Great speech.

Written by Adrian Tan, author of The Teenage Textbook (1988), was the guest-of-honour at a recent NTU convocation ceremony. This was his speech to the graduating class of 2008.

—–

I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give your convocation address. It’s a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation. I say this as a Singaporean and more so as a husband.

My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one. She is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practising at home during conversations between her and me.

On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day telling people how wrong they are. I make my living being disagreeable.

Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one who triumphs is always the wife.

And so I want to start by giving one piece of advice to the men: when you’ve already won her heart, you don’t need to win every argument.

Marriage is considered one milestone of life. Some of you may already be married. Some of you may never be married. Some of you will be married. Some of you will enjoy the experience so much, you will be married many, many times. Good for you.

The next big milestone in your life is today: your graduation. The end of education. You’re done learning.

You’ve probably been told the big lie that “Learning is a lifelong process”and that therefore you will continue studying and taking masters’ degrees and doctorates and professorships and so on. You know the sort of people who tell you that? Teachers. Don’t you think there is some measure of conflict of interest? They are in the business of learning, after all. Where would they be without you? They need you to be repeat customers.

The good news is that they’re wrong.

The bad news is that you don’t need further education because your entire life is over. It is gone. That may come as a shock to some of you. You’re in your teens or early twenties. People may tell you that you will live to be 70, 80, 90 years old. That is your life expectancy.

I love that term: life expectancy. We all understand the term to mean the average life span of a group of people. But I’m here to talk about a bigger idea, which is what you expect from your life.

You may be very happy to know that Singapore is currently ranked as the country with the third highest life expectancy. We are behind Andorra and Japan, and tied with San Marino. It seems quite clear why people in those countries, and ours, live so long. We share one thing in common: our football teams are all hopeless. There’s very little danger of any of our citizens having their pulses raised by watching us play in the World Cup. Spectators are more likely to be lulled into a gentle and restful nap.

Singaporeans have a life expectancy of 81.8 years. Singapore men live to an average of 79.21 years, while Singapore women live more than five years longer, probably to take into account the additional time they need to spend in the bathroom.

So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you’ll have another 40 years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.

Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they’re 50, 40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their convocation. They would be very disappointed that they didn’t meet their life expectancy.

I’m here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy.

After all, it’s calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want to expect being average.

Revisit those expectations. You might be looking forward to working, falling in love, marrying, raising a family. You are told that, as graduates, you should expect to find a job paying so much, where your hours are so much, where your responsibilities are so much.

That is what is expected of you. And if you live up to it, it will be an awful waste.

If you expect that, you will be limiting yourself. You will be living your life according to boundaries set by average people. I have nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be them. And you don’t need years of education by the best minds in Singapore to prepare you to be average.

What you should prepare for is mess. Life’s a mess. You are not entitled to expect anything from it. Life is not fair. Everything does not balance out in the end. Life happens, and you have no control over it. Good and bad things happen to you day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. Your degree is a poor armour against fate.

Don’t expect anything. Erase all life expectancies. Just live. Your life is over as of today. At this point in time, you have grown as tall as you will ever be, you are physically the fittest you will ever be in your entire life and you are probably looking the best that you will ever look. This is as good as it gets. It is all downhill from here. Or up. No one knows.

What does this mean for you? It is good that your life is over.

Since your life is over, you are free. Let me tell you the many wonderful things that you can do when you are free.

The most important is this: do not work.

Work is anything that you are compelled to do. By its very nature, it is undesirable.

Work kills. The Japanese have a term “Karoshi”, which means death from overwork. That’s the most dramatic form of how work can kill. But it can also kill you in more subtle ways. If you work, then day by day, bit by bit, your soul is chipped away, disintegrating until there’s nothing left. A rock has been ground into sand and dust.

There’s a common misconception that work is necessary. You will meet people working at miserable jobs. They tell you they are “making a living”. No, they’re not. They’re dying, frittering away their fast-extinguishing lives doing things which are, at best, meaningless and, at worst, harmful.

People will tell you that work ennobles you, that work lends you a certain dignity. Work makes you free. The slogan “Arbeit macht frei” was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps. Utter nonsense.

Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway.

Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself.

