"Luck is all I need"

Joan took the Which Singaporean Elite School Do You Belong To? quiz and the result is Dunman High School

You think that you are different from other elite schools.You probably know the difference between a yangqin and a liuqin. You believe that you are better than them, as evident in your world-views and personal experiences. And in most cases, you are right. That is until you find yourself inevitably sucked into the rat race. You sometimes resent yourself for turning into the competitive and unfeeling creature that you really are not. Otherwise, you are generally good-natured, kind-hearted and frown upon vicious competition. In your quiet moments, you think "Luck is all I need".

---

I always thought myself as different from other people. I imagined a life of glitz and glam, yet relaxed and comfy, it's all part of the living in the east kind of suburban lifestyle. I wanted to be a writer, and publish hot-selling books, and have them sold across the world, maybe translated into different languages. I could do my books in both English and Chinese with little problems. I'd be sleeping in the day and working at night, I'd be meeting friends for high tea, and maybe even with a acessory kid in a chic stroller, I'd be bringing my laptop down to the beach to view the sunset and the plot unfolds before my eyes. Home would be a smallish but cute condo tucked somewhere in the East. Along the way Hollywood would pick up my stories and adapt them into full length motion pictures. Book tours, readings, discussions, seminars, all of them would follow...

Well, as life proceeds on, all I can see in my future is a stable job in the civil service, a HDB flat in Sengkang, marriage, a kid, maybe an upgrade to an executive condo in Buangkok, another kid, continue on with my job and get long service awards for 10 years, 20 years, watch my kids grow old and get sucked into the same kind of lifestyle as myself, grow old, retire, live on my CPF and maybe my kids, pray hard I don't fall sick, die. Great...

*stares at the pile of manuscripts in front*

If only I have an agent, or maybe a publisher, just one big break for me to make it big... And I know I have the talent for it!

I read widely, I read in both languages. I love my Donna Leon books as much as my Liang Yusheng's. I know the difference between Jin Yong and Gu Long. I can even read traditional Chinese characters in the up to down, right to left format. I have lots of wonderful ideas and interesting plots which pan out inside my head. I've a pile of manuscripts collecting dust somewhere. I have a life before me... So where am I?

Honestly, I have no idea...

A Class 3 License Named Desire

Recently there's been a debate about a family member taking up driving lessons. It made me think about the time when I was 18, fresh out of A Levels, with lots of time on hand and nothing to do. Why hadn't I learned driving then?

I only started taking up lessons into my final year in NUS, at the ripe old age of 22-23. It isn't too uncommon. There were still plenty of people who hadn't started taking lessons yet, also plenty of people who hadn't passed their TP test yet, but there's also a fair number of my peers who are already driving for a couple of years. I wasn't particularly old among the students in my driving school. All my driving instructors regarded me as a student, along with the other 18 year olds since I was still technically a student, even as a fresh graduate.

I passed my TP test on my first attempt. Ask any Singaporean who drives and you'll know this is something to be bragged. The passing rate is low, the passing rate for first timers is lower, and the passing rate for female first timers is about shin high.

So why hadn't I been driving much earlier?

I was 18, fresh from my A Levels, and scared of the world that awaits me. All the talk about low passing rates, high driving lesson fees, and the difficult controlling the clutch frightened me. I knew I wasn't ready yet. Furthermore, I can't deny the fact that my hand-eye-mind-leg coordination was trash, I can't differentiate right and left, and worse, I have very poor judgement. I am definitely not what anyone can describe as a driver. But I love cars. Nothing excites me more that a fast German car, and I'm proud to say I know my CLKs from the SLKs, and I have my preferences. I know one day I will be driving. But that day wasn't when I was 18.

My father did express some disappointment when I wasn't like any other 18 year olds pestering to learn driving. He talked to me much about his days of driving illegally as a 14-15 year old when he was an apprentice mechanic with access to cars in the workshop, and his TP test when he had a stroke of bad luck and almost met with an accident but still managed to pass because of his quick thinking and fast reflexes. He also talked about the good old days when being 16 was all you needed to get a license. But I knew I was going to be a road hazard, and I was scared of failure. Maybe more of the latter, much more than I thought so then.

I finally decided to take up lessons in my final year of studies for a very selfish reason. That was the last year I was leeching off my parents, and if I took lessons, they would be paying for it. The deal was that they would pay for all my lessons until my driving test. If I failed, I would have to pay for more lessons on my own since I would have graduated then, and I knew I would have done so. But until then, I was happy living off my parents.

The first few lessons confirmed my greatest fear that I sucked at driving. I could have got full marks for both theory tests but that had no bearing on my ability to think and transmit my thoughts to my eyes, hands and legs in a split second. My engine stalled almost every 5 minutes. And I couldn't bring myself to learn automatic because of the dream of speeding down the A8 in a CLK in Germany. But at that time I truly hated driving. Maybe it wasn't driving that I hated, I hated that sense of failure. My life has always been plain sailing, and there wasn't anything that I truly sucked at, if there was any, I wasn't doing it, so it didn't matter.

Driving was killing me so bad that I took a 6-months break. In all my life of studying, I never once felt this amout of stress and pressure on my that I felt so suffocated. I pushed registering for the TP test because I felt I wasn't ready, and I wanted so badly to pass so that I needn't have to pay for additional driving lessons on my own.

Now thinking back, I realise that deep down in my subconscious, it was never about money, it was never about age, it was all about my fears. I wanted so badly to drive well despite knowing that nothing my my bones and reflexes contained the ability to drive. Yet still I wanted to prove my body wrong and that my will could triumph. It took my 4 years to muster up that will. Listening to horror stories of friends, listening to triumphant stories from different people, and listening to myths about how to pass. Now thinking back, I think deep down I knew I could do it.

I stepped out of my 6-month hiatus without forgetting anything about driving. All it took was another driving instructor to bolster up my confidence. It wasn't that my previous instructors were bad, but they were telling me the things I wanted to hear. This instructor seemed to be made to work the way I handle my work. And things got better, I stopped stalling, I gassed up and accelerated, I felt welded to the steering wheel, my confidence grew.

Now that my class 3 license is safely in my pocket, i slackened. I have yet grown used to driving but at least I know I could do it. My early fears were also what motivated me to prove myself.

Enlightened Absolutism

My political view is that democracy sometimes might not be the best form of government because a country of 51% baboons, under democracy, will be governed by a monkey, leaving the 49% under excruciating control. If democracy is not the best form of government, then what is?

Theoretically an enlightened absolutism could be the best form of control, if there is a benovelent ruler who not only is fair but also wise. There isn't a need to worry about stupid people ruining the country since the benovelent ruler decides everything. And people won't be upset with the decisions made by the benovelent ruler because he knows everything and his decision is always the best. However, this is only an ideal solution because man is faliable. Not man can achieve the benovelence and enlightenment needed for this to be successful.

As the popular saying goes, power corrupts. Any faliable man when put in a position of power will crave for more power and greater autocracy to make sure that his position of power will never be threatened by anyone else. As such, some decisions made by him would not be of the best interest to the general population. And because these decisions aren't the best decisions, people oppose, and the enlightened absolutism becomes a failure.

Another problem that we face is that the world is divided into many different types of governments. Because of the discrepancies of the various governments, it is impossible to establish a single type of rule across all borders to eliminate borders and create a uniform rule.

Creating a borderless society of the whole world would eliminate many problems faced by many lands in this present world and will eliminated the problems that have plagued mankind since societies were formed. The eradication of wars and disputes. There wouldn't be a need for wars when everybody in the world is from the same global society. There won't even be cultral conflict, racial, ethnic, religious conflict, since everyone is the same. How about a classless society? That would sound a bit Marxist...

Well, perhaps a classed society might be better. WIth everyone doing their job, a little bit like the worker ants, where there's a social hierachy but everyone working like a well oiled clockwork. Everyone knows their place in society and does their job well. Life would be so much simpler like that, and people can be happy with their day to day life, and not fret about climbing the social ladder and getting caught up in the rat race.

But no, it's not about birth rights, because that would lead to inbreeding and the degrading of the quality of the top tiered class. Rather, the class structure is based on merit and everyone has the chance to perform.

Utopian remains utopian because man is faliable and unable to achieve utopia.

Beware of Phishing

I got an email from a supposed Paypal requiring me to verify my details.


On the surface it looks pretty decent, a proper header, the use of the trademark signs when necessary, even the hyperlink and the return email address looks pretty legitimate.

BUT!

The biggest tell tale sign that this is a phishing email is that this is not the primary email address I'm using for my Paypal account.

Then I ran my cursor over the seemingly legitimate hyperlink and look at this,

It appears that the hyperlink would be redirecting me to some other weird website.

So I ran a check on the full message header to check where the email originated from, and take a look at this,

It clearly states that the author of the email is not from Paypal but some other weirdshite organisation.

For pre-emptive measures, I decided also to check with Paypal to doubly make sure that this is phishing even though I'm already 99% sure that it is. So I ran around to check for an email address from Paypal to see if I can check it with them. True enough, Paypal does have a whole range of security measures, and specific departments to handle all sort of phishing complaints. To report phishing emails, just forward the email received to spoof@paypal.com simple as that, and that was what I did.

And their response was pretty quick, not that I think it'd take pretty long for them to decide if they did or did not send out verification emails.

But at least it's one less worry off my back.

Usually I don't go to such an extent to report phishings, but Paypal is different because they handle my money, and anything that has a direct relation to me and my money is a pretty serious issue. Over here I'd like to highlight the importance of recognising a phishing email and not fall into the traps of phishing.

