grey's
The thing I like so much about Grey's Anatomy, is how much i can relate to it.
Simple themes which works its way into everyday life, quotable one liners and a little bit of everything about life, is enough to make me watch it more than once.
you can come up with all the plans but in the end it doesn't make any differencepeople just drownthats why i rarely plan. I remember a quote which goes something like, "the failure to plan is a plan to fail" thankfully, this isn't entirely true.
messing up its what makes a person.its how we learnwhere we find joyand the things u don't plan forthe things u never see comingi mess up so much, that this is the usual self comforting thing i always tell myself.
The Lexean
I was recently introduced to The Lexean by a friend. Its high time that singapore has a publication like this. The Lexean discusses local issues, from the disaffected youths to the political scene -- usually non-tumultuous, yeah the greatest upheaval is like Chee Soon Juan. So anyway i was very happy with The Lexean despite them declaring that their target audience as the "affluent male reader", a "niche market".
Its almost a habit that I google anything that is new. I found the Lexean website and thought that since i like the articles in there so much (really, after some time, Her World, Female, Cleo all start to look and sound the same and seriously, i think the articles are recycled among the different magazines). Ok, the point is that i got interested in the lexean and was considering if i subscribe to it even though i would no longer be here in September. Anyway, i downloaded the subscription form and as i read it, i got really annoyed! While the magazine sells at the news stand for a staggering $15.80, you can get up to 70% less for it if you subscribe to it. Wait, nothing wrong with that, many other publications do that too. But as i read on, i can't help but feel a huge sense of injustice, I was fuming! Apparently, to be eligible for the "preferential price", you have to be "of men aged 35 to 59 with minimum income of $60,000 per annum". So the 3 criteria are -- 1) you have to be male. 2) you have to be between 35 to 59. 3) you have to be affluent. I can't help not being male. I can't help being young and yet interested in the sort of articles they publish. I can't help being young and not earning 60k a year. Seriously, give me 5 years and i will be there. But i will never be male. And i will still not be 35 yet. And yet i feel as if its a penalty to be a female aged below 35 because i have to pay so much more! What an outraged!
Maybe its the advertisers. After all, they want to target the
"the affluent male reader. He is a man who is sharp, successful, worldly, and well-read—the archetypal hero steeped in honor and tradition"
not interested in the affluent female reader. She is a woman who is sharp, successful, worldly, and well read.
Since i am not affluent, (and therefore would appreciate the preferential price), and i want to get my hands on the publication (even the adverts are nice, the layout is not bad too),i should get chummy with my older, male, affluent colleagues.
by the way, the guy who's Lexean i borrowed, is an undergraduate at NTU. I think $15.80 is quite a sum for a student to be forking out for a magazine -- compared to FHM or Maxim which is like $6? Isn't it so much easier and less costly to just be a "himbo"??
WHO READS US
Our reader is a man who is confident of who he is and pays attention to the way he lives and looks.
He belongs to a class of sharp, successful men aged between 35 and 59 years old,
earns more than $60,000 per annum. He is a leader, a CEO, a mentor.
He is discerning. He is demanding. He is who others aspire to be.
In essence, a man who is fluent in the ways of the world, affluent in the way that he lives,
and influential in ways other men can only imagine.
A thinking man.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To be fair, i think this sounds really good and elitist, that sort of shit. But at some point, i do feel like puking
Labels: singapore
tell me a joke
"lets all tell a joke!!"
I was dumbfounded. its not that i'm a boring person, and can't think of any jokes. Its just that, I have truly not told any jokes for a long time. the kind that goes "there are 3 men stuck on the island. The first person.. ..." All i have been sharing are those little supposedly stupid hence funny anecdotes in my life. So there i was having dinner with 2
kids attachment students who are at least 5 years my junior. We were supposed to tell jokes.
