My employer informed us that there will be a reduction in headcount due to the no performance of the company in recent months. Since I presume the boss will not axe himself, one of 3 employees will have to go. In my friend's words, that is "serious massacre! Like when Cain killed Abel when the world population stood at 4 people."

I am putting my money that it will be me since I stand as the biggest opposition and the loudest critic of the management style and decisions. The decision will be out soon and till then, keep checking for updates.

 
I think I overworked.

I am presently running a low fever and every inch of my body hurts. I meant every inch when I said so. Even my soles hurt as I place them on the floor as I walk. My friend suspects that it is due to exhaustion. I suppose gym on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and my games on Saturday and Sunday contributed slightly to my present predicament. What made things worse was that, I went out directly after my ball game and did not reach home till midnight.

I realized that something was amiss when I reached home, but I thought I would recover with a night's sleep.

And the result? My body felt like it weigh a ton when I woke up. I had to drag myself to work, despite feeling extremely tired and I was highly sensitive to the cold, which is unusual for me. My body began aching all over and it aggravated to the present state.

It has been quite some time since I ached this way. My body was totally alive and absolutely sensitive to every physical stimulus. My head was throbbing, my muscles and joints are aching, I am tired but I cannot sleep, my soles are sensitive and even clenching my hands hurt. It has been quite some time since I can feel the entire mattress under my body with every inch of my body.

I suddenly feel so alive.

And it sucks.

I think I overworked...

 
A friend asked me advice on relationships. And that is after the umpteenth time which I said that my path is not meant for others. This guy is either harbouring a death wish or has gotten bored of the relationship. But I figured that he is volunteering to be a sacrificial lamb in my weekly rites.

 
Give and Take

I mentioned to a friend the other night that I do not often practise give and take in relationships. There is after all, not much that I can give and there is little that I want to take. A relationship with me is always that of an invitation; an invitation to see what I see; an invitation to do what I do.

So everything should be natural and be as uncontrived as possible.

As I extend my invitations, I receive invitations as well. And it can be a cumbersome, tiring affair, but I want to see what they see, I want to know how they do what they do and why they feel how they feel. If you do not see what I see, and do not know what I do, sometimes, communications end. And when communications end, relationships will end.

Play on my curiosity to want to see what you see, lead me by your passion to do what you do. And at the end of the day, even if I might not be as passionate as you are, you will have gained my respect.

And that, is more important than love.

 
I was told that a friend got attached on Christmas eve and images of Love Hina smacked me right across my face like a brick, bouncing my brain within my skull. In my near concussion state, so many other love stories flashes across my mind...

I suppose a lot of people are looking for a day to happen. And Christmas eve is a good day to make things happen. It is surprisingly that non-christians look to Christmas eve to set things off. It is amazing how that number on the calendar can hold so much meaning for people who hardly notices any other dates at all.

I suppose not many occasions hold a meaning for me anymore. Do not be mistaken though, I am relieved that we have holidays; I am glad that there are traditions, rituals and rites to mark the passing of our years and I am terribly grateful for the rest that we can get during those days.

But that is about it.

They hold no meaning aside from being rest days for me. I am not sure if this is what people call being jaded. I do not need a reason to party, I do not need an excuse to celebrate. I require no permission to be happy. And I make things happen when I feel like it.

It is just that my social calendar may not be in sync with others.

 
I was looking at today's paper, deciding whether if there is anything in it that is worth my further messing up my room with accumulated papers when I heard a someone in the background said, "Don't need to buy, you can have mine."

Still looking for valuable articles, I continued to peep into the papers.

"Don't need to buy, you can have my copy, I have finished with it."

It was only then did I realized that the voice was directed to me. I turned around to see a clean shaven, bespectacled man, dressed very casually, in his early thirties holding today's papers in his arms.

He looked at me, and continued," Don't need to buy. I have finished my papers, you can have them if you want." In rather much of a loss, I mumbled something and took the papers. This, being the first time in my life being offered newspaper by a stranger, my inexperience is apparent in my lack of graciousness in accepting his goodwill.

