Moving House

Boys and girls (and the occasional alternative-living type),\

I’m moving out of the toilet into a studio. I’ve been working on a new website for a while, and I’ve set up a blog there which has all the old postings from My Ivory Throne. If you’ve bookmarked me, please do let me know where you are so I can kiss you, then change your bookmark to http://studio.x-animo.com/blog/.

The main site’s not completely ready yet; I’m experimenting with some new stuff I’ve never done before, but I thought now’s a good a time as any for a revamp in identity. Hopefully this will work out, but if I post up this message on my other blog saying to come back here, you’ll know I probably can’t keep up with the bills.

My old nick of 8 years might also go. haloZero has seen its heyday in the local tech arena early this decade (I was famous once you know, though only a little bit), but it’s growing old. Lucky for me I don’t need a deed poll to change my Net identity, but there’s a lot of admin work I still got to do.

I’ll keep you people posted back at the new site.

Let’s Have a Reunion! (Stony Silence)

I dread reunions.

Why, oh, why do people even want reunions? My own Chinese New Year reunion dinners are, at best, a page out of a script for the Jerry Springer Show that was rejected and sent to Oprah at a specified lunar movement every year. And these are the people I live with; what of people I haven’t seen in years? What would I say? What would they say?

I’ve been reunited with a select bunch of guys from my high school years, and we’ve been having somewhat regular beer sessions, but to this very day I’m confident in saying we still feel a slight tinge of trepidation whenever one of us calls for a meet-up. The fact is, a lot of years have passed in between, and none of us know enough about what’s happened and what’s changed in each other’s lives to hold a truly meaningful conversation that would last 15 minutes, much less 4 hours (the time it takes for some of us to finish 2 pints).

And then recently, I’ve had the opportunity to catch up with some more of my sordid past (some of whom I’ve actually dated, others I tried to date, and then some I didn’t even want to hold hands with). Between them and me stands more than a decade of lost years, during which a large truckload of them got married, had children, carved out high-flying careers (literally) for themselves, moved away to another continent or generally wasted their lives being jackasses who would never amount to much (namely, me).

The past few months of bantering to and fro actually spurred the idea of a reunion that, if all goes according to my reluctance, will be happening in 2 weeks’ time. I’ve come up with all the excuses I could come up with, from “Nine Inch Nails is coming, I can’t go that day” to “I’m going on a church mission to Southern Thailand” (I’m a Buddhist, by the way) to “I got cancer, aw shoot, chemo appointment’s that very night”.

But what am I really afraid of?

There’s them to me; in those lost years, I’ve never really thought of these people. Sure, they’re in my Facebook friends list, but who really talks to every single one of the people you add on your friends list? And the sudden interest in seeing my newly gained weight, hearing about my newly started family, asking about my newly established career, laughing at my newly grown hair… it just wierds me out.

And then there’s me to them; it’s been more than a decade. I don’t know how you’ve been getting along, where your life stands right now, what you’ve gone through to get where you are today. As far as I’m concerned, the only thing I really know about you is your name (and only because it’s on Facebook). If I were to start a conversation, how do I know I’m about to say something offensive (I’ve met people who get offended from even a simple trigger, such as “fat” or “religion” or “Amy Winehouse”)? How do I know you didn’t like me back when we were in school in the first place but never said anything because you’re not confrontational by nature? How do I know I’m not just gonna freeze up, pick a seat on the corner next to a huge plant and silently count the hairs on the back of the hand I use to hold my bourbon coke until it’s time to go?

The fear is further amplified when even before we meet, incidents are already happening (thanks to Facebook, Twitter and Web 2.0, the marvel of the new millennium). Some are shy; no matter how you poke and prod, you never see them comment on anything; it’s almost like you’re being ignored. And then there are those that are not shy; they are so comfortable with their friendships (even though it’s been more than a decade since you’ve seen each other and are now practically strangers) that thoughts and assumptions come flying at you like bullets over No Man’s Land in Afghanistan. Albeit in jest, through separate private conversations with each other, I’ve already been described as a narcissist, a gay perv and a potentially unfit father-in-law (don’t ask where that came from, I’m WTFing it myself) in just over the past 3 days (wow, it really does feel like high school again).

Yes, I have a mentality towards reunions that compares with much accuracy to that kid who says he sees dead people (for the first hour-and-a-half of the movie anyway). I also acknowledge that because of this exact same mentality, I have no friends (according to my mother). I can hear you saying now, “Get off your fucking high horse, you gay, narcissistic excuse of a father-in-law, step out of your cocoon and get a life.” And you’re right. Something needs to change. The principles guiding my life which I have upheld and guarded in the last 10 years are fundamentally flawed. I’ve written all of 830 words so far in dedication to my ire of reunions, blocking my own path with assumptions that ultimately remove any sign of redemption through the use of one simple philosophy: try.

I’m going to a reunion.

Monk + Money = Monkey Business?

