Hurhur.

...what.

Next you'll be telling me you don't get retarded ideas when you're in the toilet in the morning.

And if you don't then...well, you should!

Ji Liap.

Because anything said in Hokkien is either funny or offensive. It's not the sort of language you bring home to meet your parents.

You have no idea what I'm going to talk about, do you.

But yes, you might have noticed, and in fact experienced this "portable music player" technology that is sweeping the world. They play a file format known as "MP3" you see, and...

I kid, I kid.

This is about music players, though. Specifically, mine. Funny, how we lose our sense of wonder, growing up. Back when "Hi-Fi" was still in use, I, small fat kid, had a walkman given to me. It played cassettes, and it was wonderful. All this sound coming through this...box I hold in my hand? And up these tubes into small, nipple-like objects so only I can hear it? Wow.

In secondary school, I permanently borrowed a discman from a friend who had too much money and goodwill for his own uh, good. And that was nice. It was by Technics, and the little fucker ate two AA batteries a day. Srs bznz. But it was still nice. That was, of course, back in the days when Oasis was awesome to you. "I have no idea what they're talking about, but it's so awesome, right?"

And then, long hiatus. Until a dear friend got me a present. I still remember where I got it, and unwrapping it. And it was great. This is, however, the time when she finds out it's been long dead and I've just never had the heart to tell her. Sorry love. The cute orange fucker just refused to turn on one day.

I was quite used to music on my walks by then, so I permanently borrowed another one from a...well, then-time good friend. No, he doesn't have too much money, and actually still owes me more than a thousand. It was his sister's. It was made in China, ran on AAA batteries and sturdy as a German mother. It also happened to have the memory of a German mother. 256MB, no you fuck off.

So that went by. And upon the recent breakup, we were all, "Must not be fat fuck anymore. Resume walks. Drink less." Seeing how our good friend Rostov waves from over there, you can see that's gone to shit.

But you didn't come all this way to hear me emo. All this way...across the internet. Which is instant, in most places. Except certain parts of Russia, where internet access only exists as a lurid fisherman's fantasy.

Well. That was a long introduction. I apologise for liking the sound of my own voice too much. And for wantonly jumping into the royal plural.

No, not really.

Anyway, on day of resolve, I bought this.




Looks nice, hor? No. I won't even get into that I had to buy it from clueless old-man shop assistant, who was nice enough, but there's only so much of, "Yah that one very good," you can take. It was the same reply no matter what I pointed to. Including the decorative plastic plant.

Comes with a clip, you see. But you only get to use the clip if you put it into godawful condom-type cover. The clip slips into a slot on the cover. I say slips into. What I mean is you need tweezers, pliers and the dexterity of an autistic chimpanzee to get the fucking clip into the slot. But "slips" was shorter.

So now it looks like shit. But it clips onto your back pocket, and because it's so light, you don't feel it. It weighs...

You don't need to know how much it weighs. Seriously. I could give a shit about much it weighs, but I won't. Because it's light. Product reviews that tell you what anything below a hundred grams weigh piss me off. If I can't feel it, please feel free to talk about other things I might actually give a shit about.

Ok, ok, it weighs as much as the third leftside teat of a milked cow.

See what I mean?

It holds 2GB, which works out to a good bit of all I have, anyway. Old man at this point says, "Yah, yah, this one got...two. That one only got one. This one good."

It was a nice morning. I let him live. Well, that and it was the only shop selling music players in Holland Village, far as I could tell.

Comes with earphones, USB Cable for data transfer and charging. Pleasant. No, no sarcastic. Quite pleasant. Clip, fondle power-on nipple, go. With the rubber cover on, it helps develop your nipple-fondling skillz, because unless you PRESS DOWN AND DO NOT SHIFT THUMB A NANOMETRE TO THE SIDE, it won't turn on.

It has a built-in equalizer and such. Which you could give a shit about, but won't. And a built-in speaker, in case you ever feel like roleplaying Mats At a Void Deck.

Otherwise, it works fine. But you need to choose your songs very, very carefully. Because it's easier, and faster to find a smurf to fellate than it is to find a specific song on this thing. I suppose the somewhat nice thing is that the forward button can be found by touch quite easily. The somewhat not nice thing is seeing a guy walking along, furiously fumbling with his buttox.

It cost less than a hundred. But if you've made it this far, you're probably like me and spend money when you need to, only occasionally despairing about your bank account.

