the entry eyed after

bah, so carrying on about my pilgrimage to the eye-jabbing doctor...

my name was finally called by the nurse. i walked into the room with trepidation, and hands clutched tightly behind me. i sat on the chair and waited with bated breath whilst doctor sim analyzed my right eye. he was using this gargantuan, complex contraption that was made up of varying degrees of lenses, magnifying glasses, and a nozzle that shot jets of air into the eyeball. it was all too familiar.

no injections please, i prayed to myself. i couldn't possibly deal with the pain of another needle puncturing my eyeball. ha! the irony of it all.

the verdict: doctor sim made my day when he diagnosed the eye problem to be a case of conjunctivitis. so it was just the regular pink eye. a little eye drop would have sufficed. and of course, i had to be off contact lenses during the interim. i see the light!

me in post-consultation, ocular-preserving mode: geeky specky.

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the entry about seeing eye to eye

well, i must have been reaching for the stars when i prayed for a better day tomorrow, because i woke up with not just one, but two bouts of malaise. the first was a sprain at the back of the neck. i gather this must have been from the built-up tension with the intensive gym visits i have of late, which was almost once a week. i tried a couple of neck-twists and thumb massages to the sore area, only to come out of it feeling worse. reminder: do not attempt to orchestrate chiropractic mastery on oneself without prior knowledge.

the other illness that welcomed me with open arms was this burning, stabbing sensation in my right eye, to which i immediately panicked. i feared that it was a case of deja vu. just earlier this year, i was at the eye doctor's for a tumor-like infection in the corner of my right eye. okay, so it wasn't the size of a tumor but more of an ulcer. still, it didn't feel good at all. every blink of the eye sent a white-hot, throbbing signal to my brain, which only suppressed the pain a little by secreting tears to lubricate the lacerated area.

according to doctor sim, my eye doctor, the reason for the ulcer-like growth was improper eye care. i had, upon my negligence, worn contact lenses throughout the day and night, and night and day. this went on for as long as three to four days at times, without removing my contacts. the accumulated protein in the cornea caused the growth of the ugly boil. and because my problem was more severe due to delayed consultation, the infection could not be treated with simple anti-bacterial eye-drops.

the treatment was to introduce a jab of antibiotics (yes, you heard it right, jab) into the eyeball. whilst this sounded terrifying enough, doctor sim reassured me it would not be as painful as he would administer a jab of anesthetics into the eyeball prior to that. right, that made me feel so much better. i was pretty sure i was about to bolt out of the room any second. it was only when he warned me that i might become blind from the infection had i come any later, that i calmed my nerves, rationalized, and decided to go through with the literally stinging procedure.

so you could imagine my fear when i was at the eye doctor's again today. more needles? i hope not. still waiting for my name to be called...

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the entry about an a.a. meeting

on a particular saturday night, a group of serial alcoholics congregated and conceded to their addictions. the result was a slosh-fest of inebriated drunkies who were all too eager to whore it for the camera. introducing the colorful characters in their sober plights:

jem, the life of the party

daryl, who just can't get enough

ethereal beauty ray

duncan a.k.a. siu mong an

ruz, the mama den

glum pierre

venes

benjamin, who refuses to reveal his true facade

hi, my name is desmond and i am an alcoholic.

with alcohol as our quick fix, we managed to look human all over again. i'll just leave the narration to the pictures this time. on a sidenote, i absolutely abhor my new haircut.

the rose amongst the thorns, venes puts her best face forward.

two in tow: the winning couple look goes to *drum roll*: siu mong an & venes!

varying degrees of sobriety...

as part of the alcoholics anonymous programme in a bid to encourage less drunks, we willingly sacrificed our bodies of temples to guzzle down every single drop. as a result, the alcohol kicked in sooner than you'd say "cheers", and intoxication took place in the form of crazy. big time crazy.

smashed from the alcohol, squashed by the camera

hot chimps gone wild

_______________ (fill in the blanks)

pierre and venes takes the cake for being the most animated couple of the evening.

the gang engaging in a little polygamic kissing.

i was glad i got my ass out. i enjoyed myself totally. what did you do over the weekend?

