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Why I Think Class Streaming Is Bad

2012-01-29T20:38:00.000+08:00

Yesterday in STOMP, Singapore's No. 1 gossip website, someone raged about an express stream student who called normal stream students dumb. Of course, he was quickly reprimanded and accused of having an elitist mindset. This was not the first time something like this has happened before, mind you. Just a few weeks ago, a Temasek JC student lamented on why ITE students get to enjoy better facilities when JC students are the ones who become the leaders of tomorrow. He too, was accused of being elitist.

The Facebook convo as seen on STOMP

Why do some students act in such a stereotypical manner? Why is there a common thinking that dictates that if you're not in the best classes, you're automatically not as good and even considered as second class? While some blame the students, I personally think that the education system is at fault or more specifically, the streaming aspect of it.

While proponents of streaming argues that it is good because it allows the teachers to focus specifically on the students strengths, ie the teacher can plan the syllabus accordingly, like giving more challenging work to gifted students, I on the other hand think that streaming does more harm than good and if taken to the extreme, can be seen as a form of eugenics.

When you divide students according to their "intelligence" rather than allocate them equally without bias, you attach a label to each and every student. Instead of thinking of each other as equals, students are made aware that they are different than each other. Groups are created, a divide is formed. There's a group of students that are believed to be gifted while the rest are not.

And when you're in the gifted group, naturally a sense of superiority would set it. This is the basic human mechanism. When we are in a group, we would naturally attribute more positive qualities to our group while doing the opposite for the out-group to preserve our sense of self esteem. The lack of mingling with the out group, as you are in different classes, help to prevent any form of cooperation nor friendship between the two groups of people. In contrast, it would help to further strengthen your stereotypes as you do not have an opportunity to get to know the other group.

In a sense, by dividing the students according to their "intelligence", ie grades in exams, educators are indirectly giving students a tool in which they can discriminate against others, just like how skin color or gender can be used to discriminate. I think Jane Elliot highlighted it best through her "Blue Eyes and Brown Eyes" experiment.

Not only does categorization indirectly promotes prejudice and discrimination among the students, it also hinders the progress of the students in the non-gifted stream or the normal stream through the widely documented phenomena known as self fulfilling prophecy and stereotype threat.

To put it in a nutshell, both stereotype threat and self fulfilling prophecy works in one way which is making students who are considered to be not as good live up to the label attached to them. For example, female students not doing as good in a math test as compared to their male counterparts. Or black students not performing well in exam.

In one of the famous experiments that I always read in my Psychology textbooks is how teachers themselves are shown to be discriminatory when labels and streaming are evoked.

In a perfectly normal class, researchers randomly allocated half of the students to one group and labeled them as gifted while the remaining were labeled as normal. They then told the teacher of the class, or rather lied to her, that the gifted students were chosen based on some tests that they have done and they are most likely to succeed in exams as compared to the normal group of students. As you can see, the key variable here is the teacher, as there were no real tests that were done and the label "gifted" was assigned randomly.

After a period of time, the researchers returned to the class and found that the "gifted" students had indeed performed better in exams. However, it was not because the students were gifted intrinsically, but rather it was the teacher who paid special attention to the student thinking that they were really gifted. Students in turn would act in ways according to the teacher's behavior. Those who were given special attention would work harder which in turn translate in better results which reinforces the teacher's stereotype in one dangerous cycle.

The result of this experiment has been shown to be pretty robust and has been replicated many times before, showing that self fulling prophecy is indeed a concrete event.

Taken into everyday context, teachers would choose to give attention to smarter students and tend to forsake the weaker students, which is quite unfair if you ask me because as a teacher, you are supposed to treat every student equally. I'm sure you have come across a lot of cases where teachers simply gives up on the weaker classes thinking that they could not be changed.

How self fulfilling prophecy works

And then there's the stereotype threat too. Researchers have shown that when made aware of the stereotypes surrounding us, we would tend to act in accordance to the stereotype rather than oppose it. For example, in one experiment, African Americans have been shown to perform worse in exams when they are told that African Americans normally do badly in exams as compared to the whites. In contrast, African Americans who were not told the stereotype did equally well as compared to the whites. The only difference is whether you're aware of the stereotype or not.

Class streaming in a way works wonders in telling you your stereotype and therefore reinforces the stereotype threat phenomena.

Here's a graph to help you

All in all, no matter how you look at it, I think class streaming in schools do more bad than good. People might disguise it as helping students who are gifted but in essence, it's the milder version of eugenics. It helps a certain group of students to succeed and discriminate against the others. Faced with prejudice, self fulfilling prophecy and stereotype threat, the weaker students have little chance to fight back.

Once you've been labelled, the gap between you and the others would only widen throughout the years. Even if you want to fight back, it would take enormously large effort for you to succeed as compared to the better students with so many odds piled up against you.

I grew up in a school that did not believe in streaming. Students were divided into different classes irrespective of their abilities and talents. There were no better or smarter classes among the 10 classes for each form. Everyone was equal.

And frankly, problems that streaming advocates are so scared of did not happen. Smart students did not get left behind, in fact, they manage to do pretty well, seeing how some are in UK and Australia now and there were no problems of teacher discriminating against students or do not want to teach on the excuse that the class was not worth teaching because every class had good and bad students equally.

Students learned to mix with each other and favoritism among teachers were only limited to an individual basis. There was simply no smart students group in my school. The top 10 students of each form is dispersed among each class and not limited to only the first class. And frankly, things turned out pretty well in my school. I turned out to be pretty fine too.

Though discrimination can still happen, at least it is not institutionalized in the system. And it is on a much smaller scale too. Which is why I have always hated the idea of streaming in schools because it promotes inequality and if one school can practice non-streaming, why can't other schools too?

A visit to a Hindu temple

2012-01-29T02:29:00.000+08:00

Sri Mariamman Temple...

...conquered today!

By none other than yours truly Lukey the handsome!

Yeap, after countless hours of imagining the worst case scenarios and mentally preparing myself to do something I have completely never done before, I finally found the courage to step into a religious site that is completely different than my own all for the sake of an A grade.

With that being said, despite how bad I imagined things would turn out, like getting scolded or chased out with a broom, everything went better than expected. Sure, there were a few awkward moments here and there but still, thinking back, everything that I was afraid of seemed quite irrational now. Like my lecturer said, "We will survive". And survive I did.

I guess part of the reason why I was so afraid in the first place was due to the stereotypes that I held in the first place. I admit that being a Chinese who was raised as a Christian, visiting other religious sites has always been attributed with negative connotations by our elders since young. Words such as dirty and inappropriate and warnings that "bad spirits" inhabit places of worship other than ours were often used to scare us since young.

I guess that kind of education had its effects in instilling a certain fear for other religious sites in me and the first step of abolishing those stereotypes is to challenge them by doing exactly what they ask us not to do. Perhaps that's what my lecturer had in mind. To forge a better appreciation for religious faiths that are different of yours.

The girl who kindly agreed to accompany me for the day. Arigato!

But then again, all I had to do was to just passively stand around and take pictures. When the second part of the assignment comes, I have to take the pictures back and and ask one of the people there to interpret the pictures for me. That is when the shit gets serious. Because not only am I afraid to go new places, I'm also extremely afraid of talking to people, especially when asking for help. I'm the typical stereotyped guy who refuse to ask for directions when driving around.

But... lets cross the bridge when I get there.

Tomorrow

2012-01-28T01:38:00.000+08:00

Sri Mariamman temple...

Tomorrow, Lukey is gonna conquer you. Not in a literal sense, but rather in a I-would-prefer-to-jump-over-100-sharks-but-I-have-no-choice-because-my-assignment-grade-depends-on-this kind of way. I will survive!

I Just Feel Like Ranting

2012-01-27T05:16:00.000+08:00

Life... has not been good for me so far since the start of 2012. Maybe it's the feeling knowing that the world is gonna end soon but yeah, there's no sort of flowery and great experiences nor great moment of motivations for me since the beginning of the year, despite how much I want it to be so.

Watch out, the place where you're sitting on will probably be under water sometime this year

I've been spending quite a lot of time in the virtual world of games, to be honest. Despite how much protest my brain puts in and how much it tries to convince me that it is not real, somehow I just could not find the strength to really put gaming aside.

I guess it's the feeling of escapism that the game offers that I find it really hard to live without. In a game, you could be anyone you want and you could do anything you want to do without being judged. Even if there's other players, the contact you have is much less severe than real life contact which you can just simply shrug them off because you won't be seeing them often anyway. Besides, you also get the sense of importance in game too. It's this kind of feeling that makes it hard for me to like gaming so much.

Whereas in life, one cannot help but feel that it is something like a constant rat race. Since coming to university, life has always been trying to do better than the other person all the time. The work never stops. One must constantly try to improve yourself or risk losing out your life chances to another person. Be it in studies, dance or even blogging, you must be one of the best or you are not considered good enough. There's no opportunities for the second place.

