Leave him alone.
I saw a real man in school just now. I never really knew him, never really talked to him, never really liked him as a person(probably because I don't know him well enough), but I did enjoy threatening to squeeze his nipples. As I did with almost every other guy that I kinda know.I never knew that he's such a manly man until yesterday. It's Saturday, 2.14AM now, 24th October. I never knew that manly side to him until 13hours ago, when he came out and shrugged his shoulders helplessly, fighting back his disappointment and panic/labels of what was to come, and managed to afford a weak, wistful, smile to all who inquired. He wasn't inhuman enough to remain emotionally isolated, but he managed to shake his head regretfully to all, almost as if he has let everyone else down.
He managed to have a (small) talk with me, and I really didn't know what to say to make him feel better. I was helpless. To a real man like him, what am I to say? What is there to say? What is left to say? What would he rather hear? Would he rather be given his peace and quiet, away from prying eyes and unkind/overly-kind tongues? Would it have been better to let him have that bit of dignity? Or would concern be of use?
He didn't express much verbally. It was all in the non-verbal cues. There was no laughter in his eyes when I tried to crack some jokes to cheer him up--the sinking feeling is too much for him to laugh truly, but he laughed anyway.
I like to think of myself as someone who can see much from eyes, because I'm guud, but I didn't like what I saw. As mentioned, I don't know him well. But I was affected by his mood.
And there was nothing left for anyone to do for him, the die is cast and nothing anybody said would be of help. Concern is an euphemism for destruction of pride. Are we to bestow it upon him then? And if we did, then what?
I think he'd rather we leave him alone.
-- 10/20/2009 12:35:00 AM
Fai is gay.
This picture tells it all:
-- 10/19/2009 03:51:00 AM
Winner.
Really?
-- 10/17/2009 01:12:00 AM
Why the emphasis on unfamiliar animals?
Went to build sandcastles just now as a school event. It's quite weird for a bunch of JC students to build sandcastles, or so I think, because youth has left me and there is nothing in me besides age. It is more regrettable that I couldn't revel in mud creation nor satisfaction gained from having created a hybrid turtle-cougar-lion sand structure.I think that inactivity is the source of much discontent of the day, because there was nothing I can do that would benefit the building of the structure. When you have 20+ people crowding around a pile of sand, and 200+ people in the same squeezed area, you can't move around much and there's nothing much you can do because 20+ people crowding around the sand is just too much, there's too little space for everyone to work in. We ended up having around 5 slackers. Not that we want to slack but because we can contribute nothing.
Moving out of that compound would be retarded because you'd be missing and you don't want your attendance to be ticked off. Also, to be completely missing would mean that you're totally not interested in the affairs of the sand, so much that you are not even allowing yourself to be available to help when you are needed.
And to stone around on the beach with truckloads of people surrounding you looking busy isn't that healthy. And the instructors swoop down on stoners and people who are building random sandcastles at random spots. It's not like we can do anything else, but it's not healthy to argue, so we conformed and went back to stoning beside the structure. Easiest way out.
So for each sand structure you must build something related to the house, and AJ's houses are all cats. Not that I have a problem with cats since I'm a lion, but the question: Why cats?
Seriously, what's so impressive about cats? Or dogs? Or birds? America loves the eagle. Or hawk. Doesn't really make much of a difference to me. Singapore loves the lion. Or mermaid. Or Merlion, which doesn't exist and doesn't make sense considering the gender of both creatures involved but nevertheless well-loved and ignored to a large extent. The existence of such awe-inspiring creatures are hardly in-your-face kind of things. You are not reminded of the hawk, or mermaids or lions or Vanda Miss Joaquim-s in everyday scenarios. These animals(and plant) are chosen because of their uniqueness and rareness and traits which makes them stand out, not that any animal doesn't stand out with its own traits. But I haven't gotten to the point yet--
why all this extravagance? A hawk? A bird? All the same to me. A lion? A pussycat? Got difference mehx? Every major organization(every organization actually) is so concerned about a show of power that they forget that certain animals don't exist throughout the world. Like, you don't find pandas in Singapore. We don't even have them in our zoo. We don't see lions in Singapore in our workplace. We cannot relate to such noble creatures because they are too noble for us commoners to relate to. I can't identify myself with the whale besides the fact that I've got blubber, and I can't relate to an anaconda besides the fact that I have one behind my zipper. Oh wait...
