..man, I was angry, wasn't I?

No offense to any Malaysian who reads this.. if you aren't one of those insulting Singapore's water supply. If you have.. well, I invite you to take offense. In fact, take plenty of it! Because if you're like those I read about here, you bloody well deserve it.

Now, the facts on the water dispute between Singapore and Malaysia. Singapore has been importing water from Malaysia for almost a hundred years now, since we were all under British administration. This is because our existing natural resources aren't enough to support the needs of our population and industry together. According to the terms of agreements signed in the 1960s, we are entitled to buy raw water from them, and they treated water from us, at prices determined SINCE SEPARATION. And it is CLEARLY STATED in the treaties that any changes in price were to have been made in the 1980s, twenty years after the treaties were made. If they were unhappy about the fact that they sell raw water to us at less then what they pay to get treated water from us, they should have raised the issue when it could be changed. BUT THERE WAS NOT. A. PEEP. FROM THEM THEN.

And how dare they say that Singapore benefits from this agreement? Sure, we get our water, and water /is/ important, but WE PAY FOR ALL THE INFRASTRUCTURE INVOLVED AND WE SUBSIDISE THE MALAYSIANS AND THEY SELL IT TO THEIR PEOPLE FOR A PROFIT. Hear that? Singapore sells treated water to Malaysia at below cost, but they still have the sheer thick skin to complain about us. And to want to raise the prices now? Hello, it's twenty years too late, don't you think?

As if that's not enough, the price increases suggested are RIDICULOUS. We pay, currently, 3 sen per thousand gallons. They want to raise it to 60 sen. That's twenty times the price, but okay, fine, water's important. HOWEVER, wanting us to pay 3RM is JUST WISHFUL THINKING. A hundred times the rightful price?

Even that would be acceptable, if only those BLOODY IDIOTS would stop changing their minds every few minutes or so. A few years ago, it was "resolution of the issue as a package". Now, it's "look at it as a separate issue"! It's "let us all treat it as a business deal". *SNORT*

I heard a Malaysian politician speak on the radio, once. Can't remember his name, but I'll never forget what he said. "If Singapore wants to buy water from us, let them buy, lah. Other states like Penang want water, also have to pay, lah. If Singapore wants to drink Newater, let them drink, lah."

..well, thank you for letting us drink our own water. Thank you very much. I probably should have put this here before this, but I was too angry- Newater, if you don't already know, is recycled water, dirty water purified through the latest in technologies (it's been used in the US for about twenty years already, but ours is more advanced, being new and all, no pun intended.). It meets, as I recall from the papers, all the World Health Organisation's standards for drinking water, in fact, it exceeds them by far, the results derived from years of testing. Newater is even pure enough to be used, without further processing, in wafer fabrication plants. The only drawback, perhaps, is that the process removes all the minerals in the water. But for all that, it's not even going to come directly to Singaporeans through taps, it's going to be mixed into the waters of our resevoirs, and from there go through the same processing as raw water. Newater is probably /cleaner/ than the resevoir water, given that resevoirs are like lakes and probably contain lots of fish shit.. in addition to other things.

I would have thought that the bashing of Newater was just something the Malaysian politicians cooked up to garner support; in the recent election the ruling party UMNO had a major drop in votes from the majority Malays, and they managed to stay in power thanks to the help of non-Malay coalition partners, which means that the non-Malays, traditional targets, are off limits this time. (and they talk about marginalization of Malays in Singapore? what about themselves?!) So they turn to Singapore bashing. Biih, I say. It's probably the same with the labor issue, where they've forcibly deported thousands of illegal immigrants, something that doesn't make any economic sense at all, since those people were mostly involved in the more menial jobs which Malaysians scorn, and even accepted lower wages. The irony? Shortage of cheap labour in Malaysia now.

But, to get back to my point, this article, and a couple I've read, over time- of which this is one- combined make me want to think that even common Malaysians have misguided views on the water issue.

What do they think they can achieve by deriding Singapore, and Newater? It's certainly not going to stop us- in fact, it's probably beneficial, in that more Singaporeans are going to welcome it. It only proves that there are people out there, who, although they have enough "literacy" to write to papers and actually win competitions, assuredly do not deserve to have passed PRIMARY SCHOOL SCIENCE. Because, you know something? All water on this planet /is/ recycled. Whether by nature, or by science, it's probably gone through the body of a living being before being passed out through whatever process, and most of it's probably been used to wash.. oh, I don't know, underpants, or something, in the ages before it came to anyone as "real water".

Imbeciles.

Personally, I read Coraline in the dark of my room at home when everyone else was asleep and it was cold and there was only the desklamp for light and it was really, really quiet.

You know what I learnt?

...don't.

Will aine Survive A Pit Match Against Clinton And Bush?

. 0% chance Bush would kill you. . 24% chance Clinton would kill you. . 33% chance he would sexually harass you. . 76% chance you would kill them.

Enter Combat

Presenting:

This Dark Aeon, or

Ants in my Pants.

Today- Go out, discuss Angel Sanc things that Just Should Not Be. Thinking brings.. pain.

Visit house. Overeat. Overeating is a cause of stomachache, intestinal malfunction, and obesity. Also incontinence. Discover that stomachache causes pain.

Walk out, stand at bus stop talking until look down and discover foot is on ant nest. Lift hem of trousers to discover foot covered in angry blue-black welts from angry ants. Feel pain.

Strike off for train station. Halfway, get hit by severe and sudden leg cramps. Nowhere to rest, and late, so limp to station, in pain.

Get to station. Train off, next one eight minutes' wait. Sit down. Swat at ants, whimper softly to self. Am very late. Waiting a total pain.