When I was a kid, i would make an effort to remember jokes so that i can share them with my friends. I always had some jokes to tell. The last time i did that, was like eons ago. Boy! i feel old. I feel like so not a kid anymore.
When i was a kid, it takes so little to make me laugh. Like really laugh, uncontrollable laughter. Now, jokes just don't achieve that sort of effect anymore. Have I lost my sense of humor? Have i become more skeptical about life too? Maybe when we were kids, we didn't have that many life experiences, or funny experiences to laugh about. but as we grow older, funny things actually happen to us and we start sharing these incidences with our friends, laughing over them -- these are our jokes, and guess what? they really happened!! Maybe thats why we, or rather i stop telling jokes.
Yes, there was a time in primary school particularly when we tell our friends jokes. I remember that. sighs. its been quite a while...
sometimes, i miss being a kid. yet when i was a kid, i hated being me.
and on reading all those insightful blogs, i begin to feel like mine is all shallow and self absorbed.
blogs on singapore
I am one of those relatively contented and unquestioning singaporeans who live my life on a day to day basis. I was completely ignorant and uninterested in the politics here out of helplessness. It seems like an established fact ingrained in me since young that the ruling party will always be PAP. With each successive elections and with surrounding controversies of how some of these elections are won, I figured I have better things to concern myself with.
A few years ago, I participated in an overseas exchange program and it was here that I was first faced with supposedly disturbing questions regarding Singapore. There was this Finnish guy who relentlessly asked me about the style of governance, the human rights issue, all the way to the ban on chewing gum. And of course like any law-abiding country-loving citizen, i gave him all the typical answers.. like you know, caning is fine, so is capital punishment, marijuana is evil, its ok if we don really have freedom of speech i mean after all, look how well Singapore is doing?? In my heart i knew that these were rather superficial answers
and answers that I personally don't believe in anyway. (right, he must have been thinking what a dimwit i was. i mean, one of those brainwashed citizens i suppose). But those talks with him got me thinking hard, reading and searching a lot. Reading on what people write about Singapore. I ventured beyond mrbrown -- who was, i felt more of a harmless writer, sometimes funny to the point that i never took him that seriously. I subscribed to various newsgroup which told me more than the government-controlled-media will ever report on. Then, blogs became the next rage on the internet. There are so many blogs around these days that its almost impossible to read them all. Some of these are really well written, well thought out articles about recent/on-going issues in singapore
here,
here, and
here). Even Philip Yeo is participating in some of them!
here and
hereBrain drain: sighs, i guess there are always those who want to leave, and some who will want to stay or return someday. Regardless of "rootedness" or whatever. Singapore is a fast changing place, all i did was leave for a mere 6 months and when i came back, many places looked different. On leaving, when i was in my 1st year as an undergraduate, i was shocked to learn that some of my friends were soo keen to leave singapore! Maybe i was the young starry eyed kid back then, thinking that singapore is the perfect place to be in, but anyway, hearing what my friends (older guys who have been to NS) had to say about
the sucky life here truly opened my mind. (yes young and impressionable). Perhaps now, i get it. sort of.
Singapore really should treat its own people better. Like appreciate them more. I'd been brought up by my mum telling me of the huge amounts of money i'll earn when i get a degree... which obviously, i'd found out the hard way, isn't true. Entry level pays little, despite how specialize skills are required. Despite the life science boom, i was truly underpaid for over a year. Thats very depressing -- i think thats a phase that many graduates go through. I feel that many of my friends are not happy with their earnings/take-home (take paying off tuition loans into account and other watever) and somehow disillusioned We go through that.
At the end of the day, maybe i am just not one of those talented individuals who deserved more.
me leaving singapore isn't going to be a significant lose anyway. i am glad i'm leaving. Not because of how under-appreciated i feel here, but rather, life here just isn't comfortable enough to make me stay. You know, if life here is all cushy and comfortable, people won't really want to leave. After all, this is a clean and safe place to live in -- if you can afford it of course!
