Dreaming of Fascism
Taken from the Star.
CW
Dreaming of Fascism
By S.B TOH
300
Rating(out of 5): NR
(20th Century Fox)
Starring: Gerard Butler, Lena Headey, Dominic West, David Wenham, Vincent Regan, Rodrigo Santoro
Outnumbered 200 to one, a small army of 300 men cannot wait to tear into the enemy. Blinded in one eye, a warrior shrugs off the injury. “It’s just an eye,” he says. Faced with certain doom, another grins and dreams of “the beautiful death”.
Indeed the entire movie is an ode to the good death: Arms are severed like poetry in mutilation. Dreamlike, decapitated heads fly. Murderous rampages play out like balletic dances, the blood spurting forth artily.
Zack Snyder’s 300 is a musky explosion of hot air. It isn’t enough to be a man in his movie. You have to be a manly man. An alpha male. A true man of action.
Visually stunning and politically repellent, 300 is an unabashed celebration of masculine ideals: martial prowess, valour, imperviousness to pain, obliviousness to death, not to mention the all-important gym membership, without which we would not have had the heady flaunting of abs, pecs, and biceps herein undertaken.
Seldom has killing been prettier, dying more gloried, discipline more revered, belligerence more applauded. And did I mention authoritarianism, euthanasia, xenophobia, and sundry other regressive ideals the movie espouses?
Truth be told, 300 is a veritable fascist wet dream. It is a fantasy of masculine exploit, of the creation of a perfect and perfectly endowed warrior race, of state repression, rabid nationalism and a fear of foreign hordes. And it is not without its appeal, being a typical adolescent movie, and more stylish than most of its ilk.
Based on the Frank Miller graphic novel, which in turn was inspired by the Battle of Thermopylae, where Spartans clashed with Persians, 300 is what you could call a celluloid comic book. Like Robert Rodriquez’s Sin City, also derived from a Frank Miller work, it is the “reelisation” of the comic book. These are exercises not so much in translation as transliteration, with the director as technician and the film as a marvel of visual and technical wizardry. Creativity and vision be damned.
It is the movie as a virtual comic book - in looks and sensibility, in the tendency for simplifying and exaggerating, in its penchant for spectacle.
300 straddles that territory between cool and dumb, somewhere two-dimensional, black and white but also blood red, dreamily savage, partial to s-l-o-w motion, naturally somewhat retarded too, and where death is easy and pretty and quite without gravity.
As they say: Cool!
Duh.
The movie begins with an insight into the Spartan way of life, by way of chronicling the birth and making of King Leonidas (Gerard Butler). In Sparta, the narrator tells us, newborns are judged to be robust or puny, and woe betides the puny little ones, for in the competition that is Spartan Idol, the losers are left to die in the mountains.
The babies deemed worthy of sparing meanwhile live a life of brutalised childhood, handed over to the state to be toughened, punished, made to fight, and finally left to fend for themselves in the wilderness against sabre-toothed wolves. Shirtless. On snow-powdered moonlit nights, no less, but with the narrator waxing poetic all the while.
Only the hardiest may call himself a Spartan, the narrator intones, the hardiest and bravest. And what is the point of all this self-inflicted brutality?
That Leonidas and his bronzed and beefy men may better open cans of whup-ass on the invading Asian hordes led by the Persian King of Kings, Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro). Oh, they needed the harsh training all right, seeing as to the magnitude and monstrosity of the oriental enemy: towel-headed Middle-easterners, masked ninjalike fighters, 10-foot tall Cyclops, machete-armed mutants, evil rhinos, stampeding elephants.
What a collection of freaks.
While grown men might quake, the Spartans think it’s a piece of cake, and, after all, they are free men who fight against the swarming army of a despot who threatens all that the West holds dear.
Clash of civilisation, did you say?
In a world presided over and wracked by neo-cons and a delusional American president who now has modern-day Persia (Iran) in the hairline, 300, while mindless, can hardly be seen as mere entertainment, free of odious ideology or bigotry.
The demonisation of the enemy is pretty literal here, but that’s only to be expected in a simplified, cartoonised movie. 300 is a stripped-down, tricked-up movie comprising basically just three chords (but I don’t know about the truth): mythologizing the occidental, demonising the oriental, and indulging the blood lust.
That is all there is to this movie. Most of the filmmakers’ energy seems to have been poured into buffing the movie’s visuals to a new-penny sheen. Shot against a blue screen in specially designed sets for the most part, 300 is heavily stylised, and it looks great - for the first hour anyway, burnished, gilded, shadow-filled, mythical.
And then it begins to feel like a videogame, a music video and a comic book all rolled into one. One wearies of the eye candy, and the relentless male bravado grows tiresome too. The movie doth protest too much its masculinity, that fragile thing that man is forever grappling with because, as Norman Mailer once wrote, he “can hardly ever assume he has become a man.”
A woman is; a man must strive to be, and oh how he strives in this movie.
This tale of brave Greeks is a geek’s dream come true, but it is also positively fascist.
Belian BBQ - Jan 29, 2007
Hellooooo all! Hope all the Belianers had a wonderful, wonderful CNY! I'm sorry for the late posting; but since the blog is dead i guess i'll be forgiven anyways.
Here are the pictures from the most recent Belian BBQ that we had through my camera's lens. (ahhh such sweet memories - remember when it went into the lake?)
Here's a shoutout to hunyee, in case she's reading: Be yourself down there in Aussieland. Make Belian proud, and live life to your fullest! :D All the best! :D
How the night went:
It didn't start off very well, with Jamie Yong already starting to bitch at Jamie Khoo when i arrived a full forty five minutes late for the BBQ (typical hashie timing), complete with a bowl of undercooked potato salad. Apparently there was a technical glitch with the fire, but who cares! Belian was back together again, and everyone was exchanging news about themselves, other friends, teachers, schools... the level of bitching was at an all time high. Our two much maligned chefs, however, were busy preparing the feast that awaited the rest of us...
