damn tummy was acting up… i sat on the toilet bowl for like half a day, got exhausted from the effort of sitting and promptly slept for…. 8 hours.

don’t i sleep long!

but i didn’t set any alarm anyways. no, i still haven’t receive any calls from Hog’s, otherwise i would have been up earlier. one day down, another one to go to call back or something, in case that hot manager forgot to show him my resume and stuff. but you know what? working isn’t like being a consumer, if they made any mistakes, they won’t say “ooo ok, i will make space for you to work” but i love hog’s so much… *prays for good news* i did mention it’s a MIGHT hire me issue. if they don’t, oh wells, i will call back the other places and send out more resumes (ink guna be out soon -.-”)

blog trolling again the moment i woke, just so i can have the slow joy of waking up to this world. next time i am putting books on my pillows, works just as well.

see that above? that guy chose to wear that stuff to anime conventions. oh yes, hairy legs, arse and a HUGE bulge (not sure what it’s made of). but that really isn’t the topic, rather his choices that he makes.

when we all choose to do things in our lives, it not only impacts us, even the stuff we eat, the shit we take. we take a shit, people gotta clean the sewage. we gotta pay the bills for the water that flushes, the people at the water company gotta handle us, the incoming water and all the money they are given by us.

when we eat, the animals die, plants die, farmers earn from these, factories earn from these. there’s always something in the chain that is affected by the very minute thing that we do each and everyday.

on this blog, and every other blog, when we say something, be it nonsensical, controversial, personal or informative, it is chosen by us, by whatever we have learnt and from how we are nurtured. it shows our upbringing, our education and represents everything about us and all that involves us. our country, our education, our family, our friends and those who opt to be with us (acquaintances and random strangers alike). the same goes for forum discussions.

There were a few things i was reading through for the past few months but chose not to talk about them because 1) they are controversial and 2) i just plain don’t like the content of what i was reading.

it started with thesecondholocaust.blogspot.com (it’s non-existent right now, so don’t bother). at that time, i was just plain disgusted by the very words the author was just churning out of his small twitchy mind. it’s true, racism dies hard, racism will always be a part of our lives no matter how much we try to eradicate it, but his obvious disgust and… hatred for malays/muslims, were out-and-out retarded and unfounded. i can’t remember the details now, but it was along the lines of trying to kill them (duh) and that there’s a huge conspiracy to kill them that they just don’t know about, and how they are so stupid they will just die out from the stupidity anyways.

let me tell you something. norjit, my dearest ah ma, is way intelligent. defiant perhaps, spoilt, perhaps, loud and unabashed in her actions, well maybe. but circumstances in her life does not yield and allow her to study as much as she may wants, or should be. frivolous actions on her own also contribute to that circumstances. she just doesn’t like authority or having to study, but make no mistake. that is one hell of a bitch to contend with.

i can list out more examples, but why should i? people with such retarded racist comments should not be entertained, and thus all was forgotten about him, sans he distaste i had with his website.

few months down the road, from what i understood, he and someone else was arrested (my info maybe wrong. news articles referred to another blog host altogether anyways). here’s a version of the news from ucla, thanks to kevin.

the initial charges were based on their contribution in a forum, in response to a woman’s letter to the straits times, a local newspaper, whereby she address a concern that’s fairly legit. According to the muslim law that most muslims follow in Singapore, muslims are not allowed to touch wet dogs and something else (can’t remember what). as far as i can remember, ah ma herself told me that dogs are “dirty” (macham like pigs) and thus deigned “haram”. the 2 guys went on to abuse the religion and their God alike, making bad jokes out of it and what gives you.

i believe the charges might be extended to their blogs (??? too much reference to their blogs, i am getting confused). and they are charged under the seditious Act which states:

Interpretation.
2. In this Act —

“publication” includes all written or printed matter and everything whether of a nature similar to written or printed matter or not containing any visible representation or by its form, shape or in any other manner capable of suggesting words or ideas, and every copy and reproduction or substantial reproduction of any publication;

“seditious” when applied to or used in respect of any act, speech, words, publication or other thing qualifies such act, speech, words, publication or other thing as one having a seditious tendency;

“words” includes any phrase, sentence or other consecutive number or combination of words, oral or written.

Seditious tendency.
3. —(1) A seditious tendency is a tendency —
(d) to raise discontent or disaffection amongst the citizens of Singapore or the residents in Singapore;

(e) to promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races or classes of the population of Singapore.

