the wacky wombat weblog

The Writers Guild of America is on strike and the effects are starting to show:

I guess I’ll start embarking on the Super Mario Galaxy adventure in Japanese…

What has it come to when the government pays RM214 for a set of screwdrivers that probably cost only RM40, and doesn’t do a thing to check for possible corrupted practices?

Read this on The Star online today. It’s simply ridiculous.

The Auditor-General’s report revealed that the government has been paying insanely high prices for what seems to be very generic tools when they funded the supplies tools for the National Youth Skills Institutes in Malaysia.

Like RM10,000 for a technical tool set that costs RM 400?? And the list goes on.

Hasn’t it occured to anyone to check what was going on when the proposed budget ballooned from 400 million to 700 million? You mean nobody noticed the suspicious budget that doubled twofold?!?! 0_o Amazing. Dunno how to count izzit?

This is what truly annoys me about my home country. No proper governance, no transparency, and money squandered away for the benefits of the filthy selected rich ones.

When I first came to Singapore to study 6 years ago (gosh so long ago!), I was still optimistic, and dreaming of going back to KL to live and work there. What to do, I was 18 and I missed home.

But after all these years and witnessing what goes on in the news and among the people, all desire of returning home to ’serve my country’ has vanished.

No way I’m going back there in the near future to wallow in mediocrity and fear for my safety on the roads, and suffer through high cost of living. (Contrary to what many think, Singapore is a much more affordable city to work and live in. But that’s material for another blog post. :p)

Not to mention the rising tension of racism and religious difference. Nothing’s happened, but signs of the society being delineated along racial religious lines are just too obvious to ignore.

Once you’ve travelled abroad, seen other cities and all, then you start to see all the possibilities that could have been, but are wiped off because of greed, inefficiency, selfishness and narrow-mindedness. The future definitely doesn’t look too good.

Singapore isn’t the best city in the world to live in (I’m still trying to find out which city is), but I think I’d live better and happier here. So for now, I’ll just shelf my KL plans. For now it’ll just be my hometown, where I go back only for visits to my family and friends, and ‘real’ food.

There are so many things I wanna rant about.

1. Where the heck is my Macbook!?!?!

8flags, you suck. You said it’ll arrive within 14 days! It’s already been 15 days. You have such a crappy vendor to supply your Macbooks in such small quantities. Ugh. I hope it gets here by next week before I go back to PJ. Grrr…

2. Why must it rain?

Or rather, why must FYP period be during December, the great monsoon season!?!?! Pray the rain stays away so that we can wrap up our shoot already.

3. Uncle, why must you play your stupid tetno handphone music so loud in the bus?!?!

I don’t understand people who play music on their mp3 phones loudly on public commute. Like, do I care about your ah-beng music? There’s such an invention as earphones you know. And almost always, it is bad tetno. But this is the first tetno-listening uncle I encountered. There should be a rule, like in Japan, where phones must be switched to silent on the train and buses and no one is allowed to yak loudly into their phones and disturb old ladies sitting next to them.

4. Why doesn’t it feel like Christmas?!

I think I’ve been stuck in my FYP shoot for too long. That I haven’t visited town area for ages, and have not seen a Christmas tree for over a week. Gotta drag myself downtown to see some blinking trees, dancing lights, frenzied shoppers, and possibly get attacked by yet another credit card promoter in Orchard Road. Meanwhile, just have to rely on my limited collection of Christmas carols, and that tiny Christmas deco I have on my room door. By the by, I was at Marina Square a couple of weeks back, and I think their deco is real classy. Simple, yes. But the purple and gold cascade of ribbon, lights and baubles is definitely classy. Not tacky like Tangs and their weird plastic gems.

Okay. Enouigh rants. On the bright side…

1. my darling is coming back next weekend!! woohoo! finally!

2. We’re going back home to PJ for Christmas week! Woohoo again! I miss home. ( I heard there’s now a watermelon patch in my house’s garden. Gotta go and see what that’s about. And hopefully really got watermelons to eat. haha.)

3. Good food. Been eating a lot lately, despite it being my FYP shoot. In fact, it is precisely because we allocated meal times that I now eat more. >.< My tummy had a nice treat of bbq chicken wings and stingray at Bedok 85. W00t. Yummy! And I think there's gonna be more good food waiting for me at home! Christmas parties, new year parties. omg. 0_o hahaha. This reminds me of one stupid Christmas carol: “Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat…” I think now it should be changed to “Christmas is coming, and I am getting fat…”