Morbid

I was at the family court, and I saw something that churned me inside. It was a matter of seconds. Half a minuite maybe. But it was distressing.

There were Maroon and red lines that spreaded themselves over the grey, green and purple blotches on her face. I thought at first that it was a birth mark, but after a lingering glance, I realised they were inflicted. She was beaten. She had bruises on her cheeks, mouth, chin.

The demure way in which she asked for directions I also found to be really haunting. She did it like she was oblivious to the fact that her face had been pummelled.

The person who did that should be publicly humiliated.

If I ever do practice, I hope I shan't have the stomach to defend the moron who did this. Maybe I should just settle for what one of the lawyers call bread and butter cases rather than hope for the intellectual challenge litigation would provide. Or perhaps explore the alternative of not practising altogether and run off to whatever high paying offer that comes by my way after school. Hopefully I shan't be too money or position driven 4 years from now.

O Death has found its sting

I am a flower quickly fading

Here today and gone tomorrow

A waved tossed in the ocean

A vapour in the wind

(Lyrics from "Who am I")

The brevity of life.

This theme has been popping out in a myriad of places over the last week. I dreamt of the 55 year old party lady that made the headlines, read a book where a little girl died, handled probate files, read a blog where my friend posted something related, then last night, when I was out with two of my colleagues, we broached this topic, and one of them told us in vivid detail how she lost her father to a cardiac arrest.

I guess the fragility of life and its transcience was already made distinctly clear to me in the 2nd year of the army where I had two friends with their lives violenlty snatched from them. And knew of 3 more people who died untimely. Again, I am resolved to live brilliantly. To Carpe Diem I guess. And really, take the line Hak Boon(the principal gong jiao boys somehow love to hate) came out with for our school motto:

"...scholars with a zest for life..."

Such a philosophy has led to a rather unihibited manner of partying on wed (where I was inaugurated into the party scene that is Singapore's) and yesterday. I think it mighty fun, especially mambo. God, I don't know what I've been missing.

But there's abit of irony here really, because the last time I was siao enough to dance like that was because of a completely different motivation. It was the religiously inspired motive to honour God by "dancing before him with all my might" the way David did when the tabernacle was brought back to Israel. Eh, I don't give a flying fuck if this might seem quirky or crazy, I'm actually quite prooud I had balls massive enough to act in sync with my beliefs.

It's just weird irony that now, such behaviour is caused by a lack of belief in the eternal.

Work

taken from an overhead bridge near my place of work

I’m having fun at work. Loads actually.

I’ve also been reveling abit in an assignment I received where I was asked to “pictur-ise” a brochure. At the expense of my modesty, indulge me by allowing myself to say that I think I did a pretty nifty job, and someone who I thought took absolutely mind-blowin pictures sent me an email complimenting me on e photos I took. Which was both flattering and encouraging. Woot!
Here are some of my favourites:

my friends said I should have taken this with the plant far to the side. still like it though

has to be my favourite

me pretending to read some law book

And that's not all man, today at lunch, a colleague packed in Nasi Lemak for most of us, which we had in the conference room. And after lunch, some of my colleagues had poked fun at a partner about some very juicy stuff I doubt I have the liberty to mention on this blog. That aside, I think I’m growing abit more careful with the stuff I’ve been assigned to do, which is good I guess.

Woot!

I've been terribly hyper of late, prancing around in the privacy of my study to the Johnny Halliday song Gabrielle and the Beattles Twist and Shout. Must be because of the possiblity of an incredibly fun weekend! woots to that :P

The unfortunate thing however, is that within the past two weeks, I've been making an awful lot of careless mistakes at work. Everything from klutzy spelling to bumbling errors regarding staff work. I desperately want to rid myself of this carelessness.

I think this lack of attention to detail has been consistent through all my life, particularly with respect to work. In fact my beloved Platoon Sergeant, ah lu was whining to me about me sometime before I ORD that I was awful messy, etc etc... And my dad also phoned in from afar to reprimand me for losing a receipt.

