a warning to the curious:

"it's better not to be in love, than to be in between."
- the coral

am i toy mad?

my newest acquisition. i love it. totally menacing.

46SAR has left a very lasting impression on me. here's one of those not-so-nice moments. i sound like i have some serious issues.

a little magic with photoshop, and ken lands a massive flying kick in balrog's midriff.

the coup de grace. akuma vs evil ryu.

united colours at turquoise

club chic picked the laid-back ambience at turquoise last saturday. what took me so long to upload the pics? beats me man. i'm so busy sometimes.

rach and jo were at their cam-whoring best.

after a while, i joined in. XD

those twin peaks might set tongues wagging at Miss Singapore Universe 2007.

my best excuse is that ben hong was high on the sea breeze.

we look so good together. united colours of club chic. the colours always match naturally.

a cool piece of pseudo-album art that i created with adobe photoshop.

more frolicking pictures!

colin + kero

for the heteros, metros, homos and bis, you have to check out colin and kero. not check them out (god, no), but check their blog out. this is by far the most cutesy, mushy, lovey-dovey blog.

i find it amusing with all the muackz, hugs and 'darling's everywhere. rachel used it for stress-relief during her exam period. i won't see the word 'darling' in the same light again.

love is bliss and, of course, blind.

an education for the simple sanguine singaporean mind

this is my most purposeful post to date in a very young blog. the internet was created to inform and entertain. while i've been busier with the latter, election fever has led me to look at the former.

below is an excerpt from singapore democratic party's (SDA) website. i got wind of it from ben hong's blog.

this is an education for the average post-65er who, i gather, is pretty uninterested and uninformed about the political landscape of sunny singapore, much like i am. i am not proud to admit this. but before you assume that i'm leaping blindly into political activism, let me assure you, i am not. this serves only to inform, not brainwash.

and just like every piece of information we receive, let's all take this with a pinch of salt. i am not a supporter and neither do i endorse SDA's claims. i stand by the fact that without evidence, claims cannot be totally justified.

wordy this post may be, but i do hope you all enjoy this extra bit of material. we have to step out of this ignorant bliss and not let our polls be ridiculed as a phoney war.

_______________________________________

The Tuth About The Election System

Elections

In the absence of genuinely free and fair elections, the act of voting becomes a treacherous impostor of democracy. In Singapore, the Elections Department is under the purview of the Prime Minister’s Office. Because it conducts its business largely away from public scrutiny, many are as convinced of its impartiality as they would be the act of a ventriloquist over the radio.

For instance, the Electoral Boundaries Review Committee redraws the boundaries and then submits its report to the cabinet for approval. The opposition and the public are not consulted, and the report bypasses parliament. Changes are announced only shortly before the elections. As a result, constituencies that showed strong support for the opposition party have undergone major surgery. These areas have either been redistributed to other PAP strongholds or wholly absorbed into GRCs.

Violations of the Parliamentary Elections Act (PEA) by the PAP are never acted upon. In the 1997 elections, several PAP ministers entered polling stations, which they clearly had no authority to do. Under the PEA, no unauthorised persons are allowed to loiter within 200 meters of any voting centre. Yet election officials did not attempt to enforce the rule. Worse, the Attorney General declined to prosecute, saying that the ministers were inside the polling centre—as opposed to loitering on the outside—and, hence, not in breach of any regulation. Complaints and reports about ballot papers being folded together (which should be impossible, because each voter is required to fold his or her voting paper and place it individually into the boxes), the number of ballot papers exceeding the number of registered voters, ballots being sealed in the boxes before polling commenced, ballot boxes not being sealed in the presence of opposition candidates and their agents, and ballot boxes taken to centres outside of the constituency for counting all went unheeded.

