A Short Staff

A monk held out his short staff and said, "If you call this a short staff, you oppose its reality. If you do not call it a short staff, you ignore the fact. Now what do you wish to call this?"

So how do you answer the question “Is it raining heavily?”

Travelling @ 0 km/h

Apparently my speedometer gave up on me. Now I have no idea how fast it is I’m traveling. Dunno when will have time to fix it. Guess I’ll just have to drive slower relative to the other cars on the road. But what happens when there is no cars on the road to compare with ? ha ha… we’ll see if instinct can kick in. maybe i can use this as an excuse?

Luckily not Under-17 now

This piece from Mr. Brown in Today says its all. I say its a sad state of affairs when parents cannot control their kids, or at least for the gov't to think so.

Aikido

Finally attended the first lesson at Dover after much procrastination. The class wasn’t big, 7 person. I’m the newbie and the oldest besides the instructor. Quite fun learning how to move, roll about and fall around. But the seating on bent legs needs some getting used to.

Apparently, one needs around 2 years to get a black belt and there’s no competition for Aikido because the technique is meant to stop, restrain and kill on first strike / defense. Aikido is like the Chinese 擒拿手, all about locking joints and subduing people.

Besides wanting to do some sort excerise (by signing up a martial art class), i wanted use this opporunity to better fine-tune my eye-hand coordination and my focus. Lately, my mind has been wandering from one end to the other of the universe. Not so good.

The Constant Gardener

Caught " The Constant Gardener "(15/2), a movie that explores the grieve of losing a loved one against the backdrop of modern imperialism and corporate rape of poorer third world countries by MNCs in their pursuit for more profits while being protected/covered-up by the related first world government.

Always like Ralph Fiennes’s acting i.e as a “tortured soul”. But sadly he never got any Oscar awards for his works.

The following questions begged your response.

Can the efforts of one man change the world ?
How did the society churn out people who give different values to different lives?
If we turn the other way on injustices in the world today because we “too far” away to help, how can you still justify not doing something about the injustices in our own backyard?

I always wanted to tour Spain if I ever got the time or the money. But I guess, now, Spain has got to take a back seat to Africa. Coz the landscape is so beautifully depicted and the culture so radically but fascinating far-removed from our urban/modern/western experiences.

Lots of people told me to at least catch Brokeback Mountain. But I will give it a miss and instead focus on Syriana (2006).

Brokeback Mountain is just an atypical romance story involving men which doesn’t really appeal to me even if the film is really done superbly. On the other hand, Syriana is a political film that bring your awareness of the intimate relationships between politics and our daily lives to a clearer perspective.

The Slow Poison

To love or be loved ?

In my JC yrs, I had reflected on this question, and over last weekend it popped in my mind again.

And my words are still the same.

“ Setting aside the obvious, i.e striking a balance of both, my personal view is that in loving somebody, one would need to bring the goodness in oneself out hence making you a better person., by being considerate of the targeted one. Eventually your love will snowballed into a greater compassion which will embrace everyone and everything.

Whilst as a recipient of love, love will be taken for granted in the long run. The consistent giver will be abused and neglected as the recipient knows that he will be forgiven and he does not need to put in much effort to enjoy the goods.

There is rarely a good balance being struck by both parties. The giver, in giving his all, hopes that the recipient will reciprocate in kind. Human, being human, will always take the easy way out by holding out their love till the last moment by which all may be too late.

However if its only a one-sided, a full timer giver's steam would dissipate in the long run. The other problem is that such people are usually the most resilient and wouldn't know when to give up. "

In this modern society where the culture of love is deeply ingrained, everyone wants to find their true love and go off into the sunset hand in hand but however this isn't happening because most people take the easy way by waiting for love to find them or hit them, implying that everyone wants to be more of a recipient than a giver. And even worst, most of us expect instant gratification but thats another theme for some other time.

The way to true love or even maintaining one is actually quite simple.

Firstly, Keep it simple. Second, be honest to yourself. Thirdly, be considerate.

Happy V-day.

凡人歌 Fan Ren Ge

Vocal: 李宗盛 (Jonathan Lee)

你我皆凡人, 生在人世間
Ni wo jie fan ren, sheng zai ren shi jian
終日奔波苦, 一刻不得閑
Zhong ri fen bo ku, yi ke bu de xian
既然不是仙, 難免有杂念
Ji ran bu shi xian, nan mian you za nian
道義放两旁, 利字擺中間
Dao yi fang liang pang, li zi bai zhong jian

多少男子漢, 一怒為紅顏
Duo shao nan zi han, yi nu wei hong yan
多少同林鳥, 已成分飛燕
Duo shao tong lin niao, yi cheng fen fei yan
人生何其短, 何必苦苦戀
Ren sheng he qi duan, he bi ku ku lian
愛人不見了, 向誰去喊冤
Ai ren bu jian liao, xiang shei qu han yuan

CHORUS:

問你 何時曾看見
Wen ni, he shi ceng kan jian
這世界為了人們改變
Zhe shi jie wei le ren men gai bian
有了夢寐以求的容顏
You le meng mei yi qiu de rong yan
是否就算是擁有春天
Shi fou jiu suan shi yong you chun tian

