Haw Par Villa Outing [05.07.2008]

Went to Haw Par Villa last Saturday with Nicole, Rinaz, chillycraps, DK, endoh, malique and his missus, mintea and arzhou.

It was a little worrying when I left home around 1115hrs because it was starting to rain at Jurong and the people I knew living along the AYE and the West Coast were reporting that it is overcast in their area – from Taman Jurong all the way to Alexandra.

I first met Endoh, chillycraps and nicole at Vivocity for a light bite, and then went to the supermart to pick up some drinks, food, and also some disposable plates and cups. It was already 1330hrs when we left Vivocity, in which Mintea has already arrived. We arrived at almost the same time as Rinaz, while the rest arrive at their own time later.

We had fun looking at the statues and making fun of them and we end up playing games – like Indian Poker – in which the punishment is to eat the food. I suspect Old Chang Kee won’t be selling chillycraps any curry puff for a long time as chillycraps is probably suffering from curry-puff phobia from having too much of them and Mintea’s mother’s curry puffs are really good!

Anyway, it is a little sad looking at the place… there are few visitors, and some of the statues appear to be in need of a new paint job. There’s even cracks on some of the monuments. I certainly hope it won’t go the way of that place beside Jurong Lake, called Tang Dynasty City or whatever. [Personally, they should just give that place to me for free and grant me a third license to turn it into an Chinese-theme IR complete with ‘dens’ for Mahjong and Chinese Dominos.]

My only regret is that we didn’t go to look at the Halls of Hell. The sentiment was that we don’t want to ‘pay and go to hell’ , though I personally didn’t accept that but I can’t have everyone wait for me while I am looking at the displays there.

Here are some of the photos I have taken. Pardon me for not having too much people in it… but you can find more photos of us when you check out the links to the blogs of the rest.

Keep the place alive! Save one of our common heritage! Visit Haw Par Villa!!

[ping.sg] The Under-Currents

There is only one other thing more annoying than the people who had nothing to do with a matter saying a lot things about it just for getting traffic to their site. And that is the kind who are unaware of what has transpired acting self righteous.The screen-capture shows one such individual.

Before I begin, let me point out the fallacy of a so-called social media guru goondu’s argument. First of all, Daphne had commented in the posts I am referring to, and so she does know what has transpired but chose to sit back and did nothing to rein in her attack dog. So does that settles the matter on who is being retarded here? Let me just say I wished your ‘retardation’ can be better applied to flames instead [pun intended].

However, since there will be those who thinks he has a point, I believe it is best I make matters clear, even though I am standing the risk of losing a friend for doing so.

I had not want to bring this matter up originally because others would accuse me of stirring shit. And for the same reason I did not ‘ping’ this post and will mostly use cached copies when linking the articles. But for those who would insist I am stirring shit then be reminded that when you let someone get away with it by saying her remarks are made in a personal capacity, then don’t make any noise when I say something in relative privacy here!

Anyway, I recalled on more than one occasion I argued with chillycraps [cc] over this, at times we probably vowed never to talk to one another again in private due to violent disagreement. I raised the matter again with cc when dk raised hell, and it had made cc quite annoyed. In fact, when I told him about this again earlier, cc said he doesn’t want to hear about it anymore.

But before I begin, let me just say dk and cc both loved the community in their own special way. I admire cc for his forbearance and long suffering – in silence – even though I think cc should just put down ‘the cross he is carrying’ and speak up.

The matter began somewhere in late May, where there was a slew of posts from bloggers about their crush, and on 28.05.2008, someone launched a unprovoked attack on un-named invidual(s). And the reason which inspired this post is found here: see ‘A comment made during the first incident’ .

In the blog post, the labels shallow blogger and serious blogger were used. It left people scratching their heads wondering who are the people being referred to here and in private some of us felt it has created a rift. After all, this blogger has actually asked the people who are unhappy to leave ping.sg.

I was also quite annoyed looking at what was written because I have also on several occasions spoken out against the postings lacking quality. I was under the impression that my private feedback over channels like Windows Live Messenger and G-talk were being discussed behind my back and instead of telling me straight off to end it, this public spectacle is created to send me a message. It was much later, I found out that cc was the one under fire, as he had mentioned on Twitter he wanted to take some time off from ping.sg and return after the ‘Crush Fad’ die off.

I had no clue why Daphne was upset with that, and what she has told this little puppy to make it equally upset enough to be inspired into making that blog post and a subsequent one. I can only guess it was because cc was being like the show stopper. But whatever the reason was, cc and I were even more annoyed with the subsequent post which continues to build a case over a non-existent issue – i.e. the ‘issue’ of ‘serious bloggers making a fuss out of shallow postings’. I initiated a brief flame war with the puppy on Twitter after that.

Subsequently, I believe cc and I separately asked Daphne to meet up with us, and discuss measures on how to clarify the matter and ‘officially’ put an end to it. Daphne refused the moment she heard about an ‘official statement’ to end this. In her opinion, the puppy wasn’t referring to anyone, and thus this is nothing more than a dispute between bloggers and has nothing to do with her. I had the generally impression that her opinion is that since no names were mentioned and only we are the one who openly thinks we are the one mentioned, then it is just our problem and not a community one.

On top of which, even if we are unhappy about it, the matter is already dying off and no one cares anymore. And to emphasize that her decision in this is final, she told me in a private G-talk chat in no sterner terms (not exact words): ‘You can leave if you don’t like it. I have a forest and I won’t give it up to keep two trees. I have work to do and many things like the Ping party to attend to. I am very busy.’.

