Better Living Through Buttermilk

Announcing Real Presences: an ongoing record of Singapore literature in English

2010-03-17T23:23:00.004+08:00

Real Presences aims to create a greater sense of a public conversation in Singapore literature by listing and linking to all poems, short fiction, plays, books, and criticism published by Singapore writers--either locally or in foreign venues--on an ongoing basis. If you know of a work (whether your own or someone else's) that appeared this year, or is about to appear, leave a comment on this post and it will receive a listing. Please spread this call to people who you think would take an interest in it.

Read the About page for more details.

[This blog is still dead, but I figured I'd put this notice up for whoever stumbles upon it.]

Because I dislike deleting things

2009-08-13T01:01:00.000+08:00

I'm now blogging here, at a relaxed pace.

QOTD

2006-09-27T12:15:00.000+08:00

Things one doesn't expect to hear in a discussion about a group assignment on the plays of Alfian Sa'at--

'Can't we just group homosexuality, threesomes and prostitution under "Sexual Deviance?"'

How disappointing

2006-09-13T23:45:00.000+08:00

to declare an intention to start blogging again and then immediately find one doesn't really have the time for it just yet. Apparently I have like one million tests next week, one or two of which I might actually have to study for. (Logic 2110 is not one of them. More on that in a later post.)

More significantly (to me), I've been sucked into doing, guess what, the NUS Literary Society's magazine. No, I never learn. At least this time I won't be collaborating with people who live on another continent (actually two other continents) and who could up and disappear at any moment.

On a related note, I'd like to ~~encourage~~ ~~urge~~ ~~beg~~ encourage what readers I have (all two of you) to send something in for the Creative Writing Competition:

The [NUS Literary Society] Creative Writing Competition aims to recognise outstanding student writing and encourage the practice of creative writing among local youth. It contains two categories--poetry and fiction--and is open to all students undergoing pre-university or tertiary education as well as persons serving full-time National Service. Each of the two categories is judged by an established local writer, with prizes going to the top three entrants in that category.

The judges for the 2006/2007 CWC will be Suchen Christine Lim (Fistful of Colours, A Bit of Earth) for short stories and Yong Shu Hoong (Isaac, dowhile) for poetry. The closing date for entries is 30 December 2006, 5pm. Email nuslitsoc(at)yahoo.com.sg to receive a copy of the entry form, including guidelines.

The Creative Writing Competition is made possible by the continuing sponsorship of Singapore Press Holdings Ltd.

Even if you have the writing ability of a bean sprout, give it a shot. Trust me, unless there's been some miraculous change between last year and this year, the volume of submissions will be low and the overall quality lower. A dubious prize package and a meaningless accolade for just $2.00? It's a steal!

Now It's On

2006-09-12T20:59:00.000+08:00

I bet no one believed it was really a hiatus. Well, it was.

Hi all. I'm back.

Well

2005-10-13T19:15:00.000+08:00

I've gone on hiatus, a proper one. Let's say till next year. I guess I should've mentioned it earlier. Sorry.

Meanwhile, on reality A

2005-09-09T15:39:00.000+08:00

Various things have been keeping me from blogging lately. A quick recap:

1) Got back together with JH after a fair bit of drama and just-being-friends. Saw her off at the airport, a first. Her parents make me v. uncomfortable.

2) Went on my first (mini-)exercise as a signaller and learned never to listen to one's comms spec when he says it's okay for a buried road crossing to have a little bit of the line poking out, because he's not the one who'll be up in the middle of the night frantically searching for the field telephone and finding it in the bushes six metres from where it was left, because a 5-tonner snagged the line, snapping it off the field telephone and leaving it stretched out along the side of the road.

Also learned not to carry too many spare batteries in your manpack, because it will kill you.

3) Saw my internet connection go down for three days then, seemingly by magic, go up again.

4) Fell ill. Conjunctivitis on Tuesday seguing into fever today—troublesome because I'm leaving for Thailand tomorrow night for an exercise. It'll be a drugged-up, miserable me who gets off the plane on Sunday.

See you in two weeks' time.

Godawful

2005-08-28T10:22:00.000+08:00

I was about to delete this seemingly unremarkable bit of religious spam from my last post, but decided, on a whim, to have a look at the site first. It turned out to be a page of rather unusual testimonies from ~~the Church of the Righteous Rich~~ New Creation Church. Here's a sampling of headlines:

Property sold at reasonable price

A job that came with a promotion!

Pay increased by five per cent!

God heard my sighs and blessed my business

And here's the best testimonial of all:

From rock bottom to million-dollar round table!

Dear Pastor Prince,

I would like to share with you about the abundant grace that God poured upon my family and me in 2004.
.
.
.
At the end of July 2004, my sales hit rock bottom. I was listed last in the whole branch and around 320th out of 420 advisers in the company. I was devastated and cried in my heart. I started to sigh and I told the Lord that I give up totally, and that He has to take over and come true for me.

At that time, you preached the sermon, A Groan Will Reach His Throne. After looking at the board which listed me at the bottom, I walked away, but the words, “the last shall be the first”, rose up and came out of my mouth. It was like the Lord was telling me that He was in control and that He will turn things around.

From August to December 2004, the favour of God was so strong on me when I dealt with millionaire businessmen and doctors in their estate planning (even though the initial meetings were so tensed). His favour descended upon me while I presented and it turned the situation around. Truly, a moment of God’s favour can do much more than what years of fleshly efforts can achieve.

At the end of 2004, for the first time in 12 years, I qualified for the MDRT (million dollar round table). Only the top 6 per cent of advisers in the industry qualify for this international award.

I finished the year as the 2nd top adviser in the branch and 10th in the whole company. I qualified for a trip for two to Barcelona, Spain. It was a business-class flight plus suite-stay all fully paid for by the company! The holiday was worth about $20,000!

Also, I was totally healed of the allergy without me realising it until later!

Hallelujah, all glory to Jesus!

My first thought was that this was a parody site, but my church-going mum has heard of New Creation and assures me it's genuine. There's more here if you really want it.

Awful

2005-08-20T14:14:00.000+08:00

I borrowed but, (that anthology of student writing edited by Cyril Wong) from the library on a whim and I don't regret it. It is gloriously terrible. Look:

stalker
by Bernard Koh

i am not your average lover.

my bleeding heart will place his hands
on your shoulders and hold you gently -
firmly under the water until you say yes

or die.

I think this poem would be ten times better if that last line read 'or DIE!!!11' instead.

The other poem that sticks in my mind is by David Tang, who seems to be Singapore's top manufacturer of bathos: 'I Miss You' opens with 'Life seldom treats us well, / I have to strongly state' and does not get much better. It also includes the phrase 'Stygian dimness', which is a bit like saying 'catastrophic inconvenience' or 'Hitlerian naughtiness'.

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Three criticisms I did not expect to hear during stand-by-bed (locker inspection, basically) in an operational unit:

'Your toothpaste tube is too small.'

'Your fork is on the right side of the spoon. Wrong! It should be on the left.'

'Your toilet paper roll. . . funny shape!'

Engrish of the day

2005-08-15T20:31:00.000+08:00

More like Engrish of the Year, really. This shirt is the shit.

Daily whine

2005-08-14T21:41:00.000+08:00

This morning the whole battalion was supposed to go down to the Carnival@Marina (I cringe to type that) for some strange reason—perhaps the attendance numbers needed a little boost to get the project across the abject failure line—and so, dutiful soldier that I am, I got my blear-eyed self down to Marina station at 0945h on the dot. For what? To wait fifteen minutes for everyone to arrive, take a bus to the carnival proper, brisk walk through half the carnival grounds (a matter of no more than three minutes, I kid you not), and then be told that we were dismissed. 'Thinking organisation' for you.

'NDP memories' indeed

2005-08-11T20:03:00.000+08:00

So NDP is over, and what did my unit—barricade-lifting, crowd-controlling, grandstand-constructing sai kang warriors to a man—get for its pains? 3 days of off from the division commander, which our CO, it is (possibly unreliably) said, then cut to one. For the sake of comparison, my friend in Provost got 13 days off.

I'm a little lost for words. It's not surprising that performers should get more off, but 13 times more? Crowd/traffic control may sound easy, but only if you've never done it before. It isn't always the crowds that pose the biggest problems, either.

Example:

(A group of about ten policemen are standing around my gate half an hour after the preview show. Two of them are officers. I am the only SAF man there.

Five police vehicles pull up. They wish to enter. Their officer gets down to speak to me.)

Me: Sorry sir, but my instructions are to prevent all vehicles from entering until further instructions.

Police officer: My men need to go through and load up their stores! Call your superior and ask.

Me: (on walkie talkie) Hullo sir, this is Nicholas. Some police vehicles want to enter through my gate to load up stores. Can I allow them through?

PC: No no no! Why are you asking me this? My instructions were very clear!

Me: (to police officer) Sir, I'm afraid my PC says no vehicles may enter until the roads open.

Police officer: What? Don't waste my time! I want to talk to your PC now.

Me: (on walkie talkie) Hullo sir, this is Nicholas. One of the police officers wants to talk to you.

(no reponse)

(on mobile phone) Sir, Nicholas here. This police officer wants to talk to you—

PC: No no NO! I have no time! You better not call me again unless you want me to give you EXTRA!

Me: (sweatdrop)

(to police officer) Uh, sir, very sorry, but my PC is unavailable at the moment. He says—

Police officer: Ridiculous! What is his rank?

Me: Second lieutenant, sir.

Police officer: (forehead bulge) MEN! Remove these barricades! We are going through!

Policemen: (to me) Sorry ah, brother.

(my barricades are swept away in a tide of blue)

Me: (on mobile phone) Uh, sir, Nicholas again, sosorrytodisturbyou but they uh, removed the barricades and are now entering through my—

PC: WHY DIDN'T YOU STOP THEM!

Happy birthday Singapore and all that. May I never have to witness another from this side of the fence.

Fattened calves beware!

2005-08-08T18:41:00.000+08:00

NDP will be over tomorrow, and I'm so back. Stories of my intrepid adventures in crowd control to follow.

not 24h off the plane

2005-08-01T16:58:00.000+08:00

and already she's left me.

no fucking about, huh.

happy birthday to me.

