www.secfive.org

Apparently, even with a laptop, i've been without internet access for the past 2 days. This is induces in me a great sense of lost and depravity. It feels as though i'am not 'connected' and a part of me is lost. But now that i'am reconnected again, its cool.

Melbournes a very nice place. The people are very friendly and happy. In contrast, the people in Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore (thereby abbreviated BMS) always seems to be gloomy or preoccupied in their mind. The folks here, their default facial expression, i would describe as 'sunny'. Here it seems the people are contented and satisfied. But since this is my first few days here, i'am not yet fit to judge.

My travels started in a 2 hour Brunei-Singapore flight. Now, at the airport in Brunei, i find it irresistable to comment about the extremely rude and incompetent staffing they had at the airport. My first encounter that day was a subpar waitress at a supposedly classy restaurant (atleast in Brunei) who couldnt speak proper english. Now the name of this restaurant chain is Royal Brunei Catering and it seems to me that the service is not royal, its pretty brunei and the catering sucks. This is supposed to be a highclass 5-star styled restaurant which serves steak, burgers, coffee and tea to an international palette. The food is awesome though, but the service could do with a little bit of improvement. The next thing was the officer at the check in counter she spoke wonderfully fluent english but was extremely rude when i asked her questions concerning my flight to melbourne. It would seem to me that a person who can speak educatedly in english would thus therefore have a reasonably educated mind and understanding. But now it seems to me that a person who can speak well in english, atleast in the asian context, is just merely a person who is conversant and not necessarily mature or enlightened enough to handle the finer discourses in life. So i finished my business with her and carried on with my journey.

At Singapore, i met SK and we had some food at sakae sushi. One of my favourite japanese food is the katsu don, which is a fried pork set rice with Japanese curry, and to my unpleasant surprise, they didnt serve this fine japanese dish at a japanese restaurant, in its stead, there was a chicken equivalent of 'tori katsu don' which i surmise with my limited japanese vocabulary, translates roughly to bird pork set. The reason they did not serve this dish was because that pork was not consumed by muslims and that they wanted to appeal to a wider audience.

I argued in mentally the idiosyncracy of this. Now this is a japanese restaurant. You serve japanese food. Its fair that your customers are not japanese and indeed they come from all races and all walks of life. However the theme remains that you are a japanese restaurant. If you do not serve pork due to a small racial group (and the muslims are small in a country like singapore), you in effect impose a judgement on the rest of the cohort who frequents your restaurant, therefore no one who enters the restaurants, be they muslim or not, has the option of eating pork. Which is sad really. Coming from a muslim country, i doubt the other food they serve are halal either - which is another muslim prerequisite for meat.

But then of course, as a customer you have the option of stepping into the restaurant or not. But this is on the customer's assumption that a japanese restaurant serves japanese food, so if they do want to impose this kind of universality on its customers, the least they can do, is to put an annoucement that pork is not served and their food is halal (muslim-friendly). But then that would be against business ethics woudnt it ? And therein lies the human condition, the simple fact that not all can be satisfied. The best we can do is damage control. The best option they have, is to remove this ban on pork and let japanese food be japanese food.

.. and as usual i digress from what i intend to talk about and i humbly apologize.

So anyways, after that we went for icecream and SK gave me a prep talk (in a sincere, truly constructive sense) about girls and whatnot. Before dinner i went to buy a few books and simply for the sake of sharing, i present to you here, the list of books i bought:

The Analects, Confucious. Penguin Classics
Ecce Homo, Friedrich Nietzsche. (Dont remember the publisher)
The Republic, Plato. Penguin Classics
The Prince, Machiavelli. Penguin Classics

Then afterwards, SK drove me to the airport on the highway, and as always i'am reminded of the granduer of Singapore Skyline. How a nation of fishermen and villagers shook the earth and raised monuments of glass, steel and stone from the ground and made a difference to the region and albeit to the world. And in this grand moment, how they have fallen. Reduced in the average state of mind to senseless pragmatism. Where efficiency and productivity is the base of life and work. Where no longer the spectrum of human condition and pscyhe prevail. This being replaced by the continuum of what it means to be human. Indeed there are classes of humans, those which are deemed superior and those that are deemed inferior when one class is pitted against the other. Nonetheless, all are deemed important to the Singaporean society. But individually, no one is equal in what it means to be human. In the eyes of a Singaporean, a lawyer or doctor is more important, more economically valuable and generally a more prestigious 'asset' to the society. A continuum of human existence prevails. You are either economically inferior or superior, and this determines the level at which you belong to in society. This replaces the spectrum, of human existence whereby all humans are simply humans, but different in nature, thought and action. I do not persue an egalitarian society which many in history have done with disastrous consequence. I know that due to the human condition, an egalitarian society is idealistic and unattainable. But the fact that productivity and efficiency are determining factors of worth as a person, to me at least, is inhumane.