Malaysian Elections

For some unknown reason, I was actually quite interested in this round of elections in Malaysia. Maybe because I just returned from Malacca and Kuching, and looking at the actual state of Malaysia that made me think a little bit more, or maybe I just happened to have matured a bit, or maybe it's the high coverage of non-mainstream media reports that are floating about the internet that I can easily access. Or maybe it's a bit of a mixture of all those above mentioned reasons and some more.

But anyway, my point is that I'm quite unsure if a weak Malaysia or a strong Malaysia is better for Singapore. And I'm unsure if a strong BN equates to a weak Malaysia or a strong opposition equates to a weak Malaysia. Politics and social development is so complicated.

Anyway, I was reading some of the abstracts of the opposition party and I thought that the opposition parties in Malaysia are getting smarter. Or at least more sound that they're actually viable oppositions. Take for example PAS, I always thought that they were some sort of a staunch Islamic group, but they've modernised. The main focus of the party now is not to convert Malaysia into an Islamic state and impose religion on everyone, but to stand against corruption, rising prices, and promote harmony among the races. The DAP's also a very interesting party, there's a lot of highly educated people among the ranks, and they know what is it that could make Malaysia stronger, and their calls for a Malaysian Malaysia.

Well, let's just say that if I were a Malaysian... But anyway I'm not and I've different interests at stake, so I'll just watch the results and see how things go from there I suppose. Congrats to the the opposition for winning for than a third majority, good luck to you guys. Congrats to the BN for winning the majority of the seats, good luck to the government.

Lowering Standards of Living Or?

I spotted this headline on the papers today and discussed briefly about this issue with my father. The headline was something about PM Lee urging Singaporeans to buy frozen pork rather than fresh pork. My first thought was back to the comments made my a certain stupid minister who commented that Singaporeans should adjust our ways of livings to fit in with the economy and not keep complaining that prices are rising everywhere.

Immediately I thought that that was another ploy to get Singaporeans to buy the cheaper frozen pork rather than continue buying more pricey fresh pork and complaining that pork prices are on the rise.

But as my father pointed out, economics somethings is not purely economics. PM Lee's comments might sound like an economic reason, but the politics behind it might just be more profound.

If we look at pork, most of our fresh pork comes from Malaysia and Indonesia, and another bulk of it from Australia. Our frozen pork comes from all over the world, we all know the most *cough cough* place up north where people now have stopped purchasing most food items from, but our frozen pork doesn't just come from the region. Recently Singapore has been getting frozen pork imports from less traditional places such as Brazil and Chile, and it isn't just frozen pork but also frozen chicken and stuff. Indeed, frozen meat is cheaper than fresh ones, but for some types of cooking methods, using a frozen pig and a fresh pig makes little difference. In such a situation, why choose a fresh pig over a less costly one?

It does sound like an economics reason. But if we think deeper into economics theory, remember demand and supply? Fresh pigs are expensive because we don't have pigs in Singapore. If we want to reduce the price of the pigs without reducing demand, we have to try and increase supply, hence the increase in the supply of frozen pigs hoping to spoil the pig markets. Only if there isn't a different market for fresh and frozen pigs can there be such a spoiling of the market to reduce the price of pork.

Ultimately, it isn't just a reduction in price of pigs, but the message being sent out the the neighbouring pig suppliers. We all know the that the main suppliers have also been supplying lots of other stuff to Singapore, and they know that too. To them, they think that Singapore is reliant to them on everything, and hence they think that as long as they want to increase their prices, Singapore will have no choice but to accept it because we are in no position to choose or reject their price increases.

To a certain extent, this is quite true, whenever there are cases of animal diseases outbreak, Singapore suffers a great deal. The last time there was this Nipah virus thingie. I think it was after that incident that Airpork because a household name, well it was also due to advertising, and it was also since then that Airpork became the pork of my choice. I'm quite sure that we can rely on Airpork, but freighting fresh pork in from Australia is definitely much more expensive due to the logistics. So Singaporeans would still choose the cheaper neighbouring fresh pork over the more expensive Airpork. It's like why people choose to go to wet markets rather than supermarkets, cheaper, fresher, and all those other reasons.

Hence, cheaper frozen pork might just be an alterative to cheaper fresh pork if your cooking doesn't call for fresh pork.

Things sometimes are just what they mean at face value, but does have a deeper connotation, that's just a matter of whether you are able to pick it up. I must admit that my first thought is the face value meaning, and needed a little prodding from the father before I realised this whole series of deeper meanings behind those simple words.

Art: Nature or Nurture?

I caught a bit of Front on TVMobile just now, and there was a short discussion about this topic. Are artists born with the talent (by nature), or do they have to undergo art education (through nurture)?

Photographer Geoff Ang stated that he was self taught, so I guess there must have been a talent there, but as he described himself as self taught, there must have also been learning and acquisition of knowledge there, so can that be counted as education? For me, I'd see education as formal education, ie one goes to an institution where there are formal instructors giving formal instructions and most importantly receiving a grade for the works produced, nothing can be more educationising as grades. Hence, I'd see Geoff Ang as an artist constructed by nature.

However, school directors from both La Salle and NAFA both stated that their institutions provide art students with the fundamentals which they would then use it to their own benefit in creating their art pieces. In a way, I guess they both agree that artists has to be borned with the talent, and that education to them is not a nurturing process but more of a catalysing process. I would have to agree with that if not for the fact that a formal instistution has a grading system. It's not a conscious process, but more of a subconscious process, talent through institutionalisation can be nurtured into losing their use of the talent they have.

To me, everyone can be loosely categorised as "cautious" or "daring", some maybe be of varying degrees in between, but everyone is one or the other. This trait is portrayed in how we want to get things done. A safe person is cautious and makes sure that everything goes well. It doesn't need to be spectacular, it just has to be well, and that's enough to satisfy the "cautious". A risk taker is daring, and goes out to strive for only the best, but when he fails, he sinks the deepest. In effect, he's polarised, when he does well, he's superb, when he does badly, he's shit.

Similarly, artists can be loosely categorised as a safe artist or a daring one. Let's just say that both start out with equal amounts of talent, which do you think would be the one who'd make his mark? I'd say, for better or for worse, the daring one would find his name carved in history whether it's a praise or a criticism. The safe artist would find his name lumped up with half a million other artists. The safe artist would end up living a nice and cosy life, contented with what he has, while the daring artist would most probably be either in debt and living like a cockroach or living lavishly and very happening.

The key here is which would you choose. The opportunity cost for this choice is very high because of the extremely high opportunity cost a daring artist has to pay.

People learn by trial and error, and maybe watching other people making the same mistakes, or learning by their own mistakes. Let's take the daring artist into the classroom to undergo formal art education where his works are graded.

The daring artist will be at his daring best and come up with highly controversial art pieces. Say, if he gets A+es for the first few, he's become cocky because he knows that he's talented and he's getting the grades equivilent to his talent. From there on he'd be coming up with more and more daring works. And at the end of his education, he'd come out into society as an artist created by God himself.

But let's just say that the daring artist comes up with art pieces that somehow doesn't catch the attention of his instructor and gets a bad grade out from it. Remember, art is subjective, teachers are biased humans, and the high opportunity cost a daring artist has to pay. The probability of the daring artist getting a bad grade is very high, say after a few Fs, do you think the daring artist still dare to be daring? I'd say at this point in time, the daring artist for the sake of his grades and overall performance would take on a more cautious approach to his art.

Even though grades might fluctuate, a daring artist would find his slew of A+ grades being pulled down by an equi-number of Fs. The daring artist would still be disheartened and look for ways to salvage his grades. That's where the model behaviour of the safe artist comes in.

The safe artist comes up with normal ideas, take on a more average approach to his king of art. He might be following a certain trend, or might be that he has little originality of his own. Either way, he's be having a constant stream of B grades, with the occasional As and Cs here and there, but never anything lower than a C. Yes, this is your safe artist. And when the daring artist sees the safe artist and see the successes he got out from his little Bs, don't you think that the daring artist would feel neglected and strive to work towards a better grade, or at least something that wouldn't fail on him.

This is the process where the daring artist becomes a safe artist no thanks to the pressures put on by the institution. Yes, I am very much against art education because I think that there is only so much that art students can learn out from it, much of them still rely on coming up with your own original ideas.

A god artist has to be one made by nature and not nurtured. However, we must also agree that putting grades aside and concentrating only on the learning part of education, picking up skills and knowledge, that would have been the most beneficial to the artist without all the other stress. Of course, putting grades aside, the best artist is still one who is has the natural borned talent but must also be capable ofabsorbing knowledge to the best interest in himself.

Spotted on the Toilet Door

I was at IMM the other day, erm, yes IMM, my first time there. We went there because we had this crazy idea of exploring there since I've never been to anywhere in the north and west parts of Singapore. Anyway, the key issue here is spotting this at the toilet door.


It was on the insides of the door of the toilet cubicles. Right above the little hook for hanging of your bags and stuff, you can see my little bag there.

I was sitting atop the toilet bowl when I saw that. The very first thing that struck me was "Damn!" and I looked at the top of the cubicle walls over to the other cubicles.

I think, when you have you panties down in the toilet and are basically half naked, losing a handbag should be the least of my worries. I'm more worried about losing my modesty! If some crook can steal my handbag over the walls of the cubicles, then that crook can bloody hell see me half naked, or worse, god forbid, take incriminating pictures and/or videos of me and post them online or extort money from me, or god knows what else can happen to me.

Yes, handbags are expensive stuff that would pain me to lose, especially since I'm a bag person and I love all my darling bags. And I know losing my wallet, handphone, camera would be almost akin to stabbing me, but those are more like material goods. I can buy another wallet, handphone, camera and stuff. But I cannot get my modesty back once it's lost.

