On Thinking

There is time to think
And there is a time not to think
There is time when there is too much to think
But, I think, never a time when we think too much

Thinking can be hard
Thinking can be easy
Thinking can be right
Thinking can be wrong

Sometimes we think and get it wrong
Sometimes we feel and get it right
And both times we may not know why
But if we do, we think and feel better the next time.

But be it thoughts or be it feelings
What truly matters is knowledge
And we need both thoughts and intuition
To know the truth.

Life's Irony

A man was sick, very sick.

He was hospitalised and was in intensive care for 2 months. The most advanced medical treatment was given to him, and a wide array of deep medical expertise consulted from far and wide all over the world. The man recovered and was discharged after another 2 months of hospitalisation.

Then he was hit with the bills.

He had lost his job before he was hospitalised. He was not easily employable. There was no balance in his savings account and what can be paid by public funds have all been paid. And yet a huge balance remains. The hospital threatened and sued him and he declared himself bankrupt.

He had no family. And he had no friends. For he often borrowed and no one wants to know him anymore.

He was miserable.

He committed suicide.

The so-called "Long Term Relationship" in Gay Parlance

Posted elsewhere and edited for posting here ...

Long Term Relationsip or more commonly known by their initials LTR, is something, apparently, the most sought after kind of relationship that gays are pursuing. But is it really so?

People come into a relationship for three, or maybe four, reasons.

First, perhaps the most common reason, especially for gays, is really just sex, plain and simple.

However many will deny this is the reason. The evidence, on the other hand, is more compelling that anything you or anyone say. And thus I have concluded that the so-called LTR is merely an excuse for sex, and love was used, or abused, as a justification for lust.

And the evidence is simply this: the many stories of so-called gay LTR that dont last long, lasting from weeks to months and at most a couple of years. And even then in the latter most of time it has degenerated into a so-called 'open relationship'.

For sex is all about lust, and it is all about physical attraction and physical sensations, and such relationships founded entirely or mainly on such cannot last. I know, for I experienced such lusts first hand myself too, as I am sure many do also. After you have discovered someone, seen him naked, eaten his fruits, he no longer excites.

So strictly speaking such relationships are just extended ONS or sex-buddies.

The more interesting thing to do here is not to debate the fact but rather to ponder and speculate the reasons why people are averse to calling a spade a spade, ie to say openly that what they want in a relationship is sex. I can think of a few reasons.

One is the notion that ONS is bad. I have seen this sentiment expressed, some from religious perspectives, be it Buddhism or Christianity, but no one really asked themselves why it is so. Maybe it is just a hangover from the notions and values of traditional straight relationships where you are not suppose to screw your gal before you marry her. So sex outside of a 'marriage' is bad. And so people seeking sex, seek a so-called LTR, to be a cover to justify having sex, particularly that involving anal penetration in the case of gays.

And here I want to relate an incident. I was horny and met this guy. And we were proceeding beyond hand-holding, and into the process of comprehensive mutual discovery, but he hesitated saying that he will have sex only in a relationship. But then he has crossed the point of no return, and so he made up his mind on the spot that we are already in a relationship, ie to consider me already a boyfriend after only a few hours knowing me. But that was what he needed pscyhologically to go on to enjoy the physical. And after this point he abandon himself fully to the thrills, and it was the first time I walked on the beach naked hand in hand with another one naked.

I have also observed that usually it is bottoms who seek such LTR. Tops generally have less qualms about calling ONS, ONS. I may be wrong, but I think it is reasonable; and the reasons are, it is safer to stick to one cock; a cock is a cock, ie it does matter if it is the same cock, the thrill of your G-spot being hit is still as thrilling; and it is perceived it is ok for tops to have ONS but for btms to get fucked around is to be a slut.

So tops are not thought 'immoral' to have ONS, and thus tops give full rein to their thrill of 'discovering' people, many many people: a new face, a new bod, a new cock, a new ass, alway excites more the same old asshole. And then being tied down in an LTR is really a disadvantage. But people all cheat, and the long in the LTR is really something always negotiable, dependent on unknown and many factors - as in it "depends" - and thus ultimately non-enforceable and meaningless.

