Validation

Because everyone deserves to be validated. If you have 15 minutes to spare, do watch this.

About the movie:

"Validation" is a fable about the magic of free parking. Starring TJ Thyne & Vicki Davis. Writer/Director/Composer - Kurt Kuenne. Winner - Best Narrative Short, Cleveland Int'l Film Festival, Winner - Jury Award, Gen Art Chicago Film Festival, Winner - Audience Award, Hawaii Int'l Film Festival, Winner - Best Short Comedy, Breckenridge Festival of Film, Winner - Crystal Heart Award, Best Short Film & Audience Award, Heartland Film Festival, Winner - Christopher & Dana Reeve Audience Award, Williamstown Film Festival, Winner - Best Comedy, Dam Short Film Festival, Winner - Best Short Film, Sedona Int'l Film Festival.

Santa Claus like you never knew him before.

According to folklore, Santa Claus is an fat old man wearing red robes. He delivers presents to children on his sleigh pulled by eight or nine reindeer, of which one is known as Rudolph. He makes a list of who's naughty or nice, and every year he flies around on his magic sleigh on Christmas Eve, and slides down chimneys to deliver presents.

People say that Santa is a myth. Well, the real myth is probably that children can be good for an entire year. Kids are the brattiest little shits ever. And all they have to do is one little bad thing, and they're out for the year. As a result, Santa has been delivering so few presents, people think he doesn't exist.

Anyway, let me tell you the story of Santa Claus. A long time ago, Santa Claus was an old man who liked little kids. He liked them very much, but he couldn't find a way to make them like him back. He realised that the only way for him to get close to them little kids was to give them presents. But, he couldn't give them presents for no reason because their parents would get suspicious.

Hence, he came up with the idea of giving them presents on Christmas eve. However, there were too many kids around. Santa didn't have enough money to give them all presents, because all he did was observe little kids. In indulging in his little hobby, he had forgotten to get a real job.

So Santa had to carefully choose the kids, and he came up with a naughty or nice list. He reasoned that since kids were so naughty, only a few of them would be able to stay good the whole year.

However, watching so many kids was a mammoth undertaking that overwhelmed even the likes of Santa. Hence, he went to the market to buy a few reindeer, a sleigh, a set of red robes and a copy of the Communist Manifesto. Next, he travelled to Lapland, told the elves communism was the way to go, and enslaved their whole race, even as they believed they were destined for a better life. He then got them to do the watching for him.

Now, you might argue that elves don't exist. Actually, they do but the reason why nobody's ever seen the elves is, according to Harry Potter, elves are able to apparate. Apparently, they also have very good eyesight, as I ascertain from Lord of the Rings. With skills like that, is it any wonder no one's ever seen them at work? Furthermore, Santa put them through rigorous training, feeding the lousy ones to Rudolph. The song "Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer" was really an attempt to put a positive spin on what was otherwise a rather icky situation.

With all that settled, all Santa had left to do was to deliver his presents. There weren't that many to deliver anyway, because good kids aren't exactly common. However, at night people lock their front doors. Hence the only way into the house was through the chimney.

What about homes that don't have chimneys, you might ask. Well, such modern housing is usually associated with capitalist bourgeoisie nations and all members of such nations are capitalist pigs and automatically excluded from the nice list. So says Santa, quoting from the Communist Manifesto.

Anyway, back to the main story, once Santa was in the house, getting out wasn't a problem, because all he had to do was open the front door. That makes Santa no different from an average burglar, but Santa really just wants to make friends. With your kid that is.

Now, do you really want Santa to visit? Thought so.

Fuck you Lions, I'm not watching another match until you show me you really deserve your fans.

On a day courage, tenacity and passion were needed, 11 men decided it was better to become wusses and pussies. And of all the places to do it, they chose the National Stadium. In front of a home crowd who had put everything aside to show them we cared, they showed us why we lost our faith in the national team in the first place.

The best part was, before the match, the same bunch of bloody PEACOCKS were crowing and saying they would score many goals against the Vietnamese, or show them what Singapore was about. FUCKING RAISE MY HOPES.

Well they got part of it right at least. They showed the world what Singapore's football team is about. A bunch of CHOKERS, who only do well when nobody expects them to. Every time they call the fans to support them at the National Stadium, they FUCKING CHOKE.

EVEN MY KITCHEN SINK IS NOT THAT RELIABLE.

I am not wasting another dollar, or another minute of my time supporting this bunch of jokers. This is just a massive OWN GOAL, and a slap in the face of every person who calls himself a Lions supporter. It wouldn't be so bad if they actually tried, but why do I get the impression they were too arrogant and self-confident to really scrap for a win?

Gosh, I am just so disgusted and disappointed.

On a sidenote, the referee is from Malaysia. Dammit Mahathir, I know you had something to do with this.

WKWSCI should find a new home.

After spending a year in NTU, I think it is becoming plainly evident that WKWSCI is really in the wrong host university. We are a communication school in the middle of a behemoth of an engineering institution that neither understands what we do, or our motivations for doing what we do. As a result, support for our institution is hardly forthcoming.

