Top Ten Scary Halloween Costumes One Doesn't Expect to See Queuing Outside Zouk - But Did.

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10. SIA cabin stewardess

9. Parking Summons Auntie

8. 1.89 m tall Yoda

7. Freddie Krueger with a Rastafarian do

6. Sadako - with a moustache and goatee

5. Sith Lord in Sarong

4. An orange-coloured Barney

3. A ridiculous-looking Transformer made from Bata shoeboxes

2. A friendly giant condom having protected handshakes with everyone

1. Man in all-white gahmen outfit waving to curious onlookers

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In Retrospect : Ten Things About Hari Raya Jalan-Jalan

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1. The bigger the group, the more merrier it will be.

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No doubt a large company contributes a higher noise pollution, but it sure beats trying to stir up a decent conversation with the occasional sombre-looking hosts who served you kuih and coke and then just stare into your nose, awaiting your further instructions. Sheer empty banter revolves around the English Premiership, The 101 Elitist Ways to Say Sorry and whether that floating debris in the lontong gravy was an offspring of the residential musca domestica.

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2. Hari Raya is a good time to visit relatives you don't know existed, and who don't know you exist.

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Although there is that phylogenetic shock you have to contend with when you're introduced to the unknown fourth cousin/third nephew/great-grand auncle, you still don't believe you're related to them. Because they're angmohs, godammit.

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3. You know there is too many people in your hari raya group because there isn't a space left on the floor of a four-room flat in Bukit Batok. Every square tile is occupied by the resting of partial human anatomy - the rear end, butt of course.

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4. Uncles make dry jokes only their spouses would laugh at. It therefore becomes very easy to identify the marital bonds when these jokes are told at night in the car - the slightest giggle from some corner of the MPV indicates matrimonial loyalty.

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5. Green-coloured packets seemingly mutes the contents - so you really can't see what's inside when you hold it against the light. The current economy dictates that the average content of a green packet in Singapore is about S$2. Johor relatives with kids throng houses here for the good market exchange rate.

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6. Priority of visits: Senior and elderly relatives' homes first, followed by aunties / uncles', then random relatives according to the GRC you happen to be in.

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7. You swear all the pineapple tarts in every home you go to are imported from Batam - The clue is the butter-encrusted imprint under random tarts that says 'Repablik Indonesia'.

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8. (F&N drinks + peanuts + mee goreng + assorted kuihs with chocolates on them) x seven houses = traumatic stomach implosion.

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9. Leaving each house with a different set of footwear every time - and magically getting back your chapal during the last house visit.

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10. Low PSI.That's clear enough.

Remember To Stay Humble.

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I wonder what was going on in the mind of that RJC girl when she was expunging that fiery diatribe of hers - the one post that launched a thousand email replies to her rant.

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I don't think she has a tiny clue of how the world works.

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Can't blame her though; if you were surrounded by sugar-coated cotton candies every day of your life, you'd think the road ahead of you out there is just as sweet as well, like a cogent yellow brick road that seemingly leads to your Ivory Tower, and everything else a great desert of Insignificance.

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Although it could be forgiven for an eighteen year old to make such carthartic remarks for the lack of acute judgment, it is of greater significance to note that the writer is no ordinary offspring; she is a perennial top-scorer in our national exams, a scholar in a prestigious junior college and a daughter to a prominent member of our political environment. Considering her overachieving ability, which is seeming made to be a mere conscripted shadow, her failure to restraint immature zealousness in her words speaks volumes of her puerile tendencies and thereafter send shockwaves reducing any notions of the existence of intelligentsia with high EQ into urban legend.

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Based on a learning psychological pattern where children above the age of seven learn from their environment and not stay egocentric, it is therefore assumed that an eighteen year old who remains constricted in her views is possibly an idiot savant.

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To say that she exercised discretion in writing down her angst on her so-called 'private' blog is atrociously ridiculous, seemingly because the word 'private' and 'blog' does not correlate together in existence, and a 'humane' humanities scholar should know better than to expunge anti-establishment tendencies in them without careful thought to the world. Surely she is not as constricted in her mentality towards the hidden dysfunctionalities of blogs as well, is she?

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I know there are similarly others like her in mindset out there - a person who has never tasted the vulnerabilities of being a disadvantaged in society and has no qualms whatever in being condescending towards others of lower socially-perceived strata. I fear the day when the Hydra Syndrome comes in effect, where you cut off one head and two will replace it for sake of dominance, and empathy will no longer be the measure of one's wealth.

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Another ridiculous aftermath occurred when her father made several comments concerning his daughter's remarks in the local papers. Among them was the fact that while her 'basic point' was correct, her delivery was insensitive.

