And it's 2010. Not bluffing.

So from 2006 to 2010, it's 4 years. Wow. A lot has taken place. Interesting. Who's next to come say 'I'm old'?

Immature I can endure, unreasonable is beyond understanding

Infuriated. Plain jane anger. My adrenaline rich blood demands that I decontruct something that hopefully would make noise and seperate to smaller pieces. I am faced with unreason, and being faced with an animosity this incredible leaves me with no logical reaction. That is why I am forced to my instinctive reactions.

Take away reason, and what you have is chaotic and random... randomness. I find myself unequipped to handle this chaotic world, like a snorkel in outer space. What I know, what I have, is based on reason.

How do you beg for forgiveness for a wrongdoing and revisit it a year later to dissect the incident to conclude that the wrongdoing is someone else's? Doesn't asking for forgiveness involve some shame or regret? Doesn't revisiting it open wounds closed and healed? Doesn't forgiving necessate forgetting? Illogical! Unreasonable!

How can someone who challenges an opponent into the boxing ring, complain of the bruises that he got? Demanding an apology for it? How can someone accuse somebody of punching you back if you have punched him first? Ridiculous! Incredible!

How contradictory! How paradoxical! My mind screams for me to remove the torturous device. HULK ANGRY... HULK MAKE BAD THINGS GO AWAY!

Sick Cat

How abject is slavery? How lonely and despoiled? How base the environment before a slave gains cognition? “Relativity…” whispers the White River, my hot blood stirs and calms. Slavery is a emotive description to indicate a region past the last point of tolerance of exploitation.

Einstein, in “Relativity”, defines a point as something occupying 4 dimensions of time-space. If I can define the point so specifically that the point no longer exists within the macro-physical world, but in the probabilistic micro-physical world, I could blur its existence such that by Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle I can acknowledge that I would never be able to accurately define all aspects of its physical location. And by Schrodinger’s cat, merely attempting to locate my exploitation tolerance point will affect the point itself. I can conclude that finding that point is futile, even damaging to my moral and psychological health. What comfort science brings to us!

Since now that I have convinced myself the only way to escape slavery is to attempt to define my point of tolerance accurately, thereby “fuzzying” the actual definition. Case in point: legal documents. Wow. And I came up with that all by myself! A scientific explanation of law.

You know how when Native American Indians consult their ancestral spirits at trying times? My Chinese blood will boil and sear words to my aural brain cortex and I will hear words like “老虎不发威，你当我是病猫啊!” (translated “tiger (as me) don’t roar, you treat me as a sick cat”) Hot words that hiss at a cold winter night, only gives a fuzzy warm feeling now to me.

I guess my lament in all this is that I am recycling this exploitation. By being exploited in this case, I am aiding in the exploitation of my fellow Singaporeans. My ancient past cries to me the 七步诗 (7 step poem)
煮豆燃豆萁，漉豉以为汁。
萁在釜下燃，豆在釜中泣。
本是同根生，相煎何太急。

Relativity

I just had a nice ride on the White River at Missouri. Sounds like a place in Middle Earth, it sure feels like it. When you arrive, you feel like a guest, not a stranger. The river looks slow and calm, totally unconcerned how now we are racing information at 1Gbps, that is 166 million words a second.

The first time you dip you paddle in the river, you attempt to dominate the river to travel faster or to go against it; To achieve mastery over it, all I achieved are blisters on my hands.

It is only when you let the river carry you does nature reveal itself to you, and ducks, snakes, beavers, fishes, crayfish come out to greet you. The river is patient and understands relativity. I left Missouri a disciple of the White River. Understand relativity and you will have the "peace of a river".

Thanks for nothing Citibank Singapore

Citibank Singapore's service sucks. I mean majorly. It must be something about me that makes them hate me, because I seem to be the only one! All my other friends have great service from Citibank Singapore.

I am going to 开门见山 (open door look mountain, means to be succinct). I have got a 欠钱还钱 letter from Citibank Singapore. A letter that looks like a cross between something that came from a loanshark and a kidnap letter.

