Nursery Rhymes

Today, children, I will talk about how the songs that you listen to are evil and cynical, and how you are not to blame for being a self-centred and wicked generation.

Three blind mice, Three blind mice
See how they run! See how they run!
They all ran after the farmer's wife,
Who cut off their tails with a carving knife.
Did you ever see such a thing in your life,
As three blind mice.

Moral: Teaching the young to start chopping the tails off harmless little rodents.

Baa, baa black sheep, Have you any wool
Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full.
One for my master, And one for my dame
And one for the little boy who lives down the lane.

Moral: It's ok to be gullible and unsuspecting of people, and keep the good stuff for those who will one day slaughter and eat you.

Hey diddle diddle, The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon.
The little dog laughed to see such sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.

Moral 1: It is alright for a canny dog to laugh at his friend who was so alarmed that he jumped over a moon.
Moral 2: Stupid and impossible things that have no causality or meaning can be taught to a young child through nursery rhymes.

Hickory dickory dock, The mouse ran up the clock.
The clock struck one, And down he run,
Hickory dickory dock.

Moral: Stick booby traps in your clock to strike harmless rodents (Hur hur. Yes, I know "struck" doesn't mean "hit" in this rhyme.)

The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the waterspout
Down came the rain and washed the spider out.
Out came the sun and dried up all the rain
So the itsy-bitsy spider climbed up the spout again!

Moral: Little insects are very resilient and need to be killed with more than rainwater.

I'm being swallowed by a boa constrictor
I'm being swallowed by a boa constrictor
I'm being swallowed by a boa constrictor
And I don't like it very much

Oh no (oh no) he swallowed my toe (he swallowed my toe)
Oh me (oh me) he swallowed my knee (he swallowed my knee)
Oh fiddle (oh fiddle) he's up to my middle (he's up to my middle)
Oh heck (oh heck) he swallowed my neck (he swallowed my neck)
Oh - (GULP!)

Moral: 'Nuff said.

There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.
He bought a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together in a little crooked house.

Moral 1: If you find money, it belongs to you. Just like if you find a cellphone in a taxicab.
Moral 2: All crooks live together. Hang around with crooks and you will become like one of them.

Nobody likes me, everybody hates me,
Guess I'll go eat worms,
Long, thin, slimy ones; Short, fat, juicy ones,
Itsy, bitsy, fuzzy wuzzy worms.

Down goes the first one, down goes the second one,
Oh how they wiggle and squirm.
Up comes the first one, up comes the second one,
Oh how they wiggle and squirm.

Moral: This is just plain disgusting.

This little piggie went to market, This little piggie stayed home.
This little piggie had roast beef, This little piggie had none.
And this little piggie cried, "Wee! Wee! Wee!" all the way home.

Moral: Some people work, some people sit around and eat. Some people are lazy-ass bastards. If you don't get what you want, you can cry and make a big fuss.

Pirates... Who stole my Monday evening!

So. Watched Pirates of the Carribean last night. Screw spoilers, I'm gonna complain, so if you're dying to watch the show, don't read on. Though I advise you keep your money and give me a treat instead for saving you 3 hours of your time. I thought the show sucked (you might have guessed). The jokes were quite predictable and slapstick. What's with the peanut? It's really not that funny.

And Calypso.. They should have known it was her from the time when she said "Davy Jones is a MAN" in this sort of breathy voice as she stared into the sea yonder. And how she kept defending him. And how she had these mysterious magical powers carried over from Carribean 2.

And when Will was stabbed in the heart, the camera cut to Jack Sparrow with a knife poised over Davy Jones' beating heart, the answer was obvious, although they only showed Will plunging the knife into the heart like 10 minutes later. So what happened to my 10 minutes in the middle? Fighting. More fighting. Special effects and fish people. Then some more fighting. Grrr. Like, get on with the story will you?

I don't get slapstick humour. I mean, I'm not daft or anything; I know in my mind that, "ok, here's the part that's supposed to be funny", but I don't understand *how* it's funny, and it doesn't make me laugh. Blackadder is still one of the funniest comedies ever made.

Not to be unappreciative or anything, the show is like any other predictable Hollywood sequel 3 type-movie - Formulaic, only mildly entertaining, and, it sometimes seems, a thorough waste of time.

The $3000 calculator

This is a report from my shipping director in the US.

The market was dead today so here’s a funny story to keep you awake: Ken Back*es of ST/Glen*core chartered a ship to Toby For*rest of Vi*tol. Toby complained that Ken’s calculations were wrong and wanted to see his calculator. So.. Ken physically mailed his little 10-key calculator to Toby. Ha ha funny, right? But Ken wanted his calculator back. So Toby said, “ok you can buy it back.. I’m putting it on E-bay.” The bid is now up to $2,470.00 (don’t forget the $2 shipping)! You too can bid on Ken’s Special Voyage Earnings Calculator at this link! http://cgi.ebay.com/Kens-Special-Voyage-Earnings-Calculator_W0QQitemZ250117924005QQihZ015QQcategoryZ3294QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZ

Since E-Bay deletes its items ever so often, here's a screenshot for posterity.

Tornado!!

So I was calmly doing my work, trying to catch up on the last two days, when the girl sitting behind me yelped in excitement. She pointed speechlessly to the window, and this was what we saw.



It started off by being rather far away, but started looming ever nearer even as we watched it negotiate amongst the vessels in the open sea. (We were hoping that one of those vessels weren't ours.. That would be a couple million more in damages!) My boss was joking that the captain must be shitting in his pants watching the tornado.

