you've been wonderful.

thank you for taking part, guys. it's time for the answers.

* means you guys got it
+ means you didn't, better luck next time

the answers:

1. a ring that is not round would be a boxing ring *
2. breads that aren't breads would be sweetbreads (meats) +
3. plants that should give us chickens are eggplants *
4. wise name for not-so-wise? wise guy. (or something to that effect, like wise-crack or wise-ass) +
5. killer apples are pineapples *
6. they wear their emotions on their sleeves, passion fruits do *
7. cauliflowers don't bloom, thankfully *
8. coconuts and whatever technicalities you can get away with *
9. h2o melon would be honeydew *
10. horse radish, the main ingredient of wasabi * (well done, whoever got this one. it's tough.)
11. brussels sprouts aren't from brussels *
12. french/freedom fries aren't from france *
13. a kiwi! it's slang for referring to a new zealander +

the riddle:

i speak of a ring that is not round,
and a bread that does not rise;
of a plant from which chickens abound
and a wise name for those not wise.

there are apples that if they fell
would have left poor newton dead,
and fruits that display well
the strong emotion that makes them red.

not all flowers have petals to show;
not all nuts grow out of the land;
not a watermelon, but a melon of H2O;
neigh a fruit, this nippon fire-brand.

belgium didn't invent this veggie;
france didn't make those potato things;
and this one's a fruit that should not be
thanked for making the lord of the rings.

crackpots (again).

<---begin shameless plug here--->
for those of you who're new here, i'd like to direct your attention to the crackpots, a website that my friend and i started a few months ago. after a short lull, we've returned to the scene. old and new readers alike can expect frequent updates and our economy-sized box of wanton humour and insanity.
<---shameless plug ends here--->

naveen g.

i went down to centro on friday night.

reason for me to head to centro was a good one. my cousin (father's sister's son) from new york came down on thursday and he was headlining at centro. the brilliant thing is that my cousin's a doctor. he just graduated from medical school.

he's been moonlighting as a dj since he started college. he works weekdays and spends weekends locked in his room making music on his computer. what a way to pursue your passion, really. he's already cut a few cds with his label deepdish. his music is a deep-kind of trance, and after listening to it for a bit at the club, i think it's really good (even though i hate techno and all that jungle/house/trance). he doesn't stick to a catchy tune (hello norman cook) through his tunes but likes to experiment. cool thing is, while he was setting up, his girlfriend explained to us what he was doing by flipping through his cd album. "he's memorising where all his cds are," she said. this so that he can play to the crowd and switch tunes quickly if they don't like what they're hearing. wow.

he left today. i hope he comes back soon. he's starting his residency soon and he'll be working in a harlem hospital next year. if that isn't getting extensive experience, then i don't know what is (miami, maybe?).

the really sad thing, though, is that this is the first time i've ever really met him in person. i'll definitely visit him when i'm over at brown.

question authority.

on the way home today, i was attempting to sketch something in my notebook with a permanent marker. now that sufficient time has passed, my stunning ability to draw has rendered this page of my notebook what some would term as 'unusable.' and i am unable to tell what i originally set out to draw, my memory having run away with the cat and his fiddle and that spoon feller.

nature called on the way home and despite my best efforts, i realised that i needed to find a gents. i did, and if the sight of it didn't make you queasy, the smell of it certainly would. circumstances reigned, however, so i had no choice but to persevere. into the cubicle i went. as i stood there, i noticed that someone (or some people) had taken the time to scribble all over the walls of the cubicle. entries ranged from the pseudo-romantic ("ST (heart) WL") to the informative ("LIFE SUCKS"), but only one caught my eye. it read: "question authority."

after i had sorted things out between the toilet bowl and myself, i whipped out my marker-pen and scribbled something beneath that line. with a smile, i left to wash my hands.

it now reads:

question authority.

why?

reading ebooks on my palm.

be a philosopher, but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.
- david hume, an enquiry concerning human understanding

i don't know if i'm glad or unhappy that i'm 28.02% through his book. it's a great deal to take in, even when you look past his complicated, wordy and verbose use of english.

