Saturday, March 25, 2006

SHAKE-AR 'BOMB-'BOOM!

Holidays are over two long weeks ago and its back to the grind. My first week of internship was more than just slacky. It was BORING! There wasn't any task appointed to me (Okay, maybe there are just a few... but HALLO! those are peanuts!).
However, this week, the internship is going well and I'm enjoying it since I've finally gotten a better sense of what I'll be doing. It's not as structured as I'd like, but I'm going to try my best to be proactive and learn as much as I can. I really don't know how much detail I'll ever get into here about this placement because of confidentiality issues. But basically, it all concerns accounts plus the Government. It feels really different and pleasantly comfortable to be working in an environment with a sea of noble professionals who are so kind and more than willing to guide my way through.

Updates! So last night, we went on the MTI Getaway cruise. To be honest, initially, we didn't intend to go, not until my mentor asked. You see, it sounds fun with that Getaway Cruise thangie, plus, we found out that the Ministers are going. There, you can tell it doesn't seem so fun at all when Ministers are present. Eventually, we turned up, not because we were hard-up, but because we anticipated that there might be possibilities of unexpected events. So we cabbed down to Harbourfront. That ship was a hell of a SHAKE! We stomped from to the upper deck, which was so much more steady than the one below, and it's decorated and furnished with exquisite sofas as well. We had buffet after the Long- Service Award ceremony. Can't believe someone actually sacrificed for 35 years and she looks like she's barely 50. The buffet made us all looked like prisoners because we stood in line, poked out plates, walked down and waited for food to be scooped. Halfway through dinner, one of my friends excused himself to the Gents. Miss Jie Ying was like: "He must be out to puke!" And yes, Roger puked... and he claimed that his sick actually flew with the wind, scattering all over in mid-air and falling into the water like snow. EWW.

The second half of the program kicked off with TABOO! They had their inter-division games and it was a tough fight! Every single one from both teams were so competitive. Truly amazed. And one person from the ID division was so funny, the answer was 'Michael Jackson' and he ran out of words, so he grabbed his crotch and did that rock-crotch action...OH GOODNESS! The occupants in that ship just exploded into tremendous laughter. However, he was penalized as no actions were allowed. Next we had some chicken dance program led by Minister Lim Hng Kiang (we're in his team), and his PS and DS who had other people under their teams. (Dr. Vivian Balakrishnan was absent). Witnessing a Minister dancing and shaking his butt in public is really odd. But he's human afterall, its not like Ministers or Presidents do not have "SEX" in their vocabularies. And then we had this well-known game where we had to produce various items listed on the paper which appears on any row... horizontal, vertical, or diagonal. Halfway, the emcee was like: "there's something in the list that no one can produce" and so, there was this item on the list that read "A Black Bra". Time's Up!
We came in last... but we produced 2 rows of items. One which consisted of the item mentioned earlier. HAHAHA!!! Our colleague, Ashida, actually walked out and told the crowd she was wearing a BLACK BRA. I salute to her courage. To make things better, she was actually donned in a black outfit from top to bottom, even her stilettos were BLACK! Oh gawd, that was simply hilarious.

Following on, we had the last section, whereby teams under the 3 respective leaders will have to act as a rock band. 3 girls, 1 guy... with him as the lead singer. Minister Lim selected Roger for our team... and all of a sudden, I was pulled into the team. Like WHAT?! The first team was led by Minister Lim's Permanent Secretary... and from there, we realized we had to wear disgusting wigs, our electric guitars were literally brooms and the mike was that sink pumping stick. My God. Then, my team and I went to the back to put on our "MAKE-UP"... seriously, my stomach was about to fall out. And it was our turn! We named ourselves "The Boisterous Funkers" and so the emcee just called us the 'Funkers' because he had a minor problem remembering 'Boisterous'. Whatsoever, "I Hate Myself For Loving You" blasted the ship and we stormed the dancefloor. Everytime I opened my mouth animatedly, those hair from that wig wouldn't stop flying in. But that didn't stop us from bouncing and gambolling like untamed lunatics who were extremely deranged. I actually threw the brush that I used to comb my wig on the dancefloor and to my surprise, Minister Lim picked it up and put it away. LOL! Throughout the entire rock thang, I can't see a thing because I was wearing a pirate's eye patch, with that grotesque wig plus those screams and roars besieging my ears... HELPPP!!! But we felt the heat... that HEATWAVE CAME SPLASHING! YEEEHHAAAH!! HAWT HAWT HAWWTT!!! Not until the last few minutes did I realise there were stalks of yellow flowers on the floor.. like WHAT'S THAT??! The amount of "fats" I shook off, now I'm a bag of bones! The music stopped, I was giddy, wobbly, pukey, shakey and drainny. My limps felt like melted rubber. GAWD! Big hamper for us for coming in 1st. *Bows*

