What Singaporeans think of the NDP Funpack.

Overheard on RazorTV

Girl: It's not bad, quite innovative, very constructive.
Journ: Would you buy this?
Girl: What's the price? Depends on the price.
Journ: What do you think would be a relatively okay price?
Girl: Five dollars?
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Doctor: Looks like a Crumpler bag huh. It's more interesting than the previous bags, which is just a plastic bag, or just a drawstring. In fact, it looks like its quite sturdy.
Journ: So what do you think of the design?
Doctor: I wouldn't use it uh, but maybe more useful for the girls.

Well sorry to disappoint you Mr Doctor, but I think we've already established that even the girls don't want it.

I don't mind having a funpack, but I wish they would take all the sponsors off the main flap. The list of sponsors makes the funpack something you can carry around in NDP season, but after that the bag is quickly consigned to the area of your storeroom that never sees daylight.

Perks.

Was at Park Mall yesterday covering CAC camp for chron, and they happened to be having dinner at Kublai Khan.

Me: Hi, I'm from Chron, you want to get the interview started?
CAC guy: Sure, you want any drinks?
Me: Just a coke will be fine.

Whoosh. Before I knew it, one of his guys had got me a coke. We found a table and settled for the interview.

CAC guy: Have you had dinner?
Me: No, not really.
CAC guy: Dude help yourself! Eat as much as you want!

I was like SERIOUSLY! I think at that point I died and went to heaven.

I'm pretty sure that a free buffet dinner was not in the job description anywhere, but you don't question life when good stuff lands in your lap.

The happiness principle.

Humans are motivated by the need for happiness. Everything in life is geared towards making ourselves comfortable and happy. Unfortunately, we have neuroses that tell us that making ourselves happy in the short term while not working towards our long term goals will make us unhappy in the long term, and so when there is this cognitive dissonance, we become unhappy.

Let's take a typical situation. I have work to do, and I have an episode of a show I want to watch. Watching the show will make me happy now, and doing work will make me happy only after I've finished it because doing work is inherently unpleasant. After all, work is a bad word. It has 4 letters.

No prizes for guessing what we eventually end up doing. We choose instant gratification over the delayed one, because we only want to be happy, and we want it now. And after that, we let guilt take over us and we feel like shit.

And despite knowing this, this pattern will repeat again and again in our lives, simply because when faced with a situation like this, we will choose the path that promises the quickest path to happiness.

But we don't realise something. It doesn't mean that just because we do work, we will definitely feel happy in the long term. Life does not happen that way. What happens is, when you do work, you will find out that there is more work. Work gives birth to work. So you end up doing more and more work, and you stay unhappy. You might feel a small pinch of gratification that you made yourself do something so difficult, but how long does that high last? About as long as the high you get from watching that show. But on top of that, you've already endured maybe one hour of pure shit.

Let me illustrate what has just happened with a mathematical equation.

I watch show = 1 hour of bliss followed by one hour of unhappiness. Then you have to do work.
I do work = 1 hour of unhappiness followed by one hour of bliss. Then you still have to do work, because work never ends.

In addition, life is unfair. Here's another demonstration of how life works.

I watch show = 1 hour of bliss, then shit happens
I do work = 1 hour of shit, then more shit happens

What's the difference? The difference is, by not taking the route to happiness when it was readily apparent, you have just allowed life to sucker punch you and now any chance of happiness you might have had for the day has been taken away.

I watched a video a few days back of gal-sa girls in Japan, girls with bleached hair and fake tans who do nothing but dance para-para all day long and hang out. Normally, you would think that these girls are headed for disaster because they are not studying or working to give themslves an edge in the future in the job market.

But the thing is, these girls are a lot happier with life than we'll ever be, because they are having the time of their lives hanging out with their best friends dancing para-para. Even if their lives are shit in the future, they can say they truly lived once, and I have nothing to say to that, because they really did. I actually found myself turning green with envy, because I would give an arm and a leg to just take off for a few years with a bunch of good buddies and live life.

And who is to say that the lives of these girls will be shit in the future? Maybe they might end up as dance instructors teaching para para and earn a comfortable salary. They will end up doing what they love, and continue living a happy life.

