Some thoughts on friends and Singapore

My Life...as of 29th march '98...

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Hey yo!
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Daylight Savings!!! Now sydney is only TWO hours ahead of s'pore again! yes~~~~ someone had an extra hour of sleep last night....*nice bright alert grin*... :)

/ Its so amazing, its already the end of march. Like Whoa. that's 2 months of being 18 already gone...and, risking overstatement, its been bloody boring. Who'd have thought it, huh. when u're 13 u cant wait to be 14..you think that somehow when you're 14, you become cool and you hang out after school with all the sec4 guys..and that 14 is some sort of optimum age for dating...and maybe your legs will get longer and develop some shape by 15... So much for that. But i shldn't be so dismissive since, for one thing, i had a whirlwind sec2/sec3 life~! I was going out, i was eternally on the phone, i stayed up till 3am on the phone for the first time, i wasn't ever bored. I had teleview.
    Anyone remembers teleview? the chat rooms? the mbox no.s...the handles...the way it suddenly exploded sometime around 1995 into so many chat rooms and even developed its own old-chatter nostalgia....Not to forget the saturday chatter outings at Taka where we'd block up the walkway at the teleview terminal(now gone i think)...It was an amazing time for me. Now when my friends tell me about their irc outings, where they meet all these cool people (read: anyone we wldn't normally know) and when they describe the online/offline interaction, its exactly like what teleview was to me back then. And it's slightly uncomfortable when people tell you about what they're experiencing now, like they expect its something totally new to you, when it isn't. But its funny coz when i was doing it 3-4 years ago, i would tell people about it, and no matter what they said or how much they knew, i always felt they wouldn't understand unless they experienced it exactly like i did. Maybe that's how my friends feel. (blah blah blah, i warn you now that the rest of this page could be considered boring if you prefer flashy hype.)
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    Alot of things happen when a bunch of friends who've gone through much the same life for 7 years go separate ways. For those who go onto unexpected paths, they encounter new things, things that excite them and bring them fresh perspectives. Then when they meet up again(after co-ordinating suddenly very different schedules), they feel the urge to enlighten their friends whom they might feel are stuck in the same stale (albeit successful) route (rut?).
    Obviously, it doesn't happen quite the way one would envisage... Although the new ideas, the alternative lifestyles/goals may sound exciting to them, its just nowhere within the radius they've set up for themselves for now. Taking a year off before uni to travel? "oh my goodness, i so wish we could, but....maybe when we're working". Going to new york to study art? "Wow. that is So cool. so Bohemian... and such a lovely dream to have...but you can't be serious.". Even going off for 2 weeks after the As to experience a little bit of fresh life in another country with your friends is incredibly appealing but still improbable. Scholarship applications..money..parents..(who can blame them, really?) Maybe when you grow up, you realise that the harder you dream, the harder the reality hurts. Which is ironic since, the older you are, you're supposed to have more say in the choices you make. Unfortunately, you don't have the same freedom to choose what constitutes a risk.
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    It bothers me, that we all have only 70-90-odd years of life here on earth, and we spend the first third preparing for the second, and the last third trying to live before you die. You're only young once, and as far as i know, you only live once. Singapore is not an exotic place to be in, its a beehive of efficiency, but try as hard as the govt might, its missing buzz. Maybe im wrong; i haven't been back in a few months and the newlook straits times is rather off putting. Maybe something interesting has happened in singapore while i've been gone, maybe the country has suddenly been infused with a broader mentality, maybe a new local rock group is producing quality stuff which the radio stations actually push for, maybe starbucks got bombed. Haven't heard anything about it here~. What i've been reading is the most incredibly petty stuff. Bond breakers? publishing their names to shame them? Moral obligation??? FOR GOODNESS SAKES. (Tried to devise a 'leaving them shaken, but not stirred' joke here, but was not successful..). Maybe if i'd been in our little garden box of a city while all this was happening, i might've seen the point, but in the open-air down here, i'm incredulous, even though i shld know better.
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    Months ago, when i first left s'pore, i recall the campaign(?) for singapore to become more cosmopolitan. I thought that was a brilliant issue. For once, you had to think about what you had as a singaporean. You actually had to worry that singapore had become such a cold efficient place that it could put profit over the less aptitude-determining quality of citizenship.
    I imagine suddenly, people might have had a glimpsing experience on the issue of asian immigrants here in australia. Racism? well. Especially when you're a small tiny country with a defensive attitude towards its unique culture being misunderstood, you get the feeling that this welcoming of foreigners with benefits is ever so slightly like being 'swamped with (to misquote pauline hanson) outsiders'. I believe ms hanson's actual quote was along the lines of "this country is in danger of becoming swamped by asians."
    Maybe im exaggerating, i 'maybe' alot, but maybe my point of view is skewed. You can most certainly mail me, if you care enough. im curious to see how many people i know have an interest in this.

