Atonement isn't about atoning at all

I was fortunate today: a friend of mine (who works not far from where I work) had a couple of tickets to Atonement last night. She wasn't able to make it: her boyfriend had free tickets to something with Hossan Leong in it and both mutually forgot to inform the other. She decided to give up Atonement for Hossan Leong, and I got myself 2 free tickets to an Oscar-winner-to-be.

My own date's version of events is that the Hossan Leong show costed more, and therefore, in pure economic terms, giving up Atonement was a far better deal. Upon learning about Hossan Leong though, I told my friend that it was far more prudent to give up Hossan Leong instead.

Like she would. :)

And anyhow, I think I would have enjoyed Atonement alot more - why would I blog about it, no less?



Ed note: before proceeding further, there're going to be a whole lot of spoilers (from my POV at least), so read on only after you've either read the book, or seen the movie.



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When I read Atonement a few years back, it struck me that I had probably just read the best book of my life (I think I've scaled higher peaks in literature since then, but alas, I've recently regressed a far lot further since). Atonement was, for me, a writer's novel. It takes someone who's read well and read a lot to empathise with the protagonist, and, by extension, with the author himself.

The movie as I saw it yesterday night (this being only a few hours ago) was faithful to the novel - this must be because Ian McEwan himself was a producer on the movie. The movie neatly segments into four parts, just as in the novel itself:

- there was the story of that one fateful day where Briony saw her sister jump into the fountain before the manservant Robbie, and the tragic misunderstanding borne of an overactive imagination;

- there was the horror of war and what it wrought on the young men of a generation, the story of Robbie and his promise, the promise to return to the woman he loves;

- there was the story of Briony and her atonement, and how she slowly understood what she had wrought. There was her experience as a wartime nurse and her wanting to tell the story that is consuming her;

- there was the story of the aged writer, Briony finally realizing the story, her last, and what it meant to tell a story itself.

Ultimately, the story that is told in Atonement is not about Robbie and Cecilia, though one will think it is, given that they get all the coverage. The story is also not about Briony: it is, cleverly hidden from the reader / viewer who the person pulling the strings was, and the smart reader / viewer will have already discerned, early on, that the writer was telling the tale, and the writer is Briony.

But... be a little patient, and listen carefully when Briony makes her soliloquy (in the novel, this was all in Briony's head; in the movie, it came out cleverly as an interview). What Briony was essentially talking about was about storytelling, and there were a few themes in there which made the book more than just another frame story (a mise en abyme), and which made this the Booker prize winner. The truth of the matter is this: I believe Briony, in this last part of the story, is actually Ian McEwan talking about himself; and particularly, himself as a storyteller and what it meant.

I remember reading the story so many years ago, and it still struck me how, in this last part of the book, everything that was fabricated earlier was an exposition in the struggles of a storyteller: telling it as it was (fact) or telling it for what it is meant to be (fiction); imagination and the dangerous course it sometimes runs; one's experiences in life, and how they come to be important in shaping the story; and what it means to set things right, even if they were never to be achieved in reality.

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I felt for the characters: I truly did. It hurt to be wronged, disgraced and shamed; and set in an English class struggle it is all the more tragic what Robbie himself went through. It hurt to be separated from your love, and the pain of separation which drove Cecilia to part from her family, distraught and angry with your kin, is one that is beyond bearing. It must have been distressing to be Briony, to realise that you have wronged someone, and was ultimately the cause for the suffering and hurt to, not just our two protagonists, but, to a whole family as well. Briony realised that her actions of that evening was the cause of it all (like the first domino in a long chain of tragic events).

I felt it must have been carthatic to write about it all, and seek release - and I smiled when she talked about the happy ending that she wrote. An irony at the end: the truth is tragic, and the novel would have had closure the way it was without the fourth and final part of it. But that was Briony's closure, not ours, and Ian McEwan recognised that the novel wasn't great until he tore away the veneer of falsehood over it and pulled away the wool that covered our eyes all along.

That made the novel a masterpiece - and I can think of no better compliment than that for a writer.

Roundtable Discussion

A friend I know well, her friend (I don't know that well) and I. A roundtable discussion about life - one of those things you do when you eat cake and drink tea (and nope, this is not the host club I'm talking about).

