because i am just a little boy

Keep Back

2008-06-28T08:40:22Z

至百度网友的一封信

2008-06-23T15:46:49Z

前些日子，通過搜索器來到百度網討論區，駭然親身感受到了一些中國人對日本的仇恨，但也感嘆他們的天真、幼稚。

留言的人们，网上去处何其多，何苦登上令自己不悦的言论区发表一些斥尽怨气、坏人心情、又突显自己愚昧的偏见？谁不知中国文化悠久、谁不知中国经济强盛？相信网友出此下言是发自一股爱国之心，而也许中国经济蓬勃发展，在二十年内能超越日本，也许中国文化渊源传到了日本。但是说出这么难听的话来，只让人觉得说得人没修养，没家教，哪一点让人钦佩中国了？这么做非但没有提升中国的声誉，反而让外人笑话了：中国人，难道就只能说这些？中国人，难道全都如此低俗？

俗话有一句，“空口说白话”。文化悠久、经济蓬勃，无论是那一个国家大家都有目共睹。费劲心思，到处张扬，满膺沸血的熙攘只让人觉得说的人到头来对自己所号称的根本没信心，满嘴的污言秽语更无言中驳倒了自己有文化的一论。牛是吹了，日本是骂了，但终究这一切不是为了争面子，给中国在国际舞台上搏来一席之位吗？如此低流的做法，目标达不成又铸成反效果，终是功亏一篑。

虽说日本文化大大建筑在中国古代文化之上，理说中国优越，但再想想，如今世人对中国这个文明古国的普遍看法是什么、对日本的看法又是什么？想到中国，首先想到的便是吐痰、奸诈、言谈举止不雅、邋遢、盗版、空气污染、人权侵犯等等负面多余正面的印象，反观想到日本，浮现的词句则是爱干净、勤奋、奉公守法、有礼、细心、社会富裕⋯这是为什么？

任何人都大可以说，外人怎么想是外人的事，外人观念有误，中国人终究知道自己优越。但话既如此又何必痛骂日本？这造势的做法根本源于面子问题。有数千年的文化领先，现在却在修养上败给了日本，说明了现代中国人什么？世上吐痰奸诈粗鲁邋遢盗版的人这么多，空气污染恶劣又侵犯人权的国家也数不清，为何偏偏提起中国就联想到这些？日本没有奸诈的人吗？中国没有彬彬有礼的人吗？肯定有的，只不过印象取自大众。所谓旁观者清，纵列出中国所有勤奋有礼之士，尽力找出日本所有不符合这个缩影的公民，但事实在于，外人所接触到的、中国让外地人看到的，很难将之与“中国文明、小日本垃圾”（词句取自上列网站）一说圆和。

要让中国在国际社会上更稳扎稳打地立足，网民的这套手法正可谓拔苗助长。原来因为经济迅速增长已让人刮目相看的中国，现在反而因为一小撮人迫不及待而名誉蒙受折损，成事不足败事有余。炮轰日本的网民，请深省：会有人仰慕日本，便是日本有可取的地方，就像纵然有人再对中国抱持敬避的态度，也有热爱中国历史、文化等的人存在；他们认同中国的优点。不如骂他们有自己文化不据，来兴什么华族文化吧。谁不知中国文化悠久、谁不知中国经济强盛？人们有眼，尔优，便自会获得认可；彼弊，则自会受到唾弃。优劣的取决不在于部分人的执着，而在于共同体的判断。美名可不是自己给的——就不必沽名钓誉了。

i have issues

2008-05-31T13:16:52Z

Schrödinger's cat is either dead or alive; the incapabilities and limitations of our conception and knowledge do not interfere with the reality of the cat's definiteness, observability and measurability with regard to its life or death. the uncertainty applies only within our cognitive processes and not in reality as a fact. Whether it be objective collapse or statistical ensembles, or decoherence, or, for that matter, incoherence, the issue should not even arise; to look at the behaviour of the building blocks of matter through the lens of classical physics and adjudge the phenomena by the principles thereof is to demand consistency from the particles of water in the sea.

A point is no more adimensional than a line is unidimensional. No matter how small you make a point, it still occupies volume. The only question is whether it is measurable from a human perspective. Similarly, a line is just a very emaciated cylinder. The notion of dimensionality outside "3" is, pragmatically speaking, a conflation of errors and convenient generalisations, guaranteed by the irreducibility of objects to two dimensions or fewer; perception is bidimensional by necessity and by definition (due to the structure of human sensory organs and to the fact that only one direction of light can be perceived at any one point in time—not an absolute direction, but a relative one: only light heading for the observer's eyes is captured and processed), but even so perception is hardly reality.

this is more a reminder to myself, not to be so easily swayed by hype. there hardly is any necessity to mobilise the entire stable of mediacorp and to donate $10 million just because political sympathies have dramatised the incidental coagulation of individual human tragedies. how many millions more go unrecognised and uncared for elsewhere in the world, in africa, in india, and locally? there is no reason why speed should compound the tragedy of human death and decease.

