I can't sit for long, stand for long and walk for long. This is the legacy my spinal lumbar fracture had left me. Thinking back, it was amazing how I pulled myself up to walk home, then to the hospital and back again, despite the back-breaking pain. How did I do it? What strength was it that drove me on, bearing with the excruciating pain? It was the same amazement I look back on when I single-handedly did up my house when I moved in. The paintworks and decor.
I realised there is this big reservoir of stoicism and steely resolve in me. Going without food for days on end, weeks even except for a dumpling here and there. An Australian teacher once remarked to me how I should get to know the feeling of war when they celebrated some Civil Defence Day in school. Shut up BITCH! What are you talking about? I experience war every day of my life. I suffer hunger, pain and deprivation. What right do you have to speak to me about war and pain?
The same goes with all the clositered and sheltered (and especially young male and female)educators living in the world of academia, devoid of experiences in other worlds sometimes and especially the rich tais tais who teach so they get months off for holidays. YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO SPEAK WITH ME! If we worship strip-tease and slut whore bloggers, what does this show about our psyche? Not very much, isn't it?
I am never one to complain about my sufferings, my trials and tribulations, the injustices and the pains and sorrows of my life to anyone. I simply push all these bad memories and experiences deep into the recesses of my memory, for better or for worse. I just march on forward. But since I can't move on, these memories flood me and the bad feelings of hatred and enmity well up.
The Pharisees will see this as my retribution. But my other Christian friend thinks otherwise. He says you do not have to suffer like Jesus did because he has already suffered for us on th cross. I do not intend myself to be matyred like Jesus. I am no God. I am just an ordinary mortal trying to live in this kingdom of hell.
It is going to be an emotional and teary farewell for now, having blogged so furiously the last couple of months as I have, penning my thoughts with ferocity and feeling. I blogged some of my thoughts and opinions to closure but my guess is that this forms perhaps only the tip of the iceberg. There are other deeper, darker and more sinister well-springs of bad feelings lurking in my psyche. Bad feelings about life, people and places in general.
The one pervading feeling I had to rid myself of is this: that our whole place here reeks of wickedness, evil, the economy and sin. Everybody will do anything for the price of money and the economy. Look at chat channels and how these have degenerated into meat racks for hire and the perennial requests for sex, is it ever a serious and meaningful chat conduit?
To my former classmate who insinuated in no certain terms that I was a hustler, I would like to stop all gossip and rumour mongering right here and now that I never hustled for money or was ever a kept man/boy. I earned my keep and if I ever had any sexual gratification, it was for gratification and love alone that I did it, never for money.
I am so sorry I fail to connect to two former classmates I met up with. They are enwrapped as they are in their own high world of finance, unable to relate to what I am experiencing at the ground. I sense the lack of empathy, understanding and compassion in them. I guess that is it then to our "reunion".
As I mentioned earlier, some wimps get married and perpetuate metrosexuality and wimpiness all round. I remember an acquaintance whom I observed in action at a gym spa with another dude. This guy is a macho mary. He is gay/bisexual and wimp (whatever). When he is asked to give a speech, you should see the overcompensation mode he drives into. He tries to portray a macho/manly image, with a loud macho voice and actions. Now that is macho mary in action.
Oh yes and my new neighbor, some wimp who is in the naval force (he must be so unproductive at work that he has to carry out his intentions at home and we all pay towards his idleness while he beautifies his house at our expense) is so full of actions every other day.
He will be carpentering, renovating his house (every now and then and into the night to the detriment of our peace, noise level, health and cleanliness, bad as it already is with the infrastructural development right at our doorsteps, this going on for years now at different spots) repairing his kids' motor toys and a bawling spoilt child. He looks like a brat himself who hails from a privileged background and still dependent on his wife, mother and maid to clean up after him.
By the way my two dizygotic evil twin sisters bosses are both devout social helpers in their faiths they practise. I am not sure what they pray for at the churches and temples they attend. Certainly to my mind, it isn't world peace and harmony. More like prosperous business and wealth for themselves. A Fu Lu Shou figurine testifies to the God of Fortune they worship amidst the other gods they put up at their altars, idol worship, that is what it is.
And the GM, otherwise known as Mr Wimp, who is an elder in a church must surely be a bad example for his followers. How is it he did not keep his house at work in order and allow those things to happen unrelentingly? God must be really displeased with him.
Oh God and this Chinese national is a nocturnal creature. He will wash, eat, work and clean up only in the night while I am deep in slumber with all the lights and noises going on around moi. Perhaps it is true this brood is Chinese emperor in mentality, who cannot seem to do household chores as well. I have to clean up after him for heaven's sake.
I am not sure about you. But here people are always tempting you and taunting you with evil. They will always be trapping you with their questions much like how the Pharisees did with Jesus. I have been slouching at the computer, holed up with administrative work. This has been bad for my posturing and health. That explains the stiff neck I suffer at times, the stiff joints, hardened and numbed nerves. And hiccups. Yeah. Hiccups.
So what if I had a university computer graduate repairing my personal computer like the good fortune I had of meeting with one recently. He doesn't seem equipped to answer my questions or even to do up a more professional job as I expected. I mean why is it that the manual illustrated three buttons on the start menu for log off/start/shut down in its pages while my real-time machine only has two?
I will be surprised that we will persist into the new millennium unscathed, if we don't perish or die out soon enough. If I leave this place, like I did once in 2000, this whole place will be destroyed or sunk in a moment of Armaggeddon. In 2000 on my first major trip out of the country, we had our first airline disaster in history, the Taiwanese take-off crash. Never mind if one pilot was a foreign national, it hadn't anything to do with it.
The people in charge must seriously be out of their bonkers if they think they are going to beat down their own born and bred citizens while allowing the permanent residents and foreign nationals run our country in key strategic areas. They are mad if they think this foreign born has the heart for us, our well-being and our health. They are here for the economy, their livelihood and off they go, once this isn't happening.
I cannot imagine a small place like us crammed with so many skyscrapers. It only takes an epi-centric ripple to shake us to the very core of our foundation. That is how I imagine it to be.
Some observations before I bid adious. Public schools are actually allowing staff to teach at private institutions for some hours per week. This is a serious conflict of interest where I can imagine private institutions relying on these educators to pull students onto their enrolment list. These educators could blatantly tout their skills in private schools when their own charges' needs are not met in their own schools. I can't see the rationale for this, can you?
I walk into MOE ExcelFest this year and one public school affiliated to a private commercial one (it actually calls it its parent) solicits a $7000 donation from the parent, starts a wheat grass enterprise and if schools , as they claim to be, are administratively overburdened, why is it possible this one can even administer sales order and delivery?
Schools are hiring teacher assistants, vice-principals for administration, librarians and what-nots. Let us hope we see a similar quantum jump in teaching quality, especially at the primary school going level, where tuition will no longer be needed for the vast majority of the school-going populace. But seriously for the wages paid to a teacher assistant, I can see it isn't fair value for fair work done.
Before I leave, several people whom I will punch the living daylights out if I should ever square off with them again. Mr He-Ape, his wife, her dizygotic twin M/s Black Widow and their son. M/s Shrill-Ass and M/s She-Ape. M/s Cleopatra and Mr Wimp. M/s Wicked Stepmother and Daryl Chan. And to all the bimbs, wimps and blimps I ever had the bad luck to encounter. FUCK YOUR FREAKING LIVES, YOU MOTHERFUCKERS!
I have broken my back. What else does it need for things to get moving? A lost limb or my life? I may have fallen and lived but if we all fall here, it will be the end of us. THE END.
Friday, October 21, 2005
Thursday, October 20, 2005
Prejudice, Stereotype And Discrimination
I am stuffing myself with painkillers and tranquilisers to ease me into sleep and my pain. I took a short walk to get lunch yesterday as I had starved for two whole days. I was breathless, spasmic and the lower back cried out in pain. I knew I hadn't recovered and this is going to go on for two more weeks.
Did I mention my vital signs could not be had on the computerized and expensive-looking machines at one point? Doctors do not scribble in their indecipherable handwriting anymore as this is now typed out but with so many acronyms, the layman's mind boggles. As promised, my last blog before I break, die or vanish. I will come on back if nothing else happens.
Prejudice is a dislike. It could be a dislike for a gender, a race or even a nationality. For me, I am prejudiced against the evil trinity of blimps, bimbs and wimps. However aware I am of this prejudice, I will still give them a fair chance of interaction and friendship. Then I will decide if I should go on or cut it off. This action is then termed discrimination.
Most of the time, my fears are true and founded. The bimbs will invariably launch into gossips, idle talk and such. The blimps will do likewise digging into their own emotional and historical baggages. Wimps, well, are just wimps. The she-males, male versions of bimbs.
Stereotyping is when we always associate the female gender with the nurturing, maternal, gentle and loving nature. What a whole load of bullshit! If they were, I wouldn't see them screaming at kids in their care or even hitting them sometimes. Women are just as impatient, temperamental and bull-dozing.
M/s She-Ape, if you care to recall, would scream her lungs out at the students in her class, particularly the ones she doesn't like. The rest of us have to follow her lead and scream, intimidate and hit our charges as well. M/s Wicked StepMother distances herself from being responsible for the well-being of the kids from a foreign land. These are words straight from the horses' mouths.
If you are a PhD, Masters or Bachelor holder in educational qualifications, you must be smart and up to your work. I have seen so many degree holders who think and act like chao aunties at the market.
Discrimination is then acting upon our prejudices and stereotyping. Men cannot work at a student-care or child-care. They are either molesters or sexual deviants. Only native-English speakers for a language teaching position. Who is native and who isn't? Female working environment. Age above 40 not allowed.
When women go for branded goods , clothes and cosmetics like Louis Vutton , Estee Lauder and Gucci, they are discriminatory. If they are brand-conscious, they certainly can be class-conscious. Which explains why they are the ones to turn their noses up first at others they deem beneath their social status, followed by the wimps and the men. They will look for people who drive as sure-fire signs of wealth and class.
By the way, M/s Cleopatra was biased against me too. I worked in the construction industry once and she was sarcastically mimicking a contractor's speaking manners much like Phua Chu Kang. So too was the General Manager who caustically remarked that I needed escort, prison-warden style. That explains their bonding, big time. Both have emotional baggages to share.
These are the biases of the lower classes themselves. After all both are lower-classes who aspire to the upper. They have succeeded materially but inwardly they are the same person - all poor of meaning and substance. They need material wealth to prop up their psychological weaknesses and abyss.
I was screaming at the GM a few times because he was allowing all these bimbos free rein of the whole office, gossips about some squint-eyed actor (incidentally who is the ManHunt finalist Benedict Goh) and yelps about other people's (usually co-workers') lives. No control. No management.
Oh yes. M/s Cleopatra was hankering for Mont Blanc pens for her hubby. She must be one class-concious and bitchy bitch. The sales supervisor thought I was like so into M/s Cleopatra, who is a married mother of two, and remarked that if she were singly available, I would perhaps have a go at her. This shows how seriously wrong people are thinking what they think I am thinking. Highly assumptive. Do not second-guess my thoughts.
So never take anyone for granted. Like Imelda who turned her back on her social class once she attained fame and wealth, the poor can be just as nasty when they become rich.
I am equally disappointed with educators whom I use to hold in high regard. I have been making the rounds of seeing some and the reaction is at best lukewarm. My ex-teacher even asked how long has it been since I last met him, as if he was waiting to see me falter some time into the future.
People were actually waiting for you to go bust or something. They are not interested to lend a hand to help now. This is the overwhelming feeling I get from meeting some of them. That is magnamity and compassion for you. How do you expect your charges to show the same if you are the role model as such.
This is my last blog. Either I break, die, vanish or return.
Did I mention my vital signs could not be had on the computerized and expensive-looking machines at one point? Doctors do not scribble in their indecipherable handwriting anymore as this is now typed out but with so many acronyms, the layman's mind boggles. As promised, my last blog before I break, die or vanish. I will come on back if nothing else happens.
Prejudice is a dislike. It could be a dislike for a gender, a race or even a nationality. For me, I am prejudiced against the evil trinity of blimps, bimbs and wimps. However aware I am of this prejudice, I will still give them a fair chance of interaction and friendship. Then I will decide if I should go on or cut it off. This action is then termed discrimination.
Most of the time, my fears are true and founded. The bimbs will invariably launch into gossips, idle talk and such. The blimps will do likewise digging into their own emotional and historical baggages. Wimps, well, are just wimps. The she-males, male versions of bimbs.
Stereotyping is when we always associate the female gender with the nurturing, maternal, gentle and loving nature. What a whole load of bullshit! If they were, I wouldn't see them screaming at kids in their care or even hitting them sometimes. Women are just as impatient, temperamental and bull-dozing.
M/s She-Ape, if you care to recall, would scream her lungs out at the students in her class, particularly the ones she doesn't like. The rest of us have to follow her lead and scream, intimidate and hit our charges as well. M/s Wicked StepMother distances herself from being responsible for the well-being of the kids from a foreign land. These are words straight from the horses' mouths.
If you are a PhD, Masters or Bachelor holder in educational qualifications, you must be smart and up to your work. I have seen so many degree holders who think and act like chao aunties at the market.
Discrimination is then acting upon our prejudices and stereotyping. Men cannot work at a student-care or child-care. They are either molesters or sexual deviants. Only native-English speakers for a language teaching position. Who is native and who isn't? Female working environment. Age above 40 not allowed.
When women go for branded goods , clothes and cosmetics like Louis Vutton , Estee Lauder and Gucci, they are discriminatory. If they are brand-conscious, they certainly can be class-conscious. Which explains why they are the ones to turn their noses up first at others they deem beneath their social status, followed by the wimps and the men. They will look for people who drive as sure-fire signs of wealth and class.
By the way, M/s Cleopatra was biased against me too. I worked in the construction industry once and she was sarcastically mimicking a contractor's speaking manners much like Phua Chu Kang. So too was the General Manager who caustically remarked that I needed escort, prison-warden style. That explains their bonding, big time. Both have emotional baggages to share.
These are the biases of the lower classes themselves. After all both are lower-classes who aspire to the upper. They have succeeded materially but inwardly they are the same person - all poor of meaning and substance. They need material wealth to prop up their psychological weaknesses and abyss.
I was screaming at the GM a few times because he was allowing all these bimbos free rein of the whole office, gossips about some squint-eyed actor (incidentally who is the ManHunt finalist Benedict Goh) and yelps about other people's (usually co-workers') lives. No control. No management.
Oh yes. M/s Cleopatra was hankering for Mont Blanc pens for her hubby. She must be one class-concious and bitchy bitch. The sales supervisor thought I was like so into M/s Cleopatra, who is a married mother of two, and remarked that if she were singly available, I would perhaps have a go at her. This shows how seriously wrong people are thinking what they think I am thinking. Highly assumptive. Do not second-guess my thoughts.
So never take anyone for granted. Like Imelda who turned her back on her social class once she attained fame and wealth, the poor can be just as nasty when they become rich.
I am equally disappointed with educators whom I use to hold in high regard. I have been making the rounds of seeing some and the reaction is at best lukewarm. My ex-teacher even asked how long has it been since I last met him, as if he was waiting to see me falter some time into the future.
People were actually waiting for you to go bust or something. They are not interested to lend a hand to help now. This is the overwhelming feeling I get from meeting some of them. That is magnamity and compassion for you. How do you expect your charges to show the same if you are the role model as such.
This is my last blog. Either I break, die, vanish or return.
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Women's Rights And Issues Gone Awry
What am I doing up at exactly 2.52 am on a Wednesday morning. The stabbing pain at my back has gotten to the point of no return and I knew I had to sit or stand to alleviate it. So here goes my blog on women issues and rights.
Everywhere in every imaginable industry, it has become a female-dominated environment. Accounts, medical, pharmaceutical, education, real estate and banking. There is no escaping encounters of the Third Kind with the opposite sex.
I am no male chauvinist pig or sexist. Neither am I saying that the male gender is any better in some instances - the blimps and wimps plus a host of others. In fact, I think Professor Bryan Skyes did not account for the possibility that the gay gene is being transmitted down the line precisely because most wimps do eventually get hitched, sorry as that sounds.
I mean imagine the infidelity and all, the asides as bad as keeping a concubine on the stealth and the ambiguity of their sexual position. If you cannot live with yourself truthfully, you might as well not.
In the beginning I believe in equal if not gentler treatment of the supposed downtrodden and fragile sex. However seeing how things turn out now, how women can become as unreasonable, combative, competitive and bitchy, I have changed my mind and decided that some digging-in of the ground is in order to take a stance. Otherwise man is as emasculated and impotent as the Viagra he doesn't take.
In my earlier blog, I argued that women were in the first place not as equal in terms of anatomical and bio-physiological differences translating into some physical incapacitation, not any less able or intelligent. Therefore a differential in wages should follow.
I am all for the ban on age-old stifling traditions like feet-binding, prostitution as a means to earning a living, women abuse, discrimination in the medical benefits and permanent residency of their male spouses and so on.
But some discrimination could be necessary if the practicalities of the work dictate it. Like in the medical profession, a crucial life and death one, where time away from work means many losses in manpower resources to provide the quality of care-giving to an ever burgeoning greying population and medical-attention seekers.
As an example, I was trying to gain access to information to a property recently but the female manager was on sick leave throughout the week. The deal eventually did not go through and I am sure this is a pecuniary loss to the realtors.
Women seem to be a cunning lot these days. They are able to wield their feminine wiles , charms and weaknesses as a trump card for getting leeway for their more than shoddy and shirking of work and responsibilities but yet use this as a force on the opposite end to gain control and domination. How can one fight for equal rights when everything else isn't equal in the first place?
It is like having the icing and cherry on the cake and eating both twice over.
With women running an enterprise, it is quite a different ball game at times. They are no less profit-driven as the men, on the contrary they can be a lot worse. The enterprise is run like a tight ship akin to home.
We all remember the little things we hate being picked on at home especially the old wives tale kind like not to bathe immediately after exercise or food or restrictions on personal privileges like being grounded at home to save money on outings, buying clothes, movie-going or trips to the library. Yes. Trips to the library. That is forbidden because mother does not like the idea of you hanging out far from her sight.
