why age and maturity isn't a neccessary for good company
just came home from meeting Eugene and BQ for a round of drinks @ Ice Cold Beer. it's always a weird feeling meeting up old army friends and doing the proverbial 'catching-up' after not keeping in contact for a significant period of time'. such gatherings always start with the customary phrases asking 'how you're doing?', 'hows your job?' and more often than not that just opens up a floodgate of unnecessary information bombardment from your overzealous platoon mates who're dying to impress upon you about how well they're doing. before you realise, an aura of unfamiliarity just premeates into the conversations and what seemingly was intended as a celebrate of the camaraderie of yesteryears just degenerates into a socialising agony entertaining every little annecdote with mock interest while your friend happily masturbates his ego in front of you.
i really didn't need to know how u spent $8000 on clubbing as u claimed ever since u broke up with that girl whom u were supposed to get married to, or how u well-connected you are such that you could walk into whatever club in bermudas without paying cover charge. neither did you have to insidiously insert random details about your schedule next week in between unrelated talk, bitching about how busy you are having to entertain clients at so-and-so bar cos' somehow ALL the foodcourts/hawker centres buys plastic bags from your father's company even if all you wanted was to fish some compliments for yourself. and you certainly didn't have to reply and given a pseudo indepth analysis of what you would have done to the manchester utd lineup if you were alex ferguson in english when i clearly talked to you in hokkien and mandarin as i always did in the good o' days. cos' the Eugene that i knew, was the most reliable indian chief in our hokkien peng platoon, the one who had to balls to call 2SG Crouching Balls a Poo Boh Kia in front of his face. i hope it really isn't that breakup that changed u. so what if she was an SMU grad who couldn't reconcile herself with the prospect of marrying an N level holder like you? so what if your plan of opening a joint savings account failed to keep her? u have nothing to prove to us, brudder. it was her loss. Bros over Ho's, brudder. Bros over Ho's.
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In comparison, it's seems so much more fun just hanging around kids two thirds my age dispensing with the diplomatic niceties. i spent the entire saturday together with the dictators watching them in the VJ Shield preliminaries before heading off to douby ghaut for an entire evening of gaming. the generation gap is apparantly when i played DoTA with them, especially when i totally clueless about what spells or items to buy and only managing basic ham ji way of attacking the randoms while Windwalking away whenever an enemy hero is in sight, but it's was awesome fun. especially when you have like 4 persons screaming together calling for team mates to go 'zham!! zham!!! rape them!!' . it's just so much fun hanging around the dictators talking the wrongest things speculating things like questioning the plausibility of Andre's claim to have grown some LJM or Andre's need to farm testosterone which will aid his LJM growth. Here's a picture of which epitimises why training at gong jiao is so fun...which unfortunately is at the expense of poor Andre at time...
andre, the cutest human action figure
apparantly despite his dimminutive stature Andre's quite the cassonova claiming to have dated 14 girlfriends before, and there's apparantly some truth in that especially when two Big Blue debaters actually came all the way to Douby Ghaut just to meet up Andre when we were LANing. And of course, they too left when Andre joined us for dinner. Being the vernacular seniors that we are, me and Kenneth Kang promptly sought to instill some chivalry in Andre by telling him to at least go and talk to the girls (which was the least he could do) and that he'll be forgiven even if he chose to hang out with the two girls while we go dine without him. Besides, Andre needs whatever female interaction he can get to hasten his testosterone farming which will consequently hasten his slightly belated puberty growth hahhaha.
the kids did themselve proud breaking into the semifinals defeating RI and St Nicks along the way before succumbing to loss to ACSi in the last preliminary match. We're gonna face RI again in the semifinal next saturday who along with ACSi and Big Blue being the other 3 who will be competing along Cat High for a chance of etching their names for posterity on the VJ Shield. The dictators have everything to prove for themselves next saturday and i can't underline how important a win is to the Cat High team. The kids deserve a victory to end an entire year of heartbreaks ranging from 3 consecutive semi-final exits and failing to qualify to the JGs knockout rounds on the a break that went right down to speaker scores last year. They're an exceptional team who have been pouring their guts out training week after week. Even Andre, the reformed slacker has made quantum leaps in both his debating prowess as well as committment towards training. i'm exceptionally proud of him. The youngest speaker on the team, Tze Kai was phenomenal throughout all three preliminary rounds. At sec 2, he's definitely the one of the most precociously developed debating talent i've ever saw. At his age, is already able to hold his ground against debaters a year older than him. It's his immense industry in case research that really impressed me more than his raw talents and it's amazing how he manages to juggle all this together with his editorial duties at this online magazine which he started. (Yes, he started a magazine when we was barely 13 years old!). Yet at the same time, my biggest concern for him and Bryan Chan - who's exceptionally talented too - is that there is a tendency for many precociously developed debaters to get complacent about improving themselves and end up stagnating their development. Debating is never about pure talent, it's all about hardwork. If Tze Kai could keep up his hardwork and avoid the potential complacency trap which plagued so many debaters before him, we'll be looking at a future WSDC debater along with Bryan Chan. In fact, the litmus test might not be that far. There's gonna be an international competition for secondary school debaters sometime next year, and with hardwork and focus, i Tze Kai and Bryan should be able to make the DEP international team.
