cross the Cross; or x the +

On the morning bus to school, roughly halfway through my journey this lady boarded the bus, dressed in very chic clothing, nice round face, all in all rather attractive. Attractive, that is, till she pulled out a book titled "Leading Kids to Jesus". That's right. Leading Kids to Jesus. Whatever happened to teaching kids about Jesus? Lead them to him, like how you lead a dog for a walk to the park, or how you lead cows and pigs to the slaughterhouse. Pisses me off.
I shall make this very clear, I do not hate Christianity, I have countless friends who are Christians or Catholics, and I did in fact believe in Christ when I was young. What I dislike, almost to the point of hate, is how other Christians go about spreading their faith. Especially them Evangelists, who are totally doing it wrong.
Yesterday, as I was flipping through The New Paper, 2 particular pieces of news came to my attention.
The first, is regarding the practice of members of a church that hang around outside school gates and harass random students for their handphone numbers and repeatedly pester them to attend cell group meetings in their church, as well as handing out bibles for days!
This is not the first time it has happened, but this, I believe, is the first time such a story ever got published. Why do these adults continue to pester students obviously uninterested in their religion. What do they gain? Well, from their religious point of view, they believe they are doing a service by introducing them to Christ, as well as effecting eternal salvation. Bravo. How selfish.
The second, is concerning this this 17 year-old who managed to escape from a shelter home. Whats so strange about that? Well, the conditions he was made to live in was no better than prison, trust me. Read the article and you will sympathize with him too.
But what really got me motivated to write about this is not just because the pastor got angry at the boy's mother for lodging a report to the police, no! Its because, they REQUIRE the people who take stay in the shelter to stay for two bloody years! And in addition to that, they are required to attend Bible studies and pray when they are "interned" in the shelter. Please note that they are actually paying to stay in the shelter. Its like paying to stay in prison, with daily brainwashing sessions made compulsory!
Now, you might say this might simply be isolated incidents. But no, I can assure you, such abuse of the Christian faith has been going on for ages. And just to drive home a point, when I was young, I was put into daycare centres run by Christians, and guess what, we were made to say grace, sing Christian songs, and were even given a damned bible!
So excuse me for having a natural bias against Christianity, but for all the damage it has done, I think some major restructuring has to be done, or at least learn from a nicer and much gentler faith, like Buddhism. Of course, I'm not saying Buddhism is the best, or that it is good, but thats for another post for another time.

I'm an arrogant elitist

Even my lecturer agreed. Out loud. I actually wrote a little reflection (compulsory) and I made it all about how pissed I was with how we were still walking through the basics that every writer should know (like where to get inspiration from and all that). I think I was subconsciously trying to bait her into saying it. I'm not just elitist, I'm also a troll looking for trouble.

Current homework assignments include:
A review on Vertigo
14 high-quality pictures of "Nature & Man-made" for film photography
Having to get a professional or famous interwiewee, a tolerable host, and direct an episode of a talkshow with them in it. In a million-dollar studio.
I also have to write a letter to someone I've severed ties with and say all the things I want to say. I was going to write at first to Mikana, apologize for the voyeurism, explain the desperation. But two weeks ago Geia tried to talk to me again (Mikana hasn't). Doesn't seem to have changed, and I'm afraid I might be partially guilty for that.

One of the lines I rehearsed in my head for the scholarship interview involved a promise to become one of the top students, if not THE student for my course by graduation time.

Eng-gripe

You know, I realized at the end of O Levels last year that all my English I picked up over the last 10+ years are going to have to take a step back. Well, i take that back. Its not that I'm too used to having a lingual supremacy or advantage over my peers. The current issue is that I completely cannot seem to grasp what my classmates are speaking or typing sometimes. ABSOLUTELY UNABLE TO CATCH THEIR MEANING! And before the arrows are returned to me, I can assure you, its not my language skills, sure they are rusty but they are still good, no its the simple fact that they are unable to read and repeat or speak complex words, and when they type, its chock-full of errors and warrants immediate editing from yours truly.
Well, I guess that is what to be expected from being in such a "De-Anglicized" majority demographic.

turning the page

hi guys. pebblefort won't include TOFU for the next few months or so. I gotta move. maybe someday i'll come back.

events that have unfolded around me are causing me to rethink a lot about what is going to happen.

one day i'll return again. cya guys.

Testing

Neat feature..

Sent from my Nokia phone

An interesting dialogue

Well, I just had a very very interesting and enriching dialogue session with Senior Parliamentary Secretary of the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports & Ministry of Transport (MCYS), Mr Teo Ser Luck. About thirty Student Councillors were called up and tasked with engaging Mr Teo in a dialogue in which we were expected to raise questions, issues and our concerns on the topics under his jurisdiction, mainly sports, family and transport.