All the while, I looking at him. He reminded me of someone I met on IRC, someone whom I discussed philosophy and Zen extensively with, someone who impressed me with both his worldly wisdom and knowledge in the spiritual. By the time, I collected my thoughts, he was already a distance away, slowly putting more between us.

It is time to catch up with old friends.

 
The Return To The Gym

My flu is almost gone. And tomorrow, I will return to the gym. A week of inactivity since coming down with flu last Tuesday has me looking forward to pumping iron. With the rest, I think my body is now ready to go even further...

 
Once in a while, you can find people seated in their machines staring blankly into the air or just staring at their weights, and you might wonder what they are thinking about. When that happens to me, I am probably not thinking about anything...

Nothing at all...

It is hardly surprising, since there is not much you can associate with weights except maybe effort and pain. The mental struggle between the conscious will to move the weights and the innate inertia of the mind can have a hypnotizing effect on an individual. There will be a period of disorientation as the mind searches for a reason to stretch the arms, to wrap the fingers round the cold steel and force the tired muscles to exert...

If you doubt the integrity of these words, that is because you have yet to meet the people who hang weights by a metal chain around their waist as they performs their chin-ups; or the people who lifts loads above their body weight; and people who exhaust the stack of weights on the machines.

The greatest obstacle to lifting the weights is often not gravity, but the thousand whys that accompanies every action. Often in such situations, my mind will be a sea of doubts and incoherent thoughts, of which a few might be picked up. One becomes keenly aware of every ache, every pain and every strain of fatigue that runs through the body. Arms become heavy, breaths turn short… if it is truly is such a pain, why then this?

Because all doubts fall behind when you fly...

 
what-is-wrong-with-these-people episode

My friend told me that I have lost weight. And that is good. What is wrong with these people? I spent months at the gym trying to gain a few pounds and it is good to lose all that within a few days due to flu?

Losing weight sucks and it is not good. Can these people even fail to see this point?

Sunday was not as enjoyable as it was supposed to be. The rain and my flu prevented me from playing ball. And in the middle of the afternoon, I emerged from my room to find my brother's room half submerged in water. Upon closer inspection, I realized that the water was not due to the rain, but rather the water pump for the fish tank in the living room. The fish, had apparently in one of their often sudden jerks, dislodged one of the tubes attached to the pump.

The pump instead of pumping the water back into the tank began to pump water out of the tank. And the water had flowed from the living room into my brother's room. His papers and electronic equipment on the floor are now soaked in water. The Apple Wireless Airport is now a seaport and his computer almost had liquid cooling above and beyond his cooling fan.

Looking at the situation, I knew that a storm is brewing, a time bomb is ticking. If it was my room, I would have flipped. I would come home, survey the scene, feeling totally pissed. I would slowly pack, and as I plod on, anger will come sipping in, as with every passing minute, additional damages will be uncovered. Alarms were ringing, and I plan to evacuate before my brother returns. I grab some cloth and did basic damage control. But the damage was too extensive for a lone individual and I dialled for back up.

My mum, after having the situation described to her, simply asked, "How's the fish?"

For a second, I was stunned. I mean... what the fuck, what is wrong with these people? They are just fish. What we are talking about here are high tech equipment worth thousands. A potential nuclear meltdown upon my brother's return is staring in our face, do they not understand?

Just what is wrong with these people? Their priorities are warped and their concerns totally misdirected... have their survival instincts died? Or what?

 
How fickle fortune is! Just recently a downtrodden, broken man, a friend of mine is now flying high on the clouds... having being a regular victim of fate's temperamental disposition, I wonder when will turbulence bring this joyride to a sudden halt, plunging our SQ into the Petronas Towers.

Never being an object of desire for the fairer sex, and having being repeatedly rejected by a girl he has pursued for years, he was the epitome for perseverance, if not masochism.

perseverance: n. a lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.

