my relative

the problem is, HL and i are criminals here in hainan, so we can't exactly run away and ask for help. you see, as soon as we arrived, we were informed that china/Hainan doesn't allow small tour groups, there are only 2 of us, which makes us...illegal. if they find out, someone would be fined. so he solemnly warned us not to tell anyone that we are tourists. we are his relatives. and since we are his relatives...

this is the first time ever, really, i have ever shared a meal with the guide. at every meal, he would sit with us, bold as brass, as if he is one of us, sharing our food and dipping his chopsticks into the same dishes...i don't think we know him well enough for this. isn't it most awkward and strange? we don't get a single moment away from him! even when we reach the hotel and wanted to walk AROUND the hotel, he tagged along, until we went back to our rooms. sigh...because he says, Hainan is a dangerous place and we are foreigners.

i really don't want to eat anymore meals with him. i don't feel like a tourist. HL and i are like two helpless little girls dragged around the country by a crafty old uncle, who is at once protective and exploitative. no one is allowed to fleece us except himself. we are at his mercy and he knows it. we don't even speak the language too well, and who can we protest to? he drinks heavily (by my standards) every dinner, then drives us back. for once, this intrepid traveller wishes that we have other guys with us.

PS, about the compulsory tour, in the end, we simply paid for a very expensive seafood dinner (yes, he shared it with us), and that was it. apparently, it was enough money spent to justify...whatever. it means we aren't getting fined, i think. wait, maybe it means we have just been fined.

in case you are wondering, he says that his company is Ye Lin, and we booked with City 99. masterofboots posted this entry in Maintint Hotel, Sanya.

Sucker's Land

why would anyone want to go to Hainan Island?

dear friends, i wish that i could post an 'wish you were here' entry, but...actually, i could. i wish that you guys were here so that there is safety in numbers.

HL and i are like lambs brought about to be fleeced and slaughtered. i am not sure whether it is the guide's fault, or the agency's anyway, someone, no, i mean, many people, are out to squeeze every drop they can. so i am very CROSS.

many of the so-called 'items on the itinerary' are merely shops in disguised. after some demonstration, the real point, of course, is to get you to buy the products - tea, medicine, silk. oh man, even if you buy anything, they would persuade you to buy more. i think i am going to have to be very rude soon. these people don't know how to take 'no' for an answer.

now we are having a ceasefire with our tour guide. notice my choice of noun. it would resume soon. he is trying to force us to go on the 'optional tour', because if not, someone would be fined! how bl*ody absurd! so friends, wish me luck, and oh yes.

wish you are here too :(

Hainan Island

was looking at the comic column in Straits Times Life! and a cartoon character said she is trying to reduce credit card debt. it was funny, until i realise i am in the same shoes :( counting down the pennies to payday :P got carelessly over-leveraged. ok, fine, i promise myself to be a better women next year, especially with the recession looming.

Bye, friends, i am going off to Hainan Island early, really early tomorrow. if i am sufficiently bored there, will blog. i heard that there is a famous chicken dish, Wen Chang Chicken. who knows? maybe it is the original Hainanese chicken rice.

Godspeed

God answered some of my prayers pretty quickly in the past few days, so quickly, that i was surprised. maybe i wasn't really expecting an answer, and the prayers were almost perfunctory. sometimes i forget whom i am praying to.

but the biggest reason why i was surprised, as that too often, prayers don't get answered immmediately. some prayers appear to get shelved, and the results were seen only much later. some never get answered, at least, not in the way that i want it to be answered. looking at the spotty record God has in answering prayers, a cynic can easily ask, then 'how do you know that there is a God at all?" after all, the results look random, and it is the pattern-seeking human who puts God into the picture when possible.

it is a good thing then, that i don't base my faith on how my prayers are answered. granted wishes are proof of a genie in a bottle, not of a sovereign God. As human beings, we look to the supernatural for proof of God, as if God would use magic all the time. even the people in Jesus' time asked him for a sign of his deity. If there were a God, He would part the Red Sea more often than once, He would lift up his beloved disciples so that their feet would not strike a stone, He would smite the blasphemous or nasty in a satisfying manner. at least, that's what we would do if we were God. we would behave like Bruce Almighty :P

but in our New Testament times, God doesn't seem to work this way anymore. It is not that He stopped answering prayers, i come to see that He prefers to respect natural laws and gently direct the course of our lives and circumstances instead, to meet our needs, to comfort and to guide. maybe one day when we look back at the entire picture of our lives or the course of history, we would be astounded by the ingenuity God displays in orchestrating His plans without resorting to magical shortcuts. personally, i think that this would be much more difficult.

still, it is nice to, every now and then, have the satisfaction of a prayer answered very speedily. we all need a little miracle every now and then.

