A Post on V-day. (Vesak Day)

A Post on V-day. (Vesak Day)

hmm...yup, yet another one from me. today's Vesak Day! happy vesak-ing to all those who are buddhists, and to those who aren't, i trust this will be a happy day for you too, because it's a public holiday. and indeed, it seems that the people everywhere are making full use of this break.

i went to parkway with lipjeen for a while only today, and it was packed! wow, i didn't think such a seemingly out-of-place shopping mall (unless you're an easterling) could get so packed!

i feel very empty now. (not hungry...!) i just finished some game, and now there's no distractions left to pull me away from studying for my block tests coming at the end of june. but don't worry. minghui will surely find a way. (uh oh....) hahaha. like for example, my dinner tonight dragged on from about 7 to 8.20pm. i joined yeanching, yeekiat and hokito and just chatted away about dumb stuff la.haha...it was quite fun to just sit and listen and crack jokes about stuff like lesbian couples in TKGS (contributor:YC), muscular girls in softball (contributor:YK) and all sorts... i thought i'd better acknowledge them just in case some people decide to read this and sue me for unauthorised use of their intellectual property.

gosh, what is the world coming to? or more specifically, why has the blogging world become so caught up in controversial exposure and being the subject of admonishment and legal action?

blogs are hardly private, agreed, but let's take for example, the case where a blog with racist comments pepper the posts. the blogger was actually warned for posting such things online for others to read. this is classic singaporean "papa will protect you" mentality. don't tell me the people in singapore will start a riot once they start reading one silly blog of some insignificant idiot? are they not mature enough to discern between rational, thinking posts and those which are not? are you going to comb through the internet and unearth all the anti-government, racist and anti-social website in the name of 'harmony'?

how about the blogs of two (lets just call them A*MOON) scholars which came under heavy fire from those above when they criticised the agency. didn't the agency agree to finance their education in return for their services to the agency? in which part of the binding agreement did they agree not to express their thoughts about A*MOON? what you really seek to do is to breed unthinking, conforming robots to do research for you. so what if they speak up against you? will they still serve you? they will. will it affect their service to you? who knows? but a spade is a spade and a contract extends only up to what it encompasses.

so has our society evolved to become today. those who control the present want to control the past. we have become a materialistic, elitist society with a distorted sense of what's right and what's not. like for example, a friend bought a birthday gift for another friend. i asked if it was nice, and my friend replied, "hey, it's from quiksilver." your effort to go out and get something nice is really appreciated, trust me, but just because it's branded doesn't automatically make it good! can't they churn out flops? get it straight la...nice things are nice things, period. branding merely jacks the prices up.

some of us have really, really weird ways of looking at what's right and what's not. another one of my acquaintances, he can freely criticise people and put them down, just to make himself feel better. are you trapped in a loop of low self-esteem where the only cure is to exalt yourself? is there something wrong with coming down from the pedestral of oh-i-am-so-great and be friends and be nice? what's wrong with seeing yourself as a peer and not dismissing people "aiyah, i ken alwiz do this better lah." take statistics. on average, every person is a nobody. his strengths and his weaknesses cancel out each other. but what is wrong with recognising that someone is unique?

my other friend, for example. i'm really proud of him. i was just telling my friend about him yesterday as we were taking the bus back from church. he just does what he wants to. he doesn't copy lecture notes or bother about his studies. he just sits there and writes in his little book. i'm worried about his studies, but at the same time i recognise the vast unexplored potential he has in creative writing, poetry, reflective expressions and music! too bad he got caught up in this system. he should have gotten into the arts stream and then NAFA or LaSalle. but the problem is his parents. like mine, they don't see anything beyond studies. or to put it more aptly, they do not see anything as worth paying attention to besides studies.

i lament for what the world has become.