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Hello Holidays

Exams are over!

My mind boggles at the lengthy holidays that stretch in front of me now, and although I know school is a long way ahead in August, I've no doubt that when that time comes, I'll look back at this entry and marvel at the way time went by.

Which is kind of how I'm feeling now. Tonight's the last night I'm spending in this dorm room of mine, that's been my home away from home these past 10 months or so. I rushed a lot of my packing today, so it hasn't really sunk in yet that I'm no longer going to see this particular slice of the night skies anymore.

Heh. I'm looking forward to life back in Singapore though, despite the majority of exchange students all loving exchange life too much. For me the primary draw to going home would be feeling anchored and rooted again, because this past year just seemed too transient for my liking.

Well, tomorrow I'm off to Costa Rica for a week with Zhixiang, then when I return my parents will be here, so finally I get to eat well again! I doubt I'll get much internet access next week, so I shall return and post more to make up for lost time soon.

Take care all! Happy holidays! Unless you're like working or something. In which case, er. Happy working!

On Love

It's scary, how romantic love is always justified.

It didn't strike me until some time recently, when I first noticed a common link between all the love stories, love songs, and real-life romances out there. And that was, every romance is somehow completely, unequivocally, unflinchingly justified by the parties involved.

Of course, it's a good thing when people fall in love. But consider that love, as a raw, pure emotion, often relinquishes little control to logic and sense. Could there be situations when love drives one to do what would normally not be right?

Consider the song My Boo performed in the video above. "And though there's another man who's in my life, you will always be my boo."

Consider Romeo & Juliet, which may merely be a work of fiction, but which stands for the oft-propagated message that unadulterated love is worth dying for, worth defying one's parents for. There are perhaps only half a billion other love stories where parental disapproval is similarly shrugged off.

Consider Mary Kay Letourneau, the teacher who maintains to this day that she is truly in love with the (then) young boy she abandoned her family for. You can read more about her here, in case you're not familiar with her story.

I think what happens is that people in love suddenly find themselves the living emissaries, the breathing ambassadors of love. Suddenly, against the backdrop of a gloomy world beset by too many painful realities, they are the only shining beacons of what is right, what should be, and they set out to prove that their love can conquer all.

In fortuitous cases, people fall in love without causing too much disruption to the order of the world around them.

Other times, in their quest to see their love come to fruition, people go to extreme lengths. Regardless of the obligations or obstacles facing them, people tell themselves that if they can only love deeply enough, they will overcome everything else, that since love is so rare, they are fully justified to pursue it to its end.

It's a pity then when these obligations or obstacles are ones which when abandoned, do cause very real harm to other people. Marriage vows to the wandering husband are obstacles, and so are friendship ties to she who covets her best friend's boyfriend, and so on.

Funny thing still, eh, how humans are still so very enraptured by watching only the budding love stories? You never read about how Mary Kay's first family are surviving her abandonment and betrayal. You never hear that unnamed boyfriend in "My Boo" sing his side of the story, about how he feels knowing that his love is off singing songs with Usher.

To say that one would always give in to love's demands is selfish, and irresponsible. To say that one would always fulfill obligations before love, is to be robotic, mercenary, cold.

Heh. Not an easy task balancing, at all.

If My Mind Had No Lid II

Reading weeks are not much fun.

It's almost as if you have this big, oversized, humongous, gargantuan behemoth of a Blender, and you chuck in all your days and round round the blades go, until the week rolls by in an indistinguishable blur.

There were times this week when I forgot which day of the week it was, simply because everyday seemed the same. Staying at home and in the library though, I realized that the ice-cream man makes his rounds at 2pm and 6pm, and that forcefully cheerful tune his van emits kinda cheers me up.

The ice-cream man must feel quite different each time he makes his rounds, though. On his 2pm round he's like a celebrated hero meeting his adoring crowds, as the children spill out from their houses and rush to him for sweetened treats. After all, with lunchtime just over, who wouldn't be in the mood for ice-cream?

On his 6pm round though, he must like a recalcitrant homicidal pedophile - on every street that he plies his wares, parents are pulling their screaming young aside, averting their gazes, dragging them away from The Man Who Will Spoil Your Dinner.

I bet he looks forward much more to the 2pm crowd.

Sitting in the same spot for too long seems also to sap the days of colour, such that you wind up absolutely famished for variety of any sort. But you can't really enjoy any guilty distraction either, because you're wracked with guilt for not concentrating on studying.

So it was that yesterday night, I found myself eyeing the bottle of Eye-Mo on my tabletop with my mind completely submerged in contemplation of the question "I wonder... what Eye-Mo tastes like..." I snapped out of it in time, had a good cry, then went back to reading.

Lest you think that I've been studying very hard this semester, please, disabuse yourself of that notion. I'm cramming my entire syllabus in like 2 weeks. For 3 subjects. I think I played too much this semester. And hi mum if you're reading now, this is all just hyperbole.

Perfect Timing

I thought my streak of terrible misfortune with electronics ended a few weeks ago.

My laptop fan was fixed at no charge, camera was restored, iPod battery swapped out successfully, earphones exchanged for a working pair. All seemed well.

You can probably see where this is going.

Last night, at the Tribeca Film Festival, my camera started acting up again. Without warning, my camera lost its ability to focus properly, much like a hyperactive kid swimming in a chocolate lake trying to concentrate on trigonometric equations.

Hey, I thought, what's the big deal, I must learn to chill, it's just a camera, life's too short, I can't be blogging about dying electronics all the time. After all, I'd already taken a few shots of the crowd for keepsakes. Peace out.

