This thought occurred to me several months back when I was supposed to come up with a list of strengths and weaknesses for some of my friends. While the strengths were easily done, writing of the weaknesses resulted in an interesting phenomenon. Every time I wrote a weakness down, after a while of reflection, I will realise that the weakness is no longer a weakness and I will cancel it away. This continued to the case for every of the weaknesses I thought of. I stopped what I was doing and decided to analyse what constitute a strength or weakness, what is their definition. In the end, these were what I come up with... When it refers to ourselves, that is our strengths and weaknesses, Strengths are traits or abilities which we think we possess that make us a better person than others, something that we are proud to be seen as. Weaknesses are traits that we feel are hindering us from achieving what we wanted, or certain parts of us that we feel the need to improve on. When it refers to others, that is when we are pinpointing someone else's strengths and weaknesses, Strenghts are traits that we are envy of, that we hope to possess too, ablities that we feel that we can learn from. Weaknesses are the interesting part. First, we have to form an expectation of what we want to see in the other person, what is needed in that person to achieve the things we wanted that person to achieve. Areas that do no meet up to our expectations become their weaknesses instantly, in our view of course. Saying this, who are we to impose our expectations on what the other person should be like, why should the other person be compelled to achieve what we wanted him/her to achieve. We cannot and should not determine the path the other person should take. In fact, the so-called weaknesses in our opinions might turn out to be strengths in achieving what the other person wanted. The weakness might be a pre-requisite for a dominant strength in that person. Realising this, it no longer make sense to talk about the weaknesses of others.
Thought No. 1 Recently, I read an article in the Life! section of the Straits Times, written by a columnist who rave about the way to attract girls is to not be a nice guy. In it he mentioned that he has always been a nice guy and as a result fail to be attractive. And when he followed the instructions mentioned in the book "Game", he apparently managed to sweep a newly met girl off her feet. What strikes me wasn't whether being a nice guy is attractive or not. But rather, if a "nice guy" can act like a "not nice" guy for some ulterior motive, then it appear that he might not a real "nice guy". Instead he might have just put on the "nice guy" front for some motive as well, to gain acceptance or sort. And what's the point of putting on a false front to attract the girl? Unless, of course, the guy is just looking for a short term relationship, or maybe just so that he can bed the girl.
Thought No. 2 As I was watching a drama recently, there was a scene where one of the character mentioned that the idea of chastity was no longer valid in modern times. Somehow it trigger me to think about this issue of chastity. For those who felt the same way as the character I mentioned, the emphasis on chastity is a thing of the past, giving an impression it is something of the ancient world, when kings rules and wars were fought with swords and on horsebacks. It led me to think about the origin of the importance of chastity. It is definitely not a default thing, since sexual acts form the basic insticts of mankind. This means that it must have been introduced at some point of civilisation. But for what purpose? Very often, most people will think that it is a product of male chauvinism. Then again, if we were to think about it, it doesn't make sense because it prevents men from having sex with anyone they like. Why would a male chauvinist come up with something that does not benefit his species? Maybe there is some other reasons...
We should note that for human civilisation, family forms the basic unit. Without the improtance placed on chastity, there will bound to be many pregnancies outside of a family unit (since there wasn't any contraception at that time). In this case, all responsibilties of bringing up the child will fall on the women alone. Maybe some wise man come up with this idea to prevent this situation, so that all babies will be borne inside of a family unit, where one member can take care of the child while the other sources for food. By ensuring that sex can take place only after the men have committed to form a family with the women, it helps to increase the security of women and ensure that they will be taken care of. Hmm, as it seems, maybe the idea of chastity was introduced to protect women in ancient times. And a side benefit is that, it helps to restrict the spread of STDs to the confinement of brothels. Of course, we must acknowledge the fact that the over-emphasis on the importance of chastity in the past did bring harm to some girls. Some lives are ruined because of that. In the current context, of course, we cannot expect our partner to be a virgin. However, some of the things might still apply. With the presence of the many types of contraception, the possibilities of having babies outside of a family unit is greatly reduced (even inside of family unit, its hard to have baby also...). With the acceptance of sex before marriage, it produced a group of guys that are roaming out there looking for a good time, trying to score as much goals as they can. As most girls normally attached more emotions to the sexual act, only willing to have sex with someone they like, these guys will do whatever they can to win the hearts of girls, score the goal they are looking for, then dump the girl for a new target. Of course, with their experience and arsenal of tactics, they tends to be able to win the hearts of their target with higher probability which in turn increases the number of girls that is going to get hurt by their hunting habits. Without the need for committment, sex becomes merely a game for many, an activity to satisfy the carnal desires of mankind, and sometimes an attribute for them to boast about.
