Sunday, December 06, 2009
cogito ergo sum

today i indulged my inner lian and bought converse sneakers that are white and printed with tiny navy blue stars. haha. everyone is rolling their eyes at me for getting them, but the thing is, im having a quarter life crisis! dont wanna hit that big 20 ): got a couple more days left to be the child kaye likes to call me, and therefore im making full use of it! (:

cant wait to go to italy! :D although i feel so sian to pack. but so exciting! cant wait to see the real last supper, all the gorgeous scuptures and architecture that look so ornate in pictures and im sure will look even more amazing in real life, and so many more things! pompeii and venice and catacombs and the colosseum and everything else! cant wait to steep myself in all that history and experience firsthand all the things that i've only ever heard/read/seen on tv. and of course, i cannot wait to eat! haha. i think my mum has already decided she's going to bring back cheese. how many wheels though, i can't say. i want parma ham! but i am highly doubtful that i'll be able to bring any back. ): im such a glutton. lol.

sometimes i wonder what i'ld be like if i were born into a different country/time period/culture etc. i wonder how much of the me i am today is shaped by the social norms of today, the conventions of my culture, and other various circumstances. if i were born into a lets say jane austen sort of setting (Emma got me thinking!), will i be bored to death at being the mistress of a household like i most likely will be if i had to do nothing but look after things like that in the future, or will i be blissfully content? or in a scenario more realistic, what if my ancestors continued to stay in china? then i would be living pretty much like the relatives we visited in china, and undoubtedly, my views of the world such as to equality, the meaning/significance of family etc. will definitely be different. but how different exactly? how much of who i am, being stubborn/thinking im capable of making the right decisions for myself etc. is truly innate? or are these qualities/traits being allowed to manifest due to nuture rather than it being encoded in ones dna (or something else). ok i guess what im trying to say in my confused, convoluted way is this: how much of who i am is completely independent of societal norms, upbringing, access to media, religion and all these other factors? can the effects of these influences be considered part of who i am? or do i not even have have an identity without all these things?

as you can tell, im still very confused by it, hence the lack of coherence. lol.