Sunday, July 08, 2007.

This is terribly outdated but:

I don't think Jolin deserved the Golden Melody Awards for Best Female Singer. :/

I'm biased but after watching her dance with Stanley Huang (yucks yucks yucks), I dislike her even more. Eeeeeeee.

And I'm happy that Nicky Lee snagged the award for Best Male Singer. I don't think Lin Jun Jie had a real reason to be that disappointed because Nicky Lee's voice is really really really good. Yes.

And I think I've ever said how much I CANNOT stand Fahrenheit (why don't they call themselves Celsius instead :/) as a group? Can't sing, can't dance, can't really act save for 1/2 of them and the 1/2 does not include the one with the huge tattoo on his left arm or wherever. You know they had a copy-cat part in one of S.H.E's songs?

It literally made my skin crawl.

They sounded VERY VERY VERY bad.

After hearing them sing that part you would think that Mayday were the best band in the Chinese Entertainment Industry.

I can't stand that Calvin person or whoever he is who LOVES to steal attention. And he did no justice to Brian McKnight's Back At One when he sang it because 1) He cannot sing 2) He tries to act all emotional but fails terribly 3) His english sucks. It's horrible.

And that huge beefy (okay maybe not quite) guy with the tattoo? Good-looking? Alright maybe not that much but I don't think he deserves any main role in ANY show. He pales in comparison in his acting to all his female co-stars and I sincerely hope he doesn't act anymore. He should just continue his career as a gym instructor.

Alright enough of the entertainment rubbish.

Let's talk about conduct in public.

I can't stand middle-aged or better still, men and women in their 30s and late 20s who think and act like annoying 10 year olds. You see old aunties and uncles in the train and you fight with them for seats? Hello? You're not lao kok kok right. You can afford to stand right? You're not in dire need of a seat right?

And I absolutely detest disgusting men who take off their slippers/shoes and prop their smelly and sometimes rather black and dirty feet up on the railings where you line to wait for the buses to come in bus interchanges.

It's not your home, uncle, you're being utterly inconsiderate by showing others your smelly and dirty feet. And some partially blind parents allow their children to turn themselves into monkeys and care not when their children act like monkeys and childishly mistake the railings to be sturdy tree branches.

Yes, you are agile, I can see that. And even though irrational evolutionists argue that humans originate from monkeys, you need not act like you are actually a monkey. And those children turn and turn and swing and swing whilst their parents stand there, no, sit on those railings and watch them execute these stupid stunts and never try to stop them.

You must either have cataracts cause you're too blind to see your child doing so, or you must really not care enough about your child to let him/her act like some monkey and allow people to create a lasting and horrible impression of you and your child in your minds.

Talking about cataracts, we watched a documentary on North Korea.

Whatever I say below is HIGHLY OPINIONATED.

We do read about North Korea's nuclear threats every now and then in the papers, and most people, like myself sometimes, have no feelings towards it AT ALL because those things concern us directly not. However, sometimes I do think that while I'm happily listening to my songs, watching my drama serials, other people in Africa and North Korea and wherever are suffering and suffering and suffering. And their sufferings never seemed real to me until I watched this documentary in class and truthfully, I detest Mr. Kim a lot a lot a lot. With such a sheltered and easy life we have here worrying about our grades and our clothes, we won't fully understand the hearts of people who look similar to us worrying about their survival, what they're going to eat, whether or not their clothes do fully cover their modesty and so on. They don't even have the basics of what sustains humans. Forget about introducing adidas to them when they can't even cover their feet properly.

Now about what the documentary portrayed.

Everything in North Korea is so propaganda the average person there knows not what the internet is, knows not what a mobile phone is, and obviously not what a playstation is. The house of a privilleged family in Pyongyang is no better than a really average 3/4 room flat in Sinagpore. And Pyongyang isn't at all grand and everything.

They have the portraits of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il everywhere in their homes, it's not just portraits but even the calendars have his face and him riding a horse and what-not. Kim Jong Il is their saviour. Without him they would have no jobs, no money and no food.

They praise him everyday (we suspect it's because they are made to do so because if they don't, they might be sent to concentration camps which do exist until now in N. Korea) and if you ask the blinded what they want to see the most when they've regained their sight, they say, "I want to see my great leader Kim Jong Il,"

We laughed when they said that but they took it very very seriously. Heck, they even tear and touch the portrait with such tenderness.

