drawing room

I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and...

Mon, 28 May 2012 20:56:00 +0100

I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give your convocation address. It’s a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation. I say this as a Singaporean and more so as a husband.

My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one. She is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practising at home during conversations between her and me.

On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day telling people how wrong they are. I make my living being disagreeable.

Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one who triumphs is always the wife.

And so I want to start by giving one piece of advice to the men: when you’ve already won her heart, you don’t need to win every argument.

Marriage is considered one milestone of life. Some of you may already be married. Some of you may never be married. Some of you will be married. Some of you will enjoy the experience so much, you will be married many, many times. Good for you.

The next big milestone in your life is today: your graduation. The end of education. You’re done learning.

You’ve probably been told the big lie that “Learning is a lifelong process” and that therefore you will continue studying and taking masters’ degrees and doctorates and professorships and so on. You know the sort of people who tell you that? Teachers. Don’t you think there is some measure of conflict of interest? They are in the business of learning, after all. Where would they be without you? They need you to be repeat customers.

The good news is that they’re wrong.

The bad news is that you don’t need further education because your entire life is over. It is gone. That may come as a shock to some of you. You’re in your teens or early twenties. People may tell you that you will live to be 70, 80, 90 years old. That is your life expectancy.

I love that term: life expectancy. We all understand the term to mean the average life span of a group of people. But I’m here to talk about a bigger idea, which is what you expect from your life.

You may be very happy to know that Singapore is currently ranked as the country with the third highest life expectancy. We are behind Andorra and Japan, and tied with San Marino. It seems quite clear why people in those countries, and ours, live so long. We share one thing in common: our football teams are all hopeless. There’s very little danger of any of our citizens having their pulses raised by watching us play in the World Cup. Spectators are more likely to be lulled into a gentle and restful nap.

Singaporeans have a life expectancy of 81.8 years. Singapore men live to an average of 79.21 years, while Singapore women live more than five years longer, probably to take into account the additional time they need to spend in the bathroom.

So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you’ll have another 40 years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.

Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they’re 50, 40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their convocation. They would be very disappointed that they didn’t meet their life expectancy.

I’m here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy.

After all, it’s calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want to expect being average.

Revisit those expectations. You might be looking forward to working, falling in love, marrying, raising a family. You are told that, as graduates, you should expect to find a job paying so much, where your hours are so much, where your responsibilities are so much.

That is what is expected of you. And if you live up to it, it will be an awful waste.

If you expect that, you will be limiting yourself. You will be living your life according to boundaries set by average people. I have nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be them. And you don’t need years of education by the best minds in Singapore to prepare you to be average.

What you should prepare for is mess. Life’s a mess. You are not entitled to expect anything from it. Life is not fair. Everything does not balance out in the end. Life happens, and you have no control over it. Good and bad things happen to you day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. Your degree is a poor armour against fate.

Don’t expect anything. Erase all life expectancies. Just live. Your life is over as of today. At this point in time, you have grown as tall as you will ever be, you are physically the fittest you will ever be in your entire life and you are probably looking the best that you will ever look. This is as good as it gets. It is all downhill from here. Or up. No one knows.

What does this mean for you? It is good that your life is over.

Since your life is over, you are free. Let me tell you the many wonderful things that you can do when you are free.

The most important is this: do not work.

Work is anything that you are compelled to do. By its very nature, it is undesirable.

Work kills. The Japanese have a term “Karoshi”, which means death from overwork. That’s the most dramatic form of how work can kill. But it can also kill you in more subtle ways. If you work, then day by day, bit by bit, your soul is chipped away, disintegrating until there’s nothing left. A rock has been ground into sand and dust.

There’s a common misconception that work is necessary. You will meet people working at miserable jobs. They tell you they are “making a living”. No, they’re not. They’re dying, frittering away their fast-extinguishing lives doing things which are, at best, meaningless and, at worst, harmful.

People will tell you that work ennobles you, that work lends you a certain dignity. Work makes you free. The slogan “Arbeit macht frei” was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps. Utter nonsense.

Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway.

Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself.

I like arguing, and I love language. So, I became a litigator. I enjoy it and I would do it for free. If I didn’t do that, I would’ve been in some other type of work that still involved writing fiction – probably a sports journalist.

