No more Mahjullah Singapura, Here comes Advance Australia Fair

I have been thinking about this matter for quite some time. My Dad and younger sister have decided to give up their Singapore citizenship for an Australian one. Dad would have to sell the family property in Singapore and would be able to take out his CPF which is a reasonably large sum. The next course of action is to purchase a property here. At the moment, not too much pressure has been exerted for me to follow suit but Mum did suggest that I consider that alternative as University fees would be cheaper (I’ll get 20% discount if I pay upfront or I could opt for H.E.C.S which means I don’t pay for my Uni fees until I get an income over a certain amount.)  As she said, I don’t have anything tying me to Singapore. The pay in Australia is much higher than it would be in Singapore, and even if I was posted back to Singapore to work, it’d be as an expat which means I’d be earning more than a local anyways.

Mum’s right, I don’t have any assets tying me to Singapore but I do have sentiments and memories. I grew up in Singapore. Played in the bacteria infested sandy playground. Cried when I was late for Primary school Had the occasional mishaps here and there. Met wonderful people. Met not-so-wonderful people. Went through the hell that is the Singaporean Education System. My first crush was in Singapore. My first breath of air was in Singapore. Just thinking back to my childhood embarrassingly brings tears to my eyes. A flood of snippets from that time period just hit me like a brick wall. I can’t remember too much of the details because I’ve got other things on my mind at the moment but they are all fragments of my past. I am who I am, partially, because of that.

I found some of my baby pictures. They’re quite embarrassing but it’s funny and nostalgic at the same time.

We caught the scent of McDonalds! I’m the one in the middle by the way… Trained assassins since we were old enough to walk :p My giraffe outfit. I had the most mischievous grin ever! My little sister and me! She was still cute back then.

I came to Sydney before I collected my IC. That was ages ago. Since then I’ve made new friends, almost gotten used to the life here, still swear every now and then that the shops close way too early, I have become accustomed to Australia. It was only after I had completed Year 12 of high school that I had to return to Singapore for conscription. I remembered back then I was terrified. I had never been away from my family before. The loneliness was something I was unfamiliar with and not willing to try. My worst fear was about my sexuality. This may sound silly but there are no doors in the army showers. I feared the homophobia that might develop if I was “blacklisted” as “one of them”. (Thankfully I got posted to SCDF! Hurray for showers with doors!) To this day, no one has seen me completely nude since puberty. Not even the doctors during the medical checkups for enlistment. I have been spared the humiliation of having to “cough”

I wouldn’t mind being the doctor in this situation.

Life in C.D. has been quite an eye opener. No offence to the army guys, C.D. doesn’t train us to kill imaginary enemies, they train us to save real lives. Our basic training involved the same regimentation, the same shitty barber that shaves off your hair against your wishes and you still have to end up paying for it yourself, same hours spent leaning over boots with Kiwi, furiously polishing away for the next days’ foot drill, same stupid route marches, same hours of sweat in the sun (except mine was pretty much either in camp or in the furnace or the Mandai training village). I never got to shoot a rifle during NS though but I’ve got to see amputated limbs, twisted piles of flesh stuck between the wheels of the train and the railway tracks, road traffic accident cases, suicide cases with both good and bad endings.  I’ve made very close friends during the biggest waste of 2 years of my life. It was only when I was posted out together to the Public Affairs Branch to the the pioneer batch of Public Education Instructors with 4 other guys that I realised, I wasn’t alone. Out of the 5 of us, 3 of us were here on our own. One was from Hong Kong/UK and the other was from Japan/KL/Germany and there was me. The other 2 had their families in Singapore with them but we still went through the shit together without too much unpleasantness. We progressed from nearly-bald recruits through the ranks to private, lance corporal and finally corporal. I was meant to get to Sergeant but due to some medical conditions and the changes in directive, unable to despite my head of department’s expression of displeasure to HQ. Oh well, I didn’t really mind all that much. It was almost over anyways. I would have had to go for another course to become Sergeant anyways. =) During that time I got up to a lot of shenanigans. I had my first alcoholic drink in Singapore (I do not like beer!)

With a ciggie in hand (it’s not mine! Honest!) I couldn’t stop laughing when he tried to get me to take a picture.

Apart from drinking, I went to my first gay club in Singapore, did a strip dance, pole dance and a lot of sliding down poles (thanks to C.D. for that). It was a lot of fun. Treasured memories.

Oh time for dinner now, I hope this little trip down memory lane has been as entertaining for you as it has been nostalgic for me.

Lurbs yew long time,

Jo(n)

The Snowie Files

Yaho lovelies!

