Is it just my imagination or is our IT mall teeming with an all-male workforce? What a wonderful respite from the usual dolled-up vampish witches we see manning the sales and marketing counters!
What a pleasant encounter I had with a Frenchman! It was trying at times to sift through the slight language barrier in terms of his accent and I hope he didn't have the same thing with my English. I do pride myself on my self-declaimed spoken Standard English.
But what we had was one interesting discussion about global living and cultures. He is resident here and if I read him correctly, living here isn't as great as it is made out to be! He is in fact looking for another repose.
This attests to my belief that not only is our education not education, our life here isn't life at all. There is something amiss if our life is reduced to the economy alone.
Someone mentioned about how two wrongs do not make a right . Let me add this rejoinder : Make it two wrongs among a hundred or so. How can a Greek not behave like a Roman in Rome?
This reminds me of the legwork and hard work I put in, making the rounds of the medical industry, only to have M/s Madonna (alter-ego) to harvest the fruits of my labour when I leave. It was the same too of M/s Cindy Crawford (alter-ego). All they do is shake legs in the office, sit tight and look pretty.
More wimps on the trains and at the shopping arcades. They are the young, desperate and sissified wimps who need a female companion to prop up their fragile egoes. One even played with her sash and lipstick. What a torrid sight! So I did toy with "Clinique" make-up before, but I don't go public like that. It is simply bad taste.
The car-racing game at amusement arcades must be the bane of our practical driving tests. The gamers actually cross their hands on the steering wheels or gamely drive with one arm. These would be definite no-nos at our test centres! So I did play "Quaker" and "Combat Flight Simulator" myself but it was on some joystick then, not like the sophisticated console box now.
"Wallace and Gromit - The Curse of the Were-Rabbit" was nice, though it really wasn't on my watch-list but I was aching from the long weekend, suffocating from sheer boredom. Now "The Chinese Tall Story" would be, like "The Promise" which was disappointing as it turned out to be a sob story. I am looking for action and space-age special effects which the trailer promised.
"Wallace and Gromit"'s credits had a someone resident in Singapore who, if he is the person I think he is, is the Russian-Australian I am acquainted with. He was one hell to live with, especially his gay visitors who come by and use my house facilties without permission. It is the same ingrained thinking here to wring every cent of your money's worth!
I might have bumped into him again and seemingly he is hitched and gone hetero. If that is so, it must be a betrayal of his gay partner, whom I thought they were lovingly coupled, until he brought another home . What flirtatious fun!
As I mentioned , trainers and members at the SSC gymnasiums are marketing health and slimming supplements. This is unethical as, most likely, both are in cahoots. If you remember Mr Old Fart who works out at the gymnasium in an early blog, he did precisely tried selling me some of this stuff. That is why he earns no kudos from me in terms of cultivating a friendship.
I am crestfallen that the Constitution hasn't afforded me equal protection in acquiring a property and in seeking employment. If I am denied a home and a school, I am ,de facto, denied my constitutional rights.
Perhaps it is all for the better. If the Book of Revelations proves true, then the 666 Beast which needs anyone to trade with it to have its mark could be at work here. Before the Day of Judgement sweeps mankind up in one final calamity.
I do enjoy some journalists' pieces in our main daily. They write with newfound insight. Writers like Mr Jenadas Devan, M/s Ong Sor Chin, M/s Chua Mui Hoong, Mr Andy Ho and M/s Susan Long. But the forum pages see writers who are being featured time and again. It seems controlled and phoney.
Well enought thoughts for a day. The new year is coming and move on I must.
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Monday, December 26, 2005
Have You Seen A Christmas Elf Or Troll Yet?
I had never known "Spotlight" was an Australian export. The shop has everything a home-maker could dream up. I ventured into its only store here and was smitten with its wide array of fabrics, crafts and home interiors. The nice, plush and fluffed-up upholsteries caught my eyes. Even venetian blinds never had it so good.
How has your Christmas been? Has it been one big festoonery, overran with all the gaiety and yuletide cheer ? Were you partying the night away, ate to your heart's content and as drunk as you could be? Or were you holed up, contemplative, meditative and reflective on the Christmas meaning and message, far away from the madding crowd.
I thought, in line with the Christmas spirit of the season, that I should espouse something. Young men, take heed. Before you down that anabolic protein shake before you hit 21, think of its stunting effect on your growth as it pushes your muscles in all the right places but not in your upward spurt. It also triggers horrendous acne breakouts for some and weight gain or adipose (or is it cellulite) deposit when you are no longer training.
Steroids are the stuff hormones, the precursors of vitamins, digitalis, sterols and bile acids are made of. Digitalis are used as cardiac stimulants. Sterols occur as cholesterols in the fatty tissues of animals and as ergosterol in plants. Bile acid is used to emulsify fats.
The bio-chemical implications are clear, if you cannot by now see the light.
This is something the trainers at gymnasiums may have overlooked as they push and shove for that herbal remedy to cut down fats and protein-building steroids which line their pockets with cash. Even gym members are pulling off a similar MLM round-robin stunt at the clubs they work out. Again, schools' physical education instructors seem to be not filling this edificational black-hole.
When it is economics, everyone has a finger in its pie. But when it is something that will save a body or help a lost soul, nobody is in sight. This could be everyday issues that affect everyone schools can put up for project work.
Just so to further bolster my argument about story writers and tellers being the high-browed intellects that they are. Lewis Carroll was the nom de plume of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, logician, author and mathematician. CS Lewis was a professorial scholar. This should be enough to kill any lingering doubts.
In case you are doing any last-minute festive shopping and IT happens to be on the shopping list, pay heed. If you see a PCMCIA specification written on its IT brochure, you had better strike this off your purchase. A PCMCIA is as old as what corsets would be in the Victorian Age.
I am sorry if you thought my 6 months of blogs have been one helluva fire and brimstone. It is only an infintesimal 0.0125 of my out-and-out earth years here. How is that for eschewing statistical reality?
Merry Christmas once again and may 666 never plague us on 6th June, 2006 in the new year!
How has your Christmas been? Has it been one big festoonery, overran with all the gaiety and yuletide cheer ? Were you partying the night away, ate to your heart's content and as drunk as you could be? Or were you holed up, contemplative, meditative and reflective on the Christmas meaning and message, far away from the madding crowd.
I thought, in line with the Christmas spirit of the season, that I should espouse something. Young men, take heed. Before you down that anabolic protein shake before you hit 21, think of its stunting effect on your growth as it pushes your muscles in all the right places but not in your upward spurt. It also triggers horrendous acne breakouts for some and weight gain or adipose (or is it cellulite) deposit when you are no longer training.
Steroids are the stuff hormones, the precursors of vitamins, digitalis, sterols and bile acids are made of. Digitalis are used as cardiac stimulants. Sterols occur as cholesterols in the fatty tissues of animals and as ergosterol in plants. Bile acid is used to emulsify fats.
The bio-chemical implications are clear, if you cannot by now see the light.
This is something the trainers at gymnasiums may have overlooked as they push and shove for that herbal remedy to cut down fats and protein-building steroids which line their pockets with cash. Even gym members are pulling off a similar MLM round-robin stunt at the clubs they work out. Again, schools' physical education instructors seem to be not filling this edificational black-hole.
When it is economics, everyone has a finger in its pie. But when it is something that will save a body or help a lost soul, nobody is in sight. This could be everyday issues that affect everyone schools can put up for project work.
Just so to further bolster my argument about story writers and tellers being the high-browed intellects that they are. Lewis Carroll was the nom de plume of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, logician, author and mathematician. CS Lewis was a professorial scholar. This should be enough to kill any lingering doubts.
In case you are doing any last-minute festive shopping and IT happens to be on the shopping list, pay heed. If you see a PCMCIA specification written on its IT brochure, you had better strike this off your purchase. A PCMCIA is as old as what corsets would be in the Victorian Age.
I am sorry if you thought my 6 months of blogs have been one helluva fire and brimstone. It is only an infintesimal 0.0125 of my out-and-out earth years here. How is that for eschewing statistical reality?
Merry Christmas once again and may 666 never plague us on 6th June, 2006 in the new year!
Sunday, December 25, 2005
Histrionics
My first encounter with theatre was the musical "Phantom Of The Opera". It was playing at the Kallang theatre and I actually had a circle seat all to myself. The experience was electrifying to say the least. Up close and personal, savouring the drama in multi-dimension, with booming vocals, songs and dance was one not easily replicated on a flat two-dimensional screen such as a cinema.
My other theatrical experience was with the Tang Quartet at the Victoria Concert Hall. They were young, vibrant and the gang of four played so marvellously well on their strings, each musical piece was classically rendered. Too bad I can't remember what composition these were.
I even watched a local drama entitled "Diary of A Mad Woman", a role fleshed out so successfully by M/s Loo, a dentist. She even parodied our then-Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew as he can only inimitably be. The woman wasn't really mad. She did stuff differently and just thought she was being watched.
I will pay through the nose if "Joseph the Techni-color DreamCoat" should ever hit town again. Regrettably I had missed out on this one chance to watch a bliblical musical.
I didn't know trolls were connected with Scandinavian folklore. This is like a little blight on a snowy white land of the Midnight sun. I was imagining that if my first crush was with Gabriel, a Eurasian, whom I was hypnotised by his matt of shiny golden hair, if that signals a return to my first love when I fly off to Scandinavia. Will this mean closing a final chapter in my love life, back to my roots kinda thingtummy.
I was fascinated and amused too when I first touched a copper-blond doll when I was a child. This was a hand-me-down, thanks to an aunt who I am positive, must have worked for some Nordic-European-American families as a live-in amah. There were no shortage of toys like Fisher-Price musical wind-up toys, Beano, DC , Marvel and Norse Gods comics at various times.
This week-end live-with-us aunt was to be the other woman in our family strife, leading to much anguish and enmity in and around the home especially with Mom.
The doll's hair was thick and silky to the touch. This was the first thing I reach out to feel, mind you, besides being mesmerized with its movable blue eyes. It was so much like the European boys I see in town or on the trains.
A little research reveals that Fisher Price is tied in with Mattel which makes the Barbie dolls. That explains the association with the doll. It is a 75 year old company, about as old as Walt Disney.
Our first color television set was an European model, Sierra ( a brand that I cannot find now and do not know which country it is from - Sweden or Switzerland). It is one of those elongated,wooden, sturdy sort of television with sliding doors, like Grundig, its German contemporary, which is still around even today. This is way before Japan technology revolutionised cars and home electronics with its steely looks.
Therefore I think our contact with the American-European world must have gone a long way even before now.
Before you go thinking that I am asking for the world, please stop. I never was, to date. But everyone around you wants to make you feel out-of-step. What can moi do but to retaliate? I mean I am not asking for plush furnishings at work but neither am I saying a dingy, grimy, Legionaired or windowless work environment is conducive. Any natural light cut off can only mean a non-diurnal critter, living its miserable existence in a hellhole.
If you don't allow me to operate an education service here , work for a credible one on the basis of a degree , deny me a roof over me head , an adopted child or a civil union, you don't expect me to sit and watch those who do provide an "education" gets fattened with wealth, live in opulence, flaunt a brood and engage in polygamy. If it is "education" they provide, then dung is chocolate, urine is Coca Cola and semen is milk. It is as simple a logic as that.
By the way if your dog barks and growls at strangers , it coud mean that it isn't a properly trained pet. Thought you might just want to know and keep the leash on it, just in case.
Merry Christmas all the same, whatever that means to you.
My other theatrical experience was with the Tang Quartet at the Victoria Concert Hall. They were young, vibrant and the gang of four played so marvellously well on their strings, each musical piece was classically rendered. Too bad I can't remember what composition these were.
I even watched a local drama entitled "Diary of A Mad Woman", a role fleshed out so successfully by M/s Loo, a dentist. She even parodied our then-Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew as he can only inimitably be. The woman wasn't really mad. She did stuff differently and just thought she was being watched.
I will pay through the nose if "Joseph the Techni-color DreamCoat" should ever hit town again. Regrettably I had missed out on this one chance to watch a bliblical musical.
I didn't know trolls were connected with Scandinavian folklore. This is like a little blight on a snowy white land of the Midnight sun. I was imagining that if my first crush was with Gabriel, a Eurasian, whom I was hypnotised by his matt of shiny golden hair, if that signals a return to my first love when I fly off to Scandinavia. Will this mean closing a final chapter in my love life, back to my roots kinda thingtummy.
I was fascinated and amused too when I first touched a copper-blond doll when I was a child. This was a hand-me-down, thanks to an aunt who I am positive, must have worked for some Nordic-European-American families as a live-in amah. There were no shortage of toys like Fisher-Price musical wind-up toys, Beano, DC , Marvel and Norse Gods comics at various times.
This week-end live-with-us aunt was to be the other woman in our family strife, leading to much anguish and enmity in and around the home especially with Mom.
The doll's hair was thick and silky to the touch. This was the first thing I reach out to feel, mind you, besides being mesmerized with its movable blue eyes. It was so much like the European boys I see in town or on the trains.
A little research reveals that Fisher Price is tied in with Mattel which makes the Barbie dolls. That explains the association with the doll. It is a 75 year old company, about as old as Walt Disney.
Our first color television set was an European model, Sierra ( a brand that I cannot find now and do not know which country it is from - Sweden or Switzerland). It is one of those elongated,wooden, sturdy sort of television with sliding doors, like Grundig, its German contemporary, which is still around even today. This is way before Japan technology revolutionised cars and home electronics with its steely looks.
Therefore I think our contact with the American-European world must have gone a long way even before now.
Before you go thinking that I am asking for the world, please stop. I never was, to date. But everyone around you wants to make you feel out-of-step. What can moi do but to retaliate? I mean I am not asking for plush furnishings at work but neither am I saying a dingy, grimy, Legionaired or windowless work environment is conducive. Any natural light cut off can only mean a non-diurnal critter, living its miserable existence in a hellhole.
If you don't allow me to operate an education service here , work for a credible one on the basis of a degree , deny me a roof over me head , an adopted child or a civil union, you don't expect me to sit and watch those who do provide an "education" gets fattened with wealth, live in opulence, flaunt a brood and engage in polygamy. If it is "education" they provide, then dung is chocolate, urine is Coca Cola and semen is milk. It is as simple a logic as that.
By the way if your dog barks and growls at strangers , it coud mean that it isn't a properly trained pet. Thought you might just want to know and keep the leash on it, just in case.
Merry Christmas all the same, whatever that means to you.
Thursday, December 22, 2005
The Whole Kit And Caboodle
A flurry of exchanges between myself and the housing board authority.
A few very obvious oversight (or no sight even) . They are comparing the SPRs not on a citizenship but on a marital status basis. It is on this premise that I argue Single Singapore Citizens are no better than a non-citizen. They are, indirectly, mopping up brand new units by virtue of their marriage which says nothing about their allegiance to the state unless they swear citizenship on an oath-taking ceremony.
It could be, after all, a marriage of convenience for pecuniary or other material benefits. Already they can bite directly into the secondary market. Two bites of the pie while I only have one. Thus, citizenship for non-citizenship, they are better off than moi.
All the while I thought the housing board was a constitutional sacrosanct (as enshrined in the Constitution Article 12 and as a key statuory board listed in the Fifth schedule right along the MAS, JTC and CPF), a guarantor of equal protection without discrimating on the bases of religion, race, descent or place of birth as long as this is a Singapore citizen, in his acquisition, holding and disposal of property as well as employment. It is also the champion of asset-building and ownership.
Now why would I incur an expense in rental accomodation, throwing money down the drain month after month, and not contribute towards an asset, a point the housing authority has also conceded in its official website.
Once again, I hope the Health authority would re-consider its plans to build the Jurong General Hospital. This has been superceded by the Yishun Norther General Hospital. Apparently there will be just a out-patient health-care institution in the west now and the Northern part of Singapore's population catchment warrants a new hospital.
I have no arguments against that but I am saying the West has an equally pressing need in terms of a growing populace. The National University Hospital seems to serve residents in the Clementi, Dover, Buona Vista and Bukit Timah areas while geographically the Jurong General Hospital would potentially serve Boon Lay, Chinese Garden , Lakeside, Jurong East, Bukit Gombak, Bukit Batok and even Choa Chu Kang.
I am suggesting that the out-patient institution be outfitted with a 24-hour accident and emergency ward with all its attendant ancillaries for life-and-death medical attention where time is of the essence. Imagine travelling out to a distant NUH when you are residing in Boon Lay. Your life could be smothered out even before you reach your salvation.
My lumbar spinal fracture accident has taught me this and I was fortunately a stone's throw away from Tan Tock Seng Hospital, through no fault or planning of mine. As I said, experience is life's greatest leveller. I hope something like this won't have to happen to you to jolt you from your inertia.
Hopefully the present calls for suggestions on the new hospital would see, other than calls for water and landscaped gardens themes, suggestions on more patient-centric and friendly features such as non-slip floors , ramps, elevators and light-weight doors for the infirmed and the gerontologics.
Recapitulating on Louis' fears about menstruation. I think he meant it as gory and thus he is revolted or sickened, and therefore "disgusting" figures in his vocabulary which isn't too far off the mark what he was trying to express. But this is a natural bio-rhythmic cycle and he must be made aware of it. I would be too like I would gory surgery or profuse bleeding from some injuries.
I am amazed my computer can shut down on its own and I can't send selective electronic mails out or some that I do, have parts missing or jumbled. In fact when I receive certain mails, I have letters substituted by chinese characters. Someone tell me what is wrong with me computer.
As I soon discovered, Down's Syndrome afflicts its sufferers to varying degrees. The intellectual development is apparently delayed, but for what kind of numbers, I don't have the information. Even cerebral palsy, while damaging the brain and thus motor ability, can leave intellectual ability intact for how many of its sufferers, again I can't say. So much for my assumption at first. It is clear from this that looks can deceive (physical versus intellect).
Narnia, was, by all accounts, a cold, wintry and heartless place, ruled by the ice-queen, the White Witch herself. It took four sons and daughters of Adam and Eve to break the magical spell she held over its citizens, thus returning the land to its warmth and glow it should have been.
Walt Disney has done it again. We can draw parallels here to nations, whose economic and political pre-occupations, sometimes ignore and leave its citizens out in the cold on universal human and humanitarian needs. Witness the icified statues and you can imagine how we can commiserate in policies and actions of people who leave us precisely that way.
Going round malls, I could see how our Y generation is coupling and turning out. It blew my mind away that the guys are allowing their female compatriots to poke, jibe, slap and hit them all over their body or snatching away their belongings, some obviously wimps. It is bad enough if it is perpetrated by your own gender. Fun goes as far as this, I say. You are going to be one abused and hen-pecked husband in the near future.