I thought it was pretty funny that such a sign was posted up. I mean, obviously if a person is sitting on the toilet bowl, his eyes can look only in one direction, right? Like at the direction of the sign which would effectually make the sign redundant since the person is already looking at his bags and stuff. Them again, if by some reason or another he isn't looking at that direction, then isn't the sign more redundant?

What Is Death?

I know I'm only 20++ going on to 20+++, but somehow, this thought crept into my mind. What is death? Am I going to heaven, or hell, since I'm not a Christian; or am I going to be reincarnated; or am I just going to disappear? I'm trying to understand death by trying to look into the religious beliefs and also the scientific or logical explanation, but both doesn't allay my fears. Yes, after living for 20++ years, this is my first time being so fearful of death.

I've never been afraid of death. I was probably more afraid of the pain I were to suffer before I die, but now, I don't know why, this mindset has changed. I'd be able to endure all sorts of pain as long as I can survive, but well, this is my present mindset. Perhaps, when faced with different circumstances in the future my thinking might change again.

What is there after we die?

Using logical thinking, I think that death is just like sleeping, without the dreams. When we sleep, when we don't dream in our sleep, time passes by in a flash. Before we know it, we awake again. Hence, death might just be like sleeping just that we don't wake up, we'd lose consciousness and not know about anything that happened. It's just like a person suffering from amnesia. He doesn't know what happened to him before he lost his memory, ie after we die, what we would feel, what our souls and memory be like is like a person's lost memory. Stopped at that moment, never to be recovered.

I would be reassuring in a way because we consciously would cease to feel, and hence cease to fear, but also because of that, my fear becomes that which would happen. After I die, there would not be any Joan left in the world. I wouldn't be able to feel anything, I'd cease to exist, then now the me... My world centres around me, I cannot imagine the world carrying on without me because I've been so accustomed to the whole me idea.

If say I believed in the supernatural and that after we die we would become ghosts, then say if I were to die, I'd become a ghost. How does a ghost live? From folklore with a bit more logical thinking, ghosts would exist because the soul has unfinished business. Those who doesn't have unfinished business, or those who are willing to move on, would not be ghosts, instead, there's the end road for them, more about this later. I'd like to discuss a bit about ghosts now. Say, if there were ghosts and I were to die, would I want to be a ghost? Right now I'd say yes, I still have unfinished business, but how am I to accomplish all that, and when would I be able to give up on my unfinished business and move one?

I have a lot of things I want to do in my lifetime, but will I be able to do all that as a ghost? I don't know. I'd imagine life as a ghost is pretty boring and repetitive, hence without a very strong desire, ghosts would choose to move on. So do I have a strong desire? I don't know. But I know I'd have a very strong jealousy streak in me. If I were to see people happy about my death, I'd be more than angry and upset. I would want people to remember me, miss me, and continuing to remember and miss me. I'd certainly not want to see Someone moving on in life and replacing me with another girl. So what is my mission in staying on in this world? I don't know...

Then how about moving on? That's what I fear. At least if I were a ghost, I'd know that I'm still me, I still have the soul and consciousness that I know I'm Joan. But if I move on, I'd either disappear entirely or have all my memories ereased off and become something else, which I won't know. In a way, I've still disappeared. It's really very scary to think about one day if there isn't any more me. Call me self-centred, but ya, that's what I am. We all are, in some way or another.

Recently I've also been watching quite a few movies about the end of world, humanity dying. It's not just individuals dying but collective groups of people dying for causes that we see as supernatural or not normal, or fictional. I've watched Aliens vs Predator 2 and I Am Legend, within the past week, and I'll be watching Cloverfield some time next week after it opens. And that's what I've been thinking, what if humanity were to face such a massive disaster, where would I stand? Will I die?

The idea of monsters lurking out there ready to kill me is sort of haunting, I'm scared. I'm scared of the unknown, and there's nothing we know about the monsters out there so how am I going to deal with them. I'm not much resolute to fight them, or try and escape, I'd end up being killed by them, and it feels like a very horrible death.

What if large amounts of people were to die together, won't there be too many ghosts left roaming about? What if there are no more space left for the ghosts? Then there's the questions if the monsters are able to see and/or interfere with the ghosts. See, as with humans, ghosts should be unique to our world. And say, if our world were to be overrun by monsters, won't they want to take over the ghosts as well, but can they see the ghosts? Or maybe, there never were ghosts in our world at all, then it'd be easier for the monsters.

The virus thingie sounds a bit scarier than the idea of monster attack. In a monster attack, although we don't know much about the monster, at least we know it is a monster. How do you identify a virus with ones bare eyes? I remember the SARS outbreak, it came to almost being a national crisis, a tremendous horror story. Like the spread of SARS, it's also possible that another virus outbreak is possible, maybe a SARS/AIDS mutated virus or something like that. And soon it becomes like the KV of the one in I Am Legend.

Between a monster attack and a virus outbreak, I think I'd rather experience a monster attack and die from it. Death seems much more certain and immediate. I don't know what might happen to me should I suffer the virus attack. If death is imminent, it's probably a horrible, lonely, quarrantined death, which just sucks. If I get mutated into a vampire, I seriously don't know how I'm going to deal with that, I'd rather die. Still, both scare the shits out of me.

Looking back at history and examining what we are experiencing now, I seem to think that our life has been more than rosy. Throughout history, there has been wars and plagues, and suffering and whatnots, yet here we are totally happy and contented. Our lives seems so much better than anyone else who lived through history. I sort of feel that could this be a chilling foreshadowing of something much more sinister to come and catch us all unawares?

Life seems too good for me now, I'm really scared that if turbulent times were to fall upon me I won't be able to adapt to it. And yes, I'm very much afriad of death.

Remember what I said about death and sleeping? Death is something like sleeping with the dreams and everything alive. Well, lately, I've been afraid of going to sleep. I'm scared that with this sleep I won't wake up again, and everything will come to an end for me. Likewise, every time I open my eyes after a sleep, I'd feel thankful that I'm still alive and breathing. It doesn't help allay my fears with the rising reports of young people dying from unknown causes in the sleep.

I don't want to add to that statistic,

Myopia

Before I start writing about my view, I think this calls for the need of a disclaimer to be put over here. First, I admire Aung San Suu Kyi a great deal, I'm really moved by what she believes in, and what has she done for her people, and most of all I'm extremely in awe of how much she has sacrificed for her people. That to be said, I also must make it clear that I am well read about this issue, and have even written a paper on her, so I'm not one of those ignorant fools out there expressing ignorant remarks.

This has been a very big issue right at our doorstep lately. With the crackdown on the Burmese monks and continued house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi, many people have been criticising out government on not doing anything to help our neighbours in Myanmar. Trawling the web and reading blogs of the commonfolk, many have expressed their desire for the Singapore government and the whole of ASEAN to call for heavy sanctions against Myanmar to force them to relent their heavy-handedness. Especially lately, there's been an email from a top Burmese official's son mocking Singapore for allowing him to continue living his high life a la Paris Hilton.

I must say that that guy is a complete obnoxious moron who totally doesn't deserve anything like this, but what he said is also true. Singapore will continue to tolerate Myanmar and will never consider calling for sanctions. Economic ties between Singapore and Myanmar will continue, and very unfortunately, that brat will be getting his new Ferrari in no time.

Like the Singapore government, I don't see sanctions as a viable or effective option in democratising Myanmar. More importantly, I share the same view with our government that sanctions against Myanmar will cause ourselves more economic harm than the so called victim country.

Point one, sanctions will not be effective because Singapore is only a tiny red dot. Larger sums are traded between Singapore and other countries, but also larger sums are traded between Myanmar and other powers. This being said, even if we did impose sanctions on Myanmar, it would not do much economic harm to them to force the military junta to give up power. For as long as Myanmar still has another trading partner, things will be fine for Myanmar. That being said, Myanmar does has another huge ass trading partner in China, which are probably just as undemocratic as itself. Unless China also decides to impose sanctions, I don't see a point in Singapore imposing economic sanctions and hurting our own economy.

This goes on to my next point. I don't understand why a lot of people don't seem to be able to see the fact that Singapore is totally reliant on Myanmar that we cannot and must not impose any sanctions on them. Remember, if one we impose sanctions on Myanmar, Myanmar will do the same to us. Don't say we don't need anything from Myanmar, because we NEED. Had it not for the fact that Singapore need this commodity from Myanmar, I believe, Singapore might have already taken a stronger stance against Myanmar.

There is one commodity that Singapore imports only from Myanmar, giving Myanmar a monopoly over that commodity, and that is one very important raw material essential to the very survival of Singapore as a nation-state. Sand. Since Indonesia ceased trading sand with us, Singapore's economy suffered a dip, and Singapore had to seek other alternatives. It took more than a short period of time for Singapore to be able to find an alternative in Myanmar, do you think we'd give all this up and see our economy wither off? No way. Even now, Singapore is paying six times the amount for sand from Myanmar than previously from Indonesia, imagine how much sand would cost if sanctions were to be placed on them. Imagine how Singapore's development will come to a total standstill if that were to happen. Sentosa, integrated resorts, lan reclamations, the building industry. Singapore will be screwed.

Unless Singapore is able to locate a viable and economical alternative to Myanmar in the sand trade, there's no way Singapore can take up a hard stance against Myanmar. Dubai wanted to partake in this sand trade with us some time after the Indo-sand fiasco, but it's just not economically viable to import sand from that far away, hence talks has been scrapped. And that means, we need to be nice to Myanmar.

