the shortest day

It can only be the shortest day when I wake up at 130pm, go school, come back and sleep at 8pm.

I need Dr Re-Wiring to rewire my bio clock.

Any doctors around?

But on a brighter note, asked my prof if he could be my ism sup. He doesn't mind, and he's quite powerful. Legend has it that he holds the record as the top and only first class honors student from ps dpt for the past ten years. He went on to other parts of the world to become a specialist in european affairs and foreign policy, before coming back to nus to teach mortals like us.

thinking of doing an ism on ASEAN or EU foreign policy, ha ha...maybe that will help me put one foot into MFA, and then towards UN glory. *in dreamoland*

3 more essays!
Need to push through this crappy weekend.
No time to feel sorry for myself or anyone!

the longest day

wow, the effect of sleeping at 530am for the past 2 nights really took its toll on me.

I was basically on my bed with my eyes wide open (due to excessive coffee, tea, chocolates and maybe chips), until the clock rang at 630am.

Dad sent me to school at 730am cos had to meet up with my friends for a grp presentation. They were late, and the canteen stalls had not got their food ready.

Had to make do with bland milo and lousy been hoon.

Then finally head down to chatterbox to do our last min ppt run through.

There was really lotsa smoke coming from 3 of us. But then again, smoke is inevitable when I'm a pol sci student, Godwin a philo major, and Kenny is, i think, naturally quite full of corn.

Oh well, the presentation turned out pretty good. i dunno, somehow strangely, the profs like our idea that local architectures is a representation of space and time and thus an alternative to reading sec sch textbooks about our national history.

Ha so full of crap, now we need to get our act together to come up with a decent paper.

Speaking of which, i was quite taken aback when a friend called me last night and poured out all the grievances of doing group projects (problems of free riders, clash of ideas etc etc). I was actually quite tired during that time, plus it was already midnight and people dun call people up at midnight unless there is really serious business to talk ... I think. But anyway, decided to be mr nice guy and just listened. I realized that my friend, who isn't a chrisitian, really look at problems in life in a different light. I din want to be too pushy and evangelical at midnight, so gave my friend some christian perspectives in a secular manner.

I dunno, I think I haven't really been a good friend to many, in the sense that I can be uninterested and interested to friends at the same time. I guess I could have been more sincere and really listen to my friend's problem that night. But I'm just kinda half hearted about it.

I need passion!

I need to sleep.

A medley of panadols

I find it hard to sleep at 1am.
Though I'm really trying hard to sleep.
Usually, I would lay on my bed at 3am.
But it won't be till 4am that I could really sleep.
It's disturbing my bio system.
I'll wake up at 930am and dash off for my 10 am lessons,
unkempt and much maligned.
Or wake up at 1145 am and give up going for my 12 noon one.

***

Shambles shambles.
I hate it when I can't control the simplest things in life, such as sleeping in itself!
There is just no rest whatsoever with a thousand and one things in my head.
Can I pray for a brain filter?
If there is such a thing as a brain filter?
To sieve out the useless,
so that my head will be less choked up.

***

Honestly, I think my strength is my damn weakness.
I like to think too much.
I'm not saying I'm smart,
cos I am not
(and my cap tells me so).

***

But I just like to think, and ask God questions that demand no replies.
It's the silence, that cripples me at night.
And when the dreams start streaming in at 4am,
it is immediately an "ideal place", and "a void" at the same time.
Because it was such a lovely place; the laughter amongst autumn leaves.
But yet I know that it is just a vague and distant ideal,
a negation of what I knew,
that demands no replies.

***

So what can I say, in these moonlit rites?
I'll close my eyes for another night.
Laughter amongst autumn leaves,
would do just fine.

Race the Red Lantern

If all chinese eat mee pok, and I say mee pok taste like crap, does that make me a racist against chinese? According to our local penal code, I think so.

Was doing a brief check on the link to find out what does being seditious mean

http://statutes.agc.gov.sg/non_version/cgi-bin/cgi_getdata.pl?&actno=1964-REVED-290&date=latest&method=whole

and though I'm no lawyer, I guess the recent under-fired dude was probably charged for promoting "feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races or classes of the population of Singapore".

Which is quite strange. Consider the following premises in the case:-

P1: Made excessively vicious remarks against Islam, which is a religion.
P2: Religion correlated with the Malay race.
P3: Charge for being a racist.

I do agree that that guy ought to be punished for instigating hatred, but it seems like the punishment doesn't quite match the offence. I was at the Something about Melayu play recently, produced by the NUS Malay Society, and one thing that they expressed quite strongly is that not all Muslims are Malays.

In my opinion, racism is a behavior that firstly stems from wrong ideas about a particular enthnic group, and secondly allows that idea to reify into some sort of negative energy.

So if our press continues to use Malay and Muslim interchangeably, and the law continues to reinforce that concept, then it might be sending the wrong signal to a generation of Singaporeans who are already so displaced and disillusioned with the CMIO classification; Chinese who can't write Chinese, Malays who think that they are Malays because they got help from Mendaki, peranakans who are labelled as 'others' in their ICs, Buddhist who believe in Hindu Gods, Englishmen who are into Zen, Fandis marrying Wendies, Chinese selling nasi lemak, Indians making roti prata etc etc.

A friend recently told me this story about how the Burmese government tried to install a traffic light system in a village to control the traffic. Drivers who saw the traffic light for the first time in their lives were so distressed that they actually end up crashing the traffic light! And so the governor removed the traffic light.

What is the morale of the story?

Home security is always an interplay between Order and Law. And sometimes, order is favored over law (removing that darn traffic light to bring back a sense of normacy in the Burmese lives), and sometimes the law becomes a nuisance in itself (i.e. installing the traffic light).

I'm not saying we should remove the sedition act, but we need to redefine it, which by the way has not been enacted for 40 years (some articles say it is 10 years) prior to this case.