one by one ticking timebomb fun

ISD is so interesting. haha. really. everyone should go to the heritage center. and you really wouldn't think any interesting clandestine things happen in singapore, but the ISD personnel have a nice way of making pipe bombs and hijackings sound normal.

david lim, intrepid mountaineer, on the other hand feels a little off to me. i mean, all power to him for having conquered the peaks and an awful disease. it makes for really good storytelling and seriously reflects upon a man undaunted by even the greatest of challenges. he is an amazing person and to retain his optimism after all his experiences is wonderful.

but somehow, by turning the whole thing around and making it into a motivational speech cheapens everything. really. i don't know what his teammates think about what's he doing, but some of the things he said were obviously not very nice. and what i really think is that by making a business out of the whole thing, he's taking the experience away from his team. as much as i enjoyed his talk, which was quite a bit given my usually humourless approach to the entire course, i really couldn't get past my qualms over what he was doing. somehow, everything felt forced, like he was really trying to milk his 15 mins of fame for all it's worth. the messages made some sense, but i can't help but feel that they weren't, or perhaps shouldn't have been the point.

i'm sure we were all smart enough to have benefited from his talk even without the motivational speaker posturing that was included. i think david lim is an amazing person. but perhaps he should teach his lessons on his own terms without colouring it with pointless analysis. the experience really couldn't, or shouldn't, be pared down to it's parts. it somehow makes it just so much less powerful.

much more interesting though was encik othman wok. it's rare for someone to just walk out from the history books and into the same room you're sitting down in, and just having him there was great. it didn't matter that he never really answered any of our questions, because i hope i speak for everyone in saying that almost everything he had to share was fascinating. i had two questions in my mind that i wanted to ask but didn't get the chance (too slow to raise hand). i wanted to ask why he joined the PAP and what it felt to have lived through such tumultous times in light of the stability we seem to take for granted. i'm sure he would have launched into a 10 min speech on some totally unrelated matter if i asked, but it wouldn't have mattered, cos somehow it would have given us an answer. maybe not to those exact questions, but an answer nevertheless.

oh well, off to MINDS for community involvement. not really my cup of tea, but gotta make the best of it. everyone says it's particularly rewarding, so let's hope so.