in the absence of memory

(an open letter to my team, and the rest of the club.)

I just wanted to tell you guys my thoughts about debating (in general) sparked off by something I read today that bothered me.

It's from ACJC's school blog, written by one of their school debaters, about this year's JC nationals. It's a long extract though, so I won't reproduce it here. Instead you can read it here. (Please don't go and comment or do anything silly like that.)

There are acceptable limits to wanting to win or lose, especially in something as insubstantial as debating; to think that a sport/art/activity like this can be reduced to the sum of victory and defeat is unreasonable to me. I don't want you guys to come away with the idea that it's okay to question the judges' biases (competence is a different thing, though), or the idea that losing doesn't exist, or the idea that it's okay to crow about your victories (looking at you, NG LI KI).

Remember, always respect your opponents, I'm not telling you to love them or be their friends, I was never very good at that either (until I retired) but always be aware that they are good, also, and that they can beat you. When you win, it shouldn't be cause to rub it in their faces; when you lose, it isn't reason to cry. These things happen. Be gentlemen. Win with dignity and lose with grace.

I don't believe in the mindset that the judge decides who wins or loses. You do. As debaters, you decide the verdict. If you're better than your opponents on the day, you win, and if you're not, you lose... for me, it's as simple as that. At almost every point in the debate, there is an opportunity to win the debate with a brilliant speech, to swing the momentum of the debate in the favour of your team. If at the end of the day you don't win, ask yourself - why didn't I do that? why didn't I give that speech that I knew I had in me? That's the real question, the statement 'we should have won but...' means nothing to me. Invariably my answer is, but you could have done better. Do that. Do better.

Please bear in mind that the issues we research and discuss and debate are real ones, important and complicated ones, and that minds far greater than our own are thinking over them, without clear answers or resolution. Therefore it's inevitable that teams can't win all the time, even the greatest sports teams don't, and that what we should really aspire to is not (just) beating what's put in front of us, but improving ourselves - improving ourselves in the SKILLS that debate is about, not just as debaters. I hope that over time you guys will start to think more clearly, gain the confidence to speak your mind, learn the nuances of international issues as well as social concerns, be able to present yourself well to other people, things like that - I hope that you always remember that it's not about the debate, it's about the wider issues that you're debating.

Because like it or not, debate is not important. You can't be a debater forever (like you can be a footballer, or a basketballer, or a chorister, or an actor). Debaters grow up and graduate to become lawyers, politicians, diplomats, businessmen, the people that shape our world. that's what our craft is grooming us for - so always remember this, and don't be caught up in the petty details of this competitive region we call the 'debate circuit'. Think big, believe in yourself.

(just think about it.)

In a surreal postscript to this entry, at five-thirty this morning suddenly I sit up in my bed, wide awake, and run my fingers across my face. There is something dry caked against my left cheek.

I turn the light on (one light bulb left burning, out of five) and stand in front of the mirror. There is a streak of dried blood across my left jaw and my lips. There are red stains on my hand. The corner of my pillow is thick with blood. My mind reels with the shock of incomprehension, a sudden horror. I wash my face and hands frantically and check for cuts. I take my shirt off, check my arms and chest, my neck, my nose even. There is no hint of broken skin, no hint of injury, except a tiny black line on my lower lip that refuses to wash away - but surely a cut lip could not bleed so badly?

Shaken, I turn the light off and sink back into sleep: an hour later, I wake up. It is late and I am rushing to return to camp. The bloodstain on my pillow is stark, like a mark of guilt.

In case anybody kind of likes this pair of shoes and fits a size US9... I will be glad to move them on 'cheaply' (obviously, cheap is relative) - they are a little tight on my feet, sadly

A harrowing dream: I check myself into a small hotel in a strange city. It is a narrow white building and there are rows of public-works greenery in the vicinity, as well as convenience stores and bicycles. Inside, it is not spacious, even to the point of being claustrophobic, and all the walls are white. On each floor there are two rooms, white-doored. The white paint does not glow or shine, as it might when new, but seems to have yellowed dully in parts. There are only two ways up and down the building: the lift, which does not seem to work, and a staircase which doubles as the fire escape. On the way to my room I do not encounter any other guests. The furniture in my room is the colour of plywood. The only ornament is an old phone directory. At this point I am made to realise that the hotel is in fact a rehabilitation centre of sorts, an asylum for the depressed or disturbed.