The coverage of Reverend Shi Ming Yi’s trial led to a small balcony discussion between me and my wife, and subsequently, a number of lengthy comments between me and a skeptic (with good reason) in – of all people and in all places – local celebrity Ken Tay’s Facebook profile.

For those not in the know, following the very messy and sensationalised NKF scandal comes a new high-tension drama series – “Ren Ci Hospital“, starring the Vulnerable Reverend Shi Ming Yi (I’ll explain the use of the term “vulnerable” later).

The synopsis: said Reverend was arrested in the middle of last year and put on trial a day later after a five-month probe into the hospital’s alleged misappropriation of funds, found in undeclared interest-free loans to individuals and businesses working with the organisation. Digging deeper into the dirt, the prosecution found additional discrepancies, not only of the Reverend’s very fat bank account, but also of his history in property investments here in Singapore and in Perth, Australia, his chauffeur and various cars of significant worth (we’re talking Beemers and Volvos; I drive a Nissan Sunny, and it isn’t even mine), not to mention his allegedly “doctored” philosphy PhD from a questionable educational institution.

Now, we’re talking about a big-time charity figure who’s been earning millions for the organisation(s) he represents, and is known throughout high society (middle and low as well, for that matter) as the foremost Buddhism advocate in Singapore, Johor (and some say Batam). My first real interest in this matter was piqued while I was in the midst of moping about my own finances, when I read a headline mentioning the Reverend’s bank account; my first thought (which I subsequently posted on Twitter because it was less than 140 characters long) was, “You know your life is truly crap when you find out on a newspaper that a monk has more money than you.”

I mulled over that statement with my wife, who had a different opinion of this whole debacle. Here we have the third-largest charitable organisation after the NKF and the Singapore Endowment Fund; the amount of money changing hands on the basis of Singaporean kindness makes charity work overwhelmingly profitable as an induistry. And, as some of us may have learnt from the NKF debacle, it is quite necessary (although not altogether the smartest thing to do) to have it run very much like a corporation, complete with administrative staff, personal assistants, auditors, a board of directors, and the most dangerous job of all, the CEO.

So the monk fucked up. So what? In the face of so much money coming at you like Spanish tomatoes during La Tomatina, the temptation is truly irresistible, regardless of whether you’re a monk, a yogi or the Pope. To be fair, the Hospital itself has flourished and its charges taken care of with the fullest utilisation of the benefits the organisation has earned. Lending a quote from The Straits Times, “The monk admitted that he was ‘easy with money’ but denied he was similarly so with Ren Ci’s money.” With this in mind, we need to ask ourselves, how many people have we helped, the way the Reverend has helped his patients, to be able to fuck up this big-time?

I’ve personally seen as many monks sharing a bouncy red 20-year-old Datsun hatchback as there are monks driving and being driven in Mercedes Benzes and BMWs (I won’t even talk about the airport encounters I’ve had with monks in first-class). Do they deserve to live their lives this way, whether it be in a hatchback or a luxury 2.4-litre German monster? Neither you nor I can say, for we know nothing of their backgrounds and the circumstances behind their gains (even the Datsun boys; at least the thing moves). This is where the benefit of the doubt comes in handy.

Let’s talk about the “loans”. If a truly venerable monk with $5 in his cloth bag were approached by a man who makes his case as a penniless chap in need of $5 to tapow 2 packets of chicken rice back for himself, his wife and 37 children, do you think the monk would say no? Similarly, if the Reverend, hapless as he is about the financial policies set forth by his own organisation as well as the legal boundaries of the Charities Act, were to be asked by the people under his employ, colleagues, or business partners to “help a brother out” after being presented with a convincing case, what do you think he would do? (Even though it is surplus revenue from after his organisation’s beneficiaries had been beneficiarised, a scheming mind might say, “Go ahead”, whereas a naive mind might ask, “Why not?” The outcome may be the same, but the intentions are vastly different.)

“(His PA) told Ming Yi that he needed the money because he had run into some financial difficulties, but did not tell him that it was to pay for the renovations.” [link]

As far as I can see, the misappropriation of funds was borne through a naive sense of doing good coupled with an ignorance of rules and regulations, made possible through the conniving of certain individuals who made their want of money look like a need for personal gain.

What of his property “investments” and bank account then? Supplemental income? Back-up plan for Ren Ci’s rainy days? Part of Mother Theresa’s estate to “all the kind people out there”? In search of the perfect place to meditate in? All my wife and I know is that it is not uncommon for heads of charities to have money on the side for whatever, whenever. Even the hospital’s management committee had this to say during the trial:

“When questioned later by Ming Yi’s lawyer, Senior Counsel Andre Yeap, Mrs Chan said the committee trusted Ming Yi would give himself a reasonable salary, pegged to that of other hospital CEOs and also based on the scope of work undertaken by him for the hospital.” [link]

Think of it this way; if our politicians are paid well over their deserved thresholds in salary so as to combat corruption, shouldn’t there be a need for this one guy who’s supposed to be the deciding factor to where all this public money goes to have a stash of his own to keep him from wandering into the communal pot? It sounds warped, especially since we’re talking about a monk here, but you can’t deny it makes sense; the government sure as hell don’t deny it.

