Body Worlds 2003

I have to say........ this exhibition puts a whole new perspective to the whole idea of signing your body up for science. As I walked through the exhibition, I kept wondering whether all these poor souls knew what was really going to happen to their bodies and the implications of what they had done.

Ok, some brief intro first. This exhibition is currently being held at the Singapore Expo and is basically a showcase of preserved human bodies. What makes this unique from your average bio lab display is firstly, the process used in preserving these bodies. The process of plastination, to be exact, which was invented by Gunther Von Hagens. It is basically the "forced infusion of anatomical specimens with reactive plastics", which seems to preserve the organs and even the nervous system.

It also allows the body to be preserved so well, pieces of muscle can be peeled away from the body, and even every intricacy of the central nervous system is preserved. This I can vouch to. In some of the exhibits, the nerves are preserved so well, they resemble nothing less than pieces of thread, covering our ( their? its? ) entire body. Also makes you wonder what happens if, say, someone sneezes hard in the wrong direction, or spiders decide on the cadavers for their holiday residence. ( Oh honey! This will be perfect! Look, even the web has been built for us!)

There was even one playing chess at a table, and Slayer and I were thinking that that could've been us in our chess-playing days. Eek. ( Noticed however, that they placed the black pieces inaccurately. :p )

They had specimens of the human body, ( male mostly. Slayer says sexist/generalist. I say we women know better than to just sign on the dotted line ) and a section to foetuses. The row of deformed foetuses is.... unnerving. There was a deformed foetus which had its ( his? her? ) brains and intestines growing out of its body, at abt 5 mths I tink, and the sign said it was a disorder present in every 1000 foetuses. Most times it's nothing. Sometimes..............

We tried to take some pix, ( yes, photography was not allowed ) with my camera phone. Since it wasn't allowed, the following took place:

Me: ( pretending to SMS ) All clear?
Slayer: ( Shiftily glancing left and right ) Clear. Quick! Do it now!
Me: There're people here! They'll notice us! ( Students on field trip standing ard us )
Slayer: Damn! She's moving nearer! ( Security staff )
Me: Ok, got it! ( Snap )

Aside: Slayer thinks the pix I took weren't too bad, and that I have a future as a budding paparazzi. My career prospects look so bright at this point of time. The 4 miserable pix I took can be seen on my camera pix website, link at top of page.

Viewing the exhibits is a morbidly fascinating affair. You look at it, and you think, "Good god, is that me? Could that be me?" Or rather that's what I mostly thought. The Slayer, whom I went with, for some reason, thought more in the direction of "Your dick is so small. I pity you." and "The dead foetuses are cool! They should have more!" ( She wrote that last thought in the comment book provided at the end of the exhibition, by the way )
As an aside, if you're reading this, I'm never going to such an exhibition with you again.

Excellent exhibition, especially for
1) budding doctors/nurses/anyone in medical field
2) anyone with a taste for the macabre
3) Jack-the-Ripper wannabes

More references, if I got your interest whetted:
Body Worlds website

Servers are Back Up

The Blogger servers are finally working again and I can continue blogging and reading once again. *PomPom*

The unfortunate thing is that I have nothing in my life to update about. *PomPom wilts*

Hm, so let's pick the nitty-gritty.....

Sylveracyd's website is coming up nicely, though a couple of pages need cosmetic arrangements, and some more organizing. I spent the entire afternoon yesterday before tuition alternating between helping Quet on ICQ with her report, ( Ya owe me, fren. Mwahahaha ) changing the order forms and cursing formsite's stupid arrangement, ( Form has to keep uploading every time I make a change. Bah! ) and using PS to change the logos. Gawk!

Then the new tuition kid....

Let's have some basic details. I got this kid thru Bunny ( er, for lack of a better nick, though Turtle may frown on me infringing his BF copyrights. ) and the kid's Thai, studied in Singapore for abt 2 years and now in P5. Firstly, I got terribly, terribly lost trying to find my way to the place, cos it's this super ulu-fied private estate bang between Hougang stadium and Heartland mall. Bleah. Then the kid turns out to be the most super-unmotivated-bochup-don-give-a-damn kid I've ever seen in my life, and yes, his English is...............bad.

God help me now, but I really need some damn creative-divinely-inspired way of getting this kid to even look at me, let alone do the work I set for him. I realise that getting assessments is prob useless and even ineffective, if he can't be bothered. Then when I call Bunny later at night and talk to her more about the kid, she tells me more horror stories about him, like how she went for lessons and when at their doorstep, he refused to come out for lessons and his guardian just said lesson cancelled but charged anyway.

Well, getting paid for not teaching........ hmmm......... I better think up some super creative way of teaching this kid English. Help!

Does anyone notice this weird thing with blogger that's going on? Everytime I try to access someone's blog which is hosted on its server, it just directs me to the main blogger page. Hello.........i think someone in tech support isn't doing his job well..........

New Website!

