when in doubt, give hope

Quite possibly one of the reasons why I never made it as valedictorian is valedictorians have to give speeches, and no prizes for guessing what would be the content of my speech. It will honestly make this speech seem really tame and friendly even. Honestly honestly speaking, the kindest word I can force myself to muster for a PAP person is 4 letter-ed and starts with F.

When I lost my job at moral, and then subsequently at SGH, I admit that that was really a rough time for me. Why was I subjecting myself to pain and suffering in an industry so thoroughly defiled and befouled by NCSS, for a job that obviously is not going to pay me for what I'm worth. I did get another job eventually [and I'm still there] but everyday I have to ask myself what I am doing there when I feel I have been so thoroughly short-changed: I am receiving a pittance of a salary not because the organization cannot afford it, but because this is what they feel I am worth as a social worker because afterall, I have no FSC experience. Yet constantly, I'm being turned to for my knowledge of the social services, the contacts I have made, and my mass com expertise. I resolved to act like what I'm paid, a total newbie, but how can I possibly say no? Adding oil to fire, for some strange reason, inter-bank creditting of salary only works for POSB or DBS accounts so I had to open a disgusting account with DBS. And adding even more oil to fire, nowhere is the miasma of NCSS seen more but in a FSC. And I had to smile at those disgusting NCSS cretins.

And to top it all off, I have to get accredited with the Singapore Association of Social Workers [SASW]. I'd rather get inducted into the KKK first.

—

I would like to end this post with Hope though.

This is an excellent speech by a Ms Allison Anais Brunner. Excerpt:

"I believe that hope is intrinsic in the individuals, families, and communities we serve. But what do we do when people feel hopeless? I believe we do as my former therapist did for me when I wasn’t able: We hold the hope for them."

—

I hold the Hope that one day things will be better.

8:22

So at 8.22 PM earlier today, according to the local news, time stood still as Singaporeans dropped whatever they were doing and were united in saying the pledge. I always suspected Woodlands was part of JB because as I roamed around the area looking for dinner, life went on as usual: usual delinquents making too much noise at the basketball court, usual Me looking for blood and usual G half torn between being patriotic and pissing me off.

Me and the pledge go back way back. In Primary 5, I stopped placing my hand to my heart during morning assembly. In secondary school, I stopped stopping whenever the pledge was being recited. In JC, I got into the most trouble over the pledge. I was perpetually late, and one of the punishments for late comers was to say the pledge. I resisted against putting hand to heart but I couldn't escape reciting it, and try as I might, I could never get the last line right. I mean, all decent governments should be striving to achieve a nation built on happyness, peace and prosperity no? Is there something else more important than either happyness, peace or prosperity? I could never figure out the right mix, so I was perpetually in and out of the discipline master's office where he continuously made assinuations that I was a Jehovah's witness. And secondly, shouldn't the pledge be more for the civil service and ministers to recite and not us, since we are not in any position to effect change?

Of course I know what I missed out. 'Peace' was never part of the pledge. Prosperity is. Specifically prosperity for the very chosen few. And peace is something that is not important of course. A country can never have peace. A country is a arbitrarily demarcated piece of land fluffed up by a mascot and history. Without the history, the nation cannot exist but history wears off with the passing of time. History almost always dissipates in the face of peace.

How else can we explain the constant reminder of the threat of terrorism? The threat of racial disharmony? And the latest in turn today: the threat of swine flu? The fact is none of our existing measures go beyond simple serving as a visual reminder that such a threat remains, and by extension, we need to depend on the government to keep us safe. How easy is it to evade the security guards at the MRT stations, if they even need evading in the first place. How redundant is it to have temperature checks when a person would probably have travelled through layers of commute before being detected, if he is even detected in the first place.

-

In other news, managed to catch Up! last Friday [and will be catching it yet again later this afternoon]. It's quite possibly the best show I've ever seen. It's really really good, although G remarked that I make the bitter protagonist look optimistic.

miscarried

My friend so nicely put it: it's almost like I suffered a miscarriage.

To put things in perspective on how stuck SGH's HR policy is: it's like I joined Al Quaeda and Osama doesn't think I'm a very good terrorist, and therefore I'm not suitable. Not that Moral = Al Quaeda; my main point is management people aren't necessary there because they deserve it. My take is, from one management to another, you can't start questioning another organization's capability to manage because... Let's just say Moral's management most probably isn't the only unfit one around.

So it's said that I don't 'take my work seriously' so I guess we have to start from the start on what is it exactly I didn't take seriously.

