Night rumblings.

I confess I didn't feel too well this year when I decided to write my Christmas cards.

Partly, because Christmas didn't feel so festive for me this year. Probably another reason would be the friends I send Christmas cards to, I haven't seen in awhile. Awhile, meaning like five years or more.

So, which is usually the case, I start to analyse myself. Is sending Christmas cards a mere reminder to them of my existence, or an indirect hint to them to send me one back. After all, who really sends christmas cards nowdays because they mean it? You might send it to business acquaintances as a gesture of goodwill, or a gift to cultivate business relations. You might send it to friends and family simply because well, because that's what people do what.

And, yet, I confess that a beam comes to my face when the few respond to the cards I send. Perhaps in their mind, they're thinking 'hmm who's this person. sounds vaguely familiar' or 'omg. another card from Him. doesn't He get the hint already?'.

Honestly, in a few years time, I just might cease sending cards. Or I just might send to a bunch of different friends. Who knows right.

I have a board beside my bed; the kind you can pin stuff on. On it, are addresses. A useful board for when it's time to send cards. Yet, it's so hard to decide who to send to each year. Of three quarters of them, I've not spoken a word to. And, even if I were to, there's usually nothing else to say after 'Hi, how're you? How's sch?'

Am I then, one of those who have lost the ability to communicate? Nah. I'm socially skilled.

And. I can only accept the fact that people weave in and out of your life all the time. Like a cross stitch, sometimes it goes in, sometimes it comes out. Sometimes, it goes in and stays in; it doesn't come out. The various threads, they have to follow the great tapestry or design or masterpiece the owner is weaving.

The times where the thread simply refuses to go through the eye of the needle; they may not be accidental. Or the areas where the threads don't meet. Perhaps it's for a reason.

So, I confess my helplessness when I look upon these addresses in sorrow. Reflecting upon nostalgia, and revelling in memories of yesteryear.

Just a simple trip down memory lane.

Where water under the bridge shoots up like a geyser.

And sleeping dogs bark and chase their own tails.

And skeletons clubbing within closets.

Simple is such an understatement.

New Year Resolutions

The start of the new year brings about promise, and a certain mystery, to what life will be after army.

Perhaps army is a dementor in its way. Yet, in all its evil, it allows me to spell out my own Patronus, and light the way.

A new year of promise. New adventures to encounter. The start of routines, that will escalate and end in a different world altogether.

And, I already have my first new year resolution. Which is to be a good secret keeper. I could just blame it on army and say secrets are not kept but shared, all in the name of unity. Or I could just blame it on my loose tongue.

But, loose it is no more. For now. For my kids. And for my future. Well, the one that's in my mind now. That might involve confidentiality clauses. (No, I'm not becoming a patient.)

You just gotta appreciate kids. Blunt, honest and crude. Nay a hint of tact, nor agile sensitivity, they just dish it to you the way it is. And you can't fault them for it.

Thoughts Bought Noughts

The night is silent, and quiet. The wind gently rustles through the trees, blowing droplets off leaves and sending them plummeting down to earth.

Pitter-patter, helter-skelter.

Calm envelops him, whom lies within the bed of hay. The stars twinkle overhead, winking to each other, alongside the grinning moon.

Mind to matter, heart to shatter.

The frogs diminish their croakings as they sense the royal child asleep. No wailing piercing through the air, no sobbing streaming through the lair.

C the letter, T the latter.

Beneath the crib, unseen, unknown, a tiny rose it slowly grows.

H two R, he IS.

Amongst the hay, with nay a grain of soil.

It doesn't wither, doesn't recede. It just grows towards the source of light.

How to Tweet locally.

You would have seen it in papers. Twitter, twitting, or tweeting. First it was a thing of the youths, now celebrities are doing it, and no doubt some politicians too.

And, you got so excited, and wanting to be in the trend, you've decided to get yourself a Twitter account. Excellent. All signed up and ready to go? What? You've got a question?

Oh. How to tweet from the phone ah?

That's an excellent question, actually. You see ah, got a lot of applications you can use to help you tweet while on the move, and yours truly is here to help.

Starhub Mobitweet!
If you are using Starhub, and are either on Student/NSF plan, with unlimited sms, or you simply have a lot of free sms-s to spare, Starhub allows you to tweet for free!

Registration is easy and fast. Simply sign in with your Twitter account, select a maximum of ten friends to receive updates, and you're done.

