Nailed the final mock exam.

All that's left is Bali and 7 days of crazy partying, chilling and other assorted hedonistic activities.

Can't wait.

Conversations have been of a different sort lately.

Economics is the flavor of the month.

I don't think there is any social study more divisive than economics. Laissez-faire, statism and everything in between have such direct impacts on people that you can't help but be very passionate about your opinions on economics. The little kids picking up garbage for less than $1, the tree huggers streaking in front of WTO meetings and that guy in the mansion who's richer than God all can be explained through economics. The current trend in the world (a.ka. left-wing Europe) is for capitalistic pigs (such as myself) to be looked down upon by socialist snobs (such as my friends) as heartless imperialists who wring every penny they can from workers. Said capitalists would then retort by saying that socialists know nothing of economics and that capitalism is the best system we have. Personally, I subscribe to the latter.

This trend of socalism is especially prevalent in youth, who tend to see equality as an ideal that's worth fighting for. I agree that it's an ideal, but I don't think it's one worth fighting for, seeing as it's unlikely to ever happen. Or maybe I'm just jaded and have no heart. Hm.

First college acceptance

Got accepted to Babson.

Phew.

It's not exactly the hardest college to get into (37% acceptance rate), but it's ranked #1 for undergraduate entreprenuership classes, so I'm quite excited.

Still looking forward to some other replies though =)

Leaving high school will be such sweet sorrow.

On one hand, I'll finally get out of this blasted institution known as the International Bachalaureatte. No more working on things I don't want to work on. No more laborious nights doing work for subjects that I have barely any interest in. It's the beginning of adulthood, how can one not be excited?

But on the other hand, I've made many many good friends during the last two years. Arguably, these last two years have been the best of my life and I don't ever want it to end. I know it's nothing more than a futile attempt to halt the march of time and I know it's an immature plight to prevent change and stay in my comfort zone, but I can't help feel that my high school fun has just begun yesterday.

I guess the upcoming Bali trip will have to make up for all the high school days devoid of fun that I've experienced. Expectations are high.

On a less juvenile note, I've begun reading some of George Orwell's essays and I think he's an amazingly gifted writer. He states that there are four reasons why writers write and they are:

1. Ego
2. Aesthetics
3. Historical record
4. Political vocality

And I think this relates to why many of us writes blogs. Most of us write, to differing extents, for our own ego, sort of a narccissistical exercise where we assume that we're important or profound enough to warrant readership. Some of us also write things because we feel that we have the gift of prose, the ability to write and phrase things beautifully, effectively elevating the status of writing as an artistic practice. A few of us write things to keep track of our thoughts, like keeping a diary and a somewhat smaller number of us write to voice our ideological and political opinions.

I just thought, despite writing these essays more than 50 years ago, Orwell's thoughts still very much ring true in this day and age; a mark of a great writer, in my opinion.

You know, I'm starting to get into this whole blog thing again. I realize that it's not really about people reading it, but about me writing down my thoughts of the day for future reflections (or just to read my own writing, I'm narcissistical that way I guess).

Anyway.

Got to see the President of Indonesia today. It was quite... nerve-wracking, to say the least. I've never been the type to be struck dumb by celebrities and such and most people who know me would also know that I'm not the type to run out of conversational pieces, but when I came up to him to shake his hand, I could barely even squeak out an audible "thank you." President Yudhoyono is amazingly fluent in English (for a person who's lived most of his life in Indonesia and spoke Indonesian a majority of the time) and quite surprisingly fluent in economics as well.

Quite a memorable day, this was.

Racial slurs

Had an interesting discussion on the use of racial slurs yesterday.

Stephan found it offensive when we use the "N" word to describe those asians and caucasians who think they're black. Never really bothered thinking of it, seeing as a lot of my friends call me using a derogatory term for Chinese and I don't care. I guess it's because I find context much more important than diction or, in other words, it's not what you say, but why and how you say it that matters. On the other hand, I can't really blame him either. My experience with racism is minimal compared to Stephan's and perhaps if I had the same experiences, my perception of certain racial slurs would be different.

Words represent ideas and a lot of people have gotten the short end of the stick with certain ideologies, so I guess it's only natural that a lot of people react negatively to certain words, regardless of context.

However, I have always thought that the extensive use of derogatory words have an ameliorating effect on them. A lot of words that were taboo to be spoken just 20 years ago have become commonplace in today's lexicon and I think that shows social progress. If you can remove the hate and prejudice from a word that used to represent those emotions, you have taken a step towards the removal of hate and prejudice in general. Sort of a positive version of of Orwell's 1984 where the Party changes the dictionary and word meanings to create and destroy entire thoughts, if you will.

After all this intellectual discussion, we then proceded to Centro and macked on some Indo whores for their arrow-shaped Heineken baloons.

Fun.

Finally got the comments to work. Never really bothered editing the HTML to get it working, but since I'm updating this again, might as well fix a few things.

So yea, comments can now be posted.

Been almost a year since my last entry.

Currently waiting for a cab to take me to Ryan's.

My, 8 months and only that one inconsequential line to offer. Pretty shoddy, even for me.

I'll be updating this more often now that I know for sure some people are reading my blog, me being the exhibitionist that I am.