Miss Quirky

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A good, albeit quirky, student of mine had a few punchlines during make-up lectures I was eagerly dying to post.

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1st Punchline

When told that the correct answer for a missing nutrient was 'water', a couple of students asked why the answer can't be 'minerals'.

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"It can't be minerals because minerals occupy only a trace amount absorbed into the body".

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The quirky student chirpily buzzed in : "Then mineral water lah".

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Haha!

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2nd Punchline

Overheard Quirky Student replying back to her friend on where she got this particular snack : "Sperm-market".

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Haha!

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3rd Punchline

When asked what the iron-deficient disease in Man is called : "Amnesia".

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Haha!

An Original Short Story : The Evening Jog

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I

As he started his warm-up before the evening jog, the clouds above took on the vehement mood of red angst. It appears that thunder was rolling in, as the first sweep of frosty breezes turned into angry wind sweeps, occasionally overturning the mass of leaf litter in the park into obtuse angles of scatter.

A storm was quietly brewing in the midst.

The jogger, unperturbed by the sudden change in climate, trudged on with his calve stretches. Soon rain will hailed from the skies, but he was adamant in his quest to keep up with his robotic schedule. He needed to complete this evening’s jog like some sacred ritual he had been adhering to for the past eleven years. No rain or storm will stop him from doing so; he was a completely resilient person who never broke down before – not of physical impairment, emotional instability or physiological dysfunction. Almost a verbatim life – a machine among men.

He was not going to be stopped by Nature or its’ wrath today.

The first bolt of lightning seared through the evening ochre sky. Yet the possibility of rain was remote. The clouds have been adamantly bleak for the past three days, except for the theatrical blades of lightning that crossed the stage of the skies in cavalier fashion with no real climax of rain.

The uncanny weather was another reason why the jogger wasn’t the least disturbed by it. If the heavens were preparing for a floodgate to cleanse the world all these while, he will still complete his revolution around King James Park before they flood it. He didn’t seem a bit bothered by it at all.

He started his pace fast – he wanted to see how fast the momentum carries over to the next moment when the glycogen depleted. From there, he could gauge his endurance and pushed it further than never before.

His endurance level was his fulcrum that made him a remarkable human with great physique. He was constantly pushing himself to the limits; always testing the breaking point.

Little did he know that what lies ahead in this evening jog will test his psyche almost to breaking point.


II

As the jogger passed by the playground, he saw a small group of children playing on the merry-go-round. In spite of his intense concentration on maintaining his pace, his curiosity got the better of him. He huffed as he slowed down, and glanced at the band of children that seemed out of place in this unnerving weather as he passed by them.

Which set of parents would be moronic enough to let their children play out in this evening of a potential typhoon?

Weird. The kids, all seemingly no older than five years, suddenly appeared less childlike now, as he examined their stoic facial expressions. They were actually conversing among themselves, like regular adults do, except that they’re not. In a split second, the jogger noticed a particularly familiar face of a boy on the merry-go-round, staring blankly back at him.

The jogger suddenly realized who the boy was.

The jogger was staring at the childhood version of himself.

III

The unprecedented fright that shocked him out of momentum saw him ran a couple of blocks down in record time, until he came to catch his breath and spin down his encounter as mere hallucinations.

He must be dreaming.

It took him a good ten minutes to recover his senses, by then after which he dismissed the quirky moment as sheer coincidence of the highest genetic congruency.

There are at least seven versions of yourself in this world, he was told. Maybe I just met my younger version – a sheer coincidence and a stroke of luck. That’s it. Don’t dwell on it.

He tried to continue his run, but somehow he felt the momentum was not there anymore.




IV

The next junction saw him carelessly trudging on his Nike’s past an old clock tower that sat in the middle of Normanton Path.

And that was when things got curiouser.

As he limbered on past the monument, he caught glimpse of a teenager, bespectacled with a tousled mess of hair, sitting on the bench beside it, elbows placed on the knees and the palms of the hands on the sides of his face, looking visibly distraught.

By the glow of the night streetlamp, he could see that he was crying. The tears that welled up formed a mist on the lenses of the spectacles.

The jogger, irked by the sheer placement of the teenager being totally alone in the central part of this forested park, noticeably slowed down and tried to denounce the fact that this was a loose spirit haunting these woods all these while.

He wasn’t totally wrong.

The teen looked up and realized he wasn’t alone.

In that foreboding moment of reality, the jogger knew who he was staring at now.

