Thursday, April 28, 2005
Bozo
Have any of you ever been to Genting Highlands (this is directed to Singaporeans)? The place where your cash-loaded relatives go to spend their money at the casino up there (certainly not for the theme park because it sucks monkey balls)? Here's a few facts about Genting Highlands for you to ponder over/waste your time:1- It's pronounced GEN-ting, not JEN-ting. Genting means ravine/valley in Malay. For goodness sake, get it right.
2- A substantial amount of Singaporeans make up the visitor population there. Now that casinos are going to be built in Singapore, Uncle Lim (Goh Tong) will be losing quite a bit of business. Then again, the fact that the Singaporean casinos will have a S$100 admission fee might entice gamblers to cross the causeway instead. It costs a little less than that for a two-way bus trip to KL and then up the hill, you know. The cold atmosphere is a bonus, too.
3- I used to work there as a clown.
whAt WhaT wat? Let's take a look at that line again.
3- I used to work there as a clown.
"OMFGWTFBBQLOL!!11!!1!1!"
Drama aside, yeah, that's a fact. Some people were somewhat amused when I told them that. Others weren't quite as surprised, though; apparently it was kinda my personality to make a fool of myself to entertain others. Before I go on, I must inform you that that's only half-true, since going a little crazy all the time takes too much energy and it gets old eventually.
But I digress. Back to clowning. My sister's best friend's father works as one, and he has a small entertainment provision company; he sets up parties, amuses people, blows and swallows fire, twist balloons, etc. for a living. What happened was, in November 2002, when my brother and I were wasting away during the holidays, he approached us to see if we could work for him in Genting Highlands. After some encouragement (really) from our mom, we accepted the offer. Besides, we could use some extra cash, in the range of RM20 per hour (though we're told that we're only working four hours per day, and that food and lodging are provided). We later went to his house for a crash course on baloon-twisting, and were set to head for the hill the same weekend.
I must tell you, it wasn't easy being a clown.
Although work starts officially at 10.00am, we had to get up two hours earlier to prep for the job. Morning showers were essential but dreaded, not least because they're friggin cold! Then to put makeup on. We do that in the following steps:
1- Apply a layer of clown white (it's a sort of face paint) on face.
2- Remove portions around the lips and nose to reveal some skin there.
3- Apply some red makeup on the lips to form the clown's mouth.
4- Draw some eyebrows and some markings to add variety to the pale, creepy face.
5- Be sure not to mess up step 4 because your markings may look like battlescars if not done correctly (I know this from personal experience). Then you'd have to wipe of that portion and relayer with clown white.
6- Smother face with lots of talcum powder to conceal stickiness of clown white.
7- Douse face with a little bit of water to remove excess powder.
8- Tap face with tissues. If makeup does not come off, then you're set.
9- Use cellophane tape to attach red coloured clown nose of sponge to the area of skin on the nose (your nose) that's exposed.
And to complete the image, we got to wear funky hats and wigs. Clothing, on the other hand, was usually a set of pyjama-like clothes adorned with freakishly horrendous patterns, ranging from simple spots and stripes to parrots and trees. We were free to choose our own footwear, though (we had gigantic clown shoes, but most of us didn't want to opt for that because they were usually mold-infested on the inside). What we ended up with were very shabby looking costumes (I've seen much, much better), but it gets the job done. Once preparations were complete, we had to make a half-kilometre uphill hike from our apartment to First World Plaza, where our 'HQ' was the backstage area. Tiring shit, this. And you get a lot of people honking as they drive pass, too...
...To be continued when I feel like it.
Now, to look for some of the pics I have as a clown so I can show them to you guys...
Zhen was here at 9:43 pm,
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Monday, April 25, 2005
The Reason Why Singapore Has A Birth Rate Problem
Singapore has a birth rate problem.According to Singstat, the crude birth rate of Singapore is 10.1 per 1000 population. One of the lowest in the world, it appears in the top 20 of the world's least 'productive' nations.
[EDIT = 27/4/05] According to the CIA International Factbook, Singapore's birth rate is 9.63 per 1000 population. That is quite a lot less than 10.1, you know. [/EDIT]
However, strangely enough, the country produces Viagra.
