lundi, janvier 31, 2005 I'm still alive, but desperately seeking my dissertation topic, hence busy, hence no posts. If you feel that this has lessened the quality of your life somewhat, all I can offer in compensation is that you put in your requests for post topics you'd like to see me write on and I will try to oblige :)[All Requests Live] |
jeudi, janvier 27, 2005 Highlighting A Letter From The SDU * highlight to see my thoughts.Dear Member, (you mean I haven't been kicked out for not accumulating any ECA participation points yet? Darn!) It has been a pleasure for us to serve your social interaction and dating needs and we hope that you have been actively participating in our training programmes and activities. (I'm sure I have. I love going on 5-day tours to Australia, by myself, with total strangers, on a strict 50-50 gender ratio split, with an inadvertably overenthusiastic SDU facilitator. Oh joy.) In SDU, we strive to continue to serve the needs of all members. (Have you asked me what my needs are? Did I miss that survey form?) We have revamped our membership card to keep pace with your image. (My current image is one of extreme dowdiness and lok-kok dressing. How does this funky orange card fit in?) Attached below is your Classic Membership Card. (Got change meh? Still oleng-car-ler mah!) Remember to bring along your card for participation in our programmes and activities, and you can also enjoy a host of value-added benefits from participating outlets. (I'm sure I can fit this card into my bulging wallet, full of other cards with "value-added benefits from participating outlets", all from which I cannot remember a single one. Yippee.) We hope you will continue to participate and actively utilise your membership to increase the probability of meeting the special someone, whom you can share your life with. (I can't wait. With my new orange card (which lasts all of 5 months) I'm sure I can populate Singapore enough for all policy makers to be happy.) We wish you the best in your quest! If you have any further queries, etc... Warmest Regards etc. [Highlighting A Letter From The SDU] |
mercredi, janvier 26, 2005
[There are no words (#1?)] |
mardi, janvier 25, 2005 We Singaporeans sure love our food I'm a little bugged by the reports in the newspapers about the so-called "traditions" that schoolkids have - you know the ones I mean: the taupok, the keropok, the bra-snapping, the wedgie, the soggy biscuit (this one's definitely the tradition of some angmoh-ified international school or other, judging from the slightly distasteful (to say the least!) factor involved.) Why can't the papers just run a small story and be done with it? Now, fun, harmless things like bra-snapping have been psychologized and analyzed to death, and the health detriments of taupok-ing listed... There'll be even less fun in schools now. Maybe they should research the history of flagpoling and compare the ascent of this "game" with the drop in Singapore's fertility rates...[We Singaporeans sure love our food] |
dimanche, janvier 23, 2005 I can feel my sinuses (sinii?) burning already After looking at a couple of shots that my friend took for a digital photography/NIE project, I'm just wondering why I find the close-up partial shots of mundane/everyday objects rather appealing. I love her overhead shots of a cup of kopi, chilli (without soya sauce), and the extreme close-up of a leaf on a textured granite floor. Here's the picture of the chilli just to give you an idea of what I'm talking about:
On another note, I like the way a theme comes through in her pictures (I almost typed "accidentally", but I think I want to give her more credit than that.) There was a circular theme in the set of pictures which the chilli platter belonged to - you had an arial shot of the cup of kopi, another arial of the chilli, and another of a bowl of prawn noodles. Not that you have any control over the shape of the plates or bowls or the cup, but I liked the eye that saw the potential of the circles arriving from arial shots. This could be the etude of new media in Singapore: instead of the ubiquitous fruit bowl (which might be an interesting post-modern assignment actually: assign students to do a project on the theme of the fruit basket), you have an etude on the meal. Take pictures/make art of a meal. Just a thought. ETA: Actually, on second thought, a pomo assignment on the new media fruit basket might turn out to be more interesting. [I can feel my sinuses (sinii?) burning already] |
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I used to think that St. Nicholas was a huge land of stairs - after all, should you decide to ascend from the track and field to the Primary 6 classes, located on the top floor, it would be a whopping 8 stories at least.