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It seemed to me like the father was still trying to justify her daughter's comments despite being seriously condemned by the general netizen community and public. While he was not obliged to offer an apology on her behalf, there was no need to continue to impose on the issue. Furthermore, his follow-up comments over people who cannot take 'blunt' criticism was belligerent to say the least. It was literally implying that the comments she made were RIGHT, and then people who 'can't take the heat' should 'stay out of the kitchen'.

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Instead of taking a leaf out from diplomacy, his remarks merely escalate the belief that those ruling elite will forever be entrenched in their 'elitist' mindset, incapable of experiencing the difficulties of the average norm. Not only will the lesson be lost, it will inculcate a continued arrogance and 'infallible' streak that has plagued the ruling elite, and their children will be no better off. Indirectly, he is seen to have failed this facet of responsibility in bringing up his daughter by the proper norms of civility towards other. You cannot argue that upbringing has no effects whatsoever; she is the product of her father's values.

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Those who are successful and secure tend to take any complaints/"whining" by others as evidence of the latter's lack of strength, intelligence, initiative and ambition. One cannot think that one has a rosy future solely because of one's natural intelligence and hard work.

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This is the elitist mode of thinking. And that is wrong. Her misreading/simplification betrays her narrow elitist world view.

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That said, I've a good mind to remind myself and my students to always exercise great humility.

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There's really nothing grand or altruistic about it, not even coming from a teacher, however noble it may sound.

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Rather, we have to thank these so-called perpetrators of 'elitist thinking'; without their narrow views of life, we will never see the boundless opportunities for us to share and give back what we have to the needy, poor and disadvantaged. And whatever little we have we can still give in this world-not-created-equal.

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And that alone is a trait of a quality life worth reminiscing during the yonder side of age.

Of Ketupats and Rendang.
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I figured out Hari Raya will never be complete without these :
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and

You indulge in them like possessed gamers high on Warcraft crack – obediently ravaging the dishes and diligently wiping out all remnants of beef and gravy on the plate like possessed food connoisseurs – you’ll only appreciate them once they're secured in your stomach, and none left on the table.

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In spite of the gravy being so thick and oil-laden that you’d be better off drinking from a bottle of vegetable oil, you still indulge sinfully in it – slurping it even, and wiping the whole slate clean and completely juice-free that scrap-pillaging bacteria will hate you for the complimentary empty plate.
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The only thing that gets to me is this :
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Yup. Wearing the kain samping. I could never get it right. It always looked like a bad metallic crepe around the waist.
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I could never understand how some people wear it so smartly without it getting loose like a fashion impediment.

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A chinese lady we met in the lift had this to say to us when she saw us in our traditional regalia of songket, samping, songkok and other cultural paraphernalia :

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"The malays really light up the streets during hari raya. Everyone is so colourful, and everyone seems very unified - from just now till this moment, it was really a wonderful sight to see all of them splendidly dressed up for this occasion. Fantastic".

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I couldn't agree with her more.

Aidilfitri is really tonight.

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Right after the azan beckons the call to break fast for the last time, the melancholic takbir will be playing over the radio, serenading the new month of Syawal.

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The first cadence of takbir alone defines, and truly makes up, what Aidilfitri is all about - a reminiscing of the past - and it inexplicably hits the hearts of millions of Muslims all around the world straight-on when they hear it, causing a solemn flooding of many a lingering poignant memories to gush back.

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The takbir is, undeniably, Hari Raya.

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Salam Aidilfitri everyone.

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Cards, No Such.

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If there's one thing sorely missing during the coming of Hari Raya these days, it would be the Hari Raya greeting cards.

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I remember receiving loads of these cards by snail mail when I was a kid. We would wait anxiously behind Dad when he opened the letterbox and seemingly fondled the insides - and taking out some square white envelopes with our names written on them only much later - Aha! Hari Raya cards from members!

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I replied back, of course, with similar fashion. And I sent out loads more to other friends. And I got more back. It was a cool thing back then to lick stamps.

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I would then consolidated all the cards I received for the whole month, and proudly hanged them up as a train of cards on the wall next to our dining table using a thin nylon thread I ransacked from Mak's sewing box.

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I always catch our Hari Raya visitors sneakily peeking through them, and trying to decipher the greetings inside. I guess it kinda gave them a thrill to read someone's else private mails.

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Nowadays, the only Hari Raya cards we receive are those from property agents ( with at least a dozen of their business cards stapled onto it ), the agent from the maid agency and THAT NTUC Income guy who's been pestering me to buy a life insurance from him ( he seriously needs to get a life ).

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It seems that the Hari Raya card, like the floppy diskette, is a sure victim marked for extinction, and will definitely go the way of the dodo soon enough.

