visited every Saturday morning to stock up on food and other home essentials. They were good times then, but this around, these places were as cold as when I'd first set foot into them. The people then were no longer there now.

People make places matter to us and we make places matter to people. What's the matter? People.

May you love and enjoy the people in the different compartments, spaces and places of your life today. Because it can be very different tomorrow.

Sunday, April 09, 2006

How Are You Measured?

8th April 2006, Singapore - You needn't put your ears to the ground to know that the people of the land are gearing up for the big GE. The fever is in the air. The notable intensity at which new candidates are introduced every other day; the jabs and stabs that come with the representatives of both the ruling and opposition parties come as no surprise. How will you vote? What will it be based on?

Hoards of newspaper columnists have already made their oxymoronic 'calculated guesses' on what basis the city state's citizens will vote. There have been eager calls not to vote for the opposition for the sake of wanting opposing voices in government; the converse is also heard. What makes a candidate worth one precious vote from every individual in a single ward or GRC?

Observe all news reports and bio data released on every newly-unveiled contesting candidate and you'd be greeted with information on what high profile positions they held previously, their educational background, the highly-appraised good work via humanitarian/charitable/grassroots work and other vote-winning points. If contesting candidates of political parties are measured this way, what about you? How are you measured? By your position/designation at work, the good deeds or volunteer work you engage in, the mission trips you've made, or what your highest educational qualification is?

Pray no. There are too many conditions to live up to and too many faults to begin with. If not for grace (God's grace) with with which we live under from one day to the next, we all fall short of the expectations and standards set upon us by man, by institutions, by the world.

What is the measure of a man if he gains the world or the world's vote and favour, but loses his own soul?