At the lobby, there is a very young girl who bears a passing resemblance to Dakota Brookes. She appears to be staying here alone. She is asking the receptionist about her stay here. The receptionist is a corpulent, sagging man with thick and curly hair; he looks more like a dirty newsagent than a receptionist and reminds me of a zombie. I realise that he is the only staff member I have seen so far. In the day, he says, you sit and enjoy the peace and quiet. At night our staff will monitor you and run the necessary tests. As you sleep, the receptionist says. As you sleep? There is something strange in his voice. Unbidden, some scenes present themselves to my mind's eye, as if I were a moviegoer watching a collection of still cuts. Cameras in the ceiling, blinking over the sleeping girl. The white door opening slowly. The girl, asleep, surrounded by shadows and men in white coats. The girl splayed out on a table, stabbed full of syringes, a cross between a jellyfish and voodoo doll. A white-cloaked figure slicing her stomach cavity as other shadows gather to observe a strange lack of colour, or blood. The girl, suspended by manacles, her chest and stomach open and empty. The girl, whole again, with a cock forced into her mouth, or bent over and taken from behind. The floor is slick with some black, oily substance.

Suddenly the images cut. In the lobby, the girl looks like she has just woken from a dream; her eyes go momentarily blank and then readjust themselves as she shakes her head as if stunned. She thanks the receptionist and walks up the staircase. As I step out to visit the convenience store I see a Caucasian couple walk in and register at the counter. They are blond, blue-eyed, fat, I am not sure what they want from this place.

The next morning I wake uneasily. I check myself for cuts, or stitches: none. I pass the girl in the stairway. In the sunlight, she looks pale, paler than I had remembered. The Caucasian couple walks by; seeing the girl, they smile weakly at her. Through the windowpane, the sun is bright and unforgiving. I wake up.

'...I have John Donne for my seminar later,' the other girl said.

'What, has he taken us for class before?'

'it's v romantic': whatever is romantic for the couple is lonely for the individual.

variations on a theme of UNORIGINALITY... this is a short story about 'patriotism'.

( yukio mishima, PATRIOTISM )

In the absence of words, we still have music and pictures... this is all kinds of awesome.

This month is completely frightening. In a week's time I will be twenty; in a week's time I will have served one full year in the employ of the Singapore Armed Forces. In half an hour's time the class of 2008 will collect their results, and I hope nobody has to feel like I did on this day a year ago: comfortably numb, uncaring, narcotised. I wish all my juniors the best of luck, and the best of justice.

Letter-writing is becoming a painful art: as soon as we read anything deliberate written in the personal sphere, it immediately seems contrived, as if such work belonged exclusively to the domain of work and 'serious' writing.

Our cleverness manifests itself as an appreciation for irony and a rejection of everything else. The native skepticism of our friends tends to develop itself as a quick-witted dismissal of anything that seems constructed, like most serious writing is. After a while it is too easy to deride certain blog entries as 'emo' or 'whiny' or 'why is he thinking so much'... instead we're left with funny stories and very laconic writing, which is good but can't be all there is to this craft.

Maybe some of us have been too well-trained by the classes we've taken. If seven years of formal education spent in an environment that encouraged us to question whatever we read wasn't enough, we then went on to read Knowledge & Inquiry for two years and spent them doing 'critical thinking' passages, where we took pains to unpick whatever was presented to us. Under our critical knives and ice-picks the most reasoned of articles turned into a series of assumptions and assertions.

It's almost as if we've seen through the magician's methods, so the tricks no longer impress us.

( The danger of cool things: stuff I should not be trying to afford but want anyway )

So somehow tonight I chanced upon a telecast of Manchester United's 1994 home game against Barcelona whilst channel-surfing over dinner. This was Johan Cruyff's Dream Team, trying to rise from the ashes of a 4-0 defeat to AC Milan in the final of the European Cup a year before, playing against a Manchester United team caught in transition between the old guard of Paul Ince and Mark Hughes and those teenagers who later became 'Fergie's Fledglings': Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt, David Beckham, the Neville brothers.

