Gratitude. Contented.

I came to realize that I have been ranting alot. ALOT. in the past few months. Mainly due to being in the working world and my emotions have been pretty negative in every single post which kind of sort of gives off a vibe that I am not really enjoying myself in school. The recent posts have strayed from my original intention of "leaving memories for myself" into some outlet and platform for me to rant about stuff and I dunno if its good or bad.

Good because I get to sort my thoughts out more coherently and be a better person after keyboard-warrioring here.

Bad because its kind of unhealthy that I cannot sort out all the fked up thoughts in my own head and I actually have to resort to venting it out here to bring the equilibrium back in my life. Which is fked up in its own way.. its like a guy who has unhealthy sexual desires who watch porn alot to prevent himself from raping every single person in the streets. The root of the problem is not solved and this outlet may one day not be enough.. shit I am becoming negative again.. damn!

Anyway Bandung trip was pretty awesome =D It was much more enjoyable than what people online mentioned! The shopping was pretty decent, the food was extremely decent and the prices for everything (air ticket, accommodation, food, shopping, transport) were fking decent. I would strongly recommend going before it becomes touristy!

The trip itself was epic the moment I landed. I arranged for airport transfer from my hotel and for the first time in my life, I saw my name printed big big on a board while exiting which made me feel LIKEABOSS. Hahahaha and for the first time I stayed in a hotel instead of some cramped up guesthouse and the feeling was S.H.I.O.K. Got gym, got pool, got people opening doors and carrying ur luggage.. holy moly I am not staying in a guesthouse ever!

Anyway long story short.
We shopped. ALOT.
We ate. ALOT.
We slept. ALOT.
We spent. ABIT.

We planned for a few breakfast places but we did not wake up a single day before 11. In the end the only breakfast we ate was the hotel breakfast. which was still decent =D. This trip was much more relaxing compared to taiwan and korea where everything was planned meticulously, this trip was more free and easy and less tiring!

Moral of story: Earn more money, spend on nice relaxing holidays and explore the world! Super motivated and looking forward to the next holiday hehehe!

On the topic of earning more money, I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude and contentment. Gratitude and being contented are the recent enlightenment and revelation that I had regarding being a better person in general. I also realized why Zoe makes me a better person and why I am so happy to be with her. Because I am grateful to her in many ways and I am so so contented to have her in my life.

Similarly, I am extending this revelation to my job and I also realized how lucky I am in many ways. People I met in *** are actually great people. Despite the many dramas and behind the scenes politics, there are many nice memories as well =D

A relationship blossomed which I am randomly responsible.
A chance to experience being a nicer and better person, even if its maybe 50% fake, it feels nice to be the good guy.
A chance to carry others and be seen as a carry. (There are many cons obviously but lets stay positive!)
A chance to give advice and people actually think your advice makes sense when I just wanna do a social experiment and see how things turn out on the expense of others =D

All in all, I am contented with my job, my life, and I am grateful for how things turned out. I am happy =)

Alright. Enough positivity. Back to some soul searching reflection.

Regrets. I am sure everyone has them. I personally don't have many major life changing regrets except the following.

1) I know its 太晚了. But the number one regret was hall life in Uni. I should have made better use of it. After reflection, I realized I could have made my Hall life much more exciting if I wasnt that addicted to gaming. But hey.. wcg medal for exciting hall life..#worth.

2) Cherishing people. I have alot of close secondary friends that I no longer keep in touch even though I am extremely thankful to them for making my secondary school life so memorable.

3) 宽容，感恩. I should have learnt this ages ago. Makes me a better and happier person =)

Maybe its because I am listening to Katy Perry's song which made me think about what I would change and who would I become if I had a chance to be "In another life".

Distance.

To keep a distance? To go the distance? It changes everything.

Congratulations.

It is half sincere, because the other half is apologetic.
Why apologetic?
Because I feel you deserve better?
Because deep down I know that it could have been me?
Do I want it to be me? Half yes half no.
Why half yes?
Because my ego is huge and I believe the person I am right now and in the future would still be a better fit in every possible way.
Why half no?
Because if ceteris paribus, I would not have been who I am today. Which leads to the paradox of if the incident did not turn out this way, would we still be who we are today? Would I still be obnoxious and would you still be an enabler of my egocentric condescending nature?

