Posted by the writer on Jan 27, 2010 in
general Waiting is the most most most difficult-est of all!
How much time do we spend on waiting everyday?
Waiting for a transport (buses are the worst, trains next, cabs, even if you drive, you have to wait for your engine to be ‘ready’!) to get you to your destination.
Waiting for food to be prepared (cooking or take-outs).
Waiting for elevators (unless you have acrophobia and work/live no where higher than ten floors up).
Waiting for school/work day to end.
Waiting for allowance/pay day.
Waiting for someone to call.
Waiting for someone to say I love you.
Waiting for results.
Waiting for promotion.
Waiting for a sale.
Waiting for an occasion.
Waiting for Steve Job’s latest iFrenzy. (oh my oh my…i’m so iGeared up!)
Waiting for the Martell TUSS to confirm my participation!
ARGH!~
I so wanna win it cos:
1. The shop is rental free for 6 months! 
2. The Insead programme. Not that I can’t afford it but it’s completely different when it is sponsored. Hehe.
3. The award.
Finally, today I understood why some scholars would die for their scholarship when they can perfectly afford the cost of it many times over. I couldn’t understand it back then (which was why I gave up my scholarship hoping that someone who REALLY needed it would benefit from it – but I seriously doubt so…).
Ah…the bitter-sweetness of waiting.
What if I don’t win leh?
:S *hides*
Continue with my life lah…it is still a sweet interlude…
Posted by the writer on Jan 25, 2010 in
writing A friend commented the other day that he has been on the receiving end of repeated calls asking for a certain Ah Seng.
A simple name. A simple incident. A simple story develops in my mind.
It is amazing how the commonest stuff can give sparks to the story board.
Well, I’m thinking of a short story revolving around this.
Characters:
1. The caller – an elderly woman
2. The answerer – a high flier
3. The invisible Ah Seng
That’s all that is needed. 
Posted by the writer on Jan 25, 2010 in
general Sometimes I wish I have the liberty to be like so many other people and take pictures of the food I eat…the places I visit…the countries I travel to…the friends I am with. Somehow, the saying ‘birds of the same feather flock together’ holds true as most of my groups of friends value privacy more than anything else.
Sometimes I wonder about the value of privacy and sometimes I wonder about the value of exposing it all.
When we are out dining somewhere interesting…as in really interesting…and I really want to take a snap of the place…the dish that’s being served…but somehow…with the kind of glances glares thrown in my way…all I could do is slip the camera back to its case.
This has resulted in my phone functioning as a spy cam…taking pictures on the sly…and the quality is super lousy as expected…with really weird angles to add.
To be honest, I want to take photos not because I want to showcase them on blogs or Facebook…but because it’d be good to keep a scrapbook kind of memory box…yes, I love scrapbooking but it’s a ridiculously expensive hobby to keep here. And oh, for the lack of photos.
Posted by the writer on Jan 22, 2010 in
heart I have a bad habit of skipping town whenever I’m upset.
I once took a cab to get across the causeway and checked into a hotel, with just the clothes I was wearing, the passport, my wallet, a cellphone and a very miserable heart.
It was most painful because of the miserable heart. I went there because I was looking for him. And I thought I remembered where he was. At 5.15am the next morning, I took a cab to the town he supposedly was at. It was the right town, I remembered all the landmarks or so I thought. At 6am, I was at the petrol station which I thought was nearby his house. At 605am, my cellphone’s battery died on me. I was completely lost at the petrol station with the highway in front of me and rows of almost countless houses behind. In one of those houses was the person I was looking for. I felt very tired. I wasn’t scared for myself but for the lost of this opportunity to see him again. I wanted to see him so badly.
Till now, I remember with excruciating clarity the feel of the morning air when my cellphone’s battery went died. The silence of the morning broken only by passing cars. The breaking of dawn. It felt both light and heavy at the same time. A glimmer of hope and yet darkness envelopes. The first time I felt a sense of lost.
And then a car drove up. Someone got out of the car. Someone familiar. One of Yikor’s men. They sent me back to the hotel where Yikor was waiting in the room next to the one I had left earlier that morning. He had known all along that I would attempt to look for that person. And for the first time in my life, he shouted and ranted and was like a mad man for all of almost an hour about the danger I was in and the amount of worry I had created. At that time, I couldn’t care less. All I thought about was how I had failed to find him. And all I ever wanted to do was to go off again to find him. I was angry with Yikor, extremely upset and tired, and so I shouted back and threw things at him as well.
I can still remember the look on Yikor’s face. I saw the tears he didn’t shed. Yet, I continued to behave like the spoilt brat that I was.
That person meant more to me than life itself. Yikor took years to finally accept this as a fact. He had thought it’d meant no more than a passing fancy to me but it was not. I told Yikor, I’d give my life to protect this person. I’d give up everything for him. I’d even give up Yikor…just for him.
If you never knew the meaning of pain, the pain of the heart, you never knew love. When two in love are separated by a situation beyond their control…that kind of pain…the real pain of the heart. That one true love. (刻苦铭心的相愛) But how do you know? You know because your heart knows it. And your heart can no longer accept another’s promise of happiness even when you say or think you can. That one true love.
The little breeze caresses your face, you breathe in deeply, let out a deep sigh, hoping that the emptiness will just go away but it remains an aching pain in your heart. And for many years after that, you still feel the emptiness weighing heavily, painfully in your heart though you may say that you have found happiness with someone else…”
That happiness is never complete without your one true love.