an economic prediction

2008-05-04T16:19:54Z

i had so many things to say, but in the usual rush and flow and ebb and wane of events and non-events that make up every day, so much has been forgotten, and i am the worse for it. i need a record of what goes on in my life, if only because i spend so much time thinking about more important things that my own existence swirls down, anti-clockwise, into a pothole that empties out into the sea that is called oblivion.

but i do have one prediction to make. an economic one, just for the record in case in the future i need proof of foresight.

with the 2007/8 credit crunch that is fast becoming a general economic crisis, i predict that the United States of America will from now on begin to wane in global significance. this was the peak of american (and western) power. the years to come are asian.

an update long time coming

2008-04-05T16:47:48Z

I decided to stop reading on the train today, and took a look out of the door-windows. I watched cars stream by backwards in front of me, and people, clad in suits and trunks and about to jump into a pool, and the pools themselves, until even the buildings fell away and it seemed like nature had reclaimed the land with her unerring power.

Along the roads that trailed forlornly by the tracks, a boy pedalled the thin vehicle he so proudly owned, weaving amongst the cars in pursuit of a destination that only he could have known, effortfully racing to keep up, but moving gradually, centimetres by centimetres, backwards on the glass pane that filtered my observations. Eventually he dropped away out of sight, and was replaced by a piece of unwanted newsprint, flapping half under a bush in the wind and not going anywhere, and some white swans, made of plastic and with holes dug deeply into their backs so that children might ride in them, floating upon a dark green lake about whose colour no one is ever quite sure of.

And then as quickly as the water had appeared it is swallowed up by solid soil and green grass again, and presently curved pillars of off-white that make up part of an arch burst into view, crowding up all the window, jolting me from my revelry, and eventually it is time for me to get off.

i finished Graham Greene's A Gun for Sale today, my first Greene foray. you could say i was green with Greene, or a greenhorn at Greene, or simply that it was my green foray into Greene's novels. whichever lame pun it is, he has a controlled sense of purpose, if one can generalise from Gun. everything comes in slow, measured drips and drops from the start—the plot, the characters, the expected literariness of it—and gradually the tap is turned up, still at a very steady pace that you can just about gauge by the width of your mouth as you nip at the corners of the pages trying to drink all the words in and delicately chew on them and their meaning. eventually when the tap has reached its maximum and the water is no longer streaming, but gushing, out, you sputter a moment as you forget to swallow one mouthful and it gets jammed in with the next one coming behind it, and the next, and the next—until you hastily step back from the sink and have another go beginning where you left off.

shall start on Our Man in Havana soon. will finish it by 15 April anyway, because that, printed in unforgiving, angular letters on my receipt, is the due date at the library.

and, on the night of the last day of march, this arrived (: :

from amazon, ordered a few days aforehand, and lied to that "We're sorry! Your order will ship only by April 14th to April 16th. If you wish to cancel your order..." but no way in hell i was going to cancel that, because the book was on 80% discount, from US$45 to US$9. which led to the rather odd scenario of having your shipping costs run quite a fair bit higher than the actual thing you're buying, but who's complaining?

it's great to have mia around. (: she keeps track of all these things—the 80% discounts, that is. trust the motherly figure!

the children the world almost break become the adults who save it II

2008-03-27T13:10:25Z

because yesterday we watched the Pillowman again (see here), this time with colin, and because ian sent an email containing a link to another review of the play and i replied, herebelow is reproduced my email:

I've got a few disagreements with the Chicago thing. I think in its attempts to elucidate Katurian's and Michal's characters and relationship it ventures way to far off and too far into biblical territory. Yes, McDonagh was Irish and likely also quite Catholic, but i feel the play still has to be taken way more heavily on its own merits than on biblical allusions. Katurian himself expresses in the play his contempt for authors are "too fucking stupid to make anything up".

this guy's thoughts on Michal's resentment are quite ill-founded too, I believe. I say he gives too much credit to Michal for control over his own actions. I don't deny Michal's mental capabilities—he is smart, and he is perfectly capable of rational thought, as I mentioned to ian, since he can meditate in front of Katurian himself about epistemology shortly after confessing his actions (after he indignantly criticises Katurian for cursing him to spend eternity in the hands of his parents after death, which was the "meanest thing anyone ever said").

On the other hand, I quite agree that Katurian's stories, while he claims them to be completely fictional, are deeply rooted in his childhood (and that of his brother of course). No one's stories can be completely divorced from his experiences, if only for the simple reason that your experiences shape your ideas, whether you're hopelessly idealistic or impossibly realist. Et eadem via Tupolski's lengthily-titled "Story of the little deaf boy on the big, long railway tracks in China".

One thing to note—the Chicago article also happens to mention "the Little Green Pig" as the only story that does not draw upon the horrors of "Katurian's experience as the witness to suffering, as opposed to a consideration of Michal's experience". this misses the point, as does almost everything the article's author says about the significance of the story to the two brothers (which he also relates to Michal's sense of self-worth, which is the only relevant point), because he seems to have forgotten that McDonagh planted this sole sane story before Katurian infans started hearing his brother's screams, i.e. while the story itself has lots of reflective qualities upon the play and its message, within the confines of the play's framework there is no "preoccupation with the self as a witness to the action of humanity, rather than with humanity itself", that is a artist's failing, says the author, in the story.

