I Wanna Break Free

Freddy Mercury's Song: I Wanna Break Free
This is one of his songs. Queen's Freddy Mercury who died of Aids.

Richie Rich
Tim (Sidney or Sydney) must be a spoilt brat since Auntie mentioned she divorced when Tim was aged 21 and they were fabulously rich then. He sure talks like one spoilt sissified brat.

Another Richie Rich
I met up with one of the owners of a popular youth magazine here at a local hotel. He was trying to source business funding. Now that I have read some celebrity's blog, I realise many of her "friends" were from that magazine, either as writers or something.

This dude's behavior is so atrocious. Toward the last bit of our conversation, he walked out, expecting me to foot the bill he had eaten.

This magazine has all the sleazy stories on people's sex lives. GOD! What trashy reads!

Who Knows What You Want Better Other Than Your Ownself
I know what kinda job I wanna do. The aptitude I have and so on. It is not for others to decide, judge and then try to put you into a square mould when you are a round peg. Isn't this right?

Who knows yourself better than you yourself? Your own temperament, your true feelings and your true views. So you can't shove words into my mouth and make me seem like I am the one saying those things you think I thought. Or from the few behavioural actions and you decide that it is!

I can't be doing a job for life when I know it won't sustain me through and through. Not when I am not even remotely interested or keen? Why would I wanna flit in and out of jobs when I am flitting in and out of a home and permanently nomadic and uncertain where my next home will be?

Are The Foreigners Controlling The Upper Reaches Of Our Society
Whether in government or businesses . And I don't mean just foreigners but also the naturalised citizens. Or the permanently resident ones. They aren't really one of us now, are they?

Which must explain some of the really atrocious thinking behind many of the policies and human resource management in organisations.

Maybe they were just paying back some of the bad karma they had undergone themselves from us here. Maybe they don't mean us very well and they just wanna beat down all the locals as much as they can?

Singapore Is Not America, Singapore Is Singapore
I met two uncle cabbies the past few days and we chatted on a wide range of political issues. I told Uncle Cabby No 2 that Singapore can NEVER adopt the American model in freely allowing work passes foreigners here to work on our shores.

Many would leave after making their bundle. We are training and equipping them with the skills to start their own businesses back home or to build their home economies. If Malaysia wants to build a biotechnology industry, it just needs to head-hunt those who have worked here or abroad.

Singapore is not America with its 300 million people and its bumper crop of inventors and innovators like Microsoft. We can ill afford foreigners taking away with them the technology that has helped built our industries and then competing with us back in their homelands.

Uncle Cabby has misread the information when he thought that singles could purchase new flats under resale conditions and market prices when the tender for private agents to market the units is finalised. While this is true, these are unsold 5-room or larger flats which singles can ill-afford.

Foreign Land
While nosing around for information about a potential home in Jurong East/Jurong West (God, the East is a slum. Some parts of the West too. And you know how remote this place is), I randomly chanced upon two China national women who have made their homes here with their Singaporean husbands.

Both on different floors of the same block. What coincidence and luck to randomly run into them like this!

If I can bump into them so randomly, imagine how much more random the whole town must be with their numbers swelling our ranks in the far-flung and cheap slums of Singapore.

Uncle Cabby No 2 Told Me This While Some Time Ago Another Told Me This
NTUC Fairprice has closed its China branches, this is what I was told. Some time ago, another Uncle Cabby told me that Delgro Comfort has similarly closed its operations there.

They EARN, We PAY - Your Logic Is SO GOOD!!!!
Our work passes visitors come here and EARN money. After they amass a fortune, they usually leave. For the rest of us, meaning CITIZENS, from cradle to grave, we PAY AND PAY (gee - does this sound familiar to you? No prizes for a correct guess). And they are further accorded special privileges and subsidised fees?

Now there is talk of compulsory medical insurance. Gee whiz. When I worked for He-Ape, a whole year passed with me without being medically insured. And I am a citizen? What about housing? Aren't they hogging and competing with us there too?

Disused Community Clubs/Centres
The Bukit Panjang Community Club is in such an appalling state. Save for the lone Down Syndrome boy sitting outside its office reading the papers, the whole place is deserted.

