Heaven and Hell

An assassin working for an evil feudal lord in ancient times had a wildly successful career getting rid of his lord's enemies, until his lord was assassinated by some other assassin, thus ending the evil reign and his particularly lucrative job. Following the reign of peace brought on by the death of the evil feudal lord, the assassin was sorely out of job, and lacking other skills, he became a farmer and led his life out farming on some desolate plot of dirt.

When he died, the assassin arrived at the gates of Heaven. Nonplussed, he went up to the gatekeeper who was standing behind a podium twenty feet high.

"Excuse me. Has there been a mistake of some sort? I don't think I'm supposed to be here."

The gatekeeper looked up from the huge tome he was bending over, and flashed the assassin a wry smile. "You are worried that you arrived before the gates of Heaven?"

"Well, yes. I don't want to get my hopes high, you know? I mean, there's no way I can be going to Heaven, and I think I'd rather go straight to Hell, instead of lurking around in Heaven for a while before they realize there's a mistake and kick me out. It'll be a double torture."

"If that's the way you would have it," said the gatekeeper. "Your name, please?"

The assassin told him.

The gatekeeper consulted the huge tome briefly, leafing through it with inhuman speed, before finally looking up. "Well it appears all in order. You are due for Heaven, and not too soon too."

Taken aback, though not too unpleasantly so, the assassin was lost for words for a moment.

"And it appears that you have done quite a lot of good too. A well deserved stay for you I must say."

"What?" the assassin blurted out. "Did you know that I was an assassin for an evil feudal lord? I kill people to earn my keep!"

"Yes," the gatekeeper agreed, "an assassin for an evil feudal lord who killed many good people all intent on plotting against the feudal lord.

"Good life." added the gatekeeper.

"What?"

"Very good life in fact."

"Look," the assassin persevered, "Are you saying I am going into Heaven for killing all these good people? Is this some kind of a joke?"

"No, god, no! " The gatekeeper was taken aback by the suggestion.

"Good, I thought that was rather implausible too..."

"In Heaven, we don't joke about such things. You are precisely going into Heaven for killing all these good people."

"What?"

"Let me put it into perspective for you. You have," explained the gatekeeper, "sent a commendable number of people into Heaven. Heaven, as you know it and as advertised, is a place of unlimited or infinite goodness, where only good people reside. By sending people into Heaven, these people get to enjoy an infinity of goodness and happiness. By extension, since you are the one who sent them here, you have generated an infinite amount of goodness and happiness in this world. There is no greater good than that a mortal can achieve. You are, metaphorically speaking, the Charon of Heaven."

A metaphor in bad taste too, thought the assassin. But he was not to be put off.

"You know, that sounds very philosophical and deep to me, and I kind of like it since the outcome of all that is I get to go to Heaven. But seriously speaking, if you ask me, it sounds like bullshit to me, if you don't mind."

"Had you not sent those good people to Heaven when you did," continued the gatekeeper, pretending that the assassin hadn't spoken, "the good people would have continued plotting against your evil feudal lord, and we have very good statistical data that they might eventually succeed in the absence of assassination attempts made on their lives, and replace the evil feudal lord with their own rule, whereupon it is highly probable that they will do heinous acts of the most unspeakable sort. These good people would hence be unable to qualify for Heaven, which is the place for only good people.

"In fact," the gatekeeper continued in conspiratorial tones, "these good people are rather grateful to you for sending them here. I hear they drink an occasional toast to you."

Whatever, thought the assassin, I'm not going to refuse the cake that's dropped into my hands. Particularly not against such a rubbish argument.

"Enjoy your stay," said the gatekeeper, "and don't worry about it. Worrying is outlawed in Heaven." The gatekeeper winked, tapping against a sign which says "Worrying is outlawed in Heaven."

The assassin turned to go, then suddenly stopped. He approached the gatekeeper again, who was beginning to find him an annoyance.

"Where's the other assassin? I've always wanted to meet him, you know? I don't even know who did it."

