Sports

Why would I actually want to write something about when I have no idea what it actually is and why it exist? This time, it isn’t really about sport, it is about our school, a little gathering that everyone had. Because of the sensitivity of the issue to certain people, it is not appropriate to spell everything out.

Anyway, everything is almost like the past years, people come, sit down, some went of running, some went to the steps and chat. We are not allowed to leave the premises as usual, but we are allowed to relax, and heck care about whatever seemingly competitive activity the people down there are engaging. The school knows how lame the whole thing is and why students have tried countless means to escape in the past years. This year, even before the event, we have been warned. This warning isn’t entirely good, nor bad; it just caused the attendance to drop very much because everyone thought it was meaningless to go there and anyway, no one marks the attendance.

In a situation when someone does marks the attendance, they must be students are hence, there is a little biasness again. So far, I have never seen bribery but it is true that there is usually jeering occurring because certain monitors or chairman are being too inflexible.

There is more than 2000 people there if I am not wrong. Mistakes arises when there are less honest people than I expect. And the whole atmostphere is rather relax. The lame marching and carrying of flag is gone and the whole event becomes less solemn. Even as the National Anthem was sung, students are smiling and giggling – this probably never happened before. There is no Milo truck or free drinks today and some of the students are taking the opportunity to raise funds for their councils by selling drinks at normal prices. While some dumb students cheered, others were busy talking about how the economy works, what nuclear fusion is and telling stories of certain movies.

My friend used to say that for this particular annual event, a sub-event is the great escape from school, back home. Reasons for doing so includes not being able to justify their presence for the event, not wanting to squeeze with sweaty students in the bus stops and the buses and also for fun, to challenge their skills of slacking. This year, for some reasons, people have given up playing hide and seek with the NPCCs, looking out for the disciplinary master, and camping in the toilet to wait for a good time to sneak out of the compound. It is as though the students have lost their fighting spirit and the love for challenges. The over-control of us have resutled in apathy and cynicism toward the changing of the path one is going to take.

This is a perfect demonstration and the best explanation of why a revolution is impossible. Somehow, it is already taking place, individually. Students have cease being good boys or girls and decided to do only what they think was right. The school compromise sometimes, but also impose certain unreasonable rules, making the hatred even more bitter. Now it has reach a stage of no return. The relationship between the school and the students is dying soon.

School Stuff

I was thinking of getting into education politics again by creating a category, ‘School’ and posting anti-school articles. A pity I didn’t really have the time to maintain such a log about the progress of democractisation in our school. Nevertheless, I shall let the head of the cat out of the bag for a little basking in the sun.

It is yet another SBC today and it is interesting to note how the absence of teachers can trigger extremely stimulating responses from the audience. The students are finally willing to talk. Like what some other SU member said in Mandarin, “Secondary 4 students are hard to handle.” I think so too. Of course, this time, there are much changes to the SU organisation and they way the spend money.

The most glaring part of the whole SBC is definitely the presentation by the finance controller. Firstly, I would like to point out that we did not vote for a cute, young boy to be the finance controller; we thought he’d better off being a Welfare Secretary. Secondly, the proposed budget is a crazy $10 050. I am not sure about the $50 that seems so extra that I thought our dear Fat Brother should have donated it out of his pocket. Overall, it is just, too big a figure to swallow. But perspective does help, each student contributes only $5 – enjoying nothing at all. The rich guys out there can treat it as money for feeding some dogs or donated to some organisation for the disabled, but not for people like us. We cannot afford to pay such a huge sum of money, only for it to be wasted. Yes, Master Rasputin, the money that is removed quietly, and without our consent from the CDS is like a form of investment. It is like a one of the bets we are laying down in the great HCI Casino that is going through some ‘Integrated Programme’, to integrate all forms of entertainment with education – without forgetting to forget about Confucian’s teachings (or any other Chinese moral teachings) and go gamble. Investment for the better good of the whole school. Yeah, right. Oh, and according to a ex-member of the SU functioning body, the projected amount is usually only 75% of the actually amount they are going to spent. This time, the pocketting of our money ‘for the sake of greater good’ is a result of the school being stingy with their money because they want to pound the soil beside the canteen, and insert some piles there. That reminds us of the announcement last year that the building of the SALT centre and the science building would commence in October/November 2004. It appears otherwise. The whole place is rounded up but I don’t see work going on. Good job guys!

