Got into a little facebook tussle + rant

Pretty common for me to pick fights on the internet =(

Protip: don't fight on facebook. It can be nearly as bad as having sex with the other guy in public.

I don't really have anything against the YOG, honest. I don't have too much interest in the politics at the moment, because my own life is a sinking ship. But once in a while I can't resist playing devil's advocate. The perverseness of going against the flow... it gets me hard!

So anyway I don't know either of these people, or indeed many people at all on FB, so I decide what the hell I'll just go bomb something off the top of my head. I thought the miss Tan up was just making a throwaway comment like me, but nooooo, she starts naming names. Everybody in Singapore knows that one person is just a dangerous detractor, but two people is a mob and you should call the police so they can bring in the riot vans and tear gas.

Anyway yeah, small beans, wouldn't even call it mudslinging (though I probably sound harsh for a Singaporean). The surprise is when I realize that Estell IS ON MY FRIENDS LIST LOL WAT. I keep a fairly tight friends list and never add anyone I don't know, and I have never known anyone by this name. I check the profile, and it's my junior in Mass Communication. She changed her name to this weird thing.

*headslap* Of course. It's the goddamn internet.

I guess it looks like I've lost another of my precious few media contacts, not to mention one of links back to my old life in secondary school and the Drama Club. I shall strive to be less snide on Facebook. *sigh* Miss Tan there added me as a friend though, lol. She appears to be a 20+ politically-minded girl, judging from her profile. I was hoping she'd be younger, hehehe.

Rant time. Why are Singaporeans so adverse to passionate debate and argument? It gets on my tits how many people keep interjecting variations of "OMG I HAZ MY OWN OPINION OKEY" and "agree 2 disagree can???" Those phrases have nothing inherently wrong about them - when an argument persists as a stalemate, you can talk about common ground and difference of opinion to bring things back to earth. But it has been feeling to me for a very long time that too many Singaporeans spam these lines at the first sign of tension, throwing a blanket on the debate the moment things get interesting.

Singaporeans like us loooooove the status quo. It terrifies us that our opinions may be OMG WRONG, it terrifies us that because Person A has different values from Person B, a fight might break out OMG! Or they won't be friends anymore. No, we just want everyone to keep quiet except when they're agreeing with each other. After all, we wouldn't want a repeat of the racial riots from 1962 now would we?

We're so fucking pampered, not just in the material sense, but in the social sense. In May last year or the year before, a Singaporean teacher went to lecture at New York. There, she taught that homosexuality was bad, which made the liberals there flare up and start up a little campaign against her. Did she stand up for what she believed in? Fuck no. She turned tail and ran for home. I'm pro-gay marriage myself, but that's not the point. The point is that Singaporeans shit their pants at the first sign of conflict, they either run away spouting "BUT IT JUZ MAI OPINON", or they get really defensive (see LKY's lawsuits).

It's probably the reason Singaporeans venture little into the international stage beyond business. One of the few reasons I would not migrate west is because I'm pretty sure I'm mollycoddled too. Wouldn't fit in.

Security guard laments to me about life

The security guard was at the table just outside the lifts. I walked up and sat on the opposite end. She was Malay and obese.

"How do you buy that?" she asked suddenly, pointing a finger at the ice blended coffee I had set down. Apparently she wasn't so sure what the black pearls in it were called. The conversation turned into a rant about her job pretty quickly though, so I'm fairly sure she had wanted to talk about that all along.

She works pretty much fulltime. In a single day she has to stand around at different places, usually traffic control. She opened her notebook and indicated a bunch of organized scribbling. It all adds up a nine hours a day of standing. Not all at once, but I think it was mentioned that the breaks were short. It's hard on the legs. Right now she was taking an unsanctioned rest; the pain became a bit too much for her this time. She has to ration a medicine to keep on her feet.

I wasn't participating much in the conversation at this point. The woman obviously had a lot she wanted to get out. She was an immigrant, and she couldn't use her Johor work experience here (I think it had something to do with production lines). The paycheck is eaten up quickly - with products like clothes and shampoo priced for the middle-class, saving money is a challenge.

