Lego and Piss

Admist the sounds of a crying child, I heard the snappish voice of her mother.

"Go ask your papa to buy you clothes!"
"I want mama to buy me clothes!"

The above exchange was repeated at least twice before the mother, having a sudden inspiration, threw in the line, "give me back my lego!"

Amazing isn't it? And all this happened while the mother was storming indignantly along the common corridor outside my flat while her crying child tried valiantly to catch up on her short legs. One wonders what kind of example the mother was setting for her daughter. One of childishness and spite, perhaps. I know not the background of their family; maybe the parents are divorced, leaving the mother broken and bitter. One innocent remark made in favour of her father and the daughter finds herself the perfect outlet of her mother's frustrations.

If what I witnessed was a snapshot of their daily lives, then I fear the child will probably grow up with a distorted perception of gifts and love. Insecurity will haunt the girl through her growing years and if coupled with a few choice relationship or friendship problems that life will without doubt dish out to her, she's finished.

As I was walking to th MRT station from home today, I saw a child's bare ass. Her legs were sticking in the air, held together by her mother's arms. Apparently, she had just finished peeing as her mum was shaking her as a man would shake his member to get the last few drops of pee out.

The washrooms were at most, 20 metres away from the grass patch that the mother took as an ad-hoc toilet.

Stellar examples of parenting. Suitable to be filed along with incidents of kids running up and down the train with their parents yelling threats of caning without actually carrying them out. These kids grow up with the impression that empty threats are all their parents are capable of. When they reach their teenage years and totally ignore the advice of their parents, the parents complain in hapless frustration that their teengers are rebellious, oblivious to the fact that they were the engineers behind such behaviour.

Gosh

I must be the last person in the civilised, IT-savvy world to know of Technocrati, the specialised blog search engine.

Drinking at The Labyrinth last night was turning out to be another sober affair - although Jianming, Daryl and I had almost an entire bottle of Jim Beam - until Daryl's friend, Steven, who's one of the pub owners came and Daryl got him to concoct their special premium cocktail that according to Daryl has Barcarrdi 151 among other potent spirits. Yum.

Steven came with the turqoise-coloured drink in a martini glass and advised me to suck it all up in one breath cause it'll be difficult to finish the rest of the drink if I stop halfway. Sure, no problem I thought. I took a deep breath, and drank up the liquid using a straw, feeling burning sensations in my nose and throat. My eyes were tearing as I finished it, but I felt remarkably sober. Oh shit, I thought. The drink must be one of those delayed-reaction poisons that will leave you feeling deceptively sober until the kick comes up from behind and slams your head with a sledgehammer.

Jianming was determined not to be left out of the fun, so he got Daryl to order one more serving of the potent liquid. After going through almost the exact experience as I did, he proclaimed the drink "nice", and I agreed! Daryl conveyed the msg to Steven who stated incredulously that Daryl has "crazy friends". Well, birds of the same feather ..

We finished up the Jim Beam, and walked out of the place relatively sober. High, but sober. Oh, and other non-alcohol related updates include Daryl and Jianming serenading the pub with a few choice songs on the karaoke system, and this pretty waitress who's the resident eye-candy.

I'm still laptop-less. I feel like I'm getting over a break up. It's geekily depressing.

Cereal..Cornflakes?

I've always used the term "cornflakes" as a generic term that covers all cereals. I only noticed it today, or moments ago after deciding that I should blog about keep cereals(cornflakes) in the fridge.

It's a brilliant idea really, keeping it in the fridge. Jasmin's a genius to have thought of it. Doing so produces two benefits; first, the cereals fresh and crunchy, and second, the ants don't get to them. My attempts at keeping cereal fresh involved rolling up the top of the cereal bag and double tying it with two rubberbands. When even after doing that I still found ants in my banana-nut crunch, I, erm, balanced the box of cereal on a bottle of horlicks that I appropiated from camp. I'm sure you can see the logic behind doing that. It didn't work though, so all I did was to smash a spoon around in my bowl of cereal before pouring in the milk to give the ants a chance to get out. I've no qualms about eating ants, so it's purely out of the goodness of my heart that I offered them a route of escape. =D see, I'm a nice guy.

Anyway, I'll just keep my cereal in the fridge from now on.