Coming from that background, the steps of NUS weren't a particularly huge hassle - after all, there were always bazaars and other eye-candy to feast upon on your way between classes (or canteen breaks, depending on which you prefer.) Unfortunately, all my stairmaster training has not prepared me to the craziness which exists somewhere in Tuas:
[NTU: Ascension] |
vendredi, janvier 21, 2005 Quick Comment: CapitaLand partners rival casino operators in two separate bids Capitaland article here.Why bother calling us a democratic republic? "... Western definition...assumes a democratic political structure in which competing groups seek legitimacy and power through public opinions and elections... particularly difficult to discern are emerging democracies where alternative views may be encouraged in theory but not in practice..." I don't think we'd like to see ourselves as an "emerging democracy", however, it seems that this is the way that the wheel we set spinning has turned. Everyone I know is against the casino - even my friends who sit on the fence sit facing and leaning towards the "No" camp. I can imagine that this is the reason why they're so eager to increase the retirement age - can you imagine the social disaster which would occur if our GREYING POPULATION were to retire at 62, then proceed to gamble away their CPF in Sentosa two days later? We're allowed to vote for the president, and I think we should be allowed to vote on something else: we should have a referendum on this. (How does one go about doing this? The last referendum I recall was the Singapore-Malaysia merger or separation, and nobody says anything about who calls it.) [Quick Comment: CapitaLand partners rival casino operators in two separate bids ] |
mardi, janvier 18, 2005 I am on the cusp of my first Apple purchase, because duuuuude, $268* is a ridiculous price to pay for 1 GIG of space. I've been wanting a thumb drive for a while now, and the fact that it plays music is just a major super bonus, that's all. Plus the "I-want-an-iPod" feeling. Plus it looks très cool, non? C'est super cool, et j'espere quelqu'un m'en acheter! Peut-être toi? (Like real.)Plus, I just realised that somehow, I amazingly got the specs on the Zen Micro wrong. There is NO 10 gig model of the Zen micro, only 5 gig ones. I would have bought it if it were 10 gigs and at that price, but for 5 gig, I don't think so. What is wrong with my eyes?! But Apple won't play the WMA files I have... which are rather large in number... * ETA - I'm WRONG about this. My dad just bought a 1GB flash drive at Funan for $145. Which is even more ridiculously low. [Pod people] |
lundi, janvier 17, 2005 <html><head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=<$BlogEncoding$>" /> <title>little pink soap dinosaur v3</title> <script language='javascript' src='http://www.blogextra.com/backblog/userdata.asp?user=3170'></script> <style type="text/css"> <!-- body { background-color: #000000;} .Title { font-family: Georgia; font-size: 25pt; color: #000000; letter-spacing: 2pt;} .Title a:link {color: #000000; text-decoration: none;} .Title a:hover { color: #990000; text-decoration: underline; } .Title a:visited {color: #000000; text-decoration: none;} .subtitle { font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 7pt; color: #FFFFFF;} .subtitle a:link {color: #FFFFFF; text-decoration: none;} .subtitle a:hover { color: #FFFFFF; text-decoration: underline; background-color: #FFFF99; } .subtitle a:visited {color: #FFFFFF; text-decoration: none;} .blackdot { font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 5pt; color: #000000;} .blackdot a:link {color: #000000; text-decoration: none;} 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Lions vs Indonesia: 2-1 to Singapore!   This is how the stadium looked like as we baked in the sun at 530pm, just
Some practice Kallang Waves later, the sun was still taking some time to set. Die Hard Fans had broken out their pom-poms and were starting to show off their dexterity with the tools of the trade - a huge drum, long air clappers, scarves, Lions mascots etc. The announcer was also making us practice other stuff like shouting randomly, announcing No Smoking policies, more Kallang Waves... he had a rather strange accent, like it was a fake, put-on one, and when he announced the logic behind the No Smoking in the stadium rule, he mentioned something about "There are families and chewwen attending this event, so please be considerate." Hello, how many chewwen do you have?
A closer shot. The Slacking Blogger and the Policy Queen before anything happened on field, like how some Indonesian and Singaporean fans scaled barrier fences to fight, and how the Indonesians turned their backs and their butts on us when the Kallang Wave reached them (I do believe that some of them actually mooned us!) I'm ashamed to say that I too partook of the general boos and derogatory noise making when the other team arrived, and booed the referees at the end also... and generally yelled variations of "WAYANG ONLY LAH!" and "OSCAR PERFORMANCE VERY NICE! GET ON WITH IT!" when various people got pummelled on the pitch. However, the refereeing was sometimes ridiculous - a foul occurred in front of my seat, and the ball had been in play on that flank of the pitch for a while now, but the referee was busy LOOKING THE OTHER WAY. What happened? "Relak lah, still got time! Eh, why you so shiny?"