In the theatre though, as we were getting seated, I overheard two girls near me chatter in high-pitched squeals:

Girl 1: Oh did you see! They're here!
Girl 2: Who?
Girl 1: The director and the lead actress! They're here! They're outside right now having drinks with the press!
Girl 2: Seriously!?
Girl 1: Yes yes! And she's wearing a white dress, it's so pretty on her! I heard they will be answering our questions after the movie!

I couldn't help but start to sweat a little. You see, we were catching Three Kingdoms, some recent Asian flick starring Andy Lau and Maggie Q, and last I checked, Andy Lau was still male.

Let me try to convey the excitement I felt at that moment. If Maggie Q really were in the house, it would be as if a PS3 suddenly sprouted legs, snuggled up to me and said hey let's make a PS4. With lifetime warranty.

Disturbing imagery aside, YES, that was when my camera died. I turned it on to check if the focusing error had resolved itself, which indeed it had. Why, there was only the minor problem of the camera extending its lens, then shutting down automatically without retracting the lens.

My brain was working feverishly. Was it the battery? No, I just charged it, battery bar says full. Did I drop it? No, I've been cradling it as gingerly as I would a baby jellyfish. Did dust get in and jam the motors? Ridiculous! I'd even bought a new camera case for it!

There were only two possibilities left. Either it was pure undiluted bad luck, or the girlfriend-bought shirt I was wearing had the latest Anti-Straying technologies built in (which would include a sound emitter that intones 'Full price full price no further discounts', audible only to females, creating a vague sense of discomfort and thus keeping them away).

After the movie, I sat by the sidelines as fans went up to Maggie and put their filthy soiled arms around her waist or shoulders for the pictures they took. My friend told me I could still go and have my picture taken with my camera phone, but Maggie deserves better treatment than that.

In those few frustrating minutes when hope seemed to be running on its last legs, I kept pressing various buttons on my camera as I tried to fix it, but my magical touch didn't seem to transfer well from girls to cameras at all. Little motors within just kept whirring, which I guess when translated would mean "HAHA take that. Lick my batteries!"

To be honest I did think of just going up to pose with Maggie, while my friend pretended to take pictures of us with a defective camera. But somehow that seemed slimy, and desperate, and dang if I were going to sink to such levels.

Here's the only proof I have that I was really there that night:

Today, I sent off my camera for (further) repairs. From now on, it's only going to be known as 'my Fuji camera'.

Yes, I have disowned and un-named her.

Doing It Gracefully

It was one of those quiet Friday nights in my room. You know, the kind of night where you know you're supposed to be out hitting the hottest clubs, chatting up the sexiest girls... but for some reason you're home alone with no plans.

But there were curtains. And there was a locked door ensuring privacy. So I simply did what any other guy would have done in my position.

I took photographs of the top of my head, since it was one of the few parts of my body I'm not that familiar with. It never hurts to learn more about yourself.

And to my utmost shock, I discovered that I have a bald spot.

I know because I uploaded pictures of my scalp to my laptop and zoomed in, then went online to figure out that the circular bit at the top of your scalp is known as the crown or the root of the parietal whorl. 

And then I compared my pictures against other people's, and I discovered that my scalp was relatively very much more exposed. No matter what angle I took my pictures from, I couldn't change the ugly truth that stared back at me from the laptop screen.

Now, if you purchased a product and you discovered it was faulty, you'll call up the shop to complain. Hence, I called up my mother. I didn't care if it was only 8am in Singapore and my mother was most likely not in the mood to entertain panic-stricken first-borns.

Me: Hi mum! Look, there's something I need to talk to you about! It's quite serious!

Mum: Teng! Oh no! What happened!

(A short explanation is necessary. In all the months I've been overseas, no emergency has ever necessitated my calling home to seek counsel from my parents. Not when there was a stabbing outside my building, not even when my hot flatmate upgraded from a scanty towel to a proper all-encompassing bath robe on her daily pilgrimages to the shower.)

Me: It's my head! I've got a bald spot! I can see my scalp!

Mum: ... how do you know this? 

Me: I took pictures! It's very obvious! 

Mum: Cannot be cannot be! It's just the way your parting is la, you just comb your hair differently and it should go away.

Me: Go away? Mum, I don't comb the top of my head!

Mum: But cannot be! Your dad and I aren't bald, and no one in our extended families is bald!

I hung up then. The shock was too much. Either I was developing a case of non-hereditary baldness (which Google says is quite rare), or I was balding hereditarily, and hence, ADOPTED.

A melancholic reflective mood set upon me. I sat at my desk, reading up about male balding, wondering if my long hair was getting too heavy for my scalp to support, and hence, falling out. 

I also went through old albums of my youth (pre-2008, it seems), and reminisced about the 

times when the days were carefree and hair was thick, lustrous and in abundant supply. Memories were suddenly shrouded in sepia-tones. 

My iTunes was playing then, and then I suddenly realized that the last three songs were by pop stars younger than I. Namely, Jordin Sparks (19 years old), Leona Lewis (23 years old), and Miley Cyrus, star of Hannah Montana, who's all of 15 years old at this time of blogging.

The avalanche of evidence pouring in was staggering. A lot of things suddenly made sense. Why I simply could not get up before 10am anymore, why I had suddenly taken a shine to Frank Sinatra and forsaken Mr. Timberlake, why I was always falling asleep in the toilet.

Seriously, it occurred to me that despite my best efforts I had already turned 24 this year. 

Wow.

I guess for me it's that time of year again, where I sit down and contemplate what I've achieved in the past year, and how much more I want to do in the following one. It's funny how I always get so zen and contemplative about life when exams loom around the corner.

Funny, isn't it, how time is like the greedy fat kid in a candy store - when you've got your eye trained on him, he's shuffling slowly between the aisles, but the moment you blink, all the candy samplers are suddenly gone.