But whatever the reasons are, the fact of the matter remains that sex is a main reason for most gay relationships, the so-called LTR.

And I dare put forward that sex is also a major reason for straight relationships too, except that after fucking a gal there are consequences, and such do indeed evolved into marriage and maybe even love. But there are no consequences in a gay fuck - gay sex is free sex (and so you have bisexuals) - and so there is really no force or motivation to keep and to evolve the relationship further other than a sexual one, although gays in LTR say they do.

The second reason is companionship.

Here people come together for the mutual benefits of having a companion, someone who you give first priority to, and who has first-call privileges on your life, your time, your resources, your emotions, etc.

But there are various shades of grey in this relationship, as characterised by the type and degree of mutuality.

The mutuality type refers to the things shared. It can just be time, or thoughts or values, or feelings, or it may be entirely physical, from sharing a house, activities, and of course including sex. So when people say sex is part of the package in an LTR, they are thinking of such a relationship.

And so people can be companions without sharing everything. They share the things they want to share. It could just be time and activities and does not involved sex. An old married couple could be an example of such a relationship. Or it is could be on the other extreme where it is all physical, a house, such as sharing costs to buy a condo, making and sharing meals, mutual sexual gratification, or none. In a sense friends are a kind of companionship relation.

But the mutuality is the key here, ie it involves an exchange or a trade, a sharing: I give, you give, I fuck, you fuck. But if you stop giving, I stopped, and if I am no longer first priority in your life, so will you be dropped from having first call privileges.

The second factor is the degree or type of mutuality, ie how much do you 'pay' in that exchange. You can have at one extreme equality, same for same, degree for degree, ie the same things are traded and to the same amounts by both parties, something like 69.

On the other extreme, the relationship can be one where one party gives everything for just a little of another thing back, eg a sugar daddy/sugar son relationship. And some have classify this as a fourth reason for relationship: to extract maximal benefits for yourself, but I rather not and see it just as an extreme form of a companion relationship. The giver although being milked is getting something back too.

But of course when approaching this extreme, the trade or the mutual exchange may degenerate into prostitution, ie to trade away things non tradeable, or for things inappropriate or of relatively no value. Where such trades transit from being moral to immoral is not entirely clear, for in a sense we are all trading our bodies away everyday in our work: trading labour for money. It may be clear in the extreme, but murky elsewhere.

Lastly the third reason is love, true love.

And to me love is simply a relationship that relates to the other for the good of the other, and for no other reasons.

It does not need mutuality nor gratification of any sort, physical or otherwise.

And this is what distinguish true friends from mere friends, namely, if there are no benefits to you to be his friend, would you still be his friend?

If you see all relationships in terms of what you can get from it, whether you need him, or are you benefited, in one way or another, be it material, spiritual, knowledge, connections, or whatever, then you do not really love. And he is not really your friend. The other, even if you call him friend, is merely a means to an end, namely yours, and particularly one who puts you better than what you were before.

So again to reiterate you love solely for the sake of the other, and not for your benefits.

So to me the best test of true love is if the other person walks away from you and no longer call you friend, do you still consider him friend? Do you still care for him? Would you still give him your time, energy and effort? And would you still response to him when he is in need, whether or not he asked you for it?

Sounds like a tall order? an unrealistic, unworldly and impractical notion? or just plain delusion, a fairy tale or even madness? Well it may well be, and thus I also conclude that love is not common in so-called LTR, if at all, and perhaps never the real reason for any relationship between anyone in the real world, sexual or otherwise, straight or otherwise.

But I still believe in love.

That it is so uncommon only makes it far more precious, and no price then is too great to pay.

And true love can exist in a companionship too, ie where two person loves each other, each loving the other solely for his sake, unconditionally, unreservedly and unassumingly, each loving the other as himself, and without trade. That is true mutuality, and a great love.

But perhaps this happens only in fairy tales.