Tangentially, because I mentioned it to ian in our conversation just now, the name "Ariel" has nothing to do with Plath (dan), or the Tempest (ian), and its significance as a Jewish name (thong) is only secondary. Ariel is the angel of healing and new beginnings, which should probably be known to the more religiously-read, and the name is important of course in that Detective Ariel gives Katurian's stories a new beginning by not burning them. But it's more likely its Jewishness made McDonagh name the dead boy "Goldberg", and to talk about the Jewish Quarter, and to have Ariel seem quite angry in that sequence in the play (which one must remember was subsequently and swiftly dropped from the play entirely—hence diminished importance, of course), rather than the other way round.

a few things i think need to be considered in interpreting the play:

don't give religion too much weight. It has much to do with the play, what with "the little jesus", and all sorts of allusions, but it serves more as a signpost to the themes and ideas mcdonagh wants to draw the audience to, rather than the end in itself.

don't relate the play too much to things that figure or are figuring in your own life. the play is a standalone piece, and whatever the claptrap about art being whatever it means to each person distinctively, the playwright has his own point to make, so stick to that.

i suppose i shall put this on my blog too.

ian's new musings on the play are here.

leaving on a jet plane

2007-12-09T12:49:34Z

i'm sorry i couldn't think of a less clichéd title, but i shouldn't be, because tomorrow is 5 days of hong kong and shenzhen whenever we feel like it. have made myself such a long list of to-buys that there can be no possibility of striking everything off that list, but the tickets have been bought, and so the effort will be made, and hopefully as many things will go off that list and my luggage will be as heavy as i can help it.

and i leave you all with this photo of a mannequin i saw in BHG at J8 just yesterday—

i'll miss you.

the children the world almost break become the adults who save it

2007-11-18T07:23:53Z

I return this moment from a most exceptional performance of The Pillowman. It is the most satisfying, if most terrifying and indeed most traumatising piece of drama i have seen on stage for as long as i have been in the habit of theatre, and i come away from it with a grouse against its tagline, for i believe it to be, yes, vicious, but quite as far from funny as ever a play could conceivably claim to be. The psychological warfare that raged unremittingly both on the inside of the protagonist writer and in the spaces that filled the distances between him, his brother and the two detectives built itself up into such a crescendo that when it finally culminated, as was always known it would, in a resounding crash of philosophy mingled with violence, brutality and a strong and strengthening sense of doubt, distrust and deep suspicious dread, the trauma that rippled through the theatre seemed to bounce off every wall in the theatre and every body in the audience, and to congregate and resound in my mind, where the weight of irony dripped off every word uttered by every character, every action by every personage, and everything that i seemed to hear and see, and presented to me a great consternatory web of interrelation, interpretation and interposition that burrowed depths beyond the deepest which i felt capable of plumbing, and that stretched far into a sphere that can be known only by revelation.

Was Katurian's brother, Michal, really retarded? That was the first question that occurred in the course of the play, the one that gave rise to many subsequent doubts, and the only major one still left inconclusively answered.

Act I was unrelentingly shocking. By the middle of the act I had been left dumbfounded in my seat, staring with apprehension and dismay commingled at the stage. As I remarked to Thong, this was not a play that played well (excuse me) to verbal reproduction or indeed any method of secondary relation, for such importance held the manner and style of delivery by each character of each line and each word, and such also held each word of each line uttered by each character, and I would have myself attempted to rationalise—what, I don't know; the play perhaps, or what it excited in me—but for the incapability even of measuring or articulating my own reactions and responses, compounded by the inadequacies of our language that hinder a direct confrontation with the questions posed by the play on morality, causality, responsibility, agency and the duet of perception&reality, and make us run rings round the topic while appearing to broach the subject without actually having addressed any of the issues it raised at all, for all their complexity and interplay.

The remnant throbbing of the headache from five hours ago still lingers in my head, though dampened by a long bus ride and a short nap that it should not be so strong as to deny me my rest for the night anymore.

I should not have been so shaken by a play, but for the damning indictments that it cast, pitilessly and unremittingly, on the human condition, and when the stories started unfolding and Michal uttered his incisive and yet dubiously abstruse protestations of indignation to Katurian, the speechlessness that had been kindled within me turned at the first sign of the impending moral upending into a disbelief that in turn became a horror, of the sort to which comprehension and consciousness were merely as a tall pinewood is to a lumberjack or as a flippant fish in the river is to a fisherman—inviting bait and eventual victim—and which when itself swallowed up by fear became a trauma tarred and crossed by trepidation and dread that rendered me physically incapacitated by the dolour of distress and for most of the very long (1h 45min) first act unable even to turn the corners of my lips up at what was intended to be comic relief, limp against the soft comfort of my seat, holding my head in a half-tormented headache and thankful that I did not have to suffer such horror as was being played out on stage firsthand to learn what i learnt, as if as strong an iron as ever had been brought to bear upon my body, and had wrought excruciation that no cry either of pain or anguish could vanquish.

