Filed under: diary, training and nutrition | Tags: experience, running, running in the rain
People think you are crazy.
I ran from my grandparent’s house to my aunt’s condominium in the pouring rain. Amidst the crackle of lightning and the gloom of dark clouds, I felt a sense of redemption as the rain pelted my exposed face and body. The thick strands of rain and the cluster of raindrops hanging over my eye lashes limited my vision. Decisions to cross roads are leaps of faith and every step is made with trepidation.
Yet every passing flash of lightning reminds me that I am lucky to be alive and every beat of rain that lands on my face tells me that there is a real, tangible and wonderful world out there. This kind of run won’t be my last.
Filed under: diary, the arts | Tags: kanye west, spike jonze, we were once a fairy tale
Not a big fan of rap, but this Kanye West x Spike Jonze production resonated with me. Hazy, surreal, and brilliant.
Kanye West x Spike Jonze, We Were Once a Fairytale
Won’t post any Youtube links because it will probably be broken by then due to copyright claims, and won’t mention what’s really inside the video. Just Google and find the video, watch, enjoy, and ponder.
Filed under: diary, training and nutrition | Tags: asics, asics foundation 8, newton motus, newton running shoes, running, running shoes, zoot, zoot advantage
The sad death of my first ever pair of real running shoes (Asics 2120) provided me with a chance to get another pair of running shoes. The old battered 2120 has had its day, after miles on the road, many gym sessions and 300 workouts, and it is time to retire it as its sole has dropped off. I have 2 pair of shoes, one is kept in school while the other is kept at home. The one that died is kept in school, and is used for both gym work and running the Botanic Gardens. The one at home is an Asics Foundation 8, probably the most supportive and comfortable (though chunky) running shoe I have ever used.
Hence the question for me was whether I should stick with the tried and safe, or try something new. The safe choice would be another pair of Asics; Asics never fails to provide a shoe with fantastic support and comfort. Yet after reading much propaganda and books about the perks and advantages of barefoot (or at least, simulated barefoot) running, I want to try out something new that may help and improve my running and the whole running experience. My experience of running so far has been painful at times, with shin splints the most prevalent problem. I reckon that this might have something to do with my running form, and books and research told me that proper form requires one to land and lift off on the forefoot instead of striking the heels. Apparently, wearing shoes with thinner soles will help train one to use the forefeet. I was curious to know if an almost flat-footer like me can develop a “proper” running form and land on my forefeet.
Hence I decided to look for a shoe that has a thinner sole and better feel of the ground, and will train me to run in a more efficient manner by making me run on my forefoot instead of striking my heels. I already have a pair of ultra supportive running shoes, so just in case the new purchase did not turn out well, I can always relegate it to a gym shoe and get another pair, or just use my current Asics Foundation 8 for distance work. It’s time to try a shoe that is less chunky and liberates my feet.
So I popped into Running Lab in Novena to shop for my next shoe. My eventual answer, after trying out and deciding between the Zoot Advantage, Nike Lunarglide and Newton Motus, is the Newton Motus (http://www.newtonrunning.com/newton-products/the-shoes/mens-shoes/men-trainers/men-stability-trainer).
It was a tough choice. The Zoot Advantage had a thinner sole, which fitted my requirement of a shoe with a thinner sole, and it was an absolutely fantastic fit. It hugs the feet perfectly, and the lacing system was no frills and effective without the need to fumble over tying knots. One can run in it barefeet without socks; just slip it on and off one goes.
Yet I chose the Newton Motus instead. With all this gushing, one might expect me to end up with a pair of Zoots. As I mentioned, it was a tough decision. The Newton was not half as comfortable as the Zoot, and the lacing system is as normal as it can get. The colour scheme is a garish yellow/orange blend (a note to manufacturers: please use nicer colours).
What won me over was the feel of the shoe, not in terms of comfort, but rather its attention to correcting and perhaps forcing the runner to adopt a midfoot running style. The lugs in the middle of the shoe protrude out of the sole and makes it irresistible for the runner to land on the lugs. On the treadmill at Running Lab, I began to notice a change in my running style; instead of heavy wide strides, my legs closed up in narrower strides that landed closer to the bottom of my body.
The true test of any shoe is whether it performs in a normal run. I took mine for a light run after coming back from school.
Landing on my mid/fore foot was a novel experience. I felt like a toddler, unsteadily tiptoeing along and I felt like falling over. However the lugs absorbed the shock well and my feet adapted to the need to be more steady as the shoe had significantly less support and cover than my Asics.
After the initial baby steps and uncertainty, I was running faster than I did on my Asics. The Newton is light, in fact very light. The contrast was quite massive; the Newton with its thin and breathable mesh outer was very light, in comparison to the chunky Asics I have.
And it was not just the lack of weight that made me go faster. My running form changed. My legs lift higher, and they land below the axis of my body. I take more steps, but my stride cycle is faster. My arms are tucked backwards, and my spine erect, with my legs propelling me forward. Is this the fabled “optimal running form”? Or ChiRunning? Or POSE? Or whatever you call it. Whatever it is, it feels different, and good.