But now, things are different, his luck has suddenly changed for the better. The predator has become the prey. At the lowest point of his romantic life, where everything seems bleak and grey, he received an unexpected invitation from a female colleague for a date on the eve of Christmas. Either Santa found that he has been a good boy for the past year or all the flirting, joking and teasing of that colleague finally paid off.

Technical issue 1: Though at this point, it must occur to one to ask if that colleague does as well have a masochistic streak, since she seemed to like being teased and insulted. That being said, it brings to mind another question.

Philosophical inquiry 1: It has been said that the worst way to torture a sadist is to pair he/she up with a masochist. But in this case, one cannot help but explore the mechanics of a masochist-masochist pairing.

He: "You whip me first. "
She: "No, you whip me first."
He: "I hit first last week."
She: "Do you think I care? You whip me first. "
He: "I am not going to whip you. Why am I always the one to give in?"
She: "Because I am a woman and I am entitled to be a bitch. "
He: "Look, bitch, I am the man around here and I will be the one who gives the f**king orders. "
She: "Oh yea? Look who is the one cuffed to the bedpost wearing nothing but a leash and my panties. "
He: "..."
*silence then the sound of whip cracking*

Philosophical inquiry 2: Can one inflict pain by withholding pain?

Technical and philosophical difficulties aside, how this story unfolds has shown that it remains true to the cultural and literary influences in the manga tradition where the male protagonist starting out often as unloved, ostracized and often ridiculed, later turned out to be a babe magnet as the plot develops...

He was a skater boy
She said see you later boy
He wasn't good enough for her
Now he's a super star
Slamming on his guitar
Does your pretty face see what he's worth?

~ Avril Lavigne
Sk8er Boi
Let Go

He could have finally found someone who laughs at his jokes. And good luck does not end there. Where did I read that most one night stands occur during Christmas eve dates? It will be a dinner date and given the number of interpretations about dinners, I suggest holding back the oysters.

What do men consider foreplay? Buying dinner.
~ Cindy Garner

He has been looking for love in all the Wrong places. And now Love has found him in the Wrong place. Everything seems so perfect and right but I can never shake off Murphy's Law which resides always at the back of my mind.

There are so many questions to be asked. What if she is a psycho? What if she is just treating him like a rebound? What if she just needs a guy to go out with and carry her shopping bag? What if she just needs someone to pay for that expensive dinner? What if she has not been a "she" all her life? What if all she wanted was his body? What if she is not truly interested in him but derives a sick and perverse satisfaction from adding notches to her bedposts? What if the light at the end of the tunnel was really a red light to warn unsuspecting victims and my friend, who happens to be medically certified colourblind stumbles into a web of deceit and lies? Will this be the story which Sex, Lies and Masking Tape will be based on?

So many questions asked and so little answers given. Sometimes, for the important questions, one should direct them to the person who brought one into the world. And I do not mean God.

Mother, you who conceived without sinning, teach me how to sin without conceiving.
~ Katia Yaksic

It has been a rough year and we look to ending this one with a bang and start the next afresh. Maybe once in a while, we can throw caution to the winds, and leave these questions and doubts behind as we embark on a new journey... it is, after all, a brand new year.

Even though, it is the same old people...

 
"To know you is to love you"
Madonna
Beautiful Stranger

I often wondered what it meant by to know god. What if I know god and is convinced of his existence yet I do not love him? What if I believe in his existence, yet through a lack of understanding of his rationale and logic feel an utter disgust towards him? What if I believe that he is omnibenovelent yet believes that he is wrong? What if he is whatever the bible claims him to be, yet he still leaves a bad taste in my mouth?

Knowing a person, trusting a person and understanding a person do not equate to loving a person. I cannot control my own heart as I can control my hands. That applies my ability to love some human beings and that applies to, god. And if I do not love a god is omniscient and is always right, does that make me wrong?

I do not think so.

 
The freedom that comes from true friendship is one that springs from the fact that they are always at arm's length and yet always within reach. I have the freedom to dance and when I fall (and I will fall), I will always have someone to hold on to.