The first act was so vastly superior to the second that i shall not even mention the latter, except that it was necessary to flesh out the other two main characters, Detectives Tupolski and Ariel. But oh, the names, the names! I did mention that this was not a play that lent itself well to verbal relation.

It was a pity that, upon asking at the ticketing counter, as Thong and I did immediately after the show ended, it was found that tickets to all the shows had long been sold out. We had been desirous of watching the play again, though he for slightly different reasons as might be imagined.

[livejournal, or xjournal, the client i am using, ate the original of my very long entry that i spent an hour writing, and into which i invested much emotion and effort. i am in pain, and have tried to recreate the entry, but it falls far short of what i had had, because i was inspired then, and despairing now. it was past 3.30am and i was not about to spend another hour before my computer trying to salvage something practically hopeless. oh, the pain, the anguish! i was in shock over the play previously, but i do believe that the mood now applies equally to what i feel towards technology and its vagaries. this is the inferior reconstruction, kept as close to the original as i can remember, and i shall never feel as complete again till this memory be wiped from my scars.]

here is ian's muse on the play, and here is daniel's. because neither kayhwee nor thong blog (much), there is nothing i can show.

teo chee hean

2007-10-28T09:43:34Z

so he came over for a visit today, and i casually asked him, "what do you think of NMP Thio?"

and in classic politicianspeak, he replied, "well, i think she's a bright woman. i don't always agree with what she says, but she's a bright woman."

i didn't press him further.

on conservatism, part I (edited)

2007-10-24T18:07:54Z

i don't believe what i just heard on the channel 5 news. there's actually a lawsuit going on, right here in singapore, involving an exorcism.

an exorcism! i won't even provide a link because it's so preposterous.

so after winding back the clocks from civil liberties to claim that gay sex is like shoving a straw up your nose to drink and inherently harmful to your body (NMP Thio Li-ann with her ill-deserved law degree from harvard), we now have an attempt to purge a human body of spirits in novena church, an act which was last officially ~~sanctioned~~ performed [whoops kels] by the catholic church in the 17th century.

we are that mediaeval. in spite of my friends, my opinion of christians in singapore just keeps going down, down, down. ian has observed more than once that christianity in singapore tends to be a middle-class-and-above religion, and usually corresponds with slightly higher education than the general population. no arguments there, but it seems every passing incident vindicates my theory of the mindset bottleneck more and more.

i can't even remember when i came up with that hypothesis; it was so long ago, and i doubt i ever gave it a name—at least not this name in particular. but i do remember invoking it, explicitly or implicitly, in any number of monographs i have written. the line of thought goes like this: despite having a thoroughly open mindset to begin with, as a person (or, in aggregate, a people) starts to get educated, his mindset will narrow sharply, and only gradually widen as he progresses up the educational ladder. the point at which it throws itself fully open again is the attainment of what has been termed, in religious contexts, as Enlightenment.

the reasoning is simple, and the assumptions more so. to simplify, the former is that, in the beginning, man is without any knowledge of the world, and is thus acutely aware of his limits, and bears no preconceptions; he looks upon the world with curiosity in order to find out more, and neither judges or prejudges because he is unable to without a yardstick. as he learns, however, he finds out what is usual and normal, and what is not; ideas then form, based on experience and a dash of logic, as to what ought to be normal. because his knowledge is still severely limited here, his mindset closes to a chokingly narrow state, and only opens in drips and drops as inquiry reveals not just more of the world, but also of the inadequacies of his methods and reasoning. gradually the cumulative effect will build and the enlightenment will arrive, like a hyperbola on a mathematical graph, after the flexion point is reached.

the theory practically traces the history of the western world from the prehistoric ages, through the greeks, romans and their many gods (the classical age is but a highly stylised culmination of the blind feeling that was early learning, and it ended with, among other things, plato sniffing at the ancient greek pederastic custom, and christian theodosius I desecrating the ancient roman pagan religion), the middle ages with its crusades and witch-burnings, the renaissance that brought with it the scientific method and galileo, followed by the enlightenment, which eventually, one might say, led up to the civil liberties revolution of the 1960s.

it doesn't fit the east that well, though. china, india (which other nation gave us the kama sutra?), japan and persia, not to mention the african empires of egypt, mali and assyria, among others, adopted highly liberal—even by today's standards—attitudes towards personal identity, choice and behaviour, all throughout their history (arabia, whose trajectory more closely resembles that of europe, is an exception). using homosexuality as an example, since 377A is so hot now:

until mediaeval britain's laws were copied en masse and hence gay sex outlawed in the 17th century by a qing dynasty wishing to ape the west's "modernity" (their idea of "education"), men commonly had intercourse with and married one another; the idiom 吟詩作樂 does not literally mean "compose poetry and make merry", but is a euphemism; the Han emperor Ai (漢哀帝, 劉欣) in 3 BC cut off his sleeve as not to disturb his sleeping (male) lover and contributed "brokensleeve" (斷袖; many others abound—chinese page);
up till the meiji restoration, again when western laws were unthinkingly adopted as part of "modernisation", samurai were known, and even encouraged to, engage in homosexual relationships with their daimyo (overlords);
even in the 18th century persian male brothels were seen as no different from the female ones: they simply paid tax like any other business; baccha were a common sight in samarkand in 1915 (see Prokudin-Gorskii's photo) and still are now.

