the figleaf

I don't know why the caged bird sings

2005-03-05T11:14:00.000+08:00

When this pigeon landed on the top of my head, I entertained the thought that I was anointed by A Higher Power. I thought now's the time to buy 4D. Now I will finally get lucky. That good, lucky feeling lasted till it actually anointed me. With luminous green poo.

Thanks a LOT.

Got free tickets to the Jurong Bird Park last week. The Lory Loft is one amazing aviary. Going into it is a little like a Jurassic Park experience. It's a made up of a tree-top suspension bridge, quite like the one at MacRitchie or Kent Ridge Park, except it's also got like, a thousand friendly little lories, fluttering around friendlyly in their resplendent primary colours.

They won't let you pet them, but you can feed them, and have them perch and squawk on your arm, if you like, but from one person who's been personally shat on - I don't really recommend that.

Here's a picture of a Lory. I don't think they're particularly pretty. In fact, I think they look quite fierce and frankly, too colourful to be edible. When they got the goo of food all over their greedy beaks, they look damn unphotogenic also. But don't let that stop you from going to the Lory Loft, cos it's a really nice aviary.

The highlight of the bird show, in my opinion, was a chirpy young chick named Linda. Her script was a little contrived, but I think she's cute and it was heartwarming to see that she kept up her bright cheery smile all through the show even though she was perspiring in the heat. Now that's my kinda gal.

On the other hand, going into the talking bird section made me sad, because it's dark, the cages are small and you can really see that the birds are pining.

But if you're there, do drop by Sam-boy's cage and give him a little pat. He's a Greater Sulphur-Crested Cockatoo who can speak Hello, Sam-boy, How Are You?, Bye-bye, and if he's learnt anything from me, Lemme Out too. If you go close to the cage, this cacatua galerita will bend his head close to the cage grill and allow you to scratch the perpetual itch he has on the back of his head.

I don't approve of putting birds in cages, or clipping their wings and robbing them of their God-given right to flight. But then sometimes, looking at some of them makes me think that they may just be too dumb to know any better.

1800-XDENGUE (NOT)

2005-09-28T23:39:00.000+08:00

One big bad mothersucka.

A giant mosquito landed on the wall in my room. I'd like to thwack it and put an end its indiscriminate spawning of the swarms of dengue-spreading bitches, but then since this fella only sucks nectar and plant juice, it might be bad for the karma if I kill it. So I left it.

If I'm not headed to India this weekend, I'm going to the World Trade Centre to donate a bag of my A+ blood to those who need it. Now, assuming that I'm an average adult male, I should contain about 5.6litres of blood in my body. Considering that the donation bag I see on TV looks approximately 1.5x the size of an average Ribena packet, that would make the volume about 500ml. That works out to be 10% of my blood. I suppose that might somewhat reduce the frequency of involuntary hard-ons.

I feel giddy already.

Sleeping around

2005-09-25T21:52:00.000+08:00

An idea eased itself into my mind recently, as I was walking the streets with my friend the other day. I was thinking, hey, wouldn't it be nice to bring a rug along wherever I went? That way, if I ever felt tired from all that walking, I'd just find a nice shady little spot to lay my rug under a tree, below a bridge or across a bench... and then read / nap the afternoon away on it.

My friend smiled but did not comment. Besides being a wonderful person who always plays along, she's also a very polite and considerate person, so I never found out how that idea sounded to someone other than myself. Weirdos never think they're weird. Have I merely spent one too many late nights? Or is the the beginning of the slow inexorable descent into the eccentricity of people who spend too much time on their own?

Boats, Bikes, Babes

2005-09-19T20:10:00.000+08:00

Saturday night, I met up with friends for a chocolate buffet at the Fullerton Hotel. Halfway through a chocolate coated strawberry, I offered to lend my camera equipment to my SSC friend to shoot her colleague's wedding and in exchange, I got two free tickets from her to go to the F1 Powerboat World Championships yesterday at the Marina Bay. Being in the Singapore Sports Council had its privileges. She also asked if I wanted to join the marathon at the end of the year, because she could get a discount in the registration. I didn't take long to consider. I would've liked to, but that would take up all the time I could have spent killing myself in other more pleasurable ways.

So I went to the F1 Powerboat World Championships after borrowing a Nikon from a colleague. There were many tents there with all kinds of mini-shows. I glazed over most of them. Particularly, I was interested in three things: Bikes, boats and babes. In reverse order.

There was a motor-cross event going on by the side. On the right, you will see a biker defying gravity, leaping high overhead after accelerating up a ramp. To me, he is a shining example of sheer guts and dare-devilry.

I take my helmet off to these guys. Check out the copious amounts of mud that gets plastered on their suits while their faces remain nice and clean. I just don't know how they wipe their faces while holding on to the handlebars. They must do it while they're up in the air. Like, that's totally awesome.

