There is no need to take my word for it: we face boring days all the time. And they are just as part of life as the more interesting ones. Even eventful days can seem boring, but whenever that happens, it is usually because you have stinged on your own sleep, or are really bored to the bone by some monotonous meeting where everybody likes to enunciate everything in the same tones that you sometimes wonder if they were really just chanting.
But uneventful days can be just as interesting as your first trip to the dentist’s. You could describe the weather, ponder about your thoughts of that day, or even get philosophical about Life. But I am not really into living life as a Soap Opera; instead I tend to see it as a continuous play.
Actors enter our lives, and make an impact upon our world; some exiting with abruptness that we cannot help but weep at the sudden loss, while others grow up together to play pivotal roles in each’s characters. In the process, we grow and learn more of our surroundings, not unlike trees in a forest.
As time goes by, the seedling becomes a sappling, which soars towards the sky. In doing so, it encounters resistance, either from the wind, or the danger of getting trimmed by the lawnmower if it gets too tall. The sappling can give up and stick to where it is currently at the same height as the rest of the sapplings, or risk the danger of getting chopped off, and stand out from the rest.
Now if you were to ask me the whole point of writing all these, I can only shrug my head and yawn. After all, I was bored.
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General
Joining the ranks of blind-folded sheep queueing up obediently at the cinema in the afternoon last Saturday was me. Together with 3 other friends, we hung ourselves at the mercy of the director of the latest X-Men movie: The Last Stand.
To be frank, I was initially skeptical of the movie’s materials, since a critic review from a local newpaper gave it a thumbs down for plot suckers, dismissing it as a typical Hollywood CGI animated fare, with enough fighting scenes to bring an action lover down to his knees. After all, what was the worst that could happen? Walk out of the cinema?
It wasn’t that bad to warrant dissing the screening ala French style, as the plot was promising enough to tantalise the viewer to keep on watching, in a valiant hope that the characters would get the development they all so richly deserved.
However, the dialogue was cheesy and shallow. Other than a few statements that reeked of cheekiness and barely disguised sarcasm, there was barely sufficient heft in the exchanges between characters, which really disappointed me. I wasn’t expecting world class expositions, but neither did I want to sit through a movie that didn’t allow the actresses to fully develop their characters.
Jean Grey came across to me as a psychotic lady with suicidal tendencies: there wasn’t enough development to emphasise that she has a side that we have all come to know so well, and like. I know, because the movie had tried to convey this; however, the lack of the x-factor has reduced the portrayal to merely a skin-deep suggestion, probably a simple allure to loyal fans of the comics that Jean has an internal struggle within herself.
Like the criticism in Lifestyle, other characters in the story are abruptly butchered from the storyline, which impresses upon me that the movies was simply going through the motions. The climax peaked as a hill, compared to most movies where the climax was an exhililerating vertical wall amongst the clouds of the world.
All in all, the story-line was promising and rich, but the execution of the movie left much to be desired.
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General
Today I left home early to go to the Immigration Control Authority to extend my passport to its full potential validity.
In Singapore, we have this weird system where boys aged 11 and above would have their passports extended for only one year at a time, until the time they enlist into National Service. It is only after the inevitable binding of life to the nation’s defence, would the nation relent and allow the passports to have their full validity of 10 years.
You know, it is as if they believe that you would abscond from the country after a few years of not-so-free education subsidised by the country. Not that I doubt their reasons for thinking this way, after I saw the sheer size of the file containing all the charges for national service defaulters in my camp, but it gets annoying when I have to wait in line for the better part of 2 hours each time just to get a stamp that would only give the passport an extended validity of half a year, and that is only after taking into account the other half year compulsory reserve validity that many countries mandate as a criteria for entry.
So I trudged down to the bus stop, and got slightly annoyed by the warmer temperature. It must have been the ice-cold environment that I work in; it shelters me into believing that the afternoon is cooler than it actually is.
I crossed the road to the bus stop on the opposite side, and immediately noticed a construction site placed directly over a side-road leading into the carpark. They were building an elaborate shelter that connected two buildings across the side-road, and they used the outward bound lane for traffic in both directions.
