No more Children's Day

October is coming and so is Children's Day. Kids are a lucky lot because they have a day which is meant for them, a day which they get to stay in bed and not have to wake up early in the morning to go to school. Then there's all the presents that they will receive from their teachers, which invariably include lots of goodies and other worthless little toys that kids amuse themselves with to no end. As is the tradition in local schools here, there will be a celebration the day before a festive holiday or other special days, of which Children's Day happens to be one of them. I remember during my primary school days, the celebration always seemed to include some magic show. Maybe it's just the nature of kids to get terribly excited with magic shows, but during my time, the tricks that the magicians perform, one would have seen them many times over till one knew exactly what's in the bag of tricks that the magician has.

The most exciting part, however, must be the lessons we had on celebration day. That's because all us greedy kids would be eagerly waiting for goodies and presents to be given away by our teachers. I remember there would be those miserly and bo chap teachers who would merely just distribute to everyone a packet of crackers or the like. Usually that's because it is the most convenient way of satisfying the occasion. In army, we call that go through motion - do something purely for the sake that it needs be done.

For those nicer teachers whom we would expect something more substantial, we were usually not disappointed. Most often, it would be the form teacher who will furnish the most number of gifts. Sometimes a huge packet consisting many smaller packets of sweets or crackers would be passed around for everyone to take one. This was a ritual performed every Children's Day, where almost a class of 40 rambunctious kids would sit in the classroom and wait for goodies to be passed around. There would be plenty of chatter, boastful comparisons of presents (like different colour or pattern of the exterior of certain presents) and a persistent air of excitement. Gratitude was not a virtue we understood or had acquired then, and all that was in our mind was the da feng shou (huge harvest). Instead of puzzling over mathematic sums, you fussed over which chocolate or sweet shall you consume first.

Kids are therefore a fortunate lot. And rightly so. For we are all kids only once, and for a short period which we will only fully appreciate and be aware of only after we leave our childhood. I don't know how Children's Day came into existence and neither am i interested to find out. But i wonder if we adults are not deserving of a holiday ourselves? Ok, Adults' Day sounds just way too unappealing. Still, since i have formally and irrevocably relinquished my children status many years ago, i wouldn't mind having something else to replace that. Modern Man needs more holidays. We need to work less and play more!

End of presentations, but...

i feel very relieved and just happy that all the rushing and the presentation itself is now over. slept on the sofa last night; woke up in the morning and continued to pore over my notes and literally worked till the last minute. class was at 4 and i finished my presentation notes only at 330pm, rushed out of home and took a cab down to school, then rushed again to the printing room to print copies of my notes for the class before flying off to the classroom which is located faraway. but finally just now i could take all the time i wanted to have my dinner.

the prof finally realised that it wasn't a wise move to have students work on the presentation topic before he covers them in lecture. and so he's going to have the next 2 classes pushed back till the final week of the semester. the module is after all highly theoretical and the notes aren't simple to comprehend. why i chose to do the earlier topic then? coz i wanted to get it over and done with. so now i am done with presentations for the semester. bad thing is: there're 3 essays, 1 project and 3 more tests to see me through the rest of the weeks. in particular, that pharmacy module i am taking is going to kill me with the gargantuan amount of memory work that's going to be needed. sucks.

yesterday i had lunch with Josh and as usual it is always interesting talking with him. he was my buddy during a certain phase during my army stint and i am glad we had the chance to be friends, to stay as good friends even though we rarely are able to meet up.

in army you inevitably make many friends but who are otherwise just acquaintances. on many occasions i've met these acquintances/army-mates around on campus, but because neither the other party nor i made an effort to say hi or smile when we first met again after army days, it became that we behaved as though neither of us knew each other. since our looks haven't had any drastic changes, it's highly unlikely that we've forgotten who the other person is. i mean, some of us went through horrible times with the same group of people, you can't just erase that person's face off your memory. besides this group of people i knew through army, the other group are some primary school friends whom i have never spoken much to during those early years.

thing is, you can't help but feel this sense of awkwardness whenever you see these people. maybe the first time when i saw them i ought to have taken the first step - but no, i'm not the very friendly sort, you know. like them, i just fix my gaze elsewhere. it's just hard to make that extra effort to establish connection once more. there's just a stubborn inertia that holds you back and makes you hope the other person will instead come forward to you. if neither does, then too bad.
i just pray i won't ever end up in a same class as these people. otherwise it will be extremely embarrassing and awkward to exclaim surprise, like 'oh yah, you are...' or 'do you remember...?'

for now, i shall take a break tonight and decide if i want to rush the project that is due this friday. yes, there're neverending datelines to meet. but i try to remind myself i ought to enjoy no matter how bad things are. besides the pharmacy module, i'm glad that for the rest, i enjoy studying and gaining insight into the subjects and issues that are involved. this should always be the case.

