It's not easy to maintain a blog. You just have to think about all kinds of so-called creative topics to write about all the time. JG is too lazy to maintain this blog in the long-run and might just stop blogging by year end.
This long-lost friend recently told me not to blog about him because it's not going to help increase my readership or advertising income. "Try bikini photos instead and link it to naked photos of Megan Fox", so he suggested.
Sure. We'll see if his idea works. If readership rate remains at its usual low level, that means he's a liar. If readership rate shoots up and I find out he's the only person who logged in from various computers at his office, then he's a lunatic. The only thing left that's not worth explaining is the "legally legit" part- you should get the idea by now.
“Sounds like you are working/surrounded by very evil people…” a long-lost friend mentioned in his email after he read through my previous blog entry.
Uh, quite…
I think you can either think of those “evil people” to have behaved towards me on a half-full OR half-empty brain capacity, especially at their age (half-past six?). I’m sorry, was I being crappy mean again? I didn’t mean it, honest. Blame the gray-haired cat.Put him in a straitjacket, or whatever.
“Half-past-six” as a compound adjective is a Malaysian and Singaporean slang for “inferior” or “of poor quality”. It was much more in use in the ’50s and ’60s than it is now.
For two PhD brainiacs to be able to listen to the well-acted-out and somewhat convincing negative ranting and raving of a non-PhD gray-haired cat about JG being horrifyingly horrendous as though she’s some kind of Frankenstein-inspired monstrosity gone wrong, that says A LOT about their PhD-induced abilities to decide on and deduce between a good and bad specimen/sampling. We must therefore learn how to crap convincingly just like the gray-haired cat.
Anyway, here’s a nice little sketch and poem done by this long-lost friend of mine:
Sketch and poem created on 28January 2000 during a somewhat awe-inspiring, totally time-wasting student leadership camp near some kind of waterfall area.
When he was done with the sketch and poem, he threw that piece of paper aside and then it was almost carried away into the river by the jungle breeze. But I thought, “NOOO!! The sketch is too pretty to be thrown away!! If he becomes famous one day, I could sell it on E-Bay!!”, so I decided to grab that piece of paper from the rocky ground, and he wondered why I was acting so weird all over one crummy piece of paper.
True enough, my instincts were right. One year later, the whole country knew who he was and almost everyone wanted to be his friend. It was that similar, peculiar instinct I had felt just like that time when a college kid kept calling me strange names in class and I said, “Stop it! Your car won’t be able to start tomorrow! Something’s gonna happen to your car tomorrow!” and it really happened, and then everyone in class freaked out, and so did I.
Here’s an old newspaper clipping of my long-lost friend (28February 2001, Wednesday):
wannabe = one who aspires, often vainly, to emulate another's success or attain eminence in some area. Please kill the reporter who came up with that article and THAT WORD!
That year, this 13 A1s guy set a record. Most records are made to be broken. He inspired many more teenagers to break his record after that year (16 A1s, 17 A1s, 21 A1s, etc). But nothing could change the fact that it was Jin Hock who first set this euphorically uncontrollable, wildly snowballing onslaught of “Score as many A1s as possible in your O-levels/SPM exam!”- he was the pioneer; the catalyst of this crazy trend… And no matter how many A1s anyone scored after that, one can never and must never dispute the fact that it was Jin Hock who started it all, this ferociously raging "bushfire" of sorts. Aren’t you getting goosebumps already from reading this little paragraph, JH?
The 13 A1s guy left the country and went on to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) all the way to the postgraduate level without flunking any paper. After that, we lost contact because he’s the kind of person who creates a Facebook account and then mysteriously deletes his account just for fun.
The only reason why no one has written any juicy, sensational gossip about JH all this while is because JH has yet to be found working as some kind of exotic pole dancer in an obscure little town, or simply flunking his classes due to a mysterious form of psychoneurosis and then decided to become a hippie living in a trailer truck.
May the force be with you!
Miraculously, after many years of supposed silence, he was recently found to be alive and well somewhere out there, experiencing his first love affair with the working world.
What is to be of him after this, we know not of, but let us just wish him all the best... *moment of silence, crickets chirping- closes eyes, starts praying*
Here's a clearer version of the "emo" poem JH had written just for fun on 28 January 2000:
Am I the cruel denizen on this colossal rock,
Is it my fault to have you apart,
Would you blame me for being deviant and to change you,
Do you really understand?
~
Water flowing in turbulent tempest,
Life’s songs of ages throbbing in my blood,
The anonymous remains unknown, trickling curiosity,
A crazy old gray-haired cat whose sole purpose in life is to destroy my life; a Chinese PhD donkey who thinks I’m not putting enough effort into my work (working till 3:00 a.m. to get things done wasn’t good enough?); an Indian PhD monkey who ridiculed me upon learning of my decision to go for a PhD… Two words for you lot:
BE GONE, you Crazy Old People @ Hopeless Old Men!!!
Okay, nine words, actually- and a comma, an alias sign and three exclamation marks. I changed my mind all in a sudden. I’m sorry I’ve always been the “fickle-minded” person you lot think I am. *sarcasm, sarcasm*
What a blessing and an inspiration you jokers are to the little kids around you with all the many things you’ve achieved in your lives (not).
