Part of what I've taken life's lessons to be lies in that the more you know the more you don't know. Like I tell my students, it doesn't necessarily presuppose a demolishing of confidence. It makes one open up one's eyes to see the world around, to learn to be more open, accepting, understanding and to learn a healthy respect of life and for people. Sure, I have my arrogant moments, but I take it that arrogance makes you human. You become aware of it, laugh at it, and then move on. I tell my students, who keep asking me about life. I suppose, like how people like Si and Mafia remain enigmatically wise and intelligent to me, although they maintain they have had a decade or more of a headstart, I become the wise one to those after me. Somewhat wise, perhaps in a relative sense, because most of the time I think I can sound really dumb, I have pockets of silent mutism because there are a lot of things I obviously do not know. I tell the younger ones I'm not here just to give them perfect A's or to help them to pass. Alot of the onus lies in themselves. To learn how to think. To learn about life, to sort out one's life philosophy. To have some sort of fuzzy directions in life, to say the least.

Sometimes I am guilty of asking them questions that leave them hanging in the air, and those that obviously are wrong, except that you don't see the wrong-ness until you see out of the box, and with the aid of logic and intuition. These questions, not about life, but merely in math, and the sciences. In English. In history, literature, current affairs, etcetera. I tell them that you apply these to life. Sure, you find mathematical shortcuts to make sense, you tease the hell out of the brain, engage in mental sums to eff up the brain and derive clarity from confusion. You learn to see how the laws of physics and biochemistry applies to life. How you relate history to what's going on in the world, how you study things by first having a healthy understanding of their original context. That the dynamics of say, heart beat is what gives you life. To pique that curiosity so you'd learn more. If you want to learn more about terrorism, go ahead and read. About religion, about culture and customs. I try to answer them to the best that I can, and then they start to read up on their own. Which is heartening, after which they start posing more questions. To see the light shining in their eyes is priceless-- that zest for life that is a far cry from the deadened, woodened despondent and lackadaisical look I first saw when we started.

People tell me I am intelligent and I write well, but really, apart from natural propensities I would be nothing and pretty much parochial in terms of thought structure if I never did sociology. Like the broken record that I am, it remains the best gem I've ever discovered. It made me considerably less arrogant, less ethnocentric. It taught me what 'verstehen' is. It gave me a lot of crucial trekking tools in my life. I remember my first semester. Two hours of Mafia weekly were enough to eff my mind to shards, it taught me a lot of philosophical arguments and wrenched me away from the narrow frameworks I used to have. It made me stop rolling my eyes at current affairs because I was taught by society that it is good to at least pretend that you are apathetic. I remember Sage in Singapore Society Class-- I learnt a healthy respect yet critique for politics. I remember my Social Problems class-- it made sense of a lot of things in the world and it really thought me how to think. It opened my eyes way beyond the stuff I was engaged in in life-- to the evils of ethnocentrism, to the brutality of massacres and genocides, to the real picture of slavery, and of course the pitfalls of official statistics that remain firmly etched in my mind. It channeled my bitterness away from being stuck in Singapore because I had no money. It made me desire to learn more, to be a better human being, even if I couldn't really make sense of those sentiments back in the day. The Socratic method played on my brain provided a healthy breeding ground for a multitude of opposing ideas to ferment and engage in sensual swordplay in my head. It made me read. It made me go to Answers.com. And it taught me how to write properly, way beyond dumb little self-absorbed stuff which I admittedly still engage in these days in the name of the unholy trinity of fun, reflexivity and catharsis. For the first time I actually enjoyed going to school in my entire life. I always say I learn from the School of Life, because I explore more than I ought to, sometimes I think I'm lucky that I haven't been kidnapped or dead yet. Really. But I think that sociology provided me with a School of LIfe within a School, with that intellectual context. That breeding ground where the pupae in my mind hatch into crazy buzzing mosquitoes that sting the mental sanctum, multiply even more, providing me with exponentially clearer bouts of enlightenment and elucidation. Giving me a healthy balance with all the other things I read or engage in.

I learnt that until you learn how to think, you'll never be able to think. And so without knowing it, for the past few years, I've been applying the same methods onto my students, albeit in a less refined way. I'm crazy, but to be told that you've changed lives by quite a few, and to know that some secretly respect you and actually aspire to be like you (I laugh so hard) is quite befuddling but doubtlessly a good impetus to carry on. In the midst of the drudgery, when I'm lamenting the heavy school workload and other demands to be balanced. I swear it's really weird, but most of my students I've been presented with (or at least those I've continued with) are really weird and mad, but somehow I see immense potential in them.

