Lobster face had a night of booze

Went to Wei Chang's birthday party in his house. Plenty of meat and booze, and his parents kept encouraging us to eat more and drink more. In any case I don't drink much simply because I don't really like alcohol, except maybe a bit of Baileys Caramel Irish Cream. I remember that I was at a fancy schmanzy restaurant in Brussels during the Sojourn trip and they served champagne literally on a silver platter. I ordered orange juice instead. My teacher in charge said: "When somebody offers you champagne, you drink it!" But what to do, I just don't like the taste, although I did get drunk a few times before. Not at clubs.

I am deeply amused by the kind of things people do when they are drunk. This guy was so gone on a mixture of vodka and beer that his face turned crimson. I call him "Lobster Face". At one point he ran off and squatted in the middle of the road. At another point he kept tearing the paper kitchen towel and crushed the pieces and piled them up on one end of the table. Just weird.

Well, night.

Suddenly

I realized I haven't written Elmer for weeks. It's not that I have run out of ideas, it's just that I don't have the mood to write it. I guess that I'm getting bored. In any case right from the start I don't want to make the series too long because the most extraordinary thing will become ordinary after some time.

Suddenly I miss the trees in Mizzou.

Money talk

Yipee yipee yay yay, finally I'm done with the interviews and writing tests at both organizations. The second interview was definitely tougher than the first one. I'm only glad that I've been reading financial news for the last few months. I have never taken economics as an academic subject, so I had to do much more research and bombard my business friends with questions till they got sick of me. Someone said to my face once that I'm just not good at economics. I hate it when people pigeon-hole me like that. Never tell someone that he or she is just not good at something because there's such a thing as a willingness to learn. At least now I'm confident enough to tell you about the current financial crisis in a way that you can understand.

Anyway now I have to use my old brick Nokia phone, which scores high in function but zero in style. It looks like an obese monstrosity as compared to the sleek Samsung phone that I lost last week. But I'm counting my blessings. At least now I have a bi-functional phone that not only serves as a communication tool, but also as a weapon of mass concussion. If say anybody mugs me or I meet the bastard who took my previous phone I'm going to hantam him in the head with my brick phone and give him a nice little concussion.

Off for dinner.

O is for Obama

I used to support Hillary Clinton because I felt Obama was untested, which is definitely not something that America and the world can afford to tolerate right now. After eight years of bad policies, two wars, a tarnished international image, and the biggest budget deficit ever, now is definitely not the time to experiment.

But my opinion of Obama has changed in the last few weeks. Whoever still thinks that he is a young upstart, just look at the way he carried himself in all three presidential debates. He was calm, he was dignified, he was intelligent, he was concise, he looked people squarely in the eye. In short, he conducted himself in a truly presidential manner.

Contrast it to John McCain. He was nothing short of a vindictive old man, and his crowning glory was when he pointed to Obama in the second presidential debate and said "that one". This is an excerpt:

"By the way, my friends, I know you grow a little weary with this back-and-forth. It was an energy bill on the floor of the Senate loaded down with goodies, billions for the oil companies, and it was sponsored by Bush and Cheney."

"You know who voted for it? You might never know. That one. You know who voted against it? Me. I have fought time after time against these pork barrel -- these bills that come to the floor and they have all kinds of goodies and all kinds of things in them for everybody and they buy off the votes."

Notice how he kept saying "my friends" in an almost conspiratorial way, to make the debate sound like "us against that one". And McCain has really elevated self-trumpeting to a whole new pitch. It's all mememe, I am the good guy, I am defending you against the evil Pork Man.

I have a problem with McCain on so many different levels: his proposed policies, his track record, his campaign methods, his personality.

Proposed policies and track record

The man who said that "the fundamentals of our economy are still strong" the day Lehman went bust has come up with a shining solution to the current economic crisis: cut pork barrel spending.

For God's sake, here is a man who had a role to play in creating this crisis and now he's trying to play firefighter. He voted for Bush's tax breaks for the richest of the rich in America. He helped to put in place the ridiculous borrowing ratio for Wall Street. Lehman had a 1:36 ratio, which means that for every dollar of capital they had, they could borrow $36. And look where they are now?

McCain is NOT a maverick. There's nothing maverick about him when he voted four out of five times for Bush's budget, which incidentally has led to one of the biggest budget deficits in the history of the US. Past is prologue indeed. The next time he spews out the word "maverick" I am going to find a moose and shoot it to death.