Now that's kinda contradictory, isn't it? On one hand, it manufactures a line of pills that solves eretile dysfunction, on the other, few babies are popping out every year.
Something is amiss...
Maybe it has got something to do with the price of the fashionable blue pill; around S$10 to S$15 a pop (I'm not sure, but in Malaysia, it's RM38). Taking into account the 'kiasu' (literally "afraid to lose") culture omnipresent in Singaporeans, it's no wonder that majority of males who have lost their magic would rather keep their wands hidden and wallets filled.
Personally, I'd be more "afraid to lose" my manhood than cash. Apparently, middle-aged Singaporean men don't think along the same lines as I do, hence the problem in the first place.
DISCLAIMER: This has been written in jest and may not reflect the current situation in Singapore. However, the country does indeed have a birth rate problem. Not my fault, in any case.
Zhen was here at 10:49 pm,
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Saturday, April 23, 2005
Sleeptime Occurences
If you have yet to read my previous post, I suggest you do before proceeding to read the descriptions of some of the more interesting dreams I have had recently. I find dreams intriguing, so I try to remember them. You may find the prospect me sharing dreams boring:Just yesterday I had this one dream that ended really weirdly. I was sitting on a couch, and there was this peculiar-looking black arowana-like fish swimming around in the air in the room (fish swimming in air tend to appear quite often in my dreams, strangely) which I, even more peculiarly, decided that it was a shark. Even stranger still, I stuck my foot out to lure it to bite me. It took the bait, but before it could do any damage, I beat it with a pillow several times to shake it off. After it retreated and went back to minding its own business, I stuck my foot out again, and got the same response and results. And the whole thing repeated itself several times. When it finally bit me, I woke up.
Now for the next dream:
Last year, during the weekend before the study break before my JC1 promotional exams, I dreamt that my roommates and I were visited by an Indian guy about our age, his mom and his little sister. It turned out that the Indian guy was to be our new roommate (our room had an empty bed then), but after being introduced to him, he suddenly disappeared. The room's dimensions changed too, and all that was left was the little girl. And she spoke Cantonese to me, which led me to conclude that the family were Indians from Hong Kong. Then I got up. I immediately related the story to my roommate, Yee Kiat. Expectedly, we got a good laugh out of it. See, dreams spillover to the real world.
But here's the weird part; three days later, a hostel officer came around in the afternoon and told us that we were going to have a new roommate. There's a slight difference though; instead of an Indian Hong Konger, we got a Thai dude named Natt Kutikun; some of you may know him, he's a JC1 in SAJC right now. Now, that's the closest I've ever gotten to having a premonition... Give me some credit, at least. Heh heh.
This one is just plain scary...:
I just fell asleep, and was wandering around a room aimlessly, before facing a wall, where a picture was being hung. A picture of...
Jesus Christ.
Now, being not-so-very-religious and non-Christian to boot (and I don't plan on converting either, so to all hardcore evangelists out there, I am NOT interested), I got extremely freaked out; you don't really expect to see stuff like these appearing out of nowhere. I immediately realised that I was dreaming, and decided that it was about to turn into a nightmare. I forced myself awake just so I could go back to sleep again...
Zhen was here at 12:55 am,
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ZZZzzz...
Screw this, I'll just write whatever comes to my mind... Read at your own risk.Sleep.
I need sleep. Lots of it.
For some reason, I never seem to get enough sleep. When I was in secondary school, I used to blame the classroom heat and humidity for being sleep-inducing. My mom blamed my late nights instead. Whatever. And then I started going to college, where I believed, naively, that the air-conditioned atmosphere would be more conducive for giving the teacher my undivided attention.
What actually happened was that it became a whole lot more enticing to sleep in class, comfort and all. Meh.
I have been adviced countless times to adjust my sleeping habits (of which the main contributors were, of course, my parents) and quit being nocturnal. Unfortunately, it didn't work, due to two prevailing factors; most of the time sleeping early failed to prevent me from dozing off at school, and I am at my most productive at night, so it feels like a waste to hit the sheets sometimes. Thus, the sleeping predicament persists.
