those wandlike words

"we live, as we dream, alone.."

Conrad is a superb writer. he speaks of the power of Kurtz' unbounded eloquence, but he too is guilty of such a lovely manipulative tool, you gasp under the sheer weight and colossal immensity of his words..

hmm. picked up this book called The Hour that Changes the World. its good stuff. yeah its true that some books are 'anointed'. i picture the writer being really sensitive, intimately aware, acutely agile to the Holy Spirit's voice. how is it that everytime i randomly open up 'Our Journey' the title speaks directly into my situation? especially James MacDonald's entries, whoever he is. maybe he really seeks God, no matter, he always blesses me with his writing.

Rahim B Sulaiman! you are my pick for Most Courteous Taxi Driver Award. hahaha.
1. neat starched shirt and collar and clean appearance
2. you start the journey with a cheery 'good morning!'
3. your taxi smells nice. no smell of suffocating perfume, no groggy medicated oil...
4. your cab sounds peaceful. no jarring chinese pop tunes or 4D readouts or boppy dance remixes..
5. you end the journey with 'have a good day!'

mm. :) i think singapore's campaigns are hilarious. anyone seen the latest TeamSingapore song? hahaa typically the lyrics in the songs go along the lines of victory, unity, harmony.. reach up to the clouds.. blah dee blah.

uniquely singapore, eh?

heh here's another poem just for you. -sheepish giggle-

sunny island in the sea

small but enough space for you and me

babies grow grow grow we must

else the economy will go bust

we'll make space upwards

if not sidewards

hdb can do it very fast.

we have space in the pews

if not in the news

for wayward non-whites to repent,

else lightning and ashes

and twentyfour lashes

should make you quite

The Quiet Singaporean

who does all things right

all rebellion unlearn

as purified, newatered men.

thank you thank YOU thank you.

come on now, let's do the countdown! :) :) there's three of it, it lasts a total of 9 hours, it is my pet subject lit, it is my last wave to freedom!!
hee. the a levels are really stretching. i'm spread thin over the surface of my mountaineous notes. like how britain was spread thin and pink over the global empire. haha. i realise that studying is very unhealthy for me. i stop exercising, and i like to isolate myself so i can concentrate. that means that i dont sms much, i dont move much, i dont eat much... i dont LIVE much. i dont love much. i dont... i aint happy.

wait! i must tell you how wonderful GOD is. Today's history paper, well it came after tuesday and wednesday's economics paper, and i did not touch history since prelims.! i am not exaggerating in the least. even for prelims my knowledge for international history was sketchy cos i always think european history's more interesting :p yes, so today was supposed to be payback day. i spent last night nodding over my notes and fell asleep. having glanced through only 1. ECOSOC notes on the bus [which amounts to 1/4 of 1/5 of international history, which is 1/2 of total history.] 2. 3/4 of Korean War [which is half of one fifth of what i had to do..] so you can imagine how bad things were.
FELL ASLEEP! that is the most disastrous thing that can happen to you when youre pressed for time. so i slept, woke up intermittently at 3+, 5am and 6am, dreamt of alligator like monsters and fat shirtless men monsters and my knife-hacking attempts to shut the door on them and keep them from bursting through the doors. no kidding.
i rushed off to school and started uh studying. and then, PEOPLE came. that's like altogether a different type of monster, the DUMPYOURSTUDIESYOU'RE GONNA DIE monster. monster that talks too much while you're panicking, talks too much negative stuff like [you havent studied? you're dead la.] worries too much [skarli this specific question come out for origins of Cold War, then we GG la. you know what to say meh?] ...grr.
so i typically, isolated myself on the fourth floor. haha. until another classmate kept popping in and out of the room asking if i practised essays, if i know how to answer Nuclear Race essays, if i wanted to do essay outlines with him....
i tell you, when you deliberately want to isolate yourself and cram into your brain 2 years worth of syllabus in 1.5 hours, you really wont appreciate company. so i quite [un?]courteously asked him to leave me alone i was dying.
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you know what? i managed to squeeze two years worth of syllabus down my throat and do a decent paper. really really thank God. i definitely know that without his help, i wouldnt have passed the paper decently. for example, originally i wanted to do Crisis of Communism, but suddenly last night i decided i'll do nuclear arms instead. and i made the right spot, cos this year's crisis question was the same topic as last years- the one that everyone skipped while they were studying. so if i chose to study Crisis, i would have been majorly screwd. does any of this make sense to you? would it if i said for international history alone the lecture notes [excluding readings] measure up from my elbow to the tip of my fingers?
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now all that can go into the witch campfire for all i care. so if somebody wishes to rescue history, econs, math?!, lit notes from the fire, please just take it all.

be glorified through my weakness.

for what its worth.

aggravating!! this is the second time im typing this! darn blogger picture upload.

as i was saying, its friday. its the end of the week! hullaballoo. yes anyhow, exams in a sense are a blessing. i just need to say thank you jesus. really. cambridge's gone nuts, all the papers are much harder than previous years [they say this every year i know but this time, its TRUE.] but God has pulled me through one week of it and im quite sure the rest of the weeks will be fine.
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yes, and i also said- everything repeated a second time loses its freshness and taste. if this one doesnt get published i'll just heck it and go do something else other than typey typey.