Hehe, I even remember that time when

OH MY LORD I'M RAMBLINGGG. 

If My Mind Had No Lid

It's funny how I blogged more when my laptop was away for her face lift, than now when she's perched on my desk acting all pouty because she fished around in my email and found evidence that I was considering a Mac.

Maybe it's because after you walk 15 minutes in the cold clutching tightly onto the fistful of dollars in your pocket, and after you fight with a dozen other insomniac students who are similarly deprived of laptops for a space in the com lab, you better bloody squeeze out something onto your blog.

Note to Self: when looking for a seat in a public, frequently-crowded com lab, do not pick the solitary computer at the very corner. It's empty for a reason. And the reasons begin with sticky keyboards. And chairs which are disturbingly moist.

Feeling a little light-headed now - I received my eviction notice in the mail today. Come May 31, I have the choice of quietly leaving this little cramped dingy room I affectionately call my Cramped Dingy Room, or staying and letting campus security escort me out forcibly. Time passes so fast!

I remember complaining about my dorm a lot when I first moved in. I found faults with the heating, the fish in the fridge that had a sell-by date of June '05, the showerhead that automatically aimed for your eyes everytime. But now, months later, on the cusp of leaving, I feel a strange emotional bond to this place.

So, lots of griping, dissatisfaction about how the pictures lied, then tolerance, then sadness when it is all over. Guess that's what marriage will be like.

Heading to DC again in 2 hours, taking the 3:45am bus. Daniel, Zhixiang and I are going to catch the NUS team in the Jessups - it strikes me how like other peeps in Europe are heading to all sorts of exotic places to experience great things (like fights with robbers), whilst we are headed to see people moot.

Don't get me wrong, I'm quite keen. It'll be a very rare and precious learning opportunity. Just saying. Er. So, if you're travelling around in Europe and seeing this, then, er, eat your heart out. Yeaaaa.

I've noticed the prevalent pet culture here in NYC for a long while. People tell me it's because the city is a lonesome place sometimes (oh the irony) and pets are faithful loving companions who don't demand a lot. Made me wonder if there are people who picked a pet, and then saw others and felt like they didn't love their first pet anymore.

You almost never hear of it happening, which makes it all the more strange given our collective track record when it comes to loving other people. I'll try shedding indiscriminately, cleaning unspeakable parts in public, and peeing excitedly at every tree, and then report if I've managed to isolate what separates pets from ex-girlfriends / ex-boyfriends.

Come to think of it, dogs must be pretty flummoxed whenever they go on walks. I mean, they don't know how long their owners plan to traipse around, and they've only got so much pee, and any self-respecting dog would want to mark as many trees as possible.

So when they come to a tree, do they simply just mark it with abandon, or do they think, waaiitt a minute, if I do this tree, I can't do that hydrant another 10 m down, but what if we take a different route, then I might miss out entirely, but what if...

No wonder why some dogs are highstrung all the time. There's a lot more going on in their heads than we give them credit for I guess.

Wow that was cathartic, being random on a blog. Got to go, bus to catch, moots to see!

"We Care For You"

Out of all the online retailers I've used so far, Asos seems to be the one that's most concerned about its customers' welfare.

Apparently, they have a very high-tech system that keeps close tabs on its customers, generating health tips and sending reminders free of charge.

I got this in my inbox just a few days back:

They sure can work on their tact, but yea, it's time to lose some weight.

Oh, To Be Amish

I've not had a good run-in with electronics recently.

First, my camera developed dust specks on the sensor. I tried to save the camera myself, thinking, how difficult can it be to open it up and clean the dust specks away, I'm not going to pay the shop $70 USD for that, they have to find other ways to cheat me of my hard-earned er pocket money.

30 agonizing minutes later, after I electrocuted myself on the circuit board and saw sparks fly (not in the usual good way I'm used to), I beat a hasty retreat. Twas a bitter defeat, for I had already removed Screws 01 through 11, but was unable to locate Screw No. Haha-You-Can't-Find-Me-Cause-You're-Not-Scientifically-Inclined.

I thought of my electrical-engineering friends, who would have easily flipped out the circuit board in a jiffy and avoided that nasty shock too. Then I thought of law and how it was so terribly helpful a degree in everyday life.

My streak continued. Last week, my laptop's fan started spinning louder than ever, and it wasn't even normal loud - I could hear it from outside my room with the door closed. I consulted another friend in law, and she told me to shut it down, let it rest for a while, and it would be fine by the next morning. Hmm. Law. I sense a trend.

Now I'm no electronics whiz, but I know enough about hardware to realize that if something fails once, it's going to fail again sooner or later. No amount of rest or TLC is going to restore it. Simply wishing that the problem would go away was not going to do a fig - I needed to get it fixed. Properly.

This time though, with the recent lessons from the Camera Incident fresh in my head, and a vow not to repeat the same costly mistakes, I was going to do things differently. I was going to open up my laptop... with rubber slippers on.

30 excruciating minutes later, after I broke a hinge and was left with only 12 out of the 14 screws I should have had (not in the usual sense too), I called it a day. Actually, I called it other unprintable names. I put it back together, switched it on and the fan was louder than ever.

I tried to look at the bright side of things, like how a friggin madman hadn't just rushed through my door during the entire sordid operation and stabbed me whilst I was deep in concetration. It made me feel a little better.

(An interesting thought occurred to me at this time - if I opened up a Macbook, what would its insides look like? Simpler and more intuitive than a PC's? Or would I find a smaller PC inside, running the whole system? What an understandable sham it would be. Shock shock, horror horror.)