a major reason why people suddenly become so short-sighted and narrow-minded is conceit. that smugness, self-righteousness and sense of entitlement suddenly renders a person unwilling and at times unable to accept the viability of another point of view. it is, as i call it, the Chosen-One fallacy: "look, i've discovered/realised/found out this, and my excitement and pride now overshadows all logic. you should see the light of my ways. what? how can you not see it? and what is that ignorant philosophy of yours; how could you believe such tosh?!"

isn't this what is happening in singapore right now? a growing middle class aspires to the ways of the west (rich, advanced, culturally dominant) and adopts christianity as part of the package. but in their eagerness and conceit—"ha, i'm more western than you, and so am more sophisticated; you should follow in my footsteps too, but why can't you see the light?"—commit an error that a little bit of history and understanding of how the law works would've prevented.

and so in reading the replies of some MPs to the petition to repeal 377A, you wonder whether they really understand the distinction between criminal law and morals, and the whole concept of a constitution. the one is intended to prevent or at least discourage harm to society by laying out punishments for transgressors, while the other is a personal checklist against which one measures his own actions and decides whether he is living as he wishes; the constitution guarantees the protection of the rights of minority groups, but by all the cowardly rhetoric about the majority's moral objection it seems as though NMP siew kum hoong was justified in exasperatedly pointing out that "majority" can also be coupled with "tyranny of the".

it is ridiculous to use this "majority" argument now when the government has blithely ignored the will of the majority in the past over so many issues. if it is so concerned about the silent majority's views (admittedly no longer silent after MPs etc. suddenly all burst onto scene to chime in against repealing 377A and to cue conservatives to join in), then why ignore it so often? why insist on racial harmony and equal representation then, since we have a majority of chinese? why build the casinos when so many opposed it too? it poses a greater threat to family values because people can become hooked on gambling; they can't on other people having sex, in this case especially if they are straight. gambling can tempt you and make you neglect your spouse, children, work and much else besides, but how can letting other people have sex?! ludicrous.

inconsistency and selective application of principles (clouded under the term "pragmatism", as we all learnt in social studies) is the key grievance here. it is pragmatic to build the casino because it will earn us money, and you all will get over it soon enough. it is pragmatic to welcome talented gay people to work here, even in the civil service, because we just need them to do a job, and we will make money from the pink dollar. but oh dear, what can we gain from legalising gay sex? we'll just lose a huge bunch of votes from the conservative christians and the surprisingly monolithic muslim community, and then what? nah, we'll just say we won't enforce the law but leave it there as a sop to the abrahamic folk. that should do it. there are so few gay people in comparison anyway and betcha most of them don't vote either. so shush, shush, let's move on. it isn't our core agenda anyway.

and i thought i'd given up political activity.

edit: take that, thio li-ann! alfian gives you a slap in the face.

and according to fridae, she also said the following: "Like an open mouth, an open mind must eventually close on something solid." is it just me, or did that come across as unusually freudian?

kudos, though, to MPs Charles Chong etc. and PM Lee for their progressive thinking. (and no, thio, we do have a customary definition of what is "progressive", so stop twisting words around; we aren't dumb.)

it's one of those times again

2007-10-07T14:01:23Z

my life is dissipated, and i can't even be bothered to write this in a presentable way. my thoughts aren't even coherent anymore. i've lost sight of the goals i set myself just a few months ago when things were looking much brighter, and the daily grind of a limited existence, of an existence limited by the sheer lack of energy to do anything at all, is wearing my mind thin. i've started playing computer games. that shows. i can't even bring myself to read much anymore nowadays, and when i do, it's camus because his novels portray grind, and i can sympathise. not even wikipedia interests me. i just click away on an animated screen.

you know, there ought to be the customary (and i have deteriorated to the point that i needed to check the thesaurus to remember that word) life sucks and all that shit, but you know what? _|_

on pity

2007-09-11T11:34:50Z

outside my company line right now is the beautiful scene of a burning sunset in a sky streaked with clouds, occurring right behind the buildings of my unit's new compound, some completed and others half-finished.

it could be a National Geographic photo.

it's times like these when i really wish camera phones were allowed in the army.

i am the patriot

2007-08-09T17:37:06Z

so much for nationalism. here's what happened to my national day bag, barely minutes after getting it:

vive la république. i'm going to bring this to france next year. and i managed to procure a green strip from someone else, so i can become an italian patriot anytime.

free balloons at suntec

2007-08-05T02:34:05Z

am going to be at suntec today, from 1 to 7, giving out balloons for NDP, to boost the celebratory mood.

if you are cheapskate and want free balloons, or at least want to say hi and relieve my boredom, do come down.

