Q

Cranium

Once, in primary school, a relief teacher stood in for a math class.

She had the kind of hairstyle you’ll usually find sprouting from the crown poodle’s caricature, an expression of perpetual shock, and underarm flabs the consistency of Jell-O.

She was like a play up of any relief teacher stereotype, and the most distinctive feature of this character would be her method of keeping (?) silence in the class: Whenever we made too much noise, she would stand at the front of the class with one finger pressed on her lips, and the other poised in the air, as if she’s waiting to be struck by a runaway lightning.

And then she would wait. Wait for us to notice her ridiculous stance and shut our yap. Of course, that never happened. We spent the entire one hour bringing down the classroom, and she spent the entire hour standing there with a finger in the air.

Stoic, lithic, she practically transformed into a immobile slab of marble no one gave a flying flick about.

At the end of the lesson, I wondered if she was really stupid, or just really smart – and didn’t particularly felt the teaching us how to multiply x and y that day.

You know how everyone has their own comfort food or stress reliever? Yeah well, mine is reading Archie Comics. I don’t know how or when it started, but I came to realise this pattern: that whenever something’s bothering me, or if I just needed to get away for awhile, I automatically find solace in Archie Comics.

I’ve started on them since really really young, and I’ve got to know the City of Riverdale so well, I guess I can say it is a sort of alternate universe for me. Somewhere I go and spend time in with my old friends when I sort of feel the universe I’m in is getting a wee bit to difficult.

In Riverdale, there is a challenge everyday, but I guess what I love about the book is that no matter what, Archie and gang would never ever change, and whatever obstacle they come across, it would be solved by approximately ten pages later. That knowledge gives me a huge sense of security.

I don’t know how glad I am to have Archie Comics in my life. Seriously, I sound like a complete sad sob here, but ah well.

I don’t usually bring a book around and read them under my table, so I guess most people assume I don’t really read. That’s the impression I give, maybe. Well actually I suck at multi-tasking, so usually I avoid reading in class or around school, cause it’s so distracting. But if you see me alone in the public transport or at home, I would be reading most of the time. Besides using the computer or watching the telly.

Another reason being because once I start to read I cannot put the book down. I meant the last statement literally. Like, even if I am dying of thirst I would wash the cup and pour myself a drink while reading it. If I need to get something from the convenience store downstairs I would be reading the whole way. You know what I mean? So I can polish off the book quickly, instead of reading small bits here and there. I never believed in the “spread your reading over a period of time” policy.

I went to Rosyth Childcare, (Childcare, mind you! Nursery!) where they seriously emphasised alot on education. I bet my chinese was way better back in nursery than NOW. I mean honestly, they drill like crazy. I was one like what, three or four? And guess what the wrote in my report book? That I don’t read enough! Like WTH!? How much do you expect nursery school kids to be reading? So my mum (being the typical kiasu mother) bought a whole array of Poldy books, Ladybird books, etc etc.)

Which I flipped through and then tossed aside.

Okay well remember the time when Teletubbies were ALL the craze? I was one of those crazy teeny tot of a fan, wearing Teletubby teeshirts, owning a Teletubby dollhouse (I love it so freaking much!!! It rocked!) and fanatically watching every episode of Teletubbies ever made. In school we also (like every other kid of our generation) roleplayed Teletubbies. And I remember (you can also infer from the photos I had throughout kindergarten) that I ALWAYS carry my talking Lala doll around. EVERYWHERE. I mean EVERYWHERE. Like when I go out with my family. To weddings, to sleep. Everywhere.

Of course all of the above could not yet satisfy my insatiable appetite for everything Teletubbies, so I pestered my mum to buy the Teletubby picture books. I drank them in avidly. Book after book after book. And when I’ve finished off the entire collection of Teletubby books, I felt this inner hollowness. Like I just HAD to read somemore.

Aha. This is where the story (pun, hahaha!) proceeds. My mum (remember? typical kiasu mother) took this opportunity to flood me with books. Roald Dahl and (loads of) Enid Blyton. Beverly Cleary and later on Jacqueline Wilson. I practically grew up with all these names. Which kinda explains my eye degree now.

After that phase, the my reading rate dwindled, cause it is just THAT hard to actually find a good book suitable for our age. I mean, the plots for Roald Dahl and what not are just plain awesome, but Fiction of Young Adults (as they so nicely euphemise it to be) are just full of chick flick crap and crushes and blondes and whatnot.