If I were to look back at my own life, all I can say is, I studied for 20 plus years and after that I worked my ass off for the rest of it. How is it that a bunch of para-para girls have a better quality of life than I do.

I find that when we look at people, what we envy is the level of happiness we perceive them to have. This is why we envy people with happy families, people who do what they love, people who are in love, people who are rich and hence supposedly able to live more comfortable, fulfilling and happier lives, and people who have nothing but are happy anyway.

The last category never fails to inspire me, because there are truly people with nothing who are happy despite having nothing, because they are happy just to live. And these people are often generous, sharing whatever they have, even if it is next to nothing. They give because it makes them even happier. The truth is, everyone has lives that are shit at some point. It doesn't mean that just because you're rich your life is always happy. It doesn't mean that just because you have a happy family you don't fight behind closed doors.

Take happiness when you can. Watch that show. Learn something you've always wanted to. Take that holiday you've been itching to take. I'm not promoting laziness or procrastination here. I am promoting happiness, although you will probably say I am encouraging you to slack.

But I don't care. Happiness is not a right, it's a privilege. And when you can, do that little bit to make someone else's life better. Because happiness is not a zero sum equation. You can never have enough of it, and more is always better.

The winds of change.

Entering Year 3, it occurs to me more than ever that I need to know what I am working towards. I realise that the hard work has to begin now.

Most of us are used to being educated in a spoonfeeding culture, and the nature of a communications degree probably has some of us floundering. It is very much a hands on education. We complain, but that is often because it is too easy to do so. We choose to blind ourselves to the vast and prohibitively expensive resources that the school has placed at our disposal, simply because it is easier to pretend we don't know about them, so we don't have to do anything but whine about how the school makes them inaccessible to us.

The thing is, if there is a problem, and you complain about it but you do not lift a single finger to alleviate it, you are part of that problem. And perhaps, you are the problem. An impetus for change will remain an impetus, unless you are willing to roll up your sleeves and start doing the dirty work. Often, we idealise. We see the endpoint, and we see the present situation, and we think that it's a bridge too far. But a bridge spanning a river is not built instantly. It is built plank by plank, nail by nail, in small discrete steps. And these small discrete steps are the ones that really matter. Each step in itself is so small as to be insignificant, but all these steps taken together, and the time and effort invested into them, they eventually form the bridge that joins the problem and its resolution.

The first step is the most difficult, because even at its end, the resolution looks no nearer. But it is. It is nearer, because now you have one plank spanning the chasm where you didn't have one before. And you add a second. And a third after that, till you see the bridge.

It is too easy to blame being spoonfed as the cause of our malaise. Perhaps we are lazy. But we are only as lazy as we allow ourselves to be. And it is easy to stop being lazy. It begins with taking a little more initiative right now.

You might wonder why I have suddenly started to write a self help column. This self help column certainly isn't funny, and I think most self-help books are written to give people short bursts of optimism because they are too lazy to actually make the changes that matter. In other words, I think they are a waste of your money, because the truth is, you are actually too lazy to help yourself.

If people were willing to make the changes that matter, they wouldn't just buy and read a self help book. They would buy ten self help books. They would alter their entire lifestyle, to make sure they got the most benefit out of the books. And they would zealously stick to that routine till it became second nature.

How many of us want to lose weight that bad? How many of us have someone we want to impress that bad? Probably none. We are motivated till the next time we see cheesecake and ice cream and we melt. Humans are not made to be zealots. To be a zealot, you must be more than a little mad. Voldemort is mad. Madonna is Mad, and that's not only because she's hooking up with Jesus. As for me, I eat cheesecake and ice cream.

Okay, the real reason I have written this piece is, I want opinions on how WKWSCI can be improved. I am not stupid enough to believe the school will ever be perfect, but I'm not cynical enough to believe the school cannot be improved either. I have always professed to be a realist, and it's probably because I believe problems are best solved instead of bitching about them.

I have opinions on how this school can be improved, and I think they should be raised to the management of the school. I don't believe the management doesn't want to help. There are individuals working in the school that are committed to helping students. However, because they are not students themselves, they cannot see the issues that really affect us. And it is up to us to help them, or sit by the side whining.

