All hail the wonderful, magnificent, and magnanimous folks at Photobucket, the only online photo provider that's apparently worked for me so far. Thank you thank you thank you mwah mwah mwah.

But if the pix didn't turn up, then may you be covered with all over boils.

Glad people like the cat. No I didn't adopt one. If I did my mom would scream the house down and throw me out the doorstep together with the cat. :p This little cutey's Hax, and he hangs around the colourful playground one block away from mine. Very friendly, very playful, and likes to rub himself on your toes. I wonder why. For a while I thought the cat got high on foot odour but i doubt that's the case...

To FWFC-ers and all others in need of fun, food and drinks, [alcoholic mainly, with a sprinkling of sugar and caffeine] the Jam will most likely be at my house next Sat, meeting ard 4something. [so sorry, got a student starting on sat so can't meet earlier] Drinks are on a BYO basis, [Bring Your Own] food will most likely be catered by various fast food establishments near my place, and I'm NOT peeling prawns this time. Bring your own scores too, and extra guitars, if u're not used to mine, or u think it's not enuff. We're prob. staying through dinner, and if anyone gets wasted by the drinks, my living room floor [and my toilet] is open to you.

All unemployed bummers or people in need of serious bumming invited to come.

Some pix:



It lifts you up sometimes, when you're walking to breakfast, and you're presenting with this wonderfully blue sky for your viewing pleasure alone. I just love the view in my estate in the morn. Although the weird pointed shadow on the ground makes it look as if it's about to be invaded by some giant KKK guy.



can u believe this is actually a bar? It's actually an alley way between shophouses at Emerald Hill, and these enterprising people threw some furniture there, put a mesh roof on top, and ta-dah, it's a pretty hip-looking bar. Wish I could visit that place once, without fear of the SPG label....



Chilli bottles at Cahaya. I was competing with Julian to see whether his super-duper-ex digital camera with 5px and 3x optical zoom and one of the hugest lens ever could compete with my barely 1px and 0x zoom camera phone to take the most art-farty looking picture. I like to think I won.

If this new server works and you all can see the 3 pix with no problem, it'll be a huge sigh of relief to me.......

Corpse in a Cart

and so started CSI tonight....

Tonight's ep was really... disturbing.. in a way. A model is found dead, in a shopping cart, with gaping holes in her face where the skin had been scraped out. Suspects include her model boss, a crazy ex-boyfriend, and a schizo sister.

What was the most disturbing part? When they found out at the end that the model had inflicted the injuries on herself.

Apparently the agency where she worked was an intense, high-stress environment. Too fat. Too flat. Can't fit into clothes, your fault. Eating too much. Her sister became a paranoid schizophrenic because of it. They both became hooked on coke, supplied by the boss of the model agency to keep his girls in line. Then she became bulimic anorexic. Eventually she died of a blood infection due to the, er, scraping n the constant puking. [something to that extent. sometimes I don't hear the words properly]

The really sad part is that she became so obsessed with her face in the end, she had to scrape out portions of it in order to make herself look beautiful. And that she couldn't see what a smashing beauty she really was. Contrast to hole-y face on stone cold white corpse on table of morgue. It makes you sick.

What also makes it even sicker is the ad ch5 showed after that ep, which was.... a commercial for Miss Singapore. What a bastardly piece of programme timing huh? Right after the ep when a model died because she hated her face so much, ch5 shows an advertisement for a local beauty contest. [in which the models range from pleasant, simple, man-like, and just plain bitchy looking] And then throughout the next programme, Buffy, adverts for slimming centres, facial cleansers and bust enhancements during the breaks.

Be the woman you always wanted to be.
Lose all your unsightly fat now.
Cleaner, clearer, oil-free skin.
For a shapelier bust.

Excuse the language, but this is just plain, clear fucking mad. The global obsession over how women should look is just bloody crazy enough, without all these advertisers, and slimming centres to screw our brains further. Be the envy of all the women - by having the bust of your dreams. What crock. What bull. Already we're [or rather I am] halfway neurotic about men, ticking bioclocks, menstruation and menopause for the older ones, and comes in all these people with dollar signs in their eyes, preying on our indecision and seeing our fears and worries as "opportunity".

I'm a business student. And I just hate the world of business at times like this. The one that judges people in terms of productivity, wages, numbers. The one that sees how well you fit into that $300 suit from zara. The one that looks down their noses at you because you don't wear makeup. The one that forces you to wear shoes that will trigger athritis later in life, but insists that that is the standard and that everyone has to go through this in order to "make it". The one that rewards all the young, slim chicks with smashing bods to screw for, and a face that'll sink a thousand ships, including one or two superstar virgos.

This is crazy. I'm so pissed now I barely know what to type. Who the hell came up with all these fucking rules and forced US to accept it??? Who the hell was the idiot who said that you had to be young, slim and screw-able in order to get the hot male bod who'd love you throughout life, and who doesn't care what you look, but thinks it wouldn't hurt if you try wearing a skirt once in while, just to look like a "girl".

Dammit I hate this world.

Internal Bleeding: I'm always up for a jam+drinks session.... even better if it's at my house. I don't have to lug the guitar somewhere and I don't have to worry about getting drunk on some street. Moreover the drinks are free. Mwahahaha..... :p Name the time and date pal....

So one fine Sunday morning, while I'm contentedly reading the newspapers in the living room, my dad yells out from the com room:

"OIE! Bored Slacker!!"

Oooooh boy........ daddy found the blog. First thing that crosses my mind are the recent entries in my blog: Chocolates, ice cream and sex. Graduate Unemployment Woes. Groan at the thought of having to justify and explain the stuff I've previously written for the entire Internet to see but never told my own father.

Then he goes on about Cats in Bishan, and eating roti prata on Sundays, and I frown: When the heck did I last write about eating roti prata for breakfast? For the life of me I couldn't remember. Then I ask him whether he went to the other website for my camera phone pix and he goes, "Ha? You have another website?"

Ok, so probably my dad saw a very, very outdated version of the blog. [hoping he did anyway] And he didn't even see the camera pix one. *Phew* I went into his profile, found the link in the history folder n deleted it. The only problem with that is that he may think it suspicious. Would he? He hardly goes online. Oh phish. Fortunately the stuff I write here isn't anything like what Belle Du Jour writes on hers. Then again, I'm not a London callgirl, so what do I have to worry about? That Daddy sees my fan raving about Agatha Christie? :)

BTW, my fren kry5t4l has come up with a blog for women to rave about love, relationships, singlehood, [contributor on that last topic, moi] and everything wonderfully rainbow-ish, good, sucky about it. Take a read at Scents N The Pretty. She's also looking for people interested in writing for it, so if u want, er, indicate on the tagboard? :p

Also tried tidying up the blog again. Hope this looks 'presentable' to u guys, meaning that you can read the words in a coherent fashion. Also that you can see the little cat pix up there. Pray to God this works.

