Gmail

Thank you for all your suggestions, lovely people.

But I've finally got my Gmail account!

Thanks to the 'Google approach to email', i'll never have to delete all my stuff constantly like I do now with my hotmail account, or sign in to four different email accounts (two hotmail, one yahoo, one university) in a bid to enable enough storage space for all my mail (which evidently keeps coming in because people love to email me, really)!

I would do a dance now if I weren't in the office, and if there was appropriate music.

I solved my dilemma by deciding to use a name-related email for its professional tone and use that for all family and friends who know who I really am. and still keep another hotmail one for its anonymity, which I'll still use for this blog.

Pure genius. ;)

Momentus Life-changing Decision

That's what a friend calls it, but I don't think that statement is qualified.

What he is referring to, in case you're wondering, is deciding on what name I should use for my Gmail account.

As you may vaguely recall a post written about a year ago, I have been desiring a Gmail email account for some time, mainly because it's got 1GB worth of storage space so my mails will NEVER bounce ever again, (horror experiences from the pathetic 2MB mailbox size that hotmail provides) and now I have been finally bestowed that privilege from this same friend (don't say I didn't thank you) and of course, what followed was an agonising contemplation on what login name I should use for this never-can-be-changed-biggest-storage-mailbox-space-available email address.

My dilemma arises from whether I should adopt an anonymous login (in the case of any unforseen impulse to write something liable, no one could sue me) or a professional login that involves my name - the kind of email address that people will remember because.. well, it is your name.

Any suggestions?

I told my friend I'd sleep on it - that was when he said 'good luck on this momentus life-changing decision'... goodness, it's not like i'm getting married or anything.

On a separate note, as our conversation continued.. the subject of anonymity and my penchant for using alphabet names came up:

An excerpt of our msn conversation:

heaven knows says:
start a blog!

heaven knows says:
it'd be funny

duckshoe says:
I can't start a blog

duckshoe says:
I can't write blogs..have boring life

duckshoe says:
be something like " today I had lunch alone, like most days. I hate going to restaurants alone, people look at you like you're a loser. ANyway I ordered a....."

duckshoe says:
how freaking sad is that

heaven knows says:
hahahaha

heaven knows says:
yes that is freaking sad

heaven knows says:
but i will still laugh

heaven knows says:
hahaha

duckshoe says:
yeah, I know. that's why i don't write about myself

duckshoe says:
also don't want my parents to know I eat right out of the pan due to sheer lazinees to wash up

heaven knows says:
hahaha

heaven knows says:
i do that too, dont worry

heaven knows says:
and dont let ur parents know u have a blog, silly!

heaven knows says:
do u think my mum reads mine???

duckshoe says:
too late

duckshoe says:
I am google-able

duckshoe says:
dunno, maybe your mom would take a great interest in your escapades with variosu letters of the alphabet

heaven knows says:
she'd not be very happy to hear 'today i had some drinks, smoked some fags, rolled a spliff and got shattered on mushrooms at a house party'

duckshoe says:
soon, you may run out of letters and move on to numbers

heaven knows i'm overworked and underpaid... says:
hahaha..

duckshoe says:
"tonight I went out with A1574. I think he's cool in relaxed sort of way, nothing seems to phase him, not even when a3541 spilled his beer on him"

heaven knows says:
hahahaha

heaven knows says:
you crack me up

heaven knows says:
i dont think i'll run out of alphabets anytime soon

duckshoe says:
fat people have some redeeming traits

heaven knows says:
there are different permutations, like QH, or VJ or something like that

duckshoe says:
true true...though might need VJ2 and QH3

duckshoe says:
sounding like announcements at the airport now


Isn't he funny?

I think I shall sleep on it for a night... and make this apparently life-changing decision tomorrow.

AVP

After studying the Alien quadrilogy for Hollywood last term, I reckon it's a duty for me to watch Alien vs Predator .. only thing was I may have watched all of Alien but I didn't watch Predator - so as much as I delighted in picking out those references to Alien, I couldn't do the same for the Predator bits of the film. It's not a blatant amazing film, but it falls into the category of what I call a film-buff-must-watch-for-its-sake film. In many ways, Alien and Predator has taken on a classic dimension in the canon of hollywood film history - not to watch it would be like watching Godfather Part I and Part II, and not Part III (although I suspect many self-proclaimed die-hard Godfather fans have not watched the third).