No, not the blog, unfortunately.......... but i did up a simple one for the pix i took on my camera phone.....there aren't much there right now, but I will put more up! Yessiree I will! My Photos
Things to note:
I used frames for the site, so if you don't see anything.... er, your browser doesn't support them n i'm sorry.....
I know the resolution sucks! It's a camera phone so whatdya expect?
I will not put up pix of my frens, in accordance with my views on anonymity on the Net. So don't worry, I won't put up those embarrassing shots I took of anyone while you were asleep.

2 features today: A link on whether Jesus might be gay, (?) and a lengthy complaint about Light Years. I don't usually hate shows so much, but this one has earned the honour.

Jesus May Be Gay?

This was originally sent in an email to me by Tenderheart, but hee..... it's so interesting I just have to share it.... before the lightning comes down and strikes me anyway.... Anyone out there more religious than I am... please tell me how much of this could be truth or not....

Was Jesus Gay?

As a sample, the authors note this fragment from the Bible:
"And the youth, looking upon him (Jesus), loved him and beseeched that he might remain with him. And going out of the tomb, they went into the house of the youth, for he was rich. And after six days, Jesus instructed him and, at evening, the youth came to him wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the Kingdom of God".

Your Pain On 5

Pain. Hurt. Anguish. Agony. Just a sample of what I went through tonight. And I have only one thing to blame for it.

CHANNEL 5 PROGRAMMES ON A TUES NITE

My family and I were watching the TV while eating our nasi lemak dinner. First on was Tan Kheng Hua and some show on food. Not too bad. Tan is very vibrant, very bouncy and looks very natural while doing so. A talent that sadly, something like 90% of the actors ( and actresses ) in TCS lack. ( That was just a general estimate by the way. Actual figures may be closer to 99.9999% )

Then came Phua Chu Kang. A lot of lame, slapstick kinda humour, ( One of the blur workers thought he had breast cancer because he felt a lump on his chest and ended up being dragged for a mammogram by the 2 women of the household ) but we expect it. After all, it's Phua Chu Kang, him of the perms-mole-boots getup for heaven's sake. Anything else from this show would've been like asking Mr Bean to perform Cirque Du Soleil.

After that, however.....

Oh Carol! came on. ( for some reason, my mom suddenly felt like doing the laundry ) I don't know if it was intentional or not, but apparently there was a technical error, so we didn't get any of the canned laughter that usually came on during these shows. That's what I first thought. Later on, I was getting to be of the opinion that the laughter didn't come on because there was nothing funny in the show. She screams at co-workers. She suffers pre-marital anxiety and cancels her wedding to Utt. ( which probably brought sighs of relief to female MTV fans all over Singapore ) Oh well, ho hum. Pass the samosas.

The really painful part came on during Light Years. Harken this name, all intelligent beings, and be wary of it. It is awful, the characters are totally fake, utterly unbelievable and extremely childish. Not only that, but the entire plot is so predictable, you start feeling clairvoyant. Let me give a good example of bad scriptwriting from the show:

( background: in case you didn't know, Light Years is about a group of students in Poly and their experiences. Good, now forget it, because it's not worth knowing )

One of the opening scenes feature this girl, a student, let's call her A, and B, a guy, getting into a cab at the exact same time, and telling the cab driver the same address. ( some fictitious poly ) Then when they become aware of the other person's presence, they start arguing about who got into the cab first, how rude the other party is, and will you please get out of the cab.

Of course, the "twist" at the end is that A finds out that B is her new lecturer, and the school term starts off on a fine new note for her.

Now, let's get one thing straight. I've never watched Light Years when it first came out, so I never had any strong opinions on it before. Hence I decided to watch it tonight and see what it was all about. And OMG, it was about the worst pukeworthy crap I had ever seen in my life.

Let's start attacking the opening scene. Firstly, what the Hell are the chances of 2 people walking into a cab at the same time? Won't they have seen each other before then? They couldn't have been standing next to each other and not being aware of each other now, couldn't they? Fine, let's give them the benefit of the doubt. They only saw a cab and were so blur they were totally unaware of their surroundings. Which makes them pretty clever creatures for being able to hail a cab in the first place.

Secondly, they proceed to argue with each other, and A demands that B gets out of the cab, and doesn't see why she has to share the cab with him. I'll tell you why, honey, so that you can SHARE CAB FARE. You two are going to the same place, hence you can split the fare 50-50, and pay cheaper fare! A simple, obvious fact which was pointed out by the cab driver, but she still put on that arrogant-piss-ass style and said she didn't see why she had to share a cab with him. OMG! How did this girl have the brains to supposedly rise to 3rd year in Poly? I can't figure out how she even got past Primary 6 if she couldn't even see such a simple logic on her own. And although B was supposed to be a Poly lecturer, he was also stupid enough to argue with someone obviously lacking in her intellectual faculties. That's like fighting with a donkey over a carrot, and a rotten one at that. He didn't even see that they could share the cab fare and reasonably point it out to her.

There is a fine line between stubbornness and downright stupidity. These folks ran all the way past it and jumped headfirst into the Point of No Brains, all the while arguing with each other about who should jump first.