This is most decidedly an ungodly hour. I just came back after a wonderful dinner at Kenny Rogers' courtesy of Tenderheart. Many thanks and roses to you. Also shared Black Angus mudpie with her too. If chocolate was sinful, then I'll gladly jump into the fire and brimstone.

Pix gone. Again. My poor pix. Daff: The method I'm using for this table is the percentage method, so that obviously is a crossout. I'm not sure abt the cm method 'cos that might mean that my table will be fixed no matter what browser you guys are using and might cause other viewing problems too.

I'm currently tweaking the code a whole damn lot to get the look I want. So this is gonna turn into a construction site for a while, sans concrete and yellow boots. Bear with me guys. I know it looks terrible right now.

That done, here is a Little Bad Poem dedicated to my trials with HTML:

I hate .jpegs.
I hate tables.
I hate javascript.
Bleah bleah urgh.

I did say it was a Little Bad Poem.

Onto blogging proper now....

Chocolates. Ice cream. Sex.

Just an example of the things women eat to reduce stress. I'm not sure about the sex part though, I just put it in the headlines to get your attention. *grin* But it will come up later in the blog.

Kry5t4l's blog [link on the right. check it out] has a little ditty this week about how girlfriends are the most important friends in your life you'll ever have. Now I produce scientific evidence to support this hypothesis. [ooo I sound all reseach-ey]

From Readers' Digest:
Shelley Taylor, a University of California, LA, psychology professor, [this is all to show you that this woman knows what she's talking about and ain't just bullshitting you] says that "Women have a potent stress-fighting system based partly on oxytocin, the 'cuddling hormone'"

Known for being produced in women during chidbirth and lactation and in both sexes during orgasm, [hence the sex part. Hey, does that mean sex will help us reduce stress too?], oxytocin has also been shown to boost bonding in rats, sheep and prairie voles. [what's a vole? why are we being compared to animals?]

Giving rats daily shots of oxytocin cuts blood pressure and the stress hormone cortisol [that's the idiot hormone screwing all of us up] while promoting wound healing and possibly, weight gain. [probably from the chocolates and ice cream]

Oestrogen increases oxytocin's effectiveness. To Taylor and others, this shows that women may naturally cope with stress not just by fighting or fleeing, but by finding comfort in friends too. Most intriguing is how... oxytocin may feed a kind of self-perpetuating loop of stress reduction.

So when stressed, forget the pills and the food. Call up your girlfriends, have a night out, and chill in each others' comfort and misery. Note one thing: The article makes no mention of male friends. :p

Hence women are better equipped to handle stress, because we reach for our girlfriends the minute stress hits? This may be more true than you think. Think: What do women do when they face stress? They SMS, they call, they meet their fellow girlfriends.

"My idiot boyfriend..."
"Dat damn bitch at work..."
"All guys are blocks..."
"They ran out of ice cream!"

Don't you think? When my frens have a shitty day at work, or a bad day with the BF, or a bloody hell of a time organizing a holiday across the European continent, I'll hear about it sooner or later. Whether through SMS, phone, email, ICQ, MSN, blog, or when we're really pissed, or bored, meeting up face to face. Or through the wonderfully effective grapevine within the group. I think the intelligence network within a group of women would put the CIA to shame. Then again, they're men. Go fig. It also shows why Bush never managed to get definite intelligence about Iraq's weaponry either. He's a man. He's genetically deficient in intelligence gathering. Ok, I'm digressing.... *ducks tomatoes*

I think part of what helps women to handle stress is the ability to share stress with her fellow women. Instinctly we have a need to pour out our sorrow, grief, joy to our frens, and instinctly we are made to receive that stress, share in it, and offer our own, sometimes unwarranted, opinions. Nothing wrong, bad, even particularly good about it, just the way good ol' Mother Nature [or God] made us.

Ditch the Valium. Ditch the chocolate. Ditch the ice cream. Gals, your best stress reliever is always there, free of charge, and only an SMS away.

Which triggers a question: Do guys handle stress the same way? Thru' male bonding? Or do they just drink themselves silly or something? Any male readers wanna comment? Or do I have any male readers at all?

A Multi-faceted Diamond...

Is my blog... because almost everyone sees different sides of the same thing. Bleah argh eek.

Overwhelming opinion is that the right column with the tagboard seems to be 2X the size of the left column. Damn. Totally the opposite of what I usually see on my screen. This is probably due to the HTML code I used, for tables. Someone more versed in HTML please give me an answer to this... Doshitte??? *hunts for her Idiot's Guide to HTML*

And all hail me, proponent of Graduate Issues. I can just see myself in Parliament...

"You con all these parents into thinking that the only way their children can have a future is to have a degree, and then you pick on them for trying to carve out that future for themselves? Shame on you, Mr Goh, shame on you!"

Right..... The only problem is that if I appeal to the grads for votes, seeing as how little a number we are compared to the entire Singaporean workforce, I don't think I'll ever make it as far to Parliament. Unless I'm standing on the lawn having my picture taken as a tourist. :p

Thankfully the rest of my life is sailing smoothly along. The online comics are still coming up, *grin* my real-life comics all came, and I'm on an Agatha Christie fever.

Blood, Gore, and the Little Grey Cells

There's a good reason they consider Agatha Christie one of the best selling mystery authors of all time. Because she's just so damn good! I've been reading her Hercule Poirot series, ["use the little grey cells, mon ami" "order and method!"] and by Jove, they're stunning! One yardstick by which I measure how good a book is is how much it pulls you into its world. i.e., a really good book should be able to make you oblivious to everything around you, because you're too absorbed in it.

Another measure could be the number of MRT stations by which you overshoot your stop, because you were too engrossed in reading the book... :p

Ah... murder, mystery, and mayhem. Brings me back to my childhood days.... When I first read Sherlock Holmes. [don't worry, my childhood wasn't that traumatic] How exciting it was to hear of the murder, and then follow eagerly on the trails of the detective as he sought out the villian, eventually roughly pulling off the mask of the suspect, and exposing his dirty, murderin' face for what is was. Of course, Sherlock Holmes was also a most polite, civilised Englishman. Despite a cocaine habit, he also played the violin and was well-versed in many subjects. [all pertaining to the art of murder, unfortunately. His knowledge of literature, for example, was described by Watson to be dismal]

Then in secondary school, I discovered the mangas Detective Conan and Kindaichi. Again, both fantastic murder comics. Conan being a young high-school detective, who was induced to swallow a mysterious drug by black-robed villians, and then turned into an 8 year old with the mind of a teenager. Don't ask. Sometimes it's best to just accept it as it is. In fact, this manga became so popular in Japan, that the town that the writer/artist, Gosho Aoyama, has declared itself the Town of Conan and there are statues and memorials to the young boy detective everywhere. The power of fame...