Also, we can't even say out loud this reliance on Myanmar because that will only make Myanmar even more cocky and that would also be detrimental to the democratic activism in Myanmar itself.

What Singapore can do now is only to put their words across as harshly as possible, and show solidarity to the Burmese people while not angering the military junta. That might be quite contradictory, but that is exactly what the government is doing now. Letting the people speak up against the junta, while the government retains it's close ties with the junta. Yes, I have utmost support for the democratic movement in Myanmar, and I'd do my best to be able to help the Burmese people. But that being said, I also understand the position of the government, and understand the precarious position of Singapore in this much larger context. No government bashings for me, and definitely no calls for any kind of economic sanctions by me.

(And no, this is not a pro-government piece. Anyone who knows me would know that I have less than kind words to say about our government. But let's just say, I know that the government is smarter than most of the ignorant folks out that, and that's why they are the government and you are not.)

Tree. Leaf. Wind

Saw this. Read this. Loved it.
So I decided to put it up to share.

***

Tree

People called me “Tree”.

I had dated 5 girls when I was in Pre-U. There is this one other girl whom I loved a lot but never dared to go after. She didn’t have a pretty face, a good figure or an outstanding charm. She was just a very ordinary girl. I liked her. I really liked her. I liked her innocence, her frankness, her intelligence and her fragility.

The reason for not going after her was because I felt somebody so ordinary like her was not a good match for me. I was also afraid that after we were together, all the feelings would vanish. I was also afraid that gossip from other people would hurt her. I felt that if she became my girl, she’ll be mine ultimately & I wouldn't have to give up everything just for her. This last reason, made her stay around for 3 years. She watched me chase other girls, and I have made her heart cry for 3 years.

She was a good actor, and I was a demanding director. When I kissed my second girlfriend, she bumped into us. She was embarrassed but smiled & said, “Go on!” before running off. The next day, her eyes were swollen like a walnut. I did not want to know what made her cry. Later that day, I returned from soccer training and found her crying in the classroom for an hour or so.

My fourth girlfriend did not like her. There was once when both of them quarreled. I know that, based on her character, she is not the type that will start the quarrel. However, I still sided with my girlfriend. I shouted at her & ignored her feelings and walked off with my girlfriend. The next day, she was laughing & joking with me like nothing happened. I know she was hurt but she did not know deep down inside I was hurt too.

When I broke up with my fifth girlfriend, I asked her out. Later that day, I told her I had something to tell her. I told her about my break up. Coincidentally, she has something to tell me too, about her getting together with someone else. I knew who the person was. His pursuit for her had been the talk of the School. I did not show her my heartache, just smiles & best wishes. Once I reached home, I could not breathe. Tears rolled & I broke down.

How many times have I seen her cry for the man who did not acknowledge her presence?

During graduation, I read an SMS on my hp. It said, “Leaf’s departure is because of Wind’s pursuit. Or because Tree didn’t ask her to stay?”

Leaf

People called me Leaf.

During my 3 years of Pre-U, I was on very close terms with a guy. However, when he had his first girlfriend, I learnt a feeling I never should have learnt - Jealousy. They were only together for 2 months. When they broke up, I hid my happiness. But after a month, he got together with another girl.

I liked him & I know he liked me. But why didn’t he pursue me?
Since he loves me why didn’t he make the first move? Whenever he had a new girlfriend, my heart would hurt. After some time, I began to suspect that mine was one-sided love.
If he didn’t like me, why did he treat me so well? It was beyond what you will normally do for a friend. I know his likes, his habits. But his feelings towards me I never figured out. You can’t expect me, a girl, to ask him. Despite that, I still wanted to be by his side - care for him, accompany him, and love him. Hoping that one day, he will come to love me.

Because of this, I waited for him. Sometimes, I wondered if I should continue waiting. The pain, the dilemma accompanied me for 3 years.

At the end of my 3rd year, a junior started pursuing me. Everyday he chased me. He was like a cool & gentle wind, trying to blow a leaf off a tree. Eventually, I realized that I wanted to give this Wind a small footing in my heart. I know the Wind will bring the Leaf to a better place. Finally, Leaf left the Tree, but the Tree only smiled & didn’t ask the Leaf to stay.

Leaf’s departure is because of Wind’s pursuit. Or because Tree didn’t ask her to stay?

Wind

I liked a girl called Leaf. But because she was so dependent on Tree, I would have to be a gust wind. A wind that will blow her away.

When I first met her, it was 1 month after I was transferred to this new school. I saw a petite person watching my seniors & I playing soccer. During ECA time, she will always be sitting there. Be it alone or with her friends, looking at him. Whenever he talked to other girls, there was jealousy in her eyes. Whenever he looked at her, there was a smile on her face. Just like her watching him, watching her became my habit as well.

One day, she didn’t appear. I felt something missing. I can’t explain the feeling except that it was a kind of uneasiness. The senior was also not there as well. I went to their classroom, hid outside and saw my senior scolding her. Tears were in her eyes while he left. The next day, I saw her at her usual place, looking at him. I walked over and smiled to her. Took out a note & gave it to her. She was surprised. She looked at me, smiled & accepted the note. The next day, she appeared & passes me a note and left.

It read, “Leaf’s heart is too heavy and the wind couldn’t blow her away.”

“It’s not that Leaf's heart is too heavy. It's because Leaf never wanted to leave Tree.” I replied her note with this statement and slowly, from that day on, she started to talk to me & accept my presents & phone calls. I know that the person she loves is not me but I have this belief that one day I will make her like me.

Within 4 months, I have declared my love for her no less than 20 times. Every time, she will sway away from the topic, but I never gave up. I decided that I want her to be mine and I will definitely use all means to win her over. I can’t remember how many times I have declared my love to her. Although I know, she will try to avoid it, I still held onto a small ray of hope.

Hoping that she will agree to be my girlfriend, I finally asked her over the phone one day. There was silence over the phone so I asked, “What are you doing? How come you didn’t want to reply?” And she said, “I’m nodding my head”. “Ah?” I replied. I couldn’t believe my ears. “I’m nodding my head”, she replied loudly. I hang up the phone, quickly changed and took a taxi to rush to her place. When she opened the door, I hugged her tightly.

Leaf's departure is because of Wind pursuit. Or because Tree didn’t ask her to stay…

***

如果当初我留住了你，
如果当时你留住了我，
如果当年我们俩不那么的固执...

也许现在的我___________。

***

I actually have another personal story that I wanted to share, I've been wanting to share it for quite some time already, but somehow everytime I have the impetus to put it up I'm not anywhere near the computer, and when I am at the computer, I feel that time is not right for me to put it up. I promise I'll put it up one day, till then...

Dumb Cabbies

It's no secret that I hate cabbies. I think all cabbies are out to cheat people's money. But of course, I know that's a sweeping statement, and that there are still some generally nice cabbies out there, and I've had some nice ones before. But still, the nasty ones somehow are so prominent that they fucked upthe whole cabbie profession.

Since I started driving on the road, I had the reinforced notion that cabbies are the worst kind of drivers on the road. Yes, I don't like to be stuck behind or in front of another L-plate driver, or even a P-plate driver, nor worse, being stuck behind an L-plate MID driver, but I tell you, the worst of all is being stuck in front of a cabbie.

There were many times when I was driving at a safe speed, and the cabbie behind me had to *boooooohr* me and then overtake me. I mean if you want to overtake me then overtake me la, why still need to *boooooohr* me? I learn in the handbook that *boooooohr* is only to alert another driver to prevent an accident from happening. I'm going so safely that there isn't any accident waiting to be happened lor. But this wasn't the worst that happened to me...

The other day I was driving quite badly. Then I found myself behind a cyclist. I wanted to overtake the cyclist, but I wasn't confident in my overtaking skills, and while I hesitated, the oncoming traffic came and I could and didn't dare to overtake the cyclist. And so I decided to slow down and follow the cyclist. Then I stepped on the brake, then I decided to change gear, so I stepped on the clutch, then I stepped on the brake, and I didn't know what else I did, I went into panic mode.

Come on la, there are three pedals and I only have two feet, and I still have to ensure that I don't steer off course which is something I always so, and I need to change gear, and my left arm is very weak so I always have problems with gear shifting. And before I know what to do, the cabbie behind me *boooooohr* me.

Stepped on clutch again, release clutch, then dang. Car stalled. Great. Just great. The the cabbie behind *boooooohr* me again, and I fumbled my keys and tried to get the car going despite me jerking the car so much with my shaky hands and and legs. Then I continued following the cyclist and the cabbie behind be was snaking behind me waiting to overtake me but there was oncoming traffic. Serves him right.

I mean, even if you don't see my big big L-plate, you can see my car, can't you, stupid cabbie. I'm a school learner, I drive the generic school cars which have the school's big big logo plastered all over the car, you can at least see that can't you, stupid cabbie. My school's car is so cool that there's even a bumber sticker that reads, "I'm still learning, please be patient with me". Hell, yeah. The cabbie is just so dumb to realise that me stalling was all his fault, had he not *boooooohr* me I wouldn't have stalled lor. He's only making me go into panic mode and I totally cannot drive when I'm panicking.

And he still had the cheek to *boooooohr* a second time. My instructor was also quite pissed that he turned back and *stared* at the cabbie then the cabbie diam diam already. wah lau... If I didn't have an instructor beside me, I would definitely have had stopped the car and fail to restart the engine and just let the dumb dumb cabbie tio diao over there lor.

I told my dad this whole story, and he told me that he once saw this impatient taxi driver behind somebody, then that person was so pissed with the cabbie that the stopped his car, walked out and opened the bonnet and let the dumb dumb cabbie just tio diao over there. Serves him right.

