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too much and too little |
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Sex and Sensibility
So I was talking to this friend of mine with a long-term girlfriend of five years. As far as I know he's a virgin like I am. Now, that probably confounds you, because it certainly confounded ME, and I don't get confounded easy, unless the confounding matter involves things like why ice sticks together when you throw salt on it, then my brain just... explodes, like. I asked "How is it possible that you could be in a relationship with the same girl for FIVE YEARS, and not have sex once? How could you possibly have that kind of willpower?" He said, "Well, you know, in order to have sex, you need to have a location, right...?" It made no sense to me, because "You have a fucking car! She has a fucking car! What sort of excuse is that?" I know you're reading this, so all I can say is it's clear that you're not trying hard enough, dude. I'll frigging lend you my room if you wash the sheets afterwards. Before anyone says anything, yes, I am a shallow, simple man.
Goodbye 2003
It's the morning of the last day of 2003, and I suppose I should write something about how I feel about 2003. Wrap it all up, if you will. I'm still groggy from the consumption of vast amounts of paracetamol to combat the nefarious effects of sunburn, so forgive me if I make even less sense than usual. 2003 has been a pretty shite year, but I suppose not as shite as it could have been. Trying to think back on what has happened to me this year, I realize that NOTHING happened to me this year. Nothing of note. But let's try to list 'em anyway: Highlights in Wiffleworld in 2003 1. Going to New York. Almost getting killed on several occasions by James' dad's "driving". Fun. Fun. 2. Going to Taipei. Going overseas = cool 3. Getting a new Personal Computer Low points in Wiffleworld in 2003 1. Going nowhere academically, socially, romantically or professionally. 2. Total financial armaggeddon. 3. Spraining my ankle. 4. Getting charged by the SAF for missing IPPT I probably could whip up a better analysis. Maybe later. I'm totally groggy and pissed from losing a Winning Eleven 6 match using Argentina Classic against Kai. Have a good one folks.
Internship starts on 12 Jan, woofuckhoo
Apparently the dress code for work is "smart casual". Someone tell me what the fuck that means, because I've no idea at all. Expect this blog to remain low profile until I start work, because I can't think of anything to write about on a daily basis. In other news, I've been getting some seriously weird dreams lately. I would describe them but I've forgotten what they were. All I can remember is waking up and thinking "WTF that's some odd shit!" My sheets seem relatively dry so they probably weren't weird in an erotic, tentacle-rape way. Maybe I should try whipping up some bad fiction, that's always entertaining (for me).
I'm incredibly bored
Thank goodness the hols are coming to an end, because I am going INSANE from boredom. It's not like I've got nothing to do, there are LOTS of things I haven't done, like 1. Learning to drive a car. 2. Clearing out my crap-filled cabinets in time for the Chinese New Year. 3. Writing the Great Singapore Porn Script. 4. Buying a new set of clothes for the Chinese New Year. I just can't be arsed. I can't feel enthusiasm for anything. I think the fever recently re-wired my brain somehow. Oh, and which of you bastages registered this blog for the Asia Weblog Awards? In case you haven't noticed, my blog SUXXORS - 1. It uses a STANDARD BLOGGER TEMPLATE. 2. It has no content. 3. I occasionally post pictures of myself, which is a definite bummer for anyone not expecting it, including myself sometimes, like when I wake up in the middle of the night and I open the Blogger interface and I scroll down and see WHOA OMG WTF IS THAT THING STARING AT ME then I start hyperventilating till I realize it's just a picure of myself or a balloon shaped to look like a penis (sometimes it's hard to tell)
Fifteen Seconds of Fame
I suppose it's not everyday you see your ugly mug on the telly, and I suppose that's worth a mention. At least it wasn't CrimeWatch. I can't really think of anything to write, so I'm stopping here. Gotta keep that daily post count up, eh.
Something You Did Not Need to Know
Sometimes I get really angry and frustrated at some things that I am either unwilling or unable to vocalize, mainly because these are things, that once said, will undoubtedly be used against me in the future, and that is plain fact; and the frustration of not being able to say what pisses me off, pisses me off even more. When that happens I go out of my way to find someone to annoy, and I think I do that quite well. ObTangent: Is it not true that nothing is more maddening than undeserved praise?
There and Back Again
Calvin: Well. I've decided I do believe in Santa Claus, no matter how preposterous he sounds. Hobbes: What convinced you? Calvin: A simple risk analysis. I want presents. Lots of presents. Why risk not getting them over a matter of belief? Heck, I'll believe anything they want. Hobbes: How cynically enterprising of you. Calvin: It's the spirit of Christmas. ("Calvin and Hobbes" strip by Bill Watterson)
Dateline: Wednesday
RETURN OF THE KING~! And here's a pretty good editorial about something else entirely. Rant of the day: We're playing street soccer, and the ball is kicked way over the fence unto the road behind the court. A bunch of girls are walking by. So one of the guys (an opponent, I don't actually know him) shouts to them and asks for the ball. They just tap the ball forward, and some of girls just point and shout sarcastically, "Oh, look, the ball is rolling down the slope already arr." I ask you, is it really THAT much trouble to bend over, pick up a ball that's at your feet, and throw it over a fence? Singapore men are always criticized for their lack of gentlemanliness; perhaps some of our women need to reflect upon their lack of graciousness. (And Fleming/SS, if you guys fuck with the comments again I'm moving the damned blog. And I'm totally serious. That kind of shit was why I didn't want to let you guys know I had a blog in the first place.)