Kindaichi is also a high-school detective. No drugs, just the grandson of a famous detective in Japanese mystery literature. He goes around solving cases too, like Conan, but his cases tend to be longer, and usually involve a lot more blood and a lot more bodies. :p In fact, there is a pattern that runs throughout all of the Kindaichi comics:

1. Kindaichi fumbles into something, or joins something, for eg, a mystery club in school.
2. The first murder occurs. Kindaichi proclaims dramatically that "The Murderer is within our midst!"
3. Kindaichi goes about solving the crimes. Nanase, his childhood sweetheart, is usually put into danger.
4. Kindaichi, after coming across an important clue near the end of the story, says, "The riddles are all solved. I know who the murderer is!"
5. Kindaichi exposes the murderer in front of everyone. Sometimes the murderer takes his own life to avoid the shame of prison, sometimes he takes a hostage, most times he goes along quietly.

It's too bad that the Kindaichi comics have ended, but the authors have released a new title called Detective School Q, revolving around a famous Japanese Detective School, which teaches its students the art of crime detection! The main lead here is Q, [don't ask either, just accept it] who's a 10 year old boy [i tink he's ten anyway] and a prodigy at solving crimes, with a great sense of observation. It's just too bad, that, just like Kindaichi, his general knowledge is woefully poor.... sometimes not even knowing the most general of knowledge.

And now I come to Hercule Poirot... all I can say is masterful. Simply masterful. The crimes, the methods, the human psychology behind it all. In fact, Agatha Christie's main interest in all her mysteries seem to be the human psychology. The way a murderer thinks, and the way that influences the way he commits his murders. Of course, there is also plenty of physical evidence to back the psychology, but you will find that the way the criminal thinks is just as important to her. No wonder that her books are one of the world's best books, and only outsold by the Bible and something else, I forget what. :p

For people with too much time on their hands, [:p] and a good love of murder, I suggest The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie for a mystery novel with a wild twist like no other. If anyone has read this book before, don't reveal the ending!

goldfish's comment on the tagboard does raise an interesting question mark in my mind now: Just what does my blog look to you guys? On my house PC I see 2 columns, and the left column is 2X the width of the right column. Do you guys see that? Or do you see something different like what she does? Plus does anyone see the 3 cat pix on the right and the boredslacker one on the left? Are you reading my blog at all??

Grad Employment Woes

Anywayz the FWFC are unemployed once again, apart from the long-suffering Yenn. [Whom I nag at every week that she should quit, but she still labours on] The common reason amongst the different resignations, or unhappiness at work, seems to be "that damn bitch". I never hear any complaints about "that damn asshole" or "that damn dick". Hm, looks like women really can't work under women huh?

In a wider view, though, it is interesting to see how disgruntled [most likely dip holders or lower] others would take this as a cause against the "picky grad". Some common views include:

"You youngsters don't know the meaning of hardship, of perseverance!" ~ Thanks a lot, Daddy.
"Grads these days don't know the meaning of loyalty to the company." ~ Quet's boss.
"Grads like you so educated don't even know how to send fax meh?" ~ Friend of Quet's experience.

Let's face it, everyone has it in for the grads. We hate grads. Lousy, stuck-up pigs. Bring out the flaming pitchforks.

Well, excuse me all. Does hardship and perseverance mean that we should stay stuck in the same, lousy job until the day we die? Does it mean we should accept bitchy supervisors and unreasonable bosses all our life? Does that mean we should just meekly accept our lot in life and deal with it somehow? I thought the reason for our education was to give us something of an edge over all that. Face it, no one excepts a grad to take a clerical job, doing data entry and filing for $1K a month and if someone did so, it would be acceptable only as a temp job to something higher, or that you were just plain crazy.

Why does everyone have this thing against us? Well, firstly you have to blame some of our own stuck-up, stupid grads. These are the idiots that ask for a salary that's 2K above the current market rate, and all sorts of fancy-shmancy benefits thrown it with it. "Oh, and nothing less than a BMW." It's idiots like these that just spoil the market [and the rest of societal opinion] against the whole lot of us, and lead society to condemn us all as spoiled, money-grabbing apes. Next time you see a stupid grad like that, whack him/her in the head, and shout, "Don't be a godamned fool!" These are the idiots that deserve to be mopping floors in McDonald's, so that they don't think that hardship is having a salary less than $3K.

The other reason that everyone hates us stems partly from that, and partly from society's own envy and jealousy at us. We are the "privileged" class, the one that tasted the sweet wine that everyone else can't have and the orgies that come with it. [ok, maybe not the orgies] Remember all that "top 20%" crap that SML used to dish onto us in JC? Never mind that most of us didn't care that we were the "top 20%", the fact that we were intelligent, hardworking, and just plain lucky enough to get in didn't cut it with most Singaporeans. [oh, I'm blushing] They still seethe at what they don't have and they blame us, because we are the ones who have what they don't.

So anytime any grad expresses dissatisfaction with their work, people automatically think, "oh, they're too soft. They don't know what hardship is like". Screw you. Our parents slogged and pushed us into this, so that we could have a chance at a better life. What's wrong if we take that chance for our own? Won't it even more of a waste of their money, if we are stuck doing what they did all their lives? If we should be content with lower salary, lousy working hours and tons of work, then why study all the way here? Why not stop at PSLE and work at Mac's? Or in a factory?

*Sigh* One thing's for sure. Being a grad really gives you a perpsective over society that is different from everyone else's. In fact, the "streaming" starts as early as secondary school, when students are put into Express, Normal A and Tech, and Gifted. The separation of classes begins as early as that, and from there, the hierarchy of society is formed. It's sorta like the Indian hierarchial system, but a little more relaxed.

The levels remain, however, and they remain all throughout life. So essentially, we're dealing with a resentment that is over 10 years old! These guys started hating us from secondary school! How do you deal with that??

There are a few arguments:
On hardship: Do you except us to stay at the same lousy job all our lives just to show others how well we can experience hardship? Obviously not lah! Given the choice, [and if other jobs were available] many other people would also quit the very next day. We have other jobs available. Therefore we quit. It's not our fault if people like to hire us.

On company loyalty: Quoted from Quet: "The way you treat your staff, the way you pay them, you think anyone wants to be loyal to you? They're just sticking it out 'cos they don't know where else to go! I know where else I want to go, and it's not anywhere near here!"

On the fax: Quoted from Quet again: "If I was smart enough to use the fax, you'd be out of a job, so thank your lucky stars I'm that stupid."

At the end of it, it's your life. No one else should tell you what to do with it. Not parents. Not employees. Not bosses. Not the Government. It's up to you what you want to do with it.

Even if you want to be a full-time tuition teacher. :p

Ok, on a lighter note,

Bday Outing with Egg Squad

Never mind that merlin's bday is in Jan, and mine and Juls are in Feb. Due to Juls' totally fluid schedule, what was supposed to be a Feb 28 celebration finally happened in March.

So we met up one Fri night for dinner and dessert. Dinner was... a mucho cheapo affair at Burger King, seeing as how we couldn't decide where to eat, and I had coupons handy. :p The good thing was that it gave us a good reason to splurge on a really good dessert. Mwahahaha.... The whole squad looked good, though goldfish was a bit frazzled at her thesis. [Slog on, girl.]