Thirdly, the rest of the cast act so childishly, you'll think you were watching Moulmein High instead of Light Years. At least in MH, they were supposed to play sec. sch students. A certain level of immaturity is expected. But surely not of 3rd year poly students! This guy, whose character came back from a student exchange trip in Japan, kept going on throughout about how he was so cool in Japan, how the girls loved him in Japan, and how cool he thought he was. Newsflash: Did you happen to miss, say, Changi Airport on the way here? Did you fail to realise that you were in Singapore, and not Japan? Or were you just wondering why everyone was suddenly speaking English around you?

Fourthly, the cast, as poly students, are more fake than an LV bag bought off the street markets of China. Did the scriptwriters actually think that Singaporean youths speak like that? That fake, pseudo-American accent became so yesterday, like.... yesterday. This Speak Good English movement has a lot to answer for, if you ask me. And the lines are so bad, they made me cringe, literally. The actors sound, at times, like those wooden dolls that go "Mama!" when you pull a string at the back. Wooden lines, wooden accents.

This show is not just BAD it's pukeworthy. No, scratch that, I won't even want to puke on it. It's trash, rubbish, bollocks, bullshit, and I'm pretty certain if you watch it enough, your IQ will drop till you consider Forrest Gump to be the pinnacle of human intellect. Do NOT watch it even if you have time to waste. I feel sorry for the campus that lent itself to the shooting of this show, because now everyone who watches it will think their students are childish, argumentative, stupid, fake, egoistical lowlives like certain TCS actors.

And as a note, all this rubbish happened in the first 15 minutes of the show. I switched channels because I was starting to feel pain just watching it.

Sigh..... having trouble again with photos... really considering whether i shld fork out the money to rent space on the Net....
maybe if I manage to get more students....

Hey guys, long ramblings below which go ever on and on, but if you get bored halfway, there're comics to entertain you along the way. You can also scroll all the way down for some links, if, *sniff sniff* you don't like my writing, despite all the trouble *sniff* I went through to write it *sniff* what with my eyesight being what it is....

Paper to Film

With the showing of the ROTK, the endless battle once again is started..... that neverending struggle between the forces of good and evil.......

Yes, it is the place for confrontation between fans of the book and fans of the film.

Gimme My Comic!

Usually I do a review for the movies that I watch, but this one is so heavily reviewed and raved..... I think there's no point preaching to the highly converted. Instead, I will offer some comments on an old issue that this has raised again.

In this week's 8 days, [Britney Spears cover] David Fuhrmann-Lim mentioned 2 kinds of LOTR fans. There are the film fans, and the book fans, and the differences are highly marked. As living examples, I will highlight 2 people I know. Let's call them D and C. [if you know who i'm talking about, let's just maintain anonymity here, eh?]

Gimme My Comic!

D is a book fan. He's read all 3 books, The Silmarillon, The Unfinished Tales, possibly all other books by Tolkien, hails Tolkien as the Father of Modern Fantasy, and is able to deliver a treatise on how every other fantasy writer out there has stolen ideas from Tolkien one way or another. [An example: kender in the Dragonlance series highly resemble hobbit in Tolkien] He's seen the films and thinks they're "ok".

Sidenote to Dragonlance fans: Don't you think the undead armies of Lord Soth are highly similar to the Armies of the Dead? Ok, back to the crap.

Gimme My Comic!

C is a film fan. She thinks Legolas is the hottest thing in the film, but Orlando Bloom looks better in that film than any other. She downloads pix of Legolas onto her handphone. She thinks the scenery is stunning, the actors are hot, Sam and Frodo are possibly gay, and who's Tom Bombadil?

The rest of us just watch the films. Haha! But you get the idea.

The 2 extremes in this case are either like Jason/D/Book fans, or Paige/C/Film/Orlando fans. And they have utterly different reasons for catching the film. D would most likely want the films to be as close as possible to Tolkien's original vision. C is just thankful that Peter Jackson cast Legolas as such a hottie. [no offence to C, who may be reading this..... but face it....... haha!] And I sure as heck do not ever want to involve both parties in a LOTR discussion, unless I want to see D strangle C in total exasperation.

[ one of my favourite lines below. "Filler stuff"? ]

Gimme My Comic!

So what is the difference between the 2? Frankly, there's a lot. If you have read the original Tolkien novel, just the first 3 books, you would know that there are tons of history and character Tolkien has that Peter Jackson does not, due to the shortcomings of film. For one, there is the character of Tom Bombadil. Also, Aragorn's history is never really explained clearly, to my satisfaction, and the Aragorn-Arwen romance is played up too strongly. [Arwen's character in the film is kinda extra, in my opinion. There seems to be no satisfiable reason for her to be there, other than because pple like to see romance in the films.]

I happened to watch the movie before I ever read the book, but from personal experience, book-to-film adaptions never really work to satisfaction. My experience during the first Harry Potter movie was such. The first film didn't just lack, but was utterly bereft of the magic of Rowling's writing. Although it was an entertaining movie, I felt that I was watching something without soul, or character. The magic was lost. To explain it in other words, the movie was not entertaining to engage me the way the original book did. To this extent, I can understand the feelings of book fans. I can also understand the feelings of Jason in the comic below....

[ Another good line. "Who's Gollum?" ]

Gimme My Comic!

