THE LAST DAY OF MAY.

How the wind howls this morn
About the end of May,
And drives June on apace
To mock the world forlorn
And the world’s joy passed away
And my unlonged-for face!
The world’s joy passed away;
For no more may I deem
That any folk are glad
To see the dawn of day
Sunder the tangled dream
Wherein no grief they had.
Ah, through the tangled dream
Where others have no grief
Ever it fares with me
That fears and treasons stream
And dumb sleep slays belief
Whatso therein may be.
Sleep slayeth all belief
Until the hopeless light
Wakes at the birth of June
More lying tales to weave,
More love in woe’s despite,
More hope to perish soon.

William Morris

A Tale of Two Cows

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taken from talkingcock.com :

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TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM. You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull. Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows. You sell them and retire on the income.

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AN AMERICAN CORPORATION. You have two cows. You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when the cow drops dead.

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A FRENCH CORPORATION. You have two cows. You go on strike because you want three cows.

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A JAPANESE CORPORATION. You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. You then create clever cow cartoon images called 'Cowkimon' and market them worldwide.

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A GERMAN CORPORATION. You have two cows. You reengineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.

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A BRITISH CORPORATION. You have two cows. Both are mad.

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AN ITALIAN CORPORATION. You have two cows, but you don't know where they are. You break for lunch.

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A SWISS CORPORATION. You have 5000 cows, none of which belong to you. You charge others for storing them.

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A CHINESE CORPORATION. You have two cows. You have 300 people milking them. You claim full employment and high bovine productivity. You have the newsman who reported on the numbers arrested.

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AN INDIAN CORPORATION. You have two cows. You worship them.

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A MALAYSIAN CORPORATION. You have two cows. You signed a 40-year contract to supply milk at 0.06 per lit. Then midway you raised the price to 0.60 or you cut supply. When the buyer agrees to the new price, you change your mind again and now want 1.20. The buyer decided you can keep the milk and they go look for milk that comes from recycled cows. Your two cows retire together with the PM.

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A SINGAPOREAN CORPORATION. You have two cows: One "cow-peh" and one "cow-bu". Both are owned by a government linked corporation.

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Haha!

Life, Interrupted.

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The recent earthquake in Bantul only served to accentuate the fact that our region is really a hotbed, literally, for stirring our grounds up.

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The plate techtonics that supposedly render the recent natural calamities like last year's tsunami are also Mother Nature's harbinger of doom that claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people and decimated families into mere stragglers trying to resuscitate the loss of their generations.

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It is hardly the kind of news I can afford not to feel something, having escape the probability of a major incident two years ago in Phuket on Christmas eve.

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And three years ago, in Bali, just a few days shy of the bombings that ripped apart the places where I spent my evenings lackadaisically.

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I remember the movie Final Destination, where the people who cheated death in an airline disaster finally got eliminated, mafia-cum-Hitchcock style, one-by-one, by Death himself later on.

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Then I started to think, and really believe that everything is this world happens for a reason.

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And because I remembered it strongly because you said it, my resolve to live is only made stronger with each passing day, and every day with excellence.

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On a lighter note, I wonder why our weather forecast segments are so insipidly uninspiring, unlike what the western media version offers.

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If only TCS can make an effort to sensationalise our weatherman report, I'd probably imagine a hyped-up mundane daily forecast by a TCS artiste ( preferably Fiona Xie ) to be along these lines :

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"Major tremor is expected along the shopping complexes in District 10, followed by heavy showers of teardrops at the Promotion Counter of Ten Minutes Free Shopping to selected patrons only at Takashimaya Basement".

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Aiya. The Great Suaku Sale is now on, lah. No wonder.

Maple Syrup
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I swear our roads are filled with dejected inviduals with the their Formula One dreams dashed.
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At the very least, everybody seems to be in a hurry.

Really.

Everywhere else, and especially back in Vancouver, everybody sticked to their lanes. We would drive all the way south to Seattle, and I'd never think of overtaking any vehicle at all. Not a single overtaking moment, and yet every moment breathtaking.

Cos if I'm not driving, I'd sit back in the rear of the MPV and take photos. Sunset is especially melancholic.

Occasionally, we'd pass by one of my franchised stores found scattered in North America and Canada.

Blissful indeed. Everything there is just perfect.

Which makes me realise that the beauty of new worlds is only possible if we have the courage to lose sight of the shore.

My uncle blames the erratic Singapore weather here that make people bad-tempered on the roads. In cooler climates like Vancouver, every homo sapien sapien here is slightly more sapien than the average homo sapien. So they might get angry, but they don't tailgate the roadhogger and then beat up the fella at the junction.

They'd simply shoot the brains outta the guy, I think.

Nah, I'm kidding.

