Moved to wordpress! Seems easier to use and looks... cleaner. (plus I seem to take less time to connect to wordpress, so there I go)

http://devandre.wordpress.com

Find me there.

And sorry chuan you just added me as a friend not too long ago and now I'm moving! The world is such a cruel, cold place.. Haha

iMOD
iMOD
iMOD

http://jaben.net/forums/index.php?topic=4957.0

I WANT MONEY GIVE ME SOME

Good things come in small packages. The only lamentable thing is that they come by so rarely, though when they DO come it's okay since, well, good things are here!

I thought today would be a terrible day. Was bummed out by school, the teachers in school, some people in school, the way people's paths cross and don't cross in school... Basically I was just feeling a little anti-social. But it was hard to be anti-social when I just had to tell everyone what happened in the first period.

I had a break, since everyone else was having GP, which meant MORNING TEH-O. Must have for me. So there I was, in the canteen, drinking my TEH and reading my book. Ngee derk, my classmate, was there too, also drinking TEH. And who should come along but Mr Isaac Lim, one of our esteemed institution's top-most educator in physical education. He has this really gruff voice that he puts on and talks in this very weird way he thinks makes the students 'bond' better with him. Anyway, the book that I was reading is the Social Construction of Lesbianism (hold the comments, people!) I was reading for KI. The thing about my book is that the word Lesbianism is in bold and splashed on the top of the cover. Dialogue is as follows:

Mr Isaac Lim (IL): (with weird accentuated voice) WHAT ARE YOU TWO DOING HERE?
Me: Uh... We have a break now
IL: WHAT ARE THE MAJORITY HAVING NOW?
Me: GP?
IL: SO YOU TWO TAKE KI?
Ngee Derk: Yeah...
IL: OKAY YOU ENJOY YOUR TEH AND YOUR LESBIANISM
Me and Ngee Derk: O_O uhhh okay......

And Ngee Derk doesn't even look like a girl! Plus he's 20cm too tall to pass off as an average Singaporean teen-aged girl anyway.

Then school came and went, and people came and went, and it was after school! I joked around and had fun with Dinesh and friends talking about people (as small minds tend to do) and laughed at the expense of others (which is fine as long as it's in moderation and not too malicious). The hours passed while I stretched my mental muscle in the hopes of somehow being able to miraculously procure a couple of passes for the preliminary exams. THEN. My mother came with my dad to pick me up from school.

Now, I know I've said it many times before, but I really don't like my parents much. There comes a time when I haven't spoken with my mother for a while, like maybe 6 months, and I think, hey maybe she's not that bad y'know? I should let loose and well, try talking to her. WRONG WRONG, every single time WRONG. Sigh. If it's not about all Malays being robbers and Indians rapists, it's about how the Japanese won't hire psychologists. And she just had to say that about my best friend. Nice work mom!

At least the day was saved by a very angry beaver! HAH. Okay. It wasn't saved by an upset animal. Just a cute girl who came by to CJ to give a talk on Arts Management. Suffice to say, that 5 minutes where I realised that HEY I know that girl! HEY she's friends with my friend! HEY I haven't seen Shaun in a while! HEY I'm too stuffed and sleepy to make smart and impressive conversation DIE DIE HELP NOOOOO CUTE GIRL DDDD: just made my day. More like night, now that I think about it. I met my friend and his friend at around 11pm. I rue the day I ask my parents to pick me up from school. Dammit! The time I could've spent socialising and making myself look cool and intelligent and utterly irresistable... SIGH NO USE CRYING OVER SPILT MILK.

I should just sing Leggy Blonde to myself and feel eloquently melancholic. That's what too much Poe does to you. And Flight of the Conchords (who has been given the Vanessa-bump! and should be Youtubed by everybody, STAT!)

So, you’re leaving, aren’t you?
I knew it when you said just then when you told me you were leaving
That’s when I definitely knew
But if you’re trying to break my heart
Your plan is flawed from the start
You can’t break my heart, it’s liquid
It melted when I met you
And as you turn around to leave
Don’t turn back to me
Don’t turn around and see if I’m crying
I’m not crying

I’m not crying
It’s just been raining on my face
And if you think you see some tear tracks down my face
Please don’t tell my mates

I’m not crying
No, I’m not crying
And if I am crying
It’s not because of you
It’s because I’m thinking of a friend of mine who you don’t know who is dying
That’s right, dying
These aren’t tears of sadness because you’re leaving me
I’ve just been cutting onions
I’m making a lasagna
For what?