So when I hear some gay says he is seeking LTR, I never assumed that he seeks love, or, conversely, to presume he seeks sex, in an acceptable context, and/or companionship, until and unless proven otherwise.

And ironically true love may be more likely outside an LTR, and the only true LTR is actually friendship, something deemed of less value amongst gays than the so-called LTR.

A Friend Died

My friend died recently.

I last saw him about a week before he died.

And I saw fear in his eyes, the fear of death.

I did not understand the fear, and I did not pause to ponder why then. Nor was I able to ask him then as he could not speak.

Now I never know how he felt at the point of death. I will always wonder if he was able to overcome his fear and have peace to face death.

For he is a Christian, one who was very much involved in all the church activities, from missionary excursions overseas, to various ministries inside and outside the church.

I would have thought he knew God, and is able to face death with confidence, assurance and peace.

But yet he feared.

Videoconference

From a letter ...

LIM: How did your day go?

TAN: We did a videoconference with our US partners.

LIM: How was it?

TAN: Like MSN.

LIM: Was it necessary? I did telephone conferences before and it was sufficiently effective.

TAN: With video you can see facial expressions and body language, or their lack. Of course you hear the tone of the voice too.

LIM: But you need to know a person to interpret or even notice such signs?

TAN: There are some universal signs: a nod means yes, and not no. A wince means he is uncomfortable, a sigh a sign of frustration, and hesitancy may indicate he is unsure.

LIM: The subject being discussed, matters too I suppose. The phone conferences I had were on technical matters.

TAN: We were getting him to commit to his plans.

LIM: I think video conferencing can be as good as being there, but you still need to know the guy. I am sure you know that ONG guy.

TAN: Ya.

LIM: You can never believe what ONG says. He can say yes and then turn around and say he never meant it. Seen him lately?

TAN: Nope. Last heard he got married.

LIM: But no one was invited to any wedding.

TAN: There we rumours that he married illegally, namely to someone of the same sex.

LIM: I suspected that too, but let's leave him alone and not get entangled with him.

TAN: I agree. This guy we talked on videoconference is a new partner for us.

LIM: So you were trying to interpret someone you don’t know? How do you know his yes means a yes, or his no really means no?

TAN: That's no longer a video conferencing issue. Even if you see him face-to-face you cannot know what he means. You need to know him.

LIM: Do you not see the irony?

TAN: What do you mean?

LIM: If you have known him, he can just say yes or no, on the phone or even in an email, and it will be good enough.

TAN: When I was in National Service I often hear my Operational Officer and Signals Officer argue over the need for video conferencing in the field. The Operational Officer always insisted he needs it but the Signals Officer thinks otherwise.

LIM: Have you ever wondered how people talked before there was email or the telephone or even the telegraph?

TAN: I suppose you either talk by snail mail, also know as letters, which get delivered by horseback, or ships and trains, or you travel yourself to see each other face-to-face.

LIM: And today we have the mobile phone. And you can call anyone, anytime, anywhere in the world. And not to say SMS and voicemail, and MSN and ICQ, etc. And email has become like snail mail, slow and unresponsive, relatively.

TAN: Then it was certainly not interactive and not real time at all.

LIM: I cannot imagine how you can talk. You say something and you wait for months or years for a reply, if at all.

TAN: And in the meantime things happened, things come and go, and things changed daily.

LIM: And people changed too.

TAN: Certainly.

LIM: People may talk less then, but do you think they know each other less than we do today?

TAN: Perhaps not. I think there are more conflicts today then there were in the past.

LIM: Maybe there is another irony here. The more we talk, the less we know.

TAN: Or maybe the more we know, the more we hate each other.

LIM: And we can be seeing each other face-to-face daily, but yet remain strangers.

TAN: I read somewhere that even enemies at war talk to each other, but here our next-door neighbours avoid us deliberately.

LIM: Enemies talk to each other because the best way to know your enemy is to be his friend.

TAN: So we have another irony here: the one who knows you best is your enemy, and the one who you think is your friend, may not really know you.