Put simply, you being treated like a 5 year old kid all over again.
I remember an exhibition of books at my school once where I wasn't permitted to purchase any because we were not rich anyway. Those were books I would die reading for.
You want a work environment away from home, not its exact replica. What fun is that? So a female-dominated environment usually entails tale-bearings, gossips and women talk. These creatures all dolled up and dressed to the nines can be a minefield of potential distractions and disgust. We have to put up with their personal habits and mannerisms.
Sometimes I am not sure if they are present to work or find a life-partner. The Chinese national girls who come here on study passes are already a questionable lot, most of whom will go on to work after their completion of their education.
Unfortunately I can only indulge in women's talk superficially not like how the wimps can do with pizzazz. They are the metrosexuals who blend in as well with the womenfolk in thinking, talk and habits.
It is so unprofessional, does nothing for the pysche or intellect, with no improvements to my professional bearing.
If I had stayed on in my previous few jobs, it would have been a really really dead-end job. There were no personal computer workstations or high technology for us to play around with. No professional expertise exchanges. No nothing. I would have stagnated and died a skill-less dude if I had not dabbled in technology on my own or researched or read up myself on the latest happenings.
I am not sure what else the feminists are fighting for these days. I would think that they are right in fighting for their equal rights in developing Third World countries but in First World nations especially in Singapore, they have been accorded more than their equal rights. So much so the men are dwarfed and emasculated in positions of power and authority these days.
If they make better decisions, are wiser, more rational and reasoning, I say I am all for them in power or management. But are they? Going by the ones I meet, I do not think so. They can be worse managers and CEOs, less compassionate, less reasoning and less rational.
Worse, their words can be rift-driven and incendiaries for seeds of hate, malice and dissent, playing one against the other. I recall two conversations I had with both parents of a foreign student of whom I have been placed guardianship. The father was even-toned, rational and reasoning. The mother, on the other hand, was fiery and emotive. Her caustic remarks were cutting and totally out of synch with reason.
So has the feminist movement gone awry. It sure has in certain cases. It is about time we wake up to the reality and see things as they really are.
Everywhere in every imaginable industry, it has become a female-dominated environment. Accounts, medical, pharmaceutical, education, real estate and banking. There is no escaping encounters of the Third Kind with the opposite sex.
I am no male chauvinist pig or sexist. Neither am I saying that the male gender is any better in some instances - the blimps and wimps plus a host of others. In fact, I think Professor Bryan Skyes did not account for the possibility that the gay gene is being transmitted down the line precisely because most wimps do eventually get hitched, sorry as that sounds.
I mean imagine the infidelity and all, the asides as bad as keeping a concubine on the stealth and the ambiguity of their sexual position. If you cannot live with yourself truthfully, you might as well not.
In the beginning I believe in equal if not gentler treatment of the supposed downtrodden and fragile sex. However seeing how things turn out now, how women can become as unreasonable, combative, competitive and bitchy, I have changed my mind and decided that some digging-in of the ground is in order to take a stance. Otherwise man is as emasculated and impotent as the Viagra he doesn't take.
In my earlier blog, I argued that women were in the first place not as equal in terms of anatomical and bio-physiological differences translating into some physical incapacitation, not any less able or intelligent. Therefore a differential in wages should follow.
I am all for the ban on age-old stifling traditions like feet-binding, prostitution as a means to earning a living, women abuse, discrimination in the medical benefits and permanent residency of their male spouses and so on.
But some discrimination could be necessary if the practicalities of the work dictate it. Like in the medical profession, a crucial life and death one, where time away from work means many losses in manpower resources to provide the quality of care-giving to an ever burgeoning greying population and medical-attention seekers.
As an example, I was trying to gain access to information to a property recently but the female manager was on sick leave throughout the week. The deal eventually did not go through and I am sure this is a pecuniary loss to the realtors.
Women seem to be a cunning lot these days. They are able to wield their feminine wiles , charms and weaknesses as a trump card for getting leeway for their more than shoddy and shirking of work and responsibilities but yet use this as a force on the opposite end to gain control and domination. How can one fight for equal rights when everything else isn't equal in the first place?
It is like having the icing and cherry on the cake and eating both twice over.
With women running an enterprise, it is quite a different ball game at times. They are no less profit-driven as the men, on the contrary they can be a lot worse. The enterprise is run like a tight ship akin to home.
We all remember the little things we hate being picked on at home especially the old wives tale kind like not to bathe immediately after exercise or food or restrictions on personal privileges like being grounded at home to save money on outings, buying clothes, movie-going or trips to the library. Yes. Trips to the library. That is forbidden because mother does not like the idea of you hanging out far from her sight.
Put simply, you being treated like a 5 year old kid all over again.
I remember an exhibition of books at my school once where I wasn't permitted to purchase any because we were not rich anyway. Those were books I would die reading for.
You want a work environment away from home, not its exact replica. What fun is that? So a female-dominated environment usually entails tale-bearings, gossips and women talk. These creatures all dolled up and dressed to the nines can be a minefield of potential distractions and disgust. We have to put up with their personal habits and mannerisms.
Sometimes I am not sure if they are present to work or find a life-partner. The Chinese national girls who come here on study passes are already a questionable lot, most of whom will go on to work after their completion of their education.
Unfortunately I can only indulge in women's talk superficially not like how the wimps can do with pizzazz. They are the metrosexuals who blend in as well with the womenfolk in thinking, talk and habits.
It is so unprofessional, does nothing for the pysche or intellect, with no improvements to my professional bearing.
If I had stayed on in my previous few jobs, it would have been a really really dead-end job. There were no personal computer workstations or high technology for us to play around with. No professional expertise exchanges. No nothing. I would have stagnated and died a skill-less dude if I had not dabbled in technology on my own or researched or read up myself on the latest happenings.
I am not sure what else the feminists are fighting for these days. I would think that they are right in fighting for their equal rights in developing Third World countries but in First World nations especially in Singapore, they have been accorded more than their equal rights. So much so the men are dwarfed and emasculated in positions of power and authority these days.
If they make better decisions, are wiser, more rational and reasoning, I say I am all for them in power or management. But are they? Going by the ones I meet, I do not think so. They can be worse managers and CEOs, less compassionate, less reasoning and less rational.
Worse, their words can be rift-driven and incendiaries for seeds of hate, malice and dissent, playing one against the other. I recall two conversations I had with both parents of a foreign student of whom I have been placed guardianship. The father was even-toned, rational and reasoning. The mother, on the other hand, was fiery and emotive. Her caustic remarks were cutting and totally out of synch with reason.
So has the feminist movement gone awry. It sure has in certain cases. It is about time we wake up to the reality and see things as they really are.
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Employment Rights And Issues
Some preamble about my fall before I go on to blog proper. I forgot to mention a sickly looking dark-skinned foreign worker sedate and in pain by my bedside. An old woman was wheeled in flailing and wailing as I imagined the older generation to be terrified of hospitalisation. One word on the security guard who insisted at one point that I stand behind the yellow line though I was the only person in queue with two others ahead being attended to. He must be a blind bat not to notice my writhing agony as I propped up my back, moaning.
Oh yes and I did fall once, flat on my face, breaking my glasses, smashing my cheeks and thorax prior to one Chinese New Year festival while doing spring cleaning. Same hospital I went and the scan turned up negative even though I felt my diaphragm compressed and painful.
Other times I had major sick events were tonsilectomy at age 15-16 where I spit a mugful of blood every other day and suffered chicken pox at age 30. The latter I contracted at a clinic when a youth with suspicious-looking rashes had it and whoops, days later, I broke out in poxes, running a temperature.
My back is still as painful though it has subsided to a very slight degree. As I slumber, the compression on my spine makes me breathless, spasmic and my every toss and turn excruciates a real pain in the lumbar. I know I will come through this alive but I am going to be holed up like this for at least two more weeks for my vertebra to heal completely.
Right, let us move on to my blog on employment issues and rights. I blog from experience not from some figment of imagination or fairy tale fantasies. Eversince I stopped working for the economy but for myself, I had never gotten sick save the occasional fever and cough. What does this tell you? Anyone caught up in the hustle and bustle of this frenetic and fanatic pace of what we call the economy can only substitute their health for death or illness.
I was working for a commercial school once with the air-conditioner turned on at full blast and I had bad vibes the place was one slimy, sleazy and grimy modern sweatshop with the stale, un-circulated Legionaire infected air kept in. I was coughing my lungs out for weeks with my two evil twin femme fatale bosses sitting idly by, not giving two toots.
Incidentally I worked a year without medical insurance for them. I am not even sure if I am covered for hospitalisation. What is the point of insurance coverage if the insured does not even know the terms of usage? So is it a sincere gesture or just a parody? Can you imagine this? The coverage only kicks in on the 2nd year. So what does that make me during the one year? A pariah dog with a life worth a salamander's? Is this the way private firms treat their staff?
To me, dental coverage is just as important because my greates source of affliction now is my teeth. I have had four wisdom teeth all extracted at my own expense as they turned into harbours of infection. I need my mouth to talk. It is my means to eke out a living. My gums bleed quite often and I attribute this to scurvy (lack of fruits and vegetables for the past 1.5-2 years because I was chasing after the "economy" dream) , lack of calcium and generally the bad shape of my teeth.
I admit I am continually sick at all these firms I work for. It must be the quality of the air , the work environment or the system which psychologically and medically affect me. I would be feverish, cold , suffer flu or cough. As I told someone recently anyone coming into the system can eventually become sick or psycho.
If human resource management is bad enough at some big private firms, you can well imagine how much worse it is at smaller ones. Total lack of transparency and good ethical practices. Like the previous "school" I mentioned, no letter of appointment. An unscrupulous He-Ape of a boss who must have on his mind, rescindment. If I can laugh along with him, perhaps he would be flattered. But I am so sorry, I can't.
No pension contribution, no letters of appointment , no medical benefits, measly wages where the cheapest labor rule the day. Medical reimbursements took longer than the usual time in the case of this "school". M/s Black Widow feigned ignorance untill I confronted her six months later for my General Practitioner visit. No red-ink pens for marking, we all have to buy and then reimburse. I certainly will not, given the time lapse between purchase and reimbursement. She gives me the evil and bad vibes.
Photocopying materials had to be done in zoomed-down sizes, fitting the A4 pages in even numbers to save costs and paper. M/s Black Widow sits by her reception counter, people watching while eavesdropping on every conversation behind her.
The owners of these firms are rich and wealthy, judging by the big landed houses they live in, the big branded cars they drive and the big dogs they walk. They golf, own country club memberships and are hardly around the office to oversee the operations, leaving this to their cronies and kins.
Their scions are all cared for equally richly, lounging in luxury, driving expensive cars with expensive taste in branded clothes to boot. Even simple staff benefits in the form of a pantry stocked with a water fountain or coffee/tea dispensers are missing.
They are not here to care for their staff or look after their welfare. They are here to wring every blood available out of their workers only to maximise their profits and sales. Is it any wonder companies suffer a high absenteeism and staff turnover rate? There is no career path for advancement or better pay. It is dead-end in most cases. We are all only working for short term benefits while waiting attrition to sweep us off before another crop of cheaper labour takes over.
Is there any shred of kinship between firm and staff? The benefactors of this economy are the owners of the factors of production, not the proletariat. Once you have outlived your usefulness and cost, you become a liability waiting to be trashed.
This is how the commercial schools operate on. You expect staff to be loyal and work their butts off? We are first world but is this how a developed nation allows its firms to treat its citizens?
I have been to enough interview sessions to observe the unprofessionalism of the interviewers. A set of hackneyed questionaires coupled with lousy interviewing skills. All manners of bad and unethical behavior. I could recite answers as if I were a repeating groove of a broken down LP player.
I had so many lines of reporting to do at one medical firm, with three sales supervisors, one sales manager and one general manager. Staff strength is no more than 8. The management is cooped up in their own ivory tower totally out of touch with reality while the rest of us rot in the open-concept office, largely unsupervised and like Cleopatra, she turns into a haughty she-bitch, haunting one and all around her. If I had been me now, I would have slapped the bitch's face a few times to rouse her from her high and mighty ways.
Sales commission is a paltry 1% of the sales price and that translate into nothingness for most transactions. In any case, at one contracting firm, I realised I was hired to clean up bad and shoddy jobs done by the previous person. No new contracts on the horizon to boost my earnings.
This accident I had from the fall only reinforce my belief that I will not slog my ass off at the expense of my health and safety. I will not climb any ladder or table to fix a light or clear a storage shelf. Accidents are just waiting to happen and if something untoward like that happens, who is going to compensate me if the Workmen's Compensation only does so for a salary less than $1800.
It is a sorry day for us all. What the economy has done is to make all of us money-centric, money-grabbing and money-motivated. I can't be any exception as this is the state of our lives now, so do not point a finger at me before looking yourself in the mirror. Are you any better than thou?
Oh yes and I did fall once, flat on my face, breaking my glasses, smashing my cheeks and thorax prior to one Chinese New Year festival while doing spring cleaning. Same hospital I went and the scan turned up negative even though I felt my diaphragm compressed and painful.
Other times I had major sick events were tonsilectomy at age 15-16 where I spit a mugful of blood every other day and suffered chicken pox at age 30. The latter I contracted at a clinic when a youth with suspicious-looking rashes had it and whoops, days later, I broke out in poxes, running a temperature.
My back is still as painful though it has subsided to a very slight degree. As I slumber, the compression on my spine makes me breathless, spasmic and my every toss and turn excruciates a real pain in the lumbar. I know I will come through this alive but I am going to be holed up like this for at least two more weeks for my vertebra to heal completely.
Right, let us move on to my blog on employment issues and rights. I blog from experience not from some figment of imagination or fairy tale fantasies. Eversince I stopped working for the economy but for myself, I had never gotten sick save the occasional fever and cough. What does this tell you? Anyone caught up in the hustle and bustle of this frenetic and fanatic pace of what we call the economy can only substitute their health for death or illness.
I was working for a commercial school once with the air-conditioner turned on at full blast and I had bad vibes the place was one slimy, sleazy and grimy modern sweatshop with the stale, un-circulated Legionaire infected air kept in. I was coughing my lungs out for weeks with my two evil twin femme fatale bosses sitting idly by, not giving two toots.
Incidentally I worked a year without medical insurance for them. I am not even sure if I am covered for hospitalisation. What is the point of insurance coverage if the insured does not even know the terms of usage? So is it a sincere gesture or just a parody? Can you imagine this? The coverage only kicks in on the 2nd year. So what does that make me during the one year? A pariah dog with a life worth a salamander's? Is this the way private firms treat their staff?
To me, dental coverage is just as important because my greates source of affliction now is my teeth. I have had four wisdom teeth all extracted at my own expense as they turned into harbours of infection. I need my mouth to talk. It is my means to eke out a living. My gums bleed quite often and I attribute this to scurvy (lack of fruits and vegetables for the past 1.5-2 years because I was chasing after the "economy" dream) , lack of calcium and generally the bad shape of my teeth.
I admit I am continually sick at all these firms I work for. It must be the quality of the air , the work environment or the system which psychologically and medically affect me. I would be feverish, cold , suffer flu or cough. As I told someone recently anyone coming into the system can eventually become sick or psycho.
If human resource management is bad enough at some big private firms, you can well imagine how much worse it is at smaller ones. Total lack of transparency and good ethical practices. Like the previous "school" I mentioned, no letter of appointment. An unscrupulous He-Ape of a boss who must have on his mind, rescindment. If I can laugh along with him, perhaps he would be flattered. But I am so sorry, I can't.
No pension contribution, no letters of appointment , no medical benefits, measly wages where the cheapest labor rule the day. Medical reimbursements took longer than the usual time in the case of this "school". M/s Black Widow feigned ignorance untill I confronted her six months later for my General Practitioner visit. No red-ink pens for marking, we all have to buy and then reimburse. I certainly will not, given the time lapse between purchase and reimbursement. She gives me the evil and bad vibes.
Photocopying materials had to be done in zoomed-down sizes, fitting the A4 pages in even numbers to save costs and paper. M/s Black Widow sits by her reception counter, people watching while eavesdropping on every conversation behind her.
The owners of these firms are rich and wealthy, judging by the big landed houses they live in, the big branded cars they drive and the big dogs they walk. They golf, own country club memberships and are hardly around the office to oversee the operations, leaving this to their cronies and kins.
Their scions are all cared for equally richly, lounging in luxury, driving expensive cars with expensive taste in branded clothes to boot. Even simple staff benefits in the form of a pantry stocked with a water fountain or coffee/tea dispensers are missing.
They are not here to care for their staff or look after their welfare. They are here to wring every blood available out of their workers only to maximise their profits and sales. Is it any wonder companies suffer a high absenteeism and staff turnover rate? There is no career path for advancement or better pay. It is dead-end in most cases. We are all only working for short term benefits while waiting attrition to sweep us off before another crop of cheaper labour takes over.
Is there any shred of kinship between firm and staff? The benefactors of this economy are the owners of the factors of production, not the proletariat. Once you have outlived your usefulness and cost, you become a liability waiting to be trashed.
This is how the commercial schools operate on. You expect staff to be loyal and work their butts off? We are first world but is this how a developed nation allows its firms to treat its citizens?
I have been to enough interview sessions to observe the unprofessionalism of the interviewers. A set of hackneyed questionaires coupled with lousy interviewing skills. All manners of bad and unethical behavior. I could recite answers as if I were a repeating groove of a broken down LP player.
I had so many lines of reporting to do at one medical firm, with three sales supervisors, one sales manager and one general manager. Staff strength is no more than 8. The management is cooped up in their own ivory tower totally out of touch with reality while the rest of us rot in the open-concept office, largely unsupervised and like Cleopatra, she turns into a haughty she-bitch, haunting one and all around her. If I had been me now, I would have slapped the bitch's face a few times to rouse her from her high and mighty ways.
Sales commission is a paltry 1% of the sales price and that translate into nothingness for most transactions. In any case, at one contracting firm, I realised I was hired to clean up bad and shoddy jobs done by the previous person. No new contracts on the horizon to boost my earnings.