And now for some shameless promotion. The mudpie at Black Angus [1 fullerton] is REALLY BLOODY GOOD!. Ok, first up, we ordered the Wild West Onion, heaven for onion lovers I tell you. Imagine one huge onion, opened up like a flower, and fried to crispy goodness and served with a special sauce. OOO mama mia! When you eat it it's crispy and crunchy and tastes divine...... though your breath will stink like mad after that, and you might end up releasing a lot of gas into the environment... but that's where the...

Mudpie comes in! A thick slab of ice cream cake, that comes with a cup of chocolate sauce which you pour over the entire cake! O la la! And the apple pie was good.... fresh apples in a pie, served with a scoop of ice cream. [food orgasm] We totally whacked the dessert while talking, it was bloody good!

Anyone up for Black Angus dessert one day? ;) It's that steak place at 1 Fullerton, but the desserts are $10 and below. 2 plates like the ones I mentioned are enough for 4 people sharing, so it's more worth it... heh heh heh...

I read the Death comic I got from the egg squad. Argh so bloody cute!!! Sandman stories are usually dark, grim and grimey, and this one was a manga-esque offering from Jill Thompson, same artist who did the cutesy big-eyed Sandman cartoons. Suddenly a lot of manga comic styles which I had never paid attention to became glaringly obvious when applied to a comic such as this. For eg, a scene where Edgar Allan Poe falls for Despair stunk of shy schoolgirl shoujo manga. Then there are the other manga references, such as the big-eyed characters, [Death is the archetypical 'silent cool guy'] and the sound effects and stuff. WoO! The effect is sort of like hearing Josh Groban sing a Linkin Park song. :p

And yes, my pix disappeared again.... I hope some of you can see them....

BTW thankfully they found all the guys who escaped to Tekong and also seem to have recovered the guns that they had on them. Phew! Fortunately I'm not as prophetic as I was afraid I was...

why is it everyone else can put pix on their blog without having them disappearing mysteriously one day but mine seems to be eternally plagued by this curse? if i ever find the wanton geek who's responsible for this, i'll stuff those .jpgs up his.... orifice. let's try this again and hope after a while the pix stay....

On a brighter note, Merlin sent me what our response should be to the baby crisis. Can someone send this to the sexually-deprived, chauvinistic old pig of a minister who said that giving birth was the patriotic duty of every citizen?

Cookies!

Sorry, not the confectionery kind.... Just a few bites of today's news.... the ones I liked anyway... :p

So... From the Straits Times, Mar 19:

Big hunt for robbers who fled to Tekong

Full ST article here

SAF personnel are now combing the island of Tekong, hunting down 3 armed robbers, who fled there from the nearby coast of Pengerang, Johor. Right now, they're focusing on the northern part of the island and they've got guardsmen, recon troops, Special Operations Command and Gurkhas, along with 12 search dogs.

Gee, that's a pretty huge party searching for 3 men.

Now comes the chips.

Firstly, I donno what the robbers were thinking when they decided to flee to Tekong of all places. [let's see, fear of capture, fear of death, fear of imprisonment... pretty much that] The conversation must have went like this:

[in Malay]
A: Ok, that veg stall owner was a bad idea, but hey!! We got RM8000 from the boat! Yahoo!
B: But now how?? Going into Singapore meh?
C: Better not ah! They cane people there one leh!
A: Eh, down there got island, got jungle some more, we can hide there first!
B: OK! Good idea!
C: Er, why got men hiding in the trees carrying guns ah?

So pretty much, they flee the Johor police force..... to end up on a Singaporean military camp where almost every man is armed. Granted the NS guys are probably untrained, but think about it. If you're scared shit, tired, and untrained, with a rifle in your hand, and the first thing you see jumping out of the forest is a guy with a gun pointing at your head...... [Argh!!! BANG! BANG! BANG!]

No wonder all NSmen were ordered to stay confined to barracks the whole time the search on the island was going on. Their nonchalance at the situation, however, belies the serious nature of it all. At the time the searchers were ploughing through the jungle and the rain, these guys were gleeful for having their road march cancelled and one battalion was having their battalion party as planned. Hello? We have armed brigands here? These are the defenders of my children?

Then the really BIG chocolate chips come up. If you read between the lines, you come up with the following chips:
1) The robbers are on a jungle island, with cash and jewellery.
2) They are believed to have fled to Tekong early yesterday morning.
3) The troops began searching at about 11am yesterday.

What does that tell you guys? C'mon, think about it!

Think hard!

Any clues?

None at all?

You're getting irritated at this?

Ok fine.
1) Cash and jewellery cannot be used in the jungle, and obviously not be pawned to the SAF on the island. Where is the next nearest place the robbers can use their loot, if the hunt for them in Johor is on?
2) + 3) The robbers fled there early yesterday morning, which could mean anywhere from 7 in the morning, to 11 when the search came on. Which means they could have had at least 4 hours to escape to somewhere else where they could use their loot.

Where is the next nearest place for them to cash in their loot? You got it..... Pulau Singapura itself......

These guys are now being chased hard, both in Johor and Tekong. Assuming I was one of them, it would seem to me that my next desperate course of action would be to make my way to Singapore somehow. I can't go back to Pengerang, because I'm being hunted there. I can't stay in Tekong, because the place is small, and crawling with armed personnel more armed than I am. If I had arrived in Tekong around 7-8am, that still gives me time to make my way to Singapore before they think to search for me in Tekong. And since Singapore is slightly bigger, if I move fast enough, I can maybe get into the island, hide in the crowd and then figure out my next move. And while I'm at it, hey, maybe I'll hock that nice gold necklace for some cash somewhere.

So, unless the robbers are more stupid or desperate than I think, the possibility of there being 3 scared, desperate armed men roaming the streets at this moment right now seems very, very real. Which, on the bright side, beats having bombs placed in messenger bags all along the MRT tracks.

Right now, not much is being mentioned about the robbers except for the article in the papers, so either there's no development on it, or they don' wan' us to panic about the prospect. [Argh! Shriek! Eek!] I'm just hoping that the thieves are either slower or more stupid than I gave them credit for, and that they find them fast, and not on the mainland. Gun violence in Singapore. Who'd've thunk?

Helping Tenderheart do some research for her thesis, and starting to remember what a total nightmare the whole process is. You log into the digital library, select a database, key in the stuff you're looking for and then......

The database unrolls a bunch of stuff in front of you that you never asked for, and you curse the blindly-thinking algorithms behind all this. Or worse, nothing comes out and you have to keep searching frantically trying every combination of words you can think of into the search engine.

*Sigh*

Anyway, to entertain you guys, [and to Candle, trying to brush up her English] here from the Back Page of 8 Days...

English Writing Rules to Drive You Mad

1. Never use a big word where a diminutive alternative would suffice.

2. Always avoid alliteration.

3. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.