I'm also damn tempted to try that out the next time I encountered a fucking fucked up impatient dumbass cabbie.

PS: Don't say I'm mean, I'm just treating them the same way they treat me.

PPS: The Chinese got a saying 欲速则不达, it means that the faster you want to hurry things up, the longer it would take you to reach your goal. And another saying 己所不欲，勿施于人, it means not to do on other what you don't want others to do on you. Remember that if you want to be a cabbie okie?

Conversation In A Park

Overheard in a park at about 9.30-10pm of a conversation between a couple sitting on a bench.

She: Look at that balding, short, fat man over there. I bet that he's damn deprived. Let's make out in front of him and make him feel jealous about us.
(Girl pulls Guy close to her and started kissing, but Guy burst out laughing.)
He: You're so damn evil.
She: No, I'm not evil, I'm just being mean. No, I'm not being mean, I'm just being playful only.
(Guy shakes his head in despair.)
(The balding short fat man leaves the park shortly after the kissing scene.)
(After Guy stops laughing, he pulls Girl close to him and wanted to kiss her.)
Girl: Haiya, kiss for what, also nobody around to see us kiss. Not fun one.
Guy: Huh??? You call this fun?
Girl: I think it would be more fun if there's someone who just broke up
and sitting around here watching us make out.
Guy: Wah, if it's me I'd definitely cry lor.
Girl: Hahahaha. Let's look around to see any lonely souls out there to make fun of.
Guy: You are so evil.
Girl: No, I'm just being playful, and have nothing better to do.

I think everyone more or less have some moments alone in a place filled with couples and look at the couples with a tinge of jealousy. I remember once when I walked down Singapore River to see the many couples hand in hand, or hand on waist, or whatever whatever, and even though I told myself, and I knew to myself that it didn't matter what my relationship status is, I was still happy about everything. But still, sometimes, there'd still be envy. Maybe some different times, there'd be a tinge of jealousy.

Last year, when I had lots of friends celebrating their 21st birthday, I saw a lot of them, those who were attached had a boyfriend around to help plan the whole party, help organise everyone, double up as the resident photographer, basically just do all the shit work of the party to let the birthday girl glow in her mature charm. I still remember the strong pangs of feelings I had then whenever I saw this kind of scene, there's this strong pang of how I wish I had a boyfriend too. Because that feeling is not based on love, I put it as jealousy and envy.

My birthday party wasn't too bad itself. I had friends. But the thing was that because I had different groups of friends, each group thought another group was to stay with me overnight and it turned out that nobody was staying with me overnight. It wasn't that bad because I was tired out and my family was coming in early the next day and I'm a person who enjoys solititute, but still, I wished that there was somebody beside me for me to cuddle up with. No, that's still not love, not lust even, it's more like possessiveness, and that's where the jealousy and envy come in again.

I still feel a tinge of envy when I'm alone and see a scene of lovey dovey couple, but the feelings is less strong. Maybe only on days when I'm feeling frustrated and need someone by my side but there's no one around. But then that's not love either. So what is this elusive thing called love?

Maybe I'm too immuned to love that I can't really feel love.
Maybe I just want to have my day of fun.

Then another thing I want to talk about is the amount of public display of affection that one can tolerate doing and watching. For me, I'm generally quite open about such stuff, as long as there's no nudity, and no sex of any kind involved, I can accept almost anything else. I think there need to be at least some sort of decency, but well, like you watch movies and TV programmes, there's a lot more affection in those other arenas.

But I'm totally fine with kissing and hugging. Maybe also I'm quite accustomed to the Western kind of lifestyle in the streets where kissing and hugging are the norm. I think kissing and hugging especially at train stations very touching. I try not to think of people straying, so what remains is the pure affection between the couples about to part.

I don't understand why some people are turned off by PDAs. I'd only think that the only thing dislikeable about it is the amount of jealousy and envy it can incur. hahaha~

Damn the Japs

Remind me again, why carry on this love-hate relationship with the Japanese...

Doctors of Depravity
After more than 60 years of silence, World War II's most enduring and horrible secret is being nudged into the light of day. One by one the participants, white-haired and mildmannered, line up to tell their dreadful stories before they die.

Akira Makino is a frail widower living near Osaka in Japan. His only unusual habit is to regularly visit an obscure little town in the southern Philippines, where he gives clothes to poor children and has set up war memorials.

Mr Makino was stationed there during the war. What he never told anybody, including his wife, was that during the four months before Japan's defeat in March 1945, he dissected ten Filipino prisoners of war, including two teenage girls. He cut out their livers, kidneys and wombs while they were still alive. Only when he cut open their hearts did they finally perish.

These barbaric acts were, he said this week, "educational", to improve his knowledge of anatomy. "We removed some of the organs and amputated legs and arms. Two of the victims were young women, 18 or 19 years old. I hesitate to say it but we opened up their wombs to show the younger soldiers. They knew very little about women - it was sex education."

Why did he do it? "It was the order of the emperor, and the emperor was a god. I had no choice. If I had disobeyed I would have been killed." But the vivisections were also a revenge on the "enemy" - Filipino tribespeople whom the Japanese suspected of spying for the Americans.

Mr Makino's prisoners seem to have been luckier than some: he anaesthetised them before cutting them up. But the secret government department which organised such experiments in Japanese-occupied China took delight in experimenting on their subjects while they were still alive.

A jovial old Japanese farmer who in the war had been a medical assistant in a Japanese army unit in China described to a U.S. reporter recently what it was like to dissect a Chinese prisoner who was still alive.

Munching rice cakes, he reminisced: "The fellow knew it was over for him, and so he didn't struggle when they led him into the room and tied him down. But when I picked up the scalpel, that's when he began screaming. I cut him open from the chest to the stomach and he screamed terribly, and his face was all twisted in agony.

"He made this unimaginable sound, he was screaming so horribly. But then finally he stopped.

"This was all in a day's work for the surgeons, but it really left an impression on me because it was my first time." The man could not be sedated, added the farmer, because it might have distorted the experiment.

The place where these atrocities occurred was an undercover medical experimentation unit of the Imperial Japanese Army. It was known officially as the Anti-Epidemic Water Supply and Purification Bureau - but all the Japanese who worked there knew it simply as Unit 731.

It had been set up as a biological warfare unit in 1936 by a physician and army officer, Shiro Ishii. A graduate of Kyoto Imperial University, Ishii had been attracted to germ warfare by the 1925 Geneva Protocol banning biological weapons. If they had to be banned under international law, reasoned Ishii, they must be extremely powerful.

Ishii prospered under the patronage of Japan's army minister. He invented a water filter which was used by the army, and allegedly demonstrated its effectiveness to Emperor Hirohito by urinating into it and offering the results to the emperor to drink. Hirohito declined, so Ishii drank it himself.

A swashbuckling womaniser who could afford to frequent Tokyo's upmarket geisha houses, Ishii remained assiduous in promoting the cause of germ warfare. His chance came when the Japanese invaded Manchuria, the region in eastern China closest to Japan, and turned it into a puppet state.

Given a large budget by Tokyo, Ishii razed eight villages to build a huge compound - more than 150 buildings over four square miles - at Pingfan near Harbin, a remote, desolate part of the Manchurian Peninsula.

Complete with an aerodrome, railway line, barracks, dungeons, laboratories, operating rooms, crematoria, cinema, bar and Shinto temple, it rivalled for size the Nazis' infamous death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The numbers of prisoners were lower. From 1936 to 1942 between 3,000 and 12,000 men, women and children were murdered in Unit 731. But the atrocities committed there were physically worse than in the Nazi death camps. Their suffering lasted much longer - and not one prisoner survived.

At Unit 731, Ishii made his mission crystal clear. "A doctor's God-given mission is to block and treat disease," he told his staff, "but the work on which we are now to embark is the complete opposite of those principles."

The strategy was to develop biological weapons which would assist the Japanese army's invasion of south-east China, towards Peking.

There were at least seven other units dotted across Japanese-occupied Asia, but they all came under Ishii's command. One studied plagues; another ran a bacteria factory; another conducted experiments in human food and water deprivation, and waterborne typhus.

Another factory back in Japan produced chemical weapons for the army. Typhoid, cholera and dysentery bacteria were farmed for battlefield use.

Most of these facilities were combined at Unit 731 so that Ishii could play with his box of horrors. His word was law. When he wanted a human brain to experiment on, guards grabbed a prisoner and held him down while one of them cleaved open his skull with an axe. The brain was removed and rushed to Ishii's laboratory.

Human beings used for experiments were nicknamed "maruta" or "logs" because the cover story given to the local authorities was that Unit 731 was a lumber mill. Logs were inert matter, a form of plant life, and that was how the Japanese regarded the Chinese "bandits", "criminals" and "suspicious persons" brought in from the surrounding countryside.

Shackled hand and foot, they were fed well and exercised regularly. "Unless you work with a healthy body you can't get results," recalled a member of the Unit.

But the torture inflicted upon them is unimaginable: they were exposed to phosgene gas to discover the effect on their lungs, or given electrical charges which slowly roasted them. Prisoners were decapitated in order for Japanese soldiers to test the sharpness of their swords.

Others had limbs amputated to study blood loss - limbs that were sometimes stitched back on the opposite sides of the body. Other victims had various parts of their brains, lungs or liver removed, or their stomach removed and their oesophagus reattached to their intestines.

Kamada, one of several veterans who felt able to speak out after the death of Emperor Hirohito, remembered extracting the plague-infested organs of a fully conscious "log" with a scalpel.

