吾之恼

长日不用华文,今日现丑了。从今周开始每天逼自己写两篇散文诗,补偿前日之惰。今日就献上散文诗,“吾之恼”。

《吾之恼》

华文之恼,有谁明了。
恼白话太长,古文太深。
惜佳文太少,古诗太妙。

恼自己;
别字极多,文章不好。
爱书而不读之习,截不掉。
恼尊师;
不值分尊,言-无人聆晓。
无聊乏味之教法,除不了。

吾恼:得到何时,才能因自身是华人而豪?

此文/词/诗是想起自己华语有多差,而怪罪在老师身上而写的。本人之师,败在自己不懂得激发学生的兴趣,只顾逼学生们死背句子,读死书。这有何用啊!

Bok's Calamity

In case you haven’t noticed, Bingyuan has just put back all the ‘censored stuff back on to his blog. That’s supposed to be good news unless he accidentally revealed them and would be switched the posts back to hidden mode. I really thought he was afraid that his form teacher or whatever would go to his blog and realised how critical and lame he is. Well, it appears that he have had his fears removed. Or perhaps it is because he has no wonderful content to show lately so he decided that the ‘censored’ stuff aren’t really that censor-deserving after all.

It appears that people are now discussing a great deal of stuff on blogging stuff that may be ‘dangerous’ due to political or defaming nature. Well, I thought this is pretty lame because I believe in the Internet, there is no way of control. When a site goes down, another one comes on again. Most importantly, you are not able to punish certain people who may have been blogging somewhere else in another nation where certain laws probably doesn’t apply. The deterence isn’t going to work.

As for non-political or defaming stuff, they are starting to get a little bored. Terry seems to be running out of ideas, especially when he is the type of blogger, who does it everyday unless he has no access to a computer. This is probably a down time for him and other of those bloggers. I probably should switch off my system too.

Bok’s Calamity

In case you haven’t noticed, Bingyuan has just put back all the ‘censored stuff back on to his blog. That’s supposed to be good news unless he accidentally revealed them and would be switched the posts back to hidden mode. I really thought he was afraid that his form teacher or whatever would go to his blog and realised how critical and lame he is. Well, it appears that he have had his fears removed. Or perhaps it is because he has no wonderful content to show lately so he decided that the ‘censored’ stuff aren’t really that censor-deserving after all.

It appears that people are now discussing a great deal of stuff on blogging stuff that may be ‘dangerous’ due to political or defaming nature. Well, I thought this is pretty lame because I believe in the Internet, there is no way of control. When a site goes down, another one comes on again. Most importantly, you are not able to punish certain people who may have been blogging somewhere else in another nation where certain laws probably doesn’t apply. The deterence isn’t going to work.

As for non-political or defaming stuff, they are starting to get a little bored. Terry seems to be running out of ideas, especially when he is the type of blogger, who does it everyday unless he has no access to a computer. This is probably a down time for him and other of those bloggers. I probably should switch off my system too.

Bus 186

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.

Rush

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’.

Newspeaker

Yay. Finally, we got Newspeaker up and running. For those who have been reading my blog since it was set up, you should know what Newspeaker is and how it represents Mib and my ideas. Instead of having it as a subdomain, we placed in right smack on the front page to give erpz.net a whole new set of purpose and objectives.

Newspeaker

Here’s a shot of it at the most primitive stage. Its content should be building up soon. For now, let me work on my studies first.

Back to Work

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.

Propagator Buttons!

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.

Button

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.

Crocodile's Eyes

For those who are observant enough, you would realise at once that I have changed the Propagator’s Croc a little, adding ‘eyes’ to make it look a little friendlier. I started off with this idea of making an proper avatar for myself in different places. Unfortunately, I have my identity hidden for certain places and not for certain websites. So I decided that the avatar will solely be for my participation in more crappy, techie websites. Here it is, the 50px by 50px version of it:

The first look of it give me an impression that it is a sign warning children to have parent guidance when viewing anything that is posted by me. Originally, I was using the old unfriendly croc’s eye and it looked really evil. Hence, I decided to amend a little to appeal to children. Unfortunately, I couldn’t change the letters ‘P’ and ‘G’. They were in caps at first but I quickly change them to small letters. I guess you guys should know why.

The ‘croc’ looks as though it portrays the parents eyes looking at everyone – especially for the children; with the purpose to instil fear in them and deter them from doing wrong things. To a large extent, the avatar seem to work well with such a feature to scare children. The things I write is not immoral, not as evil and extreme as what Mib normally writes about, but they are usually not suitable for children since it has a high tendency of distorting their perception about the world – I don’t want to make them unhappy.

The background is not black. It is a dark shade of brown that is blend with a light gray. It does look simple here but it is supposed to achieve the effect of a warm feeling despite the color being a dark one. It blends in better with the green of the crocodile and the orange text, making it the perfect background for the avatar. The orange text, of course, is to mix with the green to achieve the similar effect that my website’s design is built upon.

That’s the problem when you have a strange logo coupled with a dubious name; you produce an avatar that makes no sense or connection to your original idea. I guess you guys would soon see this avatar appearing on certain forums or communities, that’s me – unless one of you decides to pass off as me and kope this avatar. Sometimes, you may see this avatar appearing but the name isn’t ‘Vib’. It probably isn’t me, though I didn’t really fully adopt the screen name, ‘Vib’ yet. I have so many other accounts that uses purely my own name. I guess it will take another year or 2 before I use it for everything I register.

Crocodile’s Eyes

For those who are observant enough, you would realise at once that I have changed the Propagator’s Croc a little, adding ‘eyes’ to make it look a little friendlier. I started off with this idea of making an proper avatar for myself in different places. Unfortunately, I have my identity hidden for certain places and not for certain websites. So I decided that the avatar will solely be for my participation in more crappy, techie websites. Here it is, the 50px by 50px version of it:

The first look of it give me an impression that it is a sign warning children to have parent guidance when viewing anything that is posted by me. Originally, I was using the old unfriendly croc’s eye and it looked really evil. Hence, I decided to amend a little to appeal to children. Unfortunately, I couldn’t change the letters ‘P’ and ‘G’. They were in caps at first but I quickly change them to small letters. I guess you guys should know why.

The ‘croc’ looks as though it portrays the parents eyes looking at everyone – especially for the children; with the purpose to instil fear in them and deter them from doing wrong things. To a large extent, the avatar seem to work well with such a feature to scare children. The things I write is not immoral, not as evil and extreme as what Mib normally writes about, but they are usually not suitable for children since it has a high tendency of distorting their perception about the world – I don’t want to make them unhappy.

The background is not black. It is a dark shade of brown that is blend with a light gray. It does look simple here but it is supposed to achieve the effect of a warm feeling despite the color being a dark one. It blends in better with the green of the crocodile and the orange text, making it the perfect background for the avatar. The orange text, of course, is to mix with the green to achieve the similar effect that my website’s design is built upon.

That’s the problem when you have a strange logo coupled with a dubious name; you produce an avatar that makes no sense or connection to your original idea. I guess you guys would soon see this avatar appearing on certain forums or communities, that’s me – unless one of you decides to pass off as me and kope this avatar. Sometimes, you may see this avatar appearing but the name isn’t ‘Vib’. It probably isn’t me, though I didn’t really fully adopt the screen name, ‘Vib’ yet. I have so many other accounts that uses purely my own name. I guess it will take another year or 2 before I use it for everything I register.