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.

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.

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.

Conflict Resolution

I used to believe in Hong Kong dramas. I no longer do.

Goodness knows how many lives I've lived vicariously through them. I would be an ordinary schoolboy during the day, facing down challenges that even at their largest, would amount to no more than school exams or squabbles between friends.

But come the evenings, once at 7 pm and again at 9 pm, all that would change.

I would be a suave one-armed swordsman, brushing off a dozen doting lasses while waiting years for that one chick who’s my teacher, older than me and has issues with open communication. Or a struggling firefighter, or a doctor with a heart of gold, or a professional gambler. The list goes on.

And after absorbing years of life experience through that artificial sped-up process, I thought I knew all there was to know about inter-personal relationships. In particular, about how arguments between couples could be resolved.

As it turns out, nothing I learned from the dramas could prepare me for real life. The dramas only made things worse. Take, for instance, how I tried to apply a Hong Kong Drama Lesson (HKDL) when I got into a flaming argument with an ex.

At that point, she was a seething, raging beast, a veritable PMS-ing Medusa on a bad hair day who’d just missed a Mango sale. My instincts said ‘Run’, but I swallowed and kept the faith. After all, in almost 95% of the dramas I watched, there was one magic way to defuse her.

So I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and hugged her.

If the dramas were to be believed, she would struggle at first, but after 10 seconds she would calm down and cry in my embrace, and we would be fine again. Well, here’s a little mental log I kept of that 10 seconds.

2 Seconds – ‘Pain. I think she’s trying to wear out her nails on my back. Shall persevere.’
4 Seconds – ‘More Pain. I smell copper in the air, must be me bleeding. Cannot give up now.’
6 Seconds – ‘She’s screaming something into my ear, but I can’t really hear what on account of the Pain. It sounds like a swear word.’
8 Seconds – ‘Anytime now! She will melt, then tend lovingly to my wounds, which I plan to shrug off as Painless. I may have to lie.’
10 Seconds – ‘Just got Kneed In The Groin. Have. To. Give. Up. Now.’

Hours later, still curled up on the floor, I conducted a post mortem to figure out what went wrong. I narrowed it down to two possibilities – either the HKDL was fundamentally flawed, or I wasn’t being affectionate enough.

Hence, the next time she got mad again, I tried kissing her. It was only after I got most of my upper lip reattached that I grudgingly conceded that maybe the HKDL was the erroneous factor.

But that didn’t stop me. One flawed HKDL didn’t mean the rest were inapplicable, right?

For example, another HKDL dictates that when female friends storm off, you must engage in pursuit, with no regards to her requests for cool-off time / space. After all, in over 95% of dramas, men who failed to give chase would suffer loss of said female friend, or would later endure hours of nagging from random supporting characters.

Or the other HKDL, where women can take up to 40 episodes to dump the bastard boyfriend, but can get tired of their ‘boring’ nice boyfriends in less than 4 episodes? The conclusion, I thought, is that you must treat your girlfriends badly every once in a while.

Well, let’s just say that after a while, I learnt that HKDLs as theories were fun to contemplate, but suicidal to implement, especially with my history of rather violent female friends. (You know, the kind who savage you after losing at board games… and not the pleasant sort of savage, either.)

The upside to all this is that I soon accumulated a list of things not to do when trying to resolve an argument.

1. Don’t go to bed angry.
2. Don’t be sarcastic / hurtful / spiteful.
3. Don’t drag up old mistakes from years ago.
4. Don’t confuse issues, instead resolve them individually.
5. Persevere, but don’t force things.

These days I amuse myself by observing how couples resolve their quarrels, and I find that the ones who are happiest in the long-run are those who never bury problems. These couples may even bicker on a regular basis, but you’ll be surprised at how strong they can be.

Nobody likes confrontations, but at the very least, couples should always feel comfortable enough with each other to confront even the trickiest of issues.

Farewell then, my HKDL-reliant days. I guess there are some things we really cannot learn from TV.

Bad Boy Complex

He said it with the most solemn of faces. "I want to smoke," he said, "I want to wear bling. I want to treat her like dirt. I want to sulk in the corner and be Emoboy. I want to be baaad."

Heh. Helllooo, Bad Boy Complex (BBC). It's been a long time.

You’ve witnessed the BBC before, I’m sure? It's a curious affliction that most commonly descends upon poor broken-hearted boys. Overnight, they boldly strike out in wild new tangents, doing things they wouldn’t ever have dreamt of doing.

