Funny things you read in Laos

Before I start, I guess it is not surprising to find strange English notices in Laos which are humorous or just do not make sense. English is barely spoken here and the locals are still struggling to learn the language. It is not surprising that locals made a completet cock-up when putting up English signs. However, sometimes you run across some article in the paper, tourist brochures which are downright stunning in terms of absolutely garbled messages.

Another reason I suspect is that the local government hired a malicious foreigner (e.g. French) to translate its documents into English and the foreigner secretly made fun of the Lao people knowing that no one else will ever check his work.

Let's take the Lao National Tourism Authority 2004 Guide to Laos for example.

Under the section of drugs, it says:

"Drugs are forbidden in Laos (we are not in Kathmandu or Goa)."

Holy shit. I think the Nepalese and Indian government are going to be real pissed when they find out. It is like saying "premarital sex is banned in Singapore (we are not like those degenerates from the West)."

Under the section of health, it also says:

"Hepatits, Japanese Encephalitis : if you have not been vaccinated, its too late!"

Hah Ha. Wow, thank you, Sherlock. How's that for being a useless advice? Can you imagine reading this shit in an official tourist guide book?

"You have been bitten by a dog? Here, you are lucky."

WTF?

"Bite from Tiger? Very bad, especially in rainy season."

OMG, WTF? Can someone do a google search and tell me why a tiger bite in rainy season is worse than the average tiger bite in say, dry seasons? Tiger got more teeths during wet days?

And after the tiger bite, the guidebook comforted you by saying:

"You will be comforted that your family is going to get news from you, reading the daily newspaper."

HA HA. Real funny, douchebags. I will be sure to remember this when I am being chewed by a tiger in Laos.

On the section "Thirsty?", the guidebook commented that:

"To cool your drink, prefer ice cubes to crushed ice. Otherwise, an elementary prudence would be to first boil the ice."

Hey, douchebags. How about just boil the fucking water? You boil the ice cubes for what?

I kid you not. These crazy writings actually appear in the 2004 Official Guide to Laos published by the Lao National Tourism Authority. There are much more but I am just so amused right now to write further.

Who wants to be a businessman?

Sometimes in my flights of fantasy, I would imagine that my job is a temporary distraction and some day I will go around to setting up my own business and be gasp! . . a towkay. Isn’t it bloody cool? I can come to work late everyday, at my own time and people have to answer to me for a change. Yeah, that’s right bitches, make me a sandwich. I can play golf everyday and have two hours lunch break. I can go home early and spent the night drinking and fornicating with exotic and beautiful women. That’s the kind of life you see on TV during whisky commercials (Chivas Regal and Johnny Walker are usually the biggest culprits) or any commercials for men’s perfume and underwear (Hugo Boss can suck it btw).

You know the types of commercials I am talking about. Handsome Caucasian man with unbuttoned shirt and muscular six-pack sitting on a beach deck chair with a whiskey glass in one hand while trading stock worth millions on his laptop. A red Ferrari sits in the background, symbol of our Caucasian man’s financial success as a man whose destiny is clearly in his hands and no one else. Across the sandy beach, a hot blonde woman rises from the water as the soft glow of the evening sun plays on her glistening skin. Britney Spears starts singing “Oops, I did it again”. Hot blonde woman starts walking seductively to our Caucasian hero, gyrating her hips to the wind and pours him another glass of whiskey. Our hero drinks from the glass, looks into the camera and on cue, says “Now that’s the life”. Then the woman gives him a blowjob, stabs him while he is in ectasy and runs away with the Ferrari. Wait. That’s bad porn.

But of course, reality is the cold, lonely grave to fantasy’s colourful rainbow. It is tough to start a business. In the first place, one needs a bloody good business idea and I have none. I envy some of the people I met who are bursting with creative business ideas such as setting up popular bread franchises or just trading/selling on Ebay. I read from Straits Times that a Singaporean spent S$70,000-200,000 to set up his own 24 hr minimart in Tuas and is doing well. Now, why can’t I think of that? Some young people are already getting a headstart in entrepreneurship by designing and selling their own clothes.