Back home from the 40 minute run, my calves are sore. They are very tight, and various hitherto unseen and unknown small muscles ache. I envision myself having some trouble walking tomorrow. There was no pain, which is always a good sign.
I hope that it is not just the placebo effect of getting a pair of new shoes. I will find out whether the improvements are real in the next few weeks. I am optimistic that this pair of shoes will open up opportunities and bring my running to another dimension.
Filed under: diary, training and nutrition | Tags: advice, book, book review, born to run, christopher mcdougall, joy of running, running, running advice
Distance running was revered because it was indispensable; it was the way we survived and thrived and spread across the planet. You ran to eat and to avoid being eaten; you ran to find a mate and impress her, and with her you ran off to start a new life together. You had to love running, or you wouldn’t live to love anything else. And like everything else we love—everything we sentimentally call our “passions” and “desires”—it’s really an encoded ancestral necessity. We were born to run; we were born because we run. We’re all Running People, as the Tarahumara have always known.
===
If school was not in the way, I would have finished Christopher McDougall’s Born To Run in a single sitting. I have never been so thoroughly gripped by a book since Krakauer’s Into the Wild.
Exhilarating and attention-grabbing from start to finish, Born To Run reads exactly same way as its subject matter: the excitement, joy and secrets of running. McDougall leads the reader on a scintillating journey (or rather, run) to discover the running secrets of the Tarahumara and the enlightened few who in their own ways found their own secret philosophy of running, like Conrad’s Marlowe on steroids, only with much more optimism and genuine curiosity. Characters from nerdy sports science researchers to the colourful Tarahumara Indian runners, and of course, the crazed and eccentric Caballo Blanco, flit in and out of McDougall’s narrative. McDougall meshes adventure story and a sociologist’s diary with fitness science investigative drama and snippets from the History Channel, and the result is one rocking oddball of a read that serves to inspire even the non-runner.
The one recurring message this book constantly expresses is heart. Running used to be done for its own sake, as a reflection of innocent love and joy, as well as necessity. Unfortunately modern attitudes to running has sharply deviated from its original purpose and goal. Today most of us run because we have ancillary motives, like a desire to avoid an early death or obtain a good figure or to put an end to persistent nagging by others.
And this is what makes running so painful and hard to do for modern men. The “get it over and done” attitude translates to a whole sports industry that focuses on relieving and minimising the runner’s pain and coddling runners from the effects of running. It demeans the activity and the sports goods industry has milked it for all its worth. Sport shoes are designed and repackaged all the time, for no apparently good reason other than to make more profit from consumers who want “the best” for themselves. Ironically this has the effect of making us weaker runners and propagating a whole host of running injuries that were almost never heard of in the context of our primitive ancestors.
A larger observation can be made of human activities in general. Just as how running ceases to be meaningful and joyful once ancillary motives take the place of its intrinsic value, the same can be said of almost anything we do. Is it any wonder why most people hate their jobs? Or why hobbies cease to be pleasurable once one converts it into a career?
It is interesting to see how running and sport in general can be a larger analogy of life. Our own perspectives on our chosen (or rejected) sport is itself a larger reflection on our larger point of view on life. I agree with McDougall when he opined that runners are the happiest and most beautiful people in the world. It is no coincidence that athletes require little makeup to look really good and city people are more depressed than the rural folk. What we do has a curious ability to in turn affect our world view, and vice versa.
Sadly this is not so when it comes to modern attitudes on running. Once an intrinsic element of human life, running has been relegated to merely an optional activity which only “hardcore” workout people or those with time on their hands can engage in. To most, it is a needless pain. Physical prowess is often seen as a secondary and less desirable trait in comparison to mental competency and social skills in our society, and this probably affects social perception of running and other valuable physical activities.
It is a shame. I believe that there is something pure and tangible in running that we cannot derive from other things in life. A run has an end and finishing line, and if you fail to meet the timing, you fail to meet the timing. Things are obvious, innocent and clear. Unlike the tiring and shifting world of human relations and emotions where one never knows what till happen and has to deal with the unsavoury aspects of human character, running is pure and simple.
As a law student, running has a special attraction to me. One standing trend of anything I study in law is the defeasibility of any argument and principle. One can argue for a position, but one must realise that this position is almost always defeasible, either by the opponent’s argument, the teacher’s criticisms or the judge’s final opinion. There is simple no certainty at all.
To this, add the myriad of characters that filter in and out of your life. I am a poor reader of character and I tend to trust people too much. Sometimes this trust results in disappointment. You never know who to trust and who will turn out not to be a friend in the end.
Running is a welcome relief and escape from this uncertain world of smokes and mirrors. Through running, I metaphorically and spiritually run away from my problems. Running helps me sort out my thoughts. Running grounds my life with some certainty; there is no doubt that ten kilometres is ten kilometres and the watch does not lie. If I had a good workout, I had a good workout. If I did not, I simply did not.
That said, I am not the best runner at all, whether in terms of speed, endurance or even heart. I have my off days and sometimes I lose the motivation to even put on my shoes and go for a really short jog.