Let this video be an inspiration to all the oppressed little people of the world:
Executive Summary: Liz Murray
Maximum Impact Simulcast
Leadership That Inspires
May 8, 2009
I grew up with parents who used lots of drugs. They would get their welfare checks, buy drugs,
get high, and then repeat the cycle again. When the welfare money ran out, they would sell
anything, like our television or bicycles, for cash to buy drugs. One year, my mother sold our
Thanksgiving turkey to a neighbor. That’s the nature of addiction; it consumes a person.
When we ran out of welfare check money, we would go days without food. I remember thinking, "Perhaps if I sleep, then I won't be hungry." So I slept a lot. My sister and I would eat ice cubes because at least they felt like food. One time we even split a tube of toothpaste.
There are benefits in growing up how I did. One lesson I learned is that my life is my
responsibility. No one owes me anything.
There are gifts and blessings that we can look for and find in our past—just as we can choose to look back on our faults. What we look for depends on where our hearts are.
Each of us knows, in the deepest part of heart, the life we were created to live.
I used to visit my mom in the hospital for five hours at a time. I would brush her hair and clumps would come off in my hand. When that became too painful, I promised to come back “later.”
When I heard she had died, I realized that we are not promised “laters.”
Disempowered people blame and concern themselves with the past. Empowered people look
forward to what’s next and refuse to point fingers.
What transforms a life? One empowered choice after another.
Ever picked up one of the most widely-circulated magazines in the world and wondered if you’re somehow linked to someone in there? Ever realized how we are all strangely connected to each other; in a circle, in a hoop that never ends?(stole a few words from "Colors of the Wind" here)
Studying the migration patterns of humans gives us a glimpse of the development of human civilization and shows us the patterns of human existence.
Meet Ian Teh, photographer extraordinaire- Chinese by design, Malaysian by birth, and globally acculturated by all means. And we share the same insane uncle, unfortunately.
Never heard about this Malaysian before? Nevermind. Now you know who Ian Teh is.
From the Black Rain collection (China)
2008 Olympics boxing champion, Zhou Shi Ming
Summer Journey (2008 Olympics, Beijing)
Sociologist Larry T. Reynolds (1992) observes that race as a concept for classifying humans is a product of the 1700s, a time of widespread European exploration, conquest and colonization that did not begin to subside until the end of World War II.
(Picture above)
Dharamsala: Reimagining Tibet
A Tibetan youth and his Swedish girlfriend hanging out at the Tara Café. Many young Tibetans are fascinated by Westerners and Western culture—and vice versa, as the growing tide of Western travelers arriving in Dharamsala testifies.
Ian Teh’s photography skills are so amazing I hope I can hire him and his wife as my official wedding photographers when I get married at the age of 40.
The above picture never failed to make me ponder upon the fragility of life each time I look at it.
TIME: 15 May 2008
As soldiers carry a survivor of a collapsed school, at far left, another laments her missing child.
Dujiangyan, China (earthquake)
Neo Burlesque London, 2009
We shall talk about Ian Teh’s other interesting relatives some other time. Uncle J is not one of them ‘cos I just talked about him and his Bali holiday recently =P
Notting Hill, London
I think it’s a great idea to keep track of the whereabouts of your relatives from near and far, eventhough they might not be interested in finding out about your existence on this planet. Just these past few months, I’ve managed to track down a few long lost relatives from a few countries through the Internet (am I amazing or what…).
And boy-oh-boy let me tell you this- had I been walking along the streets of London or sauntering through the Alaskan woods just like any other curious tourist and suddenly made friends with an uber-good-looking Asian guy from any of these faraway lands, there could be a possibility that we shared the same great-grandparent or ancestor and we’d not even realize it because of our completely different family names. It’s just that our Asian genealogical records aren’t as thoroughly maintained as those that of our Western counterparts.
This Ian guy recently married a talented photographer from Beijing, China (CONGRATULATIONS!). So let’s say Ian and his wife soon have a daughter called “Ah Mei”, and I get married at the age of 40 and get a son called “Ah Beng”, and at the age of 30, Ah Mei chances upon 20-year-old Ah Beng at a busy restaurant in Hanoi (Vietnam), both wouldn’t have realized that they shared the same great-great-grandfather because Ah Mei and Ah Beng's parents never bothered to get in touch with each other. What if Ah Mei and Ah Beng were to fall in love??
Ah Beng: Mother, I met a girl. Her name is Ah Mei. We plan to get married soon.
JG: WHAT?! WHO?!
Ah Mei: Hello, Aunty.Ni hao ma?
JG: But son, she’s older than you are. *horror, horror*
Ah Beng: But mother, age is no barrier. Love conquers all…
JG: But son, she’s your distant cousin! Didn’t you know that?!
What could be a better comeback line from Ah Beng after this, I wonder…
But mother, if Darwin* and Einstein could do it, so can I???
* On 29 January 1839, Charles Darwin married his cousin, Emma Wedgwood, and had ten children. TEN CHILDREN! Wah liew…
Skandar Keynes, Charles Darwin’s great-great-great-grandson (!!!)
**All cool-looking photos taken by Ian Teh, except for the one above.