During handcarry checkins, the security officer asked for my compass set to be taken care of by the cabin crew. So thats that. I reckon they must be pretty shocked when they did the x ray and there were about a dozen stainless steel sharp items in the bag, this being singapore after all - with patrols of army officers carrying carbines and mp5s doing guard duties around the airport and city every now and then.

Afterwards i boarded the plane, watched a few inflight movies. Singapore Airlines is awesome, but then again i've only tried Royal Brunei Airlines and Malaysia airlines, so i cant really comment relatively on the airline service industry. I couldnt sleep much for one reason or the other. And on the plane i realized that melbourne's time zone is gmt +10, with an additional hour added to clocks every now to compensate for daylight savings. I was hoping for a hot seatmate, but she wasnt hot. She was a nice person though. I had a cup of redwine and tried to sleep. My sleep could easily be described as fitful.

After i arrived at Melbourne airport, i wandered around abit. Got a SIM card, and got accomodation at a backpacker's lounge called 'The Greenhouse' and so iám still here, mainly because i've not been able to find any alternative accomodation yet and so Iám paying AUD29 every day just to have a roof over my head and a nice warm bed. Yesterday there were germans and americans sharing the room with me. Apparently today, it has been replaced by some other folks. Its interesting to wake up and see someone different almost everyday.

University is awesome, but my peers seem to be a bit more reserved then what i'd expect from university students. For most of the international students, its probably their first time overseas so it seems they are all shy and intimidated by the sheer amount of differences a foreign life offers and most of these students would coagulate into their respective groups of either race, nationality or religion (which is deplorable). Whereas for the local students, they must be rather shocked to see so many foreign and new students. I would reckon half of the population in the School of Architecture is foreign. I guess the emotional status quo would change pretty soon and that'll be awesome. People need alcohol :\

Apart from that, i've been hanging out with 'The Man Asad' and my schoolmate Jye. And i've not drink as much but thats alright. Still starting to sort out the bigger issues of my life right now - getting a permanent place to stay, getting a bank account, and getting through university enrollment which seems like another rather messy and tedious process. After that, i'd be looking into extending my visa to include work.

During my travels from Brunei to Melbourne and my subsequent stay in Melbourne, i've been recording short video clips with my notebook webcamera. I'll screen through some of these, edit and convert them and then put them up on secfive.org when i get a better internet connection. I'd want to include some pictures of my travels, but i dont think thats possible with the internet connection and the state of computers i've been using. So farewell be patient. More updates on melbourne and my life here soon enough. There just seems to be so much to talk about .

Posted by sec5 at 06:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (287) | TrackBacks (0)

I'am pretty sure no one is interested in all the grissly details and intracacies that i have to go through to get past university admission and australian visa. So most naturally, i will not include it here.

Apparently my life has been very exciting since secfive.org has started. For one reason or another, related or otherwise, i've met alot of new people and rediscovered a few old acquiantances. In no particular order, i would like to mention these people for the sake of relevancy, without which all else is naught.

From my Family:
My Father. My Sisters. Shey, AhKoo and my Mother.

From the right wing
Lance, Roger, Asad, Hermione, Liz, Jos, Polyn, David, Adam, Hamid, Ummi, Fuzzy, Fadzil, Xisiang, Sue-Ann, Aaron, Marco, Scotty, Lances Parents, Serene, Gerath, Beverly, Dolly, Reb, Alex, Melina and alot of others whose name i cannot recall. For you, i offer my sincere apologies .. and this picture.

~

From the left wing
Foo1 2 and 3, Parky, Vincent, Chao XR, AnnAnn, Suchan, Sally, Shirley, CheaXin, LipHui, PeiYi, Jin, FatBoy Chow, TzinMin, Astroboy, Kimmy, HsienHung, HongYon, ChiuLing, ChunTai, ChiMei, KongWee, SiangPing and the occasional random guy.

From my Administrators
AhSir , Karen, Delon, Vincent, Conception, Norma, CHMS Principal, the school maintainence workers, and the nice lady in the canteen.

Misc:
Random customers who I have attended to with both pleasure and spite. Korn, System of a Down and Armin van Buuren for their wonderful music. My Camry V6 Ultima. The stranger who raced with me near the Istana. For no simple reason, that event seemed significant in my life. As well as semporna, mamih, rejoice, youme and the tutong kolomee place (all restaurants)

All this has made my life in Brunei what it is and I thank you all by entombing the memories of you and your significance here on secfive.org.

Posted by sec5 at 04:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (100) | TrackBacks (0)

As some of you might know, and for those of you who dont, I was a Junior College(JC) student in Singapore right after i completed my Olevels. I took my Alevels there in a JC called Saint Andrews. And here are some pictures for all of you gentle readers out there.