Necessary hiatus

2005-06-24T18:46:00.000+08:00

Army stuff will keep me from blogging with any regularity until after National Day at the earliest.

That is all.

Yay for unity

2005-06-20T00:34:00.000+08:00

Army personnel will quarrel over anything. I was doing marshalling duty at a corner of the Padang during yesterday's National Day Parade rehearsal and there was this section of orange netting we'd put up to prevent people from going behind the grandstands, but which the artillery people wanted taken down so participants could cross. Our officers eventually relented, on the condition that the arty guys would take over responsibility for human traffic at that entrance; apparently they didn't, and it ended with our PC having words with the arty guys' officer (or she might have been a warrant) and our acting OC making a point to tell me and the other marshals not to put up the orange netting (a half-a-minute job) once the participants were done, because after all it's the arty people who took it down. Uh, okay.

In other news, sunburn sucks. Next time there's a rehearsal, I'm going to make sure I get assigned to a post on the other end of the Padang, where there actually is some shade. I swear, I drank all the contents of my green water bottle plus five small bottles of Newater between noon and 3pm and didn't need to go to the toilet once.

The return of fragmented posts

2005-06-17T20:40:00.000+08:00

The army is so wonderfully efficient. My company spent yesterday afternoon putting up orange netting around the grandstands-in-construction at the Padang; it took that long due to all junior commanders' well-known obsession with making everything remotely string-like as taut as is humanly possible. Then we spent this morning taking it all down and putting it up again in a slightly different configuration. And then we went for a break and came back to find that some guys from artillery had removed a large portion of it so they could work on the tarpaulin on the field. Well done, artillery guys. We only secured the netting with lengths of steel wire; why wouldn't we be happy for you to remove it?

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Apparently, giant gerbils infest China. It isn't right that a perfectly serious ecological disaster should sound so entertaining ('An explosion of gerbils is decimating vast areas of grasslands. . .'). I love the little profile of the Great Gerbil. Via Asiapundit.

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Under 'music news no one gives a shit about': I finally got around to listening to the Dirty Three CD JH passed me and am surprised to find I like it. I'm no music critic and certainly no musician; the best description I can give is 'like Gybe! but less longwinded'. Warren Ellis is now officially my second favourite Warren Ellis.

Stuff I'm planning to buy some time in the near future: Picaresque by The Decemberists, In Case We Die by Architecture in Helsinki, and Marquee Moon by Television, that last also introduced to me a few months back by JH, who I'd never heard say anything complimentary about punk before. Surprises surprises.

-
And now I have to go figure out a way to dry my right boot by tomorrow morning (a hair dryer will probably have to be involved at some point), as I seem to have worn out the sole to the point where the motion of walking causes it to suck in air (or water) through the heel. It rained today in the early afternoon; I was puttering about the Padang till half-past six. Do the math.

Full circle

2005-06-13T12:32:00.000+08:00

Rifleman, Delta Company, infantry unit
Runner, Commander's Office, division
Clerk, Admin Branch, training institute
Signaller, HQ Company, combat engineer unit
Signaller, Delta Company, combat engineer unit

Fuck.

Now that's entertainment

2005-06-12T21:17:00.000+08:00

Here's why you need a positioning clause when you take out ad space online:

Via Stay Free!

Writerly whining post

2005-06-11T22:21:00.000+08:00

I've been a little burned out on all kinds of writing lately. Usually when this happens I stop consciously trying to write, refuel by loading up on reading material and just let things happen, but it doesn't seem to be working this time. I don't think I've turned out more than half a page of probably unusable fragments in the past month, pretty phrases that lead to nothing further. Army stuff (of which more later), Whatnot issues and worries about uni aren't helping. I need a breakthrough. Alternatively, I need to go see Donald Lau about a job. . . .

Guns love Bush but he does not love them back

2005-06-11T04:07:00.000+08:00

US Secret Service visits blogger over photoshopped picture

Via Doug Lain's Blog, Jeremy Lassen, noted publisher of fantasy/horror/sf at Nightshade Books, was either asked or forced to take down his blog by US Secret Service. Allegedly, Lassen put up an image of kids aiming guns at President Bush in protest over what he perceived to be violations of First Amendment rights.

That Jeremy Lassen. I told him from the start that his plans to dominate the free world with an army of preschoolers were doomed to failure.

By the way, here's the Secret Service action the picture was in response to:

Shortly before the gallery opening of "Axis of Evil: The Secret History of Sin" last Thursday at Columbia College in Chicago, two Secret Service agents came to the gallery to ask questions and take photos. "Axis of Evil" is a provocative exhibit of mock postage stamp art that explores the question, "What is Evil?" and includes many disturbing images. Among the works prompting questions was artist Al Brandtner's "Patriot Act." It portrays President Bush with a gun pointed to his head in a style that parodies the typical American Flag and Presidential Portrait postal stamps.

According to The Chicago Sun-Times, Secret Service spokesman Brandon Bridgeforth commented, "We are doing some inquiries into the art exhibit. We're just doing some looking into it."

I'm blogging this out of mild interest, but my heart's not really in it. It's difficult to work up a feeling of outrage or whatever knowing that if someone did something like that here in Singapore and a visit from the ISD plus removal of the offending blog were all that resulted, that in itself would have to be considered a great victory for freedom of speech.

Real tits send fake tits to Aceh

2005-06-10T19:55:00.000+08:00

Australian medical aid to quake-ravaged Indonesia included breast implants

A health specialist complained on Thursday that medical aid sent by Australia to victims of the Dec. 26 earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia included breast implants and other "inappropriate" goods.

Jan Rice said on ABC radio that she traveled to the worst-hit province of Banda Aceh with a government AusAID delegation three months after the disaster and found the donated implants in a store room.

Rice, a specialist in wound care from Monash University's Victoria College of Pharmacy in Melbourne, said she also found drugs that were out of date and other useless supplies.

"I found a box with breast implants in it and drugs out of date," she said.

I was a bit let down to discover that 'other "inappropriate" goods' just meant expired drugs and (later in the article) unusable equipment. The phrase brings to mind so many more interesting, spam-ish possibilities. (Via Flying Chair.)

Telling it like it is

2005-06-09T20:04:00.000+08:00

From the cover of a pirated DVD:

Via BoingBoing.

(The title of this post is a lie. I actually loved the movie.)

Two great tastes that taste great together

2005-06-08T19:04:00.000+08:00

Seen on a set of Battalion Routine Orders—

Safety Message of the Day
Secondary smoke harms your family members.

Thought of the Day
"That which does not kill you only makes you stronger."—Nietszche

Signboard crusaders

2005-06-07T20:02:00.000+08:00

From the forum section of (where else?) today's ST—

Earnest asininity or a clever mockery of the letters that usually get sent in on this topic? I can't decide.

Adventures in cinebiography

2005-06-05T22:09:00.000+08:00

My mom's watching that Sylvia Plath movie from a while back on Star Movies. This has to be the first time I've seen a biopic shot like a horror movie—sinister music, shadowy rooms and corridors, footage of the moon being covered by clouds, evil-looking trees swaying in the wind, the female lead lying half-submerged in a tub, sudden blackouts etc. I keep expecting a monstrous oven to leap out from one of those ominously dark doorways (there are many) and swallow her up. 'Behind you, Sylvia!'

My favourite bit is when she says, 'Before we met we were like two halves walking around with gaping holes shaped like the other person', or somesuch twaddle, and the actor playing Ted Hughes is looking at her with this blank expression, like he's thinking, 'Hold on a second, now how would that work?'

Adventures in ST abuse

2005-06-05T19:05:00.000+08:00

I'm amazed at how poorly linked to Commentary Singapore is. This is a quality blog. Is it the awkward name that puts people off?

Anyway, here's a good post on that ridiculous NUS = possible Aids Chernobyl OMG!! article in the ST a couple of days back. I remember reading it in the ops room and having a grade A face-palm moment, but I wasn't able to blog about it then as I was on duty, and I'd forgotten it by the time I got home yesterday. Wang Zhen's post reminded me, at the same saving me the trouble:

The AIDS Issue—Theresa Tan Mucks It Up Again

Theresa tells us that most NUS undergrads are of the mistaken impression that their chances of getting AIDS are far below that of other people.

At the same time, she seems to find delicious irony in the fact that most NUS undergrads think that the "No One Is Immune From AIDS" campaign is effective.

In case you haven't detected the flaw yet in Theresa's logic yet, let me explain it to you.

I, Mr Wang Zhen, share one thing in common with most NUS undergrads. I believe that my chances of getting AIDS are very low. What is the basis of my belief?

1. I do not frequent prostitutes.
2. I have never had sex with a prostitute.
3. In fact I have never had sex with anyone except my wife.
4. To the best of my knowledge and belief, she has never had sex with anyone but me.
5. I do not abuse drugs and hence I do not share needles with anyone.

Therefore I believe that my chances of getting AIDS are very low. And I do not think that my belief is mistaken.

Theresa Tan tells us that most NUS undergrads believe that they have a low chance of getting AIDS. She also tells us that this belief is an illusion. But why does Theresa think so?

It may well be the case that most NUS undergrads, like Mr Wang Zhen, are indeed at low risk. For example, many of these undergrads may still be virgins. Others may be engaging only in safe sex. Only a very small minority may actually be promiscuous.

If Theresa wants to show that the NUS undergrads are really under an illusion of low risk, then she must give evidence that in fact, NUS undergrads engage in high-risk behaviour. Where is that evidence? It is not found anywhere in Theresa's article.

Nicely done.

Reinventing the chicken suit

2005-06-04T23:48:00.000+08:00

Clothing for chickens

Austrian Edgar Honetschlaeger said he decided to work with the Japanese on the project because he hoped to make the chicken label clothing essential. He said "It's something that you don't really need but everyone wants to have anyway".

Riiiight. Via BoingBoing.

Thank you sir, may I have another?

2005-06-04T13:56:00.000+08:00

Meet James Seng, an assistant director with IDA, internet pioneer, Tomorrow editor and total fucking troll.

