Staff Room’s Stuffs
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Overheard a chemistry teacher telling this to another chemistry teacher :
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“Some of the students were asking me if I knew of this molecule which is always so excitable... I don’t know the answer, so I asked them back.”
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“Well, what is it?”
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“N2 (enthu)”.
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…………………………………………………………………….
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A senior teacher was alarmed when she thought she heard a PE teacher hollering ‘communist!’ to another PE teacher across the staff-room.
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Curiously, she went up to the PE teacher, and discreetly asked her why the need for such anti-establishment lingo.
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The PE teacher looked stunned, and immediately thereafter realised the confusion.
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“Oh! I was just asking her whether she’s ready to go back home, so I said ‘come, Eunice!’”

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kwang kwang kwang.

The pavements along Orchard Road could do with this.
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World art. On the common pavement.
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It's actually an anamorphic illusion drawn in a special distortion in order to create a 3D impression when seen from a particular viewpoint.
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Here's some other stylo pavement art.
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The genius behind all these is the guy above, in a quirky self-portrait, called Julian Beever.

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The STPB should seriously consider his expertise to beautify our bland concrete walkways.

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This will teach us to look down more often. In more ways than one can think of, hopefully.

The Cauldron of Fissures

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It suddenly occurred to me while I was presiding over this morning’s exam in the hall that I was literally caught in a war of sorts; a nonchalant observer in a silent battlefield of the minds - an assaulting, frenzied cauldron of invisible thoughts emanating from the masses of at least a hundred and ninety anxious cerebral cortexes, their owners stoicly hunched over the question papers, desperately trying to decipher the distinction between medulla and medulla oblongata.
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I can actually feel the charged mental-electricity in the air.

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I was imagining random wisps of thoughts floating around in the air above their heads, the surreal comet-tailed sparks of conflagrant ideas whistfully soaring across the stratosphere of the school hall, and wondered aloud – with no pun intended - whether it would be possible to audibly amplify thoughts in the near future.
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A SONY Thoughts AmplifierTM in the works, perhaps?
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Scary it will be if everyone who is standing at a two metre radius around you can hear what’s going on in your mind with that thing - a much delectable aural pleasure than radio, I presume.

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And gone too, will be the last bastion of personal freedom - an unsolicited mind.

Be Sarcastic For All You Want, Uncle.

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Almost every mosque in Singapore hands out complimentary packed bubur to fellow Muslims in the whole month of Ramadan.

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This is of course, in tandem with the spirit of sharing and giving through the providence of alms and charitable deeds.

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The mosque near our place is no different. They had ready-packed bubur for everyone to take home for breaking fast. And the nice people that distributed these never limit the amount you want to take home.

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So it was yesterday that I came to the mosque to do my late afternoon prayers, and after doing so, proceeded to the bubur collection line, where among all other congregates, we indulged in our local favourite pastime - queuing - and waited for the mosque officials to start distributing the porridge.

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I had every intention to ask for two packs; one for myself and the other for the solitary grandfather living on his own on the sixth floor.

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So when it was my turn, I showed the guy the 'peace' sign - two, please, thank you very much.

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The kind gentleman instead packed four packets - two, in each plastic bag - and gently told me, " it's alright. No problem. God is Great".

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It didn't feel right to refuse his kindness, so I said my thanks and proceeded to exit from the booth to the main gate of the mosque. I told myself I'll give the two packs to the grandpa instead of one, and the other extra pack will go to the generous chinese auntie who lived beside our unit.

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It was then that my gaze fell upon this particular odd-looking uncle who was staring at my plastic bags near the gate. I suddenly felt uneasy because his face spoke a thousand, skewed thoughts that seemed to amplify themselves into your cerebrum - you know, the type of face who looked at you like you just cleared a bank's vault as if it's a normal thing to do.

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I didn't know what his intentions were, and I was very sure I was the only one heading in his direction out of the mosque at that time, so I was particularly flabbergasted when I heard him said this aloud to his friend :

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"See? Look at that. Somebody even can take FOUR packs of bubur. FOUR, you know. F-O-U-R".

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He wasn't looking at me when he said that, and I am very sure there isn't another person behind me who was carrying home a similar amount of porridge, so I don't think I appreciate his condescending sarcasm very well. I mean, there isn't anything to stop him taking the whole truckload of bubur home if he wants to be comparatively anal about it, so I really don't see his crappy point.