Home Help Service West is a service providing services to elderly who are home-bound, so we send people down to the elderly's house to do stuff for them, which primarily consists five components: daily meal delivery, personal hygiene [2x a week], housekeeping [4x a month], laundry [ad hoc basis; clothes usually collected during meal delivery rounds] and to and fro escort for medical appointments. Of course, Moral doesn't provide such services for free; Moral is able to claim for each service rendered to each client from NCSS, i.e. NCSS subsidizes each client to an amount based on the subsidy they are entitled to, either 75% or 50% of the charge. So Moral graciously absorbs the remaining 25% or 50%, or so my manager led me to believe for the greater part I was there with her incessant whining that the clients need to be grateful because we're making a loss for them blah blah blah; turns out that MCYS foots the portion that NCSS doesn't, this little tidbit coming from my manager's mouth [hope people seeing are seeing a trend now?].

So my job essentially is to decide that someone is crippled enough to be placed on the service, and to assess their financial situation, in what we call 'means-testing', through collecting relevant financial documents like payslips and CPF thingies and then getting the Client's signature [thumbprint more often than not] on both a contract and the means-testing application form. NCSS requires both forms duly signed and filled up, approved by the social worker and the manager, with relevant supporting documents, before it can honour the payment for each client. For some reason, NCSS thinks that only a social worker is qualified enough to do the assessment and means-test.

How do I decide that someone is eligible for the service? Till today, I have no idea. There is simply no clear set of criteria I can work from. NCSS hasn't been that helpful either. My manager? Not social work trained, only notion of assessment is to sound sympathetic when talking about the clients, but dropping them at the slightest excuse. I did do my own research, consulted some journals and textbooks and came up with some forms and criteria, but it's a mixed bag; homebound-ness has a psychological component; the slightest wound can fell some people, while there are those determined few that refuse to let death or disability get in their way of living their lives, which gets tricky because people do make noise when clients are not at home and all.

'People' make noise when some clients are not deservedly 'homebound' by their books. They make noise when clients are feeding our food to the birds and demand I go check it out [like what am I supposed to do? ask the client? stake out?]. They make noise when I reject clients they referred on very valid grounds. Cutting a long story short, no fixed set of criteria, people thinking they know best, manager who doesn't know best.

Essentially, I'm just a glorified signature collector, so that Moral can claim the subsidies from NCSS. It doesn't really make a difference if I'm at the job or not; there can always be someone else more willing to get the signatures everyone seems to want to orgase over.

Intermittently, NCSS asks for statistics, beyond the ones they require every 6 monthly. So the stats are to prove whether the service is working or not. For Home Help, 4 sets of figures are required for every service, and a fifth set where all the services are combined. An example:

For the Meal Delivery Service
1. N [number of people] were referred for the quarter.
2. Of N, N1 were deemed eligible.
3, Of N1, N2 received the service.
4. Of N2, N3 stayed in the community at the end of the quarter.
Therefore, the N3 people are still in the community thanks to Home Help Service.

There was a meeting where NCSS got an expert to come along to discuss about service KPIs. At the table, I mentioned that between [3] and [4] required a considerable leap of faith, which everyone just laughed off. The expert came along, practically mentioned the same thing, albeit less dramatically, and everyone started groveling. So I hope this just goes to shows how meaningless the things NCSS ask for are.

They are even more meaningless considering you have a manager who doesn't know how to produce them, and the reluctant social worker who makes them up.

Towards the end, there was the issue with some old accounts: apparently our auditors [KS Chan] had to audit some collated figures for 2006 [when I wasn't there yet] and the only reference was like reams of reams of paper. Manager got into her usual high-panick-nothing-to-be-done-mode. KS Chan who probably thinks that accountants are god's gift to the world, and that he's god's gift to accountants, decided that the only way was to transfer everything to soft copy [that's like 400 clients x 30 days x 5-6 mths x 5 services] and 'can't we just get more social workers to do it' because god forbid, the accountant actually has to pore through paper work to verify stuff. I think the issue was resolved several temp staff later and some very, ahem, creative accounting.

So can I be forgiven for not taking a job that doesn't take me seriously seriously? A job where I have to learn whatever that needs learning on my own, and make up the rest?

But I do take the job seriously. I take my clients very seriously. And it's very disappointing when I don't seem to see the same seriousness around. I seriously think the service is severely understaffed; we service an area from Redhill/Commonwealth all the way through Chinatown to the Beach Road area. Lunch delivery starts at about 1030 and ends at 1, which is an awfully long time to wait for your food. There was, and still is, abit of an issue with clients living in some areas having to receive both lunch and dinner in one delivery. There's no fruits, or when there is, usually rarely, or when NCSS or some VIP is making a tour, it's usually only bananas. I personally find the food edible, so do most of the clients because they don't have a choice, but it's definitely not worth the $3.50/meal that NCSS subsidizes for each client, and that's the whole shady deal of outsourcing the food to this department called Moral Enterprise, which is very enterprising to say the least. The staff were not trained to escort clients, and quite frequently late for appointments; resulting in some clients actually missing their appointments. There was even the issue of getting clients to fix appointments at nearer hospitals so we didn't have to travel so far. Internal communications was archaic and involved many layers. Housekeeping sessions were random, and the default offered to the clients was 2x/mth [because if you offer 4x a mth and fail to meet that quota, you don't claim a cent at all, unless the client stipulated he/she wanted a lesser frequency].