However, the dialogue session turned into discussion where Mr Teo provided his personal experiences on sports, his life before being in the parliament, his take on family issues and other anecdotes. A dialogue that started off with sportsmanship within Junior Colleges ended off with Mr Teo having a genuine experience-sharing about how he met his wife and their courtship of ten years. Truly, he is a renaissance man, having completed four Ironman triathlons, having been a very very successful business man and now being an office holder.

But perhaps my greatest take-away from the session was how we have a very capable, honest and very down-to-earth man in a governmental position. Kinda makes me secure, knowing that he's there guiding the youth in Singapore. But what made him open up so much to us? Aren't we just mere students from a neighborhood JC? Doesn't he come from Victoria School and Nanyang Junior College, way better schools than mine? What was it? I wonder.

-

I hate hypocrites and the superficial people who sometimes swarm themselves around me.

its starting to get really obvious and its eating the shit out of me.

yes, i slapped the hell out of you. but i thought to myself first if i was being hypocritical or not. and i realised i was not.

thus, your PMS ended this entire long journey.

unAWARE

wtf. can you believe it...

the aware saga got an article in the economist. The world's leading international newspaper has an article about the aware saga.

why was aware established in the first place. we don't need pushing for women rights in singapore.

aware is just furthur prove women cannot play politics.

disgusting

When will I finally have a free Friday?

The club has been invited to a talk hosted by the School of IS to participate as attendees. It is part of year 3 students' World Issues from a Singapore Perspective (WISP) module, The topic is regarding "heroes" of the SAF, and will be an excellent way to learn about Singapore's military forces. Feel free to ask your insightful questions at the Q&A session!

Scholarship interview went okay. If I don't get this then I'll get it next year. Meanwhile, does anyone have any questions for the SAF they want me to pass on?

Interview #2

I've been shortlisted for a scholarship interview on Friday. This time I've got some O Level results to back it up (hopefully they won't read too much into that B3 for Lit). The bad news is that I've been looking in my house for my portfolio since last month.

I'll probably have to print out all my work again tomorrow night. Terminal Velocity, Toilet Horror, Freefall, a bunch of GunZ compilations, Quid Novi, a couple short stories and unfinished concept scripts, not to mention the completed ones I entered into the playwriting competitions. I have the soft copies of two testimonials as well, but I need signatures.

Haven't spoken to JJ in a (long) while. Truth is, I forgot about her after graduation and I think some of that filtered through. I'll have to ask Ms Z if I can meet her for lunch on Friday. Now I really can't avoid it anymore.

Socially I'm surviving in poly. I'll have to wait for projects and stuff to get difficult, before suddenly everyone will want to be my friend.

But hey. Screw surviving, I wanna soar.

So I took a quiz on facebook that says I'm a perfectionist kind of person. Quite true... And with taking all those moral ed lessons in school telling me I'm a very dominant and arrogant character, the same message is beginning to hit home.

Sure, I'm an arrogant guy and I'm a perfectionist when it comes to doing what I think I should be doing. Normally I would brush this off and in fact smile quietly under the facade that somehow, some people in this world understands. Yes, being a perfectionist also makes me rather elite in a sense.

Most of my life's ethos quotes are all to deal with Perfection.

I've been really inspired by Modern School's motto "Perfection cannot be acheived by the weak." and John Wooden's strive for perfection quotes. In fact, I live fueled by the drive to be perfect. None of us are perfect, but its the desire to outdo and the endeavour for perfection that creates new beings and pushes new boundries in us.

It all made perfect sense...

Until I got into a brush with a friend over being too perfectionist. This has nothing to do with the previous pfort discussion on elitism (not the dangerously elitism discussion). It was a quite scuffle with one of my close personal friends who disagreed about what I was striving for in life. Pushing myself to excel in everything wordly. Giant once said, I'm a go-getter. I totally agree. But to what extent am I going to push so hard for excellence and forget about what I stepped on for my great endeavour. 

Even in school, I'm beginning to make a name among the people around me for being arrogant, elite, a perfectionist and someone who wouldn't tolerate nonesense from others. I was never this serious about this in secondary school and I guess being in junior college has changed this in me. 

Its time to stop moving so fast and slow down to rethink. Nothing is wrong with being a perfectionist, but if it strains so much then it obviously means something is wrong.

Rethinking and retracing. But this obviously does not mean I'm not a perfectionist now. And I still despise stupid people and nonesense...