The official campaign period is limited to eight days. The ruling party meanwhile enjoys the adoration of the media it controls and freely uses the publicity to introduce and generate support for its candidates months in advance of the election. Under the British system, the prime minister is empowered to select the election date. In Singapore, the end of the year has been the period favoured by the PAP for elections because of the monsoon rains, which prevent voters from attending the rallies of opposition parties. The government determines the time and the sites for public rallies, which usually means that the designated spots are remote and difficult to get to, with grounds that quickly turn into muddy swamps after a downpour.

The GRC system is a monstrous affront to parliamentary representation. Voters cannot choose the candidates they want. The professed rationale for this system is to ensure that ethnic minority communities are not underrepresented in parliament, since each GRC team requires at least one candidate from the minority groups. The PAP argues that the majority Chinese population would be reluctant to elect a candidate not of the same race. Such a principled endeavour would be praiseworthy if it were not for the fact that Jeyaretnam, a minority himself, defeated Chinese PAP candidates in 1981 and again in 1984. In fact, the percentage of ethnic minority MPs declined relative to the population since the 1988 elections, when the scheme was first implemented. Add to this the increasing number of NMPs, the reluctance of the government to hold by-elections, and death of the one-person-one-vote system, and parliamentary democracy in Singapore has become something of an unpalatable joke.

One factor that makes Singaporeans so fearful of taking part in elections is the use of libel laws by the PAP. The judiciary is seen by many to be partial to the ruling party. Several opposition leaders have been rendered bankrupts when they have been unable to pay the millions of dollars in damages to the PAP plaintiffs.

Veteran oppositionist, Joshua B. Jeyaretnam, has paid more than a million dollars to Lee Kuan Yew and other PAP litigants. A former judge, Jeyaretnam had to sell his houses and almost all his possessions to make good on the payments. In January 2001, he was declared bankrupt because he could not pay the hundreds of thousands of dollars he still owed his opponents. Under the law he will lose his seat in parliament and be barred from future elections.

Tang Liang Hong, a successful corporate lawyer and an opposition candidate in the 1997 elections, was sued for defamation for remarks he made about PAP leaders during a public rally. Following the elections, Tang fled the country. His wife’s passport was quickly impounded and she was made a co-defendant in the lawsuit. Their assets were seized. Months later, a high court judge awarded the 11 PAP plaintiffs US$4.7 million, later reduced to US$2.1 million. Tang was subsequently declared bankrupt when he failed to pay the money. He and his wife lost everything they owned in Singapore. The story would have been less wretched had it ended there. During his exile, the government charged him with 33 counts of tax evasion. There is presently an outstanding warrant for his arrest.

In 2001, Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Chok Tong sued Dr Chee Soon Juan for defamation for raising questions about Singapore’s secretive loan to the Suharto regime in 1997 just before he was toppled. The courts then refused to allow Dr Chee to engage foreign lawyers in the form of Queen’s Counsels (QC), even though Dr Chee had indicated that he could not find a local lawyer to represent him and that Lee and Goh had engaged a Senior Counsel (Singapore’s equivalent of the QC) to act for them. The case was subsequently awarded to the plaintiffs in a summary judgment which meant that Dr Chee was not given an open trial to defend himself and call for witnesses. The plaintiffs were awarded $500,000 in damages.

This was not the first suit brought against Dr Chee. In 1993 when he was sacked from the National University of Singapore and three months after he joined the opposition and contested in an election, Dr Chee was also sued for defamation by the head of the department, who was a PAP MP, for disputing that his dismissal. The amount of costs and damages awarded was approximately $400,000.

Such a scenario has prompted Amnesty International to remark: “Civil defamation suits are being misused by the Executive to intimidate and deter those Singaporeans holding dissenting views.”