James, unlike you, I'm open to criticism and I won't go into hissy fits over whether or not a comment is 'constructive'. Here's a tip, though: if you're going to stomp around in people's comment boxes acting the big man, it's only civilised to respond when the person you're slinging shit at takes the time to ask you what exactly has you so riled. Yes, I know being civilised isn't exactly at a premium in the government sector (except when it comes to people with more impressive job titles and later stage hair recession than you), but in addition to making you a big ol' jerk, pointedly ignoring my rather innocuous question fingers-in-ears, lalalalala-I'm-not-listening style while making awkward sidelong jabs in the course of insulting other readers makes you look a little—dare I say it?—juvenile.

Speak when spoken to or go to your room. Thanks much.

Edit: I take it all back. James Seng is a classy, classy guy:

As I said, I have my fun as been a troll. I was laughing all my way doing my commenting while you on your side is fuming. That's the whole purpose of being a troll. And most importantly, you bite (as in this post) haha.

You heard the man: his troll-fu is strongest. There's nothing for me to do now but bow before his superior mastery of teh internets.

Adventures in unfortunate headlining

2005-06-02T21:07:00.000+08:00

Bush Anxious to Learn More of Deep Throat

Via Nick Mamatas's LJ.

Whatnot Magazine wants you!

2005-06-02T20:45:00.000+08:00

Whatnot Magazine (previously known as The Metastatic Whatnot) has reopened to submissions. We are now reading for our October issue. Both poetry and prose are welcome, though non-fiction will not be considered at this time. Payment is US$5 per piece for works under 20 lines/1000 words long and US$10 per piece for longer works, payable on publication. For more detailed guidelines and instructions on how to submit, please visit http://whatnotmagazine.com/submissions.html or enquire at editor(at)whatnotmagazine.com.

More advertising genius

2005-06-02T12:27:00.000+08:00

Because when I think 'fun', having a huge hairy spider crawl across my face is the first thing that comes to mind. (Perhaps what this photo is actually meant to represent is an acid trip?)

Advertising genius

2005-06-01T18:17:00.000+08:00

From SomethingSticky.

Cheese poem

2005-05-31T23:18:00.000+08:00

I just noticed that post of Michelle's where she links to a cheese poem by Ron Slate. Here's another cheese poem in return, from Very Bad Poetry, given to me by JH a year or so back. This one's by the great furniture maker, Canadian patriot and well-known cheese admirer James McIntyre:

Prophecy of a Ten Ton Cheese

In presenting this delicate, dainty morsel to the imagination of
the people I believed it could be realized. I viewed the machine
that turned and raised the mammoth cheese, and saw the
powerful machine invented by James Ireland at the West Oxford
companies' factory to turn the great and fine cheese he was
making there. This company with but little assistance could
produce a ten ton cheese.

Who hath prophetic vision sees
In future times a ten ton cheese,
Several companies could join
To furnish curd for great combine
More honor far than making gun
Of mighty size and many a ton.

Machine it could be made with ease
That could turn this monster cheese,
The greatest honour to our land
Would be this orb of finest brand,
Three hundred curd they would need squeeze
For to make this mammoth cheese.

So British lands could confederate
Three hundred provinces in one state,
When all in harmony agrees
To be pressed in one like this cheese,
Then one skillful hand could acquire
Power to move British empire.

But various curds must be combined
And each factory their curd must grind,
To blend harmonious in one
This great cheese of mighty span,
And uniform in quality
A glorious reality.

-
On an equally ridiculous note, it seems my 7-year-old brother has been Tomorrowed. He's quite pleased.

All your palace are belong to us

2005-05-30T14:54:00.000+08:00

Singapore Ink observes interesting differences between the ST's and Reuters's coverage of the dispute over Sultan Hussain's palace. I know total objectivity is an unreasonable demand to make of any newspaper, but when a quote like 'If Singapore plays a deaf ear, I may go to the International Court of Justice and claim the whole island of Singapore' is included in the Reuters report but left out of the ST, it's reasonable to conclude that Reuters isn't the one doing the spinning. The contrast between the titles alone is interesting. Reuters: 'Malay royals say Singapore grabbed ancestral land'. ST: 'Sultan’s kin want more cash for S’pore land'.

Pop will eat itself

2005-05-30T01:03:00.000+08:00

It's official: Popagandhi has died more times than a comic book character. Add another to the score.

With such a long academic break ahead of me, I have started to think long and hard about specific issues. Issues like my academic pursuits, and the changes I am looking at effecting in that area. My skills, my prospects; the battles I choose to fight, battles that choose to fight me.

One of these issues is this site. To be more specific - the relation of this site, to my offline existence; the focus of this blog; the readership levels and the semi-fame it brings. I thought I could handle fame but I’m not so sure anymore. My priorities have shifted far beyond the world of blogs and the web. I have, to be honest, no further interest in blogging.

Cheers, Adri, though I hope this death will be another short one.

(Edit: Aaaand La Idler bows out, too. Is it something in the air?)

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In other news, my kid brother ~~kills the Marvel universe~~ now has a blog:

Hello,I am christopher.I am 7+.I have adventured in distant lands,like the land of the flying bunnys.I like playing Halo2 with my bro.I have many hobbies like reading comics,watching TV and drawing.Here I will show you my stuff.This blog is dedicated to my family.

Warning: contains acts of cartoon violence.

Writing-related humour that doesn't suck

2005-05-29T03:26:00.000+08:00

How rare. From Scott Lynch's LJ: the Sony Writerbo!

You must have seen the Sony Aibo, the robotic dog simulator that becomes your companion from the moment you start interacting with it. Well, allow me to present the Honda Writerbo, the world's first fully-functional robotic author simulator. From the very first moment you start giving it feedback, Writerbo makes you wish you'd fallen in love with a fucking plumber instead.

The Writerbo is a fully autonomous and semi-mobile unit (it moves, but you never see it actually doing so) capable of scattering papers, misplacing books, keeping you awake at odd hours of the night, and making liquor vanish!

The Writerbo gets out of bed at one of two user-selected inconvenient times ('noon' or 'ESPN SportsCenter time') and can also be customized to be shorter, wider, or just less interesting than its back-cover flap photo!

The accompanying images are the best part of the post, so go have a look. Via Neil Gaiman's journal.

[Silly pun on the word 'blog' goes here]

2005-05-28T13:35:00.000+08:00

Yet another article on blogging in the ST ('WIll every blog have its day in politics?', p S10), this one a bit ominous, though not at all surprising:

'The same laws on defamation apply online. And maybe even the same out-of-bounds markers. . . .'

I suppose it was only a matter of time.

'According to the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts, the Government keeps an eye on all feedback it gets online, including blogs. "However, it is not practical, if not impossible, to keep track of everything that goes on over the Internet," stressed a spokesman.'

Implied: '. . . much as we would like to!'

'Could like-minded people—say, opposition sympathisers—get together after reading one another's blogs? There is little evidence of that for now, but it cannot be ruled out.'

No doubt Gabriel would tell me not to conflate the organs of the state with the state itself, but sometimes the fingerprints of the state are too thick and grimy to ignore. 'Opposition sympathisers'? 'Cannot be ruled out'? Very interesting choice of words. (Compare: 'Could Democrat sympathisers get together after reading one another's blogs? The possibility cannot be ruled out.')

There's also a side-story on the legal implications of blogging, pretty much just a rehash of all the other stories they've run on it before, that contains probably the most useless (traffic-wise) mention of a blog in the ST so far:

Oh well.

Adventures in counter-productive advertising

2005-05-27T21:11:00.000+08:00

Seen on a bus:

QOTD

2005-05-26T22:30:00.000+08:00

From Sangsara:

"This commercial is basically soft-core porn," said Melissa Caldwell, research director for the PTC. "The way she moves, the way she puts her finger in her mouth—it's very suggestive and very titillating."

I can see how one might full into the trap of assuming that any short video featuring Paris Hilton is some form of porn, but this is taking it a little far. (Definition of anti-climax: Paris Hilton putting a finger into her mouth.)

"'Baroque,' perhaps even 'rococo'"

2005-05-26T21:07:00.000+08:00

David Cross, who I'd never hard of before this, has written a wonderfully cruel send-up of Pitchfork Media's reviewing style:

Top Ten CD's That I Just Made Up (and accompanying made-up review excerpts) to listen to while skimming through some of the overwrought reviews on Pitchforkmedia.com

1) While reading over Pitchforkmedia.com's review for the Arcade Fire, here's a brief excerpt: "Our self-imposed solitude renders us politically and spiritually inert, but rather than take steps to heal our emotional and existential wounds, we have chosen to revel in them. We consume the affected martyrdom of our purported idols and spit it back in mocking defiance." May I suggest listening to Until it Happens/You Let it Happen, by Maximum Minimum. The fourth album (not counting the re-release of the first three 7-inches on HugTown Records) reaffirms the band's status as the godfathers of the Taos, N.M. "crying scene." Like a gilded phoenix rising from the toxic ashes of the death of mercurial lead guitarist, Peter Chernin, Maximum Minimum snarls back like a taunted tiger on steroids (also on acid). RATING: 8.2

It gets better (and then it gets tiresome, but you can stop reading when that happens). Via Blurbomat.

Adventures in the obvious

2005-05-25T19:21:00.000+08:00

Scene in the cookhouse during lunch (not today, but I just remembered it):

Battalion Orderly Sergeant (BOS): You! Why you take two cups?

Hapless Private: Why cannot take two cups?

BOS: Fucking hell, I ask you why you take two cups, you ask me why cannot? You sure or not?

Hapless Private: Sorry sah'en.

BOS: So? Why you take two cups!

Hapless Private: Because I want to drink more.

BOS: Oh. Like that ah. (frowns) (wanders off)

Alan Moore shocked to discover that Hollywood is dumb

2005-05-24T15:15:00.000+08:00

From a story on Alan Moore's cutting ties with DC and disowning the V movie:

Alan gave some details about bits of the V For Vendetta shooting script he'd seen. "It was imbecilic; it had plot holes you couldn't have got away with in Whizzer And Chips in the nineteen sixties. Plot holes no one had noticed."