And it's not like some of these books need the additional publicity from the film anyway. JK Rowling was already an international bestselling author before The Philosopher's Stone was ever made into a film. Tolkien was already well beloved as a master of fantasy literature. In fact, it was their fame in the first place that led to these books being made. These directors, in a way, were betting on a sure winner, books with their loyal following of fans that would earn money and publicity for the film and ensure that it wouldn't be a total bomb altogether.

Also, it's absolutely frustrating talking to a total fan of the film sometimes, when u even a slight knowledge of the books and Tolkien. When C talks about how cute Legolas is, and how gay Sam and Frodo are in the film, it makes me wanna tear my hair out. [thank the gods, i've never done that.] How the heck do you expect me to explain that this is just P.Jackson's vision, Tolkien's experiences in war, and the possible interpretation that Sam and Frodo represent the camaderie between the upper and lower classes that evolved during the binding crucible that is war? All the freak she can talk about is how gay they are!

Gimme My Comic!

*sigh* I know the usual excuse for this is "Each To His Own", and I know that everyone has their own preferences, even if it's freaking-little-white-face-Orlando-Bloom, but Gees! For the umpteenth time, Sam and Frodo are NOT gay, and stop casting this lime-giantic-1000watt-spotlight on Legolas! He's a supporting character for heavens' sake! It's totally alright to be fans of the book, or fans of the film, but at least do not accept either as the gospel truth and elevate Jackson to god-status! Because Jackson, technically, is copying a script from Tolkien and adding his own interpretation of it. When you keep seeing scenes of Legolas jumping over oliphaunts and shooting arrows into its driver's back, that's Jackson's vision. When you insist Sam and Frodo are gay............... er, that's just your own mind working.

Gimme My Comic!

My main stand here, I guess, is that take whatever view of the show you like. Whether it be book or film. But never accept one totally. Read/watch the other medium, expose yourself to other interpretations, or the original version, and at least have an awareness of the other side. If you've read the book, accept that Jackson had to cut certain scenes out or portray them differently, in order to accomodate the shortcomings of film. If you've watched the movie, at least attempt to read the book, to open yourself to Tolkien's original vision and understand where he's coming from.

Unless you're now a firm Orlando Bloom fan. Then please go off on your own tangent and stop muddling the discussion.

For more info on the characters, I found this site:
The Barrow-Downs

And for pure entertainment, this flash was sent to me by C, but I couldn't load it. You guys try.
Gollum Rap

According to a random piece of Javascript, one of my elvish names is Pennberaidiel. Haha!
Try It Out, Guys n Gals


Foxtrot Comics are done by Bill Amend, and these strips were from UComics. If you're from that site, and you see these comics here, please have the courtesy to send me a letter giving me a chance to take down the strips before you start suing me. Thanks.

Renovations UnderWay...

I'm still trying to refurbish my blog, and I'm trying a 2nd attempt at putting pictures up again. *gawk* All pics are taken by my camera phone, so forgive the lousy resolution. Put mouse arrow over picture and see comments.

Meanwhile, the [highly under construction, under renovation, totally not finished yet] links above are [kinda, supposedto, hope they do what they're meant to] working already.

But looks slightly neater, already, eh? ;)

Merry Xmas All!

Yes! Bring out the champagne, turkey, eggnog, misteltoe, and PRESENTS!!!!!

Well, kinda late to be saying that, since as I type this, it's already Dec 27th.... duh.... but Xmas lasts for 12 days no? :p

Anyways, Merry, merry Xmas to all, [esp. those who got me presents when this scrooge here didn't get anything for anybody. Oops!]

May those in school sail through their assignments and pass with flying colours

May those currently unemployed find gainful means of employment soon

May those in jobs they hate either:
1) Get a raise soon
2) Get a promotion soon
3) Get a better job soon
4) Kill their bosses soon

May those out of love find it soon, whether it take the form of:
1) Friendship
2) Family
3) Marital bliss
4) Boy/Girl Friend
5) Pure, unadulterated sex

Er, if you find the last one..... play it safe and spare me the details......

And here's to the New Year ahead!

An Attempt at Bad Pool Poetry

Chalk.
Cue.
Table.
Balls.

Left hand touches
Green mat.
Right grips cue.
Body leans on table.
Eye aims.

Line of sight
from ball to hole.
Angles calculated.
Cue adjusted.

Relax right grip.
Center of white.
Draw back
And hit.

White to coloured.
Grazes the side.
Ball rolls.
Enters hole.

Game is done.
And Won.


Hee..... went for pool game today with libexco..... and won some games...... happy person now....... :)
Necro, I await thy next challenge!

Best of British Blogging

Some of them ain't too bad, especially the ones that are at the top.... Design very good....
Check It Out Guys!

Clang! Clang! Bang! Hiss!

As you guys can see, page is under construction, under construction.... please walk carefully, and watch out for mud puddles and falling bricks.

Look Out Below!

BANG!

*Huff huff huff*

See what I mean?

Nike Vouchers For Sale

When my dad got me my new phone, he got 3 Nike vouchers together with it. They're $50 each and have no minimum-purchase-required, and strangely, no date of expiry either. Does anyone want to buy them? Cos I didn't see anything that I particularly wanted at Nike.

