Well Grace talked to me online yesterday and asked me why my blog died. This is not exactly a response to her comment (well it might be to some extent) – though what prompted me to write this entry is, yes, the word FEAR.

I have understood since my days in the US that ignorance drives fear and fuels most forms of discrimination, but my understanding has always been at an academic level, or at best at a level where I am a volunteer. It feels kind of different when, well, I am at the receiving end of a similar form of ignorance, lack of understanding, and fear.

I felt today, in a much milder manner of course, the kind of anger and frustration felt by the African American man who talked to me in a city park in Baltimore – where he was helpless in determining his, and his people’s, future, because of the disparity that rooted in ignorance, lack of understanding, fear, and systemic discrimination.

No don’t worry I am not being systematically discriminated against by idiots who probably would want all foreigners to disappear from Singapore. I just needed an outlet to vent this frustration.

Maybe this is just the innate sensitivity a migrant has, regardless of how long he has been staying in his adopted home. Or this may just be totally unjustified. Sigh.

Haha before annoucing my plans (or rather, just an idea) to revamp this, let me show this video:

I first saw these Micropigs in a biotechnology magazine, where the supplier was advertising these pigs as an animal model (I would reckon way better than mice). But these little things are just too cute to remain only as lab animals…

But for 700 pounds each, er well, I don’t know which lab can afford them?

Okay REVAMP!

Now I am transiting into a new role. That is –

Xiaoyang = 1) Son + 2) Boyfriend + 3) Graduate Medical Student in a MD/PhD programme.

Thus, I will not have time for philosophy and all the talk-no-action love stuff.

So – this blog will transform in a way persuant to my newfound role. It will reflect the life and the concerns of a 25-years-old medical student, who will not graduate for the next 6/7 years while surviving on an unmentionable income, with all the stress that comes with medical school and graduate school and of course who will also have to have provisions for, ahem, getting married in the future.

I hope this will be fun to write – and fun to read for you too!

I just watched this almost-3-hours long Nicole Kidman movie with my dad. It is quite well shot, and as a contrast to all the usual patriotic American freedom-fighter protrayal of Civil War heroes, this is very clearly anti-war. Based in the heartlands of the South, no one cared about what ideals they were fighting for – all they desired was surviving in peace, and having their loved ones with them.

Now I really do know how that feels like. Nothing can be more important than having people whom you love with you…

Anyway, I am now not exactly in working mood anymore; I will just do what I should and can. It is not going to give me much… I have like 2 – 3 months left, no publishable results, and I don’t even know if the project is going to continue after I leave. So.

Italy! It has been confirmed.

19/6 evening: depart Singapore
20/6 Rome (city tour, main sights: Trevis fountain, Colloseum, the Pantheon, Roman Forum, etc. I need a good travel guide…)
21/6 Rome (museums day – pick 1 or 2 to visit)
22/6 Rome (Vatican City: St. Peter’s Bascilica, Sistine Chapel, Vatican Museum)
23/6 Naples (haven’t thought of what to do yet, pretty much it’ll be about pizza and the archeological museum)
24/6 Sorrento / Capri (I want to stay in Sorrento for 2 nights, for the sake of slowing things down..)
25/6 Pompeii / Sorrento (Probably the only aim of this day is to visit the Pompeii ruins.)
26/6 Sorrento – Florence: should arrive early afternoon, optimistically.
27/6 Florence: museums and museums…
28/6 Florence / Pisa: day trip to Pisa.
29/6 Florence / Tuscany country (pick tour!)
30/6 Florence – Venice: should arrive before noon. And according to ALL friends’ advice, just 1 night in Venice.
1/7 Venice – Rome: should arrive early evening. Have a GOOD dinner.
2/7 Rome / Singapore: final shopping / sights early morning; back to SG 3/7

Suggestions of restaurants, what to do, hotels, what to see, etc. please! Or are some places simply overrated?

There is nothing much which I can write about here lately. It seems like – things that I can talk about has been talked about and there is nothing much that is new anyway.

There is an article I want to share though. It is probably nothing new – I remember commenting on elitism since the early months of my xyinamerica blog and my view on that issue still holds.