"I inserted the scalpel directly into the log's neck and opened the chest," he said. "At first there was a terrible scream, but the voice soon fell silent."

Other experiments involved hanging prisoners upside down to discover how long it took for them to choke to death, and injecting air into their arteries to test for the onset of embolisms.

Some appear to have had no medical purpose except the administering of indescribable pain, such as injecting horse urine into prisoners' kidneys.

Those which did have a genuine medical value, such as finding the best treatment for frostbite - a valuable discovery for troops in the bitter Manchurian winters - were achieved by gratuitously cruel means.

On the frozen fields at Pingfan, prisoners were led out with bare arms and drenched with cold water to accelerate the freezing process.

Their arms were then hit with a stick. If they gave off a hard, hollow ring, the freezing process was complete. Separately, naked men and women were subjected to freezing temperatures and then defrosted to study the effects of rotting and gangrene on the flesh.

People were locked into high-pressure chambers until their eyes popped out, or they were put into centrifuges and spun to death like a cat in a washing machine. To study the effects of untreated venereal disease, male and female "logs" were deliberately infected with syphilis.

Ishii demanded a constant intake of prisoners, like a modern-day Count Dracula scouring the countryside for blood. His victims were tied to stakes to find the best range for flame-throwers, or used to test grenades and explosives positioned at different angles and distances. They were used as targets to test chemical weapons; they were bombarded with anthrax.

All of these atrocities had been banned by the Geneva Convention, which Japan signed but did not ratify. By a bitter irony, the Japanese were the first nation to use radiation against a wartime enemy. Years before Hiroshima, Ishii had prisoners' livers exposed to X-rays.

His work at Pingfan was applauded. Emperor Hirohito may not have known about Unit 731, but his family did. Hirohito's younger brother toured the Unit, and noted in his memoirs that he saw films showing mass poison gas experiments on Chinese prisoners.

Japan's prime minister Hideki Tojo, who was executed for war crimes in 1948, personally presented an award to Ishii for his contribution in developing biological weapons. Vast quantities of anthrax and bubonic plague bacteria were stored at Unit 731. Ishii manufactured plague bombs which could spread fatal diseases far and wide. Thousands of white rats were bred as plague carriers, and fleas introduced to feed on them.

Plague fleas were then encased in bombs, with which Japanese troops launched biological attacks on reservoirs, wells and agricultural areas.

Infected clothing and food supplies were also dropped. Villages and whole towns were afflicted with cholera, anthrax and the plague, which between them killed over the years an estimated 400,000 Chinese.

One victim, Huang Yuefeng, aged 28, had no idea that by pulling his dead friend's socks on his feet before burying him he would be contaminated.

All he knew was that the dead were all around him, covered in purple splotches and lying in their own vomit. Yuefeng was lucky: he was removed from a quarantine centre by a friendly doctor and nursed back to health.

But four relatives died. Yuefeng told Time magazine: "I hate the Japanese so much that I cannot live with them under the same sky."

The plague bombing was suspended after the fifth bacterial bombing when the wind changed direction and 1,700 Japanese troops were killed.

Before Japan surrendered, Ishii and army leaders were planning to carry the war to the U.S. They proposed using "balloon bombs" loaded with biological weapons to carry cattle plague and anthrax on the jet stream to the west coast of America.

Another plan was to send a submarine to lie off San Diego and then use a light plane carried on board to launch a kamikaze mission against the city. The war ended before these suicidal attacks could be authorised.

As well as Chinese victims, Russians, Mongolians, Koreans and some prisoners of war from Europe and the U.S. also ended up in the hands of Ishii, though not all at Unit 731.

Major Robert Peaty, of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, was the senior British officer at Mukden, a prisoner-of-war camp 350 miles from Pingfan. Asked, after the war, what it was like, Peaty replied: "I was reminded of Dante's Inferno - abandon hope, all ye who enter here."

In a secret diary, Peaty recorded the regular injections of infectious diseases, disguised as harmless vaccinations, which were given to them by doctors visiting from Unit 731. His entry for January 30, 1943, records: "Everyone received a 5cc typhoid-paratyphoid A inoculation."

On February 23, his entry read: "Funeral service for 142 dead. 186 have died in 5 days, all Americans." Further "inoculations" followed.

Why, then, after the war, were nearly all the scientists at Unit 731 freed? Why did Dr Josef Mengele, the Nazi 'Angel of Death' at Auschwitz, have to flee to South America and spend the rest of his life in hiding, while Dr Shiro Ishii died at home of throat cancer aged 67 after a prosperous and untroubled life?

The answer is that the Japanese were allowed to erase Unit 731 from the archives by the American government, which wanted Ishii's biological warfare findings for itself.

In the autumn of 1945, General MacArthur granted immunity to members of the Unit in exchange for research data on biological warfare.

After Japan's surrender, Ishii's team fled back across China to the safety of their homeland. Ishii ordered the slaughter of the remaining 150 "logs" in the compound and told every member of the group to "take the secret to the grave", threatening death to anybody who went public.

Vials of potassium cyanide were issued in case anyone was captured. The last of his troops blew up the compound.

From then on, a curtain of secrecy was lowered. Unit 731 was not part of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal. One reference to "poisonous serums" being used on the Chinese was allowed to slip by for lack of evidence.

Lawyers for the International Prosecution Section gathered evidence which was sent directly to President Truman. No more was heard of it.

The Americans took the view that all this valuable research data could end up in the hands of the Soviets if they did not act fast. This was, after all, the kind of information that no other nation would have had the ruthlessness to collect.

Thus the Japanese were off the hook. Unlike Germany, which atoned for its war crimes, Japan has been able to deny the evidence of Unit 731. When, as now, it does admit its existence, it refuses Chinese demands for an apology and compensation on the grounds that there is no legal basis for them - since all compensation issues had been settled by a treaty with China in 1972.

Many of the staff at Unit 731 went on to prominent careers. The man who succeeded Ishii as commander of Unit 731, Dr Masaji Kitano, became head of Green Cross, once Japan's largest pharmaceutical company.

Many ordinary Japanese citizens today would like to witness a gesture of atonement by their government. Meanwhile, if they want to know what happened, they can visit the museum that the Chinese government has erected in the only building at Pingfan which was not destroyed.

It does not have the specimens kept at Unit 731: the jars containing feet, heads and internal organs, all neatly labelled; or the six-foot-high glass jar in which the naked body of a Western man, cut vertically in two pieces, was pickled in formaldehyde.

But it does give an idea of what this Asian Auschwitz was like. In the words of its curator: "This is not just a Chinese concern; it is a concern of humanity."

This is utter crap lor, remind me again, why I should hate the Japanese for all their war time crimes and guilt and until now they still aren't admitting their war crimes.

This whole article is littered with all the atrocities that I'd have been highlighting the entire article, but that would make the highlights redundant. But, please read the entire article.

Maybe it's precisely because of the post war treatment of the German prisoners of war and that of the Japanese, and because of the onset of the Cold War and America's anxious need for cold war allies that allowed the Japanese to be so bold in the actions. Thanks to the Americans, we now have such a Japanese unrepentant of their actions, and thanks to them, we now have a new generation of Japanese ignorant and nonchalant to the past actions of their elders.

How can people still argue for the Japanese that the two atomic bombs were used on Japan instead of Germany because the Americans were racist? Really, I'm so damn glad that the two bombs destroyed the Japanese even though the Japanese has been using it as some sort of the sympathetic device.

PS: There are more details about the Unit 731 at its Wikipedia page here.

Why does this sound so wrong?

link: Should a gay teacher be allowed to teach in schools?

Please click on the above link and read the entire article, then sit back and think and don't you find that there's something seriously wrong with this whole situation?

I agree totally with the first paragraph "At first glance, the answer to the question above is obvious. A teacher’s sexuality belongs to a private realm, and has no bearing on his ability to teach. There have been no known instances, for example, where one’s sexual orientation has impaired one’s ability to prepare lessons or manage a classroom."

But why is that that some other people/bureaucracies don't think the same way as me?
Frankly, what's the difference between a gay man and a normal man?
What's the difference between a gay couple and a normal couple?
What's the difference two people?

And what's up with this two very idiotic questions?
"Have you considered that you might fall in love with a student?"
"Have you considered that you might fall in love with a male colleague?"

Sure, having a male teacher groping the boys in his class is a major crime, having a male teacher falling in love with a boy in his class is very seductive, but but but what is the difference of that with another male teacher groping the girls in his class, or that of a male teacher falling in love with a girl in his class and perhaps even marrying her after he graduate. I personally know of two teachers back in my secondary school whose wives were their students last time. If MOE can condone that, why is there a need to pose such questions?

And seriously, is there a difference between falling in love with a male colleague and falling in love with a female colleague? Everywhere there are colleagues screwing around with each other, sometimes in underground affairs and sometimes openly, some of those relationships ended up in a bitter split of the workplace, some of them ended up in a blissful union. So, what is the point in preventing two males getting hitched when there are many many many cases of male teachers opening wooing female teachers?

Really, I cannot understand how homosexuality can be considered as a medical disability.

Love is blind. Yes, cliched, I know.
Since young, we were brainwashed in thinking that all races live in peace and harmony, and we should not judge people based on their skin colour yada yada. Growing up, there are always judgements made upon us if we say thing like "I'm not daing a person from a different race" and the likes of it. So if love can transcend colour, why can't it transcend gender?

If colour doesn't make a difference in love,
if age doesn't make a difference in love,
if health doesn't make a difference in love,
if social standing doesn't make a difference in love,
if financial capability doesn't make a difference in love,
if whatever whatever all don't make a difference in love,
why is there the difference in gender?

