Monday, May 14, 2012

4am Conversations and Other Epic Stuff

I Had A Conversation at Four in the Morning and All I Got was A Bunch of New Friends, Honourable Mentions for the Rest of the Day from the Organising Staff, and a Vision to Change the World.

I went over to the YaleNUS Weekend on Saturday. I was vaguely aware it was going to be fun, but not in a real, concrete way: the adrenaline rush I had from meeting people in Japan must have spilled over to this. I had my doubts; I'm not very fond of the average Singaporean. Then again, the Japan experience undoubtedly dampened them until I was, on the whole, generally, it could be said, by and large, on the whole, optimistic.

So I turn up and go through the normal sales spin on YaleNUS, and somehow manage to stay awake through the whole thing. I enjoyed the lectures, all three of them; I especially loved how the professors were so passionate about their own subjects, and that passion translates to an eagerness for us students to learn.

But I think one of the highlights was the conversation I had with a bunch of other people at the Hangout Hotel at Mt Emily (which, might I add, always sounded like a hospital to me). We were playing taboo late into the night, which was interrupted by a Popeye's Chicken study break simulation, and somehow afterwards the game never resumed, but conversation slowly inched in, like the tide, and brought in the seriousness and intellectual discussion which took its place.

I'd like to think that Xi Min was the trigger, the catalyst for the discussion when he brought up the fact that experiencing the world was an important thing to do. It all snowballed from there, coming round to volunteering in Singapore and the education system and scientific paradigms and social discourse and paradigm shifts in society and the human race.

I have no details on the conversation, and a memory at 4 am is like a wet sieve. But I would love to say that I was pleasantly surprised that these people, whom I assumed to be typical Singaporeans, actually threw up a complex and intellectual discussion of which the likes I have never participated in before. When we broke up the meeting at that mythical hour, I felt like I had faith in these people, that Singapore was not a hopeless, lost country. Granted, ten people out of five million is but a handful, but now there is hope for the future.

I don't know what else to say, but I'm definitely going back.

Saxton Yale,
The Edna Man

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