differences

1) what is the difference between my bed, 9:30am on the S&P and the USD?

Ans: the first is a place where i spend all my time, the second is a time where i spend all my money, the third is a money that's spent in all places and is honestly only there to make the riddle complete.

2) what is the difference between an angsty dota 2 pub (e.g. me) and the world famous dendi?

Ans: the former has probably won at least a dota game in the past two weeks.

3) what is the difference between talk cock summit and UN General Assembly?

Ans: the latter is televised.

4) what is the difference between spanish laughing guy (see below) and ho ching?

Ans: this guy laughs JAJAJA and JEJEJEJE while ho ching prefers a variety of HEE HEE and HIC HIC HIC HIC!

5) what is the difference between donald trump's ego and my bicycle tyre?

Ans: one needs to be inflated and the other deflated. not necessarily in that order.

6) what is the difference between Crash Landing on You and the new berlin airport?

Ans: there's some landing taking place where there isn't supposed to be; and for the latter.. there is no landing where there's supposed to be.

nothing's landed about 69 years after the airport has started construction.

and with covid we could be waiting another 69 years more woohoo~

laundry

this is an issue i have been grappling with - i wonder if laundrical (?) norms still apply now that i'm practically out of society. i've thought a while before posting this, but ah come on, it's not as if i'm going to be meeting any of you guys anyway.

judge all you want - but you will realise by the end of the post that i make sense.

perhaps it would be most helpful to first ask: why do we do laundry?

the prima facie answer is simple - to have clean clothes. (duh has lockdown dumbed your senses?)

now i could launch into a full-scale debate of whether doing laundry really does give you clean clothes, or that the difference pre- and post-laundry is minimal, but that would turn a talkcocksummit post into a thesis, so let's scrap this for now.

if i wanted to do a thesis, i should be doing my real thesis anyway :/

let's do it shanmugam style and set up a false dichotomy. if you do your laundry, you wear clean clothes. if you don't, you wear dirty clothes.

so what if you wear dirty clothes? dirt never truly killed anyone, if we were to define dirt as the dust particles that settle in your room on a daily basis.

***COVID IS NOT CLASSIFIED AS DIRT.***

then detractors would argue, but dirt doesn't have to kill for it to be wrong. it is unhygienic and could be unhealthy for your skin if you wear dirty clothes.

this could be controversial but surely hygiene is only an issue when normal society applies?

let's put it this way. i did know of some pretty dirty people back in school but i didn't bother lecturing them on the finer points on how body odour turns people away, or could cause skin problems.

oh no boy. i just avoid them like the plague. i go to school on the first day to book my seat next to people who do not dig their noses in class.

i might have digressed a little. my point is, i am now one of those "dirty" people but everyone is already avoiding everyone. therefore i conclude that the old rules don't apply.

the next-level moralist could be asking an even deeper question: such as, should you not be doing the "right thing" even when nobody is looking?

like would you jaywalk across the road when it's 3am?

for the record, i would. (i even do it when it's 3pm, as long it's not in front of an elderly german lady with children nearby.)

and that's precisely why i cannot apologise for not doing any laundry this month.

applies to everything

saw this little graph making its rounds around social media, i must say it has to be rather true for the most of us sitting at home doing mindless surfing:

 

or even if you aren't doing mindless surfing, this exponential graph still likely holds true. see, you only take 2-3 seconds on the simple graph before you swipe to the next image; or move on to the next piece of news.

therefore, if you were to check covid stats 10 times a day compared to your daily update back in january (if you even did check anything), that qualifies as exponential, kind of..?

can't think of what other exponential graphs one could be looking at - although what did occur to me are the number of exponential graphs i could plot after lockdown.

first is the time i spend on social media. i think that goes without saying. for any amount of time that you spend in bed alone and awake (so exclude sleeping, rabak and seks), you're most likely to be surfing some random chit or watching videos. 

lockdown = a lot (read: exponentially) more time at home

exp. more time at home = exp. more time in bed

exp. more time in bed = exp. more time on social media

there i've solved it. 

second is the time i spend on runs. it's so far an untold secret that i'm becoming the asian eliud kipchoge. while he now only takes a leisurely "jog" every morning according to some interview, i have been doing serious training and running my arse off every other day.

some qualifications though:

- his leisurely jog is still probably faster than my "running my arse off"

- my "serious training" is the only physical activity i get. other 23.5h i'm immobile.

