Bohemia Bunny

The Funnerology Principle

Monthly Archives: July 2006

Captain Jack and the Debt of Smiles

Today I be tellin’ ye a story. A story that happens on the bonny tropical shores of Singapore, where a certain Captain Jack be knocking back rum by the barrel. But this be not Jack Sparrow of the Black Pearl, no. This be Jack Cheok-chai of the Red Dot. And this is the story of how he was pursued for a debt of abstract sums.

While one day happily knocking around on the boat ship, Jack came across an old friend, Ah Tan, who reminded him of his debt to Davey Jones. The formidable Davey Jones was a member of the IMF (International Mariners’ Folklore) and he was coming to Singapore for a visit. In fact *oops* he was already here, toe-to-toe with our Jack, who grinned sheepishly at him from behind a digicam.

“You owe me your smile, Jack Cheok-chai,” intoned the heavily bearded Jones. “You have captained the Red Dot for many years now, and your debt must be paid. Give me your smile.”

But Jack was, how shall we say, rather attached to his smile. It drove the ladies into swooning sighs, and combined with a steely eye, a bare-toothed grin was an effective weapon against a rebellious crew. He couldn’t part with it now.

“A deal, Davey Jones. How much would my smile be worth to you?”

“Arrr… it be worth a hundred more, it would. But you would never be able to convince a hundred others to part with their smiles. Pay up your debt, Jack,” repeated barnacle-breath Jones.

“Three days, three days and I shall have your smiles!” countered Jack. He whipped out his digicam.

“See this? This here” -and he zoomed in on a picture of a handsome young man- “oh yes, you’ll love his smile all right. He look familiar to you?”

Davey Jones peered at the little screen. “Nope.”

“He’s Ah Tan’s son, old man! Aye, and you do hold Ah Tan in high regard, eh? Take the boy, and that’s one less smile I owe you.” Jack connected his portable printer to the camera and printed out a credit-card-size picture of the younger Tan. Davey Jones extended a tentacular hand to accept the printout.

“Three days, Jack.” And with that, Davey Jones of the IMF (International Mariners’ Folklore) fell overboard with a splash.

Original campaign here.

Sandy Cohen, Superhero Counsel

Another hopelessly OC-related post, run while you still can.

Sandy Cohen, dad to Seth and kind-of-dad to Ryan on The O.C., is a superhero lawyer. The reason I labelled him a Superhero Counsel up in the heading is because that way, his title matches his initials. *grin*

By Superhero Lawyer, I mean that he takes legal practice to a whole new stratospheric, philanthrophic level. To wit, he uses his powers of legal mumbo-jumbo for the good of mankind! I most certainly do not mean that he is both a superhero and a lawyer a la Daredevil. And hey, Sandy looks better in a wetsuit than Daredevil does in a red unitard. Oh, and the funny thing is, Seth does actually make a reference to Daredevil in Season 1, but that is related to something else altogether.

If more lawyers were like Sandy Cohen, their standing in the eyes of society would improve tremendously. Sure, Sandy is stubborn and a maverick. Typical lawyer traits. But where most lawyers go into the glamour of private practice, billing by the hundreds per hour, the show’s writers give Sandy the high route and make him a public defender. The money sucks but hey! He still has his heart and soul and a clean conscience. He hasn’t sold out! (At least not till later.)

And because superheroes are supposed to save lives, that’s what Sandy does. He saves Ryan, he saves Jimmy, and somewhere along the lines of my as-yet-unwatched Seasons 2 and 3, he saves more of the troubled residents of Newport Beach. Yeah, of course juvey hall and prison aren’t totally a speeding bullet or impending asteroid disaster, but the man does amazing things with the abilities he does have, ya?

Along the way, he stands up for the downtrodden by facing off to his money-grubbing father-in-law multiple times. My favourite trick of his is how he turns Caleb’s nasty habit of giving everyone pet names on himself. Caleb calls Julie ‘Ju-ju’ and Kirsten ‘Ki-ki’. The only people he hasn’t tried that on is Seth (‘Se-se’? Wtf) and Hailey (how come she gets away with it?). So Sandy, in his turn, calls Caleb ‘Cay-cay’. Tables nicely turned, my man.

Sandy Cohen has left me with such a good fuzzy feeling about lawyers that I’m hoping all the law students in training I’m acquainted with will turn out like him. A tall order though, because there’s only one Superhero Counsel! I do believe it’s time Seth made a comic book about his dad, ya? Totally.