And of all things, he is railing against the 18 billion pork barrel spending when taxpayers had to fork out trillions of dollars to bail out banks. Basically pork barrel spending means spread cost, concentrated benefits. It's when politicians use national taxpayers' money to benefit a particular community, for example, building schools or giving subsidies to members of the community. McCain has always derided Obama as a "community organizer" for his involvement in community work when Sarah Palin has actually commissioned the "Bridge to Nowhere", the symbol of pork barrel spending. The $398 million bridge would have connected a town in Alaska to a nearby island with population 50. Nearly 400 milion bucks to make 50 Alaskans happy. In one stroke, Sarah Palin had shown her aptitude for maths, geography and common sense.

Campaign methods

How irresponsible are McCain's campaign methods? Let me count the ways.

Firstly, he chose Sarah Palin as his running mate. I won't even deride her moose-hunting, bulldog with lipsticks, Republican with a pregnant teenage daughter, ex-beauty queen, hockey mom clothed in US$150,000 persona. We're talking about a woman who cited Alaska's proximity to Russia as foreign policy credentials. If that's the case I certainly qualify to be Singapore's High Diplomat to Malaysia because I can see what my friend told me are bits of Johor Bahru from my hostel window in NTU, which is like the Alaska of Singapore.

McCain chose Palin for the simple reason of resuscitating his ailing campaign. Immediately after he made his announcement, everyone went "Palin who?" and created a much-needed buzz. But now the media honeymoon is over. People are getting sick of Palin's stupidity. The more she talks, the more obvious it is that she is truly, madly, deeply unsuited for the job of vice president.

McCain is the kind of guy who will choose such a person as a running mate just to buy time. He is not doing it for the country. He's doing it for himself. Obama, on the other hand, chose Joe Biden as his running mate because Biden, with his wealth of foreign policy experience, can fill the gap. Obama could have chosen Hillary Clinton and instantly boosted his chances, but he understood that you need to choose someone you can work with, not just someone who can get you there.

Secondly, McCain's campaign has become dirtier by the minute. It's supremely irresponsible for McCain + Palin = McPain to accuse Obama of "palling around with terrorists". When somebody shouted "Kill him!" at one of the rallies, Palin stood by without rebuking him, almost like a tacit endorsement of this psycho's call of killing the one person who might have the capability of bringing America together. Instead of forging unity, McPain had sought to divide America and spread paranoia. Nothing is dirtier than using robo-calls - automated phone-calls to unsuspecting Americans that drill into their heads that Obama is actually Osama, hey, the B and S on the keyboard are not that far actually! If, God forbid, someone assassinates Obama, some of the blood will be on McPain's hands.

Personality

Look at the blond Barbie standing beside McCain who looks like she cannot smile too wide lest she cracks her heavily botoxed face. That's Cindy McCain, 18 years younger than her husband, the rich daddy's girl for whom McCain dumped his wife of 15 years.

John and Cindy McCain

John and Carol McCain

Carol McCain was a swimwear model who fell for the cute G.I. John and married him. She waited for him for years when he fought in the Vietnam War, but when he came back with great fanfare, he found that she had changed. Physically, as her love for him has never changed. She was involved in a car accident that disfigured her and left her with a limp. Her body is held together by screws and metal plates. McCain took one look at his wife, a shadow of her former beautiful self, and went back to his womanizing ways. Then he met Cindy, and the rest was, as they say, history. He will pay for Carol's medical bills for the rest of her life. But he can certainly afford to do it. After all he married into money.

If he's just any regular politician, I wouldn't judge his personal life because what matters is that the politician can do his job well. But McCain always plays up his Republican family values (if you actually have such a thing) and his experience as a prisoner of war to get to the top job. Truth is he has no values to speak of. He gladly traded love and devotion for physical beauty and money and connections.

I can only hope that come November 4, America will do the right thing and vote for Barack Obama.

The Pinky and the Brain of bad investment

One thing in the newspapers that got me thinking: the concept of "caveat emptor" or "buyers beware". Basically it means that buyers have the responsibility of doing sufficient research on the product they are going to buy, and if something bad happens along the way, well too bad, after all they have taken the risk themselves.

This concept is of course a favourite of any financial institution in the recent economic crisis. It's no secret that many banks here target retirees for their investment packages, for the simple reason that the retirees are the dream buyers: they are mostly old, relatively uneducated, sitting on a piggy bank full of years of savings, and they don't understand what the investment is all about, which makes them an easy prey for relationship managers who can then cook up some fantastic story about the investment laying golden eggs after just a few years.