- only reason why this is an exponential graph is because of the pathetic time i've put into running in jan/feb.

my trusty strava app showed that i did 77.7km in april, compared to 40km in march and something like 10km in february.

granted it's not a lot, but it's still exponential.

third is the time spent cooking. i doubt i need to launch into any lengthy explanation for anyone to understand this.

so i'll stop here. i think the point is made - this can apply to everything.

still, exponential graphs don't last forever. there is a limit at the top because at some point, finite resources dictate that the line does not run to infinity. if i already spend 20 hours a day wasting my time on social media (p.s. i don't, i also waste my time on dota), the next exponential step could be 80 hours and we all know nobody has 80 hours in a day.

unless you're doing MLM and borrowing others' hours for yourself ahem.

anyway, what this means is that the insanity has to stop somewhere. for one i think most of us have stopped looking at covid stats, because they are just rising numbers that reveal unpleasant truths. what's the point even if you know that x country has y cases a day? unless you run a slightly sadistic covid betting game (i can totally imagine), there is no sense to monitor the situation that feverishly.

hmm... btw >500 pays 1.2, <500 pays 6 any takers?

similar to the time spent on exponential graphs situation...

i'm gradually finding that every social media article is becoming the same (trump says this, expert virologist says that, random singaporean overseas says f**k this shit).

i'm getting muscle fatigue and frankly all this running around the same area is becoming boring. (and smells of army, see previous post)

i hate cooking with a vengeance and have now resorted to eating bread with cheese and ham for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

you see the trend. they are all tapering off. we can therefore project that in may, all exponential graphs applying to all situations can follow this trajectory:

and hopefully, the covid situation as well

you might ask, so what is the point of knowing this?

well i don't know, i'm still trying to figure it out. if knowledge is power and with great power comes great responsibility... i need to assume this great responsibility of thinking of how to convert this information to money.

brb.

cheers!

sometimes when i'm on my 3-6k run (depending on day/mood) along the dirt path to rummelsburg, i get a whiff of some real sour intenzio sewage-like smell.

i can't exactly put my finger on where the smell came. let's see, it could be waste treatment, body odour, wild boar manure... the list goes on.

but this more-than-pungent odour reminded me of army days in tekong, where we used to get up and run at an ungodly 6:15am in the morning. somewhere around bmtc school 1 basketball courts along the ippt route by the channel of where the painful penguins ply, there was always this awful smell.

i used to suspect the sergeants did this on purpose such that you'd have the motivation to run faster. now that i smell it again here in germany, i have to doubt my previous theory.

some smart alec will say it's "german gas". well no, because i smelt it in singapore.

nonetheless, until someone enlightens me, this will remain one of life's mysteries. what is NOT a mystery however, is how dreadfully obsolete army cheers are.

all that running and that familiar tekong smell, led to another sensory assault when the army cheers from years ago started to flood into my mind.

there was this one about not having time to do xxx, but there's always time to do yyy. that song defies all logic i could swear.

soldiers have got to be the most horny people on earth, yet one of the lines go "got no time to meet my girl, but got time to clean rifle".

uwotm8? that has to be the most ridiculous shit i've ever heard. sure, you could be gay, that's a possibility - but you wouldn't then be meeting "your girl"? and of all the things you LIKE to do in the army, i'm pretty damn sure cleaning a rifle is not one of them.

nice things of army include: booking out, canteen breaks, and for those who like a little bit of a challenge, maybe completing SOC. heck, i'd even accept field camp.

cleaning the rifle is one of the most MUNDANE and POINTLESS endeavour, for the next day when you draw arms to go out and fire more blanks, the whole cycle restarts.

please, whoever wrote the lyrics to this song.

there was another one i remembered from OCS Sierra Wing. despite the supposed improvement in one's ability to think when in occifer school, the words to this are just plain laughable.