It says "We have not received the Minimum amount due on your above account. With the gazetting of Credit Bureau (Singapore) Pte Ltd under the Banking Act (Chapter 19) in August 2002, all banks are required to submit their customers' credit records to the bureau." It signs off as "This is a computer generated letter. No signature is required. Credit Control Management Unit."

I owe them $95! My bank account with Citibank Singapore has more than that amount of money! And $60 came from annual fees, which I asked them to waiver and cancel. They refered to another department and they never got back to me, except to charge me another $35 for late fees and to send me a threatening letter.

My action: I sent them back my own email stating "I want to terminate all my credit cards, and credit line services effective July 11th. Please expect legal actions if you do not comply or respond."
I called up customer service which just told me that they cannot help me because they are not 'accounts closure' department, that I would have to call during Singapore operating hours.

I have to call them back during Singapore hours to terminate my credit cards because of no fault of my own? 24 hour service hotline? Secure email contact? Internet international banking? Didn't I see some of these on their website? I told them to leave a note to the accounts closing department and he said he doesn't have my signature authority to do so (granted). But why can't he ask me for my number to call me from, so they can get back to me? Now I have the responsibility to correct a mistake Citibank Singapore did that I have tried to rectify since Mar 2005?

Citibank Singapore has dealt unreasonably with me, I demand justice or an explanation. I have already paid them everything I owe them, so now they owe me. They have unnecessarily tarnished my credit history, I will escalate this until I can tarnish their reputation.

Just Wrong

This is one of those days where everything I do is wrong. The problem isn't with my actions. If I could gather any consistency in the results of my actions, I would be able to take advantage with the situation. Unfortunately, it is only at the end of the day that we discover an opportunity lost.

Why do I regret my actions, when I know them to be good and honest? Is there something wrong with me or everything else but me?

Freedom Fries

Sometimes it doesn’t pay to feel strongly and express strong feelings. It is strange that society has created that arbitrary rule that has caused an internal loneliness within each of us. We suffer quite needlessly, in our own thoughts. We swallow our words, bury our grieves, suppress our laughter. Since when has passion been caged at the confines of romance? Simply, for societal stability. Basically, we are individuals. And if our differences are amplified, we will not be able to see our commonalities. So we sacrifice for the whole. I agree with this concept. However, I am afraid we might have overcompensated. If any of you have heard this Zig Ziglar story before I apologize, but let me borrow his story.

One day, a husband sits down for dinner and his wife serves him this whole ham. He notices that the ham has the end cut off. So she asks her wife why she has removed the end of the ham. She said, “I don’t know, my mum does it all the time.” A few days later, that husband asks his mother-in-law that same question. And her she replied, “I don’t know, my mother does the same all the time.” Finally they rang up the grandmother, and she explained, “Well, it’s because my oven was too small and the whole ham couldn’t fit.”

My point is we must always know what it is that suppressing ourselves would accomplish. Would the world collapse if I express my great lust for nature? I love bicycles, and I still don’t understand why they don’t have bicycle lanes in Singapore. And if I express that would Singapore implode? Probably not. Now we all heard about that blogger and A*Star and the defamation suit.

Should we all shut up? Fearing to express our passions online, feeling suppressed or even oppressed by the Singapore government? Absolutely not. But should we join in criticizing our leaders? I think not. If we remember the reason for cutting that ham, we would know that we suppress our opinions to maintain the society. How would speaking bad about our leaders do anything to help the situation? All this does is to destabilize society. We start to first doubt our leaders, then disrespect them. If we believe in our leaders, we should understand that they are not superhuman. And surely, they will not be able to control aspects of their responsibilities fully. Let us not judge someone based solely on their mistakes.

Mistakes are real, they do exist. And of course, in Singapore, I know I can point out where they are. I feel vehemently towards them, but I won’t sacrifice my leaders for my opinions. I believe each of us has a right to freedom of speech, but let us also exercise some social responsibility. Solve the problem, don’t take the easy way out and shoot the messenger.