tried to tag all my posts today, guess how productive that was,
Only managed to finish the ones in'06, i was an emo kid back then
also note to self, talk about the lady melissa sometime soon
Sunday, November 08, 2009
Friday, November 06, 2009
Why an Economist shouldn't be a viable job prospect
Running on (possibly) limited information, and sleep deprivation, its easy to argue why economists are actually in fact good for the society.
unfortunately, because of retards, i need to preface this with the fact that i don't think economics is bad, just that economists are pointless. you'll see what i mean.
As much as i hate economics, which isn't really much to begin with, it is undeniably a way for us to understand the most fundamental human actions, to get more money. and it is very helpful knowledge to anyone who has a wallet. but the problem lies not in the subject, but the job itself. The Economists (Dun dun dunnnnn). while economics helps businesses and their managers, as well as politicians, when you job revolves around sitting on a chair and telling people what they should or shouldn't do, you better at least get it right. the problem is that economists always appear so divided on issues that actually matter, like what the Government should do during the recession, and the only time they ever really agree on anything is after it has been proven to work, like a fiscal policy back in Keynes' time, that through some crazy logic, actually helps the country earn more by spending. And in case you thought i was bullshitting with the economists divided thing, here's some proof.
Very few jobs in the world rely on just observing and thinking about the world around us, without really doing anything, most of them are in the vein of telling others what to do, and yess these jobs do actually exist. Jobs like theoretical physicists, psychiatrists and unfortunately economists. the difference is that in most cases the others are correct, or at least lower probability of being wrong then say a coin toss. the only real important thing that we expect out of economists, literally people who make their knowledge of economics the only aspect of their job, is to predict future trends based on what already happened and the proper course of action. everything else they do is just nitty-gritty details. And even then, they still cannot agree over what to do.
the problem lies in the fact that economics is such a "soft" "science", and i use the term science very loosely, that when you come up with an argument for, you can just as easily come up with an argument against and both will seemingly make sense, especially to scared, confused and usually uneducated about economics, public. An extension of that would be the use of often unneccessary jargon. anyone who knows why i prefer not to go into business is because of the stupid technical jargon and buzzword that don't really make sense. Economics has a lot of that. What can already be explained in plain english needs to have another word for it, worse when the word used already exists with another (close but distinct) difference. Students, at least in my school, are often critcised for using "coffeeshop talk" in their essays, in other (theirs') words, language so simple my grandma could understand, which to me doesn't make sense, because so long as the meaning is the same, and the reader understands it the same way, there shouldn't be any difference. Now, i understand that certain words are invented for the sake of shortening sentences, like elasticity. but words like demand and quantity demanded should not have such a different meaning. everytime i hear a teacher complaining about coffeeshop talk, i think to myself, why isn't she praising him/her for using simply understood english.
So back to the point about the irrelevance of Economists. let me use an analogy. Say a guy came for an interview for a job at your firm. he's is extremely well educated about say tables.
So you ask him :"what are the skills you possess that we would need?"
interviewee: "Well, i am very well educated in the field of tables."
you: " Ah, so can you build them?"
interviewee: "Actually, no, i just know a lot about them"
you: "Okay, so can you give me advice on how i should build my tables?"
interviewee: "Well, you see, i could, but all of my knowledge of tables are based on models where all else remain constant. So i cannot reliably give advice in th real world. I could tell you what i think, but the guy sitting beside me would probably disagree."
you: " Hmmm, so can you teach others about tables?"
interviewee: "Ah yes, that i can do, but you would probably end up with people who only know what i know and that isn't really helpful, now is it?"
then you realised that the univers was playing a sick twisted joke on you.
Economists have no "real"(as they like to call it) value to the society, and when combined with the other train wreck that is the media can create a lot of fear-mongering. while now that my awesome exposé has created a black hole where your dreams of becoming an economist used to be, you'd think to yourself "now what am i going to do with my awesome knowledge of economics?" remember when i talked about how businesses use economics to help them in their decisions, you can too. economics is more of additional knowledge, then primary expertise, in the sense that you would rather have a skill where you would be wanted in the job market, such as sports or music or vast knowledge of human anatomy, and then use your economics knowledge to put yourself ahead of the competition, "hedge your bets" a little, like how knowing psychology is incredibly useful even outside of the service sector, where office politics can be much better handled, and stuff like that.
damn, its already 1.15am
unfortunately, because of retards, i need to preface this with the fact that i don't think economics is bad, just that economists are pointless. you'll see what i mean.
As much as i hate economics, which isn't really much to begin with, it is undeniably a way for us to understand the most fundamental human actions, to get more money. and it is very helpful knowledge to anyone who has a wallet. but the problem lies not in the subject, but the job itself. The Economists (Dun dun dunnnnn). while economics helps businesses and their managers, as well as politicians, when you job revolves around sitting on a chair and telling people what they should or shouldn't do, you better at least get it right. the problem is that economists always appear so divided on issues that actually matter, like what the Government should do during the recession, and the only time they ever really agree on anything is after it has been proven to work, like a fiscal policy back in Keynes' time, that through some crazy logic, actually helps the country earn more by spending. And in case you thought i was bullshitting with the economists divided thing, here's some proof.
Very few jobs in the world rely on just observing and thinking about the world around us, without really doing anything, most of them are in the vein of telling others what to do, and yess these jobs do actually exist. Jobs like theoretical physicists, psychiatrists and unfortunately economists. the difference is that in most cases the others are correct, or at least lower probability of being wrong then say a coin toss. the only real important thing that we expect out of economists, literally people who make their knowledge of economics the only aspect of their job, is to predict future trends based on what already happened and the proper course of action. everything else they do is just nitty-gritty details. And even then, they still cannot agree over what to do.
the problem lies in the fact that economics is such a "soft" "science", and i use the term science very loosely, that when you come up with an argument for, you can just as easily come up with an argument against and both will seemingly make sense, especially to scared, confused and usually uneducated about economics, public. An extension of that would be the use of often unneccessary jargon. anyone who knows why i prefer not to go into business is because of the stupid technical jargon and buzzword that don't really make sense. Economics has a lot of that. What can already be explained in plain english needs to have another word for it, worse when the word used already exists with another (close but distinct) difference. Students, at least in my school, are often critcised for using "coffeeshop talk" in their essays, in other (theirs') words, language so simple my grandma could understand, which to me doesn't make sense, because so long as the meaning is the same, and the reader understands it the same way, there shouldn't be any difference. Now, i understand that certain words are invented for the sake of shortening sentences, like elasticity. but words like demand and quantity demanded should not have such a different meaning. everytime i hear a teacher complaining about coffeeshop talk, i think to myself, why isn't she praising him/her for using simply understood english.
So back to the point about the irrelevance of Economists. let me use an analogy. Say a guy came for an interview for a job at your firm. he's is extremely well educated about say tables.
So you ask him :"what are the skills you possess that we would need?"
interviewee: "Well, i am very well educated in the field of tables."
you: " Ah, so can you build them?"
interviewee: "Actually, no, i just know a lot about them"
you: "Okay, so can you give me advice on how i should build my tables?"
interviewee: "Well, you see, i could, but all of my knowledge of tables are based on models where all else remain constant. So i cannot reliably give advice in th real world. I could tell you what i think, but the guy sitting beside me would probably disagree."
you: " Hmmm, so can you teach others about tables?"
interviewee: "Ah yes, that i can do, but you would probably end up with people who only know what i know and that isn't really helpful, now is it?"
then you realised that the univers was playing a sick twisted joke on you.
Economists have no "real"(as they like to call it) value to the society, and when combined with the other train wreck that is the media can create a lot of fear-mongering. while now that my awesome exposé has created a black hole where your dreams of becoming an economist used to be, you'd think to yourself "now what am i going to do with my awesome knowledge of economics?" remember when i talked about how businesses use economics to help them in their decisions, you can too. economics is more of additional knowledge, then primary expertise, in the sense that you would rather have a skill where you would be wanted in the job market, such as sports or music or vast knowledge of human anatomy, and then use your economics knowledge to put yourself ahead of the competition, "hedge your bets" a little, like how knowing psychology is incredibly useful even outside of the service sector, where office politics can be much better handled, and stuff like that.
damn, its already 1.15am
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
My Love/Hate realtionship With Economics and some other stuff
Lots of things i wanted to talk about since my last real post, and by last real post i meant those that were so long that you probably didn't even read, (you bastard). The last 2 were really posts, there were more like tweets, my thoughts in 4 lines or less to show my readers, all 5 of you, that i'm still (somewhat) alive.
Anyway, like i said, lots of stuff i wanted to talk about since, some issues important, some even more important.
with less than 120 hours left on the clock til the A levels officially start (for me at least), its quite terrifying going to a national exam when you cant friggin do half the questions on a mock paper. i don't know why i came off the prelim 2s feeling so confident when i needed to refer to the answers for 80% of the question on a math paper i did yesterday. and the truly terrifying thing is not knowing whether the paper will actually be that difficult or other schools are over exaggerating the difficulty of the paper. Either way it's scary. right now i have to contend with the fact that i may actually have to end up repeating JC2, something which i haven't discussed with my parents, but the most expected reaction would be SEE LAH PLAY SOMEMORE.
but you know the worst part about my revision. knowing that i can't ever feel confident about my economics paper. for the poly people who read my blog, yes, i'm talking about you, i'd like to think of econs as the "social studies" of A level syllabus. it's the essay paper that most people take because trying to avoid would mean jumping through so many loopholes that just friggin doing it would save us all the time and energy. it's also similar in the sense that while they do teach you the whole syllabus, you just end up studying a little more than half of it and hope that it comes up.
economics is the kind of subject where i have no idea how good i am at it. it's not like math where i know i don't know how to do this particular topic like quotient rule in differentiation. Nor is it like General Paper where you see how bad at it you truly are, no matter how hard you try. No, economics takes all of your expectations and screws with it like a sick twisted plaything. i'm not saying economics is bad because i suck at it, i'm saying i have no idea how i got my score. everytime i think i may score well on 1 essay, i end up failing or when i feel like i wrote something wrongly, i end up getting great scores. and i can't even learn from my mistakes or successes because they always feel so random and "out of place", like when you wrote something intuitively, which you thought everyone else would too, but end up being heavily praised for that one single sentence. in fact i almost always/never really know why or what i did to deserve really good marks when i do get them. when i score well, i feel good about myself, and think "hey i've improved and that must means i'm doing something right." then the next paper comes to bite me in the ass and i end up failing.
the worst instance of this is after the common test. basically after a year and a quarter of studying the subject i thought to myself " hey, i know how this subject works and what i need to do to do well" and then come Mid-Year, all the questions are so ridiculously difficult that the textbooks don't even have the answers. one example. Explain the importance of resource allocation [25 marks]. i would usually answer that in 3 sentences. but unfortunately you must write all the stuff that just tangentially has any little (if not completely unnecessary) relation to resource allocation. typically the teacher would "expect" you to write about pretty much everything, from the definition, to the policies, to where the policies should apply, tow what the policy maker had for lunch to the time on the giant clock. essentially all that in 45 minutes or less. and the worst part( yes i know i used the worst part more than once) is the spill-over effect. in a span of 2 hrs and 15 minutes, we need to look at 6 different question and do 3 of them, not to mention choosing the questions, planning each essay and actually putting pen to paper. just picking the questions alone takes more than 5 minutes. everytime i read all 6 questions one time through, 3 minutes passed and then i go more in-depth to actually start picking the questions, more than 7 has passed. and then there's the actual planning of the essay where you write down roughly what to write in each paragraph of the individaul essay, which in itself takes time. so even though teachers say you have 45 minutes per essay, you really only have 35 odd minutes to write 4 pages, and yes that is without leaving any lines. that's basically why when i write, i don't think, which sounds surprising, until you realise that i'm not the only one. so when you exceed the time you give yourself, that eats away what ever time you have of the other essasys, and assuming that you hit exactly 45 minutes on the 2nd one (which doesn't always happen, usually you end up 5 minutes over) you end up with approximately 30 minutes to bang out an essay that is supposed to be of equal quality with the other 2 which you probably has the least confidence in since you did it last. this usually results in the last essay being short of a few paragraphs. all that for 20 friggin points.
and that about sums up my thoughts on economics, i love it why i score, even though i don't know why, and i hate it when i don't, because i should have thought about what i missed out in my paper when i was doing it, but hey, i wasn't thinking.
In other news, President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize,in other words, he won the Nobel "I-Am-Not-George-Bush-Award", according to Stephen Colbert. while i do find it odd that the committee gave him the prize before he accomplished anything, i find it ridiculous that there are people vehemently contesting the decision in the media. this is just good old sensationalism. i mean yeah, it''s odd, but it's not going up to a camera and looking all angry. he didn't even offend you, and if they gave the prize to someone else, you would have gone on with your life not caring about what he did to deserve his prize.
i have also been watching Gluttony For Punishment. great show on Discovery travel and living on sundays at 6pm or 630, i can't remember. bob blumer is a great host, optimistic and fun. and the fact that he regularly challenges experts in international competition with only 5 days of training. i think this show is so great in that it basically emphasizes the only real reason people should travel to strange lands, no not take photos wth buildings, but to try new things. most holidays just involve going to one place and eating and taking photos. while that in itself is not a bad idea in the first place, i think the "experience" part of the trip has been left out and the tourist loses out a the great culture and activity of the host nation.
Also, The Men Who Stare At Goats, great premise, great actors, hopes are high for this one.
