"At first I was mad, I've been lied to my whole life about this god/supreme being. Told I had to follow this one account of someone else's life. Argh!
I am here to tell you that I no longer accept it, I am no longer mad, but rather now I feel sorry for those still stuck. It is a little like escaping from the "matrix." I want to free other minds, but most are not ready to be freed. They are too dependent. I have often thought this maybe that is one of the hidden messages behind the Matrix movie."
How true. I often regret that I do not do enough to help free others.
I am intensely curious as to how He Who Must Not Be Named's assertion that Singapore society will not be able to accept a Slave lottery any more founded than an assertion that either of the three big monotheistic religions is superior or inferior to the other 2, or indeed, is more prone to inciting violence in its adherents?
In other news, the 1000th Comment has been made, by "nobody".
L'origine de Bert
Wednesday, January 07, 2004
Sunday, January 04, 2004
Back to work tomorrow. Why can't I be a mainland chinese girl doing hospitality at KDU who hooked up with some rich old man??
I think I'd be a pretty good tai tai. I have most of the basic tai tai skills down pat already:
a) Abusing the domestic help
b) Organising mahjong sessions
c) Going for tai chi / line dance / meditation / yoga classes at a community center
d) Spending money
This morning, after spending a few minutes listening to the engine of destruction was Gabriel's snoring, I flogged his bulk into consciousness and after our ablutions, his parents were kind enough to ferry us to Tiong Bahru for breakfast. It dawned upon me that after virtually every drinking session during these banzai trips down south, I *always* have mee pok the following morning. Strange how habits can form without you noticing.
Bought several tubes of grape-flavoured Mentos. Always wondered why we don't have those in KL. I shall show these treasures from afar to all and sundry at work tomorrow. Their expressions of wonderment shall brighten my day.
As I crossed the border into JB, the effluent smells and the teeming chaos of Malaysia overwhelmed me at the checkpoint; and it dawned on me that that was the feeling of home - you could feel it at the border, crossing from the Realm of Order to the Realm of Chaos; from the polished marble floors of the Singapore-side checkpoint, to the stained cermaic tiling on the JB side - in the stagnant drains and taxi drivers harrassing passersby for business; watching as the crowd seemed to break from ordered, steady lines into a morass of people flooding the passport counters - and I felt a memory I need to hold on to - the memory of how good it is to be back here, despite having lost everything, amidst the crowds and noises and corners, and smells, and alleys and angles; all of that chaos singing clarion to me.
The drive from Dim's place back to KL was surprisingly crowded, as he was ferrying a couple of other people from JB. One of them had the unfortunate name of Keng Dik (sp?); the other was a junior of mine from Melbourne who did IT as well. On the trip back, I learnt much about the intricacies of Nata di Coco (a conversation that largely revolved around the miraculous properties of coconut husk), as well as taking home, once again, an awareness that these days too many people know too many other people.
Ate KFC at Ayer Keroh. First time eating in one of those "bridge-over-the-highway restaurants".
And now, as the sounds of my parents watching yet *another* Anita Mui tribute concert on TV filter into my room despite my best efforts to soundproof the door, I think I'll get some sleep, because tomorrow is going to be hellish with the double whammy of the NKVE being closed while Samy Vellu carts away rock, and the school holidays ending. It will be a long slog, full of mind-convuluting planning, and reflex-testing trials. And that's just the journey to work.
Ours not to reason why.
Friend (at party): "What's it like working in Malaysia?"
Me: "One word defines it. Traffic."
(on being stuck in a jam once, in sight of a turn-off into a carpark, less than 50m away, that took me an hour to get to through the congestion on the main road) "Reject the concept of distance. Embrace the concept of traffic."
I think I'd be a pretty good tai tai. I have most of the basic tai tai skills down pat already:
a) Abusing the domestic help
b) Organising mahjong sessions
c) Going for tai chi / line dance / meditation / yoga classes at a community center
d) Spending money
This morning, after spending a few minutes listening to the engine of destruction was Gabriel's snoring, I flogged his bulk into consciousness and after our ablutions, his parents were kind enough to ferry us to Tiong Bahru for breakfast. It dawned upon me that after virtually every drinking session during these banzai trips down south, I *always* have mee pok the following morning. Strange how habits can form without you noticing.
Bought several tubes of grape-flavoured Mentos. Always wondered why we don't have those in KL. I shall show these treasures from afar to all and sundry at work tomorrow. Their expressions of wonderment shall brighten my day.
As I crossed the border into JB, the effluent smells and the teeming chaos of Malaysia overwhelmed me at the checkpoint; and it dawned on me that that was the feeling of home - you could feel it at the border, crossing from the Realm of Order to the Realm of Chaos; from the polished marble floors of the Singapore-side checkpoint, to the stained cermaic tiling on the JB side - in the stagnant drains and taxi drivers harrassing passersby for business; watching as the crowd seemed to break from ordered, steady lines into a morass of people flooding the passport counters - and I felt a memory I need to hold on to - the memory of how good it is to be back here, despite having lost everything, amidst the crowds and noises and corners, and smells, and alleys and angles; all of that chaos singing clarion to me.
The drive from Dim's place back to KL was surprisingly crowded, as he was ferrying a couple of other people from JB. One of them had the unfortunate name of Keng Dik (sp?); the other was a junior of mine from Melbourne who did IT as well. On the trip back, I learnt much about the intricacies of Nata di Coco (a conversation that largely revolved around the miraculous properties of coconut husk), as well as taking home, once again, an awareness that these days too many people know too many other people.
Ate KFC at Ayer Keroh. First time eating in one of those "bridge-over-the-highway restaurants".
And now, as the sounds of my parents watching yet *another* Anita Mui tribute concert on TV filter into my room despite my best efforts to soundproof the door, I think I'll get some sleep, because tomorrow is going to be hellish with the double whammy of the NKVE being closed while Samy Vellu carts away rock, and the school holidays ending. It will be a long slog, full of mind-convuluting planning, and reflex-testing trials. And that's just the journey to work.
Ours not to reason why.
Friend (at party): "What's it like working in Malaysia?"
Me: "One word defines it. Traffic."
(on being stuck in a jam once, in sight of a turn-off into a carpark, less than 50m away, that took me an hour to get to through the congestion on the main road) "Reject the concept of distance. Embrace the concept of traffic."
Post ID: 107322599168360768
Medieval Pole Arms - I found this page clear, well written and interesting.
I never knew weapons such as the Spetum, Voulge or Guisarme existed. More probably, I'd seen pictures of them but didn't know what to call them beyond the generic "pole arm". I also finally know what a glaive looks like, and what I always thought to be a morning star is actually a specialised form of flail.
Also, contrary to what I was led to believe, "Swiss pikemen did not ground the pike butt to accept a cavalry charge, but rather held the rear part of the shaft higher than the front, so the points which glanced off armor would not go uselessly into the air but would be forced downward into rider or mount - at worst, into the ground to form a barrier."
Interestingly, 5 of out of 6 of the sources listed in his bibliography were published in the first 25 years of the 20th century, and the last in 1934.
I was boggled by the Principia Discordia until someone explained it to me thus: "It's basically a deliberate mindfuck, set out into the world to see how far the madness spreads."
Trivia bits:
'Cocksucker Blues' was a 1976 film about The Rolling Stones.
The movie 'Cleopatra', starring Elizabeth Taylor, was banned from Egypt in 1963 because she was a Jewish convert.
The Marx Brothers (Chico, Harpo, Groucho, and Zeppo) were actually named respectively Leonard, Adolph, Julius, and Hebert.
When young and impoverished, Pablo Picasso kept warm by burning his own paintings.
Charles Baudelaire, preferred to Wagners music, the sounds ' of a cat hung up by its tail outside a window and trying to stick to the panes of glass with its claws'.
One of Britain's most famous composers, Sir Michael Tippett, composed pieces notoriously difficult to play, At the premiere of his 'Symphony No. 2', the orchestra got lost in the middle of the piece and the conductor had to start again.
The French equivalent of 'the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog', a sentence which contains every letter of the alphabet (useful when learning to type), is 'Allez porter ce vieux whisky au juge blond qui fume un Havane', which translates to 'Go and take this old whisky to the fair-haired judge smoking the Havana cigar'.
In the story of Cinderella, her slippers were originally fur, but they became glass because of an error in translation.
Nineteenth-century artist, Cesar Ducornet, drew with his feet - he had no arms.
Mickey mouse's Latin name is Michael Musculus.
About half the pianos in England are thought to be out of tune.
The phrase ' The 3 R's ' ( standing for 'reading, writing and arithmetic' ) was created by Sir William Curtis, who was illiterate.
Monaco's national orchestra is bigger than its army.
Richard Strauss wrote a 'gay Viennese ballet' on the subject of Whipped Cream.
During World War II, W.C. Fields kept US $50 000 in Germany 'in case the little bastard wins'.
The French composer J.B. Lully, while conducting a concert, pierced his foot with a pointed baton, and died from the resulting gangrene.
The Stone's album 'Sticky Finger's has a zip on its sleeve.
The most commonly sung song in the world - Happy birthday to you - is under copyright, the copyright runs out in 2010.
On the same day as he completed his masterpiece "The Divine Comedy", the Italian poet Dante died.
Bob Dylan turned The Beatles on to marijuana.
Actress Sarah Bernhardt played the part of Juliet (13 years old) when she was 70 years old.
The original title for the best seller 'Gone with the wind' was 'Ba! Ba! Black sheep'.
The Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from British Public Libraries.
Irving Berlin, who was born on 11 May 1888 and who composed three thousand songs in his lifetime, couldn't read music.
The Green Hornet is the Lone Ranger's grandnephew.
Some hotels in Las Vegas have gambling tables floating in their swimming pools.
The French critic, Saint-Beuve, was born on 23 December 1804. On one occasion in his life he was unfortunate enough to get involved in a duel. When asked to choose his weapons, he replied " I choose spelling, You're dead".
The longest Hollywood kiss was from the 1941 film 'You're in the Army now', it lasted 3 minutes and 3 seconds.
The music hall entertainer Nosmo King derived his stage name from a 'No Smoking' sign.
Hmm.
"My mom and dad went to an ADULT BOOKSTORE and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt
Porn Star"
Seen on a T-Shirt
I never knew weapons such as the Spetum, Voulge or Guisarme existed. More probably, I'd seen pictures of them but didn't know what to call them beyond the generic "pole arm". I also finally know what a glaive looks like, and what I always thought to be a morning star is actually a specialised form of flail.
Also, contrary to what I was led to believe, "Swiss pikemen did not ground the pike butt to accept a cavalry charge, but rather held the rear part of the shaft higher than the front, so the points which glanced off armor would not go uselessly into the air but would be forced downward into rider or mount - at worst, into the ground to form a barrier."
Interestingly, 5 of out of 6 of the sources listed in his bibliography were published in the first 25 years of the 20th century, and the last in 1934.
I was boggled by the Principia Discordia until someone explained it to me thus: "It's basically a deliberate mindfuck, set out into the world to see how far the madness spreads."
Trivia bits:
'Cocksucker Blues' was a 1976 film about The Rolling Stones.
The movie 'Cleopatra', starring Elizabeth Taylor, was banned from Egypt in 1963 because she was a Jewish convert.
The Marx Brothers (Chico, Harpo, Groucho, and Zeppo) were actually named respectively Leonard, Adolph, Julius, and Hebert.
When young and impoverished, Pablo Picasso kept warm by burning his own paintings.
Charles Baudelaire, preferred to Wagners music, the sounds ' of a cat hung up by its tail outside a window and trying to stick to the panes of glass with its claws'.
One of Britain's most famous composers, Sir Michael Tippett, composed pieces notoriously difficult to play, At the premiere of his 'Symphony No. 2', the orchestra got lost in the middle of the piece and the conductor had to start again.
The French equivalent of 'the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog', a sentence which contains every letter of the alphabet (useful when learning to type), is 'Allez porter ce vieux whisky au juge blond qui fume un Havane', which translates to 'Go and take this old whisky to the fair-haired judge smoking the Havana cigar'.
In the story of Cinderella, her slippers were originally fur, but they became glass because of an error in translation.
Nineteenth-century artist, Cesar Ducornet, drew with his feet - he had no arms.
Mickey mouse's Latin name is Michael Musculus.
About half the pianos in England are thought to be out of tune.
The phrase ' The 3 R's ' ( standing for 'reading, writing and arithmetic' ) was created by Sir William Curtis, who was illiterate.
Monaco's national orchestra is bigger than its army.
Richard Strauss wrote a 'gay Viennese ballet' on the subject of Whipped Cream.
During World War II, W.C. Fields kept US $50 000 in Germany 'in case the little bastard wins'.
The French composer J.B. Lully, while conducting a concert, pierced his foot with a pointed baton, and died from the resulting gangrene.
The Stone's album 'Sticky Finger's has a zip on its sleeve.
The most commonly sung song in the world - Happy birthday to you - is under copyright, the copyright runs out in 2010.
On the same day as he completed his masterpiece "The Divine Comedy", the Italian poet Dante died.
Bob Dylan turned The Beatles on to marijuana.
Actress Sarah Bernhardt played the part of Juliet (13 years old) when she was 70 years old.
The original title for the best seller 'Gone with the wind' was 'Ba! Ba! Black sheep'.
The Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from British Public Libraries.
Irving Berlin, who was born on 11 May 1888 and who composed three thousand songs in his lifetime, couldn't read music.
The Green Hornet is the Lone Ranger's grandnephew.
Some hotels in Las Vegas have gambling tables floating in their swimming pools.
The French critic, Saint-Beuve, was born on 23 December 1804. On one occasion in his life he was unfortunate enough to get involved in a duel. When asked to choose his weapons, he replied " I choose spelling, You're dead".
The longest Hollywood kiss was from the 1941 film 'You're in the Army now', it lasted 3 minutes and 3 seconds.
The music hall entertainer Nosmo King derived his stage name from a 'No Smoking' sign.
Hmm.
"My mom and dad went to an ADULT BOOKSTORE and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt
Porn Star"
Seen on a T-Shirt
Post ID: 107322080071282700
Am blogging from Agagooga's humble abode at present. He was kind enough to pick me up from the vicinity of Ardmore Park, where I had been reasonably inebriated as the host of the prior gathering I was at insisted on making all his guests down straight shots of Absolut Mandarin vodka.
A few candid observations I made while wandering around town prior to my degenerate state:
a) The whore motif still appears to be a popular one amongst women these days.
b) Listening to some Filipino maids talk in this bizzarely stilted conversation stream that resembles Vulcan translation -
"what are you thinking of Brittney?"
"I am thinking what you are thinking."
"The word is bitch right?"
"I feel I am in your mind at this moment."
(I swear, this was almost what I heard, verbatim, at Atria)
c) three guys in RJC PE t-shirts who resembled Asian hobbits (couldn't tell if they had hairy feet through their sneakers). Two of them were putting the One Ring (I could see the inscription) around the other's neck, in front of the Blind Accordion Man at the Orchard Road tunnel (a friend of mine tricked me by saying the Blind Accordion Man had started a Blind Accordion Institute where he teaches blind people how to play the accordion and sing badly in public spots while making millions)
d) Toe-socks are evil, creepy, and scary.
Was at Ardmore Park because my old friend YM was having a party. I haven't seen him in years, but to behold him with a glowing ring around his neck (one of those coloured plastic monstrosities with a little bulb in it), and the One Ring text tattooed around his forearm was a bit of a shock. As Mark said: "You know those irritating flickering blue lights on beng cars? You've just become one."
Eventually spent most of the function in a corner next to a koi pool, frenziedly smoking, downing lychee martinis, and feeding the fish with cigarette butts. Was mostly talking to Gil, Mark, YM and Zee - my generation Palmerston crowd. The problem with large gatherings is the inevitable breakdown into smaller cliques - and I've never gotten the hang of the flitter-around-and-network school of partygoing.
However, I must say Ardmore Park has the nicest apartment function room I've ever seen - equipped with microwave oven, huge freezer, and coffee-maker.
YM calls those hors d'ouevres with bread, a little bit of veg, meat and cheese "open-face sandwiches".
Also enjoyed the reaffirmation of my desire to garner vast material wealth (inspired by the 8 cars I saw in the parking lot all with the same licence plate number - "3538").
Noticed with some amusement that more than a few people I knew had signed on with the SAF. I suppose all that advertising about the virtues of an army career has finally paid off. One of them was a junior of mine who did microbiology at uni (I always thought he'd end up working for Yakult) who now says he can't tell me what he's doing. Probably developing the next generation of anthrax.
At one point Mark & Zee were in a corner discussing business. Who wud've thunk it?
Eventually, after the celebrations, and watching YM retch into his swimming pool, I decided it was time to exeunt. Nevermind that I had no money, nowhere to stay, and had to stagger to Kranji at 9:00am tomorrow morning so that I could make it to JB for my friend to give me a ride home. I like living on the edge. Forward planning is for losers.
Gabriel met me in front of Borders after I had called him one million times. I was able to make it to Wheelock Place on foot only because some drunken Indonesians were staggering to Shaw Center and I sort of trailed along like a remora, direction-wise, with my fellow convoy of the inebriated. When I hit Borders, Gabriel's reassuring bulk loomed in front of me, and he was kind enough to help me stagger to a nearby mamak store where I recuperated with some cheese prata.
After a cab to his place, I am now in a slightly more lucid state, which is not very pleasant, but the Wolf Blass wine Gabriel has provided me is helping rectify that error in my condition. Tomorrow morning, I have to somehow haul ass to JB where an Dim is waiting to spirit me home in his Proton Waja. For free.
In the meantime, I shall smoke out the window in Gabriel's house, enjoy the good company , soft drinks, and general support of my incapacitated state (at one point Gabriel permitted me to ride piggyback for 50m down River Valley Road when my alcohol-impaired motor skills got too onerous), and I still don't understand why he lets me blog here when most of my entries are spent abusing him for his hypocrisy and moral self-righteousness.
A few candid observations I made while wandering around town prior to my degenerate state:
a) The whore motif still appears to be a popular one amongst women these days.
b) Listening to some Filipino maids talk in this bizzarely stilted conversation stream that resembles Vulcan translation -
"what are you thinking of Brittney?"
"I am thinking what you are thinking."
"The word is bitch right?"
"I feel I am in your mind at this moment."