(don't read on if you haven't watched it)

As a film student very wary of Hollywood sequels, I've got to reluctantly say I've got to hand it to Hollywood to create another form of sequels by merging different films together (recall: Freddy vs Jason and now this..) But I guess that's like the ultimate way of milking the maximum returns out of any Hollywood-created character. trust Americans to fully capitalise on everything. having said that, though, the self-referential nature of such films is what makes it work - much more than usual sequels. The joy derived from watching that film, on my part, was not so much delighting in watching the Predator and the Alien fight it out (although it was quite spectacular) but in picking out the moments in the film you can relate to - whether it was the black version of Ripley in the-only-female-left-surviving character in AVP, the familiar creatures, the baby alien that bursts through the chest, the mouth-within-the-mouth alien coming an inch close to Alexa aka black-Riply's face, or the convoluted pyramid mazes (cf. tunnels in Alien III)...
It was like almost like the process I enjoyed while watching Bertolucci's The Dreamers , which constantly made references to the French New Wave films. although, of course, the latter is obviously far superior.

Anyway, that aside, I just came across something thoroughly funny. I happened to see the trailer for Face last night before AVP, so this made sense when i read it, although i didn't notice any logos so it must only be for the dvd releases and not the prints..

An extract from Movieblog :

I have since struggled to watch my special edition DVD and noticed that "Face" - a major - help me out Bubba - Distributor? in Asia have become Idiots of the Highest Order and have completely raped a wonderful movie experience. How did they do it you ask? Oh Simple. By Being Egotistical Pricks. You see, if the Chinese language can't roll off your tongue like supermodel drool, you're in for a sphincter tickle. Why? No reason. Because they can. I'm sure being total f**k-nuts has something to do with it as well.

You see, the MORONS at Face have decided that every 5 minutes (give or take a few seconds) of viewing the subtitles, "Face" with slap their brilliant Blue and Red Company Logo in the top corner -- And not just flash it there.. but hold it there for a full half minute. CLICK HERE FOR A LARGE SCREENSHOT OF IT. Folks, I'm not bloody kidding -- In the middle of the ****ING MOVIE!!!! Then, just as you've gotten back into the film and forgotten about the nasty little corporate intruder: "Bing!" there it is again!! -- Absolutley Un-[insert expletive]-ing-believable. Who on earth thought up this absolutely destructive and intrusive way of... what... advertising?.. I can't even call it advertising.. it's only making me HATE them.

This post serves two reasons.. 1) to make the average Non-Chinese speaking sucker and Hero fan aware of this and 2) Since I so obviously deserve punishment because I can't speak Chinese, I can't read their website either - so I had no way of contacting them and reaming them out personally.

For flashing logos on my screen while I'm trying to watch my well paid for DVD, I would certainly stand and admit that next time, I will go out of my WAY to find a bootleg of the movie. Screw you guys. May the flesh eating disease land on the tip of your penis.


That last sentence had me laughing the biggest laugh i've had in ages...

A championship between insects

Such are the things that amuse you at work... and no wonder they say chinese people do strange things.

Here's an excerpt: source - AFP

Hong Kong police probe insect-fight gambling ring

HONG KONG, Aug 16 (AFP) - Hong Kong's obsession with gambling reached unusual extremes with the arrest of 115 people for betting on insect fights, police said Monday.

The city is well known as a haven for China's horse racing and soccer gamblers, but raids on a club in the seedy Mongkok district of Kowloon broke a betting syndicate gambled on battles between huge crickets.

Senior Inspector Angus Yeung Fu-yin of the Special Duties Squad in Mongkok said the cricket fights, the first officers have uncovered in five years, amazed even police.

"Gambling of this type is very rare here although it was very popular in the old days, so we were very surprised when we first heard about it," Yeung said, adding that illegal gambling on dogfights and bird fights is common.

"Only older people continue to do it," he said.

The gamblers, aged from 30 to 80, were arrested in the midst of what was billed as a championship between insects from Hong Kong, nearby Macau and Guangzhou in neighbouring China.

Police said the men were not thought to have links with organised criminals, called triads here.

Officers seized nearly 200 crickets, 8,000 Hong Kong dollars (1,026 US dollars) and gambling paraphernalia, including small baskets that were used to house the insects and bamboo sticks used to agitate them.

Cricket fighting can be traced back to the Tang dynasty of 618-907 and had long been confined to aristocrats, senior officials and wealthy merchants. Winning brought honour while losing meant shame, according to the South China Morning Post.

Traders of the battling insects hunt out the fiercest crickets and devote many hours training them, the Post said. A champion cricket can cost up to 20,000 yuan (2,600 US dollars) each, it said.