OK I can relate to anacondas. But I can't relate to a bull besides the fact that I bullshit, and I really can't find myself similar to a cow besides the fact that male cows have whips and so do I.
Unless you can find something significant in the wings of a bird that is so you, you can't disagree with me. If you can, you're probably delusional, get away from your computer you're not safe on the Internet. I mean like, Hi, you're Human. You are not an animal. Sometimes I really don't see how come animals are associated with human traits. Are pigs really stupid? No. Are lions the only brave animals in the planet? How intelligent can any other animal be if they can be killed and eaten by us humans? If the animal is that clever then it should be able to preserve itself. That ability is apparently lacking in all animals. So why is it that owls are seen as a symbol of intelligence and not humans?
But this doesn't talk about extravagance of these rare, humanized animals. I just don't see how zai these animals are. I think that the most marvellous creature on Earth is....-drum roll-
the cockroach.
It has been on Earth since time immemorial(the dinosaur era), and not mentioned to have boarded Noah's Ark so I guess that means it's quite amphibious too considering the fact that it survived 7 days of flood without having to rest while treading water. Guess that's why it has 6 legs. 6 legs right?
Have you realized that cockroach repellents are always changing to become stronger? That's because cockroaches are able to survive and create some form of defense against such repellents. When you compare how viruses kills humans like flies, and humans can't kill cockroaches for nuts, you'd realize how strong and undying the cockroach is. If people were to humanize cockroaches, this persevering spirit of theirs is most commendable. Really.
Also, about the significance of cockroaches in real life, well, it just is. How often do you see a cockroach running around your house, or void deck? Quite often. You're constantly reminded of its existence and thus its undying will to live. Isn't it touching, how such a hated creature is able to hang onto its own dear life? Isn't it sad to note that it's severely misunderstood throughout the entirety of its life? But that's alright, they understand that humans are only interested in the glamorous, and such recognition is only given to animals on board of the Noah's Ark and not the ones that could live with god's hatred. If they can survive god's war against everything living, they can survive against humans.
There you go. You have a creature that survived god's wrath. Fear it. Make it your country's symbolic creature today.
Another creature worth mentioning is the....
rat. Really, they are quite hard to catch and kill. I once saw a rat trap and a caught rat in it when I was very young. It was kinda huge and it was attacking the cage furiously. It was really scary because I thought that metal was weak back then, and that its teeth would finally break the cage and kill everyone with its teeth because he is that manly.
But it didn't manage to break metal with calcium, although it did give a lot of fight. In the end, we didn't know how to kill it and free it such that the trap could be used again. So my cousin drowned it, as the nature of cages is not waterproof. Kind of DUH there but oh well.
Oh and before we drowned it my cousin was trying to poke it to death with sticks, as the nature of cages is not stick-proof. The rat's amazing dodging abilities helped it stay alive.
Back to the drowning.
It was at night and I can't see clearly, but I could hear and see lots of bubbles, and at times the cage would suddenly appear above the water level because of the strength of the rat's swimming. It was desperate for air and it got it in those dying moments of its life. Then suddenly everything stopped. No more struggling. My cousin then took the rat cage out of the water. It wasn't moving. Its fur glistened in the faint light from within the house, that which the rat could never again see. My cousin then took it out from the cage, but even then it looked like it could spring back alive anytime soon. It seemed completely capable of performing self-resuscitation even in its dead state, but it didn't. My cousin then took some stick and whacked it, and like a door mat the murderous water splashed around the place.
Really a memorable scene. See the significance and die-hardness of a simple rat? Household pests are more meaningful than foreign, unfamiliar animals.
-- 10/16/2009 12:29:00 AM
Flaming heart.
Have I blogged about flaming before? Well, probably not but even if I did, I'm revisiting it now.So my sister was telling me about her friend's response to someone who called her 'attention seeker'.
Background info: My sis' friend commented on a webpage using her own real name, and some girl didn't particularly enjoy reading comments of someone who leaves her real name in the Internet, and so called her an 'attention seeker' because she thinks that my sis' friend is trying to attract attention by using her own real name.
So, my sis' friend responded with some form of civilized flaming which involves a lot of logic and beating down on the offender's ego, thus shutting her up.
And my sister didn't like what she saw, because she thinks that flaming is retarded and that one shouldn't flame back no matter what happens because it's pointless and makes it seem as if one is affected by the flamer's comment(s).
