synecdoche

The Laze

Yup. I have been lazing around for some time now. It was ages since my last post and saying I have a writers block is not going to cut it since I am not a writer.

A good 3 months has passed since and I have lots to update.

Firstly, I bought a whole shit load of games. Boardgames. Will be writing up some reviews of games I have bought so far.

I bought a bike! A bicycle. Cost me quite a bit but it is a really good ride. I have been cycling around like a madman for 2 weeks now. Averaging a distance of 50km a day.

Meishan and I has confirmed that our wedding shall be on the 21st March! I am really excited about that. Seems like there is still a lot of things undone for the coming wedding. One of which is the taking of wedding photos.

Things are not as smooth on the career front. My ICT coming at an extremely busy period and I could not defer. but heck it is over already. Just have to be careful with my work.

Updates soon!

The Snowboarder

He looked through his fogged up goggles and grunted. Lifting them off his eyes and tightening them on his beanie-covered head, he squinted, attempting to look through the wall of white.It had been snowing from the time he was traveling up. Now at the top of the mountain, the clouds had merged with the snow covered peaks to form a sheet of continuous white. The wind whipped up the loose powder and swirled around obstacles. Vague, dark forms can be seen but the images did not look like they form anything tangible.

“What the fuck…?” he mumbled.

Using his gloved hand to shelter his eyes from the whipped up snow. The guy considered his gear.

A black, slightly damp beanie covered his head and to a lesser extent, his ears. The useless pair of goggles sat over it. It had long since lost its usefulness after it first fogged up. He wore a cheap $10 yellow neck warmer that he bought from a shop around the village. ‘Would have been black…’ he thought. ‘If they had black…’

The yellow hired parka hung loosely around his frame. His friends told him it looks too big. He thought it looked cool and gave him the room to move his body in. Underneath he wore a t-shirt he bought in Thailand that had a silly print.

His hired waterproofed pants worked very well. Under which he wore a mere pair of shorts.

His boots were the coolest set he has seen. Except for the pair of Nike’s he seen earlier on someone who fell… Oh and the pair of red Vans…

Looking around he saw a few guys coming off the ski lift on skis. The ignored him and carried on to the way down slope.

He sighed. It had been 20 minutes since his previous trip downhill. This may be his last run for the day. His companions were probably back at the lodge to get warm for dinner.

Looking at the sky, the man grunted again. It was turning dark rapidly. The days are indeed shorter Down Under.

Sitting down on the slight slope he panted as his body labored, fitting the boots onto the board was not an easy thing when you are wearing this much gear.

“Now for the easy part.” he encouraged himself.

Standing up, he felt the board slide effortlessly down the slight slope onto his lead leg. His stance was goofy though he was just as comfortable with his left being the lead.

As he gathered speed down slope he managed to make out the blue sticks, which said ‘To Village’. Leaning on his heels he veered gently to the right toward the poles. Switching to natural he managed a course around a crop of rocks.

‘Wombat’s Ramble’ a sign said.

He nodded absently at the sign and pointed out of habit, at the direction he was traveling. His instructor had told him to do it so as to better guide his body.

Knees bent, body hunched and eyes focused, he felt none of the pain and aches that he developed over the numerous falls and tumbles he took. The wind was all he could hear. But that too faded when he felt himself gathering speed.

“I am faster than the wind!” he thought. Twisting and switching from natural to goofy, he performed a ‘falling leaf’ maneuver.

He placed himself into another goofy stance for a gentle corner. Crouching down low he gathered more speed. He leaned back on his heels and let his right hand brush against the snow, executing a sharp turn in a gentle corner as a result.

He headed towards an opening between trees. An unconventional route to most, this path was the one that he had most difficulty with. It was filled with very loose powder since the heavy machinery required to pack the snow could not access it.

He twisted and turned around the tiny dunes that were formed over the natural landscape. He came to an opening within the trees where it always felt silent… where the wind could not reach him. He performed a ground shifty that sufficiently slowed him down for some tight turns ahead after which he burst forth onto the hard packed path again.

He accelerated onto the main line and turned, this time on his toes.

“Don’t fall… don’t fall…” he prayed as he managed to switch back to a heel based descent. Exhilarated, he punched the air. He had just performed a maneuver that had always been difficult for him. His confidence rising, he thundered down the slope, crouching lower than he could ever remember.