This accident I had from the fall only reinforce my belief that I will not slog my ass off at the expense of my health and safety. I will not climb any ladder or table to fix a light or clear a storage shelf. Accidents are just waiting to happen and if something untoward like that happens, who is going to compensate me if the Workmen's Compensation only does so for a salary less than $1800.
It is a sorry day for us all. What the economy has done is to make all of us money-centric, money-grabbing and money-motivated. I can't be any exception as this is the state of our lives now, so do not point a finger at me before looking yourself in the mirror. Are you any better than thou?
Monday, October 17, 2005
I Had A Great And Excruciating Fall
It has been a full 14 hours since my fall and the pain at my lower back is as painful as it was when I first tumbled. As I sit here blogging, the pain gnaws at my spinal lumbar, even when I stand and many of the everyday functions we take for granted, such as bending , stooping, coughing, turning , changing sides or getting up from bed.
This was certainly an unexpected turn of events. I had never imagined this to have had happened. One minute I was carrying on my life as usual, the next I was paralysed with insufferable pain.
So I guess I will have to put on hold my "ultimate" blog and this will be separated into three parts - (1) women issues/rights gone awry, (2 )employment rights/issues and (3)prejudice, stereotyope and discrimination
It was an ominous rainy Sunday morning anyway. I had this same feeling when someone came into and promptly walked out of my life one fine morning (the benign cyst on my back burst and bled a flow of pus) , the day my finger bled profusely on a tin-can opening accident (it was a nightmarish live with a Filipino tenant) or the day the ceiling fan came apart (someone left me as well).
Only this time, a number of premonitions flashed. The kitchen fluorescence went kaput. My juicer cum blender tore to bits even though its lid fasteners were already malfunctioning and I had to hold it down to extract juices all the time.
People, if you have a queasy, uneasy and intuitive premonition anytime (like some broken glasses, eyes twitching or some small incidents) , go on the hunch and do not endanger yourself in anyway.
I ventured out of my house that fatetful morning, the second time, to hunt down kitchen scrubs in my 3 months old BATA rubber strapped sandals (which I bought because my flip-flops were dangerously slippery, I thought). Its soles had worn down so tremendously only after a week of use. So I had my one foot flailing up in the air and down on my buttocks I went, really HARD!. Before I know it, I broke out in cold sweat, my eyes saw stars and I was light-headed. The seething pain tore through my spine and back.
I pulled myself up and knelt for eternity. Two passers-by stopped and tried soothing my howls of pain. I finally grasped one Malay dude's arms and wrenched myself up. His arm was like a lifeline, a buoy of humanity which tells me that the milk of human kindness is still alive and well. He did not realise this but in my moment of pain and aloneless, I almost cried out loud for his life-saving, out-stretched hand. I thanked them and limped home, the excruciating pain spreading and tormenting.
The only other time I fell was when I was in secondary school and that was prostrate, my foot tripping over a protruding drain-cover grill, knocking my knees on the concrete pavement. Of course , mother told me I fell and sprained my arm at home once (an event I cannot remember since I was so young then and which explained the perpetual tenderness I feel in my left arm ) and I did fall in school on a few occasions.
I laid in bed, thinking that with time I would recover. Nevertheless I telephoned the A&E department of a local hospital to seek advice. After a full hour of unremitting pain, I thought I had to get my butt out to have my lumbar checked.
Lo and behold, the X-ray scan showed a compressed wedged vertebra fracture! Oh my god! What does that mean? Will I be paralysed? Will I be another late Christopher Reeves who fell from a horse, an innocuous fall where most riders would have gotten off quite unscathed? When I did my research today, it seems that this could just be a non-complicated non-paraglepian fall.
The doctor told me he is sending me home and asked if I had my bowels moved or urine passed. I promptly limped to the john to prove I am still continent. By the way he did a digital middle-finger rectal examination and I laughed inside when I recalled my blog on that (remember the alien abduction and tracking devices implantation?)
It was quite a day, observing and chatting with patients, cabbies and health-care personnel. The male nurses and doctors were professional and tender-loving-caring. These are the big, strong and compassionate lads we should see more of in our health-care industry. We have so many Indians and Filipinos here. On admission, I couldn't hear the Indian attendant's last sentence, what with the surgical mask and heavily-accented tone.
One young stocky patient had gastritis! WHOA! And I thought being the mesomorphous body frame he was in, that that should not have been an issue. But on reflecting, I realised it wasn't the outside but the insides that matters. It is the gastric juices eating up your internal linings when your hunger pangs send your stomach growling and you don't eat anything because you are busy working the economy that leaves a gaping ulceration. So do not judge a person by the appearance.
Think Karen Carpenter again. So what does this tell you? Our society has to go beyond the superficial and physical manifestations to realise the untold sufferings behind the scene. That is a person may appear perfectly normal but you don't know what is eating his mind, his heart and his body. Do you get it now, dear citizens? Must you see me lying in a pool of blood before you start letting me live my life?
I could see how these health-care professionals must have the presence of mind, the alert and quick-acting poise coupled with the compassion and care. But wait, the lady radiographer actually griped about my NIKE cross trainer (which I bought for the same reason of safety to hike on slippery, murky and hilly terrain in the reserve) dirtying her scan bed. WOMAN! Please! I am like in excruciating pain and you mind my fucking shoes?
She remarked quite unbelievingly that I could still joke and chat jovially. She doesn't know the pain I was in, the sense of hopelessness and helplessness in my life right now, the thought of an impending old age and death and how if something like this hit me, I won't be able to work for prolonged periods, starve and my finances down to zero.
I am only bitching, smiling , laughing and being clownish to hide all the deep sorrows I feel inside for myself, our society, the world - the people who suffer and live lives of terrible pain. I wish I could just end it all. Someone remarked that a clown is in reality an unhappy person.
I am all alone and no one knows any better. Who is going to foot my medical bills since I have sold off my insurances as I can no longer afford them? I am on my own now and when I think of all the ex-bosses, the heartless, self-enriching , economy-drivers that they are, I seethe to imagine the countless lives they have exploited and discharged, all in the name of cost-savings, politics and what-not.
The porter who wheeled me around was working for a Japanese multi-national who then had a retrenchment because of cost-cutting measures. He now earns so much less and has a wife and two school-going kids to provide for. The cabby who drove me home, once a Finance Manager, has seen his fair share of unscrupulous corporatism. These are people who give a face to what an economy does not reveal. I will blog on "Employment issues/rights" and you will see for yourself how this economy has broken spirits, lives and defiled the very meaning of humanity.
But before all that I am going to find that receipt and trot off to the shoe shop for a refund for this pair of shoddy, rubbery hogwash they sold as man's best foot forward which almost cost me my life! At least if I die, I want to die quickly and in one piece. Not in an accident maimed or a lingering death with terminal illness.
This was certainly an unexpected turn of events. I had never imagined this to have had happened. One minute I was carrying on my life as usual, the next I was paralysed with insufferable pain.
So I guess I will have to put on hold my "ultimate" blog and this will be separated into three parts - (1) women issues/rights gone awry, (2 )employment rights/issues and (3)prejudice, stereotyope and discrimination
It was an ominous rainy Sunday morning anyway. I had this same feeling when someone came into and promptly walked out of my life one fine morning (the benign cyst on my back burst and bled a flow of pus) , the day my finger bled profusely on a tin-can opening accident (it was a nightmarish live with a Filipino tenant) or the day the ceiling fan came apart (someone left me as well).
Only this time, a number of premonitions flashed. The kitchen fluorescence went kaput. My juicer cum blender tore to bits even though its lid fasteners were already malfunctioning and I had to hold it down to extract juices all the time.
People, if you have a queasy, uneasy and intuitive premonition anytime (like some broken glasses, eyes twitching or some small incidents) , go on the hunch and do not endanger yourself in anyway.
I ventured out of my house that fatetful morning, the second time, to hunt down kitchen scrubs in my 3 months old BATA rubber strapped sandals (which I bought because my flip-flops were dangerously slippery, I thought). Its soles had worn down so tremendously only after a week of use. So I had my one foot flailing up in the air and down on my buttocks I went, really HARD!. Before I know it, I broke out in cold sweat, my eyes saw stars and I was light-headed. The seething pain tore through my spine and back.
I pulled myself up and knelt for eternity. Two passers-by stopped and tried soothing my howls of pain. I finally grasped one Malay dude's arms and wrenched myself up. His arm was like a lifeline, a buoy of humanity which tells me that the milk of human kindness is still alive and well. He did not realise this but in my moment of pain and aloneless, I almost cried out loud for his life-saving, out-stretched hand. I thanked them and limped home, the excruciating pain spreading and tormenting.
The only other time I fell was when I was in secondary school and that was prostrate, my foot tripping over a protruding drain-cover grill, knocking my knees on the concrete pavement. Of course , mother told me I fell and sprained my arm at home once (an event I cannot remember since I was so young then and which explained the perpetual tenderness I feel in my left arm ) and I did fall in school on a few occasions.
I laid in bed, thinking that with time I would recover. Nevertheless I telephoned the A&E department of a local hospital to seek advice. After a full hour of unremitting pain, I thought I had to get my butt out to have my lumbar checked.
Lo and behold, the X-ray scan showed a compressed wedged vertebra fracture! Oh my god! What does that mean? Will I be paralysed? Will I be another late Christopher Reeves who fell from a horse, an innocuous fall where most riders would have gotten off quite unscathed? When I did my research today, it seems that this could just be a non-complicated non-paraglepian fall.
The doctor told me he is sending me home and asked if I had my bowels moved or urine passed. I promptly limped to the john to prove I am still continent. By the way he did a digital middle-finger rectal examination and I laughed inside when I recalled my blog on that (remember the alien abduction and tracking devices implantation?)
It was quite a day, observing and chatting with patients, cabbies and health-care personnel. The male nurses and doctors were professional and tender-loving-caring. These are the big, strong and compassionate lads we should see more of in our health-care industry. We have so many Indians and Filipinos here. On admission, I couldn't hear the Indian attendant's last sentence, what with the surgical mask and heavily-accented tone.
One young stocky patient had gastritis! WHOA! And I thought being the mesomorphous body frame he was in, that that should not have been an issue. But on reflecting, I realised it wasn't the outside but the insides that matters. It is the gastric juices eating up your internal linings when your hunger pangs send your stomach growling and you don't eat anything because you are busy working the economy that leaves a gaping ulceration. So do not judge a person by the appearance.
Think Karen Carpenter again. So what does this tell you? Our society has to go beyond the superficial and physical manifestations to realise the untold sufferings behind the scene. That is a person may appear perfectly normal but you don't know what is eating his mind, his heart and his body. Do you get it now, dear citizens? Must you see me lying in a pool of blood before you start letting me live my life?
I could see how these health-care professionals must have the presence of mind, the alert and quick-acting poise coupled with the compassion and care. But wait, the lady radiographer actually griped about my NIKE cross trainer (which I bought for the same reason of safety to hike on slippery, murky and hilly terrain in the reserve) dirtying her scan bed. WOMAN! Please! I am like in excruciating pain and you mind my fucking shoes?
She remarked quite unbelievingly that I could still joke and chat jovially. She doesn't know the pain I was in, the sense of hopelessness and helplessness in my life right now, the thought of an impending old age and death and how if something like this hit me, I won't be able to work for prolonged periods, starve and my finances down to zero.
I am only bitching, smiling , laughing and being clownish to hide all the deep sorrows I feel inside for myself, our society, the world - the people who suffer and live lives of terrible pain. I wish I could just end it all. Someone remarked that a clown is in reality an unhappy person.
I am all alone and no one knows any better. Who is going to foot my medical bills since I have sold off my insurances as I can no longer afford them? I am on my own now and when I think of all the ex-bosses, the heartless, self-enriching , economy-drivers that they are, I seethe to imagine the countless lives they have exploited and discharged, all in the name of cost-savings, politics and what-not.
The porter who wheeled me around was working for a Japanese multi-national who then had a retrenchment because of cost-cutting measures. He now earns so much less and has a wife and two school-going kids to provide for. The cabby who drove me home, once a Finance Manager, has seen his fair share of unscrupulous corporatism. These are people who give a face to what an economy does not reveal. I will blog on "Employment issues/rights" and you will see for yourself how this economy has broken spirits, lives and defiled the very meaning of humanity.
But before all that I am going to find that receipt and trot off to the shoe shop for a refund for this pair of shoddy, rubbery hogwash they sold as man's best foot forward which almost cost me my life! At least if I die, I want to die quickly and in one piece. Not in an accident maimed or a lingering death with terminal illness.
Saturday, October 15, 2005
Raves And Rants
The monsoon season is here. It has been pouring this last few days. So it is with my raves and rants blog. I have been thinking again. BIG TIME! It can be pretty much an emotional drain, raking up the past like that. I suppose we all have coping mechanisms which is to suppress the worst of our memories. Blogging has helped me re-think and define my thoughts on issues, reflect on my experiences and with hindsight, do better in the future.
Before my last blog on "Employment/Women Issues And Discrimination", here is the penultimate blog.
My childhood and youth was a dark period. I was quiet, broody and moody. It was all the happenings around me. What I did was to take in all that, internalise them and they became a well-spring of knowledge, databases and experience. With this in my bag, I can instantly avoid the past mistakes of myself and others.
America is a nation of one from many. With that, there comes a host of contentious issues Americans have somehow inevitably tangle themselves in. To me, some are non-issues. Let me illustrate.
Animal activists have actively campaigned for the rights of endangered species and animals in general. This I certainly support. However in the name of science and for the benefit of a cure for mankind's diseases, I am afraid I have to part ways with the "animalists" (again my definition of defenders of animals)
However I was reading a blog yesterday where a local girl was making a big issue of leather shoes, namely cow hides. I am not sure if this is a bone of contention in America. To me, cows are already slaughtered for their meat. Thus cow hides are by-products. There is nothing essentially bad about recycling an otherwise waste-product much like we recycle electrical components from electronic garbage.
This is precisely how we are swept up by rhetorics of demagogues. We do not deconstruct and dissect their language. We did not delve deeper into the issues. We were only skimming the surface. Professor Nasbitt postulates that one difference between thinking in Eastern and Western ways is that the former is holism while the latter is focussed on one facet only (kind of myopic I guess).
I can see how logic and reasoning play important roles in education. First-principles, the vicious cycle of what-goes-around-comes-around, domino theory, both creator and destroyer theory are all "life-experiences" defined principles. Not some airy-fairy theoretical thingtummy.
My customer pays me late, I have to pay my suppliers late too. A teacher has had bad experiences in school and she reckons she should push some excess emotional baggage onto someone else such as her charges or subordinates. I kick my friend and he in turn kicks his friend. You have megal malls and you get mega mall proportioned problems.
One evil deed perpetuates another. We are SINgapore are we not, as someone pointed out to me.
Logomachy is all that defines issues in so many ways. Let us not assume the words we used carry the meanings we think they intend. Remember "dispensary" and "angst". Add "paedophiles" (sex with a child) and "ephebophiles" (sex with someone other than a child, usually pubescent which is the transition from child to adult). Let us not be assumptive on any count. Someone proposed a "religious education" in Singapore but I would venture to say he means "religion education" where religion figures as one module in a curricula continuum.
I mean it too if I said I have travelled half the world, continentally speaking of course, not by nations count. And then we have to distinguish between the habitable and non-habitable continents. What do we have? Six continents in all. Europe, Egypt and Jerusalem are must-see on my travel plans. I may blog on my past travelogues after the break.
I don't want to get too old before going on a pilgrimage to places like Egypt, Jerusalem and the Vatican where a fair bit of climbs and treks could take a toil on an aging and ailing person. Especially locales where the pyramids and Sphinx are, out in the searing sun and hot deserts (or so I imagine, haven't really examined the travel guides yet).
The bible actually has a paragraph on travel, taken from the Book of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) also known as the Wisdom of Jesus, Son of Sirach, one of the deuterocanonicals, written byJoshua (or Jesus). Seriously I am beginning to suspect this may even be written by Jesus himself.
It says and I quote: "A well -travelled man with wide experience knows many things and talks sense. You can't know much if you haven't experienced much, but travel can make you more clever." Travel , especially if it is backpacking and not so much guided bounded tours, helps you decide where you want to make your last repose too.
I suppose the press has an uphill task then in promulgating the correct use of terms and concepts, multi-faceted cognition, sticking to as close as verbatimly possible in the recount of events and the substance of people's speeches, interviews, etc and factually accurate accounts, carefully researched and up-to-the-minute, other than opinion pieces. A large part of our information derives from the press afterall.
Loose and undefined terminology confuse and warp thinking, bad as it already is sometimes among the people we meet when we engage in discussion and heated debates. We need fresh angles , perspectives and issues never before reported. Not an overkill in oft-reported articles like accidents, disasters, diseases and such. That I think is quintessentially professional and multi-dimensional journalism.
I remember taking a peek at one of the Combined Humanities essay question years ago where it was framed: "Public housing had always been..blah blah blah". With that framing, I would have taken a contrarian view and not a balanced one which schools are espousing. In any case my opinion is if you cannot agree wholly and you can defend your position well, you should go for just "yes" or "no" and not sit on the fence.
Back to the CJC dude incident. When he said his toes were treaded on, I was thinking "can't be a tread that a toenail rips, right"? So he already had a bad toe from an accident beforehand. Then that explains it.
Incidentally the way his fellow collegian carried his shoe reminded me of Cinderella and the glass slipper. I forgot to get his contact. SHIT! Yes yes. Even though he was scribbling it all down at the behest of the "clinician" (my own definition of a clinic assistant). But I wasn't sure if he was gay and why should I bother?
Again, do not assume all those attending staff at a clinic are nurses. Nor are they pharmacists or apothecaries when they dispense medicine. Or the receptionist and administrator at a "school" are teachers. They are just mere mortals - "aunties" to put it simply. So check all the medication now in case you had viagra dispensed as aspirins.
And yes, the counter booking "girl" (ok ok she wasn't exactly a girl, she was old enough to be an "auntie") left the booth so it was eventually a man ( I guess it is the manager) who took in bookings. I did not put down such details then as I thought you would be bored and space does not permit (notice how long all my blogs have been). But for truth and accuracy, I thought I should if just for my conscience sake.
