disillusioningillusion

5 May 2019 This is the nature of me, I have written another post halfway, and got the urge to write about something else. So here I am. Here is a short. I hope it doesn’t become a long. God receives your prayers. Or does she? What is the purpose of religion? Religions are based upon the concept of a god or a deity. Hence those beings are what I assume prayers are directed to. Certain religions have set specific timings during which prayers are supposed to be done. A set number of times a day, a specific place, facing a certain direction. What of you don’t follow those rules? The books say that the gods will not receive your prayer and you have to abide the rules for some few consecutive days to reset your “sin-meter”. Some religions require you light an incense. Barring that, will god not hear your prayer? Then again, no where in the history of this religion stipulates the use of incense. Why then is it used? These customs are just made up, and in the case of young Singapore,

3 May 2019 I am in the middle of Act III. I underestimated the amount of sexual innuendos Shakespeare is capable of making. I have learnt that “wherefore” means “why” and not “where”, and in the wherefore art thou scene, Juliet is actually asking him why is his name Romeo, meaning a Montague. And not trying to find him. Revelation. (a few days later) I have now finished Romeo and Juliet . Indeed, as what the tumblrs say, Romeo and Juliet were teenagers who loved and that is that. Juliet was 13, a ripe age to wed and reproduce in the story, given that her Lady Capulet’s age is given to be 26 which is just twice of Juliet’s. to think my own Mom only got married at 26. And perhaps there’s the cultural evolution thing going on in pre-industrial Italy (likely to be after or in the late part of the Renaissance), whereby people gradually have their children at later and later ages. And it is very possibly normal at that time for girls to marry at like, 13, immediately after getting their

29 Apr 2019 I am aware that my comparison will be devoid of historical truth given that it is all based upon fictional works.  Also, this is some 8-century difference of an AU. And it is based upon only one reference that makes them similar, and pathetic. My tendency to make middle aged men nearing death my muse is making me tired. The following points of similarities that I have observed between Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton and Shakespeare’s Macbeth after having watched an animatic edit of the former and read an annotated libretto of the latter. They die at almost the same age, Macbeth at the age of 52, and Hamilton at the disputed age of either 47 or 49. They were in positions of political power. I mean, duh, if not we wouldn’t even have heard of them. Macbeth was a king and Hamilton a Secretary of Treasury. While they were in the height of their leadership, they were hated by those around them. Hamilton was hated for having Washington’s support and being a loud-mouth, and

25 Apr 2019 So, there’s this story I heard when I was in school. It was 2017 and “class Instagram pages” were all the rage. It was just a more sophisticated way to cyberbully, for all I care. And of course, the nerdier kids use those things to publish memes which usually flopped (if you’re me cos I’m sort of a normie) and its kind of just a piece of bs. There were some really incriminating unglams, including most people who even attended school, you get your picture paparazzi-ed unknowingly, and the photos taken are without permission and once the page is frozen there is no way of removing those photographs, for a person who has somehow lost the password to the page. Pathetic, I know. Blatant cyberbullying. I heard of this story regarding a friend’s classes’ Instagram page. It was sometime in early October, I suppose. One day there was a huge mountain of story posts made by some student and more people started creating more Instagram stories on the same class page, and it was a way

23 Apr 2019 This is a rant about how pissed I am and how dehydrated I am and how my neck and my head hurts. The day 12/04/19. I went to an interview, pretty important and a crazy good job so you'd expect that the process is quite crazy as well. The damn interview was an affair that took up my entire morning, and its effects lasted the entire day, and I think it will not end. The preparation plus the travelling and the rituals was the entire morning, or a quarter of my day since 6.30am, with the actual interview being a jaw-dropping half of that time. Can you fcking believe it? I don’t know if I should be proud of my accomplishment or what. I made a fcking I/O psychologist perceive me as a whiney and emotional “emo” overgrown teenager, already nineteen but “frightened like a child, lazy and numb”. I didn’t intend that at all, but after I typed that I realise that this Pierre Bezukhov quote fits me so, so well. And who gets upset easily when things don’t go my way and becomes with

05 Apr 2019 There is this toxic millennial mentality of the “hustle culture” that has spread to even Gen Xers. This toxic culture which is what our Lord and God Jesus had in mind when he made it a sin to work on Saturdays. We live in a society. This toxic society that forbids anyone from resting. That every moment of your time should be filled with activities be it working or vacationing. Richard Dawkins said: We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly, those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. We pr

31 Mar 2019 I don’t know if I have already mentioned the agency name or the company name in previous posts, but for legality issues I shall write this like I have never mentioned it before. I worked at a non-financial company that is in listed in the STI ETF. That’s all I am at liberty to say. So, my actual work contract turned out to be ten weeks long rather than thirteen weeks, or three months. Because the agency’s arrangement with the company I worked at had some hiccups and they had to cut short the contract. And also, the agency was taking a huge cut out of my wages and I realised that there was a disconnect between what the company was paying and thus the quality of work they expect to receive, and the pay I was getting and thus the effort I am willing to put in. And this made me feel quite uncomfortable working there. Because I was wasting a lot of time in the toilet playing on my phone because of my laziness. And in the end, me and the person I worked with didn’t even finish