Comments Lost
As you guys may have noticed, the old comments are gone. The BlogOut website had some new html code, and changing to the new code risked a minor chance of losing all previous comments. That's just in case anyone was wondering. Oh and who put me on Blorgy?! All I can say is: OI!!!
Don't look a gift horse
Things were simple on dad's side of the family. My father was a first-generation immigrant from China, the only son in a long line of only sons, who was brought over here by parents fleeing the impeding communist victory in China. This meant that they avoided suffering the horrors of the famine caused by the Great Leap Forward, and the collective insanity of the Cultural Revolution. They did however bring their own little bit of madness with them. I will admit that as a child I did not really like my paternal grandparents. They were, to me, weird, creaky and old, so very old. Plus, the expectations they had for me, as the eldest child of their only son, weighed upon me like a rock, a burden transmitted partially through the proxy of my parents. They smelled funny too. You can imagine I was not entirely happy that I was often made to kiss them, for their wrinkly skin resembled that of a pair of ancient lizards'. They were not entirely unwelcome though; they were rich, and they acceded to my every whim. Transformer toys? Video games? Satay? Burgers? If I wanted it, I had it. But out of misguided piety my father made me stop taking gifts from them, which actually meant I had to refuse their gifts (if I looked at anything long enough, my grandparents automatically assumed I wanted it). Looking back now, I realize my father went about it wrong. He should have gone to his own father, not to me. My sad refusals to their offers of gifts, mindful that I would get a rebuke from dad if I turned up with any new toys, made nobody happy. My grandparents probably derived great joy from showering me with presents, and I certainly derived great joy from being showered with new toys. After all, they lived quite far away, and did not visit all that often. It was an indulgence both they and I could afford. The ban only served to make me resent having to go out with my grandparents. I still blame dad for this at some level. Quite irrational, I know. But then I'm the culmination of a long line of irrationality, from both sides of the family. With only one son and making good money as a Taoist priest, grandpa managed to accumulate a rather vast reserve of money, mostly thanks to obsessive pennypinching on the part of grandma. Grandma distrusted banks and kept all her money in her apartment. After she passed away, we found reservoirs of money everywhere: in suitcases, in bags, under the bed, wrapped in cloth, hidden in drawers - it was a real treasure hunt. I think she was only generous with me and brother. She loved us more than anything in the world, but cash was a close second! Practically nothing in her house was new. She never bought new things, only used things. She did not believe in the concept of something being "broken". If it was damaged, it could be fixed. If it was damaged beyond repair, well it must have some functionality even after it can no longer serve its original function. Her little flat was a veritable museum of broken things that had no business being useful. She had the same attitude towards food. Her mantra: If it won't kill you outright, you can eat it. Unsurprisingly, granddad developed the habit of eating out. He wasn't a spendthrift in any sense of the word, but he liked to enjoy himself once in a while, or why bother to slog like a dog, acting as a communicator between this world and the next, funeral after funeral, day after a day; after all, one day, the next funeral he has to attend could well be his own. So it was that Whenever granddad bought anything supercilious (practically ANYTHING according to grandma) he would get nagged to the very edge of despair (grandma was pretty good at the nag game), and developed strategies to avoid this outcome. Lucky for him, grandma wasn't a particularly clever woman. One tactic was to bring things back, and claim that they were gifts. Sometimes he would buy two things, and claim that he only paid for one; the other was part of a buy-two-get-one-free offer. It was a good deal, he would claim, an irresistable deal, and grandma would heartily agree. She did love a bargain. Granddad's luck eventually ran out, though. One day, a distant relative came a-visiting, and grandma showed her around the flat. There, she pointed out the latest addition to her home: a brand new refrigerator (now one of two refrigerators in my house) and told the relative that it was a gift that came with some random piece of furniture. The relative was astounded because it was quite obvious the refrigerator was far costlier than that particular piece of furniture, and told grandma, quite pointedly, that it was an impossible deal. Granddad was in trouble. "You said this refrigerator was a gift?" grandma asked grandad. "Yeah," granddad replied. "Well, it's not possible! This refrigerator is far too expensive! Tell me the truth!" grandma hollered. "It is the truth. This refrigerator was given to me." "Stop lying!" "Well, I had to give the guy money first," he deadpanned. I don't think granddad ever heard the end of that one. Perhaps right now, in whichever afterlife they may be at, grandma is chiding granddad for his undisciplined spending, constantly.