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It is said that fasting isn't merely an exercise in quelling your appetite and dietary wants, but also a lesson in patience and resolute moral steadfastness. When a person seemingly irks another, by tautology or action, all a Muslim gotta do (in order to deter any confrontation and preserving the dignity of Ramadan) is to simply utter the simple phrase below to the instigator and just, well, walk away from the problem :

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"In truth, I am fasting".

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Yes uncle, be sarcastic all you want. Because in truth, I am fasting.

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And because God is Great.

Slang.

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A cousin who's been living in England for many, many years is back here for holidays to spend Ramadan and Hari Raya with us.

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The amazing thing is that he doesn't have the slightest Brit accent when he talks - he still sounds like the same, unassuming Mat Rock he was before he departed for Birmingham seven years ago. Not angmohfied at all. Uncanny indeed.

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It's really weird because I know of some people who went on vacation to Australia or America for two weeks, and when they come back, they speak with a nasal Aussie twang or a petulant Yankee squeak.

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The really funny part is that if you lived in, let's say, India, for seven years, you WILL NEVER find yourself picking up that accent.

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Which is damn weird lah dey, because Russell Peters will be so goddamn proud of you lah dey.

Some Thoughts About Nothings.

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1. Smart, intelligent students will only become smarter, more intelligent students.

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I know this is very true, especially so in good schools, since the accumulation of this prolific gene pool will only serve to amplify greater learning.

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Since keen competitiveness is also an inbred trait in an intelligent person, the need to remain equal to his peers is tantamount to his character, which in turn can only increase the capacity to excite more inquisitive grey matter to contain more data and facts. The sustained inertia allows the smart, intelligent student to pick up stuffs twice ( or thrice ) faster than the average microprocessing learner.

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Which of course, in the end, will result in a sad divide among the schools, with the good ones continually churning excellent learners and the not-so-good schools producing only average results - a necessary sieve, however, to filter the brightest amongst us to anchor the country's constitutions in the future.

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Now what kind of present would you give to an intelligent someone?

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Probably this.

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To get your prefrontal cortex going, the Brain Trainer has a series of simple exercises that you do against the clock, and it's highly addictive.

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The first and simplest puzzle will keep you occupied - it gives you a hundred simple mathematic calculations to do, and the best record so far is 100% correct in three minutes. Infuriatingly this will only give you a score of average!

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So you shall persevere, and in the process, wreck your brain, which is what this wicked little trainer is all about. It sucks you into its little challenges, and you simply have to keep going to better your score. How great to have an addictive game that's actually beneficial for a change, rather than playing solitaire for hours with nothing to show for it.

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Who knows, after beating the final stage, you might even have a bigger cerebrum to show off, and lawfully earning the tag 'big-headed'.

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2. The rich will only get richer. And vice-versa.

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Some of us were talking about a recent article in the Straits Times listing the richest people in America. And they're not even millionaires anymore.

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They're BILLIONAIRES now.

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Damn.

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I wonder what their loose change's like?

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A couple of hundred thousands maybe? Or do they even transact with paper money at all? Will we ever dispel the myth of seeing a local billionaire in action at our mamak shops - buying Twisties and Mamee, and handing out a TWO DOLLAR note?

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What do you give someone WHO HAS EVERYTHING?

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Probably this?

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What better present for the person who has everything than a poignant reminder that they want for nothing?

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This lovingly crafted vial of emptiness is filled to the brim with unfettered nothingness. Free from the burden of possessions, the weight of responsibility, Nothing is as idiotic as it is brilliant.

Indeed even old Macbeth, though mad as a kipper, realised that life, whilst full of sound and fury (and that was before iPods) is inherently daft and ultimately signifies Nothing. And let us not forget, that 'Nothing' is so important that most of our universe - and the contents of a lot of people's heads - appears to be made up of it.

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It's a statement, an empty gesture if you will, a nod at the futility of ownership, and yet despite 'Nothing' being nothing, it is of course packed with millions of protons, neutrons and what have you, which is pretty good for Nothing.

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3. Cat-torturers-cum-killers, beware.

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Unless you want to be reincarnated as a cat in your next life and have your vibrissae being plucked out by human sickos, please stop these wanton acts of juvenile idiosyncrasies.

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Last warning, ah. Don't let me catch you ok.

The Magnificient Seven
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There's this unwritten rule about watches - one will find it extremely difficult to downsize his watch once he's used to a 44mm on the wrist, because anything smaller will be considered blasphemous, taboo and puny.
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Not to mention sheer indignance for wrist quality time.
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Therefore, a Panerai can only be aptly substituted with the following honourable line-up below. No less.
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1. Omega RailMaster, 49.2 mm

2. IWC Big Pilot, 47 mm

3. Graham Swordfish, 46 mm

4. Glycine Lagunare, 47 mm

5. Ernst Benz Chronolunar, 47 mm

6. Bell & Ross Instrument Series, 47 mm

7. Panerai Luminor Submersible Chrono, 47 mm

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A wall-clock on the wrist soon?