Play ball! It was a tremendously exciting first half, with the two goals - great stuff! Unfortunately, the toilet kept me from watching Aide Iskandar get sent off (what happened to you, Captain?) and from seeing the other couple of yellow cards which got us so pissed off at the referees - but at least nobody scored. The National Stadium needs to put more screens around and in the toilets - missing 30 mins of a game is insufferable punishment for a small bladder!
WE WIN! 2-1! WE WIN! HUGS! JOY! HAPPYDANCE! WE BRING HOME THAT UGLY CUP! WE WIN! WIN WIN WIN! W-I-N! The Lions/boys take a very deserved Victory Lap, and show off their new hardware acquisition to us. I'm rather glad that they didn't take the traditional route and play Queen's "We Are The Champions"... somehow or other, that song has passed its expiry date - a fact I'm rather sad about, but play it as we win and it smells musty and yellow somehow. And while it invokes a rather sweeping feeling of majesty and grandeur, it's somehow become "too slow" for the games of today - Ricky Martin was used instead for the victory announcement. (Followed by my favourite song!) Rather unfortunately, we were fed techno after the first two. The return of the Ah Beng DJ!
You can't really see it, but trust me, it reads SINGAPORE 2 INDONESIA 1. WOO HOO!
Shiok sendiri! *dance* According to Nurul, this term refers to the very entertaining yet embarassing dance that some people do during periods of high emotion (especially when Ricky Martin songs are played.) The movement goes like this: you shift your weight from side to side as you shake your hips up and down - it's like pivoting your body weight on your pelvis. At the same time, raise your hands and punch them in the air, alternating the punching up and the pelvic see-saw. Shiok sendiri! (literally, happy/shiok by yourself/oneself. I love this term!)
 Julian is the amazing man who managed to get tickets for us - how, I don't know. And he didn't want to accept money for the tickets too, preferring to fob us off on the "next time you pay lah" or "World Cup tickets you buy lah next time," - utter rubbish of course, it's not like we buy tickets every week to watch matches together. We're all financially struggling in our own ways, so we should all pull our own weight when it comes to expenses, and you're taking our filthy money whether you damn like it or not! The aftermath of the match was a rowdy, high crowd, intent on Singing all variations of the OleOleOle song with Ricky Martin. That's an exaggeration, but had Ricky been there, I'm sure he would have been singing along with us too - in his free Tiger-Lion (feline family?) t-shirt. (this entry will change slightly tmrw as I need to sleep now.) Libellés : soccer [Lions vs Indonesia: 2-1 to Singapore!] |
dimanche, janvier 16, 2005 During the first formal meeting between me and my current supervisor, my honours year thesis supervisor, Dr Millie, called him in his office. It was a rather pleasant surprise, but as I could only listen in on one end of the conversation, nothing really made a lot of sense. My professor was so kind as to relay part of the content of their conversation to me: apparently Dr Millie is of the opinion that the female lead of the Thai horror flick SHUTTER, looks remarkably like me. (not the circled ghost, but the girl in green.)
I don't know, what do you guys think? Two eyes one nose one mouth long hair... that's all the similarities I see. Oh, and a penchant for largish bags too. (Did I make a movie in my sleep?) [Shutterbug] |
samedi, janvier 15, 2005 Does anyone remember this song? This song has been in my head and on my lips (as I hum) for about two weeks, and I'm hoping to exorcise it by blogging about it. Does anyone have a recording of it? If I'm not wrong (and I don't think I am), it's by Jessica Soo, done sometime in the early 1990s. She seems to have disappeared from the scene almost entirely though, which is a shame because I rather like her sound, which is a little Corrine May-ish (or rather, Corrine May sounds a little Jessica Soo-ish) I'm not saying she sounds LIKE Corrine May, mind you. They both are different, in the way that Jann Arden and Alanis Morisette during the Jagged Little Pill and Insensitive era were different. Anyway, here's the song.My Love Song To You - ? title This is my love song to you All you happy people This is my love song to you Sad and lonely people too All you happy, sad and lonely people My love song goes out to you All you happy, sad and lonely people My love song goes out to you [Does anyone remember this song?] |