This, should be the foundation of any deeper relationships.

 
True friends are like shit. They do not have to be pretty, but they allow me to grow and blossom.

 
I am down.

I am so freaking down with a fucking throat infection. I have got work to do, I have got stuff to clear, I have got people to meet, I have got friends to torture and I have got a strict training schedule to adhere to...

And of all the things that could happen, this? I suppose there are worse things that could happen....

But still, this?

 
I suppose since everyone is putting this up, I should do the same, in case I incur the wrath of the masses.

Just 3 more days to Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.

Sometimes, I have a feeling that people who are obsessed with the Lord of the Rings trilogy have no idea what we do in our AD&D sessions. Compared with what we used to do every week, what is on the big screen will put you to sleep.

 
A particular girl whom I spoke to at a wedding dinner obviously held strong views against the guys from the other top secondary schools. But when it came to Catholic High, she holds the belief that together with Maris Stella, we housed half the potential nutcases of Singapore.

The impression that we gave her was that we can be the most creative, imprudent and unpredictable mad men. And she may not be wrong, after all, our secondary school days were marked by chaos, anarchy, elaborate pranks and relentless attempts to find the cure to the most delibilitating disease of all: boredom.

I was always proud of the fact that Catholic High is always a melting pot of cultures, languages and ideas. The product, however, after the synthesis of the good, the bad and the confused, is often a bunch of crazy guys with endless supply of mindboggling, ludicrous ideas.

Where will the world be without them?

 
"Anger is too strong an emotion for my frail constitution."

I think I have uttered those words somewhere in the past. As time mellows us all, we consider anger a thing of a distant past. But strong emotions still plague us, only under the guise of reasons and excuses through justification and rationalization.

Raw emotions and desires like jealousy, grief and vengefulness are still very much present in many of our lives. And on a relative level, their destructive powers make anger seems like the domain of the children and the impotent. Their hold can come close to absolute and their reach all encompassing.

Vengefulness often take the form of self righteousness. Jealousy often take the form of egoistical, paternalistic actions. And people who are most susceptible to them are the ones with the most "reasons" to do the things they do, to hurt the people they hurt and to destroy the things they destroy.

We grow out of anger, but not always out of jealousy.

We often have the desire to act, then find reasons to do so before we do, but fail to understand that we often do not have morally justifiable reasons that can stand up to scrutiny for feeling the way we do.

Find not the reasons to act.

Find the reasons why we feel how we feel.

Honesty to oneself, first and foremost.

 
"Men will lie to you. Your eyes will deceive you. Steel never lies, nor deceives, nor hides bitter reality. In the sword, you find the truth."

Kakita Toshimoko
The Sword
Legend of the Five Rings

 
Horoscope for Aquarius

There's no such thing as a simple disagreement. The longer people know each other, the more tangled their historical roots get. Even if you resolved a big fight with a friend or family member years ago, both of you can still hear the echoes in each small discord of your maturing relationship. This is why you like to solve strangers' problems for them. If you can follow a polluted stream far enough back, you'll eventually find what's fouling the waters. The big question is how badly the person who sent you on this mission really wants the answer.

It effectively means that if I solve my own problems, I will not, due to my personal inadequacies, be bothered to be so helpful to strangers anymore. I suppose it is time to swim upstream to see which American MNC is dumping toxic wastes into my river of dreams.

Onward to apathy land...

 
Roleplaying Games

When feelings change, roles will change and duties will change. When roles and duties change and feelings remain; there will be pain.

Roles are rules of engagement and descriptions of acceptable behaviour. Roles define how two particular persons should relate to each other. They are about duties, obligations and claims between one another.

It is independent of your feelings.

And when your feelings cannot be contained by the rules and description, there will be a mild discomfort. Often, feelings cannot accept the role that you are assigned. And more common, is that there is little you can do to change it.

