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The waiting cat

I finished my work for the night and stepped downstairs for supper. Alone in the lift, the melodies of this song suddenly popped up in my head. Don’t know why I thought of Alena. I could not get through her phone tonight. Perhaps her phone card ran out of balance.

I walked past the entrance to my void deck. There as usual was this cat with fur a mix of brown, black and white. Mom used to say this cat might actually be the long lost sister of our Blackie.

Each night she would sit at the front entrance to our void deck. And each night when I called out to her, she would start crying. You would know that this cat was terribly lonely when you heard her cries. It seems she was waiting forever for someone who never seems to come. Perhaps the one she was waiting for is her mom.

Her mom (if she was actually who we think she is) died 7 years ago infront of my door steps, from internal bleeding. She was physically abused by one of her neighbours of whom we have no idea. Blackie was there when she died. He was devastated.I was in Russia then.

If this tabby cat was really waiting for her mom, she would have already waited for 7 years. Her mom will probably never come reunited with her. Suddenly I thought of Alena… Her cries reminds me of Alena’s. Only she is waiting for reunion with not her mom but me in Singapore.

How many times have I made her cry… I thought while sitting there at the void deck stroking this waiting cat. I felt so useless.

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Burden

So that is it! I have finally made enough to pay off all my debts, I am a free man now. Penniless but never the less a free man. What I have read in the book “The Richest Man in Babylon” is true after all. Money when forced into ventures that returns high and unrealistic amounts, flees from the owner very fast.

From an economic point of view it is true indeed. There is only so much resources in the world, so if there really is an opportunity for all of us to make big bucks then someone from somewhere else is seriously looking into losing some big bucks.

But no one in the right mind would be willing party to be involved in this equation on the side that is losing big bucks, unless value of equal quantity is exchanged for that. So where then does this value come from. It can either be material (aka your local ipod, food, water… a product) or intangible (education, nail polishing service, house fixing service, web creation service). So the moral of the story is if someone says that any opportunity is going to pay up lots of money to you, you should really started looking to source out for the part of the business model that is value generating. If suppose after much search you find none of such is tagged to this huge payback for your money, then I think it is perhaps time to drop this opportunity however good it might seem.

“Money when forced into ventures that returns high and unrealistic amounts, flees from the owner very fast.” This lesson I have learned the hard way. But never the less it is still lesson learned. Follow not in my foot steps. Napoleon is a wise man indeed. Then again perhaps my advice will fall on deaf ears, so much people are into the idea of getting something for nothing nowadays. Laziness is a sin!

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A new game

Recently I got commissioned to write a new game. The original version was supposed to be a hybrid form of the traditional monopoly game. However to avoid copyright problems we decided to tweak it. Hence the resulting board was a world map instead of a squarish shape group of grids in the old monopoly.

It was very enjoyable writing that game as half the routes one it were ones I ever took while travelling. The mode of transport was quite interesting too. You could go by foot, car, train, ships and airballons from one city to another. The first 4 I have ever tried, the last one not as yet. I am damned looking forward to trying that one out one of these days.

Just in case you might want to try it out you could go to where this game is currently resided. fortune.name1price.com. It takes a while to load as it is quite big and complex.

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Nowadays it seems…

Nowadays, it seems more and more that I wake up feeling aches here and there instead of feeling refreshed.

Nowadays, it seems that rather than being free of any burden, these loads just seems to add themselves on to me more and more.

Nowadays, it seems that which used to be fun and entertaining has became boring and lifeless.

Nowadays, it seems that there are more thing than 24 hrs a days can handle.

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The roller coaster ride continues…

Alena must be fast asleep somewhere up in the north at the moment, considering the fact that we are in the same time zone. Obliged to her request, I refrained from texting her at night. She hates that.

She is a day person, her environment is as such, not much happens for her after the sunsets in Shandong, whereas my day just starts when the sun finally sets. Deep in the night is when I am at my most active, when most of my brain work is done.