Of course, there is a welfare initiative to stuff the mouths of dissidents about this sum of money that we all have to fork out. And it is the conversion of a shabby, tiny corner of the canteen into a Meeting Room, which the students are allowed to use for their meetings, or study sessions. The irony is that the room is said to be wired with wireless LAN for surfing the net. Anyone with a sense would know the room is going to be our LAN gaming centre soon. Nevertheless, we must trust our students. The dissidents are probably the only ones who are going to use the room properly – to discuss about revolution plans. Of course, they probably would decide that it is impossible to overthrow the damn regime halfway through the meeting and start taking out their laptops from their bags…

That dumb thing aside, the SBC included a touching speech about the school culture and how our school environment contrast with other schools’. Admit it, this school is not ready. A culture is something built over the years and if the traditional and most important culture about teamwork and all the nonsense are already questioned, I wonder why we are talking about having a new vibrant culture that embraces any possible trace of diversity we have among our students. Sometimes, we just don’t have the right person at the right position to do the right thing that will benefit the right group of people. Such alignment is almost an impossibility in the history of man. It is as though the planets of our solar system, they hardly align, but once they do, they would create something supposedly power. Even so, it takes millions of centuries to occur.

The boy guarding the beanstalk now have to hold this pillar to the giant’s castle carefully and prevent it from collapsing. The beanstalk is now more and more fragile with the internal conflicts within the giant’s castle. Now that the giant is dead, Rasputin and his gang is plotting about how they can collect as much of the giant’s wealth as possible and keep it for themselves. Everywhere, there are dissidents waiting to chop down this beanstalk, especially when this boy is not alert. Personally, I regret not climbing up the beanstalk and searching for some gold coins for myself after the giant’s death. Now I am waiting, for this beanstalk to collapse with all the castle’s wealth falling down for all to share. That will be the most glorious day of our revolution.

Goodbye

It is only until extremely recent when I realised that the term ‘Goodbye’, which is used in parting or bidding farewell is actually derived from a statement, ‘God be with you’. Though some may argue that it has some links with the greeting, ‘Good Day’, continuing the greetings with the word, ‘Good’. Strictly speaking, the greeting, ‘Goodbye’, should have nothing to do with the other greetings such as ‘Good Morning’, ‘Good Afternoon’ or ‘Good Night’.

It is not known how the word, ‘God’, in the statement has transformed into the term, ‘Good’. But for the ‘Bye’, it is still rather sensible. ‘Be with you’ is orginally contracted into ‘B-we-yeu’ (Note, this is the sound, no such spelling in the course of history. This applies for the rest of the so-called contractions), and then to ‘B-weu’, combining the sounds of ‘with’ and ‘you’ because they are somewhat similar. Ultimately, it became spelled as ‘Bye’. Paradoxically, ‘Bye’ means ‘Be With You’. And hence, when you say ‘bye’ to a friend or whoever you are parting from, you are saying that you are with him. Therefore, the word, ‘Good’ is essential in making the greeting meaningful and sincere.

This is partly the reason why in Chinese Language, there is no such greeting as ‘Goodbye’, which is some form of temporary farewell. In Mandarin, ‘See you’ is used instead. But it doesn’t seem to make sense all the time, for example, when you are on the phone with someone overseas; it doesn’t sound sensible to say ‘See you’. Well, that’s my opinion, others may beg to differ.

And for those who have been somewhat vulgar, I am sure you have no idea what the term, ‘Damn’ means. In modern context, there is some idea of ‘condemn’ but its usage is not exactly so. When you say ‘Damn you’, you are telling the person (in Middle English), “Death to thy soul”, which somehow means ‘Go and die’, in the more formal sense.

Mac OS X Tiger

Finally unleashed, yesterday, when I was still stoning in school after a receiving a stream of terrible grades for tests this term. It is extremely cool and is probably considered the best operating system of current times, given the slow development of operating system that arise after Window XP got attacked violently in the past 2 years. Check it out!

If you are considering getting yourself a laptop or a perfect personal desktop, get a Mac quickly. First, it is cheaper than Dell given the performance and stability of Mac. Second, it looks better than any Windows Machine. Third, Mib haven’t got a Mac yet! Get one before he does.

Blog Dies?

I agree absolutely with someone else’s view on blogging and why some guys’ blog should just be eliminated (not die, because a blog isn’t living). However, there are simply too many flaws in his line of arguement that I have to add on some more stuff and also disprove some of them.

Firstly, a personal opinion is that the term ‘blog’ has come about rather natural with the modern usage. This word doubles as both a noun (blog, meaning a web-log) and a verb (blogging, the act of logging on the online diary), just like many other words from by students in Singapore, and perhaps everywhere else. Examples includes ‘Don’t Issac’ (Nothing to do with Newton or gravity), ‘Very Haomib’ (Something to do with Mib). Of course, it is rather true that it have been overused in other context, and even misused or ‘badly-punned’, as Mib may have suggested by posting that dumb article on his blog.

With regards to how blogs, with special emphasis on Movabletype blogs, choke the search list of google, I have no doubts and agree fully with how blogs are wasting space on google’s search list. Google probably wants to have a new option for people searching – a checkbox that indicates that you are searching for weblogs or perhaps a radio button for some other sites online. Or even better, a totally separate search engines that search on blogs only.

