update

I haven't been updating regularly for the past few months now, as have most of the people I know. There's nothing edifying about life, as usual. I got called back to Army Open House for road marshalling Friday-Monday so I literally burnt the last weekend under the sun – I'm still recovering my normal skin tone, and my arms are starting to peel now that my forehead's done. Not pleasant.

First time I'd been to Joo Koon MRT – that place is really the edge of the known universe for me heh. I walked past some of the foreign workers' apartments and was overcome by the appalling smell of wet socks and sweat, like after field camp but way worse. I can't imagine how they live. There were clotheslines everywhere but otherwise it seemed to be neat – probably because these people live life so lightly, no real (physical) baggage to encumber them. I wonder how on earth they could live in there. The smell alone was surely a sign of the conditions inside.

These are real Singaporean slums, tucked away from public view by sheer geographical misfortune (just some factories, the end of the PIE and a couple of camps nearby). It strikes me now how little consideration we show to these people, who are after all here to earn a decent living just like the rest of us. Just because they're foreigners, they've been relegated to the edge of our national consciousness for too long, and it's time that they are acknowledged.

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On another note it was good to meet up with the geog guys over the weekend, too. It's been a very long time, and we talked for ages.

One thing that Wally asked and that I didn't address properly (I'm not sure whether any of the geog guys come here!) was whether you can appreciate music without playing an instrument. I don't believe so, at least not with regards to as regards classical music and maybe jazz. It's still surprisingly often that I realise things about music I hadn't seen before; it actually wasn't too long ago that I started paying attention to things like tempo and expression markings, and making sense of them, and once that happened I found pieces that I'd been playing wrongly all the while just because of some screwy recording I'd heard.

I'm sure, though, that it's different for other genres of music, like most modern pop which has a fairly standard set of instruments and lyrics, and even more so for Christian music where the whole point is its accessibility and inclusiveness – all you have to do is pick up a guitar and start doing your praise-the-lord stuff (that isn't a criticism). Different sorts of music simply have different purposes, functions, even audience intended, and I can't say I'm an expert.

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I've set myself a pretty ambitious reading programme, too; lots of the "classics". I'm not so sure how relevant they are though – some of Plato is awfully frustrating because of how careless they are about semantics. It'll be a long hard slog to ORD and beyond. I've long given up expecting any fulfilment from NS anyway.

Ah screw it I'm gonna sleep.