But my biggest qualm in this debacle has nothing to do with Ren Ci, the Reverend, his minions or detractors. It’s the media, and the people who read into the media coverage. The one big thing that the media always stresses to address is the “lowest common denominator”; the base level of understanding that any storyteller, scriptwriter, production house, and whatever other media industry player (big or small) must target at. In news reporting of such a complex nature, I have found it to be near impossible for the true essence of a news story to get through, most of the time.

When a person reads a newspaper, 85% of the newspaper is completely ignored (I like the comics section), headlines are read and siphoned, and most articles, if not all, get all their eyeball glory in no more than their first line; the news lead.

When a high-profile figure in trouble appears on TV in the news, you see his face plastered over your 60-inch plasma walking either in or out of the courthouse with the big bold headline “Ming Yi Trial” scrolling across the bottom of the screen, half of what is actually being said throughout the report is lost in white noise because your eyes are taking away what your brain should be processing.

Radio news fares no better; passive listening may put in subliminal messages in your head over a long period of time, but the BBC for me is a wonderful treatment for insomnia. So what happens when you get a hapless voice speaking over a microphone with no background music? Remember Physics class when you fell asleep most of the hour and ended up almost failing your exam?

And then we have the Internet. The most important tool for any research-based project, the connected student’s bread and butter, the communication innovation for the business of the now, and what do we do with it? Porn.

Reading through all the articles in detail, I was frankly quite surprised at what the local newspeople are reporting about the Ming Yi trial; there actually seems to be a bias toward the Reverend in the content (in particular, the defence’s case makes it quite hard to point the blame at one obvious point). But the people’s interpretation of just the headlines and their lead lines (which look like they were written by a different writer on a different sensationalist agenda) speak very differently, thus twisting views in an altogether more negative direction.

A perfect example of having 3 sides to every story; the prosecution’s side, the defence’s side, and the media’s side. Each vastly different, and all filled with ulterior motive.

Factoids (courtesy of The Court Room @ STOMP:

• Deputy Public Prosecutor Jaswant Singh said, the money was an unauthorised payment by Ming Yi, taken from Ren Ci’s coffers, for renovations to a Hong Kong flat belonging to Yeung’s friend. To cover up this fraudulent use of funds, he said, instructions were given to Ren Ci staff to prepare a payment voucher that stated the money was a loan. [link]
  (Someone commented that the loan was for purchasing branded goods; this should hopefully set the record straight.)
• Both the Reverend and his PA are standing trial.
• The Reverend is facing 10 charges:
  

  “Four – two counts of giving false information to the Commissioner of Charities, and one each of falsifying accounts and criminal breach of trust – form the basis of the trial. The other six have been stood down for now.” [link]

• His PA, Raymond Yeung, faces 2 of the above charges as co-defendant.
• Varying explanations had been given for the use of the aforementioned $50,000:
  

  “Mr Winston Ngan, an auditor who led a Ministry of Health review of the charity’s finances in 2007, said he had been given varying explanations of where the money went.” [link]

  (Different interpretations of a vague invoice, if you ask me. But I do know a lot of auditors cannot stand that kind of thing.)

• Raymond Yeung is a Singapore Permanent Resident with a previous Australian citizenship. He did not hold a work permit while working for the Reverend, but was instead paid “by proxy” from Ren Ci through the Reverend. [link]
• Based on his May 2001 salary, the Rev takes home $16,000 a month (makes me want to be a monk). According to his management, he stopped drawing salary sometime in 2005. In his bank account lies $570,000. If we do the sums based on this info, his total income (less CPF) to date would have been 736,800, which means he spent $166,800 of his own money in the past 8 years, or $1737.50 a month. I spend more than that the first 3 days of receiving my paycheck (which explains why I’m always broke).
• The Reverend loaned $610,000 to the Ren Ci Hospital since its inception in 1994. Here we are today haggling over a $50,000 cheque.
• Mandala, the shop mired in the $50,000 scandal (the illegal funds were extracted from the shop’s books), is operated under the Reverend’s name. Although there is an understanding between the Reverend and the Hospital that all proceeds will go to the charity, no documentation exists to support the agreement, so isn’t the shop technically a free agent?
• Trial Day 5: The PA ‘fessed up that the $50,000 was indeed used for renovations in a friend’s flat in Hong Kong, and the Reverend took pains to cover said PA’s backside, as well as not to sully the name of the hospital.
• Supplementary cards were given out to three people under the Reverend’s employ, including Raymond Yeung, who used it to buy “branded goods”. (I remember when my dad first gave me a sup card; he took it back the following month.) Today I have a company sup card, so I can understand why this was done. So anyone who says these two had a “special” relationship, please think about it for a moment before jumping the gun.

The rest of the trial is being covered closely in The Court Room, so anything else arising from there is open for discussion in comments.