AHH! do u see the picture? Blogger picture works! only if you upload the picture from your computer instead of from the web.

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check out Mr Leong Chee Tung, ex-rjc's comment on the press freedom index in Singapore. he has gone where many have not dared to, andhis comments are commendable as well as sensible.

this is one reply to his provocative letter to the ST.

"...An irresponsible free press can spark chaos, violence and conflicts, leading to untold miseries for the people. This kind of freedom is too high a price to pay for developing countries. We certainly do not want this.
I would rather live in Singapore, ranked 140th in RWB's international ranking of press freedom, than in a country which ranked 125th but is devastated by internal wars, riven by factional divisions and plagued by foreign intervention."
-Paul Chan Poh Hoi

here are my takeaways, emphasised in red.

singapore is largely a developed country. we are young, but level of development is linked to economic standards and education levels, to a larger extent than it is to numerical age. if we claim we are still not ready to adjust and form sensible judgements through filtering information we receive from the press, when will we ever be ready? is this a specific number you can pinpoint? the answer is, that we are ready whenever society determines we are ready- it is an approximation derived through experience and experimentation, not a figure thrust top-down.

a free press does not necessitate an irresponsible press. there is a distinct line between being destructive and responsive. a free press is one that has the freedom to respond and evaluate government policies- both its good and bad, which itself reflects participation in nation's politics. on one hand, political participation and awareness is advocated, yet on another the freedom to do so is restricted. this is a fundamental imbalance, and is no way to proceed toward greater political sensitivity and engagement.

'i would rather live in singapore'... it is true that singapore has had a remarkable economic record. what we need to understand though, is that a sound economy need not be mutually exclusive to a free press. there is no mandatory 'we would rathers' about it. it is possible to have the best of both worlds, in regions like australia and america. it is rather infantile, if not paranoid, to associate a free press with violence and social anarchy. a free press need not be divisive. it is simply interactive.

infinite apologies to you, you and you!

In lieu of the harsh security safeguards and crawly eyes over this blog, all that is safe to say is Hi and Bye. Oh, and i suppose you can talk about Love and Flowers and Barney and the Beauty of Bamboos and real inspirational stuff like that. But Definitely NO to:

1. toothbrushes [potential weapon, discrimination against anti-hygienists]
2. angels [ what about those who cant and dont make up their minds about heaven?]
3. bombs [you might be a potential terrorist.]
4. handicap toilets [you inconsiderate insensitive megalomaniac.]
5. skipping ropes [don't you know jumping is Banned nowsadays ever since windows were created? and ROPES rope! how DARE you! dont you know that ropes used in conjunction with ceilings become highly dangerous lethal menaces??]
6. the colour white. or yellow. or black. or peach. [youunbelievableRacist!]

7. exam countdowns. [this one is a personal request. you are increasing stress levels in an already stressed singapore- we already have clocks for that, thankyouverymuch.]

Right now i'd like to apologise to all those who dislike math and numbered lists, as well as to those from the Big Big Brother who have to bear such a heavy burden Watching Us [no harm done here i hope], as well as those who do not like reading English but are currently doing so, and also to those Do-Gooders-Eco-Warriers who believe that laptop energy emissions are doing our universe a great deal of harm, as well as to my parents for typing on a computer while they are asleep and thus unable to supervise, and to those people who expected to find something here which they did not, and especially to History9067/3 for spending time typing this instead of focusing on you.

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And i'd just like to say, just what Mr. Goh Chok Tong has himself said,

that what Mr Lee Kuan Yew said in 1959 still holds today-

"You are not going to teach us how we should run this country. We are not so stupid. We know what our interests are and we try to preserve them."

because, you see, if you say what someone else has said before, you are at most a shadow [even not an entirely original one] and so when the BigBrothers come running, you can just melt into the pavement and get trodden past unhurt.

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Moral of the Day [a variant of what Russell Peters has said before]:

Be a Shadow! Do the the Right Thing.