It's really ridiculous.

This Nepalese eye doctor had a vision, and his vision was to cure the blind who went blind due to cataracts (and the N.Korean doctors can't do it cause they're so closed up they're not skilled to do so). So, he went with a National Geographic crew disguised as his helpers into N.Korea to help operate on more than 1000 blind people in a time period of ten days.

Since that country was so backward, the doctor had to bring his own equipment and all in order to go in there and accomplish his job. Heck, N.Korean minders went all the way to Nepal to get him and his crew and accompanied him all the way to N.Korea and during his entire stay there.

The medical conditions were beyond bad. Even normal clinics in Singapore had better facilities than in their hospitals. So many children are malnourished! And they filmed an operating table which was yellowed and had dried blood stains. Gah.

As promised, the Nepalese doctor really operated on more than 1000 blind patients. When the day came for them to take out their eye covering, the entire mass of patients were seated in a hall, and needless to say, three portraits of you-know-who were on the wall, as usual. They had money to hang so many not-so-nice portraits but no money to channel to improve living conditions. When the first person was removed of the sash/eye-covering/whatever-it-is-called, the first thing she did was to walk to the front of the portrait, cry out to the great leader and say, "My great leader, thank you for saving me and my sight, my family and I will serve you forever," and she really cried! Not only did she cry, she raised both her arms and shouted praises to the still, unmoving and stationary portrait without feelings, without sight, and without hearing. The entire mass of patients then stood up with her, raised their arms in the air, and shouted "Man seh!" to the pathetic portrait!

Man seh means long live and longevity or something of that sort. Purely crazy.

And no one gave any recognition to the doctor who cured them of their vision, as with his crew. NO ONE. NOBODY. Every single one of them praised the still portrait on the wall. Did they think the portrait could respond to them? Or were they brought up this way to be inclined and to give thanks only to some dictatiorial figure who ironically deprived their lives which they thought he had been improving on all these years? Maybe because there were N.Korean minders all over the room and if one person didn't shout unheard praises to the oh so great leader, he or she would really receive punishment from the government. Oh no. There isn't really a government. He or she would receive punishment from the great man himself who indulges in fine wine and good food when many of his people are suffering from malnutrition.

Hello? Who cured you of your blindness? Yes he might have allowed the Nepalese doctor to enter the country. But so what? The doctor did it FREE OF CHARGE didn't he? Did your great leader remove your cataracts and give you new lens? NO NO NO. It was free and your great leader had nothing to lose so why won't he allow the doctor to come in? Why are you singing praises to a still portrait?

And I guess Kim Jong Il's ego must be really inflated. His fame in North Korea exceeds that of Michael Jackson (whether famous or infamously famous but that's not the point and that is if the people in N. Korea even know who M.J is but I doubt they do). His posters, his banners, his influence, his portraits are EVERYWHERE. He's not good-looking, in fact he looks quite qian bian to me after you see the squallid conditions in N. Korea in the video.

Alright and so one person goes up and cries and dramatically goes MAN SEH! Everyone else who comes out does the same thing and I think the entire mass in that hall must have stood up hundreds of times and shouted MAN SEH! more than hundreds of times.

It might not seem ridiculous but it looks really ridiculous on screen. It was a supposedly sentimental and awe-inspiring moment for the people in N. Korea but to us, or to me, at least, when I saw it, there's nothing I wanted to do more than to laugh. And we did laugh. Everyone laughed spontaneously. It is THAT ridiculous.

I don't see what good Mr. Kim has done and why they're so eager to thank him. If he didn't close off N. Korea to the world, these people could have regained their sight much much earlier because N. Korea would have allowed doctors to go in much more liberally and they didn't have to wait for such a kind of soul of the Nepalese doctor whose work was not recognised by those he served non-stop for 10 days.

The appearances of the malnourished kids in N. Korea are really bad. My baby cousin's turning 4 months old in two days and she looks healthier than them. Way way healthier than they are. Asians are supposed to have rather fair skin but they're so dark they look scary, coupled with their bony limbs. It's saddening to see the lives of children destroyed due to their physically capability. They should be playing with Barbies and Lego instead of waiting aimlessly at the run-down hospitals to be treated (or so it seems).

My heart goes out to the people there, brainwashed and compelled to abide by the greatness of their so-called leader.

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