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the entry of anonymity

the good thing about being anonymous online is that you can be the biggest loser and flame at any possible thing or anyone that irks you. the bad thing, though, is when it comes around the other end and you bear the brunt of it.

i have been receiving anonymous comments from the same poster (i gather so, because the suspected comments have a distinct literal clumsiness about them) that can only be classified under the following categories. 1. derisive 2. diabolically derisive. while i have tried to display insouciance by not posting it, i must admit its kinda getting on my nerves.

so mr. incognito, whoever you ever, please have the balls to identify yourself. let me have an inkling of your identity, so i can swoop down and whoop your ass real hard. thank you.

p.s. i shall leave the moderation on still, but i will let all comment posts slide.

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the entry about battling the unknown

well, i am at this juncture of my life which could either throw me entirely off track or turn my life around one-eighty. it is, generically speaking, a make-it-or-break-it situation that i currently have to wrestle with. so here i am, three years into working as a financial planner/consultant (i might use them interchangeably, but they still mean the same: money guzzlers) and i am facing the inevitable situation which most of my cohorts are currently experiencing: business is dwindling and the moolah just isn't as appetizing compared to previous years.

since young, i've always had a strive-for-the-best, work-your-way-up attitude and that rang true still the day i started my first job as a flight attendant a couple years back. i wouldn't explicitly state the chronological time line as it might thus reveal my age, which i can't, for religious reasons. i had derived that living as a single male for the rest of my life meant that it would be all the more difficult and thus i would settle for nothing less but the best. how cliched this must sound but that was what was going on at the back of my head.

being a financial consultant has been a great deal for me. i have managed to mark my first stamp of success by winning the million dollar round table award last year (an accolade for top 6% financial planners throughout the industry in the world). i have made more money in a year than i had throughout the span of my career serving coffee or tea 30,000 ft up in the air. i have met the greatest folks, who were genuinely supportive clients but by the same token, i have also come across the biggest arses, who totally do not give a shite about anyone else but themselves.

i have, therefore, always imagined myself to stay on in this line (heck, i am slated to get promoted to a managerial position by this october). and i never wanted my clients to misconstrue my business dealings with them as fly-by-night, because that simply would not be the case. of late however, an array of misfortunes has prompted a paradigm shift in my thinking, and possibly my direction in life too. i do not want to use this as an opportunity to springboard my new potential business venture, so i wouldn't elaborate more on it.

so, riddle me this: do i carry on doing something that i know i am good at, although business wasn't like the heydays, or do i venture into unchartered territories, starting all over and trying to eke a mark for myself once again. i am seriously in a dilemma.

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the entry about diving into the unexpected

 every once in a while, when the waters are less murky and the crows are not warbling in the sky, i would pack my diving gear and head out to the seas, whilst belting out my favorite tunes (did i forget to mention i have lilting vocals? now that would be telling.)

it is during this time that i feel dissociated from the rest of the world, a separate entity submerged in the blissful serenity of the seas. of course, during the aftermath, i would be quite submerged in quite another chafing matter altogether. the sand would creep its way into whatever humanly crevices possible. there would be sand in between the toes, sand in the ears, sand in private recesses where abrasion hurts the most.

so it was on this very day that i went to the southern most area of the island, supinating on my flippers as i made way for the speedboat, cautious to ensure that the sand would not slink into my diving garb et al. as the boat revved out into the open waters, i could feel the wind tousling my hair and caressing my body, which was quite an unknotting experience. when the boat came to a slowdown, i flipped off the back of it and dived into a sea of blue.

the panorama underwater was a splendid view. get a load of the sea anemones and jellyfish swimming amongst me!

have a go finding nemo amongst the sea anemones.

sea anemones thrashing gently in the water.

this condom-like invertebrate that is 0.03mm thick is otherwise known as the jellyfish

other species of jellyfish

isn't it amazing? they change colors like chameleons.

editors note: due to the extreme pressures encountered when in sentosa's underwater world, visitors (like i myself) may experience hallucination and thus conjure a web of falsified truths. i imagined myself in the deep seas when i was actually looking at sea animals from behind aquarium tanks. that much could be said too of my lilting vocals.