Well, ok, their backpacks look good but I have enuff bags as it is.... :p

If you guys are interested, sms me k?

Infrared argh!

Gods I still can't get my handphone to transfer pics to my laptop..... why? Why? Why? On my laptop it just comes out as a BMP file which I can't read. What the hell is going on here? WHy?

Meow meow....

Just felt like doing that, donno why...

Well, at least got a few more stuff to put up here....

Exposed! Revealed!

As a tribute to LOTR, I bring you The Secret Diaries of LOTR as I found it on Goldfish's weblog. [to GFish: Where the heck do you find these things??] One thing about the diaries? You'd realise that somehow every character has homo tendencies. Yes, dearies, including the dishy elf. :p All for fun, all for fun.... If my AHRM Tolkien-crazy-groupmate is reading this, maybe you could read it and comment? Hahaha.... tell us all if Frodo and Sam really have homo tendencies.... :p

NUS is now paying me

Continuing on, I got the NUS research assistant job.... Meet my fellow RA, now to be known as the Violinist, for lack of a better nick. ( Er, Tenderheart, if you're reading this, pls don tell him that, k? ) Apparently this prof, now known as Dr Fox Mulder, ( His name sounds like that. Really. ) is doing a thesis paper on humour and its effect on work performance. So what he wants me and the Violinist to do is to think of and come up with 3 short videos, then show them to subject pools of hapless Yr1s in March. Very flexible about pay too. Apparently, sitting there in the Mac's being briefed about the project and talking cock with the Violinist earned me 2 hrs of pay. Don't you just love it?

BTW, he's the Violinist cos he plays the violin and teaches it too. For Candle: Earth hands, like Hellbound's and short thumbnail. Down to earth, practical, sensible and reliable, and sees through most of his projects. Quite the opposite of me. Oh dear. I'll tell you guys more details if I see ya, cos to spill abt him on the Net seems wrong for some reason. :p

Thank god for some cash anyway. Been spending like crazy, esp. since I've started collecting all those kino coupons. *groan* To Necro, I bought Loki, Mythical detective of Ragnarok, and dang, I think you're more suited to it than me. All the characters are the cutesy bigheaded type, and so far, no bloodshed, no murder, no sex, no psychotic characters, no incest, no occult activities..... *yawn*

My New Phone!

And I have a new phone!!!!! My dad used his plan to get me the N3200! It has integrated camera, flashflight, FM radio and a whole buncha other features! So far I've only taken a few pics with it. Granted resolution sucks like crazy, but as a toy it ain't too bad. [good enuff for me to snap the pics off mag covers, i discovered with my FIRST cover of Aragorn] Can change the cover too, so can design my own cover. :D Also came with Nike vouchers! Does anybody want to buy those? Cos there's nothing much at Nike I wanna get.
Of course, the flip side is that we went to J8 just today and saw the model selling for about $150 cheaper than what he got it for. *peng*

Me & Dad: Huh???

Me: So does this mean I pay you less now?

Dad: *cheshire grin* Sorry gal.

Bleah. But least mine comes with the Nike vouchers....... Once I figure out to, I'll try to post some of the pics on the Net.

Hee..... so excited...... :) :) :) I already printed and cut out a new cover for the phone, from an anime wallpaper that I dloaded.... painstakingly cut out all the holes and stuff ( thank god this keypad only has 9 keys altogether. If it had the full 11-12... I'd die ) and den found more cool-looking covers in the box that I'd overlooked. Bleah bleah bleah. Anyway, so now my phone has an anime theme to it, with wallpaper and outside cover. Now I'm just left with the ringtone to dload and transfer whatever old pic msgs were on the old one...

Out of NUSSUX...

My exam results also came out, and I got 2 As!!!!! *champagne pops, confetti flies down. Thank you. Thank you very much* But then again I also got 2 Cs, *bleah* so the whole thing evens out into something like straight Bs. But nevermind! I got As! And in the modules I liked better too! *sniff sniff* Tai4 Gan3 Dong4! And I get to zhao outta NUSSUX with a merit!

The Roll:
AHRM: C+
Service Marketing: C+
OE: A
Internet4Marketing: A ( Despite me last time being 'defensive' during our final presentation...)

Any of my ex-groupmates reading this? How'd you all do for the modules?

Amazing how some people can get so excited about little things like that huh?

Love Me....If You Dare
Wowza! Great show! Refreshing from the usual fluff anyway...... I got so inspired, I went and made a website to the movie. [partly also because my blog's getting clogged, so this way I get more space to dish out my crap. Mwahahaha...] Check it Out! [even though it's very, very amateurly done. I was watching CSI at the same time. :p ]
The First Jeux D'enfants Fansite

And if Sylveracyd's reading this, don't worry! I'm still working on your tiles!

Asia Weblog Awards
Wow, this is how big the blog has gotten. Now there's even an unofficial contest out on the Net. [not that I was ever in the running....] Check it Out Here! cos you seriously have to see some of the blogs. They're great! Especially the ones in the design category! *flash of inspiration before the eyes*

Man, how am I gonna sleep tonight?