When i started with this blog i had wanted to use it more as a platform to do some creative writing. I think i did manage to write some thoughtful pieces and had fun writing them. Unlike what i am doing now, writing those creative pieces require more deliberation and effort as you give your writing some semblance of structure. I do that not because i haven't had enough of academic writing, but because i like to read and i appreciate good writing and i hope to exercise my writing skills in some creative way. It's somewhat like why i enjoy literature - it's about appreciating good prose, poetry and good writing that inspires or provokes. And sometimes it's just for fun, really.

But now that busy days are the norm, it is rather difficult to write as i did previously. While i know for certain there are only few - if any at all - people who would visit this blog occasionally, strangely, it has actually taken some time for me to become comfortable with blogging whatever i wish to write about, to be less restrained by inhibitions. Now i am more apt to just blog about small matters, perhaps even inconsequential stuff. To me, blogging provides the platform for writing; it is writing itself that is a cathartic process.

I slept only 3hrs yesterday to produce an essay outline that i presented today. Now i have less than 16 hours to churn out another one - the one about structural problems in the international economic system :( - before i embarrass myself in front of my classmates. I can take some quiet comfort in the fact that i was told the topic that i am doing is a hard one, and that there are probably quite many others who are also struggling with it (i hope so! haha). And it is because i couldn't really proceed on that i found myself writing all this. I hope in the next post, it would be about how i have scraped through the presentation. I really hope so.

Why are some of us always thrilled and quietly delighted at the sight of sunset or sunrise, or so i assume? Undoubtedly it has to do with the beauty of such a sight, which alone is enough to awe us. I guess its transience is just as important a factor that contributes to its beauty. Not everyone gets to see the sun rise from the horizon everyday, and even when one sees it, it is only for a specifically short period of time. That makes it all the more a precious experience.

I am not making sense of the tons of notes that i am carrying around with me everyday. 2 presentations next week are consuming ALL my attention. But try as i might, my mind's always wandering instead of reading the notes focusedly. Some people amaze me by simply being able to stay in the same position reading or doing work for a long period of time.

The bad part is not about not understanding your readings - it's being clueless about what the question wants and what the terms mean.
'Structural problems in the international economic system' - ???
Boy i am in need of help!

Rainbow over the sky

Just the other day the few of us were trying to get a bbq fire started (actually only K was getting his hands dirty with the charcoal). Dark clouds had gathered above in the sky and it was starting to drizzle. Thankfully the imminent storm didn't materialise even as the evening sky remained somewhat ominously cloudy. Then someone spotted a rainbow in the sky - and that got us all excited. We moved out of the veranda to catch a better view, and there it was, a rather faint but clearly visible rainbow had formed. I wondered in my 23 years how many times have i actually seen a rainbow. But this was certainly the first time that i saw a rainbow and had a camera at hand. Someone asked if i would be able to capture the rainbow on camera, and the next thing i knew, we were snapping photos of ourselves silly - with the rainbow in the picture, of course.

I

I read my notes blankly, stare at MS Word on the laptop blankly - only to have both of them stare back at me passively.

I stopped staring and looked out of the windows, and i realise it is now raining. I don't know when the raindrops started falling, but now that they are, i feel a tad more despairing, as if the rain encourages me to feel so.

I came to the library, the library of one of the top 20th universities, and all i wanted was a table that has a power terminal output nearby so that i can plug my laptop and do my work; but i was not granted my wish. I concluded thus, that there is a severe chronic shortage of tables and terminal outputs in the library, the library of a top university.

I look out of the windows again, and i realise now it's raining even more heavily. I wonder if it parallels my increasing sense of anxiety, but just as instantaneously, the rain seems to be getting smaller, much smaller.

I look at my laptop again, and this time it is responding, making words silently, from left to right, that look exactly the same as the thoughts that are running in my mind.

