In Continuum.

Jokingly, I've been called many names in response to my religious beliefs (none at all). I've been suggested to be the head of the Illuminati, a Scientologist, a demon, the Devil, and the Antichrist. All jokes, so I have no problems with most of them, whatsoever. However, the latter nicknames seem a little far-fetched, considering how I have no beliefs in the existence of neither God nor the Devil. It is a little difficult to be something when you do not believe in its existence, if you know what I mean. It is difficult to be a monk, for example, if you are not religious. I cannot be the antichrist if I do not believe in Jesus Christ. You know, you can't be against somebody if you do not believe in his existence, right. I mean, that'd be really weird and pretentious. Anyway, I've been called a lot of names, but I am OK with that. Then one of those names appeared in an article I was reading online, one written by a certain pastor for a local newspaper in Alaska. According to him, if it is indeed true that I am the Antichrist, then I could also very well be a homosexual, or someone who practices sodomy. That is a tall claim, because the last time I checked, I was still head over heels about women. Or, actually if he is right about the Antichrist, maybe I am really a woman stuck in a man's body. I am a lesbian, that is what he is saying.

First of all, this pastor started off the article by saying that the question of whether or not the Antichrist is a homosexual did not originate with him. Yet, it contradicts the rest of the article, choked with his researches and arguments against the act of homosexuality. Anyway, so he then went on to talk about how the word "homosexual" does not appear in the Bible, and that it is a modern word created to replace the word that the Bible used to condemn the act of homosexuality - sodomy. But if you really take half a minute to search in the dictionary, the word "sodomy" is still there, so I have no idea which dictionary he decided to go through while doing his research. Anyway, he then started quoting from the Bible and then trying to prove that God hated the homosexuals, or the people who practiced it anyway. The word "sodomy" came from a place called "Sodom", a place full of gay people. OK, I should be a little more accurate here, because the word "gay" and "homosexual" did not appear in the Bible. In the book, it was merely implied that boys were sticking their genitals into other boys with the words "lying with mankind as with womankind". It was implied that the boys were sleeping with the boys, and God wasn't very happy with that.

You noticed how, in the Bible, God spends quite a bit of time killing a lot of people. All the first-born died in Exodus, for reasons unknown, and he also made a lot of people die because he was pissed off. But, he was never physically present at the crime scene, because he always had evil henchmen to do his job. Like, locusts and fireballs falling from the skies, and stuff like that. But this time, He became so pissed off that boys were sticking genitals into other boys, He personally came down to Earth to kill these boy-loving boys. That is pretty damn serious in the real world, you know. Imagine if you are an intern working for Microsoft, and you make a mistake so big that Bill Gates flies down to fire you from your job - that's how serious it was. God physically came down, presumably on some kind of chariot with flaming wheels, and destroyed the town of Sodom, and killed everybody in there. It's no surprise that He did what He did anyway, because He doesn't seem to accommodate such things very often. You know, you piss Him off and He kills you. It's really unfair, considering the fact that none of us really have a fighting chance at all. He is a freakin' deity man, what are you supposed to do to fight against him - pray? To whom?

The pastor explains that there is no greater sin than to reject what God made you. So, he is trying to say that if God made you to be a man, then you do everything you are supposed to do as a man, and the same thing applies for women as well. Funny, how this just seems like a giant conspiracy to keep women oppressed somehow. It's not that I am a feminist or whatever, but it just sounds like something a bunch of men created to keep women in their places to wash their dirty laundry, or something. Anyway, to do anything but what a man should do was, to God, the greatest sin ever. He made you to be a woman-loving boy, so He expects you to be a woman-loving boy. To be a boy-loving boy, that wasn't He'd be very happy about that. Then again, people are always telling me to never consider the work of God in human contexts, because He is of a different league altogether. But here we have a human, the pastor, trying to interpret everything that God is saying in the Bible and taking everything literally - weird. Anyway, to be deviant is to be against God, according to him, and that is why God thought that it was right to kill them all. Well, obviously God didn't do a very good job because there are still gay people running around everywhere. So much for killing the people in Sodom, because that did not wipe out these sodomy-loving people either. Notice how they don't use the word "kill" or "murder" in the Bible. Always words like "punish" or "destroy". Euphemisms for the win.

At this point, the pastor has answered the question as to whether or not homos-, I mean, sodomy is a sin. Now, he tries to answer if the Antichrist is going to be a homosexual. Quoting from the Bible again, he says that "Neither shall he [Antichrist] regard... the desire of women..." So at this point, he is trying to make us believe that the Antichrist has no desire in women, and that makes him a homosexual. Now, wait just a minute here. If I am some evil dark lord whose sole purpose is to destroy God and take over the world, I think I have more important things than to deal with women. Seriously, I think women will not be very high on my priority list, especially not human women anyway. He based his accusation that the Antichrist is gay on that one single quote, and he seems to truly believe it to be right. He believes that men's attraction to women is the "glue for the bond of marriage" and "the propagation of a godly heritage". He keeps on saying that by defying what God made you to be, you are committing this hideous crime. But it's strange how it has never occurred to him that maybe, just maybe, God created them to be homosexuals. I think a lot of fundamentalists are so ready to disregard the idea of a gay-gene, and yet they are so willing to accept that God hates homosexuals - why?

The rest of the article is actually pretty amusing, as he begins to talk about the possibility of a gay leader, and how that man is going to be the Antichrist. When that happens, he claims, God is going to "descends from the clouds to fight against the armies of wickedness". The thought of that amuses me, for the image of it. Imagine a town full of happy homosexuals, and they are minding their own businesses. Some of their are doctors, lawyers, janitors, school teachers, a police officer, a pastor, etcetera. They are not harming anybody at all, and in fact they are actually people who are doing something to help the poor, to take care of the sick, to clean our streets, to keep us safe. Can you imagine the image of God coming down onto Earth to destroy these people just because they like members of the same sex? I can imagine God descending upon a Mardi Gras parade, and all the homosexuals dressed in glittering and shiny outfit would be staring upon God, who'd be at this time wearing some kind of shiny armor. I think the homosexuals would be quite excited to see that, especially when you have this deity coming through the clouds - such a grand and dramatic entrance. I cannot imagine the battle between God and the Gays, because that'd be so hilarious that it'd be worthy of some kind of Hollywood parody movie. The homosexuals would be fighting God with their dildos and their ray guns that shoot rainbows.

The fact of the matter is, if you are a pastor of a church, there are better things for you to ponder about than to plow your way through the Bible and trying to find validation in your own hate against the homosexuals. When you are doing in-depth research on why God hate homosexuals, you have an issue. There are more important things to care about in this world, more pressing issues than whether or not homosexuals should be eradicated from the face of this planet. Other than engaging in what many law in many countries would consider to be unnatural acts, they are not harming anybody in the process are they? They are not having sex while trying to rob a poor old lady, nor are they having sex while they are trying to burn the house down. They are doing something that we all do in the privacy of their homes, and I really don't see anything wrong with that. Persecute anybody who'd dare have sex in the public, go ahead and do that. But other than what they do in their private time, is there anything really wrong with homosexuals? If you are so bent on finding reasons that God is on your side, you have an issue.

God does not hate homosexuals, if he exists at all. At least in my mind, I was brought up to believe that he loves everyone, and that he is all about forgiveness. A lot of that is in contrary to all the killing in the Bible, but at least that is what He'd like us to think. I don't think killing a whole town of people is considered to be very fair, truth be told. If this is the kind of God that we are all supposed to be worshipping, I'd rather stab myself with a fork and then leap off a cliff while listening to the Jonas Brothers. The fact of the matter is, I think many human beings justify our own fears and hate by interpreting the "word of God" in their own ways. If you think that religion is ugly, the people that constitute the religions around the world can be even uglier. I do not agree with many teachings of God, so to speak. I do not like to be told by some invisible entity what to eat, when to do something, and whether or not I should be circumcised. The reason why a superior being would want my foreskin to be snipped off eludes me, but one thing is for sure: I will not tolerate a God who hates homosexuals. Or rather, I will not tolerate a person who thinks that God hates homosexuals. You have issues when you are meticulously pouring over ancient text and scriptures and trying to find reasons that God is on your side. It's stupid, and your church has the priorities upside down. What about the children who need education, or homelessness, or the aged. I think those are pretty important issues that the church should try to help out on. To ask questions like whether or not the Antichrist is gay, that's the dumbest thing I've read all day. I think that if people like that spend a fraction of the time spent on justifying their own hate for gays on actually helping people, the world would be a better place. Hell, eradicating a fraction of these bigots from our world is going to make the world a better place.