It annoying how authors think that when we reach this age, all we want to read about is girls our age with family problems, crushes, insecurites with their bodies and bitchy friendships. Like, NO! Please, we would like some good read too. I mean, WTH. Just because hormones are messing with our brains at this phase jolly well DOES NOT mean we are all dumb zombies walking around aimlessly chanting, “sex, crush, backstab, mini-skirts… sex, crush, backstab, mini-skirts” okay!?

When you start to read books aimed at adults, besides the classics like Jodi Picoult and Amy Tan and whatnot, all the rest comes down to always this plot: a hot not-so-young woman with mid-life crisis and a mess of past romances starts work at some firm and this hot boss and her starts to develop a pure and true relationship. They start to have sex and get married. The end.

I mean like, what the hell.

I used to have this huge thing with cheese.

Everything I put in my mouth needs to have some form of cheese on it. And I don’t just mean sausages or fries or whatever. I MEAN EVERYTHING. Sugar crackers, roti prata, PORRIDGE (Yes, I mean it, put it in when it’s hot and it melts.), maggi noodles, any form of noodles, noodles with SOUP. EVERYTHING, basically. Except ice-cream or anything, I’m not that freaky.

Once I went out to get some baked beans. You know those canned ones? Yeah, well, here was a cheese flavoured one, so guess how excited I was! In fact, I was so psyched up I couldn’t stop thinking about it until dinnertime.

AND OH MY FREAK. It was the third most disgusting shit I’ve ever tasted! (First being Wasabi Ice Cream and second being some weird herbal ginger tea.) It’s all milky and cheesy and… beany! It like really really sucked. I still love cheese now, but I don’t mix them around crazily, JUST IN CASE I get that baked beans combi again. Gross shit.

The TV is a powerful, powerful thing.

There are so many things I can’t absorb in class, but if I just happen to sit infront of the telly and somebody starts reciting the colors of the rainbow – once, or twice – I can immediately pick it up. Or how to fold socks. How to make paper cranes.

I remember that by a very young age I’ve already subconsciously absorbed a series of useless things from TV. (Prepare for trouble, and make it double, to protect the world from devastation, to unite the world within our nation, to denounce the evils of truth and love, to extend our reach to the stars above! Jesse, James, Team Rocket, blasting off at the speed of light, surrender now or prepare to fight fight fight! Meow, that’s right)(Sugar, spice and everything nice, these were the ingredients chosen to create the perfect little girl, BUT professor Utonium accidentally added in an extra ingredient into the concoction: Chemical X! Thus the Powerpuff Girls were born, using their ultra super powers, Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup, have dedicated their lives to fighting crime and. forces. of. EVIL!) Not to mention alot alot of other crappy TV jingles.

But even I myself was amazed when one night while lying in bed, being bored and random, I just thought of the Sunraysia Prune Juice advertisement. You know the one about the old grandma telling the son about Sunraysia Prune Juice pits or something? And to my utmost surprise, I actually went on to recite the whole friggin thing fluently! Without even knowing I could! (or even what it actually meant) Like ZOMG. The TV is really a powerful, powerful weapon. If only it can make to memorise my mo4 xie3 as efficiently.

I haven’t done this for about three years, but let me try.

Granny? What happens to all the pits from all the prunes that go into Sunraysia Prune Juice?
Well, grandma’ll tell you, but you have to keep it a secret.
Okay, granny.
Each night, just before midnight, the Prune Pit Pracker magically appears in Sunraysia Pruneland and pits the pits, leaving behind a pile of plum prunes for Sunraysia to put in their prune juice.
But what about the pits?
The Prune Pit Pracker takes them away, because at his home he has a gigantic pile of pits, the Fable Prune Pit Peak.
So you’re saying, that the Prune Pit Pracker pracks the pits from the premium plum prune Sunraysia pit to produce the premium prune juice and peddles the pile of pits to the prune palace on Prune Pit Peak?
Precisely.
Sunraysia prune juice, is available from the following, caring supermarkets.

Something like that. Except I don’t know what a pracker is.

What was the origin of the word testes? It was from ancient Rome (or something like that). Apparently during official events where men had to bear testimony and be a witness, they hold their balls to show their seriousness. If you get what I mean. Like to show the importance and how much value was in their testimony. When they have to make a vow they hold each other’s testes to honor the event. Weird eh. Yeah anyway that’s how the word came about.

