More entertaining propaganda from the IRAS website:

"The leading tax administration in the world
A partner of taxpayers in nation building
An eXcellent team of competent and committed people."

Why can't Singapore adopt a damn pay-as-you-earn system? Don't they know that spendthrifts like me can't be trusted with our own hard-earned cash or we'll squander it recklessly on debauchery and credit card payments? We can't be trusted with our own base impulses! Fortunately, I have about 5 more months (approx) to build up a nest-egg which will be reaped by the Gahmen (sic) to go towards paying NSF salaries and building more MRT lines. I feel like such an integral stakeholder in this nation's infrastructure development.

I swear I'm going to march into my boss' office and ask for a salary increase to keep up with the inflation of cigarette prices. CIGARETTE SMOKERS HAVE DAMN LOW PRICE ELASTICITY BUT IT STILL HURTS IN THE LONG RUN.

Have finally reached the end of my tether wrt to my damn TV. Currently am using an old 17" provided by my landlord (who, in typical skinflint slumlord style refuses to pay for re-upholstering the crap sofas he provided) and am absolutely sick and fucking tired of mono audio input.

Why? Because most DVDs have stereo output, and depending on whether the audio stream is from the left, right or mono channel, it means fiddling around with the A/V cable every time I play a new movie. The final straw came when I was reaching into the innards of the TV cabinet to and vainly plugging the right sound channel cable into as many of the DVD player's output ports as possible to find out which one contained the dialogue stream (I could hear the background soundtrack just fine..gngngngn) when the whole player somehow slipped out of the cabinet, knocked over my mug of Coke, and spilt all over the parquet and seeped into my DVD wallets (which I had laid out on the floor to clear space for my audio-cable-dicking-around)

Anger. Rage. Frustration.

Ah well - the price one pays for the privacy and independence of living alone - along with having to develop an intimate familiarity with over 30 flavours of canned soup. My father bought a massive 50" Samsung plasma TV a month after I moved out (the previous family TV had been going strong for almost 9 years); the timing is suspect, but at least I no longer have to fight over TV access rights with my Wah Lai Toi-watching mother/sister/family retainer.

"Fiberglass (pool) cues? Ptui!"

9 months and I haven't done my own laundry once. However, a constant flow of relatives, family, and friends to and from Singapore, often with me begging for the small favour of conveying a discreetly packed suitcase, have largely ensured that laundry shipments continue apace from home. As disgusting as most of my friends find that behaviour, it's hard for anyone to empathize how fucking indolent I really am, nor how it's not the washing that irritates me; it's the damn ironing.

Besides, laundry used to get shipped from San Francisco to Hawaii because of comparative advantages in labour there. So I figure the same principle applies here; and so far have managed to prove wrong the critics who claimed that hauling laundry up and down was not a feasible long-term solution.