Modern warfare 2 is also coming in 2 days, so if i fail A levels, it's totally Infinite Ward's fault
Also, brutal legend,
and Assassin's creed 2
and Arkham Asylum,
and NFS Shift,
and shadow Complex, i still can't believe i haven't played it yet.
last year's actual A Level papers were so friggin difficult. i can't believe it. *pout
Anyway, like i said, lots of stuff i wanted to talk about since, some issues important, some even more important.
with less than 120 hours left on the clock til the A levels officially start (for me at least), its quite terrifying going to a national exam when you cant friggin do half the questions on a mock paper. i don't know why i came off the prelim 2s feeling so confident when i needed to refer to the answers for 80% of the question on a math paper i did yesterday. and the truly terrifying thing is not knowing whether the paper will actually be that difficult or other schools are over exaggerating the difficulty of the paper. Either way it's scary. right now i have to contend with the fact that i may actually have to end up repeating JC2, something which i haven't discussed with my parents, but the most expected reaction would be SEE LAH PLAY SOMEMORE.
but you know the worst part about my revision. knowing that i can't ever feel confident about my economics paper. for the poly people who read my blog, yes, i'm talking about you, i'd like to think of econs as the "social studies" of A level syllabus. it's the essay paper that most people take because trying to avoid would mean jumping through so many loopholes that just friggin doing it would save us all the time and energy. it's also similar in the sense that while they do teach you the whole syllabus, you just end up studying a little more than half of it and hope that it comes up.
economics is the kind of subject where i have no idea how good i am at it. it's not like math where i know i don't know how to do this particular topic like quotient rule in differentiation. Nor is it like General Paper where you see how bad at it you truly are, no matter how hard you try. No, economics takes all of your expectations and screws with it like a sick twisted plaything. i'm not saying economics is bad because i suck at it, i'm saying i have no idea how i got my score. everytime i think i may score well on 1 essay, i end up failing or when i feel like i wrote something wrongly, i end up getting great scores. and i can't even learn from my mistakes or successes because they always feel so random and "out of place", like when you wrote something intuitively, which you thought everyone else would too, but end up being heavily praised for that one single sentence. in fact i almost always/never really know why or what i did to deserve really good marks when i do get them. when i score well, i feel good about myself, and think "hey i've improved and that must means i'm doing something right." then the next paper comes to bite me in the ass and i end up failing.
the worst instance of this is after the common test. basically after a year and a quarter of studying the subject i thought to myself " hey, i know how this subject works and what i need to do to do well" and then come Mid-Year, all the questions are so ridiculously difficult that the textbooks don't even have the answers. one example. Explain the importance of resource allocation [25 marks]. i would usually answer that in 3 sentences. but unfortunately you must write all the stuff that just tangentially has any little (if not completely unnecessary) relation to resource allocation. typically the teacher would "expect" you to write about pretty much everything, from the definition, to the policies, to where the policies should apply, tow what the policy maker had for lunch to the time on the giant clock. essentially all that in 45 minutes or less. and the worst part( yes i know i used the worst part more than once) is the spill-over effect. in a span of 2 hrs and 15 minutes, we need to look at 6 different question and do 3 of them, not to mention choosing the questions, planning each essay and actually putting pen to paper. just picking the questions alone takes more than 5 minutes. everytime i read all 6 questions one time through, 3 minutes passed and then i go more in-depth to actually start picking the questions, more than 7 has passed. and then there's the actual planning of the essay where you write down roughly what to write in each paragraph of the individaul essay, which in itself takes time. so even though teachers say you have 45 minutes per essay, you really only have 35 odd minutes to write 4 pages, and yes that is without leaving any lines. that's basically why when i write, i don't think, which sounds surprising, until you realise that i'm not the only one. so when you exceed the time you give yourself, that eats away what ever time you have of the other essasys, and assuming that you hit exactly 45 minutes on the 2nd one (which doesn't always happen, usually you end up 5 minutes over) you end up with approximately 30 minutes to bang out an essay that is supposed to be of equal quality with the other 2 which you probably has the least confidence in since you did it last. this usually results in the last essay being short of a few paragraphs. all that for 20 friggin points.
and that about sums up my thoughts on economics, i love it why i score, even though i don't know why, and i hate it when i don't, because i should have thought about what i missed out in my paper when i was doing it, but hey, i wasn't thinking.
In other news, President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize,in other words, he won the Nobel "I-Am-Not-George-Bush-Award", according to Stephen Colbert. while i do find it odd that the committee gave him the prize before he accomplished anything, i find it ridiculous that there are people vehemently contesting the decision in the media. this is just good old sensationalism. i mean yeah, it''s odd, but it's not going up to a camera and looking all angry. he didn't even offend you, and if they gave the prize to someone else, you would have gone on with your life not caring about what he did to deserve his prize.
i have also been watching Gluttony For Punishment. great show on Discovery travel and living on sundays at 6pm or 630, i can't remember. bob blumer is a great host, optimistic and fun. and the fact that he regularly challenges experts in international competition with only 5 days of training. i think this show is so great in that it basically emphasizes the only real reason people should travel to strange lands, no not take photos wth buildings, but to try new things. most holidays just involve going to one place and eating and taking photos. while that in itself is not a bad idea in the first place, i think the "experience" part of the trip has been left out and the tourist loses out a the great culture and activity of the host nation.
Also, The Men Who Stare At Goats, great premise, great actors, hopes are high for this one.
Modern warfare 2 is also coming in 2 days, so if i fail A levels, it's totally Infinite Ward's fault
Also, brutal legend,
and Assassin's creed 2
and Arkham Asylum,
and NFS Shift,
and shadow Complex, i still can't believe i haven't played it yet.
last year's actual A Level papers were so friggin difficult. i can't believe it. *pout
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
HOLY CRAPZ TEKONGZ? NOWZ? REALLYZ? NO! I MEAN YAY! NO! shit
now i have a headache
been long since i blogged anything substantial
i kind of just gave up on the daily blog thing, it wasn't working. i made it a chore to come up with something to write, and even more so since i have no motivation to do so since only 5 people get to read it everyday.
anyway, lots of things happened between then and now. lots of issues i've been thinking about which never fully blossomed into full fledged views and ideas that i found worthy enough to blog. that and the fact that i can't remember anything now.
if you've guessed that i just struck the lottery, you'd be 0% correct. actually i just got hit with the letter to go into NS just now. i've actually been fretting (is that a real word?) about it since i heard from yuan hong's malay friend whose name i can't remember until now, latiff, yes that's him, i think. i have a headache. anyway, overheard him talking about going into police, which he said was racist and that his brother was an officer so he's damn pissed. in a joking sort of way. so i asked yh about how to check the enlistment date and he said the ns website did that. so i've been checking it every few days and not getting any real response. it just wrote: you will be enlisted between dec 09 and may 2010, which is essentially useless information.
anyway, finally got the letter today, going to BASIC MILITARY TRAINING CENTRE SCHOOL 3, on 11-Dec-2009 and for those who don't know where that is, its' in tekong, directly in tekong. and in case you're wondering why this early. it's cause i'm fat and can't run to save my life, although i'm pretty sure i could in an urban environment.
i actually have absolutely no idea what to feel right now, even though i'm feeling really intense right now, like intensely scared or anxious or idunno it feels like how i felt the day before getting my streaming results. i still have no idea what that felt like exactly, but i know it feels like this. like your heart is very "tight" but there's no real good or bad feeling about it.
i feel both very good and very bad about army at the same time, which apparently is not good for the heart.
on one hand, i know i'm probably going to die from not being able to run and do all the physical stuff in the army and kenna tekan a lot. and also because of my retarded reflexes that the stupid test thinks i have. i will probably not go into a vocation with good "credentials" at least, intellectually. so i don't think my luck in the army will be very good.
but on the other hand, i get to touch a gun.
but still, the ippt and all that stuff, failing it is just going to limit where you can go, and more importantly getting screwed by the officers.
but on the other hand, the freaking gun.
so that kind of sums up what i feel about the army. i get the feeling that im not like most people in their perception of the army. most people think that the army is a waste of time and resources and that people who try to be leaders are either stuck up or boot lickers or both. i'm from the school of thought that i want to make the most out the my time there, and the only way i can do so is put myself out there and get attention, be high profile that sort of thing but i get the feeling that most people will probably hate me for it. so i feel kind of weird for thinking this way.
am i really the exception, and more importantly is thinking like that gonna get me screwed by my own platoon? i have never really talked about it to anyone who has attended to army yet so if your reading this post and you fulfill the strict criteria of going through ns and having my email, please send me an email to tell me something about this.
another thing that happened recently. some of us in jc went for lunch after physics paper 2 at kfc. wee teck couldn't so he went to the kopitiam instead, i joined him because i didn't feel like getting kfc for 2 days in the same week. so we talked and he started to talk about a few people in our class whom he thought was , since the pre a levels, quite obvious that they were going up. he atually said that there were quite a lot. which when i asked him to name, he couldnt name more than half the class, which he initially thought. And i think this thought was quite frightening, 40% of the class is at least, somewhat capable and shown proof that they were able to get into a university after the a levels, which means people like us get left behind. and now i have a cough. what happens when you feel like you're going to fail. and please don't say the self-fulfilling prophecy thing because that's just crap. this is the second time this year that i've felt like i was going to and i have no idea what to do. it feels like i have no one to talk to even though i'm online all the time. it's quite scary to do this alone. what's the medical term for feeling alone when there are in fect options available but you just aren't taking it. i'm going to invent one now. i'm lonerscrewed. and i need help.
also i decided i wanted to add another thing to a list of what i want to do in the future. skydiving instructor. because that is awesome. also, i read that you actually need at least 15 plus tandem (stuck with an instructor) jumps before you can do solo jumps and after that you need some solo jumps before you can do instructing.
been long since i blogged anything substantial
i kind of just gave up on the daily blog thing, it wasn't working. i made it a chore to come up with something to write, and even more so since i have no motivation to do so since only 5 people get to read it everyday.
anyway, lots of things happened between then and now. lots of issues i've been thinking about which never fully blossomed into full fledged views and ideas that i found worthy enough to blog. that and the fact that i can't remember anything now.
if you've guessed that i just struck the lottery, you'd be 0% correct. actually i just got hit with the letter to go into NS just now. i've actually been fretting (is that a real word?) about it since i heard from yuan hong's malay friend whose name i can't remember until now, latiff, yes that's him, i think. i have a headache. anyway, overheard him talking about going into police, which he said was racist and that his brother was an officer so he's damn pissed. in a joking sort of way. so i asked yh about how to check the enlistment date and he said the ns website did that. so i've been checking it every few days and not getting any real response. it just wrote: you will be enlisted between dec 09 and may 2010, which is essentially useless information.
anyway, finally got the letter today, going to BASIC MILITARY TRAINING CENTRE SCHOOL 3, on 11-Dec-2009 and for those who don't know where that is, its' in tekong, directly in tekong. and in case you're wondering why this early. it's cause i'm fat and can't run to save my life, although i'm pretty sure i could in an urban environment.
i actually have absolutely no idea what to feel right now, even though i'm feeling really intense right now, like intensely scared or anxious or idunno it feels like how i felt the day before getting my streaming results. i still have no idea what that felt like exactly, but i know it feels like this. like your heart is very "tight" but there's no real good or bad feeling about it.
i feel both very good and very bad about army at the same time, which apparently is not good for the heart.
on one hand, i know i'm probably going to die from not being able to run and do all the physical stuff in the army and kenna tekan a lot. and also because of my retarded reflexes that the stupid test thinks i have. i will probably not go into a vocation with good "credentials" at least, intellectually. so i don't think my luck in the army will be very good.
but on the other hand, i get to touch a gun.
but still, the ippt and all that stuff, failing it is just going to limit where you can go, and more importantly getting screwed by the officers.
but on the other hand, the freaking gun.
so that kind of sums up what i feel about the army. i get the feeling that im not like most people in their perception of the army. most people think that the army is a waste of time and resources and that people who try to be leaders are either stuck up or boot lickers or both. i'm from the school of thought that i want to make the most out the my time there, and the only way i can do so is put myself out there and get attention, be high profile that sort of thing but i get the feeling that most people will probably hate me for it. so i feel kind of weird for thinking this way.
am i really the exception, and more importantly is thinking like that gonna get me screwed by my own platoon? i have never really talked about it to anyone who has attended to army yet so if your reading this post and you fulfill the strict criteria of going through ns and having my email, please send me an email to tell me something about this.
another thing that happened recently. some of us in jc went for lunch after physics paper 2 at kfc. wee teck couldn't so he went to the kopitiam instead, i joined him because i didn't feel like getting kfc for 2 days in the same week. so we talked and he started to talk about a few people in our class whom he thought was , since the pre a levels, quite obvious that they were going up. he atually said that there were quite a lot. which when i asked him to name, he couldnt name more than half the class, which he initially thought. And i think this thought was quite frightening, 40% of the class is at least, somewhat capable and shown proof that they were able to get into a university after the a levels, which means people like us get left behind. and now i have a cough. what happens when you feel like you're going to fail. and please don't say the self-fulfilling prophecy thing because that's just crap. this is the second time this year that i've felt like i was going to
also i decided i wanted to add another thing to a list of what i want to do in the future. skydiving instructor. because that is awesome. also, i read that you actually need at least 15 plus tandem (stuck with an instructor) jumps before you can do solo jumps and after that you need some solo jumps before you can do instructing.
Friday, October 09, 2009
I highly suspect that my life will end in a suicide
it's like this weird nagging feeling.
not like a this much work is killing me kind of way.
but like a holy crap, i'm gonna die alone, and with a gun possibly
and most importantly, facebook isn't helping.
Munchausen
it's like this weird nagging feeling.
not like a this much work is killing me kind of way.
but like a holy crap, i'm gonna die alone, and with a gun possibly
and most importantly, facebook isn't helping.
Munchausen
Monday, September 28, 2009
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Friends and a rant about complainers
no picture today
went to compass to study with jelena. put in a solid 3 hours in maths and a bit in chem. its ok, but i could have done more, its quite irritating to lose momentum once you start, because you just don't wanna start again.
went home and ate dinner with family outside.
anyway, lets' talk about something that's arbitrarily important.
FRIENDS
i have never been the most approachable guy in the room, not even when i'm alone. so i tend to wait for people to talk to me before i open my mouth, which is admittedly a bad habit. most of my friends know that i ususally have something to say about something, but most of the time i just don't say it. i just keep feeling like there's never a good opportunity to say certain things. i'll admit im a very loud person, it has to do with my upbringing. but so many times, i feel like everytime i open my mouth, i'm not really contributing to anything positively, i'm just filling my ego.
so i end up with less friends than i could have. in my class, we have a mean score of 54 out of 90, which is great and everything. but like some people pointed out, these scores were done by people who just do their work alone and they stand out, which i feel is quite sad actually. i mean i'm not undermining their efforts, i just felt that if they had shared, and if we had been more open to this kind of input, we'd score even better. elizabeth pointed out that in 2s02, which is like the best science class presently, i think, they have a great class bond and they share help with each other, like the best in certain subjects just teach what they know and the others do the same. this is also true in 2a06, the best arts class. so yeah, teamwork does help. the teachers have said it, the principal has said it, now i have said it (yeah i just put myself in the same league as teachers and principals).
i think what really stops us from getting even better results is the lack of social interaction. i used to describe our class as having too many negatives (as in charges, if you take physics you'd understand), and too few positives. too many of us in our class are reliant on people talking to them before they contribute. there is like only what 2 positives in our class and they can't do all the heavy lifting. i mean it's probably already too late to really do anything about it, but i'm just saying
(oh boy html humor)
also, another thing i cannot understand. people like to equate volunteering and trying to be a leader to boot licking and kissing ass. i hear a lot of these stories from army. i have been on both sides of the fence, i was once a follower who thought they kissed ass, and a leader (in some aspect, what have you). being a leader made me realise how minor and meaningless most people's complaints are. everyone likes to complain that we don't do this, don't do that, never help the students, say this say that during election then in liao then never do anything. if we take a very consequentialist viewpoint (look it up), we can say that you stood to lose nothing through the votes and you didn't after it, so unless you lost a pound of flesh when you draw that circle on the oas, you can't really have anything to say.
i mean people stand up and we volunteer and we say, hey maybe i can do something to help. and people shoot us down and say, you selfish, you useless, you this you that. take a moment and think about how unfair and more importantly how unjustified that statement was. i mean, sometimes, people out of sheer goodwill and altruism, decide to help his fellow man and people take advantage. scott adams was right, people are selfish, greedy and horny, and that will never change.
if we took another point of view and said, but you really didn't help me with. think about that request for a minute, and then think about how ridiculously selfish it was. chances are 9 out of 10 times, the request directly benefitted you, and more importantly, at the expense of someone or something else, and also, did you think of the adverse impact on someone else when you complained. i mean, if we could do something to help you that will not directly or indirectly affect something else adversely, we'll do it, and we'll do it happily. here's an example, during the student forum last year, one of the biggest complaint was how the timetable was screwed up. some people wanted it to be longer, some wanted it to be shorter. how in the world is mrs tan supposed to make everyone happy like that, she has to accommodate everyone, encluding the teachers, who graciously have accepted what they were given, in other words they didn't even have a say in it (i think). now think back and ask yourself if you thought about the teachers or even better, the uncles and aunties who lock up after you leave. so ya, people are retarded.
so think about it, if you were to rate all the individual councillors on how they helped you, they would probably all fail. because you are THAT selfish.