And so he's some kind of a med school student (said friend), and I figured that he didn't have any idea what to do with life. A simpler way to put it would be: there're many things that he can be, most promising of which is to be an eye doctor.

But complex questions asked deserve vague answers at best: what of such a vocation should he make of it?

Me being my helpful self decided to tell the stupid gynaecologist story (which I reserved for those special occasions where a med school student is present: no one has yet caught on that it was a total fabrication). The stupid gynae story goes thus:

A med school friend of mine graduated recently from school and decided to practise in a sex clinic as a gynae. As part of his job, he had to look at a whole lot of vaginas and, other than making him lose his appetite, it absolutely ruined his sex life for the better part of six months. He didn't eat well, he couldn't enjoy any of the hardcore jap porn he collected on his PC, and he definitely found no joy pleasuring himself. Poor sod.

In any case, he got over the initial disgust and now totally immerses himself in the work (which consist of mainly him putting his gloved fingers up very small spaces and getting them wet; the fingers). So as the days went by, he grew more nonchalent about it, and found some joy in making jokes about his patients and derived amusement from the interactions with his various patients: the well-worn prostitutes, the terrified pinafored schoolgirls, the mothers-to-be.

One day, he found himself at his cynical best when a patient walked in, mentioned something about missing her period, and got herself plonked and examined. It turned out that she was 2 months pregnant, and the dear gynae friend decided that congratulatory greetings were in order.

"Congratulations madam. You are pregnant."

"But... but that can't be."

"Yes, you are pregnant."

"It's impossible... I've never had sex before."

"Er... Unless you were artificially inseminated (which you WOULD know about), then you must have had sex. You ARE pregnant."

"It can't be... I've never had sex before."

And so it went, back and forth. Gynae says she's pregnant. She insists she's an innocent virginal girl. Fed up with the pointlessness of it all, said gynae went to the window and shoved it wide open. He looked out, gazing at nothing in particular. After a tense 30 seconds, the virginal innocent couldn't take any more of the nonsense and asked, "What are you looking at?"

Said gynae's wicked reply was "Well, the last time this happened, there was a star in the East."

I did say it was a stupid story...

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Right, it was a roundtable discussion about life-changing moments, and apparently, for late 20-somethingers, there hasn't been admittedly many of these. The one life-changing moment I brought myself round to mention was a sad one, for which I never gave any details.

I did say it resulted from a conversation I had.

I did say that a month later, it resulted in a friendship lost.

I did say also that losing a friend wasn't all that was lost in that moment, for something of my soul went with it as well.

I also said that life-changing moments are those times when your soul is scarred, altered and marred by an external occurence. Nevermind that it might have been a positive development - at the point life changed, it was nothing more than losing some part of your real self.

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Yes it is not something to talk about in an MBA class, but the course is something special at INSEAD: the topic was on coping with stress, and yes religion is one way of helping the human psyche cope with the stress of the world.

I also don't deny that having absolute faith is good for the soul: the person with real faith is not necessarily free from stress, but he does have an outlet and a coping mechanism that, bar none, is far better than what any psychologist can do for you.

Plus... its free.

But losing your religion is not a step forward, and there's where I disagree. No matter what creed or faith we bind ourselves to, having no one to build a common belief with is fundamentally wrong. It is like being an island unto oneself, and floating adrift in isolation. For to believe only in one self and one's abilities is limiting - the mind and especially the body are finite. The infinite gives us hope no matter how faint the sound of that voice might be.

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Ah my pseudo-philosophical babble. I consume too much bullshit these days.

Stringing It All Together - Analogising it

If someone emailed you a notion of hers, and you find it thoughtful, maybe even somewhat meaningful. And after a moment (oh, perhaps something like a month later), you think that it might be something that you want to blog about. Maybe it is an idea, but you want to expand on it, give your own version of it. It's like, taking a song and remixing it - maybe call it the greyscalefuzz blogrot remix (except that it's with a piece of writing). It is essentially your own thing, but with a premise taken from someone else. You know, borrowing, re-doing it... perhaps even giving credit for where it came from.

So, if you did all that, does it count as plagiarism?

I don't know, but if this post gets taken offline for some reason, you know why.

