Category Archives: Personal Life

There is Bingyuan, talking about missing people, the school and stuff. I am here to say how life will still be the same. Haven’t we been through enough transitions, troubles – always brought upon by ourselves? Even in Bingyuan’s posts, he made special reference to the troubles his class has created in his journey in the school. The problem that we are facing now is that we are not going to have our lives changed by just ‘leaving’ the school this time. It is different now, troubles, nonsense are carried forward together with all the troublemakers.

While there are new teachers, new classroom, new rules, new environment, the fact that people remains a relative contant (relative to the past years) still means the same life. We do get to the end of the travelator but there’s still another one ahead. Worst, there’s a custom guard making sure that those with boarding pass labelled ‘IP’ would proceed to this next travelator. We will see different potted plants, new duty free stores and different gate numbers but those on the travelator are still the same. It is not that I mind – I will still meet Bingyuan on the travelator together with other familiar faces (except Mib, who has long landed somewhere else). The ultimate problem lies with the bunch of troublemakers on the travelator. They probably try to pull out the thick strip of rubber used as the hand rest of the travelator or do a hand-stand on the travelator.

The bottom line is that, other than those who have left for their gates, and those especially great educators, we would miss no one. In fact, we probably become irritated by the presence of some people. To be honest, I am pretty annoyed with Bok for slacking Physical Education and talking nonsense with Trix and gang – such attitudes towards learning is despicable (this sentence is sponsored by the politically correct side of my brain, situated on the left cerebrum). I suspect, I will be together with a group of people who have flunked next year, because it happened to me also. I have no real hopes for the future because there seems nothing socially accepted as great that I did like to take up as future career.

We’ll all try to let nature takes its course.

I can’t help feeling that my previous layout look damn stupid and I eventually activated the layout I prepared long ago to freshen up the site. It does look much better now. It is not a major makeover but at least the crocodile looks more decent. Anyway, I haven’t been, and won’t be updating my blog that frequently because of exams, just like everyone else here. The reason why I am doing it now is that today is a Friday and tomorrow is a rest day.

In fact, I would have been able to slack off for the next 5 days but I chose not to (I realised 14 students did manage to slack off). I thought I wouldn’t bother to study if I was left on my own, so I might as well attend school. This time, the exam extends itself all the way to the beginning of November so I wouldn’t be very free till then. Seriously, having been through that few years of crap, then landing in the current situation have not been easy but now that you are just a few steps away from ending it, you start to have some reservations because you have no idea how your life is going to proceed later.

At the very least, you know who is manipulating you at the current juncture of time and you might not actually mind that at all. However, once you enter that ‘somewhere else’, you got to ‘re-adapt’, a very complex and troublesome process that drains away quite some portion of your energy that could have been spent repairing that few cornea cells that you have on your left eye, or save enough glucose so that you don’t have to take in that extra bar of chocolate. Very energy consuming indeed.

At the very end of everything, you asked yourself about the significance of your presence and you find lots of them – but they are all words of the others. You are allowing others to define you. Cut the philosophy part and what I am trying to say is that we realised that we have not been ourselves. We have been living for others and perhaps even living somebody else’s life. Too bad, I shall say. We are limited by the system, the nation, everyone around us.

It is irritating to have such feeling. There’s always junctions when you have to stop, find out more about what others think and all the conventions you are to follow before treading on ned grounds. It is scary. I am afraid, it is now impossible to truly be yourself. You probably can do it in the sub-urb; no one would give a damn about you, or you can do it in the rural areas; others probably support you to do that. But eventually, when there’s a system in place, you have no choice but to conform. You can try changing the system, or challenging the authority and end up like the protagonist of George Orwell’s novels. Very Sad.

Lots of funny stuff out there other than the one peanut on Mib’s blog. You all have to go check out the “iPod Flea” advertisements that really rocks. This parody is done so professionally that I think they should be employed by Apple somehow to liven the Apple’s advertisements themselves.

And talking about advertisements, Opera Browser have finally decided to tap on their popularity and go freeware. Now I would say it is on par with Firefox in its attractiveness but user volume is another thing.