Sorry I haven’t been blogging for a bit. It’s been pretty hectic. My wonderful oldest sister from England came over for a visit. I haven’t seen her for 4 years. It’s really good to see her again. She arrived on Thursday. By the time I had ended classes for the day, my parents had already picked her up and came to pick me up as well. The car was pretty full with my parents and my sisters. I was dressed like a “fashionista” according to my sister. I had a long sleeve white round neck T-shirt from Esprit and my fur jacket with my sexy hand stitched black leather shoes. (Sorry for being so shameless, actually, I'm not that sorry, tough bickies, eat that you fashion perpetrators!) It was great to see her again. She got my Dolce & Gabbana’s “The One”. It smells pretty good. I’ll be alternating between that and my signature scent Yves Saint Laurent’s “L’Homme”.

On Friday – 12/12/2008, I had classes as usual. it was chemistry which ended at 1300 hrs. I bought my sister 2 UNSW hoodie sweatshirts since she wanted them. Merry X’mas dearest sister! They had very nice signet rings there. Looks similar to the family’s coat of arms. Anyways, we had family friends from Singapore coming over to stay for a bit. The dad was actually from Civil Defence as well (that was where I was posted to for National Service). He was head of 4th Division’s Public Affairs Branch (P.A.B.). I was sent to 1st Division’s P.A.B. which was alot better since their’s was located in some secluded region of Singapore. Mine was the closest to town. Orchard Road and all the fun places came under our jurisdiction. Anyways, they were here on Friday. They had 3 kids – Grace, Joy and John. They were all still kids but seemed quite old for their age. I remember Grace and Joy from when I was younger. I used to take care of them. It was really fun. The two of them have blossomed from feisty little munchkins to genteel young girls. John on the other hand was quite an overtly energetic, outspoken brat. He was “bugging” me in my room (I tried to escape to my room but he barged in) but I had my geisha smile on to hide my exasperation. And after a while he said I was very gay. I was shocked that this little kid knew what gay meant but it was the PG version of it. According to him, gays are boys that dress like girls. I had my ear stud on that time. It took all my patience to keep a smile on and continue to be somewhat “sociable”. After a while, he said I turned my head like a girl. I was like… what the !@#$… (in my head, I didn’t say it out loud)

“How does a guy turn his head then?” I asked.

He replied “They don’t turn their head that fast.”

I tried to turn my head very slowly now. In my head I envisaged myself as one of those psychotic serial killers.

“Without a smile” he added.

My mask just dissolved and I gave him one of my toned down death stares. That managed to shut him up for a bit. But OMG, I was almost ready to slice open the little imp with a butter knife and sacrifice his entrails to the gods of old.

He went to my sister’s room and announced that I was “very gay” to them. I could hear my sisters cracking up in the other room and Grace and Joy telling John off for being so rude.

On Saturday – 13/12/2008, I went to to church for a short meeting and then to the city to meet up with Klement and Derrick. They were going to get their hair cut at this Korean hair salon. I sat on the sofa facing the shopfront so I could see the people walking past. There were sooooo many hotties out today. I mean, WOW! Met up with Jeff and the 4 of us went to Din Tai Fung at World Square for lunch. I love that place!

Love the Deco!

The lights were swaying in the pseudo wind

More bowls on the wall!

Sauce bowls now :O

  Now to the soup spoons!

Close up of the soup spoons

The wind outside was pretty strong. I felt like I was going to be blown away.

Dragon Scales at World Square

We went around the city after lunch. Derrick wanted to buy some perfume so we went to David Jones and Myers to go have a sniff at the good ones. I recommended quite a few good ones to him. He ended up buying the Hugo Boss #6 Limited Edition and Giorgio Armani Code. All 4 of us were thoroughly doused with a plethora of perfume by the time we were done. I did most of the spraying on people. There are usually exhibitions and buskers at the broad walk outside Myers. I managed to take a picture of some dude painting a pretty nice picture.

It looks really good!

I came home after that. I was pretty tired but I managed to do some camwhoring during lunch and when I got home.

At Din Tai Fung with Jeff

 It was hot but windy today.

 

John was a quite a terror. He traumatised poor Snowie really badly. He used my Dad’s remote control Sherman Tank to chase Snowie around the house. Usually when Dad does it, Snowie barks his furry little head off but this time Snowie was absolutely silent. He just sat in between Mum’s feet with his tail in between his legs. I could tell he was absolutely terrified. After a while the parents told him off. He proceeded to come bug me with the tank instead. I was trying to work on my assignment. Gosh, I’m somewhat happy I won’t be able to have kids.

