In Continuum.

Our education system has taught us to accept that not knowing is a crime at school. It almost seems as if it is wrong to not know something in class or the textbooks. At least that is the educational climate in Asian countries, you are supposed to know your materials and not ask questions in a classroom setting. That is why most students here seem to be passive and non-involved at times. We have been taught not to ask questions in the classrooms, and we should try to figure out the problem ourselves. Saying something like "I don't know" makes you stupid, makes you ill-informed, it makes you a bad student, and nobody wants to be labeled as that. I suppose not knowing isn't something that is encouraged in most Asian countries, and admitting to it is like a white flag being waved on a battlefield, where you conceit defeat and you are submitting to your weakness. The truth is, however, not knowing is the most essential step to knowing most of the time, and that is the whole point of implementing an education system in the first place. Still, not a lot of people like the idea that "you don't know", or "I don't know". Some people would pretend that they know, and they say things in a way that'd convince you that they do know. It's the brilliant usage of language that makes these people so powerful in our society. After all, you don't need to pass I.Q. test to make it into the parliament, for example. 

It ties in with the fear of the unknown, I suppose. When humans didn't understand the reasons behind a lightning or a rainbow, they imagine an old man in the skies being very pissed off with, well something. Then they imagined pots of gold at the end of rainbows, and that probably sent a lot of foolish and greedy men to the ends of the world. They probably looked to the old and the wise, they expected them to have the answers to everything that happened in the world back then, and they gave them all the answers. How could they have not? They were the oldest, the wisest, and surely they should know more than anybody else about everything. So they come up with stories about the world, about invisible people in the skies and many other stories, and these stories were passed from ear to ear, from mouth to mouth. Then a group of people decided to write it down in a great big book, a book that remains as the top seller around the world in bookstores, though you can steal it from the drawer in any hotel rooms out there. All these stories were told because people were afraid to say the words "I don't know", as if those three words would doom them into the abyss of stupidity. In truth, it is easy to say the words "I don't know", and being lost is completely normal. 

I believe that the wisest minds in human history probably began with the same three words that we know of today as well. They started from not knowing, to questioning, and they eventually came to the truth at the very end. We found out that a lightning is basically an electricity discharge in our atmosphere, and the rainbows are merely the refraction effect of the light that passes through the air at a certain angle. All these answers came from the same three words people have been asking themselves for a very long time. Still, it is OK to tell yourself that you don't know, but a lot of people out there don't like to admit to it. It almost seems shameful to admit to not knowing, or that you were zoning out while the lecturer was giving the explanation in class. I think I know a lot of things, but at the same time I feel like there are a lot more things in this world just waiting for me to find out more about. I know my shoe size, in which case nobody else in this world knows by heart. I know how plate tectonic works, and I know that mixing the colors blue and yellow gives you green. Some of these are very common knowledge, but at the same time they are things about the world that we live in. Like the saying goes, the more you know, the more you know you don't know. I feel that one can never know enough about anything at all. 

So this entry is a confession, on my part, to say that I don't know a lot of things. This is me, telling the world that there are things in this world that I do not comprehend, things that I know very little of - though, I really should. First off, I am not very good with anything that goes on in the kitchen. I was at Vivo City a month or two ago when I came across a section in the shopping mall that sold kitchen utensils. I have never seen so many kitchen utensils in my life, and my mother isn't exactly a fan of having so many in the kitchen anyway. It complicates things, I suppose, and it's not like she needs so many items hanging off the walls anyway. I grew up learning only so many equipments you need to make a good meal, and they usually include the most basic of basics. A frying a pan, a pot, bowls and plates, forks and spoons, knives and really big knives, so on and so forth. And I thought the cabinets that were in the Home Economics classroom in high school had a lot of utensils to boot - that shopping mall was like the Mecca of cooking utensils. They looked more like torturing devices somehow, spoons of varying sizes and stirrers with hooks at the end of them - what's the point? Even April, who was with me at that time, knew not the purposes of all of them. It looked like the set of the next Hostel movie, and I could picture a butcher with a bloody apron picking the tools off the shelves to cut open the guts of a poor innocent victim. 