"we marched last night ah, we marched the night before, now we march like we never march before, ah!"

clearly the writer for this thought about this like he never thought before. god i am so ashamed for you.

firstly, what is the fucking point of this whole marching story? i don't remember the rest of the cheer well, but i vaguely recall it to be along the lines on how we enjoy marching. still doesn't justify the first line.

secondly, it's not well defined on what it means to have never marched before. on the first day i came to BMT, i had no marching experience. so i marched with my left hand and left leg at the same time. is that what you meant, songwriter?

gee i felt like i just insulted all songwriters. anyway this is a rather obscure cheer, other than that time in OCS where some joker brought it up, i've hardly heard it after. we can talk about more mainstream stupidity.

purple light in the valley. apparently where we all want to be.

have never trained in any valley in singapore - the only "valley" i know being river valley. and then there's the purple light - which is a reference to...? none of the colour disks i know make a purple light with the torch.

i paused for a few seconds after the previous paragraph, but no i still do not get where the purple light is coming from. is it to make up the required number of syllables? it could have well been "yellow light", that's closer to torch colour reality.

or "lime green light" from the luminous sticks. heck, any kind of two-syllabic light is more realistic than a "purple light" i've NEVER seen in my army days.

light colour aside, you might also notice that there is a logical flaw in the last line, which goes..

"with my rifle and my buddy and ME"

okay. then who were you referring to in the rest of the song? i assumed that doing IPPT and SOC was all you.

basically, if the ippt/soc bit of purple light were to be summarised into one line, it would read something like "soc, ippt, pt is all sibei jialat but i like doing it with my rifle and my buddy and me."

you like doing it with you, eh.

hahahaha i could go on forever but my brain has run out of RAM. if you have more army songs/cheers please send them to me so i can dissect its stupidity.

cheers. no pun intended.

fish sauce

Although I've never mixed you in
As often as I should
You have served me so damn well
As I knew you would

Bought you at the Asian mart
Ten million years ago
You still possess the good old taste
Of ajinomoto

Lettuce, carrots or pak choi
It matters not to me
You can turn any dish of mine
From a one to a three

Hordes of Asians swear by you
A taste not to be missed
If sauces were all humans then
You'd be Chuck Norris

flatten the curve

today i want to talk about something very serious.

as you can see from the title, it's about flattening the curve. not sure if you have any opinions on how the CB has been going on; but if you ask me it's definitely not working.

the f**king CB (not literally), if anything, is making the curve much worse than before.

i've found a picture on the internet to describe what i'm talking about.

..

..

..

..

..

this is what my chopping board looks like. messed up.

i swear, i just went to sleep one night and the next day, the chopping board had a curvature that would make beckham proud.

as google can answer so many things now, i was ensured that i'd find out the reason for this unwarranted curvery. from my understanding, apparently it has to do with uneven moisture content on different sides of the board which causes expansion and contraction of the wood through absorption of water.

i shall have to be very careful the next time i go swimming and lay on the beach to suntan. for all you know that could cause some serious back curvature.

thankfully, there seems to be two simple solutions to flatten the curve.

the first is to leave it alone. when the damp side's moisture content lowers, the board moves back to its original shape.

the second is to use a hot iron or some heavy stuff to press down upon the board. the pressure eventually will flatten the board.

unfortunately, i only have one f**ked up chopping board, so i couldn't test to see which method works better.

otherwise, the humble little wooden chopping board could be an indicator on how to handle flattening other curves. after all, this is science, how can it be wrong?

plurali

today there was some good chit going on in the waterpolo aka haters chat i'd be remiss not to document this.

never doubt the flow of a conversation when it somehow lands on (or up) the final processor of the digestive system: namely, the anus.

ck brought it up today. i forgot how, but that's irrelevant.

for another unknown reason he had to talk about its plural and we arrived at the debate if it should be anuses or ani.

wtf? who even thinks about such things?

one might attribute it on the lockdown; but i could have as easily imagined this conversation in non-covid times.

miao checked it and surprise, surprise: both forms are acceptable.

