Quite recently, after numerous literary influences like CHIRunning and Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, I've been more inclined to believe in the supreme importance of free will, but also how it has become bogged down by so many external influences that we lose who we really are. Like when Katsumoto said 'What is it you want for yourself?' in the Last Samurai, what is it that we REALLY WANT? Is NICE clothes, NICE shoes, NICE house, NICE car, NICE trophy......etc. Or have we lost our sense of value ? It's hard to see beyond that mortal fabric that we are inevitably bound to but clearly life is more than changing fashion trends, counter trends. This and other factors have led to the deterioration of the overall quality of life, the mortal shell of self, the body, has become a stylised icon, with the excessive need to look good, such to the point where it becomes an indulgence of that, the flesh, although given that its the only tangible part of self that exists within our grasps, we need to define reality, the reality of test scores is the attempt to bring into being a tangible form of intelligence and this is seen everywhere, qualifications, PHDs, simply hollow, but its what drives the world now. Sigh.

Then on the idea of idealism. Isn't the reality we experience now the ideals of others? Inventors bring into being their ideas which at that time seem crazy, and slowly these inventions have embedded themselves into the framework of society's backbone, and suddenly we are assimilated into it. The law in any country, that itself is an ideal is it not? The law created that states that no one is to steal or whatever is still inevitably broken. Thus, for those that have compromise their idealism for realism, I feel are merely existing and not living, the real world is an ideal and it has become stagnant.

And back to the third rock. I went to visit Sungei Buloh nature reserve today. Pleasant experience, and good for clearing your head up, though I was pretty paranoid about the crocodiles and then there were the mosquitoes. We hunt mosquitoes. Period. But I was the one hunted. After about an hour walking, I realised there was a mini swarm of mosquitoes chasing me and when I stopped they attacked, kinda like elementals on a mechwarrior, but yea, I had a ton of bites that made my skin burn, and to a certain degree there's a certain highness you get when you've been bitten by so many mosquitoes. I guessed I've just donated enough blood to start another dengue outbreak. =p
(8:19 AM)