"Are we humans are are we dancers?"

By some odd twist of fate, everybody's gone clubbing tonight and I've managed to squeeze in some time for a 5km run and time to read some Sartre.

Maybe not so odd, since clubbing is an activity I've successfully avoided for the past 26 years of my life. Yes, I've never gone clubbing.

Perhaps its because I can neither drink nor dance, but as is the case for any phenomena, there is an ontological reason for this aversion and inability. Namely, I do not like to lose consciousness of my sense of being. I don't like not being in control of myself, subject to intoxication or the spasmodic bodily jerking that threatens to rob me of my hard-earned dignity.

On a separate note, my A'level Chemistry teacher's warning that alcohol results in higher bodily fat levels has spooked me for life. Ever heard of the legendary beer belly?

Like so many choices in my life, everything boils down to control. I love putting on proper clothes no matter where I go, because I want a little more control over what others perceive of me. I don't want people to think I'm sloppy.

I don't like dumb girls, not because I expect them to talk about politics or economics (these being mere signifiers of intelligence and not intellect), but because I'm more interested in girls who haven't been indoctrinated into a channel 8 - induced contentment. In other words, I want to know more opinionated and intellectually-sophisticated people, because I want to be in control of my own intellectual development.

I watch my diet and exercise regularly because I want to be in control of the way I look and feel. I want to look fit and feel healthy. This is obviously something I have never taken for granted, since my fitness was earned through discipline and some help from the army.

In a world where the essence of anything has become part of its own appearance, what you do and what you say become what you really are inside.

Perhaps I'm asking a bit too much out of the people around me. Would that I can be like Jean Paul Sartre, with a lover like Simone De Beauvoir and a buddy-cum-rival like Albert Camus. Sartre had it so easy, in the heady intellectual environment of post-war France. You could toss a stone into the crowd and you'd probably have hit an up-and-coming philosopher/political economist/activist.

Here you get clones.

I somehow think I'm never going to get a girlfriend, since I'd ideally prefer a girl who accepts my intellectual ambitions and respects that I don't club/drink/smoke. (unless there is someone awfully important doing these activities and it'll really bring great career benefits for me to partake in these activities.)

In small-town Singapore, that's as bad as asking for the stars to twinkle a little brighter through the gloom of uniformity. Then again, single-hood hasn't been bad at all, since I've had "my books and poetry to protect me". (Simon and Garfunckle)

Ang Heng