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Nothing to do, and so little time to do it
I've been looking forward to Friday all week, and now I'm bored as hell. I wanted to do many things, but I was too bored to do them, or I was too broke. My pack of Tic-Tacs is running out. I'm too lazy to read. Too tired to think. Too unmotivated to exercise. "I have not time, not enough time, not enough time to do anything." No excuse. But hey, I managed to lead Everton to the Premiership in CM03/04 in the 07/08 season. So it wasn't a total loss.
I know, I know it's really serious
I really don't want your opinion on this, Ms Public Relations Person Three weeks into my internship as a reporter, and I've already developed an irrational hatred of PR people. Today I covered a ministerial event, and when I got back to the office, my boss decided to give me an angle I did not anticipate at all, so I called the PR folks up and sent some questions in. The person I dealt with at the _______ was fine, but my answers could only be gotten from the _________, and man was she annoying. "Why do you want this info? The story is about the people behind the _________? We never give out info regarding ______. Even the Straits Times doesn't this kind of information, you should write about _________ and not ________." WOAH THERE LADY! Are you telling me how to write my story? Nobody tells me how to write my stories! Well, except the chief editor. And the copy editors. And the senior reporters. And my mom. And any hot chick who cares to comment. But that's it! I'm the damned writer, and I don't tell YOU PR folks how to do your job, so don't tell me how to do mine. You don't have to give me the information I ask for, that's your perogative. But don't give me advice on how to write the story: I'm helping you get publicity, you're helping me get the facts, that's it. Fuckers. The Unbearable Dorkiness of Being OR My Day, Out of Context, In Quotes "Hey, bak kwa guy!" ---friendly middle-aged subeditor lady as I walked hands-in-pockets, bowed, against the gray sky "What has communism got to do with you as a writer of sex?" ---intern from StraitsT "Your byline will be horny smurf." ---same intern "You have no sense of civic consciousness."---same intern when I tried to mix non-halal utensils in the halal tray "Hey, you have been so quiet. Are you all right or not?" ---senior reporter, because I've been in "silent killer" mode all week "Don't you have work to do?" ---16-yr-old sports reporter intern "Man, this job sucks. Can you believe I signed on because I thought it was a fun thing to do during the holidays?" ---chain-smoking intern friend of an intern friend "......." ---practically everybody else, because I don't know anybody "Oi, next time, support Singapore can or not," ---senior sports reporter as he passed me $10. I bet Norway would beat Singapore by 3 clear goals, and he bet Norway wouldn't. Advice: Never bet on Singapore for anything re: sports, unless you want to lose. Regarding story about condoms: "What's so scary about buying condoms? I could just go up to the lady and say, 'One pack of extra-large condoms please." ---me, followed by laughter... mocking laughter from the table of interns at lunch Note: Quotes may have been adjusted to make me look more virile.
Random thought for the day
Why do people cover the eyes of their kids whenever some woman flashes her nipples? Weren't these kids sucking on those not too long ago?
What the hell?
My handphone's not ringing! It's not making any sound! I didn't put it on silent mode either. What's going on? TODAY'S ASSIGNMENT: Went down to cover Singapore River Raft Race media preview. Forgot to send lines in time. For fuck's sake! The guy who I can really talk to, D, ends his internship next week! Oh my god. Who am I going to bug now? It's not fair I don't get all any really interesting things to cover. Like, some of my friends are doing something about campus sex. Previously someone covered oral sex. And yet another person did something investigative on a grave. Me, I keep getting all the CNY/supermarket related stories, that I slave on... AND THEN FORGET TO SEND IN THE FUCKING LINES IN TIME, SO THEY NEVER GET PUBLISHED. For fuck's sake man. Fuxake fuxake fuxake! I suck so hard. I think I don't get these stories because I come across as straight-laced. Ah little do they know that a monster lurks within!
I probably should apologise
I need to send a logbook to my internship supervisor every two weeks, and it's never a bad idea to write down what you do everyday. Well, I'm using this blog as my daily log for the elogbook. This means that the details will be fairly meaningless (to anyone who doesn't know me). I'm sorry this blog is descending into several levels of suck, but that's just how it goes. Of course, what REALLY sucks is that I can't even write _explicitly_ what I do (against the rules, you see). Like I said, I'm sorry. The imaginary flowers are by the window. TODAY'S ASSIGNMENT: I must have a very strong cheena look because the boss keeps making me do stuff related to the Chinese New Year. Bak kwa, oranges, hongbaos. Today I discovered that my mom is actually a hong bao collector! Is that not cool? Supe scanned the commentary ("Too busy to read it carefully la," he grunted.) and said it may work. Woohoo. Photo byline on the way perhaps (maybe)? Pity the children. Also, DBS PR people are cool. I promise to get back on the stuff about my porn fantasies and pictures of balloons pretending to be dildos soon. Promise.
Doing Nothing Ain't Easy, Baby
Me: Wow, none of the chief editors are going to be in the office. I've got nothing to do today. What do you when Paul's not around, fellow intern? Do you go ask for work? Fellow Intern: No, if the boss isn't in you don't go ask for more work, you sit around and slack. Unless you're a dumb fuck or something. Me: Ok. So I went and volunteered to write a commentary.