The assumption, of course, is that chicks dig the Bad Boys, preferring them to the ones who are too 乖.

Interestingly enough, observe enough BBC-sufferers, and you’ll find that they rebel in eerily similar ways. And if you’re a BBC-wannabe, and have no clue where to start, you’re in luck.

Welcome to Hanting’s BBC Guide For Good Boys.

Smoking

This is probably your first resort on your journey to being a Bad Boy, on account of smoking being relatively effortless to pick up. All you really need is money, a lot of breath mints, and a blatant disregard for gross pictures.

Now, we’re all aware of the health risks involved, so what’s an intelligent Bad Boy to do? Simple. The idea is to maximize every single stick. And to do this, you have to remember, it’s not about the smoking.

It’s about being seen smoking.

So, you need to practice at home. Find a wall you are comfortable leaning against, and try out various ways of holding your ciggy. I recommend the Lolling Two-Finger Grasp, where your ciggy is hanging precariously from your fingers.

And when you do smoke it, dreamily half-close your eyelids. Exhale slowly, and flick ash away in a devil-may-care way. Heck, you don’t even really need to smoke! Just light up, and gaze longingly at some faraway point.

When others ask why you’re letting the stick go to waste, reply with some cryptic nonsense, like “From the ashes we are all born, true?” or “They do deserve the pay rise, correct?” Then go back to your ciggy while they shower you with respect.

Bling

Now, bling’s a little harder. By ‘bling’ I mean clothes, accessories, piercings, the whole lot. Now, short of paying for a makeover, it is vital that you seek professional help from friends.

Because, seriously, if you’ve been a Good Boy all this while, you don’t know jack sh*t about bling. There is no way you will be able to pull it off on your own. Not only is it already hard to know how to accessorize fashionably, but you’re a guy too, and that makes it doubly hard.

So, be humble. Ask for help.

You see, the secret is this… the bling’s got to match you. You can’t just assume that what’s cool on 50 Cent looks good on you too. A good friend will most definitely tell you when you look cool, and when you look like the village idiot – after all, he’s going to have to worry about being seen in public with you.

Just never, ever ask for your mum’s input. Please. Just say no. Her perspective is skewed.

Do you want to be as attractive as your dad?

Tattoos

With tattoos we clearly enter hardcore BBC territory. For goodness’ sakes though, considering that for most people the BBC is but a stage in life, please get small tattoos. The era of the large, ostentatious tattoo is long over, unless you’re trying to escape from a prison facility, in which case it’s damn cool.

As you can expect, the tricky part is in the choice of the tattoo. Needless to say, “Mummy Power Forever”, anywhere, doesn’t cut it. Nor do random animals in various states of aggression. Cheeky ones don’t help too, you know, the kind that goes “If you can see this you’re a lucky woman” on your… nevermind.

Don’t forget, less can say more. Go for cryptic, tiny yet highly conspicuous tattoos. Things like “Blinded” on your eyelids, or “Empty” in a gothic font just above your heart.

So what does your tattoo say about you? It says that at one point, you were delirious or troubled enough to scar yourself with an indelible statement. It’s as intelligent as having a permanent nick for your MSN… you know you will lose the angst one day, yet you still want an everlasting mark of it.

And that, my brother, is what earns you your respect.

Summary

The pinnacle of the BBC lies not in any particular activity, but in the attitude you possess. The ideal you’re striving towards, is the caged tiger. At times you will be normal, sociable, functional, but at others you can be dark, conflicted, complex.

But most importantly, never BBC allll the way. You have to be redeemable, flawed but still whole enough to be saved. For some inexplicable reason, there are girls who believe they can change wounded Bad Boys for the better, and will slavishly gravitate towards them.

Maybe it’s Nature’s way of improving the overall quality of the human gene pool, by making Bad Boys attractive only to certain girls. If so, heck, it’s not working fast enough.

But, dear BBC-wannabe, I hope for your sake that your BBC phase passes soon. I maintain that guys who subscribe to the BBC lifestyle are motivated by a nagging notion that they are imperfect in some way, and that for some reason their relatively clean-cut lifestyle is the problem.

You know that’s not true.

Enjoy your BBC phase while it lasts. I’m pretty sure that when the clouds clear and the angst passes, you’ll find that you’re still most comfortable in your own skin.

(One day, I will write about the Good Boy Complex. Because, if you think about it, if good boys want to be bad after they undergo a breakup, wouldn’t Bad Boys want to be good?

