Oh, you sexy, young, (bimbotic) thing

They are young. They are sexy. They are bold.

They dress provocatively, showing off their flair for every female's instinct to want to look their best. They splash extravagant amounts of time and money on clothes with little thread, on skimpy skirts with mere inches that would make Paris Hilton proud, on gossip so deadly and venomous the snakes would hiss at the sight of it.

They are also what I term 'the bimbotic girls'.

Every once in a while, there is a new addition. The girls come and go, as the core members of the team remain. But, any girl who wishes to enter the team must fulfil one basic criteria: to dress provocatively or sexily. They have zero tolerance for prudes or conservativists, and are not afraid to show off their power by...whining to "Daddy Dearest". "Daddy Dearest" is a very flattering term for a short, fat, balding middle-aged man, isn't it?

Forget about quizing them on algebraic equations or the theory of mechanism. They are here for one sole purpose: to look good. They may be clueless about E=mc2, but are pro in manipulating the minds of the men around them, memerising them enough to be at their beck and call.

Never mind that they or their admirers are married or attached. Men hanker and lust after them. Einstein's theory of gravity would seem like a foreign language to them, and all you should expect in return are blank and clueless stares. They sprout out words of wisdom like, "Women were born to be pampered" and "Would it hurt to let your boyfriend wait for you? It's men duty to wait for women. And, as we all know, women need time to make-up. Do men need time to make-up? No."

As the width of their skirt gets shorter and shorter, they climb higher and higher up the corporate ladder.

They thrive on the sheer power of strength.
They feed on men's hunger and weakness.
They are the masters of the show.
And men are their puppets.

Like manufactured barbie dolls, they are the living species dominating the earth. And men's minds. They have a certain mould and standard to abide to, and they must always and only marry Ken. Ken = Dashing prince-charming, with lotsa of love (optional) and money to spare. Looks are optional, but the size of your wallet must be sufficient enough to fund their random shopping sprees and their never-ending quest for beauty, even way into their 30s.

Like Madonna, they are the material girls. I wonder why they spend S$700 on a skirt with so little cloth. Are there not enough Lindsay Lohans and her mini-skirts around?

The beauty of their youth is their currency. They have unadulterated lust and passion for money, and they exchange their time, affections and youth in return for money and to gratify their superficial chase for materialism.

They want money. Money and more money. To finance their facials, spas, salon visits, beauty products, etc etc. Anything to maintain their youthful looks and put time to a standstill, "not put time on their faces".

I quote a poem I once came across:

He's 61. And I'm 21.
He enjoys my company,
and I enjoy his.
I think it's called First World Bank.

In the office, Britney's "From the Bottom of My Broken Heart" is playing on their stereo on repeat mode. Talk about noise pollution, is this their idea of good music? I have no qualms about listening to Britney's crooning vocals, but I simply cannot stand the fact that these are the very people who complain that we turn the office into a fish market of sorts. Can they please orchestrate their thoughts and iron out the reasons behind their dissent before speaking out? Why aren't they practising what they preach?

While some (females) may find such an environment stifling, others (men) appreciate the eye-candies walking around an otherwise uninteresting office environment with females decked out in boring black suit pants.

It's a miracle, that as society progresses, human beings seem to have left their brains behind while on a wild goose chase after technological advances.

Office Joke of The Month

My colleague sent out a mass email to the entire team.

This was how the email went:

Dear fellow colleagues,
Please pass me all the namecards that you have collected so that I can enter it into the main database.

Days passed. One week. Two weeks. By the 3rd week, none had passed her any namecards.

She sent out another mass email. This time, she CC-ed the Big Boss governing the entire team.

This was how the email went:

Dear (Name of Boss),
So far, none of the team members have given me any of their namecards.

The next day, all the namecards were waiting on my colleague's desk the moment she stepped in.

45 Minutes

Had a chat with my boss just minutes ago.

He asked me, "How are you?"