Posted by the writer on Jan 21, 2010 in
serious stuff Well, as can be seen, I don’t blog about serious stuff at all. But this time, something happened (Desperate Call for Help: Loanshark…) which is of particular interest to me. Besides the fact that it happened to someone who I know on a personal basis, this topic about loansharking has been a little research topic for a little period of time too. Actually, not a little period of time…I’ve been advocating for years for borrowers of illegitimate loans to be punished under the criminal act for the longest time ever (like…more than 12 years in the making already!).
Sadly, parliament did not share the same viewpoint and thus they decided to (for the time being) not pursue the borrowers but instead place the focus on the loansharks. I’ve written about this, in a very satire manner, on Facebook but it’d be unwise to post that out so openly here.
First and foremost, let me clarify something. I am not against the loansharks trying to make a living by lending out money. I am also not against those who need a temporary loan and had no other avenues to turn to but the loansharks. To me, both are just coinciding factors in the demand and supply chain.
What I am against is the lack of responsibility on the part of the borrowers to avoid paying back the loan; the lack of morals of the borrowers who went back against their promise and hit the very hands which helped them in times of needs; the particular reasons such as gambling/drug addictions which pushed the borrowers towards the loansharks. Thus, with the above, I feel borrowers of illegitimate loans ought to suffer the same punishment as the lender.
What I am also against are the methods the loansharks use in their attempts to recover their ‘bad debts’; such as vandalism, gluing of locks, placing of additional locks, arson and other means to intimidate NOT the borrowers but the families/neighbours of the latter.
The government felt, not in the exact words, that by outlawing the borrowers, it’d give more leeway to the loansharks and their activities. Does it? Will it?
By sheltering the borrowers, it creates a false ’safe haven’ for them. It gives them the illusion that they need not take responsibility for their action; for the money they had taken; for the moral agreement they had entered. And thus, even those who had no real need for the money would be tempted to borrow from the loansharks for it’d be as good as a free lunch, abet one that would follow with some inconvenience.
And, when borrowers default on their repayments, it’d push the loansharks to take more extreme measures to recover their losses. It’d also push the loansharks towards the use of violence; towards the commitment of more crimes.
Overall, it creates more social unrest instead of solving the problem outright.
But how will persecuting the borrowers solve the problem of illegitimate loans? It will, in the long run.
When there is no where for the borrowers to seek help from, they will think not just once or twice but many times before they commit to getting a loan from an illegitimate source. They will be forced to understand the moral agreement they have entered into; the fact that they themselves have committed to something very serious and that no one, absolutely no one can help them out. This will eliminate the number of borrowers and thus force the loansharks out of business, or the loansharks will have to soften their methods, lower their interest in order to ‘attract’ their potential clients. Simple market adjustments!
And when borrowers do not default on loans, the loansharks would have no reason to commit those acts of arson, terrifying others etc. And of course, should they persist in using such methods, then they should be dealt with according to the law with stiffer penalties.
Just like we cannot default on our mortgage or bank loans, borrowers of illegitimate loans should not be made to feel that they are ‘entitled’ to get away with such and that the state will ‘protect’ them from harm. This is an unnecessary burden on taxpayers.
The most important thing is, we should delve into the reasons why such borrowers are being forced to take illegitimate loans. With every reported case of loansharking, there are more unreported cases. This is a clear indication of a lapse in our social safety net. What has happened to these people that they had no one, no where to turn to except the loansharks? If it is a genuine case of need, such as medical bills, daily expenses, school fees etc, why are these people in such a pathetic state? Why have they no helplines to turn to? Is it because of a lack of awareness? Or that the social safety net has completely failed?
And if it was not a genuine case of need, such as gambling or drug addiction habits. What made them turn to gambling or drugs? And what has been done on a national level to reach out to these people? What more should and can be done?
There are legalised moneylenders. So should the criteria to borrow money from them be softened so as to accommodate the needs of more people? Or should we examine why are there so many people in need of money for even basic needs?
A loansharking problem is not simply a problem between the borrower and the loanshark. It is not simply a criminal act but a reflection of the state of social illness. Something is very wrong and the root of the problem goes way beyond that of just the borrower and the loanshark.
Oh, let’s not go into the level of responsiveness of the police. Or the efficiency level. It’d complicate matters even further.
Posted by the writer on Jan 14, 2010 in
heart yikor, i dreamt of you yesterday. and it was only this morning, after i woke up from the dream, that i realised how much i miss you actually. in the past, i hate it whenever i hear people say that i am nothing without my brother. now i wish, i rather be nothing and have you by my side…
why do the really important people in my life have this irritating habit of disappearing from me?
they disappeared when i was barely a month old…you disappeared before my twenty first birthday…they reappeared…he disappeared after my twenty first birthday…you reappeared…he reappeared…i made myself disappeared…i reappeared…and you had to disappear…and along the way…fangs disappeared…reappeared…disappeared…i lost count of that…
i can’t find the words to describe how i feel now. the happiness of finding myself…of finding him…and then the scariness of losing you…the possibility that this may be forever…
if the only way to see you again is in the dreams, then i wish i’ll never wake…
Posted by the writer on Jan 10, 2010 in
heart like remembering my favourite snack and getting friends to buy over for me without my asking for it…
like the mentos sweets…
stuff like these touches my heart
Posted by the writer on Jan 3, 2010 in
general 
So, it is the year twenty ten.
What is ahead?