Monthly Archive
Browsing entries posted on February 2005
For self, for hall
Recruiting is in full swing for my hall’s Orientation Committee. These guys will be the most happening, most popular guys in hall for the first month of school. They’ll be the first seniors the freshmen meet when they come on. They are the ambassadors of Yousucks. Their high visibility gives them an edge when it comes time to vote for the leaders of next year.
So why don’t I want to join?
I actually do want to join. I know what I can bring, and I know which sub-committee suits my personality. But some circumstances prevent me from taking up the offer.
1. My boyfriend’s on holiday.
So I should also be on holiday at the same time as him. Who knows when we could be on holiday together again? This is his last vacation before he begins university. And I want to be there to enjoy it with him.
2. I only go home for extended periods twice a year.
Twice a year is plenty, but when I live 400 km (200 miles) away, I could afford to go home a lot more. Plus my friends won’t be home when I go home in the December holidays, so I’ll have to catch them during the summer holidays. I miss our girl talks! I miss bitching! I miss being in the company of girls I actually like!
3. I’m taking my driving test during the holidays!
And the one month of vacation offered to the Orientation Committee isn’t enough. Especially for someone like me, who has never even started up a car. It definitely takes more than one month to train me to be good enough to pass the test. And after that, I’ll need to consolidate my skills by actually driving around the neighbourhood on my own. I’ll probably be the chaffeur du jour once I pass the test. “Drive your sister to tuition! Drive down to the supermarket! Dump the rubbish at the giant dumpster!”
I wish I could join. I really do. And I feel sorry for the main committee, because they’re suffering from a shortage of interested people. In short, they don’t have enough people to form a proper working committee. I know how hard it is to convince people to join your comm when they’re not interested. The president of the hall student body did ask me what were my plans for the hols, but I knew where it was going, and I told him I was going back home.
There are a lot of freshmen who aren’t staying in hall next year, so a lot of potential members are leaving. Even the enthusiastic ones like my friends have unequivocally stated that they will not be joining. There’s a certain resentment on people’s part about ‘burning’ their holidays to serve the hall.
I feel like a selfish prat whenever I see any of the main comm members. But sometimes you just have to say no. Sometimes, you should just let others take the shit.
I love good TV
“Honey, if I got paid in quarters, I’d be doing something very wrong.” Streetwalker on Desperate Housewives, when Susan asked her for change for a public phone.
Haha! This is one show that makes me laugh out loud, no matter what the neighbours may think. Great show, great cast, and brilliant one-liners. And under it all, a dark undercurrent of secrets that runs through every suburb in every city.
Darn, it’s pre-empted next week so I’ll have to wait 2 weeks for the next episode. Ish ish!
Rob and Amber. Ewwww. I don’t like Rob cos he was sneaky on Survivor, and he sent Lex off, poor loyal Lex. I hope they don’t win Amazing Race. I don’t think they deserve another million dollars. One chance at the big money is all anyone should get. After all, that’s what they did on Survivor All-Stars. They voted off the past winners like Tina and Richard Hatch, because other people should have a chance. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
I already have my American Idol candidate. It’s Anthony Fedorov! I think he’s this season’s John Stevens. Same age, same slightly nerdy/geeky look, and the unexpected entry. And I think he’s really cute too! When he sings I melt. And if he doesn’t make it to the final 12, there’s still Constantine Maroulis. He’s cool! So so cool. I really have had enough of the soul and RnB singers *cough*Fantasia*cough*. A rock singer would inject something new into this series (not that they don’t keep updating it already).
My Manhunt contestant won! I watched the episode where they were stalked by a paparazzo and where Tyler or Ty or something like that got booted off. I thought Jon Jonsson was Hawaiian or something, because he had that exotic Asian look but a Western name. Keanu Reeves’s dad is a Hawaiian, so I thought that might have accounted for Jon. But no! His father is Icelandic (hence the name) and his mother is Thai. Wow! More proof that offspring of mixed marriages usually turn out very good-looking.