I headed to the powerboat competition after that. The roar of the engines was like Lord Thunder had His balls squeezed. According to the advertisement on the bus, these machines rip through the water at 260km/hr and at that heady velocity, water turns into jagged steel. I guess that's why after these two leading boats crashed, the hull flew out and one of the drivers got hospitalized.

While waiting for the crash recovery team to mop up the scene, I parried some of my F1 knowledge with a couple of dudes I got to know at the race. I said that the Ferrari guys were blaming Bridgestone tyres for poor performance on the tracks. Oooh, they nodded, chewing on this morsel of trivia. Then I learnt from one of them that the drivers at F1 car racing don't use brakes as we know it, but engine brakes to slow down their machines. Their gears are merely buttons on the steering. Mmmm, we nodded again sagely.

I got up and left soon after the crash, suddenly feeling a vague discomfort, as if I've just taken too much of a good thing. I walked toward the FHM booth. Because ultimately, a guy can only take so much power play and macho posturing.

At the end of the day, there's only one thing a guy really needs:

A sandwich.

Last one in the bar

2005-09-16T21:48:00.000+08:00

I did not realise the spartan state of my bedroom until recently. In it, two narrow beds lie parallel to each other separated by a simple corkwood table. A couple of spare bales of toilet paper lean in a corner like muggers, waiting for the day when I squirm out of the bathroom after using up the last square of tissue. A standing fan stands stoically, keeping perspiration and mosquitoes at bay. On the walls, acres and acres of bare cream paint. Love nest it is not.

I suddenly notice this because after spending one afternoon photographing some orchids for a wedding card with my friend, she tells me that putting a picture of a flower by my bedside would greatly increase the chances of me getting lucky by an unspecified percentage. To me logically, that is about as far-fetched as the backside of Tuas South Avenue 3. But then, at this rate I'm going, I'm about to believe anything.

It is Friday night and while looking around my stash of photos for a pretty floral candidate, I scrolled upon this dismal looking picture that I took a couple of weekends ago at the botanic gardens. I won't be putting this by my bedside because I do not think this is what my friend meant by a woman-attracting type of flower-picture. But still I can't shake off the sensation that somehow it just feels right - for all the wrong reasons.

Bad hair month

2005-09-14T22:24:00.000+08:00

Couple of Saturdays ago, I put an end to all my bad hair days. I figured the only way to do it was to take it all off. Haha but no. Considering the trauma that TT Durai has put us through, it just isn't easy getting people to donate money to charity anymore. I thought to myself also: if not now, when? If not me, then who? So I stopped the decision making process and walked up the stage at Wisma Atria and had my head shaved to raise funds for the Children's Cancer Foundation.

So far, I've had all kinds of responses to my bald head.

The first of which was a big smile from my friend, who was a volunteer with the CCF, as I stepped off the stage where they held the Hair for Hope event. It was the kind of smile that said, "I'm proud of you, dude" without having to say anything. I glue that image on the backside of my eyelids, because I don't get that a lot.

The second came from the mirror in the toilet where I headed to anxiously. The guy in it looked at me slack-jawed and whispered, oh my God, what have you done... what. have. you. done.

I went on to photograph a church event of my friend's. It was easy to forget that I had no hair until she covered her mouth in wide-eyed incredulity. It was later after the shoot that my friend told me that her friends told me I looked much better now, simply because she'd told them that I'd had my my hair shorn off to raise awareness for the children with cancer. (On the other hand, the last time they met me, I was the 'sleazebag' who was doing the hip thrust and roll with my friend at Bar None.)

The next few of my friends got me down. It wasn't their responses, but the lack of which that had me groaning inside. Oh, they said, and continued discussing what was going to be for dinner. No worry, it'll grow back soon. A clever PR stunt, they called it. Are you trying to impress chicks? After a while, I was too embarrassed to take my donation card out.

I smsed my ex how much she would donate if I shaved off all my hair. She replied 10? maybe 20? 50max. depends on the charity. i think i will fetch more if i shaved instead... It is a signature of hers, to always take my topic, hijack it and make it all about her.

My mom said something to the effect of: aiyoh, why you cut your hair like that? You are doing good lah, but you're still single you know... You look like a sam seng what girl will want you?

My dad said nothing.

I spent a Sunday rolling around in bed agonizing over how my colleagues would react but it was all for nothing because that Monday morning, they grabbed my donation card and started passing it around. My boss and the mothers in my company were astonishingly generous. They gave so much I almost wanted to stop them.

Now, almost 4 weeks later, I look less and less like a dirty old monk. I've raised $934 for the children, and that makes me very happy indeed.

Like nobody's watching

2005-03-06T01:07:00.000+08:00

There are many ways to pure bliss, but there are short-cuts. One of them is to dance.

I discovered my dancing feet in JC. It happened right in the middle of the post-orientation party. The music was thumping. A classmate asked me to join her on the dance floor. I went with her, almost anxiously. I was doing my safe self-conscious sidesteps I mimicked from one of the two tea-dances I'd attended in during my secondary school days. They pass off as dancing under disco strobes, but really, they were just simply sidesteps.