Vancouver - what heaven on Earth. Next to Ben & Jerry, of course.

A picture-postcard as a tribute to this maple-leaf entry, then.

Deeper Than Skin

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As I sat in the lobby of Royal Plaza on Scotts while waiting for some friends, I picked up a copy of this particular magazine called The Peak.

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Astute readers would have presumptuously declared it as a mountaineering monthly, or either that a sales brochure of exclusive properties at high altitudes.

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It was neither.

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It was in fact, a magazine chronicling the extravagances of highly successful people in our society, with numerous splashy pics of tai-tais suffocated with heavy jewellery around their bodies while attending high-profile functions and parties.

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I am continually amazed at the remarkable frequency of some of these socialites, who never ceased to stop appearing among the pages of these colourful journals of the Rich and Famous.

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I wonder what living life is like for them.

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Endless shots captured by Carl Zeiss lens seem to be their dietary staple, preferably immortalised with the latest Zegna dress, Stilla accesories and Blahniks to boot.

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And forever looking cheery, prosthetically blissful and smiling away ( with inch-perfect white pearlies ) at the paparazzi, week after week.

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Sounds too good to be true - or maybe they are living the high life.

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The very essence of 'just living' would probably freaked them out, I think. Maybe the thought of ogling at second hand goods at Sungai Road would, God forbid, cause them to have cancer.

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Or maybe they want to believe that there is nothing more to life than endless caviars, partyings and caviar-partyings. Simply put, this is, er, the Simple Life.

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Which makes a simple pleasure of going to the beach during evening time to catch the sunset a chore for them, because they know they wouldn't be dead caught without make-up and THAT solitaire diamond-rock on their finger.

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I think these socialites are really missing the point of living.

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Yes, they look nice and beautiful and all that, but the fact that they have to continually put up with society's expectations will unconsciously mutate them into mere objects of colour and print destined for spaces in classy coffee table editions and never truly appreciated beyond the dollar signs they emblazoned upon themselves.

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They will never, I think, enjoy the sunset as much as you and I, normal people, do.

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Because they can never be themselves. They can never do things that they wanted to, and even if they could, they'd tell themselves an unclassy, miserly sunset is a small sacrifice to pay for the Vera Wang boutique they're going to grace next month.

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I gave out a heartily chuckle, reminisced some beautiful moments and grinned from ear to ear at my new-found definition of being a carefree private individual on this island, and realising that freedom of any kind has indeed a price to pay for.

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Mine was precious, and as my friends sauntered by, asked me why I suddenly looked like I was in awe of the greatest sunset I've ever seen over the horizon.

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I'd rather be under the sun than under the spotlight.

X-tra Issue
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By some stroke of fortune, my fingers are on the keyboard, typing this entry early Saturday morning.

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I just cast off some peeps for their Coney Island escapade at the yatch club just now, and seeing that this particular terminal in the office was not occupied by anybody and thus not productively utilised, I decided to do a favour to myself and technology and warm up the seat for the next occupant in tow.

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I had to remind myself to bring a Banana Boat sunblock with SPF 30. And oh, the Oakleys too.

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They're somewhere in my car, though, although I'm pretty sure the creamy goo in the bootspace was probably the remnants of the sunblock, since all I found was the cap, which pretty much sums up the derelict state of my car's rear.

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Dawn is pretty awesome. I purposefully lingered at the shoreline as early heaven rose above the myriad formation of clouds, transcending a blanket of colours from aquiline blue to glib orange and cheery yellow.

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The Nano was blaring Unfaithful by Rihanna. Quite drama-mama lyrics, but nice tune anyway.

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If you were a mutant, what special powers would you want to have?

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Woolverine is pretty cool too - those adamantiums really make a statement when there's no chopsticks around during dinnertime.

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On the other hand, having wings like Archangel means that you can fly around like a pigeon and shit on people's car like nobody's business.

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I cannot understand bird's shit, even if I wanted to. The miniscule turd looked so innocent, yet they corrode the paintwork of cars pretty bad. Consequently, that also implies they corrode your wallets as well.

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Storm's powers gonna be really useful on important occasions. I wouldn't be surprised if the World Cup committee actually give exclusive grandstand seats to Halle Berry et al during the run-up to the finals. Maybe they believed that her presence alone is, er, electrifying enough to dispel any notions of erratic weather phenomenons.

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Walking through walls, using your head to bash through columns, having nine-inch nails protruding from your epidermal layers, duplicating yourselves instantaneously etc. This is really freakdom at its' celluloid pinnacle.

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The variations of mutation is limited only by the imagination, in this case.

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With so many different strengths and uncanny abilities among the X-fraternity, I can only assume that Xavier needs a dictum of control over these volatile characters.