I'm so turning into an online voyeur. I hardly go to any websites anymore, and most of my time online is spent reading other people's blogs. Well, mostly that's because people usually update their blogs more frequently than regular websites. Also, it's nice to see what's happening in my frens' and other people's lives. Yup, I'm fulfilling my inner kaypoh.

leaving the house soon to catch a movie, hope Cathay doesn't screw me like the last time, by listing it in the papers and not having it in the movies. ( Great customer service don't you think? State in the papers that you have a movie showing and then not havin it in the theatres when customers go to catch it. ) If I do get it, you guys will hear about it on this blog. And no, it's not LOTR3.

Also, this blog will be going through some intensive construction in the upcoming period. I'm puttin' on my yellow helmut and PCK boots and going tramping around! Hope the whole thing doesn't collapse on me......

Sylveracyd's tiles site is almost ready too.... Just have to tweak the code for the forms a bit......

Thanks to Tenderheart bear, who's thrown me a lifeline by introing me to her sup. who needed a research assistant. Really hope he accepts me, as 1) the job scope is interesting, involves some writing and amateur digital video, and 2) for once, i'd be going to NUSSUX to get paid, rather than paying to be there.

Still reading through my books too.... so much to do, so much to do....

Thank god my blog doesn't keep breaking down the way Quet's does.... although I have to admit, her new blog does look pretty damn cool.... NVM... wait for this one to get the hang of her webdesigning once n for all... hee.... :p

Anyway, anyone read my previous rant on the low birth rates in Singapore? Well, if you see today's Straits Times, there's a little graph there with a line that's shooting all the way to the bottom. Yes that's our birth rates. We need at least 50,000 births to sustain our country's needs, but last way, there were only 40,864 births. ( Wonder if there was something unauspicious about that way. Would explain it a bit. Our country planners could try asking the geomancers for advice instead )

And remember why I said this was the case? Cause everyone was subliminally conditioned into thinking about money first? The paper states that "The poor economy this year probably contributed to the drought, as couples tend to put off having chidren until they think they can afford to." and Ms Tan Yen Nee, 24, says: "We can't expect a decent standard of living with a child. We've got our housing loan and we're saving up for a car."

What this means is that this Ms Tan actually feels that having a decent standard of living, [whatever that may be to her. 5room? Maisonette? Condo?] and a car is currently higher on her family's priority list than having a child is. Could we infer from this also that her material needs come before her maternal ones?

Admittedly, I am utterly blur about Ms Tan's income and her husband's income and her reasons for not wanting a kid at this point of time. [in response to Kairos' comment, this is why I can't write into the forum, cos I'll get totally blasted to bits by other less open-minded souls.] But I really have to question if she's that poor that she can't even fulfil the 2nd level of Maslow's hierarchy. I also have to question what she means exactly by "decent". My parents, at the time that I was born, didn't even have a house of their own. And even after getting a house, they managed to sustain 2 kids at the same time, at a "decent" standard of living, meaning we had food to eat and clothes to wear and a car for Daddy to drive his ungrateful kids off to school.

Better economy then? Simpler way of life? I don't know. ANd the govt's measures aren't helping. Supposedly the gahmen has this entire basket of subsidies and rebates given out to families for their 2nd and 3rd child, so all these should help financially right?

Once again, nipping the symptom, but not the disease. If you look carefully at the stuff they offer, the bulk of the offers come in the form of cash, rebates, subsidies, with the exception being the extended maternity leave. Do they think that just by throwing money at us, we'd be immediately inspired to procreate? ( Hey honey, forget the Pill. Let's just do it and get the cash! )

Yoo-hoo, Mr Gahmen, if we have all those kids you want us to have, how'd you like to take care of them for us? Here's a great plan: You can keep the money, ( Which will only minimally sustain us for the first 6 years of the kid's life, and hereby saving them from paying for the time in the kid's life which gets really expensive ) and take care of our kids for us instead! Open up the Istana every Mon - Fri from 7am to 7pm and turn it into a giant nursery house! With all that space, I'm sure you have enough room for at least 40,000 babies and toddlers. And with the national guards, we sure don't have to worry about security now, do we? Maybe if we did that, you'd have a slight inkling of just what a DAMN HECK OF A TROUBLE it is to raise a kid!

And all that's just when they are toddlers! What happens when they go to Pri Sch? Meet other kids? Meet bullies? Get picked on? Can't do their homework? Can't understand Chinese? Need tutors, cos we, their parents, don't get Chinese as well? Go to Sec Sch? The Os? Get into JC? Meet members of the opposite sex in a co-ed environment ( some, for the first time ) at the most hormonally charged stage of their lives? The As? Uni? Graduation? All this is a freakin' 20-odd year process, of which the gahmen is only helping for the first 6 and then you're on your own! Good luck and try not to trip on the way to nursery school!

Whoever's in charge of this birth rate problem, pls come up with some new measures that'll actually help. We need our CPF. We need shorter work weeks. We need longer maternity. We need more family-friendly measures in the work place. We need bosses that don't see us as asset machinery that lives to work for the corporation alone. And we can't have all this, until you make the right moves in the right direction. If all you can think of is the monetary side, then that's all we, the citizens, are gonna focus on. And we're just gonna end up paying ( No pun intended ) for all this while you sit in your pretty little house with the damn huge golf course and wonder why we're not having more babies.

