I can’t remember the last time I wrote here without checking the last post. One of my readers has nudged me, more than once, to write something, so perhaps I shall write a fictional account of a man. Any resemblance to any persons living or dead is coincidental.
Chee Kang (CK) wakes up at 7am everyday, has cereal for breakfast, then showers, checks his email or does a little reading, then reports for work at 10.30am if it is his shift. At work, he is busy shifting books or magazines around, placing them in neat order, creating and re-creating precise, tidy arrangements out of piles of tangible mess in various places throughout the day. Otherwise, when he is not busy arranging things, he is punching numbers or scanning bar codes at his station. His work is repetitive, even boring. At every shift he repeats the exact same actions, arranging, tidying, pushing buttons or scanning codes.
But it is simple, and even peaceful, if not occasionally stressful because he often sees the exact same mess at the exact same locations several times a day, which he counters in exacting vain with the exact same action, only to have the exact same loop repeat itself all over again later. CK sometimes wonders if he should find, just out of curiosity, whether the insanely precise loop repeats itself at similarly precise intervals.
After his quite simple work is done, CK heads out for some chow if it is time to eat, or heads back home. CK feels lucky to have a simple, peaceful life. Some might call him a simpleton. Oh, yes, what they think of him, he knows, and he sometimes wonders if they know that he knows. Dismissive of him, yes, people are, many times even overtly, but in his mind CK is equally dismissive of their attitudes, often with a sigh, but not for himself.
In his free time CK observes, reads and listens. He observes people and their mannerisms, the way they talk and the way they act, when he is relaxing with a cup of coffee at a nearby coffee house once or twice a week with his favourite latte. With a voracious appetite, CK also devours the latest news from around the globe, piecing together the pieces of the puzzles that are his home, country and planet. He loves language and logic and the way phrases, sentences and paragraphs can be crafted to fit perfectly with each other to deliver seamless meaning, often finding poetry in the unlikeliest of places such as current affairs blogs.
Of his school days, CK remembers only a couple of teachers, and thought that most of university was useless in developing critical insight, a sharp, astute mind and most of all, exposure. Only those couple of teachers had taught him how to think, and not what to think, and that there exists a whole plethora of views and mindsets about just about anything. He feels that most of his education, while essential, was to turn him into a tool or cogwheel, albeit a polished one, to be applied to some profession than bring to it his expertise, resulting in his eventual distance from that entire system, which seemed at times to have been engineered – insidiously.
He wonders if the bourgeoisie elite tottering around toting Guccis and donning Armanis, who are often the root cause of the repeating loops at his work, realise the subtle ways they have bought into the whole scheme and that there are viable, alternative paths in life than being superficially great at the work one does while knowing next to nothing – or nothing – about the universe one inhabits and having an informed opinion, perhaps excepting the current value of X bond and Y derivative. Gaza – “huh? What?” West Bank – “oh, did it collapse in the recent financial crisis?” Gee. Describe the human condition – “er…??? That’s such a weird question… (i.e. ‘how should I know, why the heck are you asking me that’, politely).” CK is great at his work too, you know, but he isn’t a programmed robot – he refuses to be one.
CK, too, thinks complaining about elementary maths questions ridiculous. Einstein, Fourier, Laplace, Euler, Newton, Archimedes, Euclid, Pythagoras et al, just to name a few, didn’t sit around complaining about something they couldn’t solve, they moved on and found better ways to approach problems. Newton probably wasn’t exposed beforehand to apples rudely confronting his innocent crown, but he certainly didn’t stand around complaining about the one that hit his soon-to-be-inspired self. (CK advocates algebra for said elementary maths questions, and rejects the notion of not testing problem sums even though they involve first interpreting the problem in addition to actually doing the maths later, since that would entail doing maths for maths’ sake and not, surprise, surprise, as a way to logically approach a problem and tool to solve it.)
No, CK refuses to be defeated by petty maths questions he’s never seen before, crafty systems of socialisation (for you politics heads out there who don’t realise the existence of a third meaning of this word in addition to making socialist and fraternising, it is the adoption of the behavioural patterns of the surrounding culture), indefatigable people seemingly bent on making his workplace living hell and most of all he refuses to be ignorant of the happenings in, on or out of the green and blue sphere hurtling with blinding speed through seemingly empty space he calls home.
CK thinks that’s not too much of a tall order. He has a mind he can call his own and boy, is he going to use it! He likes learning about the world, perhaps even takes it to a fault; engaging his mind is the reason why he chose to become a bookstore assistant in the first place, leading a simple, peaceful life so he could better apply his energies to enrich his worldview. CK is a sophisticated “simpleton”, the kind of person appearing simple, which “sophisticated” big-shot bourgeoisie types masquerading as well-educated like to scoff at but who wouldn’t have a clue as to the question – “what do you actually know?”
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I could not resist adding in the part about parents complaining about maths questions in elementary school graduation exams: “The setters made it too difficult, the kids haven’t been exposed to this type of questions before! I’ve never seen my kid cry after an exam!” Perhaps the more pressing question is that they haven’t been exposed to the sort of invaluable life-skills that allow them to deal with difficulty and uncertainty – and whose fault is that?
养不教，父之过，教不严，师之过。Notice that some things are written first in this expression.