It's almost like doing Home Help and biting off such a big pie so that you can tell people because we are doing it, like the same way my forms are properly needed so that my manager can sign them because there's really the only bit of managing she manages to do.

fart hard, queef proud

Disclaimer: I've taken to whining here because people just can't seem to get me, or they're more engrossed in their own crummy interests, which is nothing wrong lah, but it would be nice to have had someone who did cared.
-

So for those that don't know: my latest attempt at getting gainfully employed has been botched, thanks to my conniving, scummy, petty ex-management [i use the word loosely; they are, in fact the furtherest you can get from management].

Not sure what was in the letter they wrote, but the bits I garnered include 'not taking my work seriously', 'no sense of hierarchy' and also about my reports, or the lack of them.

I'm quite grateful to the MSW head [now ex-head] for doing all that she could, trying to fight for me and all, even calling up my ex-manager to get more details [and I was told that slimy bitch had the cheek to appear all gracious and big-hearted].

I don't regret whatever I did at Moral. It's not difficult to get a good/satisfactory testimonial. But there is nothing respectable about getting a good testimonial from such an organization. I just feel indignant that HR is stuck up enough to disregard the disrepute of Moral, that haggy ex-boss can disregard all the good things I've done or tried to do, and disregard the fact all the obstacles I faced, one of which was herself. If I do regret anything, it's that I stayed too long, probably in hopes that change could come, and I did not demand to be sacked when they told me to go.

Contrary to the common perception, I do have a sense of hierarchy. Top of my hierarchy are the clients, and unlike NCSS or Moral, does not include the need to showboat, the need for the bottomline at considerable client expense, the need for personal comfort and luxury.

There is a notion of hierarchy delineated by someone's seniority, experience and accomplishments, none of which I had first hand encounter with at Moral. The person who hired me was the director for the Tanjong Pagar Family Service Center and he seemed alot more interested in the bottomline of his centre; quite possibly only hiring me so that he could second me out to Home Help, I was told he charged alot more than what I was being paid and classified it as training fee but I only ever saw him like once on a consultancy basis, and I was the one who requested for it because I needed to whine about the job. My own executive director I've heard and personally experienced for myself, is the archetypal model of NATO, more interested in the colour of his hair, and the number of cronies he surrounds himself with. The Chairman and CEO I've heard from at least 3 sources, one of which is the aforementioned ED, are computer idiots who have their emails printed out to them where they probably make their vermilion comments. The fat one is a doctor. I wondering if he's still practicing [Lalala]. My own manager is hardly social work trained and barely competent enough to make managerial decisions; in fact, all the time I was there, I can't seem to recall any decision she has made. I have heard rather good things about the EIPIC centre's executive director and the ED for the Bukit Panjang FSC, who is kinda estranged from Moral because he refuses to 'play' along to the whole culture of pandering which the EDs seem to gleefully indulge in.

I also vaguely realize, there is the notion of hierarchy as delineated by the person who pays you. Considering that the person who pays me doesn't really get the money by productive means, but rather through donations and handouts, I supposed there is an onus to use the money for which it was donated for, in which case, yar, clients at the top of the hierarchy makes sense? There is also the hierarchy that comes with family members, something I experienced way too much of, which seems to be an in-thing in our fine meritocratic country, and which I rather not ever come across again. As the new MCYS ad [which I still think after watching it like 7 times is contrite though the conception is good] says, family is imperfect. So I say, it's best to keep the imperfections within the family?

Yes, I do know about hierarchies.

And I tire. WIll carry on the rest tomorrow.

my god

So I was approached by some Christian missionary dude. Maybe he thinks I need some God in my Godless life but most likely he must have been really that desperate to approach a Godless One as me. He did have a new approach though: he presented the God of that Holy Trinity — the Father, the Son, and the paraclete as the God the Mother for did the Holy Bible not say that God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, ...' So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them" (Genesis 1:26-27). Is it also not said, in the Old Testament in hebrew, that God is Elohim, or Gods.

All I see in Elohim is a big 'Hello Him'. It's a refreshing new trick these missionary types are doing: gender-typing their messages; probably the females will get the God the Father message although personally I prefer that too. God can be a frickin unicorn, I wouldn't be blerdy interested [only slightly].

I do have an issue with the Church though; the House of God wallows in abject luxury while the People of God get to indulge in the glow of poverty. Good one there.

So I just wanted to move on politely and not hurt anyone's feelings so I nicely told the guy I believed in Science and that blerdy nutmeg have the cheek to say 'do you noe that alot of scientists are now turning to God?'. No I did not know that, and I don't really care.