I was speechless even when I put aside my perhaps mistaken impression that we are close friends. After all, I recall there was once, under a difficult circumstance a long time ago, nocturne had said this to me: ‘Don’t expect any favours from me because we are friends!’ .

But I wasn’t asking for favours. I had expected her to exercise her responsibilities as a community manager to mend the rift. Not to mention one she has caused in her casual chit chat with another blogger. In fact, as a matter of 20/20 hindsight, I would suggest she talked about her pressures when managing the blogger’s community on ping.sg with non-bloggers in future, or like Hillary Clinton said: Can’t take the heat? Leave the kitchen!.

After all, who knows if some trigger happy blogger won’t just take her comments out of context and make a big fuss over it? But as history has proven… Daphne never learns.

Moral Degenerates on the Internet

I was going through the feeds on my RSS reader and was speechless after reading the comment quoted here.

“I wonder why the lady slept without locking her door at night? She was renting a room, so she should have been wise to lock the door.

Just curious about such a suspicious circumstance. She was like inviting trouble. No doubt the landlord should not have opened her door, but why she took such a risk to ruin a man and his family?”

It is not wrong to say that the lady was careless and that she had no threat awareness, but the above comment goes even further. It actually puts the blame on the victim for what has been done.

I won’t go further to give examples on just how absurdly wrong the above comment was. Alice has given several examples already. What the hell makes anyone think that for women who has no threat awareness or those who are simply being careless deserved what is coming for them?

Anyway, I would not not quite agree with Alice when she said ‘this exactly shows how the moral of the society has deteriorated’. But I can understand where she is coming from (even when I am no paragon of virtue), after I read the posts from Jean on my RSS reader, and went through some of the the comments and a link to Sammyboy’s forum in one of Jean’s post here.

All I want to say is, being a strong believer of retribution (or poetic justice), my opinion is that the only way people like these can be shown just how wrong they are, is to have some crime or wrong done (or some mishaps happening) to them as a result of their own carelessness. Then, some other person should come around and made a similarly insensitive remark.

I sincerely do hope they are made up of sterner stuff and won’t go about whining like a wimp at hust how insensitive those comments are when it happens to them.


A fine example of retribution (or poetic justice) would be having made prank calls, one gets a series of nuisance calls in return…

Miscellaneous

  1. Twitter account has been deleted and Twitter widget removed from the sidebar.

  2. A funny dream: Some where in a hot sunny peninsular… After several relay races, someone from the losing team complained that the other contestants had an unfair advantage. To make it fair, they changed the rules and declared that now all these other contestants will run with an handicap. The team that complained the loudest about such cheating was banned and thrown out of the games.

    In fact, as times goes by, some among his team were given a unfair head start, and even given better shoes. It doesn’t matter than the performance of all teams remained dismal and no one has broken any records. Best of it all, the clown who implemented the unfair regulations declared that it had help everyone when all he had to show was that some among the team now runs real well and even faster than others. Doesn’t matter their team has never won!

    Finally, all the teams could take it no more, and decided that they would all run fairly in some races. And in one of the race, the record was broken.

    Moral of the story: When you suck, cheating won’t help you win. And it spoils the competition.

  3. Yet another funny dream: Somewhere in the streets of a booming capitalist hamlet of a up and coming socialist superpower… In the midst of hot steamy sex with a prostitute, a brothel customer kicked over a flower pot on the side of a ledge onto the streets below. It shatters resoundingly on the street below and missed some pedestrians narrowly. Some of pedestrians protested and were told by the brothel customer to act like adults while the prostitute told them to just fxxk off because she’s has got lots of ‘business’ to do and no one else on the streets gives a flying fxxk about the near miss.

    Moral of the story: To some it doesn’t matter if you are almost hurt because it’s unintentional. You should just be grateful you didn’t die from it. Don’t expect an apology because you are in the wrong for complaining!

以上故事纯属虚构,如有雷同,实属巧合。
All events, characters and incidents portrayed in these stories are fictional. Any similarity to any persons, living or dead, or to any actual events is coincidental and unintentional.

At Work…

  1. Two users were at my desk the other day and before they could tell me their needs, I hurriedly picked up a phone call that had been ringing for awhile. A colleague who saw this told me subsequently:

    “就算那电话是什么十万火急的事,如果那两个跟你有心病,肯定以为你是故意的。可能还会暗骂你 ‘小气’ 或者 ‘不专业’。” (No matter how urgent that matter on that call was, if those two had already held a grudge against you previously, they must have thought you did that deliberately. Maybe even say you are petty or unprofessional.)

    我想:丞相肚里虽可撑船,但是丞相并不多… 呵呵! (I thought: While it is said that one can row a boat in the Prime Minister’s belly – which means great people are never petty, there aren’t that many Prime Ministers… haha!)

  2. A small quarrel broke out on a chat room in the corporate chat software. After speaking with a colleague about it, he said in Cantonese:

    “讲者无心,听者有意。被冤枉的那个,真係无辜。(The one who said did not mean it, but the one who heard it already decided otherwise. The one who is maligned, is so innocent.”)

    我想:还好没多几个别有居心的 “知心好友” 煽风点火… 要不更一发不可收拾… 呵呵! (I thought: “Fortunately, there weren’t a few “good friends” with ulterior motives fanning the fire… or else it’s going to break out of control… haha!)

On thinking back, it would appear to aptly describe some of the other things that has recently transpired as well.

Sounds like deja vu. Maybe I should call Neo.

The Matrix is definitely adjusting something.

Mean time… enjoy this hilarious video.

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