Since the restaurant winded up last week, my mom and my brother has been at logger heads. My brother has found a job at a meat-packing factory - Dorsogna to be precise. Mom thinks it’s beneath him, or I wonder if she thinks that it’s beneath her?
Her argument is that the family did not move all the way here from Malaysia for my brother to end up doing a blue-collar job. My brother asks why does she look down on the job, which my mom denies. But the exact phrase I keep hearing her say to my brother is, “Why can’t you find something else?”
It’s funny how she was the one who encouraged me to go into the restaurant business. And she knew how angry I was when I heard relatives say that I was wasting my university education. So her attitude now is contradictory.
To be fair, my brother has always chosen the easy way out of everything. The least amount of effort expended if possible. In engineering, we would have called that “efficiency”. But my mom has always chastised him for it.
However, I’m also of the view that if my brother is happy - the job is quite well-paid and the hours are decent, then why can’t she be happy for him? She says that there’s no future in the job. I like to be optimistic and think that a factory floor worker can still rise up if he/she shows enthusiasm and a love for the job.
I ended up saying to her that we moved here to get a better life, and that we have succeeded in doing that. She does not dispute the fact but she still couldn’t help but get all worked up about it. I guess she worries that he is somehow suffering from doing such a job.
Though, it’s a way of thinking that I don’t agree with, that a lot of Chinese ppl would associate hard labour with suffering and shamefulness. Hey at least it’s better than being unemployed!
While snobby ppl turn up their noses at these so-called “粗人”, they are quietly building their houses and offices, cleaning them, fixing the roads that their expensive cars drive on, repairing their pipes and connecting their electricity; looking after their kids and frying up their favourite plate of char kuay teow. Some are even richer than you think - they are just too humble to show it.
Don’t judge a book by its cover; don’t judge a job just because it relies on physical exertion rather than mental.
Met up with Swee at Catalano’s for pasta, seafood and red wine tonight. Oh, and two bottles of Hoegaarden as well. What’s the occasion? Oh nothing, she just wanted to catch up. And by “catch up” I mean she wanted to bitch and whine. It’s ok though, since I figured that I’m actually quite the good listener.
In between muching on spaghetti with chilly king prawns (woohoo!), eating pan-grilled scallops and calamari, and downing some ‘03 cabernet sauvignon and Hooegarden I did the usual uhuh’s, yup’s, and head nods. Occasionally due to the effects of the alcohol, I tried to be funny. She pauses for a second, does not laugh and then continues on her bitching. As I’ve said before, when women are spilling their guts out to you they don’t need your advice - they just want you to listen. They certainly do not want you to make light of their situations as well.
At the end of dinner, I walked up to the counter to pay but Swee insisted on paying. Oh well, what the heck I let her paid. I swear, I’d be such a gigolo if there were sex involved. I don’t have much a of “man-pride” (大男人主义) really - women can pay for me as much as they want, I have no qualms about it. Have I mentioned that I am quite ok being a house husband to a rich woman? Heheh. Damn, maybe I am meant to be a gigolo. Except that I’m not that tall or alluring enough to whore myself out like that. Shite.
So anyways, this has been a usually mundane Tuesday night liven up by good food, alcohol and good conversation (mostly Swee’s).
* with apologies to Dire Straits and the famous line in their song “Money for nothing”
You don’t have to watch “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy” to know that sometimes, TV news anchors can be a bunch of airheads who merely read words off an autocue.
And I love it when pompous TV newsreaders get it wrong, especially those on tabloid-ish programs. This just in …
Australian commander in East Timor Brigadier Michael Slater appeared this morning in a live cross from Dili to the Nine Network’s Today show, with helmeted and heavily armed Australian soldiers standing behind him.
He was pressed by Today host Jessica Rowe about whether Dili really was as safe as the Australian military claimed, given the presence of armed soldiers at his shoulder.
Pausing briefly, Brig Slater replied: “Jessica I feel quite safe, yes, but not because I’ve got these armed soldiers behind me that were put there by your stage manager here to make it look good.”
“I don’t need these guys here.”
And there would be one more oopsie in the same interview. Read the article for more. Classic.
They say that we wear different masks during our lifetime. Not only do our “faces” change during different phases of our lives, we also project different personas to different ppl. We can be one person to our parents, and another to our siblings, another to our friends, and another to the ppl at work.
To the list I’d like to add: the blogging face.
The face that we as bloggers project to our readers is just like any other faces that we project: it changes during the course of time and also according to our moods. Then again, we could put up a different face completely, obscuring the true self.
But the gist of it is that a blog is merely one of many faces that we choose to present to the world. Catch us at one point in time and you will see one thing, and at another point in time you will see something different. To a newcomer, the differences in personas may be jarring but if you have known the person for a long time, or if you have been reading their blog for a while it might make perfect sense.
My blog is my conversation with the world. Lately I have been blogging a bit about being single, the lack of sex, and the situations that arise out of my condition. Ppl who jumped into the conversation late may form an impression that I’m totally desperate and clueless about love and relationships.
Similarly, Blinkymummy was recently interviewed on Singapore TV. The interviewers, based on their shallow research into Blinkymummy the blogger formed a conclusion that she’s a foul-mouthed girl who swears for the heck of it. If she does it online then she must do it in person too, right?! And expectedly, they asked her to swear on TV. Hahah! Fuck! Now that is stupid.
Without context, swearing is nothing, it has no impact. What was the point? Ever watched a foul-mouthed comedian and laughed? Of course you have. Ever listen to just the swear words and laughed? No? Exactly.
You can know a lot about a person from his or her blog. But don’t expect the person to be the exactly the same in the flesh, and vice-versa. A blog is merely a piece woven into the complete person. But like in the flesh, the blogging face changes over time. Don’t expect to know the person behind the blog if you have only read one month’s worth of entries.
Last night I bumped into an old clubbing friend at Metro City. I was slightly inebriated and this was the conversation I had with him.
Him: I got a girl to introduce to you.
Me: Who?
Him: Kelly*.
Me: Oh I know who she is. I know one of her friends.
Him: Yeah anyway she’s single again. And your name came up.
Me: *way too easily excited because of the alcohol*
Me: What?! Really!? She mentioned my name!?
Him: No no. She asked me if I knew any single guys, and *I* mentioned your name.
Me: Ceh! Like that only ah??? The way you said it made it seem like she’s interested in *me*.
Him: No lah!
Me: That means I still have to do the hard work.
Him: Hey man. At least she knows your existence now. What else do you want?
Me: I want it handed to me on a plate. Heheh.
Him: Dream lah!
Heheh I couldn’t help it. Was killing some time in my parents’ house and was browsing around Technorati. I did a search for Xiaxue. Sometimes there would be gems with intelligent and critical writing about her.
But most times there would be a lot of banal posts from her adoring fans. Tonight I present to you a post by one such fan.
From the post complete with teen-style typing, spelling and grammar:
anyways, was reading xiaxue’s blog jz now and it seems tat she’s got a boyfriend now. being such an extremely high-maintenance girl, it seemed impossible for her to settle down. hehe. xiaxue, if u’re reading this [which is pretty impossible but jz in case] i dun mean it in a mean way. i’m jz saying that itz very hard to find someone tatz up to ur standard. =)
“itz very hard to find someone tatz up to ur standard.”
You know those viral-videos floating in the YouTube universe? Here’s a parody mocking ppl who make those kinda videos. And it’s hosted on YouTube, natch.
