I tot there is some similiarity between me and Mr Brown in the clip below. No, not cuz I did a similiar clip but cuz we own a smiliar t-shirt

A look at http://www.dictionary.com/ revealed the following:

Definition of a 'gentleman':

1. A man of gentle or noble birth or superior social position: "He's too much a gentleman to be a scholar" (Aphra Behn).

2. A well-mannered and considerate man with high standards of proper behavior. See Usage Note at lady.

3. A man of independent means who does not need to have a wage-paying job.

4. A man: Do you know this gentleman?

5. gentlemen (-mən) Used as a form of address for a group of men.

6. A manservant; a valet.

And I'm particularly interested in the 2nd definition, the reason I'll explain later but first, let's look at the definition of a 'lady':

1. A woman who is refined, polite, and well-spoken: She may be poor and have little education, but she's a real lady.

2. A woman of high social position or economic class: She was born a lady and found it hard to adjust to her reduced circumstances.

3. Any woman; female (sometimes used in combination): the lady who answered the phone; a saleslady.

4. (Used in direct address: often offensive in the singular): Ladies and gentlemen, welcome. Lady, out of my way, please.

5. Wife: The ambassador and his lady arrived late.

6. Slang. a female lover or steady companion.

7. (Initial capital letter) (in Great Britain) the proper title of any woman whose husband is higher in rank than baronet or knight, or who is the daughter of a nobleman not lower than an earl (although the title is given by courtesy also to the wives of baronets and knights).

8. A woman who has proprietary rights or authority, as over a manor; female feudal superior. Compare lord (def. 4).

9. (Initial capital letter) the Virgin Mary.

10. Awoman who is the object of chivalrous devotion.

11. (Usually initial capital letter)
a. An attribute or abstraction personified as a woman; a designation of an allegorical figure as feminine: Lady Fortune; Lady Virtue.
b. A title prefixed to the name of a goddess: Lady Venus. –adjective

12. Sometimes Offensive. being a lady; female: a lady reporter.

13. Of a lady; ladylike; feminine.

Combining definition 2 of a gentleman and definition 2 and 3 of a lady, it will be safe to assume that a gentleman is a well-mannered and considerate man with high standards of proper behavior towards a lady who in this case is a woman who is refined, polite, and well-spoken and/ or woman of high social position or economic class.

Therefore, I think it is perfectly justifiable to reserve gentlemanly behaviours to the female species that exhibit the qualities worthy of being called a lady and I mean socially, not biologically.

The reason for this? I have had enuf of ill bred female species demanding or expecting to be treated like a lady simply because they are born female.
I'm sure there are guys out there who let a lady (from here onwards refering to the female human species unless otherwise stated) move up the escalator during peak rush hours, or hold that door open while they enter or exit a lift or building, or offer their seats to someone pregnant, but let me ask a question, how many times do you get a 'thank you', or even a smile for your trouble?

Most of the time, my simple token of social graciousness goes ignored, my existence completely un-noticed. It's as if it is expected of us, the males, to offer seats and hold doors. WTF?

Of cuz you may say a true gentleman does not expect gratitude and should treat all ladies like a lady (here I mean females who are refined and well spoken), well let me ask you this, do you ladies (I mean female species) treat all males as a gentleman (I mean a man of gentle and noble birth)?

I'm sure your answer will be 'If he behaves like one', or 'Unless he's cute', or 'Unless I want to make him mine', or 'Unless he treats me like a lady'

So you have it. DO NOT expect or demand to be treated like a refined, well spoken lady unless you behave like one. We guys most certainly do not owe it to you to treat you nicely, unless you happen to be one of the following:

1. Our girlfriends

2. Our mothers or relatives

3. The girl whom we are hoping to impress with the aim of turning you into our girlfriends

4. Our female friends whom we think deserve a gentlemanly behaviour

To those who fall outside these 4 categories, you can open/ hold your own doors, fight for your own seats and take your own time and squeeze your own way up/down that City Hall or Raffles Place MRT escalator

The latest craze in town rite now, at least among those I know.
Even TSO got hooked on the show:


I managed to catch a few episodes with her on Saturday and seriously, it's quite entertaining.