Nonetheless I am extremely grateful and extremely extremely extremely thankful of everything thats happened. Thanks for accepting me at my worst, thanks for the experiences and emotions that allowed me to take the first step into being a better person. We were young, naive, foolish but the emotions were raw and real. You let me understand the strong desire of wanting and protecting someone. All our promises and dreams of the future, how many came true for you I wonder. All I can say is I'm sorry because I failed to keep mine to you.

I really do not like the way we left things. Blinded by my own ego, I failed to see whats important and failed to see the sacrifices you made and the constraints we had. Yes. Sacrifices that only you made, I did not make a single sacrifice and I am more sorry than ever. I was selfish, very selfish, disgustingly selfish. I really want a chance to make it up to you, but it is too late. Once again, I had all these years to do so, why only to this day I decided to reflect? Sigh.. I am pathetic..

Therefore, the decision is to keep a distance. Once again, the ego in me (that dictates whatever decision I make is the right one) is telling me to not remind you. Not remind you of what could have been and what had been. The decision for me to let go, then and now, is the right one. The difference however, was that I was selfish before, and now I am just sorry and want to do the right thing,

Congratulations.

Smoking

Within weeks of entering ***, my classmates have made an observation that I should go sell vacuum cleaners. They say I have a very good sales pitch and my demeanor makes a very convincing sales person.

Within months of entering ***, I have been accused of smoking through a group discussion and questioned if I actually read or referenced a legit journal for my assignments.

Did I actually read the journal? No I didnt. Why? Because I used materials given to me by professors. I actually bothered to listen and make connections and related the materials given by module A to be used in an assignment by module B. The prof provided the journal he took the information from, I simply copy pasted the citation.

Did I really go to the journal and cross reference the points mentioned in the journal to the prof's materials? No. Why? Because fk you. Are you really that stupid?

Did I really smoke in a group discussion? No. Since everybody was tired, I tried to spearhead the discussion and managed to settle everybody's roles within 10 mins.

One young fk had the audacity to call me at 11pm, questioning me about the journal article and where it was from, when we actually take the same modules and the prof went through them. After I patiently explained that I did not pull the points out of my ass (exact words used), but rather I took the materials from another module, she questioned the integrity of my work and whether I was "smoking" them in the discussion just now. Wow. Can she get any more dense?

Yes I know I have a very easy going nature. Yes I know I have a very lazy and "joker" personality. And it is precisely because of the drastic contrast between the serious me and the joker me, people tend to take me more seriously than others when I am serious. Because when I am serious, means shit just got real, and people also can feel that. Therefore I am astounded by the lack of EQ from this young fk who had the audacity to question my integrity regarding both the meeting and the assignment.

There is a Chinese saying that goes: 靠人不如靠己. Depend on yourself rather than depending on others.

I have a philosophy. I would depend on everyone and anyone for everything and anything. Only when everyone else around me has failed, I would then depend on myself. I personally think that makes more sense, if someone else can dabao food for you while you seat on your ass and play games/watch videos, why the fk not? Yea sure I have legs and I can go dabao myself, but why the fk would I do that if someone else can do it for me?

End of rant. Moral of the story: I really really really really really need to constantly remind myself to not show too much of my personality in the working world. Just shut the fk up, wait for someone else to do shit, keep a low profile. Just like in NS.

Reminder to self: Don't argue with people higher den myself, since they think they are always right. Don't argue with people lower den myself, since I think I am always right and it takes too long to explain things to retards.

In short, dun argue, stfu, keep calm and "fire in the hole" *psssssssssssssssss* (smokescreen formed)

I feel very ashamed.

Had an impulse to post this as a reminder that dogs cannot change eating shit. Particularly the dog in this case is me and the shit in this case is me being a fked up person. Not many people know my army stories and alot of people including Zoe has often noticed that army changed me significantly and "for the better".

While army did change me for the better to a certain extent, it taught me so so many valuable lessons in life as I finally had the opportunity to be treated as someone who was expendable/disposable/useless thrash. Not only that, the people who treated me like expendable disposable useless thrash RANGED from people dropping out of ITE (Regular specs) to people who were younger/same age as me that were going to NUS/NTU together after ORD (NSF Officers).