What Moore found most laughable however were the details. "They don't know what British people have for breakfast, they couldn't be bothered. 'Eggy in a basket' apparently. Now the US have 'eggs in a basket,' whish is fried bread with a fried egg in a hole in the middle. I guess they thought we must eat that as well, and thought 'eggy in a basket' was a quaint and Olde Worlde version. And they decided that the British postal service is called Fedco. They'll have thought something like, 'well, what's a British version of FedEx... how about FedCo? A friend of mine had to point out to them that the Fed, in FedEx comes from 'Federal Express.' America is a federal republic, Britain is not."

Opposable thumbs = overrated

2005-05-23T23:19:00.000+08:00

From The Observer:

Another creature similarly viewed by modern society as little more than a benign food source - the cow - is also shown to be an astute animal capable of solving riddles with an intellect more traditionally associated with an ape. Studies at Oxford University found that Betty, a Caledonian heifer, instinctively bent a piece of wire, using a gap in her food tray to create a hook that allowed her to scrape food from the bottom of a jar.

Amazing, isn't it? Almost as amazing as the correction that accompanies it:

In the article below, we said that studies in Oxford showed that a Caledonian heifer called Betty had managed to bend a piece of wire to construct a hook and retrieve food from a jar. Betty is, in fact, a New Caledonian crow, a creature perhaps better adapted to bending wire than a cow.

Link found on Neil Gaiman's blog.

Adventures in hipness

2005-05-23T13:06:00.000+08:00

Yesterday on the way back I passed a condo named LakeHolmz. Enough said.

Jean de Baton! Jean de Baton!

2005-05-22T22:22:00.000+08:00

Since nobody loves me, I had to wrest the musical baton off Pei Chi by force. (Yes, I know 'wrest by force' is redundant.)

Total volume of music files on my computer:
9.5 GB—around 2000 songs. Not a whole lot, especially when most of it's stuff transferred from my sister's PC and which I don't really like anyway.

The last CD I bought was:
Blueberry Boat by The Fiery Furnaces, which was, honestly, just a little too weird for me. Antics by Interpol, which I got at the same time, was much more to my liking.

Song playing right now:
'Under My Skin' by Rachael Yamagata (on my sister's PC, not mine).

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:
1) 'It's Not' by Aimee Mann, one of those extremely unhealthy songs where the times it's most appropriate and appealing are exactly the times one shouldn't be listening to it.
2) 'Gay Bar' by Electric Six, a gloriously silly song (improved by Viking kittens) that somehow became the anthem of the Foyle course 2003, the best week of my life.
3) 'Protection' by Massive Attack feat. Tracy Thorn, the personal significance of which originally came from its importance to JH. I've come to love it for other reasons as well since then, but I can't say if I would have if not for that initial spark. This was before I started reading Kundera and questioning the assumption that I understood the motifs (youth notwithstanding) of other people's lives.
4) 'Disco 2000' by Pulp, which captures the flavour of too too many periods of my life.
5) 'Wonderwall' covered by Cat Power. This one doesn't really mean anything to me, but it is a kickarse song.

Five people to whom I'm passing the baton:
1) Ben
2) Michelle
3) Matt
4) YJ
5) Richard

Will work for Off

2005-05-22T21:15:00.000+08:00

I spent the afternoon clearing tables and refilling drink dispensers at Bo Tien Temple/Home for the Aged, which is apparently adopted by my unit, whatever that means. I'd like to say I volunteered out of the goodness of my heart, but the truth is there was a full day of Off bundled with it, and at just an afternoon's worth of work it seemed like a good deal (with surprisingly few takers—the temple requested ten volunteers, but only six turned up).

It's difficult to believe that as recently as five years ago, I'd have refused the visit on religious grounds, having been taught from young that most other religions are essentially cults of devil-worship, and temples the abode of all kinds of evil spirits and demons. I remember one church trip to Thailand (if I'm not mistaken) where one of the cultural sites on the day tour itinerary was a temple, and the whole group refused to enter for fear of coming into contact with dark forces, instead clustering around the tour bus and tsking at the temple from afar. It must be said that this was the sort of church where Chick tracts, of all things, were considered an excellent tool for converting unbelievers, Roman-Catholics-Are-Tools-Of-Satan messages and all. (For a quote-unquote multicultural society, Singapore seems to accept as mainstream some amazingly noxious strains of Christian fundamentalism.)

Anyway, thank god I'm am atheist now, because otherwise I'd have missed out on the most easily earned day off ever. The free lunch was pretty good too, if vegetarian. We even got little bags of huat kueh to bring home. They look like small, trussed-up foam mattresses.

Kesselising Ender's Game

2005-05-21T21:02:00.000+08:00

A bit of a niche post, I know, but there's a very interesting paper by John Kessel on the morality of Ender's Game now available online. Ender's Game was the novel that, when I was about 12, really got me into sf—a mixed blessing, but at least it kept me reading fiction. Returning to it a year ago left me feeling that I shouldn't have; it's one of those books which, like The Catcher in the Rye or Fahrenheit 451, become less satisfactory to me as the years go by. John Kessel pins down a large part of the reason why:

Creating the Innocent Killer: Ender's Game, Intention, and Morality

In relating Ender Wiggin's childhood and training in Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card presents a harrowing tale of abuse. Ender's parents and older brother, the officers running the battle school and the other children being trained there, either ignore the abuse of Ender or participate in it.

Through this abusive training Ender becomes expert at wielding violence against his enemies, and this ability ultimately makes him the savior of the human race. The novel repeatedly tells us that Ender is morally spotless; though he ultimately takes on guilt for the extermination of the alien buggers, his assuming this guilt is a gratuitous act. He is presented as a scapegoat for the acts of others. We are given to believe that the destruction Ender causes is not a result of his intentions; only the sacrifice he makes for others is. In this Card argues that the morality of an act is based solely on the intentions of the person acting.

The result is a character who exterminates an entire race and yet remains fundamentally innocent. The purpose of this paper is to examine the methods Card uses to construct this story of a guiltless genocide, to point out some contradictions inherent in this scenario, and to raise questions about the intention-based morality advocated by Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead.

Link found on The Mumpsimus.

All Tomorrow's Tupperware Parties

2005-05-21T18:39:00.000+08:00

I've been trying very hard to not say anything about Tomorrow.sg here, because it's still early and because the team behind it includes a few people I hold in high regard. It's been over a month now, though, and it's about time I ejected this elephant from my living room.

Tomorrow.sg sucks. No offence to mb, La Idler or the conspicuously invisible Adri, but it does. What could have been Singapore's BoingBoing or Volokh Conspiracy or something in between has instead turned out as (continuing in that High Concept vein) Her World meets Chicken Soup for the Singaporean Soul, with a sprinkling of bafflingly punchline-free humour posts, bafflingly pointless news items and the simply baffling. Rarely have I seen so much cachet expended on so inconsequential a venture.

What's missing? In a word, focus. 11 editors (not contributors—editors!) is overkill to begin with; I would call it 'blogging by committee', but committees at least have agendas to guide them. Tomorrow, perhaps allowing what the the word connotes (bias, spin) to overwhelm what it denotes ('A list or program of things to be done or considered'), has an unwarranted phobia of agendas—

We are just a bunch of Singapore bloggers trying to ~~kick Straits Time ass~~ do bo liao things. Really, this comes from a bloggers dinner we have dunno how long ago, sound like a fun idea and so we just do it.

Don't ask us what this is for - we don't know also.

Don't ask us what's our agenda - we don't have one (except to bring interesting articles written from bloggers in Singapore together.)

That sounds like a focus, but it really isn't. What is an interesting article? 11 people naturally have 11 different ideas of 'interesting', and some of them are rather. . . undemanding? Eclecticism can be a good thing, but there's no utility in a spotlight that shines on absofuckinglutely everything. There comes a point when simply clicking the Next Blog button on the Blogger toolbar starts to look like an attractive alternative to following the links highlighted by Tomorrow.sg.

What I'd do, in no particular order:

1) Realise that 'agenda' is not a dirty word. Then decide on an actual agenda, and follow it.

2) Include a little more commentary along with the links when their newsworthiness isn't blindingly obvious. 'Anonymous letters are the saddest' is not sufficient to justify the inclusion of a common or garden letter 'From a deeply hurt Daughter', nor is 'Jay-Walk ponders the multiethnic staff at Kandang Kerbau' justification enough to link to a post that amounts to 'My wife delivered and by the way KKH has workers from a few different races and they work together in harmony just like in the ads!'

If you're posting a link, that means you think it's worth reading; as the reader, I expect you to tell me, briefly, why.

3) Lose the dead wood. For instance, TinkerTailor is doing no one any favours with commentary like 'dunno how they did the study' when the answer took up two whole paragraphs of the page linked. RTFA, n00b.

4) Raise the bar. How high? High enough to exclude maudlin, commonplace crap like this anyway. If I wanted adolescent (in spirit, anyway) ramblings on luurve, I would go to LiveJournal.

Come on, guys. Surely you can do better.

Dr Dobson, you randy old devil

2005-05-20T20:54:00.000+08:00

From yesterdays' Today:

Foiled again

2005-05-18T19:54:00.000+08:00

So much for my solid non-promise of an increase in blogging. Returning to my unit, I find that all non-essential internet usage has been blocked, supposedly for some sort of exercise. I'm only able to write this because today's our night out. This must be payback for that post of mine on computer usage in the SAF.

Bugger.

Oh well. Back to the regular programme of irregular suckage.

'Lastly, I have written “Roger”, a poem of ten sections in tribute to my cousin of the same name'

2005-05-17T01:25:00.000+08:00

I came across this HOW2 feature on modern Singapore poetry through a Literary Singapore email. Grace Chia's introduction contains some rather. . . interesting statements.

The key that saves Singapore from stasis is change. Because there is a sizable population that can afford to, or are resourceful enough to study or work abroad, the pool gets refilled by a wave of new migrants eager to farm the opportunities the gap leaves behind. And because the country doesn’t bear a grudge against or reject the leavers, many eventually find their way back home. Others create new homes oversees, bridging dual cultures while taking the ambassadorial role and sharing what they remember best of Singapore. Longing creates nostalgia, extending the yellow brick road to wherever one is. You know you can always, and are welcomed to, go back home.

