Lotsa stuff, lotsa stuff...

First up, from now on, all Funny Farm designs will be put up in my Side7 gallery. It's sorta an artists' website where all can post up their artwork, and garner praise/criticism without the rotten tomatoes. What I'll do is update you guys on new designs on my blog, and you can click on the link to see the designs. My apologies, but I need to clear out the rest of my photobucket album before I can use it again, and I'm still not sure what to chuck and what not... hee... And at least u guys can see some other illustrations I might be dumping in there from time to time...

Second down, check out this livejournal entry. Geesh! And they used to call Singapore a dictatorship? Some land of the free..... this stinks of Orwell all over...

Third left, I had a pretty eventful day yesterday, being All-Saints' Day, I did the following:

[Some entries are real long, so they're in separate entries. Just click on what you want to read instead of scrolling down all the way]

Went to the CCK cemetery and columbarium with parents

Went to Novena church for service, which was essentially an abridged version of the usual Catholic mass.

Went to Toys R Us and Sakae Sushi with Yenn.

That's it. :) Today I plan on snuggling up with the PC and doing more illustrations. *Yawn* Life of a Slacker...

Day of the Dead

Technically, that's today, All Souls' Day, but technically, most saints are dead too, so I guess it counts too......

This Monday morning saw me traipsing around ashes and graves as my parents had decided to go down to visit my long-departed [Christian] relatives. Me, being of Slackdom, opted for that as opposed to a comfortable morning in front of the PC.

One thing you realise, as you drive into the CCK area where all the cemeteries and the columbariums are, is that most death rituals are most likely done for the benefit of the living, than the dead.

Take for example, the Christian columbarium, the Gardens of Remembrance. The outside of the columbarium resembles, at first glance, a posh country club. Yes, a country club. The whole thing is very stylishly designed, with gardens, and nice polished granite walls. My dad even tells me that there's perpetual piped music inside.

I donno about others, but if I have to live the rest of my dead eternity listening to bad organ renditions of Christian hymns...... I think my ghost will just go insane and haunt the place with my baleful wails.

"Noooooo.......... More................. 'Holy holy'.....................Want..................... Linkin....................Park......................"

Then the priest will have to come and exorcise me to Hell.

And even the 'middle-class' columbarium, where my uncle and my grandmother's mother was looked like a Pasir Ris chalet. Only the inhabitants er, stay for life and the rent is paid by their relatives.

Some interesting bites from my dad:

1. The space, or 'flat' where my deceased uncle rests actually just contains a handful of soil. When I asked about it, he said:

"Your uncle was actually buried at a cemetery, and later on, the government decided to take back the land. They exhumed all the graves, but because your uncle had been dead for so long, [almost 40 years] there was nothing left of him, even the coffin he had been in. We figured that since we had been paying for the land all this while, and we'd continue to pay for the space [in the columbarium], we may as well take what we can of the dirt [from the graveyard plot] and put it in there.

If the government is going to make us pay for the dirt, then we might as well have the dirt and keep it!"

Er... ok...

2. Every person has a story to tell. Even those of the dead, if the living still remember them. Through my parents, I learned that my deceased uncle had a strong desire to become a Christian missionary at the age of 7. [Yikes! So how did his future niece turn out so paganistic?] I also learned that my distant aunt was a gentle, easy-going soul who loved to play the accordion, of all things. [there's that whatever-gene that came down to me]

All these long, distant people. And somehow, their lines went down and merged, and I was produced, in the far off future. How would their lives have affected mine? Was it because of my deceased uncle's Christian tendencies that my Taoist-almost-nonbelieving Dad got attracted to my Catholic Mum? [hence resulting in a lot of religious confusion in me...] My mother's line, consisting of a line of women who managed to all be different, in a yet quirky and easygoing way.

2 distinct family lines, boiling down to me and my brother.

Hmmm. Sometimes it's worth to go down to a place like this, simply for the stories.

