Conversations with Psycho Cabby

Was taking yet another 1am cab ride home and I flagged down an innocuous looking red taxi. The cabby was a 40 something year old chinese man with pale-as-a-fish kind of skin. The whole cab smelled of baby powder which should have signalled to be his innate psycho-ness......(cue scary music) We drove past Suntec City where a lot of spring cleaning has been taking place in anticipation of the big IMF meeting coming up in Singapore.

Me: (attempting to be friendly) Wow, they are really putting up a lot of new plants on the road for the IMF people ah?

Cabby: Ya, every night they are paving the roads. Very inconvenient. Cause traffic jam.

Me: Aiyah, must make things look nice for the important people what.

Cabby: (slowly working up a steam to turn into Mr Hyde) Ha! Important people? You know the cab company send me letter telling me I must be nice to the IMF people who get into my taxi?

Me: Is it?

Cabby: (starting to sound really pissy) Yah! The IMF people ah - get this taxi gift certificates that they can use like money like that. Then the company say must be like tour guide to them you know? If they want electronics, must bring them to Sim Lim. If they want good food, can go Newton....WHAT!!!!!?? Like They so BIG SHOT is it?

PSYCHO CABBY: (his other personality is out!!!!)
If they tell me they want girls, I give them GEYLANG ah! Like all the tourists come ask for girl, I say GEYLANG ah!
The taxi company is so BLARDY big shot is it?? WAHHHHHH! THOSE F****ING BASTARDS!!!!!! You think I got a lot of money bring BIGSHOT to go out is it?? WAH WAH, Lee Hsien Loong very big deal is it???

WAH IF I GET THAT IMF GUY IN MY CABBY, I TEEEELLLLLLLL HIM EVVVVVEEEEERRRRRYTHING BAD ABOUT SINGAPORE AH!!!!

Me:........(thinking 'just get me home, just get me home')

(brief awkward silence in cab while I keep quiet and cabby deflates)

Cabby: ...So Miss, you work very late ah?

Me: No lah. Its ok.

Cabby: Ha. Last time I work for other people, I also work very late. Now I am cabby, I am much happier.

Me:.......!!!!!????!!!!!!!......


Geez. IF this is him much happier, i don't really wanna see him in his last job. LOL.

Theories about Training

Teacher's Day is coming and I have been reading all these blogs by teachers to get an insight into what they are thinking.
Came across two pretty funny articles about the uselessness of training. :)

entertaining reading for anyone who has despised going for corporate training or recall what it felt like to be in a boring classroom. For that matter...for anyone who has fallen asleep in a sermon or bible study which is kinda like a form of training as well...ha.

Let the Teacher/Trainer/Pastor who has watched his audience snooze beware! I also scared ah.

Harry Potter and the Trainer of Dire
http://trainingdoctor.typepad.com/salty/2006/03/harry_potter_an.html

and Why Training Is Useless
http://davidmaister.com/blog/37/

I love my new G5

Last week I finally caved in on 2 years of waiting and bought a new Mac - I am now typing this on my disgustingly beautiful, hedonistic-looking 20 inch G5 desktop. Ahhhhhhh so satisfying. :) I have been masochistically walking in to AppleCentre everytime a new Mac is released, thinking to myself, "This time I will buy it. This time I will buy it."The last Mac I bought was was beloved, second-hand, war-battered G4 Powerbook in 2001 (which I bought for a ridiculously cheap price). It has been hanging on to its last legs together with its elder brother, my G4 PowerMac desktop I got in 2000.

I swore to myself that 2006 would be the year of reckoning: if the school was doing better than I expected, and if I worked hard, I deserved to get a new Mac for Christmas. By March, it looked like a shoe-in. My partner in school rolled her eyes when I mentioned this, and said, "If you already know you are going to buy one at the end of the year, then why don't you just buy it now?"

So here I am, staring with great pleasure at something I have waited so long for. I think its the story of my life.
I think I just like that concept: Good things come to those who wait.
Somehow it makes the thing so much sweeter.

btw, the fact that the new Macs have Intel chips that allow them to reboot as Windows XP? SaAHHHHHHH-WEET.
It feels a little wrong to see Gates' software on Jobs' machine but if it allows me to play Tomb Raider, all power to the Gates!