well i didn't find that acceptable. i thought something was really wrong with the english language.

for starters, this "-us" to "-i" plural endings are not applied consistently across the language. sure we know english is a pretty messed up language with a million exceptions, but if more than one syllabus is syllabi and more than one anus is ani then surely more than one bus is bi?

okay fine so perhaps it's the exceptions that make the language beautiful.

now on to my main gripe.

don't know if you've read bookworm club books when you were young. they were popular in singapore back in the 80s-90s. it was a children's series, documenting the (mis)adventures of a bunch of seven kids in school.

the singaporean version of enid blyton's secret seven or famous five, if you will.

in typical singaporean fashion they had to make sure each race and gender was represented. so there was smarty, louie, kokku, simone, sam seng (how the fuck am i remembering all these omg), porky and last but not least..

FAT ANI.

did i ruin your childhood? you're welcome.

homework

in a rare moment of inspiration that occurs about as frequently as three-digit covid cases increases in singapore (i.e. used to be more common in the past, now not quite), i decided to maximise my stay-home experience by working my python skillz.

you can check it out the last exercise i completed here:

they sure know how to motivate their students

for the uninitiated into the world of computing, you might be a little fazed by all the colours and 'geeky' commands. however upon looking closely, practically ANYONE with a basic understanding of logic could get this. as it turns out, both "patriots" and "rams" were accepted answers. yes - i had to find out if there was a trick to this, but no, there isn't.

now am i wrong to say that as an adult, our homework is getting so much easier? (btw this is a python intermediate course, don't mess.)

i'd never have imagined anything as easy as this during the good old asknlearn days of iLearning at ri. obviously while now i look back with fondness of the "good ol days", i am sure back then i wasn't all that happy doing iLearning even alt-tabbing to neopets and runescape.

homework was hard. and i bet it still is for the ri boys today.

then i think i get the answer. it's hard until you pay money for it.

one might argue that schoolgoing children also pay school fees, but that is nothing compared to the course fees of an external course run by a company. and i guess, nobody likes to pay good money to be frustrated by difficult exercises and then feel like shit.

unfortunately, i'm paying good money for le python course and feeling like i just had my intelligence insulted... therefore feeling like shit.

but then, this course was paid for by my university. so i should feel better about that.

but then again, i paid for my course at university. so i am by extension, indirectly contributing to the cause that makes me feel like shit.

and in a very roundabout way, while we can talk about how spending money can make our lives better; inevitably it may still backfire like it did on me.

i decided to close the exercise and see what else was on offer for me.

 

apparently there's a lot of (quasi-free) stuff here

i can't comment on anything much except for the "practise while you're commuting" bit. it was then i resolved to be 100% committed to doing my python exercises on the go on every single commute i make during lockdown. that will be my lockdown goal and i expect to have infinite success at it.

(p.s. if you didn't get it 0/0 = infinity)

so thinking about how i've been only spending money to my own disapproval, it was inevitable that i had to make amends.

 

4 euro apple crumble

despite this being an overpriced apple crumble and may quite literally leave a sour taste in the mouth, at the very least i know it won't insult my intelligence.  

talk lock summit

who'd have known it was going to end up like this?

no i'm not talking about the coronavirus - i'm talking about my blogger account.

after spending the good part of the last decade in cold storage, it was frozen over and died a death so quiet that it might as well have not existed at all.

(un)fortunately, the internet never forgets. some 15 years after the talk cock summit was established, i return after a 7-game losing streak on dota amidst a 7-week lockdown. i'm just glad that unlike dota, at least there are no people commenting on what i'm supposed to do here lol.

anyhow, back to the blogger account. my failure to retrieve it not only adds to my recent list of failures (more on that another time), but it offered some insights into my previous life.

1. I USED YAHOO. the shame, the shame. blogger no longer allows you to log in using the old username, not that i remember it anyway. i ended up using a password recall and the service reminds me politely that an email was sent to ...@yahoo.fr. which then reminded me,

2. I STUDIED FRENCH. mon dieu. maintenant j'ai besoin de naviguer ce système tout en français. taking a deep breath, i dived deep into the recesses of my memory to find the damned yahoo.fr address i had been using, and returned with this: yj_ri4j@yahoo.fr.

i can already sense some judgment. like HAHAHAHA WTF USES THEIR SECONDARY SCHOOL CLASS AS EMAIL? (there's more coming, hold your popcorn.)