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Replacing that tradition will be the plethora of convenient SMSes that trawled similar greetings from Jurong Island to Changi Point on the night before Hari Raya.

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Ironically, somehow I feel that the thumbing to one's keypads on his / her handphone is a sure sign that the spirit of conveying Hari Raya greetings in the coming years is going to be conveniently revamped - by technology, no less.

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Which is why I'm looking forward to the day I receive an electronic ketupat on my Nokia, bordered with pixellated satay gravy on a five megapixel screen, and telling me to enjoy the virtual gastronomic delight.

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Edible phones will flood the market soon enough.

This is Pretty Disturbing.

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The recent online brouhaha about this RJC girl who unfeelingly stomps down her supercilious reply in her blog with much high-class innuendo to a forum discussion simply reeks of crass elitism.

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Sure everyone is entitled to his or her own opinions, but the way she delivered it across is horrifyingly straight-from-the-heart angst, brutally lacking in social tact and downright pompous and condescending, especially considering that a GEP student from an illustrious JC would be presumed to adopt a more analytical mature stance in dealing with the spectrum of Life.

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The scary thing is that I can somewhat feel her resentment of the disadvantaged through her annihilistic prose.

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It shakes the very foundation of how a smart eighteen-year old perceives the world and it's reality from the comforts of her ivory tower.

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You can read it here and here. And maybe cringe a little. If you're human, that is.

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For a person who seems to have it all (gahmen scholar, MP dad etc), I think she's sorely missing humility. Yup.

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And I'm very, very sure not all RJC people are like that.

To My Kim Geks of 2006
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ChristieChenMinGloriaCharmaineDawnClareDeborahTrangEllen

XueWenEvelynPoetriEvelynTFengpingYengYieYingBinHanny

KimberlyZhaoLingAmandaYuChuanChristabelJenniferBinBin

ShondaEileenNicoleEunicePueyYeeLingxiaoSherminSophia

SteffiLarissaYuanKhengHanLinCaraMinKyeongYuYangBeverly

CalistaShanshanJiayunPatriciaLiChooLiShaanMeiYiChiaWen

VanessaJeanJasmineJessicaKatherineAlyssaKellyAlinaQian

LorraineMarciaMeganMelissaNatashaXiangLingSarahLesley

LuangPohCherieSamanthaJaniceMajellaJoanRachel

HuijiaRekhaCharleneAletheaEdith.
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Farewell, and best wishes.

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Those Darned Lingering Parkers.

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I don’t understand why some drivers purposely linger in their cars and make other drivers wait for them to move out from their parking slots, especially in perpetually-crowded underground carparks like Tampines Mall.

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Ok I would understand if he takes a minute or two to warm up the engine and had to adhere to some superstitious practices like listening to zen-inducing churchbells symphony to avoid bad karma on the roads or something like that – but taking ten freaking minutes is ridiculous.
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I think it’s another one of those eccentric, anti-social traits of drivers here who completely refused to be rushed by anyone at all, inspite of all the cars ‘queuing up’ in front of his headlights to take over the precious parking space when he leaves. It’s like he’s playing out the primitive caveman character who is bound to protect his territorial rights till he migrates his goddamn car from the slot, and wouldn't think of cooperating with his neighbours.
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Yesterday, this obnoxious lardbutt takes the cake. The bladdy chicken mcnugget KNEW we were waiting for his parking slot because :
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(a) I signaled my intention.
(b) I stopped my car IN FRONT of his.
(c) I used my fingers and face to explain in a non-verbal expression of wanting to dominate the space after he leaves. I need to rush to break fast pretty soon - I had about seven minutes left before I can fill my stomach, and I didn't want to wait a second longer - I was that famished.
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The jackass didn’t seem to take notice of my theatrics, or rather, he didn’t want to be seen noticing my wild gesticulations. He just act brur sia.

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The jibroni went inside his Hyundai, fiddled with his moustache and goatee for some time while looking at the rear-view mirror, and then combed his follicles in an exquisite stroke of the brush. The proud Narcissist then went out of his car again and pretended to scan the whole damn exterior to see if his car paint suddenly peeled off or something like that. Satisfied, he then sauntered back inside, and repeat the same facial therapy again for a couple of minutes, before he started his car engine.

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I was surprised the mirror didn’t crack under duress this time because the jackass has a face only a mother would love.
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If he had intentionally wanted to irritate me, he had succeeded, the goddamn idiot. I wished the mirror had grew hands and pulled out his nosehairs while he was grooming his facial hair, and maybe plucked out his ego as well. He later engaged into first gear and zoomed out from the slot some three minutes later at a breakneck speed of 5km/h without the slightest nod of civility to the waiting, exhausted driver aka yours truly.
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In all honesty, I think he was certainly the biggest irritant I've ever encountered since the haze came about.