Then Bingyuan is once again stirring up a discussion with his “36 Methods of Mathematical Proof” article, which he probably koped from somewhere else. I told it was pretty funny but the length causes people to lose interest in the whole thing and eventually forgot that they set out to read a joke.

I rarely read Leonard’s blog – he don’t really updates it anyway – but when I do, I always find something pretty interesting. Here it is. I thought it is quite an interesting parallel. But I don’t think Charles have to age to remarry again.

More funny stuff. There is actually a bill coming in that allows prosecution of commuters who cheat the ez-link bus fare by ez-ily tapping the machine before their destination and ez-ily get off the bus without being caught ez-ily because they are not so ez-ily tracked. See Mr Brown’s article on this.

Studying have been taxing – I would consider blogging as a break. So many stuff happened as I was somehow away. I was watching stuff happening one by one: Dengue Madness, Bloggers charged for racism, More people contracting Dengue, iPod Nano came out, Mib using Canon camera and so on. Big happenings. But I refused to comment. I am enlightened.

That doesn’t mean I have evolved into a God or something. I am simply enlightened for a brief period of time – a little longer than average persons, but nonetheless, not anymore. I shall explain the mechanism of enlightenment. Enlightenment is actually the sudden realisation of some kind of truth – usually interpreted to be the ultimate truth – and this realisation didn’t struck you; it is a collection of your experience and your deductions made throughout your life. We all become enlightened, for a brief moment, frequently, throughout our lives. And each time, the realisation is different, more sophisticated with age as experience forms theories and established theories about the society becomes laws.

When we ponder hard enough over something, and finally decide to give up on it, we sometimes receive the Truth at the particular juncture of giving up or breaking off. That is when you are enlightened. I can’t quite remember the Truth that I realised but I simply knew it came, and it lingered around for a while. And when it does linger around, we will start thinking – what should we do with this Truth – for we all know we are powerless to change anything at that point. Eventually, we find that being enlightened is simply too hard and we lapse back into reality, where we are much more comfortable: interacting with familiar faces, dealing with life problems. We live life normal again. As soon as we ‘regain’ position in our lives, we forget about this time when we are enlightened.

So why do people give up being enlightened? What so hard about it? It is hard, because the Truth is not expected, totally surprising and doesn’t fit into our mindset. We simply cannot agree that whatever came to us is the Truth. During the lingering period (length varies with persons), we think about verifying the Truth, or try to ignore it but failed (those who were successful lapse back into reality). Then we (at least for me) can’t manage to find fault with this information presented to us. We finally accept it. But after a period of living with it, we are still uncomfortable. So I finally gave up, along with another few millions of people around the universe. Some probably got it then shrug it off immediately. Others find it too absurd for their understanding.

We, everyone of us, are nothing great. We are always presented with opportunities to do whatever sort of thing. Even to be enlightened, but we don’t have such capacity for greatness. Hence, we continue with such life. So do I, just like Mib, we continue to conform to the laws of the nation the societal conventions, the tradition limitations, the customary restrictions, and the other ridiculous threats.

Now, it is back to work. By the way, a new layout is coming up for Propagator. Do look out for it soon. I still have some issues with the shoutbox. Probably won’t include it in the new design.

After more than a year of waiting, my hotmail account finally grew in capacity. As you can see, it grew from a pathetic 2MB (that has been lurking around for the past 5 years), to the current 25MB. This is good enough for me since I don’t usually store large mails in my account, given the original low capacity.

Hotmail have been trying to increase the capacity of their users following Yahoo’s explosive increase from the original 6MB to the good-enough 200MB (for a brief period, it was 100MB) and then to the unbelieveable 1GB (which could be considered a response to Gmail). The emergence of Gmail really changed the free email provider landscape on the Internet. Hotmail have been a little biased. I know of users with 250MB capacity – free. So my 25MB is considered nothing.

Something tells you that the image of your school is seriously distorted and miscomprehended by the public when you step into a the lift with an old lady and an old man, in your school uniform and hear the following:

Old Lady: ‘Ah Lao ah, eh tuk ji eh ou deng eh huk sei tia tio xi ho kia.’ (Literally means: ‘Husband, can study in this school, this student must be very good child.’)