I know maybe in religion, you believe whatever your pastor/priest/church/monk/PAP MP tells you. Believing whatever a scientist says is not Science just because a supposed person of Science is involved. Believing what anyone tells you after evaluation of what has been said: that is Science. Science is really the religion of experiencing something and then expanding this experience to possibly probably stand for something else. Alot of people hold Science strictly to the empirical senses but I give myself more leeway, as long as it's an experience, emprical or otherworldly, discrete or intangible, then it's an experience and I'm gonna believe in it probably-ly until the next best experience/evidence comes along. In short, the only way I'd believe in God is a cold day in Hell and I'm there without my winter wear or God is screaming at my face and hurling megawattic thunderbolts of doom or LKY and his clan drop dead suddenly. [God, if you're listening, personally I prefer the third one.]

where being right is wrong

The other day I was at Clarke Quay there were this lovely string trio [?], in both looks and skills, performing to an oblivious audience, performing in spite of an oblivious audience, bravely soldiering on. The show must go on I suppose.

-

So I had a letter published in the ST today [big big somemore]:

NCSS should focus more on its clients

I REFER to Ms Ang Bee Lian's letter 'Govt benchmarking social workers' pay' on Sept 26.
I have been a social worker for almost two years. While I am not seeing the kind of salary that Ms Ang refers to, I acknowledge that there has been some positive movement in that regard.

However, I feel that the National Council of Social Service (NCSS) can do more for the people.

The biggest issue is the structural way NCSS divides the services of a population within distinct demographical categories, like age or physical condition. Each group is further divided into specific needs and services, like home nursing, meals delivery, family counselling and so on. Such a model is not comprehensive, as considering how diverse people are, there inadvertently will be needs an individual faces that existing formal services do not provide.

A corollary for such a framework is that social service organisations are set up around these services that NCSS has earmarked due to the funding. This inadvertently results in agencies becoming very specific and not going beyond a certain duty to fill up any possible service loophole, either because they lack the resources or, for whatever other reasons, because it is not 'in the service guideline'. While specificity often leads to specialisation and efficiency, the precursor is economies of scale, which most social service agencies are unable to achieve.

A third offshoot is a duplication of assessment that results from a client being referred from one agency to another. Each agency requires its own separate assessment. While a specific service will assess a client differently, there are common facets like financial and background information that can be better shared. For example, multiple financial testing requires multiple collection of financial documents from the client and the family.

While NCSS has gone some way to supporting social workers, I feel we can be better supported by focusing on the clients.

Chen Lingshen

As with all things online, there will always be idiots and as of now, here's the only idiotic comment:

I think the writer, being a rookie, does not understand how the sector works.

Such embarrassment, hearing these comments from these young social workers who are passionate but don't go deeper into what they see or hear on the surface.

My next question to these rookies are: so what are you going to do to facilitate change in your position?

The idiocy of this idiot screams so loudly I don't think I even need to speak for him.

Edit. Apparently someone replied that idiot:

what embarrassment about these comments? quite sensible perceptive observations made by Chen Lingshen.

(1)"the National Council of Social Service (NCSS) can do more for the people"
nothing embarrassing about this fact.

(2)"the structural way NCSS divides the services...inadvertently will be needs an individual faces that existing formal services do not provide". correct again. such rigid divisions means this is not in my service guideline, not my area, so results in multiple referrals which hamper the efficiency of the system.

(3) clients `referred from one agency to another. Each agency requires its own separate assessment' - waste of resources and hassle for people requiring fast help.
Rookies? - better than fossilised veterans who are moulded to the old rigid inflexible system. we need more such refrshing views.

I'm embarrassed actually; he says it much better than i could ever hope to.

-

On a relatively unrelated note,

The general consensus is that the letter was 'very well written', that I was very brave to have written it. My bosses were livid. [Edit. I have since been cleared cuz I didn't mention the company name] Tomorrow, all these will be forgotten until NCSS replies, which will go along these lines: they'll denounce me as a wet behind the ears rookie, full of passion but ultimately myopic and misguided, list down their accomplishments probably in terms of how many people have benefitted from their services and the high percentage of positive evaluations, and mention how NCSS strives to keep ahead and relevant and pretend it never happened.

I'm not actually say anything new or brilliant, or made up; these are things everyone has been saying but not to NCSS, or they're not listening, or something. [Edit. I've just been informed that Case Management communicates with NCSS directly and they're able to implement changes every 3 months. Power to Case Management I say; You can be a Case Management too if you're above 60, lack social support and have one chronic medical condition]. I'm just saying what alot of people are saying but not saying to NCSS. Which is what irks. Things didn't just suddenly become like that overnight; it should have taken a hell lot of indifference for things to become what they are today.

Abit of clarification: NCSS doesn't actually provide the service or set up the agencies that do; what they do is demarcate the specific services by deciding what gets funding and what not, divide it into geographic regions and you kinda tender for it; you're free to set up your own agency providing any service you want but obviously why do something for free when funding is just a soul's sale away. You get this nice groovy service manual to follow and are required to submit stats every once in awhile purporting to the efficacy of your service but actually meaning nothing; you also have to provide any other stats, colour coded in technicolour, that the great powers at NCSS needs to set policy. I must have missed the fine print somewhere because you are also required to get your comments and observations ignored and you can't speak to someone higher ranked [at NCSS] than you directly. [I don't know where this notion of rank came about actually: technically the politicians appoint the civil servants and the power of politicians comes from the people; therefore politicians are the lowest ranked and therefore civil servants, and psuedo civil servants aren't that far off too?]

