Took half day off in the morning as woke up with a blinding headache and a persistent giddiness. I attribute it to the built-up tension and the demise of the toy.

Anyway when I got into the office this afternoon, was still feeling rather wolly.

Then I got a pressie!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Suffice it to say that I am a happy happy camper now.

Kor, you’re the best. *beams*

My baby girl will be 3 today… *weeps*

Being as vain and feminine as her mummy, she jumped around in glee when I showed her the pics that the wonderful wonderful creator of this cake posted on her blog. Even her androgynous elder sister loved it…

Three years old already… Before I know it, it will be us hitting the discos together..

Food for thought. *winks*

Who do you think possess a greater degree of sadness?

Women without love OR Women without sex?

Stellar example of the former would be the vavavroom Marilyn Monroe. She had tons of action in the bedroom, most notably with John Kennedy… She was drop dead gorgeous and a bod to boot but her marriages all ended up in shambles, and not to mention that Kennedy never gave her an official status.

Women without sex would most undoubtedly be whales and fuglies. *shudder*

Uh….but wait………..

I also haven’t had any for the longest time!!

That would make me doubly sad, wouldn’t it?! I belong to both categories!!!!

Excuse me while I go kill myself.

I am in an ultra bad mood today. My toy died on me last night, the same way my rabbit died on me a few months ago. And no, it’s not my pet rabbit and if you need to ask, you really shouldn’t be here. This is the right place for ya.

So. It’s worse because I haven’t been getting any.

So. I am in a real foul mood today. It was escalated by the two fugly women sitting near me during lunch, who had to speak in jarring decibels.

Fugly 1: “I am going to Korea next month. So
excited about it! Korean guys are so cute!!”

Fugly 2: “Yee… I don’t like Korean guys… they are so hum
sup.”

Tell me what is wrong with this conversation?!

Firstly, what is Fugly 1 doing, fantasizing about cute dudes who wouldn’t give her the f**k of the day?

Secondly, who does Fugly 2 think she is kidding? She don’t like?? She’s not in the position to not like anybody!

F**k.

I am normally not so nasty. You all know I am this fuzzy fluffy nice bunny when I get my way, right?

RIGHT?!

***

And. What is it about toads who like to peek at my blouse sideways?! Look, this is what I am wearing today:

Is it very tantalizing?!

*fume* *scowl* *bad mood*

PS: To “you know who you are”..

You are very cruel. *sulk*

We went for the Forbidden City on Saturday. Serene blew us off for her boyfriend (the bitch! hah!) so it was only Cassy and I making up the numbers for girls’ night out. Cassy’s boyfriend (he of the generous fame) bought us VIP tickets costing a bomb of $150.00 per pop and that means he blew $150.00 on me and I hardly know the dude. Ah well. Better a generous one than a cheap one. And I so cannot abide cheap guys.

Anyway, the show was good, the story spectacular and nobody irritated me by laughing or talking at the wrong moment. It was all good. Kit Chan has a really good powerful voice and she is a stellar example of how looks are not really that important to be able to make it far, as long as you have grit talent.

And that damn Bebe dress proved to be a pied piper, attracting all kinds of attention that I don’t relish from the wrong variety of men, namely SCAPs and married/ attached guys with their women hanging on their arms. WTF are all the single and cute guys????!!! Of course, Cassy was decked out in a virginal floral shift that make her look virginal and me not so virginal.. And she also refused to let me take pics of her or of us to put up on my blog! *Humph!

Don’t know what it is about the young boys these days but damn, are they a naughty bunch!

Got this email yesterday:

Hot babe,

I wish I had a mum like you! I wish you WERE my mum.

Hot love
XXXX

What the fish??!!! What did he mean he wished I was his mum? Am I reading oedipus complex here? Or is he sublimely inferring that I am old? The little skunk.

***

And the myriad of emails from impossibly young guys, from age 16 (!) to that of mine.. Which feels rather weird because I had always been into older men and the Lolita complex.. and now this.

Damn, I feel old.

Out with the girls tonight! So damn excited about it cos it’s been yonks since I sat through a proper play and dinner date with the girls..

So. Updates on Monday.

Meanwhile, I am abusing my new toy again… And did I say I totally love it?

I love it to bits. I think I just unleased another monster in me.

To “you”: thanks. You’re absolutely sweet. Although… I must confess I was rather, and still am overwhelmed when I got it. It’s a rather generous gift for someone whom you have not even met yet or even spoken to on the phone..

And most importantly, that also means that I can take pics of any idiot who ever tries to molest me!!!

I wrote about stupid PR tragedies to avoid after the elections.. and actually thought with unwise optimism that I may not have to do another until 2011.