Ten Mispronounced English Words At Some Points In My Life.
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1. Fa-card
2. Ran-dess-voos
3. Vo-giu
4. Non-care-learn
5. Mer-carp
6. Dey-boot
7. Noh-air
8. Discothe-queue
9. Boor-je-o-is
10. Eww-noosh

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And the corrected version :

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1. Facade

2. Rendezvous

3. Vogue

4. Nonchalant

5. Macabre

6. Debut

7. Noir

8. Discotheque

9. Bourgeois

10. Eunuch

An Arresting Pet Peeve.

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It seems that my greatest irk of seeing a person talking on his handphone while driving on the roads has reached a new high (or new low, to be more politically-correct).

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While driving past Yishun Ring Road yesterday, I passed by this rather slow-moving NPP patrol car bearing the Yishun North insignia on its doors, on my left.

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Imagine my surprise when I saw the driver-officer yakking on his Sony Ericsson walkman handphone like nobody's business.

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I immediately slowed down to take another look to confirm what I've just seen. And I was like, appalled. And angry. And fed-up.

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The police officer saw me as I raised my index finger at him, a visual cue to warn him that an incoming formal complaint was imminent.

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I knew he panicked, because he immediately dropped his phone away (a sign that it wasn't an emergency call after all) and swerved a left at the T-junction ahead, his obligingly nerdy partner beside him looking uninterested with what was happening.

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I see morons yakking without their Bluetooths everytime in their big cars along the SLE. I see uncouth construction contractors talking on their handphones all the time in their pick-ups along the PIE every evening. However, I don't see any traffic policemen stopping any one of them when these idiots flout the law, and most importantly, the safety consideration towards other road users.

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And when I do see the men in blue, one has to be caught breaking the law without the slightest regards for professionalism, authority and work ethics.

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I shudder to think who is going to protect us road users if some protectors of the law is clearly breaching infractions in broad daylight. Justice isn't very bright-looking in this case.

The Last Week.

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It’s the last stretch of Ramadan.
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The final week of the month-long marathon.
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For twenty-one consecutive nights now, I, like many other Muslims around the world, have been occupying a particular prayer spot at the mosque, prostrating before The Almighty for divine alms, forgiveness and inspiration.
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It has been years since I remembered etching out that personal, favourite space of prayer at the mosque – a small nook on the fourth rank from the Imam on the right-hand side of the main prayer hall – a reminder of how miniscule I am among the assemblage of mortal men facing The Creator. Throughout the whole continuum of time as far as I can remember, I too noticed a cluster of individuals who are always similarly converging, likewise, to their own personal spaces around me.
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To the immediate front will always be this young chap, no more than eighteen years old, and looking completely immortalized in that stage of life all these years. He’s always wearing that khaki Arabic ghamis, with a small Quran tucked into the left pocket, as he used it to concatenate the sacrosanct phrases in a verbatim fashion when the Imam seraphically recites the Arabic verses. A small turf of hair will sprout unfashionably at the sides of his shrinking stressed-out songkok at the end of the prayer session, a weary sign of prolonged prostration on the humble carpeted floor.
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To the left of me will be this middle-aged pakcik, a bespectacled man with a no-nonsense army-RSM look which would have surely caused chao-recruits to piss in their pants during parades. His thin frame undoubtedly masked his fiery demeanour, but the solace he purposefully embraced every night was such a resolute token of silent warrior-like bravado that seemed to amplify his greatest desires to gain every single penance from God in this sanctified month.
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To the immediate right of me will be this aged grandfather, a frail-looking old man who looked like a first-class graduate from the University of Life. His wrinkled countenance, coupled with an innate furrowed expression that hints of an unaccomplished form of personal redemption, did not falter throughout the night; rather it intensified as the ebb of prayer plateau-ed towards the end. The curious beads of perspiration on his forehead has always mortified me initially, but I decided to help him overcome his inquietude when I provided him a ply or two of tissue paper at hand from that point onwards.
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It’s the last stretch of Ramadan, and we all do what we can to help ourselves.

Balls.

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When people know you’re a football fan, they seem to have this compulsive urge to update you on the scores of the team you follow.

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I really don’t get how these people seemed to think I need a second, or third, or nth reinforcement of results from the midweek game.

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I mean, do people actually go up to doctors and say, ‘hey doc, you know, they just discovered this new medicine for flu; you might want to look in to it’ or to bankers and say 'hey big-timer, do you want this new this fiscal management of assets computation I've just drawn out from Wall Street Journal.com?'