Sedatives

Theories are systems of ideas intended to explain something in short, and I suppose that is the direct result of humans wanting an explanation to everything. Whether or not theories are definitive, that is another question altogether. I mean, theories are like a life form somehow, and it is constantly evolving. You have one theory that works today, but it's probably going to be obsolete or irrelevant by tomorrow. You know, like the whole "the world is flat" theory a long time ago when humans thought that a flat earth was set upon four elephants and a giant turtle. Those are some of the things that humans believed in, and they came up with theories after theories to explain as to why we have our feet on the ground. Of course, then they discovered gravity, but even gravity is a theory and has never actually been proven - it's true, go look it up. Anyway, I suppose we want an explanation for everything, and this scientific process is a constant quest to find out what fits the best, you know. In Physics, it seems to be much easier to come up with a theory that explains things in a more encompassing way. You have Newton's law, and that covers a lot of grounds. But when it comes to social sciences, where everything is so volatile, it's impossible to find a solid foundation to stick your theory in.

Anyway, there was this particular "theory" about the mass media that really caught my attention yesterday in class, and I feel like I really want to address it here. I know, I have a written assignment on a similar subject, but this is somewhat different I suppose. Lance showed us a video of a man named Noam Chomsky, who spoke of the media's relationship to the society at large. A particular point he made during the video, which was kind of like a taped lecture of sorts, fascinated me somehow. He spoke of the way advertisements work in the media, and how they somehow act as a control over the greater population while the powers at be gain control over everybody else. Aside from the fact that advertising brings in the revenues for the broadcasters, it seems like they have become a tool for the powers at be to remain in power, or to maintain this status quo of things. I started thinking about how true that may be, and kept in mind that theories are after all, theories. They probably explain a portion of something but not everything, and there is probably only a certain extent of truth in social science theories. But interesting nonetheless, and here is how it works.

Turning on your television, you are going to be bombarded with advertisements in between your favorite shows. Even at the movies, you have advertisements before the movie even begins, and they are usually fifteen minutes in length for the most part, especially if you catch a movie at Golden Village. That is about one-eighth of a full-length feature film, and that's how much advertising you are getting for a single trip to the movies alone. You have advertisements telling you to travel to a foreign country, to sign yourself up for some slimming program, to buy the latest cosmetic, to try out the new formula included in a certain brand of shampoo - whatever. You have all of these messages thrown at us from everywhere, and to you it may just be some kind of marketing gimmick. You know, it's like a shotgun that fires, and you just hope that one of the pallets hit your target. But it's not all like that, according to Chomsky, because these advertisements actually provide some kind of distraction for the population. You know, you become too engulfed in this consumerism deal, and you become too busy trying to figure out what to buy and what not to buy, that the people with authority and power decides to step in and make all the decisions for you.

It just seems so salient in the context of Singapore somehow. I think if you strip away the basics, Orchard Road is just a giant street of advertisements. If you take away the news in the newspapers here, you get pages after pages of advertisements. Everything, everywhere, is asking you to buy something. I have today's TODAY paper right in front of me right now, and the front page doesn't even have a single news article, nor the second. In fact, the fourth and the fifth page are all advertisements as well. The first page is telling me to save up to 70% at OG, and they are advertising leather wallets, shoulder bags, and a whole bunch of other bags at discounted prices. The second page is telling me to buy an Everlast jacket, a Fila polo tee, a bunch of watches, a skateboard (what?), and a bunch of other accessories. Then we have the television sets, the washing machines, the camcorders, the digital camera, the home theater system, the cordless steam iron, the tower fans, the fridges, and all those stuff crammed into two pages of endless marketing. Big red letters like "$1" and "OFF", and a bunch of other bombastic fonts everywhere in this single tabloid newspaper. You start to wonder if there is a greater plan to these at all, if this is just another tool by the government to control our thoughts.

It is as if they are saying, the majority of the population are not capable of making informed decisions, so let us do the thinking and let us do the planning. It is as if advertisements, which promote consumerism and materialism, are sedatives to the society. They provide the money to the advertisers, and then the advertisers use them to drug the population into thinking that they have more important things to do - like, choosing between the normal wet tissue to the orange scented ones. It makes them feel like they have a choice in everything, like some kind of delusion, to make us feel like we are in control. Everything else outside of this sphere, then, becomes somewhat unimportant. Like anything to do with politics, or the important issues that matter, you brush them aside because you are too busy choosing which product to buy, which country to go to for a holiday, which pair of shoes to wear. It all adds up, and you become dumbed down while the big boys go to play in the playground of big money. Whenever you have a society with stratified classes, which is inevitable, you have the powerful always remaining in power, and the powerless always being controlled by the powerful. Very few people jump ships, as Lance mentioned in class, and you cannot help but view advertisements in a different way.

It was just fascinating to me, I suppose, and a little scary to think that all of this may be true. You know, what if it is true that we are just pawns in a chess game, being shifted around without us really knowing much about it. Especially in Singapore, where it is said to have a high level of political apathy amongst its citizens, you start to wonder if consumerism is the reason why we cannot care less - or maybe there is something more to it? In Singapore, people cannot care less about participating in politics, because you have one party that is controlling almost every aspect of the people's lives. This isn't North Korea, but it isn't true democracy either. While that is a goal that is impossible to attain in my opinion, this country does not come close to it at all. We have the government telling its people that the country is not in support of a certain decision when, in truth, nobody ever consulted us in regards to a certain subject. Just read the papers in regards to the recent sex education issue in schools. The government stepped in and said that the topic of homosexuality is not a part of the public agenda - really? I was not asked if it is my concerns at all, and it just seems like decisions have been made for me. Think like this, do it like that, and you will be fine.

That is what I have observed anyway, the way everything has been decided. It's like the first decade of your child's education, everything being pre-planned and sorted out without your child having much say in things. The child doesn't know better, you'd say as a parent, that is why you are making the decisions and signing the consent forms - the children are not smart enough to make smart decisions. That seems to be the way we are being treated at times, and the only reason why the people are not fighting back is because so far, fortunately, the government has been making mostly right decisions. As much as Singapore has a one ruling party system, it is fortunate that everything seems to be working in a relative order, and not a mirror image of what we have in a dictatorship system like, say, North Korea or Myanmmar. But it gets frustrating at times, the way everything has been fixed for all of us. We have no channels of argument, no ways in which we could voice our opinions. Actually, you can voice your opinions in blogs such as this one, but you still have to keep yourself checked, and you cannot go overboard with your views. In a country whereby it is written in law that it is illegal to say anything negative about the country's great leader, you don't expect opinions and views to be flying around in the airwaves.

It's not that I think the government here is full of evil people with cruel intentions - I don't. I think they are just like all of us out there, and it's not like they have a handbook on how to rule the world tucked underneath their tables or something. Not all of them are trying to manipulate the masses, not all of them want to control people with an iron fist. It's just that there are some things, decisions that have been made, that don't exactly have the kind of justice or transparency that we desire at all. When there is an unknown, you cannot help but question what is happening today, and people come up with theories to justify and answer these questions. It is the same as how conspiracy theories are always coming up with theories to accuse the government as this evil force trying to rule the rest of the world. But you know, these theories, they really make you think about things. You look at things differently somehow, and you realize just how much more is at work in our society than the obvious ones that meet the eyes.

The recent negligence of this blog is not intentional. The summer semester has been coming down on us really hard. It's not that I haven't got the time to sit here and write something about the events that have come to pass. But when you are experiencing a burn out, you realize that you haven't got much energy left to brainstorm anything at all. You find yourself sitting in your chair, looking at a blinking cursor and wondering what happened to all those words that used to come forth like tidal waves and with such ease. I pride myself for the ease at which words come to my mind, or ideas for a blog entry. Every once in a while, I admit, I do come to a dead end, and I experience a dry-spell just like any other writers would. I try to blog something everyday, but then you know how it is - you simply run out of gas at times. This time around, it isn't the ideas and the thoughts that came to a grinding halt, but the energy to translate them into words into this edit box that decided to call it quits. I've just been tired, mentally tired for the most part, after going through back to back to back lessons this week. The worst part is that it is not going to end anytime soon, and this will carry on until the end of next week. It is an encouraging thought that for this summer, Thursday is the new Friday. But still, when you are working harder than office workers, something is seriously wrong.

