there are many reasons why the gay community seem to love the X-men series of movies. the tight costumes that seem to be a staple with all our talented superheroes are a good place to start. Hugh Jackman and his biceps are an even better place to start. and i think i will start with that. recently, when the latest Wolverine movie was nearing its launch date, the train station near my workplace had this huge poster of Wolverine and his biceps. actually i would be more than gratified if it was just Hugh Jackman's biceps on the movie poster alone. but point is, it features Hugh Jackman on the front of the movie poster together with the rest of mutants featured in the movie (Sabertooth, Gambit, et cetera).

the poster in question lies right smack in front of the ticket barrier. so much so that whenever i wanted to tap my transit card to get through the barrier, i would usually fluster at the sight of Jackman and his 'come hither' look. well, it's not exactly 'come hither' per se given that Jackman is baring his claws and all, but i swear, the body says otherwise.

'What? Me?' i would say in my imaginary conversations with him on my permanent night shift days. of course, that would be the point when i walk right smack into the ticket barrier, realizing that i have been tapping my transit card on every other place on the barrier other than the card responder. 'I'm okay! I'm okay!' i would say to everyone else, especially to Wolverine.

truth be told however, the pertinent parallels between both the mutant and the gay community never cease to be a source of fascination for the latter. you have a group of seemingly talented individuals, gited even. these people are really good at whatever they are doing. successful, good-looking and most of the them perhaps well-chiselled. they seem like average joes on the surface. but in reality, they have a big secret to hide from the public. if the public knew them for what they really are, some may come to be ostracized. others may be willingly accepted, but perhaps with queer little looks on their faces.

this queer liitle awkward look is one that i've come to be familiar with in my years of telling people that i am gay. and i'm sure most gay people can relate to his. you tell someone that you think would embrace your sexuality with open arms, if not at least without the clenched fist. and the first thing they give you in this weird look on their face that speaks of many things - betrayal or perhaps digust.

the first person whom i ever came out to was a classmate whom i was infatuated with. he was funny and the class joker. and you know how class jokers crave attention. he ended up telling the whole class which really put me off for quite a while. i wasn't ostracized but i got the weird look for the rest of the year. the next person whom i came out to was an outspoken, plus-sized girl who was unabashed about her stand on human rights in its many forms. i really liked her because by just standing beside her for five minutes, you became cleverer already. she always had something good to say that you could accompany with a smirk. it could be a theory, a possiblity a rheteorical question. it helps that she's from the debate team. i told her after we graduated from secondary school in a letter, with which she later replied that given that i knew her stand on such issues, i should have told her so earlier. this encouraged me to tell more people.

and so i told my best friend from secondary school, Sunanthar. she gave me the weird look as well, but i guess she eventually came to embrace it given her studies and work in mass communications and media. the bunch of people that i hung out with in drama club during the nursing school days also came to know eventually. they saw how my ex-boyfriend and i would suspiciously hang around each other for no apparent reason (other than to have sex in school). it was all of this life experience with trying to out myself and slowly leaking the fact that i am gay, that i realized people generally don't take the news too well. well, not if you throw the whole stack of pink documents incriminating yourself out of the blue.

my parents are one such example. they didn't come to know about my sexuality through direct revelation from me. traces of porn that i left behind in the family computer back then, no interest in girls, my obsession for collecting porn in floppy disks (that was way before the existence of external hard disk drives) led them to suspicions. but what really gave me away was one fine day when they came home early one fine day during a Sunday rendezvous with my ex. what gave me away was that my boxers were worn inverted - the label could be seen prominent right under my navel. many years of reprimanding through the bible later, they eventually reached a certain tolerance. i don't tell them about my gay life and they don't ask me anything about it. don't ask, don't tell. as simple as that.

and so, it is through all this limited life experience that i've come up with a set of guidelines for myself when it comes to a social context and whether i should out myself:

1) i really do care about these people enough to want to let them know.

2) these people must have had prior exposure to some form of gay people.

3) if they have not had prior exposure, they must have had a lot of sex (i'm not sure why, but these people seem to take it better than most others).

4) no prudes.

5) no Christians.

6) not at work.

7) ostracized people seem to take it better as well. under-dogs and all that.

in case you think that i'm one of those weird people who write motivational sentences on post-it pads and stick them on my walls, let my clarify that these are guidelines that i keep in my head. i'm thinking that the homosexuality nature of having to hide so many things in life has really coloured my way of life. i keep everything in my head.

for fear of writing something in a pink pen that may poke a hole in my blue way of life.


Pangkeng and i have been working together for so long that there's nothing much about him that i don't know. or even if there's something about him that i don't know, it's most likely he thinks that it's not relevent to our friendship. now that i've got all my bases covered (phew!), let me just tell you that if you asked me a decade back who my best friend would be, the last person in mind would most definitely be a ganster/hooligan (an Ah Beng in local context) sort of chracters. our friendship seems to work for some strange reason. maybe it's becuase we are colleagues. or maybe we just seem to share the same interests - good food, cheap beer, great music - all in the pursuit of leisure. he inspired me to download and entire list of 90s music that we listened through our schooling days (boybands included) whilst i returned the favour with Ayn Rand (The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged). we bounce interests of each other and we benefit greatly from it.

when it comes to my private life though, i wasn't that inclined to share much about the colourful ex bits. well okay, i do. but i convert all the Johns to Joannas, reassign the orifices i stick my wad into, and generally change the masculine to feminine. at that particular point of time, i was dating an ex whom i did call Charissa. for some strange reason, i've always wanted to date any girl named Charissa. i'm thinking i owe this to watching too many episodes of The O.C. (ALA Marissa). but since i wouldn't even entertain the prospect of a girlfriend, i made with the calling of my ex, Charissa. this was apparently, ex. no. 5. Charissa, was someone that i would frequently tell Kegal Laughs, The Fiddy Cent Model and Pangkeng about during our course of work during the night shifts. it makes me sorely uncomfortable keeping secrets from friends, but i managed to convince myself that it was for a greater good. well, at least my greater good.

so you could imagine how i felt one fine day when The Fiddy Cent Model quickly hurried me to a cigarette break, bursting with news that was 'about Pangkeng and The Porcelain Cleavage (Pangkeng's long-time love interest who had vanished from the ward under administrative pretext). someone at the work place told Kegal Laughs who eventually told The Fiddy Cent Model that (allow me to take a breath)... The Porcelain Cleavage was sighted taking the elevator closest to the maternity ward with a breat pump (i typed breast bump by accident - insert frat boy laugh hur hur) in hand. this other colleague of ours took the same elevator as her and told her 'not to tell anyone what you saw'. i would like to say that she then proceeded to slide a slender finger across her neck with a menacing look on her face, but then, the Porcelain Cleavage just left it at that.

the girls obviously couldn't keep something as juicy as this to themselves. besides, the particular piece of news was of direct relevance to us, after all, it's Pangkeng's girl we're talking about. indeed, intense discussion were carried out throughout the course of that night shift. the facts were that there's a mother involved. there's a baby involved. and it doesn't take a genius to figure out the missing part of the equation - Who's the father? (cue dramatic and suspenseful music). that's one nagging question, the other would be - Is Pangkeng the father? (cue even more dramatic and suspense-laden music)

Pangkeng would have most definitely told me about Porcelain Cleavage's baby if he knew. and though i couldn't really confirm whether he knew, it was through logical assumption to guess that he was being kept in the dark about the whole thing. Porcelain Cleavage after all was seeing three prospective men at that point of time. though it was just a haunch, i had the feeling that Pangkeng wasn't the father.

just for the heck of it, we also came up with a timeline of sorts to give the events a certain chronological order and also to plan our budgets for birthday parties in the future. the only thing left was to figure out when the baby's birthday was. The Fiddy Cent Model had an ingenius idea for this. my hospital apparently, has an SAP application that keeps a census of all patients who have stayed or are currently residing in the hospital. a quick name search of Porcelain Cleavage's real name revealed - 'D/O Porcelain Cleavage' (daughter/of).

'Why is it that she still doesn't have a name?' Kegal Laughs asked.

another haunch in my gut, but it was pretty easy to figure this one out. 'she's a single mom,' i said with a million dollar smirk that said 'oh yeah! i got this one!'.

naming a child for most part, is always a two person thing. daddy bounces ideas off mom. mom would be there to veto most of the ludicrous names like Crystal (sounds like a prostitute), Chantel (sounds like a street worker) or Cherry (ditto). in the end, mom would come up with her own list of names, whitte them down to two and pick one. daddy merely just plays a supporting role with various nods of approval and look of disdain, by the time mommy's water bag bursts, the baby would be named. in this particular equation however, there isn't a daddy. so baby wasn't named. this entire naming thing was a theory, however. for all we know, babies in the system don't have their real names displayed. either way, it was a gut feeling that she was a single mom.

if you asked me, it was actually quite a burden keeping a piece of information that one's best mate should know. yet at the same time, i knew that it would really tear Pangkeng to bit to hear about it. but i figured that it was a matter of sooner or later. and anyways, better to hear it from good friends rather than colleagues. sooner or later, might as well be sooner right? it was thus that i started planning a dinner outing with a night of revelations thrown in.


the whole thing happened at a jazz bar. it was one of those places that was al fresco, had plenty of smoking tables, expats here and there with their foreign wives or local girlfriends, moderately-priced beer and of course, live jazz. it was humid, but the atmosphere was truly warm in terms of company. the staff were really efficient and in good company, it was really the place for an offloading of secrets.

Pangkeng and i met together before the girls. we had already prepared Pangkeng on that particular morning, stating that we had something important to reveal to him that particular night. the girls had a netball practice prior to the jazz bar dinner. so the boys decided to have dinner and drinks first. it was during that dinner and drinks that i decided to whip out a photo of Charissa and me and show it to Pangkeng. i didn't know why i did it. perhaps to cushion the blow that Pangkeng was about to receive later. or maybe i was bursting with my own telling.

i slid the polaroid of my ex and me across the table and said, 'this is the Charissa whom i've been talking about for so long.'

'fucking hell....' was the first thing Pangkeng said. i was crouched and cowering in a fetal position, half-expecting a punch in the face. but hearing Pangkeng, i knew that it was more or less a green light.

'anyways, i knew long ago already lor!' was the second thing Pangkeng said. he proceeded to explain about my blog, something which i have never ever brought up within a working context. apparently, a lot of people gay and non-gay read this blog. and it's somewhat poking a big pink hole in my professional life. not that anyone actually brings it up to me directly. but still, people know. whether this blog is a boon or a bane, i've yet to actually affirm that.

either way, it wasn't till about an hour later that the girls arrived and we broke the news about Procelain Cleavage to Pangkeng. suffice to say, his response was awfully quiet. like i said, hearing aobut a girl that he really likes becoming a single mom was something that would really tear him up. we kept asking questions to confirm certain truths and assumptions about the whole matter. but Pangkeng obviously didn't have his heart in it. he kept giving one-worded answers and responses. i'm not sure if the girls could tell because they kept pressing him with questions.

and that was when i decided to divert the whole topic so as to alleviate Pangkeng's burden. i whipped out my wallet once again and did the polaroid sliding across the table thing. 'This is Charissa...' i began.

the girls both lit a cigarette in response.


it's almost half a year now since the whole revelation and many things have happened. i broke off with Charissa. Pangkeng and Porcelain Cleavage are attached. baby Vera is now nearly a year old (just a fortnight away). Kegal Laughs is getting married (next week). and most importantly, the colleagues are pretty accepting when it comes to me. the strange thing about life is that all the secrets that you keep pretty much lead to assumptions in the minds of others.

and it's these assumptions that lead to perhaps falling outs, grieviences and other moments of misery.

---

(this story happened towards the end of 2008 and it has been hibernating, like many other stories that i have, for quite some time. i was waiting for the cat to be out of the bag, and since almost everything in this story is common knowledge now, it should and ought and will be told)

everybody loves a little gossip now and then. i mean, in all honesty, even the purest of heart loves to listen to the foulest of deeds.

turth be told, even if you are not a person who really indulges in the actual exchange of malicious information about others, and take great Scahdenfrude in doing so, one would naturally be most curious about it. why is she always so cranky in the morning? why does she always talk with her teeth clenched and dilated pupils? you mean he's the one who left the urine stains on the toiletbowl? you really think her husband left her for another man? with the exception of the last one, these are just some prime examples of gossip that are constantly being whispered in hushed tones around my workplace. the last one was just inspired by a piece of porn i watched recently - Private Man #7 - Desperate Househusbands (i am not making this up!).

ironically, gossip is sometimes really, a case of art imitating life. if you've watched enough American drama serials and work in a corporate environment, you would generally know how the exchange of gossip is being carried out. office rats in general, do it in the pantry, the photocopying room or mayhaps, the unisex toilets. soldiers do it in their barracks and the jungle and through a war. engineers do it beside their... oh, i don't know... power tools and pipes and humming industrial machines.

well, nurses however are of a slightly different breed. we most certainly don't have a photocopying room stacked full of toner and A4 paper (we survive on a lot of pre-printed pamphlets, forms and booklets). we don't have a pantry to call our own because the hospital decrees that it belongs to the patient (in fact, they call it 'The Patient's Pantry'). we do have a tea room though, that smells of something sour combined with an essence of death and decay (people of various cultures keeping foods in the fridge for too extensive a period of time... say, 2-3 days). what we do have, is a unisex toilet. you can often hear people trading secret from the corridor outside my work place's unisex toilet. and as a proud owner of masculine genitalia, i find that each time i enter the toilet, the women fall into a hushed silence or an exaggerated greeting. i highly doubt that it has to do with the size of my genitalia, come to think of it.

so other than the unisex toilets, where do nurses do it then? you see those curtains hanging beside your loved one's hospital bed? yeap, nurses do it behind closed curtains. while doing nursing-related procedures and routines, no less. i, for one, have personally listened to a colleague complaining about her husband while changing diapers for a patient. gossip, as you can see, is most certainly a dirty business in more ways than one.

from a guy's perspective, working in a female-orientated environment, one just can't help but be constantly bombarded by a barrage of information of what goes in the ward daily. the catfights, the medication errors, the major brouhahas, the moments of idiocy and a million little pieces of other gossipy paraphernalia - all usually traded in between shifts like a score card. i don't often get these bits of information because i'm always all frowny-faced and irritated at the start of my night shifts. Kegal Laughs and The Fiddy Cent Model are different though. on days when they are not menstruating, they are usually chirpy and fresh-faced, looking very much alive. so they always get all the gossip. not that it matters much to me, because all their gossip always ends up with me.

here's the thing about gossip that's really curious. gossip is somewhat like a curse. once someone hears a iece of gossip, the onus falls upon the receiver to technically tell someone else. it is an open secret that gossip has to be spread like wildfire or marmalade. everyone knows that it's usually wrong to do it, and yet, we still do. in a strange way, i think that i'm blessed in the sense that i don't find myself having the need to tell anyone else about whatever i hear at work. okay, maybe i do tell whatever i've learned at work to people outside of work. but in all honesty, gossip at work simple gives me a different perspective of what i perceive certain individuals to be. and yes, perhaps a little leverage over others.

another thing about myself that i discovered about gossip is that for some strange reason, people just tend to tell me things. not at work of course, where i'm mostly as irritated and angry as the bull on the Red Bull logo. but on a social level, i realized that all i have to do is put on a look of aloofness, light up a cigarette and give occasional grunts and nods of affirmation, and people just naturally dole out the fat. what made me come to this conclusion was actually an overnight session with a sex buddy in a local chain of cheap 'transit rate' (2 hours for $30, $10 for each hour thereafter) motels. no glowing neon lights of coconut trees and bikini women, but they do have ESPN, HBO and a free toothbrush. this sex buddy of mine no longer keeps contact with me. okay, he does, but somehow i don't find myself that keen for random sex these days.

anyways, sex buddy and me are usually the $50 sort ($30 + 2 hours x $10). we have sex, smoke cigarettes, consume maybe a vowel (not A, O or U) or two, watch a bit of cable or whatever's showing on TV, discuss about our lives and then proceed on to have more sex. it's usually during the in-betweens that we start sharing stuff and catching up on each other's happenings. and the thing about this particular sex buddy is that he's pretty well-informed about the gay community. he knows which famous guy is bonking with which other toyboy, which famous singer prior to becoming famous was actually for rent, which famous actor is gay and has had plastic surgery done and many other pieces of gossip that can really indict people in the eyes of the law.

it was one fine day though (or more appropriately, one fine night), many months ago, that i decided to ask him out of curiosity, 'Why do you tell me these things? i mean, it's not like i am very familiar with the gay circle and it's actually highly scandalous stuff that you are telling me.'

he did this funny head action that they he always does. it looks like a cross between the ghost in Ju-On (Korean horror movie) and someone thinking really pensive thoughts. actually, i do have the word - 'cocked', as in he 'cocked' his head. but frankly speaking, i don't really like to use the word 'cock' because i mainly use it only when i'm having sex, as in, 'suck on my (insert word)' or 'sit on my (insert word)'. but for general understanding, he did cock his head, which actually makes a pretty good substitute for 'blowjob'. hur hur. but i digress.