I honestly can't remember very much. I'm a pretty bad listener, but I didn't want to break her flow. It's a bit like a dream - I had long grown used to the convention that adults would only ever bother to talk to teenagers for work, or for dispensing advice. As a listening ear, even, but never the other way around. Most of what I know about my own parents' lifestyle at work is stuff I overhear.

As I said goodbye to the security guard, feeling some pity for her pretty shitty existence, I wondered why she had bothered to talk to me. I definitely don't have that kind, approachable face. Would she have said anything if it was in my twenties, thirties, or preteen years? Teenagerhood is a magic period of time where most people hover between childishness and adulthood. Perhaps it's a mix of the youth responsibility to listen to elders and the ability to understand things on an adult level. This could be a quality that teenagers could utilize for the betterment of society and all that, but sadly, due to widespread apathy and image of teenagers as immature suicidal nymphomaniacs, the generation gap stays, and woe betide anyone who tries to take that away form Singapore.

Anon, you're a real bro

Kicking around 4chan one day when I chanced upon someone putting up a torrent full of ebooks. And I mean like, 1 GB+ of mostly text. A lot of ebooks.

Some people predict that in a few decades, ISPs and corporations will clamp down on what sort of information flows through the internet, destroying our free little anarchy forever. Thankfully, that day isn't here yet.

Hundreds of books in here... 200+ alone are various survival type books, ranging from the general sort to ones specializing on plants, specific disasters like floods, woodland survival, disaster cookbooks. Also two handbooks from the SAS and the US Army.

Also some general cookbooks... blueprints for solar paneling... sleeping guide... sex guide... organic chem... general chem... how to train your dog to get beer from fridge.

"DIY folder" is a another juggernaut, full of one-word pdf files. Lots of household stuff, but its probably written for western architecture.

Don't know whether it's wise to say this (couldn't find a list of banned books for Singapore, typical of MDA to want the flexibility), but there are also many guides to growing certain substances. Stuff that can make you see stars, you get my drift? Yep, a lot of these. Considering deleting these after I finish seeding.

Even that might not be the worst of it. There's a CIA tome here on interrogation (the foreword advises against torture, though). How to construct hidey-holes. Driving techniques for escape and evasion. The most chilling one has to be the anarchist's cookbook. Cursory examination reveals that its not even a PRINTED book like the others - it's an underground compilation of things you can NEVER admit to knowing about in polite society, to put it lightly.

Needless to say, I'm going to be doing a lot of deleting.

Update: Anarchist's cookbook found to be mostly full of crap, lol.

Lean Times

The month of march has just been really horrible.

I've met with setbacks after setbacks in repeated succession.

Almost every area of my life received a blow and a spit in the face.

Triple whammy sounds like it...

Got.to.bounce.back.

Hello Term 6

Really not much to be happy about the past week or so...

BTs were one of the if not the worst exams of my life...

My team got thrashed by HC in our first fixture.

And I'm behind schedule with my tutorials.

And so the list goes on...

And compounding to the agony is a whole list of to dos...

Well can't complain I signed up for this shit...

Recess Week

This one week of study break has been proving fruitful (sure it will).

Been training like a mad dog with the season round the corner...

Have also been putting some of my mind power on the NUS chancellor's shield semi finals.

Guess sometimes I'm so caught up with the chase that I tend to forget the important things.

Like in this case, studying for my upcoming Block Tests..

To me, everything worth doing is worth doing well. And I hope this is reflected in my results, whatever I'm currently pursuing.

Recently I've been fretting over my pursuit of perfection. It's the season where being capable and perfect would make up for my shortcomings. But if that's not going to happen maybe I'll just have to pay up by other means.

Going to swing into over drive soon...

And lets hope we win a couple of medals here and there.

TOFU out

Movie Review: 4.30

The core details first. Local film, independent/low-budget, directed by Royston Tan. Running time 90+ minutes. Quiet Singaporean drama revolving around a boy and a very foreign Korean man's weird relationship in a very empty house.

Depending on how impatient you are regarding films, you might either be frustrated by the film's slow pacing or you might tolerate it. One of the first shots of the film is a long take featuring our lead character, a pre-teen Chinese Singaporean boy named Xiao Wu, scrabbling around in the dark looking for something in a guy's room in the dead of night. That's practically all that happens for what feels like minutes afterwards, and we don't learn anything about what he was doing before we finally get to the next shot, which begs the question of why they held the bloody shot for so long.