(I swear, this was almost what I heard, verbatim, at Atria)
c) three guys in RJC PE t-shirts who resembled Asian hobbits (couldn't tell if they had hairy feet through their sneakers). Two of them were putting the One Ring (I could see the inscription) around the other's neck, in front of the Blind Accordion Man at the Orchard Road tunnel (a friend of mine tricked me by saying the Blind Accordion Man had started a Blind Accordion Institute where he teaches blind people how to play the accordion and sing badly in public spots while making millions)
d) Toe-socks are evil, creepy, and scary.
Was at Ardmore Park because my old friend YM was having a party. I haven't seen him in years, but to behold him with a glowing ring around his neck (one of those coloured plastic monstrosities with a little bulb in it), and the One Ring text tattooed around his forearm was a bit of a shock. As Mark said: "You know those irritating flickering blue lights on beng cars? You've just become one."
Eventually spent most of the function in a corner next to a koi pool, frenziedly smoking, downing lychee martinis, and feeding the fish with cigarette butts. Was mostly talking to Gil, Mark, YM and Zee - my generation Palmerston crowd. The problem with large gatherings is the inevitable breakdown into smaller cliques - and I've never gotten the hang of the flitter-around-and-network school of partygoing.
However, I must say Ardmore Park has the nicest apartment function room I've ever seen - equipped with microwave oven, huge freezer, and coffee-maker.
YM calls those hors d'ouevres with bread, a little bit of veg, meat and cheese "open-face sandwiches".
Also enjoyed the reaffirmation of my desire to garner vast material wealth (inspired by the 8 cars I saw in the parking lot all with the same licence plate number - "3538").
Noticed with some amusement that more than a few people I knew had signed on with the SAF. I suppose all that advertising about the virtues of an army career has finally paid off. One of them was a junior of mine who did microbiology at uni (I always thought he'd end up working for Yakult) who now says he can't tell me what he's doing. Probably developing the next generation of anthrax.
At one point Mark & Zee were in a corner discussing business. Who wud've thunk it?
Eventually, after the celebrations, and watching YM retch into his swimming pool, I decided it was time to exeunt. Nevermind that I had no money, nowhere to stay, and had to stagger to Kranji at 9:00am tomorrow morning so that I could make it to JB for my friend to give me a ride home. I like living on the edge. Forward planning is for losers.
Gabriel met me in front of Borders after I had called him one million times. I was able to make it to Wheelock Place on foot only because some drunken Indonesians were staggering to Shaw Center and I sort of trailed along like a remora, direction-wise, with my fellow convoy of the inebriated. When I hit Borders, Gabriel's reassuring bulk loomed in front of me, and he was kind enough to help me stagger to a nearby mamak store where I recuperated with some cheese prata.
After a cab to his place, I am now in a slightly more lucid state, which is not very pleasant, but the Wolf Blass wine Gabriel has provided me is helping rectify that error in my condition. Tomorrow morning, I have to somehow haul ass to JB where an Dim is waiting to spirit me home in his Proton Waja. For free.
In the meantime, I shall smoke out the window in Gabriel's house, enjoy the good company , soft drinks, and general support of my incapacitated state (at one point Gabriel permitted me to ride piggyback for 50m down River Valley Road when my alcohol-impaired motor skills got too onerous), and I still don't understand why he lets me blog here when most of my entries are spent abusing him for his hypocrisy and moral self-righteousness.
Post ID: 107315142548193824
Saturday, January 03, 2004
Just got back from late night drinks with JN, Gumballs, my cousin, and Des. We were slumming it in a hotel bar, all of us incongrously wearing khakis and polo shirts (one of the weirder instances of spontaneous coincidence - talk about yuppie aspirations). Thankfully none of us wore golf caps.
Gumballs is doing his thesis - which has been overdue for a year. Apparently this extension is like his fourth extension, and his uni is still letting him drag it out. Talk about slack scholastic standards - he's come back to apply for a PR in Australia from offshore, but he can't start until he graduates, and he hasn't graduated until he gets his degree. He was supposed to spend the whole of last year doing his degree - but I guess when you're living overseas, it just.. drags itself out.
I wish I had the balls (and the slack lecturers) who would let me spend a *year* doing nothing but working on one assignment.
Although he was kind enough to buy me a bottle '99 De Bortoli Noble One - a full 750ml size! Was totally touched by the sudden gesture, and the nicety of awareness that I really like dessert wines. It's not a Sauternes, but what the hell, I figure. Either way, this is the first non-family, non-birthday present I've received in... a year. Yeah, since - well. Since. Little victories; often the best are the ones you don't plan for.
Good to get together with my fellow geeks. Spent the whole night raving about Exalted, MTG, various computer games and George R.R Martin books. Just what I need, a social revert to my ethnic type.
Absent thought of the day: Traffic dictates culture. When Gilbert visited last week, he noted that no one seems to honk or care if you ride the shoulder on the highway. The traffic - and the way people drive/park/bribe the police here tells you everything you need to know about Malaysian culture - that going on the straight, prescribed, rule-driven approach gets you nowhere. The only way to get anywhere is to cut corners, bend rules, make illegal U-turns, bribe traffic police.
Off down to Singapore tomorrow morning for reunion party at ym's place - a bunch of the old crowd are gathering from ye parts distant. Pot luck - damn it, what am I going to bring during the bus ride? And I don't think the sheer radiance of my presence is going to make up for appearing empty handed.
On top of that, I'm down to my last 100 dollars for the next two weeks until payday, which I'm going to use up faster than a Jalan Petaling transvestite uses mascara. Funny how that I'm earning more money than ever, I seem to have less to spend at any given time.
Gumballs is doing his thesis - which has been overdue for a year. Apparently this extension is like his fourth extension, and his uni is still letting him drag it out. Talk about slack scholastic standards - he's come back to apply for a PR in Australia from offshore, but he can't start until he graduates, and he hasn't graduated until he gets his degree. He was supposed to spend the whole of last year doing his degree - but I guess when you're living overseas, it just.. drags itself out.
I wish I had the balls (and the slack lecturers) who would let me spend a *year* doing nothing but working on one assignment.
Although he was kind enough to buy me a bottle '99 De Bortoli Noble One - a full 750ml size! Was totally touched by the sudden gesture, and the nicety of awareness that I really like dessert wines. It's not a Sauternes, but what the hell, I figure. Either way, this is the first non-family, non-birthday present I've received in... a year. Yeah, since - well. Since. Little victories; often the best are the ones you don't plan for.
Good to get together with my fellow geeks. Spent the whole night raving about Exalted, MTG, various computer games and George R.R Martin books. Just what I need, a social revert to my ethnic type.
Absent thought of the day: Traffic dictates culture. When Gilbert visited last week, he noted that no one seems to honk or care if you ride the shoulder on the highway. The traffic - and the way people drive/park/bribe the police here tells you everything you need to know about Malaysian culture - that going on the straight, prescribed, rule-driven approach gets you nowhere. The only way to get anywhere is to cut corners, bend rules, make illegal U-turns, bribe traffic police.
Off down to Singapore tomorrow morning for reunion party at ym's place - a bunch of the old crowd are gathering from ye parts distant. Pot luck - damn it, what am I going to bring during the bus ride? And I don't think the sheer radiance of my presence is going to make up for appearing empty handed.
On top of that, I'm down to my last 100 dollars for the next two weeks until payday, which I'm going to use up faster than a Jalan Petaling transvestite uses mascara. Funny how that I'm earning more money than ever, I seem to have less to spend at any given time.
Post ID: 107306475642049717
Friday, January 02, 2004
Today's burst of self-pitying whimsy:
"Jesus walked with lepers. I do not pretend that it makes me blessed, but it is something to consider. Perhaps it means nothing - but let me have my hopes."
Skipped capoeira classes today, because I was too zoned out from work. How the hell do you price an illiquid bond when no one on this planet, not even Bloomberg, has any quotes, and the last price you had was like six months ago when corporate yields hadn't gone through the roof? While I appreciate my boss' confidence in going on leave so that I could tackle it alone, I fear on Monday he will be inundated by my panicked requests for support and supervision. So much for wanting to hire "candidates who have initiative, drive and can work independently"
There is a pleasing irony in knowing that what I am doing is, in many ways, collusion tantamount to illegal misrepresentation. Without going into details, I had to create several million dollars out of nothing. And all in a totally legal fashion, of course. And it may not even be an illusion; by saying it is so, getting the auditors to sign off on it (although the imprimatur of auditors has been seriously debased of late), poof - it becomes reality; a number conjured by the interplay of some legal sophistry, pure guesswork, and "market feel" (aka. The Force lah) - and next thing you know, whoosh, we're reporting increased earnings, the share price rises, I hopefully get a marginally higher bonus, and all's hunky dory and my three nights of panicked work are rewarded by the warm glow of bamboozling the shareholders and analysts.
Only two things separate what I do from the Enrons and the Worldcoms - scale (everyone does it. Just that some get more greedy, and thus get caught) and sophistication (with auditors who don't even know price-yield relationships, how hard can they be to smoke?).
Was talking to an old friend today; am meeting up with them for a reunion in Singapore this weekend. To show Fate's twisted sense of humour, my recent travails have been punctuated by tidings of good news for my friends; better jobs, promotions, opportunities, etc. Although this tide of good fortune while I'm stuck in my dead-end job pisses me off (again, the ugly side of human nature rears itself), it seems to be confined only to the material aspect of life - like an idiot I knew in uni who made a million dollars buying and selling a refurbished piece of industrial land (when I say idiot I mean idiot - he once saw me running 3dMark benchmarks on my PC and commented on the wonderful "graphs")
However, I have also heard of quite a few break-ups this December. Hallmark must have poured some mood depressant in their Christmas card ink this year; at least four people I know broke up with their significant others.
Am in the midst of playing Legacy of Kain: Defiance. Perhaps I shouldn't have downloaded the entire Dark Chronicle storyline from gamefaqs.com; knowing the exact story kind of detracts from the effort from playing it. And while the graphics are impressive (Raziel's transition from spiritual to material is particularly cool), the third person camera seems to be located at the worst possible location and it changes perspective in the middle of leaps! While a person with an analogue controller (well, LoK is a primarily PS2 title) may be able to live with it, us poor mouse-and-keyboard enthusiasts are left in the cold.
Was having a conversation with a friend last night, on the nature of temperance. (sort of) A cute chick had actually called him out for a date; brazenly saying that she wanted to see more of him because she had glimpsed him at camp and thought he was cute. (Women these days are so degenerate. Society is going to perdition. Gone are the days of chastity and moral rectitude. Yes, I'm jealous)
Anyway, they went out for a movie, and she actually invited him over to his house (reading between the lines, I gather he wasn't being invited home to play Scrabble). Now, my friend possesses a pretty hedonistic mindset, but yet is in straitened circumstances as well.
So faced with such a prospect what did he do? He said he was busy.
Now, I find this intriguing, because I don't think he refrained out of physical infirmity, moral inhibition, or some other genuinely pressing circumstance. So I asked him, why?
In his words: "i don't like girls who are bad on the surface. i want those rgs types whom i can make bad. although i've not done it yet, but i want to try."
I'm still mulling over that one.
Someone also pointed out to me on the topic of picking up strange women: "Paradoxically, when this kind of thing means absolutely nothing to you it's easier."
"the problem with above average women in clubs is that they've been hit on too many times and are jaded. you need to be something different
according to this player. he suggests the "negative hit" theory. meaning you hit them with some negativity and get them to wonder "hey this guy is more special he isn't kissing my ass like the rest of them losers""
Me: "but what if the girls who go to clubs WANT to be hit on in the normal way? I mean, isn't that why they're there?"
And, after some thought: "I think the empty, sleazy, brutally honest feeling you get from a hooker is in some ways preferable to conning some girl with your "hard-to-get" pretensions of superiority."
Friend: "That's your problem lah. Dogs can smell fear, girls can smell desperation. Oh well. the type of girls we want need to be initially attracted to us, but if they are going to be attracted to us the way we really are they would have to be fucking dysfunctional to begin with."
Me: "What would be the point otherwise?"
"Jesus walked with lepers. I do not pretend that it makes me blessed, but it is something to consider. Perhaps it means nothing - but let me have my hopes."
Skipped capoeira classes today, because I was too zoned out from work. How the hell do you price an illiquid bond when no one on this planet, not even Bloomberg, has any quotes, and the last price you had was like six months ago when corporate yields hadn't gone through the roof? While I appreciate my boss' confidence in going on leave so that I could tackle it alone, I fear on Monday he will be inundated by my panicked requests for support and supervision. So much for wanting to hire "candidates who have initiative, drive and can work independently"
There is a pleasing irony in knowing that what I am doing is, in many ways, collusion tantamount to illegal misrepresentation. Without going into details, I had to create several million dollars out of nothing. And all in a totally legal fashion, of course. And it may not even be an illusion; by saying it is so, getting the auditors to sign off on it (although the imprimatur of auditors has been seriously debased of late), poof - it becomes reality; a number conjured by the interplay of some legal sophistry, pure guesswork, and "market feel" (aka. The Force lah) - and next thing you know, whoosh, we're reporting increased earnings, the share price rises, I hopefully get a marginally higher bonus, and all's hunky dory and my three nights of panicked work are rewarded by the warm glow of bamboozling the shareholders and analysts.
Only two things separate what I do from the Enrons and the Worldcoms - scale (everyone does it. Just that some get more greedy, and thus get caught) and sophistication (with auditors who don't even know price-yield relationships, how hard can they be to smoke?).
Was talking to an old friend today; am meeting up with them for a reunion in Singapore this weekend. To show Fate's twisted sense of humour, my recent travails have been punctuated by tidings of good news for my friends; better jobs, promotions, opportunities, etc. Although this tide of good fortune while I'm stuck in my dead-end job pisses me off (again, the ugly side of human nature rears itself), it seems to be confined only to the material aspect of life - like an idiot I knew in uni who made a million dollars buying and selling a refurbished piece of industrial land (when I say idiot I mean idiot - he once saw me running 3dMark benchmarks on my PC and commented on the wonderful "graphs")
However, I have also heard of quite a few break-ups this December. Hallmark must have poured some mood depressant in their Christmas card ink this year; at least four people I know broke up with their significant others.
Am in the midst of playing Legacy of Kain: Defiance. Perhaps I shouldn't have downloaded the entire Dark Chronicle storyline from gamefaqs.com; knowing the exact story kind of detracts from the effort from playing it. And while the graphics are impressive (Raziel's transition from spiritual to material is particularly cool), the third person camera seems to be located at the worst possible location and it changes perspective in the middle of leaps! While a person with an analogue controller (well, LoK is a primarily PS2 title) may be able to live with it, us poor mouse-and-keyboard enthusiasts are left in the cold.
Was having a conversation with a friend last night, on the nature of temperance. (sort of) A cute chick had actually called him out for a date; brazenly saying that she wanted to see more of him because she had glimpsed him at camp and thought he was cute. (Women these days are so degenerate. Society is going to perdition. Gone are the days of chastity and moral rectitude. Yes, I'm jealous)
Anyway, they went out for a movie, and she actually invited him over to his house (reading between the lines, I gather he wasn't being invited home to play Scrabble). Now, my friend possesses a pretty hedonistic mindset, but yet is in straitened circumstances as well.
So faced with such a prospect what did he do? He said he was busy.
Now, I find this intriguing, because I don't think he refrained out of physical infirmity, moral inhibition, or some other genuinely pressing circumstance. So I asked him, why?
In his words: "i don't like girls who are bad on the surface. i want those rgs types whom i can make bad. although i've not done it yet, but i want to try."
I'm still mulling over that one.
Someone also pointed out to me on the topic of picking up strange women: "Paradoxically, when this kind of thing means absolutely nothing to you it's easier."
"the problem with above average women in clubs is that they've been hit on too many times and are jaded. you need to be something different
according to this player. he suggests the "negative hit" theory. meaning you hit them with some negativity and get them to wonder "hey this guy is more special he isn't kissing my ass like the rest of them losers""
Me: "but what if the girls who go to clubs WANT to be hit on in the normal way? I mean, isn't that why they're there?"
And, after some thought: "I think the empty, sleazy, brutally honest feeling you get from a hooker is in some ways preferable to conning some girl with your "hard-to-get" pretensions of superiority."
Friend: "That's your problem lah. Dogs can smell fear, girls can smell desperation. Oh well. the type of girls we want need to be initially attracted to us, but if they are going to be attracted to us the way we really are they would have to be fucking dysfunctional to begin with."
Me: "What would be the point otherwise?"
Post ID: 107305258832416706
Quote on Eat Me. Just Eat Me.
Vivian: "Hey, Shawn, you know Gabriel, right?"
Me: "Let me think. You mean Gabriel from NJ?"
Vivian: "No, Gabriel, the weird guy who links to your site."
Me: "Oh yeah, Gabriel Seah. Haha, yeah. What about?"
Vivian: "He was my primary school classmate."
Me: "Oh, so you heard him take the BCG jab. Did you hear him scream?
It was like, stuck pig in an abbatoir. Did you hear that scream? That
was some scream. It was maybe 40 seconds long. All the girls in my class
burst out crying. It was so long, it had three parts. Pre-scream, real
scream, post-scream."
Ahh, the glory days. And to think I'm a medic now.
Vivian: "Hey, Shawn, you know Gabriel, right?"
Me: "Let me think. You mean Gabriel from NJ?"
Vivian: "No, Gabriel, the weird guy who links to your site."
Me: "Oh yeah, Gabriel Seah. Haha, yeah. What about?"
Vivian: "He was my primary school classmate."
Me: "Oh, so you heard him take the BCG jab. Did you hear him scream?
It was like, stuck pig in an abbatoir. Did you hear that scream? That
was some scream. It was maybe 40 seconds long. All the girls in my class
burst out crying. It was so long, it had three parts. Pre-scream, real
scream, post-scream."
Everyone loves Gabriel
Ahh, the glory days. And to think I'm a medic now.
Post ID: 107304790617436282
2nd day of the year, and I think I have carpal tunnel syndrome. Unfortunately my company's sterling health plan doesn't cover it (however, they did let me take sick leave when I went for laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis so they're not *that* bad). My forearm feels like cold needles are running down the inside of my blood vessels whenever I move my mouse, and half a bottle of medicated linoleum doesn't seem to make squat difference.
To take my mind off the discomfort, I shall answer some more of Gabriel's posts
(Someone was asking: "Why do all your posts seem to be snipes at Gabriel or debates with him? A third person watching would think he's having a dissociative personality disorder argument with himself." I replied: "My life is too surreally banal to make good writing, and Gabriel's the only person I know of who would let a co-blogger incessantly abuse him. It keeps him honest, anyway.")