(oh the geekyness)
for the longest time i have had friends who are anti-social. and more importantly, because i tried to be more like them, i became more anti-social as well. i kind of think that was a dumb mistake on my part. a lot of times i wanted to do something and because i had no friends who wanted to join me, i ended up backing out, which i sometimes regretted. in this kind of scenarios, i really don't know how to act. should i go for it and end up alienating my friends, or should i not go and waste a perfectly good opportunity.
as i grew up, i became more appreciative of opportunities, especially to do things i have hever tried before. but the reluctance and the hesitation never went away with age. with each new endeavour, i felt equally or even more afraid of trying. and sometimes without my friends, i ended up wasting it. i think that's what people in the industry like to call peer pressure. but i don't really know, it just feels like a lack of support.
also another thing as i grew up, i became more detached from "cliques" and just became this like wanderer from said "cliques". i mean it has it's benefits, at least i have a greater network now. but once in a while, i would think back and wonder what it would like to have a clique, just an exclusive group of maybe 4-6 friends who know anything and everything about each other. i think one thing is for sure, i certainly missed out on telling people my secrets, that's for sure. and whether that is a good thing or a bad thing is open to interpretation.
something jelena asked me as we boarded the mrt, you don't talk to your old friends one meh. then what if you'all like got something to say, you just don't say to anybody? i can't say this for all guys, but i now thts pretty much all that is from me. i don't really share with other people. that's why i keep a blog in the first place (actually that's the second reason, the first is to. that's not to say i'm not a good friend. i mean if i see someone that i am friends with, someone that i click with, i automatically have something to say and the other party also. just because we don't say things randomly, doesn't mean we have nothing to talk about when we in fact do meet. i thnk that if you can click with someone, even if you don't talk to them in a while, you won't ever really feel awkward around that person, not even in a million years.
it's never easy finding friends, but you will never feel that they be the ones who are stopping you from doing what you want.
unless you're taking drugs, then they'll stop you.
went to compass to study with jelena. put in a solid 3 hours in maths and a bit in chem. its ok, but i could have done more, its quite irritating to lose momentum once you start, because you just don't wanna start again.
went home and ate dinner with family outside.
anyway, lets' talk about something that's arbitrarily important.
FRIENDS
i have never been the most approachable guy in the room, not even when i'm alone. so i tend to wait for people to talk to me before i open my mouth, which is admittedly a bad habit. most of my friends know that i ususally have something to say about something, but most of the time i just don't say it. i just keep feeling like there's never a good opportunity to say certain things. i'll admit im a very loud person, it has to do with my upbringing. but so many times, i feel like everytime i open my mouth, i'm not really contributing to anything positively, i'm just filling my ego.
so i end up with less friends than i could have. in my class, we have a mean score of 54 out of 90, which is great and everything. but like some people pointed out, these scores were done by people who just do their work alone and they stand out, which i feel is quite sad actually. i mean i'm not undermining their efforts, i just felt that if they had shared, and if we had been more open to this kind of input, we'd score even better. elizabeth pointed out that in 2s02, which is like the best science class presently, i think, they have a great class bond and they share help with each other, like the best in certain subjects just teach what they know and the others do the same. this is also true in 2a06, the best arts class. so yeah, teamwork does help. the teachers have said it, the principal has said it, now i have said it (yeah i just put myself in the same league as teachers and principals).
i think what really stops us from getting even better results is the lack of social interaction. i used to describe our class as having too many negatives (as in charges, if you take physics you'd understand), and too few positives. too many of us in our class are reliant on people talking to them before they contribute. there is like only what 2 positives in our class and they can't do all the heavy lifting. i mean it's probably already too late to really do anything about it, but i'm just saying
also, another thing i cannot understand. people like to equate volunteering and trying to be a leader to boot licking and kissing ass. i hear a lot of these stories from army. i have been on both sides of the fence, i was once a follower who thought they kissed ass, and a leader (in some aspect, what have you). being a leader made me realise how minor and meaningless most people's complaints are. everyone likes to complain that we don't do this, don't do that, never help the students, say this say that during election then in liao then never do anything. if we take a very consequentialist viewpoint (look it up), we can say that you stood to lose nothing through the votes and you didn't after it, so unless you lost a pound of flesh when you draw that circle on the oas, you can't really have anything to say.
i mean people stand up and we volunteer and we say, hey maybe i can do something to help. and people shoot us down and say, you selfish, you useless, you this you that. take a moment and think about how unfair and more importantly how unjustified that statement was. i mean, sometimes, people out of sheer goodwill and altruism, decide to help his fellow man and people take advantage. scott adams was right, people are selfish, greedy and horny, and that will never change.
if we took another point of view and said, but you really didn't help me with
so think about it, if you were to rate all the individual councillors on how they helped you, they would probably all fail. because you are THAT selfish.
for the longest time i have had friends who are anti-social. and more importantly, because i tried to be more like them, i became more anti-social as well. i kind of think that was a dumb mistake on my part. a lot of times i wanted to do something and because i had no friends who wanted to join me, i ended up backing out, which i sometimes regretted. in this kind of scenarios, i really don't know how to act. should i go for it and end up alienating my friends, or should i not go and waste a perfectly good opportunity.
as i grew up, i became more appreciative of opportunities, especially to do things i have hever tried before. but the reluctance and the hesitation never went away with age. with each new endeavour, i felt equally or even more afraid of trying. and sometimes without my friends, i ended up wasting it. i think that's what people in the industry like to call peer pressure. but i don't really know, it just feels like a lack of support.
also another thing as i grew up, i became more detached from "cliques" and just became this like wanderer from said "cliques". i mean it has it's benefits, at least i have a greater network now. but once in a while, i would think back and wonder what it would like to have a clique, just an exclusive group of maybe 4-6 friends who know anything and everything about each other. i think one thing is for sure, i certainly missed out on telling people my secrets, that's for sure. and whether that is a good thing or a bad thing is open to interpretation.
something jelena asked me as we boarded the mrt, you don't talk to your old friends one meh. then what if you'all like got something to say, you just don't say to anybody? i can't say this for all guys, but i now thts pretty much all that is from me. i don't really share with other people. that's why i keep a blog in the first place (actually that's the second reason, the first is to
it's never easy finding friends, but you will never feel that they be the ones who are stopping you from doing what you want.
unless you're taking drugs, then they'll stop you.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
NS letter
so, my parents came home and got a letter from the army. so my mum calls me down to open my letter (i was upstairs). and i was like, oh crap going to enlist liao, shhhhhhiiiiiittttt.
then i saw the letter, and it was from the navy, i was like im going to the navy
anyway, after i read finish the letter then i realised how much i sweat(ed). in case, you didn't know, after writing yesterday's post, i suddenly felt so overwhelmed by the future. it's like it just suddenly hit me and i didn't know what was going to happen after jc. and more importantly, it was scary. it's terrifying to not know what is going to happen. in school there's always more school more education, promoting to the next year of education, but no more, not now anyway.
i mean i thought about my career so many times in the past, i just never got around to link them together neatly, so they always remained fragmented ideas and just thoughts floating around. until yesterday, i have never felt so unsure before. why is that?
this is not healthy
just a short post today, but hey pictures!
i need to drop this baggage before i go in for the exams, anyone free?
Friday, September 25, 2009
Career Choice
yesterday was actually the NS forum, which was kind of cool because at least 2 out of 5 teachers have vocations that are classified, which makes it sound so much more cool than it probably is.
anyway, i actually wrote this now, because i didn't have much thought about it except, the song at the end was so cool. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYTGdi1w-Cs, here for you to hear.
ya so, i thought about today as i was going home. it's basically the same few things since my o levels, but with a few additions here and there. but i'm gonna start the story from sec 4 so you can follow on.
so the time now is 2007, before o levels. during this period, i remember telling my friends, eh, you know ar, i never study i kanna c6, i go and study, come out fail. that's why better not to study. which was really ridiculous, because that was i sincerely believed, everytime i tried to study, i ended up getting worse. so my friends were used to seeing me not study. so i had this friend, eugene who also doesn't study, but he probably does at home, that's why he got better than me. anyway, we always go down play soccer with unity (another class) and normal acad people. so as the exams drew nearer, we played that much harder, in fact the closer it was, the more we would play. maybe we were trying to destress, maybe we were venting our anger. but it didn't really matter. what mattered was we played, and i never really improved much.
so the night study starts in our school, and it was getting to 6, and i was just sitting around at one of the canteen tables, i was telling my friends
if i pass, i'm going on to a jc. and definitely not sr, because i'd rather go to a poly than end up there. and then after i get through jc, im gonna go be an engineer, maybe sign on to the army or something.
if i just borderline, i'll most probably go to poly, but i'm definitely not going to take p engineering there, because i don't wanna end up as some uni guy's ka kia. i will maybe take up optometry and take over my father if i get to a poly.
if i flat out fail, i'll go to ite or some training thing and learn to be a bartender. only because i love to throw bottles.
a few of my close friends in secondary school have heard of this story, so they usually end up surprised i ended up in sr.
anyway, i got my o levels back, and i got l1r5 of 15. at first i was like, oh, fuck. pretty much. but most i got b3 with the shocker being bio with a c5. i mean i didn't expect to get a1 for it, but you know not that bad la. so i remember i went home, i talked to my parents i cried a little, or a lot, i can't really remember how much. but i remember my mum telling me, in a soft ocnsoling voice, what do you expect me to feel, i mean i can't say i didn't expect it, i mean this is how you do it. except in chinese. so, at that point i felt even more fucked. but i got over it. and then i went to sr.
i remember telling some of my friends hey the best thing that happened to me in pae was picking h1 bio because im never gonna h1 bio ever again, EVAR.
anyway, throughout this 2 years in interim adulthood, i picked up a few interests that i never really explored in the past. one was architecture, which was really similar to engineering, except it had more to do with design. i mean i'd love to design, but i'm just not talented enough. but i'd give architecture a run for its money. the problem is, i actually heard from a cousin who just graduated from NUS, i think, i cant really remember. anyway, he says architects are always in high demand in singapore because there is only one class of them in singapore each year, which got me really interested. if i actually did do this, i would have embarked on a path similar to my dad, because he also went to optometry when it was a diploma only subject, and only one at that time had the classes, (i think). optometry was special in that there is no degree of optometry in singapore, just a diploma. anyway, back to me. the problem is, according from my cousin, you need to go in for a COMPULSORY interview, which is not a problem (mostly), with a portfolio. WTF, when you think about it honestly, people go into architecture class because they DON'T have any experience and hence have no previous designs. but apparently they want to see it so as to weed out those who do not have "the passion" so now i'm stuck. because i can't ever reliably put architecture as a plan A, it alwasy need a reliable plan B.
also, this year, i picked up magic, which was really fun, but i don't really have any interest in performance, because i suck on stage and can't smile for my life. however, i am actually interested in croupier position, which is basically the guy who deals cards in a casino. unfortunately, the IR hiring fair is now over and at that time i wasn't 21 yet and i couldn't send in my application. Damn it, because they were offering to pay for their training courses too.
another thing. i have always been interested in signing on to the army, even though people like to say, no you're wasting your life. i think i like army life because it's never really boring. if there's one job i hate, it's office jobs. i want to do something outside. but the thing is the only thing that's realistically keeping me from signing on is my fitness. never once in my life have i ever said to myself, i am finally fit. i may have been healthy at some point, but never fit, ever. so i'm kinda hesistant about signing on. i mean no point signing on if i'm just gonna be some guy there. at least be an officer or at the very least a specialist. i don't mind going in to be an engineer or something because i have an interest in that field. i just hope i can get into ocs.
also another thing that's been on my mind about the army. i don't really know whether i want to maintain a low profile there or just try to chiong all the way. there's benefits to both so i can't really decide. i want to maintain a low profile because i am not a very social person and i want to avoid as much punishment as possible. unfortunately, from my life lessons in npcc, i realised that it's never good to be invisible, because you don't wanna regret going in and not getting the opportunity that you wanted. so you know, lazy vs getting kicked in the ass and not getting rewarded.
also another sidetrack, some of you guys may know that i screwed up my aptitude test, which means, i have a much lower chance than everyone else to get into sispec or ocs, which is really depressing.
anyway, back to the main topic. as of late, i'm becoming interested in being a teacher, particuarly a gp teacher. my mum thinks i shouldn't because i'm quite an asshole to my brother. who knows, maybe that helps. anyway, i don't wanna be a maths or physics teacher because they seem to be the most boring departments (no offense to teachers). but the problem (there's always a goddamn problem) is i won't take literature or english language as my degree. if i were to take the plunge and be a teacher, i'll most probably be in philosophy or psychology. while both are interesting to study, they don't make the most stable of jobs. jialat.
now you see that most of my career choices are screwed up. things i want to be would most probably not go my way and things that are, would probably be underwhelming.
so help! i need somebody, help! not just anybody, help! you know i need someone, hhhheeeeelllllpppp!
by the beatles, my anti-drug.
also, something for you to take home. i don't want to leave srjc with a large network but no friends. i'm sure you do too.
anyway, i actually wrote this now, because i didn't have much thought about it except, the song at the end was so cool. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYTGdi1w-Cs, here for you to hear.
ya so, i thought about today as i was going home. it's basically the same few things since my o levels, but with a few additions here and there. but i'm gonna start the story from sec 4 so you can follow on.
so the time now is 2007, before o levels. during this period, i remember telling my friends, eh, you know ar, i never study i kanna c6, i go and study, come out fail. that's why better not to study. which was really ridiculous, because that was i sincerely believed, everytime i tried to study, i ended up getting worse. so my friends were used to seeing me not study. so i had this friend, eugene who also doesn't study, but he probably does at home, that's why he got better than me. anyway, we always go down play soccer with unity (another class) and normal acad people. so as the exams drew nearer, we played that much harder, in fact the closer it was, the more we would play. maybe we were trying to destress, maybe we were venting our anger. but it didn't really matter. what mattered was we played, and i never really improved much.