"Who are you referring to?" asked the gatekeeper.

"The other assassin who killed my evil feudal lord, who ended the evil reign and my job. He's something, I give him that. He must be here somewhere, right?"

"Oh that guy." said the gatekeeper. "He's in Hell."

"What?" exclaimed the assassin. "What did he do?"

"Apparently he sent some evil feudal lord into Hell. Since Hell, as you know it and as advertised, is a place of infinite badness and unhappiness..."

"You know what? I think just screw this. Where're the stairs?"

"What?"

"I said, where're the stairs. I'm going down."

Bugs

There is a dead dragonfly in my room.

Which is weird, considering how dragonflies haven't been seen in my area for the past 5 years. Nor the past 6 years. Or the past 8 years. Actually it has never been seen in my area, and now there's one dead in my room.

What is really weird, is that not too long ago, yifeng gave me a handicraft dragonfly from vietnam, and it is currently sitting on top of my bookshelf. Which is where the real dragonfly lay dead at the foot of, as if it died in the last-ditch attempt to reach my wooden dragonfly. Poor fool. I wonder if it really thought my wooden dragonfly is alive.

Now it lay dead under my bed. I have no idea if I should sweep it away with a broom, or just let it be. It looked so elegant, and fragile--sweeping it away seems a sacrilege, much less dumping it into a dustbin.

Talking about bugs reminds me of the dream I had last night. I have really strange dreams these days. Dreams which involves you randomly teleporting from one place to another aren't the strange ones; what is strange are the ones which almost seem to make sense, but not quite, and you have absolutely no idea what brought them on. Like finding yourself in a study group of five, and a maths professor assigning to you a thick book of maths questions to be finished by group effort.

Which is when I find myself staring at a container (a pencil box?) with a HUGE caterpillar crawling slowly at the bottom of it. My fellow (maths) group mates were freaking out slightly from it, so I reached in, freaking out a little myself, to haul it out. But before I touched it, or rather the paper it was crawling on, suddenly I was beset on by a cloud of little bright red ladybugs, flung on me from all sides, possibly by my group mates. I couldn't tell, all I can see were the little red ladybugs which were landing on me everywhere, humming slightly. Strangely, I wasn't as freaked out by the ladybugs as I was by the giant caterpillar, though I did run about trying to fend them off.

I have no idea what that dream meant, nor how I come to dream of it. Guess it's a absolutely meaningless dream. Just like this post.

rain

It's raining now. It hasn't been raining for a really long time lately, especially this particular kind of rain. It's a kind of mindless kind of splattering rain, not at all like the downpours that fall with a vengeance, nor like the spluttering rain like an engine about to die on you. This is a rain that says "I don't care" as it falls lazily, with sleepy thunder rumbling in the distance, so dense that it could form a curtain obscuring your vision of the distant hills.

This rain reminds me of the time when I was in NS, when we were still in Signals. When I was in NS, we would occasionally get deployed for exercise in our signal vehicles, subjected to the whims of the division commander. There was once I got deployed to Amakeng, which is a restricted army exercise area just beside the Amakeng old folks home. The rain that was falling then is exactly the same kind that is falling now: lazy with a statement.

An interesting side note, my officer told me the restriction on the army area isn't exactly that rigorously being enforced apparently. When we were driving into the area, I could see some villagers looking people waiting before the gate in the rain, waiting for us to open the gate and drive in. When we did open the gate, they walked passed our whole convoy of army vehicles, passed us who were all carrying rifles across our backs and with bayonets on our waists, and walked nonchalently into the restricted army area, disappearing before long into the bushes and trees. My officer told me that these are farmers who grew vegetables inside the restricted area, and they are apparently going to openly harvest them now that we opened the gate. How's that for guts huh? We obviously can't just shoot them, so we studiously ignored them.