Within a few more twists, he reached the bottom of the path. Scrapping to a halt just beyond the ‘Slow’ signs. The air has cleared to give a better view. Many of the skiers in this area are walking to their lodges, skis and boards over shoulder - the end of a busy day at Falls Creek.

Looking at his watch, the snowboarder quickly released his bindings and hauled the board over his shoulders.

“Shit… I better not be late for dinner” he cursed as he ran toward the lodge, dodging others trudging through the snow.

The Proposal

“Meishan, will you marry me?”"Get up you silly pork! Don’t embarrass me here!”

“I won’t until you answer me properly!”

“Aiyo… Yes lah yes lah!”

“Yes what?”

“Yes I will marry you!”

There was I, kneeling on the cold sand in the middle of St Kildas Beach, Melbourne, Australia, proposing to my girlfriend of 5 years. It was a sunny, yet cold day - 13 degrees it was on the Celsius scale.

It was evident that she was touched. She had never expected me to have bought the rings. Proven from the fact that she had prodded me into jewelry chains multiple times during the last 2 months. Asking me to look at rings. Painful time for me as she has expressed that there were nicer designs elsewhere.

There was even once that she doubted that I would buy the rings to propose marriage. But I held my ground and did not divulge the secret.

Kein was the person who had thought of such a plot. Along the way he had sent me samples of photographs and satellite images of the place that we would be going to. He even engaged the President of the Photography Club - Chandra to take the pictures. It is with my most sincere thanks to Kein that the entire thing was a success.

I had the jitters for weeks before the actual event itself. Whenever I thought about the coming overseas trip, I would start to feel nervous and exhilarated at the same time. I was worried that it will not go well. What if it rains? What if I forget the rings? What if I want to change my mind?

Yes I thought of that. Why did I though? I questioned myself on my purposes of a proposal. Did I do it so that I can have free sex for the rest of my life? Unlikely, since being in a marriage is harder than anything else I know of.

I realized my proposal was due to many different reasons all cumulating to a single consequence. I love this woman. I admit that finding a soul mate in this crazy world and worse, society is a real hard task and that I may be the most blessed man to have found one. I wanted to recognize that this is the point where we have decided to commit to each other and to Him. I wanted her to know that she means a lot to me for me to want to do this. I wanted her to be able to tell her friends that I proposed at a place that shall always be in her heart. I needed to do it proper so we can move on to the next stage in our love live - marriage.

It was a happy occasion, a day when the seagulls flew easily on the strong winds. A day when the yachters adjusted their sails to match the currents. Where the penguins came out to meet the swans.

A perfect day for a proposal.

The Light and the Dark

The eternal light shines through the dark. Never has the darkness feared as much as it has now.It is amazing how our world is filled with opposites. Yet, men have always thought that they would attract one another. How true it is that opposites attract! If one should notice, darkness is attracted by light but it does not encroach it. It creeps around the bright. It hides in shadows and dark spots. How has man hidden in the shadows spewing putrid poison and vile venom, when the ones they slander stand in the light, righteous in their ways and their paths.

I have never erred in having put down my thoughts here. I have never sought to find solace in pelting peat at others when I write behind anonymity. I wish only made known, my feelings which can be vibrant at times to the masses therefore the unhidden journal thus.

Yet I still wonder, what perils, does lie in the hidden pits of darkness that light cannot penetrate?

What evils lie beneath the veil of uncertainty and artificial beauty? I must rely on my senses and principles and attempt to pierce through the seemingly impenetrable fortress that is the darkness. I must reinforce myself.

Yet in strengthening my beliefs and principles I must undergo a metamorphosis of sorts. A transformation that takes me from being strong in path and sight to weak and susceptible to attacks by the devil and his minions. Oh how the devil revels in the pain he inflicts to others. How he celebrates the losing of the mind and the struggling of the soul. Indeed I have felt the conflicts within, struggling against the hands of darkness clawing at me with their fetid, rotting appendages. How I felt the rawness of wounds spewing open with nightmares, memories of failures and past anguish.

Yet I did not submit.

Anger arose and abated. Fear came and left. Terror ringed within my ears.

