Better, finally!

My leg's OK now, and I hope everything else will follow in good time. Just a quick word though, the first draft's >90% done, but there're quite a few things I don't like... so it's back to the drawing board I guess. Maybe it is better I go back to work so I can have my epiphanies--it's kinda hard to figure anything out when you're bored as heck, and so tired of being bored your brain freezes up and everything that travels from your mind to your fingertips gets garbled and turns crappy along the way.

Meantime... happy Chinese New Year, and may we all have a prosperous Year of the Dog!

Ouch! :(

Why does all this rubbish happen to me? First I go through all this complication making a subsidy claim from the Army after NUH gave us the wrong information, and now my left leg seizes up in an awful, awful muscular pain.
What the heck's going on??? I mean, the hospital problem was bad enough, but when you can't get any sleep thanks to the muscles in your leg screaming away in the worst leg pain you've ever felt that same night... oh no.

But I know one thing: God watches over me, and He has allowed this to happen. As He allows all our sufferings. Why? Humanly speaking, despite everything that has been said and written, I wish we knew more about pain than He has let on. But then it's His decision, not ours. This world and these bodies are not permanent homes. The apostle Paul compared them to tents you rough out a few nights in before going to your real home--a house made for you to truly live out your life in.

That's the best I can type with my leg muscles hurting, grinding like crazy. I've already taken two Panadols with muscle relaxant, so pain, pain PLEASE go away!!!

Horribly down

It turns out my claim for my scoliosis op ran into some complications... wrong info from NUH and a three-months-later payout from MediShield notwithstanding. Why do all these rebate schemes have to be so darn complicated???

And partially because of that I’m now awfully down in the dumps, as if someone’s pulled the rug from under my feet. I’m now more dark and bitter than ever--the last time I felt this way was before my A-levels. I won’t dress this post up because I do not know how. I sing hymns and go to church in vain, and I can’t even hide it any more. Where is the joy I got when I first besought the Lord and His grace?

Heavenly Father, I am weak but You are strong. Help me regain my footing; help me hold on to You no matter what.

Patriotism and the Hornet's Nest

NS defaulter Mervyn Tan has a lot to answer for. Enough about the poor man, though. But it does seem to me there's way too much pussyfooting around the issue. Is dodging our nation's NS requirement wrong or not? Now there's talk about a bridge between 'doers' and 'dodgers'.
This isn't the US, where a member of the latter group can become President.
C'mon. Better minds than mine have already explored the issue, but let me just say, well, if patriots aren't born they're made, so why ever not?
Though it definitely isn't wise to declare yourself the one who'll 'fight against Singapore if need be' before serving your NS... heh.

On a side note, it's great that child sex tourism will, in all likelihood, soon be punishable in Singapore. Sex is a gift from God. So are children, to be used and nurtured in the way He intended.
Plus, even if you don't believe in a God who sees it that way, you can plainly tell it's disgusting. But where does our sense of justice at this travesty come from?
Disgusting. If we don't punish our own wayward (and over-libidinous) citizens, who will? As a Government they're responsible for the people they serve; therefore whether these sex fiends are punished is up to us, not anybody else.

Book review: Prepare to be horrified

As I write this I've just read Leo Stein's Hitler Came For Niemoeller... and my first reaction was, maybe I should go back to my computer and play Call of Duty or Medal of Honour Allied Assault again. It seems Norman Vincent Peale got it right when he said, "If a man can read this and not be stirred to his depths, it is because he has no depths." I read through the entire account in one sitting. I couldn't put it down.
The book recounts the author's own imprisonment for implied criticism of Nazi ideals (a.k.a. high treason) and his meetings with the Evangelical pastor Martin Niemoeller, a former U-boat commander and now minister, with the courage to expose the Nazi monster for what is was. The torture he and Stein suffered is so horrifying nothing I say here will do it justice. Stein details Niemoeller's courageous reactions to the horrors around him, his comfort to fellow prisoners, and a strength rooted in the Faith no human effort can ever take away.
The writing wasn't my favourite style, but it's so good it doesn't detract from the bare honesty of the book in the slightest. Emotional reactions are kept to a minimum, allowing events to, well, speak for themselves. I'd always looked on that period as a black day for the Jewish people, one of torment and suffering which the world looked on all too late to prevent. And Christians were sidelined and ultimately saved from Nazi plans to destroy them. (And that was way before Pearl Harbour!)

Reading it as a Christian I was shocked. Heck, I had three impressions:

1. Had I been there the same cruelty and torture would've been shown to me. That's reason enough to stand beside our brothers and sisters who are persecuted for their faith in Jesus Christ.

2. I am not worthy to be counted as having taken up my cross and followed the Lord.

3. God can accomplish more than we ever dreamed in the midst of suffering. "I am the Holy One, and I am among you." (Hosea 11:9) Anyone who sees suffering as proof of God's inexistence has these testimonies to account for.

Go on, read it. Be stirred. Be shaken. For God may yet use one who does mightily.

