Shark's Fin

To my chagrin, both my sisters and my parents are not moved by my resolve to boycott sharks fin soup. Shelly's wedding, my dad's 60th bday, serene's upcoming wedding, had/will be having sharks' fin soup served as a 'customary' dish.

I don't understand their insistence on having the dish, despite knowing that 1/3 of sharks are dangerously endangered from humans killing them for food. They probably just brush off the guilt (however small that pinch might be) thinking that killing sharks for their fins are just as cruel as eating chickens, choosing to ignore the point that there is a real threat of sharks being extinct from all this senseless killing.

Then you might be thinking to yourself "So does this mean that she would stop complaining about us eating the dish if the sharks numbers go up and are no longer endangered?"
My answer is YES. I'm not one of those moral activists who follow a strict vegan diet. I eat food that may have been from animals that were exploited for their flesh, or vegetables that were grown on farms that may not be entirely eco-friendly.

But I can tolerate all this, as long as the ecosystem is still sustainable, and I won't be causing the extinction of any species of plants or animals on the planet.

It disgusts me to see people's blatant indifference to this topic. It's not as if there hasn't been enough news coverage. The point is, the dish is served as a status symbol and just omitting the dish would let the older generation 'lose face' and create 'unecessary problems' for the younger generation. But don't they know that the inconvenience caused is minute as compared to the prospect of being able to sustain the sharks existence and balance the ecosystem...

Yes it sounds very high and noble which some people claim they cannot identify themselves with. Well, if you can't live in a civilised world then you don't deserve using civilised amenities. Go back to the forests and feed the wild boars.

And for those who claim to be anti-sharks fin killing, yet continue to have the dish when served to them, thinking they're obliged to eat to avoid offending others, or thinking that since the fish is dead anyway why not just eat it and not let it go to waste, I say that there is no difference between you and the restaurant manager who buys sharks' fins by the dozen to feed its petty customers.

So the next time a bowl of sharks' fin soup is served to you, think about the sharks being extinct and the ecosystem being messed up just so that you can enjoy those few mouthfuls which you probably won't even remember one week later.

Autumn Leaves

liza

THE AMATEUR

THE PRO (tune to 6mins 30s)

the leap years - the movie

it sux. period.

now i'm not trying to sound like a bimbo or anything. but that's the most appropriate conclusion i've come to since beebs n i watched it over the weekend. (yes i'm a sad loser cos i haf nothing else better to do xept watch movies every other weekend..)

the dialogues are lame, the pace is sloooow, the actors din haf enuff chemistry.......
I would prolly appreciate it if I were 16. or 12.

Here's a nice scene from the movie though (which i din do justice to. hehe) :

surprise surprise

the boi came back on wed, 2 days earlier than the would be date of 14 mar 08. The date I had kept locked in my head since it was exactly 1 month after V-day. And, more importantly, the day he would come back for good.

i came home from jogging with nht (yes, u 2 kept it from me really well!) at 11pm. The house was empty since the parents and sistas were overseas. Wanted to shower and knock out on the bed, when the doorbell rang and I saw the fat boi standing at the door with a bouquet.

When I think about it now, that moment wasn't very romantic at all. I was rather shocked. To the extent that I blurted in an interrogative tone, "What are you doing here?!". It wasn't like the movies at all when the female lead would haf a moment of realisation and run in slow mo towards the other with arms wide open. It was more like a pakistani refugee had ran away from his country and I was letting him into my house as I unlocked the gate, albeit him having flowers n all.

Ah well, it was a pleasant surprise nonetheless, and I love pleasant surprises. Love the flowers. Love the dior necklace. Love the boi for giving me a wicked surprise.

Bisous!

3 more days…

Blacks in da neighhhbahoood

Read the Saturday newspapers (*gasps* as many of u know reading the papers takes a major amount of mental strength and coaxing for me) and came across this really interesting article documenting the lives of African visitors living amongst our Singaporean community.

Kudos to the journalist who kept in contact with the Nigerian/ Ghanian interviewees, tracking their short one month stay in Singapore (for as long as the tourist visa allows) to monitor how some attempt to create a new life for themselves by finding a job, making ends meet, or for some, getting hitched to locals, where some live happy married lives and others just get away after impregnating the girl.

Read a part of it from this link.

The stories were so entertaining I thought they could be fictionalised and written into novels.
It's awful cool to know there are blacks in the community too. I get psyched thinking there could be the emergence of a Singaporean hip hop culture, graffitied (more than the occasional swear word inscripted onto public amenities) walls and and.. hm. increased crime rate?
hehe.. watever.. I need some zz for now.