I’m not going to watch Survivor:Palau though. I’m bored of the series. I couldn’t even be bothered to watch Vanuatu, and I usually watch the finales. I honestly prefer The Amazing Race, because it goes around the world so it’s like a travelogue, and the tasks are really creative (unlike Fear Factor where they’re just plain gross). I’m waiting to see if a family team (parent-child, siblings) will win. If I’m not wrong, so far it’s been only couples (dating and married) and Flo and Zach who come under friends. Reichen and Chip are my all-time favourite because they bolstered the visibility of committed gay couples. Yes I am a gay-rights activist. It fits in nicely with my liberal principles.
Now to sit back and wait for the gay-bashing or gay-loving (as opposed to gay loving) to begin.
The Minor Singapore-Malaysia debate
Yes yes, I’m back, and not dead, not dead at all. Just went back to KL over the Chinese New Year holidays, and then was inundated with work and class quizzes (eep!) so sorry about the long absence. I haven’t stopped thinking though, don’t worry.
To kick things off, here’s a nicely frank and probably controversial list of Why One Country is Better Than Another.
WHY SINGAPORE IS BETTER THAN MALAYSIA:
Efficient Public transport. Eh you Singaporeans don’t laugh ok! You think SBS is bad? You come visit me then you will know what it REALLY means to wait 45 minutes for a bus. And then you sit on that bus for only 30 minutes. Something’s not right here.
Everything is near to everything else. MRT? Walk there. Or you can wait for the bus, and wager whether the wait or the ride will be longer, since it’s not really THAT far to the station…
Life is so convenient. ATMs in your very own neighbourhood! Imagine that! I’ve never had the privilege of withdrawing money at 12 am, in my home clothes while in KL. This is because the nearest ATM is 15 minutes away by car. But I’ve done it here, because I live on campus and uni students will just die without an ATM. We run through cash like a javahead runs through Coffee Bean loyalty cards. (I personally think that’s a rather good analogy.)
Efficient civil service. It took me only 1 day to get my student pass, but then that’s because I don’t require a visa. Probably for those from other, visa-required countries, it takes one week. Still. Pretty efficient. And payment by NETS! Excellent. Cashless indeed.
And now to refute all those people who confidently tell me that I will end up settling on this island:
WHY I’M GOING BACK TO MALAYSIA
My vote counts. Haha! I just had to start off with the most explosive point. Yes, I get to vote starting this year, and guess what? I will actually get to line up, show my IC and cast a ballot! Haha! Walkovers? No contest? Well, they happen, but not in my home constituency, luckily. Or perhaps unluckily. Election day is a holiday for us. I hope the other party doesn’t give up challenging the incumbent for my constituency, I’m really looking forward to voting. And since I’ll probably still be based here at the time of the next election, I’ll register for postal voting! Nothing will get in the way! (Except perhaps voter apathy…)
Cheap cars. aka I get to drive. No COE (a certificate of entitlement to own a car in Singapore), and that makes sense since the national car company churns out cars like the Japanese used to do decades ago - fast and of average quality. But they’re cheap! And with Hyundai and Chevy in the market, I still can buy cheap cars that aren’t Malaysian-made! This is why I feel inadequate coming from a one-car family. All my friends come from families where their mums drive, and hence have their own cars. My mum can drive but doesn’t. And to think that the one-car family is the norm in Singapore, and 2 cars means the wife is a working woman, or the husband is very rich. Or the kids are very lucky creatures (usually because their dad is rich enough to buy them their own cars).
Our National Service is like summer camp. Tralalala. I’m usually quite derisive of our national service, because compared to the Singaporean and South Korean variety, it’s totally undeserving of the name. But misnomers aside, I’d rather put my sons and daughters through summer camp NS than put my sons through Army. Yes, they get buff and tan and manly, but they also learn to swear, smoke and generally be bad boys (or worse, decide they like it and sign up for a career in the Army). Eh you Singaporean regulars don’t kill me please… I respect your decision. I just don’t want my son to go down your path.
