no i'm not

since the creation of this blog, the bar on the right has stated that i am gay. i wonder how many people came by and mistakenly believed that i am, and i think most people very likely would, because it's a damn 'about me' section after all.

in the 6 years, i haven't given this much thought until last night. i don't recall myself ever saying outright that no, i'm not really gay. the reason behind this 'gay' thing was because back in the day, i thought that blogs were gay and stupid, and of course i ended up with one because i'm cool like that.

therefore, if blog = gay,
then me + blog = gay.
if that makes sense to you? it did to me.

last night i was looking through my blog and realised the amount of damage this 'gay' thing might have already caused. just imagine the sheer number of chicks that read this blog, fall in love with me, and then see the 'gay' thing and think "he's gay? oh damn..."

so yea i shall include a link on the 'gay' bit to this post, not that it'll help bring back any of the hot chicks i've lost over the years.

non-existance

i used to wonder why some people choose to commit suicide in such painful ways, like drowning or jumping off buildings etc. it's gotta hurt, right? and there are better ways to go about killing yourself. aren't they afraid of the pain?

and then one day i realised, it doesn't matter if you feel pain because that's the last thing you'll ever feel anyway. it simply is of no concern anymore. it's like... smashing your car before sending it to the scrapyard or having your old computer crash when you've bought a new one.

shitty analogies but i can't wrangle my mind around this at 5 in the morning.

beneath the blue sky

is it normal to feel so strangely detached from everything? what am i? i ask myself all the time. it's not an identity crisis. i really want to know WHAT AM I? is this suffering going to be worth it? it's not that i am suffering right now per se, but life itself is suffering and an endless struggle.

i was in class one day and i looked around me. i saw a bunch of atoms. is that what i am? a bunch of atoms so coincidentally arranged. is that what we are? what am i? my consciousness, which for now i shall attribute to my brain, is but a bunch of atoms and electrical signals. sometimes i feel like i'm nothing, like i don't exist.

but no, i am here, and so are you. so what are we? what is going on?

5 for now

you know, i still owe you guys vietnam part III. no one seems to care, but i'll probably write it someday soon. 1 month late.

here's 5 songs to listen to, in this order.

kevin drew - tbtf
crystal castles - celestica
does it offend you, yeah? - dawn of the dead
metric - sick muse
warpaint - stars

*the first 4 songs are just over 15 minutes long together. perfect for half-time listening.

do not forget

sometimes when i'm in a good time, when everything is finally perfect, when i feel at peace with myself and everything around me, i stop for a while and try to take in as much of the moment as i can.

i try to memorise every little detail, the sights the sounds the smells, my thoughts and feelings, memorise everything because i know that such moments are rare and short-lived.

i take everything and store it in my little bank of good memories.

watch and learn

today i played my first football since the world cup started. i think i haven't absorbed enough skills through the screen because my abilities only improved by a very little bit.

it also doesn't help that my favourite position to watch and learn from is the deep-lying playmaker, but such players have not featured heavily at this world cup. the ones i loved watching the most in 2006 were riquelme and pirlo, both with differing abilities but simply the best in their position.

these special men always have the unique ability to twist and turn out of the stickiest situations without having to resort to speed or strength. they always manage to find the space they need using a simple turn and through their mastery over angles and positioning.

who can i watch now? xavi? sneijder? i find that they are simply nowhere near the level of finesse displayed by riquelme and pirlo.

all gone

i know that many bands have been hated for 'selling out' and signing for major labels, but the act of signing for a label doesn't really matter to me. they have to earn a living, and i'm more than happy to see my favourite bands get their due recognition and money's worth for all their awesomeness, because otherwise what's gonna feed them? are they gonna eat their fans' adoration? is that edible?

what i'm most worried of is bands going mainstream and losing their edge in order to appeal to a mass audience. it's not so much of tuning their sound, tweaking it a little to make it sound better to, yes, get more fans, but rather more like a total change in their musical direction to something completely unappealing and just plain sucky.

it's happened to so many of my favourite bands that it just saddens me. atreyu, funeral for a friend, i've given up on them because their songs have turned to shit. for some other bands i still hold a bit of hope, but even this little glimmer is fading. so sad, so sad.