The Public Life of a Private Person

I always thought the word “blog” sounded like the name of a word game popular with teenagers, childish adults who happen to be proficient in the English vocabulary and groups of people who didn’t have to work but rent chalets in the weekends for barbeques, walking around aimlessly in thong slippers and group make-out sessions.

Oh wait. I may be thinking of Boggle.

My dad asked today, “This is one thing I don’t understand; why do people blog? What is so useful about writing a diary about your personal life that you don’t necessarily want people to know on a website for all the world to see? Why are you so stupid?” (Quotation marks make exercising your creative license so much more realistic, but even then, that really was the gist of what I got from him.)

He was speaking in reference to the accident I wrote about in my last entry that, at the time of writing it, I felt I needed to get out of my system, hoping the topic would never resurface in conversations again. So my dad’s last question does have it’s relevance.

You may also like to note the one and only comment from my most ardent one and only biggest fan surfacing a day later at the bottom of that post. She just so happened to be at my family table tonight, raving about my humour in writing and how everyone should go take a read. “The Father’s Day one was so farnee! Pity about the accident.”

3 sets of eyes suddenly turned to me wide-eyed. “What accident? What happened?”

I rolled my eyes and proceeded to perform a badly edited re-run of the chain collision that gave me a week-long bout of misery, shame and embarrassment.

I was subsequently subjected to a whole new round of misery, shame and embarrassment.

“Do you know you’re in debt?”

“Why you waste money on car rental? Where is your sense of priority?”

“Wah lau. Last car some more.”

“You know you could have just borrowed my car.”

“Next time take MRT lah.”

“Why you go and blog about this if you didn’t want us to know?”

“Why you so stupid?”

And so, walking home from the MRT station with my iPhone in my hands and a cigarette in my mouth, I continue with my highly successful habit of being stupid by blogging about things I probably don’t want people to know about.

Why do I blog? I don’t gain anything out of it. I’m providing light entertainment to a grand total of 4 people, all of them in my immediate family. And of my ginormous fanbase, only 1 bothers to comment regularly.And that one faithful reader just happens to be the one that got me into trouble in the first place, conveniently and quietly leaving the table while the free-for-all stares in disbelief and questions about my intelligence level started to fly in my general direction.

I blog because I need an outlet. I write because it’s really the only way I know how to communicate in a true comprehension. I publish because I hope that one day my words will be able to inspire imperfect people with imperfect lives to laugh at themselves, and I wait for the perfect people to like what I say and offer me a job. I speak my mind of my own life because I want my son to read this one day, to know who daddy is, to know what he did, when he did it and how ridiculous life can be even for a 30-year-old man (give or take a few years), and most importantly, that it is perfectly fine to be living an imperfect life.

I have a blog called My Ivory Throne because it’s rhe one place I can really offload shit, and there’s really a lot of shit in here, my shit, my words, my memories, that will remind me of how I survived, teach me how to survive and survive beyond my years (as long as I keep backups).

My dad still thinks it’s stupid though.

Happy Father’s Day

My first Father’s Day.

I’ve told my wife what I really thought of Father’s Day from my own point of view, particularly after having witnessed what she had to go through giving north to our son. Father’s Day to me was like an afterthought; someone came up with Mother’s Day, and then about a month after celebrating the general awesomeness of motherhood and giving thanks to the pain and hardship of women the world over for bringing up the next generation of leaders, movers and shakers, someone else suddenly sat up and asked, “what about the fathers?”

If you asked me today, “Do you feel like a father?”, I honestly would say no. I mean, given the last 6 months, as opposed to the extra 9 months of labour my wife had to go through, coupled with the last 30 hours of birthing that eventually involved every standard birth procedure (natural, induced, forceps and C-section), I was about as useful as my little toe. And till today, I still feel that way.

Se of you may know I got into a chain collision a week back. No injuries, save for a motorcyclist skidding that turned out to be the cause of the sudden turn of events but was deemed umrelated to the subsequent cars affected. Well, although no one got seriously hurt, the implications weighed heavily on me. For one, I was the last car involved, meaning the car’s insurance would be bearing the brunt of all the other vehicles’ claims. Add to that the fact that it was my father-in-law’s car, not mine, so obviously I’m not a named driver in the policy. Then add to that the fact that I just got my license and am still under probation, and you’ve got yourself a big mess worthy of a teenager’s penchant for trouble.

I’m gonna go out on a limb by saying this whole accident incident has made me doubt my self-worth as a father, a husband and a so-called head of my household. In the current climate, what with my company’s cutbacks and the general downturn in the incomes of those around me, I really couldn’t afford an accident in my current position. Where before that fateful day I felt like I could accomplish a lot, for a week and counting I was put in my place right proper and told to fucking grow up and come back to earth.

My in-laws were nothing but compassionate about my plight and stopped at nothing to help me out with the car repairs, insurance queries, and most of all, breaking the news to my father-in-law. As much as I deeply appreciated them for everything they did, I felt deeply ashamed that I wasn’t doing right by their daughter and sister. And I’m deeply ashamed that thus far I have done more harm than good for my wife and child because of my carelessness.