Firstly, *you're* the one over-generalizing shamelessly with regards to lotteries and life. When I say a national lottery for NS won't work because of the ugliness of human nature, I mean it in the context of a Singaporean society with institutional inertia of an existing, and arguably functional (albeit not at Pareto efficiency) conscription. And studies have shown that people would accept a lower income if it was at an average level, as opposed to an higher income that was below average, everything else ceteris paribus.
That doesn't mean lotteries *can't* work in other societies with other factors at play, simply that this above factor, alongside all others, would be the primary reason why it's not politically viable in Singapore today.
Secondly, the Scouring of the Shire is a seminal part of Tolkien's book. I think it makes a great allegorical point (Tolkien's distaste for allegory granted) that not all the battles against evil involve grandiose epics and saga-level conflicts. Sometimes it can be evil in a small, mean way, in your backyard, corrupting the people around you. Of course, Lord of the Rings as a movie is meant to focus more on the bigger picture, so I can see why for theatrical release such a part would slow down the pacing and add an unncessary denouement in the conclusion - but that doesn't detract from the chapter's role and message in the original text.
The US dollar has been falling vis-a-vis the European/Japanese/Australian currencies, but the ASEAN pairs are being kept low by a combination of aggressive Treasury purchasing, hard currency buffering and mondo loose monetary policy. ASEAN is a primarily mercantilist mentality; they don't want to see their currencies over-appreciate esp with China's flood of cheapo exports around the corner. These factors make us a ready market for the US' deficit spending for a while to come.
To take my mind off the discomfort, I shall answer some more of Gabriel's posts
(Someone was asking: "Why do all your posts seem to be snipes at Gabriel or debates with him? A third person watching would think he's having a dissociative personality disorder argument with himself." I replied: "My life is too surreally banal to make good writing, and Gabriel's the only person I know of who would let a co-blogger incessantly abuse him. It keeps him honest, anyway.")
Firstly, *you're* the one over-generalizing shamelessly with regards to lotteries and life. When I say a national lottery for NS won't work because of the ugliness of human nature, I mean it in the context of a Singaporean society with institutional inertia of an existing, and arguably functional (albeit not at Pareto efficiency) conscription. And studies have shown that people would accept a lower income if it was at an average level, as opposed to an higher income that was below average, everything else ceteris paribus.
That doesn't mean lotteries *can't* work in other societies with other factors at play, simply that this above factor, alongside all others, would be the primary reason why it's not politically viable in Singapore today.
Secondly, the Scouring of the Shire is a seminal part of Tolkien's book. I think it makes a great allegorical point (Tolkien's distaste for allegory granted) that not all the battles against evil involve grandiose epics and saga-level conflicts. Sometimes it can be evil in a small, mean way, in your backyard, corrupting the people around you. Of course, Lord of the Rings as a movie is meant to focus more on the bigger picture, so I can see why for theatrical release such a part would slow down the pacing and add an unncessary denouement in the conclusion - but that doesn't detract from the chapter's role and message in the original text.
The US dollar has been falling vis-a-vis the European/Japanese/Australian currencies, but the ASEAN pairs are being kept low by a combination of aggressive Treasury purchasing, hard currency buffering and mondo loose monetary policy. ASEAN is a primarily mercantilist mentality; they don't want to see their currencies over-appreciate esp with China's flood of cheapo exports around the corner. These factors make us a ready market for the US' deficit spending for a while to come.
Post ID: 107302182417093616
I have nothing against racist jokes; hell, once I was driving an Indian colleague & a Malay colleague to lunch. The Malay guy was sitting in the backseat. He suddenly said: "Now this is rare - a Chinese driving a Malay around." It is a sign of true multi-cultural integration when all of us can tell racist jokes in front of each other.
However, when I got your email, I confess I totally did not get any humour value out of it.
Me:
??????
i don't really get it but i'll laugh because it has malays
hahahaha
(I'm a Malaysian. Racism is part of my national heritage. Most people I know here, when it comes down to it, like individuals and despise races. Too bad if you can't see the distinction.)
You:
wth
Haha
You see there's this joint in Spore called "Canadian 2 for 1 Pizza". I call it "Malay 2 for 1 Pizza" because everyone who works there is Malay.
So I gather the humour comes because something called a "Canadian" pizza joint is run entirely by Malays. While I'm not entirely rolling on the floor with levity here, I can see why some individuals with a low common denominator of humour might find it laugh-worthy.
The question is, if the picture had been of entirely Chinese or Indian or even Iraqi people, would you have sent out an email to all and sundry calling it "Chinese 2 for 1 Pizza" or "Iraqi 2 for 1 Pizza"?
However, when I got your email, I confess I totally did not get any humour value out of it.
Me:
??????
i don't really get it but i'll laugh because it has malays
hahahaha
(I'm a Malaysian. Racism is part of my national heritage. Most people I know here, when it comes down to it, like individuals and despise races. Too bad if you can't see the distinction.)
You:
wth
Haha
You see there's this joint in Spore called "Canadian 2 for 1 Pizza". I call it "Malay 2 for 1 Pizza" because everyone who works there is Malay.
So I gather the humour comes because something called a "Canadian" pizza joint is run entirely by Malays. While I'm not entirely rolling on the floor with levity here, I can see why some individuals with a low common denominator of humour might find it laugh-worthy.
The question is, if the picture had been of entirely Chinese or Indian or even Iraqi people, would you have sent out an email to all and sundry calling it "Chinese 2 for 1 Pizza" or "Iraqi 2 for 1 Pizza"?
Post ID: 107302020321933465
To clarify my position on Canadian 2 for 1 Pizza:
Fie, it seems to be the case that whenever I talk about that company, I am accused of racism.
Perhaps it is because we, in Singapore, have been over-sensitised to the point that any mention of race is automatically suspect, and any mention of it beyond a socially/governmentally approved context - meaning in an unambiguously positive way - gets one labelled as racist. This is especially the case with minorities which are traditionally discriminated against by the majority.
Please note that in the picture attached, *all* of the staff are Malay. This I have not altered. In all transactions I've had with this company, further, all but two of the people I've interacted with - the people answering the phone, delivering the goods and even manning the outlets - are Malay, and even then one of the two was what I took to be the owner of a particular branch, since he came in his private car to deliver the pizza.
Thus, "Malay" is a purely descriptive term, and any negative connotations are purely in the mind of the offended. I'm sure if there was a joint I termed "Long Haired Blondes 2 for 1 Pizza", or advertised a place as having food cooked by my "Italian chef, flown in from Italy", no one would be offended. Perhaps the outbursts this matter always triggers is but a manifestation of Freudian Projection (Ed: "A defense mechanism in which the individual attributes to other people impulses and traits that he himself has but cannot accept. It is especially likely to occur when the person lacks insight into his own impulses and traits.") on the part of the naysayers.
In conclusion, I leave you with these words of wisdom from King Edward the Third (1312-1377), who adopted them as the Motto of the order of the Garter: Honi Soit Qui Mal Pense (Evil to him who evil thinks).
Fie, it seems to be the case that whenever I talk about that company, I am accused of racism.
Perhaps it is because we, in Singapore, have been over-sensitised to the point that any mention of race is automatically suspect, and any mention of it beyond a socially/governmentally approved context - meaning in an unambiguously positive way - gets one labelled as racist. This is especially the case with minorities which are traditionally discriminated against by the majority.
Please note that in the picture attached, *all* of the staff are Malay. This I have not altered. In all transactions I've had with this company, further, all but two of the people I've interacted with - the people answering the phone, delivering the goods and even manning the outlets - are Malay, and even then one of the two was what I took to be the owner of a particular branch, since he came in his private car to deliver the pizza.
Thus, "Malay" is a purely descriptive term, and any negative connotations are purely in the mind of the offended. I'm sure if there was a joint I termed "Long Haired Blondes 2 for 1 Pizza", or advertised a place as having food cooked by my "Italian chef, flown in from Italy", no one would be offended. Perhaps the outbursts this matter always triggers is but a manifestation of Freudian Projection (Ed: "A defense mechanism in which the individual attributes to other people impulses and traits that he himself has but cannot accept. It is especially likely to occur when the person lacks insight into his own impulses and traits.") on the part of the naysayers.
In conclusion, I leave you with these words of wisdom from King Edward the Third (1312-1377), who adopted them as the Motto of the order of the Garter: Honi Soit Qui Mal Pense (Evil to him who evil thinks).
Post ID: 107301131653998514
Thursday, January 01, 2004
It's very, very easy not to be offended by a book. You just have to shut it. - Salman Rushdie
The Charity of King Wenceslas - If you think about it, really, both the poor man and the "Good" King's behaviors are very suspicious. I totally agree with the writer.
Minas Morgul - Ignore the title. It's an interesting page with little gems on a wide variety of topics. Most rare these days.
Brothers 'United' after unusual pact - A Manchester United soccer fan donated cells so his brother could have a life-saving transplant -- on condition his sibling switched his support from arch rivals Manchester City.
Ben told me the last time that to get film-quality 4R prints with digital images, you need them about 1MB in size. Bah. The 1024 x 768 on fine (medium) quality images that my mother took in Vietnam came out indistinguishable from those printed from analog film.
A certain aspect of American politics puzzles me - namely the thing about the South shifting its allegiance from the Democrats to the Republicans about a half century ago. In fact, I'm led to believe that the two parties swapped characters and agenda around that time.
Some people accuse me of being racist when I call it "Malay 2 for 1 Pizza". I beg to differ, for the term is purely descriptive. Look closely and you will see that -all- of the people in this picture are Malay.
For those of you celebrating your year-end bonuses:
The mystery of the 13th month bonus
When the British were in Singapore, they were being paid weekly & they argued that Singaporeans were actually being cheated into believing that the 13th month pay is a bonus.
Singaporeans are being paid monthly which is equivalent to 4 weeks pay coz there are 4 weeks in a month.
As the British were paid weekly, it worked out to the same. You see, there are 7 days in a week. 4 weeks in a month. 12 months in a year. Then 12 months should work out to 48 weeks only. But 1 year worked out to 52 weeks!!! Hence the 13th month is your own pay (not bonus??!!).
So, the British argued that there is in fact no bonus at all??? It is a very simple calculation that stunned many!!!! BONUS??? What bonus??? . #$%*@!!!
The Charity of King Wenceslas - If you think about it, really, both the poor man and the "Good" King's behaviors are very suspicious. I totally agree with the writer.
Minas Morgul - Ignore the title. It's an interesting page with little gems on a wide variety of topics. Most rare these days.
Brothers 'United' after unusual pact - A Manchester United soccer fan donated cells so his brother could have a life-saving transplant -- on condition his sibling switched his support from arch rivals Manchester City.
Ben told me the last time that to get film-quality 4R prints with digital images, you need them about 1MB in size. Bah. The 1024 x 768 on fine (medium) quality images that my mother took in Vietnam came out indistinguishable from those printed from analog film.
A certain aspect of American politics puzzles me - namely the thing about the South shifting its allegiance from the Democrats to the Republicans about a half century ago. In fact, I'm led to believe that the two parties swapped characters and agenda around that time.
Some people accuse me of being racist when I call it "Malay 2 for 1 Pizza". I beg to differ, for the term is purely descriptive. Look closely and you will see that -all- of the people in this picture are Malay.
For those of you celebrating your year-end bonuses:
The mystery of the 13th month bonus
When the British were in Singapore, they were being paid weekly & they argued that Singaporeans were actually being cheated into believing that the 13th month pay is a bonus.
Singaporeans are being paid monthly which is equivalent to 4 weeks pay coz there are 4 weeks in a month.
As the British were paid weekly, it worked out to the same. You see, there are 7 days in a week. 4 weeks in a month. 12 months in a year. Then 12 months should work out to 48 weeks only. But 1 year worked out to 52 weeks!!! Hence the 13th month is your own pay (not bonus??!!).
So, the British argued that there is in fact no bonus at all??? It is a very simple calculation that stunned many!!!! BONUS??? What bonus??? . #$%*@!!!
Post ID: 107294920902656676
Does anyone need more proof that the world is going straight to Hell?
Plastic Faith
ESHER, England -- The world's first inflatable church opened its Gothic arches to worshipers to reveal a blow-up organ, a polyvinyl pulpit, an air-filled altar and fake stained glass windows.
Out With a Bang
STOCKHOLM -- A Swedish church newspaper reported a growing number of explosions during cremations caused by overheated silicone breast implants in female corpses.
Bad Day
DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania -- A man who thought his boss's bicycle had been stolen while in his care killed himself in despair by diving into a cesspit. A friend returned the bike a little later.
Family Hour
BEIJING -- China banned commercials for feminine hygiene products and hemorrhoid ointments during mealtimes, declaring them unappetizing.
Ancient Art
LONDON -- A leading British museum has paid $387,000 for a 16th-century Italian Renaissance dinner plate showing a male head made entirely of phalluses.
Athletic Endeavor?
TORONTO -- A quick-fisted man bested 320 competitors to win $3,825 and the World Rock, Paper, Scissors Championship at a local nightclub.
Dog Breath?
LONDON -- A survey by a toothpaste manufacturer indicated more than half of all Britons have breath that smells worse than their pet's.
Plastic Faith
ESHER, England -- The world's first inflatable church opened its Gothic arches to worshipers to reveal a blow-up organ, a polyvinyl pulpit, an air-filled altar and fake stained glass windows.
Out With a Bang
STOCKHOLM -- A Swedish church newspaper reported a growing number of explosions during cremations caused by overheated silicone breast implants in female corpses.
Bad Day
DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania -- A man who thought his boss's bicycle had been stolen while in his care killed himself in despair by diving into a cesspit. A friend returned the bike a little later.
Family Hour
BEIJING -- China banned commercials for feminine hygiene products and hemorrhoid ointments during mealtimes, declaring them unappetizing.
Ancient Art
LONDON -- A leading British museum has paid $387,000 for a 16th-century Italian Renaissance dinner plate showing a male head made entirely of phalluses.
Athletic Endeavor?
TORONTO -- A quick-fisted man bested 320 competitors to win $3,825 and the World Rock, Paper, Scissors Championship at a local nightclub.
Dog Breath?
LONDON -- A survey by a toothpaste manufacturer indicated more than half of all Britons have breath that smells worse than their pet's.
Post ID: 107294010646747091
Word of the day (year, I hope): "agathism"
Well, it's a new year, and as cliched as the concept of "new year = renewal, turn of the cycle, rotation of the Wheel, etc" is, I find myself, like the rest of the human population, seduced by an arbitrarily chosen point in the Earth's rotation around the Sun. Still, I suppose it's human psychology to fix points in time by which we can milestone our personal, temporal progress through this mortal coil.
Okay, grandiosely pontificating preamble over (for now).
In keeping with the Adrian Mole tradition, here are my New Year's Resolutions for 2004:
a) Lift myself up from credit card penury and repaying all outstanding debts.
b) Break self out of current stoner come-home-play-computer-games-watch-DVDs-and-download-pornography drift and concentrate on the following remaining PULGs (Post-University Lifestyle Goals): get a better job, get my CFA, move out of house.
c) Reduce alcohol consumption to twice a month. (Wine doesn't count) (Neither does beer) (Or perry) (Ditto vodka) (And house pours) (Also cocktails)
d) Reduce cigarette consumpt... ah fuck it, who am I kidding.
e) Buy only computer games I plan to complete.
f) Ditto for VCDs, DVDs, books.
g) Moratorium on new online friendships, trysts, liaisons, etc. (Occasional interaction via mailing lists, forums, tagboards, newsgroups permissible but to be more stringently QC-ed)
h) Convert existing online acquaintances into meatspace acquaintances (only two to go)
i) Resume blogging as a means of psychological catharsis, verbal "gorilla-thumping-on-chest" egotism, tediously self-pitying bitching about daily events, and vocabulary-honing.
j) Stick with capoeira classes.
k) Make perfunctory gestures towards charity and altruism and goodwill towards fellow man (ie. putting more change in beggars' bowls, not abusing idiot students with cans and stickers, joining in squatters' protests, refraining from lengthy diatribes about the need for voluntary human extinction)
l) Research cryonics potential more thoroughly as part of renewed zest for life (albeit life in some other epoch where I can hopefully own an orbital space station with rail guns, a berthed Dreadnought-class starship, and a harem of vat-grown nano-constructed concubines)
m) Expect less from friends, family and people around me as part of disappointment-avoidance strategem.
n) Make efforts to go to some of the weird cultural events they occasionally advertise on the Hitz.fm Community Infoline.
I'm currently languishing at work, and am somewhat frustrated due to the failure on the part of another party to deliver the information I need to complete a report which absolutely *must* be completed by tomorrow morning. Although I have a legitimate excuse for tarrying, it still rankles that my progress is being held back by the incompetence of others. But thinking back on this sensation, I find myself surprised to discover something that I've developed resembling work ethic - a concept previously inimical to me other than as a necessary evil required to earn money to keep myself in a reasonably comfortable lifestyle.
As a result, I'm waiting at the office, by myself, staring out the window, and suddenly, *bing*, a flash of volition and here I am, typing furiously into the blog, despite my vow a year ago to stay off blogging. Gabriel has half-heartedly prodded me into making entries now and again, but here are a few better reasons why I've started again.
a) Friendster.com has lost what little appeal it initially had
b) No good games out on the horizon (except, arguably, Thief 3)
c) No money to upgrade computer to effectively play any new good games that might emerge anyway, so why not resort to an alternative low-tech hobby
d) Initially stopped blogging because of embarrassment at lack of anything to say beyond archetypical, cliched personal whining, and because I felt I should be better occupying my rare crumbs of leisure time by either looking for another job or playing more computer games or downloading more Ai Ijima clips, but recent personal events have stripped me of any vestige of motivation or dignity I might have had left.
e) Self-righteous need to critique Gabriel's moralizing for the hollow sham that it is.
f) I like lists a lot. Blogging lets me create lists ad infinitum. BWAHAHAHAHAHA.
As a matter of fact, Gabriel is presently sore wroth at me for telling him that, in Order of the Phoenix, Severus Snape is Harry Potter's real father, that Dudley has magical powers, and that McGonagall dies. He's in the midst of reading it at the moment.
(it's the little pleasures that keep one sane)
Gabriel and I have also had a recent, very long discussion on the institution of National Service, and various alternatives. He went on a long and lengthy rant about how he, as a pacifist, vociferously opposed NS on principle, and that there should be alternatives for conscientous objectors.