written 12 june, 11:28pm

headkick

back in the hotel at ho chi minh city, we were watching some ufc (fighting) on tv, because vietnam tv is cool and they show ufc. after watching, we were inspired (just a little) and i believe we were wondering just how the hell is it possible to do a head kick with so little effort.

so my friend asked me to try, and the highest i could get my leg was to hip level. pathetic. and it felt like my balls would split if i tried any harder. i came home haunted by this incident, and so i've been stretching my legs and groin regularly as well as doing some kicking practice.

well, you probably think it's useless and a waste of time, but think of it, you'll never know if today is the day when you need to kick someone in the head urgently. anyway i'm glad to say that i can now kick to head level, although not with the same technical ability as those people.

dreamland

i was armed with a shotgun in an office building/ shopping centre. i had just killed a bunch of people and was taking a group of others hostage. i didn't know if all this was for the right reasons, but it seemed that i had to do it, there was no other choice.

"tonight is the last night we'll be alive," i told my friends (who were also accomplices) as i shook their hands. i knew there was no way out of this. either we die here in battle or we go to jail and die there.

"we should try to escape," i said, but as i thought through the possibilities, it was apparent that we didn't have a chance. i looked up at the security cameras and imagined 'Wanted' posters with my face plastered everywhere.

we weren't gonna survive through the night and it was a damn terrible feeling to know that in a few hours i'd be dead.

2010

so the world cup has finally come around again. this would be my 4th world cup and possibly the worst one.

1998 was the first world cup i ever watched, and i was still a noob back then, only 10 years old and a year into my soccer career. i didn't know much, except that ronaldo (the real one) was freaking godly and i was sure that brazil was gonna win it. so imagine my shock when france (who?) beat them 3-0 in the final, with zidane's (WHO?) balding head knocking in 2 goals. 1998 taught me to take nothing for granted in football.

by 2002, france were owning everyone's asses and zidane was the new god, but all good things come to an end, as they were brutally knocked out in japan/korea. i was in secondary 2, a time where football pretty much ruled our lives. The Real Ronaldo, who had been hibernating ever since 1998, suddenly came alive again and showed the world just what he was made of. he also showed the world possibly the most stupid haircut in the history of the world cup.

the 2002 final between germany and brazil was televised live and for the first time, not at some ungodly hour. i could hear the roar from all the flats surrounding mine when ronaldo scored and brazil won in decisive fashion. also notable was the emergence of park ji sung, korea shocking the world by beating italy, turkey's brave run into the semi-finals and their goalkeeper's facepaint and heroics that remained in our discussions for a long time to come.

before i knew it, i had graduated from secondary school and was into my 2nd year of poly. what i recall of 2006 was me falling asleep while watching the world cup alone in the middle of the night, on my maid's little tv tuned in to an indonesian channel. zidane had come out of retirement for one last burst of fire, The Real Ronaldo should have gone into retirement judging by his performances, and the world was going crazy over another (fake) ronaldo.

zidane rolled back the years and led france to the final against italy, where he performed his now famous headbutt, which i missed because i fell asleep watching that boring boring match. i woke up in time for the penalty shootout which italy won. i didn't have much feelings regarding this because well, both teams were rather shit and i think neither really deserved to win.

one strange thing about this world cup was that after watching so much football in the space of a month, i found that my own abilities on the pitch had increased too. it was like all the skills and tactics had seeped into my mind and unconsciously made me a better player (or maybe it was sleep learning since i was asleep so often). i feel like i played the best football of my life in the 6 months following this world cup.

has it really been 4 years since then? the 2010 world cup was supposed to be the one where singapore played at, in its overly-ambitious and now scrapped 'goal 2010'. if everything had gone according to plan, I (and others in my crop of youngsters) was expected to be in south africa now, facing the likes of rooney and ronaldo and messi. instead, we're left watching massively over-priced football on tv, or settling for fuzzy foreign channels and online streaming.

the reason i think this world cup is going to suck is due to the lack of a feeling of community, like the world cup is being watched by the world, but in singapore, only the people who bothered paying big bucks for it will get to catch it, and the rest will settle for second grade, or not watch it at all. but fortunately now i hear channel 5 is going to broadcast the semis and final, so perhaps all hope is not gone.