I don't know about you, but those mushrooms were the best i've ever eaten in my life. They were produced in batches, and each batch was quickly devoured by Evelyn, Evelyn, Evelyn, Evelyn, and Evelyn in record time. Kudos to the Boon Gang for helping to distribute the mushrooms to the other Belianers so that we could all have a taste. :D
Pn Paramjeet: Are you sure you can cook mushrooms this way?
With Jamie Yong and Pn Paramjeet manning the now lit fire, Jamie Khoo turned his attention to the
ikan pari...
HY: Eh, so can eat already or not? Hungry la!
Abel: The prognosis, Doctor?
Ray: There's a 50/50 chance this will turn out well.
Annnnnnnd... looks like it did!
With our stomachs becoming increasingly satiated, we soon drifted away from the buffet table to catch up on the latest happenings in Belianland. However meals were still being dished up by our resident chefs, and that was enough to keep us in orbit around the buffet tables...
"HII! MY NAME IS TAN JIA WEN, AND I DON'T KNOW HOW TO USE THIS CAMERA COZ GOT NO FLASH WAN!"
"PLEASE let this fish be tasty, please let this fish be tasty..."
And these three found it tasty!
"Ohhh, so THIS is how you use a camera..."
Jamie Khoo bows to the wisdom of internationally-acclaimed food critic, Miss Leong CY.
It wasn't ALL about eating and talking, though. We had local comedian Satchid Dev do his thing for the night, as well as several lame jokes being tossed around, the funniest courtesy of Miss Tan JW.
JW : Why did the man, in a moving aeroplane, suddenly tear up the toilet seat from the toilet in the aeroplane?
...
..
.
..
...
JW: Because he's crazy larh!
Jamie Yong shows his annoyance at the lukewarm reception his well-prepared meals received, and stalked off to a corner to nibble on garlic bread.
Lit is skinny, but that doesn't mean his appetite is small...
LOL. So that was the photo essay of a very warm and fun night. Let's do this more often, alright?
Don't take anything i say here too personally alright? :D
love,
hashie.
Labels: makan
jia wen
happy cny everyone! =))
from jia wen =]
Our titles should be like this so that we know who posts what laa.. isshh.. isn't that better instead of signing off at the END? anyway, i was quite happy at the gathering that day after finding out that chiddy and abel has grown stronger.. =P the pictures that follow explains why..
I feel really sad for bidding goodbye to hun yee.. as u guys know, one of my close friends maa.. so of course sad right?? who am i goin to call when i'm all confused!? whose tummy am i gonna press!?! (not that she has a tummy like she used to.. and not that i'm STILL as mean as last time laa.. its just a metaphor.. cheh wah.. =P) sighh.. i'm sooo going to miss u darling! woot!sadly, everyone's going everywhere.. i, myself am also going some place sometime.. =( but i'll always keep the belian memories close at heart.. remembering every single time ur lives were tortured..whoops.. i meant, remembering all the fun we had together.. i mean, ok la.. i talk too much and CAN irritate the shit out of u.. but admit it, i DID at least bring 0.1% joy to ur life right?? (cepat sokong ku, chid!!) haha.. anyway, enough with my crap la.. enjoy the pics.. =)
Bringing sexy back.
Hello. We meet again.
It's rather not fair that only Chengy is making an effort to keep this blog running, considering all of us were a part of Belian. I am not going to go on a 'What happened to "Belian never dies" huh?' rant...simply because I know you all very busy laa. College and all. I myself also, quite busy. STPM in ____days =) But at least once in a while try to update something la, maybe get-together news, wedding announcements, change-of-gender announcements, Bobifications....you get my drift la. If there's something new that you think we can all share...then type it out la. Like, Norsham retiring soon (I heard only) If you need the password and username, you can either get it from me or Chengy. Especially to those I always see online...hehehe...you can't really say you soooo busy right? A few words is good enough...
So you get it la right? No obligations, but do try, okay? No need to go and old grandmother story all...even though that would be appreciated too =D I'm getting bored easily nowadays. Because if you don't try from now, I don't think we'll be all that much in contact in 10 years time. And then, how to come to Lit's wedding? Ha...now you see right right!!
The SAM people are leaving soon. Hun Yee, Weng Yu.....and if you consider Belian&Friends, then See Weng also. So if you never return them money yet, faster ya, cos Chinese New Year is coming up soon =D
I just spent the last hour or so reading up all the old posts here, and I noticed that I, for one, seem to have changed from what I was 2 years ago. From that perennial crapper. I don't know for the better or for the worse la, somehow, the old bullshit machine doesn't crank up that easily anymore. Maybe we're all just getting a little old. Or maybe its just me.
I think I'll list out what I like about you now, just so I never forget. And I'll just hope this part of you never changes.
Abel - "Die another day" attitude
Cheng Wei - Maturity. And the one who unites us the most.
Ernest - Words can't describe.
Lit - Always there when you need him. And even when you don't.
Ray - Will never judge you.
Han Sheng - Oversized heart.
Ian - Rational.
Pui Shen - Accomplishments galore.
Grace - Incredibly human.
Guang Yu - A friend indeed.
Hun Yee - Someone who will listen.
Jia Wen - Everyone needs a lighthearted friend...
Evelyn - Proof that one can succeed and still remain rooted on her two feet. Loving.
Melissa - Sweet like teh tarik.
Alex - I dunno how to say lah. But he's my Lexxieeee!
Chai Yee - Silent simplicity.
Weng Yu - Always has a smile on, whatever you say to him.
Yi Jiet - Can never be found guilty of not trying.
You must be wondering, since when got so few people only in Belian? Well...don't be noisy and fill up the blanks if you want lahh...I very tired already. You know I'm sick anot arr?? Harr??? See...of course la you don't know...I never blog about it here ma. HINT HINT. Heh. Okay then, I shall not further irritate you with my nonsensical ramblings. I know this is quite a drop from Chengy quality, but bear with me, will you? And if you have any Belian gathering pictures or something, feel free to post them up here okay? Not everyone got digicam..hehehe..
Okay okay. I have to go now. Post something okay? Promise? Yay! (I feel like a bigger idiot than usual, talking to myself and all) Have a nice day then, and rock on babehhhh =)
Chiddy.