 

to win, select all pictures with cars!

 

now this is stupid. look at the top right hand corner. that's more of a camion than a car. do i select it or not? i did not in the end and to my great dismay, being overly technical with terminologies meant that i had to assess some other images to prove that i am not a bot.

come on yahoo. if i were a bot i'd be using google.

3. i have strong school/class identity. the painful step of identifying myself as human then led to another dance to ensure that i am the correct human.

flashback: from secondary to primary school

the best part is: after trawling through a convoluted web of old usernames and passwords, i was still denied access to talk cock summit. it was only through YL that i found out that it wasn't the correct email at all.

that brings me to the final two observations.

4. young crazy me had a gazillion email accounts. and for whatever reason that i created them back then, i definitely see no reason now. conclusion: some innocuous random shit you do in the past can and will come back to haunt you, innocuously and randomly.

not wanting to drag on the pain of trying to uncover weird email addresses or passwords, i capitulated and asked YL to send an invitation to my current gmail account. and here i am now, back to good old BLOGGER in 2020. kind of goes to show that...

5. in times of trouble, one reverts to the basics. i return to my most basic instinct, talking cock.

Those Who Run Wild Have Issues (Film Review)

Wong Kar Wai's Days of Being Wild is about a playboy P (Leslie Cheung), who seduces and subsequently breaks the hearts of two girls, M (Maggie Cheung), and C (Carina Lau), probably because of unresolved mummy issues.

M is the sweet girl-next-door kind of chick. Accordingly, P starts seducing her with something very sweet:

"What do you want?"
"I want to be your friend. Look at my watch for a minute"
(M does so)
"It's a minute already, what do you want to say?"
"What day's today?"
"16th"
"16th... April the 16th. At one minute before 3pm on April the 16th, 1960, you're together with me. Because of you, I'll remember that one minute. From now on, we're friends for one minute. This is a fact, you can't deny. It's done."

Their relationship blossoms from there, until she raises the idea of marriage.

M: "Will you marry me?"
P: "No"
M: (leaving) "I'm never coming back"

Except she takes a while to get over him, with the help of a policeman A (Andy Lau). They have HTHT.

C, unlike M, is the overtly sexy kind of woman, the kind who attracts stares from other people. She is a cabaret dancer, and the first time they meet is when P has just beaten up a lover of his adoptive mother, having accused the lover of taking his adoptive mother's earrings Accordingly, P seduced her with a blend of money and being manly (essentially just expecting her to get into his car, and then expecting her to spend the night). And being physically playful. Eventually, C falls in love with him.

I suppose the two female characters serve to show that P has diverse seduction skills. He's not a one-trick playboy.

Eventually, we're shown that P has unresolved mummy issues. He's a playboy who is still relying on his adoptive mother for money. An adoptive mother who refuses to tell him who his real parents are. When she finally does, he sets off to look for his biological mum in the Philippines. He finds the house but she refuses to see him. His existence becomes meaningless because for so long he has been using his adoptive mother's refusal as an excuse for not doing anything worthwhile.

In the Philippines, he meets A, who is now working on a ship. A could not be more different. He had always wanted to work on a ship but became a policeman because he had to take care of his sick mother. It was only after his mother passed away that he went to work on a ship.

P eventually gets shot because he tried to get a passport from a gang without paying for it. But you get a sense he was taking this kind of risk because he lost his reason for living. A asks P if he remembers what happened on April 16th 1960 one minute before 3pm. Astonishingly, P does. He then says that whatever he wants to remember, he remembers forever. But he adds that if A sees M again, he should tell her that P doesn't remember anything. That way, it would be easier for everyone. There, we see that he remembers her, but he didn't want to commit, didn't want to take action, sub-consciously preferring to give in to his excuses instead of doing something worthy with his life that benefits other people. P dies in the train from the gunshot wound.