It is that time of the year again.
With each passing year, the feeling of aging gets more intense.

The time has come, for me to clear the dreaded IPPT again.

This year, I need to break 12:40 and below to obtain silver and a monetary award of $200.

Can the Denster do it again, or will he lose out to the Time and get a bronze and with it, be $100 poorer or worse, get knocked out and will have to retry?

Stay tuned as the results will be out on 3rd Sept 2008.

Hmmm, been a long while since I blogged about gatherings.
We celebrated the bdae of one of our chums on Friday.

Presenting the bdae gal
We had K-dinner at Marina Square and everyone was kinda high.
And I saw the crazy side of Aunty Leng which I didn't know existed, hahaha. There are some crazy pix which I think I better not post here so I'll just post the 'safer' ones such as these
And these are the pressies we got for Val this year.
A chirpy Friend Bear, (heng wor cuz this was the last one in Action City, heheh) and
The gals custom made this jewellery set for her
Happy Birthday Val! =)

Hmm, so I have been asked to promote yet another online shopping blog, this one owned by Little Imp.
I have included screen shots of the blog (which I have not done so for the others that I have featured so far), so that you have have a preview of what to expect.

The information contained herein is quite comprehensive.
Besides the usual details like payment/ delivery options/ charges/ updates/ measurements/ upcoming sprees (this seem to be the in-thing nowadays), the blog owner has also pegged the foreign exchange rate so you do not have to worry about FX fluctuations. And oh, in case you are buying for someone, there is a gift wrapping option available too =)


Although the blog is selling clothes and accessories, it seems to be featuring only accessories at the moment. If there's anything you think of buying and it's not found in the blog, you can leave a message at the tagboard and I'm sure you will get a response from the owner.

Feel free to take a look

Was chatting with Little Imp over msn today and the topic changed to r/s and she mentioned that I'm different liaoz, like more grown up.

In a way, I suppose I did change a little, in thinking and in handling relationships as a whole.

For eg, I used to treat female friends and gal friends the same, as in I'll show equal care and concern. And I did not really do anything spectacular for my gal friends
Maybe to some, this may seem ok but if I think from the other perspective, how would I feel if my gal friend treats me the same as how she treats her other guy friends?
But then, it's not that I dun treat my friends well now, just that there needs to be a priority in treatment, just so that the special one can truly feel that she is different from the rest.

Well this sort of extends to other areas besides just boy-gal relationships. It could work in any relationships. The underlying principle is quite simple really. Before you do anything, simply put yourself in the shoes of the other person and ask yourself how you would feel if you are in their predicament. Well, simply 'do unto others what you want others do unto you'.

To those who believe in karma, you will reap what you sow, eventually. So why sow seeds of discord when you can sow seeds that will eventually grow into something good and wonderful?

Of cuz this does not mean that if people constantly steps on my tail, I am to endure and act as though nothing has happened. Although in general I'd prefer to avoid conflict but then, I've not yet attained nirvana, so well, there is still a limit to my tolerance too. There is a saying that even the Buddha can be on fire, much less a mere mortal?