31 Mar 2019 now, now, this post is nine weeks overdue. by now, my work contract has already ended. i wrote this i think as a reflection to my first week of work and had intended to finish up with the posting of this post and post regular, aka weekly, updates of my job. my first job. albeit a really illegitimate one. hyper low paying, and grueling hours, for peanuts. sub min wage. sub poverty line. kinda pay. but it was a legit environment.  since this post is long overdue, my current thoughts and reflections are actually in the next post that i will begin to write now and perhaps publish sometime soon. i am likely to name it "wrecked by werk" Now that I am bound to a desk for the good part of a day, 9 am to 6 pm, and including commute would make 10 hours, and including time to prepare and time to wash off after, this means that I am dedicating almost 12 hours, which is half of my day to a job. In exchange for barely nine hundred dollars a month after taxes. And for the n

10 Mar 2019 Eastern Religions seem peaceful enough that even a person most disillusioned Westerner can look through rose tinted glasses and claim that eastern religion is harmless in comparison. But there is a Duck, Dark side to Eastern Religion. I would like to add a sad but cursory note about a friend whom my parents have known for a long time, but who recently passed away due to lung cancer. She was young, living merely half a century, and she did not smoke. And she prayed. She was a devout either Buddhist or Taoist and her family owned a small temple, I think. But we must ask ourselves, what are the things that we do that we think actually benefit us but may end up hurting us. Such as praying with incense or joss sticks, and burning joss paper, which is traditionally a Taoist practice but has been adopted by many Buddhists in Singapore who bastardise religion. And incense smoke may actually have similar harm as cigarette smoking, or at least second-hand smoking, which is causin

15 Feb 2019 On Monday, (ok its official I already write like Tolstoy, no need to be deliberate with it.) 11 th of February, I watched the last episode of BBC Les Misérables. Hell Ensued. The next morning, I woke up feeling like a fucking murderer. That night, after reading the “war” scenes in War and Peace, immediately after watching the final episode of BBC Les Misérables, with all the attacks and all, and immediately before sleeping, IS WILD. I dreamed that I killed a bunch of people. Probably Students. Like, TJC has a swimming pool. TJC has a civil war or is in a war. I with my dreamland grandeur of being an ex-vet or some amazing shooter, was enlisted. I was given a rifle thingie and told to fight. No Man’s Land was the length of the pool. Perhaps the pool was a 25 metre, since I recall the “enemy” was very close in that dream. The TJC pool had plunging boards/starting blocks. I was entrenched behind the starting block, periodically rising to aim at the enemy. Miraculously I d

15 Feb 2019 This post was created on the 9th of January so it is at least five weeks late, i dont know why i never got around to posting it. Or maybe I did and now I am just doing it again with a different name and that is just dumb. Im pretty sure what im doing is overkill. It feels like overkill. When you’re trying to find a job and apply to more positions than you can count on your hands. I was told that this is supposed to be normal. But this is too much. But I actually expected that anything I qualified for I would be instant accepted. But apparently not. The calls don’t come in. Monday, I received a message from someone who can’t English . Is that a thing? I let it blow. For the second time (erm its actually three times now). I fucking blew it. Woosh . Hear the wind? Then panicked me as usual left my phone on silent mode and placed it in a dark corner of the room not to be seen because I don’t want to face up to the reality of having to actually do stuff. And that’s actual

31 Jan 2019 I actually have two other drafts of actual topics that I put thought and research into. But instead of actually concluding and posting them, I decide to write this instead, about a whim I have. I will make a promise, which I will likely break, just as I have all my other promises, which I have no one to be accountable to. I have decided to read war and peace. I'm sure I can find it online, given that it's a 19th century novel after all. Probably a crappier translation, just like all the copies of Les Miserables available online. But I guess I'll just try to resist researching about which translation is better, else I'll be sad just like I was about Les Mis. Because ultimately any novel translated never retains it's essence. So what happened was: A riff of the Great Comet Musical was going through my mind. It was a part of the Private and Intimate Life song. And while sitting at a desk I really wanted to listen to the Great Comet cast recording. M

19 Jan 2019 In this day and age, it has become a kind of trend or fad to deny climate change. And the people who do so think they are being edgy, like neo-Nazis denying the holocaust. Fuck, it has been over five centuries since Columbus died, and there are still people who think that the earth is flat and think that they are better than everyone else because they are the bearers of some important and special truth that not only cannot be experimentally proven, but is also illogical to common sense. Its this kind of people who call out “big pharma” at anyone taking supplements and medication to alleviate their health issues. The kind of people who are anti-vaxxers, who prefer to use colloidal silver and coffee enemas to cure cancer rather than the proven method of radiotherapy. As someone who has seen people cured of cancer, and seen people die from cancer, I am insulted. Are my eyes and the black and white proof of clinical studies not enough? Well I guess I can’t expect too much i