Years ago, I attended a meeting where the SINDA-FSC director was present. He was rather quite disdainful of education and prided himself on his years of experience. He was particularly proud of his 'experienced' corp of volunteers in this service implemented, boasting that they were able to make thorough and complete assessments with just an hour. How this is related to the current mess I don't know but I just think that experience or education, neither one is more important than the other. You need a theoretical basis as a guide how to proceed; yet a guide will never cover every possible situation that you will encounter. Experience and education to me are just the same facets of probably-knowing something; I say probably-knowing because I don't think we can really ever know anything [and even this I don't know for sure]. I think the day I do know anything for sure is the day life ends.

Yet another common comment is so 'why am I not doing anything about it' or 'what solution do i have to offer'. I don't know? I wrote a letter didn't I? And I did give up the pursuit of a discipline [psychology] that I am thoroughly in love with for one [medicine/genetics] that is no doubt just as exciting but with a much longer, more uncertain and onerous journey because I believe it's for the best. I did design a database to store client records; I spent and am still spending droplets of time I manage to squeeze out from my laden schedule of work and school learning from scratch computer languages like MYSQL, PHP and HTML in the hopes that I can bridge at least a few services together. My system is not perfect, but it will be eventually. I really really would like to think I did and am still trying to do something about it. I actually don't quite understand the logic that when you criticize, you must have an answer. Afterall, I'm not the one that's being paid an obnoxious amount of money here.

But I actually do have an answer, and it doesn't involve raising taxes or implementing surcharges. I suggest, rather than a service-centric model, we should adopt a client or geography-centric model: that is a social worker is assigned to an area, and the entire gamut of needs of persons in that area is the responsibility of that social worker [TM]. When the social worker feels that the client requires services that the social worker is unable to render, he/she can refer to an organization providing that specific need.

One of the complaints in the social services is there's not enough resources, which is actually the same complaint in every other industry. I don't think there's not enough resources; it's just that everyone, every organization, every industry demands their own set of resources. I call this the Food Court Rice Theory [TM]. When I go to the food court near closing time, there's alot of stores who have run out of rice and have to close for the day yet there are also many other stores who still have lots of rice left. Or or or how mornings, the roads are practically jammed but if you look inside each car, you'll see there's most likely only one, at most two persons in each car that sits five people. Or you see the roads going towards the city is clogged yet the roads coming from the city is empty. Or you can never get a taxi when you need one yet taxi drivers spend a good part of their jobs waiting at taxi stands. Obviously resources are not being used all that well. And coming from my Food Court Rice Theory is the final piece of my solution: where possible, the social services should not set up a specialized service but utilize existing commercial sources [TM]. Why do we have to send food all the way from Henderson to Beach Road when there's so many eateries littering the area? Why can't we use taxi drivers who are free to send clients for medical appointments? Of course, my idealism requires alot of micro planning, coordination, and a quid of human kindness and initiative, which is the bit where it will all come apart.

-

Actually I don't know I struggle so much for what. If I just shut up and do my job, receive my [relatively] obnoxious pay, spend my pay, and live happily ever after, I would be living happily ever after instead of this mess I'm in: feeling pissed, feeling pissed that I'm pissed, career's in limbo, all plans derailed. Nothing's gonna change, moone else cares, and it doesn't matter that I care, and noone cares that I care.

-

I kinda think at the end of the day ideals are important. Sure, they don't put food on the table, and power to you if your ideal happens to be the same as putting food on the table, but ideals, even if you never meet them, make you you.

jbj

Crappiest crap:

"
CONDOLENCE LETTER FROM PRIME MINISTER LEE HSIEN LOONG ON DEMISE OF JB JEYARETNAM
30 September 2008
Mr Kenneth Jeyaretnam
Mr Philip Jeyaretnam

Dear Kenneth and Philip Jeyaretnam
I was sad to learn that your father, Mr Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam, has passed away.
Mr JB Jeyaretnam was a Member of Parliament for Anson constituency from 1981 till 1986, and a Non-Constituency Member of Parliament from 1997 till 2001. He used to engage in heated debates in the House. Perhaps it was because he and the PAP never saw eye to eye on any major political issue and he sought by all means to demolish the PAP and our system of government. Unfortunately, this helped neither to build up a constructive opposition nor our Parliamentary tradition. Nevertheless, one had to respect Mr JB Jeyaretnam’s dogged tenacity to be active in politics at his age.