That I couldn't agree more, because it is true that responding to a flame message shows the effect the message has on the recipient. I mean, why bother responding to someone whom you don't care? Or respond to something that isn't true and which you couldn't be bothered with responding to because it's too far-fetched for you to bother?
Keeping quiet in times of flame would be the move of someone who views himself as a morally superior person, because not responding at all would mean:
1) A statement of indifference to the flamer: Bring it on, I don't give a shit because I didn't reply at all.
2) A form of self-satisfaction: Carry on, you're wasting your time and I know that I'm better than you because I'm morally superior and you're only talking to yourself.
3) Face: I'm not going to lose face by flaming back and making it seem as if I've lost my cool.
There could be other variations as to why people would not respond to a flame or bullying but I can't really recall that many things offhand, so good weather.
But does it really work that way? By not appearing to be affected by the flamer's message, are you really unaffected? This indifferent treatment is only useful for people who don't hate the victim, and would give up on flaming the victim once he knows(or thinks) that the victim isn't bothered at all. The I'm-talking-to-myself illusion kicks in, and the flamer gives up to the icy indifference of his supposed victim.
In reality, most flamers are intelligent. I must stress--Most, not all. And most flamers know that by attacking his victim's person/character, the victim is most probably unable to remain calm or emotionally isolated from the flame message, even if the victim appears to be so. It is impossible for someone to be totally unaffected by a random comment made by someone he doesn't know about perhaps how stupid he is for not knowing that the door is meant to be pulled and not pushed. I made it into a real life context because not everyone has been flamed before. Either way, bottom line is that you'd be affected by others' comments on you because their opinions matter to you especially if it's something sensitive.
I once tried to stop a flame-war on my friend's tagboard. OK, it's not really a flame war, it was a random dude who was stalking my friend's friend on my friend's blog. Weird chap, but weird people are all over the place. The random dude was like asking for my 2nd degree friend's daily routine, and how well is she doing in her CCA. My friend was quite distraught or so I think, and my other friends tried to chip in to help by trying to shut the random dude up. I was like:
Hey all, let's not bother with him at all. Let's not reply to him because there's no point in stooping to his level, because when we quarrel with idiots they bring us to their level and beat up with experience.
or something along those lines, just telling everyone not to respond to him and treat him with indifference(how oxymoron-ic). It didn't work. The random dude came back with:
Hmm. Now FUCK YOU, how do you like that? I know you're reading this, I know you're pissed with me, but YOU CAN'T REPLY because of your own rules. How do you like that? (:
I changed my tagname thereafter.
See, I was still emotionally affected. It happened a few years back but I can still remember it even now. Just because the flame occurs online does not make it less immediate than a personal attack offline.
My sister still couldn't relate to my view that her friend was right in flaming back logically.
I think that flaming back is a form of self-defence, it's a retaliatory action against people who invade your personal space or make weird random judgements on you despite not knowing you very well. It's in short an education about yourself to others, however it also shows that you're vulnerable(something everyone knows anyway).
As mentioned above, keeping silent, keeping a I-am-holier-than-thou attitude doesn't help when the flamer is persistent in his flaming and knows better that the victim is more affected than the victim wishes to be.
Seriously, they know. Flamers know that they are hitting where it hurts, and it doesn't matter whether you appear to be humanely involved in the flaming or not, they burn anyway. This carpet-bombing of your person would only result in collateral damage in your social network, unless you have the guts to stand up for yourself and fight the flamer logically.
My sis was telling me about how she think she'd handle such a situation. She thinks that she'd not respond to the flamer at all, and complain to her close friends about it. She doesn't really know much about flaming because she has a life that's not very virtual, but that's what she thinks she'd do. A lot of people would choose to do that too, because standing up for themselves online is quite a pointless act. But:
1) The flaming won't stop.
2) You remain affected even after the flaming stops.
Is it really worth keeping quiet because of this indifference of yours that you wish for others to feel, when they already know that you are affected?
My sis and I quarrelled over this for like an hour or so. Quite fun.
On a completely random note, I was at my uncle's house on Sunday because I needed to take my passport-sized photo for APPLES. Not the fruit, but because I'm going Genting with my (extended) family, and going overseas require travel documents in the form of a passport(duh), and mine expired liao. I think most are expired, but yea. So, I needed to take a passport-sized photo, which my uncle helped me with.