So Mondays, they are supposed to be my longest days. Three lessons back to back, from nine in the morning till five in the evening. We have two breaks in between three classes, one for one hour and fifteen minutes, and the other for one hour and forty-five minutes. I think it has got something to do with the fact that summer semesters are shorter, which is why everything has to be packed in and crammed up. I'm not sure how long a normal semester is supposed to take, but let's just say that it takes thirteen weeks to complete. We don't have that many weeks this time, so the extra lessons would have to be built on top of what we already have. As a result, this week and the next is going to involve extended lessons, and we are not talking about ten or fifteen minute extensions either. On Monday itself, I had lessons all the way from nine to five forty-five in the evening with forty-five minutes of break. Yeah, that is how little break I got on the first day of the week, and that turned the blues on Monday into a dark shade of indigo. It wasn't fun, going through all the lessons back to back like that, because you start to experience burn out a quarter of the way through the second lesson. So by the third lesson, you are not mentally there in the classroom any longer. I know I was physically there, but I really wasn't, you know.

I usually like the classes, even if they are back to back to back. But lately, without the breaks, I've been having difficulty doing just about anything you are expected to do in class as a student. You know, the note writing, the concentrating, and the part about you participating in class and being a good student. I couldn't do any of those properly, and I was just a corpse that talked. I wasn't even a zombie at that time, which would have made my time a lot easier to bear. I don't think zombies actually know how mundane and boring their lives are. They stroll around cities trying to find human brains to suck on, and that is pretty much all that they do. They don't have backyard barbeque of human brains, or they don't even go to concerts or whatever. They just roam around streets and do roaming all day long - not very fun. But without a conscious brain, I suppose it makes things a whole lot easier for them to bear. But I was there, with a conscious mind, and I knew what I was going through. I knew how much time I'd have to endure before the day was over, and I only wished for a switch in my head for me to switch things off. You know, a zombie-switch or something. I could zombie-fy myself and I won't have to know what was going on to my brain - degradation. I rot in my seat all day long in class, and I haven't a clue on where to pick myself up.

I remember something I read on George Carlin's book, and he mentioned a curious little observation about clocks once. He mentioned how he noticed that the hands of a clock always seem to move faster on the first half of the clock than the second half of the clock. It is as if the pulling of gravity makes it easier for the hands to move from twelve to six. From then on, working against gravity, the journey from six back to twelve just seems so much longer. I couldn't help but notice that fact in class on Monday, or everyday ever since Monday. The long dark journey from six to twelve, the longest journey that a clock hand takes. As you can see, I was that bored. No, I was not bored - I was exhausted. There is a point in exhaustion when you feel like breaking something or punching someone. Or, if you can break something in that person's face while punching someone, that'd be great. Anyway, you get to that point in exhaustion, and I felt it on Monday and Tuesday. I wanted to break something because I was so tired, and I was angered by how unable I was to process my thoughts. Points were brought up and questions were posed in class, but a part of me was simply unable to voice my own opinions on certain issues. I wanted to scream, but even doing that sounded like some kind of a marathon.

I think we all need breaks, you cannot expect humans, or average humans, to go on and on at something. That is especially true when you have to engage your brain for an extended period of time. Maybe for the first half and hour to an hour, maybe you can power through with no problems. Maybe you might need some effort at the forty-five minute point, but you can still push through till the end without a problem. That is why most of our tutorials and our lectures are at an hour or one and a half hour long for the most part. That is as long as an average human can concentrate for without much of a break, but not anything longer than that. Anything longer is going to invite a concept called diminishing marginal returns. It is an economics term, but it applies to this anyway. There are times when, the more you work at something, the less you gain in return. Like, if you keep studying for six hours straight, you are going to remember less and less and less. You won't be able to concentrate much because your brain just throws his hands up and say "I cannot take this anymore". That is what happens, and that is what happened to every one of us in class. Sure, Lance is all cool and funny, and he shows us really hilarious videos. But when it comes right down to it, our brains were elsewhere. I know mine was.

You feel so helpless you know, when a question is asked and you know that it isn't a difficult question. It is one of those times when you know that you have it in you, but it's just not coming out. Think of it like a terrible stomachache, and you know that something is tumbling around in there. But nothing is coming out, not even after jumping up and down, and not even after nine times in the toilet - it's not coming out. In my mind, for numerous times, I had the answers in my head, but something between the brain and the vocal chord decided to disconnect. I couldn't voice my opinion because in my head everything went as far as "Yes" and "No", "Agree" and "Disagree". Everything else after that was a blur for the most part, and I couldn't get pass that - and that was really frustrating. So, on top of wanting to break something because of the exhaustion, I wanted to break something because I couldn't bring myself to say something substantial in class. On one hand, I kept telling myself that it's okay, that Monday would be the longest day and it'd all be better from Monday. But Tuesday was worse, and I was so bored that I started pulling eyebrows in class.

And that is the case, not just in my classroom, but all around the world you know. People being overworked, people working their heads off just to squeeze everything into a fixed timeframe. But you know, the longer you work, the lesser you get out of it. The input does not equal to output most of the time, but then it's not like the employers care so much. I mean, of course they'd want you in the office for the whole day, because supposedly that will make you produce more, more, and more. That is what they'd like to think, and they just keep pushing you and wanting you to do more within a fixed period of time. This part of the summer semester is going to end by the end of next week, but it is still going to be a long way ahead. I am not halfway through this ordeal yet, and it is so annoying that I haven't even got time for a proper lunch. Which was why I was so glad by the end of today, since I was done before noon, I had some time to hang out with my friends. We haven't done that in a while, only because we haven't had time for food, much less some pointless talking outside of the canteen. At the end of the day, we just want to make our ways home as fast as possible. We are all worn out and tired, and we can't take it anymore. OK, I can't take it anymore.

So yeah, burn out, it sucks. The army didn't understand that concept either, and they required us to go on hours on end without sleep. I think I went forty hours without sleep once, and that was not fun. You start to hallucinate, and I am not even kidding you. Your visions start to blur a bit, and you start to hear voices in the forest. It wasn't the voices of my friends, but it sounded like something else altogether - no, nothing supernatural. It became hard to think, and it really takes a toll on you. I think if you want to win a war, aside from all the weapons and the training, you have to feed your men and give them enough rest. Especially when all we are doing is to shoot at wooden boards with paper pasted on the front. We all experience burn out, I suppose, and we all know how frustrating that can be. But when we are studying and experiencing that, we could stop and give ourselves a break. In class, you are kinda stuck at where you are, and you can't go anywhere for the most part. I guess it makes me feel a little bit better, knowing that my friends are going through the same with me. My days usually end at 5.45 these days, and think about traffic at that hour. Anyway, here's to the days ahead - dread.

During the first lesson of my Political Communication class, my lecturer asked us about the current issues that are relevant to the people in Singapore right now. He's from the United States, so naturally he isn't familiar with the political atmosphere around here. One of the issues that I raised in class was homosexuality, or rather the sex education issue that the government is trying to deal with right now. To be honest, I caught on to the whole AWARE debate a little late, and was pretty much lost most of the time. I've seen news footage of women screaming at each other over, well, something, and that was the extent of my knowledge for the most part. With that said, I know one of the hotly debated topic was the view of homosexuality in the Singapore education system. I think the issue has got something to do with how homosexuality has been portrayed in sex education programs in schools, and how they have been depicted as being "neutral" instead of anything else. A lot of parents are not very happy with this depiction, saying that it'd influence their children to think that being a homosexual is OK, since the school says that it is "neutral".

In truth, I really don't get the whole issue with homosexuals though. In a country such as Singapore, homosexuality isn't exactly something that is embraced by everybody. Like, they'd like to think that they are accommodating of homosexuality, but it is still pretty much a deviance here from the norm, more than anything else. Of course, you can't exactly get arrested for it, but it's not like you are seen as being in a legitimate relationship. It's not an unique case in Singapore of course, because a lot of countries in the world are battling such an issue all the time. To legalize gay marriage or not, that has always been the debate. At the forefront of this debate are the religious extremists, some of them claiming that God hates homosexuals, and they will burn in Hell for who they are and what they represent. To them, family comes first, and homosexuality kinda goes against the whole concept of family. True, but then I highly doubt they'd burn in Hell just because they love someone of the same sex. I truly believe that if they could conceive a child, they probably would - and make better parents than a lot the so-called "normal" parents out there. I don't understand this whole debate in the local context either, because homosexuality really is nothing new, you know.

The parents are afraid that by labeling homosexuality as being "neutral", their children are going to see it as being a warrant to themselves in such a deviant act. But homosexuality has been in existence - well-documented at that - even longer than sex education. Before there were schools with sex education implemented, homosexuals have walked the earth happily and without fear. Anybody who has studied a little bit about history would know that homosexuality was not exactly uncommon in anicient Greece and Rome. It happened all the way back then when sex education wasn't something that they thought very much about. There is still that whole debate whether or not there is a gay gene, that people are just born to be homosexuals because of something inside of them. It's funny to hear religious fundamentalists argue about homosexuals sometimes, if you really give it a listen. They'd claim that there is no such thing as a gay gene, and yet they believe that the homosexuals don't have a choice - yeah, because they were BORN with it. Whether or not it is nature or nurture, that'd be another blog entry altogether. But let's just tackle what we have as of now.