even my mum was surprised

2007-07-19T16:16:25Z

i am burnt like a roast pig after beachvolley at sentosa on tuesday. and i just volunteered for dragonboating at the ndp media brief, even though i've never touched a dragonboat before, nor know what on earth it's about. this whole sun-and-sea thing is starting to feel quite exciting, and my mum has only wonder on her lips, at my diligence in rising at such unseemly hours for an activity about which i would not even have bothered a trifle a mere half-year back. i haven't told her about dragonboating yet. hmm.

i'm headed for fort canning park tomorrow morning—at 8!—for a pseudo-Amazing Race game for unit cohesion, if i remember correctly, and then lunch with thong and yee-han (spelling?) after that. a trip to the bank and a visit to the hairdresser's saturday afternoon before shopping with ian in the evening, and book-shopping with brian on sunday. i kind of like this eventful life. having things to do focusses my mind and lifts my spirits, because it takes my attention off the banalities and annoyances of life. though i still look at my aunt with envy, who's jetting off to korea tomorrow morning with her mari for a week of fun and frolic.

this post has taken extraordinarily long to write given its brevity. so many calls, extraordinarily—from brian, from thong and from my aunt, all overlapping one another, to the extent that brian commented that i had a lot of phones going on. in fact, it's ten minutes past midnight and i'm just writing the end of the post.

tpthht on shoojee's new tee

2007-07-17T16:19:29Z

read this month's issue of natgeog
and saw this article on the birds of paradise
that as we all know belong to new guinea etc.
and have outrageously florid colourings, tail feathers, all that shit
(and perform elaborate courting dances
before having wild sex).

then i thought of shoojee and his new & super nice $100 m by mj tee:

the article goes

"Here in New Guinea it isn't nature tooth and claw, but nature with painted skirt and crowned brow—a bird drag show," says biologist Ed Scholes of New York's Museum of Natural History. "Life here is pretty comfortable for birds of paradise."

Fruit and insects abound all year in the forests of New Guinea, the largest tropical island in the world, and natural threats are few, meaning no monkeys and squirrels to compete with birds for food, and no cats to prey on them. The result: an avian paradise that today is home to more than 700 species of birds.

Freed of other pressures, birds of paradise began to specialize for sexual competition. Traits that made one bird more attractive than another were passed on and enhanced over time. Known as sexual selection, this process "is to birds of paradise what natural selection is to Darwin's finches—the prime mover," says Scholes. "The usual rules of survival aren't as important here as the rules of successful mating."

hem hem. ahahaha

odyssey of a theme song and some fighting

2007-07-13T17:53:33Z

a bunch of kids were playing barney's theme song downstairs at the bus stop loudly for the auditory pleasure of all and sundry who passed. needless to say there weren't many people passing them by. poor me, therefore, who walked carelessly close, and got a earful of that appalling ditty. to think i used to watch barney when i was younger.

and i'm getting very addicted to Granado Espada. this isn't supposed to be happening.

undoing_ @ 2007-05-18T18:34:00

2007-05-18T11:47:34Z

got this off ber's blog, but never got round to finishing it (got stuck at paya lebar) until i saw kelvin's post of it today. SO MUCH FOOD. so now i've decided to complete it while tucking comfortably into a bowl of chubby hubby ha.

east-west

changi airport is the default choice for dinner if i don't know where to go. sakae for cheap sushi, pasta fresca for italian, crystal jade for chinese, and fish&co for some western.
expo is the place for booksales, and is great for a couple's hideout. (: hello there.
pasir ris is where i live.
tampines has a nice library and some good replicas of town, but that's just it -- replicas; and two shopping malls is seriously not enough.
simei brings immediately to mind just two people, daniel leong and mel, both of whom live there. also a nice new zealand's natural ice cream outlet, and a much-too-bright sakae sushi store upstairs.
tanah merah is seriously nothing but an extension of
bedok, which has the greatest food because it's been around for so long and so have the people there. the jelly cocktail at the interchange, b.85 and other random kopitiams around the area; there are just so many. also houses my grandma's place.
kembangan = kayhwee/kayhian, mahjong&alcohol sessions, gatherings, lots of food, and the one time we were driven to lunch by kats and were all holding on tight to our seats.
eunos has a renovated bus interchange that looks seriously ugly from the train.
paya lebar has that futuristic building whose view's been despoiled by all that construction, which has also removed the toilet to a makeshift one that stinks and is unusable. also the site of synwin, that music shop i used to go to.
aljunied is a station from which you can see manjusri secondary school.
kallang is where i had to go for an entire year for cricket training just cos i forgot to fill in the cca selection form. also a nice mac's opposite a kfc. must be the only american-style food outlets in singapore.
lavender is where you go to get your passport renewed (hurrah now the renewal period's ten years again).
bugis junction has lots of good food: hoshigaoka (mmm), v8 etc.; and shopping; but the cinema sucks and it's way too crowded.
city hall is the gateway to citylink, suntec, esplanade, chijmes, gramophone, peninsula, the cathedral where i attended my first christmas service even though i wasn't christian, and many other places above ground that hold dear memories for me. also the place where i met r.
raffles place is one lousy cbd. look at manhattan, or yottsuya, yo.
tanjong pagar is the place i alighted from the train one day absent-mindedly while on the way to zouk. ended up taking a cab there.
outram park will forever mean sgh for me. i never want to go back there.
tiong bahru is a's house, and where i held hands properly for the first time, and many many other first times. a history of the jews on the bookshelf, huh.
redhill is the place where the train exits the tunnel to a very ugly townscape.
queenstown is ikea, dimsum buffet and alexandra hospital. and the place of a generous chapchai stall that unfortunately serves cold food.
commonwealth
buona vista was a familiar sight every morning for a year, and then the transit stop for many more forays into holland v. settlers', harry's, häagen dazs, al dente, n.y.D.c., crystal jade, starbucks, burger king, the dbs outlet, tcc, sushi tei. and the 7-11s. fond memories of everyone. (:
dover is the outcast station because the doors open on the other side and it doesn't fit in.
clementi is where kats lives, and where i've been quite a few times. clementi.
jurong east is imm and fuji ice palace.
chinese garden
lakeside
boon lay ...er.

