So!

I'm feeling rather proud of myself. Actually caught a few of my webcast lectures over the weekend. I wanted to find out how to tie my project assignment to the concepts taught and to my surprise, the lectures weren't such a torture to get through. It does help that the topics discussed were interesting. It wasn't like your boring human geog tutorial where you study about theories of the push and pull factors. It was more about viewing the world from a geography perspective. In fact, i got so enthusiastic that i decided to be good and do my tutorial assignment.

The tutorial assignment was to find abt articles related to migration in Singapore. And once i read the assignment, my mind immediately flashed to what Jianxiang told me about the "elite" scandal and so i decided to check up on it.

the full story is here in this link:
http://intelligentsingaporean.wordpress.com/wee-shu-min/

In summary, a Singaporean in his mid-forties, Derek Wee, talked about how several of his peers have moved overseas. He worried about the security of his future in Singapore and mentioned that Singapore had become a place where one cannot work hard and then retire graciously. He did talk about how having a kid in Singapore is a liability due to the fragility of rice bowls.

I do understand his point of view. With the bid to attract foreign talent (no offense to my dear foreign friends! I love you!), there are bound to be economic trade offs (in terms of Singaporeans having to fight harder for jobs) and i really really pray that i'm not one of them. Yes, kids are a liability in Singapore. Education is expensive. There is a pressure cooker mentality so you need time and patience to teach them how to strike a balance. Yet, you may not have enough time to spend with them as you will be busy working to pay off the bills the high standards of living inevitably bring. I really do admire my parents for being able to support us up till today. And how well do i understand the point of job security? Many a times have i seen my parents with furrowed brows holding worried conversations in the kitchen. I still can remember my father bitterly saying that Singapore is a place where they suck out your youth and once you are old and useless, they forget you.

Now, that image is a very scary thought to me. I do want to work hard and contribute to the economic growth of my home country but if i have to struggle to be given a chance to retire graciously.... selfish as it might seem, but i do not want to work hard my entire youth and then be thrown aside and not have good retirement years. People might argue that CPF allows me to save for the golden years. Prob is i can foresee my CPF savings going to stuff like houses and cars. So where would that leave me when i retire? I don't want to be told that i shouldnt be complaining about the lack of jobs as there are plenty of job vacancies for road sweepers and coffeeshop cleaners here.

So anways. Back to the scandal. An 18 yr old girl from RJC (on scholarship programs) replied to his post.. it's difficult to express the exact flavour of her post should i attempt to rephrase any one part of it so i shall just paste it here.

Warning: Poisonous Content Ahead!
" mom's friend sent her some blog post by some bleeding stupid 40-year old singaporean called derek wee (WHY do all the idiots have my surname why?!) whining about how singapore is such an insecure place, how old ppl (ie, 40 and above) fear for their jobs, how the pool of foreign "talent" (dismissively chucked between inverted commas) is really a tsunami that will consume us all (no actually he didn't say that, he probably said Fouren Talern Bery Bad.), how the reason why no one wants kids is that they're a liability in this world of fragile ricebowls, how the government really needs to save us from inevitable doom but they aren't because they are stick-shoved-up-ass elites who have no idea how the world works, yadayadayadayada.

i am inclined - too much, perhaps - to dismiss such people as crackpots. stupid crackpots. the sadder class. too often singaporeans - both the neighborhood poor and the red-taloned socialites - kid themselves into believing that our society, like most others, is compartmentalized by breeding. ridiculous. we are a tyranny of the capable and the clever, and the only other class is the complement.

sad derek attracted more than 50 comments praising him for his poignant views, joining him in a chorus of complaints that climax at the accusation of lack of press freedom because his all-too-true views had been rejected by the straits times forum. while i tend to gripe about how we only have one functioning newspaper too, i think the main reason for its lack of publication was that his incensed diatribe was written in pathetic little scraps that passed off as sentences, with poor spelling and no grammar.


derek, derek, derek darling, how can you expect to have an iron ricebowl or a solid future if you cannot spell?


if you're not good enough, life will kick you in the balls. that's just how things go. there's no point in lambasting the government for making our society one that is, i quote, "far too survival of fittest". it's the same everywhere. yes discrimination exists, and it is sad, but most of the time if people would prefer hiring other people over you, it's because they're better. it's so sad when people like old derek lament the kind of world that singapore will be if we make it so uncertain. go be friggin communist, if uncertainty of success offends you so much - you will certainly be poor and miserable. unless you are an arm-twisting commie bully, which, given your whiny middle-class undereducated penchant, i doubt.