Yes, things are happening, but not my essay outline that needs submitting.

orchard-inspired crap

i like the selection of books at Kino
but i prefer the vibes of Borders
its more classy decor, its unavailable seats
maybe i just like Wheelock more than Ngee Ann

topman is giordano-ised
levis is de rigueur
zara is chic
and everyone has a pair of addidas sneakers
but watch out
'coz puma is leaping up

there is orchard but no fruits
there is mango but no tree
far east plaza is far but not east
paragon lures with elegance
while scotts seems forgotten

from lucky plaza
take 7 to bugis
to get to suntec
take 1-0-6 or 14

unseen trains zip beneath the mall
quite deep they must be
'coz there's B1, B2 even B3

For now i can't think of more
and end here it therefore shall be

I haven't read Thomas L. Friedman's by now not-so-new book The world is flat. But i've read The Lexus and the Olive Tree. Another book in waiting to be read is his earlier one, From Beirut to Jerusalem. Came across this New York Press Review of his new book from another blog and it has had me laughing.

Starting on a wrong note

There are some days when you wake up at the wrong time, find yourself a little tired perhaps (despite the long sleep) and feeling none too enthusiastic about the day that would unfold soon. You sit on the bed slumped, hair in an unsightly state, notes lying untidily on the desk; the alarm clock shows that you are running late for school, and you realise your bag is not packed with the things that are needed for the day. But try as you might to be upbeat about things and to summon a sense of urgency - which the situation always demands of you - you just feel unmotivated to get going. It's like you've woken up from a deep slumber on a stationary jeep stuck in the middle of a long empty road: you dreamily recall that there's an appointment to hurry to, and that you need to do something fast with the failing engine - but something appears to be out of sync and holding you back, and you can only remain where you are, almost involuntarily, unable to do much else except maybe stare at the long, lazy road ahead. All this while the details of the surroundings - the relative quiet and calm, the unstirred dust and sand, the usual sounds of nature - conspire to root you to your immobility - which you only all too readily acquiesce.

Today was such a day for me, except that I was not in a jeep on some desolate road. I woke up and sat dead still on my bed, but was strangely conscious of the small room which i've been an inhabitant of since nearly 6 years ago. Immobilised to my bed for a couple of minutes, i was staring not at an empty road but a messy table (and its contents). The noisy standing fan a few metres away from my bed was determined to fill the place of natural sounds. And outside, the sky was occupied by low menacing clouds while the sun was nowhere to be seen. I vaguely remembered waking up momentarily to a raining sky earlier, but it seemed now the rain had retreated.

I surveyed my surroundings and looked for my alarm clock first. If i hastened to do what needs to be done, i reckoned i could still catch the bus and not be too late for the 8a.m. lecture. The mood to act fast was, however, decidedly absent. That's when it struck me that today is not going to be a good day, that things are not going to go quite the way they should like on, say, a normal day. After all, it's always been like this: your mood at the start of the day often has a strange influence on how the rest of your day would be like, while the unfolding events in the day would be all too glad to perform a complementary role, as if proving that your mind had picked up the right signals at the start of the day's journey.

In my case, it didn't take long for the day events to sing to the tune of my tepid, languorous mood. Although i knew it wasn't very early by the time i set off from home, it soon turned out that i would be made to pay for my morning procrastination. Walking to the bus-stop, the rain came on again, first drizzling but soon got heavier, though it never reached the levels of torrential rainfall. An unusually long wait for the bus ensued. When the first one arrived, it stopped to allow passengers to alight, but the front doors remained passively shut. Obviously the diver didn't think that more people could squeeze up the sardine-packed bus. The second one came - yet another single-deck - but still i couldn't board it; the massive, shoving crowd proved just too difficult to get past. Only when the third bus arrived was i able to get on the bus, by which time the lecture was just a few minutes away from starting. Surely this wasn't a very good way to start the day with.