We have real jungles and beaches. Not nature reserves and reclaimed sandy strips. And we still have tigers roaming around and eating people. We have real nature!
Ah it’s getting late. I think this is enough Singapore-bashing for one post (but I did praise you guys a bit in the beginning!) so let’s call a truce and go to bed.
Number of flowers I received for Valentine’s Day: 0
Hall Spirit(s)
Today I shall ramble on about my hall. Longtime readers will know that I attend a certain university in Singapore. Since there are only 3 unis, and only one has a proper Arts faculty, it shouldn’t take long to deduce which one I attend.
I live on campus in a residence hall whose name I will not mention, except to say that it sounds like “You suck”. In fact, to make it rhyme better, make that “You sucks”. Ungrammatical, but peculiarly Singlish.
The inter-hall games are in progress now, and my hall is one of the favourites. We have quite a good track record so far. My friend and coursemate “persuaded” me to attend the volleyball match last week. I decided to go, because I felt bad about not supporting our team. Plus an old friend was playing for the opposing team, so I thought I’d go there to smirk at him.
Yesterday at lunch my coursemate “gently reminded” me to go for the sepak takraw match after dinner. To the uninitiated, sepak takraw is a game played in South-East Asia, involving a small rattan ball which is kicked or headed into the air. It’s quite entertaining to watch because it’s a quick game, and acrobatics are common.
It feels like I’ve been infected with hall spirit. I suppose now I will go for the semifinals to cheer our boys on (sepak takraw is only played by boys). I’ve been brainwashed with the propaganda of “one big happy family”!
Hall spirits are something else altogether. Not the ghostly kind, although we purpotedly have those as well. I’m talking about the spirits of Jim Beam, Jack Daniels and the hall favourite, Absolut. It’s not uncommon to find vodka in our rooms, since it’s a favourite liquor. Absolut is the undisputed champion because it comes in various flavours and the girls love it. We even have pictures of Absolut bottles on our bags, it’s the latest fashion trend. I have yet to get my own bottle of Absolut, because I don’t go through airports where they’re sold.
I hope no authority figures read my blog, I wouldn’t want my friends’ rooms to get raided. That would mean no free vodka for me. *grin*
Seen on campus, on a t-shirt: Spongebob Squarepants in his tighty-whities holding his head in a distressed manner and saying: “Leave my brain alone!”
Hahaha! That applies to us uni students as well. Don’t feed me any propaganda, just make me an employable worker, thanks. I have seen through thy latent functions, oh Noose*, and I know thou art trying to convince me to stay. Begone!
*my personal pet name for my uni
Special needs and white horses
In light of the minor kerfluffle over the Kent Ridge Ministerial Forum (wah! Now I can boast that Mr Lee Kuan Yew visited my uni!), I decided to shed some light on something most of us on campus are aware of, but never really paid attention to. (For more info on the kerfluffle, go here.)
There is a guy in my year, my faculty. He is an albino, so I bet everyone on campus has noticed him at least once. We in the Arts fac have grown used to him. He has poor vision, so he has to sit up front during lectures. Not just in the front row of seats, but at the table normally used by lecturers (although in this age of slideshows, the table is quite redundant). I usually sit up at the back so I don’t really come close to him, but last Tuesday I arrived late for my lecture and got a seat near the front.
As a result of his poor vision, this guy has the lecture notes printed out for him in a large font. And if there are PowerPoint slides, they’re printed for him one to a page, while the rest of use generally use 4 or 6 to a page. This probably means that one set of lecture notes for him, for one lecture, is equivalent in terms of paper to what we have for half the semester.