so the night study starts in our school, and it was getting to 6, and i was just sitting around at one of the canteen tables, i was telling my friends
if i pass, i'm going on to a jc. and definitely not sr, because i'd rather go to a poly than end up there. and then after i get through jc, im gonna go be an engineer, maybe sign on to the army or something.
if i just borderline, i'll most probably go to poly, but i'm definitely not going to take p engineering there, because i don't wanna end up as some uni guy's ka kia. i will maybe take up optometry and take over my father if i get to a poly.
if i flat out fail, i'll go to ite or some training thing and learn to be a bartender. only because i love to throw bottles.
a few of my close friends in secondary school have heard of this story, so they usually end up surprised i ended up in sr.
anyway, i got my o levels back, and i got l1r5 of 15. at first i was like, oh, fuck. pretty much. but most i got b3 with the shocker being bio with a c5. i mean i didn't expect to get a1 for it, but you know not that bad la. so i remember i went home, i talked to my parents i cried a little, or a lot, i can't really remember how much. but i remember my mum telling me, in a soft ocnsoling voice, what do you expect me to feel, i mean i can't say i didn't expect it, i mean this is how you do it. except in chinese. so, at that point i felt even more fucked. but i got over it. and then i went to sr.
i remember telling some of my friends hey the best thing that happened to me in pae was picking h1 bio because im never gonna h1 bio ever again, EVAR.
anyway, throughout this 2 years in interim adulthood, i picked up a few interests that i never really explored in the past. one was architecture, which was really similar to engineering, except it had more to do with design. i mean i'd love to design, but i'm just not talented enough. but i'd give architecture a run for its money. the problem is, i actually heard from a cousin who just graduated from NUS, i think, i cant really remember. anyway, he says architects are always in high demand in singapore because there is only one class of them in singapore each year, which got me really interested. if i actually did do this, i would have embarked on a path similar to my dad, because he also went to optometry when it was a diploma only subject, and only one at that time had the classes, (i think). optometry was special in that there is no degree of optometry in singapore, just a diploma. anyway, back to me. the problem is, according from my cousin, you need to go in for a COMPULSORY interview, which is not a problem (mostly), with a portfolio. WTF, when you think about it honestly, people go into architecture class because they DON'T have any experience and hence have no previous designs. but apparently they want to see it so as to weed out those who do not have "the passion" so now i'm stuck. because i can't ever reliably put architecture as a plan A, it alwasy need a reliable plan B.
also, this year, i picked up magic, which was really fun, but i don't really have any interest in performance, because i suck on stage and can't smile for my life. however, i am actually interested in croupier position, which is basically the guy who deals cards in a casino. unfortunately, the IR hiring fair is now over and at that time i wasn't 21 yet and i couldn't send in my application. Damn it, because they were offering to pay for their training courses too.
another thing. i have always been interested in signing on to the army, even though people like to say, no you're wasting your life. i think i like army life because it's never really boring. if there's one job i hate, it's office jobs. i want to do something outside. but the thing is the only thing that's realistically keeping me from signing on is my fitness. never once in my life have i ever said to myself, i am finally fit. i may have been healthy at some point, but never fit, ever. so i'm kinda hesistant about signing on. i mean no point signing on if i'm just gonna be some guy there. at least be an officer or at the very least a specialist. i don't mind going in to be an engineer or something because i have an interest in that field. i just hope i can get into ocs.
also another thing that's been on my mind about the army. i don't really know whether i want to maintain a low profile there or just try to chiong all the way. there's benefits to both so i can't really decide. i want to maintain a low profile because i am not a very social person and i want to avoid as much punishment as possible. unfortunately, from my life lessons in npcc, i realised that it's never good to be invisible, because you don't wanna regret going in and not getting the opportunity that you wanted. so you know, lazy vs getting kicked in the ass and not getting rewarded.
also another sidetrack, some of you guys may know that i screwed up my aptitude test, which means, i have a much lower chance than everyone else to get into sispec or ocs, which is really depressing.
anyway, back to the main topic. as of late, i'm becoming interested in being a teacher, particuarly a gp teacher. my mum thinks i shouldn't because i'm quite an asshole to my brother. who knows, maybe that helps. anyway, i don't wanna be a maths or physics teacher because they seem to be the most boring departments (no offense to teachers). but the problem (there's always a goddamn problem) is i won't take literature or english language as my degree. if i were to take the plunge and be a teacher, i'll most probably be in philosophy or psychology. while both are interesting to study, they don't make the most stable of jobs. jialat.
now you see that most of my career choices are screwed up. things i want to be would most probably not go my way and things that are, would probably be underwhelming.
so help! i need somebody, help! not just anybody, help! you know i need someone, hhhheeeeelllllpppp!
by the beatles, my anti-drug.
also, something for you to take home. i don't want to leave srjc with a large network but no friends. i'm sure you do too.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Feminism
i realised i have a lot of things to say but i HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO START
anyway, hey from me
parts of these may seem like they don't make sense or contradict each other. most likely because these are just fragmented wide-ranging views that i have about this topic and never really got around to connecting them. and you know trying to make sense.
i have a really strong feeling that the feminist movement won't likely ever succeed, as in the modern one, like the third or something. basically its' because (i think) girls don't know what the hell they want. or in an attempt to get more language marks, they do not have a universal set of goals and targets that they can set out to achieve.
in case that was a little hard to understand, here's a little analogy. imagine you're a minority and you have been marginalized for a very long time. you have been denied rights that should be deemed equal for all human beings but yet find yourself living without them. so you know, after maybe, some guy says this awesome speech or after a barfight where everyone just got really drunk, BOOM, you find out that there's actually a movement out there to right the wrongs that you have been suffering all your life. so everyone's all protesting and shit, and you know what, they all have a somewhat sketchy idea of what they want. basically equality and stuff that i would proceed to bore you with if i went through listing them, but i won't. because i'm merciful.
so anyway, that's at least how a movement starts. and the problem with the feminist movement is that they have no fucking clue what they want. i mean the first and the second were great and all, getting you ladies into jobs and schools say that we have hot chicks in uniforms to look at. but that's pretty much where everyone just have no clue where else to go from. some chicks go no we don't want to be objectified in ads anymore, and then the others go, we're just so very proud of our sexuality that we just want to do porn and be prostitutes for fun. then here's the point you go, " wow Nil, you magnificent little princess, is that the only thing where chicks are all estrogeny about?" of course not, silly little internet person. there are of course those, if i may borrow from Cracked, chronicly offended, at FUCKING EVERYTHING. "fucking is being used here as adjective and not literally sexing up everything. See, we can be educational too!
anyway, feminism right now is being so screwed up because of this clash of ideals. because no one has a clear idea of what equality really means. unlike obama. if you want to start off with the PG-13 stuff, some girls actually like guys who are gentlemanly, you know open the doors, shift the chairs, say thank you, non-douchebag behaviour. but some actually criticise them for being condescending, saying like "i can do it for myself, you chavinistic pig, exclamation mark" i have absolutely no idea where she got that idea from. is she like saying that these gentlemanly guys are going that extra mile just to get in their pants or something, because somewhere that chain of thought doesn't make sense. why go to all that trouble when all you need to do is be a jerk and girls will be drooling over you. which is another thing that i find really disturbing, because girls don't go for the nice guys, they always end up in the "friend-zone". i'm sure you all have stories of those fairytale ending types, but stop being so narcissitic and over-attentive to yourself, the men are talking about the real world here.
then you have the objectification in ads. this is lip service most often paid by people who study any form of arguing above high school. they just go "oh look at that provocative posture, how can you exploit women like that." which i find really stupid because number 1, these are mainly ads that cater to the male demographic and 2, men are chavinstic pigs. objectification of women happens because there's money to be made, guys are easily swayed over by boobs and tight and/or no clothes. remember that everytime you go up to a guy with a flag day donation tin. is it unfair? probably, but think about it, why does objectification of men so much less prevalent. then honestly think about it, would you buy a product, if it was advertised by a guy showing off his gigantic eyes. probably not. there is virtually no scenario where showing off penii will ever get more customers, except maybe the porn industry. but with that said, that doesn't mean that there is no objectification whatsoever. right now the koreans are perfecting the technique with 12 men flailing their hands and feet to a rhythm, they call them super junior. which i find disturbing and mildly gay. it's like in the back of your mind, you're wondering, there has to be at least 2 of them that are gay and making out behind the scenes.
and THEN you have the women who enjoy doing porn and prostitution. some women actually believe that by alloing such women to do so, they would undermine what they have tried to achieve all these years. which i kinda get, but yet at the same time find very ridiculous. it's a very contradicting feeling when you actually feel that both parties are right at the same time. think about it, if say i really enjoyed blowing balloons (this is not a metaphor, it was just the first thing that entered my mind) and some other guys would be saying that hey don't blow balloons, you'll make us look gay. and i'm like what? i enjoy blowing balloons and i'm not hurting anyone. so i'm kinda on the fence about this one. on one hand, it would tarnish the image of strong independent women that they're trying to cultivate, but on the other hand, i'm a chavinistic pig.
i mean, i can't say for certain that women will never achieve equal rights, but i'm positive that their idea of "equal" will change so many times that they will lose track of it. the reason that feminism is so unlike other movements like gay rights and african american rights and even animal righs is that its not possible to say that one is "equal" to another in all aspects. i can say that i am as equal to a gay man as i am to a black guy, because we have no conflicting ideologies or practices. feminism is so much more complex, because men are fundamentally different. we are biologically wired to tap that. and what that means is that one party will find a way to get into the other's pants, and they will say or do anything to get there. so while the woman is saying "equal rights!" all the guys are hearing "blablabla get me a diamond ring and i'll fake it like i've never faked it before" ( a line taken from sinfest).
we are biologically wired to approach women differently from how we would approach a black dude or a gay guy or even a puppy. that's just how we are. shallow chavinistic pigs. and i don't even know what chauvinistic means.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
some guy
WHAT UP BITCHES !!
awake, yet? still trying out the greeting thing, anyway, back to stuff that doesn't matters.
the dude you see above is douglas, and he came to our school and talked to us, which was cool. he comes off as a really semi domesticated culturised japanese, which i have no idea what that means. but he's singaporean, very singaporean. he's most probably brought up in a chinese environment, since he can just spew off couplets ( repeat after me Cheng Yu !!) like just off the cuffs. i probably just misused the phrase off the cuffs. anyway, he comes to our school, talks about his life at this company called apex-pal, which honestly is a really retarded name for a company, no matter how small that is. i mean, can you imagine a bunch of directors and bigwigs sitting at a table going, hmm, glennard pte ltd, no, glennard incorporated, no, glennard he's so awesome enterprise, no, and then little douglas meekly whispers, apex-pal? and then the directors going WHOOOOO!!!!! WE GOT IT!! like a frat party.
just wondering if you could imagine that.
anyway, what astonishes me (ok, exaggeration) was that he just took chances and things just worked out for him. i suspect that there was more going on in the shadows, but really, "i just chose vitamin E because i was introduced to it" Come on. and all 4 of his sons nams start with do and have 3 syllables, like dominic, donovan and some other name i can't remember.
also, he came off as this guy who was really committed to what he wanted to do and how he wanted to do it. he was like "VALUES SYSTEM !!!" and then pointing out his index finger at the student who asked a question, and then rainbows came out and a unicorn jumped over the table. ok i was kidding that din happen.
but still, he was very committed and he talked about how he got 4 jobs within the 3 months after a levels and before ns. which when you think about it is quite amazing. he had a job in a power plant in the morning, a teaching stint for 10 weeks (2 and a half months for you all who suck at math), a job at a bakery and another doing market research (ie dumbass surveys). all of these jobs are time-consuming and tiring and still he held on to them for 3 months, which is kinda amazing. even more amazing was that during ns itself, he managed to pack 8 2-hour tuition lessons into those weekends, letting him rack up 5-6k per month, completely pwning his ns (officer, that is) pay of 1k.
as i heard about him talk about his jobs and also people asking for internships (is it just me, or is it becoming a recurring question?), i was thinking about going to a job agency and telling the clerk, get me the craziest job that i have the qualification for. which is awesome, because i have no idea what the hell i'm gonna do. imagine like, suddenly, the clerk calls you and says, "we have an opening for a parachute tester, would you li---- HELL,YES!!"
hahas.
also, breaking news, i have been singing get back by the beatles wrongly for the past week,
...
and i just found out about it
like jojo was a man who thought he was a loner, but he nanananananana
amd then that for about 3,4 more lines then, GET BACK, GET BACK, which is essentially the chorus, and that was awesome to sing, out loud, when people seem to be staring at me, is that a chinese dude, what's in his bag?
YOU'LL NEVER KNOW!!
and you know, the douglas i was talking about, he's the CEO of Sakae Sushi.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Mancave
Pictured above is actually my god grandmother's (or grand godmother, which kind of makes less sense when i think about it.) current house. it now houses her, my god grandfather and her grandchildren and sometimes her sons, now less so since they're already married. i just tried to remake the floor plan from memory
That was the rough floor plan of what i thought would be my future bachelor pad would look like. it had just enough space for one (or two, wink) people. which i proceeded to feel guilty about since it was once home to 5 people at the same time.
Actually before thinking about my future potential Mancave™, i was at the state prior to being unconscious (i.e sleep), i was thinking about the first list of things i would need to buy if i were to uproot myself and go to another place or country with nothing but my phone, wallet and possibly passport. the first thing that hit me was food and medicine, particularly, cough drops, and eggs and bread came after that.
Well, since you're probably more interested about my Mancave™, it'll most likely have as much space as my Ah ma's place. a nice estimate of that size would be to imagine the size of 2 classrooms (i think, because the rooms are screwing up my projections of the size).
Anyway, important things first, internet, computer, xbox, pool table. Duh, but unfortunately there's no way to make the pool table fit into any room other than the living room, but that's just sad. so i'll have to leave it out until i get a bigger house. Since i would only sleep in one room, the other would be converted into an awesome room. Why? because i can.
The awesome room would contain beanbag chairs, because beanbag chairs are awesome. also, xbox and plastic instruments. i'll probably soundproof the room, or if that proves too expensive, i'll semi-soundproof the room with things like styrofoam and bubble wrap, i'll think of something. In the awesome room, i will also probably include either a projector or a effing big screen to look at stuff, and by stuff i mean things that are not porn.
i'll probably leave a blank wall in the awesome room or the living room to practice graffiti.
i just realised how freaking difficult it is to describe what i want in my bachelor pad. because so much of its' appeal lies in the overall decor and artsy stuff like that, so understanding that, i'll probably do up a photoshop, when i get that bored. i doubt i ever become that bored, because the beatles rock band and pieces of plastic shaped like guitars are waiting for me.