Because I think my friends enjoy reading about themselves
The third day of the Chinese New Year is called "chi gou ri", which I think means "crimson dog day". Why? I have no clue. Maybe in China the streets run with the blood of slaughtered dogs on this day, who knows? Anyway, plans to play football in TCHS were ruined by the pitter patter of raindrops outside my window, and gladly I took the opportunity to sleep until 11am. I needed it. Because the horde was coming. Now, let's talk about my mom. My mom is a good person. She's hospitable, friendly and generous, while I am... not. In fact I am often downright hostile and nasty to visitors. Like my father, I am quite the cunt, which ultimately stems from an intrinsic of the Wiffle household: laziness. Strangely it only runs on the male side of the family, like some degenerate gene. Anyway, these monkeys (these guys were all born in the Year of the Monkey, see) wanted to do something on Crimson Dog Day, and I (foolishly) volunteered my house. Frankly all I wanted to do was open the house to these guys and let them entertain themselves while I remain upstairs watching "Girls Gone Wild XVI: BIGGER AND BADDER IN MALIBU" but my mom would not hear of it, and decided to treat these guys to lunch. It's not fair. The only people who actually EVER treated me to lunch in their homes are Joel, Kaixiang (to maggi mee but I suppose they all count) and James, after all. That's not how the "eye for an eye" rule work, they tell me. Pfft. So some of the folks played mahjong, some of the folks played Winning Eleven, and I showed my collection of Jay Jay Okocha and Zlatan Ibrahimovic to whoever remained. (Video of a Nigerian curling the ball with the outside of the foot from the right corner of the penalty box past a wall into the near post >>> any pr0n video. It's true.) Three of the guys brought their girlfriends, CH, Marcus and Adrian. Adrian was the only one who was slobbering and looking likely to do all sorts of unethical things to his, which was of course disgustingly normal, the bastard. So obsessed was he with groping his girlfriend, the moron left his keys behind in my house. But who can blame him? Later, we attempted to play football. Ha. What a wash that was. According to my mom, the girls left behind in the house when we lads left for for footy talked stuff about me to the mom. Apparently you guys were relatively complimentary. For god's sake people, stop getting my mom's hopes up, I spent the last ten years of my life deflating her expectations! And if she finds out about this blog because of you guys, I swear I will HUNT YOU DOWN, AND CASTRATE YOUR BOYFRIENDS, WITH A PLASTIC SPORK FROM NTUC FAIRPRICE. Eventually they left, we went for a family dinner that my eldest uncle (aka the rich fucker) treats annually. This year it cost him $1500. His son is at Boston University. If you are there, and see a tall, Indonesian Chinese lad, say hi to him for me will ya? PS. Please don't call me Wifflewiffle in real life. I am not Wifflewiffle. Wifflewiffle doesn't exist in the real world, he belongs here, in this little rectangular Internet Explorer window. There is no Wifflewiffle in real life, there is no Wifflewiffle behind the screen. Because Wifflewiffle sounds dodgy as fuck, yo.
Stop me if you think you have heard this one before
All geeks have a niche. It's a rule - if it's not it should be, if you believe that geeks are people who value an activity over people; who value _activity_ for its own sake. I'm going to quote d. b. weiss again here: A geek is a person, male or female, with an abiding, obsessive, even self-destroying love for something besides status. (check out December 9 2003 entry). I don't really have an obsession. I mean, alright, I'm fascinated by the English language, but I'm not particularly good at it or its mechanics, nor am I really all that interested into going full-bore into the nitty-gritty details of linguistics. I don't play all that many games, I gave up on Everquest, I'm not obsessed with the blog world, I don't know much about my favourite bands and I'm not even all that meticulous when it comes to following my football team(s). I don't really read all that much, I don't memorise tracts of poetry or prose or plays. I don't read sci-fi, and I don't read much fantasy. I think Star Trek is dull. I like Star Wars but I know fuck-all about it's history. I don't really care for movies, nor do I follow TV shows, be they soap operas, sitcoms, variety shows, reality shows or what have you. I don't worship any celebrity, I don't have extremely strong feelings about politics, and I'm fairly dead centre on the political spectrum (people on the far left or right are geeks by definition). I'm not a sports geek, a TV geek, a Math geek (aka the Nerd), an artsy geek, a games geek (not anymore), a book geek, a celebrity geek or a blog geek, and I sure as hell ain't a fashion geek. I don't draw or paint or photograph, so I'm no art geek either. I don't listen to classical music so I ain't one of those freakish I'm-better-than-you-because-I-know-who-Schubert-is geeks. I don't wear black, pretend to be a vampire or listen to the Velvet Underground. I don't LARP, I don't complete most CRPGS, I've never managed to go through an entire PnP RPG session. I've only got a few boxes of M:tG and I've never painted a single Warhammer figurine. I don't watch anime, I don't watch hentai, I am not into otaku... hell I don't even know what the hell it means. But I am undeniably geekish. Surely I am an exemplar of geekdom as most people know it. Either the definition is fundamentally flawed or I missed something obvious... Ah. Yes. I do know one thing I am rather obsessed with. Now that I know, let me end with this prayer: "Please God, help me cleanse the computer of viruses and evil photographs which disturb and ruin my work..., so that I shall be able to cleanse myself (of sin)." Amen.