it's all about the kids. as their temp coach, i feel a huge sense of responsibility to the dictators and Xander. to the dictators, i feel obliged to help them achieve their fullest potential in this tournament in whatever way possible. I feel their passion and desire for victory and i really believe that a championship victory for VJCs and beyond is well within the reach of this team which is why i simply cannot entertain any possibility of letting them down as a result of slackness on my part. and as for xander, despite enduring all the bureaucratic shit he's stuck with gong jiao for all these years and it might well be the final year that he's coaching gong jiao. it's probably time for the dictators to give xander and themselves what they truly deserve -that final missing piece in the trophy cabinet - the JGs championship. winning the VJ shield is would be a significant step towards the holy grail.
"When you really want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to
achieve it. "
--- Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
i really didn't need to know how u spent $8000 on clubbing as u claimed ever since u broke up with that girl whom u were supposed to get married to, or how u well-connected you are such that you could walk into whatever club in bermudas without paying cover charge. neither did you have to insidiously insert random details about your schedule next week in between unrelated talk, bitching about how busy you are having to entertain clients at so-and-so bar cos' somehow ALL the foodcourts/hawker centres buys plastic bags from your father's company even if all you wanted was to fish some compliments for yourself. and you certainly didn't have to reply and given a pseudo indepth analysis of what you would have done to the manchester utd lineup if you were alex ferguson in english when i clearly talked to you in hokkien and mandarin as i always did in the good o' days. cos' the Eugene that i knew, was the most reliable indian chief in our hokkien peng platoon, the one who had to balls to call 2SG Crouching Balls a Poo Boh Kia in front of his face. i hope it really isn't that breakup that changed u. so what if she was an SMU grad who couldn't reconcile herself with the prospect of marrying an N level holder like you? so what if your plan of opening a joint savings account failed to keep her? u have nothing to prove to us, brudder. it was her loss. Bros over Ho's, brudder. Bros over Ho's.
************************************************************************************
In comparison, it's seems so much more fun just hanging around kids two thirds my age dispensing with the diplomatic niceties. i spent the entire saturday together with the dictators watching them in the VJ Shield preliminaries before heading off to douby ghaut for an entire evening of gaming. the generation gap is apparantly when i played DoTA with them, especially when i totally clueless about what spells or items to buy and only managing basic ham ji way of attacking the randoms while Windwalking away whenever an enemy hero is in sight, but it's was awesome fun. especially when you have like 4 persons screaming together calling for team mates to go 'zham!! zham!!! rape them!!' . it's just so much fun hanging around the dictators talking the wrongest things speculating things like questioning the plausibility of Andre's claim to have grown some LJM or Andre's need to farm testosterone which will aid his LJM growth. Here's a picture of which epitimises why training at gong jiao is so fun...which unfortunately is at the expense of poor Andre at time...
andre, the cutest human action figureapparantly despite his dimminutive stature Andre's quite the cassonova claiming to have dated 14 girlfriends before, and there's apparantly some truth in that especially when two Big Blue debaters actually came all the way to Douby Ghaut just to meet up Andre when we were LANing. And of course, they too left when Andre joined us for dinner. Being the vernacular seniors that we are, me and Kenneth Kang promptly sought to instill some chivalry in Andre by telling him to at least go and talk to the girls (which was the least he could do) and that he'll be forgiven even if he chose to hang out with the two girls while we go dine without him. Besides, Andre needs whatever female interaction he can get to hasten his testosterone farming which will consequently hasten his slightly belated puberty growth hahhaha.