Harrenhal is awesome
On Friday, I received an ICQ message that sent my geek senses into overdrive. Kai had a friend who played the "A Song of Ice and Fire" collectable card game (CCG) and wanted to go buy a starter deck in town, so that we could partake in some gaming sessions with his friend and whoever geeks he (ie. his friend) hung out with (thirty-year-old lawyers who play CCGs are geeks practically by definition). Since Kai was slumming with his girlfriend, who lived in the vicinity, we drove down to the little hobbyist shop on Saturday morning where the gaming sessions were to take place (incidentally, right above two sex toy shops, where tools for sessions of an entirely different kind are sold). The shop was sparsely populated by a bunch of guys and a girl, all nerd types. But now that I think about it, I'm definitely the nerdiest of them all, except that these people are probably decent at math. In the end we walked out with a $17 starter deck each, because that's all that was left. Adrian called and wanted to watch Man United vs Man City at my house, and Kai decided to come over and watch too; so for the rest of the afternoon I hammered Kai's pathetic Stark deck with wave after wave of well-planned Lannister attacks---like in the story, the Starks are the Lannisters' bitches, period! I swear I'm not exaggerating one bit. Don't even try to deny it, Kai! (By the way dear reader(s), if you even remotely enjoy fantasy stories, you MUST read the "A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE" series. I am not kidding. It reeks of pure awesomeness!) Later Adrian came over (dude rode with his girlfriend on the MRT all the way to Woodlands---sappy bastard) and we played Winning Eleven on the PS2. Of course I owned both their asses. The fact that Adrian scored more goals than me is inconsequential. He knows that I owned his ass on a level so extradinarily deep he probably isn't aware that he knows it yet. Afterwards, we watched the match. Man U won. Yippee fucking yay. Adrian asks whether I swear so much when I'm at home usually. I tell the fuckin assho' to shut his muthafuckin' mouth, fucka, this ma' house n' I can swear all I fuckin' want, you get me, fucka?? Then they go home. I watch some TV. I play some Gunbound. I watch more TV. I play more Gunbound. I drink a lot of 7-Up and get a sugar high. I update my blog. Note: This might be the mostest boringest update I've ever done.
It runs in the family
Like any filial Chinese man, my grandfather went about the business of populating the family tree with unbending diligence, though it would have probably have been better for all concerned if he had worried more about immediate economic needs before that of genetic dispersion. Maybe I'm being unfair. After all, my grandfather was not really destitute, for he made a good living as a bartender in a British institution. It wasn't great money, but it kept the children fed and clothed, though after the imperialists packed their bags and left things went to hell in a handbasket pretty quickly. Mom was the second-oldest child, and the eldest girl. She was quite fortunate, for it meant that she could keep studying, though my Second Aunt was not quite so lucky---but she's doing quite well as a kindergarten teacher in spite of her lack of formal education. As a kid, my mom had to juggle her studies and her role as a surrogate mother to her sisters and brothers, because her mother, my grandmother, was quite mad. Her elder brother, my beh deh, the eldest in the family, was quite a brat as a kid, a gangster, a pai kia who rather spent his time hanging out with friends and gambling than attend to the needs of his family or study. He also had the habit of beating his mom, and soon left home to live with his grandma (ie. my great-grandma). As it happened, he turned out to be the most successful academically and financially among all my uncles and aunts, and the greatest contributor, money-wise, to the family. Proof, I think, that we must not be too quick to judge a person based on his (or her) actions as a youth. But I digress. My grandmother's sanity gave out when my mom was very young, and nobody really knew why or how, not even grandpa - his working hours meant that he was rarely home. Truth be told, my grandma's madness was not that exciting, not like Jack Nicholson's in The Shining, but still worth a re-telling: Sometime after grandma had her fifth child, my fourth aunt, she developed the habit of mumbling to herself. If you tried talking to her, she would mumble nonsense and laugh and roll her eyes so that only the whites showed, and this trait so infuriated my beh deh that he raised his hand against her more than once because of it. Once she locked herself in a toilet, where despite the pleadings of my family, she refused to come out. You must note that toilets in kampungs were quite unpleasant and smelly, not like the modern ones you have now, so certainly no sane person would lock themselves up in one. Eventually, somebody broke the door open, and grandma was there, squatting, pants around her ankles, a roll of toilet paper in her hands. The toilet paper, a full roll, was filled with tiny red numbers that covered every inch of it on both sides. Grandma had written thousands of 4-D lottery numbers in the hours she had spent locked inside the village's toilet. People got used to it eventually. It become her signature, how she spent hour after hour in the toilet, scribbling number after number, on roll after roll, again and again. Grandma was never dangerous to others, and she was capable of looking after herself. But she could no longer take care of her family, even if she functioned quite normally for someone so insane. But once in a while she would go completely berserk, like running through the kampung naked. One time when her condition got really bad, she went and chopped off the ends of her fingers (that doctors managed to surgically re-attach), so grandpa had to send her to Woodbridge Hospital, a mental institution, where doctors prescribed medicine that kept her mildly sedated. To this day she has a compulsive twitch, a side-effect of the many pills, injections and therapies she was forced to undergo, all for the sake of her mental health (they said). She later had a stroke though, so nowadays, it's quite difficult to tell which twitch came from which. She didn't stay inside Woodbridge for long, because ironically, she was afraid of the madness that lurked within. But all in all, it wasn't a bad stay for her, despite her newly acquired twitch, because one of my grand-uncles worked there and looked out for her. He was the caner. He wielded a large cane and was responsible for beating up inmates that went too mad for a madhouse. I suppose it was a cushy job. He would have made a good interviewee for an odd-job feature I think, but too late now, he's dead. But Grandma lives on, as demented as ever, now stuck on a wheelchair, partially paralyzed, twitching, vacuous - but alive. I suppose when one has reached such a state, insanity may well be more of a blessing than a curse. I don't know for sure. But I promise I will tell you, when I get there.
If it's 12 inches long, it's black
When mom shoved that thing in my face, I almost jumped back. "Look, the first balloon toy I've ever made! It's yours!" she said, quite enthusiastically. I stared at it suspiciously. Was this another one of her not-so-subtle hints that she's desperate for a daughter-in-law? 
"What's that supposed to be?" I finally asked. "A sword," she said, seemingly perplexed that I would even ask, when it was so damned obvious. I don't know what hobby she's going to pick up next, but if it's Did I ever mention that my maternal grandmother has been insane since my mom was 8?