LIM: This brings us back to the ONG character. We all know him very well indeed, but I don’t think anyone of us will call him a friend.

TAN: [Laughs]

LIM: So what shall we have for dinner?

TAN: The full course again, including dessert, just like everyday.

LIM: [Laughs]

True Love

From Chatting with Someone on IRC ...

Teck: Get this into your head: I DO NOT LOVE you. Your pigheaded insistence irritates me, and you are making me hate you! Now fuck off!

Seng: You are missing the point here.

Teck: Whatever. I don't care for it. I care for nothing from you.

Seng: And I do not care for anyone to get anything into my head. I can see what's real and what's a delusion. Unlike you, I am more than ready to call a spade a spade, no matter how unwelcoming or unpleasant the facts may be.

Teck: Oh please! Dont give me any more of that bullshit! So it is a fact I do not love you! Now go away! Get out of my life! Is that not fucking clear to you? Stop bugging me!

Seng: And it is a fact too that I love you, and I can't help it nor stop it. Not even if you kill me.

Teck: You love me? Then give me what I want!

Seng: Not everything you want is good for you. I love you. I give what is good, and not necessarily what you want. If it cost me my life, so be it. Love don't count costs. I do not fear death, and so I can love truly.

Teck: What is good for me is what is good for me. I do not need you to tell me. I hear whatever and whomever I want to hear, and it is definitely not you! Get it? If what I want kills me, so too be it! I rather die than listen to you. My loathing of you is even greater than my fear of death itself. Is it not obvious you are now most obnoxious thing to me. And yes if you keep pushing I will have no qualms killing you, if only to stop hearing another word from you!

Seng: This is off course an extraordinary situation. We are not friends. We are not strangers. We are not even enemies, for enemies mutually hate each other. I cannot hate you, not ever. I can only love you.

Teck: Love! Love! Love! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! I am sick and tired hearing you say you love me endlessly and shamelessly! It makes my skin crawl, my hair stand, and my heart turn to hate you more and more!

Seng: Then I wont say it anymore. I let my acts speak for themselves. So if you see a child about to be hit by a car, will you not do everything in your capacity to save that child? If the child you saved then turns around and say he hates you, that he rather be hit by the car then be saved, how then do you feel?

Teck: If the child wants to kill himself, it is his choice and you ought to respect it.

Seng: There are right and wrong choices, and child may not know how to choose. What you just said illustrates the very reason why I am what I am to you, despite your fierce, cruel, and unjustified rejection of me. For my heart is much pained and distraught at the corruption you have become to say such things. So even if I fail, even if I die, yet I will strive, to stem the tide, to be the lone and forlorn voice to speak against the corruption that is in the world, that sweeps you along and seduces you with its false promises of pleasures and happy life.

Teck: Oh fuck! Stop it! Speak another word and I will kill you! And that's not a threat. It is a fact!

Seng: If you kill me it will only vindicate me and affirm what I have been saying all along. You are no longer who you are. Now you cant tell good from bad. Good is bad to you, and bad, good; right is wrong, wrong, right; and love is hate, and hate, love. And even as you reject my love, I reject your hate. And whereas you fear my love, I fear not your hate.

Teck then turned sharply and walked away, hard and fast. Seng, a little surprised, started of after Teck and soon caught up, and stretched out to take hold of Teck's hand. As their hands touched, they both felt a tingle, a shiver ran through them, and they gasped and stopped dead in their tracks, still holding hands ...

Seng: It's a long time since I last held your hands ...

Teck turned, and they looked deep into each other's eyes, and were silent for a time.

Seng [eyes closed, whispering]: Teck can you - for both our sakes - please step out of yourself, and take a look at yourself. Can you ask yourself have you ever hated someone like the way you hated me? Can you not see that your hate for me is unfounded, unreasoned and unreasonable. And have you rejected a friend they way you rejected me? Who have not hurt his friend in one way or another, but is that sufficient reason for you to utterly reject me, or anyone else, as you have done?

I cannot accept it.

It cannot be so and it must not be so, both for you and for me: for me because it is unjustified, and for you because it makes you unrighteous. We both needs restoration, and it is in our hands to do it.