vendredi, janvier 14, 2005 Campsites in Singapore: Not an exhaustive list Got woken up at about 8.45 by U Frankie, who was our lovely driver today, for the Tour Around Singapore To Find A Good Church Youth Campsite for June 2005. It's a good thing that U Frankie, Christiana and myself stay around the same area - within 15 minutes of each other, or the morning pickup would have been quite a bitch.Anyway, on to the adventures of the day. First stop was the Scripture Union campsite at Sentosa. $2 car fee, and $2 entry fee each to enter the bloody island (for the mathematically uninclined, that's $8 just for us to visit this place), and we just got out of the car and went to see the campsite. The place is dirty. Run-down. Old. Leaky. It's got a werid Fort-Siloso-Canning musk about some of its rooms. The furniture is old, dusty, and everything is breaking down - but it's within shouting distance of Palawan Beach, and it's been the housing to mostly Christian-run camps. Zach, this guy who works there, says that it doesn't really matter what the accommodations are really - what matters is the presence of God, which is strong in the campsite. I really do want to believe that it's more than just a sales pitch line that he threw in, or there's no other way to truly articulate the bastardization of God's name than what he said to me. But he seems sincere, and who am I to judge? God only knows/Only God knows a man's heart. U Frankie was more interested in the peacocks and peahens than anything else - I fancy his eye was more culinary than ornithary in nature. The campsite closes in June 2005, and the government takes over it. Who knows what they have in store for the land? There's air-conditioning in some of the rooms, while some others don't. The function hall is fine - in fact, everything is in working condition, except very old, and very, very run-down. It's got character! I like it. Rather unfortunately, Christiana and U Frankie don't. I couldn't believe it when U Frankie complained about the non-aircon issue - aren't I supposed to be the over-protected, over-pampered 1980s baby? Why am I having to justify a non-aircon campsite to grandpa? Is today Freaky Friday and nobody told me? Anyway, here's the lovely view of the lovely lagoon where many lovely welts swelled my skin as lovely insects in the lovely water bit my lovely ass off. (Tis true!)
The Sarimbun Scout Campsite is located somewhere at the end of the world - or at the end of Jalan Bahtera, which is somewhere slightly off Lim Chu Kang Road. It's also home to Camp Christine, which Girl Guides will be familiar with. Rather unfortunately, we were unable to go in and view the campsite because we did not call ahead three days in advance to make an appointment, so we sought permission to lurk outside and see the activities which were going on. The campsite was a great contrast to the Sentosa one. Neat and very organised, instructors were everywhere ensuring that activities were safe and yet challenging. There didn't seem to be any organisational slack anywhere, and the place had the feel of a well-oiled machine. Most of the activities were very Outward Bound-ish type of activities - rockwall, abseiling, flying fox, obstacle course, canoeing, tent pitching, low-rope courses etc. After lurking around the grounds for about 15 minutes, we called the BB/GB campsite to make an appointment for 2pm. The groundskeeper was very gracious, and agreed immediately. So we grabbed the Mighty Minds Street Directory and headed off across the Northern tip of our island toward Sembawang. However, halfway along Lim Chu Kang, we stopped at a fish farm that U Frankie patronised. Check out the pretty fishes!  
Pretty Angel Fish on the left, and gorgeous Discuses (Discii?) on the right.
Angel fish cost $45 each, and the Discus, $250. No, I'm not kidding.
