Singaporean Tai-tais

Sometimes you get thrown by life.  Hard.

There’s nothing you can do but be optimistic and hope for the best.  It’s hard to prepare for the worst while hoping for the best, but it must be done.  There’s no point in complaining about your situation.  Just keep chugging and churning.

“Two young frogs fell into a bucket of milk. Both tried to jump to freedom, but the sides of the bucket were steep and no foundation was to be had on the surface of the liquid.

Seeing little chance of escape, the first frog soon despaired and stopped jumping. After a short while he sunk to the bottom of the bucket and drowned.

The second frog also saw no likelihood of success, but he never stopped trying. Even though each jump seemed to reach the same inadequate height, he kept on struggling. Eventually, his persistent efforts churned some milk into butter. From the now hardened surface of the milk, he managed to leap out of the bucket.”

Right now I’m just happy I’m not a frog.

Exactly a decade ago (1998), I went to see my friend in Egypt. She, along with her friends and professor, brought me to Port Said (the northermost portion of the Suez Canal Arabic بورسعيد, transliterated Būr Saʻīd) which faces the Mediterranean Sea. Reading the entry about the place send chills down my spine as I remembered that evening’s events.

“All in all it was a very interesting if not exhilarating evening as we strolled along the very busy, very festive streets. It was impossible to focus on any one thing as the noise generated by the hordes of people to our left and right, all male, could only be described as cacophonic. When we finally found a place to rest in on of the all-male joints where they play backgammon, cards, smoke, and drink sweet tea, I was a bundle of nerves ready to fall apart. The sheer bombardment of revelry and noise was tiring. I could now understand why people with chronic fatigue syndrome cannot stay in a roomful of people for too long even if they are just sitting there.

But the worst was yet to come as it turned out we were just killing time before the musical extravaganza of the night was to take place. Invited guests & performers from around the Suez joined in to sing, dance, and perform all sorts of revelry. There was no order that was apparent although there could have been and I just missed it or didn’t understand it. For their grand finale, the sole female (apart from us) in the crowd was brought into the human ring. I don’t understand Arabic but my friend said she was from Switzerland and had since moved there for a long time now.

I hated the blaring music which to me simply sounded like wailing. I did like the musical instruments though. Except for the incessant smoking by more than half of the crowd which left absolutely no pockets of fresh air and the potential brawl that almost put the show to a stop over some guys standing in the front preventing eager beavers in the back from being able to see, it was actually a very entertaining event.”

That is the title of Aldous Huxley’s book about the post-war era. In it, he mentions that the older people (in their 60’s) revel in arrested development. They insist on staying young and being young that they become anomalies because they never move on. I always thought that this was a new phenomenon. Apparently not.

Truly, nothing is new under the sun.

“Hotspur’s summary has a final clause: time must have a stop.  And not only must, as an ethical imperative and an eschatological hope, but also does have a stop, in the indicative tense, as a matter of brute experience.   It is only by taking the fact of eternity into account that we can deliver thought from its slavery to life.  And it is only by deliberately paying our attention and our primary allegiance to eternity that we can prevent time from turning our lives into a pointless or diabolic foolery.“