I guess I have to make this clear before things go down the path of no return: absolutely no swearing is allowed.
I know that I used to swear a lot while doing my national service: it brings cold comfort when the worst things happen, and everything just goes wrong: like when you lose your job, your girlfriend leaves you after taking all your life’s savings and selling your house, and your friends start taunting you for being a loser - that is the time to swear. It brings out the survivor in you, which somehow keeps your fighting spirit up so that you’ll keep at it. Curse your ex-boss to slip on the wet floor at the lift lobby, your girlfriend to lose all that money she stole from you in the stock market, and to kick the royal _____ out of your friends. You soon feel better.
Citing obligatorily from statistics in yesterday’s papers (coincidentally, some reporter took the trouble to find out the exact number of people who swore at any time of their lives — which I take to be filler so that they can avoid writing feature articles about the opposition parties in Singapore), 66% out of surveyed admitted to swearing. A psychaitrist decided to state the obvious: “the other 33% are lying”.
Given the prevalence of swearing, and the so-oft-quoted “freedom of speech” mantra that many use to justify swearing, my “no-swear” policy on this site seems to go against my own ideals.
I don’t think so. I feel that restraint from vulgarities is a culture in itself (alright, a small sub-culture), given that you see people swearing freely everywhere; and a worthy habit to indulge in. Whereas you might swear enough to make an old sailor blush, why not set aside an area in your life where you swear not to swear (pun intended)? That way, it forces one to actually process the words in your brain before even typing it out.
You don’t have to believe me, but you can take a leaf from online communities: most flame threads come about because somebody didn’t take the effort to think about what they write, and in doing so caused constructive discussion to turn into an online war zone, absolutely thrashing the discussion value.
Swearing may be acceptable, but it will never be a good habit.
[tags]swearing, vulgarities[/tags]
Scribbled under:
General
There I was at it again: with my eyes permanently fixated on the computer screen, only this time I laughed, alternating between typing frantically and stifling an average teenager giggle, when Mom came over, the hard-bristled long broom in hand.
“What are you laughing at?” she looked confused even as I went down for another burst of laughter.
“Er… Nothing. I am just chatting with my friend,” I explained.
She moved to clean the toilet, when I went hysterical yet again.
“Are you sure you are alright?”
I think she is quite convinced that her son has gone all bonkers today, but couldn’t quite decide what to do. I am sure you would do the same when you see me laugh as I did just now.
“Well stop laughing at the monitor and help me with the toilet.”
I yawned at the door while she started scrubbing furiously at the gaps in the tiles, pausing to squeeze more liquid cleaner onto a stubborn stain. As she worked on the tiles, the contrast soon became very obvious. I didn’t remember the toilet was this dirty, but I suddenly realised that all the nice uniform pattern on the tiles were actually watermark stains, and the polished tile showed from underneath the removed dirt, suddenly making the rest of the unscrubbed toilet very dirty.
Though she did ask me to help her clean the toilet, she ended up doing it all by herself, since the room was small enough for only one person to move about without elbowing another. I shrugged and went to the bedroom to tidy up my desk - always the 2nd target whenever Mom went on a cleaning spree.
I found months old phone bills for my mobile and cable internet lying strewn haphazardly. Sometimes I feel that I really should get a file to keep all my bills in their proper places - I couldn’t even recall paying those old bills in the first place. I noticed that my bed, as usual, was the resting place for my brother’s clothes. He always likes to leave it, along with the hangers, on my bed after changing out of his shirt and shorts before going out. With one swift motion, I swept everything onto his bed. Ah… sweet brotherly vengence!
The fixed line phone extension that I had plugged out umpteenth times was plugged in again. Initially, I removed the phone so that I could stop having it on my bed after my brother finishes his long conversations. He never puts it back on the desk, since during that time I wasn’t home at all during weekdays, and essentially turned my bed into a soft table of sorts. Now that it is back again, I gave up trying to get rid of it, and instead shoved it underneath my bed. If he is going to leave stuff on my bed again, I’ll make sure it ends up under my bed!
You might ask what has gotten into me this time; I’ll say it comes with being at home full time (finally).
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General
When I saw the traffic logs yesterday for my blog, a very strange trend showed consistently throughout the two weeks: other than beloved MSN and Google, the only referrers were blogs of people whom I know. Setting the gears that stayed unused for two years into motion yet again, I began to realise that the singularity of a blogosphere, as traditional media all over the world like to refer to, instead exists as clusters of self-confined spheres.
Take for example the most famous bloggers in Singapore. Mr Brown, Mr Miyagi and Xia Xue really are an encased clique - they hang out together, write about each other, and essentially link to each other. Similarly, other bloggers usually write about things that happen within their small blogosphere group. While there is overlapping of the sphere between groups, there is no contact between the bloggers connected to A and bloggers connected B, even if A and B are connected to each other.
To be precise, our blogs are mostly a reflection of our relationship, much like MySpace or Friendster on a macro scale (without all the advertisements too!).
A huge difference between blog social networking and physical relationships is that online, a writer is judged by his work. If she is good enough, someone from another blogosphere might take notice, and draw attention to the interesting piece. A domino effect starts when everyone who reads the blog likes it, and link to it from their own blog - thus another blogosphere surrounding that popular blog is started.
Now does anyone want to create a blogosphere around me? Pretty please?