I know a couple of homosexuals in my life, and I think most of them - in fact all of them - are great people. There isn't anything fundamentally different about them from all the other friends that I have. The only difference is that they like members of their own sex and I like members of a different sex, as simple as that. Other than that minor difference, we hang out and we talk just like how one human being would to another. In fact, if I was not told about their sexual orientation, I would have never known about it at all. I don't understand why parents are unhappy about the labeling of homosexuality as "neutral", though. Clearly, these parents want it to be seen as something negative, they want it to be seen as being wrong. I mean, how else would they rather have the sex education system portray the homosexuals as, if they are protesting the word "neutral"? The truth is, there is nothing wrong about homosexuality, and you cannot draw a clear line as to whether it is right or wrong. It isn't really a black and white issue, though to me it is. In a society whereby it is safer to be politically correct, I don't see why the word "neutral" is misused here at all.

It's difficult to see their point of view, from my point of view. Like, how do you say loving someone of the same sex is wrong when you cannot quantify or qualify something as abstract as love in the first place. Taking away the fact that they love someone of the same sex, the love that they devote and commit are, I dare say, no different from the kind that we'd give to someone of a different sex. In their case, we've switched the gender around a little bit, but everything else pretty much remains the same. OK, so they have sex a little bit different from all of us, but that pretty much goes on in places where we cannot see, and it's not like normal couples are allowed to have sex in public anyway - so what is the problem? I don't think the issue of homosexuality is ever going to die down, because there are always going to be homosexuals in our society. I feel that they're either born like that, or something happens in their lives that'd cause them to switch paths. I don't understand how such a personal choice could be debated, and that people would want to interfere with a personal choice such as sexual orientation. There are a lot of ways when it comes to defiance, and turning gay really does seem to be the least possible one of all.

The government is considering to remove the current sex education scheme for a while and see how things go. But seriously, I don't think it is going to make much of a difference for the most part. If you have studied media effects like I have, you'd probably know the fact that more than half of the people learn about sex from their peers. That is to say, all the stuff about how mankind reproduces and about contraceptives, people learn all those things from each other. I learned it from my friends, and I also learned about homosexuals from my friends for the very first time. I remember going "you mean things can go up from there?" when I first heard about it, but the idea quickly settled in with me because, well, I don't know. I just knew that some people were born like that, and it wasn't a concept I was terribly uncomfortable with. Anyway, not many of us learn such things from sex education classes anyway, and it is not like those classes in Singapore are very explicit in their teaching, though practical. You'd probably learn about contraceptives, sexually transmitted diseases, and that horrifying abortion video that a lot of us remember from our high school days. Either way, while those classes are definitely useful in teaching the students about how to put on a condom and stuff like that, they are not going to defer mankind's in-built curiosity in sex.

I think sex education can only go so far in educating the children about sex. You cannot dictate what they choose when it comes to their partners, you know. You can teach about the dangers of unprotected sex, or you could teach about what you could do in the case of unplanned pregnancies. You can teach a lot of useful things through these classes, but you cannot teach the students to love someone and how you should love someone. Homosexuality isn't something you can sweep under the rug through these classes because you don't decide to turn gay or not turn gay because of them. It is not something that is taught and can be taught, much like how it was never taught to us on how to be a boy or how to be a girl. Some may argue that it has been instilled upon us at birth, with the whole thing about blue blankets versus pink blankets, the toy trains and the soft toys. It can be argued that we were conditioned to be boys and girls, that beyond the physical differences, we are not dissimilar in many ways. However, if we were all conditioned the same way, then it should be expected that we should produce the same results, right? If that is the case, how do you explain the presence of homosexuals, though. The truth is, some of us are just different, born that way, and you cannot put a tag to it and say that it is right or it is wrong. It just is, that's all.

I've never went through any sex education classes from school, and I don't suppose generations older than mine would have gone through any really. I don't remember a box on our timetable that read "sex education". In fact, I think we even skipped the chapter on sex in the science textbook, when all it had were cross-sectional pictures of human genitals. Nothing was taught to me, and yet I know quite a bit about sex and sexuality (there is a difference). My parents weren't there to tell me the bird and the bees, and the school was not there to teach me about such things either. I just knew, from friends or from the society, and I read a lot about the topic. These are the kind of things that cannot be taught, but it certainly can be learned. Just because you decide to leave it out of a textbook doesn't mean that people are not going to learn about it sooner or later. It's kind of like a scandal about some politician in the country, and maybe you'd try to dumb it down in the media and try to distract the people from the issue. But somehow, people are going to learn about it one way or another, because that is the way it happens. Even if you decide to leave out the homosexuality chapter, there are still going to be same-sex students who'd camp out in a school stairwell and make-out.

I'm not discrediting sex education though, and personally I really wished that I have been given a chance to learn about it through the school. It is education, and it is no different from mathematics or geography in that regard. It is about teaching the students about facts, and sex education really is important when it comes to, say, contraception. It is important, because you'd be surprised at just how many people in our society are ignorant or misinformed about such a thing. For example, I've heard of a guy who had no clue on what a sanitary pad is for, and that he thought menstrual blood is blue because, well, they are always blue in those television advertisements. He used to think that sanitary pads are for "incubating the eggs", whatever that means. I'm not sure if such a thing in taught in sex education classes, but it just goes to show how stupid people are when it comes to knowledge like that. Sex education is important, and any common teenager should never be allowed to make reproductive decisions on their own, even if reproduction isn't exactly their goals. Yet, something like sexual orientation, I don't see how it applies to the bigger scheme of things at all. I feel like they should be separate entities, and there is one thing that the parents could do in regards to that - parent.

In fact, at the end of the day, that's really all you need to do. Sex education could happen anywhere, and it doesn't have to be in school. It didn't happen for me at home, and it didn't happen for me in school. It's not that I'd wish my parents to sit me down and talk about such things, which would be weird and really awkward. But it's just that if you truly want to, you probably could. If you feel strongly against what they are teaching in school, teach them yourself. Let the children make their own informed choices, if there is a choice at all. I don't suppose a parent's duty is to choose a path for their children, but to aid them towards the right one. It really doesn't matter if homosexuality is regarded as being a "neutral matter", because at the end of the day it is all about the wordplay. Saying that it is one way or the other is not going to make a difference, because there are always going to be homosexuals, whether you label it is wrong or not. So let's just accept that this is what is happening, and move on from there. Is it really that important, compared to the greater scheme of things?

Through my stubborn eyes, I read the morning newspaper at the dining table while trying to stay awake for the most part. Seven hours of sleep for me should be enough for the most part, or at least that is the recommended amount of sleep that I have been hearing from the parents and the army. That is the minimum that I allow myself to sleep for anyway, and anything less than that is never voluntary or habitual. I love to sleep, I love everything about it. I love how it marks the end of a day, when your only job left to do is to put yourself in an immobile state in bed while your brain goes into a fantasy world for a couple of hours. It's like a drug-induced hallucination without the drugs involved, just brain juice flowing around inside your head while you are asleep. It is probably the easiest thing to do for me, though there are periods of time when I'd be unable to fall asleep fast enough. You know, like what most insomniacs would tell you about their sleeping patterns, I have my taste of it every once in a while. It's not common, but it annoys the hell out of me. Depriving me of sleeping is like depriving me of food and water somehow. I do consider them to be rather important things in my life, as I enjoy the activity so much.

Anyway, so I was at the dining table with my eyes slowly adjusting to the light when I saw an article in the newspaper about young Singaporeans choosing to sleep less at night, and that is making the experts very worried. That got me rather interested, because of how many people I know who are in the exact same state. I know of a handful of people who'd come to school with dark rings around the eyes, then doze off in the middle of classes because they haven't got enough sleep last night. We've all had similar experiences though, because there's always that important soccer match in the previous night that you just have to stay up to watch. Or that occasional project that comes along that requires you to stay up way past your normal sleeping time to complete. Shit happens, and everybody knows that. Things don't always occur in accordance to how we plan them, so we alter our plans to deal with these situations in the best way we know how. Sleeping late every once in a while isn't uncommon, but these friends of mine come to school every single day with the same sleeping issues. And it's not because we have assignments at home to work on or because they are soccer fans at all. They are sleeping late because, like the article mentioned, they choose to do so.