A worker manned a portable sign that had both “Stop” and “Go” on opposite faces of the plate, and was using it to change the direction of the traffic.
At first the traffic flowed fine, as there wasn’t any outward bound traffic merging with the main road. But the sweltering heat got the better of the man, and he crowded closer to the structure that is under construction. And as he did so, he also disappeared from the view of drivers who wanted to turn into the side-road.
A MPV was trying to get into the carpark, and drove into the entrance of the lane, while a taxi was simultaneously trying to leave the carpark via the same lane. The worker immediately stopped the MPV, and signalled for the MPV to reverse back into the fast traffic flow of the main road.
Just then, a sedan came around the blind spot, and was about to turn inwards when it encountered the reversing MPV, and the driver had to jam on the brakes to avoid a collision.
The situation was so dangerous that I was thinking of doing a “Singaporean”. (That is pretending not to notice a dangerous or unfair situation, only to write a whiny letter to the newspaper to show my righteousness.)
But a few moments later, a middle-aged man with a pink cap was pushing a trolley on the small lane. Behind him was a Mercedes seden, which was crawling slowly as the man paused every few steps to turn around and curse at the driver.
Reaching the main road, this man simply crossed the road without so much as a care to on-coming traffic, pausing only to curse at the never-ending stream of cars. I was surprised that he didn’t win a Darwin Award.
The odd happenings didn’t stop there. When I reached the ICA building, there was a steady stream of people in queue, all waiting to do something with their passports. Since extension is one of the many things I had to do to my passports, I joined in the queue, which thankfully moved quickly. However, the relief was short-lived when I got the queue ticket for my request.
Glancing at the digital display hanging above the counters, I realised that there were more than 200 people in queue. It was really amazing, perhaps this is what Badaunt meant when she mentioned the very swamped branches of all the Japanese banks. Initially, I wondered if I should have brought a book to murder the time, but was thankful a short while later when I looked at the waiting room, where there was only standing room, that I didn’t bring a heavy tome along with me.
It was a good thing that perhaps the customer service officers at the ICA were used to such overcrowding — they handled the customers deftly, and with a coolness that could only come with experience, and the 200 applicants in the queue were decimated within the hour. Before long, it was my turn.
Handing my passport over to the Tudung-clad Malay lady, I sat down and twiddled with my thumbs.
“You… finished your national service?”
“Yup” I grinned from ear to ear, and couldn’t suppress showing my teeth while at that.
“When did you finish your service?”
“9 April, this year. ORD loh!” I shouted, despite myself.
The CSO was slightly taken aback, but regained her composure, as all great CSOs do, and did the obligatory clicking on the computer mouse. She frowned as all government officials are tasked to, and then smiled a little as she stamped my passport.
“There. Your passport now has its full validity.”
“Thank you so much, that was about time too!” I grinned at her, and she couldn’t help but stare a moment longer at the weird customer, before pressing the call button for the next queue number.
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General
There are always times when you feel like the world just isn’t spinning properly, and you begin to wonder about your life. Just what is its purpose? Why are we doing all that we have been doing anyway?
It was one of those days for me, when I had my beautiful Sunday unceremoniously trampled by an unusually demanding customer. I stormed into the toilet after off-loading the support ticket to a senior (sorry about that!). Over the sound of running water, I clenched my hands and seethed.
I suddenly felt emptiness, a sudden abandonment of ideals which is not unlike being thrown into the dark suddenly while in a maze: for that moment you feel a sense of confusion, and your senses go into overdrive as you frantically search for a direction. In fact, your brain would have been grateful for any hint — just any clue would be enough. But Life, being the practical entity that it is, refuses you the stanchion, and you thrash around.
All of the sudden, you see a path in front of you. It is dimly lit, and leads down a straight road that never seems to end. You see the same monotony of the life you are leading right now, and ask the combative side of your personality: “Why bother fighting?”, and with a barely audible sigh, walk down the only path, only to shelve the bitterness into the depths, where you hope that sufficient Time will bury this dark episode.
Only that despite Time’s efforts, this darkness will return again to haunt us: again.
I asked myself, “Just what do I want to do with my life?”
Emptiness answered.