I don't know what I find more unbelievable: that anyone who hasn't been hiding out in deep space for the past half decade can claim that 'the country doesn't bear a grudge against or reject the leavers' with a straight face, or that ~~blatantly propagandistic~~ nation-building statements like that and, well, basically the whole of that paragraph should show up in a literary piece at all. Certainly they have no place in a supposedly objective overview.

(Incidentally, 'The key that saves Singapore from stasis is change'—you don't say?)

The rest of the introduction is essentially a dumbed down version of Felix Cheong's earlier, much superior editorial for the Slope sampler, plus an overview of the chosen poets thrown in incorporating some really remarkable constructions like 'she creates three imagist verses by taking a psychedelic trip down memory lane, waxing lyrically of nostalgia' and 'the written page captures the battlefield of our thoughts'. I already knew that Grace Chia was a terrible poet, but only now do I realise that she is an all-round hack (unlike Felix Cheong, who is only a hack when it comes to poetry). Oh, and an even worse poet than I'd originally thought.

The other poems are mostly bad as well, but not bad enough to warrant further comment.

(Ron Silliman has a higher opinion of the feature, or at least of Bridget-Rose Lee; amusingly, though, he seems to be under the impression that 'Singapore' is a variant of 'Shanghai', and that these poems have been translated from the Chinese.)

Sharkjump 2005

2005-05-16T19:09:00.000+08:00

Okay, I admit it: the suckage has been strong in this blog lately. Posts have been scarce and hastily written and I haven't been replying to comments (which has not much bearing on the suckage or nonsuckage of this blog, but is rude). Tomorrow, though, I'll be posting back to my unit, which means I'll have internet access even in camp, so the volume and quality should increase somewhat.

Admittedly, 'somewhat' could mean 'very little indeed'; I make no promises. But I'll try.

Engrish of the day

2005-05-15T01:14:00.000+08:00

Pro-Singapore press redux

2005-05-14T13:19:00.000+08:00

From an ST column on the AcidFlask debacle by Chua Mui Hoong:

More finesse in handling blogging a better option?

There's a website, technorati.com, where you can find out what's being said online in real-time, about anything.

I keyed in Singapore. There were 228,295 postings, arranged in reverse chronological order. Most were posted online in the last few minutes, or hours.

It's a powerful tool that helps companies and individuals track what's being said on websites, blogs, forums.

As often as you can track one down, another sprouts up.

In this brave new world of almost instant online proliferation, what's a poor individual or agency to do when his/her/its reputation gets attacked?

This was the quandary research agency A*Star and its chairman Philip Yeo faced, when they came across a blog that made comments they felt were defamatory.

They started proceedings to sue the writer of the blog. The writer withdrew the comments and apologised unreservedly, suggesting there was no basis to make those remarks.

As far as the law goes, there is no doubt that the Agency for Science, Technology and Research did the right thing.

Emphasis mine.

Significantly, the article still reaches the conclusion that the threatened suit was a mistake:

The agency and staff may have protected their reputation from unfair attacks. In the meantime, Singapore has received worldwide attention for this action. Articles appeared in the Associated Press and other news wires which were then picked up across the world. Reports also appeared in the London Financial Times and Asian Wall Street Journal, among others. A Google search of keywords A*Star, Singapore, blog and sue yesterday afternoon yielded 25,800 results.

In faraway Warwick University in England, one blogger had posted the FT article. Another reader penned the comment underneath it: 'Definitely something to bear in mind considering that the university wants to open a campus in Singapore.'

I shouldn't be surprised as this conclusion (suing bloggers for defamation = counterproductive) is bleeding obvious, but then again, the ST has repeatedly shown itself to be adept at avoiding the bleeding obvious.

Adventures in branding

2005-05-13T23:21:00.000+08:00

Wanko Global Marketing

Finally, a local brand with truly international appeal. Just think of the taglines.

'Wanko: It's only natural!'

'Why not choose Wanko? Everyone else is doing it.'

'Love yourself. Choose Wanko.'

I particularly like the last product on the stainless steel products page: the Wankosteel Jet-Spray Steam Cooker.

Bringing litrachure to the masses

2005-05-12T21:44:00.000+08:00

I don't usually find the stuff on Overheard In New York very funny, probably because I always suspect they're making it up and that takes the fun out of it, but this one appeals to me on some weird, basic level—

The subway doors open. A hobo enters, holding a bottle of windex in one hand and a tube of toothpaste in the other. He says: Which is the better time to read Dostyevsky? Winter?

He sprays the windex.

Hobo: Or Spring?

He squeezes toothpaste out of the tube.

Japanese girl: Spring!
Hobo: You are correct.

Found on Brandon's blog.

The real thing

2005-05-10T21:07:00.000+08:00

We had an exercise today, but it rained and thundered and whatnot. My detachment ended up sheltering in the same training shed (with none of our own superiors to supervise us) as a company of Officer Cadets and another of Rangers-in-training. I will never forget the feeling of sitting in the corner eating sour-cream-and-onion Pringles and Famous Amos cookies and drinking cans of bandung while people all around us, every one with camo paint on, are getting cursed at and cleaning their rifles and being made to do push-ups and picking gingerly at combat rations.

Now I know what being a driver is like. The good part of it, anyway.

-
The course is almost over and it shows in the mood of the platoon. My bunk has started using one of the extra styrofoam boxes from our safety stores as an icebox, providing us with a constant flow of cold drinks. The downside is that someone bought too, too many cans of Coke to put in it, and there's only so much Coke one bunk can drink in a day. As a result, someone invented, this afternoon, possibly the most decadent NS prank ever: spraying people with whole cans of ice-cold Coca-Cola. I was made a victim twice today while I was bathing in the toilet; it was literally rinse and repeat. I think I still smell of it a little.

Only in Signals, man. Only in Signals.

Blogging is a thing that used to happen here

2005-05-08T13:00:00.000+08:00

I don't care if local bloggers are being ground up and turned into pudding. Surely there must be something for you people to blog about other than blogging?

Speaking of farces. . . .

2005-05-06T22:39:00.000+08:00

From the same page of the ST comes this gem of an article (emphases mine):

Bonanza from mega Olympic event here
Billion TV viewers will get to see IOC-host S'pore's vibrant society

AN UNPRECEDENTED three-minute show on Singapore is to be telecast to about a billion TV viewers across the world in July.

This massive boost to tourism here is just one in a bonanza of rewards that Singapore will gain from hosting the International Olympic Committee Session which will decide which city will organise the Summer Games in 2012.

Rather interesting language for a newspaper article. I suppose this is what's meant when Vivian Balakrishnan refers to a pro-Singapore press—one which reports the hosting of an International Olympic Committee Session using language most presses would reserve for the occasion of the country actually hosting the Olympics.

Other noteworthy bits:

Said Mr Manpreet Singh, chief executive of media agency MindShare Singapore: "Given one billion viewers, that three minute presentation is worth over $2 million. . . ."

Two miiiiillion dollars!

TV cameras will roll at 7.30pm on July 6. But before IOC president Jacque Rogge announces the winning city, a two-minute trailer on Singapore tourism will be shown. Another one-minute clip will be aired after the announcement. Singapore will be very much part of the Olympic fever.

Of course! How could the host of such an exciting, well, committee meeting fail to arouse the passions of sports fans everywhere? Imagine the possibilities: stand on the spot where delegate X successfully made the case for his country's right to host the Olympics! See the chair Ng Ser Miang used in his record-breaking 5-hour, no-toilet-break show of endurance during the last leg of discussions! Jacque Rogge mugs and T-shirts available at our gift store for only $4.95!

Certainly this isn't an insignificant event, but someone's definitely been a little too long in the hyperbolic chamber.

Web designer needed

2005-05-02T19:03:00.000+08:00

I started Whatnot Magazine (then rather tackily called the Metastatic Whatnot) in 2003 with a few of my mates from a forum I frequented. We turned out one issue that year, spent a few months crippled by the uncontactability of my two co-editors, then went the way of countless other amateur ezines before us.

The Whatnot stayed dead until earlier this year. That was when I got in touch with the web designer, Daniel—or it might have been the other way around—about possibly starting over without the others (but with Niall as 'consulting editor'). That was when we got the new domain, drew up the revised submissions guidelines, and started sending a few invitations. Full of optimism, I even started putting the link in my profile again (look under the photo of Miffy the bunny).

That was some time in March. The last I heard from Daniel was on the 7th of that month. It is now May 2 and, despite many, many emails, I have heard nothing since.

Daniel's a good pal of mine, though necessarily more so when he was actually reachable on teh internets, but I have let this project be held up by other people's (quite legitimate) meatspace concerns for long enough. I owe it to past contributors and to the writers I have already accepted for issue 2 not to let this thing die again.

So. No money, little fame, and you have to put up with me.

Any volunteers?

Engrish of the day

2005-05-01T21:49:00.000+08:00

Shit scary

2005-04-30T23:06:00.000+08:00

AsiaOne had a poll on racial purity a while back and, well, see for yourself—

(Screen cap taken by Idle Days.)

I really don't want to make another post amounting to 'racism is bad, boo', so I'll leave it at that.

Speed Through Skill my arse

2005-04-27T17:29:00.000+08:00

I'm on off today, thanks to the exercise my platoon was supposed to have being pushed to Saturday. If not for this, we would've had a long weekend due to Monday's public holiday, but I can't say I mind—long weekends are overrated, and besides, the normal weekend of today is the long weekend of last year (five-day work week, I love you so), so I don't see what anyone has to complain about.

It does raise the stakes for the exercise, though. It's one thing to merely return to camp five hours late due to someone's massive cock-up, but it's quite another thing to book out five hours late due to same. I can already think of a few likely candidates for getting their dipole antennae stuck in trees, having their radio sets tuned to the wrong frequency, setting up in the middle of a huge clump of trees and thus not getting comms, and so on. These are the people who will wind up bludgeoned to death with halyards (batteries attached to comms cord and covered in green tape) once back in bunk.

-
As for the line exercise, here's what I'd meant to say earlier, but didn't have the time to.

Essentially, the point of the exercise is to lay a pair of cables across a distance of roughly 1.6 km (or it might have been 2 km; I can't remember exactly), communicate with HQ from the endpoint, camouflage and protect the line (by throwing it in bushes, burying it where it passes over soil roads, etc.), and reel it all back, in that order. This was done once in the day and once at night, with a few uninteresting variations between the two.