I pointed out that the Jehovah's Witnesses are consicentous objectors for whom an "alternative" is provided. Granted, DB for years may be excessive, but what the hell, if you want to provide an easy alternative, everyone's going to suddenly discover their inner hippie and argue for peace and love. At least under the current system, you have to put in some effort (and luck) to get that lobo job you want.
Then I told him that I felt his current objections to NS were driven more by his own self-interest and desire to avoid the discomfiture it causes him, as opposed to any genuinely heartfelt moral principle.
He denied it vehemently of course. And cited all his other various noble causes: feminism, freedom of speech, secular humanism.
So I asked him: "If right now, they gave you a 12-3pm job, 4 days a week, but you had to go to secondary schools and give lectures on how great NS is, would you?"
Of course, he fudged. And accused me of being so morally degenerate that I assume everyone has the same base motivations as I do.
I replied: "At least I have no illusions about what I am, and what I do - well, sometimes anyway"
We then considered a few alternatives to NS; such as having a lottery, "reform vs abolition", hiring mercenaries.
"Reform vs abolition" revolves around the principle that national conscription is a necessary evil, but that the current organizational structure, implementation and use of resources is inefficient, combat-ineffective (debatable), and causes unnecessary suffering. IMHO this is broadly true; but national conscription as it currently stands is the most cost-effective way of achieving the twin military and political goals of government hegemony. No doubt there are other methods, but I really can't think of any that so effectively serve to domesticate the male population AND provide a pool of cheap bodies for the use of military defenses.
A lot of people will say that army doesn't really domesticate males; it makes them more angry and pissed off at the government, but it seems to me that what it does is that it makes them complain more in private, and figure out how to work the system; but ultimately bend their heads and just slog it out within the rules instead of upsetting the apple cart. Gabriel's recent long diatribes and emails being a case in point. It ironically makes him more complaining, more whiny, and more verbally disaffected - but disempowers him from taking any radical action towards upsetting a reinforced power/political structure - (as can be seen from the occasional court-martial-fear-driven-self-censorship in this blog).
Perhaps a more effective use of resources would be to change the incentive structure of National service; not just in terms of allowances, but in terms of servitude alternatives. For instance, a longer stint in the civil service vs 2.5 years of military service? (this would have the pleasant side-effect of devaluing PSC scholars). Or other useful forms of national-related employment? If you structure the incentives and trade-offs correctly, you can still induce/coerce enough people to fill the defensive needs of the nation, while denying Mindef an endless supply of warm bodies to perform hole-filling tasks might make it rethink the way it does things (the surfeit of zombies every year, I think, has subtly impaired its organizational thinking in some ways). This is just a hypothethical, of course, and it would require a lot of thought and fine-tuning before it becomes a workable idee fixe.
Having a lottery seems great on the surface, but the sad truth of human nature is that we'd rather see everyone suffer, even if the aggregate suffering goes up, compared to a comparative few suffering. In other words, if the government could get past the institutional inertia and actually set up a lottery system, the ones who draw the short straw are going to bitch so much that it may potentially update a (currently relatively) stable social situation. What politician would want to risk it?
(NB: Malaysia is a pretty good example of this in action - thankfully the corruption here is so endemic that a lot of people who got in have managed to weasel their way out through judicious application of resources and contacts. As a matter of fact, the M'sian government has called on Chinese and Indian volunteers to fill in the blanks caused by all these "deferments" and "disruptions" to create the ideal "racial composition". Ironic.)
Mercenaries: the only argument I like in favour of this is that none of the parties likely to come into military confrontation with Singapore can pay more so that mitigates the treachery factor to some extent.
Tangential shift to a few thoughts occupying my head.
Watched Return of the King last weekend. While watching it, I had to keep reminding myself to appreciate it as a movie on its own merits, and not address it in terms of the book. That said, however, some of the scenes were so spot on with the way I've always pictured them from Tolkien's text that it was a joy to watch. These included the death of the Witch-King, the battle at Pelennor Fields, the final confrontation at Orodruin, Smeagol's murder of Deagol, Shelob's depiction, and the wondrous cityscapes of both Minas Morgul and Minas Tirith.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who, when watching the charge of the Mumakil, thought: "Fuck! AT-AT Walkers!" (Empire Strikes Back) I kept wondering when the snowspeeders and winch cables would show up:)
I do wish that they had kept some of the more seminal scenes from the book; for instance, bringing in some of the Gondor liege lords like Imrahil and using the actual text from the Last Debate chapter, the much-discussed scouring of Saruman from the final movie, and making Denethor a little more dignified and a little less like a tyrannical glutton. Maybe the extended version DVD will help allay these complaints.
Having played the Return of the King hack'n'slash though, I have to say that it and Two Towers are the best computer-game-movie tie-ins - in terms of visual look, storyline, concept, and of course, all those cool interviews and extras.
Elijah Wood (on playing the PS2 games): "At one point, I swear, I concentrated so hard the (PS2) controller was floating in the air. Serious."
Sometimes I can relate to people who want to kill all Westerners. They come to our countries, earn obscene US-denominated salaries (often tax-included), are given luxury apartments, have our women fling themselves at them, and are reportedly more well-endowed (having lost women to the Caucasian race more than once, penis envy is something I have no qualms in admitting:). I remember once when, sitting in a bus, I was listening to a bunch of American exchange students go on and on about how hard it was to find Mexican food in the town center. Contemplated going all al-Qaeda on their heathen asses, but then I reached my stop.
But it's hard to hate them for long, given that virtually all of the technological and cultural influences that make my life enjoyable originates from them. I'm told that the Philippines feels pretty much the same kind of hate-love ambivalence towards the Yanqui.
But speaking to Gabriel's lambasting of US foreign policy, the sad truth of the matter is that despite being driven more by self-interest and personal vendetta, the whole Iraqi debacle hasn't turned out to be a total nightmare - yet. For one thing, despite everything, no one can deny life in Iraq is currently better without Saddam at the top (until everything degenerates into sectarian chaos, the odds of which are slim but not impossible at present). Ignoring the motivation behind this, and the sheer administrative stupidity that's going on in the aftermath occupation, one has to be pragmatic about the results. I would definitely be irritated by those who cast the US' recent successes as part of the vanguard of righteousness bringing harmony and peace and goodwill, but the fact of the matter is that the US has done some good on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, however cynical the real political motives, and however economically damaging it could be to all of us in the long run.
The US' deficit-fuelled economy may be good for now as a pump-primer for global growth contagion, but when it inevitably collapses? Our Asian central banks can't keep buying Treasuries forever.
Ultimately, what irks me most about the US is not so much about whether or not their actions and largesse have had good for the rest of the world (by and large, it has, despite some sore spots - its unflagging support of Israel being one example), but by their current fashion of dressing it up behind an agenda of democratisation, universal rights, and doctrinal rectitude. Why can't they just happily stick to exporting the best parts of their complicated Weltanschuung; unfettered technological innovation, sophisticated financial markets, capitalistic shenanigans, glittery hedonism, Oreos, massive flows of FDI and overwhelming military intervention in the interests of securing global oil supplies? While reining in the moral banners, the pretensions to humanitarianism, the right-wing evangelism, and reality TV?
Hm. Back to work.
Well, it's a new year, and as cliched as the concept of "new year = renewal, turn of the cycle, rotation of the Wheel, etc" is, I find myself, like the rest of the human population, seduced by an arbitrarily chosen point in the Earth's rotation around the Sun. Still, I suppose it's human psychology to fix points in time by which we can milestone our personal, temporal progress through this mortal coil.
Okay, grandiosely pontificating preamble over (for now).
In keeping with the Adrian Mole tradition, here are my New Year's Resolutions for 2004:
a) Lift myself up from credit card penury and repaying all outstanding debts.
b) Break self out of current stoner come-home-play-computer-games-watch-DVDs-and-download-pornography drift and concentrate on the following remaining PULGs (Post-University Lifestyle Goals): get a better job, get my CFA, move out of house.
c) Reduce alcohol consumption to twice a month. (Wine doesn't count) (Neither does beer) (Or perry) (Ditto vodka) (And house pours) (Also cocktails)
d) Reduce cigarette consumpt... ah fuck it, who am I kidding.
e) Buy only computer games I plan to complete.
f) Ditto for VCDs, DVDs, books.
g) Moratorium on new online friendships, trysts, liaisons, etc. (Occasional interaction via mailing lists, forums, tagboards, newsgroups permissible but to be more stringently QC-ed)
h) Convert existing online acquaintances into meatspace acquaintances (only two to go)
i) Resume blogging as a means of psychological catharsis, verbal "gorilla-thumping-on-chest" egotism, tediously self-pitying bitching about daily events, and vocabulary-honing.
j) Stick with capoeira classes.
k) Make perfunctory gestures towards charity and altruism and goodwill towards fellow man (ie. putting more change in beggars' bowls, not abusing idiot students with cans and stickers, joining in squatters' protests, refraining from lengthy diatribes about the need for voluntary human extinction)
l) Research cryonics potential more thoroughly as part of renewed zest for life (albeit life in some other epoch where I can hopefully own an orbital space station with rail guns, a berthed Dreadnought-class starship, and a harem of vat-grown nano-constructed concubines)
m) Expect less from friends, family and people around me as part of disappointment-avoidance strategem.
n) Make efforts to go to some of the weird cultural events they occasionally advertise on the Hitz.fm Community Infoline.
I'm currently languishing at work, and am somewhat frustrated due to the failure on the part of another party to deliver the information I need to complete a report which absolutely *must* be completed by tomorrow morning. Although I have a legitimate excuse for tarrying, it still rankles that my progress is being held back by the incompetence of others. But thinking back on this sensation, I find myself surprised to discover something that I've developed resembling work ethic - a concept previously inimical to me other than as a necessary evil required to earn money to keep myself in a reasonably comfortable lifestyle.
As a result, I'm waiting at the office, by myself, staring out the window, and suddenly, *bing*, a flash of volition and here I am, typing furiously into the blog, despite my vow a year ago to stay off blogging. Gabriel has half-heartedly prodded me into making entries now and again, but here are a few better reasons why I've started again.
a) Friendster.com has lost what little appeal it initially had
b) No good games out on the horizon (except, arguably, Thief 3)
c) No money to upgrade computer to effectively play any new good games that might emerge anyway, so why not resort to an alternative low-tech hobby
d) Initially stopped blogging because of embarrassment at lack of anything to say beyond archetypical, cliched personal whining, and because I felt I should be better occupying my rare crumbs of leisure time by either looking for another job or playing more computer games or downloading more Ai Ijima clips, but recent personal events have stripped me of any vestige of motivation or dignity I might have had left.
e) Self-righteous need to critique Gabriel's moralizing for the hollow sham that it is.
f) I like lists a lot. Blogging lets me create lists ad infinitum. BWAHAHAHAHAHA.
As a matter of fact, Gabriel is presently sore wroth at me for telling him that, in Order of the Phoenix, Severus Snape is Harry Potter's real father, that Dudley has magical powers, and that McGonagall dies. He's in the midst of reading it at the moment.
(it's the little pleasures that keep one sane)
Gabriel and I have also had a recent, very long discussion on the institution of National Service, and various alternatives. He went on a long and lengthy rant about how he, as a pacifist, vociferously opposed NS on principle, and that there should be alternatives for conscientous objectors.
I pointed out that the Jehovah's Witnesses are consicentous objectors for whom an "alternative" is provided. Granted, DB for years may be excessive, but what the hell, if you want to provide an easy alternative, everyone's going to suddenly discover their inner hippie and argue for peace and love. At least under the current system, you have to put in some effort (and luck) to get that lobo job you want.
Then I told him that I felt his current objections to NS were driven more by his own self-interest and desire to avoid the discomfiture it causes him, as opposed to any genuinely heartfelt moral principle.
He denied it vehemently of course. And cited all his other various noble causes: feminism, freedom of speech, secular humanism.
So I asked him: "If right now, they gave you a 12-3pm job, 4 days a week, but you had to go to secondary schools and give lectures on how great NS is, would you?"
Of course, he fudged. And accused me of being so morally degenerate that I assume everyone has the same base motivations as I do.
I replied: "At least I have no illusions about what I am, and what I do - well, sometimes anyway"
We then considered a few alternatives to NS; such as having a lottery, "reform vs abolition", hiring mercenaries.
"Reform vs abolition" revolves around the principle that national conscription is a necessary evil, but that the current organizational structure, implementation and use of resources is inefficient, combat-ineffective (debatable), and causes unnecessary suffering. IMHO this is broadly true; but national conscription as it currently stands is the most cost-effective way of achieving the twin military and political goals of government hegemony. No doubt there are other methods, but I really can't think of any that so effectively serve to domesticate the male population AND provide a pool of cheap bodies for the use of military defenses.
A lot of people will say that army doesn't really domesticate males; it makes them more angry and pissed off at the government, but it seems to me that what it does is that it makes them complain more in private, and figure out how to work the system; but ultimately bend their heads and just slog it out within the rules instead of upsetting the apple cart. Gabriel's recent long diatribes and emails being a case in point. It ironically makes him more complaining, more whiny, and more verbally disaffected - but disempowers him from taking any radical action towards upsetting a reinforced power/political structure - (as can be seen from the occasional court-martial-fear-driven-self-censorship in this blog).
Perhaps a more effective use of resources would be to change the incentive structure of National service; not just in terms of allowances, but in terms of servitude alternatives. For instance, a longer stint in the civil service vs 2.5 years of military service? (this would have the pleasant side-effect of devaluing PSC scholars). Or other useful forms of national-related employment? If you structure the incentives and trade-offs correctly, you can still induce/coerce enough people to fill the defensive needs of the nation, while denying Mindef an endless supply of warm bodies to perform hole-filling tasks might make it rethink the way it does things (the surfeit of zombies every year, I think, has subtly impaired its organizational thinking in some ways). This is just a hypothethical, of course, and it would require a lot of thought and fine-tuning before it becomes a workable idee fixe.
Having a lottery seems great on the surface, but the sad truth of human nature is that we'd rather see everyone suffer, even if the aggregate suffering goes up, compared to a comparative few suffering. In other words, if the government could get past the institutional inertia and actually set up a lottery system, the ones who draw the short straw are going to bitch so much that it may potentially update a (currently relatively) stable social situation. What politician would want to risk it?
(NB: Malaysia is a pretty good example of this in action - thankfully the corruption here is so endemic that a lot of people who got in have managed to weasel their way out through judicious application of resources and contacts. As a matter of fact, the M'sian government has called on Chinese and Indian volunteers to fill in the blanks caused by all these "deferments" and "disruptions" to create the ideal "racial composition". Ironic.)
Mercenaries: the only argument I like in favour of this is that none of the parties likely to come into military confrontation with Singapore can pay more so that mitigates the treachery factor to some extent.
Tangential shift to a few thoughts occupying my head.
Watched Return of the King last weekend. While watching it, I had to keep reminding myself to appreciate it as a movie on its own merits, and not address it in terms of the book. That said, however, some of the scenes were so spot on with the way I've always pictured them from Tolkien's text that it was a joy to watch. These included the death of the Witch-King, the battle at Pelennor Fields, the final confrontation at Orodruin, Smeagol's murder of Deagol, Shelob's depiction, and the wondrous cityscapes of both Minas Morgul and Minas Tirith.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who, when watching the charge of the Mumakil, thought: "Fuck! AT-AT Walkers!" (Empire Strikes Back) I kept wondering when the snowspeeders and winch cables would show up:)
I do wish that they had kept some of the more seminal scenes from the book; for instance, bringing in some of the Gondor liege lords like Imrahil and using the actual text from the Last Debate chapter, the much-discussed scouring of Saruman from the final movie, and making Denethor a little more dignified and a little less like a tyrannical glutton. Maybe the extended version DVD will help allay these complaints.
Having played the Return of the King hack'n'slash though, I have to say that it and Two Towers are the best computer-game-movie tie-ins - in terms of visual look, storyline, concept, and of course, all those cool interviews and extras.
Elijah Wood (on playing the PS2 games): "At one point, I swear, I concentrated so hard the (PS2) controller was floating in the air. Serious."
Sometimes I can relate to people who want to kill all Westerners. They come to our countries, earn obscene US-denominated salaries (often tax-included), are given luxury apartments, have our women fling themselves at them, and are reportedly more well-endowed (having lost women to the Caucasian race more than once, penis envy is something I have no qualms in admitting:). I remember once when, sitting in a bus, I was listening to a bunch of American exchange students go on and on about how hard it was to find Mexican food in the town center. Contemplated going all al-Qaeda on their heathen asses, but then I reached my stop.
But it's hard to hate them for long, given that virtually all of the technological and cultural influences that make my life enjoyable originates from them. I'm told that the Philippines feels pretty much the same kind of hate-love ambivalence towards the Yanqui.
But speaking to Gabriel's lambasting of US foreign policy, the sad truth of the matter is that despite being driven more by self-interest and personal vendetta, the whole Iraqi debacle hasn't turned out to be a total nightmare - yet. For one thing, despite everything, no one can deny life in Iraq is currently better without Saddam at the top (until everything degenerates into sectarian chaos, the odds of which are slim but not impossible at present). Ignoring the motivation behind this, and the sheer administrative stupidity that's going on in the aftermath occupation, one has to be pragmatic about the results. I would definitely be irritated by those who cast the US' recent successes as part of the vanguard of righteousness bringing harmony and peace and goodwill, but the fact of the matter is that the US has done some good on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, however cynical the real political motives, and however economically damaging it could be to all of us in the long run.
The US' deficit-fuelled economy may be good for now as a pump-primer for global growth contagion, but when it inevitably collapses? Our Asian central banks can't keep buying Treasuries forever.
Ultimately, what irks me most about the US is not so much about whether or not their actions and largesse have had good for the rest of the world (by and large, it has, despite some sore spots - its unflagging support of Israel being one example), but by their current fashion of dressing it up behind an agenda of democratisation, universal rights, and doctrinal rectitude. Why can't they just happily stick to exporting the best parts of their complicated Weltanschuung; unfettered technological innovation, sophisticated financial markets, capitalistic shenanigans, glittery hedonism, Oreos, massive flows of FDI and overwhelming military intervention in the interests of securing global oil supplies? While reining in the moral banners, the pretensions to humanitarianism, the right-wing evangelism, and reality TV?