my brand-new reading list is not for the faint-hearted: kant, hobbes, plato, xenophon, woodrow, locke, hume, nietzsche, tolstoy, dostoevsky, mill, huxley, smiles. a grand total of 41 texts on philosophy, religion, ethics, etiquette, psychology and sociology. worse still is my target to finish them all by the start of july. so much for my spawn comics collection.

an all-encompassing sense of nothing.

i dropped by my friend's workplace today to pass him some university guidebooks that i thought he might find useful. i travel to his camp once a week for my physiotherapy sessions, so i visit his office whenever i get the chance to. on wednesday i decided to sit down and stay a bit longer.

we discussed universities and the difference between them. my friend read aloud from the guidebook and we threw our own comments into the pot. neither of us knew that the university of chicago was considered an elite school. he has a place there, and i think he's going to take it.

eventually we talked about life in general; the way two people talk about life when they know little about one another's past, present and future, and more importantly, what they make of those three facets of time. our conversation probed and prodded, looking for something that we could both open our minds to. inevitably we touched on something that allowed us to speak with voices of belief and conviction - a topic that, despite its inherent difficulties in grasping and conveying ideas, encouraged us to bare ourselves to one another without revealing enough to make us feel awkward.

we talked about life. the meaning of; the purpose of; the beginning of; the end of; the fulfillment of. life.

society would see my friend as jaded, disillusioned or resigned. to them, he's just another matrix-inspired rebel amongst us. one that can be quietened by categorically ignoring. i don't see him that way, though. it's not that i've suddenly taken to siding with the underdogs, but i feel that if a man can carry so much conviction over something that it would change the way he behaves and interprets the world around him, then he is worth understanding.

he believes in a sort of vague emptiness. that everything, no matter how satisfying it may appear to be at the moment, is ultimately transient. there is no known path to fulfillment (something which he says is more like an 'on-off' switch than a pot that is slowly filled to the brim). he wants to live a fulfilling life but when he stops to assess things, he realises that everything he does is futile and pointless. late nights out at clubs, fun with friends, academics... everything vanishes with time or death. he believes that nothing is the only something there is.

being an agnostic, he believes that god gives people greater awareness of the troubles in their lives. troubles, that may, at some length of thought and reasoning, not really be trouble at all. he dislikes people who try to reason faith out, and i agree with him on that. don't prove to me that what you believe in exists; show me without trying and i will give belief a chance. faith is inherently an logicless concept (as opposed to logical or even illogical). it is man trying to grasp a concept that is bigger than himself.

i asked him why he's still living now if he sees no purpose in life. how can a man live, if all he sees and feels is nothing? he said that he still feels emotional bonds sometimes. he lapses in and out of this emptiness. he still has feelings for his family, but at times, even they are overshadowed by the thoughts that their love is just a temporary high. that it will fade away someday, just like everything else.

what about hope, i asked. do you think it's better to live a life of resignation, where you can never be disappointed because you have no expectations? you can never feel genuinely happy because the realisation that what you're doing now doesn't matter anyway drags you below the surface and away from breaths of fresh air, like the undercurrents of a vast ocean. isn't it better to cling on to hope? to ride the rollercoaster of life? apply to disappointments your belief that they are actually nothing, but when you fall in love, when you see beauty, when you sweat, when you help someone out of compassion, when adrenaline is pumping through your veins.. feel them as they are.

what of hope? i asked. man lives in the hope that someday we will find fulfillment. "life shouldn't just happen to you", i told him, quoting a friend's friend, who wrote that on her website, "you should happen to life." if you don't explore your emotions, your abilities and your weaknesses, it seems more than likely that you won't ever find fulfillment in your life. it won't just knock on your door one day, take you out to coffee and explain itself to you.

so what is fulfillment anyway, i asked him. isn't it different for different people? your idea of fulfillment could be different from mine. or is it actually a universal concept? he said that fulfillment would make him feel happiness, no, joy. the kind that emanates from within. he would feel satisfied; content. he was struggling to describe it, so i asked him, if you don't really know what it'll make you feel like, how're you ever going to realise when you've attained it? he was describing an end he himself said was near impossible to experience. his point got across though; true fulfillment is a high or sense of satisfaction and fullness that you can't get rid of, even if you tried to.