Quintessentially, he found himself on the precipice of reality now bordering into the pits of lunacy and total impossibility. As he drunkenly held back his gasp, and making a concerted effort to even stand on solid ground, he prodded himself conscious and quickly stumbled his way out from Normanton Path, away from the clock tower. He tried to breathe normally, but he was hyperventilating. He pathetically argued with himself, challenging science against the zone of logic, but there were no prevailing conclusion to both. Reasoning was thrown out of the window tonight. He stopped short of this mental debate and tried to envision the face he saw; clearly, even against the dark silhouette of the night, how could he not recognize it?

The teen was himself as well.







V

Caught in an ecstasy of profound illogical madness, the jogger went ballistic and did the unthinkable.

He went to a nearby corner of a jutted piece of carved rock and sat near it.

And he cried.

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VI

It seemed he must have cried for eternity.

For a man who is not known to succumb to any form of inhospitable challenges, the breakdown was apparently true and real. The jogger was clearly assaulted by his own parameters of logic that clearly did not border on sanity. His senses were numbed by the sheer irrationality of it all. And he was a man of science that presided over logic and numbers and not mere phantoms and apparitions that manifested themselves into younger clones of himself.

He braved the facts based on his observations, and decided to face blind cowardism and took refuge in his surreal experiences this evening as a willful experience no less spiritual in nature. He told himself to calm down many times over. The jogger simply refused to believe it was anything more than a statistical coincidence.

As he turned around and grasped that circular granite orb that was marked beside him, he felt a sudden trepidation of blood surging to his brain.

He eyed the object nonchalantly, and realized it was a tombstone.

In the eerie glow of the incandescent light bulb of the nearby streetlamp, he could unmistakably decipher the name on it.

His heart stopped beating instantly.

A Pleasant Surprise

Look what came in the mail yesterday.

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Hmm... a square-looking package. Is that what I think it is?

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Aha!

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Whoa. The new 2006 Catalogue. Drool.

Whoa. Glossy and feels like newly-pressed out from the printing factory. Check out that new Slyvester Stallone chrono above.

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Alamak. My PAM 86 doesn't seem to be able to find its' printed form. Maybe...

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...this can!!! Muahahahahahahaha!

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Sure looked like it had morphed out of the paper! PAM 164 and its' carbon copy.

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Haha! Viva Paneristi!

Look! Up in the sky!

A colleague mentioned that the new Superman doesn't fly as realistically-looking as Christopher Reeves did.

Actually, that's quite true.

In my pubescent mind back then, I hesitantly thought that he could really really fly, although I knew it was just a lot of invisible wires and effects.

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But he was ever the graceful Kryptonian that perambulates the clouds of Metropolis in classy fashion. He took off and landed in uber-machismo style. He moulded Clark Kent into an instant icon of likeable geekness. He even made wearing underwear on the outside a fashion chutzpah.

He made it looked so real.

The new Superman, however, is, at best, a mere digital manipulation of the Man of Steel.

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His arrival comes from a long line of animated superheroes churned out by supercomputers that would put a computing prowess of a Pentium processor to digital shame.

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Supes wasn't just not real - he was totally unreal, in the sense that for every bit of hardcore action on film he was on, Supes wasn't in it - not physically, anyway ( and clearly computer-animated ). Christopher Reeves wouldn't have Bham! Sock! Wham! the villains hands-on like the ol' Supes before him, but he'd coolly pluck out a nuclear missile like a gigantic carrot and cast it away out of this world without much fuss.

Occasionally, he does look dorky at times, but then I believe he is still The Superman to last through our times.

Sometimes, being simple is still best. Or in this case, being simple is Super enough.

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Maybe we should all strive to be simple Supers.

Dude, that's a Cyrtostachys lakka. Or is it Cyrtostachys renda?

Sometimes I scare myself.

I mean, it's really abnormal when you unconsciously pronounce the stuff found in bread as Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Normal people call it 'yeast'.

Or having notably remembering that the cause of Black Death is not just a mere bacteria, but a life-sucking flea-infesting microorganism called Yersinia pestis.

Well, call it Education, I guess. Some things do stick in the head for some time. And it better stays that way as well, and not in the literal sense.

Back in Uni time, I picked up a module on Plant Identification and Taxanomy during those freshmen days. I didn't know why I opted for this module, which is still a mystery to this day, but I am glad that I did.

The course lecturer was an anal-looking angmoh professor who look liked he didn't take a crap for a long, long time. He was always looking constipated and stern-looking, and we had a taste of his demeanour when he told us to not even breathe in his lectures, let alone talk, because he would not tolerate humans who could not listen to his instructions and lessons.