It reminds of how my father used to compare life with a cycling competition. All of us are like cyclists vying for the championship in real life. The finishing line is sort of what we would describe as success in life, perhaps a dream job or an A grade in exams and everyone of us are competing against each other to reach the finishing line first. And to do so, we must ensure that we pedal harder and faster than the rest of the cyclists or else they would reach the finishing line first. If we choose to rest halfway in the competition, other people would overtake us and that wouldn't be a good thing because then they would be winning the competition.

I never liked the analogy though, as legitimate as it sounds, because it feels to me like life is like a never ending cycle of well, cycling. Because success is relative in life and one could never be perfectly successful, there's no way we could ever reach the finishing line and say that I'm done for life. No. Life is nothing but a constant race to the finish, a constant competition with the 6 billion other people who share the same planet with you to reach that imaginary finish line. That's how the term rat race came about too. Unless you die early of course.

Which is why lately I have been feeling less of motivated to accomplish even the simplest task in my life and would prefer gaming instead. I know that somehow I'm using too much of this as an excuse and it is not healthy in the long run, but I couldn't help but feel tired sometimes of trying to cycle so hard to reach this certain finishing line called success in life. For starters, there's no definite absolute value that you can say it's success in life. You can try and try for the rest of your life but you can never be too sure where the ending point is because you can just keep going and going.

Secondly, if you are doing everything for the sake of reaching the finishing line, sometimes it gets pretty pointless too. Like sitting in the library 3 hours per day everyday just to memorize all the facts of your studies and forsaking everything else. Life is not just all about this though.

Writing all these makes me think back to the Three Idiots movie. Of how some of us are so pre-occupied with chasing the so called "success" in our life that we are forcing ourselves to do things that we do not like. Sure, you might end up with loads of money and a well paying job but by the end of the day, all of that looks pretty hollow.

I for one believe that doing what you like and living life out according to your own rules is much more meaningful that just blindly chasing after what others are chasing. Sure, you might not earn as much and might not have big houses and stuff, but at least you are happy. And being happy and having a purpose means so much more to me. And like the Baba Chandran said in Three Idiots, as long as you follow what you want, success will come chasing you, pants down.

It may sound naive in the world today, but I sincerely believe that.

If I Was Martin Luther King

2012-01-26T02:58:00.000+08:00

I would call myself Luke Luther King

Martin Luther King, I'm sure most of us would know who is he. And even if we don't, we probably have heard of his famous "I have a dream..." speech at least once before. I don't know about you, but I would sometimes wonder what would I say if I was in King's shoes myself. Perhaps my speech would go something like...

"I have a dream, that my Twitter account has more followers than Justin Bieber and my tweets wouldn't always go 'Baby, baby, oh' or 'I'm not gonna say never today! Oops, I just said never once. There! I said it again'."

"I have a dream, that all my 9gag posts would always make it to the hot page."

"I have a dream, that students would be allowed to sleep 8 hours everyday and all our assignments wouldn't be more than a thousand words long."

...that no matter how much I eat, I won't get fat."

...that every time I tell a joke, my crush would laugh at it."

...that when I open my wallet, I have exactly the amount of money I want."

...that whenever I enter a lucky draw, I get the first prize."

...that whenever I read a page in my textbook, it would automatically enter my brain."

and last but not least

"I have a dream, that when I blog, loads of people would come visit my blog and say how good I am, so good that I could win the blog awards with my eyes closed, hands tied and only typing with my feet."

Yeap, I guess I'm pretty much a first world Martin Luther King.

That would explain why I am I still a forever alone blogger who spends more time in his blog rather than in the real world making it a better place to live in. Maybe I should go by the name Lukey Luther Peasant instead. But then again, 90% of the population would end up being the normal people, so I can't be blamed since statistics is not even on my side.

Star Trekking Online

2012-01-25T01:06:00.000+08:00

I'm a real sucker when it comes to computer games. A big fat super duper power sucker. Even more powerful than the best vacuum cleaner in the world. Because when I find a game that I like I would spend countless amount of time on it. So much time that when I actually get bored, I would have grown Dumbledore's beard already.

Recently, I stumbled upon another online game called Star Trek online. Yes, they made a MMORPG out of one of the legendary science fiction series that even Sheldon Cooper likes. I decided to just dabble in it a bit because I will have 2 very free Chinese New Year holidays and did not expect to spend a lot of time on it because from my past experience, games made out of movies or TV series normally don't go well, like what happened to Star Wars.

Little did I know I would end up with a beard out from this game (because I spend so much time on it until I didn't have the time to shave).

Despite all the misgivings that I first had for this game, I must say that this is one of the best MMOs that I have ever played. Not only does the game stays true to the story line, the gameplay is immense and engaging. If you are a Star Trek fan, or if you love science fiction, you should totally play this game. Like I said, once of the best.

For starters, the game combines two important elements, which is space and ground exploration plus combat from the whole Star Trek series beautifully. Not only can you engage in combat and exploration using your starship in space, you can also beam down to any planet and do the same too. Which means that the whole game itself is pretty immense to explore.

Not only do you get to visit different alien systems in space, you also get to land on their planet or visit famous space stations like Deep Space 9 from the series as well. Very different from MMOs in which you are stuck only in one country, continent or world. This game has worlds. Hundreds of them.

Space combat

Ground action

Besides that, everything you own, from your ship to the armor you are wearing is fully customizable giving each and every player a certain distinctiveness in the game. Not only would your ship look unique, it would have unique combat as well as defensive capabilities too. And the range of the things you can choose from, for example weapons, is even wider than the biggest supermarket. Players are really spoiled for choices in game.

Gameplay aside, Star Trek online also offers you an engaging storyline, perhaps the best I've seen so far. Taking place after the 2009 movie, where Spock "seemingly died" in an attempt to save the Romulan homeworld, Klingon and Starfleet conflict have worsened and as a Starfleet/Klingon officer, you have to travel to different worlds doing all sorts of things to help in the conflict. Famous characters like Spock, Jean-Luc Picard and Worf are frequently quoted in the game. And even Paris and Torres's daughter from the Voyager series also made an appearance in game in one of the quests.

My only complain is that the game got released quite long ago, in 2010 and only recently has been opened as a free to play game, which means that there are a lot of veteran players in game already. Also, as the Star Trek universe is quite immense, spanning 5 series and so many more movies, there are a lot of things that one needs to learn in the game. From hiring your bridge officers to ranks and grades, it's quite a lot to digest. But if you're someone who loves science fiction and online games, sooner or later you'll get the hang of it.

All in all, Star Trek online is a great online game, now that it's opened to all players. If you have ever wondered about how it's life to be a Starfleet captain, protecting the universe and exploring new worlds, this is the closest that you can get, provided that holosuites don't emerge in the next few years.

Starting out might be a little tough at first, but once you've gotten the basics mechanics, you wouldn't want to stop. I just wish textbooks were this fun.

I heard it's Chinese New Year

2012-01-24T00:41:00.000+08:00

Okay, maybe that is not the best picture to kickstart a Chinese New Year post since I'm not really celebrating Chinese New Year this year and I've not really gotten any angpaus to begin with. Perhaps you can share the picture on the wall to voice your disappointment with your angpaus collection.

Anyways, for my Chinese New Year this year, it is much less exciting than how I used to spend Chinese New Year (CNY) in the past. I went to Johor Bahru, shopped around, ate a bloating meal at Seoul Garden and found out that CNY is not a good time to walk in the mall because every shop is closed. And I also sort of had my "reunion dinner" too at one of my friends house.

Much less exciting than the usual dress in red, drive around hunting angpaus, gambling 20 cents away with my cousins and drinking Shandy like it's water celebration. I guess you have to be far far away to really notice what you're missing and learn to treasure it next time.

And who could forget about the firecrackers? Singapore is really so much quieter as compared to Malaysia. Not even 1 firecracker up in the air

Oh well, no use complaining or lamenting about it though. I much prefer the silence anyway.

For all of you who are spending the tie happily at home right now, appreciate it! And wishing you an roaring Chinese New Year ahead! Fus ro da! (Since it's dragon year)

A Pre-Chinese New Year Post

2012-01-22T01:22:00.000+08:00

It's the time of the year again which the children are looking forward to the whole year while the parents are dreading it. The time when red is the in color, shandy is the most popular drink and where big cities like Singapore are void of people. Yeap, it's Chinese New Year again. And this year, it's the dragon's turn to shine.

For many of us, especially foreign students in Singapore, Chinese New Year usually represents one of those rare moments where you actually have the chance to go home without any repercussions like skipping class or forsaking your co-curricular commitments because everyone else would be going home as well. And it would also be the time where you can meet the most of your friends from around the world as it is one of the occasions where your mum would kill you if you choose instead to remain overseas rather than going home.

While almost all of my friends are either already back at their hometowns or are halfway through the journey back, I'm one of the few rare souls who out of a moment of insanity, decided that it would be better instead to stay where I am now than to join the millions of other people now flocking back to home.