north-south

bukit batok is where yongyeow lives. or i wouldn't even know of the place.
bukit gombak seriously, where do all these places come from?
cck is whence i have to take a bus to book in, and our favourite book-out dinner spot.
yew tee is where a good friend lives, right across the mrt station.
kranji
marsiling brings to mind jackie.
woodlands is wilson, causeway point, and the place of a rare, totally unplanned breakfast with shao hsien.
admiralty is an admiral's fief?
sembawang
yishun is the stop from which i take a bus home after bookouts, and where i bought so much chinese new year candy from a stall the uncle gave me a 30% bulk discount.
yck is the stop to get off at for seok's house (:
amk is the only triple-tracked station that isn't an interchange.
bishan has bored me totally after six years of going there every day, but will stay in my mind for the café cartel, pastamania, secret recipe, dintaifung, muji, cedèle and everything that happened there, plus the thomson prata, and a car ride from a different a.
braddell is, again, an outcast.
toa payoh has lots of good food, including an eleven-dollar plate of chicken rice that wilson introduced me to and i will never forget because it is so ridiculously overpriced. see also serangoon.
novena is where i went for my first taste of ben&jerry's and loved it! as well as the company. (:
newton is four years of my life, the hawker centre with its great food, the alliance française and The Glass Ménagerie.
orchard is enough said.
somerset is an offshoot of town where i wait for nightrider when i can't find other transport.
dhoby ghaut is the marvellous chocolate stall in the basement and the insane queues at the atms, plus MANHATTAN FISH MARKET and the oft-frequented cinema.
marina bay is crap.

nel

harbourfront is vivocity and its attendant pleasures, of brotzeit, zara, topman, a|x, plus a very expensive foodcourt upstairs. the place from which my rehabilitative tour of sentosa started.
chinatown is chinese.
clarke quay is tapas tree, attika, liang court -- especially the japanese restaurant upstairs. bloody good, but rather expensive so it's a PG-only place for your wallet.
little india
farrer park
boon keng
potong pasir is the stop the lady in the anouncement recording always reads with an extra 'r' -- "parsir" -- which always pisses me off.
serangoon is garrdens, ber, 53, and getting treated by my dad's friend to $30-a-plate chicken rice, wtf.
kovan is 81, heartland mall, japanese lessons in primary school and many people's houses.
hougang
buangkok is white elephants.
sengkang
punggol seriously, i've never gotten off at most of these stops before.

undoing_ @ 2007-04-21T18:03:00

2007-04-21T10:03:48Z

朱雀橋邊野草花，烏衣巷口夕陽斜。
舊時王謝堂前燕，飛入尋常百姓家。

oh dear me

2007-03-29T17:01:25Z

read a blog, and saw this really funny post:

"Went MOS in the night. Sucks. But funny things happened. or should i say a totally embarrassing thing happened. Well as u see, i was wearing a belt for the night. And then came this gal who had several hooks around her skirt. The inevitable happened when my belt was caught up with her butt hook.

It looks as if i was having Anal sex with her la! so paiseh pls.. somemore she was in a hurry and i was being dragged across for a few metres. Her skirt almost fell off. I was like oh oh oh shit.. hahah.. and because the music was not only irritatingly loud, i had to hurry stop her before both of us laughed like donno what. O well.. life goes on."

from the february 25 post on http://benji--.blogspot.com

the guy looks like someone i know. damn he's got a cute profile pic. although what on earth is "enrapture & erotize" -- the spelling, punctuation and grammar nazi in me just doesn't go away.

i am craving

2006-12-06T15:56:43Z

for tofu cheesecake

awrf

firefox irritates me!

