Category Archives: Personal Life

The world is getting scarier. First, holidays are coming. Holidays are not time for relaxation. They are periods of time when we go wild and work madly at home instead of being ‘lectured’ at school. In school, the ‘talk only’ ability becomes powerful especially when everyone assumes that having school would mean lots of commitment and responsibility, so people do not come and bother you. Simply say you are busy when people ask for your favour and the very fact that you reply would be greatly appreciated – no explanation needed (there are tonnes of it anyway).

But holidays are dreadful: You can’t say you have got lessons, or school. Initially, the school gives you a little homework, such as informing your parents about upcoming events and things to organise that comes after the holidays (they assume you have the holidays to plan everything). Next, your teachers give you work – tonnes of worksheet; so much and so heavy that they can squeeze out every single inch of adipose tissue in Bingyuan, and every single molecule of lipid out of Fat Brother. I even have problems bringing them home, if not for the fact that there aren’t many textbooks to carry around. Well, when teacher finishes with their assigning of work, your project and whatever mentors come and nag. They say you are still trailing behind the other mentees, then comment that the project is incomplete or whatever. But take note: They DO guide you with the work, expecting very much in return (in the form of excellence in the project or research quality).

Guys, it is not easy to say that holidays are coming and everything can be ‘taken easy’. If those homework, project and research, plus responsibility for organising whatever isn’t enough, there’s more. Work attachments. I have one, quite nice actually – since I have never been on such thing for all my life, so this is the first time. This one lasts for 5 days – 12 hours of work each day; to film stuff and record details. Yes, sounds simple, but think about doing that for 12 hours, in a day, for 5 consecutive days. Oh yah, and I still got to go back to school – for English Lessons. Okay, that’s all. I have about 25 days of holidays (got ta exclude days like the attachment when I cannot do anything at all). Yeah. That’s life. Too bad. I am not Mib, can’t go US, can’t go out with a bunch of friends and slack, can’t really make a point to blog in the holidays.

Last Friday, when The Economist is supposed to arrive, it didn’t. Okay, I admit I was slacking and didn’t really touched the previous issue on ‘Axis of Evil’, but they should be delivering the magazine on time. I gave them 2 days and finally, I sent a ‘comment’ to them through the net to inform them that my issue hasn’t arrive, yesterday.

They responded almost immediately to this ‘comment’ by sending the issue to my home by hand today. I am pleasantly surprised by such world class services that this company offers. Guys, if you ever subscribe anything academic, I would recommend The Economist, because I believe the content isn’t where a magazine company cant stop at. They have managed to extend beyond just content and provide the service that we need.

This isn’t the first time, and I doubt it will be the last. Yes. The bus which I take to school and back home broke down again. It is not important how many thimes it broke down in total if it doesn’t concern me, but I have encountered such incidents thrice already. This is ridiculous.

I was about to board the bus when the driver told me, “Boy, don’t board, something is wrong with the bus – overheating,” I was like,”Okay. Hey, there is smoke billowing from the back of the bus!” The bus driver quickly got down, went to the back of the bus and lifted the lid of the engine. True enough, it was extremely smoky and the air smells like it has just received a huge dose of tar. He got everyone off the bus and told them to take another bus.

I would probably have captured a snap of the smoky bus if not for the fact that I don’t usually bring my camera to school. Too bad for people who have never experienced this. And also for people like me who have experience too much of such misfortune. Service 186 is a very special SBS bus and it is not a day I took to come to such conclusion. It is a period of more than 3 and a half years. Here are some features of Bus 186, which other SBS buses probably do not possess.

Not fully air-conditioned, and the number of air-conditioned 186 buses is definitely a one digit number that is less than 5. For non-Singaporeans, ‘non-fully air-conditioned’ doesn’t mean the first half of the bus has air-conditioners but not the back; it means that there are buses of this service number with air-conditioners and those without.

Lousy drivers; they have drivers who speed past bus stops without bothering if there are people thinking about boarding the bus. There are also a huge group who stops by at every single bus stop on the route, regardless if there are people in the bus stop, or whether anyone is about to alight.

It breaks down at a higher frequency than any other service numbers. I have no explanation for this, and it is simply my deduction, but I thought that it is amazing for such buses to break down so many times when the old buses (such as those of the City Shuttle Service), do not really break down at all.

Long distance, yet the first bus is extremely late. The first bus leaves Shenton Way Interchange at 6.00am – I am not sure if the driver sometimes slack or whatever, but anyway, it is damn late, considering the fact that the first of the same bus moving in the opposite direction starts at 5.30am. I wonder why they have different timing for the different direction. Anyway, it goes from Shenton Way all the way to remote places like St. Michael, or whatever.