There was no one else in the lift and the lady was pointing to the wall near me so I assumed she was talking about me.

Old Man: ‘Orrr!’

The lift stopped at their destinated storey.

Old Lady: ‘Ho kia.’ (Literally means: ‘Good child’)

She seems to be pointing at me to her old man again. Then they left the lift.

I am bewildered. Was I flattered? Am I supposed to be happy or sad? For my school or myself? Or should I first applaud the efforts of our publicity department? As mentioned earlier, there are lots of contradiction between reality and perception of the public. I am not really surprised in the first place – it is just the kind of credit that is ‘credited’ wrongly. I admit the world is confusing and basically absurd, but this seem out of societal norm. Perhaps I am wrong – the society is like this: facade, fakes, nonsense, lies. I certainly hope we don’t have to be like that to continue to survive in this world.

By the way, to all teachers in the world – Happy Teachers’ Day. I would like all teachers to take note that they should correctly reflect the society to the students while in the classroom. Some may say it is too cruel or that the students aren’t mature enough to understand the world – but that simply drive students into confusion and even maddness when they see the real world. In any case, thanks all who have taught me and misleaded me into thinking that the world is kind and nice.

After a long (about 8 days) trip to Yunnan, I am finally back, at least in one piece. The place is great, the people (not counting the sales people) are nice and the mountains are hard to climb. Okay, my English is going down, now that I haven’t been really using it for the past week. The computer too, I haven’t seen a computer at work for a week! There are TVs but the channels are very limited, due to the location.

I ended up shooting more than 300 photos (thanks to a 512 MB SD card I borrowed from my aunt), and also getting scammed by a group of sales people selling worthless stuff. Well, I would say everyone in the group got conned in a way or two. Yes, we were really stupid. The people there have the mindset that we are damn rich and can afford to be conned this way and so, they feel that it is not morally wrong since they are actually ‘robbing the rich, to help the poor’. I do not agree because more than 99% of the people in our group are students and they don’t really have much money. Most importantly, they really tarnish the image of the Republic.

I know it is hard, and that we have been living way to comfortably in Singapore. I really think that most of us still don’t know how is the world like. We went there, to help the people there, provide some kind of effort to move their economy, but we ended up getting scammed. We surely won’t think it is fair. Then again, someone says, ‘The world is never fair’. Okay, so let this be a lesson to punish our naivety. Some in our group said, “Let this be a practising spot for us to sharpen our life skills. We would have fell harder if this happened in London.” Agreed. But ultimately, I must say we have really been extremely stupid. Some people wouldn’t even believe they have been scammed, or at least in whichever way they are.

Oh yah, it is supposed to be a ‘public holiday’ for voting the president today. Too bad it doesn’t come, and there probably won’t be such a day any time soon in the future because there is still another 6 more years to wait. Of course, we can perhaps think about the General Elections, but it is probably too earlier now a time to think about. Moreover, the results doesn’t really means much to the people here.

One main thing I noticed in China is their advertising. I guess that industry is probably the most powerful, booming one currently. Posters and bill-boards cover the cities and buildings or walls. These banners or whatever design are professionally-done, and possess a high level of artistic value. Most importantly, they are well-thought and nicely-done. I later read a news article about the truth behind some of these advertisements (mainly about how some people got conned by the slogans and stuff), and realised how fake this whole world is. Of course, I don’t need all these bad experience and negative news to inform me about that. The problems is that I really observe the magnitude of it occurring – it is really scary.

Bad stuff aside, the food there is good and cheap. I think it is probably the only stuff people don’t con about and really value-for-money. A huge bowl of noodles in the stalls by the side of shophouses in the cities are sold at 3.5 Yuan and McChicken in the real McDonalds going at 5 Yuan. I mean that’s really good price for fast food. Well, that’s the prices I saw, I didn’t realy go and try them because we had something else provided.

Our camp isn’t really that exciting compared to Bok’s. His account can be found here.

