Today my sister got an information booklet for choosing secondary schools. Kind of like "Life After PSLE". It isn't so much an information booklet as a very thick advertisement, but I suppose if you're 12, and concerned about points (who isn't?) it serves its purpose.

I looked up Dunman there, and some of it was quite funny. For instance, with the new IP program, they're going to be offering KI next year. Haha. I'm sorry, but the very thought of a place as cheena as Dunman teaching KI is hilarious. When I went back in September, Ken said that he would probably be teaching it. Dunman must think that he's a superhero with all the work that he's been saddled with.

The sister's selection criteria is simple:
1. Must have admission points no higher than 255 (the highest she personally expects)
2. Must have dance.
3. Must not have boys.

She's still in the "Ew...All boys have contagious stupidity viruses that I may catch." stage. I pointed out to her that after 2 years in a single sex school, she's going to become quite desperate, so she should just make room for future impulses. Either that, or go to a school that's located near an all boys one. Like SCGS, except Barker boys are a bit off.

This was supposed to be a joke, but my parents didn't find it very funny. Neither did my sister. I know she's going to live to regret it.

The only worse thing than being lousy at something is watching other people be good at it. I watched that Discovery Channel kungfu thing, where men built like mountains smash through brick walls, men built like cats move like monkeys and women built like bamboo poles whup the asses of the men built like mountains. So like any other mere mortal who has trouble running the 2.4, I spent most of the time exclaiming and wishing that I too could deliver the ninja hammer-punch that crushes the ribcage and kills a man with a single blow.

Which tends to put your abilities into perspective. The only things that I've ever attempted never required me to have muscles or stamina. I mean, how much upper body strength do you need to lift chess pieces? Or how much lung power do you need to debate? I sound like a first class wimp. The kind that never make it pass the door in American high schools, and need to be directly admitted to Harvard at 12 or risk getting beaten to a pulp.

It is important to note that in developing cranial abilities for these weakling activities, the brain needs fats to construct and maintain synapses. This means that I have considerable amounts of fats elsewhere. Wonderful. Sometimes I wish my parents had dragged my sorry little butt to taekwondo class or something, instead of letting me languish into my current state.

Well, when I was about 3 or 4, I did go for this thing called Tumble Tots. (sounds like a brand of disposable diapers) It was to kick the scardy cat out of me, because when I was 3, I was morbidly afraid of stairs, escalators, and lifts. My poor body was forced to do somersaults adn flips and climb strange contraptions in the hope of making me the new Bruce Lee. Didn't work. I was screaming all the way, the last in class to manage anything, and it inculcated in me a strong sense of self-preservation.

I blame this experience for making me the wimp that I am today.

I will stop trying to deny that blogging is anything rather than a narcissistic exercise (i know i just insulted myself). Freedom of speech? Yes. But freedom of speech sometimes gets tiringly self-centred as well. A lot of the time, its a declaration of "Hey!!! Look at me!!! I have an OPINION!!" or at the worst levels, "Hey everyone!! Let me tell you about my day." It is the call of the insignificant, tiny man who has to do his homework, pay his taxes, and buy peanut butter to be noticed. He is sick of stayingin the background while things like newspapers (if he even has the time to read them anymore), TVs, computers, and important people tell him important things that are important in the more important parts of the world.

So in response to that, two blogs are being created every second so that a miniscule section of the WWW will be dedicated solely to the words of this one author, THE last authority on everything in that little chunk of abstract space. But are those really things that are unique to that one insignifcant individual trying not to be swallowed up in the more important, or trying to become more important? No. Duh.

In the end, the little man becomes even littler in the wide space. His musings abuot doing the laundry and being a pooper scooper become another part of a gigantic, indistinguishable crowd of likeminded aunties, serial killers, toddlers, emo freaks, and mid-rung executives talking about what they had for lunch. Even when he does express an opinion about something important, and it may be a very good opinion worth listening to, it will not be heard over the din of the millions and millions of blogs that have sprung up. Like this one will be. These thoughts will be swallowed like a yell at a Live8 concert, and only the friends standing closest to you will hear anything.