"Don't you want any angpaus (red packets)?"

"How would you spend the time there? Won't you be alone?"

"But everyone else would be back for Chinese New Year!"

"Are you nuts?!"

Although I do admit that not going back does means less angpaus for me and also some missed chances of meeting my friends, the trouble of going back far outweighs the benefits. For starters, our dear NUS would only be willing to give its already stressed out students only 2 days of holidays (and some of the time there's even replacement classes for the two days) and the traffic jam that you have to go through is just horrendous.

Besides, I hate mixing with people anyway. Not to forget the barrage of questions that your long lost relatives would love to throw at you whenever they see you. For a socially awkward penguin like me, I would much prefer the silence now at my hostel rather than the chaotic scenes at home when I go back. It's not to say that I hate going back, it's just that it's not really a good idea when millions of others are doing the same thing I have.

Maybe I'll just go back home during the march recess week (when NUS graciously decides to give us a week off) and celebrate a belated Chinese New Year then. And not to forget to collect my late angpaus like a loan shark.

Time to join in the fun

2012-01-20T14:53:00.001+08:00

Capitalism.

That's the only one word that came to my mind as I read the growing storm surrounding this new SOPA and PIPA bill that is going to be tabled in the US Congress and the recent shutdown of the famous filesharing site, Megaupload.com.

I may not be the best expert when it comes to stuff like this, but the time that I have spent in my Sociology class in university have at least give me some limited understanding on what capitalism is, the dangers of it (despite what some governments may say) and why the recent developments surrounding SOPA and now the recent close of Megaupload smells suspiciously of capitalism to me.

If I have not mistaken, Karl Marx once inherently opposed the idea of capitalism because it puts too much power in the hands of the business owners and oppresses the working class. Roughly translated to today's concept, the business owners that Karl Marx referred to would be the bosses, CEOs and owners of today's big companies like Nike, Sony and L'Oreal, just to name a few (btw these 3 companies are in support of SOPA at the time of the writing, source here) while the working class would be the normal people like you and me, who doesn't own a big ass company and lives in a mutha freaking big mansion.

Also, Karl Marx also mentioned about how these business owners, the people that earns more than your annual salary in a month, would want to maintain the status quo and would do anything to accumulate more wealth and to secure the power. This is where the principles of "the rich gets richer while the poor gets poorer" comes in because as the people on top earns more money, the money ultimately comes from you. Which means that you have to spend more while the people who owns the companies in which you buy things from earns more.

Yes, despite how some might say that capitalism is all good in that it gives everyone an equal chance, it does not. What you have is only an illusion of an equal chance while the owners create more and more avenues for them to secure the wealth and remain rich.

Which is why I say SOPA smells suspiciously of capitalism. They may champion it in the name of the copyrights but at the end of the day, the true benefactors of the bill would not be you and me, the normal people who uses the internet, but rather the people who owns the rights which ironically are the business owners. You see, everytime you violate a copyright, the common belief is that you are killing the artist who produced the movie or song for example but if you take a look at the bigger picture, who actually owns the artists who made the music? The people who signed them on for the contract. The recording companies. And in a sense, when you violate a copyright law, the people you are stealing from is not the artiste but rather the big recording companies, who in turn has already earn billions and made their owners filthy rich people.

SOPA, if introduced, would literally mean the end of the world for us normal internet users. It gives more power to the business owners to hunt down those that have been violating the copyright laws and that means we could not stream or download our favorite shows from the internet to watch anymore. Not only that, anything that we do on the internet that is remotely linked to copyright laws, for example muttering copyrighted trademarks like Batman, Coca-cola or Ferrari could land us in trouble.

That sounds ridiculous but that is the extent of the law. And even without SOPA, the FBI are able to arrest the owners and employees of Megaupload and is on the process of putting them behind jail, using existing laws. Imagine what power would they have when SOPA is passed. Filesharing sites like mediafire, rapidshare would be a thing of the past, along with torrent sites and also online streaming sites. Heck, you might not even find popular songs on Youtube anymore. Even people who are doing cover songs might get arrested.

This may sound as an exaggeration but in a way this is a war. A war to stop those already filthy rich buggers from sucking out more money from us poor souls. Just Google the net worth of the owners of big recoding companies like EMI or Warner Music and you will know. They have already made so much and they still want to impose more measures to increase their wealth.

Like Karl Marx said, this is one of the dangers of capitalism. The rich and powerful looking to increase their power and influence. Which is why each and everyone of us need to know the extent of this controversy and not just sit idly by, knowing SOPA only as the "thing" that caused Wikipedia's blackout. It's more than that. It's World War Web.

But of course, I am no expert on this issue. What I am writing here is a result of hours of reading countless news articles, blog posts and comments surrounding this whole SOPA issue and I sincerely think as an internet user, all of us should care. I don't only see this as a minor internet law but rather a bigger battle against capitalism.

Read more about SOPA on http://sopastrike.com/

Update: The bill was pulled one day after this post went up. 100 points to people power!

I Need to Pick a Fight

2012-01-19T01:55:00.003+08:00

"Rule 1 of Blogging: Never post too much of your personal emotions, thoughts and feelings online
Rule 2: If Rule 1 fails, buy a diary"

I've been reading with interest the entire Silver Ang versus the world saga lately. After all, it's pretty hard to resist the temptation when the blog posts keep appearing in my news feed and a lot of people on my Twitter timeline is talking about it. Besides, even a local newspaper picked up the news and when a newspaper decides to write about online feuds, it must be a pretty big story so I decided to follow this entire drama to see how everything would turned out in the end. The blogger side of me demands it.

And before I start, let me introduce you to the pretty ladies involved in the whole drama:

Silver Ang, the initial damsel in distress and the main character of this drama. Blogs at http://thatsilvergirl.blogspot.com/

Qiuqiu oralso known as Qiuting. Portrayed initially as the antagonist. Blogs at http://bongqiuqiu.blogspot.com

And not forgetting the Queen of bloggers, Xiaxue.

After all, what's a blogger feud without Xiaxue right?

Anyways, to give you a rough back story, the entire drama started when Silver wrote a post that potrayed Xiaxue in a negative light, saying how arrogant Xiaxue was when they met and stuff (Xiaxue did wrote a reply to this post to Alvin which was featured here). You know, the typical "she's so famous that she's arrogant" kind of talk. Next she went on to draft a letter addressed to another blogger, Qiuting or better known as QiuQiu, complaining about how their friendship has drifted off and how that now QiuQiu is famous, she doesn't care for her old friend Silver anymore.

And then there was silence, which I presume to be Xiaxue and QiuQiu trying not to say anything to generate even more drama. I guess everything would have died down eventually if it is not for another blog post by Yutakis trying to put his side to the picture. And then the blogosphere version of hell broke loose when QiuQiu finally came up with an incredibly super long post, which covers 7 years worth of events in total on her side of the story. Even my longest post was a tiny dwarf as compared to her. I wanted to say TLDR but somehow, I managed to read through most of the post and got the gist out of it.

You know, I have always wanted to be one of the famous bloggers in Singapore, to be one of the top echelons in the blogopshere like the said people mentioned above. Perhaps get into a mini fight of my own too every now and then for fun and for the sake of the drama. However, looking at how it's a blogger eat blogger world up there, sometimes I wonder if it would be a good thing to be famous after all.

I mean sure, often bloggers would blog pleasantly about each other, saying how much they enjoy going to events with each other with all smiles in the pictures and stuff like, but reading the whole saga makes me wonder how true are the bloggers out there. I've attended a few events on my own, with other bloggers as well, and looking at how some bloggers interact, I can't help but wonder if someone is being nice to me out of sincere purpose or is it because for some other purpose like hoping I could somehow boost their readership too.

Yeah, I know I am paranoid. I can't help it. But when you know that everyone there at the event is going after the same thing as you, which is blog traffic, you tend to have that kind of feeling.

Besides, with a personality like mine, I'm pretty sure I couldn't survive even one day in the hostile wilderness of the blogosphere. I would probably be mauled by some more established blogger and left to die in a corner. Perhaps that is why you'll never see famous bloggers who happen to be timid as well. Because all of them would have be thrown off the food chain.

Still, I find it interesting of how relationships work out when you're a famous blogger. You have to be constantly mindful about what people is gonna say about you and you have to be friendly all the time too or else people would accuse you of being arrogant. And if shit does happen, you have to be ready to stand your ground and defend it at all cost.

Which kinda explains why someone like me would never make it to the ranks of Singapore's famous bloggers. Firstly, I'm too afraid to speak to strangers and secondly, even if I do, I would be too afraid to make enemies. I guess you can view me as the forever alone kid who silently blogs in one corner without trying to attract too much attention.

Back to the issue, I'm afraid I'm more in support of QiuQiu. There's a rule in online ethics that go no matter how much you feel like it, personal stuff that would offend people or make them feel bad should never be shared online without millions of other people. If you really want to mend a problem, you should do it directly rather than use the internet as sort of an indirect method. When you choose to apologize in a blog post rather than telling the person directly, it makes me doubt your motive.

