the people's champion

i've never really bothered when teachers or the government used to harp on our english (or singlish) standards. they liked to use the reason that if we were to do business abroad, foreigners would have difficulties in understanding us.

i think it's quite stupid if you went overseas and spoke to a foreigner in singlish. it's more of a case of knowing when to speak properly and when you can relax. 

anyway if we're in singapore and everyone understands singlish then i don't see a problem. every country and culture will develop their own unique twist in their language and this one's ours.

but of course the problem comes when no one understands what the fuck you're saying because you're using singlish in the wrong context or because your pronunciation is so wack and yet that's the only way you can speak.

for example, one of my lecturers in school this year. since my poly days, almost every semester we'd get one lecturer that was totally shit. and then when we thought things couldn't get any worse, the next sem a worse one comes along and a new champion is born.

in my first year of university there were TWO, both teaching finance modules. one of them was a hong kong woman who spoke like "kukukukukuku" and no one knew what she was saying. she'd then proceed to fill up the boards with strings of writing and formula and carry on with her kukuukukuku.

the second, all i remember is that he's a guy and he's incredibly boring, because i stopped going after probably the second lecture. i quote my friend: "i seriously cannot stress enough just how fucking shit this guy is. i thought in poly we had some shit lecturers but this guy is just TERRIBLE" (i know it sounds dramatic but that's really what he said.)

and then this year's new champion... also teaching a finance module (i swear it's a fucking curse), and for all his shittiness i don't know how he managed to get all the sessions and be the only lecturer available for this module.

there are many reasons why he's the champion, and one of them is his pronunciation and his english in general. it's just... 

for example, one day he said we needed to find the u of the asset. u? i looked at my friend and he had no clue. probably something new that we missed out on since we don't go to class that often anyway. so as i was listening to him talking about the u of the asset, it suddenly came to me in a big eureka moment! YIELD! YIELD OF THE ASSET!

nevermind that, another day he was talking about larberties. again, i looked at my friend and we just shrugged our shoulders. larberties, larberties, assets and larberties... LIABILITIES!!! my god.

another one of his favourite things is to add an S behind random words, for example, "now we can calculates the u of the asset." even if we exclude his language skills, he seems to be a smart guy and probably rather proficient at the topic but damn he sucks at teaching.

somewhere along the way we just gave up completely. now i'm trying to figure out this module for my exams and... i have absolutely no clue but not a single regret.

damn shit

after my previous phone died (it was a slide phone, and all slide phones will get damaged because of all the sliding, which is so fucking dumb), i got this. 

theoretically it should have been the perfect phone for me. no frills, slim as shit, camera... 

see, what i loved about my previous phone was the camera. i could adjust the settings and contrast and the photos would all come out just as i wanted them to. i would have used that phone forever if it didn't die so suddenly. 

when i was searching for a new phone, i saw that this camera was 5 megapixels, compared with 8.1 from the old one. would that be too little? but i figured it would be alright since it was the same as the iphone 4 camera and those iphone photos all seemed quite fine. 

it was only after i got the phone that i found out that not all megapixels are created equal. it's quite shit, but the most frustrating, irritating, annoying thing about it is the auto-adjusting function that cannot be disabled. 

each time i try to take a picture of something nice, i spend some time getting the shot right, the colours look great, everything is fine on the display. then i shoot and... AUTO-ADJUST. the whole photo is now pale and washed-out. 

FFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!! 

god knows how many sunsets i've missed with this damn phone.

boomz

betta splenden

when i was a kid, my father would often take me to the fish shop to stock up on his aquarium. that was when i first saw these dull fishes in jam jars, stacked on a shelf.

my father removed the card in between the jars and the fishes immediately went mad. their colours became bright and their gills flared up.

he told my those were fighting fishes and they would fight to their death if they were put together, that's why they had to be kept in individual containers.

years later when i was in primary school, we saw some fighting fishes at a fish shop near our home so my siblings and i each bought one. the moment we got home, what else could we do with fighting fishes?

we let them fight for a while but stopped because we were worried they would die. the fins got pretty battered but otherwise they seemed fine and still lived for quite a long time. that was the only time we let them fight because it seemed unnecessarily brutal.

then during my secondary school days i was re-introduced to them again and got into a bit of a craze because i found them to be quite beautiful. i tried breeding them a few times but all the hundreds of tiny little fishes died within days.

a couple of years back i went to the fish farm and came across fighting fishes again. this time they were even more beautiful than before, and the prices for the special breeds had fallen too.

i remembered during my secondary school craze i used to lust over them online and each cost around us$50. now it was barely s$20 (the common ones that i used to get from fish shops were like $2.50). i resisted the urge to buy some.

yesterday i came across this image on tumblr and once again was reminded of these beautiful fishes. to me they're really the most beautiful and elegant fish. now i think i shall buy a couple when my exams are over.

level up

over the past 2 years or so, my brother has been infected by the raw denim craze. he started off with 2 pairs of ~$100 jeans and wore those for about a year before leveling-up to something that was ~$200.

at that point he was also buying quite a lot of expensive clothes and shoes but i figured he could do whatever he wanted with his money. you know, kids these days...

around a month ago, there was a parcel delivery and my maid opened the door. i thought i heard her call me so i went to take it from her. initially i thought it was some study materials from my university because it felt stiff and heavy inside the plastic envelope, like a stack of paper.

i looked at it and realised it was for my brother, listed as cotton trousers, £30. hmmm, that seemed like quite a good price, so i searched for it online, thinking that maybe i could pick up something from the shop too.

there wasn't a shop listed on the envelope so i searched for the sender's name and it led me to iron heart. when i saw that i knew it was bad news. i've heard of the shop before and it sells some expensive 'high-end' denim.

i went in and looked around a little. the pair my brother bought is listed as £256! that's over $500 for a pair of jeans that in all honesty, looks like fuck after i've seen him in them. it's heavy and stiff as shit as well. i really don't see the point in it at all.

the reason people (kids) buy raw denim is so that they can wear them in and create their own fades and shit. they usually wear them for 6 months or more in between each wash. it starts off stiff as shit and softens over time, and it takes more than a year to get their much sought-after fades.

today i tried on his $200 jeans that he wore for probably around 10 months, so it ought to be quite soft and wearable by now. but damn, it was still stiff and uncomfortable as shit. i struggled to put it on, then looked in the mirror and decided that yes, it looks terrible, and then struggled to get it off.

i really wonder how he managed to live with those for such a long time, and his new pair is even worse. suffering in the name of fashion.

exes and ohs

i was looking through fb and i came across a girl who was once 'involved' with a friend of mine. i clicked through some of her photos and it seemed that she's now with someone else. from what i know he's the first one since my friend.

after seeing his photos i came to the conclusion that... he's kinda... let's just say it's an apparent fall in standards as compared to my friend. but then after thinking about it a little bit more, i realised that the difference between both guys isn't really that big, meaning that my friend is also... kinda...

i then wondered how should a person feel in such a situation? i came to the conclusion that it all depends on the size of one's ego.

an egotistical person would think that ah, that new guy is so shit, i was the best she could ever have, wtf is wrong with her, why is she going out with this guy?

the opposite reaction would be that if her standards are so low, what does that say about me? am i just as shitty?

and i guess a third kind would be that of a guilt-ridden person, thinking oh no, what have i done to her? i must have destroyed her to the point where she's just settling for whatever that comes her way.