In a nutshell:
What you can do: Tweet (duh!), receive tweets (only from 10 friends of your choice), and reply tweets (only to those 10 friends.)
Cost: Free.
Ratings: 3/5. Why only 10 friends?!


gladlyCast
If you want to only update Twitter via your phone, this is for you. An exclusive site only for Singapore, Malaysia and Philippine users. Each country has its own number for users to Tweet, so no worries about skyrocketing costs of international messages.

It accepts tweets in Chinese, Japanese and Hebrew too. Though why you might wanna tweet in Japanese, when it doesn't work in Japan, or tweet in Hebrew is kindof questionable. Tamil might be nice actually, since it's a national language in Singapore.

You do not need to register for an account at gladlyCast. All you need is to sign in with your Twitter account. The website will flash a certain phrase on your screen, and you have to sms that in to the local number shown, and within seconds, you are free to tweet.

In a nutshell:
What you can do: Tweet (duh!). And that's about it.
Cost: The equivalent of a local sms. (Or free, if you have unlimited)
Ratings: 2/5. (no other function except to tweet?!)


sgBEAT
If you want to update Twitter, Facebook, Plurk! and support local sounding names or names that has an SG in it.

By invitation, or by registering but accounts are limited. As of time of writing, they have yet to get back to me about an account.

In a nutshell:
What you can do: Tweet (duh!), and update facebook.
Cost: Free
Ratings: 3/5. (They offer two local numbers for you to sms to, so no worries about laggy updates)


If you're an Iphone / Ipod Touch user, you can try
Echofon
I don't use any so I really can't comment.

Two hearts are better than one.

On sunday, I saw a sister protectively hugging her little brother. He, in all his childlike innocence, irritated another kid. The kid pushed him to his sister and told her to take care of her brother.

She pulled him close, and wrapped her arms around him.

And when I looked in her eyes. I didn't see annoyance or a look of irritation, but acceptance of the fact that she was his guardian. And deep ungrudging unbias love. Maybe because blood is thicker than water, and she has accepted the fact that she is responsible for his safety. Not everybody accepts such responsibilities nowadays.

Yet she loves him simply because he's her brother.

Today, I saw the same scene. The siblings were around a decade older, though this time the roles were reversed. The brother was the older sibling and the sister the younger sibling. She helped him to his feet, and stuck by him, despite him pushing her away, in his drunken stupor.

Perhaps in the future, when she has a quiet moment to herself, when troubles overwhelm her, and darkness creeps upon the windowsill, the scene of him pushing her away might replay in her mind. She might sob, she might tear, despite her brother living oh so near.

Yet, it was with love that she stuck by him, and it is love that will see them true. Not bonded by gender or race or language or religion, but by blood. The same blood that beats within their hearts.

Two hearts are better than one.

future kids.

I was thinking maybe I should get throat mics for church.

Okay, actually that was just a random thought that came from reading Matthew Reily's book.

What I was actually thinking, was that in the future kids might probably take a step back in technology, and result to using conventional methods of communications. Not that IM or SMS would be obsolete, but see my point ah.

Kids are tech-savvy nowadays. Thus, parents are scrambling to catch up. What happens when kids today become parent tomorrow?

Naturally it would be harder for future kids to create their personal space, and maintain their privacy. Already, some parents have resorted to tracking their kids via global positioning satellite (gps) on their phones, or hiring private investigators to follow them.

Perhaps some may even secretly install key loggers, and then log in to the various accounts, simply to 'get to know their children'. But do we really need all these?

While I agree that technology is useful for bridging gaps between parents and their children, this is definitely too extreme. The onus would be on you to trust your child, without going behind his or her back.

I foresee future generations would be walking forward watching their back.

There are, in my opinion, a lot of firsts to be experienced while growing up. First stead. First kiss. First sexual exploration. Okay, maybe not that one. And, to some, the first time you lie to your parents about your whereabouts.

Come on, there's a bit of fun in that okay. Besides, it's all in the spirit of teenage rebellion and all those shit.

But, back to my point. Because our kids now will be parents later, (I don't mean it as later literally) future kids will find it hard to grow up with tech-savvy parents, who may install hidden softwares on their gadgets, and track them with gadgets and all, they may actually resort to using conventional methods to grow up. Passing a physical letter instead of sending a text. Using invisible ink to write secret stuff, and exchanging notes in class. Writing in a physical diary under physical lock and key, instead of a virtual blog with a virtual restricted access password protected system.