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If I was an X-men, I'd choose to have the telepathic prowess of Charles X. Xavier.

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Logical enough - with so many variations of mutants under my astonishing, super-powerful, ultra-long wavelength, mind-control abilities, I'll simply move them across continents like friggin' chess pieces with a mere trigger of the synaptic pulse, orchestrated with finesse, nonetheless, akin to the analytical mind of a chess grandmaster.

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I'll then manoeuvre my harbingers of the future all around the globe, and strategise these pawns as the frontline to effect change to the world, with me - the ultimate puppet master - pulling the strings on the world's theatre.

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Then I'll use a mega-powerful brain-signal to send a simultaneous encoded message from my brain to my grand army of mutants to enslave all the people of the world to subscribe to a lifetime supply of Ben & Jerry's - Chunky Monkey, preferably.

Big Brown Bags

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Today's the last day of the Term. Some colleagues are leaving us. Some new ones are coming over. Life's really a transition, I guess. In more ways than one.

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You actually don't realise that time goes by in a flash, but when you do, it's really too late to catch up on things you'd really like to dwell on.

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Good advice to me : Don't procrastinate. A daily five kilometre run does not add up as a one-kilometer walk over five days.

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I love my graduating classes. Period. They push me to be better and more determined all the time.

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For some reason, I cannot understand why some students are so darned rude. I find it appalling that they mistake kindness as a sign of weakness.

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I can be tolerant many times over, but I can't see the daylight of things when even the nicest gestures and effort don't mean anything to some of them. Sometimes it hurts.

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Guess teachers are humans after all. Yup.

I just want to feel happy, I guess.

For the first time in my life,

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I sang a COMPLETE minus one version of Bohemian Rhapsody in the public shower-bathrooms, along with two other guys ( and I'm stressing that there's NO Brokeback feelings around in da john, okay! ) after gym session yesterday, and it sounded really reverberating. And liberating.

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The common bathroom song ( my fav - at least ), would be,

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"YOU RAISE ME UPPPPPPP, SO I CAN STAND ON MOUNTAINNNNNNSSSS".

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Right.

Replicators, Never Imitators

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The husband of a famous local celebrity was caught dead with a fake watch ( replica, if you want to call it ) during dinnertime a couple of days ago.

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I procrastinated asking him about it for fear of hurting his feelings, but then I am sure that, being another half of a famous celebrity pair, he should have only been too aware of the spotlight he was continually being thrusted into, unconsciously or consciously.

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I can only hope that his Rolex wasn't spelled as Bolex, Rotex or Roleks though.

Buffering Buffets

I am extolling the virtues of buffets.

Yesterday's dinner at StraitsKitchen was, by no stretch of the imagination, mere pockets of edible portions carved out from endless silver trays spanking over a space of half a basketball court.

It was also grostesquely overflooded with food, food and more glorious food.

Yes, for over fifty dollars (++), you can eat everything there is on the tables. Even the serviettes, if you want to.

Fifty bucks might not seem much to most people who enjoy dining out at fancy places, but to pay that amount just to bloat yourself up for the evening is sheer ludicrous.

I mean, IT"S A CONNIVING TRICKERY of the greatest epidemic.

It's also reverse psychology, I tell you. They flood the place with chocolates ( cakes, mousse, white and every other imaginable assortment ) everywhere so that you'll get sick of chocolates after some time, and possibly for a month after that. They'll spread exotic dishes fit for royalty and serve food enough for an impoverished third-world country.

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You'll salivate, but you can't eat 'em all, so you'll take portions of everything. At the end of the day, you'll have no idea what goes in your mouth, because what goes into the buccal cavity is like a videotape in fast-forward; you can't really see what's happening to you.

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You've become your greatest nightmare : a human version of THE COOKIE MONSTER. (Exclaim 'FOOD!!!' instead of 'COOKIE!!!')

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For those guilt-ridden, conscious health freaks, you'll only be forced to take bite size portions the size of ikan bilis-es, and thereafter get drunk on gallons of Evian and Perrier ( different price ), no thanks to prying eyes of busybodies who seemed wishfully intent of deflating your biceps into limbs of lard .

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And civic lessons taught you to take small portions of food per serving per trip and 'better not waste them ah'.

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And at the same time, keep looking at other people's plates and see whether they're 'clean' or still wastefully laden with tiger prawns and mayonaisse-tainted fillets.

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It's gastronomic frenzy, I tell you. Crazy. Everyone's looking over another person's shoulder to see if that person dies from puffer-fish poisoning. Or that exotic lobster that is present on one particular table and seemingly absent from others. Did the lucky patron bribe the chef for Ze Special of Ze Night?

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And the best part is that you end up paying ten to fifteen times more for the meagre portions you've just consumed.

