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Blue Skies and the Fluffiest white clouds you will ever see.
I love Brunei.
March 16, 2009
December 01, 2008
When I Was Young
.. I built cardboard shelters out of leftover pc monitor boxes. I taped them together and put my stuff in it and slept in it.
I did it out of novelty and I found it amusing.
After a few days I got bored.
I guess the beds prepared by your parents are still the most comfortable ones.
June 06, 2008
A Quote That Has Inspired Me Today.
"When you look for the bad in mankind expecting to find it, you surely will."—Abraham Lincoln
May 29, 2008
Firefox 3 Download Day June 2008
May 25, 2008
My Classmates In KL
Thanks guys, you were the awesomest classmates.
Starwars Rap Videos
I love it.
My Ultra Uni Internet Connection
At school we have these special computer workstations in a special 'architectural laboratory'. So these arent any normal dodgy computers you see at the cybercafe.
They run all sorts of advanced modelling and drawing applications (maya, 3d studio max, the usual adobe suites and autocad are some examples) with genuine licenses and top of the line hardware to boot on 21+ inch lcd monitors.
Wow.. Licenses.. mmmm...
and look at the internet connection speed;
Ladies and gentlemen,
Can I have it like that?
Gwen Stefani: You got it like that
Can I have it like that?
Gwen Stefani: You got it like that
Mmmm~
May 23, 2008
Taxi Driver Uncle and Hawker Center Aunty
During my travels in Singapore and Malaysia, as i mentioned earlier in another post i went to zouk, mos, lunabar, clarke quey among other various stuff i did in sg.
It was my first time in Zouk sg, despite having lived next to zouk at kim seng plaza for a year when i was in junior college. When i went there on Saturday night i saw the Taxi Driver Uncle;
... and on wednesday night (mambo or ladies night i believe), I saw the Hawker Center Aunty. No pics tho and it doesnt seem like shes a regular there (not that i would know).
So definately, zouk has gone down a few spots in my sg nightlife book and i dont feel like i need to explain anything at all here.
But yeh.. that was a huge turnoff. Sg clubbing is so boring. No smoking in there, everyone drinks from these ghey arse mixer juggs- nothing hard, and the girls are so socially isolated. No fun. MOS was much better, maybe because i went in as VIP but atleast the girls there are more social and no one seems to be above 40 in there, and they have a nice and convenient smoking room not like zouks where you have to sort of get yourself into some dodgy lane exit and be made to feel guilty with 50 other people puffing away outdoors and listening to shit like 'OMG I WAS THERE LOR, ARBUTHEN ARBUTHEN LIKE THAT HOR DONT COME? WAH LAO SO SCARY LOR' instead of the latest in trance and electronic.
Wanted to go to St James but my friends said might as well go to zouk or mos.
Meh-
I had a much better nightlife in Malaysia anyways. Singapore is just not a place for clubbing. The foods awesome, shoppings great, geylang is good. But clubbing ? mm~ everythings there except the atmosphere. You got the laser lights, the bar and the bartender, the djs and the music and the platforms and the rotating discballs and the people. But everyones doing everything like its a chore.
I mean what do you expect when you have the Taxi Driver Uncle and Hawker Center Aunty in there ?
May 22, 2008
My Warbook Experience
I totally left this interesting part of my life out...
Just goes to show the poor level of attention and detail i give to secfive.org now.
What happened here was during November 2007, i stumbled upon the this game on Facebook called Warbook, which is a numerical rts game where you have your own kingdom and u compete with everyone else to make the biggest and most powerful kingdom.
(what the worlds largest and most powerful warbook kingdom looked like)So i played it here and there, i became so engrossed with it that i started scheming with Melvin against the (then:) current top group of people who were number 1 and took them down both ingame and through a public exposure of their systemic lying and cheats.
I played this game almost every waking hour of my life for the 1 month of holidays in melbourne leading upto the time i went to Bali. So i guess you can sort of call it a digital indulgence before my physical one started.
Anyways, i documented this entire process and toppled the existing group so called TPL, became the largest kingdom and then did a public kamikaze display worthy of World War II japanese banzai attacks, all made publicly in a long long momento slash manifesto in this forum :
http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=2618691293&topic=29347
It has been described ingame by many as 'epic' and 'legendary'.
*scoffs-lol*
and pretty much thats that. I think i totally stuffed it in the deepest part of my memory banks because after that month all i did was got myself filthy drunk almost every day while travelling across cities. Not to mention i knocked my head by literally walking into a wooden pole and gave my forehad a scar that nearly accompanied me to the Chinese New Year celebrations.
March 14, 2008
Cruising Along
.. as we do the things we do the way clouds move the way they move.
March 05, 2008
2008
It just struck me today that 2008 is a new year, and again a seemingly important one. Ahhh. I feel old : (
January 15, 2008
Journeying through Southeast Asia
I've been traveling alot these days. In the past month i've been to Bali, KL, Penang, Ipoh, Brunei and now i'am in Singapore.
Planning to go to Kota Kinabalu to see a certain special friend. Then heading up to Penang to celebrate Chinese New Year there.
Me and my cuz in Ipoh, Malaysia
Activities last few days in Singapore :
Zouk
G-Land
Poker
Expensive food
Gena
Activities in Bali:
Full body Massage
Jiggy Jig
Facial
Steambath + Creambath
Driving at night in a manual Kijang in Denpasar without a license and without street lights
Being drunk on the airplane
Activities in Brunei:
Squash at the Pusat Skuasy
Trail hiking
Getting a forehad scar from NYE party
Christmas party
Icecream at Swansons
Poker
Currently developing a slight fever and sore throat. Also had food poisoning about a week ago in Brunei from eating DimSum at HuaHua in Kiulap. An entire morning of vomtting bright orangey goo followed by an entire afternoon of diarrhea and then a whole night of fever : (
Things i've learnt in the past few days :
PRC Girls in G-land are hot, and i like them better than Japanese girls now.
I also love Durex Play.
I miss .. Australian Chicken Parmagianna served with shiraz.
Having a car and being financially free in Singapore is Cool. (with capital C)
In Singapore, Lance is both a savior and a champion.
SK is Da Ge and "Da Ge Shi Dui De"
October 14, 2007
The Epiphany
The days have seemingly been grinding down into a dull monotonous hum. Life has throttled down into a slow pace. 2 years in the running, i might have run out of steam. Maybe its the same 4 walls i see everyday when i go back, or the same route i take to school every morning or night. or the same places that i have been eating at. The same pitiful faces that i have seen again and again, day after day, and like me too, they seem to have lost a zest for life which gives me even more to worry, their faces delineated by worry. A lack of stimulus. The same grey clouds overcasted on an aerial canvas that feels as if, perhaps if you reached out enough and poked it, it would crack and break to reveal the hollowness of all that there actually is. The skies have lost their depth and they impose their weight on everything underneath.
Perhaps, I have i fallen into mediocrity, into some ominous ubiquitous state that i forever dread. It is deceiving, reality; both projected and perceived. It is haunting - it is like looking into the dark hollow eyes of a mishappen creature and glimpsing ourselves in reflection and perhaps realizing that this is all that there is, or could be.
So that is why, I need an epiphany.
A realization that there is more. An explosion of the id and ego, to regain and to conquer back and win the self.
I need to go back to the roots, to the source, to the fetal place where all is yellow and warm, where the skin is no longer the barrier between me and the world. But the world itself is part of me and barrier to everything else, beating with my heartbeat, flowing with my blood.
Which is why,
I have bought tickets to bali, kl and back home to Brunei !
... where the sand is white and warm with a golden hue; where coldness, dampness and greyness can never reach. a place closest to the sun, where colour with his good buddy light, exists as a melange of yellow, green and white. Yes, i admit with impunity, I want to go back home. I need to travel. My restless soul does not want to be ontained in this grey 4 walled mustard grey shell any longer. I need to go back and recharge my soul.
Thus perhaps i have found the epiphany i am looking for, the courage and strength to finish this last few miles before i can hold salvation and victory tightly in my cold bonewhite palms. I have found out that if i have a goal in mind, and salvation is at hand, that if i bear out this 1 and a half more months and finish strong;- then salvation will slide down my throat like an ice cold kirin beer at the end of a long hard day, with the celebration and feast that would follow. That the brighter i burn now, the greater the impression it will have upon the cold dark bland retinas of reminiscence.
Is this the epiphany i need ? or am i merely fooling myself ?
But I will choose for it to be an epiphany, and therefore it is one.
Descartes said " i think therefore i am",
i will add " i choose, therefore i become"
I have gotten the Epiphany i need and i thank you for being my audience, slave to my consciousness.
September 15, 2007
Updates
I have stopped smoking and am able to begin to truly enjoy some of the more beautiful things in life once again. I am thankful.
Smoking is bad. : (
The rest of the stuff is still good though : )
July 28, 2007
Superman
For the Death of me, I do not know why,
I find this picture, so interesting..
July 15, 2007
Subterranean Homesick Aliens
Hello my anonymous internet readers, mute and analogous, you are the one and the many.
I've been more or less incapacitated during the long duration of a month during which i've spent my many days in blissful ignorance. Interestingly i've not smoked a ciggarette for a month now and dont intend to pick up one anytime soon. Cigarette smoking is a digusting habit and a huge strain on the mind and body. And during the last semester which i did smoke, i generally felt like shit and so I've decided to replace cigarette smoking with swimming. Ah yes. swimming. Love swimming that and of course, pot.
Apart from that, i count my days of concious existence with subconcious explorations of my human mind. I've been dead and reborn many times, waking up everyday with the vigor of a freshborn baby. I guess overseas education and university life is generally more about experimentation, exploring and understanding the self, than learning and mastering the subject content, which truly in essence can never be fully understood - the complexities of our world and the acknowlegement of the 'self'. So rather than attempting to live and explore this subjugated materialistic and worldy existence, i do believe that in general we have failed to notice or pay heed to the intrinsic subconcious entitty that composes ourselves. This subjective and subconcious element that is in its own right, a world in itself. A world created by the sum accumulation of 'you'.
Religion fails in this essence as it attempts too much to bridge this existence with the worldly one. What our mainly abrahamic religion fails to underscore is that they have attempted to apply the innerworldly ideals with the incongruent physical world we live in and the results prove catastrophic.
These two worlds are related but are ultimately seperated; and anyone who attempts to bridge and blur them be they junkies or catholic priests, end up desecrating both.
Disneyland with the death penalty, lol !
In the name of god, lol !
What petty ideals.
May 05, 2007
Life in the month of March and April
Ah unpretentious writing, reflection and recollection can be such a therapeutic experience, and with that let me put my conciousness in the form of black against white in 0s and 1s regarding these recent months of spring and impending winter;
As you all might have known, i have been working independently as a soccer coordinator for a good buddy of mine called Lance, and the business has blossomed quite abit since February, and currently i earn enough to pay for my rent, and living plus a little extra for some nice clothes and accessories which is totally awesome.
What i do is i have a team of 3 people under me whom i assign matches for them to report on. They'd go to these matches and traders from the philippines will call them, whom with which they would then report the matches to. So every week i'd have to produce some invoices, pay my aides and update match tables in addition to going to some of these matches myself.
Which makes me a self employed manager cum architecture student (which is freaking awesome because), I belong to the income earning group now with a disposable income !
Its a liberating experience now that i dont have to skimp on food during them low financial tides (when i'd have to pullback on rent) and can now afford to eat a decent meal with a peace of mind everyday. Thinking of food reminds me of the muchines i used to have. Ah, unfortunately nowadays i've not been into the green stuff much which is definitely a pity. I'd have to remind myself to get some more during the holidays.
Apart from that, i've been busy with schoolwork as usual. But have decided to take an extended break chilling out at home on non school days and indulging in food and my inexhaustible anime/movie/manga/hentai/av collection. Afforded such luxury by the completion of midsemester dues, and a hardworking partner (not that i'am abusing him, i work as hard if not more as well : >).
