Long overdue post!

Sept 5:
I was at Day 2 of the Youth Marketing Forum at Dragonfly on Wednesday. I suppose many of you are now expecting a post on the hottest trends in youth marketing. What I got out of it though, were more presentation how-tos (or more like how not to) and lessons in life. Education was a huge theme in a lot of the thoughts too. Might be a strange theme for a youth marketing post, but if you think about it, life really IS all about constant learning, and hence, indirectly, the education of oneself.

I will start of with the issues close to my heart.

During the youth panel session, we were asked,”If you were given $1000 to spend immediately, what would you buy?”
Typical answers ensued. Shoes, bags, travel tickets, the Iphone! I kept silent, because I honestly had nothing top of the mind that I wanted.

Now I realize what I wish I could really buy.
Time. I want time enough to be critical about issues around me. Can a $1000 buy me that? No, it can’t. Maybe a million could.

In January, I penned that how a particular sentence from a UVA campus publication caught my eye. It was about how this particular student writer found that he “had no time to be critical”. That was one of the things that really caught my eye. I strongly identify with this sentiment, and I think that one sentence really holds a lot more than it appears to.

Time, not money, is the new commodity. Another thought that I picked up from the head worker at world vision when I was volunteering there 2 Christmases ago. How true it is. We simply have no time for anything anymore, but I’m not sure if anyone realizes that work expands to fill the time that you have. It is a rather complex arrangement to realize that the chances of you waking up, with absolutely nothing in the world to do, are going to become slimmer and slimmer as we go along, and that the only way you’ll ever get to actually live, is to intentionally take time out to do so. Maybe I shouldn’t use the word “We”, becuase, really, what I’m referring to is “I”, and I shouldn’t speak for everyone.

We want to inspire thinkers, but our universities are mainly producing do-ers. Simply because there hasn’t been enough time to go out there an explore, everyone is just too b-u-s-y to ponder about anything. And I am guilty as well. Deprived of time, I find my writing frame of mind degenerating. Deprived of time, I find my thoughts disappearing as I morph back into sponge mode at times. But at least, I am still constantly learning!

> Education

I loved what some of the Stikfas peeps brought up.
An important lesson on focus. It’s true, just looking at the word seems to imply that we focus on one thing. It is actually more apt to describe it as having to focus on many (selected) things.

Take risks – Ask yourself- Will it kill us? If no, do it!
Pride, not proud. Take pride in what you do. Everything I do, I want to do it real good!

> Organizing the Rhetoric Around Why to Go to College

Do you find it disturbing that many poly students are simply or worse, intentionally going through what they’re learning just to get a place in university? They enroll in any course as long as it entails them a possibility to get into college.

> On Work and beyond college

Graham Perkins asked if any of us really had any reason to fear, compared to say, a 17 year old youth from the UK who fears being one of the statistics in the knife stabbling epidemic. What is it we truly have to fear?

I love life. I love having time to explore nature, people, the surroundings, the different cultures. I want to find a home base that will let me do all these things, and it’s exciting to walk through town areas and seeing construction works going on. It’s exciting to hear any talks of new projects like the F1 coming to our shores.

All these are signaling mechanisms for me that the place I call home is experiencing some sort of winds of change… and I want to see more!

Tags: youthmarketing conference, life, singapore, education, culture, risks, time