We see in the final scene that C has gone to the Philippines to look for P, not knowing that he has died. There, it shows that loving aspect of C. She can be crass, possessive, uncaring towards others, but she believes in love.

What comes out a lot in the film is the exceeding loneliness of the characters. P dies in a foreign land, and only A knows. Even his adoptive mother does not know. M has a job selling snacks at first, and then selling tickets to football games, and she mentions some relatives, but there is no scene with them. A uplifts himself to work on board a ship, seemingly without friends. C does not appear to have a life apart from seeing P and dancing at the cabaret.

Even the adoptive mother is shown to be lonely, taking a succeeding string of lovers.

The other thing that seems to be the hallmark of Wong Kar Wai are the missed connections. Like how, at the end, when M tries to call A, and no one picks up, because A has stopped being a policeman to work on a ship. The missed connections are less and less believable nowadays with the Internet and social media.

Scraping The Bottom Of The Barrel

Ain't got no silver spoon
Ain't no cream of the crop
All I got's a big fat ladle
To take care of this ugly barrel.
I scoop out the gezunk
I scoop out the frunk
The smell's so bad,
my hair's standing on end.
The others left so long ago.

But that's okay
They can have the cream
 Cos the gold's waiting for my ladle
At the bottom of the barrel. 

Saving the Lost Souls of Punggol LRT

To the soul-collectors of this world:

If you need to collect some souls to hit your quota, try going to Punggol and taking the LRT. You can always find some lost souls going round and round on the LRT because the directions at the station are so badly designed.

You can always spot these lost souls because they go to the doors at every station, unsure whether to alight or not. They don't know whether they're on the wrong train and to take the train on the other side. But the joke's on them because the LRT loop for the West side only goes in one direction. There is no train on the other side. If they alight, the next train goes in the exact same direction. Their only way is to take the entire loop if they want to go back to the interchange.

Today, I tried calling back one lost soul with her kid who alighted. But I was too late as the train doors closed. Gave them a sheepish grin.

Time is the runner with the sexy backside

Incredible that it's been almost 3 years since the last post.

Even more incredible is that the blog still gets visitors everyday. I thank you all.

I hope you find the blog entertaining. I find it extremely entertaining myself. Sometimes, I can't believe I'm the same person who wrote those posts, like wow what a genius. I'm kidding.

But it's inevitable that time passes and the world changes.

Time is that runner with the sexy backside. She seems hot and pretty and perfect from the back. So you really want to run faster and see what she looks like from the front.

And she doesn't seem to be running very fast, especially if you're young. But here's the thing: She doesn't stop running. Ever.

If you're young, smart, and fit and start running early (means you plan ahead and make good use of your time), you may actually catch up with her. After huffing and puffing, you finally run one step ahead or even two steps ahead of her. You turn to look at her, and lay your eyes on your deepest fantasy. For one moment, everything is perfect. The world is as it should be. You are the master of the universe.

But Time doesn't stop running. You do. The moment you lose your concentration, you find that she's ahead and you're chasing her sexy backside again. And so you try, again and again. Until you get tired, or you stop to admire the scenery, or stop at Starbucks for a coffee. Or you decide to apply for an HDB, get married and have kids.

All perfectly rational choices. One day, your kids will be chasing sexy backsides too.

The Ho's Guide to Looking Sexy

It always happens like this. A few days before a test, I get stressed out, and I borrow a novel. The novel is such a godsend compared to whatever drivel I have been studying that I forget about studying altogether.

At 8.15am tomorrow, I will take my mid-term paper for Conflicts of Law. On my desk staring at me lovingly is an old worn-out copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I have already read through half of it over yesterday and today. It is a mind-blowing piece of work. 'Mind-blowing', as opposed to 'mind-fucking', which is what my law readings are.

At 8.15am tomorrow, I will take my mid-term paper for Conflicts of Law. I already know the answer. It's forty-two. 

Fevers

I think a fever is what happens when the brain levels up to the next level of consciousness.

The Serious Solution to Singapore's Declining Birth Rate (finally!)