Being a Good Boy is not that easy, and deserves a full guide of its own. If you're in dire need though, a good start would be petting a kitten everyday, saying “please excuse me” instead of “kn*bc*b blind ah f*x”, and not downloading any more albino infant elephant bondage porn.)

Beating

I'm a Chinese dude. With conservative Chinese parents. Of course I was beaten when I was a kid.

As a child I was generally suicidal in the way I did things, being unable to, as my teacher put it, "think of the consequences beyond the next five minutes". I would run into glass walls, use my knees as brakes, jump happily into potholes. Pain was my constant, familiar companion.

So why did the beatings I received all those years ago, still manage to drive icy spikes of dread into my little heart? It couldn't be fear of the pain, right? You don't see Michael Jackson afraid of minor operations anymore, yes? Or JBJ afraid of minor parking fines, for that matter?

Now, years on, I understand why. It wasn't fear of the pain per se. It was a lethal cocktail of pain, shame in the knowledge you did wrong, and disappointing your parents. More on that later.

My parents got the beatings down to a fine art pretty fast too. They were complementary, that's why. My mum's the Good Cop, the nagger, the one who continually cajoles you until the wax drips out of your ears. She would threaten to hit me, but never could bring herself to. She was the one who would set me up for...

... the Bad Cop. My dad. The one who lurks in the background, doesn't speak much, who distractedly plays with Inquisitory Tools of Pain while you're trying to answer the Good Cop. And when he spanked me, it wasn't mere half-hearted Western-parent spanking... it was Golden Lotus Unfolding Palms Spanking. The Shaolin kind.

A typical Disciplinary Proceeding would thus unfold something like this:

Me: You're being unfair! It wasn't my fault!
Mum: Teng, please! We're doing this for your own good! Come, come listen to mummy...
Dad: *skulks in background*
Me: No, no! You tell me, what did I do wrong!
Mum: How many times have we told you, it's wrong to fight with your brother! You're older than him, you're supposed to take care of him!
Me: He bit me first!
Mum: He's a toddler! He doesn't know better!
Dad: *flicks a cane rhythmically against a table, hums "I Will Survive"*
Mum: You don't hit your friends right? So why hit your brother?
Me: 'Cause he's my brother! My friends would complain to their parents!
Mum: ... how disappointing. You leave me with no choice. Repent while you can, sinner!
Dad: *GOLDEN LOTUS UNFOLDING PALMS*

Of course, there were many times when I would think of retaliating. Just like the delinquents in movies, I would push my mother away, or something like that. But then I would think of my dad, and I would just whimper and give up. Heck, what did I have in my arsenal at that age, Raging Vengeful Rabbit Paw?

But children learn fast. Did not Sun Tzi once say, "What you cannot beat defeat head-on, you run the hell away from"? I soon learnt to recognize the signs, and before my parents could tag-team me I would go ballistic, zipping all over the house screaming bloody murder. Oh the glory days... I was faster and more unpredictable than a headless chicken with a firecracker up its egg-laying chute!

Of course, I knew I was going to get the same beating at the end, but heck, I had to have them earn it. Plus, the pre-emptive release of endorphins always made things easier to bear.

Which is why I'm always shocked when friends tell me they've never been caned / spanked / slapped by their parents before. It's the same shock AC* boys get when they head to Uni and find that other people are well-adjusted and pleasant and nice. Growing up in a world where physical punishment was a very real consequence indeed, I can't imagine how other kids could learn without a decent amount of corporal punishment.

It all boils down to the two main schools of thought regarding disciplining kids. On one extreme we have the modern Western teachings, which exhort reasoning with children and guiding them towards understanding the import of their actions. Children are goaded with incentives / disincentives, but never physical punishment.

On the other extreme, we have the Asian Kung-Fu teachings. Here, you may reason, you may persuade, you may cajole, but there will be a beating. If you need further elaboration, just watch Russell Peters.

In my opinion, the approach you adopt depends on the kid you have. I've observed that younger, immature kids can't reason for nuts (see above as to how I justified beating my brother over my friends), and it's fruitless trying to reason with them. What's the point in spending hours persuading a petulant 6 year-old anorexic-to-be that she needs her nutrition?

Yet, once the child develops a semblance of a functional self-aware brain, then reasoning is crucial. Beating drives home very clear boundaries, but when explanations and guidance are absent for too long, the child's moral growth is stunted, and lacks the necessary nuance.