Which explains why this book has such a hold on me. It provides me with glimpses into the attitudes of others, which I can strive to emulate and learn from. And for this, I am deeply grateful to McDougall for penning such a life-affirming book.
Filed under: alcohol | Tags: port, review, taylor's 10 year old tawny port
In uncertain and trying times, one has a tendency to revert back to tried and true personal favourites as sources of familiar comfort. Some would call dessert wines the lighter weight and more “childish” members of the wine family, but I love port for its sweetness and, when done well, its complexity and maturity.
So I opened my Taylor’s 10 Year Old Tawny. A typical brownish red, although clearer and fairer then most other port I have tried, which includes the Graham’s 10 Year Old Tawny Port. It is more direct and less subtle than its equivalent. Its brighter colour belies its sharper, edgier taste in comparison to the Graham’s version I had before, which is the best port I had so far, period.
This port is a strong contender to the Graham’s. Despite being more direct and less subtle, it retains its mature character, and the aftertaste lingers in my palate. The sense of fruit and jam remains for a while after initial tasting, which combines nicely with a nuttiness that characterises mature ports. Overall, it is coherent and the real draw is in the finishing, which hints of oak and apricot. This will go down very well with dark chocolates.
The port should change subtlely over the next 3 weeks. I am quite excited and looking forward to experiencing surprises.
Filed under: alcohol
So I am back from my first ever winetasting session. It was certainly an eyeopening and tipsy experience as T and I made rounds tasting a dizzying array of wines. Some were bad, and those that were really good made the trip worth it. Here are some notes on the best wines I had:
Dona Paula Bodega de Seleccion Malbec 2005
A tight package with a strong hint of mystery, this wine exudes a careless playfulness that seems intentionally engineered. The wine seems very small when in the mouth, but is very full-bodied. It is hard to get a grasp on this wine; it invites more sips.
Elderton Estate Cabernet Sauvignon 2005
Satisfying, robust and rich with staying power. This wine has structure and made sense from start to finish, from the nose to the palate. The majesty of this is in the finishing: it lasts for a very long time, so much so that it actually affected my tasting of the Elderton Estate Merlot 2006 after that. This will go down very well with a slab of roasted beef.
Santenay Demeocq 2007
Probably the most cheeky and unexpected of the lot I have tasted. Most of the whites tasted pretty sour and bad, so I did not expect much from this wine. The starting was as expected, sour and thin, but the middle and end was thicker and reminiscent of a red. Question marks go through my head after the first sip.
==
I think winetasting is as much about finding out what different varieties and blends taste like as discovering what particular tastes and qualities one subjectively prefers in wine.
After much tasting, I realised that I prefer the following types of wines and qualities in wine:
- Red wine and dessert wines
- Intensity
- Coherent structure
- A strong and lasting finish
It’s a mix of humour and sadness that appeals greatly to me.
Adam Sandler was excellent, and Drew looked so pure.
Filed under: Law, Lifeskills, diary | Tags: book, ethics, experience, internship, Law, lawyer, manual trade, matthew b. crawford, matthew crawford, review, shop class as soul craft, shop class as soulcraft, value of work, white collar profession, work
It is by having hands that man is the most intelligent of animals.
- Anaxagoras
What follows is an attempt to map the overlapping territories intimated by the phrases “meaningful work” and “self reliance”. Both ideals are tied to a struggle for individual agency, which I find to be at the very center of modern life. When we view our lives through the lens of this struggle, it brings certain experiences into sharper focus. We worry that we are becoming stupider, and begin to wonder if getting an adequate grasp on the world, intellectually, depends on getting a handle on it in some literal and active sense…
The idea of agency I have tried to illustrate in this book is different. It is activity directed toward some end that is affirmed as good by the actor, but this affirmation is not something arbitrary and private. Rather if flows from an apprehension of real features of the world… [A person's] individuality is thus expressed in an activity that, in answering to a shared world, connects him to others… For in fact we are basically dependent beings: one upon another, and each on a world that is not of our making…
We usually think of intellectual virtue and moral virtue as being very distinct things, but I think they are not…
- Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work
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I love watching Bear Grylls in Man v. Wild, gallivanting around and successfully surviving in the wild. Just to be fair, I love Ray Mears in Survivorman too, for his tenacity and outrageous courage in living and filming his escapades in the wilderness absolutely alone. I love watching Mike Rowe in Dirty Jobs, explaining and unveiling the hidden world of people who do jobs that nobody else wants or dares to do. I love watching crab harvesters in The Deadliest Catch bring in cages upon cages of humungous Alaskan king crabs, braving the choppy, dark waters of the Bering Straits and working unending hours on the rain-soaked decks of crabbing boats in the unforgiving freezing rain and snow, and going back home to a warm fireplace and relieved spouses with their pockets full of cash.
What attracts me is the frank, refreshing honesty in what they do, and an immense sense of physicality.It is experience at its most intense and raw, and there is no fudging because the results are there for all and sundry to see. You either survive or you don’t; the crab count cannot be doctored. There is no reliance on easy talk and smiles, things that people will term as “charm” and “charisma” (but to me just exercises in hypocrisy).