Left with no alternative, I sent it in for repairs. During this trying period, a friend who's surely a devious Apple Witch in disguise attempted to induce me to the Dark Side and buy a Macbook. Why not, she said, when your PC laptop has failed you over and over again?

Her spell lasted long enough for me to find myself standing in the Den of Evil, the Apple fortress at 34th, bewildered and shaking with naked terror. Begone, I chanted, begone ye foul temptress! For shame! To ask me to consider nubile young pretty Macbooks while my sagging aging fugly Rei is fighting for her life this very instant!

(... I did caress a few Macbook Airs though, and briefly lost myself in fantasies of a different world, one where Rei and I never met, and I could have a Macbook without a hundred friends RUBBING IT IN that I should have got one from the start.)

Then, to cap it all off, the earphones I bought just days ago started malfunctioning too, and all this despite me taking the very best care of it. I rushed back to the store first this time, but only because I lacked the tools to take it apart - the masochist in me definitely would have tried.

At this rate I'm going to have to stop personifying my electronics by giving them names, for then it would affect me a lot less when they do actually fail. But oh, what a joyless alternative that would be.

It's Too Late

You lift the covers gently as you climb out of bed, but the cold air which rushes in to usurp your place doesn't wake me. Because I'm not really asleep.

I tilt my head ever so slightly, if only to have my eyes confirm the unthinkable. You tiptoe to the wardrobe, where you begin to dress as quietly as you can.

Swish-swish go your shirt sleeves as you slide your arms through them - it makes me wonder, that shirt you're wearing now, did I buy it or was it a present from her? I can't see well, but I can defnitely imagine.

Clik-clik as your fingernails tap against the buttons - do you know that I've read her letter to you, and know all about tonight being the night you leave me for her? You must. I didn't have the strength to say anything directly to you, so I left a photo of us inside that envelope in your drawer. You must have known I left it there. I'm still hoping it made you change your mind.

Thwip-ip as your belt closes its loop around you. My love, I can hardly breathe. Somehow I'm still praying that this is all just a dream, an ephmeral nightmare from which I can awake. My fists are in balls by my side, and I'm clenching them as hard as I can to keep from shaking. If every move of yours now is a step away from me, I wonder, from when did it begin?

Boof-foo as you sit back down on the bed, facing away from me. I try to shout to you not to go, to cherish and honor me as you said you would, but the words are stillborn in my throat. There is nothing I wouldn't do to keep us together, as long as you would talk to me and tell me why I am no longer enough for you.

Pwoof-foo as your laces intertwine. Really? You would go? Without even giving us a second thought? You can't really mean to go, for you would take with you all that I am now - I wouldn't die without you, but I wouldn't live either. I would be different, changed, no longer as able to trust or to love or to

... and you are gone.

And I realize, that the tears which have been marking your silent departure, are no longer flowing.

As The Dice Rolls

I watched the new movie 21 in theatres today, and it was... electrifying to observe how real professionals gamble.

21's a movie about a maths genius who gets roped into a card-counting team by his professor, and the whole lot sets out to break the casinos in Vegas. They played Blackjack, which, as it turns out, is also the game I set out to conquer during my jaunt there.

The movie made my jaw drop. It made me realize just how arrogant and ignorant I was to think that my simple plans and sub-JC maths could ever be enough to defeat the casinos. Let me illustrate the differences between him and I.

First off, the hero in 21 (let's just call him Giftedboy for short) had grand plans and noble intentions - he was trying to raise $300k to support himself through Med School. I was trying to raise $11 to pay my share of a parking ticket. And maybe score a $30 buffet dinner.

Secondly, Giftedboy was so good at maths that he corrected his MIT maths prof frequently, programmed for a robotics competition and knew all sorts of complex formula gibberish. At the table I had problems adding numbers up to see if I broke 21, and often made thoughtful "hmm" sounds just so that the other players would think I was strategizing.

Thirdly, they had a complete system of secret signals meant to tell each other which table was good to play at. We had our own system too, of course. If we said "@#*&$(" we meant that we were not very happy, whilst "Oh my lordy lord I'm getting probed from behind" meant that we were losing money.

I can't speak for my Spring Break Buddies, but the first sign that I should have stopped gambling came when the dealer, an Asian lady herself, started giving me impromptu lessons at the table. Our conversation went something like this:

She: So you want to hit? Or stay?
Me: Oh, of course. I want to stay.
She: Stay? You sure?
Me: Definitely.
She: Stay? Even when I've got a face card? You should hit!
Me: Oh, really? When you have a face card I should hit?
She: ... You are fake Asian boy.

It didn't help that upon following her advice I hit 21. Still, curses to the stereotype that Asians are good at maths and therefore by extension probability games like Blackjack.

But seriously, gambling was far more addictive than I imagined it to be. Sure, you read about the dangers in the papers and all, but when you're seated at the table, and it's your money on the line, everything changes.

Chances are that once you savor the sweet taste of victory, no matter how small, you'll be lured back in to play for more. The longer you play, the more alcohol you consume, the worse your game gets too.

It took an incredible amount of willpower to pull myself away from the table - there was this niggling voice at the back of my head that kept telling me my luck would have to change, all I needed was one big win to make it all back.

(In this case though, the niggling voice(s) belonged to my Spring Break Buddies. We aren't very good when it comes to supporting each other in the pursuit of respectable goals.)

Perhaps it's a good thing that my parents don't gamble, beyond the yearly tradition of the $100 Bonfire, where they plop down that princely sum in a bid to win the $5 million Toto.

(My brother and I always tell them they're better off giving us that $100 since we would be that much more inclined to take care of them when they are old, but my parents apparently place a lot of stock in being independent. Time will tell.)