'well, i'm thinking that you actually give people that certain sense of trustworthiness. i can't exactly place a finger on it. but you are not exactly affected by the mainstream,' he paused for a moment and now he cocked his head to the other side. if you see the number of times he cocks his head the entire night, you would think that he would need a cervical collar just to keep the neck in proper place. 'this counter-culture nature of yours just sorta makes you immune to this... well, inherent need for gay people to gossip.'

i remember thinking at that point of time whether this was true. i also remember thinking of having sex again.

'so, in other words, i make a good receptacle for gossip?'

'hmmm... *cock*,' he pondered, '*cock*, yes i would say so'.

'well...' i took a last puff of my menthol lights and extinguished it into the all-too-familiar porcelain that cup that i always used as a make-shift ash tray in this particular chain of motels. 'allow me to see whether you make a good receptacle for this as well then...'

*cock*

--

a colleague of ours (Kegal Laughs, Pangkeng, The Fiddy Cent Model) whom Pangkeng really loves to bits was sent to the administrative department under orders of senior management. well, at least that was the official story that the supervisors let leak to us. and with enough exposure in the working world, one would know that a colleague would never be suddenly 'upped' from a workplace without any rhyme or reason. but at that point of time, i didn't really think on it (camera zooms forward slightly), pray on it (camera zoom) or sleep on it (last camera zoom), to quote from Boston Legal.

now Pangkeng likes a lot of girls. in fact, he treats every woman with a certain sense of respect that many people just can't see. the respect in question of course, is apparently coated with a lot of lewd jokes and name-calling. for example, he calls a 62-year old Patient-care Assistant with arthritis and heart problems, 'Hot Mama'. he initiated the 'squeeze-your-boobs-for-us' campaign whereby if we night shift boys get bored at work, we get Kegal Laughs and The Fiddy Cent Model to squeeze their boobs for laughs. in actual truth, it's all in the name of harmless fun and he means well. this girl though, she's apparently different.

she's the type of girl that you find in those sappy Taiwanese dramas about love and romance and metrosexuals acted by suspiciously gay men. she's definitely pretty. she's always decked in shorts and a v-neck. and she's very blessed with gigantic boobs, if not at least big. if my blog were an ongoing drama series, i would hire people to turn on electric fan to flow in her direction whenever she enters a room. her hair would fly in all sorts of choreographed directions. of course, so would her skirt. but like i said, she's always wearing shorts. so pretty is she that i sometimes think of her as 'the face of facial wash'. if they ever developed a clevage whitening lotion (i'm sure they must have something like that in the market), hers would be the face (or more appropriately, the chest) of it.

as i mentioned, Pangkeng apparently, has always had a thing for her. Pangkeng mainly being a 'boobs' man, makes me think that it's mostly the v-neck and its contents that presents a certain allure to him. but he usually tells me otherwise.

'she's just very nice to me lor...' Pangkeng said when i once asked him in between a cigarette break at work, why he adored her so much.

Singaporeans seems to define a lot of things as 'nice'. Sex is nice. Coffee is nice. Dogs are nice. Mice are nice. anything indescribably favourable to a person seems to put defined as 'nice'. having always had a need to put indescribable things to words, i therefore decided i just had to probe further. 'i'm sure many other people in this world are equally nice as well,' i paused to exhale, 'but you have to tell me what else about her makes you like her. her character, the small little things she does, the big big things she has on her chest? please, anything but nice.'

and here's the thing about Pangkeng. he's not exactly good with words other than expletives, lewd vocabulary and dialects. so he was most certainly stumped for a moment. two puffs of his Marlboro Lights and silence ensued.

he finally said, 'i think it's mainly because she likes me for who and what i am'.

if you've seen Pangkeng before, you would most definitely know that he's nowhere near good-looking. but like i said before, you need to have worked with him for at least two shifts before you realize that deep beneath all that physical derelict, there's really a heart of gold. having worked for practically two years with Pangkeng with him permenently being my junior and carrying out all the menial tasks that i burden him with, he has never as so much said no. well, okay give and take a few expletives. but it's all just a matter of expression for him. he has had so much contact with patients that they always end up telling him stuff like 'if you ever have need of (insert random service), just call me with this number on the name card'. he has been offered handphone sales at cost price, job offers, discounts at restaurants and litigation services. in fact, just about two months ago, a lawyer offered to write up his will, sans legal fees.

'Divorce leh?' Pangkeng asked.

'half-price for you,' the lawyer replied with a deep chortle.

all that said, prior to her transfer to the administrative department, Pangkeng and Facial Wash Face were so-called 'dating'. they did courtship-ish activities such as walks in the park, drinks at coffee outlets, holding hands in movie theatres and the like. at that point of time however, Facial Wash Face was also simultaneously seeing two other men. not that there's anything technically wrong about that as she never promised these guys anything. and furthermore, she explicitly told these guys about the presence of the other potential men. my guess was that there was nothing in these men as yet, that would tip her decision towards commitment at that point of time.

so you can imagine how big the blow it must have been when Pangkeng heard that Facial Wash Face was suddenly trasnferred to administration. admittedly, the only thing that really cushioned the blow was the fact that she apparently cut contact with her prior to the transfer. she never replied his text messages, never picked up phone calls. it reminds me of Romeo when we first see him in the play, 'private in his chambers pens himself, shuts up windows, locks far daylight out, and makes himself an artificial night'. Pangkeng had indeed withdrawn into his private emotional chambers. no amount of boob self-squeezing (from the girls) and light brushing of his nipple (on my part - he always likes that, it's like charity to me) could rescue him from the darkness that he had perhaps created for himself.

our next encounter with her wasn't till several months later. time has definitely healed wounds. but it takes no more than a mere paper cut to burst open when took months to mend. we bumped into Facial Wash Face somewhere in June or July last year, she, on her way to work while we, back from work. decked in a white dress and blouse, she looked really bloated. fat, actually. but it's rude to call people fat. and you're liable to strung up in a litigation battle. the curious thing though, was that she was holding a huge piece of newspaper over her torso. i don't know whether it was ironic or fat's... i mean, fate's (hur hur) idea of a joke, but there was an equally huge slimming agency ad right smack in front of the portion of the newspaper that we could see. i don't know if the rest of my gang noticed it, but it was the kind of thing that brought a smirk to my face.

for Pangkeng though, it was nowhere close to being a positive encounter for him. i thought whether Pangkeng upon seeing her that bloated, was the type that went for superficials. but i chided myself, thinking again about what he mentioned to me with regards to acceptance on her part for what he truly was. Pangkeng remained quiet for the rest of the day.

(it's a bit wordy, so i'll post part two this coming Saturday)

---

i've always found that you can tell a lot about people by asking how they spend their Sundays. some people buy groceries. some spend it catching up over brunch. some try to recuperate from Saturday night parties while others are preparing for Sunday night parties. some wake up to breakfast in bed made by a loved one, while others wake up realizing that the one that they made love to has the face of breakfast in bed gone wrong. people like me though, simply find myself thinking up of ways to facilitate sleep in church.

Sunday mornings for me, have never really been my cup of tea. mainly because of church. 'it's only two hours every Sunday, can't you just make the effort?' my father would always lament. true, it's two hours. but time is relative as Einstein once said. two hours of doing things that i have absolutely no interest in other than trying my best to sleep. there was a period of time when i used to hideout in the church toilet, reading comics or playing with my Gameboy till the congregationg started to sing the benediction. unfortunately, my father found out about that one fine day and forced me to sit with him and mother from then on.

so i started to aim for excuses to not even set foot in church. before i went into the permanent night shifts, i would always roster myself for Sunday morning shifts. and this was technically done with the church's blessing even, what with the corporate prayers always mentioning 'people who have to work today, may God give them the strength and serenity to pull through a day's labour'. of course, this being a game of wits with my father, was never ever a bed of roses. eventually, father made the suggestion of attending EVENING services. and for a period of time, that meant going to work at 5am in the morning, finishing at 3.15pm, reaching home at 4.30pm and going to church again at 5pm.

these days, my father doesn't really harp over the fact that i make up flimsy excuses to skip church. maybe he has resigned to the fact that we'll be go different directions in the after life. or maybe he would rather hide the fact that he has a gay son who smokes, wears clothes that are a little to tight for Christianity, and has hair the colour of Satan. or maybe it's just me trying my best to sleep on the Sabbath in church.

after all, the Big Guy up there did declare the Sabbath as the day of rest, no?


as you might already know from previous blog posts, Sunday evenings are always entertaining dinners with the paternal family. there would be the occasional picnic at the Chinese Gardens where the only thing remotely Chinese are the Chinese people wandering around looking for anything that's remotely Chinese (give and take, there's a lone pagoda in the gardens that looks seriously infested with mosquitoes and a musty-smelling imperial gate that serves as an excuse for an oriental-inspired garden).

on more jazzed-up occasions, the family would head to random family-themed restaurants in the western vicinity of Singapore and pig out. when i think about it actually, we are quite possibly the reason why restaurants like these declare their dishes to be 'family favourites'. it fosters a sense of pseudo-kinship and many other random adjectives to describe a general being of closeness to one another.

either way, Sunday dinners in my life are mostly with the relatives, trying my very best to avoid their pesky reminders that as the eldest grandson, i ought to be the first in line to walk the marriage aisle and have little Jonathan Jrs. for my grandparents to entertain themselves with. this is also why Sundays are the only days when i am desperately looking for wine (the only accepted drink with alcoholic content within my paternal family's guarded morals) to help speed up the excruciating process.

we're not rich folks, my paternal family. thus the average Sunday evening dinner would be done at a random relatives place on a weekly rotational basis amongst the various relatives. for some reason, it's always the same type of food at the same relatives place. to begin with, there's my grandmother's place where my gruff, beer-guzzling grandfather would whip up traditional food like soup noodles. it's made up of soup and no surprises here, noodles. the soups is quite the fascinating chicken broth strewn with vegetables and weekday leftovers. it looks and tastes a bit like a culinary casulaty. i didn't have a word to describe this infernal creation when i was much younger. it wasn't until i started reading Dickens' Oliver Twist and discovered 'gruel' (albeit noodles instead of the usual rice or cereals or oats), when everything fell in place. many years down the road, the only reason why i still consume my grandfather's soup noodles i simply because he's the only other person in the family to ingest beer on quite a regular basis. that, and the fact that he has tattoos and once worked as a spirit medium to put my aunties and father through school. respect.

and then there's my father's eldest sister who has quite the interesting place in Bishan. they are what i've always found to be a bizarre family. father's a building contractor. mother's a Mandarin tutor who ensured that every single grandson in the family got at least a 'B' in their mother tongue studies (i got a B3 for my GCSE 'O' levels, thanks to her). son's currently serving his national service while the daughter's an architecture undergrad and the only one whom i can talk art and pop cultural references with.

it is evident from their home that they really like art. an avante-garde painting in the living depicts there people on a bench in some bizarre cubism form. kitsch tribal masks of a face sticking out a tongue, a face with its eyes closed and an indescribable face that prolly says 'i'm sorry for the face but i just had some noodle soup' (though in actual truth, all of those faces could possibly say that as well). a random vase. a random picture. a huge ass modernist mirror in the living room that seems to make the house just that little bigger. the food would usually be anything ranging from Thai to Korean to Japanese to local fare. i always feel like there's something going on at that place, just that i can't place my finger on what it is. metaphorical and literally speaking of course, because the art that they own looks really expensive and fragile.

and there's my favourite place belong to my Robert Kiyosaki of an Uncle where they would always serve up the same coconut rice with random dishes of fried finger foods. they live in this cramped three-roomed condominium apartment in the suburbs of Singapore which they got out of reason to close proximity to my grandparents. them grandparents served as convenient day care for my cousins who are currently primary schooling. it's a really intimate setting, what with the lush orangey lighting, nineteen degrees air-conditioning and uber-plush designer sofas.

since there are only five sofa seats in the entire house, most of the relatives will end up sitting on the chilly marble flooring. despite the entire place being really cosy and all, there's still this underground fight going on for seats that everyone does in true 'forbidden city' style of political assassination and espionage. once someone evacuates a seat, everyone suddenly moves in for the kill like ninjas in the dark of the orangey-lighting night. quite possibly because it's either your ass on the plush designer chair or plush designer floor. and like i always say, God made the buttocks with chairs in mind. if it were up to me, i would make chairs with buttocks in mind (hur hur!).

none the less, dinner at the condominium would always be filled with vivid stories of my pre-school cousins' (John and Grace) antics. John whom some of you might recall, was named after me. and it's through these stories that my Uncle of a Robert Kiyosaki's wife would tell, that i start to think that he's in a lot of ways like me when i was in primary school. he's whiny, he cries a lot, he gets bullied often, he has a bad haircut and he always has a gameboy or a book in tow. and he is crazy about High School Musical. i've always liked visiting their condominium because it's like reading an entire collection of Baby Blue comics, except that i do it under orangey-lighiting, chilly air-conditioning and my l33t ninja ass on chair.

and then well.... there's my place which nobody really enjoys. it's a cramped government-built housing apartment that is bordering on being sterile and aseptic, thanks to my mother's OCD for cleanliness. my home is practically like a safe haven of hygiene when you compare it to the general state of the estate outside of my home. litter is strewn everywhere. you see a disused sofa in the corner, used condoms and cigarette butts on the corridor, dying plants outside apartments and many other various bric-a-brac that basically deters people from visiting.

we are prolly as entertaining as a visit to an elderly retirement home. we don't subscribe to cable. we don't have exciting DVD collections (i do actually, but it's mainly drama serials, arthouse flicks and porn). we don't have high-definition television. we don't have exciting stories to tell ('And did i tell you about the time i walked in on my son having sex with another guy...'). we have excellent food cooked by my mother (in my humble yet biased opinion), but it's quite an acquired taste (cold salad pasta). we actually do have those orangey lightings that make people feel as comfortable as hotel rooms. admittedly though, i'm the only person who uses it when i invite strange foreign men back for a good time. then again, i rarely invite these strange foreign men back even, preferring 'your place' or 'transit rates are thirty bucks for two hours'. for some reason, we always deck our guests in ghostly white lighting and in cramped quarters.

i don't entertain the relatives for fear of those pesky girlfriend questions. and besides, we don't have time to entertain because my brother and i would always be in the kitchen working at our individual stations as Chef de Partie under the tyranny of my Chef de Cuisine of a mother. 'no no NO! you don't slice carrots that way!' she would always scream before proceeding to julienne 7/8 of the carrots herself, leaving me with the head of the carrot to dispose of.

that of course, leaves the father with the job of the Maître d' and provider of entertainment for the evening. it used to be a gracious thing for my father. he would pour drinks, make small talk with the various relatives and attempt to chastise the relatives in a polite way for whatever evils they have succumbed to for the week. it used to be much more prominent during a phase my father went through when he acted as though as his home was the source where all goodness emanated from. thank the goodness that emanated from the source that those days are over.

these days, it's DVD entertainment from our local movie rental. kiddy movies, family movies, anything from Pixar, Disney or Dreamworks. you name it, we prolly have watched it. however, it was with last week's family gathering at my home, that my father apparently upped the ante by introducing the paternal family to home made videos. my father is quite the gadget freak. he owns practically everything electronically-cool from a Macbook to an iPhone to the standard digital camera to a video camera to a DVD recorder to.... okay lah. my whole family is gadget-crazy. my father, mother, brother and me all own iPhones.

still, it's because of the Macbook that my father's creative juices started flowing like the source of goodness. my father managed to single-handedly create a rather professional-looking video of my brother's basic military training graduation parade (in local terms, POP) using the Macbook. it was actually quite good, albeit interspersed with clashing Richard Clayderman music. macho photoshots of my brother with his other camp mates accompanied the irritating tune of Ballade pour Adeline. i don't know if it's just me but Richard Clayderman music always makes me want to go have a tinkle. maybe it's the fact that the only places where i hear it these days are mainly in the lifts or the toilets. the general response to the video though, was that it actually looked quite professional. which basically inspired my father to further heights and a really bizarre conversation which my father and i had later that night.

it was while stacking up the guest chairs together that my father started. 'i hope you don't feel that we love you any lesser just because i did the video for your brother, okay?'

we seldom have conversations like that and i seriously dislike having such conversations. i mean, we don't even touch each other as father and son and now we are talking about sibling jealousy? the truth of the reality was that the video had about as much effect on me as scissors against rock. it's just a family video.

