memories

an exercise calculated to bring one on a trip down the memory lane: on a piece of blank paper, write down what memories of college life you have, that you cherish.

i was saddened to see that some (only a few) students seem to think that they have nothing to pen down. how could it be? 2 years spent, during which, nothing worth remembering happens? meanwhile, others happily scribbled down their thoughts, and decorated the piece of paper fondly with coloured pens and drawings. suddenly, the paper looks profoundly symbolic of the experiences of these students. some hand in brightly decorated work, some, a perfunctory few lines in drab ink. in the same place, why do people have such diverse experiences?

it is the season to choose colleges and universities again. as usual, there is a mad rush for open house days, reading all the prospectuses available, seeking divine guidance and even drawing lots! but i think that most of the time, the place isn't the main factor in determining the quality of the experience. after all, in every environment, there are people who enjoy themselves, and there are those who wish that they were somewhere else. i really don't think that it means that some are luckier than others. what matters more is, what everyone choose to make of his/her own experience. the fact is, YOU make the difference between being happy and being sad.


then i got rather nostalgic and inspired, so i shall also write down some of the memories i have of my own college:

being one of the airy fairies in the play, 'the Tempest'. The Other Fairy and i were gracefully dancing on the stage during rehearsal, when we bumped right into each other. very lovely sight.

having a (cute) senior send me home. i had a crush on him :)

making Year One students search through a rubbish bin for clues...then a REAL cockroach ran out. hehehe, that wasn't planned.

going to a dance with snake. i was all dressed in black so i thought i looked very cool, actually, i think i was just trying too hard.

falling asleep every history lesson. but dear Mr T always forgave me.

class outings at TGIF. yummy potato skins. the restaurant has closed down. sigh, it was that long ago.

one to one literature s-paper time with the tutors. having Mr H read John Donne's love poetry to me :P hey, it was for professional reasons, but i blushed anyway.

why it matters

i am angry.

i heard that a student from a top school forged an MC using his old one. even when the truth became evident, he tried his best to deny it. he displayed no signs of repentance eventually, only regret that he had been caught. he should have been more careful about using the right kind of ink. more disturbingly, this isn't an isolated incident. neither do his friends condemn an act like that. to these students, there is nothing wrong about forgery. after all, this act hurts no one in particular. why does the teacher have to spoil the party and discover the truth? what does it matter?

i feel so tired. how do you guide children who question even the fundamentals of basic morality? what have these students ever experienced in life to justify such cynicism and amorality? nothing. but life is very strange. those who have a lot, think they deserve more, and they don't see why they should allow inconvenient moral rules to get in the way of what they want to do.

first let me address the idea that the act was acceptable because it hurts no one. not every act should be measured by utilitarian principles. sometimes, things are simply right or wrong. beyond the pragmatic effects, is nothing else worth believing in? this deception is ultimately a deed done in darkness and secrecy, the perpetrator lives in fear that he would be discovered. there is something in his life that has to be hidden. tell me that this isn't guilt that comes from doing something wrong.

i always think that there is a very effective litmus test for whether an act is moral or not. we can just ask ourselves, is this something we would want our own children to do one day, on the basis that what you don't know can't hurt you?

besides, there are after all some social rules that everyone follows, to protect the order and mutual trust in society. these rules might bring about some immediate inconvenience, but no one sane wants to live in a world without them. we respect official documents, like MCs, because we trust that they come from a reliable source. but this is a situation that requires everyone to cooperate. our collective stability is safeguarded, and this too protects the individual. frankly, the very students who argue that a little deception is acceptable, would definitely not think the same way if the tables were turned on them, and they are the ones deceived. doesn't this betray some double-minded hypocrisy and selfishness?

it is naive to think that this deception hurts no one. it hurts his parents and those who care for him, but most importantly, it hurts his conscience and how he sees himself.

anyway, ultimately, i really don't think that people get away with doing what is wrong, even if they persuade themselves that they haven't done anything wrong using twisted logic. as the psalmist says to God,

'If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,"
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you. '(Psalms 139)

experiments

sometimes i think that i am in the wrong line. if i hadn't gone to read poetry and plays and such in the university, maybe i would have become a scientist. in fact, i do remember that chemistry was my best subject in secondary school. my interest in scientific research has not waned over the years, and i am just as keen as ever on conducting experiments. but what is a scientist to do, without a well-stocked laboratory?

luckily, there is actually one place right at home that is also full of volatile substances and the bunsen burner. so i indulged my adventurous spirit in the kitchen. i came up with quite a few innovative recipes, though no one particularly liked them :P. there is something else to play around with. i read about some interesting beauty treatments that use the ingredients in the kitchen, and so the only thing to do is to try them out. my dear friends, after much investigation and practical experiments, here is my verdict on these suggested treatments. you guys have to try them out to test if i am a reliable scientist.