If you haven't seen the article, [or don't subscribe to Straits Times, hint hint wink wink tsk tsk], here is the link:
Singapore Sees Lowest Birth Rate in 26 years

It's Official: My exam dates come back on the 19th, so on that date, I can see if I have to continue worrying about getting a job, or worry about seeing my damn lecturers again next sem. My sole comfort is that I don't have to agonize over it over Xmas.....

For the NUS students:
Exam Results Hell Day

Wah Freakin' Lau
Once again I'm stuck deep in HTML mess because I glibly agreed to do SJ's website for her. Talk abt shooting myself in the foot, I think I kicked myself in the arse as well. Bleah. At least this time it ain't so bad, cos I've finally discovered the wonders of Dreamweaver 4.

[angels above: Hallelujah. come to think of it, has anyone ever wondered why we pronounce it "ha-ley-lu-IAH" when's spelt with a J? Hee...]

Now the only thing left is to figure how to get a form online.... urgh.... more trips to the library....... n more javascript madness........ will publish the site on this blog when it's done, cos right now, it's so under construction, it's liable to collapse anytime. [and we sure won't want you to walk around the site with yellow helmuts. Not to mention how incredibly stupid you'd look wearing a yellow helmut in your own house]

Also got a new tuition job, [FINALLY!!!] teaching in Geylang east of all places. The place is abt half an hour's MRT ride from my place, and the pay is less, but I'm despo so who's complaining? The kid is pri 6 come the new school year, and I'm teaching English only. At least there's a library near their place for me to hang out if I reach their area early.....

Watched LXG and Nemo FINALLY! Good movies, though LXG is kinda mindless hollywood entertainment. Animation in Nemo: Fantastic. Kudos.

We Don't Want Kids...Unless they pay their own way
And currently on the News as I hear it, Singapore experiences its lowest birth rate, despite Govt. baby bonus. Like, DUH! With all the education, tuition and other unsavoury influences to worry about, why the heck would I want to raise a child in Singapore and subject him to the same shit that I went through? Why, he could grow up learning Hokkien expletives, be an utter disgrace in Chinese, turn nigh-suicidal from the homework at school, turn into an overly-pragmatic, materialistic, money-grabbing glob [for lack of a better word] and *gasp* vote PAP and wear white his whole life. [while this might mean he could go to RI....]

Ok, forget about the above paragraph. I have nothing against the PAP or RI, so don't blast my mail or my blog. But frankly, there's very little in our society and culture today that's actually helping the birth rate right now. In Europe, they have paternity leave and maternity leave that's way, way longer than ours, and not to mention the shorter work weeks. On the other hand, you have our gahmen, CUTTING CPF, RAISING GST, in order to become more COST competitive with China, and urging us to not be so PICKY in jobs and TAKE what you can while you can..... I have to ask: why are they wondering why we're not having babies? Because it's not COST-EFFECTIVE anymore!

To put it into crudely concrete terms, a child is a money-losing investment these days. You pay for all those years of raising a kid and in the end, when you've drained all your CPF seeing him grow up, he's off making his own millions and leaving you in an old folks' home. [unless you had the foresight to instil a strong sense of filial piety in him] While I doubt that most people think in such monetary terms when it comes to kids, I believe with all the COST, COST and COST being mentioned in the papers today, our gahmen has managed to subliminally condition us into thinking about MONEY, MONEY and MONEY all the time. There are plenty of examples of this. When they ran an article on why service was so lousy in Singapore, they found out it was because we put price and quality over service. Look at the crowds at the Robinson's Sales. And when something is being given out free, you can bet there'll be a queue of people, whether it be free food or free bras.

Everything we do in our lives revolves around money, and how to maximise the money we already. When you've led entire generations to think this way, what makes you think we're gonna have babies? Because frankly, unless you have a really strong sense of parenthood, [not to mention god-like patience and self-sacrifice] you're not really likely to have a kid at all. With the pay we're getting, and the CPF cuts, our generation will be lucky if we can even save up enough cash for retirement if we're SINGLE. What about when we're married? What about when we have kids? If we ourselves are struggling just to earn enough for ourselves, how the heck are we gonna afford kids? The gahmen was so worried about us losing out to China, they forgot to worry about us losing out ourselves. [gee, did that last sentence make sense?]

The gahmen had better think real good about their long term plans for Singapore.

In the name of literary balance, I'm gonna write something light-hearted to compensate for the heaviness below, so here's:

Love Actually Is All Around

I finally caught Love Actually and kudos and credits to Quet for getting the tix at half price. [ha! Nyah nyah to the rest of you!]