USB hubs and The Sims

I don't know about you, but my last purchase of a computer gadget left me with a bad taste in my mouth. And it seems I got a second helping.
Some weeks ago my brother dropped by the Challenger store at Tampines, the place I got nearly all the games I own. Now I think those guys do a fine job selling you stuff, so I'm not criticising the store here.

What I am criticising is the damned, damned terok $6.90 USB hubs they sell. You know, those devices that turn one USB port into four? OK. I needed a USB hub. They had a USB hub. So he bought it for me, I plugged the thing in, and it worked. I could connect my flash drive, printer and mouse simultaneously. Hurrah!

For two days, anyway. Then that awful message: "One of the USB devices attached to this computer has malfunctioned, and Windows does not recognise it."

I thought, OK, maybe it's a dud that slipped through quality assurance. I had it changed.

The replacement worked... for seven times as long. Two whole weeks. OK, one and a half if you go by the numbers.

Sheesh! Who's making all this rubbish anyway? Something called Pixel Technologies, I think--but now I bear them no ill will for making products that go bust after a short, short while and worse, letting not one but two (who knows how many?) devices that "malfunction" when attached to computers go through their QA process . I'm just going to avoid USB hubs like the plague, especially so since the old computer I needed it for's 4 years old and already anticipating the scrapheap.
Still, it was a valuable lesson: if it's too cheap to be good, it probably is. Too cheap I mean, not good.

I love The Sims 2. Though I haven't played it for three months. The game gets montonous after a while, I guess; no matter how many bells and whistles the folks at Maxis throw in. After four generations of prosperity, I threw something in too.

The towel.

It sims every Seem (oops, seems every Sim) becomes the same after you've run a family into wealth enough; it's the same humdrum ritual of taking care of babies, then toddlers, then children and watching them grow up. The first time I raised a baby into an adult I was darned proud of it (That Sim, Lorraine Clements, is still going strong), but as the generations went by... ho-hum. Same drill again. Even the Career Chance Cards, those risks you take with your Sims' jobs, get old after a while. And when a wrong choice drains everything... sigh. Reload. Reload.

But that said I love The Sims 2. Its third expansion's in development, and guess who'll be down at the store--anything to break the monotony, if just for a few more months.

And I've just read more Anthony Horowitz. I don't think he needs my small-small plug, so I'll just say this: he's the crown prince, if not the king, of British children's literature.

As for my own work, the first draft's nearly done. If I can just ram the last few ideas through my thick skull...

Stagnation

It's pretty odd how the initial steam wears off and blogs end up not being updated for weeks and weeks. I think I how why--it's a lot more icky to go to a website provided by strangers and type public stuff than open a diary and write, watching ink (or graphite if you don't want untidy mistakes) flow onto paper.

Speaking of stagnation, the mosquitoes are out in full force (come to think of it, when you see even one, when have they not?). I lost count of the bites I got somewhere in the 10's... and the things are just SO DAMNED FAST wherever you look they won't be there, and your hand slams down into emptiness 9 times out of ten.
The last is you hit your funny bone instead. Oooohh...

Hyped writers and I

I hope no one's offended here, but I have to get this off my chest. I've seen it in the Life! paper at Christmas, and the occasional Commonwealth Essay Competition winner's work. But something about it's bothered me, so I buay tahan anymore.
True, the concepts are there. True, the stories are creative and feature stuff I'd never have thought of in a million years. These guys can turn even a random stroll in the park into a true battle of the soul against what it knows to be wrong. Don't misread my meaning. These fine young writers deserve all the credit they get, and hopefully have had publishers sit up and take notice of their talent.
Except... except when I read their work I can't understand what the heck's going on. They have their characters wrestling with a storm of emotions and a chain of events that is somehow related. I mean no disrespect, but can't these stories at least make it clear for the reader what's happening and why it should happen? I'm not sure who to blame. Maybe it's the creative writing teachers who insist on first and second drafts for everything, and demand that emotions are dressed up in language that just screams at us how tragic, how horrible, how dark the feelings felt. And their insistence that only the classical writers' style will do, the kind few modern readers have the patience for. I'm not for one moment suggesting Colfer over Dickens if that's what you prefer, but today read, not emulate, the latter.

I'll give an example. Every Christmas the writers at Life! do a story special about something to do with the Yuletide season. 2005's featured a guy in a pub talking to an elf and going back to his family, though the language the work was dressed up in is a little over-the-top. The mishmash of emotion, events in his life, and final decision are a hard slog, and I skipped to the end which (surprise!) didn't make much sense since I hadn't read the whole thing. Then I backtracked, hoping to make it... but got lost in the tangle of words once again.

Most writers labour in secret. My own work's about three quarters through the first draft, and features a powerful, genetically-engineered psychic... though one may not necessarily lead to the other. And yes, it's inspired by a host of nonfiction works I read a while back, including Lee M. Silver's Remaking Eden. Maybe I'll list the Choa Chu Kang Regional Library in my list of acknowledgements? :)

Meanwhile, we've been having some downright horrible weather. I so hate this rainy spell, so here's hoping it blows over soon to someplace that needs it more...