Penguin

Met up with my union camp friends - again - last night. Here are pics with some of them. The important thing to note though, is my new geeky Penguin shirt. Haha.

Pamela and Boyan

Willie, Boyan

Demise

My laptop; my old friend who has stuck with me through thick and thin, from visual basic 6 to visual basic.net, has died. I brought it out yesterday to the national library and after carrying it around the entire day, it started freezing up shortly after I brought it home. Sent it to PC Clinic at Sim Lim Square where Jianming and his collegues operated on the poor guy and pronounced him dead at approximately 715pm.

I'm now laptop-less and am typing this on Jasmin's desktop. Her desktop doesn't have broadband, so I dragged an extremely long network cable from the modem in my room to the desktop in the hall, excavated a dust-covered network card from my long dead desktop and transferred it to her desktop, and there you have it, desktop with broadband.

Hello world. This is Shaun.

Humble Pie

If shallowness is the supreme vice, then the most desired virtue should be humility. Humility, coming hand in hand with meekness. Oscar Wilde wrote in De Profundis that he "forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character", and I think that is precisely what has gone wrong in my life.

That, and the fact that I've backslidden so horribly from God I've forgotten the sweetness of his presence. It's time, therefore, to seek out both humility and God, before my character becomes hopelessly and irreversibly foul.

God help me.

Cool Shit

Reflect

"The supreme vice is shallowness." I am, I know, a pretty shallow person. I can go on for ages about the importance of good looks, brains, and wealth. Goodness of character is something I never talk about. In its stead I expound on how it is useless to be of good character if you are not even attractive enough for people to bother looking at what is inside you. Beauty is only skin deep, but what do people see when they look at you? Your skin. How do people judge your character? From the beauty of your speech and actions. If you can speak, and act, like you have a good character, people will be deceived, and will be so, till it is too late.

I am, however, wrong. I play it up for the world, grinning foolishly while openly and very obviously, appreciating the beauty of passing women. But, how far can looks get you? It might land you a job, give you an edge where it comes to promotions, give you popularity, but it never gives you true friends, nor love. Of course, if you're in posession of both good looks and character, then you are in luck. But life is never fair, and that is something we have to accept.

To digress, I am having a serious problem here. My extended displays of shallowness and non-chalance seem to have affected the way I think. My thoughts vear towards the shallow and cynical when my intention is to write something encouraging and truthful. If I am not careful, this will be me, for real.

Let me put the jerk aside, for I'm not good looking enough to be labelled a "cute jerk", and ugly jerks are never tolerated. Well, look, here I go again. What I mean to say, my dear brother, is that we're born equal. You were born with the same number of skill points as me, as any other person. The only thing that difers is how God allocates them. 40 points to looks for some, 20 for others. But the person who receives 40 points for looks might receive only 5 points for kindness. In a really geeky way, I'm trying to say that there is no need to feel inferior for lacking in any particular area. I must say I pity those who were allocated low points for intelligence and insight, though. Then again, having low points in those areas might mean that they're good-looking and kind-hearted and will go through life happily.

One might not be drop-dead gorgeous, but one might be blessed with the gift of the gab; with eloquence that is handicapped only by a low skill point allocation in confidence. Confidence, however, can be acquired, as can good fashion sense. Dress well, walk with grace and dignity. Be confident in your speech(that applies to me as well), have faith in yourself, and there is nothing you can't accomplish(or at least it helps to tell yourself that).

Superficial traits aside, you have a heart of gold. A loyalty to friends unmatched by any other I know, and a nature so helpful it goes against logical comprehension. Love will find you; just, for the love of God, open the damn door when she knocks.

Here I go

I looked through my recent entries and discovered that I've been typing in short disjointed sentences. Not that I don't usually type that like, but recently it has gotten worse. In fact my english standard has deteriotated to a point where I had trouble with the previously mentioned QET.

I could say that my undoubtedly poor performance was due to the fact that I've never taken GP lessons, or that I lack practice in writing proper essays; the last time I wrote a proper essay was for my 'O' levels English paper. But, that would be deceiving both the reader and myself. Global warming and renewable energy sources were the focus of the QET paper and I was supposed to write a convincing argument on whether it was crucial for Singapore to adopt renewable energy sources. We had an article to reference to, and the grammer editing section of the paper was on global warming, so a lack of information was not a problem. The problem was in the organisation and eventual penning down of my thoughts. I had trouble focusing. Ideas swam through my mind incoherently. My attempts at writing an outline failed miserably. In the end I decided to screw everything and just start writing. That was my first mistake. Writing an argumentative essay is unlike a narrative or a blog entry where you can get away with missing out an important point. Also, it is unlike typing a paper on the computer where you can back-space and edit what you've written.