It is only this year that I finally concluded that sleeping is not a problem; it is a pleasure. In fact, I have never enjoyed sleeping this much in my entire life (yeah, sounds like real fun, doesn't it?). Sometimes, during the weekend, when I have no homework left to do (which occurs very rarely, but I don't really care too much about homework anyway) I would just dump myself on the (soft, cozy, cushy) hostel mattress, which is ironically more comfortable than the one I have back at home. Then I proceed to escape from reality, and literally, into dreamworld.
The dreamworld is an unusually accomodating place; most of the time you have no idea that you are sleeping, and every memory you have of reality will reassemble themselves to make your dream believeable, no matter how far-fetched it would be had it been real life. If you're lucky, you get to dream about things that you may never have a chance to do in reality, from being together with the one girl that got away, to flying like a character out of a cliched Japanese manga. Another plus is that you will forget all the burdens you had in reality due to the 'memory reassambling effect'; for that short period of time you get to forget all your worries. It is probably the best form of escapism ever; it actually feels like you are doing the things you have always wanted to do, instead of fantasising and imagining all the time. One flaw in this method, of course, is the fact that you cannot really 'choose' your dreams when you fall asleep. You would just have to sort of gamble. But considering that the average person sleeps several hours everyday, the odds of are highly stacked in your favour. Naps of several minutes or even seconds may produce highly satisfying dreams (I've had a few during lectures).
And since we cannot choose what to dream, people are bound to experience nightmares. To those who do; you have my pity. Remember what I just said, about how "I've never enjoyed sleeping this much in my entire life"? That is because I am now suddenly able to wake myself up from sleep when things get ugly. For reasons that escape my explanation, I can sort of 'feel' it (usually when I hear a shrill, ringing sound in my ears) when a dream starts turning into a nightmare. Then I realise that I am dreaming, at which point (was that gramatically correct?) I could force myself awake by attempting to move my limbs. What's more freaky is that sometimes my eyes are open (yeah, dreaming with open eyes) when all these is happening, which adds an exceedingly high degree of eeriness to the situation. But it works, and I have not had a complete, nail-biting, teeth-grinding, pulse-quickening nightmare for quite some time already. Hence the remark that sleeping has become (at least for now) more enjoyable experience for me .
These days, it is not lack of sleep that makes me want to nod off, but rather, the craving for sleep. In fact, it just moved up a few notches in my list of favourite things to do. Unfortunately, sleep-craving does not answer why I still fall asleep in lectures and sometimes even during tutorials. Must be due to the teachers being too boring to warrant my undivided attention. Either that, or sleep-deprivation. Or self-denial.
So, if you would kindly accept my suggestion on what to do the next time you are bored out of your skull; sleep. It really takes your mind off things and solves a lot of problems.
We all need sleep. Lots of it.
Zhen was here at 12:15 am,
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Monday, April 18, 2005
Man I Sound Stupid
I'm making a personal reminder not to publish my posts before I've gotten to reading them several times. Considering the incoherence and aimlessness of my previous two posts (yeah, even the disclaimer was screwed up, and possibly this too), I'll save drafts and read, reread and edit before publishing. Yeah, I did say that customer satisfaction was not top priority, but I have certain standards I need to meet too... Hence the decision.Man I sound stupid.
Zhen was here at 8:59 pm,
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Sunday, April 17, 2005
Disclaimer
A certain somebody commented that my first post " was a fantastic waste of space".I couldn't agree more.
However, in light of that comment, I realise that some people do not understand the purpose of my blogging, and as a result, leave this page uncontented. Therefore, to prevent any further mishaps and complaints, I will provide a disclaimer. For those of you who are vocabularily-challenged, that is "a repudiation or denial of responsibility or connection". Kudos to those who know what repudiation means, because I haven't got a clue at the moment. Anyway;
If you came here expecting Pullitzer-prize material, you should click on the little cross at the upper left corner of your browser now. You would be wasting your time reading anything posted here. I am blogging for fun and enjoyment, etc. Pleasing everyone who visits here is, unfortunately, not my priority.
Moreover, even if customer satisfaction was indeed my intent, I would suck at it anyway. As I have so nicely reminded at the top of this page, expect to see half-assed posts. If you want a good time, you probably have came to the wrong place. I strongly suggest that you look somewhere else for entertainment. Play a video game or something. I heard that Halo 2 is fun, you should try that. Or if you really must read a blog, there are better ones out there. I highly recommend a friend of mine's, Bryan Tan. It's chock-full of metaphors and inspirational material, which I personally believe in as well (which in turn saves me a lot of time and effort, because I don't have to repeat whatever he says, and he pulls it off with much more flair than I do anyway).
