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Wednesday, October 19, 2005

 

The answer, my friend...

Today evening I was at Clementi interchange to meet a friend for some beer and food, as is usually the case. However, my friend was delayed and I suddenly found myself with some spare time to kill. As I stood at the bus stop, the distant sounds of a harmonica rose above the din of a busy town centre and like a bee to honey, my feet instinctively took me to where the music was coming from.

It was an octagonal shelter with one escalator going up to the train station, a pedestrian walkway to the interchange on one side and on the other side was the bus stop. In the middle stood a marker indicating the name of the train station and all around, people were coming and going. A normal working and student crowd for the 1900+hrs peak period.

In between the escalator and walkway, a blind elderly couple were seated. Their busking paraphernalia was laid out neatly, consisting of a rectangular steel tin seated on top of an amplifier, which was covered with an oddly bright shade of yellow tolex. The 2 bulky items were strapped to a small foldable trolley with bungee cords. The elderly gentleman was dressed simply (perhaps better than myself) in a grey shirt, black trousers and brown rubber slippers. He sat on a foldable lawn chair and played the harmonica through a microphone, which then went through the amplifier. Incongruously though, a shiny plastic statue of Ronald Macdonald stood beside them, fixed in a perpetual greeting wave and cheesy (pun alert) grin as if to remind everyone that Macdonald’s is everywhere.

Interestingly, he had an electronic drumpad for percussion sounds, so he was holding the harmonica and microphone in one hand and playing percussion with the other. The lady sat on the kerb and tapped along on a tambourine, though not very expertly.

I stood there for half an hour, observing and listening. He wasn’t too picky about his playing technique, perhaps to conserve energy for playing a long evening, but the harmonica is by nature a forgiving instrument. The holes for different notes are located next to each other and if more than one note is blown, the musical intervals are still listenable, harmonious even. As he blew the harmonica held in his right hand, his left hand danced on the drum pad to produce the percussion sounds. Most of the time he stuck to the basic kick drum and snare sounds, but occasionally deigned to throw in a few variations, a little roll on the snare or toms and perhaps some cymbals. It wasn’t complex at all, but he made sure it complemented whatever he was playing on the harmonica. The lady tapping the tambourine was a little tentative and hesitant, but managed to stay within the rhythmic framework for the most part.

Together, they busked for the busy crowd milling about, going through some old Chinese songs which I didn’t recognise and a couple of English oldies. Whenever someone dropped a coin in their tin, the gentleman would nod in appreciation as he carried on playing. It was a relatively generous crowd they were playing for, perhaps a reflection of the public sentiment of disgust for our (dis)organized charities which have recently come under the limelight for less than noble reasons , and a preference to donate straight to the people who need some help.

Among some of the English songs I recognised were some rather poignant numbers, given their circumstance, like “It’s A Small World After All” and “He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands”. The defining song of that half hour for me though, was this Bob Dylan classic:

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, 'n' how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, 'n' how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they're forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, 'n' how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, 'n' how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

How many years can a mountain exist
Before it's washed to the sea?
Yes, 'n' how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
Yes, 'n' how many times can a man turn his head,
Pretending he just doesn't see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.


(Taken from http://bobdylan.com/songs/blowin.html)


As I mouthed the chorus under my breath and tapped my feet, I couldn’t help thinking about the way some halls of residence and faculties in NUS approach Flag Day. This day is when some students of NUS are mobilized islandwide to wield donation tins en-masse in the name of charity, and the collection takings are totaled and contribute towards the winning of the Chancellor’s Shield, which seems to hold some prestige for the winning hall/faculty.

All the logistics are meticulously planned down to the last detail, with people being assigned and transported early in the morning to various locations to compete with students from other halls/faculties for donations. The way it is organized is almost military-like in its administrative efficiency (assuming comparison with a credible military organization), and credit has to go to the committees responsible.

However, somewhere along the way people just lost sight of the whole idea. Exhortations and encouragements are dished out liberally every year, along the lines of striving for the trophy and besting the other halls/faculties, instead of the charitable purpose of this exercise. Pep talks which are more appropriate for competitive business organizations and sporting teams are the norm, and the bottom-line has become the relative takings rather than the absolute takings.

There has to be a way to restore the spirit of charity to this once good but now perverted cause, sullied by the ugly competitive nature that rears its head when enthusiasm lacks focus.

Perhaps the wind blowing by would have whispered the answer, if only I knew how to ask.

Thursday, October 13, 2005

 

If a picture paints a thousand words...

I just spent the better part of 2 hours hunched over a tiny clear space on my desk, squinting at a metal ruler , drawing countless lines and circles and generally ruining my eyesight doing a scale drawing for one of my module term papers. Much erasing was done (with a miniscule piece of eraser no less), swear words were uttered and the resounding voice of Muddy Waters echoed in the background as I got reacquainted with my steel rule, compass and protractor.

As I finally filled in the last line and put down my pencil, I took a few minutes to marvel at my (ahem) masterpieces. It then occurred to me that I’d been doing almost the same thing since primary school. In between homework, computer games, Lego and TV, I often occupied my idle afternoons with drawing, even when those afternoons weren’t supposed to be that idle. This was before I had discovered guitar, so paper and pencil were my main muse.