Long takes, slow cutting, and generally serene pacing are the signatures of this film (I'm told it's a departure from Royston Tan's usual style). I think it's probably an experiment on Royston's part, because there are plenty of points where I found my attention wandering for lack of something happening. Music is used sparingly and not too much diegetic sound, so an audience is many a time left twiddling their thumbs waiting. That said, there are also scenes that use the long take well; for instance, it is used to communicate effectively the trappings of a classroom scene and that agonizingly empty and slow lonely feeling. As long as you're invested in the characters of the movie, the slow pacing should be an overall plus to your appreciation of it.

There are only two "real" characters, they hardly interact with each other, don't even speak the same language, and yet, they both bring something to the situation. Xiao Wu provides humour, mischief, and innocence as a counterpoint to the sordid themes, as the child character often does, but at the same time he is at the centre of much of the pain in the movie, being abandoned by his mother to live with a stranger that doesn't even speak the same language. The "Korean uncle" Jung, unhappy and distant guardian, although he does very little guarding, is the vague and fuzzy dream that us and Xiao Wu are feeling around for. In a hazy, timeless landscape where Xiao Wu has virtually no one and nothing, we are tantalized with few but intimate little details about this man who is just in the next room, but just can't talk to.

The movie focuses on Xiao Wu's numerous attempts to reach him, and Jung's ambiguous reactions, despite all the differences between them. Most of these attempts to connect are disguised as pranks, courtesy - but since these are the only times Xiao Wu's life brushes another, they feel sincere, treasured. As I grew depressed about Xiao Wu's empty, empty existence, Jung also became my little fixation, as he was pretty much the only person either of us saw - extended, contemplative shots were now filled with a bit of longing to become somehow closer, to make some real contact, to get some real conversation. 4.30 was quiet and dark. It took a while, but it got me.

Some credit has to go the the acting, too. Xiao Li Yuan (the boy) and Young-jun Kim (the Korean) do fine jobs, finer still when you take into account how difficult long takes are, in getting everything right. Sound, voices, are conspicuous in their sparseness, which only helps add to the impact of certain scenes when they are present. Overall it's a minimalist approach that eschews the usual heated dialogue and overly snaky plot that is common in local productions. At no point do Jung or Xiao Wu talk plainly about how they feel, and yet you manage to understand their isolation, their desperation.

Some may think 4.30 is mostly just a lot of tedious shots and an overly long short film (and they would have ample reason), but I could stand to defend it as an artistic triumph, an example of Singaporean cinema that doesn't rely on the easy tricks (horror, hot actresses, guns, tired slapstick, name actors, etc.). Not a movie designed for casual audiences, but I'm glad Tan stuck with it and didn't try to shoehorn anything in.

Also of note: To enhance the awkward relations between Jung and Xiao Wu, director Royston Tan forbid them from talking to each other. The one time this rule was broken, Royston canceled the shoot. Nice to see he's learning enforced method acting.

most of the time, we take things for granted. and we always want something else other than what we don't have. but maybe life is just like this and the grass is always greener on the other side.

i mean school's really killing me but perhaps the feeling of progression fits me better than stagnation.

because we all like to progress

Of school and pride

Just thought I wanted to share some school mottos that I felt are really powerful stuff...

In no order,

The Best Is Yet To Be - Anglo-Chinese School

Nil Sine Labore (Nothing Without Labour) - Victoria School

Ora et Labora (Pray and Work) - Saint Joseph's Institution

Auspicium Melioris Aevi (Hope of A Better Age) - Raffles Institution

Up and On (Upward and Onward) - Saint Andrew's School

Naimatma Balheenien Labhya (Perfection Cannot Be Acheived By The Weak) - Modern School Delhi

I really like all these mottos as I think they all epitomize the strive and desire for excellence.

Of worth mention is the Victoria School's motto. "Nothing Without Labour" really is something I hope to live by.

In fact I think all these mottos are pretty good principles.

Here's to good mottos.

derp derp

I just heard that one of the teachers who accompanied us to India was fired last June for slapping a student. Guess who, hurr hurr.