Totally Gratuitious Post

Went swimming. Then I had some water stuck in my ear. That was annoying, so when it hadn't gotten out since after my shower, I stuffed some tissue paper in, and soaked up the water, and it cleared.

Later on, I noticed that it was a little painful in that right ear of mine. It persisted until it became a somewhat throbbing pain and I had to sleep it off. It was only the next day when I realised that I could relieve the pain by equalising the pressure on both sides of my eardrum.

I decided to figure out whether there was something blocking the passage. I put the ear wax spatula into the ear and started feeling around gingerly for anything stopping the gap. There was nothing apparently at first, then I put the finger in and out came 1 huge lump of earwax. Aha, that was the source of my problems.

Then I put the spatula in again and managed to gouge out a second large lump. Totally gross. But interesting flavour though.

So kids if you have problems with water in your ear, then it could just as well be that you haven't cleared your ears for a while. If the earwax is stopping up the pressure valves on your ear then clear it before it becomes a real pain.

Dow

A person watching the tide comingin, and who wishes to know the exact spot which marks the high tide, sets a stick in the sand at the points reached by the incoming waves until the stick reaches a position where the waves do not come up to it, and finally recede enough to show that thte tide has turned.

This method holds good in watching and determining the flood tide of the stock market... the prive waves, like those of the sea, do not recede at once from the top. The force which moves them checks the inflow gradually and time elapses before it can be told with certainty whether the tide has been seen or not.

Charles Dow

One of the ideas in stock markets is that you don’t really know when a stock has reached a local high. Yes, you can have the price going up every day, or maybe stumbling back one day but roaring back higher than ever before. You won’t know. It is only clear in retrospect. Charles Dow (yes he is the Dow Jones Dow) compared this to the tides, where a watermark would show where the highest tide once reached before it receded.

Similarly it was also true for the oil reserves in America. It used to be self sufficient in oil until the 70s which is why all its problems with the Middle East only started around that time. And the fact that its oil production peaked during those years was only evident in hindsight. It was only clear 5-10 years after the fact. Similarly, oil production in the whole world might have already peaked, we don’t know. People predict somewhere between 2006 and 2016, and we will probably look back upon it at

And it’s also true of happiness. You wouldn’t know what the happiest time of your life was when you were living it. It’s only when you look back that you know.

Capricorn

Do you believe in astrology? In a way I still do. I don't think that the position of the stars, or what time of the year we are born in have much effect on our personalities, but I still believe in the astrology effect. I think that if you allow yourself to think of yourself as an Aries or a Taurus or whatever you will unconsciously act more and more like this sign, whatever it is.

And at the same time people tend to believe in their astrological signs selectively. They may look at their Chinese sign, and say, that isn't like me at all. And I do look at my Chinese sign this way, I guess my western zodiac sign has been a little more accurate.

And I believe that some signs are more beneficial than others. I am a Capricorn, and I'm happy for it. This hasn't always been the case, and I've had this Aquarius friend of mine who usually believes that it's always best to be an Air sign, because they are "cooler". It's true, a survey was given to many people, asking them which sign they would most rather be. Aquarius won hands down, because I guess it's cooler to think of yourself as the unconventional hipster.

In fact I wouldn't really say that I'm that much a Capricorn, but it's certainly beneficial to me to think of myself as one. The steady, reliable guy who gets things done. Definitely an asset to have. The planner, maybe even the schemer who always gets what he wants (although hardly the most popular person around). Something to steady myself with.

I think that's a better role model than say, if you were an air sign, dreaming, theorising and verbalising but not that much in the way of execution. I don't need that. Or if you were a water sign, always in the throes of mood swings and maybe not able to get much done. (I was acting a lot like a water sign in my college days.) I know of a person who believes she's a Scorpio (which she is) and ends up being in serial unhappy relationships. I wouldn't want that for her or myself.

Earth signs are not the happiest of people but there's a steady contentment. There is a certain degree of being comfortable in your own skin after a while. Of solid unpretentiousness, I like that. The character in Archie's I've always identified with is Jughead Jones and I'm sure he's a Taurus.