Oh, I’m not crying
No

There’s just a little bit of dust in my eye
That’s from the path that you made when you said your goodbye
I’m not weeping because you won’t be here to hold my hand
For your information there’s an inflammation in my tear gland
I’m not upset because you left me this way
My eyes are just a little sweaty today
They’ve been searching around
They’re like searching for you
They’ve been looking around
Even though I told them not to

These aren’t tears of sadness
They’re tears of joy
I’m just laughing
Ha ha ha-ha ha
Sitting at this table called love
Staring down at the irony of life
How come we’ve reached this fork in the road
And yet it cuts like a knife?
I’m not crying

All pae07a01-ers!

Leave the afternoon of the 9th of August, National Day, free! We are going to meet up for ice cream. If there are no violent objections, the venue will be The Cathay, 12pm. Come if you can!

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.


Philip Larkin

I like my friends. Friends are good. They're good things to have. Especially when you need money to pay for your kitten's shots.

A. April eats one pouch (85g) of kitten food a day. That's $1.56 per day.
B. She also poops and pees enough times for me to use up one bag of kitty litter every one to two weeks. That's $8.99 every two weeks.
Multiply A by 30 and B by 2, and after consulting my calculator, it adds up to $64.80 per month, or rounding up, $65 per month. Which isn't a lot, except that I think she's now finding that one pouch of kitten food per day is not enough for her growing needs(!) I don't think I have to say it, but she's gonna eat me out of house and home soon. Kitten food is not exactly what one would call "dirt cheap".

To top it all off, my mother addressed me today, when I was taking a break during my reading of Great Ex, saying (and effectively pissing me off to no end; she's very good at that) "Vanessa, we need to talk. You know dad has to retire next year and we won't be able to even afford to eat but you don't seem to be interested in studying!" Whereupon I was so utterly disgusted with her I went into my room.

You may call me callous and think me without morals, but I have no love towards my parents. Sadly as it is, I'm still bound by my own ethics, which means I won't just kick them in the face and leave after stealing all their money. But I really cannot stand them.
!#*&%&!^@$#(!&#!@^#%))!@*&(!^@#*^$!%@#*%(!*^#@%(!&@#()**!@#^!#*&U@(!$^!(@*#^!&@

I just need to vent my anger sometimes, and most of the time I don't have an outlet to. So forgive my snappish moments. And enjoy the banned Mastercard commercial I've imbedded below.

This is probably why I loved those first three months in NJ so much...

the LEXperience :: hate me like an old man trying to play ball with the young guns says:
haha. well you got a new cat

the LEXperience :: hate me like an old man trying to play ball with the young guns says:
maybe its time for a new girl

never anger someone who believes in reincarnation says:
yeah but pickings are few and far between at this time...

never anger someone who believes in reincarnation says:
you know what? i think i need to start hitting some lesbian bars

the LEXperience :: hate me like an old man trying to play ball with the young guns says:
YES!

the LEXperience :: hate me like an old man trying to play ball with the young guns says:
where would u find those though?

never anger someone who believes in reincarnation says:
hahahaha

never anger someone who believes in reincarnation says:
TANJONG PAGAR

the LEXperience :: hate me like an old man trying to play ball with the young guns says:
haha. take advantage of being legal

never anger someone who believes in reincarnation says:
i know where the gay bars are. grin. you interested?

the LEXperience :: hate me like an old man trying to play ball with the young guns says:
time to hit the bars

the LEXperience :: hate me like an old man trying to play ball with the young guns says:
HAHA

the LEXperience :: hate me like an old man trying to play ball with the young guns says:
nah, ill pass

the LEXperience :: hate me like an old man trying to play ball with the young guns says:
maybe when i give up on girls

the LEXperience :: hate me like an old man trying to play ball with the young guns says:
tanjong pagar ei? dude, would it be weird for a guy to go to a lesbian bar?

the LEXperience :: hate me like an old man trying to play ball with the young guns says:
cause it sounds fun

the LEXperience :: hate me like an old man trying to play ball with the young guns says:
hehe

never anger someone who believes in reincarnation says:
no you could pass off as just having a successful sex change 

never anger someone who believes in reincarnation says:
hahaha

never anger someone who believes in reincarnation says:
it's not weird for guys to go to lesbian bars, with their lesbian friends, that is!