back to the future

i think i must have held the record for lowest amaths score back in secondary 4. i scored 11/100 for my prelims. i wonder if anyone managed to break my record. oh and my emaths was 16/100 for a combined score of 27/200. beat that, bitches!

anyway i have never been good at maths since primary school. the level of mathematical craziness just got waaay outta hand and i gave up. usually when i solve problems, i gotta visualise them in my head, i see how it works and then i get the answer.

when it comes to maths, everything was fine i think, until sin and cos and ln and log all popped out. WTF ARE THOSE SHIT? how the hell am i supposed to visualise these things?! screw this shit, i thought, although in all honesty, my maths was fucked long before sin and cos etc popped up, but that was the final straw that broke my back.

after secondary school, i was hella happy to be free from maths, or more specifically, crazy maths. i even took an elective calculus class and it was fine because there wasn't crazy maths involved.

and then, now. i started my maths bridging course last week. this bridging course will allow me to skip first year of university. bridging course? should be a piece of cake, i thought, since i did just fine for my poly calculus class.

so i went to class, and the first few pages was easy. then i turned the page and saw LOG! LN! e! WTF? it was only the first damn lesson! today i tried to do some homework and it made me dizzy. "i gotta find out what in the world is log and ln and e," i thought.

in this day and age, where do we go when we need information on something? WIKIPEDIA! so i went, and read, and got even more dizzy. why does this feel like 2004 all over again?

O_O

yesterday evening i was at queenstown waiting for my bus which took an enternity to arrive. i was standing alone outside the bus stop when suddenly a car drove into the edge of the bus bay and jerked to a halt right in front of me. strange since there weren't any buses in front, and a bus behind was forced to jam on its brakes.

"wtf? idiot," i thought. then a skinny old man around 60 years old alighted from the opposite side of the car whom i assumed was a passenger who wanted to drop off. but this 'passenger' started gesticulating towards the bus driver, and then went beside his window and started shouting and banging on it, challenging him to come out.

it was then that i realised that this guy was the driver of the car. the bus driver, a young chinaman, merely sat still and smiled at him in incredulity. after a minute of this, the driver opened the front door and people from the bus stop came forward to enter. the man then walked into the bus and continued shouting at the driver.

before i knew it, an entire drove of people rushed forward and gathered in front of the door to gawk at the unfolding drama, and some passengers on the bus whipped out their phones to film the excitement. one guy even got off the bus to film the car driver's face and vehicle number.

this was rather amusing because it was the first time in my life that i've actually seen the much talked-about Kaypoh Singaporean in action. normally they'll be like me, watching from their original positions, but this time they freaking rushed up to watch this free show. i just stood there and smiled a little at the absurdity of the entire scene.

anyway before long, the bus driver too got agitated and began shouting back at the man. blah blah, the dispute was about the bus doing something that nearly caused an accident and the car guy was unhappy. soon, the bus passengers were scolding the man, ordering him to move his car and go away because he was just wasting everyone's time.

in the end the poor man realised that he had no one on his side so he got into his car angrily and drove off. peace restored, show over, the gawkers returned back to their resting place under the bus stop. and my bloody bus was still not here.

spot the moon

24th may 2010, 5:39pm

fluffy blue

the skies have been more blue than i've ever remembered them to be. maybe whatever bad things we're doing to the world now have one good outcome after all. and after this we'll all die and there's nothing left to see. back in secondary school i used to take photos of clouds because i figured each cloud is significant in its uniqueness. it's there one moment and the next it's gone, never to be the same again. and in its short lifespan, at least someone noticed it.

i took geography for my o levels but never could fully grasp the subject although i thought and still think that everything in it is fairly logical and it's not that i didn't know how it worked, i just couldn't answer my exam questions. of course it didn't help that my teacher was more happy to spend entire lessons telling us grandmother stories (she was a grandmother anyway), but there were still some who did well so i guess it's not all down to her.

i learnt in geography class that different clouds have different shapes and were mostly grouped into several categories. sirrius, culunonimbus (i still can't spell that shit), what else i don't remember. but it always troubled me that most of the clouds i seemed to see appeared to fall into the 'fluffy white stuff' category and yet there wasn't any proper name for it, or at least it wasn't taught in school. it's as though its ordinariness excluded it from any importance.

written today, 10:23 am