Initially, I'd try to talk to my friend out of this. In fact, all of my other friends tried to talk this friend out of this. I mean, I love to sleep late, and I am a night owl - don't get me wrong. I am a nocturnal animal who loves the silence of the night and the tranquility of it all. The difference is that I love waking up late as well, and sleeping late is usually an option I go for when I haven't the need to wake up early tomorrow morning. I give myself seven hours, minimum, to sleep every night. That is what I try to do, and you have moments whereby you do a little additional and subtraction every now and then. It's inevitable, but I understand the beauty of the night just like any other person out there. However, when you have to wake up at seven in the morning, you don't go to sleep at five in the morning thinking that you'd just get so tired the following day that you'd be knocked out after dinner. It doesn't work that way at all, which was why I was really worried for my friend. I know the negative impacts of sleeping late, the repercussions that come along with it as well. It is an unhealthy thing, and there is a reason why humans need to shutdown for a while at night - we need to rest.

Like I said, I didn't get what was going on in my friend's life, and didn't really see why it was so hard for my friend to change. My thought was, if you want to sleep earlier, then sleep earlier. If you take three hours to fall asleep, then go to bed three hours earlier than you usually do. I didn't understand why people would stay up at night just to watch television shows or play games, when everything amounts to negative input by morning. You know, decreasing marginal returns, a term that we've learned in economics that explains this situation very well. The vicious cycle works like that: when you sleep late at night and wake up early in the morning, you feel tired all the time throughout the day. So, when you go home, you take a little nap, telling yourself that you need that nap. By night time, because of that nap, you'd be wide awake all over again, and your body is going to let you go to sleep because you have already slept a good deal in the afternoon. So the vicious cycle goes on and on and on, and it is really very difficult to break out of it. That was the reason why I might have felt somewhat frustrated on my friend's situation. Perhaps, I thought, I could convince the parents to strap the friend down onto the bed at ten o'clock at night or something like that. Then, of course, I continued reading the article and realized that maybe, just maybe, it isn't always his or her fault when he or she chooses not to sleep.

Here is a little quote from that little article of something Dr. Pang said. He says that insufficient rest can lead to poor concentration, decreased productivity at work and increased irritability. OK, so basically if you continuously get insufficient amount of sleep, you'd basically suck at work. That is the basic notion of his statement, and I just feel like this serves a larger agenda, if you ask me. You have to go back to why people are losing sleep in our society in the first place, why people would choose to do whatever they want to do and sacrifice those hours of the night just to do them. When you have a society that bears down on its people with stress from your job, your school, or your family, what do you honestly expect from your people other than reactions such as this? When you emphasize so much on a career, on your earnings, on the results, people are going to do whatever they can to meet those expectations. So we work our heads off for the better part of the day, and most of us forget that we have ourselves to take care of. And it's not just the health aspect that we are talking about, but the importance of spending some time with yourself and doing something that you want. How many people working now has the luxury of doing that anyway. My friend's sister comes home at midnight everyday - where is the time for herself?

When a doctor tries to convince you not to sleep late by saying that it affects your productivity at work, your concentration level at work, you know that he does not want you to sleep so little because he, like the society as a whole, wants you to work. Yes, it's like this invisible whip packaged to look like a professional health advice from a doctor. It's like saying, the only reason why you should have enough sleep is because if you don't, you will not be able to work and toil for us, and the society will not be able to function, and everything falls apart! For the greater good, for our common cause, sleep early! That is like some kind of world war two propaganda or something, but I think that is the kind of subtle propaganda they are trying to drill into our heads. They don't seem to really mind that they are robbing you of your time with yourself and your loved ones. They don't seem to really care if you are coming home at midnight and going to work at seven in the morning with little time for sleep, not to mention some time for yourself. All they seem to care about is whether or not you are getting your work done, your report handed up, your assignment handed in. Everything is about productivity now, and we are like gears in this giant machine that are not allowed to rest for one second.

I think the only reason why people are choosing not to sleep is because they feel like they really need that little time for themselves, you know. Like, when you have already taken up two-thirds of my day, I feel like I want to have the power and control over how I want to spend the other one-third of the time, even if it means less sleep and more me-time. They are choosing to sleep late because the society as a whole has robbed them of the better half of their lives. You and I both know that by the time the society allows you to retire, you are going to look back and realize that the better half of your life would have been spent on working for somebody else and not yourself. I am not saying that work is not important at all, in fact I think it is very crucial in terms of the economy as well as your own need for material gratification. You need to work to get the money, and you need to get the money to spend it on things that make you comfortable, that make you happy. You shouldn't be living to work, but you should be working to live. You should be working because you want to do something with the money that you earn, and not living because you feel like all you are good at is to work for, well, something. You'd have to figure that out yourself, even if you are retired and too late to right the wrongs.

I just feel that while the author of the article is asking questions and offering reasons as to why people should be tucking themselves in earlier at night, he didn't really talk about why people are doing what they are doing. I don't think anybody really wants to go to work all tired and worn out. Nobody wants to feel lethargic, and everybody wants to have energy to do what they like and what they want. Still, you have to realize that in our society today, it does not give a lot or room to yourself. It's like, your company wants your time from nine to five, if they are kind, and then the additional one hour before and after work for traveling belongs to them too. But you and I both know that most companies these days don't allow you to get off work at five. They want you to work overtime without pay, even if they don't explicitly tell you that. Deep inside, you know that when it comes to retrenchment, the people who haven't got a lot of unpaid overtimes will be going first. Haven't worked extra hours without pay? Out. Haven't spent more time than you should in the office? Out. You knocked off work at five while everybody else stayed until ten at night? Out. That is the reality of things, and you can tell by the number of lighted offices in Shenton Way at ten o'clock at night. People don't sleep anymore, because they've got WORK to do.

How do you expect people to rest like that, especially when so many people out there have to deal with their work even on weekends. My friend's mother has to work six days a week, coming home and barely having the time for the family. This is one mother with one job, and imagine how it'd be like for the mothers and the fathers taking up two, or three jobs. Taxi drivers work at fifteen or sixteen hours a day for three hundred and sixty five days a year - no breaks. If you take a break, you don't get money in your pocket. If you are sick, you don't get money in your pocket. No subsidies, no compensations, no vacations. That is how everything works, and they want every ounce of that twenty-four hours, because all the bigger corporations and all the people that control these big corporations want more than your time and your sweat and your blood. They want more, and that is why you have to give up the time that is rightfully yours, to spend with your loved ones - like yourself. You get home from work, and you realize that for a fact. You tell yourself that you shouldn't let others tell you how you want to live your life, and you want some control over things. So you give up that one thing that you can give up on - sleep. You spend a bit of time on the computer, with a book, or some pointless game.

I get into that sometimes, not being able to properly sleep at night. It can be frustrating because you know you need it, and yet you can't get it. I think the only reason why these people are choosing to do what they are doing is because they feel like they have had enough time taken away from them. It doesn't even have to be work though, but it begins all the way back in school. You know, parents forcing their children to go for classes after school. Oh, before they go for those classes and those tuitions, they go for CCAs. Great, now everything is devoted to the school, and the best cartoons are already over by the time you are free. Then your parents usher you to go to bed and get ready for school tomorrow, but you have your homework and you have to complete them before class tomorrow. That is the reality that a lot of people are facing, and no wonder they are giving up sleeping time to do whatever that they want to do. You have twenty-four hours in a day, and pick a lifestyle or a work that fits you in the most comfortable way. If it is sucking your life out, quit it. I know times are tough, and having a steady income is more important than anything. But without health, you can't do anything in life at all.

Just for laughs.

And so, my very short-lived holidays came to an end, and this is the beginning of a brand new semester all over again. I don't suppose I regret not going to any foreign countries this time around, because the holiday has been well-spent with my friends, Neptina, and myself for the most part. It was great to just hang my head for a while, unscrew the knobs and allow myself to just crumble in a corner of my bed and not worry about anything. But of course, such days never really last very long, and we all found ourselves at the end of it all last night. Some of us probably welcomed it with opened arms, sickened by the mundane nature of the nothingness at home. Some others probably wanted a week or two more to prepare themselves for the new semester. Like, the body clock for example, which I have yet to adjust back properly yet. I mean, I tried to sleep as early as possible last night, but I'm pretty sure that I only managed that after two in the morning despite being somewhat fatigued. The body clock wasn't cooperating, though it's not like I blamed it really. I didn't make an effort to turn it back, and just allowed myself to sleep late and wake up even later on a daily basis. It was my holiday, so I suppose I had to right to do whatever that I wanted.

