...

Being emo and pissed off for random reasons. I realised i should cherish that which cherishes me, and all else can burn in hell for all i care, for thats life.

Today fushi and co were quite pissed off at a certain floorball teacher in charge, Mr Loke, heres how it supposedly went,

Loke: Shahrani, do you know Zakir is injured?
Shah: Yea
Loke: Did you ask him how he is?
Shah: I asked Pauline
Loke: Oh, so did you go and ask your MJ friend how he doing or not? Hmm?

Makes me wonder when teachers became so childishly bastard. This type of attitude, the obvious contempt, is what people usually associate with petty playground scuffles rather than the words of a grown man teaching economics.

On that point des told me hes a biased man in lessons and whatever that implies, it certainly doesn't stand out as a positive trait.

Not to judge or impose obligations upon others, but i never really did think teachers should pub/club if they don't want to encourage (ok, further encourage) their students to do so as well. So a teacher that goes to pubs and has a happy time with 2 (well lets not talk about the looks) girls isn't exactly my idea of a role model.

Of course, everyone has a choice of their own lifestyles, and i won't judge him based on his conduct, especially since i don't really know him. I believe people do not have the right to enforce their own ideas upon others and expect others to follow, i believe they do not have the right to act merely upon their whims or their assumptions and go ahead blaming and venting their frustrations on others.

Still feeling fucky.

fuck la

fuck this

Explain to me

Today nick, ys all that were talking about how khai, fushi and shah were getting their Top 3 achievements cut. Thats pretty serious, obviously, so i checked with shah what was going on.

Apparently, they (the VS malay gang, to be general) went for the floorball finals against MJC and sat at the MJ side, clapping and cheering for both teams. Well, that seems like a good show of sportsmanship by them considering how i understand their impression of the current floorball team has not been positive. Yet someone (its either a floorballer or the teacher in charge since there wasn't any other VJ people there) decided that it was greatly "un-patriotic", that as pure victorians (VS -> VJ) they were betraying their school.

So now we can't sit with the opposing school? We can't cheer for them? Mr Seet and Mr Tan seem to think that way. They originally threatened to cut their top 3 achievements and have them make a public apology. Apologise for fuck? Shah was even keen to do it, since he could then explain properly to people who would listen. (which means everyone who can see beyond their own noses)

Shah originally tried to explain and to have a civil and logical discussion with the teachers about this issue but after Mr Seet threw his temper and started banging table and shouting and i-dono-what, he just kinda gave up trying. Now they're supposed to write letters of apology and clean the school canteen for...some time.

Lets not look at the fact they're being punished for retarded reasons first. Lets look at how the teachers decided they could ruin a bunch of boys' lives just because they seemed to "betray" the school. I'm sure there are people who utterly detest their own schools, who go to competitions specially to see/hope their schools lose. But whats the rationale for punishing such actions? is it illegal to dislike something? is it against the rules to not support your own school? We do not have obligations, only choices. We do not see Singaporean bettors cheering for Malaysia at the Tiger Cup getting thrown into jail, or fined, or blacklisted, do we? They have the right to cheer for whoever and whatever they want.

So why is a school presuming that their students must have undying, unwavering loyalty to their school that sportsmanship becoms a sin?

And i wonder what drove the complainee to complain, the only unbiased view i can have now is that whenever they saw them, (the VS gang) they had conceded a goal and were looking around in dejectment to see them clapping/cheering. When we are frustrated and losing, we tend to blame everything else but ourselves, to find an outlet for our pent up anger and perhap humiliation. So they may have decided they lost because of the demoralising effect that a couple of guys cheering for the other team had on them. Thats just one view, though.

Sometimes this school is just ridiculous in the decisions it makes.

but what can we say?

the game of life

Between dusk and day
Before the sunrise
The city will begin to live its crimes
Millions if you ask
It happens everywhere

Every little corner has its tale
Windows are the eyes
That witness without soul
Watching in the silence what is done

Everyday crimes are commited that go unpunished, that are unsolved, whose victims are left screaming at walls asking "who" and "why". Our base nature lies always upon greed, upon that desire to gain more than what you already have. It is what drives us to succeed, to invent, to innovate. It is what has helped us survive up till now, to become the dominant species. Simply by being greedy.

Walking on the line of life and death

Greed, like all of man's strongest urges and feelings can give life or death. Used rightly it can propel us to and beyond our limits, or it can bring us down into mindless, uncontrollable and unrealistic desire. With great power comes great responsibility, (Uncle Ben, Spiderman) much as we wouldn't like to believe it, greed is one of our strengths, just as anger and selfishness and many other attributes are.