Worst, they want to raise the bus fees! With such world-class bus services, one can expect anything out of the world to happen – whether it is overheating of the engine, lack of power in the battery box, or something wrong with the accelerator, 186 simply has to cause me trouble. In fact, its waiting time is already irking me. 8-13 minutes of waiting for peak hours and 15-19 minutes of waiting for off-peak. In this era when time is everything – when I didn’t actually think blogging about this is productive but I still did – how can I be spending so much time at the bus stop? World-class. Yeah, right!

Yes, I benefit from the service. If not for the existence of this bus, I would have to walk a few extra hundred metres to reach the bus stop with another bus that happens to cross the road of a particular bus that reaches my school directly. In case you don’t know what I am talking about, I actually mean that in any case, I still have to change bus and so the bus company is already squeezing me dry with me having to pay almost double the fare. Well, it is true that i purchase the concession stamp but that doesn’t mean they can do anything to try squeeze everyone else dry.

I thought it would be nice to get to know a bus driver, especially those driving me to and fro school. Unfortunately, SBS probably changes their driving schedule as fast as they refill their bus fuel tanks – I see a different face sitting on the drivers’ seat everytime I board the bus to go to school, even when the timing is exactly the same. The big problem is that while the driver is different, the bus is forever that SBS1834E (not reliable because the plate is rather weather-worn; I couldn’t see it properly), which is old, jerky, spoil-more-than-twice-but-somehow-managed-to-recover, smelly, dirty, not waterproof (so I am extremely unlucky on rainy days), has rusty railing to hold on to and finally, the windows have to be opened yourself (the big problem here is that the window is old and rusty, thus, the friction between the plastic window and the railing is tremedous, making loads of squeaky sounds when you open it). And if you are real unlucky, you might not even be able to push open the window!

I don’t like the idea of owning a car, nor taking a bus – especially when you are in a country like Singapore. Forget it, I think people like me have long migrated somewhere else. I am beginning (actually it is more of continuing) to wonder why I am still here. Okay, maybe it isn’t that bad. It is not as if Mib is enjoying himself.

I definitely have to change my point about life being the same. It is actually gathering pace and I am busier than ever now. With 2 main projects already on hand, I thought I have very much improved from the passive mode I was in during the start of the year but I was wrong. Now comes more things; attachments, a whole new turn for the film I am shooting and whatever academic stuff, which I am already working on. I really need help for the film now. You people might like to comment somehow. This is what the film is about:

A student volunteer goes to volunteer his service to a particular neighbourhood link, helping to conduct Chinese Calligraphy and a Conversational English Course, then he goes back. Throughout the act, there will be 3 interviews featuring the staff in charge of the centre, a elderly man who is the ‘student’ in the Chinese Calligraphy Class, and the actual student volunteer who is working with the centre to conduct a Conversational English class for the elderly. This is a docu-drama, whereby the drama and interviews are inter-twined together to make it like a ‘The Making of…’ kind of short-film.

Now, the problem I am facing is that if I really go and do something like ‘The Making of…’, the film becomes a side-thing, appears on the surface as being useless. I wonder if it is possible for me to propose this to the teacher. It is a whole new concept to stage ‘The Making of…’ as a stand alone film – but for now, it is rather ‘The Progress of Moral Neighbourhood Link Project’. So it is working on the same sort of genre with a different approach, a vastly different one. There are still uncertainties here and there. Firstly, I still don’t have an idea what kind of feeling has to be instilled in the audience watching th film. It is meant to be quite arthouse actually, but it doesn’t seem to work out. This is mainly because it does not invoke deep emotions. This project is getting out of control as time pass. I really hope some people out there can comment on such a kind of film.

Well, some may think it is refreshing to have this kind of film and want to watch it before saying anything, but currently, I think the whole film is so screwed that I don’t think it is deserving of any viewing. On contrary, I think people should go watch Tak Giu, one of the good Singaporean Short Films I have seen so far; though I thought the title is wrong, for people who knows Hokkien, I believe the right pronounciation is ‘Tad Kiu’, which literary mean ‘Kick Ball’.

After a week of sabbatical, it is back to work time, though it is not as if sabbaticals are totally slack. Life is as usual, prepareing for test, doing homework, and probably menging MRP. To some, this is no life. I probably think so too. To make it worse, there isn’t much games to play these days and not much political stuff to comment on. So in order to liven things up, I continue my service at the Neighbourhood Link. Everything there hasn’t change much, with the same people around and the same activities.