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General
If you ever bother to check out the lifestyle section on the NS Portal, you would notice that in addition to the short articles on the website, there would be a short poll on the bottom left hand side of every page on that section.
When you click on any option on that poll, you’ll see the results of that poll on the page. Believe or not, that number represents the number of bored CSOs ever. A few seconds later, the poll disappears and a new one appears in its place.
You click again on the new poll, and the same numbers greet you. Shocked, you watch in disbelief as the poll is replaced again by yet a new question, which gets sillier and sillier as you go through them. You are asked a variety of questions, from your preference of durains, to the location of NCS (the company that is supporting the NS Portal). Again, you are dumbfounded by the number of respondents to the mundane questions.
You see, working on weekends is usually boring, as the rest of Singapore is either away from the country, sleeping or playing, or simply busy not calling the hotline. This results in the few of us who happen to be on duty during the weekends to have a minute or two between calls to allow us to take a breather. When the gap between calls get longer, the number of bored CSOs increase, and thereby contributing to the traffic for the lifestyle page. (Though sometimes I wonder if that is the only traffic the lifestyle page ever gets.)
Contrast this with long call queues during weekdays, and the contrast is starking. People simply enjoy calling in during their working hours.
I worked till 10pm tonight, it is extra hours for extra money, so I might as well go for it. But I had a shock of my life when I left the compound to see my card away from it’s holder. In fact, i didn’t even know where it went, having got the shock only when I boarded the bus. I alighted at the next stop, and ran back to the previous bus stop, and searched frantically for the card. There was a large grass divider between the two roads that I had crossed to the bus stop, and I searched the grass, much like how we used to search for spent round cartridges after live firing.
When the AWOL card didn’t return after half an hour, I decided to call for help from Boss, whom immediately advised me to treat the card as lost, and to make a police report. All the while I was on the phone with her, a stranger tapped me on the shoulder. He asked me if I had dropped something, and pointed in the direction of the company guard house.
You cannot understand the feeling of hope that suddenly gets revived when a stranger comes out of nowhere and says that he knows that somebody had dropped something. It gets even better when the stranger tells you that the dropped item is a security pass.
My heart leapt into joy when I saw the missing security pass on the guardhouse table. I showed the guard on duty my empty pass holder, and he returned it to me after checking my details. The weight suddenly lifted, and immediately my heart was allowed to jump from pure gratitude that the card didn’t decide to abandon me.
I went back to search for the stranger who kindly tipped me off on the card, and thanked him very profusely for saving me $50 and tons of angst.
When I got home, I checked the card holder, and realised that the retainer had cracked, and was loose. That allowed the card to slip out easily when on the move. I was simply lucky that the card dropped in the company premises, so the security guard found my card. I couldn’t have imagined what might have happened if somebody with devious intentions found the card. Could they sneak in to steal all the precious unlimited supply of Milo?
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General
I know that the tyre around my stomach is swelling at a really bad pace - right now it is about the same size as when I was in the middle of my Basic Military Training in January 2003. Grandmother couldn’t be prouder that her grandson has grown in breadth once again after the evil Singapore Armed Forces forced him to shrink 2 years ago.
Regardless of both their opinion, I don’t like carrying a tyre around my stomach. Basically, those 2 years without it have made it extremely easy to miss sitting down and leaning forward without a protruding mid-section that consistently reminds you of its omnipresence. Therefore, I am going to make the conscientious effort to get that nice feeling back.
Not to mention the heartburn. It happened to me again last Sunday. Going by the advice of fellow forum members, it is likely I am actually descending into the great land of fatness, and will probably gravitate faster if I don’t start doing something to shed the excess calories that are just sitting packed into my body. Thoroughly shocked at the prospect of becoming fat again, I have started on a comprehensive exercise regime to gradually reduce my burden.
On Monday, I bit the bullet and did a 3 km basic run at my normal speed. At least what I thought was my usual speed during National Service. I had to slow down many times to dampen my heart, which I remember had not raced at that incredible speed since during my BMT training period, where I was beginning to shed those kilograms. I knew that I had a long way to go, and couldn’t risk exhausting myself on the first day to give myself an excuse to skive on Tuesday, so I went home.
