HK Oct 2007 Day 2: Big Buddha

Having spent the afternoon at Tai-O, I cannot imagine a worser experience. Thankfully, the powers that be saved me that chore when we went to the Big Buddha on Ngong Ping.


HK is not a place I would have liked to visit ever again, it being filled with so much painful memories, especially in places I have been to before like the Big Buddha.


Want to take the cable car also cannot.


I have actually deleted every picture I have ever taken in HK, for the strangest reasons, the new ones I have taken look strikingly similar.


The good thing was unlike the previous time, there wasn't so much people crowding around the place. However, even though there were lesser people, the average intelligence around the place doesn't seem any higher.

From HK October 20...

Unfortunately, there's a reason why there wasn't so many people there: it was pouring rather heavily, as this half-covered pic of the Big Buddha shows. So yeah. How smart am I to be here.

Not very apparently.

HK Oct 2007 Day 2: Shaolin@Tai-O

Shaolin Monastery at Tai-O.

Complete with directional signboard.

So evil members of the demonic sects can find their way easily to Shaolin.



Loud-speaker.

No need for the monks to practise 千里传音 anymore.


And there's nothing like some Haagen-Daaz ice cream to train constitution. Eat liao swords and spears also cannot go through your body.

From HK October 20...

So yeah. Shaolin at Tai-O. There's training courses for small friends, and separate classes for those above 18 too.

HK: the journey so far

Currently I'm at this guesthouse somewhere in the middle of Mongkok, straddling Argyle Road and Western Vegetable Road South. It's not a bad place, location wise. Compared to Causeway Bay or Tsim Sha Tsui, it's not nearly half as populated but it's near to lots of good places, near in my vocab meaning no more than a 5 minute walk. Western Vegetable Road runs parallel to Nathan Road and is full of toy shops and shopping centre with toy shops and other fashion shops selling all sorts of cool linglinglonglong. Ladies market is somewhere perpendicular to the vegetable street so that's cool too. Coolest of all is Krispy Kreme is once again just a friendly 5 minutes from my door step.

The bad thing? Well there is internet connection in the room, but I suspect it's heavily fire-walled. Msn, bittorrent and mail clients don't work. I have to access msn from facebook, and it is in beta, not the google 'it's beta cuz beta is cool' but beta is the true sense of the word: it doesn't auto-refresh and I have to refresh if I wanna see if there is any new messages. For people who are responsive that's not too bad; it gets very irritating talking to people are are unresponsive fucks.

The first day in HK [i don't count arrival day] was super hectic. We ate alot of street food, shopped around Western Vegetable street, walked from Mongkok to Tsim Sha Tsui where we proceeded to Lan Kwai Fang for Halloween. Today the plan is to go to the Tiantan Buddha, before going for karaoke and then sit the ferry to Victoria Peak. Friday, the itinerary includes City University.

My travelling philosophy is this: travelling is not about cramping your itinerary with everywhere. Sometimes doing nothing is also travelling.

I am missing Singapore already.

leopard

Oh gosh. I don't mind re-installing every 6 months just to watch this video.

i hate

New Balance Real Run 2007.

15 km.



As the map shows, the run consists of 4 too long stretches of road. Straight road. Straight endless road. I can't do running on straight roads. It's look you put in so much effort and then you look up, the place still looks the same; it's like you're not moving at all. It's like you put in so much effort and you get nothing out of it. I have a phobia for that.

I freak out.

I run faster. Try to overtake more people. I get more tired. But the road still looks the same like nothing happened.

And then i sprained my ankle.

I can't do straight roads. It's too much like life.

japanese toilet training video

Piaget is gonna have something to say about this.

vanna white and pat sajak discusses font choice

surreal.

porn for the pain, hawthorn for the heartaches

Today, we have so many many pills for so many many things. There's stuff for preventing HIV, for psychological conditions and as I have just learnt, we now have a forgetting pill.

I wished it worked on me, but unfortunately the pill specifically targets only traumatic experiences, like rape or war. You don't forget that you were raped of course, you simply forget what it feels like to be raped, which apparently makes affective issues more easier. Not like the 'pop a pill and forget the last X minutes of your life where X is the dosage in miligrams' usage that I quite imagined but cool nonetheless.

How does the forgetting pill work? Apparently to remember something, you need to strengthen it. When we experience something traumatic, adrenalin rushes through our body and strengthens the memory. So our dear pill works by blocking the production of adrenalin. [By this same token, if you have an exam, you could try hanging on a cliff and studying]

I can easily think of so many things we need pills for.

How about a pill for loneliness? Right, we have ecstasy. How about a pill for what happens after the ecstasy wears off? And another one for when that goes off too.

Or a pill that makes you just know things. You would pop it and then realize you shouldn't really be eating this pill in the first place.

Let's make a pill to cure gayness. Conversely, we can have a pill that induces it. Imagine, being gay on demand. Why? Because in certain situations, it's good to be gay. For the rest, we can just pop a pill.

Bryan would really like a pill that induces orgasms. No comment.

We could have a pill to makes people fall head over heels for you. Money seems to be losing its sheen these days.

