The mood is good, the weather is a hug and the air is the stuff of magic. I'm feeling like a Hawaiian dance to this song at a luau with Ronel Trias :D

You know your priorities are in the right place when you wake up on the morning of your exam and your first and pretty much only thought is: El Clasico! Wait for me Barcelona, imma be back, and this time I'm not going to watch the match from a tv in a restaurant.

I watched home at the end of the world, like you wanted me to. I know, two and a half years after you wanted me to. But now I know why. It's lovely, Michael Cunningham always is. As are you, ilu like in secondary school.

Distract me.

For blue-hoo skies



Hunny,
How's your halo?
Just between you and I,
You and me and the satellites.

Help!

Thanks friends, for continuously tempting me to go out and play. No, really I mean it. I'm happy even if it means I have to sleep a little past my bedtime at 12 or 1. I'll just treat it as practice for practice :)

And Cesc Fabregas is not hot. GOT STAMPS IN YOUR EYES IS IT? Oh how I love primary school boys insults.

DUM DADA DUM DADUM (= Well done, you have just delivered a major ass whooping to your brother's Snake high score / Your pie is mindblowing)! :DDD

I WANT PIE!

There will be one day a month where I will feel really sad and I guess today's it. But I can handle that because all my :(s are peanuts and my :)s elephants. Right now I just need to wait while my good elephants chomp on my peanuts.

My friends are unbelievably lovely and talented. Every day they make me want to be better. This is why you must choose very carefully who you spend your time with.

(1) Watchy, my friend made this! The song is peaches/pêches ;)



(2) Putting his tips to use, this is Alfian Sa'at, my BFF. He does not spell my name 'Ee Meng'. He is beautiful.

Some Useful Tips For Writing Your Secondary One Composition, by Alfian.

Don’t write zephyr when you mean wind. Don’t write fart when you mean break wind. Don’t write azure to describe the sky or the sea. Don’t write menacing to describe clouds or guard dogs. Don’t write plethora when you mean many. Don’t write altercation when you mean fight. Don’t write quixotic when you mean brave.


Don’ t use your finger to try achieving equal spacing between your words. Don’t be demoralized by the hidden word fool in foolscap paper. Don’t use more than three dots when you want to write your ellipses, it doesn’t mean that the more dots there are the more mysterious your sentence, nor does it mean that each dot is equivalent to the root of every hair follicle you expect to incite to horripilation. Don’t write horripilation when you mean standing on end.



Don’t make your ellipses rise and fall like the flight path of a butterfly. Don’t use three apostrophes as a quotation mark even if what is said was told by a friend of a friend. Don’t forget to use commas even if you have set the class record for holding your breath underwater.



Don’t write Suddenly at the beginning of your sentences when you want to introduce one surprise after another. Don’t write the full moon/the creaking door/the cobwebbed room/his bloodshot eyes/her cackling laugh in your horror story. Don’t write horror stories.



Don’t end with I woke up and it was all a dream. Don’t end with lying in a pool of blood your eyes growing heavy footsteps fading, which is the same thing.



Don’t write sleepy when you mean tuition. Don’t write fear when you mean forgetting to bring your PE attire to school. Don’t write jealous when you mean mummy has brought home a new baby. Don’t write longing when you mean daddy has not come home from work and you are counting the cars in the car park from the window. Don’t write loss when you mean the smell of the batik hammock stretched between mummy’s knees. Don’t write shame when you mean daddy heading straight for the bargain bin when he buys you your first pair of track shoes. Don’t write loneliness when you mean the woolly crayon scrawling in an alphabet book you once owned.



Don’t write about the saddest day of your life, unless you are able to dapple your sheet of paper with tearstains, as proof.



Don’t write about the happiest day of your life, even if this is the assigned topic, because it is possible that the experience exceeds language, your language. Don’t believe those who say write what you know, the more important thing now is to write what you have, so choose a day when you were moderately, not indescribably, happy.