]-[
Having said that, i'am compelled to digress and have a little discourse on that. In the past perhaps month and intensively during the past week, i've been watching some animes;
Ergo Proxy (23 eps)
Blood + (50 eps)
Trinity Blood (24 + eps)
Twelve Kingdoms (45 eps)
Full Metal Panic, second raid (13 eps)
Ghost in the Shell - Solid State Society, which is fucking awesome
... some movies;
Mothman Prophecies
Matrix Trilogy
The Prestige, which is a fucking awesome movie
Tim Burtons' The Nightmare Before Christmas, a favourite i've always wanted to watch and finally got to,
Visitor Q, Takashi Miike's weird Japanese movie.
the Da Vinci Code, boring, predictable and lame.
Bernado Bertuluccis' the Dreamers, staring Eva Green, lots of nudity : D
Stephen Chow's God of Cookery
The Protege, typical unrealistic and biased asian portrayal of drugs
Tokyo Trials
Election 1 and 2
Babel
Battle of Wits
After this our Exile, shitty
.. and a manga called Haru yo Koi and Jean Paul Sartres' existentialist manifesto Being and Nothingness, which i find rather dense and indecipherable compared to the other bunch of philosophy books i read.
I've also gotten Radiohead's OK computer and Hail to the Thief, albums that i used to own but have lost and that i now miss. Thom Yorke's new album called The Eraser is also quite good feauturing the track Analyze played during the closing credits in the Prestige.
.. and within my digressions i digress but again.
]-[
Two years ago, i would have thought that my psychological consumption of films and movies and 'stuff' in general was perhaps extensive. But now having lived in australia for the second year, it seems to me that instead of extensive, the word that would describe the programmings i take in is varied in the extreme sense of the word, and it seems to occur in realization to me that it is uncommon to the point of abnormality to watch something like the nightmare before christmas, visitor Q, the dreamers and then stephen chows god of cookery in succession. To be able to understand and then appreciate the genres and director's intention, namely tim burton, takashi miike, bertolucci and stephen chow is definitely something that springs to my mind now as an oddity that might not be necessarily an appreciable quality. Ideas that i have long since been exposed to and then subsequently cultivated as a child.
Now before i continue let me add the disclaimer that if you might want to start faulting me for what you would maybe perceive as an inflated sense of modesty and perhaps too much of a leaning on cultures, backgrounds, races and origins. Then i'd like to ambivalently add that people are different and that makes us unique and interesting. It is also natural and becoming of the diversity of the human race that creates what is strongest in us. This idea is distinct and antagonized by antiracism or anti-cultural bias, which directs us to believe that all people are all similiar regardless of their cultural leanings and backgrounds, and this downplays the uniqueness that is related with human conciousness itself. While this is a legitimate political movement. Most of the generation of our times have been deluded into believing that such a notion would apply on a social level. Sushi is sushi, we will make it out of rice instead of pasta. Ultimately the most ferocious anti racists, are in actuality racists themselves, and he who butchers monsters have turned into one himself, the abyss having gazed back.
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146Having digressed in my digression of digresses, let me continue with the digress of my digressions.
My fucked up multicultural leanings with my command of the east asian culture and language coupled with my strong base in the english language and understanding of the western philosophy in general has generated an unstable concoction of a personality - that composes and perhaps is ultimately detrimental - to my psyche. In a sense, i feel as though i've lost a purist understanding of the world and an in essence have been diluted by the ideas and thoughts of antagonizing cultures. As if man was not intended to have more than one tongue in the biblical babel sense. This confundment is distinguished from biculturalism where the two cultures a person is exposed to is dissociative - having a primary base for fundamental thought and essence and a secondary function for cross culture dealings. Graphically, this can be illustrated with two circles, both distinct and dissociated from one another - i.e not touching each other; perhaps one larger than the other and this would apply to a caucasian who speaks say Japanese and an asian who speaks english. Their secondary languages and by extension cultural exposures are additions ontop of their primary ones. A bowl stacked on a plate. Allegorialy in extension, i believe an australian or american born chinese or asian is but a person who adopts the cultural leanings of their host countries with the physical appearance of whatever genepool they are from, but with mental and psychological backgrounds of generally, caucasians perhaps but merely tinged with whatever is left. The negotiation and dialogue between the two circles might sometimes come to meet and perhaps even intersect to a slighter bit and amount. The conundrum comes when these circles have intersected to the point of eclipsing each another and the intersected area greatly overshadows the remaining bits resulting in a half a bowl immersed in half a plate, making the resulting object absurd. The purity of essence is lost and the result is an apparition of what would be its former purist self that is neither of its original beings.
Coming from somewhere like Brunei is also a source of such a confoundment. Having lived the formulative years of my life in this small idealistic place with an unrelated history and growing up in an environment with similar disporas like myself. and then subsequently superimposing east asian culture and western worldview culturally neutral place feels like a psychological lobotomy now that i reflect upon it.
So in terms of both Jus Sanguinis and Jus Solis. I am fucked. A further irony is that Thom Yorke's track 4 in his album The Eraser, is singing 'this is fucked up, fucked up' . Befitting indeed.
Perhaps this quote that i came across means something.
You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star. Friedrich Nietzsche
]-[
I should write a book someday in my life. Back to my carefree spiels about my indulgent and extended chilling out break from my usual hectic studies~!
It is 9am now on a Saturday morning. Gotta clean up my room which is currently reminiscent of some form of alien infestation from a ridley scott film, do the laundry and get some breakfast with a buddy from brunei.
After that, I'd be looking forward to getting some more Nietzsche books from Borders today, and maybe get myself a proper bag to keep my folders and whatnot as well as needing to do some stuff at the post office. Also the highlight of the day would be getting a new handphone since its been a year and abit since my contract started, and maybe some yummy japanese or cantonese food, and checking out some art galle.ries and museums.
I'd probably have to pick up the slack tomorrow for next week to make up for this weeks indulgence. Which is fine and dandy, i enjoy doing my work. I should probably get another bottle of Jack Daniels, those things are awesome to have everynight before you sleep.
Ooh yeah. Lifes good.
.
April 11, 2007
Bubbly Noggy Chair
Made by Me and Nogy : D
February 09, 2007
Fish + Mono
3D models from secfive. The first part is called Fish, a structure with fin like facades/forms.
The second part is called Mono, a Monolithic structure inspired by half life2.
And here is the 1600 x 1200 resolution .pdf files. Feel free to drop me an email for further info.
February 03, 2007
Lucid chatting
part1
part2
.... and here is my own personal study guide to deciphering my incoherent ramblings.
part1
you know, neo took the red pillin the first episode.
after he took it, he just stays in the couch.
entire matrix reloaded and matrix revolutions happens
in the span when he took the red pill.
.
.
i have a good answer to that
the answer to that is.
.
allegory of platos cave
#%^@
i'am quite fucked tonight
(after quite a while)
ALRIGHT BETTER NOW
plato's cave
if every baby was forced to watch shadowplays
?!@!$%!@
!%%!@#?
.
anyways k, platos cave says that you trap men in a cave to watch shadowplays
cave, men, watch shadow play since birth
part2
one day man breaks freei'll call him neo
he sees the fire
and thinks that fire is an awesome device
[ in plato's republic, the allegory of the cave;
prisoners are bound to chairs with their heads held in place since birth to see a screen in which shadows are made from a fire on top to project shadows through items placed inbetween the screen and the fire;
this creates the shadows which the prisoners see all their life. and by extension, these prisoners would take the shadows they (only) see as the entirety of their version of reality. ]
[ if one of the prisoner was released and set free and given the ability to turn his head to witness the devices that creates the shadows and comes to accept that the entire reality of his life was false and of shadowplay ]
then we bring him out of the caveand let him see the sun, its blinding.
[ and then if he were subsequently brought out of the cave to experience the reality of the world as we know it, with the sun ontop and the soil below. allusions are then made with the fire in the cave and its relation to the screen and the sun in the world and its relation to the earth we live in. as both the fire and the sun are progenitors of all life and in extension reality as they experience it. ]
[ plato then connects this entire scenario with the crossing of the different levels of moral and intelletual perceptions as experienced between the ascendency from a lower to a higher form of intellectualization/morality. Plato then goes on and elaborate, using the cave as scenario that serves as a basis from which plato forwards his entire argument/dialetic; starting with the first claim that regardless of situation, we are ALL at some level - prisoners in a cave, subservient to shadowplay. this comes much later on in his long and deep philosophical discourse about how people of such stock are to be governed in an ideally egalitarian human society. ]
he goes back into the cave,wanna tell his friends about the wonders hes seen
but his friends do not believe him
and instead choose to
?X??!@#!~~@#$?
?!@#~
translation: persecute him for his different beliefs and opinions, think that he is insane
.
[ 'neo' having seen the 'real' world travels back to the cave, and is insistent to inform his kindred of the wonders and the 'reality' he has seen, but his kindred - the people having brought up on shadowplay - is obviously skeptical and resistant by conditioning, and are unable to believe him. 'neo' is then cast out of their social community and is ultimately unable to convince them of their ignorance. all of this predetermined. ]
psychoactivityhow are you doing about it ?
hows your pysch trip going
?
.
.
you interseted in the other trip ?
singapore pennang with my sisters
.
yea
a tour.
.
.
you can tag along
theres this big thing regarding the black (full) moon festival (in thailand)
then the singapore to penang trip just to let them know whats going on in these societies
.
.
alright, woo
then climb mount kk (kota kinabalu)
.
then maybe go to makati city (in manila, philippines)
then kl (kuala lumpur)
.
k, i'll load (show) you some stuff
who me ?
.
nah
cbf (cant be fucked)
January 23, 2007
Tattoo, Logo and Etymology
Here's a design i came up with. I intended it to be a tattoo for my back. But apparently i liked it so much that i decided that it should be the logo for secfive.org as well. And maybe for my own company in the future - whatever i might be doing.
Its not complete yet, there are still some stuff that i want to tweak and play around with before i finally decide to let it be. Whats left to be done is some simple shading/hatching to the effect that it is as if is a building viewed from above with the sun inbetween it casting shadow effects and what not. And maybe some color adjustments and fills.
The motive behind this was that it was supposed to go behind on my back, perhaps even with the 'secfive.org since 1985'. I wonder what kind of publicity i would get if the media knew. mmmm....
Now that i think of it i do realize that the phrase 'since 1985' does not correctly reflect the age of the site, which currently is only a year and a month old. But I'd like to think of secfive.org as a part of the holy trinity of 'me'. Now for those less inclined with biblical mythology, let me rant on abit about the holy trinity. The holy trinity is a divine composition of 3 identities which is the holy spirit, jesus christ the son and his father, god. All these 3 identities exist as the one entity known as god, spelt with a capital g. Yes thats very correct, a Capital g.