During all that waiting, however, i found myself distracted by the rain instead of being preoccupied with the prospect of being very late for class. There's always a somewhat subdued sense of elation welling in me whenever i gaze at and admire falling raindrops from the sky. Perhaps it has to do with the power of Nature to evoke in me a certain sense of awe and fascination each time it displays its forces (which of course can be benign or destructive). The traffic may be roaring and the movement of humans on the streets continuous and unceasing, but the rain stands isolated from all that, even nonchalant to the little chaos it seemed responsible for below here in diminutive human towns. Against the bad vehicular traffic and in the midst of an atmosphere of incessant rushing and impatience at the bus-stop, the raindrops merely fall innocently from above, creating a constant rhythm that drowns all human din combined. Sometimes the simple joy of admiring nature can't be explained fully in words, if only because man's tool for expression sometimes prove inadequate (and unecessary perhaps) in matters regarding Nature and its myriad processes.

I was almost 45-minutes late for lecture but was told by my friend i had missed little. When i got out of the lecture theatre later the cloudy sky had already cleared and the sun was peeking from behind somewhere. I did feel a little disappointed that the rain had come and gone so quickly, but it wasn't a lingering feeling. For the rest of the day, the lethargy was persistent and, i supposed, quite visible since i had friends asking why i seemed out of sorts today. Also, I would have incurred a great deal of unnecessary trouble had i not realised i had dropped my wallet at a bench. It was almost 15 minutes later that i realised it and flew back to the location to find it still lying there untouched, fortunately.

Ironically, perhaps that recovery - born out of a bad incident - was destined to mitigate the bad day. At least for today, it seems mind, body and fortuity were all playing conspiratorial roles. The only good is that it produced these thoughts, and hence this post.

(un)common experiences?

There are probably dozens of experiences that are trivial and hardly mentioned but which some of us probably share and feel the same way about them. Usually it takes someone to casually mention them and there will be an ensuing chorous of consensus and nodding of heads.

Just the other day when i was in a friend's car, i was sufficiently engaged by the music playing on Class95 to remark thus: It's always like this: whenever i'm in someone's car, there's always good music playing on the radio, but when i'm at home sitting at my desk and doing my work, the music that's playing is just bad. My friend concurred, while J, sitting at the back of the car, added that for her, she gets 'bad' music whenever she is the driver; but while on others' car, it's always the opposite case. I also recall making the same observation to another friend when we were walking in some shop once where the music that the radio station was playing was just consistently great. And my friend readily agreed with me. I guess i'm just not the only one who feels that way.

Another example which i didn't check with anyone: bizarre dreams made during fitful sleep in the morning which upon your waking up you wonder if you were actually semi-conscious or fully conscious when you were dreaming of them. Sometimes there are dreams that i'd just made whose 'scenarios' are so familiar, so surreal that i almost am certain that that was not the first time i'd dreamt of them. It's almost as if i was transported into the same setting over and again, that as i am dreaming of them, i know what's going to happen, how the 'plot' is going to play out, which are the corners that i am going to turn to; that i am a reluctant character who is destined to go through the same fate every time the dream is made. And always, these are dreams which are neither pleasant nor frightful; they are just odd and probably inexplicable - bizarre, in short. Then there are others which invariably surprise you - you dream of certain acquaintances or friends whom you're barely keeping in touch with. And still there are those which are short and weird, which you made them probably all in the span of the same time, one after another, like a series of short films that you see in continuous mode. Maybe there is some physiological explanation to all that, i don't know.

It's always intertesting to talk to people, listen to them sharing their experiences. That's when you realise people are bound to one another in an inexplicable number of ways, all in the realm of human experience and thought.

Not enough women for marriage-age Chinese men

What happens when humans try to play god and disrupt Nature?
Naturally, you get disturbing imbalances.

In a trend fraught with troubling political and social implications, China will soon find itself with a marriage-age population remarkably out of balance, with about 23 million more young men than women available for them to marry in this decade and the next - what demographers term a "marriage sqeeze."

This impending surplus of unattached young men could be a driving force behind increased crime, explosive epidemics of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, and even international threats to the security of other nations. Yet the Chinese government has done little to address its demographic destiny.

The coming squeeze is largely the legacy of the government's one-child policy, along with societal modernization. As a result, the nation's fertility rate has fallen dramatically, from around 6 children per woman in the 1960s to around 1.7 currently.

But the society's strong preference for sons has not changed. In recent decades, ready access to ultrasound technology has enabled parents to learn the sex of their unborn children and has led to widespread female-specific abortion.