4. Avoid cliches like the plague - They're old hat.

5. Don't use commas, that, are not, necessary.

6. Don not use a foreignn word when there is an adequate English quid pro quo

7. One should never generalise.

8. Be more or less specific.

9. Use youre spell checker to avoid mispalling and to catch typograhpical errers.

10. Avoid, poofread carefully to see if you any words out

11. Don't use abbreviations, etc.

12. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.

13. Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas.

14. Contractions aren't necessary.

15. Who needs rhetorical questions?

More in next week's 8Days....

Was just surfing through the Xanga website. Those not in the know, it's another bloggin server, out there for you to create cool blogs. [when i write it that day, 'bloggin' now looks like an adjective rather than a verb..]

So anyway, not a bad website. There are a bunch of features that Blogger doesn't have, like the ability to put background images on your blog and profile pictures of yourself. Coolz. Unfortunately the code doesn't seem as manipulat-able [is there such a word at all??] as the Blogger code. Somehow all the xanga sites look pretty much the same as one another. [sorry kry5t4l. :p] So either the HTML is not accessible to the public, or the owners of the sites I've seen have not tried anything with it. :p

And somehow you can only link to other xanga sites? You can't seem to put external links on your blog, like I did with this one. Once again, matter of coding.... The Code is the secret language, known only to the few who are willing to learn. Very Jedi, but since we're talking about computer code, it kinda fits. In a way. [right, release your inner geek]

However, the good thing about it would be since you can't manipulate the code, you have to rely on your own writing to keep your readers interested and coming back. [that is, unless, like in this case, your readers are your friends who don't wanna hurt your feelings by saying they didn't read your blog. :p] No flashy animation, [not that much anyway] no long list of Links To Websites I Like, and no pictures. [none of the blogging servers allow picture upload anyway, unless you pay for it] Just good, ole' simple writing.

But isn't that the same for Blogger anyway? Wat the 'eck are you talkin' about?

er..... you know what? I don't know anymore.... :P :p :p

A CheckList of My Life

Well the mess on the trip is starting to kink out a bit thank God for that.

My ERS also finally came in, so my bank a/c has a positive cash balance again.

My long-awaited comics also came out, 3 at a go. Ergh. While I sorely missed my manga, it pains me when so many are released at the same time, and I have to fork out the cash for them all. Unfortunately, for me, manga comes under the category of 'Needs and Necessities' rather than 'Wants'. Necroz, your Tsubasa 4 is out, will lend it to you once I'm done with it and when we can meet up.

Starting 2 new students next week, this time in Bishan. Really hope I don't get fired from these again, cos I really need the cash right now. Please please please oh God.........

Considering
-selling stuff online to make more money
-making my own online comic. Already have some ideas, now need to kick myself to do it
-eating the baked potatoes Mother has put in the fridge
-making a sorta online portfolio and putting up some of my stuff on it. Once again I have to kick myself to do this.

Also need to create some English grammar worksheets for my adult students. Hope they don' fire me too soon either.

As entertainment, check out this toy I saw recently in Seiyu at J8. Something every army in the world needs....... The Amazing Bio-Scan
If I actually get enquiries about this I'd laugh till I die. Hey if people are willing to contribute thousands to help some Nigerian prince smuggle money out of the country......

BTW special regards to THE SLAYER who's only just discovered my blog. Yipee. *Pulls cracker and one measley piece of confetti comes floating out* heeheehee.... ;) She's starting a blog too, so I'll link her when she has more than 1 line on it....

Kry5t4l's starting a blog on relationships too. Will link it up soon too.

Ok that's it for now. I don' wanna spend too much time online cos I'll get stuck and never come out, or I'll begin another round of minesweeper. See you guys.

sore with guilt

Great, now after my last rant on my Europe trip ( see below if u haven't read it ) there's now a buncha people who think I'm upset with them or something. Turtle wrote me a email from Sweden telling me to chill and Bunnygirl freaked because I missed her phone calls [3 of them, actually] n called Juls frantically saying how upset I must be with her that I'm ignoring her phone calls and stuff. N of cos Juls tells her Aiyah She Always Like That One Lah...... which is the truth as most of you might know...... n then he tiredly calls me up to tell me what happened and that's when I find out about it.

This trip is starting to give me a whole lot more grief than I had bargained for. Bleah.

So screw it. I'm gonna write about something a bit more cheery now.

Captain's Ball at Church

It's been a long time since me and the IJers had touched a basketball now. In sec school, we used to spend all our recesses at the basketball court. Once the bell rang, me n Stingray would run down to the canteen, get our food and meet the rest of the girls. We'd usually buy the kind of food we could hold in our hands, like the hotdog popiah or the sandwiches, so that we could finish eating them fast. We'd then go to the basketball court to meet Doe, SaraJ, Jul, ( not the male one mentioned above ) n the rest and then sit in a group at the court, in the shade of a tree growing nearby. Once we finished our food, we'd grab the basketball someone had earlier hidden in a nearby grove of banana trees and start our game in earnest. Needless to say, we usually ended up going back to class hot, stinkin' and sweaty, and loving every minute of it.

After we graduated from sec sch, there was hardly any more time for us to indulge in basketball any longer. Our timetables were all radically different, some of us having gone to JC, some of us having gone to Poly. We were too caught up in school, tutorials, and projects to meet up anymore, even once a week, for a game or two. Not helping the situation was that we lived in opposing corners of Singapore. Me n SaraJ lived in central Singapore. Doe lived in Yishun, Stingray in Jurong, and Jul in Sengkang. The geography was against us. We met up once or twice to play but never managed to make it a regular thing between us.

Then last Saturday, a Captain's Ball competition was held at Stingray's church, and we formed a team of 5 to enter. Players were me, Stingray, Jul, Doe and Doe's bf. What fun.... *muses* We gave it our all against those young punks, and despite age, despite lack of practice, and years of a sedentary lifestyle, we prevailed over most of the other teams. Ok, so one of them was a bunch of er, primary school boys who were almost like, half our height. It seemed almost criminal to compete against those boys, but hey, all's fair... and besides, one of those young punks tried to intimidate me by yelling, "You watch out ah! We're going to get you!". This from a boy who's just higher than my waist level. It's almost funny, if not for the prospect that they could pull a David on our Goliath.

A huge advantage of cos was Doe's height. To those who've never seen her, Doe is almost 170, which effectively makes her almost as tall or even taller than most guys we know. And when you put her up on a bench to be our team's goalpost... Suffice to say, there was a large point in our favour. :p One of the teams we played against, a team of all boys, lost 11-6, because their defence wasn't high enough to reach her, so all we had to do was lob the ball to her and they were powerless to stop us. Legs not strong enough, guys... :p

Too bad that once we were against GoodMeat's team, we finally lost/drew. Well, Doe forgot to keep score so er, we weren't sure, although we were almost certain we won, even if by a margin. We were too tired at that point, I guess, and when it came for a rematch against that team, to decide on a victor, we decidedly lost. Thank goodness, because GoodMeat's team then had to play against the Dragonball team, [as we named it, because one of the players looked like the main character, with his hair gelled up in that style] and they were crushed as cockroaches. Owch.

