Politically Correct in a Crazy World

After a few prayers to God,I'm feeling much better now.Thank you people for all your concerns.

Come to think of it,the reason of me going crazy is probably because I've not been going out with my friends frequently.How I survive during my period of March till June is all thanks to William and Kelvin who always ask me to go out every Friday,and I call it the Friday Gay's Night.

Another reason will be because I rely on my own strength too much.I should have let God take control of my life fully,instead of doubting His way for me.I still remember how He have helped me survive that dreadful days of my Polytechnic life and the suffering during my attachment period.I should thank God that He has never give up on me,even though my life is completely screwed up.

Just wonder when is the next term break for NUS/NTU/SIM going to come?

I told Yunn and Sandra that I won't be coming for HGC today.Reason is because I'm not feeling mentally well.

I started to get agitated by all the minor details around me.This is not the "Me" that I'm supposed to be right now.

I wanted to shout till my voice break and I realised that I'm actually inside my office.I know if I'm gonna do that,I'll get the boss attention...to sack me.I just want to stay on to my job.Just need to control myself,that's it.

Don't worry people,I'm not going crazy.I just need some time to calm myself down and put my monster self into a deep sleep,that's all.

I know I can never trust the plan to go other country will go smoothly.

Reason Number One: They are all pile up by their workload,as if their boss FORCE them to work and never take leave.Oh my,where is your ANNUAL LEAVE?NO ANNUAL LEAVE,YOU MIGHT AS WELL QUIT YOUR DAMN BLOODY SHIT JOB!

Reason Number Two: They have other commitment in SAF.Frankly speaking,you can never escape.

Reason Number Three: No money.Funny,you people just work for free.





So this is it,I might be staying in this country for this year again.I've learnt my lesson: Trust no one.

In my dream.....

Oh yes,happy Holiday people.And I want to boycott Mediacorp for entertaining us with no holiday special.

I just came back from my cousin's wedding dinner.When you see more of your cousins getting married each time,you'll become more and more stressful.That's because you'll have to hear your relatives asking the same old questions every time you see them.

Fortunately,nobody ask me about getting a girlfriend,the only question they asked me is some job related stuff.

Food is rather okay,but with 7 adults sitting around the table,you'll get to eat more and you have to pay the price of entertaining my nephews,whom we really had a hard time dealing with them.Anyway,who cares?

Monday blues will start tomorrow,I got to endure for the coming of Tuesday Public Holiday.Got any program on Tuesday anyone?

Nowadays I'm kinda addicted to read the forums on the Straits Times,be it in the newspaper or onine,because it do helps me improve on my English.However,there's still a big room of improvement to brush up on my grammar and vocabulary.

The forum is also a good place to read all the wonderfully complains and comments.Some are interesting reads,while others may just make a joke out of themselves.

I shall now quote a so-called complain of the week before it's gone:

All the movies are about sex and violence. Time for censors to act

I turned to the cinema pages of the Life! Section in the Straits Times last Saturday and noted the sort of movies being shown in town.

The main themes focussed on violence, crime, death and sex. Here are some of the movies:

. The Black Dahlia - about Hollywood's most infamous sex murders;

. Dead man's shoes - about revenge;

. Silk - about spirits;

. Death Note - about death;

. The Departed - a crime drama;

. Wet hot sake - about sex, sleaze and sensuality;

. My Summer of Love - more sex and sleaze.

The other movies are about inconsequential events. These are time-wasters and sad to watch:

. Talladega Nights - about brainless and crazy people with fast cars;

. World Trade Centre - a disaster;

. Rob -B-Hood - no theme.

These movies do not provide any wholesome and meaningful lessons in life. The more a person watches them, the more he would be made to feel that life is hopeless and meaningless.

Movie directors are happily ripping off the public by giving us worthless movies that harm us. It is useless to bar only children and those below 18 from watching these movies as the tasteless pictures in the media continue to defile good sense and morals.