Don’t assume however that your life means only the one that others have witnessed, and not the lives you have lived in your head. Don’t hesitate then to write about the hundred-balloon birthday party/the beach picnic where you swam to the horizon and touched it and swam back/the suicidal goldfish revived by water/the first prize, although it would be more convincing to the marker to say second prize, because there might be one more deserving of being first, but you are no less deserving of the happiness you feel by coming in second.



Don’t keep choosing to write the argumentative essay, again and again, unless you are certain that one day you will write fiction and find your freedom ignoring the tips above, again and again.

To those with exams


To those shivering in the winter cold


To those who have trouble finding sleep


The Sandman brings good dreams by sprinkling magical sand onto the eyes of children while they sleep at night. (1) I know what you're thinking but his sand is magic so it does not hurt. (2) He is real. (3) We are children.

To those watching U2 in Australia and Lifehouse and Maroon 5 in London,

HATE YALL.

Joking laaa, love yall a bit less. :)

O Happy Day!

(1) My favourite person in the whole wide world was born today! HAPPY TWENTIETH JACKY BOY! And not far down the list, Paul Scholes! Yes Boon, he is indeed THE MAN. He still is.

(2)Rachel got her ticket to Seoul, doubling -nay- infiniting/infinitivising my year-end fun! It's been far too long :D

(3) Singtel: Dear customer, your free Connecting Tone will end automatically by 21 Nov 10. Aand all my long-suffering friends organise a party (une fete, e with a party hat ^!) to celebrate the expiration of my unwelcome freebie. Now they need only suffer mine not answering the phone to the tune of 'bring-bring'!

(4) IP law has been good to me. The judges, my my, what witticisms they produce - "An example of a mark that is incapable of distinguishing is 'SOAP' for soap. The bar (pun not intended) is factual, not legal". Oh yes it was intended you cheeky judge you. It also comes easily to me. Isn't it obvious that the only and simplest way of reconciling Arsenal Football Club v Reed with Irvine v Talksport Ltd is this: Justice Laddie is plainly a Man U fan. End of legal analysis.

Pray tell, what did I do to deserve this? Because I will do it again and again :))))) Triple cartwheel with split in the air! Yibeeedeeebeeedooo I am happy like fat kid with cake!

Or like Nando with ball!

El niño para siempre, don't you ever turn el hombre on me <3

Ok going to roast in contentment, bai!

LOLLIES!

(1) In Linkin Park LLC Trade Mark Application, the applicant (no prizes for guessing) FAILED. You think? You know the joker boys you knew in primary school, secondary school and jc? Well some don't ever grow up.

(2) Skrtel admits his girlfriend is still finding it hard to distinguish between him and Liverpool's many other bald players during matches"!

(3)
The moves! I know not what to say! I shall just insert exclamation mark --> ! Ah Katy Perry, you got this one right, these were without a doubt the most fun things ever :D Wj's going to marry someone who sings Ray LaMontagne to her (oops I let the secret out). I am going to marry someone who sings Teenage Dream to me. Aiya jk la.. I think.

Thank you for coming back into my life :) This is a kiddy version of RHCP's 'Dosed', but no less amazing.

Dear French

I like you and all but I am so flipping glad that I finally get rid of you tomorrow.

Love, Moi.

Exams this year are a terrible torture! To hell with a broad-based education and taking cooler non-law modules if that means having exams over one and a half months. You heard me right. Be warned, don't touch if you can't handle!

Anyway, in case you don't know, I love you! Unless I don't know who you are, then you can ask me, but it's fairly safe to presume that I do. I love human beings. They are so lovely.

"Confidence was never a problem" <3

I dedicate tonight to Oasis because there shouldn't be a need for any reason at all to pay tribute to the second best band ever. Ever.