While the prize money for cricket-fighting rarely exceeds a couple of thousand dollars, winners of fights between dogs can scoop up to a million dollars, according to the Chinese-language Sun newspaper.

Summer

I have been swamped with work recently - which explains the sparse amount of posts. And by work I mean besides meaningful work with decent bylines, they dump crappy stuff on me as well. I swear it's because I'm a temp that's why they think they can get away with it. But being junior in that convoluted chain of newsroom hierarchies, i guess they do get away with it.

Last night I went out with Q and am beginning to really appreciate his presence in the newsroom. There's just so many things behind the scenes that happen but you never fully realise until someone alerts you to it. We went to this nice chilled out place that has a band playing smooth jazz. It was fantastic. It's hidden in this stretch behind the main boat quay stretch of pubs, running parallel to it. So it wasn't too crowded, we had nice chairs, had couple of drinks and listened to the music and talked about life. The band who was playing, you would never have imagined they played good music if you met them randomly on the street. Actually, they look like computer science geeks - some slightly plump, most bespectacled, square dressing... and then the singer sang - and you would never have matched his face to his voice. true blue blues band.. which is the true beauty of music, i reckon. All that beauty is internal.

S called up later and after Q went home, me and S spontaneously decided to go to another bar called post bar at fullerton hotel... the atmosphere is pretty nice and we had free champagne coz S knew the manager. After getting rather woozy, we proceeded for some bar top dancing at bq. S goes mental when he starts dancing - actually, not really mental - I think the right word is CAMP. He perched atop the bars dancing with his pinkie sticking out and left hand at a 90 degrees angle. He was attracting so much attention that all the blokes in the bar (mostly foreign men) were all staring at him. Even I felt slightly jealous. And the sad thing is they were all hetrosexual men... even S. Sigh.

So much for not going out on friday night... was hoping to lie it low for a bit so I can properly party tonight but it seems like i'm gonna have to do that two nights in a row. I get so tired easily now! It must be age getting to me.... or the stress of work. Speaking of which, I got a taste of proper wall street this week. I sat in for this session between bankers/investors/financial advisors and besides being thoroughly bored about them bantering on bonds and asset management, I couldn't help but recall Herman Melville's Bartleby - these people sat around talking about money, oil prices and the wealth of the future - oblivious to the more urgent matters of life. Their conversation struck me completely false - dead as the portrayal of Melville's 19th century new york's wall street. It seems we've come so far in time, yet that same atmospheric staleness of the financial world hasn't changed regardless of time and location. I thought about my arty conversations with friends about life, while lounging on the fields on grass in the park, looking up to the big blue sky and contemplating the complexities of this world - how different and inconsequential the previous conversation seems in comparison. But isn't the stock exchange what keeps the world going, jobs coming, and provides families with food to eat? To be fair, that commercial part of life has its own excitement. And without such dry affairs, I think the arty conversations and contemplations that we have wouldn't seem as wonderful. It's like the knowledge of good and evil - we can't fanthom what good is, unless evil is there for us as a basis of comparison.

Summer is happening so fast it almost eludes me. I wish I was back in england to appreciate that only time of the year english weather isn't gloomy. (actually, many people will disagree that summer isn't gloomy in england) But at the same time, I am having quite a blast anyway.
On a completely separate note, English premiership starts today... yay! The only damper is Owen has moved to Real.. and we didn't get Morientes. bummer. but i'm sure this season promises to be a good one...

National Day

Every year, on this day, someone always tells me that going for the National Day Parade is something you have to do once in your life.
But I have yet again settled for the comforts of my sofa, viewing the spectacle from my good ol' telly. When our annual fireworks came on display, my brothers rushed to our balcony to watch the colourful lights emerge from a distance. As we live rather far from the stadium, the lights weren't as dazzling as they should be. so i settled back on the sofa to watch the telecast instead of standing outside with my brothers. I mused about how fireworks are banned in the country, like chewing gum. It takes stupid people to abuse things like that... it's quite sad how we've got to resort to laws to get things under control. on the other hand, i recall with amusement how on the first Guy Fawkes day i spent in england, a bunch of us went to the huge cryfield field on campus and lit fireworks on our own - and the guys, being rather incompetent, didn't stick the firework in the ground quite as firmly as they should have, and it went off with fire ambers shooting in like a million directions towards the screaming girls who dispersed like frantic ants. i remember it narrowly missing me on the right side - a little bit more and i would have been burnt. so maybe banning fireworks from incompetent people aint such a bad idea after all.