From IHT, China Bachelor Bomb

To live well and healthy

For many of us who are in our twenties or younger, we are healthy youths who, i suppose, have not succumbed to unimaginable illnesses or the legions of lurking diseases and health problems that are insidiously present in this world. We eat freely and give nary a thought about what it would be like if our health is seized away from us. Still, i've observed that in today's fashion-consicous and image/appearance-obsessive era - no thanks in part to the proliferating media - many people are making deliberate choices when it comes to their diet and lifstyle needs. By and large, i have many friends who generally avoid fast food restaurants, and quite many of us in fact really like our veggies. This is all very good but equally important is the motive behind our choices.

But that's not what i wanted to talk about. In the span of a week, i've made two trips to two hospitals, one is to visit a very ill Uncle who had a liver transplant many years ago and have remained in poor health since. The other is to visit a troubled ex-classmate who is otherwise all right in health. It was the former trip which really dawned on me the enormity of the problem of health care in every human society. I'd bet that many friends are probably like me: we ain't have a clue about the medishield, medisave and - are there more? - other insurances that are actually covered under our name. Despite the numerous times that the CPF board sent me an inordinate amount of materials and papers and forms with regard to all the medi-policies, I've never seriously read and understood them. A professor once told my class that in the present day, the problem we have is not a lack of information - it's information overload. And i guess that in a certain sense explains my reluctance - even aversion - to read up the information that actually matters a great deal.

Then the hospital visit made me realise that health care, both health costs and services, above many other public issues, is a topic of perennial utmost concern. The elites and wealthy in every society may not ever need to worry about this; they have the monetary wherewithal to see that should they fall very ill, they would have no problem gaining access to doctors and health treatment. Money can't buy you happiness, but it can certainly solve many problems. By and large, however, the rest of society are not as fortunate as the minority of wealthy elite.

Perhaps a classic example to be used in economics, health care - medical workers, medical equipment etc - is a finite resource and demand for it always outstrips supply. This may not be prevalent in Singapore but there's no doubt that demand for health care resources will always be high - because every human is fallible and will fall ill and die one day. It is therefore a measure of state efficiency how a country manages the problem. Illnesses and diseases are blind, and they do not choose between the rich and the poor, but therein, the stark reality is that the ability to receive treatment differs vastly between the two groups. I am talking both in terms of gaining access to treatment as well as the quality of treatment.

Each time parliament spoke about health care or that there are some major bills passed to improve medishield and medisave for the population, especially the elderly, i never bothered even to read the headlines. They always provoke little interest in me. Then when i was at the hospital visiting my Uncle, i started to understand that that topic which i couldn't care any less about is precisely very significant, very tremendous. When my uncle was sent in to the hospital very ill and with liver malfunctioning, he was not able to receive immediate attention only until after some time when my aunt had to make a great amount of effort to seek necessary medical attention. Only two days in ICU, the costs had ballooned to more than S$8k. As my uncle has stopped working since his liver failure and after he had had a transplant, he has little in his medisave to help with his hospitalisation costs. Thankfully my aunt has been a most strong lady who has been working tirelessly all these years. I'm not sure if monetary help has flown in from elsewhere but there's a big, pretty close-knit family network that i'm sure has been instrumental in lending support in various ways.

It's never a pleasant thing to visit a hospital but the sad truth is that at some point in our lives, we most certainly would have gone there at least once, whether or not it's to visit someone or to seek treatment ourselves. When compared to the dozens of poor developing nations, i guess it's not a bad thing after all for it means that hospital health care is prevalent in our society. It's easy to go on and on about how the poor will always be disadvantaged in this situation, that life is frail and so on. I have no wish to do so. Personally, i hope to take personal responsibility for my own welfare and health so that i will never have to find myself in a situation where i have to burden my family.
It's just too huge a burden to afford.

Four notes

1. I'd to give tution yesterday morning and i was, as usual, trying my best not to be too late. But i needed some decent food to at least suppress the morning hunger. Instead of waiting for the traffic lights to turn green (which i never do whenever i have to cross the particular road), i walked a few metres away from it and cross the road without thinking twice (the hawker centre and wet market is over at the other side). It was when i was crossing halfway that i realised a police car had just gone past me. A lady officer was driving the car, and i was dead sure she was looking at me when she drove past. Thing is: the traffic lights had turned red, the car had to stop, i was just a few metres away from the traffic lights, and hence the stationary police car. Of course our police officers have got better things to do than to nab jaywalkers every minute of the day - which if they really do, they could easily round up something like 90% of Singaporeans in a day, i reckon. Nonetheless, i hastened my steps. It's not exactly comforting to know that you've broke the law right under the watchful eyes of law enforcers, you know.