Ramadan

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In a few more minutes, the first day of fasting is going to be over.

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(Only twenty-nine more days to go).

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I still find it mystifying that during NS times, I can go about doing daily combat routine in this whole month sans food and water - for at least eleven hours a day - and live to tell my experiences.

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In essence, the abstainment from food and water is merely a small part in the holistic interpretation of fasting, the other factors being zygomatic tangents of spiritual reflection, practicing a core Islamic jurisprudence, remembering the needy, and shying away, essentially, from the pull of the world's deadliest venoms - gluttony, greed, lust, pride, envy and wrath.

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Fasting is, quintessentially put, an exercise of the mind over matter.

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That, and the curbing of worldly desires - usually in the form of Ben & Jerry's during the day, in my case.

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There is that elusive aura that permeates the spirit of Ramadan into every Muslim each time it arrives.

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Mosques are unusually packed with fellow congregates each night - everyone of us subserviently supplicating in front of The Almighty, and reinforcing our dualities as humble servants and dutiful vicegerents of this world.

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There is also that unexplainable camaraderie among neighbours in the instant Ramadan heralds forth, one point noted is that food for breaking fast is automatically shared among neighbours, no matter how meagre the portions of murtabak or spaghetti may be.

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Which explains why Mum always prepare only one type of meal, because by the time the call of prayer to break fast beckons, we will surely have a gastronomic variety in front of us - multiplied many times over, with at least ten different menus shared between ten different neighbours - on our small IKEA dinner table, proving indeed, that the kampung spirit is still very much alive and thriving in our common HDB receptacles.

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Hmm. That roti kirai looks enticing. Plus that bubur cacha. And that spring chicken. Oh, and that mee hongkong too.

The Crossroads of Crossings

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We've all seen those jibroni motorists who zoomed past zebra crossings and completely disregarding those pedestrians standing by the side of the roadkerb waiting for them to stop - as if the road-crossers are mere traffic observers with no better things to do in their life but to eschew carbon monoxide for spiritual contentment.

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Luckily however, in general most cars do stop (they better!) and give way to people, and only a few would otherwise consider breaking traffic laws ( and possibly some bones as well, in unfortunate cases ) by speeding past them.

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What happened yesterday, though, takes the cake, and by far, will be the most outrageous thing I've ever seen at a zebra-crossing - that, and the socio-political overtones behind it.

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A curious lot comprising of :

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1. two auntie friends with grocery bags

2. a female jogger

3. a Bangladeshi worker pushing a pathetic old bicycle laden with groceries and stuffs

4. a just booked-out-from-camp NS recruit

5. a middle-age gentleman constantly talking on his handphone

6. and myself,

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came to a zebra crossing all at the same time near a major artery towards Tampines Central.

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Instinctly, the odd company stopped at the side and we all waited for the first car to stop for us to cross.

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And it did.

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Or rather, that first car in front, a black BMW 5 series, screeched to a halt - like the driver was testing the brakes for the same time. It wasn't as if he couldn't see us, but rather I think he was finding us as a mere inconvenience of his precious driving experience, hence that sudden jamming.

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All of us were taken aback by this intentional act of vehicular sarcasm, because he wasn't exactly speeding to warrant that shock of urgency on us. Even the bangla dropped one of his brinjai.

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The aunties looked at him in disgust, gave the driver an icy goddamnit-you-want-to-die-issit? stare and benevolently marched onto the asphalt first with their grocery bags in tow.

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We all followed suit, with the Bangla guy the last to cross - his ancient, laden bicycle continually impeding his wobbly progress towards the other side.

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The uneven load and weight on the bike eventually proved too much for its scrawny frame to take, so much so that in the middle of the crossing, this had to happen : the Bangla guy suddenly lost grip of one handle, and the next moment, he was on the ground sitting on the bicycle with potatoes, brinjals and onions rolling incessantly on all quarters of the road.

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Of course, being good samaritans, most of us backtracked our way to help the poor fella. For the record, I managed to nab a rolling potato and handcuffed three fleeting carrots before they disappeared into the drain.

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It was then that we didn't expect this next thing to happen.

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The gnarling, seething monster behind the wheel - a fat, obnoxious-looking specimen of the human being - began to honk at us. And he kept honking.