Incidentally, my ex-bosses' son, besides being a SJI, CJC and NUS alumus, was also a "chee-hong" (a local colloqualism for men who go to extreme lengths for all kinds of women paramours). The girls get his special attention in class and the class does gorge itself on tit-bits and other bribes his father-and-mother-owned commercial school dishes out.
All this chatter of the coming Christmas festival set me thinking. It is in Scandinavia that Santa Claus is credited with from hailing from. So I cannot help thinking that this place must be a pretty special place in the hearts of everyone.
Its authenticity, reindeers , lakes and forests, cannot but beckon to one and all. I can just pray that its people would be as real as they are portrayed to be. Only even better. Better than Santa Claus, that is.
A few very obvious oversight (or no sight even) . They are comparing the SPRs not on a citizenship but on a marital status basis. It is on this premise that I argue Single Singapore Citizens are no better than a non-citizen. They are, indirectly, mopping up brand new units by virtue of their marriage which says nothing about their allegiance to the state unless they swear citizenship on an oath-taking ceremony.
It could be, after all, a marriage of convenience for pecuniary or other material benefits. Already they can bite directly into the secondary market. Two bites of the pie while I only have one. Thus, citizenship for non-citizenship, they are better off than moi.
All the while I thought the housing board was a constitutional sacrosanct (as enshrined in the Constitution Article 12 and as a key statuory board listed in the Fifth schedule right along the MAS, JTC and CPF), a guarantor of equal protection without discrimating on the bases of religion, race, descent or place of birth as long as this is a Singapore citizen, in his acquisition, holding and disposal of property as well as employment. It is also the champion of asset-building and ownership.
Now why would I incur an expense in rental accomodation, throwing money down the drain month after month, and not contribute towards an asset, a point the housing authority has also conceded in its official website.
Once again, I hope the Health authority would re-consider its plans to build the Jurong General Hospital. This has been superceded by the Yishun Norther General Hospital. Apparently there will be just a out-patient health-care institution in the west now and the Northern part of Singapore's population catchment warrants a new hospital.
I have no arguments against that but I am saying the West has an equally pressing need in terms of a growing populace. The National University Hospital seems to serve residents in the Clementi, Dover, Buona Vista and Bukit Timah areas while geographically the Jurong General Hospital would potentially serve Boon Lay, Chinese Garden , Lakeside, Jurong East, Bukit Gombak, Bukit Batok and even Choa Chu Kang.
I am suggesting that the out-patient institution be outfitted with a 24-hour accident and emergency ward with all its attendant ancillaries for life-and-death medical attention where time is of the essence. Imagine travelling out to a distant NUH when you are residing in Boon Lay. Your life could be smothered out even before you reach your salvation.
My lumbar spinal fracture accident has taught me this and I was fortunately a stone's throw away from Tan Tock Seng Hospital, through no fault or planning of mine. As I said, experience is life's greatest leveller. I hope something like this won't have to happen to you to jolt you from your inertia.
Hopefully the present calls for suggestions on the new hospital would see, other than calls for water and landscaped gardens themes, suggestions on more patient-centric and friendly features such as non-slip floors , ramps, elevators and light-weight doors for the infirmed and the gerontologics.
Recapitulating on Louis' fears about menstruation. I think he meant it as gory and thus he is revolted or sickened, and therefore "disgusting" figures in his vocabulary which isn't too far off the mark what he was trying to express. But this is a natural bio-rhythmic cycle and he must be made aware of it. I would be too like I would gory surgery or profuse bleeding from some injuries.
I am amazed my computer can shut down on its own and I can't send selective electronic mails out or some that I do, have parts missing or jumbled. In fact when I receive certain mails, I have letters substituted by chinese characters. Someone tell me what is wrong with me computer.
As I soon discovered, Down's Syndrome afflicts its sufferers to varying degrees. The intellectual development is apparently delayed, but for what kind of numbers, I don't have the information. Even cerebral palsy, while damaging the brain and thus motor ability, can leave intellectual ability intact for how many of its sufferers, again I can't say. So much for my assumption at first. It is clear from this that looks can deceive (physical versus intellect).
Narnia, was, by all accounts, a cold, wintry and heartless place, ruled by the ice-queen, the White Witch herself. It took four sons and daughters of Adam and Eve to break the magical spell she held over its citizens, thus returning the land to its warmth and glow it should have been.
Walt Disney has done it again. We can draw parallels here to nations, whose economic and political pre-occupations, sometimes ignore and leave its citizens out in the cold on universal human and humanitarian needs. Witness the icified statues and you can imagine how we can commiserate in policies and actions of people who leave us precisely that way.
Going round malls, I could see how our Y generation is coupling and turning out. It blew my mind away that the guys are allowing their female compatriots to poke, jibe, slap and hit them all over their body or snatching away their belongings, some obviously wimps. It is bad enough if it is perpetrated by your own gender. Fun goes as far as this, I say. You are going to be one abused and hen-pecked husband in the near future.
Incidentally, my ex-bosses' son, besides being a SJI, CJC and NUS alumus, was also a "chee-hong" (a local colloqualism for men who go to extreme lengths for all kinds of women paramours). The girls get his special attention in class and the class does gorge itself on tit-bits and other bribes his father-and-mother-owned commercial school dishes out.
All this chatter of the coming Christmas festival set me thinking. It is in Scandinavia that Santa Claus is credited with from hailing from. So I cannot help thinking that this place must be a pretty special place in the hearts of everyone.
Its authenticity, reindeers , lakes and forests, cannot but beckon to one and all. I can just pray that its people would be as real as they are portrayed to be. Only even better. Better than Santa Claus, that is.
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Well Thought Out Afterthoughts
I would like to clear up some terms I may have used or am using so readers do not get flummoxed. First this blog may be an "afterthought" but it is a carefully thought through one. Second, evangelical in one of my blogs is taken to mean "preachy turning militant".
Third, "liberal" means one of its several contexts which here I advocate the "freedom of individuals" and "social, political views or policies favouring nonrevolutionary progress and reform". I am not agreeing to its other contextual significance which is the belief in laissez-faire economic policies, wholly unfettered, unabated, unchecked and unreined.
Fourth, why educators have to ensure their charges are using terms and words correctly, fully cognisant of their meanings and implications, would be the sole reason of not conveying a false and wrong impression.
Otherwise Louis would be yelping that a woman's natural bio-rhthymic mentsrual cycle is "disgusting". This is scientifically wrong. But it would be his "personal" belief that it is and it is he alone who decides if he is turned off by it. Much as a non-scat would a scatological fetish which in the first place is a potential medical health hazard anyway. One man's meat is another man's poison.
The quality of life, on my personal level, would be heightened by living near water with some natural greenery. I feel I am an artist very much at heart. My best work and thoughts would be born in such a tranquil, peaceful , perfect blend and harmony of nature and man.
If economic benefits and financial feasibility were the sole measure of all our activities, then we are sadly living on the economy alone. No great nation lives on bread alone. It would be on very shaky and wobbly bedrocks that we are treading on.
We have utterly ignored the moral, social and public good . Strip clubs , bordellos and gambling dens have social and moral negative consequences, being the satanic but alluring forbidden fruits that they are. But they do reap bountiful economic harvests. Gay-sex marriages and civil unions would stablise and root out philandering. See how a social and moral good this is?
In fact M/s Black Widow (remember her from my early blogs) would have benefited from a re-marriage. She was swell-looking, given her age, and she had no lack of suitors, judging from the Ah Peks who gather round her counter desk, whenever she tempts all with her translucent attire, donning a black bra inside for outstanding contrasting effect.
My only evangelical encounters were attending several charismatic services. The singing and music certainly must have attracted the younger parishoners but the homily was contrived. If we only had a demagogue continuously peppering his delivery with "Alleluia", "Praise the Lord", "Amen" and no real God's biblical message filtering through, it was showmanship at its best. It reminded one of the World Wrestling Federation devilish Undertaker and his angelic counterpart, Brother Joy.
Continuing with my thread on how the army was a bickering, bitching and back-stabbing outfit, at least where I worked. If the Officer-In-Command appoints two chief clerks, it is the rapidest way to two antagonistic management philosophies akin to two Prime Ministers running one country. I distance myself from all the rivalry and bad blood brewing an evil broth of Mcbeth's witches. It was also about holding on to one's territorial jurisdiction and not taking on more payload than one can handle.
Incidentally the allowance was paltry back in those days amounting to about a hundred dollars or so. Don't forget all the deductions for SAFSA, pioneer magazine and what-not and we have very little left. Lunch is on our own expense and so is transport.
I am not about to put forth suggestions like what everyone else was doing in order to earn their stripes faster and better. The suggestions should make sense, not complicate and for the general good . They can all carry on and be awarded the "Three Star"upon public commendation.
The continuing NKF reports show the lack of sufficiently good governance with power vested in one and only one man. Though there were no lack of regulatory bodies overseeing its functions, ranging from the IRAS to the Ministry of Health and Home Affairs, none had intervened. It was a clear cut case of "passing the buck".
In light of this, let me relate my own two personal experiences.
One, the Ministry of Education's Private School Section has engaged in similar tactics with it devolving audits to CASETRUST and the financial insurers, both of whom are saddled with their own work and not in any capacity to comment on academic rigors. As I have said before and I am repeating it now, the Private School Section cannot "register" private schools, thus conferring authencity and a stamp of approval of sorts, and then meander its way out by leaving other judicial functions in the hands of other regulatory outfits.
It must assume the full responsibility for the private schools as we are involving education here. Education of the mind, body and soul, no less. How is CASETRUST and the financial institutions able to play the roles, given theirs are not of educational concerns?
Two, the real estate agents in the industry are also not regulated if they choose not to be accredited. Accreditation is not mandatory. Just a check yesterday had me going on one wild goose chase after another just to seek out a regulatory body which could bring a rogue agent to bear.
The only recourse will be to have her "nominal employing accomplice" (afterall all real estate agents are associates of their parent company) dispense justice. It is akin to complaining to parents about their errant son who most likely would be let off with just an admonition. The case for neutrality would be certainly diluted when you are speaking of flesh and blood kinship here.
Life as it is now isn't quality life at all. We are stooped or hunched at our work, leading to rigor mortis of sorts in our bodily joints and a bad posture makes for a seriously stressed spine. Bleary and red-eyed from staring at a blinking monitior or pint-sized fonts both on-screen or on print. Over-extended by deadlines and plumping for ever-increasing profits. Worn out from office politics and rumour mongering. Obese from a sedentary life filled with sugary and cholesterol-laden diet, which usually lead to health complications like hypertension, diabetes and so on.
If this is quality of life, then living in a cess pool of vermins and viruses seems no more worse.
Third, "liberal" means one of its several contexts which here I advocate the "freedom of individuals" and "social, political views or policies favouring nonrevolutionary progress and reform". I am not agreeing to its other contextual significance which is the belief in laissez-faire economic policies, wholly unfettered, unabated, unchecked and unreined.
Fourth, why educators have to ensure their charges are using terms and words correctly, fully cognisant of their meanings and implications, would be the sole reason of not conveying a false and wrong impression.
Otherwise Louis would be yelping that a woman's natural bio-rhthymic mentsrual cycle is "disgusting". This is scientifically wrong. But it would be his "personal" belief that it is and it is he alone who decides if he is turned off by it. Much as a non-scat would a scatological fetish which in the first place is a potential medical health hazard anyway. One man's meat is another man's poison.
The quality of life, on my personal level, would be heightened by living near water with some natural greenery. I feel I am an artist very much at heart. My best work and thoughts would be born in such a tranquil, peaceful , perfect blend and harmony of nature and man.
If economic benefits and financial feasibility were the sole measure of all our activities, then we are sadly living on the economy alone. No great nation lives on bread alone. It would be on very shaky and wobbly bedrocks that we are treading on.
We have utterly ignored the moral, social and public good . Strip clubs , bordellos and gambling dens have social and moral negative consequences, being the satanic but alluring forbidden fruits that they are. But they do reap bountiful economic harvests. Gay-sex marriages and civil unions would stablise and root out philandering. See how a social and moral good this is?
In fact M/s Black Widow (remember her from my early blogs) would have benefited from a re-marriage. She was swell-looking, given her age, and she had no lack of suitors, judging from the Ah Peks who gather round her counter desk, whenever she tempts all with her translucent attire, donning a black bra inside for outstanding contrasting effect.
My only evangelical encounters were attending several charismatic services. The singing and music certainly must have attracted the younger parishoners but the homily was contrived. If we only had a demagogue continuously peppering his delivery with "Alleluia", "Praise the Lord", "Amen" and no real God's biblical message filtering through, it was showmanship at its best. It reminded one of the World Wrestling Federation devilish Undertaker and his angelic counterpart, Brother Joy.
Continuing with my thread on how the army was a bickering, bitching and back-stabbing outfit, at least where I worked. If the Officer-In-Command appoints two chief clerks, it is the rapidest way to two antagonistic management philosophies akin to two Prime Ministers running one country. I distance myself from all the rivalry and bad blood brewing an evil broth of Mcbeth's witches. It was also about holding on to one's territorial jurisdiction and not taking on more payload than one can handle.
Incidentally the allowance was paltry back in those days amounting to about a hundred dollars or so. Don't forget all the deductions for SAFSA, pioneer magazine and what-not and we have very little left. Lunch is on our own expense and so is transport.
I am not about to put forth suggestions like what everyone else was doing in order to earn their stripes faster and better. The suggestions should make sense, not complicate and for the general good . They can all carry on and be awarded the "Three Star"upon public commendation.
The continuing NKF reports show the lack of sufficiently good governance with power vested in one and only one man. Though there were no lack of regulatory bodies overseeing its functions, ranging from the IRAS to the Ministry of Health and Home Affairs, none had intervened. It was a clear cut case of "passing the buck".
In light of this, let me relate my own two personal experiences.
One, the Ministry of Education's Private School Section has engaged in similar tactics with it devolving audits to CASETRUST and the financial insurers, both of whom are saddled with their own work and not in any capacity to comment on academic rigors. As I have said before and I am repeating it now, the Private School Section cannot "register" private schools, thus conferring authencity and a stamp of approval of sorts, and then meander its way out by leaving other judicial functions in the hands of other regulatory outfits.
It must assume the full responsibility for the private schools as we are involving education here. Education of the mind, body and soul, no less. How is CASETRUST and the financial institutions able to play the roles, given theirs are not of educational concerns?
Two, the real estate agents in the industry are also not regulated if they choose not to be accredited. Accreditation is not mandatory. Just a check yesterday had me going on one wild goose chase after another just to seek out a regulatory body which could bring a rogue agent to bear.
The only recourse will be to have her "nominal employing accomplice" (afterall all real estate agents are associates of their parent company) dispense justice. It is akin to complaining to parents about their errant son who most likely would be let off with just an admonition. The case for neutrality would be certainly diluted when you are speaking of flesh and blood kinship here.
Life as it is now isn't quality life at all. We are stooped or hunched at our work, leading to rigor mortis of sorts in our bodily joints and a bad posture makes for a seriously stressed spine. Bleary and red-eyed from staring at a blinking monitior or pint-sized fonts both on-screen or on print. Over-extended by deadlines and plumping for ever-increasing profits. Worn out from office politics and rumour mongering. Obese from a sedentary life filled with sugary and cholesterol-laden diet, which usually lead to health complications like hypertension, diabetes and so on.
If this is quality of life, then living in a cess pool of vermins and viruses seems no more worse.
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
The Quality Of Life
When I spotted Mr Good Looking, Tanned and Hunky from the corner of my razor sharp eyes as I flit past the rows of eating benches, I mentally noted a vantage point I could plonk my horny ass down to ogle. Sadly 45 degrees afield from the epicentre of my vision, Mr Good Looking, Tanned and Hunky was obstructed by an anorexic, hip-clad bitch. I had to look over her hair to get past viewing my object of desideratum.
I was magnificently rewarded with every twist of his sinewy musculature boldy flaunting its sculpted torso from behind his pint-sized sleeveless jersey. It was flexing and contracting as he put mouthful after mouthful of food in between his luscious lips. What a splendid sight to behold!
This is Quality Living at its apical.
I stood rooted, peering at the new Sony Gallery which screened a perfect pixel of an amazingly scenic village life in Canada. It was rightly named "Dream Catcher". It had everything going for it from biking trails, cable car rides, fishing in misty-colored waters, bear lodges and a twinkling night life.
I marvelled at the child-size of a speedo swim trunk for the ladies. No wonder anorexia is rife and fecundity is down. How can you ever hope to nourish and bear a child with hips and teats so small, Dolly Parton would have to starve 52 weeks just to get there.
Deferred gratification or instant gratification. This is a term now in vogue with our educators. Our pupils are taught that the former is a glorified virtue they should whole-heartedly embrace. I was told students see no further than the focal length between his eyes and the book he holds up to read (mostly likely a Manga or some skin flick).
I concur with this but wasn't I like them too when I was their age (not the Manga or skin flick part, we never, or at least I, had a chance to view porno - but the naivete) . Not because I was a knave but because of the lack of opportunities to hear out my educators' good counsel. It must then be the obligation of educators to avail them of this?
In an economy-driven consumerist society deferring gratification is near if not virtually impossible. It would be wiser that we differentiate between necessities (needs such as food, water and shelter) and luxuries (non-needs which are desires and wants). Let us call this selective gratification or prioritised gratification.
If your child pulled your glasses down and broke it, it has to be replaced. When your television breaks down, it has to be repaired or re-bought. When your shoes wear, you have to buy a new pair.
The flip side would be to go as blind as a bat, be unentertained and treading treacherous tarmac barefooted. What else can you do in Singapore if you do not have a television or computer set? Shop, shop and more shop.
If I had chosen to drive a BMW, bought a plasma screen or show off a Tiffany watch, that would be vices. Why don't they tell that to my ex-bosses' son? A SJI, CJC and NUS alumnus, this exhortation of "deferred gratification" had fallen on his deaf ears or has the education system failed in its noble mission of promulgating frugality? He has never worked for anyone before and starts right near the top of the pyramid. Just go kiss my arse, MOE.
So it is too with permitting gay parties in the first place, wasn't it? It was a regional event which has now shifted to Phuket, calculated to be financially feasible and economically beneficial. This is the sole criterion on which every single activity is contingent upon. But not a gay-sex marriage or civil union.
This was the same official line when I put in my proposal for the Outer Ring Line linking the outermost terminals to one another from West to South to East and North.