the kids did themselve proud breaking into the semifinals defeating RI and St Nicks along the way before succumbing to loss to ACSi in the last preliminary match. We're gonna face RI again in the semifinal next saturday who along with ACSi and Big Blue being the other 3 who will be competing along Cat High for a chance of etching their names for posterity on the VJ Shield. The dictators have everything to prove for themselves next saturday and i can't underline how important a win is to the Cat High team. The kids deserve a victory to end an entire year of heartbreaks ranging from 3 consecutive semi-final exits and failing to qualify to the JGs knockout rounds on the a break that went right down to speaker scores last year. They're an exceptional team who have been pouring their guts out training week after week. Even Andre, the reformed slacker has made quantum leaps in both his debating prowess as well as committment towards training. i'm exceptionally proud of him. The youngest speaker on the team, Tze Kai was phenomenal throughout all three preliminary rounds. At sec 2, he's definitely the one of the most precociously developed debating talent i've ever saw. At his age, is already able to hold his ground against debaters a year older than him. It's his immense industry in case research that really impressed me more than his raw talents and it's amazing how he manages to juggle all this together with his editorial duties at this online magazine which he started. (Yes, he started a magazine when we was barely 13 years old!). Yet at the same time, my biggest concern for him and Bryan Chan - who's exceptionally talented too - is that there is a tendency for many precociously developed debaters to get complacent about improving themselves and end up stagnating their development. Debating is never about pure talent, it's all about hardwork. If Tze Kai could keep up his hardwork and avoid the potential complacency trap which plagued so many debaters before him, we'll be looking at a future WSDC debater along with Bryan Chan. In fact, the litmus test might not be that far. There's gonna be an international competition for secondary school debaters sometime next year, and with hardwork and focus, i Tze Kai and Bryan should be able to make the DEP international team.
it's all about the kids. as their temp coach, i feel a huge sense of responsibility to the dictators and Xander. to the dictators, i feel obliged to help them achieve their fullest potential in this tournament in whatever way possible. I feel their passion and desire for victory and i really believe that a championship victory for VJCs and beyond is well within the reach of this team which is why i simply cannot entertain any possibility of letting them down as a result of slackness on my part. and as for xander, despite enduring all the bureaucratic shit he's stuck with gong jiao for all these years and it might well be the final year that he's coaching gong jiao. it's probably time for the dictators to give xander and themselves what they truly deserve -that final missing piece in the trophy cabinet - the JGs championship. winning the VJ shield is would be a significant step towards the holy grail.
"When you really want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to
achieve it. "
--- Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
5 Comments:
Man I hear you on the faux-socialisation: ego massaging, name dropping, and this general pretense of "places to go, people to see". :)
I have another theory about that. I find that friends that you grew up with (pri sch, sec sch) are more "real" than ppl you meet later in life.
$8000 on clubbing? What a waste. I would have been able to put that money to much better use.
Cat high people are animals. How can you tsake advantage of people just because of the simplistic reason that
1) they are late bloomers
2) they have no choice but to allow you to.
It's a sad sad world when you have to rely on bullying others to affirm your own masculinity.
This comment is not attacking cat high people or you in general, but what you actually did to make fun ofthat boy.
I'm sure you are a nice person, whoever you are, but I definitely do not understandwhy you would condone such a thing happening, esp when, if you have tagged your tagboard correctly, you are the coach of CHS debate.
thank you and i think I have made my point.
mooiness: yeah that seems really true! some of the best frens that we make tend to be those we meet earlier in life. probably has a lot to do with the trust building necessary in all solid friendships which takes years
sb: yeps, i could have survived very comfortably for an entire year on that sum of money.
anonymous: i actually do share some of your concerns as to whether andre feels victimised by such all these nonsense, which is why i ask him about how he feels about this from time to time. and at least from what i gather, it was done in the spirit of good fun and andre's just playing along having fun together in -albeit somewhat twisted - team bonding activities. we all love andre, and the intention (if there was even any at all) was never to condescend andre - which i believe he realises- as much as it was an exercise into brainless entertainment for both sides (read MTV Jackass).
but beyond all that, i agree with you that there exists a possibility that he may in fact be a reluctant participant in these random exercise in moronity while putting up a strong front. there's a fine line and i will assure u that nothing that undermines Andre's dignity will be forced upon him.
Well some people need to prove that they are still desirable and worthy, especially more so after they break up. You probably don't think it's necessary, but it's simply a healing process they have to go through. To validate themselves through other achievements that they can cling on to - since they failed miserably in love.
I guess the best thing u can do as a friend is to lend a listening ear and not judge him. He will snap out of it one day (hopefully) and will realize there are more meaningful things to pursue in life than counting the no. of plastic bags he has sold.
Love the quote from the Alchemist. I like Paul Coelho too. :)
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