Wa, I MUST get rid of this blur factor before I start school, otherwise I definitely won't get the sterner stuff ambition hopes for. So that's minus a woot till I become meticulous... :(

And, I watched Beauty World with mummy dearest and my brother on sunday. Awesome stuff, except I thought no one (my brother did I think) caught the rather obvious torchlight double entendre when Mary Joseph was singing about her time in MacRitchie with her boyfriend. The musical is another reason for wooting, so... WOOT!!!!

Bush in the Middle East

I haven’t wrote about anything lightly serious for ages. Of late, the urge to write about George Bush’s speech (which I think riddled with irony) in Abu Dhabi is strong enough for me to risk the censure of my mates from the army who think folks who blog about such stuff pretentious.

So let’s see what he had to say:

“Iran funds terrorist extremists, undermines peace in Lebanon, sends arms to the Taliban, seeks to intimidate its neighbors with alarming rhetoric, defies the United Nations and destabilizes the entire region by refusing to be open about its nuclear program”

He forgets that:

his administration arms his allies who are mainly Suunis, (only a couple of months back I think), thereby posing a security threat to the largely Shia Iran;

he has defied the UN in invading Iraq (this doesn’t help with their accusations that Iran undermines peace does it?);

their ally Israel isn’t exactly transparent about their nukes either.

And I think the irony gets so pointed to the extent where one cringes at hearing his following comment about some of his allies in the Middle East:

"You cannot expect people to believe in the promise of a better future when they are jailed for peacefully petitioning their government”

If one puts this against the travesty which is Guantanamo bay, one can imagine the kind of sentiments a statement as such would evoke, especially since the above-mentioned statement is directed at the societies who bear the brunt of his removal of their right to trial.

In fact, on Guantanamo bay, I caught some news sometime ago about some British citizens held there 4 years without trial. It was incredibly sad. The lawyers of the incarcerated handful, having read through the documents related to their arrest, though unable to divulge the classified details, asserted that there was no evidence showing that they had links with terrorism.

I think one would be incredibly angry if he puts himself in the position of one of these detainees who have well been robbed off 4 good years of their life for not committing any wrong. When one considers that Bush, the man who makes this statement of much moral posture is also responsible for revoking the right to a fair trial for those suspected to be involved with terrorism, one can’t help but be taken aback by his cutting double standards.

I’m not trying to hop on the let’s bitch ‘bout the yanks bandwagon, I mean America after all is the land of buffalo wings and the land of Jessica Simpson, who by the way, thinks buffalo wings come from buffaloes because of its name (believe me on this, I saw her say it on TV).

Ok ok… I just had to take a dig at her. But I think they still have a very significant role to play in the world today, and for them to be effective, it is in my opinion important they recover the moral authority to influence events.

Source for Bush’s speech: http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/13/bush.mideast.speech/index.html

Suay ar...

I'm incredibly annoyed that some dick stole my stuff when I was with YiHeng at the Toa Payoh gym. I lost my wallet, phone, and all e office apparel. E bloody inconvenience and e inability to grab frens to go out with because of a lack of handphone is annoying. Shit.

And I'm therefore sorry for not replying messages

21st Birthdays

I met Koes, encik, ps and his girlfriend for a mini birthday lunch for weijie's bday. Which was fun and entertaining, though they were gloating about some rather unfortunate but what I think hilarious events that have occured in the period after my ORD.

I later crashed Kino and was reading a book called Identity by this Czech guy, Milan Kundera. Er, I don't want to keep sounding like some pretentious snott, so all I'd say is that it was insightful, but I also thought it had too dark a world view. Somehow, all these old authors are always sad farts. They ought to be abit happier.

Later on in the evening, I accompanied a good friend to an acquaintance's birthday party, cos he did not know e rest of the folks there. Which was bad, because I really hate being wallpaper I guess. That being said, the birthday girl's quite amazing. She represented Singapore in a UNICEF conference in Mauritius. Anyway, her fren's were nice as well, but I was still wallpaper cos we barely knew one another.