My dad just woke up to feed the cat, it was unnecessary, there was still lots of cat food in the bowl. My mom will be heading to the hospital in the morning to have her womb removed. My brother back to work, but it seems he will be heading off to Germany for training for a month come this Friday. Boy I am looking forward to one month of free space.

I love the nights when everyone at home is asleep. It felt like I owned the entire place, all the space I needed. Perhaps that is why I choose to spend most of my day time sleeping nowadays and my night time up and working. Perhaps in the future when I own my own apartment it might become different, but till then, I believe my nocturnal habit will persist.

Just last night I got dragged down by one of my buddies into one of the new clubs in town. It was a fresh concept. How does it go about… Imagine the thai disco concept, where there is a band is on stage and the audiences show their appreciation for the band or the singer by buying them sashes or flowers each of which the performer could later exchange for its equivalent value in terms of cash. Well take away the thais and their bands and replace them with Male Singaporean Singers, that is what this new club is about, Singaporean male as singing entertainers on stage.

Bazaar really, but pretty entertaining. Here we have a group of guys whom mostly has received little or no vocal training performing on stage and there we have a mixed group of audience but pre-dominantly Singaporean females in their late twenties to early thirties dumping sashes and flowers on these former group of guys. Suddenly the reality I pre-supposed became topsy turvy.

Being disinclined towards singing any canto or mando pop songs, I mostly spent my time table hoping and chatting up the crowd, spending time on any willing poor soul to convince him or her of the fact I am some illegal Mongolia immigrant who just happened to be in Singapore before wandering off to the next place.

Since the premise was false, I might as well capitalized on the occasion and experiment with how far fetched my imaginations could be and at the same time convince the next guy beside me it was the truth. I am afraid after a whole night’s experiment, people are more gullible than we admit ourselves to be.

Thankfully god had mercy on them, on and off I was dragged off stage to stand around while the guys sang their number, or just to do my usual dance gig with my bros.

Now one thing which I observed that really interested me was that it seemed common for the more popular males singers to be constantly being cuddled up against by their female fans. Having had the chance to converse and study these female clienteles, I realized more than half of them were attached with boyfriends, fiancees or husbands during their daily lives. So why this then, women paying money for affection from someone else outside their partnership? Are they not supposed to be the more emotionally attached part of the human species? Apparently not I think.

Well to be fair and speaking for both sides of the fences, what about the Geylang then, the re-known red light district for the main stream crowd, the guys. Obliged to do research online into this uber underground part of the Singaporean scene recently, I dare bet that more than half of these visitors were married with a wife or attached with a girlfriend or fiancee.

Perhaps then the whole notion of marriage as an institution, holy in the kingdom of god is a sham after all, something to be paid lip service to when remembered, a yet undischarged relic unyet left behind by society, a false front to at least maintain some resemblance of order amidst what is truly an anarchical state of chaos that is the human society today.

Seriously I have no clearer idea on what is to come as compared to the next person beside me. The only answer I arrived upon is that a certificate signed between two parties at the local registry of marriage is not much of a gaureentee on the level of bliss one experiences in life to come thereafter. One does really have to resign oneself to the fact that there is always a chance the whole thing not work out and one cannot but continue on one’s path in life alone no matter how hard one tried. With that said, perhaps it is time too that I attempted this path myself. Yes, it might indeed be the most adverse and most challenging of times with the economic crisis, the swine flu and my most recent time bomb encountered to attempt something on such a major magnitude. If it is destined to fail, so be it. Better to get it done and over with really fast and continue on with my life than to hestitate and go around in circles undecided, wasting my constantly dwindling time in this reality in the process. Life is calling, what is left in the top portion of the sand in the hourglass flows downward irregardless.

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Serendipity

It was Sunday, having just finished dinner with Anabel, her sister in law, I stepped out into the streets. Walking on foot from Marine Parade to Paya Lebar, I contemplated on what she said. It seems irregardless of the stations in life one occupies, rich or poor, successful or down , smart or dull, the central idea to happiness is always a challenge.

