my sis is a genius.

My sister thinks it's very average. Re-reading it again, yeah, well - it's average. But i've decided to post it up because it's not formal enough to be a short story and it's too bloggish and reportish to be any good.

Thanks to my CREATIVE ARTS PROGRAMME sister who's super zai, you will ALL get to read it. Even post-theives can take it now. TAKE IT! and may you have uneasy sleep knowing that you will NEVER, EVER write anything of value.

POOR DUDE IN THE GYM

I was working out in the gym today, out training for Rugby for 3rd Div. I worked out on my PRECOR USA 546 EPILEPTICAL FITNESS TRAINER, trying to hit my target of 300 cals in 21 minutes. Some inane chinese show with lots of laugh tracks and people falling down was playing on the tv, and my Mp3 player filled in the dialogue for them with a Robbie Williams song

Oh it seemed forever stopped today
All the lonely hearts in London
Caught a plane and flew away
And all the best women are married
All the handsome men are gay
You feel deprived

Yeah are you questioning your size?
Is there a tumour in your humour,
Are there bags under your eyes?
Do you leave dents where you sit,
Are you getting on a bit?
Will you survive
You must survive

When there's no love in town
This new century keeps bringing you down
All the places you have been
Trying to find a love supreme
A love supreme.

I looked to my left and looked to my right, ridiculously keeping time with the beat of the song and actually bopping my head a bit. I hate people who do that. Well, I guess you can call me a hypocrite. As I looked to my left I saw a rather cute girl in a black sports bra working out on the treadmill, getting bothered by a guy in a baggy white tee and beige 3/4s and NEW BALANCE ARMY SHOES! NO BALANCE AT ALL! He seemed to be talking to her but Robbie Williams drowned him out and I preferred to invent the dialogue for them then listen to him.

The girl had a pretty face, and she did seem rather slim. But she was wearing a pair of tights which pinched her waist and made her flab bulge out in a rather unsightly manner (there! You can call me a hypocrite again because we know my fat would bulge out in an unsightly manner if I wore tights too! But the fact of the matter is that I didn’t wear tights and she did.) My gaze kept dragging back to her fl-abs, and I felt a surge of pity for her.

But not that much – she was a good-looking girl, after all. Pity the choice of clothes.

Clothes maketh the woman, I say!
Anyhow, she stopped running and when I looked back from the inane Chinese show on the tv, pushing 250 cals and trying to hit my goal in 3 minutes, knowing it was impossible (I was tired, ok?) there she was, one machine away from me. The white-tee guy looked at her, and looked at the (lemme borrow a phrase from a previous post of mine) sweltering (SWEATING) manly chunk of meat. Or meaty chunk of man. Oh I meant hunk but I must have typed chunk by mistake (Oh me of the fl-abby club too).

The white-tee guy got up to the machine in between us, a PRECOR USA 546 EPILEPTICAL FITNESS TRAINER and began to train epileptically. He pedalled, huffing and puffing, talking to the black-sports-bra girl (God save me I’m becoming like Zhu!). She wasn’t really talking back, and even Robbie Williams, playing

Come on
I don't wanna rock, DJ
But you're making me feel so nice
When's it gonna to stop DJ
'Cause you're keepin' me up all night

I don't wanna rock, DJ
But you're making me feel so nice
When's it gonna stop, DJ
'Cause you're keepin' me up all night

couldn’t mask the fact that, well, she wasn’t.

Poor dude.

I unplugged Robbie from my left ear and slowing my pace down to 120 rpm, I told him, “Hey, your machine’s not switched on.”

“Harh?

“Your machine – ” I reached over and helped him press the large, green, START button.

“Oh! Not on arrh. But how come I was moving leh? I can move what! Not on meh?”

“You have to start pedaling to turn it on.” I told him a known fact of the whole world of PRECOR USA 546 EPILEPTICAL FITNESS TRAINERS. I tried very hard not to add, “YOU NOOB!”

On my right, an old granny stepped up to a similar machine (I’m tired of typing it in and misspelling epelepit – epilipt- epppp FAAHHH whatever) wearing a flowery blouse and cotton pants and NEW BALANCE ARMY SHOES as well! Now, what a coincidence. (no doubt bought by her grandson) She began pedaling and then pressed the BIG, GREEN START button, and input her “Fat Burning programme.” (Wuss! I was on the extreme hyper cardiovascular interval alpine trail pass.)
I looked back at the guy, who had stopped pedaling and was pressing the controls. “Hey, how come stop liao? It say here ‘pause – cool down’ leh.”

I was pretty sure it said, ‘PAUSE – COOL DOWN STARTED’ not ‘PAUSE – COOL DOWN STARTED LEH.’ After all, it was a state of the art PRECOR USA 546 Epi- epitlai- whatever trainer. But I didn’t tell him that. He had cost me valuable seconds on my high intensity workout. I would never make it to 300 cals in 3 minutes. I sighed and slowed down.