'not really, i would rather have appeared in porn' was the acerbic reply that the sarcastic monster in me wanted to reply and laugh over. but he said it with such seriousness that i felt really bad for actually thinking of such a reply. thus i decided to go with the politically-correct answer, 'i'm didn't think of it as that way,' i replied as i lifted the stack of wooden Ikea guest chairs. 'in fact, feel free to make a video of my POP if you want to.' which i am obviously regretting now.

it was a little peace offering to show that all was cool between us as father and son. except, the only problem was that most of my army photos were not exactly the stuff that you would show your family over dinner. 'okay this is the photo of me in a blonde wig when i dragged for an army function' or 'this is when a bunch of army friends and me in bathrobes acting like we were caught in bed, no no no... it was just a one night thing that happened after too many drinks at the local
bar and besides, we used protection'. after rummaging through my collection of army photos. i only found about twenty that i could safely hand over to my father for proper family entertainment purposes.

it's not a lot. but hey.... Richard Clayderman songs never make people stay for long.

---

'God spoke to me today!' is one sentence that you do not want to be seen shouting along the streets. in fact, the only places where i think one can afford to do so without risking being put into an asylum is at an evangelical meeting or some other place of religious purpose. you see, throughout the history of mankind, humanity has learnt that God usually speaks only to a select few. they include the insane, people on drugs, or people who are simply trying to find a substantial reason to commit mass murder, terrorism, or make a quick buck. of course, that still doesn't stop the multitude from claiming that the almighty creator (or some other higher entity of equal stature) hath thus spoken to them.

Benjamin Folds (better known as Ben Folds) once wrote a song (Not The Same) which features a guy who climbed up a tree while tripping on acid. the next day, he came down saying that God spoke to him while he was up in the tree. he became a born-again Christian since then. then there's Diane Duyser who was touched by the 'holy toast' when she took a bite into a homemade sandwich in 1984 and realized that it had an effigy of the Virgin Mary on it. in 2004, it still hadn't grown mouldy and in fact, she sold it for $28,000 via e-bay^1-2. and as if that wasn't enough, George Bush in 2004 declared to a group of 60 Amish in Pennsylvania, that 'God speaks through me.'³ okay okay, to be fair, the whole phrase that he actually said was 'I trust God speaks through me. Without that I couldn't do my job.'⁴ which brings about the question... 'what job?' either there's something seriously wrong in the communication process or there's something wrong with the listener. a point of irony worth noting would be that God incidentally spoke to Moses through a burning bush in a desert. burning BUSH (hur hur!).

so everyone seems to be hearing or seeing or even eating the voice of God and other God-associated phenomena these days, but i still don't see the light of it. or in this case, 'hear' the voice of God. one of the reasons why i still can't wholeheartedly bring myself to Christianity (despite having been brought up in a Christian home for practically twenty years), is this refusal to believe that God is about as effective as the Bush administration when it comes to global affairs. everything happens for a reason, yes we get that overused point. the wars, the famines, the earthquakes, the droughts, the rise of the Superbugs, the increasing oil prices, ERP increments, all this happens for a darn good reason which we mere mortals just can't see the light of. it would be much appreciated though, if God would actually give a decent explanation as to why shit happens in this world. like a memorandum or a circular or some sort ('Okay okay, i sneezed while i was trying to fix the damn tectonic plates, everyone affected by it has their loved ones restored to life and gets a free beach house in a country of their choice').

this actually makes me contemplate whether the world would be a better place if God actually spoke to us via some method of communications. for one, we would have a hundred lesser versions of the Bible to squabble over. we wouldn't have to scrutinize the scriptures for the exact meaning of things. we wouldn't have so many different denominations believing in the same God yet, having different beliefs. but then again, humanity is equally screwed up as proven through history. i mean, look at the Isrealites that Moses brought out into the Wilderness for forty years. they had a substantially better system of communications with God⁵. most items of concern went via Moses who spoke and interceded on their behalf. they whined, they complained and they had little faith that God would actually lead them into the Promised Land. yet God accommodated with all their bull. it's actually almost like Singapore. we're 43 this coming 9th of August and still a nation of whiners and complainers. just look at our local newspaper forums.

so mayhaps a direct communicative link to God might not be that great an idea after all. given the thousands of implications that could prolly exist only in an alternative reality, we're better off figuring out why God does the things He does.

after all, what is a faith, without faith?


Reference List

1. Woman 'blessed by the holy toast'. (2004, Nov 17). Retrieved 1st August, 2008, from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4019295.stm

2. Gilin, E. (2004). Your Own Personal Jesus Toast. Retrieved 1st August, 2008, from http://blacktable.com/gillin041202.htm

3. Bush says "God Speaks Through Me" But what does he really mean?. (n. d.). Retrieved 1st August, 2008, from http://www.irregulartimes.com/godspeaksthroughme.html

4. Kamen, A. (2005, October 14). George W. Bush and the G-Word. Retrieved August 1st, 2008 from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/13/AR2005101301688.html

5. Moses and the Wilderness. (n. d.). Retrieved 2nd August, 2008, from http://bibletime.com/theory/history/moses/

6. Oermann, M. (1999). Developing and Scoring Essay Tests, Nurse Educator. 24(2), 29-32.

(it's a long and wordy post. but thanks for reading my boring experience)

---

humblest apologies for the lack of posts for nearly a month. and believe you me, i've been trying. there are a lot of drafts drafting about in the deserted realms of my blog at the moment. and all of them have a body, it's just that the opening for each blog post is missing. it's practically like a headless zombie fest in my blog at the moment.

you see, the problem is that i'm going through a bout of constipation at the moment. and it's not the type of constipation that comes about when you've had one too many times of anal sex thus resulting in compacted stools at some unreachable end of your bowels. no. it's the type of constipation that afflicts the average writer at the most inconvenient of times. of course, any time for the writer is an inconvenient time. because the writer is constantly able to churn out what his senses tell him into pieces of flowery speech. it's a bit like a pastry chef taking the most mundane of household ingredients and baking them into connoisseur-worthy pieces of food.

apparently, the need to shit or the want to bake pastries (whichever metaphor is more suitable for your palate) is just not that. being bogged down with work and a major hospital audit is not really helping things. even worse is the threat of four nursing essays looming in the background. these assignments have their heads on, but are 'bodyless' so to say. which is way worse than the state of my headless zombie blog posts. but then again, that's no proper excuse for not blogging just as there is no proper excuse for not shitting.

like i always tell my patients who are on a regular dose of morphine or have just been through a minor operation, shitting is one of those things in life (just like coffee and sex), that simply can't, or at least shouldn't be rushed. when it comes, it simply comes. of course, if it's not coming for a month, then one should start seeking medical attention or buying better coffee or changing a sex partner. rushing would just result in something sub-standard and who likes a sub-standard shit? so i'm just waiting to come (i've always wanted to say that on this blog).

and right now, i think i'm coming (there i've said it).

---

i seriously think that the paternal family seem to be running out of ideas when it comes to the sunday gatherings that i mentioned in two blog posts ago. remember those picnic outings with them in the random parks of Singapore? the humongous portable picnic tables and gaudy Spiderman 3 mats from KFC? the ones that were filled with a weird assortment of foods and tetrapack drinks? the ones where everyone would be talking about their families while my father would be doing his Martin Luther thing while my Robert Kiyosaki of an uncle would be reading his books on politics and anything else that would most likely have a '$$$$' sign on its cover? yeap, those sunday gatherings in the park.

these gatherings, much as i find them morbidly embarrassing, are actually quite enjoyable. given the hustle and bustle of the modern day life, one would actually be quite hard-pressed to find a decent and quiet spot to have a picnic. everyone in Singapore it seems, wants a piece of the green on the weekends. and that includes us. but when we do find some nice spot that is actually quiet for once, it's when i start to appreciate these outings the most. and by 'nice spot that is actually quiet', i mean that everyone else in the park is quiet except for my family who makes as much noise as a political rally. other enjoyable things in the park of course include (but are not limited to) - curiously gay rollerbladers, over-dressed joggers, eccentric old people who exercise in the park with their chinky chunky peripherals, et cetera.

so it was with the saturday that had just passed that i found out that my parents were taking out the disposable plastic cups from one kitchen cabinet. now, when the parents start brandishing the disposable plastic cups around the house, it can only mean two things. one, that we're having the relatives over at our place this coming sunday. two, that we're having the picnic gatherings. i decided to go with the former as i remembered the picnic gathering that we had had just about three sundays ago. it was at a relatively desolate spot of green named, 'Chinese Garden'. there were lots of trees, presumably Chinese-looking rocks, Chinese fishes in a broad lake that doubled up as a reservoir and a pagoda at the end of the garden that over-looked the whole estate. it was a place that was really perfect for an evening's jog or a walk in the park. or as one other gay friend so aptly put it, 'a nocturnal rendezvous for them horny homosexuals'.

cruising aside, it was with the assumption that the paternal family were headed for my place the coming sunday that i started the usual routine of hiding all the carnal stuff in my room. and i know i sound like Mary Alice (of Desperate Housewives fame) when i say this, but indeed, every family has their secrets. my dad would start keeping all my Xbox360 games that has 'unchristian'-like covers inside a discreet-looking cabinet beside the television set. i do my part by hiding that bottle of Baileys and the 42 below from sight. my secret stash of gay porn which i usually keep on a shelf just above my bed would have to vanish as well (Cousin: 'Hmmm.... i wonder what CDs you keep in that CD pouch of yours!' *unzips*).

it was on Sunday morning that i discovered the blatant exposure of the Xbox360 games just beside the gaming console itself. on the top most of the stack was Dead Rising which had a cover of the main character in the game bashing a television set into the face of a zombie. to avoid having to show a demonstration of the various other bric-a-brac that the main character can also bash/slice/dice/impale/dismember into/from/on the many many zombies in the game, i decided to start keeping the entire stack of games into that nondescript cupboard as aforementioned. my very observant father of course noticed this and casually mentioned, 'We're not having nai nai (our affectionate term for the grandmother - literally means paternal granny) and all over today, we're going to Chinese Garden instead.'

i started the not-so-tedious process of replacing the empty voids in my room with all my carnal indulgences again.

---

i vividly remember my posting at the Institute of Mental Health during my nursing student days. it was an old building located at one of the most inaccessible parts of Singapore. true, there were buses and taxi and people living in the area, but the nearest train station was about a half-hour's bus ride away. in Singapore where our train stations are constantly expanding their branches and networks, a populated area like this being isolated from a train station is something out of the ordinary.

i recall the whole place giving me the impression of an English countryside. the complex stood proudly on a hill of green, like a grand old dame standing erect and stoically, watching the rest of the world with the eyes of weariness. maybe she's really tired, maybe she's on meds. who knows? what i did know and notice though is that a long winding road led to the main entrance. architecturally and scenery-wise, it looked like the place for a mental patient for a retreat. from a nursing and security perspective, well.... it's a long run down the hill if you're trying to escape. not forgetting the fencing and the security guards armed with tranquillizers. of course, you do realize i'm joking right?

on arrival, the lobby greets you with a very warm and relaxed atmosphere. genially friendly staff are there to guide you to the place you need to go. given that the complex is actually quite big, i daresay that it's a godsend. the aroma of fried noodles from the cafeteria and the scent of antiseptic wafts through the eerily quiet place, giving you the impression of hygiene and good food (which is the only way you want your food to be, no?). i allowed myself a wry smile as i thought to myself, 'i wonder if they serve noodles fried under aseptic technique'.

none the less, i was posted at a general ward which housed a grand total of about thirty male patients. some were truly insane. some were mildly off. some were questionably crazy. it's easy to tell the extremes apart. the really crazy ones and violent ones wore orange t-shirts. the questionably crazy ones wore the blue. but sometimes when i talked to those patients, i found myself wondering if they really deserved an orange after all. not because it's more suitable for their skin tone or it looks better on them, but rather the content in their conversation seems rather.... off+++. for all it's worth, several plastic shields and batons were hung in the nursing offices for emergency uses. and i'm sure those equipment are no respector of t-shirt colour.

one of the patients i talked to was a jovial old man who seemed like a mentally-healthy person. he talked about coffee and he talked about politics. and when he talked about politics, his face had this glowy 'in the zone' kind of look to it. it was obvious that he really enjoyed talking about politics. i wasn't that familiar with the local political scene during those days and i took everything he said at glowy 'in the zone' face-value. i mean, it really made sense and it didn't hurt to actually believe in the governmental conspiracy theory that he was relating about. unfortunately i decided to discard what he said on the second day when i started getting chummy with him. he pulled me to one corner of the psychiatric ward, and he whispered to me in hushed tones.

'Eh boy! since you're so nice to me, i'm going to give you something!'

'And what are you going to give me, uncle?' i replied with a cynical tone.

i was half-expecting some junk or some sweets or something silly. after all, these patients had very few physical possessions to begin with. this was for fear of them injuring others or hurting themselves. it was almost like Prison Break, except that you've got an all-star Asian cast. and the orange and blue t-shirts of course.

'I will give you....' he held his breath as he fumbled in his pockets for the mysterious gift, 'the personal phone number of the president!'

from his pant pocket, he took out a note book. it was the old and ratty type that punters and gamblers used to take down sweepstake numbers, copy down names of winning horses and quite possibly the mobile number of 'Krystal' who offers lapdances at bargain prices. he asked for my pen and proceeded to write down the number on a piece of paper. intermittently, he would look around to see if there were any Internal Security Act Agents standing around to arrest him. he tore the jotted-down number from the punter's notebook and handed it over to me.

