Capturing the Mood

Just a quick note before I turn in tonight.

At work, things are really starting to get interesting. While I still enjoy bringing people around the Masterplan exhibit (and there really are more visitors than I had initially expected - and if you haven't come down to see it yourself, do yourself that favour!), there are only so many times you can reread a panel before familiarity breeds impatience. And the theme songs of the various videos are starting to grate on the nerves.

And so, it is with the considerable relief that greets any change in routine that I approach the next few tasks: more research (which I think may actually have some strategic implications, and thus cannot be divulged here) and some actual planning cases. Of course, I am quite far away from having any authority to make any real decisions, and the purpose of this involvement is really just for me to read the case material so as to better observe how the actual planners make the actual decisions. But it is still refreshing and intriguing to get a glimpse of my mentor's real work.

It immediately strikes you, the need for balance in any decision. As a planner, you need to take a wider view, to try to understand as many perspectives on the decision as possible; the ideal is to take all stakeholders' concerns and opinions into account. This, of course, is rather difficult for an individual planner to achieve, but given the constraints, I do think the planners manage quite a good job. They think about issues and details that would not even have occurred to me, showing what experience can do to your perspective in this business. And they do put in a lot of effort to consider every conceivable factor, in an effort to attain that most difficult of balances, which lies between human interest and adherance to established rules.

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Also met up with YS for dinner tonight at Bugis. It turns out my old flightmate is on the brink of yet another trip, this time on a mission to Vietnam to spread awareness in rural areas regarding environmental issues. Unfortunately her flight time clashes with work, but all the same, I send my hope this trip will be more fulfilling and enriching than she expects.

It has been a long time, and it was good to be able to sit and talk once again. We chatted a lot about life in the US, because she is studying there this year on exchange from ANU. Hearing anecdotes and dispatches from the US was, of course, tantalising; and to hear the immediacy in the first-hand accounts that she related really brought into focus my own impending departure to New York. We also chatted at length about work-related concerns; a lot of philosophical and principle discussions. After all, it's likely that in the course of our work we'll actually encounter each other again through our respective agencies. And for her, the prospect of serving her bond is much more immediate, and to get a glimpse of what it is like to stand at that juncture was also helpful.

But of course, quite apart from what we talked about, it was once again refreshing to recapture the way that we talked. Electing to ride a bus home instead of joining the jostle in the trains, the slow progress of the vehicle reflected the luxurious and unhurried nature of our talking. There was no rush, no pressure, and, I feel, nothing that was off-limits. It was as direct a meeting of minds as I could ask for. Here is one of the very few relationships whose default state is one of connection.

It may seem that all me and my friends do is talk all the time. And I have to say that that is, by and large, true. And why shouldn't it be? I find that in talking, I am able to approach them the closest. Physical presence, of course, has something to do with it; nothing beats a face-to-face conversation. And a certain expressiveness (not necessarily eloquence, mind you) is necessary. But face-to-face conversation, I find, is the most effective mode of communication because it de-emphasises the mode of communication, and rightly focuses attention on what is being said. You listen properly when you can look someone in the eye, and the connection goes beyond a fixation of being in the same place and using nice words with each other, to capitalise on the ideas and the meanings that are being transmitted between the two parties.