Everything is Relative
Today's Day One of the Chinese New Year, and I didn't want to rant, because it's the New Year, and how you begin the year decides how you spend the rest of it. Or so it goes. We always do the same thing during the Chinese New Year. For Chinese, especially semi-traditional ones like us, Chinese New Year is IT. We have a reunion dinner on the Eve, where members of the family come together to have a meal together, to catch up, to bond, and to remember. My mom likes to have a family photo taken. For the memory. Every New Year together is something valuable. Or so it goes. (I used to have a picture here. Then I got scared.) My dad, my granddad and my great-granddad all had no siblings. I suppose the tradition of my family spoiling their kids rotten started pretty early. The seed wasn't strong, I guess. The closest thing I have to a relative on my father's side is my grandmother's god-son, and so we always visit them first. It is the same every year. We go down, and they treat us to a delicious steamboat lunch. They will insist I consume at least some beer. They will give out hongbaos (red packets containing money, for luck). And we will head out to my great-grandmother's place to meet with the branch of the family I'd rather not meet. It never changes. Ritual. Or so it goes. Only it did change this year. We didn't get hongbaos at my father's god-brother's place, because a member of his family had died and they aren't supposed to celebrate the New Year if they're in mourning. Tradition. Ritual. Mores. I felt the pain in my pocket though. These folks were usually rather generous with their hongbaos. I didn't go to my great-grandmother's place either. She fell out with the ungrateful bastards of that particular branch of my mother's extended family, and we didn't visit that bunch this year. No hongbaos from there either. But I suppose the monetary loss was a worthwhile trade off for not having to actually _talk_ to them. It's sad that people don't get to pick and choose what kind of scum share their DNA. Or so it goes. The next stop: my grandfather's place. I very much enjoy visiting my cousins, because they're generally a decent bunch. But sometimes my aunts can be annoying with their probes into my sex life. And sometimes in their attempt to make conversation they can go into weird, off-base, rather icky territory. Listen: At this point the conversation is still somewhat normal. She's talking about some girl, who's really cool and stuff, and unattached, but unfortunately too tall, or else she could introduce her to me, you know the drill, when she veers off into the Twilight Zone. Aunt: "You know, some people marry their cousins. How come like that ah? What's the rule for marrying cousins? When is it too close?" Me: (nervous) "Man, marrying the daughter of my mother's sister is ALWAYS too close!" Aunt: "Yeah, but there are people who do that right? There are no laws against it, I think." Me: (panic) "Yeah, but these are the kind of people who give birth to deformed children, damnit!" My younger cousin starts talking about some weird rule about cousins not being allowed to marry cousins that are next to each other in seniority. I start gulping my chrysanthemum tea. Later... Same aunt, who's not usually a freak: "Do you think F1 (her daugher) is very rough?" Me: (sweating) "Huh?" Aunt: "She's so rough, I think she'll never get married!" F1, who is RIGHT BESIDE HER: "I can be very gentle when I want to be okay!" Aunt: "What man would want a girl like that? Hey wiffle, do you think any man would want to marry her?" Me: "Uh, she's ok la..." F1: "Why must girls get married anyway? I don't get married I can take care of you what." Aunt: "I don't want you to take care of me la. Hey A (other cousin), do you think any boy will want her?" Cousin: (pause) "She won't have a problem finding a boyfriend la." Aunt: "Hey A, are there any boys chasing you?" Cousin: ... Aunt: "Haha, actually F1 already has a boyfriend..." Me: "Wah lau eh." Aunt: "Do really think she looks like she has a boyfriend? She like that also can have a boyfriend? What do you think?" Someone tell me what the whole point of that was. Was she trying to point out to Cousin and Me that her daughter managed to get attached? Or is her daughter not actually attached? Why did she put down her daughter like that? Was Sumiko Tan right all along? What the fuck was the cousin marriage thing about? Did I imagine the whole conversation? Wifflewiffle, disturbed, signing off. Have a Happy Chinese New Year folks. Gulp down some beer for me, I'm going to sleep.
Thanks
Once in a while I look through my site stats and I find referrals from sites I don't expect to. To start with: Woowoolife The Sponge. She's cool, she's confident enough not to need comments on her site, and she loves the White Stripes too. ScorpioGirl ScorpioGirl. She's from New Zealand, so I suppose she's a wee islander too. She's up for a Bloggie, so she's deffo worth a read. Strange thing: both blogs highlighted sections from entries involving Choonhou. What does this mean??!
There is a light that never goes out
And if a double-decker bus / Crashes into us To die by your side / Is such a heavenly way to die And if a ten-ton truck / Kills the both of us To die by your side / Well, the pleasure - the privilege is mine (The Smiths)
Hi kids. (Hi Mr Wifflewiffle!) Do you know what the word for today is, kids? (No, Mr Wifflewiffle!) Well, today's word is: goofball
As part of an assignment, I went to listen to some press conference regarding the S*ngapore R*ver H*ngbao early in the morning where I met E and J, schoolmates and fellow interns, though working at different companies. When they send interns, you pretty much know that it's an event that unimportant, but not unimportant enough to trash. The whole bloody thing was narrated in Chinese, and in case you had not gathered from some of my rants about Chinese, my grasp of the Chinese language is at best tenuous. I felt like I was off the pace. It sucked. But at least I got a free buffet out of it. Back I went to Str**ts and I quite quickly finished off the story as I had another piece to write. At around 6pm, when all the ops people were out, I suddenly realized I had done it again. I hadn't sent my lines in. The stories which were due tomorrow weren't listed or cleared for copy editing. Simultaneously, I was slogging through the other story, and really tormenting the chief with my incompetence. By the time it went through, it was 11pm. I worked 13 hours on a slow news day, that must've broken a few records. I also did various other rather goofy stuff that pains me to write about. Apparently my dad was somewhere in the vicinity, so I called him and asked him if he could fetch me home. He said, yeah, but he'd take 30 minutes. I thought, well, it might take a _little_ longer than just taking the MRT/bus, but at least I could avoid the mangled soul destroyer that is public transit, so I said, yeah, okay. The old fogey took 50minutes. I'm beat. I've got no assignment for tomorrow, which can only mean one thing: something will crop up at 6pm, and they will throw me down to some godforsaken place to interview some piddlin' little fucker, and the story will take up approximately one-tenth of an inch.