It's also quite heartening to have some actually having a heart-to-heart, sober talk with you, telling you these same words, calling themselves a 'student of P'. To me, it remains pretty much ludicrous. Like I tell B, I'm so much younger than him. I'm crazy. I really am.

I mean, hell, I am fucking playful. And then I am mad. I engage in crazy bouts of seriousness. Then laughter. Afterwhich placidity follows. One hour with me and I can either exhibit one mood or ten different moods, oscillating between different states of mind and jumping from topic to topic. That is, if you follow through. This warrants me to be classified as insane or schizophrenic, but I remain highly skeptical of clinical definitions as they are. I mean, DSM-IV, a test here and there, a version I, II and III of a particular scale, etcetera. Alot of it hinges on the will, on self-fulfilling prophecy and the power of discourse that seeks to prescribe, discipline and constrain. Like Mafia was quipping, "Hell I could be a depressed person but I never know." Makes fucking sense. Na beh,

If I were to diagnose myself, the Medical School Syndrome bias notwithstanding, oh God, I'd probably have at least ten mental disorders. But really, much as I ramble, I maintain that I have a huge affective range. Some have a small range, with low intensity. I happen to experience the entire huge spectrum strongly, although I've learnt how to control them without becoming a pawn. I've put the ring over the nose of the bull and most of the time, I steer the ship, unless when I want all my thoughts in the typhoon of the mind to spill out in a happy yet chaotic coalesce, for the reason that I want them to ignite.

I remain the whackjob that I am. Happy are the mad. Happy are the mad who can be placid. Happy are the mad who remain mad enough to admit that they are mad.

And happy are the mad who know that happiness is nothing but illusory.

Alot of people, I realize, cannot take me when I'm serious. Sometimes people get uncomfortable when you know stuff, when you are in-tune. They feel threatened, I feel funny just saying these, from a combination derived from reflection and instinct. Ah well, instinct remains highly important to me. It functions as my muse. Especially because there are some things you cannot rationalize.

Not everyone can stomach what I say, beyond comprehending what the hell I am actually saying. Not to say that I'm perversely intelligent, but perhaps in terms of figures-of-speech and in terms of different amounts and types of knowledge. Although I really do not think that what I say will render anyone with that severe a case of figurative gastritis.

Alot of people too, cannot take me as the person that I am. The one who is really more interested in learning than in bimbotic preening. But I realize that a claim remains a claim. It's just like saying that I eat alot but suddenly with you I may eat little, although the main reason is because I'm as nervous like hell, the jitters orchestrate the chaotic fluttering of the butterflies in my stomach, the acid splashes upon my stomach walls because the winged things are merely illusory, I remain idiotically scared. Sure, I am scared of some things. Some things and people make me nervous. I remain still with some degree of social phobia, although I remain a good actress, because essentially Shakespeare said it best that all the world's a stage. I may be bold but concomitantly afraid-- we all are walking paradoxes, it's just that some of us remain greater contradictions than others, functioning well with dichotomies that delineate the boundaries and everything else in-between. Some people therefore, remain afraid of the side of me when I speak about the stuff that really interest me. When I muse about life and all it has. About intellectual stuff that they call 'intellectual'-- that title remaining daunting for a supreme fraud like myself. They roll their eyes. And so we talk about easier stuff, even if for the sake of talking. Dealing with people. Mmmm. And with those whom I can engage in those stuff with, it takes a certain wavelength, not necessarily similarity because I love diversity, but rather, openness and acceptance. I remain in love with feeling intellectually stunted when faced with really intelligent and/or wise folks. Though not all the time. It feels good to feel good, to have that entire affectual range.

Sometimes I get tired of the cocky idiots who think they can charm me off my feet that easily, who think they can sweep me away to the moon where they have Tony Bennett's voice and croon Fly Me To The Moon. Most cocky idiots are generic, to say the least. Most classifications of people, be it in class, age, income, education, habitus, etcetera, have got benchmarks; whereas unorthodoxy has no standards. And so I'm happier holding up the figurative vacuum cleaner to sweep these people way under the carpet. I'm pretty glad for the unorthodox people and the madcaps who've walked into my life, though.

Obviously, I am highly inspired tonight. So highly charged, even though I have two over hours of sleep time remaining before statistics class tomorrow.

I am admittedly a different person or non-self with different people. Because different situations and time and moods shape me differently, and the composite of whatever antecedents there may have been, even in the last five seconds, may channel a different part of me or change me.

I wonder, who will be the first human being to see all my different sides and faces. Pretty intriguing. Mystery is as such, even though there's a high margin of probability that some mysteries remain unsolvable.