It made me so sick to the stomach everyday when ITE failures were commanding me to do inefficient and pointless things and punishing me for suggesting smarter ways of doing things. It made me even more sick to the stomach when officers whom I had higher expectations of, joined in the fun and ridiculed me further in a more intellectual way. Regular specs would just give physical punishment like PT or confinement, because their brains arent that sophisticated. Officers I had were much worse, they would use the things I confided in them during those mandatory talks to ridicule and humiliate me in an intellectual way. I have to keep this hate alive for the rest of my life to keep reminding myself to be a fked up person to protect myself and my loved ones. Daniel T*n from NUS dentistry. Francis L*m Jia* Xia* from some random poly. If one day I think of a perfect crime and you happen to be in my life, god bless you. (Just kidding..... Or am I?)

Which brings me back to my point, I used to be very straightforward, very positive and optimistic, very blunt with words, but never an evil thought or intention that would harm others. I would stand up for what I felt is right, speak up for people who just accepted bullshit and that really got me into alot of trouble.

After NS, I am scheming, cynical and full of bullshit. I read very very deep in between the lines, I have multiple personas when dealing with different people, I can sense danger of my welfare from a mile away. I am manipulative and cunning in such a fked up way, I would say yes and smile to different groups of people while trying to achieve an objective that was only beneficial to myself. I thought I would no longer require this "skill" to protect myself once I ORD. Sadly, every ICT would awaken this nature and refines this skill further.

I thought to myself, there would be absolutely no need for this "skill" once I enter the workforce, since if I am paid a salary to endure certain nonsense then by all means endure. Sadly, it has awakened once again and I am ashamed and afraid of myself because the people I am dealing with are really weak low level noobs compared to fkers from NS.

How far would I  go to manipulate nice people into doing more just so I can do less? How fake would I be to manipulate people into thinking I am doing just as much? How pretentious must I be to create and instill fear into people who dare to approach me to do things? How much of a smiling joker must I be so that when I suddenly turn serious, people wouldnt know how to deal with me? How cruel must I be to humiliate and ostracize people who wayang and spoil market while still maintaining a friendly relationship? How fked up must I be, if I could achieve all of the above while hiding behind a facade of smiles and deceit?

I am ashamed, I really am, and I am feeling that my fangs and claws are starting to show which is why I am writing this emergency post to remind myself to keep it hidden. The more people open up to me, the more I need to pull back otherwise I am afraid they would see the real me. This quote from one of my friends would be perfect to end this pathetic excuse of a post.

All Singaporean guys are fked up. Why?
NS is fked up, and all SG guys have to go through NS. Therefore, all SG guys are fked up.

A truthful review of Lucy that does not bash it entirely

Watched Lucy in JB with Zoe, it was honestly a very thought provoking movie for me especially the end. I was so engrossed with the ending as a myriad of thoughts were rushing into my head so I made a mental note to google a review to see what others thought. Unexpectedly, almost all the reviews on the first page were negative reviews that were so sarcastic and borderline retarded that did not provide any meaningful review and discussion. So here I am.

First of all, I just wanna raise a gigantic middle finger to those negative reviews that jumped on the bandwagon and bashed Lucy due to scientific fallacies. Every review pointed out a glaring loophole that human beings do not just use 10% of the brain. This is a freaking sci-fi movie, its NOT meant to be true in the first place? I'm sure those people must be a joy to have in parties, do we ever question the scientific facts behind gamma rays that made the Hulk? Do we question the radioactive spider that bit Peter Parker? Do we question what brand of shampoo Asgarde sold? Same goes to the scientific background of the CPH4 drug, who cares whether its really produced by a pregnant lady or whether it really forms the skull or whatever? Its just a science- FICTION movie. Please.

I personally felt that the last few minutes were the crux of the show. I was trying to understand what the director/scriptwriter wanted to tell us and what is his stand. The biggest question I had after the show ended was: Is this show trying to make us think about creationism vs evolution? If thats the case what did the scriptwriter think? What is his stand?

It seems that at 99% Lucy became one with time and could go back in time, which is quite interesting because it definitely showed evolution and the reverse big bang and first life forms were jellyfish (immortality throwback?) lookalikes and lastly crooked looking plants and finally the first cell.

At 100%, Lucy disappeared. Now everything up to this point has been a recount of the movie. From this point onwards its just what I felt after watching. It seems that the scriptwriter is leaning towards creationism since at 100%, Lucy essentially became God.

