as a Sports influencer

This was actually meant to be the bottom half of the earlier article. But as I wrote and wrote, it seemed to me that this held the merit to be another article altogether with a slant towards opinions and thoughts.

So here we are.

What I'm sharing right now isn't a new thing. It's been there for a while, but only after Rio last year did it take on a completely new vibe altogether, and one which I'm extremely pleased with.

Because it is long overdue.

About a decade ago, I worked for a very short time in a sports events company. What a non-competitive, non sportsperson type of person was doing in a sports events company can be simply answered by the fact that I thought I was going to deal with community events, and community events alone. Pretty naive, huh? Anyway, back then, sports was purely about sports, which meant that sports gear was purely about sports gear. And they were mostly in colors of black, blue, grey with an occasional hint of green or purple.

You know the neon colored sports shoes and laces that we have these days in the sports stores? Didn't exist then. Or the brightly colored tank tops and shirts that are in the Women's Section today at major sports stores? Didn't exist either.

To be a sportsperson then meant that you were tough, fearsome, tomboyish, focused, determined, aggressive, non-compromising, disciplined, passionate, competitive... everything and anything associated with the masculine attributes. There was nothing for the female in the sportsperson. If you were going to do sports, you were going to have to be like the men. You were going to have to throw away the mindset of prettifying yourself and live and breathe and live and breathe only one thing. COMPETITION and WINNING.

Anything other that attitude was deemed to be distracting and worthless to the GOAL of winning and beating the competition.

In other words, if you were a non sports, non competitive person like me, if you were dorky, chubby, with not an ounce of adrenaline or active physical energy in your body, if you were unable to 'toughen your mind up', there was nothing in the active gear genre for you, and nothing that you could wear to look pretty at the same time.

You don't want to know what I wore at that time. Suffice it to say I felt like a complete fish out of water with my explosion of colors and range of colored polo t-shirts. I don't think I wore as many polo t-shirts in my life as I did that time. Nearly every day was a polo t-shirt; one day I wore pink, another I wore  (And I don't think I even look good in them!)

Things are different now.

Puma, Asics, Adidas, Nike, Reebok, Under Armor, New Balance and a host of other brands have stepped up to the game and produced a range of very colorful sports gear. Prettified ones. The shoes are neon. The tops are neon. There are running shorts, sexy ones, and not so sexy ones. There are t-shirts in colors of lime green, vermillion, purple, fuchsia, disco pink and cerulean blue. There are pants in a range from leggings to straight to yoga with, or without patterns on the sides. You've got vibrant accessories. And the shoes are no longer chunky and heavy with stripes that match with nothing else. They are so bright that they by themselves are termed street style.

See, it's no longer enough to just be able to perform well in the sport. With sport now engaging and integrating into the element of Lifestyle (hi, athleisure) and day-to-day jobs, it becomes essential that not only must one aim for perfection in a sport, one must look good when you're there. It is no longer sufficient to simply depend on the achievements and accolades whilst looking like we're scarred and wounded and exhausted all over.

For too long, we have taken this stance where we believe that as long as we have the certificates and the proof of our capabilities, it doesn't matter how we look when we're getting there, or when we're there.

But that's no longer the case anymore. That's not how it is with the sporting arena anymore. Sportspeople are powerful influencers. This is not a biggie. But have we, to date, seen a sportsperson influencer who looks like they need some help in defining their appearance? No. They look good. They look smart. They look tough. They look sharp.

If Messi or Ronaldo or Usain weren't so good-looking and model-esque and winners in their game, would they have the influence that they wield amongst football lovers and runners around the world? And Karlie Kloss has also jumped in. She's a face for Adidas now. It can only get better, and prettier. Victoria Secret has a Sport line- and it is quality enough for real gym work. (How else do the Angels get their lingerie-worthy bodies otherwise?) H&M and Uniqlo and Forever 21 have their Sport Lines as well. Then we have CK Performance, which is a whole new line dedicated to Sport under the Calvin Klein brand.

So it isn't only about the Gold anymore. It's about what you do with the Gold after you get it. It's about being human. It's about influencing the non sporty people to get their grit and their determination together and put it to the grind for the sake of health and their bodies.

And looking good is a great motivator altogether.

Just ask the millennials.

Tell them to do a sport because of *lists all the benefits* and they'll simply shrug and walk away. They've got other things to do in life, whatever they might be.
 

 And for them, it's not enough just to be successful and win. You're not much of a motivator nor an inspirer if you win in life but look like you've had a long, hard fight getting there. These days, it's critical for an influencer if you look the part and prove the part. An influencer who only proves the part but does not look it is viewed with skepticism.

 

Sure, the youth might not value the wounds and the scars that the Experienced brandish about like medals of valor as much as they should, but perhaps, just perhaps, they witnessed the journey of the Experienced, they witnessed the drudgery and the trudging route they took to achieve the success, and whilst they admire them, perhaps, there's a part of them deep down where they know they have just one life that will not be a bed of roses, so why not try planting the rose bushes and self-scatter as many rose petals as possible whilst getting there? 

Our athletes are young. And they're as much influencers to youth in, and out of our country. They're as much deserving to be admired as their counterparts from neighboring countries. Let's not go into sponsorship. Sponsorship is a different matter entirely and it doesn't mean that only for the purpose of Sponsorship should a person look good. That's Business, but not a statement of relevance to make to the athlete, and to the sport itself. An athlete is an athlete, and an athlete, whether he or she gets the dollars or not, deserves to look confident, sharp, aggressive, tough, beautiful, good-looking and personable all at the same time. Whether they've won the Gold, or whether they're getting there.