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No, they don’t, because if some jibroni spent enough of their time studying medicine and finance banking, you’d expect them to know what bloody new stuff is out on the market, right?

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Somehow, though, everyone with a copy of the New Paper seems to think it’s their god-given duty to update me on Arsenal scores.

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“Hey man…your team lost.”

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“Not sure if you watched the match, but Arsenal lost.”

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“Hey dude! Long time no see! Arsenal lost.”

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"So how? Arsenal lost".

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I bloody well know Arsenal lost, you buttmonkeys. What do you think I was doing up till 2.30 last night? Inspecting my rectum?

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I was watching the bloody game, and yes, it was miserable, and yes, I bloody hated every goddamn minute of it. I’m a football fan, alright? I bloody well know when my team loses, and the last goddamn thing I need is to be reminded of it.

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Then again, I suppose that’s just how guys relate to each other, and few things give me greater pleasure than stuffing every Anfield defeat in the face of Liverpool fans (well I did support Ian Rush and Co way back then, and I dig the way John Barnes and Peter Beardsley glided past through defenders, but now I'm not so sure).

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In retrospect, I think sports is an excuse for otherwise civilized men to metaphorically kick each other in the balls once again, because, in all honesty, we never really grow out of it.

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You see, this is why nobody likes a chelski fan nowadays. You just can’t like a guy with armor plated balls, because, damn it, nobody likes those invincible types.

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Every now and again, you want to know your mates are human, that they’ll hurt when their team loses. You have to be able to rub in an occasional 5-0 whipping at the hands of Bolton or some other equally crap team.

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That’s why everyone loves those Charlton fans, or Watford fans, or Wigan fans - you have to respect a man who loves a crap team.

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For that same reason, I find it real hard to relate to guys who don’t watch spectator sports.

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Granted, not everyone loves football, but it seems essential to me that a guy, in order to be a true man’s man, has to blindly devote himself to following the fate of some team pitting their skills against some other team, in a contest that doesn’t really have any bearing on the real world at all.

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Love for a sports team is a peculiar brand of irrationality that proves that, in the end, we’re all human, and therefore, a little crazy on the inside, that your passion for life and instinct for male bonding is great enough that it can spill over into uncompromising support for a group of men who don’t even know you’re alive, that’s what a freaking great guy you are.

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When I meet a soccer fan, and talk about football, no matter what country, what league, what language we’re speaking, there’s a telepathic understanding.

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We were in Spain a couple of years back watching a live Euro Cup match, and Germany scored a goal. Some Italian yuppies in the pub turn to us and gives us a knowing grin, and suddenly, we’re no longer German-Italian-Japanese-Singaporean-Thai-Retarded-Whatever, we’re just a bunch of guys watching a bloody game, and it’s beautiful.

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Superstitions.

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So the story for today : I brought up some mirrors from the lab for a lecture session. The topic was about the functions of the mammalian eye and I wanted my students to sketch their beautiful left orbs and examine closely the change in size of their pupils when light is shone through them.

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Of course I told everyone to be careful with the mirrors and not break them by any chance - an intuitive precognitive notion that comes bundled with asian values regarding superstitions. Even seven years of bad luck down the road is going to be a distinct economic drawback to live by - not least for an unheeded quasi-cultural spook-belief.

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No sooner after I finished saying that, a gigantic periplaneta orientalis ( or common oriental goddammit cockroach ) suddenly scampered out between the stack of mirrors to take centrestage, which shocked me into dropping one of the mirrors, which, by the action of earth's gravitational pull, smashed itself onto the cold hard concrete floor into tiny shards of glass smithereens.

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After reaffirming my hatred for all cockroaches in the world and having to endure the fatalistic act of smashing a mirror after reminding my students NOT to do so, I am further burdened by the fact that today is Friday the Thirteenth, which by no small measure, is considered a holy and blessed day in any earth calendar.

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What a really a bad day to break a mirror sia.

Binary Sunset.
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The haze is creating surreal hallucinations.
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There was this uncanny sensation when I caught this tableau along misty Benjamin Sheares bridge one late evening - something familiar about the way the sun was setting.
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Hah! Now I remember. The twin suns setting over the horizon of Tatooine, and Luke Skywalker standing ceremoniously over a dune crater witnessing the alluring spectacle of grandeur.
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I swear I could hear echoes of John William's haunting Binary Sunset serenading my ears just then.

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Yup. Seeing things is a hazy issue now - for sure.

Ten Reasons Why Being An Evil Super Villain is Cooler.

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1. You will have a nice little, discreet base of evil-dom at the top of a mountain, or volcano, or some underground lair, or perhaps even under Kallang River.Whatever it is, you'll do good in property if the evil villain thingy doesn't work out for you.