I need a new greeting
I need a greeting, especially since im' gonna do this everyday.
like hello internet, but that's already taken
anyway, spent the last hour doing some work, actually the hour before my dinner. but before you go out and say " Nil, you awesomely slacking compatriot, are you mugging IN THE CLOSET?!?" actually, i did my work over feeling guilty over (yes i used over twice in the same sentence) not doing anything constructive over the long weekend, which is 3/2 times longer than most weekends. heck, its' not even revision, it's just work i would have otherwise done in class today, had there been class today. officially i have spent at least a week not revising any work. the first week of school, i just had absolutely no mood whatsoever to do any kind of "real" work. maybe it was because the beatles rock band is coming, which i now own and is AWESOME, or that nobody is really around in school anymore, which makes not knowing how to do your work all the more irritating.
i'll be honest, i have to study around other people, because firstly i suck, and secondly, i suck and i end up pestering other people on how to do simple questions. so certain people get really annoyed when i do that, but it's not the majority so i still have a vast pool of resources to tap into (Muhahaha, people who are not annoyed).
so yeah, studying by yourself, no matter where you are is incredibly unfruitful (i'm not sure if that is a word), so i avoid it. but you can only avoid your work for so long before it finally catches up with you. and now i end up doing papers from at least 2 weeks since the teachers gone through them, so that when i ask my friends, they have some clue what i'm talking about.
we got our prelim results over the past friday. everyone in our class got our ranking points calculated wrongly. and more importantly, our scores and subsequently, our class average, should jump by around 5 points more. this is really weird because our class was the only one affected by the wrong calculation (i could be wrong but the other classes don't seem to be complaining), so when the principal showed the top classes, we might have beaten some of them. and by we i mean, elizabeth jason and the other freaks who actually study. anyway, our class average is around 50ish, which is not that bad until you remember, this score is after all the moderation(s). i'm not sure if i can call this "hypocritical" but you keep bashing us about not studying more and not working hard enough and not paying more attention to the question and yet, still give us extra points that we don't even deserve. How Dare You!?!?.
correct me if i'm wrong but any sort of moderation should be done using a bell curve (ask your local neighbourhood math tutor). our form or moderation just involves adding 5 or in the case of physics 7 more marks on top of what you already had. This, number 1, makes everybody equally better, which means relatively, there hasn't been any change whatsoever, so we aren't pulling the people at the rock bottom up so they don't feel insecure, but everyone, so we all feel better about ourselves. Number 2, why the need for this? we aren't going to be using this for any sort of assessment in the future and more importantly, this gives us the facade (pronounced far-car-dee) of being smart enough to pass our A levels, when we know we can't.
moderation like this is like going to the archery olympics and the referee saying that, since retard number 1 is going up against superman, i'll move the target closer for retard number 1 so he won't feel bad if he loses. what the hell? if exams were meant to make people feel adequate about their intelligence, might as well use primary school papers.
i'm not bashing on people who did poorly in exams, because i know and genuinely believe that they worked hard, sometimes, we are just that unlucky. but i felt that jumping one grade for everyone is necessary. especially since i felt the i deserved my original score because i am that unfocused. and even more so after i've come to terms with how retarded i was (at that one specific paper).
anyway before you start shouting "Nil, you cheeky backstabbing monkey, does that mean you did very well for this prelims" heck no. allow me to rephrase myself. HECK NO. officially i got a 50, which for my non-jc friends, is upon 90, which means i am passing. well, non-jc friends. not really, because on average, people need upwards of 70 to get into a local university. furthermore, that was after moderation. if based on my actual results, i should have gotten a 30 + 10 for PW. essentially meaning that i got 2 E and 3 S, you go and do the calculations yourself, but that essentially means fucked up, if this happens again in A levels. and this realization is made so much worse when you realize that other people are getting upwards of 70, and they did the same paper as you.
you're so screwed.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
New News
Just some things to clear up before i go into blogging mode. i want to try this new thing out about photo-blogging, daily. yes, daily. essentially being the attention whore that i am, i want to get as many hits on my blog as possible, ok at least i try to. if you go to blogs of other people who are popular (i.e not me) you will see that there are essentially 4 basic paths you can take.
1) Have many friends who are as bored as you are
2) Be hot, in a way that people are interested in your business, even though you don't even know who that guy is.
3) Be funny
4) Update regularly
because steps 1 and 2 are out of the equation as i am neither hot nor have more than 5 incredibly bored friends. i am left with 3 and 4. and 3 is also difficult to pull off because firstly, its not easy being funny when writing, since the facial expression and voice tonality is completely variable. i could be writing about some retard and you think im insinuating something about your mother. secondly, i am not funny, as hard as i try, i am not. and the huge box of irony comes crashing down as trying to be funny is one of the few, VERY few things i work hard at, the other being getting girls.
so i'm left with option 4. which is okay, but incredibly tiring. so now i'm stuck with a dilema. i usually write awe-inspiring and thought-provoking events and happenings (i.e not about what i ate for lunch and who i went shopping with). but given that most people generate ridiculous amounts of hits writing mundane stuff like, i didn't go for lessons and stayed at home and facebooked the whole day, its coming off as mixed signals. should i continue writing stuff in my head or stuff i do (which is incredibly boring), anyway, for the 5 people who frequent my blog (I LOVE you Guys), leave your thoughts about what you liked about my blog and what you wanna see disappear, like me being emo and stuff.
anyway, knowing the person that i am, i doubt i'll be able to keep daily photo-blogging up for long. keep in mind that photo-blogging is not a revolutionary concept( OH MI God !), but i just never really tried it before, so i figured hey why not.
for the actual stuff happening today, it's actually hari raya puasa. which is malay for something. and since they celebrate by breaking fast (i.e eating weird sweet stuff that i can't pronounce) i thought i posted a picture of cookies. yes cookies. why cookies? because i don't really know what they eat during hari raya, i don't even know how they celebrate it. all i know is that the colour green keeps popping up somewhere in the equation and families like to dress up in colour coded groups. which is kind of cool, i have to admit, but the appeal wears off after one or two years. i imagine, i'd be like wow cool i get to wear bright colours and go out for the first year, and i'm like what we have to do this again NEXT year?! i figured it'd be a lot easier to find your kid if you lost him in a crowded place. some security guard would find him and just match him up to the next family that dresses like him. he'd be like blue, green, blue, blue, green, pink, yellow ah there's your parents.
anyway, a selemat hari raya puasa to all muslims friends, which i figure only like 1 ever visits my blog. selemat hari raya to you bro!
and just to side track, i had around 30 hits since someone last left a LOL at my tagbox. it takes my friend roughly a few hours to generate that number, and her blog is protected, meaning random stalkers and possibly perverts ca't see it.
1) Have many friends who are as bored as you are
2) Be hot, in a way that people are interested in your business, even though you don't even know who that guy is.
3) Be funny
4) Update regularly
because steps 1 and 2 are out of the equation as i am neither hot nor have more than 5 incredibly bored friends. i am left with 3 and 4. and 3 is also difficult to pull off because firstly, its not easy being funny when writing, since the facial expression and voice tonality is completely variable. i could be writing about some retard and you think im insinuating something about your mother. secondly, i am not funny, as hard as i try, i am not. and the huge box of irony comes crashing down as trying to be funny is one of the few, VERY few things i work hard at, the other being getting girls.
so i'm left with option 4. which is okay, but incredibly tiring. so now i'm stuck with a dilema. i usually write awe-inspiring and thought-provoking events and happenings (i.e not about what i ate for lunch and who i went shopping with). but given that most people generate ridiculous amounts of hits writing mundane stuff like, i didn't go for lessons and stayed at home and facebooked the whole day, its coming off as mixed signals. should i continue writing stuff in my head or stuff i do (which is incredibly boring), anyway, for the 5 people who frequent my blog (I LOVE you Guys), leave your thoughts about what you liked about my blog and what you wanna see disappear, like me being emo and stuff.
anyway, knowing the person that i am, i doubt i'll be able to keep daily photo-blogging up for long. keep in mind that photo-blogging is not a revolutionary concept( OH MI God !), but i just never really tried it before, so i figured hey why not.
for the actual stuff happening today, it's actually hari raya puasa. which is malay for something. and since they celebrate by breaking fast (i.e eating weird sweet stuff that i can't pronounce) i thought i posted a picture of cookies. yes cookies. why cookies? because i don't really know what they eat during hari raya, i don't even know how they celebrate it. all i know is that the colour green keeps popping up somewhere in the equation and families like to dress up in colour coded groups. which is kind of cool, i have to admit, but the appeal wears off after one or two years. i imagine, i'd be like wow cool i get to wear bright colours and go out for the first year, and i'm like what we have to do this again NEXT year?! i figured it'd be a lot easier to find your kid if you lost him in a crowded place. some security guard would find him and just match him up to the next family that dresses like him. he'd be like blue, green, blue, blue, green, pink, yellow ah there's your parents.anyway, a selemat hari raya puasa to all muslims friends, which i figure only like 1 ever visits my blog. selemat hari raya to you bro!
and just to side track, i had around 30 hits since someone last left a LOL at my tagbox. it takes my friend roughly a few hours to generate that number, and her blog is protected, meaning random stalkers and possibly perverts ca't see it.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
yesh
Yes, my interface is finally back to normal, unfortunately i didn't take the screencap of my horribly disfigured interface of the past
listening to many of the beatles' old songs in anticipation of the game.
it's actually already out, i just never got around to actually buying it, no one wants to go to amk hub with me.
many of their songs like twist and shout and drive my car are very fun to listen, even if you are ultra emo. just listen to them sing and you just feel like singing along, they are that great, more popular than jesus in fact.
just to let you see my calendar for these few months
August 25: Batman: Arkham Asylum Release
September 1st: Guitar Hero 5 Release
September 9th: Rock Band: The Beatles release
September 22nd: Halo ODST Release
October 13th: Brutal Legend Release
October 23rd: Graduation Day
November 10th: COD: Modern Warfare 2 Release
November 10th: Something Called The A Levels, Apparently
November 17th: Assassin's Creed 2 Release
November 30th: The real date we should be counting down to instead
December 5th: Prom, Which will probably be canceled because no one wants to go
speaking of which, its' actually quite easy to overestimate the idea of prom night. its the kind of idea people tend to assume is self-publicising and self-promoting. like how thanksgiving doesn't really need any publicity but the rockfest (you know the one for the environment or something) does.
now my time is divided between waiting for these things to happen and looking at stupid photos on the interwebs
listening to many of the beatles' old songs in anticipation of the game.
it's actually already out, i just never got around to actually buying it, no one wants to go to amk hub with me.
many of their songs like twist and shout and drive my car are very fun to listen, even if you are ultra emo. just listen to them sing and you just feel like singing along, they are that great, more popular than jesus in fact.
just to let you see my calendar for these few months
August 25: Batman: Arkham Asylum Release
September 1st: Guitar Hero 5 Release
September 9th: Rock Band: The Beatles release
September 22nd: Halo ODST Release
October 13th: Brutal Legend Release
October 23rd: Graduation Day
November 10th: COD: Modern Warfare 2 Release
November 10th: Something Called The A Levels, Apparently
November 17th: Assassin's Creed 2 Release
November 30th: The real date we should be counting down to instead
December 5th: Prom, Which will probably be canceled because no one wants to go
speaking of which, its' actually quite easy to overestimate the idea of prom night. its the kind of idea people tend to assume is self-publicising and self-promoting. like how thanksgiving doesn't really need any publicity but the rockfest (you know the one for the environment or something) does.
now my time is divided between waiting for these things to happen and looking at stupid photos on the interwebs
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Monday, September 07, 2009
birthday
yesterday was my birthday.
the most touching thing that happened yesterday was that my grandgodmother (i.e. my mum's godmother) and grandgodfather drove all the way to hougang from tanglin halt (a rough estimation would be near queensway or the ikea at alexandria)
she came all the way here with her little granddaughter, only 20 months, just to deliver me a twenty dollar angbao. she really tengs me a lot
my actual grandmother didn't even gave me so much as a call. even the insurance company gave me a nice card.
anyway, had a real celebration today. i actually had a one-to-one "consultation" (don't know if you can call it that) with mrs lim. but she let me reschedule because of my birthday. thank you very much mrs lim.
we went to dhoby gaut to eat at astons and watch a movie, district 9. which i thought was good, and jelena and wenhui thought was VERY bad.
anyway, astons is quite overated, i think. maybe for that price range in that area in particular, that's why it stood out. but i don't really think that the long queues do any justice.
anyway, we went to orchard central, which is like this really fancy art gallery slash fashion high class shop thing. the best part was that the chairs were very comfortable.
we sat there for 15 minutes before the girls and yang decided to leave to "shop at taka"
they came back with takkin and kenghong and got me a cake. actually they went to a lot of trouble to hide the cake, which i proceeded to ruin the hiding by saying "the cake ar" in my usual loud and obnoxious voice. Jelena replied "at least he's not that stupid."
the cake was an "oreo cheese cake" with like a whole pack of strawberries on top. like if you took out the box it would all fall down, that much. i haven't tasted the cake yet because we lacked a plate or even tissues. but i ate like more than 6 strawberries so that the box has enough space for me to close. and takkin thinks that strawberries grows on trees. thanks very much for the cake everyone!
then we watched district 9. which was 2 hours long and quite draggy at the beginning, only when the action starts then quite exciting and i use the term exciting loosely.
thanks to all who made my birthday so special, mum, dad, bro, ah ma, ah gong, jelena, kenghong, zheng yang, wenhui, takkin, edmund and everyone else!
editor's note: i tasted the cake just now and the oreo part tastes a bit weird, like coffee or something, the cheese cake is actually pretty good.
www.lightamillioncandles.com
help them out
the most touching thing that happened yesterday was that my grandgodmother (i.e. my mum's godmother) and grandgodfather drove all the way to hougang from tanglin halt (a rough estimation would be near queensway or the ikea at alexandria)
she came all the way here with her little granddaughter, only 20 months, just to deliver me a twenty dollar angbao. she really tengs me a lot
my actual grandmother didn't even gave me so much as a call. even the insurance company gave me a nice card.
anyway, had a real celebration today. i actually had a one-to-one "consultation" (don't know if you can call it that) with mrs lim. but she let me reschedule because of my birthday. thank you very much mrs lim.
we went to dhoby gaut to eat at astons and watch a movie, district 9. which i thought was good, and jelena and wenhui thought was VERY bad.
anyway, astons is quite overated, i think. maybe for that price range in that area in particular, that's why it stood out. but i don't really think that the long queues do any justice.
anyway, we went to orchard central, which is like this really fancy art gallery slash fashion high class shop thing. the best part was that the chairs were very comfortable.
we sat there for 15 minutes before the girls and yang decided to leave to "shop at taka"
they came back with takkin and kenghong and got me a cake. actually they went to a lot of trouble to hide the cake, which i proceeded to ruin the hiding by saying "the cake ar" in my usual loud and obnoxious voice. Jelena replied "at least he's not that stupid."
