- SO HOT
- MY SHOE SO DIRTY
- MY SHOE SO WET
- I WANT MY AIRCON

Above are the various remarks which I keep hearing from the participants of my school's Sec 3 Adventure Camp today at Pasir Ris Park (3D2N). Enjoy!

I just saw a wrinkled Gary Coleman on TV (WWE Wrestling) last night, and it was scary.
For the clueless, Gay Coleman was the star of 'Different Strokes', a popular 80s sitcom that featured him as a wise-cracking cute little black boy. Fast forward many years later, and he still looks pretty much the same, except with more wrinkles.

Two slang words in the UK that I recently discovered:

SHONKY - of low quality. E.g. That is a shonky bike he is selling.

STONKING - used to emphasise how good something is. E.g. That was a stonking good party last night!

In May issue of MBUK (Mountain Bike UK, a MTB magazine):

THINGS YOU SHOULD NEVER EVER DO -

Part 15: Ride on the road...

Everyone has to ride on the road from time to time, but never, ever, buy a road bike and get serious. Yes it's fast, yes it's great training, but what profit is there in that if it makes you inhuman...

School Cockpit is a shonky, stinkin' gigantic piece of software turd.
It's hanging right now as I type this...
I wonder how many teachers in Singapore have rained curses at their computer screens.
School Cockpit is preventing me from going home.
I think the MOE pencil-pusher who came up with the Cockpit idea should hang too.

Heard of 'Tak Giu' (hokkien for 'kick ball' aka 'soccer')? It's a short 15-minute local film that was made by a young Singaporean recently. You can download it here.
It's a hoot! Love it for the unadulterated Singaporean flavour.

Is Singapore really a food paradise?

Yes, you say? Read this enlightening and perceptive article written by a Singaporean, maybe you will change your mind. Me? I agree with the writer, but given my unadventurous taste in food, I will still stick to ordering the usual chicken rice, wanton mee, char kway teow, nasi lemak and ice kachang.

Chee, bye.

Guess what, it's Chee, bye again. The director of a film on Dr Chee Soon Juan was asked, no, demanded to withdraw his film from screening at the recent S'pore Film Fest. You can download the film here before it disappears.

Last night, I realised that the coffeeshop at Street 82 has 3 suspended television sets, to screen Channel 5, Channel U, and Channel 8 separately in the evenings. That's cool-- no fighting over which channel to watch.
Having a cup of coffee at that coffeeshop is like having a cigarette. Don't you admire smokers for the way they can take time out to enjoy a puff? And they derive so much pleasure from it. Well, I drink coffee at that coffeeshop for pleasure, and it's cheap, at 70 cts a day (or $1.40 if I have 2 cups). It's not an addiction, mind you, just that there is merit to be had in taking time to savour that cuppa and watching life go by in the Heartlands.

Last night, as I sat at the coffeeshop, I caught most of the programme Love Bites (yuan lai jiu shi ni) on Channel U, hosted by zany hosts Quan Yifeng and Kym Ng. This time, the hosts had to go hunt for potential male suitors for a single lady (next week, the sexes will be reversed). I feel that they should just stick to hunting for potential girlfriends for a single man instead, reasons are:

(1) This format will have more good-looking females appearing on screen (good looks are a criteria for one to be picked).
(2) The other format will only have one single lady, and chances are she will not be that attractive, as the good-lookers are likely to be attached already. E.g. last night's episode featured a slightly plump lady.

By the way, forgive me for my slightly chauvinistic reasoning.

Incidentally, my very own cousin Augustine will be featured in next week's episode as the single male! I went to Parkway to watch the filming.

I am sure all of us had thoughts of suicide at one time or another. One doesn't need to be in dire straits to entertain such thoughts. The idea of voluntary death simply compels one to ponder and reflect on why the hell we are born, and have to go through $ingapore's unforgiving education system, serve National Service, cope with exams after exams, go to work for long hours, get married, have kids... and finally, either end up in the coffin, or as ashes, or as compost. At least, there is CYCLING.

Heard of Sisyphus? He's the guy who was condemned by the Greek gods to keep on rolling a huge stone up to the top of a mountain. Once the stone reaches the top, it will roll all the way down again. Imagine having to do that for eternity.

Here's a summary of 'The Myth Of Sisyphus' by Albert Camus. I've only included the paragraphs that I like:

"There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide." If we judge the importance of a philosophical problem by the consequences it entails, the problem of the meaning of life is certainly the most important. Someone who judges that life is not worth living will commit suicide, and those who feel they have found some meaning to life may be inclined to die or kill to defend that meaning. Other philosophical problems do not entail such drastic consequences.

Camus suggests that suicide amounts to a confession that life is not worth living. He links this confession to what he calls the "feeling of absurdity." On the whole, we go through life with a sense of meaning and purpose, with a sense that we do things for good and profound reasons. Occasionally, however, we might come to see our daily actions and interactions as dictated primarily by the force of habit. We cease to see ourselves as free agents and come to see ourselves almost as machine-like drones. From this perspective, all our actions, desires, and reasons seem absurd and pointless. The feeling of absurdity is closely linked to the feeling that life is meaningless.

Face to face with the meaninglessness of existence, what keeps us from suicide? To a large extent, Camus suggests that our instinct for life is much stronger than our reasons for suicide: "We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking." We instinctively avoid facing the full consequences of the meaningless nature of life, through what Camus calls an "act of eluding." This act of eluding most frequently manifests itself as hope. By hoping for another life, or hoping to find some meaning in this life, we put off facing the consequences of the absurd, of the meaninglessness of life.

You can't beat the Japanese for their wacky use of the English language. This is so hilarious that I have to post it straightaway.

Slogan for a Japanese brand of soft milk candies: 'Milky is the taste of Mother'.

HAHAHA.