I would love doing career counselling and jobbing prospects for schools. This should be staggered throughout the year and well before they do any graduation examinations. We could have some upon the release of the examination results but this would be shambolic in view of the many schools and our few resources, all happening on the same day. Somehow this eludes schools in their year-round planning for the welfare of their charges.
As I wrote in another blog of comments, schools are the custodians of basic and fundamental academic, arts and sports education. Anything else over and above this should be outsourced to voluntary or commercial outfits or niche schools such as our Sports School or NAFA.
But academe remains the most important function so much so that schools should engage service providers if they cannot fulfil the vital role entirely, given their various constraints. Be this remedial or enrichment. The system, as it is now and notwithstanding any future changes, still hinges upon examinations as the final determinant of a student's ultimate fate. The least the schools can do is to try to insure their fate to be as assured as the sun will rise in the east every dawn.
I was magnificently rewarded with every twist of his sinewy musculature boldy flaunting its sculpted torso from behind his pint-sized sleeveless jersey. It was flexing and contracting as he put mouthful after mouthful of food in between his luscious lips. What a splendid sight to behold!
This is Quality Living at its apical.
I stood rooted, peering at the new Sony Gallery which screened a perfect pixel of an amazingly scenic village life in Canada. It was rightly named "Dream Catcher". It had everything going for it from biking trails, cable car rides, fishing in misty-colored waters, bear lodges and a twinkling night life.
I marvelled at the child-size of a speedo swim trunk for the ladies. No wonder anorexia is rife and fecundity is down. How can you ever hope to nourish and bear a child with hips and teats so small, Dolly Parton would have to starve 52 weeks just to get there.
Deferred gratification or instant gratification. This is a term now in vogue with our educators. Our pupils are taught that the former is a glorified virtue they should whole-heartedly embrace. I was told students see no further than the focal length between his eyes and the book he holds up to read (mostly likely a Manga or some skin flick).
I concur with this but wasn't I like them too when I was their age (not the Manga or skin flick part, we never, or at least I, had a chance to view porno - but the naivete) . Not because I was a knave but because of the lack of opportunities to hear out my educators' good counsel. It must then be the obligation of educators to avail them of this?
In an economy-driven consumerist society deferring gratification is near if not virtually impossible. It would be wiser that we differentiate between necessities (needs such as food, water and shelter) and luxuries (non-needs which are desires and wants). Let us call this selective gratification or prioritised gratification.
If your child pulled your glasses down and broke it, it has to be replaced. When your television breaks down, it has to be repaired or re-bought. When your shoes wear, you have to buy a new pair.
The flip side would be to go as blind as a bat, be unentertained and treading treacherous tarmac barefooted. What else can you do in Singapore if you do not have a television or computer set? Shop, shop and more shop.
If I had chosen to drive a BMW, bought a plasma screen or show off a Tiffany watch, that would be vices. Why don't they tell that to my ex-bosses' son? A SJI, CJC and NUS alumnus, this exhortation of "deferred gratification" had fallen on his deaf ears or has the education system failed in its noble mission of promulgating frugality? He has never worked for anyone before and starts right near the top of the pyramid. Just go kiss my arse, MOE.
So it is too with permitting gay parties in the first place, wasn't it? It was a regional event which has now shifted to Phuket, calculated to be financially feasible and economically beneficial. This is the sole criterion on which every single activity is contingent upon. But not a gay-sex marriage or civil union.
This was the same official line when I put in my proposal for the Outer Ring Line linking the outermost terminals to one another from West to South to East and North.
I would love doing career counselling and jobbing prospects for schools. This should be staggered throughout the year and well before they do any graduation examinations. We could have some upon the release of the examination results but this would be shambolic in view of the many schools and our few resources, all happening on the same day. Somehow this eludes schools in their year-round planning for the welfare of their charges.
As I wrote in another blog of comments, schools are the custodians of basic and fundamental academic, arts and sports education. Anything else over and above this should be outsourced to voluntary or commercial outfits or niche schools such as our Sports School or NAFA.
But academe remains the most important function so much so that schools should engage service providers if they cannot fulfil the vital role entirely, given their various constraints. Be this remedial or enrichment. The system, as it is now and notwithstanding any future changes, still hinges upon examinations as the final determinant of a student's ultimate fate. The least the schools can do is to try to insure their fate to be as assured as the sun will rise in the east every dawn.
Monday, December 19, 2005
Quadrivium - What Makes Liberal Arts Even More Liberal
It is a hackneyed theme repeated time and time again in most Chinese movies. Men fall for beautiful women. They kill one another over her . Eventually only one claws his way out of death to capture her heart and they fly off to the burning sunset.
Please MR PRODUCER! We have had enough. Why don't you do one on TWO GAY GUYS clasping each other in flames of immolation as they chant war cries of licensing GAY CIVIL UNIONS in their backward Third World? That would clinch you the "MR DERRING-DO" and "NEVER BEFORE SEEN" Golden Adonis cinematic awards of the century.
Back to the topic on schools. I do not want to upset the apple cart. However if heads had to roll and it takes someone in higher authority to be gullotined to get things rolling (double speaking, of course) , so be it.
I say we relook all the "rules and regulations" and see if any still hold enough rationale for us not to chuck them away like we would clutter in our house.
I recalled being a substitute teacher for a fortnight. I was summoned to the principal's office. It seems all new substitute teachers do. He sat me down and told me to motivate the students. Christ! I am like there for two weeks and you are telling me this! This sounds more like a job for your resident teachers who are paid handsomely especially at the higher levels.
It is like I run a 5-day in-house program and everyone wants an assessment of my trainers but the teachers do a year-long stint and they are not? Anyway I will gladly oblige with my motivational programs if he can fork out the money like they do for water themed koi ponds in the school or hyped up, almost evangelical to the point of brainwashing, scream from the pulpits stuff they call "motivational programs".
There are more inane encounters with educators at every quarter. Others want to assess us based on word-of-mouth. Everyone has bad-hair days. If we are struck off the rolls on the few days we conduct the training programs, are the educationalists telling us they got their act right every single 365 days of the year?
Frankly some are not even up-to-date with current affairs. It is still East Timor when it is now Timor Leste. That tells all. I am not sure if some are even aware of what they are talking about. The women are only good at using their high-strung voices and the men are all rodeo cowboys.
This Chinese student crossed my path in an international school. He is smart academically. He made it to a Special Assistance Plan school and then on to Raffles Junior College. M/s Wicked Stepmother (from an earlier blog) dissuaded him at every turn. I cannot fathom her intentions except for wishing him ill.
But sincerely, this boy is only all academics. He isn't so savvy in other areas but good at computers. I am not very sure if he has a good heart and the knowledge he has will be for the general good or to add on to our miseries. This is something for think-tanks to chew on.
I do not have to be anywhere but everywhere to double-check what my eyes are telling me they are seeing. The running thread of conversations usually centres on money and gossips for adults. For kids, it is about the latest low-down on their friends, school or the gadgets they got. We will rarely, if ever, find tete-a-tete on local current affairs, let alone international ones.
We should be glad if Britney Spears is ever broached as a conversation topic. That is about as international as we will get. If we are lucky, we may get the occasional Microsoft Xbox thrown in for good measure.
That would be what an economy has churned out. There are no more ideals. It is consumerism, materialism, parochialism, myopism, elitism and copulism.
As for the Raffles boys I observe, they do look like nerds and bookworms. Some walk with their heads hung down. Others seem buried in their thoughts. Yet others exude the "blur" look. You could have swiped their underwear in the loo for all they know, and they wouldn't have batted an eyelid.
They were fastidious too with their cleanliness and tidiness. I feel sorry for them. Like for myself. This must be a habit ingrained in them at a very young age in their homes. To be clean, sterile, hygienic and tidy at all times.
BUT I LOVE THEM! They would make for easy targets for dartboard practice. The kind of darts you pierce in nice warm places - like their hearts for instance. One was wearing an ear-stud and was as tanned as a cow's hide but he looked marvellously hunky and "blur".
It was with genuine sincerity that I adjourned to a nearby chapel, first genuflecting, then kneeling on the hassocks and finally prostrate, reciting my "Lord's Prayer":
Lord - I do pray to you today
For the years
Of abstinence and romanticism
That I will, if your will be done
Catch one hunky, cute, sensitive, loving , intelligent and wise
**** soon as a trophy
For me to cherish, love and ****
Amen! Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!
Or I could fuck my sorry ass from this little red dot who thinks the world of itself. Remember this - you are just all image and there is not a shred of substance in you! From the schools right down to everyone else. You are only a "retail commercial hub". That we all know.
Please MR PRODUCER! We have had enough. Why don't you do one on TWO GAY GUYS clasping each other in flames of immolation as they chant war cries of licensing GAY CIVIL UNIONS in their backward Third World? That would clinch you the "MR DERRING-DO" and "NEVER BEFORE SEEN" Golden Adonis cinematic awards of the century.
Back to the topic on schools. I do not want to upset the apple cart. However if heads had to roll and it takes someone in higher authority to be gullotined to get things rolling (double speaking, of course) , so be it.
I say we relook all the "rules and regulations" and see if any still hold enough rationale for us not to chuck them away like we would clutter in our house.
I recalled being a substitute teacher for a fortnight. I was summoned to the principal's office. It seems all new substitute teachers do. He sat me down and told me to motivate the students. Christ! I am like there for two weeks and you are telling me this! This sounds more like a job for your resident teachers who are paid handsomely especially at the higher levels.
It is like I run a 5-day in-house program and everyone wants an assessment of my trainers but the teachers do a year-long stint and they are not? Anyway I will gladly oblige with my motivational programs if he can fork out the money like they do for water themed koi ponds in the school or hyped up, almost evangelical to the point of brainwashing, scream from the pulpits stuff they call "motivational programs".
There are more inane encounters with educators at every quarter. Others want to assess us based on word-of-mouth. Everyone has bad-hair days. If we are struck off the rolls on the few days we conduct the training programs, are the educationalists telling us they got their act right every single 365 days of the year?
Frankly some are not even up-to-date with current affairs. It is still East Timor when it is now Timor Leste. That tells all. I am not sure if some are even aware of what they are talking about. The women are only good at using their high-strung voices and the men are all rodeo cowboys.
This Chinese student crossed my path in an international school. He is smart academically. He made it to a Special Assistance Plan school and then on to Raffles Junior College. M/s Wicked Stepmother (from an earlier blog) dissuaded him at every turn. I cannot fathom her intentions except for wishing him ill.
But sincerely, this boy is only all academics. He isn't so savvy in other areas but good at computers. I am not very sure if he has a good heart and the knowledge he has will be for the general good or to add on to our miseries. This is something for think-tanks to chew on.
I do not have to be anywhere but everywhere to double-check what my eyes are telling me they are seeing. The running thread of conversations usually centres on money and gossips for adults. For kids, it is about the latest low-down on their friends, school or the gadgets they got. We will rarely, if ever, find tete-a-tete on local current affairs, let alone international ones.
We should be glad if Britney Spears is ever broached as a conversation topic. That is about as international as we will get. If we are lucky, we may get the occasional Microsoft Xbox thrown in for good measure.
That would be what an economy has churned out. There are no more ideals. It is consumerism, materialism, parochialism, myopism, elitism and copulism.
As for the Raffles boys I observe, they do look like nerds and bookworms. Some walk with their heads hung down. Others seem buried in their thoughts. Yet others exude the "blur" look. You could have swiped their underwear in the loo for all they know, and they wouldn't have batted an eyelid.
They were fastidious too with their cleanliness and tidiness. I feel sorry for them. Like for myself. This must be a habit ingrained in them at a very young age in their homes. To be clean, sterile, hygienic and tidy at all times.
BUT I LOVE THEM! They would make for easy targets for dartboard practice. The kind of darts you pierce in nice warm places - like their hearts for instance. One was wearing an ear-stud and was as tanned as a cow's hide but he looked marvellously hunky and "blur".
It was with genuine sincerity that I adjourned to a nearby chapel, first genuflecting, then kneeling on the hassocks and finally prostrate, reciting my "Lord's Prayer":
Lord - I do pray to you today
For the years
Of abstinence and romanticism
That I will, if your will be done
Catch one hunky, cute, sensitive, loving , intelligent and wise
**** soon as a trophy
For me to cherish, love and ****
Amen! Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!
Or I could fuck my sorry ass from this little red dot who thinks the world of itself. Remember this - you are just all image and there is not a shred of substance in you! From the schools right down to everyone else. You are only a "retail commercial hub". That we all know.
Trimivium - What Makes Liberal Arts Liberal
It does no good if Mr Snooty is an honors graduate, and therefore on the dean's list, with a string of achievements in sports and other community projects if all I see is the blazing light of earnestness in Gilbert's eyes dimming and dying when Mr Snooty, with a wave of his hand, dismisses all that Gilbert has on his mind to ask of his epistemological deity. That in a nutshell sums up how our education system works to a large extent.
By the way Mr Snooty works, on the side, in a public-funded training agency, an agency which all and sundry who claims to be its ethnological kin, pays a tithe towards its ritzy presence. Imagine the irony when I, myself, is brought into head-on competition with this same agency in the very field of work I cherish passionately and dearly. Be assured attempts at working alongside it has not worked out and I wouldn't have it any other way , besides. We have different credos in our approach to education and training anyway.
Education has become one perfunctory administrative bucreaucracy without a more reflective and elaborative examination of education as in its original intent and meaning. To create thinking, reflective, committed, compassionate and wise counsel for the sciences, the industry, the community and for government. Leaders and people who would benefit mankind, not detract from it.
One performance indicator would be how many of their former students would be returning to their alma mater anytime soon, on their own accord, to meet with their ex-teachers. We are not talking of only teachers' pets but the distant and aloof ones as well.
And to acknowledge them oustide school. You may be the young hot shot of the school now, brilliant, virile and imbued with loads of sporting testerone. But once you are old and none of your charges turn to you, it is a sad indication of how much you have touched their lives.
Mr JL is one such teacher. First he called me "Fat Man" for no particular reason and called me stupid at his metalwork sessions. Even if I were slow or blur at times, does it warrant insulting pseudonyms? This is a signal for other pupils to join in the mockery and teasing. He is a man with a stentorian voice who helps out in church. But look at him now. He is an aging, stooping, old man and all alone.
Schools may claim , on the contrary, that they have done their utmost in bringing about holism in education. It still remains far off the mark. First, all stereo images of words and phrases have to be re-examined so pupils know exactly what they are mouthing. Many young pupils are using words which they only know its meaning vaguely.
I have frankly enough of "regurgitated vomit" academicians bandy about, without any practical relevance or utility. Issues go beyond the superficial semantics of words and thus the next crucial part of education ensues.
This second part is: pupils need some courses in logical and critical thinking through of issues germane to their lives. We have no use for descriptive and narrative stories with inane topical lead-ons like "One night, I was lying in bed when suddenly....", especially at the middle high school years. The pupils would have sufficient training of such creative imagination and romanticism at the elementary and junior high school years.
Even argumentative or expository topics need to have a broader spectrum of issues . It has to be something more in phase with the individual's experiences rather than a somewhat detached, out of reality and even irrelevant one. Compare "Tobacco smoking should be totally banned" with "What is your experience with tobacco smoking, either as a smoker or non-smoker. How does it affect you if ever?"
Truth is, the second re-framing would have subsumed the first anyway if the student is smart enough to be as inclusive and comprehensive as he should.
What's more with "One night, I was lying in bed when suddenly..."? How many of us would actually have such an experience.
The only one experience I had was when I woke up one night in bed when I was a precocious and pubescent 10 year old to find that I had a wet dream or that I had bed-wetted. Now how much could I go on writing on this one horrific nightmare I had, thinking I was diseased.
Did education teach me to cope with this natural physiological and circadian process or did it shut me off truth and knowledge and instead presented me with fear and an ordeal?
Chew on this!
By the way Mr Snooty works, on the side, in a public-funded training agency, an agency which all and sundry who claims to be its ethnological kin, pays a tithe towards its ritzy presence. Imagine the irony when I, myself, is brought into head-on competition with this same agency in the very field of work I cherish passionately and dearly. Be assured attempts at working alongside it has not worked out and I wouldn't have it any other way , besides. We have different credos in our approach to education and training anyway.
Education has become one perfunctory administrative bucreaucracy without a more reflective and elaborative examination of education as in its original intent and meaning. To create thinking, reflective, committed, compassionate and wise counsel for the sciences, the industry, the community and for government. Leaders and people who would benefit mankind, not detract from it.
One performance indicator would be how many of their former students would be returning to their alma mater anytime soon, on their own accord, to meet with their ex-teachers. We are not talking of only teachers' pets but the distant and aloof ones as well.
And to acknowledge them oustide school. You may be the young hot shot of the school now, brilliant, virile and imbued with loads of sporting testerone. But once you are old and none of your charges turn to you, it is a sad indication of how much you have touched their lives.
Mr JL is one such teacher. First he called me "Fat Man" for no particular reason and called me stupid at his metalwork sessions. Even if I were slow or blur at times, does it warrant insulting pseudonyms? This is a signal for other pupils to join in the mockery and teasing. He is a man with a stentorian voice who helps out in church. But look at him now. He is an aging, stooping, old man and all alone.
Schools may claim , on the contrary, that they have done their utmost in bringing about holism in education. It still remains far off the mark. First, all stereo images of words and phrases have to be re-examined so pupils know exactly what they are mouthing. Many young pupils are using words which they only know its meaning vaguely.
I have frankly enough of "regurgitated vomit" academicians bandy about, without any practical relevance or utility. Issues go beyond the superficial semantics of words and thus the next crucial part of education ensues.
This second part is: pupils need some courses in logical and critical thinking through of issues germane to their lives. We have no use for descriptive and narrative stories with inane topical lead-ons like "One night, I was lying in bed when suddenly....", especially at the middle high school years. The pupils would have sufficient training of such creative imagination and romanticism at the elementary and junior high school years.
Even argumentative or expository topics need to have a broader spectrum of issues . It has to be something more in phase with the individual's experiences rather than a somewhat detached, out of reality and even irrelevant one. Compare "Tobacco smoking should be totally banned" with "What is your experience with tobacco smoking, either as a smoker or non-smoker. How does it affect you if ever?"
Truth is, the second re-framing would have subsumed the first anyway if the student is smart enough to be as inclusive and comprehensive as he should.
What's more with "One night, I was lying in bed when suddenly..."? How many of us would actually have such an experience.
The only one experience I had was when I woke up one night in bed when I was a precocious and pubescent 10 year old to find that I had a wet dream or that I had bed-wetted. Now how much could I go on writing on this one horrific nightmare I had, thinking I was diseased.
