Familiarity breeds contempt
POSTED AT 11:56 PM

I guess one reason why I may seem more aloof than others is the fact that I've never been good with faces. Every time I watch a movie or a serial for the first time, it really takes me a while before I'm able to differentiate one character from another, unless it's really obvious like Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan in Rush Hour, or I already know the actors/actresses from previous productions.

I have this problem even with people whom I know reasonably well. I'd see someone on the bus or the MRT, and I'd have myself convinced that it's so-and-so, only to realise my mistake at the last possible instant (ie. the moment just before I reach out and grab them into a bear hug). And so I learn to compensate for my facial recognition abilities, which means that there are situations when I see this guy that looks oddly familiar but I apply the recalibration and decide it's a stranger, so I turn away and suddenly he reaches out and grabs me into a bear hug. (or a handshake. or a wave.)

Of course, not everyone's the bear hugging type so I'm sure there must be plenty of times when I meet acquaintances on the streets and they find that I just brush by ignoring their presence. A simple hairstyle change or clothing style or anything can throw me off totally. I don't really know when to believe my eyes anymore.

Hence the perceived aloofness. My chance meetings with acquaintances on the streets depend heavily on their willingness to ignore my ignorance and actually do something that makes me know for sure that they're not some grey background stranger. I feel crippled.

Sorry, I just had to put this up...
POSTED AT 11:13 PM

If your left leg is Christmas and your right leg is New Year's Day, can I visit you in between the holidays?

(as seen on Juicypout.)

I think that...
POSTED AT 10:57 PM

I've just read this and a response to it from Evie which offer some interesting opinions on the state of our local society today. The former says that we're all mindless sheep who either offer unwavering support or opposition for the government without any rational justification; the latter says that we, the people, have the power to lift ourselves up from whatever quagmire we may be in, so there's really no point ranting and raving when there are more productive things to be done.

This isn't really a new issue to me - it probably is familiar fare for anyone concerned with the way things have turned out recently. The Sheep Guy pointed out that there's a political culture which discourages clear, independent and analytical thought. I agree. It might be a pretty unsubstantiated assertion to make, but I think that there isn't much (or any) room for dissent or even a calculated show of disapproval. That's probably a characteristic of the representative democracy system that we adhere to - we elect our representatives democratically; they make the decisions on our behalf. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that it's inherent in the system; of course it's possible to live in a representative democracy with a healthy and strong opposition engagement and discussion, but this system allows for the representatives to make decisions which they feel are in society's best interests, regardless of what popular opinion may reflect.

But it is not without its merits. People forget that it is a fragile peace, a fragile society that we live in. Not too long ago, we were pretty much nothing. Today, that has changed. The government needs a strong mandate in order to push, cajole and sometimes coerce us on to the right path. If ten people have differing opinions and yet each believes strongly in the truth of his judgement, how are we ever going to get things done?

Competent leadership at the helm will steer us in the right direction. 100 oarsmen who can't agree with each other will not. Whether or not we have competent leadership in place today is a whole different (and sensitive!) issue which I'm not going to touch at all. What I'm saying is, given the context of what we started out as and what has been happening around us in the region, this system has served us well.

That said, I do think it is time for change. I'd like to think that today, we are better educated, more concerned and more rational. Opening up the floor for greater discussion and engagement will surely be able to add greater insight and guidance to problems that we might face today. And if we are not more concerned and more rational, the lack of involvement of the common man in the decision making process is surely a major contributing factor. All the more that we will need to change that.

Evie pointed out that we all have the power to lift ourselves out from poverty. I think that the social mobility here is not quite as fluid as we might imagine it to be. We may have surpassed the race and cultural divisions which have torn many countries apart, but instead we are divided by class, with education as the caste system putting us all in our place.

Many of the opportunities abound today are limited to only the well educated. They are well taken care of, because they are equipped with the skills and knowhow to push our country further down the path of national development. The man on the street who may or may not have the ability (again, an issue that requires further discussion, which I'm not going to go into) but definitely lacks the qualifications and the technical skills to manage investment assets overseas, or to represent clients in high profile litigation cases, or quite simply the opportunity to put on a shirt and wear a tie to work is not going to find it as easy as the abovementioned scholars (and I use the term here generally, rather than in the contextualised meaning of a scholarship holder that we seem to have hedged it into) to break free of the class divide. Qualifications are everything in Singapore, and society is unkind to those who try and fail.

Interestingly, Evie also brought up the issue of quitters. That's probably worth a thought (or talk) or two, but I'll keep that for another day.

The Local Tube
POSTED AT 01:37 AM

I caught an episode of The Dance Floor the other day, which is a thinly disguised local version of So You Think You Can Dance? I guess, following in the relative success of Singapore Idol, Mediacorp tried to stake its reality-competition-makes-for-good-tv chips on the new, untapped market of dance. Unfortunately, this gamble didn't really pay off. Oh my word, it was utterly terrible.