Only Ghosts in Paradise
It has not been that long since Junior College, but it feels a lifetime away, not mine but somebody's else's. Having escaped the oppressive madness of the arts stream I fell awkwardly into a class I never really felt I was part of. But last night, as I tried to sleep I grasped at the strands of dream, attempting to conjure some images of that part of my life from the vaporous, shadowy, whispery, fleeting wisps of memory: people, faces, things--- ---but what came to mind was a spiralling staircase,dark, silent, dusty, cement, haunted. When I dropped Further Maths in the second year of my studies I found that I had a lot of time to spare in between lessons. There was nothing to do and no one to talk to. Everyone I knew was at a lecture or a tutorial, and I was stuck at the class bench, near the canteen, where people I did not know but saw everyday came and went. It was unbearable and any attempts to nap were simply futile. So I began to look for a place where I could be by myself, and my first option was the library, where it was at least quiet. Still, it was too damned bright and there were only so many books I wanted to read, and I despaired, till I noticed a door to an unlit staircase. It was locked, but I could see that there was another entrance on a lower storey, and after a quick search, found it to be open. As I walked through the portal, I felt like Moses on the cusp of the holy land, finally at the end of my long exile. I was home. Now, this staircase was not entirely without traffic, even though it led nowhere. There were those who came to smoke, and more rarely, couples who would come here to get intimate, free of prying eyes. But they only did so at the lower reaches of the staircase. The upper levels, above and beyond the landing near the door to the library, was completely unlit, and nobody ever went up there. Except me. I was the ghost of the staircase: a spectral, sleeping, drooling boy. I imagine that the newspapers I spread across the landing still lie there in the musty dark and the doodlings I drew still remain on the walls, untouched, waiting---for me. The landing where I rested would have been pitch dark if not for the light from the library downstairs, since the aforementioned door had a little rectangular window. Near the window was a desk, where occasionally people would sit. If I climbed a little higher from the landing I could spy faces of people - whispering, reading, sleeping, musing - and sometimes that's what I did, if I felt more voyeuristic than I was drowsy. On occasion I looked in between the railings, through the hole in the middle, down, down, down at whoever visitor I had, though he (or she) rarely knew he was my guest. Twice, I coughed while I was doing so, and both the victims I beheld from above panicked, and ran away in obvious distress. Both times I broke out laughing. Maybe they still think they had an encounter with a being not of this world. Maybe my cackles still haunt their sleep. I sure hope so. In that secret cove, I discovered the darkest dark I had ever known, and the quietest quiet. It was a place out of time, indeed, I often lost track of time, which meant that quite often I missed lectures (particularly Economics ones) that I did not plan to. It was timeless. It was Zen. Other than the occasional visitor, there were no distractions, and I discovered that one is often lonelier in a crowd than in solitude. Because there was usually no one else, I could be everyone else. There were no gadgets, no computers, no books, no sirens, no surprises, no handphones, no pagers, no duties---just myself and my thoughts. And I thought a lot. Thinking is overrated as I've found. Few will ever reach enlightenment or discover great truths by oneself. My thoughts were usually not very useful or penetrating. I did not reflect upon the questions of the great: What is truth? What is being? What is the nature of desire? No, I wondered why my butt itched, whether the hot chick I saw last week would sit by the chair near the window and whether I ought to go for Phys Ed class or not. And such. In those rare times when my mind wandered towards the metaphysical, I fell quickly asleep and dreamed beautiful dreams, filled by giant attack robots with golden gossamer wings. Sadly, I could never stay in my beautiful Shangri-La for long. Tied to the mundane, even the Buddha had to return to the fold of men, and I, to class. Fortunately, I never had to tell anybody where the hell I was; since I was the resident madman, I was never asked. My own madness was my own business, my roamings no one's concern. Perhaps one day I shall return from my self-imposed wandering. After all, Canaan is waiting.
Like the UN, you can't have the New Year without resolutions
After the sheer embarassment of coining the Wiffle Waffle, I hereby announce my set of resolutions for the new year: - When I have the flu, I will not say i have the Wiffle Sniffle - when I dance, I will not say I am doing the Wiffle Shuffle - when I buy a lottery ticket, I will not say I have joined the Wiffle Raffle - when I confuse someone, I will not say that I've performed the Wiffle Baffle - when I tell someone to shut up, I will not say that I've given him the Wiffle Muffle - when I mess up somebody's hair, I will not say I've done the Wiffle Ruffle But that's not all: - I resolve not to decapitate more than two people with the handle of a large, wooden axe - I resolve not to use the word "helminthiasis" for any reason - I resolve not to post pictures of Scandinavian women engaging in scat - I resolve not to join any queue that spans several city blocks for a bloody iMac. - I resolve to pretend to enjoy some of the stuff pretending to be food that my mother whips up on occasion - I resolve to UTTERLY DESTROY MARCUS at the next game of Diplomacy - I resolve to stop weirding girls out who bother to give me ICQ messages by pretending to have a fetish for the "uh oh" sound. Even though it's true. - I resolve to stop - I resolve to UTTERLY DESTROY MARCUS at the next game of Gunbound - I resolve not to fail my Professional Internship by too large a margin - I resolve that if I ever have an imaginary divorce with my imaginary wife I will make sure I get the imaginary dog - I resolve to UTTERLY DESTROY MARCUS at the next game of football My ma always told me not to make promises I can't keep.