I am obsessed with this song, almost as much as I am with Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah. Now that I've heard every existing version of the latter, I am on a major Don't Look Back in Anger hunt. Isn't everything about this song just perfect? I wonder if the lyrics which I did not scrawl on my RJ classroom wall are still there. Feel free to join in at the chorus? Haha who is he kidding? But then again, NOEL ONLY GAVE YOU LICENCE TO OPEN YOUR MOUTHS AT THE CHORUS, HOW DARE YOU DEFY HIM, CROWD!

If you put a gun to my head I will say that Noel is my favourite. He is the musician, he is John Lennon. In the video he shows more emotion in the duration of one song than some people will experience all their lives. Liam merely sings, which is to making music as running is to swimming, as freestyle is to breakstroke, as Brendan Hansen's breastroke is to Kosuke Kitajim's breastroke. And he was the better singer only at the start; even that went downhill after Patsy Kensit apparently took, together with his heart, his voice. This is my favourite video to cite as proof of that.



I half wish they would take this video (and all those with Liam singing in 2002) down because it is why I will always be 0.001% embarrassed to say that I am an Oasis fan. With this out of the way, I will declare more freely and loudly. Anyway listen to how strong Noel's vocals are (Don't BE scared/I'm NOT scared!), especially in comparison with those of his brother, Kermit. It's such a pity really, because Stop Crying Your Heart Out is MINDBLOWING.

This next one is hilarious. Noel is SUPERMAN ok, to have been able to survive the multiple grievous wounds inflicted on him by Liam's eyes for the entire first minute! Apparently Noel had just chided Liam before they went on stage: "Did you ever see the Beatles wear shorts to perform"? Liam's response: DIE DIE DIE.



Oh my heart is already very fond, so it is high time you guys return from your temporary state of disbandment.

Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.

When did we first encounter this? I loved it then and I love it more now because, amongst other obvious reasons, I have a very stinky memory. Never take it personally if I fail to remember you or a moment we shared. Even if I love you like I love this passage, every day father time appropriates from me, and eventually I lose even that which I hold the dearest.

I must re-read this often and check on my progress. For now: I work less and less, I avoid telling the truth very often but because I close to never lie, everyone knows that, which helps with the third, and every day I look for someone to love. (Re)Enjoy! :)

---
Written by Adrian Tan, author of The Teenage Textbook (1988), was the guest-of-honour at a recent NTU convocation ceremony. This was his speech to the graduating class of 2008.

I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give your convocation address. It’s a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation. I say this as a Singaporean and more so as a husband.

My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one. She is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practising at home during conversations between her and me.

On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day telling people how wrong they are. I make my living being disagreeable.

Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one who triumphs is always the wife.

And so I want to start by giving one piece of advice to the men: when you’ve already won her heart, you don’t need to win every argument.

Marriage is considered one milestone of life. Some of you may already be married. Some of you may never be married. Some of you will be married. Some of you will enjoy the experience so much, you will be married many, many times. Good for you.

The next big milestone in your life is today: your graduation. The end of education. You’re done learning.

You’ve probably been told the big lie that “Learning is a lifelong process” and that therefore you will continue studying and taking masters’ degrees and doctorates and professorships and so on. You know the sort of people who tell you that? Teachers. Don’t you think there is some measure of conflict of interest? They are in the business of learning, after all. Where would they be without you? They need you to be repeat customers.

The good news is that they’re wrong.

The bad news is that you don’t need further education because your entire life is over. It is gone. That may come as a shock to some of you. You’re in your teens or early twenties. People may tell you that you will live to be 70, 80, 90 years old. That is your life expectancy.

I love that term: life expectancy. We all understand the term to mean the average life span of a group of people. But I’m here to talk about a bigger idea, which is what you expect from your life.

You may be very happy to know that Singapore is currently ranked as the country with the third highest life expectancy. We are behind Andorra and Japan, and tied with San Marino. It seems quite clear why people in those countries, and ours, live so long. We share one thing in common: our football teams are all hopeless. There’s very little danger of any of our citizens having their pulses raised by watching us play in the World Cup. Spectators are more likely to be lulled into a gentle and restful nap.