I recognised several of the names, but from a different context. For Barcelona Carles Busquets started in goal, Ronald Koeman and Miguel Nadal in defence, Jose Bakero and Josep Guardiola in midfield, and Txiki Begiristain on the right wing. Today Begiristain is Barcelona's sporting director, Busquets's son is playing in central midfield for his father's club, and Guardiola is the manager behind Barcelona's most statistically successful season, ever. So the traditions of this club continue, as does the influence of Johann Cruyff, for better or for worse. As for the other names - Bakero and Koeman became coaches at Valencia, for a while, and of course Rafa Nadal, the world's best tennis player at the moment, is Miguel Nadal's nephew. There must have been a little bit of Miguel Nadal in Rafa today. He is strong, uncompromising, willing to play himself into the ground, just as his uncle did against Mark Hughes, old 'Sparky', winning almost every header against the notoriously tough centre-forward. Today's Barcelona could still do with a defender like him - or with Koeman, for that matter, who pinged perfect pass after pass for his wingers from his position inside his own half. Then there was Guardiola, madly adventurous in central midfield, always trying to spring his team onto the counter-attack, always trying for the pass to put his teammate in the clear - it almost did not matter that he got it wrong half the time.

Time tends to make fools of us all, and we speak of the 1994 Barcelona as we do of legends, but watching them play they were imperfect, just like the teams we watch now. In between the periods where Barcelona were imperious and careful in possession, letting the ball go back and forth (high and low) between their players, Guardiola was giving the ball away every now and then. Hristo Stoichkov, who looked like an old alcoholic despite his youth, ran down blind alleys too often. Romario's touches were sometimes careless, Begiristain was anonymous. Watching these games, ten years back, it is striking just how much space and time the players seem to have, especially in midfield; I can't say if the modern game has suffered for it, but every player today has to have an exceptional touch in order to create anything with the time he has on the ball.

Roy Keane started for United in that game, at the age of 22. Already he was driving forward, rushing players off the ball, but also contributing more to the attack than perhaps we have memories of him doing. Scholes was 19 then, a pale, bright-haired boy, coming on as a substitute in front of the Old Trafford crowd in a big European tie; out of nowhere, he caught the crossbar with a chip after he had dispossessed Guardiola just outside the Barcelona box. Busquets clapped in relief, maybe in admiration, as the ball went over. And perhaps United fans of this age have no time for Paul Ince or Lee Sharpe, spoiled as they are by two generations of star after star at their club, but in the 80th minute Ince won the ball outside the penalty area and left Koeman leaden-footed with a quick pass to an overlapping Keane, who crossed low for Sharpe to let the ball run across and behind himself and his marker before flicking it into the net with his heel. One wonders what today's media would make of Cristiano Ronaldo had he scored that goal.

I can see it now: there is an evening in the future where I am 30 and sitting in front of my television, watching Xavi and his Spain side win the European Championships, wondering why the colours look so strange, following how he keeps the ball, thinking about how David Villa looks just a little piratical with his goatee.

blame gold cat.

I could have wished for simplicity, and peace, and contentment: such rare commodities.

Today I spent most of the afternoon walking up and down Portsdown Road in the blazing heat and a black t-shirt. I miss the days when I did these things by choice, not circumstance, not in the absence of anything better to do; also the days when I didn't have to blog about myself all the time, in the first person.

It is awful how I have to shrug off all these comments about my posting in the army, it's almost as if I am at pains to point out what I've gone through. It must be wrong that I am embarrassed to announce it and feel obliged to explain matters. As if there were anything to explain. It is not congruent for an infantryman to be where I am, at the cadet corps headquarters, that is ALL. I wish I could believe it; it is very unpleasant to try to be happy about something you're not proud of.

Tomorrow afternoon I'm flying back to Taiwan for this Lunar New Year - back next Friday. It is yet another suspension, I should be looking forward to it but it is getting harder to derive meaning from little things...

maybe I'm just going blind, slowly, slowly.

This is a song for this November, or December, or next February, or next March: it could be any of our stories, parts of them are all the same.



(and you will try to do what you did before:
pull the wool over your eyes for a week or more...
let your family take you back to your original mind)

This should not be how the year ends: for the first time in a long while, I feel completely unable to make sense of my life.

It's funny; so much has happened this year and yet it's so cheap and easy to toss them aside in these big recycle bins labelled ARMY and OVERSEAS UNIVERSITIES and try to return to last year. I want to be free of the past but it is so sticky, like barnacles, like jellyfish.

For what it's worth, I'm really glad to have experienced what I have in the army, especially those five short months in the School of Infantry Specialists; I sweated and cared too much for them to be just a fairy tale. Outside the jungles of these memories there is not much left of this year. I've listened to a lot of music, I've been thrilled but not comforted. I've tried to care about clothes and run myself out of money and ideas, and conviction. I've drifted from here to there and I'm searching for constants: myself, my love, my friends, my family, I need them and I want them to be certain.