From a biological perspective, the human stomach can enlarge to further accommodate a higher volume of food, but the churning effect still takes about 3 - 5 hours. This means that for a person who wants to maximise his dollars for a buffet dinner, he must come in, preferably starving, on the exact opening hour of the buffet and gorge on the feast for as much as he can until he feels that he is completely full in the stomach ( roughly, around 25 minutes later ).

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He will then need to rest for another 3 - 5 hours to completely allow the stomach to churn the chyme into the duodenum, by which the establishment would have been near closing time and he cannot be even allowed to tau-pau his food away. The disappointed patron commits suicide with the creative use of three century eggs and two sausages.

This scenario is probably the ideal ( albeit draconian ) setting to ravage a buffet spread.

In truth, many of us don't do that, for the sake of civility, ethics and the penance of a flat tummy.

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So, why bother?

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For $4.50, I am contented with the chicken rice at Centrepoint.

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That feeling is much, much less expensive as compared to hotel buffets, which I forced myself to expand my stomach cavity and filled it with more exclusively-priced chicken wings.

Heck.Why am I still waxing lyricals when THE BUFFET IS EVEN PAID ( ie. FREE ) FOR ME?

Haha. Free dinner.Aiya, just gorge on and induce that excessive gastric juice, lah.

You're A Great Way To Fly

Haha!

Conan The Author

Trust Google, my favourite search engine, to come out with this.

It's a tribute to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on his birthday, the creator of the famous resident at 221B, Baker Street - Sherlock Holmes, the greatest oft-caped detective ever. Cool. Really cool. Google sure knows how to complement quirks.
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Elementary, my dear friend.

Le café des personnes

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It is actually very entertaining to people-watch.

I’d say I learnt a thing or two about pretences.

A young couple, sitting directly in front of us at Bakerzin's, was greeted by a lady with a baby on a stroller, presumably a friend of the young woman.

The two women exchanged hugs and kisses, and almost immediately after the young woman cooed at the cute baby, instantly elevating her vocabulary to the higher degree of baby-talk, as she stooped to play with the cherub and admire his rosy cheeks.

The young man, quite diffidently, reacted like a moron, and just remained still in his seat, obviously trying to chart his next step.

Like a humpback whale soaring above the Baltic Sea for air, he suddenly became a contortionist and made the stupidest-looking facial expression in an attempt to show that he too, likes kids.

His attempt fell down to earth in a spectacular blaze of glory.

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The kid looked at him and didn't seem the least amused. Rather, the baby must have thought that the guy was menstruating.

He didn’t look genuinely interested; rather he was merely complimenting his partner’s adoration, and his fakeness was radiating for miles. You know, like how someone would smiled at you and says “Oh, it’s ok. Just a pleasant sensation, really” when you excused yourself after farting in his face.

Making funny faces really made him look more stupid. It’s really funny because he didn’t look sincere at all, and was waaaaay too uncomfortable. It only made sense that this pre-paternal act was only to impress his girlfriend.

He looked like a coerced clown suddenly thrusted into the unwanted limelight.

I wonder how gals would react if their guys don’t like small kids. Or be forced to make funny faces like a dork.

Of course I’m assuming that all women are natural lovers of small human beings. But then, no things are created equal, so I rest my case here. :)

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Goo-goo ga-ga.

Piqued
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I find myself doing this when I’m typing out entries on Word :

Step 1 : I choose the fonts first.
Step 2 : I adjust the font size.
Step 3 : I type the words “chronic jedi”.
Step 4 : If I don’t like how “chronic jedi” turns out in that particular font, I repeat Step 1 – 2.
Step 5 : Feeling satisfied with the life-changing moment, I then start to type.

Now, what does that make me?

Well, I could say I am a neat freak ( without being overtly anal-retentive ). Or simply following a routine.

Or maybe I am just meticulously sequential. You know, the type that wakes up in the morning at exactly 5.15 am and proceed to the bathroom with a robotic schedule that involves (a) squeezing the toothpaste, (b) brushing your teeth, (c) finally removing that elusive piece of cashew nut, and occasionally (d) realizing that the toothbrush I used is actually the small brush we used to remove debris in clogged sinks.

Sheesh.

I’m random as well.

So random that on certain occasions, I change the water in my fish tank every three days and then completely forgets about it for three months. I swear I did not remember putting in a tortoise, and for sure guppies don’t mutate into mini archelons, so I’m going to let the mystery go unresolved for the time being.

It is the completely routine things that we do everyday that makes us so efficient. And automated.