God can forgive our sins against Him, but only we can forgive each other our sins against each other.

Why do you hate me so? Why? Why? Why? You must ask why. You cannot run away from these questions. Please dont run away but stay and work at it. Please dont say there is no need. Please dont say you are not interested. These things are you and your real self. You must get to know yourself as you really are.

And this is one reason and one role I am to be to you and for you. I am to be with you and to help you think through and sort out the mess that is you. I am to reflect back to you what you are, help you come to terms with yourself, and to see the truth about youself and thereby become free of yourself and then to go on to become the beautiful you I have seen from the beginning. You are yet a caterpillar but I have seen the butterfly you are to be.

In a sense it was good for you to express all that hate and anger at me. And maybe I am the only one who can draw this out from you. And now you can see who you are. Now is a time of healing. Now is the time for building. Now is the time for growing.

Maybe it is your psychological response and coping mechanism to this strange thing called love, something you say you seek, but you dont really know what it is, and when you sensed it, actually fears it.

Love is something that makes you drunk, transform you into someone strange, and transport you to places unimagined and unimaginable, and open your eyes to see things unseen.

But what you have sought was sex and not love, mere physical gratification and not the spiritual union of two souls becoming one. So you feared it, and you ran away from it, and when it comes after you, you put up your defences.

And one of which is rejection. As you have no rational reason to reject it, you responded with rage and aggression, and created this unfounded hostility and hatred, to give you a sense of justification for your rejection.

But you know it is love, and instead of responding to my love, you exhibited transference. The emotions and desires due to me are unconsciously shifted to another person, such as you wearing the orange T-shirt - which I very much like to see you in - hoping to attract someone who you have thought was very much like me. And then to consider John as a friend forever, when we are suppose to be friends forever. And then of course you also exhibited many times over, denial and self-deception.

But now you have had the taste of the world and what gay relationships and all its sex are all about. You have eaten as much as you wanted. But sex is a food that will never satiate. Anonymous and mere sex gives you a high, but a deep sense of emptiness overwhelms you after it, which will only draw you back to more empty sex. And the circle turn visciously, and you are trapped. Do you not want to get out of this meaningless, futile and wasted life?

So Teck, please hear me, hear me truly, if only just this once.

Teck: OK. Just this once. I have to go off now. I am tired. Let me sleep on it. I promised I will get back to you.

Teck walked away. Seng stood and watched until Teck disappeared from sight.

Some Trivia

We Believe What We Want To Believe

As reported on the BBC website, the scientific evidence is:

The report also said her brain was only half its normal size at her death.

She was incapable of surviving without her feeding tube, Mr Throgmartin said, adding that she was blind and incapable of thinking, feeling or interacting with her environment.

"This damage was irreversible, and no amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons," he said.

On the other hand, elsewhere it is reported:

Nevertheless, attorney David Gibbs III said Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, continue to believe she was not in a vegetative state and questioned the conclusion that she was blind.

The finding that she was blind counters a widely seen videotape released by her parents of Terri Schiavo in her hospice bed. The video showed Schiavo appearing to turn toward her mother's voice and smile. She moaned and laughed. Her head moved up and down and she seemed to follow the progress of a brightly colored Mickey Mouse balloon.

The parents said the video that showed she was aware of her surroundings, but doctors said her reactions were automatic responses and not evidence of consciousness.

What this case illustrates, and reinforces, is a persistent human trait, or limitation, namely that it is not so much what we see that matters - as ilustrated in two ways here - but rather what we believed.

First the scientists and doctors see a brain shrunk in half and severely damaged.

On the other hand the parents see a face, eyes, and its apparent conscious and volitional responses to stimuli of familiar voices.

These observations in and of themselves dont say a thing. What they mean really depends on how we interprete them, which in turn is derived from our perspective, which itself is mostly shaped by our beliefs.

If we believe that brain tissues cannot grow back itself, and that only a normal sized brain can function normally, then we conclude that Schiavo is good as a non-person, ie a vegetable.