i can empathise with my friend, not because i can imagine what he's feeling. i'm actually like him in several ways. cold to emotion at times, and easily overwhelmed at others. we can handle disappointment well, and tragedy even better. we realise that many of the things we do are pointless, yet we still do them. why? because we choose to. we are compelled to believe that somewhere within this futility is direction, purpose and hope.

hope. what a lovely word. god is hope, isn't he? what is hope then, to the godless?

blaise pascal, when not tinkering with his triangle, put forward a theory that became popularly known as pascal's wager. simply put, he deduces that it is better (ie the probabilities are in favour of) to believe that god exists. he gives three outcomes. one, we don't believe, and he exists. that's bad. two, we don't believe, and he doesn't exist, big deal. three, we believe and he exists. great. two out of three ain't bad, as they say in the suburbs. whether or not i subscribe to that theory is a different matter. one thing that people try to do to anything they cannot understand is to rationalise it and explain it in terms that they are familiar with. they bypass understanding and seek only the conviction and belief of others. pascal tried to use probabilities. laypeople try to use simple deductions and logic. scientists boast their grandoise theories, hard evidence and extensive research. these men conjure up hope and fulfillment in their little test-tubes.

i can only fear that one day god will be reduced to a binary figure.

did i mention...

that you guys are no fun at all? not even a single attempt to show for yourselves. i hope you're all too busy to try. yes. i hope that's it. for your own safety.

---

i am indebted to this world
for the nothing it has given me
you look me in the eye, lord
but my reflection is all i see
my shadow grows darker still,
tainted thoughts beseige me
but i have your saving word
come lord; my friend. please teach me.

riddle me this.

i speak of a ring that is not round,
and a bread that does not rise;
of a plant from which chickens abound
and a wise name for those not wise.

there are apples that if they fell
would have left poor newton dead,
and fruits that display well
the strong emotion that makes them red.

not all flowers have petals to show;
not all nuts grow out of the land;
not a watermelon, but a melon of H2O;
neigh a fruit, this nippon fire-brand.

belgium didn't invent this veggie;
france didn't make those potato things;
and this one's a fruit that should not be
thanked for making the lord of the rings.

---

there are 13 answers in total. see if you can figure them out.

brown.

i thought i'd share my application essay with you guys, because it speaks so much about myself, something that i thought these questions could never make me do. the way the application form was structured and planned out, i had the freedom to write whatever i wanted to and not what i needed to. there were so many drafts for this essay, that i got lost in them all at one point. this essay is still unfinished somewhat, because i rushed it towards the end, but it still captures quite well what i intended it to.

---

the beautiful thing about being able to come back home when travelling anywhere, i have come to realise, is that i can look out of the same window on the way there and back again and see everything on both sides of the path i've taken. i walk this path in life only once, and there's no coming back, unfortunately. there are countless windows. i’ll look through many of them on the way to my destination, hoping to see something different; something better in my life. inevitably, i'll miss a few sights here and there, but it's in making the most out of what i do get to see that will determine the way things turn out for me. i don't want to spend my days searching for life's meaning. i have always wanted to find out how i can put more meaning into my life.

a trip with my family to south africa a few years ago gave me a chance to feel the pulse of the world outside my own. little did i expect to be enlightened by the southern tip of the dark continent. south africa is a vibrant, beautiful country. i’ve seen shows about her on television, but one can't capture atmosphere on film. the country has its problems like any other, but the natural beauty of her lands and people is unsurpassed by anything i have ever seen. i watched an imax documentary on the serengeti years ago, but you have to really be there to feel the ground rumble beneath your feet as the wildebeest storm past. cape of good hope, the third most southern cape on the african continent, is a slice of heaven on earth. there i stood, precariously perched atop a cliff’s edge as the clouds flew right through me. it felt like it was happening the other way around, really. the countless natural features tugged and tossed around my emotions: cascading waterfalls, abysmal valleys, endless plains, homeless beggars, shanty towns and the like. however, towards the end of my vacation, something transpired which made me stop and think about how this world really works. at a traffic junction in one of the suburban districts, a coloured man strolled up to our car and pulled a gun out. in broad daylight, he pointed it at the driver, my uncle, and demanded money in afrikaans. my uncle nonchalantly sped off, oblivious to the paleness of his passengers. "they do that," he explained, "to welcome tourists to johannesburg. murder is a far worse crime to be accountable for than armed robbery, so they'll never pull the trigger." every country like south africa has a different (and sometimes shocking) way of working, but what is undeniable is that everything still works. the people just pick up their baggage again, and keep on moving. people may have different ways of begging, talking or acting but the outcome is essentially the same in singapore, india, germany, california, new york, arizona, australia, dubai, indonesia, malaysia and every other place i’ve been to in my life. people just keep on moving.