What works:

natural yoghurt as a face mask. the bacteria eats away your dead cells and makes your skin brighter.

green bean powder+green tea powder+egg white = a very good mask to make your pores smaller and cleaner.

lemon juice+witch hazel= a good skin whitening product.

my mum keeps the water that is used to rinse rice, and washes her face with it. apparently it makes her skin less lined. in fact, if you keep the water overnight, it actually smells as bad as SKII products :P


What doesn't work:

rinsing your hair with vinegar. this is supposed to make your hair shiny, but it also makes your hair smell like puke :P

smash a tomato on your face. it's hard to function with bits of tomato dripping off your face.

banana peel on your eyes. this supposedly is a good eye mask, but all it does is make your eyes itch.

Home

it is the national day season and i am feeling patriotic. besides, if i wrote a glowing enough piece, maybe i would get a pay raise :P

it probably is my age now, but i am not feeling half as footloose as i used to be. i guess, i have been to enough countries to feel somewhat less curious about what the world out there is like. and frankly, after it all, i do feel...it is rather good to be a singaporean.

of course things could be better. there is always room for improvement. we don't have the terracotta army or polo buns. we could be less kiasu, more gracious. less demanding, more generous. we should complain less and smile more. oh yes, things could be better. but think again, things could be much worse too.

having been squashed on tokyo trains and left stranded by striking subway workers in London, i do appreciate our comfortable and reliable MRT. after shopping through a major street in HK, both little fish and me fell ill because of air pollution, so, never take the clean air back home for granted. there aren't many developed countries in the world that offer cheap freshly cooked food either. you just have to make do with cold sandwiches, even in winter :P . and there are some countries that you simply mustn't fall ill in. the list could go on, but i don't want to sound jingoistic. suffice to say, after travelling, i feel quite glad to see the 'Welcome Home' sign at changi airport.

there is only one other country in the world which i really wanted to live in - New Zealand, of the Lord of the Rings beauty. it looks picture perfect from every angle. in fact, i wanted to marry a New Zealander just so that i could migrate there. but here is the irony. the country has one of the highest suicide rates in the world.

so, what exactly makes an ideal country?

Home

phew, a breath of fresh air back home.

It does feel good to be able to breath freely again. not sure if it is a sign of environment damage, in Xian and Beijing, but everything is covered by dust, and after a day out in the open, we all feel very well powdered.

after days of listening to tall tales about palace intrigue, foolish emperors and evil eunuchs, i feel strangely disoriented. spent most of the morning sorting out my spoils from China and reading my mail.


MYSTERY OF SILK STREET
tuesday morning, bright and early, we followed the map and navigated ourselves to a place where Silk Street was. it was a street filled with stalls, selling all kinds of imitation goods and curios. try as we might, we just couldn't find the place. finally, we asked someone where Silk Street was, and to our dismay, the local pointed to a shopping centre.

Apparently, the central authority cleaned up the whole street and put everyone into a building! now, that quite destroys the charm of shopping at street stalls, in the open. who wants to go to yet another shopping centre? sigh...modernisation.

V (formerly known as Bedi) and i gave up shopping after a while because all our renminbi ran out. we decided to shell out exhorbitant prices for drinks at a nice cafe and people-watch. the cafe was clearly local-run, and guess wat, a starbucks imitation. it calls itself Spr, and looks, well, just like starbucks, complete with the green logo. think they call it globalisation, China style :P a coffee costs RMB 35, which can pay for a meal for 2 at a restaurant in Beijing.


A phenomenon at Food Street, Wangfujing: HUMAN DUSTBINS

my friends, i know it's rather mean to say that people are dustbins, but that is what they are doing in Food Street. there are many stalls selling all kinds of food to tourists, and inevitably, a lot of food is wasted because people order more than they can finish.

so people stand beside the real dustbins, so that they can take over the unwanted food to eat. sometimes they also rummage the dustbins for edible scraps. it's very sad to be in such a state. i bought a stick of deepfried crabs which tasted horrible, so i wanted to throw it away uneaten. and this old lady simply took it from my hand and ate it.

Get the ads coming

i just don't get enough hits on this blog. in fact, little fish says that my blog is downright boring, but i figure that this isn't the reason. what kind of blogs get the most attention? those that write sensationally about sex, or food. it looks like cyberspace citizens only like to gratify their basest instincts. so when a blog muses on issues of philosophy and current affairs, nobody is going to read it.

fine, if this is the way things are going to be, guess i have to be more pragmatic, and give the audience what they want. be warned. what is written below is R(21) material.