After the fireworks, the annual patriotic singing would commence. Songs ingrained in us during our primary school days suddenly surfaced and I was immensely surprised by the extent of how well I could remember the cheesy lyrics. At this moment in every year, I would cringe in my seat for the load of bull we profess to sing - but somehow this year, it felt a bit different. maybe it's because my youngest brother, having now reached the age of primary one, had been taught the cheesy songs like This is Home and as all younger children display unfanthomable amounts of enthusiasm, started belting out the song at full volume. rather unashamed, and rather enjoying it, actually. my other brother, who is older at 17, but younger than me... moved by the spirit of my youngest brother, started following suit and sang along while fully grinning like an idiot. faced with the pressure from my brothers, I hesitantly began to sing too. I got rather embarrassed after awhile, though. and promptly shut up.. while the other two went on. my youngest bro, with his angelic, young soprano-boy voice, sang till the very last high note - holding it tremulously and with pride. For an instant, i actually felt vaguely patriotic towards my home country. To sum it up, this is after all, my home. Even when I have felt I don't belong, it's a place where I've grown up, like it or not.

2004 seems strangely to be the marking of an era, a moment in history of transition.
Our prime minister's step down from 14 years of office is just one of the events that have marked this year. When the parade paid a tribute to him, as he smiled benelovently at the crowd, waving his palm and gradually walking his way out of the stadium, the ever-skeptic-towards-politicians me even felt a tug at my heart-strings and felt a sense of sadness of his passing the reign of leadership of our country.

2004:
1. I turn 21.
2. PM steps down after 14 years to make way for the new leadership.
3. Grandfather of my friend's, Lien YC, also an important national figure, passed away - supposedly "marking the end of an era" - the legend story of a man coming to Nanyang and making it from rags to riches.
4. Change of America's president (possible)
5. End of 10 seasons-long Friends plus much-loved-and-hated SATC.
5. many deaths.

In the short span of the last two weeks, many friends and relatives of friends have passed on this world - which makes me wonder if the myth of the seventh month holds any truth. there's a chinese myth at in the seventh month of the chinese calendar, the ghosts and spirits are released from the other world. and it's called the hungry ghosts festival. people make offerings to appease the spirits and there are some who actually see them during this month. i know such facts can't be proven - but statistics have actually shown an increase in number of deaths in the seventh month. i shall take it upon myself to find the truth of that statistic when i'm in the office tomorrow, and have resources at hand.

For the meantime, this is my little contribution on national day.
Happy 39th Birthday.

21 years, 3 days, 1 hour and counting...

...If there was one thing surrounding my coming of age to the official adult age of 21, it is the uncanny awareness that I'm alive.

I was trying to avoid doing a turned-21 philosophical rant... and after pondering very hard about it, I decided silence is golden and I wouldn't write anything about it. Until now.
sometimes events just happen to jolt you out of a reverie and you lapse into what I call a supreme awareness state - of being acutely aware of the significance of events, life and people around you. and how fragile and vulnerable anything can be.

I struggle with my thoughts. There are some things you just cannot articulate - especially not to the common public. Yet, there are thoughts you want to share - convoluted thoughts that swirl in a conscious mass of nerves - and sometimes you're not even entirely sure what they are.

I've had a roller-coaster of a week and things have happened that I will never again forget in my entire lifetime. The vividness of a fear, the aftermath of its relief, the prolonged agony of possibilities... And after it all, you wonder if you were over-reacting. But the reality of the possible truth that presented itself to you in that moment in time registered too scary a scale... and it comes back to you in fragments. scraps of memory extracted from an unwritten book.
I hope I never lose that book which is mine. secrets known only to me.

Amidst these thoughts, which I desire to pen, but am too afraid to, or find it too difficult to, a death surfaces that puts things in perspective.
childish rants, frivolous desires, worldly success, status quos... what really matters in the face of death?
even that which I feared... shouldn't I have considered myself lucky I could even be alive?
In the words of Shakespeare, death is the greatest leveller.
What plagues the lowest being so plagues the highest. there is no exception.
When does living with a difficulty become worse than not being able to live at all?

My heart goes out to the friend whose brother just died in a motorcycle accident. When one moment ago, you believed life was perfect...or at least alright, news that makes the moment not so is never easy to bear. I understand perfectly the emotion. And nothing we do or say will be able to share the burden of the pain - but we can silently be there. rallying behind the unsaid words of comfort. for whenever you need it. And only time will ease the burden - to see light where before it was dark.

This is when life gets serious - and frivolity finds its shame and takes its rightful place in your walk of life.
No amount of clubs, alcohol, drugs or mushrooms can mask you from the truth any longer.