Capricorns are usually setting themselves up for something. I'd like to think of it that way, that I'm a caterpillar eating everything in sight before he emerges as a - goodness knows what, a dragonfly, mosquito or butterfly. That wouldn't be too bad.

Around 20, which was a low point in my life, I had figured out that youth is really not my thing. The things that people have in their youth - vitality, attractiveness, maybe a slight naivete, these things don't really help me that much. I've always been a plodder, and I can be a plodder when I'm old, I could be like Teddy Sheringham who can play until he's 40 years old because he never had to rely too much on his pace. At least I like to think of it that way.

I recently read some really bad news - life sags in the middle. According to research. Across various cultures, the results are the same - life starts off pretty good, and then reaches its nadir when you're in your 40s. Then things look up by the time you're retired. Damn. Hope it doesn't happen to me.

Will it happen to me? I hope to be too busy or distracted to even notice.

Olympics and Democracy

Now that we have Mypaper, I think it is a good thing that I can have something convenient to read in Chinese. They have Mypaper online as well which is good. What is not so good is that they have sneakily disabled people from linking to articles. This is one measure that SPH have taken to ensure that their articles do not get pummeled on line on the blogs. That is bad for democracy and therefore no good.

Another thing is that the Straits times has come up with the concept of “Star Bloggers”. That serves as a purpose of reinforcing the idea that the power of media should only be conferred upon a selected few and not any old Tom Dick and Harry who happens to have an internet connection (ie me). They want to reinforce the illusion that blogs haven’t changed anything. I never liked that. So fuck them all.

Now we have a commentary by star blogger Ju Len about Steven Spielberg pulling out from his role as an artistic advisor to the Beijing Olympics. Since I can’t link to the article, I have copied and pasted it here. Take it away, Ju Len!

SO STEVEN Spielberg has a problem with China. Or, to put it more precisely, the lauded US filmmaker has a problem with civil war atrocities in the Darfur region of Sudan, and lays much of the blame for them at the feet of the Chinese government.

So much so that he has departed his role as an “artistic adviser” to the opening and closing ceremonies for the Beijing Olympic Games, and done little to hide his disgust for his erstwhile employers on the way out.

Spielberg believes that China “should be doing more” to end the humanitarian crisis in Sudan. Weighing in on the matter are Nobel Prize winners, Olympic athletes, actors, musicians, writers and political activists, all of whom have put their signatures to a letter urging China to put its foot down on the Sudanese government and its handling of the Darfur conflict.

Let us be clear about one thing. The crisis in Darfur is deplorable, and speaks of our
failure as a species to safeguard the well-being of our own kind.

But the response of Steven Spielberg and gang is, at best, sadly misguided and at
worst, insidiously recriminating, for Darfur has little to do with China, and even less to do with the Olympic Games.

The Games, which are meant to be a celebration of the human’s triumph over the limits of his corporeal shell, have been sullied by politics before, of course. Hitler’s refusal to acknowledge the achievements of Jesse Owens at Berlin in 1936 and the blood-stained tragedy of Munich in 1972 are the most notorious of these, but it’s safe to say that Spielberg’s opportunistic withdrawal from the Games will in time be regarded as being full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

His actions amount to little more than a show of raging impotence, for when has Beijing ever bowed to external pressure, even those greater than the collective force of a thousand Spielbergs? The egos, they say, are large in Hollywood, but for one man to believe that he is able to hold sway over the will of the Chinese government by
displaying his back to them...

That, put simply, defies logic.

And so, too, does the reasoning that pins responsibility for Darfur’s atrocities on China. “As the primary economic, military and political partner of the government of Sudan, and as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, China has both the opportunity and the responsibility to contribute to a just peace in Darfur,” wrote the mob in a joint letter.

“Ongoing failure to rise to this responsibility amounts, in our view, to support for a government that continues to carry out atrocities against its own people,” they added.