'Don't look at it until i've gone away!' he said again in a harsh whisper that was in close proximity to my right ear. unfortunately, my Jackie Chan nose was also in close proximity. i could smell the fetid breath of halitosis as he quickly attempted to mingle with the rest of the patients again.

when i opened the folded piece of paper from the punter's notebook, the following numbers to the president's personal telephone were written down in a somewhat childish and untidy scrawl:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

indeed, government conspiracies. he was really funny though and i enjoyed his company thoroughly.

another highlight of that particular posting in the institute involved a fellow nursing student. this fellow nursing student was the ardent Christian type. the type that says grace before food, the type that drops the name of God intermittently in every two or three sentences. the type that says 'Thank God!' and really means it as 'Thank you God my precious saviour and all that thou hath done for me!' aside from the zelous nature of hers, she's pretty and she has a mole on one cheek that really befitted her. i called her 'The Christian Beauty Spot'. i found her enjoyable to talk to and we shared a lot on how our churches are like and alike.

none the less, Christian Beauty Spot and i were on duty that particular day. she mentioned in the morning that she felt tired and weak. i shrugged it off as a lack of breakfast. and as if to chastise that nonchalance to her general body condition, she fainted right there and then on the spot. i manage to catch her in time just as a few other patients were trying to make a grab for her. according to other nursing students, they had a lecherous look on their face. i can't really tell if that was true though i seriously think they were trying to catch her too.

but that's the problem with mental health: how mad is mad? is eccentric really mad? and can mad be sometimes simply shrugged off as eccentric? the homeless chap whom you pass by everyday - everyone so readily labels the poor chap as insane and mad. but the professor of science and the arts and all his weird little idiosyncrasies is no more than eccentric. there seems to be a bias in place when it comes to the definition of madness.

none the less, over a cup of milo in the tea room, she thanked me. there was a look of adoration in her eyes that i felt really embarrassed about. not helping was that her beauty spot of a mole turned into a dimple when she smiled. charming. over the next few days, she kept would bring up the event and reinforce to me that she had had breakfast in the morning. to which we would have a good laugh over and reenact the moments and snippets when she fainted. at the end of the posting, she gave me a CD of a sermon by a famous preacher in her church. the title was something along the lines of wealth and health.

these days when i see her in the hospital, she still looks pretty. my father inherited the CD which she gave to me and occasionally listens to it with plenty of scorn and cynicism.


the concept of restraining patients in the hospital setting has always been one of questionable ethics. when do you need to restrain a sick person? why do you need to do it? is there no other alternative? what about sedatives? how do you go about doing it then? do you know how to tie a knot? why do they call it 'tying the knot' when the only firm sort of knot that you know of when 'tying the knot' is most likely a 'dead' knot?

rubbishy questions aside, the ongoing understanding from having worked in the hospital for several years coming seems to be that only restrain when the patients is doing something harmful to themselves. then again, how do you define harm? a person slashing their own wrists and doing bodily injuries to themselves or others is definitely within the boundaries of harm. but a 'naughty' patient who tries to remove his blood transfusion cannula and refuses treatment when he's already of a questionably unsound mind and low haemoglobin level seems to fall under that category as well. there's loads of factors to consider when the decision to apply restraints on someone is considered.

even so, application of restraints comes with the proper technique. cotton pads are applied to the wrists when hand restraints are used. charts have to be set up to ensure that the nurses check on the restraints regularly to see if they are too tight. the doctor has to be informed. the relatives have to be informed as well. and there's the fact that most relatives, just like parents who receive news that their child has done something wrong in school, almost always refuse to believe that their loved ones are unmanageable to the point of restraints. i knew of one patient whom a colleague had restrained in the afternoon. throughout the night shift, that particular patient's relative constantly called every hour or two to check on the condition of the patients. she apparently slept peacefully throughout the night.

in my humble opinion and principles (hey, i actually do have some of those okay!), i don't really believe in restraints. it's demeaning and besides, most patients on restraints tend to struggle even more than they previously did when they were unrestrained. this basically ends in really knotty situations whereby you spend even more time undoing the restraints that were enforced on the patient. actually, come to think of it, i'm about as capable with tying restraints as a junior boy scout member. i mean, i can do enough knots to get through a couple of shoes, a neck tie, a wedding gift, a plastic bag of general waste and perhaps a session of light bondage that is not even convincingly tight. but since when was a Windsor applicable to a pair of hands? which is why every knot i tie ends up as easily removable as a shoelace or as permanent as a dead knot. most of the time, i cut the damn thing off with a pair of nursing scissors.

my other colleague whom i work with on the permanent night shifts is a strong advocate of restraints however. she's been in this permanent night business for about three years coming. and believe you me, three years of irregular sleeping hours and horrid colleagues handing over terrible work for you to follow-up during your shifts can really make one bogged down and burned out. she has the dark eye bags and permanently tired look on the face to prove it. six months into this gig and i have already sallow skin and a permanent frown on my face as battle scars.

my colleague usually considers restraints after three warnings to patients against whatever silly things they are doing. some are plainly confused. some are irrational. other are just bordering on pure disobedience and bastardry. why come to the hospital when you're going to refuse treatment and cause so much trouble? either way, i think that the 'three warnings' system is quite possibly the best method to go about hinting at restraints. but then again, i'm stubborn and stick to my principles sometimes like a frozen tongue on an alpine ski lift.

i steadfastly refuse to restrain my patients. so much so that if they are restrained at night, i would secretly untie them in the dark of the night. Pangkeng (whom i have taken to calling 'Xena, Warrior Princess these days due to his overall lack of gentleness) gets extremely pissed when i do that. most of the time, the patients don't really do much damage themselves. they pull out their cannulas, they attempt to climb out of bed (but rarely ever manage to do so). nothing that can't be resolved. in fact, most of them actually sleep better at night when they are unrestrained. but then again, the only patients i usually nurse are men.

now, the reason why i brought this story up was simply because of a lapse in my principles several weeks ago when a patient under the charge of my colleague was admitted for a suspected bleed in the gastro-intestinal tract. her blood count results showed a low of about 7.0mmol/L. couple that with a previous history of a duodenal ulcer and she was thus scheduled for a scope the following day. during the course of the night, she was transfused two bags of bloods to 'top up' her blood supply. according to my colleague, she was really nice and all during the day when the bloods were still transfusing. post-transfusion however, she was caught attempting to leave the bed.

there was nothing wrong with actually leaving the bed, but the fact that she actually leaving and walking all the way down to the other end of the ward corridor - now, that's a worrisome fact. we asked her of course, what she was trying to do by walking down from one end of the corridor to the other. she just said she was looking for her relatives. it was about 3.20am at that point of time. when i thought about it, it was pretty obvious that she was trying to look for an escape route from the ward. she was constantly opening doors and on the lookout for an exit. not helping was that she did the above-mentioned with all the subtlety of a brass band's percussion section.

as nurses, we always attempt to try the nice method first. the more forceful alternative would always remain as a secondary plan. of course, the forceful words always come after we settle whatever issue a patient has at the pantry ('What is wrong with this old man? he wants me to hold his penis so that he can pee properly???' - this is true, i heard it at the tea room before). we attempted to convince the old lady to go back to the bed and take a rest as her blood levels were low and she was at risk of fainting at any moment. we tried helping her by guiding her at the arms. she slapped my hands off and ended up slapping me in the nose. which basically gave my Jackie Chan nose a reason to start up a sinus party. i couldn't stop sniffling after that.

after parking her in her bed, she attempted three more 'escapes'. 'escape' is in inverted commas as there was absolutely no stealth in her attempts. you could hear the loud click as she undid her bed rails. the flip-flops she was wearing truly lived up to their noisy names. one bizarre thing though that made us question whether she was of sound mind or not was that she didn't even try to run or walk briskly. she was actually must sauntering about and looking about for that elusive escape route of hers.

and thus a final warning laced with a hint of restraints was issued to the lady before we enforced on her the inevitable. i couldn't bring myself to do it as i was just being a real prick with me and my principles. but one could really hear it was a tough job despite the fact that Pangkeng was there to help. bloodcurling screams and shouts pierced through the quiet night air. and Pangkeng was occasionally spewing vulgarities. he only uses vulgarities when he's with me or when violence ensues. so he was obviously getting physically abused. it was either my friend getting kicked or my principles. i decided to screw them for once and help Pangkeng.

at the bedside, it was truly an ugly scene. gauze wrappers were strewn all over the floor. blood could be seen trickling out from an ex-cannula site that the lady had forcefully ripped out from a vein. the lady was screaming, shouting and kicking everything and everyone in sight. the rest of the patients in the same room as her had woken up and wondering what the commotion was all about. she had even managed to pull her pyjama top open. a button lay at the side of the bed and she had one breast exposed. she looked savage and she looked vicious. in my mind, i made the mental connection between the lady and the harpies in Van Helsing. my colleagues got bitten and pinched. i got kicked twice in the chin. Pangkeng, the warrior princess got slap on the face and his balls kicked. but he's resilient.

it was with all that violence that we decided to reinforce the entire set of restraints - a body vest, a pair of hand restraints and a pair of leg ones. Pangkeng did the ultimate of plonking his entire hulking 98kg frame on her legs to stop the kicking. and it's really ugly to see a woman scream and shout when you usually see them very well in control of their emotions. i felt bad as throughout the whole ordeal, she was screaming and appealing to us not to tie her. she mentioned that we were bullying her as there were four nurses tying her up. she stated that she was old and that tying her up was a sign of disrespect. being Chinese and having a father who imbued me with respect for the elderly, i really felt that the whole thing was... demeaning or disrespectful or well, i can't pinpoint an exact word. but i hoped that i was doing the wrong thing for at least the right reasons.

and restrain the lady we finally did. exhausted, Pangkeng and i decided to head to our secret spot in the hospital for a quick smoke. when we came back an estimated fifteen minutes later, we found that the entire bed had been shifted out to the ward corridor in front of the nurses' counter.

'She actually managed to undo her restraints!' my colleague exclaimed in exasperation.

upon closer inspection, 'undo' was not really the correct word. she actually ripped out her restraints. and those weren't soft, cottony gauze restraints. we used linen restraints that were double sewn at the seams and connecting points for extra strength. as we did her restraints again, she got even more violent and abusive this time. somehow or other, she managed to get hold of a bottle of Chinese medicated oil that she stashed underneath her pillow. she start sprinkling the entire vial of mentholated fluid at us. it was burning. it was hot. and resolved all of us nurses to quickly get the job done.

when we managed to restrain her the second time she suddenly started singing a bizarre song in Hokkien. there were some old Hokkien words in there that i couldn't understand and my Hokkien is l33t. but what i did grasp was that she was trying to call upon the spirit of her in-laws to destroy us. and being Chinese, calling your in-laws for help is sorta like the last resort, given that most Chinese in-laws are quite the horrible bunch. we were kinda freaked out as her unnatural strength, her loud screams and shouts, her Hokkien in-law song... we were thinking along the lines of demonic possession actually.

suffice to say, when she was more settled down and asleep from all the physical exertion (or maybe the demon left her, who knows?), i managed to catch a breather with my colleague.

i asked her, 'you think it's worth it to tie her up after all that kicking and scratching?'

she was scratching at the already inflammed area on her arm where the medicated oil had landed. on her other arm was a slight hint of a bruise. the other arm was a redness that came about from a pinch from the patient.

'maybe,' she said, 'i mean, it was either her or us.'

was the lady with the low Hb condition mad to begin with? or was she just plain 'naughty'? those thoughts made me pensive for the rest of the evening.

but i'm thinking it's mainly due to me being really anal about my principles.

---

(apologies for having not blogged for so long, plenty of activities and educational pursuits and work matters, apologies for another post on family issues as well. you must be bored to death hearing about my father and his constant suppresion of myself. i'll blog about something as next week. otherwise, i'll.... ehrm... post naked pictures of myself!)

my paternal family has the sort of 'fun-filled family activities' enthusiasm going on that can really sometimes irk you to death. you see, it all started with one fine Christmas gathering when the entire family committed to spending more time together. this particular Christmas gathering was the one that had just passed apparently. the one whereby my father tried to convince the entire family that the world was ending and that we were to tighten our chastity belts and keep a good check on our faiths to see if we were still in tune with the Lord. the one when everyone simply just laughed at my father's all too zealous belief that the world was ending. the one whereby my father still has a sore spot over the fact that the paternal family laughed at his claims.

in all honesty, it wasn't that my family didn't believe in his theories of apocalypse. everyone in my paternal family (well, practically everyone - i'm not that there yet in terms of faith) is a strong Christian that truly deserves a one-way ticket to heaven. but it was more of the way he did the whole spiel that made everyone think that he was verging on a crusade or matyrdom. it's all cool to believe in an 'end-days' theory, but to be a doomsday preacher is way not cool. which my father apparently needs someone to drill it into him. but how many people actually approach their local doomsday prophet and actually correct them or tell them 'it's not cool'?

the more i think about it, when i actually dress my father in the scholarly robes of yore, hand him 95 pieces of theses and place him in front of the Wittenburg church door, i begin to realize that i have actually been living with a Martin Luther in the house. not exactly in a 'it's wrong for the Catholic church to withhold the bible in a foreign language from the public' kinda way, but more of 'i challenge the authority' manner. it's quite apparent that the doomsday belief of this Martin Luther father of mine (and i say this with all the love in the world for the man who raised me up) has apparently tainted and coloured his social life. my father has only friends from church. my father only conducts business dealings (eg. insurance agents) with like-minded brethren. he even managed to convert his best friend from Catholicism to Christianity. last heard, i think he was a Deacon in one of the sister churches of my dad's in Canada.

so you see, given that we're not getting much of a social life in terms of a family unit, i think it's a prudent investment of time to go on various outings with the paternal family over the weekends. what sort of outings you say? thus far, when we don't head out into the public, we rotate potluck parties at each others house on a weekly basis. we would try to have themes and prepare dishes in accordance to the themes. so far, we have only been successful at Western, Japanese, Korean and of course, Chinese cuisine. actually the Korean was falling apart with the appearance of Chinese ngoh hiong rolls (translated to mean '5 spices' - it's my grandmother's speciality).

when we do go out however, it's much more interesting. we do morbidly embarrassing things like go out to the park with picnic tables in tow. we literally find a grassy spot under the shade and open up this grassy-green coloured portable picnic table that's the size of a hedge. in fact, it blends in very well with a hedge (thank goodness!). since we have only two tables that can sit a family of four, the others would make do with the trusty ol' picnic mats. and not just any ordinary picnic mats, but tacky Spiderman 2 mats courtesy of Colonel Sander (it came free with a family feast from KFC). and sometimes i question their cleanliness because we don't often do picnic moments together. so the picnic mats tend to be in great need of dusting. i can't really tell whether it's just Spiderman's webs or really cobwebs.

during these picnic outings however, there's always a bizarre mix of foods. everyone brings whatever they can lay their hands on. packets of chips that nobody eats at home, a big metal pot of Shark's fin soup (can you actually say that you actually have eaten Shark's fin soup in a park in shorts and singlet), bottles of green tea, a box of 16 doughnuts, roasted duck, a chunk of agar-agar that looks like a fish (??). of course, there's the standard fare of fried vermicelli and finger foods like sausages and nuggets.

it's all these outings that i come truly prepared. i bring along a good novel and my ipod and indulge in a good half-hour's worth of reading. another person who does the same, albeit without the music, is my uncle-in-law who opened the nursing degree programme that i'm currently being educated at. my selection of reads are mainly limited to fiction and the occasional popular non-fiction literature. whereas my uncle-in-law is the direct opposite. he reads books on financial management and success. he would always be armed with a copy of the Business Times and financial magazines. titles like 'You Can be Financially Prudent Too!' and 'Money Matters' flash across my mind when you ask me about the books that he reads. i just met him again last week and i saw him reading 'Master Plan of Evangelism'. eclectic mix of books, that's all that i can say.

i've come to realize that the both of us are the only one who don't really talk much to the paternal family. my reason mainly being that i'm in the presence of my parents and don't find much comfort in expressing myself. my uncle-in-law however, it's a different matter. the only moments he chips in are when it involves politics and financial matters. and he's quite well-versed in these things. listening to him talk is like watching a political commentary. which admittedly, thrills me to no boundaries. i'm sure he quotes most of the stuff from the books that he reads. but it's almost like watching Robert Kiyosaki at work. which is quite possibly the next best thing to sex (for me, at least).