Yet I did not submit.

Fighting, screaming, arms trashing, I resisted the temptation to give in. I held my ground.

Redoubling his efforts, doubt fills my mind. What if truth was spoken in these words? What if I had erred? What if I, too, have succumbed to the darkness, or even worse, was the one who lead them there?

I pondered.

I questioned.

I screamed. I sought refuge in known light. And there came salvation.

Waves of warmth swept over me, as I knew, that I have been and has stayed on the path of the righteous. That I have stayed on the straight and narrow. That I am within the light.

That I am… the light.

High Tech Pants!

Been meaning to finish this little article. Now you get to see it.I have read an article once about how technology has affected fashion, especially men’s fashion. Look at the clothes that come with an ipod pocket etc etc.

More specifically, the article has highlighted how microfibres and nano technology is utilized to make crease free clothes.

I think the researchers are all either

a)      women

b)      men who pee seated

Why do I say this?

The reasons I highlight here would probably turn off a few people so this here is a GROSS FACTOR warning.

I speak for all the men out there that pee whilst standing. Peeing is an art form that is hard to master, let alone perfect. I am 27 and I dare say that 27 years of peeing, though not all the 27 years, has not taught me the art of not getting pee on myself.

No matter how carefully, how clinically precise my aim was. The splash of the pee cannot be avoided. This is an act that I repeat at least 8 times a day and I have yet to master it. Having so many tries a day I have tried to change the way I pee to see whether it helps.

As you can imagine how a normal urinal would look, a urinal would be a standard size and shape. It is a personal urinal, meant for use by only one person (preferably male) at once. Sometimes the urinals a placed lower than usual to allow children (preferably male) to use them. No matter how urgently one needs to pee, he should never use kiddie urinals unless he is of the appropriate height.

The different variables that increase/decrease splash back are listed below.

HEIGHT

First, would be height of attack. That would be the origin of the stream of pee to the contact point at the bottom of the urinal. Theoretically, the higher the origin is, the greater the splash as the control would be lost at the end of the stream. To add to the problem, gravitational acceleration would also speed up the pee, allowing the pee to accelerate further to a greater velocity causing more splash back. Gravitational acceleration also cancels out the effective control of the stream of pee.

PRESSURE

Second would be pressure. The more urgently you need to pee, the higher the tendency for a splash back to occur. This is due to higher velocity achieved when there is high pressure in the bladder. Effective use of control can help maintain the pee to reduce splash back (if you can do this, you should be really good in bed because the same muscles are involved).

AIM

Third would point of contact. This would be the effective aim of the person. He can aim at the fly at Terminal 3 all day but still get splash back. It is true, I tried it. The better one’s aim is, the lesser the tendency to get splash back. However like I mentioned earlier, good aim is just a component of not getting splashed.

DISTANCE

Fourth will be distance. Distance refers to the parallel distance between the pee’er to the urinal. This differs from height because greater distance can only be achieved with higher pressures. Of course due to trajectory, taller men can also achieve greater distance. If you use a urinal that is placed lower, naturally you can achieve a greater distance. But due to gravitational acceleration, more splash back may occur (more around the ankles if you are using a kiddie urinal). I have a friend that pees so far away from the urinal that you wouldn’t fancy using the adjacent for fear of the AOE of his pee splashing back.

ENVIRONMENT

This is a highly variable factor. It actually means in what kind of place and the kind of environment it is housed in. For example you would tend to pee faster and disregard splash back nor would you care if you were in say, a gay bar’s toilet, or, in Alaska.

All these factors will affect the amount and intensity of splash back. I shall be examining the methods and how these factors can be negated tomorrow.

Settlers of Catan – Six Players

Hooked up with Chris’s secondary school friend Donny and his wife-apparent Fynn to play Settlers of Catan on Saturday.

Word has it that Fynn is a formidable player who has won EVERY game of four player games they have played. I am amazed at the acclaim that Eva and Chris had heaped on her.

She was a good player with pretty good awareness and a mean streak too… she asked for a rare resource and I asked what she wanted to trade for it. She proceeded to steal from me. Well she didn’t get the resource from me but I knew this person could no longer be trusted in this game anymore. I will celebrate a good player but even I, the master of deviousness would not do something as dishonorable as such… laff…

She pretty much had the first game when it was the 8^th turn. I realized it sooner than anyone else did. But I had made myself adopt a laidback strategy to counteract my own aggression. I mean these are guests. Let’s not scare them away can?