Let us consider, in a separate vein, a recent case in Saudi Arabia in which a rape victim was sentenced to 200 lashes of the whip, more than double she received in an earlier ruling, for little more than “speaking out about her efforts to find justice”, says Human Rights Watch.

That is grossly unjust, but by the same standard with which Spielberg and fellow protesters hold China responsible for what goes on in Sudan, are we not to hold the Unites States – a primary partner of the government of Saudi Arabia – equally responsible for the human rights abuses of the Saudi people?

The Chinese may have their failings, but they are no more accountable for the Darfur genocide than the US is responsible for the Saudis’ reprehensible treatment of their female citizenry. Spielberg and gang have built their argument on a slippery slope. Should America, also an ally of Japan, be called to account for the latter’s outrage- causing whaling practices?

The great pity of the matter is that the film-maker has chosen to express his convictions in a manner that calls attention away from the real cause of the Darfur conflict, misdirecting them instead to a third party that was only ever to respond, if at all, by digging its heels in.

Spielberg would have done far better to have simply plied his craft instead. Go and shoot a film about Darfur and flex some of that mastery of mawkishness for which you are famed, so that a million heartstrings might be tugged in the direction you wish. Stand on a soapbox, if you must, but do it without trying to disrupt the efforts of those who wish to stage the Olympic Games, a matter of no little pride for all involved.

With or without you, the Games will go on, and at their end there will be hands raised in triumph, from those who work hard to host the event, and those who wield the medals from them.

Whatever you say about the matter, all will be clean of Sudanese blood.

Now I’m not Chee Soon Juan so I will try to give you a balanced view of the situation. Yes we are Chinese and really proud to have the Olympic Games in China. (But since 1980 the Olympic hosting have been dominated by the 5 permanent members of the UN security Council. USA hosted twice, USSR and China once, London will be hosting it in 2012, beating out Paris.) I remember the decision to award the Olympics to Sydney for 2000 was politically motivated – China was being criticized for its human rights issues. I even remember having to write an essay for it in class in my tortured Chinese.

(I can even see now in my mind’s eye the Chinese teacher sniggering about me talking about Chinese pride when the grammar goes out the window, but I digress.)

We would talk about how hypocritical the “Westerners” are and bring up the Opium Wars for the umpteenth time. Later it would occur to me that it’s better to stick to current affairs when you’re making comparisons.

Well let's take a look at some of his points.

It’s not right to use the Olympics for political ends.

But still I would believe that it is a good thing that you use these things to force the government to pay attention to its human rights issues. I mean things have changed for the better in China, one would hope. Yes you could argue that it’s all about better economic conditions instead of the political pressure but I think that the Olympics would have sent a very strong message to China.

Political pressure at the Olympics achieves nothing.

Ju Len argued that the centerpiece of the Olympics is the athletic performances and not the politics. Really? How many people can you name at the Berlin Olympics in 1936 (other than Jesse Owens because he’s a politics guy?) You remember how many golds the USA won in 1972 or you remember the Palestines killing the Israeli athletes? In 1984 there was Carl Lewis, of course, but aren’t we more likely to remember that the USSR decided to not show up because the USA boycotted Moscow in 1980? And wouldn’t we remember the dope cheats like Ben Johnson and Marion Jones more vividly than the actual champions?

Do politics at the Olympics really achieve nothing? The terrorist act of the Palestinians in 1972 was a victory to the extent that it brought the world’s attention to the Palestinian cause. Yes there are better ways to stage protests rather than executing athletes on live television and killing people is bad but when the Palestines engage in terrorism it is a very grey area.

Then there were the student demonstrations at the Seoul Olympics. What followed next were democratic reforms, culminating in Kim Dae Jung becoming the president. (That’s the equivalent of JBJ becoming PM of Singapore.) Of course whether the demonstrations were the cause of the democracy movement, or merely a reflection of it, will always be up for debate but it did bring this issue much larger attention.

The US should mind its own business first before criticizing China.