Now i'd hate to imagine that you are feeling as though I am comparing myself to god. But let me reassure you that it is only but an analogy. I might have an egoistical view of my concious self - which given the context of the day and age and upbringing we live in and i went through - is justified, but that is another topic for another day.. Anyways, so there is the birthname loochernyang me, the online identity known as sec5 and there is his web known as secfive.org - all of which are manifestations of me. Especially so with secfive, since it is literally a collection of my thoughts and conciousness. Regardless of which side of 'me' you see. It is me nonetheless and regardless. Therefore with that in mind, the 'since 1985' tag is related to 'me' - the one being and entity collectively known as loochernyang, sec5 and secfive. Therefore what 'secfive.org since 1985' effectively translates to is that "I - the supreme being and controller of 'me' has been in existence since 1985"
Alright, now abit about the ideas behind this. I went through several designs and this was either the 3rd of 4th. Its not too clear in here, but there are 3 colours, obviously black and blue, but there are also purple coloured angular forms as well. The image is roughly split into two main areas, the obvious black bold lines which is concerned with the sun, and the faint purple and blue lines, which correlates with the causality of the sun.The core of the sign is a ceaseless sun with a good sense of symmetry in 2 axes, though it doesnt fully mirror in the x axis. There are 17 points of flame and this is a randomly generated number by virtue of the shape i was working with. I'am thinking to change it to a multiple of 7, 7 being related to sunday. The sun as a motif is an allusion to my first name which literally in chinese characters means the sun. Fire is also my element according to my fortune teller. In the centre there are 3 interlocking patterns, which invokes the strength, unity and timelessness of the sun. The outer black ring with offwardly set shark fins represents the aura and presenece of the sun which manifests itself in random and interesting ways, circles inscribed in the fins represents emptyness and fullness - duality being a consistent theme in the entire design. Finally the faint blue and purple lines represents the causality (not to be confused with casualty) of the sun. And its impact-result on the worlds around it - being a source of light that gives the ability to make sense of environments, being a source of food for plants without which earth would be barren. This is represented by a cross titled at 25 degrees - which is the rounded value of the tilt of earths axis and the 4 ends representing logic and rationality as well as the cardinal points of the earth, I might change this to make it resemble a plus sign ( + ) more. The purple angular shapes are a sharp contrast to the nice rectangular block shapes and serve as a form of counterbalance (in duality).
The shape induces the viewer to subconciously believe that the object is symmetrical and rational though complex. Indeed it looks like a very consistent and coherent pattern that can be easily dissected by a line through the center at certain angles, and we are tempted to try. However no line dissects the shape. And this is a form of duality, of both being and not being, of fullness and emptyness at the same time. A paradox which mimics life and nature. A state of falling and being stable. An actuality that borders between intelligence and divinity. And this appeals greatly to me, how something which appears to be either this or that but is actually neither or both. It eludes us ever so sublimely. Feels like playing poker with god. Mmm. god... (tempted to look in the mirror)
The object also looks like an architectural plan, which would look even more so when i add the shades. It also looks like looking at planets aligned together and we feel as though we see an entire chain of events and causality.
Mmmm. I love my logo.
January 21, 2007
My Odd Jobs
I've been handling several odd jobs in january. Which is really good because otherwise i'd be totally clueluess and have nothing better to do in a period of time when i should be doing something. Mmm. Heres a simple summary of what i've been up to in the money making world.
Greenpeace
I was a Greenpeace frontliner for like 5 days. This job i did during the day. So in the day i would be campaigning for the wellbeing and welfare of creatures all big and small. But i had a disagreement with this seemingly innocent charity organization i was working for, either that, or they had a disagreement with me. Eitherways i quit afterwards. The work was just too tough and i wasnt ready for something so hardcore. Everyone in the team had like facial hair, were hulking huge people with the persona and build of a bouncer who have been roughed out by life and what not. Being a small statured asian in an environment of bikers is abit too awkward for me.
So what we roughly did was, we would set up a stall somewhere in a place where there would be alot of people, and then we would approach people and convince them that the environment is something worth caring and fighting for and that it was urgent to do something about it. After that, i would convince them to signup and chip in 25 dollars a month. Mmmm... and i get paid 16 dollars/hour. Interesting if you do the maths about how much we get paid from the support people are supposed to be giving into the environment. To be honest i felt like it was a bit of a con, but well whatever works.
A little more on this actually. What happens is greenpeace outsources their fundraising work to independent commercial companies like the ones i work for. So these serve as an intermediarie between the people and the charity. So the one whose running this is a commercial entity and not literally greenpeace themselves. _This_ company runs it by borrowing the name greenpeace from greenpeace. So greenpeace is still a good organization and charity nonetheless, and if you ever feel concerned about the environment - which you should be - greenpeace is still a good organization to go through : )
You also have to put up with alot of arses from the streets. Krishna devotees, jehovah witnesses, scientologists, norwegians, farmers, fishermen and firefighters. Who all seem to be interested in giving me a share of what they feel the environment should be as well as their own SOB life stories. Ask me in person and i'd tell you all about it : > I guarrentee : ( my vocab has been horrible recently) : it would be entertaining.
Soccer commentator for a betting company
And at night after i've been working for Greenpeace, i'd be the superstar vigilante wannabe and crawler of pubs where i would watch soccermatches and report the position of the ball to my employers in the Philippines, and for this i get paid about a hundred dollars a match. Quite lucrative if i may say so.
So yeah what i would do is get my self comfy inside a pub, get a nice cold beer to go with it, and have earphones over my phone and a dude will call me from the Philippines and i will tell him how the players are doing and the position of the ball and other miscelleneous (i can never spell this word) soccer information from which they would use to make intelligent and calculated bets with other companies. A rather shady work, but i earn my money legally and ethically and not under the premise of some charity and the environment, which is just a little bit too morally hypocritical for me.
I also get paid to watch live soccermatches from stadiums. I'll put a video of it someday : )
Essay writer
I write essays for those who cant be bothered writing it themselves or feel as though they would prefer someone whose language of instruction is english to write for them. I charge 10c/word, and i usually get either 600 worded essays or 3000 worded essays written for people who are not in the country or are not used to be in this country.
Its not easy work, but somehow i enjoy it.
Painter
I paint the walls for my university, and i get paid 25 dollars/hour for it. Onetime job.
Tradesman
I buy and sell all sorts of interesting things : )
American Express Promoter
This is apparently my next job after the greenpeace one. I'd be donning a suit and tie and trying to sell credit cards to rich 40 something men who already have enough credit cards, or credit card colelctors. I'am interested in seeing how this turns out.
Tada and thats it : )
My first attempt at working in the real world in the real world to raise funds to keep myself fed instead of having my parents to feed me.
So mummy and daddy, especially mummy, if your reading this. I hope you feel a certain sense of pride about what your son is doing and see the awesome messianic potential i have : P : P : P
One day, i'd be able to stop bullets like Neo. just you wait.
January 04, 2007
Musings
Heres what i talk about online when i'am totally out of it.
-
January 01, 2007
Happy Puky New Year !
Alright so heres waht i did for new years eve. This french-indian girl called Devika called me out to meet her at her place at 8pm. So i got off and got some JDs and chips, as well as B52 quickfuck shooters. Got over there. Met her english friend Max, and then we smoked some ciggies and had a chat about architecture and engineering over beers. After that we went down to check out the fireworks at 9.
And yea the usual stuff, fireworks over Central Pier next to Telstra dome, i'am sure the lovely girls must have loved the lovely vibrations. After the fireworks were done we were cruising the promenade with beer in hand. Max took videos of the firework and Dev talked to her security guard friends at the club known as Watergate. We had like B52 shooters and we were walking around.
And then OMFG, these two cops on a bike came over and they were totally playing out the good cop bad cop deal. So the male cop looks at us behind sharp Oakley sunglasses with tight puckered pissed off lips on a solid emotionless porcelain face whereas his female sidekick plays this 'hey dont fuck with my bro, he's completely robocop' character. The girl advises us to throw the beer bottles in the thrash immediately. I noticed here they use 'chuck' instead of 'throw' and the thrash can or the rubbish bin is colloquailly called 'the bin' so she goes 'chuck it in the bin right now' in a friendly manner with her partner staring at us with laser guided eyes.
Anyways after the drama, we went to a restaurant below her condo, and we were made to wait like 1 hour for the food. The waitress screwed up the bill and so i had to tell her that shes undercharging us 10 bucks. Good ol honest me. After that, we were made to wait an hour before food came and during then, we were all impatient and hungry and pissed off for being made to wait so long. So the lovely waitress who must have had lovely vibrations during the lovely fireworks comes and offers us free beer on the house. Which we cordially accept after which the food comes much to our satisfaction. This was also followed by some belly dancing action with a girl on wings and stuff like that i cant be bothered remembering. I had a corona and an asahi after that.
After that we went back up to the apartment for another round of beers with Dev rolling up this huggge joint that contains the most potent shit ever. We have that and i had to take the duty of showing to Max on behalf of me and dev how to properly smoke it which totally gets me rather fucked up. After that Max decides to go to the toilet and ends up hugging the floor. We move him into the living room and i chilled at the couch. After a while i went to the toilet for a puke fest. it was nuts, never eat too much on a night out : (
The story gets more puky..
After that i went back to the couch and Dev drags me outside for 'fresh air' and for the new years count down. Man this was the worst possible idea. All the lights and fireworks and people made my nausea go through the roof. And i started puking in like 2 or 3 other locations. When they finally finished the countdown and everyone was hugging everyone else and wishing everyone else a new year. I was like puking. Puky new year indeed. Poor Devika have to put up with me puking everywhere. Everything was like a puky purplish black haze with all sorts of colours and sounds jumbled together.
Glorious Synthaesia.
After that Devika got me a cab and i passed out in it giving vague directions to the cab driver to get myself home. I got home and everything was still spinning around and in and out. Took a nap and woke up at 4am. Sent and reply a few messages then i went back to sleep. And i had a massssive hangover after that. But it wasnt so bad seeing as to how all the alcohol ended up being puke instead of in my bloodstream.
Thanks to that, i miss out all my entire nights program which included clubbing and watching the sunset and going to the beach : (
So my advice to everyone is to never smoke a large joint after a large round of drinks or food if you still want to have some semblence of conciousness to go clubbing.
..and just for the record, I passed out after:
2 Jack Daniels with coke.
1 B-52 shooter
1 Corona
1 Asahi
1 large Hawaian pizza &
1 HUGE Joint
.. after recovering from my sorethroat.
at about 12.00AM January 1, 2007.
Kudos to Devika for helping me out and being there and getting me a cab for my Puky new year. I'am soooooo sorry i couldnt accompany you for the rest of the night. *takes a bow* i'll make it up to you some how : ) Also kudos to Max for being a great buddy and to everyone else who reads secfive.org and what not. I hope you enjoyed the first few hours of 2007 as wild as i did.
December 20, 2006
Amateur Photography
I wanted to make some cash during the summer holidays. But who would have thought that looking for jobs on your first try would prove to be so difficult. So far i've earned only 360AUD from two odd onetime jobs. I've yet seen a single cent of this money. So tentatively i'am still on zero earnings.
So I thought of making some cash through stock photography @ www.shutterstock.com . I got a Nikon D70 DSLR camera from the school and went trigger snapping around melbourne. But apparently this isnt working out too well because my photos do not meet the strict quality control regulations, i will try and get around them in time and see how it works out. I think its time for me to find out how those paypal donate buttons work. Quite frankly, my lifes not being very productive and i'am starting to feel the blues.
Here are the Photos that i took, all of them from Melbourne:
Mosaic angel found in a commerical building. Copyright status unknown
Antagonizing vanishing point lights and Exit.
Domed roman ceiling at the General Post Office (GPO)
Building Masonry upclose
Public steel statue and pipe services
Polluted tabula rasa, interesting name i came up with, but actually just some stone/glass interior art deco
Butterfly things on steel rods
This is its quality at 100% cropped
I am willing to sell all these compositions for a flat price of 50 AUD dollars to any one who is interested in buying. You will legally own it in full. I've got the legal forms : > These photos are all atleast 3.5 megapixels. For more details please contact me by email at sector5@gmail.com
I feel desperate and diminished : (
December 16, 2006
Nationality, Race and Religion
Recently, some Malay guy around 30 + years old offended me. Here is the story in the form of a complaint letter I have written and sent for the relevant parties. I have changed the names to protect this person.
To Whomever concerned,I write regarding a recent encounter with an RMIT staff member who is simultaneously also a student in RMIT doing his major in architecture. I also know that he teaches at foundation level in RMIT. I only know this person as “an arse” who is usually referred as “the Cow”.
Having met this person from the labs, i regarded him well as a senior in both age and education and respected the fact that he was an RMIT staff member. I treated him with respect and candour as anyone would expect from any new social encounter and helped him with some IT problems he encountered.