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A friend told me in an email (not so long ago) that a relationship is like a piece of thread. When you embark on a new relationship, it is akin to cutting a length of the thread with a pair of scissors. As the relationship progresses along, through all its ups and downs, there might come a point where it breaks into two - perhaps it is an event that prompts a break up, or maybe something like an extended period of being apart. When a thread breaks, it is possible to mend it back together again - perhaps using glue, or maybe some sticky tape.

However, no matter how much the thread gets put together again, it is undeniable that it was separated before - everyone will notice that it has been mended. It's like that patch that one sews onto clothes: the patch covers up a tear or hole, but it is undeniable to one and all that the clothes are ruined and that patch only served to accentuate that. The thread is thus noticeably weaker - everyone around can tell. Why not then cut a new length of thread and start again? Perhaps this new length won't break so easily.

I liked my friend's analogy, but I decided that, like countless analogies I've heard in my life, it bears expanding upon. Think of it as an exercise in helping people make sense of the world: analogies help us manage as if the world was a simpler place to live in. Analogies were the first real and crude (and perhaps even oral) instances of models of the world. Models were built to help people simplify and generalise the world they live in - using analogy is just a way of doing that.

As for the thread analogy, one should think about what the thread is made out of first. Is it nylon thread? Or perhaps just ordinary button sewing string? Or is it layered and thick like a rope? A thick thread made out of a tough material is surely harder to break, or cut, than the ordinary string. It might even bear more weight and can take more strain if anyone tries to pull it apart.

Likewise with a relationship: if the relationship was built on more solid ground, then it is perhaps more able to stand most stress and strain put onto it. A relationship built on common goals, principles, faith, and background has more 'fibre' than one based on lust, money, companionship and availability. When it is important attributes (principles, faith etc) that connect two people, it is less likely that one can find these attributes in other people (probably because it takes too much out of one to dig out such gems).

On another point in the thread analogy, the bit about mending a thread seemed kind of odd. People don't usually mend thread - they just throw it away and use a new one. It should be kind of hard sticking two separate pieces of thread and expecting it will function like a new one, right? Perhaps, instead of a relationship being like a piece of thread, I think everyone is like a thread of their own. When one thread finds another thread, they may want to get together and form a bend knot (something like... tying the knot, but not in the marriage sense). Note: Bend knots are knots formed when two pieces of rope are tied together at the end.

It is the kind of knot tied that determines the strength of the relationship. Oh, and whether the two threads were compatible in the first place (try knotting together sewing thread and nylon). It is not impossible for two incompatible pieces of thread to be knotted together. It depends on what kind of knot is being used to bring the two together. A well-tied knot ensures that the two separate threads stay together under pressure - they don't come apart easily.

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Being home now, I sometimes tune into NewsRadio FM93.8 while driving (this being in Singapore). This is largely because it supposedly has more informational content (it does make for less mind numbing fare than the typical morning show tripe). One of the items I do enjoy are the interviews they put on the air, and there was one which I heard three times already (well, they can't do THAT many interviews, so some of them get substantially more airtime).

This interview was with a Singaporean ex-priest with an education in public policy and an MBA to boot. He is now running some sort of leadership coaching program for Singaporean undergraduates. Unfortunately for me, I didn't manage to catch his name (despite 3 hearings of the show), otherwise I would have googled him.

The interviewee witnessed an interesting coaching session using a familiar analogical exercise: a jar is provided to the participants along with the following items: some fist-sized rocks, pebbles, sand and stones of varying sizes. The objective was to fill the jar with as much of the rocks, pebbles and sand as is possible to fit within the jar. As is the case, if one had filled the jar with the sand first, it would have been impossible to put in any of the rocks or pebbles since the sand would have packed the jar tight.

When asked what the exercise had meant, the textbook answer was that the items represented priorities in life, and the rocks and pebbles, being the biggest, were the biggest priorities in life. If they were sorted out first (i.e. placed in the jar) then any space leftover may be filled with the sand (the small things in life). If the small things were to be done first, then there would have been no space for the big items, since the sand would have filled the jar without leaving any room for other stones.

The interviewee then mentioned one particular response he heard which struck as being somewhat very incisive. One participant's view was that the rocks and pebbles, the big things, were one's dreams, while the sand was but the itty-bitty stuff of life. If one were to fill his life living out the itty-bitty stuff, fussing over the mundane and unimaginative, then there would have been no space for the dreams. The dreams, according to this participant at least, are the most important things to address in one's life.