Anyway, so it is the summer semester, and most of us are not too excited about the syllables. We've gone through two summer semesters now, and I think we pretty much know how it is like for the most part. A summer semester isn't exactly a semester in a year, and students are usually having their summer breaks right now. But this program, being a three year program, we just have to go through with the summer semesters unless you decide that you want to take it off and graduate a full year later than everybody else. It's all up to you really, which is the great thing about this college system thing. But the problem with summer semesters is that you have about three or four modules to squeeze into a tight schedule, and this causes the lecturers to really skim through the courses at a great speed, so fast that we usually cannot catch up. I mean, mid-terms is probably going to be in about three weeks, and that is usually the amount of time we take to get used to a single module. So, time is packed up, and not a lot of us like the fact that things are all squeezed together. To think that one of our modules, PSY 333, has a bad reputation amongst the student body, summer semester of 2009 really wasn't looking up at all.

I missed the first two express buses to school this morning, but made it there on time anyway. First class of the day was PSY333, and I have heard all kinds of horror stories about that course. The same lecturer who taught last semester is teaching us this time around again, and let's just say that the last batch didn't exactly do very well. If Naz scored a B and was pleasantly surprised, you know that the course isn't a walk in the park. Besides, there were a whole lot of people who managed only Cs, which I thought to be pretty uncharacteristic considering how I know them and their academic history. Anyway, I walked into the class without much expectations, since the rumors of my friends dropping the module was circling in whispers. The lecturer stumbled in with a giant suitcase - yeah, those with wheels. She started the lesson without much hesitations, and I must say that she started it off with a good impression. If I hadn't heard the kind of stories that I have about her teaching style, I wouldn't have thought bad about her at all, truth be told. That impression lasted throughout the lesson, and I started to wonder if those complaints were unfounded in the first place, because things really doesn't seem very bad at all.

Maybe it is because it is the summer, and the syllables is a little different from what they had previously. It seems a little more relaxed this time around, and this module seems to be rather specific on the kind of things that will be tested. Of course, this being the first day, it's going to be very hard for me to judge whether or not this good impression will last. I am kind of on the edge about things, unsure of whether or not to think of her as this or that, if you know what I mean. She is a great speaker, and seems to have a great grip on what is going on in the class and what is going to happen throughout the semester. I like that kind of sureness, though we all know that, like all human beings, lecturers like to give a good first impression - they are the most important impression after all. So anyway, I think if anything, she started off good in my books, though she isn't the kind of lecturer to provide notes online or whatever. I guess the old days of typing down notes on my Macbook is going to return for sure, not that I am complaining about that. It's just that compared to the last semester where we had Julie Bowker as our very first class of the summer, this one just paled in comparison. It was Julie Bowker after all, and she is still the best lecturer I've ever had.

Moving on to the second class, Political Communication, the name of the module itself didn't get my juices up at all. I mean, you have a course about communication combined with politics - that's not a happy marriage at all. That's like a house cat married to a camel or something, and you know that the child is going to pop out from that womb with humps and claws. The lecturer came into the class, with his shirt neatly tucked into his pants and hair trimmed short. He seems nice enough, but I still get that vibe about him that makes him somewhat difficult to handle. It's difficult to explain, but you somewhat get that kind of vibe from some lecturers at times, like a bad feeling about things. Perhaps it is something in the air, the way that they talk, or the way that they conduct the class. He's in his mid-thirties, a really young lecturer as compared to the others, and let's just say that his class so far has been rather average for me. As in, I don't see myself being actively participating in the class, or being terribly excited about it either. Dropping it doesn't seem to be a viable option at all, because that'd mean a five hour break on Monday. FIVE HOURS. And it's not like I have a lot of Battlestar Galactica left to watch (one more season).

Now, the last class of the day, this is when things got a little more exciting. When we heard about the lecturer, I remember something about how he was supposed to come to Singapore for the spring semester this year. Everybody went online to look for his name on Ratemyprofessor.com, and his ratings were pretty damn high with good comments at that. Anyway, so everybody wanted to be in his classes in the spring, only to have him pull out in the very last minute. So this time around, he finally made it to Singapore for the summer semester, and we are just glad to have him around - though we have never actually had a class with him before. Anyway, Lance seems to be a tremendous lecturer, and Jody immediately fell in love with him after approximately five minutes of talking from him. The girls started saying how cute he is, and I suppose I can see why. He has that dorky thing going on for him, that somewhat geeky cute that some girls seem to adore, and I agree. But of course, I was there for what he had to offer as a lecturer to the students, and let's just say that I enjoyed whatever that happened in class so far.

First of all, here are three observations that I made about him that makes him a potentially awesome lecturer. First, you know that a lecturer is good when he apologizes for ending the class early. It was about fifteen minutes before the class was supposed to end, but he has already finished whatever he wanted to go through for day one. So, the first thing he did was to apologize for ending early, something which I haven't really heard before. Lecturers usually apologize, if they do so at all, if they go overtime - never before they are supposed to end. Secondly, You know that a lecturer is good when he offers to buy back the textbooks that the students bought for a course that does not need them. You see, not every module requires textbooks, but the school seems to want the lecturers to have them anyway. So some lecturers are forced to pick a book for the students to buy, although we sometimes don't need them at all. That is also the reason why most of the students have yet to buy our textbooks yet, though some already have. Lance's class, according to him, doesn't really need a book. Four girls then mentioned that they've already purchased the textbook, posing as a major problem. He asked if they could go to the college bookstore to return them, and they said that they couldn't return the books. So, what he offered to do was to BUY BACK their books. How AWESOME is that? And he understood my "that's what she said" joke. That makes him a good lecturer in my books.

Anyway, so that is the rough break down of the lecturers so far. Of course, from experience, you know that things are going to change after a few classes. Sure, Lance also made us play some games around the school and rewarded us all with highlighters. That is a bonus, but that doesn't mean that we are not going to have a watchful eye over him for the next couple days. Until then, I am just glad to have most of my friends all taking the same classes as myself. So Mondays involve the bunch of us going from one class to another - together. I love that, even though it is a nine to five day, it doesn't feel half as tiring as it would have been otherwise. This semester is looking to be somewhat enjoyable and hectic at the same time. But then again, it's not like we haven't survived a similar situation or worse in the past. I'm pretty sure we are going to pull through this time, especially with the lack of lecturers like, well, let's not name names here any longer. We all know who we are talking about, so there isn't a point to regurgitate. Speaking of which, I recently heard that one of our former lecturers, the one who got tangled up in that petition issue, is now a hobo - or looks like one. I can totally picture that somehow, and I feel really bad about it for some reason. OK, not really.

I wasn't always like that for my family though, because we actually had places to go to if my mother decided to take a break from all the cooking. I mean, we love her dishes very much, but and that is probably the only time when all our tastes for food converges. Other than those times, we used to have a couple of restaurants plotted in our minds to go to when we feel like eating out. It's much easier in Taiwan because all of us love what the streets have to offer. You can pick out practically any store in Taiwan and it'd taste good enough for all of us, but the same cannot be said here. Like, for example, I can probably settle with Manhattan Fish Market if I want to, no problem. But the family is not going to like that because all the fried stuff is going to turn my mother off. Anyway, so it wasn't always like that because we knew places to go to last time, until we somehow decided never to go back ever again. One such places is the Long Beach restaurant at East Coast, the place with all the seafood and the likes. I remember visiting there very often as a child, and my parents would bring us there every once in a while, especially when we had guests flying in from Taiwan to visit us. That was when we'd all go down to the restaurant while my sister and I would hang out at the beach.

Last night, I paid a visit to that place all over again. It's not really the food that got me feeling somewhat nostalgia, but the little places that have changed over the years ever since my childhood. The East Coast represents the first beach that I've ever really been to in Singapore when I was younger, and there were a lot of time spent just being a kid on the beach for the most part. A trip to the beach last time was the most exciting thing ever, because I'd get to build my castles and dig my holes. Yes, that was what I did on the beach with a shovel and a little piece of ground underneath my feet. I used to think that if I dug deep enough, I'd be able to reach the sea underneath or the continent beyond. It was hard to imagine the concept of distance and size, and I was very young at that time. So, armed with a little plastic shovel, I'd start to dig deep into the beach until there'd be a giant hole for small children to fall into. There'd be this layer of lighter colored sand, then a layer of orange colored sand, and then it'd just remain that way for a while until it became too hard and compacted for me to dig any further. So much for my plans to dig to America back then.