2. After relief came agony. I was delighted that i bought my peanut pancake without having to wait a very long time for it to be made. But just when the bus-stop from which i was going to take the bus at came within my sight, i agonisingly witnessed the bus that i had to take leave the bus-stop. So in exchange for being very late for tution, i got to eat my hot peanut pancake unhurriedly at the bus stop.

3. A cyclist friend of mine is a lawyer. Whether you look at him from the front, back or side, he looks my age, or even possibly younger. And it's not just me who thinks that way; practically everyone can't tell his real age. But alas, he's a good 13 years older than me, and as i've just said, there's no telling he's in his thirties. Tell me he's a few years older than me, i can still accept; but he, with his oh-so-flawless complexion and baby-face looks, is actually many years my senior - I adamantly refused to believe. Other friends had to assure me that this is the truth as they've seen his age from his IC before. Certainly, for this lawyer, the stress and demands of his profession, and Age, have not taken a toll on his physical appearance. When we parted after one of our not-so-regular rides of late, a humourous friend of mine asked tongue in cheek: 'Don't bluff, you going to meet Sammi Cheng right?' (Sammy Cheng endorses the skin care products of SK-II).

4. I received a birthday card from a friend yesterday, and that was all that was needed to make my day. In this day of cutting-edge technology, I really appreciate and delight at receiving letters, cards or the like the traditional way, that is, via the snail-mail. I would like to believe i am not out of sync with today's world or that i've failed to recognise the intrinsic value of technology -which is to make our lives more convenient. I do also appreciate emails, greetings and messages communicated through other means besides the snail-mail. However, precisely because it takes that little bit more effort and inconvenience (so to speak) to still rely upon snail-mail to transmit one's greetings, cards received via the laborious post-system are just so much more heartfelt and appreciated. I know, because it always takes me time and effort to write and send my christmas cards every year, a ritual that i insist in carrying on every year to reach my friends.

I was a spiteful boy

In the yester-yesteryear of primary school days, when we were blissfully still little kids who prance around and live a social existence oblivious of human treachery, unaware of social decorum and the complexities of human relationships, we uttered one too many silly thing - things that on retrospect you can't recall or disbelieve that you actually said them. But we needn't be surprised, really. It is probably not far from the truth that over the years each and everyone of us would have accumulated legions of remarks we wished we had never uttered - remarks that are variously unbelievably stupid, silly, outrageous, bizarre, ridiculous, harsh, hurtful or just simply unnecessary. And it is perhaps not implausible that all these qualities may all at once be present in some of the things that were ever said.

I found myself in embarrassment and disbelief when i met a primary school classmate once. And yes, as you would soon hear of, apparently i'd ever said something very horrible. But bear in mind i was then in all respects pretty much still a KID. And as we all know, kids can be really pesky and nasty; they say things in plain terms, from genuine opinions to downright silly but hilarious stuff; they are little devils and angels all at once. (Yeah, in case you don't know, i'm now providing advance justification for my imminent revelation.)

You know, because this is tiny Singapore, for a good majority of us born and bred here, the paths that we and our peers take often cross and converge. The ex-primary school classmate that i had met came from the same university as me, and needless to say, there were occasions when we would bump into each other (she also lives very near my place). She's the loquacious sort of person, and unrestrained by the inhibitions that normally make many girls shy talking, she's clearly comfortable speaking with both guys and girls. Together with a few other ex-classmates who lived in the same area, we used to hang around together after classes, sometimes playing catching in the playgrounds that used to be an ubiquitous sight in our neighbourhood. I also remember her as candid and brash speaking, but always confident and strong in the face of consistently frequent biting reprimands by our form teacher. In fact, many of us had to be strong, for we had a tough lady teacher who practised favouritism. She was affectionate to the academically strong students and especially harsh and biased against the weaker ones (of which i fall under this category). As we were talking about our primary school days and classmates, this friend of mine recalled bitterly how vulnerable she felt then, what with a stern, biased teacher being so harsh on an 11 year old kid.