Don't preach that it is wrong, or bring some superbeing into the picture because wrong is a moral judgement and in this case, the judge here is you and you alone, and your word alone can't stand. Don't bring in the superbeing nor his teachings because all religions are preached by humans, and in this case, it is this certain human that is making a moral judgement, and his word alone doesn't stand.

The only reason that I can think of about why some people and/or some groups of people are so against homosexuality is that they are ignorant about love, or ignorant and filled with extreme stereotypical images of gays.

Okay, I'm not a lesbian so I can't say for sure what goes through the mind of a homosexual, nor can I qualify anything about homosexuality, but I am a normal citizen, and I have my right to voice my opinion about stuff, and I have the right to feel a certain way about some issues, and this is my take on this issue.

Anyway, this particular incident sounds even more screwed up to me is the way this circumstance was handled. Everything was so arbitrarily handled that it makes me feel that that poor guy was so wronged and was screwed by this crappy bureaucracy.
"When he was in the army, he had asked both the Medical Officer as well as the psychiatrist he was referred to whether declaring himself a homosexual would affect his future prospects in the civil service. He was given full reassurance that the 302 classification (the military’s code for homosexual personnel) was the sole provenance of the Ministry of Defence, and was not a universal trans-ministerial category."

So, they can say one thing on one day and say another thing on another day. Ya, right, very helpful indeed, very assuring indeed.

Our society is becoming more and more polarised that I really don't understand how these two groups of vastly different people can survive together. On one hand due to the social development of our society, there has been a significant increase of in the GLBT population and the rising involvement of that circle in the wider society, but on the other hand, there is still this very anal group of people that strongly oppose a lot of things. So much so that I feel that our society is somewhat stuck in limbo. It's kind of a very sucky feeling being stuck somewhere not knowing what will happen, will the GLBTs take control and push forward for greater development or will the anal people emerge as victors.

Okay, being more objective, I can see the rationale behind some homophobes, like that they fear that they'd be hit on by people of the same gender, and they find that it'd be a weird and awkward feeling, or that they just love the attraction of the opposite gender too much. But what I cannot accept is that some anal people are using religion as an excuse to express their displeasure against the homosexuals. Our society is supposedly a religious tolerant country, I thought, so why bring in religion at this point in time? And more so, what has religion got to do with gender preference?

I long for a day when there can be a civil movement against gender discrimination just as there was one against race discrimination.

Block Contact, Delete

A while ago, this girl from school once asked a bunch of us while we were whiling time away, would you block and/or delete an ex from your MSN contact list. It's excruciating especially when you see the ex-significant other move on in life, and pepper his/her MSN nick with lovey dovey messages to some other person and you're somewhere out there pining, and getting jealous, and getting upset.

I hear of friends who say that the change of status of their, or of some person whom they care about, the most immediate marked change would be their relationship status on Friendster. Granted, I don't have Friendster, so I don't know how that works, but from the stories that I hear about, the most accurate (other than of married men trying to sian sweet young things) reading of a person's relationship status is from the Friendster account. On getting hitched, people would immediate change their relationship status from single to attached, and likewise for those who've falled out of love.

So, am I accurate to say that these cyber information are the most accurate one can get out of another person? I don't know...

What I do know is that I have 317 contacts in my MSN list and have never deleted anyone off that list, even though at the height of my rough patch everyone called for me to block and delete him and not be bothered about him. I lied, I did try to block, sometimes, but I lied still, and now even when I'm the one who (sort of) ditched him, I still left his contact on my MSN list intact.

There are some freaks out there who by some means get my MSN contact from some weird place and add me, but after I found out that they were freaks, I merely just ignored them. I don't bother to block them, and when they IM me, I just leave them alone. Most of the time, if they don't get a reply they'd say stuff like "u there?" "y u ignore me?" but I'd still just ignore. They can think I'm dao, or can think that I'm busy or think something else, but most of them are just lonely people out there only wanting to talk to some other person out there and they'd probably have added hundreds of other people onto their MSN list just like they've added me. It's sort of like casting a wide net and hoping that there's be some fish caught in the net.

I don't see a point in blocking people because I don't want to see an MSN list with half of my contacts with the blocked sign. And because I'm pak jiao, I'd probably mix that up with the busy sign. I am also against deleting contacts because they'd just all end up in my trashbin somewhere and occupying a similiar space. MSN Live works a bit quirkily, I don't know why. Either that or is the fact that I don't want to burn my bridges.

Once a guy I used to go out with taught me this, never to burn your bridges, because one day, you never know when, you might need all the help you can get. Like if you need votes for some sort of competition, or if you because an insurance, finance agent, and you need to build up a contact list, or even a database, or just plain queries and help. You need contacts.

Because of this warped theory, I end up keeping a lot of trash people on my MSN list. Even though some of these trash people might already have blocked or deleted me, I still keep them on the list because for every contact, there's an email address.

Proud to say, people I used to go out with are all still on my contact list. Take Mr Swirl for example, (some might remember him, some might not, it doesn't matter) I still have him on my contact list, and I do look at his MSN nicks and stuff, and sometimes I do take tabs of the times when he's online and ya, I think about him. I'd whonder what he's doing at this time of the day/night, if he's at work, at home, doing stuff we used to do but with another person, or is he just chatting with friends/families or just chilling out. Ya, even now, especially when I'm alone at night and I tend to think more, I still think about him occasionally.

The main reason why I'm blogging about this tonight is that I think that RP has blocked and deleted me from his MSN list. I can't deny that I don't feel good about it. The feeling is a bit indescribible, it's something between indignant, jealous, sore, and a dash of relieve. I have been avoiding being online in the afternoons in the past couple of weeks when I know that he'd be online, mostly because I'm out, but mainly because I don't know how to face him. Then the other day when I finally was online on an afternoon he was online, he IMed me and I ignored every of his messages.

I think that was when he blocked and deleted me.

It is not hidden secret that I always had thought of one day, maybe tomorrow, maybe in the far far future, of returning to the rough patches days, so I made it a point not to burn that bridge even though I think I should have done so. And even though realistically, it was also not possible for me to go back to those days even thought I did think about it. I think of everything anyway. The point is that, I am quite upset over being blocked and/or deleted even though this is probably the most convenient thing that could have happened to me.

For the past few afternoons, I've been coming online just to check if RP's online as a proof that he didn't block/delete me, and maybe was just busy or outstation. Even though I know I'm not going to IM him again, I just sort of want to indulge in the comfort of knowing that he knows I'm still alive, and I'm happy without him.

If Mr Swirl can accept that I'm still online and not be bothered about it, perhaps there's something about RP toward me that he's not comfortable with me still on his list. Is it because it would upset him that I'm happy? Or is it because he just can't be bothered with a contact taking up space in his list? Or is it that he think that he can fuck up my mind by deleting me off?

In a way, with me penning this post, he did succeed in mindfucking me. Or maybe it's just me thinking too much into some insignificant course of action...

Camping at Mount Elizabeth

Singapore is quite a disheartening place to live in because I don't think I dare to fall ill in Singapore, especially not with the rationale of our healthcare system in place. Let's just say 一分钱，一分货，多一分钱，加一分service. A penny for a penny worth of goods, an additional penny gives a penny worth of service. Unless I have lots of money to pay for private healthcare, unless I am willing to give up my sanity before being pushed crazy my lousy healthcare services, I don't think I dare fall critically ill.

Staying with my late grandfather during his last days at the hospital proved to me that private healthcare services is much much better than the public sector. My maternal grandfather is a regular in/out of some Singapore Government Hospital and the last time he was in, the whole experience was dreadful. The doctors doing rounds were like my age and they took hours to arrive. Medication was slipshod and because of not very accurate prescriptions, the scope had to be postponed and postponed. One nurse served many people, the nurses attitudes were bad and they were quite slow. A lot more other gripes, but I don't want to sound like I'm complaining so I should just go into complimenting the folks over at Mount Elizabeth.

My dad would say that service standards there have dropped since my great grandmother, and my grandmother's times, but well, it's already very good already la. My grandfather was admitted into a double room, there was this other guy sharing the room with him when he was first admitted, but because my grandfather was in a critical condition, that other guy asked to change to another room because he was pantang about sharing a room with someone who was about to pass away. And he did get his change of room. And because of my grandfather's condition, the nurses didn't arrange another person to move in and hence my family was given exclusive rights to use the entire double room.

Making the room comfortable to ourselves, we brought in our own foldable chairs, the nurses allowed that. We made use of the chairs available. And we even took over the empty bed beside my grandfather. But it's also because we really had a lot of people with us, the entire extended family and the occasional guests. Since we had two TVs, we played two different channels on each TV to occupy our time. Best of it, there are lots of very interesting channels on their TV, mostly Indonesian channels and a few cable channels. Of course, since I bet there are like more Indonesian patients than local ones. hehe~

There's also an adequate number of staff on duty, with nurses coming in to check on my grandfather regularly, taking his blood pressure, checking on his oxygen and changing his drip. There's also a higher proportion of local nurses working in the private sector. It's not that I'm driscriminating the foreign nurses, but an advantage of the local nurses is their ability to understand the local tongue. Most nurses speak dialects so that they can communicate directly with the patients. Not just the nurses can actually, even the doctors, they speak various dialects and some Bahasa (for the Indonesian patients mah). That is better because if not there'd be lots of miscommunication. The private sector nurses also seem to be a lot more experienced than the rookie nurses stuck in the public sector.