A horde of orange fish ($25 each) on the left, and a wonderfully
Some shark-like fish on the left, and my personal favourite of
The setup for the storage tanks on the left, and some
To my immense surprise, Christiana actually bought two fish! And U Frankie bought some kind of pump filter for his water plants. I asked Mr Gan, the owner of Gan Aquarium Fish Farm (LCK 180 New Tiew Lane 2) if he had fighting fish, and he smiled a pretty smile and said "Fighting fish si hor gheena chit-tou ngia; wa zhit-peng si hor rich lao ah-pek eh," (* Translation from what I can recall from my horrible hokkien - Fighting fish is for children to play one, I down here (my fish) is for rich old men one...) We finally ended up at the Sembawang campsite, after my directions were questioned again and again and again by U Frankie, who could not believe that we had to pass by the Zoo to get to Sembawang - "Are you sure? This Mandai leh! How come pass Zoo one? Visit the animals first ah?" - hey, I might get lost in NTU because it is NO MAN'S LAND especially without the campus map, but trust me when I'm telling you where to go when I have a map in my hands. Follow me to the ends of the earth if I happen to have a compass in the other. I may not do some things as well as I may like to, but I. Rock. Maps. I totally do. The BB/GB campsite is just as I remembered it - functional, clean, a little run-down in parts, but fully servicable. Close by to the Sembawang shipyard and sea, within breathing distance of some red-white striped Senoko lookalike towers. The only change I could see was that the airconditioners were serviced, and they had just changed all the mattresses for the dorms, which is a good thing. There are a couple more "urban" campsites that I didn't really bother with unless there was no other alternative, such as the NACLI campsite, which isn't a really bad campsite, but it looks boring, and all I remember was being bored when I was at NACLI having some monitor or prefect training in St Nicks. I remember the trainers rather full of themselves, and how they were just oh-so-cocky that they were the greatest thing on earth - which is rather weird vibes to be giving out at a camp targeted for 15 year old girls. I remember there was this coach called Vivian, who would wake up and do aerobics with us. Vivian was a guy. And might you, this was way before Balakrishnan was anywhere near the picture. Actually, NACLI may be the reason why I don't really like motivational trainers - they're mostly full of hot air and crap. I don't begrudge them a living, but dude, you're supposed to help those with ego problems, not hammer any more insecurities into them. [Campsites in Singapore: Not an exhaustive list] |
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Dinner at a Thai-Indonesian Restaurant Dinner at a Thai-Indonesian Restaurant turned up
this  [Dinner at a Thai-Indonesian Restaurant] |
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I think I'll just let this be a picture blog with comments.
This was taken when I was stuck in a jam on Orchard Road. Stick that handphone on the top of the roof of your car and get a pretty shot of Orchard Road - right smack in the middle.
That's Puden and Pu Chuan looking all happy that they're all messed up by Jia Hao's cunning wiles with the spray canisters...
And that's Aaron in the black shirt, Puden in the red, Pu Chuan in the white, and Ben in the dark grey. I think that's Lydia on the right, in red. We were standing right outside Tangs, where locals kept ambushing this pack of caucasians. Everyone got in on the fun, and it was really mad when canisters and canisters of fake snow got sprayed all over the place. Pity the luxury cars who tried to pass by our section to get to the Tangs carpark - not a chance that they would get by unscathed by the fun spray.
This is Jai Hao getting some of his own back from Kenneth and Pu Chuan - finally!
This was one of my pet peeves during the Christmas season - very creepy melody-playing, swaying trees. Just as you thought you could be safe just standing beside the road, waiting for the green man to appear (like the legal citizen you are), suddenly, the TREE beside you starts to rumble and shake, and you think - "Help! I'm being attacked by ENTS!" and then "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" starts playing, and the tree starts tilting alarmingly from side to side as it bops to the music. And speaking of bopping...
This has to be the grossest Christmas tree ever. Swaying side-to-side might be creepy enough, but when a Christmas tree starts going up and down, and up and down, and up and down... it's just not right, people. It's just not right. [Christmas 2004] |
mercredi, janvier 12, 2005 After a month-long deliberation process which had me ping-ponging between iPod-Creative, quick discussions with my Creative pimp Hwee Yee (see pic below), I had finally decided that I would either buy the Creative Zen Micro (10 gig) or the Zen MuVo (5 gig) once the CNY squeezed out festive offers from the Creative Jurong Den. And then Apple has to pull out a one-two punch to my solar plexus, and throw everything out of the window.
512mb version should cost about $170-200, while the 1 gig version about $250-300. The "two" of the one-two punch came when Jobs announced the arrival of a US$500 desktop computer - just the computer, no other frills attached like screens and keyboards (which everyone should already own anyway.)
Look at that. How can Apple get it so right, and everyone else get it so mangled? I am suffering from serious Option Paralysis. ~ 'the tendency, when given unlimited choices, to make none' - Douglas Coupland, author of Generation X [My Head Hurts] |
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Just look at this one here.
[Heroes aren't hard to find...] |
   Lyra's Oxford by Philip Pullman
& The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy: and other stories by Tim Burton
& Blankets, by Craig Thompson
[Books I want] |
mardi, janvier 11, 2005 How Regina from TWOP rocks the recap By saying the obvious and making me laugh.