Only a fine line between carelessness and idiocy
Today was yet another twelve hour day, but only because of my own making. I had stayed until 10pm on Thursday so that I could finish the story which was due tomorrow. I mean, it's Sunday. I want to be at home on Sunday. So I did the usual stuff, write the story, get another assignment, call a million offices and get no reply out of nine hundred and ninety nine thousand of them because it's a GODDAMNED SUNDAY AND NOBODY SHOULD WORK ON SUNDAY, DAMNIT. The clock ticked down, and I was a little agitated after an attempted "interview" over the phone and I was seriously wondering whether I should go for a course on interview skills because I must really be THE SUCK. It's seven and I'm checking my article and I'm wondering WTF none of the copy editors have gone through it when I filed the bloody thing at four. Soon it's dinnertime and I stay at the office 'cos I expect to leave soon. Soon it's 8pm and I can't do any work cos it's SUNDAY NIGHT, by Jove! The chief sends me a message saying "You can go whenever the editors have cleared your work" but I'm checkin' and checkin' and it's 8.30pm and it's still not cleared cos the copy editors are eating dinner like normal human beings do. Damned rule about reporters not being allowed to leave until their copy is cleared! I couldn't take it any more. I don't mind working late if there was actually work to do, but this was not the case. So I called out to Z, a nice dude in ops. "Hey, can you help me check if ____ist19 has been checked?" He looks over. "You mean _____s19?" After the interview and this, I was beginning to wonder if I had some sort of horrible lisp. "No, ____ist19." He stared at me. I stared back. Suddenly, enlightenment. I had filed my story under a different slug (effectively a title) from what I had given ops. This meant that it wasn't marked as being due for publication tomorrow. Which meant that the copy editor (who at this point must've dined for three hours) wouldn't copy edit it. Which meant it would never, ever go to the subs. As I changed it, I wondered how long it'd be before I go down in history as the most fucked-up intern in the history of Str**ts. By the time the copy editor got back, marked it up, and sent it down to the subs, it was 10pm. But it was over, damnit, I was free! So I strolled out of the building, through the gate, and down the long stretch of road towards the bus-stop. Freedom, ah freedom, I shouted inside my head as I stretched my arms and gazed upwards --- and it immediately began to rain.
Sleeping with the Devil
This is just a very minor update. I'm sick of all the problems with BlogOut, so I switched to Haloscan. So, all the comments are once again lost. Reset. Gone.
Umbrous Toilers
Ah, Friday, the end of the work week for me. I slept until noon, and spent the rest of the day doing a delightful nothing. Also, I signed unto Friendster today. More proof that, yes, I am finally losing my last, tenuous, grip on sanity. Also, I just unloaded a bunch of soil. It's sitting on my driveway. I don't know why my dad ordered 30 friggin bags of soil. What do you do with all that soil???
Everything you ever needed to know about being a reporter
ONE Me: Yeah, I've been following the story, but it sounds a bit like crap to me. It's like promotional crap... Senior Reporter Dude: No, no, no. You don't understand. You are in no position to judge. I am in no position to judge. The editors decide if the story is worth following or not. You just write the story and make it as interesting as you can. They will cut as they see fit. Got it? TWO It's 10pm and the reporter to my left is alternating between gulping down mouthfuls of chicken rice and typing his story. I bend over the wall of the cubicle prison. "Hey ______," I said. "How do you guys keep yourselves from suffering from horrible gastric pains?" "By finishing stories earlier," he said. PS. I've no idea why the comments are fucked.
Irony
I guess, for me, the quality of the blog is inversely proportional to the interestingness of my life. I still love you guys, but when you spend hours and hours writing the last thing you want to do is write some more when you finally crawl back home late at night after the usual 12-hour workday. I love the work though. I fuckin love it. I love working at a smaller paper. I am practically guaranteed a byline for my stories since there are only over a dozen reporters (excluding editors), unlike say ST, and unlike the interns at larger papers I am given a great deal of freedom. The editors are fair but friendly, and you're pretty much free to do whatever as long as you deliver the goods. I'm just waiting for when I screw up with explosive spectacularity; the day can't be far off. Then there's the aspect of going out to meet people. I covered a press conference today, one that was attended by Minister of State for T&I and ND Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, who really seems like a top dude in person, because frankly it's a very minor event, yet he took time out to attend. I think it says something about the guy. Do I sound like a starstruck PAP lackey? I say, if Lee Kuan Yew thinks this guy is good, and good enough to be MoS for two important ministries, he can't possibly be _______(insert random PAP politician you don't like in the space). Then I got to talk to babes. I mean, hey, I spent the whole after yesterday talking to ah peks I'm due a break. And I met my old chief editor from Chronicle at the press conference. Man, that made me realize the importance of contacts. She was _extremely_ helpful. She's a wizened editor, so she helped compile the press kit, which was absolutely excellent. You see, some PR folks simply don't know what _writing_ is. When they send information that's filled with jargon and fluff and deliberately obscure the _news_, they make life hard for a journalist. And a pissed off journalist is less likely to write something complimentary about his/her event/product/client. It's so damn simple, isn't it? Oh and I doubt I will be able to read the blogs I do on a daily basis any more (no Internet access for interns) so I'll likely read all the entries in one go when I'm off duty. Like I said... I still love you guys (but in a platonic, non-sexual way, mind... unless you're hot, sexy and have big boobs). BTW. I can't seem to write in the comments box.
