zenov is B+ Boy

Had a dinner just now with rArAr.

So interesting. I guess the reason why we are so jie-mei-ish is cos we think alike, so we tend to agree on a lot of things.

Like the ugly gal me, gg and xx saw last week in Arts Canteen, but whom the other 2 insisted was not ugly. I don’t know whether they were just being nice (to someone they don’t know and aren’t going to know) or they… hehe… are more forgiving to mistakes, I just know that the gal was just PLAIN UGLY.

rArAr made me believe that I am not alone in this world. haha!

We also talked about how to ‘zuo ren’ (tactful in handling people) after I told her about the last lesson of RVI, where the tutor with PMS that day (who, btw, is a guy) was arguing with the presenter. There was an obvious lack of advantage towards the presenter, who grew very defensive. It made me conclude that a lot of times, we must know when to shut up (as opposed to Yang Ming in Star Awards 2007, where he said only newscasters need to know when to shut up).

(It is also very coincidental that xx’s sms tone actually reminded me of BEP’s ‘Shut Up’, which also made my mind swarmed full of Fergie’s high-pitched sonata)

At the same time, I realized that such a statement coming from my mouth seemed paradoxical. For someone like me who advocates the freedom of speech and individualism, it’s very hard to imagine that I actually ’shut up’ most of the time.

Sometimes, I shut up cos I need to get things done. Like the worse group project I ever did, with the little time and effort I had to spare to handle the other people, solving the problem myself would be faster, and more beneficial, both to the group project and my personal well-being. Heck the others for their moral degradation. I do not live their lives to be responsible for their mental growth.

Sometimes, I shut up cos I understand the unbending rule that no rule is unbendable. If 6 billion people in the world think and judge people in the same way, the human population is doomed. Call me irresponsible (no, I’m not Michael Buble), but I don’t see the need to change the mindset of others cos I am not responsible for their lives. If they can lead their lives till today, it means there is a truth to the way they led their lives. Period.

Sometimes, I shut up cos I agree that she who knows the most knows that she does not know anything at all (Socrates, read more from this site on Sophie’s World, where I learned of the idea. Do read the part on Plato’s idea, cos it complements my beliefs too, if anyone is interested). A lot of people wanted to have the last word (like the presenter in RVI) just to prove that they knew more. He who says more than he thinks obviously knows less than what he thinks he knows.

To me, free speech is about me being able to air my views, but it doesn’t mean that I want to change the world (world is too exaggerating, let’s say My World). Which was how the paradox comes in.

I shut up with my own free will, so that I can free myself from endless, bottomless argument pitches.

I shut up cos I want to listen to the others so that I can learn more and in turn, polish my views of the world and the way I lead my life (I adopted this only like in the past one year).

I shut up, just so I feel like it and does not need to explain to anyone.

Oh… Another paradox…

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Since we’re on the topic of ’shut up’ and I mentioned BEP’s Shut Up, here’s the MP3 and another song by the same name from Wilber. Somehow, Wilber’s song is calls out more to me, cos the BEP’s was more of a song between couples.

The Shut Up Songs

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Also, since we talked about Socrates and Plato and RVI, there was one picture I learned from RVI that I rather liked, which was Raphael’s School of Athens (below). Do read the write up in the wikipedia. In the pic, Plato, who advocated that truth is beyond the physical world, is the one who pointed to the sky, while Aristotle was gesturing to the ground, cos he believed in the 4 elements of the world. Interesting stuff like Raphael’s own portrait hidden in a corner, his jab at his contemporary Michaelangelo (who was unkempt and shabby unlike Raphael, who was charismatic and popular with women). How Raphael reconciled the ideas of old and new and how he subtly (in my opinion) aired his preference between the 2.

Their citizen journalism (something like STOMP) awards one picture a week as the ‘Best Picture’. Sometimes, the selection would be OK, like a two-headed tortoise. But most of the time, like the one this week, the choice was baffling.

This week’s choice was a pic of a guy making a fuss out of nothing: He claimed that the signboards in T2 Changi Airport was too confusing. In the picture, he claimed that the Up-Pointing Arrow confused people and he wondered if it meant the MRT was upstairs.

He was actually awarded Best Picture for this wrongly-informed, making a mountain out of a molehill pic??

It was definitely an international standard that the Up-Pointing Arrow means Go Forward. So I really CANNOT understand why that picture was awarded Best Picture.

Shame on OMY!!!