"Caveat emptor" is utter bollocks. It only operates when both the seller and buyer have access to roughly the same amount of information and have roughly the same ability to process this information. If the seller knows about the dangers of the product but the buyer doesn't, how can the seller simply invoke "caveat emptor" like it's a magic spell that will absolve any guilt in his part?

And it seems unfair that the media has crucified the relationship managers for the DBS High Notes 5 saga, which is linked to the now bankrupt Lehman. The relationship managers are the front-line employees who sold the retirees one hell of a bad apple, but many people seem to forget, or maybe ignore, the fact that they are exactly that: employees. They were not the ones who came up with the investment package. In fact most of them are 'victims' (I'm using the term rather loosely here) to the company policies of commission-based work and actively targeting retirees. In other words, some of them had to sell these investment packages to retirees so they can also earn a living.

It's just like Pinky and the Brain. Don't crucify the Pinkies. It's the Brain that comes up with all these diabolic plans and makes the Pinkies do the dirty work and then reaps the profits in the quiet while the Pinkies are being chased by a hoard of angry investors. My blood boiled when I read about the AIG executives who went on a US$400,000 spa retreat just after the US Government bailed out their fat butts with taxpayers' money - the salaries of people who might never have been to a spa before, much less blow nearly half a million bucks on manicures and pedicures and God knows what else. Not to mention Dick Fuld, a first-rate bastard who single-handedly led Lehman to its demise with a combination of bad judgment and greed, and still managed to poach US$490 million, and when cross-examined had the cheek to say, oh nonono Satan forbid, I DID NOT take 490 million, I ONLY took 250 million. Eat crap, Dick Fuld. I wish you death and disease.

I might graduate and be a lowly paid journalist, but when I hit the pillow at night I would sleep with the knowledge that I had not cheated old people of their life savings. Don't try to justify yourself with your pretentious business wank. A crook by any other name is still a crook.

A few beats away to something bad

The interview went all right, but it's not over. They split the "chat" and the writing test, so I have to do the writing test on Saturday. I don't want to go into too much details because nothing's certain for now. The only certainty is that once I start my internship I'll have the social life of a pupa, not that I'm at the top of the popularity stakes now anyway. In fact I don't even think that half the school know who I am, seeing that I've been so consistent in skipping some lectures (I have a horny lecturer who doesn't feel ashamed, especially at his age, to tell the entire lecture hall about his fantasy of having a "private affair" with Jessica Simpson. Tell me, how am I supposed to go for such a lecture?).

I honestly feel rather strange to see people so stressed out nowadays. The fact that the exams are three weeks away had not even registered until I checked out my friends' blogs. I think two semesters ago I would have been on the same boat, but right now I'm past caring, at least not until a few days before the exams.

I'm not one of those geniuses who can get an A+ just by studying one night before the exams. I kind of accept that I might get okay grades, but not fantastic grades. But it doesn't mean that I don't do my work. I do my part of group projects, although I quite dislike it when people come hounding me days before the actual deadline. Leave me alone, and I can assure you that I will finish my work on time.

I lost my handphone two days ago so don't call. And I don't want to talk about it. On a happier note, my brother got me hooked on a mecha anime: B'tX. Forget for a moment that the name sounds rather asinine, like the IRC nickname of a pimply teenager with an identity crisis. It's one of the most exciting animes of all time, coming from the legendary Masami Kurumada, also the author of Saint Seiya. I had finished Neo Angelique Abyss and Yakitate!, both spoiled by a WTF ending. I hate it when animators lose interest after a while and are in a hurry to finish the entire series off. They ruin an otherwise excellent anime, like Cooking Master Boy, which is obviously about cooking. Hopefully B'tX will leave me with a pleasant aftertaste.

Anyway back to B'tX. B't stands for "beat", which also means brain, blood, bravery and battler (don't ask me how the author came up with this). Basically it refers to a brave fighting machine with a brain, which submits to a "donor" who brings it to life with his blood. X is the name of the hero's fighter machine cum buddy.

Takamiya Teppei is on a mission to rescue his genius brother, Kotaro, who has been kidnapped by the Machine Empire so he can find a way to stop Raphael, the ultimate B't created by the empire to rule the earth but which has now become uncontrollable. Teppei has to battle many many enemies along the way, including the Four Knights: Fou Lafine and his phoenix Je t'aime; Ron (a Japanese version of Bruce Lee complete with irritating battle shrieks) and his dragon Raido; Hokuto and his giant turtle Max; and Karen, Teppei's mentor, with her mythical horse Shadow X.