No dude, THIS is the first day of the rest of your life
This will be short, because I'm badgered. In the morning, I went with a senior reporter to the subordinate courts to cover a story involving a mama-san (if you want the story, you're gonna have to read the paper I work for :b), and sat in on the RSS Courageous trial. Man, the Courageous trial was technical and tedious, I was glad when I escaped. Then a bunch of people got killed in an explosion, and I was thrown down there, the lone reporter from my newspaper. I was there for four friggin hours, talking talking TALKING and I got no scoop, nothing, zilch. When I got back, my half-completed story had been partially re-written by a senior reporter, I helped edit and fill in the blanks, and WAHEY, I'm getting my first byline tomorrow. This is such a fucking pointless update. It could have been much (MUCH) more, but... fuck it. I think I gonna hit the sheets and wait for morning.
This may be the first day of the rest of your life
If it's interesting, I'm not permitted to talk about it If you have been following this blog, you are already well acquainted with my fear of making friends and winning people, so I won't go into the horrors of the first day of work. I'm also not going to write anything that may cost me my internship, so count that out too. So what have we left? I spent most of the day slacking reading countless copies of the paper I'm now working at, which isn't very interesting. I had to help a relatively recently transferred reporter on a story. Grunt work. I stared at microfilm of the Straits Times looking for the info until my eyes hurt, then I had to make a call. One simple call became many, as my very simple request had to be filtered through multiple layers of bullshit. Let's put it this way, I was looking for info you could get just by walking to the nearest supermarket, so I don't understand what the damned fear of giving a poor journalist intern the friggin info so he can help his senior reporter make her deadline was all about. In the end, I finally got a guy to talk, though he was rather antagonistic from the beginning. "I think you're doing this wrong," he said. "It has nothing to do with ____" "So what causes the _____?" I asked over the phone. "It's not ______ that causes the ______ but ______" he said. And he proceeded to give a pretty decent spiel why. I hung up on him, then I went to talk to the reporter I was helping, and she told me to call him back and inquire as to whether he was willing to be quoted. So I did. "No." he said bluntly. Then, "I tell you, if I am quoted, I will be very pissed. I will take action against your paper..." I couldn't believe it! This guy was threatening me! What a way to start the journalism life, eh?
When I get nostalgic, little children suffer
Old photos of my New York trip I unearthed while looking for a suitable logo pic in my picture archives. I hope the files aren't too large, or too terrifying. 
Damn you, Lance Armstrong, and the bike you rode in on.
In addition to death and taxes, every Singaporean male has the privilege of having to take an annual fitness test (IPPT - Individual Physical Proficiency Test), because every single one is a soldier, darn it, and the nation needs him in peak physical form! As a healthy, patriotic and frankly ultra-rightwing fascisti warrior, I've been doing everything possible to keep myself in tip-top condition, except exercise. Instead, I've been spending hours every day staring at the computer screen In order to fulfill my duty to the nation, which hopefully does not involve a stint in Iraq or East Timor or any place where the locals have more guns than the police and the army combined, I took my computer-ravaged body down to Khatib (a Malay word for "Filthy Little Pit filled with Nasty Smells"), where the test was being held. Accompanied by my pal Choonhou, we drove past the camp twice because Choonhou had the perceptive powers of a blind pigeon, you know, the kind that kill themselves because they don't know the difference between an open window and a closed one. But we made it inside eventually. We did the static stations first, which are those for standing broad jump, shuttle run, sit-ups and chin-ups. For a person who last exercised in 1998 I did okay. (Football doesn't count, most of the time I'm just strolling around the pitch mocking my teammates for their incompetence.) But the climax of the IPPT is always the same: the two point four kilometre run. Now, Choonhou is a natural runner. He's thin, lanky and he looks like he's from Nigeria. I'm not. I'm short, clumsy and I consume vast amounts of coke and ice cream, which even as we speak are forming plugs in all my major arteries, therefore ensuring that I have little chance of living past the age of forty. The muscles in my buttocks, stomach, shoulders and legs are now merely vestigial. Scientists are still trying to figure out what strange phenomenon enables me to move. There I was: Standing on the 400 metre track in my street soccer shoes, as I had forgotten I no longer possess a pair of running shoes, I looked at the people around me. By the grace of a vengeful god most of them looked hale and hearty, with a few possessing muscles so taut that even Mark would be jealous, and possibly desirous. Thus the spectre of humiliation hung over me like a cloud of sweat in a non-airconditioned gym. Still, when the physical training instructor shouted go, I went. My old platoon commander used to tell me that running was ninety-percent mental. It was all in the head, he said. You have to push yourself beyond the pain barrier. It was aptly demonstrated by Lance Armstrong, AP's Male Athlete of the Year, who managed to defeat testicular cancer and still pull off the five-peat. The body is but the tool of the mind. The mind can overcome. Screw that, I say. It started off badly. I think I had made nary a dozen steps when my heart started going into overdrive. My blood bravely negotiated the obstacles that stood in its quest to bring oxygen to screaming cells, but it was not enough. "Breathe," I silently told myself. "Must... breathe... damnit." It was payback time for years of sloth and excess. The pack was pulling ahead, and I felt like the lone deer that gets picked out and killed by cheetahs on TV programmes narrated by Sir David Attenborough. My thighs burned like they were being bitten by jackals. "Five more laps to go!" shouted an instructor as the guy in front of me passed. "Five more laps to go!" he repeated for me. "Five more laps to go!" he repeated for the guy behind me. GO! MAKE IT! YOU CAN DO IT! COME ON! a spectral voice egged on. A second lap. A third. "Two more laps to go!" the instructor shouted for the man ahead. "Three more laps to go!" I grit my teeth, and began walking. It was time to give up, I thought. Walk to the side, tell these guys I've had it, kaput, gassed out, gone. More men lapped me, even the fat ones. I saw Choonhou run past. Bastard. Dead last. Eventually I was the only person on the track, around 50 metres behind the second-last person. Some had fallen out of the race, given up, surrendered, but I saw the finishing line. Slow I may be, but I was going to complete the bloody run! That wasn't very wise. Now my legs hurt, my eyes water, my throat thirsts. Hell, it's been several hours and I'm still gasping for breath. Damn you Lance. (Oh, and by the way, my pal Choonhou ran two minutes faster than me and still failed the run!