I don't know much about anything that goes on in the kitchen, and it extends to my lack of knowledge for food. I like food a lot, in fact I love food. I love the feeling of a thousand pores in your mouth opening up to the taste of whatever that you put inside your mouth after a long day of starving. You know, the feeling you get in your mouth, like the opening of a dam and the water starts to gush down the river like a tidal wave. I do feel like that with food, but I don't know them very well. That is also a part of the reason why I do so badly at NTR in school, because NTR does not involve eating - it usually takes a microscopic look at food and how it affects your body. I admire people who can take a sip of a soup and tell you what is inside and what isn't. I admire people who can pick off italian names of food off the top of their heads, and I especially admire the girl who taught me what "Penne Alla Arrabiata" is. This would be a typical way of how they'd probably describe a soup: I taste a hint of (something), blended with a bit of (something). They added a tad bit too much (something) though, they could have used (something) instead. But the preparation is really good, I can see that they (something) it. I see good food, I fork it into my mouth without second thoughts, and here we have people dissecting the food and telling you what is in it and how they prepared it? I have no idea how these people can do such things, perhaps my tongue is just perpetually numb. I have no idea how you differentiate from one ingredient to the next. To these people, I send my highest praises. 

Next, cars. I don't know a lot about cars, in fact I don't know anything about cars. I know a lot of people who can give you the model of cars off the tips of their fingers. They could tell you which model of which year, and I bet the names every part in the car engine. I don't suppose it is because I don't have a car, but because I haven't been very interested in them at all. I know of people who could talk about cars all day and all night long, and they can never get bored about arguing over whose dream car is the best. I know that a car has four wheels, a car has a dashboard, seats, a hood, a trunk, bumpers... as you can see, the knowledge is rather limited. Some people don't just know about cars, they know how to fix cars. Your car breaks down at the side of the road, you give them a call and they are going to come in, bare hands, and fix everything for you. That is how amazing these people are, and I have no idea how they do it. They probably read up a lot on cars - a lot. They can tell you down to two decimal places when it comes to how fast a car reaches 100km/h, or they could quote the prices of cars right off the bet. Another group of people I greatly admire. 

Then, we have fashion. I think I dress OK, not overly extravagant and not too overly vulgar either. Casual and comfort, I suppose, is the way to go for the most part, and I do not have a lot of clothes to go around in the first place. For guys, things are usually very easy to differentiate. We have the shirts and we have the t-shirts. We have the shorts, the bermudas, the pants and the jeans - easy. There are technical details you might want to go into, like a V-Neck or a tapered jeans but, that is as far as it goes when it comes to the details anyway. The ladies, however, they have a completely different set of names for their wardrobes, and it is so difficult to remember all of them. All the technical names start to flood in when you hear girls talking about which top to buy when you go shopping with them. To me, they were all merely "tops" and "bottoms" a few years ago, until I was introduced to the terms like "turtleneck", "spaghetti", "tank" and "cardigan". Seriously, I was that stupid. I know now, at the very least, but there is still a world of names out there for me to remember when it comes to the ladies. The shoes alone probably have a dozen different names, and those names probably have a few sects of their own as well. Of course, knowing that I "don't know", I have no idea where to begin naming them one by one. All you have to know is that when it comes to fashion, I am in shallow waters. 

So yes, I have admitted to not knowing a lot of things in life. I think I know quite a bit about music, about guitars, about the movies that I love (I have the uncanny ability to name a movie that I have watched just by seeing one second of it, tested and proven), things like that. Still, there are a lot of things out there which I don't know of, places where I'd feel overwhelmed and daunted by those who know a whole lot better. But I suppose, that is the joy of knowing, to know that you are not the wisest of them all, the smartest in the crowd. I suppose with such a mind, comes a great responsibility, and I am not a fan of that for the most part. I like to know that I am insignificant sometimes, to know that I still have another hill yet to climb. I makes me humble, I suppose, and it reminds me every once in a while that I am not in the center of the universe. We all have to step back every once in a while, to stare upon ourselves and to think "Wow, I really know so little despite so much". It's true, and there isn't anything wrong with saying "I don't know". Start now, say those words with me, and go to Wikipedia and find out more. It's fun to know - try it.