Get off train. Board bus. Is crowded, noisy, and person on left obviously come straight from fish market, smell so bad. Cannot move, because of crowd. Platform sandals begin to make feet ache. Experience vivid and acute first-person ..pain.

Stagger home past late night supper crowd. Parents lying in ambush to unleash well-aged home brew of potent pain. Stand straight, look attentive. Foot hurts, cognitive nodes of brain completely non-functional. Bruised, holy'd self-ego triggers exponential increase in pain.

Begin countdown to Oblivion.

One.

Begin to think self is actually chained up sado-masochistic thing from hell in putrefied swaddling clothes.

Two.

Blink.

Three

Decide first thing to do when out of pesky chains is to find a good brand of fungicide and scissors; Baby obviously suffering from bad case of chest hair.

Four.

Find self imprisoned in stony big crystal rock once called Home. Swear.

Five-

Sink into Oblivion.

...If you've played Final Fantasy Ten, I think you get what I mean. If you haven't, "Baby" is Seymour, Squaresoft's retake on the classic misunderstood, horribly slashy, not-really-beautiful-but-everybody-says-he-is villain, only gone horribly, horribly wrong. And I was writing my life today from perspective of the Dark Aeon Anima, who is one of the Summons in the game, and Seymour's Aeon. Scary thingy.

Anyway, tired. I have more to say, but they shall wait till I have time. Ants.

It's a story about a young boy, Alex- only fifteen, goodness, I'm older than he is, now!- who goes on a spree of murder, rape, robbery and wanton vandalism (you can read as much on any blurb, which is why I don't consider this spoilers). Eventually he gets caught by the law, and efforts to rehabilitate him ensue.

...thirty pages into the book, I was ready to put on a hazard suit, one of those yellow ones that make you look like the statues on Easter Island- pick him up with a pair of very sharp, very long tongs, then shut him into the nearest garbage compactor I could find. And make sure it was securely bound for incineration.

The last paragraph was what I really wanted to say, actually. Need to read the book again more thoroughly before I can say more.

1. "Oh, purple. How cute!"

2. "Aine-chan, what are you doing with.. purple.. furry.. balls in your hair?!"

I like them. Purple fuzzy balls. Two of them, suspended on black rubber..

I remember how, around a decade ago, I used to spend the mid-Autumn festival with my family at our Clan Association- they had the old building with the courtyard then, so the celebration was held there, under the open starlit sky- although most of the light really came from the lanterns of all colors that hung from wall to wall of the compound, strung up in their rows by threads so that they surrounded the middle of the celebrations, each of them pasted with a riddle that later we'd gather to solve.

And at the corner of the courtyard there'd be a table laden high with all sorts of mooncakes and food- I particularly remember pink and green snowskin, red bean, the homemade type with the covering of brown pastry thicker than the commercial type and richer, so it crumbled into your mouth as you bit into it-(can you see the thin line of drool threatening to force its way out of my mouth?) and I'd proceed to stuff myself silly. Then there would come the time for riddle-guessing (I seldom won anything here because my command of the Chinese language then and now are horrible), and games- silly games, of the sort that invariably involve water, eggs, spoons, positively unholy quantities of flour, and bodily contortions of the sort that only drunk people or kids have the guts to try. But I don't think the adults whom I remember participating in the games were drunk- or maybe it was only the kids' games which involved lots of contortions and running around. And yelling for the sake of yelling. I liked the prizes, I think, when I was young. Most of them were the cheap plastic type of toys, or stationary sets, or pencils, but one year I remember winning a radio. Still have it somewhere around, I think.

And after that, lantern time! I don't know why running around as fast as I could while carrying potential fire hazards appealed to me as much as it did, but it did then. I don't think I'll be running around in circles carrying lanterns this year, thank you, but I still remember the euphoria- maybe it was just that this was the one time of the year I got to play with fire, and fire = wheeeeeeeeeee! The flames of the candles in the lanterns were extinguished easily, and half the fun was crouching down, trying to relight it from another lantern without burning yourself, or watching the adults swear as they tried and failed to get a light going because the wind was too strong. The lanterns themselves were pretty, even the cheap common paper ones. Electric lanterns, even though they had more interesting designs, weren't as fun. I expecially liked the most common variety, the cylindrical type that came folded in bulk packs where two out of ten wouldn't hold a candle properly in their wire hoop- I think I found something hypnotic in inflating and deflating them, like an accordion, while watching as the flame flickered in and out of its translucent crepe sheath.

Then there was this year where my family came back from the clan's party early and we had entire boxes of candles left, so somehow my parents allowed me and my sibs to go on playing with the neighbors in the field outside my house, and we lined all the candles we had on the sills of the wooden slide/playhouse and lit them, then sat there in our private wonderland, all mysterious dark and brightly burning stars. Looking back, I think it's a wonder that we didn't burn down anything.

I think I'm going to go get a mooncake.

And so my life for all of what, five minutes? today has been going o.0;;; at the ancient Greek coming-of-age ritual of Arete- they believed that a man's semen, apart from being part of the procreative activity, also contained spiritual and magical properties. Fair enough- or, rather, understandable enough, given the other things some men have been known to claim about various other parts of themselves- but they also believed that it could also be used to impart the qualities of manhood from a "fine and honorable man" to a younger one, and thus the custom of Arete, where an older man would have to penetrate and infuse his semen into the body of a younger. Since incest of any kind was generally frowned upon, the older man would usually be the best friend of the youth's father.

...Greek mythology has a lot of instances of randy old men carrying away pretty boys. Something they don't put in the books of myths for children.