It is no wonder then that in its annual report Freedom House says that, “Citizens cannot democratically change their government.”

why are babies so cute?

thursday morning, my colleague jeannie gave birth. the babe came sooner than expected, and cuter than expected. she's super cute! all round and plump. lina had to change her diapers after she pooped. haha!

i couldn't bare to touch her. awww.
she kept yawning and sneezing in the most adorable fashion.
i'm going to have kids! at least one. XD

erin, eddy and me

we met up on wednesday evening at subway harbourfront. eddy's having a 'great' time as an involuntary (heck, what's so voluntary about NS anyway?) sleep-deprived section commander due to mono-intake BMT at his camp. erin's sleep-deprived and moving into mugging overdrive, then it's off to Ohio for a work-and-travel programme. i'm sleep-deprived at my new work place. we're all sleep-deprived.

thanks to erin's trigger-happy fingers, i got a lot of (involuntary) shots of myself. i'm no cam-whore, you know. she made me one. it's all her fault.

adobe photoshop is fun. i've been a tad obsessed with trying all the filters these few days.

click! for all the scandalous material.

J-O for jo

jo has said not once, but twice, that my blog is wordy. i pride myself in creating an interesting online tome to entertain and amuse, and of course try to keep everything as short and sweet as possible. to me, short = sweet. i hate wordy blogs. so far, nobody else (i pray so) has told me that my blog is wordy.

recently, i found out, much to my surprise, that jo likes paris hilton. i thought to myself, and not for the first time, why would anyone like her? besides other bimbos and dumb girls, that is. hmm. maybe they do have more in common than just the i'm-so-girly smile and a single-digit IQ score. now i totally understand why jo feels inundated when she reads quality text from my blog.

it seems ben hong thinks jo's deluded too. click here to find out why. i laughed my ass off. so true. so jo.

werk werk werk

i haven't blogged for the past few days due to lethargy. if you ignorant bunch still haven't known, i'm in the middle of compiling an equipment catalogue for the boss. now, add entering into excel format every single receipt collected by the company since 2003 to my list of tasks. aaaaarrrgh! this new task is mind-numbing. it's so routine and tedious, it kinda reminds me of army days.

anyway, just to let you all know a little more about how i work. everyone has this perpetual impression that i'm a slacker who does little or nothing and still gets paid and gets the results. ok, i'm not saying it's totally untrue, but you gotta cut me some slack (pun not intended). a slacker gets to work too, and gets tired at the end of the day. just not all the time.

this is called a hand pallet truck (yes, i know. what a name), my new best friend. i need to take snapshots of equipment, so naturally there's a need for me to move them to get better angles. most of the stuff that i photograph are extremely heavy (i'm not a fashion photog, i don't snap feather-light models). this is where the hand pallet truck comes in handy. i bet many of you out there don't have a clue about how to use it. but i do. in fact, i'm can operate it with killer efficiency. ha!

alamak lemak

have you tried changi nasi lemak? it's superb. fragrant rice, tasty sambal. enormous fried chicken wing. i'm really satisfied now, especially since i've been craving kick-ass fried chicken for about a week, but never got to order it. the anticipation of sinking my teeth into a juicy chunk and savouring the flavour is banished as soon as the repulsive thought of the oil enters the frame. but thanks to the boss, who lives in the east, changi nasi lemak has made its way onto my own 'makansutra' list.

a deadly idea just crossed my mind. combining two of my most sinful indulges, i just might have the ultimate killer of a meal. especially for the weak-hearted elderly. try char kway teow with a fried chicken drumstick or two. it's a cardiac arrest inducer. but for me, it'll take a week to burn away. hell no.

brokeback mountain 2

jessica alba
halle berry
angelina jolie
eva longoria
scarlett johansson!
brittany murphy
sara foster
jessica simpson

it's tantalising to look at the list of A-list hollywood hotties. the movie will cost a bomb to make, but guys will flock to watch it. let's replay that skinny-dipping scene in our heads again. surely, a whole bunch of sultry lesbian cowgirls is more attractive than a gay cowboy couple. the cast is just missing an asian chick to go all out for mass appeal.

arab street rendezvous

it's been more than a month since i met up with the cool and chic people of the club. so on thursday evening, i was really looking forward to our arab street rendezvous. eager, in fact. jo was finally done with her exams, ben koh got his NSF pay and rach managed to squeeze time out from her arduous reading schedule.

