‘existentialism’

The word 'existentialism' popped into my head suddenly on Sunday morning, whilst I was enjoying a sumptuous yum cha with my family to celebrate the first day of Chinese New Year. I've seen and heard of it many times, but I don't know the meaning of it, and I had no idea why it came into my head the way it did. A quick search on Wikipedia revealed the following -

"a philosophical movement that views human existence as having a set of underlying themes and characteristics, such as anxiety, dread, freedom, awareness of death, and consciousness of existing, that are primary. That is, they cannot be reduced to or be explained by a natural-scientific approach or any approach that attempts to detach itself from or rise above these themes."

If there was any evidence that time flies as we get older, get a load of this - a particular friend of mine is born early in January, and therefore he is technically born in the year of Horse (Jan 1979). On the Chinese calender, we are always one year older than our English counterpart, but in his case, he is two years older! It was when he somewhat muttered with some resignation that he was 27 on the English calender, but 29 on Chinese calendar that I took a double take. Now, I never think about reaching the 3- mark, but his remark sorta sent me on a tailspin. Not that I worry about getting old... no, no..... uhmm, not me.

Anyways, enough of my obsession about things I can neither change nor control. Someday, I'm going to learn how to pick my fights properly. My beloved and I went to the White Stripes concert on Saturday (CNY Eve) with some friends. Yes, yes, not the most clever of dates to pick to go to a concert. Unfortunately, the fact that over 1 billion of the population in the world is Chinese don't make that day out of bounds to concerts and other events that coordinators may wish to hold. Festival Hall is still the old, junk of a place that's been hanging around 20 years too long. As my bro-in-law fervently exclaims, the place should have been bulldozed about 20 years ago. My beloved fondly remembers seeing The Cramps in concert. Oooh, now we are revealing age here. Moving on....

... The White Stripes were awesome, a band made up of one husband and his ex-wife (or one wife and her ex-husband, depending how feminist inclined you are), trashing at guitars and a basic drum set. Along with instruments such as the zylophone, triangles, pianos and organs, it was a feast on the musical senses - that is if you like rock & roll, plus alot of head trashing, whiny & at times wailing vocals.

We headed back into the city around midnight to catch the dragon dance at the Russell street carpark, and to watch the mayor of Melbourne light up the firecrackers. It was quite a bizarre night, being in the mix of two cultures. I sometimes catch myself being very thankful for our exposure to multiculturalism. I would like to think that as a result, we are more tolerant of others needs and differences. Unfortunately, we somehow always end up getting completely the opposite kind of people running countries. Another thing I can neither change nor control, but I suppose if we start at the bottom, we'll work our way up eventually.

As everyone inevitably does, we ended the night tucked in a bar on Liverpool St called Double Happiness (very apt for the occasion) and gas-bagged till the wee hours in the morning (at least it was to my 26-year-old body) drinking Coopers Ale long necks. Just the perfect ending to a perfectly fine new year.

~
Bragging rights corner
A client of my firm just got nominated for an Oscar for his short animated film, The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello. For all you film buffs out there who might be interested (if chance permits).


http://www.jaspermorello.com/gazette/

http://www.melbournepubs.com/v/876/

http://www.theage.com.au/news/gig-previews--reviews/white-stripes/2006/01/29/1138469601764.html