then again, it's easy for me to say. my future isn't certain but i guess right now it's a lot brighter than most people's. derek will read this and brand me as an 18-year old elite, one of the sinners who will inherit the country and run his stock to the gutter. go ahead. the world is about winners and losers. it's only sad when people who could be winners are marginalised and oppressed. is dear derek starving? has dear derek been denied an education? has dear derek been forced into child prostitution? has dear derek had his clan massacred by the government?

i should think not. dear derek is one of many wretched, undermotivated, overassuming leeches in our country, and in this world. one of those who would prefer to be unemployed and wax lyrical about how his myriad talents are being abandoned for the foreigner's, instead of earning a decent, stable living as a sales assistant. it's not even about being a road sweeper. these shitbags don't want anything without "manager" and a name card.

please, get out of my elite uncaring face.

end of poisonous content!

The poor girl. if she had done it in a better manner, her points would not have been so offensive. In a weird sort of way, i do understand her point of view. Life has been and will always be the survival of the fittest. Competition from foreign talent will drive Singaporeans to work better which would hopefully boost the economy.

It sounds good in theory, but pity the poor common man caught up in the dynamics of the theory. People are after all, selfish in nature. All want to survive-well.

The whole scandal was an uproar partly because this particular girl's father is one of the ministers in Singapore, Mr Wee Siew Kim. They say children often reflect the upbringing of their parents. With such obvious lack of empathy in the daughter, does that also tell one about how the father, our govt, think about us?

Well the father wrote into the strait times forum to make a non-apology which said "I think that if you cut through the insensitivity of the language, her basic point is reasonable, that is, that a well-educated university graduate who works for a multi-national company should not be bemoaning about the Government set on with the challenges in life."

Once i read this reply, i started to really really worry about my future. Are we then to buckle down, and not make noise if we already have a job? With the lack of tact, the minister has effectively conveyed to me that my opinions are stupid and i should just do my job. And there liein my main grouse.

I don't want my ministers to dress up as hip hop dancers and dance the hip hop. I want them to take me seriously, understand what i would like my country to be, help me be proud of my country. I want to stand in the national stadium and proudly hold my flag. What i do not want is the current situations. I don't want to be called names by a minister's daughter if i voice out my concerns. I don't want my elder generations to be always worrying abt their jobs. As mentioned earlier, parents influence their children to a great extent and i admit that my parents exert the most influence on me. I'm in NUS because they have always viewed it to be a prestigious school. So what am i supposed to think when i see my parents' generation worry all the time about money and financial matters? My dad's company, a SIngapore MNC, has been gradually cutting his pay and welfare. If you don't take care of your own....

I don't want the minister to non-apologise in the tactless way and read the hidden message that my concerns are small and silly to the government. People say that Singapore is one of the few places that treat its own people as second class citizens while treating foreigners as their first class ones. Coupled with the retirement worries, would it better to go to another country where i will be treated as a 2nd rate citizen but get better retirement benefits?

the best part is the minister still remains a minister. He's gonna be dressed in white clothes on National Day and waving to people he tink as mere chess pieces. I don't want such a tactless, unsympathetic person to represent me. I don't mind him saying tt we shud accept tt we will have competition. I mind him doind a half-assed apology that actually insults the person instead. That, to me, shows me how unbothered the government is. When the SIA had the pilot's union asking for more benefits, Lee Kuan Yew stepped in when SIA is supposed to be a private company. When a minister makes the colossal mistake of showing people how much they really mean to him, nothing happens. And nothing is going to happen because this is Singapore. We are going to accept it because the mentality is "let someone else do it". Sigh.

In her bid to be everything (educational hub to health hub to lala hub), the system of Singapore has forgotten to include her people. If people do not see a bright future in Singapore, the brain flow of Singaporeans running to escape the rigid and unforgiving system here increases. During one of the human geog lectures, a guest lecturer said that in her study, unlike other foreigners, many Singaporeans studying/working overseas do not attempt to form a social attachment to other Singaporeans. Have we become so ashamed of our country that we try to cast off all attachments to her?

I don't want to feel the way i do right now. Seriously,i want to experience national pride. The kind that i can happily put my Singapore Flag outside my house.

Maybe im being too affected but right now, Singapore suffocates. And no amount of dancing ministers are going to change that. Imitation is not the way to understanding. Listening and responding is.