The man looked up from his controls and the black-sports-bra girl with flabby abs had gone. She was safely tucked away at another treadmill, actually running this time. Both treadmills on her left and right were occupied by Asian versions of Kenyan marathon runners. The ¾ pants guy got off the machine dejectedly and moved towards the jiggling – I meant JOGGING girl, and after inspecting the HAMMER STRENGTH USA BICEP-CURL 578 STRENGTH-TRAINER, which was right behind her, he proceeded to use it.

Give him some credit. At least he didn’t use it wrongly, though the weight he was lifting was only one plate. A girl in a RAFFLES tee using the machine next to him was curling more than five times of what he was.

Poor dude.

I took 21:16 to hit 300 cals, panting and gasping and stomping away at the PRECOR USA 546 EPILEPTICAL FITNESS TRAINER. I sneaked a peek at the granny next to me. She was reaching 356 cals in half the time I took. She smiled genially at me, not sweating a drop, her legs churning smoothly and easily.

Poor dude.

IN THE GYM

I was working out in the gym today, out training for Rugby for 3rd Div. I worked out on my PRECOR USA 546 EPILLEPTICAL FITNESS TRAINER, trying to hit my target of 300 cals in 21 minutes. Some inane chinese show with lots of laugh tracks and people falling down was playing on the tv, and my Mp3 player filled in the dialogue for them with a Robbie Williams song.

Actually, I went on to finish this short story in microsoft word and now, looking at the product i've created, am NOT going to put it up. HAH! suck that all you word theives out there. Really, I did! and i like it too much to put it up online.

To allay all my adoring fans out there (fame gets to the head, you know. Drives one a touch insane)

I'll include this little snippet.

I was eating chicken, and i decided to eat the bones, you know, like the Nigerians do.
So i ate the bones, being very careful to chew them all properly to a powder so that no sharp points would spear my stomach and kill me with internal bleeding. I chewed until my jaws were numb and my teeth ached a bit.

After I finished all the bones, i felt kinda queasy. Then I began to feel very light, and the next thing i knew, I was floating! You don't have to believe it because I couldn't myself, but I was seriously floating like, a foot off the ground. Then my stomach felt so queasy i belched loudly and down i came, with a bump. Butt-first onto the ground.

Then I realised, that HEY! it's because the calcium in the chicken bones reacts with the HCL in your stomach to release Hydrogen gas, which makes you light enough to float! cooooool.

WHY I CAN NEVER GO TO THE LIBRARY AGAIN

today i went to the library with patrick. i decided to have some fun. i went up to a girl doing community service rearranging books which i had carelessly put onto the wrong shelves, and i asked her,

"miss, i don't read many, but i want to try reading somes book. got some books intro me can?"

She looked at me blankly, then quizzically, her head cocked to a side as the question sunk into the dense recesses of her dog's breakfast. (reference kurt vonnegut!)

"What kind of books do you like?" she asked me, a little exasperated.

"ahh....i dunchno leh. dunch read muchs, but my fren say the dan brown very good one - wat arh...the leonardo da vin-ki code one... quite nice leh."

she called her friend over and asked, "hey this guy likes reading dan brown - do you have anything for him?"

"Oh, dan brown? don't have already..." she hurried away, unwilling to get caught in a conversation with an obese ah-beng and his good-looking sidekick. (reference Patrick!) The first librarian (she's not really but just for the story's sake) looked at her partner's departing back in exasperation. SIGH.

"ok follow me lah..." she grabbed a book off the shelf.

DANIELLE STEELE - JOHNNY ANGEL

"it's quite nice. i think you'd like it."

"daniel-lee steel-lee. johnny an-gell." i said and patrick snorted.

"You idiot, it's angel lah, not an-gell!" he told me.

I looked chastised. "Oh sorry hor. i not so smart one dunch read much leh..."

the librarian had disappeared after handing me the book. it had been her smoke screen. she was no where to be seen. we cracked up in laughter, snorting like school boys at a bad joke, pushing and shoving each other - leaning against the bookshelves. it turned out to be a terrible error.

the bookshelf toppled over under our (ok i admit the majority was mine) weight and, to our increasing horror, the rest of the bookshelves collapsed like a large stack of dominos. when the screams of terror abated, we were the only ones standing silent amidst the wreckage of books and wood.

That is why i can never go to the library again.

Pre-op photos.

Not my cousin. My schoolmate in the year 2003, also yong yao's classmate! i'm just doing this for publicity for my blog, so that when people search for her images they will come to my blog! muahahahah! wow. where did that come from?

Hey! leave my cuz alone, alright? Enough about her! Everywhere I go i see her picture and all the stories, truths or lies. It's bad enough she's the hottest blogger around, she's my cousin and i'll never get to... sigh.

hahahah awright she's not just kidding dawg. just cashing in on our similar surnames is all. Next i'll say that I actually married out of the family and changed my surname to Nga. Anyway he's a nice guy i really really met him on the bus.

He was all muddy and steamily sweaty. (why am i describing him like that? Freud would have said it is the product of my sex-repressed subconscious) He was tall and ripped. I told him, i've met you before and he asked where?, wary of a trite pick up line. I told him, the golden point awards, and he said oh yeah you won right? I liked your story. Oh ok thanks.

