From the journals

New York doesn't sleep. One cannot go to New York and expect to sleep. The first three days were overwhelming. I dived straight into its wild beating heart and it took a while for me to comprehend which way I was going. Too much, too noisy, too chaotic. It's so vastly different from Singapore, and for the first time I understood Singapore's smallness. We read about it all the time in textbooks and newspaper articles; the cosmopolitan, odds-defying little red dot. Always an emphasis on the littleness. I never fully comprehended it until New York happened.

The subway runs 24/7 like the veins and arteries keeping the city moving, pulsing, streaming even at the oddest hour. Broadway plays whisk you away to Utah, to prohibition-era Chicago, to Africa. Grand Central with the light and shadows and constant movement hypnotises. Elsewhere, behind nondescript doors and in dirty shop houses, endorphins and alcohol run deep. It's an ironic culture of speakeasies being trendy; everyone loves a good secret even if everyone else already knows about it. Tucked in the cosy basements of Greenwich Village, renowned jazz musicians let their hair down and jam to an appreciative audience limited only by the size of the room and the generosity of the laid-back bouncer.

Everywhere you turn, there is a hive of activity. People who keep on keeping on. Food trucks setting up their fare; the smell of hotdogs and shwarma wafting in the breeze. Dog-walkers resisting the pull of five dogs , florists setting up, people queuing for coffee, Wall Streeters power-walking to salads and yoghurt, tourists obstructing the way for their photos, office workers with their arms full of goods from the place of wonder that is Trader Joe's after work.

And the subways, the subways are a world of their own. On the subways, teens slouch in their seats and chatter with little care, massive well-behaved dogs eye curious children warily, girls with amazing hairdos giggle among themselves, and a clan of Orthodox Jews in their distinctive outfits crowd into a carriage as quickly as they alight like an almost blur of black fabric and beards and Hebrew. The sartorial touch is evident in most carriages - the stark red lips, the perfectly drawn cat eye, the sleek fall coat, the blacker than black bowler hat sitting atop picture perfect coiffure, the Instagram hipster with glasses he was born to wear. And people read. They tote their books around and whip it out once the doors close. It's so easy to get lost in a book while on the subway, and even easier to fall for place so perfectly chaotic.

240/366 Wisdom from perspective

Listened to Lim Siong Guan give his thoughts on Christianity in the workplace last night. Despite my initial reluctance to attend (audience was mid-40s and above; mingling with aunties and uncles require a special kind of energy), I'm glad I turned up. Reminded of how much insight experience provides and the value of learning from those who have gone before you. So easy to get caught up in trying to understand things from a narrow perspective instead of taking the optimal option that is the 'wisdom of the ancients'. Many issues are about perspective, some better than others. (Note to self: Keep that in mind). That man is a titan and one heck of a civil servant. In an hour, he touched on anthropology, a country's success, the fate of empires (John Glubb), the duty of government, honour, changes in a cultural landscape, and reframed it in the Singaporean context (SG100), along with a brief lesson on Singapore's history - all with great aplomb. For all the cynicism I have about the government, there's no doubt that this guy's heart is definitely for the country.