After all, there was a time when lots of girls had crushes on Fandi Ahmad and Lim Tong Hai and Nasri Nazir and the whole national football team. Because they were symbols of national football pride, AND they looked cute.

So there. *_*

cute swimmers @ SEA KL

There we were, four boys of the Singapore swim team, on the winners' stand, receiving their Gold medals from the officials for their victory in the 4x100m Relay.

 

But though I was supposed to be looking at them, I wasn't really looking at them.

 

Instead I was getting distracted by the presence of the other two teams.

 

The Vietnamese team, who won the Silver, and the Malaysian team, who won the Bronze.

 

Okay, I was actually more distracted by the Vietnamese than the Malaysians. Not because the Malaysians were any less good-looking than the Viets, but it was the Viets who took me by surprise.

 

I didn't think Vietnamese could be this cute.

 

It wasn't the make-up. They weren't wearing any. It wasn't the clothes. They were all clad in fitted but comfortably sized track jackets, track pants and shoes. There was no camera-defining makeup or sharp-suited outfits or statement accessories to make them look better than what they already were... like what Entertainment does.

 

And yet, they had the looks. Looks well enough for maybe (I hinge a guess) a talent spotter to say that maybe, just maybe, with some makeup and training, fitness modeling could be on the cards. 

 

So, if it isn't one or the other, then I'd say that it could have been their Hair. Which, the more I think about it, I might be just right. And if I'm right, it means that along with the coaches and the rest of the team, Vietnam brought the National Hair Designer along too. A Hair Designer whom cut and maintained their hairstyles before going out to the Camera and showing their (Silver) victory to the rest of the region, and perhaps the rest of the world.

 

Which, after Rio 2016, is no longer so jaw-dropping anymore. And which might, after a few more of such regional and international sporting events, became de facto.

I hope so.

And if that is so, I sincerely, sincerely hope that we jump on this bandwagon fast enough too.

Because, like I said, the Viets were distractingly cute. Cute enough to make me pay less attention to our own boys in their tracksuits and horror of horrors, even the National Anthem.

And if that were something I noticed, I'm absolutely, absolutely sure, that would be something others noticed too. :)



reset And repeat

At long last, we're getting the show on the road. Okay, I gotta be more specific here. I'm getting the show on the road. We haven't quite started the basic cogs moving yet for this one.

 

Or maybe we have.

 

Depends on how you see it.

 

Admittedly it has taken too long a time. From the time when I was first told of a 'simpler' approach in 2012-2013, it has taken four years before I feel like we're going somewhere. There was all the research in the beginning which felt like it was heading in a particular direction but yet didn't have a central arc that made it feel like the dots were connected. But it made for great character study anyway, and there was some sort of integration being discussed, which I didn't quite know it was integration until much, much later.

 

I guess it was just a sort of natural approach to me; to see things in a slightly different perspective, to place significance (and hopefully, sponsorship) into the bargain, to focus on people and lives and tales and to be a straight-out sort of storyteller. What I didn't realize was just how disruptive that was to be. Still, there was the first revamp done in the summer of 2014, followed by plenty-plenty-plenty-plenty of rewrites following after.

 

How many notebooks and papers I've stored (for the sake of storing), I don't know. I haven't actually counted. I don't want to count them.

 

But we're pat down now. I don't foresee any further alterations. Sure, we could go deeper in some parts and build more flesh into the skinny frame before muscling it out entirely, but at least I think I've got the frame and features on paper.  It's all sorted out, more or less, we've found the voice, we've established the 'reasons' for them doing what they do, and if there're more reasons, they'll pop up along the way anyway.

 

I'm pretty stoked about this story. Not because it's, like, oh, I've got a Good Story. But because I think this is a narrative that's waiting to be told. It is not a narrative that is often spoken about at ease. It is not a narrative that is a commonplace topic either, despite how commonplace it actually is. Neither is it something absolutely fantastic and bombastic and outta this world. Hollywood's already done all of that. What it is, though, is a narrative that has been around, is around, and will be around for some time and I'm stoked to just even have the hope of seeing it come to Light of Day.

 

And I'm sincerely hoping that my financiers and funders keep seeing it the same way I do too... despite the interim four long years. :) Iffff it helps, and I'm being presumptuous here, another Story popped up along the way, but hey, that'll be a wee bit of time further, I'd say. :) 

fish & chips @ Fish & Chicks

They're called Fish & Chicks, but I'm there for the Fish part. Most of my fellow diners seem to go for the Fish part too, though I've seen a couple of Chicks on plates from time to time. 

 

Thing is, they've got just this one outlet.

 

And this one and only outlet is this stall at this little nook in the basement in the food court of Cathay Cineleisure. Which means that as dingy as it looks (now!), when you're going down the escalator, you don't want to turn around and take the escalator back up to the brighter-lit alternatives on the first and second floors.

 

Neither do you want to bother about the (usually short) queue at the stall. Nor the fact that you're seated under harsh white lights dining at mono-design rectangular grey tables and chairs or hard booth seating. You don't want to look around you and care about the coldness and cookie-cutter, eat-and-go atmosphere of this place. Neither do you want to bother about the fact that you've to wait to place your order, and that you've got to carry this round pager thingy back to your table and wait 8-10 minutes before the pager lights up and you can go collect your food.

 

Because you'll be missing out on this.