when i arrived, the rest had just finished their drinks at cafe ambrosia. posh-sounding name with posh-sounding prices. naturally, we adjourned to a coffee shop at the corner. they ordered their fare of mee rebus and mee soto, while i distributed goodies from bangkok, burger king dinner still processing in my tummy.

i quickly handed the two bens their candles before ben koh scurried off to meet his amry pals for firewall. what's with ben koh and movies? i haven't a clue. rach was clearly delighted to get her much sought-after red bull tee. i shall not elaborate on the mouldy fate of her previous one.

jo looked on expectantly. "where's mine?" so thick-skinned. buay pai seh lor. typical jo. i told her i forgot. haha! you should have seen the look on her face. try combining sadness with utter disappointment. i bet she was gonna say, "wa, this type of friend one." i whipped out a pink bracelet. her face lit up. i began to explain how i got her present with a simple mindmap:
pink ---> bimbotic ---> jo

we were practically coffee shop hopping. the 60c teh-tarik across the street was calling out to us. having had a cup of kopi-si during lunch and another teh-o at the office, the 60c teh-tarik was reaffirmation of my belief that i might turn into a coffee shop uncle in the future. rach was clearly stressed from all her studying, but with malay rock balads playing in the background and malay uncles shaking their heads to the rifts, this coffee shop was her ideal 'relak-one corner'. there was something about the place that gave us an air of equanimity.

on the way home, we chanced upon a shophouse along a narrow alley. ben hong has a unique ability to spot interesting stuff on the second storeys and pulled all of us up. what greeted us was a 70s style decor studio cum boutique. the lady said 'everything is for sale'. from lamps to blouses to armchairs, everything was lovely. this place was a cool place for photos! realising that we were obviously not buying anything, the lady left us to ogle at her stuff. rach and i whipped out our digicams and began clicking away.

we posed for our own old-fashioned family portrait.

the eye-patch was giving me ideas. we all tried it on for some swashbuckling fun. gaaaargh!

near the junction, the striking yellow peugeot was beckoning. jo tried her shameless best to be a carshow queen. rach was tempted to hop in as it matched her top. 'the open top makes me wanna dump my bag behind and drive home right now.' sure rach, be my guest. i wonder if the horsepower can sustain the amount of load though.

get all the pics here!

a birthday song from paris

on the subject of birthdays, 2006 is a year of twenty-firsts for the class of '85. the perceived transition from youth to adulthood is finally completed by passing the twenty-first milestone. to me, it's just a load of overrated bull, but whatever man. whatever makes you happy.

and this is a birthday song that will make you happy.

dressed to match her bimbotic demeanour, she is a top-to-toe first-class airhead.

and wow, paris can actually sing! and speak in complete sentences! she deserves an award.

mr hefner, spare me the 'ooh's and 'aah's.

natalie the gangsta

this will burst ben koh's natalie portman bubble. my image of her being sweet, demure, gentle and sensual will be almost lost forever. kinda.

great clip courtesy of Saturday Night Live. fyi, it's directed by The Lonely Island bunch. ardy appears near the end. great work by these guys.

heyo 50 cent, ya don't look so tough now huh?!

erotic instinct

in 1992, the brooding michael douglas and lethally-sultry sharon stone starred in what started out as a B-grade slasher flick. douglas was the only big name in the production while stone was a relative unknown. however, sex sells, and the director knew exactly what to do.

i believe the film caused a lot of brouhaha because it was overly sexed-up. it was like bringing soft-porn to the masses using two gorgeous actors. and the adult public lapped it up. an unlikely box-office smash, it was. earnings of US$115,881,195 don't lie.

a few days back, i finally caught it, almost fourteen years after its release. the hype around basic instinct 2 is starting to heat up, and it would be quite senseless to catch the second part if i didn't know about the beginning. my verdict on basic instinct is clear: it's soft-porn indeed. sharon stone was a total knock-out, with or without clothes. the controversy surrounding the film catapulted her to stardom; her infamous interrogation scene, where she wore an ultra-short dress that showed off more than just her stunning legs, is the stuff of legend now.