So, I told him, "Really bad. I've been stuck in this hell hole for the past 5 months and I still have one more to go. I don't have much work to do on some days and I spend my time searching for Stephanie Sun's lyrics. To add it all up, I have this scumbag for a boss, and he happens to be you."

What? Did you expect me to say all that? No, of course not, so my reply was, "Fine."

And then, I added, "I've learnt a lot of things".

He went, "Oh, really?"

Well, you know what is really? What's real is that if I had stuck to what I was supposed to do, and what you wanted me to do, I must as well have been sitting at home and scratching my leg from 9 in the morning all the way till 6 in the evening, and it wouldn't have made a difference. At least, for the latter, I got to do something slightly constructive like scratching my leg.

Some people.

So, with my very PR-ish statement, I would have expected some reciprocatory as a form of courtesy on his part. But, no, a while later he had to go on to ask me, "So, you said just now that you've learnt a lot of things. So, what have you learnt?"

Thankfully, I had my writing to back me up. =))

During our conversation, I projected a view of mine that I've had all along.

I said: "I think that working life is better than studying."

"Oh, really?" He seemed very surprised indeed and did a motion of lifting up his sleeve to look at his watch to signify that he had plenty of time to listen to this very interesting nugget of thought.

When I declined to elaborate further, he said: "Besides the projects and exams that you are mugging for, now, add on mortgage loans, handphone bills, electricity bills, allowance for your parents and kids; all these plus work."

"That's something to think about, isn't it?"

When work/study commitments were out of the way, the conversation took a turn and went for a long walk down pyschology path.

It was so philosophical, in fact, that half the time I had no idea what was sprouting out of his mouth, although it sounded to me like some thoughts of wisdom.

He mentioned that life was always the same around Singapore, it would be good to breathe some foreign air..."It's always the same, take a bus to Bugis, if not take a bus to..."

Plaza Sing immediately popped up in my mind.

"...Plaza Sing, or else Orchard..." Either we have real telepathy or Singapore really has so few mentionable places. I suspect the latter.

He asked, "Have any of your family and friends ever asked you to take bus to go watch the sunset for a change?"

"No." I laughed. "But, I have."

"You see? It's good to do something different."

Er...actually, what I meant was that I've thought about it before and asked a friend, who was unwilling to accompany me because she said, "Watch the sea for what?!! Siao ah!! So boring to watch the sea...I have better things to do with my time. And, besides, I don't have the mood."

So, I didn't get the chance to go watch any sea, much less the sunset.

I would love to go do something different, instead of watching a movie. To me, that's so passe, and I'd rather hit the beach anytime soon. The last time I saw a rainbow in its full glory was when I spent a week on a farm in Australia. Once in a while, I think back to that day when I opened my door and saw the seven striking colours of the rainbow, and I could still smell the scents of the after-rain. It's captured fully in my memory and it will take a while to fade.

If ever.

Zero 灵感

最近，没有什么灵感
生活也少了一些情趣
平凡也变得太过平凡
生活也变得枯燥乏味

最近，迷上了方文山的心灵鸡汤
密密麻麻的文字会让我冲昏了头
但里面包含他对生活的正面态度
是否有能力改变我客观的理论呢

最近，常在网上跟一些朋友聊天
朋友笑说我在MSN的对谈话有如
相似在写一篇文章
她有点太大作文章

最近，闷闷闷
每天上班，就想下班
但一下班，就想明天又要上班
明天上班呢，后天又要上班
然后就是后后后天
下下下下下个礼拜
等一下，不对，
我没有这么多下下下个礼拜了

我只能说。
无奈。

Lady in the Water

Another out-of-the-world flick that attempts to bring a bedtime story to life. Lady in the Water infuses fantasy into reality about Story, a water nymph, living underwater in a pool situated in a seemingly ordinary apartment.

However, for realists out there, this film may come off as senseless or idiosyncratic for the cynic in you. The facts are made up of fiction, and the movie has to constantly find itself explaining to the viewer the quirks and rules of law of the other world (where water nymphs live), like how an eagle will soar above the sky at the right moment to bring the "water nymph" back to their world. It comes to the point where the movie is almost nonsensical, as the director aims (and fails) to beef up the movie by smoking new facts up to prop the film's storyline.