Perhaps it's karma for making fun of "emo" people, but today was a rather emotionally exhausting day.



It started well enough till i made the super uber mistake of telling sherlin and asilah in detail about what happened in the past. I thought that i would be able to laugh it off by now but when i showed them the blogpost, i started reading those hurtful poisonous words again. Amazing how hurt and self doubt come pouring in at the smallest sight of vulnerability. Why is it that we doubt it when people praise us but once someone writes horrid stuff about us, we immediately believe it to be true and start questioning where we went wrong? am i really so bad? What did i do wrong? Am i stupid to have trusted her so blindingly? Am i really the kind of person she writes me to be?

i hate this feeling. the feeling where the self confidence you painstakingly built up crumbles to bits just due to one person's wicked words. I know it's not true but what hurts me the most is that i really considered that person as a friend. When she had problems with an anoymous tagger on her blog at 3 am, i was the one to console her when i had a project due the next day. When she wanted to practice her presentation over the phone, i was the one to listen. I'm not citing such examples to say i demand gratitude. I would gladly do anything for a good friend. But to treat someone like a friend only to have that very person to say such poisonous words about you. It hurts. In reality, you can move on. You can decide to forgive that person but there will always be a small nigging part of you that remembers the terrible hurt. You will always have that self doubt in you. It''s just a matter of how deep do you bury the hurt.

Hard to believe but it's gonna be a year since that happened. In a way, i'm really glad that it happened to me and not any one else i know of. That's cause i'm lucky enough to have my family and friends to help me recognise my self worth. I cannot thank them enough for their patience, reassurances and listening ears.

They allowed me to cry out all my pent up emotions, were extremely patient in listening to my incoherent ramblings and pulled me out of my low confidence funk by cheering me up and making sure i knew how loved i was. If i have not done this before, i would like to tell all these special individuals that i really really love you guys. I don't know what i would have done without you! You were really the best cure a girl could ever hope to have. I hope that one day, should you ever need a friend, i can measure up to how you were in my times of crisis!

Besides strengthening my present friendships, that incident was a blessing in disguise. When one door closes, a window opens. Instead of wasting my time on a hypocrite, I had the lucky opportunity to make friends with Hidayah, Sherlin, Asilah, Alvinna, Claryce, Huili, Jia Hui, Jing Xian... etc. It was also great to re-kindle a friendship with YiQi.

Blogging sure is therapeutic. I was feeling rather upset at the start of this post.. but as i wrote on, i realised that in losing something that never really was worth it, i have gained so so much more.

Sure. It was a terrible drama that i do not want to ever experience again. That self doubt remains. And every once in a while, that self doubt will inevitably surface, leaving me upset and shaken. But i'm lucky enough to have awesome family and friends to offer me a helping hand to pull myself out of that quicksand of self doubt. Now, if that's not the biggest blessing a girl can ever have, i don't know what else is.

a drawing inspired by YiQi



4 more projects to go! woohoooo!

I have no idea why but i feel rather affected by the news article about the Singapore- Australia couple who tried to kill their kids. For my aussie friends, there has been news about this Singaporean couple living in Australia who fed their 2 young daughters 120 sleeping pills each as they wanted to escape a life full of despair and debt.



The Strait Times did a article about their lives and i felt pretty unsettled after reading about their lifestyle. Even though they could not afford it, they rented an expensive apartment and went out with their children everyday to the nearby shopping malls to splurge on toys. As i read it, i found myself shaking my head at the absurdity of it all. A fleeting thought of "why on earth would anyone be stupid enough to do that when they cannot afford it?" was replaced by the horrifying thought that ridiculous as over-spending seems, i do know people who have been sucked into this whole consumer have-to-buy-it-now mentality. In fact, i'm one of them!

I'm sad to say that i do have 2 uncles who are notorious for spending waaay over their expenditure power. Their children wear branded shoes (which, frankly to me, is such a waste of money since children's feet grow real quick), they stupidly get expensive cars (another wasted investment in Singapore), they use up their wives' money to treat their friends to dinner in order to show everyone how "rich" they are, they have to have branded stuff and have the audacity to sniff at other people for saving up for a rainy day. I was really angry when i heard that one such uncle approached my dad for a loan. It's okay for family members to help each other out but for him to ask for money while he was still splurging on luxuries (like the extra cable channels such as 55 and 56, piano, car, flat screen TV, digital camera). Frankly, i don't think my parents save up just to help people out of their debts which they should never have racked up in the first place. As my mother once retorted, "I work so hard to scrimp and save and here, people open mouth and can get 30 grand? I also want."