Sigh
And that's what all of you are thinking on the inside.
Tag
10 years ago I wasin Standard 2 something in SKDU. Zuhal, was it? Anyways, I just transferred here from SMK Sri Gombak (long story), so I guess I didn’t exactly like the place. I still remember my first day: waiting for bleeding hours in the canteen while the office worked out the paperwork of my transfer and assign me to a class. So anyway, I ended up in Zuhal, where I was just basically very quiet and low profile (weren’t we all back then… well, except maybe Satchid and Ernest). I remember Khien Koon and Jia Wei from back then; though now Khien Koon should still be in Aus and Jia Wei in God-knows-whatever hell slackers go to. I also remember hitting someone; but exactly who it was remains hazy to me…
Aside from that, I remember I was involved in this stupid POL class (People’s Own Language) where I was taught Mandarin. OK, maybe not taught, more like made to memorize. I can still remember it until now… zhe shi shou, zhe shi kou, zhe shi bi zi, zhe bu shi er duo… Useless crap…. I also went to mental arithmetic class, Aloha if memory serves. This was mostly bull as well; though a hell lot more helpful than the Mandarin classes. Up till today I use their ‘teachings’; it’s almost like reflex to me now. Can still remember the stuff: “Plus nine equals to minus one plus ten”. Geez, was everything taught back then purely memory work? Plus I learnt how to use an abacus… how many people in my generation could say that? Eat that, you n00bs…. The art of abacus will probably die out together with the taukes of Chinese medicine halls.
There used to be this fat little kid who went for mental arithmetic classes every Saturday morning, just like me. Quite a quiet little kid; but sometimes he’ll just talk and talk and talk suddenly. Used to sit next to him for classes too, though I never really saw him around in school (hey, back then, your own classroom was practically your entire universe, so it wasn’t really that surprising). You guys might have heard of him; guy by the name of Ray Mun? And I swear to whatever God that claims to exist, HE was the one who spiked me with itchy seeds. I don’t really know what the real name is, but there’s this palm-like plant with the small yellow and red kernels? Yeah, the juice causes severe itchiness. And I swear man, though I can’t prove it, Ray was the one who planted them on my chair one day. He’s not as goody-two-shoes as you guys think he is….
5 years ago I wasin F1 Adil of SMKBU. Came with only about 5 other people from SKDU; 2 of them Bobs. The other three were Shiaun Wei, whom I already know; Jonathan Ling, a little bastard if there ever lived back then (could still be now, I dunno…) and Eugene (Mak, was it?). Their standard there quite low lor… coz I mean like, 1 Adil was supposed to be the best class, but the ‘entry requirement’ was 5As from PMR out of 7. +_=”. I think it was harder NOT to get 7As in PMR than to get them… My class was OK, thankfully enough. Since it was the ‘best’ class, there were not too many Bobs in there. So overall things were pretty quiet in my class, even though the rest of SMKBU was a freaking gangster school, no shit. It was famous back then la, you could try asking the teachers in DU.
Despite the bad reputation, I wasn’t really ever in any grave danger there. The teachers (for my ‘best’ class at least) were actually pretty damned good. I still remember my class teacher who taught us Sejarah and BM, Pn Zuhairah or Zuhaidah or something. Now she was one damned good teacher, even though she was only about 30 something. Can you imagine, she actually brought spices for us to examine in our Sejarah class so we knew wtf the Bob Sultans got their asses owned for? And she was damn nice too. My English teacher was another excellent teacher; possibly the best English teacher I ever had. Her classes were creative and fun ones; you definitely learnt a lot of things not found in your silly-bus. The stuff was always out of the box; definitely increased my general knowledge and worldliness exponentially. And I was practically beyond God-like (in other words, Cheng Wei) in the English subject, I always enjoyed her classes.
But I’m still kinda sore over one test paper or mine she marked back then… Got 67 out of 70. Got 8 out of 10 for the fill in the blanks section; but later on I found out that my ‘organisms’ was correct! Dammit, how many other F1 students even KNEW what ‘organisms’ mean?! And for one essay I got a full 30 marks; but she later took it back and slashed it down to 29, because “Sorry la, but 30/30 means it is perfect, and there’s no such thing as the perfect essay. So I have to give you 29”. Then for the SECOND essay, I got 29 out of 30 as well, because I wrote that the king cobra was the largest venomous snake in the world. She wrote “Is that factual?” and deducted a point for that because she taught I was making it up. Bloody hell, it was correct la!!!!!!!!!!! I could have gotten like, FULL 70/70 man! I got conned I tell you…
Urm, anyway… My class wasn’t too bad la. People like Shiaun Wei, John Wong, Wen Jieh and all were in my ‘gang’; as well as the other guys like Jian Lun, Nik Izzat and Choon Hong (did I get that right? I can’t remember the exact spelling. And btw Choon Hong, it wasn’t me in that YouTube video, I swear…) But I got to know the nerds such as Tim Weng, Brian, etc too. And let me tell you, these nerds are the authentic nerds you know… you think the Belian people are nerds, but they can’t really measure up to these people. I mean, they used to read Stephen Hawking as their PLEASURE reading. No shit… and all other manner of shit that were freaking deep, man… and if I think it is deep, you people have no chance in hell of even understanding how deep that is. What #$@%&^* F1 kid reads A Brief History of Time, man?!? The girls were pretty OK too; though no chun chicks in hindsight I guess. I believe YJ, PS and Chid already met Bavani (the one who came closest to my owning-ness in Eng… closest la, but still quite far) and Cheryl… I believe Amanda (Chong, I think) was from DU also, and I remember that girl who sang “Greatest Love of All” damn well… damned good rendition. Rosalyn or Rossell I believe…
Gangsters and gang fights were a big problem, though they never really affected us. In perfect honesty, they were mostly people from Kayu Ara, because this was the school closest to Kayu Ara. They rode motorcycles around on one wheel (yes, the Mat Rempits are their graduating class), pontenged like fuck, beat each other up, extorted money from other students, thrashed up the whole canteen once in one of their gang-fights (I still remember that; I was there. Right after Jogathon. One minute eating my mee in peace, the next all hell breaks loose, and broken glass flies everywhere and tables get overturned. My friends and I just calmly took our food elsewhere to eat, that’s how common gang-fights were) and in one memorable incident, a bra was thrown down from one of the upper floors down to the badminton court during the school tournament. Don’t ask me, even I don’t know the details…
1 year ago I washaving my brains freaking liquefied in Belian. And ironically, by two extremes. One was the amazingly lifeless and nerdy atmosphere caused by those neurotic study-freaks up front, and the other was the mind-blowing stupidity and shallowness shown by the people at the back. Individually, each one was bad enough; but luckily when you mixed them both, you got some kind of normalcy. But still, that wasn’t good at all. It’s like being stuck in a glass room with the 12pm sun shining straight down at you, but also with an air-con in the room blowing straight at you. I mean, sometimes you might feel normal, but sometimes the extremes just made you sick.. Aside from the obvious kiasuness which Belian is already famous for, I guess the only other word I could describe them with is neurotic. Yes, they had no sense of reality. All of them were living their whole lives focusing on just one bloody aspect of their lives. Sure, they can score 90 for every fucking paper, but they can’t even take a bus or something as menial as that. I won’t go so far as to say that their education is useless, but still, come on la… you get what I mean, right?