The superficial things i remember about SAJC was the absolutely awesome and superb food. I was best fed for those 2 years of my life and every now and then i still think of the heavenly food they served there. It was all just surreal, every lunch time was magical. The tastiest food for only 2 to 3 SGD everyday for 2 years. In comparison, the food i'am eating everyday in brunei now, usually costs more than 3 dollars for any random meal, and doesnt even taste half as good as the food they served in my school. Variety is horrible here too, I could get up to twenty choices of tantalizing food at one stall in SAJC, yet in brunei, the collective varieties of food i eat caps at at most 15. The best food in Brunei isnt even in Brunei, i'd have to say that it would be in Kuala Lurah with the stingrays and fish. As for the upperclass restaurants, they serve expensive crap that neither tastes wholesome or come in satisfactory enough portions. Simply horrible - the choices of food here. Its also dirty, oily and salty too. Spices and flavour enhancers (Monosodium glutamate) are the order of the day for the flavouring of any dish here resulting in servings that taste superficial and dry to the palate. You can almost never taste the freshness anymore.

Apart from that, the girls in SAJC were also awesome. Well dressed and mostly well mannered, with their petite figures in their petite blue skirts, it was never a chore to look in any direction in school. And here too, we have variety. All girls of all races and all types were present in all forms of the human spectrum. Everyone was special or unique, rarely dull. The female teachers also looked lovely, mostly university graduates - young vibrant and smart people. But then i guess, we must remember that all this was but mere superficiality.

Underlying these seemingly beautiful features of the social landscape, was the rough mechanical indocrination of the singaporean government schools - a cold, calculating, ruthlessly efficient method of education that took no heed to the individual's worldview or belief system. Everyone was expected to conform to the norms laid out. Rewards strictly came for obedience or tireless effort for the college, the system. Punishments strictly went to those who fell out of the system or to those who wasnt in line. All in a clockwork manner. I felt dispensable and for a first time, at a total loss for the control over my own life. Depression and addiction would be words that , however extreme , described the better part of life in the singaporean junior college system. I was an easy going person, i studied out of interest, out of passion. I studied for meaning and for purpose. The fact that reciprocal results replaced the quest for knowledge greatly affected me.

The students conciousness were actively controlled through a series of compulsory activities, strict rules and regulation and conformity through conditioning. Dress codes were enforced. Hair for example, must be 5 cm above the collar, skirts had to be not more than four fingers above the knee, your hair must also not touch your ears. Being late for school, meant compulsory detention. Detention translates to manual labour - this included either washing toilets, carrying items such as furniture, boxes and books. In my case, i was made along with other detainees (people who are under detention) to wash 4 or 5 classrooms, and to carry boxes containing yearbooks up 2 flights of stairs repeatedly. Apart from that, students were made to assemble every morning on the track at 7:30am to listen and sing the national anthem, followed by the school anthem. After that, the scripture was read to students. This is followed by a prayer and a daily briefing of programs. This was held everyday. If you were late to school, you would be forced to line up at the atrium, subject to the scrutiny of enforcing teachers who would perform inspections on the late students, scolding or at times shouting at students who did not follow the dresscode appropriately. You were not allowed to leave unless your form teacher 'picked you up'. I felt violated. On Fridays, an additional compulsory 2 hour-ish mass session with a pastor or cardinal extolling on the virtues of christ was held in the hall. All this everyday, before lessons actually begin.

Let me digress with a story of my first encounter with the 'system'. I had just entered the school, and I had applied gel to my hair to shapen it. Be not mistaken my dear readers, i had no wild hairdo, or long hair, coloured or otherwise. But i did have puffy hair and so eversince secondary school, i had applied gel to keep it in check. Just that day, they were enforcing dresscodes, and the enforcer cum invilgilator had a problem with my gelled hair and i was actually told to wash the gel off my hair from the sink. I was awestruck by such a request. Resistance, i knew, would result in demerit, that is made very clear. Sufficient demerit points resulted in expulsion from school and so i complied and conformed. We were coerced to comply

Apart from such school regulations, compulsory hours of charity and social work was also demanded from the student. I do not remember the exact amount, but up to 24 hours of charity/social work was required of all students throughout the 2 year academic course that is the singapore-cambridge Alevels. Such charity work comprised of donation drives through the red cross - walking around business and commercial areas with a tin can asking for donations or visits to old folks homes, bringing them food and supplies and cleaning up after them. Furthermore, a secondary course (apart from Alevel) called Project Work was also required of all singaporean college students. And this comprised of upto 10% (more or less) of university admissions. Students were required to conduct surveys, interviews with companies and implement ideas and later present them to a panel of judges who graded students individually.

