Kevin Low

And yes, I went there, yesterday (22 July). It was a totally crazy place. The Central ‘Lending Department’ is located in Basement 1 and it was crowded with a whole lot of people, at least thrice the number of shelves in the library. And yes, I guess just that section holds as much books as a typical community library do, much better than the previous National Library (Why, of course, they took so darn long to build it).

So you’ll probably be asking me, then what are the other floors for, especially when the library is a stand-alone building that is so tall? From my perspective, majority of the floors are redunant, probably built to prop up the Reference Section, which is the next place where books are present other than the Central Lending Section. And this section, is located on the 7th floor, exactly 7 storeys away from the previous section. Scary. In addition, this sections extends up to 13th floor, with book shelves standing side-by-side, in a less creative manner than NIE Library but definitely holding much more books. This section, dubbed ‘Lee Kong Chian Reference Library’, houses the largest collection of books in the social sciences aspects with regards to South East Asian Studies and would contribute very much to my personal research if it had opened earlier.

I took a photo from 4th storey, but I have no time to upload it now, so I probably be putting up sometime later. In any case, the photo isn’t very cool. Unfortunately, I was there at 8.40pm, exactly 20 minutes before they close, so I was unable to look through the huge building. And one warning, the elevators really sux big time. I waited darn long for the elevator to reach the storey I am on before realising that it was simply too packed to fit another being. To be fair, I got to mentioned that then was when everyone was going home, and hence, trying to go back to the first storey. Yah, I think that’s all.

这已是第三次了。之前还以为昊旻有多威风，竟被报章记者访问，但这几次的经验后，我认为还是别出风头为妙。做个平凡，普通的人还是比较好的。别问我到底是上了哪个报，也别想知道我的样子 – 我想也没人会想知道，知道了也没什么，我样子无论如何，比秉元差就对了。连伟豪跟我比起来都好多了。

其实这次的活动，本想也把秉元拉进来，但是被校方“拒绝”了。总之，受访非好事也。大家可要记得！

I know the NKF thing just got bigger after the ‘Peanuts’ Comment, which have been driving people nuts. Recently, you would notice that whenever you pass by an old coffeeshop, you’d hear people shouting, “Oei uncle! Roti-peanuts! Peanuts zhuay zhuay! Mai ka wa pang kaya hor!” (Non-Singaporean’s Translation: Uncle, give me bread with peanut butter. Make the layer of peanut butter as thick as possible. And don’t you dare give me Kaya!) Well, some people may not even know what is Kaya, I can’t help, there is no proper explanation for this ‘sauce’.

As I was saying, people are going crazy over peanuts, even the teachers are talking about it: “I think nowadays you go supermarket right, you will notice people picking peanuts one by one,” and another says, “Peanuts are cool, I’d like to earn peanuts too!” And best of all, the cynics are popping out everywhere. They are always beside you, but now, they emerge as the heros, the greatest and the noblest of all – a role they never had till now, and they’d say…

“See, I told you not to dump your money into that black hole. Where got every year collect money 3 times then can only last 3 years only? Come on man, why you so stupid?…”

“Exactly 2 weeks leh…2 weeks before the trial I email everyone and told them that dumb organ-isation was nonsense. You know the money go to who meh? Well, now you know, but no use crying…”

“You mean you give that caretaker of funds 150 bucks every year? What the? You dunno that a portion of the money get ‘donated’ to the telephone company meh? Oh god, you are damn lousy man!”

Who knows? These guys probably donated huge amounts of money for the past years and are saying all this to vent their frustration. Lucky for me, I maintain my stand: I only help the people in need directly, never in such means. Money is a good tool, but it is also a tempting one. Unfortunately, it is difficult to say you can survive without it, yet no one will ever say they have had enough of it. Oh yes, the situation now is a little different, people prefer gold taps and peanuts nowadays. Money is nothing.

Talking about peanuts, I used to like them a lot, but no longer. Don’t be mistaken, I didn’t withdraw from peanuts because of this incident – it was once when some of the crushed nuts stucked in my molar teeth, and really hurt my gums. Yea, that was stupid, I know that. But now that the craze is on, I think we should all go Peanuts! Or we probably will be deemed Nuts!

Yes. It is my turn to say something about the NKF thing. I wanted to title this post, ‘Want more jobs? Go charity!’, but unfortunately, I don’t like to see my topics too long and hence the title. Not having such post on your blog apparently signifies how shallow you are as a Singaporean. So I must not lose out, even to Mib, who is currently somewhere else.

Well, now you know, guys, if you need jobs, go set up some charity fund or a ‘non-profit’ organisation. Yes. You not only benefit yourself by providing an income for your family, you help other people in need, and most importantly, you will be able to satisfy people who donate to you. You need to have a board, of directors, of course, preferably those who are friendly with you. So if I am the CEO, I probably get Mib to be one of the Directors, and also Bok. That’s it, you can now start solving unemployment problems.