the LEXperience :: hate me like an old man trying to play ball with the young guns says:
haha! yea, we should go one day

the LEXperience :: hate me like an old man trying to play ball with the young guns says:
maybe ill get laid by someone who thinks i have an amazingly real dick

never anger someone who believes in reincarnation says:
HAHAHAHAHAH

never anger someone who believes in reincarnation says:
that would be your lucky day!

the LEXperience :: hate me like an old man trying to play ball with the young guns says:
haha!

the LEXperience :: hate me like an old man trying to play ball with the young guns says:
in the meantime, im gonna have to make do with the 3 girls in this god damned school of mine


Y'know lex, if you hadn't put XXX as your first choice, and stayed in NJ, I probably would too. Just that the thought of facing Phoon every school day without you for him to latch on... was enough to chase me away. Heh.

I probably shouldn't be doing this now, as my lit teacher (who is also, unfortunately, my form teacher) has been getting even more exasperated with people not taking the exams seriously (or so she thinks) and not doing their work (or so she thinks), and has sentenced me to re-write out my mid year lit question on Great Expectations. Well I suppose that's partly my fault cuz she asked the class who else didn't attempt the Great Ex question and I put my hand up. BUT! That was because she was staring me down, and when I say she was staring me down BOY was she staring me down. You'd have to meet her to understand. If looks could kill... Mdm Damo's frag count would supersede Hitler's.

And anyway I'm falling sick and growing ever more irritated as the days roll by. *bleep*ing *bleep**bleep* always blames me whenever *bleep* *bleep* the house *bleep* as though *bleep* all my *bleep* fault when it's not like I had a *bleep*ing choice *bleep*ing whatsoever. *BLEEP**BLEEP**BLEEP*

Gah. Moving on to other things, I'm here, because something funny happened today during lit lecture that will probably never occur in any Physics lecture in cj, and I have to let you xjc people know (because that's what attention-seeking adolescents do, dammit!). The event unfolded as follows... During our paper 4 lecture on Poe's 'Fall of the House of Usher'...

Mrs Sng: ... THE HOUSE IS ALIVE! (stares up at students frantically copying down notes)
Me (to Jason): The hills are alive!!!
Jason: (puzzled stare)
Me: ... WITH THE SOUND OF MUSIC!

Okay kill me if it wasn't funny to you. But in the middle of relating that to Derrick we started going off on Hall and Oates and The Bee Gees. Man, takes me back to Whose Line Is It Anyway. Y'know, the game where they talk in song titles. Like:

SHE'S GONE!
TRAGEDY!
... SHAFT!

... Damn all my funny in-jokes which are not funny to people outside the joke-circle. Well, anyway, if I ever get to inhale helium, the very first thing I'm gonna say is TRAGEDY!! Bee Gees style (like so)

I realised I left out many important bits in my last post.

April is a birthday gift (a very early one!) from Luo Er, whom I've known for... 13-14 years? She likes to bite people's feet (April, not Luo Er) and hands and heads... Anything within reach is something for her to gnaw on. Teething period *sigh*. Other than that she loves to climb onto my bed and walk all over me, disrupting my sleep and making me cranky. My mother complains that she's too black and a hazard at night; she worries that she'll step on April like she almost did Socks. And to top it all off, April's so darn cute that you can't get angry at her for long. Damn Darwin and evolution for creating such an impenetrable defence!

I find great irony in April's name when she's actually born in June. ... I sure hope that the namesake doesn't become the bearer of the name. Not sure what I'd do if April grew up to become a mini-walking hazard. Bad enough that she peed on my bed (!) and prefers flesh to catnip when selecting toys.

So yes. My birthday is coming soon. On the day CJ has its parent-teacher meetings for the JC2. God my life is worth a million bucks. The only thing I have left to console myself with is the fact that I won't ever have to worry about being carded again!

Very tempted to leave another essay following the previous, but it'd be another super long one. Guess I'll leave it for some other time.



FRIENDS! THE END IS EXTREMELY FUCKING NIGH!!! - Derrick Lee

I'm still alive! With very little to say after this long absence of posts.

I know I should've put this up earlier (Wednesday, in fact) but I only got around to doing it now.
Here's the latest addition to the family since Socks passed away.

Her name's April, and if you're gonna ask me why her name is April when she's born in June.... Ask Luo er. And Joy. But Joy will probably tell you that she wishes April will die soon, because Joy is mean!