However, our differences were not personal. In 1993, one of you (Kenneth) wrote to Mr Goh Chok Tong, who was then Prime Minister, to say that you found employers in Singapore reluctant to offer you a job, and your only explanation was that the employers felt the authorities would not welcome your employment because of your name. Mr Goh replied with a letter which could be shown to prospective employers, to say that the government did not hold anything against you, and that employers should evaluate you fairly on your own merits, like any other candidate, because Singapore needed every talented person that it could find. Mr Goh had previously made the same point to your brother Philip, whom he had invited to lunch. I am therefore happy that both of you have established yourselves in Singapore.
Please accept my deepest condolences.

Yours sincerely
Lee Hsien Loong
"

Obnoxious main points in the letter:

1. the PAP is always right.
2. Good riddance, loser.
3. Kenneth and Philip, you are not like their father. Keep it up.

-

Wah, our president is even more power:



I suddenly very proud he is social work trained lor. In 2 sentences, he can draw more blood than other people's 2 paragraphs. Who knew the old guy had it in him?

chronicles of narnia: prince caspian

Yah, I know the dvd has already been released, but it's only on the SQ flight yesterday that I managed to catch The Chronicles of Narnia, Prince Caspian, or otherwise known as 'that darn lion saves the day again', which is supremely ironic given the premise of the whole show hinges on that darn lion refusing to save the day in the first place like he did in the first movie, or as he himself so succinctly puts it, twice in fact, that 'nothing ever happens twice'.

The movie is alot like Growing Pains meet The Lord of the Ring. Besides the requisite epic battles, which are rendered quite competently, although a tad too much in the flavour of the good guys, there's also the other requisite items: i.e.

Mean melee arrow using dude, usually lanky and feminish [i.e. Legolas]. Check.
Cute small little furry creature who's really deadly [Shrek 3]. Check.
Marauding treefolk [Ents]. Check.
A variation of Gandalf's 'You shalt not pass' scene. Check.
Rushing river slamming onto enemy troops. Check.

And the list goes on.

While the Lord of the Ring had the suicidal wisdom of Gandalf, the anguished valour of Aragon, the boorish chivalry of Gimli or the reluctant responsibility of Frodo as centre pieces, what we get in this movie is teenage angst, just as suicidal, or anguished or boorish or reluctant, but teenage angst nonetheless; rebellion immature adolescence deciding the fate of thousands and thousands amidst the intricacies of acne, identity confusion, crushes, sibling rivalry, and fatherly acceptance [from the lion].

The movie ends like your typical secondary school essay; like it's all a dream and everything's back to square one and nothing really happens, which is really crappy when used in the essays, but actually meaningful and believable coming at the end of the mindless slugfest.

In the end you realize the movie is about letting go: as tempting as integral as something is to you, it's not you and you have to let it go and stop doing silly silly things.

I have to let go too.

manila: overall impressions

Generally I get that my travel logs always denigrate into anti-Singaporean expressionism. I promise I'll keep that in, right after I bash Tiger Airways.

Lousy, deceptive, fradulent airline that sent me to Manila (Clark), which is 2 hours away by hot bumpy bus ride from Manila, and which the locals don't consider to be part of Manila. I know, I know, buyer beware, but when you go to some airline webby and choose Singapore to Manila, you really expect them to take you to Manila, that Manila (Clark) is part of Manila. I know I know, I should have done some research, but I'm complacent, as is the trend here: I'm a seasoned traveler afterall, not the sort that carries a Lonely Planet around and reads up on every detail, but the sort that trusts the airline to keep their word, and that for everything else there's Mastercard. I've not even started on the ride experience: I can do hardship, but you cannot separate me and my hand carry bag which is what Tiger did by insisting I put my bag in the stowaway compartment and not block the passage way at the emergency exit. Like, wei? My hand carry bag is literally a handbag the size of my hand. If it blocks anyone at the exit, it means that person is really obese and probably deserves to be blocked. And ok i get that no outside food is allowed on the plane. But you don't have to constantly announce it like we are dogs who deserve no better because we can only afford to fly Tiger [and can't afford your overpriced food]. In any case, if people are still flouting the rules despite your multiple announcements, it's probably because your guy needs to go back to language school. And what's with the spastic announcement: please switch off and keep off all handphones, including those handphones with airplane mode. Why else do we call it airplane mode? In any case, said Tiger staff with language impairment should also learn how to differentiate iPhones with iPod Touches if he wants to enforce the rule.


In any case, this was the nice airport I landed in: DMIA. The temp looking structure with alot of people waiting under is a very permanent waiting area for people waiting to check in. Apparently, DMIA won some airport of the year award last year and rightly so too; all airports should seriously be like this.


Very straightforward. No need to waste time waiting for the plane to berth properly, or for the tunnel thingy to attach itself to the door, or for the feeder bus and the people slowly streaming into it and once in the airport, there's none of the convoluted twisty cavernous labyrinths to actually get to somewhere.

Ok, the truth is I went to Manila for surgery, so most of the time I was confined to my room so I didn't see much, so this post is quite limited.