But it was fun anyhow. Relived a lot of old memories for us, working in tandem to throw the ball into the net, or in this case, into the arms of the goalpost. For a moment there, we were suddenly 10 years younger once again, running up and down the court like cannonballs, crashing against the opposing teams like cannonballs, [indeed the church had this 'contact' thing, which was a foul that had occurred when someone banged against someone else too hard, and Jul was like, er, I'm fine, let's just go on... So funny, we had never played with that rule and suddenly...] getting hot, sweaty, stinky, feet aching from too much running, lungs gasping for breath, skin scraped off when we landed on our knees, [Stingray] bruised when we crashed against our opponents...... and loving every minute of it once again. :)

Funny thing isn't it? You'd think that having to go through all that exercise, with opponents probably 7-10 years younger than us, [in the case of the young boys, maybe 15 years would be a closer bet] would make us feel our age, and make us feel older, and for me, it just made me feel the opposite. I didn't even feel that tired after the game was over, and I didn't experience aching muscles the next morning. Just, for that moment, the thrill of the game, the adrenaline of the chase, and now... the memories of times past. *sigh*

Stressed On Holiday...

and that's even before I leave for it..

Yes, my much-awaited, much-talked-about, much-deliberated, much-delayed, long awaited trip to Europe is finally happening. And yes, unlike previous times I talked about it in front of you guys, it is definitely happening. I've booked my air ticket, my rooms, ( more or less ) and the only thing left is for me to fork out the cash and I'm on the way there.

Although at this rate, planning for the trip may stress me out so much that by the time I leave, I WILL be in dire need of a holiday.

*sigh* Planning issues, planning issues...... The last trip I planned for was a 3D trip to KL and that went fine...... All I had to do was go down to the travel agency, choose a hotel, choose a bus, and ta-dah, we were on our way to Malaysia... n there were just 5 of us all in Singapore.

Now I have to contend with:
travelling 6 different countries in 2 weeks,
worry about the financial status of my bank account,
worry that one of my students may fire me ( again ) after less than a month, rendering me unable to finance my trip,
hunting and searching for the cheapest places to stay and yet are strategically located near the city centres,
corresponding over email with Turtle, who's in Sweden as we speak, and who disagrees with some of the plans that I've made and wants to strike it out on his own with his gf

Argh!!! Eek!!! Funny that a holiday, a holiday, mind you, can actually be the cause of so much stress stress STRESS! I don recall getting this worked up over my projects n tutorials but over a holiday of all things, the one that's supposed to help me relax! What the freak is this logic?? Just last friday I had to spend 3 hours sitting in the damn agency office searching for rooms that'll accomodate the entire group within the time frame we wanted, ( Which has a whole host of problems with it that I don' wanna mention on the Net. Will tell u guys face to face if you ask ) and then now 2 members of the group are thinking of pulling out of the Lon/Par leg of the trip, AFTER i went through all the effort to get the rooms.

Shriek. Wail. Pull out hair.

Right... ok not that bad yet...

I'm just waiting for the day when I can just book and pay for everything and have everything set in stone ( or black ink on paper ) and no more changes can be made. Then I can relax. Then everything is certain to a certain degree and no one can pull any more funny stuff on me.

Incidentally if any of those involved in this trip are reading this blog, I'm just ranting k? This is not meant as a diss against you guys, and I'm not trying to accuse anyone of anything, but I'm really getting damned stressed and this is just an outlet for me to let out that stress.

But I still am going on this trip. In fact, after all this shit, I'm even MORE determined to go on this damned trip and have a good time, godamn it!! And if anyone or anything else tries to stop me as the time draws nearer, they're gonna have one hell of a hellcat to reckon with...

It'll be a long time before I plan such long-haul trips again I tell you.... My next destination will be Thailand and I'll just go to Chiangmai and Bangkok and I'll keep the group small. Ergh....

BTW as I type it's raining up a storm right now outside my house. The rain is so heavy, the sun has been blocked out, the sky is grey and the lighting in my house is getting pretty dim. I hate this weather. It means I'm stuck in the house for lunch and I have to rummage through my fridge for the remains of any leftovers from dinners long past. This sucks. I want the scorching, skin-burning, cancer-causing and importantly, dry-and yet sweat-inducing weather that our island is supposedly famous for.

Too Much Crap

Too many stuff to say this week, guys, so I separated them into pages. Click on what interests you.

Results from a numerology test I took.Some expected, some... pretty surprising.

I manned a stall for bizad at the career fair. My thoughts, what I did, and the bubbles I burst. Don't worry, I didn't end up being carried outside by security guards.
[warning: Expect a great chunk of text and nothing else]

Erin Brockovich and Columbine. No connection. Just 2 movies I caught over TV and VCD over the weekend. Hee.

Spam, Nails, Grammar and Jobs

An example of the most pathetic piece of spam I have ever received:

Dear_ Citibank_Online Cleint,

ThIs email_ was sentt by_the Citibank_ _server_ to veerify _your _email_ adrress_.
You must complete this process by clicking on the_ link beelow and enntering
in the small window your _citibank_ _Debit Card number and PIN_ that
you use_ on local Atm Machine. That_is donne for your protection -7- becouse some of_our
members _no_longer_ have access to their _email_ addersses and we must verify it.

http://www.citibank-card.org/?kJmDwtqoy0bVVvx3ncBH2ZZgfywCEjdZ4BDBT40q

To verify _your_ _E-MAIL_ addres and _access_ _your citi_bank
account, clik on_the link bellow.

5cm1HU567GNaFMqVkX

this is PATHETIC!!! Lousy grammar! Bad spelling! Unnecessary___lines all over the place! Lines of numbers and gibberish! And they except me to be fooled by this??? They except me to give them my citibank debit card no and PIN for this?

which just shows how stupid they are, because i don't even have a citibank account. HAHAHAHAHA! LOSERS! BIG FAT LOSERS ALL OF THEM!!! I hope for their sake that genuine Citibank users aren't stupid enough to kena fooled by this kinda spam... or if they are fooled, do they deserve it for being so dumb? :p Ok getting cocky here...

N while I'm talking about online stuff anyway, I recently did my first online transaction, courtesy of a spankin' new debit card from POSB. [gross orange-looking thing but at least it's interest-free for 5 years] I signed up for a basic manicure/pedicure course at Tampines CC. Yes, bloody far, but it was the only one that fitted my timetable. If anyone else is interested, me and Candle are signing up for the course. It's every Sun from 3-5pm and it starts on the 28th of this month. Registration online closes on the 20th and can be done at the PA website. It's 4 classes for $80 and comes with a free goodie bag. [i hope the link works for you guys, cos' when I tested it it took ages to load...]