It is a matter of fact that blogs exist to fulfill the pursuit of journalism for most blogger who failed to be professional journalist. Of course, the rest may be columnist-wannbes without the qualifications to do that. These people are just like you and Mib, undoubtly innocent, have some anti-government sentiments, have ridiculous thoughts about how you can change the world, and not realistic at all. But like Mib, or even me, we hold on to this hope, that someone out there, probably one who shares our thoughts, sees the entry and would respond to it positively or even be inspired to express the view himself.

This is so even for crap-bloggers such as Wap. It is the thought and the self-opinion that matters, not what others think. One man’s food may be another man’s poison, a man’s blog maybe the other’s crap. Nonetheless, there would be someone to appreciate the thought, even if it is just a single person. A blog also presents a different persona from the one in real life. For a person like Ruiyang (this is not real name, he is commonly known by screen name, ‘Jew’ or ‘Jew1’), a quiet boy in class with a tinch of interest for History disappears behind a computer as a blogger, at his blog, dubbed ‘Nameless Until Further Notice’, voicing extreme political and anti-government views.

Inactivity

Please pardon the inactivity on this site. It is due to a combination of my slacking and mugging, which will end around week 7 in this term. Meanwhile, people should visit thePropagandaMachine. For some anti-Jap stuff or more political nonsense. It appears that erpz.net is far from being politics-free because of the mindsets of the owner(s).

By the way, a new homepage will be designed for erpz.net soon. I thought it would be best if we incorporate a geeklog there and put more political stuff. Wonder if Mib would agree. Anyway, he has also set up a rather lame gallery, an idea which I conceived previously but had no time to realise. I would say, good job, Mib. But it wasn’t really what I had in mind.

新天地

此’日记’已改名为”广播者”以配合昊旻兄的”广播机”。当然,”广播者”会继续以华文在政治及文学领域上发表批评与意见。这一次,我还特别开了”书法论”Category与大家谈论书法,或是美术。

美术

美术乃何物?

对于像我们,生长在新加坡的学生们,美术只有两个用处。一,专家说的”欣赏”。这种想法的崛起,都是因为我国有一群因在外国的或几个奖项而自称是专家的人。这一群人,使我们认为,美术,或是艺术,只适合‘上等人’。这种想法简直可耻。

Hello World!

I finally got my blog up, with a new name, ‘Propagator’. The old blog is kind of lame and anyway, I can’t get the savaged posts back on this blog, so I am ‘renewing’ my ideas. This new blog, as you can see from its title, would be more political, and critical of the events. Days of ranting about one’s life is over.

There will be topics or issues ranging from politics to literary stuff discussed or mentioned here. Of course, not forgetting politics. Well, if you think the stuff here are too serious and you need a bit of relaxation, do go to Interesting Stuff. You will have great fun there.

I have copied the 2 most recent post from my old blog to fill up the space here because I have nothing much to say currently.

History and Japan

Historical textbooks and perhaps even books by professional historians have never been accurate throughout the course of history. Many put up with such inaccuracy or biasness that may be caused by double interpretations of the text or implied meanings. It is alright because it does not distort history directly and make any serious impact in the current generation about the knowledge of the happenings of the past. However, to have information in the history textbooks that has absolutely distorted facts about the war and stuff would be ridiculous and even a little too much.

I can, therefore, understand the feelings of those protesting in Beijing and South Korea. Why is it so that despite Japan’s denial of their actions in the war and their assertion that their intention was for the better good of mankind, they want to alter the history textbooks to misled the younger generation about the past? If they are a strong nation, why must they do so? From such action by the Japanese government, we can see that their country is falling apart, the youths may no longer have trust in their (grand)parents’ generation – these old guys need to put up a facade to tell their young how great they have been.

In my opinion, to strengthen the ties of the country, they should openly admit their evil actions while maintaining the stand that their intention is good. Print the most accurate possible historical account in their youths textbook so as to tell their young that no man is perfect, and that if their nation were to do something wrong, they probably do it together to show their unity. It is also reasonable that they do evil and bad things out of goodwill and kind intentions – especially in this world where weird stuff appears now and then.

But of course, every country hopes that their citizens have something about their history to be proud of. While this is true, it may not be always possible. An example would be Singapore. A typical secondary school student, when asked about the merits of being a Singaporean and told to name something in Singapore he is proud of and he will say that the merits of being a Singaporean has already been listed in his Social Studies textbook (he then removes it from his bag and branish it to the surveyor), while the thing he is proud is is definitely the government. The reason given – it was simply told to him.

Japan probably has something better to show off about after they admit to all their sins. They can say, “I am proud of my country because they are extremely united – when they sin, they sin together, and previously, when they want to fake that they didn’t sin, they also do it together.” As for the parts about merits, that will be their longevity.

By the way, I do support the idea of protesting to Japanese ridiculous move in an attempt to brainwash their people and alter the knowledge of history. However, violence such as burning of flags is not encouraged. I believe it would be better if those guys each chip in a little and pool enough money to send some of those protestors over to Japan so that they make a greater impact. Shouting and rioting in your own country probably only brings a little confusion and chaos to your country – and stir some news.