So do I feel like a father? No.

***

I feel bad for my own dear old dad. In the midst of having to deal with my own problems, my communication with my parents have been getting less and less, with my dad getting the brunt of the neglect.

He hasn’t been doing too well either in the past months. After having to deal with doctors telling him he’s got a heart problem and even showed evidence in his ECG that he’s had a heart attack and stroke before (so mild even he didn’t notice), currentedical results now show that he’s possibly diabetic.

He’s aged a lot in the last 2 years. The tiredness is manifesting in his receding hairline, growing number of wrinkles, his lack of energy and even his mood. The once energetic man with a corny sense of humour and an ability to solve problems in a heartbeat is now a tired old man, prone to impatience and bad temperment and sorely in need of sleep.

And all I could do today was send him a Father’s Day greeting via SMS. Heck of a father I am, and now, heck of a son.

Someone should just fire me from my life, because I’m doing a terrible job of living it.

Your Wedding – The Day You Potentially Start The Rest Of Your Life Wrong

I never thought I would be blogging in a “Wedding Jitters” topic again, but this one I thought I couldn’t let up, so…

… so I was at this wedding dinner tonight hosted by one of my wife’s closer cousins. I shan’t go into specifics about the goings on, but throughout the course of the dinner I had a number of revelations that I thought I’d share, along with a handful of good advice handed down to me by my own groomsmen and maids-of-honour, one of whom was a wedding planner herself at one stage in her very colourful life.

1. This has to be number one: Always choose your groomsmen and maids-of-honour wisely. You need responsible people who are able to do their jobs, are constantly conscious of the people attending the wedding from the moment bride and groom wake up to the moment AFTER the last guest has left the wedding dinner venue, and most importantly, respect you and your partner for who they are. Your parents might know what you are like, and they might know what your friends are like, but your in-laws, extended relatives and other acquaintances you are inviting to celebrate your special day sure as hell don’t. So when your maids-of-honour run through their morning “bargaining” ritual with the groom by picking on his poor English language skills and subsequently embarrass him in front of a whole ballroom with a video clip of him struggling through an English passage, or when your designated Masters of Ceremony conveniently forget to invite the groom’s VIP table up to the stage for the ritual toasting, or when your groomsmen start putting cigarettes in their mouths and light up in the ballroom of your wedding dinner only just after the last course is served, and they’re sitting only 2 tables away from VIP Table No. 1, not to mention the tables surrounding them that have kids ages 5 and below (including my own son), it says a lot about your social circle, and that (unfortunately) reflects really badly on you, however much of a nice person you may be.

2. Wedding affairs may be the most exhausting to plan and execute, but you need to stick it to the very end with your brightest smile and your best manners. Meet your friends and family and greet them with all sincerity (even the ones you don’t particularly like). Never, ever, miss out on anyone. See them all off at the door when they’re done dining – all of them. Show them a level of respect above and beyond any respect you’ve ever given or received. Because as much as this is your day, it’s not. Wedding days are really a big-ass extravagant announcement to the world you live in that you’re getting married, and the people you invite, whether it be for solemnisation, tea ceremony, lunch, dinner, karaoke or mahjong session, are the people you are doing it for, no matter what people tell you. Face it, the bride will always dream of the perfect white wedding, the groom will always dream of the smallest bills, but based on experience, the wedding day done right is the wedding day done with the people in your lives in mind – not you. You want to do something for yourselves, you got the rest of your lives to go sort it out (starting with your honeymoon; now that is where your married life really begins). Your wedding day goes to your guests (who are, by the way, the same people you are trying to get to pay for the whole thing anyway, so do right by your sponsors).

3. Choose your venues carefully. If you’re cost-conscious, going for a cheaper restaurant is all fine and dandy, but you got to at least make sure service standards and venue facilities are up to par with the standard expectations. People can forgive the leaking ceiling in the lift lobby, or the dingy car park with a post-dinner car queue extending 3 basement storeys because there’s only one single-lane exit point. But banquet staff who don’t bring you your drink after 4 consecutive requests, or usurp your personal space to serve food without so much as a glance or an “excuse me”, or try to clear your dish before you even touched the food on it just leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Look at it this way; the two of you are getting married because you’re committing your heart and soul into your relationship for the rest of your lives. Shouldn’t the people you’re engaging to help you on your wedding day at least put in their heart and soul, just for this one day, to making your wedding go right?

4. You have to play politics. As much as you don’t like it, politics plays a big part in this kind of event. I haven’t met a couple whose extended family doesn’t have a grouchy uncle or a troublemaker cousin or a bitchy grandauntie twice removed or any other kind of colourful character that seeks to make life interesting. That being said, you still got to invite them all for the sake of common courtesy and prevention of wagging tongues. I personally found myself receiving RSVPs from my more complicated relations, including people I thought were long estranged from my mother and had problems with my dad, but careful planning of seating arrangements and an unorthodox programme involving a trishaw and 1930’s Shanghai music ensured the enmities were kept to a minimum and the old folk were suitably distracted to forget about family warmongering for just that one night. In fact, it actually got my family closer to my mother’s estranged side, who invited us to another grand dinner event in order to try to patch things up.