Now I don’t like it that a moral equivalency is evoked. I don’t like the argument that because the USA is involved in some shady business of its own, it shouldn’t lecture China on human rights. I think that everybody should have a right to criticise, and I do think that both the USA and China should be criticized for helping dictatorial regimes.

Sanctions achieve nothing.

The part that I agree with him with is when he says that sanctions are of no use. China should continue trading with the Sudan. Sanctions have a mixed record. Did they work in South Africa, or were the white government on its way out already? They could have helped. They didn’t help at all in Iraq, and they made Saddam Hussein stronger. They caused a lot of hardship in Iraq and helped force a war in order to resolve the issues.

But I’m not for China supplying arms to the Sudan. Of course you could pay for the oil in cash, but then again giving cash to the Sudanese is a little bit like giving them weapons because that’s what the cash will be used for. The thing about engagement is that you still leave the channels open where you can help influence foreign policy.

A lot of people will criticize Singapore for trading with Myanmar. Yes we are trading with the Myanmese. Yes a lot of monks died in the crackdown. (By some accounts this number is in the thousands.) Maybe they were killed by Singaporean bullets? Who knows? But still we keep the door open and maybe, just maybe we can reach out to the junta and pressure them to talk to the real world. After all, who in this world would rather listen to an enemy than to a friend?

Bah humbug democracy

It used to be that the newspapers were the friend of democracy, but now they are the enemy of democracy. Newspapers which are in the hands of large corporations will be loath to say anything untoward about their rich corporate owners. Or whoever happens to be owning them.

Democracy is always under threat. This threat has increased over the years because big business and governments are starting to collude with each other. Big business makes big campaign donations, and the government formulates more pro-business policies.

I think that on some level people recognize this. A few years ago there was a huge protest in London against the impending Iraq war. It was notable for its size and turnout. OK, it might have to do with how there are plenty of Arabs living in the UK but this was the biggest demonstration ever in the UK. Bigger than anything during the Vietnam war. But I don’t know if the media covered this sufficiently, or whether they were in thrall to the Bush-Blair orthodoxy.

Democracy seems to be rather unwieldy and ineffective when your constituency is very very large. In the days of direct democracy, every issue would be talked over. In the early days of the Founding of the USA when democracy was the exclusive domain of a very well educated few, it was arguably at its most effective. But democracy is a lot about various groups jostling for power, and in the end it’s still the wealthiest and the most well connected who get this power.

Still the ability to have an audience listen to your message is a key component in being able to exercise your power. While the media is not power in itself, it acts as a magnifying glass, focusing attention – and therefore political pressure on the salient issue of the day.

It is of course good for some of these entrenched interests if people were to pay no heed to all these protests going on. In this way while there was coverage of the Iraq protest, it didn’t get elevated to an “event” on the scale of the Washington march of the 1960s. There were plenty of protests at the 1999 Seattle WTO talks but the slant of the coverage in the news is that they are all misguided teenagers, in spite of the ferocity of the protests. Maybe some of them are but many of the causes have genuine grievances.

It is good for those entrenched interests if you can tell these people that protesters have no credibility. That they are “naïve and misguided” or that “we need somebody with a better sense of reality. Somebody like Suharto, perhaps.

Rob Hughes / Pantene

Just bought myself a new bottle of shampoo. Apparently I got it at 10% off but I was buying it in Raffles City which means that 10% off means what you'd expect to pay for it in a HDB estate. It's Pantene Pro V total body care which is nice except that I wish that the name doesn't sound like I'm smearing some poor girl's underwear over my head.

Here's an interesting article about the African Cup of Nations, written by Rob Hughes who often writes for the Straits Times. Interestingly it appears that a Singaporean syndicate attempted to bribe Benin and Namibia to throw matches. (And why wouldn't they since they're minnows and everybody expects them to lose anyway.) That's great! Who says that Singaporeans don't have entrepreneural spirit? And I was thinking, "well, let's see whether he reports all that stuff in the Straits Times".