And like a Live8 concert, there are the stars that get listened to. Stars like mr brown, the nearly-porn stars who post pretty pictures and the blogs of tyrannical Iranian leaders. Cyberspace is no longer a relief from reality. It is reality.

It doesn't really matter in the greater scheme of things, chinese, you know? No less economically developed countries are going to sink any deeper in the quagmire of bureaucracy or corruption simply because I failed chinese. Singapore is still going to continue its immensely profitable business dealings with China after tomorrow, after I fail my chinese promo. If nothing terrible in the likes of the apocalypse is going to occur when Ms Chan screws up chinese tomorrow, chances are, an asteriod will not collide with the earth if she does not turn up at all.

I am seriously considering that option.

But then I know that my pride will not let me. My pride will force me to take that bloody paper, and get an S (in a best-case scenario) instead of having a blank in my report slip. My common sense also tells me that I may as well get as much practise screwing up as I can, so that I can screw up the real A level chinese exam properly. Most of all, Mr and Mrs Chan will be much more annoyed about being absent for the chinese exam than if I failed it. But they will still be annoyed.

I also am driven to school every morning...and I have no intention of scaling the gate like many other VJC heroes.

Au revoir world. When I put my head on the chopping block for 3 hours toomorrow, I know that you'll still be the same when my headles carcass emerges. But I know that I won't.

Its easy to forget that there are more horrifying things taking place other than the promos and the A levels. However, if anyone bothers to stop mugging for about 5 minutes to read the newspaper (unless you’re crazy and mugging for GP, and reading the newspaper anyway), you’ll see that what’s grabbing headlines is not the Iraq, or Iran, or the Lebanon conflict. It’s organic food, and the discovery of E Coli in organic American spinach. I’m an organic food sceptic myself, and I use this as proof of organic food’s complete uselessness.

To summarise what’s been happening, E-Coli has been found inside the leaves of spinach from Californian organic growers. Many people are ill, some have died, and spinach and other organic food are being pulled off shelves. So you see, organic food isn’t the miracle health cure that people claim it is, it can be as dangerous. "Organic" is just a term to charge three times more than normal food so that you won’t ingest cancer causing agents.

But if you think about it, "organic" really has no meaning. It just means that instead of synthetic fertilizer, your food gets nourishment from, well, bullshit. The thought of having the waste product of cows and all the bacteria concentrated there being absorbed into your food is just revolting. So you aer left with a choice. Eat food contaminated with "natural" pathogens, or risk a death from cancer (which you probably will get anyway even if you eat just organic food)

If you look at it closely enough, organic food is just a symptom of nostalgia, for a time when father and son plowed the fields together with a pair of oxen instead of barely keeping in touch by mobile phone. An offshoot of this feeling is people using typewriters in the computer age, or fountain pens when there are ballpoints. Still, there is a limit to this. Surely with all the technological progress that we’re so proud of, you don’t want to go back to using a quill? Or a club. Ug. Me Man. Me Talk.

The very people who advocate this shift to our ‘natural’ state are really hypocrites. They drive cars, they balance their finances with calculators, and they watch MTV (if not MTV then some TV, but I bet you can’t find TVs in caves).

On the other hand, they reject things like "Western medicine" just because this science allowed us to isolate antibodies and mass produce them. These are the people who advocate TCM. (they used an acronym to make it sound cooler) And really, does TCM make any sense? How do you quantify "cooling" or "heaty"? Likewise, if eating deer penises makes you virile, will eating a whale’s make you…big?? I’d like to see those people try.

This nostalgic feeling may make us realize how far we’ve come, but now its only making us move backwards. Or subscribe to very strange things. Look at "water births", where the woman gives birth to her baby without painkillers, while sitting in a Jacuzzi-thing. There is nothing ‘natural’ about this either. Animals that "naturally" have babies in the water are animals like whales, dolphins, fish, and sea cucumber. Therefore, many claims of human beings going back to the ‘natural scheme’ of things means pretending to be another species.

As for me, I’m going to take a risk. Yes, there is lots of synthetic stuff that can hurt you, but the "natural" stuff is so dubious as well. The important thing is to read the label, and make sure you don’t get duped. If I ever go into contractions in the labour room and someone asks me "You want water birth or not?" I’m going to say no.

Bring on the drugs baby.