Can't it be put up for use as a private school for operators like me?

Screw My Face!
As my mood swing hit me again these couple of days, no less aided by all the pathetic readings of illogic in policies, the people around me and the stress brought on by the looming prospect of moving again, I can hurl invectives against anyone.

You can't blame me if my every waking hour is filled with problems, unreasonable people and all kinds of idiocy happening in your life!

So just keep out of my way!

A Life Imprisonment
I have a funny feeling I am under 24-hour surveillance. Tim goes to work in the morning and comes back in the night. Auntie keeps watch in the daytime. Auntie goes to work in the night and comes home in the morning. Tim keeps watch in the night.

Perhaps like Auntie mentions, she fears robbery. I dont see so many things at home worthy to steal. What about the 2 China National work permit holders? Shouldn't she be in greater fear of that?

Like Hiro, I am confined to my room. At least he has a TV set. Auntie watches TV the whole time she is at home during the day. There are times, I just wanna stay in, relax, snooze a little, read or watch TV. Regular stuff people do at home. And have visitors.

And yes I am moving house partly because Tim (so is he Sydney and a security guard like Auntie says he is or is he Tim the hair-dresser like he said he is?) was smirking and formally introducing me to the two China tenants when they moved in. He didn't do that with Hiro and me. So what meanest this? What are his evil intentions?

Tim talks like a sissy little kid. Really, I cannot but help feel how naive and silly he is. Little GALL!

Interview Snub
They have shortlisted me. The same gang, one woman executive and a director, who refused me a space in their international hotel building (which is tied to MOE in some ways) to start a classroom on grounds of "conflict of interest" (how many other "conflict of interest" haven't we encountered already everywhere) and so on.

I didn't turn up for the scheduled interview. If they had said yes back then, I would have been in a better position. Now they want me to work for them? FUCK YOU!

Like the MOE HQ, there are so many rooms left empty and unused in this building. Just like the community centres and clubs.

I Am Not Training Any Teachers!
When my last interviewers mentioned training teachers for some of their programs, I baulked at the suggestion. I rather teach young fresh faces like the kids than some of the bitch and wimp arses in schools.

Greater M0rtal Fear
I am not as fearful of catching some STDs at the men's clubs as I am of catching some skin diseases. Some clubs are really in bad shape in terms of cleanliness and hygiene. Eczema maybe? Genital herpes and warts?

Anyway, the dudes flitting in and out of the dark rooms are just like the zombies. Mindless lonely souls. But can I blame them? Arent we who have made this place what it is?

Can we change it?

Unsettling Unsettlement
How can I take up a job when I am not settled on the homefront. Or even start an enterprise? I can't be living in the West and then holding down a job in the East, can I? Isn't that why foreigners live where they work? Like the hordes I see in the West? Even here in Bishan. Lots of Indians and Chinese China nationals.

What when my new place is ready? Wouldn't that disrupt my work? I don't even know where I can live as affordability is an issue and that depends on how much I will be getting.

Breaking Free Of A Mindset
I mean I know I am moulded of a mindset too and I can be dense at times. I realised I could have topped up my multi-media account at the library directly via one deduction from my ATM card rather than two via the ATM card and cashcard.

But this was because it can only be paid via the cashcard once upon a time before they offered multi-modal payment. Thus I was moulded.

Unto Thy World
All of us live in our own cocooned small world. Auntie. The PAP. The old. The young and especially Tim. I can imagine the local gossips he engages with his clients, mostly the heartlander aunties. Unfounded gossip and wrong information in most cases.

He thinks he knows everything and he is so smart.

You don't expect the hairdresser or the security guard to know what the world of the politican or surgeon is right?

Put-downs And Denying Me My Livelihood And You Dont Expect Me To Bite Back?
Every time I go round marketing my programs in schools, there were plenty of putdowns and idiotic questions coming from sanctimonious "educators". If they were any better, hey, I would clam up and shut up sooner. But they weren't.

Like the clone in the curriculum planning department. She asked for my "credentials". Well, I don't know hers but I do know her other clone's. It ain't exactly sterling!