Suddenly it hit me: I have often been put off by his seemingly high handed and moralistic tone when talking about the excesses of the English Premier League. But then I realised that the Straits Times is probably one of the very few outlets he has to bitch about the EPL, since he couldn't possibly do it in any of the British papers that he writes for. So if you write for the Straits Times, bitch about England, and vice verca. That's fabulous.

But don't expect me to read any more articles of him bitching about the EPL on the Straits Times. It's getting bloody boring.

Gods of Finance

Damn. I should have known better to keep my mouth shut.

It was all very puzzling at first: why was the Singaporean press so eulogistic towards Suharto? Why did all those people he murdered passed over cursorily as mere "mistakes"? Why did LKY go all the way to Indonesia to pay tribute to him?

Then when talking to a bunch of financial ppl they mentioned that Singapore's financial sector caters mainly to Big Indonesian Business. The same bunch of people who got astoundingly rich partly because of political favours from Suharto. The same bunch of people to whom Suharto is a patron saint. Nobody doubts that this money is earned through hard work, but also nobody doubts that corruption and laundering is also involved.

My God, in writing up that article on Suharto I have been angering the Gods of Finance. Please forgive me!!!

RIP 2007

A terrible year to be a jazz legend. The following died.

Michael Brecker
Alice Coltrane
Andrew Hill
Max Roach
Joe Zawinul
Oscar Peterson

Of course there are a lot more than that but these are just the people I'm familiar with.

A bumper crop indeed (if we were to extend the metaphor of Death holding a scythe)

Corkscrew

A gathering, and there were a few financial types. I think we know what they're like: urbane, sophisticated, smarmy.

Was struggling to open a bottle, and didn't sink the corkscrew personally. I think they knew I had 2 cans of beer in my belly by then. ("Better stick to the beer now huh?") After struggling with the corkscrew and enduring their sniggers for a while I gave the bottle to one of them who also gave an impromptu lecture about how "a wine bottle is like a woman, you got to handle it the right way " etc etc etc... got to kiss it before you open it. I thought that was cute.

But what I learnt from him was how to hold it firmly so that the screw wouldn't slip, so I fired back, "yeh, but what I learnt from watching you is that you got to hold her down while screwing her." Nervous laughter all round.

Edit: RIP Ah Meng.

Death of the rock Star

I think one of the biggest factors in the rise of the rock star has been the album. I’ve been trying to figure out why the death of the rock star coincided with the coming of MP3s but I think I’ve gotten my handle on it. It’s the album.

When you listen to 1 song off the radio, you get entertained for maybe 3 minutes. It is hardly an investment. You didn’t ask to listen to it, and so the depth of your involvement with the entertainer is limited. When you have a single, it is more like fanhood, where you go down to the record store to buy something, and you got at least 2 songs, an A and a B side, and most of the time the B side is deemed to be relatively inconsequential. But when you have a whole album, it is a bigger investment, more saving of pocket money is required. You have maybe 12 songs, and that act is entertaining you for around 50 minutes. The sleeve is very important, because it puts a picture onto the music that you’re listening to. It makes the experience more complete.

The music is a wonderful thing, and so are the lyrics, but it’s that album picture which completes the package by giving you a mental image of the music. On its own, Jimi Hendrix’s music would already be very impressive. But it would still be somehow a little abstract, where you have all that fuzzy distorted psychedelic guitar but not focus. With that mental image, it fixes the music in a certain time and place, 1 black guy and his 2 white sidekicks playing the crap out of their respective instruments. Colourful clothes. Illegal drugs (which is fine, nothing wrong with listening to people making music under the influence of illegal drugs, so long as you don’t touch that stuff yourself. There’s nothing wrong because, let’s face it, music itself is a drug.) Fuzzy hairstyles. Hippy lifestyle. Love and peace.