The people here seems quite friendly though, like naturally from the bottom of the heart friendly. On the strange bus from Clark to Manila, I started appearing all touristy by taking out by map and staring at it. Immediately 2 locals sitting opposite came to my aid and even came me their numbers. After we got off the bus, they helped me get a cab and even told the cab driver not to cheat my money, which he actually totally disregarded, but which a very helpful security guard helped settle. My doctor and his wife brought us to a nice local restaurant where we were pleasantly entertained by a live band with a singer who sounded better than Norah Jones; when she was tired, the waiter filled in for her with a rambunctious song and dance item.

Being a tourist gives us the leeway to look like idiots. Obviously common ones like wearing the ethnic but inappropriate garb and lugging around a mean looking camera I avoid but we end up committing all new ones. Like frantically looking for our seats in the cinema. I never stopped to think 'FS' is a weird way to label your seat numbers, that both stubs had FS. In the end, FS = free seating. Or how not being able to squeeze into the MRT the 3rd train in as many minutes, I noticed the first few cabins were consistently almost empty, so promptly headed for it the fourth time only to feel chilly daggers at me throughout the whole ride. Looking around the cabin I had some weird suspicious something was terribly wrong; checking a rather concealed signboard after getting off confirmed it: the first few cabins were reserved for women, children and elderly folks. If anything, I was ready with the excuse 'we all like the same things'.

So I watched Fillipino TV most of the time. Channel selection was great: so many great movies like Narnia, Mr Bean's Holiday, 21, Mission Impossible, and drama series as well as talk shows. For example, I managed to catch Grey's Anatomy Desperate Housewives and it seems in Manila, they're almost through with latest seasons of both series [season 4]. I think in Singapore, we're still seeing Drs Burke and Addison. They also had some nice cartoons that I've never seen before, like one called the Avatar, about a world made up of common people and people who can command the elements. But 4 days gets boring: I saw Aladdin and Hercules twice, and there was the Kung Fu fighting MTV trailer for Kung Fu Panda that played in between every show. I even turned to Sellavision for long periods of time; it was somewhat refreshing: they sold products that would take you to the ends of the earth and more in the backdrop of very cheesy acting and even cheesier selection of music. For example, they had a drink that would make you grow taller and they interviewed lots of people unhappy about their heights, or this drink that increases your bust size, or this drink that grows hair back to the song 'here now, there now'. And wait, there's always more of course.

The only place we really went to was Glorietta, on the first day pre-op and last day when I snuck out.



It's not so much a shopping centre, but 4 shopping centres joined together in the middle by a vast concourse and interlinked to one another. Like I'm pretty sure you can find everything here; in case you can't, there's 2 departmental stores nearby, one shopping centre at the Shangri-La hotel, and one more series of mega shopping centres just across. We never got to exploring the whole area. What I did find fascinating was this bookstore [what's with bookstore chains and the colour red?]. They had shelves and shelves of medical, nursing, and psychology textbooks just going for $20 SGD. The interesting thing is many of them are printed in Singapore.

And so I want to end my limited exposure to Manila by talking about the food: simply fabulous.


This is hallo-hallo, a simple dessert consisting of yam ice cream on top of yam paste filled with fried fruits and lots of red bean and atapchee. Very nice.


I forgot the fillipino name of this dish but it's simply a big juicy chunk of pork that's deep fried, then you slice off abit and eat it with some savory soy sauce. Besides that there was also kare-kare, which is some fish in peanut stew you eat with prawn sauce and a beef broth dish which I'm rather ashamed at forgetting the name and not taking any pics because it was best dish I had in Manila. At Glorietta we ate at the foodcourt where I had this rice with sotong stuffed with diced vegetables served with pork bits at the side. Another day I had adobo, which is simply meat marinated in some sauce served with rice, brought to me. How do I know I really liked the food in Manila? The Krispy Kreme test - out of the dozen krispy kreme bought on the first day, there were still 3 left at the end of the trip.

It's really quite a pity that I didn't get to see more of Manila. I would have loved to have gone to the university belt, which is a district filled with universities, quite possibly the birthplace of Fillipino excellence. I'm quite sure it wasn't just nationalistic sentiment when my doctor bemoaned the fact that the Phillippines has so much talent but all of it is either not nurtured, or those that are nurtured are taken by other countries. There's also the night life, which judging by the day life, I'm sure would be excellent too. And the Bay Walk. And all the many many offshore islands and their natural wonders.

I think I should have to go back again. And definitely not by Tiger.

general youtubing

The iPhone really is a wonderous device: for all its supposed flaws and lack of high end tech features everyone else is cramming into their phones these days, it does the one thing it's supposed to do very simply and very nicely: it squeezes in my laptop, iPod and handphone into one device and just works. True, I won't be spreadsheeting or photoshopping or dreamweaving or garagebanding with it, but I can IM, check email, surf the web and even youtube

While I was stuck in Manila recuperating after my surgery, my trusty iPhone saved the day against boredom.