Hm. Back to work.
Post ID: 107293857668657372
Wednesday, December 31, 2003
The Western Disease - The strange syndrome of our guilt and their shame.
The National Review Online, despite being a right-leaning publication, does and has produced thoughtful, balanced pieces. However, whenever I see this particular author's (Victor Davis Hanson) articles, I shudder but read on anyway. The reasons for this are twofold. One, it is good to expose oneself to opinions and ideas diametrically opposed to one's own, for the sake of intellectual rigour, especially since it's unlikely the whole article will fail to make any valid points. And two, his florid writing is stylistically pleasing.
In 24 months the United States defeated two of the most hideous regimes in modern memory. For all the sorrow involved, it has already made progress in the unthinkable: bringing consensual government into the heart of Middle Eastern autocracy, where there has been no political heritage other than tyranny, theocracy, and dictatorship.
Right wingers like to trump the fact that they're bringing freedom, democracy and righteousness to the world. However, this broad generalisation inevitably masks the truth. In this case, the USA has largely forgotten about Afghanistan in its zeal to pump Iraqi oil, and risks the country - or at least the southern part of it - slipping back into the same sort of mess that gave birth to the Taliban. At the same time, we can see US zeal about democracy fading in Iraq in the face of the difficulties they are facing. The strong democracy they seek to build is already being undermined by the impending US withdrawal. If humanitarianism and freeing suffering hordes is really the driving force of US foreign policy, let's see them free North Koreans from having to eat tree bark soup.
Thus by any comparative standard of military history, the last two difficult years, despite setbacks and disappointments, represent a remarkable military achievement .Yet no one would ever gather even the slightest acknowledgment of such success from our Democratic grandees. Al Gore dubbed the Iraqi liberation a quagmire and, absurdly, the worst mistake in the history of American foreign policy. Howard Dean, more absurdly, suggested that the president of the United States might have had foreknowledge of September 11. Most Americans now shudder at the thought that the former might have been president in this time of crisis - and that the latter still could be.
I suppose alienating the whole world in his single-minded obsession with deposing Saddam, bogging half (?) the US Armed Forces down in Iraq unnecessarily, with a guerrila war being fought more than 7 months after "major fighting" was declared over and fueling the rage of Islamists is not a grave mistake for foreign policy?
Often American and European writers echo the fury of Gore and Dean... He [Paul Kurgman] exclaimed, "In the end the Bush doctrine - based on delusions of grandeur about America’s ability to dominate the world through force - will collapse. What we’ve just learned is how hard and dirty the doctrine’s proponents will fight against the inevitable." Krugman was apparently furious that American taxpayer dollars were going to be used to hire exclusively American and Coalition companies to rebuild Iraq rather than be paid out to foreign entities whose governments opposed the removal of Saddam Hussein.
Bush cannot ensure continuity of policy and political will in the executive for long enough to fulfill the dreams of his doctrine, or at least the ideals of democratic imperialism. And witholding the issuing of contracts to "foreign entities whose governments opposed the removal of Saddam Hussein" is petty, wasteful and misses the point - the companies do not dictate foreign policy.
Bob Herbert assured his foreign audience that "The Republicans are hijacking elections and redistricting the country and looting the Treasury and ignoring the Constitution and embittering our allies." That outside entities and media have confirmed the vote counts of the Florida election, that Congress must approve federal spending and pass laws, that an independent judiciary audits our legislation, and that 60 countries are now engaged in Iraq meant nothing.
Granted - gerrymandering is a an affair cheerfully engaged in by both sides, but at this moment the Republicans are the ones who are more guilty of this crime. But what is converting a generous budget surplus into red ink as far as the eye can see in a matter of years for the sake of reckless tax cuts and an unnecessary war called then, if not "looting the Treasury"? And just because 60 countries are involved in some small ways in Iraq does not mean the rifts are healed. It's called repairing the damage.
A rather refined-looking French self-described expert in jurisprudence was lecturing his audience about the proper legal framework that was "acceptable" to the international community. From his dandified look he appeared a rather different sort from the Americans who crawled into Saddam’s spider hole to yank him out. Soft power I suppose is the glib pontification from the salon; hard power is dragging out mass murderers at night in Tikrit.
This advocacy of vigilante, Texas-style justice is disturbing. I suppose we should cheer if a hitman were to sneak into the White House and take out Dubya, then? International Law is fragile enough already as it is. We do not need rogue nations inflicting their whims on the rest.
Another worried-looking European analyst was raising the specter of a potential oppressed prisoner suffering at "Guantanamo" - in voicing concern for the rights of Saddam Hussein! French trading with a mass murderer, profiting from selling him arms to butcher his own people is one thing; worrying that the same monster fully understands the nuances of Western jurisprudence while in the docket is quite another. Of course, our European humanist never noted that his own country’s pusillanimity over the last decade was responsible for abetting Saddam’s reign of terror even as someone else's audacity was for ending it.
Like the USA had no dealings with Saddam itself in the 80s, after it had used chemical weapons in Iran. Further, to treat your enemy badly just demeans yourself and brings you down to the same level as he. What moral superiority would they be able to claim, then?
There is something terribly wrong, something terribly amoral with the Western intelligentsia, most prominently in academia, the media, and politics... thousands of the richest, most leisured people in the history of civilization have become self-absorbed, ungracious, and completely divorced from the natural world - the age-old horrific realities of dearth, plague, hunger, rapine, or conquest.
I'd counter that some people are too intoxicated with the thought of their inerrancy and righteousness.
Indeed, it is even worse than that: a Paul Krugman or French barrister neither knows anything of how life is lived beyond his artificial cocoon nor of the rather different men and women whose unacknowledged work in the shadows ensures his own bounty in such a pampered landscape.. Neither knows what it is like to be in a village gassed by Saddam Hussein or how hard it is to go across the world to Tikrit and chain such a monster.
Like this writer knows what it's like being such? Or even a prisoner, possibly innocent even, in Guantanamo Bay, devoid of almost all rights, including that to a fair trial with a recourse to appeals and access to a lawyer
Both Western pontificators and the mob in the Middle East feed off each other. Paul Krugman would rarely write a column about how abjectly immoral it was that thousands mourned the death of a mass murderer when one can say worse things about an American president who chose not to use American dollars to hire French companies to rebuild Iraq. Bob Herbert can falsely rant about a Florida election "rigged," but seldom about an election never occurring in the Arab world.
Granted, but the writer is guilty of the same crime, albeit in another way.
It was the genius of bin Laden, after all, that he suspected after he had incinerated 3,000 Westerners an elite would be more likely to blame itself for the calamity - searching for "root causes" than marshalling its legions to defeat a tribe that embraced theocracy, autocracy, gender apartheid, polygamy, anti-Semitism, and religious intolerance. And why not after Lebanon, the first World Trade Center bombing, the embassies in Africa, murder in Saudi Arabia, and the USS Cole? It was the folly of bin Laden only that he assumed the United States was as far gone as Europe and that a minority of its ashamed elites had completely assumed control of American political, cultural, and spiritual life.
Perhaps the willingness of the "elite" to examine the reasons for events is more prudent than running into a fight, gun barrels spinning - to invade a country at the slightest provocation, as the writer suggests, and attacking symptoms, not causes. Be that as it may, I seem to recall the very same people who shrilly denounce Clinton for not taking action against Al-Qaeda earlier equally shrilly denouncing him a few years back when he bombed Iraq in 1998 and sent cruise missiles into Sudan. Besides which, the Taliban were able to arise thanks to the very same people who later spearheaded the drive to invade Afghanistan, a fact the writer conveniently leaves out.
Hatred of Israel is the most striking symptom of the Western disease. On the face of it the dilemma there is a no-brainer for any classic liberal: A consensual government is besieged by fanatical suicide killers who are subsidized and cheered on by many dictators in the Arab world. The bombers share the same barbaric methods as Chechens, the 9/11 murderers, al Qaedists in Turkey, and what we now see in Iraq.
And irrational unmitigated support for it, motivated by the Jewish and Evangelistic Christian lobby, is the most striking symptom of the Right-Wing Republican disease. The "consensual government" so beloved of the writer regularly engages in policies designed to persecute and exterminate the Palestinians as a people, just as the Jews themselves were persecuted for so many centuries.
When Europe frets over the "Right of Return" do they mean the over half-million Jews who were sent running for their lives from Egypt, Syria, and Iraq? Or do they ever ask why a million Arabs live freely in Israel and another 100,000 illegally have entered the "Zionist entity"? Does a European ever ask what would happen should thousands of Jews demand "A Right of Return" to Cairo?
What's past is past, and two wrongs do not make a right, unlike what the writer seems to think. Perhaps so many Arabs live in Israel precisely because they have despaired of the intransigence of the Israeli government every being softened. It's called desperation, not gleeful acquiescence.
Instead, the elite Westerner talks about "occupied lands" from which Israel has been attacked four times in the last 60 years
One could make a similar argument about the USSR and its satellite states.
Perhaps the most pathetic example of this strange nexus between first- and third-world Western bashing was seen in mid-December on television. Just as the United States government declared a high alert, one could watch a replay of the Indian novelist Arundhati Roy trashing America to a captivated, near-gleeful audience in New York. Her dog-and-pony show was followed by pathetic pleading from her nervous interrogator, Howard Zinn, not to transfer her unabashed hatred of the Bush administration to the United States in general. Mimicking the theatrics of American intellectuals - Roy’s hands frequently gestured scare quotes - she went from one smug denunciation to another to the applause of her crowd. Little was said about the crater a few blocks away, the social pathologies back home in India that send tens of thousands of its brightest to American shores, or Roy’s own aristocratic dress, ample jewelry, and studied accent. All the latter accoutrements and affectations illustrated the well-known game she plays of trashing globalization and corporatization as she jets around the Western world precisely through its largess - all the while cashing in by serving up an elegant third-world victimization to guilt-ridden Westerners.
And now he makes absolutely no sense, at least about Arundhati Roy and America.
Such invective only reveals the writer's xenophobic, US-centric view of the world. Thankfully, not all Americans are similarly delusional. The National Review should really get more balanced writers. Or maybe they keep him for the same reason the New York Times keeps William Safire - shock value and cheap populism.
Oh, yes. And Happy New Year too. If you've made it this far :)
The National Review Online, despite being a right-leaning publication, does and has produced thoughtful, balanced pieces. However, whenever I see this particular author's (Victor Davis Hanson) articles, I shudder but read on anyway. The reasons for this are twofold. One, it is good to expose oneself to opinions and ideas diametrically opposed to one's own, for the sake of intellectual rigour, especially since it's unlikely the whole article will fail to make any valid points. And two, his florid writing is stylistically pleasing.
In 24 months the United States defeated two of the most hideous regimes in modern memory. For all the sorrow involved, it has already made progress in the unthinkable: bringing consensual government into the heart of Middle Eastern autocracy, where there has been no political heritage other than tyranny, theocracy, and dictatorship.
Right wingers like to trump the fact that they're bringing freedom, democracy and righteousness to the world. However, this broad generalisation inevitably masks the truth. In this case, the USA has largely forgotten about Afghanistan in its zeal to pump Iraqi oil, and risks the country - or at least the southern part of it - slipping back into the same sort of mess that gave birth to the Taliban. At the same time, we can see US zeal about democracy fading in Iraq in the face of the difficulties they are facing. The strong democracy they seek to build is already being undermined by the impending US withdrawal. If humanitarianism and freeing suffering hordes is really the driving force of US foreign policy, let's see them free North Koreans from having to eat tree bark soup.
Thus by any comparative standard of military history, the last two difficult years, despite setbacks and disappointments, represent a remarkable military achievement .Yet no one would ever gather even the slightest acknowledgment of such success from our Democratic grandees. Al Gore dubbed the Iraqi liberation a quagmire and, absurdly, the worst mistake in the history of American foreign policy. Howard Dean, more absurdly, suggested that the president of the United States might have had foreknowledge of September 11. Most Americans now shudder at the thought that the former might have been president in this time of crisis - and that the latter still could be.
I suppose alienating the whole world in his single-minded obsession with deposing Saddam, bogging half (?) the US Armed Forces down in Iraq unnecessarily, with a guerrila war being fought more than 7 months after "major fighting" was declared over and fueling the rage of Islamists is not a grave mistake for foreign policy?
Often American and European writers echo the fury of Gore and Dean... He [Paul Kurgman] exclaimed, "In the end the Bush doctrine - based on delusions of grandeur about America’s ability to dominate the world through force - will collapse. What we’ve just learned is how hard and dirty the doctrine’s proponents will fight against the inevitable." Krugman was apparently furious that American taxpayer dollars were going to be used to hire exclusively American and Coalition companies to rebuild Iraq rather than be paid out to foreign entities whose governments opposed the removal of Saddam Hussein.
Bush cannot ensure continuity of policy and political will in the executive for long enough to fulfill the dreams of his doctrine, or at least the ideals of democratic imperialism. And witholding the issuing of contracts to "foreign entities whose governments opposed the removal of Saddam Hussein" is petty, wasteful and misses the point - the companies do not dictate foreign policy.
Bob Herbert assured his foreign audience that "The Republicans are hijacking elections and redistricting the country and looting the Treasury and ignoring the Constitution and embittering our allies." That outside entities and media have confirmed the vote counts of the Florida election, that Congress must approve federal spending and pass laws, that an independent judiciary audits our legislation, and that 60 countries are now engaged in Iraq meant nothing.
Granted - gerrymandering is a an affair cheerfully engaged in by both sides, but at this moment the Republicans are the ones who are more guilty of this crime. But what is converting a generous budget surplus into red ink as far as the eye can see in a matter of years for the sake of reckless tax cuts and an unnecessary war called then, if not "looting the Treasury"? And just because 60 countries are involved in some small ways in Iraq does not mean the rifts are healed. It's called repairing the damage.
A rather refined-looking French self-described expert in jurisprudence was lecturing his audience about the proper legal framework that was "acceptable" to the international community. From his dandified look he appeared a rather different sort from the Americans who crawled into Saddam’s spider hole to yank him out. Soft power I suppose is the glib pontification from the salon; hard power is dragging out mass murderers at night in Tikrit.
This advocacy of vigilante, Texas-style justice is disturbing. I suppose we should cheer if a hitman were to sneak into the White House and take out Dubya, then? International Law is fragile enough already as it is. We do not need rogue nations inflicting their whims on the rest.
Another worried-looking European analyst was raising the specter of a potential oppressed prisoner suffering at "Guantanamo" - in voicing concern for the rights of Saddam Hussein! French trading with a mass murderer, profiting from selling him arms to butcher his own people is one thing; worrying that the same monster fully understands the nuances of Western jurisprudence while in the docket is quite another. Of course, our European humanist never noted that his own country’s pusillanimity over the last decade was responsible for abetting Saddam’s reign of terror even as someone else's audacity was for ending it.
Like the USA had no dealings with Saddam itself in the 80s, after it had used chemical weapons in Iran. Further, to treat your enemy badly just demeans yourself and brings you down to the same level as he. What moral superiority would they be able to claim, then?
There is something terribly wrong, something terribly amoral with the Western intelligentsia, most prominently in academia, the media, and politics... thousands of the richest, most leisured people in the history of civilization have become self-absorbed, ungracious, and completely divorced from the natural world - the age-old horrific realities of dearth, plague, hunger, rapine, or conquest.
I'd counter that some people are too intoxicated with the thought of their inerrancy and righteousness.
Indeed, it is even worse than that: a Paul Krugman or French barrister neither knows anything of how life is lived beyond his artificial cocoon nor of the rather different men and women whose unacknowledged work in the shadows ensures his own bounty in such a pampered landscape.. Neither knows what it is like to be in a village gassed by Saddam Hussein or how hard it is to go across the world to Tikrit and chain such a monster.
Like this writer knows what it's like being such? Or even a prisoner, possibly innocent even, in Guantanamo Bay, devoid of almost all rights, including that to a fair trial with a recourse to appeals and access to a lawyer
Both Western pontificators and the mob in the Middle East feed off each other. Paul Krugman would rarely write a column about how abjectly immoral it was that thousands mourned the death of a mass murderer when one can say worse things about an American president who chose not to use American dollars to hire French companies to rebuild Iraq. Bob Herbert can falsely rant about a Florida election "rigged," but seldom about an election never occurring in the Arab world.
Granted, but the writer is guilty of the same crime, albeit in another way.
It was the genius of bin Laden, after all, that he suspected after he had incinerated 3,000 Westerners an elite would be more likely to blame itself for the calamity - searching for "root causes" than marshalling its legions to defeat a tribe that embraced theocracy, autocracy, gender apartheid, polygamy, anti-Semitism, and religious intolerance. And why not after Lebanon, the first World Trade Center bombing, the embassies in Africa, murder in Saudi Arabia, and the USS Cole? It was the folly of bin Laden only that he assumed the United States was as far gone as Europe and that a minority of its ashamed elites had completely assumed control of American political, cultural, and spiritual life.
Perhaps the willingness of the "elite" to examine the reasons for events is more prudent than running into a fight, gun barrels spinning - to invade a country at the slightest provocation, as the writer suggests, and attacking symptoms, not causes. Be that as it may, I seem to recall the very same people who shrilly denounce Clinton for not taking action against Al-Qaeda earlier equally shrilly denouncing him a few years back when he bombed Iraq in 1998 and sent cruise missiles into Sudan. Besides which, the Taliban were able to arise thanks to the very same people who later spearheaded the drive to invade Afghanistan, a fact the writer conveniently leaves out.
Hatred of Israel is the most striking symptom of the Western disease. On the face of it the dilemma there is a no-brainer for any classic liberal: A consensual government is besieged by fanatical suicide killers who are subsidized and cheered on by many dictators in the Arab world. The bombers share the same barbaric methods as Chechens, the 9/11 murderers, al Qaedists in Turkey, and what we now see in Iraq.
And irrational unmitigated support for it, motivated by the Jewish and Evangelistic Christian lobby, is the most striking symptom of the Right-Wing Republican disease. The "consensual government" so beloved of the writer regularly engages in policies designed to persecute and exterminate the Palestinians as a people, just as the Jews themselves were persecuted for so many centuries.
When Europe frets over the "Right of Return" do they mean the over half-million Jews who were sent running for their lives from Egypt, Syria, and Iraq? Or do they ever ask why a million Arabs live freely in Israel and another 100,000 illegally have entered the "Zionist entity"? Does a European ever ask what would happen should thousands of Jews demand "A Right of Return" to Cairo?