My first impression of snooker as a sleazeball of a game was bolstered by what I saw at a billiard saloon where students at a nearby "school" congregated, smoking and drinking. By the way, do note the fine differences between billiard, snooker and pool.
However my recent visit to one near my hometown changed my mind when the smoke and drink (usually associated with slime, grime and drunkard brawls) were taken away. It became a perfectly legitimate and healthy sport for young people. See how something changes when we redefine it.
Oh yes , semantics, that illusory language construct sometimes. I remember a co-trainer of mine wrote in Chinese "press the lift" when he meant "press the lift button". I do suppose both conjure up contrasting images, no?
Where have all our role models gone? , Imagine a year younger ex-colleague of mine (Hatsheput or is it Cleopatra now?) , a mother of two, taking after her idol Madonna. Does this bode well for us? Are the lives of the celebrities the ones we should emulate or look up to especially if it is rifed with scandals, fights and break-ups? Sorry girls, you don't exactly send me good vibes, experentially speaking. Guess I am kind of a spiritual dude.
Have you seen the way some real estate agents conduct themselves? Totally devoid of professional etiquette. I can't blame some whom existentialism is a question mark at times but I certainly do not want to be at the receiving end.
I am going to write on my last blog soon and with that closure on most of my thoughts on issues. I will return eventually but will during the hiatus occasionally blog should something crops up. Unless I have decided it is so meaningless an existence here that I should just up and leave for somewhere. I am cornered as it is. I don't have many options.
Before my last blog on "Employment/Women Issues And Discrimination", here is the penultimate blog.
My childhood and youth was a dark period. I was quiet, broody and moody. It was all the happenings around me. What I did was to take in all that, internalise them and they became a well-spring of knowledge, databases and experience. With this in my bag, I can instantly avoid the past mistakes of myself and others.
America is a nation of one from many. With that, there comes a host of contentious issues Americans have somehow inevitably tangle themselves in. To me, some are non-issues. Let me illustrate.
Animal activists have actively campaigned for the rights of endangered species and animals in general. This I certainly support. However in the name of science and for the benefit of a cure for mankind's diseases, I am afraid I have to part ways with the "animalists" (again my definition of defenders of animals)
However I was reading a blog yesterday where a local girl was making a big issue of leather shoes, namely cow hides. I am not sure if this is a bone of contention in America. To me, cows are already slaughtered for their meat. Thus cow hides are by-products. There is nothing essentially bad about recycling an otherwise waste-product much like we recycle electrical components from electronic garbage.
This is precisely how we are swept up by rhetorics of demagogues. We do not deconstruct and dissect their language. We did not delve deeper into the issues. We were only skimming the surface. Professor Nasbitt postulates that one difference between thinking in Eastern and Western ways is that the former is holism while the latter is focussed on one facet only (kind of myopic I guess).
I can see how logic and reasoning play important roles in education. First-principles, the vicious cycle of what-goes-around-comes-around, domino theory, both creator and destroyer theory are all "life-experiences" defined principles. Not some airy-fairy theoretical thingtummy.
My customer pays me late, I have to pay my suppliers late too. A teacher has had bad experiences in school and she reckons she should push some excess emotional baggage onto someone else such as her charges or subordinates. I kick my friend and he in turn kicks his friend. You have megal malls and you get mega mall proportioned problems.
One evil deed perpetuates another. We are SINgapore are we not, as someone pointed out to me.
Logomachy is all that defines issues in so many ways. Let us not assume the words we used carry the meanings we think they intend. Remember "dispensary" and "angst". Add "paedophiles" (sex with a child) and "ephebophiles" (sex with someone other than a child, usually pubescent which is the transition from child to adult). Let us not be assumptive on any count. Someone proposed a "religious education" in Singapore but I would venture to say he means "religion education" where religion figures as one module in a curricula continuum.
I mean it too if I said I have travelled half the world, continentally speaking of course, not by nations count. And then we have to distinguish between the habitable and non-habitable continents. What do we have? Six continents in all. Europe, Egypt and Jerusalem are must-see on my travel plans. I may blog on my past travelogues after the break.
I don't want to get too old before going on a pilgrimage to places like Egypt, Jerusalem and the Vatican where a fair bit of climbs and treks could take a toil on an aging and ailing person. Especially locales where the pyramids and Sphinx are, out in the searing sun and hot deserts (or so I imagine, haven't really examined the travel guides yet).
The bible actually has a paragraph on travel, taken from the Book of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) also known as the Wisdom of Jesus, Son of Sirach, one of the deuterocanonicals, written byJoshua (or Jesus). Seriously I am beginning to suspect this may even be written by Jesus himself.
It says and I quote: "A well -travelled man with wide experience knows many things and talks sense. You can't know much if you haven't experienced much, but travel can make you more clever." Travel , especially if it is backpacking and not so much guided bounded tours, helps you decide where you want to make your last repose too.
I suppose the press has an uphill task then in promulgating the correct use of terms and concepts, multi-faceted cognition, sticking to as close as verbatimly possible in the recount of events and the substance of people's speeches, interviews, etc and factually accurate accounts, carefully researched and up-to-the-minute, other than opinion pieces. A large part of our information derives from the press afterall.
Loose and undefined terminology confuse and warp thinking, bad as it already is sometimes among the people we meet when we engage in discussion and heated debates. We need fresh angles , perspectives and issues never before reported. Not an overkill in oft-reported articles like accidents, disasters, diseases and such. That I think is quintessentially professional and multi-dimensional journalism.
I remember taking a peek at one of the Combined Humanities essay question years ago where it was framed: "Public housing had always been..blah blah blah". With that framing, I would have taken a contrarian view and not a balanced one which schools are espousing. In any case my opinion is if you cannot agree wholly and you can defend your position well, you should go for just "yes" or "no" and not sit on the fence.
Back to the CJC dude incident. When he said his toes were treaded on, I was thinking "can't be a tread that a toenail rips, right"? So he already had a bad toe from an accident beforehand. Then that explains it.
Incidentally the way his fellow collegian carried his shoe reminded me of Cinderella and the glass slipper. I forgot to get his contact. SHIT! Yes yes. Even though he was scribbling it all down at the behest of the "clinician" (my own definition of a clinic assistant). But I wasn't sure if he was gay and why should I bother?
Again, do not assume all those attending staff at a clinic are nurses. Nor are they pharmacists or apothecaries when they dispense medicine. Or the receptionist and administrator at a "school" are teachers. They are just mere mortals - "aunties" to put it simply. So check all the medication now in case you had viagra dispensed as aspirins.
And yes, the counter booking "girl" (ok ok she wasn't exactly a girl, she was old enough to be an "auntie") left the booth so it was eventually a man ( I guess it is the manager) who took in bookings. I did not put down such details then as I thought you would be bored and space does not permit (notice how long all my blogs have been). But for truth and accuracy, I thought I should if just for my conscience sake.
My first impression of snooker as a sleazeball of a game was bolstered by what I saw at a billiard saloon where students at a nearby "school" congregated, smoking and drinking. By the way, do note the fine differences between billiard, snooker and pool.
However my recent visit to one near my hometown changed my mind when the smoke and drink (usually associated with slime, grime and drunkard brawls) were taken away. It became a perfectly legitimate and healthy sport for young people. See how something changes when we redefine it.
Oh yes , semantics, that illusory language construct sometimes. I remember a co-trainer of mine wrote in Chinese "press the lift" when he meant "press the lift button". I do suppose both conjure up contrasting images, no?
Where have all our role models gone? , Imagine a year younger ex-colleague of mine (Hatsheput or is it Cleopatra now?) , a mother of two, taking after her idol Madonna. Does this bode well for us? Are the lives of the celebrities the ones we should emulate or look up to especially if it is rifed with scandals, fights and break-ups? Sorry girls, you don't exactly send me good vibes, experentially speaking. Guess I am kind of a spiritual dude.
Have you seen the way some real estate agents conduct themselves? Totally devoid of professional etiquette. I can't blame some whom existentialism is a question mark at times but I certainly do not want to be at the receiving end.
I am going to write on my last blog soon and with that closure on most of my thoughts on issues. I will return eventually but will during the hiatus occasionally blog should something crops up. Unless I have decided it is so meaningless an existence here that I should just up and leave for somewhere. I am cornered as it is. I don't have many options.
Friday, October 14, 2005
Happenstances
I can only nub my last few blogs thus: You do not win anyone over by just words, coercion, looks and your body. You win them over through their minds and hearts. My teachers won me over in school by their kind, affirmative and supportive words. They should be harsher at times of course to instill some discipline for recalcitrants. Let us just be situational.
They followed this through with their deeds in presenting themselves professionally and ethically. Perhaps there could be more in the way of more personal interaction to know what is going on in their charges' lives but nevertheless that is how they win us over.
By the way, I have missed out on a good number of people in my salutary tribute to my teachers, most good, a few bad. I am so sorry I missed out on M/s Gladys Fernandez.
I will be dazzled by the brilliance of people's minds. When I read the whole works of renowned professorial academicians, journalists and scientists like Samuel Hungtington, Andrew Parker, Jared Diamond, Paul M Kennedy, Thomas Friedman and god-knows-who-else-I-have-missed-out, I am bowled over so much, I dream of their work when I go to bed. It is the way they write and present and defend their works so incisively, so coherently and so professionally.
Of course what ultimately counts is that their works are peer-reviewed and recognised. That of course says a lot about everything. Sir Issac Newton was a political heavyweight and that in many ways gave more credit and substance to his scientific work than say another equally if not more brilliant work somewhere which isn't.
I thought that the General Paper at 'AO' level is a critical thinking and all-subjects encompassing one. It would be a paper I would pen my thoughts with ferocity and oomph. I could be wrong judging by how many students fare so poorly, in general.
Teaching has nothing to do with being "lively" in class which M/s Wicked Stepmother thinks is the elemental composition of good "pedagogy" ( this word can be so tainted, take it as methodology if you will - sounds like pedantry, no?). It is about bringing words to live. It is about breathing life into chapters. If you can put a subject across as a story, so much the better. It is your careful, well-thought out, analytical, meaningful and well-constructed piece of work you expound on to your audience.
But look at the sad, sad , sad state of how things have turned out in some of our schools, commercial or otherwise?
I will be saddened if that very sad day comes when our charges cannot discern what is good education and what isn't.
I love the oft-repeated cliche: "Be firm but approachable" that even M/s Wicked Stepmother propounds fervently. I don't see her putting this as much into action though. How approachable is she if she turns her nose up and curls her lips if we question a bit more? As I said, she is a bodily existence, mouthing all the standard cliches without a trace of her real true self. She is a walking and talking zombie. Monism only minus the mind.
My first contact with foreign students was working with M/s Wicked Stepmother. It was kind of like home-coming to me (though on reflection it should be my mother's) seeing these Chinese students. My first thought was that these students would certainly miss home. But oh no! M/s Wicked Stepmother had to burst my bubble and go on to say that so and so does not miss his home but only misses the money his family remits for him to spend.
How true nobody can say for sure? But seeing the way she operates, I have my reservations about her. This Thai boy was also the same one she and the teachers (bimb and wimp) accuse of vulgarities and theft. I say if I don't know a vulgarity in a foreign language, we are none the wiser. But these bitches and wimp had to kick up a fuss. They want to burn St Joan of Arc at the stake.
The last I heard of this bunch of Wickedy Wickedness, they were hanging out at another educational establishment. M/s Wicked Stepmother is working with young children now. I wouldn't place my child a centimetre closer to her than I would my child with hyenas in a cage. That was the way she and wimp, Daryl Chan, cackle when they did some evil deeds. He is like so caring in front of his wards but behind their backs, he slimes everyone and enacts the washing off the hands ritual.
I am also sad that I should be the last-born in my family. If I had been the first-born, I would have ruled the family with a more uniting and firmer hand. As it is, I have to defer to all the "authorities" yet again, even when I feel that decisions made were not wise. As my brother puts it :"Don't teach your father how to suck eggs". I suppose experience can be a euphemism for mistakes as Oscar Wilde puts it.
I guess I am just a pretty insecure person deep down inside after going through so much taunts, put-downs, victimisation, scarring, traumas, taints and what-nots. I have to have someone whom I can trust completely because I am entrusting my entire life to him. I want to make sure he is really looking out for me, have my welfare, safety and concern at the uppermost of his mind, loves me for what I am, warts and all and above all share my concerns and thoughts.
He must have the good presence of mind and a good heart.
I am not a play tool, a money-making machine, a cash cow to milk, a nameless entity, a face in the crowd, a digit and an identity card number. I am not an economic tool, a marketing tool, a step-on, a pawn or whatever.
I am a human being of flesh and blood. I am born with that right and I must be treated fairly, equally and correctly. Whatever you do up there and elsewhere, affects my life down here, cutting deep into my very flesh and veins. You utter "No free lunches and nobody owes us a living" and it becomes a free-for-all down here. Incidentally my last blog will be on "Employment Issues" before I knock off for a break unless something interesting beckons.
I have been following the tread of some other blogs and it is true the simplistic and condensed reports (perhaps of an editorial and space restraint?) sometimes do not give justice to the full spectrum of the issue on hand. Like the purported $138000 cash value upon asset realisation ignores the other half of the equation which is the need to then buy another property to live in. As someone correctly points out, unless the liquidator camps out at the national parks.
And a sip of just plain good old water can't be a serious affront at public places? I mean it isn't sugary or carbonated or fizzy and all that stuff which sticks and stains? But if it spills, I guess it will be wetter and more slippery, that is all.
I guess we are all so numbed by everything else, we have desensitised, rationalised and economised so much so we all suffer severe headaches everytime we try to think more with our feelings. And you want to deny me milk powder? See how I have turned out. I can think a little better now, thanks to that extra ounce of milk I nourished on.
Last note. We have the Student Protection Scheme which covers a life insurance for the foreign students. But it does not cover as much as we do in the local scheme. It would be ironic if we only protect their fees and not their lives.
I mean when I am personally at the grassroots, in contact and looking at the students that come in with their shorts pulled up to their chest, we cannot treat them as foreigners any more. They are human beings just like you and me. They have families who would howl the day away should something untoward happens to their one and only one child.
That is what is human, It is not paper shuffling at the top, far removed from the realities you face at the ground. Do you get it Mr/Mrs/Miss/M/s or Dr Policymaker? The circumstances at the ground differ so much from what is on paper.
Further last note. Fire-safety requirements state that malls must have spaced out fire exits at appropriate places. At shopping malls, which I do not see any fire-drill and evacuation conducted anyway, the first instinctive reaction will be for "visiting people" to run out on the escalators and stairways, not look for these hidden, squirrelled away exits. How are you going to conduct these drills anyway if you have walk-in customers and not just your tenants?
And when I volunteer at the orphanage, I cannot deny the legitimacy of a child born out of wed-lock when I have met Louis and the rest. So single-parented means so much more than just a divorce or widowment, doesn't it?He is a living, breathing, walking and talking vibrant boy who needs state protection, a "copulation mishap" if you want to call it that which I won't for I believe all children are gifts from God (think people who can't have children and wants them), which is not his doing.
So there, how's all that for you to digest and think about today? I have seen enough and experienced enough. That is why I have to do things my way and avoid all these glaring mistakes. If not, a human being is condemned to death for a crime he did not commit. It is as the late Professor Stephen Jay Gould puts it, the crime of the institutions (read as people running an organisation) and not of the accused. They make him do it.
They followed this through with their deeds in presenting themselves professionally and ethically. Perhaps there could be more in the way of more personal interaction to know what is going on in their charges' lives but nevertheless that is how they win us over.
By the way, I have missed out on a good number of people in my salutary tribute to my teachers, most good, a few bad. I am so sorry I missed out on M/s Gladys Fernandez.
I will be dazzled by the brilliance of people's minds. When I read the whole works of renowned professorial academicians, journalists and scientists like Samuel Hungtington, Andrew Parker, Jared Diamond, Paul M Kennedy, Thomas Friedman and god-knows-who-else-I-have-missed-out, I am bowled over so much, I dream of their work when I go to bed. It is the way they write and present and defend their works so incisively, so coherently and so professionally.
Of course what ultimately counts is that their works are peer-reviewed and recognised. That of course says a lot about everything. Sir Issac Newton was a political heavyweight and that in many ways gave more credit and substance to his scientific work than say another equally if not more brilliant work somewhere which isn't.
I thought that the General Paper at 'AO' level is a critical thinking and all-subjects encompassing one. It would be a paper I would pen my thoughts with ferocity and oomph. I could be wrong judging by how many students fare so poorly, in general.
Teaching has nothing to do with being "lively" in class which M/s Wicked Stepmother thinks is the elemental composition of good "pedagogy" ( this word can be so tainted, take it as methodology if you will - sounds like pedantry, no?). It is about bringing words to live. It is about breathing life into chapters. If you can put a subject across as a story, so much the better. It is your careful, well-thought out, analytical, meaningful and well-constructed piece of work you expound on to your audience.
But look at the sad, sad , sad state of how things have turned out in some of our schools, commercial or otherwise?
I will be saddened if that very sad day comes when our charges cannot discern what is good education and what isn't.
I love the oft-repeated cliche: "Be firm but approachable" that even M/s Wicked Stepmother propounds fervently. I don't see her putting this as much into action though. How approachable is she if she turns her nose up and curls her lips if we question a bit more? As I said, she is a bodily existence, mouthing all the standard cliches without a trace of her real true self. She is a walking and talking zombie. Monism only minus the mind.
My first contact with foreign students was working with M/s Wicked Stepmother. It was kind of like home-coming to me (though on reflection it should be my mother's) seeing these Chinese students. My first thought was that these students would certainly miss home. But oh no! M/s Wicked Stepmother had to burst my bubble and go on to say that so and so does not miss his home but only misses the money his family remits for him to spend.
How true nobody can say for sure? But seeing the way she operates, I have my reservations about her. This Thai boy was also the same one she and the teachers (bimb and wimp) accuse of vulgarities and theft. I say if I don't know a vulgarity in a foreign language, we are none the wiser. But these bitches and wimp had to kick up a fuss. They want to burn St Joan of Arc at the stake.