I like arguing, and I love language. So, I became a litigator. I enjoy it and I would do it for free. If I didn’t do that, I would’ve been in some other type of work that still involved writing fiction – probably a sports journalist.

So what should you do? You will find your own niche. I don’t imagine you will need to look very hard. By this time in your life, you will have a very good idea of what you will want to do. In fact, I’ll go further and say the ideal situation would be that you will not be able to stop yourself pursuing your passions. By this time you should know what your obsessions are. If you enjoy showing off your knowledge and feeling superior, you might become a teacher.

Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don’t, you are working.

Most of you will end up in activities which involve communication. To those of you I have a second message: be wary of the truth. I’m not asking you to speak it, or write it, for there are times when it is dangerous or impossible to do those things. The truth has a great capacity to offend and injure, and you will find that the closer you are to someone, the more care you must take to disguise or even conceal the truth. Often, there is great virtue in being evasive, or equivocating. There is also great skill. Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence.

In order to be wary of the truth, you must first know it. That requires great frankness to yourself. Never fool the person in the mirror.

I have told you that your life is over, that you should not work, and that you should avoid telling the truth. I now say this to you: be hated.

It’s not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you? Yet every great figure who has contributed to the human race has been hated, not just by one person, but often by a great many. That hatred is so strong it has caused those great figures to be shunned, abused, murdered and in one famous instance, nailed to a cross.

One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong.

The other side of the coin is this: fall in love.

I didn’t say “be loved”. That requires too much compromise. If one changes one’s looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.

Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.

Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the truth worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.

Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn’t happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.
You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.

You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.

Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.

Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.

InfoBabar !

My Resume that started it all. goto https://sites.google.com/site/omairbabar/home to see it in all its glory . (Copy Paste operation)

SocialZip

If reading be the food of love...

"Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag.She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes."
— Rosemary Urquico

View from the top

A view from the belly of the metal birdie.

White fields as opposed to Westfield

White London 

snowy landscape

I need to get me one of these.

London Calling

Qatar

As natural as Cher's face

Beautiful Symmetry 

One day Omair, one day

Sochnay ka khana

"Justification is a window to confession"

Mashad ali 

A Midsummer Nights Dream

Who knew the English countryside had so much to offer. I certainly didn’t. All I had known (or read) about the place was tea, bad weather and Mary Poppins. What I did not know where the amazing twisty countryside roads they have, which upon a recent purchase of a car have opened my eyes to 'B' road driving.  The tiny two way roads are now seen as a challenge in my little blue Ford, and believe me it’s a little rev happy clunker. But most of all it’s the view from my drivers seat. Little green avenues and tunnels made with trees and suddenly the wide-open expanse of fields that stretch out to meet the sky on the horizon. These jaunts around the countryside have been made with the help of one charcoal happy bar b quer Henry ‘left hook’ Hayns, the charming cath’barty’ Baert and her trademark sunshades as well as one "lunges happy" barrel chested rupy. I have to admit, I have never had so many bar b qs or sweet corns in the space of two weeks.
I have a theory, that people from england being cooped up indoors for eleven months in a year due to bad weather and rain, forget how to be outside in the sun. I also think it might have something to do with being sober. Given that they drink to quell the depression caused by the bad weather throughout the year they sure do have a weird way of expressing their joy when they're out in the sun, although im not sure sneaking up on a cow with your arm out or trying to catwalk on a tree trunk on the middle of the river is my idea of being outdoorsy.

I also started Boxing with Henry and to be honest I thought to myself what so difficult about that. All you have to do is throw a few punches and just jump around a ring for two minutes. Not to mention the amount of women you can use the ‘oh im a professional boxer’ line.  And if I’m brown that automatically qualifies me to be better than a white guy right? Well that was until I went into the ring with a crazed white fat woman from oxford. Not only did she start scaring me psychologically by giving me her ‘mean eyes’, she also went after me with both arms swinging. Which is where I started to run around the ring.  And this is where the coach told me that id never get hit. And id never get to hit back either. God help the poor sod that mugs her.  So if you ever come across two gentlemen in oxford who claim to be professional boxers, ill show you a guy who is so quick on his feet that when you turn off the light he can be in bed before it gets dark. Did I mention we also learnt how to talk trash here? Or was it trash talk….