it wasn't a life-altering experience, though. even such memories start to dissolve in my mind as the years go by. however, each experience registers something deep within me, and gradually i am shaped. each experience changes the way i perceive the next. the words of jd salinger, harper lee and bertrand russell and the many books on philosophy and history that i have read seem trivial compared to my experiences. in pretoria’s national heritage museum, i learnt how mahatma gandhi fine-tuned his art of peaceful resistance in south africa which he later used to great effect against the british in india. i realise now that i am the second indian to have gone to south africa to (unwittingly) fine-tune that art. i resist what i am comfortable with because i know that it is the only way i can ever create new ideas and opinions. only when we challenge the norm do we really see the world with our own eyes. i don’t want to live my life in regret of not having tried that. right now i spend my time challenging what students accept as charity here in singapore. with my book and various initiatives in schools, i seek to convince youths to donate their time, more than their money, to the less fortunate.

my short, poignant trip to south africa taught me only one lesson, one that i have come to learn very well. there is more to life than just our material comforts. i’m not saying that i live the life of an ascetic, though. i’m a young adult and i’m no different from my peers at a superficial level. i occasionally pick up an album from my favourite alternative groups, i spend my army allowance on a new pair of cymbals for my drum set and i enjoy the latest flicks with my friends just as much as the next person does. the truth is that we are all bound by something greater than just our common ancestral roots. what makes us human is our capacity for compassion, for knowledge and for communication. i want to live my life in service to the world around me. touching lives has always been a dream for me, and i never want to believe that it is something out of my reach.

recently, i read a book that recounted the history of the british isles. one of the accounts struck me with a message that still reverberates in my mind: william the conqueror tripped and fell on his hands when he landed on english soil to claim its crown, and as the crowd around him gasped at the seemingly evil omen, he called out, “see, my lords, i have, by the grace of god, taken possession of england with both of my hands!” the life i live is all about perspective, and it’s the silver lining around every cloud i see that keeps me moving in the right direction. being able to see the extraordinary in ordinary places, people and events lets me put more meaning into my life. i don’t need to be different to see things differently. to me, it’s not about taking the proverbial path less travelled but rather, taking in the path less marvelled.

a letter.

dear university,
i would like to share with you the thoughts running through my mind. i am undoubtedly grateful for your acceptance package, though i am neither thrilled nor relieved. the feeling is one i can't find the word for, but i'd like to think of it as the perfect opposite of resignation - a feeling of purposefulness, coupled with renewed vigour and hope.

there is something about you that i would like to share with you. i've never met you before, i had never heard of you two years ago, i hardly know you and i cannot begin to fathom the experiences that you've been through. you are a strange acquaintance of mine. in all honesty, you are no different from many other universities. you might ask me what it is about you that sets you apart from them. if i told you that it was your presence, your ambience, your faculty, your reputation or your tradition, i would be lying.

flipping through the papers that you passed me some time ago, one question caught my eye. it asked me to tell you about what i had accomplished, from the biggest things down to the small, seemingly insignificant ones. i didn't have to list it all out and then use my essays to explain what the stuff in the list meant. i enjoyed answering that question, and writing the subsequent essay on how i think and what i believe in. in just two well thought-out questions, i understood something about you that no article nor picture could make me understand. you are different not because of what you stand against, but what you stand for. to me, you stand for everything that education should be - by students, for students.

we shall be friends now, brown, and we will share some wonderful memories together in the near future. you'll be hearing from me again soon.

sincerely,
rahul

odd.

i don't know what's stranger: the deathly silence of the kop last night or the fact that liverpool, for once, beat a team comfortably.

at long last.

i got my big fat package from brown university today. fall 2005, here i come.