There was also compulsory physical education and fitness tests. Twice a week, physical education or fitness classes were conducted. If lucky, students could play class games like basketball and the such. But a majority of the sessions were drilling and/or running sessions, where students - especially males - were made to run 2.4 kilometers, people who did not have the stamina to run through the course was frowned upon. The drills we had to do involved the entire class doing pushups, situps or squats on whistle cue by the instructor - army style.

All this compulsory. Everyone did it and you were expected to do it too. Attendence was taken, and if you were absent for anything - such as the friday religious sessions, you would be punished through detention. Peer pressure meant you could not refuse the drilling and running sessions.

Imagine, 2400 students in my college, undergoing such a programme for 2 years - mostly without complaints. You could almost mistaken all this for a military school instead of a public college, North Korea instead of Singapore. I was unprepared for all this strict rudimentary punishments, physical exercises, extra coursework and preaching. I was dumbstruck by it all.

People no longer went to school because they were interested in learning, they went to school because they had to. They studied to get As and not to learn. It all felt mechanical and meaningless to me. I started to feel mindless and apathetic. My life no longer my own to choose. I had managed to book flight tickets, get through the interviews, documentations, find housing and transportation all for a mental prison, where i had to go to college every morning, subject to the enquiring glances of invilgilators and always having to conform to accomodate my peers and teachers. I felt my individuality slipping. I felt powerless, i felt insignificant.

Even as i write this now, i feel a certain sense of unease to critique the school in such a way. I know that the school and singaporean government would not be happy for an ex-student to relate his experience so negatively. I know that certain of my singaporean friends and classmates who read this will disagree strongly and vehemently support the system they have become so used to and denounce me. But since this is the internet and this is my own website, I feel that I have a right of expression. And i would not be satisfied if i did not relate this important part of life.

Perhaps if any american or european read this, he might be dumbstruck by the sheer idea of such a college. I came from a chinese secondary school, and all chinese secondary schools have communist leanings then although most schools now would refuse to acknolwedge it and the syllabus has been greatly altered. As a primary school (grade school) student, I was required to study the likes of Mao Zedong (Cultural Revolution and The Great Leap Forward) and Chiang Kaishek and other revolutionary leaders of contemporary communist primary chinese textbooks of the time when we could barely write our own names or form sentences. Despite all this, I found college in singapore to be even more Orwellian and even they had the leniency to let me have gel on my hair and to tidy it up a little or to choose what extracurricular work i had to do or not. Neither did they enforce on me manual labour - as punishment or what not, apart from what i did voluntarily as a scout. I had a choice to participate in any program, there were no compulsory drills. I also did not have religion preached to me every morning nor was I made to sit through any religious sessions.

I guess i was naive. To me, Singapore was a first world country - a developed democratic country which had a multireligious, multiracial and multicultural society with the presence of political parties whereas Brunei was an Islamic state ruled by a long line of muslim monarchs. A secular state where in public schools, girls were made to wear headdresses. Naturally, my opinion of Singapore was that of a liberal state, where people had greater choice and freedom to choose and select what they wanted in education and faith, or the very least, what they wanted to choose or participate in.

Finally, after a year, i felt disillusioned and lethargic. Most of my free time in school, i spent it at the library reading philosophy books (where i was first exposed to nietzche and decartes through fukuyama) or news magazines. I did not do my exercises or tutorials and I distanced myself from my class and the rest of the school population except for a select few. When I did study, it felt meaningless to me. The equations seemed distant and insignificant, the structures of compounds and atoms lost their relevance. At home, i spent countless hours in online games, a form of escapism, a form of release in a desperate attempt to find meaning to it all. At the height of my depression, i stopped going to school during the months before my final exams. There were days where i lived without uttering a word to anyone except the pizza guy or the lady who served me Japanese food.

I got through with all this, and went back to Brunei, where i retook my Alevels and obtained much better results. I am currently applying to RMIT in Australia for a course in architecture. Had i known all this, i would not have considered Singapore to further my studies. Now that i have been through all this. I refuse to return to Singapore to further my tertiary education.

Those who had been with the system for most of their teenager/adult life would perhaps find such a setting comfortable, for they have lost their ideals of choice. It was comforting for them to have the right decisions chosen for them all the time and for most other people nowadays, that seems to be the case. Whereas to me it was a burden. This lack of choice - even if i would not make the perfect one, meant that my life was not my own to choose. I had been independant all my life. My parents having divorced when i was 12, and living alone with my father after that. I cycled to school when i was 13 - the only student to do so. I made my own food, i signed my own test papers and did my own laundry. When i had no transport, i walked 4km home everyday in the sun. It wasnt easy, but i choose to do everything i had to do. I did them out of my own volition. It was forced on to me by fate. I could accept fate but for SAJC, or anyone for that matter, to dictate my life, i simply could not accept.

[For the sake of transparency and discussion, i will publish all non-vulgar comments made by anyone, if any]

Posted by sec5 at 02:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (372) | TrackBacks (0)