Scoring high in grades but not in values
by Sandra Leong

My views on elitism are as follows:

1) Meritocracy is good, but when not exercised carefully, it becomes elitism and that is bad

2) Elitism is bad because it can be self-perpetuating: it can potentially stratify society by decreasing social mobility

3) Systems which breeds elitism through exclusivity, such as GEP and the current IPs, can potentially destabilise society in the long run if not carefully managed – as it is natural for the minority students from these systems that eventually hold most of society’s power and resources

4) Educational elitism is bad because it creates an experience and world view in those minority students that is different from the general population, and the minority students, who are more capable and holds power and resources, are unable to comprehend the mainstream world view due to lack of exposure.

We see that often in politics (e.g. dear G .W. Bush and Mr. Tung CH, the failed first CE of HK), the civil service, medicine (‘screwed-up doctors’), academia, etc.

A common retort is – the schools don’t generate snobs, and we can’t blame the schools for that. It is up to the individual to learn to not be snobs.

It is a very strange argument because – an individual’s attitudes are to a large extent formed and reinforced by his environment. Actually the problem is not our best schools generating snobs – yes there sure are people who refuse to use Dover station because they don’t want to be mistaken as SP students but those are the extremes – it is more like our best schools do not supply the opportunities and the environment to let their students know Singaporeans better. They can be nice people, they think they are Singaporeans, but in fact, well no – most Singaporeans are not like them. Nowhere near – and when they are treating real Singaporeans as doctors or making policies for real Singaporeans, they suddenly realise that why on Earth is everyone so different from them.

The internal breeding schemes among the scholars that our dear Govt. is being rumoured to be conducting – it is certainly true to some extent – is a result of an obsession with elitism. I am totally against this whole idea – thus I will not fall into their trap. Even if I do fall into the trap, I will attempt to educate the other party the essence of my views – which I have already failed terribly once a couple of years back. So you will see – my girlfriend will NOT turn out to be a scholar, as I would have logically ruled them all out automatically. For those who are interested in my love life (for some very strange reasons), bear that in mind…

You can more easily happy if –

You have low expectations and demands for everything, and

You do not have to be appreciated.

We were at Coronation on Sunday for dinner –

The auntie at Prince still gave us student price for the set dinners they have.

We were actually very honest. We told the auntie – we USED to be students here. Then she asked, which university? Then we said, we graduated from university recently.

Then she said, sell to you at student price la! You can imagine how happy we were.

I didn’t really used to go to Prince – I used to eat a lot of 可愛雞 and Cosy Corner, but not really Prince. It was most probably because it was comparatively expensive. Obviously I ate 可愛雞 the most often – it was $3 vs. $4 vs. $6.

But I do remember how it looked like. It was exactly the same as I remembered. The stronger memory even realised that the wall decorations didn’t change. Food-wise, the portion has apparently shrank in size, and the price has gone up by 50 cents. It wasn’t actually food to die for – Old Brown Shoe has way better fish-and-chips – but what we were eating that day were memories. A very strong one spanning 6 years that started 12 years ago and a weaker one spanning 2 years that started 8 years ago.

Gosh that is how old we are now.

Now the petrol station embedded in Coronation Plaza has moved out and that location is now Starbucks. It is no longer possible to climb through/over the fence to get into HC, and bits of it has been surrounded to construct Downtown Line’s Tan Kah Kee Station. Even the school name and logo have changed.

But our memories won’t change. Thankfully, we can still retrace all those now – the places that we used to go to are all still around. Hopefully they will remain like that as long as possible..

This will be a short one – just to make a note for something longer later maybe.

1) There is only one perfect love – that from God.
2) We can only conceive, receive and give imperfect love.
3) We should always try to work towards perfecting our love – meaning, genuinely unconditional love.

And I will be writing something about ‘filial piety’ – discussing and critiquing this concept. We always assume that filial piety is ‘good’ – but is it necessarily so? I will attempt to argue that, when filial piety becomes an obligation placed on members of society as an absolute doctrine (in the name of ‘Asian values’ and ‘tradition’), the concept naturally will become materialistic and oppressive to some extent.