I am sure many people know la, but it has just got to be stated that Singapore has a birthrate problem because those in charge don't think out of the box. They think that Baby Bonus, Social Development Unit, childcare centers blablabla are all innovative ideas that involved 'thinking out of the box'. But they don't, and that's why they don't work. Nowadays, there are so many so-called innovations that people are fed up and don't give a shit about these innovations anymore. So true thinking out of the box, which has always been about being contrarian, has become thinking from inside the box. Confused? If you can think inside the box outside the box, then you have gained enlightenment, my friend.

From inside the box outside the box, the answer to Singapore's birth rate problem is of course to have arranged marriages in Singapore. And not like in the old days when you need your mother your father your grandmother your grandfather or even pay a matchmaker to find someone. Such a waste of resources. The fact that Singapore is an administratively-efficient country should be exploited and the arranged marriage will be balloted.

Everyone will ballot for a spouse. Nowadays, with technology, can just put everybody in an excel sheet and use the random function. I assure you any army corporal in the Ops department of an army battalion would be capable of doing something simple like that.

And of course the ballot is compulsory. Like National Service. On a certain day of each year, there can be held a ballot, say for all the guys aged 25 and girls aged 23. Then every guy is matched with a gal. If there's a shortfall of any sex, we do what we do best - import foreign talent. And voila, at the end of the ballot, everyone has a spouse.Everybody gets a fair chance, so if your spouse happens to have a hairy back and saggy boobs, there ain't no one to blame but luck.

One of the complaints must be that the people don't get a choice as to who they marry. But some people never get a choice anyway. For example, I imagine that under the current system there are people who spend time honing their scientific research skills for the benefit of mankind instead of developing social skills and hence are unattractive. These selfless people can finally get married in a ballot.

And for those who get a choice under the current liberal system, statistics show that they aren't very good at making that choice anyway. Divorce rates don't lie. So in true Singapore fashion, we let the State make the choice, and the State generously delegates that task to the random function of the excel sheet.

The other complaint is that 'but they don't love each other'. And here, we run into the difficult question of 'what is love?' That's a question for the philosophers. Fortunately, there aren't any philosophers in Singapore, so we don't have to answer that question. Singapore is above all, a practical nation. I mean, come on la, I can bet my cock hair there are people who get attached and then married just because they think it's the right time to do so, taking into account on a spreadsheet the biological clock, the career, the life expectancy etc. Doesn't sound much different from a balloted marriage.

Also, we all know that racial, religious harmony etc has always been important in Singapore. Arranged marriages will result in unprecedented social integration, Chinese marry Indian marry Malay. Christians marry atheists. Nobody will dare say Singapore is not a nation of risk-takers anymore. It will be any social engineer's wet dream.

If you still don't buy my idea, think of the lonely hearts who will be lonely no more. Pissed off at the spouse with the hairy back and saggy boobs maybe, but definitely not lonely.

There will of course have to be someone who is in charge of the excel sheet yearly for the ballot. This entity has to have the highest integrity, cos it will be very tempting to cheat and tamper with the results. Talkcocksummit unequivocally volunteers to take on this burden for the good of the nation. 

The Conspiracy Theory

Someone said I should blog here; and given my recent propensity to try everything except my Advanced Audit tutorial (still undone by the way), I have duly started writing out this post.

Yes hello everyone - I'm back after.. two years? Three? I can't even remember which came later; my last login to Neopets or my last post on Talk Cock Summit. Regrettable - but I think I will be logging into my Neopets account soon, as the Altador Cup should be just round the corner. Watch this space as I fill you guys in on my Altador Cup escapades.

Of course, that is assuming I remember my birthday. Not the real one, I don't have much trouble remembering that. I meant my Neopets birthday. Everyone has a real birthday and a Neopets birthday.

So I was supposed to blog about The Conspiracy Theory, but turned out I didn't because I digressed. It's just like me and my Advanced Audit tutorial. Fun fact: I was supposed to start doing it at twelve, but I decided to watch Chelsea fans boo Benitez instead.

Speaking of which, DO YOU KNOW HOW THERAPEUTIC IS THAT?