Anyways, back to my point, i never want to end up like the couple who saw death as their only escape. Imagine to be ridden with so much debt! Debt that they could have avoided getting into in the very first place. Which serves as a huge wake up call to me. Right now, i'm lucky enough to have my parents providing a roof and food so my spending problem has not gotten as bad. But i do realise that if i go on spending the way i do, i'm may end up over-spending and life would be very shitty indeed.

There are so many things i wan to do in life. I wan to
a) own my own house
b) do a grad trip with friends. And i never want to starve the way i did in NYC. i wan to be able to splurge when i'm overseas and not have to walk around because i cannot afford transport.
c) build my parents a new house
d) be financially independent.
e) Travel more! I wanna see the world!


Reader Digest once had an article about a study in which they studied people who were faced with the dilemna of deciding where they should splurge on: the product they were eyeing or going off on holiday. And, it was found that people who chose to travel were found to be happier than those who bought the product. Of course if you think about it, it's kinda like material vs intangible goods. Ever since i read that article, i have always felt tt travel experience would be something that i will always carry inside me while the quick thrill i get from buying something will not be remembered a month later. I wanna be a cool aunt/ grandma/ godmother who can relegate people with stories of what i did with my life!

Ahem. SO! If i wan a house when i'm in my 30s, i have to think long term and start saving up now. What use is a nice branded bag when i do not have my own house to allot a place for it?

Of course i'm not saying i'm gonna walk around in a white robe and eat bread and water. What i'm getting at is that i need to start thinking long term and open my eyes to the whole brandwhore mentality. I will still buy stuff, branded or not. Afterall, people do not change overnight. It's just that for my future, i will try cutting down on such luxuries and try not to be sucked into the whole consumer live-for-today mentality.

So wish me luck! I'm aiming to get a condo or something in this life. Preferably with as little loans as possble, seeing what a killer interest rates are these days. Most Singaporeans are still paying off loans for a house they bought in the 80s!

This is where, my dear friends, you come in. The next time i'm itching for a new bag or top or shoes, please remind me of my financial goals! i'll invite you to my awesome house-warming party!

What i love most about Jill is that we can have those lulls in conversations and it's not the awkard kind where you are frantically fishing for a topic, any topic to continue the conversation. And of course, no topic is off-limit, which leads to many interesting conversations!


What was supposed to be a tanning session resulted in a marginally painful consequence with sun burn. We got too busy playing that we kinda over stayed our welcome. Hence, my face is totally blackish red and i got sun burnt on my arms and shoulders. According to Jill, even her eye lids hurt so you can imagine how hot the sun was then.


Donuts and good company make me smile.
Met up with christine yesterday for some pasta. What was supposed to be a quick lunch turned into a full day's outing in which we spent 3 whole hours queuing up for donut factory.







Donut Factory!









The 2nd part of the Queue. See the guy in bright green shirt? Tt's where the queue ends.




Because we thought that we were late in meeting jie jie and dan(who would give us a ride home), we quickly grabbed the donuts and ran from raffles city all the way to suntec's tower 1. We were in such a hurry, angeline's shoe came out and she had to run to get it back! Heh. As we carried our precious boxes with pride, you could just see the envy in other passer-by's eyes. It's the ultimate symbol of prestige!






Anyways! It turned out Jie jie hadn't even came out of her office yet. So here are some pics of our wonderful donuts in the evening light. I have to warn you though.. the pics dun do them justice!

The much coveted box

The fabulous doughnuts!

the 2nd box of doughnuts. We ate one while we were waiting for the others to bake. We had to! It was sending out a psyhic message for us to eat it!

In case you wanna know whether the 3 hours was worth it... I tink one and a half is worth it so i wouldnt do it again. I only did it because the company was great and i didnt wanna waste the time i spent queuing. The doughnuts are nice and squishy. A tad softer than krispy kreme's, not as sweet as dunking doughnuts. What i like abt them is that the flavour can be tasted throughout the whole doughnut. It's yummilicious!




Late Night supper with friends make me smile.
Today, i was seized by an urge to shake things up a little. It always seems like i'm in school the whole day. And the night lectures aren't helping at all. I dun know why but i always feel a little depressed after night lectures. Esp when people ard me are going out while i go home. Thankfully, Jiahui, Huili and Jing Xian actually listened to my whining and off we went to chomp chomp. It was really swell to just hang out and talk over supper.