I had problems with my attention span too. I could not keep focused, and I eventually gave up and just wrote in whatever style I felt like writing. I made cynical remarks about our "pragmatic society" that is apathetic to the environmental disasters happening elsewhere in the world because, well, they are not happening here. I wrote that to convince a society that is this pragmatic, one needs other reasons, either political or economical. In fact, I even wrote that it is crucial for Singapore to make a show of developing and using renewable energy sources because it will improve our standing in the international community.

I remember reading "State of Fear" by Michael Crichton and it was about how global warming's a myth. Only problem was that I could not remember the details. For all my bullshit about how I read slowly to really appreciate a book, I display a remarkable lack of retention of the book's content.

I just finished reading Oscar Wilde's "The soul of man under socialism" and I must say that man writes beautifully. He bullshits so damn well that one might even be taken in, and accept his writings as truth. He wrote about Jesus like he really knows the man. He ascribes his own philosophies to Jesus, and maybe even Plato. I know little of the teachings of Plato, but enough about Jesus' teachings to be absolutely sure that they were definately not about Individualism and the perfection of man as claimed by Oscar Wilde. Oscar Wilde even lies blatantly. He claimed that Jesus accepted authority, both that of the Roman government and the Jewish church. It was true that Jesus did not rebel nor teach rebellion against the romans, but he did wreck the jewish synagogue in rage. Basically I totally disagree with his references to Christ, but I do agree with some of his other points. Besides, beauty covers a multitude of sins, and Oscar Wilde certainly writes beautifully. Read "The picture of Dorian Gray" if you haven't. It's sinfully good.

As I walk from place to place, plugged into my ipod, I sometimes have feel the urge to write about stuff. Stuff like beauty and arrogance. On the virtues of virginity and why it makes a hell lot of sense to keep it till marriage; not so much for the man, but for the lady.

-i realise after finishing my brainless tirade that it might be offensive to some .. so if you think you might be offended by an entirely tactless and senseless discussion of virginity, please don't read on-




Now that I've got a writing momentum, let me try to touch on the issue of virginity. Sex, and references to sex are everywhere. In movies, a couple makes love shortly before or after they're pictured to have fallen in love. Not marriage, but "in love". No, actually sometimes they have sex even when there's no love involved. Pick up any gender-focused magazine like Men's Health or Her World and you'll definately find an article or two about sexual techniques. Everywhere we turn, we see or hear references to sex. There is no escape. Is it any wonder then, that people are starting to take their virginity lightly.

Sex is seen, is portrayed as an act of love, or as an act bringing extreme pleasure. I doubt a girl who's a virgin will seek out a random stud for sexual pleasures; that would be stupid. I believe most girls who choose to have sex before marriage will have it with someone they love, and whom hopefully, loves them. Generally speaking, that is silly. Why do I say so? Ok, when a girl loves a guy, she will most likely want to marry him and spend the rest of her life with him. And so she thinks to herself that since they're so in love and would probably be for a lifetime, she feels it is acceptable to give up her virginity to the said guy. Maybe he has been pressurising her for sex and she is worried that if she can't fulfil his sexual desires, he'll look else where. Maybe he has been giving her the over-used but definately effective line that if she loves him, she should, well, let him fuck her.

What will most likely happen is that they quarrel some time in the future, discover irreconcilable differences, and break up. What happens now? The girl has been robbed of her most precious gift that she has for her future husband. She has lost her virginity and has well, nothing much left to lose. From this group of girls, several breeds are born. Some learn not their lesson, and go on making the same mistake over and over again. Some get so jaded they seek out partners purely for sexual pleasures. And of course there are those that get so traumatised that they sink into depression.

In the best case scenario, the couple stays together, and the girl waits for the man to propose. But what incentive does he have to propose? They're already intimate, both emotionally and sexually. Marriage will just be a burden. A waste of money, and a stone around the neck. If sex is reserved for after marriage, the man will have every incentive to marry the girl. No money? He'll work harder. This might even make the man a better person, and eventually, a better husband.

