Crap... and Serious Crap

i think i had too much garlic in my diet. see right... my mom loves to put garlic, tons of it, into her cooking. and she cooked beehoon today. and as usual, there is a generous dose of garlic in it... it was quite tasty and all... but i think it caused much flatulence today. and when i went to shit, my shit smelt of garlic...

anyways... enough of my crap. on to something slightly more serious.

now that China has devalued its currency, i wonder whether CNOOC will be able to buy over UNOCAL. though i can understand the concerns that the american lawmakers have. considering what a strategic resource oil is. in fact, our modern economy cannot function without oil. take away oil and i'm sure all us soft nancies will die.

at least that's probably true for quite a lot of the younger singaporeans (i.e. Singaporeans my age or younger). take away our broadband internet connection and we feel lost, take away our handphones and we kau beh kau bu, no air-con and we all die of heat stroke. or at least will complain damn loudly. i think there is some veracity in the older generations charge that we are too soft. i read in the papers today this whole list of letters regarding training safety in the SAF. it's no wonder that one of my brit friends think that the SAF is not training soldiers but merely babysitters, that soldiers in SAF are all himbos. i mean, you don't hear so many people dropping like flies in the past. perhaps people of a generation ago are indeed made of tougher stuff. i wonder why that is the case though. perhaps we in this generation are really too comfortable, being given everything that we want, so much so that we take things for granted, that we have lost that sense of discipline, to endure hardship and fight for what we want.

it seems that my generation (myself included) might have grown up with a mentality that everything should be in place for us, that it is our birth right to have an easy life. and when reality hits us, when we realise that we actually have to fight for our livelihoods, our ideals, we grumble, we complain, we blame everyone else but ourselves.

i suggest that parents should stop being so concerned with academic grades and focus more on the character of their kids. once they settle that, once they inculcate fighting spirit, discipline, team spirit, selflessness, respect for self and others, then the academic grades will then follow. merely forcing a child to get good grades is really putting the cart before the horse.

but really chewren nowadays har. some times really feel like smacking the living shit out of some of them. but then again, sometimes i feel like smacking the living shit out of other people too. like whenever i was in NS and made to rush to wait and wait to rush, i feel like smacking the living shit out of the people who did the planning. no... i jest. i understand why sometimes things don't go always as plan. but the sheer paranoia that leads to us having to rush to wait and wait to rush does get quite irritating.

i read another article about this rush to wait syndrome. apparently, for the IOC session in Singapore, because we are so damn bloody kiasu, the organisers factored in buffer time for travelling and all. but they factored in too much buffer time, resulting in the members usually arriving too early (i.e. 30-40 minutes before what they were supposed to be there for). of course, these people are dignitaries and hence are always entertained while they waited. at the very least, they were comfortable. but for poor NSFs, or SAF personnel (because it is the case for any SAF event, the grunts are always made to rush to wait...), we just wait in the sun, in the rain, in much discomfort. and i think it just goes to show that we are actually quite inefficient. but of course, the people who matter, the powers that be don't see it. they just see things happening the moment they get there. of course things start on time, because everyone else has been there waiting for the last aeon. and all that time could have been put to better use.

well... i'm off to bed. durians tmr. the last time i ate loads of durians, my shit smelt like durians. honest. i kid you not. :)