In the day, my detachment, misunderstanding the requirements of line-laying, bashed through the vegetation instead of just laying by the road as we were meant to. Anyone who has ever bashed will realise that there's a huge difference between bashing and walking by the road; this resulted in our third man having to return in the safety rover due to the strain. I and the other guy weren't strangers to bashing and managed to comms through well within the set time anyway, but the other detachments (who'd followed our path for a while before realising it was insane) didn't, and none of us could perform the second road crossing given the kevlar-hard soil and the fact that instead of sharp, metal arc-of-fire sticks to use for performing tiebacks and slack, we had been issued with blunt, wooden chopsticks instead. Also, one of the other detachments had their deployment packs connected the wrong way around (which wasn't their fault; someone else had done the connecting), and attempting to lay from them resulted in an entanglement the proportions of which made me want to cry just looking at it.

This same detachment had the terrible bad luck of mixing up drums with us when reeling back (our fault, really), so that they ended up having to follow our lines back through lalang, waist-high grass, potholes and water-logged ground. They still bitch at us every day about it. One thing in particular that stood out was their third man's account of his horror at realising that our third man seemed to have taken leave of his senses and done a tieback around a thick, thorny bush covered with red ants. He showed us his hands and it was like something from The Passion of The Christ. So this is what guilt feels like.

Oh, and my detachment lost the clip that holds the drum in place, and now the second man and I have to pay for the whole thing. We could split the costs among the whole platoon, as our course commander (who, by the way, was Very Unpleased with the whole thing) instructed us to do, but I guarantee that would not make for happy fun times with our platoonmates.

What I've been trying to say about EX Line Combine, I guess, is that we didn't have a very good time of it.

Cable guy

2005-04-23T12:44:00.000+08:00

This week was cutting wire, stripping wire, reeling wire, unreeling wire, untangling wire, knocking chopsticks into the ground with rocks (wonders of technology!) in order to tie wire around them, and bashing through vegetation carrying 20 kg of wire on my back.

I am getting a little tired of being what is essentially a combat electrician.

-
In other news, my dad has this card that allows him a certain number of free stays at the Mandarin Hotel, so that's where my family's going tonight. I'm not sure what the appeal is; I'd assume it's the whole getting-away-from-home thing, but doesn't it sort of defeat the purpose to bring your three kids along with you? Anyway, I'm bringing the Xbox with me so I can destroy my few remaining brain cells by playing the sometimes stupid but ridiculously addictive Phantom Dust for hours and hours, because I need to book in again tomorrow morning for guard duty and so I need to waste a weekend's worth of time in one day. Wish me luck.

Neither the Xbox nor Phantom Dust are mine, by the way (I spend too much money on buying CDs by bands with silly names to be able to blow $300 on a Halo 2 accessory); they belong to a friend with a puzzling tendency to only use his Xbox at other people's houses.

-
Oh yeah: I was at West Mall yesterday with this same friend when we were accosted by a pair of secondary school students performing a survey. It turned out to be about AIDS, a rather more interesting topic than I ever got to do a project on in school. The questionnaire was just as interesting—I have to say that this is the first time 14 year-old girls have come up to me in a public place to ask me about masturbation.

That's when I reach for my revolver

2005-04-23T10:12:00.000+08:00

The new QLRS is out, and it's got a rather vicious review by me in it—

The British poet Maura Dooley praised Terence Heng's first collection Live a Manic Existence with a Cup of Sanity in Your Hand as "a tour de force... cutting but never bitter, Heng is a master... of the short urban lyric." Closer to home, Heng is known to admirers for his daring use of local as well as foreign vernaculars to explore such difficult themes as identity, alienation and love. Coming after a break of seven years, Heng's second collection of poetry From Where I'm Standing was one of the most anticipated local releases of 2004.

I lie, of course. I've never heard of Terence Heng and odds are that unless you're a scenester, neither have you. As far as I'm concerned, this is no great injustice, for From Where I'm Standing is a terrible book.

Reading it now, I think I may have been too blunt (though the version published there had already been toned down considerably from the original), but I suppose someone has to make up for the fawning review of a totally shite collection found elsewhere in this issue.

An offer we can't refuse

2005-04-16T21:40:00.000+08:00

Wonderfully ambiguous headline in the Sraits Times today—'MM Lee on casino: Can Singapore afford to say no?'

And that's all I'll say about the casino issue, because it bores me.

Adventures in baggage-handling

2005-04-16T15:30:00.000+08:00

Handler punished for donning camel costume

SYDNEY, Australia -- Qantas Airways Ltd. on Friday suspended a baggage handler who was caught on video opening a passenger's bag which contained a camel costume, donning the head and wandering around the airport tarmac.

The costume's owner, David Cox, said he was waiting inside the terminal at Sydney Airport earlier this week when he glanced outside and saw the baggage handler wearing his camel head.

"I obviously was flabbergasted, my jaw dropped to the ground," Cox told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio on Friday.

I've read funnier, weirder news stories—and if you read blogs, I'm sure you have, too—but that headline is just the ultimate. (Link taken from YJ, a bit later than usual—side-effect of staying in.)

The case for big publishing conglomerates

2005-04-15T21:11:00.000+08:00

Unlike small press publishers, you will never see them select a logo like this one.

Brain-dead

2005-04-10T14:14:00.000+08:00

I meant to spend today getting started on college apps, sorting out some of the issues with the Whatnot, maybe doing a bit of writing. Instead, I ended up reading this and playing this.

I blame the army.

Telecommunism

2005-04-09T23:37:00.000+08:00

I happened to be at the Singtel website and couldn't help but notice the unfortunate choice of title for the Singtel newsletter's cover story of the month:

Coming to you soon, courtesy of Singtel: nationwide famine, endemic poverty and reasonable IDD rates!

Never leave home without it!

2005-04-09T16:30:00.000+08:00

Wonderful thing of the week, via Brandon: Penny Arcade's Third Echelon Spy Manual. Read it now.

A vote for me is a vote for mercy killings

2005-04-08T19:20:00.000+08:00

I thought the upside of going on course again would be that I'd at least have material for more NS posts, which would hopefully mean more links from Mr Brown, which would mean more traffic, and I am after all a publicity whore who desperately wants to be loved. I'm sorry to report, though, that the Signal course is the most half-arsed waste of time I've experienced in the SAF. I have hardly any interesting anecdotes to share, only three observations:

1) I really can't take sergeants seriously any more.

2) My platoon sergeant is always using expressions like 'roger him back', 'if your OC comms you, are you going to tell him "Sir, I don't know whether to wilco you or roger you"?', and so on. Nobody realises that this is funny.

3) A few months in the army subtracts sufficient points from your IQ to give a third of the platoon problems understanding concepts school children can handle. For instance, a watt is not the same as a volt, the ideal spot to use a radio set is not the middle of an underground tunnel, a piece of equipment labelled SPOILT is not the best piece of equipment to draw, and if you drop something on the ground from a height, there is a possibility that it might, you know, break.

DON'T PANIC

2005-04-03T22:33:00.000+08:00

Up till now I've managed to blog once or twice every day, but tomorrow I'll be going on a six week Signal Operator course and will only be home on weekends until it's over. I should have something for you on Friday nights, Saturdays and Sundays, so do check back then.

I leave you with some better pictures of that bizarre tin of biscuits I mentioned a while back.

Cheers.

SMU students are different

2005-04-03T17:05:00.000+08:00

My dad: (teaching a class on defamation) Lee Kuan Yew called Chee Soon Juan a 'congenital liar'. Does anyone know what 'congenital' means?

Some guy: (puts up hand) No, but I know what 'genitals' means!

Simon says: Singapore blogs > HK blogs

2005-04-02T22:58:00.000+08:00

Singapore and Hong Kong are well known rivals. Usually Hong Kong has the upper hand. But when it comes to blogging Hong Kong is, let's be honest, woefully behind Singapore. Singapore blogs have bigger readerships, are more diverse and more interesting.

Why?

I don't actually agree with the premise. Bigger readership? Aside from she-who-shall-not-be-linked, Mr Brown and Adri (maybe Gabriel), I can't think of any with a readership higher than or on par with Hong Kong's biggest bloggers, even now that Conrad's disappeared. More diverse? Maybe. More interesting? It is to laugh. Between Simon himself, Hemlock and Fumier, I think Hong Kong has us all beat. (But, but, they're all gweilos, you say. So?)

Anyway, here's an excerpt from Simon's correspondence with mr brown that I thought was noteworthy, though not new. mb sez:

. . . I think we seem to buzz more because there is no real place for Singaporeans to speak their minds. Blogs offer anonymity and a chance to vent, rant and articulate thoughts that may get you in trouble offline. This is not to say that we live oppressed lives here. Most of us are quite happy and the perceived lack of freedoms is often over-stated in foreign publications. blogs and media. It's not that pathetic as it seems.

Most of us don't 'live oppressed lives here', true. Then again, most of us don't have problems getting married, if we wish, to the people we love, or seeing people like us in films (campy villains don't count). Most of us don't want to do performance art. Most of us have a chance at a job in the Air Force or in Armour. And most of us are free to comment on the issues that affect us without coming up against OB markers or 'not in the public interest' stonewalling.

Sure, I'm pretty unoppressed—but I'm not that political, and I'm Chinese, and I'm straight. It doesn't follow that someone who's communist or gay or Malay is equally 'free', or that because most people's lives are safely within the set boundaries, society as a whole is okay. If your feet are in the fire and your head is in the fridge, you are not, on balance, warm.

We could use more freedom offline but for now, blogs (and even, ahem, podcasts) are pushing the boundaries of tolerance, freedom of expression, and wit. Hopefully, this will spill over to the offline world too.
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If Singaporeans get used to speaking their minds online, then maybe, just maybe, they will also start asking for their rightful space offline too. Then it will be grand to have played a small part in making that happen.

Much as I would like to think otherwise, mb can dream on. Bloggers are safe for now because we're insignificant—yes, even mb. What's a few thousand readers a day compared with what the (government-controlled) papers get? (mb has his column in Today, sure, but self-castration there is a given.) If we had circulations of Instapundian proportions, there's no way we'd be able to speak as freely as we do now, at least on political issues.