And then, I remember a voice telling me, relax... close your eyes... let go...

Well, it could've been me talking to myself, but I'm not kidding about the voice. I remember doing as it said, and released the hold my brain had on my limbs, and slowly, my body began moving on its own volition, tentatively at first, and then before I knew it, I was spinning around like a washing machine. Thankfully, I've evolved since.

And that's what I want to do this year. I'm just not so into clubbing at discos these days. Sometimes I stop dancing and look around at the people dancing around me, and they look faintly ridiculous to me. So this year, I've started on lessons, to rein in my enthusiastic but unlessoned feet. I started dancing ... the tango.

I was told one night by a woman in Xen bar that it was a dance of fierce passion, with origins in the bawdy bordellos of Argentina. One can say that I could not resist a premise so full of promise.

I spent whole of the last Saturday at the Singapore Dance Masters 2005, held at Raffles City convention hall watching a ballroom extravaganza not unlike the one featured in "Shall We Dance?" Contestants in plunging backlines, swirling skirts, tight pants and tuxedos waltzed and rhumba-ed bedazzled spectators like myself, trying so hard to out-perform each other in the two minutes of music that it showed in the ecstatic agony of their expressions.

Several high profilers graced the event. I saw Mrs Elizabeth Sam, (former?) deputy president of the OCBC, dancing with her young, handsome Filipino partner. Ms Hyflux, Olivia Lum also had her own young male consort, whose effortless handling of her planetary weight was jawdropping to say the least.

For the record, my bunkmate in NS and his wife were the only Singaporeans in the top three of Amateur Standard Ballroom event. He told me that he's about given up on the latin dances, where the young and energetic tended to triumph. I didn't hear voices in my head this time, but when he said that, I felt that near-imperceptible feeling of moving on.

We don't always feel it. But I think that everyday, we let things pass into history so that we can embrace more of the future.

Winners of the Standard Professional Open:
Stanislav Bekmametov & Natalia Urban of Russia,
proving once again that
dance is the vertical expression of a horizontal desire

International Women's Day

2005-03-08T23:24:00.000+08:00

While clearly aware that celebrating the international women's day does not quite equate to feminist activism, I sms'ed to my umfriend today, hoping that the solecism would slip past:
'hapy international women's day. so, hv u burnt ur bra yet?'

It's been four hours. There's still no word from her, but I'm beginning to feel some tension between us. If there's no tension, there's no passion. I'm getting better!

The difference between Law and Justice

2005-03-01T21:48:00.000+08:00

Every now and then, a country leader does something so downright #$%@$, and my Libran scales of justice gets really flipped.

If I may quote the Straits Times today, "Law minister S. Jayakumar yesterday dismissed suggestions that there were some serious lapses or a travesty of justice when a man's appeal against his convictions was heard only after he had finished his jail term."

He took elaborate pains to explain that Mr Yeo's case, (him being an unemployed man of 52, who spent nearly five months in jail serving time for the crime of 'letting an overstayer spend one night in his flat', a case which the Chief Justice overturned on appeal - a rare case in itself) was very rare and the result of unusual circumstance, and outrightrejected compensation for him. He also harped on the fact that there was no malice in the prosecution nor any delay or flaw in the system.

Let's agree on the fact that there is no 'malice in the prosecution' because that's a no-brainer, right? If I were a medical doctor and jabbed a patient with a HIV tainted needle, I should clearly be completely vindicated and pay no penance for that mishandling, because it happens in very rare cases under unusual circumstances, and may the sky fall down on our heads if doctors and hospitals harbour malice while prosecuting lawyers don't.

But for one to claim that there is really wrong with the judicial system when a man has been unjustifiably sentenced behind bars truly takes the left ball of a lawyer and the right ball of a politician.

So when our hero MP Arthur Fong asked if the public's sympathy was misplaced, our Minister of Law (not Justice, may I ironically add), answered not with regret, nor with the slightest compassion for Mr Yeo's plight that would have been his mitigating mark of humanity and nobility. He had predictably, dredged up old dirt from Mr Yeo's past, smeared it all over the latter's name, and quite possibly sealed the poor fellow's status amongst the unemployed.

But hey, to quote a certain remisier currently being sued by Chief Justice even though the CJ has no dealings with him and has never met the remisier in his life, "I should keep my mouth shut. I don't want to have free food and lodging."

Roaster to Rooster

2005-02-11T18:57:00.000+08:00

Look ma, I'm flying!

Since this is my first blog ever, I thought I'd start it on the Year of the Fire Rooster - and on a Positive Note too. I will see everything with the blind faith of Optimism. I will embrace Hope and spend this year in a happy state of Denial.

So far, in these two days, nothing's been going right, but hey, what's wrong with going left?

deja vu: This reminds me creepily of the first time I started on my homepage - yeah, back then in '99, it was called a 'homepage', ok.