 

SALTED EGG

The fish is good. It's served freshly prepared and piping hot. And it is huge piece. Huge enough to share if you don't want to finish it all by yourself, but don't bother sharing, I'd say, because places for salted egg sauce fish & chips right now are only very few. It's as good as another more well-known fish & chips restaurant of a local brand. Maybe the batter's a bit different, but it is fried well, there's a crispiness about it and it tastes good. The fish inside is flaky soft as flaky soft as it can be and it forks off well, so it's good.

 

But the clincher- the absolute clincher- is the salted egg sauce. It is for this sauce that you go for. It is for this sauce with the battered fried fish that you go for. It's like an oozy, melty dressing all over your fish, and it goes so, so well. That distinct flavor of salted egg, that richness, the way it blends into your white flaky fish... And they're pretty generous about the sauce, not to mention the generosity towards the ketchup, the chili and the tartar sauce as well. :)

pandan Gula Melaka cake

from Cedele

Trust me, it is hard, very, very hard to resist a cake like this. It is also very hard to have to share a single slice of a cake that is this with another person. You want to eat it up all by yourself. You want to go up to the shiny glass counter and order the whole cake and bring it home and eat it spoon by spoon by spoon until you're filled up and keep it in the fridge for afterward and then eat it the same way again. 

 

But there you are, with just that one slice for two peeps and if you've got a cake companion who is more into the eating than the savoring, well, the cake eating time turns into a sort of fight with plate pulling and fork dodging just so you can have that one more morsel. 

 

For all the cakes that Cedele offers- and they've got quite a good variety- this is the one that I tend to go for. I don't mind trying out their cheesecakes. I don't mind their chocolate cakes. I don't mind their sea salt caramel something cake. I've eaten that one before. Once. All their cakes are very, very good, and their flavors are remarkably creative. Right now they've got a lychee-infused one. :) (I like any thing that's got lychee flavor inside- sweets, ice cream, whatever...)

 

But because anything with gula melaka- and sea salt caramel- is also one of my favorites, and it is only in recent years that we've seen a surge of desserts made with gula melaka, what usually happens is that I go up to the shiny counter, gaze a while at all their cakes on display, oooh and aaah over a few new ones, and then point to this very one. 

 

It is a good choice. It always is a good choice. :) You've got these cute, cute little gold balls on top- they remind me of the handheld game where you got to roll the little metal ball over the plastic slats to get the ball from the top to the bottom without going round and round and round. You've got richly flavored, totally aromatic pandan custard which makes the texture of the cake itself just right, neither too heavy nor too light. And you've got what I love most about the cake- the gula melaka cream cheese. It's so smooth. Slightly salty, slightly sweet, there's that distinct taste of palm sugar and that cheesy roundness that, together with the pandan part, make a solo mouthful a perfect blend of tastes and textures which are distinctly Asian.

 

Best part, it's made using organic, unrefined sugar with no artificial, processed ingredients so it's great for just about anyone and everyone at any age. They've got cakes suited for vegetarians, and they've got some eggless ones too. :)

a Ship at Vivo

a ship at twilight

 

I happened to be at Vivocity that day.

And if you've ever been to Vivo, you'll know that this is one- if not the only- mall that is built so close to a body of water so deep that a full sized sailing vessel can dock there, right next to the mall at the edge of the boardwalk.

It's like a community outreach thingy, this mall being the one place where just about anybody can come as close as they dare to sailing vessels without having to go specifically to a port, or harbor or a sailing club or a naval base.

Three ships at this very spot I've seen thus far. I've counted the flags of the Nippon Maru. I've climbed the gangway of Doulos and visited their on-ship bookstore, and now from here, this very spot where the picture was taken, I've seen this ship belonging to the Mexican Navy.

Whom, to my chagrin, I don't know her name.

I didn't get near enough to see it. I felt I didn't have to, and I figured that if I wanted to, I'd probably just go and google it, but now that I'm writing here and reminiscing about the moment, I realize I'm much more caught up in remembering the magic of that moment rather than the necessity of finding out her name.

She was beautiful, truly beautiful. Basked in the glow of the fast setting sun, surrounded by the dusky twilight that hovers between night black and deep, sapphire blue, with all her lights twinkling  so prettily in the soft evening hue, she was a mesmerizing, enthralling sight that kept me looking, looking and looking at her. At her masts, at her artfully draped sails and her neat structure.

If a ship could be described as sensual, enticing, enthralling, gorgeous, graceful, even magical, this ship would be it. None of the raucous stories we often hear about sailors and sailing belonged to her. She wasn't a ship that set out to seduce you, she was simply what she was-confident, elegant and desirous, yet incredibly delicate, happy, twinkly and giggly-sweet at the same time.

She was quiet too. She wasn't overly expressive or dynamic or loud or anything of the sort. There was a certain serenity about her, so much so that for anyone who gazed upon her- myself, that is- you felt drawn by her charismatic presence. You felt like you had to hush and join her in her calmness and live in the moment together with her. Why, it even felt like she was your present companion, both of you watching the sun go down together.

Which was precisely how I felt that very present moment. A sense of quietness. A sense of parallel universes and space and time. A sense that sailing ships of two, three centuries ago hadn't faded away and were still here. A sense that time could, at least, with her presence, pause for that brief moment and absorb you into her portal. Does it sound weird? I hope not.

It's just that I remember that singular moment very well.

And if it can be said of good-looking people mixing with good-looking people, well, she was, I heard, kept ship-shape by a pretty good-looking crew.

the national Day Parade

I almost missed the front part of the parade this year.

 

Not because I was out of the house, not because I was busy with something else (well, technically I was) but because I thought the parade started at 615pm. And it was only when I got an alert telling me that it had already started did I dash to the TV and turn it on.

 

Which, I'm uber glad for.

