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May 29 interesting dayi was sitting in church, listening to the pastor give his sermon. he mentioned a programme run by the church to teach english to vietnamese children. sounds good, doesn't it? unfortunately, the idiots had an ulterior motive. they thought the children english, alright. they taught the children how to read the bible.
who gave them the right to preach to young, impressionable children? who gave them the right to tell them their parents are evil liars who should be rebelled against? seriously, it's just pathetic. the church should NEVER use such vehicles to evangelise. now, if the children had, of their own voalition (yeah right), ask about the bible and about God, then there's no problem. it made me sick to my stomach that the programme would be to indoctrinate ignorant, illiterate children with our faith. it makes our religion look desperate, and above all, it's underhanded. they might say that it is our duty and our purpose to spread the word, but i say it should be spread to people who have the ability to choose their beliefs. not only are they naive, children are also unable to disagree with adults, seeing as how adults should have all the answers. what adults say is always right, always true, and so they will not disagree or doubt their words - even if they are given the faith now, they are not questioning themselves, they are not hammering out their own doubts. in the end, you have an ignorant believer. one who might be ostracised by his/her own people, seeing as how their own parents do not believe in a god. in fact, as the story goes, the children came up to the teacher and told them to "stop wasting their time, there is no god". if that's what they believe, then that is what they believe for the time being. teach them english - PROPER lessons of english, and if they decide they wish to find out more about christianity and God, then they can ask on their own. you can put up prompters like the cross and banners and such, but who the HELL allowed you to teach them a LANGUAGE by using the BIBLE?!
they really make me sick to my ass.
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wow! great race day this week - so exciting. the whole 78 laps. FERNANDO ALONSO (!!) was ahead, with kimi raikkonen chewing up the track right behind him! most of the first half, they were 1/2 a second apart. then came a critical moment - the first pit stop. raikkonen went in first, and came out, then 2 laps later in went alonso. renault made a tactical error by pulling alonso out early so he would appear in front of kimi, but in retrospect, it would have made little different either way. it appeared to me that raikkonen, with 2.5 sec more fuel, would have gone all the way, and given alonso very very little room to overtake. as luck would have it though, a crash out resulted in the safety car coming out! once the safety car came out, everyone was going in for fuel and new tyres, which gave alonso the much needed seconds of fuel without risking him position.
for those not familiar with the rules:
1) when the safety car comes out, you are not allowed to overtake at any point of the track
2) the racers will line up in formation behind the safety car until it is called off the track.
therefore, if you go in to the pit first, you will come out first. this allowed alonso that break he needed to win!
schumi pulled a stupid stunt yesterday during qualifiers. he knew alonso was coming up on his timing, so in the last turn, he breaked hard and pretended to stall, running his car into the wall and causing a major blockage. this forced all the cars (including alonso) coming through the corner to slow down. it resulted in alonso coming in 0.064 seconds slower, in poll 2. obviously ferrari vehemently denied all allegations of "foul play" - it was a genuine car fault - but the final analysis by the stewards was that "Schumacher had no justifiable reason for braking so hard, as he had been traveling little or no quicker than at the same point on previous laps. They therefore concluded that he deliberately stopped his car on the circuit, an infringement of the sporting regulations. As punishment the stewards deleted all of Schumacher’s qualifying times, hence his move to the back of the grid".
despite that, he crawled his way up the line, ending in 5th place, after artful blocking from rubens barrichello. amazing. he was chased most of the last few laps by fisichella, though. well done. May 19 once again, i sinkwell, looks like i finally did it. i pushed it too hard, and although i can now do 2 pull ups unassisted, i've injured my back. doc said it was a muscle spasm, which caused a nerve injury, but pain killers, muscle relaxant and a nerve vitamin should fix that all up.
while lying in bed, which is one of the less painful things to do right now, i suddenly realised something. despite the fact that i loathe this country, and i hate NS, when i leave, these people are going to be my only friends when i start uni. sure i have my friends who are already in australia, but they'll have changed, and have their seperate lives - not like back when we were in high school and we'd get together on weekends and stuff like that. no, i'll be the only person i know at my uni.
and the sad part is, that makes me sad. i never thought i'd see the day when i'd be missing singaporeans. but there you have it. that's what my life is like. despite the fact that they never call me out to anything, they're going to be the last batch of people i'll know before i leave. i've already lost all my church friends, BMT's a distant memory, and even my uni friends would be too busy to remember me well after 2 years. not many people to talk to these days, seeing how the only people i meet aren't interested in talking to me much 'cept for jeff and leicester.
