This is water.

This may very well be the most important video I've seen in my life. It's only audio, and is the famous commencement speech by David Foster Wallace, "This is Water". All of you should listen to it when you get a chance:



Otherwise you can also read it in transcript form here: https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/DFWKenyonAddress2005.pdf

I was so impressed by his eloquence and the way he showed the value of education in both abstract and concrete terms, with examples and analogies. This left an impact on me and codified what I actually have been learning and struggling to do myself in the past few years. I called it "empathy", that we need to learn to see things from others' perspectives and to think in their shoes, and hence act accordingly with kindness and respect. It was such a difficult thing to learn though, for people to truly internalize and do in their day-to-day lives. It was hard getting the point across without seeming patronizing or lecturing, and that's why I'm supremely amazed by how he did it so well without imposing his views on us. He gave his story, and we all learned a little something from there.

In his speech, he called it awareness, to choose consciously how to think and what to think, to be well adjusted and not see everything as being all about yourself.

I realize now his way of putting it is a lot more digestible, and easier for the bright-eyed, proud new graduates to understand. They wouldn't be able to understand empathy the way they can understand awareness from him, from the way his speech laid it out as a self-centric mechanism of being aware and thinking consciously of others. It really illustrates and teaches us what we need to do with our lives, with our day ins and day outs.

I'm so glad that my friend shared this with me. It really changes the way I think when I say things like "they should be better at communicating" or "they should be better at empathy and understanding each other!" when I watch shows like Terrace House. When I observe human interactions that I wholly disapprove of. I realise that the easier way to put it is that they have to be more conscious and aware of others, and put in the effort to choose to think different.

I also feel somewhat a connection to David, by the fact that he's been struggling with depression and in the end committed suicide in 2008 (a mere 3 years after this iconic speech). I've read somewhere that depressed people have a more realistic view of the world, while people who are not depressed are usually over-optimistic and over-confident about how they stand in the world (e.g. they all think they look above average...which can't be possible).

Having gone through depression before in my teens, I saw the world clearly for what it stood, but I could never really express what I meant until now. I've always been advocating empathy and kindness, but now I can point to an alternative approach - this is water.

Our most ambitious music video yet!

This has been in the planning for a few weeks, and finally we made it happen! It's our first semi-professional (attempt) at making a music video - here are some sneak preview shots:

Our emo shot at the Golden Canyon, which can also serve as our album cover (if we ever publish one)

My housemate and I were planning to visit Death Valley and decided that it would also be a perfect location for all these stunning scenery shots for our music video. Please pardon all our my awful attempts at looking like professionals (and failing terribly...); instead, gawk at how beautiful Death Valley is!

Jump Shot at Badwater (Salt Flats)

hehe that was the whole point, even if our singing was terrible and the video sucked, at least you get more amazing sceneries than the original MV offered hahaha.

Hope you'll enjoy this as much as we did in making it, and stay till the end for some behind-the-scenes bloopers!

my first experience with Death

I just heard the news from my parents that my grandma probably won't live past this Friday. She hasn't been doing well this past year - she was diagnosed with liver cancer last March and underwent surgery to cut out a portion of her liver and colon where it had spread to. She had to live with a stoma, and perhaps it's because of her age (she's 80) surgery created complications for her recovery. She had kidney failure so she needed dialysis three times a week, she kept getting infections and fevers so she would be admitted to the hospital for weeks at a time. Every time she's discharged she'll develop some other illness and had to be sent back to the hospital. My uncle and aunt put her in a hospice for a while but she had to go back to the hospital before long.

Finally, the doctors found that the cancer had spread to her lungs. The only treatment is chemotherapy, but everyone agreed that she's not going to be able to take it. She's also been having low blood pressure because of the kidney dialysis, which means that blood may not be able to get to her heart or brain, i.e. her heart can stop anytime, she can go brain dead anytime. The doctor injected some medication for her to increase her blood pressure but it didn't work well and only gave her fainting spells.

Now, my grandma is in a comatose state, and hasn't been responsive since 12/23/16. My parents, uncle, aunt and the doctors have made the decision to stop her kidney dialysis so she won't suffer complications from low blood pressure. This is meant to end her suffering earlier rather than just keeping her alive with injections. This also means that there will be toxin buildup in my grandma's body, that her body will fail. That she will not live past the next few days.

I don't really know how I feel about this. Even though she's my grandma, I realized that I haven't been close to her at all - not during my childhood (I was in hk), not in my teens (my family didn't stay with her) nor in my adulthood (now that I'm in the us). She's just someone I visited every once in a few months, and got angpaos from during CNY. She had always been in a wheelchair for as long as I can remember (she had a stroke in her 50s and couldn't walk properly since then), and she's always lived with my uncle or aunt. I got the feeling that my mum was never too close to her either, since my mum was often out working back in her youth, and then she moved out early on.

This is the first time a close relative of mine is dying, and with the very real implication of a funeral coming up. I feel compelled to take sick leave of bereavement (which I can) and fly back just for her funeral, and I'm willing to do that, though I never expected it would be so soon. My parents told me not to do that though, especially since I'm heading back next month. My mum said that my brother will represent me, and that she will get a funeral flower wreath on my brother's and my behalf.

I feel somewhat guilty that I never bothered to become closer to my grandma, that I never bothered to learn more about her and her life. That I was never interested in what she did, what she thought, what her life had been like, what wisdom she might be able to impart. She's always been there to smile at me awkwardly, ask me things about my work/whether I had a bf, and comment about the weather or a tv show. Never anything deep, never anything close. I don't feel sorry for not being closer, but I feel guilty that I don't feel sorry. I wonder if this is what it's like to feel apathetic to your relatives, to someone you're not close to. I even feel some relief that I don't have to go for her funeral, since I'm pretty sure I won't be able to cry for her.

I'm not sure how my mum feels about this. I've asked her several times if she's ok, and she always said that there's nothing to do about it, when ppl grow old this is what happens.

I know that the funeral is mainly for the ones who are left behind, so it's to support my mum, my uncle, and my aunt. Ppl who have cared and loved for my grandma and would need support at the time of her passing. When my mum says this, I always worry about whether I should still worry for her or not. It's all too confusing and foreign to me, and I honestly don't know what to do or feel. I am not a cold blooded animal, but sometimes I feel like I must be one if I don't feel for my grandma. All I feel is slight guilt, and pity for her. I worry about me growing old, and becoming like that. Suffering from poor health, not quite dead but dying? I'd hate it, I'd absolutely abhor it and I'd rather be dead. So I stop thinking about it and instead read books about assisted suicide, and how ppl choose to die rather than be a burden to their family and keep suffering in pain.

My thoughts are all a jumble right now, and the best I can do is to write this down, and then ignore it all. It's not going to be a momentous event to me when my grandma passes, but would it be if it's my mum? My dad? My brother?

Would I cry for them if it's them instead of my grandma? Why is it I don't miss them when I'm out here away from home, and when I do I mainly miss the cooking, the company, the comfort of having someone else to take care of me?

Am I really a cold person after all?

I wish my family had grown up closer and with more outward love and laughter, rather than expectations and pressure. I wish we could have been so close that it's normal to hug them and say I love them.

Is it possible to change this now? Do I even want to change this now?

Update 1/7/17 4.32am Singapore Time: my grandma has passed away, and the wake is being held starting this afternoon in Singapore in Marsiling, at the void deck of her old HDB home. I will not be attending, but in my heart I feel deeply for my grandma. I wish all the best for her, and I hope that she will finally find peace and be free of pain wherever she is now.