Everyone was pretty damned stressed and tensed that year due to the SPM. Ironically, the cause can also be rearranged to describe the effect: PMS. All damn tulan la that year; the ugly side definitely came up (the table-booking incident comes to mind), and an increase in the number of bitchings making their way around the bitching mills was noticed. But more often than not, while everyone who heard it would AGREE with the bitchings, nobody could ever really say anything about it because they were as likely as not to be guilty of the same thing too. I can’t honestly say that I didn’t piss anyone off during that time; but I can’t remember doing it over studies. I can honestly say I never set out to screw anyone academically, or hid agendas behind people’s backs just so I could obtain some imperceptible edge. I pissed people off for a lot of freaking reasons, so I guess you can call me whatever I want; but as long as I am not guilty of being kiasu, that’s all that matters to me.
Still, if you didn’t look at the kiasuism, individually the Belian people definitely rocked la. No matter how dumb they could be at times, there was always some sort of coherence and understanding among each other. There was nobody there who was soooooooooooooo dumb that he/she couldn’t really get what the other Belian people were saying. If somebody said something funny in front, everyone would laugh because the joke would fit to the tastes of everyone there. True, it was always the same few people making the jokes, but at least it was everyone who was laughing, right? No matter what clique they belonged to in Belian, somehow there was an understanding la. It’s not like in Jati or Cengal where they got different groups who didn’t talk to each other at all and that kind of shit. Now, I see ex-classmates from those classes walk past each other in the hall in college without batting an eye or saying anything at all. No matter what gang people belonged to back in Belian, we could always still talk to each other at some level. I even saw YJ speaking to Boon once; something I’ve not seen before in the last 3 years of high school.
I used to go AWOL rather often to Keledang and generally spent as much time with the Keledang people as I did with Belian. I preferred the Keledang people’s attitude, you know? More laid-back, more grounded in reality. God must have blessed them with the revelation that getting 127 A1+++’s in the SPM wasn’t the true meaning of life. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that all of them were slackers, but all of them did know how to plan their life out. They didn’t live to study like Belianers did, and they never had that nervous, stressed, foul-mood atmosphere that always seems to hang around Belian people. They were a simpler species; whose recesses were spent stealing fries from each other (with Weed usually being the one who stole la), and not sitting in class doing past year Add Maths questions. True, Belian practically owned the school; dominating in practically every way possible; but at what cost? I’m not exactly sure whether the price we paid was worth it, after all was said and done. Even now, people still refer to us as ‘you Belianers’ as if we were a different species from them. I don’t see any other class who is still being called by their class names…
There weren’t as many (good) jokes and fun times in Belian last year compared to the previous ones; but it was still pretty damned good nonetheless. Looking at each Belianer individually, everyone probably brought something to the table; for better or for worse. We might have been missing some things; but I can’t really even suggest what that might be. We had almost all and every type of personality present, and best of all, there was a connection somehow or other among all these diverse people. That was good. At least the nerds still appreciated a good laugh; even though they never offered to make others laugh. I have to admit, everyone never seemed at their peak in F5 somehow. There was always the sense of distraction somehow. I know that for myself, I couldn’t be creative for flaming fuck back then. Even if I had hours in front of the computer, somehow I would just stone. It was as if the nerdy atmosphere had taken away the part of my soul which could produce and appreciate pleasure. It was like my life had been put on hold; waiting, always waiting. Always nervously waiting for something. When I look back at the stuff I wrote back then, I feel like burning them all up, because they were all just BS. I’m sure everyone must have felt the same thing in their own way too.
But I could probably go on forever with this. Basically, I’m pretty damned glad the year was over. I dunno whether anyone has any regrets about how they went through F5… probably not… but I do. I wished I had not let the oppressive atmosphere get to me. I should have been better than that. Some people changed for the worse because of it; myself probably included. The jadedness has never really left me. Belian helped train me, it was true… but into what, and for better or worse, is harder to answer.
5 most recent songs I listened toShit, can’t remember. I’ll just list out 5 I’ve USUALLY been listening to nowadays la ok?
- Shirley Walker - Superman TAS
- Busted - Crashed the Wedding
- Peter Gabriel - The Book of Love
- Indecisive - Empty Decorations
- Celine Dion & Peabo Bryson - Tale as Old as Time
5 songs I know all the words toUrm, dunno if I actually know 5 songs…
- Michael Buble - Home
- Billie Holiday - Am I Blue
- Anastasia theme - At the Beginning
- Jim Brickman & Wayne Brady - Beautiful
- Ed McCain - I’ll Be
Yeah, turns out I do.
Ideal place to run away to:
The Canadian wilderness. A cabin in central Canada among the steppes. I just know.
