Oh look I'm 20 already! This year, dad was here to celebrate it with me. Kind of tough as I was pretending that I was not in Singapore so as to give my gal the surprise she will not forget for some time to come on her 21st birthday which took place over the weekend. Quiet cake cutting ceremony for me in the comfort of our home. Been going home lately, and especially after discovering, much to my glee, that there is a shuttle bus that transports people to camp in the morning as well. That fixes another leakage of cash flow to a place where my heart doesn’t belong, not anymore anyway. I wake up everyday now with the notion that something new will transpire and it is just waiting for us to uncover it and use it to aid us in whatever purpose we will it to. Just like how I realized that there is internet radio on winamp that actually works! Good reception and reproduces reasonably good sound quality at 128kbps, slightly sub-CD but it’s good enough for streaming audio. Quite intrigued by the chilling out music they have, reminiscent of beats played at lounges, where people plop themselves in the soft cushioned sofas and just focus on nothing at all. Some people actually can do that (focus on nothing, I mean) without the aid of a conducive environment, it seems.
What happened was that I was feeling quite friendly all of a sudden after sending my baby gal to the bus stop and I met a Malay man in his mid twenties I’d say, playing with kittens. He was a most distracted man! While inviting me to walk around Tanah Merah, which I politely declined (what, and let a potentially armed and dangerous man have his way?), he could stop dead in his tracks and start talking about anything under the sun like we were old friends. As I talked to him about how I felt about people of lower educational levels being marginalizing by society, I could not help but feel pity for him. He simply could not concentrate on what I was saying. He was looking at others walking past, when he was the one who requested for my company in the first place. Attention Deficit Disorder? At twenty five? I told him I felt that there is no way for employers to tell whether the bunch of hopeful candidates paid their taxes or visit their aged parents every weekend, so the only way is by looking at the only common thing which they must have collectively gone through to serve as a rough guide: examinations, the more the merrier as it shows their level of mental discipline to be able to assimilate more and more advanced concepts and ideas into their brains and apply them. This was in response to him lamenting the fact that his brother, a polytechnic graduate compared to his own ‘O’ level’s, was commanding a higher salary for doing “merely computer work”. It is quite perplexing to fathom how someone who can speak Mandarin and infer from my asking if he had to work early tomorrow as a way to end the conversation does not wish to put his talent to studying. People are strange creatures, and like a taxi driver pointed out, “one type of rice brings up hundred types of people”. Too bad he can’t be recruited as he will probably digress while discussing business. Next please!
Happy birthday shouts outs going to Caryn (20), Jeanne Jie (21), myself and my baby gal! Librans rock! Don’t we all?
Now playing - Groove Salad: a nicely chilled plate of ambient beat
Love to hear - Rasmus: In the Shadows
Zee Chan: Mo Ri Zhi Lian