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General
I now have a new neighbour! The Wicked has moved in to SgBlogging!
The Wicked, masterminded by Wei Kiat, is a game that tests your ability to solve clues that are placed on the page itself. To progress, you need to figure out the file name of the next stage, and enter it in the URL itself. There are a total of 36 stages (so far), with hints to help you along. If you are still stumped by a particular level, you can visit the forums there for help from the community: they are very friendly, and don’t bite, as far as I know. 
If you must really know, I just stopped on level 6; I had intended to go further, but I couldn’t resist the lure of The Television. Channel U is showing a variety show by famous Taiwanese hosts Jacky Wu, Kang Kang and NoNo. Each week, the hosts would be paired up with different guests, after which they would go around a specific place in Taiwan, competing against one another to chain-eat a list of food. The name of the next dish they eat must start with the last name of the previous dish, and they must finish off with the nominated last dish, before a final dash to the finishing gong.
The show wouldn’t be as interesting if not for the lame jokes blatantly cracked over the air. The producers throw in obstacles in the form of fun games to spice things up. Finally, to up the ante, the losers of the competition would have the privilege of consuming a blended mixture of raw meat, made happily by the winners.
I love watching everyone squirm to keep all the food they had eaten previously in their stomachs as they struggle to down the viscous liquids.
But I would be even more delighted to share my space and bandwidth with promising projects straight out of Singapore, in that small hope that their authors’ brilliance will rub off on me. If you have a great idea, yet have neither the web space nor the bandwidth to bring it to life (I know Singapore web hosts are rather stingy with both!), contact me at pkchu.spin@gmail.com!
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General
It is tough to co-ordinate meeting with 4 other people simultaneously to play badminton together. The task gets darned near impossible when people start calling to say that they won’t be able to make it, despite having made prior guarantees. Couple this with one persistent caller who, after failing to get me on my cellphone because I was sleeping, called my house phone without telling me the reason for the urgency, and ended up having Mom wake me up, and another who insists on not helping to book the court even though he lives the nearest to it, and it gets really annoying.
And by “annoying”, I was just being mild.
I give up.
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General
Today marks the day I miraculously found my pink I/C, which was lost to some green uniformed men some time back on 10 December 2003. Back then I lost my hair too, but I am elated to announce that both have finally made their way back to me.
850 days, 28 months, countless burnt weekends, 10 over exercises, 2 countries, 1 pink I/C, and 0 days of full time national service liability left.
The trip through National Service was tough and gruelling, tracing through the path of a fat boy who was physically toned down into a less fat boy, bringing the cultures and experiences of 2 countries into a relatively sheltered life, and the unforgetable meetings of new friends.
I will never forget my first buddies: Hazwan, Daniel and Kang Xun. They ground under the training mill together with me during my entire PTP and BMT period without leaving me (because we all couldn’t qualify for the one week disruption, Haha!), and were my only sense of hope and crutch during the many times I faltered. They took the abuse I dished out when I snapped horribly during the 7 days field camp, and for that they are true friends.
My rifle was taken by the instructors when I forgot about it in my exhaustion, and Hazwan was a great buddy to get up from his trench at 3am in the morning to help me look for it.
Things took a twist when I expressed interest in becoming a scout during the interview. I found myself thrust into an active battalion on the other side of the country, along with a platoon of the unwilling. Thus we went through ISPC, ate and sent intelligence reports while sleep-walking, snapping into life when dashing away from enemies.
We celebrated birthdays, disagreed with each other, went out to play DOTA, poked fun at others and girlfriends. Most important of all, we bathed together.
[Picture removed after onerous request by victim;]
National Service is a time where you are forced to meet and interact with people, whether you might like them or not. You learn to take care of yourself and your friend out in the company of forests. You faced trouble, and took the consequences in its stride.
As this chapter in the lesson of life closes, I want to thank everyone who has been in my life for teaching me so much! NSF life is now gone, but we will surely meet during reservist. Till then… ORD Loh!
O ver the years and months I wait
R elease me from this cruel fate,
D estroy the chains that confine me,
L et me go, set me free
O n the road to freedom I’m set,
H eading down, I’ll never look back.
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General
I wasn’t really motivated to write this, but since somebody asked for help in Hardwarezone, I felt that writing about this would not only help the new-comer, but also turn me into a traffic whore. (Perhaps I already have. Unless having accounts with 3 different traffic trackers, and staring compulsively at the numbers several times per day don’t count.)At the end of this, you understand what both web hosts and registrars are.
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Tips and Tricks
Finding a job is tough. That I know. But finding a temporary or part-time job that you are able to hold for only a maximum of 3 months while trying not to let your contact details fall into the hands of multi-level marketing or single level marketing companies, not to mention trying to do this with a bare-bones GCE “A” level certificate, and your chance drops from significantly hard to significantly impossible.
Up till this point, I have been calling up the advertisers in the classified advertisements almost everyday, and do land interviews, but curious enough, there is always somebody who manages to land an earlier interview time, and gets chosen, even before I leave my house. For your consideration, I usually call around 8am, when most fixed line phones advertised usually go unanswered, so I am quite sure that being an early caller helps, but it gets annoying when the interviewer calls to cancel later in the morning after all the meetings have been lined up, and I suddenly find myself with enough free time to have trouble killing it, yet insufficient to go home.
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Scribbled under:
Tips and Tricks
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