He looked like the type who could forced a plant to stop photosynthesizing during daylight.

I wonder if his close friends are as creepy, unfriendly and mouldy as him - and imagining whether their names go by the likes of Fungi, Fern and Ficus.

Anyway, when we went for field trips ( which is of course, the most logical way to appreciate the dichotomy of plants and the impact of mosquito bites on your legs after that ), he was clearly in his element out there. He would proceed to rattle off every tree, grass and flower's scientific name with the pronunciation accuracy of a profound academic who looked like he had lived all his life talking to weeds and pollen grains.

Boy, were we impressed.

I picked up some common scientific names of roadside trees along the way, although sometimes my belacan tongue does get tongue-tied at some point, which is the case of one fine day when I mistakenly mispronounced a common garden shrub as a muscle in a giraffe's ass when asked to name it.

Boy, was he not impressed.

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Here is a list of some common roadside trees of our Garden City and their scientific names.

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Some of the more notable names that perhaps needed mentioning would be the following :

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Sea almond ( Ketapang tree ) - Terminalia catappa

Tampines tree - Strablus elongatus

Perepat - Sonneratia alba ( related to Jessica Alba??? )

Seraya - Shorea curtisii

Midnight horror (?) - Oroxylum indicum

Nipah - Nypa fruticans

Rambutan - Nephelium lappaceum

Nutmeg - Myristica fragrans

Cempaka - Michelia chempaca

Pong pong - Cerberra odollam

Rain tree - Samanea saman

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Go on then. Assault the rambutan seller at Geylang with 'hey, your Nephelium lappaceum sucks!' and chances are you'll even get away with it - this time.

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Incidentally, trivia of these sorts are true tests of our general knowledge. As I sat pondering, wondering for the answers of some of the questions in a Biology Trivia Competition in a lecture theatre in Ngee Ann poly last Tuesday, I am made to realise that the degree of difficulty is indeed limited only by the broadmindedness of an individual to contain the many facts and data that are semi-consciously pervading our senses everyday.

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For example, up till today, I didn't know that :

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Kopi Luwak is a $600-a-pound delicacy collected from the backside of an Indonesian feral cat called the luwak.

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The Sardinian cheese, Casu marzu, is unique because it is infected with maggots.

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The scientific name for the common bird's nest fern is Calophyllum inophyllum.

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However, I did know that the Beagle was the freakin' ship in which Darwin set sailed across the Galapagos before he came up with the much-criticised Theory of Evolution.

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I had fervently wished that the organisers asked where Darwin was buried after he died, because the answer would be Westminster Abbey. Aiya, no such luck.

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However, we still managed to come in runners-up at the end, starting from about thirty teams, beaten only by a few points by a premier boy's institution currently located in Bishan.

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Never mind lah, we give them chance.

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Our loot of the day :

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Not bad, huh? Well done well done.

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Curiously too, did you know that the word 'dude' actually means hair on an elephant's butt?

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Betcha you didn't know that. Right, dude?

Excellent Post, Jean.

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A good student of mine came up with this post on her blog.

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sometimes you feel that things aren't going the way you want them to be. or you feel that something should have happened to you, but happened to someone else instead. or you ask yourself, "why shouldn't i deserve it?" then, maybe you start to plunge into self-pity, some sort of kind of revengful anger develops and you try so hard to prove yourself.

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yea i'm pretty sure many of us have felt like that. it's really tiring. trust me, i've been there. and i'm still learning to get out of it.

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you know, maybe sometimes we fall, we fail, because God is telling us that we shouldn't be so proud. pride doesn't go very far. learning to break down the high places is the hardest thing to swallow, yet the most liberating. when you begin to put others before youself, you see things differently. in new perspectives. you'd come to realise things you never realised before. Humilty is one of the most beautiful virtues a person can possess. when we learn to humble ourselves, it automatically destroys that stubborn hardened shell. suddenly you feel so free and the world becomes so beautiful...that's when you feel really alive.

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i think it really rocks if a person is willing to give up their high-paying jobs, their comfortable and secure environments, committing their time and lives, for volunteerism, totally stepping out and venturing out of their comfort zone. that, i believe is true humilty, courage, selflessness and ultimately knowing how to place others above yourself. and its not really how much they give, but how much love and passion is put into the giving. these are the real heroes on earth.

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its the people who give, who will find true happiness in life, rather those who receive.

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Jean, you da man.

Love and Time

The Lake House is actually an alternate twist to an older classic called Somewhere in Time - a soapy story of how the possibility of time travel eventually merges two different souls from two separate timelines into one conjoined entity under the pledge of True Love.