You can watch it on Crunchyroll or Zomganime.

Scare me tender

I have two internship interview appointments in the next two weeks: one tomorrow and the other next week. I think each interview will be around two hours, the first half the writing test and the second the "chat". Right now I'm scared shitless I don't know why. I feel positively underprepared but I don't know how to prepare for them.

Everyone has fears, I assure you. It's just a matter of who is better at hiding them. Am I a good pretender? We'll just have to see, no point speculating or complaining now.

Will update.

Lilliputian musings

I've been watching video after video of international events on the New York Times online (and cooking videos by the hilarious Mark Bittman in between). From rape victims in Congo who found healing through sharing; to the Israeli lady in Jerusalem who said she doesn't mind co-existence with the Arabs but wishes that an entire Arab village will be razed to the ground; to the Argentinian ex-drug addict who abused Paco, a powerful drug, because he "didn't want to feel"; to the Turkish girl whose idea of freedom is to be allowed to wear her scarf in a secular country.

There are too many bad things going on in the world. After thousands of years of existence, people still haven't learned how to treat each other. If any, they have become more brutal as they become increasingly disconnected from their action. Nowadays you can push a button and destroy an entire city thousands of kilometres away.

Konrad Lorenz argues that humankind is one of the few species practicing intraspecific aggression (routine killing of its own kind), in comparison with most other species, which practice interspecific aggression (killing only other species, except in the most unusual circumstances, such as cannibalism in certain tropical fishes). Basically animals kill to survive. But people kill for a variety of reasons. For money, for power, for fun, for ideologies. And you think that humans are better than animals?

I'm very cynical about the possibility of world peace, contrary to what any beauty queen might say. Machiavelli wrote that humans have an innate desire to conquer, and as long as humans exist there will always be war. It doesn't have to be physical. Countries can destroy other countries through economic means and, increasingly, cyber means.

Millions have died because they couldn't have access to patented drugs that cost pharmaceutical companies about a quarter (no conclusive estimate) of their price tag. African countries are heavily in debt to first world countries, and after they borrowed from the IMF, they found themselves in a deeper shithole because they couldn't pay the interest. People in Tajikistan are tied to "their" lands in a modern-day feudal system, where they back-breakingly harvest cotton for a giant government-linked company only to starve during winter.

What am I doing to make the world a better place? Nothing, really. I'm not saving lives, not moulding minds, not putting a smile to the faces that deserve it most. I just want to be very realistic about my place in the world right now. The world is really much bigger than what we are, so let's not entertain the notion that we are very important persons. Unless of course you are doing any of the above mentioned things on a daily basis.

If you have three minutes to spare

My groupmate had suggested that I write an Elmer story called Elmer on the Island of Survey to entice people to fill in a survey for our group project.

I refuse on the grounds that it's so obscenely ridiculous it's not even worth considering. Therefore, I'll stick to the tried-and-tested salesman method.

Those of you who have read The Online Citizen before, please fill in this survey.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=v557L0m6cXqbaar72wTPdw_3d_3d

It only has three questions, and is not exactly an entry test for Mensa. You can finish it in less than three minutes. I would deeply appreciate, from the bottom of my bottomless heart.

The Adventures of Elmer the Elephant with a Pinhole in His Heart: The Island of Cactus

The Island of Cactus actually had only one cactus, and a very sombre one at that. It was glowing a healthy green, and its spikes were firm. But there was a sense of deadness about it, like it had no interest in itself. Elmer thought he had never seen a sorrier looking plant.

An old man who was standing near the cactus was not much better. He had a deeply furrowed forehead and melancholic eyebrows, like he had been suffering from a severe constipation for the longest time. He also sported a combover that resembled a freshly raked corn field. And his white and foamy moustache gave the impression that a tube of toothpaste had exploded on his mouth.

Elmer said to the old man: "Why do you look so sad, Mister? Have you been pricked by the cactus?"
Old Man: "No, I have not. That's the problem. My cactus doesn't even bother to prick me if he's unhappy about anything."
Elmer: "Well, I wouldn't want to be pricked by anything, unhappy or otherwise."
Old Man: "You don't get it, my friend. It's worse for someone to not care enough to prick you."

Elmer soon learned that the old man was called Mr. Mimosa Greenthumb. A few years ago he had found an unusual seed in his garden, and was so excited over his discovery that he sprinted bolt-like to his house, despite his age, to get a shovel and a watering can.

He then planted the seed and took great care of it, while nurturing dreams of the seed growing into a beautiful flower that would be the envy of all the other gardeners. Mr. Greenthumb watered the seed everyday, actually almost every minute of everyday, thinking that the seed would grow much faster that way.