Visiting hours and visitor limits are also bullshit in the private sector. Even though there's clearly a visiting hours, the nurses don't enforce that. That resulted in my family and I staying overnight at the hospital. We mostly stayed in the room or went to the lobby. And people were camping and sleeping all over the place, not a very pretty sight but nobody cares much, there's after all much more important stuff like the matter of life and death to worry about. That day we stayed over we saw many other families also staying over in the hospital, suddenly I felt that we are not alone in the horrible sufferings, it felt somewhat comforting.

My journey down to the hospital was bad. The news came quite suddenly as my grandfather's conditioned worsened suddenly. I took a cab down to the hospital and all I thought was the last time I cabbed down to Mount E, I was with my sister, that night my grandmother passed away. The ride was quite silent, I guess not many cab drivers, a Mercedes cabbie somemore, would want to talk to a person who looks gravely silent and is heading towards a hospital. My grandfather managed to pull through that night as we stayed with him the whole night. It was a Saturday night, luckily, people needn't work on Sundays, so there was not much worries of tiring out.

Sunday morning my family went home for a short rest while my dad's siblings and their family came over. That short trip back home was quite bad. Every phone call made our hearts skip a beat. I really hate those kind of phone calls, it's so nerve wrecking. Sometime in the afternoon came the call which sent us all back to the hospital. My grandfather hadn't managed to make it till the night.

The nurses over at the hospital were really very supportive.

But of course, private healthcare isn't also that all great, there were some quite bad encounters especially with the usage of a machine which my family supposedly paid for and rented it for the sole use by my grandfather, but because the whole ward only had one of those machines, everytime some other patient needed it, it was loaned out for a while. But it's only a monitoring machine so things weren't affected that much.

Then there's also the problem with the billing. There's a lot of additional charges and stuff. And each night at the hospital came up to about $1100-1200. Imagine how much bills was chalked up the last time my grandfather stayed in the hospital. He stayed there for about 3 weeks, and had an operation done too. hai... Very expensive.

Really, in Singapore one cannot fall sick unless one is rich enough to pay for all these sort of stuff. Quite disheartening...

PS: A note to all concerned, I'm coping well with this loss, don't worry too much about me. Life is back to normal. Maybe I'll talk about the wake another time. I'm fine with talking about these stuff, so don't worry too much when talking to me. yup~ I'll be fine.

Service From the Service Textbook

There's a new deli along East Coast Road called Oh Deli which caught my eye because it touts to have imported some European meats and cheese and herbs and spices. I was wondering if they would have brought in Blackforest Ham too, so I've been wanting to visit it one day. But while on the bus I happened to see the phone number being printed big big on the signboard. So for the past two days I've been calling them up hoping to ask them without having to make the trip down, but the phone calls have been unanswered until this afternoon.

The following conversation took place.

Deli: Hello, Oh Deli.
Joan: Hi, I'd like to enquire if you have Blackforest Ham.
Deli: I'm sorry?
Joan: I would like to enquire if you have Blackforest Ham.
Deli: Are you planning on making a sandwich?
Actually, it's not just making a sandwich but explaining would be difficult so,
Joan: Yes.
Deli: Would you like to try blahblah instead? We have blahblah which is good for blahblah...
Joan: No, I'm asking if you have Blackforest Ham.
Deli: Oh, we currently don't have it.
Joan: You don't have it?
Deli: We currently don't have it.
Joan: No, I meant, is it that you don't have it full stop, or you don't have it now, that it is sold out, or you're not carrying it.
Deli: We are not carrying it now.
Joan: Does that mean that you will carry it in the future?
Deli: Yes, we might bring it in in the future.
Joan: So it's all tentative?
Deli: Yes.
Joan: Okay, I'll check again in the future. Thank you very much.
Deli: Thank you. Bye bye.

Just tell me what is wrong with this whole conversation!

Granted, I'm not complaining about the bad service because the service was not bad at all, it's just so service like that it makes me feel quite exasperated with that lady over the phone. For goodness sake, I'm want something, and she's not doing the things right to woo me as a customer, she seems to be just doing it for the sake of doing things right.

I know, in person I'm some ugly lupsup looking student, I was wearing some camp teeshirt and boardshorts and don't really look like a worthy customer, but I was talking to her over the phone! Over the phone I think I sounded proper enough to sound like a customer who was willing to spend a lot just to get what I want. Okay, I AM willing to spend a lot just to get my hands on the Blackforest Ham. If I were that lady in the deli, I'd do all I can to woo me as a customer.

Instead of recommending something else and talking in vague circles, I'd first clarify and take note of the ham that I wanted, then I'd say that we currently are not stocking it but we plan to stock it in the near future. I'd get the number of the customer and say that when we stock up the ham that is wanted, we'd call her and let her know about it. This can forge a very healthy customer relationship and even make me into a regular since I'm willing to pay exorbidently high prices for some little bits of ham.

This is why people say that Singaporeans don't think out of the box. They're all stick in the muds, follow everything to the book.

Now I think I'll have to go back down to the German supermarket, or try to find the Swiss butchery which I don't know where it is. I'm such a big sucker, for the things I like, I'm willing to go out of the way and pay high prices for it. Oh well...

Kare Kano: Reminiscence

For a brief introduction to the above forementioned manga, please read it's wikipedia page or my blog entry on it.

As I mentioned before Kare Kano is the shortened name for Kareshi Kanojo no Jijo. The translated title is His and Her Circumstances. "Kareshi" although can mean "he", can also mean "boyfriend" which of course is referring to Arima Soichiro, likewise "Kanojo" can mean both "she" and "girlfriend" and which is of course Soichiro's girlfriend Miyazawa Yukino.

The reason for me bringing up this manga again is because this was the inspiration for me to write Yu Yi. I modelled the narrator after Soichiro. Yes, for those who have yet realised, the narrator is a male. The subject of the story was a bit more vague, I was also inspired partly by Yukino, but after writing that piece and reading that piece over again, I realised that the subject resembles me more than she resembles Yukino. Maybe it's the free spirited nature in the both of us. Yukino although might also be a free spirited character, she also has this charisma in her that enabled her to attract Soichiro. The subject in Yu Yi lacks this charm.

The relationship between the narrator and the subject is also different from the relationship between Soichiro and Yukino. Yukino really loves Soichiro.

Rewind to when Soichiro first tried to confess to Yukino, this was played out in a flashback of Soichiro narrating to Yukino after they were together. Soichiro had wrote a note to ask Yukino out to the Sakura trees, but because of some other reasons, he was unable to confess to Yukino. He only managed to confess on another occasion, this time he was successful. Yukino at that point in time rejected him flatly. However, as Yukino described the rejection to her two sisters, one of them mentioned that right from the start Yukino had already taken special notice of Soichiro if not she wouldn't have wanted to be in all ways better than him.

In another twist of fate, Yukino lowered her guard and Soichiro found out that Yukino was in fact a farce, and was a total slob at home. The anime depicts this scene very well, and made it very funny, better than the manga. There were a couple more conflicts between Yukino and Soichiro and over that course, Yukino realised that she was in fact very much drawn to Soichiro that she likes him. However as Soichiro had confessed to her before the expose, she wasn't sure if he still liked her.

Then comes the second confession of Soichiro. As he describes his feelings then in a later scene, he said that although he was first attracted to the farce image of Yukino, the more he learnt about the true her, the more he found her similiar to himself and the more he liked her, so there was a growth and development of his feelings towards her over the course of time. Although Yukino by this point in time knows that she likes Soichiro, and with the second confession, knows that Soichiro still likes her despite her being a total farce, doesn't tell him straight that she likes him.

I think this has got to do with a myraid of factors. Firstly, consider Yukino's reflex action, she didn't expect that second confession, hence there couldn't be the most natural reaction then. Then there's the circumstance she was in, at the metro station with an oncoming train, and Soichiro's reassurance that sort of just puts a full stop to the discussion. And most importantly there's the "otome" (translated very loosely it means something like virgin maiden) character inside Yukino.

The most difficult thing is not to tell a person you like him, but to tell a person who told you that he likes you that you like him.

Anyway, Yukino didn't say it, she did something else during some committee meeting with Soichiro, but that's not the point. The anime version was also better in this sence because we were able to see the struggles of Yukino, not knowing what she wanted to do, or say.

Another thing I want to bring up is the TV documentary I watched last Friday at 8.30pm. It's called 《圆点》之《重逢》, this girl she went all the way up to North Vietnam to look for her father. All these years growing up, she never met her father before, so there was a burning curiosity to what her father was like. When she first saw her father, in her own words, she said that she didn't feel anything about him, it was almost like they were strangers. But as she stayed with him over the next couple of days, and she went around to see how his life was like over there, she felt a bond between them, it was almost as if the stranger was becoming her father, over the span of that couple of days.

It's no different from Soichiro and his father Reiji Arima. Soichiro felt nothing when he first saw Reiji, but after Reiji kidnapped him and made him stay by his side for the next ten days, it is clear that Soichiro felt the bond between them, in fact, it was so clear to Soichiro that he loved Reiji. The scenes from Kare Kano played out to seem so much similiar from that girl's tale in Yuan Dian that I really took a double take. Just as her father brought her around the village, brought her to see his friends, his students, and how he was living his life over the past twenty over years, Reiji brought Soichiro with him along to his concert tours, brought him to meet his agent and all the media following him, brought him to drink, and just showed him how he was living his life over the past seventeen years, playing the piano and being given that new lease of life. I guess such things indeed do happen in real life too.

Okay, now I've got this huge urge to want to buy the complete set of Kare Kano. I don't even mind buying the entire set in Chinese, but after I've stopped my damned diet plan, my expenses have been rising and I don't have that spare cash to buy anymore manga. Maybe I should go back on that diet...