It also laterally implies that by being so extraordinarily mundane in our lives, we take out the human quotient in our schedule and render it senseless – literally. How else can you explain a florist who is immune to the range of flowery fragrance around her and take no notice of these scented beauties no more? A hopeless romantic yearns for the aromatic breeze of roses and lilies anytime of the day, similar to the anticipation of a nicotine addict for the tobacco plant.

The in-built autopilot thus render us less emotive and perceptive to everyday norms. I see the masses thronging our trains during rush-hours no different from computer programs waiting to be shut down by a long day of applications at work.

It robs us of spontaneity and mutes the surroundings.

I am not confusing routine with habit, because good habit breeds excellence.

Routine, however, dulls us.

So, to offset this general malaise into obscurity, I have decided to try out these on any random days :

(i) Take a random bus to anywhere one fine day
(ii) Try to drink coffee
(iii) Make edible brownies
(iv) Collect small crabs by the seaside
(v) Haggle the price of prawns at the market
(vi) Sketch a yellow rose at the Botanic Gardens
(vii) Take photos of the night sky
(viii) Join Singapore Idol ( and simultaneously experience the harrowing journeys of the thousands of wannabes who take pride in humiliating themselves on National TV. In truth, 90% of them should get a reality-check – or Life. Crap. I’d rather induce self-narcolepsis.).

Aiya. The thought of breaking routine - Dare I even think about it? Missing out on marking assignments and test papers on a whim? Urgh.

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Wait nong nong ah.

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Cryogenicity

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As I'm typing this, Henry Purcell's Two Rondeaux is playing havoc with my auditory nerves - some girls were playing this haunting classical earlier on in the day.

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Coupled with Satriani's Flying In A Blue Dream blaring from the earbud speakers of the Nano now, I am pretty sure my ear canals are already rendered insensitive.

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Today has been a long day in school. On a hot Saturday, somemore.

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Thank you, aircon.

The Lesser Ones. Or Are They?

Dinner at Clarke Quay was swell. Friday nite crowds are always groovy and drunk.

On the way back, we saw a really hunched man.

Really hunched. Like a modern day Quasimodo. His head was drooped way below the shoulder blades, and from the back, he looked like he was carrying a baby's pillow - a softer version of a tortoise's shell.

The scientific name for hunchback is postural kyphosis.

Kyphosis is a curving of the spine that causes a bowing of the back, such that the apex of the angle points backwards leading to a hunchback or slouching posture.

The incidence of kyphosis is really rare, unless someone really spent all his time slouching and bending over 24/7.

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I didn't want to start imagining what his earlier years were like , or how he didn't see it coming. I mean, you really have to be a hardcore sloucher to induce the spine to retain that awkward posture and freezed it there for some time. Which normal people don't do that all the time - slouching.

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Maybe he had a really difficult life - that of a coolie, hunching over the sheer weight over his latissimus dorsi.

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Or a very, very sad past that he couldn't grapple with, and spent years crying over it - in a dank corner of his solitude, bending over a photograph of a loved one and reminiscing the fateful past.

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I imagine him being that way all the way home tonight.

A Code for Celluloid Revelations

The Da Vinci Code was good.

It is somewhat how I envisioned it when I first read the book. Except for Hank's bad hair code, everything else is justified and pretty much how it should be on film.

I was slightly petrified and uneasy after reading the review for the Cannes preview earlier in the day before the show though. Obviously the critics didn't like it very much and lambasted it to the depths of Hades, but I'm hoping for some saving grace to this controversial couldron of fiction.

I always remind myself never to read a review of a movie I'm anticipating to watch, or I may end up feeling biased with an opiniated streak to one side of the fence. The judgemental dose of local critics in print serves only to stir up the otherwise-untainted minds of discerning pre-movie-goers, thus I find myself avoiding Ong Sor Fern's deadpanned reviews every Friday in Life, although I must admit that resistance is futile.

There isn't going to be any synopsis of the plotline here. Heck, half the planet knew that Jesus became a dad in this story. If anyone has been living in a cave in Bukit Timah quarry for the last four years and saw local daylight only yesterday, the best place to begin the basic initiation rite would be at Wikipedia. Here, I even create a shortcut for the non-Brownians - click here.

I think we can all agree that any sensationalization of thematic contents in religion is a surefire to achieve fame ( or notoriety ) of critical mass proportions.

To begin with, it really helps to have lots of anagrams and difficult mathematical puzzles tucked in amidst these exaggerated revelations.

The Da Vinci Code simply endorses the act of serializing history through fictional intertwining of make-believe fallacies and repudiating allegations.

In other words, The Da Vinci Code is intentionally made to be CONTROVERSIAL.

CIA analysts, puzzle junkies and Mensa nerds will have a field day trying to decipher other cryptic messages in this movie. It is supposedly filled with 'extra' clues, signages and hints of other conspiracies relating to the search for the Holy Grail.