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2. You will have the latest gizmos at your hands. That means you don't need to call mum to tell her you're coming back late for dinner - you already have a clone of her at the office.

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3. You will have more friends. Just look at Clarke Kent and Bruce Wayne - they are social outcasts. See the pattern here?

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4. You get to laugh that evil, maniacal muaha-ha-ha! laugh.Good guys don’t get to do this. No one has ever heard Superman or Batman laughing like a maniac and no one ever will. Trust me, this is something everyone wants to do. It is strangely liberating. While you may pass chances to do this every once in a while during your civilian life, you will never get the quantity of opportunities that come with a career in villainy.

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5. All of a sudden, you will have the budget of a first world country for all kinds of toys. Super bad guys are never broke. Not only are they never broke but they always have more resources than the hero could ever hope for. Apparently the villain racket pays very well. It also seems to be recession-proof. I hear the tax breaks are good too.

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6. Hot chicks dig evil guys. You never see an evil villain with a busted ass woman. Sure, they may be dirty, rotten, and out to steal your empire, but you can always kill them if they get out of hand.

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7. You will be safe from everyday accidents. Evil villains are never killed in car accidents. It just doesn’t happen. You won’t slip in the shower, get smashed by a falling piano, or die of food poisoning. The only way you can be killed is in an explosion created by the hero by exposing the one flaw in your plan that no one could ever possibly foresee. But you'll ALWAYS have a Plan B.

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8. You don’t have to worry about anyone killing you. Evil Villains simply can not be killed. People may think you are dead but you will secretly be lounging in an easy chair on your secret desert island hideout planning your next caper. The only way you can be taken out is by another villain eviler than yourself who will subsequently take over your identity and continue upon your path of world domination.

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9. You can kill anyone you want and you won’t go to jail. For some strange reason, the police never come to bust Evil villains at their homes even when the evidence is overwhelming. You could kill Superman on a live video feed in front of the entire planet and not one cop would try to arrest you. They can’t even arrest you for the stash of plutonium you have in your shed. It is in the charter when you join the union.

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10. You get to dress how you want. You never have to wear a suit and tie again. You can even dress in the most outrageous outfits and commit fashion faux pas everyday while demanding the world bow to your demands and no one will even make the slightest of snide comment. This could have something to do with the fact that you can kill anyone you want and can’t be killed back. Remember, no one ever made fun of Magneto's helmet or the Joker's Marilyn Manson-inspired make-up and bad fashion sense.

You Watch Your Language!
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I'm beginning to think that humour is really the solution to all the world’s health problems.
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Because when you laugh so much that your stomach stitches and unstitches itself many times over and your rectum starts to convulse in similar fashion, it does look like the body is self-ridding the intoxicating little stuffs that made you agitated, anal-retentive and epileptic during the whole day you were cooped up in the office.

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The calm before the storm.

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Russell Peters’s ability to connect to everyone with his stage antics proved a simple point : that, inspite of all the seemingly-racist banter he eructated, it is really a rudimentary exercise in being able to laugh at your own expense.
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And especially if you’re Indian, that is. Most of his expletives-laden jokes revolve around his ancestral heritage and the copious stereotypes surrounding, literally, the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean.
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His uncanny timing and campy predilection for spontaneous zany humour is priceless, and he regularly uses the audience as cannon fodder.
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The LA-based Canadian doesn’t waste seconds on dissociating the jocular truth from the harsh innuendo of life – his comic relief transcends stuffs that range from the facile Beijing way of pronouncing ‘Kentucky Fried Chicken’ to the supremely inane Indian-style phone sex hotline ( no sir, we don’t do leather -that’s sacred for us ), and he gets everyone involved in his acts; after a group of people roared back in response when asked whether there were any Gujeratis in da house, he subliminally quipped back to tell them to put away their swords.

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Haha!

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Why, even the nice lady getting up to go to the toilet during his performance wasn’t spared the maniacal moment either when Russell spitefully (albeit hilariously) announced to the audience, “All lesbians, please report to the Ladies Room now”.
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Comic genius, indeed.
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You all better queue to take my funny face okay, or somebody gonna get hurt real bad. Somebody.

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Blame it on the proliferation of Youtube and whatnots on the web, but Russell’s acts are world-class banter, and something asian-flavoured that we can easily identify with.
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I guess that’s what we need in a crazy world after all – the paradox of laughing at ourselves silly for a while in an auditorium, while the madness rages on outside still.

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Authentic ticket stubs signed by the Mad Bombayman himself. You can have it though. For $34.50.

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Sleepyhead.