Truth be told, many people have asked me to invest some money into their business ideas. E.g. a Singaporean who I played golf with just asked me to invest S$250,000 in a fabric factory in Laos. He even lay out a business plan for me – something about exporting Lao fabric by the bulk to neighbouring regional markets. Another asked me to invest in some mining expedition which will have fantastic yields. A cute Japanese cup cake staying in Thailand asks me whether I would like to invest in her plan to run an internet cafe on the beach of Krabi which also specialises in renting out Japanese books for Japanese tourists (Note : I must say this is still the most sensible and viable business plan I have heard for the whole year). But to say that I am sceptical is a major understatement. I think it is my nature to be risk adverse. Whenever some guy comes along with a business plan for me to be towkay, my immediate reaction is that he is here to cheat my money. Bleah. There is so much I don’t know about business – balance sheet, yield, earnings. I need to go back to school to understand how a simple business operates.

Sure, I can set up a foodstall in the middle of nowhere selling noodles. But that would mean I have to stay in Laos permanently since I am never going to make enough to even afford a decent living in Singapore. I guess it is times like these which make people just walk to their nearby Singapore Pool outlet and buy Toto.

The Dawn of Silliness - Fakeyourspace.com

Last week (pre CNY), someone recommended that I should expand my online profile by joining some stupid whoring internet sites such as MySpace or Facebook. This is so that I could increase the possibility of meeting my "Special One" out there. I personally think these internet sites take stupid to a whole new level. If human civilisation collapsed one day, historians a thousand years from now can trace the decline exactly to the date some dumbasses started posting ineligible writings on his myspace website. " Hi, I am 4EVERHOT :) I am pretty and horny and get turned on by abs, asses, boobs and porn. Come cum with me!" Like I said, a whole new level of stupid. I rather have someone hit my balls repeatedly with a knotted rope (ala James Bond in Casino Royale) than participate in the sea of lies and silliness on MySpace.

My idiot friend also told me that since it is important to look (sound) cool on MySpace, it is imperative that I should show people that I have popular supermodel friends within my network (friends list). People who have pictures of beautiful friends are always being approached and worshipped by other idiots on MySpace. However, most normal individuals like you and me don't have supermodel as pals. So what to do? Apparently, one of the things to do is to visit www.fakeyourspace.com.

What is www.fakeyourspace.com?

It basically allows you to pick pics of random supermodels to put on your friends list as fake friends. Not only that, it also let you create fake customised messages and comments from these fake friends to leave on your comment wall so that you look popular! You can even customised one of these models to be your fake lover.

Isn't this amazing? These website is offering fake friends to people so that they can look popular on MySpace. One word = LOSER.

Check the following advert from www.fakeyourspace.com out.

"You may be asking yourself why should you pay for something like this? Our answer to you is because it's dirt cheap. Our basic plan starts at only $.99 This will give you 2 messages per week for 4 weeks. So for only $.99 you will receive 8 messages that will be there forever, not to mention our Models picture which will show up on your friends list. A pretty small price to pay for online popularity don't you think?"

When my friend asked me to check out this website where one can fake one's profile on MySpace, I thought, " Nah. There is no way anyone can be so loser. Paying money for the right to post supermodels pics up as fake friends? No fucking way." Well, guess I was wrong. People who are so desperate for online popularity that they are willing to pay for fake internet friends require serious mental help. By "serious mental help", I meant being hit by a hammer over their head until it bleeds.

The light of civilisation just got darker.

Hey, Daniel Wu and Louis Khoo are dumbasses too!

It would seem that Singapore is going through somewhat of a drought in terms of movies. Simply put, they would have to pay me money to watch some of the crap on offer. The Matrimony? I don’t know what it is but any movie with that lame of a title deserved a pass. The Unseeable? Wow, the movie takes the words out of my mouth. What next? The Unseeable II : The Unwatchable? Or The Unseeable III: Totally Un “qua” able?