NOte about this show: This is definitely something to catch if you have a bf/gf as a companion. Richard Curtis, who also created Bridget Jones' Diary, 4 Weddings, and Notting Hill, produced (I think he produced.... I think) this romantic comedy revolving around these couples who are loosely related. The relationships are something like:

The PM of Britain falls in love with Natalie, and his sister is
Karen is married to Harry, who's attracted to his secretary. Working in Harry's office is Sarah, in love with Carl, hot latin hunk.
Karen is also friends with Daniel, who's stepson is in love with a girl at sch, and Daniel is friends with
Jamie, who's in love with his Portuguese housekeeper, though they don't understand each other linguistically.
Jamie is friends with Mark, who loves his best friend's new bride.

Out of the whole sequence, seemingly, is Colin, self-proclaimed sex god who flies to US for a shag, cos he's convinced that all American girls think British men are hot. And Billy Mack, whose Xmas spoof on Love Is All Around beats Blue's single to become the top single for xmas. [his single is played in snippets throughout the entire show]

V.funny show, though the British slang and accent may mean that you might miss a few jokes. Also amazing is how they managed to sew in the stories of so many disparate characters and yet not make it confusing to watch. [hint to all: don't think about the relationships between the characters. just concentrate on the love that is all around.] Not too many love cliches also, thankfully, but then again, isn't love in the movies a kinda cliche already? The difference is that here, this movie seems to say, "Yea, I'm about love, so what about it? Sod off, mate"

Fluffy, comfy movie. Watching it at xmas is kinda like curling up in front of the fire in a pile of blankets and a mug of hot chocolate and marshmallows. :) Gives you that warm, cosy feeling. [or maybe it was 'cos I was wrapped up in my shawl throughout the whole movie.]

For more pro reviews, check out:
IMDB
The Official Site [ Might take a while to load ]
and for a more balanced view,
Rotten Tomatoes

Can't stand my parents
damn damn DAMN once again I type in a whole chunk of stuff and when I leave to answer a call, the blogger server kicks me out and now I've to rewrite everything. damn damn DAMN!

Ok, as much as I can remember I was griping about my parental units. [i coined that phrase with the slayer] I started off with: My parents have been pushing for me to work in the same place that my cousin does, 'cos they say some money's better than just sitting at home. Downside: My cousin sorts and delivers mail at $5 an hour. That is one damn lot bunch of peanuts.

Q: If I decline this seemingly-generous offer, am I being the picky graduate that everyone picks on in the papers?

The problem with our parents is that they grew up in a totally different environment, with a totally different and narrow perspective, and somehow, they think this infuses with the wisdom of the ages and that it is their sublime and holy duty to make us that us, their offspring, follow their wisdom, otherwise all manner of disaster and mayhem will befall us. This is the problem with my units. From primary One they've been telling me to do things the way they like, only that now that I'm older and obviously have a thinking mind of my own, it's a bit harder for them to do that. Then to them, I become selfish, materialistic, picky and snobbish.

[i'm now posting this para by para so that I don't lose anything]

I missed a tuition offer over the weekend. The agency called when I was in Jap class and I didn't get the call, cos my phone was on silent. A potential channel of future income: Gone. The best thing about it is that they called my house then, so my mum sent me an sms and that's how I finally got to know about it. I couldn't call back the agency cos firstly, it was late [who's at the office at 630 on a sat nite??] and also becos my phone was on low batt again and I wouldn't have been able to talk to the lady for more than 5 sec without it dying. [some of you may know about this curious trait about my phone]

Anyway, I got a bit upset about it when I heard about it, because hello, come Jan, I'm on my own, and I like, really need the income? And my parents' way of comforting me? Telling me that I should have gotten my priorities right. [ie take the call and leave the jap class] So sue me if I follow a basic courtesy practice that HALF the population of Singapore doesn't, even if I've been doing it all my 3 years in NUS.

The irritating thing about my parents is that they think that their narrow perspective on life has somehow given them the wisdom of seniority, and that if I don't follow that wisdom, I will be struck down by God or something. Never mind that they grew up in totally different eras, or that they are 2 different people from me, or that they didn't follow the same educational path that I did, they somehow think that they can impose their way of thinking over me, because they're always right and I'm always wrong or at best, misguided. They're always harping about 'my priorities' when it's perfectly clear that they don't know what my priorities are, and couldn't care less, unless it was out of line with what they think it should be. They did it in pri sch, after my Os, after my As, and now they're doing it after I graduate.

Like, screw you. I have my own goals in life, and I don't need you to decide them for me.

Now I can only pursue my goals in silence, cos if I tell them what I really want to do with my life, their response will be so predictable. MONEY. It's always about MONEY and even though I know there's some truth in it, I'm sick of the way they keep harping on it, and the way they keep pulling me to join their path of monkeyhood. I know I need money to survive but I don't see why I have to become a damn wage monkey to a multi-billion corporation who's more interested in their shareholders than the needs of their employees. [and that I have NO illusions about, becos that's exactly what they taught us in bizad]. There are more than one ways of pursuing money, why can't I, for now, try a different way?

The worse thing about my parents is that they don't give a heck about my priorities, unless it's out of line with what they think it should be.

My pix don't work!!! I donno why cos I swear I typed the URL and everything correctly and quet tells me all she sees are 2 little red crosses on the screen and candle doesn't even seem to see the new entries........ oh gawds above kill me.... kill me now and end it all now........