I have no qualms against albino monks running around with a cilice around their thighs, but I don't condone the fact that these 'white angels' go around shooting people in the name of their god. I think zealousness has a threshold, and that it shouldn't involve the use of a Smith & Wesson.

The period of the Crusades has always intrigued me. I blame the last Indiana Jones film for etching that permanent damage to my head - a solitary Crusader from ancient times protecting the cup - that Jesus supposedly drank from during the Last Supper - from Harrison Ford in fedora.

Hollywood, I find, is definitely more memory-jolting than textbooks.

I wonder how anyone today would feel if he or she is found to be directly blood-related to very, very, very, very important people in history?

Imagine if you're the great-great-great-grandchild of either one of these world-changing personalities :

(i) Mother Theresa
(ii) Adolf Hitler
(iii) Mahatma Gandhi?

Or, for that matter, any one of these people in this list?

Wow.

Think of the expectations on your shoulders. Think of the responsibilities. Think of the merciless autograph sessions.

Somehow, if the thought of it only bothers you already, I don't think you can even get past BIRTH.

It's almost impossible for a living descendant of Jesus (if any) to completely hide from the world's gaze all these years. That is so disturbingly irresponsible.

Watch the Da Vinci Code, be enthralled, be smart but don't leave your grey matter clogged when you leave the theatre. At best, it's a clever, convoluted history lesson spunned well from a collective thought of demented inspirations, but beyond that, you and I have better things to do than to search the web for extended articles regarding the Fibonacci sequences.

Like writing a good 'ol blog like this.

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For those of you who crave for more though, this site will not disappoint. It follows through right after the ending of the movie.

So dark the con of Dan Brown.

All These Hidden Codes

This article from CNA today :

Soccer: Experts say watching World Cup may damage your health

PARIS - Health experts are sounding a cautionary note about the World Cup finals, saying that some matches could be quite literally heart-stopping.

Cardiac arrests, drunk-driving, fan violence, wife-beating, binge boozing, smoking, gorging on fatty snacks with no exercise, even suicide - all of these phenomena surge during the world's most-watched sporting contest.

In the 1998 World Cup, the number of heart attacks in Britain rose by 25 percent when England lost to Argentina in a penalty shootout, according to a study in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).

Compared with admissions for the same day in previous years, 55 more people were treated for a heart stoppage as a result of the match, say the University of Birmingham researchers. They suggest in all seriousness that it might be advisable "on public health grounds" to scrap shootouts altogether.

Scrap shootouts altogether?

I am thinking of this particular scenario in a doctors' lounge when a group of doctors stood rooted at the common tv watching a really tense match involving their favourite teams. And for every missed penalty kick during the climactic shootout, one doctor will drop to the ground, followed by another for another missed penalty. This cycle will continue until all of them are rendered incapitated with the last remaining doctor trying desperately to resuscitate everyone else with multiple CPRs. Sca-ry.

On a lighter note, this must be one of the funniest article I have ever read in a local newspaper. Check out the second question, and the nutsy answer to it.

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Haha! Moobs! Mutant Male Nipples!

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The relevant authorities here are receiving flak for allowing The Da Vinci Code to be shown in all its' entirety, despite strong protests from various religious organisations.

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I have nothing to say about that, although I am feeling this : that if you wait too long to watch this movie, you guys might end up paying the same price BUT possibly with some cuts on the editing floor. Or worse, have the gahmen suddenly banning it here over the weekend because of the hyper-zealous fiction conspiracy surrounding the book's content.

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Scary.

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Which is why I'm watching it later. Haha!

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So dark the con of man.

Clunk.

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As I was explaining the concept of homozygous genes to my class, the swing of my arm suddenly carried itself to the edge of the whiteboard's horizontal, crashing into the bezel of my Panerai on my right wrist with a heart-wrenching thunder of metal-clank.

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I am a bereaved clunk. Heart pain sia.

Watch Your Bird

I didn't know quirky ads can flame meaningless sparks of senseless debate. Apparently, my favourite commercial was critically dissected and overanalysed by this missus. For the rest of the link, click here.

Visa's advertisement is arrogant, condescending to Asians

I am writing to protest against Visa's latest advertisement featuring actor Richard Gere in India.

It reeks strongly of racial stereotyping, condescension and arrogance. The last thing the world needs is a not-so-subtle message that only a big, white American guy can free poor Asians with American financial clout by way of a Visa credit card.

Other subtle messages may be given to more negative interpretations, which surely do not dwell well in our present suspicious global climate.

Visa may want to rethink its advertising strategy if its aim is to attract Asian customers. So far, it is only successful in offending the sensibilities of most Asians and it may be prudent to withdraw this advertisement.