MS Office, online messaging and (more) Anthony Horowitz

I must admit, Microsoft Word may be ubiquitous, (almost) intuitive to use, and much the only word processor I use. But Mr. Gates, since I've two home desktop computers and a notebook, is it really necessary to pay for three copies of Office? Sure, we don't want Evil Men in ragged clothes, eye-patches and parrots on their shoulders getting away with distributing the stuff without paying, but forcing customers to 'activate' a product on installation, well, just smacks of "Dear Mr. Customer Sir, since you've got these fancy-schmanzy CD-RW drives, you have the capacity to take part in criminal activity, so let's not get any ideas, shall we?"
(To which I'm tempted to reply, "Dear Mr. Man In The Street, you've a biological endowment that gives you the capacity to be involved in a sexual crime. Please report to the police station at once.")
And what's that about the Works word processor that never seems to open my Word documents properly? Are Works users really so hard-up they need a smaller processor all to themselves? But then again, since all my games run only on Windows it doesn't look like I've a choice besides paying the Almighties off time after time.

Call me old-fashioned, but I'm not sure this online messaging thing works for me. I care deeply about the Personal Touch, that sort of thing you feel when sharing a coffee with someone across the table and talking about anything from Christ to cookies. Of course, it's great for just that--instant messaging. Like, "Meet me at McDonald's Tampines at 3", "Call me tonight", etc. The day it totally replaces face to face communication will be a sad day indeed, even with all these bells and whistles like animated smileys (or is it smilies???) that look like, well, smiling faces trying to look sad or embarrassed or whatever while staying optimistically cheerful.

No wonder I can never think of stuff to say online.

But it's nice to see the printed page still alive and well. My cousin gave me a copy of Anthony Horowitz's The Falcon's Malteser, and it's a fun romp through the casefiles of the world's most inept private detective. I won't spoil the plot by revealing it here, but it's good--one of the few books combining serious run-for-your-life action with first-rate jokes. Maybe someday I'll tackle the rest of the series, along with his new, much darker Power of Five novels. It's always good to learn from the masters.

More soon...

Don't you just hate it when you've stomach trouble? And more than ever I'm thankful for the constant supply of toilet paper we enjoy... I'd say more, but that, I guess, is the difference between a blog that everyone's supposed to read and a diary no one's supposed to even peek at. So no suggestion these are online diaries--online chronicles, maybe.

Anyway, just discovered a great sci-fi (I prefer SF, actually, science fiction lah, not Special Forces) writing website at www.scifi-az.com that's got some of the best articles on SF and writing in general I've seen yet.
Now if I can just figure out how my spaceships exceed the speed of light...

What did you (not) give this year?

Is it just me, or is it really every New Year's or Christmas season when you hear columnists for a certain paper that shall remain unnamed describing how they met with people so poor they can't feed their n children and send them to school on their meagre (blue-collar job X)'s wages, then saw how their efforts could help, and ended up not buying anything for their own kids so they could share the true meaning of Christmas?
Maybe it's guilt the poor can't enjoy what the rest of us take for granted.
Maybe it's a desire to inculcate that experience in their own children.
Maybe... I don't know.
And I'm cheesed off. Every time I see something like that I lose a little more tooth enamel. I promise you, this isn't a rant by a materialistic hypocrite. For one, Christmas is about giving.

Anybody can be like the columnists. But my concern is how their kids, the recepients of this, um... gesture interpret the less fortunate. Is it:

a. "Daddy, that's so touching. Can we open our piggy banks and give? Or is there a community project we could join?"

b. "Where's my present?" (insert pleading action here) "Don't tell me you went to the family service centre again???"

c. "What's for dinner?"

If their response is (b) or (c), the poor will end up simply those who deprive them of material gain just by acting so pitifully in front of their parents. That's the last attitude I want my future children or anybody to have. And this whole 'guilt' thing smacks of patronisation--the one thing our turkey- and present-slushed minds are unequipped to handle.
I truly admire those who spend time helping out the less fortunate in society--it is a command from the Lord Himself (Matthew 25:31-46). But I believe it's wrong to let this filter down to refusing to give presents (material ones, anyway) for that reason. And declaring it in a public medium like a newspaper... not once, not twice, but every year? Sheesh.

Alex Rider rocks!!!

I loved the new Alex Rider adventure, Ark Angel. In fact, the first thing I'll do after finishing this is add Mr. Horowitz's AR series on my favourites.
But sometimes I wonder if we'll ever see anything like a Roald Dahl again:

President (on radio): "This is the President of the United States of America."
Astronaut: "And this is the Wizard of Oz."

-- Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator

I rest my case. But Alex Rider is great--all the cool gadgets and big adventures of James Bond but without the sex and niggling paternity lawsuits Bond probably struggles with between saving the world from evil madmen. And does he ever check if his partners have sexually-transmitted diseases?
Ah, well. How realistic can Bond get, anyway? With the first AR book, Stormbreaker, made into a movie, what next? An Alex Rider computer game?