I've really grown sick of watching how NTU is launching new ventures all the time, and somehow they are always related to engineering or economics. They throw millions at these ventures, but when WKWSCI asks for funding, we really have to make a case for it.

When NTU invites guest speakers, they are always esteemed professors of engineering colleges or in the sciences. I'm not going to argue about how they don't bring in communication scholars. They don't even bring in anybody from the humanities side of the educational spectrum, except when that person happens to major in economics.

You know what's WKWSCI's biggest contribution to NTU this year? Having a Miss Singapore World in our very own school. Yes, of all things we are known for having pretty students. I'm not saying that I'm not proud of such a fact, in fact it is a bonus because I'm male, but really, it is hardly something that defines us as a school. It's more like a lottery, and next year the Miss Singapore World could very well come from NUS or SMU.

The most laughable part was how quick NTU was in capitalising on the glory. Tell me in what way did NTU contribute to Ms Faraliza Tan's campaign? Did they sponsor her makeup? Did they teach her how to present herself? Did they even know she was in the competition? If anything, it was WKWSCI who did all the support work. Certainly not NTU. But guess what? The news appears big and bold on NTU's website like she was sent as NTU's champion. I guess that's what they call the world loves you when you're winning.

Even when we're applying for INSTEP or opportunities aboard for exchanges, WKWSCI is very much on its own. Look at the number and quality of colleges offered for engineering students and business students, and contrast those with the ones offered for communication students. Very often, in many countries, the universities offered are engineering colleges like NTU who just happen to have communication departments. Tell me, why would I want to go on exchange just to end up in NTU II? I hardly see places being offered for communication students for exchanges in prominent universities of communication studies.

But the saddest part of it all is the lack of support for our peripheral contributions to the school. Look at our Radio Fusion booth. In any other school, such a venture would certainly be given more respect, at least the respect it deserves. Instead, it is shunted to the least popular canteen and given minimal coverage so the DJs inside can remain an interesting oddity, like goldfish in a goldfish tank, misunderstood and largely ignored. Is it really so difficult to put the booth at Canteen A instead? And is it really so difficult to broadcast its programmes campuswide?

The real reason is, NTU really cannot be bothered to do so because it doesn't see the importance of giving our radio division more coverage. It doesn't understand our motivations. It's just like Spectrum TV, but don't get me started.

As for Chronicle, its all and good that we have a newspaper that is at least acknowledged as a welcome addition to the school. But the fact that the newspaper hasn't diversified and still remains very much the same after more than 10 years really says a lot about the straitjacket environment it operates in. Our content is censored, and our creativity in taking the newspaper forward is stifled by unseen greater powers.

What I see in Chronicle is an attempt to fuse the Straits Times and the New Paper into an acceptable broadsheet for NTU, with neither the depth of the Straits Times in its engagement of campus issues, or the ability to grab readers' attention like the New Paper does. As a result, it is really at best, mediocre. It may be the best campus newspaper in Singapore, but I just have to go online and I can find campus newspapers that would put Chronicle to shame. Just because we're the best doesnt mean we stop trying to improve, but how can we do that if we're expected to operate in the same way year after year?

WKWSCI should never have been allowed to leave NUS. Even if so, definitely not for making up a certain technological university's gender imbalances. I hope someday, WKWSCI will finally be relocated into another institution, because NTU is hardly good enough for WKWSCI.

sofarkingawesome.

Is it me or are the holidays actually really darned boring. I'm going to say it right here. The holidays are damn boring. It's probably something nobody wants to admit to because before the holidays they've been wishing it couldn't come sooner. But now that it has come, it is actually very boring.

I think its because I belong to a deviant species. The fun is actually not fun because it is now legalised. Darn it. I'm free to slack? Holy shit. Where's the fun in that? I want you to tell me I actually have work to do so that when I slack it feels guiltier and ten thousand times more exciting. Guilty pleasures ftw. I think that might be why I pile myself up with work during schooldays so that when I slack its almost orgasmic. Farking awesome!

And its not as though I have nothing to do. I have a list of 10 things I'm supposed to do, and I always do the 11th thing that is not on the list. Someday I should actually make a list of 10 things I shouldn't be doing, so that I might actually clear a list for once. Maybe, if I ever make it to item 5 on a normal list, I should slap myself on the back and strut around like a rooster.

Oh what the hell. I've got my keys right here. Gonna take myself out for a walk, just like how I walk a dog.

All you people are so damned right. Amazing.

You know how people always go like "The world is full of bad people, you should watch out or you'll get into trouble."

Well, I'm going to say, wow, you're so damned right! The world is full of bad people. They wake up every morning and the first thing they think about is, I am going to take all your bloody lives because I am miserable and misery loves company. I will bomb you all because I know nothing about sustaining the economy and I'm afraid that if you let me try, you'll find out.