And once the child develops a conscience, you can retire the canes and the secret Kung Fu manuals. You've been through it yourself. You're initially all defensive when your parents berate you over something, but slowly you begin to see the whole picture, and eventually you know you're wrong. And all without a beating, too.

I'm not saying that without beating you can never teach a kid well. I'm saying chances are higher that with a lil' harsh love you can guide them faster, earlier. So if by chance you're around 4 - 8 years old, and reading this, and have never been beaten before, please ask your parents to beat you.

Just don't say it with a wink in your eyes. I don't know about your parents, but if I did that to my conservative Chinese parents... whoaaaaa, mama.

Her World

Do forgive me if my posts aren't as funny or amusing for a while! It's the exams, and faced with a choice between blogging normal posts and not blogging because my posts aren't amusing, I'll rather blog. =)

Anyways, I was paid a high compliment recently by a friend who said I was one of the more moral people he knew. Interestingly, feedback I've received seem to indicate that my moral convictions manifest overwhelmingly in one facet... in the way I treat girls. Or ladies, if you happen to be a bit older.

This was somehow most apparant in the army. There was once when my OC (that's the senior officer in charge of us) and I went off to comfort a fellow officer who had just broken up. The way we comforted him... you can see for yourself.

Friend: (sobbing)

Me: Hey, you know, it's not that bad... you two can't be together now, but think of all the good times you two...

Friend: (sobs harder and louder)

Me: Er! No! I mean, what you two had was very special, and it's not something everyone gets to experience, so cherish the times...

Friend: (starts bawling)

OC: Hanting what the hell are you doing! Get lost get lost! (turns to Friend) Ok, you listen to me. Did you get to squeeze her ****s or not. Answer me.

Friend: (stops crying for a while, dazed look upon face, nods)

OC: (laughing) Then its ok la! You didn't lose anything, you gained a lot leh! For free!

Me: Huh?!? Sir, what the hell is that type of advice?

Friend: (starts smiling) Thanks sir, feel better now.

Yes. It may have been paraphrased, but that was the gist of the conversation. When they then started chuckling and talking about the poor girl's ****s, I was completely stunned. Ohhhkaaay. I had somehow entered the Twilight Zone, where morals and priorities are wildly different.

But that's me. For the female friends I'm closer to, I've always disapproved tactfully if they behaved wantonly, or if they dressed down too much. I've corrected the way girls sat, gently advised them against fooling around, and never once thought impure thoughts of my female friends.

Suffice it to say I’ve always respected females, and have yet to take advantage of any female, emotional or otherwise.

Apparently, and unfortunately too, it’s not the common standard of decency to expect of most men. I’ve heard of guy friends who push the boundaries with their cavalier ways, and of female friends who have come to expect nothing less. And for the record, alcohol is not an excuse for anything!

But here’s the surprising part. I didn’t inherit these values from my parents, for they are conservative Chinese folks who hardly touch upon these topics. I fashioned them after… the agony-aunt columns in Her World.

(No, I do not spend my money on those mags. Even if I were a girl, paying $10 on mags which are 50% advertisements of things you can’t wear anyway, 40% lifestyle crap you can’t afford, and 10% sex advice you can’t utilize… nuh-uh)

You see, my mum had scores of them when I was younger. (Please disregard the 50%-40%-10% thing with regards to my mum… that’s my opinion, so I have no idea what she wants them for.) And as a curious young lad, I found joy in reading the articles, just to see what the big fuss was about.

And yes, it was the agony-aunt columns that fascinated me the most.

I just couldn’t believe the stories laid out there. Typically, they would be about a girl who’s persuaded into an intimate relationship with her boyfriend, “out of love”, “for him to stay loyal”, “to show that she is true to him”. And then she would get preggers, and the boyfriend would leave.

Or, they would be about their boyfriends / husbands cheating on them. Or about their men abusing them physically / emotionally / verbally. You get the picture.

After a while it hit me that quite a lot of men are bastards. And what was scarier, I found that I could suddenly see the common techniques men use to ensnare their women, that it was suddenly within my power to choose to walk the dark path too.

For example, I shall demonstrate two scenarios in which you, the male, can carry out spousal abuse. One scenario is ‘incorrect’, and would lead to her walking out on you. The other is ‘correct’, and would allow you to happily beat her for years.

Scenario 1 >> You beat her during an argument. She is sobbing in a corner. You beat her again, and again, then you shout that it’s not your fault, and you storm out of the house, telling her you don’t care if she hates you.