Sex, geekdom, Christmas and madness... and ghost/dog
Sex Science proves why semen is sometimes called "happy sauce" Apparently the "mood-altering hormones in semen absorbed through the vagina" has a positive effect on a woman's mood. My first reaction to the piece was that perhaps the conditions of unprotected sex, such as a long-term, comfortable relationship could have contributed strongly to the findings, but someone on a webboard who had access to the original research article said that these variables were controlled and I have no reason to doubt him. Well lads, you know what to do the next time your Geekdom I've almost finished Lucky Wander Boy and the section in the "The Catalogue of Obsolete Entertainments" under "Geeks" was so damned clever I am in awe. I love Adam Pennyman (in a Plutonic, non-homophobe way of course)! A GEEK: A geek is a person, male or female, with an abiding, obsessive, self-effacing, even self-destroying love for something besides status. (D. B. Weiss) Victims of the Mosaic curse, they look down into Canaan from their own private Pisgah's without any hope of ever being allowed in, and like Moses they acquiesce in this state of affairs, though unlike him they have done nothing to deserve their exclusion from the land of milk and honey. For they may be oppressed by the figures of beauty, and they may be ugly---but they have the music. (D. B. Weiss) I may have to meditate on this. Christmas Q: Why is Michael Jackson like Santa Claus? | | | | | | | A: After he visits a room full of kids, his sack's empty. Madness 
Being bored, I fired up Championship Manager 4 and replayed my old Everton savegame, left fallow in disgust after having half the senior team injured, and quite quickly I faced a bug. The game crashes every time at a point right after kick off in the UEFA Cup 4th Round against Lyon. I have brought the team this far and I wasn't going to give up now! So for HOURS I sat there replaying that bit again and again in the hope that the binary gods would decide to spare the programme from crashing. I tried everything. I changed the skins, I rebooted the computer, I looked for a new patch, I shut down all programmes, I opened a lot of programmes, I cursed, I tried walking out of the room... and it wouldn't work. Hours of my life, doing nothing but that. Surely only someone who is not entirely sane would do this! Later, I had an ICQ message out of nowhere, and surprisingly it wasn't Jiayi (who has shocking me with the ICQ "uh oh" sound down to an art form) but Eronele, a fellow Singaporean who plays Everquest. (If you actually read this blog Sue, hi.) Talking about Everquest almost stoked the desire to return to the world of Norrath, where instead of the evil, ugly dwarf I am in real life, I can be Shagga, an evil, ugly, dwarf WHO CASTS SPELLS! If my obsessive attempts at bypassing a program crash so that I may continue to manage a bunch of ones and zeros pretending to be famous European football stars in CM4 was borderline insane, then any desire to reinstall that demonic bottomless pit of time and money could only be the result of PURE, UNDISTILLED, EL LOCO COCO WACKO SOCO, MADNESS! Do I enjoy sitting around on my ass hitting the 1 button after counting down a Complete Heal? Do I enjoy having random strangers send me messages asking for a rez when I am halfway across the world? Do I enjoy being blamed for group deaths when the stupid puller decides to pull a train after I've announced LOM? Do I enjoy turning up for a planned raid that no one else does? Do I enjoy listening to people squabble over loot? Do I...? Do I fuck! I'd rather have the jizz fairy come over and jack off in my laundry; at least that stuff is full of happiness and joy and fun, as proven by science and the BBC. ... and ghost/dog An hour after I wrote all that I walked to the nearest 7-11 for a sandwich, and on my way out I spied a little brown long-haired dog scuttle on spindly legs towards my neighbour's house. I gave it no attention and kept on walking. Eventually I got my sandwich and on my way back found that the dog was still in front of my neighbour's front gate, seemingly conversing with the dog who lived behind it, a large black doberman. As I walked towards my house the little brown mutt turned towards me and started barking. There I froze with my sandwich in hand, worried. It was a tiny canine and if it attacked me I could probably kick it to death, but I wanted to avoid that if possible. I remembered then that when faced with an aggressive animal one must stare it down and show no fear. That wasn't hard - the aggressor in question was the size of an overgrown cat. What surprised me was that it worked! The dumb dog backed off, barking but avoiding eye contact. I was quite satisfied as I unlocked my gate and walked through the porch, when I heard a woman calling my name. I thought it was my mom because it sounded kinda like her. It only stopped when I unlocked the door to the house proper. I shouted "What is it ma?" but had no reply. I went upstairs and found the door to my mom's bedroom locked. There was no way she could have shouted to me from upstairs and be heard. You see? I am now hearing things. I am clearly off my rocker. Mad, mad, mad as a hatter!
I'm sorry for inflicting this sight upon your eyes
You still have the opportunity to turn away. Really. I'm not kidding. Okay, fine, look you bastards look. I'm the dork at the back, the guy most of you would rather I had masked. 
There's no reason why my pal Xai is masked in that picture. I masked him because I can, and because it makes me feel powerful and shit. What am I doing there, you ask? Well, judging from my posture I may be "spelling my name in the snow". But: 1. It doesn't snow in Singapore. 2. This shot was clearly taken indoors. 3. I don't take out my wang in public, well, except for that one time in the Expo when the cubicle door opened on me prematurely... but you didn't need to know that. Why the hell was I wearing a long-sleeved shirt? Well that's a story best left untold. (Yes, I stole this picture from another blog, sight unseen, like a thief in the night, a whisper in the dark... okay that's all the cliches I'm able to muster. I've added two more blogs by "people I know" to my collection to feed my voyeuristic hunger into my ever expanding collection, and all is good.)
Newater is killing my fish!