I guess I'll never have the kind of luck or brains to ever make a living by gambling, but I acknowledge that the lure of easy money is going to be a temptation I'll spend years staving off. It never helps when you hear of other people getting rich quick, because everyone thinks, what if it were me?

Hopefully there'll always be nice Asian dealers to remind me of the shame I'm bringing to my race - that'll keep me away for sure.

Piece Of Mind

Normal people become more socially adept as they age. Experience teaches them to better express themselves, how to connect with others and integrate into society.

It seems I’ve got it all backwards. I was most socially adept in my kindergarten years, and from there on it all went downhill.

The precipitating event that led to the retardation of my social skills lies in a conversation my mother had with another parent, at a kindergarten concert we put up. It went something like this:

Parent: Oh, so which class is your son in? Sparkle Daisy, Fluffy Puppy or Unstoppable Murderous Executioner?
Mum: That last one, that’s the one.
Parent: What a coincidence! I’ve a son there too! Does your kid tell you about school? Is he happy there?
Mum: Why, yes he is! Is there cause for concern?
Parent: Well… my son says there’s a huge bully in class, and I was wondering if my son was being singled out or something.
Mum: Gasp! A bully? At so young an age? That’s terrible!
Parent: Wait! There he is! That’s the bully!

Of course, that was the moment I appeared on stage. And that was also the first of many instances to come when my mum would look away and pretend not to know her first-born son, otherwise known simply to her as the 8-Hour-Labour-Clot (I've peeked into her diary before).

And I wasn't even a classic bully in the sense that I resorted to strong-arm tactics to gain an overwhelming advantage over the weak! If memory serves me right, he had been the first to be rude and boorish, and I had simply demonstrated my equally robust vocabulary of bad words.

Of course, Mr. Left Fist and Mr. Right Fist had something to add in too. For emphasis. I think that's why the boy thought I was a bully. Pansy.

Most mothers refuse to believe their kids are anything short of angels, but my mother evidently went to a different parenting school. You little rascal, she told me that night, your dad and I are going to reform you. We’re going to teach you proper manners, and how to relate properly to people.

And those lessons were what screwed everything up for me.

You see, now I’m incapable of effectively communicating with anyone. I can’t bring myself to say directly what’s on my mind, and I take pains to be sensitive. I even have a personalized bush I bring around to flog during long conversations. Ok that sounds wrong.

It’s not that I lie, mind you. I'm still frank, and honest, but by the time I properly justify and qualify my statements everyone assumes I'm lying. But I maintain that it makes all the difference, as the following example shows:

Friend: Does this dress make me look fat?
What I Think: Yes it does.
Right Answer: It’s not a flattering dress for you. The way it’s cut, it doesn’t accentuate your body shape at all. You look plumper than you really are. Try others?
Wrong Answer: I don’t think it’s possible for you to drown.

I’m not exactly the confrontational sort (I rarely lose my temper, but when I do…), and prefer to find diplomatic ways to solve things. Unfortunately, this lack of blunt candidness hampers me most when something irritates, even infuriates me.

For if I am unable to think of a good way to approach the issue, I’d toddle off and bottle it all up. More than once, this has resulted in my having to put up with things I’m not comfortable with, when all it would have taken was a frank word or two, to spare myself all the unnecessary angst.

But I’m learning, or should I say, unlearning many of the niceties my parents bade me learn.

Recently, on a few occasions when people went too far, I directly called out their bad behavior and made it clear I wasn't happy with them. I'm still hampered by concerns that I would destroy friendships if I said all that is on my mind, but I'm making hearty progress.

Hopefully, if all goes well, I'll be able to better communicate with my friends, feel less angsty, and also come across as more honest!

That has to be good, with so many birds with one stone, and without even resorting to the Fist Brothers.

Vegas: No Sleep For Poor Men

So, there were three of us. And at all of the hotels we were staying, two beds.

Even before we embarked, my two friends were already playing Rock Paper Scissors to see who had to share a bed with me. For some reason I can’t fathom, I was the designated whore by default. It was a nice feeling though, to know that even if I were thousand of miles away from Singapore, in wholly new social circles, I still had my familiar rung of the social ladder to count on.

Yet, for all the noise they made about have to share a bed with me, it was ironic that I was the one who suffered the most.

You see, I take some time to get to sleep, a good 15 to 20 minutes to doze off completely. Secondly, I do my best to be as courteous as possible, so I try to minimize tossing and turning when someone else is in bed with me.

This means that for those minutes in bed when I’m still fully alert, I force myself to keep completely silent and immobile. Seriously, I’d feel more relaxed if I were in a lift filled to the brim with all the teachers who hate me. And with my girlfriend’s parents. And my exes. And the electricity suddenly cut off. And I needed to fart.

Although my mother warned me years ago never to publicize what I do in bed, I see no reason to keep tight-lipped now. The first night I retreated to my side as much as I could, to give my friend more space.

I also kept deathly still, and squeezed my eyes shut hoping that sleep would rescue me from this ordeal. The result was that I felt completely trapped, a tense balled-up lovemachine this close to falling, not to sleep, but off the bed.

This is the part of the story where words simply do not do justice – the follow pictures represent my sleeping arrangements for the first night.

11.00 P.M. – Lights out. All is well.
11.05 P.M. – Friend starts shifting closer to me. I exhale as much air as I can, hoping to take up less space. I begin to hate him.
11.30 P.M. – Friend is snoring, but I still can’t sleep in my cramped corner. I begin to lose temper, and contemplate sleeping on the floor. I start counting sheep, but end up killing them.
11.50 P.M. to 2.00 A.M. – Just. Kill. Me. I am in a ball on a bed because I dozed off and his leg was over mine. How the (!@&# did he end up sleeping diagonally someone please tell me.