On the morning of 14th December, I met “the Cow” in the labs. He approached me and asked for my input on certain pdf settings and i helped him cordially. He then left to purchase materials and i met him again at about 9:30 in level 7, building 8. He asked if i could help him to mount his 5 A0 printouts on foamcore. I agreed and i spent the next one and a half hour doing this in the construction labs. Having completed the task, he suggested that I help him trim the foamcore edges off. I was reluctant but i decided to finish the job anyways. However he was being extremely difficult and picky and spent a long time on the first and second foamcore in what would otherwise be a simple and easy job. He asked for my input on the measurements and on cutting which I gave. I side commented this that was his work and i respect whatever decision he would decide on, i was just there to help him. Things were not working out with the foamcore he was handling and it was cut slightly off and this led to him becoming increasingly frustrated. Noting this, I told him at this point that I was hungry and would like to leave soon to have breakfast. He told me not to leave yet as he would be done in a while and offered to buy me breakfast. Seeing as to how desperate he was and entertaining the thought of free breakfast, i reluctantly agreed. This was when things took a turn for the worst and he then started rambling on how he has done this a dozen times, that he was good with it and what we should have done instead and what not. After his lengthy observations, i commented that it was because he was being picky and that it was usual for the cutting to be off by a few mm as mounting is not perfect.
Having said that, he snapped and asked for me to repeat what i said. Reluctantly i told him again what i felt, and at this point he started calling me immature and childish in a condescending, hurtful and spiteful tone among other things that i have forgot in the heat of disappointment with his display of such attitude.
Having felt thoroughly insulted and offended that my 2 hour worth of samaritan effort and labour ended without gratitude and instead with an insult to my character and integrity; I left saying that I was sorry he thought that way, and that he was being inconsiderate.
Reflecting back, it seems that I was naive to have been so readily helpful towards “the Cow”. But I would still like to hold the opinion that I would rather study and work in a positive environment with a jovial social atmosphere although this recent incident has severely cast doubts on that.
I am writing this as i felt that he had diminished my integrity and worth, as well as insulted my character and goodwill. I am shocked and perturbed by his actions and up till now, I still do not have a peace of mind over this incident; leaving me frustrated and disappointed first over myself for letting myself suffer such indignity and second over “the Cow”. The purpose of this letter is to ease my pain and suffering through expression and second to inform the relevant parties of this incident. To this end, i will send this letter to :
1. RMIT HE Design and Social Context,
2. RMIT DSC Foundation,
3. RMIT International Students Information and Support.I will respect RMIT's decision. I only wish to voice out.
Sincerely,
Yang.
First off i'd like to apologize for the things i am going to say. It is as acidic as it is sensitive in nature. I decided not to put it in my letter in light of how serious it would be if I did. But this is the main source of frustration I felt that spurred me to write this letter in the first place.
I realized this person only approached Malaysians and did not entertain other people of other cultures. He spoke in a condescending tone as polite as he was to the effect that it made me felt as though I had a social obligation to him due to an inherent class or race difference between us. Whether this racial nuance was self perceived or actually intended is a matter up to debate. But the intended class difference in his mentality was to me very obvious. It was as though I was being persecuted for my race and nationality. It is this arrogance instilled in him due to race and nationality that I find so disappointing and upsetting – more so from an educated man.
I’d hate to make another racist and secondly sexist remark; but it does seem to me that the average overseas Malay guy is extremely socially naive – as smart and competent as they maybe – resulting in a disconnection from the rest of the social communities around. I say this with a background of being Malaysian and having grown up in a Muslim monarchy state. I respect them, but to ignore the fact that in general they are introverted with regards to other cultures and ways of life is not the mark of an educated man but that of a bigot regardless of how noble your intentions maybe.
It does seem inviting to think that their mentality is buoyed by the idea that they are too seriously and religiously absorbed; and that they denounce other cultures and religions and am inherently upset that they have to put up with it.
I do, however, find Malay girls very polite, intelligent and becoming of themselves. Perhaps this is because in their culture, it is oriented such that the roles the females play are submissive in nature whereas the males play a dominative role although I am neither fit nor interested to comment on this sensitive issue.
Regardless of whatever cultural or social idiosyncrasies they practice, this is Australia and I refuse to be subject to Malaysian conditioning of which I am not a part of. I am myself. For any one person or social denomination to identify themselves so strongly with their nationality, religion or race is not only racist and discriminatory in nature, but it is the stuff of Nazi Germany, Maoist China or Muslim terrorists. It is arrogance in its purest form and I denounce it.
I’d like to add that I respect these cultures but If they were to impose them on me for the fact that I hold a Malaysian passport, I would most definitely rebel and resist for it trespasses on my essence of being. It insults my very existence and I will have none of it.
People need to be able to see and accept their own failings; and in the process shed off such mindless prejudices as race, nationality and religion, if they were to seriously intend to advance themselves as either a society or as an individual.
October 04, 2006
Architectural Things
This is what I did in the past 15 hours. Modelling a house for school work.
... and i really like this one. mmmm~
... and heres a .pdf file for you to look at it in detail
September 15, 2006
Voodoo People
I've created a few more 3D models. I wanted to create a tentacle monster thing. But i ended up making this instead :(
Mmm, Perhaps I should stop spamming secfive with my 3D models..
September 12, 2006
3D Tank Thing
I've been making more 3D stuff lately. Its fun.
I call this DAD-01 (Destroy All Dodgies). It tracks and hunts down all dodgy people, starting with the asshole who stole my bike. Oh yes, my bike got stolen last sunday :(
:(
:(
September 09, 2006
The University Students' Holy Trinity of Chemicals
September 04, 2006
Life Update
Dear all, i've been busy, so i apologize for not posting anything at all last month.
As you all might or might not have known, I am an architecture student. And this semester i've been tasked with designing something iconic for central pier in docklands, Melbourne. This is of course just a school studio task, not as if it would actually be built. But i'd like to think that it is the thought that counts.
So this thing i'am designing is a technology center and I start out sketching rough things in my A5 visual diary after that i draw them up in 2D in Autocad like so;
And then i export them into rhinoceros and make them 3D
After that, i create a perspectival view of it, and then i present it to my eccentric tutor.
I'd like to elaborate more but i'am afraid this is as long as the post will get.
So Dear Daddy and Mommy, and my beloved Sisters and my benefactors. Know that your brother/son/relative/friend is doing good and well in Australia (and continue to send him money). Know that he is not doing dodgy stuff (*guilt* guilt*) and that he is working hard.
Gyah, that is all.
Love and Peace.
July 20, 2006
The Minds Mildew
Mmmm, i guess an architecture students life really doesnt amount to much. We're too philosophical for our own good and we muse about life too much instead of actually living and enjoying it. Hopeless romantics. Perhaps that is the price to pay for clairvoyancy. I'd like to talk about the semester and everything but it just occurs to me that education isnt perhaps as interesting a topic as it rightfully should be. Torn between the rifts of the reason and feeling, we live in an unreasonable world filled with unreasonable things. All life and humanity can perhaps only amount to so little.
I must say this month has been particularly unfortunate for me. I've lost alot of things. My keys, my ipod and perhaps some friends who are going back or dropping out. And to replace them, we are paired with senior students in other new lower pool design studios, while it is exciting to meet these new people, i deplore about how easily people are replaced in our lives by simple necessity. Fate, also alternatively spelled as god (according to your relative denominations) indeed has little sympathy for human emotions (as it shuffles it about with reckless abandon) and this brings me to marvel at the conception of human empathy. If people place so much importance on it then why does it only amount to so little in our own lives on both an individualistic and a collectivistic level.
Let me tell you why; humans are selfish and arrogant thats why.
We've grown with consumerism to choose people and friends like the way we choose our clothes and accessories. We choose to live in higher human density areas not to enjoy the company of other men, but to gain greater access to a wider range of goods and services. When we compare of towns and metropolitan cities, the image that comes up is the glitz and modernity that the cities provide instead of human company and indeed perhaps humanity is reduced to only what we see on the various medias, and our own choice of personal friends. People are expendable and dispensable. Thus all humanity only amounts to so little.
God or fate, if he has the ability to think and ponder the way we do, is cruel to blow conciousness that is denotative of the human spirit into the lifeless vessels that we truly are
.
Perhaps this really is purgatory;
Mindless men and women working about their lives trying to find meaning and purpose in their lives while always being subjected to the fate that they they will never understand the purposes of life beyond their flesh and conciousness, like rain drops plitter plattering on the bottomless ocean surface and voiceless fishes in the sea never knowing a different world above, we are all oblivious to our roles in life, pawns to a higher divinity. We try to find meaning to it all and yet the reality is that there really is no meaning or purpose to human conciousness as it relates to our being.
June 22, 2006
End of First Semester
The semester has ended for me, and now i have to pay my second semester tuition fees by the end of this month.
But first a run through of whats been happening with your favourite sector.
Its been a whopping 20 days of absence. The longest period of absence ever in secfive.org's history. This correlates with my end of semester activities which has been challenging and work-filled. I dont like to call it stress because stress to me is something that is undesirable, negative and well just bad really. My studies are definitely not undesirable, negative or bad in anyway. So stress is abit of an overkill word to use. But eitherway, i've been surviving on lots and lots of V which is this little energy drink down here.
Drinking as much as 1 litre a day of this green thing. Digressing from the point, i notice alot of green things are good in life, V, weed, nature, the US dollar. But anyways, 1 litre might sound like its alot, but infact its just 2 glass bottles of the 500ml varieties that you see in the image above. Also because of the long work hours and my weird sleeping habits, i've begun to use the stopwatch function on my handphone to clock my hours awake, so i can tell myself whether my body needs sleep or not as the mind is fleeting. My sleep cycles are usually like this during projects; being awake on caffeine for 24 to 30 hours and then taking a 10 to 12 hour sleep before repeating the cycle. On not so busy days, i'll just have my usual 15 hour awake and 8 to 10 hour sleep cycles. These cycles do not follow the pattern of the days, so i can very well wake up at 3am or 3pm, 10pm or 10am. Time is independant of day cycles afterall. I dont see why everyone needs to live a 8am awake, 9pm sleep cycle. Convention as i have deplored many times, is nonsensical.
And i use all this time and energy (from energy drinks no less, \o/) , to work on my architectural projects which has included much more drawings now (made with my 30 dollar drafting pens and 60cm rulers), and much less graphics and pictures. Perhaps when i have enough free time or enough ego one day, i'll update all my new drawings and projects into my online portfolio, of which i have also made an A1 and A3 version for coursesubmission. Working with A1 stock paper, i must say, is a very expensive and cumbersome process.
Ah, money... the quintessential basic unit of anything good in the human society. I know conversely, the cliche claim is that money cant buy happiness and love and whatever. But that is just too idealistic for the average 20 something. Money IS happiness right now. Money is to me, the opportunity to have an education that i knowingly deserve. Money is to me, the freedom to experience life in the fullest. Although arguably, i'd say the lack of money and the subsequent persuit of it also results in a full life. But more money is always better than a lack of money. There is the question of having enough money, and more than enough. But when you simply dont have enough of it, the ends in life just dont meet very well.
But, the keen reader may ask; 'What makes you different from the rest of the billions of people on earth who too are lamenting on their objectable financial situations', and my answer would be; What is different for me, is that it is a matter of what people deserve, for their competency and ability. Those competent enough to be leaders, innovators and instruments of positive change in the human society, should therefore accordedly be given the basic opportunities to archieve their potential, regardless of their financial background, race or other superficialities.
So, therefore I complain about the lack of meritocracy in our world and societies, more than my own state of being.