5. Think through the red packets you’re giving out carefully. When you involve your friends and family in the groomsmen/maids-of-honour/flower girls/ring-bearers/drivers/door-openers/runners/odd-job labourers, this is the one time you have to communicate their worth in monetary value directly to them, so you can’t afford to be stingy, and you got to give it to anyone and everyone who’s helped you, however small the job; it’s not only customary, it’s expected of you. I made the mistake of asking my mother to help me divvy up the red packets I was to give out, and she ended up giving a paltry amount to my brother-in-law (who was my driver), who subsequently never looked at me the same way again. And let’s not forget the third-party providers that are actually billing you for their services (your matchmaker lady, photographer/videographer, restaurant manager, etc.). Wedding events for them are pretty much the only time they can earn tips in Singapore, so you gotta indulge them too.

Having said this, I am in no way a wedding expert, nor do I claim this to be an exhaustive list (although after writing this over the span of one late night and a morning, it is exhausting), but I have seen and heard enough from people at my own wedding and others to know some of the things where people get things right or where things can go wrong without you knowing. Feel free to add on your experiences in the comments. I will add points in this post when I see good points being made.

Such a Fascinating Creature, This Bird

I’ve been stuck on Twitter the last couple of days. Though I did register yonks before, and have a rudimentary understanding of how it came to be one of the hottest (and most inane) cultural phenomenons of this digital age, it didn’t hit me how useful it really could be until I decided to run It to find out when the iPhone OS update would be rolled out.

Yes, I have an Apple product. No, I am not a fanboy (I still very much love my Asus behemoth laptop running 64-bit Windows 7). let’s move on.

Forgive my lateness in entering the world of instant 140-character, to-the-second news updates. The biggest reason why I avoided using Twitter so long was only because of 2 main reasons; firstly, that I have a tendency to write long passages of pseudo-witty soliloquoys to no one in particular (as may be attested from the bulk of my blog entries), and secondly, I could not fathom an afternoon of updating myself with what some of my friends might consider activities that would interest the Internet world (tweeting “I’m at work” only serves to inform your employer that you are indeed worth your month’s salary, but if you’re a copywriter, it only gives the company more incentive to hand you the pink slip, doesn’t it?)

But in the interests of tracking when the hell Apple will allow me to start using MMS and type with my fingers more fluidly via a landscape keyboard on my severely overpriced, over-hyped, wonderfully intuitive communication device, I decided to run Twitter to see whether anyone else was wondering the same thing and if anyone knew any better.

As it turns out, tens of thousands of people were wondering the same thing (tweets ranged from querying, “Is it out yet?” to pleading, “Please, Apple, please…” to swearing “Why isn’t it f&$@ing out yet?!” to relenting, “Ah f&$@ it, I’m going to bed.”)

In the course of all this ruckus, the keywords iPhone, OS 3, and Singapore hit the top 10 trending topics on Twitter (Singapore having made the list because some twit posted a link on the iPhone OS release date from the singapore website, which caused a big hooha because everyone thought the US side pushed back the release date based on what they saw; cue a few hundred people who knew better furiously tweeting “No, that’s the Singapore site. It’s Singapore… no, Singapore, … Singapore lah!”).

I found the whole discourse utterly amusing, and in the span of 24 hours, I’ve managed to tweet more updates than I have posts on this blog, not to mention add follows to 25 people, 21 of whom I’ve never met, and get followed by another 20 or so people, 8 or 9 of whom keep wanting to show me their naked photos.

I must say, though, Twitter as a growing social networking application certainly deserves a more thorough looking into. As a means to getting a good feel on the biggest topics on the common man’s mind, as a volatile marketing tool, or as a place to get recognized at your workplace as being hard at work without even trying too hard, I’d say there’s a lot more I have to learn about how the world works, and I won’t be surprised if the lessons come in 140-character blurbs.

(By the way, I wrote all this on my post-update iPhone. My thumbs are now ready for competitive texting.)

Don’t You Just Love Them Womenfolk?

Exciting weekend, wasn’t it?

With bated breath I waited for the AWARE EGM to happen, what with all the controversies and venue-changes and my dollhouse-punting feminist eldest sister circulating emails about what injustices had transpired. Then Saturday came and went. I sent Liza to Suntec in the evening for a drinking session with one of her old friends, conveniently forgetting THAT was where a couple thousand angry women were gathered (though I suspect some were there to try out some new red t-shirts they were given at church the weekend before, or they were aunties that saw a long queue and thought, “eh, got free gift?”).

The day after that, I woke up to the voice of a newscaster on the radio saying the new guard had been ousted and a new exco consisting of old guard members had been instated. While buying lunch, I decided to purchase a couple of newspapers detailing the events that unfolded. Can you imagine, The Sunday Times was already almost all sold out in the Jalan Kayu area? I only managed to get a copy because its headline page was torn and the provision shop owner, in a valiant yet half-hearted attempt to salvage the remains of that copy’s dignity, slapped on a large crumpled clear tape on the tear hoping no one would notice (and he still charged me full price for it, the bastard).