2006-02-04T18:34:31Z

or i am irritated by it.

new template for vaish here at my template-testing blog, which works fine for IE but which screws up for firefox. claudacity! inventing! HELP! WHY is firefox so ANAL.

primeste fericirea

2005-11-24T06:24:01Z

finally playing this song about a week after ian first sent it to me, and i find myself belatedly addicted to it. as with all otheraddictions i foresee this to be relatively shortlived as well, unlike the cumulative loves like Sigur Rós and Arcade Fire.

vrei sa pleci dar nu ma, nu ma iei,
Nu ma, nu ma iei, nu ma, nu ma, nu ma iei

just saw wilson off, who came over to watch Blackadder (!!) and play a bit of Rise of Nations (which has really bizarre unrealistic game rules, but i digress). my goodness Blackadder has just relumed my day which had positively fallen away after lit; four sheets of paper for three essays is not the most encouraging way to ace your exams.

and ian and wilson have met! went to kino, then lunch, then kino again together before ian decided that he was going home. funny haikus from the poetry section:

on Philosoph. Natur. Princip. Math. Newton:

Cherry blossoms fall
with Force equal to Mass times
Acceleration.

on The Canterbury Tales Chaucer:

Pilgrimmes on springe braecke—
roadde zippe! Whoe farrtted? Yiuw didde.
Naw, naught meae. Yaes, yiuw.

on Robinson Crusoe Defoe:

Alone for twelve years,
then a footprint in the sand.
Thank God, a servant!

on the Kama Sutra:

Advice for those in
a difficult position.
First, be flexible.

on Inferno Dante Alighieri:

Abandon all hope!
Looks like everyone's down here.
Ohmigod—the Pope!

on Brideshead Revisited Waugh:

Gay Catholic toffs—
what else to expect from a
man named Evelyn?

on The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith:

Supply meets demand,
the invisible hand claps.
Capitalist Zen.

on Das Kapital Karl Marx:

October winds blow.
Your contradictions doom you,
capitalist swine.

on Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad:

The darkness darkened.
Oh, the horror, the horror.
It was horrible.

besides that, we have terra cotta figures dressed in a suit—

—and unwitting japanese gay porn—

—and this vandalised poster two days ago at the library lift lobby—

tomorrow, HPGoF with my sister, then intensive reading begins; lit S texts until the 28th, and laisser-faire after that. great incentive indeed, books. (:

chicken licken

2005-11-11T11:01:25Z

"Chicken Licken was in the woods, and the sky fell on her head. We're going to tell the King that the sky is falling."

The Heroic Tales of a Holiday in Phuket

2005-09-21T11:00:38Z

this story was so hilarious i'm reposting it from my blog.

i have come to glean some precious bits of information! however, to protect the identity of the two men involved in the following, highly embarrasing incident, i shall give them the names Rollason and Miles. note, that these are purely fictitious names with no bearing whatsoever on the reality.

one day Rollason tells Miles, with whom he is going to phuket, that he has the perfect deal, extremely cheap. so Miles agrees enthusiastically and they arrive in phuket, only upon which Rollason informs Miles that the deal was a honeymoon deal. Miles' jaw drops, but since they are already there, he goes along. even when, in the hotel lobby, the porter ventures to present a bouquet of flowers to them, but is at a loss as to whom he ought. eventually, Rollason gestures at the porter to Miles.

trickier fates await them when, upon opening the door to their hotel room, they realise that the bed is in the shape of a heart. with rose petals scattered along the perimeter. one of them opens the bathroom door to discover the (double) bath in the same condition. it was a real test of their tenacity when, later, the porter calls on them to inform them that, as part of the package, they are entitled to a candlelight dinner, and to ask them whether they wanted it A) on their balcony or B) in the restaurant downstairs. most unfortunately for their sensibilities, they picked the latter, which ends up with them sitting at a heart-shaped table in the restaurant, two grown men with families, having their dinner while the rest of the patrons stared on in curiosity at them, and at the guitar band serenading the ostensible couple.

the coup de grace surfaced at Checkout. as we all know, there happen certain instances where the actual price charged by the hotel is higher than what is actually stated or advertised. this is known as cheating. our two young and merry (or perhaps Mary) protagonists, one mischievous and the other deathly unwilling, were at the checkout counter ready to pay when Rollason (a reminder, the names used are fictional and any coincidence with persons living or dead is purely coincidental) finds out that the price on the bill and that advertised do not tally. being a righteous and incorruptible man, Rollason notified the counter staff that there has been an egregious mistake in the billing, but to no avail.

the horror of Miles must have been unimaginable when Rollason proceeded to exclaim, to the attention of all the guests in the lobby, that he would not pay the higher price because he and Miles had come on the honeymoon package and were therefore entitled to the discount price. in spite of poor, embarrased Miles' repeated pleading for a reprieve from the penetrating stares of all the people around, the argument goes on; at the end of the day, however, we must feel sorry for our two heroes, who were roundly defeated by the hotel staff in the match of endurance, paying the higher price after round after ceaseless round of face-burning exposition.

END The Heroic Tales of a Holiday in Phuket

by the way, Rollason - okay fine, rolly - claims that it was Lies, all Lies. in his version of the story, it was miles and an ex-student who had become his good friend. but do not give up! all of you, during your EH post-mortem interrupt and bombard him with questions about that phuket trip! it will be a nice fulfilling of his prophecy.

rolly: "you've what- oh no, eugene, you told them. you know what's going to happen, during the post-mortem for the european history papers they're going to be asking me all sorts of questions about this. you know that lot; they can't stop. (cue collective gasp of indignation) oh gosh, thank you very much, eugene, thank you very much."
me: "you're very welcome, mr rollason!" grin