The last I heard of this bunch of Wickedy Wickedness, they were hanging out at another educational establishment. M/s Wicked Stepmother is working with young children now. I wouldn't place my child a centimetre closer to her than I would my child with hyenas in a cage. That was the way she and wimp, Daryl Chan, cackle when they did some evil deeds. He is like so caring in front of his wards but behind their backs, he slimes everyone and enacts the washing off the hands ritual.
I am also sad that I should be the last-born in my family. If I had been the first-born, I would have ruled the family with a more uniting and firmer hand. As it is, I have to defer to all the "authorities" yet again, even when I feel that decisions made were not wise. As my brother puts it :"Don't teach your father how to suck eggs". I suppose experience can be a euphemism for mistakes as Oscar Wilde puts it.
I guess I am just a pretty insecure person deep down inside after going through so much taunts, put-downs, victimisation, scarring, traumas, taints and what-nots. I have to have someone whom I can trust completely because I am entrusting my entire life to him. I want to make sure he is really looking out for me, have my welfare, safety and concern at the uppermost of his mind, loves me for what I am, warts and all and above all share my concerns and thoughts.
He must have the good presence of mind and a good heart.
I am not a play tool, a money-making machine, a cash cow to milk, a nameless entity, a face in the crowd, a digit and an identity card number. I am not an economic tool, a marketing tool, a step-on, a pawn or whatever.
I am a human being of flesh and blood. I am born with that right and I must be treated fairly, equally and correctly. Whatever you do up there and elsewhere, affects my life down here, cutting deep into my very flesh and veins. You utter "No free lunches and nobody owes us a living" and it becomes a free-for-all down here. Incidentally my last blog will be on "Employment Issues" before I knock off for a break unless something interesting beckons.
I have been following the tread of some other blogs and it is true the simplistic and condensed reports (perhaps of an editorial and space restraint?) sometimes do not give justice to the full spectrum of the issue on hand. Like the purported $138000 cash value upon asset realisation ignores the other half of the equation which is the need to then buy another property to live in. As someone correctly points out, unless the liquidator camps out at the national parks.
And a sip of just plain good old water can't be a serious affront at public places? I mean it isn't sugary or carbonated or fizzy and all that stuff which sticks and stains? But if it spills, I guess it will be wetter and more slippery, that is all.
I guess we are all so numbed by everything else, we have desensitised, rationalised and economised so much so we all suffer severe headaches everytime we try to think more with our feelings. And you want to deny me milk powder? See how I have turned out. I can think a little better now, thanks to that extra ounce of milk I nourished on.
Last note. We have the Student Protection Scheme which covers a life insurance for the foreign students. But it does not cover as much as we do in the local scheme. It would be ironic if we only protect their fees and not their lives.
I mean when I am personally at the grassroots, in contact and looking at the students that come in with their shorts pulled up to their chest, we cannot treat them as foreigners any more. They are human beings just like you and me. They have families who would howl the day away should something untoward happens to their one and only one child.
That is what is human, It is not paper shuffling at the top, far removed from the realities you face at the ground. Do you get it Mr/Mrs/Miss/M/s or Dr Policymaker? The circumstances at the ground differ so much from what is on paper.
Further last note. Fire-safety requirements state that malls must have spaced out fire exits at appropriate places. At shopping malls, which I do not see any fire-drill and evacuation conducted anyway, the first instinctive reaction will be for "visiting people" to run out on the escalators and stairways, not look for these hidden, squirrelled away exits. How are you going to conduct these drills anyway if you have walk-in customers and not just your tenants?
And when I volunteer at the orphanage, I cannot deny the legitimacy of a child born out of wed-lock when I have met Louis and the rest. So single-parented means so much more than just a divorce or widowment, doesn't it?He is a living, breathing, walking and talking vibrant boy who needs state protection, a "copulation mishap" if you want to call it that which I won't for I believe all children are gifts from God (think people who can't have children and wants them), which is not his doing.
So there, how's all that for you to digest and think about today? I have seen enough and experienced enough. That is why I have to do things my way and avoid all these glaring mistakes. If not, a human being is condemned to death for a crime he did not commit. It is as the late Professor Stephen Jay Gould puts it, the crime of the institutions (read as people running an organisation) and not of the accused. They make him do it.
Thursday, October 13, 2005
What's Going On Here?
Lord! What a fucking day it had been! Am I going out of my mind? First I had to drag myself out of the house for I had been cooped up too long I think dust is beginning to gather on me hair. So it was off to I-am-not-telling-where.
An old couple was already queueing up and the old blimp was complaining. Show starts at 10.15 am but booking starts only at 10.00am, a mere 15 minutes to showtime. It needs more time than that and he was right but the counter "girl" did come in earlier at about 9.45 or so and did start taking bookings as soon as she was ready.
Even his female companion/wife listened and asked him to shut up. Given the time I had and having drunk gallons of water earlier after my exercise, I trudged off to the loo. A CJC dude was inside and he had a toenail ripped off and it was really gory and it bled some spots of blood which remained even after I visited the john 1hr 20 minutes later. What does that tell you? Someone has not been cleaning out the toilet!
This reminded me of Dwayne and his toe stubbed on a sharp bathroom thingy. In the CJC dude's case, he already had a bad toe from a bicycle accident and today he had it stepped on. Ouch! So I told him in no uncertain terms that he can't be walking around like that. After checking it out, I took him to a "dispensary" nearby.
Look CJC dude. Never mind if it is a "dispensary". A dispensary is double entendred. It is still nevertheless a clinic. I promptly ordered the clinic assistant to bandage it up and crossed my finger and trust he is well and left.
That must have left me in a tizzy and I was sitting in the wrong cinematographic hall and only realised it when I noticed the huge turnout of women who were obviously rooting for their Korean superstar idol and the flashing trailer had Korean words on it. It was supposed to have Chinese words on it.
Ok ok. It was a R21 made-in-China gay movie "Lan Yu" (aren't all things made in China nowadays?). Happy now? God! This movie was like banned some time back and it is now allowed to screen with many cuts as I can see. Why cut it? It is R21 after all and as far as I can see, the audience was matured, with a few old men sleeping throughout the show.
God! I missed my screening by a good 10 minutes. The action unfurled thick and fast and I was drawn into the life cycle of a pompous promiscuous rich gay man and his quickie marriage cum divorce, his client-server relationship with a penniless gay student, a on-off thingtummy culminating with the poor lad's death because of his brush with the law. Nothing to crow about.
Did I spy M/s Gladys Fernandez, my lower secondary school teacher? She has put on weight but she still has that distinctive Mickey Mouse look with her oversized glasses. That was what the boys call her in class.
That brought on memories of my school days again. As I see it, almost all the female teachers throughout my school career had served with distinction and honor. They had a professional, even-toned and academic-slanted approach to teaching. They were never like the callous bitches I see in some schools and in the commercial establishments these days. What is the academy and the authorities churning out? Blimps, bimbs and wimps?
Even my favourite teacher M/s Maria Teo, fashionably ahead of her times and physically asseted, dressed decently with at most a scarf around her neck and in high heels. It was never the ultra short skirt and skimpy cleavaged top.
M/s Wicked Stepmother if you care to recall had even on one occasion egg me on to jump off the window by her insinuation. When inked markers ran out, she suggested using blood to write. What a stupid fucked up bitchy bitch! She claimed (and infact many do in the commercial establishments, credentials which I question) ex-educationist status and this is how she served in the profession? Christ! I had to fight a fire at home once, some problem with a gushing tap and came into office soaking wet. She asked caustically if it was raining outside.
As I lounged around and sipped my drinks, I started dreaming and thinking (again). Suddenly I notice an Indian couple walking by. The wife started coughing. I can't believe this and instinctively felt something was wrong. Something overwhelmed me. I became dizzy, light-headed and nauseous. It tickled my throat and nose. I started coughing too.
It triggered a chain reaction and others started coughing as well. We realised something was amiss with the air and ran out. Save for a couple of people who were unperturbed, the rest of us felt some stingy pangs of "air" which had us coughing. I am keeping one of the operations personnel cell phone number just in case what we breathed in was harmful.
My mother must have transmitted me her genes for intuition. Mother knows best. Despite my mother's best intentions , my then 19 year old rebellious sister married against her wishes twice. She paid for this dearly and I knew our whole life at home was never the same again. Dear sister even instigated me not to look after my father as she knows she will be pulled into a quarry if I do. If I have problems, she will be the first I will call as we are "closer".
So fathers are not financially supported in their old age. Why? Because mothers always have daddies be the bad guy. If you do something wacky, she threatens you with father and father is the whipping sadist. Does that explain it all?
I hope the women know better and to heed their mother's warning when it is indeed meritorious.
An old couple was already queueing up and the old blimp was complaining. Show starts at 10.15 am but booking starts only at 10.00am, a mere 15 minutes to showtime. It needs more time than that and he was right but the counter "girl" did come in earlier at about 9.45 or so and did start taking bookings as soon as she was ready.
Even his female companion/wife listened and asked him to shut up. Given the time I had and having drunk gallons of water earlier after my exercise, I trudged off to the loo. A CJC dude was inside and he had a toenail ripped off and it was really gory and it bled some spots of blood which remained even after I visited the john 1hr 20 minutes later. What does that tell you? Someone has not been cleaning out the toilet!
This reminded me of Dwayne and his toe stubbed on a sharp bathroom thingy. In the CJC dude's case, he already had a bad toe from a bicycle accident and today he had it stepped on. Ouch! So I told him in no uncertain terms that he can't be walking around like that. After checking it out, I took him to a "dispensary" nearby.
Look CJC dude. Never mind if it is a "dispensary". A dispensary is double entendred. It is still nevertheless a clinic. I promptly ordered the clinic assistant to bandage it up and crossed my finger and trust he is well and left.
That must have left me in a tizzy and I was sitting in the wrong cinematographic hall and only realised it when I noticed the huge turnout of women who were obviously rooting for their Korean superstar idol and the flashing trailer had Korean words on it. It was supposed to have Chinese words on it.
Ok ok. It was a R21 made-in-China gay movie "Lan Yu" (aren't all things made in China nowadays?). Happy now? God! This movie was like banned some time back and it is now allowed to screen with many cuts as I can see. Why cut it? It is R21 after all and as far as I can see, the audience was matured, with a few old men sleeping throughout the show.
God! I missed my screening by a good 10 minutes. The action unfurled thick and fast and I was drawn into the life cycle of a pompous promiscuous rich gay man and his quickie marriage cum divorce, his client-server relationship with a penniless gay student, a on-off thingtummy culminating with the poor lad's death because of his brush with the law. Nothing to crow about.
Did I spy M/s Gladys Fernandez, my lower secondary school teacher? She has put on weight but she still has that distinctive Mickey Mouse look with her oversized glasses. That was what the boys call her in class.
That brought on memories of my school days again. As I see it, almost all the female teachers throughout my school career had served with distinction and honor. They had a professional, even-toned and academic-slanted approach to teaching. They were never like the callous bitches I see in some schools and in the commercial establishments these days. What is the academy and the authorities churning out? Blimps, bimbs and wimps?
Even my favourite teacher M/s Maria Teo, fashionably ahead of her times and physically asseted, dressed decently with at most a scarf around her neck and in high heels. It was never the ultra short skirt and skimpy cleavaged top.
M/s Wicked Stepmother if you care to recall had even on one occasion egg me on to jump off the window by her insinuation. When inked markers ran out, she suggested using blood to write. What a stupid fucked up bitchy bitch! She claimed (and infact many do in the commercial establishments, credentials which I question) ex-educationist status and this is how she served in the profession? Christ! I had to fight a fire at home once, some problem with a gushing tap and came into office soaking wet. She asked caustically if it was raining outside.
As I lounged around and sipped my drinks, I started dreaming and thinking (again). Suddenly I notice an Indian couple walking by. The wife started coughing. I can't believe this and instinctively felt something was wrong. Something overwhelmed me. I became dizzy, light-headed and nauseous. It tickled my throat and nose. I started coughing too.
It triggered a chain reaction and others started coughing as well. We realised something was amiss with the air and ran out. Save for a couple of people who were unperturbed, the rest of us felt some stingy pangs of "air" which had us coughing. I am keeping one of the operations personnel cell phone number just in case what we breathed in was harmful.
My mother must have transmitted me her genes for intuition. Mother knows best. Despite my mother's best intentions , my then 19 year old rebellious sister married against her wishes twice. She paid for this dearly and I knew our whole life at home was never the same again. Dear sister even instigated me not to look after my father as she knows she will be pulled into a quarry if I do. If I have problems, she will be the first I will call as we are "closer".
So fathers are not financially supported in their old age. Why? Because mothers always have daddies be the bad guy. If you do something wacky, she threatens you with father and father is the whipping sadist. Does that explain it all?
I hope the women know better and to heed their mother's warning when it is indeed meritorious.
Why I Do Not Regret Not Driving And Why I Hate This Commercial School
I am not sure about you. To me independent thinking and living are two musts in my life. That means living the life I want and pursuing the things I want to do. I am not one to rely on anyone - not my adopted son or nephews or nieces - for financial support. I must have my own money to spend as I see fit, freely and independently.
Seeing the way how my aging and eventually ribs and bones father had been largely neglected in the care of my older sister, I shun to think if I should ever fall in the trap one day of having to rely on her. I will kill myself sooner than count on her care-giving.
I have never regretted giving up driving. The only thing I miss is the personal space I have with my thoughts and surrounds. On the public transport, you share your private turf with a gazillion motley crew, each intruding into your face and physicalities.
It is such a hassle driving on bumper-to-bumper traffic on the highway, an "expressway" meant to convey vehicles expeditiously as its moniker implies. Then there are parking woes to contend with, maintenance and breakdown costs as well as every last cent you have to fork out for parking lots, ERPs, CBDs, tax, insurance and petrol. I can't afford any of these at the moment and I can't see the need for a car other than to have it rot away in some garages, utilised only on occasions.
My favourite hangouts if I do drive will be the far flung areas not as accessible by public transport like the East Coast and Changi beaches, the Marina Bay area and all the parks and reserve dotting the island in the West and elsewhere. I will not drive in the city.
Somehow when I visit Changi airport, I always have this tremendous yearning to fly away, the feeling of visiting a distant land beckons. Greener pastures. Traverse the oyster of the world. An exotic and foreign culture.
Having lived with three older sisters and my mother, I can gauge very accurately what women think . It is written large on their faces and the way they act and react. I can in certain ways judge their and men's character. I can tell the diabolical from the sincere.
I have one very sad prognosis for mankind. The women have been so psychologically tainted and wickified in the world of work and commerce, they are no longer the gentle, kind and compassionate beings we have come to associate with their gender.
Just look at the women drivers. They are no better than the men. They hog the fast lanes when they are slowing down, thumb their middle finger when provoked, hurl vulgarities just as quickly and hanker for fame and riches.
So it is too when woman run a show or enterprise. I was expecting magnanimity and so on. Oh no! I am so wrong. Let us name this woman "vice-principal" M/s Wicked StepMother.
M/s Wicked Stepmother is a mother of two. I am not exactly sure what her marital status is but it could be a contributory factor to her psychological make-up. The moment she opens her mouth, it was one sarcasm after another, full of invective. Nothing good spews forth, to put it mildly.
If she were a straight-to-honest person I would have forgiven her, but she speaks nothing but factoids. She is particularly hateful of the Chinese students in the school and speaks incessantly of one such student. Her words are fuel for a cat-fight and she is a back-stabber, sucking up to her bosses while bad-mouthing down below her line of authority. She does not have a heart of gold but a heart of Cinderella's step-mother.
Truth is, she knows she can't work a full day as she has to take time away which coincides with the big bosses taking leave at the same time. Nobody can ask more than one question. She shows you that wicked, stuck-up and curled-up lip expression. Who would want someone in their employ who cannot serve their customers and pick quarrels with them?
She will set people onto you if she does not like you. Like she did with me. A big Vietnamese student who is gangster-like. And of course her lackey, Mr Wimpy, remember Daryl Chan from an earlier blog, well I think he should have been born a woman.
I remember going off for lunch and having this funny feeling and came right back. M/s Wicked Stepmother had one of her lackeys rummage through my belongings. Worse, she keeps accusing a student of theft and conducts a body search in class.
She even conducts evacuation and fire drills and I have to leave my belongings in the General Office, with me feeling that she has some bad intentions up her sleeves. These were obvious tactics of hers to plant as many incidents in school to make her look like a heroine and thus deserving of her managerial capacity.
She even had the audacity of inciting a Chinese student (whom you recall was the one she was ranting about earlier) renting my place up and pack, without so much a word of informing me first. All this right behind my back. I may have my differences with him but we can always have a face-to-face heart-to-heart talk and if you want to move away, fine. But let me know first.
That was the reason why I had this strange feeling that morning that I didn't see this Chinese student. Call it intuition. That was why I immediately rush out and have to hail a cab as you recall. Lo and behold, he was packing up and ransacking my store-room for storage boxes. Is this ethical? No way. You can imagine the diabolics this woman had planned, arranging for transport and his leaving, behind my back.
Any boss who has the myopic foresight to employ a rift-creating and malicious manager like that must surely have his downfall eventually. This woman had free rein of the place, unbridled , and she must have thought she was Empress Dowager Cixi.
That reminds me of all those stupid old men who have these Chinese national women gold diggers snuggling up to them. They are such a pitiful lot if they think it is love.
Anyway after that incident, I have had two room tenants all coming from that school and I have not had a very pleasant experience with any of them. I am sure it must have been that bitch who sent them all.
She is just one of many women I have observed amidst us who is like this. And the wimps are another story altogether, lumped in with the blimps. I say this is the final end of the male species. The end of man and humankind. For course I speak solely for our society. It is a wicked cess pool of diabolics.
You judge and decide.
Seeing the way how my aging and eventually ribs and bones father had been largely neglected in the care of my older sister, I shun to think if I should ever fall in the trap one day of having to rely on her. I will kill myself sooner than count on her care-giving.
