I Have Had About Enough

Murder on my mind
If I ever get hooked up with a gal or a wimpy gay, I will probably have this on my mind.

Computing run-around
Yesterday was quite a day. First I had to contend with the odd opening hours of our community libraries (malls' open at 11am while stand-alone ones start at 10am).

In fact not only libraries but a slew of establishments like LAN shops for instance. I have to be in synch with their opening hours only because I need to catch up with the stock market trading hours to put in my buy-sell order like the last time when I was somehow actively punting stocks.

Outside the library, there was already a queue of people who has the same idea as moi has. That is to be the first to lay their hands on the newspapers . After me , there were people waiting around for the papers.

It has gotten to a point of playing musical chairs at some libraries where those who are finished with the papers chained to the reading table, get up, move to another spot to read another newspaper while a fellow library user moves in on the vacated seat. And another does the same for the seat so vacated and so on.

There were familiar faces - the old, the unemployed, the young, students, housewives and so on. If you seek the faces of the Singapore unemployed, go visit the libraries, the hawker centres and at parks. They are all there.

After that, I had to email a few human resource departments of schools and companies my job application and that included a school which needed a mailed application. I couldn't do this at the library, so I have to adjourn to a cyber-gaming centre further down the street to do this.

Now the school that required a posted application was a real headache. When I had edited some parts of my resume to fit the job description, I had to save it on my floppy. But I couldn't print this out here.

The last time I paid $0.80 for a print-out copy at a photocopying shop near the town centre. This time, I hunted down another which costs me only $0.50.

I walked to Singpost where I bought a pre-paid postage envelope for $0.30 to stuff my resume in, licked the sticky skirting along the envelope's edge to seal it in before dropping it off at the mailbox.

In all, it took me a good one and a half hour of legwork and helter skelter to complete my task.

Meet Nicholas - the face of the Integrated Program
I was kinda lethargic and needed to work out. There were cute school dudes as usual but I only struck up a conversation with one. He is from RI and I thought I detected a tone of gripe with the IP program he was on. He is in his final year and they don't award a certificate so that if he fails the 'A' levels, he has only a PSLE certification to fall back on. If he doesn't make it for the IP's internal examination, he transfers to the 'O' level program and repeats another year.

If you ask me, it sounds like whichever way you turn, you lose BIG TIME!

My stand on illness , medication and how I was a sickly child
This is my stand and mine alone. I will never see a doctor for anything except perhaps a persistent high fever that won't go away even with Panadol. I believe that the medication you take for one illness has about enough side effects to spawn another. I will chuck away all the antibiotics too.

I coughed and rang up high fevers too frequently when I was young. I was a sickly child I guess. I must like have enough codeine to be like the numbed Iraqi women sleepwalking the streets of their war-torn country.

The Society For Men And families
I am glad this organisation has come up. But its moniker is vague. I have many questions to ask like (1) does this include single men (2) what about gay single men (3) what age group are we talking about here (3) Is it just men's issues or do their families play a part, families like their parents and siblings or their spouses and children (4) what kinda issues are they focussing on - career, health, sex, marriage, singlehood, relationships (samesex included) etc, etc.

Two old men and a bagful of gripes (which include half a bag of mine)
I ran into two other older men who are in their sixties and seventies. One had about the same gripes as me about the kind of "foreign talent" we have imported into our shores.

His run-in with the law when he tries to do some hucking on the streets. Profit-driven employers who takes on cheap labor and who will ask you to do anything. The quality of life and if the current thinking has its way, we are all to live out our golden years just sitting and waiting for the GRIM REAPER to snatch our lives away, going by the budgeted monthy CPF payout (which is entirely based on the lives of ordinary folks like us and not the megabucks entrepreneur or civil servant) and food allowance.

The other old man I poured out all my woes, what with the place I am staying at now and the kinda meaningless existence I am living. Mind you, I am not even asking for a CEO's job but a humble , lousy, thankless and low-paying job teaching kids a bag of tricks I hope they can survive life on.

Just so to pay off my bills, eat a meal or two a day, save enough to scrimp together to buy my own humble place and plan for a frugal retirement when I can no longer work because I have no dependants to depend on. It seems this is too much to ask.

I am kinda stressed so much so that pimples have broken out (which I hadn't have for quite a while now) and my mouth ulcers are back. I am not smiling so much so you will excuse me if I should screw up my face more than I usually do.

Screw you too!