Twisting in

Ok, I had a request a while back on a particular topic, but I cannot remember what it was, and I cannot be bothered to find out what it was, so I'm just going to ramble randomly now.

Been spending a great deal of time in the library recently, nothing like the time I started this weblog thing, but more than since then. Clearly, the lack of effort in the past two months or so has caught up to me. Well, things can't be that bad, except for the fact that my levels of productivity have attained new lows. When I wonder why, the only thing that springs to mind is that my enthusiasm for school has faded completely.

I can hear the cries of disbelief now. Dazhou, enthusiasm for school? Oxymoron. I cannot ever have been happy to work and go to school, can I?

Well, the truth is that once upon a time, I was looking forward to school. This was when I was in the army. Back then, I thought university would be fun, cool, interesting. I thought studying in the States would be a real learning experience. I wanted to discover more about myself and the world around me. As you can tell, this state of naivete was brought on by a state of intense boredom. The army, especially for NSFs, or National Service Fulltime kids, is the single most boring occupation in the world. Maybe excepting Singapore security guards. But at least those guys got to ogle skimpily clad teenage girls in the condominiums. In the army, there are essentially no girls. The only females are invariably superior in rank to you, and the only emotion engendered by their appearance is resentment and irritation at their refusal to bow to the authority of the knowledge and expertise of bored NSFs. Which is odd, because these are the smartest people in the army. Regulars are generally not too bright, and the smart ones are not hanging about the units rotting with bored NSFs. Those people are out becoming generals and the like. So at the operational level, a few morons command a bunch of bored kids, some of whom are the best and brightest in the country.

You can imagine the intense boredom this can create in the breast of one such as myself. I freely admit that I am extremely derisive of those people who are unable to muster, sustain and articulate a single coherent thought in their lives. I suppose that will earn me some flak, but hey, if you insist on respecting people who demand it, but are eminently incapable of earning a jot of it, that's your business, not mine. Just as people have a right to be stupid, I have a right to pour scorn on them. Unfortunately, I discovered that those in charge of me in the army belonged to precisely such an ilk. I shall not delve into details here. Suffice it to say that I had a devil of a time pretending to be extremely stupid, so that the work assigned to me, which I could complete in approximately one hundredth of the time thought necessary for it, would not be increased. Unfortunately, I did not succeed at this completely, and I was frequently asked to perform tasks beyond my original and intended level. Fortunately, I was lazy and irresponsible enough such that these tasks were rarely done promptly or satisfactorily, and this never spread too far.

Now, note that this attitude does not extend to every aspect of my life. It is only in this period of my life that I was completely unmotivated to be even slightly competent at anything asked of me. This was because there was no system of reward for competence, nor punishment for incompetence. Well, there was some punishment for incompetence, but the level of failure required here, defined by the level of the supervisors themselves, is astoundingly high. So I had no reason to be good at what was asked of me, and no reason to fear being bad at it.

So I was spectacularly bored. This was a period when my mental activity slowed to the pace of a rock. I basically went into suspended animation, for the brain, for two and a half years. The boredom drove me to think that any change would be better. University sounded appealing, simply for it's being at the end of the ordeal of military service. Also, the prospect of interacting with girls who were not empty-headed bimbos, as the crowd seemed to be in my NS social circle, sounded tremendously good. Of course, I have realised that this is clearly a shallow and meaningless goal. Especially when I realised the quality of girls in my school does not match up to my personal tastes. Not an absolute level, mind, but nobody particularly tuned to my frequency at least.

Besides, the thought of enjoying myself away from my parents sounded good. Unfortunately, it seems I was misinformed as to the funkiness of Chicago, as it is most definitely not nearly as interesting as Singapore. Which is saying something. Well, alright, maybe it's just the food. Still, food is important. Good food makes the day a little brighter, the moon a little rounder, company a little better, the earth spin a little faster. Without good food, life becomes a touch sad and lonely. I won't even go into family and friends here, as it should be fairly obvious.

As I spend more time here, school becomes less appealing, the States less welcoming, life less interesting. I have come to depend on others for entertainment and support after realising I have little within me to hold myself up after years of mental limbo. I am a tremendously boring fellow, at least to myself. There is nothing deep below. All there is is a knot of energy and intelligence, but without any substance or personality to feed upon, so it simply twists in upon itself, seeking something, anything, but finding nothing after all. The only remedy is to find sustenance externally.

Ok, I'm tired now, so I will elaborate on the specifics some other time. Stay tuned.