I have this thing for pinup girls. Can’t stand stick thin models stalking down the catwalk looking as if they want to murder someone for depriving them of some greasy fries. They have this perpetual frown on their faces, and they twitch their toothpick of a body in such a painful manner I always suspect they might snap their limbs clean into two.

Pin-up girls, however, are classic beauties. They look healthy, happy, and their full figures makes even me – OKAY I think I better stop here. The animated pin-up girl arts makes me so happy. The shading is so awesome. Especially the shading of the skin. Pin-up girls always have this radiant pink glow. Unlike the models now who are either “snow white fair” or “bronzed tan”.

Honestly why is our perception of beauty so warped nowadays?

ANYWAYS. In response to the recent news of Jack Neo (there are many many headliners recently I notice) getting angry for having his MarkLee/Fann Wong movie (I don’t even bother to remember the title.) critisized for being a rip off of some Korean film; I SO AGREE. I never did like him. I just felt his films were embarrassingly childish and painfully afbf (act funny bo funny). The only reason why they sell is because there’s plenty of local references and satire, not the genuine excellence of the movie.

So when Jack Neo commented on how he thought Stephen Chow’s recent CJ7 was a rip off of a series of his movies, I could only laugh in response. OMG, PLEASE. He is STEPHEN CHOW for goodness sake. Why would a genius want to kope B grade movies? Granted, CJ7 was not one of his best works, but it was cute, and YES, Xu Jiao ROCKED like crazy.

According to Jack Neo, in CJ7 there was something about patching up old shoes and getting punished by the school for the lousy state of schools, a main theme of his show Homerun. HA. HAHAHA. FIRST OF ALL, THE PLOT FOR HOMERUN WAS TAKEN FROM AN INDIAN FILM, SUCKA. (Credits to Xinyi for her SUCKA phrase) SECOND, in CJ7 only a minor part was about the shoes. NEXT, in Stephen Chow’s highly acclaimed Shaolin Soccer, there was also something about sports shoes being patched together. HA, in your face J.N!

He also made other random accusations which did not make sense and seemed like pathetic attempts to frame Stephen Chow into some plot stealing man. YEAH RIGHT, YOU WISH, Neo. It made me cringe in shame for Singapore when someone local does something to determinedly foolish. Jack Neo asked why we insulted instead of supporting local work.

First of all, if you actually stop making unfounded, arrogant claims and lap up criticism (which if you’re dabbling in the art scene you should ALWAYS accept no matter whether they are true or not), you MIGHT make it big. I never liked him much, but what happened made me disrespect him even more, because it seemed incredibly childish to have retaliated in this matter.

If he had said something like, “I have my own integrity, and if you choose to believe I ripped it off, it’s your own choice.” I would have thought he was adept at handling such matters, but no. He went on to ramble and ramble and made a complete fool of himself. I believe that no criticism can be unconstructive. Even if it was said in a not so nice way, it should ALWAYS be taken into consideration so you can improve you work.

Yes, Jack Neo. Prove your capability through your work, not empty talk/accusations. When a man over forty can make a teenager feel sickened by his immaturity, there’s much to be said about him.

OMG MY GRAN IS DAMN PRO! In ONE night, she managed to sell $80 worth of Fiesta tickets to her Karaeoke class! AND she’s gonna sell more later. Easy peasy, simple pimple. She’s the moniter of her singing class okay!? Kudos to my gran.

I have this insatiable curiousity for random topics, which I do lengthy research of online. Topics vary, at least two per day. It can be anything, belly fluff to the Grimm Brothers. Twin connections to perfume origins. Which is prolly why I’m crammed to the brim with useless knowledge.

Haha this is so cute!

English has to be one of the hardest languages to understand. Read the paragraph below and try to understand the meaning.

Two individuals proceeded towards the apex of a natural geologic protuberance, the purpose of their expedition being the procurement of a sample of fluid hydride of oxygen in a large vessel, the exact size of which was unspecified. One member of the team precipitously descended, sustaining severe damage to the upper cranial portion of his anatomical structure; Subsequently the second member of the team performed a self rotational translation oriented in the same direction taken by the first team member.

In plain English what does this translate to?

Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after!

This one is even cuter!

One day a Panda entered a restaurant, ate the food, shot the waiter, and left the place. The owner of the restaurant went to the zoo to look for him and asked him why he did that. The Panda calmly pointed to a sign on his enclosure: Panda eats shoots and leaves.

SO CUTE! :DDD