But it is strange, is it not, to say that feelings can be boxed in by regulations? After all, roles define actions, not feelings. There should be little reason, if at all, why anyone should feel emotionally strangulated by their role and place. Feelings, after all, are used to unregulated freedom.

The beauty of role playing is that we all take turns in each other's shoes. And it is simply a matter of time till we are each tried by fire.

"Mother, daughter, sister, lover,
One day soon you'll be one or the other,
You'll offer forgiveness, my savior, my sinner,
And then you will see that the circle begins here with...
Mother, daughter, sister, lover,
Father, and son, brother, lover

One day soon you'll be one or the other.
And you'll see that the circle begins here with...me

We can grow together
We can walk together
We can laugh, we can
Cry together
Mother, daughter,
Sister, lover
Father, and son,
Brother, lover
One day soon
I'll discover
What will be...
One or the other"

Billie Myers
Growing, Pains
Mother, Daughter, Sister, Lover

 
Nothing is as painful as watching an attempt to be creative.

It is an understatement to say that Singaporeans are not the most creative of people. During a course on effective presentation and impactful opening, we are split into groups to come up with an effective opening in 30 minutes. Limited time and limited minds do little to help.

Perhaps the only pragmatic aspect about me is my deep belief in substance over presentation, function over form. Perhaps it is logical to say that you cannot be creative about substance if you do not have it at all.

When people want to be creative about something when they are hardly even capable of synthesis of ideas, and when they want to package something they know precious little about, the process of creation gets really "innovative".

How do you react when the physical incarnation of superficiality is breathing in front of you and staring at you in your face? You turn away before you are charged with murder.

 
I have attended 2 wedding dinners in 2 weeks, and I found out from the other guests around the table, that I should be consider myself lucky to just have 2 invitations. Apparently the table was full of casualties of the year-end death rain of wedding invitations.

For the more reticent, sitting through a dinner at a table full of strangers might prove to be a harrowing experience. The stress of being at a table of nine fresh faces will be enough to affect their delicate stomach.

But my personal experiences in the past fortnight have been testimonials to the contrary. Far from being stressful or tense, the dinner experiences were in fact quite enjoyable.

To help fellow readers make the most of their monetary contribution to the dinner, I sifted through the details of the experience and the thought processes which I underwent during the dinner and consolidated what would be the finer points to note during wedding banquets, in hope of saving their appetite.

And here I present to you, the result of days of deep meditation:

The Survival Guide to Wedding Banquets

Apparently we are all present because of a few common factors listed below. And it will only be to our advantage should we use them to relate to our fellow diners.

One, either the bride or groom thinks that we are his/her good friends.
Two, we all have nothing better to do on a Sunday night.
Three, we are all hungry people waiting for food.
Four, we are all veterans at wedding dinners.

As such, below are a few topics for conversation:

One, suggest constructive things that we can do on Sunday nights without wedding dinners.
Two, exchange stories of bankruptcies caused by wide social circles.
Three, amuse everyone with the simple game of dropping names of 90% of the hotels in Singapore and compare the quality of food, of service, of ambience and number of cute waiters at the banquet. Feel free to extent the list to hotels in Shanghai, Beijing, Kuala Lumpur or other exotic locations.
Four, brainstorm for creative metaphors and images for hunger, starvation and disgruntled customers.
Five(for the grandmasters only) do a longitudinal comparison of the quality of food in the banquet they had in the same hotel last week and the quality of food in the present banquet.
Six, gossip about the idiosyncrasies and the quirks of the bride, groom or both.
Seven, (optional) talk about the positive characteristics of the bride, groom or both.

To conclude, often it is perceived differences that exist between individuals. Deep down, we are all the same... hungry and bored people without a life. So think not of them as strangers, but as fellow sentient beings capable of feeling the way you are.

 
My mum threw my brother's new red shirt into the washing machine together with gym load and I am now holding onto a sleeveless pink Nike and pink underwear. The Nike is still acceptable, but the sexy, pastel underwear is not.

At least, not in gym...