It was on that piece of paper that my imagination was let loose. Fanciful armoured vehicles, Star-Wars inspired spaceships and weapons, robots ala Transformers and cars that probably wouldn’t be allowed on Singapore roads were all sketched out in varying levels of details, alternating with my forgettable attempts at comics and humour. I could spend the hours between lunch time and dinner time just filling sheet after sheet with the 2D interpretations of my fantasies, occasionally earning a reprimand from my grandmother (who I stayed with then) about the copious amounts of eraser dirt being generated. Needless to say, Art was one of my favourite subjects in primary school and the highlight of my week would be to have my piece selected for pinning on the class noticeboard at the back of the classroom.

My drawing tendencies carried on into secondary school and junior college, where empty spaces in my textbooks and notes became my canvas. I got caught more than once doodling when I should have been listening, but that never stopped me. I do remember doing a (flattering) caricature of my form tutor in JC for our class noticeboard, but that was probably the most publicity my drawings ever got at that time. The ones that could be publicized, that is.

When I enrolled in Mechanical Engineering after my 2.5 year stint in the armed forces, one of my 2nd year modules involved hand drawing and Solidworks modeling. Again, this was one of my favourite modules, especially since it didn’t involve much memorizing or studying.

Fast-forward to today. The carefully measured distances and angles, numerous drawing projection views, painfully straight lines and meticulous attention to detail (most of the time) are perhaps a far cry from my crude childhood drawings, but the idea behind them remains the same. The desire to put pencil to paper and create a snapshot of the object of my imagination prevents me from crushing up the paper and going insane when the going gets tough. One difference though is that these days, I have a bit of Glenfiddich to help steady my hands.

For most of my engineering projects I’d usually generate a 3D model in Solidworks and from there, generating a 2D drawing is a simple matter of choosing viewing angles, layouts and dimensioning. Hand drafting is pretty much antiquated by today’s industry standards. Even the same module I took earlier on where I learnt drawing by hand doesn’t teach that anymore, focusing instead on 3D modeling. Geez, even before my education is complete I’m already out-of-date, a product of the “old school”. Of course it used to be even more old school, with modules that taught basic machining like milling, drilling and turning in the first year, but that was way before my time, until some wise-ass engineering undergraduates felt that they shouldn’t be learning such lowly manual labour. Anyway, I made up for it by taking on most of the fabrication for my portion of this 3rd year project and learning by sheer trial and error.

Old school or not, the process of seeing your ideas come to life line by line on a piece of blank paper is still something I find rather enjoyable. Perhaps one day, I’ll come round full circle and go back to drawing the same vehicles, weapons and robots that I used to dream of, this time for a living. Que sera, sera.

Saturday, October 08, 2005

 

Say what?

I just finished watching Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle. Funny and mindless entertainment loosely based on the issue of racial diversity in America. It’s not exactly an intellectual movie (Not in any sense that I can imagine at least), but it got me thinking about something that happened to me along that line a while back.

This was even before my internship, when I tagged along with my dad on a business trip to America. It was a small town in Oregon and we were only there for a few days. No point renting a car for that short period, so we walked around one evening hunting for food.

It wasn’t particularly cold, but the chilly breeze blowing by was just enough to make me tuck my hands into my jacket pockets. It was rather late, probably 7-8 pm but the sky was still bright. The street, however, was rather deserted, with only occasional pedestrians and vehicles. Most of the stores were closed at that time in a small industrial town. Random litter flitted in the wind, while a homeless guy pushed a trolley with all his worldly possessions across a traffic interchange, the wheels rattling against the asphalt being the loudest audible noise on the street.

We were both quite hungry and absorbed in trying to recall where we saw the eating places along the way back to our hotel earlier on. As we crossed a traffic light, a graying, bearded man in a greasy jacket and baseball cap walked in the opposite direction. I hardly noticed him, but as he passed he muttered just loudly enough for us to hear, something that sounded like,

“Wide America.”

My father is quite hard of hearing so he didn’t even notice it. I wasn’t entirely sure he was talking to us, but he WAS looking towards our direction and there wasn’t anyone else except the two of us. As a result, we both didn’t pay much heed to that weird comment.

As we continued pounding the pavement, the sheer oddity of that remark stuck in my head. My dad kept muttering about finding this Chinese eatery that we passed just now, but I continued to ponder. What on earth did it mean? A cursory glance at a map would confirm that America is indeed wider than it is long, but why would someone feel such an urge to give two passing strangers an impromptu geography lesson?


Could it have been :

“Why America?”

“Wry America?”

“Ride America?”

“Right America?”




I tried all the possible rhymes, temporarily diverting my attention from my stomach to my linguistic memory banks, and it took me all of 10 minutes to figure out what it actually was.

And when I did, I chuckled to myself and brushed it off as the silly bigoted jibe* that it was and decided to concentrate on something more worthwhile.




Like finding food. Just as Harold and Kumar did.



*Can't figure it out? Hint: Read out the first sentence of this post.

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