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The premise of the story is that if you will yourself hard enough to believe that you can go back to the past, then you will.

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I'm guessing the strongest force at work here is not the Concept of Space-Time Continuum, or the Time-Warp Effect, or Schrodinger's cat, but rather the pull of Love.
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It is interesting to note that, in all probability, you can actually believe a person who claims he comes from the distant past, but not from the future, simply because it is impossible to go against Time.
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However, in all likelihood, it would be a high uncertainty that a time machine ever existed in the 18th Century, or anything earlier than that. So we can assume that no man from the past has ever hyperspaced in to our present days without looking really dorky and simian with a bad fashion sense.
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So, if we can't go backwards in time, when can we travel forward in time?

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At best, our lightspeed-time-bending technology can only be described as embryonic. It'll take at least two more centuries before anyone can actually devise a time machine that warps time and successfully prevents our molecules from being scattered across the Milky Way when we zipped at the speed of light. So at the moment, er, running fast seems like a very valid idea to beat the clock.
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Imagine if we can actually go backwards in time ( and only backwards ). Think of all the things we would have altered or changed.
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Your occasional stupidity leak.

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Your greatest mistakes.

Your exams.

Your accidents.

Your failures.

Your shortcomings.

Your whole life.

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Would you have played out your life the same way if you had the opportunity to go back in time?

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I think not.

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Most probably we end up rectifying some parts of our existence and tweak some things.

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Which, in all retrospect, will make us more curiouser because we want to see the outcome of these amendments, but we can't expect things to be better and smoother just because we remove the pitfalls and pretend that life is going to be cheery and rose-tinted from then on.

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Call it what you will - karma, destiny, fate, luck, chance etc. - but Life will never run out of the unexpected twists and shocks you'd similarly find, say, in a Sandman comic book or a European-branded washing machine.

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So, your life could end up more horrigible than the first version you so ingeniously edited.

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The whole point of Time and its' essence is that by the end of each day, you look back and reflect on the things that you have done on that nice spot on your sofa with a mug of hot cocoa in your hands while Michael Buble croons in the background, and then maybe ask yourself whether you'd spent enough quality moments in them.

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You would want to stop proselytising the 'What if-s?' and the regrets that came with the unfortunate things that happened in the day, simply because there is no such thing as rectifying the past or travelling back in time.

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Except of course, to look into the future. And not to drown your thoughts anymore on what has passed.

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At least not in the hot cocoa, anyway. Ouch.

The Botox Pageant ( or The Silicon Exhibition )

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It is very scary to see near-perfect Barbie dolls in human sizes sashaying down the catwalk like automated cupcakes on a sushi conveyor belt ( like the recent Miss Universe pageant ).

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It makes me wonder whether the species on display are truly filial-genuine, or 100% mutated.

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The contestants all looked like Stepford wives in different denominations of races and ethnicity. I am sure behind every perfect set of pearly-whites lies a story involving a cosmetic orthodontist, and every other medical professions in between for all other anatomical parts. I will not even have to hint about silicon, simply because that element is NATURALLY abundant that night, albeit in some inconspicuous manifestations.

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You'd think there's a factory/lab somewhere that clones these dolls just in time for these pageants. You want to nudge your senses and tell them the girls really do exist, and wonder why you don't bump into them on the streets, but you stop kidding yourself believing that they looked Revlon-ready when they wake up in the morning.

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Someone mentioned to me that if you really want to see true superficial beauty in a girl, you should really see her - in her natural state - when she just woke up from sleep.

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Bearing in mind that you might be arrested for unlawful intrusion into a private property during the morning, or simply having to contend with her wrestler-dad during breakfast time, chances are you will never get to see her au naturel allure for all that she's worth.

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Which comes to one point in mind :

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Is physical beauty really just skin-deep? Can a girl remain Botox-less for only so long? Will there be hope for women who cannot afford them? Will DVD pirates change jobs and flood pasar malams with cheap, made-in-China Botox in the future?

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Stay tuned.

Doodling

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I guess doodling can be deemed as a form of a highly constructive expression of the semi-conscious mind, particularly if it is not meant to be one in the first place. Unlike an artist who, in some small calculation, still needs to plan something for his empty canvas, which is evidently an act of conscious projection.

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The doodler, however, simply lets the pen runs. And the muscular coordination in the fingers will follow suit while the brain continue to entertain the impulses.

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The canvas of a Doodler? Anything - minutes of meeting, recycled paper of notes, toilet paper, fabric, what-nots, walls(?) etc.