5 things I really want
- Strength of Hercules
- Wisdom of Solomon
- Speed of Mercury
- Stamina of Atlas
- Courage of Achilles
5 things I should be doing- Biology
- Chemistry
- Physics
- Statistics
- Mathematics
5 biggest joys in my life
This is a difficult one…
- Myself
- Reading
- Left alone
- Food
- Star Wars
5 people I’ll tagWhat’s the fragging use, nobody has time to do this shit anyway. So might as well I be ridiculous about it.
- Pui Shen
- Yong Jing
- Shu Wei
- Lit Rong- Datin Norizan
CW
I played scrabble last week.
I played scrabble last week. I know what you're thinking. Wow. Well, can it. I'm the one dishing sarcasm out here, not you wannabes. Becker's back on Monday nights; beware my power. But like I said, I started playing scrabble again. And it wasn't for fun, it was competitively. Like, virtually the first time I touched a scrabble set again since a somewhat ill-fated scrabble tournament last year, and it was to play competitively again. In case you haven't gotten the hint, the last tournament didn't exactly go very well. But I don't wanna talk about it. You can go ask YJ or Shu Wei. I haven't played seriously since then, and you can imagine how much I regretted that when I was informed by Cher and YJ that there was this scrabble tournament coming up; care to try out for the HELP team?
I'll be honest, I've not scored 20 points in scrabble since last year. But since my co-curricular participation in college is a chubby round zero, I decided that now was more or less the right time to start grabbing at straws. OK, I said. Bring it on. There would be tryouts, though. Bring... it... ON. Alright, turn up on one Friday after 12 at the DSA for the tryouts, simple as that. But then, disaster struck: I started thinking. That's never good. I had the following revelation: Hey, since YJ and I are trying out for scrabble, why not bring in Shu Wei again? It'll just be like old times. Besides, wasn't she our best player back then? Used to wipe the floor with me? Yes, why don't I try to get Shu Wei? Besides, YJ was not really sure if she wanted to join in the first place; getting SW might convince her for sure.
So one dark, gloomy, ominous night, as lightning flashed in the lashing rain outside, I called Shu Wei at home. Hi, may I speak to Shu Wei please? Shu Wei? This is Cheng Wei. Hi. Don't hang up..... The conversation kinda went downhill from there, but the gist of it was that she was not interested. Why not? persisted I. Lots of projects. Nemo argo forever! What? Urm... never mind. Seriously, no? Yes, no. You're wasting your credit, CW. Oh come on. Surely there must be something? Hmmmm.... Anything? Well, I'll go for scrabble, IF..... For the second time that night, the conversation went downhill. As in, got kicked down the side of a cliff downhill. A cliff with jagged rocks, downhill. Jack-got-off-easy-just-breaking-his-crown, downhill. You get the idea. But again, I'd rather not talk about it. By the end of the night, 21grams of soul lighter but with Shu Wei's agreement to join the scrabble tryouts in hand, I messaged Yong Jing to tell her the ...'good'... news.
I lived through the few days till the tournament, in spite of that pony-tailed ADP Davy Jonesess' efforts to hawk tickets to anybody and everybody. Then Friday of the tryouts came, and it was time to test my natural skill at scrabble. Cher Hao was there... and so was that heartless, merciless ice queen... and oh yeah, Shu Wei too. Anyways, it was to be for 3 hours, you could play as many games as you like. At the end of the day, al that they'd look at was your spread though. No problem. There were about... 20? Maybe less... people there, vying for the 10 slots in the HELP team on sale. So my chances were about... 50/50. Bring it on. Urm... I can't remember what happened next, but basically, I got systematically creamed. I got beaten by Christine by more than 80 points.... I made up for that by creaming some noob by... can't remember. Then I got beaten in the very last game by... *drumrolls*... two points.
Literally.
I think my spread was positive; but then again, I've already made clear that anything involving my thinking generally can't be relied upon. Yong Jing played 2 games, won both... and promptly stopped playing anymore, ensuring her spread would be positive in the end. Always thought she was a clever girl... SW though, had a spread of -40 something. I wouldn't have believed that, actually... As far as I remember, she was the only one of us 3 who used to bingo back in F5. But she had looked stressed in the past few days... either stressed, or the corruption of her merciless soul was peeping out. Either way, that can't be good. Sure enough, I was later informed that YJ was among the 5 who made the team for sure; the rest of us plebians would have to duke it out gladiator style for last 5 places; the sadistic idea of the guy named after a vulgar body part. But even later, I was informed that there would be no need; said anatomically-christened ordure orifice was supposed to hand in the list of participants that same week; and he had deemed SW and I worthy for his list. Looking back at it, that's probably not something I'm proud of.
The next week would be the last week of practice we would be getting before the competition: the inaugural Taylor's Inter-College Scrabble Competition / Psychological Torture Camp. I ended up playing scrabble during most of my free hours, and even stayed back most days to do the same. Oh, and getting systematically juiced by Yong Jing and Shu Wei, of course. I was kinda surprised how low my standard was now. I lured three n*rds from my class to play against me; beat them by 100 points. But that'd be like SF loosing by only 1 goal: It should have been more. And besides, these people were more noob than... Ras. Ugh. One day, I was even "invited" (read: ambushed and conned) to listen to an MC who apparently used to be a national scrabbler talk about strategy. Who's betting I didn't listen to a french-connection-united-kingdom-ing word he was saying? Congratulations, you're not retarded. Keep up the good work.
I just have to mention something here about our handler, Mr Reproductive-Body-Part You (and I dare you prove me wrong). He, to put it simply, lived up to his name. Despite having ought to have informed us about the transport arrangements the week before, he... jeng jeng jeng... didn't. Wow. Is it any wonder Cher Hao is his friend? But seriously, he makes even Cher Hao look like bleeding Superman. His excuse for not informing us about the transport arrangements throughout the week? "I had LAN". Yeah, no shit. I believe you. You're named for one, after all. And besides, as he himself said (with a proud sniff): "I have no transport problems". Silence for a heartbeat; then punctuated by my "Good for you. Now how about the rest of us?" It is ironic when I think about it now, really... I mean, how can someone who was named after a certain anterior male anatomical extremity, act so much like the body part directly 180 degrees behind it?