Just because the world is not meritocratic, and is what it is ; it does not justify itself against what the world could be or possibly be. Accepting the shitty conditions of our present state is an excuse to not improve upon the world. It is accepting what has been given as status quo, and is not representative of the innate human nature of which we belong to. Understandbly it is human to want change, to hope for the better and to improve upon what is given. Seeing as to how we merely accept the status quo and conventions of the day, may we have lost that important human characteristic in persuit of the perfect society that we have been attempting to create ?
Which brings me back to my semester fee payments. If i dont pay my university AUD 10k by 31st of June, I very well might be packing my bags home by July, which is lamentable, having completed only 1/6th of my Degree in Design and 1/10th of my Degree in Architecture on my 'great journey' to make something out of my 3rd decade in life.
My mother seems to have dispossessed me as son and is refusing to pay my school fees, for her own very selfish reasons about the family situation with my dad. My dad seems to be in a financial bind and has not been very forthcoming about the fees. I've always had the impression that my education is not very important to him seeing as to how he started his own business without a degree from humble beginnings. Regardless, i've had less than stellar parents and have not come from a happy and conducive family background. I dont want to blame them, but fate is cruel to have given me a broken family and a damning conciousness of it. It would have been easier to accept if i was brought up a tad bit more stupid and a tad bit less intelligent and concious of my circumstances. No child or person wants to live knowing that he is the product of an unhappy marriage. It corrupts the sanctity of marriage and of family, all this hate, loathing and vengeance my mother has. But this is another topic, and not for today.
Eitherway, I Accept the challenges of life that Fate (or god if you will) has given me and i endeavor to triumph as has my predecessors. Human history is a list of victories of men against men and men against nature. If this bit of idealism will help me survive my hardships then so be it.
And to that end, i introduce to you, secfive's prayer for a happy future and life;
May we all live in a self induced state of faith to our own particular social constructs such that we may advance ourselves in the persuit of learning and simply being what we are and what we could be. Amen
May 25, 2006
The Media, The Government and the Society
I recall reading a Times article on ecstasy 1 to 2 years ago. The story invovled a 20 something relating her first time experience of ecstasy. She related to the journalist how ecstasy induced in her a state of mind that made her cross examine her life and her relationships with her family. This subsequently led to her appreciating and valuing life so much so that she grew out of her troubled teenage life and made changes for the better.
The objective and honest examinations of news magazines such as Times and Newsweek highlights the true value of journalism in our society. It is an objective, organized relation of factual phenomenon as observed in reality. Conversely, other forms of media such as government sponsored anti drug campaigns, commercial advertisements, subjective reporting, and materials taught in school textbooks are generally twsited and reformed to suit the agendas or tastes of the issuing government/organization and/or the consuming society/body/community. It is 'made by' an entity for a reason, and 'made for' an entity for a reason. It is not objective, nor factual. It is not the truth.
And in such reporting and media communications, generalizations are commonly employed and used to such a degree that any sensible and educated objective person would regard as grotesque. It is generalization on the same level and extent as the generalizations used in racism, sexism and nationalism. Which reminds me of a childhood event when i was in secondary school.
When we were in secondary and primary schools, the government held anti drug campaigns. Students were made to relate drugs (called 'dadah' in the Bruneian national language, malay) with skulls, blood and death. Poster competitions were held to distinguish which entries best related drugs with death and no distinction or definition of 'drugs' was made. The government also brought in prison officers from the national corrections department who in turn, brought in mannequins and canes. For reference, i implore you to read these 3 articles: caning, caning in singapore and Michael P.Fay - a caned US teenager. And as a citizen, permanent resident and resident of Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore respectively, i would like to respectfully add that the articles in wikipedia are an understatement to the true cruelty and indignity of caning in these countries. Prison officers were trained to rupture skin and thus by definition cause bleeding on every stroke of the cane; a prison officer would not be allowed to perform caning if he could not fulfill such a requirement. After caning, victims of the state -, i mean criminals, would not be able to sleep per normal as their arse would be wounded, all of them would have difficulty walking for upto a week or more and all of them would develop disgusting lateral physical scars on their butts after the ordeal. And i thought scarification was only used to brand animals. Some also report permanent damage to their peripheral and nervous systems. Furthermore these corporal punishments are applicable to lesser crimes such as vandalism (in the case of Michael P.Fay) and rioting.
So we have some secondary school students and little primary school children - most of them barely or just approaching their pubes - watching on as prison officers with the builds of arnold schwachzenegger caned the poor mannequins. It was one of the most intense experience in my pubescent life. I'am sure a few little girls cried. Perhaps a small price to pay for the nations antidrug campaign. But fuck that. As a society we'ved developed further than that. Corporal punishment is not required in a developed country.
... per usual, i digress. I have long suspected that i have a mild form of ADD. My antics are ironic as i'am procrastinating from my work to do this entry, and even within the entry, i am procrastinating from my topic to do another sub-topic.
Back to journalism and the media. The correct portrayal of phenomenas in reality is important as the incorrect portrayal of it equates to gossiping and rumour-mongering on a state, national and global level. The channels by which it moves through results in further exageration and misconception. The product finally produced at the end of such a journey is something that is distorted and different from reality. And this distorted information is consumed by a society which builds upon it. A cycle of distortion and lies is finally created. A free and unprofessional media is one that distorts the truth.
Thus when little children pubescents are told that drugs = blood, skulls and death, and is then subsequently shown imagess of a humanoid being physically abused for being related to drugs; The little children and pubescents grow up to be incessantly paranoid about anything 'drug' related, not even truly knowing what 'drugs' are. The same thing is applicable to other concepts such as sexual discovery of self and between genders, personal opinion on authority and religion, religion itself, uniqueness or self identity (apart from what is considered the norm), homosexuality, racism and anything that has already been established as the norm by the society and/or government and not just drugs.
What is ultimately created, is a culture of fear on a national level, which is inturn used to keep such a newly developing, urbanized and industralized society such as Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore in check; which i guess is justifiable. But the governments have to realize that a new generation of educated folks (of which i may humbly be an example) are in the making, a generation which if less enlightened will not bode well with what they perceive as government propaganda and authoritarianism. This can be observed in the emmigration of the educated intelectuals. (of which perhaps i would be one too, weee linking yourself to your own arguments is such fun~)
On a side note, Its sad when teenagers and pubescents are ashamed of their own genatalia. Let us not even consider other themes like sexual orientation, social standing and physical attractiveness. To feel sorry for yourself, that must be the most wretched feeling available in the psychological spectrum. I wanted to draw parallels with suicide rates. But that'll be for another time.
May 02, 2006
Coursework
Publishing some presentations that i am currently doing.
It sort of relieves tension to know that other people are looking at my work apart from the ever critical tutors. Ah.. times like these i feel glad i have secfive.org
I start off my work with a simple introduction. These two are in A4 each and will serve as cut out labels to stick on my A1 paper. At the end of the presentation, i expect to have about 4 to 6 pieces of A1 papers that details my project. Apparently, we are doing some project on a gallery to showcase some art and design students works. I will not go into the details.
After that, comes the design philosophy, i've chosen a series of enso circles, some gardens and cells as my design motivation. All these are gonna be cut and pasted onto A1 too. After that, theres' some images of the site plan i've obtained using google earth. This is followed by an analysis of the shadows produced as the sun moves from east to west during the day in melbourne.
All this took about 4 hours, including bits of msn chatting, alot of thinking and bits of researching at the university. Its gonna be cold and soggy on the way home. And i have to finish up my model making. Its 3:10am. I can say without sarcasm, i love my working hours.
April 29, 2006
My Thoughts for the Week
I am not too sure why, i seem to be losing my vibes. I've not been feeling quite right these few days. Perhaps depression is starting to set in, perhaps i'am not quite used to Melbourne and perhaps i'am homesick. Perhaps it is the workload. I'am not sure.
Regardless it is clear to me that things have to move on, time continues ticking and the cogwheels of life will always be in a state of perpetual motion. That such mood swings occur merely in passing. It is 10pm here now and my day has been particularly lazy. I had a really sweet afternoon nap. Perhaps it is the weather, this cozy climate constantly encourages people to hibernate in some form, to close ones eyes and let morpheus takes us into an alternate realm beyond our physical senses.
Today, i've also been reading alot online about a certain Hans Christian Andersen. You might not know him but he is the famed Dannish author of alot of fairty tales that we might have read when we were young. It started with me watching the tv, and seeing a grand performance attended by royalty to celebrate the life and works of HC Andersen. His works have known international reknown, and his statues sit in Copenhagen. It struck me that this person must have been exceptionally brilliant and well regarded in his days if 200 years later today, he still commands such attention.
And so i wikipedied this person and again i am reminded how ugly and dystopic the world we live in is compared with the world in tv, where everything is scripted, programmed. Everything is fake. HC Andersen was abused as a child, and was shunned by his peers for his physical unattractiveness. He was also homosexual and never married or had children. He was a loner, a shrewd and was discriminated. And only through writing did he find pleasure and an outlet to express his thoughts and ideas. All this was conveniently ignored in all discussions of his life in museums and in public.
And i learnt that the Little Mermaid didnt get to be with the prince. Instead she died and turned into sea foam and then into a spirit of the air for a mermaid could never be loved by a human. She wanted too much; she wanted a human soul, and forbidden love. Both of which were unattainable.
But of course disney portrays this otherwise. Talking fishes and singing lobsters, kind seagulls and an ending in which 'they lived happily ever after'. That was not the way the story was written or was meant to be told. And that is how our world works. Everything is always painted to look prettier, to look nicer, to make it something other than what it is.
Why do we consistently keep blinding ourselves to what which is reality, why do we whisper into our own ears, sweet lies and bend reality into what it is not and in the end only serve to hurt ourselves even more. Why do we want more when we can settle for less. The world has no place for petty idealism. There is no such thing as a white lie. They are all lies, regardless of their nature. And lies but serve to hurt ourselves in the long run.
Truth may not be as palatable, but at the end of the day, truth is the only thing we are left with.
April 10, 2006
The Week, Pictures and Quotes
Quotes express a thousand thoughts;
Pictures a thousand words.
My week begins roughly like this. If memory serves, my monday begins without much sleep. On tuesday i went to school in the afternoon, afterwhich when i get back i went to a students hostel called Arrows to work on my model with a partner. This i did, all through the night.
After that was done, we brought it to school and presented it to the tutor in the morning, i would have to say our model was the best in class by far. For the love of Vitruvius, some of the models had crooked parallel structural parts; and the poor folks had to remade the whole thing. Pity. After that session and a lecture, and 28 hours of surviving on caffeine and taurine, i decided that the next logical chemical to have in me was ethanol, so we went to a lounge called bunkers. Towards the weekend i went clubbing with some of these fine people.
I was walking past swanston (a street) when i saw this fine V6 Ultima 3000cc Camry and nostalgia started to overwhelm me, so i took a photo of it. :)
On thursdays, we went to a workshop in Fitzroy, 4 of us in a car, to work on some columns for our shelter project. So we drilled and sawed for 3 hours and got back, to build the structure on which i was sitting on.
And this just to fill up the page, i took photos of myself when i was bored and/or drunk.
To end all this, i guess i find this quote most relevant for my week, and maybe perhaps yours too.
The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one. - Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
March 16, 2006
Commonwealth Games Opening Ceremony
I bought a bike on monday. Having this new found freedom, i went cycling until my ass was sore. And no, this has nothing to do with homosexuality, and i like young petite girls just incase you were wondering. But again and again, i digress. So on wednesday i cycled to the Melbourne Commonwealth Games (atleast that is what i think MCG stands for) to check out the opening ceremony. They had the most spectacular fireworks display that i have ever seen in my 20 odd years of life. I would like to show you the pictures, but you have probably seen it in newspaper or on tv, and to show you what the media has been brainlessly feeding into your feeble minds once again would be to defeat my own philosophy which is something that endears me. Therefore, unfortunately, i shall not show you pictures of these spectacular fireworks.
However, we still have this rather interesting image of me wearing the official MCG cap, along with some friends of mine. Cheers, that is all.