Where are our educators? Why are they silent on this sad state of affairs? What does our conscience tell us about such movies being screened in public? Do we have a conscience at all?

One may argue that we have a choice not to watch these shows. But if it Hobson's choice everyday with such low quality movies, where is the freedom for one to choose a wholesome and good movie when none is available?

What about the public's right to see good movies? And why do we create for ourselves a famine of morally enriching shows?

A movie that is worthwhile watching would give hope to the viewer about the meaning of life and its purpose.

A good movie should result in stirring a person's mind and heart to do good for society. It should focus on wholesome family values of love and care, and respect for the elders and the government.

How should we rate a movie for its value? We should not give ratings to reflect its popularity based on violence, crime and sex, but instead focus on good values such as kindness, gentleness, love, peace, goodness, faithfulness, self-control and joy.

Unfortunately, none of these good values can be found in the movies mentioned above.

Movies that espouse the desirable values are rare. These are 'Chariots of Fire' and 'Akeelah and the Bee'. I particularly enjoy watching Jack Neo's portrayal of our primary school system in 'I not stupid'.

Yet if it remains only a portrayal of our country's meritocratic education system, it alone would not be able to help us make further progress.

It is not enough just to point out society's ills. The movie's director should have concluded the show with lessons on corrective measures for the public.

I would like the Board of Film Censors to critically review and evaluate the quality of the movies currently being screened in public.

The guiding principle of the authority should always be driven by good and responsible values that promote hope, compassion and love.

And it should not be influenced by the public's lust for sex, violence and death that leads to a sense of hopelessness for the viewer.

George Lim Heng Chye

Because of this,people try to bombard him in defence:

Call in the censors? Please don't let art be a white-washing machine

I refer to the letter by Mr George Lim Heng Chye "All the movies are about sex and violence. Time for censors to act" (ST Online Forum Oct 17).

I am appalled at the crude generalizations made about the films he mentioned.

I wonder if Mr Lim had watched every one of them before passing his moralistic judgments.

If films cannot have themes such as crime, murder, disasters, spirits, sex (issues which are not at all unrealistic), if films are prohibited from presenting so-called "ugly" truths of life, if films function only to stem our imaginative indulgences, what will we have then?

My guess: A cinematic world that is dreadfully unimaginative, absolutely unrealistic, frightfully plain and ultimately deadening to the senses. It'll be a repression of alternative perspectives, a papering over different ways of interpreting the world, and repressing even our very own lust.

I have yet to comprehend why Mr Lim thinks WTC is an inconsequential event that belongs to the category of "time-wasters" and is "sad to watch". It is clearly a landmark event in contemporary political history. Yet Mr Lim thinks of this film that promotes values such as altruism, patriotism and courage as "worthless" and "tasteless".

He writes, "These movies do not provide any wholesome and meaningful lessons in life. The more a person watches them, the more he would be made to feel that life is hopeless and meaningless."

Mr Lim's appreciation of films clearly does not stretch far. Most films have plots with very positive and happy endings that promote optimism in the face of adversity.

A glance at the films of the last decade would suffice as evidence.

I do not claim to love and praise every single film as I have my own list of "trashy" and "worthless" films as well. Yet I do not stand at the gates of morality screaming and demanding that my conception of screen-worthiness be the norm.

That Mr Lim sees films as portraying life as hopeless and meaningless only serves to reveal his inability to read the subtext in an artistic work, his lack of critical thought, his disregard of the hidden messages in films, and most of all, his lack of appreciation for complexity, self-reflexivity and moral diversity.

His idea that good movies should be explicitly moral and clean shows an inability to understand commentary, subtlety and irony.

He chooses censorship to deal with perceived subversive content instead of allowing artistic dialogue to generate fruitful discussions on social reality and moral dilemmas.

In doing so, he bulldozes the entertainment landscape with his sweeping opinions.

