Whinges of an Alien

I love Christmas, but I have much reservation about the notion that, to celebrate Christmas means that you will have to buy something for someone, and subordinate completely to commodity without much thought. Every time I feel like buying something for my friends, I tend to think that I might be adding to: Their clutter - excessive wrapper and trimmings on top of gifts that my friends may have no idea what to do with. Do they throw them away? I may feel unappreciated. Do they reuse or recycle them? That may be too much work for them. They may just throw the wrapping paper away, but it’s still an unnecessary contribution to the landfill. Their chores - things like flowers, nice. But they would have to get the water changed everyday, and I will worry about what they would do when the flowers are dead. I normally bury them, but I can’t possibly expect all of my friends to do that too. Their extreme hassle and guilt as they may have no idea what to say to me - if they totally do not like w...

The bus ride back to my little room rented from a human family takes about 35 minutes every evening, and passes by many HDB flats (The Singapore government built flats, HDB stands for Housing and Development Board) in Chinese housing area including the China Town. Since mid August, I have been noticing a lot of burning of candles, prayer paper that represents "hell money", joss sticks, and paper replicas of luxury items in these areas. There are also some heavily decorated stages and tents set up in various areas, completed with altars and amazingly, karaokes! It looks like something really big is going on. Aahhhhh... it's one of the most important Chinese festivals in Singapore: The Hungry Ghost Festival! The festival which the Chinese believe that the hell gate would open and free all underworld souls to wander amongst the livings' world. All that burnings are the humans' offerings to feed these hungry and perhaps greedy ghosts, so that they shall not disturb or...

If you ever come to Singapore, you would be impressed with their efficient public transport such as the trains and the buses. They are not short of taxis either, however, these taxis may not be of your service at all time. After a human-bashing (verbally) dinner with my sister (may or may not be another Erisian) who came for a training trip, we headed for the taxi stand to get her back to her hotel. The moderately long queue didn’t put us off. We thought: this is a highly ‘developed’ country equipped with such efficient public transport system, how difficult is it to get a cab? Moreover, I see taxis on the road all the time, loads of them! 5 minutes. 10 minutes. 20 minutes. The person at the start of the queue stayed unchanged, and the queue got longer. Yes, there were taxis driving into the stand, but they either had the “On Call” sign on, or were just dropping off some passengers. Those with no “On Call” sign on, would come in and pick a random passenger whose destination appealed to...

It is the last day of earth year – 2006. Earthlings’ are preparing to welcome 2007, the new year ahead. Well, let’s see what’s new. Millions of people are crowding around ‘happening’ places all over the world, watching the second hand on big giant clock ticks, and do count down. Sadly, what these earthlings do not know at this instance is, that they really are counting down to the end of their planet, sooner than later. Fireworks! Yay! We had it last year, and the year before last, and the year before the year before last… but hey, we are having it like we’ve never had before! It’s bigger, more colourful, and surely, we are burning more of it. Let’s double… no, triple the amount. This way, even our neighbouring countries can see us, and be very jealous of us. And every country may wish to do the same. What’s the contribution of fireworks to mankind again? Why can’t they have a peaceful New Year celebration, and pray for more surviving years for the planet? Party time. It’s only trendy ...