Claire Chong (Mrs)

I really did think the whole commercial was a complete package - the setting, colour, characters, the clever camera angles, the incidental facial expressions; even the music was absolutely spot-on.

I love it.

Take it easy, Claire Chong (Mrs).

Bogus Bonanza

A friend came back from Bandung and showed me this.

Wow. A 10(!)-in-1 movie DVD. Back sleeve featured only one movie synopsis, though (inset).

JB pirates, Eat your hearts out!

A Happy Day

I have heard stories of legendary and inspirational human beings called teachers who were able to do superhuman stuff perceived only as chalkboard mythology among the teaching fraternity.

Like a Mrs Chan, who, in those days, was able to draw the map of the whole world, freehand, in white, blue and red chalk, and complete the atlas with all the names of all known countries -without a geog book in her hands.

Or like a Mr John Chia, who can list down the complete radioactive decay of uranium in all seventeen stages - without a single trace of physics note in his grasp.

Or like a Mr Robyn Tan, who can outwit the fastest calculator and mentally regurgitate the highest log value of log nth to the nearest three decimal places - and thereby indirectly causing the economic collapse of Casio calculators.

These, and other paranormal tales, are nevertheless, true.

The funny thing is that I can't remember many of these superhumans who have taught me from nursery classes to college tutorials.

Well, I think I can name some of them.

Ironically, most of these superheroes are forgotten past etched in some sidekerbs of my past history trail.

A colleague told me that students only treasure their teachers when they are long gone from school. The students, that is.

Which only goes to show that people only start to appreciate things when they are no longer there.

Which only means that most people, like me, tend to take things for granted.

Sigh. The passivity of mere mortals.

I'll live another day yet, hoping somehow to create that impact of me in the classroom yet again for another day. And another day. And another day.

Don't mind if I sound tired out. Actually, I feel quite elated today - and it has nothing to do with the packet of free lunch on my table.

I did a teaching survey for my classes - you know - those questions that posed career-threatening endings like whether the girls liked / hated / mysteriously wept at my teachings and so on etc. so naturally I was kinda hopeful and fearful at the same time - the feeling that I mysteriously linked to blind dates and SDU activities (cos you never knew what was going to come at you).

Was I surprised at the response.

A personal best for me - 156 positive votes. Out of 156 students.

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Haha. I am so happy I am going to buy TWO tubs of Ben & Jerry's this time around. Then I am going to plot my way to becoming the Best Teacher Award for The Year.

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Fat hope, of course. And no thanks to Ben & Jerry.

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:)

Mojo jojo likes this.

This is quirky. Just oceans of pink schoolbags. And more pink schoolbags.

And more pink schoolbags.

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I am perplexed ; obviously primary school girls have a limited dictionary of colours, and only one common preference.

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Pretty in pink? This is enough proof that Blossom, Buttercup and Bubbles have permeated our society and wreck havoc on the colour scheme of our lives.

Amylase Armament

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I'm having a hard time recently talking to a friend of mine.

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It's not that we are impeded by our verbal differences or aural opinions, but rather I am feeling nit-picky about his, erm, saliva.

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That's right.

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It's not that he's spewing tons of it when he opens his mouth either. No no.

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Rather, it's just that he develops this weird formation of whitish goo at the sides of his mouth when he talks, and worse, as he rambles on, the goo becomes bubbles of foam that eventually pops at its' grossest, ovoid form.

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And his saliva looked so sticky that when he opens his jaws, the malcontent fluid stretches their way across the lower and upper jaws so much so that they remind me like he was eating those pizzas that seemed to stretch their cheese to infinity and never break, even past the limit of proportionality.

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And I stood transfixed looking at his oral orifice, more curious than alarmed of his excessive wealth of amylase.

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God. Please pity those women that he kissed.

Friends, Fans and Other Electrical Appliances...

The 6 am Gamble

I will try not to spend too much time out on Saturday nights. Am still sleepy when I'm typing this.

And I say this not because I nearly fell asleep at the wheel on the way back home.

No.

I'm saying this because I nearly fell asleep at the wheel on the way back home AND nearly redecorating one of the street lamps with Nissan car parts.

Geez.

The next time around, I'm bringing us to Woodlands to eat Nasi Goreng Daging Merah at Al-Ameen's. Power.

And get that sweeeeeeet, diabetes-inducing vanilla milkshake at Mac's drive-in along Amoy Quee Camp.

Or for that matter, may I recommend the following below?

Sin-sational. Simply Devilishly Yummy. Helluva Junk Food at its Pinnacle. Sweet Memories are Made of These.

Okay. U get the drift.