Interesting enough, for all its merits and honesty, I find myself simultaneously a voyeur, peering over the edge into the hidden worlds of people who I know I will never find the will to emulate and society does not give sufficient respect, gratitude or attention to. A touch of fantasy and impossibility separates me from their actual worlds.
Fortunately enough, I chanced upon a book which articulates and analyses what was to me an instinctive gut feeling of respect and admiration and gives me the ah-ha! moment. In his paean to the manual trades Shop Class As Soul Craft, Matthew B. Crawford makes a compelling case for a new appreciation for the manual trades, and critiques the pieties of conventional conceptions of what constitutes proper work.
My reading habit tends to be influenced by my current situation. I Googled and Amazoned this book after reading about it in an article in Newsweek about work satisfaction while (rather aptly) commuting to work in a law firm in my white shirt and black pants. I found the Amazon reviews on Crawford’s book as well as Crawford’s article in the New Atlantis and NYT on the same subject interesting and relevant enough to warrant reserving the book from the library.
It did not disappoint. I was consistently able to relate to what Crawford had to say and compare it to my experiences as a legal intern. My prior uneasiness with and slight disdain for the majority of white collar jobs were articulated in logical argument.
In a nutshell, Matthew B. Crawford dispels notions that the manual trades do not engage the intellect and provide meaningful jobs that are stable and sheltered from the threat of outsourcing. In fact he argues that the blue collar trades . In doing so, he also critiques the current job landscape and the workplace’s tendency to dehumanise and ignore the intrinsic needs of humans, which include the need to see the tangible effect one’s work has on the world and fidelity to and fulfillment of objective standards and ideals.
The tradesman’s work is psychically and emotionally fulfilling. As Crawford points out, one of the central problems of the modern world is the lack of individual agency. Office workers feel as if they are mere cogs in a machine, with little or no power to shape their immediate reality and no tangible fruit of their labour to show. A mechanic in contrast sees the actual fruits of his labour, in what Crawford terms as the “overlap” between the “community of consumption” and the “community of work”. The small town furniture maker sees his product put to good use by the community and is enlivened by it; such a job caters to the basic human need for “rational activity, in relation to others” that serve a greater community good and need.
By the sheer nature of the work of a manual trade, a practitioner is a true student of his trade. He cannot fix a machine in his mind, and neither can he go guns blazing into a repair job without a measure of theory. He has to understand theory in the abstract and confront reality where theory often has to be adjusted or even discarded in order to achieve the goals of his trade.
Such work affirms the individual’s sense of Emersonian self-worth and situates him within a larger ethic and purpose, the sort that nourishes a soul and gives direction and stability to lives. In Crawford’s words:
The satisfaction of manifesting oneself concretely in the world through manual competence have been known to make a man quiet and easy. They seem to relieve him of the felt need to offer chattering interpretations of himself to vindicate his worth. He can simply point: the building stands, the car now runs, the lights are on. Boasting is what a boy does, because he has no real effect in the world. But the tradesman must reckon with the infallible judgment of reality, where one’s failures or shortcomings cannot be interpreted away. His well-founded pride is far from the gratuitous “self-esteem” that educators would impart to students, as though by magic.
This book is also an exercise in breaking misconceptions about “menial labour”. The phrase suggests that such jobs do not engage the mind and are merely automated tasks that anyone can perform, and that such jobs are low status jobs. The former is not true since the mechanic must have a close understanding of his work in order to be good at it, but the latter is unfortunately a fact that is sadly dependent on prevailing social perceptions rather than any objective criteria.
Contrast the work of a skilled practitioner of a manual trade with the work of an average paper pusher in the office. The best and most accessible representation of the plight of the office worker is probably the Dilbert comic strip.
The world of Dilbert, with its crazy unfeeling bosses, excruciating boredom and inane bureaucracy is alarmingly close to real life. Life in a cubicle can be existentially absurd. We work with people we would not normally interact with in life, and chains of hierarchy command our uneasy relationships. There is silence, and very often boredom. Work is done mostly through impersonal emails and on paper. An intense sense of purposelessness, of “why am I doing this?” and “what am I doing here?” pervades work.
The advancement of the modern economy is very much predicated on the phasing out of physical jobs and its substitution with modern “thinking” jobs. However this comes at great social cost. People are essentially lost as cogs in machines; they do not know the effect of their work and the standards to which their work are judged (if they exist at all). If such standards do exist, they are usually so vague that they serve as nothing more than public relations material or useless platitudes. The cubicle dweller has trouble explaining in any degree of meaningful detail what exactly he is doing, without resort to jargon and artificial phrases. The lack of a clear standard through which to measure work results in irresponsibility since no one can be said to be underperforming or doing things wrongly, and this perpetuates immorality.
Crawford notes the modern tendency to separate thinking from doing in the white collar working place. Whatever can be done mechanically in a job is farmed out to “lower level workers” while thinking is the dominion of the supposedly highly-qualified intellectual class with their scores of degrees and qualifications. However as mentioned above, true learning comes from the synthesis of both theoretical learning and actual doing; the student that is only introduced to theory has a half-baked understanding of a subject and fails to appreciate the subject adequately.