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the entry of silver medals

so after 48 grueling years of waiting, singapore finally did it.

we managed to upset the netherlanders, the south koreans, and landed in the final two spot in the olympics table tennis games against mighty china. akin to david versus the goliath, only in this case, david (a.k.a singapore) gets his rump kicked instead. indeed, what a recipe for a thrash-ismo catastrophe.

the chinese (china) opponents proved to be a pernicious threat for our chinese (singapore) counterparts. it was actually quite painful for me to see our representatives, li jiawei, feng tianwei and wang yue gu, getting steamrolled by their opponents. as much as they tried to distract their competitors, li jiawei with her sulky pouts and feng tian wei with her chicken dance after dropping a game time and again, it did little other than entertain the google-box viewers.

it was definitely a tall order to defeat china in their home ground, on top of the fact that these china girls were the top seeded players. throughout the match, the china contenders were an expression-less trio, as though they had suffered a stroke. perhaps it was this steadfastness and aggressiveness that made li jiawei and gang lose their nerves. nevertheless, the singapore flag remains unfurled, proving to the world that we're resolute in the face of adversaries, and that we're good at talent-scouting too.

but foreign talents aside, i am just glad that we won a silver medal.

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the entry about a spiritual movie outing

how do you ascertain stardom? does it involve appearing in a cheesy advertisement with bad special effects and rehashed kung-fu choreography about one's unpremeditated voyage to the beijing olympics? or does it involve appearing in yet another tacky advertisement about being in a restaurant drinking soup so salty that it just makes you want to kick some waiter's ass? what do these two have in common? for starters, both commercials are commissioned by visa. secondly, the protagonists in these commercials, albeit being superstars, speak very, very bad enguish.

anyways, i digress. let's get back on track. i should be in a celebratory mood. after all, it is not oft that i get to see a friend of mine cast as the main vehicle of a movie. a local movie, that is. titled the spirit compendium, the story is loosely based on the seventh lunar month and the haunting events that occur during this ghostly period. the movie also tries to impart the knowledge of i-ching, a study of divinations, to the viewers. it also teaches the lesson of what happens if you do not lift the toilet seat up after using it.

save for the latter, the movie is an abstract blur, in my opinion. the saving grace was benjamin ng, said friend and colleague and now actor. although he had difficulty grasping the inflections of the mandarin language, his acting was quite believable and it was great fun watching a friend on the big screen. because the film had a moderate budget, the production team had to rely on more draconian methods and the special effects reminded us what computer generated imagery (cgi) was like in the early 90s. however, if you were to peel away the superficial layers of cgi that current blockbuster films always rely on, at the heart of it all, you will find that this is a film that is humble and sincere.

if you're looking for something refreshing and unique, look no further. the spirit compendium is screening at sinema. check out their website for details.

in other related news, here's the whole gin gang attending the premier of the movie at the cathay.

me with the power of three

ben, the star of the night looking all glamour puss-like.

the coupling effect (clockwise from top left): ben & val, john & ruz, pierre & daryl, ben & nat, ruz & duncan.

after all that is said and done, a little inebriation would be in order for the festive moment. the guys and i adjourned to the next best place to be: winebar @ zouk.

shots of appletini to soak in our stardom regalia.

more chimps for the zoo to feed

ever camera ready, duncan (siu mong an) demonstrates this trait skillfully.

ex-acjc mates having a little reunion.

congratulations, ben! hope you had a blast that night! >.<

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