-
March 14, 2006
Transcripts
These are a series of transcripts that i have recorded spontanteously as they occured. Tidbits that i found interesting.
[INTERSECTION]
my time at green house.
i arrive on thursday morning , and i checked in to greenhouse. i dont remember much of the people that were there then, but if i was not mistaken , it was a british girl. Afterwards, this american girl came and stayed over next to my bed. Now let me describe the structure of our room. it is divided into two interlinked corridors resulting in a U shaped structure of the room. On each side of the U, would be 4 bunkers. Two double decker beds. So anyways, the american girl brings these 2 friends of hers, whom i would again describe as physically round, and they started chatting up with me , and one of them spilled ginger beer on my twodays old socks. And to my surprise, she starts to take my socks away and brushes of the foaming liquid with her fingers. Perhaps this is because i'am asian this must be an american thing to do, but still shocking nonetheless, my socks were stinky too , well not that stinky eitherway, but its not something even i wouldnt touch without second thought. After that encounter, two german girls and a german guy moved in. Apparently they've been backpacking around the world and they just came from adelaine. The guy also supposedly bought a car for 500 bucks. The amazement of western life never ceases to astound me. Soon after , that , 2 other guys whom i didnt really introduced myself to came , so i didnt know where they were from , i almost didnt even know they were living in the same room as me. As i am typing this now, there are , i think 6 or 7 norweigian girls around me, thankfully, the text on this pc is too small for them to read, otherwise i wonder what they would think. Some of the girls are actually pretty hot and young, i guess this perhaps might be one of the moments in my life where i can actually boast that i slept with 7 girls in the same room. Hmm, they just left. oh that sucks. anyways, i wish i was wearing my contact lenses.
[5 mins later]
they have came back and they are going 'hello' 'hello' with each other repeatedly followed with hysterical laughter. Ah , the wonders of world culture. I guess i'll never fully comprehend it all.
xoxo
12:30AM GMT +11
27 FEB 2006
[END INTERSECTION]
[INTERSECTION]
Gay drama
now again i deplore you for a monent of your time, so that i may share with you the story of my gay housemates. As i was reading the works of vitruvius, the architect on my laptop, i heard the spontaneous groans of pleasure from my gay housemate cum landlord, saying 'Ahn! its so tight!', to my awkward and annoyed surprise. Now with slight further thought and gaining more pieces of data from their conversation, i realized they were talking probably on some sort of under wear. And indeed i have seen this forsaken piece of apparel. it is made with thin fabric, with some natural jungle-ish designs on it , usually in the form of wild parallel stripes resembling claw marks. worn by the mens to shield their inner delicates from the ravages of nature and the oppression of naked eyes, and perhaps by gays to visually enhance the nature of their groin and most necessarily their ego. many times, my gay landlord has come into my room to address me on some trivial matters regarding the household wearing this obscene undergarment, and many times have i strained not to let the curiosity in my eyes wonder to that blasphemous region. and i stand before you truthful in my glory for i have remained unconquered.
now i understand that perhaps you might not know the process which has gotten me into this state. and indeed i have no angst against those whose sexuality overwhelms them. but the knowledge of the fact that two of my housemates are gay, is suddenly overwhelming, I cannot but feel a sense of insecurity and bewilderment at knowing that i am living with two gays. One of which repeatedly fills the house with sounds of Ahns and Ohns. It is painstakingly annoying, and i have a thing against not gays but sissies. I would perhaps describe them as trangendered instead of homosexuality, because homosexuality deals with preference of sex. Whereas transgenderism deals with the idea of sexuality itself. And indeed i have seen many ... sissies in my life. In my communist school days, i thought they were freaks of nature and even worst, freaks of human society. Them with their flamboyant attitudes and arched wrists wich they freely swayed around everywhere during their dramatic conversations. Even worst was when they were overwhelmed with certain emotions, happiness, sadness , eleticism, where they let of squeals of uhns and ohns much to their delight and to the detriment of anyone within audible radial range. And i have found peace with those who are homosexual, i respect that, for apart from their sexual preferences, they remain normal, reasonable people. Whereas those who are transgendered, or more poetically, sissies, i find deplorable. For these people seem to have their sensitivities overgeared, they no longer form part of the natural human spectrum of reasonable and linear thinking personas. They are hypersensitive, and whimsical, emotionally. And to me, any person who is too emotional, has their reasoning and logic functions overwhelmed. for we are all but human. And an emotional person, is rarely a reasonable person. Times like these i cannot help but appreciate nietzches' uberman concept of the super human, to ignore the inferior, and not wallow in pity or sympathy for them and adopt the cool hard shield of apathy, indeed to protect mankind from such freaks. This does not warrant their persecution or execution. but instead encourages their natural extinction through the process of natural selection. Nature does not think in terms of feelings, nature does not pity. And is there anything in nature that does not function correctly; wondrously ?
That is all. I shall go back to reading vitruvius.
11:00PM GMT +11
7 MARCH 2006
[END INTERSECTION]
March 04, 2006
University and the First Week
Today is Saturday, and i went clubbing last night with a girl from korea nad a girl from malaysia. I forgot that for clubbing , people were required to have dresscodes and so i wore a 'save the environment' t-shirt, basketball shoes and 3/4 pants to meet up with the girls. The girls, whom i met in university during the day, were quite interesting.
The first girl was malaysian, but having lived in australia for the better half of her teenage life, i reckon the only thing about her that is malaysian - like me - is the fact that she has a malaysian passport. Now she was quite the spectacle. She was wearing thick glasses in school with long sleeved tees and jeans. This look associates most people as the typical nerdy foreign asian student in a university. Now that night, she miraculously transformed. She had wild curvy hair, without glasses, and wearing a sort of spaghetti straps + tanktop combination dress with really really short translucent filmsy type skirt and she danced in a really sexualy charged way. But more on that later.
So i met this supposedly innocent and goody good shoe girl at night, along with this other korean girl and we were supposed to meet up with another guy but he didnt come. I was quite surprised at the outfit she was wearing, but then was reminded of the fact that we were going to a nightclub afterall, and everyone dresses more or less like that. And instead the odd one out was me with my basketball shoes and ankle pants. So we went off to the korean girls place and she got me more funky shoes, and we went to the nightclub and danced till 5 in the morning afterwhich we went off for some food before i walked home.
On my way home i went into victoria market, just to check it out since i pass by it everyday but it was always closed. Now the later experience i had was surreal, after a whole day at the university, and buying groceries and subsequently dancing the night away till dawn, dead tired and abit tipsy, i was in a large warehouse where there were two long rows of bright fresh red meat, along with carcasses of cows and chickens, interspaced with rows of fish stores. And everyone seemed mindless, cutting up flesh and lining them up precisesly in rows and columns of bright red with the most meticulous care a person can give. And 200m long rows of stores were doing this simultaneously. At one point i imagined how similiar human society was compared with this meat processing facility. We grow up being fed and taken care of in school and university, most of us as mindless as the animals themselves that we feed on, and then we are released into the society, where we work and work to serve 'the society'. Never truly being able to change the state of the environment we are in, nor neither having the ambition or interest to do so.
So eitherways, i went home and got into bed, and went to sleep. I woke up at about 3 and went to shop for bicycles with Jye, a friend who has posted a commentary here on secfive before. After that we just walked around, looking at pidgeons and sitting around. Melbourne is just such a great city in that sense. You can just walk around, relax, talk and enjoy the culture and life of the people, without feeling urge or any particular purpose. I cannot imagine doing this in either Brunei, malaysia or singapore as in brunei, the weather is absolutely horrible, the birds are ugly, and there are no public amenities. There are no chairs or sculptures or shades for you to walk in, sit on or look at, there are no water fountains that offer you water when you are thristy. In singapore there are such amenities, albeit little, but the atmosphere there is fatal. The peoples faces all seem to be engraved with overwhelming purpose, either that or abandon, apathy or lethargy. And these are not faces that encourage you to sit down ,relax and have a good chat with a friend over a meal or drink with pidgeons and statues. A truly fatal atmosphere. As for malaysia, the place just seems dirty, and polluted. The vehicles and people are noisy and loud, and the people too share a sense of fatality as do their singaporean counterparts, albeit not to the same extend. The hot weather, like the parallel effect of temperature on all chemical and thus biological organisms, seems to accelerate the temper, guile and general pace of society in these equatorial countries, and in my perspective, this is detrimental.
Apart from that, school work has been exciting, engaging and fun. My first week of university life has reinforced in me, my passion for the subject of architecture , the pure art of utility. I cannot think of any other subject that i would want to be doing instead of architecture. I enjoy all my lectures, and my tutorials and classes. However i do note that my peers seem to find the topic abit overbearing and tedious. But i am not fit to judge my peers.
The only thing lamentable about Melbourne is that the sun is overpowering, and scalds the naked skin. Apart from that, the weather seems to be fine and dandy. I've also encountered hail last week, much to my pleasant surprise - little blobs of ice that plitter platters on the surfaces of manmade buildings, oblivious to their purpose in nature, but ever consistent. Entities that do what they do but are never able to find beyond themselves, the meaning for their existence in nature. Are they a product of a greater whole ? or a part that constitutes to a greater whole ? They do not know, they just plitter platter when they are summoned. Indeed!, what a blissful existence.
February 26, 2006
sec5 in Melbourne
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 .
February 03, 2006
Memoirs of a College Student
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.
For starters. This is our college's logo
Blue with white stripes. I've grown to like the design.
and this is the tennis court (QED)
.. with benches.
We have the main hall here.
and I'd queue up here usually when i was late to school. And i was late rather often :(
This is near the administrative offices.
During events, booths will be set up here, and it'd always be lively
This is the canteen during an event
and indeed, there were lots of people. Pretty much like a zerg swarm - the whole concept of the school and this thing called unity and harmony and i couldnt stand it. I hated the social system where everyone was supposed to fit in neatly. I grew disillusioned. I'd pick up all these philosophy books in the library and try to find meaning to it all.
We also had tracks and field.
We'd slave on these tracks for quite alot every week. I respect that Singaporean males have to go for national service after their pre-university education. But compulsory physical education was not my idea of college.
~
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]
January 24, 2006
Jung Personality Test Results
One perfect and beautiful day while i was talking to a a girl called Elizabeth (and heres a link to her blog) , she informed me of something called the Briggs-Myers Personality Test, and so i took a look at it on wikipedia and a few days later i actually took the test. And here are the results my dear readers. Apparently, i'am a very rare breed and i probably belong to the hitler type.
All this from similiarminds.com,
Extroverted (E) 55.56% Introverted (I) 44.44% Intuitive (N) 52.63% Sensing (S) 47.37% Thinking (T) 79.41% Feeling (F) 20.59% Judging (J) 56.25% Perceiving (P) 43.75%Your type is: ENTJ
ENTJ - "Field Marshall". The basic driving force and need is to lead. Tend to seek a position of responsibility and enjoys being an executive. 1.8% of total population.
Enneagram Test ResultsThe Enneagram is a personality system which divides the entire human personality into nine behavioral tendencies, this is your score on each...
Type 1 Perfectionism 56%
Type 2 Helpfulness 23%
Type 3 Image Awareness 60%
Type 4 Sensitivity 20%
Type 5 Detachment 40%
Type 6 Anxiety 40%
Type 7 Adventurousness 80%
Type 8 Aggressiveness 73%
Type 9 Calmness 63%
And this is taken from keirsey.com
Of the four aspects of strategic analysis and definition, it is marshalling or situational organizing role that reaches the highest development in Fieldmarshals. As this kind of role is practiced some contingency organizing is necessary, so that the second suit of the Fieldmarshal's intellect is devising contingency plans. Structural and functional engineering, though practiced in some degree in the course of organizational operations, tend to be not nearly as well developed and are soon outstripped by the rapidly growing skills in organizing. But it must be said that any kind of strategic exercize tends to bring added strength to engineering as well as organizing skills.As the organizing capabilities the Fieldmarshal increase so does their desire to let others know about whatever has come of their organizational efforts. So they tend to take up a directive role in their social exchanges. On the other hand they have less and less desire, if they ever had any, to inform others.