RORY: Last night when I was reading my biology chapters I distinctly heard a ‘ping’ in the vicinity of my brain. LORELAI: Your brain pinged?RORY: Yeah, it just went like ‘dink’. LORELAI: Well then honey your brain dinked, it didn’t ping. RORY: Well I don’t think that a dinking brain is any less worrisome than a pinging brain. LORELAI: You got me there. (from That Damn Donna Reed) [How Regina from TWOP rocks the recap] |
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Ole Ole Ole! I'm gonna watch the soccer match at the National Stadium this Sunday! Who wants to go with me? Come lah, what else are you gonna do on a Sunday night in Singapore? Sit at home miserably waiting for Monday right? Tickets are only $7 (if I'm reading the FAS website right) - less than a weekend movie ticket... come down with me, bring your binoculars, bring crysanthemum tea or newater (never let it be said that Singaporeans are uncouth, we only throw processed pee), bring your umbrellas - come down and just soak in the atmosphere, and hope we win! (So much for being a loyal fan.)
SMS or email me if you want to make a party of it! I'm definitely going, no matter who else is. [The Beautiful Game] |
samedi, janvier 08, 2005 She's back! With new title credits! (Of Sydney Bristow running around in all manner of outfits, some hot, some not.) It's a two-parter, all shown in one two-hour long episode - and if you can believe it, only ONE reference to Milo Rimbaldi! Only ONE! And a passing one at that! No more Milo! Burn the Rimbaldi "artifacts"! We hate Rimbaldi!So that's the HUGE plus - bye bye Milo Rimbaldi, hello to - well, there are plenty of things to say hello to - Hello to Vaughn again, who still looks hot despite his three-years-and-running LACK of acting skills, hello to even MORE complex twists and turns of the Spy Family (Is Irina Derevko really, truly, cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die, DEAD? No, I don't mean she-drowned-in-a-car-accident dead, or a bomb-in-the-prison dead, or the kidnapped-and-killed dead, I mean really, really, REALLY dead?) Hello again to the double agent lives - but this time, your blur-man is Sean-from-Felicity/Weiss? Lovable, adorable, like-a-puppy Sean/Weiss? When's Will coming back man? Or Sark? Bring back the Sark! And make his fake English accent a little thicker, would you? ETA - According to the most reliable source on the planet, Will's gonna come back! Yahoo! [The Return of Alias] |
vendredi, janvier 07, 2005 I wait at the bus stop, amid cricket chirps, and the faint buzzing of florescent lights, the white noise broken only by the occasional yellow-top taxi driving past. Ancient gears grumbling loudly as they trudge up yet another campus slope, the noise gradually fades and the crickets crescendo again.Another car streaks by. Everyone waiting with me at the bus stop has pulled out their mobile phones, and are busily messaging away, their faces lit eerily (white, blue, green) by their radioactive toys. (An idle thought crosses - before the mobile phone revolution, NTU must have been a very lonely place to be in.) A white mini van pulls up at the bus stop, almost full of people. (But then again, maybe it's even more lonely now with the phone. Kampong spirit lost and all that sort of thing.) A few fellow bus-waiters get into the van, and it drives off. Three souls left at the bus stop, two still messaging furiously. I wonder if they're messaging "A white bus just left my bus stop", "I'm hungry", or the ever perennial favourite waste of a 5 cents SMS - "where are you?" Telecommunication empires can be built on those three words. Another white van pulls up and stops. I stare at it and wonder why there are so many white mini vans around. Two students, just arriving at the bus stop (must have just finished their lesson), open the back door and hop in. The driver starts to pull away, then stops the van in front of me. (Wonder when the 179 will come?) He pulls down the window, leans over the passenger seat, and clandestinely whispers: "Go Boon Lay MRT, 70 cents, want or not?" [School #3: The (Ntu)ight Bus] |
jeudi, janvier 06, 2005 I read this very evocative excerpt from a blog once:From The Shadow of the Sun, by Ryszard Kapuscinski. One day I was wandering around the market in Kampala [capital of Uganda]. It was somewhat empty, many stalls were broken, abandoned. Amin had stripped and ruined the country. There was no traffic in the streets, and the shops, which Amin had earlier confiscated from their Indian owners, gaped with musty emptiness or were simply boarded up with wooden planks, plywood, or sheets of tin. Suddenly, a band of chilren came up the street that led up from the lake, calling, "Samaki! Samaki!" (fish in Swahili). People gathered, joyful at the prospect that there would be something to eat. The fishermen threw their catch onto a table, and when the onlookers saw it, they grew still and silent. The fish was fat, enormous. These waters never used to yield such monstrously proportioned, overfed specimens. Everyone knew that for a long time now Amin's henchmen had been dumping the bodies of their victims into the lake, and that crocodiles and meat-eating fish must have been feasting on them. The crowd remained quiet. Then, a military vehicle happened by. The soldiers saw the gathering, as well as the fish on the table, and stopped. They spoke for a moment among themselves, then backed up to the table, jumped down, and opened the tailgate. Those of us who were standing nearby could see the corpse of a man lying on the truck bed. We saw the soldiers heave the fish onto the truck, throw the dead, barefoot man onto the table for us, and quickly drove away. And we heard their coarse, lunatic laughter.