For those who are not sure, Vib is not gone, and neither is Propagator or this subdomain going to sink into a state of total passive-ness. I was out this few days, slacking away instead of mugging at home. I was going to the Art Museum on Friday (because they have free admission on tha day from 6pm – 9pm), when I saw two rats fighting out on the patch of grass beside th pavement to my bus stop. Armed with a camera (which I intend to use when I am at the museum), I took half a dozen shots of the two creature fighting like crazy. One of the photos I took even revealed some blood on one of the rat’s nose.

Here’s one of the best picture I shot. No blur, no mess, and almost perfect lighting. The dumb thing is the cigarette butt in the picture. Stupid Singaporeans, they know they probably get fined when they litter on the pavement since it is so obvious so they simply dump their ‘butts’ on the grass patch. What a nuisance! So much for a gracious society.

I thought the rat on the right has quite a nice pose, but a pity its tail was too long to be captured fully. Its limbs are all visible and I was quite close to the two guys when I shot them. I saw the same couple chasing each other a few days back when I was going to the venue of my community service, also near the bus stop. I guess they never finish fighting.

In life, some pairs of people, friends, buddies, or enemies, they will fight each other out, comparing in almost everything. In the end, they finish their fight realising how everything have been meaningless though all those competition has helped allowed them to rise in the society. The lives they wanted were simpler.

Yes. I am back, but not for long. I am still in Singapore, not overseas, not with Mib and definitely still going to school daily. I have not been blogging lately due to the immense workload that has emerged after this rather long June Holiday. I have to announce that my blog shall cease to have new posts until further notice, though Dr Croc may still post essays or articles.

This temporary cease in operation may last for about 4 months, when I complete all my education for the year. The good news is that after that, I may be writing so much, on a daily basis that no one would have the time to finish reading the posts. Anyways, Vib will be unable to reply any request, comments, or shouts for the time being.

Though not as plain as Mib’s blog, I always thought my blog lacked pictures. Not fanciful ones that crash the browsers loading your page or images that repeat in almost every post. And of course not a colorful background depicting a sky then having ‘Icy Wind’ as your blog title. Those are all disgusting. By the way, having no images or graphic in your blog theme actually sux too. Compounding on the fact that you draw some big, red, pixelated Chinese Seal image on so many of the posts. Yuks!

I thought I would start a ‘column’ on my blog. It is by an imaginary character named ‘Dr Croc’, and he will talk about education, or those childish stuff that I usually won’t write. When I say childish, I am referring to things related to children. I am thinking of drawing some political cartoons of ‘Dr Croc’. You will soon know what I mean exactly. A crocodile is chosen mainly because of the simplicity of it and also the multiple dimensions in which you can interpret its personality. You can say it is a slacker, but it is also an opportunist – there is almost no limits to the way you can talk about it.

Since this is the ‘exam and tests’ period, I will only return with more graphics during November. But in the meantime, you can actually see what Dr Croc have to say about stuff in Singapore. For those sensitive people, Vib is NOT Dr Croc. Whatever he says do not represent me! By the way, all the images or graphics of Dr Croc or related are my original works. Please do not steal them and put on your blog without my permission!

I only realised recently that the date and time stamp of my blog is totally messed up and I suspect it had been so since I upgraded the wordpress blog. I didn’t have the time to amend all of the post so I merely corrected the time of the posts that are on display on the first page. I don’t think it poses any problem but it does look strange that I am blogging at around 3am in retrospect.

I don’t usually talk about food on my blog but I will do that today – now that I realised that food is another profound art waiting for more youngsters to probe into. I went to the Coffeeshop No. 286 or whatever it is called for lunch this afternoon and ordered Teh-Peng as a beverage for the meal. For those non-singaporeans, Teh-Peng means Iced Tea with milk (Breakdown for dumber people: Teh – Tea with milk, Peng – Iced). I have been drinking Tea with milk since I was young and I only take it with ice when the weather is somewhat hot.

As I waited for my order to be processed by the absent-minded cashier, who asked me what I want when I approached the counter, asked again when I paid the money and one more time when the person in charge of making the drink asked her. Well, that I am quite used to. I observed the person making the tea. First, she added extremely thick tea into a cup of water, adding evapourated milk as she poured in the tea from the stocking kettle (this one you don’t know I can’t help – too local). Next, she scooped about three quarter teaspoon of condensed milk into the cup, stirred frenzily. Finally, she scooped in about half a soup-spoon of coarse sugar (not brown one) into the cup before stirring again and pouring the contents into a bag of ice for me to take it away.

Just a cup of tea, so many processes and mixture of different flavouring (though all are supposed to give a sweet taste). It is no wonder why the sweetness we taste is usually different at different coffeeshops. The key to obtaining the best tea is probably having the best permutation of the proportion of milk, tea, sugar or any other flavourings. There is still so many other kinds of tea and combination of ingredients for us to discover: Teh-Si, Teh-O and coffee too – Kopi, Kopi-Peng, Kopi-O, etc.