Hardly more than two percent of the total population, the Fieldmarshals are bound to lead others, and from an early age they can be observed taking command of groups. In some cases, Fieldmarshals simply find themselves in charge of groups, and are mystified as to how this happened. But the reason is that Fieldmarshals have a strong natural urge to give structure and direction wherever they are -- to harness people in the field and to direct them to achieve distant goals. They resemble Supervisors in their tendency to establish plans for a task, enterprise, or organization, but Fieldmarshals search more for policy and goals than for regulations and procedures.
They cannot not build organizations, and cannot not push to implement their goals. When in charge of an organization, whether in the military, business, education, or government, Fieldmarshals more than any other type desire (and generally have the ability) to visualize where the organization is going, and they seem able to communicate that vision to others. Their organizational and coordinating skills tends to be highly developed, which means that they are likely to be good at systematizing, ordering priorities, generalizing, summarizing, at marshalling evidence, and at demonstrating their ideas. Their ability to organize, however, may be more highly developed than their ability to analyze, and the Fieldmarshal leader may need to turn to an Inventor or Architect to provide this kind of input.
Fieldmarshals will usually rise to positions of responsibility and enjoy being executives. They are tireless in their devotion to their jobs and can easily block out other areas of life for the sake of their work. Superb administrators in any field -- medicine, law, business, education, government, the military -- Fieldmarshals organize their units into smooth-functioning systems, planning in advance, keeping both short-term and long-range objectives well in mind. For the Fieldmarshals, there must always be a goal-directed reason for doing anything, and people's feelings usually are not sufficient reason. They prefer decisions to be based on impersonal data, want to work from well thought-out plans, like to use engineered operations -- and they expect others to follow suit. They are ever intent on reducing bureaucratic red tape, task redundancy, and aimless confusion in the workplace, and they are willing to dismiss employees who cannot get with the program and increase their efficiency. Although Fieldmarshals are tolerant of established procedures, they can and will abandon any procedure when it can be shown to be ineffective in accomplishing its goal. Fieldmarshals root out and reject ineffectiveness and inefficiency, and are impatient with repetition of error.
Well i dont really know what to say about all this, but i guess i'd take what the personality test has offered me as a compliment. Afterall, according to it, an administrative or executive post befits me to most and apparently i'am special in the sense that theres only 2% of people like me in the population. Furthermore i also think that the tests describes me rather accurately. I do get gravely impatient when mistakes are repeated by either myself or any other people, and i do love to run some sort of a racket or organization. I love to create, to implement, to design and to produce. I also rarely give a damn what other people feel. I'd prefer that people act along the parameters of reason and rationality rather than feelings and emotions. We all do things for a purpose, a reason; for in doing so it has meaning, and relevancy - without which all else is naught.
Apparently, i'am also not a very helpful, or a very sensitive person. I guess its obvious why. To be helpful means to lend assistance to those who are less competant. I would give help in the form of guidance, advise, but never directly in terms of aid, monetary or otherwise. It is my philosophy that aid creates dependency, rather than encourage change, growth or improvement. The weak and incompetent needs to improve themselves, not to depend on others. As for being sensitive. I guess i'd concede that i'am a pretty cold and unforgiving person sometimes. Life is deterministic, causal. I dont see how being sensitive, loving and emotional can be considered positive qualities in life. Rather perhaps i see them to be the harbringers of friction, conflict and disagreement. We are humans, we cannot surpress our urges and emotions. To be sensitive would mean to take into consideration another person's thoughts and feelings and perhaps mask or present our own thoughts in a better form. This is a form of concealment, or even dishonesty. And being the causal and deterministic world that we live in, concealing and being dishonest with our thoughts and feelings have repercussions over time. Ultimately this erupts in an orgy of conflict and argument. How is that desirable ?
It can be argued that sensitivity here relates more to the ability to perceive and read people, rather than accomodating them. In the context of my environment and the usage of the term sensitivity, this is rarely the case though. Usually the word to describe the ability to perceive and read people, is called empathy instead. And for that i concede hands down, certain times i just cannot read and perceive what a person is thinking or feeling. Perhaps i should work more on that. This thing called empathy.
January 12, 2006
Wacky Days and a bit of Philosophy
[INTERMISSION]
Give me a sec while i put on my earbuds.
*adjusts & adjusts* alright its smooth
Damn, low batt.
*hooks it up to the pc, yadda yadda yadda*
*puts on forever today by dj tiesto*
alright
[INTERMISSION ENDS]
These few days have been wacky, as you can obviously imply from the title of this entry. Strangely i cannot recall much without the sheer use of willpower. So let me think realllly hard.
Lets start off with Dec 31, New Years Eve. I was at marco's place and he has a huge place. Apparently he speaks either spanish or portugese and he has these really great friends, and makes really great alcoholic fruit punches. Thats all i can remember though.
Between 1st and 7th of Jan, i've been out with random people, mostly playing cs and dota at a cybercafe and then hanging out for snacks at the local hawker stores. Somewhere between then, i also went to labi and i met a few folks, most of which were scuba divers on our second trip to labi. On our second trip to labi, we went to another place instead, and apparently this was the _one waterfall_ that everyone was talking about. Here was a beautiful waterfall and directly in the path of the water falling, there exists ropes for people to climb up the waterfall, in the waterfall. To get up a waterfall with water falling hard on you is a rather interesting experience. You'd think that it would be difficult with all that gravity and water acting on you, but that wouldnt be the case. Rather the water hits you so hard and loud on your head and face, that you can hardly see or hear anything but water. It also messes with your sense of direction so half of the time people just slip and fall back into the water. 3 of us, out of 7 or 8, managed to climb up this liquid monstrosity, and we explored the rapids up till a sharp corner.
And this was probably among one of the most beautiful and amazing nature experiences i've had in my life. Up the rapids, the water was flowing on smooth bed rock filled with pot holes, it broke off occasionally to form two vertically seperated but converging currents - each on two alternating levels. I'am not too sure if you can imagine that, but its really something really astonishing. Further up on the rapids, there were these natural seats carved perhaps by time and rocks into human fitting bedrock where you could actually sit in it and have currents pulsating on your back for the ultimate spa/jacuzzi experience. I swear, one session in these nature spas would restore you by atleast 10 years back to when you feel like you just got your first erection or turn on. And just when you think you heard it all, theres the monkeys.
Not only do they have natural jacuzzis up there, there were also monkeys who served you alcohol. Once you made yourself comfy on these bedrocks, half a dozen monkeys would jump down with pen and paper to take your cocktail order and serve you anything you fancy. We all ordered a few coronas and san miguels and just chilled out at the ultimate nature chillout lounge.
Nah i was fucking joking about the monkeys.
After the monkeying session and other random stuff that i'am feeling lazy to write about, we went back. Luckily this time there were no leeches. Thank the reinvented god.
The next thing that comes into my mind was the 7, 8 and 9th of January. Thats sunday, monday and tuesday. We had a huge party at adams place, and i got really high on redbull and vodka. The strangest thing ever was that when i puked, there were leaves in my puke. These were full leaves about 2 cm in length, and they looked like oxidized tea leaves. I didnt really know what the hell they were but i sure was surprised that theres leaves in my stomach. Perhaps they were something else and perhaps i was high. I did eat satay before i puke though but i swear to god, they had the exact look, shape and consistency as tea leaves. Either the satay was cooked with some sort of herbal leaves or i was actually eating grass. But oh well, i'am still alive so thats a great thing.
Before my great puking session there was also a snake wine drinking session. More specifically cobra snake wine from Vietnam that our hosts obtained from a certain minister in Vietnam.
Now let me describe this intriguing object.
In a very general sense, it is a typical ~600ml whisky bottle, with the typical double arched slender shape at the sides and a flat bottom, the wine bottle has a larger width then its height , but this width slowly decreases and tapers off to form the neck and the cap section of the bottle. The bottle can be described as fat and flat. What was inside it was a baby or adolescent cobra, coiled at its ends which rested at the bottom of the bottle, with its head rising spectacularly into the typical cobra agitated stance - with its head spread horizontally out and its jaw opened slightly to reveal a forked tongue. Surrounding this spectacle was ginseng roots and what was probably rice wine. The hosts saw our iminent fascination with this and brought us shot glasses. I had 2 shots of this rather flavourful wine, on which the second shot i nearly puked. The wine didnt taste that bad, tequila and vodka straight up is much much more worst, but the psychological image of the snake and everything really does make the typical non exotic wine drinker feel like shit.
[EDIT - i found a picture of this online, dont you just love the internet]
After the snake debacle, we chilled out and listened to assorted folks playing the guitar and singing. We had a few slighly morals and philosophy debate. This (rather cute) british girl believed that it was the innate function of every person to be materialistic and want more, and that those people who are not inherently materialistic are ignorant. I argued that people have a choice to be materialistic or not, and that people are merely forced to conform by peer pressure from branding and the media to have the idealistic notion that more stuff is better. That the happiest people, are indeed people from the undeveloped nations (Statiscally, happiest people are the Filipinos), and whether relevant or not, i would gladly choose to be happy than to have more. Though between being happy and knowing more, I would choose the latter. Cause i do agree with her that happiness does require abit of ignorance about human affairs and the human condition.
Apart from that, I also told them that humans have the largest dicks among all primates, much to their amusement. Perhaps this is no small feat if the word primate conjures up images of chimps and bonobos in your mind, but think of the gorilla, usually 2 to 3 times the average human in size and weight, yet only having 4 cm of erected wang for sex. This is unrelated but, personally i think that sex is an integral part to human evolution, and that evolution favours those who give better sex to their partners.
Apart from that, we jumped into the pool at the party which was awesome. After that, we just socialized and talked alot. Roger took lots of pictures which i will probably be posting in another seperate entry. At about 5am, we went to serasa beach to look at the stars which were awesome. It was a perfectly clear sky, visibility was awesome and you could see a whole 360 degrees worth of stars. Later, we went to Shahbandar, which was a recreation park, and hiked up a hill or two to look at the sunrise, and that was awesome too. Stars and sunrise - very nice combination. After that, we had some indian and malay food and went home.
I remember i had to do this wacky christian praise music video-audio editing for one of our customers. With all due respect to religion, this was 5 mins of few hundreds of people singing and coordinating hand movements along the lines of world peace, love and breaking the chains of mistrust and selfishness. To see a few hundred people with their faces so full of awe and abandon to me is a very sad image. I find it very hard not to correlate such an image with that of nazi soldiers, maoist-styled communism (everyone with their little red book) or george orwell's 1984. Also the sheer idealism these people have with the one-sided ideals of hope, love and peace borders on the obsessive and fanatical.
I slept after i finished my work, and we went to the border when i woke up. This was the 10th. We had awesome chicken wings, stingray and fish, and then after that we went home and i slept early.
Then today or atleast, 3 hours ago, which was the 11th. We .. hmm lets not talk about today :)
That much be such a spoiler. But oh well, shit happens.
Life is fun. Someones gotta enjoy it, why not you.
December 31, 2005
Year Of Opportunities
Hello everyone, I'am back again.
I bet you'ved missed me during my week of absence but thankfully for you i've managed to find some spare time sober and still have enough energy to write.
What has been happening with my life ?
Well I've been checking out some hawker stores near the border which serve excellent food and (more importantly) alcohol, going for hash, playing pool, chilling out (translation : drinking), going to parties and socializing alot. This month has also blessed me with a new pair of earbuds (Sony MDR EX71SL) for my iPod, a 2nd credit card, some new Giordano apparels from hongkong disneyland, secfive.org and the opportunity of meeting a few lovely girls. I just love december, every december is pure bliss.