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I am wondering, and am still wondering to no end, whether or not I am achieving my dreams: I still don't know what they are, and I still don't know whether the path I am walking down leads unto it. There is no analogy or model that can help direct my life: there is only analogy or model to help me understand how best to live it.

The Word

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it." John 1:1-5

One of the most abstract ideas that came from the bible was concerning the Word. The Word from the above passage obviously refers to Jesus. But just as simply, I think the passage is trying to hint at the power of the spoken word - Jesus, being God's son, came to the World to spread His Word, and it was with such a notion that the writer of the Gospel of John regarded Jesus.

(Oh, on a side note, theologians will actually use this phrase to expound on a whole load of information, such as that this phrase explicitly mentions Jesus as God, and not as a being created by God. As such, he isn't man, but God in the flesh.)

Anyhow, I just wanted to start with something that brings me to my real topic: words are powerful things, whether they be written or spoken. Words have the power to change or even to stymie change, and the first instance of such a thing happening (and again I quote from the bible) was when God created the world: Let there be light, and there was light. Amazing how something spoken (albeit by a omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent being like God) can have the power to create and to bring forth something new.

But that's just the bible... or is it? How is it that we, as mere human beings, have allowed words to affect how we act or how we feel? How is it that we have afforded mere words that much power?

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Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. I disagree - I think words can hurt. I know - I've experienced it so personally before. When you love someone and he/she doesn't love you back, gentle words to decline may soothe the pain. But when someone prefers a quick and dirty way out of a sticky situation, the nastier words the better.

Words can hurt, but I hear it is only because we let them. Can one really be that insensitive to another's utterance or opinion? The answer as I have learnt to say it: It depends.

But I shall not elaborate. :)

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My favourite comic book author (so far) is Alan Moore, the original creator of works such as V for Vendetta, A League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and Watchmen. Look out for the movies, but don't bother looking for any credits to Mr Moore though - only a genius dissociates from the bastardization of his own work.

In any case, one of his less well known comics was Top Ten. A not so major character (but important to the plot) from the story was called Harry Lovelace, the hostage negotiator otherwise known as 'The Word'. The Word's power (it is a comic book and he is a super hero amidst a book filled with them) comes from his ability to compel people who hear him speak obey him. He is very, in a word, persuasive.

See, all he has to say is 'Put your hands up!' and you're compelled to do just that, without any rhyme or reason to. I think it is an especially useful ability to have: need cash? Just compel people on the street to hand the money in their wallets to you. Want sex? Just ask for it.

But the Word is really a metaphor more than a real character - the Word is like that character you have to obey in real life. The boss, your sergeant, the missus. Anyone with the power to say something to make you do an action, or to feel an emotion. Like an order issued for you to quickly get an assignment done. Or a guilt trip to emotionally blackmail you for not buying her flowers for her birthday.

(Sidenote: I think that being the Word in the comic book isn't all it is cut out to be though. Suppose you can't turn that ability off, and whatever you say is going to be taken literally. You can't really joke around much, like when someone tells some really kick-ass joke, and you're laughing your hardest, and you happen to utter "Ah you're killing me". Imagine what the consequences would be.)

So, in a way, having the power of the Word - whether it means that you're the one with the power to order someone, or to create specific emotions in someone else - you are responsible for the words you speak, so speak them with care.

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In a recent episode of the anime xxxHoLiC, a character, one of a pair of twins, has an inferiority complex. She lets whatever she hears about herself influence her person, and much of what she had heard were negative comments from her twin sister. In and of itself, the words that she had heard were not meant to limit her abilities - the fact is that she herself acts as an amplifier for the words spoken, and they become a limiting mechanism.

Simply put, if you keep hearing someone say that you're clumsy, and you believe it to be true, then you will be clumsy.

Perhaps it comes down to 2 factors... no 3 factors: the issuer, the receiver and the amplifier. The issuer speaks, the receiver listens, but it's the amplifier that makes either something sound trivial, or makes it the most compelling thought-provoking message ever heard. (And here I start getting reminded of my uni days as an electrical engineering undergrad - hard to imagine now, but those amplifiers we were all made to build have such enormous philosophical relevance, and yet, we were so caught up in the capacitors, resistors and general circuitry of it all that we fail to see the amplifier as nothing more than a goddamn hindrance to graduation)

The amplifier comes in many forms but I believe the one most important is that amplifier inside of oneself. Some people I know manage to tune that amplifier to only hear what they want to - like a low-pass filter of sorts, they filter off all the high frequencies and hear the good parts (the bass). Some others are unable to hear the good parts, and tune in only to negative comments, on which they remind themselves of their fragility.