Having been going through Intertext classes for almost a term, I was bombarded by an avalanche of interpretation of Absurdist literature, and forced to link the whole idea with the idea of Existentialism. It appears, that to the young, especially the apathetic ones of this age, is extremely vulnerable to being converted to this form of atheist-ness. In any case, they ignore rather than strongly oppose the possible existence of any God or divine, supreme being. They speak of how the universe is essentially illogical and that everything has no purpose or meaning. They asserts that one must adjust oneself to get out of the social conventions and be indifferent to the rest of the world because it is simply too hard to fully subscribe to any existing structure of religion or belief.

The whole irony is that human beings are somehow endowed with this form of logical reasoning, a term given to this process of explanation given by us, and yet it does not fit into the rest of the picture. Fundamentally, it has not been able to answer many questions. The question that remains deep in the flaw of what known as logical reasoning is the real purpose of existence. And the answers themselves, usually branches out to several possibilities or motivates further questioning that brings about essentially no meaning to the initial question. Even Douglas Adam’s warned us of how absurd the universe is (even when he has gone so far to make the one in his story much weirder than that of ours). Because of such, there really exist no causal chain – what happens is all within our mind, our psyche and our ‘logical reasoning’ that brings about all these nonsense.

At the end of the day, the existentialist are questioning whether our lives is all about waiting. The answer they have come up with is a combination of their beliefs and derived from the original set structure that humans traditionally abide by. We are to invent a structure for ourselves, for we are the only being who can truly define ourselves. In fact, we are already bound by the earlier matrix that we have no way of changing – because we can’t find a way around it – our names. Names are simply tool of identification used by the others to aid their definition and recognition of you. As a joke puts it: What is yours but used by everyone else more than yourself – you name. Can we eventually get out of the system? Are we born to survive only in societies as Plato has somehow postulated.

Treat this as a practice for my essay writing on philosophy and basically existentialism. If it appears too chim, forget it. Take it that I am crapping.

It appears that Mib just realised that the front page of erpz.net have been changed – a major makeover event that occurred more than one and a half month ago. Nah, that’s not important. What matters is that he agrees with me with regards to the working erpz.net

Maybe we shouldn’t just handover some space to anyone. I thought getting Bryan Tee in would be a good idea, except that he seems too novice a writer to me. But he does have the tongue of critics though he isn’t that serious about most issues we usually discuss.

The basic reason why we are seemingly neglecting erpz.net is that we are simply too busy with our school work. Then you might ask, why do we still blog? This is similar to the question some traditional teachers ask their blogging students who claims to have no time for school work. Well, I guess it is because we still have the passion to argue for what we really believe. Other than that, there is an element of self-publicity – not that it is very important. But the fundamental benefit for me is the writing part. I can vouch that if you bother to blog in the best language you can, you will improve in writing (only, if you don’t really speak) and verbal expression in no time. You can talk crap but ultimately, it is a fact that your mind is generating words – the text that you may have come across and wanted to comment on and so on.

Of course, it doesn’t matter if you add a touch of Singlish, or Chinese, or even dialects for they are beneficial to the readers in understanding the Singaporean’s point of view towards things. It is ‘Uniquely Singapore’ (To quote from STB’s slogan). And you can also be Uniquely [something else]. Say, Mib wants to be ‘Uniquely Mib’ and decides to scatter anti-japanese propaganda all over his blog, there should be no reason why you should scoff at his views. You can only decide to disagree with him and then scoot off to somewhere else.

Thanks Bingyuan, Leonard and Wei Sheng. Everyone did a good job – it is just not good enough – but nevermind. I think we have put in everything we have. Recognition from oneselves is more important. Call it self-consolation if you like, but I thought we should learn to attach and dettach from society readily so that our emotions are not affected. Of course, if I want to go extreme, I can always go existentialist and say, “Grand Finals is just the society’s way of showing their recognition, and I wouldn’t accept it even if I was offered the opportunity”.

The term is nearing its end, and so is the year. While we may dangle from the leftovers of this year, I truly hope the next year would be a really new and great one.

We have come to the end of this project, and it shall end for now until we pick it up later, soon. Yah, that’s all, I am quite pissed actually. If you are free, and is looking for something to do, I suggest you go and vote for the president. This election is designed in the Singaporean-style, please do not be surprise by how strange the voting process is.