Is it worth the money? If you pick your playlist right, yes. It really is quite small and light. Men, if you can carry testicles without feeling a strain, it's about the same. I guess it just didn't work out at the presentation. "Creative Zen. It's like a testicle." Women...you're on your own.

What, were you expecting yet another emo post? Not happening.

Now excuse me while I go stare at pictures of her and cry.

brkn

wut?

i kanot haz hapy?

kkzlol

...y?


Right. Outburst done. Move along folks, nothing to see here.

Really.

Nothing.

A List.

Ah, happy endings. So cliched, so wanted, so elusive. Have just watched Ice Age 2 again. Does tearing up briefly while watching an animation make you a wimp?

I'm not even sure what I'm still doing awake. So here is a list:


1. Pretty girls don't exist anymore. Well ok, they do. But suddenly they're all divided into two categories. Her, and Not Her. Guess where the interest is.

2. Occasionally, you feel like doing that old movie thing where they jump and click their heels together. You do, however, retain enough sense to know that should you do so, you will fall flat on your face.

3. She just has to say "Hi," and your day is better. When she says your name, you feel a tingle. You actually feel a tingle.

4. Holding a hand and suddenly thinking to yourself, "Wow. I'm holding this hand. It's hers. She is holding my hand." Repeat, broken-record fashion, until stirred from reverie.

5. You don't need something to read while on the bus anymore. A kaleidoscope of scenes and conversations more than occupies you. Resultant facial expressions make other passengers avoid you.

6. You look at her like she's something else. Something else looks back at you, when she does. You smile.

7. Songs suddenly make sense. Even the Japanese ones you chucked in the playlist for no apparent reason. Because got feeling, ah.

8. A talent for the most godawful, cheesy lines manifests. Like, "You're like a near-death experience." You actually mean them, too. Well, except the one about the badger.

9. She edits you. And makes it better. As small a change as it was, your mind, who will burn villages if someone even looks like he's thinking of moving a comma, is blown.

10. You can't walk past dark alleys without giggling like a schoolgirl. Uh, a manly-man schoolgirl, that is.


Neh. List. Of what, I'm not sure. And no, not emo. Because lists are like, scientific.

Hor?

/OOC

So it's happened. We've been through all of Questionable Content, and it was awesome. We've watched all the comedy we have five times over, and most of the movies at least twice. There's nothing left to stave off /wristing at the ceiling.

We were so desperate, we actually started working on a short horror story. And then it started freaking us out, and we deleted it. Messed up – but you try to imagine being immobilised, with a creepy old woman in a worn pink slip holding a stapler and a butter knife in front of you. We got as far as what she slowly and fumbly did to the poor boy's toenails with her feeble, nigh crippled, hands. Veins pale blue beneath porcelain skin, backlit against fluorescent light from the doorway. Her eyes never once leaving yours, shining points you can just make out through eyes clouded with tears, because it hurts. But so slowly, with each feeble twist...

And you thought having an imagination was a good thing.

But yes. After a bit, we realised that though we've been saying that our behaviour has been severely OOC lately, we just took it as inexplicable, and insurmountable. That doesn't need to be true. It's still emotional logic, and can be broken down into component parts and analysed.

It doesn't change our feelings about the situation. We just never thought we had feelings beyond, "No, you fuck off." before. And all that's happened in less than a month would have even Hitler crying while listening to Frank Sinatra and morosely feeding pigeons in the park. And he probably would have shaved that ridiculous moustache.

But we think we've probably been a bit of a jerk to everyone concerned. Go, you pronoun confusions. But yes, we intend to scale it down a bit. If we can be, "Oh...I suppose so," about most things, why not a situation we can't help? Sort of like that Chinese man who was buried in rubble from the earthquake, and survived by eating his cigarettes and drinking his pee. Except less gross. "I tried to encourage everyone around me to drink their own pee too, but they wouldn't listen," is not something we hope to ever have to say.

Well, that was therapeutic. Now to figure out the meaning of life in a similar fashion.

Voltron, assemble.

eMorning.

Notice the cleverly disguised title. Not bad hor.

It's slightly past four in the morning, and I've just got back from work. I am strangely unaffected, and hardly sleepy. It's hard to believe there was a time I felt it important to /wrists about how I caught the last bus back from work. Hard to believe there was a time when buses were important. Indeed, when anything was important. Because last night, I heard what will probably be the three most memorable lines in my life.