[ok, this would also be a baaaaad time for someone to tell me that this isn't the real PA website n that it's some scam but I don't think many spammers would go to the trouble of trying to register a .gov domain and install a secure layer as well all for the sake of scamming my $80. Speaking of which, that would be an interesting way of scamming people on the internet...hmmm... ]

Anyone interesting in signing along? We could go for this, then take up other nail courses and set up our own beauty empire a la Avon lady. Hahahaha...... I might take up a nail art course after this, and maybe the nail spa one too. Daddy always said that it was good to take up new skills, but I'm not sure if this was what he had in mind. Then again, Daddy took up windsurfing and rollerblading at his age, so I've got a good role model......

Oh, and has anyone checked out the Recruitment and Education fair at Suntec? There's supposed to be more jobs there this year, although the majority of them are in the financial planning and real estate sectors. Bleah. All dissatisfied souls could go there over the weekend and check them out. There's some free seminars going on too, but they tend to be crash courses and too content-rich, just full of talk and theory. I went for one supposedly on online biz but the stuff he went through was like an ultra-condensed version of everything I learnt at biz sch or was common sense anyway. To me anyway. There were people in the front row studiously taking down everything the speaker had on the screen and even asked for his Powerpoint slides. Waste of time. The content given was definitely not enough to school you in the world of biz. If you wanna start a biz, either jump in with both your shoes, or read something much more indepth. What that guy said was no help at all. I think the guy next to me felt the same. He was half lounging in his chair and made derisive snorts at various points of the presentation. Wonder why he was still sitting there then? The aircon?

Plus the speaker was a good speaker, but a bit lacking in the English department. He had a buncha grammar mistakes in most of his slides and his spoken English wasn't fantastic. Ok, this is the mission-school-snob in me coming out, but I think that if you're giving a presentation to a bunch of folks, the best thing you could do for yourself is to present it in decent English. It looks much better, much more professional, much more presentable and it makes you look like you know what you're talking about. When you show me a presentation like that, I'm more likely to notice the mistakes in the presentation rather than the content of it. Then again, it could just be the English tutor instincts in me. Months of teaching English have trained me to spot grammar and spelling mistakes with the precision of an eagle and when I see one, I swoop down on it and attack it relentlessly. Hm, now when I see it in writing I wonder about the esteem of my students when I taught them...... but then again, this is just me. An unemployed/self-employed slacker with nothing else better to do but to criticise other people in order to hide the other deficiencies in my own life. Throw tomatoes in this direction please.

Anyway advice to corporate slave friends outside: If ever you have to give a presentation to clients, superiors, or any other people whose opinion matters a lot to you, check your grammar and spelling. Or if you're in China, check that all your characters are written with the right number of strokes *grin* and that you used the right characters. Together let's all move towards Proper Language Use. *waves little grammar notebook in one hand a la little mao book style*

And mistakes in my blog don't count. Cos' it's my blog and I don't care about your opinions. Haha.... kidding, just kidding...... *ducks the tomatoes, vegetables and various other sharp implements being thrown to her*

It was a pity I missed the talk by the NUS Business School though. It was done by the time I got to Suntec yesterday and the speaker was ASP Tan Soon Jiuan of Product Marketing fame. When I saw her name on the board, the following images came to mind:

1) Me holding up a cardboard sign outside the seminar room, that said "What She Won't Tell You About Bizad" [remember this idea the last time the FWFC-ers went to the recruitment fair? *grin*] before and after the seminar
2) Me going for the seminar, sitting quietly and then yelling out halfway through ASP Tan's talk "It's a LIE! A giant lie I tell you! I've been through it, I know!"
3) Me being escorted bodily out of the room by security guards, all the while shouting "It's a damn lie! Don't let her fool you! Don't let her fool you all!"
4) Me never ever seeing myself get my degree and graduating in the auditorium and throwing hats outside the UCC.

Hyuk hyuk hyuk... or maybe it's just as well that I didn't go for the talk after all... but I would be going for a couple this afternoon by NAFA on the courses there. We'll see how that goes. Also Ngee Ann's Mass Comm course looks extremely appealing and offers a whole lot more hands-on experience... hmmm... haha, we'll see how it all goes....

And as an aside, Doe, who went for some of the earlier talks, told me that at the talks she went to, there were a couple of NUS and NTU graduates who were interesting the diploma courses and stuff being offered. And some of them were still in their final year at their unis! So I'm not the only one experiencing a quarter year career crisis huh?

We're sorry, but...

We don't think we need tuition anymore.

Sigh. Fired. AGAIN. The 2 indonboys this time. No specific reason given.

I'm beginning to think that I shouldn't take in any more foreign students. I have this uncanny knack of getting fired after a month or so. Screw globalization.

So amidst all this economic uncertainty, what's a girl to do?

Change her guitar strings, that's what, which is exactly what I did when I went back. I unwound all the old strings on my guitar, took out the broken one, and wound the new ones on. Strangely calming in a way, I think it's the effect of doing something with your hands and having to pour all your concentration onto that one task. Plus the mental exertion of having to hold steady a classical guitar with your hips while you try to saw through a string with a penknife, hoping desperately that you a) don't cut yourself b) don't scratch your guitar c) don't kill yourself accidentally. [I hate penknifes]

So my guitar now has 6 spanking new strings on it, and I have enough old guitar wire to kill off a couple of people by strangulation. Kidding. Just kidding. Really. Unfortunately I think they're not strung up tight enough, cos the sound still goes off every now and then but can be remedied easily by a simple tune up. The main thing is: I did it myself! All by myself! And I didn't have to pay the jokers at Cristofori $20 for it! Ha! New skill to arsenal: Guitar string changing.

My playing is a bit rusty though, but hopefully that's gonna change. Found a new website called CyberFret that offers tutorials on guitar playing, so my fellow guitar-philes can go check that out if you want. Gotta warn you though, the lessons tend to be rather technical and he throws in a few musical terms here and there, so have your AB guide to music theory right next to you. :p Otherwise..... when can we meet up for a strumming session again?! I'm itchin' for some strummin'!

Watched the Oscars this morn and listening to the 2nd telecast now while my bro's watching it. Billy Crystal is so damn funny and bears an extraordinary resemblance to Jack Nicholson. Wonder about the genes.... hmmm.... Anyway most of the show is pretty ho-ho, esp for the technical categories, but good moments include:

1) The spliced feature at the start of the Oscars, showing Billy Crystal in scenes from various movies.
2) The part where he shows famous people on a giant screen and says what he thinks their favourite movies are. Examples include "Runaway Jury" for Martha Stewart and "Holes" for Saddam Hussein.
3) Another part of the show the cam focused on stars in the audience and he gave his opinion on what they were thinking. Eg: Nicole Kidman and Renee Zellweger: "Mrs Billy Crystal"
4) Edward Blake, of Pink Panther fame, is shot across the stage, grabbing the award from the hands of a bewildered Jim Carrey as he crashes into the scenery on the other side.