The seed gradually grew, but to Mr. Greenthumb's dismay, it developed spikes instead of leaves. Mr. Greenthumb thought he must have made a mistake. So he abandoned his watering can and spent long hours at the market, trying to find the best fertilizer.

He returned to his precious plant after he was convinced that he had found this fertilizer. But even after pouring bags after bags of the fertilizer on the plant, Mr. Greenthumb could not stop it from developing even more spikes and growing more tube-like. Mr. Greenthumb had denied it long enough. His seed had grown into a cactus, not a flower.

There was no doubt that Mr. Greenthumb loved his plant, but sometimes one can completely love another in a completely wrong way.

Mr. Greenthumb: "Well, that's the story, Elmer. I am a complete failure, aren't I?"
Elmer: "Do you love your plant any less, Mr. Greenthumb, now that it's a cactus?"
"No. I do love it, but everytime I look at it I wonder where I had gone wrong."
"Why don't you ask it yourself, Mr. Greenthumb?"
"It's useless. It won't even talk to me."

Elmer was rather afraid of being pricked by the cactus, but decided to talk to it for the sake of Mr. Greenthumb.

Elmer: "He-hello, Cactus. I am Elmer. Elmer the Elephant."
Cactus: "What do you want?"
"I-I just want to know why you refuse to talk to Mr. Greenthumb."
"Because there's nothing to say."
"But he has been taking care of you all these while, hasn't he?"
"So?"

"So you should at least be nice to him, shouldn't you?"
"Look, Elmer or whoever you are, whether or not I want to be nice to him, it's my own choice isn't? Do you actually think that you can waltz here and tell me what to do? It's none of your business."

Elmer was offended by Cactus' rudeness. He didn't even waltz towards that idiotic plant, for goodness' sake! But out of respect for Mr. Greenthumb, Elmer decided to let Cactus be.

The truth is Cactus felt guilty for not being a flower. It's not that it was idiotic, it just didn't know how to feel that it was fine the way it was.

Elmer said to Mr. Greenthumb: "I'm sorry, Mr. Greenthumb. Cactus didn't want to talk to me either."
Mr. Greenthumb was crestfallen, but tried not to show it.
"It's okay, Elmer. I appreciate."
"Cactus might not want to talk to you now, but I am sure it knows that you have been trying, Mr. Greenthumb. Maybe, just maybe, it will understand someday."
"Thank you, Elmer. We'll meet again, won't we?"
"Definitely."

- E.

Going going gone

I've spent the last two days listening to troll speak and I'm worried that it will affect my own coherence. I interviewed a guy last week for my assignment and I had not so wisely put off transcribing it till yesterday. The guy talks like he has a million marbles in his mouth, and my voice recorder sucks balls. Perfect equation for a perfect transcript.

I thought I can take a break after that but then I opened my NTU Webmail and voila! More work to do, and it can't wait. Sometimes I wonder if I should not open my Webmail at all after a certain hour so I can use my last few waking moments doing totally unproductive happy things, which actually sounds like an oxymoron because how can something be unproductive when it preserves your sanity?

I'm going to sleep.

A world in words

I asked Jeanne to describe Japan in one sentence, which is much more lenient than the one word I had to use to describe Mizzou ("surreal") in Yi Wen's video project. Jeanne is teaching English at a high school in Iida City in the prefecture of Nagano. Prefecture is the Japanese equivalent of a state.

Jeanne's "sentence" is top-quality writing, which she said was inspired by Nosaka Akiyuki, the author of Grave of the Fireflies.

"For me, Japan is a mix of elation and frustrations, work and graduate school, new experiences, and unfortunate continuations of the demons I thought I left 7,000 miles away; Japan is deep, with many facets, some worth exploring, some better left to their own, but as far as I’m concerned the Japan in the minds of anime fans does not exist no matter how hard they may search the overrated maid cafés of Akihabara or the rat hole shops of otaku who managed to make a business out of their hobby – why I think that’s worth mentioning in my sentence, I do not know."

Just a thought, I think the word "nice" is an adjective that is only really used by acquaintances, not good friends. Would you say, when asked to describe your friend of 10 years, that he is "nice"?

And "nice" is, well, nice, but when it is the definitive aspect of your character, I personally feel that it makes you rather boring. You want to be remembered as "intelligent", "strong-minded", "passionate", "stable as a rock" - a whole lot of things apart from just "nice".