 
Flat abdominals and six-packs have gained more publicity in the past one year than in decades. Women are now obsessed with acquiring and maintaining a flat stomach and men, are now socially compelled to lose weight.

Women tend to be fighting an uphill battle. Their genetic make up with the propensity to accumulate fats and retain water in unsightly areas are odds stacked heavily against their them.

Men, usually endowed with a higher metabolic rate, on the other hand, might be considered luckier. But due to lack of exercise, unhealthy eating habits and the slowing down of metabolic rate as age increases, men tend to put on bulk after they start working.

Most fashion trends are unfair towards the heavier end of our population. But this obsession with tanned complexion and flat abdominals might be the healthiest trend yet.

 
Besides the halls housing the Singapore IT EXhibition 2003 was a fair featuring products targetted at households and families.

Health products, vacuum cleaners, food products, seasonings, spices were just some of the products featured. The design of most booths were spartan and functional, but a few were particularly extravagant.

Prudential had the most outstanding booth. It was of a moderate size located in the middle of the hall, with a pretty conservative design and simple decorations. It was pretty much devoid of eye catching colours, the only thing that drew attention would probably be the female agents, for the adults, that is.

But for the kids, the booth is a dream come true. Located in the middle of the booth, between the tables and the simple, earthy shades was a sand bar. It would have been easy to miss if there were no dirty, noisy, irritating, obnoxious, hysterical, slimy little kids throwing sand around since it is blocked from sight by the human traffic and the furnitures. A few feet away was a small section sealed off by low fences. Within the enclosure were chicks (young chickens), which surprisingly did not attract as much attention as the sand.

The theme of the day was: life insurance and the study saving plan.

The kids were happily playing with sand while all around them, their parents were being slaughtered and hacked to bits by the insurance agents. I had the mental image of the beach landing scene in Saving Private Ryan with the kids playing with the sand, building castles and throwing plastic spades, oblivious to their parents getting shot down, having limbs blown off and getting blown up by evil capitalist and mercenary agents.

When they grow up, they might not even remember what happened that day. When they grow up, they might not even be grateful. And from the way things are going, when they grow up, they might not know anything.

So of what price is the next generation worth?

Of what price is hope worth?

 
Sometimes watching young couples cuddling or holding hands can get me rather self conscious. The saccharine scene is not offensive, but it brings to my mind, my personal need for space.

I am a person who really requires a wide berth. I cannot really think clearly when I am hugging someone or holding someone's hands. Clear thoughts, like the weaving of magical spells, requires articulation and gesticulation.

The freedom of thought requires the freedom of the body. I cannot wave my hands in the air with someone holding it, I cannot shift myself when my legs have been put to sleep by someone who has chosen to use it as a pillow.

The feeling is that of suffocation and claustrophobia. Under these conditions, no one can be comfortable. It stifles me too much for any incubation of thoughts. How then can these youngsters think when they spend hours cuddling?

On second thoughts, maybe they do not...

 
"From the 18th century onwards, it is no longer from the practice of community but from being a wanderer that the instinct of fellow-feeling is derived. Thus an essential isolation and silence and loneliness become the carriers of nature and community against the rigours, the cold abstinence, the selfish ease of ordinary society."

Raymond Williams
The Country and the City

The world without strangers, would be a sad place.

It can be liberating as one sail through a sea of unfamiliar faces with nothing to remind one of anything joyous or sad, no one to invoke haunting floods of images which seek to overwhelm one . There is nothing here but people, who like leaves being ripped away in the wind, hurtle away from me as one walk.

A leisurely walk with no one to follow, and no one trailing, is a joy on its own. Surroundings seemed alive and vibrant with the new found freedom, and the sights and sounds seemed so much richer and more palatable.

I have always found it amusing to watch people walk past me as if I have never existed. So absorbed in their own activities and lives, the rest of the world fades away. The best way to stay unnoticed by people is surprisingly, among people. No one bothers and no one cares. The only person who notices me, is me.

And during that momentary invisibility, I can be me.