Quarter of a century.

Its official. I am now a quarter of a century old. Not that anyone stops to check my id in clubs. Its apartheid taking place on my head. The white hair taking over the blacks, which is the bit about history repeating itself. Come to think of it, I might just be inclined to dye it black when Nelson Mandela kicks the bucket, as a mark of solidarity for a great man. Or is that racist? I don’t know.

I have decided to reward myself this year with an exorbitantly priced laptop. In the hopes of it making it pay for itself. All I know is that I can see Cobie Smulders in HD. And Alessandra Ambrósio. Which in my mind is paisay wasool.

Research in Motion you are a expensive whore. With herpes. Who gives you pain and anguish after a little pleasure... Just like the bosses who run your company and undermine it with short selling the stocks. The money, which should have gone into research for your flagship fuckin phone. Or do you not see the irony with your name. oh right you call yourself RIM. Well stop riming each other and get your shit together (pun not intended).

Time to get a new phone. Being the good muslim boy that I am, Ill give you another chance to redeem yourself.

Road trippin all over ourselves.

A Greek, two Germans, an Italian, a Mexican, an Arab and a Pakistani decide to go on a road trip. Sounds like the starting of a very long joke. It was.

Twas what the ‘English’ refer to as a giggle and a laugh.

We decided to go and catch a football match at old Trafford, which is in the middle of the country in Manchester, which is in the middle of nowhere. With the entire country trying to reach the same place, it was bumper to bumper, on a road that would make a tightrope walker shit himself. And with the eco mentalists trying to make cars smaller and smaller, we were all sitting in each other’s laps while the driver was sitting on the engine. I was sitting next to a newly formed couple with the guy trying to impress his girl by pointing to random cars on the road and then giving a knowing wink and a smirk. The Mexican( or was he Spanish) dude was trying to show his Italian girl all the cars he had back home. He was pointing out German cars to the girl from the land of Ferrari. Brain damage is what happens to you when you drink worms in your spirits. Or wear a blanket with a hole in the middle.

Me, I tried to drown out this tempting voice in my head telling me to strangle the mexican with his seatbelt, by turning to my trusty itouch. Which has become a good friend on my various excursions from Oxford. Love it when I can drown out the world and come and go as I please.

We set off with a German behind the wheel, and the Greek as his copilot, with the arab and the paki tucked away at the back so the cops wont stop us and left oxford at 2: 30. We had to reach there before 7, park the car somewhere and try and get to the stadium and our seats. Everything went without a hitch, except for the fact that in our excitement we forgot where we parked. Which was in the middle of nowhere again. To reiterate my point, even the currency changed into something out of mad max. part 2. We bought some stuff and the change I got was a never seen before guy on a 5 pound note. Now here was a dilemma, do you act all cool and pocket the note nonchalantly or do you clobber the shopkeeper for passing a counterfeit note, assuming you to be drunk with the intellectual capacity of a snail. Waitaminute, does that mean I look English?

Which brings me to a my next point, how a race of proper, civilised, stiff upper lipped respectable people can become uncouth, fowl smelling degenerates, incapable of hearing or speech with just a few pints of fermented barley. As the game progressed, the public became more inebriated, the songs started making less sense and the Arab was called a shoe bomber. I would have been more careful chaps, you don’t want old Trafford in smithereens.

With the long and tiring road trip (400 miles) to the middle of nowhere, the stupid Mexican jabbering in my ear, the long and cold walk to and from the car and less than 12 hours to make it all happen.

It was all forgotten when Rooney popped that header in the back of the net. Glory Glory Man-united - Glory Glory United.

Shark Tails from Shakespeare

Apparently the British like to be schooled in single gender educational institutes. It makes the girls smarter and work harder according to one study. What it failed to mention is that it makes the men like their own gender too much. Which they then they blame as eccentric behaviour. And here it seems I have hit on the head why they like tight spaces. And they REALLY like their tight spaces. How they fit a bus on a road that would make a cockroach claustrophobic is beyond me. Honestly this country was designed for horseback. Or poor people. So they could walk on foot. Bring a car to the road in any part of the country and you have a potential traffic jam on your hands. Some of the houses they consider ‘quaint and cosy’ are actually ovens with a sink attached. No wonder they had such a successful navy, the lack of space was ‘home away from home’. In fact I saw a house today that could have only belonged to a senile sailor or someone who saw JAWS on crack. It was located on a normal sub urban part of Oxford, with the usual brickwork. Until you saw the sloping roof or rather the monstrosity sticking out of it. Even Henry, a native of the land (and of an all boys school) could only gape and point.I’ll let the pictures explain.