Anyhow my life on display is not very different. School depresses me, as usual. I'm sleeping bad, as usual. I'm still not reading enough, as usual. But life goes on.

I'll leave you, poor soul who's reading this out of obligation than anything else, with something by Richard Dawkins, author of 'The Selfish Gene' and 'The Blind Watchmaker', though you'll probably know him better as the guy who wrote 'The God Delusion'. Juliet is his daughter of his second wife (he's married three times and divorced once). Enjoy as much as you can of it!

Good And Bad Reasons For Believing
By Richard Dawkins

Dear Juliet,

Now that you are ten, I want to write to you about something that is important
to me. Have you ever wondered how we know the things that we know? How do we
know, for instance, that the stars, which look like tiny pinpricks in the sky,
are really huge balls of fire like the sun and are very far away? And how do we
know that Earth is a smaller ball whirling round one of those stars, the sun?
The answer to these questions is "evidence." Sometimes evidence means actually
seeing ( or hearing, feeling, smelling..... ) that something is true. Astronauts
have travelled far enough from earth to see with their own eyes that it is
round. Sometimes our eyes need help. The "evening star" looks like a bright
twinkle in the sky, but with a telescope, you can see that it is a beautiful
ball - the planet we call Venus. Something that you learn by direct seeing ( or
hearing or feeling..... ) is called an observation.

Often, evidence isn't just an observation on its own, but observation always
lies at the back of it. If there's been a murder, often nobody (except the
murderer and the victim!) actually observed it. But detectives can gather
together lots or other observations which may all point toward a particular
suspect. If a person's fingerprints match those found on a dagger, this is
evidence that he touched it. It doesn't prove that he did the murder, but it can
help when it's joined up with lots of other evidence. Sometimes a detective can
think about a whole lot of observations and suddenly realise that they fall into
place and make sense if so-and-so did the murder.

Scientists - the specialists in discovering what is true about the world and the
universe - often work like detectives. They make a guess ( called a hypothesis )
about what might be true. They then say to themselves: If that were really true,
we ought to see so-and-so. This is called a prediction. For example, if the
world is really round, we can predict that a traveller, going on and on in the
same direction, should eventually find himself back where he started.When a
doctor says that you have the measles, he doesn't take one look at you and see
measles. His first look gives him a hypothesis that you may have measles. Then
he says to himself: If she has measles I ought to see...... Then he runs through
the list of predictions and tests them with his eyes ( have you got spots? );
hands ( is your forehead hot? ); and ears ( does your chest wheeze in a measly
way? ). Only then does he make his decision and say, " I diagnose that the child
has measles. " Sometimes doctors need to do other tests like blood tests or
X-Rays, which help their eyes, hands, and ears to make observations.

The way scientists use evidence to learn about the world is much cleverer and
more complicated than I can say in a short letter. But now I want to move on
from evidence, which is a good reason for believing something , and warn you
against three bad reasons for believing anything. They are called "tradition,"
"authority," and "revelation."

First, tradition. A few months ago, I went on television to have a discussion
with about fifty children. These children were invited because they had been
brought up in lots of different religions. Some had been brought up as
Christians, others as Jews, Muslims, Hindus, or Sikhs. The man with the
microphone went from child to child, asking them what they believed. What they
said shows up exactly what I mean by "tradition." Their beliefs turned out to
have no connection with evidence. They just trotted out the beliefs of their
parents and grandparents which, in turn, were not based upon evidence either.
They said things like: "We Hindus believe so and so"; "We Muslims believe such
and such"; "We Christians believe something else."

Of course, since they all believed different things, they couldn't all be right.
The man with the microphone seemed to think this quite right and proper, and he
didn't even try to get them to argue out their differences with each other. But
that isn't the point I want to make for the moment. I simply want to ask where
their beliefs come from. They came from tradition. Tradition means beliefs
handed down from grandparent to parent to child, and so on. Or from books handed
down through the centuries. Traditional beliefs often start from almost nothing;
perhaps somebody just makes them up originally, like the stories about Thor and
Zeus. But after they've been handed down over some centuries, the mere fact that
they are so old makes them seem special. People believe things simply because
people have believed the same thing over the centuries. That's tradition.

