I don't believe in Democracy

Ok this is an entry is for me to let of steam. I was so pissed today by one of my group members. Perhaps i need to evaluate my tone of speech also. I sincerely and firmly believe there shouldn't be any democracy in a group project. The leader should dictate all, dish out roles. When you are choosing a leader, you are not choosing a puppet. You are the other half of the hand which respond when the hand wants to clap. You take down order from the leader, and do it efficiently. Deadline is tight, there is definitely no time for you to engage in some parlimentary debate. Autocratic system should be practice here, not democracy.

I discussed with my leader and we come up with jobs that are going to be allocated to the members. Everything is based on the individual's ability. For instance, if your maths is lousy and your economics is good, you would definitely be placed doing some economics related stuff instead of perhaps, doing some calculation for your project. So what do you do when one of your members decides he is better in maths than economics and want to do the maths part which his result doesn't justify it? What would you do?

I really don't know. For the betterment of the group, i feel like forcing the bitter pill inside the throat. You may call my authoritative but i do it with a reason. When i allocate, of course i allocate based on your forte. Why would i jeapordise the group's performance and allocate you some job which i know you are not up to the task? If i do that, i am a fatatous leader!

Like Minster Mentor said once:" a good policy may not be a popular one". I totally agree. You may not agree with what i do but i certainly know its for the good of everybody.

Swallow it.

Casino

The debate on Casino has been going on quite a while. It bring back memories when "score", the football betting system was being mooted in the parliment. The same old story goes that a lot of Singaporean are going overseas, internet bet placing site to place their football bet. So why not we ourselves start one? The government heed to this chinese idiom that is literally translated as fertelised water shouldn't let outsiders use. It mean be selfish actually. So instead of letting illegal bookies or whoever to accept bet, the government accept it.

I remembered alot of controversy was stirred in the football betting parlimentary discussion. Some pragmatic or should i called them money minded MP put a tick to the idea. Some moralist or so-called say no to it. Religion bodies throw their weight behind those moralist. The main leads, the punters were less concerned. Question them they would tell you:" oh the garment sure got way", an ideal and typical Singaporean reply. They are sitting on the fence.

Feedback collected, provided yours didn't cross the OB markers. But no matter how many petitions were signed, the idea was still passed. The lame reason i think is that it can revive the S-league with the betting system as the punters need to support their team as they stake their family fortunes on it. But well well, just peer at the stadium in front of your home while reading this article, look at the numbers of people who turned up, watching S league. They could never matched the numbers that supported Singapore during the M cup heyday.

Slowly slowly, Score began to accept bet for overseas match, i believe, because it was more "profitable". What an irony for a system that is set up supposedly to support local footballing scene.

I think history is going to repeats itself again with the casino debate. If it is just a simple debate which was being assured as just only a debate now, can attract so many investors with plans on how to set up a casino here and run them well? It isn't just building sand castle in thin air but building casino in marina bay!

I think casino is here to come, whether you like it or not, looking at the past history. Alot of people actually want it thinking it will reduce taxes and what have you. However looking at Score again, i would like to remind people that the 3% of GST has risen to 5%. So do you think it will lower any taxes?

On the other hand, some want to keep casino out in order to keep out the undesirable socially diseases like vice. But aren't you just building a house without windows because you scared the fly may come in? If Singaporean can't even exercise their own curb, draw their own boundary and remain sheltered and give that "Govt will take good care of it" reply, have we really matured as a society? I don't think so.

While the good side of me want to keep casino out, the other side of me tell me i should support the idea, thinking i haven't pull any trigger of any jackpot machine before.

sleeping in various places

I love sleeping. I really do. Everyday i slept at 10.30pm, or 2230hrs in army term. However i started to sleep at 10.30pm way before i was enlisted. My mum forced me to sleep early as she was afraid i might be listless during classes on the next day. I guess over the years, it becomes my sleeping habit. If i do not sleep at 10.30, i can feel my brain stop functioning. It become evident when i am doing maths questions( another of my past time). Whenever the clock strike 12, the questions in front of me suddenly become so unfamiliar. Acute and immediate dementia sets in and i would feel like a zombie, restrained by some supernatural forces which prevent me from conquering differentiation.