But if you believe we have not known all there is in life, and that there are mysteries of life beyond our meagre knowledge in medical science, then anything is yet possible for Schiavo.

But in real life sometimes we have to take decisions, practical decisions, and requires that such irreconciliable positions be resolved. We then need some means, just or otherwise, to do so.

And one means is to base on what we know, albeit our knowledge being incomplete, imperfect and even wrong. For we do not know what we do not know. And as long as you admit to the possibility of anything unknown, then any sort of theories no matter how incredulous, as long as it cannot be disproved, have to be acknowledged, and that does not help the situation.

It is the same with human justice. It is not true justice. What is being exercised and enforced is the law, namely rules, eg of the jury and of the presumption that one is innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Michael Jackson may well have committed all those acts for which he is accused. But as far as the evidence goes, the jury cannot say that there is no reasonable doubt, and therefore, as defined by the law, he is innocent. And that's mere human justice for you.

And that is life.

But there is yet true justice.

Of Choices and Respect

"I have made my choice and I expect you to respect it."

And that started me thinking, and below is an edited excerpt of what's in a letter as a response ...

Respect is to be earned not demanded.

But then not all respect earned is important or of value anyway.

There will always be fools, flatterers and sycophants all around who are more than willing to lavish praise and good wishes on whatever you choose, be it good or bad, detrimental or beneficial, wise or foolish.

I rather not have such respect from such fools.

I rather earned their scorn and derision; and choose anytime and without reservations, the rebuke and correction of the wise, then the praises of fools.

And to earn any respect that matters, you must be able to stand up to your choice, to justify it, and be clear and certain that it is wise.

That the outcome of one's choice is uncertain is not an issue as there are human limits in knowing what will happen tomorrow. But rather it is the awareness of such limitations and making decisions and choosing within the boundaries and the implications of such unknowns and unknowables, which is definite evidence that one have been wise.

But if you make a choice blindly and unable to say why, but rather to obstruct, by saying that there is no need or that you do not want to think about how and why you made the choice; or to obfuscate by saying things like there were many factors, without able or wanting to enumerate them nor ranked them by importance; or to be evasive by saying that it depends, and again without able or wanting to say what were those things depended upon, when clearly the choice was made in the past and what were depended are historical facts; or to deter by throwing a temper and getting angry and unreasonably pigheaded; or finally by becoming a fool altogether by saying that we should not think too much, if at all, then your choice deserves no respect whatsoever.

And I will also certainly not respect your choice if it is foolish, harmful to you or others, uninformed or based on fallacies and falsehoods, and especially when it is deliberately chosen, perhaps to spite, or in contempt, or to annoy and to frustrate.

So in conclusion that you choose is NO BIG DEAL at all!

For even fools, mad men, and evil people, choose.

Exercising a choice is no basis for respect at all whatsoever.

It is what and how and why you choose what you chose that is the true matter.

And upon this basis is then your choice to be condemned and rejected, or to be accepted, praised, respected and emulated.

That people ought to be respected regardless of their choices, as long as they choose, is an example of the fallacy of popular wisdom: falsehood disguising itself in humanistically persuasive, flatterring and lofty truth-sounding language. And my theory is that this so-called wisdom has its roots in the American political scene from their popular marketing of democracy to make people come out to vote, ie vote or choose and as a reward you know that you are respected for it: a feel-good temptation appealing to human vanity.

It is obvious that this so called wisdom is not true. For can you respect my choice to kill because I don’t like you? Surely not!

Therefore it is not an unconditional thing. Not ANY choice anyone made is to be accorded automatic respect. No! There are conditions upon which some choices are to be respected and others to be rejected.

And what I am saying is that this condition is why and how a choice is made, their reasons, and their justification in terms of future outcomes or some other terms.

So if you want me to respect your choice - if, in the first place, my respect is something you deemed important to you for whatever reasons - then you had better be clear WHY you choose what you chose.

And if you obstruct, obfuscate, evade, deter, and be a fool, then I have to make my own conclusions for myself.