At 30% she was already showing signs of omniscient (all knowing with quantum physics, applied mathematics, memories, knowing all about another person by touching them etc), at 40-50% she was showing signs of omnipotence (all powerful, controlling objects and people at will etc)  and at 99% - 100% she showed signs of omnipresence. (Controlling time, and that sms "I am everywhere " )

So the order of 99% and 100% actually mattered quite significantly to me. At 99% Lucy saw evolution and she wasn't "everywhere" yet, furthermore she actually saw the first cell, that was only possible if God came first and created the first cell. If cells came first before God, would God still be able to see the first cell that created him? I'm not too sure about the time travelling mechanics for God. Did God proceed to create lifeforms who were similar to himself and realised that it requires too much sustenance and slowly proceeded to "dumb down" till evolution took place? At least thats what I felt the scriptwriter was trying to say or maybe I'm just thinking too much/little.

Some things I could not think through.
1) The Lucy fingering the monkey scene appeared before dinosaurs. Not sure if there was a significance with that timeline.

2) First female monkey also called Lucy. I must have missed some sort of link. So did Lucy went to the first female monkey and passed on her knowledge of evolution to that monkey by connecting fingers? No idea because it conflicts with what I thought the scriptwriter was trying to imply.

Some random closing thoughts:

Scriptwriter must have thought funny people are smarter. When the junkie snorted the CPH4 directly into his nose, he started to laugh like a manic. What if taking in huge amounts of CPH4 actually results in a being that is so humorous that nothing is funny enough to make her laugh anymore? What if Robin Williams reached 100% and was so funny that nothing could make him laugh anymore and he just disintegrated and became God?

That random thought lead to Zoe and I trying to come up with a definition for a joke. According to dictionary: a joke is a thing that someone says to cause amusement or laughter, especially a story with a funny punchline.

Using what we learnt in N**, we came up with a new definition of joke: A statement that engages the prior knowledge of the audience that causes a disequilibrium and results in a laughing response while trying to achieve equilibrium with the punchline.

So, "life was given to us a billion years ago, now you know what to do with it."
Yes I do indeed, party hard, overdose on drugs and evolve into a flash drive/hard disk/cloud storage.

God of Trolls really exist.

If you could only choose between having sex or eating food which would you choose and which would you give up?

A: Choose to eat. Give up having sex.
B: Choose to have sex. Give up eating.

A twisted his back the next day.

B had infected gum the next day.

Yay its June holidays~!

After 8 months. The end of heaven.

It has been 10 months since I started this job and I shall soon be released from contract and going into *** for training. This post is mainly to serve as a reminder to myself in the future when I have children.

Today marks the end of Semester 1 and it is time for the Meet The Parents session again. As expected I wasnt required to be there ( reminder, next time just go home when the school is relocated back to tampines ) but nonetheless I was there from 8 am to 3 pm due to school policy. Did absolutely nothing except connect my laptop and microphone in the music room and sang songs.

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I have 2 ideas to remind myself in the future.

1) To find out the true personality of my child, I should consult the teachers who teaches the non-core subjects to get a clearer picture of my child's true colors.

Reasons being:

For core subjects like EMS, they are conducted in a classroom setting where it has been drilled since Pri 1 and there is more or less a certain amount of classroom discipline instilled into them.

Form teachers are with them for close to 3-4 hours a day and are generally very strict and fierce to enforce discipline and respect. Hence students are definitely more afraid of their form teachers. 

Parents put alot of focus into their child's results, teachers put alot of focus into their child's results, no one actually cares too much about the moral upbringing and personality of the child as well as the positive/negative impact he brings to his peers and vice versa.

For non-core subjects like Music/PE/Art, this is where I feel that would allow the child to freely express himself. I can find out personality traits like whether my child has a competitive nature and whether he would resort to underhanded methods like cheating or violence to win during PE, or does he give up extremely easily in class when subjected to physical activities. For Art or Music, most boys would tend to dislike it as it seems feminine and pointless, this is where I will be able to see what my child's attitude is like towards things that he dislikes. Will he uphold his moral upbringing of respect over personal feelings and continue participating and listening to teacher's instructions or will he become a huge nuisance and pest in the class?

Case study/example 1:

An art assignment required students to decorate their names. A P4 student handed in a piece of artwork consisting of the words F.U.C.K. When confronted by the art teacher, the student was proud that he knew the word and proud that he knew what was the meaning of the word. The art teacher took this case to the form teacher, letting the form teacher settle.