The cubicle worker is in essence a hopeless idiot. Not in the derogatory, colloquial sense of the word, but in the sense that the word is used by Robert Pirsig in Zen and The Art of Motorcyle Maintenance and interpreted by Crawford: an idiot is a person who does not see his work as part of an involvement with something outside of himself, of larger concern and universal quality. An idiot teacher would only care about whether he has adhered to issued instructions from school authorities; he would not see that he is entrusted with the important task of expanding young minds and the need to maintain a personal concern for each individual student. An idiot is at bottom, to quote Crawford, a “solipsist”, that is a selfish person who only thinks about his own views.
Crawford posits that intellectual and moral virtue are in fact entangled. The mode and level of cognition that pervades our work determines the moral quality of the person. If a job reduces you to a mere instruction-following cog in the machine (e.g. the ubiquitious zombie helpline worker who can chant pre-written responses to genuine queries and problems without ever taking a real interest in the plight of the caller), chances are that your sense of morality and care for others will be reduced somewhat too. The current economic crisis is testimony to the destructive potential of such a pernicious approach to jobs; bankers respond only to cold profit while investment salesman see their role only as conduits for passing on poisoned investment products rather than the guardians of the financial well-being of their clients. They see themselves as cogs in a chain that foists financial products on the unsuspecting public, and their better judgment and perceptions are suspended. Crawford terms this as a process of “learned irresponsibility”, since responsibility and concern for others is the bedrock of most ethical systems. If this is true, the perceived degradation of the moral character of the modern man can be linked to the increased mechanisation and depersonalisation of jobs.
The predicament confronting the modern cubicle worker reminds me of various characters of some fine books I had the privilege to read. Biff and Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman are probably the most striking examples. I tried to relate what I read to characters and people I knew, and these two sprang immediately to mind.
These are two characters who are hopelessly out of place in their materialistic society. Biff used to be a star quarterback and dreams of working in a ranch with his hands, but instead caved into pressure from his father to find a way to a job behind a corporate desk. Willy loves tending to his garden and really should find a job as a gardener, but instead he fell prey to the delusions of thinking that everyone should find a job in sales and live the high and successful life and embarked on a failed career as a traveling salesman. They have submitted to social pressure and sacrificed their better selves at the altar of social misconceptions of what constitutes proper work.
I believe that Biffs and Willys can be found everywhere in the world. We can see shades of them in ourselves and others. These characters, like many paper pushers, struggle in the modern working climate, which fails to nurture the best in men and fulfill our psychic and emotional needs. One particular phrase used by Crawford seem particularly appropriate here; to paraphrase Crawford, while “every job entails some kind of mutilation”, it is important to make sure that “none of this damage touches the best part of yourself”. A firefighter runs the risk of burns and bruises, but he does so because he is engaged in the noble and fulfilling endeavour of saving lives. However a modern cubicle worker might find it a struggle to state what exactly he is sacrificing time and his mental health for. Some things are simply too precious to be damaged, and many jobs in fact do just that.
Crawford’s writing sheds much light on my current situation. I am a law student, and if all goes smoothly, I should be starting a career as a lawyer soon after I graduate. However even before starting my career, I am able to see how lawyering has the potential to be at bottom unfulfilling and uncongenial to the better parts of one’s humanity. Since being a lawyer is one of the quintessential white collar professions, Crawford’s critique can almost be fully applied to lawyering.
My chief experience as a legal intern was that to be a lawyer is to live life by proxy. Instead of being a businessman, lawyers aid businessmen in their endeavours, be it through drafting merger and acquisitions documents or negotiating terms of sales and purchase agreements. Instead of playing a sport, lawyers act for sportsmen. Instead of nurturing brands, lawyers are engaged in intellectual property work. It feels like an opt out, and whenever I hear fellow students that say they love the sea and hence they want to go into shipping law, I roll my eyes. If you really love the sea, why not be a sailor? Or a fisherman? Anything that actually gets you into direct contact with the object of fascination itself.
Seen from a more negative light, lawyers are mere cogs in the machine of commerce. They are conduits, the lubricant that allow things to move more smoothly. And they are paid a lot and work obscenely long hours, to do things that are not explicitly productive. There is no furniture at the end of a working day or project, except for maybe a few documents, and I bet that lawyers have a tough time explaining their work to any common person. The doctrines of consideration and undue influence are artificial, without any anchor on concrete reality.
Is there then some connection between the unfortunately emerging phenomenon of errant lawyers absconding with money and the nature of the job? Ethical standards exist for the lawyering profession in Singapore, but professional standards seem to be open to interpretation, and bending. There is really no correct way to draft a contract, or to make an argument in court. Subjectivity pervades the profession, and this is perhaps a reason why lawyers get jaded, and in the worst cases, downright immoral. Without the anchor of the sense of responsibility arising from being held to an objective standard and adhering to a larger ideal, lawyers tend to lose their internal moral compasses.
Till the day I finally reach some sort of congruence between my professed admiration for physical, tangible work and my chosen lawyering path, there remains a blotch of uncertainty and self-conscious hypocrisy confounding my heart and mind.