The maid just changed the water in the fish tank today, and now the fish are dying. Some are lying on their side while others have flipped over. The ones that seem to be ok are moving sluggishly, quite unlike their usual selves. A few are actually trying to escape the water by jumping right into the ceiling of the tank! I've never seen that behaviour before. Right now the fish are being transferred to a little (by "little" I mean minuscule) pond by the side of my house proper, where the water is pre-newater - the good stuff. Even fish are prey to the horrific effects of the "psychological barrier" towards newater it seems. Either that, or this stuff is PURE CHLORINATED EVIL. If they don't survive I guess I'm having sushi for dinner for the whole of next week. Bastards. BASTARDS. Random website with funny stuff on it for the day: Hold Your Plums!
Angry Rant **more about the Chinese language in Singapore**
Sometimes I find myself unable to tolerate some of the so-called English-speaking Chinese liberals in Singapore, who seem to be particularly two-faced when it comes to issues of language discrimination. Now, many English-speaking Chinese conservatives and libertarians do the same thing (particularly the traditional English-speaking fundamentalist Presbyterian types) but at least they wear their biases reasonably proudly, which precludes me from accusing them of hypocrisy on this particular issue. It was, yet again, the question of Chinese language teaching that has reared its head in the Straits Times that sparked off this rant. While the bias of the English-elite that dominates the paper is moderated by the need to toe the government-sanctioned line, it seems to me that yet again demonization against the Chinese language and its users has reared its ugly head in liberal camps, cloaked in the fallacious argument that Chinese should not be taught, and should not be forced on children based on libertarian principles - the idea that these people are arguing against the coercion of the language on ethnic Chinese and not against the language itself. This is not true, and since my own social circle revolves around these English-language users I think I am well placed to talk about it (though fairly few of them could be seen as liberal, if anything the Chinese-speakers I know tend to be more "liberal" in both senses of the word). I do not believe that it is a coincidence that those who rant against the coercive aspects of government policy vis-a-vis the bilingual policy tend to be those with the lowest opinion on Chinese-language speakers. My own social circle is hardly a scientific sample from which to draw conclusions, so take this rant for what it is, a rant. But my observations are supplemented by my own observations of the blog world, where arguments are often supplemented by examples spawned from, dare I say, loathing against those on the Chinese-speaking side of the divide. For the first time today I found references to Chinese-speakers as "cina gerks". Here's a quote from a person that I found online: "last but not least, yes, i agree with you that to us the word 'cina' is more of a degoratory term. simply for the fact that they were - and still are - uncouth in manners and wotnot." I've found English-speakers to display traits just as low-brow and uncouth as that shown by Chinese-speakers; some of the most mean, small-minded, ridiculous people I've ever encountered speak English predominantly, their true selves shimmering under a sheen of oily, genteel hypocrisy. I've seen their disdain for the hawkers they buy their food from; their uppity refusal to speak in Chinese to someone who is unable to communicate in any other language. The fact is, that Putonghua has become, in the eyes of many of these high-flying, A(ir)-Level-straight-to-Uni yuppies, a language of the lower-class Chinese, or a language of traditional Chineseness. I've mentioned on many times the reason why it is so for the latter reason, and exhibited disdain of the governmental and NIE policies that has linked the language to a largely mythical culture. The former reason, it seems to me, is a classical case of Classist discrimination - language merely happens to be the fault line upon which the battle rages, as it must. As you can see from the quote listed above (and I can assure you such words are bandied about quite frequently among certain circles), some people don't seem to mind stereotyping an entire class of people, and this is not done without ressentiment, as I am wont to do (and indeed enjoy doing). Why must the Chinese learn Chinese in school? Well, why must we learn anything in school? Why general science, why geography, why history, why math, why English, why art, why physical education, why anything? Unless you're extremely libertarian (or anarchistic as the case my be) and believe that nothing should ever be "forced upon us" for "our own good" it seems concentrating on Chinese betrays a culturalist agenda. To be fair, the myths about the Chinese language and the co-option of the Chinese language as a means of transmitting certain "values" by our institutions, in addition to the general difficulty of learning a second language that has very little in common with the first, has made Chinese a natural target for the disgruntled. It does not help that, in general, the means by which Chinese is taught in school is piss-poor, and I'm speaking as one who came from a "premier" SAP school. For those who ask why we have to learn Chinese, I ask them why we have to learn Math. After all, is a second language not something which is immensely useful? Does it not open up horizons of understanding which would otherwise be denied us? Yes, it is imposed upon us - but then many things are. It is true that Putonghua is not a "Mother Tongue" for large numbers of those forced to learn it, it is also true that those who force Putonghua upon us have no business being the sole arbiters of what Chinese-ness ought to mean. But it does not deserve the rancour and scorn poured upon it by certain segments of the English-speaking bourgeoisie (nor does it deserve the mindless, chauvinistic adulation some of the Chinese traditionalists heap upon it). And the two-faced hypocrisy displayed by the some members of the English-speaking population, who would treat the more downtrodden non-English speakers as somewhat less than human (something I encountered fairly recently), disgusts me. (Note: Though it seems so from what I wrote, there is no clear-cut boundary between the English-speaking Chinese, or Chinese-speaking Chinese, thanks partly to bilingualism. But there are segments who speaks only English, and segments who speak only Chinese, and these are the purified ends of the spectrum that I am concerned about.)