Someone once told me that Sri Lankan crabs were huge because they fed on the flesh of dead men water-buried from the Ganges River in India. I thought of the crabs again after the tsunami - and then remembered this passage after today's reports on human trafficking in Indonesia. The darkness of these reports rival the warm, fuzzy feeling you get after seeing the outpouring of money and aid from all over the world - it's almost as if some force has to balance the goodness of this past week's actions with evil. The religious boundary has been overlooked to give aid to Indonesia - one of the region's hotbeds for terrorist breeding programmes, the political gauntlet has been lowered by the Tamil Tigers who have sort of stepped away from bothering the Sri Lankan government until this mess was semi-sorted out (I suspect that someone will get trigger happy before long though, but for now I'll take what I can get) - so if religion and politics can be laid aside for a while, why can't economics? People are worth money. Children are worth money. The sex trade lives - and by extension (or is it the other way around?) the slave trade exists, and there is money to be made in the adoption circuits. But to take advantage of a total tragedy, to pose as aid workers or parents - that is simply abominable. To pretend to be the face of a trusted person, when instead you are the devil... to be able to put aside your scruples, your principles, hell - to be able to put aside your HUMANITY and kidnap AND/OR BUY lost/orphaned children for your own material gain - this is the state of mankind today. We're in bad shape, people. [Tsunami #2 - We eat our own] |
mardi, janvier 04, 2005 I don't know whether to be amused or disturbed that my supervisor, who sits on the board of admissions and on the academic advisory board, also does not know my academic requirements for certain. According to the school's website, from the 2003 intake onwards, there is no distinction between core, electives and specialisation subjects, and Masters students only need to do two modules before their dissertation. On another shiny booklet obtained from the library, it stated that I need to do six modules in all - two core and two specialisation. In a paper given to me by my office, I have to do four modules in all - and I have to do three modules THIS semester.Oh, and I have to hand in my official official thesis proposal to be vetted and approved by the deans and the vice deans and the board and the association of toilet cleaners of the school, I think. Tons of signatures required on the form - and if I do what we all did for my honours programme, which was to simply hand in ANYTHING and change it later - well, if you thought that original approval was hard to obtain, wait till you see the STACK of paperwork waiting for you should you decide to change your mind. Astounding - a whole forest worth of paper for you. So I brought this whole confusing stack of paperwork to my supervisor's office, to try and make sense of it, and we tried to sort it all out. He called someone, and voila! I take two modules this semester, and spend the rest of the time reading thick thick books (which are sadly, but not surprisingly - unavailable from the NTU library.) Qu'est-ce que je n'y supris? (or should that be n'en?) Anyhow, I guess I'm off to NUS tmrw to borrow my ex-colleague's staff card to borrow books... I'll get them and zap them I suppose. I would prefer to own them, but I think it's better that I find out if the books are worth buying or not. (Plus, I have no more shelf space.) [School: Day 2 - Wha...? Huh?] |
lundi, janvier 03, 2005 The commute there was less horrific than I expected - I take my regular bus to Clementi, then change to the MRT, then wait for the feeder into NTU. Takes slightly over an hour and a half to get there, which is less than my projected 2 hours. There's also not too much hassle - there's a bit of a crowd on the MRT between Clementi and Jurong, but that's just one station, and everyone clears out after that. So all in all, quite an easy journey. I think it also helped that the 179 was waiting to leave just as I got into Boon Lay, so there wasn't much of a wait there. Getting back was equally easy.Then I attended my first lecture in over 1.5 years. The class was alright - the professor was a typical bumbling old man, but he looks like he's a bumbling old man with a still-functioning brain. Talking with some of my classmates during the break, I realised that I was confused about what the graduation requirements were for my course - on some web pages, there is a clear distinction between the Research and Coursework Masters Degrees, but on a lot of pages, the distinction is not clear - sometimes, there doens't seem to be a distinction at all, which is rather alarming as it means more coursework for me (but a thinner dissertation.) Gonna check it all out tomorrow. [School: Day 1 - First Class] |
dimanche, janvier 02, 2005 I'm sorry to hear about your dad.Our Days - Hannah A. Frone Our days are like the grass Or like the morning flower; If one sharp blast sweep o'er the field, It withers in an hour But thy compassions, Lord, To endless years endure, And childrens' children ever find They words of praise sure. [For Yenling] |
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Well, not really goodbye, but goodbye to the entire shelf of newspaper and magazine clippings (from both overseas and Singapore) - I've finally sat down, bitten the bullet, and pulled out those pictures of DD and GA and THROWN THEM AWAY. I've kept some which were simply too great to throw, but the rest is history once the garbage man arrives tomorrow.