I have never regretted giving up driving. The only thing I miss is the personal space I have with my thoughts and surrounds. On the public transport, you share your private turf with a gazillion motley crew, each intruding into your face and physicalities.
It is such a hassle driving on bumper-to-bumper traffic on the highway, an "expressway" meant to convey vehicles expeditiously as its moniker implies. Then there are parking woes to contend with, maintenance and breakdown costs as well as every last cent you have to fork out for parking lots, ERPs, CBDs, tax, insurance and petrol. I can't afford any of these at the moment and I can't see the need for a car other than to have it rot away in some garages, utilised only on occasions.
My favourite hangouts if I do drive will be the far flung areas not as accessible by public transport like the East Coast and Changi beaches, the Marina Bay area and all the parks and reserve dotting the island in the West and elsewhere. I will not drive in the city.
Somehow when I visit Changi airport, I always have this tremendous yearning to fly away, the feeling of visiting a distant land beckons. Greener pastures. Traverse the oyster of the world. An exotic and foreign culture.
Having lived with three older sisters and my mother, I can gauge very accurately what women think . It is written large on their faces and the way they act and react. I can in certain ways judge their and men's character. I can tell the diabolical from the sincere.
I have one very sad prognosis for mankind. The women have been so psychologically tainted and wickified in the world of work and commerce, they are no longer the gentle, kind and compassionate beings we have come to associate with their gender.
Just look at the women drivers. They are no better than the men. They hog the fast lanes when they are slowing down, thumb their middle finger when provoked, hurl vulgarities just as quickly and hanker for fame and riches.
So it is too when woman run a show or enterprise. I was expecting magnanimity and so on. Oh no! I am so wrong. Let us name this woman "vice-principal" M/s Wicked StepMother.
M/s Wicked Stepmother is a mother of two. I am not exactly sure what her marital status is but it could be a contributory factor to her psychological make-up. The moment she opens her mouth, it was one sarcasm after another, full of invective. Nothing good spews forth, to put it mildly.
If she were a straight-to-honest person I would have forgiven her, but she speaks nothing but factoids. She is particularly hateful of the Chinese students in the school and speaks incessantly of one such student. Her words are fuel for a cat-fight and she is a back-stabber, sucking up to her bosses while bad-mouthing down below her line of authority. She does not have a heart of gold but a heart of Cinderella's step-mother.
Truth is, she knows she can't work a full day as she has to take time away which coincides with the big bosses taking leave at the same time. Nobody can ask more than one question. She shows you that wicked, stuck-up and curled-up lip expression. Who would want someone in their employ who cannot serve their customers and pick quarrels with them?
She will set people onto you if she does not like you. Like she did with me. A big Vietnamese student who is gangster-like. And of course her lackey, Mr Wimpy, remember Daryl Chan from an earlier blog, well I think he should have been born a woman.
I remember going off for lunch and having this funny feeling and came right back. M/s Wicked Stepmother had one of her lackeys rummage through my belongings. Worse, she keeps accusing a student of theft and conducts a body search in class.
She even conducts evacuation and fire drills and I have to leave my belongings in the General Office, with me feeling that she has some bad intentions up her sleeves. These were obvious tactics of hers to plant as many incidents in school to make her look like a heroine and thus deserving of her managerial capacity.
She even had the audacity of inciting a Chinese student (whom you recall was the one she was ranting about earlier) renting my place up and pack, without so much a word of informing me first. All this right behind my back. I may have my differences with him but we can always have a face-to-face heart-to-heart talk and if you want to move away, fine. But let me know first.
That was the reason why I had this strange feeling that morning that I didn't see this Chinese student. Call it intuition. That was why I immediately rush out and have to hail a cab as you recall. Lo and behold, he was packing up and ransacking my store-room for storage boxes. Is this ethical? No way. You can imagine the diabolics this woman had planned, arranging for transport and his leaving, behind my back.
Any boss who has the myopic foresight to employ a rift-creating and malicious manager like that must surely have his downfall eventually. This woman had free rein of the place, unbridled , and she must have thought she was Empress Dowager Cixi.
That reminds me of all those stupid old men who have these Chinese national women gold diggers snuggling up to them. They are such a pitiful lot if they think it is love.
Anyway after that incident, I have had two room tenants all coming from that school and I have not had a very pleasant experience with any of them. I am sure it must have been that bitch who sent them all.
She is just one of many women I have observed amidst us who is like this. And the wimps are another story altogether, lumped in with the blimps. I say this is the final end of the male species. The end of man and humankind. For course I speak solely for our society. It is a wicked cess pool of diabolics.
You judge and decide.
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
I Had It Screwed
He was like a dream out of my mind. Someone who strutted into my life like a male peacock with his showy tail plumage. He yak and yak and I was so taken up with his sense of self and of issues, I sat mesmerized, listening to his every conviction of how the world should be and how life should turn out.
From the corner of my faked hazel blue eyes, I could tell that this was a man of substance. A man of his word. A man who would conquer the world. And then whoops. It just fell to bits the moment we had sex and he went on a guilt trip.
Christ! Why do you have to bring on all the beautiful, intelligent, well-endowed, physiquely built and intellectual high-flyer and then as surely as the sun sets in the west, tease my cock and leave it cold, dried and shrivelled? I am still feeling down there for signs of an up-life.
God! What life game are you dicing with me? Why does he have to end it all and I have to had it screwed (some pickwickian humor here)?
It was one thing after another, things just fell one by one on a hot sweltering Saturday evening. Off with the belt, the suit, the Banana Republic boxers and it was moans, groans and amon. And then it happened. Irving stopped dead in the tracks of all that we were doing.
Guilt was written all over his face. He recounted to me the strict Catholic upbringing he was accustomed to and how all this did not fit in with his calling. I was like thinking "what calling", isn't this calling enough? The call of the wild and of the beasty beast within our gonads?
Irving sat dumbfounded on the sofa, defiled as he was by my paws all over his body and balls. GOD! He is a virgin? His mind clouded over and he went on a guilt trip. Everything just fell flat on its face. My erection drooped and became flaccid the moment his hit the deck as well. What a nightmare!
After he left my musky bedroom, I could feel the curtains drawing to a close, a chapter of my life ending, the great sex we had anti-climaxing into a cesspool of intravenous drips.
I had to continually assure him what happened wasn't an incident, it was an indulgence, much as I hated calling it that. It was more like wank, blow, poke, ram, smooch, hug, lick and ooo that stubble, you are tickling me Irving!
I remember the rolling and the frenetic frisky jerks. It was bliss! After a long and hard foreplay, he had one day's cumload that shot right out of his peehole all over me. It was bliss again! I shot on his shoulder and he squeamed with delight, slapping my dick over his face and slurping it up.
While I was entranced, the beeper beeped. It was Irving.
Before long, his text messages filtered through and I had the last pubic hair on my pelvis standing on end: "We are no longer an item. This is the end."
Me: GOD! Irving! Don't do this to me! You are making me faint and light-headed (reaches for packet of condoms, mistaking it for aspirins)
Irving: But there never was an "us". You dreamt it buster.
Me: Please don't say that! You can't possibly say that what we did in 45 minutes was just all scum in the bottom of the latrine? Irving! I am gonna kill myself! (Peers out of bay window - OH WOW! Look at that crane! - stepping onto precipe overlooking MRT station - hey and look at those bigots below us, if I fall, I am gonna squashed you all to death as well)
Irving (heartless, cold brute): Duh! Please! That is like so histrionics! Watch me! (Shakes his bon-bon and laughs)
Me: Ok Irving! Whatever you say! You are the boss! (Steps away from precipice and retreats into living room - you are spared another day, bigots! I swear if I have another incident/indulgence, you are gonna pay with your life)
From the corner of my faked hazel blue eyes, I could tell that this was a man of substance. A man of his word. A man who would conquer the world. And then whoops. It just fell to bits the moment we had sex and he went on a guilt trip.
Christ! Why do you have to bring on all the beautiful, intelligent, well-endowed, physiquely built and intellectual high-flyer and then as surely as the sun sets in the west, tease my cock and leave it cold, dried and shrivelled? I am still feeling down there for signs of an up-life.
God! What life game are you dicing with me? Why does he have to end it all and I have to had it screwed (some pickwickian humor here)?
It was one thing after another, things just fell one by one on a hot sweltering Saturday evening. Off with the belt, the suit, the Banana Republic boxers and it was moans, groans and amon. And then it happened. Irving stopped dead in the tracks of all that we were doing.
Guilt was written all over his face. He recounted to me the strict Catholic upbringing he was accustomed to and how all this did not fit in with his calling. I was like thinking "what calling", isn't this calling enough? The call of the wild and of the beasty beast within our gonads?
Irving sat dumbfounded on the sofa, defiled as he was by my paws all over his body and balls. GOD! He is a virgin? His mind clouded over and he went on a guilt trip. Everything just fell flat on its face. My erection drooped and became flaccid the moment his hit the deck as well. What a nightmare!
After he left my musky bedroom, I could feel the curtains drawing to a close, a chapter of my life ending, the great sex we had anti-climaxing into a cesspool of intravenous drips.
I had to continually assure him what happened wasn't an incident, it was an indulgence, much as I hated calling it that. It was more like wank, blow, poke, ram, smooch, hug, lick and ooo that stubble, you are tickling me Irving!
I remember the rolling and the frenetic frisky jerks. It was bliss! After a long and hard foreplay, he had one day's cumload that shot right out of his peehole all over me. It was bliss again! I shot on his shoulder and he squeamed with delight, slapping my dick over his face and slurping it up.
While I was entranced, the beeper beeped. It was Irving.
Before long, his text messages filtered through and I had the last pubic hair on my pelvis standing on end: "We are no longer an item. This is the end."
Me: GOD! Irving! Don't do this to me! You are making me faint and light-headed (reaches for packet of condoms, mistaking it for aspirins)
Irving: But there never was an "us". You dreamt it buster.
Me: Please don't say that! You can't possibly say that what we did in 45 minutes was just all scum in the bottom of the latrine? Irving! I am gonna kill myself! (Peers out of bay window - OH WOW! Look at that crane! - stepping onto precipe overlooking MRT station - hey and look at those bigots below us, if I fall, I am gonna squashed you all to death as well)
Irving (heartless, cold brute): Duh! Please! That is like so histrionics! Watch me! (Shakes his bon-bon and laughs)
Me: Ok Irving! Whatever you say! You are the boss! (Steps away from precipice and retreats into living room - you are spared another day, bigots! I swear if I have another incident/indulgence, you are gonna pay with your life)
By the way, I recalled an extremely hilarious cartoon I watched in the good-old-days of television. It was about a certain damsel-in-distress named Miss Penelope who would invariably be tied to the train tracks or hanging on to a fast untwirling frayed rope . Her signature tune for help was always :"Save me! Help! Please!" It was a riot of fun just to watch the antics of her white knight who had to risk his life in a variety of cliff-hanging adventures. So Miss Penelope is the epithet for damsel-in-distress.
Thus ended the final chapter of my seeing someone special in my life. I was that close to that elusive civil union in Belgium, Spain, Netherlands, Canada and some states in America! Damn it! Why did it have to be this way? Wasn't my balls huge enough and my dick long enough to drill a hole into the hearts of man?
Sigh! I swear there is another Irving somewhere around the corner somewhere. I just have to look hard and swift enough.
Issues Galore
Since my previous blogs on a gamut of issues, I have reflected upon them further and here are some more thoughts.
It is important we dissect and deconstruct words and language. Demagogues rouse and incite precisely because they play on emotions. If he has both style and substance fine, but if he has only style then we are all done for.
When we pare words to its very bone, we sometimes find not a shred of connective tissue of truth. Somehow this seems to be the cunning domain of women and some men.
The gantry point hypothesis I raised earlier was an actual incident I experienced, albeit not entirely in that fashion. There is indeed a gantry point outside Bestway Building (the old Singapore Polytechnic) along Prince Edward Road. Tending to an emergency one late morning (the incident of which I will relate in another blog) , I had to decide where to locate to as I try to flag down a cab with little cash on me.
Domestically there could be a potential time bomb of issues galore that we are all better off on self-imposed exile, sent on a diplomatic mission with immunity to boot. In a foreign land, we can all be spectators without qualms unlike the blood-related umbilical cord tied to our homeland.
Back to my ERP rants. The COE was another measure to regulate traffic congestion via controlling the supply of vehicles on the road. It was to work in tandem with the ERP, mindful of population growth, increase in disposable income, decrease in vehicle and certificate of entitlement prices usually tied with easy credit financing.
The CBD congestion arose in the first place only because there was one financial and commercial hub then and perhaps even now. Imagine the multitude of office skyscrapers crammed into one huge designated business zone all competing for talents. It naturally follows that both human and vehicular traffic rise in crescendo.
If we had a number of business zones evenly distributed throughout the island, then there would not have been this human and vehicular crush which I am sure we are now trying to alleviate by delegating some to the heartlands and the New Downtown. It would make even more economic sense to assign each a specialised niche perhaps and each pared down to a size that befits its capacity. The CBD should be a central and much smaller model but providing a one-stop comprehensive range of services.
Sometimes when I look at my own town, it scares me to see the humongous 40, 30 and 25 storey blocks all cloistered around the central mall. What used to be a clear panoramic view of the skyline and the distant greenery is now hampered by concrete buildings.
There is only a 2-lane road plying the distance between these blocks and the flyover leading to the highway. As it is, traffic crawls along during the peak morning hours. Where will all this go once the new blocks are completed? Is the infrastructure sufficent to support the additional vehicular traffic?
By extension, schools face the very same problem with parking woes as parents line their cars outside its compound to drop off or pick up their kids. Imagine all 1600 students whose parents drive and you can see how one centre of education may entail human and vehicular crush. Perhaps schools can be broken up into smaller and more manageable units but with the added costs of managerial control at each and every educational centre.
Hey guys! Remember my retail megamall showcase theory! Well guess what dudes? The above just vindicated my theory of a retail megamall personality giving life to a retail megamall disorder. So how is that? Nifty? Kind of fits in nicely , doesn't it?
I was espousing a private public entity to include functions that a legal contractual agreement could not like residency status of a foreign partner and mutual tax filing for gay couples. I will be surprised that an open, inclusive and fairly democratic country of ours does not welcome gays as much as it welcomes immigrants (some residents whom I have had the pleasure of meeting). This is only fair if what my gay friendly pal tells me is the constitutional birth rights of an equal and non-discriminated citizen of a country. Otherwise Belgium, Netherlands, Spain , Canada and some states in America beckon.
If I got it right, legislation is a different kettle of fish from policies. Legislation is when a bill is read in parliament with its attendant amendments untill it becomes law. This usually takes time and are of national and crimes against the state interests. Policies are civil in nature and are plans of action executed by bureaucrats. They can be changed at the drop of a hat and should be flexible and responsive.
The egalitarian and relatively hassle-free tribal bands do seem to be the way to go. These are the encumbrances we have taken upon ourselves to carry in the name of city living. I say we bring down the walls of Jericho much like the Israelites did.
It is important we dissect and deconstruct words and language. Demagogues rouse and incite precisely because they play on emotions. If he has both style and substance fine, but if he has only style then we are all done for.
When we pare words to its very bone, we sometimes find not a shred of connective tissue of truth. Somehow this seems to be the cunning domain of women and some men.
The gantry point hypothesis I raised earlier was an actual incident I experienced, albeit not entirely in that fashion. There is indeed a gantry point outside Bestway Building (the old Singapore Polytechnic) along Prince Edward Road. Tending to an emergency one late morning (the incident of which I will relate in another blog) , I had to decide where to locate to as I try to flag down a cab with little cash on me.
Domestically there could be a potential time bomb of issues galore that we are all better off on self-imposed exile, sent on a diplomatic mission with immunity to boot. In a foreign land, we can all be spectators without qualms unlike the blood-related umbilical cord tied to our homeland.
Back to my ERP rants. The COE was another measure to regulate traffic congestion via controlling the supply of vehicles on the road. It was to work in tandem with the ERP, mindful of population growth, increase in disposable income, decrease in vehicle and certificate of entitlement prices usually tied with easy credit financing.
The CBD congestion arose in the first place only because there was one financial and commercial hub then and perhaps even now. Imagine the multitude of office skyscrapers crammed into one huge designated business zone all competing for talents. It naturally follows that both human and vehicular traffic rise in crescendo.
If we had a number of business zones evenly distributed throughout the island, then there would not have been this human and vehicular crush which I am sure we are now trying to alleviate by delegating some to the heartlands and the New Downtown. It would make even more economic sense to assign each a specialised niche perhaps and each pared down to a size that befits its capacity. The CBD should be a central and much smaller model but providing a one-stop comprehensive range of services.
Sometimes when I look at my own town, it scares me to see the humongous 40, 30 and 25 storey blocks all cloistered around the central mall. What used to be a clear panoramic view of the skyline and the distant greenery is now hampered by concrete buildings.
There is only a 2-lane road plying the distance between these blocks and the flyover leading to the highway. As it is, traffic crawls along during the peak morning hours. Where will all this go once the new blocks are completed? Is the infrastructure sufficent to support the additional vehicular traffic?
By extension, schools face the very same problem with parking woes as parents line their cars outside its compound to drop off or pick up their kids. Imagine all 1600 students whose parents drive and you can see how one centre of education may entail human and vehicular crush. Perhaps schools can be broken up into smaller and more manageable units but with the added costs of managerial control at each and every educational centre.
Hey guys! Remember my retail megamall showcase theory! Well guess what dudes? The above just vindicated my theory of a retail megamall personality giving life to a retail megamall disorder. So how is that? Nifty? Kind of fits in nicely , doesn't it?
I was espousing a private public entity to include functions that a legal contractual agreement could not like residency status of a foreign partner and mutual tax filing for gay couples. I will be surprised that an open, inclusive and fairly democratic country of ours does not welcome gays as much as it welcomes immigrants (some residents whom I have had the pleasure of meeting). This is only fair if what my gay friendly pal tells me is the constitutional birth rights of an equal and non-discriminated citizen of a country. Otherwise Belgium, Netherlands, Spain , Canada and some states in America beckon.