When discussing the matter of transport further, he offered to bring us there to Taylor's. The girls were all for it at first, until he asked SW where she lived. Seksyen 17, she replied. Huh? was the answering unintelligible grunt. Is that like, near Seksyen 2? Never mind, she answered sweetly, all the while eyeballing him with something between horror, disgust, amusement and pity; We'll find our own way. Are you sure? I'm fetching Cher Hao; after all, he lives near me. Wait a minute, I chipped in at this point with a frown. You know where Cher Hao lives? Yeah. Where? BU. So you know BU, but you don't know Seksyen 2 or Seksyen 17? Where the hell do you live? TTDI. What the knn mcb dns etc etc etc...... I know resolutely swore that I'd limp my way to Taylor's on crutches rather than have anything to do with him and transport.
Luckily enough, transport for the three of us was arranged smoothly enough; with YJ offering (coerced?) to fetch us there. Despite minor incidents involving my housing area's security guard detaining me for suspiciously running out of housing area at 6.00 in the morning, a taxi driver exquisitely pissed due to my lateness (due to aforementioned security guard) and SW being slightly late, we managed to assemble at YJ's house all alive and relatively well, where we traded offensive stories about Mr-Body-Part for a while before we set off at about 7.15 for Taylor's. Our main problem was that we did not know the way exactly. My calls to Sonia went unanswered, while my calls to Wai Wai turned up an even more gruesome result: an unintelligible, groggy, disgruntled Wai Wai over the phone. NOT something I'll be doing again in the future. However, thanks mainly to the enterprise of YJ's mother, we found our way there in one piece, and (would you believe this to have happened in Malaysia?) on time, reaching there just at 8am.
Of course, needless to say, being on time meant that we were a good 20 minutes earlier than anybody else. We could not register right away, as we had to wait for the whole delegation before we could register ourselves. However, SW helped fill the time (and the chalice of my mortification) by regaling the few of our fellow HELP students who had already arrived with stories of the ADP Summer Variety Concert of the night before. By the time incompetent incarnate arrived (with friend, and Voon), I heartily greeted him by bellowing out his name across 30metres in welcome. Strangely enough, he did not seem pleased with my PDA (public display of affection). Registration followed after the ex-national-scrabbler Bob arrived; as did our splitting with RM25 each in 'registration fees' for the tournament. Hah. A con if I ever saw one. If I wanted to pay RM25 to be put in a cold room for 2 days without food.... well, shoot me.
The first three games of the tournament were to be played before lunch. Trauma from the previous night's high-jinks, not listening to Smashmouth's Allstar for a few hours before the tournament, running to OU at 6am and arguing over my nationality with the security guard took its toll; I lost all three. Each game worse than the previous one, and I can prove it. Lost the first one by 20, second one by 30, third by 40. Well, I guess I'm nothing if not consistent. Still, being beaten by a damn n*rdy looking guy whose Christian name is 'Teddy' probably isn't going to help my self-esteem very much... but in my defence, it was goddamn freezing! My body's temperature regulation has always been a bit screwy... I can go somewhere that is freezing, and not feel or be cold at all; my body is still warm, while everyone else freezes in blue hell. Then after some time, my temperature suddenly drops and I feel bleeding cold. All those Mr Moay classes have proved this; I'm not making this up. So one hour into the competition found me wondering when was lunch, and whether someone would try to set Taylor's on fire that day....
Lunch finally arrived, and since my game ended late, the other HELP-ians had gone off to lunch ahead of me. Oh what, you expected them to wait for me? With me being me? And them being Belianers? Hah. Not on your life. On my way to meet them I just stood in the Taylor's courtyard under the sun for 5 minutes. You don't need to be Superman to enjoy some heat, dammit. A short walk down the road led me to Asia Cafe, where the rest were already seated. Damn, they actually had like, food here. Serious. Food and chap fan were not synonyms in Taylor's that's for sure. HELP had a great variety... Chinese chap fan, Indian chap fan or Malay chap fan. Or if you really wanted something different, you could have bread. But this place had like, everything. Even a bak kut teh store. Limpek would've loved this place (instead, he's feasting in Bob's Corner, but enough on that...). I ordered a chicken/duck rice, though I must have made a mistake on ordering, because what got to me in the end was chicken/duck bones rice. Hmmm.... guess the grass does always seem greener... but then again, that's what my drink tasted like, so I guess I'm not entitled to talk.
Mercifully, lunch was relatively long, and there were only another four games before we were freed. Recharged by my good friend yellow sunlight and stomach filled with gnawed-up chicken and duck bones, I felt better, and despite not having Allstar to listen to, I felt confident of doing better. And I did. How? Providence. MUAHAHHAHHAHAHA! Some noob came my way. As in, CEG kind of noob. She says she comes from Tanjung Malim. That was all I really needed to know, actually. I pawned her for 196 points. MUAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHA! Ok lah, quite bad, I know... but I never said I wasn't. And in actual fact, I kind of went easy on her after a while... I mean... I just didn't have the heart to massacre her any worse than I did... In fact, I even helped her score 20 points one turn... stopped her clock for her when she forgot... let her keep her turn even though her made-up words got rejected... Adam? Wtf? I mean, I know "Eve" is a word, but come on....
Well, mainly thanks to this game, I finished the day with a positive spread. Not bad for only like, two wins out of 6 games in the whole day. I got beaten by Shu Wei though... by 19 points. She was looking like, sooooo listless that day, so I though I could go easy when playing with her and still win. But in the end, I got smacked. She's got this damned irritating habit of looking so down and out and hopeless... then hits you for like, 30 points by putting two tiles. Damn it. I was kinda scrambling to keep up and on the back foot throughout the whole game, and I actually feel kinda lucky to have lost by only 19, considering I was some 50 or 60 points behind her at one point of the game. Sheesh, so much for all my pre-game pledges to cream her for like, a billion points to avenge my partner Voon's defeat at her hands/claws... I protested and lamented my loss afterwards to both YJ and SW; yet for some reason they both seemed unsympathetic. Indeed, YJ even expressed muttered sentiments to SW to the effect of how glad she was that SW beat me; otherwise who knows how insufferable I would have been had I won... Hmph. Incorrigible females! That's two people off my Christmas list. Now all I have to do is get a Christmas list....