It was too late to salvage the situation and the rest of the players are too involved in their own crawl to success that they have not bothered to prevent her from winning.

And afterthought with Meishan on Sunday confirmed how no one has even noticed that playing against other players require you to play AGAINST them. This is not a race. It is a game that requires you to prevent your opponents from winning as much as it is to play to win.

See this as a game of multiplayer chess. You need to checkmate your opponent as much as you need to prevent that from happening to you. The game’s similarity with Risk when it comes to 6 player games is the balance of power has to be maintained.

I realized that Chris and Eva only uses the robber to steal from the person who has the most cards (resources) or the person that they perceive to be better (random). This approach is wrong because the person that you should steal from or block off using roads and settlements should be the one who has the most POINTS.

Which everyone realized thereafter in the second game where I risked hostility by openly discussing it. Not everyone is cooperative though and that undermines the possibility of winning anyway.

So the strategies for a 6 player game will have to be built on the balance of power between the players. This can be perceived in many ways. Strategic placing of settlements and roads, access to rare resources and build up of permanent points may all be defined as having an advantage above others.

The strategies would also mean that all players will have to guard others and must be able and willing to chip in a collective effort to thwart the winner from being a runaway.

The second game was pretty much the same when I suggested that Donny build a settlement to break Fynn’s longest road. She protested strongly as Donny nodded in agreement more to himself than anyone else as he put down the little house on Fynn’s highway. She did get it back though, but it was Meishan who won the game. She sportingly used her monopoly card to get all the available bricks and traded them to Donny for him to build his settlement.

I thought that was a masterstroke with incredible foresight.

Fynn had to use all her resources to continue her road while Meishan upgraded her settlements. A well played game that was.

I haven’t been winning for a while now. Have to give up this laidback attitude to win again.

The Gratitude

Words are formed in a strange way. I am not a linguist but having only known 2 languages, namely Chinese and English, I can draw upon the parallels between the two where words and characters are formed.Take for example, the word gratitude. How fitting that within the word contains another word - attitude. Indeed, gratitude is all about one’s attitude. God asks humility of us, and humility is indeed the attitude we should adopt in this world.

Understand that, intelligence may not be a gift from God. He knows for certain that Adam and Eve will eat from the tree of knowledge. However he also explicitly instructed not to eat from the tree. By defying that of which we should have a obeyed, we have caused mortality to ourselves.

Why do I speak like this today?

I read the book Flowers for Algernon yesterday. It was so interesting that I could not put it down. I finished it in 4 hours.

The story made me cry.

It also made me doubt a lot of things about us human beings. Whatever defines us as human beings or sentient beings even. Whether it is intellect or compassion, pride or humility. Ultimately we must understand that, we are so immaculately nanoesque in our pittance of an existence that we are but a speck of dust in an unfathomably vast expanse of which we can only contribute to changes in a way of cumulativeness to a culmination. Why so should we not show humility!?

Why do we behave with such arrogance and ego? Why do we guard our pride?

Interestingly this book brought Meishan and me a lot of insight. We discussed it at length last night.

I came to a conclusion of my own though. I believe that we should be thankful towards what we have in our live. Be grateful that we have so much. Show gratitude, towards your parents, your children, your friends and family… Be grateful towards God. A very basic gesture of love gratitude is.

Gratitude = GReat + ATTITUDE.

The Seat

I have absolutely no idea why women in the western world complain about men so much. Not that Asian women doesn’t do the same. My chief complaint here is the fact that women in the western world complain about men not putting the seat down.

OMG…

They have NO freaking idea how bad it would be in Asia or rather Singapore. I CANNOT imagine how they would react with sharing toilets with men. In Singapore, men do not even lift the fucking SEAT!

Yes… disgusting isn’t it. And I for one, have none of the wildest idea how pee can get everywhere… on the floor, on the seat, on the walls, on the roll of toilet paper. Oh God save me if I was in real need of a toilet that I am close to home or an ultra posh hotel with gleaming gold taps that have their toilets being washed every other minute.