 

Cos' I hate missing out on any part of the parade.

 

Especially the beginning.

 

Where the Red Lions come in and where all the ministers make their appearance and the march past and the contingents and the colors.

 

This isn't about whether I'm patriotic or not.

 

We're all Singaporean. And it doesn't matter whether you feel excited or you don't. It doesn't matter whether you think all this is a waste of time or you don't. Just so long as you're Singaporean, there's a lil part that's just gonna be there. In any case, if the parade doesn't excite you, something else about Singapore will- it can be the ice cream sandwich uncle, it can be our transportation woes, it can be anything- so there.

 

It's great fun to watch, I suppose.

 

If there's a parade of military might on show, then it's a parade with military might on show. That's just it. And it's just once a year, on a day right in the middle of summer that you get to see a bit of action, a bit of dance, and a bit of clappity-clap stuff on an official stage. It's a day when the usually stoic, stern-faced Ministers get to wear stylish outfits and wave at everyone with their light sticks and take pictures and bang together whatever's in their fun pack.

 

That's what I tend to look out for, actually. :P 

 

I'm always on the lookout for people who are loosening up and letting go and being real and just having a fun time without being too cray over everything.

 

So I caught the Red Lions in time- there was a guy in black this year- the last guy to land- and whom didn't take off his sunglasses at all.

 

And then everything else went as it was meant to go.

 

You had the band, and then after that, the bagpipers. The arrival of our MPs and Ministers, the men decked out in an array ranging from polo tees to short-sleeved shirts of red, or red and white, the ladies in outfits of tops and bottoms and dresses, some with floral motifs stretching right across the outfit. The motifs were lovely, as were the bright red cigarette pants worn by one female MP/Minister, and which were really, really eye-catching in the setting sun. Too bad the cameras didn't catch the shoes of one Minister. :)

 

The uniformed contingents went in... and I'm pretty glad that the Civil Defence had their own contingent this year, so that made it five in total. I can't remember the last time the Civil Defence had their own, in fact, I can't remember them ever having one at all. If they had, it must have been a fairly long time ago. They looked pretty cool in their protective gear and all too... :) The same coolness could be extended to the students' contingents- you know, the NPCC, the NCC, the GB, the BB etc. Except... why the umbrellas? What was the prop supposed to be? Had it been arranged that they'd open them?

 

The non-uniformed contingents went in after. NTUC, OSIM, SINGTEL, SEMBCORP. I salute the workers who had to spend months and days and hours rehearsing under the unrelenting sun. I can only imagine how exhausting it had to be for them. Most of them aren't the youth of the uniformed groups anymore, and it really isn't easy for ordinary folks to get ourselves on there and to march as well as them uniformed folks in front.

 

And then came what, to me, is the highlight of the whole celebration. The flag fly past.

 

Okay, so I know that many of us have differing, if not strong opinions about this and that about the Administration and the Management and there are things which I support, things which I'm not sure if I should support, and things which I don't really support at all. But when all's said and done, there's just one thing that isn't going away.

 

Being a Singaporean.

 

And being a Singaporean means that I know how to sing the National Anthem, I know how to recite the pledge and I most certainly got that sense of national pride when the flag flies past- with the Chinooks and the Apaches. There's something significant about seeing the flag crossing past our banks, our skyscrapers, our Bay area hotels in the orange glow of the setting sun.

 

how it looks from suntec city

 

It didn't end there, of course, we hadn't come to the party yet!

 

So we had the dancers, the formations, more singing, more of the local hits, plus the one and only NDP song that I'm strangely averse to, more performances, where we had Rahimah Rahim and Brian Richmond and Grandma Mary and the Purple Symphony, and lots more singing and dancing, and to top it off, at the end we had Joseph Schooling and Yip Pin Xiu on top of the mountain... whom I thought both looked rather lonely by themselves up there.

 

Not forgetting, of course, that this year, there was a very special segment. One that involved a whole lot of vehicles zooming in one by one, a chopper over the Bay waters, and quite a bit of manpower running in and out. I'll be straight. I didn't really pay much attention to the details, cos' the PR side said it was straight-out Hollywood action and I've already seen a lot of action blockbusters coming out from Hollywood, but bits and pieces here and there caught my eye, and I'm glad for the presence of the uniformed females, and for the professionalism of the "terrorists".

 

That made the sequence very, very likeable. ;)

No NDP is complete without the pledge recitation and of course, the fireworks, and yup, I'm glad the weather held too. Cos, fireworks somehow hit the soul of the heart and make everyone stop, look and be happy.

a Train In india: Thodari

By the time I flipped to the Vasantham channel, this movie was already running midway, mid-scene where a pretty important character- a politician of some sort- was telling off a meek and subservient guard over something. I don't know precisely what.



poster. copyright Sathya Jothi Films

But that's the beauty of interesting movies.

You can start watching from any Act, start watching from any scene and sooner or later you'll get the gist of it. Good subtitling works too. :)

It didn't take me long to realize that the whole- and I mean the whole- story was set on a train. So basically, it's one train, many areas on the train, many passengers, many stories. It helps that the fictional journey was long enough... from Delhi to Chennai. That's almost right across the whole continent of India, I think.

So you have a couple of characters on the train, and you have a couple of characters off the train. There's Saroja- the makeup artist to a famous actress but who aspires to be a singer. There's Poochi- his real name is rather long, but for most of the show he's affectionately called Poochi- a beverage vendor who falls in love with Saroja on first sight and so pretends to have a contact in the music industry just so he can have a reason to interact with her. There's the guard that I came upon, a pretty put-down one, if I must say, who works for the politician, a Minister of Something. And then because Poochi is a beverage vendor, you get a whole bunch of lively colleagues in the beverage cart as well, including the loud-talking manager whom his subordinates later play a trick on.