The day ended at long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long last; and it was a mix-up as to who was the more relieved by it and eager to get home; YJ to get back to writing her personal statement, SW to get back to studying for her exams, me to get away from Cher and his cocky friend (couldn't resist the pun), or both YJ and SW, and the majority of my HELP teammates, to get away from me. In any case, we all agreed we were exultant that the day was at an end, and that's all that mattered. Transport back was a problem; but once again the most excellent and generous (not to mention Mercedes Benz furnished) YJ came to the rescue. We had to listen to a rather exquisitely long rant of hers concerning the incompetents she played against, but I found it very amusing to be sure. I just had to imagine how she'd rant about ME.... SW on the other hand was consoling herself by taking potshots of me by references to the previous night's gender-bending performance, while YJ did me no favours by constantly agreeing with SW, and also declaring it the best value she had ever received for four bucks.
Actually, I knew it had been a bad journey back shortly before being dropped off at 1U by YJ's dad; and also got the impression that it could be a lot worse. We had stopped off to pick up YJ's younger sister earlier, and I had had some previous bad experiences with her before. Though I'm sure she does not remember me, I will be hard pressed to forget having her throw magnets into my water when I was at YJ's house last year; no doubt in a rather childish though sincere attempt at assassinating me. Anyway, shortly before arriving at OU, said young girl, all of 10 years of age, had been gawking at me for a short while; with what seemed to be a knowing, amused look on her face all the time. She then leaned forward to whisper something to her elder sister in front, who promptly barked out a laugh and callously mentioned "See? Even my sister knows". Know what, little girl? I asked tensely, with saccharine smile in place. The little girl just shook her head, with mischievous smile still on her face. YONG JING! I wailed indignantly. What?! She said defensively. All I showed her were the pictures! I would never show her the video! What video, went the little girl as a matter of course. Oh, the one you can only watch once you're 18, said YJ. Awww... let me watch... jie jie... bawled the 10-year-old, shaking her sister's shoulder imploringly. Sigh. This is going to be a looooooooooooooooong life.....
Despite having voiced misgivings, grave reluctance and half-hearted threats to pull out of the competition after the first day of games, the next day found both girls preparing themselves for yet another day of scrabble; albeit with no small amount of grumbling. The arrangements were only slightly different from the previous day’s: SW had gone to Taylor’s with her friend after church, while I had to be rescued from the 1 Utama taxi stand by YJ after having been stranded at home a good half an hour waiting for the taxi. It’s a long story… the first day, I had gotten up at 5.30am, and called a taxi to wait for me at the OU taxi stand at about 6, figuring that by the time I walked there, it would be just in time. However, I had barely put on my shoes when I was informed that the taxi had already arrived and was waiting. Since it was a good kilometre or more from my house to the designated taxi stand, I started cursing and running there; though of course, the cursing stopped once I ran out of breath. However, just as I arrived at the entrance of my housing estate, I was hailed rather alarmingly by the security guard, who asked to see identification.
Looking back on it, I can probably see how I would have looked suspicious. It was about 6am, I was dressed all in black, with a bag in my possession, running like a bat out of hell out from the housing estate. Damn, I was probably lucky the trigger-happy Bob didn’t shoot me on sight. And since I hadn’t brought any ID on my person except for my student ID, we had a long, not-very-eloquent discussion as to my nationality and my possession of the knapsack. In the end I prevailed in convincing him that I was not a Chinese national who had just robbed a house and was (somewhat foolishly it would seem to me) making my getaway right in front of the guardhouse; but by that time the taxi had already left. I watched it leave from 200 metres behind him in the dark, in fact. I had to call again, only for the very same taxi to come back. Needless to say, the man was pissed. But in any case, YJ and SW had most unsympathetically labeled me a fool after I had narrated my troubles to them; and had wisely suggested that I get the taxi to come to my house next time. Which was exactly what I did on Sunday morning, and it blew up quite spectacularly in my face, I assure you. Whether they didn’t do addresses very well, or the taxi company blackmailed my number, I do not know; all I know is, it just didn’t work, and YJ had to pick me up from OU.
Since no registration was required the next day, the time before the competition passed without incident. True, we all looked the same as we did after a double period of Cik Liang last year, but at least nothing was screwed up this time. The games commenced on time today (WOW!) and ominously, perhaps as a sign of the things to come, I won my first game by 2 points. Yeah, 2 points. Literally. Now I know how it’s like on the winning side of a 2 point difference, for once. And it felt good. But as I said, that could not possibly be a good omen… And sure enough, it wasn’t. For my next opponent, I got matched to play against aforementioned ex-national scrabbling Bob. My reaction in no particular order was: Damn. Sigh. Bring it on. And surprisingly, halfway through the game, I was leading him by 70 points. Seriously. Then I took a trip to bingo hell. Just so those unfamiliar with scrabble know, a bingo is when you use up all 7 of your tiles. You get a bonus 50 points for that. After his bingo we were level. OK… bring it on. Then the bastard pulled the stunt again. And to cut a long story short, I lost by 83 points. Knnmcbdns….. Oh well. He beat YJ by the same score the previous day; I guess that’s a respectable score (relatively).
I then played what would turn out to be the second-unluckiest game of scrabble in my life (more on unluckiest later). I was playing against this girl who was probably of the same standard as myself; yet for some reason I had the worst luck. Personally, I blame God. He hates me. Anyways, I virtually did not touch a high-scoring tile the whole game, save a miserable Q, and even then I could not make anything out of it; while she kept having the perfect tiles to put at the perfect places. The only time I hit 30 points or more was with ‘QUIPS’. Self-styled scrabble experts and gurus like Cher Hao will tell you that that is NOT good at all; and I agree. And I guess my sheer bad luck can be summed up perfectly with the following narrative of what she did next: She then put an E to make it ‘EQUIPS’. Sigh. I feel like I’m in SF all over again (Oh wait a minute….). When’s lunch? It arrived soon enough, and this time, I was the first one flying out of the room; and again, I stood under the sun for a good few minutes. I had worn a long-sleeved T-shirt for today; yet that had proved ineffectual.