On a side not, yay, I finally managed to use the markers I brought here to the US. I'm just glad I have my bed all to myself now.

Vegas: Sins Of The Flesh

When I first went to Vegas as a 10 year old, I never got to see the seedy side of it, because I was the victim of an elaborate con.

Once we got to the hotel, it was as if my brother and I had died and gone to heaven. You see the Pay Per View TV, my father said, you can watch all the Disney movies you want. You see the fridge minibar, he gestured, eat all that you can eat.

The only catch was that we had to stay in the room the whole night, but heck, as far as we were concerned my dad had suddenly morphed into a Ren Ci Charity monk. After all, the young male mind is not geared towards looking past immediate gratification. We didn’t even notice my parents slip out gleefully and return past midnight looking decidedly happier.

Years on, the more I read about why Vegas is Sin City, the more bitter I got. The only lasting memories I had of Vegas, after all, were of nice hotels and Bambi running around in fields of green.

Coming back to Vegas as an adult, I was determined to wallow in as much filth as I could. After all, I was of age, was financially solvent (at the beginning at least), and no longer had to worry about outsmarting my parents. This was my chance to see if Vegas deserved its reputation.

And it does.

But it’s not because of the sheer availability of call girls. Nor the endless rows of slot machines and card tables. Nor the abundant alcoholic oases that litter this desert town. The way I see it, the one thing that makes Vegas Vegas, is the… Vibe.

The Vibe is this intoxicating, heady mood that chips away at your inhibitions, that makes all the wrong things somehow feel right. Ever been in a club before, where it’s dark and it feels like you can do anything and get away with it? Multiply it a thousand times, and you’ve got the Vibe.

And that’s the allure of Vegas. Here, whatever your desires may be, there’s a whole bunch of people alongside you, and their company dilutes your guilt and concentrates your indulgence.

Within minutes of hitting the Strip, we chanced upon vendors handing out little cards with barely-censored pictures of girls, complete with expected charges and numbers to call. It was mildly titillating to get these cards at first, but when I saw how many of these cards were abandoned on the pavement, the crassness of hit home.

Upon reflection, I guess it was the way these girls had endured the indignity of baring themselves to strangers (albeit on cards), and yet people were simply just… walking all over them.


Thankfully, the adult-themed Cirque De Soleil show we caught was quite tastefully done. Here’s a quick snapshot of the theatre that I managed to get. We were to go to a strip club too, but an unscheduled snowstorm on the way back from the Grand Canyon was our main entertainment for the day instead.


Unsurprisingly, for all the enthusiasm I had for exploring the dark underbelly of Vegas, I discovered that unless you're willing to throw yourself in fully and participate, you're just going to be a dispassioned bystander.

In a way, I can better understand why my father would have preferred me to stick with those cartoons all those years ago. And yes, the tone in this post is schizophrenic. Haha.

More to come!

Spring Break Statistics

I'm back! Here's a quick summary of the statistical side of things, will post in detail soon!

Male companions on trip: 2
Female companions on trip: 0
Paid female companions on trip: Also 0
Miles driven in car: 1400
Cars which were better-looking than ours: ~ 2000
Parking tickets: 1
Speeding tickets: 0 (car not powerful enough)
Was overtaken by: ~2000 cars
Overtook: 15 cars, 1 truck, 1 scooter, 1 dead cat
Trips made to Grand Canyon: 1
Snowstorms in Grand Canyon of all places: 1
Theme Park visits: 1
Puked: 0
Vulgarities scolded: 794
English vulgarities: 44
Hokkien vulgarities: 750
Squatting outside Wifi zones to leech internet: 4
Getting chased away by zealous security guards: 1
Missing Fergie in concert: 1
Cameras spoilt by dust: 1 (mine, grrr)
Sinful meals: 7 x 2 = 14
Early morning gym workouts: 0
Money lost at Casinos: USD $21
Hours playing Blackjack: 1 hour
Rate of loss of money: USD $0.30 per minute
Amount of planned alcohol consumption: 50 Tequila shots, 20 Beers, 10 Flaming, 10 Margaritas
Actual alcohol drank: 2 Soju shots, 2 Margaritas, 1 alcoholic sweet
Getting chased out of pharmacy for being high / drunk: 1
ID checked on account of looking youthful: 6
Half-naked women seen: 7
Girlfriend faithfully thought of: 7 x 10 = 700
Cost of seeing half-naked women: $70 USD
Average cost per each half of each half-naked woman: $5 USD
Distance from said half-naked women: 80 meters
Conversations initiated by beautiful women: 1
Friendly women who turned out to be prostitutes: 1
Times we said we would ring up call girls: 56
Times actually called said girls: 0

Phew! Ok so that wasn't a real, classic American Wet 'n Wild Spring Break, more of a Soggy 'n Mildly Exciting Spring Break. But it was still my Spring Break, so it's special to me.

Talents

There was a farm on the edge of the moor. Aside from the normal produce, people could also pay a small sum to adopt, and bring home, any one of the animals on the farm.

Every Saturday, the farmer opened the gates that were normally closed, and put up a large sign which invited animal lovers in. He would then shoo his animals out, and prod the sleepier ones so that they might better endear themselves to visitors.

One of the Ducklings was very perceptive, and it occurred to him that he had none of the charms, skills or antics of the other animals. Waddlequack! he thought, I need to improve myself! Or no one would want me!

The Duckling thus begged the Rooster to teach him how to strut. Cockakoo! crowed the Rooster, do you not waddle perfectly well already? But the Duckling was insistent. It is true that I can waddle pretty well, he said, but your strut is a most majestic way to walk too!

The Duckling also entreated the Sheep to teach him how to bleat. Whyforeeee! bleated the Sheep, you are good at quacking your native quack! But the Duckling was insistent. It is true that I can quack pretty well, he said, but it is not better if I knew how to bleat too?