the release of basic instinct 2 is around the corner. catherine trammell is back, totting her icepick and dragging her psychotic baggage. the film is getting reviews that are less than flattering. a lot of things change after fourteen years, and i'm not too sure if sharon stone's body will be anything but flattering. still, bad hype is better than no hype. i'll have to cross my fingers and adopt a cautious wait-and-see approach. who knows, it just might be another surprise box-office coup.

tangs but no thanks

orchard road: a place that i had sadly not ventured to in about a month, even though it's only a fifteen-minute train ride away. this hiatus was a culmination of a few factors. my friends were too busy with exams, or had no money to go out (what bull), or in a specific case, has a girlfriend but can't manage his time well enough (loser!). i decided to break my orchard road exile yesterday. and guess who i did it with? my brother. when all else fails, there's always him for company. haha!

obviously, i noticed the changes in orchard. far east shopping centre had an extra extension, but i was hardly interested. in fact, i don't think anyone would be interested. not unless you're an ah lian in your mid-teens, still confused about whether to snog a butch or that 'cute' sylvester sim look-a-like at the back of the classroom, and listening to jay chou and the works. sigh, they are a pitiful bunch.

tangs' playlab threw up the most pleasant surprises. darren quickly proclaimed it his 'favourite place in orchard'. i couldn't agree more. the entire level is decked with vicious threads, litreally, ranging from affordable chic Pony to stylish chic FCUK and grunge chic G-Star. and the oh-so-obscure-super-expensive brands further behind that are too flamboyant for me.

darren put on his favourite retro pony sweater. coupled with his retro tee and faded jeans, he looked liked he stepped outta the 70s show. too bad the 2000-ish playlab background gave him away.

i put it on and it looked great (of course, only because i make it look smashing). quickly, i snapped into my fantastic four persona. i was gonna rip off the sweater and jump into action against the big-haired auntie who terrorises shoppers with her chanel-28 stink bombs.

this simple clean-cut pair of puma slip-ons knocked the wind outta me. i was blown away by it. i made a mental note of it. no, i was definitely not buying it there and then. the great singapore sale is around the corner and i'm making shopping plans just in case my sugar mommy doesn't appear in my life after all. by the way, you don't exactly have to be a mommy or an aunty or a granny. heck, you can be younger than me. you just have to be a cash-rich female. no transsexuals please. enough said.

at takashimaya zara, i spotted a denim blazer that wasn't to thick. it was comfortable actually. but then, i looked into the mirror and realised: DENIM OVERKILL! next please...

vote wars

i got this in the email from rachel. it's created by one of her pals, persumably with pretty sharp skills in adobe photoshop. it's hilarious. i nearly fell off my chair.

but there are loopholes in the plot. we all know PM Lee is MM Lee's son and they're both on the same side/party. so if MM Lee is darth vader, how can PM Lee be the hero luke skywalker who kills his dad? an evil luke, maybe. too bad, the 'good guys' in the vote wars will lose, as always.

seven courses with the b-o-double-s

i got treated to lunch again today on a much larger scale. seven-course lunch at a west coast coffee shop:

1. fried tofu
2. steamed grouper
3. black sauce ostrich
4. fried butter crayfish
5. thai-style fried chicken
6. kang kong with cuttlefish
7. baby squid

i've never tried ostrich before. the two squeamish secretaries didn't take a single bite of it. but i didn't let their reactions bother me. to be honest, when i knew there was ostrich on the table, i was eager as a beaver to try. yummy. it tastes like a cross between beef and chicken. it's more tender than beef, and has more flavour. the baby squid was exquisite too. crunchy and fresh. ooh la la.

the bossman rocks!

webcam-o!

usually, i'll be jumping around from pc to pc in the office with my thumbdrive in hand, using whichever is available to do my catalogue stuff. i raised my concerns to the b-o-double-s and he quickly handed one of the brand new asus laptops to me. these laptops come with a nifty in-built webcam.

