There are two things on my mind right now- Quora and Naam Ras. It’s 6:25am. Yesterday I told myself that I would get off the computer at 11:30pm. I got off at midnight, and went to sleep at 1am, and I woke up at about 430am. It wasn’t the best possible sleep imaginable, but it was still pretty good. Also, while I didn’t keep exactly to the limit that I had set, the presence of the limit did help me stay away from falling into the endless pit of timesink desolation. So here I am. I was struggling to decide whether to go back to bed or write, and I figured I might as well write. I’d like to make the most of my early hours. I want to build a productive habit of being really productive and effective in the early morning- like 5am to 10am or so- and if necessary, I’ll take naps in the mid-afternoon. I think that’s a better way of doing things. There’s something about the early morning that’s blissfully peaceful and quiet, and it’s a great time to do work. Also, there’s something about breaking up your time into chunks that gets more done. I did manage to complete the article I had planned to do last night, so that was great.
Let’s talk about Quora first. I remember the first time I saw Quora- somebody posted an answer from Quora onto the group that I started and manage on Facebook, and it was “What’s it like to have a trophy wife?” I didn’t think much of it then, but I do remember that the answer was remarkably articulate and well-thought out. Fast forward maybe a year later and I’m now a regular and reasonably well-recognized member of Quora- I’m actually a Top Writer of 2012, an honour given to less than 500 members (including Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia). Tremendous honour, and I felt like it was some really significant validation for me, especially considering my lack of any serious academic credentials past age 10. On Quora I feel respected as a person for the quality of my thoughts rather than anything else, and it’s a wonderful feeling. I’ve had the honour of interacting with peers who are successful, wealthy, well-educated… there are autodidacts and polymaths and many individuals who I have learned from. Off the top of my head I think of Jane Chin and Nan Waldman, who are amazing parents. Jon Davis, a US Marine. Lou Davis, an emergency room nurse. Ethan Hein, a musician and musicologist. I’ve learnt so much from reading and answering questions on Quora, I swear it counts as one of the most significant aspects of my life experience, of my learning. I have learnt more from a year on Quora than from 3 years in Junior College and 2 years of National Service . (Granted, that could be a consequence of my attitude, but I don’t think it’s possible to recreate the sheer breadth of thought and experience that one has access to on Quora.) It’s an indescribable honour.
Halfway through, I suppose I should switch to Naam Ras. Naam Ras is a Sikh religious festival/event of sorts that gets held at the Singapore Expo every two years. My dad runs an industrial waste disposal company, and we help to dispose of the rubbish at the festival every two years. He’s been doing it for a decade now, and I’ve helped out at the last 3 events. The amount of waste is staggering- I don’t mean to imply that they’re needlessly wasteful, nothing of the sort- there’s just a hell of a lot of waste at any large event where humans gather. It’s been a fascinating experience for me. It’s incredibly humbling just to work with rubbish- to essentially be a rubbish collector, one of those guys we seldom think twice about, assuming that they’re just foreign workers or uneducated or otherwise not worth thinking about. I’ve had so many interesting little microexperiences that I don’t know where to begin.
One non-grand thought is- it’s amazing how much of a kickass workout it is, carrying thousands of bags of rubbish, throwing them into a large container, dragging them around- it’s really a full body workout. I found myself thinking- why do I even bother working out or going to the gym, when I could do something like this instead, which is paid work, and builds muscles, and a service to others? I mean, I could just be a furniture mover on the weekends or something. Why work out? Hmm.
The whole experience is a humbling, smelly and dirty affair. Picking up after people’s food waste is… just something that’s a class of its own, really. I want to talk about the interactions between blue-collar workers. I’ve experienced this a few times- when I was banquet staff at Shangri-La, and when I was working at the Singapore Airshow… there is a certain kindness and cameraderie that working-class folk have amongst themselves that’s really powerful and humanizing. Everybody looks out for one another, everybody cares for one another. I remember when I was doing some traffic marshalling at the air show, and ground staff from another “unit” (not at all related to us) shared their food and water with us, because they saw that we were alone. I thought that was incredibly thoughtful and touching, and that’s something that’s often lacking in a more white-collar dog-eat-dog environment. There’s a certain wisdom and a certain element of the human experience that you don’t get anywhere else, I think.
I wish I could better distill the insights I’ve gotten from my working-class/labourer experiences. They’re really something. I highly recommend anybody who has an opportunity to try it… try it. I remember when I was working at Shangri-La, there was a day where I wasn’t completely clean shaven- and the manager threatened to send me home about it. That was something very visceral and real that I still remember today- I suppose you have similar experiences in NS, but I was still about 16 then, and thinking, wow, welcome to the real world, where it’s not at all about you, and you can pretty much go to hell if you’re not in order.
These experiences have been tremendous for me and I’d like to contemplate them more.
One last quick insight- I went jamming with my band today for old time’s sake- our guitarist just came back to Singapore for a short break, and I really enjoyed it. I remember writing “went jamming” in my journal when keeping track of my days, and I intuited that perhaps jamming must have been a really positive experience for me, because I felt it somehow important or necessary to keep track of. And yeah, it’s just cathartic, making music with other people. I think music will always be a part of my life, even if I never get incredible at it. It also reinforces the instinct I’ve had for some time that I ought to dig up my thoughts over the past few years to look for hindsight-reflected insights that I would otherwise neglect moving forward. The importance of sleep, reading, of time spent with loved ones, of exercise, of music. And life is good, good day to you.