Did education teach me to cope with this natural physiological and circadian process or did it shut me off truth and knowledge and instead presented me with fear and an ordeal?
Chew on this!
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Boys' And Men's Health And Sex Issues
I should have gone for cosmetic dentistry early on in my life. As my misaligned and misshapened teeth stand now, it is no longer aesthetic but life-threatening and a potential health hazard. I mean the nooks and crannies are harboring food scraps and I have bacterial attacks ever so often.
My mouth is what earns me my living. I can't be clamped shut, can I , while nursing an ulceration? I do have chronic ulcers since young.
I am known to be the genteel dude with the steely cold gaze though. The reason I do not want to talk so much is not to contribute to the cacophony that is the marketplace of ideas . To suggest schemes, like my senior did in the Army, which would add on to an NSF's miseries. Or to engage in loose talk that would create disharmony, discord and endanger others.
Apparently this has not worked all the time with me ending being victimised instead.
Serving in the armed forces and in the health-care industry has indeed opened up my eyes to medical conditions which I know not of hitherto.
For example, there are connatural genitalia, phimosis and paraphimosis. Phimosis is when the foreskin cannot be retracted in the penis. Paraphimosis is its diametric opposite.
In the latter, there is pain as the penis is like in "suspended animation" with the prepuce wound tight around the lower glans and upper shaft, exposing the soft skin to roughage. Imagine your pubic hair or any part of your crown jewels caught in a zipper. It would be precisely the same feeling.
Phimosis is not a healthly situation either as smegma would accrete. Remember the parallels between Phallus Impudicus (which also sounds like phallus impudent) and our penis and you are on your way to a "hygiene and health" re-education program. I am not sure if a douche would do as much for a penis where perhaps it should be renamed a "pouche"?
Circumcision would be the only resolution for phimosis, it seems. Common sensically, I am anti-circumcision (except for religious rituals which I cannot comment though statistically there have been complications) as the protective sheath would be off and the soft skin now doubles as its calcified counterpart. It would be left susceptible and the nerve sensation would be lost too.
I would be appalled if in schools, sex education isn't more forthcoming in hygiene and health care of the body, which include the above and acne management (a perennial adolescent angst).
It is indeed outrageous we have chosen to term perfectly legitimate , healthy and normal outings with friends of the opposite sex as "dates" (which imply romantic liaisons). We hit on anatomy and physiology but pay no heed to the management of psychological, emotional and sexual philosophy and one's physical body .
It is the same with granting permission for gay parties (which was then taken back after just a couple of years), somehow associated with wildness, promiscuous sex and drugs, but not allowing civil unions or same-sex marriages. The latter would have been a stabilising factor in society like a Woman's Charter sanctioned one between a man and a woman. We want a family as much as anyone else does but not in the stereo-mode.
Our authorities have been loosening up in all the wrong areas with hooters, strip clubs, bar-top dancing, bordellos, spas, casinos and pornography which are satanic temptations even for a happily monogamous couple. How long more before drugs hit the scene or hasn't it? It is the wrong tack and a surefire roll down to the abyss.
There should have been avenues to meet people for all sexes, besides schools, chat rooms, pubs clubs, spas and what-have-you . Isn't this a sure ticket to preventing STDs rather than all your multi-million dollar campaigns?
It pains me too to see young boys in our institutions looking up to their young male educators who are sometimes treated shabbily and given a shove off. You are their idols, in some cases. They look up to you for information, knowledge and advice. Some are smitten. Do not pretend or mask your own sexual inclinations either.
The least you could do is to reciprocate with kindness, wise counsel, emphatic commiseration and good communication. Some lack communication, love , companionship and come from dysfunctional families to various extent. You are their salvation in some instances. Do not brush them off and condemn them to a perilous eternity of a death sentence.
This requires warmth, magnamity and the true insides of your heart pouring forth to reach out to another person in need.
Chew on this!
My mouth is what earns me my living. I can't be clamped shut, can I , while nursing an ulceration? I do have chronic ulcers since young.
I am known to be the genteel dude with the steely cold gaze though. The reason I do not want to talk so much is not to contribute to the cacophony that is the marketplace of ideas . To suggest schemes, like my senior did in the Army, which would add on to an NSF's miseries. Or to engage in loose talk that would create disharmony, discord and endanger others.
Apparently this has not worked all the time with me ending being victimised instead.
Serving in the armed forces and in the health-care industry has indeed opened up my eyes to medical conditions which I know not of hitherto.
For example, there are connatural genitalia, phimosis and paraphimosis. Phimosis is when the foreskin cannot be retracted in the penis. Paraphimosis is its diametric opposite.
In the latter, there is pain as the penis is like in "suspended animation" with the prepuce wound tight around the lower glans and upper shaft, exposing the soft skin to roughage. Imagine your pubic hair or any part of your crown jewels caught in a zipper. It would be precisely the same feeling.
Phimosis is not a healthly situation either as smegma would accrete. Remember the parallels between Phallus Impudicus (which also sounds like phallus impudent) and our penis and you are on your way to a "hygiene and health" re-education program. I am not sure if a douche would do as much for a penis where perhaps it should be renamed a "pouche"?
Circumcision would be the only resolution for phimosis, it seems. Common sensically, I am anti-circumcision (except for religious rituals which I cannot comment though statistically there have been complications) as the protective sheath would be off and the soft skin now doubles as its calcified counterpart. It would be left susceptible and the nerve sensation would be lost too.
I would be appalled if in schools, sex education isn't more forthcoming in hygiene and health care of the body, which include the above and acne management (a perennial adolescent angst).
It is indeed outrageous we have chosen to term perfectly legitimate , healthy and normal outings with friends of the opposite sex as "dates" (which imply romantic liaisons). We hit on anatomy and physiology but pay no heed to the management of psychological, emotional and sexual philosophy and one's physical body .
It is the same with granting permission for gay parties (which was then taken back after just a couple of years), somehow associated with wildness, promiscuous sex and drugs, but not allowing civil unions or same-sex marriages. The latter would have been a stabilising factor in society like a Woman's Charter sanctioned one between a man and a woman. We want a family as much as anyone else does but not in the stereo-mode.
Our authorities have been loosening up in all the wrong areas with hooters, strip clubs, bar-top dancing, bordellos, spas, casinos and pornography which are satanic temptations even for a happily monogamous couple. How long more before drugs hit the scene or hasn't it? It is the wrong tack and a surefire roll down to the abyss.
There should have been avenues to meet people for all sexes, besides schools, chat rooms, pubs clubs, spas and what-have-you . Isn't this a sure ticket to preventing STDs rather than all your multi-million dollar campaigns?
It pains me too to see young boys in our institutions looking up to their young male educators who are sometimes treated shabbily and given a shove off. You are their idols, in some cases. They look up to you for information, knowledge and advice. Some are smitten. Do not pretend or mask your own sexual inclinations either.
The least you could do is to reciprocate with kindness, wise counsel, emphatic commiseration and good communication. Some lack communication, love , companionship and come from dysfunctional families to various extent. You are their salvation in some instances. Do not brush them off and condemn them to a perilous eternity of a death sentence.
This requires warmth, magnamity and the true insides of your heart pouring forth to reach out to another person in need.
Chew on this!
Saturday, December 17, 2005
Fairy Tales Made For Adults Not Kids
Let us call this the Age of the Summits. With so many going on, each with its own special agenda, you can be forgiven if you lose track of what each is supposed to achieve in the first place. All that yelping and yakking. I would be utterly bored and disappointed if it all turned out to be just hot air.
Cartoons and fairy tales are not written and animated for children. The Grimm Brothers were not some midgets with an IQ of 50 but lawyers. Their more famous tales included Hansel and Gretel. Lewis Caroll was a high-browed mathematician who gave us the tall tale of "Alice in Wonderland".
You would therefore expect similitude in characters they drew in real-life and story-life. They would have brilliantly made use of artwork and satires to achieve their social messages and morals. A young audience would not be able to appreciate the finer and subtler aspects of the parallels.
Think the following:
(1) Pinocchio. Exactly how many pinocchios have we encountered in our lives? That brush of the nose with the fingers is a surefire sign someone is telling a whopper.
(2) Hansel and Gretel. This smacks of a dysfunctional family with a pretentious pair of foster parents actually seeking long-term pecuniary interests out of their charges.
(3) Alice In Wonderland. The procession of the King and Queen of Hearts shows the high-handedness, stiff-upper lip and protocol-ridden monarchy.
(4) Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf. Mimicks the predatory instincts of criminals and other crackpots, be they rapists, robbers , thugs, extortionists , insurance or real estate agents.
(5) Sleeping Beauty. Had a drug overdose, what else? And waits for Prince Charming to give her a shot in the arm.
(6) Beauty and the Beast. The outcast spurned by society, condemned to a life of loneliness, ostracism and mal-treatment.
Disclaimer : All allusions alluded to are illusionary. Any similarities are regretted. If however you feel you fit the description, then it is just pure coincidence.
Cartoons and fairy tales are not written and animated for children. The Grimm Brothers were not some midgets with an IQ of 50 but lawyers. Their more famous tales included Hansel and Gretel. Lewis Caroll was a high-browed mathematician who gave us the tall tale of "Alice in Wonderland".
You would therefore expect similitude in characters they drew in real-life and story-life. They would have brilliantly made use of artwork and satires to achieve their social messages and morals. A young audience would not be able to appreciate the finer and subtler aspects of the parallels.
Think the following:
(1) Pinocchio. Exactly how many pinocchios have we encountered in our lives? That brush of the nose with the fingers is a surefire sign someone is telling a whopper.
(2) Hansel and Gretel. This smacks of a dysfunctional family with a pretentious pair of foster parents actually seeking long-term pecuniary interests out of their charges.
(3) Alice In Wonderland. The procession of the King and Queen of Hearts shows the high-handedness, stiff-upper lip and protocol-ridden monarchy.
(4) Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf. Mimicks the predatory instincts of criminals and other crackpots, be they rapists, robbers , thugs, extortionists , insurance or real estate agents.
(5) Sleeping Beauty. Had a drug overdose, what else? And waits for Prince Charming to give her a shot in the arm.
(6) Beauty and the Beast. The outcast spurned by society, condemned to a life of loneliness, ostracism and mal-treatment.
Disclaimer : All allusions alluded to are illusionary. Any similarities are regretted. If however you feel you fit the description, then it is just pure coincidence.
Friday, December 16, 2005
Of Monsters And (Wo)Men
I remember in one earlier blog, I mentioned that I always thought that Singapore could have been the Hawaii of the South Pacific or the Monte Carlo of the French Central Riveria. I am referring, specifically, to it being a resort haven, not a gambling den.
When you learn about the heart-wrenching tale of the troubled reigning monarchy, it smacks of a family curse like King Tut. Princess Grace Kelly, ex-Oscar winning actress, died in mysterious circumstances, rumoured to be murder and the heirs are battling matrimonial discord , death , divorce (hey look, people, the 3Ds - muahahaha), infidelity or bachelorhood. Sounds like a bad Hollywood movie, an inheritance of their mother?
M/s Real Estate Wussy was just pretending to bimbote as I discovered. She is a conniving, evil and low-down life-form only pontianak can emulate. All her lies were calculated to benefit her monetarily. Professionally, she did not exercise due diligence in her fiduciary duties. She will have her just desert, where her tongue will be sliced and her throat slit in the 18 Gates of Hell, the "devout" Buddhist she claims to be.
When I mentioned M/s Doey Eyes, I recalled the nerve control centre where I worked to be dominated by women. It wasn't a nice place with women bickering, bitching and back-stabbing one another. There was a Senior Warrant Officer who politicked no end for a new ranking exercise which would have esconced her in the highest echleon of her non-commissoned officer class. She is good too in cultivating relationships at the top of the hierarchical commissoned level.
This fat ass at the top of the heap was actually pawing younger female junior officers, who must have hungered for promotional advances (excuse the pun) at anniversary dinners and dances. The Chinese has this saying: "上梁不正，下梁歪 。Shang liang bu zheng, xia liang wai". (If the top is crooked, the bottom is too).
There were exceptions of course, one of whom was a Christian Sergeant who sat me down and spoke to me and another a Staff Sergeant who works quietly and seriously and whom I bumped into several times now but did not acknowledge. There is no need. We aren't that close. She has not touched my life in any way.
What did the Officers-In-Command do? They let every thing pass without as much as a word of admonition or caution when warranted. No wonder the rivalry and bad karma boomeranged and resounded throughout the organisation, unchecked and unreined.
If you ask me, years spent in the army look very much like a punching bag for the people in charge as they unload and re-enact the bad experiences they had on their subordinates. Seeing how they can send you on "jungle missions", it scares me no end if they ever had my safety and interests at heart. It is akin to sending you on a death mission.
Your life is like a speck of dirt, no better than a toad's. It was just round after round of vengeful "tekan" as it is called in army lingo. It must really be "song" to see your recruits suffer and to relish power, torture and abuse under the guise of regimented physical conditioning and battle-waging.
Then there are the swipes of your personal articles and you are in deep shit if you lose anything.
This leads me to the question of Chinese civilisation. They invented everything (even paper money could have been their doing) and were at the acme of their renaissance before they closed their doors and barbarism took over. It is a reversal of fortunes now and the Chinese hasn't been exactly abiding in their rule of law.
The Europeans fought two World Wars and had many skirmishes along the way. But they laid down their arms and precisely because of the countless miseries the wars have wrought, the EU was born. Thus the EU nations had a commonality in their historical and cultural ties. Europe has learnt its lessons. So too Japan?
If I need to elaborate further on how Western ideals are being imbibed by Asians at a very young age, I will say look no further at the cartoons we watch or the fairy tales we read. We watch Walt Disney and read Grimm Brothers. We do not have any Asian role model. On hand, I have a folk-tale story book hailing from Mynmar which never made it to our readership locally. This is indeed sad.
This is the "life" humans have invented and created for themselves. Don't you sometimes wonder if we are "civilised" or "barbaric"?
When you learn about the heart-wrenching tale of the troubled reigning monarchy, it smacks of a family curse like King Tut. Princess Grace Kelly, ex-Oscar winning actress, died in mysterious circumstances, rumoured to be murder and the heirs are battling matrimonial discord , death , divorce (hey look, people, the 3Ds - muahahaha), infidelity or bachelorhood. Sounds like a bad Hollywood movie, an inheritance of their mother?
M/s Real Estate Wussy was just pretending to bimbote as I discovered. She is a conniving, evil and low-down life-form only pontianak can emulate. All her lies were calculated to benefit her monetarily. Professionally, she did not exercise due diligence in her fiduciary duties. She will have her just desert, where her tongue will be sliced and her throat slit in the 18 Gates of Hell, the "devout" Buddhist she claims to be.
When I mentioned M/s Doey Eyes, I recalled the nerve control centre where I worked to be dominated by women. It wasn't a nice place with women bickering, bitching and back-stabbing one another. There was a Senior Warrant Officer who politicked no end for a new ranking exercise which would have esconced her in the highest echleon of her non-commissoned officer class. She is good too in cultivating relationships at the top of the hierarchical commissoned level.
This fat ass at the top of the heap was actually pawing younger female junior officers, who must have hungered for promotional advances (excuse the pun) at anniversary dinners and dances. The Chinese has this saying: "上梁不正，下梁歪 。Shang liang bu zheng, xia liang wai". (If the top is crooked, the bottom is too).
There were exceptions of course, one of whom was a Christian Sergeant who sat me down and spoke to me and another a Staff Sergeant who works quietly and seriously and whom I bumped into several times now but did not acknowledge. There is no need. We aren't that close. She has not touched my life in any way.
What did the Officers-In-Command do? They let every thing pass without as much as a word of admonition or caution when warranted. No wonder the rivalry and bad karma boomeranged and resounded throughout the organisation, unchecked and unreined.
If you ask me, years spent in the army look very much like a punching bag for the people in charge as they unload and re-enact the bad experiences they had on their subordinates. Seeing how they can send you on "jungle missions", it scares me no end if they ever had my safety and interests at heart. It is akin to sending you on a death mission.
Your life is like a speck of dirt, no better than a toad's. It was just round after round of vengeful "tekan" as it is called in army lingo. It must really be "song" to see your recruits suffer and to relish power, torture and abuse under the guise of regimented physical conditioning and battle-waging.
Then there are the swipes of your personal articles and you are in deep shit if you lose anything.
This leads me to the question of Chinese civilisation. They invented everything (even paper money could have been their doing) and were at the acme of their renaissance before they closed their doors and barbarism took over. It is a reversal of fortunes now and the Chinese hasn't been exactly abiding in their rule of law.
The Europeans fought two World Wars and had many skirmishes along the way. But they laid down their arms and precisely because of the countless miseries the wars have wrought, the EU was born. Thus the EU nations had a commonality in their historical and cultural ties. Europe has learnt its lessons. So too Japan?
If I need to elaborate further on how Western ideals are being imbibed by Asians at a very young age, I will say look no further at the cartoons we watch or the fairy tales we read. We watch Walt Disney and read Grimm Brothers. We do not have any Asian role model. On hand, I have a folk-tale story book hailing from Mynmar which never made it to our readership locally. This is indeed sad.
This is the "life" humans have invented and created for themselves. Don't you sometimes wonder if we are "civilised" or "barbaric"?
To Each His Own
The latest in a string of commentaries and updates has it that Medieval Christianity (branded the Dark ages prior to the Renaissance) actually harnessed capitalism and secularism of today.
With leading theologians postulating, philosophisizng, inventing and innovating, this is no surprise. But if it is said that we should look to the future, not the past, why is research being directed at the past to come up with answers for the future. There must be keys to questions that lie in the past, not the present or future.
Despite all the integration efforts of countries such as ASEAN and the EU, not all have been successful. Besides a common currency and a host of other economic benefits, a more universal linkage in terms of human values like cultural and historical commonality may foster better communication and co-operation.
This starts in the schools at a young age. If we are inundated with only Western humanities early on, do not expect us to feel any affinity for our Asian roots, which rightly should be so. As an illustration, I find shelves of books on American and European literature, philosophy and history. When it comes to Asian and particularly South-east Asian humanities, there isn't as much pickings as I would like or none at all. The popular works would still be the GREAT Western thinkers of the past.
What can this suggest? Asians are so caught up in economics, they have neglected that one truth in their lives and that is: the common human and humanitarian values they share in the humanities. That would have bonded them more than economics which stratified more than it already has.