And this is my personal request: a pill that gives you broadband internet connection upon consumption. Don't ask me how it's supposed to work. I need internet connection.

How about a pill that prevents one from hoping? Or a pill that cures stupidity? Actually they could be the same pill 'cuz only the stupid hope.

I think we could really use a pill to stop us from ever eating pills.

-

I think it's so cool to just pop a pill and have sadness, or loneliness or insecurity or uncertainty or whatever unbearable negative emotion just vanish. It would make life so much more livable. Vincent Van Gogh certainly wouldn't have ended his life and would have gifted the world with much more beauty.

But would Vincent have been brilliant without his pain? I would like to think not.

I like to think that pain makes us human because pain differentiates us from other animals, from other people. No one is going to care about our own pain but us. How we transcend our own pain makes us a better person, because we made ourselves.

-

Want a pill of happiness? Take arsenic.

sailor moon

Some things should stay animated.

oversleeping

by 'I'm from Barcelona'




Damn! Oversleeping again
Damn! I can't believe I did it once again

I can make it in time
if I jump out of bed
if I skip to wear clothes
and get running instead
if I get on my feet
if I skip to hit snooze
if I don't care to eat
and get running instead
I can make it in time

Been oversleeping on Monday
I don't care let's pretend that it's Sunday

-

This is so my official song.

to build a home

I hate chin ups.

Mounting the bar must be the singularly most energy-expenditing event, space travel edging it out but just barely.

I see all my friends doing their chin ups. They reached their limit but always without fail try to squeeze out one more, usually by attempting to slither up the air. When I do chin-ups, I dismount after comfortably completing 10 reps. I don't even think of trying for one more.

It also seems that no matter how much effort I put in the gym, I'm only good for 10.

I hate chin ups.

-

I think chin ups are like life.

No matter how much effort you can put into something, the end is always pre-determined. You can never change an outcome. Over and over again. The eternal return of doom and gloom. Happy endings are things that exist only for other people; I've tried, very hard, too hard, , too many times and here I, plunged painfully right back to the beginning.

it's been a good life, almost 24 years of it. It can only go downhill from here.

I think I would like to dismount liao.

time of death

my logistics manager: The neighbour informed me that Client XXX passed away liao.

Me: Ok.

manager: ermmmm.. then how?

me: deactivate all his services lor.

manager: Ok but you have to write me a com[munication] form?

me: What? You want me to write a com form to you to tell you what you told me?

manager: yah. this kind of news i only hear from the neighbours. You are the social worker. This kind of thing only you know.

me: ok

*put down phone.

*scream

resignation letters: always good to have one on hand.

in the news: silly health survey

The Straits Times recently reported that based on a global online survey, 4 out of 10 Singaporeans suffer from either the flu or sore throat. And only 1 out of 10 is shameless enough to say he's totally healthy. 26,500 people replied, with 500 Singaporeans so that means 200 Singaporeans are sick with flu or sore throat?

Seriously I have no idea what the survey is mentioning because that's all the article mentions. It doesn't even mention what is the time frame for the illness to occur, which I would think is pretty important; your figures are surely gonna vary if you ask what illness a person has within one week, one month or one year time frame.

And online sampling must be the worst sampling method ever.

Obviously the type of people who answer online surveys are the type who are generally good at computers, and nobody ever got good at computers going to the gym.

When I fall sick, I tend to do bo liao things like answering online surveys.

When I fall sick, I tend to do pity seeking things like answering online surveys about my health.

help unlock the second prison

The Yellow Ribbon Project.

They should get Durai to be their mascot. Got racial harmony component some more.

-

Personally I'm not a fan of the project [big shock].

1. You put people behind bars, you're the one that stick the stigma on them.

2. So you tell me what I should not mind by pointing out all the things I should mind. I always wonder how that worked.

3. Finally, I strongly suspect if I had a degree and went to jail before, I don't think I will have that tough a time finding work. I think the problem is more of a qualification issue, which of course isn't an issue here, because qualifications are the way our meritocratic society sieves people and decides who gets PA and who decides how much PA is.

beware the spouse who never gets angry

Mack said to his partner Gabriel, 'When I get mad at you, you never fight back. How do you control your anger?'

Gabriel replies, 'Simple, I clean the toilet.'

Mack asks, 'And how the heck is that supposed to help?'

'I use your toothbrush.'

empiricist by birth, constructivist by convenience

My friend says: I'm an academic cheat, very much like how you distribute pirated mac app. We're going to be together for a long time.

Me: Distribution is such a strong word. I prefer to think of it as carelessly leaving my stuff on your table.

Friend: I'm an empiricist, not constructivist. A transaction, by any other name, is still a transaction. Heading to school. Hope I don't murder anyone along the way.

Me: I'm into peddling pirated psy e-books now. Can i interest you in a pdf of the dsm iv? Fully searchable wor.

Friend: yes yes yes yes :-)

Odie my colleague says to her clients, 'how pregnant are you?'

At 1 pm in the afternoon, my mum asks, "Why are you still at home ar? You on leave ar?"

Me: No ar

Mum: Den?

Me: My boss is.

desire

My credit card is somersaulting in my wallet.