There's crisis, of course, which leads to action. Crisis comes in the form of a train robbery, and though the robbers kill no one (I think so), the retiring train driver has a heart attack and falls and as he does so, he hits the lever which sends the train hurtling forward at breakneck speed. And somehow the doors are locked and so no one can get into the driver's cabin, and then for some reason Saroja is stuck outside on the edge of the train and of course, Poochi goes out to get her. The robbers are outside atop the train too and now the media sweeps in and as each broadcast gets out, the speculation rises.

First that there's a terrorist attack of kidnapping (because the minister is inside) and then the terrorists have taken over the train and then that they are outside on the roof and because Saroja is there, speculation grows that she's the leader of the terrorists, and in come these experts seated in the studio who weigh in on all the reasons and analyze and all that. Then of course, the police and everyone else stationed at the main controls come in.

But that doesn't stop the train. And Saroja can't get in, try as she might, and the train is going over this bridge that's so old it's gonna collapse if any train goes over at high speed, so there's the tension building up there. They cross that barrier, the terrorists have fallen off and so all's good, until they realize that they have to slow down the train somewhat, otherwise it's gonna crash into the station and all the onboard passengers will be killed. 

So it's Poochi to the rescue. Armed with nothing but a walkie-talkie, he does this thing that even engineers will find it hard to do, which is to separate the front from the rest of the carriages. 

That's the gist of the whole movie. 

Minus the parts where Saroja discovered Poochi's lie, and the big-talking beverage manager ends up being mistaken for being a terrorist for all the (meaningless) threats he's making, and the part where the guard loses his gun cos he passes out... and all the little nibblets and snackables in between. Including the cameo of a very, very adorable shihtzu!!! :)

I pretty much enjoyed Thodari.

Few are the movies that can feature a multitude of themes within a seamless plot, and Thodari capitulates on quite a few. It's all mainly poking fun at themselves, but hey, pretty good a job... you got romance, you got heroism, you got music, you got dancing, you got bad singing, you got the ordinary citizen, you got media frenzy, you got train corridors, you got beverage vendors, you got media industry, you got the dangers of media speculation, you got politics, you got bureaucracy, you got the politician, you got counter-terrorism, you got retirement, you got robbery.

All centered on a single, long train ride. 

reversing the Maslow Hierarchy

Remember not too long ago I wrote about having a sofa experience which led me to dispute several well-known, internationally-accepted theories?

 

And I said that I didn't really know whether I should write what I thought about them, having no intention to get into long-winded debates on whether this philosophy or that philosophy influences or guides our behavior or not?

 

Well, controversial or not, I suppose I've decided to write about them after all.

 

One theory, at least. :)

 

You see, I first heard about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs nearly two decades ago- during one of my Marketing modules. It was efficiently described in the textbook- which I still have.

 

If you've never heard about what this theory is about, or who he is, well, he's this dude who was born to Russian migrants and grew up in a working class neighborhood in NYC, and whom during his childhood, faced a great deal of anti-Semitism and so he grew up experiencing what it was like to be bullied. His parents believed in education, however, and so he went on to study in a college in New York. That's the basic backgrounder I recall from the Wikipedia article.

 

The theory was formulated in 1943. Offhand, I don't recall where precisely he was during the years of WWII, but I do remember that he was married with a wife and was also a father of 2 (or 3) children and so thereby was unqualified for military enlistment. Why, and for what purpose he researched and formulated this theory, I don't know either. (It's probably written somewhere, and I've ignored looking into it.)

 

To the theory itself, it is this. A very, very well-recognized, a very, very well acknowledged diagram.

 

 

I've taken this diagram- quite liberally- from Wikicommons. Of course, I could have taken a picture of the same diagram in Page XXX of my Kotler textbook and then posted it here, but that's another point altogether.

 

What this diagram generally means is that all humans have these needs, and whilst they aren't as rigid as they appear here, meaning that we all have esteem and a sense of belonging and physiological needs all at the same time, there are varying degrees of fulfillment- and it starts from the bottom. Only when the lower level is fulfilled, then can you feel the need to fulfill the next level, and so on.

 

Which means that if you're lacking food, water or sleep or excretion, you're not going to think about employment, resources, family, health and morals. And if you're not established in your resources and family and morals, you don't feel safe, and since you don't feel safe, you don't seek to have fulfilling relationships and intimacy. And so on, and so forth.. until you reach self-actualization at the top.

 

I'm not disputing this triangle. Nope, not at all. After all, it has directed businesses, relationships, societies, economies and so on, since 1943. It has shaped the world that we've grown up in, it has shaped the world where baby boomers, Gen X, Gen Y, Millenials, Xennials and maybe even Gen Z live in.

 

But, you see, real-life experiences are a different matter altogether. It is not a case of doing research on the top 1% of top colleges and creating a theory based on the results. I'm not sure about some of the names featured in the Wikipedia article where I did my reading from, but I wouldn't quite think that they experienced the main physiological problems (excluding sex- people's bodies don't deteriorate from not having sex).

 

Real-life experiences, and real-life 'traumas' change how you perceive life, and how you perceive these theories that you believe have been created to guide you. Real-life experiences make you question the validity and the relevance of these theories.

 

And I'm telling you, as far as I'm concerned, the order's all wrong.