But of course i am not going to go into details of sleeping. But rather places where i will sleep. I enjoyed sleeping on my bed. Its actually my parent matrimonial bed. But i siphoned to my room. A king size bed for myself. When i was young, i began to sleep on that bed when my parents just place me there and cajole me to sleep. I am a kind of person who need to be in a familiar environment in order to sleep. The bed was my comfort and my hypnotiser. Without it, i can't sleep. But i sort of grow out of it and return the bed to my parents when i was around primary 6. Occassionally, i would still steal a nap on it. Although the bed was quite old, as old as me, but i refuses to let my parent change to a new one. I am not the kind of person to ditch the old for new.

Beside home, the next most comfy place is the MRT seats. I just love sleeping in the MRT. The habit was formed when i was travelling from Tampines to ayer rajah camp. Woke up at 5.30am, so its kind of tired and i would just sleep on the train. I would start sleeping from Red Hill station, after reading the straits times and alighted at Chinese Garden. Yes you guessed it, i overshot my station. But to me it was great to just rest your head on the glass panel, and doze off. Of course not every seats on the MRT is for sleeping. I recommand the seats near the door, with the glass panel. First they are sheltered from the sunlight, next, don't you think the seats at the size are more spacious? The glass panels are good for resting your head. But do make sure the panels are clean. Sometimes you can find nasal mucus on it, be it dried or wet.

I just love sleeping. I do not know why. Perhaps my zodiac sign, Pig, has to do with my indulgence with sleeping.

Shallow Hal

I have just watched Shallow Hal on tv. Let me give a brief summary on what is the show all about. There is this guy call hal, who always wanted to date pretty hot babe. However, he failed miserably because practically all the women in the world feel that he is so shallow, based on looks and date people. One day in a lift, he met Anthony Robbins, the guru who wrote countless books and charge per person thousand plus for his seminar. This guru then sort of hypnotise him so that Hal, instead of viewing girls and judging them by their looks, he will look at them differently, by looking at their inner beauty. So this Hal guy met Rosemary, a little overweight girl. But in his eyes, she is a georgeous babe( thats y thet ask paltrow to act, bodoh!). The went out and fall in love. But one day, Hal best friend, de-hypnotise Hal and Hal began to wake up. But in the end, he still accept Rosemary as he finally know what true love is all about.

Now i am going to give my 2-cent worth on the story. I think everybody has alittle bit of Hal inside us. When is the time where we do not give a second look to things that are beautiful? I have read a book that says, guys like woman to be buxomy not because of anything, but because it signify the good ability of pro-creation and of course, the badge of that she is a true woman. It is, i can say, a human basic instinct that we always will give good lookers, good looking object more credits than they should have.

If our moms goes to the grocers, they would also choose the orange base on the skin, perhaps, the more orange the orange look like , the sweeter? Try telling your mom that " hey, the worm hole suggest that it is sweet thats why the worm will blah blah blah" and i bet she will tell you to buzz off.

Although there is a bit of Hal in everyone of us, i think we do need to reflect on ourselves is that, is your bit of Hal bigger than my bit? When you see couple, each of them blessed with good looks, can you straight away jump to the conclusion that they each are Hal and when you see a couple, who perhaps, the male is not too good looking but the female is pretty, say that yes, thats not a Hal couple.

I do not really have the answer to that because the person i like is pretty and like i said, i like her. So do that make me a shallow person also?

But what i do know is that like what Robbins said in the movie:" we are all hypnotised by the society, by the world. The movies, magazines, tvs are telling you what is beauty and what is not. But is that a real answer to what beauty is all about?"

A couple of months back, i read in one of the blogs available by this girl. She wrote:" all of you chasing xxx should back off, take a good look in the mirror..." When she wrote about the mirror part, i feel that, she is based on looks and thats all. True perhaps she want the best for her friend and that "take a good look in the mirror" is just a sentence meaning undeserving guys should just back off.

But the ultimate feeling of this girl just based on looks keep creeping on me. I hope her friend is not like her.

finished another dan brown book

Yup, after da vinci code, angel and demons, i had finished deception point. Unlike the other two, which is mainly base on christianity, the holy grail, the deception point is more of a scientific thriller.

I have always amazed by how dan brown wrote. Hi story or rather his style you can really guess by the time you read another book of his. Its always this main lead who will on the course of investigating, come to know this another second lead who will always be the god-send kind of guy/gal to the main lead. This second lead will also be the life saver of the first lead, saving him/her always from the danger. The the baddy will be someone close to the lead always.

The story will end, with the 2 lead making love( although it isn't a erotic book, but one could guess by his use of words and descriptive sentences)

What intrigue my mind is his research. This author really go and research everything he wrote. So i don't mind reading his book although i know his style.