An interview Alfian Sa'at gave some time back seems relevant here. In it, he says the government's allowed him free reign 'despite certain anti-establishment sentiments'

Because they know that I have a very low circulation and there are not many people who read poetry at all. I only reach a very selected audience and it's not like my poems are being published in The Straits Times which has a mass circulation. A lot of people were asking about how I deal with the paradox of, on the one hand, I am raving against censorship and the on other my poems are being so blatantly anti-establishment and yet they are not being censored. So how do I negotiate that?

My answer: I'm small fry.

The same, I'd argue, applies to blogging today. The day an openly (not necessarily exclusively) political local blog hits the real big time, or practical efforts are made on the back of the blogosphere to ~~assert our rights~~ ask for our privileges in meatspace, will be the day the 'political website' laws start to get enforced on blogs. I'd bet my ORD on it.

Sofa King anal

2005-04-02T07:41:00.000+08:00

The Scotsman reports that a furniture shop's poster with the slogan "sofakinggood" was banned today. The Advertising Standards Authority banned the poster stating it could be viewed as containing swearing and "was likely to cause serious or widespread offence".

Link yoinked from Brandon.

Death and fines

2005-04-01T19:16:00.000+08:00

From Seth Godin's blog, via LancerLord:

Singaporeans should feel quite at home in Newcastle.

Baffling

2005-04-01T13:28:00.000+08:00

Overheard in the cookhouse:

NSF 1: 'Why is porn contraband ah?'

NSF 2: 'Got AIDS what.'

I guess they were talking about gay porn.

Pwned

2005-03-31T20:04:00.000+08:00

I lost a library book a while ago and paid the replacement fee and all ($30 in total), only to get a call on Tuesday from a clerk in my previous unit asking if I'd left a book of poems behind, because the chief clerk accidentally put it in her drawer and had forgotten about it all this time. Not cool.

Anyway, I met up with the guy at Jurong Point yesterday to get the book back, as I had the night out. Another clerk who was with him told me something that made me laugh harder than I have in a week (but only because I'm a bad person). Apparently, he and three or four others got busted playing Counter-Strike on the Information Resource Centre computers yesterday, during working hours. No big deal. This is the good bit: they were caught by the commander himself (a full colonel), who was showing the facilities to the Army RSM (!) at the time. One of them almost told him to fuck off before turning around and realising that it was, in fact, the commander speaking and not someone playing a prank.

Sweet, sweet schadenfreude. What a good thing I wasn't there—I'd have been playing as well.

13375p34k

2005-03-31T12:01:00.000+08:00

I noticed this amusing letter in yesterday's ST (and would have blogged about it then if not for Blogger's innovative, evening-long 'Unexpected Error OMG!!!11' feature).

Singapore should get rid of the word 'elite'

WHEN Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong spoke recently of an 'elite' group he tried to make clear that it was not to be based on pedigree or class but on merit.

I believe the term 'elite' is not compatible with the society PM Lee envisages for Singapore. Why must there be an elite class to lead the non-elite?

The question that needs to be answered is not who leads, as we know that the most capable have to lead, but can the leader survive without the critical mass of those he leads?

It must be remembered that however brilliant a general, there must be the private willing to go out to fight and die for the plan to succeed. Is the private then not also elite?

Sadly. . . no. Someone needs a dictionary.

I read on a plaque, some years ago, about the organs of the body having a discussion about who should be boss.
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In the midst of the heated debate there came a small plaintive voice asking to be chief. It came from the opening at the lower end of the alimentary canal.

After overcoming their initial shock, the other organs began laughing. The keeper of the portal through which residual chemicals and deceased microbes made their exit was insulted and clamped his mouth shut.

After a few weeks when nothing was passed out and the toxins were re-absorbed into the bloodstream, the other organs capitulated and the anus was proclaimed chief.

The moral is that one can become chief in more ways than one. One does not need the word elite to do a good job; one can be a gatekeeper.

'You think you're the shit, huh? Well I'm the asshole.'

'[T]he opening at the lower end of the alimentary canal'—I love that.

Thinking soldiers

2005-03-30T11:56:00.000+08:00

The cisterns in the canteen toilet have signs on them reading 'WATER NOT FOR DRINKING.'

Tonguetied

2005-03-29T20:31:00.000+08:00

I'm sure it's just a coincidence, but it looks like even the National Arts Council's been bitten by the sexyblogger bug. Have a look at this.

I am Most Displeased.

Oh, what the hell. It's no point fighting it any more. For your viewing pleasure: sexymiffy, the Buttermilk bunny.

Now go away.

U Penn students don't need no steenking TASTE!

2005-03-29T20:07:00.000+08:00

So, Sonic Youth's going to be the main act at the University of Pennsylvania's Spring Fling concert. Let's play a little game of word association. I say Sonic Youth, you say?

"Who are they?" College freshman Elizabeth Jefferson asked. "I've never heard of them."

Wharton junior Lloyd Thomas said he feels "disappointed," especially considering what some other schools have performing this year.

For example, Snoop Dogg will be headlining Cornell's Slope Day concert and Ben Folds will be playing at Brown's Spring Weekend.

"I think we deserve a bigger name," Thomas said.

For more righteous indignation and some amusing quotes, read Michelle's post.

Truesdale's Law: Ninety percent of everything is, like, really gay

2005-03-28T18:37:00.000+08:00

What's wrong with science fiction today? Two-bit critic and 100-proof crank Dave Truesdale has the answer: liberalism. Oh, and fairies.

I find that many more of our personal freedoms are in danger from the political Left than from the Right, and Robert Silverberg points up but one instance of this in his column. Politcal Correctness (and in the case of the instance written about in Silverberg's column, the fallout from Political Correctness, but that's another essay), has run amuck. Now, it seems, an active imagination and artistic freedom are under siege by those on the Left who have the power to punish us for what we think, and it ain't those mean old, uneducated, bible-thumping, red-state bubbas who are to blame. It is those on the Left, often-called the Elite Left—those who believe, in their heart-of-hearts, that they know what is best for us, that we are incapable of making our own decisions (again, fodder for another essay).

All of which led me to wonder if SF is going soft these days. One doesn't often see hard-edged political stories in short SF anymore—at least not many of them in the past twenty, twenty-five years or so.
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It's as if much of today's short sf has become metrosexualized, a term I'll co-opt from one coined to label the metro-sexual male. You know, a yuppie sort who isn't ashamed to be seen in the male equivalent of a beauty salon, a contemporary male who struts around with his hair carefully coiffed and shaped with Product, his carefully manicured nails bling-blinging in the sunlight as he straightens his Queer Eye for the Straight Guy tie, who has been convinced by his small circle of elitist, liberal, faddist (and also mostly brainless) friends who keep him insulated from the rest of the world outside the yup fashion district. Sometimes I have this unnerving and spine-chilling thought that too much short SF today is naught but metrosexualized SF. Boy, it sure looks great in its polished and coiffed literary clothes, but is what is underneath any different—or better? Is what is underneath (the actual story itself) any better for the clothes?

Nick Mamatas has a characteristically entertaining and on-target response to this nonsense, which is a good thing as I'm stuck in camp and so am in no mood to blog at length.

Give that god a Tiger!

2005-03-28T13:16:00.000+08:00

This made my lunch hour.

Okay, so I had a boring lunch hour.

Andy Ho = hack

2005-03-28T12:34:00.000+08:00

I didn't have much to do in the Signal office after area cleaning this morning, and Andy Ho's column (on the Terri Schiavo business) in today's Straits Times caught my eye, so I ended up chicken scratching a letter to the forum in my little black notebook. Then I realised I couldn't remember if NSFs are allowed to write in to the papers, so I'll just post it here instead. The letter's nothing new to the blogosphere, but I'd feel very silly not doing anything with it, so here it is:

For a column labelled 'Science Monitor', Mr Andy Ho's piece ('Death by decree: An issue that will live on', ST, March 28) shows a surprising disregard for science. He claims that 'the assumptions of both the lack of awareness and its permanence are not medical facts but. . . unprovable guesses.' This is factually incorrect. CAT scans show that Mrs Schiavo's cerebral cortex has mostly or entirely liquefied. That higher cognitive function is impossible in such a state is not in question, nor is its irreversability.

Instead of science, Mr Ho would rather base his opinion on a video the court found to have been heavily and selectively edited. The unedited version shows Mrs Schiavo's 'responses' for what they are: random movements unrelated in any meaningful way to external stimuli.

Mr Ho devotes the last third of his column to a lengthy account of death by dehydration, a manipulative tactic that conveniently ignores the existence of administerable drugs to ease the process and the presence of trained doctors and nurses to oversee it.

Tellingly, the piece ends with the claim that the Schiavo case ought to make physicians reconsider their stand on the removal of life-prolonging equipment 'if only on a gut level.' I can only be thankful that despite the intervention of moral crusaders like Mr Ho, the relevant authorities have remained clear-headed enough not to let their gut feelings overwhelm rationality and respect for human dignity.

Championing the arts

2005-03-27T14:40:00.000+08:00

Unbelievable. Simply unfuckingbelievable. From Friday's Straits Times (which I only read today):

Literature winner read only 3 novels in 2 years

A TEEN who prefers news magazines to novels has won an international award for ENglish Literature students.

Candice Wan Shu Ting picked up the 2004 Angus Ross prize, an annual award for the best performancein the A-level English examination by candidates outside Britain.

The former Saint Andrew's Junior College divinity student, who confessed to reading just three novels in the last two years, makes no apology for not being a bookworm.

At this point in the article, I assumed that she had, instead, been reading short story and poetry collections. I was wrong.

"What's important about Literature is being able to appreciate the text for what it is, and to have the genuine passion to sit down and apply the skills we've been taught," said the 18-year-old, who attended Crescent Girls' Secondary and Radin Mas Primary.

Seldom have I seen two phrases as unequally yoked as 'genuine passion' and 'sit down and apply the skills we've been taught'. Then again, maybe I'm inappropriately old-fashioned for my age—my definition of what it means to have 'genuine passion' for literature would include, well, reading it.