Thought No. 3 During my reservist, one of my friends mentioned that an attractive celebrity declared once in a pub that she can get any guys she wants. Needless to say, that comment sets me off thinking again. Well, with her looks, of course she can get any guys she wants, but only to have sex with her. She will not be able to get them to love her. So what good does it do to just be able to want to go to bed with you? While I must admit that being physical attractive does have its perks in many area, but it make it harder to determine if someone really love you. Does he love you as a person, or he only love your body? For a sexually attactive woman, he loves her because he want to have sex with her, but for a sexually less attractive woman, he have sex with her because he loves her.
Two weeks of ICT are finally over...time to get back to realities. It definitely has been quite an enjoyable 2 weeks, and most of the time, considered relaxing, at least in my opinion. Got the chance to catch up with old friends, friends that we only get to meet once a year during reservist (sounds quite sad though), also managed to get to know some new ppl, and also got to know those "hi-bye" acquitances better. Two weeks are neither a long nor short time, and ther are surely some interesting obersvations worth mentioning (without any breach of security, of course =p). First of all, it must be the power of our uniform. Designed to camoflage soldiers in jungle warfare, I realised that it works just as well, if not better, in urbanised area. Wearing my uniform, and carrying my barang barang, I stood at the side of the road, trying to get a cab to go to my camp. But it seems that the moment I put on my uniform, I became invisible to all taxi drivers. Countless empty cabs just zoom by despite my outstretch arm waving in a nice and friendly manner. Some even pick up speed as they approaches me. The speed limit is 50km/h, yet the sight of me automatically accelerates the taxis to travel beyond the speed limit. Despite being "camouflaged", there were still a number of taxi drivers who managed to differentiate me from my concrete surroundings. However, the moment they hear my destination, they conveniently said they are going some other places and sped off. It didn't help that it started to rain quite heavily. Desperate, I decided to call a cab. Yet despite so many empty cabs I saw in the vicinty, no cab answered my call. I thought they complained that business for taxis were bad. Forunately after an hour of waiting and rejections by dozens of cabs, a kind taxi uncle agreed to accept me as his passenger. Being grateful, I let him keep the change, something that I normally would not do when taking a cab, unless the change amount to less than a dollar. Then of course, there were the human minds that once again proved to be the hardest to fathom as usual. There are the few who simply refuses to eat cookhouse food, prefering to eat at the canteen. Though cookhouse food aren't really gourmet standard, they are still good enough, and the food at the canteen weren't actually much better. Yet to these people, the plain idea that the food comes from the cookhouse immediately qualify it as food fit for Fear Factor. And there is the strange phenomenon that world outside camp immediate become heaven once people are inside of camp. It doesn't matter how much they complain during the rest of the year about how boring "civilisation part" of Singapore is, how stressful their life is, how shitty their job is, and etc etc. During ICT, they yearn so much for the "life that sucks", to get back to all the things they supposedly detest so much. Yet it is not because ICT is demanding or anything. In fact, for most of us, it is more relaxing and stress-free compared to our everyday life. Yet it seems like hell for many of them. How strange. Continuing on this aspects, there will ocassionally some evenings when we can book out. On these occassions, LOT 1, the nearest shopping complex which is still a 20mins drive away, suddenly become the "hippest" place even though, during the rest of the year, these people will never even think of going there for any purpose. It seems that I'm the only one who doesn't see the joy of going out, together with a few who are too lazy to travel. They always seems puzzled when I replied that I don't want to go for the nights off. My answer "I'm already out there for the other 50 weeks" doesn't seems to make any sense to them. Well...end of ICT...time to face the harsh world again...