Cross one off the list.

I’ve found another job which I’m singularly unsuited for. Suicide Helpline counsellor. Don’t get me wrong, those helplines are great, and I think it’s cool that PostSecret prominently displays a hotline number. But in spite of my psychology education, I don’t think talking depressed people out of ending their lives is my calling.

In my usual superficial way, I arrived at this conclusion by way of a TV show, The O.C. The storyline involved this kid Oliver who was getting to be a nuisance of a third wheel between my darling pair of Ryan and Marissa. As the episodes roll by, it’s made clear that this dude isn’t all he’s cracked up to be. Depression and a coke addiction are just symptoms of his mental illness. I’m pretty sure he has a personality disorder as well, but I don’t think they have a disorder called “manipulative shit disorder” yet. He does smack a bit of borderline personality disorder because he gets totally overinvolved with a person, to the point of someone getting a restraining order against him.

I don’t know if they exaggerated for the sake of good tv, but this character totally pisses me off. Apart from trying to steal Marissa, the little shit will, in front of others, slap himself while exclaiming how much he hates himself for being the way he is. Man, if I were there, I’d just sit and watch him hit himself, cos that’s so passive-aggressive. Yes, I know I am an uncaring, heartless bitch. Someone who makes Ryan-and-Marissa drive 2 hours because he wanted to fake a drug overdose doesn’t deserve my sympathy.

Oh, and I think Marissa has the IQ of a sea anemone, because she’s so ridiculously blinded by her “friend” that she can’t see how warped he is. Man. If I had a friend who needed psychological help, I’d refer him or her to someone else. It’s so not worth extricating them out from their tangled web yourself, because you might just be caught up in there and then you can’t be objective.

So in the end, our buddy Oliver pulls a pistol on Marissa, and our hero Ryan bursts in and saves the day with his street smarts by talking Oliver out of it. Once Ryan opened his mouth I knew Oliver would live to see another depressed, borderline day. Ryan’s the hero, right, and they have to give him the good-guy-forgives-villain veneer. Gosh, I am so totally well-educated in soap operas. Score one for The O.C.

Yup, so that’s why I can’t work the hotlines. I have no compassion. I sure would make a great litigation attorney, though. *wink*

The Final Hurrah

Well now that the 2006 edition of the quadrennial madness is over, we can all go back to sleeping at 11, waking at 6 and debating useless politicians rather than useless strikers. I don’t know if this edition can be considered a classic – time is usually the best decider of such things – but it sure had its share of surprises. And no, Brazil losing to France wasn’t one of them. No, seriously, I wasn’t shocked at all.

The usually dour Germans should win some sort of fan award, I think, for being able to win over a whole nation of doubters. Most Lovable Team, or something like that.

Most Frustrating Team should be shared between England and Spain. Great talents on paper, but somehow they just can’t gel into a coherent entity. I didn’t see much of Spain, but I had more than my fair share of England – it was punishment of some sort for being so endlessly optimistic, I see that now.

Every World Cup throws up its share of young geniuses heralded as the next big thing, and Messi and Podolski pretty much justified their tags. Theo Walcott, on the other hand, barely justified his plane ticket, in my opinion. I didn’t even get a glimpse of him in the dugout, much less see him kick a ball. Yes, it’s a huge experience for him to go to the World Cup at 17, but I figure he could just as soon have bought his own tickets for the matches. The World Cup is not some England school trip, all right?

Then there are those whose dreams were cruelly cut short by injury. Top of the Sob Stories list has to be Cisse, who didn’t even get a competitive kick in before flying home. Michael Owen follows, and poor old Michael Ballack missed the third-place playoff. Ballack seems to be cursed as far as final matches go.

And because the World Cup only comes around every 4 years, 30-something captains and midfield marvels will be tottering fathers of adolescents by the time the next World Cup rolls around. That’s why you always get the fond, and not-so-fond farewells every time a team exits. Among the notable ones leaving are Luis Figo, Oliver Kahn, what seems to be half the French team, Gary Neville and Sol Campbell. But I think the most heartrending story belongs to that son of Marseille, Zinedine Zidane.