For all I know, you could be sincerely sorry or you might just want the to portray to the world that you are a victim. Either way, when you choose to do it online through an indirect method, the doubt is there.

Still, I would love to see how everything would turn out in the end. Would the friends be back together or would the drama die down after a few weeks and people would eventually forget about it (and then another drama pops up like a vicious cycle), like all the other dramas that happened before? Or would they fight it til the very bitter end and end up destroying each other? (Which is a good thing because I can make use of the gap to climb up the ranks of the blogosphere and make myself famous muahaha)

Only time will tell. In the mean time, perhaps I could go pick a fight with other famous male bloggers too, just to increase the traffic to my blog, since no one reads my blog anyway. Who do you think would make a good choice? Perhaps Kenny Sia or Kenwooi (Hey, you're not funny enough! Even my pet rooster can talk better cock than you)? Or perhaps fashion male bloggers like Yutakis (Hey, how come you can be so famous when I'm so much more handsome than you? Even my blog name got lukeyishandsome.com. You got anot?) or food bloggers like Brad Lau (eat so much everyday, eat die you ah!)?

Speaking of which, perhaps I could dedicate an entire post to pick a fight with famous male bloggers around the region. Idea. Should I do it? Do you have any other famous male bloggers in mind that I can pick a fight with?

Update: It seems that both Silver and QiuQiu pulled down their blog posts in the end. Seems that they reached an agreement offline to not fight anymore

I Died A Little Inside

2012-01-18T03:55:00.000+08:00

I love ang moh (the Singaporean slang for Westerners) lecturers. If you were to let me choose, I would prefer a lecturer who has pale skin, blonde hair and speaks in an European accent rather than one from India, China or even Southeast Asia. Somehow for me, I have a generalized thinking that ang moh lecturers tend to be funnier and have a more unconventional style of teaching, which I seem to enjoy more as compared to the normal style of Asian teaching, which includes mostly only the teacher speaking monotonously in front while staring blankly at the wall.

While the stereotype tends to be correct most of the time, ang moh lecturers do tend to be more different in teaching styles, there's also a downside to that too. Being someone who teaches differently, the assignments usually given by ang moh lecturers are also not the usual take home and do type.

Take my SC308 Religion and Society module that I'm taking this semester for example.

For our first assignment, we are required to go to a completely unfamiliar religious site that is different from our beliefs and take a few photographs from there. After that, we are also required to conduct interviews on site asking people to interpret the meaning of the photographs we've taken, like what did that small triangle on top of the pillar symbolized, for example.

And for someone like me who totally loathes talking to a stranger, what more interview them about their religious beliefs, this is even worse than Mission Impossible for me. To be honest, I would rather be running through burning buildings and scaling mountains rather than do this. I even can't talk properly without pausing every now and then. How am I going to keep the interviewees interested then?

Besides, religion has always been a sensitive topic in Singapore. A snooping student asking random questions at your worship site? I can so see the broom in the ass already.

Sigh. NUS should really let us check what kind of assignments that we must do before bidding for a module next time. I mean, introverts like me will sure lose out to people who are more comfortable with mixing around when it comes to assignments like this. Maybe I should just throw in the towel and focus on other subjects instead.

Or maybe I could use my handsomeness to my advantage by interviewing girls and giving my phone number in exchange.

A Singapore Love Story (Low Kay Hwa): A Review

2012-01-16T02:33:00.000+08:00

I should really stop having any activities past 12am. Things like bathing, supper and laundry should all be confined to pre-12am because I realized that if you start things late, you'll end up sleeping late too. And that in turn would cause you to have inadequate sleep which in turn would give your stupid brain another excuse to convince you not to attend lecture tomorrow. Not good, I tell you, not good.

Anyways, I've just finished reading a novel recently, with the title "A Singapore Love Story" written by a local writer called Low Kay Hwa. This is his 10th novel and his past works have included titles like "For That Day" and "The Perfect Story". In a nutshell, the novel is about well, a love story happening in Singapore (sorry I am not really good in writing nutshells) and touches on other issues relating to marriage such as money, education and compatibility.

Anyways, a short review on this book:

Yes, I am so lazy that I even use the picture from another blogger

To be honest, I had high hopes for this book. Unlike the many love stories out there, Disney fairy tales especially, that I've seen since young, this is one of the first few books that in my opinion, really manages to explore the meaning of marriage nowadays in a brutally honest manner. It doesn't try to overdo it and makes it all pessimistic in the end, and yet it doesn't try to give an overly positive happy ending either to the story.

The whole however is like saying that, "look, marriage can be both good and bad. It's not a bed of roses but yet it can also be one of the most beautiful thing ever. The question is how much are you willing to sacrifice?" Very thought provoking, the story is.

Sadly, while I hoped for a well thought ending to the book, it did not. The book had high potential, judging on how the first half of the book was written but somehow along the way, the writer must have thought that it is too difficult to give a conclusive ending to such a deep story and decided to introduced a twist that was in my opinion, completely irrelevant to the first part of the story.

I mean it's good to include a twist to the story that is completely unexpected to the reader but you also must be mindful that the twist you are writing can be linked back to the earlier part of the story and sort of continues or build on to the story. In "A Singapore Love Story", after the twist, it felt to me as if the book was divided into two parts with completely different themes and questions.

I had to read the entire second part of the story again to actually understand what happened. I guessed Kay Hwa had wanted to use a clever play of perspective for the twist but somehow all it succeeded in doing was to confuse me. And a confused reader is usually not a good sign.

Criticisms apart, A Singapore Love Story is still a good read for a few reasons. Firstly, it raises relevant questions that very few people dare to confront in our society today. Is love enough or do we need to supplement it with things like money too? And secondly, it also added in the local Singaporean flavor into the story and I'm sure many Singaporean readers could relate to the terms and puns used in the novel. It also gave a foreigner like me a glimpse into the Singaporean culture.

If you are looking for a book that deals with the issue of love in a local context, this book is a good. read. It retails at 17.90 SGD and can be found in all major bookstores island wide.

Til then, adios!

RE: Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus

2012-01-13T18:32:00.000+08:00

There was a video going around Facebook recently, shared by loads of friends of mine, and after seeing it appear in my timeline for a few thousand times, I decided to watch it for myself (the power of conformity). It's a video of someone ranting about religion and Christianity in general so if you're one strong atheist who doesn't give two hoots about this being called God, this post may not be for you. Just saying. Anyway here's the video:

Transcribed audio:

"Because the problem with religion is that it never gets to the core,
It’s just behavior modification, like a long list of chores.
Let’s dress up the outside, make things look nice and neat,
Its funny that’s what they do to mummies, while the corpse rots underneath,
Now I ain’t judging I’m just saying be careful of putting on a fake look,
Because there’s a problem if people only know that you’re a Christian by that little section on your facebook
In every other aspect of life you know that logics unworthy
Its like saying you play for the lakers just because you bought a jersey
But see I played this game too; no one seemed to be on to me,
I was acting like church kid, while addicted to pornography.
I’d go to church on Sunday, but on saturday getting faded,
Acting as if I was simply created to have sex and get wasted.
Spend my whole life putting on this façade of neatness,
But now that I know Jesus, I boast in my weakness.
If grace is water, then the church should be an ocean,
Cuz its not a museum for good people, it’s a hospital for the broken
I no longer have to hide my failures I don’t have to hide my sin,
Because my salvation doesn’t depend on me, it depends on him.
because when I was Gods enemy and certainly not a fan,
God looked down on me and said, “I want that man!”
Which is so different from religious people, and why Jesus called em fools
Don’t you see hes so much better than just following some rules?
Now let me clarify, I love the church, I love the bible, and I believe in sin
But my question, is if Jesus were here today, would your church let Him in?
Remember He was called a drunkard and a glutton by “religious men”
The Son of God not supported self-righteousness, not now, not then.

Now back to the topic, one thing I think is vital to mention,
How Jesus and religion are on opposite spectrums,
One is the work of God one is a man made invention,
One is the cure and one is the infection.
Because Religion says do, Jesus says done.
Religion says slave, Jesus says son,
Religion puts you in shackles but Jesus sets you free.
Religion makes you blind, but Jesus lets you see.

This is what makes religion and Jesus two different clans,
Religion is man searching for God, but Christianity is God searching for man.
Which is why salvation is freely mine, forgiveness is my own,
Not based on my efforts, but Christ’s obedience alone.
Because he took the crown of thorns, and blood that dripped down his face
He took what we all deserved, that’s why we call it grace.
While being murdered he yelled “father forgive them, they know not what they do”,
Because when he was dangling on that cross, he was thinking of you
He paid for all your sin, and then buried it in the tomb,
Which is why im kneeling at the cross now saying come on there’s room
So know I hate religion, in fact I literally resent it,
Because when Jesus cried It is finished, I believe He meant it."

Religion, religion, religion.