Monks and nuns aren't what they used to be. At least the ones I see in our shopping arcades. Resembling the Tibetan monks in maroon and saffron robes, I spotted one sporting a gold watch. Wow and they are ascetic, I thought. Caught up in consumerism and materialism, I suppose?
People do change. When I hear people speaking differently of someone I know eons ago, it sounded like a very different character. I suppose it has to do with changing mores and who is in at the helm. Eg: My primary school alma mater had a no nonsense, fair and straight-laced Mr Paul Lee Poh Soon as principal. The teachers hold him in awe, I think, so there wasn't as many contending issues which surfaced. Once we have a feeble-minded, lax and wussy Comptroller, the whole school collapses.
Marriage is an issue for each and everyone to decide upon on its own merits. We have heard of successful and failed marriages, not withstanding age nor years spent in nuptial ties. Here is my personal opinion and mine alone:
(1) I am not attracted to a woman in any way. Neither intellect nor appearances nor sexual anatomy nor character. In fact with a woman about the house, it would be an intrusion and stressor which actually lowers my quality of life, given their predisposition most of the time.
(2) Therefore, a dual-income does not appeal to me as a sufficiently pecuniary reason for marriage. I am not marrying for money but for the person. This is the last frontier of mores I will hold fast to like the last Mohican would. I can compromise on everything else but not this. This is my only ticket to sexual and emotional happiness and satisfaction.
(3) I am however all for a child to complete my cycle of life. I only need one, not a brood. He will have all my attention, care and nurturing for his future career, individual fulfilment and advancement. He is however financially expensive (if I want to provide for all the good things he should be entitled to , if he wants to and he has talents for - music and academic education, sports, arts, the whole works) and this is something I have to work out. As I said I will be the diametric opposite of a childless couple. Children are gifts from God and I love children (male ones, sorry) for their curiousity, their innocence, their babble, their sense of adventure and fun, their tickle-bones and so on.
(4) It makes no difference that your other half is of either sex. You have to pick one which will contribute the most in better mental health and sex. You can pool money or purchase a house with any one sex . In any coupling, each does lead very individual lives in some instances.
(5) It is dumb that hetero couples spend so much on a grand wedding dinner (but this is more than covered by the red packets guests dish out, me thinks). It is only a day in what would be a lifetime spent together. They should use the time to learn about each other than on just this one occasion.
I think I have debunked stereo-modal sexual couplings here , once and for all. Speaking of which, I wonder why humans are named "homo-sapiens" and not hetero-sapiens? Homo means "the same"? I am not implying anything here. I hope.
With leading theologians postulating, philosophisizng, inventing and innovating, this is no surprise. But if it is said that we should look to the future, not the past, why is research being directed at the past to come up with answers for the future. There must be keys to questions that lie in the past, not the present or future.
Despite all the integration efforts of countries such as ASEAN and the EU, not all have been successful. Besides a common currency and a host of other economic benefits, a more universal linkage in terms of human values like cultural and historical commonality may foster better communication and co-operation.
This starts in the schools at a young age. If we are inundated with only Western humanities early on, do not expect us to feel any affinity for our Asian roots, which rightly should be so. As an illustration, I find shelves of books on American and European literature, philosophy and history. When it comes to Asian and particularly South-east Asian humanities, there isn't as much pickings as I would like or none at all. The popular works would still be the GREAT Western thinkers of the past.
What can this suggest? Asians are so caught up in economics, they have neglected that one truth in their lives and that is: the common human and humanitarian values they share in the humanities. That would have bonded them more than economics which stratified more than it already has.
Monks and nuns aren't what they used to be. At least the ones I see in our shopping arcades. Resembling the Tibetan monks in maroon and saffron robes, I spotted one sporting a gold watch. Wow and they are ascetic, I thought. Caught up in consumerism and materialism, I suppose?
People do change. When I hear people speaking differently of someone I know eons ago, it sounded like a very different character. I suppose it has to do with changing mores and who is in at the helm. Eg: My primary school alma mater had a no nonsense, fair and straight-laced Mr Paul Lee Poh Soon as principal. The teachers hold him in awe, I think, so there wasn't as many contending issues which surfaced. Once we have a feeble-minded, lax and wussy Comptroller, the whole school collapses.
Marriage is an issue for each and everyone to decide upon on its own merits. We have heard of successful and failed marriages, not withstanding age nor years spent in nuptial ties. Here is my personal opinion and mine alone:
(1) I am not attracted to a woman in any way. Neither intellect nor appearances nor sexual anatomy nor character. In fact with a woman about the house, it would be an intrusion and stressor which actually lowers my quality of life, given their predisposition most of the time.
(2) Therefore, a dual-income does not appeal to me as a sufficiently pecuniary reason for marriage. I am not marrying for money but for the person. This is the last frontier of mores I will hold fast to like the last Mohican would. I can compromise on everything else but not this. This is my only ticket to sexual and emotional happiness and satisfaction.
(3) I am however all for a child to complete my cycle of life. I only need one, not a brood. He will have all my attention, care and nurturing for his future career, individual fulfilment and advancement. He is however financially expensive (if I want to provide for all the good things he should be entitled to , if he wants to and he has talents for - music and academic education, sports, arts, the whole works) and this is something I have to work out. As I said I will be the diametric opposite of a childless couple. Children are gifts from God and I love children (male ones, sorry) for their curiousity, their innocence, their babble, their sense of adventure and fun, their tickle-bones and so on.
(4) It makes no difference that your other half is of either sex. You have to pick one which will contribute the most in better mental health and sex. You can pool money or purchase a house with any one sex . In any coupling, each does lead very individual lives in some instances.
(5) It is dumb that hetero couples spend so much on a grand wedding dinner (but this is more than covered by the red packets guests dish out, me thinks). It is only a day in what would be a lifetime spent together. They should use the time to learn about each other than on just this one occasion.
I think I have debunked stereo-modal sexual couplings here , once and for all. Speaking of which, I wonder why humans are named "homo-sapiens" and not hetero-sapiens? Homo means "the same"? I am not implying anything here. I hope.
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Cinematic Parodies Or Is It Real (Reel) Life
If you weren't as sharp, you wouldn't have noticed the mis-spelt "Catastrophie" in "Back to Gaya". "King Kong" had its hero looking like a younger Barry Manilow who was a prolific and successful song-composer and singer with hits like "I Write the Songs" and "Copacabana".
Wait. It may not have been the "Billboard Top 10" but to me, in my heart, it is a hit if I feel it to be. Barry Manilow is distinguishable by his aquiline nose. The other on-screen hero was a Charles Bronson wannabe named Bain Baxter (men who perhaps went under the knife too).
I have heard it all before - Financial Planning. We have all done it at one time or another. Somehow, we still fall critically short. An accountant I met would typify this. Given his profession, he would have thought he had financially planned better. It is the same with all the GDP and GNP growth statistics, I don't see any of it trickling down to Joe Bloggs. Therefore, on a micro-level, it ain't no growth at all.
I do not want you to think that M/s Cindy Crawford (alter-ego) and M/s Doey Eyes are maligned in my blog. They were just what they really are. They were, besides being bethrothed to their other halves, flirtatious, showy, bewitchy and charming, ensnaring one and all who cared to be ensnared.
I don't mean to be mean (oops, sorry for the parallelism). But when I am trying to have my time alone, doing my thinking and all, I seriously hate "uninvited" guests who want to take their places at my table. Can you please wait for me to finish up and you can have my seat then.
The same goes for carrionous crows who hover about your table, waiting to pounce on your dining space. So eviscerate me and call me a hooter for being single .We are humans too, deserving of space, time and thoughts alone. Blame the F&B people for not having or having enough single or double seaters.
Dong Gun visits to promote his movie "The Promise" on a whirlwind tour. That accounts for the huge turnout lining themselves outside the cineplex, some armed with read-to-shoot cameras. Star gazing and celebrity mania! This is a mini-Hollywood gala for sure.
Sometimes when I think about how computer games and games arcades provide escape channels for shooting, kicking, boxing, hammering, thrusting and slashing fantasies, it crossed my mind if we were not actually directing them at our real-life nemeses. Humanity does deserve it, doesn't it, for all the evil deeds they have committed against each other?
"Santa Slays" debunks popular myth of a mirthful, benign and magnanimous gift-doler. Who can deny this fact that we have a "The Other Side of Midnight" to our persona? Especially if we are cornered into a despicable tight corner like Noami Watts was in "King Kong". It was survival or scruples.
The Special Olympics is organised for the intellectually disabled. How this term goes unchallenged has astounded me beyond words. I suppose it could be to varying degrees.
Down's dyndrome, for sure (or so I think, or could it just be the appearance but not the mental faculty?). But polio or some lower half paralysis cannot count towards this , as borned out by the cases of our local athlete hero Dr William Tan and America's 32nd President Franklin D Roosevelt.
And the blind? Helen Keller learnt just as well , just that she needed extra coaching and special training aids and the Braille was invented for this special purpose. So too did Anne Sullivan, her forebear. What about the deaf and mute? What about kids just slower in their learning abilities?
So physical versus intellectual disabilities. And what constitutes intellectual disability? To what extent is it intellectual and not of the making of examinations which may not be assessing any ability in the first place? What is intellectual ability and is it the only measure of a person's intelligence? Should it even be a criterion for typecasting?
We have inherited many old Western-based colonial and non-colonial systems (possibly even Eastern ones as testified to by the Han imperial examinations following a surge of Confucianism) of which this is but one which we should relook and re-orientate.
Sorry if I sound like a tart. The Iranian President's inflammatory speech had three parts. Jews be obliterated. A Jewish state be carved out in the Western World. The Holocaust was a myth.
Certainly the first is totally preposterous and the third is at best unfounded, based on the present circumstances. The second doesn't sound too far off, given the fact that the Holocaust was a Western World doing and to atone for their sins, they should have a Jewish state in their midst to serve as a reminder of the horrors they inflicted by waging war, shirking responsibility and making a bad decision in creating a Jewish state in among a predominantly Arab World (though Israel would have no other site as this is both biblical and historical, as much as it is for the Arabs, but they can't possibly resist if the superpowers are not swayed or do not budge, can they?)
What he says has some validity. I mean I don't see any of the Western community interacting any time soon now amidst us. It is usually enclaves of their own kind. You see this at the cinemas, the shopping malls, the eateries. It is the same with us when we are abroad. Where else do you see large Asian communities except in their own ethnologically demarcated townships - Chinatown, Japantown, etc. Perhaps transplantation of heterogenous communities back to their homogeneous origins does not sound so crazy after all? Just a thought.
I thought I met Mr John Chia on the train that day. At least what was left of him, a shadow of his former self. Strands of hair straggling his bald pate, old, freckled with vision problem, apparently, he is nowhere near the whistle-blowing soccer coach he was during PE lessons. Frankly I hated soccer and wished we had more of baseball , football or hockey. But he was gentlemanly enough never to utter any unkind word even if I refuse to play the game and just slack during PE.
At the end of the day, it is just UNNATURAL for mankind to live life as it is now, divided as we are by economics, religion, race, gender and language. It is like putting KING KONG in captivity for all to marvel as the Eighth Wonder Of The World. Our only hope in the future of our civilisation is FANE and NWO, my two theories for survival and sustanability into the danger-fraught zone (or so we are led to believe) of the 21st century.
You answer this now. Is it really reel or real life?
Wait. It may not have been the "Billboard Top 10" but to me, in my heart, it is a hit if I feel it to be. Barry Manilow is distinguishable by his aquiline nose. The other on-screen hero was a Charles Bronson wannabe named Bain Baxter (men who perhaps went under the knife too).
I have heard it all before - Financial Planning. We have all done it at one time or another. Somehow, we still fall critically short. An accountant I met would typify this. Given his profession, he would have thought he had financially planned better. It is the same with all the GDP and GNP growth statistics, I don't see any of it trickling down to Joe Bloggs. Therefore, on a micro-level, it ain't no growth at all.
I do not want you to think that M/s Cindy Crawford (alter-ego) and M/s Doey Eyes are maligned in my blog. They were just what they really are. They were, besides being bethrothed to their other halves, flirtatious, showy, bewitchy and charming, ensnaring one and all who cared to be ensnared.
I don't mean to be mean (oops, sorry for the parallelism). But when I am trying to have my time alone, doing my thinking and all, I seriously hate "uninvited" guests who want to take their places at my table. Can you please wait for me to finish up and you can have my seat then.
The same goes for carrionous crows who hover about your table, waiting to pounce on your dining space. So eviscerate me and call me a hooter for being single .We are humans too, deserving of space, time and thoughts alone. Blame the F&B people for not having or having enough single or double seaters.
Dong Gun visits to promote his movie "The Promise" on a whirlwind tour. That accounts for the huge turnout lining themselves outside the cineplex, some armed with read-to-shoot cameras. Star gazing and celebrity mania! This is a mini-Hollywood gala for sure.
Sometimes when I think about how computer games and games arcades provide escape channels for shooting, kicking, boxing, hammering, thrusting and slashing fantasies, it crossed my mind if we were not actually directing them at our real-life nemeses. Humanity does deserve it, doesn't it, for all the evil deeds they have committed against each other?
"Santa Slays" debunks popular myth of a mirthful, benign and magnanimous gift-doler. Who can deny this fact that we have a "The Other Side of Midnight" to our persona? Especially if we are cornered into a despicable tight corner like Noami Watts was in "King Kong". It was survival or scruples.
The Special Olympics is organised for the intellectually disabled. How this term goes unchallenged has astounded me beyond words. I suppose it could be to varying degrees.
Down's dyndrome, for sure (or so I think, or could it just be the appearance but not the mental faculty?). But polio or some lower half paralysis cannot count towards this , as borned out by the cases of our local athlete hero Dr William Tan and America's 32nd President Franklin D Roosevelt.
And the blind? Helen Keller learnt just as well , just that she needed extra coaching and special training aids and the Braille was invented for this special purpose. So too did Anne Sullivan, her forebear. What about the deaf and mute? What about kids just slower in their learning abilities?
So physical versus intellectual disabilities. And what constitutes intellectual disability? To what extent is it intellectual and not of the making of examinations which may not be assessing any ability in the first place? What is intellectual ability and is it the only measure of a person's intelligence? Should it even be a criterion for typecasting?
We have inherited many old Western-based colonial and non-colonial systems (possibly even Eastern ones as testified to by the Han imperial examinations following a surge of Confucianism) of which this is but one which we should relook and re-orientate.
Sorry if I sound like a tart. The Iranian President's inflammatory speech had three parts. Jews be obliterated. A Jewish state be carved out in the Western World. The Holocaust was a myth.
Certainly the first is totally preposterous and the third is at best unfounded, based on the present circumstances. The second doesn't sound too far off, given the fact that the Holocaust was a Western World doing and to atone for their sins, they should have a Jewish state in their midst to serve as a reminder of the horrors they inflicted by waging war, shirking responsibility and making a bad decision in creating a Jewish state in among a predominantly Arab World (though Israel would have no other site as this is both biblical and historical, as much as it is for the Arabs, but they can't possibly resist if the superpowers are not swayed or do not budge, can they?)
What he says has some validity. I mean I don't see any of the Western community interacting any time soon now amidst us. It is usually enclaves of their own kind. You see this at the cinemas, the shopping malls, the eateries. It is the same with us when we are abroad. Where else do you see large Asian communities except in their own ethnologically demarcated townships - Chinatown, Japantown, etc. Perhaps transplantation of heterogenous communities back to their homogeneous origins does not sound so crazy after all? Just a thought.
I thought I met Mr John Chia on the train that day. At least what was left of him, a shadow of his former self. Strands of hair straggling his bald pate, old, freckled with vision problem, apparently, he is nowhere near the whistle-blowing soccer coach he was during PE lessons. Frankly I hated soccer and wished we had more of baseball , football or hockey. But he was gentlemanly enough never to utter any unkind word even if I refuse to play the game and just slack during PE.
At the end of the day, it is just UNNATURAL for mankind to live life as it is now, divided as we are by economics, religion, race, gender and language. It is like putting KING KONG in captivity for all to marvel as the Eighth Wonder Of The World. Our only hope in the future of our civilisation is FANE and NWO, my two theories for survival and sustanability into the danger-fraught zone (or so we are led to believe) of the 21st century.
You answer this now. Is it really reel or real life?
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Back To Civilisation
Racism rages Down Under. But when I examined the photographs, they look "enacted". As it is with many world events, contrived and politically staged for political ends. In this age of technological advances, nothing is impossible. All we need is an international collusion. After all, paper money on its own is worthless. It is the universal value we attach to it that makes it what it is.
I recalled this petite, doe-eyed and dimpled face sergeant in the administrative sector of the Defence Ministry where I worked. She, and a NSF hunk, were the toast of the unit, a smooching couple who hugged and slow-danced to the music of George Michael's "Careless Whisper" during anniversary dinner and dance.
It was a real blinking eye-sore to see this pair of lovey-dovey, coupling love-birds making out anywhere and everywhere. Sometimes I just wished they would stop. Not that I am green with envy but it is just that there are appropriate times and places to indulge in blatant tasteless displays of affection. She thinks she can charm and buy the world with her beauty.
Which again is the recurring theme in many a movie. King Kong was the same. Beast fell in love with gall, gets captured and dies for her unrequited love. What a stupid thing! That movie was Titanic and Jurassic Park rolled into one. The moral here is never to transplant an animal from its original homeland to a foreign one and to leave nature be.
I am not trying to throw a spanner in anyone's dreams of marriage. But seriously, do we ever think we can save enough for anything anymore. Given the "stipend" we are paid sometimes, all that goes down the drain in expenditure most of the time.
Expenditure which is necessary in the first place because they are necessities. I can imagine a life without a conventional notion of a "spouse" but I can't imagine life without an "adopted kid" (singles can adopt, fulfilling some "requirements" of course) or a trusted and beloved "Special One". I am not going to start any SME soon with any woman, even if it means going it alone or having one as a staff member only.
If reports of marriages in trouble are any indication, marriage seems to be no more than two people who had a BIG BANG (in wedding dinner and honeymoon terms not in the bridal chamber, what were you seriously thinking?) and then go on to lead almost separate lives under the guise of respecting each other's sacred time away from one another.
Today's report on a Boon Lay teacher filming under the skirts of women must surely represent the apogee of a tattered marriage hidden behind the cloak of a smoke screen of a happy one, a nascent one at that with a first child on the way in four months' time. His credits boast being a respected educator , church member and loving husband.
