Thoughts.

Didn’t update for three days, mainly due to laziness, but also because of having a lot of things going through my head.

Attended the NUS Global Entrepreneurship Summit as a student helper at the request of my dajie Sarah. I think the experience itself was interesting because this is after all the first entrepreneurship-related event that I’ve attended since coming back from Shanghai, but it actually brought upon me more questions about this whole deal of entrepreneurship. I was chatting with one of the NUS professors for entrepreneurship during the dinner reception, and he said what I have been thinking all along – Singapore is glorifying entrepreneurship. In fact I would go to the extent to say that Singapore has glorified it so much that people are now jumping blindly onto the entrepreneurship bandwagon that they don’t realise the difficulties and the obstacles that lie ahead. It’s all very well saying that to become an entrepreneur you have to overcome difficulties and obstacles, but as far as I’m concerned, jumping blindly into entrepreneurship, without considering the difficulties and obstacles, is not exactly a very clever thing to do. Shouldn’t the people who are keen to become entrepreneurs be more aware of the real world, and find out more about whatever they want to do, before taking the plunge. I don’t think we should applaud those who just take the plunge, but instead we should understand all the tough things that are associated with being an entrepreneur. It would be silly to glorify this whole deal on entrepreneurship which would make people ignore everything else and go blindly into it.

And then I was thinking of my participation level with the Computing Club. I have been back for a week and to be absolutely honest, I am actually quite disappointed with the state of the club now. The element of companionship is gone, and it seemed to be replaced by rules and regulations. I still remember that the club used to be a very happening and interesting place which I love to be in, but now whenever I go into the club office the place actually feels cold to me. I’ve talked to a lot of people for their opinions of the club, and of course I’ve heard a lot of different aspects. But whatever I see doesn’t lie to me. The club is indeed very different from the one that I was so happily to be proud of in one and a half years ago, and because of that, I actually am getting to be in a loss over whether I should still be so committed towards it. I’ve told a lot of people that “if the club needs me I’m here”, which I still maintain my stand, but it’s just that would it be a case of me being pro-active in being involved with club activities, or would it be me being passively requested to help in club activities that’s my concern now. I know that I won’t like to be controlled, so I kinda like what I am now, not under the jurisdiction of anyone. But if I want to really contribute more to the club, then chances are I would need to get into situations which I will be controlled by people, and I don’t know if I can handle that. Well, I want to live life like a student, and being active in student activities is the best way to do so. But I don’t even know how I would want to be part of this whole thing, especially when I honestly don’t see things happening or moving in what I perceive to be a right direction. It’s nice to be appreciated, when people are telling me that they would love to have me around, but it’s still hard because of the fact that I feel that the club did not seem to have gone on the right track. I could choose to stay away, and to be honest, the club was close to me because of the atmosphere that it used to have. But the coldness that it demonstrates now is getting me a bit skeptical about a “comeback”. Now I think I’m kinda stuck in the middle, so I think whoever that can convince me now would probably someone that will be able to dictate if I will or will not be active again. To put it bluntly, I am now being quite confused about if I want to be part of something that I don’t, or at least I haven’t been able to, believe in?

And of course there are a lot of other things that are going through my head these few days, but I guess that two thoughts on entrepreneurship and Comp Club are the two most “disturbing” thoughts that I’m having now. I guess the only excuse that I can offer so far for all these thoughts going on in my head is that “things have changed – and so have I”.

To a certain extent, like what someone said to me today, I wish I’m back in Shanghai.