She went on and told me many details of our primary school days, and i was rather stunned by her amazing memory. It seems she could recall so many things that I just couldn't remember. In fact, her memory is so fantastic that it apparently retained certain things that would suggest i was not a perfect, sensitive, kind and lovable boy at the age of 11 years. I really thought i was a very nice person like i am now (smirks). But i had to be proven wrong.

"Do you remember you said i was the ugliest girl when we were in primary school?"

I would like to say, in all honesty, i don't. And by the way, are you sure you remember correctly? Oh well, so the truth is i am capable of such hurtful, spiteful remarks. But because i do not have the benefit of good and clear memory, there's no ascertaining under what circumstances were those words said. But one thing is for sure - they've clearly stuck in her mind since. Oh boy, now i can add another charge to my accumulating list of sins i've committed. Fine, i shall say more nice things to my friends from now on to compensate for all that. And to somewhat redeem myself a little, my friend can take comfort to know that she certainly isn't ugly now. I doubt i genuinely believed she was ugly at 11 years old also. Hell, there are many uglier people around - and to this, i can safely say that my sin-list has yet taken another huge leap upwards...

words in politics

In the arena of politics and international relations, words matter a lot. Sometimes, their inadequacy is precisely meant to express - or conceal - the obvious, which is forbidden from being mentioned by the vague notion of political correctness. Language by itself permits vast possibilities of nuances and subtleties, and by the same token, that which is spoken or said permits various interpretations of its meaning and significance. Just ask any diplomat or lawyer.

During today's lecture, the sincere and dedicated but ultimately boring and monotonous lecturer caught my (and the rest of the lecture's) attention when he said something. We were on the topic of ASEAN and politics in Southeast Asia, and he mentioned something about PM Lee and Thaksin's meeting in Thailand, wherein the two leaders discussed matters with regard to Indonesia, that biggest member in the regional organisation.

He said: When Thailand and Singapore speak in Thailand about Indonesia affairs, it is called interferrence. When Thailand and Singapore and Indonesia talk about the latter's problems in its country, it is called dialogue.

It seems so trivial yet this demonstrates in a limited sort of way how language gives meaning to the whole notion of political correctness, or incorrectness.

The choice of words speaks volumes.

the indispensable Music

Listening to music is a great way to chill, to enjoy a certain equanimity and peace that accompanies the pleasure of imbibing splendidly melodious notes. And it doesn't cost much to appreciate music.

I find myself enjoying walking through the malls in the weekdays when there's not much of a crowd - no screaming kids, no three-generation families out in full force, no chaos and unbearable din. It's not because i fancy walking around looking at beautiful things which i would not mind possessing but which i can't afford. Sometimes i just linger around simply because the department store or mall happens to be playing some music that has got me hooked. You know, there must be a few times when you unconsciously find your attention diverted away from the array of displays to the certain piece of music or song that is being played. I've had that exprience many times. By sheer chance, there would be times when some really nice music happen to be played just as you happen to be around in that particular store or mall. And then you just continue to stroll on, while your head is full of the music/song in the air.

I also like chilling out at bars or pubs that play soft rock music or jazz, or where there are live bands performing. Ironically though, i haven't had many opportunities to spend time in such places. One thing is that you usually have got to pay a lot for the drinks in order to be inside the bar. This is not good for poor folks like me. Coffee clubs or houses are a good alternative, though the ambience is certainly not quite the same. And i don't suppose any coffee houses have any live bands performing. In Kuala Lumpur, there are quite a couple of pubs around that look pretty conducive for enjoying drinks and chilling out with friends. (Many of them, at least in the area where i was, aren't the kind that has loud raucous music blaring from within.) I was at this place in K.L. once where it is somewhat like the Holland V. of Singapore, in terms of the street ambience and its slightly cosmopolitan crowd. After walking around for some time trying to find a pub that plays decently good music, my friends and i finally settled on one that has nice cushion seats that can accomodate all of us. There were plenty of other bars around which have very creative names and which all seem to be playing music that is palatable to our preference. But i reckon we were then too tired from all the walking and decided to just get into one quickly. It turned out to be quite a decent one. And if i recall correctly still, a bucket of heineken bottles was ordered and shared amongst 4 of us. As it is our neighbour up north, of course the drinks were far much cheaper, allowing us to drink our fill merrily.

When i to travel to K.L. the next time, i would definitely visit the place again. Far better than shopping and tiring your legs, enjoying drinks with a group of friends and appreciating good music is a much better deal.