Something’s wrong…

It appears like I have posted "A Spot of Bother" before "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised". That's not true. The "Spot of Bother" entry should be from a later time.

Weird.

Anyway, this is the song that I quoted in that Television entry.

When You Are Who You Are (Gil Scott-Heron)

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

Because our boss is a well-known photographer, he will be featured on a scoop. We, the employees, just received an announcement stating that CNA (Channel News Asia, a Singaporean cable channel) will be here in the office tomorrow morning.

And so we are required to be punctual and to do abso-positi-lutely nothing besides work the whole time, to project an illusion image that we are very productive.

Appearing on TV should make me as excited as someone about to give birth, but I couldn't care less even if it's CNN doing the scoop. I'm not a TV guy, and have this been local TV or Fox News, I might have erupted snide remarks, Tyler Durden style. Why do I hate TV so much? Because it's so fake! The materials there are screened, cut, edited and censored, until the only messages left are that the world is okay, the government is okay, life is one big beauty contest and that we should binge on mass-consumerism (all of these, of course, are mere skimmings of the surface). I don't need all these junk. Step into the real world and I'm always met by contradictions that are never televised.

Anyway, the last thing I need is to see my colleagues acting phony, with all these obligatory gussy-ups for a pursuit of fame. Alas, being around them has made me acutely aware of what they may do. They will dress grandiloquently and feign formality just to be mediagenic. And, of course, they'll pretend that everyone is in good terms and that there's no such a thing as cliques or demarcation - not the truth. That should be a sight to behold. Imagine, candor compromised by artificiality for the disguise of “pleasantry” (which is synonymous to “perfection”, which is always based on personal and cultural biases).

As for me, I wouldn't EVER trade my real identity for a made-for-TV mask. Lost in the marsh flooded by censorship, deception and dishonesty, I believe in sincerity, or in the immortal words of Gil Scott Heron, “You can be so very beautiful when you are who you are”. We are sheep, but let's not BAAAA to a deceitful shepherd, eh?

A Spot of Bother

You Know My Steez - Gang Starr

My prayer today went like this:

Dear Lord, forgive me for I have miscommunicated. When I posted yesterday's entry, I didn't sincerely mean I want to have another bad incident inside the bus. It was a sarcasm. 

I'm not having much luck with bus rides lately. Yesterday I was put in an awkward situation, but that's trifling compared to what happened today, which was just plain annoying.

Today's bus was quite unlike yesterday's. Each column of this one had two different chairs (there were two chairs on the left and on the right). They were comfortably spaced and had adequate leg rooms between different columns of seats. Things looked good, so I thought today's journey was going to be smooth. I was yet again proven wrong.

A person skinnier and smaller than I am took the next seat. As the bus moved, I started to notice that this guy was taking too much space. His legs were spread so wide that his knees would push mine aside, and he leaned considerably on my seat. Whenever I tried to nudge him back to his own space, he'd push me so he could be back to where he was. When I inched away from him, he'd take another mile. It's like he's totally gay for me. I couldn't even tell him to stop taking my space, because he had an earphone. To avoid body contacts with this annoying prick, I ended up being cramped way into the corner (as I was at the window seat).

What the hell is his problem? This wasn't even like a bus whose seats weren't clearly divided: as each columns had TWO chairs. I thought it should be pretty obvious how much space an individual should be occupying. Was he dense or what? If he was as big as Shaq I would understand, but he's not taller than me, so he definitely didn't need to take 30% of my space! Did he think that he was a king or something, lounging on two chairs like that? He's just plain irritating and obnoxious!

Damn, I'm so ticked off!