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It feels liberating to be the uninhibited doodler than the reluctant artist.

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Conspiracies about Conspiracy Theories

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I get the feeling that the many Dan Brown-wannabes and their books pilfering every inch of Borders are simply trying to milk us dry of their conspiracy theories. You know, it's always about a hidden artifact or treasure that has remained buried for three decades or more and suddenly reappearing among a secret brotherhood that harbours a secret for world domination, with some unfortunate protagonist trying desperately to snatch it away from potential evil deeds and thus redeeming himself as an accidental hero.

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It is no wonder that humans continually thrive on current fads that seemingly make our lives more exciting.

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Until the fad dies. Like the bubble tea phenomenon, and its' silent implosion.

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I wonder how anyone could read any more fiction regarding long-lost relics resembling any form of God-inducing revelations and the trysts they play with mortals. Your brain need to halt if you are made to think that there are so many of these Armageddon-raising troves in our garden soil.

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I guess when the conspiracy-theory fad dies, probably a new one will arise from these ashes. Maybe someone will attempt the ultimate transcript of writing a book about uncovering an actual hole that leads to hell, but was quickly covered up by bureaucratic white tapes or building the White House over it or something like that.

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It all makes sense because things, like everything else, is static. And because everything is static, we thus have Change, which is the only constant.

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No wonder those pumps and tubes are back on those lians in Bugis. Aiya. Fashion, what, hor.

I remember this.

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“Never lose sight of the importance of a beautiful sunset,

Or watching a full moon,

or the smell of rain.

It's often the little things that really matter in life."

SMSes

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How do you judge SMSes that are worth keeping in your INBOX?

Are they little anecdotes of warmth, or cute pictures of bunnies in socks?

Or are they precious moments of time

left to stand still

while

the universe rotates in rhyme

to meandering valleys or hills

of life

that knows no traffic laws

or any other erstwhile cause

to believe that the SMSes you keep from the very start

are in truth

matters that matter

to the very dear heart.

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Have you ever wondered why you keep all those messages that you keep?

Humility

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The greatest lessons in life are learnt from acts of humility.

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The need to understand that all of us are flawed and that there is this unspoken magnanimous equality that makes us all the same.

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Yet we differentiate, and act above our limits and question others of their virtues, seemingly forgetting ours.

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We are all the same. You and I.

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I will only try to achieve what I can. No more. No less.

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I choose to believe in the things I do. And the people I believe in.

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And then they will believe in me, because I did.

Xerostomia

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That's the new word I learnt today. It means having a low salivary flow, or a dry mouth.

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Well, you can't actually run out of saliva even if you actually believe that it will.

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The reason why I'm salivating over this is because of one thing : halitosis.

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Bad breath.

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Yup.

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While it’s not a life-or-death problem, bad breath causes embarrassment and self-consciousness for many people. When certain bacteria in the mouth eat, they release airborne compounds that cause bad breath. The bacteria prefer anaerobic, or oxygen-free, conditions. One reason most of us wake up with bad breath is that our mouths have been closed and sealed off from a fresh supply of oxygen. For the same reason, you may have bad breath if you haven't talked or eaten in a while.

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Sluggish saliva gives bacteria a chance to feed on peptides and proteins. One thing that can help prevent bad breath is acidic saliva, because the bacteria responsible for bad breath prefer alkaline saliva. So, while eating sweets is bad for your teeth, Ben & Jerry might actually be good for bad breath because glucose makes saliva acidic.

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Or either simply pop some mints. And open your mouth all da time for that oxygen fix.

The Day After Tomorrow

Some colleagues were talking about the tsunami that just recently slammed parts of Indonesia again.

One suddenly mentioned that scientists were predicting a mega, 40-storey high tsunami that will ravage half the world in fifteen years time.

That thought alone sent chills to my bones - the bizarre notion of witnessing a spectacular sight of an awesome rank of killer waves coming over from the edge of the horizon of East Coast Beach, suddenly reaching to dizzying heights and crashing against the condominiums and HDB flats along Marine Parade and thereafter leaving a trail of death of epic proportions, before sweeping inland to wreck havoc and cast our existence away.

Our island would literally sink.

Just how fragile are we? Just how safe will we be? Where will I stand, in all irony, to observe this spectacle of horrific grandeur?

Mrs Brown

I stopped short in my track when everyone was suddenly talking about Mr Brown in the staff room.

Aye, our famous prodigal blogger that manages to stir the gahmen with his recent satire-yet-true facets of life.