Or maybe you could take the cover to “Dark Side of the Moon”, a prism through which a ray of light becomes a rainbow. This is no tribute to Isaac Newton, but rather the idea is of an altered mental state, with the white ray representing your normal mind, the prism, marijuana, and the rainbow, your mind on drugs. Pink Floyd seldom put their band photos on their

Or the cover of “Horses”, the image is of an androgynous woman, dressed in a fashion throwback to the beat poets. It is ironic because on one hand those were the ultimate symbols of rebellion, but on the other hand by paying tribute to them you are according them the highest respect. The stare is alternately dreamy and visionary. One of the poets she pays tribute to is Muhammed himself visited by a vision.

And also there is this: a young poster boy in his young adulthood, enjoying his newfound confidence in his own sexual appeal, a talented musician, in the guise the world first took attention and loved him best, before the weirdness and sordid accusations of child molestation took over.

With the album, you could have the attention of a fan for 50 minutes. The experience of listening to a good album is much more than just a collection of songs. It almost has a plot of its own, and the songs bleed into each other. Why is a happy song follow a sad song? Why are they arranged next to each other? “Sunday Morning” by Velvet Underground is such a sweet and innocent song, so why is it followed up by a song about buying drugs from your dealer? And like a movie, there are highs and lows, and when it’s over there’s a bit of sadness.
Also the magic of music is that the listening to the music is the experience itself. This is not true for movies, where the core of the experience is knowing what happened in the movie. After you have finished a movie, a lot of the enjoyment you can derive from it is lost because there are spoilers. There are no spoilers for music. There can be musical surprises, but they will always be there. Thus the relationship between the listener and the rock star can be built because you can listen to a good album over and over again.

So I think that this relationship became a little lost when you have too many bands around, and you have to divide your attention between too many bands that fade into obscurity all too quickly. When, unlike those people behind the great albums I earlier described, they are not afforded time and space to develop something special and distinct of themselves.

It used to be that the person delivering the music was the rock star. The idea of delivery is very important, for during the rock star era, it was not only considered important that the person was the performer, but also that he was the songwriter. You had to be the total package, like John and Paul being the writers for the Beatles (I think they are the ones to the largest degree responsible for the idea that real musicians write their own songs, and in the future they will be remembered more for being writers than being perfomers). Or Stevie Wonder writing everything and being a one man band. Or Morrissey and Marr being the writers for the Smiths. So you are responsible for at least 2 stages of the delivery. The advantage of that is that the notes that come out of your own pen and the music that comes out of your guitar and your voice all becomes associated with you. So you could have a song like “Superstition” and it’s just 1 Stevie Wonder writing everything, arranging everything, performing everything, producing everything.

The people behind iPod realised the nature of this special relationship between the music and the person delivering the music. And since they are smarter than the guys at Creative, they set out to be that agent delivering the music. The special relationship between the listener and the rock star is gone, to be replaced with the special relationship between the listener and the iPod.

And that is why there are so many reunions these days. People know that there has been an entire lost generation of rock stars. Back in the day people criticise the stars of the 80s for being faceless and lacking a distinct identity, but now even in comparison to what you have today they are considered pop icons. I think you have the Police reunion, the Led Zep reunion. It’s not only lucrative, but they know that they represent a lifestyle that’s about to disappear.

Yahoo Auctions

Motherfucking Yahoo Auctions.

Was wondering why I hadn't sold some of the things I had listed for sale, certain stuff that I thought people would grab a chance to buy at the price I was offering it for. Then I realised that the problem is with their search function. Like you list out 120 items and only 50 of them can be searched, the rest of them are as good as invisible.

Wrote them a few complaint emails and I got shit like:

We would like to reassure you that we are investigating the problem you
reported. We apologize for any inconvenience, and appreciate your patience and
understanding on this matter.
If you have other concerns that I can assist you with, don't hesitate to reply to this message. I will be happy to help you, for your satisfaction is our main goal.

I think they forgot the "PS we think that you are a gullible sucker to believe this."

So I thought, maybe I will just take down the unsearchable listings and use my bulk loader to put them up again as fresh listings. Then I found out that they disabled the bulk loader.