Fatal Attraction
She sees him and he sees her.
they do it, and so she is going to get pregnant.
Then she eats him up because there is no more need for him to stay around.


there, you depraved lot! i hope you are happy now! the sex life of spiders is exciting, isn't it? this entry is all sex and and violence and food. what more can anyone ask for? think google is going to put some ads on my blog soon :P

Goodbye

it is always difficult to say goodbye
and so i didn't.

they say that a modern city slicker meets more people in one day than an ancient rural dweller met in his whole life. i think it must be true. so many people come in and out of our lives that we will go crazy trying to keep in touch with everyone.

and so we don't.

it is only pragmatic to allow strangers to enter regularly, and to let friends and acquaintances fade out quietly, unmarked. but somewhere in my heart, there is always a sense of loss. there are people whom i would have liked to get to know better, and there are those whom i would like to meet again, but life doesn't offer such chances.

so yesterday, i taught my last sunday school class in grace chinese church. i didn't tell the students that i wouldn't ever be teaching them again, because i have other plans for my life. after all, a sunday school teacher is a sunday school teacher, and there would always be others. besides, what could i say that would be meaningful? and most importantly, i do hate saying goodbye, knowing that even if we promised to keep in touch in the spur of the moment,

we most likely wouldn't.

Special Day

yesterday was a big day for our family, and everyone relevant turned up punctually .

mum celebrated her birthday early, so we get to feast on KFC, pizza and curry chicken. *yummy* there was so much food left over that i could dine on it today. still taste good :)

before the pig-out started, daddy announced the good news- Mum had just accepted Christ, on the very day. well, it wasn't exactly a great surprise to us anymore, because she had been attending church quite regularly with us for the past few months. still...it was quite a moment. truly, God moves mountains quietly when we are not looking.

after the feast was a good time of bonding for everyone. the fat one wanted to play indian poker, but the rest of us were content to let our brains rest after the strenuous meal, so it was good old black jack. no thinking needed :P

MAGIC EYES

my dear friends,

masterofboots IS BACK!!!

i really want to thank everyone for your encouraging messages and prayers. the messages are still in my hp, and i read them before i went into THE PLACE :)

the greatest challenge of lasik is purely psychological actually. i mean, there is never any real pain because of all the anaesthetic drops. but, it takes incredible will power to obey the instructions. i mean, instructions like: 'i am going to draw on your eyeball with a pen and you musn't blink' :P *help*

then, i realise how perverse humans can be. the more you are told not to do something, the more you can't help doing it. really! the doctor kept saying 'look at the red light, don't look right or left.' and guess what, i had a terrible, terrible urge to move my eye ball.

but it's all over quite fast, and BeDi was waiting outside the laser suite :) and i am walking around with my new magic eyes. they still feel strange and sore now. and funniest of all, i kept wanting to 'take out my contact lenses', before remembering that i am not even wearing any! considering that i have worn spectacles for almost 20 years, this really MAGIC - the magic of technology. hahaha GP students can put this in their essays.

ok, shouldn't be on the computer, considering that i only had my eyes fixed yesterday :P dont' want to ruin my magic eyes.

time capsule

the cast of the tempest reunited once again because prospero got married. and at the wedding, we decided to open our 10-year time capsule. it is such a strange feeling looking at something that we, in our foolish youth and naivete, wrote. it was really quite a moment, especially when...the groom found out that he did not actually contribute to the time capsule :P i, the keeper of the holy grail, could have just died, died, died, from the sheer embarassment. but at least, other members of the table got back what they wrote.

it is quite something remembering the hopes and dreams and fears that we recorded in the time capsule, standing at quite crucial crossroads of our life then. still, i suppose we were really naive then. i somehow imagined that the decisions that i made about university etc would direct the rest of my life, not quite realising that so many other things could happen in life, and what is one turning?

i was amused to see that me at 18 years old wrote about the situation in the balkans and the middle east, and attempted to predict what would happen ten years later. some things have changed greatly, and others have remained the same...what is 10 years in the development of history?

it was rather sad to see that some of the people who contributed to the time capsule have long been lost to our group of friends. well, 10 years is a long time and i do count myself lucky that i am still friends with so many of the cast of the Tempest :)

there are a few unclaimed notes: ann, des, ailin, yucky, and some mysterious person who wrote in chinese. please contact me to get your scroll back :)