So what should you do? You will find your own niche. I don’t imagine you will need to look very hard. By this time in your life, you will have a very good idea of what you will want to do. In fact, I’ll go further and say the ideal situation would be that you will not be able to stop yourself pursuing your passions. By this time you should know what your obsessions are. If you enjoy showing off your knowledge and feeling superior, you might become a teacher.

Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don’t, you are working.

Most of you will end up in activities which involve communication. To those of you I have a second message: be wary of the truth. I’m not asking you to speak it, or write it, for there are times when it is dangerous or impossible to do those things. The truth has a great capacity to offend and injure, and you will find that the closer you are to someone, the more care you must take to disguise or even conceal the truth. Often, there is great virtue in being evasive, or equivocating. There is also great skill. Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence.

In order to be wary of the truth, you must first know it. That requires great frankness to yourself. Never fool the person in the mirror.

I have told you that your life is over, that you should not work, and that you should avoid telling the truth. I now say this to you: be hated.

It’s not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you? Yet every great figure who has contributed to the human race has been hated, not just by one person, but often by a great many. That hatred is so strong it has caused those great figures to be shunned, abused, murdered and in one famous instance, nailed to a cross.

One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong.

The other side of the coin is this: fall in love.

I didn’t say “be loved”. That requires too much compromise. If one changes one’s looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.

Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.

Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the truth worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.

Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn’t happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.
You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.

You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.

Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.

Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.

—–

Written by Adrian Tan, author of The Teenage Textbook (1988), the guest-of-honour at a recent NTU convocation ceremony. This was his speech to the graduating class of 2008.

—–

Make sure you are in the guest list.

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 13:10:22 +0100

Make sure you are in the guest list.

Vogue February 1957 Photo by Richard Rutledge

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:28:00 +0000

Vogue February 1957

Photo by Richard Rutledge

[Vincent Tolan]Nigga, don’t act like a bitch!That’s...

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 17:42:43 +0000

[Vincent Tolan]
Nigga, don’t act like a bitch!
That’s why I never love a ho (bitch)
50 Cent, Too $hort, and E-40 sayin’ BITCH! (remix!)
She sucked me off, don’t kiss that bitch
(from new york to the bay)
(from new york to the bay)
Oh why oh why’d you marry that bitch

[50 Cent]
He said he love ‘em man, you really think he love ‘em, man?
She’s a super freak, freakier than he understands
She not the type of girl that you take home to your mother
She’s the type that you take to the track to come up on a sucker
Watch her deep throat; see her DP
Ending up on fours like it’s easy
It’s not a big deal, she doin’ what she do
She doin’ it with everybody, not just you (hello)
I’m trying to put you up on game
You getting emotionalthen you can get the fuck on, man
You buy her everything; you let her treat you like a trick
That sugar daddy mentality, it make a nigga sick
She ask for it, you just run and get it for her
No matter how much you give her, she wants more
I hate to tell you, but you end up with a whore
And chances are, if niggas try, they gonna score
Man, fuck that

[Hook]
Bitch!
That’s why I never love a ho (bitch!)
50 Cent, Too $hort, and E-40 sayin’ BITCH!
She sucked me off, don’t kiss that (bitch)
Oh why oh why’d you marry that bitch

[Too $hort]
See me, I get everything I wanna get
I have some fun with it, and make her momma trip
Cause if I’m in her life, it’s a problem
A real player’s at your girl, you better stop him
Turn your back on the bitch she ain’t actin right
He hit it way before you now he’s back in her life
What you gon’ do when you lose her?
She got a nigga on the side just to use her
If it’s me, I’m parkin at the front do’
And you be knockin on her bedroom window
You see the shadows, you hear the sounds
But you don’t do nothin you just turn back around like a (BITCH!)
Feelings hurt, ready to cry
You cain’t believe, everything she said was a lie
She got a lot of bitch in her but not more than you
I never underestimate what these whores’ll do

[Hook]
Nigga don’t act like a (bitch!)