On Sunday – 14/12/2008, we went to church as usual. Came back home and we had a barbecue. It was really warm outside. Our guests would be leaving today. We had a pretty good lunch and wonderful dessert to wrap up lunch. There was a long chat session while the girls went to take a nap. John took a “pretend” nap. He was back within 5 mins. After much begging and annoying his Dad, John was allowed to take Snowie for a walk around the neighbourhood. My Dad went with John since he was the official “dog walker”. That was the only reason why John’s dad allowed him to go anyways. They left for their hotel at 1730 hrs and at 1845, I had to go for the evening service with Dad and Mum because we were going to pick up Angeline after that. She’s a friend from Uni that had to find a temporary place to put up till February when her new place will be done. If she didn’t come stay with us, she’d be sharing a room with 5 other people – 3 guys and 2 girls. It worked out pretty well also as we’d be going away to the Gold Coast next week and couldn’t find anyone to take care of Snowie.

Snowie was absolutely wasted from John the Terrible. He was under my sister’s duvet. He didn’t bother moving at all. Poor Snowie! Perfect opportunity to photograph Snowie! >=)

Sleepy Snow

 No energy to escape the evil wraps of the duvet!

He didn’t even bother licking me when I tried to kiss him! :( Where’s the loovveeee gone!?!?

Usually when I attempt to kiss him, he’d try to eat/lick my lips. This time he just laid there doing nothing.

Sorry for the rather long post, now we come to the last section…

Monday – 15/12/2008

Had to get up early because Priscilla (my oldest sister) had to go to the Department of Immigration to get her Australian PR status back. It wasn’t possible to get it done on the spot because she didn’t fulfil the requirement which is to be in Australia for 2 years out of the past 5 years. She did get some forms to fill in and the lady that served us was really helpful. She tried her best to provide us with all the information we’d need, etc. So we were done by 0930 hrs. We walked from Railway Square towards the central city. First stop was Starbucks for a nice pick-me-up drink. We continued walking towards QVB and The Galleries Victoria.

Town Hall

The Queen Victoria Building (QVB) and some bald dude

We fluttered from store to store till 1130 hrs when I had an appointment at Stairway to Beauty at Skygardens. The girls went to get their nails done. We were finished by 1245 hrs and went to do more shopping. We headed for David Jones. Pris wanted to go look at the Giorgio Armani makeup so I brought her to the woman’s section. After a while of looking around their range of makeup, there was a really fair lady that took a seat in front of the makeup mirror and was attended to by this makeup artist with a heavy French accent. She looked really familiar and I couldn’t help but stare for a bit. She smiled slightly at me as I tried to recall where I remembered seeing her. It suddenly hit me like a brick wall. That was Miranda Otto! She was the actress that played Eowyn from Lord of the Rings and one of the characters from Cashmere Mafia. OMG OMG OMG!~! Celebrity alert!! Of course I didn’t go hound her but I tried to steal glances at her whenever I could. Oh and there were hot guys there too, sadly, shopping with their girlfriends. Pris ended up buying a really good concealer and lipstick. We met up with Angeline and went for lunch at Sky Phoenix. We had yum cha there. It was pretty cheap for the 4 of us. I burnt the top of my mouth from a searing hot siew mai. It’s not good to “fi di” when you’re eating dim sums straight out of the steamer. It was pretty bad. Almost cried from it. Anyways, we walked around a bit more and then went to SDS. The girls were shopping for swim wear and havainas while I just looked around for hot guys. The guys in there weren’t really my type. We caught the bus home after that. I fell asleep on the bus. Quite tired today. When I got home I had to finish up my essay which is due tomorrow. Total gheyness…

My phone always makes me yellow :(

Hmmm why am I yellow from the phone?

Speechless… Miranda Otto had really clear fair skin!

Anyways, that’s all for today. Sorry for making the post so long. Please remind me to update my blog regularly so I don’t have to torture myself with such a long post :)

Lurbs yew long time,

Jo(n)

The Misery

Hello possums,

Let me try to recap what excitement have been going on since my last post... There was the trip to the beach with the Singaporean people, well, most of them anyways. Georgina, Tabitha, Clyde, Sean, Derrick, Jeffrey and myself went to Long Bay Beach near my place. It was pretty fun. Starting from Clyde and Sean, one by one they were dragged off into the watery depths of the bay. I was fortunately spared because I was holding the camera. Even though it's widely known that I'm a camwhore, I didn't take "self-portrait" pictures. I was taking alot of pictures of everyone frolicking in the sun. I took caution to remain in the shade most of the time since I'm not particularly interested in developing melanoma. Kudos to the Aussie sun! After a major sun-burning session for the guys frolicking in the water, we adjorned to my place to finish up the food. It was good to have everyone over but they left a bit of a mess. Dear Snowie was over-excited by the sudden onslaught of attention and did not hesitate to wee on Sean. I was pleased that Snowie had developed excellent intuition on which person to wee on. Despite the gratuitous golden shower Sean receive, he was undeterred and continued to exude annoyance to everyone's displeasure. Well, they left before 1700 and I cleaned up after them. That's it for that day.

