show some love

in urban (straits times) today:

“i love Singapore, but i didn’t understand a lot of things when i first got here. When i was looking for a place to live, my property agent kept referring to home owners as auntie and uncle. i just didn’t understand why she kept taking me round to meet her family instead of showing me property.”

- ally begg, star sports presenter.

this kind of reminds me of the time when i was in taiwan – i was trying to catch the attention of the shopkeeper by calling “auntie, auntie!”.

flustered-

i need a pick-me-up.

badly.

can’t help it huh?

and another one bites the dust.

telling me your position

ah tired. shall be a short entry before i try mugging before falling asleep.

anyway these few days i have been “haunted” so to speak, by a thought. it is frightening to me, but sometimes i wish that real life could be reel life. when i watch drama serials, i don’t feel afraid, because i know that more often than not, the bad guy will actually learn that he is wrong and regret and repent. there is always the assurance that there is going to be a happy ending. for example, the common case – a family member who sees his career or whatever more important than his family. but eventually he will get into some scrape or another and learn that his family is the only one who would stand by him in his times of trouble. then he would learn to love his family back. at the start of the show, the audience would be thinking “what a dumb guy! can’t you see all the effort your family is putting in to be close to you?! why aren’t you even giving a damn about them?” but this anger would be short-lived, cause the audience would know that eventually the guy will wake up and everything’s good and well. 

well, one would also note that not every show has a happy ending, but i guess in those cases the bad guy just dies or something. so i think that’s out of my consideration.

but real life is scary.

there is never this assurance that there is going to be a happy ending.

you can’t ever be sure that the bad guy would ever realise that he’s wrong.

when he does,

he might just be too late.

don’t do it

rahhh js made me fall in love with this song! a little late/slow though. oh wells.

Running Away by
Midnight Hour

Don’t lie and say that it’s OK.
It’s alright here, there’s nothing more to say.
So I’m running away.
I’m leaving this place.
Yeah, I’m running away.
I’m running away.

Don’t tell me, I don’t want to play.
It’s too late for you to make me stay.
No, I won’t stay.
So I’m running away.
I’m leaving this place.
Yeah, I’m running away.
I’m running away.

And faster than you can follow me from this lonely place.
And farther than you can find me, I’m leaving
Yeah I’m leaving today.
And I, I’ll never let you find me.
I’m leaving you behind with the past
No, I won’t look back.
And I don’t want to hear your reasons.
Don’t want to hear you tell me why I should stay.

And try, and try to understand me
And try to understand what I say when I say I can’t stay
I, I’m moving on from this place
I’m leaving and I won’t quit running away.

I’m running away.
I’m leaving this place.
Yeah, I’m running away.
I’m running away.

you took it away

yesterday my parents, my brother and i went to lagoon @ east coast park for dinner! the food was all very good, but in actual fact our dinner was totally junk food. lol! we had chicken wings, satay, barbequed youtiao+taufoo+cuttlefish and ngoh hiong (however you spell it) - nothing that was a main dish! we had a great time eating though, and i concluded that when you go to lagoon, you should just order side dishes cause they will be done very quickly and you do not have to wait for ages just to start your dinner. the previous times my family ate at lagoon, it was a nightmare cause of the sheer amount of people at the whole place, the long queues, and the long waiting times. so yep, eat side dishes at lagoon!

haha anyway what happened yesterday was that the uncle from the drink stall came around our tables and asked if we wanted drinks… and it kickstarted a conversation between my brother and i about “touting” in singapore. (it was just a short conversation though.)

bro: actually what he is doing is illegal…

me: yeah, cause no touting right. but i don’t understand why cannot tout leh. i think it is a good service what, i would appreciate it.

bro: ya, but it is illegal cause it gives an unfair advantage to the stalls that have assistants who ask around the tables.

me: huh! then all the drink stalls should just ask their assistants to ask around if the customers want drinks right?

bro: then all of them will be competing for customers and then all the assistants will pester the customers incessantly to buy drinks from them. that’s why it becomes so irritating what!

me: … oh ya that’s true. like clementi like that.

clementi’s hawker centre is really bad – it’s probably like second in touting, right after newton i think. my brother said when new patrons arrive, the drinks assistants do things like “来来，这里吃完了，可以坐可以坐” (come come, down here eat finish already, can sit can sit – literally) even though the previous customers were still at the table! that day when my brother and i went there for lunch after my h3 exam, they were totally perstering us even though we were just looking around for what to eat. one or two times is alright, but six or seven times is really not cool!

so anyway i was thinking today, actually they should change the rule to “no incessant touting” instead of just “no touting”, cause most of the times if they only ask once or twice, i would be fine with it and actually i would be quite glad for the service! yeah but i guess it would be quite hard to determine how much is “incessant” and how much is not. oh wells.

so. i was reading the newspapers today and the article about marion jones admitting to her performance drugs usage. i thought it was quite a sad case though, especially since it was her coach who lied to her and fed her with the performance drugs. of course, she was in the wrong as well since she vehemently denied that she took any drugs even though she found out later that she was actually taking the drugs instead of the waxseed oil that her coach said it was. anyway in the article, there was a quote that made me wonder. it was “the irony about Marion Jones’ confession of doping is that the world will never know how great an athlete she could have been.” how true, really.

but when i thought about it further, i think this is actually not the most disappointing thing. i think the most disappointing thing is that the world will never know how great other atheletes could have been! i think this applies to all sports, and all athletes who use performance drugs. i am not a sportsperson (lol understatement of the year - i haven’t been able to do sports since eons ago cause of my congenital recurrent patella dislocation problem.) so i guess i would never understand the temptation in taking performance drugs, their mindsets before the biggest race in their lives, and how much they really want to win.

but from my perspective, i think when these sportspeople take performance drugs, they are not only hurting the image of the sport, they are actually wrecking the lives of many of their fellow sportspeople. in the lifetime of an athlete, he would probably be able to take part in the olympics twice or thrice in his life. but out of these two or three times, how many times will he be in his peak form? if i can hazard a guess, i would say only once. time is constantly moving forwards (don’t go philosophical on time with me now, i am just talking generally). their whole lives, they have put in the hard work and all the efforts to reach their peak form, and in that one race, it is going to be the race of their lives. but what happens when one of the athletes is actually taking performance drugs? that particular athlete wins, and that’s the end. all the efforts the other athletes have put in goes to naught. more likely than not, they will never be in that peak form ever again, and more likely than not, they will never have the great chance to be the champion again. and all this – because one of the athletes had used performance drugs. no one would ever know how great the other atheletes could have been.

everytime an athlete uses performance drugs and then runs a race, the whole race is destroyed. the performance of all the atheles becomes a mystery. “at this point of time, would i have won? would i have been able to use my natural abilities and dilligence to win the race? would i have won the athlete who used those drugs?” all their lives they have worked so hard to reach this moment, and the answer is one that may never ever receive. sigh.

i guess i can’t be too judgemental, since i probably know zilch about what an athlete is thinking. so oh wells. anyway i was thinking, then why don’t all the sports bodies just allow all the athletes to use performance drugs. then wouldn’t everyone have a fair advantage? haha. uhm well i guess it’s not exactly a good idea since we would probably have cases like 1000 athletes dying from a drug overdose before every match or something. really, i don’t know. i don’t know how performance drugs work anyway. perhaps a person who is a weaker athlete may have a better response to certain performance drugs over another person who is a stronger athlete. oh wells.

hm.

i wonder what it’s like to win a sports competition.