The trouble with tradition is that, no matter how long ago a story was made up,
it is still exactly as true or untrue as the original story was. If you make up
a story that isn't true, handing it down over a number of centuries doesn't make
it any truer!

Most people in England have been baptised into the Church of England, but this
is only one of the branches of the Christian religion. There are other branches
such as Russian Orthodox, the Roman Catholic, and the Methodist churches. They
all believe different things. The Jewish religion and the Muslim religion are a
bit more different still; and there are different kinds of Jews and of Muslims.
People who believe even slightly different things from each other go to war over
their disagreements. So you might think that they must have some pretty good
reasons - evidence - for believing what they believe. But actually, their
different beliefs are entirely due to different traditions.

Let's talk about one particular tradition. Roman Catholics believe that Mary,
the mother of Jesus, was so special that she didn't die but was lifted bodily in
to Heaven. Other Christian traditions disagree, saying that Mary did die like
anybody else. These other religions don't talk about much and, unlike Roman
Catholics, they don't call her the "Queen of Heaven." The tradition that Mary's
body was lifted into Heaven is not an old one. The bible says nothing on how she
died; in fact, the poor woman is scarcely mentioned in the Bible at all. The
belief that her body was lifted into Heaven wasn't invented until about six
centuries after Jesus' time. At first, it was just made up, in the same way as
any story like "Snow White" was made up. But, over the centuries, it grew into a
tradition and people started to take it seriously simply because the story had
been handed down over so many generations. The older the tradition became, the
more people took it seriously. It finally was written down as and official Roman
Catholic belief only very recently, in 1950, when I was the age you are now. But
the story was no more true in 1950 than it was when it was first invented six
hundred years after Mary's death.

I'll come back to tradition at the end of my letter, and look at it in another
way. But first, I must deal with the two other bad reasons for believing in
anything: authority and revelation.

Authority, as a reason for believing something, means believing in it because
you are told to believe it by somebody important. In the Roman Catholic Church,
the pope is the most important person, and people believe he must be right just
because he is the pope. In one branch of the Muslim religion, the important
people are the old men with beards called ayatollahs. Lots of Muslims in this
country are prepared to commit murder, purely because the ayatollahs in a
faraway country tell them to.

When I say that it was only in 1950 that Roman Catholics were finally told that
they had to believe that Mary's body shot off to Heaven, what I mean is that in
1950, the pope told people that they had to believe it. That was it. The pope
said it was true, so it had to be true! Now, probably some of the things that
that pope said in his life were true and some were not true. There is no good
reason why, just because he was the pope, you should believe everything he said
any more than you believe everything that other people say. The present pope (
1995 ) has ordered his followers not to limit the number of babies they have. If
people follow this authority as slavishly as he would wish, the results could be
terrible famines, diseases, and wars, caused by overcrowding.

Of course, even in science, sometimes we haven't seen the evidence ourselves and
we have to take somebody else's word for it. I haven't, with my own eyes, seen
the evidence that light travels at a speed of 186,000 miles per second. Instead,
I believe books that tell me the speed of light. This looks like "authority."
But actually, it is much better than authority, because the people who wrote the
books have seen the evidence and anyone is free to look carefully at the
evidence whenever they want. That is very comforting. But not even the priests
claim that there is any evidence for their story about Mary's body zooming off
to Heaven.

The third kind of bad reason for believing anything is called "revelation." If
you had asked the pope in 1950 how he knew that Mary's body disappeared into
Heaven, he would probably have said that it had been "revealed" to him. He shut
himself in his room and prayed for guidance. He thought and thought, all by
himself, and he became more and more sure inside himself. When religious people
just have a feeling inside themselves that something must be true, even though
there is no evidence that it is true, they call their feeling "revelation." It
isn't only popes who claim to have revelations. Lots of religious people do. It
is one of their main reasons for believing the things that they do believe. But
is it a good reason?

Suppose I told you that your dog was dead. You'd be very upset, and you'd
probably say, "Are you sure? How do you know? How did it happen?" Now suppose I
answered: "I don't actually know that Pepe is dead. I have no evidence. I just
have a funny feeling deep inside me that he is dead." You'd be pretty cross with
me for scaring you, because you'd know that an inside "feeling" on its own is
not a good reason for believing that a whippet is dead. You need evidence. We
all have inside feelings from time to time, sometimes they turn out to be right
and sometimes they don't. Anyway, different people have opposite feelings, so
how are we to decide whose feeling is right? The only way to be sure that a dog
is dead is to see him dead, or hear that his heart has stopped; or be told by
somebody who has seen or heard some real evidence that he is dead.