An Ode to Artemis.

Who are you Artemis?
A reverie in the midst of madness?
A Shangri-La, I need to escape with my breath intact?
Do you exist as a distortion of reality,
a fictional rendering in my mind's eye
created to cope within this cocoon of self?
Almost an elusive dream I can’t seem to wake up from.
Will you clip my wings before you push me off the abyss?
I met you once and I've fallen for your notions
one kiss from you and I'm drunk up on your potion...
For I knew the signs, yet was unsure of what to expect.
And when the clouds push apart
to let the light descend in your presence,
I know I must have done something right to deserve this.
Release me from my smoke filled obsession,
for the murky alveoli call out to me.
Time will tell.
All I know is this.
Things have a way of falling into place.

A Moment of Inertia.

After a ten day hiatus, I have had an epiphany. Allow me to explain.
At first I thought to be "myself" meant simply to act out the way I feel. I would ask myself a question and react accordingly to the answer. Often than not it was the first thing that came to my head. As I kept on at it, I realised there were more underlying feelings. The more I tried being myself; I found a more choice of selves. I understand that to be myself means consciously choosing which level of feelings I want to respond to and recognise that whatever I am feeling, I always have a choice to think carefully rather than selfishly about myself and those around me. When I am careful about the thoughts I brood on, because feelings precede thoughts, circumstances can no longer dictate my mood. But when I think carelessly, myself is “lost in thought”
Am I being myself at any point ?

It just takes a moment. To change everything. A lifetime of relationship can be found or cease to exist. How we act in these moments, do they really define who we are? Do intentions matter since no other but your self can be aware of them?

I seem to have lost a friend, a brother even but gained a fresh start on another aspect of life. Both in a meaningless setting, where for once, I realise actions and intentions show their true colours, either good or bad.

I hope this begins to justify the white hair.

Life's Experiences

A list of gems I've collected over the years

1. Have a firm handshake.
2. Look people in the eye.
3. Sing in the shower.
4. Own a great stereo system.
5. If in a fight, hit first and hit hard.
6. Keep secrets.
7. Never give up on anybody. Miracles happen everyday.
8. Always accept an outstretched hand.
9. Be brave. Even if you're not, pretend to be. No one can tell the difference.
10. Whistle.
11. Make it a habit to do nice things for people who will never find out.
12. Lend only those books you never care to see again.
13. Never deprive someone of hope; it might be all that they have.
14. When playing games with children, let them win.
15. Give people a second chance, but not a third.
16. Be romantic.
17. Loosen up. Relax. Except for rare life-and-death matters, nothing is as important as it first seems.
18. Don't allow the phone to interrupt important moments. It's there for our convenience, not the caller's.
19. Be a good loser.
20. Be a good winner.
21. Think twice before burdening a friend with a secret.
22. When someone hugs you, let them be the first to let go.
23. Be modest. A lot was accomplished before you were born.
24. Keep it simple stupid.
25. Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.
26. Live your life so that your epitaph could read, No Regrets
27. Be bold because when you look back on life, you'll regret the things you didn't do more than the one's you did.
28. Accept that some days you're the pigeon, and some days you're the statue.
29. Visit friends and relatives when they are in hospital; you need only stay a few minutes.
30. Begin each day with some of your favorite music.
31. Once in a while, take the scenic route.
32. Keep a note pad and pencil on your bed-side table. Million-dollar ideas sometimes strike at 3 a.m.
33. Show respect for everyone who works for a living, regardless of how trivial their job.
34. Send your loved ones flowers. Think of a reason later.
35. Become someone's hero.
36. Marry only for love.
37. Count your blessings.
38. Compliment the meal when you're a guest in someone's home.
39. Wave at the children on a school bus.
40. 80 per cent of the success in any job is based on your ability to deal with people.
41. Don't expect life to be fair.