Sources
Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class As Soulcraft: An inquiry into the value of work
The original essay from the New Atlantis: http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/shop-class-as-soulcraft
Matthew B. Crawford, “The Case for Working with Your Hands” in the NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/magazine/24labor-t.html?_r=1
Fukuyama’s review of the book: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/books/review/Fukuyama-t.html
Filed under: diary, training and nutrition | Tags: boxing, muhammad ali, thoughts, videos
Was obsessed with boxing matches for the last week. It’s the raw ferocity displayed by boxers and physicality of the sport coupled with the intellectual strategising required to win that attracts me. Underneath the blunt violence, taunts and verbosity lies dedication to the sport, intensive preparation and much sacrifice.
Muhammad Ali was particularly inspiring
Ali v. Foreman, Rumble in the Jungle:
As cheesy as a Rocky movie, but as inspiring in a heart thumping, masculine manner. Apparently one of the bloodiest fights, Ali was the clear underdog, but won through his smarts. He let Foreman pummel him and expend all his strength for the initial rounds, before coming back at him when he was tired in the later rounds. Foreman was to become a close friend of Ali later.
Ali v. Ernie Terrell
Terrell refused to call Ali by his Muslim name, and called him Cassius Clay instead. In the fight, Ali toyed with Terrell and tortured him for 15 rounds even though he was dominating. He could have knocked him out, but he refused to because he wanted to punish Terrell for his lack of respect. This he duly did, shouting “What’s my name” repeatedly while doing so.
Ali v. Frazier, Thrilla in Manila
The third time they faced each other, and one of the most brutal matches in boxing history. An appropriate climax to their bitter rivalry, this fight took a massive toll on both boxers.
Ali’s words
Perhaps the most memorable words came outside of the ring. Ali’s recipe for life.
Filed under: diary, the arts | Tags: comment, E.M. Forster, email, letter writing, review, technology, the machine stops
It is amazing how prescient EM Forster’s The Machine Stops is, given that it was written way back in 1909, long before the internet was invented and the digital age even begun. Forster manages to encapsulate the anxieties and pitfalls of embracing technology, by illustrating a world in which the substance and warmth of humanity has been replaced by cold efficiency and shallow satiation of the senses.
Forster paints a world in which sterile and faceless technology has infiltrated all aspects of life. People literally live in their own worlds, as they do everything in subterranean hexagonal cells with various machines that provide for all of their needs. The Machine, as it is rather blandly named, provides everything that humans need. No one lives above the ground anymore, and air outside in fact kills. Public gatherings are “clumsy” and have since been abolished. Travel is often unnecessary since telecommunications is so advanced.
The protagonist, Vashti, is a mother who lives apart from her son Kuno, and communicates with him only through imaging plates and knobs that adjusts broadcasted sound. Their relationship has the air of formality one would normally reserve for strangers and professional acquiantances, and Vashti was reluctant to physically visit her own son who wanted her counsel and help. Mother and child are literally and metaphorically distanced. Upon realising from him that he visited the surface, she was shocked, and disappointed with him, and saw him as a disgrace to the Machine, a formless entity to whom she owes a larger allegiance and more affection to.
The dystopian world Forster presents to us is clearly a product of fiction, but I can see parallels that world has with ours.
A key feature of life in the Machine is isolation. Life is solitary, and much of the “needless” social interaction has been either abolished or reduced to electronic means. Just as people in the story interact through electronic intermediaries, we too are doing the same. Instead of meeting physically, we meet online and talk through phones and email. Subcultures that excessively trumpets the call for technology to engulf every area of our lives like the “Otaku” culture in Japan are emerging. Electronic gaming has become to many an adequate substitute for physical sports and a hour or two in the sun.
While people of the Machine was physically and spiritually segregated, we are yet to reach that point. I guess physical seggregation is impossible in this increasingly congested planet, but spiritual and emotional seggregation is already creeping into our lifes. We plug into our iPods and tune out the world, people marry later and many do not marry at all. Traditional religions are losing their hold to individualistic materialism and secularism. Many of our children grow up playing single player electronic games, not board games or marbles with their kindergarden and primary school friends.
Marshall McLuhan famously opined that the medium is the message. The form of communication often has an impact on the message itself, and has the insidious and subtle power to transform the very relationships between people. There some truth to this, in relation to the impact of electronic communications has on human relationships.
Compare traditional post with email. Sending a mail by traditional post requires more effort; one has to buy sufficient stamps, find out the applicable postal rates, obtain the appropriate stationery, plan the letter, vet and edit drafts, set pen to paper, seal the letter, affix the stamp, get the address right and finally make the trip down to the post box to send the letter. Email in contrast is free and just require you to tap a few keys and click a few buttons.
When one sends a traditional letter, one has to be careful. Words must be carefully selected because there are constraints, like the amount of space on a post card and the need to maintain the aesthetics of the letter by avoiding cross-outs and minimising corrections. These concerns are less pronounced in the context of email.