Books, books, books
I went down to the Expo today for the Penguin Books warehouse sale, and I'm going to list the books I bought, because, frankly, it makes me feel all clever and stuff. Here they are: D. F. Wallace, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men D. H. Lawrence, Apocalypse Murray, Schwartz and Lichter, It Ain't Necessarily So: How the Media Remake Our Picture of Reality A. Shipman, The Globalization Myth P. Roth, Goodbye, Columbus E. A. Burtt (Ed.), The Teachings of the Compassionate Buddha: Early Discourses, The Dhammapada and Later Basic Writings D. B. Weiss, Lucky Wander Boy R. Allen (Ed.), The New Penguin English Dictionary I may have a short description of each book at some stage, but since I'm utterly enraptured by Lucky Wander Boy right now you guys will just have to wait.
All the News that's Fit to Print
A Cake in Time saves Nine It was mom's birthday, and I was in a panic. I had forgotten it was December the Sixth, and my brother had forgotten (him being a callous asshole and all), but like elephants and Russian chessmasters, women never forget. Fortunately, my mom had a nap shortly after my realization, and with the last $15 to my name I gave my brother the quest of buying a suitable CAKE from the nearest CAKE SHOP, and bringing it home without being detected by the matriach. Then we took mom out for dinner and pretended that we had remembered her birthday all along. This should generate enough goodwill to last a month. In fact, she was quite happy. "This is the happiest birthday I've ever had," she said. "Why?" I asked. "The fact that the two of you didn't do anything to piss me off, that's why." Good thing she didn't know I've spent almost $150 over the past week, eh. There's Something in the Water My room stank from the smell of tar today, thanks to the re-paving of the road outside my courtyard. Apparently people from the waterworks had dug up the road to fit in new pipes, so that instead of getting potable water from reservoirs and Mother Nature largely, now I'm getting a new kind of water. Exceptional water. Uberwater. Super water, even. It's not the water your father used to drink! Oh no. It's a whole new breed of water altogether. We call it: Newater. According to the manufacturer, newater is clearer, less odorous and less baterial than the water people get from the Public Utilities Board. What is exactly is newater, you ask? According to Wordspy, newater is "exceptionally pure water recycled from waste water generated by showers, sinks, and toilets". The fact that it's so exceptionally pure and clean must be why my hair gums up and my whole body feels like it's coated by a layer of wax after I take a shower of this stuff. This is the hardest water I've ever encountered. The question is, where do the minerals that cause the hardness come from? I am not sure I want to know.
Where the fuck was I?
It doesn't matter where the fuck I was, what matters is TODAY'S MOM'S BIRTHDAY, and I forgot!
This is kinda fucked up
Teacher sues to be allowed to teach non-Christian civilizations You gotta be fucking me.
I am such a klutz...
I cut myself with an electric razor. Also, type "miserable failure" (without the inverted commas) into Google and press the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button. A familiar face pops up. :)
What I Did Yesterday
Yesterday, in the male washroom, I sat on a commode with my trousers around my knees, facing three women and a video camera. "I need you to grunt," said one, the director. "Huh?" I said, adjusting the copy of Today I held between my legs. "Ummmmmmhhhhhhhhhffffff ah. Like that." "Who the fuck makes that kind of noise in the toilet?" I said. But I did. "CUT! What the heck is that thing between his legs? That black black thing." Everything is more interesting without context, I say.
The Humanity
It's a warm, sleepless night and I was trying to lull myself to sleep with the sweet rhythms of random karaoke tunes from national radio, as I lay on my side like a goddamned infant wondering what it would be like to actually reach out and touch someone, to actually affect somebody. If I died right now, probably from the very debilitating disease of insomnia, I wonder if anyone would give a flying fuck. A real fuck. I'm talking about the young-pubescent-girl-to-world-famous-rock-star-who-chokes-on-own-vomit kind of give a fuck. Yeah, that kind. But dying now would be no fun. I want to live to 85, have a ton of grandchildren, and have a sexy supermodel give a speech at the wake. A speech, in front of a large and weepy audience, that would go something like this: "Grandpa Wiffle was a good man, who lived a good life - a long life - and was well-loved and well-known by all around him, who earned the affections of everyone he knew with his earnestness and grudging generosity. He had no regrets in his life, and he left the living, his heirs, with no burdens, but an extensive legacy of good works and wisdom so well-used the phrases he created became cliches. He married the girl of his dreams and gave her many wonderful children, though the foster home from which he stole them was not quite so pleased. Though he was small he had a big heart, but it was nothing the doctors could not cure with intense medication. And his wit and humour, long compared to comedy greats like Pauly Shore, Larry King and Urkle, always managed to turn somebody's frown upside down, whatever the hell that means. "A man of quiet restraint, the hardest drug he dabbled in was alcohol. He hardly ever smoked, he never gambled and despite persistent rumours was never caught in bed with a Swedish whore, even though he wrote The Great Singapore Porn Script. I remember once, when I underwent the throes of puberty I came up to him and asked him how he managed to keep myself free from the vices like he had, and he said, "Don't be silly child, what's the point of living if you don't smoke a bit of the weed during drunken episodes of strip poker with the mates as a prelude to noisy, raucous sex?" This I told my mom, his child, and she told me not to listen to the senile loon at the back especially when he's high on panadol and Diet Pepsi. But Grandpa Wiffle was right, he touched me, like he touched millions of others with his Agony Aunt columns in "Her World" magazine. He will be missed." But who am I kidding? That's never gonna happen. This is a more likely version: "Yeah. Hi. *Cough*. Mr. Wiffle, yeah, wiffle, he was that... guy who lived by himself with a mean dog. I hear he's a failed writer of some sort. Worked at the Strait's Times or something apparently. I'm not really sure if this is important, but that guy had a talent for mouthing expletives and bad lager. Whenever I walked past that house, I always felt a pair of eyes arrowed on my back... you know? Like I was being watched. Watched... watched by an angry midget with an irritable canine. Right? You see what I'm getting at? So... one day, I walked by that house, and I didn't *feel* it. The eyes. No eyes boring a hole on my back. I immediately sensed that something was wrong. It's like, sixth sense, you know. Like in that movie with the kid and Bruce Willis? Like I could see dead people you know. Well, I actually could. He was lying dead on the porch, his entrails being eaten by that nasty dog. I think the dog's name was "Puffy". At this point that name was probably more suitable for Mr. Wiffle. Hehe. Heh. Yeah. That's about all I know about this dude. Yeah. He had a huge stack of porn nearby too. I didn't take any of that I swear." Polite applause by four or five members of the local RC and Joe the Social Worker who's about to be Joe the ex-Social Worker because he fucked this case up. And yes, I received my examination results today... why do you ask?