So it was over to the Protégé with special appearances by Daniel Wu and Louis Khoo at at the special charity screening at Vivocity on 12 Feb 07. Which was a complete bust, pardon the drug pun. At the charity screening premier, I recalled thinking to myself why did Daniel Wu and Louis Khoo look so embarrassed in front of their screaming legions of fans? I mean, if I am rich and handsome like Wu and Khoo, I will be flexing my muscles in front of my screaming girl fans and basically acting like a jackass while thinking who should I bring home to have a good shag with. Instead, these two were giving everyone an embarrassed grin, looking very much like a couple of dumbasses who wandered into Lawrys and only got money for water and free bread.

He only said one word.

The answer hit me halfway through the movie like a ton of cheap drugs injected into a homeless bum. They looked so embarrassed because they knew they just cheated everyone’s money with this show (cos it was so bad) and they can’t wait to get the hell out of Vivocity before someone opened a can of whoop-ass on their manicured asses. Really. Louis Khoo was so ashamed of this movie that when he was asked to say a few words to his fans, he merely said “Bye” and got the fuck out of the theatre faster than a fat man going for the buffet line at Goodwood Park or before you could even say methamphetamine. You got to give it to Louis Khoo. His acting might have sucked in every movie to date but at least he had the smarts not to hang around ground zero of this atomic bomb of a movie. Yang Guo couldn’t have run faster. Andy Lau and Anita Yuen, being old hands in this business, were even smarter. They didn’t even bother stepping foot in Singapore knowing that they would be pestered by 500 emails asking for refunds.

You also got to give it to Daniel Wu. Knowing that his acting in the movie sucks harder than a baby sucking a wooden spoon, Daniel Wu still had the balls to make small talk to us before the movie and wished everyone “good fortune” after watching it. Oh yeah, good fortune. The only good fortune I want after the movie is to have the good fortune to meet Daniel Wu later in a dark alley so that I could beat my S$35 dollars out of his ass as reimbursement for two hours of enduring his wooden spoon acting and a storyline/dialogue that literally went nowhere. “People take drugs because they are lonely. So, is loneliness or drugs the greater threat?” Hey, tell you what – with dialogue like that, my foot up Daniel Wu’s ass would be a greater threat.

And to think that the dynamic duo of Wu and Khoo actually managed to further cheat some girl out of S$388 when they auctioned off an autographed jacket before the screening. The shame.

To call this “movie”, movie, is somewhat of a misnomer. Like some disasters I have watched, the Protégé suffered from a classic case of identity crisis. It couldn’t decide what the F it should be. A cops/robber action movie or a society drama on drugs or a Discovery Channel documentary on drug trade in IndoChina? All in all, I want my money back from Daniel Wu and Louis Khoo. And also from Andy Lau, since I watched more crap gambling movies from Andy Lau than most people on this planet.

Congratulations are in line . . .

When my maid came in this morning, she said:

Maid : Congratulations, Sir!

CO : Hmmph? What happened? (I was thinking maybe my gardener dug out a box of gold in my garden yesterday. Woo Hoo!)

Maid : Singapore beat Thailand in yesterday's football final.

Oh yeah, which reminds me . . . . . .

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SINGAPORE 3 : 2 THAILAND


IN YOUR FAT FACES, BITCHES! WHO IS YOUR DADDY NOW?!!!

ALL THE FUCKING ROLLING AROUND AND WALKING OFF THE PITCH LIKE A BUNCH OF PUSSIES DIDN'T HELP YOU AT ALL, DID IT? AT LEAST THE LAO PEOPLE HAD THE INTEGRITY TO STAY ON THE PITCH EVEN WHEN THEY WERE LOSING 11-0.

I got like three Lao people congratulating me for Singapore's victory in this morning alone. One actually was cheeky enough to ask me to buy him a treat. I am in a good mood today. It is not everyday Singapore can claim to be the Champion of ASEAN.

Some people might tell me "But CO, Singapore play a negative defensive game compared to the attractive style of the Thais!" To which, I will respond "Do I look like we give a shit? We are champions, bitches. Build a bridge. Get over it."

Coffe and cookies for the whole offifce this afternoon.