He was muddy and sweaty from playing soccer near my house. He stayed in marine parade. His accent is to die for. Purely singaporean with a tiny aussie twang, low and seductive. (geez what is WRONG with me????) we made small talk. Being a celeb pays peanuts in Singapore, apparently, but it's his dream. Go for it big guy.

well.

I was thinking about writing. I haven't written anything productive recently and I was wondering why. I've been reading a fair bit, though, and trashed a half-done novel. 40 pages of work - poof. just like that. Maybe i've been thinking too much and haven't been writing enough. I seem to write two or three pages, maybe four or five on better days, and I lose steam, like a broken down steam train in one of Paul Theroux's railway stories.

I was reading Paul Theroux's My other life, which is an autobiography, and not really an autobiography because you don't know what's real and what's contrived, although I have a good idea. He used to work in Singapore and he didn't like it. He was a lecturer of English here, teaching Shakespeare. He earned fifty US dollars a month and he quit to become a private poetry teacher to a rich expatriate businessman for 100 bucks a week. Paul theroux described singapore in the 1970s as a newborn baby, the government tearing down the old buildings and constructing new ones, he wrote of censorship and canings, and dictatorships of Lee Kuan Yew, who he described as an autocrat, and MM Lee's greatest strength and weakness as being a dictator. He described Singapore as clean and orderly and calm and peaceful and charming from an expat's POV, a modern colonial town finding it's feet in the chaos of the Vietnam War just north of it, the burgeoning prosperity that came with the Americans. Paul Theroux wrote how he longed to escape from here with his family, and eventually, he did.

He's one of my favourite writers, but Paul, you should come to Singapore today. You'd be delighted to see how it has changed, and you'd be welcome. Or maybe you came already, and I never knew. Maybe you saw how we've come along and nodded your head in approval, like the way westerners do when we speak and they go, "Wow! Your English is really good!"

I also read a good article about Annabelle Chong, a Singaporean Anti-hero. In the Straits Times.

I've read the major works of most of the local writers, the best in the local business - Catherine Lim, Goh Sin Tub, Philip Jeyaratnam, Colin Cheong, Darren Shiau, Hwee Hwee Tan - just to name a few. I compare them to my modern favourites, like Ishiguro, Irving, Updike, Odjaante, Theroux, Inoue, Fitzgerald, Orwell, Atwood, Rushdie - to name a few as well; I find, and without prejuidice, that they're better in every aspect of their writing. I check myself - is it because I look up to foreigners and naturally look down on Singapore writing? Is it because the foreign writers have won prizes and rave reviews? Is my perspective biased and skewed? I check myself, and thoroughly check myself again. I have no bias or prejuidice in me, when I say, we're just not as good. It's like comparing the s-league to the Premiership.

Alright, I'll say Catherine Lim and Colin Cheong are really good reads, no doubt. But they're not great reads.

The Spanish have Don Quixote and Marquez. The Americans have Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Fin. They have Irving and Updike and Chandler and Ellroy. The Indians have Roy and Tagore and Naipul and Rushdie and Singh. The Japanese have Inoue and Ishiguro, the Brits - oh, don't get me started. Even the Malaysians have their new star, the Booker Long-lister Tash. Singapore?

I'm still waiting.

WARNING! RAVE AHEAD!

I have 2 Raves to make.

100 years of Solitude is the book to read. As bad as this may sound, it's like reading the whole synopsis of Days of Our lives but with all the necessary literary prettifications! The feeling of completing it was so satisfying - I now feel like I don't have to read any other book except the Bible and Love in a time of cholera, also by Gabriel Marcia Marquez. It was a lovely book, with a narrative like a Gordian Knot, simple and linear yet circular and tangled up in the most delightful manner.

2nd Rave

I've watched every single Bruce Lee movie, (and to me, he's still the man) and most Jackie Chan movies, and most Jet Li movies and I've come to the conclusion that Tom Yum Goong is THE best action movie in recent years. I mean, what a forgetable, preachy storyline. But what unforgettable action. Visceral, fast, smart, Bone crunchingly painful. Behold Tony Jaa.

The next tiger of Asia. Or is that elephant?

Wow. Every fight scene was beautifully choreographed. I heard people in the audience wincing and rearing back in imaginary pain as Tony's smashing elbows and knees destroyed all the bad guys. I know this sounds stupid and amazingly childish, but the fanboy in me demands a deathmatch between Tony Jaa and Bruce Lee! And Tony Jaa vs Jackie Chan! And Tony Jaa vs Jet Li! I mean, how cool would that be? heh.

How embarrassing to blurt that out. I won't be able to post here again.

i don't go crazy over things much. I just like to learn something new, maybe be a little good at it. But to pour in your life and soul into something as insignificant as a computer game...

well i honestly hope you make it to the WCG finals because that's where the money is. and for all you people who get pissed off at noobs (mainly me) playing Dota for not being as good as you - it's just a game.