For those used to reading my blog, you may think that I'm secretly dissing some body some how. Maybe I am, maybe I'm not. But in any case, if you think I'm dissing you, then maybe you are in one way or another guilty of something? Think about it, it's always better to think in the shoes of others and all it takes is a little effort on your part and the world could be a better place for all. Afterall, the world dun spin for you alone =)

p.s. Congrats to the Women's Table Tennis Team for clinching the silver. After watching the game yesterday, it's a bit too much to expect our World no 6,7 and 9 to defeat the World no 1, 2 and 5 from China for the gold.
And, although we 'bought' 2/3 of our silver medal, citing from our PM during his national day rally speech, China has 1.3billion people compared to our 4million and so going by statistics, for every 300 medals they win, we can only hope to win 1, so maybe this is a good investment for our future. Who knows, one day we maybe able to win a medal via our home born and bred Singaporean? Karma my friends, karma

大姐大 fwd me this convocation speech by this guy called Adrian Tan.
I kinda like this guy cus he shares the same philosophy as me, only he's more thorough and more chim but hey, people ish litigator ok? More powderful England than moi:

Life and How to Survive It
Below is a speech to the graduating class of 2008 at NTU convocation ceremony last week by Adrian Tan, a litigation lawyer and the author of The Teenage Textbook.

I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give your convocation address.
It's a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation. I say this as a Singaporean and more so as a husband.

My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one. She is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practising at home during conversations between her and me.

On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day telling people how wrong they are. I make my living being disagreeable.

Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one who triumphs is always the wife.

And so I want to start by giving one piece of advice to the men: when you've already won her heart, you don't need to win every argument.

Marriage is considered one milestone of life. Some of you may already be married. Some of you may never be married. Some of you will be married. Some of you will enjoy the experience so much, you will be married many, many times. Good for you.

The next big milestone in your life is today: your graduation. The end of education. You're done learning.

You've probably been told the big lie that "Learning is a lifelong process" and that therefore you will continue studying and taking masters' degrees and doctorates and professorships and so on. You know the sort of people who tell you that? Teachers. Don't you think there is some measure of conflict of interest? They are in the business of learning, after all.Where would they be without you? They need you to be repeat customers.The good news is that they're wrong.

The bad news is that you don't need further education because your entire life is over. It is gone. That may come as a shock to some of you. You're in your teens or early twenties. People may tell you that you will live to be 70, 80, 90 years old. That is your life expectancy.

I love that term: life expectancy. We all understand the term to mean the average life span of a group of people. But I'm here to talk about a bigger idea, which is what you expect from your life.

You may be very happy to know that Singapore is currently ranked as the country with the third highest life expectancy. We are behind Andorraand Japan, and tied with San Marino.
It seems quite clear why people in those countries, and ours, live so long. We share one thing in common: our football teams are all hopeless. There's very little danger of any of our citizens having their pulses raised by watching us play in the World Cup. Spectators are more likely to be lulled into a gentle and restful nap.

Singaporeans have a life expectancy of 81.8 years. Singapore men live to an average of 79.21 years, while Singapore women live more than five years longer, probably to take into account the additional time they need to spend in the bathroom.

So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you'll have another 40 years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.

Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they're 50, 40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their convocation. They would be very disappointed that they didn't meet their life expectancy.

I'm here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy. After all, it's calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want to expect being average.

Revisit those expectations. You might be looking forward to working, falling in love, marrying, raising a family. You are told that, as graduates, you should expect to find a job paying so much, where your hours are so much, where your responsibilities are so much.
That is what is expected of you. And if you live up to it, it will be an awful waste.

If you expect that, you will be limiting yourself. You will be living your life according to boundaries set by average people. I have nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be them. And you don't need years of education by the best minds in Singapore to prepare you to be average.What you should prepare for is mess. Life's a mess. You are not entitled to expect anything from it. Life is not fair. Everything does not balance out in the end. Life happens, and you have no control over it. Good and bad things happen to you day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. Your degree is a poor armour against fate.

Don't expect anything. Erase all life expectancies. Just live. Your life is over as of today. At this point in time, you have grown as tall as you will ever be, you are physically the fittest you will ever be in your entire life and you are probably looking the best that you will ever look. This is as good as it gets. It is all downhill from here. Or up. No one knows. What does this mean for you?

It is good that your life is over.

Since your life is over, you are free. Let me tell you the many wonderful things that you can do when you are free. The most important is this: do not work. Work is anything that you are compelled to do. By its very nature, it is undesirable.

