Hello, I blog!
I share all my sporadic and toilet thoughts in here, because I am random like that.
Gong xi fa cai
There are many things about Chinese New Year that I’m not particularly fond of.
There’s an overwhelming emphasis on abundance, wealth and fortune. Music that plays in malls, markets and public places sing about how “the God of Fortune is coming”. Everyone wishes one another ‘gong xi fa cai’ – which means ‘may you have a windfall’ in mandarin. People cheer “huat ah!”, which is Hokkien dialect for ‘fa’ – which means ‘prosper’ in mandarin.
Mandarin oranges become ubiquitous during this festive season, which signifies good fortune as its name in mandarin means ‘gold’ – another reference to wealth. A well-known superstition also states that one should not sweep the floor or throw out any trash during Chinese New Year, as it’s associated with ‘sweeping your wealth away’.
It’s all about wealth this, wealth that.
Money, money, money.
It all seems pretty superficial to me.
But I guess 2020 has been an unprecedented year, with layoffs and reduction in incomes due to the poor economy. So this 2021, the typical Chinese New Year wishes have their place. Everyone wishes for a steady income after all, we all need money to survive. That’s unfortunately how the world works. :(
My wish for everyone this year is stability, health and happiness. I don’t need wealth or abundance, ‘just enough’ works for me. It’s human beings’ desire for abundance that is driving environmental destruction after all. Also, keep being kind to one another.
My Chinese New Year has been really quiet this year. No large groups, no noisy loheis. It’s just the way my introverted self likes it. (Although part of me feels that it’s weird.)
Irresponsible people, irresponsible people everywhere
I’m angry.
We’re in a fucking pandemic, but people don’t seem to be taking it seriously.
I just saw several videos on social media from friends who have attended weddings this weekend. The attendees – all in an air-conditioned enclosed space – none of them (or only one or two) were wearing masks even though they were not eating or drinking.
People in offices who refuse to mask up because “it is uncomfortable”. Bitch, I have freaking asthma and I am still wearing a mask. What’s your bloody excuse? Besides, I have to wear a mask for the rest of my life. You only have to do this temporarily during a pandemic. Stop fucking whining.
And temperature screening is not even taken seriously in Singapore. Scan your palm? What the heck? What’s the scientific basis to that?
I registered 34.6 degrees at a café in Paragon Mall.
Wow, I am walking around with hypothermia, guys. I was practically dead at that point in time.
Temperature screening, not.
Either do it properly, or not at all.
And people gathering in groups of more than 8, then boasting about it on social media as if it’s some badge of honour. Oh look, I’m flouting the rules. Aren’t I cool. No, asshole. It’s irresponsible people like you that are raising the community case counts in Singapore.
People still going to work and mingling with others after developing symptoms like fever and loss of taste/smell – and spawning 2 new workplace-based clusters. Slowclap. After 1 year of this shit, you would have thought that people would have developed some common sense. Nooooope.
In most recent news, with Chinese New Year around the corner, the government is limiting the number of visitors per household per day to 8. And each person is not allowed to visit more than 2 other households in a given day. But how is this rule even regulated? The onus is on the people to be responsible, thinking adults.
But I don’t trust people to be responsible and self-regulate, seriously. They will find every single possible loophole and exploit it.
“They can’t patrol every single house and catch us anyway.”
This is the third pandemic – selfish ignorance. (The second is the pandemic of fake news and disinformation. As for the first, I doubt Covid-19 needs introduction anymore.)
I’m honestly very thankful that both sides of my extended family are heeding these new regulations.
I sound like I’m on my moral high horse here and being absolutely judgy. I’m just really incredulous at this blatant show of selfishness when we have a pandemic ripping through mankind and people are dying by the millions.
/Grumble.
Pokémon invaded my dreams
I just had to write this dream down for remembrance.
Disclaimer: This post will make absolutely no sense if you’re not a Pokémon GO player.
Last night, I dreamt that my boyfriend and I were playing Pokémon GO. (Nothing different from real life, since we do this every weekend.)
Another new generation of pokémon was just released and Yamper (this pokémon that looks like a corgi) was one of them. Now, my boyfriend and I are huge corgi fanatics so obviously we were going around catching all the Yampers we could find.
Chasing corgis aside, the Pokémon GO gameplay had a huge twist from what it is currently.
Because I was a fan of Megumin, this character from the anime Konosuba, Megumin strangely materialized in my dream as a pokémon that can be caught in Pokémon GO. Once evolved, it turns into Megumax. (HAHAHA, my brain churns out puns even in my dreams.)
But here’s the catch – it cannot be evolved directly.
Instead, you had to hunt for bluetooth gadgets that are hidden in real world locations (via partnerships with commercial places) in order to evolve Megumin. I’m not even talking about augmented reality/location tracking anymore, but actual physical gadgets.
It’s literally a treasure hunting game in the physical space.
So my boyfriend and I were running around a mall, hunting high and low for these mysterious bluetooth gadgets. We went from store to store, looking underneath shelves and scouring all corners. (If this was real life, we would have looked so suspicious that the mall will call the police on us, haha.)
Eventually, we found the gadgets at the bottom of a basket filled with chocolates.
Somehow, the Pokémon GO app will pick up the signal from the gadget and the “evolve” button will magically appear.
Very happy, we both were.
Somehow, evolving Megumin and Yamper were one of the requirements to level up from 40 to 41 so we leveled up automatically. And I was musing to my boyfriend about how I was stuck at level 39 for 1.5 years, whereas it took me only 2 months to level up to 41.
But wow, isn’t this game mechanic so cool? It becomes an urban reality kind of game, or an upgraded treasure hunt where the entire world has become the playground. And nope, no amount of location spoofing will be able to help you here.
Then, my boyfriend (in real life) mused “those gadgets are going to get stolen”.
Oh, right.
Reality hits.
So many possible problems with this game set-up. Those gadgets have to be chained up. Oh, and crowd control. We’re still in a pandemic after all.
Dang.
After that, I longed to go back to sleep so that I could return to that dream, where pandemics and shitty humans did not exist.
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