Ah, childhood memories~!
We're all gonna go now, but don't forget to get your twangers out, and play with your balls. Bye! Man, I remembered watching this when I was a kid! Thames Television, if I recall.
Miscellany
I Cannot Lie: I Was Listening to Perfect Ten 98.7FM Just heard on the radio: (paraphrased because of malfunctioning memory) Mandy Moore: Now when I look back, I do recognize I made bad pop music, and I do apologize to people. Good to hear that you know that, Mandy. Instead of merely apologizing about it, why don't you stop making it? On a completely unrelated tangent: The MTV for "Stacy's Mom" (Fountains of Wayne!) reeks of pure awesomeness. From the Land of Demonic Tentacle Rape Porn Anime Hardened criminals start young nowadays, it seems: Japanese schoolgirls force pal into prostitution. This kind of story makes me angry with humanity. Friends = Money, indeed. You know what makes it worse? When adults do this kind of thing it's not even news any more. You Know, It Could Be You Take a break. Take things easy. Rant on a blog. Go watch some Demonic Tentacle Rape Porn Anime. But only if you can't make love to your wife Play with your (imaginary) kids. Eat a tub ice cream. Mock your superiors. Play football with your (imaginary) friends. Pray to an (imaginary) god. Maybe soon the hurting will stop. Weltenschauung O thou art blind! thou chasest a sham, deluded by puppet shows Seen in the midst of the crowd; thou deemest of value and genuine Conjurer's trickwork, trees all of gold that we see in our dreaming What is this eye but a little ball lodged in the fork of a hollow tree, Bubble of film, anointed with tear-brine, exuding slime drops, Compost wrought in the shape of an eye of manifold aspects? (A Buddhist Psalm)
A Quick Guide to Success in the Workplace (The Condensed Intern Version)
Simple Steps to Becoming a Happy and Well-Adjusted Intern
I wish these internship training courses would teach me something I do not already know. After about three hours of this shite I sneaked off with KK and WX (joined later by QY) to look for some "smart casual" clothes at the Citylink triumvirate (Raffles, Marina, Suntec) but only WX bought any. I had trouble fitting into even the smallest-sized clothes because
But why were we looking for new clothes in the first place? That, of course, was due in part to what we learnt at the internship training session:
I can safely say that with these rules as my guide, I'm primed and ready for my internship, and I'm sure that I will not be a hapless victim of "spank-the-intern" office fund-raisers who are punished for good ideas by being flung into the cosmos on an office "intern-a-pult." I am raring to go! And it's all thanks to advice like this:
*I've no idea what these vehicles actually do, because the statement was clearly written in a language other than English.
The Day the Holidays Went Away
Aaaaugh. The holidays are at an end. Tomorrow morning, instead of being blissfully asleep, I shall be standing drearily in the train travelling westwards, rubbing shoulders with people who'd rather be anywhere but here, at any time but now, with anyone but me. And for what? A two-day pre-internship course meant to teach me how to "maintain the reputation of the University and Singapore" and "think entrepeneurially", among other things like what not to say and how to dress. (Finally I shall find out what in Hogan's name "smart casual" is!) Personally I think it's completely useless, and merely NTU's way of ensuring that the probability of it being sued by companies over the gross incompetence or negligence of its students is minimized. In NS we call it "covering our own backside". Once off the train and into school, there's the need to interact with my peers. God, how horrible. I must have forgotten the names of 90% of my schoolmates by now, and been forgotten by 99%, and who can blame them? The key to comfort: avoid all eye contact, find a corner, and stay very, very quiet. Well, it's probably not quite as bad as I make it out to be. I shall be glad to see most of you even if the feeling is probably not mutual, despite probably having to spend eight hours shifting my butt uncomfortably on the damned plastic seats in CSLT1. Then on Monday, I start work. Details to come.
Got sick of the old design
...but being utterly useless at webdesign I stole an orangey skin from blogskins.com. Got rid of the guestbook.
