Archive for June, 2009

The meaning of death

Jun 11th

Posted by Aaron Ng in Others

1 comment

I’m supposed to be working hard on my Masters thesis, but for the past week, I’ve been spending some time pondering the meaning of death because my wife’s co-supervisor at MIT, Professor David Schauer, suddenly passed away.

I’ve not had the chance to know him very well, but the few times I’ve met him and talked to him, it’s clear as day to me that he’s a wonderful person. He’s soft-spoken, patient, kind and caring towards people. He was due to spend a year in Singapore in a few months, and I was looking forward to knowing him better and showing him around Singapore.

His departure came as a shock to me, although I’m definitely not as badly affected as my wife and the other members of his lab. However, it did make me ponder the meaning of death, a topic in the deepest recesses of my mind in recent times. And, I think I’ve decided what death means to me.

Death is not the mourning of demise, but a celebration of having lived life.

When it’s my turn to leave, I hope people who still remember me will smile, and for those who have to shed tears, let it be tears of joy.

The way forward

Jun 8th

Posted by Aaron Ng in Others

4 comments

This blog has not been updated for a while, and I don’t know if I’ll continue to update it with the intensity of the past. It’s a combination of factors for the lack of updates but generally, I guess the fire in the belly has fizzled considerably, perhaps due to age, work, married life, new life interests and other factors that I’m unable to pinpoint.

I guess I’ll probably still write on this blog sporadically. There are many voices these days commenting on the gamut of socio-political-economic issues in Singapore society today that perhaps my views are perhaps unnecessary, except for a niche group of people who bother checking this blog every now and then. Nonetheless, I still want to document my views from time to time, and perhaps some years down the road when I do a proper content analysis of my blog I will be surprised to find out how I’ve changed through the years.

Till the next entry.