the cake was an "oreo cheese cake" with like a whole pack of strawberries on top. like if you took out the box it would all fall down, that much. i haven't tasted the cake yet because we lacked a plate or even tissues. but i ate like more than 6 strawberries so that the box has enough space for me to close. and takkin thinks that strawberries grows on trees. thanks very much for the cake everyone!
then we watched district 9. which was 2 hours long and quite draggy at the beginning, only when the action starts then quite exciting and i use the term exciting loosely.
thanks to all who made my birthday so special, mum, dad, bro, ah ma, ah gong, jelena, kenghong, zheng yang, wenhui, takkin, edmund and everyone else!
editor's note: i tasted the cake just now and the oreo part tastes a bit weird, like coffee or something, the cheese cake is actually pretty good.
www.lightamillioncandles.com
help them out
Saturday, September 05, 2009
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
these 3 days
just about finishing up on my new blog skin, can go to http://justfortestingskinsrawr.blogspot.com/ to check it out first, give comments maybe.
anyway, prelims are over, most of the papers consisted of 1 killer difficulty paper plus 1 can-make-it-if-you-studied type of paper. unfortunately they always put the more difficult paper in front.
anyway, spent my weekend doing up the blogskin and spent yesterday visiting teachers followed by soccer followed by heatstroke/malnutrition
here's the play-by-play:
heatstroke/malnutrition happened because i didnt eat breakfast. so i played for about 15 to 30 minutes soccer at 12 odd pm. clearly the sun is damn hot. so i finished and dank hundred plus, then sat at the benches beside the courts until our turn again.
this is when the problem starts. at first the left side of my vision starts looking a little off, like slanted and a bit negative looking. but i didn't do much about it, just carried on playing.
then i start my next match looking abit dizzy and losing depth perception. but i could still react to the ball.
i played for 10 mins before going back for lunch
by then it was 3 plus. at that time, a small part of the right side of my brain starts to hurt, along with my legs burning, but thats natural because i just played soccer.
after a while it spreads to the back part of my brain. then my stomach, the upper right part, just below my lungs. so i figured i just needed some food.
so everything hurts as i ate my lunch, at 330 by the way. but the pain started to subside. by the end only a small part of my right pain remained in pain, possibly due to lack of rest.
anyway, i don't really know why i'm talking about this on my blog. maybe as some sort of reference perhaps. i dunno
have no idea what what my prelims results will be like. want to feel confident and yet at the same time, don't want to be overly relaxed. everytime i feel like i did well for 1 paper the universe turns around and screws me, and when i feel not confident for a paper, the universe does its magic again.
taggingrox.blogspot.com
anyway, prelims are over, most of the papers consisted of 1 killer difficulty paper plus 1 can-make-it-if-you-studied type of paper. unfortunately they always put the more difficult paper in front.
anyway, spent my weekend doing up the blogskin and spent yesterday visiting teachers followed by soccer followed by heatstroke/malnutrition
here's the play-by-play:
heatstroke/malnutrition happened because i didnt eat breakfast. so i played for about 15 to 30 minutes soccer at 12 odd pm. clearly the sun is damn hot. so i finished and dank hundred plus, then sat at the benches beside the courts until our turn again.
this is when the problem starts. at first the left side of my vision starts looking a little off, like slanted and a bit negative looking. but i didn't do much about it, just carried on playing.
then i start my next match looking abit dizzy and losing depth perception. but i could still react to the ball.
i played for 10 mins before going back for lunch
by then it was 3 plus. at that time, a small part of the right side of my brain starts to hurt, along with my legs burning, but thats natural because i just played soccer.
after a while it spreads to the back part of my brain. then my stomach, the upper right part, just below my lungs. so i figured i just needed some food.
so everything hurts as i ate my lunch, at 330 by the way. but the pain started to subside. by the end only a small part of my right pain remained in pain, possibly due to lack of rest.
anyway, i don't really know why i'm talking about this on my blog. maybe as some sort of reference perhaps. i dunno
have no idea what what my prelims results will be like. want to feel confident and yet at the same time, don't want to be overly relaxed. everytime i feel like i did well for 1 paper the universe turns around and screws me, and when i feel not confident for a paper, the universe does its magic again.
taggingrox.blogspot.com
Monday, August 31, 2009
funny joke
A woman has a close male friend. This means that he is probably interested in her, which is why he hangs around so much. She sees him strictly as a friend. This always starts out with, you're a great guy, but I don't like you in that way. This is roughly the equivalent for the guy of going to a job interview and the company saying, You have a great resume, you have all the qualifications we are looking for, but we're not going to hire you. We will, however, use your resume as the basis for comparison for all other applicants. But, we're going to hire somebody who is far less qualified and is probably an alcoholic. And if he doesn't work out, we'll hire somebody else, but still not you. In fact, we will never hire you. But we will call you from time to time to complain about the person that we hired.
Friday, August 21, 2009
timeless
made a casual observation today after watching season 1 of friends
if you want to make a show classic or timeless that future generations may be able to enjoy
avoid pop culture references, because they only make sense at roughly 1 or 2 years of broadcast.
this kind of reflects how some producers or writers just think about the short term and use pop culture references to a obscenely irritating level and then find that while it may be good now, its hard to get syndicated because no one understands anymore.
if you want to make a show classic or timeless that future generations may be able to enjoy
avoid pop culture references, because they only make sense at roughly 1 or 2 years of broadcast.
this kind of reflects how some producers or writers just think about the short term and use pop culture references to a obscenely irritating level and then find that while it may be good now, its hard to get syndicated because no one understands anymore.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
crazy kids . . .
crazy ideas me and my friends used to talk about
joel came up with a shirt for us with team srjc synchronized swimming jersey that we would wear to school
he also came up with buying old plastic power rangers masks or something like that from the pasar malam and then sneaking it into the cinema. when mama mia or high school musical 3 played. that way, anything there was a song, we would burst from the seats and start dancing as if it was some live show
joey sir used to say this when he makes a mistakes, "testing you only, lucky you all pass!" hahas
and i have a hell lot of friends whose name start with J. counting JUST my contact list, i have AT LEAST 11 friends whose names start with J. and that's not even counting those i don't have numbers of.
NEED MONEY FOR SHADOW COMPLEX
joel came up with a shirt for us with team srjc synchronized swimming jersey that we would wear to school
he also came up with buying old plastic power rangers masks or something like that from the pasar malam and then sneaking it into the cinema. when mama mia or high school musical 3 played. that way, anything there was a song, we would burst from the seats and start dancing as if it was some live show
joey sir used to say this when he makes a mistakes, "testing you only, lucky you all pass!" hahas
and i have a hell lot of friends whose name start with J. counting JUST my contact list, i have AT LEAST 11 friends whose names start with J. and that's not even counting those i don't have numbers of.
NEED MONEY FOR SHADOW COMPLEX
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
My Dreams
a name that came to me in a dream yesterday night, or was it the morning today. anyway
the name is HG aegis Lewis. author, female
i think the name came from lewis carol, whom i thought was a girl
still another word that i used to keep pronouncing because it is so fun to pronounce was
alex faire. i dunno how to write out the pronunciation and if i did i doubt you would know how to read it.
anyway, just some of my weird dreams.
also, a strange observation, things in your memory do not have colour unless you take special notice of them.
things like rainbows and blood and things like that.
everything else looks like its in grayscale. or black and white for layman terms
particularly, i can't remember any colour in my dream except until the part where i cut the author's hands with a samurai sword and blood came out, and that kind of woke me up. it wasn't even like kill bill gushing out type. it was like a stylised flow, like the blood from the wrist flowed out in a radial style. like those cool wavy lines you see at the end of most web designs nowadays
anyway, her hand was gray and the blood came out was red. and then i remember pulling her hand (the hand wasn't completely cut, it was deep, but not enough to go through) and making her run because a lot of readers or probably zombies were chasing me/her. then i dodged a taxi or cab or some black car with a huge white stripe in the center which kind of held them back. the readers were probably zombies. at least they behaved and moved like zombies.
then i woke up and my lungs and legs were all warm and i didn't bother to check the time because my dog was still hogging on to my blanket.
in case you think this is a generic nightmare scenario, it was not. it was not scary at all. i or rather the main guy in my dream felt very relaxed and calm and like somewhat experienced, like some kind of special agent who's seen this before kind of stuff. so there was no particular fear involved in this dream, just more like rushing for time, late for deadlines/meeting/school etcetera.
and that's my dream. i have others that i don't post online because those are more surreal and many times more incomprehensible. this is one of those dreams that people, in other words me, generally can make sense of.
I CAN SEE THE FUTURE!!!
the name is HG aegis Lewis. author, female
i think the name came from lewis carol, whom i thought was a girl
still another word that i used to keep pronouncing because it is so fun to pronounce was
alex faire. i dunno how to write out the pronunciation and if i did i doubt you would know how to read it.
anyway, just some of my weird dreams.
also, a strange observation, things in your memory do not have colour unless you take special notice of them.
things like rainbows and blood and things like that.
everything else looks like its in grayscale. or black and white for layman terms
particularly, i can't remember any colour in my dream except until the part where i cut the author's hands with a samurai sword and blood came out, and that kind of woke me up. it wasn't even like kill bill gushing out type. it was like a stylised flow, like the blood from the wrist flowed out in a radial style. like those cool wavy lines you see at the end of most web designs nowadays
anyway, her hand was gray and the blood came out was red. and then i remember pulling her hand (the hand wasn't completely cut, it was deep, but not enough to go through) and making her run because a lot of readers or probably zombies were chasing me/her. then i dodged a taxi or cab or some black car with a huge white stripe in the center which kind of held them back. the readers were probably zombies. at least they behaved and moved like zombies.
then i woke up and my lungs and legs were all warm and i didn't bother to check the time because my dog was still hogging on to my blanket.
in case you think this is a generic nightmare scenario, it was not. it was not scary at all. i or rather the main guy in my dream felt very relaxed and calm and like somewhat experienced, like some kind of special agent who's seen this before kind of stuff. so there was no particular fear involved in this dream, just more like rushing for time, late for deadlines/meeting/school etcetera.
and that's my dream. i have others that i don't post online because those are more surreal and many times more incomprehensible. this is one of those dreams that people, in other words me, generally can make sense of.
I CAN SEE THE FUTURE!!!
Monday, August 17, 2009
money
also, i need a lot of money this month
and the Zimbabwean dollar is discontinued
$72 batman arkham asylum (possibly more)
$32 Trials HD
$32 Shadow Complex
and yes al, i need my money back
and the Zimbabwean dollar is discontinued
$72 batman arkham asylum (possibly more)
$32 Trials HD
$32 Shadow Complex
and yes al, i need my money back
Clone info
NEE-NAH-BU-AY
bloody hell, i know how to do qn 5 yet i go and stupidly do qn 1. stupid econs. stupid time limit. cannot 3 hours meh. will die meh.
heard mcfly on radio. they sound very pop ish like simple plan, which kind of caught me off guard. saw them on youtube, hate their hair, for the fact that everyone and their monkey has that same hairstyle
i actually wanted to write that last line in my gp essay.
anyway, saw a guy from sr 's twin in the elevator, he lives 2 stories above me, looks exactly like the guy from sr. i think he's s13 or something
anyway, got me thinking about twins going to different schools and different social circles. then i thought about having my own twin. like i would give him a picture of who are my friends and who are the people i would say hi and bye too. then i thought about clones.
then i thought about having this flashcard of "clone information" like basically you give this flash card, like the pw presentation cards, and he would be able to "continue" in your place. i wanted to compile my own clone info here, but i realized that i would have to put my friends' picture on the interwebs. and that's not right
www.lightamillioncandles.com
bloody hell, i know how to do qn 5 yet i go and stupidly do qn 1. stupid econs. stupid time limit. cannot 3 hours meh. will die meh.
heard mcfly on radio. they sound very pop ish like simple plan, which kind of caught me off guard. saw them on youtube, hate their hair, for the fact that everyone and their monkey has that same hairstyle
i actually wanted to write that last line in my gp essay.
anyway, saw a guy from sr 's twin in the elevator, he lives 2 stories above me, looks exactly like the guy from sr. i think he's s13 or something
anyway, got me thinking about twins going to different schools and different social circles. then i thought about having my own twin. like i would give him a picture of who are my friends and who are the people i would say hi and bye too. then i thought about clones.
then i thought about having this flashcard of "clone information" like basically you give this flash card, like the pw presentation cards, and he would be able to "continue" in your place. i wanted to compile my own clone info here, but i realized that i would have to put my friends' picture on the interwebs. and that's not right
www.lightamillioncandles.com
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Random Musings
I find it incredibly strange that people can sit down and spend hours upon hours on facebook and yet cannot type up a decent 2 sentence blog update.
also, if i had to choose which club to go to based on name alone, Ministry Of Sound would beat all competition hands down. i mean who comes up with a name like zouk anyway.
also, i found out that certain words are incredibly fun to pronounce, like konfrontasi and batu ferringhi. and alos this latin phrase i always used to pronounce even though i didn't know what it meant but now can't really remember
also, nokia screwed up the entire bus 80 ride i took from bugis to kovan. the bus shook like a phone was ringing on vibrate and they screwed up the seating plan and made it look like seat so much less people, and for what? music? the music is not even half decent. also there's a part in the bus with 2 seats designed like a bar top complete with weird ang moh guy sitting opposite you,(on the window, meaning your seat is actually facing a window) in front of a table full of alcohol. and the most ironic part about this was that the bus passengers consists of either old people and foreign workers. the youngsters only made up like one fifth at most.
went to bugis national library just now. never ever gonna go there again. me and edmund reached the library's study lounge itself at 9.12am, while the library opens at 9. it was already full. so we went down to the actual library part of the library to wait since it opened at 10. by 9.50 there was already a goddamn queue outside a library. A FRIGGIN LIBRARY. and most ironically, most did not come early for the books, they came early for the seats.
so you know, there's a business opportunity somewhere there. rent a huge warehouse, load it with tables and somewhat comfortable chair, install a good aircon system, and charge students to go into study. to get them to enter, charge them cheaply, like 50 cents per hour with like $5 for the whole day or something like that. and then overcharge the food and drinks, but make sure you have a SILENT air filter to filter out the crap smells that food seems to bring with it. there you go, business plan!
also, i spent more time in the library reading dilbert than actually studying. so apparently even the school is more boring than the library
also another thing i never really understood. i always seem to eat lor mee even though i have never once tasted lor mee that actually tastes good. it just always seem to be like on the priorty list for an irrational unexplainable reason. i mean i don't really like lor mee but yet i always seem to buy it even when there are perfectly reasonable substitutes and then end up hating the lor mee that i for some reason will buy and eat. it is just completely irrational.
and to end off my post, WHAT THE FUCK DOES HURR HURR EVEN MEAN?? does anyone even make that sound naturally.
also, if i had to choose which club to go to based on name alone, Ministry Of Sound would beat all competition hands down. i mean who comes up with a name like zouk anyway.
also, i found out that certain words are incredibly fun to pronounce, like konfrontasi and batu ferringhi. and alos this latin phrase i always used to pronounce even though i didn't know what it meant but now can't really remember
also, nokia screwed up the entire bus 80 ride i took from bugis to kovan. the bus shook like a phone was ringing on vibrate and they screwed up the seating plan and made it look like seat so much less people, and for what? music? the music is not even half decent. also there's a part in the bus with 2 seats designed like a bar top complete with weird ang moh guy sitting opposite you,(on the window, meaning your seat is actually facing a window) in front of a table full of alcohol. and the most ironic part about this was that the bus passengers consists of either old people and foreign workers. the youngsters only made up like one fifth at most.
went to bugis national library just now. never ever gonna go there again. me and edmund reached the library's study lounge itself at 9.12am, while the library opens at 9. it was already full. so we went down to the actual library part of the library to wait since it opened at 10. by 9.50 there was already a goddamn queue outside a library. A FRIGGIN LIBRARY. and most ironically, most did not come early for the books, they came early for the seats.
so you know, there's a business opportunity somewhere there. rent a huge warehouse, load it with tables and somewhat comfortable chair, install a good aircon system, and charge students to go into study. to get them to enter, charge them cheaply, like 50 cents per hour with like $5 for the whole day or something like that. and then overcharge the food and drinks, but make sure you have a SILENT air filter to filter out the crap smells that food seems to bring with it. there you go, business plan!
also, i spent more time in the library reading dilbert than actually studying. so apparently even the school is more boring than the library
also another thing i never really understood. i always seem to eat lor mee even though i have never once tasted lor mee that actually tastes good. it just always seem to be like on the priorty list for an irrational unexplainable reason. i mean i don't really like lor mee but yet i always seem to buy it even when there are perfectly reasonable substitutes and then end up hating the lor mee that i for some reason will buy and eat. it is just completely irrational.
and to end off my post, WHAT THE FUCK DOES HURR HURR EVEN MEAN?? does anyone even make that sound naturally.