Besides, if I use too much figurative language to make myself sound more serious, I'd probably start hurting my head. It just doesn't sound very natural, not very me, I think. For now, I'll just write like this; my England not that powderful.
Tankz joo veri march for ridding.
Zhen was here at 10:39 pm,
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Saturday, April 16, 2005
Of Bitching and Benzes
In the past, I've always maintained a negative stance against keeping diaries. I never did see the point of pouring your thoughts into a book which probably nobody else but you would ever have a chance to read. In comparison to other means of 'emotional release' (so sue me for making up a phrase), diary-keeping seemed to me relatively fruitless.Imagine this situation; "I just lost my job, girlfriend and pet Schnauzer to my boss and his Mercedes! I'm so mad, I'll write it in my diary."
Yeah, like that will solve anything. Most people, I believe, would have gotten even with the exacerbating executive by way of a pair of fists allowed to fly freely, and the Benz, on the other hand, may receive several well-placed blows on the windshield. Granted, that is a lot more dramatic than writing in a book, but people need to spice up their lives in some way, right?
Anyway, as I was saying, I was never a fan of keeping a diary. A journal, yes; there will come (I'm not sure if I sound grammatically correct here) a time in the future when you will one to know the details of your unfortunate or uneventful past. I have one myself, one which have not been updated for about 10 days, and a typical line in it goes "I went back and slept". Yup, that's a journal. The method which I employ to distinguish diaries and journals are by comparing language use and the amount of bitching in each; you can easily tell that you have stumbled upon a diary when you see pages and pages of entries going "*Expletive* that *expletive*, who the *expletive* does she think she is?!"
However, we can't really make that distinction with the phenomenon we have come to know as blogs. When blogging first started, people simply shifted their diaries from one medium to another. The essence of their blogs, as a result, remained the same; bitching. Others diligently chronicle every single event of (perceived) importance in their lives. The technology have also allowed groups of people to get together to start a multiple poster blog, taking turns posting ideas, comments, achievements and pictures, each new post attempting to outdo the last. Some journalistically-inclined people have even turned their blogs into some sort of online newspaper column.
More industrious people have even used their blogs as an efficient means of interpersonal communication. In the past, people who actually want their diaries to be read by others had to hide the books in the most obvious of places, complete with a conspicuous, elaborately decorated front cover with the words 'DIARY' emblazoned across it to catch the attention of potential snoopers. Now, all you have to do is type, tag, and hope for the best. This has led many to utilise their blogs to 'subtly' convey their resentment of certain other parties just by bitching about said other parties followed by publishing and publicising their blogs so that eventually, that other party will stumble upon the blog and receive the message. Moreover, if anything goes wrong, one can always edit and delete, or accuse hackers for any screw-ups. Now is that cool or what?
As you can see, I've ran out of ideas for jokes. I hope that sometime in the future, I may be able to fill this space with a witty comment or one-liner. As for now...
With that being said, I hope that my insensitive categorisation and labelling of the various species of bloggers and blogs will prove useful to you, although I highly doubt so. I just felt like saying something, but I lack the time and the flair to make this a nice and proper post. Like the description of my blog says at the top of this page, this is only a half-assed attempt at blogging, so it is only appropriate that I make a half-assed first post. Until you return, I apologise for wasting your time. Now go away and get back to surfing the net.
PS: Now that I come to think of it, how the heck do you surf a net?
PPS: Crap, it took me an hour and forty minutes to type this thing... Time to get back to sleep...
PPPS: This is a reminder to anybody using blogspot, please type your posts in MS Word or something first before publishing... That is to prevent irretrievable damage should you hold down Shift+Arrow Keys or Shift+PgUp/Dn to highlight words; all the words you type suddenly go missing! This page friggin made me waste thirty minutes retyping the second half because I typed something by accident instead of pressing "Recover post". Sheesh... More than two hours spent on this thing.
Zhen was here at 6:10 am,
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Sunday, April 10, 2005
This is only a test
Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3...If I die today, don't cry for me.