I never really liked Chelsea, but then again, I never really liked Benitez either. Watching Chelsea fans boo him is like watching my least favourite professor having a heated argument with the fucking annoying asshole in front who always asks stupid questions in order to get his class participation marks.

Right. In case you are wondering, no I am not referring to any particular person. I AM JUST SAYING.

Blogging at this time of night is not really healthy I should say. Then again, neither is doing my Advanced Audit tutorial. Hmm it's now half past two and I think I just won't do it anymore.

Oh wait, was I supposed to talk about The Conspiracy Theory?

I guess I've forgotten all about it. I think it was something about university education system here, but there's nothing about it that you cannot find on NUS Confessions or on Hardwarezone or EDMW (loves Singapore, might I add).

You know, while I've been away from here, social media has evolved to a stage where blogging isn't cool anymore. (Where did you think I went?)

So I guess, that's all for now. I don't have much left to say.

Maybe something interesting that you all want to know (whoever is still reading this blog..) would be that YL and I have set up a hedge fund. We aren't listed yet, but only because we think that the time isn't ripe. The amount we currently have in the fund is hardly enough to buy a cocktail at Pangaea, much less sponsor the whole going-public process.

Which means we need to wait until YL gets his law degree and myself, an accounting degree.

In effect, I guess that's why I am in university. All for this hedge fund.

People might question my motives and ask whether I'm being daft, putting myself through four years of hard work and toil just to get my fund listed without the help of others, when I can simply use the hedge fund to earn money to hire professionals??

This is akin to buying a car because you want air-conditioning.

But I think you all must understand that I am a great fan of Mario Balotelli. Sometimes, the reason may be complex, sometimes not so. And the reason, ladies and gentlemen, of why I have to get my degree for this hedge fund is.............

...........because I can.

Words of wisdom. Now I can sleep in peace.

An ode to the commitment-phobe

They say we live in an uncertain world.
Indeed, who am I to make it more certain?
It makes more sense to thrive in uncertain waters,
than to mollify a tempest all over.

Can I make it for the appointment, you ask,
Yes of course, but it depends,
on whether my mother has cooked,
or if the weather is good.

It's not my fault I am a busy man,
everybody wants a piece of me!
Get in the queue now and take a number,
else don't blame me if you're still waiting next summer.

Sometimes I am late and sometimes I don't turn up,
and it looks like I overslept and couldn't give a damn.
But didn't your mama tell you looks can be deceiving?
They certainly are, because the previous night I was doing hardcore problem-solving.

You think you can avoid me.
But unfortunately,
I am everywhere.
I am especially in those who don't think I am there.

Finally feels like school

Yesterday, at the start of the class, the Prof asked "Who has no problem with this class being pushed back to Thursday?" For the first time in the entire semester, there was 100% class participation as the class stood in solidarity with all hands proudly raised.

And when class was indeed delayed, there was before us a tremendously euphoric scene. Squeals of delight were heard in a law class for the first time. People who had hitherto been strangers rushed to congratulate one another like old friends, and tears of joy flowed like beer at Oktoberfest.

It did not matter that Thursday's class was going to be longer. Thursday's class was Thursday's problem. Heck, even the guy who came to school solely for the cancelled class celebrated like a boss. For all the talk of law students being study machines, at that moment, the shackles were thrown aside, and everyone capably displayed his ability to live in the present.

Finally feels like school.

Chilling my way through lawl skool

They say that education is the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty. I am glad to report that I am in the midst of miserable uncertainty. I am uncertain whether to read up on Finance(6 weeks' backlog), Property Law (4 weeks' backlog) or Corporate Law (8 weeks' backlog, because there was no mid-term test to get me moving). And the finals are about 2 weeks away. Faced with such humorous circumstances, I decided to blog instead. 10 years down the road, I hope I can  will be proud of this momentous decision.

If law has to be a household appliance, I would say it is the vacuum cleaner. A very good vacuum cleaner. And life is like dirt. But my life is so big it clogs up the vacuum cleaner.

If I can chill through law school, I can chill through anything.