The difficulty is in quantifying them now. Most things about her are. Memorable, that is, although one could argue that most things about her Are. Fun, what caps can do.

As with everything that all of a sudden defines your mind, it started quite innocuously. "You drink too much. If I ripped out your liver and threw it at someone, it would probably kill him." There are ways to drive a point across. Logic, humour, force and zeal, I've always thought. Roughly in that order of effectiveness. I then discovered that astonishment also works quite well.

In what seemed too little time, I then find that there are words that can deliver the same amount of panic as, say, "I think I'm pregnant." They are, "I need to pee, but I'm not sure if I can make it to the toilet." Well, what would you say to that.

The walk back was unusually pensive. I ask. And sense, like how you sense that the oversized birthday cake your mates present you with is less likely to contain a stripper than the hobo downstairs wearing nothing but his lack of sobriety, that the answer isn't going to be pleasant.

She answers. And the lights in the world flicker. Silence, perfunctorily punctuated by pleasantry. Lit golden, eyes bright with streetlight and with a curious breeze tucking her hair to the left, she says, quite earnestly:

"I tried to tell you."

"Oh? When?"

"One of those times when I looked like I was about to say something, but didn't."

I compute, comprehend, and concur: "What?"

Shortly afterwards, I think a truck hit me. And it was awesome. In the original sense of the word.

Given that I write with vague intent to read this when I'm seventy and say hello to the garden gnomes every morning, I think I would hate me. "eMorning. What a nice, descriptive heading, asshole. What am I supposed to remember from this? That I'm a deliberately obscure piece of shit? And what's all this, then? Thanks, me. That truck should have killed you. Asshole."

Pretty near did. And me being me, other unfortunate fallouts follow.

You know how you read about, and see people who break down for the most silly reasons? "That song...it was our song. I just...can't...URHURHURHUR." "That fried chicken...it was what we ordered when we first went out. URHURHURHUR."

Yeah. Streetlights remind me of her, now. And beer. And cigarettes, because when I thought I really needed one, she reminded me why I didn't.

I think I'm fucked.

Diversion.

"I'll insult Singapore tomorrow," is a bit of a promise to live up to. So, I didn't.

But yes, suddenly I find myself home at odd times. And I have better things to do than to invite lawsuits for your amusement.

So here are some pretty pictures.


It's Danny, for those who know him. Been a while since I last saw him. Starting off awesome, he's improved his act a fair bit. Though, he's now calling himself "The Flame of Asia". Which I thought was a bit much.

"I want you all to do a little exercise with me. Hold your hands out. That's it. Now bring them together, quickly. And repeat. And repeat. That's called clapping, and you'll be doing a lot of that from now on."

That's part of the awesome. Helps that he looks really quite delectable.

Yes. Yes, I know how gay that sounded. You only have my word that it was a rather objective statement.

Really.

So I brought work back, but procrastinated it. I was going to make mewing noises here, but procrastinated that, too. Then I tried to go to sleep, but the weather feels like damp socks. So I procrastinated sleep. With all this inate ability, if you ever need a professional procrastinator, I'd be your man. Except I'd never get around to it.

But yes, we apologise for the crap start. It was going to be all thunder and lightning and other such spectacular things, but ended up as a sort of, "Pfft." sound. Why were we gone more than a year? Because we never said never.

Things have happened. Not terribly exciting by themselves, but noteworthy because they stand out in an otherwise really, really dull life. I had all four wisdom teeth extracted under general anethesia, which I was convinced was going to kill me. I went on an actual holiday, which was relaxing but indifferent. And I broke up with the missus, ending a six-year relationship.

Yes, the numbers do not lie. All four wisdom teeth.

Instead of playing catch-up though, I figured it'd be easier to insult the Straits Times, and our nation in general. Yes, uneducated goat takes on world. Watch.

Like most people, I had healthy respect for reporters. For the national newspaper anyway, under which The New Paper doesn't figure. I think it was two years ago that the image crumbled. Not only were they human, they were uninteresting and tend to be pricks.

From vague memory, it was a Sembawang GRC walkabout, where all the members of parliament come out and shake hands, get garlanded and generally worshipped. I had a camera, and was covering the event for a small-time publication. Of course, I was lumped together with the Media. Not a good idea.