M/s Cindy Crawford (aka the Kept One) and Lao Tiko (aka as the old, white-haired, rich Indonesian bastard of a "doctor" - his medical credentials have to be verified on international par and not on the qualifications he obtained in his native land) made me sell not beauty and cosmetic products but such an appallingly diverse anatomically sex-linked products like proctoscopes, vaginal specula, breasts implants and vacuum pumps.
She would regale me with tales of her diet with pork (she is a Moslem apparently) and how she had her sutures unstitched (not sure if this was the hysterectomy she had, due to many reasons, one of which could be the formation of fibroids because of hormonal therapy as a contraceptive device and she does fall under the age-group for this or she had her hymen reconstructed for the sexual pleasure of the lecherous doctor). She loves brushing her nether parts against me under the pretext of passing by me while I am standing or photocopying. Oo! Frottage fun!
"Back to Gaya" actually had a anthropo-philosophical undertone. Concepts like "free will", Descartes' "Cogito ergo sum" and Neanderthals as the snurks. The heroine was a butt-kicking one too. There were eschatological aspects too laced with Armageddon as burning lava erupting forth to bury the villain in the end. It looked too much like a playscript I wrote once upon a time.
By the way, Descartes was schooled in mathematics by the Jesuit friars in the monastery and it is no surprise he became an overwhelmingly zealous proponent for the existence of "God". "Back to Gaya" was really educational at the high-end which I don't think a very young audience can grasp.
A visit to the dentist threw up some light moments. He was concerned about the frequency of my visits and the generally bad condition of my teeth ( I have fangs, a sunken tooth and my teeth are crowded together). As I thought aloud, he got the hint that if he decreases the price, I will increase my number of visits. Dental treatment is getting more expensive these days.
I should have worn braces a long time ago. With age, the crevices are beginning to harbour scraps of food ripe for bacteria to live in. He was right there. But we were not as informed back then and I did not feel the need to go for aesthetics dentistry. There goes our favourite thinking that if national dental health-care is free, people would abuse it at every opportune moment.
I didn't know I was sticking out my tongue most of the time I was in the chair. He was afraid he would brush my tongue rather than my teeth. He even went as far as praising my good genes for the general good shape of my teeth. That was funny and I laughed heartily.
To parody a civil servant I encountered recently. She wrote to say that she was "appalled" by the tone of my reply in my electronic mail. Well, get this BITCH! When you write something which I know is some "regurgitated vomit", so standardised everyone mouths it as a cultural norm, be ready for a swift bite of my pen.
She was going on about "deferred gratification" as if she, as a model educator, has shown any herself. Let her be the first to do without her car and then she has the right to talk about "deferred" gratification. BLOODY INTELLECTUAL BITCH!
A group of foreign wussies ,dressed scantily, scrambled up the bus and rushed for seats like devils may care. It was reminiscent of Shanghai. The young couples would dash into the trains, plonk themselves on the seats and be completely immersed in themselves, oblivious to other elderly and needy commuters.
This has served to remind me time and again that we have nothing going for us here except as a retail commercial hub. No wonder people here are ugly, in their manners, behaviour, speech and thinking , though they may look marvellously well-dressed, groomed and cosmetically-altered good-looking.
That is all that is left of you Singapore. NOTHING.
I recalled this petite, doe-eyed and dimpled face sergeant in the administrative sector of the Defence Ministry where I worked. She, and a NSF hunk, were the toast of the unit, a smooching couple who hugged and slow-danced to the music of George Michael's "Careless Whisper" during anniversary dinner and dance.
It was a real blinking eye-sore to see this pair of lovey-dovey, coupling love-birds making out anywhere and everywhere. Sometimes I just wished they would stop. Not that I am green with envy but it is just that there are appropriate times and places to indulge in blatant tasteless displays of affection. She thinks she can charm and buy the world with her beauty.
Which again is the recurring theme in many a movie. King Kong was the same. Beast fell in love with gall, gets captured and dies for her unrequited love. What a stupid thing! That movie was Titanic and Jurassic Park rolled into one. The moral here is never to transplant an animal from its original homeland to a foreign one and to leave nature be.
I am not trying to throw a spanner in anyone's dreams of marriage. But seriously, do we ever think we can save enough for anything anymore. Given the "stipend" we are paid sometimes, all that goes down the drain in expenditure most of the time.
Expenditure which is necessary in the first place because they are necessities. I can imagine a life without a conventional notion of a "spouse" but I can't imagine life without an "adopted kid" (singles can adopt, fulfilling some "requirements" of course) or a trusted and beloved "Special One". I am not going to start any SME soon with any woman, even if it means going it alone or having one as a staff member only.
If reports of marriages in trouble are any indication, marriage seems to be no more than two people who had a BIG BANG (in wedding dinner and honeymoon terms not in the bridal chamber, what were you seriously thinking?) and then go on to lead almost separate lives under the guise of respecting each other's sacred time away from one another.
Today's report on a Boon Lay teacher filming under the skirts of women must surely represent the apogee of a tattered marriage hidden behind the cloak of a smoke screen of a happy one, a nascent one at that with a first child on the way in four months' time. His credits boast being a respected educator , church member and loving husband.
M/s Cindy Crawford (aka the Kept One) and Lao Tiko (aka as the old, white-haired, rich Indonesian bastard of a "doctor" - his medical credentials have to be verified on international par and not on the qualifications he obtained in his native land) made me sell not beauty and cosmetic products but such an appallingly diverse anatomically sex-linked products like proctoscopes, vaginal specula, breasts implants and vacuum pumps.
She would regale me with tales of her diet with pork (she is a Moslem apparently) and how she had her sutures unstitched (not sure if this was the hysterectomy she had, due to many reasons, one of which could be the formation of fibroids because of hormonal therapy as a contraceptive device and she does fall under the age-group for this or she had her hymen reconstructed for the sexual pleasure of the lecherous doctor). She loves brushing her nether parts against me under the pretext of passing by me while I am standing or photocopying. Oo! Frottage fun!
"Back to Gaya" actually had a anthropo-philosophical undertone. Concepts like "free will", Descartes' "Cogito ergo sum" and Neanderthals as the snurks. The heroine was a butt-kicking one too. There were eschatological aspects too laced with Armageddon as burning lava erupting forth to bury the villain in the end. It looked too much like a playscript I wrote once upon a time.
By the way, Descartes was schooled in mathematics by the Jesuit friars in the monastery and it is no surprise he became an overwhelmingly zealous proponent for the existence of "God". "Back to Gaya" was really educational at the high-end which I don't think a very young audience can grasp.
A visit to the dentist threw up some light moments. He was concerned about the frequency of my visits and the generally bad condition of my teeth ( I have fangs, a sunken tooth and my teeth are crowded together). As I thought aloud, he got the hint that if he decreases the price, I will increase my number of visits. Dental treatment is getting more expensive these days.
I should have worn braces a long time ago. With age, the crevices are beginning to harbour scraps of food ripe for bacteria to live in. He was right there. But we were not as informed back then and I did not feel the need to go for aesthetics dentistry. There goes our favourite thinking that if national dental health-care is free, people would abuse it at every opportune moment.
I didn't know I was sticking out my tongue most of the time I was in the chair. He was afraid he would brush my tongue rather than my teeth. He even went as far as praising my good genes for the general good shape of my teeth. That was funny and I laughed heartily.
To parody a civil servant I encountered recently. She wrote to say that she was "appalled" by the tone of my reply in my electronic mail. Well, get this BITCH! When you write something which I know is some "regurgitated vomit", so standardised everyone mouths it as a cultural norm, be ready for a swift bite of my pen.
She was going on about "deferred gratification" as if she, as a model educator, has shown any herself. Let her be the first to do without her car and then she has the right to talk about "deferred" gratification. BLOODY INTELLECTUAL BITCH!
A group of foreign wussies ,dressed scantily, scrambled up the bus and rushed for seats like devils may care. It was reminiscent of Shanghai. The young couples would dash into the trains, plonk themselves on the seats and be completely immersed in themselves, oblivious to other elderly and needy commuters.
This has served to remind me time and again that we have nothing going for us here except as a retail commercial hub. No wonder people here are ugly, in their manners, behaviour, speech and thinking , though they may look marvellously well-dressed, groomed and cosmetically-altered good-looking.
That is all that is left of you Singapore. NOTHING.
Sunday, December 11, 2005
FlashBack, FlashPoint, A Flash Of Genius Or A Flash In The Pan
I was blinded by a flash. No, it wasn't a burning bush speaking to Moses. On reading Latin phrases being bandied about the Net, I checked out a webby of one premier school and lo and behold, its motto read: "Auspicium melioris Aevi" To top off the web design, its multi-variegated gender-ethnic poster boys and girls actually flashed for a brief moment. I was reminded that this could only mean several things , all of which are encapsulated in my blog title. Or struck by a flash of lightning. Mua ha ha ha.
It made me realise how alike its motto is to another premier all-boys school. And not only that, we have many Latin words in our daily English language usage. Words like "curriculum vitae" and "bona fide". All I can say is simply "latinous", how's that for yet another Latin word.
Yes, yes. I mentioned "Madonna" the last time. I forgot that her nifty dance-steps would best be described as "eurhythmics". Please dont. We have enough of technocrats and bureaucrats here. So if I leave for Europe, I don't want another Eurocrat. And the blog on "Kama Sutra". Add handsprings, cartwheels and somersaults as part and parcel of the sex act only contortionists and gymnasts can afford.
While I am on the topic of megastars, I might as well. My ex-lady boss has Cindy Crawford looks, although petite, and with that distinct mole to complete her resemblance. Wonder if she had gone under the surgeon's knife but I won't be surprised if she did, given that we are dealing with beauty and cosmetic products.
Note this correlation guys: Phallus impudicus is a foul-smelling fungus having a thick cylindrical stalk and a narrow cap of the order of Phalleles. Its common name is stinkhorn.
I didn't know the "Best Asian Blogger" award is up for grabs. No wonder a fellow blogger has briefly mentioned this while another has begun her long tirade on hers. Spare us O bloggers! It is only a blog, for everyone's sake.
Oops. "Chicken Little" had Freddy Mercury, the gay vocalist, of "Queen" fame singing "We are the champions" and a string of past American hits I can't place my finger on. Familiar tunes, unplaced artistes. Or is it forgotten?
Let me explain too why I said "dramatic licence". Chicken little is no more than a squeaky, two-foot chick with oversized glasses perching on its beak, the typical nerd. His lady companion was a buck-toothed , fugly, quacky ducky and his best friend, a rotund, squealy, scaredy-cat pig.
In the finale Chicken Little was portrayed as a tall, V-cut, broad-shouldered, muscle-bound, manly-sounding cockerel who blasted into space with a flick of his strapped-on rockets with his totally altered gall-in-waiting. So too were his other companions recasted. That is dramatic licence.
It is true we do not like to read. We rather we listen and hear "the message" from friends or on screen. That explains how important it is that "the message" is effectively conveyed by educators, speakers and so on. By whatever means.
Remember my private versus public sphere debate. Other than regards to inner sanctum and sovereign space, you could extend this to a myriad of other issues. But once the door is bolted, even if it is a public place, it becomes private.
My entry on the diversity of humankind and the gene pool had me thinking. Again? What are you, nuts? I recalled browsing a photographic book snap-shooting natives in various lands. They were not exactly the current notion and model of beauty and looks.
In fact, the old had their faces screwed-up, furrowed and crinkled. But who says they are not beautiful in their own way? The media today has parodied only one acceptable and apparently "acme" of youth, beauty and looks. The anorexic, snow-skinned and flawlessly complexioned look for galls and the sculpted, hunky and boyish look for guys. Amazingly banal. That explains a thriving beauty trade here and everywhere else.
I read we are onto a new science, something called nutrigenomics. That set me thinking. (oops, I did it again - sorry Britney - love your breasts!). Is it genes which determine our phenotype or is it physiology such as nutrition and metabolism. Phenotypes like height and weight especially. For sure, medical diseases like cretin make dwarfs of some. But how else is our phenotype determined apart from the genes passed on like a chip off the block?
Nutrigenomics, as it is now, examines the impact of nutrition on health and diseases. I am more concerned with nutrigenomics' influence over phenotypes.
Ageism is here. I mean if our guys have problems finding jobs at a ripe young age of 35, the "Eldershield" scheme kicks in once you hit 40, pensionable staff can get laid off at 45, CPF withdrawal can be effected at 55 and retirement age is now fixed at 62, AGEISM is BIG here, isn't it?
Irving Washington is an interesting writer. He wrote under the pseudonym of Dietrich Knickerbocker, a book detailing the "History of New York". He also wrote "Rip Van Winkle". Interesting character, a bloke who woke up 20 years later. Kinda like "Sleeping Beauty", although in a much longer time frame.
This book is important to me if I plan migration. I want to know who went where and what happened thereafter. The Dutch , they are not Danes just so you are not mistaken, swamped New York. That is how New Yorkers are known as Knickerbockers. See how New York turns out and we will all have to decide.
Ok, so I am not writing as well to catch up with the times. Nobody writes "Suddenly someone knocked on my door" anymore. It should read "....someone rang my doorbell". If we have a "childless couple" and I am its anti-thesis, then what do you call moi? Childful coupleless? By the way I don't mean "single" as in being alone, I do envision a "other half" just not in the stereo-mode. Get it?
Yes, yes oh yes! I would love being a public prosecutor! All the prosecutees would be my ex-employers , their families and henchmen. I would love to see them grilled in the hotseat for all the vile acts they committed.
"King Kong" is making a comeback, with a new-look of course. I hope that film will be a techno, laser-lights-ridden action one. And "The Chronicles of Narnia" sounds like our Hokkien-expletive "Nar Hia", doesn't it?
Enough for one day. It is "Back to Gaya".
It made me realise how alike its motto is to another premier all-boys school. And not only that, we have many Latin words in our daily English language usage. Words like "curriculum vitae" and "bona fide". All I can say is simply "latinous", how's that for yet another Latin word.
Yes, yes. I mentioned "Madonna" the last time. I forgot that her nifty dance-steps would best be described as "eurhythmics". Please dont. We have enough of technocrats and bureaucrats here. So if I leave for Europe, I don't want another Eurocrat. And the blog on "Kama Sutra". Add handsprings, cartwheels and somersaults as part and parcel of the sex act only contortionists and gymnasts can afford.
While I am on the topic of megastars, I might as well. My ex-lady boss has Cindy Crawford looks, although petite, and with that distinct mole to complete her resemblance. Wonder if she had gone under the surgeon's knife but I won't be surprised if she did, given that we are dealing with beauty and cosmetic products.
Note this correlation guys: Phallus impudicus is a foul-smelling fungus having a thick cylindrical stalk and a narrow cap of the order of Phalleles. Its common name is stinkhorn.
I didn't know the "Best Asian Blogger" award is up for grabs. No wonder a fellow blogger has briefly mentioned this while another has begun her long tirade on hers. Spare us O bloggers! It is only a blog, for everyone's sake.
Oops. "Chicken Little" had Freddy Mercury, the gay vocalist, of "Queen" fame singing "We are the champions" and a string of past American hits I can't place my finger on. Familiar tunes, unplaced artistes. Or is it forgotten?
Let me explain too why I said "dramatic licence". Chicken little is no more than a squeaky, two-foot chick with oversized glasses perching on its beak, the typical nerd. His lady companion was a buck-toothed , fugly, quacky ducky and his best friend, a rotund, squealy, scaredy-cat pig.
In the finale Chicken Little was portrayed as a tall, V-cut, broad-shouldered, muscle-bound, manly-sounding cockerel who blasted into space with a flick of his strapped-on rockets with his totally altered gall-in-waiting. So too were his other companions recasted. That is dramatic licence.
It is true we do not like to read. We rather we listen and hear "the message" from friends or on screen. That explains how important it is that "the message" is effectively conveyed by educators, speakers and so on. By whatever means.
Remember my private versus public sphere debate. Other than regards to inner sanctum and sovereign space, you could extend this to a myriad of other issues. But once the door is bolted, even if it is a public place, it becomes private.
My entry on the diversity of humankind and the gene pool had me thinking. Again? What are you, nuts? I recalled browsing a photographic book snap-shooting natives in various lands. They were not exactly the current notion and model of beauty and looks.
In fact, the old had their faces screwed-up, furrowed and crinkled. But who says they are not beautiful in their own way? The media today has parodied only one acceptable and apparently "acme" of youth, beauty and looks. The anorexic, snow-skinned and flawlessly complexioned look for galls and the sculpted, hunky and boyish look for guys. Amazingly banal. That explains a thriving beauty trade here and everywhere else.
I read we are onto a new science, something called nutrigenomics. That set me thinking. (oops, I did it again - sorry Britney - love your breasts!). Is it genes which determine our phenotype or is it physiology such as nutrition and metabolism. Phenotypes like height and weight especially. For sure, medical diseases like cretin make dwarfs of some. But how else is our phenotype determined apart from the genes passed on like a chip off the block?
Nutrigenomics, as it is now, examines the impact of nutrition on health and diseases. I am more concerned with nutrigenomics' influence over phenotypes.
Ageism is here. I mean if our guys have problems finding jobs at a ripe young age of 35, the "Eldershield" scheme kicks in once you hit 40, pensionable staff can get laid off at 45, CPF withdrawal can be effected at 55 and retirement age is now fixed at 62, AGEISM is BIG here, isn't it?
Irving Washington is an interesting writer. He wrote under the pseudonym of Dietrich Knickerbocker, a book detailing the "History of New York". He also wrote "Rip Van Winkle". Interesting character, a bloke who woke up 20 years later. Kinda like "Sleeping Beauty", although in a much longer time frame.
This book is important to me if I plan migration. I want to know who went where and what happened thereafter. The Dutch , they are not Danes just so you are not mistaken, swamped New York. That is how New Yorkers are known as Knickerbockers. See how New York turns out and we will all have to decide.
Ok, so I am not writing as well to catch up with the times. Nobody writes "Suddenly someone knocked on my door" anymore. It should read "....someone rang my doorbell". If we have a "childless couple" and I am its anti-thesis, then what do you call moi? Childful coupleless? By the way I don't mean "single" as in being alone, I do envision a "other half" just not in the stereo-mode. Get it?
Yes, yes oh yes! I would love being a public prosecutor! All the prosecutees would be my ex-employers , their families and henchmen. I would love to see them grilled in the hotseat for all the vile acts they committed.
"King Kong" is making a comeback, with a new-look of course. I hope that film will be a techno, laser-lights-ridden action one. And "The Chronicles of Narnia" sounds like our Hokkien-expletive "Nar Hia", doesn't it?
Enough for one day. It is "Back to Gaya".