I don't want it to end like this, so despite everything... love. I feel like I'm closing one door behind me and opening another and I don't know what lies beyond. We are stepping off into space, into the stars, and it is scary and beautiful all at once.

Perhaps I need a stiff dose of metanoia, or just hope. I'd buy a bottle of hope, this year for the next.

You know you've spent enough time in the infantry when:

1) you watch the latest Army recruitment television advertisement (THE STEEL WITHIN) and your first thought is

'damn, this place looks familiar'

2) and you realise that there are too few people who actually know what you're talking about.

sigh. Those bright memories.

the ting tings, january 13th
anyone interested? (should I go?)

Midway into the second week at the national cadet corps headquarters and I still don't know what to make of it. Here the day starts with me waking up at six, reaching the train station at seven-twentyfive, walking in for twenty minutes and changing into uniform in a bunk where there is dust everywhere and darkened windowpanes. At seven-fifty the light just about starts to creep in properly. Then it is office work until five-thirty, which for now consists of a lot of nothing. Twice a week I go out on despatch in the NCC car. As and when needed I look after cadets on course. The rest of the time I spend in the office, in front of a pathetic computer, killing time. Probably when my upperstudy (it's not a word, but over here it is: a rather elegant construction) ends his term of service I will have more real work to do.

This is an interesting place, actually, because one has to deal with all sorts of people, and I don't really regret being here. But I am always wondering to myself if I am missing out on something else. Maybe it is just a matter of expectations: you come into the army thinking that you'll spend your time 'doing dangerous things in the jungle' but for most people, the best part of these two years is a long coda spent doing the same things over and over again. I don't know how anyone keeps themselves from watching the clock, as it were. At least when you're doing dangerous things in the jungle there is no clock to watch.

It is hard to be happy, isn't it? I mean - I'm going home every day, I can meet people pretty much whenever I want to meet people, and yet I can still find reasons to be discontent. Strange how people will find ways to be miserable, I'm not the only one. I think everyone sounds miserable in writing, because I know that every time evening comes and I step out the gate I am a happy person again. It's just this waiting (waiting alone) when it's difficult to smile.

Fish is at an infantry regiment... he compared his remaining year to walking through a desolate field that turns colourful in memory. I won't be walking through a desolate field or anything. It will just be a long walk. I hope that on the way I run into things to remember.

Before the trip I tried to feel at home again, going back to school, looking at familiar faces. Watching my juniors gather to play soccer post-mugging, it was like what the stay back club did back in those days, us sundown kids; the game was almost an afterthought, but it was nice not to lose. There were little coincidences. I found my debate juniors organising training on their own for their juniors, in turn; I ran into Jacqueline and Jeremy in a darkened classroom. At the end of the evening I found myself alone again, packing to leave at dusk, showering last, looking around me at the class benches and taking the long walk out. There were too many mirrorings of my past: as if for the evening I had stepped back into another simpler, more pleasant world. These feelings persisted through Saturday morning. Serendipity brought me to meet a neighbour at the bus stop, and just seeing her reminded me of those pre-enlistment days when I thought this year might be carefree and straightforward; in fact it has been the most tumultuous of years. But the familiarity comforted me, as did soccer later.

I must have been nervous: draft was draining rather than pleasurable. I went home in a half-rush, tried to slow myself down, slow time down. I ate dinner deliberately, watching football on television as if it were any regular weekend return to camp. Even the packing would have been the same, except that the deviations were too telling: ziploced shirts, sweaters, clothes that I would not use but for three days. Online I tried to talk to people, but these couldn't quite calm my fears. It did not help that after I had readied myself my parents were scolding my brother downstairs with the same words they had used on me two years ago; it was painful to see all these pale reflections.

At the airport it was awkward. I wanted to be alone and accompanied, all at once; eventually I settled for eating with my parents. We ate quietly, I tried to talk and cheer myself up, but found the attempts pathetic. I saw others with their girlfriends and felt a twinge of envy and of absence. When the time came to go the goodbye was austere, as I had known it would be; I was secretly glad I had a goodbye to say. On the plane I slept when I could. Upon landing the difficulties at immigration failed to materialise. I kept my passport away and pretended to be Singaporean: but when I struck out TAIWANESE on my disembarkation card I felt only shame.

Arrival held nothing new for me, and I slept some more as we lumbered southward towards camp, not feeling quite at home, but cheerful with falsehood.