Facebook

While I have set up an account yesterday, the account will remain largely dormant for a simple reason: My private life is not for all to see.

I will add you if you make a request.

I will use FB only be for staying abreast with information.

China Stakes Claim on Santa

Lavender Food Court, SINGAPORE - A China-born Singapore-based foreign talent explains today the genesis of Santa Claus.

According to the Chinese legend, "Sheng Dan Lao Ren", or old man Santa as we know him today, was a homeless old man in China who was so overcome by the cold one winter that every thing on him shrank, except (his) "eggs" (sheng dan).

- Fishy Slippery (Xin Hua) News Agency

Memoirs of a Jetlagged-sha 1

There is no two ways about it. Jetlagged or not, the first and foremost desire is to bitch. So here goes.

The flight started off really badly. The heavy flight traffic caused the plane to take off nearly an hour late and worse, I was seated beside some idiotic American man in his 50s. Burly and stocky, he insisted on taking over "my" right seat rest despite having two seats to himself in the middle of the centre block of the 747 flight. I could either stick out to my left and be knocked down by people walking down the aisle or food trolleys, or we can compromise and he moves a little to his right and I move to my left to the extent of not putting myself in mortal harm's way. But no, he can't. So we engaged in a tact elbow and shoulder battle throughout the entire flight from Singapore to Frankfurt. Trust me, we even stuck elbows into each other's midsections. And for jerks like him, he brings out the worst of me. I turned in my sleep and let off some air in his direction. He was completely non-receptive of any "kind" he gets. I was nice enough to not do anything beyond the sovereign airspace of the handle but he never knew to respect that. When he plonked himself onto that seat, he closed the overhead compartment! When I opened it, I realised he had two huge bags and on the huger of the two, he hung a PPS tag, suggesting that he is a First Class frequent flyer. But he certainly had no First Class EQ.

When I arrived in Frankfurt, I was pissed enough to complain to the airline representatives on the ground. They swapped me to another seat. And as I walk forward to the lavatory, I see the poor guy assigned the seat I last vacated, leaning out perilously because this f*ck*ng b*st*rd won't share.

... to be continued.

TT CC PH

The MRT trains are extremely packed these days regardless of time of the day.

Today, I had to jostle for elbow room with a woman.

How I describe her will leave nothing to imagination. You will understand why after she does what she did in the middle of the train, she was granted the full train width between the seats.

For good measure, it wasn't elbow room. My bag was banging into hers and what f**king luck today, to stand in front of two seated old fogeys who simply won't get off the trains. Staking in front of their seats while seeing the rest of the passengers get off, except these two old men, was frustrating enough. And then there was Ms TT CC PH.

Who, you ask?

Ms Thunderthigh Columncalf Polehugger.

That's her. I might add Victorian Columns!

T'was in the signs

I should have guessed Obama would win the US presidential elections.

I mean, the signs were all there and the stars were all aligned. Yet, as they say, hindsight is 20-20.

Many Americans were "kao-peh-kao-bu"ing recently. The country was mired in two wars, the subprime crisis was bad, the economy was failing, the Bush Administration can't seem to do right and the people felt "change they need" (even though I don't know if they know exactly what change they need). They were literally "cry-father-cry-mother"ing for change. They wanted the whole system revamped.

I wonder what that means? Pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan? Provide refugee camps for their own people? Print US banana notes to revive the economy? Change from Red to Blue? Oh, yes, change from Red to Blue. That's the only thing they have to do for a start, then the rest will follow. But what's the rest?

So, with a name that combines father "pa or ba" and mother "ma" and which starts off with an exclamation "O!", then the US got their man!

Obama it is!

Reiterating the Ethos of this Blog

I've begun tagging my posts and working backwards. The tags serve to accurately pinpoint my state of mind when I wrote the entry. With this decision, reiterating what this blog stands for becomes important:

If you haven't a good thing to say, you're welcome to sit beside me.

I don't pretend to be the Dalai Lama or Mother Theresa although in one of those weird personality tests, I fall in the same quadrant as the two of them. In short, my cards are faced up on the table. I do not pretend to be pure as Snow White, innocent as Bambi, gullible as Pooh, brilliant as Einstein, irreproachable as a saint or what have you. And I don't want to act in anyway that I am not.

In fact, people who come here want to celebrate a mind more twisted than Katrina, humour darker than black holes, a being more mentally crippled than Hawkings physically is and what have you.

But one thing is certain - malice is not intended. The main objective is sometimes to highlight some interesting observations, make some comments on perceived injustices, stupidities, Darwin Award-ism, social imbalances, etc.

Over here, we may agree to disagree. Even disagree to disagree.

My readers and I come from vastly different backgrounds. Of course, our moral yardsticks differ. I don't even know if I have a moral yardstick. I mostly categorise people into a few groups - people I want to have a meal with, people I want to have tea with, people I want to visit, people I want to share my food with, people I want to serve poisoned food to, people whose food I would eat, people whose food I would not eat and whom I should cut out from my life... Well, I think I should review this sentence some time in the future. I probably have as many categories as I have people in my life. But by and large, I think my friends are great people. If they are not, refer to previous sentence.

Simply said, I am a person with a huge tolerance and immense latitude for differences. But don't cross, or worse double cross, me. I'll run over and amputate your toes. This is the minimum I guarantee. If I fail, I could do it again. No?

If only...

Singapore planted a flag or erected some functionally useless fences on the Middle Rocks and South Ledge. Perhaps we would be granted sovereignty of that as well.

Oh, well. Perhaps not. Pirates would cut those fences and sell to the scrap yard for money.