Etymology, lah.

ang moh /AHng-morh/
Lit: Red hair.
Noun, count.

A casual term used to describe the English language; i.e. My ang moh not very good. OR

A generic term used to describe anyone with caucasian features. Because no one can put a finger on what exactly that is, think white American. Or English. Or white Australian. You should get the idea by now. Ang mohs began as our colonial masters, and it seems the yoke has never slipped completely. We defer to them for all things to do with the English language, even if they are of the variety that cannot distinguish between "your" and "you're". In Singapore today, ang mohs are seen as being very rich, because they digest food and excrete it as nuggets of gold. In retaliation, we overcharge them for seafood and try to sell them cameras. e.g. He got no money? How can? He ang moh leh!

Origins:
Records are uncertain when the term ang moh became popular. Because it makes no sense. The Irish never got here in any sort of great number, and there was perhaps one white man with red hair on the entire island. And that was due to a tragic lubricant accident.

The term for white man completely ignored the blondes and brunettes which composed 99.98% of the white population. Because the transliteration of blonde hair (kim moh) was already used for ah bengs, and the one for black hair (orh moh) sounded really dumb. And no one knew how to say brown in Hokkien. They instead called it the shit colour, pang sai sek.

And because the Chinese, who are largely responsible for coming up with the quaint terms we use, are better at kung fu then they are at sense, the one red-headed man became the basis for what we call the white man today.

His name was Steve.


filli-felleh /FEElee-FEHleh/
Adjective. Archaic.

Used to describe good proficiency at something, esp. language. More specifically, if you're filli-felleh at something, it means you're so good at it that the other person cannot understand you. Strangely, the term is derogatory, because it's somehow your fault for being better at something than they are. The Chinese are many things, but we're not a gracious people. e.g. You don't come and filli-felleh your ang moh down here, ok? We Singapolang, speak Singlish!

Origins:
The word was first used in a stable here in 1855. As one of the colonial masters was inspecting the horses, a mare slipped on a slippery thing and promptly fell on her side. Turning to a stablehand, he said, "Be careful what you leave around the stalls, old chap. Look, the filly fell, eh?"

A fellow stablehand came to help as the ang moh walked away, and he asked the first stablehand what happened.

"I dunno. The hoss fall down, then the ang moh say filli-felleh. Dunno what he saying. Work lah."


And finally:

shiok /shee-YOK/
Adjective. Or perhaps a verb. Not a noun, at least. You know what? I have no clue. It's a terrible word.

When you say something is shiok, you mean it's good in a way that gives you pleasure. Usually used with food; i.e. This chicken rice is shiok! Usage is versatile, and the word can be used to describe any sort of pleasing effect. Standing under the air-conditioner after a walk in the hot sun, for example, is shiok. Receiving oral sex is also shiok, though vocalising this during the event may result in it never happening again.

Origins:
In the year 1862, Singapore was a bustling port. Of the many immigrants, the Chinese in particular came in droves. Most came with barely the clothes on their backs, to begin a new life of toil and labour. Others came with precious stones hidden in unmentionable places, and traded those in for the money to start a small business, providing for their peers, the colonial masters and the occasional badger that washed ashore.

At one such humble restaurant, a group of colonial masters dined, one day. As is still seen today, the ang mohs are treated very nicely indeed. Because they're the ones with the money, and back then, the guns and the flags.

The diners were frustrated at not being able to drink their tea pinky-up, because the Chinese teacups had no handles on them. But the food was excellent, and one of them wanted very much to tell the owner of the restaurant how good he thought it was. Of course, he did it in English, because the English expect everyone to speak it.

Diner: "I say, old chap, this Chicken rice is fantastic! I mean, shockingly good! There's nowhere to get decent fish and chips on this island because we just can't explain the concept of batter to you, but the things you can do with chicken, my god. Bravo!"

Owner: "Ah. Tank you."

Of course, the owner spoke almost no English, but he knew the word "good", and got the idea. He was a great one for self-improvement, however, and he wasn't going to pass on this opportunity. Ten minutes later, he stepped up to the table again and coughed politely.

Owner: "Ah. Sok?"

Diner: "What? Sock?"

Owner, pointing to chicken: "Sok good?"

Diner: "Oh! Yes, shockingly good, I say!"

Owner: "Ah. Tank you."

He went back to the counter, and mouthed the word to himself a few times. As the diners got up to leave, he hurried over for the last time.

Owner: "Ah. Shiok?"

Diner: "Um. Shockingly good, I said. You know, like...oh nevermind. Yes, yes, shiok. Shiok! Very good!"

The owner beamed, and bowed. He couldn't wait to tell all his friends the new ang moh word he learned that day.

Hurnaissance.

Like renaissance, but for retarded people.

So I've been missing for quite some time. Just short of a week, now.