They are so good that if our ruling government gives out $9oo of Ben & Jerry's Voucher instead of progress package cash, I'd vote for them spot-on. Haha.
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Thank you Aisyah for reading my blog everyday. I'm guessing that the first two blogs you read belong either to (i) more powerful mortals than me or (ii) bimbos.

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I am not against bimbo blogs. I just find them banal after a while.

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The new X-men movie is missing Nightcrawler, and still doesn't have Gambit in it. Nightcrawler's vanishing act ( pun intended ) is going to be sorely missed, because his opening act in the second movie was simply awesome.

On the other side, the new Transformers movie due in 2007 is gonna rock! You can see why.

Cool, huh?

Check this out too.

It's amazing what people will do to 'transform' their image.

I still this image below haunting. CAUTION.

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This face came out suddenly during a series of dream images haunting the child Reagan in the classic scary movie The Exorcist. Although it appears flickeringly in less than a second on screen, it is undoubtedly the scariest image I have ever seen in a horror movie. Period.

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O-kay. Maybe Sadako crawling out from the TV takes second place.

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Mish-mash of random thoughts here. Guess I'm still sleepy.

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Million Rupiah Question :Should I put a tagboard up? Do I really need it?

Hook, Line and Sinker

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Saturday night was hyped up in the beginning, and left with a terribly sinking feeling.

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To begin with, Poseidon was what I expected it to be.

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Yup - the film took my breath away. Literally.

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A lot of time holding my breath, that is, just trying to match the screen time of that young kid diving underwater and resurfacing some two minutes later. TWO MINUTES LATER.

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I would have freaked out at two seconds.

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The half-submerged mass graveyard of a liner seemed to sadistically torment the few survivors to keep holding on to the last few spaces in the lung cavity with air, as water enters the haemorrhagic portions of steel and iron and began casting it away to a final resting place on the Atlantic floor.

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I think death by drowning is the worst way to die. Seriously.

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Imagine all the water gushing into your lungs in one powerful stream of pressure, and your lungs simply burst to pieces instantaneously, and sets in the pace for oedema to facially reconstruct your cheek bones into puffy Roti Papas.

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And for that matter, your putrid, bloated shell will eventually look like a cross between evil Mr Marshmallow Man and an obese sumo-in-training infant.

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And that space of time in which that moment of drowning occurs - so tragically short - yet so infinite that your whole life seems to flash right before your very eyes that you even managed to regret the day you rejected Mum's offer to send you to swimming classes with that gay-looking instructor when you were five years old.

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Drowning is the WORST WAY TO GO.

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Imagine the clawning and desperate gnarling for air, and the thought of suffocation seems only secondary next to the blowing-up of your chest.

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Yikes.

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I'm definitely going to swim more - afew hundred more laps, in fact - the next time around.

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Hey, we live in on an island ( if you recalled that ) and I'm not going to let any rogue waves or tsunami snuff out the life outta me - or my star wars collection - that easily without a fight.

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Ok. Let me get my power ranger boya first.

A Sad Mother's Day For Some

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Was surfing around and came across this article.

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"This Mother's Day will be sad and regretful for me because my mother is in her own world - and the doctors say she will visit us less and less until the time comes when she stays in that world. So, I think back and wish I had visited that one Sunday or had spent an extra weekend with her. She probably won't understand why she is getting flowers and cards this Mother's Day.

I have several friends whose mothers are lost to them, too. I was there when some of them struggled with the reality that as they held onto their mothers with both hands and tried to grip tightly with their fingers, their mothers still slipped away. Now we are like the keepers of the doors that our mothers went through."

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I am assuming that the mother in this story is mentally unwell, or probably is getting senile in an old folks' home as days go by.

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I guess most of us can relate to the pandering years of aging, where the decadence of emotional and mental erosion presides in some of the loved ones we know. At least, in spite of everything, we know that the bond between us and them will never break down, even throughout the last few silent years of their lives. As long as this emotional constitution is forever forged in pure sunshine, the remaining years of their lives will be a consolation for solace in all of us, even as we seeked answers beyond our horizon - answers we could never understand and come to terms with.

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The quirky thing I find about the writer is that he sees his mother living in another realm of existence; the kind that transcends all material things in this world, yet devoid of any human touch. In this strange place, everything is where it should be, and none is there when it should be. Occasionally, the wandering soul places herself back into our world, talking and interacting with us like normal people do, only to lapse back to comatose existence. There is no clear bridge of reality between us and them, I think, except only the love that one can give unconditionally.

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Why love?

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Because the recipient of that love can feel it, no matter how transient the persona is, no matter how ignorant she might look. The language of love is universal and transcends all dimensions of existence without prejudice, regret and remorse.

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Let's love our mothers, and not just on Mother's Day. :)

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On that note, I love Mak every day of the week, and twice on Sunday!

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