| Thursday, July 07, 2005 |
| a most interesting ride, indeed |
Yesterday on the train ride home a couple of interesting things happened.
Firstly, somewhere along the way I realised that someone near me was wearing a really nice fragrance. Very clean-smelling, like maybe fresh laundry. I'm not a big fragrance person, usually I find them overpowering, especially on women. Strangely, the few times I've smelled a fragrance on a man, I found it nice. I don't know if this is supposed to be some base instinct thingy. Haha.
Anyway I soon realised it was this neat and rather nice-looking fellow standing near me. Eventually I got a seat, and after a while this guy sat down beside me too. He fell asleep and started leaning on me, as people do when they fall asleep on trains. It's happened to me before, and it's pretty embarrassing to wake up with a start to find that you're leaning on the person beside you. Usually I straighten up again discreetly and pretend to sleep again. Invariably, of course, I will fall asleep again, and the pattern will repeat itself. At one point the guy was leaning so much on me I thought I might crush the person on the other side of me! But I didn't know what to do - to push him back would have been kind of unkind, and embarrassing. So I just held on until he woke up, which took quite a while. Did I enjoy myself because he smelt nice and looked quite nice too? Erm, not really, I'm not like that. It was kind of awkward. But I wasn't grossed out, which I'd be if he smelt bad! Haha!
At some point I realised that someone was shouting "MATI!!!" (which is Malay for "die") This person would talk gibberish for a while and shout either MATI or DIE at intermittent times. At one point he said something like MY GRANDMOTHER HE DIE HERE. That's not a typo, he really said HE, or so I heard. He sounded a bit like he was speaking in tongues! Sometimes he sounded almost coherent, but the speech was too garbled to make out what he was saying. I wonder if he was listening to music or using a hands-free set. At one point the doors had just opened and people were walking in and he had come to the DIE!!! part of his monologue, so that really shocked the people coming in. That was kind of funny. At first I couldn't see him cos' the train was really crowded, but as the people cleared I saw that he wore specs and earbuds, a T-shirt (something about fitness in Singapore) black shorts and sandals. He actually looked quite clean and normal; his sandals looked new. He got down at Tampines.
I wonder what his story is. Later when I told Na about it she said she'd encountered the same guy on bus 28 the day before (in Tampines). We knew it was the same person because he was wearing the same thing (! meaning that he hadn't changed) and said more or less the same things, even though when she encountered him he was shouting MAD instead of MATI.
The nice-smelling nice-looking guy got down at my stop. Pasir Ris. Lol.
I've been reading A Beautiful Mind. Missed the movie when it was released, missed it when they broadcast it on Ch 5, and I don't see the VCD/ DVD selling anywhere. Anyway, it's quite fascinating. A ton of mathematical stuff that I don't understand in the slightest bit, and some I understand only slightly. Usually something like would have turned me off, but the author writes about it in a way that somehow captures the reader, despite what I sometimes felt was unnecessary information. I've never really liked or enjoyed Math, only perhaps during Sec 4 with A. Math when the problems were really easy and I simply enjoyed the technical aspects of it - apply formula, get answer. It's very satisfying to check your answers and find that they're correct. Still, I'd never have thought that Math could be beautiful, until I read this book, saw a little of the world through the mathematicians' eyes.
John Nash is a fascinating and compelling character. If not for his illness and genius I'd have called him an ingrate, a coward, irresponsible, selfish, narcissistic and the b-word. He did pretty awful things to his mistress, wife and two children, not to mention his students and colleagues. But he wasn't a bad person, I believe. He just didn't know how to relate to people and the world. Is this excuse enough for his behavior? Perhaps not. We all have the responsibility to handle ourselves as best as we can. But he had schizophrenia. Hmm. Geniuses are human too, perhaps even more vulnerable than normal people.
Strangely I identify with him in some areas - the alienation he felt, the sense of not being able to live up to one's own expectations. But he had great confidence and always worked hard at what he wanted to achieve. This is something to emulate. Though of course in my case I should put great confidence in my God instead of the self, which, as Nash as shown, is really fragile. |
posted by esther @ 11:48 PM  |
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| 3 Comments: |
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can lend me :(
its a pretty beautiful book from wad i've heard.
take care :)
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of course i can lend you...how to meet up though? :)
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of course i can lend you...how to meet up though? :)
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can lend me :(
its a pretty beautiful book from wad i've heard.
take care :)