Did the form teacher show the student's artwork during MTP session?
Nope.
Was the incident even mentioned?
Nope.
If it was my child, would I have wanted to know?
Fuck yes. Lol.

Case study/example 2:

This one happened in my class. A P3 student stood up in the middle of the class under no provocation randomly shouted: "CHAO CHEE BAI" and grinned cheekily at me. The rest of the class stared with a confused look since none of them even knew what was being said. I brought it up to the form teacher and when he confronted the student regarding what was said, the student cheekily replied "I dunno" to every single accusation.

The form teacher then gave me one of the stupidest suggestions ever. He told me to record it down next time. Like wtf? I have a fking lesson to conduct and I am expected to waste 50% of my handphone battery to record every single sound that this P3 kid makes for an hour just for an off chance that he decides to do that again? Hey buddy, in that case, its fine by me. Your form class, not mine lol. 

Did the form teacher bring up this incident during MTP?
Nope.
If it was my child, would I have wanted to know?
Ccb yes.

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2) The second point is not really an idea, but a reminder not to be cynical. I feel that one of the key factors that determine whether a child is morally upright is how innocent/cynical he/she is.

Children are NATURALLY innocent. I belong to the 人之初性本善 faction and as long as children do not lose their innocence and naivety, they are on the right  track regardless of results.

How to destroy a child's innocence?
By being a cynical adult, be it teacher or parent.

Imagine your child comes home one day and tells you "Daddy/mommy my form teacher say this school event is compulsory, so that day cannot have tuition/family gathering/violin/piano lessons etc."

A cynical parent that has a proud mentality would say " fk that shit. no such thing as compulsory in this world. your teacher talk cock only. go for ur tuition/violin/piano lesson and tell your teacher that day not free." ( of course the conversation would not be delivered in this manner. )

A part of the child's innocence just died inside, not because he cannot go to the school event, but rather the weight of the teacher's words, just became null and void that easily. The instructions from teachers that were once absolute, are now easily refutable not by himself, but by his parents. An internal struggle between obeying his parents and his teacher starts to occur and in the years to come, the teacher's words no longer have any impact to the child.

Imagine a student coming to you in the middle of the lesson complaining that his/her classmate called him/her stupid or told him/her to shut up.

A cynical teacher would be one that disregards the student's complaints due to its childish nature. ( "Teacher he use the S word", initially I thought it was the word shit. Actually it was the word stupid. Cute right? Lol)

I have to admit I was guilty of waving them away asking them to think whether they would become stupid just because others said so. It may seem logical and justifiable at that point of time to get on with the lesson and ignore such childish complaints, but I have since seen the error of my ways and it is exactly the same reason as before.

A part of the child's innocence just died inside, not because he was called stupid or told to shut up, but rather he resisted the urge to scold back his classmates and approached the teacher instead as it is the "right" thing to do. ( Of course we can say that the right thing to do was to ignore but they are P3s for fks sake, if you called me stupid at P3 I would have cursed your whole family to oblivion ) My disregard for such incidents would imply to the students that I am a teacher who tolerates and accepts such language to be used with no serious repercussions, the good students would get their innocence slowly chipped away by their classmates while the bad students would 变本加厉  and push their limits further.

Furthermore, I would have single handedly destroyed the framework that my colleagues in P1 and P2 so painstakingly built. So instead of approaching the teacher, the students would lose their innocence and they themselves will slowly become cynical as they realized that approaching teachers are useless since most of us "do not care" for such small matters. Small matters become big, and soon we will have more and more students submitting FUCK on their artwork.

Imagine a cynical parent meeting a cynical teacher during MTP session. What would happen?

The parents would think that the teachers are useless and the teachers will think that the parents are useless. Both parties are judging each other's uselessness and it becomes an extremely pointless meeting where both parties end up talking about how useless the other party is at their role. While all this is happening, the children are the ones that pick up the wrong things, mainly from cynical parents. This is how students lose their respect for their teachers, when their parents are at home discussing loudly about how useless teachers are.

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Write too much sian already. Mind starting to block, words starting to get choked, sentences starting to not make sense.

TLDR: Dont be cynical. Approach non-core teachers for a true assessment of my child's personality.