The Duckling also requested the Cow to teach him how to give milk. Whatthemooo? went the Cow, you are really better off… not giving milk! But the Duckling was insistent. It is true that… I am not good at giving milk, he said, but isn’t that all the more reason to make an effort to?

And so the Duckling went around the farm trying his best to learn from the other animals. When Friday night came, the Duckling fell asleep, exhausted at rehearsing all that he had learned in preparation for Saturday.

The next day, the Duckling was the first out on the field, and when the visitors started coming in, he proudly displayed all the various skills he had acquired. Who could possibly resist me, he thought, when I am all that the other animals are too?

The hours went by, a number of animals changed hands, and yet no one had requested to bring the Duckling home. As closing time loomed, a little girl ran towards the pond where the Duckling was. This encouraged him to once again show off all that he had learned, despite all the disappointment already saddling his heart.

The little girl stared at the Duckling in puzzlement for a while, then slunk sadly back to her parents, She took their hands, and as they were walking out of the farm, the Duckling overheard this:

“There was a mighty energetic Duckling there, darling, was he not to your liking?”

“Well… I wanted a Duckling who waddled, not toddle around like he was drunk like Grandpa always is. I wanted a Duckling who quacked, not squawk like he was being stepped on. I wanted a Duckling who could be cheerful, not always look oh so very constipated.

“I just wanted a Duckling to be more, like, well, a Duckling… so no, that wasn’t him.”

Spring Break!

I'm off to Vegas! And LA! And San Diego, if I haven't crashed my car in this silly left-hand-drive system by then!

Will be away for about a week, will try to blog from there! Back with pictures soon!

Once In A Lifetime

Last week, I learnt that a friend here was about to go skiing. She then called me up to ask for a favor, and I must say, it was a most unpleasant experience.

I mulled over how to handle it, but decided that brutal honesty in the end would do best. So I trudged over to her place yesterday with a heavy heart.

Me: Hey, here's the ski pants you wanted to borrow.
Her: Oh ok, thanks! Hmm, is something wrong, you look... kinda upset.
Me: Yea. I wanted to tell you that I'm pretty disappointed in you.
Her: Huh?
Me: I mean, I thought you were different from my other female friends, but, at the end of the day, you also just want to get into my pants.
Her: ...

Look, if you were me, you would never have passed up the opportunity to say that. =)

Ponytail

It's much harder than you would think, keeping long hair.

I've had short hair most of my life, and generally I've had the same dead-sea-animal of a hairstyle since Primary 1. There were times, of course, when I tried to break out of the mold.

In Primary 3, I discovered to my absolute amazement I could flip my hair the other way, thus creating a mirror image of myself. It was intoxicating, the feeling of being able to do something so radical to my hair, all with a simple swish of the comb.

You know the feeling - it's the same one you get after you receive a fresh, bold, new haircut. I proudly flipped my parting every other day, and only stopped after I realized no one noticed, or, even after I pointed out my cunning, gave a flying fish. I guess I was ahead of my time.

In Secondary 1, hair gel made its grand entrance into my life, and I eagerly poured my meager allowance into these Little Pots of Guaranteed Happiness (just ask Mr. J). But it didn't matter if I used gel, wax, mud or bear fat, I just couldn't get my hair to behave the way I wanted it to. According to my hairstylist (the $10 auntie), I just didn't have the type of hair to pull off those Japanese anime haircuts.

My hairstylist was also the same one to stoically veto every one of my planned hair innovations over the next few years. She refused to dye the front locks of my hair white ("boy ah later you look like ah kwa"), resisted my requests for cool, short, spiky 'dos ("eh your forehead very big, must have hair to cover") and most helpfully pointed out the failings of my hair growth ("waa you so young only but I think you got bald spot already leh!").

As my options dwindled, I finally decided to embark on that one project most guys undertake at one point or another in their lives: the Ponytail.

See, I started off this way in Singapore:


Then, over the new few months it happily grew out:


Eventually, from the progress I've been making, this is a mock up of what I should look like in a few more weeks:

We'll see how it goes.

Mother Tongue

Before I came over to New York, a professor advised us exchange students that we would have to modify the way we spoke so that we could be understood easily.

So I brushed up on my English by watching Youtube tutorials on American (for practical reasons), Irish (to dazzle and charm) and er other-ethnic-group accents (so that I could tell whether the guy chasing me in a back alley wants my wallet or wants my body... not that it would change how fast I would be running).

4 Youtube tutorials and 80 House / Heroes / SATC episodes later, I was pretty confident that my faux American accent was polished enough. This was a good thing, for upon coming here I blended in pretty quickly, and never really felt left out.

That is, I blended in well with the English-speaking world. Not, it seems, with the Mandarin-speaking world here. I mean, seriously, who goes to the US for exchange and expects the cohort to be made up of 35% Mainland Chinese?

The beginning was the worst. Most of the Chinese students came up to me speaking in heavily-accented Mandarin, and were rightly stunned when they discovered my Mandarin was halting. "Your English is better than your Mandarin?" they would say. In Mandarin. I could hear my ancestors writhing in their graves in shame.

Yes, the shame! I knew how my friends must have perceived me - I must have looked like a Japanese who hasn't heard of Origami, or a Brazilian who never watched football, or a RI boy who didn't know how to charm the socks off girls. It struck me then how language is such a distinguishing hallmark of heritage.

Yet one learns fastest when one is thrown into the deep end. My conversations were like this last August:

朋友：喂， 你选了哪些科目？选到你想要的吗？
Me: 我... er... 很幸运， 学校给了我... ok look this is more painful for me than for you. I got Securities and Patents, which is probably 安全科目 and 不可以偷用我的东西科目. Just kill me.