Why have sex before marriage? There is absolutely no convincing argument supporting it. Some might claim that a couple gets more emotionally intimate after sex. I disagree. Emotional intimacy might in fact suffer once a couple starts having sex. They talk less, fuck more. Time that was once spent getting to know each other better is now spent on foreplay and sex. If sexual furstration builds up, masterbate. Either alone, or for each other. Then again, it might not be a good ideal to mutually masterbate because, where does one draw a line? And the couple might get so drawn into the foreplay that a progression to actual intercourse becomes the most natural thing in the world. Emotional intimacy will then suffer as much as if they're having sex. In fact, it might even suffer more, as the poor guy tries every mean known to man to get intercourse.

Total abstinence is then the best. In theory. Practically however, it's almost impossible. Couples hold hands, they hug, and they kiss. This leads to making out, and into foreplay. It's a natural progression. What should we do then? Abstain from dating? Impossible. Our brains are hardwired to obey God's command to seek out members of the opposite sex and eventually to be fruitful and multiply. His later commands to flee from fornication and sexual immorality are more easily ignored.

The above paragraphs are perhaps the most ridiculously hypocritical ones I've ever written. I'm no saint; in fact I'm knocking on the gates of hell. Put a gorgeous babe in front of me and my prayer will not be "lead me away from temptation" but "God forgive me for I will sin". I hope nobody's offended by what I wrote, and please, please don't take it seriously.

Smoking Benefits

You've seen me post about the health benefits of drinking alcohol. Now comes the list of benefits of smoking cigarettes. Among others, nicotine is said to protect smokers from Alzhemer's and Parkinson's diseases, and is also a potential drug in the treatment of tuberculosis. The therapeutic effects of smoking includes a sharper mind and strangely, an optimal body weight.

Read more about it here! Don't take it too seriously though.

I've been really lazy to blog. Had an english test recently; the Qualifying English Test that NUS requires polytechnic students to take. I might just fail.

Pics:

A happy me with a half-eaten mega-cut prime rib steak at Daryl's birthday celebration at Hog's Breath on the 15th of July.

Proof-we-were-there pic at Hog's Breath. Best steak I've ever eaten. Not bloody enough though.

Spider-Man 3 Teaser Trailer

Here

Time

It's time to re-write my self-description on my blog. And maybe it's time to be politically correct and not include half-jokes like "skirt-chaser" =)

Climbing was good. Managed to make 4 climbs, including completing one route that was marked grade "?" so I've no idea how difficult it was. Doubt it was hard though. I have a fear of heights and I totally suck at top-roping.

Just finished "The curious incident of the dog in the night-time". Heart-breaking story ..

Boing

I've been having a rather happening week. So much so that I can hardly remember what happened and when. Let's see.

Monday was back to camp for my last day of work where I almost got forced to cut my hair.

Tuesday was bank loan application which took 5 mins, float building in NUS with my SoC friends, and dinner with Jun.

Wednesday brought with it an ice skating session with SoC friends, and mambo night at Zouk with union camp friends except that I didn't stay in mambo. I hate mambo. I can't stand the way they butcher perfectly good oldies. Stayed in Phuture, which was, as usual, crowded as hell.
Now, today. Going yishun to climb with Fengjie. Just the two of us. I wonder how many climbs we can last before one or both of us puncture.

Mi Lu Bing at Semi Finals of SuperBand

calvin's a genius. haha

=(

Everybody tells me the adidas shoes are ugly.

Sha says:
UGLY
shaun : legs cut off from beneath says:
:(
Sha says:
very ugly
shaun : legs cut off from beneath says:
why.
Sha says:
tasteless leh
shaun : legs cut off from beneath says:
it's not
shaun : legs cut off from beneath says:
it's esoteric
Sha says:
you are TWENTY TWO boy
shaun : legs cut off from beneath says:
!
Sha says:
up to you la

Mr Happy

Remember my post about me having bought a new pair of shoes last week? I was happily wearing it today when I walked into the adidas boutique in Bugis Junction. And, I totally fell in love with the shoes there! I want 3 pairs! Mon Dieu. I've never fallen in love with shoes as much as those 3 pairs. It's like being infatuted with some incredibly hot chick; the increased beating of the heart, the longing, AND the knowledge that that desire can't be fulfilled easily.