Seriously, I think something might need to be done about our current kids, in that we grow them well, such that they won't be like us now.

Don't you think so?

The Anthem

Memories.

I cleaned up a couple of drawers today. Perhaps I'm a sentimental guy. I like to keep stuff that are remnants of the past. Not that extreme, like keeping a mummy or sand from beaches of places I've been to, but more of events or people that entered my life.

Example: class photos. Or other such memorabilia. Some might say this is being too materialistic, and I tend to agree. If I could go back in time, I would travel back in time and create a 3d model of my primary school. How else to tell my kids about the joys of playing catching or zero point or hopscotch. Their version of playing catching would be pressing WASD on the keyboard. And maybe hold on to the shift button to sprint.

And among my 'artifacts' I found a notebook. One that I used during BMT and includes poems and prose that I wrote during free time.

One you can view here http://monkeytuba.blogspot.com/2008/10/step-forward.html>http://monkeytuba.blogspot.com/2008/10/step-forward.html

The other one, I shall post below. If my memory serves me right, I wrote it in an effort to combine stories with a friend of mine. But she probably might have forgotten about it already, though she did have a flair for writing exceedingly well.

-

Take the dagger, stab me twice
But, be warned, I'm as hard as ice.
Royal blood that flows down south,
Down the ancient mountain's mouth.
By the rising of the sun,
Power and your will be done.

'Sixty-four days', He uttered to himself as he etched another mark on the cave with his self-crafted dagger.

He had woken to find himself chained to the bars, caged up like an animal, along with other children. He had pleaded with his captors to release him, but they only looked at him unfeelingly. He spoke in all the languages that he knew, including dialects from neighboring tribes, but to no avail.

It soon became a routine. They would travel to a new town every week, to be displayed like fruits at a fruit store. At every sale, he hoped eagerly to be bought and freed, but at the end of the day, nobody wanted him.

Perhaps it was because he was thin and bony, and in the eye of his prospective buyers, he would be useless and a burden to the household.

But what could he do? Bread as hard as rock was given out thrice a day. Some times he dreamt of taking the bread and throwing it back to them and knock them out.

Them that feasted every night. The children would look out from the cage, with lifeless eyes. The new 'additions' would lean towards, hoping for some merciful captor to throw them some scraps. Any scrap.

He would know. He did that for the first week till he realized it was just a sport to them; to taunt the children and feign pity.

The only thing he looked forward to was the bath. He noticed the trend on his thirtieth day. Every time they were about to reach an urban town, the children would be chucked into a river for a bath. They would be stripped out of their rages and given new clothes. He always hoped with bated breath at every town, hoping to be bought. Every town that he left, he held on, thinking 'the next town, perhaps'.

It never came. Something life-changing happened instead.

A new kid. Fear and sorrow overflowing, but a glint of hope still remained.

She spoke his dialect too.

-

Youths aren't gracious? Really?

I find it very very very discriminating that most people tend to point the blame on the younger generation. I mean, come on, nobody thanked us for widespread use of shortforms or other youthful, i mean useful, stuff like making a change to the way Chinese is taught.

One thing I realize is that the youths are actually very very very helpful and have a lot of initiative. Granted, me being a youth myself, that sounds totally bias. It would be like NTUC complimenting themselves, or Starhub saying Green is The way to go. Literally.

Just yesterday, I took a train to Bugis. In the midst of the journey, at three consecutive stops, an elderly couple would board the train at each stop. As they enter, a couple would give up their seats for them.

It actually took me by surprise. After all, everybody's complaining about how youths are gracious enough. I actually looked around to make sure there weren't any cameras rolling, just in case it was an advert for a gracious society campaign.

Youths are gracious as a whole. We were brought up with those values. It's just that a few rotten apples spoil the whole barrel. Either that, or perhaps the same few who don't give up their seats happen to get stomp-ed a lot.

But that's not the point. The point is, does the shame campaign really work? Will posting pictures of youths not giving up their seats, or people feigning deep sleep change the community?

Of course not. Putting photos of cash won't make us any more eager for cash than we already are.

Maybe we should change it. Why shame, and not fame? Perhaps we should put up more awards or recognize gracious acts. Or have a fame panel or page, where such photos can be stored. I'm sure we all wouldn't mind taking a photo of somebody doing a good thing right? If we can snap photos of our idols faster than me typing this, taking a snapshot of someone doing the right thing wouldn't be too much of an effort. Or we could just place photos of cash on the web page to encourage citizens.