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On the train towards town last week, I saw this rather quizzical episode of a young man desperately trying to stay awake and keeping his head from landing on the auntie's shoulder beside him.

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It was rather funny because :

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(a) the auntie was a diminutive woman who would have totally collapsed under the weight of the idiot's big head if she did not continually retard the retard's head on her scapula.

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(b) the auntie, in the poise of an inanimate kungfu master, would occasionally flick her middle finger to exorcise the sinking human head from crashing onto her shoulders every few seconds or so.

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(c) the slumbering bozo was tenaciously trying to keep awake at times, but immediately after succumbed back into the evil clutches of the ZZZ-monster once again, his bodily oscillation reminiscent of a hippie-junkie during the slow encore of Woodstock's last love ballad.

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(d) At one time, the tipsy moron's head was at a complete state of equilibrium with the auntie's shoulder for a second or two, before the auntie came up with her deft crouching tiger, hidden finger move yet once again, and the bobblehead quickly reached the vertical in a rather apologetic and stymied act of profused confusion.

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I bet nobody minds if a delectable member of the opposite sex does that to us in the Mert (the sleepy stance, not the finger prod). But not a revenge-exacting, diminutive auntie with an evil, middle finger.

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That is too scary an MRT encounter to sleep upon.

X marks the hidden spot.

During an ice-breaking moment in a Biology teachers' course recently, every teacher had to introduce himself and the school he is currently teaching to the mass of educators.

One of the teachers stood up and introduced himself as Mr X, and gave the name of a weird-sounding school as his current institution.

Everybody looked appalled and curious when he mentioned his school's name, because, as far as I can tell from their looks, nobody, and not even I have heard of this school before - until this day.

He seemed calm about the whole thing, before he casually pursed his lower lip and sombrely dropped this punchline,

"Oh, it's okay. Even GoogleEarth cannot see it".

Haha!

Es.Em.Mess.

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I think creative people are really those people that can churn out funny one-liners in their sms.

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I mean, you really must have a quirky sense of humour to wax spontaneous lyricals and make the most mundane of sending messages extraordinarily laughable, or at the very least, putting a smile on someone's face. Boring smses ( the dorky ones you wished your phone would have a autodetect function to immediately delete them ) are a complete turn-off.

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And I'm not talking about those forwarded, unoriginal SMS that goes something like this either :

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Actually I wanted to mail you something

(further down)

it's so cute

(further down)

confirm will make u smile..

(the final nail on the coffin)

BUT the stupid postman asked ME to get out of the mailbox :p

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Ok fine, it's cute and all, but it doesn't actually reflect the humour quotient of the sender. For all you know the message has been circulated around the world at least three thousand times since sms technology first started.

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What I mean is something along these lines, which happened recently :

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I was late for an appointment, and while waiting for yours truly to arrive, creative woman A smsed this :

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Hey. Where art thou? Arriving sooneth?

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Well ok, the bard's vernacular isn't exactly normal lingo for most of us when the average local Beng can ingeniously inscribed 'K$#$@^, where e *&%^ r you sia?' on his N90 to deliver the same point across, and much more potent in effect at that, but then it does provoke you to think that the sender does have her witty moments, you know.

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I replied back, of course, saying that I was on the way, in the same mauled-up Shakespearean lexicon.

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The reply back was in the same intellectual vein as the first, and much more amusing:

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Quicken pace. Time is gold or thou might just see me in deep stupor waiting thy arrival.

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Haha!

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THAT, in my opinion as a professional handphone user, is much more enthralling, engaging, riveting and pulsating than receiving a similar message that irritatingly goes :

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faster la, can?

A World apart.On the same Planet.
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Look at these editorials.
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With all the local references, they do hit a bit too close to home, don't they?
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That's because these slides were presented during the recently-concluded IMF meetings here.
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An astute colleague pointed out this contrasting stark reality slideshow to me just only - she even had one of the brutally-honest slides adorning her desktop.
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I guess every now and then, we need to be reminded to realise just how fortunate we are, time and again, to exist in a perpetual state of material abundance and physical adequacies.
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Would anyone here give up his place and trade his existence for a slice of life anywhere devoid of any succinct level of comfort?

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Would anyone even consider the senseless dying from malaria as a befitting end to his existence - heck - to any life at all?

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Probably not. Lucky us.

Berry berry good.
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And they say an apple a day keeps the doc away.
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The top five healthiest fruits ( measured in terms of the amount of disease-fighting antioxidants ), seemingly come from the family of berries, which, in all hypothetical sense, could probably keep a doctor away from you for months and years.

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Tip : Whack on the strawberries at a buffet table first, then proceed to ravage the apples and pears later. Stow away the avocado for the nightly facial rejuvenation session.