Every now and then, I'd be ordered back to the dinner table for my meals. Adult conversations never interested me in the past very much, and I didn't like the fact that I had to crush the shells of the crab on my own, because they were too tough for a young and weak child such as myself back then. Most of the time, my mind would be in places other than the meal itself, like the sea or the little patch of padded grass next to the restaurant. If you go to that part of the East Coast today, you are probably going to find it there still, though it used to be a little bigger than it is now. Instead of the beach sometimes, I'd much prefer to go there and hang around while the adults talked about things about their lives. I'd be there on the grass patch, running around hysterically for a moment and then lying down, feeling the little prickly grass on the back of my neck. On very clear nights, I'd be able to see the stars in the sky, and then some wisps of clouds floating by. I remember this other time when I'd stand on the railing and then stare out into the horizon at the ships passing by. All those lights from their decks, forming their own cluster of artificial stars. I saw the same ships in the horizon last night, little lights glistering off the coast, moving like molasses from where I was standing.

A lot has happened since I stood on the railing that night as a little child. I remember that time along East Coast when we were forced to run in cadence as army boys. Yes, that crazed officer Eugene was screaming at us again, and said something about how we had to run in cadence, or we'd be punished or something like that. All of his good intentions ultimately amounted to bad executions, and that was only one of the many reasons why he garnered so many haters amongst the company. Anyway, I remember the way my socks were soaked from the rain that was coming down on us, and we had to run as a platoon because that was his way of having platoon spirit. We tried to catch up, but some of us started to fall behind. I accompanied Jonathan, I remember, as he fell behind in the pack amongst others, and we were all punished at the finish line even though we were there in time. I remember feeling somewhat embarrassed, being under the eyes of the public in my army singlet and everything. I don't know, there is just something about that which made me feel somewhat uneasy. It was a beautiful day though, the rain coming down on the beach like a veil somehow. I remember taking a picture of little children on the beach, one feeding the other imaginary food with a twig.

Last night was good, it was nice to take a stroll on the beach with the significant other and her family, plus her family friends. The place was packed, and naturally so for a Saturday evening I suppose. I wondered why they thought it'd be smart to build all the seafood restaurants next to each other when they pretty much tasted the same anyway. I mean, they even sold the same thing, which I didn't get. Anyway, we took a stroll along the beach on the somewhat humid night, and watched those people wakeboard in the murky lagoon that looked like something right out of the Usborne Puzzle Adventures with the seaweeds and the jelly-like things floating around inside. I would have much preferred to ride a bicycle though, but it was getting late and the parents didn't exactly feel like engaging themselves in that kind of exercise after a heavy meal. The meal was OK, though I still had problems with the peeling of prawns. I really do prefer the kind of prawns which allow me to eat everything in one gulp. With that said, I was especially fascinated with the lobster tail, something which I haven't had a close-up look before. The scales and the spikes were something right out of a fantasy novel.

The East Coast, what else can I say about that place. I haven't got much memory left of the place anymore. Anything after my times spent there as a child were barbeque parties and the ones that I refuse to remember at this point in time. Just very random and scattered thoughts and memories, like that time when I pulled Matthew's pants off for no apparent reasons - why did I do that? Then there was the time when someone thought it'd be clever to start a barbeque fire with kerosene, which then burned his eyebrows off because he used too much. I remember that little chat I had with Mr. Thodey, I think that is how you spell his name. He was on the stone bench that faced the sea, alone with a plate of chicken wings. I still think that he is a sad, sad man, alone in a foreign country and in a place he loathes. I wonder if he is still there in his dark office, sitting on the same stone bench and thinking about flying back to New Zealand? I'd never know, I suppose.

Cab rides home, they are oftentimes two degrees colder than it should. Cab drivers have it the hard way I suppose, driving their cabs up to sixteen hours a day with no breaks in between and no holidays in the year. It is difficult, which is why I do not complain about the temperature or the godawful smell from the air-refreshening device attached to their dashboards and their air-conditioning vents. But it is cold at the back of the cab, and I'd usually turn my attention out to the passing vehicles and buildings after debating with myself as to whether or not I should strike up a conversation with the driver. It is late, and driving in the middle of the night is a lonely job. Yet, I usually stick to myself and my thoughts, and the embrace that I comfort myself with. From the cold, for one, and to remember how it felt like when I was given the last embrace a few moments ago, for the other. It is as if hugging myself would make the feeling last a little longer, like the little children chaining themselves to pipes or something like that. That'd be strange, but I do have a brain of strange analogies sometimes. Anyway, that is what I do at the back of cab rides: I hug myself and think about things.

I don't listen to music on cab rides home anymore, because my in-ear headphones tend to come in the way of hearing questions from the cab driver. You know, sometimes they turn back or look through the rearview mirror to ask you a thing or two about your way home. Expensive headphones are very cool, but the fact that they block out all the sounds can be quite a problem when someone is trying to converse with you. So I have given up the habit of plugging myself in when I am on a cab home, I try to focus my attentions on other things to kill time. I think about a lot of things in place of music, like how the day went with the significant other. Images in my mind of the places that we have visited, the taste of the good or the bad meal, and the jokes along the way that we make. I'd close my eyes to remember the places, lick my lips to remember the taste, then smile a little bit with my hand over my mouth to prevent any forms of embarrassment. Those are the kind of things that happen out of reality, I'd think to myself. Those are the kind of things that happen when you leave reality behind for a couple of hours, and you immerse yourself in the part of your life that does not involve your life at all, if you know what I mean.

I think we all have "a life" that we stick our neck out for, you know. Especially so for the working adults, or people out in the workforce. The life that you know, or the reality that you understand, is the one that involves going to work in the morning and then coming home from work afterwards. All the times spend with your family, your friends, your loved ones, all the times that you spend not dealing with that reality, is another reality altogether. Like an alternate reality, you know, like some kind of sci-fi parallel universe type thing. I don't think humans can survive on one single thread of reality. I think we need to have a few realities for us to distract ourselves with. It doesn't matter what form your other realities come in, and it is completely up to the choices that you make. When the going gets tough in one of them, it comforts you to know that you have another life, or reality, to go to somehow. For me, that alternate reality lies with the time that I spend with Neptina. Of course, I have other realities as well, like the times that I spend with my awesome friends from school, or with my family. But with Neptina, this sense of an alternate reality just seems a lot more real somehow. It really drives it home, you know.

Some people would tell you that the beauty in music is not in the notes, but in the pauses and the breaks in between. I suppose to a certain degree, that holds true somehow. The same can be said about these realities that we create for ourselves, the way humans do not register the value of moments until such moments are lost. The beauty of my reality with Neptina gets a home run once I am leaving on those long cold cab rides home. Suddenly, as I am at the back of that cab, it dawns on me that I am back in reality - that other reality. I am back in the life that I know, the life that I have to "deal with things", so to speak, whatever they may be. It'd be harsh to say that meeting with Neptina is an escape for me, like she is some kind of an excuse. She isn't, but I do feel a sense of escapism somehow. It's not an act of cowardice when I feel like running away, but the lure of comfort and love that drives me away from the reality that I am responsible for. For the most part, we toil through our most familiar reality with our heads bowed and our helmets buckled tight underneath our chins. We try to brace for the crashes through the walls, but it always hurts by the time you are through. Reality sucks sometimes, the main one that is, and all you want to do is to jump ship and go to the yacht.

You know how reality is, and when it sinks in, it sinks in deep. You have to deal with everything that life throws at you, you know, and that can be a horrible thing. Think of that reality, the one that involves your personal problems and your job, the taxes and the bills, as a department in an office. You are the head of this department, and anything that goes wrong in this department is going to invite the boss to drill down on you. So you want a little breather out of your cubicle, and every once in a while you want to make a trip to the water cooler because you get to walk pass the secretary, who is really cute. That is how I see things anyway, times spent with Neptina is like a short but precious trip to the water cooler. It calms me down, and it reenergizes me for the rest of the day in the office. But you know how it is once you turn back from the fake walk to the water cooler, after you walk by the cute secretary, everything goes back to square one again. The boss is in your face, your have a bunch of projects piling up, and everybody is waiting on you to start their work. Oh, the stress, they really come on to you once they get a chance to connect their heads and butts. Reality sucks your life right out, and you just feel like going away at times.

She is my buoy in the middle of the ocean, she is my harbor in the middle of a storm. I sail to her in times of need, like some kind of old beat-up fisherman. If I have a boat, I'd name it after her. The times that I get to spend with her, I secretly tell myself how surreal it all seems at times. I feel distant, not from her but from everything else in my life somehow. You feel the gap, at a safe place, a place that is far enough to forget your worries, even if it is just a little while. It doesn't matter if it is me hanging out at her place, in the void deck, or just her voice over the phone in the middle of the night. Any kind of time spent with her is some kind of time away from the reality that I have to deal with on a daily basis, if I had not met her last August in the very first place. To think that I'd have one less alternative when it comes to my choices of reality frightens me at times. But now that I have this other option, I cannot help but feel that the one that I have right now stretches tight around my neck at times. School is fun for the most part, but then the assignments and the exams start to happen - happen, like some kind of natural disaster. But it does feel that way at times, but I pick up the phone and ask her if she wants to hang out.