...one-person pun, that one. And hardly funny by any stretch of the imagination. I apologise.

The strange thing is, it's hard to get started, in the same way, no matter what you apply it to. Reasonable things, of course. It would not be hard to get started on having scantily-clad women feed you sashimi while interesting things go on about a metre down from where the sashimi goes in. If said women, sashimi and huge bed were readily available, that is.

And you know how hard it is to find good sashimi, these days.

But it's hard to start on anything for yourself without an immediate, tangible reward. Cleaning your room, for example. You know it's going to be a bunch of dusting, wiping, moving and mopping. And the more you think about it, the more perfectly clean your room seems to be, so fuck off, alright?

Or starting on exercise. You know how long it took you the last time to finally be able to see that first bicep line. And now you've laid off it for so long, the dumbbell you casually scratched your back with last time is impossible to lift. You blame the tiny elves holding it to the ground, then go have a beer.

Eventually, you do. And cleaning your room is just like you thought it would be. You collect enough dust to stuff a pillow with, discover the obligatory one fossilized cockroach, and break out in hives all over your body. After a few hours, it's finally done and you hurl the cloth viciously into the bucket in a gesture of finality to no one in particular. Then you take a shower to clean off off the dirty water you just splashed on yourself.

You dry off and come back into the room again and hey, it's somehow more pleasant, isn't it? Your feet don't stick to the floor anymore. And the air smells fresher too. Why you don't do this more often, you have no idea.

And perhaps you'll finally put on your running shoes and go for that run you've promised yourself for two we...months, now. And yes, you feel like shit. Oh gods, how did you ever manage to do this in the past. Jesus, you don't need to inflict this on yourself.

You get back home dejected, damned near dead and knowing it's going to take a lot more than a twenty-minute run to get back in shape. You're no Belgian Blue Cow. The good news is, you don't ever have to worry about people discovering you run cow-photos.blogspot.com Seriously, wtf.

After just ten minutes though, when you've caught your breath again, you feel pretty good, don't you? Perkier. Energetic. Why, you'd even swear you can see your abs now. Why you don't do this more often, you have no idea.

And neither do I.

To sleep, perchance to...eh?

Nine days already? Really?

I'd intended to at least attempt to write something once a week. But the days are just packed, to quote Bill Watterson. No, no reason, besides that he loved his work enough to flip off money. Leh. Along with the people giving it to him.

That's a personal goal. To be successful enough doing something I enjoy to flip off money. It will be tough. Jacking off doesn't pay very well.

But yes, dreams. What are those all about, eh? It's interesting how it's a subject with which a change of tense can be the difference between blah and epic.

"I had a dream."

"I have a dream."

I could go places with this. Or you could, with Google. But we'll just look at three facets of sleep and dreaming. With corresponding levels of Epic.

1. Flying
Probably the second-most common dream, next to sex with German twins. No, I don't think I'm special, but I've never had dreams of flying. The closest I got made enough of an impression on me, that I remember it nigh twenty years on. Twenty years leh. Le...ok, sorry.

I was a kid. And for some reason, I thought it was a good idea to jump out of the window of the flat, which was on the fourth storey. I probably had some vague idea I was dreaming, and wanted to test it because I'm empirical like that. There, but for the grace of actually being correct for once, goes the non-existence of tehgoat.blogspot.com and the very messy existence of one piakked kid.

So I jumped. And I went high, and slow. Gravity was like a forty-five dollar cocktail at a posh bar: there, but less than half-strength. I slowly landed, and it was fun. And I jumped again and again, because when you're six years old, you have no idea that what you really should be doing is visualising hot German twins. So whee, jump. Land. Jump somemore.

Like frog.

Yes, other people get to fly. I got to play frog. Albeit the special frying kind with the extra webbing between limbs so they can glide from tree to tree. No, really got such frog.

The ramifications of that probably explain why I am the way I am, today.


2. Sleep Paralysis
It hasn't happened lately, but it's not fun. Skim the Wiki and make your own call, but let me describe it.

You're awake, but unable to move. Everything is black, because you can't open your eyes. Breathing is laboured. Yes, you panic. Straining the edges of sanity, you find you can move a finger, ever so slightly. Yes, you know you're awake. You can feel your bed, your pillow, your bolster. Hear the fan and the faint drone of the TV in the living room.

But you can't move. You want to scream for help, for someone to slap you out of it or something. But you can't. Black. Sight is so close. You know it is. Your eyelids are stapled shut, though. You can feel your heartbeat speed to ridiculous levels, and you think you might die from it. You think maybe that would be a good thing, that blessed unconsciousness would be better than this dark, sightless limbo.