By the way, I think one of the key messages in his favorite film "I Not Stupid" by Jack Neo is precisely to point out some of the unintended consequences of streaming primary school students and it is dedicated less to glorifying the meritocratic system.

In fact, one of the scenes in the movie portrays a student attempting suicide. By Mr Lim's puritanistic criteria, shouldn't this movie be dumped into the rubbish bin of meaningless and unwholesome films too?

His notions of "corrective measures" unseat me. As much as I agree with him that there are values we ought to cherish as a society, I dread the day when cinematic art becomes a white-washing moral mechanism.

I fear the day when Singaporeans start to evaluate films in such a flat and one-dimensional fashion. The age-old problematic relationship between film and morality can be debated to no end.

It begs the question of whether anyone has a monopoly on moral values.

Censorship has to straddle carefully between allowing artistic diversity in entertainment and making moral decisions. It should not be used to champion a particular moral interpretation and put down another.

Also, an educator educates his or her students by engaging them in constructive conversation, not by tying blindfolds on them.

Miss Lim Li Yin

And this guy uses good English that I can learn from:

A movie needn't be vehicle for morality. Just enjoy art and learn from it too

I refer to the online forum letter "All the movies are about sex and violence. Time for censors to act" in which the writer deprecates films that ostensibly fail from a moral standpoint. It calls for the censors to expurgate them from our society.

The value of films does not necessarily serve some moral or didactic purpose and as an art form, it should be as valuable as art in its pursuit.

That said, films should not be considered morally subversive either, even when they contain such elements in the story-telling process. In fact, they reflect our human condition, our society and culture, our personal beliefs, and they may be realistic and accurate. After all, the world we live in is not a bed of roses and all forms of art reflect this point to some degree.

One only needs to remember Shakespeare's King Lear where the tragic ending had been refashioned to suit the Restoration stage. This version by Nahum Tate has been criticised by modern critics for compromising the theme of tragedy. Although good eventually triumphs, there is a lack of poetic justice in the face of all the bloodshed and acrimony with Cordelia's demise.

Tragedy occurs everyday, sometimes through "the surfeit of own behaviour", sometimes the "disasters of the sun, the moon and the stars." In the same way, are we too afraid of this kind of reality that we have to blot truth like this from our audience?

The writer also expresses the view that morality is absolute, but perhaps this is a fallacious ideal. Art forces us to rethink our own perspectives.

Contrary to the writer's suggestion that it will lead to society's decadence, it will instead help us to understand humanity better.

Ultimately, a person creates a famine for himself if he persists in imposing his standards on others, especially when it comes to appreciation of the arts.

Jeremy Chua Jiakai

And who said forums are boring?

To Mr George Lim:

I believe you are very desperate for the censorship board to cut away all your "unnecessary details",but not all people think the same as you are.Meanwhile while you are waiting for Jack Neo to release your favorite "I Not Stupid 3,4 or 5",why not go watch some shows by the everloving purple dinosaur instead?

Few weeks ago 7 people were caught for downloading music on the Internet,especially through a P2P software.

This week we have 25 cases of illegal sharing of music through P2P.

Nowadays the government is so strict of the law that many people decided to give up downloading musics/videos from the Internet.

Does it means that we are going to support the singers by buying their albums?If I were to buy,I'll bankrupt in no time.

(Checking the music website one day...)

Me: Hey that's the song I heard from the radio,since I cannot download songs from the Internet,I shall buy his album.

(few minutes later...)

Me:This track's not bad too.That will be 2 albums on my shopping list.

(moments later...)

Me:Isn't this album from my favorite artist?Must buy!

And there you go,3 albums in a day.

I don't mind paying a certain fee for a song,provided that the cost fee is cheap (less than $1 per song?)and stay permanently inside my mp3 player.Some legal download only allows us to listen to a certain number of times and best of all don't allow drag and drop.

Oh well,just my 2 cents worth,if you don't mind my crapping.