Where life is just a game
That you have to win

Without motivation greed is of no use, our teachers and parents and seniors (most of them, at least) always tell us to have dreams, or at least try (and sometimes succeed) to enforce their dreams upon us. With these dreams all our strengths and advantages come into play, serving as a driving force behind our actions, fuelling our desire to achieve. And what bigger prize is there than winning the game of life?

Of course we can never determine what exactly amounts to winning in life. But everyone has his or her own idea, their own version of how life is played along. A man in poverty-stricken Africa may consider having 2 meals a day by the end of his lifespan, winning in life. the same man born into British aristocracy may only view achieving immortality in tales and tabloids and history as a life achievement, worthy to be called victory.

In the end we're all playing the game of life, but noth together, only with ourselves. At most we look over our shoulders and view the progress of others, thus changing our own plans and routes. Yet eventually the only person we are striving to win is ourselves; for at the end of life, no matter how many are with you physically as you pass away, in your mind there is only you and yourself. (and perhaps God if you believe)

When death surrounds you on and on
All the time it's near

People always say our greatest rival is ourselves. Given the fragility of life, we should strive everyday to beat ourselves, to overcome our own limitations, to beat ourselves at every moment - for death could come anytime.

I am greedy yet i cannot beat myself. Such is the sin of procrastination that i cannot even save myself...

Hey you

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeRZL12SFJk

This COULD be good. This MIGHT be good. But this COULD be bad, this MIGHT be bad.

I used to be full of hope, i used to rely on the what-ifs and maybes and possibly-s, I believed and believed but now i know i was just consoling myself. Sometimes, when fate plays an awful trick on you, you can't accept it until its truth smacks you in the face, knocking you flat.

Yesterday i collected my new progressive lenses. When testing the optician had already told me "This is as good as it can get". I told myself that i was merely tired, that it was a new lense and that once my new specs was made, i'd be enjoying 6/6 sight again. Our minds always hope for the best, that is the beauty of imagination - it gives you hope and possibilities to keep you going for that day, that week, that year, till you find out its all a lie. Yesterday i looked around the opticians shop, i looked at the words on a cardboard piece, on the stall opposite the road, at the assistants face, perfect. Yet once i closed my left eye, the world crumbled as the clarity simply faded to oblivion, replaced with a perpetual fuzziness that makes the world seem surreal.

Many thoughts went through my head yesterday, and even today. My life as i knew it had finally been tipped past the edge. Taking that i should not have developed cataracts till mid 50s, I have ruined 4 decades of my life. I will spend 4 decades with a eye that is uncorrected, with my 400degree astigmatism, with my new, left master eye- when i'm a right hander.

When the assistant asked me to compare my vision with what i used to have, i was stunned. I could not remember clearly the days of having two eyes to look with, of the clear 3D representation of the world so many of us - or more appropriately, you - enjoy. I guess the saying that you don't know what you have till its gone is true. When i had vision i never really appreciated the beauty of it and now that its gone, i can never ever experience it again. Makes you think about how human nature seems to lead to us getting hurt, how we always neglect whats most important, just cause we take it for granted. Or how we can take risks just because it shows our courage (human pride), or feeds our greed (greed) etc etc. Think the seven cardinal sins.

Hey you, don't you give up, its not too late, theres still a chance for us...

I'd really like to believe that one day, with medical or genetic or some other technology, my eye can be saved. The gift of our youth - hope - always shines with a glaring brightness, blocking out rationaliy and facts to create choices. Yet as strong a healer an driving force hope is, it is also the delusion of youth, since the worlds grim certainties haven't taken its toll on us, forcing our eyes away from the light of dreams into the cold dark box of reality.

Yet i believe in the innumerability and infinite nature of possibilities, of the multiverse and quanta theory. Anything is possible. Impossible is nothing.

I may truly let that sink in and be a person waiting for the light, or i may never do so, resigning myself to a life wasted by a mistake of mere centimetres that fateful day. Between delusion and despair, the imaginative me chooses the former, if only i lie well enough.

Hope is the delusion of the young, Despair is the delusion of the old.

Move

A couple of years back i came across a video of Switchfoots Dare you to Move. It was a chunky, simple flash movie that told a simple story - you make the change, you make the decision, do you dare to?

This isn't even similar, it touched me but it did not make me cry like that video (that now i can't find) did. But the song is meaningful and the purpose of the creator of this video is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkFQ3w9VXNM&v3
(sadly, youtube likes to screw up on me and i cant copy the embed.)

