On Holiday,

Earlier I ranted about how everything and anything that goes wrong is all our fault and how we must do all we can to achieve whatever we want. I can’t help but to (disagree with myself and) offer a contradictory antithesis to that argument.

Perhaps sometimes there are just things that are beyond our control. In fact, they always are beyond our control. In this world there are too many factors apart from your effort to create an outcome. It could be that the people above are hard to deal with, the people below just aren’t learning — and you’re already doing all you can. Circumstances often dictate what we can or cannot do and trying harder is not going to grant us the capacity to overcome these circumstances.

For one, I am alarmed that I have sort of lost touch with my Effort Results Curve during this long period of break. There will come a point on the curve where additional effort will not translate into additional results but become stagnant. This applies to learning or more specifically practising a skill i.e. running. If Effort/Result >1 , then it is not worth the effort. One is better off lazing around all day. (Instinctively, I can counter this but I shall save it for another day)

More often than not, some of us already do try too hard. (you know who you are) We all need a break sometimes — which is why I decided to go on holiday on an island resort in Thailand.

For the past few days, I have got the following:
1. Black skin (more of dark grey actually, my grey skin just turns dark grey  ><) —  rehab for a year without much sun.. It has burnt off chunks of my brain already I think. Sun is bad for health.

2. Realisation that the reason I may end up in NUS is because of holidays like this. ><

3. A photo with a 人妖.(and the shudders that come with it) Tall beautiful woman with a voice deeper than mine. shock.
I HAVE BEEN INSPIRED TO TRANSVORM. OPERATION HERE I COME. ><

Strange that any guy would want to go for a sechs change. Wait, where did they get the money to do the op? (I realised this as I was packing stuff before I received a plastic chest and a heck lot of oestrogen shots.) Maybe they have back alley plastic surgeons much like back alley abortionists — my favourite Mister Rusty Hanger and Uncle Vacuum Cleaner, not to mention the Brothers Screwdriver (HAHAHA NO PUN) and Lectric-Drill.

Chances are — there are shows in thailand that specialise in showing off the men-turned-women. The question is: do these companies/theatres fund the men even before they remove their schmeckel. (i just found a good reason not to Transvorm — ack, it pains me to imagine) There must after all be some reason why there are so many of them concentrated in one specific country. Culture?!

Oh, one last thing I learnt — not using the com/net for three-four days overloads my phone and mailbox. The wonders of technology and how very intrusive of technology — i have been reminded of another one those Great Adventures i will be embarking on next year.

[This post gets filed under evolution of gender roles… uh, yeah, literally an evolution of gender…]

 

Unemployment solution

I was reading about unemployment today and how it is impossible to go down to zilch. Unemployment is indeed a hard problem. The government cannot just allow the unemployed and their families to starve or resort to crime (or throw themselves onto the tracks…). Yet it isn’t a good thing if the government hands out taxpayer’s money for people to do nothing. Is there a way to find a Golden Mean?

My inspiration stems from two sources
1. My classmates and their talk about how we should send mainly failures to the army. It sounds damn elitist i know, but our Prime  Senior Mentor once suggested this, though it faield most unfortunately
2. The story about how this poor guy stole just to go to jail to get food

lloyd’s proposed solution is basically to —

Draft all unemployed people. Recruit them, immediately put them in the army. They may not necessarily be part of the military combatants but they can be stuff like clerks, cooks or even parachute folders. That would grant them a job and some income.

Basically, “if we can find money to ‘kill’ people, we can find find money to help people” — a quote from Tony Benn, a former British politician who is extreme left. Perhaps there are other roles in which the government can provide apart from the military.

I will not go into the possible consequences of such a move — but it is feasible in my opinion. If you can conscript and train all 18 year olds, you can do the same for the unemployed as well.

Maybe this policy may not even involve much money being paid out…Perhaps not being sent back to the army would be a good reason to get a job — ANY job, even a cleaner. Essentially, disincentivise people from being unemployed ^.^ I don’t believe there’s such a thing as being “unable to find a job” just “unable to find a job that would suit a person’s tastes/preferences”

I have a slight problem with the definition of unemployment — more often than not the main phrase left out of the definition is “looking for a job”. Why the distinction? Perhaps it is mainly for women who’d willingly stay at home — to not count them as unemployed and thus screw the statistics up. My point ofview on the evolution of gender roles means that men can as well. But regardless of gender or the willingness to look for a job, it does not change the fact that they *can* contribute to the labour force and they have the potential to do so.

There probably is only one problem with this idea i’m toying with — we can’t exactly pinpoint who is unemployed to force them to become militarymen. Then again, why would that matter — its not our fault if people “refuse our help”. Just wait till theyre desperate enough and they’ll seek this avenue of employment and income.

 

The Dilemma (till early next year)

“In life, there is always the presence of crossroads where major decisions have to be made.” How apt to have been the first line of my 3000+ word project last year (on junior colleges, my dilemma for last year)

And this photo was used for my ISO poster that scored me pretty high (thanks madam m—-)

It’s quite a simple dilemma — IB subject options and it can be summed up as:
Higher Math versus Higher English — which should i take? No doubt, a post of boredom, i would have preferred to lay off academics on the blog but it cant be helped if it will be the question taht bugs me for the next two months.

Basic logic: consider the criterias involved (floh would laugh at me here for my parkpole/metrerule)
Criteria 1: What is best for myself?
Taking whatever that benefits more/is more important to uni and in the long run.
In other words, this results in “Friends ” having a lower priority =\ since friends come and go, and while i have opened up a lot more this year i stil keep the belief that a lot of things are still pretty much temporal. We’ll all make new friends anyway and being in the same class is not a prerequisite anyway. Furthermore there are some who WILL be in different classes already anyway (i.e. SB in my class and E who may take HL chem *cough* urk)

Enjoyment probably also goes down the line. Besides, enjoyment is moot — i like math on the same level as i like reading LIT (lit ><) somewhere in between. I also think that enjoyment can be cultivated. Furthermore people do not do well because they enjoy the subject (i mean i like bio, somewhat) but they enjoy it because they do well.

Which leads to
Criteria 2: Which is more important — getting a a)higher total score or b) fulfilling prerequisite subjects
A higher score will be helpful for a scholarship (which i’ll prob need to not go NUS) and getting admissions but prerequisite subjects are course specific.

Which leads us on to
Criteria 3a: Overall points — would math or english give me a higher total points?
3a. Higher English is not much different from SL english apart from having four more books and a bit harsher on marking.
Math on their hand is supposedly having a larger difference. The total from HL eng SL math would be higher than SL eng HL math since it dips more for math and virtually none for eng (or so i speculate)

Criteria 3b: Prequisite subjects — which is more necessary for uni courses, English or Math?
3b. Math wins hands down — esp if im considering econs in the long run. English would “help” law and journalism but SL woudl do just fine and it is not a prerequisite. However compare a lower grade higher level math with a higher grade standard level math, which would have more value?

Overall, it’s quite a gamble on striking a balance and hopefully going beyond that. I feel some urge to draw a useless speculatory graph (which may incorporate my this year’s grades to predict a trend) I can’t really do much apart from pray and trust God in this case.

On a more saucy note, if the issue was about enjoyment vs importance, it will be like marrying a woman i don’t love only because she’s rich and is a CEO or something >< (while i get to stay at home and sleep, play xbox, read manga, watch anime and korean dramas like aunties, ferry kids from school, cook, clean and wash.)

How much i want that, is a different issue altogether =x
(oh, why is there a tag called evolution-of-gender-roles, does that mean there may be more of such tags to come?)