Singapore?

I'll make it short and sweet.

National Day Parade disgusts me. Huge parts of our colonial history are conveniently left out, forgotten and played down.

You simply don't do that right in front of the City Hall. A monument from our colonial era, a reminder of how much the British and the Europeans had shaped our legislature and architecture.

Our history books and heritage had been tampered with, ostensibly to drum up support for the ruling party, and to ensure that our citizens remain shrouded by the illusion of asian values.

I studied in a school founded by a British man.

I cycle regularly to one of the first reservoirs of Singapore, which was designed a century ago by Robert Peirce. I use Thomson Road and Marymount Road on a daily basis. Thomson Road, according to Wikipedia, was responsible for the design and construction of a number of notable engineering works including bridges, roads, and hospitals. Why do our history lessons leave out such a big part of Singapore's history?

We speak British English and we do the Cambridge O and A Levels. We drive on the left side of the road.

But we don't speak of our colonial heritage. Not even in our history books. Not in what the Ministry of Education calls 'Social Studies'.

Why?

Bitten by the Sea

Don’t ask me why I am here because I honestly don’t know. I have never planned to be here.

If I really did, I won’t be wearing these sand-trapping sandals right into the beach. It’s absurd. Nothing is making sense. I’m standing on the beach, alone, with nothing more than a pair of shorts on my body and a pair of sandals on my feet.

In this cold, I’d love to believe that somewhere along this beach lies my property – warm clothes, a wallet, some money to get back home. I’d love to believe that I know where exactly I am, and I’d love to believe that I’m not alone here.

I’d also love to believe to know whether what I’m staring at right now is a fucking sunrise or a sunset.

You can’t just bring me here and leave me alone, can you? That’s irresponsible, you know? You were never there for me, you bitch. The least you could do is to let me have my clothes.

I let the rising tide lap at my toes, partly to wash off the gritty sand between my toes, and partly to just feel something. Hot or cold, I don’t care. The water’s bitingly cold today. Does that mean that it’s dawn, or is it that I’m in a place where the water’s always cold? I don’t know. You wouldn’t say.

Something about the biting cold draws me in. I make small steps into the water, allowing the icy numbness to slosh around my sandals, below my feet. My big feet. Everything looks big when there’s little else but vast areas of sand and sea around it.

It feels strangely comforting. Did you want that? Was it what you had in mind? Did you want me to walk into the water and just disappear?

There’s no reason for me to stop walking, but there’s no reason for me to walk on either.

I let the cold water lap at my ankles.

I let the cold water tickle the back of my knees.

I let the cold water flood my navel.

I let the cold water tickle my chest, bringing on spasms of chills.

Should I walk on or stop? I look to you for a sign, a gesture, anything at all. But you ignore me.

Maybe I’d stop, maybe not. Perhaps I’d walk all the way into the sea and never stop? Perhaps I’d eventually find myself walking away from, and not into the sea?

I don’t know. It’s not as if you’d decide for me anyway.

Today

is a day that I feel strangely happy. Bee Gees sounds so good on the hifi. And it's freaking Bee Gees - that's my dad's kind of music.

I don't know if it's because I just had a long and hectic day at work and its finally over, or whether it's because I've not been sleeping well. But I feel hyper.

I haven't been myself today and my colleagues have been telling me that?

I shouldn't be blogging on because I don't exactly make any sense. Maybve I'm hypomanic. In such states I should be extra creative and have no trouble making words rhyme. Because I feel sublime. I'm high but yet I toe the line. It's not as though I'm committing a crime.

OK this is getting scary but I have a sudden urge to tidy my room up.

In my bid to save Gaia (whoever that is) I shall refrain from switching on the aircon

and sit here and sulk instead.

Do you believe that you can make a decent UHF antenna out of aluminium foil and duct tape?

Now you do. Courtesy of Macgyver (my dad) and Macgyver Jr (me).

Alu foil, duct tape, a length of coaxial and an old piece of perspex with brass bolts on it. Oh, and a crumpled piece of PC Show 2010 brochure that I had used as a spacer to prevent the 2 prongs from touching


Malaysia's NTV 9 is very clear.


Malaysia's TV3

IT's receiving digital channels perfectly.

There's some ghosting on okto and Channel u. Strange how Malaysian channels are so much clearer than Singaporean ones here.

Sadly, I can't receive Batam's RCTI at all, and SCTV is so blurry that it's pretty much unviewable. No football for me then.

