Saturday, August 25, 2007
WARNING : NOT FUNNY AGAIN
FORT MINOR LYRICS "Slip Out The Back"
Listen its like poker you can play your best
But you got to know when to fold your cards and take a rest
And know when to hold your cards and hold your breath
And hope that nobody else is stacking the deck because
I don't need to tell you that life isn't fair, it doesn't care
It arbitrarily cuts off your air, and like you I want someone to say its OKAY
Life is like Poker. ( school)
During a very boring lecture, I once thought of this. “If there was one thing you could learn and benefit most from in class, what would be it?”Straight away, my brain felt alive and kicking, Ninjitsu? To defend myself from enemies? Or weaponry, learning to kill with just a bullet, wouldn’t that just be exhilarating. Why not soccer, so I’ll be a famous star like David Beckham (who is so famous his name is even included in my Microsoft word dictionary. Wow) after much deliberation, I threw away my boyish childhood dreams and finally settled upon a logical choice. Poker. It’s a game full of flair and heart.
For the unknowing, it’s a card game ( which is banned in school) in which the players draw cards and try to use the betting of their stakes to impress, mislead or utterly crush his opponent. And yes, money, the ever exciting stimulant is involved. One can be a millionaire from just one nail-biting round, or a pauper who has his cash mercilessly torn from him. It’s a cruel game, I must admit.“
Gambling is a vice, you’ll be hooked on it and will keep losing money till you end up being hacked to death by a loan shark who wasted five pig heads on you, before he realised you didn’t get the message.” Very true indeed.
First, let me ask you a question. Isn’t life a gamble? Every day, you walk out on the streets, as you cross the road, don’t you weigh the risks that a truck is going to steamroll over you? Perhaps it’s because the chances of that is negligible, and that urges you to place your bet, which in this case, your life, on the action of crossing the road. Even a simple thing like crossing the road, can be broken up into a game of poker. What more life, in a macro view, it itself is a game of costly poker.In it, there can only be two outcomes.
You win, or you lose. When to buy a house, when to sell it; How to get promoted, how not to get demoted; When to spend and when to save. Aren’t all these choices with risks involved in the game of life? To succeed, one must make the best choices and have the heart to stomach the risks. From the above, it brings us back to our point. How do you train this skill? That’s when poker comes into play. It teaches you how to make do with what you have, and transform it into something better. When dealt with an ugly hand, one would know when to fold and take a rest. Analogize this to stop pursuing a lost cause. However when dealt with a trump card, you would know how to press on to maximize your wins. This is the essence of success.
Maybe you’ll lose, after all life is unpredictable. Yet, with this refined skill, success in anything would come much easier, and losses minimized. In conclusion, we can see that the skill of playing poker can be applied to life itself.
On a completely unrelated and random note, I am still wondering if choosing the risky option of submitting my blog on Saturday , one day past the deadline would be realised and punished by our fair English-teacher in-charge.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Debunking the myths and truths of Skipping Classes(Teenage Issues)
I love the thrill of skipping classes. Your heart beating in your chest like a blacksmith at work, as the teacher walks pass your hide-out unknowingly. Muscles clench and breathing quickens as pure adrenaline takes over, yet amidst these stages of ‘high’ you begin to smile uncontrollably and unexplainably. The sheer pleasure of evading yet another authority really releases the stress that has accumulated throughout the week.
Getting caught is feared. This is a risk, like everything else in life. When capture is imminent, any trace of pleasure or enjoyment evaporates like water on a frying pan. It fizzes out, bringing you back to the real world. Where you are no longer a spy on a mission, but a nerdy school kid who has to follow the strict regiments of the school. An onslaught of guilt rushes over the body like a tidal wave, simply put, this is the worst feeling, and you’d never want to feel this twice.
Yet, there is an unspoken rule among the fellow misbehaving students who have been hooked onto this ill practice. One for all, All for one. There are two sides of a coin when being AWOL. When caught, one can only swear that the unlucky fellow holds to this sacred unspoken rule. That’s just one scenario. Any scenario is when your friend is discovered, the guilt causes you to do irrational things. For some illogical reason, you mind forces your body out of your comfy hideaway to give yourself up. Personally, I’ve never understood why this is so. It has happened to be a few times in my life, although the most rational thing was to stay put and wait till the storm is over, your butt is just jolted by this bolt lightning that forces you to give yourself up. Funny isn’t it?