[50 Cent]
You love her, I fuck her
She might jump off, she your baby momma
You kiss her, I twist her
And send her ass back to you before you miss her

[Vincent Tolan]
(Bitch!)
I’m a player, baby (I’m a player, baby)
Don’t play no games
(bitch!)
I remain the same, I ain’t never gon’ change
for you bitch
Nah, not for you baby
That’s why I’ll never love a ho
50 Cent, Too $hort, and E-40 sayin’ BITCH! (come on 50 Cent)
She sucked my off, don’t kiss that bitch
(please don’t kiss her, please don’t kiss her)
Oh why oh why’d you marry that bitch

[E-40]
Never slippin and slippin and skippin and drippin and missin (missin)
These cats that I be hangin around don’t listen (don’t listen)
I be hippin and sippin and smokin and drinkin and spittin (spittin)
and these musty mouth broads they be trippin (they be trippin)
I mean the bitch thought she was bad (bad)
I knew what that batch was thinkin
when she thought what she was thinkin, but she shouldn’ta thought that
I told her the money costs too much and I ain’t got a dime
You got to pay me (pay me) or pay me no never mind
I (I) don’t sit on the toilet when I go piss (piss)
You (you) got feminine tendencies like a bitch (bitch)
Me (me) I’m solid and concrete I keep it funky (funky)
We (we) we pull up in somethin, actin a donkey (donkey)
She (she) she liftin her dress up showin her monkey (monkey)
See (see) he trippin, he trickin, throwin her money (money)
B (B) I-T-C-H, all in her face (face)
E (E) 40 so laced, stay on the case

"He had his own way of defusing the madness. In 1999, on the 30th anniversary of the moon landings,..."

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 14:26:11 +0100

“He had his own way of defusing the madness. In 1999, on the 30th anniversary of the moon landings, “when there were still raw feelings … the impeachment … I got Nasa to loan me a moon rock, carbon-dated 3.6 billion years old. I put it on the table in the Oval Office and when people started the crazy stuff, I’d say, ‘Wait a minute guys. See that rock, it’s 3.6 billion years old. We’re all just passing through, take a deep breath, calm down, let’s see what makes sense.’ It had an incredible calming effect!””

- Financial Times interview with Bill Clinton

Netflix

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 09:30:45 +0100

There have been some big changes here at Netflix. Way back in July, your company’s market value was $16bn. We think shareholders may prefer our new, more manageable market cap of about $7bn. This exciting shift means new investors can buy our shares for almost 60 per cent less than they cost just a few months ago.

Some of our longer-term investors may find this transition a little bit confusing. We apologise most sincerely. Let us take some time to say what’s happened.

Of course, we don’t set our stock price. You, our investors, do that. And to those who owned the stock at its peak, thanks for believing in us when our shares were trading at 60 times this year’s earnings. That made sense if you consider only our sales growth (over 50 per cent in June, the sixth straight quarter of acceleration) and dominant market share of US online subscription viewing (nearly 90 per cent this year, according to IHS screen digest). We appreciate the way you averted your eyes as Amazon and Hulu hopped over our industry’s low barriers to entry, and our content costs rose even as revenue per subscriber fell.

Things are different now. We made two bold decisions: an abrupt and poorly presented price increase and the break-up of our brand. “Netflix” was too well known; we thought people might prefer to rent DVDs from “Qwikster”. While neither decision can explain the crash in our shares, they did focus everyone’s attention on what a hard business we’re in and how unsustainable our margins appear. Now that we have set a much lower entry point for investors, we can announce today that we’re rolling back the Qwikster idea. Please don’t worry about how our new, lower valuation (24 times earnings) still dwarfs, say, Apple’s (14 times), despite Apple’s faster growth. We hope you are as excited about Netflix’s future as we are.

- FT Lex

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool...

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 09:53:23 +0100

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

—Steve Jobs 2005 Stanford Commencement

Richard Rogers just said 2/3 of his current projects are in...

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 19:48:00 +0100

Richard Rogers just said 2/3 of his current projects are in Southeast Asia!

What’s a lounge suit?

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 11:22:20 +0100

What’s a lounge suit?

"Being 90% right is sometimes completely wrong."

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 09:05:56 +0100

“Being 90% right is sometimes completely wrong.”

Gerçek lider böyle faltaşı gözlerle ve cankulağı ile dinlenir.

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 12:33:10 +0000

Gerçek lider böyle faltaşı gözlerle ve cankulağı ile dinlenir.

"You need to go down from molecules to electrons.. if you want to change the world. Actually it..."

Sun, 20 Feb 2011 14:47:33 +0000

“You need to go down from molecules to electrons.. if you want to change the world. Actually it happens all the time. Every industry that goes from molecules to electrons as ways of distribution is radically disruptive.”