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All of us were startled by his incredulous stance, his utter rudeness, and his lack of compassion, inspite of the affluent and state-of-the-art automobile he was in.

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We quickly helped the bangla on his feet - quite shaken by now, I believe - and retrieved most of his sundries before we pushed his bike ( now totally road-unworthy, because the chains were dislodged from the wheels ) back to the same side of the road where we started from.

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The caveman, sensing that the road was clear for him to take off, immediate sped away without the slightest regard for civility and humane gentility, leaving us with a trail of debris and a deep VROOM from his twelve-cylindered, Autobahn-tested, German-precision machine.

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With all the hype about how civilised and cultured we have become in the microcosm of the world, plus the four million smiles we gave to the world in the last week, it seems all had fallen to nought, courtesy of one frigging idiot who simply is too caught-up in his affluent affairs and refuses to see greater things beyond his dense, little world of material comfort.

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In that fleeting moment, I was so ashamed to be called a Singaporean.

A Weighty Introduction.

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We were having dinner last week when one of my friends saw a former acquaintance of hers, someone she hasn't seen in a long while.

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At first the friend of hers didn't seem to recognize her, but then he realized who she was and came over.

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Now, I was expecting the guy to say something like "Hey, it's been a while, how ya been?" or something to that effect. But what he said totally took me by surprise:

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IDIOT: "I'm sorry but I REALLY need to tell you this. You REALLY put on a lot of weight." (Yes he emphasized the word "really").

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What the?!? Why the hell do people say stuff like that?

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Seriously, here's a tip for people who love to give those kind of comments - people KNOW that they put on weight, they don't need YOU to tell them. We know that our clothes did not shrink. We know that the reason we can no longer walk up the stairs without sighing is not because they have gotten steeper.

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To her credit, my friend took it pretty well.

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And the insane thing is she looks fine to me, but the way he said it was like she had put on a million pounds. Not that it would be ok for him to say it then. And people wonder why young girls nowadays are starving themselves to the brink of death just to stay stick thin.

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If it had been me, I would have probably replied with "Oh really?? Thanks for telling me, I never noticed!" or "You don't look so hot yourself" or " Well true, but I still look better than that girl you went out with last time, the one that looks like a horse?".

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Alright fine, I would have probably just stayed silent and cursed him the whole night, simply because there isn't any need to be confrontational and waste your time with licensed idiots.

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It's called TACT, you know.

I'M Fine with IMF.

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World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz on Friday called Singapore’s restrictions on the entry of activists for the World Bank/IMF meetings “authoritarian“.

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But he said the World Bank and IMF did not plan to postpone their annual gathering here.

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“Enormous damage has been done and a lot of that damage is done to Singapore and self-inflicted. This could have been an opportunity for them to showcase to the world their development process,” Wolfowitz said in response to questions from civil society organizations at a town hall meeting recently.

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“I would argue whether it has to be as authoritarian as it has been and I would certainly argue that at the stage of success they have reached, they would do much better for themselves with a more visionary approach to the process.”He added that the bar on entry into Singapore for some activists “is a violation of the understanding that we had drawn up” with Singapore.

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The news article above sums up this recent debacle in Singapore. Trying to attract the world's talent while at the same time having world headlines read 'authoritarian' does highlight the flaw in the so-called ‘pragmatic approach’.

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The pragmatic approach to decision making is founded on a simple idea that you use the option which works best at that particular time, or rather, decisions are to be made without reference to a core set of ‘political values’ or grand plans.

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The ‘old’ politics of ‘left and right’ no longer hold sway over those in power, the rhetoric of Confucianism has been abandoned, and ‘Asian values’ is a term that has gone by the way.

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Today Singapore is placed at the mercy of globalisation as every other nation is.

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Globalisation is referred to as an ‘invisible hand’ that alters the fortunes of men and women on a global scale. When the Singapore economy performs badly - simply place the blame on globalisation. When the Singapore economy does well - accredit the praise by remarking that the Singaporean government has done a good job opening its doors to the world.

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To argue that multi national corporations and the financial markets determine the fortunes of the people of Singapore is tantamount to blasphemy. Blasphemy because we all live in societies that have supposedly turned their backs on the old ideologies of politics.

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Today we are said to live in a pragmatic world that is without ideology. A greater number of those who had wished to protest on the streets of Singapore are not really anti-capitalist (or communist/Marxist). They are aware of the reality of the situation we find ourselves in - we simply need capitalism to continue for our own survival.

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All they were trying to ask for was that their voices be heard when they call for a ‘kinder - softer capitalism’.