If I got it right, legislation is a different kettle of fish from policies. Legislation is when a bill is read in parliament with its attendant amendments untill it becomes law. This usually takes time and are of national and crimes against the state interests. Policies are civil in nature and are plans of action executed by bureaucrats. They can be changed at the drop of a hat and should be flexible and responsive.
The egalitarian and relatively hassle-free tribal bands do seem to be the way to go. These are the encumbrances we have taken upon ourselves to carry in the name of city living. I say we bring down the walls of Jericho much like the Israelites did.
Saturday, October 08, 2005
More Systemic Disorders
Gosh. Uncle. Why didn't you make it clear you were captured by the Japanese in Malaysia. And gosh again. He was like captured not once but twice. Going by his accounts, the British were no better governors than the Japanese. Thinking the villagers were members of the communist party, the Britons beat up not only men but women as well. They burned down their homes and then built a new town for them. Uncle fled to Singapore in 1948 one decade later than my mother did, traumatised by both the Japanese and British overlords.
I confess. I was one of god-knows-how-many-others who had the cheek to send in a working paper for the educational excellence campaign in the private school umbra. However when I looked at that same working paper again and compared it with what the administrators had come up with since, they had become two disparate carts of fruits, as different as rambutans are from mangosteens.
I had never intended the proposal to be reduced to a half-baked scheme of factoring only the money part of the equation which coincidentally stifles the cash flow of the business while not completely heeding the educational aspects. What about the welfare of the teachers? That was not at all addressed in the final upshot.
Having underwriters needing a guarantor to vouch for my business defeats the purpose of underwriting which is essentially the undertaking of risks. That is what underwriters are in busness for. The onus is not on me, it is on them. They could always co-write or re-write in conjunction with co-insurers or re-insurers (note the difference).
Imagine approaching an undertaker (oops!) to underwrite my life and I need to bring in my 80 year old grandmother to vouchsafe it as well. A fine illustration of first-principles-first, don't you think?
As for inoculation versus immunisation, over the years, the two words have been used interchangeably although at first they had a subtle difference in meaning.
I can be a very verbal and combative person if I want to. But before I speak on a topic of which I know nothing of, I must do my research and read up on it. That is why I do not engage in so much loose talk as that can seriously do a lot of harm untill I have sufficient information to do so.
Which brings me to my earlier blog of the game of distorted or selective communication I played in a class. In fact on a recent occasion when I had a petition drafter write my appeal, I could see how his writing had diverged so much from my original intent and substance, I am glad I had mine all ready and his was only going to be a covering letter.
So what else can go wrong? Plenty, judging by how many things can be skewed and misinterpreted in so many different ways. You may scoff at all these as some highly fertile part of my imagination but if you were ever caught in such a situation, tough luck on being on the receiving end of a short shrift.
Let me give you two examples of how matters had gone complicated even though the intent was good.
First, the Electronic Road Pricing. Its original intent was to regulate travel patterns at certain times of the day, namely the peak and off-peak period. It did this by the use of a graduated payment schedule spread across a price range of between $0.50 to $3.50 based on 5minutes-30 minutes time slots throughout the day. It is to ensure equitable charges contingent solely upon usage.
What happens is that motorists now has such a long list of time slots to remember that I do not think anyone is keeping tab any more although that was what it was supposed to do. Motorists were supposed to travel based on decisions of peak and non-peak hours. It is fortunate the intra-unit device holds a cashcard for auto-deductions or I can imagine a balding and greying population happening sooner than Hurrican Katrina can hit home.
It is the same with cab fare metered charges and surcharges. In the beginning it was a flat 50% surcharge on top of the metred fare after midnight or at exactly 00.01 hrs. Now it has been graduated from 11.30 pm till 1.00am over 15 minutes to 1 hour time slots and at an ascending rate of 10% to 50%. This is automatically worked into the cab's meter but a passenger has to work his sums if he is on a budget or if he has change as sparse as the grassland in the desert.
And all the extras make a rational and economic being like a Man's mind boggle. I am like standing within a CBD zone at exactly 7.50pm, less than 5 metres away from the gantry with only $9.50 in my pcokets as I had not been able to withdraw cash earlier because there were no available ATMs within a 10km radius from where I was and an encroaching deadline of reaching my destination at 8.15 pm.
I have to decide if I should walk the whole way past the gantry, thus bypassing the CBD charges and making it there at precisely 8.01pm so I can both avoid the peak hour charge and travel within my $9.50 budget limit and yet to be able to think if today is the eve of any major public holiday.
Anyway the electronic road pricing just diverts trafflic flow from a congested one to a non-congested one. It does not solve the problem. It only pushes the problem to a different part of the road. The end result is an enlarged , evergrowing area of congestion that just balloons and balloons as long as new roads are identified as congested ones.
Our young people are attired in starchy, crisp and pressed uniforms. Given our tropical climate and the swirling fan phenomena of most schools, it is usually sweaty and stuffy. It is a disciplinary issue if shirt or blouse tails are untucked, which students tend to because of play or the sheer comfort of hanging loose.
If school attire wasn't school uniform per se, it would have been cleverly devised as a more comfortable cotton polo shirt without needing to tuck in. If girls had a choice between skirts or trousers, there would not be an issue of hemlines. Why are we reducing our relationships with our charges to one of talking down to rather than talking with or to?
Attention everyone! The Galaxy is on fire. Please evacuate all stations in 5 minutes or your life may be in danger. Attention everyone - all systems are malfunctioning.
I confess. I was one of god-knows-how-many-others who had the cheek to send in a working paper for the educational excellence campaign in the private school umbra. However when I looked at that same working paper again and compared it with what the administrators had come up with since, they had become two disparate carts of fruits, as different as rambutans are from mangosteens.
I had never intended the proposal to be reduced to a half-baked scheme of factoring only the money part of the equation which coincidentally stifles the cash flow of the business while not completely heeding the educational aspects. What about the welfare of the teachers? That was not at all addressed in the final upshot.
Having underwriters needing a guarantor to vouch for my business defeats the purpose of underwriting which is essentially the undertaking of risks. That is what underwriters are in busness for. The onus is not on me, it is on them. They could always co-write or re-write in conjunction with co-insurers or re-insurers (note the difference).
Imagine approaching an undertaker (oops!) to underwrite my life and I need to bring in my 80 year old grandmother to vouchsafe it as well. A fine illustration of first-principles-first, don't you think?
As for inoculation versus immunisation, over the years, the two words have been used interchangeably although at first they had a subtle difference in meaning.
I can be a very verbal and combative person if I want to. But before I speak on a topic of which I know nothing of, I must do my research and read up on it. That is why I do not engage in so much loose talk as that can seriously do a lot of harm untill I have sufficient information to do so.
Which brings me to my earlier blog of the game of distorted or selective communication I played in a class. In fact on a recent occasion when I had a petition drafter write my appeal, I could see how his writing had diverged so much from my original intent and substance, I am glad I had mine all ready and his was only going to be a covering letter.
So what else can go wrong? Plenty, judging by how many things can be skewed and misinterpreted in so many different ways. You may scoff at all these as some highly fertile part of my imagination but if you were ever caught in such a situation, tough luck on being on the receiving end of a short shrift.
Let me give you two examples of how matters had gone complicated even though the intent was good.
First, the Electronic Road Pricing. Its original intent was to regulate travel patterns at certain times of the day, namely the peak and off-peak period. It did this by the use of a graduated payment schedule spread across a price range of between $0.50 to $3.50 based on 5minutes-30 minutes time slots throughout the day. It is to ensure equitable charges contingent solely upon usage.
What happens is that motorists now has such a long list of time slots to remember that I do not think anyone is keeping tab any more although that was what it was supposed to do. Motorists were supposed to travel based on decisions of peak and non-peak hours. It is fortunate the intra-unit device holds a cashcard for auto-deductions or I can imagine a balding and greying population happening sooner than Hurrican Katrina can hit home.
It is the same with cab fare metered charges and surcharges. In the beginning it was a flat 50% surcharge on top of the metred fare after midnight or at exactly 00.01 hrs. Now it has been graduated from 11.30 pm till 1.00am over 15 minutes to 1 hour time slots and at an ascending rate of 10% to 50%. This is automatically worked into the cab's meter but a passenger has to work his sums if he is on a budget or if he has change as sparse as the grassland in the desert.
And all the extras make a rational and economic being like a Man's mind boggle. I am like standing within a CBD zone at exactly 7.50pm, less than 5 metres away from the gantry with only $9.50 in my pcokets as I had not been able to withdraw cash earlier because there were no available ATMs within a 10km radius from where I was and an encroaching deadline of reaching my destination at 8.15 pm.
I have to decide if I should walk the whole way past the gantry, thus bypassing the CBD charges and making it there at precisely 8.01pm so I can both avoid the peak hour charge and travel within my $9.50 budget limit and yet to be able to think if today is the eve of any major public holiday.
Anyway the electronic road pricing just diverts trafflic flow from a congested one to a non-congested one. It does not solve the problem. It only pushes the problem to a different part of the road. The end result is an enlarged , evergrowing area of congestion that just balloons and balloons as long as new roads are identified as congested ones.
Our young people are attired in starchy, crisp and pressed uniforms. Given our tropical climate and the swirling fan phenomena of most schools, it is usually sweaty and stuffy. It is a disciplinary issue if shirt or blouse tails are untucked, which students tend to because of play or the sheer comfort of hanging loose.
If school attire wasn't school uniform per se, it would have been cleverly devised as a more comfortable cotton polo shirt without needing to tuck in. If girls had a choice between skirts or trousers, there would not be an issue of hemlines. Why are we reducing our relationships with our charges to one of talking down to rather than talking with or to?
Attention everyone! The Galaxy is on fire. Please evacuate all stations in 5 minutes or your life may be in danger. Attention everyone - all systems are malfunctioning.
Why Some Women Shouldn't Be Engaged In Full-time Employment and the Education Profession
When I wrote this blog, my question was "Why Women Shouldn't be in Employment and Education". See how this new title , with its qualifications and provisos, compares with the old. This highlights the importance of framing the question correctly.
Women are anatomically, physiologically and biologically different. They have breasts, vaginas, menstruate, goes through the pangs of infant-bearing, infant-birth, post-menstrual syndrome and post natalism. Men do not. This is an undeniable biological fact.
By the way, I have defined an infant as someone between the ages of 0-18 months. Someone please define an infant, a child, a young person, a minor and an adult.The statutes have one set of interpretation while I read another in everyday life. For instance R21 films are strictly off limits to an 18 year old full-time national serviceman who ironically is able to fight for his country with his life. A 16 year old can hook up to the Internet but he has to wait till he is 21 before he can sign up for a fixed line, both of which are essentially telecommunication services.
That leaves the 17 year olds in limbo. Who are they? Aliens free riding on a UFO?
These anatomical and bio-physiological differences do not translate into any innately less intelligent or abled being. It does however mean some physical incapacitation in the way of time needed to recuperate, heal and to fulfill her maternal roles. Then again women has to be categorized into the various stages of their lives, be it in their pre-nubile age, their singlehood status, their married life with or without children and into their old age. At each stage she is plagued with ills only peculiar to her gender to which the Obstetrics and Gynaecology department has been dedicated in her name.
The monthly cycle and almost a year woman's thingy (7-9 months of gestation followed by 2-3 months of infant care) takes a woman away from her professional duties. What's more, this time period has precluded child-rearing responsibilities throughout the lifetime of the child.
I would have been crushed under the weight of such onerous responsibilities. So what is more with women? Do you seriously think you can juggle career and family professionally without one eating into the other? That is an awful lot of bullshit. Nobody is a superwoman.
It isn't fair to her colleagures, her professional responsibilities and her accountability to one and all if she is actively engaged in full-time employment. Leaving her maternal roles to a grandparent or a care-giver (like a maid or a nanny) have consequences yet untold and unseen till the next generation surfaces with the symptoms, begging for a cure by which time it may already be terminal.
I have no quarrels if the woman needs the income to supplement a breadwinner's take-home bacon or if she has financial obligations to her parents, herself or her children following a separation or divorce. But if she doesn't and she is only out to carve a career for herself, then seriously the issue of whether she can live up to her responsibilities lie squarely with her and her employers and colleagues to decide.
I am most willing to help a colleague but this hinges on who the person is, many of whom I have the unfortunate incident to meet with are just bitchy, bossy, slutty, conniving, indolent, skivvy, unreasonable, vain hoities toities.
In the educational arena, boys are always singled out as the boisterous and trouble-making lot that they are always caricatured to be. Most men can tolerate much of their nonsense but some women cannot. Women run the school like home, nit-picking over the little trivias and sometimes unthinking, mindless and unreasonable in not seeing things for what they are.
It is as if they see life through rose-tinted glasses, much like I did once , that is why I donned a pair and got screwed in junior college (so what the fuck is the big deal so much so that the President of the Student Council has to pick on me - motherfucker!!!). If women are brand-conscious, I am sure they are a class-conscious lot as well. That is why they can be discriminatory.
Imagine our students having their school routine disrupted, their learning cycle broken and their continual adaptation to new faces and teaching styles when women are away from work. Is this very fair?
Our boys in schools are whipped and whacked so much, they cower till we see the phenomenon of "metrosexuals", men who are so much like women, both are in cahoots in character, behaviour and thinking. What does this mean to mankind? A bitching, wimpy and conniving bunch of she-guys. Remember how Admiral Zheng He lost out to his fellow opponents, some of which were court eunuchs themselves and you can pretty much imagine the repercussions.
The women do not see how by their tone and content of their talk, their sarcasm and really biting and unfair remarks sometimes that these are incidendiaries for riots and running amok. The little girls in turn are made out to be the perfect model that they are and they are not disciplined as much or let off too easily, so much so that they have in turn become domineering, vociferous and rebellious while our menfolk are beaten down and emasculated.
If you want equal rights and freedom, then be prepared to be screwed as much for your wrongdoings as for the sins of man. Do not use your gender as an excuse for your mistakes and then use it again as a force for your promulgation of equal rights and protection. Don't expect to be given so much leeway untill the battle of the sexes becomes so skewed and wrong, tipping in your favour.
This is a very sad day for mankind indeed. It will be surely be the end of man. Professor Stephen Jay Gould has prophesized the new order when women enter the workforce. It has begun and it has revolutionised. Let us be ready for the dire consequences.
Women are anatomically, physiologically and biologically different. They have breasts, vaginas, menstruate, goes through the pangs of infant-bearing, infant-birth, post-menstrual syndrome and post natalism. Men do not. This is an undeniable biological fact.
By the way, I have defined an infant as someone between the ages of 0-18 months. Someone please define an infant, a child, a young person, a minor and an adult.The statutes have one set of interpretation while I read another in everyday life. For instance R21 films are strictly off limits to an 18 year old full-time national serviceman who ironically is able to fight for his country with his life. A 16 year old can hook up to the Internet but he has to wait till he is 21 before he can sign up for a fixed line, both of which are essentially telecommunication services.
That leaves the 17 year olds in limbo. Who are they? Aliens free riding on a UFO?
These anatomical and bio-physiological differences do not translate into any innately less intelligent or abled being. It does however mean some physical incapacitation in the way of time needed to recuperate, heal and to fulfill her maternal roles. Then again women has to be categorized into the various stages of their lives, be it in their pre-nubile age, their singlehood status, their married life with or without children and into their old age. At each stage she is plagued with ills only peculiar to her gender to which the Obstetrics and Gynaecology department has been dedicated in her name.
The monthly cycle and almost a year woman's thingy (7-9 months of gestation followed by 2-3 months of infant care) takes a woman away from her professional duties. What's more, this time period has precluded child-rearing responsibilities throughout the lifetime of the child.
I would have been crushed under the weight of such onerous responsibilities. So what is more with women? Do you seriously think you can juggle career and family professionally without one eating into the other? That is an awful lot of bullshit. Nobody is a superwoman.
It isn't fair to her colleagures, her professional responsibilities and her accountability to one and all if she is actively engaged in full-time employment. Leaving her maternal roles to a grandparent or a care-giver (like a maid or a nanny) have consequences yet untold and unseen till the next generation surfaces with the symptoms, begging for a cure by which time it may already be terminal.
I have no quarrels if the woman needs the income to supplement a breadwinner's take-home bacon or if she has financial obligations to her parents, herself or her children following a separation or divorce. But if she doesn't and she is only out to carve a career for herself, then seriously the issue of whether she can live up to her responsibilities lie squarely with her and her employers and colleagues to decide.
I am most willing to help a colleague but this hinges on who the person is, many of whom I have the unfortunate incident to meet with are just bitchy, bossy, slutty, conniving, indolent, skivvy, unreasonable, vain hoities toities.
In the educational arena, boys are always singled out as the boisterous and trouble-making lot that they are always caricatured to be. Most men can tolerate much of their nonsense but some women cannot. Women run the school like home, nit-picking over the little trivias and sometimes unthinking, mindless and unreasonable in not seeing things for what they are.
It is as if they see life through rose-tinted glasses, much like I did once , that is why I donned a pair and got screwed in junior college (so what the fuck is the big deal so much so that the President of the Student Council has to pick on me - motherfucker!!!). If women are brand-conscious, I am sure they are a class-conscious lot as well. That is why they can be discriminatory.
Imagine our students having their school routine disrupted, their learning cycle broken and their continual adaptation to new faces and teaching styles when women are away from work. Is this very fair?
Our boys in schools are whipped and whacked so much, they cower till we see the phenomenon of "metrosexuals", men who are so much like women, both are in cahoots in character, behaviour and thinking. What does this mean to mankind? A bitching, wimpy and conniving bunch of she-guys. Remember how Admiral Zheng He lost out to his fellow opponents, some of which were court eunuchs themselves and you can pretty much imagine the repercussions.
The women do not see how by their tone and content of their talk, their sarcasm and really biting and unfair remarks sometimes that these are incidendiaries for riots and running amok. The little girls in turn are made out to be the perfect model that they are and they are not disciplined as much or let off too easily, so much so that they have in turn become domineering, vociferous and rebellious while our menfolk are beaten down and emasculated.