No, the point is not in the photo. The point is when Kieren(one of my cousins, like, 10years younger than me) pointed Kristie to my stitched area. I wasn't that interested in showing a 4year-old girl my (quite) gory wounds, but she was pulling my hand away from the covered area and so I relented. She didn't flinch, just asked 'Gor-gor what happened?', and she wasn't satisfied with my answer so she went to ask her grandfather.
Who replied: Coz he was climbing tables, then he fall down. Next time don't climb tables OK?
LOLOLOLOLOLOL OK that was the punchline in case you missed it because it's not very funny in retrospect but I've been getting a lot of comments for the sheer stupidity of the method I got my wounds by.
And because I don't know how to end this post I'm just going to make a random vague reference to the clock which read 2.38AM and buhbye.
-- 10/14/2009 01:40:00 AM
Post-promos.
So that was the end of the 4 day affair with the symbolic gesture of proving your academic worth and the proof of your intelligence because papers are all it takes to prove your worth.I hope I justify myself well enough to promote >.<
And maths really redefines helplessness, like...
how I'd be content to get double-digit for it. It's a paper upon 100, and I'd be thanking my toes for 10 although that didn't really make sense.
Seriously, throughout the 3hour paper I was stoning and praying for it to end earlier because it'd be the same anyway, I'm stoning my hours away while others are writing and calculating like mad.
In the end, I resorted to playing with my TI and I was like...trying to do guess-and-check because I had too much time due to unanswerable questions, ie the whole paper.
It was crazy. I have no mathematical ability.
Life.
Oh and post-promos celebrations. Well I can't say that I'm relieved, perhaps I would be after getting to know whether I'm promoted or not but we'd just hope. Anyway, on Friday, I had lunch at some Chinese restaurant in Tenpenis mall, and I somehow forgot the name of the restaurant-branch-thingy, but anyway that is not the point.
The point is--angmohs were eating too. And they were using chopsticks.
In the correct way.
I remember taking great pains to educate my cousins about the Way of the Chopsticks, but I failed. But angmohs are so accustomed to chopsticks it's surprising to note that even the Chinese can't use their own eating utensils properly.
'Chopsticks? Really? I'd fork my food.'
Bleh.
Then I took the MRT to AMK. Thanks to my wonderful rectal muscles, I managed to hold it in till I reached a safehouse where I unleashed all my toxins in one shot. In fact, I was done so quickly that I didn't know that I was done. I ended up stoning there for another 3minutes or so, checking whether I'm seriously done or not(I hate return trips to the toilet, it's just retarded why some people can't finish their business in one sitting if not for diarrhoea). But as things turned out, yes, I was done in the first wave. When I stood up to wipe my ass crack I saw a blob of brown. A huge blob of brown that I thought impossible to appear in just 3 seconds of gearing up for business.
So I left for pool, which kinda sucked because I didn't know the way at all and had to disturb Darren from his game.
Pool is fun. Left-handers own. End of story.
..no. They were playing some songs in the pool place and I was marvelling at globalization once more. The fact that I'm using English is proof of globalization. The existence of my blog is testament to its power.
I haven't really mentioned how the songs were influenced by globalization. It was like they were playing English songs, then they suddenly moved on to 'Nobody', and some other random Korean/Jap song before getting back to Chinese songs, which distracted me because I can relate, I understand the lyrics(I somehow can't catch English songs because of their accent), and because I know them.
So I'd space out when waiting for my turn. It dampens my mood :c and it's distracting as in seriously but oh well that's something I got used to.
Pool was fun.
Then we went for dinner, then we stoned deciding the next move in Life for that evening.
We wanted to go Kbox but it was kinda a scam. 25bucks each for 8 people in one single room for 2 hours just doesn't work out. It means around $12.50 per song for one single person, and it was a scam. Really. When we realized this we weren't going to sit around and just get scammed, no, we don't take bullshit from people, so we went to the cashier-register-whatever-it's-called to ask if there's another way of charging and I don't mean that in the electrical appliance sense, and she could only offer to charge us for the price of 6 people.
Says a lot about the magnitude of Scam here, if the cashier people could simply waive $50 off just like that.
But it still didn't work out, overall it'd be like a milder version of Scam. The -$50 in terms of scamming magnitude kind of scam.