Some notable youtube things I saw:

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Very cool very hot pair of contestants from this reality show Britain's Got Talent. I'd be darn happy if I can be half as good as them.

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Manila's got talent too!

This is their take on promoting Kung Fu Panda. shown on local Manila TV after every show. I quite like his rendition of the song. In terms of effectiveness, I risked sepsis and certain reprimanding when I sneaked out of recuperating on the last day to catch the movie. I also bought the soundtrack [limited Manila edition for 350 pesos or $10SGD].

I just saw the Singaporean attempt at promoting the show: Gurmit Singh [yet again] attempting to appear witty as he interviews the voice actors of the show. Singapore's only got gurmit singh? And what's with the Ch 5 is the official channel for Kung Fu Panda. Is there any chance Vasantham Central could be the official channel?

I'm particularly reminded by something my doctor in Manila said: that the Philippines is simply teaming with talent and it's very very sad the government is not able to harness it. As if on cue, the waiter who was serving us broke into a rapacious song and dance item; his performance easily can win any one of our [un]talent shows here.

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Very catchy lyrics:
There's a hole in the world like a great black pit
And the vermin of the world inhabit it
And its morals aren't worth what a pig could spit
And it goes by the name of London

At the top of the hole sit a privileged few
Making mock of the vermin in the lower zoo
Turning beauty into filth and greed

I find this stuck in my head and repeating itself quite constantly, with the word 'London' replaced with 'Singapore', usually during morning rush hour, and reaching a climax in a meeting with employees of NCSS [note that I don't see people who work for NCSS or any government organization as dignified human beings; these top few who turn beauty into filth].

means testing

Sniffy the Virtual rat is a rat where cohorts of hordes of insincere psych undergrads administer electric shocks or feed food to Sniffy in order to get him to behave in a certain way. No rat deserves such a fate.

People get so many flavors/treats/services/gifts/education from me, favors/treats/services/gifts/education they so don't deserve. No one deserves such a fate.

I should do means-testing on all the stuff I give out. No-one who was mean and callous to me should deserve anything other than a well-aimed, well-timed and well-executed roundhouse kick.

Means testing is really cool because is prevents people who don't deserve anything from getting what they don't deserve.

Alot of my job is means testing, which basically involves finding out how many children my client has, and getting their total income then divide by something which I shouldn't go into too many details about. So clients who have children basically don't deserve any subsidies. Fair enough I think.

I'm not very good at means testing though.

I find it hard when in a stuffy, dark and dank one-room flat where the electrical appliances are as liveless as the occupant, in front of an elderly person, ravaged by age and society, whose todays were just like yesterdays, and the tomorrows are no better, to even consider that this person might not deserve what meagre solace I can provide.

The only way I can find out how many children uncle or auntie has is to -gasp!- ask them.

Sometimes uncle gets so excited because I am the first bit of civilization he comes into contact with in such a long time, and such a fine bit at that, that they forget how many children they have exactly. I'm a social worker, not a FBI lie-detector.

Or I could be fixing the washing machine and as we all know water pipes have a mind of their own and this mind includes deciding to burst and gush out unexpectedly usually when me and my notebook is in the way, and we all know how paper takes to water: so well that the ink smudges and the $200,000/year income uncle's son earns becomes $20.

Generally, half of all my clients speak Hokkien only. The other half are just lying that when they say they know other languages. My Hokkien is totally non-existent. I have this skill where I can tell how many children uncle has by looking at his eyes. It's way cool.

So yeah. I'm not very competent. Good thing in this country, incompetence earns you millions.

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And so as the earth moves mindlessly on, Sniffies will continue to be shocked and stuffed in ignorant pursuit of redundant knowledge and I will continue to give stuff out to those who don't deserve anything more than anything.

How wonderful life is.

HK Oct 2007: Saw IV

To capitalize on the cheaper rate if you watch shows before 11 am, my travel mate decided we should watch Saw IV, to which I obligingly agreed even though I get really freaked out during horror shows.



The theatre was really small. There is only about 10 rows, and the room was flat and non-sloping, which meant that you get full view of the head of the guy infront of you. For once, I was actually glad for that.

I think I get freaked out during horror shows because I can almost imagine myself being in the poor victims' shoes.

After a while, I think the movie kinda grow on me. Basically, the movie is about some dude who goes around setting up contraptions for bad people to put themselves into where they have to choose between death or cutting off an appendage, either of which they truly deserve. I think the show, and its prior prequels, is about karma or more specifically that karma doesn't exist though people think it does, and the only karma is the kind you put into your own hands.

Karma doesn't exist. It's really just a myth.

I'm indignant. You can live your life the best way you should, but as always, it's the scummy garbage that gets what you deserve, and they're probably laughing at you about it.

So yeah. I was not afraid during the show because I know I will never find myself in the trap to be judged. I will be the judge.