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    Now for something that happened to me in the last few days...
    There's this weekly ezine that i subscribe to. I came across it from yahoo and i got hooked on reading the past issues.. Its a humour-based zine mainly about the author's life, and he's definitely an entertaining writer, but i'm having some difficulty raving about his zine because of an ugly incident.
    The past 3 issues that were sent to me was about this book written on puberty, with a decidedly christian bias. The author basically typed out parts of it and with a friend, made fun of it accordingly. I thought it was careless, and i mailed him so. What happened was that he wrote a scathing reply, but decided to be polite in the end, sending me a note of thanks for writing and a dictionary definition for 'satire'. Upon introspection i probably should have left it there and let it be, but instead, i mailed him back with a short comment on quality regarding satire, and the disclaimer 'but who's to judge?'.
    This in turn invoked his ire and delivered to me the previously composed scathing reply, embellished with personal attacks. Suffice it to say, i regret the entire incident, for the unkind words it spawned, and the loss of some respect, surely, for both parties. Its entirely regrettable that people can be so easily provoked into offensiveness.
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    Another thing the incident brings to mind is the use of sarcasm. I remember learning somewhere at age 13 that it wasn't a compliment to be called sarcastic, after years of being proud of it. Sarcasm is a very ugly spiteful thing, and whenever i come across people who boast at their skill in sarcasm, their talent in using tones and their memorable ripostes, its difficult to explain the difference between witty repartee and unkind words. And there Is a difference. being nice doesn't mean you have to be a doormat.
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    I think this has been too long already...:) Always hoping it doesn't come across self-important like so many things i've read online...(to aaron, if u're reading this, im not talking about you, alright?) I know some people like reading these articles, i assume those who don't, don't tell me, which is good for my ego. Whichever way it goes, this is the closest i've ever gotten to keeping a voluntary journal, which is way cool. :) To end off, Joey(the one frm rj) sent me this .bmp file and it creeped me out. I'm putting it here so you all can have nightmares too... And to my dear, dear stressed-out friends, im not giving up~! Someday, we'll be walking through the streets of paris like some stereotypical coming-of-age movie, relaxing with glasses of wine and some bread and cheese under a bridge, enjoying the misty cool skies, and having a gem of experience to make life that little bit more worthwhile. and think of the shopping.! *grin*
/ Here's the picture... try out the instructions~!~

If you can't read the words properly, it says:
/ CONCENTRATE ON THE FOUR DOTS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PICTURE FOR ABOUT 30 SECS. THEN CLOSE YOUR EYES AND TILT YOUR HEAD BACK. KEEP THEM CLOSED. YOU WILL SEE A CIRCLE OF LIGHT. CONTINUE LOOKING AT THE CIRCLE... WHAT DO YOU SEE? / (if u see a face, then you saw what i saw..someone i know saw a mask..like the one in Phantom. You tell me what you saw, k?)

/ Spooked? /

Click here to see the ezine i was talking about. Despite what i said, i still think the issues are really good reads.