Singaporeans need a sense of humour

Here's a joke I heard while I was on exercise. For buddhists you have buddhism. For hindus you have hinduism. For taoists you have taoism. for rainbows you have... rainbowism!

I think some of you might be thinking "Um where's the joke?". You know, I think that was precisely the joke. Because after that the major just laughed his head off like it was the funniest joke in the world! I laughed too, but not because of the joke. I was laughing because of the sight of the staff sargeant trying to laugh along and failing miserably because the joke was just anything but funny.

I think its great that people working still try to be humourous, because they can hardly be said to have a sense of humour. But trying too hard is just sad. It shows that the person has totally lost track of what humour is, which also shows how out of touch the person is with people who actually have a sense of humour.

Onto my topic about people who have lost a sense of humour, I guess I can say half of the fans watching the current season of Singapore Idol don't have it. Why get so worked up over the current season? I mean it doesn't matter if the best singers get voted off. I mean it. Look at last season's winner, Mr. Taufik. What does he do now? Sing? Oh defintely not. The last time you saw him on TV he was probably plugging a 7-Eleven drink.



Oh yeah. I love 7-Eleven. Don't you love it too?

Which brings me back to my current point. Why are all you Idol fans getting into a twist just because of a certain Joakim who you think can't sing? For one I think he'll be much better at selling 7-Eleven than Taufik. That's what the Idol is for man. Selling 7-Eleven.

You really think Singapore Idol is for finding good singers? How stupid are you? If that were the case people would only be allowed to vote once per telephone number. The truth, which I'm afraid some people can't handle, is the whole competition is a popularity contest rigged to earn the most money possible for Singtel and 7-Eleven. Please. Open your eyes and use your brains. Stop voting for the singers. They aren't the people 7-Eleven are looking for. Singtel has already made sure of that. Your good singers would probably be much better striking out on their own now that the fake singing competition has given them a higher profile.

And you know how they tell you that you should vote more for your idols? That's all a Singtel conspiracy man. Its precisely the thing that's keeping Joakim in the competition and Mathilda out, while raking in huge bucks for Singtel. Let me enlighten you on how it works. By asking you to vote more, the one Mathilda fan will vote 150% more, but the 10 rabid Joakim fans thinking that their idol is in trouble will vote 200% more. Who wins? Singtel. And then they do it again till everyone's out of idols to vote for and Joakim's fans are out of moolah.

Next... they will then produce an album for Joakim, for which all these rabid fans will sell their accessories and work part-time to pay for. Who wins? Ken Lim. Nevermind that he "hates" Joakim's singing. Deep down he knows that the rabid girl-fans of Joakim will ensure that he laughs all the way to the bank. Nevermind the bad singing. Half the singers out there can't sing anyway. You just need a pretty face that cons little teen girls into thinking they have a chance with you and they will break the banks and overcome all odds come what may to make sure you will win Idol just so that you can sell more records, and make more money at their expense.

It rocks to be Joakim Gomez man. Just pity those stupid little girls.

Critical Cubism #6

It sucks to fail on a technicality. How is a person who runs one second slower, or jumps one cm less any less fit then someone who passes right on the dot? I know there needs to be a cutoff somewhere but try explaining that to the guy who jumped 215cm.

Critical Cubism #5

With all the spoonfeeding the government heaps on us I think we've forgotten how to live our lives. As much as the government means good, I think too much spoonfeeding actually dulls our drive and makes us mindless drones. Maybe we were better off as a people 40 years back when we actually had to fight for survival day to day.

But I'd rather live in now. I'm a pampered citizen.

The life of a system administrator.

The life of a system administrator is something like that of those people at information counters in shopping centres. You seldom have to do anything other than answer stupid questions and entertain their even stupider requests.

Q: Eh, where's the toilet ar?
A: You got two eyes right? See the sign?

And when there is actually work to do, its usually quite serious, like when somebody goes missing, or in my case, when someone kicks the server over and effectively disables the WHOLE network.

You think that's nothing? Not when you're supporting like 60 computers on exercise and suddenly 60 angry and sleep deprived men want to know at once why their work has disappeared. Its like a scene from Night of the Living Dead, but with bad breath.

Like I said the requests are usually stupid. I was holidaying in dreamland when a warrant officer suddenly walked up from behind me and tapped my shoulder. As it is after all the seventh lunar month, I wasn't exactly composed. But I tried my best to look the attentive soldier as he related his request. Quite futile since he already saw me sleeping and my forehead had a red bump from sleeping too long on it.

"Eh my laptop hang leh. How ah?"

Oh, you take the laptop, smash it against the wall and get a new one. Alternatively you could try waiting for it to recover. It might actually decide that hanging is pretty boring and come back into action.

Of course I couldn't tell him that. But somehow there's no way to tell him that he only needs to push a button without making him sound dumb. I think he's pretty used to it anyway being a warrant officer but still its not very nice. He's after all an old man and I've been taught to respect old men. If only for their age.

But that wasn't the stupidest request. The stupidest one came from of all people, a commissioned officer.

"Hey, I can't see any email from other people. Is there something wrong with my mailbox?"

We thought it sounded serious, so we went down to check. Guess what the problem was?

No one had sent him any email. Of course he hadn't received any email and hence, he couldn't see anything. D'oh!

Stupidity should be outlawed.

Critical Cubism #4

7 hours of sleep in the army is a farce. They shouldn't even bother asking this question. It doesn't mean anything even if you say no anyway. You still have to go for your runs.

Critical Cubism #3

Wait to rush, rush to wait. A classic demonstration of why so much time is wasted while you're in the green.

The Yellow Ribbon campaign

Ribbon campaigns are pretty useless. Low on significance and people think that just wearing the ribbon equates to supporting the campaign. Well, supporting it in name but not in spirit. Kind of like the four million smiles campaign. Or the less oil in your hawker food campaign. Or the Speak Good English campaign. So on and so forth.

Many of us are probably familiar with the green ribbon. Every year it is sucked into the black hole within our schoolbags, never to see the light of day until the next one comes the next year to join its predecessor.

I have a suggestion, and that is to save the environment by NOT making these ribbons because they are really just a waste of cloth and money. The environment's already in its death throes, we don't have to plunge another dagger in its back for stupid meaningless ribbons.

But today my main beef is with the yellow ribbon. For those who didn't even bother to find out what these mean, the yellow ribbon represents giving prison offenders a second chance in society. As much as I believe in this campaign, 1% out of 4 million people does not spell good news for those affected.

For most people in society, once someone goes to prison its as good as the person having stepped into another dimension, gone to planet Sartus XII, and forever erased from society and normal social interactions. When they actually return, they are infested with Sars and cannot be associated with. What are their chances of getting a job, or anywhere near another human being for that matter?

Need more evidence? Despite the presence of the yellow ribbon, NSFs who are unlucky enough to end up in DB (military prison) for more than 14 days still cannot enter university. Any NSF will tell you that its actually quite easy to end up in DB. Just tell your commander what you really think of him. Just joking.

I'm also pretty sure that the policeman on TV telling us to give prison offenders a second chance wouldn't hesitate to disagree to that very same offender being his colleague. If even the people telling us to trust these people don't trust them, how can they expect us to do so?

I really think that offenders of minor crimes, like petty thefts, that have not relapsed for a long period of time upon release should have their slates wiped clean. After all you have no idea what it feels like to be cured of Sars. In addition it would give the yellow ribbon more significance.

Inadvertently, the moralistic types will tell me that such people can never be trusted. In that case, don't let me see you wearing a yellow ribbon. I will wring that ribbon around your furry weasel neck.