Here's my favourite ..

"Mr Happy" shoes! Rocks. And ..

Kermit the Frog. My favourite muppet baby. Nostalgically nice. And lastly,

TRON. The ultimate geeky game. Comes with almost all Linux Distros, the perfect shoe for the computing student.

Each at $179. Never felt poorer. No, actually, I've been feeling really poor. Haha.

Wow.

Shaun the Great's back. Except that he doesn't feel that great anymore. The past 5 days in union camp had been quite an experience. My ego's severely bruised. I feel different. I think different. There has been a marked change in my thinking. I can't quite place my finger to it yet, but something in my mind snapped.

I had fun. I laughed, I joked, and sometimes I wished the ground would open to swallow me up.

MLB - Wang Ba Dan

Mi Lu Bing's performance for Superband's Revival round. They got in. =)

Bloop

Zara's having a sale. I bought a pair of rich-man shoes at $79. Jasmin's not impressed with it.

Went to Paulaner's for dinner and beer. My beef steak was remarkably ordinary, considering its price. I ordered medium rare and it came medium rare, but more towards the medium end of the spectrum. Also, it was incredibly chewy, which got irritating after a while. The beer was heavenly as usual though. Munich Dark. The mushroom soup was pretty good too..but the beer, oh the beer.

Tomorrow's the start of NUSSU camp! NUS Student Union's freshmen orientation campm, reputedly the most happening camp in NUS. I'm excited, and nervous. And quite screwed up cause my group leader called me saying that our group's color is PURPLE and we have to turn up tomorrow wearing a purple shirt. Hello. How many guys you know have purple shirts?! WTH. And our group name's Cap5, so we are to bring a cap. I don't have a cap! Ok wait, I do have one, but it's somewhere in my cupboard back in my bunk.

Hm..let me leave you with a pic ..

From don't know how long ago. Oh that's Sam from Mi Lu Bing on the extreme left. And more importantly, a question has been bugging me day in and out. Should I keep my hair long again? Haha.

Flaming Lips - Fight Test

Artist: The Flaming Lips Lyrics
Song: Fight Test Lyrics

I thought I was smart
I thought I was right
I thought it better not to fight
I thought there was a virtue, in always being cool
So it came time to fight
I thought "I'll just step aside"
And that the time will prove you wrong
And that you would be a fool
I don't know where the sunbeams end
And the starlight begins
It's all a mystery
Oh. To fight is to defend
If it's not now then tell me when
Would be the time
That you would stand up and be a man
For to lose I could accept
But to surrender I just wept
And regretted this moment
oh that
I was the fool
I don't know where the sunbeams end
And the starlight begins
It's all a mystery
And I don't know how a man decides
What's right for his own life
It's all a mystery
'Cause I'm a man, not a boy
And there are things you can't avoid
You have to face them
When you're not prepared to face them

Pachelbel's Canon .. in Rock

I know this is pretty old .. but i'm putting in up in case some of you missed it..

Old Friends

This must be the first photo in years that the 4 of us took together. We've come a long way since '98 when we looked like ..

Nostalgic..no?

Congrats on your commissioning, Qingwei :)

Pics from School of Computing's orientation camp

My orientation group, Churl, supposedly the God of War. Never heard of it though. Usually associate God of War with Odin, Mars ..

Hendra, my OGL, and me, drawing attention to our BiG assets :D

Happy Birthday!

Before I forget, happy 22nd birthday to you, Angela!

Oh, and btw, Angela asked me to introduce some good men to her. Check out her profile on my friendster and if you're interested, apply here! I'll personally handle the QC tests. And knowing how superficial and shallow I am, ___ people need not apply. Sorry angie *grin*

3 taxis and a kia

Daryl was sending me home after we watched Superman Returns. Jianming was in the front passenger seat and I was sitting in the middle rear seat leaning on the front passenger seats and chatting with Daryl and Jianming.

We were travelling along Punggol road, approaching bus stop B08 at approximately 1235am when we saw this blue comfort taxi stop suddenly to pick up a passenger. A yellow citycab was immediately behind it and jammed its breaks to avoid crashing into the comfort taxi. Daryl responded by changing to the right lane.