I'm not asking anyone to start donating funds, or to start going overseas to dig wells and build houses, but to look and to feel. I don't believe in volunteering for charity homes and programmes, in flag days or fundraising drives. Constantly urging people to raise funds does nothing if they don't help in the little things that count, if they won't give a penny to "uncertified" beggars.

When people donate money they feel they've done a good deed, they've accumulated karma, they feel good. When people help another, for no self-gain or forseeable benefit, that is when one can feel proud. I shirk students asking for flags day donation, i say "sorry no thanks" to people selling pencils and bookmarks. This despite having been in their shoes before, sometimes out of my own free will.

Call me selfish or miserly but i think that when i help an old man up the bus, i'm doing much more good to society than a dollar or two in an aluminium tin would. Obviously, i'm not saying funds aren't required by charitable organisations, but the urgency for it, the significance of materialism is only secondary.

Singapore aims to be a gracious society, popular icons strive to seek religious and spiritual uplifting, weeekly a man named Earl tries to change his karma. The world as we know it is swept up in finding its new identity in seeking a higher meaning to the purpose of life once their material status is stabilised. But the underlying priority of such actions are in the end the promotion of kindness, of compassion and sympathy in our communities.

A community where people help each other in the little things that makes life that much more bearable, that takes only an ounce of your effort and the kindness in your heart. If just a few people could pass on a helping hand, and if the recipients feel touched enough to further pass it on the need for donations and fundings and homes and charities would be reduced greatly. After all would a man with kidney failure need much help from NKF is his friends and relatives chipped in to help, or even donated a kidney to him? Would ex-convicts need funds to create job allocation programmes if people readily accepted them? It is not a certainty, but it is certainly a beautiful idea.

Yet the prettiest pictures can only be painted in the ugliest circumstances when the human mind is pushed so hard it strives to find true beauty in the world. That time is coming, with growing war and horrors inflicted upon the fellow people of the earth by our own hands, we may see our flaws and faults, and theirs. And we will then work to change it, for that is how humanity has passed its course.

By making mistakes, and trying to correct them after its run its painfull toll.

Hopefully we'll realise whats wrong soon, before global warming and AIDS and poverty and all the other growing terrors gain enough momentum to be unstoppable. Theres no running, salvation is here and not anywhere else, for theres nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, when the world at large is at stake.

So, dare you move just that one step?

Red Dragon

Okay so I haven't blogged in quite a while, Granado Espada has been fiercely addictive with hunting and leveling, not to mention the passing of Common Tests and the inevitable need to go out and play after its end.

Anyway, I've been reading some books, one of which is Red Dragon. Its apparently a movie but typically of me, i didnt catch it cause noone else wanted to.

The book revolves around a killer, a sociopath to be exact, and the hero Will Graham has to track him down before he murders more, brutally. The legendary Hannibal Lecter appears off and on to provide insights and horrors for the hard pressed Graham, whilst also aiding the Red Dragon. The most gripping chapters were those that laid out the development of the Red Dragon from unfortunately disfigured but nonetheless innocent child to a tortured, schizophrenic sociopath.

The saddest and sickest moments lay not in the killings or the ruthlessness of the murders, or the sadistic nature that the human nature unleashes when pushed to the extremes. Mainly because the extremes are isolated cases, uncommon and hard to create. The horro lies in the way society creates such sociopaths, true the gene for sadism, for being a sociopath or arsonist lies there, but the environment plays an even larger part. The extremes are hard to hit, but cruelty, neglect and exploitation can push one off the cliff of sanity.

The human potential for ruthlessness and our base nature of greed and thus insensitivity can be expressed in many ways. Recently, i've been taking 853 from serangoon and theres always theis sight disabled man calling for aid at identifying buses. Yet each time i am the only one helping him on. On the bus, people shrink from him as if his blindness were contagious and only when he hobbled to the back of the bus did someone offer him a seat, that someone was an old man, one who would also need the seat, surely. This is nowhere near being sadistic, it is probably not going to create a murderer directly (though indirectly, probably) yet it is a simple evidence to our growing incapability to see that others need aid and to lift that helping hand.

Random rambling on the darker nature of humanity tends to make me feel like i'm being misanthropic, after all, haven't we all felt the cold tendrils of hurt from our peers and fellow humans?

Anyway, gotta sleep, making new transition-progressive-lenses tomorrow that'll cost 500 at elast (according to mommy), so must sleep early so eyes are recharged and superb!!

Also, since i don't really know how to dedicate posts, i'll just say here: Get well soon Bimin and don't be a perpetually-sick kid anymore! =D

heh.