The concept of happiness it seems involves many if not infinite factors. Hence the coefficient of each factor contributing to the general level of happiness one experiences though in the short run is significant, fast becomes negligible due to the short saturation cycle.

Each of us has 24 hrs per day and only so much resources at hand. To fulfill each factor that contributes to happiness demands for time and resources. Scarity is a very real thing.

Alrity ,so it seems being constantly happy is a myth, we should pretty much forget about it. So what about being happy in the short run? That it seems is the norm around us. We have this today, we are happy. Soon we are not. We need next to find something else to fill the gap. Thus we did. We become happy again, until of course we hit the next cycle. Examined from a bird’s eye view level, It is a seemingly endless and meaningless cycle that stops only at the end of each of our life cycle.

Then Eureka! I suddenly recalled a monk’s invitation to enter into monkhood in a monastry in Thailand many years ago. Perhaps monks do lead a happy life… Perhaps I should really attempt to find sometime off these next few months to enter into monkhood. Hopefully, Alena will be patient with my absense during this phase of my life journey. If not AiYaiYAi!!! there goes my peace from life in monkhood. Once during a filming session, I met Kah Keong. He was a former monk for two years before returning back to Singapore. Truth is I got pretty fascinated with the whole idea after the conversation ended.

I finally arrived at Paya Lebar, and hopped onto bus 7 heading over to Glen Eagles Hospital to visit my Mom. All seems well I felt at peace. I could already imagine myself meditating in some Thai monastery, unit The bus stopped somewhere along Geylang Lorong 20plus. A lady in her 50s came on the bus. Interestingly off all the free seats available on the bus, she choose to squeeze in one of the most uncomfortable one, the inner seat beside mine. Just in case you had no idea, I am a big man, I occupy lots of space.

Then all of a sudden she struck a conversation, which took the most crazy of turns. So she has visions… she believes in God and Jesus, the Jewish branch. She wears the Star of David instead of the traditional cross. She condemns Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, Catholicism and Islam-ism as Paganism and bullshit. After much conversation it seems she also made it her business to sell some obscure versions of the Bible through the internet. (Check out these URLS if you will http://goldendoves.com/, http://cgbconline.org/ , http://www.dpmchina.com/) Then she went on to commit an inverse logical error by attempting to link the cause of my moms health to her and dad’s religion.

An example of an inverse logical error : Given a 3 why assume it is a 1+ 2 when so many other combinations including 4 – 1 can fit the criteria?

So what can I do? Smile my most patronizing million dollar smile at her of course.

Hey I don’t mind, just the other day I was toying around with this sentence in my head “I believe in the church but not in God…” But mind you, no offense, it was just pure experimental speculations no harm intended. I was just wondering how willing this society of ours might accept this phrase which happened to pop into my head from God knows where. Fortunately or unfortunately whichever way you might want to take it, I only arrived at nothing conclusive.

However this lady… Wow, she is the REAL THING! From her intonation it seems less a mere statement than an official declaration against the freedom of religion.Make her the Prime Minister and I think all religions will be banned really soon.

Still from my point of view, it is important for her to have her views. after all I am a great fan of Voltair, the classical “I might not agree with what you say, but I will fight to the deaths for you to have your say”. In my case being less violence inclined, I modify that space to be “I might not agree with what you say, but I will give you your space to say it”.

What an irony it seems. Here I am contemplating about entering into the monastary and then suddenly out of no where this radical agent pops up and propose strongly that I betray my intended cause and switch to hers.

So what is happening to the world nowadays? Has all businesses been so hard hit by the recent recession that even Omni Potent Entities through religions are fighting for followers?

Suddenly I got reminded of this humorous author Terry Prachet of which one of his books I read years ago. Check him out, if you will it is cool stuff. Warning for the more staunchly religious minded, take it with a pinch of salt, if not avoid it at all cost.