It appears that I am the one who have changed; more slack in my job and duties. This is probably because I am steering my focus toward studies and the sideline stuff don’t appear to be that important anymore. This include things like blogging or stuff like revolution. The idea now irks me. I yearn for a more simple place to be in, yet the environment is undoubtly trying to force me back into the competitive, illogical realm of academics and arts.

As I am typing this crap here, my house suddenly blacked out. There was lightning and thunder outside and it is raining heavily, the heaven probably knows about all these sufferings of people. Well, if one were to interpret this way, another can always say heaven is angry at you for being so upset with your current life. So I shan’t argue. After churning out those lame graphics, which Jin’s daughter commented that it looked like some turtle, I curse at my own graphic skills – those images took me more than 2 minutes on flash and photoshop to create! I am getting worse, I thought that Propagator might well be gone since it does nothing productive and do not contribute to anyone unlike Terry’s blog, which aims at helping others. The problem I am facing now is probably the fact that no one asks for help from me (except Mib).

Worse of all, when I reach out to help others, I am not appreciated. In addition to that, I got a lousy Merit award for my Chinese Calligraphy work, which I thought was the best entry to that competition of this 3 years. Well, for this, it probably is the fault of the organisers and the judges. As we all have said long ago, they number the works, then use a lottery machine to pick out the winning entry before deciding whether the work is good.

By the way, Bingyuan churned out quite an interesting article on how his classmates would far in society next time. I think I probably deal with some designing stuff, unless I decide to join Mib and be his Propaganda Minister or something of that sort. Well, maybe the owner of some small firm that will deal with arts or design stuff and maybe I will be helping Bingyuan out with designing his restaurant and the menu (in addition, free designing of the gift voucher and the food arrangement), in exchange for some of the shares of his restaurant. On second thought, I may be pitching myself against Yanmin, so I decide I shall be the landlord of Wei Xiang, who will be dealing in the food business selling Nasi Lemak and Fan Choi.

Oh yah, Terry won’t be a Deejay. His taste for travel will definitely prevent him from getting a job that encloses him a in dimly lighted room for hours talking to himself and a bunch of nothing-to-do idiots. He probably open an arcade and play Para Para Dancing all day or be some kind of travel reporter who goes around the world and bumping into all sorts of people. It would be fun though.

Owning to the time from Sabbatical Week, I have been fiddling a little with photoshop to see how my logo can be modified or fitted into different uses. I came up with this dumb button that is a 88 X 39 pixel banner. Of course, it is the same dumb croc with the text and coloring. It is apparent that this is a 5 minutes no-brain work.

If you like, you can download or link direct and put it somewhere obvious on your site and link it to “http://simplicity.erpz.net”. I am changing the main page soon so please link direct to the main page so that people can view other parts of my site (if there are any). Now that I am a tiny bit freer, I am thinking of doing a set of Propaganda series posters for erpz.net, and setting up a main blog where Mib and I can both post stuff and updates. That will definitely satisfy both of us. I think I am always coming up with new ideas and doing nothing about them, and this situation is getting bad especially when work is piling at school. I can’t promise anything, but I will surely work things out by the end of this year.

Mib too, will be free during the end of year holidays and will get so bored from gaming that he starts working on some part of the site especially the gallery, which now has evolved to become his own. I guess our interest on images and photos simply vary too much. Of course, there are propaganda posters which I admire and also images of scenery which I like but the idea of a gallery doesn’t seem to work out as I previously imagined.

Finally, my interest in argumentative essays and writings have cost me my abilities to spin tales and stories using profound words that I have learnt. Today is the perfect demonstration of my story-writing skills, which is still stuck at around Primary Six level. We are supposed to do a personal recount for our Sabbatical today and I choose this rather dumb story about misplacing my passport and realising it only on the morning I was leaving for some overseas studying course for a year.

The question itself is dumb, and according to the teacher, there is no need for sophistication. Anyway, there’s no room for that. And most importantly, I was supposed to stretch a few seconds into about 100 or so words. The fact: I didn’t manage, and will probably only score well enough to pass this exercise. I must say, I wrote with my best abilities for the question and it wasn’t the storyline which bothers me; it is the language. I am not able to use the suitable ‘chim’ words for the essay mainly because of the 1 and a half year immersion in arguementative essay or exposition. So this exercise is total crap to me.

I seem more proficient in English than Chinese when it comes to blogging. Even so in life, yet I think English is still a stranger to me. I cannot udnerstand some of their cultures, or the way the language is designed to be. Chinese Language appears more logical to me, but it is probably harder; which in turn, may be a result of the environment and lousy system.