Hmm.... do i see a developing spark for blogging among the teaching fraternity here?

Little did I know later on that Brown-mania was actually induced by the presence of - none other - than Mr Brown's mum herself, who is attached to the school for some time.

And I'm like sitting two tables away from her.

Hmm. I find myself wanting to go up and ask her to comment on my blog. Then I can say to people that mine have been Browned - by Mrs Brown.

Cool, huh?

Mental
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The angklung performance, along with the booming percussions was a pleasant surprise awaiting us at Suntec.
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From the third level, they were the only sea of colour I could seemingly pick out.
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The upbeat tempo of the piece was perfectly layered with the quirky high-pitched angklungs and the resonating booms of the gendang and rebana. Psychedelic. Kinda like a traditional Wicked Aura.
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What goes in the mind of the mentally-ill?
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I saw this young man, who I reckoned was no older than thirty five years old, running around the third level with a pair of chopsticks and hollering "I'm gonna get you, I'm gonna get you!" while occasionally snooping behind some pillars and pretending to be James Bond.
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I don't think it was a prank on Gotcha, but rather here I was witnessing a life in its' prime eroding away amidst gawking civilisation. In short, obviously this guy's mental.
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He looked normal enough ; crew-cut hairstyle, white t-shirt with khaki bermudas. I didn't want to capture a shot of him in action because I realised it would be politically incorrect and shameless to exhibit the weak and fallible among us. I didn't want him to be stood up more than the stooge he already is.
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He completed a few animated revolutions around the third floor, to the amazement of the purging crowd, like he was playing up to them, and to which some of the younger crowd actually clapped their hands, realising later that this was no staged act of entertainment, but rather, a spectacle of the mentally-ill.
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Everyone has problems, but what magnitude of problems would drive a man to the brink of madness?
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In some ways, all of us are crazy in our own sense. After all, each and everyone of us has quirks that others might deemed as abnormal.
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Is headbutting a crazy act of retaliation, even if it means cracking the belly of someone who insults your family members?
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A decade ago, people who talked to themselves in the streets are clear-cut looneys, but now, it warrants more credibility to be seen talking to youself - with Bluetooth, hopefully.
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Clearly, a prehistoric cavemen from the past would not have considered the flint as a firestarter anymore, not after seeing the techno-savvy contraption of ingenious flameless cooker hobs. Yet, we have modern man getting Lost on an island without a GPS locator in this global village. It's crazy, I tell you.
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In The Killing Joke, the Joker played a sartorial madman out to prove that the path to absolute madness lies in taking away the important things in the life of Batman.
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I don't know about that, but I believe the unfortunate mental chronics in our society are clearly victims of their own agenda - a case of too much things for the mind to sort out, with little avenue for recourse?
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Or maybe genius lies beyond the threshold of normal minds - penetrable only to those who gave up this world for the uncanny madness of the next. John Nash clearly proved that in The Beautiful Mind.
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Is the modern society so chronic in translating everyday experiences as normal and not-normal? I prefer the term 'unique'.
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I rear a fish in a tank on my working table now. I hope that's normal enough for others to see that I appreciate other forms of Life.
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Hmm, maybe we are 'unique' after all in our different, little ways.

Line Of The Day

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Overheard over a digital camera counter in an electronics shop in Sim Lim Square just now :

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Ah Beng Salesman to Angmoh Couple :

"Aiya, Mr John, you no need to walk-walk all over Sim Lim one. Our shop is the cheapest one, confirm. You don't waste your time like your other (angmoh) fren. You see all your other (angmoh) friend ah, walk here, walk there, walk everywhere want to find best deal. For what? No need to lah. Wait later they all call you Johnny Walker".

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Hahaha!

Misty Roses
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Look what I found in my pigeonhole at the end of the day.
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It was placed neatly in the shelf without a single trace of note or letter from the sender.

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Mysterious indeed.

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It was only after a short investigative work that I found out it came from a student who was leaving the school today, after having decided to pursue her education overseas.

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I guess roses are apt gestures of sincerity and a token of honesty imbibed with lots of thanks in this case.

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I didn't have a chance to thank her. But I wish her luck in all her future endeavours.

A New Name

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My senior lab specialist, who hailed from a foreign land and therefore may not have the faintest idea of the dichotomy of local names, came into our staff room, and started looking for a certain teacher called Joe Harrison.

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Nevertheless, I had a new name that day, with every colleague passing by me and asking me, " Eh, Joe Harrison, how?"

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Joe Harrison. Eh, not bad ah the name.