Went downtown right after for supper. The entire journey was a JOKE! Galilee & Friends serves fantastic smoothes. This day, is one of THE best moment of my life. LOVE KO TO!!!

freed his mind P.Y.R.A - U.G.I.N.E at 9:18 PM [comment]

Life is beautiful, so are you.

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Sunday, March 12, 2006

Everyone Is A Victim.

Racism. That's what I'm talking about. What does it mean exactly? As what the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary has defined, racism is "a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race". In other words, it is "a belief that different races have different characters and abilities, and that the qualities of your own race are the best" - Longman. I don't believe that people are born racist. That's a learned behavior. For me, the term of 'race' is racist itself as it implies that there are sub-categories of humans. You can't just ask a stranger "Hey, what's your race?" That's rude. I believe that there is only one human race and outward appearance is just a variation within the same human species. With that being said, I know that we humans can go to unreachable extends to discriminate terribly against people who are some sort, the "others".
Come to think about my own experience, sometimes I do find myself avoiding certain people in life, but not because of their skin colour or anything like that. For me, I get alil nervous and awkward around people who dress or act weird. It's only that I get to know these people then do I feel comfortable to blend. I mean, this happens to all of us, and we do have predjudices, but they are more based on personal protection than other aspects.

I once had someone told me a couple of years ago, "You know, I'm a racist". I ain't gonna mention names but that person is still very much alive and LOUD. Okay, let's call this person SHIM, since I'm not revealing the gender either so as not to cause any misunderstanding. So SHIM continued to rant and confessed that SHIM has got a problem with some races in our little island. SHIM sounded serious. Or I thought. The moment I heard that, my opinion on SHIM changed drastically. What the hell is wrong with you?! I've forgotten what I told SHIM but I was just dumbfounded. These words could actually come out from SHIM's mouth? Given the opinion that SHIM is such a DEVOTED child, it just sums up to one word, SHAME! What I'm gonna say to SHIM is, if you're reading this, do you actually feel for minority groups that experience this kinda agonizing discrimination? Have it ever crossed your mind that WHAT IF, you were in their positions and WHAT IF, you were to go through that? Have you ever thought of how people will think of you as? Perhaps SHIM has learned that keeping quiet in the public is the key to mighty discretion, but I'm pretty sure deep in SHIM's heart, there's a barrier that divides SHIM and people of the certain races shim dislikes. What goes around, comes around. You might think that these "others" whom you so called "dislike" are minorities to you. Now, guess what, you make yourself the minority. Oh well, we know SHIM, don't we?

One recent movie that we can relate racism to is Crash, which we all know, just won the Best Picture at the Oscars. Yes, people who watched the movie will simply exclaim "Wow! That's a great film!" I thought so too. But at the same time, I thought this film isn't really sending out the message. The thing is the film is doing nothing for the problem. It's not examining the roots of racism, it's not questioning its existence, it's not proposing any way to curb the existence, and because of that, it is fully accepting its existence. People will just say "Yeah, racism does exist... Big deal? We see that in movies, we see that in our countries, its everywhere." It pretends to be socially conscious, but it doesn't tell us what we don't already know. But it does tell us that we are all victims of us human beings. We walk in and out of people's lives and we really can't anticipate what happens next.
Thank God I'm living in a racially diversified society where everyone accepts the others for who they are... though there might be some shadowed discretion amongst individuals. But you know, I've always wondered why there hasn't been any Afro-American President in the USA...