To be fair, there's a decent display of dance on show here. I didn't get to see all the groups perform, but some at least were impressive with their eye-catching displays of coordinated body movements.

I'd thought that Singapore Idol, with contrived anticipation-inducing manoeuvres scattered liberally throughout the show, was just about pushing the limits. I see now that Gurmit, kudos to him, did a pretty good job in preventing the show from running away in its own absurdity. Even Daniel Ong in the second season couldn't drag Gurmit down with him.

In comparision, The Dance Floor's Batman-and-Robin pairing of Glenn Ong and the Flying Dutchman wouldn't need too much to sink all on their own. If they feel betrayed by a cheesy script and poor production, they certainly don't show it, or try to raise the show from the depths to which it is quickly sinking. It's full of repeated speeches, awkward pauses and cringe-worthy punchlines. Glenn seems happy to exude little more than his shock-jock radio DJ personality, while the Flying Dutchman is too busy trying to salvage the bad jokes and to not interrupt Glenn. I think B1 and B2 of the Bananas In Pajamas would make for better and more riveting entertainment.

And I don't know where they unearthed the judges from. I'm sure they're all well qualified and highly experienced in the field of performance dance, but so are Olympic Diving judges in the field of diving. Put a microphone and a camera on an Olympic Diving judge, squeeze him into putting up a live television performance. complete with ambiguous jokes and politically correct but totally irrelevent comments, and you'll have a good impression of a Dance Floor judge.

On a rather unrelated note, in my personal and humble opinion, I find the quality of local female television artistes to be greatly lacking. In referring to quality here I mean in terms of looks, fashion and poise. Somehow they seem to lack the class and style of their other Asian counterparts from Taiwan or Hong Kong, for example. I don't know, perhaps it's a rather derogatory or uninformed statement to make, but the impression that I have of our local artistes is that they generally look plebeian and dress in poor taste.

May this phenomenon not extend to the rest of the population as well.

Happy New Year of the Pig
POSTED AT 04:18 AM

I spent my CNY holidays back in Malaysia as usual. This time it was a little different, because almost my entire extended family were there. Because many of my aunts live all scattered around the region, there's hardly an occasion when they're all together at the same place at the same time - or should I say never. I would say there were only 4 absentees amongst the entire tri-generation extended family - my brother and three cousins: one in the US, one in the UK and one in Australia.

This year we had a long 4 day holiday, so I found myself with some time to spare on Tuesday after returning back from Malaysia on Monday and headed to Batam with YQ and co. for a day of cable-skiing.

That's somewhat like wakeboarding, except that there's no boat; instead, cables mounted on pylons running along the circumference of a huge pond provide the pulling force. The general idea is the same, but require slightly different skills as well.

Regardless, it was my first time, and we pretty much spent the whole morning just learning to stand up on the board without falling flat on our faces, while YQ the experienced made everything look so effortless by zipping around the pond and pulling tricks out of the air.

Lunchtime meant a break from the watersports, and the call of the nearby Go-Karting circuit beckoned. I love Go-Karting; it's a means to do all those dangerous things you wish you could do in your car, in relative safety - edging overtaking vehicles off the track, drifting around corners, accelerating through hairpin turns... Even the rather high (or exorbitant) rate of S$15 per race didn't put us off from two exhilarating and hilarious races.

By the end of the day I was pretty glad to be able to stand up and last a couple of rounds around the ski circuit, even though I'm still rather shaky on the corners where the tension of the cable can vary quite greatly. More than a few times I was caught off guard (or knowingly, but helplessly) by the sudden jerk of the cable around the corner and thrown mercilessly off the board and into an undignified heap in the water.

But it's not all fun and games - we paid dearly for out little escapade. Cable skiing requires quite a lot of upper body power, and I must say I have never had muscle aches as comprehensive as that which I had in the days which followed. It was crippling - my lats, pecs, triceps, biceps, forearms, deltoids - pretty much the entire shoulder and arm system seemed to have been put through the grinder. I couldn't bend down or reach for something without feeling pain; I had trouble even pulling my wallet out of my back pocket because the pulling action was simply too taxing on my exhausted muscles.

Plus, the sunburn. I wasn't so stupid as to not apply sunblock lotion beforehand, but it seems that it was pretty lacking in adequacy. I was red as a lobster on the ferry home, and after a few days my skin started peeling all over the place. Painful, ugly and annoying as hell. Definitely more sunblock next time.

In spite of all that, I think I'm hooked. It may be expensive, painful and exhausting but I really can't wait to go again.

--------------------------

I have been seriously considering taking up a diving course for quite some time now. In fact, it was something that my friends and I in OCS said we'd do after we commission. But we never did follow through with our plan. So now that I've loads of time I'd thought that I'd give it a try. But the local diving incidents last week have led me to seriously doubt the professionalism and the diving safety standards of our local agencies, so I think I'll be giving it a miss for now.