Just moments ago, I had to add another job title to my current working status - toilet cleaner. I spent 5 minutes using toilet paper to scrub the disgusting stains off the seat so I can go about my business.

What on earth had the previous user been doing? He may be blind, thus the terrible aim, and the negligence to actually lift the seat before hand. Or he may be the ah beng who speaks loudly on his phone and thinks his schlong is too freaking big with stable balls to support it thus he decides not to aim properly nor lift the seat or even stop smoking. Please… you are not a computer. Multitasking is not built into us. You cannot freaking smoke, yak on the phone and pee. You have 2 hands only. I you are holding the cigarette, and another hand on the mobile, how are you to unzip your trousers?

Western women do not know how cultivated their men are… bleh…

To the public toilet designers in Singapore :

Make squatting style toilets. It is the sensible way to go. If they have a problem squatting, they probably cannot pass their standing broad jumps so the more they should squat.

I am so pissed…

Heads Up

I have been pretty busy the past few weeks.

From starting a new job to really embarking onto the trail to a healthy lifestyle, I spend most of my other time studying with Meishan.

Not much time to post. I did not even went on World of Warcraft for sometime now.

Will definitely have to put more effort into getting things done than to leave them half done now.

Where the Hell did all the Money go to?

Seriously, can any economists tell me why everyone is losing money?Look at it this way, the entire world is one huge poker game. The game has been going on for sometime now therefore some of the players have more chips than others. Let us imagine during a hand, only 1 player would emerge as the winner therefore the money would all flow to him. There will always be a winner. There can never be a whole table of losers. Of course this view may be an oversimplified view of economy on a global scale.

In my opinion, the only possible winners are private investors. These private investors are not simple investors like us. They have money. Lots and lots of it. These filthily wealthy people are gaining from the other end of the spectrum. The Pareto Principle would put 80% of all wealth attributable to 20% of the entire population of the world. Therefore the 80% of us (yes, 6.5 billion of us) would share the 20% of the wealth.

Of course, this would be, again, an over-generalisation.

But the wealth must flow to someone right? Someone must have benefited from the credit crunch. These problems are all symptoms of actions that has been performed earlier on. Maybe a few years or even decades ago. When the first sub prime rate loans were introduced to attract credit unworthy buyers of property who were in turn, lead to believe that, the real estate market will always grow. Driven by desperation and greed respectively, loan takers and loan brokers saw to it that the sub prime loan market grows. Loan notes of such nature were then repackaged into various kinds of financial packages and sold off to investors who are investing in debt securities. Rating organizations were bribed to give these securities a much coveted ‘AAA’ rating. The Federal government cannot do anything about all this because when the smell of recession is found, the corpse of the deed has already decomposed that it stinks! All the US government can do is to lower interest rates and try to avert disaster.

A disaster that is imminent…

However, the effects of the sub prime loan crisis may not be as evident in the Asian market.

The USD continues to slide daily against the Euro, Pound, Yen and other major Asian Currencies. USD holding companies try to sell USD as fast as possible as they see their profits slipping away from the losses incurred in forex. In Singapore, the value against the Greenback is almost the rate for the Aussie dollar!

The fact that the devaluation of USD and US equities not affecting Asian markets is in turn overshadowed by problems of our own - rising food prices. Rice prices has doubled since January 2008. The great increase in food prices has caused regional unrest. Riots and protests erupted across Asia, demanding government aid and even blaming governments for the rising costs.

Governments are not to blame.

Oil speculators are the ones to be blamed. They are the ones that are engaged in the act of profiteering from the trading of black gold, constantly pushing up prices to make a profit. The rise in oil prices has driven the demand for bio fuels to be developed and grown. Since growing oil substitutes would see a greater return than food, naturally the farmers abandoned their rice, wheat, maize growing and started growing bio fuels like sugar cane.

Therefore decreasing the supply of food. The global population however is growing, driving up demand for food, and therefore, driving up the prices.

To soften the impact of the rising food prices, employers would have to increase the pay of their employees and thus running greater costs in their products and services which in turn rise in price.

For every dollar earned due to capitalism, ten cents may be lost due to inflation, wealth condensation at its worst.

Just a short analysis and complaint to everyone.