Scenario 2 >> You beat her, then when she cries, apologize profusely. Cry with her too, and blame yourself. Tell her you need her to survive, that she makes you a better person. Accept her forgiveness, then hug / kiss her / say “I love you”. Then, repeat from beginning.

Look, if you can’t figure out which scenario is ‘better’, just forget it. I’m not giving the answer here. Spousal abuse is, like, just way wrong, ok? I was just illustrating a point.

As I was saying, I realized then that it was up to me entirely, to choose how I wanted to be. One path meant training oneself to be considerate, sensitive, gentle, if only to make that one girl feel truly special. The other meant dehumanizing girls, honing the art of mind games until you could destroy their self-worth and pillage all you wanted.

And I thought, it can’t be that difficult to be nice and sincere now, can it?

Lest you think this is some ego-stuffed post, about me being some god-like SNAG, it isn’t. I've certainly had my fair share of mistakes, and I admit to them.

But it is a post about how I think more guys should treat their ladies, and how when one partner (guy or girl) begins to trust and depend on the other, the person who’s received that trust should never abuse it.

For goodness’ sake, you’re supposed to be providing.

You Can't Outsmart Me!

Here's something different, for a change.

Last night my brother came over to share a couple of lame jokes with me, wanting to show that he could outdo me in this department. Alas, he left my room a very humbled boy.

HL: Hey kor! Ok you see right, Doraemon was walking down the street when he saw Hello Kitty. Doraemon said "hi", but Hello Kitty didn't reply! Why?

HT: Um... cause Hello Kitty has no mouth?

(short silence)

HL: Have you heard this joke before?

HT: No! You just can't accept that I'm good right?

HL: Ok fine. So then Hello Kitty went home, and sewed herself a mouth. The next day, when she passed by Doraemon, this time she took the initiative to say "hi", but now it was Doraemon's turn not to reply! Why?

HT: Um... cause Doraemon has no ears?

(longer silence, exasperated brother)

HL: Ok whatever! Now the last part of the joke. This guy was walking with the most beautiful girl in the world, when he fell down. What did the girl say to him?

HT: What type of stupid joke is this? Of course she said "Hanting are you alright??"

That was when he left the room. I had to follow him and taunt him for the next 10 minutes about how witty I was.

Pity though, I never got the proper punchline for that last joke.

Total Defence

The doorbell rang. And rang again.

To be frank I already wasn't in a fantastic mood. I was in the midst of negotiating a tricky peace treaty with one of the more dangerous elements of the Pimple Freedom Forces currently rebelling against my flawless skin, and things weren't going too well. And this was after I spent two frustrated hours trying to understand my work. And after I woke up feeling frazzled and grumpy.

This unwelcome distraction had better be good. A PS3 delivery I would appreciate, Lucy Liu I would tolerate... anything else I would desecrate.

And there he was, this man all dressed in white, expectantly standing outside my gate, clipboard in hand, nervous smile on face. He had the words "insurance salesman" or "credit card surveyor" literally stamped on his forehead.

"Hee hee", hee-heeed my inner devil, "speak of the god! I've not seen a more puurrfect outlet for pent up frustration than this in a long time! Hee hee, hee hee."

Him: Hello sir! Good morning! Do you have a few minutes to spare? I'm here to do a quick survey!
Me: I'm sorry, I'm busy breastfeeding my kid.

Short silence. Oh, but this was a persistent one.

H: Er... sir, please, a minute! I'm Jason, and I have a free souvenir for you if you'll help me with this survey! See, I have this wonderful torchlight pen for you!
M: A torchlight pen? All the better to see with when I stick it up yo...

Then I stopped, halting dead in my tracks. My eyes had finally registered the little blue and red "PAP" logo printed on the top right of his license card which he wore around his neck. Suddenly, all the little clues added up - the white attire, the prim and proper tone, the earnest and friendly attitude.

This wasn't a simple survey after all. This was a Government Survey. By a PAP Man.

(Upon reflection later I realized my brain had intuitively skipped a number of logical reasoning steps.

If you have a man-in-white, prim and proper, earnest and friendly, you've either got a PAP Man or a Doctor. One's good at shaking hands with you, the other's good at sticking all sorts of sharp painful things in you in the name of making you better.

Since Doctors would rather shake your hand in the comfort of their clinics, this had to be a PAP Man.)