Work kills. The Japanese have a term "Karoshi", which means death from overwork. That's the most dramatic form of how work can kill. But it can also kill you in more subtle ways. If you work, then day by day, bit by bit, your soul is chipped away, disintegrating until > there's nothing left. A rock has been ground into sand and dust.

There's a common misconception that work is necessary. You will meet people working at miserable jobs. They tell you they are "making a living". No, they're not. They're dying, frittering away their fast-extinguishing lives doing things which are, at best, meaningless and, at worst, harmful.

People will tell you that work ennobles you, that work lends you a certain dignity. Work makes you free. The slogan "Arbeit macht frei" was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps. Utter nonsense.

Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway.

Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself.

I like arguing, and I love language. So, I became a litigator. I enjoy it and I would do it for free. If I didn't do that, I would've been in some other type of work that still involved writing fiction – probably a sports journalist.

So what should you do? You will find your own niche. I don't imagine you will need to look very hard. By this time in your life, you will have a very good idea of what you will want to do. In fact, I'll go further and say the ideal situation would be that you will not be able to stop yourself pursuing your passions. By this time you should know what your obsessions are. If you enjoy showing off your knowledge and feeling superior, you might become a teacher.

Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don't, you are working.

Most of you will end up in activities which involve communication. To those of you I have a second message: be wary of the truth. I'm not asking you to speak it, or write it, for there are times when it is dangerous or impossible to do those things. The truth has a great capacity to offend and injure, and you will find that the closer you are to someone, the more care you must take to disguise or even conceal the truth. Often, there is great virtue in being evasive, or equivocating. There is also great skill. Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence.

In order to be wary of the truth, you must first know it. That requires great frankness to yourself. Never fool the person in the mirror.I have told you that your life is over, that you should not work, and that you should avoid telling the truth. I now say this to you: be hated.

It's not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you? Yet every great figure who has contributed to the human race has been hated, not just by one person, but often by a great many. That hatred is so strong it has caused those great figures to be shunned, abused, murdered and in one famous instance, nailed to a cross.

One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it's often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one's own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong.The other side of the coin is this: fall in love.

I didn't say "be loved". That requires too much compromise.
If one changes one's looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.

Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We've taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.

Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the truth worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.

Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn't happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.

You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.

You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.

Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don't, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.

Don't work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.You're going to have a busy life.

Thank goodness there's no life expectancy.

Congratulations to the Singapore female table tennis team for earning us our first Olumpik medal in 48 years. And mind you, not bronze oni hor, but at least a silver.


Well but then again, after investing so much in the foreign imports, er I mean talent, it's about time we reap some rewards liaoz.

Sometimes, it's just so irritatingly infuriating when some morons simply just can't get it

08.08.08.
The day I tio-ed Toto.

Wait! It is not the 8.8million but only $30 to be split among 5 punters, each contributed $20 to the pool.

But hey, it's the excitement that counts, first time I tio-ed something that I actually had a winning ticket for, hahaha

And erm, since the Olumpik start liaoz, hope our 'strongest team in history' can do our nation proud and bring home some medals.

Went to catch this movie with TSO over the weekend.
The 1st installment was hilarious so we tot this one shld not be too bad either, but erm, other than the initial ERP thingy, the rest of the jokes were kinda 勉强.

The show places a lot of emphasis on crude Hokkien vulgarities which will tickle the funny bones of Lao Hokkiens but people who do not really understand will have to try to decipher the meaning from the subtittles which took out much of the fun.

As in all Jack Neo's movies, besides the luffs, there sure will be one part where he tries to introduce a tear jerker theme, in this case, 伟大的母爱, but hor, even this element is not as strong as those in his previous movies.

All in all, if you ask me, I'll rather wait for the vcd release. Yup, dun even bother getting the dvd version. The vcd one is good enuf. Money not enuf liaoz so must cut cost mah