Being born as a Christian, religion has always played a big part in my life. I went to Sunday school since young and every Sunday, church is like one of my routine activities. I grew up in church, had most of my close friends from church and I also learned a lot of stuff like music from church. The only problem is unlike many people who goes to church, I don't really consider myself as a true Christian or some sort. Sure, I might have been baptized and been reading the bible since young but for me, being a Christian mean so much more than being the person I am now.

There was a period of time when Christianity meant the world for me. Like many people who call themselves Christians out there, I thought that Christianity is the only way of life, that us "Christians" are more superior than the others non-believers, and that unless the non-believers "cross over to the light side", they will die a horrible death in hell. Which made me feel very good because my mind would go, "Enjoy all you want in life now suckers, because when we all die, I'll be in heaven enjoying while you all will be suffering in hell". I know it's bad and it's wrong but sometimes when you're faced with people you hate, you just can't stop to think that way. And I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks in this way too.

There was also the time when I considered myself to be sort of like a commando for Jesus. Everywhere I went, I tried to convert people. I still remember getting into an open debate with a Muslim friend of mine during Form 6 of which religion is the true way of life (I must admit, that friend of mine did come up with some rather convincing arguments). Not only that, the internet also became sort of like my pseudo-battleground, where I go around trying to make people "see". Those were the days.

But as time passed, my doubts began to grow larger, no thanks to my rebellious and curious nature.

In my church for example, I had gained quite of a notorious status among the adults for being the noisy and spontaneous guy I am. Somehow, the people at my church seems to think that if you're not quiet, love to study and act all self righteous, God doesn't seem to love you as much. They particularly hated my questions too. I remember there was once where I was told off by a church elder for wearing short pants during a service one Sunday. He was saying something like it's disrespectful to wear short pants and added that as a Christian I should always wear long pants to church. I retaliated with a question, asking that do we need to wear long pants too when we go to heaven since God hates short pants so much. We never saw eye to eye after that.

Which is why eventually I got jaded with church. All the rules about dressing, stereotypes and what defines a true Christian eventually got to me. I mean, after all, those rules are all man created and each may differ from each too. For example, a Baptist may say one thing but a Catholic may believe another. What determines who's right or wrong? And don't say the bible because sometimes one thing can be interpreted in hundreds of ways depending how you look at it. What makes your interpretation any more believable than mine?

Besides that, there were also so many questions in my mind. Questions like if God said that the only way to be saved is to accept him, what about the people in far flung places who did not have the chance to know him. It's not their choice that they're born in some places like in the middle of the jungle where Christianity has not even reached yet. How can they be saved then if they never get the opportunity to know God? Isn't God a scumbag god if he chose to put them in such places, only to send them in hell later on for not accepting him? How does one explains that?

God works in mysterious ways, that's the usual answer I get, when one cannot explain how things would work out. The fail safe answer. One that creates more questions that its own.

Coming to university hasn't help much either. Psychology, for one, seems to be on its own anti-religious crusade. In Psychology, for example, I've learned that "hearing voices" from god could be a sign that you have Schizophrenia and the classic tales of horror that are usually told by my church people, about waking up at night not being able to move, is a medical condition called sleep paralysis rather than the commonly believed 鬼压身 or visitation by demons that I was usually told.

Not only that, I have also learned that sometimes the worst crimes of humanities are often committed by the so called religious people. The pastor for Singapore's City Harvest church, a church that I used to idolize back in Malaysia, was suspected of fraud (not to mention his primary message is to ask people to donate money), and there's also the Moonies (members of the unification Church) and the incident of Jonestown. All not so good examples of what religion can do to you in the name of God.

Like the guy in the video, I hate religion. I hate how some people who they themselves claim to be the messengers of God could be so outright self-righteous. I hated the fact that every time I see them, they remind me of the pharisees that Jesus abhorred in the new testament and yet, so many people choose to believe them and follow their teachings. I hate how religion has become so imposing, that if you do not do this and that, you are not considered to be a Christian of sort.

I mean, who determine these rules anyway. Who said that to be a Christian, you must attend the church every Sunday, sing some songs, read the bible twice a day, pray before you eat and stuff like that. If taken to the extreme, I could also say that to be a Christian, you must be become a prostitute first or to be a fisherman first because Jesus's trusted disciples were from these jobs. What I am trying to say here is that although I understand that some of these rules may originate from good intentions but when you overdo it, or when you overemphasize it, you tend to become the very person that Jesus hated 2000 years ago.

Yeap, I know I'm sounding a bit pessimistic alright but generally this is how I feel about religion these days. You can think of me as stuck between an atheist and a believer status. But despite all the negativity, a part of me still want to believe that God exists. That up above, someone really does love you, no matter how broken you might be and want the best of you. And one day, after the whole world has fade away, you can finally return to a place that you can really call home.

That's naive, yes, perhaps unscientific and even bordering on a bit of craziness, but one could hope right? Besides, if I were to be a complete atheist, life would be pretty pointless anyway because in the end, no matter what you do in life, you'll become dirt anyway and you cease to exist. Oh well, I'm one troublesome guy. Call me lukeyistroublesome.com

Way Too Much Time

2012-01-12T02:37:00.000+08:00

I'm spending too much time in Minecraft. WAAAAY too much time.

Not that I'm creating real impressive stuff like designing an awesome circuitry to help you collect food, harvest tree and kill all the hostile mobs all at the same time, nor am I building some of Minecraft greatest wonders either, it's just that well... I wasting a lot of time standing around. And staring emptily in air. Minecraft air.

For example, staring at my mob trap to see whether mobs really spawn there

I guess I have myself partly to blame for all the time wasted standing around, to be honest because had I listened to advice from others to just copy other people's design from Youtube, I wouldn't have spend so much time thinking, building, testing and redesigning everything that I've build in the game.

But that's just me. For one, I hate copying other people's stuff. Not that it's an act of piracy but I just feel more happy when I try to make something from scratch. Call me egoistic but I just love it that way. Life feels so much more fun.

Also, I tend to feel a bit tad more competitive when it comes to stuff like this. Somehow, I don't feel that something belongs to be unless I made everything from scratch itself.

Of course, I did manage to churn out something that I am ~~partly~~ proud of too. Not exactly as good as what others have made but still, for someone like me, it's pretty high standard.

My too much looks cactus farm

I should really stop and focus back on my studies instead.

Things I Would Have Changed

2012-01-11T02:51:00.000+08:00

It's 2.30am now. As usual, I'm sleeping at an abnormal time again. But then again, everyone else is doing the same (at least in a place called Eusoff Hall) so I guess that makes me normal in some sort of way. I think

I've been talking with one close friend just now, ranting about loads of stuff and bitching about all the hated people, it's amazing how common hatred for someone can pull two person together, and one of the stuff we talked about was the past. How we used to be like, our regrets and stuff like that. All the unresolved what-ifs in life. If given a chance, I would definitely like to change something about my past. Not that I hate what I am now but sometimes I would just like to see how my life would have turned out had I chosen a different path. Perhaps life would have been better in some sort of way.

For starters, if I can change the past, one thing that I would have definitely want to change would concern the area of music. I used to hate music quite a lot. Back when I was young, my sister and brother had to take piano lessons and somehow, I managed to escape. Back then, I thought that I was lucky not to have been forced to undergo all the countless hours of practice, but looking back, I wished I had the chance to go through music lessons.

No matter how hard it could be, knowing music can help you go a long way in life. Not only it would help me get the girls (yes, girls particularly like guys who are musically trained), it could have also helped me in loads of other stuff too, like I'm able to join bands and enter competitions. Perhaps I could have been a musician too. Who knows. There's just so much more stuff that I can do had I taken all the music lessons and practiced.

Maybe even be the next Jay Chou

Also, I would also join a lot more stuff when I'm in secondary school too, like prefects and toastmasters, rather than be the inert guy that I was. There's just so many things that I could have learned if I just had the courage to take up more responsibilities.

And I wouldn't have quit scouts too when I was Form 3. Heck, I would even try to go for the King Scout title. Sure, it may be one of the hardest thing to do but it would sure be an awesome experience and perhaps I would have been a totally different person today.

But I guess that's life for you. What has happened will never change and you can just look back and wonder "What if". Resolution for this year: Create less what-if situation for the the me in the future.

Back To Minecraft

2012-01-09T22:25:00.000+08:00

After a long period of absence (technically it would be 2 to 3 version updates), the name doriyakiz is finally back in the world of Minecraft, the fictional 8 bit pixelated world where monsters spawn at night and everything is comprised of a square block, even yourself. For all the criticisms leveled at Minecraft's not-very-impressive graphics, I for one, along with some of my Eusoff friends (and 4 million+ other people around the world and counting) seem to think that Minecraft is one of the best game ever made. Perhaps even better than Skyrim in some sense.

For starters, the game is infinitely free. Literally. There's no end to the world that you can explore (as long as your computer's processing power allows it) and there's no limit to what you can do in it. You can build almost any kind of structures or you can explore the world as you like. Words would never be able to express the immenseness of Minecraft sufficiently. To put it simply, Minecraft is dope.