你我皆凡人, 生在人世間
Ni wo jie fan ren, sheng zai ren shi jian
終日奔波苦, 一刻不得閑
Zhong ri fen bo ku, yi ke bu de xian
你既然不是仙, 難免有杂念
Ni ji ran bu shi xian, nan mian you za nian
道義放两旁, 把利字擺中間
Dao yi fang liang pang, ba li zi bai zhong jian
多少男子漢, 一怒為紅顏
Duo shao nan zi han, yi nu wei hong yan
多少同林鳥, 已成了分飛燕
Duo shao tong lin niao, yi cheng le fen fei yan
人生何其短, 何必苦苦戀
Ren sheng he qi duan, he bi ku ku lian
愛人不見了, 向誰去喊冤
Ai ren bu jian liao, xiang shei qu han yuan

CHORUS

Not just mosquitoes

A colleague complained of a mosquito bite.
So i searched for a satifactory picture and added in the red words so that all the pest can read it off my monitor.

Fortunately no one caught the meaning behind the words. Especially when i pointed their attention to my monitor.
Ha ha ha... ;P

10 million dollars

Was around a neighbourhood area to buy a new game to occupy my time at night. then i saw this. Quite a long snaking queue for Friday's TOTO.

6777 3777

ordered a Strawberry Sundae at 1615hrs. Came at 1645hrs.

Loof

Went to a roof top terrace pub named Loof at Odeon Towers. Alfresco concept. Quite cool. Got a comfortable crowd. The drinks are ok. Would be a nice place to come on a weekday when there should be less people around. Went with LL, C and Val. They got their “playthings” to come along, namely James, Victor and Alan. Quite nice chaps. Anyway JM jio me for mahjong midway but too bad. Eventually they got Ter to make up the table. Hear he was the big winner that night.

Debugging the myth of car wash detergents

As usual, my brothers weren’t home to help me wash the car when I called back. Luckily, i was advised by my colleagues that we have a long hose with spray gun at the back of the office. Hee hee…

Taking some dish washing detergent from my office and an old cushion sponge in my car, I started. Can’t imagine that its so easy. Well, this is my 2nd time washing the car since I took over. Wahahaha. Worked up a bit of sweat though.

The only thing that I’m not satisfied is that I can’t get the glass windows to be smudge free.

Being no veteran in this area of car washing, I consulted the net to find out if we can use normal detergents for our car wash, which my father uses. There is an on-going debate about the usage of normal detergents, i.e your dish washing kind, versus specialized car wash detergents that are specially formulated and expensive.

Those who swear by normal detergents maintained that its really the same as those specialized car wash detergent. The other party offered 2 counter arguments : Normal detergents strips away the wax and any salt content in it will destroy the paint job eventually.

As any paint will deteriorate and dull in time, a long long time, the purpose for waxing cars is to protect the car paint with a transparent barrier, i.e from UV, other stray paints, dirt, birdshits etc, which will also make the car look shinier and hence the whole car will look better. The wax will usually wear off around 90 days or so, even some products claimed 5 months of protection. Yeah right.

But I dun intend to wax this car. Ever. The way I look at it is that as long as the whole paint dun crack or be stripped off using normal detergents and that I dun intend to do any waxing, normal / cheap dishwashing detergents will be my choice. I should also be accurate in thinking that any car would look dull if the dirt is like 1 mm thick.

I am going do this experiment on this car, and by the time that this car can be scrapped, i.e 5+ years, I will lay to rest this question once and for all. Ha ha ha.

15 Birdshitsss !!!

Never park under a tree, especially after evenings.

Now I have to wash my car after work. Blah!

Hmmph. My brothers are going to have to join me in this. =)

The Thing with Gambling

As a social gambler, I gamble infrequently coz most of my friends dun. So my gambling skills suck big time. But ridiculously, my luck is actually quite good coz I usually break even one way or the other. So 2 session in this CNY, one at Tiong Bahru and the other at Hume Ave, yield a modest lost of around $30 as compared to others.

Now the thing is this, $30 is lost only at playing card games, a simple “luck”game that anyone can play, whilst I broke even at mahjong which l’m like amateur level one. I dunno how to count the “台”, dunno how to “count” the tiles and even worst, I dun guard too much against my “下家”. But i'm welcomed at any mahjong table as i'm usually depicted as a "菜包"。My strategy is simply to concentrate only on winning with my tiles irregardless of how many “台” anyone else have, much to the disgust of my friends, usually the “上家” but a delight for the “下家”。 Coz attack is the best defense. Ha ha ha… I will only start guarding when my tiles are in a hopeless permutation. What i have observed is that my direct opposite player tends to gain the most. Ha ha ha…

This CNY, I have learnt two versions of poker called “In-between” and “Chicago poker” or something like that.

So the important things I remembered from my last gambling session :

1. Prepare to lose your initial startup cash when you gamble i.e $50
2. Stop once your initial cash is lost
3. Be happy coz you are playing with friends

And the most important thing is :

虽然是“ 十赌九输”，假如真要赌，就不要怕输。