I do not advocate that, because this is my education I am talking about, and I do not want to be the product of an educational experience I could have improved for myself but chose to be lazy and graduate disillusioned. I think most of us would agree.

Some of the changes I would propose are

1) Students being able to make requests for modules that they would be interested in. I don't just mean being able to apply for places in modules already present. I think students should actually be able to band together and request modules that they think are relevant to the education of communication students, and suggest to the school admin that lecturers with the relevant expertise be brought in. For example, I think a module on Internet Journalism is long overdue, given the impact the Internet is having on the journalism scene worldwide.

2) The streamlining of loaning proceedure for filming equipment. The school has lots of equipment that is sitting around not being used simply because students are not taking enough initiative to loan them for independent projects. It is not just the fault of the school, or solely that of the students, but if we make the loaning of equipment a little easier, students might just be more encouraged to pursue independent projects and become better filmmakers.

3) More modules to be opened up for design in advertising. I don't believe advertising is a specialisation that can be best taught in theory. I think our future advertising executives desperately need more opportunities to cut their teeth in design or developing "sticky" advertising taglines and promotional media. And why doesn't anyone let our advertising students develop the advertising and promotions for school events? I would think the best litmus test of the effectiveness of our advertising graduates would be on how they can promote school events to an otherwise disinterested school population. If you can do that, you can advertise to anybody.

These are just some of the changes I feel could be highlighted to the school management. If anyone else is interested in making this school a better institution for everyone, feel free to let me know, or make suggestions. Our school has the advantage of being small, and as a result it is easier to enact changes to our immediate environment. I sincerely believe that with more interaction in an environment where the students and management actually get each other, we will eventually have a better programme, and better students.

Flame wars

Being an avid Youtuber, I usually go through the comments pages of the videos I'm watching sometimes for a laugh. And for every video I watch, there will inevitably be the person that comments "This guy sucks. X is so much better"

And inevitably, someone else will reply "if you don't like this video, don't watch it. no one cares for your opinions"

And soon, there will be a full fledged flaming war spanning several comment pages between these two that only serves to diminish my faith in humanity being capable of making sound logical arguments. When people start arguing, suddenly someone has a fat mom, someone else is a racist, people ordain themselves and start preaching about forgiveness, and just about everyone else becomes a faggot. And on Youtube, you can't exactly shout, so people START TYPING IN CAPS. And they add exclamation marks!!! And vowels to words to make their point clearer. Like how everything is soooooooo fake.

If I could, I'd arrange for these two warring parties to meet. People who hate each other that much, according to what I watch on TV shows, they inevitably get married. It doesn't matter if they're of the same sex. I know some states in the US allow civil partnerships. I mean hey, even monks in Singapore are getting in on the act. If you don't know who I'm talking about, you're not reading the news close enough.

The real problem with these people is, its not so much the subject that they're arguing over. It doesn't matter how good or bad the guy in the video is, because it's not about the video. Just by adding two words in front of their comments, I can demonstrate exactly what's going on.

A: (I think) This video sucks.
B: (I think) He's great. If you don't like this video, don't watch it.
A: (I think) He's a faggot.
B: (I think) You're the faggot.

(I think) its pretty obvious what I'm driving at. The video or person in question is actually irrelevant. These two childish people are really arguing in defense of their bruised egos. When someone validates you by agreeing with your tastes, you will naturally feel better because he is validating your worth as a person. The problem occurs when someone takes it upon himself to diss your tastes, because that means he has a problem with your taste, and by proxy, you as a person. Some people are mature enough to recognise when people are actually baiting you, but most people will just bite on it hook line and sinker.

As the phrase goes, don't argue with an idiot because you will be reduced to their level. However in life, I know it is difficult to avoid arguing with people sometimes. I make allowances for family and people who are married, because when you hang out with a person long enough, they will know exactly what buttons to press to make you feel like that six year old who just got teased in the playground all over again, even if your real age is easily six squared. Like "moneyface! look at that moneyface!"

Moneyface. What a word. What the hell is a moneyface anyway. I'm quite sure teachers don't teach that word in schools. How did our kids end up using it? Anyway, I think I would like a moneyface. Wouldn't you?