Dan Brown is my kind of author who treat readers with respect by his research. Way to go!

Oh yah, today is CNY day 1, selamat tahun baru cina to everyone and gong hei fuck choi! haha

Don't make the same mistake of abolishing Singlish altogether

In the early sisties and seventies, our grandparents and parents grew up to shows helm by Wang Sa and ye Fong, the duo were the hottest comedy stars in Singapore, i can say they can be comparable to Jack Neo and Moses Lim. The reason of why the duo can reached to the masses easily and successfully perhaps is the usage of dialects. Dialects were spoken by many of the Chinese in Singapore. The early immrigants usually herd together like flocks of Sheeps determined by the dialect that they spoken. Clans were set up for each respective dialect group.

However the government decided to abolish dialect shows altogether to suits the Speak Mandarin Campaign. Wang Sa and Ye Fong were forced to retire prematurely. The Speak Mandarin Campaign were quite successful to a certain extent. Now, except for vulgarities, none of the chinese speak Dialect. Throw them some dialect words and they can't dicepher what is the meaning. Communication with their dialect speaking grandparents were thus lost and one way or another, the abolishment of speaking dialect contributed to the generation gap between grandchildren and grandparents.

Recently, the government i believe, decided to revive dialect speaking bit by bit, discreetly. They can't really do it openly as it would mean backtracking. We can see the opening up by speaking of dialect in movies like The best bet, Money no enough and tv sitcom like Don't worry be happy. Majority is Chinese entertainment shows that have dialects.

So in what comparison do it have with Singlish? Plenty.

Speak good english campaign was started in the late 90s when the then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong signalled Phua Chu Kang, the sitcom, as a rather bad influence to the youngsters for its overly use of singlish. Immediately, the producers of Phua chu Kang changed the sitcom to suits the government agenda.

I firmly believe, the abolishment of Singlish is too big a mistake and perhaps costly. What really bind people together is not their skin color, not the way the dress, but their religion and language.

Religion like i said previously, is a powerful tool to mankind. I believe anyone can see that when a fellow muslim see another muslim, he will walk up to him and shake his hand. Such is the binding force of religion to the individuals. Osama has an important tool to dispose of, that is religion. We can see how fast and widely spread the Al Queda speads its tenticles. Around the world not only the Arabs are muslim, but also the Malays, the indonesian, a few handful of chinese decent and caucasian. The fact that a non arab is willing to blow up himself on a plane proves that religion has surpass the skin factor and culture.

Langugage is the most crucial form of communication. Whenever we are of same race, we tend to speak in our mother tongue. Even if we have one or two friends of different races with us, we still tend to speak in our mother tongue as it just come out naturally. It is of such cases that our friends of different races can pick up our mother tongue fast.

Singapore is make up of a very diverse array of people, each with his own religion, culture and language. The chinese alone have embraced christianity, taoism, buddhist and what have you. The malay have Islam as their religion with some embracing other religons. Same goes to Indian.

We can't really force everyone to have a single religion as it will be a breech of human rights and disregard and disrespect to the religions that were not chosen to be the forced religion of Singapore.

What i want to say is that racial harmony is more than having school performance on july 21th every year. It is not just reciting the pledge, affirming racial harmony either. It goes beyond that.

Racial harmony can never exist flawlessly as there are just too many factors to be considered. What we can do is to make it near flawless.

Therefore, imposing the same religion to make the people homogeneous at least, in their faith is out of the question. Same goes to changing the skin color or even each individual culture.

Therefore, Singlish is needed actually to bind us together. If the Anglo Saxon can import french word, latin, spanish or even chinese word and phrases into English, i see why we can't import our Lah Lor Leh into our unique brand of English.

Singlish in this era, doesn't serve the purpose of communicating anymore. It serve a more divine and practical purpose, to bind the races together. It is an language which every Singaporean have with him, inborn. It is an language which set us at ease when we communicate. It is a language which we can converse easily without any miscommunication and most importantly, it is a language which is made in Singapore.

In this country where everything is imported, from ideas to food to cultures, we badly need a unique entity which we can really call it our own. I see no other things except Singlish.

To abolish Singlish is a grave mistake not to be repeated like abolishing dialects. No singlish could mean racial ties are in fact, weaken. English is the language of business, Malay is the offical Language and i think Singlish is the racial harmony language.