Oh, and apparently, the nearby military camps make it a habit to conduct training sessions in the cemeteries, to encourage bravery in their troops. [how many people dare to spend the night in a cemetery, AWAKE and on the alert the whole night?] So if ever you are at the CCK cemeteries and you notice fleeting figures jumping from behind one gravestone to another, or blurry figures behind trees at the corner of your eyes.... Don't run screaming from the place. :)

Although when my dad told me that, the following scenario popped to mind:

It is the dead of night. The cemetery is empty and quiet, except for one man praying at his parents' graves.

[translated from Hokkien and muttering under his breath] "Please lah, please lah, all I need is the 4 numbers lah. Ah Lian is sick already, cannot work so hard, and children all in school leh."

The leaves rustle in the distance, and the wind blows them so that they brush past him. He shudders.

Suddenly, what was that??!! He thought he spotted a grey blur at the corner of his eye, but as he whipped his head, there was nothing. Don't think too much, don't think too much, he thinks to himself.

"I know lah, you two never like me to play the 4D, but now I really need the money lah!"

He hears a leaf-rustling sound from behind his parents' grave again. The joss sticks that he has offered to them are suddenly extinguished by a gust of wind. He gulps and continues his plea.

"Your son is begging you already! PLEASE LAH!" He abruptly shouts out the last 2 words, in sheer desperation and fear.

"ARGH! ARGH! WHO GOES THERE! FREEZE OR DIE!" Pte Lim couldn't stand it anymore and jumped out from the grave he was hiding behind. His large, fear-stricken eyes stare at the man and his shaky hands thrust the rifle at his face, the end of the rifle only inches away from his face.

*THUD* The man falls backwards, eyes wide open and body rigid, in a manner no one could doubt. Pte Lim stood there, shaking, and as he calmed down, wondered how the hell he was going to explain this to his sergeant......

Pregnant Fish?

Why the funny title? Reason coming later...

Possibly the best time to go to Toys' R' us is on a weekday afternoon. That's when parents are at work, [no adult shoppers] kids are at school, [no screaming kids and half-mangled toys on floor] and the store is practically empty. So what can 2 [supposedly] grown up 'young adults' do at a giant toys store?

1. You can go in there, manhandle the merchandise, oops, I meant play with the toys. Upon entering the store, we saw leftover Halloween merchandise, and immediately grabbed tridents with to jab each other in sensitive abdominal areas. Ya! Take that!

2. You can try on dumb costumes which you'd never do in the presence of 50 ogling customers, as Yenn did with the mouse hat.

3. You can gleefully open the package and see what the inside looks like. "What do you think the board game looks like inside?" "I donno." and proceeds to open the box, and take out the gameboard and play money. "Ooooh......"

4. You can ogle and drool over all the toys you want without feeling embarrassed or having kids give you strange looks.

"OMG IT'S A POOL TABLE!!! AND IT'S ONLY $40!!!"

"UNICRON FROM TRANSFORMERS!"

"LIMITED EDITION X-MEN UNO CARDS WITH COLLECTOR'S TIN!"

"AAAARRRRGGGHH!"

Ok, so most of the above statements came from me...... :p

Then Sakae Sushi for buffet lunch. [Students' Price too. HA! And you guys wonder why we didn't get regular jobs! :p] And can I state for the record that Yenn has a SICK FETISH for PREGNANT FISH. Yes, I'm talking about the shisamo sushi that Sakae has on its red plates. I mentioned that I once got turned off by the thought of eating shisamo because it was pregnant fish, and she kept PEEPING at every damn pregnant fish that went by her on the conveyor belt.

Me: "Will you stop that!" after the umpteenth time she has lifted the cover to peek at the egg sacs of the fish.

Yenn: "Wah, look at the eggs in it. Every time you eat it, you're killing countless lives!"

Me: "They're already dead! And everytime you do that, it's like you're lifting up the skirt of a pregnant woman to peek at her ovaries!"

She's sick lah, I tell you......