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no, i don't actually have an uncontrollable urge to exterminate teenage girls
Hi, i can be boring sometimes. And i often sound evil to conceal life's banalities. But i really am a kind and peace-loving creature. That despite the URL. |
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got neither analytical insights nor flashy pictures to offer just trying to make the mundane a little less mundane! tagboard
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2008's been a decent year. wedged somewhere between 2006's JC academic euphoria and 2007's NS prisoner melancholia, i figure. but better stagnated stability than a roller coaster ride of emotions. i know 2009 can only get better. what can possibly rival conscription, after all? it pales only in comparison to actual criminal imprisonment itself. so unless i get incarcerated for some form of juvenile misdemaneour next year (caught sneaking into an r21 show finally, perhaps?), i am comfortable with the idea of ushering in the new year with a reasonable amount of joy and anticipation. yay. the mandatory 2008 lookback entry shall take the form of disjointed, completely spontaneous ramblings this time round, presented to you in ascending order of frivolity: 2008's greatest moment:  12 December 2008. no explanations, no embellishments, no more reiterations. just sweet, sweet emancipation. 2008's most trying moment:  exercise bold cannon 1 - one of our military pretend games, i mean, exercises held in the deep, ominous recesses of lim chu kang. it was four straight days of crazy physical labour, consisting of lugging some 10kg deadweight over by scoliosis-inflicted back across vast expanses of muddy ground and leafy mazes. the cherry on top of the cake? 4 straight days of thundery rainstorms that threatened to flood our vehicles, flooded our boots, and reduced my feet to a soggy, rotting mess remotely resembling the texture of minced pork. 2008's most shocking piece of news  at least the malicious evil source of the financial crisis seemed distant and obscure. the scandal that involved this head honcho of what used to be perceived as an altruistic charity was especially hard-hitting because people (including me) invested so much genuine empathy and affection in him. his display of financial and moral corruption was all the more infuriating for the benevolent and compassionate veneer he used to put up, what with the ice submerging, tightrope balancing and skyscraper abseiling. the gimmicky stunts should've been telling, yet no one could have expected a fraud from someone as honorable and virtuous as a religious icon. shame on him, and on anyone who might have wittingly condoned and allowed such a massive act of public trust betrayal. 2008's most unnerving piece of news at first it seemed like just senseless, nontheless plunging numbers for the layman. then the trickle-down effects dawned upon our conscience and our daily lives. what could be more unnerving than SPH announcing a wage freeze and a hiring slowdown in the money section of its own newspaper? yea, i'm convinced it's more than just sheer numbers now. 2008's most comforting piece of news am hard-pressed to recollect any, given the insane recurrence of the term 'financial crisis' i see in the papers everyday. but still fresh in my memory is the news of the liberalization of the ban on political films sometime last month. i'm inclined to see it as more than a token gesture, one that is representative of the government's increasingly loosening stance on censorship that has inhibited the creative expressions of many in the past years. what is more dishonourable than defamation itself is the fear-driven paranoia that shuts out opinions, justified or otherwise, without allowing people the chance to even judge for themselves. sigh. 2008's most heinous personal crime i love yet somewhat hate that the path ahead is no longer idiot-proof and neatly laid out. two years ago, out of naivety, (either that or some witch cast a career spell on me), i put my ugly signature on the dotted line that would effectively lock my future in - in a vacuum potentially saturated with everlasting teenage angst and brattiness. those two are the most disgusting behavioral traits that could exist in human beings generally considered to have lived past their teenage time frame, i went on to realize. and so, many agonizing deliberations and one stammering phone call later, it all went back to square one. oh, not before a fat cheque was written, sealed and sent away. 2008's biggest one time expenditure: that fat cheque was worth a thousand dollars. sorry mum, sorry dad, sorry to the organization i might have remotely let down, and sorry to my bank account for kissing my scant NS savings away, just like that. let this be a lesson for the teenage boys and girls out there. never. take. such. decisions. lightly. not even if you're still plagued with teenage angst and brattiness. 2008's most baffling phenomenon:  facebook. i never caught on the facebook fever, and i say this with absolute objectivity and zero disdain. please tell me facebook serves purposes more humanisitic than virtual poking, because i absolutely do not see the twisted joy, much less purpose in that. maybe virtual poking is at the unglamarous end of the wide spectrum of enriching activities facebook has to offer, but i remain adamant that the only thing more useless than a real flower bouquet is a, erm, virtual flower bouquet. alright. at least photo posting satisfies voyeuristic tendencies. that's about the only thing i find useful. i concede. i'm just a lazy, antisocial grouch-pouch-of-a-slouch. sorry. 