The main theme aside, the film has its memorable moments. But, what stands out the most for me, even more than the main theme of this flick, is how the director aims to break the conventional with his unconventional sub-themes, which is aplenty in this supposedly horror flick sprinkled with its heart-stopping moments (even those most of them, I must say, are cheap thrills, leaving nothing to the viewers' imaginations except to scare the hell out of them).

In it, there is an intelligent character, who often amuses himself with the fact that "there is no originality left in this world" and he can supposedly predict a story's ending after reading only a few lines of the beginning. (Case in point: No one in real life walks around saying their thoughts out loud, as evidenced in films.)

In this movie, a point that Shyamalan, the director, hopes to bring across is that the world is connected. And, that no individual, no matter how seemingly unimportant in the first place, is not a part of the jigsaw puzzle that forms the world. He puts this ideology of his blended into the movie where a useless pool boy later goes on to play an important fixture.

All in all, this is one child-like film that will test the boundaries of your patience.

Simplicity

17岁的纯真少女，徐宜真 (张韶涵饰)，双胞胎妹妹意外坠楼身亡，后来才发现妹妹的惊人秘密，不禁问男友林嘉纬 (杨士萱饰)，看似文静、乖巧的妹妹为什么背后会有这么可怕的故事，而又是什么原因导致她走上黑暗的道路。她男友就这样回答她：

"也许
我们并不需要找出答案
从开始念书到现在
我们经历了各种大大小小的考试
选择题也好
是非题也好
甚至是问答题
我们为了分数
都习惯了教科书提供给的原则
去解答出老师们心目中
所谓的标准答案
可是现实生活中
标准答案真的存在吗
我看未必吧
所以有些时候
有些事情
我宁可把他们当成无解来看待
这样才不会为了钻牛角尖
活得那么痛苦"

<<爱杀17>>

To: My Next-Door-Neighbour

Dear Next-Door-Neighbour,

Gee. Thanks for making me feel better everytime I see the kind of living conditions you are bunking in. You make me feel great that I'm living in a big, big house with a toilet the size bigger than your entire er...flat (if that can even be called a flat in the first place).

Logically speaking, we are not even neighbours because you don't live in the same area as I do, where all the houses there are big, with swimming pools and all. However, you are just located outside my window, below a block of flats. So, I still think you can be considered my neighbour.

Sometimes, I wonder what you do for a living. Hell, you could be the security guard or the man who always washes the cars parked below the flats in the morning. I wouldn't know, because I don't even know what you look like, except that you are a Malay and a guy, because I've always only seen you in the dark.

By the time I wake up at 7am, it seems you have already left your "flat" to go to work. Your green door remains shut. During daytime, you are not always not around. Sometimes, when night falls, I don't see you sitting at the foot of your door, like you sometimes do. Yesterday, when I looked out of my window, I didn't see you around.

You must be a foreigner, who travelled miles and miles to reach this island called Singapore to eke out a living. Sometimes, I stop to wonder if the reason why you are living in such shabby conditions in a well-developed country like Singapore (where there is no such thing as starving to death, only people who say they have no money to eat and you later see them queuing up at the Toto store below their block), was because you were cheated by an agent, if your children had abandoned you, if your wife had left you. But, no, I think they are all waiting for you at home to send some money over.

Sometimes, I look out of the window, and I see you. But, when I see you looking at my direction, I turn away quickly in guilt. I wonder what is going through your mind when you look at my house. Are you thinking of making it rich so that one day you can buy a real house of your own? Or are you thinking about your home back in your hometown, your wife and kids?

Sometimes,when you leave your door open, I see that you don't even have a proper bed, just a mattress being laid on the ground, and a small fan beside it. I look at my tall fan next to the window and Gee, you make me feel so good about myself. You really do.