He came out of retirement for a final hurrah, and led them all the way to the final, and somehow it all fell apart 110 minutes into the match. You don’t expect a 34-year-old man to headbutt an opponent, and certainly not in his final match when you’d expect him to want to go out on a high note. I know there’s a saying about ‘if you’re going down, go down fighting’ but I don’t think that’s exactly what it means. I wonder why he headbutted him though. I’d have shoved the fella in the chest, perhaps that only gets me a yellow instead of a red, I dunno. Shoving is an angry move, but not quite violent, so perhaps it’s worth a yellow card for unsportsmanlike behaviour. But hey, this is the same referee who sent off Rooney for that ball-busting stumble, so.

The saddest thing about Zidane getting sent off is that once you’re off the pitch, you can’t come back. Not even for the medal presentation ceremony. So the man who inspired them to a last shot at glory wasn’t even there at the end. It left a bit of a sour taste.

It was lovely to see the Italians celebrating, it’s really amusing how grown men regress to teenage boys in the heat of victory. It seems Camoranesi cut off his ponytail – I wonder why he was keeping it in the first place. If they hadn’t won, would he have kept it like some symbol of his disappointment?

Ah well, it’s over, and while some coaches *cough*Klinsi*cough* are being begged to stay on, others are given a metaphorical kick out the door. A 25-million pound kick out the door. Yeah, good riddance to you too, aye!

The view from the fence is good.

As a Malaysian based in Singapore, I put up with my fair share of denigrating comments from ignorant Singaporeans who seem to have an inferiority complex when faced with a person from ‘up north’. I’ve heard all the shit about our rubbishy cars, our universities’ quota system, our lousy education system… the list goes on. Despite (or maybe because of) this mightier-than-thou attitude, I am scarpering back to my own little backwoods country as soon as I legally can. I can’t scarper now because I owe the Singaporean government money, and I have to pay it back in blood. By the manual labour of my brain and four stick-like limbs, I shall absolve myself of the debt after 3 years.

I’ve never had any intention of settling here permanently, but one recent event is the total, final nail. The government’s overly touchy reaction to this illustrates all that is very, very wrong with the way the country is run. I do find it odd that my political views on Singapore (despite not actually having the birthright to comment) run in the same direction as that of the Singapore blogosphere. Perhaps it’s because the blogosphere is populated by more educated and enlightened people than the general populace, hence the overall impression you get from blogs is one of anger, disappointment and sometimes, resignation.

All they needed was one man to be their lightning rod, and to channel all their frustration into words. And he had the mainstream media behind him. Until now, that is. Is the government scared? Perhaps they should be. mr brown has inspired a bit of a fanatical following. I agree with his opinions, since they are well thought out and nicely articulated.

But he is pretty much all I agree with. Reading through the comments, one sees several unwelcome and unenlightened opinions. And this is where I diverge from the crowd.

Firstly, I don’t know how obvious it is to Singaporeans, who live in a multicultural society, that ‘Bhavani’ is a female Indian name. I do concede that sometimes it’s hard to tell, especially with less common names, but I was wading through the comments wondering ‘why are they calling the writer a ‘he’?’

Secondly, perhaps their emotions got the better of them, or Ms Bhavani needs a better editor to clear up ambiguous sentences, but I did not see any insult to mr brown or to his daughter. Several commented that ‘oh that’s a low blow, targeting Faith’ but I didn’t see anything. The offending sentence was about means-testing to see if parents qualified for subsidies for special-needs school fees: “… we understand mr brown’s disappointment, as the father of an autistic child”. I got what they meant. It was the usual political “we feel your pain” line that rings totally empty and insincere, because it’s not as though they’re increasing subsidies, are they? But apparently some people saw more than that. They interpreted it to imply that mr brown was disappointed over his daughter’s condition. Now perhaps some may dismiss my opinion with a ‘my Engrish not so powderful’, but frankly if I had got the erroneous interpretation, I’d reread just to make sure that the government hadn’t suddenly turned into the schoolyard bitch who says ‘I’m so sorry you have a lousy face’. The tide of emotion was running high, I suppose.

I don’t think all this fanaticism is doing mr brown any good. Support is one thing, but myopic (I hesitate to say ‘blind’) admiration is just going to backfire on poor mr brown who will be under more investigation than usual, under suspicions that he is mustering up his own little blogger army or something. So I’ll stay up here, with the fenceposts poking up into my butt. Not as though I have any right to be down there with the protesting masses, anyway. I’m not staying long, remember?

And to pre-empt the flames:

Yes, our cars suck. They suck like the first Japanese cars sucked. Perhaps in 50 years our auto industry will be like the Japanese one too. By the way, the reason our tin-can cars sell so well, is that one of the goals of Vision 2020 is to have a tin-can car in every driveway. Nah, I’m having you on.