i managed to get a decent shot of myself. i look professional, don't i? and if you're wondering if i'm really talking on my mobile, the answer is yes. typing, fiddling with webcam and chatting on mobile with ease. i can multi-task. reads like an impressive resume.

sales manager chris told me he got good deals for the notebooks, "you can even play games on it! office work? no problem." i might consider getting an asus notebook before i go overseas so i don't have to buy a separate webcam. the reasonable pricing is a plus.

lunching with the B-O-double-S

boss edwin dropped in today with his usual "good morning everybody! ne hao!". he never fails to amuse me, either with his bubbly cheer or his weird dance moves.

11.50am was the time. "wanna go for coffee?" edwin said invitingly. i followed him to the canteen. surely enough, he insisted on buying me lunch and some teh si. now how's that for a boss? i had a chat with him about DSTA, ex-navy personnel at DSTA and work stuff. edwin used to be a diver in the RSN until he broke off at age 28. while in service, he was a 'diver all his life'. he supervised the diver training; "lee kuan yew's son and chief of navy trained under me."

after a short while, sales manager chris and chief engineer philip came over to join us. edwin shifted the subject of the conversation to his two aluminium speedboats which are christened melissa and natalie after his two lovely daughters (did i mention that they're awfully cute and sweet? shucks, if i were in primary school now i would date them. i think i've developed a crush). prefering speed over a quiet sailing ride, he enthused about the power behind the controls of a speedboat compared to the luxury of a yacht. yachts give you a very quiet and smooth ride, but the sails don't give much speed and mobility. the keel's huge, so it can only sail in deep waters. a speedboat, on the other hand, gives the the driver what he wants: raw power that leads to a thrilling adrenaline rush. he recounts an experience when he rode one of the boats out into the open sea at close to its maximum speed. imagine 200hp of force driving you against the wind and waves. what a beauty.


i listened and soaked up all the enthusiasm in his words like a sponge. now, besides a car and a house, a speedboat ranks high on my list of luxuries. given singapore's hectic lifestyle, it would be ideal to whisk my future girlfriend out to sea to enjoy the setting sun over a glass of champagne. damn, i want a boat badly.

philip then had a story of his own to share. a few nights back, a door-to door salesman popped up at his place. he was busy watching tv in his room, so his wife answered the door and, rather foolishly, let the hound in. and watched him do his sales pitch and demonstrations for over an hour. still, like all sensible housewives, she had to chase him out. after all, these people are the banes of suburbia. she ran to the room and informed philip of the situation. desperately, she gasped, "i'll give you a blow job if you get him outta here!" philip asked for two. oh man. we all burst out laughing. i got a glimpse of the married man's life. it's a tad chauvanistic and perverted. but hey, aren't we all sexual beings? edwin was eager to know more. "eh, tell us what happened after you chased him out." philip just gave us a wicked smile. that smile said it all.

i'm a seducer?

i'm blogging during office hours yet again. boss has gone home. so the mice come out to play.

picked up this blogthings webbie link from erin's site. yes, i've become idle enough to start clicking on random links on my pals' blogs. anyway, blogthings is fun. so many things to do there. go to this site when you've run out of ideas to post. judging by the immense number of blogthings on erin's site, i think she has run out of blog ideas, besides posting about her boyfriend and hall life.

Your Seduction Style: Fantasy Lover

You know that ideal love that each of us dreams of from childhood? That's you! Not because you posess all of the ideal characteristics, but because you are a savvy shape shifter. You have the uncanny ability to detect someone's particular fantasy... and make it you. You inspire each person to be an idealist and passionate, and you make each moment memorable Even a simple coffee date with you can be the most romantic moment of someone's life By giving your date exactly what he or she desires, you quickly become the ideal lover. Your abilities to make dreams come true is so strong, that you are often the love of many people's lives. Your ex's (and even people you have simply met or been friends with) long to be yours. No doubt you are the one others have dreamed of... your biggest challenge is finding *your* dream lover.