Hi my name is Lukey aka doriyakiz, there's a crosshair to my face and there's my half finished house in the background

And yeap, Minecraft was also one of the reasons why I missed my daily blog update again because I was too busy building my house to actually find time to blog. I mean, how can someone blog when you don't even have a roof above your head? Worse still, there are zombies and skeletons during the night and you wouldn't want Lukey to be zombie food right?

Okay, not a very good reason.

Anyways, since there's nothing much to blog about, I shall share with you the process of building my home sweet home in Minecraft. All in HD pictures!

The initial stage: Getting the foundation ready and building the lower floor

Building the second floor

Yes I admit I'm greedy. I can't settle for a single storey house in either Minecraft or real life.

Then comes the hardest part... building the roof!

Who knew roofs looked like this?

And after more than five hours since laying the first building block, literally, le house is finished!

le front view

Side view of the house

And not forgetting the rear view of the house

Of course, it's not only the outside which the effort went into. There's also the inside of the house too! Which was why the entire construction took more than 5 hour plus.

First floor interior

The place where sandwiches are prepared, the kitchen

Second floor layout

And that concludes Lukey's first Minecraft project! Each and every block in the house was legitimately placed by yours truly, using only my two bare hands, with the help of a mouse and keyboard of course, but no machinery was involved.

To be honest, this is a game spoiled brats should play because you'll know how hard it is to be a construction worker building a structure from scratch. In Minecraft, everyone is a bangla. And perhaps one could come to appreciate them more after finding out that construction is no easy work.

With that being said, I guess I should head back to the game now to build something for the community and pay off my crime. Serves me right for stealing those stacks of wood. Ugh. But before that, a final picture of the proud owner! Cheers!

Wanted: Singapore Bloggers!

2012-01-07T23:15:00.001+08:00

Yo peeps! I'm back! I know I have not been posting regularly as I should so I would like to apologize first. Sorry. Have been caught up with loads of stuff to do in life and I could hardly find time to even browse the web. Which kinda means I have no life last time because I have been almost posting everyday without fail. Sad.

Anyways, remember the last time when I ranted about wanting to have a bloggers for bloggers group in Singapore? Well, after a long period of silence, there's finally some follow up news!

Inspired by the recent and upcoming collaboration by the Malaysian comic bloggers (you can take a look at Cheechingy's post and Miao&WafuPafu post), it's more like copying but "inspired" sounds less evil, and after a few email blasts with Melvin, there will be finally some action in regards to this Singapore bloggers group and we're looking for interested bloggers!

The poster for the Malaysian comic bloggers collab

To keep a long story short, this bloggers group is sort of like a bloggers for bloggers initiative where the aim is to establish a non-commercial network of bloggers so we could share ideas and do awesome stuff together. Like they said, there's strength in numbers and this group aims to be one of the blogger's voice in Singapore. Besides, it would be quite lonely to be a lone blogger in the scary world of the blogosphere right?

Of course, getting something started is not easy and we are also not sure if this whole idea would work out or not as there are so many bloggers in Singapore and there are also established network of bloggers like the Nuffnang bloggers. the OMY.sg club and also the now not very active Singapore Association of Bloggers.

Which is why we're starting out with a collaboration!

The idea is actually quite simple. We do not care what type of blogger are you, be it food, comic or photography, as long as you have the passion, you can be part of this. The exact nature of the collab has not been finalized yet, as we are still looking for interested bloggers but it would be a series of posts that would be cross posted across participating blogs. As you can guess, the purpose of this collab is to generate publicity for the group and also for participating blogs and also to share our pool of readers.

If you are a blogger and you are interested to be part of this blogger's collab, you can drop me an email at doriyakiz@gmail.com. We are currently in the process of finding interested bloggers and then taking it to the next phase which is the implementation phase. Be quick though, because we will be starting the collab soon in two weeks time, before the 25th of January 2012.

I look forward to seeing your email!

Twilight is dangerous

2012-01-06T03:53:00.001+08:00

I wanted to write a really long post today. But because something big happened just now and it's already 3am plus, I think I'm just gonna share this picture that I found on 9gag about a girl wanting to turn a boyfriend into a vampire by feeding him her blood:

And she's aptly named Sakura Cullen

I have no idea whether if this is a hoax or not, after all it could be a Twilight hater trolling behind that question but if what she's asking is true, she might have just won herself the dumbest Twilight fan award of 2012. I bet Stephenie Meyer would be really happy now for turning an innocent girl into a... I don't know, a wannabe vampire bordering on witchcraft?

But if I'm Stephenie Meyer, here's a reply that I might give to our Miss Sakura Cullen aka I-want-my-boyfriend-to-suck-my-blood fan girl:

"Dear Sakura Cullen,

If you have been reading my books carefully, I know the book is filled with dramatic emotional sentences that sometimes makes you want to skip the whole book at one go, but still if you have at least read the cover, you would know that one does not simply turn into a vampire by drinking your own blood first.

To become a vampire, you will need to..."

Okay, shit. I've never read any of the Twilight books so I have no idea how you become a vampire in Twilight. But lets just pretend that I know.

Dear Sakura Cullen,

Like I said, if you have paid even the slightest attention to my book you would have known that to turn into a vampire, you must first get bitten by a vampire itself. After that, provided that the vampire that bites you is kind enough to not drain you dry, you would then need to ask him or her to let you drink some of his blood too.

          I know it is kind of hard to ask for something when you're half dying due to loss of blood, you have no other choice except if you manage to strike a deal with the vampire before he or she decides to suck you dry. Also, not only do you have to drink the vampire's blood, you would also need to mix their blood with some glitter dust so you could get the sparkly effect under the sun.

          Only then would you be fully prepared to turn your boyfriend into that dream vampire boyfriend of yours. Just a word of advice though. Turning him into a vampire doesn't mean he would magically become the handsome Edward Cullen that you normally see in the Twilight shows. To do that you have to feed Robert Pattinson your blood instead.

          I hope all these advice would be sufficient in your effort. I wish that you and your boyfriend would live happily forever. Literally.

P/s: Just try not to get into any arguments. It tends to last a few centuries

Your blood sucking friend,
Lukey Meyer

Looks like the Mayans predictions of the world ending this year might be true after all.

What I Found From Cleaning 2 Rooms

2012-01-04T22:22:00.000+08:00

What I found from cleaning my Eusoff Hall room today, after 2 weeks of absence:

1. Found lots and lots of dust. And hair. Especially under the bed. Who knew I could shed so much hair and generate so much dust? Okay too much info here.

2. Found out that newspapers does wonders in cleaning. Especially for glass materials like windows. Wipe the dirty object one time with a wet cloth and finish it with a newspaper. Voila, a sparkling shining new window/glass etc etc

3. Found out that my nose is an excellent dust detecting machine. Wherever there is dust, my nose will sneeze like the world's gonna end. Also found out that when cleaning room, it's best to wrap a cloth around your face like a bandit to prevent those dust from getting to your nose and triggering a cataclysmic sneezing pattern

He's not a bandit, he's just preparing to clean his room

What I found from cleaning my old room back in Ipoh, two days ago

1. A whole stack of Shin Chan comics. Once, he used to be my hero and he still is now. Part of my lameness is inspired by the great master Shin Chan. Nude butt dancing not included of course

I used to have a much bigger stack but over the years, thanks to my carelessness, most of them had gone missing or ended up in the recycle bin. Stupid me

2. And in the midst of the Shin Chan books, I also found a love story which is even better than Twilight. Heck, even Yoshito Usui can manage a better love story than Stephenie Meyers. Who said love must be all soapy, serious and sparkly?

There was the misunderstanding

The was the supposedly "Happily ever after" part

Then came the twist in the story

The heart stopping part

The part where I shed a tear

Shin Chan, still a better love story than twilight.

Of course, those panels are only excerpts from the entire story which spanned a few comics and the real story is much more exciting, funny and touching. And if you noticed, I read the Malay version because that's the only translation language I can read in (the alternative being Chinese) and the Americans thought that they were too good for Shin Chan.

To summarize, the story follows the love life of Teacher Matzusaka, the fierce teacher of the Rose class and her boyfriend, the bone doctor Tokuro. After a long period together, they finally decided to get married, only to have Tokuro's career and Matzusaka's parents barging in. One thing led to another and eventually, due to a major misunderstanding, they broke up and Matzusaka decided to marry another guy whom she did not love.

Of course, Shin Chan and his friends couldn't just sit quiet and let that happen. They intervened, using various methods that only Shin Chan can think of and eventually, Tokuro crashed the engagement party, saved the bride and promised to marry Matsuzaka once he came back from his assignment in a fictional country near South Africa.