Ciaos! peace.

Juno

Watched Juno over the weekend, which was a really heartwarming movie.
Had some memorable quotes and moments like below:
"I never realize how much I like being home unless I've been somewhere really different for a while." - Juno MacGuff

The familiar topic on teenage pregnancy was retold in an entirely refreshing manner, where there was no time wasted dwelling on sad and moody bits. Instead, Juno the teenager was pretty cool in accepting her pregnancy, determined to overcome all odds in dealing with the pregnancy. Her parents, too, were amazingly calm upon receiving the news and reacted as if it was just another one of her routine "shenanigans". This part caught me in a little disbelief. That's it? No threats of disowning? No knife wielding and tongue lashing?
Man. I dun understand ang-mohs. tsktsk

Anyways, as all movies that wow me, the soundtrack can't be too bad either. Towards the end of the movie, as Juno manages to wield herself through difficulties in school and the adoptive parents, with her wit and humour, I got serenaded and chuckled up enough to resolve to make a list of all the things (acts that are mundane and of complete irrelevance to anyone) that I've always only talked or thought about, but never got down to doing.

Here's the list for now:
1) Lie on top of the car bonnet while gazing at the stars in the cool breeze
2) Be of some semblance to the following situation, "a thirty-something graphic designer with a cool Asian girlfriend who kicks ass on the bass guitar" - Juno MacGuff
3) find a sweet boi like Paulie Bleeker and marry him.


Yup, someday I'll get down to doing them. At least I've made the list.

Thoughtful quote

you need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star - friedrich nietzsche

Humour shared:

Here is the Washington Post's Mensa Invitational, which once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.

The 2006 winners are:

1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying (or building) a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.

2. Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an asshole.

3. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize that it was your money to start with.

4. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

5. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

6. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

7. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

8. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

9. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

10. Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.

11. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

12. Karmageddon: It's when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, and then the Earth explodes and it's a serious bummer.

13. Decafalon: (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

14. Glibido: All talk and no action.

15. Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

16. Arachnoleptic Fit ( n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.

17. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

18. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.

The Washington Post has also published the winning submissions to its yearly contest in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words. And the winners are:

1. Coffee, (n.) the person upon whom one coughs.

2. Flabbergasted, (adj.) appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.

3. Abdicate, (v.) to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

4. Esplanade, (v.) to attempt an explanation while drunk.

5. Willy-Nilly, (adj.) impotent.

6. Negligent, (adj.) absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.

7. Lymph, (v.) to walk with a lisp.

8. Gargoyle, (n.) olive-flavored mouthwash.

9. Flatulence, (n.) emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.

10. Balderdash, (n.) a rapidly receding hairline.

11. Testicle, (n.) a humorous question on an exam.

12. Rectitude, (n.) the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.

13. Pokemon, (n.) a Rastafarian proctologist.

14. Oyster, (n.) a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.

15. Frisbeetarianism, (n.) the belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.

16. Circumvent, (n.) an opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.

cool old dudes

norahs: is AWAY from it all and may not reply

Yes, i'm getting my long-awaited respite from work and family and other mundane commitments, in exchange for more mundaneness - like cleaning up the fat boy's room in his dingy hotel. Will post before and after photo of his messy sty later.

So quitting the job didn't turn out to be such a great kick afterall. It wasn't a "So long suckers!!" kinda feeling I looked forward to from the first day I stepped into the office. Instead, there was a strange feeling of nostalgia and a sense of obligation towards the last remains of my job responsibilities. I guess that's what inspires pple to write farewell emails mass mailed to pple they have not even met/heard of before. Mails from strangers that i trash immediately, accompanied with a quiet swear of irritation at this egoistic resignee who assumes pple should give a bee's arse about his/her resignation. Note above behaviour is especially prevalent in times of crazy busy-ness, for instance in the months of Jan to Mar and July to Aug.

So, not wanting to provoke such responses, I consciously reminded myself not to send a farewell email which would only consist of frigidly-polite phrases thanking pple whom I should thank the least.

Meanwhile before I'm back to enter the next hell-hole (as Jon aptly puts it), I'm back to the land of bubble tea, quivering occasionally in the cold, non-heated hotel rm, enforcing a holiday routine of piano-playing and for the rest of the time, shopping, sleeping, eating and blogging maybe.

I leave you with a song I'm currently obsessed with: (yes another fagotty song! yay!)