I had a barbecue at my place the other day, on Saturday I think it was. It was good. Dad invited his ex-students over and I invited my Uni mates which comprised mainly of the Singapore group anyways. Georgina, Angelina, Natalie, Priscilla, Derrick 1, Derrick 2, Jeffrey, Roy, Sean, Syafiq and Wayne came. We had a pretty good time. After dinner, most of them played cards while Georgina was getting abused in Soul Calibur 3 on my PS2. She makes the most hilarious expressions and noises when she plays. Her body bends to the side as she frantically mashes on the buttons, occasionally squealing "you idiot!" and "die die die!". Much to our entertainment, we all took turns wiping the floor with her. The climax of the battle royale was when she used Sopithia against Seung-Mina controlled by Natalie (this was Natalie's first go) and was owned by Natalie. We were all cheering for Natalie to the rhythm of her horizontal attack blitz from which Georgina was disastrously caught in. It was spectacular! They soon left after that eventful battle. If only we had a video of Georgina playing, we could relive the moment in our dullest moments.

On Sunday after church, I went to Kingsford to meet at Sean's place as he was flying off to Singapore for a holiday as well as to celebrate Jeffrey's birthday. Even though I had missed out of the main celebrations which was Georgina's initial brithday prank backfiring on herself, there was video footage kindly provided by Angeline. Georgina had planned to have a pail of water projected from the 3rd floor balcony onto the unsuspecting blindfolded Jeffrey who was waiting below. It was by chance, or divine intervention or retribution if you will, that Georgina was thoroughly soaked whilst Jeffrey, still blindfolded and none the wiser, escaped unscathed. After a few rounds of Soul Calibur 4 on Sean's PS3 and HD wide screen plasma TV, all of us walked down to the main road with his Prada bag almost splitting at the seams due to an overload of Gucci shoes and his ginormous clam shell Samsonite suitcase with contents that costs a king's ransom. We were at the hotel en route to the main road when Sean realised that he had left his iphone at home and rushed back to get it. Meanwhile, his suitcase was about to precariously roll off the sidewalk and into oncoming traffic if not for my slut-trained lightning reflexes. A taxi had pulled into the hotel, dropping off some elderly ladies and we managed to persuade the driver to wait while Sean swaggered down the street. It took 4 strong army-trained guys to load his suitcase into the boot. We all wondered how he'd be able to extricate his coffin of a suitcase from the boot one he reached the airport. Anyways, it was a bitter-sweet farewell since he was my only bitching buddy. We proceeded for Jeffrey's birthday lunch at a pretty good Indonesian restaurant. Despite it's dodgy architecture, it served pretty good food. We were all pretty pooped out after today's escapades and dispersed to return home. That's it for Sunday.

I was stuck at home on Monday. It was rather miserable. The most entertaining event of the day was the emoticon war with Kevin. I don't remember how it started but it just went on and on for quite a while. Couldn't really decide who won since there weren't any rules of engagement established. Ah, dear Kevin, what would I ever do on those boredom ranked days without you.

Before Haircut

After Haircut

After Haircut

With Bee Bee

Snowie wants to join in the fun

I went for a haircut on Tuesday. It's pretty much the same style. I was wearing my green contacts again today. I met up with Gary who was an artographer (freelance photographer) for coffee after my haircut. He's a nice guy, showed me around his studio and his cats. He has taken some really nice pictures of Sydney and stuff. He taught me a bit about photography as well. We walked by the Greater Union movie theatres on the way to his studio. The streets were prepared to be cordoned off and the workers were busy setting up tents and planning to unroll the prestigious red carpets for tonight's opening of "Australia" starring the ever beautiful Nicole Kidman and the beef cake Hugh Jackman and directed by Baz Luhrmann. It looks spectacular and fully embodies the Australian spirit. I left for home at around 1430 hrs. The bus ride home was tiring and stuffy. I think the air-conditioning wasn't working at the back end of the bus. There was a particularly hunky guy on the bus that was sitting behind me. I managed to take a peek at him when I abruptly awoke from my nap when I had unglamourously rammed my head into the window when the bus jerked. I hoped I didn't snore because that would have been appalling. When I got back home, Bee Bee was all dressed up for her formal tonight. She had caked on the eyeshadow till she looked like a panda that got punched in the eyes. I helped her remove some of it till it was a proper pair of "smokey eyes". We ended up camwhoring for a bit. Snowie came in to join the fun. That's basically all the interesting bits that have happened so far.

That's all for now. Toodles!

Lurbs yew long time,
Jo