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Gaga Over Fountainhead January 12, 2010
There are books you read that makes you feel like you’ve found kinship with somebody else who has read the same titles. (And I do mean read. Not buy, read three pages, stack it up on a shelf with your other prized titles, assumed you’ve read the entire book, then read the book review and regurgitate the writer’s opinion as your own. That is the worst kind of dishonour you can punish a book with.)
And then there are books that open up a secret pathway into an exclusive club after you’ve finished it. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings was described as one such tome. I’ve read Tolkien’s entire series, even the prelude title he wrote for his kids – but I did not feel that way. I probably didn’t understand the significance of the series.
But I did feel that way about Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead.
I usually blaze through books skipping words, sentences, even paragraphs I felt was mere drivel. That was how I finished Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code in one sitting. I thought I could do the same for Fountainhead too – but no, I couldn’t. It felt disrespectful to not give some of the words, sentences and paragraphs a few more reads.
I enjoyed the dissonance I felt with the characters of the story. The best of them was hateful, the worst of them was disappointing. I tried to like Dominique Francon but she was too unreal to like. Or Gail Wynand, but he’s such a complete asshole! But the hateful ones, you begin to have a sadistic joy in catching their moments of humanity – I remember most clearly when Dominique was described as “giggling” when Steve Mallory was telling a group of four his outrageous personal stories. It was so out of character but it felt so real too.
But most of all, I liked how it has overturned many perspectives I was living with and affirmed some of the ones I secretly held but had no courage to explore. I also love the irony that the book, which expounds objectivism and promotes the individual above the collective would have 6.5 million copies sold. It’s a collective praise for a hatefully individualistic book! Love it!
Really hating the idea that the lives of Howard Roark and friends will end in some 100 odd pages and I have half a mind to leave the book hanging – but that’s just ridiculous, I can’t wait to finish the damn book and then move on to Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged – described as her magnum opus – you mean there’s something better than Fountainhead? I can’t wait!
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Quote Unquote January 10, 2010
My salvation phrase of the week:
“Sexual love, Peter, is a profoundly selfish emotion. And selfish emotions are not the ones that lead to happiness. Are they?” – Fountainhead, pg 330
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Still Prefer Faces January 10, 2010
Reminder: Hort Park is a great place to do night photog. Do not freak out unnecessarily – even if it means walking the damn bridge after midnight in total darkness (save the city lights in the horizon and the moonlight) and get laughed at by present company.

I'm not a huge fan of doing landscape pictures. Perhaps I don't have the patience to. But I do like this picture muchos from the rest of the stuff I've taken.
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It’s a Bitter Marshmallow to Swallow January 9, 2010
Last night after watching Sideways, I suddenly panicked. It’s like that invincible feeling of youth suddenly threatened to leave me and I was not prepared for its departure.
I know that it will go, one day. But not today.
I don’t think I’ve squandered the last ten years of my youth away but I have been living:
1. from one material good to the next
2. from one career path to another
3. from one weekend of aimless fun and laughter to this weekend and the next
Bah… just what have I been doing with my life! No no, it’s not that I haven’t been doing anything with it. It’s that I have not done anything CONSISTENT for the last few years. it’s a very very mild form of an attention deficit. Too mild to be termed a clinical disorder.
But it is a disease! It must be!
Just a few moments ago, I had an impulsive urge to take up oil painting classes. Last month, I seriously contemplated taking up French lessons. And then there were intense reflection sessions on fencing, dancing, traveling, collecting comics… And there was coffee!
Oh my god! Coffee?! Yes, coffee!
I wanted to take up this personal research project on the varietals of coffee beans and the process of growing, grinding, decaffeinating and whatever that ends up in a Styrofoam cup. I don’t know what I’ll do with all that information but it just seemed really interesting. I probably don’t have enough attention to see the project to its end though, which is a real pity.
But that might just be a solution to my attention deficit problem. I learnt of this concept called delayed gratification some time last month while talking to a friend. it was borne out of an experiment that involved resisting marshmallows. Hmm… I would have failed that test, I know I would. (Hmm… marshmallows… I wonder if the convenience store downstairs has any…)
I mean, if the recipe of success included ingredients of determination and discipline, this is a real insight into why i have not been able to amount to anything in life of late. But let me highlight another point first. Determination and discipline is less an issue if the matter of timing wasn’t involved.
See, if you tell me that I could have a second marshmallow if I waited for 15 minutes – that would have been a struggle.
But if you tell me that I can have a second marshmellow if I waited for 15 seconds – OF COURSE I CAN WAIT!
The issue is that success, can be very fickle, very discriminating. There are people who slog their way to success – with determination, discipline, well all the works. And there are those who has had ’success’ falling in 15 seconds on their laps – think striking the lottery. Admittedly, in this situation, we must consider the variable of luck. And luck, is an EVEN MORE discriminating little bastard.
But fortunately, life isn’t too unfair. Everybody gets a go at being young and everybody can choose how they utilise the freedom of youth. If you don’t have luck on your side, at least you have energy for this period of time to attempt to be successful.
In my case (with luck NOT by my side) I certainly wished that delayed gratification came in the form of pills. With just three more years before I hit the dreaded three-zero, I’ll definitely need a quick and painless solution to getting to where I want to be – success.
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Gnawings and Droppings January 8, 2010
Before Baileys, the cutest cat in the world, came along, we had Alpha, a chinchilla, for about three months before it died of heat exhaustion. We thought it’d be a great idea to give the rodent some freedom and have it roam the house as it pleased.
The chin gnawed on most wooden corners in the house and furniture and it left droppings EVERYWHERE. Two years after it passed on, we could still find Alpha’s droppings behind corners and between drawers.
I can’t help but relate this to the amount of writing I devoted to past relationships. See, I usually clean out my mailbox of messages between me and ex partners when the relationship sours – but I can never get rid of ALL of them. Just while looking through my hotmail account earlier, I found drafts that dated back 10 years ago! In 2000!
My writings are EVERYWHERE! Like Alpha’s droppings! They’re useless and they’re so many of them!
It was not cute and innocent like Anne Frank’s diary. It was awkward, childish and self absorbed. There was a draft email I intended to send to an ex complaining about how little time he spent with me. I read through it and blushed at some points. DID I REALLY MEAN ALL OF THAT?! It was so embarrassing.
I feel apprehensive going back to the old blog to read my ramblings, there are so many things I do not like about the young me. Not that I’m particularly pleased with myself now but I will take comfort that I have progressed enough in the last 10 years to not feel sorry that I can’t go back to being 18!
I will probably cringe again when I read my ramblings here ten years later but I think that will be a good sign of progress. Unlike Alpha’s droppings, I didn’t clear out my drafts and writings. Some personal history is important for reflection exercises.
But the gnawed furniture and corners – those I can never remove, not even if I try to. Every partner I have been together with, I always leave a little bit of my heart with them – even the meanest of them all. It makes me reflect upon my failings with these issues.
If I treat these experiences as a statistical problem, I ought to see a consistent pattern of problems that I can probably resolve. But I refuse to see relationships so coldly! How can a relationship work like a mathematical equation?!
But perhaps, that is a failing in itself, to be unable to see a relationship as a game.
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