 

It's not that you fulfill your hunger drive or thirsty drive before you go on to finding a place to belong or respect others. If we so follow this order, then we'd really find ourselves in a very chaotic situation. We'd all go crazy trying to satiate ourselves with those needs. We'd all go animistic trying to fulfill those fundamental, physiological needs. I suppose riots are a fairly clear description of that. 

 

It works the same for building a family or establishing relationships. If you're going to have great relationships or if you're seeking to build a beautiful family, then you've gotta possess confident self-esteem. You've gotta respect others and have the respect of others first before you establish healthy relationships. It's not the other way around. Whilst healthy families and fulfilling relationships do enhance our self esteem and make us confident of ourselves, it can also work us towards the opposite direction in many a way.

 

It's like, you might not be hungry and you might not be thirsty and you might have your sexual needs filled, but does that mean that you'll be safe in your morals, your health or even your employment? And let's say that you're safe in all of that, you've got a job, you're guarding your behaviors pretty well and you're fit and all, does that mean that you'll start searching for intimate relationships where you'll feel loved, or feel a sense of belonging in?

 

It's not quite the case, is it, in our society of the day?

 

How many people do we know that are secure in their jobs or their health but seek out intimacy? Is that a given? Is that how it works? Frankly, I cannot be so sure.

 

If there's one thing that sofa experience taught me, it's that self-actualization should be at the bottom. Not the top. It's not a journey getting up there. It's an acknowledgement, an internalization that you are already up there. That you're already creative. That you're already spontaneous. That you're already a problem-solver. That you're already moral, unprejudiced and that you're striving to solve problems larger than what's glaring at you in your face.  

 

Then, and only then, can you tackle all the other s*** effectively.

 

I speak from real, painful experience. An experience that still haunts me from time to time and affects my decisions as and when it happens. I don't want to go into details here, not because it's painful to speak of it, but because hey, I'm private like that.

 

But I'll just say this.

 

If I hadn't started from the self-actualization, if I hadn't realized that there was something else I should be looking at, if I hadn't realized that there was a divinity in all of it, if I hadn't internalized that there was in fact a greater problem waiting to be solved and a greater purpose in all of this d*** s***a** of a situation that I could possibly address, I would have handled my situation very differently.

 

When I was really hungry, and depending on a stick of sugar pilfered from a coffee joint (sorry!) to bolster my spirits up, when I had eaten my last biscuit in my bag and I only had a dollar to last me for two meals till the next day, when for reasons I won't disclose, I found myself spending sleepless nights outdoors instead of beneath a shelter, with no place to manage daily hygiene, when I walked up and down from one destination to another instead of taking a bus because I didn't have the fare, when I pilfered (sorry, again!) a mug of milk from the coffee machine  because I'd consumed everything else with me and I didn't have enough to get anything else, and in the midst of it all, I had to carry on meeting people and do what my role required me to do... if I hadn't an ounce of self-actualization in me, I'd either have spiraled downhill, or lost all sense of control and composure.

 

Behind every discussion, behind every smile, behind every caregiving effort that I felt was needed to the patient, behind every thought-process during that period of time, was a very, very tired, very, very hungry individual surviving only on the understanding that this whole f**ked up s*** was not what I was meant for.

 

I started with the understanding of who I was. I started with the understanding that who I was determined how I'd handle the situation. If this s*** was going to blow over, I'd not want to be ashamed of what I'd done. If this s*** was going to blow over me, and it did, and it has, I'd not want to look back and wonder why the heck I did what I did. I'd want to look back and realize that, hey, despite the a** of a situation, I'd held my own.

 

Which I did, thankfully.

 

And I'm now wondering if it means that this theoretical approach is a load of c**p. Through personal observations (and no more else), I'm wondering if this approach towards the Maslow Hierarchy fosters a chronic dependency on systems that feed (yet never fulfill) the physiological. I'm wondering if this approach hinders quality and productivity. I'm wondering if this approach makes for complacency and disregard of healthy relationships.

 

Because when one hasn't reached the self-actualization, when one is still at the lower levels and is content and complacent to remain at those levels, and when one has the safety nets to maintain them at those levels, then quality is compromised, moral codes are abused and in the end, everyone simply operates and behaves and deals with life in the way they want to, disregarding right or wrong, disregarding others, becoming selfish, becoming greedy and complacent and gluttony and all. How then, does staying at the lower levels not become destructive to the self, and to the community and society in general?

 

At least, that's what I think the cause and effect seems to be.

 

It sounds kinda chaotic.

 

No, it sounds very chaotic.

 

 



murtabak At Springleaf

Now, you can have prata at any prata place, whether in Tekka, or whether at any other neighborhood in Singapore.

 

Just drop in to Sakunthala or Ananda Bhavan or Minora if you're in the Tekka area, or head to Jalan Kayu if you're in the Seletar-Seng Kang area, or even just about any one stall (or shop) in any residential neighborhood. Whether you're at Tampines or Ang Mo Kio or Jurong West or Yew Tee or Serangoon, there is bound to be at least one roti prata stall in the 'hood.

 

And me being a "just-eat-lar, chin-chai-lar" kind of diner, I won't recommend nor will I enter into debates over which is better, or which is not, which is good for this, or which is better for that.

 

But there are places that you make very special trips for... and Springleaf Prata Place is one of them.

 

I say very special trips, because one outlet is at Thong Soon Avenue, one outlet is at Rail Mall, and the other is at Jalan Tua Kong.

 

Which means that if you're not in that 'hood, and want to have their pratas, you're gonna have to go to somewhere along Upper Thomson, somewhere along Upper Bukit Timah Road, or somewhere along Siglap, and save for Rail Mall which is along the main road, the other two places are 'further inside'.