Then, stupidity struck. The retarded citycab driver decided time was too precious to waste on waiting for the comfort cab to move on, so he suddenly moved to the right lane. Daryl slammed his brakes and honked for all his car's worth, swerving to the right and narrowly missed the stupid citycab.

All 3 of us turned to curse at the two stupid taxis when ... a bright yellow light filled my vision and I turned to the left to see a taxi crashing into the back of Daryl's car. OUCH. My left hip, which was leaning against the backrest of the car hurt from the impact.

The first 2 cabs started to drive off. Cursing and swearing, I whipped out my handphone and started entering their license plate numbers. I finished with the first cab, and stared at the city cab's license plate. But somehow, the numbers just didn't register in my stunned brain. Wasted. The citycab's the main culprit. Asshole.

We got out of the car, and settled things with the cab driver that knocked into Daryl's car. That's the summary. Lazy to go into details. Anyway, we called comfort to lodge a complaint against the first comfort driver who stopped to pick the passenger up. Pity that we didn't get the license number of the citycab driver.

My hip hurt, and I was supposed to book into camp later on. Eureka. I went to Changi Hospital, spent 1 hour waiting to see the doctor, and walked away with painkillers, muscle rub, and one day mc.

-

On a brighter note, Qingwei got commissioned today as a Police Inspector! Daryl, Jianming and I went to the Home Team Academy to attend his commissioning parade. We arrived too early. Thankfully there were a couple of look-worthy beings to entertain us. Or rather we entertained ourselves looking out for and at them.

Daryl, Me(if you don't know that why are you here?!), Jianming

Leaving on a jet plane

My best pal Weeli is now in Adelaide where he'll get his bachelor's in Computer Science, come back to Singapore, finish serving his NS and probably go for his masters all before I graduate from NUS. Our country loves diploma students.

He'll be greatly missed though. And don't worry finfin, both Rachel and your pretty sister are safe from me. I still think I should move into your room to accompany your brother though. Haha. Take care bro, and check in often k. Oh and remember the greygoose on your way back. Happy climbing, skirt chasing, boozing, and the occasional studying now and then.

Younger every day

I know how irritating it is to visit someone's blog and find it un-updated. It's like you wasted time clicking on or typing the url and hitting the enter key. I'm positively starving right now, so any little bit of energy is important.

Here's a little update. I know I haven't been updating much, and frankly lots happened in my life. I went for computing orientation camp, for one. It was a blast. Despite what everybody told me about how computing camp would suck, I went for it, in part to prove to myself that I'm not the superficial bastard I'm beginning to think I am. God has a really twisted sense of humour, and my nice-guy-persona had to work overtime several times during the camp. Not that I was hypocritical, but sigh, you guys who know me know how I am.

Anyway, I had loads of fun. Lots of whacky pictures coming up. I'll post one at the end of this post as a sneak peak.

I visited the bank today to deposit the $1000 note my mum gave me. Who on earth uses $1000 notes?! The cash depositing machine refused to accept anything above $100, so I unhappily joined the long queue at the bank. I can't understand why people depositing stacks of $50s don't use the damn machines. And the above-mentioned machines update your passbooks too you know? Why queue?! Anyway. Talking about lack of common sense, here's a snippet of my conversation with the bank teller.

Me: -hands over deposit form, cash and SAF ID-
Teller: Oh, you're in the army now?
Me: Yup.
Teller: Do you save money monthly?
Me: Er, yup.
Teller: How much?
Me: -wtf aint that private information- er, whatever's left at the end of the month lor
Teller: Ok, how old are you?
Me: Turning 22 this year
Teller: Oh ok, I thought you were 15.
Me: WHAT?! Okay. -didn't she just asked if i was in the army. what army did she think i was in? some arabian terrorist army?-

Here's the pic ..

Hold your gay horses! I'm still an ardent fan of the female form. This was for some camp game in which some wise ass thought it funny for me to act gay. Many more gay pics to come..

Kill me.

a happy guy told me i looked like his ex boyfriend. after i was done cringing and freaking out i asked him, "but i'm better looking right?". he replied, "nope, he's more handsome."

somebody kill me. anyway he's my first "happy" friend. quite interesting. of course i'm straight as ever. check out the girls at the ben and jerry's in The Cathay. =D