- Shai Agassi

"…iki saat sonra kalabalığın içinde, sinemadan bir dar sokağa çıkan sanki başka birisiydi...."

Sun, 02 Jan 2011 13:24:45 +0000

“…iki saat sonra kalabalığın içinde, sinemadan bir dar sokağa çıkan sanki başka birisiydi. Düşünüyordu: “çağımızda geçmiş yüzyılların bilmediği, kısa ömürlü bir yaratık yaşıyor. Sinemadan çıkmış insan. Gördüğü film ona bir şeyler yapmış. Salt çıkarını düşünen kişi değil. İnsanlarla barışık. Onun büyük işler yapacağı umulur. Ama beş-on dakikada ölüyor. Sokak sinemadan çıkmayanlarla dolu; asık yüzleri, kayıtsızlıkları, sinsi yürüyüşleriyle onu aralarına alıyorlar, eritiyorlar.” saatine baktı: dört buçuğa beş vardı. “eve gidip okusam.” durağa yürüdü. “bunları kurtarmanın yolunu biliyorum. Kocaman sinemalar yapmalı. Bir gün dünyada yaşayanların tümünü sokmalı bunlara. İyi bir film görsünler. Sokağa hep birden çıksınlar…” kafasından geçene güldü. Duraktakiler dönüp baktılar. Kadının biri kaşlarını çattı. Sokakta kendi kendine sesli gülünemeyeceğini bilmeyen yoktu. “ne adamlar be. Güldüysem güldüm size ne?” duramadı orda, yürüdü. Eve gitmeyecek. İçindeki ’sinemadan çıkmış kişi’yi öldürdüler. Sağ kalan sıkıntılı, kızgın.””

- Yusuf Atılgan, Aylak Adam

Wishing you the best in the coming year. /efe

Wed, 22 Dec 2010 17:28:43 +0000

Wishing you the best in the coming year. /efe

"Müzakere ve pazarlıklar sanıldığı gibi masada halledilmez, aslında masaya oturmadan bitirilir, masa..."

Tue, 21 Dec 2010 13:42:12 +0000

“Müzakere ve pazarlıklar sanıldığı gibi masada halledilmez, aslında masaya oturmadan bitirilir, masa sadece redaksiyon içindir. Baştan yaptığın plan, ona göre oluşturduğun strateji ve buna uygun olarak belirli bir süreç içinde uyguladığın politikalarla karşındakini önceden (o farketse de farketmese de) kıskıvrak bağlarsın, o, ihtilaf çıkıp da müzakere masasına oturulduğunda çok geç kaldığını orada idrak eder, ancak kendisine önerileni (dikte edileni) bir anlaşma metnine dönüştürür, bu arada birkaç da iyileştirici ama neticeyi değiştirmeyen rötuşla kendini ferahlatır!… Bütün büyük ustalar müzakere konularını müzakere masasından önce hallederler!”

- Reha Tanör

Bir gün bir derviş, bir kucak dolusu elma ile bayırlar aşan bir genç kıza rastlamış.. Bozkırın...

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 13:25:15 +0000

Bir gün bir derviş, bir kucak dolusu elma ile bayırlar aşan bir genç kıza rastlamış.. Bozkırın sıcağında yorgunluktan al almış kızın yanakları..

“Nereye gidersin? Ne doldurdun kucağına?” Diye sormuş derviş.

Uzak bir tarlayı işaret etmiş kız: “Sevdiğim çalışıyor orada… Ona elma götürüyorum.”

“Kaç tane” diye soruvermiş derviş.

Kız… şaşkın: “İnsan sevdiğine götürdüğü şeyi sayar mı hiç?” deyivermiş..

Ve usulca koparıvermiş derviş elindeki tespihin ipini!

"If you build it, they won’t come."

Sun, 14 Nov 2010 17:02:23 +0000

“If you build it, they won’t come.”

- /efe

I think I made my friend Yuko Matsunaga famous!

Tue, 02 Nov 2010 06:24:08 +0000

I think I made my friend Yuko Matsunaga famous!

It’s time to wear your dancing shoes..

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 10:22:56 +0100

It’s time to wear your dancing shoes..

How Monty Python and the Holy Grail helped to define...

Tue, 05 Oct 2010 17:43:18 +0100

How Monty Python and the Holy Grail helped to define irreverence; and became an instant cult classic.