Sadly, fate decided to intervene. Tokuro was killed in a terrorist attack shortly after he left in the country and devastated, Matsuzaka immersed herself in drinking until one day she was found out by the kindergarten headmaster. Persuaded to take a leave, she ended up promising an old man to be his boxing protege, after engaging in a drunken fight with some rival boxers, hoping that she could use boxing to injure and kill herself so that she could meet Tokuro soon.

Knowing her plans, Shin Chan and friends decided to prevent that from happening. In just the nick of time, Tokuro's letter, one that he wrote before he died, arrived and wanting to see the girls fighting, Shin Chan carried the letter to the fighting venue where Matsuzaka is purposely taunting her rival to kill her in the match while not fighting back.

As the letter was read aloud to her, she realized what a fool she's been in wanting to die and regaining her will to live, she fought and defeated her rival. In the end, she went back to being a teacher, wanting to teach the younger generation to love each another so that the world will no longer know hate.

Of course, there's still a lot of twists and drama here and there but that I'll have to leave it to you to read. The story is found around volume 40+ in the Shin Chan manga. And the story is so good that even I wanted to cry when I read it. No kidding.

And the part where I bawled like a baby

3. I also found a whole bunch of old letters among the pile of my old stuff too.

Who knew I once had so many letters? Proud

There were photos, old love letters (yes love letters), cards and presents that came from once upon a time in my life ago, back when I was still a much younger kid. Boy did those letters brought back memories. Silly me during that time thought that letters were romantic and was crazy about them. Except that my English then looked something like thiss... hahaa... :)

You get the idea.

More old treasures

Time really flies, doesn't it? And I thought I was the nerd one who rarely had any girl contact. Turns out all these gifts and letters proved me otherwise. And it also turns out that the age old saying that girls are more mature than boys is really true. Because looking at the letters written to me and the letters that I've written, it's like a small boy chatting with a much older sister. Not that I'm much more mature now but at least my English is not as flowery as it is used to and filled with as many dots and smileys.

But the best find of all? A green cloth with gold letters on it. Can you guess what it is? Nah, soure you can't. Even I was stunned. But still it did happened and I have the evidence to prove it.

Prom king, I am, alright.

Who knew cleaning up room could yield so much interesting finds?

Laser Tag @ Ipoh

2012-01-03T00:43:00.001+08:00

When a person talks about Ipoh, fun is usually one of the last things that come to mind. Because unlike bigger cities like Singapore or Kuala Lumpur, there's only two shopping malls with two cinemas in Ipoh. And when someone like me returns to Ipoh, there's usually very little to do except the normal activities like watching movies, mamak or just walking around. So it's very normal for me to get bored quickly when I have an extended stay in Ipoh.

However, things have slowly started to pick up in the recent months with openings of more shopping places and I just found out today, an indoor laser tag arena! You know the game that Barney Stinson from "How I Met Your Mother" loves to play a lot?

And when Barney Stinson is doing it, you ought too

Going by the name Laser Battle, the place is located on the top floor of Glamour Square in Bercham, which in turn is quite near the North South expressway and the holiday-confirm-packed Kinta City aka Jaya Jusco, making it easily accessible from the major places around Ipoh.

And here's a map in case you cannot find it

To be honest, I was quite impressed with the place. When my sister told me that there's a laser tag arena in Ipoh, I had in mind some run down place with a not-really-good-environment because this is normally what you get when someone tries to do something big in Ipoh.

It turned out that not only the place was better than expected, it has also quite a great environment inside. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

The entrance to the arena

The place where you collect your weapon and armor

Inside the arena

If you ask me, the whole place reminds me of Tron and you're like fighting inside a futuristic battle. The place was also quite big, running around in the arena soon got me panting like a dog and I realized that I might have overestimated my abilities to be an awesome soldier. After all, sprinting in real life is so much more taxing than sprinting in games like Modern Warfare 3.

Note to self: Must warm up before going into a laser tag battle next time.

All in all, Laser Battle is a must visit place in Ipoh. It's a fun filled activity that one can really enjoy with friends. And for gamers like me, it's a really good alternative as compared to sitting in front of the computer. Besides, it's through activities like this that you can truly test your skills and show off to the girl you like. It's quite affordable too as compared to paintball. And you don't have to endure the pain in this game.

And of course, what's a game without a group picture?

If you noticed, I look quite bad in the photo. Like I said, I overestimated myself. Never should have ran so many rounds in the game.

But still, it was fun! If you're looking for fun things to do in Ipoh, do pay Laser Battle a visit. It's fun, the staff are friendly and the rates are affordable. Just make sure that you're fit enough for this. Or if not, just sit at one corner and camp. And do make sure that they don't go bankrupt before I come back from Singapore the next time because I'm looking for a showdown again!

Hmph.

Like their Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/indoorlasertag

Hello 2012

2012-01-02T03:31:00.001+08:00

"It's not how you spend the time but rather who you spend it with that matters." And yeap, that quote is from me, although I vaguely remember someone else saying something like that sometime ago. But who cares, if you cannot remember something, it doesn't exist.

Anyways, I'm sure you know that the year 2011 has come and gone and we're now stepping into yet another new year, 2012, in which hopefully the earth wouldn't end. While it's customary for bloggers to list down the things that they have done and achieved in the past year (a relic from Kenny Sia) or to blog about their new year resolutions, I think I'm gonna save it for later (when there's no topic to blog about) and to share instead with you how I spent the new year because it's so special and different this year!

Before I start the post, I believe that a customary Happy New Year greeting is a must.

Toying with the new GIMP image editor again. Woots

And now that you've seen the first handsome picture of mine for this year, it's time for the rest of the post!

So why did I say that this year's new year celebration was special and different?

Well, for starters, I had almost spent every single new year's eve of my life back in my small hometown called Ipoh. Growing up, I was either at home with my family or at church with my church's youth group for new year's eve countdown every year without fail. Not that I'm saying it's not good but when you keep doing the same thing year after year, it tends to get a bit boring.

Which is why this year was special. It was one of the few rare moments in which I had the chance to be somewhere else, in this case KL, on a holiday enjoying myself and really immersing in the mood for celebration. And best of all, I got to celebrate it with someone special, which wass the reason behind the quote I posted up there.

Not only did I got to spend the new year's eve in an entirely new place with an entirely different bunch of people, the whole day was also jammed packed with awesome activities that kept the excitement running.

First there was the famous Klang Bak Kut Teh for breakfast after a fruitful day of shopping the day before. Though I still prefer the ceramic bowl Bak Kut Teh with loads of ingredients inside rather than the meat only Klang version (sorry Jason!), the experience of eating breakfast with your friends over a few cups of hot tea was fun by itself. Not to mention that the sight of a few young people among the sea of uncles and auntie was amusing enough.

Then there was lunch at Petaling Jaya at one of the famous Yong Tau Fu stalls. Though the lunch was intended as the main highlight, the incident where we got lost and ended up going in one big circle quickly became the main topic of the day. It was funny because the car I was in was not really good at producing cool air and soon I was sweating like a dog because I chose to wear a frigging thick long pants for the day. And the sun was burning at the same time too. And in the heat of the moment, I forgot that we could turn down the mirrors for ventilation. Well, I guess that could count as my first pseudo sauna moment in life. The lunch was still good though.

Next we went to 1Utama, a shopping center that I have always heard of but never got the chance to visit, to watch Sherlock Holmes and to hang out while waiting for the countdown party happening later at night.

It's the second time I'm watching the movie so I was half expecting to fall asleep but surprisingly I find that the movie was more enjoyable the second time because I was busy looking at the details to see whether what Sherlock Holmes really did what he said he did when he revealed his plans at the end of the movie. And yes, every single detail of Sherlock Holmes' actions was honed to perfection and if you really pay attention to the movie, you can decipher how the movie end even before Sherlock Holmes reveals his secrets. In a sense, this movie allows you a chance to become a mini Sherlock Holmes yourself when watching the movie.

Note to self: Watch Sherlock Holmes 1.

After the movie, we sort of walked around, shopped around and had dinner while waiting for night to arrive so we could make our way to the Curve for the New Year's countdown. And guess what, I spotted a Star Wars deco in 1Utama itself which is quite awesome!

It's an X-Wing vs a TIE bomber

Nerd mode on!

Later that night, we made our way to the Curve where the celebration was to participate in the countdown and to get "foamed". There was a concert there but we did not pay much attention to it because the hordes of people there did not give us much of a chance to enjoy the concert. Instead, we walked around again, tried to find some alcohol because Edmund wanted to drink and ended up drinking a real bad bottle of beer. Ugh.

On the upside, we did have a few moments of laughter when we used the five bottle caps to play a game that we once used to play back in primary and secondary school. You know, the one where you need to spin and hit the bottle caps? It was real funny because after so many years of inactivity, we found ourselves playing like a bunch of small kids with no skills at all.

As the clock tick closer to 12am, we finally made our way back to the main road where everyone was and waited for the countdown. The atmosphere alone was euphoric I tell you. The horns blaring, people running around and the music blasting, the celebratory mode was on alright. And before we knew it, the entire crowd was soon shouting down the numbers and we too followed suit. Thousands of people counting down in unison.