If you want equal rights and freedom, then be prepared to be screwed as much for your wrongdoings as for the sins of man. Do not use your gender as an excuse for your mistakes and then use it again as a force for your promulgation of equal rights and protection. Don't expect to be given so much leeway untill the battle of the sexes becomes so skewed and wrong, tipping in your favour.
This is a very sad day for mankind indeed. It will be surely be the end of man. Professor Stephen Jay Gould has prophesized the new order when women enter the workforce. It has begun and it has revolutionised. Let us be ready for the dire consequences.
Gay Issues
Professor Howard Gardner framed the Multiple Intelligences study. Many years later, he had to publicly dissociate his name from a number of organisations which had mis-used this study to the detriment of his good reputation.
So it is with the study on any policy matter. After soliciting feedback and sitting in on one paltry meeting with the proposer, formulators hardly invites the proposer to oversee the refinement and implementation. Otherwise, the spirit and intent may be screwed, lost in a sea of misreading and mis-interpretation.
The point is, the founder has to be the overseer in certain ways. The vision and the mission are usually that of the pioneering spirit.
The framing of the question and asking all the right ones are at the heart of any issue. Have you ever been fielded a question you know has no pertinence whatsoever to what is being pursued? Or the question has been angled wrongly?
Gay rights is apparently a huge hoo-ha now in the States, vacillating between being legislated and then shot down. In California, the state has legally conferred equal marriage rights between gay couples and straight ones. This has seen a flux of gay couples seeking licenses to marry.
In Singapore, I do not forsee this happening anytime soon. If it does happen, I will question if it is a state function to legislate and sanction gay marriages. Can this not be a private mutual arrangement between consenting parties contracting with their own lawyers and "legally" appointed presiding marriage solemnisers on exchanging marriage vows, estate distribution and custody of children without the full glare of the public eye.
However I can see the contention when the estate involves assets like the Housing Board flat or the Central Provident Fund. This is one issue that has to be thought through and resolved if it can be by the intervention of legal eagles. Can a private will then supersede all else?
I can see why gay couples are anxious for state legislation. They want to publicly declare their love for each other and exchange nuptial ties with pomp and ceremony. All these legally conferred and sanctioned in the eyes of the state.
For me, I would have the same ceremony, albeit in a private capacity in the comfort of home or a private santuary but with all the attendant legalisation and solemnisation of the marriage.
If it must be a state function, as is characteristic of many of our national state boards dealing with energy, telecommunication and the press, the responsibilities have usually devolved to privatised public entities (excuse the oxymoron much like the oxymoron for Creationist Science).
If the fear persists of the state recognising such an "unholy" marriage, there does not have to be any publicity given to its legally functioning presence or status. Those within the community with the vested interest to know will know. The general public does not have to know.
It is like we have a private school section within the Ministry of Education. 99% of the people would not know of its existence. Only the businesses needing to obtain operating licences from the department would. The general public will only know the private schools as being tied to the Ministry of Education and nothing else.
Speaking of which, I am still pissed with not being able to register my private school as a private academic one as I am told there is a history to the existing ones. That means I am not entitled to step into this historical boundary but if I cannot understand the history unless it is explained to me, I cannot accept the refutation. Just as I was able to pin down the cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict once I saw its history.
If I were to announce that there are gay spas here, chances are nobody knows. I have had the pleasure of telling a friend who in his 21 years of indigenous living does not know of the existence of gay spas. What you do not know won't hurt you. You do not need to know and even if you do, you are none the wiser.
It is a non-issue. Everything carries on as usual. Nobody will even notice the spas in their midst. Life goes on.
As a last word on updates and corrections, I will leave this to you the blog reader to have the good sense to judge where they are and to make the necessary changes.
So it is with the study on any policy matter. After soliciting feedback and sitting in on one paltry meeting with the proposer, formulators hardly invites the proposer to oversee the refinement and implementation. Otherwise, the spirit and intent may be screwed, lost in a sea of misreading and mis-interpretation.
The point is, the founder has to be the overseer in certain ways. The vision and the mission are usually that of the pioneering spirit.
The framing of the question and asking all the right ones are at the heart of any issue. Have you ever been fielded a question you know has no pertinence whatsoever to what is being pursued? Or the question has been angled wrongly?
Gay rights is apparently a huge hoo-ha now in the States, vacillating between being legislated and then shot down. In California, the state has legally conferred equal marriage rights between gay couples and straight ones. This has seen a flux of gay couples seeking licenses to marry.
In Singapore, I do not forsee this happening anytime soon. If it does happen, I will question if it is a state function to legislate and sanction gay marriages. Can this not be a private mutual arrangement between consenting parties contracting with their own lawyers and "legally" appointed presiding marriage solemnisers on exchanging marriage vows, estate distribution and custody of children without the full glare of the public eye.
However I can see the contention when the estate involves assets like the Housing Board flat or the Central Provident Fund. This is one issue that has to be thought through and resolved if it can be by the intervention of legal eagles. Can a private will then supersede all else?
I can see why gay couples are anxious for state legislation. They want to publicly declare their love for each other and exchange nuptial ties with pomp and ceremony. All these legally conferred and sanctioned in the eyes of the state.
For me, I would have the same ceremony, albeit in a private capacity in the comfort of home or a private santuary but with all the attendant legalisation and solemnisation of the marriage.
If it must be a state function, as is characteristic of many of our national state boards dealing with energy, telecommunication and the press, the responsibilities have usually devolved to privatised public entities (excuse the oxymoron much like the oxymoron for Creationist Science).
If the fear persists of the state recognising such an "unholy" marriage, there does not have to be any publicity given to its legally functioning presence or status. Those within the community with the vested interest to know will know. The general public does not have to know.
It is like we have a private school section within the Ministry of Education. 99% of the people would not know of its existence. Only the businesses needing to obtain operating licences from the department would. The general public will only know the private schools as being tied to the Ministry of Education and nothing else.
Speaking of which, I am still pissed with not being able to register my private school as a private academic one as I am told there is a history to the existing ones. That means I am not entitled to step into this historical boundary but if I cannot understand the history unless it is explained to me, I cannot accept the refutation. Just as I was able to pin down the cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict once I saw its history.
If I were to announce that there are gay spas here, chances are nobody knows. I have had the pleasure of telling a friend who in his 21 years of indigenous living does not know of the existence of gay spas. What you do not know won't hurt you. You do not need to know and even if you do, you are none the wiser.
It is a non-issue. Everything carries on as usual. Nobody will even notice the spas in their midst. Life goes on.
As a last word on updates and corrections, I will leave this to you the blog reader to have the good sense to judge where they are and to make the necessary changes.
Friday, October 07, 2005
I Am Seeing Someone Special
You filthy lecherous morbid whore of a mind! It isn't what you think. In fact he is some oldie who hawked chicken rice at one time and was among the pioneer residents of Toa Payoh like I was.
Through him, I learned that this first modern satellite town had its roots in 1965. WHOA! And I thought we were like the very first settlers of this new town when we moved in in 1972. Tomorrow I am going to learn about his capture by the Japanese when he was about three years old.
So you see! Not all old folks , men or women included, are blimpos or bimbs. Doesn't take a super genius or CEO to pass on some knowledge or history. It does however make him lesser than my mother though , who was in her late teens when she first encountered the Japanese invasion. And that in turn makes me more informative than he is as the oral history passed directly to me from my mother and father.
Speaking of which that makes my parents contemporaries of Minister Mentor Lee!
As I said, a person should be judged on what the person is on his own merits. Not on his historical past, his educational background, his gender, his whatever. It should be based on what he can do in the present and for the future. If we keep harping on a person's sexuality, it can draw more attention to an already contentious issue than warrants it.
May I suggest a close on all discussions of a sexual nature and let the open parties and marriage ceremonies go on privately without the need of public privy , knowledge or information? Let it be known among the community itself. We have the private means of circulation and dissemination.
Make this a non-issue. Let us not speak about it in the press but do let us debate this in private.
We should all publicly defend our positions. But privately, let us reflect on the criticisms and if proven true, we should work on rectification whilst making a public proclamation to the contrary.
Mr Blimp of A Historical Gripe across the causeway may be a stone wall to progress at some point in our negotiations, but he did levy some truisms about us when he mentioned about our cars going as far as across the crooked bridge to get away from it all and to rev our engine up sufficiently for good measure. So the good and the bad must be taken as one wholesome nutritional meal of vitamins and minerals plus viagra.
I remember my Officer-In-Command comment at one point in my National Service career that people like us cannot fight in a time of war. I guess he was thinking along the traditional lines of gearing up in combat wear with a bayonet attached to a M16 .
I will have him know, if he is still alive, that we can be human suicide bombers or missiles if we need to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of our nation. So there! It takes more imagination these days to fight a war. Thomas Friedman observes that 9/11 was a war of imagination (note: airplanes used as projectiles instead of nuclear warheads) and not a conventional war as we imagined it to be.
I have met a number of women educators in our public service. In fact most were heading departments. The meetings usually start with screaming into my ears of one complaint or another about the state of schools , their populace and so on.
I see some have risen to vice-premiership of schools and even seconded to headquarters. If women (and some men) of such distinction could grace our institutions, I say we all had it. It is goodbye to great leadership and true education.
One school had an older Malaysian discipline mistress with anorexic looks and ultra skimpy mini-skirts parading her wares up and down the corridor. I hope she administers justice as well as she dresses up. Another had such huge boobs, she blatantly had them bobbing up and down in her cleavage-exposed tight dress. WHOA! How are the students going to study like this? Where did the training academy and authorities get all these educators? The bimbo peep-show attraction?
They actually made me wait out and waste two years of my life chasing after a dream of a school-enrichment program, feeding me false hopes upon quote after senseless quote. They could not be truthful with me and let me decide more decisively.
You have retail megamall mentality and we get retail megamall personality and disorder in return, all the way from the top to the bottom, from teachers to students.
After all if they have mega popstars as the only idols they can emulate, what can we all say? A beauty culture of slutholes, whores and bimbs? My older married ex-colleague (remember M/s Hatsheput ) idolises Madonna and she behaves like her. Look at the screaming fans turning up at airports, media stations or concert events and you can conclude how idolisation, consumerism, fashion and commercialisation have all taken hold of our young.
There is this senior lady working on administration who tried to pull a fast one on me. She seems to have a thing or two with a school attendant and insinuates that this attendant comes into the office only at 9.00am. As far as I know, the Executive and Administrative Staff comes in only at that time. If I had not known any better, I would have been misled.
Remember this vivacious hag of a witch who tried making me sign up for her "educational" lessons? She had me do a lesson for $40 and promptly issues me a IR8E for this measly immaterial amount which IRAS scoffs at. This coming after even signing on her payment voucher and her husband is an accountant who should know better.
Which reminds me of a local union-linked organisation who similarly issues me an IR8A when I am not even a full-time employee with them. It should have been a IR8E. So much for observing good governing procedures.
If something happens on the streets, don't always assume it is a Singaporean's doing. I have seen a couple of bad social graces and behaviour perpetrated not by us. Crowding around train station entrances, not moving the slightest inch even when other passengers attempt to board or alight, they were in some cases speaking a foreign tongue in equally loud tones at times.
In retrospect quite a few of the business accounting small and medium enterprises I worked for were owned by Malaysians. Note that they are not here to make meaningful contributions but to enrich themselves. Most work were paper-ridden and perfunctory at best. I am not sure if it meets anywhere close to the rigorous standard needed for a final audit report.
An emigration consultancy I met up with was manned by Malaysian, Thai and Hong Kong bosses. If they provide the kind of information they do that even an imbecile with half a mind could and in the English language even the mute can speak, I say I can run the same outfit in Euro-America, with better finesse and knowledge.
Oh yes! This commercial school run by a woman Chinese national, in the name of her Singaporean husband. See how I keep telling you the great governance we have here among our commercial schools where the supervisor is just a nominal nominee or proxy. I am not sure where she got her educational credentials but for sure she is not winning herself my kudos.
And this other Taiwanese principal running the same. I remember while sitting in on an interview with her when the telephone rang and she was speaking to the voice at the other end assuring it that the kids are not allowed to talk in class. There behind me was a class of chatterers with an Indian teacher (?) working crowd control. So much for education and casetrusting.
Sometimes I really wonder where have all the true-blue Singaporeans gone? I cannot believe that with the benefit of our still comparatively good education, that they could be one of so many of the herds we have all come to associate with uncouthness. Have they all disappeared somewhere to greener pastures?
Yes it is time I move on. I will if I am forced into a corner with no other options other than to move on and away!
Through him, I learned that this first modern satellite town had its roots in 1965. WHOA! And I thought we were like the very first settlers of this new town when we moved in in 1972. Tomorrow I am going to learn about his capture by the Japanese when he was about three years old.
So you see! Not all old folks , men or women included, are blimpos or bimbs. Doesn't take a super genius or CEO to pass on some knowledge or history. It does however make him lesser than my mother though , who was in her late teens when she first encountered the Japanese invasion. And that in turn makes me more informative than he is as the oral history passed directly to me from my mother and father.
Speaking of which that makes my parents contemporaries of Minister Mentor Lee!
As I said, a person should be judged on what the person is on his own merits. Not on his historical past, his educational background, his gender, his whatever. It should be based on what he can do in the present and for the future. If we keep harping on a person's sexuality, it can draw more attention to an already contentious issue than warrants it.
May I suggest a close on all discussions of a sexual nature and let the open parties and marriage ceremonies go on privately without the need of public privy , knowledge or information? Let it be known among the community itself. We have the private means of circulation and dissemination.
Make this a non-issue. Let us not speak about it in the press but do let us debate this in private.
We should all publicly defend our positions. But privately, let us reflect on the criticisms and if proven true, we should work on rectification whilst making a public proclamation to the contrary.
Mr Blimp of A Historical Gripe across the causeway may be a stone wall to progress at some point in our negotiations, but he did levy some truisms about us when he mentioned about our cars going as far as across the crooked bridge to get away from it all and to rev our engine up sufficiently for good measure. So the good and the bad must be taken as one wholesome nutritional meal of vitamins and minerals plus viagra.
I remember my Officer-In-Command comment at one point in my National Service career that people like us cannot fight in a time of war. I guess he was thinking along the traditional lines of gearing up in combat wear with a bayonet attached to a M16 .
I will have him know, if he is still alive, that we can be human suicide bombers or missiles if we need to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of our nation. So there! It takes more imagination these days to fight a war. Thomas Friedman observes that 9/11 was a war of imagination (note: airplanes used as projectiles instead of nuclear warheads) and not a conventional war as we imagined it to be.
I have met a number of women educators in our public service. In fact most were heading departments. The meetings usually start with screaming into my ears of one complaint or another about the state of schools , their populace and so on.
I see some have risen to vice-premiership of schools and even seconded to headquarters. If women (and some men) of such distinction could grace our institutions, I say we all had it. It is goodbye to great leadership and true education.
One school had an older Malaysian discipline mistress with anorexic looks and ultra skimpy mini-skirts parading her wares up and down the corridor. I hope she administers justice as well as she dresses up. Another had such huge boobs, she blatantly had them bobbing up and down in her cleavage-exposed tight dress. WHOA! How are the students going to study like this? Where did the training academy and authorities get all these educators? The bimbo peep-show attraction?
They actually made me wait out and waste two years of my life chasing after a dream of a school-enrichment program, feeding me false hopes upon quote after senseless quote. They could not be truthful with me and let me decide more decisively.
You have retail megamall mentality and we get retail megamall personality and disorder in return, all the way from the top to the bottom, from teachers to students.
After all if they have mega popstars as the only idols they can emulate, what can we all say? A beauty culture of slutholes, whores and bimbs? My older married ex-colleague (remember M/s Hatsheput ) idolises Madonna and she behaves like her. Look at the screaming fans turning up at airports, media stations or concert events and you can conclude how idolisation, consumerism, fashion and commercialisation have all taken hold of our young.
There is this senior lady working on administration who tried to pull a fast one on me. She seems to have a thing or two with a school attendant and insinuates that this attendant comes into the office only at 9.00am. As far as I know, the Executive and Administrative Staff comes in only at that time. If I had not known any better, I would have been misled.
Remember this vivacious hag of a witch who tried making me sign up for her "educational" lessons? She had me do a lesson for $40 and promptly issues me a IR8E for this measly immaterial amount which IRAS scoffs at. This coming after even signing on her payment voucher and her husband is an accountant who should know better.
Which reminds me of a local union-linked organisation who similarly issues me an IR8A when I am not even a full-time employee with them. It should have been a IR8E. So much for observing good governing procedures.
If something happens on the streets, don't always assume it is a Singaporean's doing. I have seen a couple of bad social graces and behaviour perpetrated not by us. Crowding around train station entrances, not moving the slightest inch even when other passengers attempt to board or alight, they were in some cases speaking a foreign tongue in equally loud tones at times.
In retrospect quite a few of the business accounting small and medium enterprises I worked for were owned by Malaysians. Note that they are not here to make meaningful contributions but to enrich themselves. Most work were paper-ridden and perfunctory at best. I am not sure if it meets anywhere close to the rigorous standard needed for a final audit report.
An emigration consultancy I met up with was manned by Malaysian, Thai and Hong Kong bosses. If they provide the kind of information they do that even an imbecile with half a mind could and in the English language even the mute can speak, I say I can run the same outfit in Euro-America, with better finesse and knowledge.
Oh yes! This commercial school run by a woman Chinese national, in the name of her Singaporean husband. See how I keep telling you the great governance we have here among our commercial schools where the supervisor is just a nominal nominee or proxy. I am not sure where she got her educational credentials but for sure she is not winning herself my kudos.
And this other Taiwanese principal running the same. I remember while sitting in on an interview with her when the telephone rang and she was speaking to the voice at the other end assuring it that the kids are not allowed to talk in class. There behind me was a class of chatterers with an Indian teacher (?) working crowd control. So much for education and casetrusting.
Sometimes I really wonder where have all the true-blue Singaporeans gone? I cannot believe that with the benefit of our still comparatively good education, that they could be one of so many of the herds we have all come to associate with uncouthness. Have they all disappeared somewhere to greener pastures?
Yes it is time I move on. I will if I am forced into a corner with no other options other than to move on and away!
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