Amakeng is really like some rural area, perhaps the last surviving countryside left here. There are even lots of fruit trees scattered around, growing wild. After we set up our vehicles and comms, sometimes we would roam the area looking for durians. We did find some, and they were good, not like the lousy small durians found in Pulau ubin. One of us even plucked a papaya, which unfortunately caused him to sign a lot of extras when he picked it and left in his vehicle, forgotten till it rotted and stank the whole place up.

However, when it is raining like it is now, we weren't able to go booty hunting. For normal army units, raining means a chance of lightning, and if Cat. 1 is sounded, all exercise would be off for fear of lightning strikes. For us signal units, it means hurry up set up your vehicle, put up the 10 stories high antenna and establish communications before you get fucked or struck by lightning, whichever is first.

And establishing communications in the rain is especially hard, if not impossible. For my vehicle, it's worse. My radio sets date back to WW2, and at the best of times, only bloody single-mindedness allowed me to establish comms after hours of tuning and adjusting the antenna. When it is raining like it is now, getting the radio sets to work is like praying for a miracle, which involve alternatingly tuning the radio and going out into the rain to shake the antenna like an idiot trying to get struck by lightning.

Finally after several hours when the comms are established, the rain would disappear, leaving us to steam slightly in our wet clothes under the hot sun. It is entirely more likely that, however, we managed to establish the comms only because the rain is gone.

Bitches and bastards

Today I was going to have my lunch at the Jurong Point food court when I noticed the woman just in front of me in the queue at the food stall has an arm in a splint. She's middle aged or more, with that singaporean auntie look, and she was hogging the front of the stall, moving to and fro inspecting the utensils, and what-nots. When her food was ready, she paid up slowly, and inspected her receipt with deep concentration, frowning at it slightly even though she could probably see quite well. She's not that old, as you might have thought from the description I provided, but she moved with the speed of my grandmother. It is obvious that her slowness is due to slow wits, rather than the injured arm.

Then she tried to leave with her tray of food, trying with obvious effort to rest most of the weight of the tray on her good hand while the other balances the tray from the side. It is also obvious that she can't make it beyond two steps. So I stopped her and offered to carry her tray to her table.

She directed me to a table some distance away. The table isn't empty. Someone, dressed in long sleeves shirt and looking like a yuppie is sitting at the table, punching leisurely at his handphone whilst waiting. He didn't even look up as a stranger, me, set his mom's food beside him. At least, I think she is his mom. (I observed them later; the aunty was chatting lightly, with the guy looking slightly bored. An almost sure mom-son sign.) The fucker just went on punching on his handphone, almost like food service is common at the food court.

I had the urge to grab his collar and shake some sense into him, asking him why the fuck he didn't buy food for his mom, who has her arm in a splint and nearly just spewed her food all over the floor. In the end a stranger has to carry her food which she obviously couldn't handle, and the dressed to the nines son didn't even have the grace to look embarrassed.

The aunty thanked me profusely with another slow-witted look on her face, but I wasn't impressed. It's as much her own fault for producing such a son, and she didn't even look faintly embarrassed by her son's behavior.

Sometimes I really wonder. There are people who look smart, dress well and speak well, but deep within them seems to be devoid of any moral core. These yuppies, and I have seen any number of them, have something seriously lacking in their upbringing. Maybe that's what you get if you spend most of your time deciding what clothes to wear, which cologne to use, and going to facial and spa every other day. Just yesterday I saw a girl on the train, dressed in such a way that a blind man would look twice, seated at the corner seat, staring at a pregnant woman who got in just after the girl sat down. I saw the considering look in the girl's eyes, directed at the pregnant woman's belly, but after a moment, apparently dismissed the woman from her mind. No one else got up to offer a seat either. A thorough bitch. I for one didn't look twice at her.

Vegetarians

Philosophy is the only discipline I know of which has so profoundly and seditiously affected its practitioners' daily lives; of the graduate and undergraduate students in my department, four are vegetarians, two other eat only fish other than vegetables, and this is only out of a grand total of 20+ people in the whole department. And that's not counting my professor who is also a vegetarian.