Sunday, August 09, 2009
myself : a somewhat psychological analysis
anyone who has simply read my blog but never met me in person would believe i am an empty shell with little to no social skills and the number of friends that i have would attest to that.
many times when i read my on blogs, particularly on "good days", i always see myself writing as this really emo angsty kid. sometimes i find myself incredibly immature. and yet at the same time, i feel very immature for calling myself immature. did i just make any sense back there?
for purposes of understanding, good days are those where i am in a RELATIVELY good mood because the last thing i could remember happening was something pleasant.
i am incredibly pessimistic, the only things i am really optimistic about is the food i am about to eat later will taste good as long as someone other than my maid is cooking. i tend to, and i do fault myself mostly, proclaim that i have few friends on my blogs. on any good day, when i see this, i will think about all the good friends i have, which comparatively to maybe the most popular guy on campus, may be little, but to call them few is quite an injustice to them. on any good day , when i read my own posts, i feel a little guilty for saying that i only have so and so friends.
as a kid i always used birthday parties and birthday gifts as sort of a gauge to see how many friends i have. in recent years, if i get more than 2 i would jump for joy, and i'm not kidding about that. every birthday post that i have written about in my blog has been a "bad" one, and by bad i meant i only received a cake from my family and maybe a shirt or a card from someone considerate enough to remember. P.S thank you wen hui and also all the insurance companies. when i was in sec 4, i decided to change all that, i told myself that hey if i wanted more gifts, then i should do the same and give them to other people right, thats' how karma works. but it doesn't. eventually i started to feel that my gifts or gifts i shared in cost were becoming more and more insincere and i felt more like a chore than a truly thoughtful gesture. eventually i gave up on that silly idea and only bought and helped with people i truly cared about. it wasn't very often, but the feeling you get is infinitely more satisfying.
i often feel emotionally and socially crippled, maybe not as much as some people, but i do feel that there is a part about the nuances of society that i don't seem to be getting, which others do and that puts me at a disadvantage. i have rather low self-esteem if any of you guys have not yet picked up on that. many of my actions that i took in jc are merely "leaps of faith", hoping that if i do enough crazy things i wont appear insecure. but it never truly worked. i still am lousy at running despite 2 years of will run. i hang on the my broken shoes, as an excuse that i couldn't really let go of because i don't want to face up to the fact that i suck at running. i always tell others gp so easy what, just as a way to make myself feel a little better about what little strengths that i have, even though i always come off as a jerk. most of the times, i only realise how much of an asshole i am after the words leave my mouth. although i have no reason to apologize for giving others a reason to judge me, i have a strong compelling urge to say i'm sorry, for perhaps belittling you somewhat.
speaking about birthdays, i think the reason i get so upset is because i'm jealous of others. everytime i visit blogs or from other people verbally, i always see this recurring picture of lots of people surrounding them as they either have a meal or go out and have a good time. i see pictures of people who have enough gifts to put on the ground and take pictures without having to zoom in. and then on every 6th september, i look at the computer screen and walk around in my house with nothing but boxers and a big t-shirt, wondering what went wrong with my life. because every 6th september i am reminded that i will not have a great big birthday bash like everyone else. to be fair every birthday night i can expect a nice small little strawberry cake from my parents, and to that i really must say i love them. i don't tell them i love them enough.
i never fully understood the concept of humility and i feel that is also why i'm socially crippled. unlike many other traits or values, this is one that you cannot fully adopt and portray it. some people feel that imagination is the most difficult, but i do not think so. just think a little different from how you normally do, and stop applying logic and you should be fine. but humility is difficult, because it cannot be displayed prominently like perhaps courage or moral integrity. sometimes when people talk to me about my achievements, if i downplay it and say as if its' nothing or that its' very simple, people, particularly my mother, say i am arrogant. if i talk about it as my ego would allow me to, i come off as an even bigger asshole. if i don't talk about it people think i'm anti social. so i sometimes really do admire and perhaps be a little jealous of people who come across as humble. perhaps it's the little subtleties that makes it such a simple idea so much more complex.
for the sake of simplicity i will, as i have in the past, refer to anyone who believes in jesus, christians. because there are really too many splits if you want to nitpick
i actually wanted to use my little birthday analogy to start as a small little anecdote before talking about some of my friends. particularly the similarities. i noticed that i remarkably large percentage of people i knew whom i think, or at least gives the impression of having great social skills and hence numerous friends including many who are close friends, are in fact practicing a religion of some sort, most notably christians. granted i do have friends who are somewhat "meh" about any religious views, i have only met one person who is even remotely atheistic, despite the fact that i have 200 odd "friends" on facebook and probably more in real life. i think as a general approximation, i think that only may be 1 out of every 5 friends that are "meh" about religion, are relatively successful when it comes to socialising, whereas for religious friends it is the opposite, 4 out of 5 are great at socialising.
this has mixed implications on me personally, because on one hand cultural diversity, and on the other, it means my chances of finding a girlfriend are slimmer somewhat, considering that most christians i meet would RATHER have a relationship with people of the same ideology. it's one thing to be friends with someone with a conflicting mindset, but it's another thing altogether to have a relationship with someone of a conflicting mindset, especially when it comes to something as big as religion.
ok so now i'm going to base everything that i am about to write on the fact that religious people tend to be more socially "successful" or have a higher EQ for another interpretation and vice versa for non-religious people.
in sociology, the problem of causality would come into effect here. was it that the religious part the cause of such people's social ability, or was it just liek coincidence, maybe because christians make up such a big part that they overlap with people who do well. because both sides are in fact equally possible since chirstians actually make up more than 50% of singapore's population.
but based on my own personal experience, which i must stress is just opinion and not fact, is very simply that religious people, particularly people whose PARENTS preach to them, are the ones who have that extra opportunity to "practice" social interaction. i'll explain what that means.
parents who preach to their kids and bring them to any temples or churches, on a regular basis, like not just new year, who generally have kids that are exposed to more people. so as a kid you will have more time spent with other people, be it kids or adults. and you will pick up certain subtleties very early on compared to people who don't have that opportunity. it is akin to riding a bike. if you can't bike, and you always try to ride a bike everyday, eventually you will learn certain tips and tricks like the faster you go the more stable you are and looking down as you paddle will make you unstable. this are very fundamental and incredibly crucial subtleties that anyone who is already trained to bike will find it difficult to teach because you have already gotten past that phase for so long you forgot how it was to start riding. just like social interaction, the kid who does it everyday will pick it up faster than the kid who does it once a month. so that explains the ability point of view in the ultimate success of somewhat "religious" people.
as for the expanded network and circle of friends, its' actually quite simple. people who go to church have access to a larger group of people to talk to than people who don't. it's simple math. people can always try to "offset" that difference by taking up different hobbies that will help them meet people but then again so can religious people. often times, i have heard of people quoting stories from their church friends, and i always think to myself, how interesting can your church friends be.
as a kid, my parents never imposed any form of religious upbringing in me. they did teach me to be morally upright and honest and always say thank you, values oriented things. but none of what they taught me ever oriented from any kind of religion or even any story. they just said hey you should do this, otherwise other people will suffer, like e.g if you don't share, others won't get to play your toys and they won't share with you kind of lessons. i was a product of a christian convert mother, who never wears a cross and folds incense paper and a buddhist/taoist father who only prays to guanyinma and his late father, unless other people are around. while they have never explicitly stated how strong they were in their individual faiths, i think the main thing was that they never ever tried to influence me in any belief system. so i grew up learning to question others, i grew up question why i had to go to a temple when all the incense smoke was just going to make my eyes tear up, that was when i was a kid. in my primary school years, being in a catholic school, with prayers every morning, it undoubtedly had an impact on me. because according to what they said, everyone was a catholic. and i thought i was a catholic. i remember one time where there was this wishing thing they had where you would send letters to god, and all i wished for was so i wouldn't be careless and keep losing stuff. and my mum was like looking at me with this weird look, and said are you sure you're a catholic. of course i eventually understood that it was just the school and that i was not one of them even though they kept saying everyone believes in their god. as i grew older, i started to respect my roots, become more like my father somewhat, with a quiet respect for the unknown. my dad used to tell me, it's better to give offerings to the ghosts during the seventh month in case.
every time i tried to speak to any god, all i could ever hear was me replying in a slightly deeper voice telling me what i already know i should do.
after one particular incident, i questioned existence, and eventually came to the conclusion that there wasn't. for such a long time i had suspected that if there were so many religions how could i know which is the right one, but i never acted on that impulse. today i look at religion like how a historian would look at history, marvel at the great ones while respecting and admiring their own roots, no matter how detached they feel, there was still a small strand of connectedness with it.
i reflect upon this as i considered my own flaws. maybe that was why i am such a cripple. maybe i will never have a floor full of gifts. maybe i will never become anything more than an arrogant son of a bitch. but i know that inside me lies the potential to change all that, and whether or not i was put here by an almighty god does not matter, because my actions will determine my outcome, and i refuse to let whichever god you believe in take credit for that.
because this is my story, and this is how i choose to write it
this post was originally going to be named the impact of religion
www.lightamillioncandles.com
something you can do to help
many times when i read my on blogs, particularly on "good days", i always see myself writing as this really emo angsty kid. sometimes i find myself incredibly immature. and yet at the same time, i feel very immature for calling myself immature. did i just make any sense back there?
for purposes of understanding, good days are those where i am in a RELATIVELY good mood because the last thing i could remember happening was something pleasant.
i am incredibly pessimistic, the only things i am really optimistic about is the food i am about to eat later will taste good as long as someone other than my maid is cooking. i tend to, and i do fault myself mostly, proclaim that i have few friends on my blogs. on any good day, when i see this, i will think about all the good friends i have, which comparatively to maybe the most popular guy on campus, may be little, but to call them few is quite an injustice to them. on any good day , when i read my own posts, i feel a little guilty for saying that i only have so and so friends.
as a kid i always used birthday parties and birthday gifts as sort of a gauge to see how many friends i have. in recent years, if i get more than 2 i would jump for joy, and i'm not kidding about that. every birthday post that i have written about in my blog has been a "bad" one, and by bad i meant i only received a cake from my family and maybe a shirt or a card from someone considerate enough to remember. P.S thank you wen hui and also all the insurance companies. when i was in sec 4, i decided to change all that, i told myself that hey if i wanted more gifts, then i should do the same and give them to other people right, thats' how karma works. but it doesn't. eventually i started to feel that my gifts or gifts i shared in cost were becoming more and more insincere and i felt more like a chore than a truly thoughtful gesture. eventually i gave up on that silly idea and only bought and helped with people i truly cared about. it wasn't very often, but the feeling you get is infinitely more satisfying.
i often feel emotionally and socially crippled, maybe not as much as some people, but i do feel that there is a part about the nuances of society that i don't seem to be getting, which others do and that puts me at a disadvantage. i have rather low self-esteem if any of you guys have not yet picked up on that. many of my actions that i took in jc are merely "leaps of faith", hoping that if i do enough crazy things i wont appear insecure. but it never truly worked. i still am lousy at running despite 2 years of will run. i hang on the my broken shoes, as an excuse that i couldn't really let go of because i don't want to face up to the fact that i suck at running. i always tell others gp so easy what, just as a way to make myself feel a little better about what little strengths that i have, even though i always come off as a jerk. most of the times, i only realise how much of an asshole i am after the words leave my mouth. although i have no reason to apologize for giving others a reason to judge me, i have a strong compelling urge to say i'm sorry, for perhaps belittling you somewhat.
speaking about birthdays, i think the reason i get so upset is because i'm jealous of others. everytime i visit blogs or from other people verbally, i always see this recurring picture of lots of people surrounding them as they either have a meal or go out and have a good time. i see pictures of people who have enough gifts to put on the ground and take pictures without having to zoom in. and then on every 6th september, i look at the computer screen and walk around in my house with nothing but boxers and a big t-shirt, wondering what went wrong with my life. because every 6th september i am reminded that i will not have a great big birthday bash like everyone else. to be fair every birthday night i can expect a nice small little strawberry cake from my parents, and to that i really must say i love them. i don't tell them i love them enough.
i never fully understood the concept of humility and i feel that is also why i'm socially crippled. unlike many other traits or values, this is one that you cannot fully adopt and portray it. some people feel that imagination is the most difficult, but i do not think so. just think a little different from how you normally do, and stop applying logic and you should be fine. but humility is difficult, because it cannot be displayed prominently like perhaps courage or moral integrity. sometimes when people talk to me about my achievements, if i downplay it and say as if its' nothing or that its' very simple, people, particularly my mother, say i am arrogant. if i talk about it as my ego would allow me to, i come off as an even bigger asshole. if i don't talk about it people think i'm anti social. so i sometimes really do admire and perhaps be a little jealous of people who come across as humble. perhaps it's the little subtleties that makes it such a simple idea so much more complex.