Not to be so. The way our beloved government is throwing in moolah into the deep bottomless abyess that is the IMF/WB PR disaster, it calls for another clinic. Heck, it might be a hospital emergency this time round.

We spent millions to secure the right to host a huge ass project for the potential benefits of the exposure and networking. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the importance of the PR mechanisms in sync. And no, it’s not some goody bags you put together for the delegates’ wives, or spending some obscene amounts on wilted flowers that frame the cagework of the circus..

It is doing the groundwork research that comes with the territory of a humongous ass project. It’s taking the good with the bad. It seems rather stupid (yes, stupid!) to me that they would refuse entry to the very protesters who are accredited by IMF/WB and in the midst of doing so, created such a furore in the international media. Worse still, it brought on a sharp rebuttal from IMF/WB themselves. It’s doubly, no, make that quadruply stupid because we as a country, the super scale ministers and the 4 million people who have smiled have been manipulated by the spin doctor which is Paul Wolfowitz. Like a chess master, he has planned his moves such that the host country is slimed and he earns brownie points by standing in with the very protesters against his organisation. A master of the game, and too bad our spoon-fed streetsmarts-deficient ministers did not even anticipate this move.

Adn what can we as citizens do about this deadlock? Nothing. In the first place, the reasoning is so stupid (yes, stupid!) that I cringe just reading it. How so does protesting activities lead to terrorism?! How so will the protesters make a political impact on Singapore, so that SM Goh has to issue a statement saying that they would be in “deep political trouble” with the citizens if they allow double standards. What double standards?! Rubbish. It’s all the Act 1, Scene 2 all over again. They got Act 1 wrong, so Scene 2 has to follow… accordingly. Talk about shooting ourselves in the foot.

This reminds of the casino situation. The government is still harbouring the notion of taking the good without the bad. We’ll see. And no, I refuse to call it Integrated Resorts or IR or such nonsense. A skunk by any other name would smell just as bad.

***

And now, we are once again the international baddie in the limelight for all the wrong reasons. We are already notorious for being weak in the area of human rights and freedom of speech and now, it is plastered all over the international dailies. Nice. Add to that the heavy handed approach they took towards a peaceful march. Even nicer.

And arresting the 400 frowns activist guy is plain stupid. Look, his campaign turned out to be more realistic and prophesy fulfilling than the delusional 4 millions smiles campaign. They may think that authoritarian clampdown works best on our conditioned society but well, you can control a small country with total media direction and propoganda spinning… but you cannot hoodwink all of the foreign media. My favourite blogger, Xenoboy wrote a most moving piece for one of his favourite bloggers; Mr Wang. It was poignantly heartwrenching writing.

I am reminded of another of my favourite guys, Alfian Sa’at:

Singapore You Are Not My Country by Alfian Sa’at

Singapore you are not my country.Singapore you are not a country at all.

You are surprising Singapore, statistics-starved Singapore,

soulful Singapore of tourist brochures in Japanese and hourglass kebayas.

You protest, but without picketing, without rioting, without Catherine Lim,

but through your loudspeaker media,through the hypnotic eyeballs of your newscasters,

and that weather woman who I swear is working voodoo on my teevee screen.

Singapore, what are these lawsuits in my mailbox?

There are so many sheaves,I should have tipped the postman.

Singapore, I assert, you are not a country at all.

Do not raise your voice against me,I am not afraid of your anthem although the lyrics are still bleeding from the bark of my sapless heart.

Not because I sang them pigtailed pinnafored breakfasted chalkshoed in school

But because I used to watch telly till they ran out of shows.

Do not invite me to the podium and tell me to address you properly.

I am allergic to microphones and men in egosuits and pubicwigs.

And I am not a political martyr,I am a patriot who has lost his country and virginity.

Do not wave a cane at me for vandalising your propaganda with technicolour harangues,Red Nadim semen white Mahsuri menses the colourful language of my eloquent generation.

Your words are like walls on which truth is graffiti.

This has become an island of walls.

Asylum walls, factory walls, school walls, the walls of the midnight Istana.

If I am paranoid I have learnt it from you,O my delicate orchid stalk Singapore,

Always thirsty for water,spooked by armed archipelagoes,always gasping for airspace,always running to keep ahead,running away from yourself.

Singapore why do you wail that way, demanding my IC?

Singapore stop yelling and calling me names.

How dare you call me a chauvinist,an opposition party,a liar,a traitor,a mendicant professor,a Marxist homosexual communist pornography banned literature chewing gum liberty smuggler?

How can you say I do not believe in The Free Press autopsies flogging mudslinging bankruptcy which are the five pillars of Justice?

And how can you call yourself a country,you terrible hallucination of highways and cranes and condominiums ten minutes drive from the MRT?