Because everyone is doing it
Since both Strangecloud and Chat-Moyen have talked about this thing, I shall too (being the mindless bandwagon hopper that I am). HAIRCUTS I had to cut my hair today, because my mom had been on my back over it being "disgustingly long", "ugly", "messy" and "girly" and really I can only take so much crap before I drown in the stuff. You'd think that she'd let a twenty-three year old guy decide what kind of friggin hair he wants to have, but then, this is the woman who gave this guy hell for months when he decided that he preferred his t-shirts untucked and his collars unbuttoned. Luckily I won that particular battle. But sometimes you have to obey She Who Gives You Money To Spend--- So off I went to the town center, in the land of Serangoon where the hairdressers lie. Normally I patronize the Malay barber closest to my house, but I was feeling adventurous today! Scouring the neighbourhood a myriad of unisex hair salons was found, but I didn't enter any of them because they looked posh and were filled by mainly twenty-something-year-old women, and I fear twenty-something-year-old women, because, being a Singaporean male, I would be unable to control the irresistable urge to have them peel my prawn, and frankly no woman in her right mind would go anywhere near mine, much less peel it. Eventually I found one that had a huge sign that said "Half Price For Men" and after a quick check (yup they were still there) realized that I qualified for this wonderful deal, which meant I only had to pay twice as much as usual. How could I resist? I strolled in and found only one hairdresser inside, and she was in the midst of a bunch of middle-aged men. I couldn't tell how old she was. A combination of stylish blonde-dyed hair, make-up thick enough to plaster walls and uniquely inscrutable features made her age a mystery. She could have been anything between twenty-five to forty-five years old. "So... you want to retain your old hairstyle?" she asked as I took my seat. I don't know if the stuff that grows on the top of my head can be counted as having a "style" of any sort, but I said "Yeah, please." She started snipping and asked, "Same ar? Layered?" You mean that's what that dude at Mell's have been doing to my hair? What the hell does "layered" mean? As far as I can tell the only thing on my head that has a layer is dandruff. "Yeah." Snip. And the result: inexplicably dodgy hair!
Conversations with a Self-Professed Homophobe (ENTIRELY FICTIONAL)
Mark had the habit of touching himself while playing football. Since he played football in part to get a decent tan, he played only in shorts, leaving his muscular upper body naked to get some sunlight. As the only person on the team with decent hands, he is often forced into the role of goalkeeper (possibly the least interesting role in a football team). Standing bored, in the sun, in front of the goal, he would pretend to scratch himself as he caressed the taut flesh above his nipple when nobody paid attention. Like most body-perfectionists, he loved himself more than he cared to admit. This is his story. "I'll say it upfront: I'm homophobic. I'm afraid of gays. Don't be so quick to judge me until you've heard my story, Wiffle. You know me, with everything I've gone through with that lot - it was all very traumatic, how could I be anything but anti-gay? I've told you about the guy called Kal Foo right? I haven't? Oh. Ok. I'll tell you now. It's not easy for me to talk about this you know, not easy at all. It's like, you know, exposing yourself. Like a flasher. Like a flasher with... rotten teeth. You know what I'm talking about? Do you? "Anyway, Kal Foo was this guy I knew back in secondary school. We were quite close. I was rather innocent back then, you know? I didn't know about things like sex or desire or hot gay love. We went out together a lot. I guess I was dumb. This is a guy who plays with Barbie Dolls, if that's not a huge flashing warning sign that he's gay I don't know what is. But we really were friends. So one night, he wanted to stay over at my house. Don't look at me like that. Boys staying over and having fun is entirely normal. Hell we just had a stayover didn't we? It's all good. But Kal Foo, he went too far. There's this pull-out mattress underneath my bed. It's still there. That was where he was supposed to sleep. I was gonna be on top and he would be below me... wait that didn't come out right. But you know what I mean. So he was supposed to be there, and I was supposed to be here. Like normal kids. But after I turned off the lights and closed my eyes he climbed on top of my bed and laid beside me. You would be freaked out too wouldn't you? You would, and you know it! I got angry and I shoved him off the bed. A few minutes later and he was back. He tried to... spoon me. I kicked him back down. It went on all night. I couldn't look at him. "After that, I ignored him completely. As far as I was concerned he was no longer my friend. He became very persistent. Like a girl. He would call me. He would call me a lot! I got pissed off and I told him to leave me the fuck alone. I would say 'Go away damn you.' and slam the phone down. And he would call back immediately. It went on for a year! But eventually he gave up. "Am I still in contact with him? Oh no. Does he try to contact me? No. But I do know he has a steady boyfriend now. "That was not the only time. Remember that time in Bugis, when I went to a toilet and someone stared at my penis beside me, reached out his hand at crotch level, and asked me if I 'wanted to be his friend'? Remember that? These gay people, they have no sense of... sanctity! The toilet, the washroom, the communal bathroom are sacred places! It is there that a man is at his most vulnerable, and implicitly all men subscribe to a code of honour inside. You don't stare, you don't touch. You don't hit on fellow men in a sacred place like a public urinal. It's like... fucking a dead cow in a church. Or peeing in your mom's shampoo. It is a wrongness. You simply respect the platonic spirit of the place, not profane it. "Do I have the words "FAGGOT MAGNET" tattooed on my head or something, Wiffle? Do I? Damnit. "Well... "Yeah there is one other thing. But I was just a kid. "I don't feel like talking about it. "I'm not even sure if it really happened. "In a McDonalds. "I was, I think eleven, when my parents decided to celebrate my birthday at a McDonalds, upon my insistence. It was one of those packages you buy from McDonalds, where they seal off an area of the restaurant so you and your friends have a spot to play in and eat all those lovely hormone-infested beef patties, and they'll have a cake and songs and it was every little boy's wet dream were he capable