for the sake of simplicity i will, as i have in the past, refer to anyone who believes in jesus, christians. because there are really too many splits if you want to nitpick
i actually wanted to use my little birthday analogy to start as a small little anecdote before talking about some of my friends. particularly the similarities. i noticed that i remarkably large percentage of people i knew whom i think, or at least gives the impression of having great social skills and hence numerous friends including many who are close friends, are in fact practicing a religion of some sort, most notably christians. granted i do have friends who are somewhat "meh" about any religious views, i have only met one person who is even remotely atheistic, despite the fact that i have 200 odd "friends" on facebook and probably more in real life. i think as a general approximation, i think that only may be 1 out of every 5 friends that are "meh" about religion, are relatively successful when it comes to socialising, whereas for religious friends it is the opposite, 4 out of 5 are great at socialising.
this has mixed implications on me personally, because on one hand cultural diversity, and on the other, it means my chances of finding a girlfriend are slimmer somewhat, considering that most christians i meet would RATHER have a relationship with people of the same ideology. it's one thing to be friends with someone with a conflicting mindset, but it's another thing altogether to have a relationship with someone of a conflicting mindset, especially when it comes to something as big as religion.
ok so now i'm going to base everything that i am about to write on the fact that religious people tend to be more socially "successful" or have a higher EQ for another interpretation and vice versa for non-religious people.
in sociology, the problem of causality would come into effect here. was it that the religious part the cause of such people's social ability, or was it just liek coincidence, maybe because christians make up such a big part that they overlap with people who do well. because both sides are in fact equally possible since chirstians actually make up more than 50% of singapore's population.
but based on my own personal experience, which i must stress is just opinion and not fact, is very simply that religious people, particularly people whose PARENTS preach to them, are the ones who have that extra opportunity to "practice" social interaction. i'll explain what that means.
parents who preach to their kids and bring them to any temples or churches, on a regular basis, like not just new year, who generally have kids that are exposed to more people. so as a kid you will have more time spent with other people, be it kids or adults. and you will pick up certain subtleties very early on compared to people who don't have that opportunity. it is akin to riding a bike. if you can't bike, and you always try to ride a bike everyday, eventually you will learn certain tips and tricks like the faster you go the more stable you are and looking down as you paddle will make you unstable. this are very fundamental and incredibly crucial subtleties that anyone who is already trained to bike will find it difficult to teach because you have already gotten past that phase for so long you forgot how it was to start riding. just like social interaction, the kid who does it everyday will pick it up faster than the kid who does it once a month. so that explains the ability point of view in the ultimate success of somewhat "religious" people.
as for the expanded network and circle of friends, its' actually quite simple. people who go to church have access to a larger group of people to talk to than people who don't. it's simple math. people can always try to "offset" that difference by taking up different hobbies that will help them meet people but then again so can religious people. often times, i have heard of people quoting stories from their church friends, and i always think to myself, how interesting can your church friends be.
as a kid, my parents never imposed any form of religious upbringing in me. they did teach me to be morally upright and honest and always say thank you, values oriented things. but none of what they taught me ever oriented from any kind of religion or even any story. they just said hey you should do this, otherwise other people will suffer, like e.g if you don't share, others won't get to play your toys and they won't share with you kind of lessons. i was a product of a christian convert mother, who never wears a cross and folds incense paper and a buddhist/taoist father who only prays to guanyinma and his late father, unless other people are around. while they have never explicitly stated how strong they were in their individual faiths, i think the main thing was that they never ever tried to influence me in any belief system. so i grew up learning to question others, i grew up question why i had to go to a temple when all the incense smoke was just going to make my eyes tear up, that was when i was a kid. in my primary school years, being in a catholic school, with prayers every morning, it undoubtedly had an impact on me. because according to what they said, everyone was a catholic. and i thought i was a catholic. i remember one time where there was this wishing thing they had where you would send letters to god, and all i wished for was so i wouldn't be careless and keep losing stuff. and my mum was like looking at me with this weird look, and said are you sure you're a catholic. of course i eventually understood that it was just the school and that i was not one of them even though they kept saying everyone believes in their god. as i grew older, i started to respect my roots, become more like my father somewhat, with a quiet respect for the unknown. my dad used to tell me, it's better to give offerings to the ghosts during the seventh month in case.
every time i tried to speak to any god, all i could ever hear was me replying in a slightly deeper voice telling me what i already know i should do.
after one particular incident, i questioned existence, and eventually came to the conclusion that there wasn't. for such a long time i had suspected that if there were so many religions how could i know which is the right one, but i never acted on that impulse. today i look at religion like how a historian would look at history, marvel at the great ones while respecting and admiring their own roots, no matter how detached they feel, there was still a small strand of connectedness with it.
i reflect upon this as i considered my own flaws. maybe that was why i am such a cripple. maybe i will never have a floor full of gifts. maybe i will never become anything more than an arrogant son of a bitch. but i know that inside me lies the potential to change all that, and whether or not i was put here by an almighty god does not matter, because my actions will determine my outcome, and i refuse to let whichever god you believe in take credit for that.
because this is my story, and this is how i choose to write it
this post was originally going to be named the impact of religion
www.lightamillioncandles.com
something you can do to help
Saturday, August 08, 2009
the new paper
read the new paper just now
can't remember when was the last time i read it, probably the time the auntie at my void deck stopped selling.
anyway, they were running articles about ndp and stuff
i din actually buy tnp to read the ndp articles, but the part about soo being kicked out because she din have an american accent
anyway. about soo. she is a dj on 987 who does the midnight shift, called pillowfight with soo. i heard her voice before and i actually thought she was some new graduate from the radio academy or something like that. i had no idea she was 30. seriously
anyway, she thinks she was kicked out for not sounding american. i have heard her on the dj a few times and i don't think she deserved to be kicked out. i thought she was a great dj with a great personality and i din really think she had any language problems that i could think of. so i think the kicking her off part is a bit too drastic. i think she does a great job of connecting with her audience. so there is a facebook petition to get her back but i can't seem to find it.
anyway, another article that caught my eye. it was about race. it talked about how this young malay boy doesn't speak with other races because they were of a different faith. then he met the old man who changed his perspective.
i never discriminate. ok let me rephrase that. i don't discriminate intentionally, i think. i never really found a reason to hate or even dislike a person for his skin color or faith. i did find other reasons though. so sometimes when i see my friends making fun of chinese immigrants, i never really understood why. i mean yeah they have an accent, so? i also never really understood why people made fun of indians, that cannot see them in the dark. my friend once laughed at me and called me racist jokingly when i showed her i changed my phone language to malay. i actually saw that in edmunds' phone and thought it was really funny because you'd go about looking at your phone and not knowing what the hell you just stumbled onto. i din think of making fun of the malay language. hell, i'd change it to french or german or thai if i could, because it was the not understanding that was the funny part.
also i thought about my own "religion" if you can call it that. i think i made a breakthrough this week, in that i thought about existence of god and the supernatural. to adopt a scientific mindset, it would be naive and ridiculous to think that god doesn't exist, or anything is an absolute for that matter. basically, what we have right now is a whole bunch of nothing, in the box of evidence of god's existence. and that is a compelling enough reason to take up atheism. but then again, to think deeper is to understand that we do not have evidence to prove that god DOESN"T exist, in maths this is called a null-proof. so it is only fair that we remain open-minded to accept that one day we may have evidence to one or the other. so until then, i will list my "religion" as i am forced to, to Atheist Until Further Notice. it has a pretty nice ring to it.
watched gi joe with yang today while i waited for eman aka Clog02, whose work you may have seen around orchard during the singapore arts festival. GI JOE WAS AWESOME, waiting for a trailer. for the first time, both the lead girls are equally hot, with no one girl being hotter. i think gi joe really beats transformers 2 hands down, probably on par with transformers 1. this is the kind of movie that makes you wanna join the army and work hard there. awesomesauce.
also had our thanksgiving concert yesterday. the performance by the teachers were awesome by themselves. it's just the connection between each performance was not really well done. because the time travel theme was rather lame and made the mcs work hard and come off incredibly lame. i think the time travel theme is very difficult to make cool. seriously, even if it does sound so on paper
the science grease performance was the awesomest. the guys were cool and the ladies were sexy, so yeah i guess that makes an awesome performance. the humanities was also very creative, but a bit sad la cause only can see 2 people, the rest all must cover up until liddat. but the part with the college anthem was damn funny, when the teachers held up srjc signs.
1s11 went out to rk prata house after that. around 16 people went, including gabriela and cheng kai. saw mr thomas there with his class i presume. played truth or dare, but only has truth. quite fun, know more about friends. the starting quite boring because always ask the same standard questions. but this kind of game more fun to hear about other people's stories. also note to self: improve dress sense. it's more important than you'd imagine. thanks to everyone who made 7/8/09 such a great night.
www.lightamillioncandles.com
awesomesauce too!
can't remember when was the last time i read it, probably the time the auntie at my void deck stopped selling.
anyway, they were running articles about ndp and stuff
i din actually buy tnp to read the ndp articles, but the part about soo being kicked out because she din have an american accent
anyway. about soo. she is a dj on 987 who does the midnight shift, called pillowfight with soo. i heard her voice before and i actually thought she was some new graduate from the radio academy or something like that. i had no idea she was 30. seriously
anyway, she thinks she was kicked out for not sounding american. i have heard her on the dj a few times and i don't think she deserved to be kicked out. i thought she was a great dj with a great personality and i din really think she had any language problems that i could think of. so i think the kicking her off part is a bit too drastic. i think she does a great job of connecting with her audience. so there is a facebook petition to get her back but i can't seem to find it.
anyway, another article that caught my eye. it was about race. it talked about how this young malay boy doesn't speak with other races because they were of a different faith. then he met the old man who changed his perspective.
i never discriminate. ok let me rephrase that. i don't discriminate intentionally, i think. i never really found a reason to hate or even dislike a person for his skin color or faith. i did find other reasons though. so sometimes when i see my friends making fun of chinese immigrants, i never really understood why. i mean yeah they have an accent, so? i also never really understood why people made fun of indians, that cannot see them in the dark. my friend once laughed at me and called me racist jokingly when i showed her i changed my phone language to malay. i actually saw that in edmunds' phone and thought it was really funny because you'd go about looking at your phone and not knowing what the hell you just stumbled onto. i din think of making fun of the malay language. hell, i'd change it to french or german or thai if i could, because it was the not understanding that was the funny part.
also i thought about my own "religion" if you can call it that. i think i made a breakthrough this week, in that i thought about existence of god and the supernatural. to adopt a scientific mindset, it would be naive and ridiculous to think that god doesn't exist, or anything is an absolute for that matter. basically, what we have right now is a whole bunch of nothing, in the box of evidence of god's existence. and that is a compelling enough reason to take up atheism. but then again, to think deeper is to understand that we do not have evidence to prove that god DOESN"T exist, in maths this is called a null-proof. so it is only fair that we remain open-minded to accept that one day we may have evidence to one or the other. so until then, i will list my "religion" as i am forced to, to Atheist Until Further Notice. it has a pretty nice ring to it.
watched gi joe with yang today while i waited for eman aka Clog02, whose work you may have seen around orchard during the singapore arts festival. GI JOE WAS AWESOME, waiting for a trailer. for the first time, both the lead girls are equally hot, with no one girl being hotter. i think gi joe really beats transformers 2 hands down, probably on par with transformers 1. this is the kind of movie that makes you wanna join the army and work hard there. awesomesauce.
also had our thanksgiving concert yesterday. the performance by the teachers were awesome by themselves. it's just the connection between each performance was not really well done. because the time travel theme was rather lame and made the mcs work hard and come off incredibly lame. i think the time travel theme is very difficult to make cool. seriously, even if it does sound so on paper
the science grease performance was the awesomest. the guys were cool and the ladies were sexy, so yeah i guess that makes an awesome performance. the humanities was also very creative, but a bit sad la cause only can see 2 people, the rest all must cover up until liddat. but the part with the college anthem was damn funny, when the teachers held up srjc signs.
1s11 went out to rk prata house after that. around 16 people went, including gabriela and cheng kai. saw mr thomas there with his class i presume. played truth or dare, but only has truth. quite fun, know more about friends. the starting quite boring because always ask the same standard questions. but this kind of game more fun to hear about other people's stories. also note to self: improve dress sense. it's more important than you'd imagine. thanks to everyone who made 7/8/09 such a great night.
www.lightamillioncandles.com
awesomesauce too!
Thursday, August 06, 2009
mr subhas anandan
who in case you don't know, is the top criminal lawyer famous for defending people like one eyed dragon.
our school invited him to come to talk, and boy was he a good speaker.
there was a sense of open honesty that he had with his words, kind of like he already knows all about us.
anyway, whomever convinced him to come to our school must be one brilliant person
he had this very "not in the mood" kind of face, which maybe was his beard, but i couldn't really tell. he talked about his life and lessons for us in jc
when it came to the q & a session, for the first time, councillors need not stand up. thank goodness. i mean i'm getting sick of hearing people complain that confirm is teacher set up one or councillor again, wah lau. i mean if you don't want to speak up then don't complain when others do so right. anyway, this was not the problem today.
he was this really interesting man who talked about the cases he took and why and how he goes about with the cases. incredibly interesting.
i shall not divulge what he told us, but rest assured, this is probably the most interesting moment in srjc for term 3, before thanksgiving concert of course.
anyway, i'm making a new blogskin, so that's coming up, just couldn't get the top banner just right, any suggestions.
www.lightamillioncandles.com
our school invited him to come to talk, and boy was he a good speaker.
there was a sense of open honesty that he had with his words, kind of like he already knows all about us.
anyway, whomever convinced him to come to our school must be one brilliant person
he had this very "not in the mood" kind of face, which maybe was his beard, but i couldn't really tell. he talked about his life and lessons for us in jc
when it came to the q & a session, for the first time, councillors need not stand up. thank goodness. i mean i'm getting sick of hearing people complain that confirm is teacher set up one or councillor again, wah lau. i mean if you don't want to speak up then don't complain when others do so right. anyway, this was not the problem today.
he was this really interesting man who talked about the cases he took and why and how he goes about with the cases. incredibly interesting.
i shall not divulge what he told us, but rest assured, this is probably the most interesting moment in srjc for term 3, before thanksgiving concert of course.
anyway, i'm making a new blogskin, so that's coming up, just couldn't get the top banner just right, any suggestions.
www.lightamillioncandles.com
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
conclusion
conclusion of Msn and Facebook Experiment: It's Not working, its about the same, except for weekends, about 3 more visitors per day.
maybe i'll try it again when i'm famous
maybe i'll try it again when i'm famous
Monday, July 27, 2009
Great Art, Okay Relatively Mediocre Art
is made of 2 parts creativity, 1 part inspiration, and 1 part sleep deprivation. feel free to substitute any ingredient with hallucinogens
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