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On an unrelated note: If you're a Singnet user and your blog posting page has been looking a little funny the past few days, it's a Singnet problem. The solution is to press Ctrl + F5, which will refresh your page without caching, and restore it to the original state.

SMRT, you can't be serious.

Taken off the Straits Times

Fined $30 for eating sweet

THE crime? Eating a sweet on board an MRT train.

The punishment? A $30 fine.

The offender 48-year-old housewife, Mdm Bibi Zaina Binti Mohamed attempts to justify her actions.

She said, 'I know it is not OK but I take it sometimes because I am giddy.'

Enforcement officer Roger Foo did not buy her explanation. 'If everyone were to say they have to take sweets because they are thirsty or giddy, where are we going to draw a line?' he rebukes.

SMRT on Thursday started cracking down on commuters eating or drinking on trains.

500 enforcement officers have started patrolling trains for errant commuters and if you are caught consuming, first time offenders could be fined $30.

Such action comes a year after trying a different approach.

Before this crackdown, SMRT used to counsel chomping commuters instead.

However, when the number offences rose from 276 cases in 2006 to 595 in 2008, SMRT moved to change tactics.

Whether the enforcement works remains to be seen, but you can find out what happens to people caught for eating or drinking on board a MRT train or at a MRT station on RazorTV.

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The next time you want to pop a sweet in an MRT train, be warned. It could cost you $30. Really SMRT, what are you going to do next? Fine us $50 for drinking water in the trains?

Do you really need to pay 500 people to patrol trains catching people eating and drinking? I think it costs less to pay 10 cleaners to clean the trains everyday no? Seriously, if you have so much money, why don't you lower train fares.

Breaking the habit.

One of the hardest things to break is a habit. It doesn't even have to be something really big. It could be the smallest of things, like how you need to let the alarm on your phone snooze like twice before you'll finally clamber out of bed. Or it could be something like how you brush the right side of your teeth before your left, or vice versa.

Nothing wrong with habits, because we're all habit forming creatures. But what happens when the habits you have are actually bad for you?

We've all heard people telling us about our bad habits. Stop playing computer games! Stop eating snacks before dinner! Stop calling her a bitch! She's your teacher!

Oh, I have to share this totally unrelated experience. I saw a dog on the road once. It barked at me. I called it a bitch. And I was totally right. It really was a bitch. I went to school. I saw my teacher. She barked at me. I called her a bitch. And I was totally right too. She really was a bitch.

Breaking a habit is tough, but trying to break a bad one, its crazy. Ever tried telling a smoker to stop smoking? They know its bad for them, but they continue doing it anyway. The problem with bad habits is, we know its bad for us. We just have to do them anyway.

One of my worst bad habits is procrastination. I procrastinate way too much, even on things I shouldn't be procrastinating on. Let's say I have an assignment I have to submit by the next day. I will procrastinate till the very last minute, and then I'll tell myself "Okay I need to do this now or I will fail."

Then I tell myself I can't work unless I feel fresh and go take a bath.

The problem with procrastinators is, they always miss out on good lobangs. Sistic was giving out 1000 free tickets to see Kobe Bryant play live next Wednesday at the Indoor Stadium. If you follow basketball, this is like the biggest thing to happen in Singapore like ever. The only thing you needed to do was show up at any of their offices and get a pair. The offer started on July 17, and it was supposed to last till the 19th. Of course, me being me I thought heck I'm busy on the 17th, I'll go first thing 18th morning. And when I checked the website on the night of the 17th, they were out of tickets.

Dammit! You know how much those tickets would be worth on eBay or hardwarezone forums.

Seriously. Singapore is full of basketball Ah Bengs flush with cash from vacation jobs or selling pirated VCDs. If I had roped some buddies together to queue, we'd all have made a killing. Just by not procrastinating.

It was a painful lesson well learnt. I will try to procrastinate less.

In the future.

3rd year already. Damn.

I was taking the car to school for the first day of FOC camp last week. I didn't want to be late on the first day, because I was actually rather excited at seeing NTU again for the first time after 6 months. I have to admit that the excitement died about 5 seconds after I set foot in the place though, when I realised that Can 2 still stinks, the toilets there are still gross and the shuttle buses are still irregular. Some things never change.

But anyway, in the car my dad engaged the same old topic I've heard many times before, and since there was like a traffic jam, it was an agonisingly long ride.