[INTERMISSION]
Hmmm i'am feeling disoriented now, there is a floating sensation - i think someone spiked my drink woooooooo~~~ the world is turning upside down. Oh man, zero gravity. The trance i'am listening is sending me to heaven~
Alright sorry, i'l continue properly now.
[INTERMISSION ENDS]
It is another 22 hours to 2006 and it is one year that i'am really looking forward to. First there is the World Cup 2006, and 2nd i'am going overseas to study again. Another reason is that 2006 is a first step into the 3rd decade of my life, and so it is a year of virgin opportunities, of iniative and optimism, of new experiences and of meeting new people. I'am looking forward to it.
The first thing i'am going to do after the holiday season is to get my left ankle fixed, and go visit the education counsellor about university admissions. I've fixed my sights on a degree in urban planning and design and hopefully followed by a degree in architecture from University of Melbourne. I'am also thinking of getting australian permanent residency and moving my entire family over so Its gonna be awesome though mostly i'am just going to slave the next 3 or 4 years of my life in a 4 walled white washed room on a chair infront of a table with a book listening to trance and drinking tea, but something new is always something nice and I love new experiences and meeting new people. Thats what makes life worth living.
Out of random, here's a list of places i would want to visit in the next decade which is probably the most glorious decade in anyones life. In no particular order;
1. Goa, India
2. Ibiza, Spain
3. Zoukout, Singapore
4. New York, States
5. Shibuya, Japan
Heres what i'am looking forward to in the next decade.
1. Meeting my prospective life partner
2. Getting Filthy Rich
3. Sky Diving or Bungee Jumping
4. Owning a place of my own
5. Meeting new people
Awesome, a new year and a new chapter in my life. The old chapter ended suddenly but well enough. Life has never been so great. I hope your life is great too (: If not all you need is trance and some alcohol :)
P/S: Kudos to all the lovely people reading secfive.org also add me to your msns at sector5@gmail.com if you wanna say hi. Do identify yourself, i dont like to play guessing games :(
December 24, 2005
Happy Holidays
With upcoming Christmas and New Year approaching, I wouldnt have enough time or be sober enough to be writing any interesting prose. But before i go off for my season of fun and games, here are some pictures of our trip in Kuala Lumpur in september this year.
On either a friday or saturday night, we went to a lebanese restaurant in some hip region of KL, so here i proudly present you the first picture of myself on secfive.org;
After that we went to Zouk;
and.
And we got home half-dead pissed-drunk. But not before i took a picture of the resident DJ;
Fun :D
Thats all for now, Happy Holidays. Be Happy :)
December 20, 2005
Saturday and Leeches
I arrived at foo's place at about 6:30am and started packing the stuff for the trip on his SUV. We went off after the other two - a couple, came. Foo was the designated driver, i was the navigator cum spare driver. The trip there took about an hour and a half and we had to explore the region abit and ask for directions. I took over driving about then and we finally arrived at longhouse probably belonging to iban locals. Incase your too lazy to click on that, heres a picture of them from wikipedia.
Interesting folks arent they. Of course the ones we saw werent like this, iban though they were, they were modernised folks who drove modern toyota and ford cars around and worked in typical 9 to 5 jobs. The next thing we noticed was a group of 3 men, and even more noticable was their black meter long automatic assault rifles, probably a carbine, that they carried. This immediately prompted me to wonder - as perhaps my peers too - why there were people dressed in uniforms with automatic assault rifles going into the same place that we were going looking for a beautiful waterfall. Foo suggested perhaps they were hunting pigs. But then dont people hunt pigs with shotguns or rifles ? and why do you need the military to hunt pigs ? Nevertheless we moved on.
At this moment i deplored the fact that i had not brought a camera along with me. I assure you my dear reader, the next time i go on an interesting obscure jungle hiking trip, i will.
As we proceeded through muddy ground in what was probably a maize field in my 2 month old nikes (now still incapacitated by mud and grime), we sprayed ourselves with insect repellent and insectiside which probably made us radioactive. As we followed the trail, we saw the various interesting flora and fauna only available in tropical rainforests such as these and the amazon and perhaps to most of the westerners reading this, available only in the discovery or natural geographic channels and journals. These amazing plants and animals deserve a special commentary and are too unique to simply ignore in any writing by a tourist of the tropical rainforests, a commentary which i am obliged to give.
Most noticable would perhaps be the huge buttress roots of the trees that held up a canopy of leaves and flora which effectively shielded the ground from sunlight and rendering it in a shade of perpetual dark green. Herein lies parasite paradise. And two main classes of creatures survive - parasite and host. On the trunks of trees, parasitic vines, ferns and mosses grew on the very plant that shields them from the scorching sun, trees of which also harboured various insects - butterflies, termites, ants and the such. For these trees, existence means to be fed upon, and i could think of no other living thing that is so noble.
More noticable to the less botanically inclined would be the scores of mosquitoes and flying bugs that followed and preyed on us. But having soaked ourself in insecticide and repellent we were nearly immune to these bugs. We saw a few exotic butterflies, moths and some colourful lizards but perhaps most interesting of it all would be the leeches. Wikipedia calls these borneo leeches and they resemble earthworms in shape but are smaller and brown in colour, Apparently they have two suckers and move in a slinky like fashion by attaching one end of the sucker to the hosts flesh and using it to propel the rest of the body forward in a wave like motion as shown in this diagram here.
Now why i am so interested in leeches all of a sudden and did research up on them would be later revealed further on in this article but let us continue on.
Apart from these parasites, there were also spiky and sharp barb wired like plants which gripped and tore the flesh. These were as thick as a guitar string and had sharp spikes lining up the stalks and protruded from the bushes as meter long natural barbed wires giving dotted lined cuts to unsuspecting trekkers. Huge big ants with angry red stingers were also present and these we avoided cautiously.
So we trekked in these poorly trailed jungles for about an hour and a half, and we finally reached the waterfall sometime around noon. We were quite disappointed as the waterfall wasnt as grand as we tought it was, it was just a rather simple though elegant waterfall with two conjoining parts, it was rather pretty but not grand. Here I climbed up to the waterfall through some slippery moss infested rocks and basked in the torrent. I felt very purified and it was about this time the girl on our trip got bitten by a leech on her back. Usually if your bitten you wouldnt know, but she was trying to scratch it and so the leech being agitated gripped harder. She described the experience as being hit by someone but she didnt bleed alot.
After exploring abit more we went back but somehow we took a wrong turn and ended up somewhere else instead. Wondering about, lost in the jungles for a while, we finally got back to the right trail and reached the SUV a shortwhile later. After around then we changed clothes and footwear, and after doing so, i realized that half my hand was smeared with blood and i did a body inspection and realized two snake-bite like puncture wounds near my hip region, one of which was bleeding profusely. I applied some tissue and changed back to my clean clothes and continued on the journey.
At this point it kept on bleeding until 5 or 6 tissue papers were soaked with blood and we decided to go to the local clinic. The male nurse there swabbed it with alcohol and then dressed it, after which for no apparent reason , he gave me an anti-tetanus shot. He then gave me some cream and painkillers and then discharged me from the clinic free of charge eventhough i am not a Bruneian citizen (although i've lived here for most of my life). We continued on with our journey and we decided that we were hungry and the snacks we had werent satisfying a meal enough, so we went up 16km to seria and had a plate of seria fried kueh teow which tasted... okay. At this point i've already bled enough blood to form a 20cm diameter spot on my shorts and when i realized it, the seat cushion of foo's car already had a 5cm diameter spot of blood on it, and i had to place my bath towel ontop of the front seat to soak up the blood.
By the time we almost reach foo's house, which was about 5 hours since i got bitten and started losing blood, I was feeling less concious and dizzy. So i sat around in foos house and had some sugared drink before i made my way home. By the time i reach home i saw that the blood finally coagulated and the bleeding stopped.
I took a bath and got dressed and went to work. Currently i'am helping out at one of my dad's shop working as some sort of assistant store manager, i'am unpaid but i cannot think of getting 'salary' from dad as appropriate being raised up the confucian way. So dad gives me 'allowance' which is roughly what i need to survive on everyday. This particular day, i am required at the shop from 6pm to 9:30pm. After work, foo and some of our friends came over to my house and we went for food after which we played DotA through the night till 6am, subsisting on coffee. We went off hunting for food together again at dawn and then finally went back to our respective homes for a well deserved rest after 24 hours of fun and games.
I just love saturdays.
December 12, 2005
Rainy Days
Christmas is approaching but I dont remember much Christmas memories in my short, short 2o years of life. I've always wanted to see snow though on Christmas, as to me christmas associates strongly with snow. But then the only snow i've seen is in the snow factory thingy attraction cum thingy in Singapore and i cant remember what it was called for the life of me. Snow city ? snow factory ? whatever, not interested in artificial things.
Here in Brunei where I've been raised, the Christmas season is also the monsoon season and we get quite abit rainfall. Just today I went out for some walking around at the local malls and it rained. Half of me was totally drenched. Reminds me of the days when I used to cycle home in the rain, that was the best feeling ever - the adrenaline and the feel of rain pelting against your face just made it feel as though you were fighting for something really important - in this case getting home in the rain. Its interesting how much more alive we feel the more we believe we are doing something important. Ah, how purpose driven we are.
Another interesting experience of a rainy day was the time when i went hiking on a mountain trail with Lance in a weekly hash. So there I was running gaily through forests and jungle trek, with rainbows overhead and flowers and talking animals singing the sound of music and before i knew it i was lost. I tried vainly to move across the tall bladed grass (which cuts giving flesh wounds) and some deep marshy holes which u cant really see with all the thick vegetation covering it and also on which the ground gives way and you sink up to your knees if you arent careful enough. I wondered around for about an hour and i could see that the sun was starting to set. Somehow after a bit more while pandering around i found a father and son pair, father being some 45+ caucasian with his son, prolly a 6 or 7 year old kid. So along we went, me a 14 or 15 year old asian with some caucasian guy and his kid wandering through the most dense vegetation in the world. Man the amazon from what i've seen in TV doesnt even compare to the jungles of Brunei, Singaporean military servicemen actually come and train here and now i'am going through the same course without all the equipment and clothing. This might be an exaggeration but Che Guevera wouldnt have succedeed in his Cuban Revolution if Cuba had the vegetation we had over here. So anyways, we trekked around trying to find back our trail, somewhere around this point the Caucasian's kid grabbed onto a vine full of spikes. Now i'am not too sure how you can imagine a vine with spikes since we're all use to the smooth strong un-spiked vines that tarzan uses when he swings around in his disney movies, neither would i if i've never seen one, but i'am sure the kid's hands still have scars from when he grabbed onto the vine in attempt to pull his own weight up. Needless to say, his hands was bleedingly profusely and i was going like omg omg we're gonna die. We continued on having blood shed.
Anyway you must be wondering wheres the rain. So here comes the rain at about 6:30 PM just around when the sunsets and the 45+ year old caucasian whom i've now realized is a pilot of sorts is yelling directions till hes hoarse. I too was yelling, but mostly profanities :P, which i shall not disgrace thy pure ears with in this beautiful weblog. We've already climbed up to a mountain by then and we could see flickers of light and some shouting. I also vaguely remember seeing a chopper, but we were finally rescued by a team of Gurkhas (nepalase soldiers stationed in Brunei as defense) who tied us with rope onto eachother and led us through the dark forlorn decrepit Bruneian jungles.
Ever since then, i've been less adventurous and sticked to properly trekked mountain trails and have not participated in any hash.
Rain is good I like rain. It has been a stoic company through both hope and despair and is an embodiment of balance for which i so seek in life for without which, all things lack relevancy. Without despair there is no hope, and no light without darkness. And in between, harmony reigns.
And that is how i associate the Christmas season with, rain and peace of mind.