Tiddly Toddlers Week 3

oh no, i have joined the menagerie and become an animal too.

today's babysitting army saw a tiny chick of a girl who was two sizes smaller than everyone else and timid as a mouse. whenever she was left alone, her little lips would quiver and those big round eyes dart around the room anxiously for mummy. what is the nanny to do? so, this is what i did the whole of the first hour:

i felt like a great fat mother hen nestling the chick under my wings. she was so young that she didn't seem to understand what was going on, and stare uncomprehendingly at you if you try to talk to her. hehehe, it was almost like hugging a warm soft toy...until it wanted to go and pee :P then this mother hen relinquished her to the toilet 'choo-choo train', and ran off happily to play with other chicks, i mean, children. the menagerie was rather quiet today because some of the most lively members were not around, so it wasn't as tiring as usual. or maybe, i am getting used to babysitting already.

*** ***

http://www.asiaone.com/News/Education/Story/A1Story20081111-99901.html

this epic campaign makes me want to laugh. some undergraduates from SMU want to stop people from reserving seats with packs of tissue, and staged the monumental effort of giving out packs and packs of tissue with the words 'this seat is not taken, it is yours'.

in the first place, i am not convinced that it is an anti-social act to reserve seats in this manner. after all, it is not like the seats are hogged for a long time. it is perfectly understandable that diners want to be assured that they have a seat after they bought their food, right?

what is so intimidating about a pack of tissue? why does it stop people from taking the seats? it is effective as a means of reservation only because we all respect the unspoken social rule, because we too have benefitted from it. surely you don't mean to say that all this while you have been fuming, you continue to be rendered helpless by a pack of tissue? my goodness...i would love to have such compliant children in my menagerie.

i thought, the easiest way to abolish the rule is to ignore it. those who refuse to recognise the sovereignty of the pack of tissue can simply take the seats anyway, and yes, use the tissue too, so there! :P

please, young people, this is really much ado about nothing. in other countries, undergraduates are running around naked to stop animal abuse, or demonstrating against excessive carbon emission. i would be embarassed to be fighting a battle over something as filmsy as tissue paper :P

Lehman Minibonds: Appeal to emotions

Logical fallacy: Appeal to emotions

This fallacy is committed when someone manipulates peoples' emotions in order to get them to accept a claim as being true. for more detail, see here
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-emotion.html

don't string me up and shoot me. i know that money matters are sensitive, especially if one feels victimised. over and over again, we have been bombarded with media coverage of investors of the doomed Lehman Minibonds. much of the focus is given especially to retirees who have lost their life savings, and yesterday's Newpaper featured a partially paralysed man who was counting on this investment to see him through for the rest of his life.

of course these people need help, and considering all the public attention lavished, there is no doubt that DBS and all other banks would bend backwards to cater to their needs.

but it is another matter saying that they deserve compensation because of their failed investment. if a product pays anymore than a fixed deposit, naturally, it carries a higher risk than one that pays less. how can there be such a thing as a free lunch? to be frank, isn't the higher profit the very reason why one would take more risk? the worst doesn't usually happen...but this month, it did.

of course it is painful to lose money, especially in huge sums. but this doesn't mean that the banks have the legal obligations to compensate the investors. in fact, i thought that if they do, it actually undermines the integrity of the laws that govern investment, because it means that even legally-binding contracts, aka the fine print, can be overturned if there is sufficient public outcry. let us not forget that these laws exist to protect not just the banks but also the investors, and a spirit of fair play is necessary to ensure that both parties continue to transact freely, without the fear that the contract would be breached.

this doesn't mean that we leave the needy in the lurch, and tell them, 'just too bad'.

the banks could, and should extend them help out of goodwill, as part of their social responsibility. let those within the category of 'vulnerable investors' appeal from this angle, and receive all the help that they need. and let this help be generous and big-hearted.

at least, in my point of view, this would be the more legally logical solution.

This is not a key

this is the key to what used to be my locker at Jurong Fuji Ice Palace. i went back with a huge bag as planned, and brought everything home. then, i left the door unlocked. i would never need this key again, because the whole building is coming down in a few days time :( goodbye, Fuji Ice Palace. it is hard to explain why i feel sad, when i still have every intention of continuing to skate.

maybe it is hard to let go of the carefree days of young adulthood, a time when my skating friends and i had lots of time and money, and no responsibilities. We jokingly dubbed ourselves the 'Waltz Jump Club', since that's all we could do at that time, and invented silly moves like the Ultraman spin and moonwalk-on-ice. Why can't things remain that way forever? My partner and i have not even finished choreographing our programme 'I need to Know' . and i never got to perform the Butterfly Lovers, which i rehearsed so painstakingly. ! i think i am the last one left in the party, singing forlornly, 'I don't want to grow up because if i do, i won't be a Toy R' Us kid...'


making the transition to the Kallang skating rink turned out to be less difficult than i thought. though many skaters in my generation have stopped skating, there are new people joining. in fact, i met even more people i knew, since some of the coaches made the switch much earlier on. the rink seemed a little smaller, but i can live with that. the building has many more shopping and dining options. now, if only they would provide lockers as well...

well, i suppose there is no point looking back and wishing that things would remain the way they were. there are always new things to look forward to, even if i have to be dragged into the future by my hair, screaming and kicking petulantly.