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A capitalism that factors in human beings and the environment into their decisions.

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One that encourages corporate responsibility.

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To argue that we now live in a world of ‘pragmatic’ decision makers unencumbered by ‘values’ whether they be universal or local, is merely an uncovering of the dominant hegemony of our time. The image of boats rising with the tide of ‘globalisation’ as if it were another force of nature creates the image that there is no alternative.

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When a new gahmen came to power a few years ago we were held astounded for the promise of a marvelous future for Singapore - an open society with individuals making their voices heard without fear of suppression. The cameras of the world will show a picture of the passive Singaporean when a better image would have been a dynamic, intelligent and risk-taking society that was progressing and changing, involved in decisions that would effect their own futures and the futures of millions of others.

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Often people have been known to ask - “Singapore? Isn’t that part of China?”

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This mistake isn’t based on geographic location alone.

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Indeed, any host nation to an international summit is destined to be probed for all its protocols and systems, yet being able to be seen balancing the proper stratas of issue managements similar to walking a very fine tight rope. When you have a US statesman of Wolfowitz’s stature commenting on how ‘authoritarian’ the decisions are it seems to indicate just how fragile and sensitive the whole world really is.

.

And it is really that fragile and sensitive.

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Oh, well.

Frikwds?

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Saw this on the road beside the school dance studio. I picked it up to check its' contents - wallet could have fallen out from a Primary One girl's pocket.

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It was empty.

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Hmm. Thomas & Frikwds? Is that how Thomas the Train calls his loco-buddies now?

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On second thought - Thomas & Frikwds... hmm. Sounds like the name of an expensive Scandinavian designer boutique that specialises in diamond-encrusted train playsets and jewel-studded locomotive replicas with human faces.

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One thing's for sure : Girl was right not to associate herself with this friky mess of a wallet.

A Close Encounter.

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This creepy incident was told to me by another male colleague just a couple of days back.

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It happened to him in one of the sporadic male loos located around the school.

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Apparently, he was undergoing major egestion of the bowels at that time in a cubicle and didn't realise there was actually somebody else in the toilet as well - until he heard footsteps outside his cubicle door.

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Sensing that it could be another colleague ( which is quite improbable, considerable that the total number of male specimens in the school is only about half a dozen, and that the chance of any two of us osmoregulating at the same time is remotely remote ) while in the midst of his rectal procrastinations, he sombrely muttered;

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"Oi. Who outside ah?"

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Of course there was no response.

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To which our astute protagonist quickly asked again;

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"Oi. Who outside ah?"

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NO RESPONSE.JUST SOME TIMID SHUFFLING OF SOMEONE'S FEET.

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Without wasting a second longer, our gallant hero quickly recovered from his bowel position ( it is not known whether he washed up ) and hastily proceeded to open the cubicle door -

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- only to find one of the elderly female toilet cleaners quietly mopping the floor - with a pair of earphones plugged into her - possibly tuning into Cantopop on some local radio station.

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I guess in a male-challenged environment such as where I am now, it is sheer loo-nacy not to believe that the female presence is almost everywhere.

"Did You Hear the One About Hitler?"
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It's about time the Third Reich takes in it's own medicine - a dose of humour, to be precise.
.

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A new book about humour under the Nazis gives some interesting insights into life in the Third Reich and breaks yet another taboo in Germany's treatment of its history. Jokes told during the era, says the author, Rudolph Herzog, provided the populace with a pressure release.

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Like the author, I think that if you laughed about Hitler, you're actually doing good by robbing him of the metaphysical, demonic capabilities that the post-war apologists attributed to him. That makes it all the more astounding that the "hollow fairground magic of the Nazis", which was laid bare in contemporary satire and literary testimony, actually ever, resulted in the Holocaust.

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The Germans were by no means powerless victims of their own propaganda. Many saw through the games played by Goebbels and his consorts. This didn't change the fact that the country was sucked down into a whirlpool of crime in the space of just a few years. It's just a piece of reality sinking in too slowly to take effect.

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I am no history buff, nor am I eulogizing the greatness of the Nazi era, but its' provocative past can be redeemed through grains of life anecdotes, albeitly taken with a pinch of reality salt. And I think humour provides that apt relief in quantifiable sustenance not amounting to backlashed nausea for past horrific acts that the Fuhrer is well known for.

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Herzog's book is just the latest indication of a fundamental shift in Germany's treatment of its Nazi history in recent years. As the wartime generation dies out, the children and grandchildren are taking a more detached view of the past, and a number of taboos have been broken as a result.

