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Saturday, October 27, 2007

Look to the right sidebar...

Look carefully and see if there's anything different....

Holy cow! There is! How did I miss that before??? *You slap your forehead*

After all these weeks of non-blogging, and people complaining about dust on my blog, this is my little attempt at housekeeping. [sort of like using a dustbuster to clean a maisonette, but well, at least I tried]

The little dinky service is thanks to Twitter, and I've used it to send updates via handphone to my blog, so at least, even if I'm out, you'll [hopefully] get to hear about what I'm doing. This means you don't have to wait until I actually go home, switch on the laptop, wait for it to boot, IM with friends, read blogs, play Sudoku till I actually blog.... :P

So let's see how this works!
Some Monkey Business

You've gotta love a good concert, especially when the group is the Black Eyed Peas. :) :) :)

I caught the concert on Monday night at the Indoor Stadium, a concert for which I paid a pretty packet, but all so worth it.

Opening act Click Five was so-so-ok-la, but they did manage to get the crowd slightly rowed up, which meant that when the lights went out and the Peas came out, BANG! Everyone started to get really wild!

It's also good that the songs that the Peas sang that night were danceworthy tracks, thumping good songs that made you just have to stand up and shake your humps in your seats! Once it came to the especially popular ones, that was what everyone was doing!

Fergie and Will.I.Am also sang their respective hits, Glamourous, Fergielicious, Big Girls Don't Cry, and I Got It From My Mama. Good to see a group that respects each other's breakaway solo hits as well.

But one thing they did during the concert was really cool: They dimmed the lights, got everyone to take out their handphones and wave left to right in the dark. So we waved our phones [my phone was dead. I waved my IPod] to the beat while Will.I.Am sang "wave your phones, now Singapore... Wave your phones, now Singapore..." [Or something to that effect, I may have forgotten the actual words] The effect was like, well, NDP lightsticks but with better music. :P

And that's why I think I prefer to pay good money for good seats. After all, in concerts and theatres, it's not about getting a product, it's the experience of actually hearing them live that counts. And as long as I can afford to do so, I think I want to maximise that experience as much as I can.

That's good money well spent. :)

Sunday, October 21, 2007

A Veritable Library



It's amazing what happens when you haven't been blogging for a while, and then suddenly you find a lot to blog about.

After a week of staying away from the rugrats and the general mayhem of school, I finally found some of my old writing spark. So check out the new arrivals in my blog library:

Chick Lit


After all the worrying and agonising over money I've been doing lately, when I finally became liquid, it was as if the floodgates opened and drowned me and the town red.

I've especially been buying shoes, shoes, shoes, and I don't know why. This is me on a typical shopping trip:

Walk, walk, nice top, argh, not my size, don't have my size, it's unfair, why don't they ever have clothes in plus-sizes for us normal-sized women [excuse the occassional delusion] Aiya this one also very nice... XL? XL? Don't have! [cries] later on better not eat fast food for dinner again, this is getting depressing............

OMG that's a nice bag, but I already have so many bags, and very troublesome to keep changing bags and throwing my stuff from bag to bag, and the last time I did that I left home without Shiroi and nearly died of boredom on the bus... Oh this is cute too, but I told myself last time to wean off the bags already so forget it........

Hmm, this book looks good..... the plotline looks interesting enough, can try, and hey! There's the new book by that author I like so much! But only out in hardcover, quite ex leh, and I'm not sure if this is the kind of book I want to keep for long times..... oh well, there's always the library and if I decide I like the book I can always buy later, hopefully when Kino has a 20% off...

Wait! There's a shoe shop! And an adorable pair of heels in the front! Can go try... throw on ground, it's tight but it's only one size smaller than my usual, bigger one can fit, and can wear for work as well, so not as wasted.... do you have this in 40? You do? It fits? It looks good? Can I pay in NETS?

And there goes...... Now you can understand why I have a harder time resisting shoe shops........

The big problem with shoes, however, is that heels give you blisters. And blisters hurt like hell. So bad, that, in fact after buying and wearing out a new pair of shoes, I had to stop by the URS to buy another pair of shoes to wear to save my poor feet. And then I didn't just buy one, I bought two.

-_-!!!!!! Time to rein in the wallet ropes again......

Next library shelf....

Politics


The Gay issue has come up again, with the recent moves to repeal Section 377A. According to this law, homosexual acts or relationships are illegal and punishable by up to 2 years in jail.

Some other info: This is a law that has been decriminalised by the US, and just about every Asian country around us.

Some questions: What is the criminal element in homosexuality? What is the adverse effects on the citizens around a homosexual individual, like his family, his neighbours, his children? Are they temporary, or long lasting?

Next: Is homosexuality a condition that can be passed on from one individual to another? [I doubt so, actually. Cos if sexuality was a transmittable condition, then the hordes of heteros around the homos should have turned them straight a long time ago. If it was really possible to transmit homosexuality, then we're most likely to have a few gays, ie, mutations in the genetic flow, rather than increasing numbers]

Next burning questions: What is democracy to you? If 7 out of 10 citizens of sound and informed minds decides that they are opposed to homosexuality, then should not a democratic society follow the will of these 70% majority? Or is this a case of the tyranny of the majority, enforcing a law on an innocent minority, ala Pharaoh and the Jews?

Last stupid question: After the Jews left Egypt, who was left to build the temples?

For a more insightful [and coherent] view on this, check out the two websites, depending on your point of view:

Repeal 377A!

Keep 377A!


Note: The petitions they are handing out expires on OCt 21, 11:59pm. Cast your vote quickly.

Walk now to the next shelf:

Philosophy


I'm realising how important it is to have a life outside of work, love and, generally, everything. The one week break from the usual work suddenly made me mindful again of all the other things in my life that I wanted to do, and try.

Candle, Juls and I were sitting at Ichiban Boshi, discussing more wacky biz ideas over endless mugs of green tea. A thing you have to realise about Juls and I is that we are bad influences over each other. Once one gets into a weird idea, and the other likes it, we will bounce the idea from one to the other like a softball till it grows and turns into a basketball, and suddenly we're getting ideas of joining the NBA.

Candle steals the ball from us. What about cashflow? What about strategy? What about revenues for the first year in operation? Y'all can't just bounce this ball aimlessly around the court and expect to join the NBA.

A deft snatch from me again. Sometimes it's not about making it work. Sometimes it's about not being sure whether it works, but trying anyway for the heck of it. At times, it's time to get off the paper and actually do it.

I have friends who are too comfortable in their present situations to try anything that would threaten that safety position. Which makes me worried: What if that safety position was taken away from you, through forces not of your making? What would you do in such a situation?

What if you lost your job? What if you lost your savings? What if you lost your spouse?

I'm not sure what I would do in such situations. Probably cry a lot and clean Jul's kitchen and house for him till it was sparkling clean. But what was I going to do after that?

That's why I figured you always need outside stuff. You can't just base your life 7 days a week around one person or thing.

And sometimes, there's only so much you can do on paper. After a while, you just gotta start the game and trust in the strategy and your wits.

Maybe that's why I keep playing these games with Juls and others. When you play these games, you don't have to think about work or the rugrats or whatever. You only concentrate on the game in front of you, and you mentally switch gears in order to do so. In order to do so, you have to let go of the previous worries, and dismiss them as unimportant, or unessential to your game.

And then you start moving around on the court and start playing. And then whatever happens to the game is due to your own skills and play.

I'm not sure whether the basketball metaphor can be understood by everyone. I'm not sure myself that I understand the metaphor myself. But I think I'm figuring out what the impact is on my life.

All I gotta do is keep bouncing.