M: (sweating just a little) Erm, sorry, survey? Survey, you were saying? Yes, yes of course I would like to help. Yes. Anything at all.
H (now Jason): Oh, that's great! I'm doing a survey on Total Defence Preparedness, and I have to gauge just how ready you and your family is in the event of an emergency!
M: Don't drag my family into this! This survey doesn't involve them!

It wasn't my fault. I had just spent the morning reading all about Public Law in the Singaporean context.

J: Ohhhkay. Anyway, I'm going to play you this little tape recording of Public Alarm Sirens, and you've to tell me what they signify, ok? They're three of them, so... here I go!
Tape Recorder: *Booopeeebooopee* pause *Beeeouubeeouubeeeouu* pause *Hmmmmmmpeeeeeehmmmmpeeeeee*

Of course, at this point I was thinking of all those times I heard the explanations for the different sirens. Over the radio, over the MRT announcement system, over TV, but not once did the information stick. Privately, I just labelled them (in order of increasing urgency, in my opinion) as "Buy Insurance Soon!", "OK We're In Trouble!", and "That's It We're Screwed!".

M: Well... I don't think I know... I know one of them means we've got to, er, stay indoors or something...
J: Oh no, that's not good at all! Here, take this card. It'll provide a reference for the meanings behind the various sirens! If you hear them in the future and you're confused, just check it!

And then he scribbled something on that infernal clipboard of his. Oh lord, only 22 and I was being marked.

J: Ok, next question! Do you have a working flashlight at home?
M: Oh, oh yes! Yes, in fact I do! It really works! I can show it to you!
J: Very goooood Mr. Leong... you're Mr. Leong, right? No, there's no need to show it to me. Ok, next... Oh! Almost forgot. Do you have spare batteries for the flashlight?
M: .... no.

Again, the infernal scribbling on his clipboard.

J: Not to worry, not to worry. Just ensure you keep enough at home in case of a prolonged blackout! Ok, do you have a complete medical kit at home?

(Ah, to lie or not to lie. This requires a bit of explanation. 5 years ago, my dad proudly came home with a brand new medical kit. At last, he proclaimed, the Leongs shall have a proper first aid kit in their own home!

We gathered around that holy box, and ooohed and ahhed as he displayed each individual item for us to see, as if he were a travelling magician with his bag of tricks. There was everything in that kit... iodine, plasters, gauze in three sizes, medical tape... a full-body stretcher, birth control pills, a little pacemaker, 2 kidneys and a lung. Seriously, the box wanted for nothing.

Alas, we had been given a fish, but not taught how to fish. Over the months we used the kit, but no one replenished the supplies - it quickly rotted and fell from grace, as a beautiful angel would fall to become Paris Hilton. It's true, we still had a medical kit, but its contents were so long past expiry that it could now only be used to put down horses or outperform mustard gas.)

M: We have a medical kit, but it's not in very good shape...
J: That simply won't do! First aid has been shown to help increase your survivability (in the event of an accident) by over 50%! Never mind, you can purchase a fully equipped one at your nearest CC anytime!

Scribble scribble, scribble scribble. Oh look, there goes my future! Yay, how fun.

J: Well, that's all I have for you today Mr. Leong! Here's your free pen! Thank you for your participation, and remember, Total Defence is the key to protecting our nation!

Pftt! as he disappeared in a cloud of black smoke. I was left standing in the hot sun, a pen, a Sirens Reference Card, a pamphlet in my hands. I trudged back into my house slowly, but things would never be the same again.

Things would never be the same again.

My Real Life Lara Croft

* * * DISCLAIMER START * * *

The following blog entry is meant to entertain only, and is not

an accurate (well not fully) reflection of the state of mind of the author,

and is not meant to be taken out of context.

Any reference to people living or dead has hopefully

been masked sufficiently well.

* * * DISCLAIMER END * * *

What I Actually Said

A thousand girls I met today
Living, breathing personalities on their separate ways
All different, unique, distinct
Yet... barely any as special as you, I think

There was that girl of maybe ten
Wiry hair meticulously leashed by coloured bands
She bounced around the train full of energy
A living personification of a calorie
A cheerful, delightful bundle dressed in pink
Yet... not as radiant as you, I think

Or how about that wizened grandmother of four?
To whom caring for others is hardly a chore?
Carrying across the island treat-filled bags a-dozen
Just to pamper and delight her grandchildren
Rare as it is to see someone give and never take
You'll surely be as caring as her one day, I speculate

