This morning started out all wrong.

FIRSTLY, tuition kid who was supposed to come in the morning cancelled last minute. As in she SMSed me the message LAST NITE at 130AM and I read it at 730 this morning. WTH??? What for I wake up so early in the morning then???

Never mind, I thought, console yourself by going for breakfast and have your favourite roti prata and teh ping. As thoughts of crispy prata and fragrant curry filled my mind, I looked out the window, and saw the cloudy horizon filling with dark clouds and a cool, misty, rain-like wind blowing into my face.

Oh kuso, I thought, and then as if by magic, the heavens burst upon to rain their showery blessings upon me.

YEEEAAARRRGGHHHHH.................................................................

So FINE i'm STUCK at HOME, with the PC again.... I decide to open up Freehand and draw up a new cartoon for the Mis-Educators blog. [inspired by Yenn during lecture. Go take a look]

Pen. Stroke. Erase.

Pen. Stroke. Curve. Delete.

Pen. Stroke. Curve. Fill. Undo. Delete.

Pen. Stroke. Curve. Fill. Undo. Delete. Swear. Curse. Threaten all manner of unholy acts upon the PC.

You get the idea. (^^!)

And I still gotta rush off and bathe and meet Turtle before going to school.

For a 4 hour tutorial.

And it's still raining, albeit a light drizzle.

oh kuso.....................

Another update on Mis-Educators on my rather eccentric lecturer...

Hate her? Saboh her online!

Yesterday's Digital Life supplement in the ST ran an interesting article on the dangers of online sabotage. Did you guys realise that it's NOT illegal for someone to post your personal details online?

I remember a Xiaxue post where she wrote about the revenge she wrought on a girl who had [unfairly, she judged] stolen a cab from her. If I remember correctly, I think she even jumped into the cab to confront the girl and even took photos of her on her handphone camera.

So ok, whatever. Then later on, she realised that the girl had been giving a highly-biased picture of her through some online forums. [Well, simply put, the girl was talking bad about her lah] In a fit of righteous indignation, she went on to post the photos of the girl and the boyfriend online, linked the girl's blog, the friendster profile, and any other online paraphernalia the girl had online. She even gave instructions on how to bypass the Javascript password prompt the girl had on her blog.

Considering the daily visitor statistics to Xiaxue's site average in the 1000s, you can imagine what happened to that girl's blog. :p

But you can already see from this that it's not difficult to find and put information about a person online. Even for a person who retains an anonymous facade like I do, a truly determined person could probably hunt out clues on my blog to find hints to my identity. [good luck trying. I have over 2 years of archives]

Worse still, someone who knows me in real life, should he/she have a sudden flash of hatred towards me, can post as many personal details as they know online. For my close friends, this would include my real name, my handphone no, my address, and, if you want, you could probably steal my underwear and sell online. [not that any of u would want to do so....... right?]

And you know the best part? NONE OF THIS IS ILLEGAL.

That's right. If I type on my blog now "Ah Neow lives in Jalan Anak Kambing Blk 123 #12-345 and her phone number is 98765432. She's a damn sexy chio bu so call her now!" it's NOT illegal. Even if Ah Neow gets 1000s of phone calls from that one stupid post, she cannot even sue me for harassment.

Scary huh? So moral is: Don't totally piss off your friends.

There is a little clause in the law: The law in Singapore can only make an arrest, if it can be proved that the information I posted led to a crime being committed.

So if I type: "My friend Ah Kow is living in [insert district 10 name] house no 124. You can't miss it! It's the big white house with lots of begonias in front! He's going on holiday from this friday to monday. I told him better change that rusty lock for his gate, or at least buy more than one lock for the house, but he don wan. Scally his house kena rob ah! So much jewellery he leave in his brown cupboard in his bedroom!" it's still considered legal.

ONLY if some stupid burglar decides to rob the house BASED solely on the information above, bungles up the job, gets caught by the police, and admits that "Yah lah, I read the boredslacker blog then I know that guy going on holiday mah! How I know I so xia suay you will be taking kopi break there at that time??"

THEN can I be charged under the law.

Luckily for me, I do NOT post much personal information online. I've seen blogs where they put photos of themselves, their house, their friends, their boyfriends, their dogs, their mother's underwear, [ok, I've never seen the last one. Heh.] and can't help but think: If people recognise you on the streets, talk about you, express many unfair opinions about you ["Wah lau, her mother wear so obiang panty ah?"]

Whose fault is it? Haven't you sort of invited the comments by posting all this up?

Thankfully for me, I've never encountered too much of this kind of thing from my humble little blog. There's something to be said about being one of the xiao ren, as the song goes.

Oh, and remember my previous post on defamation? Digital Life also posted some more information.

"Ah Kow is a bastard" implies Ah Kow was illegitimate. If he wasn't, he can sue.

Then how about "Ah Kow is a f**king bastard"? Will the law sue me for using f**king? After all, he is a normal, functional human male is it? That's not defamatory is it?

"Ah kow is an incompetent idiot" implies he cannot do his job. This damages his reputation, so he can sue. But he can't sue you for using "idiot"

"idiot" and the like are common expletives, so "no matter how vulgar, are generally not considered defamatory." according to the article.

"Slut" and the like implies that the woman sleeps around, but it's an expletive too, so the judge would probably determine whether it's defamatory by looking at the rest of the message.

So in other words, that means that I cannot sue people for the following statement:

"boredslacker that BITCH! What a f**king fool! Always writing a bunch of f**king crap on her blog! Why doesn't that SLUT just go f**k her IDIOT boyfriend already?"

