Phaedrus is back

Walked for 5-6 hours in the streets of Singapore - the law doesn't allow to walk on the express ways else would have walked there also.
Have been reading the "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" and like what happened every time I have read it - the spirit hangs over the head and the question keeps popping up.

It rained hard while I was standing at the City Hall station.
Interestingly, never noticed how people react to rain. Different people do different things. Some people run on the road to reach the other side faster.
Never thought that for Singaporeans the next best possible alternative for umbrella was Newspaper. Interestingly, people with umbrellas were more wet then the people without - reason being that those without umbrellas were either not walking in the rain - avoiding it or rather running.
Wish I could take my camera out and capture all those people.
Interestingly, Singaporean kids notice the wet shorts more than the other kinds - may be this is a too good and disciplined of a place.

On the way back on Boat Quay noticed this old man cycling across.
It had been a bad day on road - only two photographs and that two average ones.

With Phaedrus in your head - I guess life is different.

tuesdays with morrie - excerpts from the book

Do you know you are going to die one day.
Yes we all know that human beings have a life span.
We have read all the biology and life sciences and its another fact.
But the person we are talking about is not anyone else but "YOU".
But it's not another FACT of life.

And the moment you can relate that its not some one else we are referring to but "YOU" - a lot of things which appeal a lot will loose there meaning or they will appear as mere things.
A new paradigm will emerge, the outlook to life will change a new path will emerge - the path to salvation or a path of self discovery or the spiritual path. You have the option to ignore it to or to embrace it - whatever you do. It's a temporary decision of today. Cause tomorrow the same path will emerge again and it shall rise every time you realize you are about to die. And until one makes that choice, the same wuestion will keep popping up. one can avoid it, delay it cannot run away from it.And then only you will know what it means to LIVE

Picked up this book in the Chua Chu Kang library and now am reading it sitting in the Jurong East library. A simple book by Mitch Albom about, in his own words "an old man, a young man and life's great lessons".


"When you learn how to die, you learn how to live"


Excerpt I

Yes, I said, but if aging were so valuable, why do people always say "Oh, if I were young again". you never heard people say "I wish I were sixty-five"
He smiled. " You know what that reflects? Unsatisfied lived. Unfulfilled lives. Lives that haven't found any meaning. Because you have found any meaning in your life, you don't want to go back. You want to go forward. You want to see more, do more. You can't wait till sixty five.
"Listen you should no something.All younger people should know something. If you are battling against getting older, you are always going to be unhappy, because it will happen anyhow.
And the fact is, you are going to die eventually.

Excerpt II

We've got a form of brainwashing going in our country. "Do you know how the brain wash people? They repeat the same thing over and over again. And that's what er do in this country. Owning things is good. More money is good. more property is good. More commercialism is good. More is good. more is good. We repeat it - and have it repeated to us - over and over until no-body bothers to even think otherwise. The average person is so fogged up by all this, he has no perspective on what's important anymore.

There's a big confusion in this country over what we want and what we need.