of having one. "Well, apparently there was some sort of cosplay convention nearby, because there were a bunch of people in odd costumes wandering in the area, munching cheeseburgers. "You know what cosplay is right? "Well a bunch of weirdos come together at a gaming or rpg or anime convention or something and they dress up as fictional characters. Yeah, like those goths and their vampire thing, only geekier to the nth degree. "After one too many milkshakes I had to go to the washroom, and inside there were three men. One was dressed up as He-Man, another guy in some weird elastic Sailor Moon outfit. The third was a yellow-and-red-striped clown with a red nose and huge red shoes. "Yeah, he kinda looked like Ronald McDonald. "What happened after that is kinda foggy. I think I instinctively suppressed that part of my memory. Or... or maybe it was a dream. I don't know. I was just a kid, you know. I was peeing in the kid's urinal, the kind that's half a foot lower than the normal kind, and I had just zipped up when He-Man and Sailormoon grabbed me, and held me against the wall. The clown then came over, unzipped his clown pants, and took out his clown dick, and started waving it in front of me. It was the biggest dick I've ever seen. It was this big! It was like a goddamned cricket bat! "No he didn't touch me with it. "Maybe waving wasn't such a good word to use. The clown made strange and intricate patterns in the air in front of my nose, waving that thing back and forth and sideways with occasional waist motions, and once in a while he would flick the thing with his index finger. I struggled, but He-man and Sailormoon was far too strong and I was far too small. I don't know how long it went on. Far too long, I think. "I didn't know what was happening. I still don't. But now that I think of it, maybe the clown was trying to talk. Maybe he was trying to send me a message. A message he couldn't describe in mere words. Like... like the alien dudes did with prime numbers in that Jodie Foster movie, what's it called? Yeah, Contact. Or maybe it was just some crazed prank by sick, drunk, homosexual cosplayers who happened to stumble into McDonalds. "Oh I'm sure they were homos. "I didn't tell my parents immediately. I was too freaked out. They wouldn't have believed me. What do I say? A rednosed clown tried to hypnotize me, on my birthday, in a McDonalds, inside a toilet, with the help of Sailormoon and He-Man? Would they have believed me? Do you believe me? I'm not sure I believe it myself. "If you had experienced that and get weird postcards from men who want to 'know you better' you'd be paranoid too. "Nah, I prefer Burger King nowadays."
Oh no, here comes two-oh-oh-four!
Fuck you I need a new schtick, a new gimmick. Out with the old, in with the new, eh? Maybe I'll be the lovable underdog this year, the adorable loser, instead of merely the guy you talk to/read/think of when you're all pissed-like, when you need to cheer yourself up when the sad music is playing - "Ah it is a cheerless night and I am so unhappy, but at least I'm not this guy." Or maybe I won't. I'm sick of being a fucking walking joke, the guy you laugh at - the "haha!" dodgy short clown, the guy you get to feel superior to. And I'm sick of having to choose between self-depreciation or angry assertiveness, depending on who I am talking to. It's fucking tiring, and I'm exhausted. I don't fucking need you, don't you see? I'm fine by myself and my madness. It's 2004! People are obsolete, don't you know? Over and over Let's talk about New Year's Eve. I spent the Eve with my extended family, and that of course sucked. All my favourite cousins were not there, it was the eve, and they had plans, and those plans do not involve crusty old aunts gossiping around badly cooked food in a small three-room flat. Of course out of the millions of aunts I have one of them managed to catch what belle called the "Charmin commercial" and she tried to get me to talk about it, but I exhibited enough hostility to prevent the meme from spreading too much. More worrying is the fascination some relatives of mine have with my sexuality. I don't mind it from the aunts, gossiping about the children of their siblings is what they do, but now the pressure is starting to come from my peer group. On Christmas my family had yet another gathering, and I was sitted in a corner with the cousins who I am more comfortable with, and after looking at some pictures of Ah-Xiang's prom, my seventeen-year old cousin Felda decided to switch the topic. "Hey Wiffle do you have a girlfriend?" she asked. "No." I said. "Have you ever had a girlfriend?" "No." She looked surprised. Well, I guess I ought to be glad that she had assumed that I would have at least had one. "Curious mah. You're twenty-three already right? How come you never had a girlfriend?" she pressed on. Then more conspiratorially. "Are you... like... gay?" "What the hell?" I said. "Oi you better be more respectful to your elders, ok." "No big deal mah," she said grinning. "No I'm not fucking gay," I said. "I'm fucking straight, ok?" "Then do you have a girl you like?" "Now?" "Yeah." "At this point in time?" "Yeah lah." "No." And this is plain truth. "Wow." Now, how do I explain to a seventeen-year-old girl that I'm completely socially incompetent, that the very idea of opening up emotionally to a female gives me panic attacks? That I am not even sure what being in love means, and that every crush I've ever had I've gotten over the moment I convince myself I'm not good enough, that I've no chance, that I don't really give a damn - that I'm not sure if I'm capable of love? Hell, I'm not even sure I'm capable of being a friend. "So has any girl ever pursued you?" she continued to ask. Damned teenagers who refuse to let up. I think she's curious herself - curious about love and sex and sexuality. I wish she'd just do what I did and consume huge amounts of porn (I haven't stopped doing it btw). "No." "Girls don't call you up or send you SMSes?" she asked. "Or ICQ messages? Or gifts? Or Valentine's Day Cards? Or..." "Nobody ever sends me anything. It might be because I don't reply to them." I said. At this point one of my cousins make the comment that girls who actively pursue guys tend to be ugly desperados. The conversation shifts - the fulcrum is no longer with me. I am free. As I sipped on a Pina Colada from Orange Julius. On this, the first day of the year, I went to buy a pair of shoes. I was struck by a revelation: If I really want to be free I need to be financially independent. Then - out of the house, out of her grasp, free to make my own goddamned mistakes not someone else's. FREE. Really free. And I felt exulted.
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