You may ask “Aren’t you being stupid by giving yourself away? Now your English teacher knows that you skip classes! Dimwit! “Well, I’m only writing this article because of an unfortunate incident today. To make a long story short, I got caught for well, skipping classes of course. That motivated me to write this article.
I’m not being proud of myself or showing off. I feel that a common way of reprimand by teacher is asking. “Do you know you are breaking school rules? Then why do you still do it? WHO DO YOU Think YOU ARE?!” Well, it’s obvious that students like me, are fully aware of the school rules. As recorded in Sun Tzi “Art of War”, to defeat an enemy, you must first understand him, with reference to the school rules and breaking of it. Why do I do it? Personally, I find that question hard to answer, with hundreds of reasons that seem to be floating around my head, yet none distinct enough. I did it frankly because of the stress, and the excitement it seems to give me. Lastly, in defence of my actions, I feel that I think I am still young, at least relatively, so in comparison to Singapore’s aging population. Let me quote a line from the blockbuster movie hit Transformers. The leading actor said “60 years down your life, would you regret not taking that chance and getting into the car ( autobot ). “ This is relevant to the situation now. How can one be a perpetual stick in the mud and rule abider? 50 years later what would you remember of your childhood? Going for assembly or skipping and having a good time? This is a bold statement and I had qualms typing it but I believe it needs to be said.
To conclude, I want to reiterate that I’m not blasting the teachers or being a smart alec, I’m just trying to present another viewpoint, my perception.
writer: " heres something more sombre from me. and a relief from chuanhongs ego-ness. i got caught for ponning 2day><>
I love the thrill of skipping classes. Your heart beating in your chest like a blacksmith at work, as the teacher walks pass your hide-out unknowingly. Muscles clench and breathing quickens as pure adrenaline takes over, yet amidst these stages of ‘high’ you begin to smile uncontrollably and unexplainably. The sheer pleasure of evading yet another authority really releases the stress that has accumulated throughout the week.
Getting caught is feared. This is a risk, like everything else in life. When capture is imminent, any trace of pleasure or enjoyment evaporates like water on a frying pan. It fizzes out, bringing you back to the real world. Where you are no longer a spy on a mission, but a nerdy school kid who has to follow the strict regiments of the school. An onslaught of guilt rushes over the body like a tidal wave, simply put, this is the worst feeling, and you’d never want to feel this twice.
Yet, there is an unspoken rule among the fellow misbehaving students who have been hooked onto this ill practice. One for all, All for one. There are two sides of a coin when being AWOL. When caught, one can only swear that the unlucky fellow holds to this sacred unspoken rule. That’s just one scenario. Any scenario is when your friend is discovered, the guilt causes you to do irrational things. For some illogical reason, you mind forces your body out of your comfy hideaway to give yourself up. Personally, I’ve never understood why this is so. It has happened to be a few times in my life, although the most rational thing was to stay put and wait till the storm is over, your butt is just jolted by this bolt lightning that forces you to give yourself up. Funny isn’t it?
You may ask “Aren’t you being stupid by giving yourself away? Now your English teacher knows that you skip classes! Dimwit! “Well, I’m only writing this article because of an unfortunate incident today. To make a long story short, I got caught for well, skipping classes of course. That motivated me to write this article.
I’m not being proud of myself or showing off. I feel that a common way of reprimand by teacher is asking. “Do you know you are breaking school rules? Then why do you still do it? WHO DO YOU Think YOU ARE?!” Well, it’s obvious that students like me, are fully aware of the school rules. As recorded in Sun Tzi “Art of War”, to defeat an enemy, you must first understand him, with reference to the school rules and breaking of it. Why do I do it? Personally, I find that question hard to answer, with hundreds of reasons that seem to be floating around my head, yet none distinct enough. I did it frankly because of the stress, and the excitement it seems to give me. Lastly, in defence of my actions, I feel that I think I am still young, at least relatively, so in comparison to Singapore’s aging population. Let me quote a line from the blockbuster movie hit Transformers. The leading actor said “60 years down your life, would you regret not taking that chance and getting into the car ( autobot ). “ This is relevant to the situation now. How can one be a perpetual stick in the mud and rule abider? 50 years later what would you remember of your childhood? Going for assembly or skipping and having a good time? This is a bold statement and I had qualms typing it but I believe it needs to be said.
To conclude, I want to reiterate that I’m not blasting the teachers or being a smart alec, I’m just trying to present another viewpoint, my perception.
writer: " heres something more sombre from me. and a relief from chuanhongs ego-ness. i got caught for ponning 2day><>