Hm, there was one interesting conversation I had, where unfortunately, I was corrected for the pronounciation of "Louvre", shame on me. But I thought it quite informative, cos she was some NYAFA grad who seemed to know her stuff. And I met some old VJ schoolmates and some fun folks from NUS law. So maybe it wasn't so bad after all... oh wat the heck, everyone's turning 21. My turn in 3 months.

"The letter of the law brings death..."

I think it is alright if lawyers showboat and put on a cocky, confident air to intimidate a possible hostile witness or even ruffle abit the lawyers they spar in court. That I guess, is part of business.

However, it becomes most distasteful when one in the name of business puts on this air, takes the moral highground in a case obviously morally nebulous, and in his phoney white hat do a hellfire and brimestone of sorts while discussing settlement with other lawyers. The tirade purposed to be in ear-shot of his most hostile witness who was already emotionally distraught by the fact that he shared a portion of blame in an accident that killed 4 or 5 people(I can't remember), one of which, his brother. By the way, he called this witness: "killer".

If one wanted to be as big a bitch, one could have candidly told him to stop showboating. Alternatively, one, if not wanting to roll in the gutter as he did, could have advised him to not be so emotive, and at the same time serve him a gentle reminder that his client's insured was high on K and alcohol and speeding. Playing Billy Graham did not quite cut in this case. He was more a Jim Baker than anything. Unfortunately, the parties involved smiled politely at his antics.

He also made several other unpleasant remarks, which I thought though rude, could be tolerated if one would see it as purely business. Let me fill you in, he:

1. Aggresively declared to one of the fellow lawyers on the case who was politely advising him: "I'm the partner, its my decision."

2. antagonized another lawyer by jokingly asking "c'mon, you know the law right?" when the lawyer missed out some details.

And as much as the above-mentioned was a dick, he was erriely kind and friendly outside of work. He bought 6 of us, myself included lunch, and was extremely courteous and entertaining then. I guess he took off the "strictly business mask" and put on the "networking time" one. Creepy, not just because I think the change drastic, but I think one can very easily end up like that.

And as much as I disliked his conduct and obvious insensitiveness to the trauma and grief of the witness I spoke of, I think becoming a dick of sorts is a bit of an inevitability. I think that in the course of handling case after case that deal very much with what others consider sacrosanct, the familiarity would errode our sensitivities. One, in the pursuit of victory might be able to convince himself that serving such a severe moral indictment like that of the dick can be just.

I just hope that if I do practice, the visceral pang would be as intense as the way I felt today, or at the very least, I would make a concious effort not to rub the proverbial salt in the wounds of someone already so hurt.

Oh well...

I guess it was bad luck to use the Ricky Hatton-Floyd Mayweathers analogy, cos Hatton lost. Well, no significant harm done I guess, as my chain-smoking pseudo guru would say, "just go for it". And it was a real blast to meet up with them, and we were thoroughly, laugh-out-loud amused at the Kazbar when we had a plump red belly dancer shimmying her behind in his embarassed face. (Hey! if u are reading this, be flattered man! I just elevated ur status to "pseudo guru".)

After that meet up, I went down to the airport to send my cousin off to Scotland. He's going there for 5 months. God I can't wait to fly away and start school! Maybe I ought to crash my dad's at Copenhagen again, if my folks are willing to fund me again in a couple of months time that is. And this time, I am really wanting to visit Christiania(i think thats de name)...

Ah! and i almost forgot. I had a proud moment tonight when I ran over to my neighbours' and saved their dog from another big black menacing one that somehow ran amock in our neighbourhood. And whoa! who said Singaporeans were unhelpful, there were like 4 of us running out of our houses after she screamed help! help! Whoo! But I hope they're fine, she was so terrified she was crying buckets after that incident...

And, God I've been incredibly pensive. Thinking about the usual ideal vs. pragmatism thing again after I had to get this fella to pay his bills, but I shall not delve into that since I think its something I've been consistently blogging about. And I had another zen-meditative moment whilst watching the fireworks at the esplanade, but I'd talk about that another time, cos I've got work tmr and I seriously need to hit the hay...