(i am showing only those that i feel are related to the case)

(2) Notwithstanding subsection (1), any act, speech, words, publication or other thing shall not be deemed to be seditious by reason only that it has a tendency —

(d) to point out, with a view to their removal, any matters producing or having a tendency to produce feelings of ill-will and enmity between different races or classes of the population of Singapore,

(3) For the purpose of proving the commission of any offence under this Act, the intention of the person charged at the time he did or attempted to do or made any preparation to do or conspired with any person to do any act or uttered any seditious words or printed, published, sold, offered for sale, distributed, reproduced or imported any publication or did any other thing shall be deemed to be irrelevant if in fact such act had, or would, if done, have had, or such words, publication or thing had a seditious tendency.

based on that law, last invoke about 10 years back (according to various news sources) the 2 guys are dead doomed. i am not saying i support them, nor that i support the law either actually.

for the years and years and years that we have all known each other, my friends and i have at some point been “racially rude” to each other because we are so familiar. even when that later transgress to blogs and forums (aka postal and everything else that we know of), we did not relent at times. between learning to ignore the rude morons and knowing that it’s just jokes between friends, it is also a time when we actually learn to be more tolerant of ignorant people, racists and to appreciate our… minority.

i do get pissed when i get yelled at, i must admit, but tolerating them is still ok to me as well, because they are just expressing themselves and their ignorance. it makes them a standing joke to the public, even though they may take themselves seriously.

what makes these 2 guys so different from the everyday “malays are stupid” blog posts that we might chance upon was that someone reported them. it has put many singaporean bloggers on alert of what they write (as if they didn’t have enough from the past already). that and the fact that they are 25 and 28 years old, not silly 15 years olds making a raving statement about how the world is always against them. how many people has actually spoken racists comments from singapore? plenty. rarely does one get reported.

this was their choice though, to make stupid comments against another race. just like our choice to put our personal thoughts and life onto the world wide web. the scary thing is, our thoughts are monitored. so do we really have a choice anymore on the content of what goes on our blogs?

let’s go back to this “competition” that Singtel had in singapore. Campus moblogging. while it’s a great idea, encourages competition between schools that is more student interactive (i hope) than teachers showing off their skills, or lack thereof.

while i had understand if it was a project on something specific, like science or something, when it came to blogs, i am a little dubious. it mentioned that one of the judging criteria was the contents, the depth and clarity of it.

for the past month or so, life turned upside down. i was barely making sense to myself, much less being able to output it. what if something happened in the students’ lives? how much depth and clarity can you input, how do you judge something so personal? there’s only so much words can do, pictures can do. at the end of it, what one puts up on one’s blog, is fairly much a matter of choice.

what is your blog to you? a place of personal ranting? a place of information? everything you can think of?

but everything has it consequences. what one says can cause hurt, pain, happiness, emotional stuff to the readers. this is the internet after all. unless you password your shit, someone’s bound to chance upon it, read it up and get all pissy.

on the very forums that they commented disfavourably against the muslims, there was this warning “how not to be sued”. basically, it raises some other issues the poor forums had. companies had threatened to sue them for allowing readers to raise unhappy opinions of their shops. they were advised not to mention shop names, not even locations.

let’s be honest. when we chose to patronise a shop, we might also get unhappy/ happy, as much as we might get unhappy against a certain person, a certain race, a certain community or group of people. there are many restaurant reviews all across the net, with regards to singapore restaurants or otherwise. shopping places and what gives you. other than the occassional people who says “this shop sucks!” without giving a proper reason, there have been as much happy reviews as there are unhappy ones.

are consumers no longer entitled to the right to be unhappy, and thus to voice their unhappiness? are we not allowed to recommend to friends and foreign visitors alike what places are there in, for example, singapore to enjoy are what to totally avoid? after all, singapore IS tourist spot, depends on services for economic purposes.

i know, racism is on a totally different plane. but if what transpired equates to resurrecting almost dead laws (i mean, it WAS last used 10 years ago!) and internet is longer safe to voice our opinions, restaurants and people alike, we might be taking a step back in techonology.

everyone hopped on the blogging bandwagon not only to gain fame, but also there was this assuarance of freedom of speech. are we going to be curtailed now? is every small racist joke that we intend for our friends going to be used against us? our even just a minor swipe at the other race, the less priviledged, even the handicaps..

if that is the case, there is one relief. people like peka on the l2blah forums will get jailed and fine for making prejudiced slurs against the deaf people. we will have less retards telling chinese to fuck off back to china ingames, because they will all be serving time in jail.

we might actually have civilised conversations in games, on various forums and in newspapers.

as likely as racism is to desist, that is still a fantasy. there will always be some retards somewhere making stupid choices. it’s the more infamous ones who make it to the already packed jails or pay the highly priced fines (i am a student, 10k is a HELL LOT).

as far as freedom of speech goes, i hope it stays regardless of the retards all over the net. i mean, just look at man-faye! between laughing at his hairy ass, and learning to take things as lightly as they should be, and trying to disgust tony into sleeping (the only way to get any guy to sleep), i am glad we have SOME FORM of freedom of speech around.

i mean, if there’s no more man-faye, no more racism, no more unhappy consumers, how do we learn and change?

we all learn from people’s statements. we learn NOT to be like those we don’t like, and be more like those socially acceptable ones (yes we are made up of various communities, not an individual no matter how you look at it.). we learn about ourselves in those processes, we learn what people do not like about us, about the group of us and what we can and cannot do about it. Can we teach people to appreciate other races? yer. can we force them to believe in those teachings? no. it is their choice.

we learn to see these choices that we have made though and change who we are, for the better and for the worse. we learn what people think of us, and that is good enough.

we learn to laugh at man-faye or be like him, having the balls to turn up like that at anime conventions, because life is short, take it happily.

it is your choice though. not mine.