Robert Kiyosaki and Martin Luther... isn't my paternal family quite the fun bunch?


they say that good financial habits comes from good parenting. however, when it comes to all things financial, i'm about as wise as a piece of banana money. my parent's idea of financial prudence is a matter of saving for the rainy days. as the free thinker of the family, i feel a presing need to go against the grain. every day seems to be a rainy day for me. after all, what's money if you don't spend it? of course, i'm not that callous with money. just a tad more generous when it comes to friends and colleagues.

still, i've come to realize that i've made many financial errors in my life. one of the top ones begin that i took up a financial advisor that was introduced to me by my mother. she joins the church choir (she's a soprano) and knows a lot of people in there. one of these people that she's connected with, is an insurance agent or more aptly put these days, a financial advisor. he's a Christian guy whom i suspect is a closet case or at least someone who's trying to suppress those man-loving tendencies. he owns EVERY season of Friends on DVD (not exactly crminally gay) that he keeps in an OCD-resemblant disc folder, he speaks in a light tenor voice, and well... the ground that he treads on basically sprouts pink daisies. but he's a good Christian aman and i can without a doubt attest to that. problem is, i don't feel comfortable sharing my financial situation with brethren that are as like-minded as my father. and my financial advisor is one of them. it was with him that i signed up two insurance policies that amount to a monthly premium of $354.67.

my parents expect a monthly contribution from my salary to the household expenses. which i'm actually fine with. the initial amount was a whopping $500, which in reality i can figure out lots of foolish ways to dwindle it down. i can buy all the lap dances i want for an entire night and still have enough to spare for a a supper for two, a cab ride to the nearest love hotel and the transit rate there. i bargained it down to $300 stating that i was just starting out work, which the father expressed unhappiness and compared me to the cousins who literally contributed $500 a month. if there's one thing parents should never do is to compare their children to that of relatives. it's demeaning. and anyways, the brother's the one who wastes electricity by leaving all the switches on on the 'vampire' electronic devices.

then there's the issue of my school fees that sets me back by about $250 every month. my phone bill as well which never exceeds its stipulated minutes every month since i don't really like to talk on the phone. this basically results in me having roll-over minutes EVERY month. i do subscribe to a wireless broadband service though. total - $67.50. a World of Warcraft account costs me $25.14 per month. adding the odds and edds and i fork out a total of $997.31. i bring home about $1.8 - $2k every month from working the permanent night shifts. which leaves me about $1K every month. and apparently, it's bordering on being insufficient. i find myself lacking about $50 every month. i think it's the smoking.

you see, i smoke a pack of cigarettes a day. and i can't do the low-end brands because they make my throat phlegmy and leave a terrible after-taste. not that i'm trying to be prissy or classy or anything like that. but the only cigarettes that i can enjoy and i find a good investment in are Dunhill Kings, Consulates, Camels and Marlboro Ice Mints. so it's practically $11-12 a pack. not helping is that i need to be at Starbucks every weekend to help generate these blog posts. so if you add up here and there, i'm actually surviving on an amount that's just sufficient, short of $50. i throw $50-100 into savings every month which i end up having to tap back into.

i'm not thinking of quitting smoking or even cutting down any time soon. the last time i bought new clothes was when i was in Thailand. before that, it was during the Chinese New Year, before that it was Christmas and before that? my birthday in October. so i'm not exactly splurging on materialistic goods.

so when i think about my finances, it basically all boils down to matter of unwise financial decisions that i'm bogged down with. the insurance especially. but i understand that in the long run (pending the doomsday prophecy), it really helps. the bigger problem though is that every month i'm constantly having to head back to the parents for money. and i'm not asking money from THEM, but rather, trying to tap on my savings which i decided to let my father safeguard. alas, my father being the prophet of the end times would never release my savings to me without 'the talk'. now, 'the talk' would usually last about a half hour or more. it would usually start from my smoking habits, and develop and evolve till it reaches his favourite doomsday prophecy. the first few times when he did it, it did have some form of impact on me. subsequent times however, it was much less impressionable. mainly because it was the same old recycled material that he would always use. keywords that would often pop up during 'the talk' would be things like 'gnashing of teeth' (to describe what hell was like), 'seven years of trials and tribulations' and 'rivers turning to blood'. and all i wanted was the take some money from my savings...

and to crown it off, he would never ever release my savings to me based on a previous experience of me splurging when i had a lot of money in my bank account. of course, i was young and i was new to the whole concept of holding a singular fifty dollar note in my hand. and splurge i did. what my father would normally do would be to take him like a credit card and roll over the money. so every month, i tap on my father's credited money and roll the money to the next month to pay him back. in all reality, i might as well get a credit card with all the legal and financial implications behind it and be spared the hellfire and brimstone prophecy.

so i did the administrative procedures for a Citibank savings account and credit card application over the weekend. it was smooth-going and my application was approved within two hours. it was after that unfortunately that i had to consider whether to come clean with the father regarding my credit card application. because, living with them is like living with the Secret Police. they used to go through all my mail until one fine day when i raised my voice and locked my bedroom door. they were so freaked out that they never dared to go through any of my mail again. i decided to save the voice-raising and door-locking for emergencies in the future.

out of love and honesty and a responsibility to my parents, i decided to talk to my father about the application and its approval. i tried a 'i want to take responsibility of financial matters now that i can manage better' tactic with my father. suffice to say, my father on top of being the Martin Luther of the family is now quite the wet blanket. 'Are you sure you can manage a credit card because from previous records, i don't think so,' he started. and thus he launched into his barrage about bankruptcy and the seriousness of it and how the banks will come after me if i can't pay up and et cetera. i was hoping for something more along the lines of 'oh congrats on getting your first ever credit card' or maybe even a smile or some sense of pride. and he once again had to make a comparison between my all-too-perfect cousin who saves money every month and contributes a lot of money to the household and can rent a car every month to take the family out. i hate being compared.

i'm thinking that i will never ever be able to make the father proud unless i become a Martin Luther myself. alas, monastery robes and all that are just not my thing. i wish the Robert Kiyosaki of an uncle-in-law was my father. but i try to refrain from doing that because that's already a comparison, no?

---

i've never liked racket sports (not that i like sports to begin with). events such as tennis, badminton, hockey, floorball and whatnot, they seem to project this image of... blame. each time the player misses a ball, whacks the puck out of court or bashes someone's ankle accidentally, he instinctively starts looking at his racket. it's as if to say, 'it's not my fault that the racket's possessed.' which is perhaps why i prefer watching rugby and most contact sports that involve the physical body and the body itself. of course, it certainly helps that the men playing such sports have bodies that appeal to the general public. especially rugby.

but sports aside, it seems that people these days seem to fault everything that goes wrong to everything and everyone else other than themselves. in the context of law, serial killers can get away with a plea on insanity by stating childhood stress and trauma related to a parental divorce. employers who abused their maids relate it to work stress. serial molesters claim that they are the way the are because they were molested by others when they were young. so everyone gets away scot-free just because of their traumatic childhoods and seemingly traumatising stressors, so it seems.

as for me, i'm morally grey with three shades down the darker side. i'm no criminal unless you consider buying the occasional contraband cigarettes to turn me into one. and of course, not forgetting the consensual anal sex with other men. but this got me thinking that in one way or another, we're all quite possibly damaged or at least influenced by events that happened to us during our childhood. after all, the minds of children are considered to be at their most malleable. childhood is like taking a plunge into the great big fondue of life. you may be a bright red strawberry or a colourful fruit by any other name. but once you take a dip into life, you definitely will emerge as a change person. mostly darker, no thanks to the sinfulness of chocolate.

most events that children go through will almost always leave lasting impressions on them. and believe you me, children have really good memories. they remember the good stuff well, and remember the bad stuff even better. which is perhaps why i coined the phrase that 'Adulthood is no more than childhood betrayed'.

admittedly, i can't say that my childhood wasn't enjoyable. there were good moments like Happy Meals, 10/10 spelling tests (i was really good at spelling), Sonic the Hedgehog, Rockman comics and things that endear a lot to kids of my time. however, it wasn't all that a bed of roses as well. i never played with the neighbourhood kids (mother was afraid that i would get kidnapped or molested). i had only one official birthday party with my classmates in my entire life, and that was in kindergarten. i spent a lot of time doing homework, studying and reading. these may have coloured my life today in some way. at the root of myself, i guess i'm still the fat geeky kid from the primary schools. unfortunately, the ultimatum of my childhood that really defined me was my father and his violent tendencies back then.

father was a very violent man. of course, he's not that violent these days, Thank God (literally, because he somehow saw 'The Light' along the way and gave up his violence). he got pissed and irritated very easily, which made him very unapproachable. we used to live with my paternal grandmother in this jumbo apartment. if it wasn't for her, i would have perhaps been caned to oblivion and psychologically scarred beyond repair. it was the screaming, the canings and the shouting that made me hate my childhood so much. i remember praying a lot to God that somehow or other, my parents would throw away the cane. i prayed that they would never use the cane on me again. in fact, i remember one time i prayed so hard that i spent practically fifteen minutes just squatting by the bedside, hands clasped together with eyes shut tightly. though i really think that the reason why i spent fifteen minutes squatting there was due to the fact that my father had just given me a can of whoop ass.

for the record, God never answered my prayer about the cane. when the cane finally started to splinter, they simply threw the old one away and bought a new one from the local provisional shop downstairs. the auntie at the shop would always give me that demeaning stare whenever my parents bought a new cane, as if to say, 'isn't this like the fifth cane they bought this year? i bet this spawn of Satan really deserves it! hmph!' these days however, what with the law and protection against the ol' skool method of chastising children, you don't really find provision shops that sell canes any more.

so for the record once again, maybe God does answer prayers, just that it's a few years too late.


i decided to skip church today again. in fact, i have been skipping church for two months on alternative weeks. there were certainly what i considered to be 'white lies' involved. i mean, i couldn't jolly well tell the parents that i hated church and wanted out. that would be like grabbing the cane from them and using it against them. and i hate having to hurt people, whether physically or emotionally. therefore, i used to rather solid excuse of work commitments and group projects.

truth be told however, i simply can't help but hate church, possibly because it makes me hate myself. the idea of church that has been branded on my mind since young is the warm and stuff place where everyone has black hair, long skirts and hairy armpits accompanied with fat arms. there's an organ at one end of the sanctuary and a piano at the other. people live their lives according to the word of God, as if the other practicalities of life never mattered. if their lives were an Electrocardiogram reading, it would be a pure flatline. a flawless, straight and narrow little flatline. boring, true. but flawless and leading to heaven, none the less.

it's because of this hate that i've turned out to be what i call a 'church bastard'. i don't single the hymns. i don't contribute to the offering bags. i don't partake of the Lord's Supper because i haven't been baptised. i haven't been baptised because i don't want a part in the Lord's Army. i keep my eyes open during the corporate prayer to update myself of the family mechanics of the various church people ('Oooh... new girlfriend!' or 'The three teenage children are sitting between mommy and daddy... spousal dispute'). i end up noticing the hairy armpits and fat flagging arms at this junction actually. i do my best to fall asleep during the sermons. and if i can, i escape from the service for a quick cigarette and come back smelling like smoke.

a lot of this church-hating sentiment i guess, is derived from events that happened during my childhood. nothing major i guess, but there are plenty of scenes that i remember vividly. scenes that are apparently more negative than positive in context. and i don't remember a lot of my childhood to begin with for some reason. it's these events therefore, that contribute to the building blocks of my relationships with my parents and how i've come to hate Sundays and church-going so much.


why i find that i can't express myself in front of my parents

this happened when i was about eight years of age. it was a sunday evening with the paternal family and the cousins. i've always enjoyed hanging out with them because it was the only time that i got to roam around in public by myself. my protective mother would never let me out of her sight and it was quite irritating that i had to follow her everywhere. okay okay, to be fair, the only point of time she did so was at the lingerie section where she would officially hand me over to my father for safekeeping.

we were out at this ancient and run-down shopping centre called 'Beauty World Complex'. it was one of those old buildings that served its sole purpose of housing a few random stalls. these stalls usually sold really outlandish clothes and skin-toned bras. even at eight, i was surprised that i could tell that those clothes were really horrid. stuff that i would never have worn (and no, i'm not referring to the skin-toned bras). i vividly remembered the multi-storey car park to be this dark and creepy place. the type of setting that's perfect for young nubile things to get flashed at by perverts in the middle of the night.

well, the only point of interest for us kids back then was the video game arcade. it didn't stock any of the latest games in the market. but it did have games and kids are quite possibly the most easily-satisfied people in the world. it was these small little joys that help endure the whole outing to Beauty World Complex. why they would have a video game arcade in this run-down shopping mall is really beyond me. truly, the beauty of this place is indeed, complexed.

lame jokes aside, we kids anticipated that one or two of our parents would be bringing us to the arcade after dinner for some fun. the whole lot of my paternal family members were milling and ambling about in a women's departmental store. the kids were just randomly touching and rustling through the women's clothes in the most obscene of places. i was as usual, following my mother. when one of my uncles did finally make the announcement that we would be going to the arcade, i jumped for joy. you know that kind of 'yay! we're going to the arcade after a boring family dinner' kind of jump. all of us screamed and shouted and whoops and pumped fists into the air. just the way happy kids do.

it was also at that same point of time that my father delivered a big slap to my right cheek. i remembered that it was at the intersection in the women's departmental store that separated the lingerie section from the pants. my mind processed what just happened and decided that the best course of action back then was to shut up. somehow or other, i also got the understanding that when your parent slaps you in the middle of public for no apparent reason other than being extremely happy... well... as a kid, you just know that there's nothing wrong that you've done. it's your parents.

i instinctively put my hand to my left cheek. i remember my vision blurring from the tears that started accumulating in my eyes. all i could see was the blurry colours of beige (presumably the bras) and a few familiar faded faces. i hated my father so much at that point of time that i didn't want to see his face.

the rest of the kids went on with their arcade session while i was forced to stay with the parents and endure the public shame. it was also with that day that i think that i must have decided to not ever be happy when i'm in the presence of the parents. i actually think that it was a three day tantrum sort of thing, to refuse to smile or even talk when with my parents. three days turned into three months and then developed into three years. and since then, i can never bring myself to smile, frown or show some signs of feelings when i'm alone in the presence of the parents. i'm just a passive flat line in the eyes of the parents. of course, it's easy to smile when in front of the relatives and family friends. after all, we all have appearances of happiness to keep up with in public. but then again, i don't really express what i feel or think when the parents are around. the thought of a quick slap to the face somehow just lingers in the air.

but this is quite possibly the reason why i never say anything when i am forced to go to church every sunday.


why i hate teachers and can never get close to them

you know sometimes when you think back about the things you did as a kid, you really can't figure out for the life of yourself as to why you did it. it's as if someone or something influenced you to do this unusual course of action. i remember one time during a primary school music class, we were all marching and dancing to a particularly enjoyable piece of music. for some reason, i just flipped up the skirt of a female classmate that was jumping in front of me. i seriously have no idea why i did that. and i was only seven years old then. the music teacher only warned me that that was a very wrong thing to do. children, as you might have realized, can get away with most things.

the event in question happened in primary school during year one. i was seven and bored to death and irritable. i'm thinking it was the afternoon heat actually. it was hot and humid and in the middle of a boring reading session. i decided to up and leave the class and take a walk around the school. i ended up staring at the flag poles that stood proudly at the front of the courtyard. there were two apparently, one with the school flag on it and the other with the Singapore flag with its red, white and five stars & crescent. now from the first day i stepped into school, i have always harboured a secret fantasy of lowering the flag that only the prefect did. they normally did this during the singing of the national anthem. i mean, as a kid the pulley system of a flag pole is like the coolest thing that man had ever invented (aside from video gaming consoles and the computer).

and so i succumbed to temptation and decided to try out the Singapore flag pole. of course, we learnt about living things and non-living things during science class. but the topic of pulleys and forces had not been taught to us yet. so with the simple undoing of the knot on the flag ropes, i basically undid the flag. there was this loud zzzzzzzipp that seemed to reverberate around the whole school as the flag sild down the pole. that loud zip certainly did attract the attention of one teacher that i will remember for the rest of my life. she saw me as i tried to return the flag back to its original position. and like every other good citizen would do when they some something wrong being done, they would shout out the obvious and start giving chase.