This is not a millionaire's game

My dad asked me point blank yesterday if I want to continue his business. And of course he had to end it with the ubiquitous sentence: "Journalism doesn't pay much, does it?"

I'm not going to launch into a whole debate about the virtues of journalism, because at the end of the day virtues don't fill my stomach.

I know what I want, and it's not a mansion with a plasma TV and a jacuzzi and a $100-per-head lunch and a pimp-my-ride car and a Patek Phillipe watch and a Botega handbag and Manolo Blahnik shoes.

What do I want? I want a sense of exploration.
Do I want a family? Sure, I would love to love and be loved. But it's not something that can be laid down in a five-year or a ten-year plan is it. It's not like I can sit here and say, all right, I'm going to settle down at this time of day, and I'm going to remain committed for the rest of my pathetic existence.

I am not a fan of making plans. People tend to get absorbed with how things should be, not how things really are. Plans are good, but not when they consume our lives.

And I have an absolute disdain for motivational speakers and church leaders who promise prosperity and God knows what else if you just buy their book, if you just donate 10 per cent of your income, if you just contribute to the building fund so they can build a mega church with a surplus for other property investment.

It doesn't work that way. It's a whole lot of trials and errors. I know damn sure that I'm going to screw up sometimes, but so be it. I'll screw up, and I'll hopefully learn and move on. So I'm going to do what I want to do, even if I won't exactly end up in the Millionaires' Club.

Show is a four-letter word

I am right now diffused all over the place with no priority whatsoever. In other words, I am slacking when I definitely shouldn't be.

My life is all peaks and troughs. When I'm at the peak I'm basically running on Nitro, sometimes working 10 hours non-stop with very little breaks. When I'm in the trough I'm the Queen of Inertia, with my butt surgically attached to my chair.

Right now I'm in a trough. On a side note, I almost forgot that Megan was such a riot and that I really do like talking to her.

When talking about Rachel's brother:

1:31am Megan: to the best of my knowledge she is great... and yes... her brother is brutally hot.

When talking about her new South Korean roomie:

2:22am Megan: she eats strange sea creatures as snacks. I came home late the other night and stepped on a small blue fish that refused to unstick itself from my foot. it was staring at me

2:24am Eveline: a small blue fish

2:24am Megan: yes. it was shiny

2:24am Eveline: it was alive?

2:24am Megan: no. rather dead and sticky.
she thought it was hysterical

it is kind of like living with ursula the sea witch... she snacks on small creatures that look very much like what they did in life
out of small bowls on her desk I might add

Megan with Ivan, a week before he went back to Serbia

I've always thought that it's worse for people who were left behind. Because everything will be the same and everything will be different for them. All the buildings and streets and rooms will bear the names of those who have left. Memory set in concrete, staring at them in the face.

Anyway I had this "Show not tell" exercise in my News Copy & Editing class. A bit of background: a real-life journalist had a blind editor, and he had to read out his story to this editor. But the editor kept saying, "I can't see it! Make me see it!" My American teacher Dan asked us to show him these emotions:

I'm happy.

I'm sad.

I'm in love.

I'm scared.

What did I write? I must admit that I was hard pressed for time because I totally forgot about the assignment. So I had to finish it within five minutes in class. Here they are (some are ripped from Elmer):

I felt like it was suddenly Friday.

The world turned monochrome and I wanted to be anywhere but here.

I wanted to be a better person so I could deserve you a bit more.

I got sucked into a Super Black Hole and I had no torchlight. Not even a cellphone monitor light.

I can't remember specific moments when I felt all those emotions. If you ask me what my happiest moment was, I wouldn't know what to say. But I do know how I felt when I was happy, or sad, or scared.

How would you show these emotions? Try it.

Where's somewhere?

Uli (Ulrike) is doing a year of practical work to get her Diploma (volontariat) in Journalism at the University of Leipzig. After "a long time of hoping and sweating", she'll finally be working at the ZDF, a huge national broadcaster. Uli of the Apple Cheeks might appear on German TV! I'm proud of her.

Lea alias Miss Sparkle has started work in Cologne. I can't remember where she's working.

(Miriam) Schumacher is running in her county election in Bonn, on top of being a member of the youth wing of the Christian Democratic Union, the ruling political party in coalition with the SPD.

My friends in Germany are going somewhere. I have an internship interview in two weeks' time. I hope that will be my "somewhere" for now. Will update when it's time to update.