He is (from what I have heard) also autistic. This probably explains why he doesn’t really mix around with others. I have nothing against autistic people. I have known a few. Although their behaviour can be sometimes disruptive, I accept it anyway. And this guy has a milder form, so his language skills are quite alright. (Someone please correct me if I’m wrong in thinking that autistic kids generally don’t learn to speak very early or very well.)
Sometimes in the lecture he’ll just ask the lecturer a question straight out of the blue. (We don’t do that here. Lectures are for sitting through quietly.) Then the whole lecture hall laughs. I don’t really know what they’re laughing at. Is it because his behaviour is slightly inappropriate, in our context? Or is it because his questions sometimes are quite trivial?
There’s a third reason they could be laughing. Any Singaporean reading this post will already have recognised who the albino is. You see, he isn’t just an albino in university. He also happens to be the current Prime Minister’s son. And the grandson of Singapore’s Founding Father. Perhaps the locals feel some resentment at what they perceive to be preferential treatment, as he is somewhat a ‘white horse’ (a term used in the Army to describe sons of VIPs going through national service). Never mind the fact that (or perhaps because) he never served NS, the resentment of the locals is still there. So they laugh, because that is as close as they will ever get to laughing at the Lee dynasty.
As an outsider, I don’t know what it’s like to live under a pseudo-democracy where one family holds the power. It does seem that NUS is going out of its way to serve the needs of a white horse. But read the above again, and think: Is he getting all the extras because of who he is, or is NUS being special-needs friendly? They are just making his academic life more comfortable and accessible, the same way they accommodate wheelchair users by providing ramps and lifts. He couldn’t help being born an albino to a powerful father. We can’t change the fact, but we can learn to view people for who they are, instead of whose son they are. Don’t blame the son for the sins of the father (or grandfather).
It may seem easy for me to say this, because after all I am a foreigner and I will never have to forgo casting my vote. But I am also campaigning for greater awareness and acceptance of the ’special’ people in our midst. (I don’t like that word, it’s a bit condescending, but it’ll do.)
Number of times a phone rang during lecture: 4
Time to move on?
I’m contemplating taking this blog in a more daring direction. I think I’m playing it too safe, by refusing to get too personal and detailed in my descriptions. That’s why there’s a real lack of good stuff to read on this blog. The really interesting things that happen to me are kept under wraps.
I think I should post about details of my life… complain about the system at my uni (and I shan’t hesitate to name it, either) and be more of an online citizen by linking to other good blogs (there’s a link on the right, to xiaxue’s blog). My blog feels so isolated from the world, and yet I’m not really saying anything incriminating in it.
Why would I want to say anything incriminating? Because it’s fun! I like watching people, and catching their private moments made public. Singapore is a strange city. People fight openly in the streets. No, I don’t mean in a street-brawl sense… I mean lovers’ tiffs. Why would you put all your emotions on display like that? I know they probably couldn’t help it, but perhaps they should wait till they get to somewhere private?
In charting a new course for my blog, I shall try to keep it from sinking into the morass of absolutely self-related and thus boring blogs. I’ve read some really bad ones, which talk all day long about what they did, where they went, and whining about all the bad things that happened to them. The main problem with blogs like these is the lack of introspection. It is possible to chronicle your life and yet not sound self-absorbed.
mr brown’s blog is a good example. He’s not shy to talk about his life, but no way in hell could you call him self-absorbed. Oh yes, I shall also swear more. I never vent in real life, and I won’t swear too much here, but at least I can be less guarded.
I think I shall try a Bridget Jones-style statistical blog. Numbers are a good way of making things interesting. I shall count the number of fights I see each day! That should be good! Along with the number of loud people in lecture, and the amount of time a lecturer takes to switch on the computer.
I can’t add pictures to this blog, apparently. I could move to blogger.com, but I don’t know enough HTML to make it look good, and also I have nowhere to host my pictures. Sob. It’s okay. I shall rely on my fantastic powers of description!
Number of Strepsils eaten today: 2
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