People sometimes say that you must believe in feelings deep inside, otherwise,
you' d never be confident of things like "My wife loves me." But this is a bad
argument. There can be plenty of evidence that somebody loves you. All through
the day when you are with somebody who loves you, you see and hear lots of
little titbits of evidence, and they all add up. It isn't a purely inside
feeling, like the feeling that priests call revelation. There are outside things
to back up the inside feeling: looks in the eye, tender notes in the voice,
little favors and kindnesses; this is all real evidence.

Sometimes people have a strong inside feeling that somebody loves them when it
is not based upon any evidence, and then they are likely to be completely wrong.
There are people with a strong inside feeling that a famous film star loves
them, when really the film star hasn't even met them. People like that are ill
in their minds. Inside feelings must be backed up by evidence, otherwise you
just can't trust them.

Inside feelings are valuable in science, too, but only for giving you ideas that
you later test by looking for evidence. A scientist can have a "hunch'" about an
idea that just "feels" right. In itself, this is not a good reason for believing
something. But it can be a good reason for spending some time doing a particular
experiment, or looking in a particular way for evidence. Scientists use inside
feelings all the time to get ideas. But they are not worth anything until they
are supported by evidence.

I promised that I'd come back to tradition, and look at it in another way. I
want to try to explain why tradition is so important to us. All animals are
built (by the process called evolution) to survive in the normal place in which
their kind live. Lions are built to be good at surviving on the plains of
Africa. Crayfish to be good at surviving in fresh, water, while lobsters are
built to be good at surviving in the salt sea. People are animals, too, and we
are built to be good at surviving in a world full of ..... other people. Most of
us don't hunt for our own food like lions or lobsters; we buy it from other
people who have bought it from yet other people. We ''swim'' through a "sea of
people." Just as a fish needs gills to survive in water, people need brains that
make them able to deal with other people. Just as the sea is full of salt water,
the sea of people is full of difficult things to learn. Like language.

You speak English, but your friend Ann-Kathrin speaks German. You each speak the
language that fits you to '`swim about" in your own separate "people sea."
Language is passed down by tradition. There is no other way . In England, Pepe
is a dog. In Germany he is ein Hund. Neither of these words is more correct, or
more true than the other. Both are simply handed down. In order to be good at
"swimming about in their people sea," children have to learn the language of
their own country, and lots of other things about their own people; and this
means that they have to absorb, like blotting paper, an enormous amount of
traditional information. (Remember that traditional information just means
things that are handed down from grandparents to parents to children.) The
child's brain has to be a sucker for traditional information. And the child
can't be expected to sort out good and useful traditional information, like the
words of a language, from bad or silly traditional information, like believing
in witches and devils and ever-living virgins.

It's a pity, but it can't help being the case, that because children have to be
suckers for traditional information, they are likely to believe anything the
grown-ups tell them, whether true or false, right or wrong. Lots of what the
grown-ups tell them is true and based on evidence, or at least sensible. But if
some of it is false, silly, or even wicked, there is nothing to stop the
children believing that, too. Now, when the children grow up, what do they do?
Well, of course, they tell it to the next generation of children. So, once
something gets itself strongly believed - even if it is completely untrue and
there never was any reason to believe it in the first place - it can go on
forever.

Could this be what has happened with religions ? Belief that there is a god or
gods, belief in Heaven, belief that Mary never died, belief that Jesus never had
a human father, belief that prayers are answered, belief that wine turns into
blood - not one of these beliefs is backed up by any good evidence. Yet millions
of people believe them. Perhaps this because they were told to believe them when
they were told to believe them when they were young enough to believe anything.

Millions of other people believe quite different things, because they were told
different things when they were children. Muslim children are told different
things from Christian children, and both grow up utterly convinced that they are
right and the others are wrong. Even within Christians, Roman Catholics believe
different things from Church of England people or Episcopalians, Shakers or
Quakers , Mormons or Holy Rollers, and are all utterly covinced that they are
right and the others are wrong. They believe different things for exactly the
same kind of reason as you speak English and Ann-Kathrin speaks German. Both
languages are, in their own country, the right language to speak. But it can't
be true that different religions are right in their own countries, because
different religions claim that opposite things are true. Mary can't be alive in
Catholic Southern Ireland but dead in Protestant Northern Ireland.