Speak To Others With Love & Respect

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When I observe others who are rude, demanding, or insensitive to a cashier, taxi driver, a stranger, waitress, salesperson, or whomever, I often ask myself "What gives this person the right to speak like this?".

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I still don't know the answer to this question.

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Sometimes people believe that if someone is doing his job, he ought to put up with snobby customers or an arrogant boss. It's always seemed to me, however, that if someone is doing his job, and I'm one of the beneficiaries of their performance, that's all the more reason to speak to him with gratitude and respect. But even beyond what's right and wrong, it's just smart business to speak to others with love and respect.

Feline Fragility

As far as I can remember, there is only one type of animal always seen flattened and splattered on the roads, and they are cats.

I have NEVER seen dog meat smashed against some side kerbs or highway dividers, or any other animals for that matter, and I don't intend to.

I'm guessing that cats are poor road crossers.

I have seen stray mongrels hovering near the edge of busy roads, and waiting to chance upon the perfect timing to cross them. And they always succeed.

But cats?

In all probability, 99% of them will still end up on the other side, but not anywhere in this world.

The Other Side.

It is uncanny that the relatives of our domesticated felines are able to stop traffic at the slightest flutter of their manes, and even one can even outrun a Lamboghini, but the ordinary felis domesticus is actually a nubile, timid version of the canines.

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Or maybe a pretentious lot at that. Notice how often mature cats stare at you like you're some kind of imbecile, trying to feed it with the remnants of your Twisties ( I know how it feels because I did that).

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They look at you like they're analysing you, like they're studying you, like they're mentally dissecting you, like they're some kind of superior aliens coated in cat skin, and scanning every single probability of human weakness and then use it to launch an invasion on earth in five years' time.

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Dogs don't do that. Only cats do, and that is scary if they really are aliens out to conquer Earth in mega-Armageddon style.

Literature and Art Don’t Necessarily Make Us Better People

It is not clear to me that exposure to literature and art makes us better people or works against wrong political thought. The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and the dramatist Bertolt Brecht were both womanizers. Rudyard Kipling was a thoroughgoing racist, while Martin Heidegger was a supporter of the Nazis.

Adolf Hitler was actually an art lover. And during this time, the churches of Germany opposed Nazism, but the universities, where all the well-read people presumably would have been, offered no opposition.

In contrast to all this, one hears of simple, illiterate people living in rural areas in less developed countries such as Bhutan, who are often polite and hospitable. Clearly, books alone do not yet good people make, nor does the lack of them necessarily lead to the opposite.

One also notices, with the exception of Penguin Classics, how many anthologies and series of publications purporting to be ‘world literature’ present us only with the usual Western names like Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare and Milton.

Whatever happened to the non-Western literary figures, such as Vyasa, Valmiki, Firdausi, Rumi, Attar, Li Bai, Du Fu and Lady Murasaki? Presumably, only the ‘great classics’ of the West count as literature.

Quite evidently, the perusal of their ‘great books’ has instilled all the right values in the learned men of the Occident by making them so broadminded and appreciative of other cultures.

If the way to perceive humanity of a foreign people is through their literary heritage, the opposite is also true : the way to foster the perception of a foreign people as barbarians is simply to propagate the fallacy that they have no literature, or no literature worthy of consideration.

Finally, some so-called classics contain material that simply does not impress me much. In Greek mythology, the great mother of the Western Canon, one repeatedly find things like parents killing or eating their own children, people killing or lusting after their own parents, gods messing with the minds of mortals to make them commit the said atrocities or otherwise bullying them in all sorts of ways.

If this can pass as great literature, then I say pornography can considered holy text. By the way, it was things like these that made Plato want to ban poetry from his Republic.

Native Singlish
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I found these erroneous language blunders on our roads yesterday.
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Hmm. Beng will always be beng, I guess.

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"Movers" would suffice. Or maybe "House Movers". This local Home Removal company is thus a world's first.

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Blame it on our colonial forefathers and their legacy of the Union Jack then.

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Or would we rather have French conquerors before Raffles came and grow up elegantly swearing *"fous le camp, vous imbécile!" to inconsiderate neighbours karaoke-ing in the middle of the night?

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Would local history be made more interesting if Raffles was German? No, danke.

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Hmm. Maybe the Education Ministry did have a point about hiring native english speakers to accentuate the language proficiency here.

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That, I believe, would be a chalLANging task indeed.

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* Get lost, you moron!

Zinedine He'sDone.

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I wonder what possess a man, who seemingly, on the verge of attaining ultimate glory in his career, to succumb to temper and rage, and in an instant, threw it ALL away?