I'm sad. I've got clippings there dated 1994 - that's 10 years ago, when I was in Sec Sch. Kristine, Cheryl, Xi'en, Adeline, Veronica - all my co-conspirators in buying all sorts of X-Files related merchandise without my mom freaking out - everything they ever gave me was in those files. And now, unfortunately, I have to say goodbye, because the time for childish things is past, and more importantly, space for grown-up things is needed. Reading through those newspaper articles made me smile - it's really almost like being transported back to when Cheryl and I would walk down the AMK hill to our bus stop, pausing only at the mama shop halfway down to check out the latest issue of STAR! magazine, to see if the pictures of DD or GA were good this time around (they were famous for printing the most awful photo shoots of anyone this side of the universe.) I would peruse them and ponder, and Cheryl would wait patiently by the side, picking out a Yakult flavour, or one of those long sugus bars for 10cents or something. Finally, when I bordered the "enough is enough" time limit, she'd make a snap decision for me - "Buy it." (or not.) Sometimes I'd listen to her, sometimes I wouldn't. Xi-en would send me stuff she read in etc magazine (oh man, remember those days? Of Lime and Backstreet Boys CDs?) - all folded up into four or six and sent via SingPost at 20cents. Veronica bought me official XF postcards from her travels with her parents. Adeline doing the same. I must have postcards from every Universal Studios in America now. I see the postcards - kept in pristine condition - and I marvel at how we found the time to do all this stuff, and still study our asses off. The junk pile also chronicled my very first experience with eBay - buying the X-Files Expo Pack off someone who attended and grabbed a few extra packs for selling. Smart guy. (I kept the Expo Pack, just in case you're wondering.) This was even before the days of PayPal, so everything was done via bank/mail order, so the eBay experience was followed closely by my first experience with the S$5 surcharge for mail orders (versus $10 for bank orders) and the exchange rate system. (Which gets divided by which again?) So when I went through all this stuff and started throwing it away, it really felt like I was saying goodbye to a piece of my history. I know in my head that this is nonsense, that I would never have touched that pile of stuff again in my life unless it was to move house (and in which case I would probably throw it all away anyway), but still, it was a sad and fond farewell to the pieces of Entertainment Weekly, 8 Days, Etc, Lime (which incidentally featured the best version of all the DD posters I've seen - one still hangs over my bed now), GQ, Cleo, Shivers and all the rest. I'm sad. (But I've got one side shelf half-free now.) [Goodbye, Fox Mulder] |
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Everytime a huge disaster strikes, the same thought always comes to me as I watch the aftermath played out on the tv screens and in the papers - why is it that human compassion and kindness only come out when there is crisis?
Watching the crisis unfold, the ICM side of my brain recoils at the thought that a massive number among the body count could have been prevented had there been more networks present - it is inconceivable that the people who knew about the tsunami could not contact the relevant parties from the affected countries, and had to resort to contacting their own embassies within the area? Surely this sort of communiqué should be free from the political chains that shackle other types of information. And now, hindsight is 20/20 as funds are collected and systems being set in place. A little too late, in my opinion, but better late than never seems to be the adage that will hold true for our future generations. There will be famines and earthquakes in many places. Scary thought, but to people who say this to me, I say: not yet. The end is still to come. I think we flatter ourselves when we say that we are living in end times, giving ourselves a sense of importance. A million years pass with the blink of God's eye, so I'd say that we're living on very different schedules here. But still - therefore keep watch, because you do not know on which day your Lord will come. [Tsunami #1 Minor Thoughts] |
samedi, janvier 01, 2005 I have avoided posting about Christmas and New Year's because there was/is simply too much going on.I love my life. [Christmas and New Year's] |
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