I can't offer a way to tune that amplifier to hear the whole message though, and it is only human to tune in or tune out as we see fit. Perhaps it is important to realise that we inherently tune the messages we hear, and that should be sufficient to know. I have always heard that it is important to analyse what you hear in the context of what the issuer is saying - perhaps that is where I shall start now.

I shall start listening - without tuning.

Of Reading Lists and Postcards from Barcelona

Given the time out from full-time student life, I've come to appreciate the fact that I can finally read fiction work again. It sounded strange when I first verbalised it to myself: as a student in uni, I consumed fiction voraciously. Textbooks were full of gibberish and the only thing I counted on were notes and scraps of paper.

Then that monster known as work came along. Consulting is not for everyone, and was definitely not for the fiction afficionado. So I compromised: I read less. Still, I could consume enough books to satiate that lust for stories. I read stuff from all over, and it was during this time that I started liking Margaret Atwood's feminist gab and David Mitchell's dreamy sequences.

Along came biz school and this time round, reading anything other than the required cases for class is a travesty. What's more, the profusion of reading material on the net (I speak of blogs, newspapers, whatnots) meant that my whole day is spent in a constant infusion of text into my brain. I just did not have enough bandwidth to consume fiction as well, and it was on a sad note that I stopped reading anything interesting (hey, some business texts are interesting in their own right - just go read Blue Ocean Strategy... but they aren't stories).

So summer without an internship was a kind of blessing in disguise. I've read David Mitchell's Black Swan Green (I like his previous work better), Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in a Time of Cholera (I never thought I would touch that novel, to be honest), and Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore (very weird stuff in this book... very very indecipherable). And due to the dearth of good fiction around the house, I'm actually reading the Da Vinci Code (after having seen the movie).

The Da Vinci Code reads like a person driving a car with both the accelerator and brake pedals depressed: start-stop-start-stop-start-stop-start... the protagonists find some new clue, and then the action stops at a critical juncture, and you ask yourself "Gee I need to know what happens!!!" and so you read on. Until the next critical juncture. Ad nauseam. Very useful device to convince the reader that you have an engaging and interesting book (but seriously though, the book reads like someone throwing his high-school history+art+bible lessons at you, wrapped around a treasure hunt story).

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Someone once said that there were only 2 kinds of stories in the world: "A man goes on a journey" and "A stranger comes into town". Every other story is a variation of the 2 themes, a combination of both, or a sluice of something in between. Try looking for these themes the next time you read a book.

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As promised, here are the photos from Barcelona. While there, I met up with a friend who was learning Spanish there (lucky guy) and he introduced me to some of his classmates, one of whom was Italian. That Italian lass and I sat glued in a pub watching the World Cup finals: I cheered for France; no questions who she cheered for. And for my efforts in cheering the losing team, the Italian lass gave me a lesson on what Italian hooligans sing about (they were everywhere in that pub and sang the lewdest songs!), and of course, goaded over their goddamn undeserved victory.

Anyhow, photos:

Go to Barcelona, if for nothing else, thn to see Gaudi's irreverent artwork

La Pedrera

Parc Guell

And the Sagrada...

...with its interesting doors.

The only place where skateboarding can be done around gothic buildings...

...and demonstrations take place outside the mayor's office regularly.

Art, in whatever forms it assumes, is always being restored. The lady here is painstakingly restoring a letterbox carved during the renaissance for the building formerly used by a lawyer's guild.

Port Vell, where a shopping centre's front arcade features mirrors on the ceiling. Perfect for the narcissist in all of us; and a strain on the neck.

Oh yes, the bridges also tend to break up often. :)

Also, do not miss Las Ramblas for the street performers - to be honest, I find them all a tad too touristy and profit driven. Much preferred the occasional guitarist or opera singer I encountered around parts of the Gothic Quarter (a maze to certainly get yourself lost in).

Due to space constraints, check out the rest of my Barcelona impressions here.