But if they write:

"boredslacker is clearly unfit to teach at any level. You can see how irresponsible she is, from the casual use of foul language on her online web log. She is clearly very incompetent at her job"

THEN you will receive the letters from my lawyers. :)

A quick note: I've set up the Mis-Educators blog for anything school-related, so you guys can check that out for my misadventures, yea? I'm not putting them on this blog, because I got other plans for that one in the future :p so take a read once in a while, k? Arigatou...

Btw, don't spread the news of this blog to gahmen frens, ya? You never know when Da Ge is watching......

Mis-Educators

And for other entertainment, check out what one creative genius did to the fountains at Taka...

Terrorists Poison Ngee Ann City

Too bad, might've been more interesting if he'd used Tiger instead...

Day 1 of Servitude

This next post is coming to you at another ungodly hour, but this time I'm at home, frantically typing away to finish this post so I have time to run out, eat prata, [food at NIE suckx. Will try to reduce eating there as much as possible] and stone on the train all the way to Boon lay. Thank God I have a good book with me. :S

As of yesterday, 20th June 2005, 9am Singapore time, I officially became a trainee teacher, employee of Ministry of Education, of the gahmen. God help us all, and especially the children who will be under me.

Anywayz, as from the last post, Yenn and I successfully managed to get to campus, and find the locations of the LTs without getting too lost. :S Aside from a slight hiccup. Heh.

The day went by rather smoothly, I guess, since it was just 2 briefings we had to attend on future modules, one of which starts TODAY and goes on till Friday. Talk about a crash course! The way I hear it, the course I will take for 6 months is like a doctor shoving half a dozen pills down your throat, shaking you hard till it all goes down, and then kicking you out his clinic door, demanding that you be healed and healthy NOW! :S

Ok, that's a strange analogy, but my brother's nursing drug guide is in front of me right now, so that's what I came up with :p

The GTs [GTS, GTT, and now GTK] were also astounded at the number of ex-classmates, ex-schoolmates and ex-dunnowhat that we came across in the canteen during a break. For the Bizaders, we saw LEROY of all people. [taking into account he was a first-class hon student, you can roughly guess how much the Ministry will be paying him. :S] Then there was Ron L, who'd worked in private for 6 months, and then went to contract teaching, and a couple more people Yenn recognised, but I didn't. For CJC-ers, Krys, I donno whether you remember Soo from C2 last time? Yea, she's a teacher too.

*Peng* Quite the reunion there :S All these souls, disillusioned and disenchanted by the private sector, and thus heading into teaching instead. :S Only to join more disillusioned and cynical souls like Yenn and I. Good choice of career.

Then after another briefing, the GTs headed for the queue for registration [which would give us stuff like our matric no, orientation pack, time table etc etc...] only to find a queue which rivalled the Great Hello Kitty Fiasco of 2000. Wah liao kuso leh! We decided, no point, and went to Jurong Point for lunch instead, resolving to settle it another day.

Pretty much, that was the end of the day at NIE. I have one crash course module this week, [bleah] and another Teacher Prep one next week for 2 weeks, and I'll be posted to a school!!! :S:S:S Remember that doctor analogy just now? [double BLEAH] It's all in line with the latest Ministry initiative to let trainee teachers try out the teaching world to decide whether it's for them or not. Granted it's a good idea, but YEARGH! I NEED CLOTHES! [scrambles around frantically for pants and Giordano shirts]

Brekkies time now...... wish me luck and let's see how the first module goes..... :p

BTW, might consider starting another blog in future, dedicated solely to exploits in NIE... will consider and post any updates on this blog...

This post comes to you courtesy of the free Internet post at Jurong Point Shopping Centre. [Slow, but what can you do? :p]

It is now 8am on a Monday morning. I have a almost drunk cup of [very weak] Lipton tea, Yenn is still queueing for her food, and I have a overwhelming desire to be back in my bed, woken at 9 by my radio, and then head to my favourite coffeeshop for my dua-kosong-teh-ping breakfast set instead of sitting here in the goddamned early morning with a cup of weak tea and 2 eyebags forming. (-_-)

Plus, I decided yesterday that the DF is an absolute BLOCK. (-_-!)

We happened to be talking yesterday, albeit in extremely indirect hits, about him not spending a lot of time with me.

The whole thing could be boiled down in 2 statements:

Him:
"Physical affection isn't everything in a relationship. A lot of relationships start with a lot of sweet nothings, and then end up in nothing, because the 2 parties realise in the end that all they had were those sweet nothings and nothing else."

Me:
"Yea, but IT WOULD BE NICE TO HAVE SOME OF THOSE SWEET NOTHINGS ONCE IN A WHILE!!!"

Towards this point, we were walking across the bridge opposite Fullerton, that crossed the Singapore River.

"Hey, you see that bumboat on the river?"

"Yea?"

"You wanna a closer look at it?" And at this point I attempted to dunk him into the Singapore River. [Wonder if dragonflies can swim. Hm. ]

So hence, my conclusions for this morning:

Internet connection and keyboard sensitivity at McDonald's sucks. [yea, the keyboard's slow to react to .]

Lipton tea is one of the weakest teas ever on the face of this planet. [my kingdom for a teh ping...]

My body has not adjusted to a system of waking before the sunrise yet. [I'm so screwed when school, as in actual teaching, starts]

And lastly,

MY BOYFRIEND IS A BLOCK.

Time for more tea...