What's past is past, and two wrongs do not make a right, unlike what the writer seems to think. Perhaps so many Arabs live in Israel precisely because they have despaired of the intransigence of the Israeli government every being softened. It's called desperation, not gleeful acquiescence.
Instead, the elite Westerner talks about "occupied lands" from which Israel has been attacked four times in the last 60 years
One could make a similar argument about the USSR and its satellite states.
Perhaps the most pathetic example of this strange nexus between first- and third-world Western bashing was seen in mid-December on television. Just as the United States government declared a high alert, one could watch a replay of the Indian novelist Arundhati Roy trashing America to a captivated, near-gleeful audience in New York. Her dog-and-pony show was followed by pathetic pleading from her nervous interrogator, Howard Zinn, not to transfer her unabashed hatred of the Bush administration to the United States in general. Mimicking the theatrics of American intellectuals - Roy’s hands frequently gestured scare quotes - she went from one smug denunciation to another to the applause of her crowd. Little was said about the crater a few blocks away, the social pathologies back home in India that send tens of thousands of its brightest to American shores, or Roy’s own aristocratic dress, ample jewelry, and studied accent. All the latter accoutrements and affectations illustrated the well-known game she plays of trashing globalization and corporatization as she jets around the Western world precisely through its largess - all the while cashing in by serving up an elegant third-world victimization to guilt-ridden Westerners.
And now he makes absolutely no sense, at least about Arundhati Roy and America.
Such invective only reveals the writer's xenophobic, US-centric view of the world. Thankfully, not all Americans are similarly delusional. The National Review should really get more balanced writers. Or maybe they keep him for the same reason the New York Times keeps William Safire - shock value and cheap populism.
Oh, yes. And Happy New Year too. If you've made it this far :)
Post ID: 107288562164745020
Debating homosexuality in schools: Censorship doesn't work - Inside the First Amendment
This may be about a specific topic, but I believe the same principles hold true in almost all situations.
... Too many school officials try to duck the controversy through censorship. But these efforts to stifle the debate over homosexuality are based on the false hope that harmony and tolerance will prevail if no one is allowed to say anything that might offend anyone.
This was the failed strategy administrators employed against Elliott Chambers... who insisted on wearing a sweatshirt with the words "Straight Pride." After the principal ordered him to stop wearing the shirt, Chambers sued for the right to express his views. The court ruled... that genuine tolerance in an educational setting includes tolerance for a diversity of views – even views that others may find offensive...
Sweeping polices strictly limiting student speech (for or against homosexuality) are not only wrongheaded, but also are likely to be struck down as unconstitutional. A few years ago, two high school students in Pennsylvania challenged an anti-harassment policy that prohibited a wide range of potentially "offensive" speech, including speech directed at another’s "values." The students claimed that the policy would ban them from stating their religious beliefs about homosexuality and other topics. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, holding that such a broadly worded policy violates the First Amendment.
Of course, protecting the free speech of students doesn’t mean "anything goes" in a public school. Schools can (and should) ban name-calling and other forms of harassment. And if there is clear evidence that student speech has caused substantial disruption of the school, then it shouldn’t be allowed. But schools should refrain from censoring student viewpoints – for or against homosexuality – merely because such views may offend someone or make some students uncomfortable.
If censorship and strict speech codes aren’t the answer, what is? Let students speak, but simultaneously teach them how to express their views with civility and respect. By linking First Amendment rights to civic responsibility, schools create a learning environment that is safe for all students – but also free.
This may be about a specific topic, but I believe the same principles hold true in almost all situations.
... Too many school officials try to duck the controversy through censorship. But these efforts to stifle the debate over homosexuality are based on the false hope that harmony and tolerance will prevail if no one is allowed to say anything that might offend anyone.
This was the failed strategy administrators employed against Elliott Chambers... who insisted on wearing a sweatshirt with the words "Straight Pride." After the principal ordered him to stop wearing the shirt, Chambers sued for the right to express his views. The court ruled... that genuine tolerance in an educational setting includes tolerance for a diversity of views – even views that others may find offensive...
Sweeping polices strictly limiting student speech (for or against homosexuality) are not only wrongheaded, but also are likely to be struck down as unconstitutional. A few years ago, two high school students in Pennsylvania challenged an anti-harassment policy that prohibited a wide range of potentially "offensive" speech, including speech directed at another’s "values." The students claimed that the policy would ban them from stating their religious beliefs about homosexuality and other topics. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, holding that such a broadly worded policy violates the First Amendment.
Of course, protecting the free speech of students doesn’t mean "anything goes" in a public school. Schools can (and should) ban name-calling and other forms of harassment. And if there is clear evidence that student speech has caused substantial disruption of the school, then it shouldn’t be allowed. But schools should refrain from censoring student viewpoints – for or against homosexuality – merely because such views may offend someone or make some students uncomfortable.
If censorship and strict speech codes aren’t the answer, what is? Let students speak, but simultaneously teach them how to express their views with civility and respect. By linking First Amendment rights to civic responsibility, schools create a learning environment that is safe for all students – but also free.
Post ID: 107287273361850410
The Sunday Times - Britain
December 28, 2003
TV chiefs favour Muslims, says watchdog
Nicholas Hellen
MUSLIMS are being given preferential treatment by Britain's comedians and dramatists on television and radio, according to broadcasting watchdogs. Satirists who routinely mock Christians are said to have become "timid", "cautious" and "self-censoring" at the prospect of offending the Islamic faith.
Lord Dubs, chairman of the Broadcasting Standards Commission (BSC), said: "In portraying Muslims they have held back, they have censored themselves, they are timid.
"I have seen them pour scorn on Christianity more than on other religions. Christianity is an easier and more acceptable target — followed, to a lesser extent, by Jews and Hindus."
Dubs made his comments in a valedictory interview for the BSC, whose functions will be taken over tomorrow by Ofcom, a new quango.
He admitted that the BSC had also shown bias in favour of Muslims: "We have tried to treat the religions equally. I doubt we have succeeded. I think we have shaded a bit on the side of Islam."
The BSC recently upheld a complaint about the use of the phrase "Jesus f****** Christ" by Jamie Oliver, the chef, on Channel 4. The Right Rev Richard Holloway, former bishop of Edinburgh and a member of the BSC board, said this would not have been aired had it been about the prophet Muhammad. "There is much more sensitivity to disturbing Islam," he said.
"It is partly because the Muslim community does not have a tradition of humour about religion, although Christian leaders will stand up for things which are fundamentally important."
Truth about high school - Unpopular boy makes valedictory speech: 'A lot of you were jerks' Finally - a valedictory speech that isn't hackneyed, cliche-ridden and white-washed!
U.S. court rules nude Barbie photos are free speech - A federal appeals court on Monday upheld a Utah artist's right to make nude photos of Barbie dolls being menaced by kitchen appliances.
"He'll need the help of someone who is incapable of sympathy. Someone so cynical that the suffering of others is nothing but a source of cheap entertainment." - The Garbage Man on what Dilbert will need on his trip to Elbonia (Dilbert Season 1 - Elbonian Trip). The sad thing is that some people would actually *want* themselves to be so described.
Note from the He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, who is currently MIA:
"studies show that going on a low-cholestrol diet means lower risk of heart diseases, but higher risks of death from
suicide, accidents and fights (cholestrol/fat's effects on mood)
saddam hussein was found with Mars bars, insect repellent, and a pair of lanvin socks"
(Re: The feel good factor, maybe that's why fat people tend to be jollier)
Welcome to Handsome Boy, Steven Lim's Hompage!! - SUPER ACTION HERO IN SINGAPORE!!!!! Steven Lim is a hunk - Luo Jia Liang & Daniel Chan Xiao Dong Lookalike
Steven Lim - The Street Eyebrow Plucker
Sometimes, I also feel that i look like Hong Kong Actor Edison Chen from a certain angle. Also dun know why? Do you think so? I believe u share my sentiments. Thank you. This pic is taken on 22th December 2003 in my father's house when I was rather furious. The evil villians took my Superhero's belongings away and force me to a corner, I have no choice but to fight back with my hand gun. P.S. Please support and purchase my book. See the link above!! It really works!
1999 pic when I was only 60kg. I used to be very very skinny during my studies in Nanyang polytechnic. I hate it! Last time I dun have superpower and cannot protect innocent civilians from getting hurted. I looked weak and feeble. With my self created formulas and exercises which I have mentioned in my book, I gained 18kg of mass and muscles within half a year. Sometimes when I take a peek of the old photos, I will ask myself, "is that really you?" With strong and sturdy physique, i acquired ego and confidence. I finally become a superhero.
Is this a joke??? Maybe he wants to be our Asian Prince! You *must* check out the photos...
December 28, 2003
TV chiefs favour Muslims, says watchdog
Nicholas Hellen
MUSLIMS are being given preferential treatment by Britain's comedians and dramatists on television and radio, according to broadcasting watchdogs. Satirists who routinely mock Christians are said to have become "timid", "cautious" and "self-censoring" at the prospect of offending the Islamic faith.
Lord Dubs, chairman of the Broadcasting Standards Commission (BSC), said: "In portraying Muslims they have held back, they have censored themselves, they are timid.
"I have seen them pour scorn on Christianity more than on other religions. Christianity is an easier and more acceptable target — followed, to a lesser extent, by Jews and Hindus."
Dubs made his comments in a valedictory interview for the BSC, whose functions will be taken over tomorrow by Ofcom, a new quango.
He admitted that the BSC had also shown bias in favour of Muslims: "We have tried to treat the religions equally. I doubt we have succeeded. I think we have shaded a bit on the side of Islam."
The BSC recently upheld a complaint about the use of the phrase "Jesus f****** Christ" by Jamie Oliver, the chef, on Channel 4. The Right Rev Richard Holloway, former bishop of Edinburgh and a member of the BSC board, said this would not have been aired had it been about the prophet Muhammad. "There is much more sensitivity to disturbing Islam," he said.
"It is partly because the Muslim community does not have a tradition of humour about religion, although Christian leaders will stand up for things which are fundamentally important."
Truth about high school - Unpopular boy makes valedictory speech: 'A lot of you were jerks' Finally - a valedictory speech that isn't hackneyed, cliche-ridden and white-washed!
U.S. court rules nude Barbie photos are free speech - A federal appeals court on Monday upheld a Utah artist's right to make nude photos of Barbie dolls being menaced by kitchen appliances.
"He'll need the help of someone who is incapable of sympathy. Someone so cynical that the suffering of others is nothing but a source of cheap entertainment." - The Garbage Man on what Dilbert will need on his trip to Elbonia (Dilbert Season 1 - Elbonian Trip). The sad thing is that some people would actually *want* themselves to be so described.
Note from the He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, who is currently MIA:
"studies show that going on a low-cholestrol diet means lower risk of heart diseases, but higher risks of death from
suicide, accidents and fights (cholestrol/fat's effects on mood)
saddam hussein was found with Mars bars, insect repellent, and a pair of lanvin socks"
(Re: The feel good factor, maybe that's why fat people tend to be jollier)
Welcome to Handsome Boy, Steven Lim's Hompage!! - SUPER ACTION HERO IN SINGAPORE!!!!! Steven Lim is a hunk - Luo Jia Liang & Daniel Chan Xiao Dong Lookalike
Steven Lim - The Street Eyebrow Plucker
Sometimes, I also feel that i look like Hong Kong Actor Edison Chen from a certain angle. Also dun know why? Do you think so? I believe u share my sentiments. Thank you. This pic is taken on 22th December 2003 in my father's house when I was rather furious. The evil villians took my Superhero's belongings away and force me to a corner, I have no choice but to fight back with my hand gun. P.S. Please support and purchase my book. See the link above!! It really works!
1999 pic when I was only 60kg. I used to be very very skinny during my studies in Nanyang polytechnic. I hate it! Last time I dun have superpower and cannot protect innocent civilians from getting hurted. I looked weak and feeble. With my self created formulas and exercises which I have mentioned in my book, I gained 18kg of mass and muscles within half a year. Sometimes when I take a peek of the old photos, I will ask myself, "is that really you?" With strong and sturdy physique, i acquired ego and confidence. I finally become a superhero.
Is this a joke??? Maybe he wants to be our Asian Prince! You *must* check out the photos...
Post ID: 107285078197826397
Monday, December 29, 2003
Speedy Gonzales: Banned in the USA - Cartoon Network officials have banished Speedy Gonzales from their day and prime time lineups for fear of offending Mexican Americans, but fans of the Mexican mouse hero are fighting back
Claim: Donald Duck was once banned in Finland because the character doesn't wear pants. - Status: False.
hahaha
Dr Bob's Skeptical Quiz. Some interesting archived questions:
Why was the Linux computer operating system given its dual-boot facility?
Answer which NOBODY GOT - well, not exactly -
* Because when Linus Torvalds was developing Linux, he also wanted to play the DOS game Prince of Persia and he had only one computer
Of dead bodies of persons found drowned in the ocean, 100% are dead but 70% of them have something else in common - what is it?
Answer:
* Their flies are undone.
Scandinavian food: Why are cloudberries more expensive than lingonberries?
One of these is right:
* Because cloudberries cannot be farmed and have to be picked wild.
* Cloudberries obviously grow on clouds and getting to them is not so easy. Berry pickers are forever falling to their deaths from balloons, and off the wings of gliders and small aircraft. Needless to say, they tend to drop their baskets of berries on the way down. Extra money must be charged for cloudberries to cover funerals and ongoing labor recruitment and this makes them very expensive indeed. Sometimes cloudberry pickers land on lingonberry pickers, which ruins the lingonberries too, but more often they fall into bodies of freezing water.
If you fall from a ship in Arctic waters, what should you do?
Answer: (from some people, probably consultants, who have obviously never done it)
* Since death by freezing is believed to be worse than drowning, swim like mad for the bottom.
What unusual effect would you observe if you mixed 500ml of water with 500ml of vodka?
Answer:
* There would be markedly less than 1000ml of fluid - 941ml has been claimed. I tried this but I cannot remember the result, or anything else for that matter, including how I came to wake up in the arms of a tattooed sailor on a steamer bound for Vladivostok.
I wish I were as witty.
Claim: Donald Duck was once banned in Finland because the character doesn't wear pants. - Status: False.
hahaha
Dr Bob's Skeptical Quiz. Some interesting archived questions:
Why was the Linux computer operating system given its dual-boot facility?
Answer which NOBODY GOT - well, not exactly -
* Because when Linus Torvalds was developing Linux, he also wanted to play the DOS game Prince of Persia and he had only one computer
Of dead bodies of persons found drowned in the ocean, 100% are dead but 70% of them have something else in common - what is it?
Answer:
* Their flies are undone.
Scandinavian food: Why are cloudberries more expensive than lingonberries?
One of these is right:
* Because cloudberries cannot be farmed and have to be picked wild.
* Cloudberries obviously grow on clouds and getting to them is not so easy. Berry pickers are forever falling to their deaths from balloons, and off the wings of gliders and small aircraft. Needless to say, they tend to drop their baskets of berries on the way down. Extra money must be charged for cloudberries to cover funerals and ongoing labor recruitment and this makes them very expensive indeed. Sometimes cloudberry pickers land on lingonberry pickers, which ruins the lingonberries too, but more often they fall into bodies of freezing water.
If you fall from a ship in Arctic waters, what should you do?
Answer: (from some people, probably consultants, who have obviously never done it)
* Since death by freezing is believed to be worse than drowning, swim like mad for the bottom.
What unusual effect would you observe if you mixed 500ml of water with 500ml of vodka?
Answer:
* There would be markedly less than 1000ml of fluid - 941ml has been claimed. I tried this but I cannot remember the result, or anything else for that matter, including how I came to wake up in the arms of a tattooed sailor on a steamer bound for Vladivostok.
I wish I were as witty.
Post ID: 107271162946125021
Sunday, December 28, 2003
The Crown of Roses (aka "Legend" (When Jesus Christ was but a child), 16 Children's Songs Op.54/5)
Peter Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
When Jesus Christ was yet a child
He had a garden small and wild,
Where in he cherished roses fair,
And wove them in to garlands there.
Now once, as summertime drew nigh,
There came a troop of children by,
And seeing roses on the tree,
With shouts they plucked them merrily.
'Do you bind roses in your hair?'
They cried, in scorn, to Jesus there.
The boy said humbly: 'Take, I pray,
All but the naked thorns away.'
Then of the thorns they made a crown,
And with rough fingers pressed it down,
Till on his fore head fair and young
Red drops of blood like roses sprung
Much of the work expresses passionate sorrow; its "motto theme" is taken from a Russian Orthodox funeral chant
I first heard this song performed by a Singapore Secondary School Choir (Dunman High?) at one of Nelson's Choral Workshops in 1999. I used to have the King's Singers version of this song on my playlist, but I lost it in my catastrophic hard disk crash. Tim has it, and will send it to me one day, but in the meantime I have one version by Aled Jones and another by the Choir Of Clare College, Cambridge.
I finally find out what "Gregorian, Masters of Chant" is about.
Gregorian is comprised solely of artists who are steeped deeply in Christian church and choral music: Philip Conway, Thomas Barnard, Jeremy Birchall, Andrew Busher, Michael Dore, Mark Bradbury, Timothy Holmes, Roger Langford, John Langly, Gregory Moore, David Porter Thomas, Christopher Tickner, and Alex Mack. They are among the most sought-after performers in England`s major cathedrals (London, Cambridge, Oxford, Birmingham) and hail from the most classic of classical institutions, such as the Academy of St. Martin, the Royal College of Music, King`s College Cambridge, Royal Northern School of Music, and Trinity College of Music.
Right.
"Why don’t you write books people can read?" - Nora Joyce, to her husband James
Peter Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
When Jesus Christ was yet a child
He had a garden small and wild,
Where in he cherished roses fair,
And wove them in to garlands there.
Now once, as summertime drew nigh,
There came a troop of children by,
And seeing roses on the tree,
With shouts they plucked them merrily.
'Do you bind roses in your hair?'
They cried, in scorn, to Jesus there.
The boy said humbly: 'Take, I pray,
All but the naked thorns away.'
Then of the thorns they made a crown,
And with rough fingers pressed it down,
Till on his fore head fair and young
Red drops of blood like roses sprung
Much of the work expresses passionate sorrow; its "motto theme" is taken from a Russian Orthodox funeral chant
I first heard this song performed by a Singapore Secondary School Choir (Dunman High?) at one of Nelson's Choral Workshops in 1999. I used to have the King's Singers version of this song on my playlist, but I lost it in my catastrophic hard disk crash. Tim has it, and will send it to me one day, but in the meantime I have one version by Aled Jones and another by the Choir Of Clare College, Cambridge.