That's how it's like the first time, anyway. If any of you two people reading this have experienced sleep paralysis, it's unpleasant, but breakable. Calm yourself in the face of utter despair. And then there's no way I can describe the following action, but to gather your sense of self into a corner. Ball yourself up into a tight ball, if you will. And lunge outwards.

It takes a few tries, sometimes. But you'll eventually break out of yourself, gasping for air and cursing like a sailor who discovers he has crabs, and not the sort you eat.

But me being me, I've done that. And woken up, gasping and all. And went about the daily doldrum, getting ready for work. All very normal. Then I leave the house and a pig flies past. "Hello, you," I say. And then SMLJ reaction kicks in.

And then I wake up. Again.


3. The Cling
I haven't actually heard anything about this. It's generic enough to be all over the place but unGooglable, I suppose. Like trying to find a childhood friend whose name you forgot by entering, "Chinese boy, about yay tall in 1990."

The cling starts when you have a happy dream. Silly-happy sort of thing. Like when you're a kid and swimming in a sea of candy. Replace candy with money or something, as you grow up. Or virgins. Anything you can grab a handful of and be pretty happy about, really.

But everything's normal when you're dreaming. For a while, at least. And then you feel yourself wake up. Dream-reality ripples, and begins to fade. Running on sheer animal instinct, you grab handfuls of whatever it is around you, because you want so desperately to keep it.

And then you wake up. And even though you know it's retarded, you slowly look down and open your tightly clenched fists. Empty. Not that you were really expecting a fistful of candy, money or rather grotesquely, dismembered breast. But you're still disappointed, and go bleah at no one in particular.


Yes, this is when you find out that it's about Her after all. Because you tend to dream of what weighs most heavily on your mind, you see. And rather embarrassingly, she's it.

I dreamed of her. Nothing exciting enough to remember. Possibly, she was gardening in a chicken suit, weeding out wild Bratwursts that were choking the flowering pizza plants. Then I woke and, finding myself in my room, go, "Ah. Dream. I wonder what she's doing right now."

Something was strange about my bolster. It was a funny shape. And it was heaving gently. I looked down, and it was her. Warm, sensuous and curled up against me, her head tucked into my chest.

And that's the story of the one time I brought my dream back with me. It was wonderful, in the original meaning of the word.

Crafty Boys.

Unless you were raised by a band of wild turkeys, you'd prolly have been asked, "What do you wanna be when you grow up?" at least once in your life.

I suppose it would be the same if you were raised by the turkeys, really. Except they'd ask you in Turkey. And there's just the one answer: "Bigger turkey."

But yes, for serious. The little answers don't tend to vary. Doctor. Astronaut. Pilot. Fireman. Policeman. When you're little, you're in a good place, with somewhere to sleep, food to eat, money given to you for candy and toys. And Uncle Bob only very occasionally touches you in your special places.

And then you get older, and people stop smiling when you tell them what you want to be. "Well ok, helping people is all very well, but what do you really want to do? Eh?"

A little hard to intrepret when you're little. "But...I've just told you." Nono. Doctor still ok. Lawyer, banker and engineer are the only other acceptable answers. Everything else is a cop-out.

Some of us never grow out of When I Grow Up. I haven't. I admire craft. Well, the more showy ones, shamefully. Plastering is a craft, but at least for me, it's hard to go, "The way you mix it so perfectly...and the deft strokes you use to smooth it over with the...thingy thing. Teach me, oh master."

The showy ones manifest my WIGU syndrome. But you sort of have to see the people. Hearing a song is fine, but watching a good singer perform makes me want to sing. Dancers make me want to take classes. Instrumentalists have me imagining myself playing their instrument, as if I could ever move beyond Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Even watching cooks makes me think I could make unfunny jokes while speed-slicing a cucumber, and have it all turn out wonderful.

Humour and writing are sort of exceptions, yet not. Comedians do make me want to get out there on a stage and proceed to stare in terror at a few hundred people, having forgotten all my lines. Watching a writer would be...not very exciting, at best. But the writing is the actual performance, and reading good writing makes me wonder how I would write the same thing. Good comic writing is just the shit.

Craft. It's a nice word. Someone crafting a meal makes you want to eat it. Someone crafting a story has you enthralled. Use it on the right people, though. Not on the guy with a can-opener and a microwave. And for the latter, not on Catherine Lim.

Yes, WIGU never leaves some of us. Not all of us are as taken with craft, perhaps. Some of us WIGU about being managers, dreaming daily of ways to steal credit and disclaim blame. But life wears on and you wake up one day to realise, fuck, you're 38 and losing hair like the Singapore law enforcers have been losing prisoners. You have grown up.

That's when you go out and buy a Porsche. Or a six-pack, for most of us.

But try not to lose your WIGU. If you've always wanted to write, write. If you've always wanted to run a shady business importing Russian brides, start running a busi...you get the idea.