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Some paradoxical humour worth mentioning :

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1. Many found the Heil Hitler salute with its outstretched arm ridiculous.

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A circus director in the western city of Paderborn, a confirmed Social Democrat opponent of the Nazis, trained his chimpanzees to raise their right arm whenever they saw a uniform, and they even took to saluting the postman. He was denounced and received an official notice forbidding the chimpanzees from making the salute and threatening to slaughter the chimps even.

.

2. Hitler - often the butt of jokes - didn't find them funny. At all. Some of them :

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Hitler visits a lunatic asylum. The patients give the Hitler salute. As he passes down the line he comes across a man who isn't saluting.

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"Why aren't you saluting like the others?" Hitler barks.

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"Mein Führer, I'm the nurse," comes the answer. "I'm not crazy!"

.
That joke may not be a screamer, but it was told quite openly along with many others about Hitler and his henchmen in the early years of the Third Reich, accordingly in the book.

.
But by the end of the war, a joke could get you killed. A Berlin munitions worker, identified only as Marianne Elise K., was convicted of undermining the war effort "through spiteful remarks" and executed in 1944 for telling this one:

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Hitler and Göring are standing on top of Berlin's radio tower. Hitler says he wants to do something to cheer up the people of Berlin. "Why don't you just jump?" suggests Göring.

.
A fellow worker overheard her telling the joke and sabo-ed her to the authorities.

.

3. As it became clear that Germany was losing the war and Allied bombing started wiping out German cities, the country turned to bitter sarcasm:

.
"What will you do after the war?"

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"I'll finally go on a holiday and will take a trip round Greater Germany!"

.

"And what will you do in the afternoon?"

.

*Das ist, Mann wirklich lustig!!!

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*That's really funny, dude!!!

The Empire has an Imperial Base here. Seriously.
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That's Eastpoint Shopping Mall in Simei taken from GoogleEarth.
.

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Now's here the Empire logo.
.

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See? Subliminal, the Dark Side is.

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Careful, you shoppers must be. Bargains, they might seem.

.

Factory rejects, they actually are.
.

The Need For Speed
.
It was bound to happen, sooner or later.
.
I was getting really fed-up with all those stupid drivers who cut recklessly into other drivers' lanes without the slightest consideration for safety like they're some kind of grand prix circuit champions.
.
I wouldn't blame them if my car was in their blind spot, but I'd think they'd be really blind not to notice other cars all the time when they switched lanes.
.
Worse, they don't signal their intentions to do so.
.
Unable to hold my patience no more yesterday, I decided to get even with the blue souped-up Subaru that looked like a pathetic attempt to masquerade an actual WRX.
.
The moron had missed my side view mirror by a milimetre, when he tried to squeeze between my car and another idiot in a roadhogging Toyota on the right lane. Not only was he brushing alloy to alloy on asphalt, he was rudely leaving trails of his lunacy in a whirl of grey exhaust smoke that seemed to condense into a carbon-mist that spelled the words EAT DUST!, leaving the dazed motorists behind him in a sudden void of emptiness that time has just suddenly stood still for them.

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He was easily doing at least 140 km/h while zig-zagging like a drunken kongfu master.
.
I couldn't take it any further. I had to teach him a lesson.
.
So I stepped on the gas. And gave chase.
.
I didn't know why I instinctly did so, and I also knew perfectly well that my small car is ever-ready to push the speed limit beyond its' recommended heart-pounding, adrenaline-overflowing 88 km/h, after which, I'm sure the metallic parts will most probably dismantle themselves into aluminium sheets if I cranked it any further.
.
However, I was fiercely determined to teach the young punk a lesson.
.
My machine quickly zoomed behind him and instantly I put on my high-beam on him, hoping that the glare would somehow :

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1. signal my dutiful-citizen intentions, therefore indirectly telling him to cease this frivolous act of grinding rubber, or

.

2. blind him temporarily and he'll lose control and die.
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He didn't budge, not even showing the slightest indication of braking.
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In fact, the uncivilised monkey seemed to acknowledge that he wasn't ready to give up the right lane just yet, and was ready to give a run for my money, literally, to play catch-up with his oversized exhaust pipe.
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I hold my breath and decided to live out the remaining few minutes of my life in high speed, strongly believing that if anything were to end in the next more moments, my death will not be in vain and the incident would probably occupy at least a Top Ten spot in the annals of the Greatest Expressway Tragedies in Singapore.