I forget if our universities still maintain the quota system, they were supposed to scrap it. Anyway, if the public universities don’t want your business, the private ones do. The private ones aren’t beholden to the quota anyway. Cost is the main reason so many people opt for public universities, and a private education ensures you can’t get married cos you’ll have to pay off your student loan. *gasp* it’s a conspiracy to stop the minority races from taking over the country! *gaspgasp* Actually, I’m tempted to say that most of us don’t care about the quota system (if in fact it’s still in operation) but I have to consider that there are lower-income minority students who are deprived of a place because of that. Never fear, MCA is here! (Malaysian-Chinese inside-joke)

Our education system sucks, because they can’t decide whether to teach in Malay or English. I always figured a bilingual education was cool, but apparently not everyone can handle the code-switching between the two languages. That’s ok, Bahasa Malaysia is looking more and more like English anyway. Case in point: “Aktifkan Akademi Fantasia”. You don’t even have to know Malay to understand that phrase. I’m some sort of demented optimist, so I like to see it as correcting the great error of trying to teach Maths and Science in Malay, rather than indecision. At least they’re doing something for the kids. I remember the adjustment I had to go through when I did A-level Chemistry, because all my info was stored under Malay terms. Now future generations won’t have to suffer like I did! Unless they have lousy teachers who can barely speak English, in which case all I have to say is – you’re screwed. Call me for tuition, RM50 a week. Hahahaha!

We have aged politicians who refuse to leave the stage quietly and instead stand at the sidelines shouting instructions. Hmm, he must be taking a page out of someone‘s book, ahem ahem. Ok, I will give you the point that our old politician is perhaps more of a firebrand who likes talking about explosives and other countries in the same breath, but that’s because that’s his style, mah! Must maintain you know! Rest easy knowing that the current government totally doesn’t agree with him, which is a different situation from elsewhere, no?

If you take offence at the above, then you’ve probably offended me in one way or another concerning the above. If you’ve never said such things to me, then what are you worried about? My argument’s not with you.

Working Stiff

I’ve been at work the past week. It wasn’t exactly fun, but it beat the job I had before I started university, which was so dull I thought I would explode from all the frustration in my head.

My mum is the admin manager in her office, and she’s basically the big kahuna there since it’s a very small office. Her clerk quit for greener pastures in Singapore, so she brought me in to do data entry and proofreading. Most of the time I was finished with my work early, so I’d just stand and watch the colourful fish in the marine aquarium. For some reason, the big bosses decided that having Dory, Nemo and their assorted marine friends in the office would be nice. And you know what? It is.

But staring at fish makes my eyes dry out, not because it’s boring but because the glass surface reflects cold air into my eyes. So I’d go back to my terminal and play Solitaire. At least in this office, no one stops me from playing. In my last job, I was basically paid to play Solitaire because they couldn’t assign more work to a temp clerk who could up and leave any day. And if I got bored of cards, I could surf the Internet! Woohoo! That’s the good thing about small organisations, they’re a bit more lax with their employees. The office staff actually use MSN to communicate among themselves, so it’s a more relaxed, informal atmosphere.

The not-so-fun bit I was talking about referred not to the work, but to the actual process of getting there and back. Waking up at 6-plus so that we could leave at 7am and beat the morning rush of parents with schoolchildren – not fun. Plus, both my parents work right in the middle of the downtown area, along with thousands of others, so they would usually leave work later and avoid the 6pm rush hour. I’d rather go home later without enduring a traffic jam, than try and get home earlier and end up stuck in traffic with no toilet and no fish to watch.

5 consecutive days of early mornings and late evenings and I began to truly appreciate, and I mean totally and truly understand what they have to go through every day, for 30-odd years. I only had 4 hours of downtime after work before bedtime, a huge contrast to the endless stretch of free hours I have as a student. I can’t imagine how my parents can relax in so little time, especially if they bring work home. It truly is the neverending rat race.

And now that I’ve seen how hard it is to earn a ringgit, I fear for my own madly consumerist lifestyle. It has to change, because I’ll never be able to afford it on my own. 30-dollar t-shirts, impulse buys of cosmetics and the ever-useful excuse “it’s on sale” – it has to end. Especially with the damn exchange rate as it is right now. Anybody want a tuition teacher for their kids? The first lesson they’ll get from me is that they’re little parasites with giant appetites.