What can we do about all this ? It is not easy for you to do anything, because
you are only ten. But you could try this. Next time somebody tells you something
that sounds important, think to yourself: "Is this the kind of thing that people
probably know because of evidence? Or is it the kind of thing that people only
believe because of tradition, authority, or revelation?" And, next time somebody
tells you that something is true, why not say to them: "What kind of evidence is
there for that?" And if they can't give you a good answer, I hope you'll think
very carefully before you believe a word they say.

Your loving
Daddy

LEEROOOOOOOOOOOOOOYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY JENKINS!!!!
... at least he has chicken.


http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_p2.html

I made a new friend today. While it was nothing to be excited over unlike Jill Sobule it was an... interesting experience. It all started with cats.

If you read my blog you'll know that my cat (God bless him, wherever he is) passed away not too long ago. Well, cat passing away so suddenly meant that I had 1) a heavy heart and depressed soul 2) spare cat food and snacks. Thus, the evenings and nights found me roaming the badly-lit streets of my estate, searching for a glimpse of hope. (Actually, I was just looking for this particular cat which I found when she used to come over.) That aside, I found my black mother cat (whom I, on a whim, dubbed Sally, and shall refer to her as such from now on) with a new litter. Three young whippersnappers in all; one was all grey and striped with a pink nose; another was dark and striped too, but with a white face and paws and a black nub of a nose; the last was a beautiful brown and grey striped kitten.

My heart melted. Yours would, too, if you saw them. Barely weaned off their mother's milk, they were - are - small and playful, not to mention afraid of humans. Which meant I couldn't get close enough to cuddle. Thus, I resorted to bribery. Socks loved to eat this particular brand of cat food - sardines in prawn jelly, spoiled little thing - and I had - have - spare cans around. So I took one can down to feed the little critters. This was at around 10pm today. I sat down and watched them greedily devour the smushed food (incidentally, it reminded me of how some of the guys in our class eat YES I'M TALKING ABOUT YOU).

The light of the house I had thought previously uninhabited flicked on. "Oh, you're feeding the cats too?" Her name is Christine, and she's been living here for about a year. With her boyfriend. *gloomdoomdepressedsad* oh well. At least I made a new friend.

Interesting how much you can tell a stranger you've never met seen or talked to before. We chatted for about an hour, and within that hour I felt freer than I'd been in a while. It felt good talking about things in your life that happened and bothered you (whether then, or still) to someone who doesn't have much of a foothold in your life, and doesn't make you feel guilty for butting your problems in on them (whether intentional or no). It felt good. Even with anxiety problems ("You seem pretty calm now though" she said) and school stress ("I swear, it's the education system in Singapore," she said) niggling at the back of my mind, I was at my calmest and most lucid. Which surprised and yet did not surprise me.

But, at the end of it all, it boils down to whether I can sustain this feeling that 'all is right'. Medication may or may not help (here Luo er comes in with a definite "NO VAN" D:< ) and I'll definitely need help from the people around me who care for me. Time will tell if things will pick up or not.

I miss my cat.

It has come again, and this time it's a big one. There's no stopping it. Like the waves of a giant tsunami, it comes crashing down, engulfing and obliterating your consciousness. Bass lines throb in the space between your ears; warm stickiness at your fingertips. Eating food microwaved but still spotted with green and grey. You don't care. Maybe no one cares. How long has it been since you last felt safety and comfort?

The road behind Ngee Ann City is one that gets congested real easy. There's only two lanes, lots of bends and a traffic light. Plus many pedestrians hurrying their way to catch a bus at the bus stop opposite Takashimaya. It was on this route that I fell again into contemplation.

A woman and her husband boarded the bus 167 I was on. Late Sunday afternoon; domestic maids, hurrying to get home on their day off before their employers scold them - or spit at them or harangue them or hit them; the seats were all taken up. She stood, with all her middle-aged glory spilling over her tight pants, hanging on for dear life to one of the dangling handles. The road was naturally jammed with cars. Start. Jerk. The woman took two steps backward in her brown labeled heels. Stop. Jerk. Two steps forward. Two steps backward. Two more steps forward. Beside her, her husband threw disgusted glances at her, in time with every jerk of the near-possessed bus. There was a ring on the fourth finger of her left hand; from where I was sitting I could barely make out a dark gem stone. The disgusted looks continued with the steps forward and backward.