Stay tuned.

We’re pilgrims on the journey of the narrow road
And those who’ve gone before us line the way
Cheering on the faithful, encouraging the weary
Their lives a stirring testament to God’s sustaining grace

Surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses
Let us run the race not only for the prize
But as those who’ve gone before us
Let us leave to those behind us
The heritage of faithfulness passed on through godly lives

Oh may all who come behind us find us faithful
May the fire of our devotion light their way
May the footprints that we leave
Lead them to believe
And the lives we live inspire them to obey

Oh may all who come behind us find us faithful

After all our hopes and dreams have come and gone
And our children sift through all we’ve left behind
May the clues that they discover and the memories they uncover
Become the light that leads them to the road we each must find

This is for fellow friends who are already offered places in graduate school and are now agonising over where to go to:

This probably will offend some and help some – I won’t care and I will just say it.

Agonising over choices between Harvard HILS, UCSF BMS and MIT Biology is akin to Lee Ka Shing’s son agonising whether he should get a Ferrari or Lamboghini as his next new toy. I hope you know, if you can see this from an outsider’s perspective, how ridiculous this is.

This is not a tough choice at all. You won’t be applying to these programmes if they are not good. You got into a couple of them – you like all of them – and that’s why you are agonising??

My answer to your problem is, just close your eyes and pick one. Or, set up unimportant criteria like – whether that place has good food, whether you have friends there, whether you can get cheap tickets to London easily.

Rationale behind this response is this. No one knows what your future is going to be like, including yourself. There is only this much you can plan, and beyond that, things are hardly controllable. There is one thing that is sure – if you can get into one of those programmes, and if you are happy with all of them after all the visits and research that you can do about them, you will make a bright future out of ANY one of them. It doesn’t matter the tiniest little bit even in the longer run – say 5 or 7 years – if all these programmes are all good. It is just that you might be doing different work – mouse genetics vs. human genetics, for example – and that’s it. Your future is going to be as bright.

If you are worrying about things you can’t foresee, then you are stupid. If you can foresee problems in one, and you have better options, just strike the problematic one off your list.

Ever wonder why I don’t even bother reading forums where people keep talking about when the acceptances will be released etc.?

I made a tougher choice by choosing to go into academic medicine. By the time you guys get your tenure, I might have just got my first faculty position. I took a year of researching and talking to people and interviewing to convince myself that the path I am heading down is truly something I want to do.

Though that said, I have full knowledge in my heart that, regardless of whether I get to practise medicine, I can still carve a bright future out for myself. I want to go into academic medicine, but even if I don’t get to do that, I can still do well in the biomedical sciences, which is something I enjoy doing tremendously. Thus, if I don’t get the permission or if I can’t get into medical school, it is just one failure – and I am fully capable of turning that around into a success.

And yet – now you guys aren’t even choosing career paths. There is, honestly, no big deal at all.

As you can see – I am not sympathetic about this. Two exceptions: if you are worrying that you can’t get into the school where your boy/girlfriend is currently located, or you are facing the choice of whether you should wait another year to see whether you should apply again in the above situation, I totally sympathise with you. I will have a big problem myself if I am also in your shoes. The other exception is: if you still don’t know what you ought to do, or you see no direction for yourself – I can understand your anxiety.

But come on. If there is no external binding circumstance, and it is just choices that is troubling you, you can just pick MIT/Harvard/Yale like picking Belgian Chocolate/Chai Tea/Hazelnut ice-cream. Just get any one if you like all of them for goodness sake.

Leave your comments in the comment section if you want to discuss this!

This is really cute to the max.

We should all go to Three Bear Lodge in West Yellowstone, dance that thing in front of it, put it up on Youtube and heh I bet you this song will make the motel famous in Asia. By the way, the motel is indeed pretty good (cheap with microwave in the room and free wi-fi). Though I think Holiday Inn is still better (they upgraded us last time).

And also, don’t underestimate the kind of thing one can do for someone he/she loves heh.