… and woke up on Tuesday with a terribly dull sensation in my leg. Already it was like me going through BMT again, and my muscles ached enough to remind me of those days of relentless training. That morning, I dragged literally lead to work, and couldn’t be bothered to walk too much during the day. In the evening, I ran again, this time opting for short sprints.
The starting and stopping nearly drove my heart insane, and I had to stop earlier than scheduled as I still had Wednesday on the cards. The plan was to establish a routine before intensity, so I had to bid my time. It can get quite unbearable to control my speed when I see seasoned joggers (50 year old ladies) over-taking this young 20 year-old who was only recently just out of National Service, so I was thankful that I started around the time they were wrapping up their final laps. That allowed me to overtake them, which made me feel really good.
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to continue on Wednesday morning. I could barely wake up to go to work, and ended up feeling really sleepy at work. That the callers asked weird questions didn’t help, and I felt as if I was at a testosterone low when I walked the 1km from the bus stop to my house. I forced myself to run anyway, since that was what I would have been forced to do anyway back in my BMT.
This time I only did 2 rounds of slow jogging around my estate. The heart racing wasn’t that bad, but I could tell that it was still working really hard, as if trying to expel something from my lungs. I hoped that Thursday would be better, and went to sleep early.
This morning, the sun shone brightly on my back (my room window faces east), but I woke up with a soreness in my throat. I remembered that I had sore throats whenever I didn’t drink enough water after running, but it was puzzling that it came again this time since I remembered gulping down lots of water after Wednesday.
Reported sick from work, and sat down at home. After lunch, the feeling of fatness came again, and I decide to go swimming. Just let me cross my fingers that sore throat cannot be spread through water.
Perhaps chlorine can do some good for my sore throat.
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General
Intellectual Law is getting more ridiculous with each new lawsuit being lodged by lazy companies which prefer to ride on the success of others.
We see companies rushing to file ridiculous patents, only to leave the development to flounder in the mires of their dusty archives. Then when some enterpreneur hits a gold mine with a similar idea, these companies set loose their bunch of hound dogs to sue the pants off the poor entrepreneur who simply made better use of an idea and was successful.
IP law stifles creativity by granting the holder a monopoly on methods and ideas, so much so that nobody else can safely do the same, or improve on it! It definitely goes against the core grain of the idea of Intellectual Property law for the encouragement of inventions and creativity by allowing individuals and companies to have exclusive rights to earn from their inventions.
Essentially, what I could do now is to file patents for virtually everything I think up of, (that is, if they have not been filed by others yet), leave the developement to rot. When somebody does it better than me, I’ll gather some hungry IP lawyers and sue for damages.
What better to earn money than to earn it off somebody who can do it better than me?
That is what Creative Technologies is doing with its lawsuit on Apple. You can do it better than me? I’ll make sure your earnings end up in my pocket anyway. If you don’t pay up, I’ll make sure you spend all your earnings fighting me!
Anyway, I am absolutely confident that the lawsuit will fail, since that patent is for a method of organising songs in the MP3 player, it is probably unenforceable as it is too general and overencompassing.
To Creative: You may be a Singaporean company, but I don’t support companies that do ridiculous things when they get desperate.
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General
The power of small deviations in real life can be stunning, but yet it is constantly a force that is underestimated. Even I am guilty of that.
We have learnt that in physics, all points radiate out from a single dot. The moment a movement is taken in any direction, it is considered a deviation from the movement if it were in any other direction. Therefore, that movement is totally unique, even if it is a small movement.
However, when we continue to move in its direction, it can be plain to see that the path deviates drastically from the other paths that originate from other directions. It may start from the same dot, but just by changing the course, over progression of time, a totally different path is carved out.
It is hard to see this in action in our daily lives, but this is mostly due to the limitation on our own thinking. We just refuse to see this natural phenomenon for what it is: a small change that will lead to a huge impact in the future.
If you are thinking about quitting smoking, start now. Immediately cut down on one cigarette per day. Once the trend is set, you are on your way to managing the small change (not to mention the withdrawal syndroms) of smoking less better, and make it less likely for you to give up on your smoke-free future.
Scribbled under:
General
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