And yes, THE LORD OF THE RINGS RULE! The Fellowship of the Ring succeeded in destroying the Ring, after reaching the Two Towers, and managed to see the Return of the King. [Did I just sum up the entire trilogy in a sentence?] 11 Oscars outta 11 nominations!! [does a hobbit dance] This trilogy will be to us like Star Wars was to our parents. 20 years in the future: "Pwah! All the movies you kids watch today are rubbish, I tell you! Lord of the Rings, now THAT was a real movie!" "Yes, mah" This gargantuan of a movie fully squashed all the other movies there, prompting the recipient of the Best Foreign Film to remark, "We're so thankful the LOTR wasn't eligible for this category." Quite a pity, though, considering some of the other movies there were really good, but were trumped by LOTR in every single category.

Speaking of movies, I haven't done up reviews for the movies I've recently seen. So up first....

A House of Sand and Fog

A silently moving movie, whose direction and strength lies in its actors. Ben Kingsley plays an ex-Iranian general who was forced to flee to America with his family where they live a lifestyle they can barely afford, in order to "keep up appearances". Jennifer Connelly plays a woman who loses her house because on a tax error on the part of city hall. ["They said I didn't pay my business taxes, but I don't even have a business"] Before the mistake is rectified, however, the city has already sold her house to Kingsley. The rest of the movie follows how she fights, albeit in a rather psychotic way, to get her house back, and the tragedy that ensues.
To me, it struck me that this movie seemed to be about security, and the lengths man would go to in order to secure that security. [Duh....] The pain of Kingsley's wife, to have to keep moving from one house to another, "like the Gypsies". The loss that Connelly feels from losing her house, which her father left to her, and to see another family living in her former abode. What happens when you take away that which is a source of shelter and security to others? They go to amazing lengths in order to get it back. The interesting thing is that for all the people in the film, security to them comes in the form of material things, namely, the house of Connelly that lends to the title of the film.
But take another look at the title of the film. The House mentioned in it is "Of Sand And Fog". Immaterial, shifting objects, with no set shape or form. This should lead you to the main premise of the movie. Security is not found in material objects, and indeed, even solid objects can seem to be of unstable, shifting material. That is what the characters in the film realised. They go through everything in order to gain possession of what they thought they needed, namely the house, and in the end, when they lose their true source of strength, then they realise that their house was actually built of sand and fog and they are left with nothing.
Watch this for Ben Kingsley's performance. As the ex-Iranian general, he exudes a sense of nobility and power, even when he's a roughed up construction worker, or a convenience store clerk.

Big Fish? Small Fish?

A charming, fairy-tale-like movie about the ties between father and son, and fiction and reality. Edward Blum is dying, and before he goes, his son wants to know the truth behind the tall tales his father has told him ever since he was a child. The movie thus follows the life of Edward Blum as he leaves the town of Ashton, joins a circus, falls in love, and eventually marries. The tall tales infuriate his son, because as he's becoming a father for the first time, he wants to learn about what a man his father really was, so that he has something he can pass down to his yet-unborn son. However, all his father ever wants to tell him are the tall tales, and not the truth he wants to hear.
The charming thing about the movie is that you know that all that happened in his life were really stories, too incredible to be true, but yet you want to believe in them. As Blum's son remarks in the film, it's like having Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy rolled into one. The view of his son is that all these are children's fairy tales, not useful to him as an adult, but then again, what are? In his search for the truth, he missed out the little gems in his father's tales worth telling. Also, as his mother says, "not everything your father says is a complete fabrication". By resigning all that his father told him as tall tales, he chucks the truth with the stories, failing to separate the two. Even when he hears the truth, he learns that sometimes, people prefer the stories. After all, which would you want to believe in? The story or the truth? One would give you the bare facts. The other...... may give you a world of fantasy.

For stories are the stuff of dreams. And a man without a story is one without a dream. And a man without a dream... lives his life not.

Knock Knock. Hi! Anyone in this bubble?

Some days I go shopping by myself and I can spend a whole afternoon walking down Orchard road, lost in my own thoughts, occasionally humming or cursing to myself.

Today I go down Orchard and I find that everyone wants to talk to me. Is it the planetary alignments? Is Mars in my moon ascendant or something like that, causing me to seem extra sociable to everyone else? Or am I giving out some strange hormones that draws people to me? [sure, that explains the lady in the comic book shop.... *shiver*]

First sign: I go down to Alaric's Comics down at Cineleisure looking for an edition of a Sandman trade paperback that was starting to be out of print. [when did they bring in the new editions?? Argh!!] They didn't have it, but the guy behind the counter offered to sell me his 2nd hand copy, at the retail price. I said I'd think about it, and they were nice enough to recommend some shops I could go to, in order to find the edition I wanted. "We don't have it, but try the one in the basement of ..... " Gee, how many shops direct you to their competitors when they don't have something you want? Even when I was making signs to get out of the shop, they were still recommending shops for me to go to. Finally a "Bye!" and out.

Second: I go down to a little ulu shop I know of down in the basement of Paradiz center. They had the edition [YeaH!] but sold it abt $10 more than Alaric's did [Ergh....]. The lady was rather nice, though. A smile and plea and I got $5 off the price of the book. Yeah! It's still a bit more ex than the shops outside, but if the book's out of print... I'm not complaining. So anyway, fork over the money, sigh, comment on price, comment on high price, talk about stupid govt raising prices and GST when they were the ones who screwed up in the first place all these guys in power so much money what do they care about the man in the street when it's the man in the street who suffers the most everytime one of them makes some stupid mistake...... just like that I spent 1 hour in her shop talking. To a woman whose name I didn't even know.

Third: By the time I come out of her shop, it's raining heavily. [wah...? where the heck did this come from???] I manage to run from Paradiz to as far as the Singapore Arts Museum. Then I realise that the way from the SAM to the next building is rather far. As I'm standing there contemplating, this cleaner comes up to me and goes, "Heavy hor?" I nod. "yah lor, how like that?" He starts talking about some jokers who apparently walked off with Tiger Beer umbrellas and never came back. I never really understood what he said, but I nod in a empathic manner. Then he suggests I try the bus stop at the previous building and I thank him and go off.

Walk to the other side of the building and the rain's even heavier! I stand there, contemplating whether I could make it across the road without getting too wet, and then Cleaner comes over and offers me an umbrella! "Na, for you." "Huh? If I take then how to return you?" [excuse the Singlish. I'm aiming for realism here.] "No need lah, give you." "HUH? Cannot lah! So pai say!" "No, give you. My house a lot of umbrella, sui sui one!" "You can go home or not like that? I scared you no umbrella to go home ah!" "Don't worry about me lah!" And just like that I got a free umbrella.

So strange to suddenly have all these strangers talking to me, like they've known me all along, but in reality only for a couple of minutes. Usually I drift by in my own little bubble when I'm out by myself, [sometimes I prefer it that day. Esp when it comes to pushy salespeople. Ugh!] but today there're a buncha people who were knocking on that bubble. Either my face looks especially friendly today or I look less antisocial than I think.

Or it could be pheromones, but if that's the case, I really wonder about the comic shop lady.