I went to Vivo City with Jing Yi,Edmond and Kelvin yesterday.Actually I came earlier to explore the place.After managing to cover half-way of the 'city',there're some conclusion that I've derived using the word 'over'.

1.Overpopulated


Almost 1/3 of the population is coming to check out this place.The place is so crowded with people and the vehicles are almost immobilised by the traffic congestion toward carpark.You should be thankful that you're not driving there.It's recommended that you walk there or find another parking slot far away from here.

2.Over-rated

Link from previous point,Vivo City draws legions of crowd just because the place is claim to be larger and more spacious than Suntec.For this you must thank the wonders of nation-wide advertisement and the power of the word of mouth.

3.Oversized


The place is just too big to explore.And by the way,can you tell me where's on Earth is the nearest ATM and toilet when you're in there?

4.Overpriced

The food at the Food Republic is freaking expensive!Come on it's just a normal foodcourt and you charge me $3.60 for 3 chicken wings and $3 for a Dim Sum?Oh not forgetting $7 for a decent amount of Laksa and $3.50 for a chicken rice?Good food,unacceptable price.

5.Overdone

Just wonder how much is the green man paid for doing all this in front of a public?If it's gonna be $50 per day,maybe I'll consider.

Not only the green men comes into play,we also have bus conductor-like person driving around with his wierd looking vehicle and also some hip hop dancers.I tell you,one of the guys wore his shorts so 'revealing' that I can even see him 'zhao geng'.

However what is all these thing gonna last?Are they trying to do this forever?



Only 60% of the shops are opened.So if you're going to see the official opening of all shops,you'll have to wait till December.

Just happened to dig through my photo achieve and found some picture that I didn't post.It was my birthday photos that was 2 years ago.During that time I was very skinny and look as if I'm lacking of nutrients.

When I look at what I am 2 years back and now,I think it's good to gain back some meat in my face,it just looks cuter.Or maybe I should go for mass build instead of washboard figure?Hmmm...

The acting cool photo.Just wonder was the camera didn't manage to capture Raymond fully?

Recently my tagboard seems to be spammed by some unknown visitor that promote some websites to me.

It's really an annoying one,no matter how much I tried to delete it,it just keep coming.

Is it because of the post that I post a few weeks ago where I mention the C letter words?If that's the case,I'll have to censored the word.

If this spam continues,I'll have to switch to another tagboard.And people,do contribute more to the tagboard.There's another possibility that it's because the tagboard is so cold that the "people" is trying to "help" contributing.

Yesterday we celebrated Raymond's birthday at Changing Appetite which is at Marina Square.The concept of this place is somehow like NYDC,but with even more variety.

They have so many drinks to choose from that I really cannot make up my mind.After a long decision,I decided to choose the banana milkshake-like drink.


Elvin and I ordered the fish and chip with calamari.We had a hard time trying to finish up the food.







Lastly a group shot photo.The camera girl actually shake her hand abit,making the whole picture blurred.

As you can see in the picture,I wore the wrong dress code for the dinner.This makes me an odd one out of the four.Sorry guys,next time when we celebrate Glenn's birthday I'll make sure I got it correct,or else I'll treat.

We didn't went to the Mind's Cafe after this due to time constrain,so we had to make it another day instead.

Anyway,I'm hope Raymond really like the present that we bought for you,although you still have to change the wrist size and alter the length).And thanks Glenn for the "invisible friend" idea.Hah!

Finally I've managed to get rid of my lazy bones to post the photos taken at Chinese Garden last Thursday.This is the only time I'm free to go there.

The theme for this year is so-called 7 wonders of the World.Well,let's see if I did capture all 7.












And there you go,the "7 wonders of the World".







Some people don't even care about the warning sign by crossing over the line.Didn't they know all lanterns have high voltage?








Brilliant performance indeed.All human know how to change face,if you know what I mean.







The weather is completely fine today as the haze has been blown away.However,I still pray that the burning of trees issue in Indonesia to be settled as soon as possible.The World needs the clean air seriously.