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It is interesting to note that the voluptuous pear is number 10 on the list - which goes to show that anything well-proportioned isn't exactly well-laden with good insides.

Another (Great) Literary Heist.

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Moral of The Story : Go to neighbourhood malls to get great book bargains - a known conspiracy theory.

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My latest coup (above) - three for $10. Damn cheap okay.

Now we know how Dinosaurs died.

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Seeing how misty the air around our island has recently become, like some foggy scene straight out from Silent Hill, a friend began to theorise how the Cretaceous Period may have ended.

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He said that 'it wasn't a dino-killing comet that impacted earth, but rather it was the freakin' forest fires in freakin' Sumatra that continued to burn until daylight is totally obscured by the thickening blanket of emphysema-inducing haze, thereby causing all dinosaurs to lose track of day and night, and consequently, their way of life'.

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'The prolonged darkness got so bad that it made all the dinosaurs so disoriented, and they then start to do silly things like drinking another dino's urine and clawing another megalodon to death for fun, all in the name of Perserve Disorientation'.

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'By then also, since the sudden environmental cataclysm did not accord them sufficient time for their vision to adapt to prolonged darkness, they'll just lumbered blindly in the dark until most of them simply fall off a ravine, cliff or a trecherous ledge to a bottomless pit, and then they all die. Even the flying ones crashed into a coconut tree or something like that. Two days after the last dinosaur met his doom, the fires in Sumatra stopped'.

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How convenient.

This Arabic Song has been around for ages.
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Right after the azan, or prayer call to break fast, this song on the radio will serenade us while we tucked in our food.
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For as long as I can remember, the melancholic tune has been around since time immemorial.
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Listening to it brings back a lot of poignant Ramadan pleasantries at the dinner table.

College Collage

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Maybe it's just a guy's thing.

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I swear there's a silent war going on between these two factions of JC guys everytime I go to this mosque for Friday prayers. It's quite hilarious, these restrained vendetta - clearly showing the intangible imperfections of the reticent human psyche.

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I hesitantly concluded that these two groups from two different JCs just couldn't see eye to eye to each other.

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Noted observations :

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1. They exhibit territoriality.

Each group never mix with the other group. Ever.

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2. They become anti-social creatures in a holy place of worship.

Even in a mosque, where everyone greets one another with salaams, the only thing they exchanged between themselves are icy glances or stares of death permeating even the thickest cholesterol-laden dermis of the skin.

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3. The Elitist Syndrome.

The first group came from a supposedly higher-ranked JC, while the second were from a not-so-champion college.

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Here we see the alpha-male exhibiting its typical primal consciousness - that coming from a better institution, the first group don't have to feel obligated to talk and chit-chat with the lesser mortals of the lowly-ranked JC. Similarly, the other group don't have to mingle with the first group because the words 'nerds' and 'rocket scientists' doesn't exist in their dictionaries.

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Maybe it's the uniform. You know, some JC students proudly flashed their uniforms like its' their second skin or something like that along Orchard Road all the time.

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The funny thing is that I realised this phenomenon doesn't happen among secondary school boys. It's only college guys who suddenly get neanderthal over simple stuffs like these.

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I guess when you're growing up, you begin to see everything around you as a competition field, and the guy you classified as a friend four years ago is now your fellow competitor. That's the brutal truth for a reality check that has seemingly kapowed you hard - suddenly.

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Which is quite true, because I realised it was the same thing way back then too. Everytime we went for Friday prayers during JC time, we found it hard to interact with this particular group of people from another college, and they, with us.

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It's that hovering non-verbal stigma that seemed to echo "so what if you're in a better JC than us? - slash - I'm in a better JC than you are.Period." when you're in a 'highly-ranked JC' uniform. It's like an unseen tension caused by the perception of envy.

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I mean, it's just a school uniform what.

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It's not like your intrinsic qualities are shown like badges - like what those scouts wear on their sleeves.

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(Although a corporal would beg to differ when he is talking to a colonel, because probably the colonel's badges ARE his intrinsic qualities. But that's another issue altogether).

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It's really funny how these JC guys perceived the mere uniforms as quintessential loculi in the overall piechart of a person's worth.

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Envy should never be accorded on the outer fabric.

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But like I said; it's a guy's thing - so it's okay if you don't get it.

A Cranial Issue.
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Just another mish-mass pile of fabric, eh?

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Actually, it's a part of something more...cerebral. Like this.
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Brain art. Yup.

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The cerebellum behind this, and other artistic brainy ideas, belongs to an artist called Marjorie Taylor. With unique pieces like this, I'll say she's definitely ahead of her competitors, that's for sure.