I finally find out what "Gregorian, Masters of Chant" is about.
Gregorian is comprised solely of artists who are steeped deeply in Christian church and choral music: Philip Conway, Thomas Barnard, Jeremy Birchall, Andrew Busher, Michael Dore, Mark Bradbury, Timothy Holmes, Roger Langford, John Langly, Gregory Moore, David Porter Thomas, Christopher Tickner, and Alex Mack. They are among the most sought-after performers in England`s major cathedrals (London, Cambridge, Oxford, Birmingham) and hail from the most classic of classical institutions, such as the Academy of St. Martin, the Royal College of Music, King`s College Cambridge, Royal Northern School of Music, and Trinity College of Music.
Right.
"Why don’t you write books people can read?" - Nora Joyce, to her husband James
Post ID: 107261794671434216
Eat Me. Just Eat Me. is back.
My brother in law pointed out to me that in anime, people are always shouting. I agree, this being one of the reasons why I dislike it. However, I notice that on the rare occasions when they are *not* shouting, they are talking in hushed, graven tones, usually while looking at the floor with clenched fists.
My right eye seems to have become slightly astigmatic, requiring 25 degrees of correction. Oh well, not bad after 8 years without any deterioration.
My brother in law pointed out to me that in anime, people are always shouting. I agree, this being one of the reasons why I dislike it. However, I notice that on the rare occasions when they are *not* shouting, they are talking in hushed, graven tones, usually while looking at the floor with clenched fists.
My right eye seems to have become slightly astigmatic, requiring 25 degrees of correction. Oh well, not bad after 8 years without any deterioration.
Post ID: 107259434462387043
Thursday, December 25, 2003
In its desperation, 42 has resorted to threatening us with perhaps the vilest threat it is possible to threaten Full-Time Slaves (NSF) with - tinkering with our ORD and extending their grubby grip from beyond the grave to grasp and glom us. We have been told that it is official policy that if we do not pass our IPPT by the time we ORD, they will not give our Pink ICs back to us, and that they'll issue SAF 100As to get us to come back for Remedial Training every Sunday until we pass. Whether they are able to follow through on these threats is another thing, but the fact that for the sake of their promotions and bonuses, they are capable of ominously warning of the impending visitation of said threats, and doubtless wishing that they could do so, to fellow human beings speaks volumes. Pity they have from me, and contempt, I wager, from many more.
Now my company is going to charge people who bring contraband in, instead of merely eating 5 days off. In other news, someone was charged and slapped with 14 days Stoppage Of Leave for waking up late (6:45am). The principle of proportionality of the punishment to the crime, already lamentably absent in military justice, is being perverted further. If one gets 2 weeks SOL for sleeping late, I suppose going AWOL can net you the Death Penalty. 42SAR is getting from stupidly sadistic to ridiculously vicious.
The tiring and useless 5BX is gone. Whee. An extra 45 mins - 1 hour of uninterrupted sleep, here we come. But we are promised mysteriously that those caught not "putting in effort" during the Unit Fitness Program will be singled out for "special training", and both these phrases are extremely vague. But why do I have the feeling that this is just the calm before the storm, the deadly silence before the swoosh of the guillotine's blade, or the last meal of a convict on death row, if you like?
We're being forced to clear a day of leave/off on 31st December even though we'll only gain half a day off. Bah, I suspect it's part of the Evil Masterplan to deprive us of our leave.
My unit held Christmas Celebrations and invited some "less privileged children" over. We had games stalls, vehicle and weapons displays, a Christmas tree, made using camouflage netting (...), and even our own Santa Claus, in his rover (...), and a gazillion people came up to me to comment that I should have been Santa. The Mess's celebrations the next day looked suspiciously familiar though, with the same balloon sculptor and games stalls. "Santa's Rover" even made an appearance again. Later, what was billed as the NTU Choir performed at our Christmas celebrations, and throughout I was puzzled at their lack of standard, which was not helped by our lack of condenser mics, which led to an unbalanced sound. Later I found out they were actually hall residents, so I suppose I can forgive them :)
Water sports at Jurong East was invigorating, though the complex was swarmed with Primary School kids. I should be grateful at least that nary a soul aged older than 13 and younger than 25 was to be seen, since the Sec 2-5s probably thought it un-hip to visit such a place and the JC and Poly students were sleeping off hangovers from the previous night's parties. With the closure of Fantasy Island some years back, Jurong East Swimming Complex is probably now the best place in Singapore to partake in Water Sports, with many contraptions that I am at a loss for words to describe, and ridiculously cheap too.
I was leery of the tube-slides - those big tubes placed above the ground and lubricated with flowing water, down which users slide in joyful terror - at first, but decided to try one just once. It wasn't as bad as I thought, and the whoops, squawks and shrieks I emitted on my way down entertained the whole pool, or so I am told. Unfortunately, my fourth experience, on the highest tube-slide of all, was not as enjoyable. Somewhere after the halfway point, my float flipped over, turning me onto my stomach and landing on my bag. Stunned, I has not the sense to flip myself back over, or to mount my float again, and my whoops changed to cries of consternation as my nipples were given a good rubbing by the floor of the tube, until I plopped into the pool unceremoniously, to hoots of laughter.
A fact that puzzled me was the abundance of Malay women in tudungs. They looked so forlorn sitting by the pools and looking at their children frolicking, the females in uncomfortable swinsuits with overly long sleeves and pant legs, I felt sorry for them.
We were going for a Sakae Sushi buffet but many of us hadn't eaten breakfast and couldn't stand the hunger, so we had a quick bite at the KFC there, at which I realised that KFC's wedges were actually very lousy, many being so big as to be mostly tasteless due to the seasoning not permeating the potato, and watched as some girls stole floats which another group had unwisely left outside the restaurant, costing them $3 a float.
Quotes:
[On the CRO] Anything interesting? [Me: No. Oh, no more 5BX!] You know who to thank? [Me: You ah?] Us officers. We're too lazy to come down and conduct 5BX.
[On my high pitched yawns] What is that supposed to be? Your mating call?
Warren Officers (Warrant)
Hey, look, it's Santa Claus! He's gonna come and give gifts to you so go make fun of him.
Today he was talking to someone who commited suicide also. [Me: He's a necromancer? Can talk with the dead?] (attempted)
I'm thinking of including some new original section on my homepage when it comes up again, but I'm bereft of ideas. Homepages are all the same nowadays - most of them are blogs or glorified photo albums.
I always love the Economist's year end Christmas (not-quite-)double issue. I wish they had interesting special reports on such an eclectic range of esoteric topics the whole year round, like Congolese Music and Human Hair. I particularly like both one writer's swan song which, though overall approving of her former employer, is surprisingly frank and talks about some of the inevitable parts she doesn't like about it and the uber rare piece on Singapore - "A kinder, gentler BG", about our future Prime Minister (requires a subscription to view). A pity, really, that they do stories on Singapore so rarely (note how under Singapore's Country Briefing section, there are so few articles about this nation). I await the publication, in next year's first issue, of the inevitable letter from the authorities which will doubtless be published with nary a sentence cut, for fear of being gazetted again.
I am wroth. It turns out that, all along, independent girls' schools ($100 for all 4 of them) have been charging their students as little as half that independent boys' schools charge theirs ($150 for SJI and $200 for the rest). Why is this the case? Could it be that boys break more things than girls?
5621 Halal certificates were issued by MUIS last year, up from 3460 and 2780 in 2001 and 2000 respectively. This does not include the pseudo-Halal outlets which serve Halal food but not alcohol. I am happy for them, for to be restricted to eating Fast Food and Malay Food while you are outside (albeit of your own will) is dreadful, but at the same time I wonder when we will no longer see pork on restaurant menus island-wide.
Mobile Armored Strike Kommand -- MASK - I recall I used to like this show, but not why, especially since I can't remember what it was about.
I feel weary, as if some vampiric organism has been feeding on my life energies. Sometimes I have the feeling that, come what may, it will not make any difference to me, but I know that in the distant future, it will begin to matter again.
Now my company is going to charge people who bring contraband in, instead of merely eating 5 days off. In other news, someone was charged and slapped with 14 days Stoppage Of Leave for waking up late (6:45am). The principle of proportionality of the punishment to the crime, already lamentably absent in military justice, is being perverted further. If one gets 2 weeks SOL for sleeping late, I suppose going AWOL can net you the Death Penalty. 42SAR is getting from stupidly sadistic to ridiculously vicious.
The tiring and useless 5BX is gone. Whee. An extra 45 mins - 1 hour of uninterrupted sleep, here we come. But we are promised mysteriously that those caught not "putting in effort" during the Unit Fitness Program will be singled out for "special training", and both these phrases are extremely vague. But why do I have the feeling that this is just the calm before the storm, the deadly silence before the swoosh of the guillotine's blade, or the last meal of a convict on death row, if you like?
We're being forced to clear a day of leave/off on 31st December even though we'll only gain half a day off. Bah, I suspect it's part of the Evil Masterplan to deprive us of our leave.
My unit held Christmas Celebrations and invited some "less privileged children" over. We had games stalls, vehicle and weapons displays, a Christmas tree, made using camouflage netting (...), and even our own Santa Claus, in his rover (...), and a gazillion people came up to me to comment that I should have been Santa. The Mess's celebrations the next day looked suspiciously familiar though, with the same balloon sculptor and games stalls. "Santa's Rover" even made an appearance again. Later, what was billed as the NTU Choir performed at our Christmas celebrations, and throughout I was puzzled at their lack of standard, which was not helped by our lack of condenser mics, which led to an unbalanced sound. Later I found out they were actually hall residents, so I suppose I can forgive them :)
Water sports at Jurong East was invigorating, though the complex was swarmed with Primary School kids. I should be grateful at least that nary a soul aged older than 13 and younger than 25 was to be seen, since the Sec 2-5s probably thought it un-hip to visit such a place and the JC and Poly students were sleeping off hangovers from the previous night's parties. With the closure of Fantasy Island some years back, Jurong East Swimming Complex is probably now the best place in Singapore to partake in Water Sports, with many contraptions that I am at a loss for words to describe, and ridiculously cheap too.
I was leery of the tube-slides - those big tubes placed above the ground and lubricated with flowing water, down which users slide in joyful terror - at first, but decided to try one just once. It wasn't as bad as I thought, and the whoops, squawks and shrieks I emitted on my way down entertained the whole pool, or so I am told. Unfortunately, my fourth experience, on the highest tube-slide of all, was not as enjoyable. Somewhere after the halfway point, my float flipped over, turning me onto my stomach and landing on my bag. Stunned, I has not the sense to flip myself back over, or to mount my float again, and my whoops changed to cries of consternation as my nipples were given a good rubbing by the floor of the tube, until I plopped into the pool unceremoniously, to hoots of laughter.
A fact that puzzled me was the abundance of Malay women in tudungs. They looked so forlorn sitting by the pools and looking at their children frolicking, the females in uncomfortable swinsuits with overly long sleeves and pant legs, I felt sorry for them.
We were going for a Sakae Sushi buffet but many of us hadn't eaten breakfast and couldn't stand the hunger, so we had a quick bite at the KFC there, at which I realised that KFC's wedges were actually very lousy, many being so big as to be mostly tasteless due to the seasoning not permeating the potato, and watched as some girls stole floats which another group had unwisely left outside the restaurant, costing them $3 a float.
Quotes:
[On the CRO] Anything interesting? [Me: No. Oh, no more 5BX!] You know who to thank? [Me: You ah?] Us officers. We're too lazy to come down and conduct 5BX.
[On my high pitched yawns] What is that supposed to be? Your mating call?
Warren Officers (Warrant)
Hey, look, it's Santa Claus! He's gonna come and give gifts to you so go make fun of him.
Today he was talking to someone who commited suicide also. [Me: He's a necromancer? Can talk with the dead?] (attempted)
I'm thinking of including some new original section on my homepage when it comes up again, but I'm bereft of ideas. Homepages are all the same nowadays - most of them are blogs or glorified photo albums.
I always love the Economist's year end Christmas (not-quite-)double issue. I wish they had interesting special reports on such an eclectic range of esoteric topics the whole year round, like Congolese Music and Human Hair. I particularly like both one writer's swan song which, though overall approving of her former employer, is surprisingly frank and talks about some of the inevitable parts she doesn't like about it and the uber rare piece on Singapore - "A kinder, gentler BG", about our future Prime Minister (requires a subscription to view). A pity, really, that they do stories on Singapore so rarely (note how under Singapore's Country Briefing section, there are so few articles about this nation). I await the publication, in next year's first issue, of the inevitable letter from the authorities which will doubtless be published with nary a sentence cut, for fear of being gazetted again.
I am wroth. It turns out that, all along, independent girls' schools ($100 for all 4 of them) have been charging their students as little as half that independent boys' schools charge theirs ($150 for SJI and $200 for the rest). Why is this the case? Could it be that boys break more things than girls?
5621 Halal certificates were issued by MUIS last year, up from 3460 and 2780 in 2001 and 2000 respectively. This does not include the pseudo-Halal outlets which serve Halal food but not alcohol. I am happy for them, for to be restricted to eating Fast Food and Malay Food while you are outside (albeit of your own will) is dreadful, but at the same time I wonder when we will no longer see pork on restaurant menus island-wide.
Mobile Armored Strike Kommand -- MASK - I recall I used to like this show, but not why, especially since I can't remember what it was about.
I feel weary, as if some vampiric organism has been feeding on my life energies. Sometimes I have the feeling that, come what may, it will not make any difference to me, but I know that in the distant future, it will begin to matter again.
Post ID: 107236277846665487
IDIOT SON OF AN ASSHOLE-AND HE'S OUR PRESIDENT!!! - People really hate Dubya. If someone were to do this about Singaporean leaders, I wonder what would happen to him.
Jangle bells makes them crazy - 'An Austrian trade union has claimed the repetitive playing of Christmas Carols in department stores is nothing short of "psycho-terrorism" for salespeople. From morning to night, for weeks before Christmas, there was the same Christmas music in department stores over and over again, said Gottfried Rieser of the Union of Private Employees. "Many staff in the retail sector suffer psychologically from it. They get aggressions and aversions against Christmas music. On Christmas Eve with their families, they can't stand Silent Night or Jingle Bells any more," he said.'
Man burns life savings but fails in suicide bid
Bad Santa tries to rob bank - Police say a man dressed as Santa Claus tried to rob the Alberta Treasury Branch in Westlock on Friday, then drove off in a dark pickup truck or SUV.
Santa's knee off-limits - A small town in New Zealand has banned children from sitting on Santa's knee because organisers fear liability if anything goes wrong, organisers said.
University jeered for anti-Santa web warning - News that affirmative action officers at the University of Central Michigan had tried to 'ban' the use of Father Christmas and reindeer images for fear of offending people of other non-Christian faiths, drew nationwide attention this month. The anti-Political Correctness brigade was especially incensed.
Jangle bells makes them crazy - 'An Austrian trade union has claimed the repetitive playing of Christmas Carols in department stores is nothing short of "psycho-terrorism" for salespeople. From morning to night, for weeks before Christmas, there was the same Christmas music in department stores over and over again, said Gottfried Rieser of the Union of Private Employees. "Many staff in the retail sector suffer psychologically from it. They get aggressions and aversions against Christmas music. On Christmas Eve with their families, they can't stand Silent Night or Jingle Bells any more," he said.'
Man burns life savings but fails in suicide bid
Bad Santa tries to rob bank - Police say a man dressed as Santa Claus tried to rob the Alberta Treasury Branch in Westlock on Friday, then drove off in a dark pickup truck or SUV.
Santa's knee off-limits - A small town in New Zealand has banned children from sitting on Santa's knee because organisers fear liability if anything goes wrong, organisers said.
University jeered for anti-Santa web warning - News that affirmative action officers at the University of Central Michigan had tried to 'ban' the use of Father Christmas and reindeer images for fear of offending people of other non-Christian faiths, drew nationwide attention this month. The anti-Political Correctness brigade was especially incensed.
Post ID: 107235761710652589
Wednesday, December 24, 2003
Pavarotti on Elephants
Queen's corgi killed by daughter's terrier - LONDON (Reuters) - The Queen is mourning the death of one of her beloved corgis after it was savaged by her daughter's bull terrier, newspapers report.
A little girl was talking to her teacher about whales.
The teacher said it was physically impossible for a whale to swallow a human
because even though it was a very large mammal its throat was very small.
The little girl stated that Jonah was swallowed by a whale.
Irritated, the teacher reiterated that a whale could not swallow a human; it was physically impossible.
The little girl said, "When I get to heaven I will ask Jonah".
The teacher asked, "What if Jonah went to hell?"
The little girl replied, "Then you ask him".
****************************************************
A Kindergarten teacher was observing her classroom of children while they were drawing. She would occasionally walk around to see each child's work.
As she got to one little girl who was working diligently, she asked what the drawing was.
The girl replied, "I'm drawing God."
The teacher paused and said, "But no one knows what God looks like."
Without missing a beat, or looking up from her drawing, the girl replied, "They will in a minute."
***********************************
One day a little girl was sitting and watching her mother do the dishes at the kitchen sink. She suddenly noticed that her mother had several strands of white hair sticking out in contrast on her brunette head.
She looked at her mother and inquisitively asked, "Why are some of your hairs white, Mom?"
Her mother replied, "Well, every time that you do something wrong and make me cry or unhappy, one of my hairs turns white."
The little girl thought about this revelation for a while and then said, "Momma, how come ALL of grandma's hairs are white?"
********************************
The children had all been photographed, and the teacher was trying to persuade them each to buy a copy of the group picture.
"Just think how nice it will be to look at it when you are all grown up and say, 'There's Jennifer, she's a lawyer,' or 'That's Michael, He's a doctor.'
A small voice at the back of the room rang out, "And there's the teacher, She's dead."
***************************************
A teacher was giving a lesson on the circulation of the blood. Trying to make the matter clearer, she said, "Now, class, if I stood on my head, the blood, as you know, would run into it, and I would turn red in the face.."Yes," the class said.
"Then why is it that while I am standing upright in the ordinary position the blood doesn't run into my feet?"
A little fellow shouted, "Cause your feet ain't empty."