'OI! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!!'

i was only seven and could run like the wind. she was over-weight, in her 50s and wearing sandals. unfortunately, she had the advantage over me simply because she taught me for Health Education classes and knew who i was.

it wasn't till later that evening when i was about to return home that all hell broke loose. my father was in his smart-looking army uniform (he was with the military back then) when he came to bring me home. it was white and gleaming with respect. and with all the luck in the world, the Health Education teacher was there when i met the father. when i think back, either she just really happened to be there or she was actually nesting there, awaiting the arrival of my father. none the less, she went ahead and told my father about what had transpired during the afternoon. i'm thinking that it must have been a very shameful thing for him back then given the context that he was in the smart air force garb. my father apologized profusely and walked away without even a second glance at me. i stared at the Health Education teacher with all the hatred, ninja knives and nuclear bombs in the world before making my departure.

i tried to keep up with him as i lugged my heavy school bag to the car. i remember that i said nothing at all during the entire drive back home. he was constantly berating me in the car. and you know what quarrels in the car are like. quiet. imaginatively echoey. and quite awkward. i've come to hate that silence when my father shouts in the car. i do recollect that the first thing that happened when we got home that evening was that he went straight to the store room and grabbed the cane. it was a thin bamboo rod with a pink handle.

that was the night whereby i was caned the worst in my entire childhood. my father locked me in the dark store room for what seemed like a long time. i even remember the scratching sound of scotch tape that pierced the air as he tried to seal the entrance from outside. my grandmother and mother were pleading that he let me out. of course, an angry man is almost always a man you can't convince. it was that long period of time in the darkness of that store room that i hardened my heart against teachers and figure of authority. i hated people who did the right thing without considering the implications of their actions. the right thing, may sometimes not be so right after all. especially if it involved the drastic physical punishment of a child.

the Health Education teacher has since then passed away from cancer from what i last heard. she was remembered as a loving teacher who was a firm Christian and strong morals.

i remember her to be the catalyst for my punishment.


why i hate good people (and Chinese language teachers)

i used to be a class monitor when i was in primary three. i was nine years old then. i was really proud of it because the responsibilities were minimal and you got to wear an uber-shiny badge that stated the words 'MONITOR' and a lot of other unwritten pride on it. all the monitor had to do back then was to count heads, announce the arrival of the teacher of the next class and look really important. in today's modern day context of office rats, it sounds almost like the CEO's lackeys.

i was a good monitor with a penchant for the occasional impish naughtiness. being in a Christian-mission school, that was highly unacceptable. but then i think i got to keep my position as class monitor because i did my job well. it wasn't till one fine day that i blurted out the word 'SHIT' during class when i forgot to bring my Chinese textbook. one classmate of mine took the bloody initiative to report me to the strict Chinese language teacher. as with most Chinese language teachers, for some reason or other, there tend to like wearing sleeveless blouses and stockings. not helping is the fact that they have armpit hair and unshaven legs. i'm not sure about you, but ALL my Chinese language teachers are like that. tradition or trend? you decide.

maybe she was pissed with me, maybe she hated my occasional misbehaviour, but i was stripped of my monitor status there and then. and this is why i hate goody-do-gooders and Chinese language teachers. i know, it's a petty thing. but i valued my class monitor status a lot back then and it was a kick to the gonads to me. my church has a lot of these goody-do-gooders apparently, who simply don't consider the implications of their morally-upright actions. sometimes, it's good to remember that you maybe a Christian, but above all, you're still a human. and humanity prevails.


why i hate youth groups

a friend and i agreed yesterday that Christian youths are quite possibly one of the most sheltered people in the entire world. statistically speaking, the average Christian is middle class, has a stable career and a quite a fair amount of luxuries. looking at my church car park, one will see Beemers, Mercedes, and an entire barrage of space wagons and family sedans. so the average Christian youth has hardly tasted hardship. 'trial by fire' to a majority of these people seem to mean examination and minor classroom disputes. when you compare these problems to that of the poor, the abused and the destitute, it hardly makes you bat an eyelid.

the youth group that i grew up in were children that accompanied me for many years. from kindergarten to secondary school, we have seen each other grow and mature. most of them are now in some foreign country studying something worthy of today's working world. arts, economics, financing, banking, zoology, et cetera. in my batch of youth group members, there were only two of us from schools for the lesser mortals, some other guy whom i don't see in church anymore and me. my youth group leader was this family man who was raised in an elite school and was working in a managerial position of sorts. he had a nice car, nice family and a pretty nice home in somewhat prime estate.

unfortunately, he was the type that favoured intellectuals. i couldn't hold a conversation well back then. i didn't know what to say when they brought up topics. and so i was more often than not neglected during those youth group classes. i was pretty sure that the other guy whom i don't see in church anymore was really left out. he was raised in a traditional Chinese family where they spoke mandarin. my youth group leader over the years, seemed to focus all his attention on the intellectually-endowed crowd. prolly all the mental-sparring shit that they loved to indulge in so much.

but what really made me hate my youth leader so much was one church camp. this happened when we were all in secondary school, teenagers to be precise. teenagers as you might have grown up realizing, are one of the most easily-influenced crowds around in town. you could prolly blame it on peer pressure. and it's most likely true. they seem to value the opinions of their friends more than their family members. indeed, it's one of the complexities of the youth.

peer pressure was what this youth group leader employed after a night sermon. the task was simple: there was an imaginary divide on the center of the floor. if you're on the Lord's side, please stand with me. if you're want to be with the world, you can scoot to the other. all of us were already on the Lord's side as the sermon was preached on that side of the floor. so perhaps we were all too lazy to move (it was a NIGHT sermon after all). as for those who were on the edge of the imaginary line, you could see them hurridly shifting over to the Lord's side, as though as the darkness will claim them if they don't.

in this context, peer pressure would never allow the teenage youth to go over to the carnal side. to do so, would be to allowing yourself to be officially recognized as 'one of the others' in the youth group. it's what a youth fears the most, not being accepted by his peers. of course, this would entail of whole barrage of follow-ups like one-to-one heart talks about your spiritual growth and a tedious exercise of checking up on you constantly.

it seems like an insignificant use of peer pressure upon impressionable youths, but i felt betrayed that night.


and so, these are the events of my youth and childhood that might perhaps have damaged me in some way. but upon recollection, i think that they might have strengthened my resolve to not easily be influenced, to not give in to physical punishment, to grow stronger. some people lead great childhoods with fond recollections of their parents and the good times together. some have really bad childhoods. for me i think, if it needed a lot of caning to change my father into a better person, then i say it's simply no more than a matter of trial by fire.

like they say, 'what doesn't kill you, only makes you stronger'.

---

i love to socialize with people in general. i really do. the rewards that come from it are endless. to begin with. it broadens horizons, introduces new perspectives, and if it's a guy, gives one a potshot of a chance at sex ('Speaking of bed linen, why don't we test out the 'bed linen' at MY place?'). the only problem i have with socializing is that i hate it when it all goes wrong. i have an avid fear of conversations becoming boring. this is especially so with old friends whom i know them inside out. i fear the boring. so much so that i will never ever been seen doing anything uninteresting. whenever i'm out, i'm always armed with my cigarettes, a paperback, my laptop and if i'm utterly bored, i'll even bring along a vibrating dildo.

point is, i realize that i can't spend too much time with people in general because i'm afraid of becoming stale material. i'm scared of having nothing interesting to say. in my books, either i have something witty, punny or interesting to say, or i don't say it at all. this is regardless of whether they are close friends or simply just acquaintances. which perhaps might explain why i eagerly celebrate the concept of the One Night Stand so much. there's a purpose in meeting for the two people who agree on the One Night Stand, it's mostly fuss-free and most importantly, with no strings attached (it's not called a Two Night Stand for a reason, no?). the person you're meeting prolly knows as much about you as you are familiar with your healthy gallbladder.

obviously, this fear of becoming a boring person has sorta tainted the way i handle things in life. i abstain from outings that have a chance of painting the town a monotone shade of grey. every single detail about me has something interesting about it. you can ask me about anything i'm wearing at a single point of time and i can tell you a long story about it. most importantly though and the most relevant point i want to make with regards to this blog post, is that i seldom am keen to go for long overseas trips with small groups of friends. mostly i dread the moments when all of us are spent and exhausted with nothing interesting to say other than mentioning random non sequitur in the middle of conversations. like i said, when i have nothing interesting to say, i just don't say it at all.

when i have nothing to say at all, i'm about as exciting as a library reading of the vibrating dildo that i carry in my bag all the time. of course, you do know that i'm joking about the dildo in my bag right? why put a dildo in your bag when you can put it up your.... well you get the point.


and thus we met at the train station leading to the buses that would take us straight into the heart of Malaysia itself. this was right after a night shift and all of us were looking forward to the five hour coach ride to KL. to avoid boring you with the details and summarize the travelling bits to KL, this is a picture of Kegal Laughs without the make-up and me who have just woken up when the coach stopped at one of the rest stations along the Malaysia highway. this marked the beginning of us smoking two pack of cigarettes within a day while in Malaysia.

but like i said, avoid the boring bits. we reached KL with all our limbs and luggages intact. the coach dropped us off at the road that led to the Pudu coach station. the afternoon sun beat down on us like bright Christmas lights and the traffic drifted past us at the speed the same Christmas lights would change their flashing patterns. we were constantly touted by men offering cab rides and coaches to various parts of KL and Malaysia. i was half expecting someone to sell me tupperware or sex. it wasn't when we reached the hotel that i should have known not to be surprised if someone did offer me a social escort for the evening.

opening the hotel room door, we found what resembled our local chain of love hotels named 'Hotel 81'. we had adjoining rooms that were connected by a short hallway that last no more than two foot steps. the beds looked decent but felt really scratchy when you laid on them. the bath tub where i might have my kidneys removed had yellowed stains in them. there was water dripping from the faucets. and the toilet had a lighting that was reminiscent of a B-grade horror movie.

yep, we ended up staying in a love hotel it seems. what confirmed my suspicions of the Puduraya hotel being a love hotel was a lift trip down the lobby after we had settled down. we entered the creaky life accompanied by one man and a woman. the man looking like your average Chinese Malaysian guy. plain and non-descriptive. the woman however, was dressed to the nines. she had bouncy shampoo commercial hair, thick make-up. her boobs were that type that said 'Helloooo! I'm Helga the milkmaid!' she carried an LV clutch in one hand and balanced a pair of Gucci sunglasses on that bouncy coif of hers. the give away that a 'business transaction' of sorts was done between the both of them was that they never said a single word while in the elevator. there was this awkward sexual silence in the lift as we contemplated about the man who paid for sexual services.

part of the itinerary of our trip was actually to get as smashed and as wasted as it was financially possible. need i remind you that we were on a shoestring budget. from talking to the cab drivers that we hired during the day, we discovered that the taxi fares at night can cost quite the nuclear bomb. so we decided to make do with drinks in the love hotel. in preparation for this, we bought ourselves hard liquor. a bottle of Absolut, a Bacardi and a Johnnie Walker Black Label. the girls bought mixers to accompany the drinks. Pangkeng who's a beer kinda guy, partook of the mixers as well. i like my drinks and things neat and untainted.

of course, alcohol does really bizarre things to people. for one, they lose their inhibitions and starting acting out. some get really horny (Pangkeng). some get crazy (The Fiddy Cent Model). some just keep quiet and deliver witty quotes at the most appropriate moments like Kegal Laughs and me. for some reason though, drunk people like to play games during drinks. one fine example since we didn't have any playing cards would be the classic Truth or Dare. Kegal Laughs and i agreed that we would rather take the dare than the truth as we both had a lot to hide. i, for one, have my sexual orientation to consider. Kegal Laughs i presume, had her alternate lifestyle to consider.

none the less, one of the dares that we attempted was the famous 'Kiss (insert person's name of the same gender) on the lips. the dare was that i had to kiss Pangkeng on the lips. if i did so, then Kegal Laughs and The Fiddy Cent Model would do the same as well. i mean, it was easy as lesbian porn for the two beautiful girls. Pangkeng who was ready for anything that was even remotely close to being sexual was all ready for it. gay little me still had my social inhibitions to consider. and to crown it off, i wasn't that drunk yet despite five glasses of Johnnie Walkers.

it's one thing to kiss a random stranger or a gay guy. but to kiss a good friend and colleague of yours is a totally different ball game. it would have been more palatable if Pangkeng was more pleasing to the eye. bless his soul and all, but it was while looking at Pangkeng's acne that i hesitated a little. the bulbous little things seemed to talk on a life of his own. Pangkeng was a tad irritated with my hesitation and tried pulling me forward with his brute-like arms. but gym-trained arms almost always trump brute arms. i pushed him back.

'If we're going to do this, we'll do it on my terms!' i warned him.

at the background, the girls were poised with their cameras and chanting 'Dare! Dare! Dare! Dare! Dare! Dare!' like a gaggle of pom-pom girls.

i swig one big gulp of Barcardi, took three puffs of a cigar that we had bought at one of the downtown stores and felt the immensive high that overcame me all of a sudden. of course, my alcholic-inspired mind interpreted it as a bunch of guts and courage. and thus i grabbed Pangkeng's shoulders, closed my eyes and took the plunge.

it was warm. and i didn't really enjoy it. a bit like kissing microwaved fish without the butter, spices and other flavouring ingredients. 'five seconds! five seconds!' the girls dared. and so it's official that i kissed Pangkeng on the lips for five seconds in the middle of KL. of course, the girls did the kiss on the lips for a full five seconds that verged on being French.

i fell asleep soon after. the good thing though is that we never mentioned the kiss again for the rest of the trip. and when we went back to work again, everything happened as if the kiss never happened.

i'm thinking that that's straight men for you.