Because I forgot to take the Please Talk To Me sign off my forehead that day, I got a lot of Hello Where Are You Froms. I could barely finish the sentence before they started saying they needed to go wash their hair. The correct answer of course is, "Beneath you, ma'am. May I fall to my knees and refresh the gloss on your nail polish with my blood?"

I won't repeat the jokes they made on the media bus either. Because no one should suffer such injury. I thought my jokes were lame. Theirs were paraplegic.

Grassroots leaders are of course the main driving force behind these events. At this walkabout, many of them were actually not assholes. One in particular took great pains to make sure we all knew where to go at what time, had enough water to drink, and such.

"What time does the forum finish?" one reporter asked.

"I think about 1pm." said nice grassroots man.

"What? But I need to send in my article by 12.30!"

If I, smalltime boy from smalltime town, had the day's program emailed to me, how come bigtime reporter who do bigtime things don't have? And the next time you see a reporter, look out for the little things circling their head. Planets.

Forward to the present, where MOMAE links me to article about championship gamer slapping team leader and getting dismissed. He mentioned Oo Gin Lee, who I thought was new to writing techish stuff for some reason. Reading it, I realised why.

I copy first two paragraphs nia, ok?

ALL it took was one punch to deliver a knock-out blow to Singapore's hopes at a top regional cybergaming competition in China.

Singapore's virtual-gongfu ace Wilson 'Tetra' Chia, 26, has been sacked from the Singapore Swords team for hitting his team manager Aaron Aw, 28, on the left cheek after the Swords had lost a joust with a Chinese team from Wuhan on Thursday.

Full article here.

Seriously, "virtual-gongfu"? "joust"? The game is Dead Or Alive, which you reveal in the third paragraph, still calling it a "gongfu" game. I could, I suppose, take a poll of people who play the game and see how many call it a "gongfu game". But I won't, and will immediately pass judgement: it sounds very stupid. Ignorant, even. And if you want to argue semantics, probably wrong. Tournaments have "matches". Knights, on "four-legged equines", joust. Might as well run the rest of the article through an automatic thesaurus, if you're going to write that shabbily.

I'm not even getting into the actual contested point yet - punch or slap? And I'm not going to. I suppose when Oo was interviewing, he just wrote down, "Piak." Easy mistake to make.

But what do you expect from a paper that has Tay Yek Keak as a writer. Critic, no less. I had to google permutations, because the name sounds like nails on chalkboard.

Orh hor, call peepur name. Straits Times writer somemore, sure get arrested for sedition. But no, I needed the analogy to link to his writing, which is like nails on chalkboard in your mind. He actually started off decent, going by much earlier work. And then he tried to get in on the "humour" thing. I suppose it worked. There are people who love him, find him funny and satirical. It's like how people want to be Paris Hilton's BESTIE, I guess.

And Sumiko, dear Sumiko. She gets half a page or more on Sunday to post the lyrics of "I can see clearly now". That was when she was telling us about her Lasik, and uncharacteristically failed to work something about being single into it. I can understand why she's single - she's attractive, powerful and intelligent. And happens to run the national newspaper. A lot of men are intimidated by that. But is it really a reason to have a LiveJournal in the paper?

I would make noises about the odd fashion bits popping up too, but I suppose some people out there love them as well. I was just...caught by surprise, when out of nowhere, sneakily-taken pictures of girls in boots appeared, with the faces blurred out. Then got harsh harsh criticism of how that way of dressing not fashionable.

If I started taking pictures of girls without their knowledge, I'd be arrested.

Wow. I complain harder than I thought. I'll insult Singaporeans tomorrow, then.

Really, now.

So I'm sitting at a marble table in the void deck, wondering how to start this. Quietly, a man with a mullet, wearing a light blue polo tee and flowy black pants strides up from behind me. I notice him, and catch his eye. Seeing he now has my attention, he deadpans quite articulately:

"Bintang."

And continues striding off into the sunset. Or at least he would, if it wasn't nine-thirty at night. And he wasn't walking in the wrong direction. Fine, he went nowhere near the sunset. I just didn't think, "And continues walking towards the coffeeshop" sounded nice.

I do happen to be wearing the Bintang singlet which comprises 15% of my wardrobe. But how would you like it if someone just crept up behind you and told you what your T-shirt said, eh?

"Bad boy."

"Just do it."

"Ah Huat Cleaning Services."

Depends on what you're wearing, of course.

So much for wondering how to start. We'll be with you shortly.