And then there was that teen who swayed,
And sashayed, causing the restraint in men's hearts to fray
She smiled just once, but when she did
It was as warming as the end of a winter most frigid
She was a porcelain doll, beauty at its most succinct
Yet... hardly as lovely as you are, I think

A thousand girls I met today
Living, breathing personalities in their own way
All different, unique, distinct
Yet... none quite like you, I think

What I Actually Thought, When I Said It

A thousand games I've wanted to play
I've never seen a more entertaining array
Oh if only I could somehow keep you at bay
Then, maybe then, my games I could play

There's God of War and FF 12 and GTA
There's fighting games from the Naruto anime
There's Max Payne and Rainbow Six and GRAW as well
Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell
Arghghgh I could spend forever making this list
Though I wonder how far I can get before you'll get pissed

No, please don't go and get it all wrong
I've been treasuring our relationship all along
I've never misreported my sleeping time
Just to play after I'm officially asleep - that's a crime!
Nor have I played while talking to you on the phone
Anything less than full attention for you I won't condone

I thank you, in fact, for helping me
Overcome this dreadful malady
Of spending far too much time on such trivial pursuits
When I could be elsewhere harvesting more valuable fruits
Just indulge this boyish desire of mine once in a while
Be nice and sweet and a little less hostile!

A thousand games I've wanted to play
More than enough to completely fill my days
But I don't think I will, for all that I say
To lose you just cause of silly games... now that's just gay.

What I Really, Really Actually Thought

I'm not stupid. Hahaha. Hellloooo, public blog.

=)

Territory

Always in fervent support of student activities, my school administration ensured that the new school campus came equipped with sufficient rooms for the various clubs to hold their activities in, be it storage of equipment, holding of meetings, or breeding of foul venomous hellspawn harpies.

You see, I was on my way to a Christmas Charity meeting when my friend played a little prank on me. The Christmas Charity meeting room is right next to the Singapore Law Review (SLR) room, and he told me that the meeting venue had changed to the SLR room instead. I peeked in and didn't see anyone inside, so I thought hey, even if I walk into a prank how bad could it get?

Hur. Hur.

I took a seat at the table inside, and waited patiently for the rest to arrive. Soon I became aware that there was another person in the room with me, someone hidden behind this partition at the back of the room, apparantly so engrossed at surfing the net that my presence went unnoticed. You must understand, most of the clubs have to share rooms owing to space constraints, so I hardly found the situation worthy of further investigation.

Things got interesting 5 minutes later. Other members coming for the meeting spotted me in the SLR room, and streamed in believing themselves to be in the right place too. That's when the girl emerged from behind her partition, and confronted me.

Girl: Hey! What are you doing here?
Me: Oh, I'm here for a Christmas Charity Meeting.
Girl: Who said you could come in here?
Me: I'm sorry if I'm in the wrong place, my friend informed me that there was a meeting here.

Bad move. What counted as politeness on my part must have smelt very much like weakness to her.

Girl (morphing): What's your friend's name!?
Me: He's Kaixiang, a Year 2 who's convening the Christmas Charity Meeting today.
Harpy: Who's Kaixiang? This is the Singapore Law Review room you know! Can't you read the sign on the door?

No, I didn't know, and I can't read. I scrapped through Primary School, Secondary School, Junior College, Army and 2 years of University without knowing how to read, and managed to fool the Ministry of Education all the while into thinking I was literate. Surprise!

Me: Well, I guess there's been a mix-up, I'll take my leave now.
Harpy: You can't come in here without permission!

Really? Gosh, from everything that has transpired so far, I really couldn't tell. Lucky for me there are lots of people around who are only too enthusiastic to help blithering idiots like me.

Harpy: The SLR room is sacred ground that's off-limits to all the mediocre Law students unable to meet our qualifications! We gather here expecting nothing less than complete privacy! The school's facilities are public resources that are open to all students, so why don't you use those instead of intruding upon our birthright? No, I cannot and will not be calm about this! We may have peacefully coexisted for the last five minutes and you are now leaving after we cleared up a small misunderstanding but you have befouled the air in here and I will not tolerate it.

Ooo. Frosty.

Perhaps what puzzled me the most about the whole incident was why she had to react the way she did. I tried my best to imagine myself in her position, but try as hard as I could I still failed to empathize with her.

True, I would have been a little affronted if say, someone had barged in and created a ruckus, then refused to leave. Even then, I suspect I would still have been polite about it, and the clueless intruder would have left feeling a little embarrassed instead of wanting to declare jihad on somebody.