Care requires effort. And effort is an expression of the amount of value one places on particular relationships. Effort has the peculiar ability to strengthen relationships through a cycle of positive feedback. The more effort a person puts into a relationship, the more likely the person will cherish his counterpart. In economic parlance, effort put into relationships can be termed as “sunk costs” which motivates a person to stick with preexisting relationships instead of seeking greener pastures.
I read from somewhere before that a handwritten letter is equivalent to a personal visit from a friend. Having received a few in the past month, I must say there is a large amount of truth to that statement. Nothing beats the sense of warmth and pleasant surprise that one gets upon receiving a letter from a cherished friend in the mail and reading about her feelings and reengaging with the happenings of her life.
In contrast emails are utilitarian and to some extent encourages careless thoughts and words. It is little wonder that email often find its greatest use in the calculative and coldly rational world of business, where time is everything, speed and efficacy is paramount and effective communication of facts and orders and not conveyance of emotion is required. However email as a mode of communication is sorely inadequate between friends.
Sadly the culture of letterwriting has been on the wane, with the prevalence of email and the ease of writing electronic letters. Email clearly has its place and usefulness, but my concern is that the ascension of email will come at the cost of another avenue through which human emotions and warmth can be cultivated.
However I am also confident that letterwriting will not be abolished. As the persistence of print in the information age suggests, people do recognise the inherent value of old technology. I hope the value of letter writing is not lost on future generations.
Just as I find room for hope, Forster is not a pessimist in his story. There is redemption at the end of the story. Mother and son kiss for the first time,the first and unfortunately last act of intimacy and love between them and an admission that life in the Machine is in fact not really life at all. Hopefully, just like how Vashti reaches a moment of epiphany, those of us that place blind faith in technology at the expense of our very humanity will too realise the truth before it is too late.
Filed under: current affairs, diary, food | Tags: comment, David A. Kessler, David Kessler, review, The End of Overeating
Humans are creatures of habit, and once automated behaviour is programmed into our subconsciousness, we stick with it regardless of its ill effects on us. David A. Kessler in The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite argues that overeating has its roots in the practices of the food industry and natural consequences of modernisation.
People overeat because we are primed by our surrounding environment to do so. Kessler suggests that it is more nurture than nature that percipitates binge eating. Food today is readily available, and served in large portions that encourage overeating. Food comes in all sorts of fancy packing and “new” flavours that encourage people to buy and sample them. Kessler vividly uses the metaphor of the “purple cow”: a person will not bat an eyelid at an ordinary cow, but the sight of a purple cow excites and intrigues.
More damningly, Kessler opined that the food industry has been consciously producing food products that encourages overeating and make consumers want to have more and more, in a bid to earn profits. According to Kessler’s research, the tools are sugar, fat and salt – that is in essence the three elements that trigger off an orgy of overeating. Add more sugar, more salt and more fat, in the right “magic” proportions, and you instantly get a product that the masses go crazy for.
I can see how this is practised in my immediate life. Potato chips come in all sorts of flavours, and they are amazingly salty and not to mention, fried in oil. Fast food are largely all fried and laden with salt – from french fries to old Chang Kee curry puffs. And fast food chains “innovate” by periodically offering new selections made using the same methods.
Reversing a culture of overeating is not easy. The method of adding more salt, sugar and fat takes advantage of deeply-ingrained primal instincts in humans. Our ancestors are programmed to be deeply attracted to high carbo, high salt and high fat foods because of their harsh environment where rich sources of fat and energy are scarce and survival necessitates that a person should gorge whenever he finds food. Obviously the modern human does not require this primeval instinct anymore, but the problem is that we still have this inbuilt mechanism deep within our brains.
The essence of what Kessler propose we do to combat the evil of overeating is consciousness of instinct and active denial of the influence of instinct. We have to know that our brains are telling us to eat and actively decide not to take up what our instincts tell us to do. Easier said than done, that is for sure.
Yet what sets us apart from mere animals is our capacity to deal with our baser instincts to promote the greater good or achieve a more important personal goal. The dominance of will over instinct can and should be the status quo.
Filed under: diary, the arts | Tags: fifty dead men walking, martin mcgartland
Can a person find peace with himself when he sacrifices the lives of people personally acquianted with him in exchange for the survival of an anonymous mass of people? Is the death of a friend worth exchanging for the survival of tens of other strangers?
This was the central recurring struggle that tormented the lead character Martin McGartland’s conscience in Fifty Dead Men Walking. I just watched the movie with J and I was well-entertained. While the cinematography and pacing were excellent and Jim Sturgess’s performance as a more animated and cocky counterpart of Tony Leung’s brooding, taciturn undercover cop character in Infernal Affairs was outstandingly believable, it was the fundamental conflict McGartland faced that most fascinated me.
As the title of the movie would suggest, is it morally, or at least personally, justifiable to sacrfice family and friends in exchange for the “greater good” of letting say, 50 men who one has never seen or heard before and are supposed to die, live?
Aside from the question of whether a crude and unfeeling utilitarian calculus can be used to justify or rationalise the sacrifice of human lives in exchange for others (e.g. 1 life can always be justifiable exchanged for 2 lives because 2 is more than 1), the problem of whether one is able to morally justify, and live with, the consequences of sacrificing everything that is real, tangible and personal in pursuit of an abstract ideal that seems so removed from one’s immediate concerns and perceptions.