Did I forget to mention that some foreign workers pissed in the void deck again. Damn it. Bad people who my grandparents always used to say kidnap innocent children. Actually it is my neighbour's dog that did it but I'll blame them because its the Singaporean thing to do.

There are also the people who go "Well there are good people in the world too."

I'm going to say the same thing again. You're so damned right! When you least expect it, that punk on the MRT with the mp3 player plugged into his ears pretending to sleep will give up his seat to you. Even if its only because he's reached his stop. Hey, a seat is a seat, and its equally valuable to anybody if given regardless of intent.

Basically, I feel people believe what they want to believe about the world. The world is too many things, and each person sees what they want to see. The cynics are unable to face reality, the optimists choose the version of reality most palatable to them, and the realists are too busy getting on with life to give a shit.

And really, everyone just wants to know that they are right. When you make people think they're smart, they think you're smart too, and everyone walks off with a smug grin on their faces thinking yes I'm smarter than that guy I just talked to.

So, what are you waiting for? Starting from today, go tell everyone "You're so damned right!"

Gosh I've forgotten what makes me feel alive.

Sitting in a chair playing games and watching shows all day does not a life make. It makes one feel lazy, uninspired, and worst of all, the days start to pass a little too fast, and they all don't look any different from one another.

I just knew I had to stop when my mom asked me whether I'd be having dinner at home tomorrow and I was like "Is it Tuesday tomorrow? Or Wednesday?"

"It's Saturday."

Oh my farking crudmegeons its Saturday again? Wasn't it just Saturday yesterday? That was when I realised that I'd better get some semblance of order back into my life. In the last two weeks I've been a great conqueror of virtual armies and I have experienced the lives of many different people around the world through various reality shows and dramas, trying to escape the dystopian drudgery that is my life. But as it is with any dream, the waking up's the hardest part.

So it all started with a run. It started pretty well, but 1km into it I was starting to see stars and feel faint. I actually started feeling angry with myself because I'm just 20ish and only wusses that age run 1km and feel like dying. But I pressed on, largely because I had run 1km into nowhere and even if I wanted to quit now, I had 1km to go.

At the end of that run, I felt brilliant because I just made myself do something so unpleasant. After 2 straight weeks of not being able to get up before noon, just doing that gave me immense pride.

So it continued the next day. Despite the pain and everything, nothing makes you feel better than a run sometimes. And now I'm actually addicted to it. Everyday I feel the itch to run, although I know I will hate myself for it till the very last step.

Like a normal human being, I feel the dread before every run, knowing I will not enjoy it, but yet I have to do it because some weird force from within compels me to run so I can purge all the last remnants of my sloth and laziness.

Okay, actually I'm just bullshitting. My IPPT's next month. That weird force is actually the fear of remedial trainings.

Bombay gets bombed.

Sometimes, the manner in which you die defines your life as a human being. The Mumbai bombings a few days back showed how. There was a Singaporean victim, but the real tragedy isn't just the fact that she died in the bombing. The real tragedy is the fact that her death has come to symbolise everything she never wanted it to be.

I'm sure nobody wants to be stuck with the tag of "Singapore's first terror victim". What's the problem with that? Well, nothing. I guess it's only the fact that everything you were before, a promising lawyer, a people person, becomes overshadowed by the manner by which you died. You become the property of the nation, free for the government to use whenever they need an example in a social studies textbook, about how Singapore has been affected by crazy extremists with a penchant for dried fruit and tossing pineapples.

But in a morbid sense, she is lucky. She's not one of the many Indians who died in the disaster, so numerous in number they become a statistic. While she gets full length reports devoted to her in the paper, the hundred or so Indians who died together have to be satisfied with paragraphs in the same report mentioning how hundreds of locals were also killed in the attack. It's so unfair its funny.

These numerous indians died in a most appaling way. They died faceless, nameless, and in most cases, already forgotten to the world, what they stood for, what they did, who they were. They are special only to their families, who were the very same people robbed of them. It's almost as though Indians are destined to become a statistic when killed, because when something happens, chances are they are one of the hundreds or thousands who were affected. Its the old newsroom joke. When 5 people die in India, its not news. Call back when its 500. And even then, I can only spare you a small column beside the ad for cereal and bar soap.

In my honest opinion, this bombing only gets so much attention because Mumbai isn't a place normally associated with terrorism. In the Middle East where so many die everyday from suicide bombings and the like, well, who really cares. In fact, I'll even sell you weapons so you can go on killing yourselves. It's a win-win situation. I have weapons, you have oil money, there are many infidels to kill, and you won't eat my pork.

The day no one in the Middle East dies from some violent cause or another is the day China's food is clean, and the day I strike lottery. Wait, let me correct that. I will probably strike lottery first. Then the Middle East conflict will end when the place runs out of oil. When they no longer have oil money, they will grow some brains.

As for food, it's just better to pay more to make sure what you eat isn't from China. I've a hunch they're tainting food as a means of population control, just that they will never admit it.