What Kind of Seducer Are You?

i'm a fantasy lover? that's cool with me.

'you are often the love of many people's lives'. - i'm not sure about this. i haven't a single girlfriend to date. sad, but true.

'your biggest challenge is finding *your* dream lover.' - maybe that's why i haven't a single girlfriend to date. this website seems to reveal some truths about me.

caution! man at work

if you've been reading my blog (and i know you've been, all you loyal fans out there), you would have realised my last few posts have suffered a dearth of pictures. i try my best not to let my blog degenerate into a wordy one, because i can't stand so-super-wordy-and-ultra-long-that-you-can't-finish-reading-one-without-running-outta-breath blogs. they BORE me. yawn.

i've a few pics below to showcase the work that i do. yes, i do work. the slacking's occasional. right now, i've been assigned by the boss to compile a catalogue of equipment for rent. i take pictures and fill in the specifications. it sounds easy, but i kid you not. a lot of the heavy equipment is kept together and cluttered up, so i'll have to shift and clean them to get good shots (it's a catalogue, duh). and i know next to nuts about most of the equipment. all the information has to be gathered somehow.

containerized decompression chamber. i learnt how to open the doors of a container. nothing too special about it, but i don't think many people know how to.

it's terribly claustrophobic inside a decompression chamber, much worse than the hall rooms at NUS. and you probably wouldn't wanna 'get it on' inside, unlike at NUS. XD

a high-pressure diving compressor

CCTV console and comms box

diving helmets. they're pretty heavy. imagine one of those over your head while underwater. i think i'd still drown even with the breathing aids.

working.kinda.

if i'm posting at this time and place, it's obvious what i'm doing: slacking. sales manager chris hasn't been in the office the entire afternoon due to a rendezvous with a client, and i've been given the privilege to use his pc to work on some equipment catalogue. i hate to admit it, but the slacker in me is slightly uncontrollable. look at what i'm using his pc for. it's only two weeks into my temp job and this is happening. i'm so ashamed. and happy at the same time.

i've just had a thirty minute chat with ben hong on my mobile. and read all my pals' blogs (yes, from boring{haha!} clarence to girly erin to outspoken su-may). phew. even slacking can be tiring. since monday, i've been chewing gum in the afternoons to keep me awake. if it's gonna become a habit, i wonder what will it take to keep me from nodding off once my gum supply runs out. oh dearie.

i hope my slacking+gum habit problem fades away soon. i can't imagine going through the same slacking+gum routine while i'm in the usa. a laissez-faire attitude is bad for work/study, while chewing gum is, well, irritating. otherwise, you may notice the 'teeth-whitening' effects of the gum in a few weeks.

hadoken!

my first pic with a trick. thanks to adobe photoshop cs2. i'm so proud of it. totally.

HADOKEN!

cars and melons

it's no secret now; i've been offered a place at carnegie mellon university (cmu). i wouldn't be this happy a few weeks ago as i had taken it for granted. i have to admit rather regrettably that cmu wasn't too high on my list. i was looking forward more to an acceptance, which wasn't to be, from UC berkeley.

now, i'm forced to reconsider my position on CMU. Umich doesn't seem like an outright choice anymore.

umich vs cmu
michigan vs pennsylvania
ann-arbor vs pittsburgh
public vs private
beer n football vs cars n melons (kidding)
more chicks vs less chicks
more guys vs less guys

for a start, ann-arbor isn't as famous as pittburgh. you must be wondering why. well, pittsburgh are champions of superbowl last year. so there you go. to me, without sounding snobbish, private seems more appealing than public now.

if you have any thoughts, opinions or advice, please feel free to give me a buzz. i'm torn between these two excellent colleges. any extra info that i get may influence my decision about my future.

rant no. 3

parkway parade: a newly-renovated, supposedly more trendy shopping centre. an extension on the second floor houses topman, dorothy perkins and espirit. today, they even had a mini fashion show. the models were nothing to shout about, but it's great effort from a suburban mall to take the spirit of the singapore fashion week to the heartland.