You got to be very careful about these things: They just closed down Yahoo Auctions in the USA. Because Yahoo is a more frequented auction site in Singapore than eBay, they can't close this down. But I don't know how long they're going to keep Yahoo going, given that there are no more synergies with the USA counterpart.

Are they intending to kill Yahoo Auctions? I don't mind it if Yahoo's lousier than other auction sites because it's free. But I find it a bit hard to take this shit lying down.

I'm including the words Microsoft, takeover, buy-out, merger, so that people will search one or more of the above and stumble upon this article and find out for themselves how screwed up Yahoo auctions is.

Number nine would like to wish his readers a motherfucking happy Chinese New Year.

Projects part 2

Sorry I knew that I had posted part 1 of this thing and didn't do part 2.

My third and last prank, I think in a way it was my masterpiece and in a way it was one of the most tasteless things I had ever done. Actually no, I had done pranks that were more tasteless (like getting my friend drunk and molesting him, or what I did to my sister's hippo).

We were doing John Steinbeck's "The Pearl". One of our classroom assignments was to do a newsletter based on the book, some sort of a fun thing to do to make sure we understood what was going on in the book.

Now naturally since the book is an allegory for people in the ghettos who become crime bosses because of the lure of money, that story had a very high death rate. Back then (this was sec 1) my mind was already as warped as it is today. I felt that in order to do the story justice there had to be an obituary page.

This was not the first time I had gotten into trouble because of an obituary page. We were required to decorate our exercise books for History, and it was around the time of the first Iraq War. (Actually I don't know why you call it the first Iraq war when there was the Iran-Iraq war in the 80s but nevermind.) I cut out an obituary in the papers of some guy who had a moustache, crossed out his name, and wrote "Saddam Hussein" over there. Yes, yes, I know, I have an uncanny ability to sniff out the most offensive thing and do it.

Anyway one of the people who died was the baby kid of the main character. I was wondering where to get a baby's photo for the obituary, when I chanced across my classmate's yearbook photo. Now this is a fairly geeky looking guy (he's happily married now but he still is geeky looking) and his photo was hilarious, it had this rabbit in the headlights expression about it. So I thought it was perfect: funny looking, and the look of somebody who died without knowing what the hell was going on. It was funny, and it made the rounds, and there was a lot of mirth all around at first.

Unfortunately that guy was also fairly sensitive about being picked on, first thing. I went up to him to apologise after that, and he punched me in the stomach. He was close to his mum, second thing, and last of all it was hungry ghost festival. So as expected his mum blew her top and threatened to report me to the principal. I got very scared because at that time I still believed that there was such a thing as a permanent record. (Well you know if there are some of you ISD folks out there reading this blog maybe you do have my permanent record and please leave a comment so that I can contact you. Thanks!) One of my classmates told me "don't worry we'll stick up for you". I thought that was a nice gesture. This same classmate also enjoys making fascist salutes in class so I guess he appreciates my sense of humour. (He's in the foreign service now so I guess he's not making fascist salutes anymore, I hope.) Years later smloh told me that the obituary incident was the first time he had heard of me, and he was like, "what a cool guy, I must get to know him!" So it wasn't all bad.

We Chinese believe that you should do things that increase your social stature, not only because it is good for you, but also things that increase your social stature are likely to be of benefit to other people. I sometimes find that in a small way making bad jokes accomplishes this although of course there are better ways.

In the end the principal took the fairly lenient view that it wasn't a matter worth making a fuss about. I was let off with a scolding. But I think that in real life things are a little different. In real life you can get away with cheating and stealing, occasionally with murder, but there are certain people out there you shouldn't really offend.

It is not true to say that I meant to do him any harm, but also not true to say that I didn't mean to do him any harm. What is true is that I didn't care either way, so I guess I was wrong in that sense. But I'm sorry, it was just too funny to pass up. I selected him because of his funny stunned look, and not because I wanted to put him down, although it's understandable he didn't see it that way.

I became a good friend of the victim after that but recently we drifted apart.