I couldn't help but recall a similar incident just a while ago. A friend was offended at receiving what he perceived to be junk mail, and in response he wrote back to the company involved threatening legal action if they didn't issue a full apology to him. I read the letter he drafted and I was stunned. No wonder some people perceive us cocky or pushy.

A little more love, people. Being nice doesn't mean you're a pushover. Save your bile for the ones who really deserve it.

*Note: Oh, I do know that not all SLR people are like that. =)

Conscience

Looking back, I suspect that I might not have been the most angelic of little boys.

The earliest memory of how demonic I was finds its roots in kindergarten. The adults who ran the place, probably young idealistic people without kids of their own, thought it decidedly brilliant to sit us "little angels" at tables of four, and rotate the groups every two weeks.

The theory was, by mixing in different groups regularly, the kids would develop their social skills faster. They would overcome their shyness at meeting new people, and learn to cooperate, give and take, grow into well-mannered sociable beings.

Evil finds no foothold in the hearts of innocent children, no?

Foolish humans! Under that system, there was no group that I didn't come to overwhelm by sheer force of character or violent brutality. My day of glory was when I was finally rotated into the group with the then reigning class bully, for after that showdown, my dominion was complete.

(He had taken my new eraser and pulled it out of its cardboard sheath, knowing how much I hated people to do that. I took his eraser, bit it in half, and spat it out onto his books. Ooo. Never seen someone cry so fast.)

But I couldn't afford to be complacent. They made me change classes, you see, twice. Everyday was a battle for new turf.

I heard much later that after my short stint there, they scrapped the rotating system, replacing it with one where the kids sat at cold metal tables, with at least 1m between each child, thumbtacks on the floor to discourage movement, and barbed wire circling the compound.

Even now, there are many colourful posters littering the walls of the staff room, with labels like "How to Spot A Possessed Child" and step-by-step guides to dealing with juvenile troublemakers. No kindergarten kid left such a legacy as I.

Yes. My early childhood was a completely amoral time for me. If someone hit me, I would hit them back. If someone didn't hit me, I would hit them all the much harder. I was practically the poster child for, if the government wanted, their "Stop At Zero, Sterilize Yourselves" campaign.

But every story has its turning point, and mine was in Primary Five, when we received our Mid-Year Exam results. I got a 53 for my Maths Paper, a dismal score which was probably Band 5.

(Just in case you've never gone to Primary school in Singapore, your grades are clustered into Bands, arguably to encourage you to work harder. Band 1 means "Good Job, You Did Well", Band 2 "Not Too Bad, But No More Scholarship Liao", Band 3's "Tsk Tsk, Police Going To Catch You", Band 4 "Hahaha see How You Tell Your Parents" and Band 5 "Brain Damaged La You".

Aye, the academic scene in Singapore's harsh at times.)

So anyway I found myself clutching my paper and running off to the loo. I shut myself into a cubicle, and just started crying. Before long, I heard the adjacent cubicle door close, and someone else started sobbing too. When the worst of my grief was over, I said:

H: You also did badly ah.
X: Yar la. S*** la. Feel very bad now.
H: Feel bad? Why leh?
X: I'm a full-time student... my only responsibility is to study. My parents work so hard just to send me to school, so the least I should do is get good grades and support them next time. I don't want them to worry about me...
H: Oh. Ok.
X: You leh? Why are you sad?
H: Go home my mother sure going to whack me. I scared pain.

On the way home that day, pricked by what my friend said, and after long hours of inner turmoil, I gave birth to a Conscience. It was small compared to its peers, underweight and decidedly malnourished. It certainly didn't look like it would survive past a couple of hours.

Yet, frail and delicate as it was, it wailed with the lungs of a dozen babies. And true enough, not only did it survive, it developed quite well.

In fact, since that day, I've changed quite drastically. Overnight I drew my own OB markers, and started treating people better, respecting their space and rights and privacy. People tell me that I'm very 'guai', and while they're right in that my parents were good parents, I must attribute a lot of it to the strange thing otherwise known as a conscience.

There are, as of now, a loooong list of things I must set right, and by my own hand too. Way way high on my priority list is to compensate my dear friend for breaking his arm in primary school, because I was too scared then to tell my parents.

After that... after that I will seek out the loved ones I've wronged in some way or another, and for what it was worth, tell them I was sorry for the way things turned out. Some things can never be righted, but I know I will still try.

For all the laws we have, for all the fears of punishment, the hardest thing is to be able to answer to yourself before you sleep every night.