A Good Book I am Reading Now (courtesy of pretty Photobooth function on G5):
God Talk - Cautions For Those Who Hear God's Voice by Ruth Tucker
very interesting read on how so many of us in Church misunderstand or abuse the term "God spoke to me", "God wants me to..."
I have not reached the conclusion yet but I think it's a pretty honest look at a phenomenon not many of us address in church.
I like it that she specifies the potential stumbling blocks for both the 'Spirit-led' Pentecostals and the 'Word-led' Evangelicals.

Imperfect Past Makes Present Tense

Watched Wildrice's JBJ play on Saturday with my dad. While it was not as flawed as the Straits Times made it out to be, it was definitely uneven and a little disjointed. Act 1 and Act 2 felt like 2 separate plays, each successful but when put together...it just seemed strange. It started as a light-hearted satire, almost like a romp. It ended as a melancholic, sober drama without much sign of the earlier half's breeziness. The distinct drop in tone was a little jarring.

BUT I still liked it. :)

1) for the quote "imperfect past makes present tense". nice line and I see on technorati that many other singaporeans thought so. ha. eleanor wong's got good lines as ever!

2) for the police man scene - easily rodney o's 2nd best scene. quite good, considering he was pretty weak in the first act.

3) for the amazing amazing Pam Oei - I swear the girl can really out-act any one. Every persona switch she did was spot on, pitch perfect and funny. Anything she acts in is just gold i bet. :)

4) for the pretty intense and well-acted lunch scene between "clara tang" - the up and coming civil servant - and the idealistic journalist she can never leave behind. the undercurrent of tension in that scene - sexual, political and otherwise! - was pretty well-done.

5) the strange ending - I don't fully understand it but there was something quite poetic about watching "clara" - the new cynical Singapore - drop her guardedness, her sadness and just dance in grim abandon with the ghost of an idealistic Singapore - "david" - under the momentary flare of national day fireworks. the scene had a little magic i think. :)

Origami Girl

origami
Originally uploaded by neonangel.

I got an email sometime back from a very sweet woman from a women's prayer group I visited sometime in January. Reading that email till this day still touches me deeply to tears.

I suppose one big reason why I am touched is that F - the good woman - is almost a complete stranger to me but she had apparently been faithfully praying for my concerns and petitions.

The other big reason why I am touched is how poignant the images and words are to me this year. It amazes me how God shows people
the right words and visuals to minister right into the core of someone else's secret pain. F said while praying for me, the images just flooded her mind:

"You are a box, come undone. Opened up. Outdoor plain coloured.
Inside, many patterns, designs… fascinating
… but have to open up. Don't be afraid… May even have to pry a bit, pull… stretch, undo the glue, the "comfortability" on some sides

… but to see inside. What lies inside... astounding…

Then you see the real beauty. Already nice as it is, function and place,
but He wants to unravel… and then reform…

Last time, you were flat paper
- die-cut and fitted together to become a box,
Now, He's undoing… and He will fit it all back together again
… it wasn't a mistake, just that it's out grown it's present purpose, function, which is a great thing
… and piecing together with other parts to fit together into something new." 

This year has been many moments of reassessment of who I am. It's so scary to be told to take apart the You that you have been so comfortable living in - all the saftey nets, all the protective shields, all the defences all nicely in place.

But to be told to change it...?
...to reconstruct the You that served its purpose in years that required more silent endurance and quiet soldiering on...
......and unfold and refold it to a You that is more open and vulnerable, more confrontational and starkly honest?

It is such a scary thought.

I am genuinely paranoid that people would shy away if they really knew what was on my mind in all its intensity. I guess sometimes I just don't trust people enough to be able to take what I think or feel and still look at me still with grace, love and yes...genuine friendship.

I have had people tell me before that I am too emotional and too intense for ordinary conversation - so I fall back to making conversation all about the other party. I find it difficult to introduce in my own raw thoughts and instead I give most conversations my processed, pasteurised, homogenised thoughts. Some now feedback to me that I can be so mild-mannered, contained and diplomatic that nobody knows when I am feeling hopelessly down, angry or what.

Some people have told me I am a good listener. I think it is one of my strengths. But something I have realised over time is that listening is not enough. Conversation is a kind of giving - two-way, charitable sharing of each other's thoughts. I am not always capable of doing that - I feel guilty talking about myself and my problems. I feel like a limelight hog so instead I sometimes turn into a cipher. I just morph into a gigantic Listening Ear. And sometimes that's not what people need.

God, what you up to? What do you want to fold and unfold me into?