**********************************
The children were lined up in the cafeteria of a Catholic elementary school for lunch. At the head of the table was a large pile of apples.
The nun made a note, and posted on the apple tray:
"Take only ONE. God is watching."
Moving further along the lunch line, at the other end of the table was a large pile of chocolate chipcookies.
A child had written a note, "Take all you want. God is watching the apples."
Queen's corgi killed by daughter's terrier - LONDON (Reuters) - The Queen is mourning the death of one of her beloved corgis after it was savaged by her daughter's bull terrier, newspapers report.
A little girl was talking to her teacher about whales.
The teacher said it was physically impossible for a whale to swallow a human
because even though it was a very large mammal its throat was very small.
The little girl stated that Jonah was swallowed by a whale.
Irritated, the teacher reiterated that a whale could not swallow a human; it was physically impossible.
The little girl said, "When I get to heaven I will ask Jonah".
The teacher asked, "What if Jonah went to hell?"
The little girl replied, "Then you ask him".
****************************************************
A Kindergarten teacher was observing her classroom of children while they were drawing. She would occasionally walk around to see each child's work.
As she got to one little girl who was working diligently, she asked what the drawing was.
The girl replied, "I'm drawing God."
The teacher paused and said, "But no one knows what God looks like."
Without missing a beat, or looking up from her drawing, the girl replied, "They will in a minute."
***********************************
One day a little girl was sitting and watching her mother do the dishes at the kitchen sink. She suddenly noticed that her mother had several strands of white hair sticking out in contrast on her brunette head.
She looked at her mother and inquisitively asked, "Why are some of your hairs white, Mom?"
Her mother replied, "Well, every time that you do something wrong and make me cry or unhappy, one of my hairs turns white."
The little girl thought about this revelation for a while and then said, "Momma, how come ALL of grandma's hairs are white?"
********************************
The children had all been photographed, and the teacher was trying to persuade them each to buy a copy of the group picture.
"Just think how nice it will be to look at it when you are all grown up and say, 'There's Jennifer, she's a lawyer,' or 'That's Michael, He's a doctor.'
A small voice at the back of the room rang out, "And there's the teacher, She's dead."
***************************************
A teacher was giving a lesson on the circulation of the blood. Trying to make the matter clearer, she said, "Now, class, if I stood on my head, the blood, as you know, would run into it, and I would turn red in the face.."Yes," the class said.
"Then why is it that while I am standing upright in the ordinary position the blood doesn't run into my feet?"
A little fellow shouted, "Cause your feet ain't empty."
**********************************
The children were lined up in the cafeteria of a Catholic elementary school for lunch. At the head of the table was a large pile of apples.
The nun made a note, and posted on the apple tray:
"Take only ONE. God is watching."
Moving further along the lunch line, at the other end of the table was a large pile of chocolate chipcookies.
A child had written a note, "Take all you want. God is watching the apples."
Post ID: 107226937772166406
Monday, December 22, 2003
These two letters largely sum up my views about learning Chinese.
Why coerce young into learning?
I REFER to the letter, 'Speak the language or lose out' (ST, Dec 5), by Dr Chang Kai Cheh and those of some previous writers to The Straits Times Forum on the subject of learning Chinese.
The arguments that Chinese will be important in the future because of China's increasing share of the world economy, miss the point raised by the letters that started this thread of discussion.
Nobody seriously disputes that Chinese will be important for this reason. The question raised by anguished parents is why the system here has to be so coercive about the subject.
The issue here is not about the merits of Chinese, but about the failings of the school system in Singapore. Is this a society that allows people to follow their aptitudes and passions - and to ignore what does not interest them - or a society that insists on extruding everybody from the same grinder?
I also note with concern the ethnocentricity of some assumptions. Just because a person is Chinese by ancestry does not mean he must be Chinese by culture nor does it mean he has any obligation to be fluent in Chinese. To insist on this is a form of racism - pigeonholing people by the colour of their skin.
The demand to learn Chinese is placed on children of Chinese ancestry, regardless of their home language. Yet if the most pressing reasons for learning Chinese are economic, why not make the same demand of all Singaporeans?
By the same token, since economists generally think that India, too, will be a rising economic power, shouldn't these proponents of Chinese do-or-die insist that all our children learn Hindi or forfeit a place in universities here?
The issue is not about language but about our frame of mind.
AU WAIPANG
Problem lies in way language is taught
I REFER to the letter "It all boils down to attitude (ST, Dec 3) by Mr Chee Yew Chung. He said that the difficulty Chinese Singaporeans face in learning Chinese "all boils down to the attitude... and the will to do so".
I am a secondary school student, and as much as I agree with his point of view, I feel that the way in which the language is taught in school is also a cause of the widespread difficulty in learning Chinese.
Under the current Chinese language syllabus, the subject is taught in such a way that students must memorise countless combinations of characters, words and phrases, many of which are cliches.
As a result, student essays suffer from a severe lack of creativity and style, while the vocal aspect of Chinese is almost entirely neglected.
In short, Chinese is taught only as far as content and structure are concerned, whereas cultivation of a better appreciation for the language is sadly missing from the picture.
The use of the language as a written form of communication is also neglected.
Hence, for many, China's rich culture, illustrious history and elaborate literature remain inaccessible, uncharted territory.
Secondly, as with other academic subjects, the teaching of Chinese in schools here is plagued with an over-emphasis on results at the expense of the actual process of learning.
Teachers often use exam results as benchmarks. Thus, each academic year becomes nothing more than an exam-oriented crash course.
While most agree that exam results are an accurate representation of a student's competence in a subject, this does not apply to the Chinese language.
In this case, results are but a reflection of the student's skills in exam techniques such as memorising vocabulary - hence enabling the student to answer "fill in the blank" questions - and understanding the tested letter structure in order to answer functional writing questions.
As a result, a student with a relatively good grasp of the language need not necessarily score well, and vice versa.
In this situation, students are encouraged to put in effort to score well rather than to actually be proficient in the language.
This contributes to the feeling of pointlessness that many students experience when learning Chinese.
As my friends put it, "Studying so hard just to fill in a couple of blanks - is it worth it?"
In such an environment, will students feel interested in learning Chinese?
Will students' grasp of the language show some noticeable improvement?
A language cannot be learnt through intensive drilling; it must be cultivated through years of use and experience.
Perhaps it is time for the Government to review the system, to prepare youths for a future in which bilingualism will become ever more important.
TAN YAN SHUO
Screwed Up Girl gets screwed by the NKF:
"Someone should seriously go SUE the NKF!
I am bloody pissed off now
Received a message saying "Merry Xmas from someone who treasures ur friendship. U have created miracles for those you care about. Reply "hi" via SMS to find out who's thinking about you".
It sounded like a greeting card/SMS thing a friend sent right?
So I replied "hi" and suddenly I received a call, and STUPID Sharon Au's cheena voice came blasting out of the phone saying THANK YOU FOR THE DONATION.
I did not bloody donate to the NKF! They keep cheating people's money, this is NOT THE FIRST TIME I HEARD OF SUCH THINGS HAPPENING, and the kidney patients complain about not receiving the funds too!
SHEESH, I am super pissed off now... may kick up a fuss when my bill comes... Why can such organizations be so unorthodox sometimes?! They make me want to lose all faith in Singapore charitable organizations sometimes."
I think someone should go napalm their building.
Why coerce young into learning?
I REFER to the letter, 'Speak the language or lose out' (ST, Dec 5), by Dr Chang Kai Cheh and those of some previous writers to The Straits Times Forum on the subject of learning Chinese.
The arguments that Chinese will be important in the future because of China's increasing share of the world economy, miss the point raised by the letters that started this thread of discussion.
Nobody seriously disputes that Chinese will be important for this reason. The question raised by anguished parents is why the system here has to be so coercive about the subject.
The issue here is not about the merits of Chinese, but about the failings of the school system in Singapore. Is this a society that allows people to follow their aptitudes and passions - and to ignore what does not interest them - or a society that insists on extruding everybody from the same grinder?
I also note with concern the ethnocentricity of some assumptions. Just because a person is Chinese by ancestry does not mean he must be Chinese by culture nor does it mean he has any obligation to be fluent in Chinese. To insist on this is a form of racism - pigeonholing people by the colour of their skin.
The demand to learn Chinese is placed on children of Chinese ancestry, regardless of their home language. Yet if the most pressing reasons for learning Chinese are economic, why not make the same demand of all Singaporeans?
By the same token, since economists generally think that India, too, will be a rising economic power, shouldn't these proponents of Chinese do-or-die insist that all our children learn Hindi or forfeit a place in universities here?
The issue is not about language but about our frame of mind.
AU WAIPANG
Problem lies in way language is taught
I REFER to the letter "It all boils down to attitude (ST, Dec 3) by Mr Chee Yew Chung. He said that the difficulty Chinese Singaporeans face in learning Chinese "all boils down to the attitude... and the will to do so".
I am a secondary school student, and as much as I agree with his point of view, I feel that the way in which the language is taught in school is also a cause of the widespread difficulty in learning Chinese.
Under the current Chinese language syllabus, the subject is taught in such a way that students must memorise countless combinations of characters, words and phrases, many of which are cliches.
As a result, student essays suffer from a severe lack of creativity and style, while the vocal aspect of Chinese is almost entirely neglected.
In short, Chinese is taught only as far as content and structure are concerned, whereas cultivation of a better appreciation for the language is sadly missing from the picture.
The use of the language as a written form of communication is also neglected.
Hence, for many, China's rich culture, illustrious history and elaborate literature remain inaccessible, uncharted territory.
Secondly, as with other academic subjects, the teaching of Chinese in schools here is plagued with an over-emphasis on results at the expense of the actual process of learning.
Teachers often use exam results as benchmarks. Thus, each academic year becomes nothing more than an exam-oriented crash course.
While most agree that exam results are an accurate representation of a student's competence in a subject, this does not apply to the Chinese language.
In this case, results are but a reflection of the student's skills in exam techniques such as memorising vocabulary - hence enabling the student to answer "fill in the blank" questions - and understanding the tested letter structure in order to answer functional writing questions.
As a result, a student with a relatively good grasp of the language need not necessarily score well, and vice versa.
In this situation, students are encouraged to put in effort to score well rather than to actually be proficient in the language.
This contributes to the feeling of pointlessness that many students experience when learning Chinese.
As my friends put it, "Studying so hard just to fill in a couple of blanks - is it worth it?"
In such an environment, will students feel interested in learning Chinese?
Will students' grasp of the language show some noticeable improvement?
A language cannot be learnt through intensive drilling; it must be cultivated through years of use and experience.
Perhaps it is time for the Government to review the system, to prepare youths for a future in which bilingualism will become ever more important.
TAN YAN SHUO
Screwed Up Girl gets screwed by the NKF:
"Someone should seriously go SUE the NKF!
I am bloody pissed off now
Received a message saying "Merry Xmas from someone who treasures ur friendship. U have created miracles for those you care about. Reply "hi" via SMS to find out who's thinking about you".
It sounded like a greeting card/SMS thing a friend sent right?
So I replied "hi" and suddenly I received a call, and STUPID Sharon Au's cheena voice came blasting out of the phone saying THANK YOU FOR THE DONATION.
I did not bloody donate to the NKF! They keep cheating people's money, this is NOT THE FIRST TIME I HEARD OF SUCH THINGS HAPPENING, and the kidney patients complain about not receiving the funds too!
SHEESH, I am super pissed off now... may kick up a fuss when my bill comes... Why can such organizations be so unorthodox sometimes?! They make me want to lose all faith in Singapore charitable organizations sometimes."
I think someone should go napalm their building.
Post ID: 107209327324745502
Sunday, December 21, 2003
Empress Cinema in Clementi may start their shows on time (or even earlier, causing you to miss the first minutes, as I did for Return of the King), shine bright lights into your eyes at the end of the movie and have no escalators to whiz you up in comfort, but it *was* gloriously empty just now, considering it was a Sunday afternoon, so we chose seats with generous legroom and the tickets cost $7 each - $1.50 cheaper than elsewhere. Not "small, musty and none-too-clean", no.
Return of the King was possibly the most emotionally evocative experience I've had in front of the silver screen.
I hate my VCR. Among its numerous quirks, if you forget to turn it off, pre-programmed recording will not take place, which is how I missed today's episode of Power Rangers Time Force.
In other news, the "3" key on my funky handphone cover came out and could not be popped back, and some others seemed loose. Luckily, a spare though not-so-funky cover was where I remembered. That's what you get for $5 at a Pasar Malam stall run by Ah Bengs.
Return of the King was possibly the most emotionally evocative experience I've had in front of the silver screen.
I hate my VCR. Among its numerous quirks, if you forget to turn it off, pre-programmed recording will not take place, which is how I missed today's episode of Power Rangers Time Force.
In other news, the "3" key on my funky handphone cover came out and could not be popped back, and some others seemed loose. Luckily, a spare though not-so-funky cover was where I remembered. That's what you get for $5 at a Pasar Malam stall run by Ah Bengs.
Post ID: 107199941484003041
NICE TITS - Pictures of Tits - Never have I seen nicer ones. Hell, I rarely get to see tits in the first place. Those who get to see them often must be very fortunate :)
Disturbing Search Requests - For those who like checking their referrer logs
The following summarises what I think of almost all modern art, and much modern music.
"Rodin's successors noted the amazing things he had done with light and shadow and mass and composition - whether you see it or not - and they copied that much. Oh, how they copied it! And extended it. What they failed to see was that every major work of the master told a story and laid bare the human heart. Instead, they got involved with 'design' and became contemptuous of any painting or sculpture that told a story - sneeing, they dubbed such work 'literary' - a dirty word. They went all out for abstractions, not deigning to paint or carve anything that resembled the human world."
Jubal shrugged. "Abstract design is all right - for wall paper or linoleum. But /art/ is the process of evoking pity and terror, which is not abstract at all but very human. What the self-styled modern artists are doing is a sort of unemotional pseudo-intellectual masturbation... whereas creative art is more like intercourse, in which the artist must seduce - render emotional - his audience, each time. These laddies who won't deign to do that - and perhaps can't - of course lost the public. If they hadn't lobbied for endless subsidies, they would have starved or been forced to go to work long ago. Because the ordinary bloke will not voluntarily pay for 'art' that leaves him unmoved - if he does pay for it, the money has to be conned out of him, by taxes or such."
"You know, Jubal, I've always wondered why I didn't give a hoot for paintings or statues - but I thought it was something missing in /me/, like color blindless."
"Mmm, one does have to learn to look at art, just as you must know French to read a story printed in French. But in general it's up to the artist to use language that can be understood, not hide it in some private code like Pepys and his diary. Most of these jokers don't even /want/ to use language you and I know or can learn... they would rather sneer at us and be smug, because we 'fail' to see what they are driving at. If indeed they are driving at anything - obscurity is usually the refuge of incompetence. Ben, would you call /me/ an artist?"
"Huh? Well I've never thought about it. You write a pretty good stick."
"Thank you. 'Artist' is a word I avoid for the same reasons I hate to be called 'Doctor'. But I /am/ an artist, albeit a minor one. Admittedly most of my stuff is fit to read only once... and not even once for a busy person who already knows the little I have to say. But I am an /honest/ artist, because what I write is consciously intended to reach the customer... reach him and affect him, if possible with pity and terror... or, if not, at least to divert the tedium of hours with a chuckle or an odd idea. But I am /never/ trying to hide it from him in a private language, nor am I seeking the praise of other writers for 'technique' or other balderdash. I want the praise of the cash customer, given in cash because I've reached him - or I don't want anything. Support for the arts - /merde/! A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore! Damn it, you punched one of my buttons. Let me fill your glass and you tell me what is on your mind."
--- Robert Heinlein, Stranger In A Strange Land (Part Four - "His Scandalous Career", Chapter XXX)
Disturbing Search Requests - For those who like checking their referrer logs
The following summarises what I think of almost all modern art, and much modern music.
"Rodin's successors noted the amazing things he had done with light and shadow and mass and composition - whether you see it or not - and they copied that much. Oh, how they copied it! And extended it. What they failed to see was that every major work of the master told a story and laid bare the human heart. Instead, they got involved with 'design' and became contemptuous of any painting or sculpture that told a story - sneeing, they dubbed such work 'literary' - a dirty word. They went all out for abstractions, not deigning to paint or carve anything that resembled the human world."
Jubal shrugged. "Abstract design is all right - for wall paper or linoleum. But /art/ is the process of evoking pity and terror, which is not abstract at all but very human. What the self-styled modern artists are doing is a sort of unemotional pseudo-intellectual masturbation... whereas creative art is more like intercourse, in which the artist must seduce - render emotional - his audience, each time. These laddies who won't deign to do that - and perhaps can't - of course lost the public. If they hadn't lobbied for endless subsidies, they would have starved or been forced to go to work long ago. Because the ordinary bloke will not voluntarily pay for 'art' that leaves him unmoved - if he does pay for it, the money has to be conned out of him, by taxes or such."
"You know, Jubal, I've always wondered why I didn't give a hoot for paintings or statues - but I thought it was something missing in /me/, like color blindless."
"Mmm, one does have to learn to look at art, just as you must know French to read a story printed in French. But in general it's up to the artist to use language that can be understood, not hide it in some private code like Pepys and his diary. Most of these jokers don't even /want/ to use language you and I know or can learn... they would rather sneer at us and be smug, because we 'fail' to see what they are driving at. If indeed they are driving at anything - obscurity is usually the refuge of incompetence. Ben, would you call /me/ an artist?"
"Huh? Well I've never thought about it. You write a pretty good stick."
"Thank you. 'Artist' is a word I avoid for the same reasons I hate to be called 'Doctor'. But I /am/ an artist, albeit a minor one. Admittedly most of my stuff is fit to read only once... and not even once for a busy person who already knows the little I have to say. But I am an /honest/ artist, because what I write is consciously intended to reach the customer... reach him and affect him, if possible with pity and terror... or, if not, at least to divert the tedium of hours with a chuckle or an odd idea. But I am /never/ trying to hide it from him in a private language, nor am I seeking the praise of other writers for 'technique' or other balderdash. I want the praise of the cash customer, given in cash because I've reached him - or I don't want anything. Support for the arts - /merde/! A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore! Damn it, you punched one of my buttons. Let me fill your glass and you tell me what is on your mind."
--- Robert Heinlein, Stranger In A Strange Land (Part Four - "His Scandalous Career", Chapter XXX)
Post ID: 107194002427882369
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