Saturday, December 10, 2005
Logomachy
This is precisely the kind of education I would have envisaged for ourselves. That communication steers clear of illogic and bad diction as far as possible but we are all forgiven for mistakes we make from time to time. If not, we perpetuate myths, factoids, half truths and warped thinking.
My advocacy for a "practical" oriented approach to education has borne fruit in my illustration of the mathematical exercise at a junk-food joint. This is but one instance. As I have said all along, it takes experience to jolt one to practicalities or impracticalities, things we have learned in academe.
Here are more examples which I have painstakingly taxonomised them where applicable:
Political
A fascism is a philosphy or system of government that exercises dictatorship typically merging state and business leadership, together with a belligerent nationalistic ideology.
Governments do run on a system of the judiciary, legislature (or legislative assembly) and executive. Of course there are exceptions. I am not sure however if the exception is the rule or the reversionary is true. And if the exception is the rule, then the rule is an exception. Right?
The legislature is called by many names in different countries. It can be unicameral or bicameral.
In Germany, it is the Bundesrat (Ha! Rats) and the Bundestag. In Sweden it is the Riksdag. No, no, Japan's Diet doesn't mean a nationally prescribed menu for its citizens and see how punctuation is important here and the Congress in the United States of America and the Philippines is bicameral, the House of Representatives (lower) and Senate (upper).
Bicameral means two chambers , with the readings of bills (usually with amendments) before legislation, passing through both as a sort of check and balance and possibly even overule.
Britain's is the Westminster Parliament, as are most Commonwealth countries, bicameral with its House of Lords and House of Commons (Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha in the case of India). Each country would have its own vernacular translation.
China has its unicameral National People's Congress.
Sex
Well, hang me and slice my balls if the next entry immediately after politics happens to be sex. If I am in a congress with Danny, it may not be what you think it is.
Hmmmm. Come to think of it, all the congresses in politics certainly add up, don't they? Think world politicians on the international stage leaving office in a huff and puff because of the hush-hush they weren't able to hush up.
Misnomer
Catgut isn't surgical sutures made from the guts of cats but the dried intestines of other animals.
Biology
A fluke zoologically can be a type of worm or flatfish, vernacularly a happenstance or structurally the barbed triangular end of an implement like an arrow or harpoon.
A foreign person would, on our indigenous terms, be a non-Singapore citizen. That puts long term residents right along with our short-term working residents.
Humanities
Somehow most people associate philosophy with the system of values we live life by. Fortunately it also means critique and analysis of fundamental beliefs (which Socrates himself has dissertated) as they come to be conceptualised and formulated. It is also natural philosophy which investigated natural phenomena and its systemisation in theory and experiment. Yes, it concerns logos, pathos and ethos.
Astronomy is natural philosophy. And superpowers who are able to launch satellites and embark on stellar travel usually have astronomy and cosmology as subjects of study in their institutions of higher learning.
Mathematics
Permutation will be an ordered arrangement while combination isn't
So in my previous post, this corrigenda follows:
Permutation1: $W (A) = $X (B) + $Y (C) + $Z (D)
Permuation 2: $W (A) = $Y (C) + $Z (D) + $X (B)
Combination: $W(A) <= $Y (C) + $Z (D) + $X (B)
Mythology
The Gordian knot has it that King Gordius of Phrygia tied an intricate knot until Alexander the Great came along and cut it with a sword when he heard an oracle promising the winner the prize of ruling Asia.
The word "nemesis" has its origin in Greek mythology too. As do a host of other words.
I have only this last thing to say: LONG LIVE THE KING! QUEEN! EMPEROR! EMPRESS! PRESIDENT! CHANCELLOR! PRIME MINISTER! PREMIER! Whatever.
My advocacy for a "practical" oriented approach to education has borne fruit in my illustration of the mathematical exercise at a junk-food joint. This is but one instance. As I have said all along, it takes experience to jolt one to practicalities or impracticalities, things we have learned in academe.
Here are more examples which I have painstakingly taxonomised them where applicable:
Political
A fascism is a philosphy or system of government that exercises dictatorship typically merging state and business leadership, together with a belligerent nationalistic ideology.
Governments do run on a system of the judiciary, legislature (or legislative assembly) and executive. Of course there are exceptions. I am not sure however if the exception is the rule or the reversionary is true. And if the exception is the rule, then the rule is an exception. Right?
The legislature is called by many names in different countries. It can be unicameral or bicameral.
In Germany, it is the Bundesrat (Ha! Rats) and the Bundestag. In Sweden it is the Riksdag. No, no, Japan's Diet doesn't mean a nationally prescribed menu for its citizens and see how punctuation is important here and the Congress in the United States of America and the Philippines is bicameral, the House of Representatives (lower) and Senate (upper).
Bicameral means two chambers , with the readings of bills (usually with amendments) before legislation, passing through both as a sort of check and balance and possibly even overule.
Britain's is the Westminster Parliament, as are most Commonwealth countries, bicameral with its House of Lords and House of Commons (Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha in the case of India). Each country would have its own vernacular translation.
China has its unicameral National People's Congress.
Sex
Well, hang me and slice my balls if the next entry immediately after politics happens to be sex. If I am in a congress with Danny, it may not be what you think it is.
Hmmmm. Come to think of it, all the congresses in politics certainly add up, don't they? Think world politicians on the international stage leaving office in a huff and puff because of the hush-hush they weren't able to hush up.
Misnomer
Catgut isn't surgical sutures made from the guts of cats but the dried intestines of other animals.
Biology
A fluke zoologically can be a type of worm or flatfish, vernacularly a happenstance or structurally the barbed triangular end of an implement like an arrow or harpoon.
A foreign person would, on our indigenous terms, be a non-Singapore citizen. That puts long term residents right along with our short-term working residents.
Humanities
Somehow most people associate philosophy with the system of values we live life by. Fortunately it also means critique and analysis of fundamental beliefs (which Socrates himself has dissertated) as they come to be conceptualised and formulated. It is also natural philosophy which investigated natural phenomena and its systemisation in theory and experiment. Yes, it concerns logos, pathos and ethos.
Astronomy is natural philosophy. And superpowers who are able to launch satellites and embark on stellar travel usually have astronomy and cosmology as subjects of study in their institutions of higher learning.
Mathematics
Permutation will be an ordered arrangement while combination isn't
So in my previous post, this corrigenda follows:
Permutation1: $W (A) = $X (B) + $Y (C) + $Z (D)
Permuation 2: $W (A) = $Y (C) + $Z (D) + $X (B)
Combination: $W(A) <= $Y (C) + $Z (D) + $X (B)
Mythology
The Gordian knot has it that King Gordius of Phrygia tied an intricate knot until Alexander the Great came along and cut it with a sword when he heard an oracle promising the winner the prize of ruling Asia.
The word "nemesis" has its origin in Greek mythology too. As do a host of other words.
I have only this last thing to say: LONG LIVE THE KING! QUEEN! EMPEROR! EMPRESS! PRESIDENT! CHANCELLOR! PRIME MINISTER! PREMIER! Whatever.
Friday, December 09, 2005
Bloglets (Blogs Within A Blog), Bloggists, Bloggicide And Blogonymous
More nubs for my blog, thoughts that just came and went.
When I ride the train up north, I am enraptured with the blue, crystal clear, shimmering Sungei Sembawang snaking its course along the blocks of flats fronting it. But when I walk over to Sungei Whompoa, I am greeted with the stench of filth and the sight of murky, dirtied waters. What a world apart! I certainly hope something would be done and waterfront living would be made habitable once more.
Madonna has cut her most recent album "Confessions of a Dance Floor" and one track is entitled "Hung Up". In this song, she gyrates and grooves like she always did in her earlier albums, only sexier and more provocatively, and we have to hand it to her as she is already a mother. However I will only go so far as to admire her brazen performances, outlandish costumes, nifty dance-steps and unforgettable songs.
I found myself raising my voice the other day at the community librarian when I tried explaining why I should not be fined for a book the library apparently never received. I had returned three books some weeks ago , two of which were a few days overdue, via the bookdrop but the last title hadn't been registered as the sensor did not light up. I was indignant at the hefty fine imposed and it wasn't my fault if I had dropped the book into the bin and thereafter it got lost in transit.
This thought just occurred to me. If we have cosmetically and physically altered folks turning into their idolised pop stars, wouldn't it be a very sad day for mankind indeed if we no longer have the diversity of looks and appearances that make homo sapiens unique? Imagine every which way you turn and it is a Jennifer Lopez or a Angelina Joline. No more Gigi Leungs, Sammi Chengs and Stephanie Suns (oopsy whoops, did I just let slip a Freudian?) . Dolly the sheep would be proud but not geneticists.
Danny's visit set me thinking. I had to sift through the two presumed disparate issues of private and public spheres of life.
As a visitor or a tenant of a private property (thus private sphere), I would say you have to observe the binding covenant as you are entering the private inner sanctum of the owner. Thus first hand smoking which induces second hand passive smokers are strictly proscribed.
Extend this analogy to visitors to countries and you pretty much get the big picture.
Whatever transpires in private is private as long as it does not encroach onto the public sphere and thus disturbs others. There is then this intersection of the two spheres and arbitrage would come on if never the two shall reconcile.
In the public sphere which is normally common property, we are under obligatory obligations to observe good etiquette and civility. The jury is still out on the blogosphere, especially since most blog entries are private, unless the bloggers had actively publicised their existence.
Usually there is an arbiter for the resolution of common, thus public, property disputes. In any case, the arbiters may even be the agents for due action or enforcement through its third-party outsourcing arrangements or of its own as a regulatory aribtrator .
Do you notice how simple acts like visiting a junk-food joint becomes an exercise in advantageous mathematics? You have to decide between buying a bundled meal A at price $W versus an alacarte menu of B at price $X, C at price $Y and D at price $Z.
So if we compute this algebraically, we have three possible permutations ( most unfortunate that I have to lay out the equations in threes as my keyboard does not permit a combined symbolic sign of two):
producer(left) consumer(right)
(1) $W(A) < $X (B) + $Y (C) + $Z (D)
(2) $W(A) = $ X (B) + $Y (C) + $Z (D)
(3) $ W(A) > $X (B) + $Y (C) + $Z (D)
Only algebraic equations (2) and (3) would confer Adam Smith's economic wealth status on the capitalists in a laissez-faire economy, looking in from the consumer's viewpoint as opposed to the producer's.
And note: All prices quoted in Singapore currency at prevailing rates and menu prices correct at the time of publication @ 2300Hrs, Friday, 9th December 2005.
Be careful that you punctuate your sentences and words correctly. If I had said something like "Catholics aren't that catholic in their religious views, are they?" and "The KnickerBockers wear knickerbockers to bed", you must certainly pay heed to the capitalised letters in either word.
While I had previously mentioned that the "Teen Confidential" column is a misnomer, I am not advocating that it be taken off the air. It should continue if only for a good laugh or two, albeit with a name change to "Teen Confidante or Confidant" should there be a switch in the resident counsellor whose chromosal make-up is XY as against its former XX gender.
The full name for the Queen Consort to King Henry II of France is Catherine de Medici who invented the corset which must have riled quantitatively challenged women of her times. It was an under-bodice cut to befit the social class, wealth and power of the era. This stifling and asphxiatic contraption must have been as good an instrument of torture as any. It resembles the softer, cotton fabric , oft floral-designed, string strapped ,under-bodice Chinese women love wearing in imperial times.
Holy Onion Rings! She also plotted the massacre of Protestants on St Bartholemew's day, 1572. Women! How diabolically devious some can be!
It never ceased to amuse me to see how humans have sought to devise innumerable ways to entertain themselves. Imagine paying to watch other people dance, sing, act, box, kick a ball or swing a bat. Or at the amusement arcade. Games players now strum guitars and beat drums in addition to the conventional race-driving, gun shooting or sword wielding. How did our Stone-Age ancestors pass their time then? They drew, sang and certainly hunting was in itself a preoccupation that took up most of their time.
Get real and in life, we have ageists, sexists, racists and bloggists. These are people who are dead set against age, sex, race and blogs. If any of our blogs ever get shut down , hacked into or scribbled with cutting remarks, we know we have a bloggist on our hands. Just as we have parricide, suicide, homicide and regicide. Not forgetting infanticide and bloggicide. Eg: Dwayne, you are committing bloggicide just by torturing those poor living creatures of God and screening them on your blog. It will die a slow but sure death.
If greedy and avaricious are synonymous, light versus dark are antonymous, boy and buoy are homonymous, beauteous and beautiful are paronymous, then surely blog and weblog are blogonymous.
When I ride the train up north, I am enraptured with the blue, crystal clear, shimmering Sungei Sembawang snaking its course along the blocks of flats fronting it. But when I walk over to Sungei Whompoa, I am greeted with the stench of filth and the sight of murky, dirtied waters. What a world apart! I certainly hope something would be done and waterfront living would be made habitable once more.
Madonna has cut her most recent album "Confessions of a Dance Floor" and one track is entitled "Hung Up". In this song, she gyrates and grooves like she always did in her earlier albums, only sexier and more provocatively, and we have to hand it to her as she is already a mother. However I will only go so far as to admire her brazen performances, outlandish costumes, nifty dance-steps and unforgettable songs.
I found myself raising my voice the other day at the community librarian when I tried explaining why I should not be fined for a book the library apparently never received. I had returned three books some weeks ago , two of which were a few days overdue, via the bookdrop but the last title hadn't been registered as the sensor did not light up. I was indignant at the hefty fine imposed and it wasn't my fault if I had dropped the book into the bin and thereafter it got lost in transit.
This thought just occurred to me. If we have cosmetically and physically altered folks turning into their idolised pop stars, wouldn't it be a very sad day for mankind indeed if we no longer have the diversity of looks and appearances that make homo sapiens unique? Imagine every which way you turn and it is a Jennifer Lopez or a Angelina Joline. No more Gigi Leungs, Sammi Chengs and Stephanie Suns (oopsy whoops, did I just let slip a Freudian?) . Dolly the sheep would be proud but not geneticists.
Danny's visit set me thinking. I had to sift through the two presumed disparate issues of private and public spheres of life.
As a visitor or a tenant of a private property (thus private sphere), I would say you have to observe the binding covenant as you are entering the private inner sanctum of the owner. Thus first hand smoking which induces second hand passive smokers are strictly proscribed.
Extend this analogy to visitors to countries and you pretty much get the big picture.
Whatever transpires in private is private as long as it does not encroach onto the public sphere and thus disturbs others. There is then this intersection of the two spheres and arbitrage would come on if never the two shall reconcile.
In the public sphere which is normally common property, we are under obligatory obligations to observe good etiquette and civility. The jury is still out on the blogosphere, especially since most blog entries are private, unless the bloggers had actively publicised their existence.
Usually there is an arbiter for the resolution of common, thus public, property disputes. In any case, the arbiters may even be the agents for due action or enforcement through its third-party outsourcing arrangements or of its own as a regulatory aribtrator .
Do you notice how simple acts like visiting a junk-food joint becomes an exercise in advantageous mathematics? You have to decide between buying a bundled meal A at price $W versus an alacarte menu of B at price $X, C at price $Y and D at price $Z.
So if we compute this algebraically, we have three possible permutations ( most unfortunate that I have to lay out the equations in threes as my keyboard does not permit a combined symbolic sign of two):
producer(left) consumer(right)
(1) $W(A) < $X (B) + $Y (C) + $Z (D)
(2) $W(A) = $ X (B) + $Y (C) + $Z (D)
(3) $ W(A) > $X (B) + $Y (C) + $Z (D)
Only algebraic equations (2) and (3) would confer Adam Smith's economic wealth status on the capitalists in a laissez-faire economy, looking in from the consumer's viewpoint as opposed to the producer's.
And note: All prices quoted in Singapore currency at prevailing rates and menu prices correct at the time of publication @ 2300Hrs, Friday, 9th December 2005.
Be careful that you punctuate your sentences and words correctly. If I had said something like "Catholics aren't that catholic in their religious views, are they?" and "The KnickerBockers wear knickerbockers to bed", you must certainly pay heed to the capitalised letters in either word.
While I had previously mentioned that the "Teen Confidential" column is a misnomer, I am not advocating that it be taken off the air. It should continue if only for a good laugh or two, albeit with a name change to "Teen Confidante or Confidant" should there be a switch in the resident counsellor whose chromosal make-up is XY as against its former XX gender.
The full name for the Queen Consort to King Henry II of France is Catherine de Medici who invented the corset which must have riled quantitatively challenged women of her times. It was an under-bodice cut to befit the social class, wealth and power of the era. This stifling and asphxiatic contraption must have been as good an instrument of torture as any. It resembles the softer, cotton fabric , oft floral-designed, string strapped ,under-bodice Chinese women love wearing in imperial times.
Holy Onion Rings! She also plotted the massacre of Protestants on St Bartholemew's day, 1572. Women! How diabolically devious some can be!
It never ceased to amuse me to see how humans have sought to devise innumerable ways to entertain themselves. Imagine paying to watch other people dance, sing, act, box, kick a ball or swing a bat. Or at the amusement arcade. Games players now strum guitars and beat drums in addition to the conventional race-driving, gun shooting or sword wielding. How did our Stone-Age ancestors pass their time then? They drew, sang and certainly hunting was in itself a preoccupation that took up most of their time.
Get real and in life, we have ageists, sexists, racists and bloggists. These are people who are dead set against age, sex, race and blogs. If any of our blogs ever get shut down , hacked into or scribbled with cutting remarks, we know we have a bloggist on our hands. Just as we have parricide, suicide, homicide and regicide. Not forgetting infanticide and bloggicide. Eg: Dwayne, you are committing bloggicide just by torturing those poor living creatures of God and screening them on your blog. It will die a slow but sure death.
If greedy and avaricious are synonymous, light versus dark are antonymous, boy and buoy are homonymous, beauteous and beautiful are paronymous, then surely blog and weblog are blogonymous.
Alter-Egos
At one point in my mundane existentialism, I actually wanted to visit our interior authorities armed with either a deed poll or religious certificate, to change into my alter-ego - aka Philip James Bond 007. If my matinee idol, Takeshi Kaneshiro, could, and he was once upon a time Anikin Jin, why couldn't I?
I imagined myself as the suave and swashbuckling debonair engulfed by a web of deceit, espionage, sex, CDRWs , DVDs, N90 camphones and lies. I would be surrounded by a troop of hunky dories from professions unthinkably linked to the money-laundered world of under-table, less than above-board scams - the stunningly visual international fashion vista, the high-flying corporate raider, the filibustering politician and the Mafia Boss.