Apparently, lots of people working around here saw it too, and the pictures started circulating rapidly in the industry.

This is what Sandro saw:


This is what my shipping broker saw:


Me: It was quite scary lor
Me: It was quite far away, then started looming larger..
Me: And it started moving amongst the ships..
Me: Haha. That was quite scary! We were praying that one of them isn't the Trust [one of our vessels] man..
Broker: aiya this type can only suck in fish and prawns
Broker: ships just feel ticklish

Heh heh. Told you he was funny.

Anyway, here's the explanation from a friend's friend who's an MOE scholar with an Oxford masters in Geography.

~~~~~~~~~
That's a waterspout.

Happens when you have a mass of air rushing into an area of low pressure. See it lots in tropical areas where weather is hot (therefore area of low pressure, Hot air rises = low pressure).

Prob a storm happening in further Indian ocean or something.. bringing in cold air mass. As the differentiated air masses converges, the funnel forms.

If you wondering why the ships are not drawn up and destroyed, its because the water of the funnel is not drawn up from the sea, but rather the condensation of water vapour around the low-pressure centre where the air masses merges.

Harmless one la.

Is it just me?

...or is this quite funny?

Me: Hey! Have you heard of any oman refinery export recently?
Broker: wat abt that?
Me: Nothing lah.. Just wondering if you know anything about that. Platts is asking me, and we dun do crude mah.
Broker: aiya they're like blind spider anyhow jump
Broker: didnt even check then straight away post out their questions
Me: Your analogy is so funny
Broker: yah sometime they sent to multiple people on their yahoo list to ask
Me: Blind spider will anyhow jump meh?

Haha. I love his analogy man. He's damn funny.

Anyway, I did this thing last night cuz I was really bored. 2 days of MC can really drive a person insane. (Haha, you people. Don't even think about saying it.)



In a separate email conversation I had with Andrew,

Me:
I think this is hilarious! Not the most perfect fit, but…


Andrew:
Is that all I am worth ??!!!

Me:
Less.. But they didn’t have coins lah. :D
Gosh I keep farting today.

Andrew:
:finger

Me:
So crass. Tsk tsk.

Andrew:
:finger (left hand)
:finger (right hand)

Me:
Can’t decide if my response should be this:


Or this:


Andrew:
the second defintely since you are already farting non-stop

Me:
Since you mentioned…

Values

I’m feeling a little under the weather today, yet have to be at work because the boss isn’t around, and someone needs to give the analysis for the trade window.

Something stirred inside me when I read Christabel's blog entries. I guess part of it had to do with my own experience with adolescence and even though I was more centred and having less extreme emotions, I struggled. Yes, I did. I struggled with approval, with peer pressure, with homosexuality, with doubt, with esteem issues, with academics (or disinterest thereof), with authority, with popularity. The human emotion can sometimes be a tempest of wild and unabating extremeties. I guess she would have to fight her own demons. I have faith that she will survive, and emerge victorious.

A short analogy comes to mind at this point: There once was a thief that broke into a supermarket one night, as one would break into an apartment. But this thief did a very strange thing; instead of stealing items from the shelves, he swapped price tags on the items on the shelves. He would take the price tag off an expensive item and put it on a cheap item, and vice versa.

Strange, isn't it? But it really isn't, because this is what the devil seeks to do to us in the world. He would take what was unimportant, of little value, and swap it with an item of great value. Because of that, the world becomes confused, and imagines the item with the expensive price tag to be one of great value, when only God knows the true value of the items on the shelves. Things like popularity, money, career, social standing, beauty - These become items of great value, and integrity, love, contentment, respect are relegated to the bottom of the priority list.

Christabel, the Bible says this:

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. (John 10:10-11)

This is what I would tell my students, and something I constantly remind myself: That price that Jesus paid for me? That's my value. That's what I'm worth. I should never allow the world to put a price tag on me.

Personality Disorder Test

So I was doing this test that I found on Christabel's blog. Wahaha. Ok, I'm quite well adjusted lah.

Disorder	Rating
Paranoid:	Low
Schizoid:	Low
Schizotypal:	Moderate
Antisocial:	Low
Borderline:	Low
Histrionic:	Low
Narcissistic:	Moderate
Avoidant:	Low
Dependent:	Low
Obsessive-Compulsive:	Low
-- Personality Disorder Test -- -- Personality Disorder Information --

Good job, me! (As you can see, the narcissism is starting to show).

A few of the AHMs and even HMs have been accusing me of being massively hormonal. I found that to be quite strange, because I used to pride myself on being quite consistent. Obviously, I didn't think much of it until recently when it occurred to me that, looking from a boarder's perspective, my consistency could very well be construed as being slightly crazy.

See, I compartmentalize. This means that it doesn't matter that someone's my favourite boarder, and just 3 minutes ago, we were having a wonderful discussion about my pet hamster. If in the next half a minute, I find out that she has disobeyed the rules, I will come down as hard on her as I would the next guy. I would scold her, and dish out the punishment, and then after that's over, I will resume my chat. Obviously that's quite an extreme example, but the lines are quite clear for me. I would be your friend and do all the things friends would do for each other, but I would rarely, if ever, use my AHM position to grant privileges to a favourite boarder that I would not do for another normal boarder. And if I *do* grant privileges to a favourite boarder that I deny to another boarder, it is because that favourite boarder has proven to be worthy of trust.

See, it sounds complex, but really isn't. And I really am not crazy.