Eat your stupid Powerpoint

I loathe Powerpoint Teachers in NTU who brush aside questions that are not in their slides ad verbatim. You call yourself a scholar of policy evaluation when you can't even answer why statutory boards in Singapore jack up various tariffs even though the related companies are making billions of dollars in annual profits? The worst is when you proudly emblazon across your slide the statement that the Singapore population is "obedient, cooperative and non-resistant." Apparently you have not talked to the famous taxi drivers in Singapore. Again, you call yourself a scholar of policy evaluation?

I have no problem if you can't answer my questions. I will still accord you a reasonable level of respect. But if you brush aside my questions and give stupid excuses like "We'll see this later in the slides" (when your hallowed slides have absolutely no relevance to my questions) how the hell do you expect me to respect you? Dear friends, do use this tried and tested diversionary tactic next time you don't know how to answer a question: Act like the question is the stupidest question ever asked and that it's totally beneath you to even give it a proper thought.

I've come to a point where I don't know what on earth I'm learning in school anymore. Maybe I ask too many whys for my own good. But what's the point in going to school, planting your butt on the lecture seat and sitting there for the next few hours while your teacher foams at the mouth dispensing bullet point after bullet point that you can very well read for yourself from the Powerpoint slides? Science or engineering modules, maybe, because there are absolute truths. But Humanities modules, definitely not. The very fact that it's called Human-ities means there are imperfections, which means they leave room for whys and why nots.

A teacher who cannot tolerate whys and why nots doesn't deserve to be a teacher, as simple as that.

On a side note, I don't know why on earth my tagboard had shifted to the bottom of the page. Blogger is really testing my patience.

The Adventures of Elmer the Elephant with a Pinhole in His Heart: The Island of Bam Bam

Elmer just arrived on a sparsely inhabited island when he heard a stampede approaching at an alarming speed.

BAM! BAM! BAM!

Elmer experienced a fear-induced disconnect between his brain and his legs, and thus was unable to move in the face of doom. He closed his eyes and prayed that at least death would not be painful.

He heard a loud SCREEECH and thought that death came with a rather bizarre soundtrack. Only it wasn't death's soundtrack, it was the sound of something huge pulling the emergency brake.

After the smoke cleared, Elmer saw a lone figure standing in front of him. The stampede had been caused by a single boar. The boar had a mini rotating galaxy complete with chirping birds over his head. He also had a huge plaster on his temple, and he was as wobbly as a bobo doll. This will be explained later.

Boar: "You in Bam Bam's way, stranger."
Elmer: "I am Elmer the Elephant. You nearly trampled on me! Who on earth are you?"
Boar: "Bam Bam I am. You still in Bam Bam's way, Eleanor."
Elmer: "I am not Eleanor. Can't you see that I am a boy elephant."
Bam Bam: "Whatever say you, Emily."

Elmer gave up on trying to assert his rightful name and gender.

The truth is Bam Bam suffered from a slight brain haemorrhage that affected his sense of judgment, on top of making him incoherent at times. This is because Bam Bam had a habit of crashing headlong into walls.

Elmer: "You nearly killed me, Bam Bam."
Bam Bam: "Bam Bam want to kill Elmer not. Bam Bam want to crash wall. Elmer stand in front of wall. So Bam Bam nearly crash Elmer."

Elmer looked behind him, and true enough, there was a solid brick wall waiting to be crashed by Bam Bam.

Elmer: "Why would you want to crash into the wall, Bam Bam?"
Bam Bam: "Because something behind wall there is. Bam Bam want get that something."
Elmer: "What is that something?"
Bam Bam: "Bam Bam know not. But still something there is."

So Elmer went behind the solid brick wall to see what this something was, and was greeted by another solid brick wall. He went behind the other wall, and realized that there was an endless stretch of walls.

Elmer: "There's nothing but even more walls, Bam Bam."

Bam Bam said impatiently: "Yes, yes, but the something is behind even more walls. Bam Bam just have to crash and crash and crash."
Elmer: "Look at you! You can't even stand straight. Your brain must have been knocked out of its socket from all the crashing. Why don't you stop, turn around and do what normal boars do?"
Bam Bam: "But Bam Bam crash many many walls already. If Bam Bam stop now, everything is nothing."

Elmer realized that no matter what he said Bam Bam was not going to listen to him.

Elmer: "As you wish, Bam Bam. I really hope that you'll find what you are looking for. But if you want to turn back, you can always do so."
Bam Bam: "Okay, Esther. Bye bye."

- E.

I'm not sorry it's over

I miss Germany.

