How reprehensible the man
Who, when death’s crew enters the room,
Stands firmly up before they can
Take hold, and, dignified though wan,
Walks with raised chin towards his doom.

How pitiful the creature who
Gulps frail yet resolute goodbyes
To all and sundry that he knew,
Being so brave as to hide from view
The reddened nose and teary eyes.

How abject he who shifts to faith
All the responsibility,
And smiling palely, waits for death,
With no drive to prolong his breath:
It’s His will – what will be, will be.

The heart that muscled through the years;
The eyes that marked the coloured time;
The mind’s daily-expanding spheres:
Betrayed by wrathless, placid tears
Of vile acceptance of this crime.

No – futile though the battle is,
No one was born to feed the soil;
We all may stand by the abyss,
But though the darkness will not miss,
It cannot force a single smile.

So when the rope loops round the neck,
Embrace it not as destined fate,
Or whisper gently, ‘make it quick’;
But writhe and curse and glare and kick
With all your life, with all your hate.

by Khor Kuan Min

"Rage, rage, against the dying of the light."  Only with more irony and contempt. Dylan Thomas better grow some balls because he's just been served. Love it.

3 February 1992: the day my world came to an end. Life was tough enough for an overweight, Asian geek but it was about to get a lot worse; I received the call from Melbourne telling me that my grandfather had died in his sleep. I may have been young but I wasn't stupid. I could see the writing on the wall. My parents had already separated. Without the presence of the family patriarch, they would not be forced to maintain the image of unity. They would be free to indulge in their life re-engineering projects, notwithstanding their two dependents. Us kids would just have to shut up and put up.

Want to move in with someone else but come back every two days for a free meal? Go ahead. If the kids complain, tell them that they've been turned against you.

Want to renovate the house? Get the kids to help. If they don't, accuse them of siding for the ex.

Want to take them on a poxy holiday but they told you 'no'? Tell them they're being manipulative.

They're unhappy because they're selfish and ungrateful, not because they're only getting half a parenthood, half a childhood, half of half of what you got.

Other kids rave about their parents' divorce. They tell you that they get 2 sets of gifts. That's true, but the rub is that you get 2 sets of crap gifts, because: "Mum/Dad can't possibly afford what you want. (Why are you being so unreasonable? Dad/Mum told you to complain, did they?)"

I knew it would get bad when he died, but I didn't know it would get that bad.

I visit his plaque at the Springvale Necropolis 16 years later. Staying with Yuriko in Clayton, I chance upon how close it was while looking in the Melways for suburbs to visit. Springvale, Box Hill, Doncaster, Dandenong. Turns out that I have an intimate albeit unwanted knowledge of Melbourne's far eastern suburbs generated from years of spending my school holidays being dragged from place to place searching for the latest stupid restaurant to go to after church.

Do I regret spending time with my grandparents? No. My grandparents were the epitome of old-world dignity that I have only recently re-discovered an aspiration for. Do I regret going to Melbourne? Yes, Doncaster is the middle of nowhere with no transport except rides from adults who aren't going to take you anywhere interesting anyway. We should have flown his ass down instead of driving all the way up just to show how filial we were.

Chinese Pentecostals don't enshrine their dead like their Buddhist counterparts do. The Church of Christ sees death as a celebration. "Rejoice! He's gone to live happy and whole with God." We gave him a rousing  musical send-off and that was it. My family washed their hands so cleanly of him that they don't even know where he is. Most cultures see holding on to the past as a bad thing but severing the ancestral links causes the Confucian hierarchy to collapse. The past is what gives us identity and structure; perhaps the very thing my parents were trying to escape.

3rd February 1992: I am too busy bracing myself for the excruciating end of the world. 24th August 2008: I cry my freaking eyes out.

Announcing the arrival of Princess Sheeba Holmes Thiefeater Wee.

I don't feed her. I anticipate her royal highness will grow fat on the stream of bogan reprobates that try to rip off my place, like that housing trust bitch and her little spawn that 'accidentally' found their way into my lounge-room - through my fly screen.

In the meantime, it's a matter of enduring neighbours who complain about her barking. One such idiot put a note on my fence AFTER ONLY 3 HOURS saying "Shut your dog up or we will report you."

It whisked me back to fond memories of arriving in Australia to find everybody ignorant, intolerant, and eager to meddle in my affairs. It takes two months for the coppers to track down the slag that invades my home, but keep a barking dog or water my garden incorrectly and it's boots through my door at midnight.

In a fit of self-control (because I'm a repressed Asian that just 'takes' being tea-bagged by white folk) I tore up the note and stuck it back on my fence. A message rich in Oriental subtlety: "Touch my fence again and I will break your fingers."

"And feed them to my widdle Princess. Aww, who's a good girl?"

Good girl!

1. Decompose the picture into HSV (Hue Saturation Value).
2. Run a sharpening filter on the Value component.
3. Re-compose the image.

Strange thing is, the preview on Windows Fax and Picture viewer doesn't deal with the extra detail well.

Locations: LRT tracks near Jalan Kayu, Singapore River near Raffles' Place.

1. No Filter
2. Filter
3. Filter + HDR

I braved an informal reprimand to get this issue to you.

http://www.users.on.net/~wallala/

Ooh. Misusing computing resources. I'm so scared.

No, really. My testes have constricted. I'm in fight-or-flight mode.

As I set a new record for toilet-sleeping yesterday (2.5 hours), I dreamt that I was at home playing Doom 3.

You know, running around on God-mode, chainsawing everything that moves. The actual procedure is a bit more sophisticated. Step one, see monster. Step two, yell "I fuck you! I fuck you! I fuck you up ze ahse!". Step three, throttle up Beavertooth. Step four, run straight at the victim. Step five, wipe splatter from armour.

(Awww. They peed on my rug. Man, that rug really held the room together.)

I love the chainsaw. It's like this magical fairy wand that turns everything it touches into meat. I actually get hungry after using it.

Wouldn't it be funny if enemies said random things before they died? Instead of gurgled screams, how about "I shouldn't have come to work today," or "Tell my girlfriend I love her!"

Ha ha ha. The stuff that toilet-sleeps are made of.

Wait. That actually happened.

Easily customisable ... Check.

Not blocked by the Network Nazis ... Check.

Easy syndication ... Check.

Can use existing registration ... Check.

I've been thinking about porting my website, http://www.users.on.net/wallala, over to a blogging engine for a while. I'd really like to receive feedback from the people who read me. (I know they're out there.) But while a blogging engine would suit some of the more bloggy bits, I'd have trouble migrating the 'richer' sections, like International Deathmatch, or the calculators.

Right now, I'm thinking of a fusion. Perhaps I'll port some sections and leave others and link between the two. But that big picture view is pretty blurry and could change tomorrow.

Still, this is a start.