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An accomplished sportsman, Zidane is the epitome of footballing greatness who always rely on his level-headedness to orchestrate The Beautiful Game in clinical, pitch-frenzied moments.
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It is however, this classic irony of him using his head after all, that brought his downfall into the shameful nadir of professional tomfoolery.
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His headbutt against an opponent probably caused France a glorious chance for the double. Sadly, his reputation too.
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How can a man, deemed a higher mortal than the average footballing genius, forsake glory in a tempestuous fit of rage at the most clinical moment? By placing a foot in the finals again, he has already cast his immortality in the annals of footballing history - surely, there is so much more this individual can take from The Azzurri Misfit out to deny his moment?
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I can never understand that forked path to anger and temptation. I doubt many could. Zidane is obvious proof he's a genius clad in the same emotional core like every one of us - fragile and breakable.
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I could never imagine the gauntlet of greatness being thrown away just like that in a moment of madness. I guess even the greatest among us err on the world stage after all.

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All The World's A Stage

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Theatre has always been that mystifying part of my existence.

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I conclude that stage pantomimes, and all other variants of non-verbal expressions of the human subject, is essentially the most important portion of the deliberate externalisation of human thoughts.

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I am amazed at how sometimes we see ourselves as those mimes onstage mimicking the simplest of everyday life's activities, and how much we can relate to it.

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This is not obviously a case of deja vu. Rather, I am amused by how true theatre amplifies the nondescript existence of every being into a literal walkway of muse and body forms on a mere platform no bigger than a basketball court.

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And we all know life takes more space than that.

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It's very warped, these acts of miming, yet they disturb your innards and stir your conscience like never before. It's like seeing life flashing before your very eyes like the finality of a dying moment, all so true and real, yet you know the protagonists on stage don't know you the way you know yourself.

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Yet you find them disturbingly a real part of you that never existed before. And somehow you sympathise with them, you cry with them, you laugh with them.

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You feel for them like they're a part of your existence, and you'll know these vitriolic moments can only take form within you for the next hour or so before intermission pulls the reality blanket back, and then you'll find yourself snatched away from the Wonderland you saw for its' last few moments of existence.

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Theatre is really the parody of Life. And Life itself is a theatre in it's draconian existence - free from the tyranny of the oppression of Thought that warps the reality of everything.

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Theatre takes me to places I want to be. To be swept away in its whirlpool speaks so much of its' potency to enthrall minds of mere mortals deluded of the quintessentials of Life.

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All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

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Ah, theatre. Sweep me away.

Ultraman Taro

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Lunch at Sakae Sushi was fine. Parking space at Junction 8 was non-existent. It seems half the world converges to Bishan for lunch.

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It was when we passed by this shop that I was suddenly reminded of a traumatic past.

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It was a shop that sold really colourful towels for children; really bright made-in-China towels with cartoon caricatures of Superman, Batman, Lightning McQueen ( that red racer from Cars ), Powerpuff Girls and other assorted characters from Loonytown.

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I could never forget that episode involving a certain bath towel.

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Mak would always bathe us siblings together during the evenings on the pretext of saving water. She would then wrap us up damn tightly with those towels for fear of us catching a cold, and every sibling has a different character towel.

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Mine was Ultraman Taro.

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So it was on that fateful evening at around 8 pm that mum started to shower us, by which I was the first to be cleansed off and was made to be rolled around a new Ultraman towel she had just bought at a pasar malam.

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Apparently, she must have rolled the towel too tightly, making me look like a human california maki that when she took off the towel later on to powder me and my brothers, imagine our horror when I saw Ultraman Taro's fighting stance outline neatly emblazoned on my puny chest.

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Mak and me stared at my chest for some time, trying to make sense of it all.

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After throwing the towel immediately in the bin because the bright colours were also staining the floor and other pieces of furniture, Mak tried to remove the image off with some type of oil, but apparently it was fated that I was to remain a legacy of Ultraman Taro for at least a week. The damn stain just wouldn't come off.

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I was in Primary One when that nightmare happened. Even the PE teacher thought I had a local dorky-looking tattoo on my chest and sent me to the Principal's office to verify it.

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I am still trying to forget how loud the Principal laughed when he saw Ultraman Taro on me. I was fortunate that he did not forced me to strike a pose reminiscent of the japanese hero fighting giant lizards that looked like used condoms.

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Years later, I found out that Mak actually went back to the pasar malam some time later and abuse the seller left-right-centre.

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I would have gladly did the same, with or without my power button on my chest.