Scattered Brains

Mondays are never the best day for me to be thinking too much, but these are some snippets gleaned from my travels and observations during the day:

On Relationships

Today I received news that another acquaintaince split up with his long time girlfriend, bringing the grand total of breakups I know about this whole weekend to two. I know that a breakup probably occurs at least once every hour or so (I'm being optimistic here) but still, as cynical and pseudo-hardcase as I am, I still get a little sad whenever someone I know has a falling out and has to give up their happy place for whatever reason.

Probably because I too know what it feels like, and how disorienting (and potentially debilitating) the whole business is.

On Shopping

I played a bit of hooky with some colleagues during lunch hour and visited MidValley to scout out potential Raya buys. Sadly though, there were either a) no sales, b) nothing I liked, or worse still c) something I liked but was too expensive OR didn't come in my size. Now bearing in mind that I am as of yet no where near King Kong Bundy dimensions it's a little annoying that a lot of clothes on racks these days seem to be tailor made for waify men with the dimensions of a stick insect. Of course it didn't help either when the ONE item I felt absolutely at home with turned out to be an RM 700++ jacket from Zara that I absolutely didn't need. To make matters worse, apparently G2000 in MidValley doesn't stock shirts my size anymore! What, bigger people don't work?

Bah.

On Fasting

Whilst making our way back to the parking lot, we ran into a group of Malay teens happily puffing away on the staircase near our exit. The funny thing was, the moment they saw us they scattered to all points of the compass, leaving us puzzled. Now I am no angel (as plenty of people will attest to) but what struck me was the fact that they deemed it necessary to run. Did the sight of me and my colleagues awaken some sort of unrealised guilt complex for not fasting, or would they have stayed put if we weren't Muslims? I'll not judge here (since it's way beyond my job description) but the little encounter gave me some food for thought that I'll probably elaborate on in a later post.

On Academic Responsibility

Working in an academic institution, I understand that some people assume we academics know pretty much everything there is to know about everything. While it's flattering to think so, the truth is we don't, and part of the price we pay for having a few members of the public thinking thus is that we have to be very careful when issuing statements of any kind. This applies to vocalised statements, printed ones, and even (or shall I say especially) those in cyberspace. One thing about us is that we ALWAYS have to attribute what we say to an empirical source unless it's a personal opinion, in which we have to explicitly state that it is.

Otherwise, there is a danger that whatever we say/print/blog about will incorrectly influence someone else's point of view, which in turn starts a whole messy chain reaction with mistaken inferences, wrongful assumptions..well you get my drift. Another large part of any respectable academic's life is defending his/her writing. It's inevitable that as you publish scholarly work someone will take offense or disagree (and if you don't believe me, look what Newton and Franklin had to go through, among others). Therefore it's very important for any member of academia to maintain a level of objectivity, or in layspeak "keep their cool".

This is, of course, easier said than done. Our emotions are funny little things, and it's always disheartening to have someone else discredit what we've spent a sizable chunk of our lives researching (or what we personally think is gospel). One way to prevent attacks is by trying as much as possible to adhere to a rigorous scientific methodology before publishing anything on any medium, which helps with our perceived credibility.

However, regardless of what we do, attacks will come. How we react to them sometimes means more to our reputation than any number of works we've published anywhere. Get affected emotionally, and all your hard work will be for naught, and there goes your credibility out the window. It's a huge responsibility, something like Spider-Man, but without the cool powers.

Which brings me back to a favourite saying of mine (okay I stole it from an ex):

If you can't be good....be careful.

Laters!