PS: No one here is SHIM unless you think you are.

freed his mind P.Y.R.A - U.G.I.N.E at 5:43 PM [comment]

Life is beautiful, so are you.

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Tuesday, March 07, 2006

And the Oscar goes to...


Crash. Like you, like me, like everyone else, I suppose we weren't expecting that. It was a wee bit disappointing not seeing Brokeback Mountain win Best Picture. However, Crash was an excellent movie which portrays racism in America and also was deserving to sweep the Oscar. I've watched that, and no complaints here. I loved watching the Oscars because it is the quintessential award show given for a selected few. Sometimes the Golden Globes and Emmys are pretty good. Oh well, actually neither does anything else, everything else is but a pale comparison to the Oscar, don't you think? I was completely enamored with Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin. They make good partners.


I'm a little surprised Reese Witherspoon won Best Actress for Walk The Line only because I thought Felicity Huffman was gaining momentum in buzz these days . I thought Felicity did a fairly great job in her role as an almost-to-be-perfectionista tranny in TransAmerica. However, the movie was just ayte. But the erm... manhood was OH-MY-FUGGING-GAWD-DAMN-HILARIOUSLY-DISGUSTING! HAHA! Yeah, it was... Watch it and you'll know. Anyways, Reese delivered the best acceptance speech and she's such a sweet lady.


In the other segments, I thought Robert Altman seemed classy and his bit about the transplanted heart was a marvelous way to point out that he's not quite dead yet and is still young at heart. That was a comedic Gold moment.


"I wish I knew how to quit you"? No! Ang Lee, you can't say that to an Oscar! Well, I guess he saw it coming like we did. I'm really proud of Ang Lee. I mean, as an Asian myself, having someone like Ang Lee as a reputable icon to look up to... it's simply awesome... and he's always made sure the audiences get the message that Brokeback's controversial subject matter is not just a gay love story but a universal, transcendent love story. Theoretically, it sorta makes sense that the best directed movie might not always be the best movie. But Ang Lee has definitely made history. I thought Ang Lee should have coaxed the best performance from his actors, but none of them won in their categories... though I felt Heath's role wasn't really Oscar worthy. I do wanna watch Capote.


And OH, I was just what...confused that Three 6 Mafia actually won an Oscar for that crap "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp"? Like WHAT?! And coming to the Oscars in baggy outfits like those... it's alil disrespectful altogether. None of those nominated songs really deserved to be on the list.


Dolly was ... ... SCARY! No wonder she's up for the featured song to TransAmerica.



freed his mind P.Y.R.A - U.G.I.N.E at 10:26 AM [comment]

Life is beautiful, so are you.

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Saturday, March 04, 2006

My nose just farted.

"OH, EXCUSE ME!" I guess I must have inhaled an immeasurable amount of dust. So yesh, I haven't been updating my blog... I KNOW! Blame it on the exams. There's been some outbreaks since the study vacation kicked off. No eruption though. I'm kinda wretched. Never mind, I could get cure for that. Nevertheless, I should cheer for the fact that I could breathe new air AGAIN after weeks of burying myself alive into notes and notes and notes and notes and MORE NOTES. It's bizzare. Well, I really do hope that we people could be together again. But not for the following semester. What do we expect for our formidable APTs... we certainly have no idea. It's so friggin' intimidating to learn that I'm actually the only person posted to the Ministry of Trade and Industry, while some of my classmates have half-a-dozen other fellows sauntering along into Ernst & Young, PWC etc. What am I to anticipate?? I was told that I'm working in the Finance Department...DUH. I se-RI-ous-ly hope that those people won't give me a hard time. In truth, I would undoubtedly be missing some people. Thanks Kai for your empowering words. Well, I guess I'll have to see in 2 weeks' time. BBRGH.

freed his mind P.Y.R.A - U.G.I.N.E at 12:28 AM [comment]

Life is beautiful, so are you.

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