Due to this severe cold (and I can see no other reason than this as the excuse and reason), I decided that something must be done about it. YJ and SW had gone to the ladies’, and (unsurprisingly) had imperiously bade me watch their bags and other possessions while they were gone. While looking absent-mindedly at SW’s jacket, I was taunted by the devil and tempted by the cold to try it on, which I did. Surprisingly, it fit me rather well. On seeing me, one of my HELP teammates Stephanie commented that it looked slimming on me. Why, thank you. However, before I could even approach close enough to SW and YJ to ask them if they agreed with their fellow female’s opinion, YJ’s usually austere demeanor broke into a look of incredulous wonderment, while SW’s eyes seemed to triple in size as her jaw dropped. Some commotion occurred straight afterwards, and the gist of it was that they were appalled I had worn SW’s jacket. Thankfully, I wasn’t hexed or punished in any way for it, because YJ seemed to amused, and SW, too disgustedly horrified, at the sight to remember to censure me. All SW did was make me promise only give it back to her at the end of the day, since she claimed she could not bear to wear it any more for the rest of the day.
For lunch, over the usual trading of sob stories relating to scrabble, I heard something that made me feel slightly better. A HELP scrabble teammate, Siva or Brahma or Vishnu or something, had played against the guy I lost by 20 points to yesterday; and had led by 150 points. However, in the last 4 minutes, he had managed to lose the game. Don’t ask me how. Rejuvenated with the news that God hated someone else more than myself, I ordered the bak kut teh… only that it wasn’t really bak kut teh at all. More like… dark soya sauce boiled and burnt to a crisp. Don’t ask. I never thought that pork could ever taste so bad in my life. If I could ever be accused of having ever contemplated becoming a Muslim, now would have probably been the closest I’d come yet. And oh, in case I forgot to mention, I was wearing SW’s jacket the whole time; if not on my hips, then around my neck. And I took it as a sign of encouragement that nobody stopped to stare at the sight of me; it must have been just as I suspected: I didn’t really look that bad in it. Silly females. Always overreacting. And there was YJ advising SW on the finer points of boiling clothes with some Clorox added. Hah! Like she would know! I bet she’s never had to wash anything except her hair her whole life……
My opponent directly after lunch was YJ. Yeah, I know. The simplicity of that statement probably caught you off by surprise too, eh? Like, how could so much dread be packed into 7 words, right? But YJ it was… and despite having won only 3 games so far (and one by only 2 points at that) as opposed to YJ’s 4 or 5, my spread was still higher than hers (-17 to -100 something I believe it was). So we did what all respectable Belianers did: we cheated to make sure our scores evened up. Besides, I was pretty much out of it by now; YJ might still have a chance at winning something if I let her rack up another win. So we (actually, just I) played like hell, since we had agreed to report a false result at the end anyway. In reality, she beat me by… 100 something I think. Which actually isn’t really a lot, considering I opened up the board for her and selected the low-scoring tiles for myself. But it doesn’t matter, what went into the official records was a loss by a spread of -53 to myself, bringing our total points to around -70 each. But despite our cumulative spreads being similar, YJ now had an extra win to help add to her tally.
And now came my unluckiest game of the tournament. Strangely enough (considering what I'd eaten for lunch), it was against a Bob. Yeah. A non-ex-national scrabbler at that. Kinda hard to describe how the game went… but it was basically very high scoring. I mean, the both of us scored close to 300 by the end, which is surprisingly high for competitive standards (for us amateurs, that is). I don’t know how SHE managed to score that high; all I know is she did. She, like my earlier opponent, would have just the right tile to put in just the correct places, or the almost impossible to get combination to form a word. By the time we got to the end of the score-sheet, my score was 293 and hers, 291. The tiles were running out; the board was stuck. And as my luck would have it, I pull out a Z, worth 10 points, with no possible word to form with it, and no possible place to put it in. So if the game ended with the Z still on my board, she’d get a bonus 20 points from that alone. And she had less tiles than myself, naturally… But providence smiled upon me; she put an E behind another E to make it EE; and, not daring to believe my luck, triumphantly placed my Z to form ZEE. 12 points. But then, she produced a blank tile to put behind ZEE to make it ZEES. 11 points. And to top it off, her ‘S’ also formed another word downwards, SWAN. 6 points. The game finished with a loss to myself; by some 30 points after penalties (she would finish first, naturally).
Fuck.
Well, no matter what, the tournament had ended, one way or another. Needless to say, we had to wait an hour and stay back for the results; or as my partner Voon quite hilariously put it, to wait around to clap for the winners. And that is exactly what we did; and despite the teams of YJ and SW (Oh, did I forget to mention? They were partners) and Voon (this kinda quiet girl who’s quite good at scrabble, and is damn cool because she sits cross legged on her chair while playing… so zen. Reminds me of Shaolin Soccer for some reason. By the way, ‘ZEN’ is apparently not a word; but then again, apparently ‘ABET’ isn’t either; but that was because I got screwed by the marshal. Urm… but I’m ranting now, so I’ll stop) and I won nothing, Cher and his partner Stephanie (a foul DJ-ian, I found out later) won best team. If I’m not mistaken, they counted the cumulative spread of both. After all the ceremony of photos etc etc, we could finally, finally, finally leave. My goodness, I never wanted to go back to Taylor’s ever again; or play scrabble for that matter. The only time I’ll play scrabble from now on is the Rempit way against Han Tsong, Chee Seng and Edwin. But anyway, once again we were deported homewards bound by YJ’s dad; though this time I dropped off at SW’s house because it wouldn’t be in their way to go to OU. And besides, I had to give her her jacket, didn’t I? She was… not very pleased with me. I walked home from SW’s house after that… and with that, ended what was probably the only scrabble experience that could have been bad enough to top even the wolf-whistling La Salle competition last year. The. End.
(Yeah. I wish.)