this was only the second time that i've been to the spanking-new extension and as fate had it, i had to go to the bathroom halfway through the fashion show. i looked around for toilet signs and spotted one. only there wasn't a male figure on it. holding up the pee in my bladder like a dam that is about to explode during flood season, i walked down the corridor curiously. there i found the ladies' and a washroom for the handicapped. only. the male loo was nowhere in sight. i'm no Male Chauvinist Pig. in fact, i'm far from one. but it's fucking ridiculous. bullshit. utterly disgusted, i used my superhuman strength to hold the dam back and look for another outlet to relieve myself. i just can't believe the lack of common sense on the part of the parkway landlords. they must have thought women and the handicapped can't control their urinal urges as well as men. what idiots.

singapore's transport system is advanced. it's something that the government is proud of. however, i must gripe about the buses. i've been wanting to do this for quite awhile, but didn't have the proper means to do it. well, now i do.

it's not that the buses are filthy. they're clean. stenches, though, do emanate from corners sometimes. and it's not due to the odd bangla. but that's not where my frustration is directed at. it's the bloody bus times. ever since the overly-glorified opening of the north-east MRT line, buses have been neglected. bus companies reduced the number of bus services available to force residents to go underground. whatever bus services that are left come and go at irregular intervals. the times are just about as volatile as an insane iraqi fending off american 'invaders'. today i spent twenty minutes waiting for the wretched service 966 for a twenty-minute ride home. for every minute that i wasted, i had a minute on the bus. it's not supposed to work that way. shit! those precious twenty minutes could have been spent on more worthwhile activities.

maybe i've been spoilt by the 'almost-flawless' transport system all my life that these minor glitches just piss me off so badly. still, i can assure you, the buses is singapore are are nothing to be proud of. and i bet i'm not alone. many other singaporeans share the same sentiments. i know i speak for the others. this rant is not wasted. i have spoken up for the population.

rant no. 2

sunday, a day to hang out with pals and just chill. maybe have a nice meal, chat over a cuppa, or play a few rounds of pool. not unless your pals are busy with other things in their lives.

today i hang out with guan ming. but someone was conspicuously missing. "who?" you may ask. i'll point a damning finger at jason. hey brother, what's up with you? before getting into a relationship, you were all sad, depressed, miserable and lonely. you pined for your crush. guan ming and i would just sit and listen to you ramble about how much you feel for her. i'm not insensitive. i know what it's like. that's why i sat through it and comforted you time and again.

but now it seems some things have changed. you're in a relationship, but not with the girl whom you were besotted with. (at one point or another, we all accept that in life you don't always get what you want.) we don't meet up so often, mostly due to you being 'busy'. now you're just sad, depressed and miserable. lonely, no more. however, your problems are far from over. yes, relationships aren't always smooth-sailing, but is it necessary for you to create these problems that you are dealing with? you're in a relationship man. it's time to grow up and take some responsibility. stop putting the blame on your feelings or some shit like that. move on brother. quit being so moody. if you DO wanna be moody, can you at least act the part? a little tip: wear shades of grey and listen to Nine Inch Nails. shove all that boyband crap down the toilet.

and if you truly and utterly wanna meet to catch up, stop pretending that you wanna meet up oh-so-often during our dates and try to actually set up dates. the fact is, i've tried asking you out for at least two weeks with you telling me that your weekend's fully booked. without sounding pretentious, i have to say things have changed since your relationship started. i do envy happy couples sometimes. but i don't hate them. i just can't figure you out. if you've got something on your mind, would it hurt to let it out and at least enlighten me? in all honest truth, you're starting to piss guan ming and i off really badly.



so much that while playing pool today, we dedicated extremely poor shots to you. "oh, there goes another low hui huang shot!" i don't wanna lose a true friend. i hope that you initiate a little reflection on your part when you read this.