 

Which also means that if you're going to make a very special trip there, you might want to try something more than the regular prata kosong, so at Springleaf, you've got the "Murtaburger" and the "Plaster Blaster".

 

The Murtaburger is their version of the Ramly burger, so you've got two mutton patties wrapped in egg with a generous serving of cheese, doused with lots and lots of mayonnaise and chili sauce and black pepper sauce and then sandwiched between two crispy, hot pratas. The Plaster Blaster takes its cue from Eggs Benedict, so you've got two lovely poached eggs, above a layer of ham slices, above a crispy, hot prata and Hollandaise sauce ladled over and atop everything.

 

I've tried both, and funnily enough, I've got no pictures of either. ;)

 

What I do have are of their murtabaks.

 

the murtabak

They're seriously huge, they're beautifully and skillfully done, their filling is solid, they're served hot, and they're wonderfully crispy and tasty. Plus, they're cut into nice little squares, so it's easy to share and whatever pulling that needs to be done is done on your own little slice.

We order the mutton murtabak most of the time. Because the size of the meat inside is appealing. None of the little mutton bits that offer me nary a taste, this one has pretty solid pieces- at least I can see the meat- folded inside and which make for a way, way more filling meal.

 

But it's not just the specialties and the murtabak that's good. Their regular prata offerings are fantastic too. Let's see, I've had the egg, the onion, the egg and onion and the kosong, and next time I'm there I'll give a shot at their banana prata. :)

 

Accompanied by a steaming cup of Teh Halia, or a glass of Lassi, or that cute drink with mint leaves floating about inside.

 

Drinks

 

my Lassi

 

Bus Ride Sights: Paya Lebar

From somewhere near Certis Cisco, I think, is where I whipped out the camera. That's the place where the left side of the bus looks into the light industries that make up part of the Geylang East Central area leading towards Aljunied.

Paya Lebar is an interesting road. You don't really know where it starts, and you don't really know where it ends. It's as if it starts from Tanjong Katong Road, and yet it does not, because it connects to Guillemard Road, and from Guillemard Road, it makes this huge gigantic round downtown, and from there, the road seems to go on and on and on. So where it connects to, you don't really know.

It's the same on the other side.

Supposedly the road starts from Boundary Road, which is technically true, but check Google Maps and you'll find that Boundary Road forks out into two separate directions, one towards Yio Chu Kang and Seletar, the other towards Lorong Chuan.

So Paya Lebar Road is like somewhere in between the Central and the East, or somewhere between the Northeast and the South, which makes it an important connecting road, but you don't know precisely from where it connects to, and from where it truly ends.

But it's not really where the road starts from that matters, is it?

It's what you see along the way, and here, on Upper Paya Lebar Road, you're surrounded by industrial estates left and right, all the way from Aljunied down to Tai Seng- where LuxAsia and Breadtalk Group and Sakae Sushi and Charles & Keith are- and then to MacPherson, and then more factory buildings that make up that area, then the back a few schools, then Paya Lebar Chinese Methodist Church, more residential estates, a well known turtle soup place, and then finally the junction that intersects Upper Serangoon Road and Boundary Road.

somewhere near Geylang East Central

opposite Certis Cisco and AQueen Hotel

an orangey industrial-office building

blue shutter of a provision/sundry shop

towards bartley, I think...?

sage green Booooots

BOOOOOOTS.

 

I like the sound the 'ooooo' makes. :P

 

There're times when I'm cray like that... and I get especially cray over stuff that make me especially cray.

Stuff like Glitter Nail Polish. Or Lip Balm. Or Wide Legged Pants. Or Messenger Bags. Or Studded Backpacks. Or Perfume. Or Hoodies. Or Sweaters. Or Sneakers. Or ice cream. Or Boots.

Like these sage green ones from Reebok that I ordered online and which came one sunny afternoon four years ago. :)

 

multi-purpose. multi-style

It's been that long, and they're like one of the bestest buying choices I've ever had. 

 

High top, big tongued with a zipper at the side for convenience and speed *easy on, easy off*, they've brought me places. They've brought me all round Singapore on a bike. They've brought me on the Green Corridor on a bike at night in near darkness with only a tail light and a front light for company. They've brought me to countries near and far.  They've kept my feet cool in 34-degree weather and kept them warm in 2-degree weather. They've held their ground when I've had to make sudden stops.

They're light, with some sort of composite material that protects my feet and my toes and because they don't have those metal thingies, I don't set any bells off when I clear security checkpoints at airports. :)

 

Style-wise, they're as much me as they can be. When you're someone who will topple when you're dressed up, when you're someone who cannot hold your balance in a pair of gorgeous (but dangerous) heels, there're just only so many styles that you can get away with.

 

Camouflage is one of them.

I've worn them to business black-tie events where there were beautiful ladies and well-dressed participants and it was business glamour and diplomatic representatives standing around.

And though Camouflage style was quite a rule-breaker at that event, and I know it wouldn't do for every event, I suppose I'd like to think of personal style as just that- individualistic personality pulled together with propriety, wit, structure and a touch of whimsy. 

 

Where just a wee bit of mud on camo boots certainly builds the style factor up rather than tear it down. :)



some Really Sad Pics

Have you ever snapped a picture, or a series of pictures, and then after that looked at them and felt like your subjects were telling you something? As if they had a message they were sending out to you right at that very moment you clicked the shutter.

I'm not talking portraiture photography.

I'm talking inanimate objects. Objects that *technically* have no life and therefore no soul and no spirit.