Fun With Purple Prose AKA The Great Singapore Romance Novel, as Written by Somebody with a Thesaurus Obsession.
Jeannie placed her Economics Ten-Year Series Manual down on the spotless, parqueted floor she was recumbent on, and sighed, her glistening deep beryl eyes (thanks to a new pair of coloured contact lenses) examining the texture of the ceiling, supported by the four walls that had been her prison for the past week. How she missed the Saturnian days of, well, two months ago when the examinations were distant and short skirts and tall ACS boys with fancy accents (and even fancier credit cards) were the order of the day, and not an incessant need to memorise, by rote, the differences between monetary and fiscal policy. It seemed simple enough for her. In her house, monetary policy was simply her parents giving her money directly while fiscal policy involved buying her something she didn't need, or making her work on some retarded project (such as tutoring her stupid Ah-Lian sister) for money. As ever, whenever she thought of bulls and bears and money, her mind would wander inevitably to Alberto Lawrence Foo from Class 23, who, unlike the proletarian, Singlish-speaking plebs that surrounded her, had an English middle name and (this really excited her) had the habit of rolling his r's. Plus he was a "scholar", which meant that he could one day become chief of the armed forces... even CEO of Singapore's premier airline! Plus there was a furphy going around that A.L.F. had what is known as a "turgid shaft", though Jeannie never really understood what the girls meant by that. Was that thing eternally swollen? Wouldn't walking around with an eternally tumescent member be really uncomfortable? "I wouldn't mind finding out first hand!" she giggled girlishly. Her swollen mounds of womanly desire throbbed in between breaths. *** Alberto Lawrence Foo was working out in the mini-gym by the pool. As he pumped iron, a random thought came to his mind. "Why is it that when a guy is called a stallion it is a compliment," his powerful, mega-trained, super-valuable-to-his-country cranial nodes wondered, "while being called a horse is an insult?" As the brilliant, almost Mentat-level microprocessing unit in his brain worked on an answer, his eyes wandered towards the powerfully-defined buttocks of Harry Irenicus Singh, his classmate who was doing pull-ups opposite him. He wished he had buns of steel - rear muscles capable of twisting off bottle caps and defeating constipation by sheer force of will. A single drop of sweat trailed down the side of his sculpted face. Harry was his very best friend. They were also the best players in the school's touch rugby team. They had been pushing, together, for the formation of a -real- rugby team, and tight uniforms like the ones worn by Jonny Wilkinson - all around Anglo-Saxon and World Cup winner. But the principal had demurred, and MOE wasn't too pleased that Alberto had tried to use his father's influence to push his scheme forward. Too bad, Alberto _knew_ he knew better than the rest of them. "Righto! Enough of a workout for today, old chap," said Harry as he dropped sprightly from the pull-up bar. "Shall we go for a meal and a quick fag before we continue our revision, mate?" "Yeah, I'm hungry Harry, but you know I'm trying to quit smoking," said Alberto as he put down the steel dumbbell of pure massiveness. He stretched his sweat-glistened sinews. "Let's go. I hear the salmon at the restaurrant near by dad's place is delightful. Shall we go there? I'll drrive. The BMW Z4 needs some brreakin' in." *** Lai Lee, or Larry as he insisted everyone called him, sat at the benches near the canteen in school, wishing he had bothered to take notes during class instead of ogling that buxom bitch Jeannie. He wished he had money. He wished he could use words like "corybantic" without breaking into fits of laughter. "Oei, study lah brudder, CONCENTRATE LA, why you looking into the air like dat?" said Zul, his mat-rocker pal. Zul was wearing his favourite Guns-n-Roses t-shirt and red headscarf. Lai Lee, as ever, was wearing a white Giordano t-shirt and green berms. "I was lah," lied Lai Lee. "I'm trying to memorize the F-distribution." "What the fuck you doing man," said Zul. "F-distribution formula is given during the exams la. Plus, you're holding the Maths C textbook. Maths C where got F-distribution??" "Erm..." "Thinking of the Twin Towers right?" pressed Zul. "Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur la." "You know what I talking about, don't act blur. Twin Towers, she lie down become Twin Towers liao," said Zul. "Hah. I thought we only call her Atomic Bombs," replied Lai Lee. "Or 'She Who Cannot See Her Shoes when she looks down'." They laughed. *** I apologize in advance. I couldn't find any means of inserting bloated prose into the third part.
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