So we went to play L4D instead. 8 people, versus mode, chaotic. Not everyone knew how to play either, and I never played versus mode before.
Oh and in case you don't know what's Left4Dead, here is a trailer, which is quite funny considering the language it is in:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvzhmjJLxAA
Then we played 4 player campaign mode so we kinda split up into 2 games. No, not kinda, we did split up. And we always had like a representative to clear a stage and eventually the campaign. Like, when 3 of us were incapacitated I told Darren to get into the safehouse so when the 3 of us dies he'd clear the stage anyway and we'd be revived.
Such is the huge difference between real life and game. In games, you have 'Game over', and 'Respawn'. In life, you have 'Game over', and 'Eternal damnation'. So yea, we made use of the Game attributes, and just won the game without much care about 'ethics'. In the last stage, only Darren made it to the helicopter alive, leaving the 3 of us to die by smokers and incapacitated...
but that's what I told him to do in order to get the game over and done with.
Awright. That's about it. Nothing sexciting these days =\
-- 10/09/2009 02:12:00 AM
Study break. Got point mehx =\
Bit overdue, an apparent lack of time concept illustrated. Hi.So lantern festival in Rivervale was...like that lor. Don't really know what to say, nothing much happened, not a lot to share about bandages or anything. Nothing to share at all.
Except for the fact that some random P6 girl who helped out added me(and a whole lot of other people who went back to help out) on Facebook. It was weird having a P6 girl adding you on Facebook and...yea. I kinda feel inhibited by kids, I can't really go around exclaiming in all my profanities my hatred for a certain aspect of life or my vested interest in Sex(although I just did).
Moving on.
They gave us a study break for Thursday and Friday, and sad to say that I didn't really make full use of it. I went travelling to the mountains to study instead, and I made some interesting observations because my mountains are more often than not less than secluded and have a lot of people walking around.
1) Thursday. I went to Chinatown(my mum works around there) to study. So I went to um..some weird place with hardly anyone and started studying. Until 12, when one Spinelli worker approached me. The conversation was something like this:
W: Um excuse me sir, would you like to buy a drink?
Me: Uhhh, no.
W: Then please excuse yourself from this area as the people are coming down for lunch.
Me: Yea I know. I'd leave when the people come.
W: They come at 12. -gives an all-knowing, condescending smile-
And when I checked the time it was 12. Says a lot about his attitude towards me, a freeloader.
So 12 came and I went to find my mum for lunch. Her treat of course. And there were like hordes of people, much like in L4D, and a lot were angmohs. So I was wondering, how come got so many angmohs in Chinatown? Then I realized that I'm quite anti-globalization, so never mind about that view. It's just that..hordes of angmohs, aren't we capable of running businesses ourselves? OK it's supposedly a very myopic view and we're really just earning money from them, but still I think that national pride is important although it doesn't bring us money.
Seriously this way we'd be second-grade citizens holding second-grade jobs in our own country right? Yes we have our own companies and stuff but in the grand scheme of things foreign companies are still like whoa-ish(boomz) in our country right? OK maybe I'm wrong =.= I don't take econs anyway. Bleh.
Then after lunch I went to hide at my mum's office for awhile, and it was weird having all those much-older-than-me people walking around and perhaps wondering who am I because I don't think any employee is supposed to walk around in shorts and slippers severely unshaven and stuff like that. It was weird but they didn't talk to me.
It's very much like crashing a party and acting like you belong there. Everyone brings their friends along, and everyone would think that everyone else brought you along, and that you are the friend of someone of the everyone in the party. So as long as you look like you belong there, or just put on the I-eat-people face, they'd steer clear and you'd have earnt your right to stay in the party.
And I went back to the same Spinelli, and I didn't buy anything. I hog places well and my skin is thick. I'm guud.
2) NUS. I went with my sis, but I ended up wasting most of my time trying to get my hands on her laptop. Computers prove to be a great distraction and I really hate how susceptible I am to its attack. =\
The people walking around proved to be a great distraction too. Some were skimpily dressed and eyes of men simply lose focus when they meat flesh-coloured objects.
And if you think that AJ's short skirts are short a walk around NUS would redefine 'short'. It is like boomz.
And there are benches all over the place, and they always come with power plugs. Orgasms, I didn't charge my phone though.
Nothing much happened then. Awright. End of story. I should go to sleep now.
I should.
-- 10/02/2009 10:56:00 PM