And yet...

That's how it feels sometimes.

That's how it felt taking this series of pictures.

It can sound bizarre, flighty even, but I thought they were trying to tell me something. As if there were many things waiting to be spoken, and yet many things left unspoken. As if there were lots and lots of voices speaking, or fighting to speak, but their words ended up lost in a mist of drifting murmurs, completely indiscernible.

I'm not trying to be poetic. That's really how it was. Like I was hearing voices, male and female, yet not being able to decipher what was being said. There was just one overarching impression that lingered with me even as I left the museum, and the same impression that surfaces still when I'm seeing them again.

Pain.

So much pain.

Don't ask me why. I don't know the answer.

It was just there.

All the pain.

And tears. Loud, wailing tears.

And the fact that these subjects were remarkably difficult to capture, as if they didn't like being observed and studied- even through the glass case- and as if they didn't want to be photographed. It took me a bit of coaxing before anything acceptable turned up.

It was- is- all very peculiar, so I've decided- with a little bit of reverence- that I'll just place these pictures here, as they are from a hospital in northeast Singapore, and just let them be.

a sort of shield

mealtimes

a lamp with a story

steel; surgical steel

i'm shuddering

clay play

 

sesame chicken Ginger

There's just one picture.

Because this is one of the (only) few dishes I've had so far at Soon Huat Bak Kut Teh.

I've tried their white bee hoon, which was full of gravy and lots and lots of bee hoon and was really good. I've tried their dried bak kut teh. But given that I'm not really quite a bak kut teh eater, and since I've got a regular hangout... this sesame chicken and ginger is what I've gone for, over and over again. :)

soup on the side

It comes to you simmering in its clay pot, and you can see the tiny little bubbles over the surface. There's a mild fragrance that's just there, and like what bak kut teh is to many, it is just as warm, comforting and endearing, especially on a windy, rainy day.  

I like the chicken. The pieces are small, easy to pick with chopsticks and best thing, there are no teeny-tiny bones. I'm terrified of little chopped bones in chopped chicken pieces. I like the spring onions too, and I always get the whole lot of them.

Above everything else in this dish is the gravy. It is tops. Lots and lots of sesame oil. Lots and lots of vinegar.  It doesn't overpower you. It doesn't make you feel like you're taking a herbal broth or that you're needing the vinegar. It just tastes good. Plus I'm a fan of sesame oil, so much so that I literally drown my rice in the gravy. :P

Post Meal Art



2024: mrt to Johor Bahru

The announcement came this morning, and although I haven't read the articles thoroughly yet, in a nutshell, what they're saying is that we're gonna going to be able to travel to JB via MRT come 2024. That's... 7 years from now.

 

Okay, cool. :)

 

One question though, does that mean that the rail train will no longer operate from the Woodlands Checkpoint that side?

 

Because that's where they are now.

 

Right now, if you wish to take a train from Singapore to Johor Bahru, you've gotta go all the way up to Woodlands and hop on a KTM shuttle train there which will then take you across the border. It doesn't sound troublesome, and neither does it sound that inconvenient, but it just isn't as fun as what it used to be.

 

There was a time when we all boarded our trains from the KTM Tanjong Pagar Railway Station. There was a time when we bought tickets from the counter to wherever our destination was, and after buying our tickets we either made our way to the seats and waited there with our baggage, or we went for breakfast at the little coffee shop at the back of the station. 

 

Then one day, both countries made some sort of agreement and next thing we knew, we were left with an empty railway station, one long, long corridor of hacked-up rails that we call the Green Corridor, and natural foilage growing on either side.

 

We were also left with scenes like these.

 

teetered on the fence for this shot

 

platform through the fence bars

 



eastern & oriental: glamorous travel

 

train schedules

 

the boarding platform

Twice I went to the Railway Station, once in the late afternoon, once in the late evening. This was early days, not too long after the announcement because I wanted to remember the place as she was, upon receiving the knowledge of her finality. 

 

This is not a Station a mere decade old. Neither is this a Station designed in the modernity of architecture. This is a Station that has stood through at least one world war and through the Merger and Independence of Singapore. This is a Station that has seen countless people travel between the up country of Malaya and the township of Singapore.

 

All ages, all careers, all lifestyles, whether you be rich or poor, whether you be fluent in English or dialect, whether you work in the Government or amongst your own community, whether you be educated or uneducated, Singaporeans, young and old, would have more or less passed through the archways of the station and gone to the boarding platforms and taken our seats on the train.

 

How many of us have, or at least have known, of someone who traveled in and out of the country for reasons whatsoever? Certainly I know of one. My loved ones too have taken the train during the busiest period of the year- Lunar New Year- up to Johor and KL and Penang. I have taken the train with my loved ones up to Melaka, and I only wish that I'd gone on that backpacking train trip that I so wanted to do after graduation. 

 

The vague idea had been that I'd train from Singapore to Gemas past all the little, little towns, write my observations as I went along, and then at Gemas, decide whether to continue up to Penang, or to switch and train to the east coast of Malaysia. But heck, I told no one, and as things go, the planning didn't even get to the real stage.

 

Still, I'm glad enough that I've taken the train from a platform as this.

 

I'm glad to have heard the whistle of the master and heard the chug-chug-chug of the train and seen the scenery pass my windows by. And as lonely and abandoned as she looks in these pictures, what matters to me is the one time when my loved ones and I made a decision (on impulse!) to forgo the long bus queues at Queen Street and take the train instead from this Station up to our destination. 

 

Because not only do I remember the trip.

 

I also remember the journey getting there on that last train ride.