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I didn't see anything when I reached light-speed. Everything else around me was a whizzing blur reminiscent of a Photoshop manipulation. I was only too intent on tailing the punk till the end.

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We zipped in and out of traffic like lightning - I was hell-bent on teaching him who the Master was. I had enough of crappy drivers who exercise indulgence at the expense of everyone else on our roads.

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Nearing a bend while doing at least 120 km/h, I managed to steer to an empty lane on his left and proceeded to pummel my pedal in the hope that I'll manage just enough space to nip in front of his bonnet. I was trickling quiet beads of cold perspiration because the timing had to be critical for me to achieve that feat.

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As soon as I realised that I was half a car's length further in front of him, I told myself victory was inevitable. That I was King of Komeback. Yeah. All I need to do was to swerve into his lane and then I'll be doing the victory lap. The guy's a goner, man. Hah!

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As I was about to clinically finish him off, Mum suddenly came to the X-box console and switched off the power plug, leaving me in a period of sudden death from the greatest anti-climax I ever had in Burnout 3 : Takedown.

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I, Cher.
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I met up with some college / varsity friends yesternight, and the post-dinner banter that ensued somewhat led us to discussing our present occupations.
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Just to reiterate the statistics, the following below is a casual breakdown of our jobs:
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Of the eleven of us,
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3 are medical doctors
2 are system analysts with MNCs
2 are civil engineers
1 lawyer
1 accountant
1 postgraduate with a PhD coming soon
1 teacher
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I guess sometimes I do feel inferior to my peers, at least based on where we are now, and especially coming from where we were during our schooling years. Looking at where some of them are now, perched comfortably at the pinnacle of their working lives clearly provided me with a soulful indication of how small I stand in a certain quadrant of society.
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But the fact still remains that we don't compare salaries ( Eh! Why am I missing another digit in my monthly pay cheque? ), that we don't harp on our daily routine ( Eh! Why am I always marking papers every day? ) and that we don't question our livelihood (Eh! What am I doing???) further resonates the proof that throughout the years of growing up together, we learnt not to query one's life like an open book simply because we respect one another as mature individuals who choose our own quiet destiny and wander the roads less travelled in the pursuit of the 5Cs and spiritual contentment.

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Sometimes, amidst the piles of papers around me, I do occasionally succumb to the belief that teaching is a dead-end job, and that most probably I'll die of fatigue while marking a set of Prelim scripts at 3 am by the time I'm 51. Or 41. Or 31.

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At times also, I induced myself to believe in the effectiveness of the aerial spraying of Prozac in the classroom to quell the uncontrolled pandemonium when the need arises.

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I also strongly subscribed to the belief that caffeine should be taken intravenously during those comatose moments of setting exam papers.

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Education has come a long way since.

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You know things have changed a lot because students nowadays stamped their names from customised rubber stamps rather than the conventional way of writing on their exam question papers.

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It's always a mad dash to change and update everything's around you. And Teaching is centric around that static phenomenon.

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It's a personal challenge that no sane person will ever contemplate - the Herculean call to inspire others.

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I like to believe that I actually enjoy doing what I'm doing. And I think I do. And probably the doctor friends with their jobs too. And the others as well.

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It is times like these that you realised you've changed, but in essence you never really do. Because, in spite of the increasing affluence and status and social standings of your career and high-paying jobs, it is really what you are inside that defines the real you. And not the stethoscope around your neck.

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Or, at the very least, the red ballpoint pen that you use to mark scripts.

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These things in you never change.

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Well, maybe except for an astute colleague, who asked me if I had seen a 'perforator' lying around, which I found out later to be a new term for the common hole-puncher.

Superhero
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A good student of mine gave me this - a belated teachers' day card, with the following sketch of a superhero ( or rogue Jedi, maybe? ) on the front.
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She is an astonishing artist - a young prodigy masquerading her student life as a gifted talent indulging in artistic graffiti on her friends' notebooks and file covers.
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Anyhow, she left this impressionable sketch in my mailslot.

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Her superhero character obviously has a penchant for Ben & Jerry's and Star Wars, judging from the BEN shoulder lapel on the denim black jacket and a eco-friendly green lightsaber to splice kitten murderers' heads. Her character's quite a hunk too, what with the wide latissimus dorsi and muscular arms. And ya man, the chiselled features and the half-Cyclops eyewear really upped her character's superhero quotient, so maybe he'll be eligible to enter the Justice League or an Opposition Party or something like that.
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However, it was the way the character posed that kinda reminded me of these :
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And these.
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Kinda like the all-too-typical, superhero machismo-bravado, quintessential superhumans' pose in a roll of honour coverpage probably inked by famed artist Brian Bolland.
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I'd imagine the Rebel Jedi( RJ, for short) fitting in nicely on the cover as well.
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Yup. Nicely, RJ.