We would have sex in the woody reserve, in the heat of the Swedish hotbaths, up in the air in the comfort of the pilot's cabin, on the carseat at a drive-in, crouched on the window ledge of my apartment and doggy-style in the dog's kennel.
I would perforce be hunting down clues and criminals with cues from my bevy of hunks. They would be damsels in distress or Templar Knights at various junctures of our adventurous and heroic exploits.
But one running defining trait would be that they would all end up in bed with me and we would, at some point, walk off into the sun-set, arm in arm or hand on crotch, fully clothed, topless, bottomless or naturistic.
It isn't like I am doing a RL Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. We are afterall "masks in disguise", living life on the life's dramatic stage we call "humankind".
It crosses my mind sometimes how I would have turned out being a prosecutor for crimes against the state. The following is an imaginary scenario where I am furiously grilling a defendant for his part in a major corporate scam.
Public Prosecutor: "You left the books to your second-in-command when you are the John Hancock of the company, didn't you?"
Corporate Fraud CEO: " Well, that in no way falls within my ambit of corporate due dilligence ..."
Public Prosecutor: "Just answer the question Mr Guilty-As-Hell-Defendant, did you or did you not leave the books to cook to your acolyte after explicit instructions?"
Corporate Fraud CEO: "Well but...but.... I..I....I......"
Public Prosecutor: " No buts Mr Guilty-As-Hell-Defendant. That's it. By stammering your response, you are only confessing your guilt. Your Prosecuting, As-Good-As-Ensconced-On-The-Throne, Excellency, the Judge. I move that he be interned for life pending death row only to be lethally injected and fried . Case closed. And another sentence well executed"
Ah... the wonderful mind....see how it can imagine a life that never was...
I imagined myself as the suave and swashbuckling debonair engulfed by a web of deceit, espionage, sex, CDRWs , DVDs, N90 camphones and lies. I would be surrounded by a troop of hunky dories from professions unthinkably linked to the money-laundered world of under-table, less than above-board scams - the stunningly visual international fashion vista, the high-flying corporate raider, the filibustering politician and the Mafia Boss.
We would have sex in the woody reserve, in the heat of the Swedish hotbaths, up in the air in the comfort of the pilot's cabin, on the carseat at a drive-in, crouched on the window ledge of my apartment and doggy-style in the dog's kennel.
I would perforce be hunting down clues and criminals with cues from my bevy of hunks. They would be damsels in distress or Templar Knights at various junctures of our adventurous and heroic exploits.
But one running defining trait would be that they would all end up in bed with me and we would, at some point, walk off into the sun-set, arm in arm or hand on crotch, fully clothed, topless, bottomless or naturistic.
It isn't like I am doing a RL Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. We are afterall "masks in disguise", living life on the life's dramatic stage we call "humankind".
It crosses my mind sometimes how I would have turned out being a prosecutor for crimes against the state. The following is an imaginary scenario where I am furiously grilling a defendant for his part in a major corporate scam.
Public Prosecutor: "You left the books to your second-in-command when you are the John Hancock of the company, didn't you?"
Corporate Fraud CEO: " Well, that in no way falls within my ambit of corporate due dilligence ..."
Public Prosecutor: "Just answer the question Mr Guilty-As-Hell-Defendant, did you or did you not leave the books to cook to your acolyte after explicit instructions?"
Corporate Fraud CEO: "Well but...but.... I..I....I......"
Public Prosecutor: " No buts Mr Guilty-As-Hell-Defendant. That's it. By stammering your response, you are only confessing your guilt. Your Prosecuting, As-Good-As-Ensconced-On-The-Throne, Excellency, the Judge. I move that he be interned for life pending death row only to be lethally injected and fried . Case closed. And another sentence well executed"
Ah... the wonderful mind....see how it can imagine a life that never was...
Codicil - I Stand For This, This And This, Barring Everything Else
Pets Act (Chapter 1)
How could I enact a Pets Act (Chapter 1) in my previous post and promptly not have it up on my blog? Therefore, this is the codicil (you would notice the legal terms I have been bandying about recently - the Acts have gotten to me) and I shall be brachylogical about it.
It can be said in just one sentence: Love your pet, take good care of it as you would any living creature and be prepared to see it through its life span. Forget the 163 articles you thought I would draw up just as our drafters did with our Constitution.
A Republic
Interesting. I have mentioned the Constitution which will serve as a prelude to my discussion about a republic.
A republic is a constitutional form of government, especially a democratic and representative one, in which the head of state is not a monarch and supreme power is vested in the people or their elected representatives.
I shall now explain the terms in bold so you could put two and two together and infer your own logical conclusion.
A constitution is a system of fundamental laws and principles that prescribes the nature, functions and limits of a government or other institutions. You may do well to find out what other institutions the constitution covers.
A democracy is a government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives. Representatives would be people you elected and they would be typical instances of people whom you sought to represent your interests.
A monarchy would be a rule by a king, a queen , an emperor or any such heads of state usually by hereditary rights and for life.
Sex and Pornography
I am not sexually attracted to the opposite sex. All anatomical structures and the mere thought of their natural bio-rhythmic cycle turns me off. This is just me and I hope nobody gets offended in any way. I can only engage them meaningfully on a purely platonic and intellectual plane, if that is even feasibly possible with some.
I would fit the typology of the truly typified "single" parent, vernacularly speaking, loving , nurturing and caring for a male progeny but without the significant other. I would be the anti-thesis of the childless couple. I believe that kids complete the cycle of life with or without your other half. You can single handedly bring a kid up . That should dispel myths about my being self-centred and selfish .
I think the clamp-down on pornography had been increasingly relaxed to the point of non-existence today, more because one wisecrack suggested this to be the cause of Singapore's lack of fecundity. I am not convinced however if this had not backfired in equally unequivocal dramatic rises inthe divorce rate.
Conjugal partners have their sexual performance expectations artificially raised as soon as stuntmen and stuntwomen are hired as acrobats in the pornographic production. Once their significant other could not do the wheelbarrow, they have to look to other sources which could and this perhaps explain infidelity in general and some recently reported cases of uxoricides.
If this isn't comeuppance for a morally degraded population stock, then what is?
Everyone enjoys "exotic sex" but when mummification, fisting, autoerotic asphyxia, scatology, cock ball torture, electro and bestiality degrades, hurts, maims and kills, it can be a tad dangerous, no?
Advance Medical Directive
I fully endorse the directive as any extra-ordinary life-sustaining treatment provided as palliative care for a terminally ill patient, whose incurable condition predates imminent death anyway, in my opinion, is unnatural given that it only postpones the moment of death.
My only wish when that happens is that I will be surrounded by my loved ones and they will be the first to unplug any life-supporting system that is stuck into any part of my bodily orifice or anatomy.
But before I can even contemplate signing on the dotted line in the prescribed form and in the presence of a Medical Practitioner and another legal-age witness, both who must not be beneficiaries of any part of my estate, mentally sound and of their own free will,I have to find out who the hell is the Registrar whom which I will be lodging my directive with. Any idea anyone?
While I am at it, I mean interpreting the Acts, I must say I am particularly impressed with some constitution of our educational institutions. Especially the Board and Senate parts.
And I do love reading the captivating caption of our statutes where it is "brought to us by the AG's Chambers and the MFEO, MOF" which really reminds one of the many sponsored programs we see on television.
Blah, blah, blah.....Sheezzzz...the sheer poppycockiness of it all?
How could I enact a Pets Act (Chapter 1) in my previous post and promptly not have it up on my blog? Therefore, this is the codicil (you would notice the legal terms I have been bandying about recently - the Acts have gotten to me) and I shall be brachylogical about it.
It can be said in just one sentence: Love your pet, take good care of it as you would any living creature and be prepared to see it through its life span. Forget the 163 articles you thought I would draw up just as our drafters did with our Constitution.
A Republic
Interesting. I have mentioned the Constitution which will serve as a prelude to my discussion about a republic.
A republic is a constitutional form of government, especially a democratic and representative one, in which the head of state is not a monarch and supreme power is vested in the people or their elected representatives.
I shall now explain the terms in bold so you could put two and two together and infer your own logical conclusion.
A constitution is a system of fundamental laws and principles that prescribes the nature, functions and limits of a government or other institutions. You may do well to find out what other institutions the constitution covers.
A democracy is a government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives. Representatives would be people you elected and they would be typical instances of people whom you sought to represent your interests.
A monarchy would be a rule by a king, a queen , an emperor or any such heads of state usually by hereditary rights and for life.
Sex and Pornography
I am not sexually attracted to the opposite sex. All anatomical structures and the mere thought of their natural bio-rhythmic cycle turns me off. This is just me and I hope nobody gets offended in any way. I can only engage them meaningfully on a purely platonic and intellectual plane, if that is even feasibly possible with some.
I would fit the typology of the truly typified "single" parent, vernacularly speaking, loving , nurturing and caring for a male progeny but without the significant other. I would be the anti-thesis of the childless couple. I believe that kids complete the cycle of life with or without your other half. You can single handedly bring a kid up . That should dispel myths about my being self-centred and selfish .
I think the clamp-down on pornography had been increasingly relaxed to the point of non-existence today, more because one wisecrack suggested this to be the cause of Singapore's lack of fecundity. I am not convinced however if this had not backfired in equally unequivocal dramatic rises inthe divorce rate.
Conjugal partners have their sexual performance expectations artificially raised as soon as stuntmen and stuntwomen are hired as acrobats in the pornographic production. Once their significant other could not do the wheelbarrow, they have to look to other sources which could and this perhaps explain infidelity in general and some recently reported cases of uxoricides.
If this isn't comeuppance for a morally degraded population stock, then what is?
Everyone enjoys "exotic sex" but when mummification, fisting, autoerotic asphyxia, scatology, cock ball torture, electro and bestiality degrades, hurts, maims and kills, it can be a tad dangerous, no?
Advance Medical Directive
I fully endorse the directive as any extra-ordinary life-sustaining treatment provided as palliative care for a terminally ill patient, whose incurable condition predates imminent death anyway, in my opinion, is unnatural given that it only postpones the moment of death.
My only wish when that happens is that I will be surrounded by my loved ones and they will be the first to unplug any life-supporting system that is stuck into any part of my bodily orifice or anatomy.
But before I can even contemplate signing on the dotted line in the prescribed form and in the presence of a Medical Practitioner and another legal-age witness, both who must not be beneficiaries of any part of my estate, mentally sound and of their own free will,I have to find out who the hell is the Registrar whom which I will be lodging my directive with. Any idea anyone?
While I am at it, I mean interpreting the Acts, I must say I am particularly impressed with some constitution of our educational institutions. Especially the Board and Senate parts.
And I do love reading the captivating caption of our statutes where it is "brought to us by the AG's Chambers and the MFEO, MOF" which really reminds one of the many sponsored programs we see on television.
Blah, blah, blah.....Sheezzzz...the sheer poppycockiness of it all?
Thursday, December 08, 2005
Mutatis Mutandis
Life is short and we don't have all the time on our hands to do all the things we wished we could. Thus, excuse me, if for this blog, I give you the brass tacks of past events, sometimes mutatis mutandis.
(1) Let us not confuse ourselves semantically if some French decides to set up a brasserie. This in no way denotes a lingerie shop. And do note that legal briefs are not legalised undergarments, which the government has gazetted. St Joan of Arc was beatified and canonised. Mother Theresa, on the other hand, is awaiting canonisation, having been beatified. Confused? Good. And a canon is not a cannon. A caveat can be a legal term. The point is: take note of the semantical meanings of words in its biological, linguistic and even theological context.
(2) I forgot to mention that "Chicken Little" had so many themes going for it. It was about ostracism, about being different and not conforming. See how Chicken Little suffers for his beliefs when he digs his heels in.
It was about prejudices and discrimination when a Mother admonished her daughter against eye contact with Chicken Little. It was also about community ties where all the animals would rally to a community emergency at the knell ( hee hee as in death knell? Quite appropriately, don't you think?) of a tower bell.
It was about single parenting and family ties. It was about sticking by your friends through thick and thin. It was about helping out an "alien" (read this as being double entendred as well) lost and left behind in a foreign land. It was about traditional roles of women in upholding harmony in the family and maintaining healthy checks and balances and being a voice of reason , comfort and good counsel.
It was about dramatic licence in churning out bigger than life-size heroes by the media. It was about good sportsmanship, the underdog, the loser, a prayer and just how a one throw-of-the-dice-kind of opportunity turned failure into success.
"Chicken Little" was all these and more. Walt Disney has proven itself not only to be a movie producer for young minds alone but for adults of all ages. In fact, I think it is the savoury adult who can discern the subtle allegories in the film.
(3) I met up with someone and somehow cosmetic surgery figured in our conversation. I am all for simple works-in-progress like a little nip and tuck there, a double eyelid , a jab to smoothen out the wrinkles and a grind or zap to even out the pocks marking an acne-scarred face.
However, I draw the line at a total facial or bodily reconstruction involving gory major surgery like breast implantation. I guess that means epidermal ones as compared to the subterranean subcutaneous types that reach into your bones, innards, arteries and veins .
I was stunned too when he drew my attention to how uncanningly similar three female superstars looked. Either they shared a common ancestry through introgressive hybridisation or they had the same plastic surgeon.
(4) I would like to draw your attention to the Animals And Birds Act (Chapter 7) and my own legally drawn up Pets Act (Chapter 1). This gazette deals primarily with the exportation, transhipment, importation , the prevention of the spread of diseases and the possession of live stock.
Its moniker says all but its short interpretation of animals and fish had a more far-reaching logomachy than just mammals (other than Man and such as dogs and cats ) which under its "fish" category includes crustacea, turtles and marine sponges while it dissertates that animals may include any living creature/s as prescribed for purposes of the Act.
Herein lies the catch. The ambiguity of the Act. The Special Provisions applying to dead animals and birds (other than dogs and cats) has it being directed by an authorised officer the appropriate means of disposal, usually by burning.
However The Prevention Of Cruelty To Animals articles (Sections 41 and 42) define "animals" unambiguously and spells out in no uncertain terms what constitutes cruelty.
Since we are still in on the Acts, I might add that some ordinances have been repealed and re-enacted or amended. We often do not have the revised edition or the re-enactments ready on hand for examination. Case in point, The Multi-level Marketing And Pyramid-Selling (Prohibition) Act which had a Year 2000 Amendment Act now known as the Excluded Schemes and Arrangements Order.
Finally I am not a night owl or nocturnal creature and you will find me at my most dazed and most vulnerable there and then. So if any investigative State powers so decide, under any Acts of seizure, to pounce on me, please don't do it in the wee-hours of dawn or under the cloak of the dark night (as I hear they invariably do).
And knock. Don't just barge in. You won't want to find me naked or in my knickerbockers now, would you ?
P.S: Danny Boy, enjoyed that hot simmering salsa with you that night, this blog is specially written for you and your ilk.
(1) Let us not confuse ourselves semantically if some French decides to set up a brasserie. This in no way denotes a lingerie shop. And do note that legal briefs are not legalised undergarments, which the government has gazetted. St Joan of Arc was beatified and canonised. Mother Theresa, on the other hand, is awaiting canonisation, having been beatified. Confused? Good. And a canon is not a cannon. A caveat can be a legal term. The point is: take note of the semantical meanings of words in its biological, linguistic and even theological context.
(2) I forgot to mention that "Chicken Little" had so many themes going for it. It was about ostracism, about being different and not conforming. See how Chicken Little suffers for his beliefs when he digs his heels in.
It was about prejudices and discrimination when a Mother admonished her daughter against eye contact with Chicken Little. It was also about community ties where all the animals would rally to a community emergency at the knell ( hee hee as in death knell? Quite appropriately, don't you think?) of a tower bell.
It was about single parenting and family ties. It was about sticking by your friends through thick and thin. It was about helping out an "alien" (read this as being double entendred as well) lost and left behind in a foreign land. It was about traditional roles of women in upholding harmony in the family and maintaining healthy checks and balances and being a voice of reason , comfort and good counsel.
It was about dramatic licence in churning out bigger than life-size heroes by the media. It was about good sportsmanship, the underdog, the loser, a prayer and just how a one throw-of-the-dice-kind of opportunity turned failure into success.
"Chicken Little" was all these and more. Walt Disney has proven itself not only to be a movie producer for young minds alone but for adults of all ages. In fact, I think it is the savoury adult who can discern the subtle allegories in the film.
(3) I met up with someone and somehow cosmetic surgery figured in our conversation. I am all for simple works-in-progress like a little nip and tuck there, a double eyelid , a jab to smoothen out the wrinkles and a grind or zap to even out the pocks marking an acne-scarred face.
However, I draw the line at a total facial or bodily reconstruction involving gory major surgery like breast implantation. I guess that means epidermal ones as compared to the subterranean subcutaneous types that reach into your bones, innards, arteries and veins .
I was stunned too when he drew my attention to how uncanningly similar three female superstars looked. Either they shared a common ancestry through introgressive hybridisation or they had the same plastic surgeon.
(4) I would like to draw your attention to the Animals And Birds Act (Chapter 7) and my own legally drawn up Pets Act (Chapter 1). This gazette deals primarily with the exportation, transhipment, importation , the prevention of the spread of diseases and the possession of live stock.
Its moniker says all but its short interpretation of animals and fish had a more far-reaching logomachy than just mammals (other than Man and such as dogs and cats ) which under its "fish" category includes crustacea, turtles and marine sponges while it dissertates that animals may include any living creature/s as prescribed for purposes of the Act.
Herein lies the catch. The ambiguity of the Act. The Special Provisions applying to dead animals and birds (other than dogs and cats) has it being directed by an authorised officer the appropriate means of disposal, usually by burning.
However The Prevention Of Cruelty To Animals articles (Sections 41 and 42) define "animals" unambiguously and spells out in no uncertain terms what constitutes cruelty.
Since we are still in on the Acts, I might add that some ordinances have been repealed and re-enacted or amended. We often do not have the revised edition or the re-enactments ready on hand for examination. Case in point, The Multi-level Marketing And Pyramid-Selling (Prohibition) Act which had a Year 2000 Amendment Act now known as the Excluded Schemes and Arrangements Order.
Finally I am not a night owl or nocturnal creature and you will find me at my most dazed and most vulnerable there and then. So if any investigative State powers so decide, under any Acts of seizure, to pounce on me, please don't do it in the wee-hours of dawn or under the cloak of the dark night (as I hear they invariably do).
And knock. Don't just barge in. You won't want to find me naked or in my knickerbockers now, would you ?
P.S: Danny Boy, enjoyed that hot simmering salsa with you that night, this blog is specially written for you and your ilk.
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