I won’t go further into it, since the entire island has talked the event to shreds over the last 48 hours. What I do wonder is, where will the news punters go from here? I am definitely curious about the fates and futures of certain individuals and organisations that were behind/involved in/indiscriminately pulled into the fracas.

Josie Lau: What’s gonna happen to her? The new now-ex President of AWARE should have known that first step into the AWARE ex-co was going to be fraught with problems when her full-time employers started publicly complaining about her unannounced extra-curricular activities. For those of you still wondering why DBS was being so harsh on this woman when other DBS board members were happily frolicking around with their side projects outside of the Bank, I beseech you to please wake up, put on your glasses and read between the lines behind DBS’s statement. Very likely DBS, knowing the full extent of Ms Lau’s character, took the first step in denouncing her actions so appropriate action could be taken should she fail in her endeavour at AWARE. We shall see (cue snide evil laughter here).

Dr Thio Su Mien: Boy, is she going to lose business. Here we have a legal practitioner unable to talk her way out of a situation she created herself (and she did admit to creating this whole thing herself, didn’t she?). “I am a … very charmed… feminist mentor… on page 73.” Aiyoh, auntie (sorry, should be Lokler Auntie). People give you accolade, you dun rub in people’s face mah. Very chao kuan you know. That aside, it would be very interesting to know what becomes of her, seeing as this little debacle may permanently discredit her standing as a high-standing member of society. “Lokler ah? So?”

The Thio family: To a large extent, the local blogdom, and the media both contributed in bringing in an entire family into the fray of this saga. It was weird enough that Josie Lau got to where she was in the AWARE ex-co, then bad enough that her auntie-in-law came forward admitting to having orchestrated the new ex-co’s coming together. Then happy happy the husband also kena as an “I’m so angry, I’m going to write a letter” homo-basher, then Dr Thio’s daughter NMP Thio Li-Ann also got involved, and there are not-so-discrete whispers in the background of how the family’s now-blown-wide-open agenda is linked to the that previous rainbow-love saga involving Section 377A of the Penal Code. This whole thing has just made their entire family look like fish bait for queer sharks (and I use the term “sharks” in the nicest possible way).

Section 377A: Might the family’s involvement in the AWARE saga bring about a relook at the treatment of our rather dormant section of that age-old Penal Code? Many parallels can be drawn from AWARE’s EGM no-confidence voting, compared and contrasted to the much larger, yet somewhat quieter fight for and against the keeping of the Section in our law books back in 2007. I’m not trying to stir up AWARE’s involvement in the gay rights issue again, but the Dr Thio’s introducing her anti-homosexuality into the agenda of the new ex-exco does bring back some fond memories, doesn’t it?

The Church of Our Saviour: Oooh, this one’s a very unfortunate victim, and another fine example of what getting religion tied up in secular activities, whether on purpose or by accident, will get you. I won’t go so far as to say they might get dissolved, though. I believe the faith of the Church’s members will very likely keep that from happening. But in the eyes of the public, the unforeseen errors of its members’ actions have reflected the underlying agendas that build the foundations of its pulpit. As much as this is a case of its people doing injustice to its cause, we ALL know the line between church-goers and the church itself is a very very fine blurry line indeed.

DBS: Oh yes, the people’s bank. A few weeks ago, a column on Today sought to question the motives of DBS as it openly rebuked Ms Lau for her seeking office as President of AWARE. While initially both my wife and I didn’t particularly appreciate the tone in which the article was written, editor-at-large Conrad Raj seems to have hit the nail right on the head when he ended his piece with the question, “Unless there are other factors at play here?” I have also mentioned earlier how they might have had the foresight to voice their opinion about this whole Josie Lau debacle before the whole debacle even began. The recent turn of events against Ms Lau’s favour may have created a ripple effect involving the fate of her career, but as of right now, even I haven’t a clue how her company is going to handle this. Ooh, a cliffhanger! Who’da thunk it?

The war against alternative lifestyles on an inadequate platform has now turned into a fight of survival in maintaining reputations after a flurry of mistakes by seemingly respectable individuals. I have to admit, though I understand the nobility of this fight of making AWARE aware, now that the old guard is back home, I am a lot more interested in the high entertainment value of what’s about to happen to the ones that have been caught and kicked outside with their skirts down and are now walking around outside, forgetting their skirts are still inside.

The Complexities of Life at 2 Months of Age

It’s been quite a whirlwind experience, and it seems to be gaining speed. At only 2 months, Xander has outgrown most of his 0-3 months garb, and is fitting quite comfortably into stuff normally meant for 6-month-olds (of course being in the children’s fashion industry, I know perfectly well how inaccurate kids’ clothes sizings can be). But what really amazes me right now is his increasingly complex requirements.