If nothing else, keep your WIGU just so you won't be a defective person. The ability to look at someone perform and go, "Wow, that's awesome. I wish I could do that someday," is important. Certain breeds of managers are such pricks because they've lost it. They go, "Well that's nice and everything but can you do what I do? And have I mentioned? Even my children play golf leh. Leh."

If you must know, I wanted to be a scientist when I grew up. Small the time, don't know about all the different branchy-branches what. It was all lab coat, clipboard, test tubes and voila! Win Nobel prize for paper on effects of banjos on cats. Mucho money. Retire. Spend rest of life shagging leftover cats.

Real life, not so easy. Banjos hard to come by. The earlier one realises that, the easier it is for him to deal with it. So the next time little Timmy comes to you and tells him he wants to be a fireman when he grows up so he can help people, do the right thing.

Set him on fire.

Equine elevation.

Relax your neck, and slump your head forward. No, really let it go. Your chin should touch the middle of your chest. If you want to take it a little further, walk around a bit like that. If not, just imagine spending the rest of your days like this.

Quite a long time ago, I saw her while on my way to work. A tiny, emaciated thing of sixty-five, seventy, maybe more. Who knows. She was dressed simply. Plain, worn but not shabby. And she was walking towards me, from the direction of the train station, just like that, looking straight at the ground and a little to the left.

I wondered what had her so sad. Because she did look sad, in a rather permanent sort of way. Like she'd watched a kitten die painfully, and someone suddenly sprayed fixative on her face. She walked softly, tending to weave a little to the left like a rogue supermarket cart. She would correct her step frequently for that. Something was incongruous, though. I slowed slightly.

Then, using the hand that was not clutching a plastic bag, she pushed up on her chin to raise her head, so she could see where she was going. Having checked, and likely written the next ten metres into her mind, her arm dropped to her side. And her head flopped once again against her chest.

Who she was, where she was going and what happened to her, I don't know. I saw her a few more times, but haven't in the past...year? I'm not even sure if I should wish that she's doing alright.

Earthquakes, tsunamis, brutal governmental crackdowns. I could care less. Let the papers report it, and the internet lookatmes pour forth their grief for all to see. I'm quite happy to give my ten or twenty to a worthy cause, when asked. But my emotionz cannot go out to people I don't know, half a world away.

They did go out to her. I remember her soft, stoic shuffle still. "Well, what can I do about it? Gotta keep on truckin." it seemed to say. I'm mostly alone, but that's by choice. If she didn't want to be, I can but hope that she didn't have to be.

But yes, I've recently sat in the chair of someone who, having seen what I did, would probably say,

"It's her own damned fault, you know."

How so?

"Everyone knows about Osteoporosis, and how women need to look after their calcium intake when they get older. She has no excuse."

She might be illiterate, and one of the few remaining that came from China on a boat, looking for a better life. She might have spent her life raising children left behind by a gambling drug addict of a husband who left her for a woman with a pretty face and nice tits.

"Well, why wouldn't she drink milk anyway? It's great for calcium, not to mention all the other benefits that come with it. She was just asking for it."

She's lactose intolerant. She doesn't know that's what it's called, but on the rare times she did drink milk, she had explosive diarrhoea in the fields for a week. It doesn't even take cognitive thought to come to the conclusion that it's bad for her.

"Her fault for being lactose intolerant. She still could have taken calcium supplements and the like. Or gone to a doctor. You should always see a doctor when you're not feeling well. I always see a doctor when I'm not feeling well."

Her children left her, one by one. They can't call her because she doesn't have a phone. And they don't visit her at all. What little money she makes goes to her evening meal of vegetables and rice. Sometimes she feels extravagant and buys a bottle of fermented bean curd. It usually lasts her a month.

"With a diet like that, it's no wonder she's in such bad shape. Well, enough. I can't help it that no one takes my advice. I mean, look at my life. If everyone listened to me, the world would be so much better. I'm going home to my highschool sweetheart banker husband and two and a half children. Bye."

And people call me self-righteous leh. Leh.

Verse rehearse.

Terence, to all that were present
Had talent but practically patent
The bright side of things
And half-full glass things
Were just to him all quite apparent

"Good day!" he would say
To all on his way
"Isn't it all bright and cheerful?"
And because of such
It was hard to begrudge
His habits, though mildly distasteful

Terence, you see
Was grope-touch-feely
With all bar some elderly aunts
On the bus you'd find
With Terence behind
Hands going up skirts and down pants

It was strange, we thought
But no harm was wrought
By Terence's lewd non-sequiturs
Still, from that time on
We all called him TOM
Terence, the Optimistic Molestor


It's mongrel doggerel. But it's got far more happiness behind it than you might imagine. Than I would have imagined. And I've got a pretty good imagination.

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.