"You're entering your 3rd year already right? It's about time you found a girlfriend. See your cousin, he found a girlfriend in his 3rd year. When is it going to be your turn? Next time when you go out into the workplace, it will be hard for you to find nice girls. Most of the good ones will already be taken."

The moment I heard all that I was like thinking "Omg not this again." I started humming a song, and then I told my dad "Don't worry I'll figure it out."

But that was like an invitation for him to continue. "There are so many girls in your faculty. How come you haven't found a girlfriend? I see you ah, you are very introverted. You don't socialise. If you don't mix around, how can you find good girls?"

Sometimes this accusation of being introverted they level on me really grates. If you believe what they say, I'm some whackjob who goes to school, runs into the nearest broom closet and hides in there till the school bell rings. Then I peek out, see if anybody is around, and I tiptoe out quietly to the nearest bus stop and catch the first bus home. Ok maybe I'm exaggerating but they really think I don't talk to people.

Yeah, then what the hell am I doing going to the FOC in the first place so early in the morning right. So I can hide in a broom closet? I might as well catch up on sleep.

Come on man. Everyone knows I'm not a loner. Right? I'll give you a dollar to say I'm not. You can buy um, a can of soft drink. Please? If you see my parents, please tell them weili is very sociable. I'm like so friendly lor.

Okay, if only for the one dollar.

Anyway, to divert the topic my dad had uncomfortably started on, I tried cracking a joke. "Eh dad its not easy la. It's like what they say you know. Girls are like parking lots. The good ones are taken, the ones left are handicapped."

After a few more mutterings about how I wasn't socialising enough, he got distracted by something on the road and thankfully stopped going on about this awful topic. Later on in school though, someone asked me if I was gay because I'd returned from overseas and not found anyone.

If I'm gay your name is Bruno. If your name does happen to be Bruno, can I have your autograph? I don't really want it but I know an eBay opportunity when I see one.

Well, I need money to pay people to tell my parents how sociable I am.

The Struggle.

The Struggle. A concept so difficult to put into words, yet familiar to every guy, because it is a force so powerful, once you experience it, food is tasteless and your imagination runs off in directions it shouldn't be going.

And damn don't you enjoy it. If you didn't you wouldn't be struggling.

So what is The Struggle? Well, it's not just a struggle. It is, THE STRUGGLE. The universal bane of all attached malekind. The struggle that guys struggle to put into words, because guys are better at doing two hundred pushups than saying 3 simple words. I'm shit at both, but I will give you 20 pushups over ten days before I say those 3 words to you.

It's probably because you're male, a friend, a stranger, or just strange, but also because guys don't say those words. It is only to be used in situations with the maximum impact. The girl, who has been exposed to this unexpected yet absolutely cheesy expression of sincere love from a guy, she must totally melt. If not, welcome to the abyss. I hope you like being abysmal.

You don't burn bridges or close down your options unless you're sure it's the best course of action. If you use it unwisely its like armageddon, and you really avoid unleashing armageddon till necessary, unless the girl turns out to be like "North Korea". Reclusive, wants you to herself all the time, checks your smses, keeps tabs on your friends, spies on them, sucks your money dry, communist etc. In that case, please nuke that option shitless if you still want friends.

But I digress. I will give the typical situation of a guy in a struggle. A guy has been happily attached to a fantastic girl for a period of time, typically more than 6 months. A girl who's too good for the slob he really is, and he knows that too.

Suddenly, life presents him with another attractive girl. She could be someone he has just met, or somebody he's known for quite a while but never considered till he sees her in beachwear. He suddenly realises "Hey she's actually quite hot. My girlfriend just has cellulite."

She becomes his flavour of the month. She's probably half interested too, but laying it off because she knows his status. Or maybe, it's a one sided thing, but the guy cannot stop thinking about this girl because there's just something about her. Her smile, the way she laughs, her insanely hot whatever, or because honestly, you actually prefer her to your girlfriend.

If it's the last case, I feel for you because you must struggle like a bitch.

