devouring human beings
Extract:
Pablo Neruda, 'I'm Explaining a Few Things'
translated by Nathaniel Tarn
______________________________
And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.
Jackals that the jackals would despise
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate.
Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives.
Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain:
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull's eye of your hearts.
And you will ask: why doesn't his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land.
Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
the blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
in the streets!
________________________
Fishes in Bowls
Ladies!~
and Neo-Pagans!
There's a new fish in the blogging universe: my younger brother.
He does somersaults for lunch, hand-stands for dessert, and after that, he writes entertaining, fishy stuff like this :
"
Humans are almost not totally unlike fishes. That is, they metabolise, and they die. Otherwise, the finest and yet most distinctive difference is that fishes think; humans think they think, and think fishes don't think beyond their aquariums.
To elaborate:
Humans say Knowledge is Power, and Ignorance is Bliss. Since Knowledge entails knowing and learning, and Ignorance involves not knowing anything, thus it can be said that acquiring Knowledge is the act of eradicating Ignorance. This implies that Knowledge and Ignorance are mutually exclusive, and presence of one denies the other, in effect, leading us to the conclusion that since Knowledge = Power and Ignorance = Bliss, we can substitute them into the equation and understand that Power and Bliss are mutually exclusive too."
High school, intellectual impunity, and The Whole Sort of General Mish Mash, is a lethal concoction.
Helping others is good thing mah~
One small step, from notion, to reality.
Conceptualized a community project that'll help disadvantaged children quite a while ago....
and after a million procrastinations and a billion bigoted selfish acts of self-indulgence.....finally got down to typing out that draft proposal and sending it out to the relevant people.
it is basically a project that will help children who can't even afford assessment books, gain access to 2 things:
1. Internet & Computer skills
2. Online academic exercises that can stimulate their independant/interactive learning spirit.
Hopefully, enough people sitting by the Greenlight switch-board will see its worth and workability.
-----------------------------------------------
Working Title:
Project PC (Pupils Connect) :Helping disadvantaged children log on to the Internet Era.
-------------------------------------------------
Who:
-
Pupilspace.com-
Youth.sg- Youth volunteers
- Disadvantaged children
What:
An e-learning community (with interactive learning features and English, Maths and Science quizzes) wishes to offer its resources free of charge to disadvantaged children en masse.
When:
1st quarter 2006 (Recruitment of volunteers / Publicity)
1st half 2006 (Implementation / Publicity / Ongoing Review & Refinements)
Where:
Through computer centers in Community Clubs / Locations with computer classrooms (e.g. primary school PC labs)
How:
Pupilspace.com provides subscription packages (activation passwords and user-ids) and collaborates with the Youth.sg web-portal in these main areas:
1) Promotion of this project to the relevant children's welfare organizations and publics
2) Recruitment of youth volunteers who can teach the children how to use
Pupilspace.com's e-learning resources (how to log in to do the quizzes etc.)
3) Sourcing of locations (community clubs, PC labs in primary schools etc)
where the youth volunteers can hold their teaching sessions
4) Structuring of the volunteer sessions (Duration, Logistics, Content etc.)
Why:
There are many children who come from families that cannot afford assessment books, much less a PC or an Internet connection.
Pupilspace.com hopes to reach out to them, offer them its e-learning resources for free, and help them gain the necessary web usage/navigations skills that are essential in this Internet era.
At its core, Pupilspace is about helping young pupils become savvy about the learning dynamics within an online community, whilst improving their academic performance. Currently, the website caters mainly to Primary 4, 5 and 6 pupils who can afford to have access to PCs at home.
Through this charitable, collaborative, volunteerism-driven exercise with Youth.sg, Pupilspace.com hopes to achieve 2 objectives:
1) create a positive convergence of virtual/local/learning/youth communities
2) highlight the importance of inspired community action and spirit amongst
youths in the Internet era
------------------------------------------
you know lah,
people say young people, sit in front of computer all day, all they do is watch porn, download illegal movie and music files, chat n bitch n gossip n blog about frivolous things (like whether
her nose real or not).
people say sg young people, disconnected/disaffected/disillusioned/disco//dislocated
/distinction-conscious/dependantconsumeristic-blindlytrendifashionslavilistic/
/disinfectant-sterile-stale-stoopid-strawberry-cupcakes.
don't know lah, maybe 50% true lah. Like yin-yang lah, half half lah. (when u spin the black n white, it all becomes grey lah.)
But whatever people say abt us, sg youths, really is still got some of us who don't got money, but still also want to help other people lah i feel.
maybe these people so free will come n help me with Project PC.
The question to ask is why.
why har why? why bother with all these community projects/community action leh?
Well, your mother told u the answer when u were in kindergardening already ok~?
"Helping others is good thing mah~"
Technorati Tags:
singapore
e-learning
Note to self
---
Postsecrets.com
olde olded old
she spoke to me.
she has no teeth. she asked if I was hokkien.
i smiled and said yes. I told her I spoke to both my grandmothers in Hokkien too.
she is very old.
she stays in the living couch all day. lying down. curled up.
when the maid wakes her up, she eats a bit of porridge.
i work in the home-office her daughter has set-up. Her daughter is a grandmother, so that gives you an idea of how old she is. Her daughter is very busy with work. Her grand children are also very busy with work. The maids that tend to her are also very busy with work. Nobody talks to her. Sometimes, when I have to walk through the house to get some documents from the storage area in the front porch, I will see her there.
There. curled up. in the couch.
When I see her, I give her the warmest, brightest smile I can conjure. I greet her with a clear, but gentle "Po Po, ni hao."
She looks at me, silent. curled up. on the couch.
Occassionally, at around 2 or 3am at night, she will take a very slow walk from her couch, to the home office where I'm watching footage or writing scripts. The home office is separated from the dining area by a sliding glass door with curtains.
She will move the curtains aside, and glance at me. Sometimes, I get engrossed with the PC or TV monitor and I do not notice her. When I do, I usually get a bit of a fright...because that's what hunched-back great-grannies will do to you at 2 or 3am when they are looking at you in silence, without you noticing.
But I always hide that quick, pointless moment of fear. I smile and wave to her. The sort of polite smile and waving gesture you reserve for an acquaintance.
Then she lowers the curtain, and walks away.
I can't really decipher her expression.
-----------------------------------------
Tonight, she spoke to me with the sort of dialect you expect from a typical Singaporean granny. Actually, she started with some broken English.
Her
"Later..lu..CLose door" (Remember to lock the gates before you leave ok?)
Me
"Ho :) Ho :) (Hokkien > OK, OK)
[u see, i've overheard my boss talkin in hokkien to her before. My boss' home office is afterall, adjacent to her dining room]
"Lu...hokkien lang?" (you are Hokkien?)
"Wa si hokkien lang. ka wa eh neng eh po po gong way ay si zhun, boon si gong hokkien" (i'm hokkien. I speak to my two grannies in hokkien =)
"Wa.lu..dsun..dsakdum...
[She started mumbling. I couldn't understand what she was trying to say. Then my boss came, and politely, firmly told her not to disturb me from my work process.]
----------------------
Perhaps... all she wants is to make a friendly connection.
Perhaps my big round face and my big round smile reminds her of someone.
Perhaps she just wants to chat.