The interesting thing is, none of them are vegetarians for religious reasons. They cite ethical issues to do with the preparation of meat, the very idea of slaughtering animals just for food, the pain visited on the animals in killing them; the very last reason is also the reason why some only eat fish, since there has been studies done to show that fish don't in fact feel pain. Maybe they can't even understand the concept of death--they don't have a fish brain for nothing.

And I have, at least, seriously considered going vegetarian before. But I love my meat too much, and giving in to irrationality, resolved not to think too much about what I am eating. Besides, I have yet to come up with a satisfying argument for myself for not eating meat, given the fact that many species of animals, including man, are naturally evolved to eat and digest meat. But above all, I have a very practical reason not to go vegetarian: my mum would scream and throw me out of the house, refusing to even cook rice for me if I dare to breathe a word of "vegetarian". And then my dad would follow me into going vegetarian, whereupon my mum will scream and drag me back to claw the hell out of me, forcing me to recant. For the sake of avoiding a family tragedy, I refuse to think anymore about going vegetarian.

So, my friends, if you are thinking that eating vegetarian might be a good lifestyle choice for you, leave me a message, or give me a call--I have altogether five pure vegetarians and two not so pure vegetarians for you to choose from, though one of them should be pretty tough due to age.

Subconscious mirroring

We all do unconscious mirroring, sometimes, to some degree. Some self-help books on imaging, office politics, or interviews recommend doing that in order to build better relationships with your friends, your colleagues and sucking up to your bosses. The general lines to go about doing it is to copy your target's little gestures, leaning back in your seat as he does, crossing your arms if he crosses, breathe to the same rhythm, and pretending to accidentally step in another pile of poo if he did so too.

The danger is that your target might notice your mirroring, and instead of forming a subconscious liking for you, he might be put off, or worse, think that you are mocking him. Hence it is vital, according to the experts, that you keep your mirroring gestures small, natural and entirely unnoticeable. At least to the conscious eye.

However, for the uninitiated, we don't really need to try all that hard. Friends mirror each other whenever they sit and talk, or walk alongside each other. We relax when the others slag visibly in their chairs, lean forward if he does so while talking, and generally walk to the same pace with the same swagger. (This brings us to an interesting observation: if a friend leans back away from you when you lean forward, you have a very clear signal that he/she isn't being very comfortable around you.)

All this is very fine and good, since we want our friends to be comfortable around us, and like us to say the least. However, things can get a little annoying when strangers start to mirror you, also subconsciously. Behold the pedestrian on the sidewalk who obviously was torn between two directions, and just as you were passing him, he would miraculously, and usually to his own surprise too, choose the direction which you are walking in, and walk shoulders to shoulders to you, in tandem, two people crowding a sideway which is empty for miles.

Or the obnoxious smelling man on the train, who seems to lean onto you with every lurch of the train, giving off a smell which only in the best of moods you would call "homely"; each time you lean forward ever so surreptitiously in your seat to escape the smell, he would lean forward after a minute's lag time, totally unconscious that he is doing so simply because his subconscious saw you doing it at the edge of his vision. And if you get up early the moment the train doors closed on the stop before yours, to escape the stench, he would get up early too, ambling along the train corridor after you with that vacant eyed look. All the while his subconscious is spinning up stories why he needed to lean forward due to a creak in the back, or why he needed to get up early due to the crowd in the train. He didn't follow me anymore after we got off the train; I hired someone to take him out.

To the people who know, subconscious mirroring by strangers are irritating, especially since you cannot stop them from mirroring you short of stripping yourself naked and start dancing in the train. Now you know too, being my readers, and I shall gladden my heart with knowing that henceforth I will not be the only one being irritated by subconscious mirroring by strangers.

Brown Belt

I just got my brown belt; now I am 4th kyu! Wahaha.

I have slightly conflicting emotions now; each time I got a double promotion, I feel like my fighting abilities are not worthy of my kyu, but if I merely got a single promotion, I would feel I'm under-appreciated. Guess it's better to feel not worthy though, ahah.