19 Jan 2019 What have I achieved from 12 years of school? Nothing. It was the night of 7 November 2018, or I guess its already passed over to 8 November. I lie awake in my dusty bed. I had tossed and turned dozens of times. I try to tell myself that its pointless to think. But its not of use. I can’t fall asleep. The next day was the official start of the A level exams. So, the next day I went for the GP exams with a mere 5 hours of sleep, at least, I hope. Thinking, the next day will be better, I will be able to sleep. Because the next day was math, and sleeping was really important to not screw up a math exam. But as I went home, overwhelmed with tiredness, I took a four-hour afternoon nap. And was screwed over royally. The night of 8 November I couldn’t fall asleep too. At that time, I asked myself. There were two options, to not be able to sleep every night before exams, or to have nightmares every night, even until after the exams. And at that time, it seems like the first op

16 Jan 2019 I had six hours of sleeplessness last night overthinking about what I was going to write. And when I wake up after not sleeping enough this morning, I promptly forget about it. Disclaimer: I am not a medical professional so just treat what I say as if I am some other creature coming from another planet. Also, squeamish guys please f the f off. So, I wanted to write about blood. Two types of blood that are interconnected, because of course they would be, they are from the same body. Menstrual blood which comes out clotted and brown and dried from an orifice in your nether regions, the vagina, which is absorbed by cotton and other synthetic fibres. And the blood which you donate which comes from a carefully selected and pierced vein in your arm which flows smoothly and warm into a silicone bag. And how when one of it happens, the other is affected. Like, how I normally have five or six days of period with the first three days being very heavy. However, if in the middle

12 Jan 2019 Vegetarian in Singapore is usually driven by religion, specifically Buddhism, which about a third of Singaporeans profess to be adherents of. And many Hindus who are also vegetarian, although the percentage of Hindus is much less. And according to dharmic religions, alliums, a type of root vegetables, are not vegetarian. the Buddhism rationale is that these plants contain compounds which excite and distract from the peace and enlightenment process, as well as making the breath stink and the person unpleasant. Jainism furthers the concept of ahimsa to say that plants are hurt and die when they are picked from the ground, and little bugs are also killed in the process, (hence fruitarianism does least harm). The excitability claim is reminiscent of Fully Raw Kristina’s avoidance of alliums because they are supposedly excitotoxins and destroy brain cells. Hence in the case of Singaporean vegetarians, they usually avoid garlic, onions and ginger. A pity, really, when garlic

10 Jan 2019 The heightened level of stress arising from having nothing to do and having to find something to do before I start rotting away, has sprouted some canker sores on my mouth and left me with a persistent neckache. And I keep typing and deleting, typing and deleting, blocked and frozen. I am brought back to a time in 2016 or early 2017. Sometime in end-May 2016, I came across a post on Quora asking how to be a pilot in Singapore. Replies recommended joining the Singapore Youth Flying Club. I looked it up, completely surprised. This recommendation arose from the fact that learning as an adult meant spending up to 50 thousand dollars to get a license, which does not even guarantee any job. Whereas this SYFC thing is sponsored by taxpayer dollars, directed at JC students, who only have to pay 50 dollars. And I got very excited. I perhaps qualified for it. I looked up all the application procedure, including the hypobaric chamber stuff as part of the application. But in the en

3 Jan 2019 So imagine yourself on some wheels on a rainy, slightly flooded day. And you're somehow rushing somewhere and you think it'd be good to pick up the speed. And so those wheels you're on, roll faster and faster until a layer of water forms underneath the wheels because the rotation and friction of the wheels are no longer enough to push the water out of the way. Then in the mist of rain and dark of storm, a huge immovable structure appears in front of you. and you have to stop immediately to avoid crashing onto the structure. But because the wheels are no longer in contact with the water there is virtually no friction between the wheels and the road and the brakes do not work. and so you are an unstoppable object approaching an immovable object at full speed. And then you crash. The collision is completely inelastic. Which means you stick to the immovable object. And as much as we would like to think of the human body as a rigid-body, and we do consider it a rig

2 Jan 2019 Fun fact: google auto-correct actually wants to change "Caishen" into "Cavendish", as in the Cavendish potatoes. Chinese folk religion is a peculiar thing. Chinese have been long known to be mercenaries, meaning that they work for money, and will serve whoever makes them richer. Chinese immigrants are also very rich in South East Asia because of their supposed propensity to save, compared to the South East Asian propensity for largesse and subsequently corruption, which is another story. This mercenary nature also extends to religion, whereby they believe in a certain god only if it promises to benefit themselves, as can be shown in the conversion of the majority of chins to Buddhism, with an added Chinese flair, a long time ago; as well as the current phenomena that many Chinese are becoming Christians because it is supposedly more popular and will benefit their prestige. But still, the Chinese hold their folk religions close to heart. Chinese Buddhi