Explaining why she does not read novels, she said: "As I've grown older, I've developed my own style of writing poems and short stories, and no longer need to read novels for ideas or to emulate techniques."

I don't recall having heard that before from a writer under 50, but if you do the math, you'll see that Candice Wan achieved this remarkable feat at age 16. Someone give her a prize!

Oh. Right.

Understandably, certain people seem to find this inspiring:

CANDICE WAN.. man.. she sure is the role model we shd look up to.. Literature Book Prize!!! She sure did SAJC proud.. and not forgetting to mention THE ARTS FACULTY.. yea!

Incidentally, those three novels she did read? They're by. . . Dan Brown. Go figure.

I wonder what Miss K thinks of all this.

Mad pimpage

2005-03-27T13:50:00.000+08:00

Put On Your Jesus Skin Boots

Ben's a pal of mine and needs to learn how to truncate news items, but that's just two strikes against him, right? Read his blog anyway.

Secret life

2005-03-26T22:52:00.000+08:00

Jeff VanderMeer is Joss Whedon!

The company that occupies the first through fourth floors of the building has a secret name. This name is never spoken aloud and almost never written down. A few people have seen its syllables, at night, in confidence. The name glows a fiery gold when looked upon. Those who see it are said to be changed forever. Some leave the building immediately. Others rise so fast in the company that they ascend to the fifth floor and few ever see them again. The secret name of the company is older than the company itself. It will remain long after the company is gone. ('Secret Life')

Hmm.

Link thanks to Matt, who describes the story as 'Dilbert on absinthe', which is fair. Give it a go if that sounds like your thing.

Fear me, I'm a poet

2005-03-26T16:50:00.000+08:00

Chicago poet seized as fugitive killer

Poet Norman A. Porter Jr.'s greatest work might be his creation of J.J. Jameson, an anti-war, pro-labor Chicago poet who has been spinning and spouting his verses in the city for nearly 20 years.

On Tuesday, Porter's life as J.J. Jameson of Maywood came to a shocking end when authorities arrested him for being a fugitive from the law. Porter, they said, killed two people in his home state of Massachusetts. The arrest came the same month he was honored as Poet of the Month by the Web site ChicagoPoetry.com.
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In 1960, he was arrested and charged with the execution-style slaying of a store clerk in Saugus, Mass., police said. While awaiting trial, he attempted to escape, killing a jailer at a Middlesex County Jail in Cambridge, Mass., police said. Porter later pleaded guilty to the slayings of both men.

After he escaped from the work-release facility in 1985, he made a new life for himself in Chicago as part of the city's lively poetry scene.

Porter was known for his comic poems and his slow, pronounced tone, said C.J. Laity, a friend and the publisher of ChicagoPoetry.com. In 1999, he also published a book called "Lady Rutherford's Cauliflower," Laity said.

It'll be good for his sales, at least.

(The follow-up article includes a sample of his poetry. It's disappointingly staid.)

And I'm not afraid to use it

2005-03-25T22:35:00.000+08:00

Found, a bit late, on Neil Gaiman's journal:

Prison Guards on Strike Over Antique Guns

Greek prison guards will go on strike next week demanding a change of their American-made weapons that date back to the U.S. wars in central America almost a century ago.

While antique shops would be eager to get their hands on them, prison guards just want to get rid of their obsolete 1911 U.S. Cavalry revolvers. The guns do not scare inmates any more as safety experts have advised guards not to fire them.

Yes, that would do it, I'd think.

Having his lips stolen by Ye-won, he threatens to marry her

2005-03-25T16:36:00.000+08:00

The mindboggling back cover of a VCD my sister bought for a friend:

Just another victim of the ambient morality

2005-03-24T21:20:00.000+08:00

Shortly after I made that last post, I experienced a sudden conviction: discrimination against homosexuals in Singapore isn't something we'll see reduced to acceptable levels in our lifetimes, because never mind homophobia, racism is still mainstream. Unreported, but mainstream. It's acceptable—even usual—among the rank and file of the SAF for Malay women (bear in mind the context of my last post) to be disparaged as 'brown like shit', and for all assembled to express collective disgust at the notion of Indian women ('hairy', 'smelly', 'black'). It's acceptable to make jokes about 'invisible men' and how they have to smile so you can see them at night, at which point they become 'Oreos'. It's acceptable to refer to an Indian whose name you don't know as 'that one, you know, the aneh—the tall one, not the fat one'. (Compare: 'that nigger—the tall one, not the fat one'.) It's acceptable to refer to a Sikh as 'the turban'.

Okay, you say, these are teenage (or close enough) boys, some of them not very educated or with little exposure to the Other. Of course they're pricks; it's a phase. I say: bollocks. I've heard the same, in more polite terms, from DXOs, classmates of both sexes, cab drivers and so on. I once overheard a Christian lady on a bus tell a group of companions how you can't blame the 'aboriginal' races for rejecting Christ, because devil-worship is in their blood. Reaction: sagely nods from all. Even someone very close to me (who shall not be named) has been know to remark that Malays do badly in school, and maybe it really is genetic. . . ? If casual racism is something people grow out of, it seems there are enough others growing into it to replace them.

Damned if you'll ever read anything about it, though. Instead, crack open any government produced publication on anything that involves the common people and odds are it's supposed to have shown the harmony and cohesion between the races—photos of Chinese and Malays working side by side (always that phrase) to fight SARS, or terrorism, or help tsunami survivors, and sentimental accounts (there are many such in Shoulder To Shoulder, for instance) of how 'in NS, the colour of your skin doesn't matter; all do the same work, and if anything happens, all kena tekan together'. Apparently harmony means restricting one's racism to when other races' backs are turned (thus avoiding riots, yay!).

Yeah, I know none of this is news. I guess it's just that online forums and the blogosphere have spoiled me; there are racist and/or homophobic idiots out there, sure, but it's a rare forum where such people don't immediately get shouted down by a dozen saner minds, and as for blogs, even the most extreme blogs, if they have any significant readership at all, have to at least code their racism/homophobia (and will probably end up getting picked apart anyway). This simply isn't the case in meatspace, at least not in little this corner of it.

I never thought I'd say this, but the internet has given me more optimism about humanity than is warranted. Events over the past few weeks have slowly brought the reality back to me.

Here's what your tax dollars are paying for

2005-03-24T12:18:00.000+08:00

Internet access for me to blog and my platoonmates to look at women in lingerie.

Three cheers for the SAF.

Things I am studiously ignoring

2005-03-23T20:14:00.000+08:00

For the good of my blood pressure:

1) The Media Development Authority on Safehaven's concert permit application—'We are unable to agree to your application as performances that promote alternative lifestyles are against the public interest.'

2) Vivian Balakrishnan on censorship—'Far from wanting the media to be pro-People's Action Party, the Government's main concern is that the media be honest, accurate, and pro-Singapore' (from the Straits Times)

3) Tony Pierce on Xiaxue—'i like your blog very much and i am glad to hear that you are becoming so popular on the blogosphere'

Human lettuce must live

2005-03-22T20:26:00.000+08:00

If there's one thing I hate about tragic events aside from their, well, tragedy, it's the terrible poems they spawn:

Vegetable Nation
by Stew Albert

Republicans love Americans
turned to vegetables,
on their lies and fake news.
fighting vigorously,
human lettuce must live,

Bush rushing to the White House,
he even concluded a vacation
for signing on
to Terri's right to stare blankly forever,

getting away from the stink
of executed corpses
of thinking humans
he left rotting in Texas graveyards. . . .

Well, what did you expect from a poem that starts 'Republicans love Americans'?

As for the issue itself, enough said. RIP Terri Schiavo. Soon, I hope.

Observations

2005-03-22T19:19:00.000+08:00

1) New recruits marching resemble nothing so much as go-go dancers.

2) Today's cookhouse dinner, the 'Seafood Burger Set', included chicken, sausages, baked beans and papaya soup (!), but did not actually contain any seafood.

iPuke

2005-03-21T21:59:00.000+08:00

Found on Boing Boing: Make your own furry iBook!

Yick.

Better Living Through Buttermilk

Announcing Real Presences: an ongoing record of Singapore literature in English

Because I dislike deleting things

QOTD

How disappointing

Now It's On

Well

Meanwhile, on reality A

Godawful

Awful

Engrish of the day

Daily whine

'NDP memories' indeed

Fattened calves beware!

not 24h off the plane

Necessary hiatus

Yay for unity

The return of fragmented posts

Full circle

Now that's entertainment

Writerly whining post

Guns love Bush but he does not love them back

Real tits send fake tits to Aceh

Telling it like it is

Two great tastes that taste great together

Signboard crusaders

Adventures in cinebiography

Adventures in ST abuse

Reinventing the chicken suit

Thank you sir, may I have another?

Adventures in unfortunate headlining

Whatnot Magazine wants you!

More advertising genius

Advertising genius

Cheese poem

All your palace are belong to us

Pop will eat itself

Writing-related humour that doesn't suck

[Silly pun on the word 'blog' goes here]

Adventures in counter-productive advertising

QOTD

"'Baroque,' perhaps even 'rococo'"

Adventures in the obvious

Alan Moore shocked to discover that Hollywood is dumb

Opposable thumbs = overrated

Adventures in hipness

Jean de Baton! Jean de Baton!

Will work for Off

Kesselising Ender's Game

All Tomorrow's Tupperware Parties

Dr Dobson, you randy old devil

Foiled again

'Lastly, I have written “Roger”, a poem of ten sections in tribute to my cousin of the same name'

Sharkjump 2005

Engrish of the day

Pro-Singapore press redux

Adventures in branding

Bringing litrachure to the masses

The real thing

Blogging is a thing that used to happen here

Speaking of farces. . . .

See also 'farce'

Web designer needed

Engrish of the day

Shit scary

Speed Through Skill my arse

Cable guy

That's when I reach for my revolver

An offer we can't refuse

Adventures in baggage-handling

The case for big publishing conglomerates

Brain-dead

Telecommunism

Never leave home without it!

A vote for me is a vote for mercy killings

DON'T PANIC

SMU students are different

Simon says: Singapore blogs > HK blogs

Sofa King anal

Death and fines