---

Singapore is quite possibly the most boring place on Earth. it makes me wonder why tourists bother coming here in the first place. but hey, we're generating plenty of revenue and sex with foreign men, so i'll keep my mouth shut. or maybe open, in relation to the latter point. point is, our country has very little news that really makes or breaks the world. our geographical location makes us pretty well-protected against natural disasters of most sorts, so no New Orleans-like situations around here. our economy is pretty buoyant these days unlike the economic recession of 1997. our arts scene is possibly as controversial and inspirational as the 9 o'clock news. it's always the profitable and popular stuff like musicals, musicals and oh, did i mention musicals?

our crime rates are quite meh and humorous actually, sometimes even bordering on pure bastardry. murders normally involve rudimentary weapons best described as 'i reached for the first weapon i saw, which was a spatula' rather than drive-by shootings. our local thugs rob old people (there's the bastardry bit). local fights are mostly bar room brawls and street gang clashes, a lot of it revolving around a night out to the club and opening ten bottles of Chivas Regals at one go. Chivas seems to be the #1 choice of the street gangs that get into a lot of fights. indeed, this is the Chivas Life.

given the boring context here in Singapore, it's quite possible that our locals have therefore found an obsession to build up their lives with. food, to be precise. we have A LOT of food in Singapore. there are four primary races in Singapore to begin with (in no order of merit or preference for those racially-sensitive folks) - Malays, Indians, Chinese and the last very fondly labelled as 'Others'. given the Singaporean culture to profit on obsessions, there have been many methods that have helped build the culinary industry. we have reality programmes designed to spot the best of the best of specific foods. we have guidebooks collaborated that offer the top 10 of (insert random local cuisine). i even know of a specific couple in my church that keeps one of these guidebooks in their car (a Beemer). they make it a point to visit a food outlet mentioned in the guidebook and cross it out. when i last talked to them, they were already 75% through the very much dog-earred book that sat beside the equally dog-earred street directory.

none the less, it's with much thanks to the buoyant economy in the recent years that we've been seeing a lot of foreign fine dining popping up all over the place. French, Middle Eastern, Vietnamese, Burmese, Thai, Korean, Japanese, etc. you name the country, it's with a quick google that you can find it on our sunny shores. it's also with thanks to our Singaporean obsession with food and our knack for business, consumer versions of these fine dining places have been popping up for those who can't afford it and those who are ignorant of the sequence of culinary utensils on the dining table. we even have niche restaurants like Curry Udon places and Tapas bars. and yet, people are still complaining about the lack of proper food in this good country. a comment moan i often here from friends and colleagues goes something like 'But there's nothing here to eat!!' behind them would be an entire row of food court outlets offering local delights and western meals.

like i always tell people, 'Food is a blessing. Variety is therefore, Godsent and perhaps prudent Economics.' i know it doesn't make much sense. but then again, neither does the fact that we are whining about the lack of food in a country that has an abundance of it.

---

it's raining heavily. and not just any rain. it's the type that has monotone clouds, monotone lightning, monotone rain drops. if sound could be described as monotone as well, then it would be apt for the thunder. there's a faint smell of freshly-cut grass mixed in with the rain. and true enough, when the scene pans downwards, we see the horizon defining the sky and an endless field of green grass.

in the distance, we see two people. presumably lovers, presumably star-crossed. like a hundred-metre dash, they run fast. like a war film trailer about lover separated by politics, they run with no regrets. like two magnets separated by a science teacher teaching a class about north and south poles, they dash to each other like it was a scientific law that designated they do so.

the two lovers clash in a hug. they don't kiss. they don't make love on the field. they don't do anything else other than wrap each other in an embrace that possibly explains the context of the entire situation.

two people. a man and a woman. he closes his eyes and cradles her. she is crying tears of reunion. the tears have a special glint though. possibly because they've been diluted with the monotone rain droplets, spelling out a short-lived reunion. she has the face of an angel no less, despite the fact that she's crying.

the hug lasts for no more than a minute. two cars arrive.

and that's when the dream ends.


for most gay people, i'm sure that there's some point in their lives that they've asked themselves THE question. it's a question that maybe spells out self-doubt. maybe guilt. or regret. or whatever negative connotations that come about when i reveal the question in the next few sentences. well i'm not sure whether it's most gay people or it's just me. but it's only recently that i've begun to question myself. 'Could i turn straight again and live with it?' can i revert back to the lifestyle that i left behind oh-so-many years ago? can i drop an ideal that i built my life from, right here, right now, and not look back? can i go back to sex with the supposedly designated gender that society says i ought to be having with? could i possibly get married with a woman and settle down? can i actually deal with having children? when i ponder over such thoughts, the only question that i can truly answer is the one about children. and you know how i feel about children, preferring most of them to be under the care of a Miss Havisham sort of character.

it's definitely a daunting question, even for the most mature gay person. we've spent so many years working hard to get to the point where we are today. we built our lives around values that contravene most of the world's norms. and i can assure you that in the midst of meeting many gay people, most homosexuals have forgotten to add a few accommodating straight people in their list of friends. so you see, it's not like a change of underwear for a gay person to just turn the tables on the sexuality. or to put it in a crude metaphoric 'hur hur hur' sense, it's a bit like wearing a really kinky piece of women's undergarment. you have to take a while to figure out to put which limb into which hole of the undergarment in question.

it is with recent concern though that i've been pondering this question of turning back to the path of the straight and narrow. of course, these thoughts don't just pop by one fine day and rear their ugly head. it's perhaps destiny and fate and the circumstances that they've thrown in that give situations their context. in my case, it's mainly feelings and dreams. well, not dreams of death and dying like i mentioned before in my previous posts. i used to dream a lot about dying, with my playing the role as the person who dies. not a very fun thing to do when you experience the various methods of death with the feelings of pain that my mind conjures up when i'm sleeping. the good thing is that these days, i'm don't dream so much about death anymore. it's as if my mind has decided to move on from horror movies and psycho thrillers and perhaps start watching something else more substantial.

substantial in this case refers to the stuff that you often find in your local film festival. the type that has twenty second shots of water dripping, twenty seconds of silence and another twenty seconds of an upclose shot of a vagina. all for no apparent reason other than to dare the boundaries of film mores and perhaps artistic license. well okay, my dream are not that incomprehensible, but it does give me that feeling when i wake up after my post-night shift afternoon sleeps. the electric fan would be blowing in a corner of the room, the brother would be in another watching streaming movies and downloading porn at the same time, the window reveals grey clouds of impending rain, and i would be up in bed, hearing the sounds of the afternoon heartland soundtrack

i wake up from one indie film, only to be in an indie film of mine.

---

money is indeed, a really sensitive topic within gay relationships. for the typical straight couple, tradition, norms and a superego have perhaps more or less defined that the guy should mostly pay for dinner, movie tickets, coffee and the hotel room. if the girl is prudent and really nice, she'll even bring along condoms, lube and her best friend (insert random heterosexual chortle here: hur hur hur!!). for the two men in a homosexual relationship though, financial matters are more of a grey and rainbow-coloured area. after all, tradition, culture and superegos are not exactly familiar with gay society and its social mechanics. should it be defined by age as in 'i'm older so i'll be picking up the tab'? should it take into consideration professions (doctors and janitors in a relationship)? or even better, sexual position preference (top picks up the tab because he's more manly)! which is why i believe that to avoid all the money-related conflicts ('i paid for all your stupid sparkling water during your fine dining meals, you bitch!'), it's perhaps better if gay people just go dutch on most things.

in my short few years of being gay so far, i have seen my fair share of couples breaking up over money matters. a typical example would be a couple having joint accounts and one partner in the relationship being a spendthrift, fancying indulgence and constant extravagance. it's a problem that isn't prejudiced with age though. even young couples that earn barely enough to club on the weekends are plagued by it. you know how relationships are - expensive and as stable as a chemical reaction. and you thought that the young couldn't possibly break up over financial matters.

of course, for all the breakfast-coloured sunshine and silver linings in this world, i have also known of really giving and generous couples who make sure that money doesn't become an issue in any conflicts that may arise in the course of love. i know i sound like a marriage counsellor here, but openness is one factor that really helps. other options involve going steady with a simple man or pre-nups. but speaking from a more practical perspective, avoiding extravagance and the impracticalities of life is seriously the most useful solution. for some reason or other, the average gay person simply loves extravagance and the empowerment of luxuries. is it a by-product of the Dorothy Dollar? or just simply the media and its constant barrage of the ideal gay man in a pair Gucci slippers and designer threads? and since we're on the topic of Gucci slippers, i'm actually dying to see the day when someone slips and fall while wearing a pair (this deserves another straight man chortle: hur hur hur!).

i once saw a young gay chap of about twenty. to put it simply and without prejudice, he's the skinny and effeminate friend that you prolly know of or have one of. i like them because they are generally hilarious and vivacious people with plenty of attitude. this guy in question though, was decked from head to toe in black and brands. huge logo-ed ones, to be precise. he was what one could call as your definitive fashionista. from the top, there was a black Lacoste polo tee covering his skinny frame. a pair of black Abercrombie jeans hugged what was left of his anorexic butt. he carried a black Louis Vuitton carrier that prolly weighed more than him. what seemed like an original pair of Gucci slippers (i couldn't jolly well reach down and feel for the fabric can i?) announced his entrance with a really noisy 'piak-piak' sound. the crowning glory was a pair of Gucci sunglasses that screamed 'I am Nicole Richie, here me roar' (meow!). admittedly, i have nothing against style and luxury. in fact, i shouldn't have a say in style as i can't tell the difference between a birkin and a bag. the only issue that i have here is that i find it rather sad to see someone covering himself and what's left of his dignity in branded and logo-ed goods. everything on him has a logo the size of Zimbabwe. from the trade mark LV motif, to the gold-embossed Gucci frames.

and oh, did i mention that i happened to see this guy in the blue-collared worker's main mode of public transportation - the train.
yes, class meets crass.

i've never been one to spend tonnes of money on the various impracticalities of life. not that i'm a prudent person when it comes to all things financial. after all, i am the guy who signed up for insurance with a three hundred dollar per month premium. not forgetting another three hundred for the household expenses and another two-fifty for my education. none the less, i know i'm treading on really sensitive ground here given that 'impracticalities' is a rather loosely-defined term. i need my cigarettes just as the same way you might need to get your daily dose of a protein shake (which i used to, but now don't). point is, i know what i ought and ought not to be spending on. take for example, i would jolly well love to stride into the nearest Lacoste boutique and say something chi chi like 'Can i have ten of this in ten different colours?' but obviously i don't because not only do i have to put my ass on the street market for ten month after the whole Lacoste hoo-hah, but also it's just purely impractical. and silly. and foolish. and retarded. but 'nuff said.

this trip to Thailand (yes, it's another Thailand post, sorry to bore you guys to death with my Sawadee stories) has really been one revolving a lot around money. to begin with, i have already burned a hole in my pockets just to get there and get bored to death with the family. i found the perfect solution for this though. whenever the parents went shopping, i quickly went my separate way and found myself a nice coffee join to start reading, smoking and people-watching. the brother of course, had no choice but to tag along with the parents because my mother believes that he will get kidnapped by tuk tuk drivers or Southern infidels. plus he didn't have a lot of money to begin with. i contributed a hundred bucks to the brother's expenditure in Thailand. and a few one cent coins just in case he needed the loo (you have to pay for entrance into the toilets in Mah Boon Krong).

everyone of course bought plenty of things. everyone that is, except the father whom i can't recall bought much. prolly still saving for that HDTV that he so wants. i went on a book-spending spree, buying more than ten novels to keep me pre-occupied in Thailand and public transport in Singapore for at least two months. i bought cheap tees, pants, shorts and stocked up on a barrage of cheap beauty products. i even had money left to buy souvenirs for colleagues. i actually went there with a list of things i had in mind to buy. so i was pretty much left with an excessive amount of money which i spent on really impractical things like Wireless Fidelity in the hotel room. in case you didn't know, Wireless Fidelity is more commonly known as WIFI, not to be mistaken for something along the lines of fidelity and promiscuity which in this case might be a male masseur in my hotel room. but as i said, WIFI in the hotel room is silly. and foolish. and retarded. and impractical given that i'm in Thailand, the land of a thousand smiles and many more internet cafes. but i don't do silly things without a reason.

the brother, being a young teenager and a real narcissist bought several cheap tees, a pair of sunglasses and one item of much decadence. the item in question here, being an Adidas sweater. it was white and had stitched-on red stripes at the side in the trademark triple stripes of Adidas. i would have been fine if it had been a simple Adidas jacket. but no, on the back of the jacket was the huge word 'JAPAN'. and thus, i spent a half of the trip in Bangkok watching the Chinese brother wandering around in Bangkok with the ching-chong face made up of won-tons and Chinese takeaways. i couldn't help but laugh internally when i see authentic Japanese tourists in their street-styled clothes walking past him. unsurprisingly, none of them wore apparel which stated their nationality. this also prolly explains why my mom is paranoid about the tuk tuk drivers and Southern Infidels kidnapping the brother.

my mother was more prudent with her purchases though. she bought accessories. she bought clothes. she even bought a Thai silk nightie that looks really nice. alas, she bought a fake Longchamp bag as well. being no style guru, i can't tell you the exact name of the bag in question. but it's the trademark one that comes in a variety of colours and the brown flap over the top. there's a logo emblazoned into the brown flap which my mind captures as 'the guy on th ehorse in mid-jump'. i was in the hotel room when my mother returned from shopping with the proud tote in hand. but the moment i got to touch the leather flap, i had problems convincing myself that it was a genuine item. plus, 'the guy on the horse in mid-jump' was slightly faded when i recalled seeing the original product. in fact, the guy looked better if he were on something more ancient like a tapestry or a brochure for medieval holidays in Europe.

but enough with what my family are buying in Thailand. the norm of the our short holidays in Thailand would go something like that: the first half of the day would be spent out on the streets of Thailand's coffee joins and shopping centres. the other half though, would be mainly in the hotel rooms. you see, just when i thought i had the legendary 'iron stomach' that could ingest and digest any food from all over the world, i developed a bout of indigestion on the second day of the trip. i didn't seek any medical attention as there are three nurses in my family, me included. the culprit here i suspect, would be the Chang Mai rice that i consumed in the latter-mentioned country.

now, Chang Mai rice is different from your typical Thai rice that we Singaporeans mainly consume. it actually comes in clumps (which sounds rather lewd - 'I come in clumps!'), it's sticky and it's hard (which sounds equally lewd). not to be mistaken for glutinous rice, Chang Mai rice is the type that suitable for extended storage due to its lack of moisture and 'clumpiness'. in fact, it's perfect for food fights over the dinner table. if you run out of Chang beer bottles to throw in Chang Mai, grab some local rice and hurl it over to the nearest drunken tourist for a grievous injury to the eye.

out of the seven days on the trip, six of them were tainted with fevers and the constant purging of solely liquid. everything else was just clumping along in my stomach and intestines and remaining undigested. use your imagination when i say that 'whatever went in, came out looking like it never went in'. i permanently felt like puking half the time. all i could do when i watched my parents and the brother pigging out on steamboat and pizzas was exude a greenish tinge on my face. it was with this that i decided to spend the second half of most of the days in Thailand under the cosy comforters in my hotel room. i watched plenty of Nat Geo, Discovery Channel and MTV, suffice to say. i learned a lot about Global Warming. i was humoured by Mythbusters. and i saw how Janet Jackson danced with four (or was it five?) glowing balls in 'Feedback'. by the fifth day however, i was bored stiff. mainly because cable TV is all about reruns. plus i had already completed three of the books i purchased in Thailand.

the cool part though was that i brought along my Fujitsu laptop with me to Thailand. the not-so-cool bit was that i had no internet connection. i had porn on my laptop though. and as many guys would attest too, porn is only fun till the point you come. you can have 9 hours worth of porn in your storage space, but if you come within 9 minutes, it's pretty much is useless, isn't it? not that i come in 9 minutes, mind you. or in clumps for that matter. it was with this ultimate boredom that i decided to purchase WIFI in my hotel room, a three day pass to the world wide web. i spent the last two days in my hotel room mainly playing World of Warcraft from the afternoon till the night. this is what i mean by 'impracticalities'.