exercise is working - i'm keeping my weigh steady at 84.6 kg. that's a drop of like 4.4 kg - i was 89 when this thing started. i've lost more than that in fat, though, since i've grown in muscle - now they're really biting me in the ass. ><
ah well. May 11 well well well...haven't had time to think about the polls. the voting was one big, strange event. first off, there was a james gomez bomb - it was strange, because one of the pap said "let's move on", while the rest of the party refuses to let it go. they wish to debate the "real issues", and yet they keep bringing it up, saying that they wish to forget all about it. what the hell? then there was the first tv rally. one the one hand, the opposition talked about how they would improve life in the constituencies. the pap, on the other hand, kept saying "debate the issues, debate the issues". now i would actually like to know about the real issues. terrorism is already like background noise - used to justify ALOT of bullshit in the US, and certainly a threat in singapore, but it's not like we don't already have a police force that is watching our every move, guards with guns in the ports, and laws that are already in place. now, assuming these laws are not destroyed by the new government (which i doubt they would be, seeing as how the actually work), the "real issues" are ones that affect the everyday lives of the people in the country. another interesting thing - the overseas vote. apparently even the people who have seen a real opposition governmment, people who no longer LIVED in the country, were voting for the pap! what the hell?! dude come on...at least THINK about it for a second - isn't it better, having an opposition voice in government? what's the deal with the upgrading? how is it fair that you refuse to upgrade the flats in constituencies that aren't voting in your favour? of course they are being considered, certainly all of singapore deserves to be treated the same way, just that they're really really far down the list. look who's ahead, didn't you vote for the pap? didn't YOU? damn... heard comments from pap members that hougang was getting very old, and that upgrading was in order. now, how come hougang hasn't ALREADY been upgraded? after all, it's a part of singapore, certainly older than some of the parts that have already been marked for en-bloc upgrading. suspicious, wouldn't you say? and i mean, it's like a big carrot that they hang over singaporeans' heads to get them to vote for the pap. you are the government - a very rich government - who has the money to do the upgrading, and yet you're asking the opposition - who doesn't have the huge coffers of the people in power - why they aren't doing anything to make life easier for its residents? i'm sure if the opposition had your reserves to use up, then they certainly would have done the upgrading, and would not have spent all the money on "progress packages". i mean what the hell is that?? then there was that shot the pap took at the wp for having enough money to upgrade only 4 blocks of flats. the wp hit back by saying it was enough to upgrade 8 blocks, and that had they been given more money, they would've done more. i'm more inclined to believe the wp. OF COURSE they don't have your kind of money moron, it's not like YOU ever had to have charity drives and fund-raising activities... progress package - carrot no. 2. it is the singular most stupid thing i have ever heard of: we have a surplus in the bank, so we're giving it all back to you. now, how much you get depends on your age, living conditions and employment status. how does it come to be that some people living in HDB can get less than people who live in palaces not even in singapore? it's because these are non-discriminatory guildlines for the dissemination of of the package. as long as you technically qualify, you can get the money. nevermind that you might be earning more than US$50,000 a year overseas, as long as you don't earn an income in singapore, you are technically unemployed, and therefore entitled to the bonus. drop in the bucket, but it's money to people who live on the streets, in tiny flats who can't afford food, and so on. why not use that money on upgrading instead? :) and of course we all know that now the voting's over, prices WILL skyrocket to take all the money back. once they've accounted for a significant portion of the money, then inflation will drop again, which will make the newly reinstated government look good...again. *sigh* having said that, the pap were right about one thing - the fact that the opposition is not experienced in working with overseas people. after all, when have they been given the chance? i mean, cutting business deals and working out foreign policies are 2 totally different animals. even if they had experience in one, would they know what to do if someone decided to become hostile? i don't think so. sad to say, if there was anyone i could trust to handle our foreign policy, it's pap. *sigh* guess it's true what everyone is saying - the pap is good to have in power. at the end of the day, i believe everyone wants the pap to win, but by a significantly small margin, so that more opposition MPs get voted in, to learrn the ropes, and one day take over from the pap. right now people have very very very little confidence in the wp, sdp, sda (total morons - more on that later) and so on, as a government, although as a local representative in local issues, they are alot more accepting. now here's the conundrum - how can people from other parties have any experience in parliament without being voted in? but how will they get voted in if people don't have confidence in their ability to run a government? May 05 she...it's funny - the things you remember about someone. like how they have a lazy eye, or maybe how they are allergic to peanuts. |
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