It appears that a great deal of people are starting to practice self-censorship, worried that they will infuriate the school authorities because they said something seemingly bad about the school or particular people in the school. This people ranges from the big-size type Bingyuan to timid-looking but sarcastic Ruiyang.

I guess there should be harm making personal attacks in real life. We do it everyday. Except it varies from verbal insults to discrimination or whatsoever. Most importantly, it does not make an impact on the school, the discriminated person, or the person who insults. The punishment should not go beyond feeling guilty and worrying about losing friends or popularity. The whole idea of blogging in the first place is about freedom (of expression), if we exercise such restrains on ourselves, then we should be thinking twice before starting a blog.

Ultimately, the blog acts as a vent for frustration. Why be frustrated about venting frustrations? Why should we be practising self-censorship when our words do not even cause racial riots or aything paramount to that magnitude. I admit sometimes we get political – and I mean school politics or whatever you like to call it (don’t worry, I am a Singaporean). Yeah, right – you would say; then ask about what happened to those criticised for the content of their blogs online and even sued by the authorities. Well, those guys just aren’t prepared enough to embrace the spirit of freedom in Singapore. They have to get an extremely political correct secretary to help with a little vetting before they can proceed to publish their thoughts online.

Well, it is still quite encouraging to see a huge chunk of Singaporeans practising their freedom, in their very own way. It is interesting, though not a great breakthrough. At least you don’t have to pay for the news you receive there, unlike Straits Times Interactive, which is ridiculosuly collecting money from thei readers – even from the print subcribers, for logging on to their website to obtain softcopies of the ‘somewhat excellent’ and accurate news reports. It is not as if Singapore has many news sources to start with, for comparison. It does even have enough news for these sources anyway.

So, I received this crap from Mib.

Here are the rules according to thePropagandaMachine:
1. Write a four line poem with the 1st and 3rd lines being “turd in a punch bowl”
2. Make lines 2 and 4 rhyme, using any topic.
3. Pass along to 3 unsuspecting punchdrinking bloggers and make them put it on their blog site.

I don’t know what is this, and I don’t want to give a damn but I thought it could be quite fun. Just a little copying and brainstorming, I got this:

Turd in a punch bowl,
What the hell is this?
Turd in a punch bowl,
Crappy as it is.

Turd in a punch bowl,
Wonder who did this?
Turd in a punch bowl,
Mib needs a hot dish.

Turd in a punch bowl,
Does it concern me?
Turd in a punch bowl,
Sponge cake is for tea.

Got this in less than 4 minutes beccause I am more poetic than Mib. Standard poem, Iambic Pentameter. That’s what you get for studying Shakeapeare for about 5 months. Now, I am going to end this here. Hope Bok have fun starting his own turd-tagging!

After the 3 month long delay, my first issue of The Economist finally arrived last week. I can’t really blame the company, I got a darn good price for the subcription, they probably want to check my identity as a student first. I quickly read through the first few articles and got quite bored with it. Actually it isn’t boredom, but you can’t possibly expect my attention span on such an academic magazine to be that long. I did not forcefully compel myself to finish it, and hence, I ended reading just half of the whole issue. The main focus last week was about oil. There isn’t really very much to elaborate about oil other than its price, Saudi, and Bush. It appeared to be an extremely eurocentric magazine with some stuff about Asia here and there.

So before I manage to finish that issue, a new issue arrived – once it starts coming, it begins to stream in weekly – this time the focus is not Australia. From Bill Bryson’s ‘Down Under’ I learn lots of stuff about Australia. I also discovered how much the world has forgotten them. This issue of The Economist is probably a breakthrough after these months since 2005 began.

For such an old publication, I expected more attempts to try catch up with times and hence a little more pictures but unfortunately, they seem as traditional as ever. Even the advertisements are mostly text-based. They’re probably the biggest European Google supporters. Nonetheless, the articles are solid and definitely full of content, which explains why the publication manages to live till today. Initially, I was quite biased against this publication mainly because its name makes it sound like a old radio churning highly technical information that has jargon all over it – I was wrong; secondly, it is because Edwin Tan always tries to show off how much he knows about terrestrial stuff by copying the articles from The Economist and pasting them on his blog. Don’t worry, I won’t do what he does.

I am not that much of an economic kind of person (I am more of the economical kind), though I very much don’t mind being one. I am rather facinated by how complex this whole thing is. It is almost natural arising, it took a combination of circumstances and human brain-work to complete its infrastructure. It is more amazing than the world’s every super computer combined. In fact, it is built by a collection of super-computers, and super-intelligent human minds. Most importantly, every political engine is dependant on this stable collective power to operate and function smoothly.