despite spending on exorbitant internet access, i still had quite a large amount of money to contend with. close to three thousand baht, if i recall. falling short of a massage, i couldn't really think of anything else i wanted to spend on. besides, if anyone were to massage me at that point of indigestion, i would most definitely have hurled. and vomit-stained towels are really not that widely accepted at most massage parlours in this world. even the shady ones that offer extra 'services'. so the idea of something that i could spend on came to me at what i defined as 'The Gayest Moment' of this family-oriented trip to Thailand. as i might have already declared proudly, i didn't have any sex in Thailand.

what transpired was a random trip with the family to the huge shopping complex formerly known as the World Trade Centre in Bangkok. it was one of those places that were more attunede to the foreigners that go there for holidays. there were plenty of boutiques and various other chi chi places selling luxury goods. one of these upmarket places was of course, the Zen Department stall. 'The Gayest Moment' of course happened when i passed by the men's underwear section, no less. like your typical men's underwear section, there were really artistic mannequins of Herculean torsos clad in underwear. and you know what they say about art imitating/irritating life. as if one cue, there were several equally Herculean men wandering around the rows and rows of undergarments. some were obviously gay. some were obviously couples. for some curious reason, all of them were Asian. all of them were staring at the new-comer with that gay stare, as if daring me to purchase some expensive underwear.

from a gay person's point of view, it was one of the most fascinating underwear departments i've actually seen in my entire life. not like the typical ones in Singapore that stock funny-looking under that require instruction sheets and some creative thinking in order to put it on. not like the average ones in Singapore that have plenty of grey, whites and blacks. not like the horrid ones in Singapore that have really gaudy designs of yachts and stars (i'm not joking about this). i dunno what made me decided to purchase expensive underwear in the end actually. maybe it was the fact that there was a sale going on. maybe it was the pressurizing atmosphere of Herculean testosterone and pheromones wafting about. or maybe it was that i had money to clear before my departure from Thailand.

it was with some decision however, that i decided on two pairs of Aussiebums. i couldn't help but think about what the sales assistants were thinking when i made my purchase. prolly something along the lines of 'i could purchase more than fifty meals in Thailand with that amount he spends covering his manhood'. there was even a VAT refund for the underwear i bought. but that was too much hassle. i couldn't help but feel guilty over my purchase. a sort of guilty pleasure though. somehow or other, i always imagine most expensive items looking like money. like take for example, a birkin bag would prolly look like many stacks of hundred dollar notes shaped like a birkin bag. in the same line of thought, my Aussiebum covering my genitals would be nothing more than a few wads of cash sewn together to provide coverage.

it's not a pleasant sight, i must say. well at least not something that anyone could come in clumps to.

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i like to people-watch. this is of course, not to be confused with the primary gay past time of cruising for sex. to me, people-watching is one of those activities that you can learn a lot from. it also helps that i have this uncanny ability to notice bizarre little details about people. it could be one's manner of walking, one's manner of speech, the accents, a scar, line of vision, choice of apparel, et cetera. from these details, my mind processes it with cultural facts and information gleaned from life. it mixes it around and comes up with a conclusion as to why that particular detail exists of this person.

i know this makes me sound really intellectual and all, but i assure you that i'm not that clever. and anways, most of the conclusions that i come up with are along the redundant lines of 'He's wearing a white shirt because he's a waiter' or 'Prolly because he likes to wear white'. poin tis, people watching accompanied with the ability to notice bizarre details on people is prolly the main reason why i love visiting foreign countries so much. plus the fact that you can seal real hot men in the flesh.

beats having to download porn just to see a Caucasian.


for the average Caucasian tourist though, it's a totally different matter. in the eyes of the Asian tourist, the average Caucasian is prolly insane. it could be an American tourist taking pictures of the Bangkok rush hour, in the middle of the road. or the purchase of a Jade Elephant statuette or an ornamental vase. i daresay it's that immaterial substance that permeates every corner of Thailand. the typical Caucasian tourist asks questions. why the curves on the roof of a Buddhist temple are done that way. why are the temple domes are covered in gold leaves. why there are over a thousand step on the only entrance to the Buddhist temple in question. it's this all-encompassing thing called Culture.

it's perhaps this stark reason of a lack of culture in our family holidays, that my parents decided on Bangkok with a detour to Chang Mai for this trip. after all, we've done Bangkok so many times that we're prolly bored stiff. the normal routine whenever i go to Bangkok with the family would be to get what i want from the various department stores and then head to the nearest coffee joint for a cuppa, some reading and people-watching. my father will accompany mother on her shopping trips like the perfect husband. my brother will simply follow along because he doesn't have any money of his own to spend.

Chang Mai is quite the desolate place. not as crowded as Bangkok and the traffic is actually way better. and there are 'American' pubs everywhere on the main tourist districts offering ribs and steaks and Chang beer. which explains why the night market rates are prolly jacked up way higher than the Bangkok prices. it's a great place to relax and chill none the less, which was what i did most of the time when the parents weren't in my hair to bug me.

our time in Chang Mai was spent doing cultural things. things like visiting the various handicraft and produce factories with our tour guide, Noi. Noi was really informative and knowledgeable about Chang Mai itself. after all, you wouldn't expect any less from a person armed with a Masters in Political Science from the University of Siam. previously in the import/export trade, he became a tour guide after 9/11 when his businesses folded one after another. and thus, he told us the history of Chang Mai, the various kings, the princesses, the ones who brought back the silk trade, et cetera. i had a better understanding of why the Thais are the kind and hospitable people that they are after listening to his stories.

the second day of Chang Mai was rather exciting to say the least. we went all wildlife and nature and took an elephant ride. Noi drove us all the way to an outpost in the middle of what seemed like nowhere. there was a big sign that announced something in Thai and broken English. you could basically understand two things from the sign:

1) there were elephants in that outpost
2) this was an outpost of some sort

Caucasian tourists were everywhere. most were plus-sized, in their 50s and had really bad peeling tans. the screech of cicadas pierced what would otherwise have been a nice quiet forest of sorts. if you listened closely, you could pick up strains of French, Russian and German words occasionally punctuating the air. Noi who wasn't one to waste time due to our tight schedule of visiting many other cultural-inclined places quickly ushered us onto two elephants, the parents on one and my brother and me on another. i have to admit that the only elephants i've seen are on Discovery Channel, Nat Geo and the Singapore Zoological Gardens. and these are all encounters behind a television screen or at least some fencing. therefore, to see one upclose and feel the skin and all of an elephant is really quite an experience.

riding an elephant is not like riding a horse or a 100% speed mount (to put it in World of Warcraft terms) where you hop on and get to the business district within five minutes. there's a big hand-made seat with leather cushions for two tied on top of the elephant. an elephant trainer sits in front of you armed with a stick and a mobile phone, presumably to send text messages when he's bored ('I'll c u @ outpost 4 lunch in 1 hr, am ridin now'). it's a slow process that only tourists with all the time in the world to spare can afford to do. for this elephant ride, our destination was to the village of what i think was the Lisu tribe in Chang Mai. i felt like a joystick, suffice to say. we constantly swung to the left, to the right and then one sweeping round. this constant pattern of swing left and right and one round was really making me feel queasy. what wasn't helping was that at that point of time, i was going through a bout of indigestion, having consumed a large amount of Chang Mai sticky rice the previous day. i thought of lighting up a cigarette. but i also thought of smoke-aggravated charging War Elephants in a computer-based strategy game (Age of Empires) i once played. i decided to live with the nausea and a handy stash of Maxalon pills that my mother brought along.

we spent close to an hour on the elephants, riding from the outpost all the way to the Lisu village. it's really like National Geographic, crossing rivers, seeing kids play in them, forests and plenty of flies and mosquitoes. my father and i were pretty nonchalant about all things buzzing, having survived the army and all that survival training stuff. my brother and mother though, were constantly slapping them and losing their karma points. our missing luggage hadn't arrived at that point of time and therefore there wasn't any repellent to go around. there was plenty else to see otherwise. the villagers dotting the surroundings. i couldn't help noticing that anatomy of elephant as well.

as you know elephants are BIG creatures. and BIG creatures translate into BIG anatomy. there was another elephant in front of ours. and it had an anus the size of well.... i can't find anything to describe it. but to put it metaphorically and humorously, if you wondered why the Vitruvian Man has his arms stretched out... well it has something to do with the length and width of the elephant's anus. amidst all that gray skin, there was a rude pinkish hole that constantly dripped some really viscous fluid of sorts. one would automatically assume that's the anus of course without expecting anything else other than faecal matter to pop out of it.

but Mother Nature sent her act of confirmation with a really loud plop of sorts. it was that kind of plop that sounded like a human dropping from a building, thanks to CSI. lo and behold, the elephant started shitting mid-trip to the Lisu village. the rude, angry-looking anus in front of us started evacuating huge chunks of big green balls of shit. they looked equally angry too. i'm not sure about elephant social mechanics, but this shitting seemed to be a sign for all the other elephants trekking through the forests to start defecating as well. whilst riding on top of the elephant, one could feel a sort of strain going through mammal itself, before you heard a loud plop behind you.

i'm fine with mammals shitting actually. but i'm not fine when the shit that comes out of the elephant is accompanied with green fluid. and you could be in another country far away from home, but the laws of physics still apply. in this case, wet and hard lumps of shit hitting the floor will cause the wet bits to fly all over the place. 'all over the place' included several spots near my sneakers when our elephant was trying to overtake the elephant in front of ours. who was shitting, no less.

i was therefore really relieved when the elephant arrived at the Lisu village. there were no tribal dances and people crafting wooden inanimate objects as the average Caucasian tourist would expect. my parents though, being the Asian tourists, predicted another tourist trap selling handicrafts. and true enough, there was a whole row of stalls selling local products, mainly along the lines of bags and trinkets. business was bad. not because there were few people visiting the village solely to pee in the toilets and get a few drinks. but prolly due to the fact that there were about fifteen over shops all selling THE SAME trinkets in THE SAME colours and THE SAME designs. and every shop owner was a Lisu girl dressed in THE SAME tribal costume saying THE SAME welcoming greeting of 'You want come see!' in THE SAME accent and THE SAME tone of voice. i'm not trying to be degretory here or anything like that, but some business smarts would be really welcome here. obviously, the whole batch of tourists around us never bought anything.

you must be wondering then, how on Earth did we get back to the elephant outpost? thank goodness it wasn't by elephant this time, but rather ox-cart. two oxes, a wooden cart and a ox rider armed with an even bigger stick of sorts prolly to tame the critters. he had a mobile phone as well, of course. it was a really rocky ride. and from the experiences, i couldn't help but conclude that our oxes seemed really unintelligent or have problems with psychomotor-coordination. the right ox kept veering towards the right of the designated dirt path. and to the right of the dirt path is a bunch of trees. hoorah.

the ox rider of course, had to do something. and he had two things i hand, the taming stick and the mobile phone. i was hoping he would use the mobile phone actually and call some friends for a replacement cart or whack the ox or something. simply because the taming stick was really thick and had a huge wooden ball at the end of it. getting bashed with it would result in internal haemorrhage or some random forensics detail. 'WHOCK! WHOCK' two hard beatings on the ox's back were given. being people of urban living, we as a family were of course shocked. my dad gave the ox rider a nice tip of two hundred baht after the whole ride which lasted a good half hour.

we asked Noi later on as to why the ox rider gave the poor critter such a harsh chastising. he told us simply that oxes in the Thai culture are considered to be one of the less intelligent creatures when compared to others such as monkeys and elephants. there was no other way to teach it properly other than 'negative reinforcement' (in his own words). SPCA would come beating at the Lisu village's door step.

but then, that's culture for you.

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but obviously, something like that would be rather hard-pressed to happen. mainly because my father is a family man. the duty-bound, 'my children's expenses before my HD TV', responsible person that one would rarely find in these days of materialistic wealth. the father would not have it any other way than a family trip, the main reasons being that:

1) we as a family, have not been on a holiday in a very long time (the last time we went on one was to Vancouver in 2005)

2) the brother is entering the army for his National Service soon - it's difficult to plan a trip when one of your relatives is in the military (or any other governmental organization for that matter)

3) it is after all, paid by my mother's organization.

and thus, plans were made and think tanks in the entire family's heads were activated to brainstorm for holiday destinations we could actually go. we actually did set out sights on several places initially. Japan, for the culture and the food. Perth, for the farmland animals, koalas, kangaroos and perhaps the food as well. UK for the art, gardens, palaces and tea, presumably. Korea, for i dunno.... Bae Yong-joon and kim chi? so many holiday ideas, mainly about food, but here's the catch: hey! reality check people! we don't have enough money!!

and thus like scorned upper middle class people having to make do with second best, we decided on Thailand. and do note, this is after i contributed at least a thousand dollars for airfare (mine), another two hundred for food and on the mother's behest, a final hundred dollars for the brother's expenses (who couldn't be bothered to take up a part-time job despite having been lazing around for two months coming while waiting to enlist in the army). that's practically three quarters of my month salary. whatever happened to responsibility and duty-bound and 'my children's expenses before my HD TV'?

and thus, with our luggages in tow, we found ourselves at Changi International Airport on a friday. despite the time being no more than six o'clock in the wee hours of the morning, the father seemed rather perky. so did the mother. and of course, the brother. i was still recovering from the night shift blues, having completed another set of nights from monday to thursday. it was all pretty much a blur to me. the checking in, the piling of the luggage on the baggage counter, the passports, the sudden disappearance of myself for a quick cigarette break. i had a feeling that i was not really going to enjoy this trip. based on past experiences, i could already foresee intermittent periods of silence where nobody knows what to say, phases of indecision where nobody knows what to do. i brought along my laptop because of this. if i'm bored or speechless, i could open up my laptop and start surfing on the wi-fi internet. falling short, i could bash myself on the head with it for agreeing to come on this trip.

the plane ride was uneventful. a ride to Suvarnabhumi Airport and then a quick transit to Chang Mai International. the children barely communicated more than a few sentences and brief terms of agreement to the parents throughout the entire ride from Singapore to Chang Mai. even then, the method of communication was mainly through a family-trained tradition of grunts and nods. however, all this changed when we tried to survive our first-ever family holiday crisis. we were awaiting our baggages along the belts. my humongous Quiksilver carry-on, check. my brother's small carry-on, check. the parents' medium-sized wheelie, check. the parents' large boxy luggage, ch.... wait, where is it?

it's one of those epiphanic moments of denial that you typically see in American dramas. you know when the lead is alone and in another country without her baggage. a really emo-sounding indie tune would be accompanying the scene and the baggage belt just grinds to a silencing halt at the appropriate climax of the song. except that in this scene, we had just one luggage less, two really calm men, one panicky mother and one nonchalant teenager. the baggage belt did have that really have an impact though. it seems rather to silly to stand watching at a non-moving baggage belt, but we did just that. presumably hoping that some random Thai airport staff would poke his head from the dark recesses of the baggage belt entrances and start screaming something incoherent like 'PRAKTUCHAI KAP SUM PONGSAP SONGKHRA BAGGAGE SINGAPORE KRAP PONG PONG KRAP??' (loosely translated: 'What in lemongrass is this baggage from Singapore doing in here at the end of the baggage aisle?')

and i'm not kidding you when i tell you the first thing my mom said was this:




of course, all that worry was for naught. because roughly one and a half days later, our luggage arrived intact, smelling like airplane cargo. my father thanked Noi profusely, even shaking his hand so much that the coins and keys in his pocket jangled like Christmas. as we checked the luggage in the hotel room, we couldn't help but notice a little tag that indicated from whence our baggage came from.

a chinese logo. chinese words stating the name of a china-based importing company.

yes, China.

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