For a while I continued speaking English with them, but things got to a head in one of my study groups. There were 2 other Taiwanese, and whenever the debate got too heated the 2 of them would switch to Mandarin, and then revert to English so I wouldn't feel left out. It occurred to me then that I had to cut the excuses and just practice my friggin mother tongue.

I figured that since there's about 0.8 seconds of lag time required for translation of my very English thoughts, I would take the initiative of greeting my friends in Mandarin. Then, in the time that they opened the conversation proper, I would have time to prepare my thoughts. This strategy, however, saw mixed results:

Me: 你们好！哇， 今天风和日丽，乌云满天！好久没见， 光阴似箭！
朋友：... 你是不是生病了？

Obviously they weren't buying it. After perusing a few self-help books on making friends, I figured that I needed to bring up a common topic, something which would clearly show that I was one of them:

Me: 同志们！毛主席万岁！台湾抢回来了吗？
ex-朋友：...　我们是来自台湾的。

There's a happy ending to all this, despite what my Chinese teachers fervently believe. Just last week, I bumped into a Chinese friend, and it was only after we parted ways did I realize that our entire conversation was in Mandarin. Apparently, my past few months of practice have done me some good.

Of course, my journey is hardly over. I've got years of practice and immersion ahead of me before I will fully appreciate my Chinese heritage / identity, but hey, 千里迢迢的路是一只脚开始的.

Phantom

I finally managed to catch Phantom the other day, with a bunch of other law school friends who were visiting in NYC.

I hate spoilers, so I’ve taken every effort in my adolescence to avoid finding out about the story behind Phantom. When Channel 5 screened it, I would hide in my room and do sit-ups. When my friends talked about it I would sprint hastily away. When Phantom came to Singapore, I would… ok you get the idea.

So I got very fit. And I was blissfully unaware of the plot, aside from the nugget that there was a girl, and that there was a guy. I also suspected that one of them wore a mask, not sure who.

Last week, as I sat in Majestic Theatre and watched Phantom unfold, I was entranced, beguiled, captivated… and eventually horrified. Horrified!

What do you mean, Christine doesn’t end up with the Phantom!? Wait, is that Raoul she is going off with?! The Phantom forced her to choose, and she sacrificed herself to keep that smirky-slimy-opulent-arrogant-ratass-toyboy safe?!?!

I remember sitting there long after the curtains fell, long after the cast came on stage to receive the applause, long after the lights were turned on and people started filing out, just to see if the Phantom would prance out from behind a rock and stab that bilebag Raoul. That would have gotten the standing ovation from me.

Outside the theatre, I was righteously indignant at the way no one else gave a damn about the Phantom:

Me: Wait, so it didn’t bother you guys that the Phantom ended up alone?
Friend 1: Bo pian la, he must have been really fugly.
Me: But he was sincere! And nice to her! And he really loved her!
Friend 2: Raoul also what. Plus Raoul handsome.
Me: But, but…
Friend 3: If two girls loved you equally, and one looked like Fiona Xie and one looked like Boon Kiat, who would you pick?
Me: But, but…
Friend 1: But what?
Me: … but the Phantom got his own Bat Cave also ma. How cool. Right?

Later I realized that I had been insidiously poisoned by Disney. I had smugly expected that Christine, temporarily smitten with Raoul, would come to see how his soul was much uglier and darker than the Phantom could ever be. Like, it would come to light that Raoul trafficked in babies or something.

The Phantom, in a dramatic rousing scene, would then snatch Christine away from the evil clutches of Raoul, and spirit her away to a land of grassy plains, blooming flowers and cheap facials, and they would live happily ever after.

To my great distress, the plot for Phantom doesn’t vary much across the movie, the books, the comic books, the audiotapes. In every single iteration of the story, I kept witnessing the Phantom climb that heady staircase of Hope, only to inevitably fall so ungracefully after. It’s a most irksome story.

Some friends have tried to figure out why the story bugs me so. Some believe I see myself in the Phantom (ok maybe the singing bit only), some say that it's the disgust at how Raoul had everything whilst the Phantom ended up with nothing. It's simpler than that, I think.

I read elsewhere that humans are fascinated by tragedies – if a happy ending and a tragic one were to compete for the privilege of finishing off an epic story, chances are the tragic one would win out. That sense of injustice, of what could have been, would haunt audiences much longer than a cheesy nauseatingly happy one would.

Makes you wonder which of the endings we all subconsciously seek in our own, personal lives.

On The Road

It's always unpleasant when you quarrel with a friend over a particularly thorny issue.

It's worse, however, when you simply bottle it up, swallow it, and try to forget the entire business.

In secondary school, I remember the day I walked into the teacher's room and found my classmate reading the journal I had just submitted to my teacher. It was a private journal, and the intrusion into my privacy was a stinging slap to the face.

Yet, instead of confronting him, I just turned around and walked away. I guess at that point whatever kinship I shared with him simply evaporated, taking with it any trust, affection and friendship. Nothing has changed, after all this time.

That particular bad habit of avoiding confrontation has stayed with me. On the few occasions I've ventured to openly confront a friend over a problem we have, my temper takes over and I find I'm no longer as charitable, kind or pleasant as I want to be.

For a long time this particular foreign relations policy seemed workable - cherish the friends who are true, be cordial to the ones who you aren't sure about.

But it isn't, and it's not hard to see why. Daryl asked me an innocent-enough question the other day, and instead of being frank and honest with him as an old friend deserves, I subconsciously doubted his intentions and raised my defenses sky-high.

I'm ashamed of myself for even questioning his motives.

My flame is flickering.