5... 4... 3... 2... 1... and it's 2012!

There were fireworks.

And people were cheering, shouting and enjoying the moment. I was just happy and content to be able to spend it with my friends and people I care for.

New Year countdown at the Curve, 2011/12

And of course, there's the foam. It's sort of like the tradition to spray people with cans of foam and be sprayed back in KL, so I was told. Pretty much like the water festival in Thailand. We were attacked by loads of people and before we knew it, most of us became white foamy monsters. Should I have the chance to spend New Year's Eve in KL again, I'm gonna go prepared. With a whole box of foam sprayers.

The I foam you, you foam me tradition in KL

Still it was an enjoyable night. It was an whole new experience for me and one that I enjoy really much. And given a chance, I certainly would want to celebrate new year's countdown in KL again. The atmosphere is just awesome. This is certainly one of the best new year's eve I ever had.

Happy New Year!

Scumbag Cupid

2011-12-29T02:21:00.002+08:00

Can also be named scumbag love or scumbag life

"To be happy in love, marry someone who loves you more than you love her." That's the exact sentence that a police officer said to me once upon a time ago, when I was still a small boy and still believed in Disney's happily ever after. Strangely, out of the entire safety talk that he was supposed to give, that sentence was the only sentence that I remembered out of the entire lecture. Maybe it sounded like the answer to life to me during that time.

I used to disagree with him. Because I believed that if you try hard enough, if you love hard enough, you'll find your own version of happily ever after.

Well, turns out that Disney is just one big liar and the police officer might just be right after all. Along with my tons other friends. They might have a point after all. Because when you're with someone whom you love more than the person loves you, the chances of you getting hurt is higher because you prize the relationship more than the other person. Because life loves to give us shit.

I Haz A New Banner

2011-12-28T02:41:00.001+08:00

I haz a new banner today! After weeks of procrastination, I finally had the time to sit down today and out of the immense boredom (because the internet is too slow, no friends wanna go out with me and I have finished exploring every grass and tree in Skyrim), began designing the first draft of Lukeyishandsome.com's long overdue new banner.

The smaller version of the big banner up there

So what do you think? It's not the best design one can have, that I'll admit, but then again it's my first time using this new software called GIMP (The GNU Image Manipulation Program) because Adobe decided to be a scumbag. I mean, if you are going to price your software at such a morbidly high price, you should at least be more lenient at hunting down the cracked versions right? Furthermore I'm not even using the latest version of your precious software.

Fuh. Angry.

Well, thanks to a friend of mine, I was introduced to this new and most importantly, free image editing software and I must admit, it has quite impressive features if you were to compare it to Adobe Photoshop. Sure, it might not be that advanced but it has sufficient features to let you edit a picture for a software that's free. Bye bye scumbag Adobe!

The only problem now? I only have a mouse for drawing and trust me when I saw the inventors of the mouse did not have "drawing" as a feature in their mind when they designed the mouse. Now who could sponsor me a drawing tablet?

Kwek Jian Qiang, of Equality and Equity

2011-12-27T03:51:00.000+08:00

It's human nature to want the best for ourselves and perhaps that was the reason behind Kwek Jian Qiang's now infamous letter lamenting the fact that the ITE students, who are considered weaker academically, are given better facilities than students in JCs who are considered better. To quote him, he said that "Our brightest students, who will become Singapore’s future leaders, should get the best facilities in order to excel and grow. We should reward according to merit."

Looking at this reminded me about one of the classes that I took under Psychology once upon a time ago that talked about something called Equality and Equity.

In broad terms, when it comes to allocating rewards or in this case, facilities, to people, there is two methods in which one can choose to do it. In the first method, rewards are allocated based on the principle of equality, in which everyone gets the same allocation of rewards no matter what their contribution. In the second method, also called equity method, rewards are allocated based on the individual's contribution, meaning that the individuals who contributed the most should get the largest portion of the reward while the same goes vice versa.

For example, imagine a group of hunters who are going out to hunt for food. One of them decides to stay back because he is injured and could not hunt as properly as the others. And so the rest of the hunters went and looked for food while their injured friend stay behind. When they finally returned with the kill a few hours later, one question comes to mind. How should they divide the kill?

Should they divide the kill equally, where each of them gets the same amount of it or should they divide it based on the principles of equity, where each of them gets the portion according to their efforts, with the injured hunter getting the least or none at all, because he did not participate in the hunt? Now if I change the details of the story from an injured hunter to a lazy hunter, which method should they now use?

Depending on how you see it, there's no obvious right or wrong when it comes to choosing between equality or equity. Both can be fair and unfair in their own way.

While many people who criticized Jian Qiang called his way of thinking as elitist (and therefore putting it in a bad light), in a way, he was only basing his arguments on the principles of equity. In his mind, he might think that the path of JC is much harder than ITE and therefore, they should deserve better facilities in accordance to their contribution.

On the other hand, people who criticizes him are thinking in terms of equality, where each and every student should be allocated a fair share of the facilities because not everyone can make it into JC and the students of ITE contributes to the society too. And after all, it is not ethical to group people according to the contribution that they make. It's against human rights to do so.

There's no right or wrong in this matter and I believe that you have used both methods before in your life. A very good example would be the issue of Singaporeans versus the foreigners. Although both contributes to the country, Singaporeans thinks that the benefits should be awarded according to equity, ie citizenship rather than equally, where everyone gets the same benefits.

So before you get hyped up about this issue, Kwek Jian Qiang has a point. After all, isn't this the meritocracy principle (or the equity principle in other words) that the government constantly espouses? That the rewards that you'll get in life is proportional to the effort that you put in? And for a lot of students, not putting in enough effort means a shitty result which ultimately culminates in the student dropping out or ending up in ITE?

I for one, have really no idea which sides to take in this issue. While a part of me agrees with him that true, students should be rewarded according to the effort, another part of me disagrees because ultimately, the true measure of our rewards is not seen through the facilities that we enjoy but our jobs and our life's subjective well being in the future. But then again, this is a hard topic to find an objective argument to begin with. So there's really not much point arguing about it.

Why 26th December is known as Boxing Day

2011-12-26T01:41:00.000+08:00

While the 25th December is known all around the world as Christmas day, on the other hand, not many people knows that the day after Christmas, the 26th of December, is known as the Boxing Day. Well, at least in many parts of Asia and definitely near the place I live as far as I know.

You might wonder, how on earth did the day after Christmas became known as the boxing day? Now Lukey has some interesting theories that may shed light to the reason why 26th of December also became known as the Boxing Day.

As the picture above might illustrate, 26th December is called the Boxing Day is because well, Santa always gets punched in the face the day after Christmas every year without fail by his reindeers. Just imagine having to work your ass or hoofs off trying to cover the entire earth in just one night. That's an amazing amount of distance that one has to cover in just one night. Even the fastest marathon runner in the whole world can't do it.

And despite numerous attempts by the reindeers to negotiate for a one week Christmas so they don't have to overwork themselves in just one night, Santa keeps denying them the request because he's just too lazy to leave the house for more than a night. Which is why out of frustration, the reindeers have taken it as tradition to punch Santa every year after Christmas to release their anger. And people wonder why they need an entire year for rest.

And thus the act of punching Santa to release your frustration began to spread around the world and slowly, it has became a custom for people to go around on boxing day to punch the people that you do not like and not be reprimanded for it. Yes, even if you hit him in the face. It is a day to release your pent up anger on a person after a year and to know who does not like you either.

Another possible reason of why Boxing Day is called Boxing Day is because of the shopping activities that usually takes place after Christmas.

You see, the period between the day after Christmas and the day before new year is usually the time when most of the shopping malls will have year end sales to clear out their stock for the new stock to arrive. And people would usually take the day after Christmas off to shop for new clothes and stuff. Combine these two together and well, you have people rushing to buy all the stuff that are on sale, thus leading to an increase of violence between shop goers. And the rest is history.

And of course, we could not possibly forget about the amount of party that we had on Christmas night, right? After a hard time partying with lots of alcohol on the night of Christmas, the majority of people would wake up with a major hangover the day after. And when you're having a major hangover, your mood tends to be bad and you're easily irritated. Now imagine almost everyone having the same problem as you. Even a slight bump when crossing each other would lead to a major fight.

This inclination to beat up people the next day of Christmas because of hangover is one the reason why the day is came to be known as Boxing Day. It's because on this day you'll see a sharp rise in arrests by police over brawls on the street. After a while, it's no wonder why the term Boxing Day came to be popular.

Now while these three reasons might sound logical, it is not until later did I realize that the word boxing in Boxing Day is not used to refer to the act of punching people but rather to the container for you to store stuff.

As the internet says, the name boxing day came about from the act of opening the Christmas boxes or presents, thus the name boxing. It has nothing to do with hitting people and whatsoever. So much more dull than what I thought it was. And here was I waiting to punch the person that I hate tomorrow. I even had my boxing gloves ready.