I looked through my friend's Facebook album in Cologne, and was reminded of how endearingly vibrant the country is. Where else can you find a kebab stall with the slogan "Doener macht schoener" (Kebabs make you more beautiful)?

I still remember that the atmosphere at the Leipzig campus music festival was electrifying, for lack of better words. Probably because of the static from so many hairy bodies bumping against each other, but seriously, even though I didn't really fancy being bumped from all directions like a pinball, I felt like I was at the centre of aliveness. What kind of a word is "aliveness"? I am turning incoherent.

I try not to think about Mizzou because I'll feel like a black hole has opened in my diaphragm. Sometimes I hate Facebook because it makes me feel so near to my Mizzou friends and yet so far (yes yes it sounds like some cheesy third-rate lyrics). I mean, hey, I can check out what they have been up to from their albums, their wall posts, their notes, their whatever. But it's different from standing or sitting near them, poking their stomachs, hugging them, telling them whatever's on my mind, debating death penalty over yet another disgusting lunch at Dobbs. Talking to some of them on Facebook Chat has become, I'm sorry to say, so banal.

"How are you?"
"All right. I've been doing blablabla. How about you?"
"All right too. I've been doing blablabla."

It makes me sad when a beautiful friendship has been degraded into something as ridiculous as coffee table talk. That's why if I ever leave Singapore for good, I never want to email or send letters to friends here. It's better to leave a good memory than to let it rust over time from fading interest and increasing social distance.

The robot dreams

So it was, today I went to the Speaker's Corner.

After I came back, my brother said: "You go there speak and nobody listen is it, that's why you come back."

For the record, I didn't go there to speak. I went there to listen to people speak. Some students and alumni from my school held a protest because of the campus media blackout on Dr. Chee Soon Juan's "uninvited" visit to NTU.

I personally feel that this whole issue had blown on the university's face. Why censor a report which is exactly that: a report of Dr. Chee's visit, nothing more nothing less. No political agenda, no manifesto, no rah-rah come join the dark side propaganda.

However, I would say that the protest had limited success in drawing members of the public. Most of the people there were from the media, both mainstream and "alternative" (the word being used rather loosely here): Channel 5, The New Paper, The Online Citizen, and maybe others that I had no knowledge about. The rest were NTU students and friends of the speakers. In total, I would say about 50 people came. Compare this to the bus fare hike protest organized by TOC last week that drew 150 people.

I can only attribute this to two factors:

1. Lack of publicity. If not for TOC and Yi Wen's blog, I wouldn't have known about this protest.
2. Media freedom is not a matter of bread and butter. Face it, Singaporeans are more concerned with paying four cents more on each bus trip than with press freedom, and campus press freedom at that.

Four people spoke (by order of speaking): Clarence, an SCI alumnus; Scott, a final-year SCI student; Yan Wen, an SCI alumnus; and Thaddeus, a second-year SCI student.

I feel that Clarence and Scott were the best speakers. Clarence scored on both substance and quality of presentation. Scott no doubt had some good things to say, but perhaps he could have toned down his speech rate and gestures because they were a distraction. And by the time Yan Wen and Thaddeus spoke, I was kind of tuning off already because they were basically repeating what Clarence and Scott had said. And honestly I feel that Thaddeus was a bit fuwa fuwa at times.

But a credit to all four speakers for standing on a hill (literally) and speaking for what they believe in. Belief is not an over-rated word that anyone and everyone can puke out to make themselves sound more enlightened than they really are. It's not easy facing the media and the school and in some cases your family. The risk is real.

A person without ideals is a robot, and a person without pragmatism is a dreamer. Obviously we need a good dose of both to make things happen.

A little more of you and a little less of me

Thinking about life in general is such a cliche.
But I eat cliche for breakfast, so here goes.

I wonder if people actually mean half the things they say.
I wonder if it's possible to love someone for the rest of your life.
I wonder when you should stop loving others so you can love yourself a bit more.
I wonder if loving yourself at the expense of others is selfish.
I wonder if our lives are ours and ours alone.
I wonder if I'll ever be content.
I wonder if I'll ever find a place to truly settle down.
I wonder if being alone is a blessing or a tragedy.
I wonder if we are as strong as we'd like to believe.
I wonder if anything will be enough.
I wonder if everything is my own little lie.
I wonder if I'll ever find what I'm looking for.
I wonder if I am even looking for something.
I wonder when was the last time I felt like there was nowhere else I'd rather be.
I wonder when was the last time I laughed like it was the only thing to do.
I wonder when was the last time I knew exactly what I was doing.
I wonder if you are happy.