In some sense, fidelity in this form is similar to religious belief. The Muslim God in particular has no physical manifestation, and in fact Muslims frown upon depictions of God. Hence to believe in God is in a way to believe in a pure idea, a non-corporal entity or ideal. Just like how McGartland betrays his “mates” (as he affectionately calls them) for the higher ideal of saving abstract lives, religious fundamentalists seek to fulfill their version of God’s abstract purpose and will by blowing themselves and others up.
I was also reminded of just how similar this form of love for the right is to the Duke Orsino’s rather ridiculous predicament in Twelfth Night: he was in love with the idea of love, and it took the trickery and cross-dressing of Viola to get him out of his self-imposed romantic stasis. Perhaps fidelity to an abstract ideal can indeed be counterproductive and undesirable, stymieing the proper order of life.
In the end each of us chooses his own poison. Life is perhaps a question of trading precious and finite time, health and effort in exchange for meaning and value, in the form of whatever endeavour we choose to focus on.
At the end of the movie I felt that McGartland was a hero. Yes, lives were sacrificed along the way and he had to betray his closest connections. But his bravery, courage and steadfastness were admirable, and the fact remains that his unintentionally Machiavellian ways did save many lives. In a perfect world everyone is a saint, but clearly perfection is a dream. In an imperfect world where circumstances are often out of the control of the hands of men, McGartland did the best he could while listening to the voice of his conscience.
Filed under: diary
090709
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I just bought a new acoustic guitar. The sensation of excitement is something I have not experienced in quite a while. I feel like a boy with this exciting new toy that I want to play with all the time. And boy is this toy expensive, it set me back about 700 dollars.
But currently at least, every dollar shelled is worth it. The guitar is gorgeous, with its reddish solid cedar top, abalone inlays, deep brown rosewood sides and grainy nato neck. And boy is it playable; it is a jumbo (i.e. larger than normal) but its curvy body remains manageable. And the sound. It booms. And it is so mellow and warm, yet articulate. Strumming is delightful, and solo-picking is fantastic with my acoustic guitar pick. It is the kind of guitar that will age gracefully and delight me consistently for years to come.
Here’s the guitar by the way: http://www.maestroguitars.com/products/ej3.htm
Filed under: diary
22/06/09
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Six Pence None the Richer’s Kiss Me floods my ear canals as I sat cross-legged, leaning backwards on a clean, smooth steel bench, gazing down the entire outer hallway of Bangalore International Airport at the clear blue sky squarely picture-framed at the end. I was waiting for the baggage checkin counter to be in service. The temperature was perfect at 28 degrees, with winds streaming gently through the hallway and my hair.
It almost too good to be true, after 50 days in India and Pakistan. I felt a welcomed and rare sense of blissful peace, a feeling almost always absent during this hectic and trying trip. It felt odd, strangely alien and it was almost numbing. It was the end of my longest, craziest and most dangerous ever soujourn into foreign lands, and endings invite introspection.
Curiously enough, this was the first time I plugged in my mp3 player and listened to music during the trip, and it came right at the end where I probably felt the least need to engage in aural escapism.
I struggled to find the reasons. Was it excitement and the sense of the unknown, like that present for most of our Chennai-Calcutta train ride, our first experience of Indian Rail? Or was it fear, like that which puntuated my Goecha La trek whenever the throbbing headaches and breathlessness rear their ugly heads? Or was it just the sheer heat, like that which suffocated us in Lahore? Or is it a bit of all? The boundaries beween my memories melt and they coalesce. Sieving for reasons seems futile.
Yet I crave for rationalisations. It can be safely said that a significant proportion of the tri pwas filled with discomfort and boredom, be it from the sweaty and stuffy bus rides or unwelcomed bouts of illness. It would be dishonest to say that I did not expect myself to survive the trip before or at anytime during the trip proper. I would never engage in anythign that spells certain death or injury.
That said, I also expected India and Pakistan to take its toil and leave some sort of scar, in particular on my health. And it did. Diarrhoea was the constant black dog in the corner and when I wasn’t emptying my guts and losing my body weight down India’s toilets, I carried a stomach that was queasy, bloated and cramping, all at the same time. My alimentary system work in incomprehensible ways now and danced out of step with the rest of my body. The relentless smog has also affected my respiratory system; since leaving smoggy Lahore I have been wheezing and coughing and hacking yellow phlegm laced with blood.
Yet I would not trade any of my experiences during this trip for any degree of compensating comfort, however tempting it might be. On hindsight, it was thoroughly worth it, even though I would probably respond otherwise if I was asked about it while panting my way up Goecha La or freezing the night in a shaky tent at the bottom of a windswept valley.
Perhaps this is the nub of it. Physical discomfort and illness are the price for spiritual understanding, opened eyes and a broader worldview – quid pro quo for another lesson on the world, myself and human beings. Suffering itself was part of the experience, the learning. And I am grateful for all that I have seen, heard and felt everything during the trip.