2008's favourite journalist: 杨丽玲of i-weekly! she has been a perennial favourite. not only is her command of the language respectable, she also words entertainment report to actually sound less frivolous than regularly perceived. i am bought over by her ability to not make me feel shallow and superficial when wallowing in the indulgent yet disposable sea of entertainment reports, so to speak. and her movie critiques are really more movie-inspired literary musings than movie critiques, really. i love it. 2008's biggest guilty pleasure (which is making me tear my frizzled hair now as i struggle to admit) : i wanted to hate hsm3, really. but in the end, i think one subversive part of my callous heart managed to resonate with fawning tweens worldwide. oh my gawd, the things i make myself sacrifice for a 2008 lookback. i bought none of the troy/gabriella cheese, but this great sharpay/ryan reverie number, 'i want it all', is embarrassingly compelling for its blatantness and frank honesty. ("i want it all! / the fame and the fortune and more / i want it all! / i gotta have my star on the door) never since survivor's corinne kaplan have i seen such unabashedly conspicious ambition on display. it helps that the hooks are crazily catchy, sharpay is endearingly bitchy, and ryan's tight pink pants are completely, out-of-the-world kitschy. haha 2008's somewhat valuable lesson from an anti-hero:  the only one thing that makes corinne kaplan's blood-curdling epic bitchiness remotely forgivable is ironically her stoic resolve to embody just that. love the elites with all your heart and hate the mutants with all your soul. while verbally abusing people the way she did on survivor certainly reeks of elitism, overt discrimination and bigotry, i think something can in fact be gained from learning how to operate with lesser filters and truer colours in life. hard, but somewhat cool. 2008's most joyous source of human contact:      amid all the cynicism, i know i still have to thank all of you who have been there to mock, laugh, cheer and jeer with me this past year. no one can ever operate as a sole lone entity and i would have been driven nuts had it not been for people who have been there to provide human comfort and relief. cheers to my omnipresent, increasingly-fun and friction-free family, and friends who've withstood my idiosyncracies all this time - gf, mariam, mok, nan zai, poo yee, alybo, ah nong, cyndi ngiam, even hulu, neh-o, jojo and ray, as well as kaijian, terrence, brown dough, se mo, kong, lester, weiliang, wee leong, hoh heh for being the human pillars of support amid the tyranny of the dumb and deluded. glad that you were around. 2008's most productive lesson learnt: since assault techniques and marching drills do not count, then driving is a shoo-in for this category. i relish the driving lessons, especially with an easily manoeuvrable (i dictionaried that one) auto car. before you erupt into another one of those uninspired manual-car-is-better-what tirades i've heard a million times over, let me just disclaim that i do not care about the egoistical, even somewhat chauvenistic notion of equating the quintessential male prowess with the car he drives. i bother only about the fact that the family car is an auto one, any car i may possibly buy in future will be an auto one, and that in the frequently brought up hypothethical situation that only a manual car is available for driving, then i will logically proceed to suck it up, and hail a cab. simple. :D 2008's most eye-opening experience in a foreign land:  i didn't fall head over heels in love with india like some self-respecting backpackers would, but india was definitely a visual and cultural experience as grounding as it was educational and eye-opening. the runaway cattle-induced mayhem was intimidating, yes, but the rustic, roguish charm was also charming and memorable in its own endearing way. it was charm of a different form that took no respect for the organized staleness and stagnant slickness us urbanites so conform to. 2008's one big personal breakthrough clubbing and pubbing. i derived nary a sense of joy or alcohol-induced high from those outings. i guess being a sedentary creature of some sort did nothing to help. and call me a party-downer but i still fail to see the allure of alcohol. it tastes offensive and hardly contributes to sustainable spending in times like these which call for prudence, ok. magaritas to me are like fruit juice with cough syrup thrown in for bad measure. shudder. my 2008 lookback is definitely not exhaustive. categories the likes of most youth wasting activity (guard duties), only watched drama serial (一方半厅一水缸）, biggest source of comic relief (michelle chong's barbarella) keep spontaneously popping up, but i figure there could be no end to the free-flow of idiosyncratic ideas and sentiments, and i had better jam the brakes, for where is the spirited joy in ushering in a brand new year while obstinately clinging on to the pleasant and unpleasant past? in fact, i feel extremely wasted now, having written what i believe is the most mammothy of mammoth entries to date. it's 3am on 1/1/2009, and as the world heralds the start of the brand new year with many inane countdown parties, i shall go ... sleep ... and wake up to a hopefully exhilirating 2009, all dependant on the one most critical event i will be facing in two weeks time. happy new year. |