Happy New Year Everyone!!!

Wishing all a fun filled , happy 2006, good health and good friends ahead.

Should all acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind ......

The Lyrics Which I Don't Understand

1. Rock a bye baby (aka Hush A bye baby)

Rock a bye baby on the tree top,
When the wind blows the cradle will rock,
When the bough breaks the cradle will fall,
And down will come baby, cradle and all.

This nursery rhyme should be re-examined by the Hall of Baby Songwriters. The title of the song is already murderous. You rock the baby and then it's bye bye after that! If I am the baby, I will be turning white and shitting in my diapers the moment someone sings this to me. And who in the right mind would put the baby on a treetop??!!!


2. Auld Lang Syne

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and days of auld lang syne.
And days of auld lang syne, my dear,
And days of auld lang syne.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And days of auld lang syne.

We all sing this song on New Year's eve. I sang this at the end of every school campfire. If you look at the lyrics carefully, it is actually a "I Hate You" song. I think Auld Lang Syne is Scottish and I don't know what it means, but the first two lines translates to, " I regretted meeting you, and I will try and forget you as soon as poosible. Please get out of my sight, and I hope we will never cross path again, dear. "

NarHia ... The Shopping, The Packing and The Wardrobe

Frankly, I love shopping. I like being able to exchange pieces of paper with faces of dead people for new shirts and pants. But we know that men and women shop differently. Men know exactly what they want and where to get it. They zoom in to the store and in less than 5 minutes, they are out with the shopping bags and checking the phone for the latest soccer results.

But women, they have to look at every item, check the colours, look at the seams, examine the zipper, feel the buttons, place in under the light, shake it, knock it, crease it, smell it. Then they always have to hold that dress and stand behind it and then check out the mirror image. "Oh, that's how I look if I go to the office with the hanger round my neck ...... " . If the mirror counterpart looks good, they will then go into the fitting room and try out the actual piece. And when the final stage of testing is completed, they MAY consider buying it !!? Why, because they run through another set of QC and ISO 9000 questions before buying!!! Does it match my bag, what accessories goes with it, does it match my top, can I wear it to my boyfriend's party, does it match my husband's shoes, does my neighbour have the same dress, will it be cheaper if I buy it later etc .

Men don't go through all this. Men will not examine a washing machine, open up the cover, check out the mirror and see how he looks when he throws in the laundry and soap. The women's shopping experience is very different from the men, and therefore extremely hard to understand, it's like asking why men would look at any woman in bikini ... there's no one answer to that.

But the shopping enthusiasm drops to a zero when I reach home. I hate the cutting of labels and price tags and removing of the countless needles that hold the shirt in the plastic wrapper. Then you have to wash it first, in case those people at the shirt factory wore it to a party first before selling it to you. For me, I have to figure out where to hang up the new piece of clothing. If you have a wardrobe like mine, you will have a headache after every shopping session. It looks like a museum of clothing because I have shirts dating back to at least 20 years ago. Not that I am still wearing them, but I can't bear to throw them away because I have a great respect for cotton. So I have to squeeze the the clothes together, very much like the commuters in the train during peak morning hours, you open the doors and everythings falls out.

So here are some pictures of my wardrobe. Hope nobody pukes.

The Chinese Swordsman

If I ever have a career option, I may consider being a Chinese Swordsman. After watching "The One Arm Swordsman", I am convinced their fringe benefits and prospects outweigh what I have been getting for the last few years.

To me, being a swordsman is like living in a fantasy world. First of all, you don't have to work! All you do is just walk around and stroll around with that mighty sword. And you get to keep your hair long. Your life mission is to search for that secret manual (an excuse not to work), which unfortunately is usually in limited edition (most of the time only one copy and no reprints).

One of the incentives of being a Chinese Swordsman is you don't die so easily ... very much like cartoons. You can fight alone with an army of soldiers and end up with only a few cuts that don't require stitches. But even if you are unlucky and suffer a few thousand slashes all over your body, you will usually get well the next day. You can have an arrow pierced through your chest and almost reaching the other end, yet you could still walk for a few days with the arrow stuck in the body. You will then collapse in front of your lover, who will then conveniently pull it out without spilling a drop of blood. Most certainly, you will also not suffer any infection from the rusty arrow head, and what you need is just a wet silk towel over your forehead.

However, one of the major qualification as a Chinese swordsman is you have to be ambidextrous. At any one time, should you lose one of your arms, you have to be able to quickly hold up your sword and fight with the other. It is not easy considering most of these swords are made of iron and not stainless high oxygenated carbon steel. But the problematic part is, you have to search all over again for the other sword fighting secret manual for left handers and re-learn everything.

If you are a so-so swordman, you usually try and protect the women and children in the village, and fend off the amateur street thugs. Sometimes you do part-time gigs for hawkers selling home made medicine by the roadside ... just wield your sword from right to left , make a few stance and hop around, then tell the audience you took 7x7 = 49 days to master it. But the best part is most of the audience wont even know the sword fighting has nothing to do with the medicine you are promoting.

If you are a black belt swordsman, you can apply to work for the Emperor. Not only the palace is a cool place to hang out, you can get into politics and attend conferences with the ministers. Promotions prospects is plentiful, just save the Emperor from the assassins a few times and you can go from Assistant Personal Guard to Chief of Army in a very short time.

But the main reason why I would consider being a Chinese swordsman is that special coveted award from the Emperor ... the "No Need To Die" gold medal. If you have this medal with you, you are excused from dying for any wrong doings. Got caught for sleeping with the Emperor's concubines and sentenced to death? No problem .... even if the Queen Mother tries to overrule, just flash the medal and you walk away a free man.

The Names

I was watching an interview on tv (taiwanese programme) when one of the interviewees introduced herself as "Ring". Then the other day I heard "Fish Leong" sing on MTV, and a few days later someone told me her colleague's name is " Balloon".

See how much effort people make to stand out from others? And these are real names, not nicknames like those Crap1989 on ICQ or emails. But there is a real problem here, either we have run out of names or people just run out of ideas what to call themselves. You cannot use numbers as your name because the World Prisons Association has full copyrights to that idea. And I remember not too long ago people were naming themselves after animals. The early Chinese would conveniently call their young Tan Ah Kow (dog) or Tan Ah Goo (cow) and their western counterpart would have names like Porky or Cattie or Bitch.

But if you have a name that is too common, its quite likely that one of your own friends would have the same name as you, then it's very hard to tell people apart. Like within my circle of friends, I have three Crystals on the list. And when two of these Crystals get together, I have to attach a "big" or "small" to the name, so it's either Big Crys or Small Crys, and after that everyone knows exactly who we are refering to . Who gets the big or small is purely luck and not according to bodily assets.

So with the population exploding and more of your friends recycling the same names, it is not surprising that people these days are using objects as names. I am sure when people started using crystal as their names, there were many who found it strange, especially when your neighbours were naming their own kids after animals. But gradually after a few decades, it became acceptable and pleasant to name your child after glass. And it is a matter of time when "Ring" appears in your list of contacts ..

A few centuries ago, some scientists speculate that our names would get longer and wierder. Wierder yes, but not much longer than before. My prediction would be people would start adding phrases to their names after the trend of animals and objects names subsides. The people in the wrestling industry have already started it and I think it will become trendy to have names like Stone Cold Lee or Rock Baddie Tan. And you will see names that are more catchy, like some slogans or motto. For example, if your surname is Goh, you might consider a name like Way To, so it becomes Way To Goh (you may add an exclaimation mark! at the end for more impact, like those Africans names ) or if your surname is Cheong, then you may consider Tonight Can Cheong ... cool or not?