I then thought up most of the words you have just read.

Have you ever tried counting the total number of songs that you have heard before, sometime or another in your life? My thumb was constantly pressing the next button on my sony walkman. Pink Floyd. Radiohead. Brahms. Next. Next. Next. Five hundred and seventy-eight songs, splayed out before me. All I heard were the first two seconds of each piece, not even registering the title or artist. Next. Next. Next.

What you read affects what you write. What you hear affects what you write. What you see affects what you write.
To my beloved readers, most of whom I know but never thought would read this, some of whom I do not know yet still read this, a few of whom I know and love, let me tell you a story.

There is something about yourself that you don't know. Something that you will deny even exists, until it's too late to do anything about it.

You're standing in the middle of a crowded bus. Going home at peak hour. You glance at your watch. 6.45pm. The secondhand rolls around the face of your watch, rolling off time at its own stately pace. It's one of those watches where the secondhand doesn't count a minute off in sixty jerks, but with the fluid motion of a hot knife slicing through butter, glides its sixty seconds away, and away, and away. Until the battery runs out. Until you stop wearing it.

It's the only reason you get up in the morning. The only reason you suffer the shitty puss, the blood, the sweat and the tears.

She moves a little, and you notice her movement immediately. Out of the corner of your eye you see her profile, blurred, turned ever so slightly towards you. You chance a glance in her direction, vision flicking past ear, past eyes, past nose, past teeth. The bus jerks, and she turns to the front. For the next five minutes you play cat-and-mouse in the corner of your eyes. In the corner of your half-framed, astigmatism-corrected lens of your glasses. Guaranteed by tall, dark, good looking men and women to make you ten times more attractive. It cost three hundred dollars. Almost guiltily, you push your glasses slowly but deliberately up the bridge of your nose, and through the gap between your fingers you peek at her. Her body is turned forty-five degrees towards you, but her gaze is as far off as the silhouettes of trees, fence and kerb speeding past you at sixty, fifty, forty kilometers per hour.

This is because you want people to know how good, attractive, generous, funny, wild and clever you really are. Fear or revere me, but please, think I'm special.

You look out the window again, and again you feel her gaze on you. You feign indifference; you look at your watch with its new leather strap, already wrinkled where the strap passes through the buckle. 7.00pm. You steal a glance at her, out of the corner of your eye.

We share an addiction. We're approval junkies.

She isn't even that good looking.


Hair. Short. Brown, dark to the point of being black. Carefully measured and cut and moussed into that perfect guise of artful messiness. Think of all the testing animals had to go through, all that disease and shampoo and toxins and soap. Just so you can maintain some kind of a sculpted hairstyle arranged to look all but sculpted. Twenty-two dollars for a cut-and-wash, twenty-seven if a senior stylist does it for you. "Fuckin' bleedin' heart," he'll say. Or maybe he won't say anything, not knowing what to say.

We're all in it for the slap on the back and the gold watch.

"And, for what purpose," you ask, "is this for?"
"It's for the fuckin' aesthetics man. It's for the fuckin' aesthetics."

You kill animals, you destroy plants, lakes, reservoirs, you tip the whole fucking ecosystem; you slap mud on your head, put little bits of plastic in your eyes, smear your lips with fish scales, powder phthalates on your cheeks; you shave, you squeeze, you scrape, you starve; all for fuckin' aethetics man.

The hip-hip-hoo-fuckin' rah. Look at the clever boy with the badge, polishing his trophy.
Shine on you crazy diamond, because we're just monkeys wrapped in suits, begging for the approval of others.

socks, named by jamie, the household cat for 1 year 4 months. in may he would've turned 2 years old. was always there when i needed someone around, was always warm and comfortable to hug. the model i used most often for taking photos. the one who made life bearable. he died on the 22nd of april, 2008, tuesday.

i will always miss having to chase him off my bed and bags, hugging him and just looking at him.

me: mom, have you called the psychologist?
mom: yeah the doctor said he will check his schedule on monday and make an appointment
me: so he hasn't fixed a time yet? it's okay if i go in the morning and miss a bit of school
mom: the doctor said afternoons have a better chance of arranging an appointment. if he's not free next week then i think maybe you go see him during the school holidays.

someone once said to me

"what if you tried killing yourself, but right after you do it you regret it?"

what if there's nothing else left for me to regret that i haven't already?