Tell that to the battered housewife who thinks happiness lies at the end of a Toto Queue.

Tell that to the tourist guide whose fillings are pewter whose feelings are ironwhose courtesy is gold whose speech is silverwhose handshake is a lethal yank at the jackpot machine.

Tell that to my imam who thinks we are all going to hell.

Tell that to the chao ah beng who has seven stitches a broken collarbone and three dead comrades but who will not hesitate from thrusting his tiger ribcage into another fight because the lanterns of his lungs have caught their own fire and there is no turning back.

Tell that to the yuppie who sits in meat-markets disguised as pubs, listening to Kenny G disguised as jazz on handphone disguised as conversation and loneliness disguised as a jukebox.

Tell that to all those exiles whose names are forgotten but who leave behind a bad taste in the thoughtful mouth,reminding us that the flapping sunned linen shelters a whiff of chloroform.

Tell that to Town Council men who feed pigeons with crumbs of arsenic.

Tell that to Natra Hertogh a.k.a Maria who proved to us that blood spilled was thicker than water shed as she was caught pining under a stone angel in the nunnery for her husband.

Tell that to Ah Meng, who bore six hairy bastards for our nation.

Tell that to Lee Kuan Yew’s squint.

Tell that to Josef Ng, who shaves my infant head amidst a shower of one-cent coins, and both of us are pure again.

Tell that to my Warrant Officer who knew I was faking.

Tell that to the unemployed man who drinks cigarettes smokes tattoos watches peanuts unself-conscious of his gut belch debts and wife having an affair with the Salesman of Nervous Breakdowns.

Tell that to our Maya Angelou’s who are screeching like witches United Nations-style poems populated by Cheena Babi Bayee Tonchet Melayu Malas Keling Geragok Mat Salleh.

Tell that to the fakirs of civil obedience, whose headphones are pounding the hooving basslines of Damyata Damyata Damyata.

Tell that to the statue of Li Po at Marina Park.

Tell that to the performance artists who need licences like drivers and doctors and dogs when all they really need is just three percent of your love.

Tell that to the innocent faggot looking for kicks on a Sunday evening to end up sucking the bit-hard pistol-muzzle of the CID, ensnared no less by his weakness for pretty boys naked out of uniform.

Tell that to the caretaker of the grave of Radin Mas.

Tell that to Chee Soon Juan’s smirk.

Tell that to the pawns of The Upgrading Empire who penetrate their phalluses into heartlands to plant Lego cineplexes Tupperware playgrounds suicidal balconies carnal parks of cardboard and condoms and before we know it we are a colony once again.

Tell that to Malaysia whose Desaru is our spittoon whose TV2 is our amusement whose Bumiputras are our threat whose outrage is our greater outrage whose turtles are weeping blind in the roaring daylight of our cameras.

Tell that to the old poets who have seen this piece of land slip their metaphors each passing year from bumboats to debris to sanitation projects to drowning attempts to barbed neon water weeds on a river with no reflections a long way off from the sea.

O Singapore your fair shores your garlands your GNP.

You are not a country you are a construction from spare parts.

You are not a campaign you are last year’s posters.

You are not culture you are poems on the MRT.

You are not a song you are part swear word part lullaby.

You are not Paradise you are an island with pythons.Singapore I am on trial.

These are the whites of my eyes and the reds of my wrists.

These are the deranged stars of my schizophrenia.

This is the milk latex gummy moon of my sedated smile.

I have lost a country to images, it is as simple as that.

Singapore you have a name on a map but no maps to your name.

This will not do; we must stand aside and let the Lion crash through a madness of cymbals back to that dark jungle heart when eyes were still embers waiting for a crownless Prince of Palembang.

***

Boy, I do so love intellectual men.

The Development Bank of Singapore recently launched a branding campaign with the slant towards “Living, Breathing Asia”.

It’s good. No, it’s beyond good.

Savings is a rather unwise form of parking your money, given the miserable interest rates as opposed to researched investment. Therefore, to dress up the idea, make it appealing, even desirable, would take a bit of the spin doctors’ touch. And that’s why I said they were good.

Short TVC ads with a storytelling slant. Emphasis on Asian values. Beautiful artistic direction. Feel with your heart as opposed to think with your head factor.

It’s good. You have to see it for yourself for full effect.

***

I think of the DBS branding campaign which is successful… and I think about the attempt on the part of our government to rebrand all the government agencies.

Somehow, I get the chills when I even think about it. What is a brand really? Our government seems to think of it as a corporate direction, image and mission. But really, it’s an imperceptible aspiration, an intangible sense of belonging, designed to appeal to the target market. A representation of the beliefs that the organisation embody.

And if the branding of the agencies are anything like the PAP brand itself, I don’t think I can survive the massive gagging.