Tech Talk
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My youngest brother just got this for himself.
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The Dopod 900.
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It does look like a pocketable mini-laptop - and a gazillion features ( like Wifi, Bluetooth and 3G-ready) packed into a sleek metal casing - that would probably be the stuff of techie-erotic dreams that gadget nerds have.
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My brother simply uses this as a handphone. That's it.
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Talk about being daft.
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I've never seen him do anything complex to it, unless you count taking photographs and adding customised ringtones to the photos a complex algorithm that involves burning your grey matter away.
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Another friend just got this.
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The new Pentax k100d Digital SLR.
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I asked her why she needs a digital SLR when all she does is to shoot pictures of her clubbing friends and Honda car decals, and probably some tiramisu and sushi leftovers.
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She says she needs them in high resolution, so she decided to go high-end and invest a considerable amount of moolah in a good camera. (Good is an understatement here).
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I then told her that compact cameras can do a better job than an SLR, but she says SLR has 'more megapixels', so it's more clearer and brighter'.
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Haha!
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You wonder at those people who buy cameras at 7, 8 or 10 megapixels even, and the only decent thing they ever do with it is to clip small shots onto their blogs and online albums.
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Talk about being daft.
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Now, what can't you do with a Nano that you must simply, simply, simply put it aside to rot and await anxiously for the arrival of this supercool, uber-stylo-milo-mother-of-all-MP3-players?
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That's right. The new Ipod with touchscreen, full-colour screen. Akan datang.

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T-O-U-C-H-S-C-R-E-E-N.

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My Nano's going the dodo way soon.

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Talk about being daft.

A Toothy Issue

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Mum has a severe tooth ache now. Apart from tearing everyone's hair who's at reach and scratching our skins off our bones while groaning like a sore feline, she is feeling a bit better.

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Phew. Lucky we had painkillers.

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I wish Mustafa Centre had a dental outlet, man. Because inspite of all the technological wonders on this island, we still don't have a 24 hour Dental Clinic on a Sunday night when we need one.

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And I need one for Mum now.

People Who Don't Flush.

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I'm quite, quite sick of walking into the toilet cubicles only to find that some dips*** has done his business there, but has, in doing so, presumably run out of energy, and failed to pull the flush lever.

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The result of this is the damned, near-death confrontation with a floating mess of curry-coloured putrid excrement and soggy toilet papers which, in most probability, will put you off whatever you may or may not be about to eat.

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To the people who do this: who are you? Do you just forget to flush, or is your mission more sinister? Do you lurk in the shadows and snigger to yourself every time you see someone grimace at the "treat" you've left for them? Are you hoping to be cursed to Diarrhoea Hell? What, exactly then, is your problem, s***head?

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Maybe that's it. Just a s***head.

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Jeez.

Are You Lucky Visitor Number 8888?

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If you happened to take a look at the counter on the right, and IF it says 8888, please drop me a message indicating who you are by clicking the "Sign In My Guestbook".

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Good fortune awaits you. And a nice Darth Vader figure.

What Women Want...Really.

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Men have a terrible problem buying gifts for women - as if we were born without required brain parts to pick out gifts that women will like.

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My brother, for one, is a fine example of someone completely devoid of the gift-giving sense.

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He is otherwise, a rather thoughtful, considerate person, but for some reason or other, cannot bring himself to buy anything that doesn't need to be plugged in.

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He once bought my mother - the same mother who was then only coming to grips with the internet - a flatbed scanner.

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She finds that it makes a rather handsome shelf, though.

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Then there is another uncle who bought my aunt a top-of-the-line PDA phone. The thing was twice the size of a normal phone and had so many functions, it was like a small computer.

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It took my aunt two months to work out how to change the ringtone.

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She hasn't told him, but she doesn't really want a phone that can play powerpoint presentations.

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She wants a pink one.

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Another friend must surely take the cake.

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She gave his girlfriend what he thought was a killer Valentine's Day present : a cordless steam iron.

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She didn't talk to him for two days.

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The main problem, you see, is that all of us guys were buying gifts that we personally wouldn't mind receiving.

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Men like things with a lot of functions, but they do not appear to be what women want.

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American humorist Dave Berry once described the ideal gifts for women like this : "The gift should not do anything, or if it does, it should do it badly".

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Haha. I suppose that's why women like diamonds so much : They are essentially useless.