The guy thinks of what could be. He doesn't just fancy the girl. He actually starts thinking of this girl as a possible girlfriend and starts imagining situations. And he's smiling and dreaming and suddenly he gets an SMS and sees its the girlfriend. And he puts off replying to her because she just shattered his happy dream by reminding him that he's a locked bird in a cage. He fires off an sms to the other girl instead. Ooh scandalous shit.

Well, guys don't really want to stray because having a girlfriend is better than none, but they do dream about doing it all the time. If they could do it without any possibility of getting caught, they most definitely will. Don't believe me? Want to prove you're the most faithful guy in the world? Okay read on.

So, why are you thinking about it in the first place? And struggling every time you see that girl enter the space in front of your eyes? Why do you make the extra effort to strike up conversation when your girlfriend isn't around? Why do you check her out when the girlfriend is around, turn to make sure the girlfriend isn't looking, then check her out again?

Damn, why am I so good. Now, that we've established what a struggle is, next we have to determine if girls cause more of a struggle if they are already accquaintances, or if they are people you've never had any association with previously. Honestly, I have no idea on that one, and I'm not even sure it matters. To me, it's quite simple. You struggle when you fancy a girl. How much more or less is really irrelevant, because a struggle is a struggle.

You can even have multiple struggles. Or struggles that are more intense and less at the same time. Or simultaneous struggles. Or you could be struggling all the time because you're attached to a girl when you really fancy her sister or her best friend. It's like a drama, only that its spicier and I'll be there to write about it when the shit hits the fan. I can't keep away because stuff like that makes my world go round.

The Struggle, it really just depends on your imagination and your capacity to dream.

Go forth, and struggle.

Chris Daughtry Covers "Poker Face"

I like Lady Gaga but I think this acoustic version is good too. Lose the indoor sunglasses though. It's just stupid.

But anyway, Daughtry should have won AI 5.

NEW Heineken Commercial

Damn freaking funny.

Microcosm.

Reality is really a sum of an infinite number of realities, all occuring at the same time.

I've come to realise that my reality, my world, the world that I tend to think in terms of when experiencing and judging everything around me, it is just one of many. And it often takes an experience with a reality so different from my own, to shake me right out of it, and make me see that this world is really not just what I think it is. In fact, I don't even know what it is sometimes. I read an article today about a guy who was the first person to make it to dentistry from poly, and I was amazed at how he turned his life around despite losing his father to cancer at 12. He had lost faith in his studies, and when he saw how his mother was putting in hours at a factory to hold the family together, he bucked up.

I guess the story hit home because I've worked in a factory myself part-time in the past, so I know precisely how back-breaking it can be. I had to haul 20kg boxes for hours everyday, and package metal parts with my bare hands, some of which smelled so bad and were so oily and black that the oil stuck to my hands and the smell to my clothes, which got me dirty looks when I took the MRT home after a tiring day at work.

In addition, the supervisor often found fault with me no matter how hard I worked. He would nitpick at the way I did things, and hang around as I did my work, generally being a nuisance and pissing the crap out of me. I wanted to ask him to do the work himself a couple of times, but I realised that was not an option if I still wanted my pay, so I bit my tongue, kept my head down and kept working.

That was possibly the hardest part-time job I ever had, but it taught me lessons I could never have learnt elsewhere. It was probably the first time I'd really mixed it up with people from a totally different class of society. The uncle I worked with though, he kind of adopted me as a son, taking care of me throughout my work there, and he invited me to his home for CNY, along with the other guys I worked together with. His humility and willingness to work hard for his family really left an impression on me, especially when I realised how much nonsense he had to put up with from the supervior, whom we nicknamed "fatty pig".

I was actually quite surprised when I went to his home, because it was a large and new 4-room flat in Punggol, which was extremely comfortable. It was then that I realised that after 20 years of hard work, he had built the life he had always wanted. It was even more amazing considering he told me he grew up in a slum in the Defu Lane area. It made me realise that if you are willing to slog hard enough, you will eventually build your dreams, and those of your children.

How do you make sense of a world where you have people who would give up their lives to build the dreams of others, and on the other end of that very same spectrum you have people who would use the lives of others for their own personal gain?

You simply don't. The world is too much for any of us to ever understand individually, and it is often too easy to get lost in one's own reality and not see that out there, there are a hundred other alternate versions of reality all within the same reality we inhabit.