It may seem cowardly, but I hope it isn't. It's just the disparity between that and this, the fall that I suffer after each meeting. It feels so great, a fall that you wouldn't expect yourself to survive. I step out from that cab after paying for the ride, and then tell myself every time that I am back to reality, that I have to take out the little clipboard to do a little reality check again. But you feel that the lingering warmth in your chest, you feel the little children turning back the hands of time. You are reminded once again of that reality that you just kissed goodbye to, and you feel like crap all over again. You don't know the bitter until you have tasted the sweet, and the bitter tastes like death in comparison - sometimes. But it is all about perspectives, isn't it. It is all about how you perceive things, how you look at things. One goodbye is another hello coming closer. One passing day without that special someone is another day that is coming around the corner. And so I cheer myself up that way on my way home, to tell myself that every reality doesn't last very long, the good and the bad ones. I feel better, and then I go about my responsibilities all over again with a smile on my face. A smile, because there is a book in the bathroom that my mother has placed there very strategically. The title in english translates to "Smile, When the Life Falls". So I smile when life seems bleak, and then I smile some more because in the midst of the darkness, I find the beacon in my buoy all over again in a matter of time.

I think we have a shared problem, you and I. I think all humans have the problem of not having enough space in our lives. By space, it could be a physical space in our house to put our "stuff", if you know what I mean. Or it could be time, because we are always looking for more time to do more things, and it's like the need to clear out more space to put more things. Space comes in many different forms, and we are all in need of it someway or another. But it is one of those limited resources, one of those things that is finite and will run out once you've used them up. We really only have so much space in our lives, so much time on our hands, and so much land for us to live on. Unless we somehow device a way to live underground or in the skies, then that is another realm of spaces altogether. But when it comes to space, it all comes to an end somehow. It sucks when we are at the brick wall of space, we are always frustrated that we cannot break through with some kind of bulldozer and move on to the spaces beyond. We are given this much space, this much time, to do whatever that we need to do before we pass away, or expire. There are times when we accidentally find some space, or time. But you know how it is, it is difficult to fit everything we want.

I am dealing with the problem of having not enough space all the time, you know. I mean, I am the kind of person who has an ostrich outlook on things, though I am not talking about putting my head in the ground in the face of danger. What I mean is that when it comes to my "stuff", the things that I own, I like them to be scattered around my room in an orderly fashion. I suppose anybody who has ever been to my room would testify that it has been kept in a more or less orderly fashion, and I am very proud of that. However, what you guys may not know is how I deal with everything else that I own. I stuff them in drawers, in boxes, in places around my room that nobody - not even I - can see. My philosophy is that as long as I cannot see the great big mess that I have created, then everything is neat enough for me. I have a strict rule to keep an ordered working space around my iMac, but everything in my drawer is a war zone of tangled wires, balls of cables, and other miscellaneous things that somehow came together one day and decided to be hooked up with one another. I cannot see this mess though, they are tucked away in some forgotten corner, but I am OK with that. What I am trying to say is, even though it may seem like I have a good grip on the space problem, I am dealing with it as well.

Then there are times when you are just praying for more time, you know, wanting the day to extend just a little longer for you. I am not experiencing that right now of course, considering the fact that I am still lazing around in the midst of my holidays. Yet, the new semester is right around the corner, and I can predict how it'd probably be like in the coming months without even going through a day of it at all. I am probably going to experience a lot of workload, as usual, piled into the same day and due on the same day. When you do find the time to be with yourself or with your loved one, there is something else that comes up that you need to work on, to study for, to improve on. That is the way college life is, an endless stream of work that comes again and again and again. It's not that I do not enjoy the times spent with my friends while working on project presentations, because I do. There are moments, of course, when I feel like tearing my skin out and then jump into a pool of salt. But the truth is that I only have so little time everyday for everything that I want to do, and there are so many things that we all want to do, you know. Every minute spent on doing something is a minute displaced for doing something else.

A favorite television show missed, or a loved one somehow neglected. When you have only so many pieces on the board to play with, you cannot help but realize that you cannot fit every one of them into the same space. As much as you want more pawns, more rooks, more bishops to be on your chessboard just to crush your opponent, you don't have that kind of luxury. You have sixteen pieces to play around with, and that's all you are ever going to get. So you work around this problem, you try to fit as many moves as you can into the game. Then again, of course, by the end of the game, you think about all the moves that you could have or should have made. It doesn't matter if you win or lose at the end of the day, there are probably things that you wanted to do, but didn't. It's the same with this twenty-four hour thing that we experience, you know, this limited time frame that we are working with. Everything we want to do is fixated within this window, and we have to organize everything to fit into this twenty-four hours, or else it'd be the next set of twenty-four hours to work with. Sometimes we push ourselves, sometimes we don't remind ourselves that the time is up. We push on, we work harder, and we work ever harder. But something will always be left out, something will always be neglected.

What I am trying to say is this fear that I had before last August, or before I got into the relationship that I am in right now. After my last relationship and before my college life started, I saw myself not having any time for any more relationships other than the ones that I have in school with my friends. Being a firm believer that one should not have a partner from school, I didn't see it possible for me to find a potential partner amongst my social circle. With that said, my reason for such a prediction was because I didn't see how I was able to fit everything into my twenty-four hour time frame. You know, the problem of finding space - or time - for my friends, my family, school, and myself. You have to spend some time with your friends, or they'd think that you are distancing yourself. You have to spend some time with your family, because they are your family after all. You have to spend some time with yourself, because this is the person you are going to be spending the most time with anyway, whether you like it or not. You have to spend some time with school because, well, that is everything that I really have to focus on. So, I didn't see myself being able to balance, or cope with, something else like a relationship. It isn't a burden, but a big load that I'd have to carry. I feared that with everything accounted for, one aspect of that would be compromised for sure.

I don't think I can multi-task, and I don't juggle very well. You give me three oranges and I am going to squash two of them for sure. I knew that squeezing a relationship into my schedule would cause something else, or the relationship itself, to be compromised. After all, when you only have this much time at hand, you can only spare so much time for all the components. But I jumped into the relationship anyway, like many people that I know of who already has a lot of things to juggle with in their lives. I often hear about people complaining about their boyfriends or girlfriends not spending enough time with them, that they are so worked up about their school work or their jobs to spare a little more time for them. It's not that they are wrong in saying that, and maybe it is true that they are not spending enough time and giving enough emotional support. However, it is true that while there is a certain amount of responsibility tagged with the boyfriend or the girlfriend in any relationship, one must keep in mind that life really goes on with or without you. He or she didn't have to fit you into his or her life, but they did it anyway. Be thankful for the time that he or she has spared, and not complain all the time that it isn't enough.

The reason why I am writing about this is because of this thing that I am experiencing, this difference in time table that my partner and I are facing - and I am sure it applies to many couples out there too. For me, being in a holiday while my partner is at school makes it more challenging for us to fix a time for us to hang out. Of course, we still get our time after school and the weekends for the most part, and I feel satisfied for the time that we have. It's just that while may people out there may think that she isn't spending enough time with me, I am just thankful that I get to spend that little amount of time with her, you know. I mean, she has her family, her friends, her school work, and all other kinds of responsibilities that she has to deal with. She doesn't have to deal with me in the picture, and yet she accommodates me and tries to fit me in. Even if it is just a little phone call at the end of the day to talk with one another, or just being there online while she works at her assignment. I feel that these are satisfying enough for me, and it touches me on so many different levels, that one is willing to spare that little bit of time for me out of one day, you know?

It is all about perspectives, I realized. It is all about the way you see things, and how you perceive them. You could either whine and complain about your partner spending too much time with his or her day job, or you could cherish and appreciate the little time that you get out of everything else that is going on in his or her life. I happen to believe in the latter, and I believe to be such a lucky guy to be able to be there, somehow, you know. Besides, do we really want to know that we have spent "enough time" with our partners? It's just such a horrible thing to say to your partner though, that you feel like you have spent "enough time" with him or her. I mean, isn't a relationship all about improvement, having fun, and being there for one another. I don't want to think that I spent enough time with Neptina, because that just seems like I have done whatever that I wanted to do, and I want out. It's not like that, because I never want to have spent enough time with someone I love. I want to feel always deprived, always needing to work a little harder, always wanting a little more. I suppose that is the way I see it, my perspective, about time and space. I suppose even with the little time or space that I get, I make the best out of it with her. And, with her, having fun and being loved at the same time comes so easy and naturally.