It's fun having school friends who live near you. I like.

Sex and the city makes me smile.
Asilah is a heaven-sent angel. First she introduced me to alluc which allows me to watch grey's anatomy season 3 + heroes + ugly betty. Which came just in the nick of time since google has cruelly pulled out all the wonderful people who posted these shows on youtube. Now all youtube has are homemade videos of drunk people setting themselves on fire or emo kids slitting their wrists. Who would want to watch such self absorbed people do dumb things? Dear Youtube, you've got people uploading good shows on your channel. That pulls viewers. So please stick with that.

Anyways! And now asilah has lent me season 3 for sex and the city just so i can revisit the before part. wheeeeee! :):) i love asilah! And im gonna prove it by ending this post and going to watch sex and the city now. wheeee!

Groan
Taking a leaf out of chris's book,

If i gave you 5 bucks, would you do my dissertation for me?

This afternoon, alvinna and i went to meet our dissertation supervisor. Turns out he's the same guy who teaches us Construction MNO tutorial. Snore. We got lost explored SDE a little before we finally found his room.

while he talked, I was pretending to scribble notes because
a) Alvinna looked super professional as she started taking notes and nodding knowledgably.
b) The supervisor has a little un nerving habit of making direct eye contact and holding it for a very very long time. The only way to avoid it was to look down as i wrote something.

Hence, my notes looked something like this:
focus?? hmmmm need summary. His book = resources? lalalala. give outline of a) what i need to do b) what i intend to achieve c) where info is coming from.?? ?? this sucks. i'm screwed.

Turns out that Alvinna was scribbling in her notes because she thought that i was writing down real notes. Bleh. So much for my "ohsss" and "ahhhsss".

My younger sister called me a name. And so i had to lock her out of the house.


I was beyond thrilled when ting called me a few nights ago. It was sucha blast catching up with her. Gee, we must have talked for about 5 hours. She be getting her net tml so yay! we can skype and talk more then! *does a happy dance* I'm living my life vicariously through her. So.. girl, go get 'em juicy details! I'm waiting impatiently back home for details..remember that i want GORY details! But truthfully, rock lee's weird. I'm begining to rethink naming him after an anime figure. A Naruto character, no less.


Ting did not appreciate my insights at all. I'm the crush detector (i.e. can sense when a guy crushes on my friend)! and i tell you.. he harbours a dormant cursh la! she plain laughed in my face (for 5 mins str8 as she proudly proclaims in her blog) when i told her my suspicions. Pfft.


Jill is (prob) going to Aussie next year too. Pfftt i'm losing all my friends to Down Under. I dun even wanna think about tt now. Just typing it out hurts too much.


Grey's anatomy season 3 is like an american version of korean dramas. I'm practically weeping into my laptop every night. I cried when this character died and when i replayed it for jie jie to watch (she had the earphones while i just viewed it without sound), the tears were worse than the first round. What makes it worse is that i'm supposed to be doing work on the laptop. So when i wanna cry, i have to stop the emotions from welling up. I cannot imagine what would happen if my parents saw me crying over what they think is work. Maybe i should give some comment like how difficult uni work is. whcih would pave the discussion for my grad trip with the beautiful people? heh heh. Now! that's some food for thought!

the only highlight in my life right now is that they be doing a spin-off of grey's anatomy with Kate Walsh as the lead. oh.. i do hope it succeeds. Grey's wun be the same without her though.


we have to do an assignment which requires us to relate some phenomenon to geography. Like how space affects thinkin, blah blah blah... So when we were brainstorming on the topics, i wanted to broach the topic "why singaporean guys are so inadequate/weird/fugly while other countries like Japan have the hottest guys ever: is it the air or NEWater?" but the title was too long.

This sem is a killer. everytime i think i finish one project, another pops up. i proudly told huili that i had only 3 projects left.. but nooooo today i realised i have at least 4 more to go. gah! And i stay in school practically the whole day, i might as well just bring a sleeping bag and bunk in the school's comp lab. i paid the damn fees anyways.

so! i officially change my tv boyfriend from hiro from heroes to ....

1. Alex Karev from Grey's anatomy.
2. Henry from Ugly betty
3. Cristina Yang from Grey's (it's my thing. Just let it go)

I would love to have George. T R Knight's acting is superb work. ALAS! he's the kind that would make Isaiah Washington say bad names.