Singaporeans have a life expectancy of 81.8 years. Singapore men live to an average of 79.21 years, while Singapore women live more than five years longer, probably to take into account the additional time they need to spend in the bathroom.

So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you’ll have another 40 years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.

Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they’re 50, 40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their convocation. They would be very disappointed that they didn’t meet their life expectancy.

I’m here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy.

After all, it’s calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want to expect being average.

Revisit those expectations. You might be looking forward to working, falling in love, marrying, raising a family. You are told that, as graduates, you should expect to find a job paying so much, where your hours are so much, where your responsibilities are so much.

That is what is expected of you. And if you live up to it, it will be an awful waste.

If you expect that, you will be limiting yourself. You will be living your life according to boundaries set by average people. I have nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be them. And you don’t need years of education by the best minds in Singapore to prepare you to be average.

What you should prepare for is mess. Life’s a mess. You are not entitled to expect anything from it. Life is not fair. Everything does not balance out in the end. Life happens, and you have no control over it. Good and bad things happen to you day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. Your degree is a poor armour against fate.

Don’t expect anything. Erase all life expectancies. Just live. Your life is over as of today. At this point in time, you have grown as tall as you will ever be, you are physically the fittest you will ever be in your entire life and you are probably looking the best that you will ever look. This is as good as it gets. It is all downhill from here. Or up. No one knows.

What does this mean for you? It is good that your life is over.

Since your life is over, you are free. Let me tell you the many wonderful things that you can do when you are free.

The most important is this: do not work.

Work is anything that you are compelled to do. By its very nature, it is undesirable.

Work kills. The Japanese have a term “Karoshi”, which means death from overwork. That’s the most dramatic form of how work can kill. But it can also kill you in more subtle ways. If you work, then day by day, bit by bit, your soul is chipped away, disintegrating until there’s nothing left. A rock has been ground into sand and dust.

There’s a common misconception that work is necessary. You will meet people working at miserable jobs. They tell you they are “making a living”. No, they’re not. They’re dying, frittering away their fast-extinguishing lives doing things which are, at best, meaningless and, at worst, harmful.

People will tell you that work ennobles you, that work lends you a certain dignity. Work makes you free. The slogan “Arbeit macht frei” was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps. Utter nonsense.

Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway.

Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself.

I like arguing, and I love language. So, I became a litigator. I enjoy it and I would do it for free. If I didn’t do that, I would’ve been in some other type of work that still involved writing fiction – probably a sports journalist.

So what should you do? You will find your own niche. I don’t imagine you will need to look very hard. By this time in your life, you will have a very good idea of what you will want to do. In fact, I’ll go further and say the ideal situation would be that you will not be able to stop yourself pursuing your passions. By this time you should know what your obsessions are. If you enjoy showing off your knowledge and feeling superior, you might become a teacher.

Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don’t, you are working.

Most of you will end up in activities which involve communication. To those of you I have a second message: be wary of the truth. I’m not asking you to speak it, or write it, for there are times when it is dangerous or impossible to do those things. The truth has a great capacity to offend and injure, and you will find that the closer you are to someone, the more care you must take to disguise or even conceal the truth. Often, there is great virtue in being evasive, or equivocating. There is also great skill. Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence.

In order to be wary of the truth, you must first know it. That requires great frankness to yourself. Never fool the person in the mirror.

I have told you that your life is over, that you should not work, and that you should avoid telling the truth. I now say this to you: be hated.

It’s not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you? Yet every great figure who has contributed to the human race has been hated, not just by one person, but often by a great many. That hatred is so strong it has caused those great figures to be shunned, abused, murdered and in one famous instance, nailed to a cross.

One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong.

The other side of the coin is this: fall in love.

I didn’t say “be loved”. That requires too much compromise. If one changes one’s looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.

Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.

Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the truth worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.

Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn’t happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.

You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.

You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.

Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.