For more information, google for folded dipoles. There should be online calculators to let you determine the appropriate dimensions. I used okto's frequency of 543.25Mhz for the calculations.

School of Rock

teaches us that good movies, as with any art form, doesn't have to obey the laws of logic.

Music is integral to life.

When I was young, the radios at home were switched on pretty much throughout the day.

Now that I'm older, the hifi at home is switched on pretty much throughout the day.

Silence isn't easy; Starsailor lied.

I think you ought to know

I'm feeling very depressed

Authenticity

In our bid to be human we often find ourselves asserting our identity, fighting for our rights to be ourselves.

But, what really constitutes this entity called 'self'? How do we remain authentic to ourselves, when our preferences and desires are in turn based on external factors such as upbringing, and the limited variety of options that are actually available to us?

How are you so sure that your choices are true to your own character? How do you know if you really like chocolate, and that you're not subconsciously influenced to like chocolate?

Well, I don't know.

I started this entry, ruminating if I should sport a more popular and palatable short hairstyle (many say that such hairstyles are more attractive). Or I could keep my hair long, and my hair has always been longish ever since I could remember. It feels more in character to continue keeping long hair, somehow, but is that truly, authentically me?

Should I sacrifice aesthetics to be myself?

All I know is that I still feel like keeping my long hair, and keep it, I shall.

I can always change my mind later.

Asia.

Sometimes in Singapore, do you feel like a stranger? Everyone on the streets and public transport speak in strange languages. Hokkien Sri Lankan Tamil Mandarin Teochew Indonesian. Just not English.

Traditional Asian culture is rule based. You do this, you do not do that. It gives you no clues to how you should live your life responsibly. Respect your parents, because you're supposed to! Don't cheat, because you're not supposed to!

But bring in complicated or modern ethical issues that aren't described in their rulebooks and all hell breaks loose. A pity their rulebook doesn't tell them to live responsibly. Asians are the most prolific intellectual property thieves and the most cruel perpetrators of unfair labour practices, for example.

Even in bus queues, you'd find that those who try to beat the queue almost always one of those traditional types who speak in some Asian language. They're the ones who let their children make a din in public. Personally, as a kid, my parents made it clear to me that I must behave in public, and they really did enforce that. I guess they don't do that in traditional Asian culture.

On the escalators yesterday, I found it both sad and amusing that almost all of those who were standing on the wrong side of the escalator were speaking loudly in some Asian language or another. Those who stood on the correct side spoke softly in polite English.

I don't think I need to elaborate why I shun traditional Asian culture and languages.

It's not even my heritage. My parents, my uncles, my aunts, my cousins and literally everyone in my extended family are polite modern people who speak in English.

I could be brown, I could be blue

It's so hard to be me - to be authentic in existentialism-speak - because I will be discriminated, judged, ostracised, hurt and ridiculed for who I really am.

And they call this the 21st century.

New Beginnings

Perhaps setting up a new blog - especially on Blogspot - might be a little anachronistic in this microblogging/Twitter/social-network era, but I find that I express myself best on vast empty plots of digital white space. So here I am, blogging, yet again.

In a way, I'm doing this to hone up my writing skills. I love writing, and laziness has left those literary cogs to rust and seize in the past couple of years. But more importantly, I'm doing this to ventilate. Human beings - regardless of their command of language, or intelligence - have boundless amounts of mental energy that simply has to go somewhere. Keep it all in, and it manifests in unhealthy ways - acting out our frustrations, venting it on others, imposing our views on others and so on. Writing is an extremely healthy way of using up our mental energy, and committing it to a tangible form that can be shared with others - but of course, only if you're willing to!

There's so much I want to write about, but only so little I can write about. I can't blog in detail about my work. I can't blog about things that I don't want my parents to know. (Yes, my mom is no stranger to Facebook and Youtube.) I can't blog about things that would potentially hurt the people I love.

But, why a new blog? Some people create new blogs so that they can use a new URL, others create new ones so that they can clean off the uncomfortable past, and start off from a fresh slate, the way my ex used to do every now and then.

Me? I have a different reason.I'm going to blog purposefully this time round. And I have a manifesto:

1. This blog will be a documentary of the events that are significant to my life.
2. It will not focus on aimless rants.
3. Whenever I write in it, I will aim to improve my writing and skills.
4. In the process of penning out my thoughts for the scrutiny of myself and my readers, I will aim to be a better man.
5. And I will reserve the right to break any of the above rules, because it is, after all, my blog.

Smell ya later.