Little Girl Lost

last week, i was at the rink, when i met a little girl wandering around on the ice alone. she was so tiny that we could hardly see her, unless we looked down. it probably wasn't too long ago when she was learning to walk. why on earth was this child skating alone, or skating at all?

it was a crowded day, and the public skaters were charging wildly everywhere. this little girl was too young to understand danger. actually, she was skating/walking in the wrong direction, but you can't teach a baby what anti-clockwise means. here we were, adult expert skaters :P all skidding and stumbling to avoid her, and she walked everywhere freely and blithely, utterly oblivious to the dangers that surround her. i bet she had more fun than i did :(

Maybe to God, i am just the same - naive to perils, and indifferent to teaching. i am not known for my cunning or discretion, and am prone to supremely rash decisions. God knows how many times He intervened to save my skin, or to save me from myself. maybe all my guardian angels are overworked, especially when i am skating, or wandering in quiet places alone, or hehe, simply talking to the powers that be :P

and like the lost little girl, i am not even aware of all the action behind the scenes to keep me safe. i just traipse along merrily, throwing occasional tantrums when protective hands hold me back from what i want. yes, i think that is probably what my life looks like in God's perspective.

Play Fair

you don't go into someone's house and start criticising everything you see, do you?

in my opinion, the western media has been doing exactly just that. no, actually, they are worse than that, because they have been picking on China for as long as the Olympic preparations started. it seems that China can do nothing right! they sneer at the architecture of the Nest and are morally offended by the amount spent. when the date drew nearer, soothsayers looked hopefully into the skies and pronounced the air pollution unmanageable.

sports commentators hint at homeground advantage, in case China wins more gold medals than the US. this is grossly unfair, and undermines the backbreaking (sometimes literally) effort that the sportsmen put in. the media struck gold when reports of lipsynching and voiceover surfaced. more reason to fault China's meticulous preparations. someone wrote to the press and commented that the opening ceremony was technically perfect but 'soulless'. what, if i may ask, would the writer define 'soul' as? it seems like an excuse for criticising, when there was nothing left to be dissatisfied about.

don't get me wrong. as a chinese singaporean, i don't even see myself as an overseas Chinese, so there is no nationalist outrage in this entry. i just feel that people have been very unfair to earnestness of the effort put in. come on, tibet or not, give credit where credit is due. besides, i can't help wondering, of all the western activists defending tibetan rights, how many have actually visited the place and made the effort to understand the situation?

it seems ironic to me that human rights is preached with such stridency and sense of superiority.

Acer travelmate 2000-2008

the day has finally come. acer travelmate is no more.

since i have neither a car nor a flat, this laptop is the most expensive item i have ever bought, and cost all of $2300. i was a poor undergraduate struggling to get by with tuition. a relative got it on my behalf, and when it arrived, i must admit that i was disappointed by its unwieldly body and heavy weight. it wasn't particularly mobile for a laptop, and those were the days when i had to take two jam-packed buses to get to school and back.


but it had a record of impeccable performance. i have to say that all these years, it hardly ever 'hung'. the only time i had to bring it to the acer service centre was to fix its upper case because of sheer wear and tear. i must have been a model laptop owner. later in its life, i actually quarantined it from cyberspace so that it did not have to be overloaded with anti-virus softwares and other security features. it had a long good run.

there are two things i remember Acer particularly for. i bought it mainly to write my honours thesis on, and spent many long hours writing frantically in the honours room and drinking gallons of bubble tea. it was the time when every second shop sold bubble tea. i put on weight thanks to my drinking habits :P hey nihon no tomo, we both got our new laptops at the same time. how long did yours last? hahahaha


then i graduated and took to playing sim city after work :P instead of socialising like a sensible young woman should. and i wasn't even being a nerd. sim city was already sadly out of date even at that time :P at least i achieved astronomical land prices in my cities :) mind you, i still like a good game of sim city. it is stunningly easy to play and one can hardly fail, especially since i have cheat codes :P

in these days, to an eight-year-old laptop is an anachronism. the monitor has corroded beyond repair, and since i paid only $2300, what more can i ask for? it served me well when it lasted. i'll let it RIP. some things are gone and lost forever, like the lovely pictures of my solo odyessy in england :( and my essays :( :( but life still goes on and there would be better things to come. this time round i'll learn to use a thumb drive :P