What used to be a simple deciphering of diaper change/feeding time/painful cries (see what I learnt in Week 2) has now become an array of I-wants and I-feels and I-bloody-don’t-cares, including cries of shock, loneliness, discomfort in body position, fear, tiredness, wanting to stay awake despite tiredness, not wanting to stay awake because of tiredness but we’re being too noisy, and other assortments of weird and wonderful crankiness.

First-time parenthood is really a crash course into super-professional nannyhood, and what you learn really depends on how involved you are in your child’s development and upbringing. In the first 2 weeks, I thought deciphering baby cries was already quite a feat for me, but today, when the kid starts his trademark Volkswagen engine startup (“ng-uh-huh, ng-uh-huh, ng-uh-huh, ng-uh-huh, weeeeeaaaaaaaaah”), my wife and I find ourselves having to run through a much longer list of the X that’s irking the X-man. On the upside (I think), we’ve gotten so used to his cries that we are now able to identify his less urgent needs and subsequently “buy time” for ourselves to finish up whatever we were doing before attending to him. At one point when we were at my mother’s having dinner with my family (Xander’s getting daycare at my mum’s), his crying got my mum in a fluster and my sisters in a flurry, but my wife and I didn’t even look up from our plates.

Perhaps it was our trust in my mum to handle our child that was built up since Grandma Daycare started; perhaps we really did know why he was crying. But one thing is for certain, when it’s serious, we DO notice. And it almost always emotional more than anything else. Like when he gets scared, the cries are loud and immediate, and forcefully demanding of our attention. Or when he doesn’t like something, he gives this beautifully cute little pout that grows into a wonderfully written chorus of wails nobody can ignore, particularly when it’s actually being witnessed in real time.

It just goes to prove one of two things; that the evolution of humankind has written emotional responses at a higher priority of urgency than physical need, or that my son has inherited his grandmother’s penchant for melodramatics.

The Bane of Being An Insurance Salesman

I grew up believing there are some careers you simply do not set foot into, if not for anything, then for not looking like an ass in front of your customers; real estate, car sales, large electronics store sales and insurance. The common trait between all these? They’re careers in sales, they’re driven on commission, and they hardsell like a baseball bat shoved up your you-know-where.

Subsequently I’ve gotten more mature in my beliefs and how they apply in the real world, and even met some salespeople in these industries that actually seemed honest. But there remains a sliver of doubt that has constantly kept me away from the salesman profession in general most of my life.

My sister has a friend in insurance whom I spoke to last year after my wife and I were i the midst of introducing number three into our world of two. For the first time in my life, I thought I found a insurance salesperson I could honestly call “honest”. He pulled no punches, seemed straightforward enough wiht what he was selling, and spoke genuinely and sincerely for his customers’ wellbeing. My sisters already have him as their regular guy, and quite a number of times they tossed me the idea of getting me an insurance policy via him. So we spoke, but for a small glitch in what was supposed to be a cut-and-dry life policy sale (higher premiums due to my health score), I had to turn down his efforts.

Since Xander came out though, he’s been keeping in touch, more so in the past few days, to the point where I am making a conscious effort not to turn him down in a rude fashion. At the turn of the year, after seeing things turning for the worse, what with the credit crisis in America affecting the whole world and a projected shrinking economy (-8%?!) in Singapore, I can understand how hard it’s going to be for someone in his profession. But hardsell tactics are the precise reason why I didn’t become a salesman in the first place, and hardsell tactics are the reason why I keep a mental blacklist of all the places to avoid when shopping for anything.

I was text-messaged 4 times over the last 3 days by said insurance guy to discuss a hospitalization plan for my son, which would involve no hard cash whatsoever, just an annual deduction of a small amount from my CPF account. If not for the fact that last year my wife had visited the hospital twice (once for a surgery and once for the birth of our son), coupled with how badly my own finances were stacking up against me, I would have met up. But money is tight for everyone everywhere, and even if it was something I didn’t have to buy with dispensable cash, I’m still being very conscious of what I sign up for.

I will admit that insurance is an important thing, but when you force the issue of selling some to me, I’m not inclined to entertain any of your schtick, nice guy or not. Especially when I’ve kindly given subtle enough hints, like “now’s not a good time” or “better if we talk when times get better”, take it that now’s not a good time and that it would be better if we talk when times get better.

I would like to say I know what these commissioned-based salespeople are going through; I’m working every day and making every dollar count to manage my own little credit crisis. But honestly, I opted out of the life of a commissioned-based salary because when times are hard, it really shows in your bank account when your daily work shows directly in your paycheck, and no matter how glib you are, no matter how soild your sales pitch is, some days people just don’t want to buy anything. Commissioned-based industries really do reflect the old adage (albeit through a different context), “When times are good, everybody’s a friend, but when times are bad…”. The big difference between applying that adage in an occupation and applying it in social context is that socially, there ais still room for acts of kindness, but in a ceteris paribus environment such as your job, the only thing that matters is dollars and sense.

It’s going to be a hard year, my policy-toting friend. Wishing you good luck, is, unfortunately, all I can afford.